 We're not as old as we were when Charlie and I joined, then everybody was now that sounds thank you very much and I want to now call this Durham City Council work session to order at one o'clock on on August the 6th and I certainly want to welcome everyone here today. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Shul? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson? Here. Councilmember Caballero? Here. Councilmember Freeman? Present. Councilmember Middleton? Here. Councilmember East? Here. Thank you. Thank you Madam clerk. I'll now ask are there announcements by members of the council I know the councilmember Reese does have an announcement. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I have two announcements. First of all I know members of the council received last night a public comment from a group of residents who lived in who live at Emorywood estates here in Durham. This morning councilmember Middleton and I spent almost two hours on the phone with them to talk about their concerns about a new residential development directly adjacent to them between their neighborhood and in see how a 55 on your little road here in the city of Durham and I have reached out to our staff to begin the process of getting some information so that councilmember Middleton and I can be responsive to their request for information find out what is possible and to kind of just give them a better sense of where the city is in terms of how we are holding that developer accountable for what's happening in that part of our city. I know that a number of us including councilmember Freeman have spoken with these residents in the past but I think it was a we had a marketing thing I'm sorry councilmember Middleton and I had a great conversation with them today very what I will call a frank and open exchange of views and information on the subject and will continue to do that but because they had requested an opportunity to speak at the work session today because we have yet to finalize the process for that or we have but that will be in effect until our until a future work session I just wanted to raise those concerns here and let my council colleagues know that we are engaged on that and we'll be providing additional information to our colleagues as we get more information from staff about what can be done whether it's you know logging and construction trucks going through their neighborhood or opening up stubs to the new development there are lots of questions that neighbors had and we'll be working to get them some answers as I said because they wanted to speak at today's meeting and could not for technical reasons I just wanted to raise those raise that voice here at the council. Kept from Middleton before I go to my second announcement is there anything you wanted to add to that since you and I were tag-teaming on that call this morning. No I thank you you nailed it brilliantly thank you. Well this is the first time for everything. The second thing I wanted to make an announcement about is last night a group of Durham residents affiliated with our sister cities Durham program joined virtually with a group of residents from our sister city in Japan Toyama Toyama in Toyama prefecture to celebrate 75 years of peace and friendship between the countries of the United States of America and Japan it was exactly what I needed during this ridiculous and crazy time of global pandemic and we heard remarks from the mayor of Toyama and a number of other officials in the city of Toyama I delivered some poorly worded remarks and the mayor came in to save me at the end with some much more eloquent words and then all of us whether it was evening here in Durham this was about 7.15 at night here or in the morning in Toyama rang bells to celebrate and to honor the friendship between our two countries and our two cities a number of local churches here in Durham also participated using their carolons and bell towers to participate in that bell ringing and it's exactly the kind of thing that I love about our sister cities Durham program so many thanks to Brady Searls our executive director Bob Ashley the president of sister cities Durham as the as one of two liaisons to the to the sister cities Durham cut smear Middlesons or other liaison it was it was a rare privilege to be there and to enjoy that fellowship with our friends in Toyama and as I said I think during this time we can all use a little bit more celebration about what's positive about the world and our relationships with other places so I appreciate with that I'm done with my announcements thank you for the opportunity Mr. Mayor thank you councilmember Reese and you know I hope at some time you will be able to join a delegation to Toyama on behalf of the city so I'm I am I have committed to my family that we're gonna go to Toyama at some point between now and December of 2023 so we will be doing that for sure fantastic other announcements by members of the council councilmember Caballero good afternoon mayor good afternoon everyone my colleagues and those watching I just wanted to acknowledge that many of us including council members are will be starting school virtually or digitally in the next few weeks and I wanted to let city staff know how appreciative I am of their flexibility with our city employees we know this is a very very hard time for many of you and I just want to acknowledge that as a council we know that we need to have flexibility and really a lot of compassion for for parents and caregivers these next few weeks and months of schools open and very very precarious times and I ask also for that extension to be towards council members who will be struggling mightily in the next few weeks as we have you know our kids and school behind work sessions and other meetings thank you so much councilmember and I do think that that both of those points that you made are very important I do think that means that councilmember Middleton and myself are gonna have a special responsibility because we don't have children at home so if we can step up you'll let us know thank you thank you so much other announcements by members of the council councilmember Freeman and then councilmember Middleton thank you miss you and I appreciate council member Cavieros very present concern I just want to make sure that I know that I do have to leave promptly at five o'clock today for an open house meeting for one of the kids my kids start school on Monday and we are preparing and doing the best that we can and I am certain that the bandwidth situation will get much worse but anyway I also wanted to add that I do want to acknowledge that there are a number of land use concerns that have come up in addition to the Emory Woods area also in Braggtown and and a section over on West Club and I just want to make sure that staff is aware and paying attention to the folks who've been asking for assistance and if there's anything that I can do to support that I would just want to make sure that folks are aware I'm paying attention I'm here may not be responding very promptly to emails but I I do I do expect to keep up with that and here's some follow-up so and in addition to that I think I shared an email with council members about a follow-up regarding some of our conversations and requesting some time on the in the work session agenda and the coming month or so around addressing some of the MWBE WBE goals that we have set for underutilized businesses and really would like to get some feedback from the city attorney and city attorney's office and place as we have the discussion and so I'm hoping that we'll get that lined up in the next few weeks or so so that we can have it added to the agenda and lastly I it was one more thing and I do apologize I had a little note but I will come back to it other than that thank you thank you very much and I know that we had council member Reese raise some of these same questions and I'm glad we'll be having a discussion about that at our last work session council member Middleton thank you mr. mayor and thank you colleagues good to see all of you good afternoon I'm going to associate myself with all of the announcements that were made and let Javier know I'm praying for you and the family and uncle Mark Anthony is available if you need any help with the with the kids same for you Charlie I also want to associate myself with Charlie's comments about the ringing of bells and and hoping pray that those clad those bells would be a clarion call to peace not just between nations but even in our own communities which is really the on rare okay somebody buzzed in can you hear there you go on rent for my announcements today I want to thank the council again for the what I thought was a heartfelt and robust discussion about gun violence at our last council meeting alas work sessions of course and I will not enumerate them since that last council work session gunfire has continued to plague our city and the number of folk have been subject have become victims of gunfire since that last session so again I want to thank us for our seriousness in our in our willingness to talk about ways that we can form a comprehensive and multifaceted and substantive response to gunfire in our city I also want to thank council members particularly for their willingness of commitments that work in terms of expanding violence interruption and for openness to to shot spotted having discussion about shot spotter and I want to make two announcements relative to moving what I hope will be a comprehensive governmental response to gun violence in our city so Durham's watched a lot as you know and folk track us and what's going on in Durham and they follow us in the media all over the nation all of the world good and bad positive negative Durham's is just that city where the it city on yesterday Mr. Mayor and council colleagues I had a conversation with an executive from shot spotter it was a pretty free ranging and comprehensive conversation and I want to announce today to you Mr. Mayor and colleagues I want to announce to the city that shot spotter has made a representation that they are willing to do a no cost no obligation six month trial in our city with their technology for us to see if it works that includes the attendant consulting work that goes with the department as well let me repeat that they are willing to do at no cost or no obligation for half a year a pilot in our city to see if this technology would serve us one and going after repeat shooters and two potentially potentially saving lives I'm pleased to announce that on behalf of children living in this city in neighborhoods like the one I grew up in in Red Hood Brooklyn during the height of the crack epidemic where I was lulled to sleep at night by gunfire and became sensitized to it on behalf of mothers that have buried children and for the mothers that come up to me constantly and ask what are we going to do about gunfire I think we should take that deal I think we should take the deal and I think we should keep our money in our pocket it's a pandemic we know that we are stretched for money but we also know that many of the issues that plague black and brown communities have been exacerbated by this pandemic and that gunfire has not ceased or been silenced since the start of this pandemic I urge us to get them before us as soon as possible to present the details of their proposal for us to ask whatever questions we have to have whatever debate we need to have about over policing one thing we won't have to talk about this money for about at least half a year and I think we owe it to our children to see if this technology could help us save some lives and get some shooters off the street black lives do indeed matter and I think we can get the test to see if we can save some of them for free so I put that to you I'm excited about that announcement I think it's it's something that we should be pleased with it's something that Wilmington and Goldsboro and New York and Chicago are paying for we get to try for free so I want to announce that I also want to ask that in subsequent and then pursue pursuant to what we said about violence interrupters that we consider at some point in the near future having a presentation before us on the violence interrupter program to look for on ramps in ways that the city can either expand in concert with the county or initiate our own version of that program in the city once again with an eye towards crafting a comprehensive multifaceted muscular robust response to gunfire in our city that will give us the moral authority to stand before our people even if we can't causally point to something we've done and a particular shooting but be able to say that we are literally doing everything we can as a city to combat this problem rather than thoughts and prayers and showing up at vigils and funerals and wakes which is becoming very heavy on my soul and weary for many of us in the city more so for those whose children they're actually varying so so you know I'm just there to bring regards and well wishes on behalf of the community so those are my announcements to mayor I want us to consider bringing the shots about our team in to talk about the specifics of this remarkable offer that they have made to our city and I'd also like us to look at a time when we can have a conversation or presentation in concert with staff regarding violence interrupters to begin to craft our comprehensive response to gun violence in this city thank you colleagues thank you mr. mayor thank you very much counselor Middleton I know that the city manager told me he had also heard from shot spotter with that offer and so I'll be talking to him about what the next step ought to be and I agree with you a good idea we can certainly schedule a a conversation with I think we would want to hear from the county about their violence interrupter plan and we can certainly do that so thank you for those thank you both for those thank you for both of those announcements councilmember Freeman I apologize I appreciate those comments councilmember Middleton and I want to make sure I associate myself with them and I also wanted to add the last note that I had which was to to see if there was any interest of council to hear back from Parks and Rec and Office of Workhorse and economic development around some supports for children who will be learning virtually and figuring out what kind of support we can add to the community and just wanted to kind of put that out there so that we're all thinking about what that might look like and make sure that staff is supporting in any way that I mean I'm not aware of what's happening right now so I just want to make sure that if there is something I would love to be brought up to speed so thank you thank you I know that Laura Khalil from our office on youth is coordinating with Parks and Rec and other relevant city departments and I think we could ask the city manager that at the appropriate time that we hear from them either in writing or in person so we would know we would understand what the what what what the city is doing to support so thank you for that any other announcements all right thank you all so much we'll now move to I don't want to skip anything like I usually do we'll now move to priority items by the city manager thank you mr. mayor members council good afternoon everyone certainly we will work on scheduling the first two items that councilmember Middleton raised and then I think it would be easier for us to get you a memorandum of reports some kind on the work that staff DPR and office on youth is is is doing associate or proposing to do associated with some you know childcare and after-school care things particularly in light of not wanting to burden a what likely will be continued fairly large work sessions over the next several months so we'll get you something on that have several priority items this afternoon one agenda item number one related to the city council minutes there are a number of attachments one through six that have been updated agenda item number six which is the national association of city transportation official streets for pandemic response and recovery grant the fire department or the transportation department is requesting that the rules be suspended on this item this grant award today to address the transportation needs associated with the pandemic but specifically because the project must be started by October the 1 2020 and must be completed and funds expended by November 1 2020 and it would be important to us to get started did not have to wait several more weeks to initiate that if council has any questions about the grant certainly staff is prepared to to respond to that agenda item number 12 is a supplemental item that has been added at the request of council member re sub-leave is the discussion of the ward 3 vacancy and then finally I am requesting that the city council hold a closed session at the end of this meeting pursuant to North Carolina General Statutes 143-318.11 a 6 and the motion is to go into closed session to consider two distinct personnel matters the first consisting of consideration of the conditions of appointment of an interim city manager and the second one entail in the investigation of a complaint against an individual employee those are my priority items this afternoon thank you thank you very much