 One minute, 30 seconds, you're up. Thank you. I would like to call this meeting of the Durham City Council to order at 7 PM on Monday night, August the 16th, and would certainly like to welcome all of my wonderful colleagues, our wonderful city staff, and all of those who are here tonight, and however you're listening to or watching our meeting, we're really glad to have you. As we begin our work tonight and our spending time together to do the people's business, I hope that you will join me in a moment of silent meditation. Councilmember Reese, would you please lead us in the pledge to the flag? Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening. Colleagues, the staff, and all of our residents who are watching at home, I will now say the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God and divisible, with liberty and justice for all. Recording in progress. Thank you so much, Councilmember. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Councilmember Caballero. Here. Councilmember Freelon. Here. Councilmember Freeman. Present. Councilmember Middleton. I am here. Councilmember Reese. Here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Are there any announcements by members of the council? Councilmember Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, friends. Good to see you, my colleagues and to everyone that's watching, wherever you may be, back virtually. Recording stopped. I, did y'all stop because I'm talking? No record of what I'm about to say. Recording in progress. I want to, Mr. Mayor, this evening, send a shout out to the organizer and host of an event that you actually attended as well this weekend to Mr. Sherrod Johnson and Project 300, who have been doing a remarkable service in our city. On this past Sunday, hundreds and hundreds of pair of crispy new kicks shoes were handed out to our students going back to school for free. It was a wonderful, festive, masked atmosphere for our kids who are getting ready to go back to school. I know that new shoes can affect steady habits and doesn't necessarily translate into grades, but I tell you psychologically, there's something about going back to school with a new pair of kicks on, that fresh crispy feel when you've got those new sneakers on when you go to school. And it was just a wonderful to see just the diversity of our kids, how excited they were getting their new shoes and getting geeked up to go back to school. So I want to send a special shout out this evening to Sherrod and his team and Project 300 for the incredible work they're doing and for that wonderful event they held this past weekend. It's these kind of things that oftentimes don't get covered. We know what they say if it bleeds, it leads on the news, but there's so many people doing so many things in Durham. Just at the grassroots level, who aren't heralded, who don't show up in headlines or get their names in the newspaper often. This is one of those type of initiatives we should be lifting up. So congratulations to Sherrod and Project 300 for the work that you're doing. Finally, Mr. Mayor, I know that there are some folk watching tonight who live in the Taylor Estates subdivision, Taylor Estates townhouse subdivision. On last Thursday, gunfire rang out on the street in that subdivision. This is not a public housing project. This is not a low income neighborhood. This neighborhood, one of the residents is an employee of mine in this neighborhood. As a matter of fact, my executive assistant lives in this neighborhood. A few weeks ago, I talked about how rattled we were that a house right next door to members of my church was riddled with gunfire. And now it's come close to home again, not just because it's someone that's important to me and my family and my organization, but all of the folk that live in there. I want to acknowledge him and I want to thank the investigators that have been working with him. No one fortunately was hurt physically, but a number of homes were struck by gunfire in the wee hours of the morning. And what many would consider a nice subdivision. I say this to underscore for everyone watching that this issue of gunfire in our city, there's no one that's isolated or insulated, I should say from it, your zip code will not protect you. Living in a cloistered neighborhood will not protect you. This is an issue that will, that has and will affect all of us. And as we move forward celebrating all of the great things going on in our city, new arrivals of residents and new arrivals of companies. Our skyline is changing. We got a lot of great things going on in Durham, but I want to continue to push us to understand that one narrative will eclipse the other if we don't deal with it and continue to stay focused on it with dog and determination. So I want to just shout out those that are watching from that subdivision tonight and let you know you're not alone. This is something that we're dealing with as a city. We're thankful as a city that no one was hurt physically, again, in this incident. And I just want to impress upon us as we move forward as a city with all the great things going on that we continue to bring all of our ingenuity, all of our creativity, all of our resources as a government to bear on this issue. It's no more important thing that a government doesn't keep its people safe and alive. Everything we have going on in Durham is contingent upon a heartbeat from the youngest to the oldest. So I want to thank those that are watching and just continue to just press on us to commit our efforts to doing everything we can short-term, long-term, tactically and strategically to deal with this scourge that is upon our city that knows no zip code, that knows no race, that knows no socioeconomic status. This is all of our problem and it should be all of our response. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, friends. Thank you very much, Council Member. Comments, other comments, Colleague? Other announcements, rather? Any of our, any further announcements? Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to just take a moment and just welcome all the many students that are returning on campus and just note that we want everyone to be safe and to continue to mask up. I just also want to take a moment and also note that as folks are experiencing the troubling or the storm weather that hit Haiti, I wanted to make sure that we keep them in our prayers and just noting that they're experiencing a great deal of unrest and disruption in their country. And so I just wanted to make sure I noted that this evening. Thank you, Council Member. And then additionally, just noting also as well, I didn't get to see the President's speech this afternoon, but I'm also keeping the folks in Afghanistan and my prayers as well, so I just noted. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any further announcements, colleagues? All right, then we will move to priority items and first I'll ask our city manager if she has any priority items tonight. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Durham City Council, I do have two priority items for you this evening. Agenda item number seven, which is 2022 City Council meeting, pursuant to council's request, attachments number two and three were updated. And agenda item number 19, consolidated annexation, juction and ferrule, attachment number one has been updated. That is all I have to see. Thank you very much, Madam Manager. Madam Attorney, good evening. Are there any priority items tonight? Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and members of the Durham City Council. The city attorney's office has no priority items this evening. Thank you very much, Madam Attorney. Madam Clerk, any priority items tonight? Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. The city clerk's office has no priority items this evening. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, we'll now move to the consent agenda. Before I move to the consent agenda, I do wanna check in with a couple of people who are here. That is Yolanda Jones and Ron Jewett and Ron Jewett are both signed up to speak on items or at least have indicated that. I believe these are items that are on the consent agenda. We're about to prove that the council's about to vote for them and you were signed up as a proponent of these items. I assume that you're only here to speak if there are questions. If that's wrong, let me know. If you could just put in the chat if you would like to speak on these items before we vote. Okay, good. I see that from Ms. Jones. Thank you. Is that also true for Ron Jewett? Mr. Jewett, if you, thank you. That's what I thought. Thank you very much. Appreciate you all responding. The consent agenda is made up of items that the council has previously considered in our work session and has worked on at that time. The consent agenda can be approved by a single vote of the council. Items can be pulled by the consent agenda from members of the council or members of the public. And items that are pulled from the agenda will be heard at the end of the year. The consent agenda is denied item one, approval of city council minutes. Item two, Durham City County Environmental Affairs Board appointment. Item three, Durham Workers Rights Commission appointment. Item four, Mayor's Council for Women appointment. Item five, contract with the United Minority Contractors in North Carolina for consulting services. Item six, interlocal agreement for joint funding for vaccine equity program. Item seven, 2022 city council meeting schedule. Item eight, US Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Airport Improvement Grant. Item nine, recision of Durham Mars Light Rail Transit Corridor. Item 10, May 2021 bid report. Item 11, June 2021 bid report. Item 12, lease of mail with Greyhound lines ink at Durham Station. Item 13, grand project ordinance for workforce innovation and Opportunity Act, WIOA, Employment Training Funds for Program Year 2021. Item 14, emergency watershed protection EWP stream bank stabilization, EWP 2021-01. Item 15, Microsoft Enterprise Software Licensing Agreement. Item 22, Durham Guaranteed Income Pilot. Mr. Mayor? Yes. I don't want to pull that, but I do just want to give a word of commendation to our staff for the, just an incredible amount of work they've been doing and nailing this down. I'm going to congratulate you, Mr. Mayor, for getting us in this position and Council Member Freelon. I want to congratulate you as well on the work that's been done. Of course, we know the lion's share goes to the staff who have just really shepherded this thing for us and it looks like we're going to land it. It's really difficult to overstate how big a deal this is for our city to be added to the list of cities around the country that are making the case for this to secure our people, secure households and make better neighbors. Folk who aren't doing creative calculus to survive, make better neighbors and better residents and better citizens. So just so I don't want to pull it, I just want to give a word of congratulations and thanks and continue commendations to the staff for working really hard and tirelessly on this. Thank you. Let Mr. Mayor. And let me just name Amber Wade who has been the point of the spear. Thank you, Council Member. Colleagues, you have heard the consent agenda and I will now accept a motion for its approval. So moved. Second. Moved by Council Member Freelon, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson that we approve the consent agenda. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I will die. Council Member East. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it and the motion passes unanimously. Colleagues, we now move to the general business agenda, public hearings. We have three public hearings tonight and the first is Item 18, Consolidated Annexation Courtyards at South Point 2 and we will first hear the report from staff. Mr. Colcher, welcome. Thank you and good evening, Mayor Schuhl and Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, City Council members. Danny Colcher with the Planning Department tonight. First thing I would like to state for the record that all planning department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law and the affidavits for those noses are on file in the Planning Department. This request is for a voluntary annexation, utility extension agreement and future land use map or flim change and zoning map change, which was received from Neil Gauch of Morningstar Law Firm and on behalf of Jason Coffey with Epcon Communities for two parcels of land totaling 42.83 acres located at 7852 Herman Road and 1404 Fenwick Parkway. The site is presently zoned residential rural RR, Falls Jordan Watershed Overlay District B or FJB and is located in the Suburban Development here. The applicant is proposing to rezone the property to plan development residential 1.682 or PDR 1.682 for a maximum of 72 single family dwelling units. The property is currently designated very low density residential and open space and recreation on the future land use map. The proposed PDR 1.682 zoning is consistent with the future land use map and no change in the flum is proposed. The planning commission by a vote of 75 at their April 25th, 2021 meeting recommended approval of the request. Since the time of the planning commission meeting as planning staffs understanding that Epcon's representatives engaged and talks with community members about construction of another access of the American Tobacco Trail for users within the South Hampton subdivision which is located to the east and south of the site off of Fenwick Parkway. Our understanding is that the developers committed to the additional trail access of the southern portion of the site but did not indicate this on the proffered commitment or development plan yet. Staff does recommend the city council approve the annexation petition, utility extension agreements, and zoning map change and consistency statement based on the consistency with the policies of the comprehensive plan, additional connections to the American Tobacco Trail, continuous nature of the annexation that also serves as infill and closing city limits gap and all proffered commitments on the development plan. There are three motions required for this application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing corridors at South Point 2 into the city of Durham effective September 30th, 2021 and authorized city manager into the utility extension agreement with Epcon South Point LLC. The second is to adopt an ordinance for the rezoning and the third is to adopt a consistency statement. Thank you very much. Staff is available for any questions and also I'm sure the applicant team is too. Thank you very much, Mr. Culture. You're welcome. Colleagues, you have heard the report from staff. I'm gonna now declare this public hearing open and first I'm gonna ask if there are any questions for staff members of the council. All right, seeing none then, we'll move to hearing from members of the public. I have five, six people sign up as proponents, four people as opponents. Let me first ask Mr. Ghosh, are you able to be heard? Can you hear me? I think you can. Yes. Mr. Ghosh, can you tell me the sign? There are several people signed up who maybe members of your team, maybe you can help me with this. Joshua Renke, Jason Coffey, Ryan Akers, Gerard Massante, who I believe is a resident actually and Lara Holliman, which of those folks are members of your team? All but Gerard? Okay, Mr. Ghosh, are you planning to do the speaking or are you going to have other members of your team speak? I'll do the bulk of the speaking and we've got members from our team available for to answer questions that need it. All right, thank you. All right, Mr. Ghosh then as always, we begin with the proponents and so I will turn that over to you. Approximately how much time will you be needing? I have five to seven minutes, I guess. All right, and then we'll follow that up with Mr. Massante. Welcome Mr. Ghosh, we're glad to have you, go ahead. And thank you. And thank you, Mr. Ghosh, for your presentation. Good evening, Mayor Shul, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and members of the City Council. I am Mill Ghosh with the Morning Star Wall Group at 112 West Main Street here in Durham. Tonight, I am representing EPCON for this rezoning. We have a few members from our team on the call, including Mr. Jason Coffey from EPCON, Ryan Akers and Laura Holliman from McAdams and Joshua Ranky from Raimi Kemp. As you heard in the staff report, this rezoning will accommodate a single family community of about 72 homes on about 43 acres of property. It is important to understand that much of the 43 acres is undevelopable for various reasons. For example, there is a large overhead transmission line even that runs the entire eastern length of the property. And when I say large, I mean 128 feet wide for the whole length of the eastern property line. Additionally, there are two fingers of the Southwest Creek on the property, both of which include a 50 foot riparian buffer and an additional 10 foot no-build area. Of the nearly 43 acres subject to the rezoning, I would estimate that the available area is shown on the D plan to be closer to about 24 acres. Given some of these environmental and man-made features on the property, I would think one of the hallmarks of this project is the commitment to a maximum of 24% impervious. This commitment also allows EPCON to provide 100% of the required tree coverage for projects of the size through tree preservation rather than through replanting. And that also is a commitment on the D plan. It is nice that some of the tree preservation area about one to three acres is located outside of any environmental areas that we could not develop in anyway. So not only are you getting a lot of tree preservation, but you also are getting meaningful tree preservation with this project. And then there is infrastructure. For a project of this size, which also keeps all the development outside of the regulated floodplain areas, I think the developer is committing to a fair amount of new infrastructure. The project would complete the extensions of both Martry Road and Fenwick Parkway, thereby creating multiple routes for access in the area and providing greater connectivity. Additionally, the project commits to the installation of two traffic signals if they are warranted by NPDOT. Recreation infrastructure also is included with this development. The D plan commits to having a minimum of two pocket parks with pedestrian scale amenities and also includes a commitment to provide a public pedestrian connection for the American tobacco trail. The first connection to the ATT envisioned for this phase will be off the Fenwick Parkway extension. Tonight, we also want to commit to providing a second point of access to the ATT. A connection to the ATT in the northern section of this phase has proven to be quite important to residents in the first phase of this community. So we are happy to commit to providing that connection as well. We have run that language by staff previously and would like officially to add that commitment tonight. Finally, I want to touch on the community engagement aspect of this project. While this project did get a recommendation of approval from the planning commission, I think more than anything, that hearing highlighted that we had some work to do with engaging with our neighbor. In my opinion, EPCON has done a tremendous job since the planning commission hearing in creating open lines of communication with the existing residents. They have set up several new HOA committees which are chaired by residents of phase one. Based on feedback from existing residents, EPCON has agreed to some changes at the existing facilities. And also, as we just mentioned, as committed to adding that second point of access to the ATT as part of this redone. EPCON also has done some outreach with surrounding property owners that are not within phase one. For example, in response to feedback from the South Hampton community, EPCON has committed to not disturbing the area east of the Duke Power easement, except as required for the extension of Phinwood Parkway and the new connection to the ATT. We do know that there still are some folks who are unsatisfied with the proposal, but I would think even they would admit that EPCON has done a lot of work to increase transparency. We are proud that we have made strides with the area of residents in that regard. And it is my understanding that the HOA now is supporting the project. Just like the HOA and the planning commission, we hope you all will support the project tonight. Our team is available to answer any questions you have. And I thank you for your time tonight. Mr. Gouch, thank you very much. We'll now hear from Gerard Massante. Mr. Massante, are you with us? Yes, can you hand me? Yes, we can. Welcome. And you have three minutes. Okay. I am speaking tonight as a resident of the courtyards phase one. And I am not necessarily speaking as the president of the HOA. I have reached out to people in the neighborhood as a result of my work in the HOA. And I have asked for comments. I know there's a couple of people that are unhappy with things. But overall, I must say that every time I made myself available to people, asking them to give me what information and concerns they have had, they have been very positive about moving forward with this. The neighborhood, I think generally does support it. I think the working with EPCON has really significantly approved over the past couple of months. I think even people who have been not happy with some things will agree to that. And we would like to be able to see the second phase completed. So I must say that I have made myself very available to residents. I have emailed them. I have contacted them in various ways, asking for feedback. And all the feedback, except in a couple of cases, has been very positive. And people have seemed to want to move forward. We would like to add additional housing to our HOA. We don't feel that the 93 residents that we have now, 93 homes, is sufficient moving forward in terms of supporting what we need to support here. And the idea would be to really enhance what EPCON has done. EPCON, in my opinion, have done a good job. People like their units. That's why they sold out so quickly. And they've had trouble with COVID. I understand that. And some residents have been deterred by that. But I think everybody has had problems with COVID. In fact, COVID has put some people out of business. So I have seen EPCON stepping forward, willingness to work with the residents and to improve things. Mr. Massante, thank you very much for being with us tonight. We appreciate it very much. Thank you. Colleagues, we have four people who were signed up to speak in opposition. And they are Karen Frankola, Dr. Eugene Granger, Barbara Taylor and Bunsry Patel. And I'm first going to ask if Karen Frankola is available to be heard. Ms. Frankola, can you make your voice heard? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, welcome. We're glad to have you and you have three minutes. Thanks. The first thing I wanna mention is you talk about consistency. And I don't know how many of you looked at the UN climate report from last week. We have to stop with consistency. We have to really look hard at everything we do that has an environmental impact. And this is a watershed protection district. We're already, many homeowners here are concerned about sewage and drainage and retention ponds. And you don't have to rezone this. You really don't. You can take a stand. There's not too much that you can do as a city council to fight climate change. That's the main reason I'm opposed to it. And a lot of things that EPCON just said today, like it just seems like they're saying these things just because they were astonished that so many of us spoke out against this at the planning meeting. And I love Gerard, he's my next door neighbor, but there's four of us here speaking out against it and he's the only one here speaking out for it. And he was appointed by EPCON. And I understand his point of view, but I think to say that the majority of people support this, I don't think you could do that unless there was an actual scientific survey. The other thing is we met with Michael Irwin. And Michael said, God, you guys, your streets are gonna be really messed up with this. And it just seems like all these tractor trailers with the trees and is EPCON actually going to pay for the repair of these streets? I haven't heard that commitment tonight. Affordable housing, I know that's a huge point for Durham. And the EPCON guys just keep telling us, oh, you wanna have people like you living nearby. They don't want people like me. I paid almost 600,000 for my house. These houses are gonna be at least double the minimum cost of houses in Durham. I would rather see affordable housing next to me. And a couple of things, we had ramp and construction theft throughout the building of South Point One. And there was a confrontation in July in a manhunt. And we found out that EPCON had never reported any of those construction thefts. So I'm worried about that too. And one last thing, yeah, Gerard, I agree, EPCON has done better in the last month or two. But I feel like it's really just all designed to get this approved. So one example is there's a North Carolina law governing HOAs, the state's board of directors are supposed to meet regularly with homeowners. Homeowners first began moving in last October. We have not had one regularly scheduled board of directors meeting until this week. Boy, what a coincidence that is. And EPCON sent us a note saying, well, basically we're having this now because the restrictions have been lifted in terms of COVID. Well, of course, that's about two months out of date. And there's a Delta variant that they seemed kind of unaware of. I work, I do communications and change management for large organizations like Ernst & Young, Kimberly Clark. And, you know, EPCON just a year and a half, boy, I know it's COVID is tough, but it's just like even the really little basic things seem very hard. So anyway, I'm just really worried you're gonna approve this tonight. They're gonna have a really hard time, you know, following up with their commitments. I'm gonna have to have two or three years of construction, environmental issues. And also EPCON has not committed to allowing the residents of South Point 1 to take control over the HNA once 97% of the locks were closed on, which is what we all thought when we signed our contracts. So that is why I'm opposed to it. Thank you, Ms. Rancola. Now we'll hear from Eugene Granger. Dr. Granger, are you available to be heard? I am, thank you. Welcome, and you also have three minutes. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all tonight. My wife and I moved into phase one, lot 66, the court yard to South Point, October, 2020. In fact, we were the first residents to move in. Our concerns have been the lack of proper drainage along Cherub Lane, the impact it has on grove of trees adjacent to our property, and extending beyond the retention walls on March tree that connects with Cherub. I realize this is phase one, but what it will illustrate is the problem we have with commitment by EPCON to do what they should do and probably need to do. And if they failed on the issue that I bring up, then they may fail in phase two. Over the last eight months, yes, eight months we have written and met with EPCON and asked them to construct a proper drainage area along Cherub near the flood plain to protect the trees and avoid the area becoming a marsh or retention pond. This is adjacent to my property. In fact, the slope from my property and the common area going into this area is about 45 degrees and is about 45 degrees along the sidewalk. So all the rain drains to that. We began questioning EPCON about these problems as we moved into our house. We've called the city of Durham, which until recently provided a little more than lip service to the problem. They did manage to raise the sill fences. EPCON responded by plowing a trench with a bulldozer through the tree area in order to have drainage. The answer initially was, excuse me, the trees were no better off because the water continued to flow into the trees. And you would think this was becoming another retention pond. There is a large drainage pipe, which comes across underneath Cherub, which apparently comes from a pond, which has been part of the plan all along. The question comes, why wasn't this put into the regular drainage area, drainage, street drainage? And that answers, I don't know. The thing that bothered me the most was that we began noticing that trees were dying. I've pointed this out to EPCON and also pointed out to the city of Durham. I called this soil erosion people, the stormwater and erosion control people, and some progress is made. I can give you the name of the person I contacted, if you wish. Unfortunately, EPCON finally came around and built a catch basin, but it's drainage is into the grove of trees and there's no swale or drainage pipes that carry the stormwater away from the trees. These trees will continue to, will not long survive the water they are bathed in. These are pines and oaks. They are not cypress trees. Why weren't safeguards developed for this area? They certainly planned for the clear cutting that's present beyond the grove of trees. Furthermore, their answer to the erosion of the bank is to throw sod or grass on that steep bank. There is a disaster as well as being ugly to view from the road as well as from our property. I bring this problem in phase one as an example of the lack of preparation and follow through in phase one by EPCON. They're in a hurry to finish up phase one so they can begin phase two. But I would like to hold their feet to the fire and finish phase one in an equitable manner that satisfies all the residents of courtyards at South Point. It's my belief that phase two will be even bigger. There will be bigger problems with the drainage and clear cutting of trees. Phase one is not complete and one guarantees are that EPCON will live up to its commitments. I was taught long ago the rule of the seven P's. Prior, proper, planning prevents, skip the next word, poor performance. For us in phase one, there are examples of the last three P's. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much, Dr. Granger. Next, we'll hear from Barbara Taylor. Ms. Taylor, are you available to be heard? Yes, I am. Ms. Taylor, thank you for being with us and you also have three minutes. Thank you, ma'am, school and council members. I'm a resident of South Point phase one and I also am involved with the HOA in our overseeing parts of our clubhouse, pool and social committee. First, I want to just backtrack a little to what Mr. Gose mentioned. We were told that this is with the future zoning, only 20% would have to be retained as in a tree area and that they could clear 80% of the land. Phase one that we're in right now is zoned a conservation subdivision where 50% has to be retained as nature park and walkways. And we were hoping that as a sister community, as they're discussing it, that it would also be zoned the same way. In the seven to five vote, I also wanted to clarify that two of the seven that voted for it had severe reservations about it and asked that a lot more work be done on the part of EPCON. EPCON mentioning that there's been a lot of communication and unfortunately, I wish we could say that was true, but since the last meeting, we kept pushing for an interactive town hall. Twice EPCON came back and said they would only do a PowerPoint presentation. They would not address any questions. They would only take questions ahead of time and then they did take one or two questions. It was only in the past week, just prior to this meeting that we were able to get a town hall meeting from them, which actually was very constructive. My other concern is the construction traffic. Right now, the trucks going by in our walls rumble are China cabinets rumble and that's without the big construction equipment going through as well as logging trucks. I had submitted a small PowerPoint with a few pictures so you could see from the entrance on Farrington Road going in and out. It was over a mile of brand new pavement that's going to be destroyed. There's also two 90 degree turns. Trucks would have to take one of the two in order to get to the new phase. And I can't believe that they would be able to do that and one of your engineers confirmed that without doing damage. And you could see that in the picture as well. Then the next point I wanted to make, sorry, just get this down here. I did send also an area where one of our neighbors was kind enough to send a drone video so you could see this all. So we are looking as that be considered a conservative subdivision. We also like to see that none of the trees along the tobacco trail are removed. And if you look at the pictures, you'll see that quite a bit of it does run along late. It's sort of a pie shaped and runs on tobacco trail and we would hate to see all those trees taken down. We're also asking that the Fenwick Connect to be put in sooner than later. There was only one small street, which you could see in the video that connects the phase one and phase two. It is very narrow with houses on either side. And if all the traffic's to go through there for the three years of construction, I think could be detrimental to the neighborhood. Whereas Fenwick is straight in and out, it would help share some of the traffic and some of the burden coming in now and less damage to our area. My other concern is just with EPCON alone. At that meeting, as I said, there was some transparency. There has been a lot of bitterness, partially on the case of their sales team, selling neighbors on features that were never going to be offered. Selling us on things like that the tobacco trail would be in before we even moved in, that we'd have a clubhouse that could accommodate our gatherings. Right now, our clubhouse has a capacity of 68, our pool has a capacity of 57, and we will have about 180 people in here before we go to phase two. Sales team have also told us that there would never be another phase back there, that it would be a separate subdivision called the Courtyards at Herndon, that it would be separate homeowners association, separate amenities, and a separate entrance. When we, at our town meeting, when we talked to Jason Coffey and Tom Sawicki about this, they were very transparent, saying that they had no control or say in that, that any willful omission or misrepresentation by their sale, their licensed sales people was something the sales people did on their own, and that none of that was directed by EPCON. But then I sort of shows poor management on their part, that their sales team is saying whatever's needed in order to get something sold or to move on. And as we did finally get a town hall meeting, which was good, but I think it's, there's a long way to go. I think this is going to be very disruptive. We're all, we're just finishing up this fave. We have beautiful neighborhood here. And now for the next three years, we're going to have trucks and trailers coming through here and kicking up dirt, destroying our roads. We could not get EPCON to commit that they would repair the roads. They're already passing to us the $1300 a month streetlight fee, which according to Durham HOA laws is supposed to be paid by the developer. The developer is now charging our HOA 1300 a month for the streetlights for the next three years. So it's really hard to trust in a company when you feel that they don't have your best interest at heart. We all know the Durham real estate market is going crazy right now. We've got many out of state builders like EPCON coming in here buying land, putting up developments. They'll be gone and we'll have to deal with whatever's left behind. And I think it's cool. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ms. Taylor. Thank you. We're glad you were with us tonight. Thank you. We'll now move to Bunsry Patel. Is Bunsry Patel with us? Hi, Mr. Mayor. Yes, I am. I would just like to keep it brief because I think a lot of my neighbors have echoed a lot of the concerns that we have with the motion for passing for phase two. And just a little background. I will be a resident in this neighborhood at the end of this month. And I have been in contract since January. So I know that a little bit about what's been going on. And my biggest concern for this is the crime and the traffic concerns. One of the items in my homes, there's been rampant theft as you know with new construction. And if we're gonna be living there as part of phase one residents and there's gonna be new construction, that's an attractive point for theft. As a single woman living, as a young single woman living in that area and hoping to have some conservation land in a nice subdivision, I am not for having more crime and having more traffic. And so those are the biggest concerns from my side. And also just giving the trust into a company that hasn't really done its job to I think the phase one residents. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Ms. Patel, thank you so much for being with us tonight. We have one more person that I see would like to speak on this item that is Tricia Smarr. Madam clerk, could you make Tricia Smarr available to be heard? Good evening all, can you hear me? Yes, Ms. Smarr welcome. We're glad to have you and you have three minutes. Excellent, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I did email council a lot of my thoughts on this back in late June. So I'll just kind of touch on some points that have been brought up. I'm a resident of the South Hampton community, which is just south of the property, which is to be built on off of Fenwick Parkway. And Mr. Gosh, it sounds like has addressed one of the points of concern, which was the additional connection to the tobacco trail. This is the first I'm hearing of this being official. It sounds like they're wanting to make it official. I would love to see that in writing and have that be encouraged by council to get in writing that there will be two connections to the tobacco trail so that the families in South Hampton and in the Fenwick or sorry, Fairfield and other family communities in this area will have access to the tobacco trail. So that could be something that council could recommend or require of EPCON prior to approving the rezoning. That would be great. The other point in my email was about the bike and pedestrian friendliness of the development if there's a way to encourage or require EPCON to have infrastructure to make this a bike and pedestrian friendly roadway with sidewalks and decreasing the road traffic speeds, discouraging cars from using that as a cut through. It would be great to have that in writing from EPCON to go along with Durham's vision zero commitment as well as the city or sorry, the state's complete streets. So maybe there's some sort of commitment to working with within Durham's vision zero policies and whatnot. And also to touch on Mr. Gosher's point he referenced that EPCON has been in communication with South Hampton as a neighborhood and I'm a very active member of South Hampton community. I consider myself very well connected. I'm not a member of the HOA but I have not heard from anyone at EPCON. I did not know that there were conversations between South Hampton and EPCON. I know that there are other neighbors of mine that would have liked to communicate with EPCON and I haven't heard any of us having a conversation or meeting or town hall or anything with them. So if Mr. Gosher could address what level of communication that is and how we are working and partnering together that would be great. So that's all I have. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you so much Ms. Smarr. Let me ask now, is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item? I am gonna go, Mr. Gosher, I'm gonna come back to you in a little while but let me first say, is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item? This is a public hearing and if you would would you please raise your hand in the virtual chat? Your virtual hand in the chat. All right, I don't see anyone else. Mr. Gosher, you still have some time. I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to you and then colleagues will go to your questions and comments. Thank you, Mayor Schull. And as I said, we were aware that there were some folks that were still unsatisfied with the proposed community. What I did hear was that even the webcam has increased its level of engagement and transparency with residents. Some residents still are upset with the level of engagement and transparency. I think they're upset about it. I can understand that. I'm not sure that I would dispute that other than that kind of certainly has done some additional engagement and has made commitments both on this rezoning and with respect to facilities at the current community based on that feedback. So, you know, if they're trying maybe they haven't done quite the job that some folks would expect. I mean, I don't really know how to respond to some of these other items. There was questions about traffic. A TIA actually was done in conjunction with this project and there are traffic, committed traffic improvements associated with this project on the development plan. So those will be implemented in in reality, I think that the traffic impact analysis revealed that there weren't significant impacts at any key intersections in the area, but there were certainly recommended road improvements and we've committed to those. And I will mention that, you know, at there was I believe one speaker spoke about phase one being a conservation subdivision and that is correct. That's the way that was developed or proposed by EPCON. And it was a 50% open space requirement rather than a 50% tree save requirement. I just wanted to make sure to make that distinction. And there will be, you know, on both phase one and phase two, there was about 20% tree save. The, you know, one feature of this project is that all of the required tree coverage is going to be provided through tree preservation rather than through replanting, which we think is a great feature of the project. Other than that, I mean, like I said, we have our team available to answer any questions. Oh, and I did want to clarify, we are making a commitment to a second connection to the American Department of Travel. We did run some language by staff. That language, just so I'll put it in the record, prior to the issuance of an initial certificate of occupancy, the developer's own self pedestrian access from the American Tobacco Trail to the existing Greenway Sub on the northern property line of the project area. So that commitment refers specifically to a connection in the northern portion of the project. There already is another commitment where a public connection to the ATT that's already on the development plan. And let me see if I can read that language to you just so you know, we're already on the development plan. It says, sorry, one second. The development shall include at least 1200 linear feet of continuous walking trails within the community and at least one pedestrian connection to the American Tobacco Trail. That is a second, well, I guess if that's the one that's already committed, that's the one that'll be coming from Fenwick Parkway across the Duke Power even. And so we're making a commitment to a second American Tobacco Trail connection in the northern section of the property. We do have our team available to answer any questions. And again, I'll thank you for your time and look forward to answering your questions and getting your feedback. Thank you very much, Mr. Gaj. Colleagues, you have heard from members of the public and I'm now going to ask if there are any questions that you have for staff or the applicants. Councilor Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Marin. Let me thank the residents and members of the communities coming out tonight and speaking to us and spending time with us and to the applicant as well. I want to start off with a question to the staff first. And I thought I saw Bill Judge. He might be the person to field this, but if not, you can farm it out to wherever it needs to go. With respect to damage to streets when new development is going on, a development is going on, I recall our friend at Emory Wood estates expressing the same kind of concerns with new construction going on near them. Bill, aren't developers legally responsible to repair any damage to streets that they've done that's attendant to their activities? You're muted, Bill. Sorry about that. Good evening. Bill Judge, City of Durham Transportation. That's typically handled by our public works department, but yes, they do work pretty closely with developers and document damage before and after. When construction is going through, they'll take pictures of the before condition and then any damage afterwards. They'll hold them liable for making those repairs. Okay. Thanks for that. I'm going to turn now to Mr. Ghosh, a couple of specific questions. Thanks for being with us. I noticed at least in the summary, it says you plan on building, not you personally, but you know what I mean, up to 72 homes, do you know what the number is actually going to be? Are you going to max out to 72 or is it going to fall somewhere short of that? Right, so council member Middleton, I'll say that the way that like resenting is right, when you mention a density, if you mention a density or commit to a density, you have to hit it within a certain percentage below it. And so 72 is what we initially pinned out, you know, before we had finer detail engineering, now that we do have a little bit finer detailing on that, we think that we also build out the community is likely going to be around 68 homes rather than 72, just based on, you know, UDL requirements and what we can fit there. Sure. Yeah, and I appreciate that. And I understand the parameters in the UDL, I just wanted, was wondering if you did have a specific target. You know, usually the fewer homes, the larger the square footage, generally speaking, what is the square footage prospectively going to be on these homes, you know? So Jason Coffey with Epcon is on. And so I'm going to see if we can get him unmuted. Looks to me like Mr. Coffey can be heard. Mr. Coffey, are you able to be heard? Yeah, this is Jason Coffey. Can you hear me okay? We can, thank you. Great, well, thank you. Thanks for having me join here. Yeah, we're going to build somewhere homes we have with our phase one, the square footage will be anywhere from just over 1,400 square feet to somewhere in the mid-to-upper 2000s would be a general range for our first four homes. Okay, so one of the residents who spoke tonight, I'm paraphrasing, I want to get at least a spirit of what she said, that she doesn't want another house like her. She would rather affordable housing next door to her. I don't assume you're planning on putting any affordable units and you can certainly clarify if I'm wrong, but have you at least contemplated a contribution to the affordable housing fund? Yeah, we've definitely, yeah, this is Jason Coffey again. And yes, we've definitely contemplated community that again, this was really set up as a phase two. I know there was some maybe discussion earlier that maybe one of the residents or a couple of them said that they didn't realize this was going to be a phase two or contemplated to be a phase two, but it's been through our HOA documents of expansion. It's always been planned very early on from a standpoint of adding this to South Point one. So we really expected a continuation of what we did as a part of the first section, but as a result of that, recognize there would be some contributions for the affordable housing. So is that a commitment? Yes, Councilman Rissum, yes, and thank you for asking. This is again, something we discussed with staff prior to, and I think you all have seen the language for a commitment in that regard. So I would say that I'll just give you the amount and we can make sure that language gets put onto the development plan, but that is something that we were prepared to do tonight. And so EPCON is proposing to do a one-time payment to the affordable housing plan of 40,000. That was 40,000, 40. Thanks so much for that. And forget, these documents are blooming and sometimes they run, these cases run together when I read them. So forgive me if I missed that in your documents. And I appreciate it. You did not miss that. That's a commitment we are adding tonight. Got you. Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. I may have some more questions later on, but I'll yield to my colleagues. I did note a number of the comments from our planning commissioners and congratulations to you guys for getting a yes from. That doesn't mean you're gonna get a yes from us, by the way, but congratulations on that. I'll yield back, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. Colleagues, questions? Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to follow up. I was just wondering and acknowledging that this is just off the top of my head based on Council Member Middleton's comments. If there's been any consideration to actually doing like multi-units as that we're in single-family style homes, just noting that there are some new units that have been developed across the country and just putting it on your radar that actually look like a single-family home, but they're actually like four units in one. And so just noting that in addition to the Affordable Housing Fund, I think it'd be good to have some conversations about what it might look like to actually do some housing that was multi-unit as opposed to just single-family on site and kind of mixing that in throughout. So just a note, and I recognize you have not heard that or considered it, so thank you. And also while I'm speaking, noting I was, I was just wondering, because the question or the comment one of the residents made about the pines and the oaks versus the cypress, I don't know if there's been any consideration to switching out the types of trees because acknowledging if you're doing tree preserve and you're drowning the trees, they're still going to die. So just trying to figure out if the tree types are being acknowledged and how the actual kind of preservation's been occur, could speak to that, that would be helpful. Councilwoman Freeman, thank you for your comments. So first of all, let me take this. You asked about multi-unit living and I'll say EPCON is considering that but not for this site. This site was, this project was probably submitted in March of 2020 right before the pandemic and actually right at if you'll remember the malware attack on the city. It was quite an eventful March. So this one has been in the hopper for quite some time and unfortunately, if we were to pivot to a multi-family type of unit, we would have to start the rezoning over. And moreover, I'm not sure that that would be consistent with the feedback we heard from a majority of residents in the area. So in fact, we had some residents who thought that the density we were proposing was too high and so we were conscious of that. About the tree types, I will say I must have missed the comment from the resident regarding a concern about the tree types. So I apologize for that. I don't think I heard that or if I did, I didn't take note of it and I mean. It was specific to the comments around the stormwater erosion and the catch basin that was added. Oh, okay. And I guess I can ask Mr. Akers on our team to maybe talk about how the tree preservation on the site will occur. And maybe if you can, I mean, I don't know what kind of trees are out there but maybe you can speak to that if Ryan Akers can be made available. Hey, can you all hear me? Yes, Mr. Akers, we can hear you and I appreciate you being here. Let me just clarify one thing. I think that what Mr. Goshe asked you to address is important and I look forward to hearing about that. The specific comment that Councilman Freeman was discussing was made by a member of the public in reference to his lot, which is in phase one, the currently existing lot where there is water standing nearby which is problematic for the existing trees there. And he mentioned that the type of trees there that were oaks and pines. And so maybe you could comment on both of those things. Sure, sure. Well, thank you, Mayor and Council Member Freeman for the question. So there's a few things I'm gonna unpack on that aspect. Number one has to do largely with the amount of stormwater runoff capture that we're doing on this development and the adjacent phase one. So we're in the critical watershed, the FJB Jordan Lake watershed. Two requirements that are worth noting is that we have to basically capture 100% of the impervious runoff and treat it. Not only do we have to treat it, we have to remove 50% of the nutrient loading which basically means that all of the runoff that you have from the roads, the roofs, the yards has to be collected and conveyed to a stormwater control measure or pond, wetlands, wet pond or a bioretention area. We have wet ponds on the phase one and currently they're not converted. We're still on the construction phase of that project. It's probably another few months before we're going to, probably sorry about that, the alarm is going off. It's probably a few more months before we end up converting those. And another point there is that the roads themselves don't have their final lift of asphalt. So obviously if they're just repaired that needs to be repaired and we have to finalize the asphalt. So all that leads up to, if there are stormwater issues it likely is a result of being under construction right now. Like I said, all the stormwater is being contained onsite and treated in our stormwater control measures. So as far as the species of the trees that council member Freeman brought up I don't know that I could, I'm not going to call the neighbor out as having an erroneous assumption but I don't think that that's a derivative of the runoff from the lots. It might be something else and I'll have to go take a look onsite our offices right down the road from this project. So I'm happy to go take a look but I don't know that that's a concern that I would have as an engineer. So I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Anchors. I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, if you could just clarify you saying you don't think it's a derivative of the construction, but there may be an issue kind of off shooting from someplace else. Just trying to make sure to clarify that. Yeah, I don't think that it's an ongoing issue of site runoff contributing to the oaks and the pines dying on this site. Cause like I said, we're doing a hundred percent capture of onsite runoff and taking it to our stormwater ponds. So if there is an issue, it is likely a result of something that is not currently constructed to final condition on the site. Thank you. If I could ask Dr. Eugene Granger to just speak to, I guess, if it's your backyard, front yard, side yard, if this is an area that- Council member, excuse me, we're not going to do that. Mr. Granger, Dr. Granger, I really appreciate him being here in his comments, but his lot is an existing lot in an existing subdivision, not the, not what we're talking about tonight. What I would like to do is ask Mr. Akers, if you or someone from your company could be in touch with Mr. Granger about his situation on the, in the existing subdivision. But I don't want to get into situations in that existing subdivision that are individual people tonight. We're talking about another, we're talking about something else here. We can certainly use that to make our decision about whether to how we feel about the new, about the new neighborhood we're being asked to, to rezone, hand X, but yeah. So I think just to be clear, I would love to know where exactly that lot 66 is because I don't have that information. And so I still would like to hear from Dr. Eugene Granger about where- Okay. Yeah, we're not going to do that tonight. We don't have to talk about the trees dying or what have you, but at least noting if it's, if it's not directly tied to the subdivision, the new subdivision that's being added, I don't know the location. And so I'm just trying to get some clarity on where exactly it is sitting or where it's situated in context to the new lot that, or the new, the new subdivision that would be added. Okay. Mr. Granger, I see you're available to be heard. Can you tell us where your lot is located? My lot is located, my lot is located at 118 Cherry Blaine, which is the first house on the right as you come down from Fayetteville Road. My concern is not so much, no, we can get into issues of trees, but it is an issue of the fact that I've been after them, Epcon, since we moved in and sometimes before we moved in about the drainage issues, which occur about 30 feet below my property. Not only is it ugly, but the storm waters run into the grove of trees, not only by my property, but an extension above the property. Now we're talking about trees, some of the trees are 70 foot lob lollies. There's lots of oaks in there. The one tree that actually has died recently was an oak tree, probably about, probably 18 inches around. If those trees die, what are they going to be replaced with? Is Epcon going to replace them? If they replace them, are they going to replace mature trees? What I did this as an example, that they have not followed through with this problem, there's storm water drainage going through there. If you want to talk to Mr. Rob Stewart at that storm water drainage, he's been out here and he's investigated the land. I have never seen Mr. Akers out here looking at this land. Thank you, Dr. Granger. We appreciate you being with us. I see that Mr. Akers has indicated that he will have someone from Epcon's development team, development manager meet with you. And I understand your concern. Nobody wants a 70 foot lob lolly pine near them to be dying and that shouldn't be happening. And I'll appreciate Mr. Akers for having someone make that contact. All right, colleagues, other questions, comments. Let's go with questions at this time. Any questions for the applicant or the, all right, well, I have a few. The, one of the speakers, Mr. Gosher or Mr. Kulture, I'm not sure who wants to answer this, was talking about the concern about taking trees down next to the American tobacco trail. What would be the situation with the trees that are currently existing next to the American tobacco trail? Mayor Schill, I'm happy to respond to that. So I think the development plan is a good exhibit to look at. You can see that the limits of discernment there do in some places and get close to the American tobacco trail in that kind of shaded area. So there is going to be a 20 foot buffer along the American tobacco trail, but more than likely in those areas where the building and parking envelope is shown, those trees in that area adjacent to the American tobacco trail may be taken out, but for a majority of this site frontage along the ACT, you can see on the development plan that there won't be discernment. So some of it's adjacent to our tree preservation area, some of it's adjacent to riparian areas. Those trees along the ACT will be preserved as is. There are some portions that will be taken out more than likely with grading activity. I'll come back to that in a minute, Mr. Gosher. Mr. Kulture, go ahead. And Mayor Schill, I just wanted to go on top of what Mr. Gosher said, there is indeed a required 20 foot project boundary buffer on that side of the American tobacco trail that is required by the Unified Development Ordinance for any mass grading in a residential subdivision as this. However, because it is a 20 foot required buffer, it does not have to be a natural buffer. So they could in fact grade into that area and replant it. So it is not a requirement that they would have to retain that buffer. Thank you. Mr. Gosher, is that what you meant that you were going to be replanting there? In some portion along the ACT, but a lot of the trees that are along the ACT are going to be preserved because we're not grading in that area. Understood. But in the areas in which I didn't understand that before and I appreciate