 thursday september the 10th 2020 and i want to welcome everyone here today um my colleagues staff members and those others who are listening in various forms to our meeting i want to welcome you uh and i'll now ask madame clark will you please call the roll mayor shul here mayor pro tem johnson near here sorry thank you thank you councilmember caballero here councilmember freeland here councilmember freeman present councilmember middleton i'm here thank you and councilmember reese here thank you thank you madame clark i want to welcome councilmember freeland to his first city council work session and i want to say that we're getting awfully close unfortunately to manager bondfield's last city council work session mr manager mr mayor this is this is probably my last to participate in lead the next work session we will transition to uh wander page since he will be handling the council meeting on october the fifth but uh yeah this may be my last i will be present at the 24th and participating but not uh leading from the city manager's chair mr manager i've i've i've done a little off the cuff math i know you've been in city government for more than 40 years i was multiplying 40 years um times 26 work sessions uh and uh well i came up with a lot and um i'm just uh we'll have plenty of chances again and at our at uh at a soon to express our gratitude but i don't i think that this is where the work really happens um we all know that that the the monday night meetings are important and especially for public hearings but we know how much of the work gets done in these work sessions and you've just done an amazing job leading them and helping our staff set us up for these work sessions they're a they're such a great uh strong institution and uh so thank you mr manager you're gonna lead i want to thank you mr mayor i'll have more to say another night but thank you very much yeah mr mayor if i could real quick sure council member um this is interesting this is the occasion of the council member freeland's first work session and tom's last one in the city manager's chair and it put me in mind and i know the city manager will remember this very well my first actual work session uh back then when i joined the council i sat beside the city manager at our at our little table um and uh i know the city manager will remember this and i'm quite certain that the public works department will remember this i was um not thrilled uh with a particular item and i began uh asking a staff member questions about this and at a certain point in my questioning the city manager reached over and gently laid his hand on top of my arm as if you say perhaps a pause would be an order so that we can address some of he didn't say anything out loud he just reached over and gently places me in my arm and i have endeavored ever since that day not to work myself up into quite that much of a lather um and i think i've mostly succeeded uh so just wanted to commemorate this special day with that um not terribly charming story about myself but uh but a lovely reminder of how much i have personally relied on the city manager's guidance uh from my very first moments uh as in my service so thanks a lot time thank you councilmember riz i had forgotten about that but i'm glad to know that uh even the gentlest of reminders can be effective sometimes and we've all needed those reminders time all right uh thank you all and now we'll proceed to announcements by the council and um i'm going to call on councilmember caviaro i think actually mayor pro tem johnson mayor pro tem have you all right weren't you gonna say something first oh yeah i can say it but i think maybe you should do the thing i should do the thing okay i'm going to do the thing if i could have hired if we were in person i could have hired mariachis i would have today happy birthday councilmember riz it is your 50th birthday it is a big day uh so we felt that we had to uh make a little bit of a spectacle for you thank you very much colleagues happy birthday councilmember 50 is a good year happy birthday drink now finally exactly i say that 50 is a good year but actually i can barely remember 50 i'll be honest with you all right well that was an awesome birthday celebration and um we'll now now move on to further announcements by the council i believe uh mayor pro tem you have another announcement i do thank you mr mayor um i just wanted to request some time at our next council work session to um start discussing implementation of the race equity task force recommendations um there are about 13 of them that i think we could move forward on on our own without really needing any staff involvement things like um federal and state advocacy the creation of new boards and commissions um formal apologies for some of the historical errors of um of past city administrations and so i'd like to bring those things um for discussion at our next work session and i'll have a few um draft resolutions drafted by then as well thank you very much madam mayor pro tem um and thank you uh and for our new colleague um our practice is that uh we really try if we have something to bring up at a work session to give everybody the two weeks notice and so much appreciated madam mayor pro tem and thank you also for your work on the um the excel spreadsheet you sent around about the task force recommendations happy to thank you mr mayor everybody good with that in two weeks got some thumbs up thank you very much are there announcements by members of the council all right i don't see any so i'm going to move on now to priority items by the city manager mr manager uh thank you again mr mayor members of council good afternoon everyone uh priority items this afternoon agenda item number 10 which is the installation of signalized pedestrian upgrades is an item that we request to be referred back to the administration agenda item number 21 under citizens matters arian cheek uh that uh citizen will not be appearing today but mayor shul has authorized jessica sheffield to speak in lieu of uh of miss cheek agenda item number 24 beverly hudgens under citizen matters uh additional person will not this person will not be appearing today as was well and then agenda item number 26 uh franchise with duke energy carolina's llc uh right now we've slated this for a 20 minute presentation item uh the supplemental item has been added which is the actual presentation agenda item number 27 shannon road culvert replacement uh there is a supple this is a supplemental item that has been added to the agenda uh since it was published and then finally under the priority items you'll notice city manager priority items uh you'll notice information has been added related to city manager search firm findings which the mayor asked us and asked the uh the mayor and council asked the human resources department to conduct that work uh several weeks ago and uh this report is presented and uh the members of the human resources department who put the work together are prepared to discuss that at council's convenience either at this meeting or a future meeting those are my priority items thank you mr manager uh i will now accept a motion on the manager's priority items move approval okay been moved by mayor pro tem seconded by councilmember caballero that we approve the manager's priority items benna clark can you please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freeland hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton how about that councilmember reese hi thank you thank you very much madam clark the eyes have it and the motion passes seven to zero thank you mr manager um as we go through the uh items uh after we go through the items why don't you and i uh confer a little bit about the order of the presentations maybe you could advise me on what you think would be best be fine thank you mr mayor thank you madam attorney um good afternoon uh do you have any priority items good afternoon mr mayor members of city council the city attorney's office would request that council go into closed session pursuant to ncgs 143 dash 318 point 11 a1 this is a different exception than we typically use but it is to view uh custodial law enforcement recordings which north Carolina general statute 132 dash 1.4 a deems to not be public record so i would ask that the council pass into going to close session at the end of these proceedings thank you madam attorney could i hear a motion to accept the attorney's priority item so moved i can move by mayor pro tem and seconded by council member reese madam clark please call the roll mayor shul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton i vote aye councilmember reese aye thank you thank you sorry uh thank you madam clerk the eyes have it in the motion passes seven to zero madam clerk uh do you have any priority items today good afternoon mr mayor and city council uh the city clerk's office has no items thank you thank you madam clerk and madam clerk um thank you for the excellent job you've got a lot of meetings to to run today and we appreciate it um you've done a great job with these digital meetings and we continue to today we're adding back some public comment and we continue to move forward i just want to appreciate you and your staff and the tech technology solution staff as well for making these digital meetings uh better and better all the time thank you mr mayor we'll now move to our administrative consent items uh item one the city clerk's office approval of city council minutes item two affordable housing implementation committee appointments um i want to uh pull that item um item three carolina theater durham board of trustees appointment item four durham city county environmental affairs board appointment item five durham homeless services advisory committee appointment item six durham housing authority board of commissioners appointment item seven mayors nominee durham performing arts center oversight committee appointment i want to just point out that uh in the title to the this item it's actually wendy brown spaulding is the correct name i just wanted to point that out under departmental items budget management services department item eight international city county management association local government management fellow interlocal agreement under city council's office item non long-term homeowner tax deferment program under department of transportation item 10 installation of signalized pedestrian upgrades and that's the item that has been referred back to the administration item 11 contract to support transit community engagement and performance management with texas a and m transportation institute mr mayor pull that item this item 11 short uh item 12 under department of water management generator maintenance and emergency repair services service contract award to national power corporation item 13 sanitary sewer flow and rainfall monitoring comprehensive service and maintenance awards to ads llc under the public works department item 14 alpine road culvert replacement sd 2020-04 amendment number one under presentations budget management services department f y 115 f y 2019 24th quarter financial report under the police department item 16 shot spotter presentation under public hearing city county planning department item 17 consolidated annexation nc highway 55 abc store item 18 consolidated annexation sikes property under 19 unified development orders text amendment development agreement tc 2000 0003 under citizens matters to be heard at one o'clock item 20 ellen flats item 21 arian chic and i believe miss chic does still want to speak i see in the chat but is miss hudgens perhaps is giving up her spot to miss sheffield i'll check on that minute item 22 christina benson item 23 nancy cox item 24 beverly hudgens item 25 vanessa thornberg under supplemental items public works department item 26 franchise with duke energy carolinas llc and that's presentation and item 27 shadow road culvert replacement sd 2021-02 mr manager the items i have i see pulled are items two and item 11 and i believe that the presentations are items mr mayor yes councilmember i don't know if you can see the chat but i have noted in the chat that the item for the public arts black artist celebration is missing we just needed to get an update of the council around the 58 000 shifting from the public i'm sorry from the participatory budgeting to the actual public arts project okay thank you let me ask the administration is that something you all are prepared to talk about today no mr mayor i know we were aware of that but i don't think the department of general services has that in this cycle i think that's in the next agenda cycle all right thank you mr manager thank you councilmember and then item nine i was asking for that one item nine as well okay that is a long time homeowner tax for a group so items two item nine and item 11 um and then um mayor pro tem it looks like she has her hand up mr mayor mayor pro tem yeah sorry mr mayor i just wanted to also um say we need to refer item six back to the city clerk's office the Durham housing authority appointment why don't you explain why thank you yes sure yes um this item was misadvertised we have already appointed a member to the housing authority with uh the financial experience that's um that's noted in this advertisement the position that's open is for a dha resident um and so we need to re advertise for dha resident as well as one additional board member um there are two vacancies currently but this one has already been filled so thank you advertise it yes i forgot that and thank you for bringing that to our attention so item six will be referred back to the city clerk's office item 10 will be referred back to the administration uh items two nine and 11 are pulled and we have presentations our presentations are um the uh or the city from the city manager's priority item which is the city manager search uh the shot spotter presentation the the duke franchise presentation the budget presentation and i believe that's all is that correct mr manager correct mr would do have a quick question sure thank you sir good afternoon everybody could uh with staff confirm that the presentation on violence interrupters is is that going to happen in the next work session cycle i was under the impression that i was going to be presented today uh councilman middleton that is a presentation that we're working with Durham county to prepare and present and i don't have an exact date i know it is to be it is coming in the next cycle or two when they are ready but that's not one that our staff is presenting that's coming from the their staff and so i need to work further we get a firm date with the county manager we've discussed that we actually have it on our agenda to talk about at our regular meeting next monday afternoon our joint managers meeting to get a date specific very well thank you so much thank you this man thank you councilmember um mr manager with those i believe are the four presentations and i wondered if you had an order that you would particularly like to see them in mr mayor i would i would like to suggest and recommend that one we handle the pulled items i think those can be handled fairly quickly and then maybe go ahead and knock off the fourth quarter financial report because i do expect that the uh the franchise discussion duke duke energy franchise discussion and the shot spotter discussion are going to be fairly extensive and then depending on uh how the time frame of those go i know councilmember reese maybe has to leave at some point for a birthday celebration we understand but i then decide if you if you want to still have the um the city manager search discussion in light of the need to still have the closed session so i would i would suggest maybe those two items go to the end but then you can judge time and availability depending on how the other two presentations and discussions go associated with duke energy and the shot spotter okay so budget a fourth quarter budget presentation first followed by a shot spotter duke franchise agreement and uh city manager search right and then do the pulled items first yeah well thank you uh councilmember reese uh i had a lot of brave talk before this meeting about trying to get out in time uh to do something with my family but i think i'd rather stay and um and participate in the conversations we have ahead of us so don't don't let that figure into your calculations okay thanks all right colleagues um now we're going to move to uh citizens matters to be heard at one o'clock uh and i will let me just um get to that before i call on this plus i'm going to just look at the chat here and make sure that i see it looks like that jessica chef he'll be speaking in place of christine benton that's fine all right uh we will begin with miss plus um madam clark can you please make miss plus available to be heard miss plus are you with us i don't see miss plus do you all see miss plus anywhere colleagues uh yes hello can i be heard yes you may thank you miss plus we're glad you're here and you have three minutes excellent thank you kindly good afternoon mayors shul and members of council thank you for this opportunity to speak and for resuming the democratic practice of citizens matters in your work sessions uh greetings also to our newest representative for ward three councilmember freelon yesterday i sent an email to each of you titled engagement process and government accountability and i hope that you have had the opportunity to read and consider the content durham is experiencing a growing divide between the narrowing land rights afforded durham citizens and the expanding land rights extended to the privileged developer developers and their lobbyists have extensive direct contact to capture thought process and policy development the wall between civil government and industry can blur regulatory capture becomes a risk and it can be enabled by those who ignore it tolerate it accept it encourage it or enter into contracts under it it damages the public trust and is not in the public interest engagement process and government accountability is the second highest ranking priority for residents of durham as expressed through the engaged durham process like a neighbor who asks for soup or shampoo it should bother us that duramites of all the things they could have prioritized when asked what matters most put engagement process and government accountability right up toward the top it speaks to an unfulfilled or under fulfilled basic need in civil governance and a sober realization by the public that they are being planned over rather than planned with on may 7th engaged durham published the listening and learning summary engagement process and government accountability received 325 votes which placed it in the second rank when compared to the 70 other topics offered and it was featured in staff slide titled top shared topics on august 5th in preparation for the next phase of goal development jcc pc received a comprehensive plan update in which the topic of engagement process and government accountability had disappeared altogether other top 10 topics disappeared as well including growth and development infrastructure and gentrification and displacement all excuse me all of these disappeared topics relate to planning development and accountability it is concerning that 40% of the top ranked topics of public concern have disappeared in the most recent iteration of the comprehensive plans potential goals and that no explanation is offered for their omission it is bizarre that the second highest ranked topic of concern engagement process and government accountability is not being demonstrated more directly at the present time as certain unique udo text amendments and associated zoning cases move forward during a time when risks of regulatory capture appear to be of concern shouldn't government accountability and public engagement be paramount your public has clearly told you that they should be i respectfully request here on the record that all correspondents from the public dated from july 10th 2020 onward which pertains to any udo text amendments be provided as soon as possible to Durham's newest council member so that he may have ample time to fully incorporate the public's concerns prior to voting on any udo text amendments thank you again for this opportunity to address council that's it thank you miss plas appreciate it and we did get your email besides i did i'm sure my colleagues did as well i have read it now we'll look forward to hearing from staff at the appropriate time in response but thank you very much all right uh we'll now move on to our next speaker and that is arian cheek miss cheek are you available to be heard can you hear me now yes we may uh let me just before you start let me just say colleagues the next several speakers as you know from having read your agenda are are interested in speaking about black matter ridge and the zoning of black matter ridge i just want to assure colleagues that this is not a public hearing item before us um as you all know we don't uh hear speakers on public hearing items outside of the public hearings um unless the except circumstances are exceptional um this is not a public hearing item however and so uh we're going to go ahead and hear from uh these residents so uh miss cheek thank you very much for the opportunity to speak um i just want to make sure you can hear me now yes we can okay great so i am here to impress upon you the urgent need to correct the zoning of black matter ridge we submitted to you maps and diagrams showing the massive scale of the proposed development and the fact that there is no development plan for pdr this body city council approved a change to very low density rs 10 for these parcels back in march of 2012 at that same time the corresponding zoning map change was placed on hold only because of concern that it could impact the appraised valuation of parcels during ongoing negotiations for their preservation it is well past time to finalize this intended zoning and it is urgent to do so now now we represent a large i on behalf of a large and diverse group of citizens and asking council to take the lead in reactivating this zoning map change that was fully supported by the planning director planning staff planning commission and indeed this council the reason it's urgent now is because of what is confirmed in the memo you received from planning director sarah young as she explains a planned development residential zoning district requires a development plan but the record shows that such a development plan does not exist for these parcels and therefore the current and these are her words pdr 6.2 zoning is not valid that narrow issue is on appeal to the board of adjustment and given the record they are likely to invalidate the current pdr zoning throwing these critically important environmentally sensitive parcels into zoning limbo to avoid that chaotic result we implore you city council to start the process now of making it clear that the actual zoning what the actual zoning should be there's no downside to doing so as to the extent the developer has any legal vest legally vested rights those would already be grandfathered in regardless of any rezoning and if the board of adjustments finds he does not have vested rights then we need the actual correct zoning to be made clear as was intended back in 2012 thus we ask that you not allow this issue to linger any longer and instead to take action to protect black motto ridge and west point on the eno river park and the river with the correct zoning that has been intended for this land since the scrapping of eno drive years ago thank you very much for the opportunity to present this to you today thank you very much miss cheek uh we'll now move to uh christina benson christina benson will be speaking next miss benson you have three minutes and colleagues if i refer you if you've not read it but you probably have already through the staff memo that miss cheek referred to which is uh under her public comment miss miss benson welcome can you be heard i hope so can you hear me yes we're glad to have you and you have three minutes thank you and um this can count on my three minutes i just want to confirm that jessica cheffield of the eno river association is here to speak and whether she can speak in beaverly hudgeon slot on number 24 there was some confusion if then i'm going to give her my three minutes now it's it's fine miss well she can do that thank you wonderful thank you all of you i can't thank the council enough for being willing to lend us your ears and uh let us put this issue in front of you um we really especially appreciate um sarah young and her staff putting together that background memo for you guys um hopefully it helps uh make clear that there is a very interesting zoning issue on these particular parcels but as miss cheek just so eloquently explained um everyone has been on the same page since back at the time that um the entire community including council took wonderful leadership back in 29 to 2012 um city council was on board the planning director the planning staff and a huge swath of the community the eno river association all rose up together to acknowledge that this is incredibly special land that it is environmentally sensitive and critically important to the eno river and to the west point park and the development of the whole park system margaret niggard made this one of her big um issues and at that time it was very clear that everyone agreed because eno drive was being scrapped for environmental reasons that these parcels needed to be down zoned to um very low density to houses per acre and the council approved that for the comprehensive plan and again the only reason that was not crossed over into the zoning change was because there was an ongoing uh annexation of those parcels into the park that required a financial appraisal and they were concerned that changing the zoning would impact that appraisal unfortunately uh when the development did not occur and the annexation to this uh you know parks didn't occur their their ball was dropped and it was the loop was never closed and so we're asking i feel like this is kind of like penny wise the clown in the uh you know steven king movie about it that you know he goes dormant and then he comes back and rises again after we thought we he had been defeated and so uh we're asking you to close the loop finally and i just wanted to reiterate we're not asking council to get involved with or interfere with any aspect of the board of adjustment appeal rather we're saying that if that appeal goes the way everyone expects it to because the record shows there is no valid development plan here to support a pdr 6.2 then these parcels will be in complete limbo and without council acting to resolve that limbo and put on the record what is the appropriate zoning then uh it will put the these parcels at severe risk so we ask that you please while that appeal is on going back proactively to um take action to down zone these parcels and it will not affect the develop the current developers rights whatsoever for you to do so because he's grandfathered in on any rights that he might have thank you again for your time and um we appreciate you listening thank you miss benson uh we'll now hear from nancy cox um madam clerk can you make miss cox available to be heard hi i believe you can hear me yes hi miss cox hello i'll launch in so i have lived just north of the park now for four years and i'm very concerned about development in this area in general and especially as it relates to impacts on the enos capacity because i have seen firsthand the increased flooding and commensurate damage in fall 2018 infinity had to close for several weeks the three big rain events this year not hurricanes rain events have flooded infinity between vantage point in kenwood the culvert under infinity on this stretch is being eroded all this water flows to the eno i'm really worried about when the two properties the corner of roxboro and infinity and lotta and gas are eventually developed in terms of the impact on the eno and flooding i went to the park after one of these rain events where the flooding and obvious damage and it was really scary to think that the mill could have really been damaged each perspective development is like a puzzle piece which now includes the new northern high school right across from this proposed development but we have to treat the region in a comprehensive way that is a reason for a comprehensive review versus the administrative process there's plenty of evidence both past and current showing that government and other groups acknowledge the environmental importance of these parcels especially as it relates to water quality increased flooding and a course loss of flora and fauna so it only makes sense that there would be a comprehensive review in doing my research i was reminded of the active role mayor bell played in brokering a compromise on road construction projects that ended up protecting these parcels and given the strong public engagement then i just can't fathom pushing this forward without the public's full knowledge and opportunity to engage in the process especially because of the value this community places on the park and i urge council members to engage with the community most directly affected it appears that the council would be on solid footing based on past assessments of these parcels to move forward with the comprehensive review i understand that development in northern dorm is essential lack of the proposed you know drive worried folks back then that northern dorm would lag behind but i think we can all agree that there's a burst of business and home development that seems appropriate for this geographic region which we must acknowledge has to be managed carefully given it is home to three drinking water sources lake mickey the reservoir and falls lake falls lake is of course fed by the eno river and tributaries honestly i want these parcels to be preserved my hope is that we can work with the landowners and all bested groups to ideally make the land part of the park this development as proposed has an unacceptable density at the bare minimum this has to be reduced and so i hope that you'll take the matter under consideration not do the administrative review and definitely engage in a comprehensive review process thank you thank you miss cox it's always good to have former public officials in the room we're glad to have you and thank you for your school board service oh thank you all right uh miss uh sheffield uh madam clerk can you please make jessica sheffield available to be heard i'm here mr mayor can you hear me yes we can uh miss sheffield welcome you have three minutes i appreciate that i think everyone for working with me to get me on this schedule um so good afternoon mr mayor manager bonfield members of council and of course a special welcome to councilman freelon and now we know happy birthday wishes are due to councilman wreath again thank you for offering me the chance to speak today i just wanted to uh echo the community's concerns uh my name is jessica sheffield i'm the executive director at the eno river association here in durham you likely know of us uh since 1966 the eno river association has worked tirelessly to conserve the lands along and the water within the eno river and its many tributaries in durham we're one of your favorite squeaky wheel advocates speaking up for parkland and natural area protection water quality preservation and community planning that incorporates efficient and environmentally sound land use water use and transportation systems our goal has been and continues to be increasing public appreciation for the environment public awareness of environmental threats and to work hard to change outcomes that would otherwise threaten important natural areas in the eno watershed and that's why we're talking together today so we're working to protect the watershed now from one more such threatening project we need your help um we ring your bell when it's important and this is one of those times so the proposed development that you're hearing about is on a critical 50 acre parcel adjacent to west plan on the eno which i think we can agree is the gem of the durham city park system certainly the historic corridor is very important to us and so this development concerns us deeply you've heard of the black meadow ridge parcel time and time again the past conversations about the ill-fated eno drive project were anchored here and back in the early 2000s the entire durham community rallied they thwarted this development through north durham near the eno well the facts haven't changed in the years that have passed since then the durham community was