mr. manager you've heard the manager's crowd thank you is there a second second second moved by by mayor pro tem johnson second by council member Reese that we approve the manager's priority items madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi council member caballero hi council member Freeman hi council member Middleton I vote aye council member Reese hi thank you thank you very much the eyes have it the motion passes six to zero madam attorney do you have any priority items today good afternoon mr. mayor mayor pro tem members of council I do not have any priority items today thank you madam attorney madam clerk any priority items good afternoon everyone the city clerk's office has no items thank you very much madam clerk all right we will now move to the administrative consent items beginning with the city clerk's office item one approval of city council minutes lots of minutes from the clerk's office a lot of meetings and hard to do in this format and appreciate them very much item to boards committees and commissions attendance reports for July 1 2019 to June 30th 2020 departmental items budget management services department item three policy link cities and counties for fines and fees justice grant thank you to council member freeman and all those who have been active on this on our staff item for city council's office discussion proposal proposal and four recommendations of the joint city county renewal and recovery task force this is going to be a presentation item five city managers office rally Durham airport authority rdu a a federal aviation administration faa airport improvement project grant offer item six department transportation national association of city transportation official streets for pandemic response and recovery grant this item is a priority item by the city manager we will let me read through the rest of these and then we'll come back to item six item seven purchase authorization for the replacement of eight go during buses item eight I don't want to pull that item I just want to point out to the council into the folks watching at home that this these buses are directly related to future service expansions for go-dure bus service here in Durham it's fantastic that we've been able to include these funds are in the budget for the transit for the transportation department and go-dure and it'll make a huge difference in our capacity for transit servicing there thank you very much council member you're exactly right item eight department of water management agreement for watershed protection with triangle j council governments and authorization to participate in triangle land concerns he down to earth firms project I don't this is great I love the regional cooperation I do have one question that I don't need to pull this item but would appreciate if we could hear from the administration before we get to the Monday night meeting at the four hundred and twenty four thousand dollars from the landowner house my question is is that donation being made in form of the donation of the land exactly what is that and so if I could if the council could get an email and answer that prior to Monday when we have our meeting I would be appreciative under the finance department item non-travel management service contract under public works item 10 utility extension agreement with SR Patterson place LLC under public hearings city county planning department item 11 a 19 0 0 0 0 8 z 1 9 0 0 2 3 Farrington towns under supplemental items city council's office item 12 discussion of war three vacancy timeline and we're going to have that we have the two discussion items items for item 12 but I think now what we'll do and then to be followed by the closed session what we'll do now is to go back to item six the national association of city transportation official streets for pandemic response recovery grant this is a twenty five thousand dollar grants to support the shared streets initiative and I see that Sean Egan is here Sean we're happy to hear any comments that you may have thank you mayor and members of council this is a great opportunity for us to build on our shared streets program which has identified streets where we can improve access for bicycles and pedestrians across Durham we're involved in a public engagement and community outreach for that initiative right now and so as part of this we partnered with spirit house for the application and they're working with us to engage with the community to make sure that there's a clear understanding in the community and support for the among the residents of these streets and we are looking forward to getting the results of that public engagement and then being able to move forward and use this grant funding to help us improve the safety and multimodal access on our streets and I have here Ellen Beckman if there are specific questions about the program schedule or implementation thank you Sean and Ellen we appreciate you being here colleagues are there any questions for for Ellen this is a great program and thrilled that we are able to do it if there are no questions I will accept the motion that we suspend the rules and vote on this item to move by mayor pro tem seconded by council member Reese madam clerk will you please call the role mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi council member caballero hi council member freeman hi council member Middleton I vote aye council member Reese thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it six to nothing and the motion passes and now I'll accept a motion that we adopt the the grant ordinance so move I get moved by council member freeman seconded by mayor pro tem johnson that we accept the grant ordinance madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi council member caballero hi council member freeman hi council member Middleton hi council member Reese hi thank you thank you very much the eyes have it six to zero and the motion passes thank you Sean and Ellen for being with us today thank you mr. manager we have according to my calculation just the two discussion items followed by the closed sessions I correct that's correct miss mayor thank you very much all right we'll begin with item four I'm sorry yes with item four which is the which is the discussion of the proposals and four recommendations of the joint city county renewal recovery and renewal task force we have with us today the co-chairs of that task force Katie galbraith and Matisha Sims and I see Katie is with us is Matisha also able to be make her video available I'm with you but the host is not allowing me to turn my video on okay that'll be corrected in a second okay so if you all could make Matisha Sims video and audio available there she is good thank you thank you madam clerk we are joined today by our fabulous co-chairs of our recovery renewal task force they have done an amazing job I think that I know that many of you all know either one or both of Katie and Matisha they have done a fantastic job Katie is the the president of Durham Regional Duke Regional Hospital and also is the chair of the board of the Durham Chamber of Commerce Matisha is vice president Blue Cross Blue Shield and for many of us who've been able to serve on the City Audit Committee we know her as the chair of that committee who served on that committee for many years done a fantastic job the task force has been operating for close to 80 days I would think now in a 100-day mission colleagues as you know the task force has extended its time of service all the members have agreed to continue to serve the intensity of the meeting schedule it's been meeting every every week on Friday mornings for a couple of hours and has had a really great agenda and a really great program of work I know colleagues that you're familiar with much of this they'll that will review it I know there'll be some review of that as well as to talk about for budget just to talk a little bit about the extension of this task force work the task force has agreed to eat to meet through May the intensity of the meetings will will be ramped back twice a week twice a month in September and then after that monthly the roundtables will also continue to operate they have engaged hundreds and hundreds of their residents and businesses they will continue to operate as needed as well and they are joined Katie and Matisha are joined by other members of the task force who are with us today and madam clerk if you would make them available to the cameras as well that would be good they're mainly here to be available for questions but we do have other members of our community who are with us who will be task force members who are present to contribute if there are questions that need to be answered I'm now going to ask Ryan Smith if he has anything to add before I turn this over to Katie and Matisha Ryan as you know has been staffing the task force has done a great job mayor sure I have no additional comments and look forward to the presentation from our co-chairs thank you great Katie are you up first actually I think Matisha is up first yeah thank you so thank you for welcome thank you so much mr. mayor for those comments and just wanted to say good afternoon to everyone and thanks so much for allowing us an opportunity to be on your agenda today so in the time that we have with you today we would like to share a little background on how we got here and here meaning a formal request to the city to fund some initiatives that position us Durham to be more proactive and respond into this pandemic versus being reactive we'll also spend some time discussing the budget proposals that we're asking the city and the county to fund and most importantly we want to address any questions or concerns that you may have about these proposals I think it's important to give you a little bit of background on the Durham recovery renewal task force so we came together for the first time in mid-May with the primary mission to advise Mayor Shull and Chair Jacobs on the best ways to keep Durham safe as we recover and renew not just our economy but our people and Durham as well we have a task force of 15 very diverse individuals that are strong community leaders and they have been very actively engaged and driving forward our mission when we started our work in May we did ask ourselves do we need a budget but we decided that we will want to first focus on our mission and work on advancing our mission and we were also optimistic that we would be able to secure some volunteer time as well as donations from organizations in the community to advance our mission forward so instead of focusing on the budget we focused on our mission and I'm really proud of the work that we have accomplished in 80 or so days I've seen this task force truly serve as a catalyst to get some initiatives off of the ground and our work has provided a great forum to engage our community some of the notable items that we've moved forward includes developing the back on the bull campaign and I'll spend a little bit more time talking about that when I go with the first budget proposal we've also figured out how to provide face coverance to our vulnerable populations we've created an online marketplace for online provide for local providers of masks uplifting our minority owned and women owned providers we've created many active roundtables and this has probably been the most instrumental forum that has allowed us to hear directly from the community and not just to hear about their challenges and their struggles it's provided a forum for us to collectively brainstorm on ways to address those challenges we've had roundtables focused on places of worship vulnerable populations restaurants personal services immigrants and refugees and the list goes on we've also done some foundational work to help us better understand how we measure economic recovery and we're actively working to attack the COVID-19 crisis in our Latinx community so that's just a quick view and to some of the work that we've done over the past 80 or so days and it's by no means intended to be an all-inclusive list but from the great work that we've done we've realized that we're now at a point that in order to continue to move forward with some of the initiatives that we truly believe are key enablers to helping us on this journey to recover and renew we need some funding we have effectively leveraged her about no time were possible we've leveraged donations from the community where possible and we continue to explore ways to leverage other resources to keep our momentum going but now that we're at this juncture and we recognize that we do need some funding the task force recently designed a budget process to help us identify which which initiatives we wanted to bring forward with the request for funding we certainly understand that other efforts are happening at the city and at the county to address our response to this pandemic and that work requires funding as well so for that reason we did take into consideration those initiatives as we were going through the budget process Mayor Shul and Chair Jacobs sent out a request to the city and into an accounting to identify initiative initiatives that required funding so that we could take a look at our budget proposals to first and foremost make sure that we weren't duplicating any work and also identify if there was any opportunities to leverage existing work so we went through that process the budget process and we used a small subcommittee of Task Force members and we also invited Jim Groves from the Emergency Operations Center to be a part of this small subcommittee and the subcommittee evaluated the budget proposals to make sure that the proposals aligned with the guiding principles of the task force work our mission from those proposals we made a recommendation to the task force as a whole on the proposals that we wanted to move forward after some further vetting from the task force as a whole we unanimously agreed that we wanted to move forward with four of the proposals so today we're asking for your support of three of the four proposals the city has already agreed to fully support one of the four proposals that we brought forward and that proposal allows disposable masks to be dispersed on every go-derm bus to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission among our transit riders the city's transportation department has been passing out face masks at the central terminal which is great but many transit riders had to ride maybe a bus or two to get to that central terminal before they even had access for free mask we're very appreciative of the city for quickly responding to this request and disposable face masks will be offered on all go-derm buses in the next few weeks the task force has provided an initial supply of 6,000 free face masks and we've also identified a local source that can supply tens of thousands of additional disposable masks at a very discounted rate so again we continue to leverage resources to help us proceed in a fiscally responsible manner I sincerely thank the city and Sean Egan and his team in the transportation department for their commitment to the health of our transit riders and for moving forward with a sense of urgency to make this happen so now I'm going to share the first proposal with you and then Katie will share the two additional proposals so the first proposal that I'm going to talk about is the back on the bull communication plan the task force partnered with local experts at McKinney and Duke University's Center for Advanced Hindsight to develop the back on the bull campaign this campaign is designed to help us keep Durham open and reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission by encouraging greater voluntary compliance with public health best practices if you haven't had an opportunity to check out the back on the bull website I strongly encourage you to do so but what really sets back on the bull apart is the integration of behavior science into a best-in-class health and safety checklist that helps businesses and other establishments make concrete plans for steps that they will take to keep their employees and their customers safe businesses can complete the an industry-specific checklist where they commit to evidence-based practices that are proven to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission after they complete the checklist they can print out personalized wall design posters with the top five actions that they're taken and they can post those posters on the entrance at their establishments on the actual website residents can see every business that has participated and they can also clearly see every commitment that businesses are taken to keep them safe and we think this type of transparency is crucial as we work toward recovering and renewing this transparency will help restore and or inspire confidence among residences residents in Durham and provide the necessary awareness when needed when re-engaging with businesses in the first three weeks of the campaign over 200 businesses completed the health and safety checklist that's a good start but we still need to increase awareness and participation the task force has developed this campaign with over $150,000 and pro bono contributions from local experts but in order to fully realize its public benefit we need additional funds to increase awareness