Mr. Kulture because I was surprised at what you said. Are you saying, Mr. Gosher, that once there's grading done that you will be replanting in certain areas, you'll be replanting in the 20 foot buffer. You'll be replanting. Correct. All right. And approximately what is the length of that distance on the American tobacco trail? You can give me an estimate. Hold on. Replanting, the replanting. For the replanting, very minimal. I'll get you a number. Okay. And let's continue on. And I know Ryan Akers is looking at it. Okay. Thank you. There was a, and I'll ask Mr. Kulture or Mr. Judge to comment on this. There was a Ms. Smarr ask about these streets that would be constructed where they have sidewalks. Now, how would they relate to a pedestrian friendly city? And so Mr. Judge, do you want to discuss that or someone else is who you'd like to throw it to? Yes, I can take that. Bill, judge transportation, the unified development ordinance will require sidewalks along both sides of these new streets. So all the streets will have sidewalks on both sides. All right. Thank you, Mr. Judge. Mayor Schul, if I could come back. So we're asking around a hundred feet of replanting along the, of replanting along the American Vecca Trail. Most of it, most of the existing trees along the American Vecca Trail will be preserved. And in fact, there may be some supplemental planting in some areas in order to kind of beef up the opacity that otherwise is required. All right. Thank you. Mr. Kulture and assuming the right person to answer this question. You've heard the concerns about some stormwater concerns in the existing phase one. Could you speak to your estimate of any concerns that you have where our stormwater staff has about phase two stormwater controls? And this is in the Falls Jordan watershed, critical watershed area. Could you please comment on what you or someone from stormwater comment on how these folks are planning to meet our requirements and is it adequate? Mayor Schul, all I can say on that is that stormwater did review the development plan and did not have any concerns on that. The applicant is proffering to only impact 24% in previous surfaces, even though they could go up to the 70% maximum in previous surfaces with the high density option by ordinance, but I would like to defer to maybe Mr. Akers with McAdams as to how they will perform their treatment on site, because that is would be at a site plan level and also at a construction drawing level on how they will actually implement that. All right. Thank you. Mr. Akers, could you talk to us about your stormwater implementation? Yes, sir, mayor, excuse me. So we haven't really gotten fully into the site plan yet, but I can tell you that because of the 50% nutrient removal in the critical watershed, we'll likely be doing wet ponds of wetlands in series to treat the runoff. And we are only doing 24% impervious to lower our nutrient loading to achieve that. Past that, I really can't give you much more detail because we are only in the rezoning stage and we haven't gotten into that level of detail. Thank you very much. Mr. Kulture, you heard the trail commitments, the two trail commitments from the applicant. Was that language sufficient? Mayor Schuyl, I think we would probably want to maybe work with the applicant to shore up some, a little more language on the Fenwick Parkway commitment to make sure that that is some proper text commitment language for that one. I think there's sufficient language in place to support the Northern Trail tie-in, but I think we want some more, a proper language for the text commitment on the Southern trail. What is that proper language? Because if we vote on this tonight, we want that proper language. I think we can come up with that before the end of the meeting. All right, thank you. I think that's all my questions for now. Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a follow-up, and this is just around where the pocket parks would be located in that. Just if the advocate can just confirm that it will not be near those wet ponds or wet lands and creating that consistent parks that are flooded kind of scenario. I just want to just make sure that that was also included in the text commitments or text conversation around the language. Yeah, this is Jason Coffey, and yeah, our plan is to have them, they will not be in any of the stormwater or wetland facilities. They will be, again, active use park components that we were there for our residents, but would not be in the flood plain or ponds. Thank you, Council Member. Other questions, colleagues? I'm sorry. Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Reese. So good, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to ask, I mean, I feel like I asked this question whenever there's a low-density development, just why can't it be more dense? This PDR is really low. I know that Mr. Ghost mentioned that there were, that neighbors were concerned at the density, that some neighbors were concerned at the density, but this density was too high. I feel like this density is actually extremely low and would hope that on these 48 acres that we could get more housing considering that, the city is really in need of additional housing right now. Smaller units on smaller lots that are more affordable to people in our community are, in my opinion, more desirable. So we'd just like to hear from the developer about why they chose this large house, large lot format, rather than something that would be more dense and I feel more useful for the city. Thanks. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem for the question. I will say, so there are a couple of features on the property that actually impact, so it is 43 acres overall, that's correct. However, about seven and a half acres is in the overhead power line easement and then you've got additional acreage that is eaten up by the streams and the required riparian buffers and no-builds. So ultimately we're looking at something like 24-ish acres that are developable on this site. And so obviously the density that we're talking about here is a function of the overall acreage, but I think that when you take into account the kind of undevelopable areas of this site, the density is a little bit more attractive, maybe not necessarily what you'd like to see, but certainly not as low as the number indicates, other than that is the way that we need to discuss density under the UDF, providing more units here, I think it's kind of difficult to do. Danny did mention that the UDO does allow you to go up to 70% impervious, but that is one of the challenges of the site, it's kind of in the lower portion of the basin. And so the nutrient, the stormwater treatment and nutrient treatment, I don't know all the right words, Ryan Ather's probably knows better, but those types of things become more challenging because we're lower in the basin. And so committing to 24% impervious actually helps. With providing the appropriate amount of stormwater treatment. And some of, I think you said kind of large lots, these lots aren't that large, I think they're about 50 foot wide, or they're about, so they're not like huge lots and they are similar to what was built in phase one, which may not be your number one concern, but was certainly a concern from members that we heard. So there is a little bit of carryover so they will operate as one community, which most residents found attractive. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, Council Member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank my colleagues for covering almost every single thing I had in my notes about this case. It makes it a lot easier. So thanks everybody. I did want to ask Mr. Ghosh about the construction access and the question that Ms. Taylor just now very helpfully puts in the chat as I get ready to ask it. Is there any way to open up that a Finwick access road so that there are two ways in and out of this property while trees are being carted off and construction materials are brought in and out and that kind of thing? Well, I won't say no, there is certainly possible. I will say that Finwick Parkway is a residential road in an established neighborhood that has been in place for many years. Phase one of the courtyards project and courtyards itself when project is still under construction. And certainly those residents have lived there for some time but it's an act of construction site. So in fairness, I would think that the most appropriate location for construction traffic would be from phase one. I think Mr. Akers mentioned already that the last lift of asphalt in phase one has not yet been installed and that is because it's still an act of construction site. And so rather than directing a lot of the construction traffic through Finwick Parkway, it seems to make more sense to direct it through the courtyards phase one project. And that was, I will say something that the folks in Southampton were concerned about as well. Unfortunately, there's only two ways to access this site, from Finwick or from Marshall Road. That's it. The site doesn't have any other frontage. Obviously you can't drive construction materials on the ATT. That's not a road. So we've got to come in from at least one of those ways. And at some point, I suspect that there will be construction traffic both ways. But in all likelihood, at the beginning, this construction traffic is gonna become phase one of courtyards. Hopefully that answers your question. Yes, to the extent that I think you can. I appreciate that. I guess, I've been out to this neighborhood a couple of times since we voted to Annex it some years ago. And it's, we were out there, I guess a week and a half ago, doing a little light trespassing over to the tobacco trail. Since that seems to be a big issue for a lot of folks access to the tobacco trail, so me and my nine-year-old decided we would access the tobacco trail off that, I don't know if it's the mortuary stub or whatever it is that shoots directly out there. In any event, there's still a ton of construction going on out there. And so these neighbors have had to deal with this since they moved in. And if this project is approved another number of years, I totally get the frustration and their desire to try to moderate that as much as possible. Mr. Ghosh, I wanna get you to try to make me as comfortable as you can with the idea that this project is going to change the look and feel of this stretch of the American Tobacco Trail forever. Now, obviously when the American Tobacco Trail was built, the local governments who banded together to purchase these properties and get the appropriate easements could have bought themselves a very wide buffer to maintain what is now, I think many users call a tunnel of trees through this part of Durham County. This project, but they didn't do that. And so your client owns this property and this entitled to do things with it. What you're entitled to do will rely largely on what we decide tonight. Help me feel better about supporting this project when I absolutely positively love the Tobacco Trail and especially this stretch, which is along the path where I ran my first and only five case, I'm X number of years ago. And so see what you can do to help me with that, Mr. Ghosh. Sure thing. So, and this touches a little bit on, I think what Mayor Schuyl was asking about earlier, which is an estimate of how the linear input of trees along the ATP that will be impacted from the development of this project. So our estimate is about a hundred linear feet of trees would be impacted, meaning taken out because of construction activity on the site and the grade might change in that hundred feet and then they'll be replanted, a 20 foot buffer will be replanted in this area. However, for a majority of our frontage along the American Backhoe Trail, the trees will remain as is. Of course, when there's no foliage like in the fall or in the winter on the trees, you'll be able to see through the forest to some degree and see the new neighborhood that's being proposed here. But the trees themselves actually in large part remain the same as the ones that are there. We may also, as I mentioned, be adding supplemental planting to the existing trees so there may be even more foliage and more greenery up against the American Backhoe Trail than there is today in order to provide the appropriate opacity. There's about 85 feet between the trail and the edge of the buffer already. And so that is more for, that's gonna remain the same. So then I should say there obviously are two very obvious changes to the ACT, both connections that we're providing to the ACT as a result of the commitments for this project. So those things will also look different than what you see today if you walk this portion of the trail. However, I would think that those trail connections are desirable so that more people in Durham can use and access the trail. All right. And this is Jason Coffey. Can I add to that? Is that, is okay if I add a little bit to that? All means. Okay, thank you. And again, I'm not sure if you can pull up the development plan, but I think Neil mentioned that before that kind of helps a lot that there are a couple repairing corridors that we're not disturbing. We've got an area that's pretty much south of Fenwick that we're not disturbing at all. The North Stream area that passes through, we've committed with this development plan as well as the neighbors not to develop north of that creek. So therefore there's a non-disturb other than putting the trail through. So I think that development plan really gets to Neil's point of how much we're actually preserving along that American tobacco trail and any places that there are potential disturbances with grading the commitment to replant material in that area is on the table for us for sure. All right. I appreciate the folks from the applicant doing their best to help me feel better about that. Now I just have to figure out how many, whether or not that's gonna be good enough for the folks that use this and talk to me about the trail on a regular basis. Those are the two outstanding questions I had. That's what I've got. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council member. I'm looking at the development plan, Mr. Coffey. And I'm trying to figure out where I'm looking at page three. Is that where I ought to be looking? Yes, the development plan C2.00. And it shows the limits of disturbance basically of, and it shows a lot of area along the tobacco trail that will not be disturbed. Yeah, I'm having a hard time reading that here. What page am I looking at on that development plan? It'll be the third page, like you said, Mayor Schuyl, and you'll see there's a shaded area where it says PDR 1.682, right? Yeah. And there's that shading. So that shaded area is the area that's being developed. If it's not in that shaded area, it's not being developed. So, Mr. Ghosh, where is the hundred foot area that you're talking about on that development plan? Well, you can see that the shaded area approaches the American Tobacco Trail just to the left of that short stream. Yeah. And then also a little bit to the right of that, you see we've kind of notched in the developable area and then it comes out, it comes towards the American Tobacco Trail. And so that's the area in which the hundred feet of trees may be impacted. And to give you an idea, we have roughly 2,800 linear feet of frontage on the American Tobacco Trail. So a hundred feet is not a whole lot of 2,800 feet, I guess, is the point I'm making, although I suppose that's for you all to decide. Yeah, I estimated that when I looked at the aerial photo that I estimated about 3,000 feet. Okay, yeah. But okay, 2,800. And but when I look at this development plan, it looks to me like there's a larger proportion of this 2,800 feet that is developed, being developed close to the American Tobacco Trail quarter than a hundred feet. So where does that calculation come from? Am I missing something here as well? No, you're correct at the portion that's up against the American Tobacco Trail, portion of that building envelope that's up against the American Tobacco Trail is greater than 100 feet. However, from the, so the hundred feet is coming from McAdams who has been doing work on site planning for this. And I will let Mr. Agra speak to where specifically that is. The point being that even though it's close to the ATT, we're still not impacting all of it, but about a hundred feet is what we would estimate. Ryan, could you speak to a specific location where you think roughly a hundred linear feet of the existing trees along the ATT may be impacted based on your level of site planning at this point? Yeah, it's literally only at the areas where we're making the American Tobacco Tions through the other trail Ions. So we need to make an impact to make the trail connection. So that's why I'm saying a hundred feet. Got it. Okay, I didn't realize that. So where the connections are to the American Tobacco Trail, that's where the trees will be taken out. Even the portions shown on this development plan that are close to the American Tobacco Trail, we still won't be grading up to the American Tobacco Trail based on our site plan exercises so far. Okay, well, that's a lot better. And that probably gives council member Reese some comfort too, but I'd like a proffer to that effect. I'd like some language. And I won't vote for this until there is some language. I think we can, so this is the language that we've talked with the city staff about. And I think we can make the commitment. I'm just trying to figure out in my head what that commitment would look like. A commitment to disturb no more than a hundred million feet of existing trees within, say, 20 feet of the American Tobacco Trail, 30, something like that. Yeah, that sounds good. But you'll need to, why don't you write something, Mr. Gosch and let our staff know what it is and they can say if they're satisfied. Sure. And then I see that Mr. Kultra is ready with the proffer language about the entrance itself. So Mr. Kultra. Mayor Schull, I do have one clarification I would like for Mr. Gosch to make on that. We were discussing this proffer language on the Southern American Tobacco Trail tie in and just wanted to make sure, basically on a triggering mechanism for that. We do notice that there is a triggering mechanism for a second point of access for this site after the 37th CO and we didn't know if the first point of access is going to be from the North or the South. So we want to make sure of how they're intending to plant this development. And if that second point of access is going to come in from Fenwick, then we can set a triggering mechanism to be, we would say at the 38th CO because that's when they would actually construct Fenwick. Okay. So Mr. Kultra, let me parrot that back just to make sure I understood. This is in relation to the second connection to the ATT, correct? Correct. And your question is the timing mechanism for it and you're suggesting that it be timed to be installed at the time of the requirement for the Fenwick Parkway extension. Is that right? The question to you is, which point of access is going to be the first one because you have a commitment on the development plan at a state. That second point of access is in the part until 37th. Right. You have a maximum of 37 units to receive a certificate of occupancy prior to the completion of a second point of access to a public street. I understand. Let me just make sure, I believe our first point of access is going to be off the Mar tree, but let me make sure with our applicant. Yeah, Jason Coffey, that is correct. We'll be developing from the north to the south. Okay. And so Danny, that being the case, then I think what you're saying is the commitment for the second point of access to the ATT would come before the 38th certificate of occupancy. Then we would be comfortable with a test commitment stating that prior to the issuance of the 38th certificate of occupancy, developers shall install pedestrian access on the American Tobacco Trail to Fenwood Parkway. I'm going to pause here and let me pause before I say anything, but I and check with the team. Yeah. And this is Jason Coffey. We're good with that commitment. Perfect. There you heard it from the applicants. Yeah, that works. We will go with that. So Mr. Culture, you have both commitments that you need on the entrances to the trail. Yes, sir. We did. All right. Mr. Gosh, I'll be looking for some language associated with the, with the. Yeah. With the disturbance of the tree, the long ATT. I'm going to type something in here. I can read it to you now, but I do want the language in front of staff to review. Well, why don't you send it to staff? Should I just send it in the chat then? Or you can do, do you have it completed? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Why don't you read it to us, Mr. Gosh? The only impact allowed to the 20 foot perimeter buffer around the ATT is for the ATT connection. Otherwise the 20 foot buffer cell remain undisturbed. Mr. Culture. That's fine. Okay. Thank you. That works. Okay. Let's see. Mr. Culture. Yes, sir. Public interest statement that was included in the zoning, in the rezoning this time, the annexations. I just want to appreciate the staff for this new innovation in our, in the information that we receive. I think it's extremely beneficial. And I really appreciate that. I think it's going to be a really good addition to the package. Is this practice going to continue? Well, actually, Mayor Schuyl, that was only a temporary fix because we have now adopted the new comprehensive goals and objectives for the comprehensive plan. So we have an even different set of policy language that we're going to use. But you will see me seeing those coming forward. Well, I want to thank you. I want to thank Ms. Young. I want to thank everybody in the planning department that has made this additional, is a very valuable tool to us. We felt so. To have these benefits or at least the claims about these benefits in front of us. And so thank you for that innovation. I know it's one extra thing for the developers and so forth to go through, but it's valuable. And these came straight from the community for the comprehensive plan. So. Yeah, they're great. They're really great. Mr. Coffey, you're representing EPCON? Yes, that's correct. I'm vice president. Mr. Coffey, you've heard from some of the folks here, three or four of the people who've spoken tonight about unhappiness with the year level of communication with them. These are folks from South, from phase one. Yeah. This is important. It's important to us. It's important to our community. It's certainly important to people that live there. Could you comment on that, please? Sure. And it's important to us as well. We had, again, we have a unique situation here with our phase one. If anybody's been through there, there's a lot of homes being closed in a very short amount of time. They started late last fall and into the spring about the same time we're going to planning commission. And I think at that point, it's fair to say that the communication wasn't where we wanted to be as a company. And that was one of the comments that came out of that meeting support. But yet, beef up the amount of time you're spending with the residents. I think, again, there's been a lot of work. I know somebody mentioned we just had a virtual meeting last week we did, but that's not the only meeting we've had. We've had two other meetings of questions and answers, getting questions from the community, any concerns they had. Again, we're not necessarily, sometimes when you give the answer, it may not be what the residents necessarily want to hear, but we are communicating with getting back to them with their concerns, et cetera. You heard from Gerard tonight who is the HOA president. Again, it's not a sense that everyone there is unhappy. We still have some work to do with a couple of the residents that you heard tonight. We have one, we have some drainage issues. It was brought up at the virtual meeting. I know that our team has been working and communicating, but we still have some work and we'll commit to get Ryan Akers there as well as our land development manager to make sure that for something we can do to help shore up the drainage on that component. As it pertains to construction traffic, pertains to some of the HOA stuff. Again, I think some of those are we're continuing to work with the residents. We want to make sure and accommodate where we can. And I think we've done a really good job in the last three or four months of better communication. I think even some of the opponents tonight did state that, hey, there's been better communications gone better. And that's where we're at. We, again, we want to be good neighbors. We want to be good home builders. We think we have a lot of happy residents that are in that community for the community itself. Some of the angst is maybe adding to this, but it was always contemplated from our perspective of the potential of adding to this South Point one to make it a South Point one and two, which is what you have before you tonight. And we're really proud of the community. We think we've done a lot of good outreach and we continue to see that occurring and continue to even get better. Thank you. And I hope that when you do have your meetings that they will be interactive that people will be able to ask you questions as well as at the meeting, is that your plan? Yes, that is the plan. Again, it was mentioned that we're into an HOA phase now. So we have committees set up. We have, again, one of the residents on the board that'll continue to evolve and move forward. And again, our intent, you know, we wanted to have it on-person meetings, but obviously with the COVID coming back, but if nothing else, we can have masked meetings as well as people that do not feel comfortable having them attend via Zoom. And just like the last one, these will continue to be more and more interactive just because of where we are in the HOA process as well as, again, community relation process. Thank you. Thank you very much. You know, once we vote on these things, they're done. And, but of course you'll be back in front of us for other projects. And so we really appreciate you keeping the commitments that you make. We will. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. I think those are my questions. Colleagues, other questions? Council Member Freeman. Thank you. Just making sure that just round out the circle and just touching on the comments in the chat around the traffic calming. I just want to make sure that the staff does address the, I guess the construction traffic timeframe, just noting it shouldn't be traffic or construction traffic before a certain hour or after a certain hour. And then also just note that the traffic calming will come in from that aspect. And I'm thinking it's Bill Judge who's speaking to. Well, yes, Bill Judge Transportation. In terms of the hours of construction, that is generally guided by the noise ordinance. I think Rob joiners on as well. He can speak to that as public works typically enforces or helps us with that in working with the contractors. In terms of the traffic calming that was posed in the chat questions, that would be essentially up to the applicant to either proffer or provide during site plan process. We have a number of traffic calming measures that could be considered to be constructed with phase two or back in phase one if the applicant wishes. But thus far I'm not aware of any proffers by the applicant to provide those. Mr. Joyner. Yes, Robert Joyner, Public Works Department. Just to make everyone aware, standard protocol in this is that we actually select or the work with the developer they selected construction route through and then that route is actually bonded as a part of their requirements. So we keep bonds on that to ensure that the roads are completed and fixed as an additional. And then we periodically go through and look at the roads. We also take pictures beforehand. So we have a before and after. So it's a pretty easy argument to see when damage has occurred through to lots of construction traffic. And that is a standard protocol. We use that across the board with all of our subdivisions. We even use it in some cases on existing streets where that's the only point of access. And so- Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Joyner. Other questions, colleagues? Is there anyone who has not been heard on this item tonight who would like to be heard? This is a public hearing. Is there anyone who has not been heard that would like to be heard? If so, could you raise your hand in the virtual chat or your virtual hand in the chat? I don't see anyone. All right. I'm gonna declare this public hearing closed and that matter is now back before the council. And I'm gonna ask if there are any questions or comments by members of the council. Mr. Mayor, I don't know if you can see council member Freelon, but he's seeking recognition. Thank you. I can, and I apologize, council member Freelon. No problem. And thank you, council member Meadowton. Yeah, man. Just a brief comment. I just wanted to thank my colleagues for just the rigorous round of questioning. Sometimes when we get these things as council member Meadowton said earlier, it can be overwhelming. I really appreciated reading the planning commission written comments, but really just the nuance and rigor and detail of today's inquiry was really enlightening for me as a colleague in what was the contentious thing. I mean, it was seven, five on the planning commission and I didn't know how I was gonna vote going in and just wanted to extend some gratitude to my colleagues for asking all, every question that popped in my head. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council member. All right, I'll, council member Meadowton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Let me just echo also my appreciation for colleagues and the engagement tonight in this particular case. I wanna also just thank director Young and this might be a bit of a placebo effect I'm having tonight, but the comments from the planning commission, I think the mayor may have touched on this, seem a little more substantive. I remember our last joint city council planning committee meeting, you said that the comments would be a little more robust and nuanced and it seemed to me in reading them tonight from the recommendations from the planning department that that was taking effect again, it might be placebo but I know you've forecasted that that would be happening. I just wanna thank you for what seems to me a little more robust and nuanced input from the planning department. I also wanna say that I appreciate of the robust engagement around the American tobacco trail. It is a special sacrosanct place and I appreciate us leaning in on protecting it. And I hope that, you know, other residents who may be watching this debate will be heartened because there are some other sacrosanct places in our city and in other communities that deserve just as much leaning in on as the American tobacco trail, which I know we all love and cherish there's some other places. So I'm heartened by our willingness to lean in to protect the sacrosanct areas in our city. I really appreciate the discussion. I'm inclined and to support this and I'm more inclined now after the discussion engagement engagement tonight. I wanna appreciate the principle and she does this often that Mayor Pro Tem Johnson laid out tonight with respect to, you know going after more density relative to our housing needs. And I resonate with that deeply and principle and then of course you get to the particularities of a case that's before you. And this particular instance of Commissioner Miller's comments were actually quite helpful to me and just kind of clarifying the, how much of this land is actually buildable. It's sort of organic extension of what's already around it and the proffers that we've gotten as the planning commission, the planning department echoed as well from the developer. Again, drilling down and getting some firm commitment and language on some things. I also wanna remind us to make sure we get the commitments for the donation to the affordable housing fund that came up during this conversation. So all of that taken together. I was concerned as well given the size of the acreage and seemingly the low end, seeming low end of the density, but all things considered, how much of this land is not buildable because of environmental issues and Council Member Freeman always does a great job in kind of focusing in on issues with water and other things, I wanna thank her for that. All that said and done, I'm inclined to support this development and I intend to do so tonight. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you colleagues again for a really robust discussion. Thank you very much, Council Member. Other Council Member Caballero. Thank you, Mayor Scholl and good evening, everyone. I also plan on supporting. I was out there earlier today. The power easement is huge. It makes sense why there's so much land that is being removed from the parcel. I'm satisfied with what I heard around the American tobacco trail access and tree preservation and I appreciate my colleagues really digging in on ensuring that something that many, many of us treasure and Durham will continue to be preserved. Those are all my comments for this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to appreciate everyone who came out to speak tonight from the community about this project and of course the great work of our staff in developing this proposal. This is no secret, this is not my favorite type of development. I wish that every developer that was building a large single family house would just build a duplex instead. I think that would go a long way towards alleviating some of the housing pressures that we are experiencing in our community. But I think that for this case the benefits outweigh the costs and that I will be supporting the rezoning and annexation. Just want to, in general, telegraph to people who want to build in Durham, develop in Durham that we need more density. And in areas like this, which obviously don't lend themselves to the kind of density that we see in the urban tier or in downtown, I think there are still opportunities to build a few more homes in these areas. And I'd like for folks to be trying to maximize the number of homes that we can get on a reasonable amount of impervious surface while being conscious of the environmental constraints and issues that we of course need to be concerned with. But in general, I think that we are losing opportunities to build more homes in the suburban areas by sticking to, by having developers who are sticking almost entirely to this single family development plan. And I think that we need to think beyond that so that we can have more housing more housing on the same amount of land is what we really need to deal with the housing crisis and also to prevent any additional costs that would accelerate climate change or cause any environmental issues. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to step back, but I do want to build off of Mayor Pro Tem Johnson's comments and just acknowledge that for future developments would be great to also have solar panels included and some more innovative ways to kind of capture more energy savings. But I did want to kind of get to come back and recognize that four of my colleagues have already agreed to move forward with this project. I would love to challenge them and kind of push back and say that it would be great if this project actually included some traffic calming proffers before we all agreed to move forward. And so I just wanted to see if our applicant would be interested in actually proffering some language around, including some of those traffic calming measures in their project for the public traffic, not just the construction traffic. I'll ask Mr. Gosh if he could speak to that. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, so I'm not sure that we heard which traffic calming devices in particular were being requested or suggested. I will say that some of the things the city already has done, which will be required on this site, I think work to that effect. We have large rights of way, but they are relatively narrow streets and narrow streets themselves or a traffic calming device. The city wisely has added street trees as a requirement. And so that will be something that will be included on this and it'll be sidewalks on both sides. I don't know what we could commit to as far as traffic calming devices. So I'm not saying yes or no. I would ask Bill Judge, I guess to weigh in on that because I'm not sure what we can and cannot commit to. Mr. Judge, would you like to comment? Yes, I know I don't have the wording handy, unfortunately the, I know some other applicants in the past have proffered to do some internal medians at intersections or other traffic calming devices sort of gateway entrances at the various phases, neighborhood traffic circles, things of that nature to other than just speed humps. Mr. Goush, you've heard Mr. Judge. I did hear Mr. Judge and I'm consulting with our applicant team to see if there is a proper we could make. Just don't know what that would look like at this moment. I think Mr. Coffee has raised his hand and to maybe acknowledge him, I will say that I think internal medians for this type of community would be quite odd. There is the, just the way this site is accessed and Marjorie Road is kind of itself of traffic calming device because, well. This is Jason Coffee and maybe I didn't, I understood the question, but I didn't hear or see maybe comments where people were suggesting what traffic calming and where these are. Are we talking about phase one traffic calming which is built? Are we talking in our new, the new phase two? This would be relevant to phase two. We're not going to try to go back and make you do something interesting. Okay. Okay. Great. And was there, was there options as far as again, I think again, we're right now on a site plan stage. Is that a typically a site plan, a condition that we work with staff to work through what that may look like because obviously it's going to impact, you know, from a standpoint, we don't want people racing through as we're trying to sell homes either. So, so we understand that. But is that more of a site plan commitment or are you looking for something tonight for a zoning perspective? I'll ask Council Member Freeman what she had in mind. It would be great if you could include language that said you would work with staff. Yes. Yeah. We'd be happy to, we'd be happy to say that we'd work with staff to take a look at traffic flow, traffic calming and if something's needed that we would work with staff to work with staff. And that would be specific to rounders, speed hubs and entrance and gateway. I think interesting gateway kind of narrowing or what have you or signage, whatever it was that Bill Judge just mentioned. Yeah. And I think we can work with. Yeah. If it's, if it's narrow or narrow streetways, again, those are great. There's no, no mention. Those are great traffic calming as well, but we'll be happy to work with, with staff to work through what that would look like for this section. Thank you. I appreciate that. And just rounding out my comments, I would say that this, this project definitely rounds out the phases from phase one to phase two. And I appreciate the adjustments that have been made this evening. And I appreciate the clarity that's been given this evening as well. I note that the, the fingers of like Jordan Lake are near this section. And so I do have a lot of concerns about how water will flow. And so I will be watching to see what the devices are and how the devices are working. And I will just definitely check in with staff but at the site plan level. But I think I can support moving forward. Thank you. Thank you council member. Other comments? Okay. I have a few. I am going to be supporting this. I'll, I'll, I'll just mention a few things. One is, I really understand why the people in phase one are concerned about construction traffic and about the condition of the roadways after the traffic and having them put back. I appreciated