 Okay, we are preparing to go live. No. Good morning. I want to call this special budget work session of the Durham City Council to order and certainly want to welcome everyone here today all my colleagues and our wonderful staff and those who may be listening to this. Broadcast and some other. At home or in some way, we're glad to have all of you with us. We'll begin. Madam clerk. Are you with us? I am Mr. Mayor. Can you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Caballero. Council Member Freelon. Here. Council Member Freeman. Present. Council Member Middleton. I'm here. Council Member Reese. Council Member Reese. Sorry. Go ahead. Council Member Reese needs the link. Can someone send in the link? Thanks. And Council Member Caballero is traveling today and will be unable to be present. Colleague, she has asked for an excused absence. Can I have a motion to that effect? To move. Move by Council Member. Move by Council Member Freeman seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Madam clerk, will you, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Caballero is requested an excused absence. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. I vote aye. Council Member Reese. Thank you. Thank you. I believe under our protocols, the COVID voting protocols, the eyes have it and the motion passes five to zero. Thank you, Madam clerk, and I will now turn the floor over. I believe to John Allure, Mr. Allure. Welcome. Good morning, Mayor and members of council, John Allure interim budget director for the city of Durham. And I'm pleased to welcome you here to day, day one of our city council FY 22 budget work sessions. We have a lot of information packed into a four hour session. You will have asked someone else to assist me here with getting information up, but it was included in your agenda in your, your packet as well as in the invite. We'll start with some opening marks from our city manager. We'll move on to a revenue presentation presentations on pay and benefits finance will present some summary of some some funds, followed by the capital improvement plan presentation. Community development neighborhood improvement services and we'll close out just before one o'clock with the office of economic and workforce development. All departments will be presenting in these sessions due to the limited time we have, we chose to try and focus on people on those departments where there may be still questions for you that she outstanding the council wanted to ask concerning the preliminary budget in regard to these departments. I have shared the link to the preliminary budget document to you in the chat. And as I mentioned in an email to you last night. And because this is public I should mention to the public as well. We have since since the presentation on May 17 by the city manager we have added a table of contents to that document. So that residents with ease can find the department sections, including all of the departmental pages for our 24 to 26 departments in the city. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to city manager page to see if she has any opening remarks. Good morning. Good. Good morning. Mayor sure Madam Mayor pro Tim Johnson and members of the Durham City Council. My remarks will be very brief, as I made extensive remarks on May 17 on the proposed budget. And what I will say this morning is, thank you to the John allore and his team, the interim director of Budget and Management Services, as well as all of the city managers, the senior leaders and employees who have gotten us to this point, with a very complex budget to both serve our residents in somewhat routine ways, but also implement some new initiatives and things that make us and keep us an innovative innovative city government to serve a growing diverse population that we have here in our community. And with that, I will say we will be listening, we will be incorporating your direction and your recommendations to, to us will be bringing back information to follow up items that you have additional questions or comments on, and we look forward to moving this budget along to adoption. Thank you City Manager page. And with that I'm going to kick things off unless there's any questions with our revenue presentation. And I will say to members of Council, whatever your preferences if you want to stop me during the presentation and ask questions, or if you want to save them for the end either is fine. This is an overview of the FY 21 22 proposed budget revenues for the City of Durham. Next slide. And just a summary of the key issues. Of course, our major revenue sources will spend the most time on these property tax and the sales tax, including sales tax projections have some discussions on fund balance because I think that's always worth re clarifying, because it is confusing. And we'll talk. Well, I don't know how much we're going to talk about the American Recovery Plan funding, but I think everything that we say in these discussion is framed by the eminent receipt of the American fund, American Recovery Plan revenues. So I'm going to move on to the next slide, the general fund revenue summary. See the summary of our major revenues, property tax and sales tax with last year's adopted budgets and where we are projected to land. I'm going to align with the third quarter financial report that you received on May 20 of last week. And then the proposed proposed budget. And what we see here is recovery and a lot of areas and then in some cases, revenues that we anticipate being flat as as we move into in that recovery phase from the COVID pandemic. We have the little more detail on the budgeted revenue property tax. We'll see the increases in a minute but this is just another slice of looking at all of the adopted budgets. Over time, you certainly see that probably the most volatile of those, the hardest one to predict is sales tax. There are other local taxes, primarily that is made up of occupancy tax within that the state shared revenues that we received from the state license and permits charges for services and other revenues. Probably the other revenues is comprised of our share of the fire consolidation money that we receive from the county with the consolidation agreement we believe four years ago. The representation of these revenues I just talked about and to reiterate again that we, the general fund is primarily reliant about 50% on the property tax revenue and for FY 2233.4% sales tax. Those are those are major pieces of the