right about such big development in that particular area and that argument still stands any construction on such a sensitive natural area must be small and it must be thoughtful a big and bright and busy development is just simply not the right fit for that location next to the park and next to the eno the current black meadow ridge development proposal a proposal which we surmise must only have been allowed to get this far because of a misreading of that former zoning record is entirely too dense a housing development for this steep site running downhill straight to the park to the river the negative impacts on this adjacent natural and human environment far outweigh the benefit of having a few more houses per acre to sell we need you now that again that's why we're here today speaking in this public comment section we need you to rectify that misinterpretation of the past zoning record we need you to please remember that the community is already successfully lobbied city leadership to protect these very same acres we need you to steward these lands going forward in a sustainable way we cannot simply forget and forego the work of our predecessors this area of durham was slated for protection and we need to uphold that decree thank you very much for your time thank you missha field and now we're here from vanessa thornburg uh madam clerk is vanessa thornburg present i don't i don't see miss thornburg i don't either unless that's the phone call number i don't know um i will allow that person to talk okay miss thornburg are you with us apparently not madam clerk thank you very much colleagues uh you have heard the speakers and you can of course uh read the staff response i'm i very much appreciate the speakers on this issue it has been festering for many years um it's gone through lots of different iterations as you know it's now you know there's a board of adjustment hearing uh and i know we will be hearing uh from staff about potential action that we can take and i want to thank this the the speakers today all right um councilmember reese mr mayor you said at the end you think we can count on staff to come back with uh with a proposed course of action is that something that you've heard or just something you're assuming right now that's my assumption um is it would you rather hear from staff that we'll be hearing some advice from them i see the city manager go ahead miss yeah i'd love to be able to ask a couple of questions of our planning staff about this if they're if they're around all right i think miss young is available i know she's written some communications i believe has been shared with council members but certainly uh could probably answer some questions for you today as well thank you miss young is here go ahead councilmember thank you mr mayor thanks for some manager um good afternoon miss young thank you for being with us uh really appreciated your um staff memo on this item today um and truly grateful that you took the time to work to put that together for a public comment matter um because i think this is you know during the covid times uh this is one of the one of the only ways that we that residents can get this kind of responsiveness from the government uh in this kind of public setting so i want to thank you for that and ask you specifically about um the last paragraph under request one and that is on page two of your memo council has the ability to initiate a zoning map change um what would the what would that process look like thank you for that question council member reese mayor members of council uh for the city to initiate a rezoning um i think all we would need is for you all to um make a motion i'll defer to the attorney's office is to the particular method um to do that um but once you all initiated that then staff would be obliged to process it just so i understand the situation and i think i've got it now i think i'll understand if the council say today or next week uh were to direct staff to initiate that zoning map change it almost certainly wouldn't come back before us before the board of adjustment issues it's ruling on the appeal is that correct probably not i will say that um without discussing the the case um we are working through whether or not um case can be heard in person um because it is a very contested case um and some parties involved have asked that it not be conducted virtually if that cannot be accommodated that case may be on hold until such a time as it can be heard in person so that's why it's actually difficult in all honesty for me to answer that question i know that that makes a lot of sense i appreciate you um explaining that that subtlety maybe a more fundamental question is um we heard a couple of the folks who spoke in the public comment period just now explain that if the appeal is successful then i think that means the prior the previous previous planning director's determination would be overturned is that right that is correct but i do want to clarify that um there was a statement made um that the zoning is then invalid and that is not true the zoning that pdr 6.2 is still in place what would be overturned is the former director's interpretation of what specific conditions were tied to that pdr um from his read of the of what he interpreted as a development plan and so um that was going to be my question is about the the zoning limbo i think was the was the phrase that i heard used by some of the residents um so it would go back to the it'd still be in the pdr designation but that but then we would have to the city would continue to have to try to find the actual development plan which my guess my my reading of the record is we've had a hard time doing that yeah typically what we do when we can't find a development plan which happens from time to time we have some really really old zonings um and our files don't necessarily go that far back for whatever reason so when that happens we search the record we listen to the the recordings from any meetings from the the council or the governing body we searched the minutes of the governing body that proved it to try and find what the governing body thought they were approving at the time and if so we usually place those conditions on the property if we can't find a development plan and then we default to whatever the base in the unified development ordinance stipulates for that zoning district so that is normally how we proceed when we cannot locate a development plan what would that look like in this situation to be honest with without um i can say that there are some things that were mentioned in the minutes particularly about a buffer that we would likely enforce however there are many other things that the minutes were silent on and so it would default to the for instance um the dimensional standards in the ordinance normally a pdr for instance would set setbacks um but in this case since there is no pdr plan to look at um we would default to the base in the ordinance and i can't recall it off the top of my head but um okay um i guess that's i think those are the questions i have for you miss young thank you for i know this goes back a ways appreciate the work that your staff has done to try to use various archaeological tactics to try to unearth what the the various intents were at this time um mr mayor um i'm not quite sure what to do about this but i think the residents and our staff make a pretty persuasive case that if we want to act we can without prejudice to the current property owners vested rights um and while i'm not sure that what will happen in the appeal is sustained can be characterized as zoning limbo um i do think that we have an opportunity to move forward promptly to try to prevent any misunderstanding about what the city thinks the proper designation for this property is uh and so um so anyway that's what i that's what i had to say about that mr mayor else remember i agree and uh i want to just uh suggest that uh we've got the the board of adjustment hearing ahead of us um and you've heard about this dilemma about the potential of the in-person or the non-in-person uh in how that is or is not going to happen um and you know with the situation with witnesses needing to be called and that kind of thing it's a it's a sticky wicked that i know that our staff is working hard to try to figure out in the meantime i think maybe it would be wise to uh ask miss young to let us know give us advice on how the council might proceed should the once the both both the the method and timing once the the board of adjustment has made its ruling and uh you could bring that back to us miss young what are your thoughts yeah we're having to follow back up after the hearing once we know what the outcome of the of the scheduling of the hearing is going to be and once the hearing is able to be held we can certainly return back to the council thank you very much sure mr mayors that good for you i'm i kind of want to hear from the mayor proton sorry today quick i don't feel entirely clear on what us rezoning this property does to the current petition um because it seemed like from our staff memo that even if we rezoned the property that the developers would be able to develop it with the proposal that they are giving us so i'm not clear what rezoning it does miss young i see the cavalry has arrived in the form of dono tool so would you like mr otul would you help us sure uh dono tool city attorney's office as sarah has said what is going to the board of adjustment is an appeal of the former planning director's interpretation that doesn't change the fact that there is a base zoning for this property and since there is a current site plan application there likely would be a strong argument that the developer would have or the property owner would have for vested rights under the current zoning and and we have received indication um that the property owner would likely make such an argument so thank you don't so does that mean that us rezoning it essentially does has no effect with respect to this property owner and this application and sarah maybe you can chime in um given that there is currently a site plan under consideration i would assume that if the appeal is lost the applicant could revise the existing site plan and it's it's still considered as as the same site plan is that correct yes the the site plan could be modified in process to comply with whatever determination we make as to what the base zoning requirements are without that former interpretation from the director got it so whether this development can move forward or not depends on the interpretation of of what the base zoning is and if it's not what the planning the the former planning director stated then what is it so the ordinance has standards for a pdr in general and typically when we can't find a development plan we default to the general standards so again without me having the record in front of me looking at the specific discussion from the council at the time that the pdr 6.2 was approved i i do know of some aspects like the buffer that was discussed that would be required um but generally it would default to the the base standards in the ordinance so i have not been able to do any due diligence in terms of comparing their current site plan to what how it might need to be amended to fit that type of a call so um that's about as much details i can offer right now that's great thank you thank you mr mayor thank you mayor pro tem council member riz no we have a lot of agenda to get to and i promise i'm done very soon um miss young do i interpret the conversation we've heard so far uh to correctly if i were to say that we could the city council could change the zoning all we want but that doesn't impact what this developer can do what this developer can do is impacted by the board of adjustments determination and then your office's determination if the if the previous decision is is is deemed to have not been correct then then your office's determination about what the minutes from that meeting indicate would be allowed that's what that's what could be built there that's correct as long as the applicant maintains a live pending site plan application they would be vested to that and could continue okay uh all right i think i don't have any more questions i have concerns but i think i guess mr mayor my my my perspective here is that if there were something useful for us to do i'd like to do it but today's conversation has left me um not particularly optimistic that there is something constructive that the council can do today but i hope that the folks who spoke today will continue to talk to us if they have other ideas i had the opportunity to spend some time talking to them via zoom last week and i know that they are eager inventive and have the time to put into it so i suspect we'll be hearing from them soon so i'll stop talking i thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember yeah i mean i think we don't know enough yet and um we'll hear more from uh these constituents and i already see some miss benzin has added something in the chat but i know that we'll hear from them but we'll also be hearing from our staff you heard that miss young is doing her due diligence and once the board of adjustments has taken its actions or if she believes prior to that i know that she'll be in touch with us about our options so thank you everybody mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um i just had one final comment which is that i feel like we often hear these sorts of arguments around density that the that the environmental impact of density in this particular area is such that the density shouldn't go here it should go elsewhere um and i'm very skeptical of those arguments generally because i i think people often believe the density shouldn't go here it shouldn't go elsewhere but i feel like in this particular case it's true that the density should go elsewhere i just wanted to make the point that um i i remain skeptical of that argument but in this case i think it's it's valid and that we should move forward thank you mayor pro tem and um we'll get some guidance from our staff all right um colleagues will now move to item nine the long time homeowner tax deferment program and this item i'm going to hold item two which i pulled until we do all the appointments at the end uh but item nine the long term homeowner tax deferment program was pulled by um council member freeman who i know is thank you i'm trying to be at the meeting while she's on route go ahead council member yeah i just wanted to make sure that we explain again how this will impact those those homeowners that were getting the south south side grant and the northeast district grant just so there was some clarity but like i was not going to be able to give um answers the folks who were asking me some questions but i was just hoping that staff could help me with that thank you council member um so this this program is the one that we agreed that we would join with the county for people at 30 percent of the am i or last under the county program would be county wide um the program to which you're referring um is a program which we have previously approved that the the program for uh was passed in our budget uh that the the the the long term low income homeowner program that we had uh for the city remains in effect for those neighborhoods that you mentioned mr mayor thank you yes i just would point out i don't know if anybody from community developments on but uh that program did have a um a pilot period i believe we're we extended the pilot period one year so we're in the i think the fourth year of the program the program and then we're going to report back to the council on the results for your evaluation and consideration of any further extension so i just want didn't want to leave the impression that it's forever in place thank you mr manager any more questions or comments council member freeman no that was all thank you thank you very much our next item is item 11 the contract to support the transit community engagement performance management with the texas a and m transportation institute and this would be pulled by council member reese thank you mr mayor appreciate you uh giving me a chance to talk about this um mr egan good afternoon long time no see um happy birthday thank you uh i sent you uh an email um that had two parts one was um from a local advocacy organization sort of at the bottom and then in between there was an an email from um i think one of our peritransit drivers i wonder if you could address the concerns raised in both parts of that about this item specifically around why um why the texas a name transportation institute um is an appropriate vendor for the service why the item please explain why the item didn't go through uh the process some other contracts go through with respect to the equity inclusion department um uh for for compliance with the various programs that they administer um and more broadly how this particular uh work product would advance the goals of equity and inclusion uh for the the folks who use our local transit system certainly uh good afternoon members of the council uh sean egan director of transportation or the city uh so i'll start with the uh recent transition in peritransit we transitioned for go Durham access to a new contractor um and at that time um the contractor uh initiated a process for uh background checks and screening for all of the employees and all the employees just like with employment at the city of Durham have to pass an employment screening process and two of the employees who went through that process did not successfully pass that process so they were not retained by the new vendor but all of the other employees were retained through that process so and then getting to the question of the texas transportation institutes particular expertise uh their tti has staff who have experience working in public transit agencies um and particularly on the performance management side working with transit specific data sets uh that are um very um complex and in order to do effective performance management we have to be able to gather data sets on automatic vehicle location automatic passenger counter fairbox data maintenance management system all of these different data types that live in silos right now and so what we're looking for was um experience pulling together all of these different information systems and being able to integrate them and provide timely high quality information to decision makers and then to the public as well and that skill set is not widely available typically there's understanding of transit operations and industry or there's an expertise in data integration but it's very rare to find the combination of the two and so with tti we found staff who have expertise in both the transit industry and operations as well as the the data integration and visualization aspects so if i may speak kind of more broadly to the the transit equity campaign concern i want to start by just applauding the transit equity campaigns focus on the needs of go Durham riders and we're excited to partner with the campaign in particular to ensure that the Durham county transit plan update prioritizes investments that will benefit communities of color and low wealth households with limited transportation options the campaign press release that came out last week reminded me of the budget presentation i made to this council in February when i shared some key demographic information about go Durham riders more than 80 percent of whom were people of color 75 percent of whom have household incomes less than $25,000 and more than two-thirds of whom live in zero car households in the final budget presentation to council in may i concluded with the recommendation that given the demographics of go Durham riders there's no better transportation investment to promote equity than improving go Durham services and infrastructure such as the 15 minute service frequency on the go Durham route five on the entire quarter that will go into effect next month the development of the Fayetteville and Holloway transit emphasis corridors access to transit plus speed and reliability and other initiatives we secured funding for to advance through the county transit plan my department has embraced the equitable community engagement blueprint and partnered with neighborhood improvement services to utilize community rude partners to ensure that transportation plans and projects benefit from the input of communities historically excluded from decision-making and i have also raised inconvenient questions about transit projects such as the commuter rail when they have not embraced robust and equitable community engagement so in the contract before you today the very first bullet in the scope under task one discusses rider demographic information and we will use this contract to emphasize to a broader audience the arguments made before this council that investments in go Durham service infrastructure provide an opportunity to intentionally direct resources to advance equity in our community thank you and please let me know if you have any additional questions thank you Sean first of all I just want to thank you for your response I have been struck since you joined the city and took leadership of the transportation department that you have been focused like a laser beam on serving the communities that rely most heavily on our go Durham bus service I agree with you that it's difficult for me to imagine a place to put public money that makes more of a difference in the lives of the our most vulnerable communities than in our system of public transportation it is a true lifeline we saw that during the COVID-19 pandemic especially in the early months when our ridership declined far less than almost any other peer system because our riders have come to depend on our service and you and your staff engaged in some herculean efforts to make sure that the system remained up and running and that that lifeline continued to be in effect so I just wanted to thank you for that and for your commitment especially as it relates to the to the Durham County Transit Plan you and I have been working for a while now together to try to make sure that our partners at the county understand clearly that this is should be the top priority for the Durham County Transit Plan if we're talking about Durham County Transit this is the system that delivers almost all of the transit that Durham County residents use and so there there will be plenty of money for other types of projects as you have said but we need to make sure that first and foremost that go Durham is well supported and I'm proud that the most recent budget of the city passed during a difficult time continue to make those investments can you talk a little bit about what the work product is from this contract because I'll be honest with you it's not 100 clear to me what that looks like I think maybe because there were two pieces described in the memo and I only heard you talk about one piece today that kind of data analysis data integration from the various data silos into this kind of performance management system I think is very kind of that that's a very high level technocratic type of work that I totally get but the strategic communications document is one that I think maybe raised some eyebrows for folks in the community that we were going to have a bunch of folks from Texas explain to the to the transportation department in Durham how best to argue in the community that our transit system is worth investing in and I think that's the piece that kind of turned my head a little bit and I wonder if you could talk about that son sure so what we're really looking for and that the communications piece is a small share of the overall contract value it's about 20% of the overall contract value so the bulk of the work is on the performance management piece but really what we're looking for technical assistance with is putting together a visually appealing document and set of documents that we can share through the public engagement process that but the content from those documents is really going to come from our community and so I've already had discussions with the transit equity campaign about some of the narratives some of the storytelling that they've done on their website and their outreach materials I think you'll see that same type of storytelling coming across and what we're looking for is some professional support to be able to pull those materials together and present both the data and the narratives the content in a high quality engaging way for our community but we're committed to working with key stakeholders in terms of the right making sure we have the right content to put into that format and the consultants will be helping us put together a really professional looking document that is appropriate for our audience and really helps us to tell that story in the most compelling way possible so who are the key stakeholders so I think our bus riders absolutely are key stakeholders so we're going to be talking about the types of input that we've gotten from bus riders the types of input we've gotten from the community through the engage Durham sessions what we've heard over and over again from the community is that there's that the bus stop facilities and access to transit is inadequate that they're looking for service that's more frequent and more reliable so those types of the feedback that we've gotten through the move Durham plan and other public involvement efforts that we've done as a department pulling that input that we've gotten through community engagement through the work we're done we've done with the community rooted partners pulling that together and making sure that we really tell a compelling story about how the how improvements to the go Durham system will really impact the lives of the people in our community Sean would it be possible to revise the scope of work exhibit a to include a specific description of who the key stakeholders are here specifically including go Durham riders especially those who live in communities of color and low wealth communities yeah we can do that great um oh one other thing um and this may be a question for a different staff person but in the staff memo this was a sentence that I that generated some concern amongst a couple of folks who reached out to us is that this it reads this intergovernmental contract was not reviewed by the equity inclusion department for compliance with the equal business opportunity program and small local business program ordinances are you in a position to talk about why that is is so because of intergovernment because of the structure of this is an intergovernmental agreement governments aren't eligible for UBE certification or small minority business certification processes those those are only available to private sector firms so that's why an intergovernmental agreement wouldn't include that but what I certainly can share is we've asked for the demographic information about TTI's employees and we can certainly submit that and make sure that that's part of the package so that you have that clear view and understanding of the diversity of the workforce just like we would with other contractors for the city on that would be that sorry that would be very very helpful I really appreciate your willingness to reach out to that and I assume we'll see that updated in the agenda as it goes forward that's correct right mr mayor I don't have any other questions Shawn thank you for this and for everything you're doing to help uh help our transit system be more robust thank you thank you very much councilmember Freelon thank you mayor um and uh yeah thank you for the presentation um I just wanted to build on some of the things councilmember Reese was talking about and forgive me if I'm absorbing a lot of information and was looking over this memo without context as I was just sworn in last Thursday but um with TTI uh you talk about their like efficient skill set and the information gathering that kind of transit industry and the number crunching that they did really well in my reading and in what I've inferred from some of the feedback from community is that the the lack of the diversity and inclusion lens were how broad a net did you cast to seek out TTI and to what extent did the not using that diversity lens potentially you know prevent you from seeking out or identifying um you know a variety of other folks especially local folks who might be able to do this kind of thing and and I want to just add an addendum about that from something councilmember Reese said you know we're looking at a a hundred thousand dollar contract is what it looks like or not to exceed a hundred thousand you said about 20% of that would be around like a visually appealing document and some storytelling and when I think about narrative storytelling I mean I know that just locally complex creative for example did some great storytelling around our uh anniversary and so uh I'm just thinking about it you know really how difficult would it be to find someone who could maybe just do that piece and I don't know if I'm reading this incorrectly but you know if you have a hundred thousand dollars and 20k could go to a local business who could just do the storytelling piece maybe while TTI does the number crunching piece I'm just kind of curious to hear more about uh how that money will be spent and to what extent uh the the lack of that equity lens could have prevented some of these dollars from from supporting local black owned businesses for example sure so um you know what the the primary skill set that we were looking for is as you mentioned the the technical expertise in the data integration I think what we wanted to also take advantage of that is that TTI has staff who have worked very successfully on public information and communications documents and we think that there's an important linkage between the performance information and having a clear understanding of performance information because that that tells us what we need to improve and so we wanted these to be these team members to be able to work together to advance that document I can tell you that in a lot of the other projects that were that I mentioned things like the transit emphasis corridors access to transit we are working with and we're hoping to bring forward a contract soon to work with small and women and minority owned businesses on those types of documents those are much larger efforts you know more than 10 times the size of this effort and so we have been working to identify those teams and those skill sets among the minority women owned businesses in our community for these much larger efforts but for this smaller effort we wanted to look to the that very technical focused skill we looked at some of the local universities like the NC State Institute for Transportation Research and Education they have not done this type of work on major data system integration for transit specifically we looked at North Carolina Central University their public administration program has a faculty member who has decades of experience in the transit industry Dr. Pierre Rousseau Dr. Rousseau is a city staff member and is already working on this project for us in his capacity as the city's transit administrator so we did look to some of the local and historically black colleges and universities for opportunities to do that but the the clearest technical expertise the combination of technical expertise that we could find was offered by TTI okay thank you yeah I guess um thank you for that response it's good to know that you you looked at central and NC status and local folks and I mean you know a diversity and equity lens doesn't mean you you always go with the you know black company you go with the one that is best for the job and I understand that I guess in my reading of the of the you know the language and some of the feedback uh I don't know I was kind of getting the impression that a wide net was was not cast or or perhaps channels that we would typically go through in a rigorous kind of standard of upholding our values around equity and inclusion was not adhered to in this particular case um but uh one thing I want to just uh kind of close with and then I'd love to hear from some other colleagues is just thinking creatively around the the narrative storytelling piece and I know you're saying that this is kind of a smaller thing and at 100,000 it can scale up to 10 times as much it would be great to put those dollars in some local businesses um I'm not sure if this I don't want to tell you how to do your job either but I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing that could be piece mail a la carte but you know when I think about you know