Mr. Mr. Joyner's explanation, what we know in the council is that these, there's the bonding requirement that these roads will be put back. They will be required to put back. And during the construction, of course for people that live there, this would be difficult. But it is the price of living in a city. We, I have, you know, outside of my house, very recently, we've had a bunch of construction going on of various sorts. And it's, it's not pleasant if you live near it, but it is the reality that we face. And of course when phase one was built, there was construction. And I'm sure that those trucks rumbled through somebody's neighborhood. So I think that I'm anxious that the developer do everything that they can to minimize this disruption. But I do think we have to acknowledge that it's, it's part of living in a city and a place where there's construction that's going to go on. The American to Back Trail is, I think that in many ways, it's Durham's greatest treasure. It's our river. It runs north to south through the belly of the city. And protecting it is absolutely crucial. That stretch of the ATT, I'm on probably at least twice a week, sometimes more. I know this, this development well, I know the land well. And I think that I share Madam Mayor Pro Tem's concern about the density level, but I am going to be voting for this, despite the fact that I think it could use some more density. I am satisfied with the protection that you, you talked about for the ATT. You know, one of the speakers, I believe it was Ms. Francole. I mentioned something important, which is global warming and climate change. And, you know, one of the good things about this development and what one of the good things that everybody in phase one who spoke and wanted is a, is connections to the American to Back Trail. One of the things about this development is, unlike a lot of developments, it really is in a place where there's incredible walkability to just a wonderful park that it is a hop, skip and a jump from the American to Back Trail. People can get on the bicycle there and as many people do in that area and ride into work. This is, and I believe that Ms. Landfrie to one of our planning commissioners noted this in her comments. We don't only have the needs of our climate. And, you know, the good thing about this development is that most of the acreage is going to remain green, which is great, but we have the requirements that people want to come here and live. And we need to provide housing. It's critically important. And we're constantly balancing those things. And I think in this development, you have a good balance. You have 24 acres of development. You have quite a bit more of that that are, you have about the same amount that's not going to be developed and will remain green. So I think those things are really good. I think those are my comments. My final comment, I guess, yeah, I should add one more. I do think that Mr. Gosh, Mr. Coffey, Mr. Akers, you all have got to do better in terms of communicating with the phase one folks, folks that were there now who are clearly not happy with how they have been communicated with. And I appreciated your reassurances, the work that you've done since in the last couple of months, but look forward to continuing that. Okay, I see from Ms. Young, they have proposed language about the traffic calming commitment. Could you make that, could you come to us with that language now, Ms. Young or Mr. Koltra? Yes, Mayor Schuyl, this is Danny Koltra with the planning department. We talked behind the scenes and we would suggest that they make a commitment that says they will provide at least one internal traffic calming device in phase two, subject to final review and approval during the slide plan and CD review process. Thank you, Mr. Koltra. Mr. Gosh, is that acceptable? Yeah. All right, thank you. All right, colleagues, are there any other comments? There are three motions necessary. The first will be to adopt an ordinance annexing courtyards at South Point 2 into the city of Durham effective September 30th and to authorize the city manager into a utility extension agreement with Epcon South Point LLC. Moved is read. Second. Moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by Council Member Freelon. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. We'll now move to motion two to adopt an ordinance amending the UDO by taking property out of the residential rural. Falls, Jordan Lake Watershed Protection District and establishing the same as planned development residential 1.682. Moved is read. Second. Moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by Council Member Freelon. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. The third motion would be to adopt the consistency statement. Move to adopt consistency. Second. Moved by Council Member Middleton, seconded by Council Member Freelon to adopt the consistency statement. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much. Madam Clerk, the ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. Colleagues, I'll, well, first, I'll just say to the developer, we're looking forward to you doing a great job with this development. And we're looking forward to hearing from the folks in Phase One that you've been communicating well with them. Thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you very much to all the members of the public who came tonight. We appreciate your comments. They were extremely valuable to us. And I think have really informed our decision. Thank you so much. Colleagues, it is now 9 0 8 and we are going to take a break to give our closed caption folks a break. We will be back here in five minutes at 9 13. Please put your microphones on mute. All right, colleagues, it is 9 13 and we're going to reconvene. Our colleague, Council Member Reese, has had to leave the meeting because of a family health situation. And so let me ask our attorney, how is his vote? I guess since we're virtual, his vote won't be counted. Is that correct? That's correct, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Attorney. Sure. All right, colleagues. We'll now move ahead to the next public hearing item, which is item 19, the Consolidated Annexation of Junction in Ferrell. And I'm going to first ask to hear a report from staff. Yes, good evening, Mayor Schul, Madam Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, honorable council members. I'm Alexander Cahill with the planning department. I'm happy to be here with you tonight. We did receive a request for a voluntary annexation petition, utility extension agreement and initial zoning map change from Kelsey Westwood of Kimley Horn. And this is for 11 parcels of land totaling around 222 acres and located at the intersection of Junction Road and Ferrell Road. This annexation petition is for a contiguous expansion of the existing corporate city limits. This annexation petition is to accommodate the development of over 1 million square feet of industrial facilities with associated parking and loading docks. A level four site plan has been received to the site and is currently under administrative review by staff. This annexation does not have a concurrent zoning map change request. Instead, this is a request for an ordinance approving a direct translation. And this is in which the existing zoning in the county translates to the same zoning in the city upon the effective data of the annexation. This translational zoning does not include a development plan and therefore any future development may proceed according to what the underlying zoning district permits. This site is presently zoned industrial light. Therefore, any future development under the existing zoning of industrial light allows for industrial light activities including light manufacturing, warehousing and wholesaling activities as well as offices and some support services. A staff does wanna call to your attention that since the council work session on August 5th of 2021, the utility extension agreement was updated as you can see an exhibit B. This was updated to address an issue that was identified during the site plan review related to the construction of Northern Durham Parkway and the associated environmental permits that will need to be pooled to construct the parkway. Please see the section B and the council member attachment one under issues and analysis for more information about this. Council members may have also received some emails asking for this case to be pooled. Staff did reach out to these community members and learn that they were writing in about the Griffin Place project, a case that is just north of the site but that has not been yet heard by the city council. These residents happen to be in the notification area for the Griffin Place project but they are not in the notification area for junction and ferrule. Staff did reach out to them and confirmed they are indeed writing about the Griffin Place project. Staff does recommend that the city council approve the utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation petition and zoning ordinance for the proposed consolidated annexation. Staff recommends this approval based on some key findings including the minimal impacts this annexation would have to city services, the revenue positive result of the cost benefit analysis and is also based on the geographic nature of this annexation as it is contiguous to the primary city limits and expands the corporate city boundary. If approved, this annexation would become effective on September 30th of 2021. As a reminder, there are two motions required for this application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property into the city limits and the second is to approve the zoning ordinance itself. Thank you so much for your time this evening. Staff and the applicant team are available for questions tonight. Mr. Cahill, thank you very much for your comments. Colleagues, you've heard the report from staff. I'm now going to declare this public hearing open. I'm going to first ask if there are any questions for members of the staff, Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before I engage in consideration of this case, I do want to say that statutorily, there's absolutely no conflict of interest for me. However, as is my practice, I do want to disclose that this particular case is right up the road from the headquarters of the organization that I lead and we are in the notification area as well. So I just want the public to know that before I engage in considering this case. No fiduciary, there's no conflict of interest, but I do like to disclose when it's this close to interest that I have a control that are vested interest in. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member, were you notified? I believe staff did get something, yeah. Thank you. All right, colleagues, questions for staff at this point. I have one, Mr. Cahill. Could you explain the way I read the memo and it looks like the staff guided the developer towards creating the donut hole or at least was not adverse to that. And so could you comment on that? Yes, thank you, Mayor Schull. That is a great question. So in these annexation petitions, we work with our public works. Finally, a great question, awesome. I've been, you know how many years I've been waiting, Mr. Cahill, for somebody to say to me, that was a great question. Thank you, good. Okay, great. I got one. To me. So that is correct. It is essentially a staff created donut hole in the sense that we analyze the right of ways of the surrounding roadways and roadways that different, our public safety services would use to access these sites. And sometimes we ask for right of way to be included. And when we include that right away, sometimes it creates an additional donut hole as it did in this case. If we had not asked for that additional right away to be included in this petition, that donut hole would not exist. We believe because of the existence and location of the site that that donut hole will naturally fill in due to the market induced time. Thank you. I had, I was, thank you. That was very helpful. The, and could you also, I've tried to understand the changes around the utilities but was unable to. Could you explain that? Or is there another member of the staff that could explain that? Yeah, I'm going to turn that over to Rob Joyner as he is very well informed on this change. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Joyner. Morning all, Robert Joyner, Public Works Department. Essentially the change here is that due to the environmental impacts that are situated for this type of development for this length of road and that this will be a facility either by the city or by NCDOT in the future that the city would end up as a dealing with the application for that. And the developer would pay for everything including all the impacts and all of those features. So we're going to make the application but they're going to pay everything. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you very much. Other questions for staff colleagues at this point. All right. If not, there are members of the public who are here to speak on this item. I'm going to begin with those who are listed as proponents, Mr. Patrick Beiker, Amanda Henry, Kelsey Westwood, Anna Lee. Mr. Beiker, are those members of your team? Yes, Mayor Schuyl. Can you hear us all right? Yes, I can. Yes, Mayor Schuyl. Anna Lee Moore is a representative of the North Carolina Railroad. So she will speak after me, but the other folks, Kelsey and Amanda Henry are part of our development team. All right. Okay. And Joe Neary, Mr. Joe Neary is here. Is he part of your team? Not to my knowledge, sir. All right. I'll call on him separately then. And then there are several people who are listed as opponents, but I'm going to first go as we always do with our proponents to hear what you have to say. Mr. Beiker, how much time will you need? I'll need about three minutes of your time tonight, and then I'll have to turn it over to the other speakers for their estimates of time. The other speakers will be Ms. Moore. Right. Anyone else in the proponents at this time? Not to my knowledge, sir. All right. Thank you, Mr. Beiker. Mr. Beiker, welcome. We're glad to have you here. Go ahead. Good evening, Mayor Schuyl, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, members of the city council. I'm Patrick Beiker with Morningstar Law Group, and I live at 2614 Stewart Drive. I'm here this evening representing Skennell properties for this agenda item. With me this evening are Amanda Henry of Skennell properties, as well as Kelsey Westwood, our project engineer with Kimley Horn here in Durham. The continuous annexation we are discussing tonight seeks to bring approximately 222 acres into the city limit, and this assemblage has been zoned industrial life for at least the past 30 or 40 years. At the outset, I want to refer to the industrial land study that was released by the planning department in October of 2020. Right after its release, our team reviewed the industrial land use study carefully, and we turned in our annexation petition about 90 days later. I wish to emphasize that the 2020 industrial land use study analyzed and ranked 179 industrial sites in Durham County on a 14 point scale. Out of these 179 ranked sites, only five, only five sites achieved a perfect score of 14. The site we are discussing this evening is one of those top five. And the fact that there are only a few opponents to an over 200 acre industrial park, I think demonstrates that the 14 point score determined by the planning department was in fact appropriate for this location. I hope all of you had a chance to go see this site, which has approximately three quarters of a mile of frontage along the railroad tracks running next to Junction Road. All of the houses you can see at the corner of Junction Road and Fair Road near or within this assemblage are under contract with Canal. These houses are all several decades old and were built on well and septic. So it is probably fair to say they've exhausted their useful life. I would estimate about a quarter of them are already vacant. To a certain extent, this is an infill location since areas within the city limits are located to the Southeast and West, as shown on the annexation map in your agenda package. What I really like about this site is that it will bring good paying jobs to East Durham. In addition, our community desperately needs new industrial space. I don't recall industrial space being this tight at any time during my 27 years of working in Durham. Besides having good access to rail service, this site also has a bus stop nearby. Accordingly, I walked from the nearest bus shelter to what will be the main entrance for this industrial park on Fairle Road. I am pleased to report that my walk from the bus stop for Go Durham Route 3 took eight minutes and 43 seconds. Since it was 95 degrees outside when I walked it, I can assure you that I was not walking fast. Inclusion, I'm sorry, in closing, I want to thank the staff for all this help with this annexation and moving this project forward. I am confident this annexation will help create the industrial park that this section of Durham needs in order to attract good paying jobs and to allow Durham's growing businesses to expand here rather than having to look elsewhere. For all these reasons, we respectfully ask for your approval. We thank you for your time this evening. I'd like to invite Anna Lee Moore of the North Carolina Railroad to be our next speaker, and then our team will be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Beiker. Ms. Moore, are you available to be heard? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, go ahead. We're glad to have you. Thank you. So good evening, Mayor Schuyl, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, and the members of council. Thank you for the opportunity to offer our support tonight. My name is Anna Lee Moore, and I am the Vice President for Economic Development at the North Carolina Railroad Company. My team at the railroad works with communities across North Carolina to facilitate opportunities for job creation and increased freight rail use. But I'm speaking in support of the Junction Imperial Project. Current NCRR Chairman and former Mayor Bill Bell and I have met with the team multiple occasions and have been briefed in detail on their proposed plans. We support this project for the following reasons. In the past three years, rail using companies, especially manufacturers have quadrupled their searches for new operational locations in North Carolina and the Southeast, where they will establish a business that adds to our tax base and creates jobs for North Carolina citizens. The challenge is that there's a dire shortage of rail-served industrial landsites or buildings for them to choose or evaluate, especially in the triangle. What's more is the jobs created by a typical rail using company are diverse in skill set needs and experience requirements, which means attainability for citizens with little to no experience as well as those at the management level, which I know is a need not only in Durham, but across North Carolina. So in summary, we at the North Carolina Railroad Company are in support of this project and the opportunities we believe it will generate and in a landing place for new businesses that will likely create a diverse set of job opportunities that are attainable again by many North Carolinians. Thank you again for your time. Thank you for being with us, Ms. Moore. Madam Clerk, can you please make Ryan Regan available to be heard? Mr. Regan, can you talk to us? I guess I can hear me, Mr. Mayor. Yes, we can. Thank you for being here, Mr. Regan. Go ahead, you have three minutes. Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, distinguished members of the City Council. My name is Ryan Regan and I am the Vice President of Economic Development at the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce. I understand the staff recommends approval for this request, so item number 19, citing the revenue positive aspects of the project and the minimal impacts to city services. I too want to voice my support for those aforementioned reasons and for the broader economic development benefits that could potentially be realized through this project. I understand that the requesting parties, scannel properties plans to build over one million square feet of industrial space on the property in question. Scannel is a developer with a good track record in our community having built the headquarters some time ago for Power Secure, which is a major employer in the clean tech space located near the park off of TW Alexander. As you know, as our community continues to experience explosive population growth, the availability of quality job opportunities continues to be a top priority. As has been noted already, the industrial market in Durham is very tight and paving the way for more industrial space to come on the market is an important consideration as our community plans for future growth. With the approval of this request, I look forward to working with both our private and public partners to make sure that this plan development is a success and that it brings more high quality jobs to the Durham community. I thank you again, Mr. Mayor and members of the council for your support for economic development in the city generally. And again, I look forward to working both with staff and this elected body to connect more of our city's residents to promising economic opportunities in our community. That concludes my remarks, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Reagan. All right. We have several people signed up, several more, three more people signed up to speak on this item as opponents and we'll begin with Ms. Benita Green. Madam clerk, can you please make Benita Green available to be heard? Welcome, Ms. Green. We're glad to have you with us tonight. Can you be heard? Yes, good evening, Mayor Schuyl. Thank you to yourself and also the rest of the council staff for allowing me to speak. I'm coming to speak against this development in support of the people who live in that junction and gear corridor and also just mainly largely on concerns of roads and safety. Once again, we do have rural roads in that area that do not have sidewalks and barely any shoulder. And in July of 2020, there was actually a pedestrian death along junction road. So those things need to be taken into consideration especially when we're bringing industrial vehicles into this community. Also a concern that I have is that there seems to have been a lack of transparency between the developer and the residents around that development as to what sort of industrial properties we're going to be coming into their community. All of these things need to be addressing concern as well as environmental concerns on sediment runoff and pollution because Ellaby Creek watershed which this development will be sitting in is already at severely polluted. And so we don't want to add anything that's going to really impair or impact that in a negative fashion into that watershed. So I would like to know and understand what oversights are going to be placed with this particular development on a long-term basis, not just while the project is going on but over the years to come. What sort of long-term impact assessments or analysis are being done to determine the effect or the effect and cause and negative effects to this area and to this community? So I thank you very much for your time. Ms. Green, thank you very much for being with us tonight. We'll now move to Rodney Potter. Mr. Potter, are you available to be heard? Mr. Rodney Potter, is he with us, Madam Clerk? Mr. Mayor, I do not see a Rodney Potter here this evening. All right, thank you, Madam Clerk. And then we will hear from Jason Bezdula. Mr. Bezdula, are you with us? I'm here, can you hear me? Yes, welcome, we're glad to have you and you also have three minutes. Okay, thank you. I'd first like to say that the gentleman who was representing the developer is a brave man for walking on Farrell Road because it is extremely dangerous. There's like, to reiterate kind of what Bonita said, there's, it's a narrow country road. There's no sidewalks. There's, you know, it's not built for the amount of traffic it already has from the developments that have gone in. And we have no idea what sort of industry this is gonna be. Is it, you know, we don't know, is it gonna be like an office complex with a lot of cars coming and going or is it gonna be large trucks because we have issues in that intersection with the train tracks where at least like every two weeks a truck is stuck on those train tracks. It's the problem that we keep coming back to with development in this area of the county that there's no infrastructure here to support the large increase in everything that is trying to be built in this area and the volume of cars and the additional people that we just don't have the sidewalks or more bus stops or, you know, proper roads that can handle a large amount of volume, not to mention other things for people living there such as parks and things like that. So it's, you know, it keeps coming back to that same thing. And adding to what Bonita said, there is a sensitive ecologically area within that area that they wanna develop. And they really haven't, they've been vague as to how much of the land in there that they're gonna preserve. And add as a keep as a buffer to that and keep as a wild area so it can not get polluted. So I'll yield back anytime I have left, I'm done now. Thank you. Mr. Bistula, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it very much. Let me ask now, is there anyone else present who has not spoken who would like to be heard on this item tonight? This is a public hearing item. If so, could you raise your virtual hand please? All right, thank you. So we've heard from members of the public and now I'll ask council members if there are any questions that they would like to ask either of staff or of the developer. Councilor Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'm gonna thank the members of the community for speaking out. I am a member of that community. Again, let me just sell this closing. And one of the speakers kind of anticipated a question I was gonna ask my friend, Patrick Biker. What route did you take when you walked? Yes, sir. Can you hear me council member? Yes, sir. Yeah, walked down, just walked across the gear street down to the corner of Junction to Sherrill Road to be completely transparent with you council member. It reminded me of the walk I had from my house to the bus stop on route 10 that I would take. I had to walk on Cornwallis Road through the Rockwood Park neighborhood and along Rogers Hur, which back when I first moved to my house and my wife and I only had one car, there were no sidewalks on Cornwallis Road. So I'm very familiar with walking along NCDOT ditch section roads with no sidewalks in order to catch a bus. So that was the road I took. I do wanna emphasize that this development will be building by my estimate over one mile of new sidewalks along Sherrill Road and along Junction Road. So to a large extent, we'll be addressing the concerns that the council heard today. Obviously we'll be improving the intersections in the vicinity of this development as this industrial park moves forward. And we're very much looking forward to presenting an industrial park that complies with all of Durham's environmental standards. I certainly watched with interest when we had the environmental enhancements to the UDO committee working several years ago. Those are all standards that the development community supports and we're looking forward to moving forward with industrial park that does everything from preserving the sensitive environmental features on the site as well as providing good paying jobs in East Durham where I would say those jobs are desperately needed. I appreciate that. I know this would be a direct translation, but did I read that a level four site development plan was already submitted? If we turn in a site plan, sir, so we're working on the building footprints and the road alignments and we're working on that as we speak. So I do wanna emphasize that the building footprints out of the 222 acres that are part of this annexation petition, the building footprint only covers about 11 or 12% of that acreage. So I do wanna keep that in mind for council members that this is not a development where you're gonna see a great deal of impervious surface relative to the overall site. And the mile of sidewalk you alluded to, that's already in the site plan, correct? Yes, sir. Any improvement to the bus shelter? How did you find the bus shelter? The bus shelter is good. They're at close to Gear Street. It's a nice concrete pad with a covered shelter. And so it provides everything that I always wanted to see in bus shelters and I was chairman of the Durham Area Transit Authority. Keeps people dry, keeps people out of the sun and does a good job. All right, I think that's all I have for now, Mr. Mayor. I may have a couple of follow-ups but I'll yield to my colleagues at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. You're welcome. Thank you, Council Member Caballero. Thank you. Just real quick and maybe I missed it. Are there gonna be any improvements at the actual intersection of Farrell and Junction where it dips over the train tracks? We're looking at that, Council Member Caballero. That's something that'll be developed as we move forward with the TIA. And these are NCDOT roads so it'll be in consultation with NCDOT. But I mean, you all know me. I've been doing economic development work in Durham for 27 years and this railroad crossing on Farrell Road has been one of our Achilles' Heels for decades. And so we finally have a project that's gonna move forward and fix it. Yeah, thank you. That after hearing about the... I can't hear what the exact answer is but I know there will be an answer. Okay, and where can we expect? I understand that because it's a direct translation and it's a different process but out of everything I've heard this, I was out there that is an intersection I know well and it is always quite frankly, never fun to cross. Doesn't matter that there's a four-way stop sign, it's sketchy. Yeah, did you catch air when you were going across it? No, I go entirely too slow for that. But I appreciate you sharing around the other thing where the residential properties on that corner. It did seem that most, a lot of them were vacant and it was something I noticed today and appreciate all the other information you provided. Thank you. Thanks for going out, check it out. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Mr. Biker, how far is the, approximately is the bus shelter from to the, As I said, it was eight minutes, 43 seconds. I think it's about, it's between a, about a third of a mile, sir. About a third of a mile, okay. Yes, sir. Yeah, so again, I'll just quote my colleagues council member Middleton and council member Caballero, there's no development plan here. I know that you can't make proffers where this is a direct translation, but it sure would be good if you all would build that sidewalk. I believe it's on the site plan mayor. Okay, great. Patrick, this is Amanda Henry with canal properties. I'd like to just jump in and clarify something here. Sure. So we have a site plan that is submitted for one building within this park right now. It is, we have a master plan that shows a number of different buildings. And the first site plan is not large enough to trigger the need for a traffic impact analysis to be done. However, we know that any additional buildings within this park will require this traffic impact analysis to be performed and we fully anticipate that there will be some improvements along Farrell Road that will come as part of that TIA and perhaps on junction as well. So while it's not in the site plan right now, we do anticipate improvements being done to those roads. We just have not analyzed exactly what those improvements will be. Right. Thanks, Amanda. As I've often said, I'm not really a traffic engineer. I just play one on TV. But obviously as this project builds out, it'll take care of the traffic that's generated within this part of Durham. Is that sidewalk from the property to the shelter on the current site plan? No. No. The current, I think the current site plan shows sidewalk to the intersection of Farrell Road and Junction Road from our site entrance. Right, okay. And then how far, how much further is it to the shelter? Probably that would be, I can measure it for you, mayor. Hold on just a quick sec. It's about a thousand feet. Okay, a little less than a fifth of a mile. I know we're getting down into the details you can't proffer, but Mr. Beiker, you did kind of make the point here that this was close to a bus stop. But if it was close to a bus stop that's not really walkable, it's not really close to a bus stop. So again, I know we're not in a proffering situation, but I really want you all to build that sidewalk to the bus shelter. We'll look at the right-of-way, mayor, and see what we can do. But I would emphasize many people in Durham have to walk along streets without sidewalks in order to catch the bus. I know, Mr. Beiker. But you were the one making the point. And you made a really good point. You made a really good point. I appreciate it. This was that this is something that you want people able to do. They should be able to get off the bus and walk to these good jobs. Well, if they are going to be able to walk to these good jobs, then build a sidewalk to those good jobs. We'll look at it, Mr. Mayor. Okay, I want you to do more than look at it, Mr. Beiker. Well, it depends on the right-of-way. So we're going to do what's legally possible, but we'll look at it. That's true. Yes, sir. All right. I do want to, you know, one of the, just mentioned this, one of the folks, Mr. Vizdulla mentioned parks. I do want to say, Mr. Vizdulla, that this area is fortunate that we are building over the next few years at the wheels site, what should be an absolute jewel in the crown of Durham's parks. And I hope you'll involve yourself yourself, Mr. Bizzoula, there's eight acres there. The city is going to be having public input. Ms. Green is well aware of this and I'm sure she'll be participating in what that park will be like. It will be across from the soccer fields that are being built now. So please, Mr. Bizzoula, make your voice heard in terms of that. But in terms of having a great park, this part of town is going to have a great park. Okay, yeah, I think those are all my questions at this point. Colleagues, Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I struggle with this case and just acknowledging I don't know what the jobs are, but I do know that what Ms. Bonita Green is speaking to is that that one mile of sidewalk would be at the expense of the rest of the neighborhood. This development shift, even this context just shift could create a tax burden on the residents in that area that they have no control over. And so I am trying, I've been racking my brain trying to figure it out since this afternoon. I think I talked about it briefly with Charlie a little bit and I've been just thinking and thinking and thinking if it were possible to like have out of proffer but some type of payment to like our long term tax grant assistance program, that would be a great way to kind of offset some of the hardship that some folks feel like they'll be experiencing with gentrification, acknowledging that this area is going to see a huge up ramping of development. And so just noted like this, this is one project, you know, just a $5,000 contribution to that fund or that grant program would be great to have the support or the support of this development applicant to say that this is one way that we can kind of attack some of that gentrification. And just noting that it's not something that's gonna be, it's not some problem that's gonna be solved in the immediate future without us doing something different. And so this is just one option. I was just thinking of it and I was just hoping that we could consider it. Not sure if that lands at all but I didn't wanna at least throw it out there. Hi, this is Amanda Henry with Skinnell Properties. Thank you for that comment and that's something we would consider. But I do want to point out one other item that maybe isn't clear on our site plan, but the main arterial road that runs through this site is on the comprehensive transportation plan that Durham put together. And it's what you all referenced as Northern Durham Parkway and as part of our development we are building about a half a mile section of that roadway and one of maybe the questions back to you all would be, would there ever be consideration for putting another bus stop along that road because that would maybe alleviate some of the walking distance that these folks would have if we could get a bus stop on that road and that would be something that we would be happy to do as well. Duly noted, Ms. Henry, thank you and I'm sure our transportation planner saw it took note of that as you were asking, thank you. If Ms. Henry, you could speak to my question that would be great. And that was- Or Mr. Beiker. I'm trying to follow it, council member Freeman. I'm not exactly clear on the- So just note in that our community development department administers a tax grant program for long-term residents who are experiencing a quadrupling, so to speak of their taxes, acknowledging how gentrification operates in communities that have like low development and then they're kind of ramping back up when development starts. And so this section of the community is seeing a huge amount of attention and of course a little bit further east than going forward. I'm hopeful that to speak to Ms. Benita's concern and I think I didn't catch the- Mr. Bezula, there's some way to kind of make sure that folks who've been in the community a long time have some sense that they're also being included, their needs are also being included in the conversation. And so I was asking if it were possible for you to make a contribution to that fund, acknowledging it's just a grant program that we have. And I'm not sure that staff would even have a way to do it, but if you were at least amenable, I could at least ask staff to look into how we could do that. Yeah, I'm struggling to understand the relationship between industrial development and residents home values because those are two completely separate items in the Durham County tax office, how they're appraised and assessed under what's called the Machinery Act. I'm just not really seeing the connection there council member because they have to value industrial parks on a certain scale and that doesn't have anything to do with residential developments in east of downtown Durham. I hear what you're saying, I can appreciate that. I will push it any further just to give you just a little bit of understanding. Any development that occurs in an area where there's no development is going to flag for other folks to follow. And that was all I was just trying to point to, but it's fine, thank you. Right, I mean, hopefully what we'll see is an increase in higher paying jobs in this section of Durham than we've had in the past. Unfortunately for seniors who are retired, that would not be helpful. So just mindful that there are folks who are in our community that could use some assistance in that that's not going to be high paying jobs. Thank you council member. Other questions, colleagues, council member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm gonna fully associate myself with your, not admonition, but nudging of Patrick about that sidewalk. It is a direct translation, but you did put it into issue, brought it into scope by your work of your example. So I do want to also add my voice. And I think my level of interest to invest in this net community is well noted. So I wanna lead in with the mayor on that as well. I do wanna ask, how many community meetings did you have? We, I'd only had one. I'm trying to think if we had a second one, but we did have a community meeting. I'm afraid the date of it escapes me, but the turnout at it was relatively low. So it did not appear that a second one was necessary. I apologize, I don't have the meeting minutes in front of me right at this moment, but it was a virtual meeting. It was not in person because obviously it was during the pandemic, but my recollection, council member Middleton is maybe 10 or 12 people showed up virtually. That'd be my guess. And at least I remember at least one of our neighbors was for it, was in favor of this project. So I think it was about 10 people, sir. Or because it was low and during a pandemic a second one might be necessary. Well, we certainly reached out to at least 600 feet, probably did more than that. And that's what we got. But I, again, it's an area that's been zoned industrial for many decades. And so I think it's a, we're fortunate to actually see this finally be moving, moving forward. Most of the, just a lot of the residential is, half a mile away. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know it better than I do. This church is right there. Yeah, well, I was going to say, yeah, I want to be very clear that the area has been, there's activation definitely needed in the area. And that land has been sitting there for a long time. But of course, with the very action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. We start doing development and other things start popping up. So I just want to, I also want to say that, folk walking around Durham, the bus stops not on sidewalks is something we want to normalize or that's something we want to fix around the city. I didn't want to ask Ms. Green, if you're still on. First off, Ms. Green, thank you so much for hanging in with us tonight. I know it's late and it's getting up in an hour. And because this is a direct translation, we're not giving them any consideration in terms of zoning map changes. Anything you heard Ms. Green that addresses some of the concerns you have, anything you heard here tonight that addresses your concerns? You know, the little bit of the sidewalk issue addresses some of it. I really appreciate Mayor Schul pushing for more because there have been pedestrian deaths on that road. So if you're bringing people out into that corridor for jobs, then you want to provide a safe space for them to be able to walk from the bus stop to the jobs. And that's very important. I think that a lot of times developers that come into the area don't really take that into consideration. And it's important, you know for people it's important to also consider the residents in that area as well. And, you know, I'm probably too late to ask this question but I'd really like to know what type of industry or jobs or being brought into the area because that could impact the environment overall. I'm going to let them answer that question Ms. Green but I wanted to just thank you for your continued advocacy. And I want to, you know, oftentimes, you know we get excited about jobs coming to Durham and we'll get told there's going to be great jobs and oftentimes they'll be commuters, they'll be folk driving in or companies will bring in folk and oftentimes our community will be, we'll have that carrot dangled in front of us at these high paying jobs are coming in and oftentimes it turns out that the jobs that we were doing were working in the cafeteria or cleaning the buildings after those life changing salaries that have left for the day. So my hope is that insofar as this developer is talking about high paying jobs coming to East Durham they're talking about us and the folk that actually live there and work there as opposed to folk who are going to be driving cars. And, you know, we don't have to worry about sidewalks if we're expecting folk to be driving cars and parking and then leaving in their cars. So we've seen this movie before. So I hope, and I know they are that there are developers, our friends are listening to this conversation and that we know what it has historically meant when we talk about high paying jobs coming into the city and that they haven't often, not often they don't they haven't translated to folk who, you know who are born and raised or the DNA or who are already living here in Durham but it's been other folk coming in and getting them and those sidewalks just feeds into that folk who got cars already, have cars already driving to those jobs. So I wanted to thank you for your advocacy and you're being with us tonight and I'm gonna let whoever wants to address your question about the type of jobs and potential impact environments if anybody wants to take your question and then I'll yield back Mr. Mayor, thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Mr. Biker, you heard the question. What, and I think that there are others of us who wanna know this as well. What do you know about what kinds of jobs will be there? Do you know anything about that yet? Not exactly Mayor Schull, but Scannell has now standing track record in Durham for building high quality, light manufacturing space and light manufacturing jobs are good paying jobs. Nobody takes more seriously what Council Member Middleton just said than I do what pained me during the early years of my career was working on attracting great tax base to Durham in either Research Triangle Park or Trayvon Corporate Park. But then when I went and talked to people who moved into the buildings that I worked on with people like Tom White and Ted Conner and Marion Black and our leaders at that time, it was always disappointing how many lived in Wake County or Person County or even Southern Virginia. So we have, again, I wanted to reiterate that the Power Secure Building is a great example of the type of building that Scannell builds the type of company that they have cracked. They are an international industrial developer. They've done industrial parks in Europe, for example. And so we really do try to maximize space for clean tech jobs, biotech manufacturing, other types of light manufacturing. And then I like to think that I've done everything I can to make these types of jobs available, especially for kids like mine who went to Durham Public Schools. So that's, I hope I answered your question. We do not have any specific tenants identified at this time, but that's Scannell's track record. And I think it's the right partner for this location. Thank you, Mr. Beiker. All right, colleagues, any further questions? Alrighty, if not, I would declare this public hearing closed and- I don't know if you can see, but Mr. Cahill, Alexander Cahill's got his hand raised. I don't know if you- Thank you, Mr. Cahill. Thank you, Mr. Cahill. Yeah, I wanted to make sure for the public record to respond to Council Member Middleton's question. The neighborhood meeting was held on January 11th. There were 21 people listed in attendance. And then nature of the conversation centered around the two items that y'all have already kind of addressed. One was around what will the potential uses be in the industrial site? And the other part of the conversation in the neighborhood meeting was what will the traffic patterns be from the industrial trucks coming in and out or the trucks serving the industrial site? Thank you, Mr. Cahill. I appreciate that. Thank you, Council Member. And thank you, Mr. Cahill. All right, colleagues, I've declared this public hearing closed. The matter's back before the Council. Happy to hear any comments or to take a motion to adopt an ordinance annexing junction in Farrell into the city of Durham effective September 30th and to authorize the city manager to utility extension agreements, canal properties. Council Member Freelon? I'd like to make that motion. All right, is there a second? Second, I'd like to make a comment. Sure, moved by Council Member Freelon. Seconded by Council Member Freeman. Council Member Freeman, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to note that whenever we're doing these large acreages of projects, 200 acres is a lot of land. And even though I know we're talking about doing a project on a much smaller scale, acknowledge it's much of the land would not be used. My concerns around accountability and shifting this rural industrial light to really active industrial park that would be more urban without addressing our infrastructure and that area is kind of, it's still an area of concern for me. I also am mindful that the comments that were made, I appreciate that they're considering the bus stop and considering the sidewalks and considering, but I'd much rather wait to hear this until we have more information or once they did have a potential tenant in mind, but that's just my opinion. So thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. I think we are in the, sometimes it gets 22 that we do get into, which is that this is a direct translation. There is no development plan, but in order to move ahead with getting tenants here, this is what we'll have to do. I'll just make a comment quickly, which is that I do think it's really significant that this is that in terms of our industrial land, that this ranks so high on so many, on so many different parts of the index, not just the railroad being able to serve it, which is super important, but all the other factors that have come together to make this one of the highest ranking pieces of industrial land in our city. And so I think that's really important. I am concerned about the traffic and look forward to the TIA when the next building is about to come online, the traffic study and the kinds of improvements that will entail. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Marion. I appreciate it. And I associate myself with everything that's been said. I'm going to thank Council Member Freeman for her comments as well. It's a direct translation. And I think this could potentially provide an on ramp because the area needs some activation, but it needs the right kind of activation. And listen, this is where relationships matter. Patrick Biker has been before us a lot of times. He knows Durham. He knows the history of the city and he knows what managed to this council. I don't know if I'm going to be here when this development moves forward, but I will continue to be a GAD fly and advocate. And we've had some representations made tonight about what can happen based upon what happens here for the community. And hopefully we'll be able to leverage this on ramp of this direct translation to getting some things that are needed in that area. Or else folks know some of us are going to come looking for them. So I'm prepared to support the direct translation, but we'll be vigilant in the spirit of what Council Member Freeman and the Mayor have said and others, all of us have said actually about making sure that we leverage best outcomes for the community. And I'm going to again thank Ms. Green for her tireless efforts and advocacy for our neighborhood. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. Anything else, colleague, before we vote? All right, there's a motion on the floor to adopt the ordinance annexing Junction and Feral to the city. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member, well, Council Member Reese is in here. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The motion passes five to one. Mr. Mayor. Yes. I'm not sure if anyone actually made a motion. I think you asked for a motion and then people ask questions. No, we did. Okay. Council Member Freelon made the motion and Council Member Freelon made seconded. Sorry, yeah. No worries. Brain, brain. I was like, did it happen? Cool, thank you. I know. Well, I appreciate it. As you know, from these meetings, I frequently have to be corrected. And I appreciate it that you're aware. But you're good. No, I'm unaware. You're aware. Yes, you're about 57% that I had messed it up. So thank you. All right. I will now move to motion two, which would be needed to adopt an ordinance amending the UDO by taking property out of the industrial light falls Jordan Watershed Lake Protection District County jurisdiction establishing the same as industrial light falls Jordan Lake Watershed City jurisdiction. I move is read. Second. Moved by Council Member Milton, seconded by Council Member Freelon. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Shul. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mayor, Madam Clerk. All right. I want to just Mr. Biker and Ms. Henry and others. We are expecting, we appreciate you being here. We are expecting that you do a great job on this development. And I know we'll be paying attention to the things we spoke about to the folks that were here, Ms. Green, Mr. Bezdula. Thank you so much for being here with us for making your voices heard. It always improves the process and the outcomes. And thank you so much. All right. We'll now move to item 20, Economic Development and Centers with New Vitronics Inc. And maybe we can do this more quickly. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Council Members, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, Honorable Council Members, my name is Andrea Graham Scott. I'm from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and I'm here this evening to request that the Durham City Council conduct a public hearing to receive comments on the proposed allocation of $150,000 in economic development funds to New Vitronics Inc. And to authorize the city manager to enter into negotiations and execute an agreement with the company. New Vitronics Inc. is an advanced technology manufacturer of micro-electronic components and subsystems that will invest $50 million and add 150 new jobs over five years to increase their manufacturing footprint and production capabilities in Durham, North Carolina. Specifically, within the City of Durham's three-year policy timeline, 113 positions will be created, including approximately 60 fabrication line technician and operator positions requiring a high school diploma or two-year degree with an average wage of $50,000. Also included are 23 jobs that require a two-year or four-year degree with wages ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 a year. Additionally, the company is willing to substitute relevant work experience for degree requirements. New Vitronics was founded in 2008 with a vision to revolutionize micro-fabricated radio frequency products. Based in Durham, they developed and accelerated innovative initiatives across the company's technology portfolio with its award-winning poly-strata technology and innovative 3D micro-coax architecture. New Vitronics's success is what drives their need for the additional manufacturing capacity to meet the growing demands of its customers. The New Vitronics expansion is being facilitated in part by the County of Durham, which approved a $2,000 incentive as well as a job development incentive investment grant, a JDIG, approved by the State's Economic Investment Committee in October 2020 for up to over $1.1 million. Payments for all JDIG and local awards only occur following performance verification that the company has met its incremental job creation and investment targets. JDIG projects result in positive net tax revenue even after taking into consideration the grant's reimbursement payments to a given company. It's estimated that over the course of the 12-year term of the JDIG grant, the project will grow the state's economy by more than $299 million. This matter was brought previously before you on January 4th, 2021 and comes before you again at this time to ensure an accurate representation of the capital and workforce development investment consistent with the City of Durham's policy, which states that investment occur within three years of the council approval of the agreement. And I have a chart if I can share my screen, hopefully to help explain this a little better. Is this visible to everyone? Yes, it is. Okay, thank you. And as you can see in this chart description, you can see that the three years that fall within our policy that Nuvatronics is committing to creating 113 jobs and this would be their median, I guess their average income. And here, if you look down at their private investment, you will see here that over that same three-year period from 2002 to 2004, they are looking to invest $39 million of that original $50 million that they will be investing over the five-year period. Staff is recommending that the city provide $150,000 in economic development investment funds to Nuvatronics subject to performance goals being met by the company related to the timing and amount of the investment employment creation and maintenance of the created jobs as well as the partnership engagement criteria. This public hearing has been advertised as required by state and local law. Thank you for your time. Staff is available to answer your questions and we are joined by Ryan Reagan, our economic development partner with the Durham Chamber of Commerce. Thank you very much, Ms. Graham Scott. Could you take the screen down? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much for your comments. Colleagues, you've heard the report from staff and now declare this public hearing open. And I'm going to first ask if there are any questions for staff by members of the council. All right, is there anyone here tonight in the public who would like to speak on this item? If so, could you please raise your virtual hand? All right, I'm going to now declare this public hearing closed and the matter is back before the council. We would need a motion to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute an economic development agreement in the amount of $150 for the new electronics ink. I'll move this stated. Seconded. Moved by council member Middleton, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Is there any discussion? Mr. Mayor, it looks like Ms. Scott has put her hand back up. I'm not sure if she wanted to seek recognition. Yes, in fact, I apologize, Mr. Mayor, but I did want to make for the record, a correction on the agenda. It states that the investment was $40 million and in fact, it should be $39, approximately $39 million. So noted, thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Rayberg, did you have a question or comment rather? Mr. Mayor, just when you read the motion, you said $150 instead of $150,000. That was one of my tricks, Madam Attorney. I was trying to just pay $150. That's why I moved. It's not a hundred and fifty. That's why council member Middleton jumped right on that. We're drawn. No, just kidding. Okay, thank you, Madam Attorney. Colleagues, the motion is to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute an economic development agreement in the amount of $150,000 in the electronics ink. I believe that we have a motion by council member Middleton and seconded by Mayor Pro Tem to that effect. Thank you. Comments, council member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I feel like it would be inappropriate to not include the sentiments of our fellow colleague, council member Reese, who couldn't be here this evening and just noting that new electronics does not need this $150,000, but we are making it available so that we can participate in this economic development. And so that's the short version. I will not do the 20-minute version, but that's all. And that's a great point. And you're right. If council member Reese had been here, he would have certainly made it. So thank you for filling in. All right, colleagues, any further comments? Madam, council member Middleton. That's not why we do these. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right, you mean we don't just do them to hear from council member Reese. Okay, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson? Aye. Council member Caballero? Aye. Council member Freelon? Aye. Council member Freeman? Aye. Council member Middleton? Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it. The motion passes six to zero. Colleagues, I believe we have done it. I will see all of you all on Thursday at the work session. Just a reminder, we have a very short agenda for the work session, but we do have a closed session following. I hopefully won't be too long as well. Colleagues, thank you so much. Good to see everybody. I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at 10, 19 p.m. Good night, y'all. Good night, everybody. Night.