play when we look at revenues. So going over how the property tax allocation, the proposed property allocation is split as you know it's a, it is a total property tax rate of 55.17 cents that's a two cent increase over the previous year of 53.1 cents. And where the increases are allocated is 0.12 cents or 12 cents in the general fund, modest increase, an increase in debt service of 50 cents which is representative of our desire to increase the amount of capital towards the green and equitable infrastructure. And then finally 1.38 cents to the housing fund, which is representative of an increase to begin to pay down the debt service on the $95 million tax referendum bond we did for affordable housing a number of years ago. Transit and solid waste fund tax allocations remain unchanged for the budget. So just to look at the property tax base growth for the current fiscal year it's a growth of 4.14% over the previous fiscal year. I think what's interesting here is the cumulative growth at the bottom tells you over time, how much the tax base growth has increased so if you look on the far right that 68.2% is the cumulative representation of everything within the previous 10 years. Tax projections. This. This is this this slide actually is a representation of what can be found in the preliminary budget book in section four, we always include a property tax page and that's what this is. It's just another way of looking how we, as we say we split the penny or split the tax rate among funds. We have new information here that is people talk about and is probably of most interest on this slide is what the penny equivalent is proposed year and that is 3.7. So moving on. I'm not going to spend too much time on these. There's another way of looking at it. There's a lot of graphic representations of the data here this is in this case, we have a pie graph representation showing that the major amount of the property tax allocation of course is the general fund followed by the debt service fund, and then housing transit and solid waste making up smaller proportions. Property tax budget to to actual. So what we see here are the budgets inching up over the course of time and and of course, certainly in the last two fiscal years, us collecting more than budgeted. We budget according to what the tax assessor advises us. So we still believe that the 4.1 4% increases within our a reasonable target for our budget. Sales tax. Yeah, the the actual for FY 21 2021 where we're at we're up 6% or 2.7 million from the prior year collection. And if you're doing this, that may seem counterintuitive in the sense that you might say well wait, John it's it's May 26 how can how can it only be an increase of 2.7 million dollars. Unfortunately, because of the lag, we don't receive our current tax collections reflects a collection three months ago. So what you're seeing here is through February at at 6%. So it's we're, we're within what we're saying is in the in the current year we're within budget and based on that actual we the second bullet there we expect the end of your projection. So we're going to do three forecasting to be 74.3 million, which is 15.7% or $10 million higher than the very conservative budget last year for obvious reasons of 64.2 million dollars. And based on that projection, we are proposing in the, I guess the second bullet, the projected 2122 property tax, or excuse me, sales tax budget to be 76.1 million dollars, which is an 18.6% or 11.9 million increase over the FY 21 adopted. Again, a graphic representation of this. I think what I draw your attention to are the Reds, and particularly the dip in in red, which is the actual and FY 21. Certainly that this that was the effect of the, the pandemic, the pandemic. But we are projecting that would have been a little higher in previous years at this point in time. But as you can see, we're projecting a strong recovery. And based on that, the blue the final blue line is saying what what we're proposing for the coming year. Other general fund revenues just just a summary of everything else that we charge. I would say with this dry your attention to things like occupancy tax where you still see conservative estimates based on performance charges for services were still, you know, a little reticent to say complete recovery there. So that's why you kind of see the U shapes with those fund balance. So this is this is tricky. So I'm going to talk talk you through it, because it can be misinterpreted. So we are projecting for FY 21, for the end of year to have 58.4 million dollars of fund balance. Within that we have thresholds of 16 point that the 12% threshold which is recommended. So that takes us to 24.9 million, but there's a council policy of maintaining a fund that balance of at least 16.7%, which is 34.7 million. And then within FY 22, we're projecting to use 10.4 million dollars, which which brings us to from the 58.4 minus the 10.4 48 million dollars or a fund balance percentage of 21.5%. But then if you calculate back in on that 48 million dollars where you want to be at 16.7% that is 23.6 million dollars, then you use the 10.4. We actually have above the threshold available above the flesh threshold of 16.7% after spending the 10.4 13.2 million dollars. Does that I hope that makes sense. I see a nod from the mayor. Thank you. I had a question about that. Yes. This is a council member freelance. So you said the 12 point, the 12% is recommended and but the city council had adopted 16.7. Who is recommending the 12% and you know, it sounds like we're batting above our way, you know, punching above our weight, which is great. I'm just curious where the 12% came from whose number is that. So, so that comes from from recommendations from the GFOA and from the state from the LGC that that's the recommended fund balance you would you would want so it's sort of what what a lot of our peers do and then, but also a lot of our peers will adopt individual fund balance policies to reflect something above that. Okay, so that that's just the bear that would be the minimum and and Durham is different. So we do 16 seven. Okay, got it. Thank you. John, if I could just add, I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, Mark Anthony and then I'll thank thanks or John good morning if you if you would just for the benefit of everyone watching because I hear a lot of people talk about the fund balance they think it's just a static kind of pot of money that we just squirrel away. Can you explain it's 16.7% of