the visual storytelling piece as I mentioned taking the data and putting it in a narrative context I'd be curious to know especially if there is something lacking in the diversity and inclusion area if we could talk to TTI about you know locally sourcing the public information and communications piece of this contract so that some of the excellent eminently qualified storytellers you know and I mean I mentioned complex creative but there are dozens here in the triangle that I think could really rock that uh public communications piece and visual storytelling and infographic piece with adequate data um though I'm not sure how you know how that would work and integrating with the systems that TTI offers or if they're saying this is a package deal you come for the data you stick around for the infographic like I don't know if that's how how it works but um you know I'm just thinking about I'm looking at the number and and the percentage you said and thinking about what $20,000 could mean to a complex creative and to our and to infusing those dollars back into our local community through a local and business it will be curious to hear from TTI if that's something they'd be willing to collaborate with us on as a part of this contract um that's just an idea it's not a mandate or anything but uh that's where where my wheels got turning creatively about especially considering some of the concerns folks are having about why didn't this go through our traditional process um you know in our in our rigorous upheld to our rigorous standard of what we want in terms of equity and diversity so those are my thoughts. Thank you. Go ahead Sean. I'll just respond that we have significant needs for community engagement and customer communications and marketing for our GoDerm services and we're in discussions with GoTriangle right now about how we can get additional support and add capacity to do that work so this task is a very short time limited effort but as we move into a broader approach to improving customer communications and marketing for GoDerm I think we will certainly look to tap into the small local women and minority owned businesses in the community and I'm happy to come back and provide more information on that as those discussions develop but I think for the for the TTI agreement um you're adding another subcontractor at this point in the process would be a very significant change to the contract and I think we would have to uh restart the process so I would recommend that we proceed with this contract and then look to our small and local business community for future communications and marketing needs that I know we will have for GoDerm. Can I just respond to that real quick um you know you mentioned restarting the process uh that's actually what a lot of folks are calling for is restarting the process and starting what as we restart making sure we apply that diversity and equity lens you know maybe throw this other idea in there to at least to see if they'd be open to it um so I mean I guess uh I don't have the same reaction to restarting the process as a potentially bad thing especially if we can restart it on a on a pathway that's more aligned with our values um but you know I also don't know what a delay could mean for you know for for what you're trying to accomplish I don't want I don't want to delay necessarily to negatively impact the riders that we just spoke about for example so um but I just want to be clear I've got you know half a dozen or so emails and public comments for folks that are asking for just that is for us to restart the process thank you council member Sean any further comments no that's all thank you Mr. Mayor and members of the council yeah I mean I think that you know clearly this is a this is a contract that has very important time time timing needs we are using this as the way to advocate for our bus riders and position our bus system as a as a competitor for the Durham county transit funds and that's all happening now on a pretty you know on a tight timeline but I really appreciate um council member the um what you've put forward and um you know we're making these enormous efforts around our comprehensive plan and our county transit plan which are which are being done hand in hand with community-rooted partners who the city is paying to you know local folks to be out in the community as part of this big transit planning effort so we're making a lot of efforts along those lines and Sean I want to thank you for being integral to that but I appreciate what council member Freeland's saying and we need to continue to keep that in mind and we need to keep continue to act on it um and take every opportunity that we can any further comments all right thank you so much everybody um and uh Sean you're you're gonna uh you have a you're a couple things that you're going to add to the package when we get it prior to Monday night that's right some additional language on the communities that were prioritizing and then the demographic information about DTI's uh workforce thanks all right we're now going to move on to our first um presentation which is the fourth quarter financial report and um I'm going to uh I believe that we will be hearing from are we hearing from Mr. Allure yes good to see you Mr. Allure hello good afternoon I just want to take a second to share my screen can everybody see here we are yes good afternoon John Allure assistant budget director and I'm here to present the fourth quarter financial report um just as a uh as a setup here uh when we last met we gave the third quarter financial report that was back in May and we were looking back at um the period between July 2019 and March 31st 2020 so a long time has passed and certainly now we're looking in the rear view mirror for the full 12 months uh June 30th and obviously uh this summer a lot has happened and I can certainly in addition although this information only takes us to June 30th 2020 but I can certainly as we go along since we have some more financial data give you some updates about where we are right now because I think we all agree that that is important so we'll begin uh with as we always do with the general fund um in your packet for this item just for the benefit everyone is a is the PowerPoint presentation and and a an agenda memo that mirrors the um PowerPoint presentation and then a series of financial schedules uh and and we've only done this twice now but something that is kind of new for for many of you is the last item in that financial package is the tax settlement and the county city county tax collector assessor is available should anybody else have anybody have questions I will handle the general fund portion as well as the enterprise portion when we get to the enterprise funds but certainly um representatives from those departments those funds are available should people have detailed questions that I can't answer so I'll begin with the summary results for everything um overall for the general fund the department expenditures projected to be under budget by five point one million dollars uh they were under budget all departments uh came in under uh at the year end um at or under budget uh there was a slight revenue deficit of approximately six hundred thousand dollars um and overall uh one way to frame uh looking at this of the fifteen point nine million dollars uh budgeted to come from fund balance we will only need ten point seven uh million of that leaving us a positive variance of approximately five million dollars and we will get into uh some more details about why that is in the coming slides so this this is just an overview of our revenues and as you can see um the exception of property tax and I think I think the story here with with not only the general fund but a lot of the funds is that property tax came in greater than we expected if you recall fy 19 was a reval year it's very difficult to predict exactly where in a reval year the revenues are going to come in but I would say overall we um we realize more uh revenues than than we expected this of course is looking uh one year over the prior year for all of our major revenues um but when you see some of the other revenues you see they're they're pretty much flat or um almost neck and neck with the prior year which is not really what we want to see we usually want to see uh growth in in revenue and a lot of that I think can be uh attributed to the current economic situation we're in one thing I'll mention for everybody as we go go forward for the general fund property tax and sales tax represents approximately 70% of all of our general fund revenue 50% for property tax approximately 20% for sales tax so we are very very uh reliant on the um general fund on those two revenue sources so getting right to sales tax which is um probably the the hardest one to to predict because there's so many variables involved the the q4 report actual that you'll look at showed 55 million dollars but of course that only reflected 10 collection month payments and that's because there's a lag in the collection of three months so building through this um we were only at 11 months of actual collections when we built the report having to project the final month the the 12th month and the projection we came up with was uh based on 11 months of actuals was 67.2 million dollars with the final payment coming in in september um and we were lucky uh that payment came in a day earlier it came in yesterday it usually comes in on on the 10th of every month it came in on the 9th and what we can now say that is not reflected in this this report is that we ended the year um compared to budget collecting 68.2 million dollars uh compared to a budget of 68.7 million dollars so just just uh less than 450 thousand dollars than we budgeted um far better than we expected uh but still um i would say that not um i would say that the strong collections in the first three quarters saved us and and and still with q4 we experienced uh losses there's a lot of thought around and discussion around the state as to why this this might be including um the fact that the stimulus money was uh was was received in uh april and may the fact that unemployment benefits got uh somewhat of a bump in the spring all of this is to say that uh what a lot of people are observing is that um spending habits didn't necessarily go down they they were just changed and focused in different areas so i would i would say with sales tax we're cautiously uh optimistic but again what we know right now is is only through the 12th month is only through june 30th and um there's a lot of speculation what the summer months will look like of course we won't start seeing that until october 10th uh but right now that's that's where we that's where we stand property tax so this is um a reflection of um the the yellow are the budgets um the green and the uh blue represents the actual um and kind of looking uh year over year or where things were of course we as i said with property tax this year um i think when we looked at the end of the third quarter we felt we might come in um about a half million dollars over um we came we realized approximately three million uh more than that and um which is surprising uh we weren't expecting that however when when we were um when we were looking at where we'd land at the end of the year in march obviously there were just a lot of unknowns not a bad thing by any means sales tax uh i won't say anything more here we've already we've already talked about that utility tax and here is as we go through these we begin to see um a drop in revenue uh certainly uh less revenue for utility franchise tax um and had been budgeted by about a million permits were up meaning building permits etc which again was somewhat surprising but if you if you look around the triangle and the communities you you just see that um that that type of growth has not slowed um since since we began this process began the pandemic process in in march occupancy tax um down i'll have more to say about this at the end about particularly where we're going with where we see we're going with occupancy tax because obviously not only does this affect uh the the general fund but um our performing art center is is a reliant on an appropriation uh from from occupancy tax but i just want to reserve that to the end uh power bill um was slightly up the graph is not really wholly representative up by by um about seventy seventy thousand dollars compared to budget it charges for services as as we expected as as you know as in the spring as we slow closed rec centers as we discontinued programs we expected to see a drop in in charges for services and we we certainly did by about three hundred to four hundred thousand dollars compared to budget and this is just an overview from our financial schedules of everything we just talked about where um where we were projecting and where we landed of course turning to uh expenditures and departments i would say that all again our our departments were amazing in in being fiscally responsible knowing uh knowing that the situation we were in in in march and making sure that they were proven in their spending in a lot of cases you might also argue that they didn't have the opportunity to spend and that's certainly why we ended up with um spending less than five million dollars across across our departments fund balance and so just to walk you through these the fund balance picture so we began fiscal year uh 20 with 49.8 million dollars minus the projected use of fund balance of 10.7 not the 17 or 18 we originally projected but what we're actually going to use plus any encumbrances that were released um at the end of the fiscal year leaving us at uh at the end of the fiscal year the June 30th of this year with 48 million uh dollars in fund balance i would remind you that in the current fiscal year we budgeted between eight and nine million dollars in fund balance to offset anticipated revenue shortfalls so that that would mean that that number comes down to about 3.9 million dollars where we anticipate to land um now in under current conditions by the spring of next year and that our our policy level yes excuse me you don't mean 3.9 million dollars do you mean 39 million dollars thank you uh mayor i appreciate that i mean 39 million dollars um and if you kind of want to see the the level of cushion the the current policy is 16.7 34 of course at your discretion uh you're fully able to go below that but differential between the 39 and 34 is about five million dollars the last thing i'll mention because it because this comes up quite a bit and it is um is on the next uh agenda cycle and it it may affect your um decision making with this that in in these fund balance projections the sale of 505 west chapel hill boulevard the old police headquarters is not factored into this so any proceeds from that sale would be in addition to this this is just another way of looking at the revenues and with that i'm going to move on to the enterprise funds beginning with the water and sewer fund um overall we saw an increase in revenues um and um underspending by by about four percent a reduction in um transfers to two other funds those are primarily transfers for capital which meant that overall there was a positive um variance in the water and sewer fund to the tune of about 6.8 million dollars transit operations uh yes operating revenues were down um operating expenses were slightly down um but overall the total revenues for the year exceeded total expenses by uh approximately 700 uh thousand dollars and and this was due to some uh strong non-operating revenues particularly some grant revenues that we uh we realized in the fund and this is just the financial schedule expressing this solid waste fund overall the fund will end the year with a surplus of 647 thousand dollars um operating revenues less than originally budgeted and there's the 647 some um obviously some uh some savings there and operating expenses um and in all their expenditures actually stormwater fund um the year end results of revenues were up by 105 percent expenditures were down 94.25 percent um compared to budget uh which saw an overall budget variance of 1.6 million dollars so again uh again um positive the parking fund is one we certainly want to monitor um operating revenues had a shortfall of 25 percent reductions and operating expenditures helped the parking fund but nevertheless they they looked at the end of the year at a deficit of 800 thousand dollars and obviously so that's going to hit whatever fund balance would be available in that fund and we certainly um the experts in in in parking and transportation are well aware of this and um are available to talk to you should you have questions about what their plan of action is going forward and then the debt service fund um a positive value variance of 1.9 million dollars again tied to property taxes they received more property taxes um than we anticipated to the tuna 1.4 million dollars i'll go back so the the one thing i wanted to there are schedules on this but there's not slides on this and i did want to briefly talk about the d-pack and the d-bap to the ballpark fund and say with the d-pack fund uh there was loss if you'll see in the schedule to operating revenues of about 600 thousand dollars uh savings uh in operating obviously for an overall deficit of 381 uh thousand dollars the the d-pack fund has a healthy fund balance that should help them uh with that but it gets to the the question of occupancy tax we just received them some numbers for uh july and august for occupancy tax where we're typically accustomed in the summer months of receiving approximately 300 000 dollars a month for occupancy tax we we're now seeing numbers of 70 to 80 thousand dollars so a significant drop there obviously the the discussions are are not done on on what happens with the d-pack fund as we continue to be under these conditions and i think what remains to be seen is um you know the how how we proceed um with with the Performing Arts Center as we go forward i know Mr. Johnson in community development who over overseas um the management of that will be coming with you to you with an annual report so i would expect to hear more on that a similar story with the ballpark fund of course we didn't have just as we didn't have theater and performances musical theater and and you know live performances we we did not have baseball um however overall we saw a 400 000 surplus um revenues were were fine and and operating savings were fine but that's because the effects of of those revenues will not be realized actually until this fiscal year so this fiscal year is the year where we really need to be concerned with the performance with the ballpark fund and again i i think i think there's going to be a whole lot of uh discussion as we continue to analyze this hopefully more information when we come to present to you the first quarter fiscal 21 financial report in in uh in november so with that that concludes the presentation and i'm happy to uh to entertain all questions john thank you so much um let me just start by saying that um and john maybe you want to go ahead and take your screen down you may need it again but um this is a superb report from a superbly managed city the fact that we have ended the year that we did in the way that we have financially just i think speaks volumes to the way we have managed the way you have managed you all have managed staff has managed our finances and the and also i think it speaks really well of our fund balance policies and all the things that have kept us safe this year when so many other localities around the country have not been so i want to start with that um i'm going to uh i see that mayor pro tem has a question in the chat about do we have slides on the ballpark of the dpec we don't but they are in the presentation i'm sorry in the exhibit um if you look in the exhibit um there are both ballpark and i'll try to shuffle through here but they're both ballpark fund and um the ballpark fund is about i don't know five or ten slides deep into the into the exhibit and the um the dpec fund is about three slides farther than that thank you yeah um which just couldn't find them in the presentation and the those slides are a little bit easier to parse yes they are i will go through the it looks like john is trying to pull them up now though oh great thanks john maybe john can magnify that i'm not sure it looks like maybe when you consider the two of them together it's kind of a wash maybe that is one way of looking at it yes i think that what i'm what i understood you to say though mr allure is that we in the coming year for both of those is where we're really likely to see the negative impacts i think so yes um i'm sorry go ahead mayor pro temp um to what extent is the city responsible for those negative impacts at the ballpark in the dpec i know we have very different agreements different management agreements with those two facilities and i don't feel i don't feel clear on like how worried i should be from from our perspective let me jump in real quick and then i don't know if david uh boyd is on the uh on as well david oh there is us him david can probably answer much more much more we've had extensive conversations with both the dpec operator and the the ballpark operator of course the the big factor is ultimately the duration of the downturn uh you know that that's a that's a bigger factor and and how quickly you know will there be a minor league baseball season next year for example we don't know but also the extent to when dpec will reopen both of the agreements are definitely structured to to give the city a lot of protection and we've taken some steps to to you know enhance that more david if you want to you know fill fill in the blanks of of where that is the the for example the the the one piece on the the dpec piece we have worked out an arrangement to actually in both cases worked out arrangements for any revenue shortfalls that would otherwise accrue to the city uh to to have opportunities for those to be repaid just over a longer period of time rather than just for this year but david you want to go ahead and comment about any detail yeah i think i'm david boyd finance director i think i'm on both funds john's correct that that next year is when we'll see the impacts revenue time because both of these agreements that we have have have both the bowls and the dpec operator making a payment to us this fiscal year's on our year's results so so next year is when we will feel the the revenue impacts um i would say that that there's much more on the backside than on the dpec side just based on the on the size of the of the funds we are in fact meeting with the bowls tomorrow to talk about the needs and the resources that we have um but the bowls are entirely responsible for all the operating the expenses and they just make a rent payment to us along with the percentage there to come so any of the operating expenses are entirely the responsibility of the bowls we pay for some debt service and the needs there similarly at the at the dpec the operator is responsible for for all the operating expenses and we make a share of the of the profits um so the expense side for operations is entirely on either the tenant in the bowls case or the operator in the dpec case um but i think we have a little concern about the long-term viability on on the dpec side and have more concerns on the part made of capital needs and once they're up and running again um readjust the long-term capital planning for for both facilities based on the resources thank you that's just mere pretend yeah and i know that we i mean we public health experts are still very unsure of you know the duration of the pandemic and especially the more severe outcomes i mean i can't imagine having any kind of significant mass gatherings next year at all given where we are now so um it's great that we're i i feel confident that you know we're we're gonna weather this with the long-term planning and you know strategic approach that we've had but definitely feel like we're in for a long haul in terms of how long the economic consequences are going to last we did have a briefing last week with the dpec for the end of year operations and they'll be coming forth i believe in october november like they typically do and certainly at that time hopefully they'll have more updated information as to what the future forecast of the restart might look like in the timing thank you madam mayor pro tem i'm going to call on council member freeman she's not uh she has um she and i have been talking in the chat so council member freeman um can you be heard i um i just wanted to echo your sentiments and acknowledge and i was completely holding my breath um and looking at these numbers and i felt some sense of calm acknowledging that we made it through this year and i want to thank staff for uh really cutting back i mean i think it was thought it was sewer and water it's almost a million dollars shave from from the budget there's there's a lot of operational adjustments that were made that i appreciate i just wanted to really come in staff on that and then just noting that i am i am concerned about our cast position and so i was hoping that there that we'll have future conversations around that but i just want to make sure you put a pinpoint in that thing thank you thank you council member other question i see council member middleton thank you so much uh mr. mayor and david and john good to see you both i want to echo uh the mayor's commendations uh to you and the staff for uh such a well-run city you know and we talked a little bit about dpac so if i can channel them is a little bit black and red are um um important colors and the conversations we're able to have as a city that's operating in the black is very different than the ones we would have as a in a red you know when we get to argue as a family about funding our values and what we should pay for that's a privileged conversation because we are in the black and we get to have those kind of debates some of those debates wouldn't even happen if we weren't in the black so i want to congratulate you and thank you for um doing such a great job i have a question about the flow the timetable of floating debt for the affordable housing a bond um bond issuance timeline and when we're actually floating debt what's the what's the landscape for that look uh look like in terms of when we'll actually start floating debt um so for what we've been working with community development uh and then we heard from from the housing authority this morning about the the timing of their um future spending and really wanting to make sure we line up um our borrowing with when we need cash and um also being mindful of the interest rate environment to make sure we don't miss an opportunity to take advantage of some some cheap debt but uh we right now don't expect to be issuing any debt in um i would say next 12 months i would say maybe late 2021 perhaps um to to do some borrowing um Reginald staff Reginald Johnson staff and i met a couple of weeks ago to talk about some additional cash flow analysis to see when uh if that will work um we can always you know uh float some costs with internal cash and then pay ourselves back with with money that we borrow in the future um so i would say right now a conservative timeline for actually borrowing money would be uh late calendar year 21 unless we see something that would lead us to believe that that interest rates are going to spike we want to take advantage of uh market conditions before then um but we'll know more i think Reginald i talked about um a a better picture of that um in later in october to to to see it some more of the their internal projections on well that that's helpful thank you and listen you guys are literally best in class when it comes to being gatekeepers and guardians of this type of stuff and watching what the market are doing i guess as if i do share with the city i'm i'm obviously concerned with what markets are looking like in this COVID environment and i know that we are already floating rfps for some of these projects and if we're going to have shovels in the ground on some of these projects before we've actually started floating dead obviously we want to we don't you know you can see where i'm going um and i don't know uh echoing what mayor pro tem says i don't know what the the prognosis is uh with this pandemic and what markets are going to be doing i just want to make sure that we're uh and you're the right folk to make sure we're in good position but that we're mindful and um just just dang vigilant as a city particularly since we're rfps are already out there on some of these projects um so that's it thank you mr mayor thanks guys thank you very much councilmember and of course you raise the important issue we'll be facing in the spring which is that the voters have uh voted to support us raising taxes for this we didn't do it this year when we were expecting to because we had the emergency and didn't want to raise taxes the COVID emergency but that's something we'll be facing um in the next budget season um so let's see and who else would like to be heard okay um i'll just add a couple of things um a question for you uh mr boyd since you're here um the the portfolio performance um i'm always interested in and the weighted the the the we're the weighted maturity of our of our investments where we're going much with much shorter duration and can you explain that to me i'm not sure i understand how that works and i think i asked this every year sure um so for the past several years um and more specifically in the past 12 months there hasn't long-term interest rates have been only slightly higher the short-term rates and for a certain portion of the year long-term interest rates were lower than short-term interest rates and so there was really no value in buying a long-term security if you were going to get equal to or less money than what you get on a short-term um because when the short-term stuff turns over you can then reassess what the market's doing and place it longer if longer rates have gone up if you tie your money up longer and then rates structures do change you your money's stuck out there and you gotta look forward to mature for you can you can move it to something that's got some higher yield so so shorter term rates came up um they've since gone back down and you can see you know our return has has gone down um but as i've said to many of before our our investment pool is very boring intentionally we are primarily focused on on safety um as our very first consideration of liquidity and then yield so unlike you know those out on wall street who are put yield first we're making sure we're protecting our investments first we don't actively trade the portfolio um and all of our investments are extremely safe with very very very little risk to principle but we also give up some some yield intentionally for that purpose thank you and thank you for that annual explanation i appreciate it one year i will remember and i won't ask it uh councilmember caviano yeah overall i will say that i breathe the sigh of relief i know that we're still waiting we for potential bad news but that we did end in a on a better ground than i was expecting um i do have a question about the water and sewer fund it looks like we ended higher than people were anticipating is there a way to move some of that surplus into the water relief fund i know that we will be reinstating water cutoff in september well this month and i've already been hearing a lot of concern out in the community about that john john if i could if i could say one thing about that um the revenue side of that i think we need to take with a little bit of a grain of salt so so we're showing a positive variance on the revenue side but we have not yet quite sorted through the um the how much of that revenue might not be collectible um so we record the revenue when we send the bills out and because we weren't taking um you know we weren't taking active collection measures and cutoffs you know we're assuming that that those bills we sent out are going to get paid and so now we're need to to look at to what extent we have some write-offs that we're not going to be able to collect so i will say just take that that revenue picture that looks really good right now with a little bit of a grain of salt because i think that number will when we when the dust settles on on the final audited results for the year that number is going to come down a bit as we make some allowances for uncollectible uh uncollectible bills um but but all of those those points are well you know we're going to have to figure out a way to deal with um and uh we already had