 Steve I had too little faith in myself. You did good Charlie. You're a fast bike rider. I had too little faith in myself. Charlie did you get a haircut or is your hair just blending in with your background? I got my, oh me or Javier? Well I can tell Javier I got one for sure. No, where's your hair? It's wet, my hair's wet. It's wet, okay. Yeah, sorry. Sorry. And I was wearing my bike helmet about 37. Ah, you've got helmet head. I love it, where's my hair? I'm going to start using that. That's been one minute to air. We are. Alright, I'll try to start by hitting myself. Thank you, Charlie. I had nice clothes but they're still at the house so I'm going to try just to do neck up so people don't know I'm wearing this biking shirt with my, I voted sticker. 30 seconds. They know now. Hey, JC, I made it over to see the fire. That thing handles like a BMW. It was just crazy. I wanted to hold that over your head forever. I got to ride in the truck and you didn't. I gave you credit for me making it over there. Recording in progress. Good afternoon. I want to call this meeting, this work session of the Durham City Council to order at one o'clock on Thursday, October 21 2021 and certainly want to welcome all my wonderful colleagues, our great staff and everybody who's attending this meeting or watching this meeting. We're happy to have you with us. Madam clerk, would you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson? Here. Council Member Caballero? Here. Council Member Freelon? Here. Council Member Freeman? Council Member Middleton? I'm here. Council Member Reese? I'm here. Thank you. Thank you, Madam clerk. Colleagues will now move to announcements by the council. Are there announcements by any members of the council? Council Member Caballero. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I just wanted to do a couple of fun shout outs and then just talk about something more serious. First of all, I wanted to thank our fire department for hosting an amazing event on Tuesday where we got to see kind of like a Star Trek futuristic fire truck that will be deployed. I think early next year in the city of LA, which is extremely energy efficient fire truck and is already being used in several European cities. I want to thank Fleet Management as well because they're putting these kinds of things on our radar so that we can meet our sustainability goals. It was a lot of fun and it definitely felt real different than a regular fire truck. Second of all, I want to congratulate the Riverside cross-country team for finishing an amazing season. They are the number one county Durham County team, which is pretty incredible. And I also want to shout out my middle kid for beating their personal best record yesterday. I think at 20 minutes, 22nd 5K, which was incredible. They've been running since July, so it's a pretty big jump for them to hit in three months. And then the last thing I wanted to talk about, which is rather sobering is the eviction crisis that we are seeing in the city of Durham right now. Last week I went to observe at court and it is quite harrowing what's happening to so many of our residents. I want to thank both Legal Air, actually Legal Aid, NCCU and Duke because everyone is all hands on deck for the situation we're facing. And I look forward to hearing from staff who I know will be coming to us soon with a proposal on what the city can do better to really, as best we can, help with this crisis. It is quite frankly heart wrenching to see what families are experiencing right now. Thank you so much. I am very concerned as we all are about the eviction situation and I appreciate how the council and my colleagues have paid so much attention to this and working with our manager. I know that this is of the highest priority for manager Page and the department and I know that we are making very good progress on getting a partner and to do this work for us and we're going to be hearing quite soon from our administration about it. And so thank you for putting that out there. We need to make this happen and I know our staff is making it happen, so much appreciation. Other announcements, colleagues? Councilmember Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, colleagues and friends and everyone watching. I want to thank Councilmember Caballero for her announcements that I'm going to associate myself with all of them. I just want to send a special shout out to the Panthers of Shepherd Middle School. My friend and principal there, Claude Archer and Ms. Reed, who was the head of the Law and Forensics program there for the last two days, Tuesday and Wednesday. I spent a number of hours as a guest lecturer for the students there, sixth grade, seventh and eighth grade. The reason why I had to spend two days is because I couldn't pick one class and not visit the others. I want to thank the faculty and staff there for an incredibly warm welcome and for the students for their engagement. I also want to re-up my invitation for them to come. I invited them to our house, y'all, to come to City Hall and see us and see where we work and check out the chamber and check out UFO if you're in the building. So again, congratulations for the wonderful work you're doing at Shepherd Middle School and I had a wonderful time visiting with the students. I'm going to thank them for the warm welcome. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I will be in the house. If they come, I will be there. Looking forward, buddy. Any further announcements? Councilmember Freeman? Oh, my apologies for my delay. I had a little bit of technical trouble, but I just wanted to share. I know that the city attorney shared an update on the Tenants Bill of Rights recommendations and I will follow up with some folks in the community. And then I was hoping that we could have the conversation in a couple of more weeks, I guess, at the next work session to give it some time to get some more feedback. So that's fine. Thank you very much, Councilmember and colleagues. Without objection, we will schedule that for the next work session. Everybody good? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Councilmembers. Councilmember Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to add on to that from Councilmember Freeman's announcement to say that as the chair of the legislative committee, I would really, really like the opportunity to work on trying to get some of the fantastic recommendations that have come forward from the community into our legislative agenda. Obviously, we're not in a great place in the kind of two-year legislative cycle to be adding stuff, but I think it makes sense. Once we have kind of sorted out what is within our power to do as a city and what's not, the things that aren't and that we still think are good ideas, that we go ahead and make plans to try to put those in front of our legislators, our delegation and Raleigh and in Washington to make sure that they're aware that these are very serious concerns and we'd like them to stand up for our tenants the way that we are going to. So happy to work with you, Councilmember Freeman, on that and let's get it done. Definitely, I appreciate that. Any further announcements? All right. Thank you all so much. We'll now move to priority items and we'll welcome our city manager, Madam Manager, any priority items today? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and members of the Durham City Council. I do have a few priority items for you this afternoon. Some of them have come, some of the text of some of them have come kind of late today and we are going to be asking you to suspend the rules and vote on a couple of the items. So we do have staff that are here if you want to inquire further on these items before, you know, you vote on them or make that decision, you know, we certainly are ready to respond to those questions. But first of all, item number 11 is a purchase contract. It is with E plus technology for the network infrastructure at the Department of Water Management's facility complex. This is phase one of the Miss Lake construction and it is scheduled to actually be completed in spring of 2022. So not far off. Suspending the rules and voting on this item today will allow at this work session will allow the city to initiate the purchase of integral equipment that is becoming subject to significant lead times in the supply chain. So we're just trying to recapture as many days as we can in order to make sure that that equipment is here when it is needed. There's very similar for agenda item number 12, which is a purchase contract with contact systems and it is for audio visual equipment for the Department of Water Management's facility complex. So those two items have the same description in terms of asking, you know, asking for that permission to suspend the rules and vote on them today to purchase that integral equipment that's subject to significant lead times. So that's the first two items. We also have item number 14, which has been has been updated, but we are requesting that the suspension of rules for this item be withdrawn. But an original attachments and it is item number 14 service and purchase contract Brady integrated security for the site and building security system at the same facility, which is the Durham Water Management Facility complex. We are not requesting that the rules be suspended for this item, but the original attachment number 23 and four have all been removed and original attachment number five has been renumbered as attachment number two. Also today, we will have agenda item number 10 where a contract amendment with reinvestment partners ink for the rehabilitation of 2816 Ross Road that motion has been revised to reflect the original contract amount. And agenda item number 15, which is a source water risk and response plan is a presentation and we expect that presentation to take about 15 minutes. Agenda item number 19, which is a contract with bro construction company for SW 80 trails repair 2021 attachment number one has been updated to remove track changes and comments. And finally, agenda item number 25 Daniel Williams, who signed up to speak as a citizen will not be speaking today during the October 21 work session. That is all I have today. Mr. Mayor and Council. Manager colleagues you've heard the manager's priority items can have a motion for their acceptance. Move. Take it. Move by Councilman Freeman seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson Madam clerk we please call the roll. Your school. Ah, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. I can't remember Caballero. I can't remember Freelon. I can't remember Freeman. I can't remember Middleton. I vote I can't remember Reese. Thank you. Thank you very much. Madam clerk and thank you madam manager. Madam attorney, any priority items today. Sorry again. Mayor, it's Don sitting in for Kim Rayberg. Good to see you. Good to see you all. Thank you. My second priority items from our office. Thank you very much, Mr. Attorney. Madam clerk any, any priority items today. Good afternoon, mayor Madam air pro 10 and City Council members, the city clerk's office does have two priority items. The first one is agenda item number one. Councils being requested to approve the September seven draft minutes, My second priority item is to request council to discuss in-person council meetings and then the guidelines for the board's committees, commissions and task forces. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, you've heard that the clerks per IT items can have a motion for their acceptance. So moved. Second. Moved by Council Member Freeman. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, I'm going to hold the clerks item until the end of the meeting. So we can have that discussion after our staff and others who are listening are able to depart. So I just want to make sure that we're being respectful of that other's time. All right. We will now move to the administrative consent items onto the city clerk's office. Item one, approval of city council minutes. Item two, Board of Adjustment Mayoral Appointment. Item three, Durham Open Space and Transmission Appointment. Item four, Go Triangle Board of Trustees Appointment. Item five, Racial Equity Commission Appointment. Item six, Safety and Wellness Task Force Appointment. Item under departmental issues, Audit Services Department. Item seven, Community Development Procurement Process Performance Audit September 2021. Item eight, under the city manager's office, confirmation of civilian police review board members. Under nine under the Community Development Department, amended and restated construction to permanent loan agreement with CASA for 2702 North Duke Street, Bryan Place Apartments. Item 10, Contract Amendment with Reinvestment Partners, Inc. for the rehabilitation of 2816 Ross Road. And I'm going to pull item 10. Let me just also add that I see that for item nine, there's someone here from CASA and I assume they only want to discuss this item. They're here to answer questions if that's wrong. They can let me know. I'm going to pull item 10. Item 11, Under Department of Water Management, Purchase Contract, E-Technology, Inc. for the Network Infrastructure and the Department of Water Management Facility Complex. And we have been asked to suspend the rules and vote on this item. And I will accept a motion to that effect. I move we suspend the rules. Okay. Move by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, seconded by Council Member Freeman that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. I'll now accept a motion to approve this item. So moved. Second. Move by Council Member Rees, seconded by Council Member Caballero. Unless there's any discussion, Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. We'll now move to item 12, purchase contract contact systems for audio visual equipment for the Department of Water Management Facility Complex. We've also been asked to suspend the rules and vote on this item. Can I have a motion to that effect? So moved. Second. Move by Council Member Freeman, seconded by Council Member Rees that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Rees. Aye. Thank you very much, colleagues. Now can I have a motion that we approve this item unless there's any discussion? All right. Thank you, Council Member. Move by Council Member Rees, seconded by Council Member Freeman. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuhl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Rees. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it and the motion passes unanimously. Continue with the consent items. Item 13, Purchase Contract, PMC Commercial Interiors for Furniture Workstations and Ancillary Equipment for the Department of Water Management Facility Complex. Item 14, Service and Purchase Contract, Brady Integrated Security Inc. for the Site and Building Security System at the Department of Water Management Facility Complex. Item 15, Source Water Risk and Response Plan, and this is going to be a presentation. Item 16 under the Finance Department, September, 2021 Bid Report, under 17 under the General Services Contract, sorry, Department, Acquisition of 720 Archery Range Road, PID number 191699 for the Future Expansion of Lake Mickey. Item 18, Durham Parks and Recreation Department, I'm sorry, Durham Parks and Recreation Outdoor Aquatics Project Contract with Ratio Sales NC PLLC. Mr. Mayer, can we pull that up? I believe we have a community member who signed up at the chat and speak on it. I'll pull it for them. I was just looking at that as well. Thank you. Mr. Mayer, did we need to spend the rules and vote on number 14 as well or am I mistaken? That was withdrawn by the manager. Thank you. We had originally had that listed, but she withdrew that request. Yeah, thank you. If only I should have paid better attention. Thank you. No worries, I always appreciate the reminders. Thank you. Item 19, Parks and Recreation Department, Contract with Rowe Construction Company for SW80 Trails Repair 2021. Under Public Works Department, Item 20, Utility Construction Agreement for U-3308 Allston Avenue. Under Presentations General Services Department, Item 21, Durham Cultural Advisory Board, FY23, Cultural Master Plan Funding Proposal. Under Public Hearing City County Planning Department, Item 23, Consolidated Annihilation Gryphon Place. I'm sorry, that's Item 22. I'm sorry. Item 23 is Zoning Map Change, Bethpage Office 2. Item 24, Zoning Map Change, line of park. There are no citizens matters to be heard at one o'clock. Mr. Williams has decided not to appear before the camera. So colleagues, our agenda, and I'll ask the manager to confirm this, is we have two pulled items, items 10 and 18, and then we have presentations on items 15 and 21 to be followed by the clerk's priority item, a discussion of our meeting, whether or not to go back and when to go back to in-person meetings. Madam manager, is that what you have? And that's what I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. All right, colleagues, I'm gonna start with the pulled items and we'll start with item 10. And I pulled this item and then, so I think that it would be fair to say that and the memo expressed this as well, that the cost overruns here is very significant and it's a big different point to all of us, I think. I know. I know that we have been in the $40,000 to $50,000 range in subsidy per unit and to see this with the, with what's happened with the asbestos in these buildings as well as the COVID-related supply chain related costs to drive the price up as it has is, it's a huge amount. And I'm gonna go back to item 11, it's a huge amount and I'm worried about it. I'm worried that we certainly can't do many of these. We know that when we have 30% AMI like we have with the cost of housing, it's gonna be more expensive to subsidize and we've done some of that and up to 100,000 per unit. But this is even above that and it's because of these cost overruns. So I'll start with that. I just, Mr. Johnson, good to see you. I read the rationale and I understand the rationale that we already have some sub-costs here and we have the concern about needing to spend our CDBG money and that CDBG money not getting it would mean that we could reduce our allocation in future years, which we certainly don't want. But I'm very concerned about this overrun and I wondered if you or the, if you could tell us why you think it's worthwhile still doing this at this very high cost per unit. Greetings Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, Reginald Johnson, Director Department of Community Development. I will admit this has been a tough and challenging project. We're here to talk about the preservation of 42 units in a disinvested area, have been disinvested in a 50 year old building and the project is, was scoped for some asbestos mitigation, but in the midst of that, we have been hit with two whammies. One, the developer's real reinvestment partners. One was that the remediation needed to be more extensive than was originally planned and they had to go in to remove sheet rock, which meant that needed to go in and remove and change out systems, which resulted in one cause. And then it was in the midst of this opportunity, this challenge called COVID. As you mentioned with the price increases and for example, lumber increase in 250%, either one of those would have been something that we would have handled better, but we have both of them. One of the challenges that we face, in making this recommendation, is that the project is halfway completed. And the question is, if you're walking across the bridge, do you turn around and go back or do you press forward to the other side? There was some cost in us going back. We were affected by the CDBG. The developer would lose a million, almost a million dollars that they would have to return. There will be persons that will be losing affordable housing that currently they have affordable housing now. And then we would also lose the units because most likely the development would have to be sold. So pressing forward to the other end to work toward the completion, we will get the units. It's going to cost us. It's going to cost us dearly. You mentioned we can't do another one of these, period. It have something of this magnitude happen. There's no question about that. We're looking at how we even evaluate preservation projects going forward so that we don't get caught in a situation like this again. Yes, the price is extensive, but also there's a cost if we go back, but if we go forward, we do gain units. And it's in a challenging area of our city that we can, that is the need of affordable units. And so it is a tough one. It's very tough. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Can you explain the concern about the loss of the CDBG funds? Oh, they'll be glad to, Mayor. So we have already put $400,000 in CDBG community development block grant funds in this project. That's fine. But we also stand to put another $989,000 in this project of CDBG funds. CDBG Community Development Block Grant US Department of Housing Development has a spending test on May 2nd, which is a 1.5 test, which means that we must spend one and a half times our allocation. This project is a cornerstone in us meeting that goal. And without it, we would be not stand the risk of not being able to reach that goal with the time period that we have left. The significance of that for us is that while we did meet the test this year, we did not meet it the year before. We were able to recover from that well. But from the eyes of HUD, if one does not meet the spend down test and this is a test of spending, that the penalty for that is the reduction of CDBG allocation funds to that particular jurisdiction. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson. You mentioned, and it's also mentioned in the memo that we may, for rehabilitation projects, which this is in which I agree, are much harder to evaluate than greenfield construction in terms of what the cost of run potential is, that you're considering a third party evaluator to assist the department in trying to, and the contract and the, our partners, investment partners to, our, what's the word that I'm looking for, Reginald, not our partners, our people we're contracting with. Well, our developers. Our developers, thank you. In assessing the properties, so I have two thoughts. One is that sounds good. That sounds very wise. And then the other thought I have is, I know that those can be time consuming kinds of processes, and we all know the value of time here in terms of constructing these projects. Is that the kind of thing that can be done in a way that is timely? Can we have a third party evaluator who is helping us in a way that is also not delaying projects? We already know that millions of things that delay these projects. So what are your thoughts on that? Yes, sir, we can do that in a timely way. If we remember the process, we normally issue RSP requests for proposals for projects. And then we also go through evaluation time period. And then when we select those projects, then we go to a time period of review before we finalize the awards. And so what we're saying is in suggesting is that we need to do some more review. I don't know that it would have caught this, in this particular situation, because we're still in dealing with cost increases because of COVID, but in terms of the project itself, to ensure that the scope is appropriate. This was a renovation of a 50 year old building. And so there were some other things that needed to be covered, but they did have a recommendation and had done some recommendation for themselves. But as it turns out, when the app permit was applied for, they needed to remove the rules, the walls, and the take asbestos state, which caused some other issues. We think that with additional review, we've been able to assess that earlier. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Those are all my questions. I do have a couple of comments. Reinvestment partners is a fabulous partner to the city in many ways and on many projects. So we know that they are a great and a trustworthy partner. I understand what you're saying about the CDBG funds and our need to maintain our ability to keep our CDBG allocation, which is so crucial. And I think that your idea about a third party evaluator makes a lot of sense. I'm gonna vote for this, but I very much hope. And I understand that things arise, but I very much hope that the council will not see another one of these with this level of cost overrun where we are forced into position where, as you say, we're in the middle of the bridge when we know what the overrun is. And so I know you feel the same way. You've already expressed that. I know we all do. These things happen from time to time, but they can't happen very often. Colleagues, other comments or questions for Mr. Johnson? Councilmember Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you calling this out and allowing Mr. Johnson to expand a little bit further. Because I didn't capture that from the memo, that level of complexity, but I do want to note that this project, I think it's an understatement to say that the area that it's being conducted in is challenging. And I feel like the risk going into it that reinvestment partners took, knowing that this community, like if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a building, an area where, like there's multiple other buildings, it's not like it's a site where they could have like cleared it and just kind of built new. And so I really appreciate the preservation side of this in that it could spur on the other buildings actually being done at market rate and there would still be affordable housing. And so while I want to be really clear that the mayor is exactly correct, we don't want to see those overruns. I don't want to see staff get off, be afraid of doing these preservation projects now. So thank you. I must not remember. Other questions or comments, colleagues? Council member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to second everything that you said. This is obviously a critically important project and I support the measure before us, but it's clear that we can't do this very often and I really appreciate Mr. Johnson's commitment to taking steps to make sure that this doesn't happen, or at least we have a better lead time on it. The reason I've raised my hand is because I don't see another item for the community development department on our agenda today and I just wanted to take a minute to say to Reginald Johnson, the head of our community development department that I am so grateful and I know I speak for many in our community, so grateful for all the work that you and your department are doing right now. I sat down and thought about it this morning and I can't think of another department in city government that is more critical to the work that this city is trying to do in so many areas and I know y'all are way past capacity right now in terms of the work you're trying to do. You've got smart, blank city council members who are adding work onto your workload, even some of us who like to send you helpful advice along the way that you probably don't need. I wanted to say how truly, truly grateful I am for your leadership personally, but also for the way that your department is leaning in to the challenges that face our community right now. So Mr. Johnson, thank you very much. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. Any more comments or questions, colleagues? Mr. Johnson, thank you for being with us. Thank you, Mayor. All right, we'll now move to item 18, but I'm sorry, we're not gonna move to item 18 yet. I have been informed by the clerk and I missed this, sorry, earlier, that we have at least one person here who it would have signed up for public comment. I don't see, I see three people listed on my list, Dory Gruner, Tameka Walker, and Percival Patterson. I don't see Percival Patterson or Dory Gruner here. But I do see Tameka Walker. And I apologize to you, Ms. Walker. I should have, the clerk had given me a list and I just overlooked it and I'm, please accept my apology. We're glad to have you and you're welcome to be here and we're glad you're here and you have three minutes. Yes, first of all, good afternoon, everyone. I'm here again in front of you guys to continue to talk about safety at Gold Durham. Since the last time we had talked, we had several incidents just to happen the other day to an operator that was assaulted on the bus. The passenger had threw a beer on her and also spit on her. Also, just this past weekend, we had a passenger walking around with the gun at Durham station and to someone called Durham PD. They chased the guy off the property. It was around 1130 PM. Also, me and another coworker was trying to get to our car and there was a couple of them fussing and fighting, talking about, call the police, he has a gun. Also, the passengers was upstairs at the COVID clinic. They had started fighting over $10 gift cards. We here at Gold Durham are the first ones to go out in the morning and the last ones to come back in. And when it comes to recognition, we are the last ones to receive it. We have overcrowded buses, which leads to angry passengers, which could lead to violence on the bus. In closing, I'm still asking for buses to stop service at 10 o'clock Monday through Saturday and seven o'clock on Sunday. That will match with the other organizations in our area. What is it gonna take? Do we have to have a fallen operator by the hands of an unruly passenger to get your attention? Because at this point, we have been assaulted, hospitalized and nothing has been done. Thank you for your time. And Mr. Patterson will not be here, but I have my vice president, Kurt Mitchell, and he would like to also speak in the place of Mr. Patterson. Thank you, Ms. Walker. And I'll offer some comments in a minute after we, I don't see Kurt Mitchell, I see Mitchell Sava, is that the same person? No, sir. Is he with you, Kurt Mitchell? Yes, sir. I'm sorry, okay, great. Kurt Mitchell, please, so welcome. We're glad to have you and you also have three minutes. Well, thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, city council members. I'm Kurt Mitchell. I've been a Gold Durham employee for 22 years. My concerns today are safety and looking out for the well-being of Gold Durham employees. Employees are asking what reason and what incentive do we have to remain working here? Since working through the pandemic, things have gotten worse. We have no COVID relief resources to help those that use all of their FMLA and sick day time during the pandemic. They had children that couldn't go to daycare or school. Some even caught the virus. The company took their vacations away the following year because of a certain stipulation. It's not our fault that we are in a pandemic. Employees are facing suspension, termination, because they exhausted all of their FMLA at sick time. We are constantly losing employees because they don't feel safe. We don't have enough drivers to run a complete run board. They are stressed, afraid, tired of being unappreciated. We are essential workers driving around more passes than any other transit company in the tri-state area. We are asking the city for more resources for COVID benefits and also higher wages increasing for the Gold Durham workers. Thank you, Mayor, city council, for giving up the floor to express our concerns. Mr. Mitchell and Ms. Walker, thank you so much for being with us. And Ms. Walker, thank you for being here again. Any assault that you all are experiencing is absolutely unacceptable. And what you've had to say about this, the feelings you've expressed, your anger about it, your dismay about it is absolutely justified. Our transportation director, Sean Egan, I realize he's not here today. I look through the attendees. He did not know, I'm sure that this was gonna be on the agenda. But I know that our administration is here listening and we absolutely do need to do everything we can to keep you safe. The other issues that you raised, Mr. Mitchell, about family leave and pay, again, I know our administration is listening to these items today that you've listed. I'm not sure, I don't know the details of those, but I know our administration is aware of it and I'm gonna ask, since Mr. Egan is not here, I'm gonna ask manager Page to make sure that we get you all a response and that we especially figure out ways to respond to your safety concerns. Madam manager, any thoughts? Yes, I just wanted to acknowledge the comments. We will ensure that Keith Chadwell and Sean Egan and myself review the recorded comments here. Typically if we did have a citizen matter that we had in advance, that would have been someone prepared to respond specifically or written responses you have mentioned, but we will respond to these comments today. Thank you very much. Thank you. And Mr. Mitchell and Ms. Walker, again, I am, I just wanna let you know, and I know I speak for the whole council. We are appalled when we hear that our bus operators who are so crucial to the year, the lifeblood of the city and everything that you said about your work is absolutely true. And we want you to know that we hear you and that we want you to be safe and that I know the manager will take your concern seriously. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Middleton. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor and Ms. Walker. Mr. Mitchell, thank you so much for being with us today. I had a rather lengthy conversation with Tamika Ms. Walker yesterday about the concerns and I want them to know, I did forward an email yesterday to the manager and to Director Egan and copied a number of other city leaders about follow-up. So I assured her that I would do that. I want you to know that I did do that and I'm thankful that the manager indicated that there would be a response forthcoming. Ms. Walker alluded to a meeting that was held I believe on October 1st with Mr. Egan and where some specific things were discussed ranging from the barriers protecting our drivers and to some type of security on the bus and on the lines. I do want to affirm they are absolutely essential workers. The city cannot operate if folk are not moving around and can't get to work or can't get to medical appointments. There's no doubt that they are essential workers. This is really just an iteration. We know of a larger issue that we're dealing with when it comes to violence, particularly gun violence in our city. And it will start to affect our commerce and our ability to negotiate the city, be it transportation, our economy, all areas are subject to impact and we are beginning to hear these anecdotes of folk that are essential workers being impacted by this issue. So I am pleased that this is on the radar of our administration, of our staff. And I want to thank Ms. Walker for her advocacy. She has a job, she's an actual operator. So to take time to do this on behalf of her fellow workers and indeed on behalf of the city at large because our transportation is our nerve center, is our nervous system off of the city. So I want to just associate myself with the staff's commitment to respond and be responsive to Ms. Walker and her colleagues at Gold Durham and fully declare that we are, we're on it. And we recognize that no one is exempt from these issues and it is absolutely unacceptable that folk while they're at work, making sure we get to where we need to get are being assaulted and threatened with weapons. It is absolutely unacceptable and I trust that we will do everything within our power to protect our workers who are there for us every day. First out and last in, I think was said and I want to affirm that and thank them for their service to the city. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council member. All right, colleagues. We will now move on to our next item, item 18. And this was an item, this is the item. I have some comments on this and a question, but first we also have a member of the public who would like to speak on this item and that is Adeel Ortiz. Madam clerk, can you make Ms. Ortiz available to be heard? Welcome Ms. Ortiz. And we're glad to have you with us and you have three minutes. Hello, thank you so much for giving me some time to discuss my concerns about the Hoover Road Park and the impending plans and engagement that's coming up. Just wanted to say that when our new director came on to Parks and Recreation, I was really excited about the opportunity to meet someone new who might be more amenable, quite frankly, to community engagement and connecting with all of the wonderful work that is happening in the city that brings community residents closer together to the city departments that deliver their tax-funded amenities. So that those amenities more closely mirror the things that those people want in their backyard. And so right now, I understand that this park is the next step in the master plan, but the master plan itself was probably built on what we know we're not the most equitable engagement practices. And so we wanna know a little bit about from the proposed contractor, how they plan on handling that tension between here you have a master document, how much fidelity do you think you have to stick to it or is there room, quite frankly, for the current day needs and express desires of the community and the design and how information is collected, how it's analyzed, how will they be part of decision-making? I know in the memo, there is a steering committee that's going to be put together, but in my reaching out to the staff at Parks and Recreation that are most closely related to this project, it's been kind of like a brick wall, quite frankly, to see how they might be able to connect with community-rooted folks who can be a part of that process long-term. It seems to me, unfortunately, that they've been pretty intentional about separating Hoover Road and the Wheels Fund Park engagement from other things. And part of the sadness that I have about that is that obviously as we're all still dealing with a pandemic and even before the pandemic, communities in this area often experience engagement fatigue and so integrating engagement efforts together so that we can see how they are parts of a whole and how they connect to a larger community narrative would be more helpful. And I'm just concerned that those things won't happen in a way that allow us to enunciate our concerns around traffic and road impacts, housing prices, et cetera, as we move forward with this project. And so I'm just here to express my concerns to formally express to the staff that I feel fairly shut out from supporting design of this and as a community resident that is very passionate about this issue, I think that the experiences I've had thus far are the very antithesis of what the equitable community engagement blueprint were meant to produce. Thank you for your comments, Ms. Ortiz. We appreciate you being with us today. All right, colleagues. Who is here from the staff to discuss this item? Good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem, members of city council. I'm Jason Fallon, senior PM with general services and I'm here to talk about on behalf of the contract with ratio states. All right, thank you. Mr. Fallon, is anybody here from Parks and Rec as well? Yes, we have a few resources persons with us today. All right, good. Thank you. My question, what is the owner's reserve? There's an owner's reserve of $146,000. What is that? That's a great question, Mayor. We have in our CIP, we have 483,000 for this project in this fiscal year. And the reserve is the item that we did not or exceed our budget and between the proposal and our owner's contingency, the reserve is what we have to a lot meant to continue with our project, our scope of services or roll into the next fiscal year to build upon our scope as we further engage with this process project as we go down the fiscal years. Okay, great. Thank you. Good to know. Thank you. Thank you. Let me observe one thing about this contract that has nothing to do with the, in many ways, it's a good thing. We have four minority subs on this contract. This agenda is full of MWBE and WBE, MWBE and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE, and WBE subcontractors all throughout this agenda. Mr. Phelan, I'm not addressing this to you. I'm addressing this to the world that are, we've done very well in this agenda with that. None of them are from Durham, none of them. All four of these contractors are from Raleigh and throughout our agenda, that's what this looks like. And I just, you know, I know I've said this a thousand times, but I don't think it can be said too many times. Part of this is we need to help the businesses in Durham develop who can do this work. And then I think that there's another aspect to it too that I have learned more about recently, which is that a lot of these contractors have minority and women subs who they are ready, who they're used to working with. And so, and that's a good thing. So when they get the contract and there's a requirement like we have for minority women subs, they plug them in. And if they're all, and they've got a really good, reliable subcontractor from Raleigh, they're gonna plug that subcontractor into the project. I'm not sure how to deal with that problem. And I'm certainly not complaining about the contractors doing that. They have these subs who they're giving business to and working with them. But we have got to figure out a way that when we have a whole agenda full of minority women subs that we've got some from Durham. And I hope that our built to last program can help to develop these businesses because I think that is absolutely, it's crucial. It's crucial. Okay, that was my speech, Mr. Field. And again, not addressed to you. I will ask if someone from Parks and Rec could come and talk about the plans for public engagement around this project. Mr. Walcott, welcome. Thank you, Mr. and members of council. Happy to speak to that. I think you'll also see in the contract that's one of the priorities of this firm that we're gonna be working with. Is to set that up, is to develop that. And there will be plenty of conversations about how this particular site interacts with both the local community and neighborhoods such as Merrickmore neighbors, but also how it can interact and compliment the park right across the street where we'll have playgrounds and soccer fields. So a big part of that interaction is programming is amenities, but how do folks from near and far access this great new asset that they can enjoy? Whether that's walking safely there or it's along a bus line, those are all the things that we're interested in hearing and creating opportunities for. The timeline, just to let you know, construction is scheduled to be completed in year 2027. That's why it's important for us to start early now so we can have as many opportunities of conversation and engagement to really get the pulse of the community so we can do and provide the best that we can for what everyone needs and wants. Thank you very much, Mr. Walcott. And I did read in the memo about this, about the plans for engagement and I appreciate it. We're not quite ready to have that screen shared yet. Okay, good. Thank you, Ms. Austin. We'll get to that in a minute. But I appreciate your readiness. All right, colleagues, questions and comments for Mr. Phelan or Mr. Walcott, Councilman Milton. Thank you, Mr. Merritt. Thank you, Mr. Phelan and Walcott for being with us today. My question isn't really germane to the contract but more to the master plan itself. Speaking of community engagement, I've been having a number of conversations in the community about wheels in particular and particularly younger constituents. So my question is, is there anything about our master plan that precludes the return of skating to that facility? No, there's nothing that precludes or even speaks to. And that's part of the process that we'll go through at this location in general. We all know that we purchased this property with the intent of an aquatics facility. Great, that's what we're gonna do. When we go through this process and we have the conversations with the community, we're gonna hear about the existing amenities and what the preference is. And we'll keep that in mind and we'll have that available. So we're not going to paint ourselves in the corner of that just because we have a pool that'll dictate what we can or cannot do with the existing amenities on site. So there's opportunities still to go either way with the existing amenities and facilities. Let me just disclose, and I'm glad to hear that. Let me disclose to you that a CEO of a national skating company contact, he may have contacted many of us, but I had a conversation with him yesterday and raised a possibility of, they're eavesdropping on what our conversations here in Durham about what to do with our young people and giving our young people options and things to do, particularly post-pandemic, raised the possibility of while we are realizing our master plan with respect to the aquatic center to possibly look at somebody's echoing, the return of skating to that facility. And perhaps even looking to get into some kind of contract relationship to provide. This is an iconic place and a lot of folks have a lot of memories in that place. And I keep running into folk who talk about just memories in that place and would love to have a place for their kids to skate in that area. So I'm sending you guys an email, folks in the email and Parks and Rec, but I'm glad to hear that that doesn't preclude it. But I'm wondering if we can while we're on our way to realizing the aquatic center, if we can get some use out of that facility, particularly the skating ring for our young people in the city. So thank you. That's all. We'll more to come on that. Mr. Council Member Middleton, I do have one thing to add on top of that, just to build on your comment a bit, sir, is outside of the Aquatics Program Scope Award that we have with our vendor, we've also built in a line item in preparation and kind of in four sites for, but as Ms. Ortiz commented on the 1,000 petitions for this roller skating ring, we have an existing conditions assessments built into this contract a little bit in case we needed to kind of tap into that resource as a conversation develops around existing amenities as an asset to the city. Thank you, Deb. Well, that's encouraging to hear it. Thank you so much. And I look forward to more discussions around that. Certainly those two. Thank you. Absolutely. It's an exciting prospect and proposition before us if we can realize it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, gentlemen. We've ever seen Council Member Middleton skate. You really want to have that ring. Council Member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Real quick, as you engage with the community about this issue, I just want to say that as a member of the community, I couldn't feel more strongly about making sure that roller skating is in the future of this particular facility. That was my understanding when I voted for the darn thing to buy it. To hear you say now that it's a possibility is, I didn't like that. I didn't care for that at all. And so as a member of the community, I'm here to tell you that wheels must continue to be a skating rink going forward. And I plan to use whatever influence I possess to make that happen. I just wanted to make you sure you knew that, Mr. Walcott. Thank you and thank you, Mr. Mayor. That's all I had. For our College Council Member Freeman, I'll just say that Mr. Walcott is in kind of a catch 22 here. We have many council members that we have many community members that want this to be a skating rink. I do too. We also have many community members that are saying to him, loud and clear, don't make any decisions about this until you hear from us. I am sympathetic to Mr. Walcott's position. Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before that comment, I was getting ready to say something. I just want to say I'm probably not sympathetic and I want to say that there has to be a skating rink. I was really concerned. I'm really concerned now. We're talking about 2027 and it's 2021. And the skating rink's not open now due to COVID is my understanding. When you're talking about it as existing conditions and the language you're using pushes out a forecast conversation and that there's, as if the skating rink is not going to be open right now. And so knowing that we all just bought skates in the last couple of years and we'd like to use them in my household, I just want to know if it's going to be open anytime soon. Well, right now, I hope you all know that it's being used as a great resource for COVID vaccinations right now. So that's what it's currently being used for. And I'll have to look to see our contract as far as how long that goes out for vaccinations. So that is the existing plan right now. Thank you, Mr. Walpat. Thank you, Council Member. Yes, thank you. Council members want to skate. That's all there is to it. Isn't there a song about that? Council Member Freeland? Yeah, there are lots of them. There should be. Any other comments or questions for Mr. Walcott or Mr. Freeland? Council Member Freeland? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I just, I mean, my colleagues have really said a lot of what I want to say. So I don't want to repeat that. It definitely needs to stay a skate park. I think of wheels in the same tiers, you know, the Durham Bulls. It's just one of these cultural institutions that's really important to so many people in the city. And so I too, like Charlie was surprised to hear that, you know, that it wasn't definitely gonna happen, but I get it, you know, Mr. Mayor, how you're saying is between a rock and a hard place. But yeah, I'm gonna be the hard place with Charlie and Adriana and just wanted to voice that. Something ideal Ortiz said, I just wanted to amplify a little bit. She talked about kind of not getting the type of response from Parks and Rec that she felt was necessary. And I remember a little earlier this year, having, hearing similar things from the Merrick Moore community who felt unheard with the soccer and everything going on across the street. They didn't feel like they were adequately engaged. I know some of that, Mr. Walcott precedes your involvement with the city, but hearing ideal echo a similar sentiments is a little troubling. And listen, we hear the name ideal Ortiz in these rooms at least a couple of times a month because she is an absolute community warrior and community engagement specialist. So I just wanted to amplify what she said and asked you to really heed the warning signs that she's alluding to. Is there some kind of different standard that's being placed around this particular Parks and Rec development, whereas other, perhaps other projects have been a little more transparent. And if there is kind of a different way you're going about it, perhaps it would behoove you to be transparent about and very loudly say to the community when they can expect to hear from you because of someone who's got her ear to the street like ideal is saying like, hey, y'all, I don't feel included. I can't, I don't feel like I'm being heard or engaged. I take that very seriously. And to your credit, I know that when Merrick Moore reached out, when some members of the Merrick Moore community reached out with similar critiques earlier this year, they were addressed. So I do just want to thank you and acknowledge that when people call you out for, hey, we're not hearing from you, you do something about it. So having heard from ideal today, I expect, I would hope and expect that, that we do something about it, that we have a conversation with her about what her concerns are, understand a little more deeply how and why she's felt kind of shut out from those conversations. Again, specifically with her because she's someone who's done wonderful engagement with the Durham Youth Listening Project, and with other departments throughout the city. So I trust her when she speaks up and says that this is an issue. So I would love Mr. Walcott, if you and your team could sit down with her and really just listen to what she has to say and take good notes on how to address it. So thanks so much. Sure, I'd be happy to, and I appreciate the feedback. And we're happy to continue the conversation with Ms. Ortiz. We both admire and respect her efforts for the community. And we'll continue having those conversations. I will continue to be responsive to all of her emails as I have up to this point. And I can assure you loud and clear that we have no interest in operating this process in a vacuum. We have no interest in building a park just the way we think we would like to or the way people would like it. But we're, our whole purpose is here is to serve the community, is to help build better lives in a better community through the power of parks. And that's who we are. And you can see throughout this process that's what we will continue to do. And that's what's of most interest to us. So I have no questions or hesitations about us being able to do that. And we'll continue that. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mr. Bear. Thank you for the number of three long. And thank you, Mr. Walcott. And I do seriously want to say, colleagues, I know that we have things that we want, but the main thing that we say we want is absolute openness to the community about what's gonna be in these facilities. And so, okay. You guys, there's gonna be a survey that's gonna be about what we want at this park. And everybody on this council gets to vote for skating rink. And then if it eventually comes back to us without that skating rink and you still want it, you can vote it down. But I do think we should remember what we ask of our staff. And when they say they're really gonna be open and listening, yeah, you know what I mean. Okay, council member Caballero, then council member Freeman. I'm a huge, I hear what you're saying, Mr. Mayor. While I am a huge fan of the skate rink and know the deep history and I can't count how many birthday parties, summer camps and time that was spent there as a family. I will say that I also know we're in deep need of pools. We are extremely under-resourced that actually does have a public health impact in the sense that we have more residents who don't know how to swim and we don't have public pools. So I understand the predicament that we are facing. And I don't envy what staff is trying to do here. And I look forward to hearing from them and the community about how we make that an incredible community asset. Thank you very much, council member Freeman. Thank you. I just wanted to just circle back around. I think I'm jokingly saying that about the skate rink, you know, I'm serious. But it's really the sense of, and I wanna kind of appreciate council member Freelon's comments and noting like, this is not just about what I want. It's really like acknowledging that there's a whole process that's been put in place around equitable engagement. And we can use that in this or we can not, but we can't say we're going to and then not do that. And so I'm hopeful that Mr. Walcott will decide to use the equitable engagement process and the staff that have been really good about engaging in that in our community to do this work. I have nothing against ratio. I don't know what ratio is and, you know, this contract is, you know, I assume it's the best, you know, option for us, but I do wanna be really clear that our community is very voiced and clear on what, you know, it needs. And there's a good way to do the engagement and there's the old way of doing the engagement. And I wanna stick to the good way. So thank you. Thank you council member Freeman. And I'm glad you brought that up. We also put in writing, but, you know, it doesn't matter what we say. It only matters if our actions back up what we say. And so we have to walk the walk if we're gonna talk the talk, but it's important for us to memorialize that and all the documents that you have as far as embracing the equitable engagement blueprint. What we also are formalizing is this is a pilot project of ours for the racial equity plan. So both of those major initiatives and philosophies we're embracing through this project. And one of the things I loved about the development of even of the scope when we send this out and try to find contractors was the multiple departments involved in doing this. So we did the engagement plan. We did follow the racial equity plan that included, you know, neighborhood improvement services and general services and the department of inclusion and equity. So from the very beginning, that's what we're doing. So thank you for giving us that feedback. Thank you very much. You're doing what you're doing. All right, colleagues any further comments? Thank you to council members. Mr. Walcott, thank you for being here. We appreciate it. And we appreciate your commitment to the community engagement. We know it's gonna take to make this right and make this project come out right. And we know you'll do it. I am 100% sure and excited, very excited. I mean, this is gonna be wonderful. All right. And Mr. Phelan, thank you for being with us. We'll now move to item 15, which is the water management department. And I believe Mr. Greeley is here with us. Welcome Mr. Greeley. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, Don Greeley, Department of Water Management. With me today is also Sid Miller, who's our water resources planner and heads up all of our water resources planning efforts. We'll be tag teaming today on the presentation. First off, I'd like to thank council for the two earlier items for suspending the rules and vote and voting on the two items related to the Miss Lake project to be able to keep that online. Certainly the supply chain issues that we have now was critical to move those forward. I wanna extend our department's appreciation for you suspending the rules and voting on those items earlier today. We appreciate the opportunity to provide you an update on the city's water system risk and resiliency. The timing is perfect today because today, October 21st, we along with other water providers across the country are recognizing the seventh annual Imagine a Day Without Water. This campaign encourages us to think where our water comes from and where our wastewater goes. For most people, water is out of sight out of mind. We wake up, shower, make our coffee, wash dishes, feed the family, flush the toilets and do the laundry. For those without access to clean, safe, reliable drinking water, a day without water is frustrating reality with seemingly few solutions. The ongoing pandemic has reinforced that water is the lifeline of our communities. Investing in our water and wastewater infrastructure can ensure we can continue to provide critical services through efficient, redundant and resilient water and wastewater infrastructure. At the end of the day, we want to ensure that all of our customers have fresh water to drink. Firefighters have the ability to fight fires and hospitals and medical facilities can provide critical medical care that requires clean, safe water. And with that, I'll ask Sid to open up the presentation and we'll get started. Okay, we're here today to talk about the water system risk and resiliency. Next slide, please. I'll be talking a little bit about the current water system resiliency that we have in place that we've been working on for a number of years. And then I'll turn it over to Sid to talk about America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018. That's related to a lot of the disasters that have, and natural disasters that have occurred across the country related to water infrastructure. And Congress working with EPA and Homeland Security passed that act and we had to formalize our risk and resiliency plans for all utilities across the country. So, but first we wanted to take a little bit, talk about the resiliency that we currently have and where we're headed. Next slide, please. So from our water supply reservoirs, currently we have Lake Mickey and Little River where we get most of our drinking water from. And we're now pursuing, accessing our allocation at the Jordan Lake watershed. Next slide, please. Lake Mickey, our oldest water supply was built in 1926. It's yield is 10.5 million gallons a day. We're currently had projects at both dams, about $60 million worth of projects going on. They're coming out of design, we just expect them to bid shortly. At Lake Mickey, we are completely replacing all of the electrical systems, all of the mechanical systems, rehabilitating all the gates and inlet gates of the dam. Next slide, please. And we continue, of course, to by land in and around for a future expansion. Lake Little River Dam and Reservoir was built in 1988. It's yield is 17.4 million gallons. We are also doing some work in the pumping station down to your lower right, as well as the intake tower and some gate rehabilitation that you see out in the water. Next slide, please. We are now pursuing through our Western Intake Partnership, accessing our allocation of 16.5 million gallons from Jordan Lake. We hope to be able to bring that online by 2031. We'll talk about that in a minute. And the yield should be about 16.5 million gallons. Next slide, please. As you can see, how much usable storage there is in that we will have at all of the three reservoirs. Little River has a very small watershed. So, and Lake Mickey has almost twice as large. And Jordan Lake is an enormous watershed. It tends to be more drought resistant. And we look forward to developing facilities to access our allocation directly from Jordan Lake rather than through our regional partners. Next slide, please. Our two water plants, Williams Water Treatment Plant was originally built in 1917. Its original capacity was 22 million as it was expanded over the years. It's now, its capacity is 12 because of the new safe drinking water laws have been passed over the years. The small footprint that we have on that site has not allowed us to expand facilities to meet those regulations to keep the capacity up at 22 million. So it's currently around 12 million. We both at Brown, which you can see in the background of my screen and the picture of Williams, we recently completed $100 million worth of upgrades and expansion at both of those facilities to meet our future needs to take care of existing problems as well as meet the new regular expansion, rehabilitation and regulatory requirements that we have. Next slide, please. Of course, the Brown Water Treatment Plant was built in 1976. It's been expanded three times. It's now can treat up to 42 million gallons at both plants. We've also have dual electrical feeds through Duke Energy. What that means is if one leg of their Duke Energy system goes down, we can still get electricity from the other leg. And if both legs go down, we have emergency generators at both plants to be able to fully power both plants during, if we were to lose electrical power from Duke Energy. Next slide, please. So our overall operation capacity is 54 million gallons a day currently and with, next slide, please. Our drinking water system, this gives an overview of all the blue lines you see there are our water system that throughout Durham and both in city and county. The blue dots represent elevated storage tanks that we have out in the system. Both with our plants and our distribution system, of course we have staff that's available 24 seven, 365 days a year that it's able to respond to any emergency. All of our water system and the plants and the towers and the booster stations are all connected by a SCADA system, which is a supervisory control and data acquisition system. In addition, we're building a pressure sensor system throughout our distribution system to be able to allow us to notify us if there's pressure losses in the system such as when there's a water break that we can respond quicker to those types of emergency. Next slide, please. In addition to having the resiliency in our own system, we have resiliency in the region. This shows as an illustration of the various water systems in the Triangle area, the blue arrows represent where different water supplies, as you can see from Durham, we have like Mickey and Little River over in Owasa, they have Kane Creek, Corey Creek and University Lake, et cetera. The darker lines represent where interconnections exist and those interconnections allow water to move from one utility to another utility. We were able to take, we've been able to take advantage of our interconnections very frequently with Owasa and Cary, both during the drought in 07 and 08 where we got a significant amount of water from Cary through their access from Jordan Lake. And we were also took advantage of both of those interconnections when we did the $100 million worth of work at both plants. We consistently took plants, the plants offline and online and our customers never noticed it because of those interconnections. And I think it was about two years ago, Owasa experienced a large water line break right outside their water treatment plant and we were able to supply them with water for their whole system until they were able to fix that water leak. So having regional interconnections for resiliency is important not just to us, but to the whole region. Next slide, please. Through our Jordan Lake partnership and now our water triangle water partnership, we've built a hydraulic model of all of our systems. This is an illustration of the hydraulic model and the hydraulic model allows