of this campaign and its impact we want businesses to know that residents are aware of the campaign and are on the lookout for the back on the bull signs and store for in windows for assurance that places are doing their part to reopen safely we've built an amazing team of communication professionals that include discovered Durham Duke University DDI Durham Chamber the city and county staff and others these groups have estimated that we can consistently reach about 50,000 residents with no additional cost but that's simply not enough our current plan will help us reach approximately 300,000 Durham residents at least six times between now and the end of this year I do want to give thanks to the city for already contributing an initial $24,100 to fund some initial communication expenses and to cover all translation expenses because of the city's support we were able to roll out this campaign in English and Spanish so the ask is for the city and the county to share the cost of this proposal and when I say share split it 50-50 the total proposal is approximately $264,000 so the ask of the city is $132,000 we did present these proposals to the county on Monday and for this specific proposal the county has agreed to move forward with seeking approval of $100,000 related to this ask and reevaluating the effectiveness of the campaign to determine if they will contribute some additional funds I do want to acknowledge Susan Amy from discovered Durham whose team has put together our detailed communications plan and they've done a phenomenal job and she's joined today to answer any questions that you might have about the proposal I also want to acknowledge Mariel Beasley who has joined today from the Center for Advanced Hindsight her team of behavioral scientists contributed hundreds of hours to develop the checklist and the website and the last thing I'll say about this proposal is this is an urgent request because we put together a campaign and we've laid out everything that we need to do to commute to continue to communicate to Durham residents about this campaign and now we're at a point where without additional funding there's not much work that we can be done as it relates to communicating more about the back on the bull campaign so with that said I'm going to pause and ask are there any questions about the back on the bull communication plan budget proposal thank you very much Matisha for that fabulous fabulous presentation both about the the work of the task force in general and this specific proposal colleagues we're going to take these one at a time as you heard from Matisha we don't have to we don't have to consider budgeting for the face coverings proposal for our buses because that's already been covered by city funds and thank you to our administration as Matisha said for making that happen we have before us now to discuss the communications plan and you heard again just to summarize that the city and county have each been asked for a hundred and thirty two thousand dollars to cover a half of each of us covering half of the plan the county has agreed there they'll have on their next agenda approval of a hundred thousand dollars and they want to wait and to see how things go before approving the the rest of that those funds and we're being asked to do the same to provide half of that funding and to do so expeditiously the I thought that our packet had a very good description of everything that you know that the outlines of this proposal and a lot of the detail and I'm grateful Susan Amy again is here and Susan thank you for your leadership of this very good group that put this plan together so I'll now ask for questions or comments by members of the council and if you want to direct your question to you to Matisha or Susan council member Reese thank you Mr. Mayor first of all I want to thank our chairs for the extraordinary work that you and the other members of the task force have been doing during this unprecedented situation a precedent in modern times anyway and thank you for your leadership your community is a safer place because of the work you're doing and I'm just I can't say enough how thankful I am that you are both willing to undertake this significant responsibility during a time when I'm sure all of our lives are already completely overloaded so thank you thank you thank you I guess my question is for staff the 130 $132,000 to ask from the city is that right Mr. Mayor some of that neighborhood you're already unmuted Mr. Mayor that is correct that is the that's a number great and is it is this the kind of expense that we were contemplated when we established the $5 million COVID relief fund in the initials budget council member Reese as you may recall we weren't quite sure what kind of expenses we were contemplating back when we proposed the $5 million funding we just knew there likely was going to be some things that were going to come up we have I think I've previously indicated we've we've incurred you know substantial expenses internally that we are looking at ways that we can recover some of those funds and to date I think we've spent the million dollars for the small business recovery and loan fund out of this out of that five million and then some smaller amounts that were referenced earlier about some translations expenses and those kinds of things so really at this point it is a a council determination what what I would say is you know we don't really have a kind of open call for funding type things I think I anticipate that the council is going to need to continue to you know evaluate these issues as they come and acknowledge that you know at some point that you know those those funds will will be used up or or we'll need to be increased but again we didn't you know didn't really have a complete profile of what these expenditures might look like we just wanted to make sure that in budgeting we had we had a source of flexibility for the council to make these kinds of decisions great that was what I was hoping you would say manager I guess in that case I think this is a fantastic idea it's the kind of program that allows us to provide some some reassurance to members of the community while encouraging evidence-based practices and and I think it's well worth $132,000 and I would support moving forward with this this particular portion of the request at this time thank you Mr. Mayor thank you very much council member other council member council member Calvierto thank you I just wanted to say that I'm excited about this I'm glad it came forward and I want to just acknowledge all the extensive amount of work that's been done to do translation interpretation in general with the task force with the back on the bull campaign I know it's taken a lot of effort and work and I just want to appreciate everyone's dedication to expanding language access thank you very much other comments or questions for miss Sims or miss Amy Calvier Milton thank you mr. Marin thank you all of you and I just want to thank the co-chair so much for suiting up on behalf of our city I think it was Winston Churchill talking about the Britain's Royal Air Force when he said never have so many owed so much to so few our cities in trouble I mean you guys were called together not because things were going well but because we were facing we are facing an incredible challenge and this is what it looks like when you have leadership that believes in science that doesn't govern by polls that's responsive to their people and is led by compassion this is what the response should look like I wish it were so on the national level so I just want to thank you as a resident forget being on the council this is a resident for the work that you're doing on behalf of an entire city and we hope we can return you back to your normal lives as soon as possible I do have a question I first off I fully support funding at the full level I this this task force was created under emergency powers I think we're still in an emergency I'm not really in the mode of kind of doing a little bit and seeing and then given the rest that that's not a knock on the county I I trust the leadership that's in place during this emergency and if you guys say you need 132 grand I believe you and and I think it'll be well spent so I'm fully in support of that I do want to ask about the if you can how much of that 132 will be administrative or actually going to dissemination and what what type of platforms will we exploiting is are we doing television ads or or print or can you give us a sense of what what the full role of the plan would look like and how much it's going to cost of that 132 roughly percentage-wise yes thank you councilor Middleton I'd be happy to actually none of it goes none of the expense goes to anything except the paid media all of the services for media planning and buying are being contributed by discovered Durham and other members of the communications task force we are looking to do two things one is to meet as broad a section of Durham residents as possible hopefully all of them and we're also looking at making sure that as Montisha said earlier looking make sure that there are multiple impressions per person that so the media that we're using are really broad we're using seven radio stations three TV stations in outdoor we're doing billboards and bus advertising online there's several different ways that we're going using online advertising including social media and then six different print publications with a real intent to reach all demographics you have me a hello thanks yeah all right great any other council member Freeman thank you I I appreciate the presentation as well miss Sims and I I've also appreciated having the opportunity to hear and challenge a lot of the conversation during your Friday meetings in the mornings and I just want to thank you as well I don't say it enough and have an opportunity to to just know like how you work through the process and how attention to how much of the attention to detail you you've put into this I know I appreciate that that miss Amy has had the opportunity to join the African-American Colbert response commit like committee and I wanted to just make sure that you follow up and and also join the Latinx Colbert response team as well and just making sure that the traditional and non-traditional media formats are all included that was my main concern and so I I I co-heartily support the funding and I want to make sure that the the folks are reached so thank you thank you thank you so much are there any other comments or questions about members of the council I'm going to ask the manager then that we put the expenditure of the $132,000 for this item or consent for the following Monday night meeting mr. manager be glad to miss mayor thank you and just to be clear this will be in a a a an agreement between the city and discovered Durham great thank you as you all I know that you all have been briefed individually council of colleagues by the by the chairs of the task force the manager has also been briefed and just wanted to let you know that he's also fully aware of these proposals and has asked a lot of good questions we spent time with Katie and Matisha and the manager recently okay I said Katie are you up I am up thank you so much good afternoon everyone and thank you for your time today as well as for your leadership really during this what is truly an extraordinary time and I I also want to just take a moment to say what a privilege it has been to be serving on the renewal and recovery task force I continue to be so humbled to have the opportunity to work with such an incredibly dedicated group of leaders from across our community so in addition to the back on the bull communications proposal I want to share two additional funding proposals with you first is the community health ambassador program and we know that to ensure the safety of all Durham residents in the battle against COVID compliance with public health best practices is really critical that's face coverings hand hygiene social distancing that's all essential and so the task force is recommending establishing a community health ambassador program to really help increase voluntary compliance with these practices and local orders by providing in-person peer support from trusted community members through this new community health ambassador program the requested budget for this is six hundred and forty eight thousand forty seven dollars to be split between the county and the city at three hundred and twenty five thousand approximately each the program would be administered in partnership with UNC Gillings School of Public Health and the ambassadors would be culturally competent frontline public health workers hired from the communities they serve and trusted by those communities and that's really a critical component of this proposal as part of the commitment to equity a majority of the ambassadors would come from those communities that have really been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 as we know including at least four positions for bilingual bicultural native Spanish language speakers the ambassadors would be providing in-person support for about a hundred and fifty hours to for a hundred fifty businesses a week and other establishments they'd spend their days visiting with businesses and other organizations to listen to really understand the needs to understand any barriers to compliance to educate and and and really to observe current practices and partner with those establishment owners or leaders to identify and remove barriers and we believe this in-person support is really critical to getting that voluntary compliance up without this level of support we expect we will continue to see wide variation in compliance across Durham and with with the investment we believe we can avoid enacting unnecessary enforcement mechanisms that have been pursued in other communities across the country we also really want to employ again from the communities that have been disproportionately affected and we want to ensure that the digital divide that we know disproportionately impacts people of color doesn't decrease the level of compliance support for those historically marginalized businesses and establishments I'm happy to answer questions on this if we want to pause here before I go into the other proposal and thank you so much and do you want to identify other people who were here today who could take questions or comments about this proposal as well absolutely so we have Kurt Rabisil from and I probably did not pronounce that last name right I apologize from UNC School of Public Health as well as Pilar Rocha Goldberg from El Centro. Thank you so much Katie colleagues as you all know in past pandemics health workers being out in the community educating people about how to stay safe has been absolutely critical and I am really so pleased that the task force took on this issue when we first started discussing this I believe it was at Ryan's suggestion I reached out to some folks at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health to ask if they were the gilling school if they would join our conversations about how to make this a reality and to make a long story short our after discussions with our public health director Rod Jenkins he made it clear that he was very supportive of this but that the health public health department itself didn't really have the bandwidth to do this in fact some of the employees that they have been using for other things for example school nurses who've been working on contact tracing are now going to be called back into school nursing duty and so with their at the same time that was happening we were very fortunate in that Kurt and his team at the gilling school the University of North Carolina and by the way let me just make it clear I don't root for the University of North Carolina just in case that hasn't been made clear but that the his team came forward with this excellent proposal that the task force has vetted and is now before you so I'm going to now ask colleagues if there any questions or concerns that you would like to raise either with Katie with with Kurt or with Pilar who's also been deeply involved in this discussion councilmember Freeman and then councilmember caveat thank you I just had a couple questions noting that the North Carolina Central University also has a school of nursing and I just want to make sure that they'll be an engaged in that conversation as well and there was the I'll come back to it I'll just leave it at that thank you thank you excellent point councilmember caveat oh thank you I just wanted to say how excited I am about this opportunity for the city and county to work together I know that there's a group called Latin 19 which started way back in March with a variety of health care providers now many folks from several counties and I can say that this is something that continuously comes up on the call how do we get the message of solid public health out into communities especially communities where it's hard to get information and there's a lot of kind of overwhelming conflicting information and so just really pleased to see this I know this is going to do so much good in Durham so thank you thank you very much councilmember councilmember meadowton thank you Mr. Mayor and Curt and Katie thank you for your leadership