some conversations with with um management about how to deal with that and what the position of the whole fund was like thank you i had a little bit of a hard time hearing at the end so i got the general gist of it um as you all learn more and i appreciate that um advice because that makes sense to me that we don't have a fully clear picture but i just want to say if there is a way to increase that fund because i know the need is going to be there as we learn more i just am advocating for that thank you i actually think that we have some restrictions on our ability to use those funds for water relief but i'm gonna defer to the administration i see the city manager or maybe mr allure would like to know that that's correct mr mayor um we we do have that on our radar and uh we actually looked at a different several different opportunities there one was the you know the cares money that we've just recently approved but that doesn't look like that was viable so uh in the back of my mind i think in the back of some of the finance folks minds potentially uh there there may be a need in the uh the covid relief fund for some other utility support but i think the city attorney has previously opined on several occasions that uh you can't use the utility fund money to provide funding for the uh you know um unpaid or or or or debt or different difficult collections within that fund that has to come from another source but we we definitely have that on our on our radar and i know staff is looking very closely at the timing of when to bring something forth okay thank you i appreciate that thank you council member colleagues other questions um i just you know i'll just highlight some of the things i liked i thought the capital improvement i mean this is our annual opportunity to look in detail at those capital improvement projects and to see that list was inspiring um i you know the the hoover road soccer complex creeps closer and closer to completion and uh i'm really excited about where that is um you know the fact that we've got 135 million dollars of water projects alone um just the park improvements the trail improvements the participatory budgeting projects that were all listed out in here and explained in such detail the technology improvements the sidewalks the bike lanes more money for public art than we've seen anytime that i've been on the counting ever uh the road paving the dirt road paving and i try to get to our last dirt roads um you know all these things are tremendous and the performance given the year uh is truly amazing and the way you all were able to ratchet back but at the same time ratchet some things up uh paying bonuses to our employees the our frontline employees during the covid period and then we see those kinds of things in the budget too so tremendous gratitude uh and oh you know whatever we win these wards every year for the best managed cities and there's a reason this is the you know this is where you see that rubber hit the road so congratulations and much gratitude tom to you uh to to wander to bertha to john to david all of you all who make this possible thank you thank you i do want to include my staff thank you and finance staff absolutely john thank you so much and thank you for being here today thank you and thank you david all right um we'll move to our next presentation which is the shot spotter presentation and who's starting this off with that i will run teach me i believe we hear from staff first i see the chief i'll pick it up it's okay hello everybody can you all see me we can we can chief oh okay there's so many pictures on the screen i was trying to make sure mine was up there okay thank you all um today we um have been asked to just give an overview of the shot spotter um technology and the opportunity that the police department and city has to potentially um pilot the um shot spotter technology and we'll begin with um ron teachman who is a consultant and representative of shot spotter and and we we've worked really hard to try to condense this presentation to give you as much information as possible so um ron are you ready i am chief thank you let me begin by uh saying that i thought when i created this presentation i'd have an ability to share a screen i do not so my thanks to miss diana schreiber at your city clerk why understand i'll be advancing the slides for me and with that i'll ask her to jump to slide four in presenter view uh present in the presentation just hit slideshow excellent thank you perfect so on behalf of all of us at shot spotter thank you very much for allowing us to join you today let me begin in my brief presentation i have 10 minutes i have a colleague with five i want to just tell you a story tonight in dorm it's very likely that while most of your residents are asleep they'll be gunfire and as derma's like most of the cities in the country it's very likely that no one will call 911 and since your officers don't know about the gunfire they can't respond unfortunately as that scenario plays itself out over and over again it leads to the normalization of gun violence the perpetrators feel emboldened to shoot guns increasing the likelihood of homicides and blood shootings while the rest of the community live in fear wondering why your officers are not there for them next please next slide please thank you they think your police know about the shooting they think your police know everything because they watch cop shows on tv and if they think the police know but the police don't show what might they think about the police department next please all this creates a vicious cycle next gun violence continues unabated your police agency is perceived as deliberately indifferent next next again there's an erosion of community trust next and your police officers are put at risk but it doesn't have to be like this next please what if there was a way to address your concerns about officer safety public perception community trust and violence reduction i know how this works i've been representing shot spotter for the past five years but before that i was twice a client i installed shot spotter in both cities where i served as a chief of police and we had success in those cities and they're both clients today i joined shot spotter five years ago to have conversations with folks like you to help bring our solution to cities like Durham hit twice next twice please thank you the fact is that over 80 of gunfire never gets reported to the police next here are some sample statistics on gunshots without 911 calls and even if someone does call their call is delayed and they usually cannot provide much information about the event which begs the question why don't law-abiding people call 911 when they hear gunfire or here are some reasons that we hear from the communities in cities will be deployed about why they don't call next they're not sure if the noise they heard is gunfire next they think someone else is going to call closer to the event with more information next they're afraid if they call the police the police come to their door and the shooter will see that and there'll be retaliation and next or they've simply given up on the police because the police have never come previously next slide so here's what happens when you do not have shots spotter at least 80 of the time when someone fires a gun you wouldn't know about it next an officer might drive by or worse stumble into the gunfire unprepared next if someone does call where would you send the officer next to the call is addressed potentially put in the officer in harm's way next critical time is lost processing the call through 911 and dispatch in the officer to the caller's address what we also know is even on the rare occasions that people do call the police they're calling from a considerable distance away on average of 780 feet or more next and since the caller's location is all the police have we send an officer to that address next as a result they fail to find eyewitnesses or other evidence or worse next they fail to find victims who are bleeding out and as a result of not being located quickly could die of their injuries next please lack of effective police response fuels negative perceptions diluting community collaboration and engagement next without comprehensive police response normalization leads to diminished quality of life such as kids not allowed to use playgrounds or leave their homes after school it also may lead young men to join gangs or groups for their own protection or that of their family next shot spotter gives an opportunity to drive different outcomes when shot spotter detects i'm sorry when someone fires a gun shot spotter detects it and even in the absence of 911 calls gives your officers within seconds the precise location where the shooting occurred so they can respond quickly and effectively next which shot spotter when someone fires a gun in the coverage area the officer would hear their sound next whether a desktop laptop phone or watch i'm sorry the audio didn't come through so here's an example of an alert as it be displayed on a police laptop in the squad car the shot spotter alert contains first you see a satellite view of the scene next the number of rounds fired in a 25 meter radius location next the nearest street address next the exact time of the shooting next if the if the incident involves a multiple shooter case next or high capacity weapon we would also tell you if there was a fully automatic involved then we give it a sequence of shots fired with an exact time stamp next and a breakdown of that sequence all that's available to the officer as it being dispatched next please so how does the system work next well shot spotter will come to Durham and we would build out a sensor array a dome of protection if you will with our acoustic sensors installed on rooftops or on utility poles next when a gun is fired the sound of a muzzle blast radiates outward next acoustic sensors are triggered by this impulsive event the sound is classified as a gunshot using artificial intelligence and triangulation determines a precise location next the data is relayed to the shot spotter incident review center we're trained acoustic technicians add their expertise to the machine classifier they listen to the audio recording of the event next examine the acoustic signature gunfire is unique and then next and they'll look at the sense of participation to see if it matches a gunfire event next in less than 60 seconds your officers will receive an alert with the tactical intelligence that they need for a safer response next all that information is simultaneously sent to your 911 emergency communication center next to the squad cars out in the field next to the officer's phones next and even to their smartwatches and we're compatible with both android and ios platforms next shots but will protect your personnel and enable them to better protect the public next here's an example of a shot spotter gunfire alert if the officer clicks on the blue arrow next they can hear the gunshots and i'm sorry we don't have audio hooked up so you can hear it then by clicking on the blue street view icon next they would get access to it would take them directly to google maps where they could pan on their with their finger on their phone or on their laptop and see the entire area they're being dispatched to for familiarization next shot spotter also helps the chief and her command staff to allocate resources effectively and efficiently without bias here's an example of a coverage area with gunfire activity over 24 hours next over three days next and over seven days you can clearly see next where to deploy the resources and be confident about the plan next shots but will direct your offices to the crime scene location in near real time multiplying the value of existing technologies and gun violence reduction strategies involves a stronger connection between your agency and the people of durham next which shot spotter when someone fires a gun your offices are directed to that location specifically gives them a chance to work the crime scene talk with witnesses and gather evidence next shots but it detects the precise time and location and can be integrated with video management systems to zoom in into the capture the shooting or see you add access to the crime scene or egress from the crime scene next please lastly but just as importantly shots but helps connect with the community which shots butter now when your residents look out their windows they'll see the police respond they'll see your officers making an arrest this is the essence of precision policing arresting the shooters removing that threat is from society without overpolicing the community next please and since so few individuals are responsible so much of your gun crime next removing those serial shooters has a significant impact next they'll see your officers attend to the gunshot victims offering lifesaving first aid and preparing those victims for immediate transport to the trauma center next next please they'll see your officers set up the crime scene and interview witnesses next see your officers collect forensic evidence to be submitted for analysis next and before your officers leave the crime scene we'll ask them to take one small but critical step ask them to go a couple of houses in every direction and knock on doors or ring doorbells next and when that community member who previously never saw a police response or infrequently saw one now would answer her door and the officer would do a welfare check and time doesn't allow me to do the full narration but we'll ask are you okay are your kids okay they need to talk to a police officer feel safe we hear because we care about you shots but it gives them the chance to connect with the community next please and i'll finish with this just hit next five times so how does gunshot detection lead to a reduction in gun violence more detection set up a chain reaction that leads to a more and faster responses leading to more evidence recovery and witness interviews which improves the investigative process leading to identifying and prosecuting shooters leading to crime gun reduction and deterrence resulting in a healthier Durham community next when you make shots part of part of your gun violence reduction efforts you empower your community policing strategy create a new normal and make a community safer and i thank you for your attention and with that i'll turn it over to my colleague wendy ethridge next slide please good morning i'm sorry afternoon i'm actually in colorado it's still morning here good morning thank you mr. mayor members of the council and chief davis i'm wendy ethridge i'm the director of analytics for shot spotter and i'm grateful to have this opportunity to introduce you to shot spotter connect which is an extension of our gunshot detection technology that focuses on crime deterrence patrol management and community engagement i know we have limited time together today but i'll quickly cover the solution due to those constraints i'm also going to ask mr. driver to help me skip through some slides so feel free to stop me at any point for additional details or discussion can you please go to slide 53 right there okay so why even consider a solution like connect if we have to describe connect in three short words next they would be detect protect and connect next please detect crime gaps of police services and risks of over policing to drive more effective precision policing deployments we do this by presenting ai generated crime path forecasts by beat and shift that use unique and transparent data sources that limit the potential for bias next connect protects your community by deploying the right resources to the right place at the right time driving crime deterrence and strengthening community trust connect protects your plan by using data to allocate your resources eliminating bias and mitigating the risks of over and under policing and connect protects your officers by alerting them of areas with elevated risk for violence allowing them to take extra precautions and remain safe utilizing connect to drive down crime in this manner means less stress and more time for positive community engagement next and finally we will help you connect your agency the critical insights for more effective precision policing while helping you to better connect your police services with the community that you serve next can we skip to 57 please thank you so here we have a quick view into the application unlike hotspot maps which traditionally focus on aggregated crime data we ingest multiple other covariate data sources like weather seasonality transportation and gathering points as well as other publicly available data sets and we then pair them with crime data to create sophisticated and precise risk forecasts utilizing data in this manner allows you to detect the gaps and reduce the potential for over policing in your service area driving more effective precision policing deployments connect places patrols in the forecast and risk areas at the right place and the right time helping you protect your community your plan and your personnel can you skip to 61 please uh next slide next some animation one more additionally connect serves as a mechanism to create new opportunities to engage with your community we recommend involving the community for their input in the tactics and the police department plans to use across the various crime types we offer a free citizens guide for connect that helps inform residents about what connect does and how it works so it's perceived as an equitable way to allocate patrol resources while engaging the community in preventing crime and we are currently partnering with nyus policing project to conduct an ethics and transparency audit of connect which is focused on eliminating bias can you skip to 64 please one more when officers and watch commanders log in to connect in preparation for their upcoming shift at their fingertips are data driven patrol plans designed to maximize crime deterrence these plans have been automatically generated by highly sophisticated algorithms that analyze real-time data sources anytime the officer spent in these directed patrol areas will be calculated and presented in the reporting module as well as any tactics applied and activities logged 67 please one more armed with that information your officers are going to be better equipped to provide quality services that are focused on crime prevention and positive community interaction during their shift and the decision makers will be presented with measurable outcomes they can confidently present in defense next connect is a game changer technology that will enable you to drive more effective use of your limited police resources drive and track positive community engagements and drive measurable crime deterrence outcomes resulting in safer communities better quality of life and stronger relationships between you and the community that you serve next in closing cat connect enables you to fully implement your crime prevention strategy next resulting in decreases in crime less demand on your resources and improved community perception it's a win-win situation for the police and the community next thank you so much for your time while we didn't have enough time to do a full presentation on the solution we certainly look forward to digging further into connect with Durham in the near future thank you very much miss ethridge and mr. teachman and you all didn't get to present all your slides but of course we have your slides and have been able to read them previously so thank you very much for going through that all right chief do you have any comments that you'd like to make at this time or you rather have council members ask questions at this point um i'd rather have the council members to take full advantage of um our shot spider representatives to answer any questions and i'll be glad to answer any that they have for me as well thank you chief thank you chief all right colleagues who would like to get us started anyone want to start us off uh council member middleton thank you mr. mayor uh chief teachman uh thank you so much for being with us miss ethridge thank you for being with us would you please just go over the specifics of the representation that was made uh to our city regarding a no-cost no obligation a trial period uh with your technology and with connect could you talk to us about that Wendy i'll let you go first uh and i'll answer on the flex side sure um so councilman thank you very much for your question uh what our company has decided to do to try to partner with Durham and bring our technology there is a free pilot of both applications so it's a gunshot detection technology and then paired that with our extension that is the risk forecasting patrol management and community engagement tool and for how long would the city be able to take advantage of that offer wrong please jump in yeah i believe it's a six-month pilot and our intention is to give the chief an opportunity that's from the time of go live so it's going to be a process of us installing the sensor array uh training with the department and from the time that she's ready to accept service we'll char that out for six months and we expect her agency will in your agency will give a vigorous review of the efficacy and determine if it's something you want to pursue going forward on a subscription basis okay and we have we don't have to use cameras do we no i showed that as a as a possibility of integration it's certainly not required our solutions stand alone and a very effective alone but it's a forced multiplier and both technology and i think soft strategies work well let me give an example i think you talked earlier if i heard correctly about violence interrupters in my previous job as chief i work with street outreach programs and i find the shot spotted data better informs their efforts because they know exactly what neighborhoods to concentrate their efforts in if they don't have the capacity to work citywide so it's a data-driven program but you need the data that shots but it could provide because 911 doesn't give you full information in fact it may give you insufficient and even misleading information because the caller is too far away from where the shots were fired mr mayor i do have additional comments but those are my questions i'll yield to any questions that my colleagues will have and i know they'll have rigorous proven questions so i'm very thankful let me first let me thank my colleagues for allowing and affording us this time for what i think is a state of emergency in our city for many in our community and that is that is the issue of gun violence and gun fire that i've been talking about for years i want to thank you mr mayor for giving a voice to it from your very powerful platform and thank my colleagues for allowing us to have this discussion and consider it fully so let's have at it so i'll yield for questions for my colleagues and then i'll have for the comments later thank you councilmember other questions at this time or comments other questions or comments for mr teachman or uh chief davis councilmember reist i think mr mayor appreciate that i want to thank the folks from shot spotter for coming to see us again chief davis appreciate you being here and having your perspective on this as well um can you help me understand the statistic that i think drives the business case for your product which is that 80% of all gunfire is not reported how does that where does that come from and um how can we how can we talk about that as a reality in Durham um without better analysis of what's actually happening in our community sure we understand that that data point and i'm sorry was i talking over the chief now you're good thank you chief so that data point is from our own analysis we've also been reviewed by outside academics a couple of academics one at the time from University of Virginia another one readers of Purdue University looked at oakland and dc for example and their study showed as i suggest that the public's calling in on gun violence was at about 15 16% and the demographics of the neighborhood didn't necessarily predict the lack of community engagement so we've looked across our client base 100 cities that we have and by the way we welcome you to look at our website shot spotter.com forward slash cities we proudly present all of our cities for your review not just a few hand picked but we welcome you to call any of them other council members in those cities and say what have you seen with the effect of shot spotter but to your question about the percentages this is what the analysis shows 911 calls from the community versus shot spotter alerts and how do they match up and the average is under 20 a 30 second anecdote if i may when i came to south in indiana my more recent job as chief and presented the prospect of shot spotter to the command staff they frankly didn't see the need they thought they were getting 90 95 community engagement as the gun violence but we installed shot spotter and a couple of months later we did an analysis and i was getting 11 911 notification which as a chief of police i'm 89 in the blind of what's going on in the city i can't possibly uh work with a problem if i don't have a full analysis and so that's why we made that that comment about the 80 20 furthermore we're now in the process with several clients doing a deeper dive and saying not just the calls coming in generally but what is the timeliness and the accuracy and our clients have suggested that we look at three minutes and 300 feet or a football field away how accurate is 911 and we're finding that when we get to the three minute 300 foot rule we're about three to five percent calls from the community those calls are usually 10 to 15 minutes they can be up to a quarter mile or more away depending on acoustic and atmospheric conditions and you're wasting a lot of police resources going to the caller's house if you do get a call and then the officer would ask did you see anything that came as the neighborhood people say they saw nothing the police got frustrated because they're in the wrong neighborhood and last comment is as i'm sure the chief is as witnessed you get called to a trauma center on a privately transported gunshot wound victim and you debrief that victim about what occurred and they misplace you to a different neighborhood and tell you a story that may not be true about their injury and you waste a lot of police resources there so the efficiency of knowing exactly where it occurred with or without camera integration talking to the neighbors directly getting to those victims being on site for physical evidence makes a world of difference and i hope i answer your question council person reese um when you say that that figure is based on your analysis you mean your analysis of other places in america not durham is that right that's correct we don't have a we don't have shot spot in durham yet to do that analysis what i hope to accomplish we hope to accomplish in that six month pilot is give the chief the opportunity to say is shot spotter of value are we getting notifications versus what 911 is giving us that shot spotter is more timely more accurate and more comprehensive that 911 is not giving us the information we need along um i noticed that in one of the later slides um you talked about the fact that the shot spotter system would reduce the need for police resources is that right it may redirect them and they can be properly applied when i say reduce uh you're not what you know as i said you're not spending a lot of time going to the wrong neighborhood you're putting your resources where they should be allocated correctly and gives the chief a better data position to allocate with a full understanding where the gun violence is occurring right now if she has his 911 and i would submit respectfully that is not informing her effectively but if your data is even close to correct that um 80 percent of gunfire is going unreported uh won't that require a significant increase in police staffing and resources to respond to all those calls no she can i believe the chief can do that with the resources she currently has in for the patrol division this is a patrol uh focused detective see the value and the solvability that comes from it but patrol be a primary responder and we're not talking the entire city we're talking the coverage area uh a small footprint compared to the entire city but where the gun violence would be primarily located so those offices on those beats with some degree of heightened activity but we usually see a suppression in gun violence activity after a pilot period or during the pilot period because now the shooters understand they're going to be seen a squad car whenever they shoot their gun and that's the goal the goal is suppression uh and intervention when necessary but when the community sees the engagement with the police and the where it gets out we predict you'll see less gunfire endure and that's the goal and we can do that i hope with less incarceration i'm going to take a break for a minute mr mayor um and let some of the folks get in okay thank you other questions colleagues or mr teachman or for the chief at this point okay i'll ask a couple mr teachman just to follow up on what council member reese was asking if they're i'm not following you in terms of the the uh the response to calls if there are four times as many shots that are identified but come to the system are you saying that this is not requiring more police to respond to them well mathematically you you'd see more calls for service uh but it will allow the chief to allocate the resources in the area where they're most needed so i'm not suggesting we need to expand the police force i think the chief can be very uh selective about how she allocates them and show how the data to drive those decisions do you have some sense that that's not happening now well i'm sure she's doing the best allocation she has with the data she has available but our experience across our client base is that chiefs now with shot spotter see they have a much better picture of what's really happening and if i could add to that um you know based on our deployment right now um our deployment it um really depends on the calls for service that we currently get as it relates to aggravated assaults robberies and you know just um a full gamut of various types of crimes that are committed with guns however there is we know that there are incidents that occur that we don't get calls about because the call doesn't come until the person is at duke or um a neighbor or somebody else is calling about a person who's injured so um and we don't get the call about the shots that were actually fired when it occurs so um our deployment has not been based on you know that information you know after the fact it's really based on the calls for service that our officers respond to like aggravated assaults to robberies and homicides and so forth and they typically um are in certain you know geographical areas but you know in the last several months we even though we've seen um uh an increase of shots fired they've been sort of all over the place but we believe that some of the individuals that are committing and repeat repeatedly commit some of these offenses are sort of um you know attached to certain geographical areas that um are associated with you know some of some of our gangs and i'm just going to be quite honest with some of the gangs where individuals that are involved in that activity um confess that they are part of this particular gang or this particular group uh of in the city i think the additional data that that we would get from shot spotter would help us to be more proactive and what i would have hoped would be a deterrent to individuals wanting to um fire weapons or be involved in that type of criminal activity because they know there's more of a rapid response or that somebody is going to respond to to to that type of call and it's not always that a resident picks up the telephone some of our residents have gotten used to hearing gunfire and they don't call it all thank you chief mr. mayor if i might calzmer freeman i appreciate the clarity i just wanted to touch on the point that the chief made around callers who don't call it i don't call anymore and i was interested in the shot spotters ability to decide between firecrackers versus gunshots and i'm not sure you talked about that at all but if you could explain a little more around that uh capability and how that operates that would be helpful sure can you understand that mr. tageman yes i heard it thank you uh i'll be brief in my remarks so we've been doing this for 24 years we've listened to millions and millions of bangs and