what explain what that number is in relation to. Of course, of your surplus cash on hand at any given moment. Typically that is at the end of the fiscal year. You know, between the corridor of June, June 30th and July one is where you you really know where you stand based on the audited audited financial statements, and then throughout the year you're doing a process of predicting based on. Okay, I know I'm going to spend this much I know. I'm not sure how much you did receiving this much but we're actually receiving this much. So you're constantly doing of a predictive calculus to figure out where you're going to land before you know where you're going to land when the audit is done. So it is it is a it is a constantly moving target. When I say that there's 13.2 million dollars predicted to be available at the end of FY 22, if we spend $10.4 million that number is going to change throughout the FY 22 year based on economic circumstances. Excellent thank you for that. And just to be clear to find point on it. I mean, the percentage is relative to what is it 16.7% of our general fund balance of what we're projecting to spend. Yeah, man was a technology issue on my part. Hey brother Chad well you're good john I'm sorry. Yeah. Yes, it is. This is strictly for for the general fund. And if you I mean if you look in the the audit. I think it's pay around page 33 or 34, you will see each of the major funds have their own available fund on designated fund balance. Thank you for that. I can't say how many people. Well you probably know, ask me, where does that number come from and how did we determine what that number is and whatever good so thank you for kind of demystifying that for much folk I appreciate it. Thanks man. John I also had thank you. I also had one suggestion john. Because I think what Pierce asked is something that is, I think we had, we spent some time a couple years ago developing this policy to come to the 16.7% and there was a really good memo summary memo that was written I think about finance. And so I think it would be good to just resend that out to all the council members and I know that Pierce probably hadn't seen it at all. So that memo the city's fund balance policy can be found in section two of the budget book. Okay, great. That's right. Yes, thank you. I forgot it was in the budget book that's great. And so, Pierce if you look at that it's rather complicated, but it does give our rationale for coming up with with the 16.7. Thank you miss mayor. Yeah, thank you thank you john. Welcome. Moving on. So, where did where does it. Where does this put us for the future, I think is often what wants people want to know with regard the gf is the general fund and we've been talking about the general fund. So, where does this put us and I, your eye is already drawn to the red. And what that is saying that is that based on everything we've talked about so far with fund balances and forecasting. I can expect in FY 23 to start the budget process, which really begins in December of FY 2021 to to be in a deficit climate of $4.6 million. And what's driving that is mainly the the aspiration for full pay and benefit restoration. Now we haven't made that decision yet but it is it is a multi year financial plan. And as I say, intention to do that. So that's why you see that deficit. And then you see when we get past that hurdle, the slow recovery to a positive surplus. And then, finally, just to talk just about our priorities. I touched on these but I'm glad we did because it highlights the, the extreme importance to work with our partners in finance to monitor revenues and expenditures quarterly to amend budgets if needed to to refocus our financial plans and to continue based on that information to refine refine our multi year financial plans. Once our projection moves for any given budget year, everything else moves for what we predict going forward three to five years to to continue from that to develop strategies to address gaps. And then finally, I want to close out with the American rescue. The recovery plan that this item it will be on the agenda for the work session on June 10. So you'll hear more about that we want to obviously develop a plan for the spending with the $51 million we are anticipating receiving federally. And to identify what those opportunities are. And with that I that's the end of the revenue presentation and I welcome any comments. John, could you take this slide. Yeah, thank you. We've heard Mr. Allure's presentations, presentation revenue. Any questions or comments for Mr. Allure. I do have one in the multi year john the what are the property and sales tax assumptions what kind of growth are we projecting in the multi year. Sure. The after this year, we go back to what has been for property tax our assumption of a 3% growth rate. It's, it's based, it's based on prior actuals and it's also, you know, baked into that is the idea that we want we want a conservative number. So it's 3% sales tax. It's between three and 5%. I'll have, I'll have one of our analysts will chat out the actual number here but my recollection is between three and 5% for the sales for the sales. Yes. Thanks. And yeah so the multi year looks pretty good. You know, given given other multi years I've seen in the past. I think that it's pretty, pretty, it's a pretty happy picture. So that's great. And you're quite right. Traditionally revenues can be quite conservative in the in the multi year plan for obvious reasons and again we refine those. So it, the picture could, could get better. Or the economy could tell us that it's going to get worse. Yeah. Another way I think about it is the 1 cent increase in the general fund tax rate next year would cover all of the needed salary. You know, restoring, restoring everybody fully to the step plans and, and so that would be, you know, that's reachable. All right, John, I think we're ready for the second presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm going to turn things over to Regina Youngblood. She's going to talk a little bit this morning about paying benefits. Thank you, John. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and the members of the council. I am here as John said to talk about the proposed pay and benefits that are in the budget. I'll wait for a slide presentation to come up. Thank you so much. Next slide. Most of this information you have seen before and was made very clear by the manager during her May 17 budget presentation. So I'll go through the salary and structure adjustment updates quickly and certainly want you to stop me and ask questions if you have them. So first and foremost, we are looking to try to maintain some competitiveness with our salary structures, all of which are relatively new. The general employee step plan was put in place in 2019. And it has not been maintained since that time our intent was to maintain that structure every other year by moving it a certain amount based on market competitiveness. We are proposing in this coming years budget to adjust that step plan by 2%. That means that every step in that plan will increase by 2% and it has the effect of moving the entire structure, the minimums and the maximums by 2%. Each employee on a step will receive a 2% pay adjustment. What is not included in the budget this year are merit increases for individuals to advance a step as they normally would in our step plan each year. For the general employee open range plan again that one was put in place in 2019 and we are proposing a 7% structure adjustment for that plan. The reason why we are proposing a 7% structure adjustment for that plan is again our intent putting that plan in place in 2019 was to adjust it every year. And the reason why we wanted to adjust the open range plan every year and the step plan every other year was because there was a natural overlap that was built into both of the structures when we put them in place. But the overlap of the step plan with the open range plan had a negative effect for individuals who are at the very start of the open range plan because they were making less per hour than individuals that were at the very top of the step plan. So our intent was to adjust the structures gradually to eliminate that overlap that was an unintended consequence of putting the plan in place. And so because we had not maintained those structures, our intent was to completely separate those plans this year with a 7% structure adjustment. For open range plans when we adjust them for market competitiveness, normally the only individuals who receive a pay increase are individuals that fall below the new market minimum as the plan has been adjusted. So what we are doing this year and what we are proposing that every employee with an open range plan receive a 2% pay adjustment, and then individuals who still fall below the new minimum will be brought to the new minimum. So we have the police and fire plans which were put in place in 2017. Those plans were intended to be adjusted every two years, but have not been adjusted yet, since they were put in place in 2017. And we have as you've heard from our manager and probably members of the fire union and police FOP that we've continued to fall behind in competitiveness to the market. So our intent is to adjust the police structure by 4% that is a step plan so as I indicated in the general employee step plan when you move that structure by 4% the value of each step in that plan increases by 4%. So that will have the effect of each employee on that step plan, receiving a 4% increase to their base for the file, the excuse me the fire structure, we're going to adjust it by 3.5%. So that every employee is going to receive a 3.5% pay adjustment in that plan. Next slide. We're also proposing some personnel bonuses this year based on the amount of money that an employee makes as an annual salary. As you can see we're proposing between 1500 and $1,000 in bonuses with the largest bonuses going to employees who make the highest amount of money. Part-time employees are also included in this bonus structure and recommendation part-time employees working less than 20 hours will receive $250 part-time employees working between 20 hours and 29 hours receive $500 and part-time employees working 30 hours or more, or those that are considered status temporary with benefits will make $750 excuse me will receive a $750 bonus. And so, in each case, when we pay these bonuses, it is predicated on an individual receiving either an effective or better performance evaluation and those individuals need to be on staff and actively employed at the time that the bonuses are paid. And for part-time employees they need to have been hired prior to January 1, 2021, and each individual needs to be benefits excuse me excuse me needs to be pay for performance eligible, meaning beyond their probationary period. This is just a breakdown of the cost of the recommendations that we're making. As you can see the 2% add to base, the 4% add to base, the 3.5% add to base and all of the one time money that would be considered the bonuses that total cost of the recommendation is about $7.7 million. The next slide is going to show you the breakdown by fund. Most of that money as you can see is in the general fund, 5.9% of excuse me $5.9 million of the $7.7 million is in the general fund. Of that 5.9 million in the general fund, 3.5 or 3.6 million of that is going to be ongoing, but $2.4 million of that is one time money in bonuses. Any questions about the pay changes before I move on to the benefits. The important thing that I want to bring forward in this presentation about our health plan is that we are anticipating no rate increases at all for either of our plans, or any of the tiers within those plans for our employees. Keeping a very rich benefits program for our employees is important to us and also understanding the affordability of our plans, given that we have not had salary increases, we chose not to increase rates for our benefits. There are some additional changes to our wellness requirements. So normally we would have a requirement that individuals take a biometric screening being conscientious of the COVID situation and not gathering large groups of employees together to do on-site screenings and assessments. We are converting to a self-reported health assessment as a requirement for, first requirement for receiving the reduced premium payment that we call our wellness rate. And an individual needs to complete that health assessment plus four additional activities to qualify for the wellness rate. This year we will be implementing a new platform for employee wellness sponsored by WebMD1. It's going to be a one-stop shop for our employees to take care of their wellness needs and to track their performance in our wellness program and to get timely tips and information to help them manage their health and nutrition. That's the end of our presentation. Any questions? Colleagues, any questions from his young blood? I do have a