on this and my dear sister and friend Pilar always good to see you thank you for your continued service to us how long will the 600 and so odd grand keep this initiative viable this is a 12 month proposal 12 month yes and that that that 600 that includes salary training it does everything it does yeah but happy to just clarify a little bit two thirds of the salary goes to ambassadors which is the bulk of it okay and we'll have about 10 people as you heard a minimum of four will be native Spanish speakers or Spanish fluent and culturally trained we are gonna be partnering with all of the organizations that have been denominated before so the group Latin 19 El Centro many others will be partnering with my department which I am the department chair of at the School of Public Health has had a special relationship with NC central since the 1950s there's a health education department as well as nursing that we will also reach out to because I think those are that's a great point as well council member Freeman and but also like to knowledge briefly Dr. Yesenia Marino who's joining me and the call who will be a co-investigator so thank you welcome thank you thank you Mr. Mayor that's it for me thank you all thank you very much council member Reese Mr. Mayor this excuse me this may be one of the most exciting things to come across our agenda in quite some time I think council member Middleton referenced failures at the federal level the fact that cities and counties are having to pony up for this kind of effort is yet another example because this is the kind this is the kind of this is the kind of effort that you would want to see being fielded nationwide as part of a robust federal response to this virus that knows no boundaries certainly no state or federal boundaries but here we are and as it's often the case communities like Durham are rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work I want to thank our colleagues the investigators at the Gillings school unlike the mayor of Durham I am a proud Tariel fan I haven't graduated from law school at Carolina my wife Dr. Laura Helms free system member the foundation board for the school public health spent 12 years at Carolina getting three degrees and as much smarter than I am and she has been very excited as I've given her updates about this particular specific policy proposal and just wanted to say how great it is to have the support of the Gillings school in Chapel Hill here in Durham to help us with this really fantastic program and I'd be happy to support that today thank you Mr. Mayor thank you council member I did bring my hat just in case is that why you walked away Mr. Mayor we saw you I just had yeah okay thank you it's creepy when you do that and you walk back in it's like your float your body is floating through space and then you sit down don't try to do that again I'm trying to imitate council member Middleton's background thank you very much council member for those comments a council member any other council member Freeman I hesitate because it's such a good good faith effort in and coming together to figure out exactly how to address this and I I can't walk away without sharing my concern and that I've shared this recently and I know I've heard of a number of times I saw I'm not sure how many of you know that last not the Saturday just passed but the Saturday prior to there were about 300 people were tested for COVID at St. Joseph's AME church and the overwhelming response from folks there and folks involved is that there's this disconnect and the black community around who is engaged and how people are engaged and what barriers are in place and so I'm concerned that anytime that we talk about you know equity and we talk about language as the as the kind of the baseline of it we exclude the fact that just because you speak English you subscribe to a culture that that is American and I just wanted to make sure that it's clear that the folks who are black in this community black brown african-american afro what what what have you lats you know there there's a different reach that has to be met or a different level of or a different level of outreach that has to be made and I I appreciate the community health worker aspect of it but I want to make sure that it's not just missed I appreciate the before Latinx or you know Spanish speaking natives native Spanish speakers aspect of it but you have to say the same thing for people that are black and and I just want to be clear and saying that thank you thank you for that important message council member Pilar yeah I'm sorry I want to say something about it because I have the same feeling and actually yesterday in our community engagement roundtable we had this discussion and talk about it and how we can bring other voices to the task force so I hear your concern because I have the same concern with me since I came on board to el centro 11 years ago we've been trying to work in how to improve their relationship between african-americans and latinos and I believe sometimes doing when we do this work that is very needed we are pulling apart because we are fighting again for resources and attention so we talked about this yesterday in the community engagement roundtable and we will continue this conversation so I just wanted to say that thank you very much for those comments any other questions or comments by council members at this time and so Katie again could you summarize the ask of the council yes so this is the total cost on this is $648,047 to be split between the county and the city so it's approximately $325,000 each thank you I'm going to refer first to Ryan Smith Ryan do you have any comments on this and then I'm going to ask the city manager to comment because I know Ryan we've discussed a couple of details of this that I think will be useful for the council to hear in terms of moving forward mayor shul I just want to share one from the county commission side that they also discussed this proposal and chair Jacobs instructed me to share both with the task force and with the city council that the county commission will be supporting this at some level but they are they have asked UNC school of public health to resubmit their budget and look for ways that they could contribute additional funds and so that that is has been done and they're going to be reviewing that at an upcoming work session but there there is strong support for it they will be funding at some level but we do not know if they'll fund it at the full level of the request yet councilmember Freeman I want to again acknowledge your comment as well and say that I am certain that this program will do exactly as you have stated too and I appreciate that comment and that when we talk about hiring individuals from the community who are representative of of of our residents who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 we certainly also mean black people and it's important to say that clearly so thank you for for that comment and we'll be sure to work with UNC on that request too Mayor Scholl I'm not sure what other you may have had other specific things in in mind that those were those are the comments I was interested in thank you mr manager thank you mr mayor certainly fully supportive of and acknowledged the need for this work just from a procedural and a procurement standpoint I would envision that the city funds would actually flow through Durham County or Durham County Department of Public Health not directly between the city and the Gillings School it seemed that it would make more sense to have the the contract administered by you know Durham County or Durham County Department of Public Health and that we would just be a a funder through that mechanism so you know don't know all of the details about how that would work so I mean while the council could certainly authorize the expenditure of the funds we'll have to work out some details as to contractually how that what that might look like the other issue that I raised yesterday with the task force that I don't know if we're prepared to talk about today or not and and maybe Kurt can can talk about just how quickly this can get ramped up I personally and I think I speak for my colleagues have you know just knowing how long sometimes these contractual situations can take to work through the the governmental systems whether that's the university system or whether the through the you know city and county procurement systems this is important work and I just was wondering if there's any thought about any interim steps that can be taken to to get get something going you know sooner or you know quicker than than than might might otherwise take or if there is any projection of how long it will take to get these contractual arrangements up and running get folks hired and on the so that this important work could begin yeah that's um I share the urgency that you all have in fact I've already worked with my staff to say that if this meeting goes well today that I was going to start writing all of the job descriptions and have them submitted to HR even before the full approval next week I am a department chair here and you're allowed to basically start spending after your before your start date before the contract is fully signed if you agree to take the risk if it doesn't go through that you'll pay for it and I will start working on this right you know if the start date is the August 15th is what we put it and we don't have a contract even signed for a few more weeks later but we know that that's going to be the start date I'm fully ready to get started working with temp some temps and some students and really start this as fast as possible I also point out we got in this revised budget $52,000 worth of in-kind funding from the school so we're very very deeply committed to this project and we'll hit the ground running and definitely get this started quickly. Mr. Manager. No that's fine I just wanted in a matter of transparency I wanted to be sure that I was raising the questions to the entire council that I raised to you and the the co-chairs yesterday Mr. Mayor. Thank you those are really important questions thank you Mr. Manager and Kurt thank you for that and I appreciate the manager raising those yesterday with myself and the co-chairs. Colleagues are there any other questions or concerns Council Member Thank you Mr. Mayor just wanted to make sure that if we're going to do what we did with the last item and get it on our consent agenda that we word it such that it's the up to the dollar amount that we've noted because the county is apparently still negotiating with the the school school public health and just want to make sure that half of the of the total up to the whatever dollar amount is in the proposal. Very much agree and thank you for that and we'll we'll ask our staff to work on the appropriate wording for that. Council Member Middleton. Thank you Mr. Mayor in the spirit of Councilor Reese's question I wanted to ask if if the county comes in short of the 50 percent of the 640 some thousand dollars what happens. That's an excellent question my thought would be that we would put our half on consent if we find whatever we find out prior to that from the county we can then if we need to pull it from consent we could discuss it 10 days from now on Monday night. Council Member how does that sound to you? Sounds great sounds great. I was really more asking about the the viability with the plans if there are contingency plans for the entire initiative if our 300 grand is going to I'm assuming it's going to be there no matter what but if it if we fall short of 640 some thousand dollars because of the county what what are the contingency plans for the initiative? Well I believe let me just say I'm pretty sure that they would my understanding from them is that there's a majority support from the county and that it would be you know it wouldn't be they're not planning to cut their support of this in half you know I mean I think it would be around the edges but I think it would be important to hear from Kurt on that if you don't get the full funding what would be that your means of operating Kurt? Yeah so we've pulled together I've worked with Ryan Ryan has an alternate budget that's smaller that has basically around six to seven health ambassadors so it just it just means that we would be able we would just reach fewer businesses our goals to reach 100 to 150 once we're up and running by the second or third month 100 to 100 150 per week and so it's an ambitious target but we would we would scale that down so we'd still be able to do the initiative it's just that it just it would take longer to get to each business. Alright thank you Mr. Mayor thank you. Thank you colleagues any other questions or comments? I believe then that I'm going to suggest that we put this on consent also and that we ask our staff to figure out the appropriate wording per council member Reese's suggestion. Colleagues are you good with that and if we need to I see some thumbs good if we need to if we need to make some changes once the the county's discussion is moved farther along we can do that. Everybody good Mr. Manager are we okay with that? Yes Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much. Alright thank you thank you Kurt and thank you Pilar thank you very much and Katie we're on to our final final item. Absolutely thank you so the final item is what we're referring to as the risk mitigation fund for small businesses and this fund is really designed to help protect workers and customers by providing small grants to small businesses to subsidize their investments in what are evidence-based practices designed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 so we know there are a lot of steps that businesses can take to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission things like placing hand sanitizer stations throughout their space using plexiglass to create barriers upgrading air filtration and airflow exchanges moving more activities that are traditionally done indoors outdoors each of these requires at least some modest investment on the part of businesses which is quite honestly difficult at a time when many of the local business owners have been financially hard hit by COVID-19 and really are struggling to stay afloat and to keep their team members employed during the crisis so the financial strain that they're under means that even modest investments may be difficult for some and less likely to occur now i'll be honest there is a lot more work that needs to be done on this particular proposal in terms of developing the logistics and the implementation fund plan for the fund but we bring it forward today because consistently from each of our roundtables we heard that that there was a request for support for expenses such as these and that was the most common request we got from sort of across sectors and the community focused roundtables was the need for this and so again in the absence of a fund like this we're really concerned that fewer businesses will do what's needed to make these evidence-based investments to protect the health of their their team members and their customers we know that the city and county have already allocated money to the small business recovery fund to help really offset revenue that was lost by those small businesses so they can avoid permanent closure and layoffs what we're recommending or one of the things that we would recommend be explored and i think it's still in the exploratory phase at this point is to see whether some of those funds that were allocated to the loan portion of that be reallocated or tapped into to reallocate for this purpose there's been an initial consultation with the city attorney's office and thought that this may be possible although i think we're still learning more day by day on that and so there's more work that needs to be done but given the interest in this risk mitigation fund and and what i understand is a relatively low participation in the loan program i think there's been more participation on the grant side of the program but lower participation in the loan program we think that that may be a viable option to to consider so that is again i recognize that this is not quite as fully baked a proposal as the other two that have come before you but we thought as a task force that it was really important to get this in front of of the council because it again has come up in every round table fairly consistently for the last several weeks as a need happy to answer questions thank you very much katie colleagues this proposal as katie has said we will not be asking to put this on our next agenda but we do want to discuss it today there's been a lot of discussion about various aspects of this which i think are important for example one of those things is that the potential source of funding being from the loan funds that we in the county have already put aside to repurpose some of those funds for this work that's one possibility but we we we need a little more legal work on that as well as we need to consult with our staff and the carolina small business development funds they're important of course those discussions are important as well there's also some thinking around what would be the best way to support our businesses some of this might be some of this would be in these kinds