us to do simulations on should there be a problem anywhere in the region, how can we solve those problems? And or how can we move water from point A to point B? If certain pipes are broken, certain plants are damaged or certain water tanks have problems. And we very frequently use our interconnections for normal maintenance work for major projects and in emergencies. And most of that goes on behind the scenes because we have such strong work collaboration and we work closely together with all of our regional partners. Moving into the future, next slide, please. We hope to bring the Tier Quarry Project online. Tier Quarry is a quarry in the north part of the city you can see where the red circle is there where its location is. That'll be used as an emergency supply for us, additional emergency supply. We're currently working to bring that online as a facility. We'll be able to fill the quarry up either from multiple sources, the Eno River when there's high flows, like Mickey when there's high flows and the river from their high flows. But mostly with all the modeling that we've done, we fill it for the most part when we have really high flow events in the Eno River. And we'll be able to use that water in emergencies or in drought and then be able to refill it when that emergency has passed. So and then as I mentioned earlier, next slide, please. We've formed a Western Intake Partnership with the city of Durham, Chatham County, Orange Water and Sewer Authority and the town of Pittsburgh, working collaboratively to build an additional intake on the Western edge of Jordan Lake and to build some regional, a new regional water treatment facility and be able to pump that water back into Durham. Next slide, please. This is a graphic to show. You can see the Durham, the Southwest County line of the Durham County in the upper right, Orange County to the left and Chatham to the bottom. You can see Jordan Lake and this is a graphic showing the intake below Highway 64 and then the blue and the orange line, how it would pump back into Durham. In addition to all of these facilities that we've either completed, projects we've completed or we're moving forward with, Durham is also a part of the North Carolina Water Warn. North Carolina Water Warn is the Water, North Carolina Water Wastewater Agency Response Network. It's a group of utilities across the state committed to helping each other to conduct emergency response and recovery operations. It's a voluntary mutual aid assistance network to combat water related incidents throughout the state and it provides an organized system for utilities to request assistance in the form of personnel, emergency equipment, materials and other required resources. Typically what we've seen the larger utilities such as Durham, Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, since we are fortunate to be more resilient when natural disasters happen frequently, we come to the aid of a lot of the smaller utilities across the state. Where the natural disasters kind of overrun the resources that they have. But all of what I've just talked about couldn't happen without the continued support of the city management, both the city manager's office and the city council to be able to make all of these projects go forward. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Sid to talk about the American Water Infrastructure Act and what we had to do and why the item is before you today. I had to figure out how to unmute myself. Why don't you back up a slide or two? Wrong way, there you go, one more, there you go. All right. Thanks, Sid. So in 2018, Congress passed the America's Water Infrastructure Act, which is commonly called WIA. It was an ambitious schedule for us because Congress took months to pass the act, but they never updated the deadlines that had been drafted in the act. Anyway, it required us to conduct a risk and resilience assessment of our entire water system, which Don pretty much described. And then follow that with an emergency response plan and then certified it to the Environmental Protection Agency that we had done so. There were a number of considerations. I would just highlight that we had to consider malevolent human acts as well as natural disasters. And we had to consider the resilience of every single component of our infrastructure. And that includes operations and maintenance as well as finance. We use what's called an all hazards approach, which is trying to consider anything that might possibly happen. We had to consider physical security as well as cyber security and the coordination that's required within our city departments, as well as between our city departments and external organizations. So basically one of these tasks are components built on the prior. And we also relied on what's considered sort of state of the art industry practices within our own water sector. There's a lot of stakeholder engagement. This began prior to the pandemic. And so our initial meetings, which includes such agencies as the FBI were all in person. And then the pandemic struck along with our cyber malware attack, which definitely made things more difficult for us. These are just some of the stakeholders that we had involved in this project. You can see it was pretty extensive. We had to consider our critical customers of which we have many within the city, our various hospitals and universities. And I would just add that this focus on critical customers represents an ongoing program for our department. Don already mentioned all of our interconnections. We have nine interconnections with five neighboring utilities. And then we had to integrate a number of already existing plans like our water shortage response plan or various mutual aid agreements. And then we finished up with a training exercise centered on the emergency response plan. And then we will be continuing to have these tabletop emergency response exercises going forward. There were a number of recommendations that came from this effort. And we've already been implementing these recommendations. And I would just highlight that in particular, thanks to you and the city manager, we created a new position, a senior emergency operations analyst position to focus these efforts. And that's gonna pay dividends. The source water risk and response plan is a part of this whole package. To some extent it lays out what we already do such as our water supply, watershed protection programs. And in some parts it drills down on some of the more important risks that exist to our source waters. But as Don has already said, we have a very resilient system. We have multiple water sources. We have multiple means of treating those sources, distributing that water. And then we have those interconnections throughout the region. And Don already stole my thunder on this slide also, the fact that we had a water treatment plan out of service for months and nobody knew it. So I just wanna close with looking into the future and the future resilience of our system. Don has mentioned some of the infrastructure projects. But I also wanna underscore this water supply, watershed protection program we now have to which we've been dedicating one cent per hundred cubic feet of water to make those investments. And that's paid, we've been able to leverage that to an incredible extent. We've protected a lot of acres, we've protected a lot of stream. We've gotten a number of great awards, but our neighbors make greater investments. City of Raleigh and the town of Kerry commit three, or I'm sorry, eight to 11 times what we currently commit. And I would like us to consider in the future, it would increase that investment. If we were to increase to three cents per hundred cubic feet of water, we would be able to take advantage of more opportunities that we're currently missing to make those investments. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Greeley and Mr. Miller. Can you take the slides down? Thank you so much. It was such an interesting presentation and that really do appreciate it. Colleagues, questions and comments for Mr. Greeley and Mr. Miller. Councilmember Middleton. Thank you so much. Don, good to see you and just really good to see you as well, appreciate the presentation. Really, really fascinating. I think in the mayor oftentimes speaks of how easy it is, I'm paraphrasing. It easy it is to take for granted just turning our taps on and having clean, fresh water come out. And rarely do we think about just the massive effort that goes into making that almost reflexive thing we do as residents and citizens possible. I'm also, as a elected leader of the city, it heartens me to see that we're thinking about modern day threats that our infrastructure face and our water systems. We know that there are people in the world who may want to do us harm and they can't come through the front door and knock us down. They'll try and do it through computers and water supply and other things like that. So it's really, really critical work that you're doing. Often unheralded, I know, but I want you to know that there's a bunch of us that appreciate it and recognize it. I did, I was fascinated by Mr. Miller, your observation about how much we spend relative to some of our neighboring cities. And I just want to be clear. The opportunities that we're missing do not translate to deficit in our security posture around the water, right? We're not, I just want to be very clear as folks listening to that. Would you just expand a little bit on some of the things we could be doing if it were up? Yes, thank you. So the way we implement this water supply, watershed protection program or one way we do is we participate in a regional activity with the city of Raleigh and with various land trust nonprofit organizations to take advantage of land conservation opportunities that they bring forward. So at present, those land trust organizations bring forward more opportunities for land conservation than we are able to participate in. Gotcha, gotcha. And the conservation is around areas that are upstream of our reservoirs. So the more land that we can conserve, of course, the more we can protect the water quality that flows into the lake. Does, we obviously have a vested interest, but geographically are, and this is going to sound kind of funny, are there residual benefits that accrue to Durham by virtue of our other partners doing it, even if we don't participate just by virtue of geography? Is this about bragging rights basically and being able to hold our heads up when we walk in a room about how much we're pitching in? Not exactly. So there are land trust opportunities, land trust project and opportunities that occur downstream of our reservoirs and elsewhere that bedend the falls like watershed that the city of Raleigh or others might invest in. We focus our efforts on those land trust organizations that are providing opportunities that are upstream of our own reservoirs. Gotcha, gotcha, absolutely. So we ought to be looking seriously at upping what we spend in it, I guess it's your work, my words, not yours, I get it. But I appreciate it though, I get it, message received. Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful presentation gentlemen. Good to see you both. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member, Council Member Cavillero. Yes, thank you, good afternoon. I think Dost was advocating for this two budget cycles ago if I'm not mistaken around increasing the funds that we were providing as a city. And so I just wanted to highlight the work and advocacy that they had done. So I'm glad that staff is now also advocating a similar position because I know it's something that many of our residents have had eyes on. Right, we were reluctant to bring this item forward last year of course, and are still a little nervous about bringing it forward just because of the sensitivity about any increase in costs to our customers, especially during the pandemic. Absolutely, thank you. Along those lines, Mr. Greeley, are you all asking for this outside of budget cycle or is this a recommendation for the next budget cycle? No, it was just to give you time to think about it for the upcoming budget cycle. All right, thank you so much. Other questions and comments, colleagues? Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I just wanted to ask the question if I know this resiliency planning is specific to the watersheds. Is there any conversation around the flooding side of the mitigation that can be done in a resiliency work as well? That's outside our purview. I would defer to Public Works to maybe answer that question. Council Member Freeman. And I just want to highlight that, you know, the watershed side is separate and apart from the flooding side. And so it's just, this is a small piece of what we'll need to address and just stop. Yeah, our programs are really focused on water quality when it comes to the reservoir and their programs are of course more focused on quantity. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Other questions or comments or Mr. Miller or Mr. Greeley? I agree with my colleagues. This was a really interesting report and to find out that one of our water plants had been down and we didn't know about it, that was pretty cool. One thing, when the tier quarry comes, I'm excited about the tier quarry coming online and it's been so cool to watch this process. And when I read about other cities that are having the, you know, we just read about another city in Michigan that's having similar problems that Flint experienced. And I feel so confident in Durham with all the planning and constant rehabilitation and maintenance and upgrading that you all doing. It's really great. I do have one question about the tier quarry. Mr. Greeley, a lot of my city council colleagues have over the years enjoyed skinny dipping in the tier quarry and I wonder if that will be out now that the quarry will be used for as a reservoir. Will that still be available? We do intend to construct a fence around the reservoir when we bring it online and I'll leave it there. Well, okay. Some of you guys are gonna have to learn to jump a fence. Okay, thank you, Mr. Greeley. Thank you, Mr. Miller. This was a really interesting report. And I also say that I enjoyed the fact that there are things about it you can't tell us. You know, that there are, you know, that there's sort of things in here that can't be made public because you all are doing, taking actions that are protecting us and much appreciate the work you do. Thank you. Any council member that would actually like to look more deeply and to actually look at the reporting, we're happy to arrange a time where you can see the actual plan, which we can't make public. So, but it's certainly available if you would like to see it. Will it light up after I read it for like 30 seconds or a minute? And will the Mission Impossible theme song come on as well? Sorry. You can work on that. I do like the special effects idea. All right, colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Greeley and Mr. Miller. We appreciate you. Well, now move to our second presentation, which is item 21 on the Durham Cultural Arts Master Plan. And I see Ms. Alston is here and Ms. Alston, now it's gonna be finally your turn to share your screen. We're glad to have you. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and members of council, Summer Alston Division Manager General Services, please forgive me. We're pleased to be back before you today to introduce an item being brought forth by the Durham Cultural Advisory Board. The Durham Cultural Advisory Board requests that the council receive a presentation regarding the city and county jointly providing support for development of a new cultural master plan. With us today representing the Durham Cultural Advisory Board is Board Chair Angela Lee, as well as members Katie Klune and Yvonne Coleman. I would like to reiterate thanks on behalf of staff for the leadership shown by our presenters today in gathering the data that informs this agenda item. And with your permission, I would like to turn the floor over to our presenters, but I will be advancing the slides on their behalf if that's okay. Ms. Alston, thank you, that's great. Ms. Lee, Ms. Klune and Ms. Coleman, we're really glad to have you as well. Thank you so much for being with us and I'll turn it over to you all. Thank you, Mayor and thank you all. Good afternoon. As Chair of Durham's Cultural Advisory Board, I'm speaking in support of CAB's proposal for allocation of joint funding for a new Durham Cultural Master Plan. And as Ms. Alston said, I'm joined in this presentation by board members, CAB members, Katie Klune and Yvonne Coleman. Next slide, please. Our Cultural Advisory Board consists of 15 volunteers who are appointed by the city and the county with tremendous and greatly appreciated staff support from general services. In addition, our subcommittee, the public art committee consists of 15 volunteer residents. In setting our goals for this year, we were motivated to focus on the infrastructure that supports the arts ecosystem that has helped to make Durham Durham. So we're here today to demonstrate why the time for a renewed Cultural Master Plan is here. And we're speaking to that. We also included as a goal to design and execute an advocacy approach for 2021 and 22 in order to seek funding for a new Cultural Master Plan for Durham, as well as developing sustainable strategies devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the work of CAB with a particular focus on anti-racism and social justice. Next slide, please. Hi, everybody. Angela, are you ready for me? Yes, I was going to say I present Katie Klune. I jumped a little bit. Thank you, Angela, and thank you, council members for the opportunity to speak with y'all today. My name is Katie Klune. Been a Durham resident since 2015. And in addition to being on D-CAB, I am communications director for Duke University's Arts Initiative. And I've been co-leading this effort with Yvonne Coleman who will speak next to close out our presentation today. So the last Cultural Master Plan for Durham was completed in 2004. And as you all know, since then the city has transformed. Since 2000, the Durham County population has increased by almost 44%. The growth rate that's significantly higher than the rest of the state and also the country. And what we think of as today's foundations of art and culture for Durham, D-PAC, the National Museum of Art, Museum of Durham History, home of the Waltown Children's Theater, ADF's Broad Street Studio, The Fruit. None of these existed in 2004. What we now call the DIY district, the area around Motorco, was boarded up in vacant and Durham's quintessential public art projects and murals were still years away in the making. While the physical landscape of arts and culture in our city has undoubtedly changed dramatically, city funding for the arts has not grown proportionally to the growth of Durham. Our funding infrastructure has not kept pace with our changing demographics and the stressors of a booming real estate market. Durham's growth has in fact made artists and arts organizations vulnerable. Next slide, please. I know some of you will remember that about two years ago, a group of independent artists in Durham self-organized to lobby city council to increase funding to address what could be interpreted as a crisis of support. And it doesn't look like the rest of our news headlines are appearing or there they are trickling in. At the request of Mayor Schuyl, the cultural advisory board formally endorsed this proposal to increase funding for artists and arts organizations by 1.35 million and then COVID-19 hit. To date, the city and county has not granted any COVID relief funding to artists or arts organizations. Next slide, please. To address this, beginning roughly a year ago, the cultural advisory board began to conduct research to demonstrate the need for evaluating, sustaining and planning for the future of our arts and cultural ecosystem. And the bulk of this research is in the white paper that I believe you all have had a chance to read, but we will cite a few key findings here. We partnered with the Durham Arts Council, excuse me, we partnered with the Durham Arts, sorry, excuse the interruptions. We partnered with the Durham Arts Council to include five questions on their COVID impact survey in December, 2020 and found that only 77% of the responding arts organizations were confident that they will be in existence in five years. 5% said it was a toss-up. We hosted meetings with three cross-representative groups of artists and representatives of organizations to better understand the current realities individuals and artists organizations faced and learn the following. The greatest needs were increased funding, both from private and public sources, especially for general operating support, capacity building for staff to meet challenges like COVID-19 and increased diversity and equity training. Programmers wished for fewer financial and logistical pressures around outdoor events and individuals expressed the need for an entity working to secure private funding for the broader arts and cultural ecosystem on their behalf, and especially for the multicultural intergenerational events that help bring our community together. Next slide, and I'm going to pass it over to Yvonne. Council members for hearing our presentation today and all that you do every day. This meeting is just one such example. So what is cultural master planning? Simply, cultural planning is a process where representatives of the community engage in assessing what we have, as well as developing a vision for the future in creating a plan for implementation. We're using a very broad definition of arts and culture. We're including the arts, sciences, humanities, history, library, arts education, preservation, recreation and cultural master planning that we would be interested in engaging in will have significant community engagement. The last plan had over 500 people involved. We anticipate this being bigger. Well, I also want to stress is that we envision our planning process to be different from others in that we would like for creativity and artists to actually be core to the process and not just surveyed and having a round table, but we want to design a process where creativity is the core feature. And of course, culturally, racial equity are essential components. The current plans that exist do not include all of these various things that we're talking about in the need for culture planning and for the arts and cultural sector. Next slide, please. So why do we need to do it? And why do we need to do it now? The sector, frankly, is fragile. The ecosystem has been fragile and certainly COVID made it a little worse. And we all recognize that these nonprofits, these artists, these organizations have continued to struggle. Growth and development in Durham is going to continue. And if we don't pause and do some planning now, we're going to look up and some things that we treasure may be gone. The sector generated $154 million in the economic activity in 2015. We know that prior to COVID, that number was higher and it will again be high and exceed $154 million. But most importantly, again, the various plans that the city and the county has engaged in over the last many years have nuggets of what the culture planning process needs to go further into. And so that's what the plan would be about. And I wanna say that the quote from the artist here, Durham has always had an abundance of creative people, but a serious lack of resources. It is very hard to continue to be a part of something that doesn't love you back. And that's a very true statement. Next slide. This slide shows that since 2014 of what we can document, 47 cultural venues have closed. 47. Yes, of course, some have moved and some have been created, but I wanna stress beyond this, that many artists and creative workers and employees of these important nonprofits have had to move to other communities because they could not afford to live here anymore. They could not afford to do their work anymore. If we don't plan, we will lose more. Next slide. It is critical that a new cultural plan is launched now and we need to plan for the future. We need to protect what is unique to Durham. We need to continue and sustain what we have. We need to create space for artists and creative and people who are working in these nonprofits and very low salaries to be able to live in this community and support for the cultural plan will in turn advance some of your stated goals, some of our community stated goals. We want neighborhood revitalization. We want to build community. Economic development is important, but so is racial equity and diversity are all important. So I leave you with this question, these two questions. One, what do you enjoy about Durham in its cultural landscape? What do you wish we had more of? Durham deserves the best. And we're requesting that the city and county jointly support the development of a new cultural plan. The last one was approved in 2004. And the cost for this one we think will be about $300,000. We appreciate your attention today and we welcome your feedback and your questions. Ms. Austin, Ms. Lee, Ms. Clune, Ms. Coleman. So good to have you here and making this great presentation to us. I know that all my colleagues are appreciative of it and you did a wonderful job. I also appreciated the inclusion of the white paper which gave us some more context. So thank you very much. I'm gonna first ask if there are comments or questions by members of the council. Colleagues, let me just say that as I speak I haven't extremely allowed something going on next to me. And so if you hear it, that's what it is. Council Member Freiland. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you very much for this wonderful presentation. I just wanted to affirm the need for a cultural master plan and really just underscore some of the things that you've shared. The creative class in Durham has been such a cultural and economic catalyst for growth but those same folks who are so instrumental are losing access, affordability, space. As you saw that list of all the places that have moved or closed. In fact, I can think of about three or four cultural institutions that aren't on this list just off the top of my head. So it's by no means comprehensive and of course COVID has exacerbated the closing of so many Angosi designs and others. BU Cafe, for example, which is on here, it's moved but they used to do music there. They don't do music anymore. That was a huge loss of a music venue in Durham. So I've always thought of Durham as like the cultural nucleus of our state here in North Carolina, but that is fragile. It's just like you said, it's fragile. And there have been some great moves since I've been on council introduction of a poll or yet was a great start. But what makes Durham really special and unique is not by accident and it takes investment. So I really see the need for a master plan to give us a blueprint for one of the most important engines not just economic engines, like the 154 million in 2015. That's wild. I can't imagine what it will continue to be as Durham continues to grow. But not just the economic engine, it's like the spirit of Durham is in our art and in our culture. It's what makes us different from Raleigh and Charlotte and the particular vibration of our culture workers and movement workers and our folks even distinguish us from others who are creative like the Asheville's and the Carboros. We're not the only creative city in the state but we have a particular tradition of people of color doing really important art and creative work here in Durham that we wanna support, that we wanna nurture and we wanna be here as Durham continues to grow. So that's it. Just wanted to raise the roof with y'all for a quick second and say that I'm in full support of this and look forward to supporting it in any way I can. Thank you very much, council member. Council member Freeman and then council member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanna echo council member Freelon's sentiment and sentiment in that the losses are great and it's hard to unwind them from the fact that this is the culture capital of a triangle and knowing that I live in a very arts district area I can see the difference pre-COVID to now and it's really harmful, which is why when I proposed the Black Artistry Celebration Project knowing the healing powers of what art does for people's soul I'm afraid of what's next, how stale and bland Durham could become. And so I'm really excited. I'm grateful for Ms. Coleman's continued work around this. I just keep reminding myself this retirement thing does not end up in retirement. And so Steve, you might wanna be careful here. You might end up being an artist in this at the next iteration of your retirement. But it just ties us all together in a very centered way. And I just wanna make sure that we don't lose the opportunity to also incorporate the aspects of folks especially children with special needs and tying in people with disabilities. This is a, I mean this plan when you talk about race equity it's not just limited by race the equity aspect of it is all of the isms. And so what's missing is what harms us. I think I've said a lot of times like it's really interesting we don't have a symphony we don't have like all of these pieces that I missed growing up in New York and we're almost there. So I just wanna make sure that I also echo that. I'm very much very much in full support and look forward to seeing what comes out of it. Thank you. Thank you very much council member. And absolutely I'm going to emulate the retirement practices of Yvonne Coleman. I can tell you that right now. Council member Reese. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I look forward to seeing the artistic output that you create after you're done with your service to the city in this forum. I'm really excited about that. I'd leave off the poetry though. You've got another person living in your house who's got that market cornered. I wanna thank y'all for bringing this to us. I'm very excited about it and tend to advocate for the funding to move this plan forward. I also wanted to say how much I learned in my time as the city council's liaison of the Durham Arts Council how important art is not just to the soul of Durham which I think council member Phelan spoke very eloquently to but also to the pocketbook of Durham. It is a huge economic driver for our city and the loss of the independent theaters during COVID was only an acceleration of a process that had been ongoing for some time. And I think one of the things that I really appreciated about the independent artist who came to us a couple of years ago with their proposal is that it kind of forced us to reckon with the not only the soul building aspect of art but also the economic aspects of art. And I thought that was really great and I really appreciated y'all calling that out in the presentation because I think that was an important moment for our city even if COVID got in the way of us doing more explorations about going down that road. The one suggestion I had for you was that as this project moves, as this master plan moves forward I hope and pray that you will take the opportunity to bring working artists into this planning process. And by that I mean independent artists who make their living doing this art that will require not only outreach and recruiting but also hard money to pay these folks for their time because the time that they spend doing this great master planning work for us is time that they're not producing the art with which they are in their living. So that is really, really important to me and something that I'm gonna be looking for as this moves forward because we have to honor that. The people who are making art right now are the ones who should be guiding this process. And I know that y'all know that. I'm preaching to the choir, but as the saying goes that's how you get the choir to sing. So, Council Member Middleton, there's all about preaching to get the choir to sing. Anyway, I'm not an artist so that's probably enough for me on this, but it's very exciting to see us doing this. Look forward to seeing the results of this good work. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much, Council Member. Council, Mayor Pro Tem and then Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to appreciate the presentation and express my support for putting together a new master plan moving forward. And when I appreciated referencing the independent artists who came to us just before COVID seeking funding, that was one of the biggest disappointments I think of our COVID budget was not being able to put any funding toward that initiative. And we had really hoped to be able to fund part of that plan as well as a number of other initiatives, some of which we were able to put into our next budget. But I'm also really looking forward to seeing the proposals for ARPA funding coming through. I know that there's at least one proposal specifically related to rebuilding the arts arts and culture sector. And we might be able to, you know, have put some of the needed resources into the sector through that as well. But yeah, this is, it seems like this is clearly needed. It's an important moment. We've got some really exciting heavy hitters who are on board to make it happen. So it seems like this is something the city should definitely move forward. And thank you all for your time and for doing this work. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. I think I'll call Council Member Middleton next. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you and I want to thank you, all of you for being with us today. Some are good to see you and Sister Coleman and Sister Clune and Angela Lee. Thank you so much for all you do in our city at Haytine. I want to particularly thank you for the assistance you've rendered to us in getting the 1000 Blackman Initiative off the ground as well, invaluable. I know it goes unheralded a lot, but we deeply appreciate what you're pouring into us and what you have poured into us. I'm excited about this plan, but it's hard for me to think about this plan moving forward without thinking about what's going on in Durham holistically and what our artists will have to ruminate on and to inspire them and what about our city we'll serve as muse for them. You know, our artists in many ways are prophetic. They have a prophetic role. They help us see the sacred in everyday mundane things, kind of stir us to see things that we didn't see. And I, you know, I've spoken about our need to have Marshall Plan type investment in our legacy Black neighborhoods that so often provided the context for these artists, the raw materials for the artists, the sights and sounds and smells of these ethnically tinged neighborhoods, these legacy neighborhoods in our city. And I'm concerned about what our, not about what they would be producing, but what they will have to look upon in our city, the flavor of our city that will inform their art and inspire their art. So I'm very excited about funding this master plan, but I'm going to be very transparent that I see this funding for this as part and parcel of what we need to do to stabilize and restore and preserve our legacy Black neighborhoods when if you look through history, you know, these have been the hotbeds where these artists have, particularly when it's talking about equity lands where these artists have been produced. You know, the Harlem Renaissance was in Harlem, you know, funded a large part by downtown salons, but there was something about that area, the place and the preservation of that place. Now I speak of Sweet Auburn and Atlanta, I speak of Sugar Hill in Harlem. So I think as we move forward, at least for me, this funding is not just going to be about preserving our artists or funding art, but also preserving the raw materials of their art. That is our very city, the neighborhoods that we, you know, I just don't want to romanticize about Haytie and romanticize about Braggtown and have lament pieces about Merrick Moore and its demise and what it used to be, but I want those areas to be the new hotbeds to inspire these artists as well. So I say all I have to say, I'm certainly going to support the funding, but I'm going to be looking for it to be tied to funding also to restore and preserve and protect our legacy Black neighborhoods, like the United States did for Europe after World War II. We need a Marshall plan for our legacy Black neighborhoods and much of that funding, at least I can see would go very much to our art and what we produce to inspire us and to remind us that there are higher things when the mundane things are challenging us in today. So thank you, Mr. Mayor, thank all of you. Good to see you all excited to support this. Thank you very much, Council Member. Council Member Caballero. Thank you, really appreciate the presentation. Good to see you, Ms. Coleman. Hadn't seen you in a little bit. And we'll be supporting it and I just, I really appreciate my colleagues' comments about making sure that working artists are included and paid for their labor. And I want to also lean into, as we think about culture to be as inclusive and broad, the city's demographics are changing rapidly and are changing very different than the historic nature of Durham. And so as we build, I hope that we continue to broaden some of our cultural institutions. I know that there is a lot of movement in the Latino community for a Latino community center, a cultural center. And I look forward to those bridges being built and the amazing work that will flourish out of that as well. Thank you very much, Council Member. I'm going to ask Council Member Freelon, if he doesn't mind, to reflect for us a little bit. He has, Council Member, you have created and brought to life, I think one of our most interesting and generative arts institutions, the North Star Church and all of the, what you've done at Black Space. And you have not just been an artist, but you have also been an institution built. And I wonder if you could, in the context of this report, reflect for us a little bit on what that has, how do you see that work fitting in here? What would something like this, how does your work fit into this idea of a bigger vision for a cultural master plan? And what advice do you have from that standpoint? I already heard you offering encouragement, but I think you have more than encouragement to offer. I think you have experience to offer that none of the rest of us does. So I wonder if you could offer some thoughts. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, I want to evoke the names of a couple ancestors. One, my dad, who was an artist, he was a photographer, primarily an architect, but he did a lot of blueprint making. And I think that a cultural master plan for me, in the same sense that an architect has a blueprint, it really gives you a roadmap to develop a strategy to build the thing that you want to build. And it really takes that intentional focus and a team of experts to get around a table and to pour into that idea if you want the final product to stay in the test of time. So in terms of advice, I want that table to be as diverse as possible. Different voices. Ms. Coleman, you talked about engaging in some, not just your typical community engagement practices. So we talked earlier with Ms. Ortiz, who is a community engagement specialist, but I'm looking forward to seeing what types of creative engagement strategies will be a part of this. Because it's like Brother Middleton, you nailed it when you said artists, they're like the profits and they have a visionary role to play and envisioning and manifesting this master plan. And honestly, they've been suffering a lot from gentrification. A lot of the artists that come to North Star, they're like, thank you, thank you, thank you for creating a space for us. We've been priced out of this space. We used to put art up at the Carrick or we used to be down with the Durham Artists Guild and those things have closed because they can't afford to keep up with market rates. And we need to think creatively. It's really a lack of imagination that is keeping some of these folks out of access to what they need. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to that process. The other ancestor I wanna mention as far as an institution builder is Baba Chuck Davis. And to think about just the enduring legacy, it's not just the African-American Dance Ensemble, it's Bimbe, it's Kwanzaa Fest. He built things that the city has invested in that have outlived him. And I think getting cultural movement workers involved in the process will be really important, but also thinking about institutions. I like that you brought that up, Mr. Mayor. I think creating and preserving institutions that can ensure that these things continue to thrive and are part of our annual budgets and part of our public safety strategies and just thinking about the various departments that can benefit from a creative lens being placed almost like we have an equity lens. I think that Durham can have a creative lens that is inter-departmental. And yeah, those are some thoughts. Thank you for the question, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. I really appreciate that. Other comments, colleagues? I have a couple of comments for 30 years. I've published a newspaper that our bread and butter, although some people think it was politics was really coverage of the arts. And I'm concerned about the state of journalism for many reasons, but one of them is the fact that artists don't have the kind of coverage, critical coverage and promotion that they've had over many, many years. And not to say that there's not some of that still happening, but not nearly the volume that even a decade ago we saw. And I think that that is, I'm not sure that something, I'm mentioning that because I'm wondering if there's a way, I'm just asking our friends here, is there a way to think about that in master planning, cultural master planning as well? Just a thought. And then I just want to say that also the, I was one of the founders of a music festival, hopscotch, not a, it has never been, it's not financially successful, but it has been, and I did it for five years. And I experienced a lot of the same pressures that you all are talking about in the white paper. And I understand how hard it is, not just to be an artist, but to be a producer of art and supporting artists in that way. And just want to second everything that my colleagues have said about the importance of the work that you all are doing. My question is, what is the timing in terms of the funding that you need? $300,000 was the number that I heard. And what's the timing? Is this all money you want in one year? Do you want it next year's budget? What are you asking us for more specifically? Thank you for that question. Ideally, we would like to launch the plan in 2022 and depending on when we are able to get a commitment from both the city and the county. We do expect to be on the county's agenda in the future, in the near future. We're finalizing that right now. And so when we have secured the funding, if there's opportunity to receive funding through ARP, which again, we want to remind both bodies that you really haven't supported this sector the way that many of your peer cities have done with ARP funding. If that becomes available, that's a source where we may be able to move a little faster. But we certainly hope by July that we're in the planning process. There's a lot of work that needs to be done prior to that, not just the funding, but also constructing and recommending the co-chairs and organizing steering committee and all of those kinds of things, identifying project manager and project management, et cetera. Just to expand on that a little bit. So if the funding... I think the ARP funding, I don't believe that... I could be wrong, but I think that our kind of proposal timeline, there are, as Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, at least one, I know, proposal in the ARP potential pipeline, but it's not this. So if there was money budgeted, and let's say that you knew our budget was moving forward next year with this funding in it. Ms. Coleman, are you saying that you would take those initial steps prior to... There are initial steps that you would take prior to the actual allocation of the funds at the end of June? Yes, there's some organizing that needs to happen, more organizing that needs to happen. And the Culture Master Plan is one of the line items in the ARP proposal that is before the city and the county. Okay, good. I didn't realize that. Thank you. Okay, great. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. And one final question, and then, Council Member Freeman, I'm sorry, I'll get to you one second. The... For those organizing steps, is the funding necessary for those or are those things that you can do prior to the receipt of the funding? Well, thankfully, one of the major steps in creating a Culture Master Plan is determining the client. So we will need more buy-in from the city management, et cetera, as well as the county, because the client for the plan will be the local government entities. That's the normal way in which master planning is done for something on this scale. So after the election, there will need to be more conversations and buy-in. And then we can kind of move forward. We are, as volunteers, can only do so much, but we are absolutely committed to supporting, getting the structure in place. There's a lot to be done, including steering committees, formation, all of that. But we need to get past this election and have conversation with new leadership, and including the city and county managers. And then move forward. And thank you, Ms. Page, for your support. Thank you, Ms. Coleman. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I appreciate all of the comments that have been shared. And it kind of gets a whole lot more of the ideas going. I just want to say to the Mayor Schultz's point around the journalism, I think there's a great opportunity brewing around some of our collegial papers and high school papers, and even like the darn voice, so the echo, the chronicle, the Ninth Street Journal, like if there's a way to pull those folks into this process as you're organizing, I think it kind of gives you a kind of a megaphone and the conversation. It also gives those students a chance to write. And I would also add that there are a number of planning projects happening right now. It would probably be good to partner in. I can speak specifically to one that I'm a part of with St. Phillips in the campus study and just acknowledging that there's a lot of arts focused conversation, but the actual actions are missing. And so I just don't want us to limit this to just the local government and the conversation that we're having right now. And so I would love to have a further conversation and I'm guessing that this is gonna happen at the cab. So I'll make sure I join in the next meeting or so. Thank you. May I respond? Yes, of course. Thank you for your comments. It's important that everybody, everything is involved. And so I certainly would like to have some additional conversation with you and others about who might be all of those different kinds of players. And I wanna stress that there's a committee of cab that's working on this. And we also have a working committee initially of others in the community. So there are lots of people behind us and it's just not the three of us working on this. So I wanted to acknowledge and to thank them publicly as well. Thank you, Ms. Coleman. Other comments, colleagues? Any other comments? I will just summarize by saying to our presenters, I think that you hear broad support and deep support from the council. You've heard a lot of different comments, but I think you've heard that myself and council member Freeline won't be here next during next year's budget. But you've heard from the other members that we are, all of us are very supportive. And I wanna acknowledge something that you've said, which is that we are behind. We are behind our other localities in North Carolina. And we know that. I think I know that we were prepared to take a really good step to write that in our pre-COVID budget. We didn't do it for reasons that I think were reasonable given that budget, but we are behind and we need to support this. And then we need to hopefully the report will inform other ways that we can be supported. But I do wanna acknowledge that and say I appreciate the fact that you all are bringing us that home truth. I'm excited about this. I think it's just gonna be great for our community and you all have done a really good job of presenting it. Colleagues, any final comments or questions before we let our friends go? Oh, yes, Patrick. Patrick, my call is here. And he wants to speak on this item and I apologize to you, Patrick. I just had forgotten. We'd love to hear your comments. You're able to be heard now, Patrick. Mr. McCall. Thank you, Mayor Schull. I apologize to you. That's okay. That's okay. I feel like I'm not even needed now because