couple of questions. I just wanted to check my calculation here. We received an email about pay from an employee who said that he was making about $45,000 per year. In my calculation, that employee would receive a raise of $900, I did use the 2%, plus a bonus of $1,500. That would be $2,400, which would be effectively they would receive 5.3% more than in the previous year. Is that my math work there, Ms. Youngblood? I think so. I'm not able to do those calculations quite so quickly, but what I do know is that there are some individuals that will be receiving an increase that is higher than the step increase that they would have been due under the fully funded plan. So the step increases for the open range plan for general employees, the steps are about 4% apart. And some instances, depending on the amount that an individual is making, they're going to be getting that 2% increase to base and a very large bonus that could calculate out to more than a 4% increase. Yeah, I did the same calculation with an employee making $34,000, which is our basically our lowest paid full time employee at the $17 an hour rate. And that would be a 6.4% increase. And so that gave me comfort, especially seeing that next year we've got budgeted in the fully bringing us up back to the step plan. But I think that the bonuses are going to put a lot of money in people's pockets. So that was good. And the thing that I don't see in the presentation is the hazard pay, the premium pay that retroactive pay. And I wondered if you could discuss that a little bit, and talk about what the, what the cost of that is, and I don't think that I have seen the number of people who are receiving that. We may not know that exactly. Exactly. And so we will know, probably approximately around June 4, exactly how many individuals we are talking about. So the definition of individuals that would be receiving the premium payer individuals who are working on the online majority of the time individuals that potentially work in offices or teams that don't allow them to socially distance that definition is being used by each department director to provide a list to human resources of individuals who would qualify for premium pay. So that's what I think is going to be calculated at approximately 5% of their base pay. It will include a blended rate for all of the overtime, or on call time that they've worked. So again, that's why I say approximately 5% for the actual time worked in a status that will pay. The total number of individuals I don't have right now. Oh, I do have right now is 1378 based on our last assessment, and we were looking at an amount around $3.7 million for the cost of that premium pay. So individuals would get that on a separate check after the last paycheck of this fiscal year, and it would be retroactive back to when we stopped premium pay in the last fiscal year. So from June 20, 2020 forward to June 18, 2021. Thank you. So, just to make sure I understand. Let's say a person was at the. Let's say a person was on a solid waste truck, and they were one of the people who was not able to socially distance and, you know, had to be with a crew. That person would receive a 5% approximately. I hear you about, you know, over time and blending and so forth, previous overtime. But if they receive that 5% increase that would be on top of both the bonus and the step plan increase that right. So somebody who was making $34,000. Could be receiving, you know, who was who was eligible for the hazard pay. Could be receiving it looks to me like an 11% effective increase over overpaid that the bonus that the bonus step plan and the hazard pay and so. Yeah, I think. I think that really is, you know, good. I think I think you all have done a great job with that. And I know there's going to be dissatisfaction about the inability to bring the step plan up faster. But I think with the bonus and the hazard pay, we've done a really good job of, of really supporting our employees, you know, at a higher rate than we would otherwise been able to do as you point out with the step plan increase. So, I just think we have to be real, real careful and clear and explaining that to our staff to our employees and helping them really understand this and then showing them that we have the fully restored step plan in the in the multi year. So, yeah, those are my thoughts. Thank you. Any other questions for comments from as young blood. Thank you as young blood. Mayor pro tem. Yeah, just sorry just one quick thing. I'm a little bit worried about the perception that we have a surplus because of the unassigned fund balance and are not giving the raises that we anticipated giving when we adopted the plan. I know that you know we can't use one time money for recurring expenses. But I'm, I worry that you know that explanation is not. People aren't loving it. Is there anything. I mean, is there anything else that we can do for our employees this year in our current in our current budget that would kind of that would make things make things a little bit a little bit better. Because we, I mean, it is hard to justify to people, you know, we have 13 we just found out we're going to have $13 million in unused fund balance but we're not able to implement the whole plan. I feel like I need. I can't hear Wanda, I see Wanda is here, I feel like I feel like I need a, you know, as some, some, some way to talk to folks about how we're, how we're managing our money, and be able to, you know, to be able to clearly communicate that we're not a that we care about our employees right that we're not we're not keeping money in an account while giving people half of what we said we would. Mayor pro Tim Johnson, thank you for that question for us. You know, as, as you know, you know when we present the operating budget, we are presenting it, you know, for recurring, you know, projecting recurring expenditures and when we show as mayor has mentioned the multi year. We're not showing any add to base salary adjustments escalated to the following year for the multi years so when that when when you saw next year. That is where we would be on our operating budget with what you see in front of you. So any additional add to base funding this year would. You know, would necessitate removing something else, or, or having some other type of revenue source that is current to cover that in this year's budget, you know, obviously, you know, any additional one time kinds of, compensation items. Those are the kinds of items that would come