of direct grants but for example we don't want people to need to go through a grant process to get hand sanitizer it might be much more efficient for us for example to purchase a whole lot of hand sanitizer that then people are able to just come get so these are some of the things that need to be thought through as part of this as part of this but i i really appreciate what the task force bring this forward i agree that it's very important i think that our we need to help our businesses in these ways to maintain the health of their establishments for them for their employees and for their customers and i think it will also help our economy come back so all of these are very important i'm going to ask ryan now if he has anything to add because he's been involved in some of the discussions around this as well thank you mayor schul mayor pro 10 members of council ryan smith budget management services i realized i failed to properly introduce myself last time i so one i've been working closely with our city attorney's office and i see that christa is on the call today and so she can answer questions about the legality of this but at a high level one thing that we worked with is to you know to figure out is can we legally create a grant fund for these narrowly defined purposes and christa can answer the details of that but in general the response we've gotten from the city attorney's office is is that for a narrowly defined fund like this that is providing funding for small businesses or potentially other establishments to make investments that would reduce covid-19 transmission risk that for some of those they would be eligible for grant funds because i know that was one of the issues around you know a loan versus grant fund earlier so i think one of the things that we still have to work through is what things meet that threshold the city attorney's office has weighed in and an email that various things like a traditional PPE from face mask to hand sanitizer that may or should mention to plexiglass things like that all all seem to easily pass muster there are there's more work to be done about whether or not outdoor dining and things like that that would be assets would transfer to a business would be allowable and thinking creatively about that so again there's really work to be done about what things could be eligible under such a grant program but at least the the initial word that we've gotten is that such a narrowly defined program could legally be done by the city if it wanted to there is a lot of continued conversation and an email that came right before this meeting about whether or not you know there are different thoughts about whether or not it makes sense to use the loan fund and to repurpose it and i've had a conversation with brian smith and oewd earlier this week about you know their thoughts that are kind of changing on how to increase participation in the loan fund so i would just reiterate there's a lot of work left to be done about that particular idea it seems that it's less a legal question and more of it is it is it the best choice of how to fund this if we wanted to and then of course all the issues that may or should lift it up so i think if you have specific legal questions again christa is with us today and could answer some of those initial questions from their work and research and i appreciate everyone in her office that has been supportive and helped us kind of think through some of the initial stages of this that's all i have at this time marishel thank you so much ryan colleagues i think i'll open this up to questions and comments councilmember middleton thank you mr maran thank you ryan i i appreciated the conversation mr maran ryan we had regarding this matters and just for the sake of the public record i'm just going to touch on a couple of things that we talked about in our meeting and one of the things i had a question about was was giving direct funds to businesses in hopes that they would i'm sure they're all honest but in hopes that it would get translated into pp and stuff like that and we talked about the possibility of reimbursing businesses as opposed to or buying en masse pp and and those types of materials so i'm wondering if there have there been any further developments on that and secondly i also asked would religious institutions be exempted from this or would religious institutions institutions be um qualified to receive uh help with these types of funds for for pp and stuff like that as well so i just wanted to put that in public record on public record thank you very much i think what i'll do ryan i'll ask you to respond to the first part of that question and christa has specifically researched the second part of that question is here for us so ryan do you want to take the first part uh the the first part councilmember middleton is yes we are looking into and the city attorney has advised the same thing about it being reimbursable for some of the reasons that you've suggested but it is there's still work left to be done to kind of figure out that option but that is one of the things we're looking into is uh kind of a uh you know using the reimbursable approach but we we have work to left to do and christa has been working as marshall said on the question of could it be expanded to nonprofits and churches and i know she's prepared to speak to that good afternoon christa just before i just wanted one other thing i wanted to say is um that the manager uh councilmember raised a lot of the same questions sort of about how does this get administered uh and so that is definitely on the task forces radar christa good to have you would you like to introduce yourself and comment on the second part of the councilmember's question thank you mayor christa kukrow assistant city attorney in the city attorney's office um on the question of supporting churches in in the same way um that ryan has described with ppe or grants um that is permissible certainly a um very complicated area of law uh with the first amendment and the free exercise clause um and the establishment clause but after doing some research um we can give ppe and grants to churches in the same way that we would support other businesses and and that would be for for these health purposes exclusively christ is that correct that's correct mayor councilmember middleton no absolutely that makes sense i imagine as it was from the other businesses as well it's gotta be we say the grants for pp it's gotta be used for ppe um i'm sure churches would be open to getting the in-kind materials as well whatever the ultimate decision is but i appreciate the research councillor thank you so much thank you councilmember cabillero yes thank you and uh i appreciate the question around religious institutions i do have a question around that though how do we handle if a if a business or an insta religious institution has discriminatory practices uh that is public and i'm thinking more around we know that some religious institutions are discriminatory to our lgbtq tq community and i i want to acknowledge that i would not feel comfortable i know we're in a pandemic so i just want to acknowledge that there i see some some areas where i have some concern around that and how would we address that christa do you have any thoughts to offer on that um that is something that i would need to do some additional research on my gut reaction um just sort of off the cuff is um that i think we have to treat all religious institutions the same but i'll do some additional research and get back to you on specifics thank you thank you colleagues uh councilmember freeman and then councilmember millton just to know i just wanted to clarify from councilmember cabillero you're not saying like because it's public health i don't i'm not i'm i just want to be clear that i'm not you're saying like i'm i'm confused by that comment and i am saying that i would feel uncomfortable and i would like some clarifying information on how we handle and i understand we're in a pandemic and so it does open up a lot of questions but when we start thinking about religious institutions because of some of the cover that they've given they've been given by our government uh i do have questions on how do we handle if there is a religious institution that applies through you know different than a reimbursement just to i'm not finished there there are there is there are some councilmember freeman let's let councilmember cabillero finish and then i'll be i'll call on you i just want to have that conversation i want to understand the legality of it i want to go ahead and know that this is a decision that we if we decide that that's fine but i want to make sure that we have that conversation and i just want to make it clear that if we're having that conversation the conversation would have to extend to like religious institutions that violate children as well like that's it's a it's a it just goes well beyond the scope of what we're trying to do here and trying to address and that's just it just seems outlandish at all thanks for sharing your opinion it might be more understandable if we thought about a religious institution for example that discriminated against african-americans then we you know maybe we could maybe that would make it more their racism wouldn't stop the pandemic is what i'm saying so treating people the way that they treat others it's not how you address a public health issue is what i'm getting at so we do what we're supposed to for everyone is is most important so that we can stop the spread and make sure that everyone's safe thank you other comments councilmember milton i think you're up next thank you mr. mayor i appreciate council cabillero's concerns i have colleagues who don't speak to me anymore because they think my views are heretical on certain things and and you know my my notion of the love of god being applied uniformly to folk doesn't square with their doctrine my question emanated concerns precisely what council spoke of the establishment clause and and you know purely because i understand the nature of religious institutions um would that's why i asked the question would they be included but you know i i certainly do not uh support any church getting money for the promotion of their doctrinal uh positions or not my church anybody else's church or or in support of what they you may teach or preach this is solely about keeping folk alive one of the most powerful stories i read were black trauma surgeons saving the life of clans members while they were in their road so you know there are there are times when we have to cross lines listen i don't know if any of those businesses there are some of the businesses who may be getting funds there are certain businesses in this city that have a reputation of being racist and treating black folk incorrectly uh or latino folk incorrectly there's some i'm not going to name them here but if they apply for funds for ppe i mean if they had passed lawsuits against them or if there's word in the street that they're racist i don't know if i'm empowered to take you know actions against them carve them out specifically as an institution so there are churches who are loving and open and there are those who are discriminatory there are businesses that are welcoming to their customers and some that suck so i i don't know what what metric we can use across the board just because you're not a religious institution you're you're a business doesn't mean that you can't be racist or you don't do things that may may bring scrutiny upon you so i think for the sake of the the pandemic from a public health point of view you know teachers teach who comes in the classroom doctors work on who comes in the er even if they're wearing clan robes or nazi symbols on them because that's their calling but i do i want council to be able to i appreciate the spirit of your question i really do but i think that all things considered um this is this is this is different i guess that's not really an artful way of saying it but i appreciate the spirit of your question i think we have to remain vigilant against all institutions uh that discriminate um and treat people less than uh than than less than with dignity that i think all humans deserve so i'll leave it at that but i appreciate the the comment thank you mr mayor thank you council member council member cabillaro thank you and again as i said i just want to make sure that we we have this conversation and i would appreciate our city attorney delving into it this is not a um a shut open shut case for me i just want to acknowledge that this is an issue that we will have to think through thank you thank you very much and uh we'll ask the city attorney's office to do that so thank you colleagues any other questions or comments on this item council member freeman just to note that if we're asking the city attorney to find ways to discriminate i just want to be clear that that's not acceptable i don't think that's what anybody's doing thank you all right um council member reese thank you mr mayor i want to thank again the task force for coming forward with this recommendation i think there are lots of good things about it um i think as our conversation today shown it gets us into some areas that might be a little bit uncomfortable but i think those are the conversations we're going to continue to have if we believe that this kind of program is valuable and i do i guess my question was more around the source of i i said two questions first of all are we going to say that it's for expenditures after a certain date or are we going to let businesses submit receipts for reimbursement for pp purchases since uh early march because that's one question the other question is um i want to find out from staff if during these conversations with um oed and kevin dick's group is administering the loan fund uh if if anybody has reached out to the group of some small businesses that was really the main cheerleaders for the loan and grant program um they as we all know had advocated for a larger investment by the city in that loan and grant fund and i'd really like to understand their perspective when they when they hear about the idea of taking some of those unexpended loan funds and using it for a different purpose so obviously we were prepared to make additional investments in the loan fund as a city if that loan fund had been depleted quickly at what our experience so far has shown us is that that's not happening for a variety of reasons um and so i think ultimately the money it all comes from from the same source i just want to make sure that we don't break faith with the folks who were advocating very for strongly very persuasively for a city support for that loan program thank you mr mayor thank you and i see the manager may have a comment yeah i would just say uh council member reese there were there are many things that have been said today and some assumptions made that i'm not sure what we knew anything about until yesterday uh and i don't believe there's been much contact made with the administration directly associated with the utilization of the the small business loan fund we're continuing to evaluate how to maximize that so i i think it'd be premature to conclude that that's a source for these so this not not that it's not a good idea but to uh and in lieu of is not something that there's been any conversation with me about thank you mr manager um so uh you also had another question council member reese which was about uh reimbursements for previous expenses i don't know that we have considered that i certainly hadn't thought about that but maybe i'll ask ryan if he has had any thoughts about that and also could respond to the other part of council member reese's question about contact with any of the uh as he put it cheerleaders for the fund thank you mayor shul um council member reese one of the one of the items in the proposal as it was initially drafted uh by the task force did have a consideration that some of the funds could be retroactive for businesses that had had by a certain by by a date but that date had not been set yet so that uh things maybe by april or april 15 again a date had not been set but a certain amount of that could be reimbursable under this grant i i think that that is an important issue and i would love to hear your your thoughts on that i think we went back and forth a little bit on that and putting the proposal together recognizing that you know there there are some benefits to to not having it be retroactive and that is that it you're actually getting more new actions and uh businesses to make new investments that they haven't already made uh and at the same time there were uh you know there were those who made a compelling argument that you also maybe businesses may be really struggling they may have done the right thing and made that investment uh but maybe really hurting uh and that this in some ways would penalize those businesses and it also uh who had who had made it done the right thing and made an early investment even though they may have been really struggling to find those funds so i i think it is worthy of of council's consideration on that question should it be retroactive on the other topic we have had conversations with some i do not and i i don't want to say that we've had conversations with all of the uh business leaders