booms uh last year alone hearing a lot of noises across 100 cities we qualified that is we determine those noises were gunfire and not something else but 141 000 alerts and we did that with a 97 accuracy rate a false positive rate of 0.5 percent and we published those alerts on average in just 34 seconds we guarantee to the chief we'll get it in 60 seconds from trigger pull to notification but our average is 34 so how do we do that a number of ways and i went through it quickly but first of all when we put up a sensor array it's it's really mathematics the gunshot takes time to reach the various sensors that time differential we can mathematically determine because we know we put the sensors on rooftops utility poles we know where they're located we have those gps coordinates and as each of those sensors announces that it heard a noise the computer then calculates this is where the person's standing that's location side as far as determining it from fireworks the human ear can with skilled acoustic technicians you can actually hear the difference as a on the back end of fireworks the computer can analyze it and the acoustic signature is unique to fireworks versus gunfire and probably most telling among the several steps is that when you shoot a gun that energy is directional when you set up a firework it's omnidirectional so the sensors participate in a more directional or linear fashion when it determines gunfire and those are just some of the tests but again it's two factors there's a machine classifier that reviews the event suggests gunfire and then a human because we want to be accurate then listens to the event reviews the event looks at all those variables and then pushes a button to send the information to the Durham police department did i answer your question yep thank you thank you any more uh council member Freelon so uh you're saying that uh between the you know the shape of the waveform and the redundant you know human screening that an a 97 percent level of accuracy has been achieved how do you determine like you know if you yeah how would how do you determine i'm just curious how you determine that so let's say yeah is it shell casings like what's the evidence that helps you confirm that so the number of levels of ground truth it's victim testimony it's witness testimony it's the ground truth it's uh uh the spent shell casings of physical evidence all that establishes that what we dispatched them to was accurate but we also consider are we missing anything not just misclassifying what's fireworks and gunfire but do we miss anything did an event occur where the police chief says hey there was a shooting here someone was shot or there was property damage you didn't notify us we're not perfect sometimes we miss things sometimes the energy of the gun doesn't reach the sensors we need three sensors on a multiple gunshot case for in a single gunshot case and if the energy is such that it's suppressed like shooting into a vehicle or point blank we meant we missed missed those so our contractual guarantee is 90 percent of external and suppressed gunfire of a 25 caliber within a 25 meter radius and the speed is that we're going to get it up to the police in 60 seconds okay um i i have another question um so uh we've been getting some emails from some citizens who are concerned about this and they reference uh well a couple things one that the the kind of free trial has hidden costs to the city uh and also something that i've seen come up several times is uh is charlotte as uh you know a sister close by north carolina city of ours that that tried this and found that it it didn't have a substantial impact um on the crime rate there um were you involved at all with with uh implementing the trial period in charlotte and could you speak to from your perspective why uh the police department there didn't decide to continue with the shock spotter well let me say this and i hope my bosses don't spank me because no we're a we're a public health company and i i can't speak much on speculation but i can tell you that my travel arrangements that'll be in charlotte on the 22nd of this month that we are in communication with the current chief and i'm not disparaging the previous one but what i know and i was actually still a chief when charlotte deployed years ago but what i know about that situation quite frankly and objectively was that implementation was tied to the democratic national convention okay it may not have been deployed where it was most effective to resolve the gun crime in that city but it was meant to uh it was part of the coordinated effort to make for a safe area where the convention was being held secondly i think shots but it takes some ownership we didn't onboard that client effectively we've learned and i've been a shots for a client back in 2010 i can tell you how much they've evolved in 10 years about properly onboarding what i mean by that is unlike with any technology you need to teach it you need to make sure everybody understands how to use it that's why i frankly have apple products because i have an apple store i can go to and they can train me on the utility i get more value out of the devices because i have that level of training we're committed to onboarding during police department properly as we will do if we get back into charlotte training the officers from patrolmen up through chief with different modules for different assignments training the dispatches and call takers and even training the prosecuting attorneys both local and us attorneys on how our solution works and we provide expert testimony down road if that's needed in court we didn't have those facilities when we deployed in charlotte years ago we've learned to improve our service did i answer your question yet yeah thank you councilmember caballero yeah what's the cost for the subscription after the six month period so it'll be seventy thousand dollars per square mile per year and the overall cost would obviously depend on the size of the footprint whether the chief shrinks it or expands it depending on how we view the success of the pilot and i'll let the chief comment further on any future plans right now our um we we spoke extensively about what that geographical area would be we had some options to cover two areas um two separate areas where we we see the most gunfire but what we elected to do and shot spotter work with us was to come up with a geofenced area that caught you know um the gunfire in that one south part south side of the sea and then a portion of the east side of derm as well so it's um a combination of our district four and our district one communities that's what we see most of our gunfire chief what what what would be the the cost then per square mile after that if it's seventy thousand so what's the total or have you all run those numbers yet actually we haven't done an analysis of expanding um that that fence stand area as of yet i don't know that the city will see um such an uptick around the city that that we would move or expand or even enlarge that area some of our communities that have repeatedly been you know um communities that experience the most gunfire are the ones that we are most concerned about and i will also add that um you know the uptick in the increase in gunfire just this year since the pandemic has been you know a major concern and that that gunfire is still in those same areas mr manager uh thank you mr mayor i just was going to add i i've not talked to chief uh teachman but uh and the previously as we've talked to phil daly with this company i thought the uh information we received was there was a three square mile minimum for the uh deployment i don't know if that's still the case or or what the experience is but i believe in an earlier presentation that was represented as the the minimum deployment for uh for effectiveness so i don't know if anybody could speak to that i think i think that's correct and that's what what um i requested tom um and they work with me in order to ensure that that that three square mile area was absolutely the area that we were mostly concerned about is there a minimum is there a minimum uh area uh square foot or a square mile area chief teachman yeah we're in cities of Durham size we still hold to a three square mile minimum thank you and and also uh with that it's contiguous uh which is what she was alluding to is we look at the map a heat map of most amount of the gun violence and try to bring all that in our costs of base upon redundancy of the sensors and that's why we try to establish uh contiguous footprints thank you uh so council member of the race chief have you taken a look at what the what the cost to the to the department will be if we went ahead and started this six month trial like what what are the additional add-on costs that the city will have to bear in order to implement this free trial yes so as you know we submitted a you know a proposal a couple of years ago about shot spotter and we had done some work ahead of time then and that proposal was really based on adding permanent positions so that we could ensure that we had you know the correct response you know to um the shot spotter technology anytime there was gunfire that we had dedicated individuals will actually go out because that's the effectiveness of the of the um technology that you respond get the evidence correlate the evidence and so on so um as it relates to the cost for the pilot because we haven't added any additional personnel to our staff what we plan to do is utilize some of the reallocation that we've done internally anyway with our staff as it relates to the details that officers are working right now responding to the increase of gunfire that exists now so uh what what what we what we have in play now is investigators who typically work um you know various investigative units they are dedicating a week of patrol time so that we can have more officers working and patrolling in these areas where we've seen an uptick of crime so we have basically just done some reallocating of staff internally and that's where we plan to pull the resources that we need have other individuals that are sworn employees in the department to actually work in that capacity outside of their normal work to dedicate time in order to help suppress some of the gunfire that we see which we're doing right now and um we plan to keep this detail going you know until we see and we've seen a little bit of of a reduction in gunfire but this is the mode of operation that we have to be in right now until we until we see you know less gunfire so if this program is rolled out that's how we will end up staffing it through other individuals in the department to actually supplement not just calls for service but to supplement responding to various gunfire calls or aggravated assaults anything dealing with a gun i hope that i hope that answered your question it did so there's no there's no additional equipment cost to the city or anything like that with this system it won't be an additional equipment cost we will continue to utilize our supplemental which is outside of our normal staffing which is supplemental is you know a overtime cost but that's how we're operating right now in order to make sure that we are meeting our staffing levels i guess if i'm having a kind of a fundamental difficulty understanding how this isn't gonna dramatically increase response times in other parts of the city can you help me understand like walk me through why that's not going to happen so we've decided that in order for this to work that officers that are responding to calls for service just regular calls for services to our community we will continue to have those officers respond to service so it doesn't interfere with regular you know residents needs the the shot spotter detail or or operation will be part of the detail that i'm talking about that's above our regular staffing which we have working right now we have a detail that's working right now where we have investigators who are working not to respond to calls for service but to specifically deal with you know gun calls and various types of aggravated assaults anything dealing with violent crime so um we don't uh we are not going to interrupt what our normal staffing levels are that's that's one thing that we continuously try to do is make sure that our staffing levels are at that 75 percent whether we have to staff it with supplemental or or you know have our regular staff at work does that help a little bit i'm not saying it's not going to cost us in the overtime because it's costing us an overtime now it's just that we're going to redirect those officers that are working those violent crimes to respond to shot spotter as a priority because we really want to see whether or not this technology is going to help us as it relates to our visibility in the right place at the right time our community engagement with individuals who are experiencing gunfire on a regular basis without anybody showing up and um and yes it took some internal discussions of how we could make it work without getting you know um those additional permanent positions for six months what so what are those officers doing right now that that are going to be shifted over to responding to shot spotter calls they're responding to violent crime so there there'll be a sort of a mix they're already responding to shots fired they're already responding to you know um aggravated assaults robberies but this is just so that and it sort of makes sense for us to use those folks because those are the individuals that are are um investigating the more serious crimes anyway this gives them additional evidence that might be associated with the individual who was uh participating in a robbery or some kind of aggravated assault so that we can collect the evidence at at at one crime scene and correlate it with evidence at another crime scene evidence that we would not have had if it weren't for maybe a shot spotter alert okay thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember any other questions or comments uh sorry did you call on me council i'm free line okay thank you mr mayor um so i just wanted to circle back uh uh to the money um so it's 70 000 per month was that what you said per square mile per month so it'd be a minimum of 210 uh yeah math per year per year per year per year per year wasn't my strong city the council president if if i was put in math maybe in the finance department that's why you're in law enforcement right okay okay got it so 200 a minimum of 210 000 per year okay that's going to be transparent uh there'd be an additional cost for the connect program that my colleague wendy was talking about and the last thing that would be on the lr cart if you will and it's free during the pilot is an api that is allowing the chief to integrate shot spotter alerts with the cad and rms system in-house with perhaps a city-owned video management system to pan tilt zoom those cameras and so forth um if there's a future for UAVs or drones that's something else you can consider but because we'll produce a latin long uh we can integrate through the api with any of those other technologies thank you that's 9500 a year for three licenses any further questions or comments any further questions or comments council member carbillero and then council member milton so post six-month pilot um we'll try to enter on the costs uh i was being turned i have a lot of reservations especially right now i appreciate the six-month pilot potential but um we're not in a great while we just heard we're in a better financial situation than maybe we thought we're still not in in any way out of the woods um so just trying to think through so the minute it's the two hundred and ten thousand dollars a year plus the whatever you said for the extension program plus eventually there would be a need for increased officers because you're relying on a staffing model now that you had implemented but that isn't sustainable in the long term yeah yes what is the time what is the timeline to do that analysis i'm assuming that would at least get done some what some at some point during the six-month pilot so that you had a plan post and and just wondering what what you're thinking chief around that so that six-month period we would absolutely conduct an analysis because we want to know whether or not this is a good fit for Durham and whether or not the technology has improved um as it relates to the numbers of calls that we have to respond to in various communities and i have no doubt in my mind that the data is going to be able to show us either or and but if this becomes a permanent program of course at that time we would be talking about how do you sustain a program that would require an additional one officer per squad which is like four officers and we talked about that before but of course that would be down the road if that were to happen because we wouldn't be able to sustain um this program just you know working our officers over time you know we i mean for six months we can do right now we're we're working officers over time to help suppress some of the gun violence and be in places they that they need to be and respond quickly to gun violence but uh we wouldn't be able to sustain a program like this permanently for for uh more than a six-month period thank you i appreciate that all right councilor middleton thank you mr. mayor thank you colleague so much for for your questions and for allowing this conversation to go forward um so colleagues i speak not just as a member of this body but again as one of your constituents uh to you my elected leaders of the city um when and for those that are watching this broadcast who may not be kind of policy wonks or public officials when you hear us talking about the possibility of needing to hire more people or more officers or what's it going to cost to implement this in terms of response what we're really saying is we know there's a problem when we talk like that it means that we expect that what we suspect is actually real and that is that we have a gunfire problem in this city that uh a lot of folk have just resigned themselves not to do anything about now if that's not true if the 80 percent is incorrect then we'll find that out then we won't have to hire more people because it's just a fantasy it's just you know we were wrong but if we're right then we now have the moral obligation if we know that we might have to get more people to respond to this problem that means we know the problem is real and we we don't have the the the luxury to pretend anymore stick our head in the sand like an ostrich when we know folk are out there suffering it's kind of like well if we don't document the problem we don't have to respond to it but we know the problem is real and what does it say about us as a city if we know that there are fellow residents and citizens living in a condition where they have resigned themselves that this is just what life is like in modulate and not doing anything about it so the blinders are off so for those watching let it be known that we know that what you say about what those the black mothers i talk to every week uh and the young children who come to my church every week and say past i heard gunfire last night they'd be shooting like that uh all the time tonight when the sun goes down folk will hear gunfire in Durham i grew up in a neighborhood like that i grew up in the crack capital of america and i'd hear uzi's going off in the park when i went to sleep and we didn't call the police because that's just what it was and i remember one of the most searing memories i had going to ps 58 uh going through coffee park uh one morning in red hook uh was seeing you could see the blood through the sheet of a body of somebody who bled out now i heard gunfire the night before was it the shot that killed this person i don't know but a person bled out because somebody actually did get shot but because we live in the neighborhood where that happens all the time we just stopped calling the police um it's interesting when when i first asked us years ago to consider this it wasn't even about violent crime it was a quality of life issue i never causally i never suggested that this would causally be linked to uh uh uh reductions in crime or that there's a causal link between a particular person getting shot and shot spotter i was just trying to to express that folk had kids that had ptsd who hadn't been to iraq or afghanistan they just went home after school and they were being trained to jump off of bikes being trained to these are children being trained to jump into bathtubs when you hear a loud pop uh like they were soldiers so the issue for me was a quality of life issue about what our children were dealing with night after night that that many of us participating in this conversation we don't live in those kind of neighborhoods um so the the phenomena is real uh it's been real uh and it will be real tonight when the sun goes down when we log off of the zoom call and go home um so i want to i want to submit um uh to my colleagues i think this is the question that i think uh one of the questions that needs to guide our deliberations and what we decide to do and here's the first question how is knowing precisely where gunfire is coming from in our streets a threat to our democracy why is it a bad idea to be able to pinpoint where the least private act i can think of there's nothing private about discharging a firearm in our public streets this isn't a privacy matter why is knowing where that happens a bad idea and how does that make us less safe or less able to secure and defend our values by knowing that um i've read and i want to thank those that have sent emails to uh inboxes and to allies and friends the activist community some who have pressed me rather directly about my record and about why i've called for this and and and you know why you know some other things haven't been called for so i want to be very clear uh to those that have sent email i hear you and one of the issues that have been has been raised is this extension of government surveillance and um you know i started thinking about that and i realized that as of today i'm the government we're the government um it it's up to us that are in office to make sure that these things aren't abused i know we're the government because the government argument did not work to exempt us from our responsibility when it came to mcdougal terrace um when when nobody was having it hearing the explanation that this was a federal government issue this is about federal money folks said no you guys are the government uh you're who we elected locally fixed the problem so we didn't get to kind of create this straw boogie government entity this kind of amorphous kind of no we're the government um we didn't get to put it on the federal government from mcdougal terrace we didn't get to put it on the federal government when when we said our police and the sheriff wouldn't cooperate with ICE detainers you know we didn't get to say oh it's the government uh our people said no our police aren't going to cooperate and rightly so so in this issue as it is with with ICE detainers and mcdougal terrace um the government is us they elected us and if we can't do the work to make sure that this system is not uh uh um abused that's that's what we're here for and not just the system anything the guns that we put on our police officer's sides the cars that they drive of the data that we collect from people when they pay their water bill or use parking meters all of that stuff the people depend upon us to make sure because we're the government isn't abused many of us when we left our houses this morning if if we left our house turned on a monitoring system some of us have cameras in our houses some of us when we go to sleep at night have other eyes watching us so if a fire happens it's going to wake us up uh they monitor our homes and we depend upon those companies that we've contracted with to do the work to make sure some pervert isn't watching us while we're sleeping or listening to our conversations in our house but we still use those services to safeguard our homes and our families and our possessions um confident that those companies that we pay will do the work well we're the people who the the taxpayers expect to do the work to make sure that we can safeguard our communities and protect against abuses i think it's it's incumbent upon us to do both of them um and and and and listen we we're the government so so government surveillance if it's if surveillance is going on it's us doing it do we trust ourselves uh to firewall and to protect the privacy of our people colleagues and friends this is this is i believe um well let me just be be be clear i don't know what's going to happen with this experiment but you don't either because we don't have any and i i want to allude to councillor reese we don't have any Durham specific data because there is no data without an experiment and that's the point of experiments to get the data and as as as vociferously as i have called for this experiment for this city for our children i will i give you my word i will be the first one to call for taking it down and scrapping it let's try something else if it doesn't work if it doesn't uh yield positive results and if we see any type of abuse count me to be one of the first ones there to call it out because that's what we're supposed to do as a government but that carries for anything we do as a government not just shots or anything we see being abused we should speak up on so i i i you know this six month period uh is an opportunity for us to see if we can make a difference for free and the fact that it's for free now it great the question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we agree with this or not we have philosophical differences because we have the opportunity to see if we can help our children for free the question must be what harm will it do will we do more harm than good now if we if we use it and if we can't answer that question in the affirmative yes we'll do more harm because i think it raises a whole other set of considerations why would we not try this if it's seventy thousand dollars a year if we decide to keep it two hundred and some thousand dollars a year that's about the the the same amount as what we pay the top executive in our city actually less for the salary of one executive we can engage uh uh uh in in practices that will help us better direct our resources and to my friends who sent me uh emails uh suggesting that that i have uh pushed back on um resources for root causes allow me to reintroduce myself because this this is part of a comprehensive multifaceted approach that i have uh and many in the city have called for for years shot spotter is not a panacea i know that but but let's do the work also on a ubi let's do the work on on expanding violence interruption and and i would just respectfully put to those that have sent emails and and and colleagues in the activist community the next it's very easy to say what we're not going to do but the next time somebody talks about we need to address root causes i want i want all of us in the city to ask an activist this question how much money did you get in the last budget where is our massive investment uh in root causes we can stop things celebrated as a victory and still be broke for as long as i've been talking about shot spotter we've also been talking about investment in root causes and community-based organizations and community-based initiatives how many of you community-based initiatives watching me and listening to me right now got money in this last budget where's the money in my community that's called the oaky doke that that's that's the hoodwink that's that's being bamboozled and we have to stop celebrating what we can stop and start celebrating working on what we can fund i am asking you on behalf of the thousands of conversations i've had with with with with members of this community black and brown people that some of the most uh um challenging stories and compelling stories i heard were from latino brothers and sisters i work with in durham can who are afraid to call the police even when they need to and what does a human being do when you hear gunfire what should a person do when you hear gunfire call the police that's what shot spotter does it calls the police and if every person in this city did what we tell them they should do that all the concerns we have about a spike in workflow and and and having to deploy police all of those things would exist organically without shot spotter because if everybody called the police every time we told them they should call the police if everyone of my brothers and sisters uh uh in these communities started doing what we say to do then you're right we would have a spike but we that would happen without shot spotter but we don't have that spike because so many of our people have resolved themselves to the proposition that this is just what life is like and i reject that it is unconscionable it is a moral that we would allow folk to to to believe that this is just what life is like in my neighborhood that that's an editorial on our city i implore us colleagues to take advantage of the listen we've got the best city attorney's office in the country i know that they will make they will read the contract top the bottom and they will make sure if anybody can find any small print that's going to obligate us unwittingly it's our city attorney's office they said no cost no obligation i i implore us to see if it would work if you if you have questions about the data let's get the data for free if you have questions about the efficacy then let's see about the efficacy for free for six months and i give you my word that if it doesn't work i will say hey that didn't work well then let's get on let's get on let's in the meantime let's still work on basic income let's work on violence interruption let's work on fast-tracking shared economic prosperity plan that helped me get thousand black men together so we can do some other things it's not just this piece let's throw everything at this emergency this scourge that is robbing us and robbing our city of our next mayor and next council people and next engineers and next police chief i'll say this one of the one of the heartbreaks of what we have learned about our national leadership in the last 24 to 48 hours uh the heart one of the the most heartbreaking aspect is when we asked a question what could we have done with that wasted time how many lives could we have saved if leadership had acted and i will put this to you respectfully friends if we don't do this and some future generation of leaders decide to try this and there are positive results if they try it and it turns out to be a good thing then may god have mercy on our legacy as leaders because history will not and the people will not i encourage us in conjunction with a whole bunch of other stuff to try this to see if we can give childhood back to thousands of our children in this city i yield mr mayor thank you councilmember any more comments sorry comments now comments or questions okay yeah i don't have questions i just have general comments um so again thank you for being here and for sharing um this information with us this is the second presentation that we've received and at least our third or fourth conversation about chat spotter so it's definitely been something that we've been thinking about a lot on city council i feel like i've made my thoughts clear in previous conversations so i'll just reiterate a couple of things um here today the data from the chat spotter company and the data from independent research that you can find online is very different with regard to the efficacy and effectiveness of this technology additionally it's clear that this technology primarily functions by moving more police officers into neighborhoods that the that it's a it is a technology that is designed to create a police response to most of the time what is going to be a gunshot but not all of the time um i don't call the police when i hear gunfire generally because i don't know that the police are going to help the situation if it's close enough to where i live so for example a few months ago there was a shooting across the street from my house um my neighbors and i came outside we made sure that no one was hurt um and we had a conversation with the people who lived in that house about what had just happened and another neighbor who had not been a part of the conversation that we were having decided to call the police what the people who lived in the house wanted to do was leave and so they left and that was their safety plan was to get away from the person who had come to their