from a fund balance or it would come, you know, certainly, you know if eligible from from art funds but we believe, you know what you have in front of you but you know based upon the guidelines and the way we put the budget together I just wanted to stress that, you know, it would involve making additional revenues or, you know, reducing something else someplace else in order to do that and we would have to calculate based upon, you know what you would want us to look at we have to calculate, you know the impact of that. You know we certainly want to improve our communications we do have midday moments and we've been getting, you know, two 300 employees sometimes even more than that. And, you know, as soon as we have more confidence about what is actually going to happen with employee pay. We certainly want to push that message more, because we also want to make sure when we talk to our employees about what they're going to have in their pockets. We want to be certain that that's going to be, you know, we don't have to go back to them and tell them something different. So our message to them and our communication with them is very important. Thank you. Yeah, that's helpful and I understand that that anything that we add this year is going to escalate in future years and that's yeah a whole recalculation of the multi year. Could we think about, or could you give us some estimates for just like higher bonuses like if we were to increase the bonuses or the hazard pay retroactive what that would cost. So we could just get a sense of that. Thank you. Thank you. In terms of, I appreciate those questions that I think those are important considerations. In terms of the explanation, I mean one way to one simple explanation seems to me to be for our staff is if you're a skinny anybody that if you're making $50,000 or below. That you'll be receiving a five with a bonus in the step plan, you'll be receiving a 5%, at least a 5% increase. And if you're the lower you're paid, a higher your increase will be so that's actual money in your pocket. And nearly half of our full time employees will be receiving an additional 5%. So an employee who is a frontline employee who is making $50,000 will be receiving a 10% effective 10% effectively not effectively will be receiving 10% more pay than they did in the previous year. So I think that's a big number. And I think that that explanation is pretty simple. I'm certainly, you know, open to considering additional bonus, but I don't think that. Yeah, I think that what we've got is good, but happy to think about more. Mr Mayor, this is Council Member Reeves, can I just speak real quick. Sure. Sorry, by the way, I had to turn my video off the the Wi-Fi is not working in my house I'm actually connected to my cell phone to get this working but anyway. I think what I've heard from our employees is not dissatisfaction with the one time bonuses. It's the bear fact that we are using that that one time money to cover the fact that we're not doing a ton on actual raises. And I think the raises are difficult for all the reasons that we've heard about this morning. If we didn't have in the tax rate increase this year the 1.38 cents for the housing bomb it would be easy to do more on the on employee pay in terms of the actual salary that folks receive. But because of that, we are in a little bit of a box, and because we've made a decision which I fully support to add a half set on the tax rate to see IP to make some critical investments that we've neglected for generations. These are the choices we've made. And so I don't, I think to answer the mayor pro temps question. I think more one time bonus money is is her perfectly happy to consider that because we do have some extra money and fund balance, but I don't think that cures the problem we've got with our employees. I think we have to be honest with our employees and say these were the needs in the community that we decided to meet this year while adding a small raise while doing a lot with one time money to try to bridge the gap between last year and next year. And so, at the very least we have to say that the multi or forecast includes a full return to the step plan next year. And to the extent that we're around next year anyone of us is around next year that we commit to funding that. The mayor said at the very beginning when we looked at the multi year that that that you know, a cent on the tax incur on the tax rate or whatever he said would cover it. I think that's something we have to keep front of mind, as we move into the next budget cycle, and as we continue to talk to our employees about the challenges in this budget. So I think I agree that that looking at some additional one time bonuses is not a bad idea happy to consider that, but let's don't paper over the fact that folks are, that's not the thing that they're there to satisfied about. And there's no easy answer to that except to say, we have to be willing to commit to do better. And that's what we're going to do next year and in the following years. That's all I want to say about that Mr may thank you. Mr Mayor, one of the things that we will do as we hear, you know, we hear these things come up during these work sessions, unless you, you know, tell us something very specific, what we will do is go back and, you know, run a few scenarios, and provide them back to you and follow up items. And, you know, as we move toward completing the budget, you know, those decisions will be made and we will incorporate all of them. Thank you so much madam manager. All right. Thank you colleagues I think we're, we're done with that presentation and thank you to Regina thank you very much. John we're back with you. I'm going to start out and talk with you briefly about that. The health insurance fund and our risk funds. Regina reviewed with you the fact that insurance rates for employees are not going up next year. Next slide please. This is how we pay for all of that. We are self insured for both health and dental claims for for all of our employees. The city is essentially both kind of our own insurance company through the employee insurance fund and a customer of the employee insurance fund where in the general fund the water and sewer fund, basically pay into this fund in order to cover the claims that are paid from the fund. You will recall that etna serves as our administrator. So all of the employees have an etna insurance card and for all intents and purposes it looks like they have etna insurance, because