in our community who were strong advocates for a for a small business fund in the conversations that i have been a part of uh i would characterize them as supportive of the idea of having more grant funds as opposed to loan funds even if those grant funds are for a narrowly defined purpose like helping with COVID-19 investments because they all know that they need to do it and in the individuals that i've spoken with including some who were who were very strong advocates early on there was support for this type of idea but we would yeah i don't want to uh i say that that you know is that i've had enough conversations that i could speak with confidence about everyone out there ryan that's that's really really helpful i appreciate that important context um and i think on the question of how far back do we go to reimburse some of these expenses i guess the question i have is is there going to be a cap on any entities able ability to participate in the grant program um are we going to let a business say drop you know a million dollars worth of receipts on our lap or are we going to cap it at something like five or ten thousand dollars that would that would make a difference to me to know that mayor shul may i respond to that so the the initial proposal called for grants of up to five thousand dollars and in part that has been based on conversations we have had in looking at you know how much things cost that could really make a difference even even some modest improvements in airflow could be done um you know in that range that could really make a difference and even the request from uh from some of the business roundtables talking about some of the investments they were take they were talking about were in the range of two to five thousand and so in the proposal that we brought forward it was an envisioning a maximum grant of five thousand dollars to your point and one final question mr mayor if i could um are we talking about kind of on currently ongoing concerns would the grant fund be open to a business say for example that that was no longer in operation but closed a month ago and had you know two thousand dollars worth of pp receipts from when they were giving it a go would we allow that kind of grant to be considered by the fund and if you don't have answers to this by the way you know i'm just coming up with what i'm just thinking about stuff ryan do you um you're muted uh i i think my my general response is that these are excellent comments um and questions council marisse that points to the work that's left to be done uh and a lot of thoughtful work left to figure out the best path forward but uh i really appreciate all of your comments there they're spot on and the things that we need to dig in to more so thank you great thank you ryan mr mayor just to just to close out my remarks i think this is a great idea it's obviously um there's obviously we still have a lot of work to do as a as a staff as a task force and as a city council to come to some consensus on the right way forward here but i think all of us believe that to the extent we can help businesses other organizations in our community meet the challenge that this virus poses i think those that's a good goal um but obviously we've got a lot of questions to answer about how we get there and look forward to having that conversation as a council with staff in the weeks ahead thank you mr mayor thank you very much i'm going to first call on miss gal brace and then i believe mayor pro tem johnson had a question thank you so i i just also want to state fully that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done and these questions that you're asking actually will help us go back and do that work the one recommendation i would have if we are looking at making this retroactive and i certainly have heard from many businesses who would like to be able to submit receipts for something that that they in good faith put forward and and made modifications um early on in this i would recommend we look at going back to may eighth which was i believe the beginning of face one um so anything back to that that might be a good way to to mark this and and say you know we'll go back to the beginning of phase one um and again up to a certain amount dollar amount thank you very much questions thank you a mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um i apologize i'm in one room with my family right now and so i had a background noise issue earlier and so i'm going to go back and make comments on the two previous proposals if that's all right i just want to thank the commission first for all of your hard work this is really important for our community and we really appreciate you all um digging in and and providing so much of your your own your own resources and your time and your energy and your wealth of knowledge to to help us all get through this crisis um i'm concerned about the lack of clarity from the county about their contributions um and since we are you know proposing to split costs for these first two programs 50 50 i you know i i think that the budgets are the budgets we need all the money to make the programs work and so i want um i want to make sure that the that our colleagues on the county are are on board and um and you know willing to to make some calls and talk to some folks over there to try to ensure that we have their full cooperation um i'm concerned that you know the we won't be able to be as successful if we if we don't have full support from the county and so i just wanted to flag that as something that i think the um that council members can impress upon our county colleagues the importance of um of a full county contribution to this initiative um with regard to the the um community resource community health workers um i appreciate greatly the um focus on language accessibility especially because we've seen um hugely disproportionate infections in our latino community and i think that it might be a good idea to have as i mean even more bilingual reps if possible the numbers did go down a little bit in in i think in june we were 75 percent of our new cases were latino and in july it was 55 percent so you know we're seeing a good trend there but 55 percent is still vastly greater than um than the number of of you know than the population of latinos who live in Durham and so um having even more bilingual reps who can reach out to that community more than four i think would be would be helpful um and finally i look forward to the you know to the conversation about how we whether we want to and how we would provide donations or support to institutions that don't share our values as a city we are we're in a public health crisis and that's you know a really a really important consideration at the same time you know i wouldn't i wouldn't want city funding to enable an institution that is acting in a discriminatory manner towards anyone in our community to to continue that discriminatory behavior i i you know i i think it's important to keep people safe even if those people um are not great but i do want you know to make sure that we aren't that we aren't helping institutions who might have a discriminatory mission to further that mission in any way or contributing that if we are contributing that we're clear about our our interest in that contribution and that we you know and that we would state very clearly what our values are and why we would donate um to an institution that doesn't share those values um thank you all again so much for for all of your work we really appreciate this effort and i look forward to to getting this work moving and and making a real difference in our community thanks thank you very much madam mayor pro town councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor um there is no Durham without the uh religious fabric the religious institutions that have contributed to the building of the city um one of my great heroes is paulie murray who straddled uh many fences and walked in many arenas in the city the religious and um the political the lead some of the leading people on our renewal and recovery task force are colleagues of mine uh in the clergy uh there are tens of thousands of lgbtq people who go to church in the city there are scores of lgbtq clerical leaders um the church has and religious leaders in this city and i'm going to be very clear about this have been among the leading voices of doing what we need to do washing hands and we've done the psas have been in the vanguard of keeping this city safe not only contemporarily but throughout the history of this city and i want to be very clear we're not making donations to any institution these are specific targeted funds to keep people alive including the lgbtq people who go to these churches uh who lead many of these churches i don't know what type of litmus test we would come up with or checklist to for you to check off before we give you a mass to save your life or before we put up a plexiglass in your pews or at your dining room tables to keep people safe but i i want to be very clear that that the biggest discriminatory force in american history has been the government some accuse us of being the the discriminatory power in this city um so and and i don't know if any of us on this council are qualified to even ask for the doctrinal statements and the theological positions of faith institutions in our city and to determine whether or not they square with with what we think they ought to represent in order for them to get material to save their lives uh i would also remind folks that the people in those churches are taxpayers as well so the money that we're granting is their money as well um and they have played a role in and i'm i'm proud of my colleagues that are on the recovery recovery and renewal task force that represent the vibrant rich absolutely indispensable faith community in this city where every week thousands of our lgbtq brothers and sisters go to try and navigate life who go for fellowship who go for restoration and strengthening who are indispensable members of those communities so so i as a government i don't you know it reminds me of another type of situation where governments start asking for belief statements to read through to make sure uh we're going to give you something to save your life that is not our place uh and that is not our role and and i think that we ought uh be mindful of that um moving forward and i just want to just want to reaffirm and thank those religious leaders in our community that have been in the forefront of crafting our response and of keeping thousands of people safe we go to them when we want to hold meetings in the community about crime we go to them when we need information disseminated uh whenever we need something in this city done uh they're one of the first communities that we turn to because of the scores of people that sit in these buildings week after week across denominational lines across racial lines across theological lines trying to make sense out of life so i just want to be very clear that that that at least i'm not cosigning on any uh position that suggests that we somehow will be vetting doctrinal statements or positions um in exchange for for life saving materials and life-saving activities i'm sure there are plenty of races that got stimulus checks from the government i'm sure there are plenty of institutions who are using the inward the kitchen uh while they're bringing dinner out to to folks sitting at those tables there are some that have been documented should we not give them a PPE uh protection as well so i just want to put that out there mr mayor and i want to i want to just reaffirm the the position in the role that the faith community in this city has played historically there would be no dirt without Durham's faith community full stop thank you mr mayor council member are there any more comments or questions on this item let me just say that i have where i think we are um and for the co-chairs and for uh staff um i hear uh broad support on the council for the idea of a risk mitigation fund for businesses um i hear that um there are lots of questions still to be answered about how such a fund might be administered what would be the best uh potential funding source should it should it be funds that come from repurpose from the existing loan fund or should we be taking it from for example our own cover relief fund uh should there uh be other ways of should this all be you know can we are there other ways that we need to think about this relief for example a warehouse full of hand sanitizer and and and face masks as part of this in addition to grants all of these questions uh i know have been considered already uh but uh i think that not just today but in the previous uh individual meetings that we've had uh and with the discussion with the county as well uh a lot of these just a lot of these have been raised uh and need to be vetted and thoughtfully thoughtfully considered and so i think that that's all what you expected today task force chairs uh and i think you've heard a very robust discussion i think you weren't expecting the last part of the discussion but hey that's what we do here at the during city council um and i'll i'll ask uh i'll ask ryan if there any any final words that you want to add in terms of how you all would like to you know i would i would you know could this come back to us in two weeks with a with a more fully you know could we be more fully prepared because i think like all of these things with covet urgency is the is the word of the day thank you mayor the task force is prepared to work closely with city and county staff and others to think through some of these questions to vet it further and bring a more developed idea back to this group uh if it's in two weeks time i like i like deadlines then in two weeks time we will get that work done so this has been a very helpful conversation and and thanks to everyone for your thoughts thank you so much miss galbraith and miss sims we want to appreciate again the work that you have done in in this tremendous leadership that you have given us and you've heard a lot of praise justifiable today and we're very grateful i want to also thank brian fox who's here brian has been really working doing all coordinating with all of our roundtables has done a tremendous job supporting the task force as well all right uh colleagues i believe that we've had all the discussion we need to have on this item four where two of the items are being moved forward to the consent agenda uh and uh i'm sure there'll be some discussion as mayor pro tem suggested with the county in in between now and then but i want to express my gratitude to everybody who has been here uh kurt pilar christa everyone else miss magali marino thank you so much all of you all for being here today thank you thank you all right now we're up to item 12 and item 12 is the discussion of the council appointment let me just take a second here to pull that up discussion of ward three vacancy timeline and thank you to council member reese for helping uh lead this and and and having the discussions with council members and so forth and providing us with proposed timeline and i'm going to turn it over to you for your leadership of this discussion thank you mr mayor appreciate the opportunity to talk to my colleagues about the current ward three vacancy and how we might move forward together as a council to round out our appointed number and fill this vacancy in a manner that's consistent with our rules and procedures and also with our community's values just as a brief refresher as you may recall in mid april we came together unanimously decided to pursue statutory option for filling the ward three vacancy under north carolina general statute 168-63 which provides that the council will within a reasonable time of a vacancy make an appointment to fill that vacancy on a local elected city council and if no consensus could be reached on that appointment the seat would remain vacant until the next municipal election which in our case will take place November 2nd 2021 and so that is the path that we chose to adopt avoiding the the process that's laid out out in our city charter and our city rules which calls would have called for us to make an appointment within 60 days of the announcement of the vacancy and so we proceeded under the statutory option that was mid april at the time we had that conversation we agreed to come back on august 6th at this particular work session where we are together now to talk about how we could move forward to fulfill our statutory obligation to make an attempt to fill this vacancy and so over the last period a little bit i have had the opportunity to speak to some of our community leaders i've talked to each council member individually about this process and in consultation with them i'm with you mr mayor and at your specific direction today i have provided for the council uh and to the general public as in the form of the attachment to the agenda at item number 14 i guess it is um the uh my proposed timeline for i guess no item 12 excuse me the my proposed timeline for moving forward to fill the vacancy on the germ city council for ward three the process that i am proposing is identical to the process that we considered and approved and then decided not to move forward with earlier this year