house with the gun and threaten them by the time the police got there there wasn't really anything to do the so the situation the immediate threat had been had been resolved by the people who were in the situation with the support of the neighborhood i'm not interested in putting into place any technology that's going to increase the amount of policing that we're doing in Durham we have for the last 25 years used police as our primary method of of ensuring public safety and it is past time to try new things and that is why we are creating a community safety and wellness task force that's why we're talking about participating more in the county's violence interruption program that's why we're talking about crisis response teams that would be unarmed traffic response teams that would be unarmed it is my vision and the vision of this broad national movement supported by thousands of people right here in the city to move us away from this kind of response to gun violence and towards a response that is community-based that focuses on health and wellness and opportunities to resources for people in communities and i want to invest our limited resources in programs that do that i don't want to invest them in five times as many police officers responding to calls for gunshots i don't think that that's an effective i don't think that's an effective response if our calls for service action like if 80% of gunshots aren't being reported and actually start being reported there's no way that's not going to take a huge amount of police resources to respond to all of those calls with very little result at the other end besides more police officers in our neighborhoods and that's not something i'm excited about moving forward with again i feel like i've said all this before but i'm happy to say it as many times as we have to have as we are going to have this conversation um i don't think the technology is very effective and i don't think that the intended consequence of the technology is the direction is moving us in the direction that i want to move in as regards building a safer community in Durham thank you mr mayor thank you mayor pro tem is there anyone else who'd like to be heard councilmember freeland hey thank you mr mayor um yeah i i um i really hear you mayor pro tem johnson um you know when uh chief teachman was talking about the ways in which this technology could scale it really like made me shiver thinking about you know right now we're capturing sound as brother middleton mentioned you know we could choose to use the cameras or not um you mentioned drones just got me thinking about an or willian kind of uh environment of um constant surveillance and not a direction i feel comfortable going in uh and the the conversation particularly around uh for me beginning as we wish to proceed thinking about root causes like transformative justice centers therapists trauma informed care mental health folks youth programs i think that those types of investments really create the type of safe communities that that i want Durham to to embrace as a as a new direction if we're going to talk about a new direction um and you know uh it was mentioned i forget who mentioned something about uh you know ptsd um i mean interestingly enough we're going into closed session after this call uh to review some kids who may very well be experiencing some ptsd uh from an interaction with police that uh you know who knows like we'll we'll see how that pans out but it's um it kind of strikes me as a as an ominous uh irony that uh we would be discussing this thing that could potentially quadruple police presence in communities of color on the same day that that will be viewing this uh body cam footage granted we don't know what's going to be on there um and the last thing i want to say about the Durham Beyond Policing Coalition just a personal story i remember uh i remember specifically it was last summer that that community members from throughout Durham many who are local natives and hail from the communities that are most impacted by this violence converged at north star church of the arts which um you know i remember it being last summer because my dad was uh was sick with al s he passed away in july and it was in june when the coalition gathered you know all of us are non-spirit house harm-free zone you know several organisms dozens of organizations came together and it was so exciting to to tell my dad you know which north star was something that that he helped found that we're changing Durham we're doing something different we're we're plucking from what other cities have done to to create a new paradigm for the city that i was born and raised in and it was such an amazing visionary experience to be in the space i remember seeing jillie and charlie and a few others there and what what they proposed was perfect was prophetic it was it was before george floyd and before uh the national uprising that we've seen happening uh across this country before the movement for black lives were making national calls for radical transformation or sorry not before that's been happening since forever excuse me let me clarify but i think it's taken a radical shift this year after george floyd um for those calls to be amplified so let me clarify that um but you know they were making these calls in 2019 and it's not because they were profits it was because that they're not clairvoyant it was actually looking back to the past there's this west african concept san kofo you need to look back in order to move forward and and looking back we can see that increased police presence has often been uh the call and the solution to this issue and as mayor pro tem pointed out um you know the solutions have had dire circumstances especially for the black youth that um council member uh middleton referenced in terms of getting mired in the prison industrial complex and in experiencing their own ptsd uh moments through uh kind of violent interactions uh with that that come with increased surveillance and police presence um and so i just want to again acknowledge the the the organizing um paradigm the paradigm shift that those organizers kind of prophesize and have been putting in motion and uh and those are the same people filling up our inboxes um you know that with critiques about with real data about the uh some of the uh ornerous implications of moving forward with something like this program and uh you know it just makes me think uh about um trusting uh the the black queer radical feminist organizers and their vision for the city and their advice those are folks that i feel very accountable to uh in addition to the folks um you know that uh some of whom are also kind of calling for increased police presence i hear both of those calls coming from the black community specifically um uh but but what i haven't seen is is a significant investment on the city's part to dive into alternatives as opposed to going into through the normal channels that were used to um so that's kind of uh i'll close my comments there and and uh and just say thank you for for coming and presenting um but uh yeah i'm feeling very uncomfortable personally thank you thank you councilmember councilmember freeman it's good to see you councilmember freeman you're out of your car thank you i appreciate your flexibility in this situation it's kind of an unplanned situation but i just wanted to thank my colleagues for sharing their points and acknowledging that this this conversation has continued for a while and i really appreciate councilmember freeman spelling out why it's always felt so uncomfortable and acknowledging just how diverse the conversation is around police presence and i i just want to center some of the voices that that i keep continue to hear in district one and district four who are facing the the increased gun violence and in south side and in east germ that that specifically the gang violence task force was put in place to kind of address the the level of gunfire we're seeing in east germ and and in south side i i don't hold this in attention with the the work that folks who are black and queer and and very visionary and where they want to see us go but i do hold attention in the fact that i i have to continuously look at those folks who are who are lining up right now at derm children's initiative to pick up pick up food acknowledging that they're going home to that similar situation that councilmember councilmember middleton outlined and knowing the continuous tears that i've cried and different shooting incidences i acknowledge how emotional i'm tied to this to this issue but i take a step back and acknowledge that that there is a need for an investment and it's not on one side or the other it's on both and if we don't acknowledge that the voices of the people who don't come to our meetings is not here they're not sending us emails they're not organizing they're just frustrated because they can't send their kids outside to play and so for every time that i've heard a mother say that i can only send my kid outside when there is a police officer outside i don't want that for them and if what it takes is a device on a utility pole or a building i'd rather much try that for six months than to say no and so i i appreciate the uncomfort i understand the complete disregard for the prop like for the product but what i can say is i implore all of my colleagues to consider who does not send you those messages who does not make those pleas to you until there is a shooting and who is i mean who is continuously saying i mean just didn't think about the mother then i don't want to call names but the the the visual that i had to had to attend this summer knowing that there were two shootings within hours of one another what a difference could have been made if the shot spotter would have been in place to catch the first shooting incidents and to kind of curb the the response that might have took place a few hours later i mean that was three children and i can't i i can't not do anything and so i am i am open i've been open and so when we talked about the additional officers so that we're not using overtime to cover this or the the community health and safety task force that is actually community at the table or if it's the the different outreach programs that are in place none of that is happening though none of it is moving and here you have a national provider of a product saying we'll offer it to you for six months to at least analyze your data and what i'm hearing is a very consummate that's not what i want to do because of a national context and i just ask that you pay attention to to the voices that aren't always at the table center those voices that say things like my child has to jump in the or knows to jump into the to the tub this is ridiculous we cannot keep doing this i i'm i'm just frustrated because there has to be a solution and whether it's shot spotter outreach teams uh i mean community painting on the streets like whatever it is none of it is happening right now and so i am grateful that councilmember middleton continues to press on all of the fronts i'm grateful that councilmember um freeline is bringing up all of those things and i appreciate may approach him spelling out why or how we can see a future where we should be going we're not there yet and i want to be beholden to those voices that continue to say those things at the derm house and authorities town hall meeting and in the spaces after a shooting i can't i can't ignore their voice and i'll leave it at that but i thank you thank you councilmember any other comments anyone else want to comment troops mayor councilmember reese thank you mr mayor i want to thank uh the folks from shot spotter for coming back to talk to us again about this program uh chief i want to thank you for your perspective on how you might integrate the product into your public safety plan for the city also want to just say how much deep respect and admiration i have for each of my colleagues who spoke today obviously the subject matter we're talking about is incredibly painful and difficult and i think no one is is blaming anybody about trying to find a solution that will help reduce gun violence in the city so i don't fault councilmember middleton or the folks from shot spotter at all for coming before us to make this pitch i think it's a mark of leadership that that they're willing to come back after we voted overwhelmingly last year not to not to go forward with the product i will say that that last year my biggest concern about this product was false positives and that concern was driven by some of the research that i've read but also about the the kind of lived experience of the officers police officers in charlotte i will just be honest with you i did not find the shot spotter representative here today i did not find that explanation helpful at all to be the what the what the police officers in charlotte reported was that one out of every 41 times they responded to a shot spotter alert they were able to substantiate gunfire i'm willing to accept that half of that was bad training bad placement lab timing all the things that the person from shot spotter identified but i i refuse to believe that that those are the only explanations and so i think about as councilmember freelon said i think about the the reality my fear that this technology will send armed police officers into communities that are already reeling right now officers who are responding as if this was a shooting because that's how they'll have to do it and and what that will what impact will that have on those communities with that level of false positives you know i think councilmember freelon pointed to the one of the things we're going to be talking about later i will just tell you that i've spent some time with those families over the last week or so and i will tell you that i can't imagine what how they would react to that kind of arrival of officers under that scenario and i think councilmember freeman reminds us that there is more to the community that we are here to represent and protect than the folks who email us absolutely but the mothers that were shall manner have not emailed us either and so let's remember that there's no monolith out there there are lots of voices if we were if we could make everybody happy by making these decisions these jobs would be a lot easier and they're not let's don't pretend let's please don't pretend with each other or the public that the weight of public opinion is one way or the other because we don't know we hear the voices we hear both those that come to us and those we seek out and that's how we do this job and so i will say that i do appreciate chief davis and her the fact that she had to my mind has done a good amount of work to get us to this point and come up with a plan that she thinks will work my fear is that is that the system will be overwhelmed with false positives which i think was the experience that folks talked about in charlotte and that that will lead to a reduction in the effectiveness of police response in Durham and i know that that is something that weighs heavily on me especially as the fact that those are those are the communities that i think need our help the most and i'm just not sure this is the help they need it's certainly not the help that i've heard them asking for but obviously as i said we'll all listen to different voices so i i'm still let me just end with this i i voted against purchasing this product a year ago and when i was sworn in for my second term of office i said that i was gonna kind of keep an open mind of things that we had previously decided about and i said that when council remember milton mentioned this i think on our july 23rd work session where he talked about the things he wanted to try he wanted to talk about shot spotter again he wanted to talk about violence interrupters he wanted to talk about a crisis response team and i think what i think i said i think most of us said at that time was we kind of went around the table and talked about which of those things we were interested in doing and it's unfortunate this is the thing that comes first um but probably because there is a vendor uh eager to access our market and eager to make themselves available for this um and uh and so i think that's probably why but um i i do wish that one of the other things that that we talked about that afternoon had come first so that we could talk about things that we were all excited about rather than this idea that i think the council had previously said they weren't interested in and now it's come back um i will say that i have approached this with an open mind i've tried to be uh as forthcoming with everyone i've talked to about it as i can uh but that the the experience uh that charlotte had weighs heavily on my mind um and i i don't accept the explanation that that chief teacher and came to us with although he did the best he could he's selling a product god less america that's that's that's what his job is but but i'm i'm not convinced that that that that the explanation is charlotte just got it wrong um my fear is that it's the technology that false positives will overwhelm our system and i don't think that'll make anybody safer um and so that's that's where i'm at right now thank you mr mayor thank you council member all right colleagues uh council member cabillero i'm going to be brief because i'm looking at the time and i know we still have potentially one more item depending on what we decide about that item and then we will be moving in a closed session um i just want to acknowledge it's something that council member risa i went back uh said i went back and listened to partially to the july 23rd work session which is where shot spotter was kind of uh reintroduced as a concept or idea um and and then that same meeting and violence interrupter crisis response to him there are other ideas and i i hear council member freeman's frustration i'm frustrated as well that we have not gotten further than we all want on this issue i am more interested in those options because it moves us in the direction that we are hearing that there's a groundswell interim and across the nation we spend 75 70 million on police every year and i don't think that this solution is going to help us and my fear is that we are actually just going to expand our police force which then means we have less money to put into other options um i appreciate the shot spotter presentation today i appreciate chief davis's um time today we've kept you a long time again chief we've done that several times this last few weeks so i very much appreciate it uh but i and i'm eagerly looking forward to the conversation around violence interrupter programs um and some of the other things that we as a council have all had consensus on there has been you know seven i think at the time six votes six voices i should say saying we really want to know more about these things and so those are the solutions that i'm most interested in hearing about uh and i will not say anything further because i'm looking at our time thank you thank you thank you councilmember anyone else want to comment councilmember milton thank you miss mary and i think my colleagues for their indulgence in this discussion i want to piggyback on and use as an on-ramp uh and utterance of council reese so let's not pretend that uh any one particular group i'm paraphrasing of course uh that that um one opinion holds sway um i don't i also don't want to pretend that one city out of 100 is determinative um there are a number of other cities in this state that have used the technology greensboro uh a greenville pardon me uh rocky mount wilson chicago not norcan obviously new york there are a number of cities that have had um positive um implementation of the program and one i've heard a grand total of one city that has not had um a positive uh experience now i know the level of debate this council is is uh capable of i know the rigor of mind and inquiry that we bring to discussions i see it on a regular basis never have i participated in a debate where in the universe of almost 100 data points is one so rigorously held on to and lift it up as the example uh as to not to do something if that were the case there are a number of initiatives we would not have pursued uh because there was a one particular city or example that was not so favorable any number of things we would not have done so i i'm just curious about this this embrace and lifting up of one city uh out of 100 american cities here let me be truthful here's what i think and and we we kind of alluded to it there is a national discussion going on in a national movement and there are leaders in this city that are vested uh in those national movements listen i've used those national talking with before i was on council you know i participated in the police reform movement uh in this city um those nationalized talking points are are being adopted and applied to our city which is fine um but i'm a Durham council person i'm i'm elected to represent the people of Durham and to serve the people of Durham and to use the data points that Durham presents i will not pretend that the Durham Police Department is the Ferguson Police Department i'm not going to pretend that the LAPD is is the Durham Police Department is the LAPD in the 80s rampart division um i'm not going to pretend that i don't know uh this chief and his command staff when we talk about armed police responses we have to put that in context of our city now if a person picks up a phone and dials 911 and says i heard gunfire the responding officer is going to respond as if a gun's involved if shot spotter tells the officer that a gun's been fired they're going to respond in the same mindset that a gun is present does it make a difference whether it's a human that reported a gun or technology that reported a gun is there a difference in the demeanor or readiness of the officer once they hear that a gun uh is involved um so i want to be very clear and and the notion that um we're going to be um overwhelmed with false positives we don't know that i don't know that you don't know that that by definition is the purpose of an experiment a free experiment to see and if we are overwhelmed the beauty of having a wonderful city attorney's office is that we don't have to buy it we can back out of it we can say thank you and and walk away the question for me is are our nationalized talking points and our adherence to uh prophecy and i'm big on prophetic utterances uh our adherence to prophecy more uh uh compelling than an experiment that could possibly improve the lives of our children our arch for me that's a simple question are our children worth a free experiment to see if we could possibly improve their lives my friends that consideration is going to win over any philosophical utterances on any day of the week and twice on sunday here's what i know tonight whatever prophetic vision we have for our city whatever hopes we have for our city tonight when the sun goes down uh uh gunfire is going to be going off in our city if we keep trending this way tomorrow next week next there'll be another family who will be burying someone or have an empty seat and i'm not i'm not really feeling going to them and explaining hold on help is on the way we're going to transform the city with a vision of of transformative justice and all other kind of things which we've been talking about for years so i put this to you my friends and it's clear probably we're not going to do this free experiment it that's i you know we haven't counted votes yet but that's pretty clear here's the deal we have a progressive majority on this council we have progressive unanimity on this council we're all progressives uh uh uh you know uh so what's our plan where's the money what what are we going to spend money on that's going to directly bring the number of gun incidents down in this city is it jobs how long will it take to put the jobs online is it mentoring where's the million millions of dollars in the mentoring for why didn't we do it this past budget why didn't we do it the year before that why didn't we do it that we've been talking about transformative things and rewriting the city as long as i've been talking about shot spot but hold up i have not just talked about shots but i've been talking about those things as well so so congratulations we can stop shot spotter we can do we have the power to do that congratulations if we do that where's the plan though where is the root cause marshal type plan and the millions of dollars to keep these young brothers and sisters out of games tell me that and forget the vision where's the money when does that begin when does that when does that work start and and you know and i've heard listen i've been with the best of them in terms of you know putting eloquent visions and where we want our city to go you're in charge you've got the votes where's the plan you're in charge we don't want to send 70 million dollars on policing where's the seven million dollars for the uh the community based initiatives how many community rooted program initiatives watching this broadcast right now how much money did y'all get last year how much money you get in this year how many of our community rooted partners uh uh uh will put something on facebook next month asking for grant writers to get 10 000 to do what where's your money where's the plan where's the plan meanwhile we still dying we still getting shot i'm not here to get popular or here for for perpetual re-elections i'm here because black kids are dying so i don't care about all that other stuff really in the final analysis i'm here because there's a segment of this community who doesn't write emails as councillor freeman said who doesn't who doesn't organize and with all due respect you're right we hear from uh uh uh uh certain people and we talk to who we want to talk to but i've been hanging out uh with those folk as well before some of y'all even got to the city so so i hang out with everybody all y'all folk and what i know is that at the end of today no money for for for root cause initiatives no shot spotter know this know that we have demonstrated our ability to say no and please let us not pretend that charlotte is the bellwether no this isn't about science or data this is about ideology this is about vision which which i'm down for i have no problem with that but let's not pretend uh uh uh that this is an empirically scientifically arrived at conclusion it's an ideological one which is cool i have no problem with ideology show me the money don't talk about it be about it for everybody watching this broadcast for every family that's going to sleep tonight in a community where you're going to hear gunfire the next time somebody talks about well you know what we need for our young men are jobs and community rooted initiatives and so ask them where the money at ask them how much money did how many emails did you write asking the council to do universal basic income how many emails did you write the council asking for millions of dollars in mentoring flooding our communities with with whatever type of workers unarmed workers that you think we should have and if you have no if you haven't had any money after all these years talking about it with a progressive majority you should go sit down somewhere because our kids are dying and this isn't this is an academic discussion so it is what it is uh in terms of this piece but but there are uh and i'm glad to hear that we're going to be talking about other things violence interrupting there's a number of things we have uh proposed but tonight we need to start talking about what our response is to folk whose children will be in bathtubs tonight and if you plan on telling them about your vision for Durham good luck let me know how that works out for you thank you mr mayor thank you council members i'm gonna i'm gonna end this discussion we've all had our say i don't really think we need to do this again um i want to thank the chief chief thank you for being with us today thank you i want to thank the folks from shot spotter um let me just say that the the way for the folks from shock spotter you all came to us through one of our council members who brought this to us um the way that we work here in Durham as you all are i'm sure aware is through our administration uh and if they have a recommendation they've heard the discussion today uh they can certainly bring that to us they would fully vet any plans that the that you all want to present whether the chief has as well i do want to say one thing to my colleagues about this idea about what we're doing and what money we're spending and those kinds of things so we have in the last couple of years uh been thinking a lot about things that we can do for our community to make our community safe in what i will call um non traditional ways for us but there are things that we do that are making our city safe all the time and i think it's a real mistake to for any of us to be saying that we're not doing these things we are we're doing a huge amount of work around homelessness we're doing a huge amount of work around affordable housing we heard all about that this morning and units are coming out of the ground we have an enormous parks erect program where young people and not just young people but especially young people hundreds thousands of them every year when it's not coveted are able to participate and many of them participate for free we run a bus service that's absolutely critical and we do it extremely well and we do it extremely inexpensively the average fare is about 32 cents a ride we keep people safe through our police force this is a major contribution that we make to people's safety we have job training and business support we've got driver's license restoration and expunction services free we've got misdemeanor diversion court and other kinds of reforms that are that we have driven the city is driven in our in our court system and in our police system thanks to the chief in a normal summer we have lots of youth employment we want to have more i could go on and i think you all know that and those are all things that contribute to community safety those are the things that the cities have traditionally done that contribute to community safety and now we're challenging ourselves and we're being challenged by our community to look in a different direction as well but i want to just point out that the county has done for years and has a giant public health mental health and social services structure mobile response all those kinds of things criminal justice resource center that helps people who are reentering we haven't done that work because it hasn't been our job we can make it our job and we put a million dollars aside in this budget to help make it our job but i do want to say to people two things one is this notion that somehow we haven't contributed this the safety of our community with all those things i've outlined is just dead wrong and then i also want to say that if we want to move in these new directions i think it's a great thing to do but i also think i will say and i think we all agree on this doing it without our county and our public schools is a bad mistake they have been doing it for years they have been putting tremendous efforts into it and we need i'm really glad that the city manager reported us that he's working with the county on on the thinking about violence interrupters that's really really important we can't lose sight of the fact that much of this work is being done in our community and we feel on this we feel that our community is putting us on the spot and asking us to do it part of it is they don't know anything about what the county does they don't know anything about those services you know many of them and you know we're we're we're very quite visible and so people are coming to us for it i'm all in favor of us rethinking that and figuring out how we can make that contribution and i was really glad that we put a million dollars in the budget as a down payment but i i think it's really important to think through you know working on this with other people and i i think that's you know that our rhetoric ought to reflect that okay thank you very much everybody chief thank you especially we appreciate you and thank you everybody for being here we'll now move to our next item which is the duke franchise agreement and this is also an important item we got a we got a big meeting today folks but that's because we talk a lot okay um i see both fergusson here and are you introducing this item bow hi mayor thank you nice to see you good to see you good afternoon mayor my pretend members of council and certainly welcome to councilmember freelon my name is both