I've heard such great support. So, but I would like to say thank you, Mayor Schull, to the city council, to city manager, page and staff for the opportunity to speak and to the cultural advisory board for inviting me. The museum of Durham history has its roots in the 2004 cultural master plan from an a steering committee was formed and acted on the documents recommendation to, quote, develop a building in Durham's downtown for a history and cultural heritage museum, unquote. In October, 2013, thanks to the hard work of our founding board of directors and staff and museum of Durham history opened its doors to a warm welcome and we've been making an impact on educational and cultural landscape ever since. We've watched Durham rapidly grow around us in the last eight years and we've been striving to meet the needs and requests of our community. Now, Durham has grown significantly in the 17 years since the last cultural master plan and even more so just in the last eight years since the museum opened and this recent accelerated growth in particular demonstrates a need for a new cultural master plan to reflect the demands of our current climate and to sustain arts and humanities organizations. So, I just want to say the museum of Durham history fully supports the cultural advisory board's request and we're excited for the council support as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're valuable comments. We appreciate them and it's good to have that on today. All right, thank you so much. Ms. Austin, any final comments? We appreciate you. Thank you so much for bringing us this great presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right, we will move on to our final item and that item is the clerk's prior to your visit. Which is a discussion of our when to go back in person and I'm gonna, colleagues, I've written you all an email or maybe we could go or something and with your permission, I'm going to just suggest, make a suggestion and then love to hear your comments. As you all know, our COVID, the percentage of positives is falling. We're about 3.5% positives now, well under the 5%. Our daily case rate is falling. It's still in the kind of 50 cases per day, but quite a bit lower than previously and continues to fall. Our vaccination rates are up and our community health workers are making an enormous difference and all the other folks that are working on this, we are at about 85% of eligible residents have at least one shot. All of this is to say that the COVID situation is getting better and I think it's time for us to think about going back in person to City Council. I have another consideration that I've also written to you all about, but I want to just talk about here. For a new mayor, it's hard to learn how to preside at all these meetings. I've got it now, but originally at the beginning, getting all the, doing all the right things and doing them in a way that is efficient because these meetings can then go long and trying to be efficient, but at the same time trying to be open to all the necessary discussion is difficult on its own, but the addition of presiding in a virtual environment is it really doubles the burden. You saw, for example, I missed, I've forgotten Mr. Mucklow was here. Even though I knew it, even though the clerk had given me the signal prior to the meeting, I had the list, there is so much more to monitor in the virtual environment. Texts from the manager, perhaps. Chat from the clerk, it's harder. And I would like to make it as easy as possible for the new mayor. And I have spoken to Judge O'Neill about her thoughts about going back. I have suggested that we go back for the first meeting on December the 6th, the first meeting of the new council on December the 6th, so that the new mayor will have the ability to, it'll be easier. And instead of being alone at home with a computer and lots of stuff flying at her, she will have the city manager on her right side, the city attorney on her left side, the city clerk in the room, and only the chamber to monitor. So that's my other motive. And I think it's an important one. So my suggestion to you all is that the council go back in person on December 6th. That will give our staff plenty of time to be ready. They've assured me they can be ready before that if we wanted to go back before that, which is also a possibility. I'm open to whatever you all think. But I think that by December 6th, the council should go back in person. Let me mention that we still have an indoor mask mandate. We may not have that mandate by December 6th, I'm not sure. But if we go back in person and we have the mask mandate, we'll have to abide by that mandate. And that's just something to keep in mind as well. So those are my thoughts, colleagues, and happy to hear your thoughts about them as well. Councilor Hamilton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, so much. And your foresight and sensitivity to the transition process, I just only just underscores who we all suspect you to be in the city. So I want to thank you for that. There's no doubt that when her honor takes to gavel, that she'll be surrounded by a team that will do nothing but work to ensure her success and help get through the vicissitudes of holding the gavel. So I'm confident of that. I do want to say I'm glad that the numbers are trending in the right way. And I'm not a medical expert, but my suspicion is that between December 6th and our next actual meeting in November, I don't know if that's room for much more improvement. So personally, as by my calculation, I think that will be your last full meeting and last work session. I'd like to see you in the chamber, actually. I'd like to see those meetings occur in our chamber with you in that seat, barring any significant upticks in the numbers, or if the numbers go the wrong way, I'd be amenable. And if this doesn't place undue pressure on the staff, I'd like to come back in person for our next council meeting and the work session after that and kind of already have some momentum in the room when her honor takes the gavel in December. So that's, that's just where I am. Thank you, councilor. So for the second, you're saying for the second November meeting, be back. Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. Council member Reese. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Gosh, I wish I had gotten to go first because now I have to think about that on the fly, golly gee. Yes, I did actually say golly gee. Y'all don't give me a hard time. Yeah, I think I could do that. That's not a problem. The, I think we are in a much better place than we found ourselves in when we decided to stop meeting in person most recently. I guess my, the only thing I would add, and I appreciate all the thought that you've put into this, Mr. Mayor and your leadership in the city throughout this entire pandemic and making these tough calls, I would just ask that my colleagues strongly consider if we're gonna go back in four weeks and come back in person on the 15th, that strongly, I urge my colleagues to strongly consider getting a booster shot as recommended by the CDC and soon to be the FDA or maybe it's the other way around in any event. Once we do set up our return for in-person meetings will each one of us as well as our city staff will qualify as folks who are required to work with others in person. And I think whatever we can do to protect each other and perhaps more importantly, the folks in the public who wanna come to attend, I think we should do. I know that if we make a decision today to come back at whatever date, I'll certainly be contacting my doctor at the next opportunity to try to schedule that booster shot because I wanna make sure that I take care of all of you as the best I can and obviously our staff and the folks who will come to our public meetings in person. That's what I had to add, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member Caballero and then Mayor Pro Tem. I wanted to associate myself with Council Member Middleton's comments about coming back in mid-November, we will be losing you as mayor and also Council Member Freelon, who we've actually only gotten to me I think twice in person. And so knowing that I like that plan, I think it would be nice to be in the chamber one last time altogether with this current cohort. And I think that the vaccine has been approved for kids under 12 now, is that correct? No, not yet. Okay, that was gonna be my follow-up question because I know there's several of my colleagues who still have unvaccinated children. So that was my only other question. And then the only other thing I would add is, and I agree with you that our positivity rate is low enough. So it's just, I would like, I said it last time, I just want it tied to a metric so that we have a real clear, if numbers, and I just knock on wood. What's gonna happen as our winter progresses, but I would feel more comfortable knowing that there's a plan, if we do need to go back to virtual and that fits tied to something that we're watching in the community. And that way staff knows what that point is and where we feel safe. Thank you, Council Member. I'm planning to talk soon to Rod Jenkins about these kinds of metrics again around the indoor masking order. We've received a lot of questions about that and the possible modifications. So I'll bring that up also. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro-Chem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Covey asked my question. I'm really just wanting, I feel comfortable coming back to in-person meetings now. I think that the vaccines for kids from five to 12 will be available in early November. And so really looking forward to getting my little one, his first shot pretty soon. But yeah, I would just really like us to have some kind of a test positivity or other standard for when we meet in person. And when we are virtual, I wouldn't be surprised if numbers continue to rise and fall over the next year or so based on holidays and travel and just other things. So whatever the public health experts think is the right number, we could adapt some sort of policy, it'd be great. Other comments? I got a thumbs up from Council Member Freelon. I'm gonna just thumb up Council Member Freeman. So I'm going to say then that we have a consensus from the Council that we will go back in-person the second Council meeting in November. And I'm gonna just ask Manager Page to just come on screen for a minute and just confirm that you all are ready to do that. And so certainly that would give us enough time to just sort of practice again. We have all of our processes as well as our technology in place. We've had that in place since we had the other two meetings. And I can provide assurance that by the second meeting in November, we would be ready to have an in-person meeting. And we are getting text messages as you mentioned, Mayor. That would be the second Council meeting. We just want to make that, get that right. Not the, yeah, the second Council meeting, right. We'll be our first time back. I think it's November 15th. Yeah, thanks. Council Member Caballero. I'm just because I'm sure we're gonna start getting queries from our boards and commissions. Can we do the same thing where we go back in-person for a little while before we take that question up? Because I know that we'll start getting that question as soon as Council Members. Yes, and the clerk had just sent me the, and asked to remind me that we deal with that question. So you and her were on the exact same wavelength. Why don't you state your suggestion again, Council Member? I think originally when we went back in August, we wanted to have a several kind of week drive-around, watch the positivity rate, or decide what the metric was gonna be, and get folks used to it, and then bring back our boards and commissions. I think early in 2022, if numbers look good, if we're coming back mid-November, it would give, I don't want to speak for staff because we won't be able to use the small conference room that's often used. So I think that that was the other pain point for us was trying to figure out where our boards and commissions can actually meet, that will be safer. Thank you. Madam Clerk, could you come on the screen for a moment? Sure. Madam Clerk, you and I had talked about the fact that we aren't, and colleagues will remember, we aren't able to provide hybrid meetings for our boards and commissions. So the boards and commissions have to vote about whether or not they wanna come back in person, or whether or not they wanna remain virtual. So, Madam Clerk, in terms of the issue that Council Member Caballero had raised, which I hadn't thought about, which is the space for groups that wanna come back and meet in person, had we previously given that thought? Well, the committee room is not being used by the city council. We are using the chambers for both our council meetings and work sessions. I think the committee room does offer plenty of space for boards and committees. They will not be online. They will just be meeting, strictly in person. But that is an option, but I don't think we have committee room space for all of our boards and committees. That's the other issue. Yeah. So colleagues, Council Member Caballero has proposed that we give our, we let our, let me try to phrase it, Council Member, and if I missed it, you can let me know. That we let our boards and commissions know that if things continue in the right direction, that they can go back to in-person meetings in January. And that I do think that gives us some time to think about this issue of space, which I agree is challenging. We do have the rooms downstairs in City Hall. We have the committee room, but I think it would be good if our clerk's office and our administration spent some time together thinking this through. So I would request that they do that. So colleagues, can I see some thumbs on Council Member Caballero's proposal? I'm seeing thumbs up all around. Okay. Thank you, Council Member. Okay, Madam Clerk, do you have what you need on that? Okay, thank you. All right, we'll now move to the, the Madam Clerk, the balloting for the boards and commissions. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members, here's my report on Council's nominations. For the Board of Adjustment, the mayoral appointment is David Paletta. Durham Open Space and Trails, the appointment to fill the at-large vacancy is going to be filled with, the nomination is Tonya McRae. For the Go Triangle Board of Trustees, the appointment to fill the Joint City County Representative vacancy is Stephanie Williams. The Racial Equity Commission appointment to fill the at-large resident vacancy is Esmond Pajo. And the Safety and Wellness Task Force appointment to fill the Justice-Involved Resident vacancy. The Council has agreed to re-advertise this position because neither applicant have that we're submitting applications where Justice-Involved, and it seems like people aren't understanding what the term means. And so in our next vacancy, we are going to provide more detail as to what Justice-Involved Resident means. Thank you, Madam Clerk. That was a privy to the email exchanges between you and Council Member Freelot on that, and I wanna thank you both for that. All right, now Madam Manager, are we ready to settle the agenda? Yes, Mr. Mayor, we are. And we have for our consent agenda items one through 10 and items 13 through 20. And we have for our GBA public hearing items, items 22 through 24. Thank you very much. All right, colleagues, you have heard the manager's recommendation. Is there a motion that we settle? I moved. I can. Move by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, seconded by Council Member Caballero that we settle the agenda for the manager's recommendations. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schull. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. Aye. Council Member Reese. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk and Madam Manager. We have settled the agenda for the manager's recommendation. Colleagues, I believe that is all the work to come before us today. It was a good valuable work session. And I will see all of you soon. And I'm gonna declare this meeting adjourned at 3.43. Yet another fantastic work session. I mean, we are on a roll with work sessions. Let me tell you, this was fun. You guys are great. See you in a couple of weeks. Thanks. Bye, y'all. Peace.