for the ward three vacancy it would call for us to open up applications the application process on monday august 10th for a period of 10 days and that application period would close on thursday or it's 20th 5 p.m four days later on monday august 24th this council will hold a special meeting i propose 10 a.m but we can we can all we can decide whether or not that's what we want to do to identify between three and seven finalists for the appointment process and we can have a conversation once we decide to move forward we can have a conversation this afternoon about the right way to do that we had we had i thought we had a good process that we used a year and a half ago or so to come up with our finalists and i would propose doing the same thing then we would hold finalist interviews thursday august 27th at another special council meeting all these meetings will be virtual under the current safer home order and as we did we can again have another conversation about the right way to structure that but a year and a half ago each council member each each of the five council members who was not mayor shul was given eight minutes of question and answers and then the mayor took five minutes at the end for a total of 45 minutes per finalist we started that meeting at 5 p.m and just went straight through which i thought worked fine although that's going to be a long meeting so that's something we should talk about and then i've proposed that after those interviews at a special meeting on monday august 31st the council would meet to vote on the appointment and at some point there after at a date convenient to the clerk and the appointee the appointee would go to city hall and be sworn in and then be prepared to sit for our next regular council meeting which i believe is currently scheduled for tuesday september 8th in virtue of the because of the labor day holiday on monday september 7th there are lots of decision points in here that we will have to hammer out together but i think first and foremost we should probably have a discussion amongst us and determine whether or not this is the process we want to pursue i think just in closing i will say that the one of the the consequences of choosing the statutory option as opposed to the city charter process is that it got us out from under the 60 day clock that's in the charter during a time when there was a ton of uncertainty in our community about how long our current COVID-19 pandemic situation would last and there was a lot that we still did not know about the virus how it's transmitted how we can keep ourselves safe and so there was a lot of credence a lot of weight and and rightness to some of the concerns that folks on this council and other members of the community raised about whether or not it was a good idea to move forward at that time i think what's happened since then is that folks are much better informed about how this virus is spread we have had some time to kind of figure out what will work for each family and each individual but how we operate in this really something situation that's unprecedented in modern times and i think more more to the point the people of the city have gotten a bit more used to the fact that both this body and our other elected bodies as well as our citizen boards commissions and committees are moving forward in this kind of format and they have seen over this period of time that this is a process that can be open that can be very transparent and can be done that this a process can be done in a way that is consistent with our values and safe the other thing i will point out to my colleagues as you well know the city of Raleigh just went through a very quick process to appoint someone to fill a vacancy on their board or the Durham School Board is on the process of a similar process that would be conducted i believe much more quickly than our than the process that i proposed here all of us just to say that i think we've got some good examples in other places and here that this is something that we can do in the right way and so with that mr. mayor i'll i'll go ahead and ask my colleagues to share their thoughts with the process and then if we can reach a consensus that this or something like this is the right timeline then we can go through some of the decision points i know the clerk had some specific questions that we'll want to address once we've determined that we're ready to go forward thank you mr. mayor thank you so much that was a fantastic summary um i think that you're absolutely right what we need to do first is take up the threshold question of is before we get to the dates and that kind of thing colleagues what i'm going to ask is uh are your comments to be at this point is are you in favor of this general process moving forward on a timeline that is that is uh similar to the one the council member reese has suggested and uh taking up this general process so let's let's let's have that discussion first and then we take up any of the more specific items that people may have so i'll i'll open the floor for that discussion mayor pro tem thank you mr. mayor i just want to appreciate council member reese for that um description and all the work that he's done to get this process rolling once again i'm in support of us moving forward on this timeline and look forward to um filling this fill in the seat as soon as as soon as we can in a way that that we feel good about and that's good for the community so thanks thank you very much other comments okay i don't see any so i'll just add my support i think this is a good uh i'll get you in a second council member sorry um yes i i want to agree uh that i think this is a good process and a good timeline i think that um yeah i think it's i think it's the way to go uh council member middleton thank you mr. mayor and i want to thank uh council reese for yo yo yo person's job uh on this uh timeline i agree with him i think it was the right thing to do um back uh when we did rescind our action and and delay it until now i think he's also right that we have learned more although we're not out of the woods we certainly are much more intelligent uh about this virus and the things we need to do um so i'm i'm i'm heartened by the work and i'm in agreement with the timeline i think we should move forward thank you thank you very much council member council member cobietto thank you i also agree with the timeline proposed by council member reese and thank you so much for all of your work on this i'm sorry council member freeman thank you i also appreciate council member reese's work and i expressed the concern around the low tech no tech um aspect of this and just making sure that that that is included into the conversation and um in support of as well as moving forward mr. mayor if i could just address that real quick um we have the benefit of having as a group and as staff deeply consider that specific issue uh last time we came together and we have a set of materials and a set of press releases that were prepared then and i'm in the process of updating out with new dates um that uh lay out the process for someone who doesn't have access to the kind of technology necessary to file the application online um and so we're uh i think we're very well served by the staff work that went into putting that together by the um by the raising of that specific issue by you specifically personally council member freeman three and a half months ago such that we are now in a position to field this and to be honest in a much better way than we were a year and a half ago um and you know when the first time that at least i've been involved in this process i don't know that we even really ever talked about what would happen if a person didn't have access to a computer and that's that that possibility is really baked into this particular set of processes that we already put together the other thing i will say is that um for me the biggest uh area of concern that i have around um access to technology isn't really about the timeline and the application process it's more around the the interview process um you know last time we did the interviews we were able to be together and so having the applicant at the podium kind of in the hot seat answering questions from each of the members was i think an invaluable part of this process that can be translated to a virtual medium but i think the video connection is something we're really going to have to think through i think it's super important the process as laid out would allow a candidate for an apple sorry finalist to call in using a telephone if they don't have that kind of technology but it would be my preference to try to find some way to get every finalist have access to the technology necessary to interact with us in those interviews um in a video format and i'm committing to each of each of my colleagues to work with staff to make that happen um on thursday august 27th assuming this that's the timeline we go forward on so that's what i wanted to say about that thank you mr mayor thank you for addressing those important issues college we have unanimity on this moving forward on this timeline what i would like to do now is actually let let us look at the dates um council member reese has proposed a series of dates which are in your agenda package um i can make all of those dates but there are really three dates the august 24th when we identify the finalists um and that would be a special meeting august 27th um would also be a special meeting and that's at five and august 31st would also be a special meeting that's at 10 so i just would like you all to please you could look at your calendars now and i think we should just go ahead and spend this time so we can get this nailed down mr mayor briefly while folks are i will say that there is some method to the madness of the times that i've proposed there the special meeting on august 24th and the special meeting on the 31st i envision not to be long meetings the last time we did this we did this during or at the tail end of a regular work session our meeting schedule between now and then won't really allow that to happen so the on the 24th my what i would envision is that we would have some kind of conversation amongst ourselves about how many finalists we're going to do we're going to use the last time we did this um we had some so we had some time we had a meeting between the time that the application period closed and the time we were going to get together and make the finalist decision and at that meeting before we came together and chose finalists we we decided on the process which was that each council member would come forward would come to the selection meeting with a list of seven names of the candidate of the applicants that we believed were worthy of moving on to the next stage in the process and then we tally the some total of all those names and there were seven candidates who received either four or five or six votes and those seven candidates were the clear choice to move forward as finalists let me just parenthetically say that i believe then and i believe now that those seven people who had made a fantastic city council in and of themselves and i think we're going to have a very similar caliber of applicants in this process this might be a good time to offer them the jobs don't tempt me mr mayor so i think you know that's one disadvantage we have now is that we're not going to have a public meeting we're not going to have a meeting between now and august 24th i guess i should say between august 20th when the application period closes and august 24th when we come together so it may be that what we should do is decide that we're all going to come to that august 24th meeting with up to seven names and then decide together as a group how many finalists we want to do i don't know i'm open to suggestions on that it like i said we had a meeting in between last time that made it easier for us to let the application period close determine there everybody was eligible and then we move forward we had a meeting where we talked about okay here's what we're going to do i listened to it the other day believe it or not it's amazing how much younger i sounded a year and a half ago and we had a little bit of a conversation about should we come with a list of five names or seven names i think i came up with the idea for five names the councilor middleton wanted to do seven in the only degree to do seven which amazingly enough worked out perfectly i think for everything but i i guess my my concern with making the decision today as opposed to waiting until the 24th is that we just don't know what if only five people apply and we had decided on seven finals what if eight people apply we decided on seven finalists um so i don't know but i will um that's this is one of these areas where i don't necessarily have to have all the right answers i could just tell you this is a an issue and we should talk about it thank you very much mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um yeah i think that the the three to seven finalists is is great i mean given that this is a word seat i'm expecting that we'll have fewer applicants than we did for the last that large seat um there may be more interest in local government in a pandemic it's possible um but i'm anticipating i expect that there will probably be fewer candidates um and yeah i think it makes sense for us to figure out um as we go through the process how many how many finalists make sense um i haven't listened to that meeting lately but i remember um advocating for some right choice voting which was ultimately um voted down by my colleagues i won't uh i won't beat that horse again but i do just want to use this opportunity once again to extol the brilliance and and wonderfulness of right choice voting for you all okay thank you very much councilmember calviata i'm open to leaving it to between three and seven depending on the pool of applicants that we get um we may have a large pool in want to interview up to seven or we may have a smaller pool and it may not make sense so three may be the right number thank you very much colleagues i think we have a couple different uh i think i think well let me first ask how do the dates look to you all is is um is there anybody who has a major problem with the day okay so we're going to settle on these dates thank you for checking oh madam quirk it's not actually helpful with these meetings mayor and council i do have an issue with the 24th what's happening is that you're recruiting between august 10th and 20th and then we have staff who needs to check on tax checks and residency and that needs to be done in one day and sometimes i can't guarantee that turnaround in one day can you can you pose a problem can you explain why it has to be we've done in one day and we you're we're getting the um let's say the last application came in on the 20th uh right mm-hmm you would um oh because the weekend is there we have the 21st which is a friday and we submit that information from our office to the tax office and depending on how quick they can turn that around yeah then you would need to have everything ready by monday so i i would appreciate another day or two to process those applications that's very very reasonable madam mayor pro tem um i just had a thought that you know we're not if we meet on on monday to pick the finalists we're not interviewing anyone until thursday of that week so if there was anyone who didn't pass that check they could be eliminated prior to interview um so if we did go on some of the timeline i think we could give the city clerk's office until thursday to check people's records that's a great idea madam clerk how about that that works doesn't it that sounds great thank you thank you so much mr mayor um councilmember freeman noted in the chat that um that the monday august 24th meeting if it could be pushed to 10 30 that that would work with her schedule um is that also true for the 31st so push both those to 10 30 like i said i those are very short meetings i think and that's why i put them in the morning obviously that's it's a challenge for those of us who are managing homeschooling at that time but we're going to make it work because we have to um but uh yeah i think 10 30 makes all the sense in the world um for that reason as long as that would work madam mayor approach it i have standing meeting every monday at 11 um so if it's 30 minutes i'm good and i could push it back a little bit if i need to but if we i mean if we could if they are going to be really short then i think we could do 10 30 and it would work for both of them i don't think that we know that the meeting on the 31st will be very short all of us are going to be wanting to give very very long speeches about why the person that we support is the absolute best i'm just worried i'm just do have that concern well i don't think we did that last time did we think we didn't we didn't but i'm just uh i'm just saying that that's a possibility i don't want to promise very short so it looks to me like we are we're between um councilmember freeman needs to move back to 10 30 council mayor pro tem needs to be finished by 11 this seems like a little bit of a conundrum how about any possibility that it could go from 10 15 to 11 15 councilmember freeman would that work at all for you starting at 10 15 i might be a little