fergusson deputy city manager for operations and i'm before you today to introduce three documents that are coming for your consideration as part of the franchise with duke energies carolina i will ask the clerk to go ahead and bring up the presentation on this and get to the second slide please i'm going to begin talking in the interest of time uh diana if you can uh perfect thank you i say coming up so we are here today because the franchise agreement with duke energies carolina's is expiring on october 5th 2020 uh that um document was last ratified on october 6 2005 so it was a 15-year term and that term is expiring we began working on a renewal of these documents in february of 2020 at that time a large contingent of staff and uh city staff city attorney's office representatives and members of duke energy came together and discussed items of interest to each entity and of mutual interest we formed teams around a number of those items and those teams began working on finding consensus around ways that we could improve our relationship improve operational issues and address any concerns that i had their entity brought to the table as i said previously that included a number of staff and experts from duke energy representatives from the city manager's office city attorney's office public works general services planning and transportation next slide please as those groups began to reach consensus uh the solutions uh the language that was agreed to was placed into one of three documents uh either the franchise agreement the operating agreement or the memorandum of understanding and i'll take a minute just to introduce uh each of those but then we'll spend a few slides on each first there's the franchise and this is a document that regulates duke's use of right of way within the city that document is narrowly tailored to how duke uses the right of way within the city and donald tool from the attorney's office in just a moment is going to describe that but because that document is narrowly tailored and construed that way there is a companion document that we've always had an operating agreement and this agreement is a more flexible tool it allows us to address issues like utility relocation tree trimming emergency response and a number of other operational sort of meat and potatoes issues that that uh describe the way that the utility and the city of Durham interact new to this suite of documents is a memorandum of understanding or an mo u and this is a new document that duke and the city jointly agreed to create and propose because over the last several years the city has adopted several guiding strategy documents along our sustainability agenda that meshed well with programs that duke already has and and values and direction that duke has been moving in and so we found areas of agreement and areas where we felt like we could cooperate those have been outlined in the mo u and we'll describe briefly what some of those initiatives would be uh let's go to the next slide and i will ask donald tool to take the virtual mic and present a little bit on the limitations of franchise authority good afternoon mayor and council uh donald tool with the city attorney's office um just wanted as bo said just gonna give you the legal landscape of what's permissible with respect to a franchise agreement very early on in this process the city attorney's office looked at state statute the city's charter provision related to franchising of utilities and also we reviewed applicable north carolina case law there were there were a couple of north carolina court of appeals that address sort of the limitations of municipal authority in light of utility commission authority and those cases were reviewed one of the things that's clear from our general statutes is that the north carolina utilities commission is given and i'll just quote it general supervision over the rates charged and services rendered by all public utilities in this state back in the 1970s one of our sister cities uh to the west of us um wanted to uh regulate duke energy if another uh utility provider um more strictly and a case went to the court of appeals and one of the arguments was that the city had the right to franchise an electric utility and that gate the city made tried to make the argument that that gave them a whole bundle of rights and things that they could include in the franchise and duke energy took the opposite position and one of the uh statements that's quoted in that case and it's repeated over and over again is that the north carolina utilities commission has the authority to say when and under what conditions power companies shall furnish services and importantly the case said in the city and outside of the city so the city was trying to make the argument that it's franchising authority gave it a great deal of power within the city and the court of appeal court of appeals rejected that argument next slide please um so what are what what can a city do through a utility franchise one of the things that our charter provision specifically says and as we know a charter provision is the legislature specifically giving a city certain authority so this is durham's charter authority on this topic it says that the city is authorized to grant franchises upon reasonable terms and consistent with applicable laws for a period of no more than 60 years so a franchise could be from zero to 60 years um it goes on to say i i guess the bottom line summary here is both durham's charter authority and the applicable case law appear to restrict municipal franchising authority to regulating the use of municipal streets and city property parcels that the city owns next slide um so just quick review what are the key provisions that are in our franchise and i know council is used to seeing license agreement basically um a franchise agreement is not dissimilar from a license agreement it's just there are certain entities that under law a city has given the authority to franchise rather than license and um some of the key provisions are it grants duke energy the right to use city right of way for its infrastructure it addresses just very generally um relocation requirements so if the city is doing a street or sidewalk project um duke has the obligation to relocate those utilities that is addressed more specifically in the operating agreement it goes the operating agreement goes into much greater detail about how the parties will operate with respect to utility relocations uh under the franchise duke is obligated to make repairs to the right of way or city property and duke is also obligated to indemnify the city so if a third party claims that they've been damaged and they wind up making a claim against the city or they sue the city duke is agreeing to indemnify those cities those is agreeing to indemnify the city for those types of claims um duke is required to provide a claims process for Durham residents to the extent that Durham residents have issues with their service um and the the franchise as currently drafted includes a term of 10 years and as i said before a franchise can be anything over zero years up to 60 years um in addition there's an appendix to the franchise agreement and in that appendix um duke specifically acknowledges the city's right to generate power and the appendix goes on to say that when legally authorized to do so under north carolina law duke will agree to distribute power purchased and stored by the city next slide thank you don so take the baton back the uh the operating agreement then follows as a document that helps um helps tease out the relationship between between duke and the city helps establish common procedures for our coordination uh and sets forth more detail in the obligations of the parties related to various facility operations in and uh near city owned rights so this can be things like coordination of infrastructure planning both uh both duke's infrastructure and our infrastructure it further delineate requirements for how duke does work on their infrastructure in the city's right of way and what processes they need to follow it streamlines the process for relocation of duke facilities to accommodate city projects so when we expand a road or when we uh you know implement a trail or a park and we need to use uh need to relocate to facilities this describes that uh it requires duke's compliance with the city of Durham tree trimming ordinance it also establishes an emergency response plan for the restoration of electric service in Durham and gives the city access to certain resources within duke uh that um that speak to that now i'm going to ask stacey poston uh and we should be on slide nine uh for whoever's running the presentation i'm going to ask stacey poston to talk a little bit about the memorandum of understanding thank you both good afternoon mayor members of council my name is stacey poston representing the general services department we're excited today to be here to talk about the memorandum of understanding which we feel like really sets the foundation for creation of a green new Durham that the mayor illuminated in his state of the city speech and that we have been working towards with a number of adopted goals over the past several years including the city's you know roadmap to sustainability which was adopted in 2018 and which featured engagement with more than 1300 of our residents through four tabling events uh communications were happening both in english and spanish and really got a great understanding of what our community was looking for regarding sustainability and uh additionally we then presented to council and council adopted in 2019 carbon neutrality goals for our municipality and then in the mayor's 2020 state of the city address in february uh he illuminated seven specific things that he was looking for and we feel like all of those things are represented in the documents whether it's the mo you or the franchise agreement and so the memorandum of understanding really it's the first time the city's ever done it it's an opportunity for the city and duke to work together to implement a shared vision where we take advantage of their programs and we talk collaboratively about things that the city needs to be able to advance our carbon neutrality and renewable energy goals next slide please so what will happen once the mo is approved by city council we will work with duke energy to create a tactical work plan and so these next two slides outline some of the opportunities that we feel like exist where we could have collaboration we know that we are seeing more and more of our residents having electric vehicles and that we want to continue to embed these in our public infrastructure and our garages and our surface slots and in other places so there's an opportunity to collaborate there we know that duke energy has been involved with duke university and charlotte taking advantage of the green source advantage program and the general services department on october 1st will issue a request for information to look at our usage and to communicate with the private sector to see what availability there is for us to partner with a solar provider to also have the city of durham partake in such a program duke has been partnering with us for a number of years on energy efficiency programs where we weatherize more than 3,500 households impacting almost 8700 residents in our in our town additionally duke donated $100,000 and we have planted more than 700 trees with those funds so we've got some energy efficiency programs that have come through the pipeline and we look forward to creating continued opportunities around that additionally there's opportunities as technology continues to advance for multi-use poles and lighting and we've been in conversation with transportation about things that they're interested in seeing moving forward in that arena next slide please next as battery storage costs continue to decline we want to look at what sort of resilience opportunities might exist for our city you may remember that we received a grant earlier this year and did some research on what opportunities there were but this is an area where we think we can continue to collaborate with duke we also are looking at transparency and data access this is an area where the environmental affairs board said to us we are interested in looking at what data exists around energy uses for individuals and small businesses to see if there are areas where we have high utility bills and that we could then dovetail and partner to create programs that would help people reduce those costs and and so we think that there's some opportunity to do some work in this area additionally looking at just undergrounding electric distribution facilities you know overall what areas we have we can take advantage of that and then finally what we hope to see in the work plan is some coordination continued coordination around construction projects and then disaster preparedness planning so those are all opportunities where we feel like once the mou is approved by council we could create a work plan a tactical work plan i also want to just remind ourselves that we have a consultant right now working on for this year is doing some work with us on carbon neutrality and renewable energy creating an action plan for our city portfolio and that dovetails into the into the mou and the work that we're going to be doing here next slide please and finally i wanted to share that paul cameron is the environmental affairs board representative from general services who is the staff liaison to that council board he and fred lemar on august 19th presented the mou to that board and the franchise agenda we have incorporated changes and and clarified some language based on that conversation that we have with the environmental affairs board i believe also that council has received a memo from the environmental affairs board sort of illuminating that they were interested in having a little bit more opportunity to have feedback a little bit longer duration i believe that there's some strategies around that so so we're excited about the opportunity of having you know an mou it's new territory for durham but it's really a great opportunity for us to work collaboratively on things we're trying to accomplish thank you thank you stacey and so i just want to describe the next steps uh the uh the adoption of the franchise does require a public hearing and that is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on this on these three proposed documents that public hearing has been scheduled and advertised for september 21st 2020 uh so at your next regular council meeting this uh this will be a public hearing where comments can be received um before we go to question and answer if we could go to the next step it's my my pleasure to introduce and ask indira everett from duke energy to speak to you indira as the district manager of government community relations for duke energy indira has been our partner in this effort since february has done a tremendous job of bringing the right resources from duke energy to the table to have these conversations uh and has uh has really helped us keep the dialogue moving in order to make sure we could get to this point and indira i'd like to hand the mic to you thank you so much bow um can you hear me you can great thank you i was having some bandwidth issues earlier um good afternoon mayor shul city council members and all of our officials the hour is long so i will uh just stick to my script but before i do i would like to certainly say a fun farewell to city manager uh tom bonfield who has certainly been a partner and a colleague i think we started working in derma around the same time and so i wish him well certainly want to welcome uh councilman freeline to the council and certainly want to extend birthday wishes to councilman reese uh today it has been a opportunity for me to address you briefly and i certainly want to start by commending the city of derma for working collaboratively with me and my colleagues who are joining today from duke energy in fact they have been on the call for the last four hours or so so i want to personally thank them these conversations started back at the end of 2019 and into over seven months of this year by way of virtual subcommittee meetings where we addressed lessons learned and opportunities for improvement and it is certainly nice to see that that level of commitment has come to fruition today in producing the three agreements you have before you now it's worth noting that even during a pandemic both the city of derma and duke energy's staff's department heads and legal council agreed upon and finalized revisions to our franchise and operate and agreements as you just heard both mentioned each of these documents further assist the city staff as well as the duke energy staff and clearly laying out the foundation and the framework for how we will continue to work together in an even more efficient and beneficial way ultimately benefiting the citizens of derma day to day whether at their residents or at their business most of our franchise agreements as done touched on around the state are either 60 or 30 years in length for derma we currently have a 15 year franchise agreement and duke energy would love to see a revised agreement for the same length of time by nature of our business we make long-term investments to improve and modernize our facilities to serve our customers so long-term assurances in a franchise agreement is preferred these agreements allow us to serve the customers of derma from generation of the power all the way to turning the lights on in each home without having to come to the city every time to negotiate or to involve ourselves in any delays for service that could lead to budget overages or the city and even our customers these guarantees and these agreements guarantee that we'll do the work right and if we don't we'll fix it it allows us to do preventative maintenance install and remove streetlights and do what is necessary to provide 24-hour service to all customers 365 days a year and on behalf of duke energy we genuinely appreciate the rights and privileges our franchise and operating agreements provide us and we trust that you find the merits in them as well and lastly I am super excited about the clean energy mou agreement you have before you because it lays out as stacy mentioned what we've already accomplished and the foundation for what we hope to accomplish through ongoing action plans and innovative tactics we certainly thank the eab members for their input into the draft and we look forward to future engagement with them and community organizations this document is not meant to stay stagnant but to evolve as new technologies and innovations become available i'm proud to say that the city of derm is one of only a few municipalities to have a clean energy mou with duke energy should it be approved duke energy leaders encourage the continued exploration of great innovations and encourages our students to join us in creating answers to the complex tasks that lie ahead the next invention is right around the corner on how we will expand battery storage and how we will find more environmentally viable ways to safely dispose solar panels so that there's no unintended harm to the environment there's a role for everyone to play and we are delighted to be a part of the discussions i thank you for your careful consideration of these documents and i ask that you unanimously pass each agreement and work with us as we move forward together to create a green new derm that we all can be proud of in the end i think you'll find that duke energy wants the same things you do we want clean energy and technologies safe and reliable energy and responsible ways of producing even more green energy we are on track to exceed our 50% carbon emission reduction goal by 2020 in the carolinas and have been working with stakeholders across the state so that with a balance of new and existing technology and supportive public policy we can retire co-early add substantially more renewables and prepare the grid to advance carbon reduction while continuing to meet customer needs of reliability and affordability this is reflective in our recently filed integrated resource plans and we will continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders and customers to ensure a clean energy future we actually had a meeting with some residents in Durham in march right before we got into the pandemic um challenges that we had and so we were pleased to hear from those citizens together we have the opportunity to make great things happen and so i want to thank you for your attention and certainly for your time and the opportunity to provide these written comments thank you so much mayor and mr furbusson thank you indira appreciate those comments appreciate you guys sticking around we also have a large contingent of staff or on the call who can answer questions for council and finally before we go to that phase i do just want to thank and acknowledge the the tremendous work on the part of city staff as indira acknowledged for duke energy staff in particular staff from the city attorney's office who were in the lead on drafting these documents taking the feedback from staff and working with duke on them so with that mayor our presentation is complete we're happy to field any questions answer any concerns from the council thank you very much mr furbusson and thank you very much miss everett we appreciate you being here with us and uh and thank you so much for your words thank you for helping uh lead the negotiations from the duke energy side and i want to really thank all the folks that have hung in here with us not just our staff but uh folks from duke energy uh who are on the call as well um we don't intentionally torture you like this it's just something that we um can't help sometimes but we are so glad that you uh stuck with us and uh are appreciative of you i'll now um open the floor for any questions uh for uh our staff council member reese and then mayor pro tem and i think you will start with those two thank you mr mayor i want to thank our staff and of course indira everett from duke energy for sticking around uh we're going to be here a while longer so um if you feel bad imagine how we feel um the first question i have is about the city's right um to be an independent power producer is that that is that written into the agreement and if so do we have the right store and discharge power and to sell it on the grid um at independently established prices i expect that's a question for mr otul but yeah thank you don hey um fred lemar i actually was thinking this was a question for you it is written into the franchise agreement but fred is sort of taken over the green energy part of these negotiations so let me let me just say that uh i passed fred and two of his children on the trail the other day moving in a really good clip i was very impressed fred so i know you're in shape for this um i don't think i was looking as good as you were mr mayor but you definitely were mentioning that fred um and perhaps in answering uh council member reese's question uh not only could you answer but maybe point out the part of the franchise agreement uh that you believe speaks to this so that he would be able to see the language and others as well yes um yes and again thank you for giving the opportunity to respond mr mayor and um council members um miss uh council member reese that um is a reservation of right that uh is stated in the addenda on the addendum of the franchise at the end among along with other reservations and that would be something that would would be exercised pursuant to gen the general statutes and conformance with authority given by the legislature as well as regulations promulgated by the North Carolina utility commission i think that's the statement there is um to say to the extent that the law allows for it um the city may be interested in in both uh collecting purchasing and storing um energy possibly solar power energy and thereby uh work with duke energy on transferring that energy to the residents um to the extent that the North Carolina utility commissions would would authorize that or promulgate the appropriate regulations for that fred am i to infer from your statement that um the North Carolina utilities commission and or state law does not currently permit that it would have to be allowed yes it had to be something that would be allowed and so currently we can't unilaterally make that decision i'm going to ask again current law doesn't allow us to do the thing i asked of this agreement let's us do is that right that's correct okay great um excuse me a second uh council member uh mr. Lamar could you point out in the in the franchise agreement uh we're we're looking at so colleagues this would be in what's all ordinance in your attachments i'm sure you're aware of that but it's it doesn't say franchise agreement it says ordinance in your attachments and uh fred we're looking at uh we're we're looking at the addendum there can you show us yes this is the end there page uh 14 perhaps um i had right now had the operating agreement open so i'm having to go to thank you kind of we're good you're exactly right mr. mayor you identified it correctly from what i can see here i guess my point in asking the question is just to make it clear that just because this agreement says it's something we retain the right to do doesn't mean we actually have the right to do it that's correct i mean it would require quite a few legal hurdles to get over yes um can some thank you mr. Lamar can someone talk to me about um the if does this agreement um require duke to cooperate with the city to create a community solar program that serves homes and businesses um in the in the city of Durham fred Lamar again uh that would be addressed in the in the uh mo u where we talk about uh participation with duke energy on the possibility of implementing that community type solar program and there right now the law does provide for that but it requires going through um negotiating with duke energy and establishing uh the community solar generator uh and um the subscribers to that program council member race since you use the word require the answer is no the the mo u does not require them to do so it expresses mutual intent on the part of the city and on the part of the utility to pursue a program like that it is not a requirement thank you um one last question it's my understanding that the fred if i understood you correctly state law you're saying that state law doesn't allow us to purchase solar power from independent producers right now is that part of the thing that the law has to get changed allows to do it if we wanted to become a um if we wanted to establish our own uh our own be our own energy producer produce electricity ourselves we could certainly uh do that but we're currently we don't have uh a uh we don't operate a electric utility as the city so if we're going to do it in concert with um duke energy's existing grid we would have to uh we don't have the legal mechanism to do that right now i guess i was talking more about uh power purchase agreements with independent producers of solar energy does the city have the ability to enter into those contracts no not not currently we do have let me not precisely in the way that you describe it we would have to have there would have to be legislation as well as uh north carolina utility commission regulations defining that what we do have is we do have programs whereby we can contract with developers to uh generate create and generate electric or solar power energy for the city to use as a consumer that's part of the the um the green tariff um uh program that duke has which i think uh stacey referenced but not to independently purchase from a solar power producer and then turn around and require duke energy to sell that power to residents using their grid well what we could do is enter into some kind of agreement like the city of charlotte did earlier this year where i think that was in cooperation with duke and another and in some way can you describe how that works in charlotte and is that something this agreement allows us to do the um the mo u the mo u talks about partnership to do that so yes we legally can enter into an agreement with duke energy and a third party developer that would be the generator and of the solar power and the city would be the consumer of that um it's a three party basically a three party agreement that's something that i believe general services is interested in in uh in um investigating that's what stacey was referring to when she talked about issuing an rf a request for information on the the possibility of of uh proceeding with that great thank you fred i guess um just to eliminate this for some of my colleagues i went through a list of things that um the mayor identified in the state of the city address in february as things that the city ought to be able to get out of duke energy during the negotiation of our franchise agreement and i guess i was trying to understand how we did um and maybe the person i really should have asked was the mayor um looks somewhat unusual for us to ask each other questions mr mayor you you're the one that kind of put these marks out there and could you talk a little bit to us about kind of how you feel about where it ended up um i'm happy to talk a little bit about it um i don't want to be the definitive word on it because i have some questions myself and what i would say is it hasn't quite ended up um we have a public hearing um we uh i have a meeting with a lot of our energy and environmental stakeholders scheduled for next week the way i'm interested in hearing from them i know that you all will be hearing from them as well um uh let me just say that uh from my standpoint um from you know what i have read and i've read it all you know twice um is that uh our staff has done a fantastic job of moving us a long way along with in in with our negotiating partner in the direction that we want to go i think there are many things in here to like it's the question that you asked um i believe that uh and in particular in answering that that durham i'm sorry that that charlotte power that has produced is to power solar power that is is purchased is to power city facilities um municipal facilities and so i want to put that question uh to our attorneys uh but in a minute i think there's also the question of the the length of the franchise um right now the franchise length is 10 years um uh miss everett uh wants 15 years for the utility i understand that i don't want that length i think that 10 years should be the outside length so i think that's good i'm also interested in whether or not it should be shorter and the reason it might should be shorter is that the the energy landscape is changing a lot it's changing really fast and it's changing in directions that we like there's more renewables renewals are more affordable so to me that's and and and there's you know opportunities for legislative change so i think that uh one of the questions that i'm about to ask our administration is why 10 years and why is there an advantage over five years i know that they believe that that is an advantage which i'll wait to hear from but i do think just to um i i just think that uh in a lot of ways um this definitely moves us in a good direction um it does uh include our right to be an independent power producer given the legal restrictions um it expressly reserves our right to store energy and discharge power and and it reserves our right to produce solar power and purchase solar power from independent producers at least that's the way i read it and i'm gonna be it's what you asked about i want to know more about that um it also i i'm encouraged by the mou these are not things that are legally required but i think they are um clearly uh areas where mutual cooperation is desired and they include some of our really important goals that you'll appreciate councilmember including the extension of the electric vehicle infrastructure um and um so i think all these things are good i think that there is a commitment from duke to help the city successfully utilize the green source advantage program uh i i am concerned that it doesn't go far enough in terms of the community solar but these are things that i want to continue to learn about in the next couple of weeks uh and uh and be educated on by our staff and our community so that's that's my thought um definitely really good progress definitely great work on a half of our city by our staff and i still have a few questions so maybe i'll ask a couple of those questions uh one of them is and i'm not sure about who the best person to answer this is but is in terms of the length of the franchise agreement why is it that you all believe that 10 years is the right time to learn so i'm happy to take a stab at that the obviously we went into these discussions working from duke's duke's preferred term of 15 years certainly have heard community interest and advocacy for a shorter term i think i think the reason we're at 10 is you know we have had extensive conversations with the attorney's office and reviewed the existing law we've reviewed what north carolina allows franchise agreements to do and we've compared that against the the the voices in favor of a shorter term and what a shorter term might might accomplish might give the city an opportunity to do in the eyes of those voices who have asked for a shorter term we have not seen a legal landscape where revising the franchise agreement on a shorter term accomplishes those things and so as your administration making recommendations to you we see the downside of a shorter agreement which is a great investment of staff time and resources and those of duke energy as well as potentially a lack of predictability on duke energy's part as far as what their future looks like in the city and their ability to make investments and we feel like a reasonable outcome of that is is a shorter term than duke requested but not a short term and because we see downsides and no real upsides to that that's where we ended up at ten thank you very much um so um i'm not sure who the appropriate person is here it might be uh fred it might be don um could you point out to me the language in the franchise agreement that that addresses our ability to use large of off-site solar to power municipal facilities like charlotte does fredle margen mr. mayor that would be part of the uh i think you referenced it as well the duke's green source advantage program which is the program that charlotte is using to be able to contract with third party producer of of solar power and gen and be a consumer of the energy that's created um that is a program that we are eligible for and that is referenced in the mo u and that's something that i think the city is is will be considering so we certainly have the authority and ability and duke energy has the reservation of solar um credits to allow for that to happen for for uh durham and i see in the chat uh from christie daniel that uh charlotte is not pairing their facilities they're retaining the uh renewable energy credits to offset their facility power i see how about that uh mr. lamar so that's and that's the way that it's not a direct uh i guess um it's not a direct consumption of of the uh solar power that's generated the the it's as i mentioned before it's a three-way agreement between duke the city and whoever that solar power generator would be and so the consumption of uh electricity that the city would um would have the city would be given credits for that electricity through the solar energy generated by the developer um and so it's not we don't directly we're not like directly connected it energy goes into the grid essentially and i mean christie if you want to elaborate on that you know you're you're more expert in this than i am so thanks fred and hello to all um i manage our duke energy renewables team and uh the way fred described that uh is correct is an agreement a three-party agreement so the power would be going into the grid the customer in this case the city of charlotte um is helping to um you know pay for that facility they are the third party on the agreement so they were the ones that sought out the solar developer negotiated the contracts the ppa with the solar developer um and agreed upon the price with the solar developer as well as term so how long and then they receive a credit in the form of an hourly energy value as well as the renewable energy credit for the power that they will be receiving but the power is going to the grid not specifically to their municipal buildings and that was through green torch advantage that yes that's correct and what's ppa mean power purchase agreement so that's just the legal document that is set up between the solar developer and the customer as well thank you thank you very much thank you miss daniel all right other other questions colleagues at this point any comments or questions from um from any colleagues uh customer middleton thank you mr mayor uh thank you uh indira and others and staff but what is the uh indira perhaps you can answer this question is there a a industry standard as to how long these franchise agreements normally last is there best practices or how long do they normally last um thank you for the question um i did a little bit of digging into our historical files and we have several hundred franchising agreements and as um i think it was fred mentioned they can go up to 60 years the majority of ours 302 to be exact are 60 years and then the second highest length of time is 30 we have sixty six zero yes sir and then the second highest number of length of time i looked was 30 years and then there are some at 40 and one at 43 and several at 20 there were absolutely only two at 15 Durham being one and the other was down east and i cannot remember the name of the small town but i can certainly gather that but for the majority it is 60 and 30 years hmm um okay that's all for now mr mayor thank you thank you council member colleagues other questions at this point any other questions uh mayor protam thank you i just wanted to make sure i was clear on the timeline that you're proposing for for this that it would that we wouldn't hear it at our next um work session our next meeting but the next one was that right well here's what i've proposed and uh with the i've discussed that i've already uh not just proposed it but uh in my meeting with tom and Wanda on this week uh we uh agreed on this timeline um the franchise agreement expires on october 5th um and uh the eab got this about three weeks ago so there would be uh the timeline would be a public hearing on september 21st which is our next council meeting we have a work session following that if we wanted to more discussion we could have it then and then we would vote on it on october 5th so this extends the timeline by two weeks and gives people from today 25 days to make all the comments that they would like including at the public hearing so that's that's the timeline that we're operating on thank you Mr. Bondfield no i didn't i concur mr. mayor just wanted to see if there's any questions but yes that's that's what we discussed thank you uh councilmember freeman thank you i i just wanted to make sure there was going to be a document attached to this conversation i know at the environmental affairs board meeting we had a long discussion about what was what was possible and what wasn't and just making it a blanket like just share your comments might create some frustration in the community if it's not understood what exactly we can and we can't make adjustments on and so i'm concerned if when if we're pushing this out to the community without any additional information that we're going to create a uprising or stir for folks around some of the things we hope to see but know that that based on our general legislature and the state we live in we're not be possible at this moment well thank you for that comment i'm not sure um how that might best be accomplished uh but we'll ask our staff to think about that i agree people need to understand what the parameters are that we're working under and maybe there's a way to make that easily accessible councilmember reese mr. mayor i i stepped away for just a moment so um i don't know if i missed this but is there some reason why we can't extend the current agreement another month i'll let mr. otul answer that question sorry it took me a while to get the video working again again dono tooled city attorney's office the way the current franchise is written it expires on october 5th and there is no provision for extending it um it specifically says it terminates on october 5th and a franchise agreement has to be approved through an ordinance can you walk me through the consequences of what happens if we turn if the franchise agreement terminates without us passing another ordinance you know given my earlier comments that the franchise essentially regulates duke's use of the right of way i would say relatively nothing because they're still subject to regulation for work conducted in the right of way under the city code um what we would lose is getting the new operating agreement in place and the green energy mo in place um on october 6th okay thank you thank you very much did you bring the cake back second just talking to charlie oh do you bring us the birthday cake no poor guys here with us my family i wasn't gonna have dinner with them tonight so i'm so sorry okay let's keep um colleagues other questions at this point we're gonna have uh we're gonna hear this at a public hearing on the 21st and then if we want to talk three days after that the work session again which we may well want to do uh will be more educated by the public's comments and uh also will have had more chances to more chance to have digested what we've heard today any other questions or comments okay thank you uh thank you to everybody that has worked on so hard on this this has been an enormous effort uh paul cameron facie jena bow don fred all the folks at duke energy were here with us uh i see other members of our staff i see daniel here uh just very grateful to all of you all who have worked on this thank you so much and uh we'll see you at the public hearing thank you thank you indira we appreciate you thank you so much have a good evening you too all right friends uh we are now at the appointments no i'm sorry we're now at the city manager search uh and we'll uh let's discuss that uh as you look at the city manager's priority items you will see as i'm sure you have the list of the um it really in thanks to hr for doing a great job listing uh eight different search firms uh describing in good detail information about these firms giving us some pros and cons and then also providing us a second attachment the chart about these firms clearly we're not going to make this decision today but what i would like to do today is figure out a timeline for making the decision uh and i believe that regina young blood is with us i see regina is here uh miss young blood welcome thank you um i hope it's not your birthday as well is not all right good um we really appreciate the work that you did to um just to describe all of these firms and to tell us all this good information about them and to you and for the chart as well i think you've given us a lot of good options and i would like a recommendation from you for the council about what you think next steps are and how we should proceed and what you think our timeline should be or not our timeline exactly but what our next big step could be and in how we choose this firm regina young blood human resources i would suggest that you convene as a group if that is possible certainly the clerk or the city attorney will determine what kind of a session that needs to be but to discuss what it is that you are looking for in a city manager and also in a search firm that will help you to make a decision about which one of these search firms or which ones you might want to interview uh and then make a decision about which one you want to hire so i would do that you know again depending on how far out you're looking to hire the city manager you may want to work backwards from that day so many of these search firms have told you that there are time for a city manager level search is anywhere from 90 to 120 days so there's that time for the search there's when you want to have the city manager put in place and backing up from there to to work on your process for selecting the search firm thank you and so your recommendation is i understand it is to have a special meeting which i think is a great idea where we would discuss the qualities that we want in a city manager and then discuss what that means in terms of the search firms what would be the next step in actually hiring a firm the next step in hiring a firm would be in deciding where the funding is going to come from to pay for the cost and then contracting with the firm but how about in the the process of actually selecting the firm how would that happen what would be what would be your recommendation so a recommendation for how that could happen is um i do believe that with these types of amounts you may not have to do an RFP but i would defer to finance to confirm whether or not an RFP would be necessary we typically have not done RFPs for searches in the past so we already have the quotes so you could come up with some evaluation criteria that you wanted to use internally to decide how you pick your search firm based on the qualities and criteria that you've established and i also though assume we would might come up with a few finalists among the search firms and then we would interview them that is correct how long would you say uh and i won't hold you to it but what would you typically say the time period is for choosing a search firm in terms of making the the job description uh or the the you know having the meeting you talked about where we talk about what we want in a city manager decide what we want in a firm what qualities we want um choosing some finalist firms and um and then uh interviewing firms and making a selection how about that process how long do you think that should typically take two to three weeks okay that's quicker than i thought um all right um thank you colleagues i'm going to call on councilmember caviaro i know she's been doing a lot of thinking about this and has talked to me some about it i'm going to ask her first if she has any questions or observations or any questions from this young boy at this time i do not i appreciate i i've read through the firm offerings that you all put together i really appreciated the pros and cons for each firm that was really useful information um i cc both you and city manager tom bonfield on a rfp that comes from a different a school district but a governing body and their criteria for choosing a firm that i thought was helpful uh and i also shared that with my colleagues i will i plan on using that to kind of dig in further to the firms that you uh listed in the attachment because i felt like that was pretty especially with the diversity component um really clear and i'm happy if folks are if it's helpful um i have some additional questions again i'm looking at the time so if we do set up a separate time i'm leaning that way because i have some things that like i'm curious to know uh around you know some of the firms what are what are their what's their success rate of placing candidates of color what are those actual pools with actual statistics and numbers and i don't want to have that conversation right now i just don't think that it's prudent no we're not having that conversation now totally not thank that's why i think that yeah we're gonna we're gonna have the special meeting i'm my i'm i'm asking now for questions and comments mainly around the process once we i think we're all gonna agree that we've got another big job to do tonight and we don't want to dig into the pros and cons of the individual firms councilmember freeman thank you i i appreciate um councilmember capriero's comments and uh acknowledgement of the time just noting that was exactly the direction i was going in uh with the rfp it'd be it would be easier to have like a workforce statistics kind of look at things and that's what i was more interested in so i'm i just want to make sure that that preference is known upside thank you thank you other questions or comments colleagues at this point for miss young blood i'm gonna um miss young blood let me ask you if you could help advance this a little bit for us i think what would be good is if you could let us know um pros and cons of an rfp process versus simply making the choice because i agree with you with this amount of money i don't believe it's required we could just i believe just choose among these eight firms or other firms versus an rfp process so i know that one of the issues would be time but if you could if you could perhaps educate us a little on that with the help of uh as you say maybe the city attorney staff and that's necessary but the administration and if you could spell out a timeline not necessarily exact dates of what the steps would be as you've just told us verbally and then maybe you know it'll take a week to do this it'll take two weeks to do that and then once we know that uh we can work with our our administration uh and to set up a special meeting uh to begin those discussions and maybe if you could outline for us what you think i think yeah as you already have but just put in writing what should happen at that first meeting that would be extremely useful we really are going to need your guidance through this process you've guided us through a lot of great a lot of great processes here on the council and we're going really there's nothing that this council is going to do that's more important than this uh as you know i also want to say that we don't need to be in a hurry we have one to page not everybody has one to page and so this is a i think that this gives us a real cushion in terms of time because we know uh that we have a super capable uh interim city manager councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor you just perfectly uh captured what the sentiment i was about to express um in having you know we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of leadership um i was going to say that for our i would like us to spend a be very intentional about having robust conversations about what type of city manager we want um and even perhaps involving the public in those discussions having opportunity for the public to sound off about what type of city manager we're going to the final quarter of our city i don't really see a rush you know taking the rest of this calendar year going into 2021 to have some robust discussions about before we even talk about firms what kind of city manager we want this is a critical decision so uh i uh whatever timetable of course we come up with a you know obviously a support but i would i would really um strongly lean towards taking advantage of in a good way taking advantage of wanda being with us and really using this final quarter of the year to have some intense conversations about who we want in that chair and also hearing from the community about who they'd like to see in that chair as well thank you mr mayor yeah i think i just want to um i would just uh modify that a little bit which is we we really need to hear from the community but i think one of the things the right search firm will do will really help us do that um i'm i'm i'm i think will um the searches that i've been on that have succeeded the best have had a search firm that can really help get the community involvement um and actually i just see mr bonfield put a comment in the in the chat the same thing so um that has got to be yes huge i mean i thought that we i was really uh i thought with when when chief davis came that that selection process was very wide open uh in terms of community engagement was just right um it was clear to the community that we were gonna that the in that case the the the manager was going to make the choice but that we were very interested in their input and i think we have to have the same dynamic and i know we will but uh okay councilmember cabillera yeah virginia could you send us the most uh update job description for the city manager when you send us a timeline and then any other type of um uh kind of those types of you know competence competency type or skill set type documents we may have yes for the role thank you so much and i i i just want to agree with um tom's comment in the chat a good search firm they're going to help us really define those qualities match it to what we have now make the updates and and and help us really design a process that gets us to what we we name as our core qualities that we want in a city manager can i also suggest thank you for that can i also suggest that we um you know some cities near us have had uh and i don't necessarily to be near us but some of our peer cities have had city manager searches um in the recent past rallies was not that long ago maybe you could also try to find some of those job descriptions miss young blood i'll do that that would be great anything else colleagues yeah just real quick mr mayor um i know everybody on this call knows this but we are the council has received a number of emails in the last weeks um by a resident intimating that i want to be the next city manager i just want to make it clear our job is hard enough i can't do that job and have no interest in it um uh so just want to put that out for everybody to understand that's not i'm not about that life so okay thanks you already were not on my finalist list i just want to make that clear mine either mr mayor mine either okay colleagues any other questions or comments i just want to make council member milton's not on that list either it's not just you i was just gonna add we keep it interesting i was sharing with i was i would like to share with um miss young blood that it would be helpful if you do find additional resources similar to what council member caviero pulled together because it is very in depth like it's very detailed and pulling together that type of timeline and what we're looking for so just feel i'm feel free to to to make inferences based on other communities that's what i'm getting at okay thank you thank you council member all right colleagues have we done it miss young blood do you feel like you have a good direction to help us i do and before i go i would be remiss if i did not thank james o'Donnell jem o'Donnell who's on the call he did all of this work thank you jim all of the work that you have just assigned to me jim thank you thanks for being with us also jim for five hours now we thank you not a problem we really do appreciate the work a lot thank you so much thanks thank you all all right colleagues uh i think we're now uh about to move to the appointments and why don't we hear from the city clerk on the appointments other than on item two madame clerk okay good evening everybody i'll start with the carolina theater during board of trustees that one we had a split vote on and uh do you want to hear the breakdown sure okay there were two selections for darin berlin two for shila crossby and two for kasey decosmo um can you say that one more time yes there were um two nominations for darin berlin two for shila crossby and two for kasey decosmo and then um one council member did not vote okay i did not vote that was me because i wasn't sure if we would readvertise or not and i would uh would like to put my vote in for uh kasey i i want to say that i'm actually for readvertising it um i i meant to bring that up earlier given the the diversity of the board and the the the lack of diversity and the lack of diversity of the candidates actually we have some good candidates um but i think we should re-advertise and especially since we're all our votes are all split i think that makes it easier we had re-advertised this is the second time madame clerk that we had yeah i went back that's one of the reasons i didn't vote because i i went back to listen to our last one it's the same yeah i'm sorry yeah i'm sorry i'd forgotten that thank you okay we've tried um diligently um and who did you cast your vote for council member cabillero kasey um i'm not sure how you pronounce her last name decosmo maybe decosmo uh i'm happy to change my vote also um i had voted for darin berlin but i'm happy to change my vote okay thank you very much thank you madame clerk the environmental affairs board you have agreed to nominate chaston wane swain for the homeless services advisory committee you've agreed to nominate herald briscoe and then you wanted to re-advertise the dha board and then did you want me to go ahead with the affordable housing yes why don't we hear colleagues um for the affordable housing uh committee um i'm going to make recommendation that we uh we'll see let's see what happens i may maybe the votes are all cast and this recommendation will be moved but if not i'll i'll make it so madame clerk why don't you tell us uh how the votes have been cast for the uh affordable housing committee okay for the at-large position um there were agreement amongst five of the nominees um stella adams nicole digs jarvis martin john parker and timothy stallman and then there was one that was outstanding okay and how about the other uh the other categories okay for the resident of affordable housing venice sanders the formerly homeless individual rita mcdonnell mcdaniel excuse me member with expertise in real estate development nicole furnace member with expertise in housing finance lucia constantine representative of the citizen advisory committee levon barnes all right so thank you madam clerk so it sounds like we um let me remind everybody that there are actually two more uh positions to be filled we only had one applicant for the people living in affordable housing category right madam clerk right we have one but we are going to advertise for the remaining so there are two more there are two more that will be representative of the group of people who are currently living in affordable housing um so um we have one vacancy and lots of good candidates uh on the um for the at-large positions um i'm going to uh ask about the council's interest in a candidate who's not in that at-large category but i think would add a lot and i think would add a lot in a way we need is courtney james who is in the um in the realtor category we chose nicole furnace for that category i would be happy to support miss james would like to support miss james and the other at-large seat i think that she brings she's the owner of um or i'm not sure if it's they call them owners in real estate companies she's the the principal um of urban Durham Realty and they're doing a lot of interesting things in terms of trying to think through affordability and she also just brings that important perspective that i think we need from somebody who is in our real estate community we've got one or two but i think we could really use more that somebody who's really knows the housing market so i'd like to recommend that but i know that that is um um it will take some an action by the council will take a motion uh or at least some thumbs up so it would be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on that i see a thumb up from councilmember cabrero but who would like to comment on that i would like to come sure so before we make that distinction can we get a clarity around who's been assigned or who's been actually nominated and whether or not um the diversity lines up sure i can give you an update on the remaining nominees i think that councilmember uh freeman means something different madame madame clark she means what's the diversity of the people that have been chosen so far isn't that right councilmember yeah so i think so far um that would be one two i think there's three maybe three white people and no so far the at-large positions there are two white males and two black females and one black male that's the um the six seats for the at-large residents the rest we have um one two three black females one white female and one black male yeah so that's seven african-american nominees and three white uh or you know choices that we've made so far you're correct yeah so uh i think that's good diversity um anybody want to anybody uh uh would like to express themselves uh or give a thumbs up or down on choosing james for that i was just gonna concur with you on miss james's experience in the community and i would also suggest concur that it would be a great recommendation all right let me see thumbs then if people are okay with that um seeing thumbs from everyone except mayor pro tem who i don't she's probably feeding a child dinner but i i believe that there are six uh thumbs i'll be back for the closed session but she did have to hop off yeah uh so madame clark uh courtney james would be the other nominee okay thank you there are so many good people on this list um including one of my best friends who is not on my list but they're just so many great people that we we we have um i think it was what the what uh councilmember melton said earlier we have an embarrassment of riches here in this situation all right um have we done it all for the appointments madam clerk yes we have thank you very much thank you and uh thank you to laverne and we appreciate you all for doing the work okay um madam attorney uh it is now time for us to go into closed session uh can you set the agenda yes we can sorry city manager mr maverick we said the question yeah the point of uh inquiry um just to put a fine point on our shot spot of discussion we didn't actually there's a a formal offer uh and i did i understand you your last statement to be if staff makes a recommendation we didn't really kind of formally say yay or nay to it i thought i understood you to say if staff has a recommendation they can make it i just want to be clear yeah that's what i was uh saying to um is that if we if staff recommends this to us then we would formally take it up as we traditionally do yes if staff has a recommendation they should bring it to us i would invite that okay is that helpful it is helpful i'm just want to for this particular item i mean obviously there are things that this council has if a counselor brings something up and wants to do something we've taken action on council initiated initiatives as well but for this particular item you're you're deferring and saying it's that i mean i guess i was sort of reading the tea leaves right um but if if anyone can can can make a motion i agree any council member can make a motion we've discussed this and if you wanted to make a motion on that uh you know today or at another time we could certainly do that i don't i'm not trying to preclude that i agree that absolutely no and i just wanted to honor your final you know directive uh uh hold in a gavel that that so i'll defer to what you said that's that i just wanted to be clear that that's what you that was the uh intended outcome of that particular discussion just to put a fine point of staff wants to think we're dead absolutely no i won't offer a motion today thank you mr man thank you very much um mr bonfield you're settling your last agenda here thank you mr mayor uh yes i have uh items for consent one through five seven through nine eleven through fourteen and twenty seven and then gba public hearings seventeen to nineteen and twenty six thank you so much uh i see a question do i see a question from council member freeman i just want to touch back on i know you explained it very thoroughly exactly how the the program is set up with the county i have concerns that the questions are going to continue to be raised and so i would love to get staff's recommendation on how to make sure that residents understand that there's a difference and there's not been a shift for this year how would you like that to happen council member do you do you want that to be made public about the city um public affairs office that would be helpful yes okay i think so mr manager um council member freeman is referring to the low-income homeowner program that we make clear that this year the existing program will be continuing to exist for this year and we'll get with the department community development to be sure to reiterate that thank you very much thank you colleagues uh you have heard the manager's agenda can i have a motion that we settle the agenda moved back in moved by council member re seconded by council member freeman that we settle the agenda madam clerk can you please call the roll mayor shul uh mayor pro dem johnson council member caballero hi council member freelon council member freeman hi council member middleton i vote i council member reese hi thank you thank you colleagues um in the covet era if you're not actually here to vote you don't count as a yes so that motion passes six to zero okay now we will turn to the attorney um madam attorney uh to talk about our closed session and guide us into that good afternoon again members of city council and mr mayor um again the city attorney's office has at the council's request sought for the disclosure of the law enforcement recordings that are related to the incident that occurred at rochelle manor on august 21st 2020 we did obtain a court order that allows me to share those videos with city