late but that's fine are you sure okay mayor pro tem any possibility you could push back i can make it work all right so um then councilmember reese and madame clerk we're gonna schedule those meetings at 10 15 on both monday august 24th and monday august 31st and that will give us an hour and i think we should be able to do with it okay mayor um hang on one second councilmember milton let me just to clear up one other thing um which was um there's another issue on the table um oh yeah which was the three to seven finalists and it seemed like people had a high level of comfort with us being able to do that then but i just what didn't want to leave this without any people have another chance to comment councilmember reese did you want to yeah let me just lay out again what i think the issue is here um we won't know how many people have applied for the position until mond until thursday august 20th at five o'clock in the evening and we don't have another meeting of this group scheduled between that time and 10 15 on monday august 24th and so we're gonna have to somehow figure out what each of us is responsible for doing when we log into the meeting at 10 15 the last time we did this we knew we were gonna have each member was required to bring a list of seven names not six not eight not one councilmember freeman but seven and so we knew that then because we had had that conversation we're not gonna have that kind of meeting now and so i think that's something we've got to at least talk about today and how we want to manage that it's certainly possible that we show up at 10 15 make that decision then and then submit our lists and turn them in that's certainly possible um and i think it shouldn't take that long we're not we're not making speeches we're not we're just deciding that portion but but i do i am a little bit concerned that there could be a problem if we have decided there's going to be seven finalists 10 that we have 10 applicants and we get into a situation where there are four candidates with six votes and four candidates with four votes um how do we decide on a group of five seven finalists we'll have to revote at some point at some level and working through that could take us past 11 15 so that's why i wanted to bring it up um thank you i will just say that if you all will let me be a pretty aggressive chair at that meeting that we will be able to do it in an hour if you won't then we can okay council i'm not saying we can't but our our odds are less if you you you'll if you will uh if you'll uh accept a pretty uh you know i'm i like to let us a thousand flowers blossom but if you don't if i only let you know 300 flowers blossom that day then i think we we can certainly get through it now councilmember freeman i would just um suggest that we change the language and just note that half of the total applicant pool and or do a minimum of three maximum of seven and that could kind of alleviate some of the angst that i think councilmember Reese is bringing up can you can you explain that again real quick so so noting um that we could we could limit it to a minimum of three candidates with a maximum of seven in mind based on a total of or based on a half number of whatever the total applicants are so even though without knowing how many there are would be we would come in with the assumption that we'll have a minimum of three maximum of seven and then we can go from there but but half but but half of the number of applicants rounded up let's just make that rule now so let's say there are 12 applicants we're we're deciding we would be deciding today that we're gonna have six finalists there you go meeting with six names ranked not in order of preference as i said last time mine were submitted in alphabetical order i think that's a reasonable strategy i have two concerns number one what if um what if only no we know okay the first one is a concern the second one is what if there are uh 16 applicants maximum seven all right mayor pro tem why i'm just not clear on what you're trying to achieve councilmember freeman like why make us pick your i heard i heard the why and i'm assuming i'm just trying to address or alleviate um councilmember reese's concern around having the three to seven open and saying like if you wanted to to just make it as as clear as possible like a clearer scenario would just be put a min and a max on it that way i think that is whether it's three or seven i think that is the proposal is to have between three and seven is that wrong i think what the the the twist that councilmember freeman's putting on it is that until we until the application period closes we're not going to know the total number of applicants so it's difficult today to decide how many finalists there should be right councilmember freeman is offering an process by which mathematically that could be determined without us having to have another meeting so that when we walk into that august 24th meeting in 1015 we each have a list and word of the point have sent it to the clerk already i hope with that with that x number of names um already filled out because other what if we don't have a process predetermined to figure that out we're gonna have to hammer that out we'll be getting the room and that and so that's that was the i think that's the reason for the proposal well let me just i want to i think we're all in agreement that we want to walk into the room with some number that we can talk about in a minute between three and seven the we have a a um if we want to talk about this again we can talk about at the work session on the 20th do we have a work session the work session on the 20th um but i would just say that i don't i'm not anticipating this being a problem we're gonna have a you know we're gonna be able to work this out you guys we'll we'll figure out a number that we'll walk in with and then everybody will come in with their list and uh we'll we'll figure it out it'll be between three and seven um i just think we're gonna be okay but mr mayor madam clerk soul and mr marrick can i make a recommendation i can put together an electronic ballot with all of the applicants on that ballot and then you can each fill out the electronic ballot and then receive the summary of all the the applicants so that you can see it graphically good idea thank you like to do that that'd be great okay and now i diana council member race mr mayor i agree with you we can figure it out but the but the supposite the the underlying presumption or assumption of what you're saying is that we're going to walk into that room with the x number of names ready to go but we can't for example have an email conversation amongst the six of us about that because that violates open meeting laws so we either have to figure out what the number is today or we have to figure it out in the room and then make our then cast our balance that i don't i don't understand how it happens any other way okay then i'll make this suggestion however any number of gosh i almost got almost went to rank choice there any any any number uh any number of names that we have we up to seven we rank we all rank seven names and then we um we we we put them on the electronic ballot and then we um are able to look at and if there are only five applicants we rank five names and then we're able to look at each other's rankings and we're able to uh just you know discuss at that time how many of those people we think ought to go forward when you when you say we rank seven names or five or however many are up to seven but if there are only five applicants five we you know one two three four five six seven we each bring that list in and then uh we see we've already seen on the electronic ballot everybody's rankings and then we're able to discuss that and figure out how many of those we want to move on but we have the benefit of everybody's rankings of up to seven okay what does the ranking do to help us what the ranking does to help us is um it it it lets us know that um you know five of us thought that candidate x was awesome and so candidate x is clearly one of them but when you get down to the tail end maybe there's some discussion about who those people are you know of whether or not they should be considered so would it be more in line to put it out for better cold than ranking because if you're just going to do five or more you know like well then then you don't get any information from other people's ballots before you get there look i'm comfortable with saying we all come in with our our list you know i think you know i think we all come in with a list of people that we think ought to be finalists and then we hash it out in the room and we do it in an hour i just sounds great let's do i'm with you everybody okay with that five of us may happen seven if there if there are seven or more applicants we need a list of seven names if there are fewer than seven applicants well you know that'll be that'll be easy to figure out yeah i mean there are all kinds of other things we could do but we can do this in an hour i'm gonna pretend yeah i just wanted to say what i think the ranking ads is that then if we decide to have fewer then we already everyone has a list so no we're not scrambling to figure out if you just you know if you just have seven people okay well now i have to pick four of them who are my top four we've already hashed that out and in the event that we have seven finalists then we're done so time saver you all want to rank them ahead of time i don't want to swear okay we want you're the boss charlie i'm not the boss i'm not the boss you're the boss of this thing and we're going with it okay we're gonna bring our names in i see a thumbs up from mark anthony okay we've hashed out several issues let me say what i think we know so far we're going by this process we're going by the dates and times that calc member reese is listed in set for the two meetings that were previously beginning at 10 or now they're beginning at 10 15 we're going to come to the meeting with a list rank yours or not your choice uh of uh to the meeting um of candidates that you think should be finalists no more than seven no less than three um that's what we know so far and i think that's a lot to know uh but let me ask if there are other issues that people want to raise or things that i have missed so far calc member reese um uh i understood you to say a moment ago that we would all come to the meeting with a list of seven names assuming there's seven or more applicants what you just said was everyone would come with a list of between three and seven names which of those did do you mean for us to use going forward i said that you should be the person that tells us what to do do you have some advice yes last time we did this we had a very robust conversation around this specific issue and we decided that it was really important that everyone come with seven names i can't remember why now uh but and and i've asked a couple of my colleagues and they can't remember either um this is really highlighting my confidence as someone who should be in this process great it was because i would have voted for the same person seven times that's why okay all right um so i think that we um i guess i don't see any reason why i should come with seven names if i only think four of the people to be are qualified to be on the Durham City Council let's see how it works out let's do it customer recovery out yeah my thing is that it's about the applicant pool if there's lots of folks who apply then you might want seven if there's just not then we don't need seven folks and it will go faster and we don't know that that's an unknown variable at this moment fair enough let's do it what you said mr mayor between three names got it right between three and seven names i'm there okay um colleagues uh is there any other issue that anyone would like to raise and if not i'm going to try to summarize this into a potential motion councilmember middleton yeah mr mayor i just wanted to say very quickly firstly you as an aggressive chair i keep i keep picturing mr rogers hopped up on like red bull so that that should be interesting and uh secondly august i'll get the red bull before the meeting good idea and i'll get my cardigan sweater too that's what i say august is is like officially my vacation month so if there's anything going on in the background in those meetings i can't be held responsible for it so but i'll be there thank you very much all right uh colleagues i'm going to try to summarize this uh and then i'll ask for a motion so move hold on a second madam clerk yes mr marron council i do have a couple questions um what about the applicants who applied in this thing do they need to reapply councilmember race i get thank you for raising that madam clerk i guess my question was when those folks applied were we still having the character limit problems yes some of them apply under the old really bad character limits yes okay that's probably not cool uh so we should we should at least give them the opportunity to give a more a fuller answer to some of the questions i would say madam clerk that everyone should have to reapply but that we are especially contacting those who previously applied so that they're aware got it and one more question want the applications to be made public from the point of application i believe they're public record and should be made public unless there's some reason that people don't think that that's true we just have to um create a process to do that that's why i'm asking i believe that we should the public wants to know and should know okay great thank you that's it thank you madam clerk all right um we have outlined a process which i will try to describe um the process is that we will follow the timeline laid out by councilmember reese with the exceptions of the 10 o'clock meetings moving from to 10 15 uh that we will uh each come to the meeting on august the 24th with between three and seven finalists who we believe are qualified to be good members of the room city council i believe that's all i need to uh i believe that's that's that's a summary of the uh so moved mr mayor moved by councilmember freeman second second by councilmember reese madam clerk will you please call the roll to approve this process mayor shul ah mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton i vote aye councilmember reese aye thank you thank you thank you councilmember reese thank you everybody for the good discussion that we got into the uh a lot of weeds but it's okay we we did a good thing mr mayor just briefly thanks everybody i appreciate it that's all all right uh we'll now uh we now will uh hear from the manager uh because our next um we next need to go into closed session and and uh i believe madam attorney do we need to repeat that language or can we just uh the manager's already read the language can we simply vote to go into closed session for reasons that the manager has um outlawed hi mr mayor it might be helpful to reread the motion again just so it's clear okay what the motion was all right mr manager do you want to read that uh mr mayor uh councilmember freeman has a hand up okay and also we need to set the settle the agenda settle the agenda thank you because remember freeman i was just going to read the motion i had i just so happened to have it in front of me so okay hang on just a second um mr manager let's go ahead and settle the agenda okay mr mayor a little a little bit of a confusion because that item number four so uh i have for consent items one through three five seven through ten 12 which will need to be you know reconfigured or complete updated based on your conversation and then there'll be two additional items i think that will fall out of item number four since there's separate motions and actions is that is that okay yes so i assume that'll be like item 13 and 14 but we just haven't numbered them yet right and then for gba public hearing is item 11 all right great you have heard the manager's uh recommendation that we settle the agenda uh can i have a motion to that effect so move i can't move by councilmember freeman seconded by mayor pro tem that we settle the agenda madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul i mayor pro tem johnson i councilmember caballero i councilmember freeman i councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember east thank you thank you madam clerk the motion passes six to zero and the agenda is settled um and now um uh councilmember freeman would you like to read the motion go ahead thank you pursuant to nc general statue 143 dash 318 point 11 a six uh motion to go into closed session to consider the two distinct personnel matters the first consisting of consideration of the conditions of appointment in an interim city manager and the second entailing investigation of the complaint against an individual employee thank you very much is there a second second second thank you seconded by councilmember middleton um madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero i councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton i vote i councilmember east hi thank you thank you the eyes have it the motion passes six to zero colleagues i'm going to uh recommend that we take a five minute break so i can stretch my legs and stand up from this computer um so we will reconvene at 345 thank you very much