they are paying the claims and providing any customer service that employees have but all of those claim payments do come from from the city. So this is a separate insurance policy for large claims claims over $250,000. We do pay for a separate policy so that we don't have any catastrophic losses, but just order a magnitude for 2021 we're expecting to pay out almost $25 million in medical claims and more than $13 million in dental claims for a total of $38 million in total health claims paid by the by the fund that includes both city contributions and employee contributions that come from their paycheck deductions. We also are self insured for dental, much smaller order of magnitude just over $2 million in dental claims and that number has been pretty stable over the years, whereas the health claim number does continue to grow every year. You mentioned the no rate increase. We are able to do that because we have accumulated some reserves in this fund that we're able to draw on if necessary, as opposed to increasing rates for this upcoming year. Next slide. Similar to the employee insurance health and dental were also self insured for workers compensation liability and property claims through a different fund. This fund is accumulate its resources similar to the insurance fund by contributions from the general fund enterprise funds, all the other funds pay into this fund based on some actuarial calculations on the exposure that exists within each fund number of employees claims history. So we are able to do that with vehicles those types of things. In this particular fund, we are self insured up to $1 million for workers compensation and liability insurance. We purchase excess insurance for amounts above a million up to $10 million. I think at the past work session there's an agenda item coming through right now where where there were some details on the cost of that insurance that we're purchasing for for next year. We have a large deductible policy for buildings $100,000 deductible for buildings and large deductible policy for our our automobiles and equipment were essentially cover all costs for you know passenger vehicles. And then we really only ensuring those high dollar pieces of equipment that we have with the $50,000 deductible order of magnitude for this year, we're expecting to pay out almost $3.5 million and work and workers compensation costs, and $1.2 million in liability payments. Over the past couple of years I think done a pretty good job of working on managing workers compensation costs. And those costs, while they have been growing because our popular, our population of employees has been growing. Good job of emphasizing safety throughout all the departments to keep those costs low, but we do have some relatively large potential liability exposure out there that is this causing the most strain on this on the risk fund at this time. The next couple of slides I wasn't intending to discuss but it included these spreadsheets and numbers for those of you that like to see spreadsheets and numbers. So you could just have an order of magnitude of how much how much money is in each of the funds so the next three slides you can skip through and then before I get to the, to the next topic I wanted to just pause here and see if there's any questions on the insurance fund or the risk fund before I move on to the to the next topic. This is Steve I have a question. The. Let's see. Let me try to pull the slide up. Hang on. Forgive me let me have some questions I had some notes that I made and I'm not sure exactly what slide it on but it has to do with the kind of health of the health fund and the dental fund. You know how, how is our, I'm sorry that I don't have my hands right now on the slide that shows their, their kind of projected balances, but how are they are we in good shape. Yes, so on the on the health insurance fund or health health and dental are both contained in the same fund we track them separately just so that we can make sure we're accurately setting rates based on on each of them. But leading up to 2020. The projections on on how much funds we would have accumulated on the health side which is where the big numbers are. We're starting to decline towards kind of where we didn't want them to fall below. We had much better experience than we expected in in 2020 and in 2021. Which we believe is greatly associated with people not going to the doctor. But I can't really tell if that's over. And if, if, if claims are picking up in 2021 as people got more comfortable with with, you know, dealing with some of their non emergent medical needs. We have accumulated a pretty healthy reserves within the within the health fund right now, but we have a lot of uncertainty about what 2022 is going to look like. But because we had a pretty favorable position, we were able to still recommend no increases, knowing that we have the flexibility to deal with a spiking claims. What we're, what we're seeing in 2021 is people not really getting back to normal yet. So I think we're, we're fine. Short answer is we're fine. And we've got a pretty, a pretty good safety net if things don't turn out as we projected. Thank you. When I look at the chart I found the spreadsheet now. It looks like as we get up towards 2023, we're projecting net surplus into the 1111 12 million range and then up to 2025 it looks like it declines some still a pretty healthy balance, but you're, you're again comfortable with that long term. With that long term projection at this point. At this point, you know, because there's there's two, two things going on one we can control when we can't one is what happens with actual claims costs. And how does that compare with what we're projecting. And then the other piece is what are we assuming on increases in both city and employee contributions in the future years. Yeah. And can you tell me anything about those assumptions in this, in this chart. We'll have to dig into the, to the meat of the model to get you an accurate answer on that but that's certainly something that we can provide. Yeah, it would be good to know just kind of what the assumption is on the, you know, not not not category but not talking about. Yeah, so you know not not a lot of detail but kind of what the aggregate increase in the benefits costs would be I think would be useful. Yeah, sure. We'll get to the claims increase assumption as well as what we're assuming for increases for for employee rates going forward. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you so much. Certainly. Anything else on on health or risk. Thank you. I just had a couple questions. Just acknowledging this a health pandemic and I'm realizing with staff addressing it, I guess across. If there are folks who are addressing it, or actually having cove it and we're seeing an impact based on that side. How does that come across, or where would I look to see if there was a sharp increase in costs associated with the pandemic. Well, it's essentially like if you're, if you are viewing your family all get covered there's cost associated with that in your health insurance. And so, if we're paying the claims, are we sure is there a place to show to see or to view where that might be translated. I defer to Regina Youngbo to see what level of detail we get on on the types of medical costs that are being paid to be able to see whether or not we'd be able to to peel that out. And mainly would be like hospital. I think some of the Medicare part, do you know that part B. Oh, so we would have to explore the claims data and work with etna third party provider to figure out how you're coding certain coven related treatments. And so we can definitely look into that to see if they have any special coding associated with the treatment of COVID individuals. And just because I could help if there is a sharp spike I think I'm acknowledging that the surplus is probably helpful. And just looking forward at what happens when folks do actually have COVID because it's not just one person that's impacted in the household. And then just a second question on the risk side, I just wanted to just make it clear for my colleagues. Is, is there a separate fund from the general fund that the dollars are used if there were a safe for instance a lawsuit. The lawsuits will be paid from this risk fund. And those are the funds that we do have if it were to go over that risk fund. I know there's another inch or another like insurance claim or process that we have or insurance that we have against that. But would general fund dollars be used for that. Well, to the extent that we had to pay something. That wasn't covered by our excess insurance and was more than, than what the risk fund could pay. We would definitely have to explore as many options as we could find to come up with where that would come from. It would depend on the unique nature of how much and what it was associated with we would have to come up with some other options on where the money would come from. And just noting on the side and the mayor mentioned, you know, dollars in your pocket, I want to be really careful and explain to staff what that means. Acknowledging that your tax bracket and the size of your family needs to be a caveat in that so it doesn't actually equate to equal dollars across the board. Just making sure that that's clear and whatever infographic or information that we put out there. Thank you. Okay, if nothing else on on those two funds on move on to the to the next topic I'm going to cover this morning. As you know the city owns a number of facilities and we hadn't really talked about them with all of you very frequently. And we have different business arrangements with each one of them so I'm going to walk through those with you this morning. Next slide. So we've got six facilities that that the city owns and we've got relationships with the occupants we've got the Arts Council Carolina Theater, the old ballpark the convention center, the deep app and and the deep pack. And for each one of them we have a unique arrangement so the first one I'll start with kind of the simpler ones and move on to the more complex ones so the first one we'll talk about is the is the Arts Council. So we own that building. There is a nonprofit that occupies the building provides services and programming. And then we pay that nonprofit to provide to help pay for some of the programs and services that they provide that's just over $700,000. The city council as the document pays for kind of the routine custodial repairs and, and those types of things needed for the building as well as their, their additional operating costs, and the city's responsible for kind of any of the building envelope needs as as the the owner of the facility. So Carolina Theater the next slide is very similar where we own the building, the nonprofit occupies it. We pay them just under $700,000 a year, and then they pay for as as with the Arts Council they pay for all of their operating costs. And the general maintenance of the of the building, but again where we own the building and when there are other building envelope type things that need to be done those are things that that we pay for. Next slide. The facility is is the old ballpark. This is a bit different where we pay capital broadcasting the Durham bowls to manage and maintain the ballpark on our behalf. We pay them about $120,000 a year. They keep it in the condition that you see it you know they're maintaining the fields. They are also responsible for a relatively small amount of repair expenses if there's something significant that needs to happen at the building that's, that's what we would pay. But the bulls schedule field rented out keep any rental income that might be generated from that and pay all the operating expenses for that facility. Next slide. And then we have a rental or where things start to get a little more complicated so the convention center is a joint venture that we have with the county so the city and the county jointly own the convention center 5050 split. And then we have an agreement with a private company spectra then venue management to run it for us. A base management fee of just over $100,000 and then they get a sliding amount of compensation based on the revenue that is generated at the facility 25% of any revenue above two and a half million and 30% of revenues over 2.9 million. And then they also can qualify for an additional $32,000 if they meet some quality standards. But all in that additional revenue can't be more than $300,000 above the base management fee that we that we pay them. Next slide. Convention centers generally do not pencil the operating costs and the revenue generated from convention centers across the country are not facilities that that cash flow. That's the reason why governmental entities operate them or own them. Prior to hiring spectra in our previous arrangement. We had operating losses at the facility as high as $1.4 million back in 2011, which we did not think was sustainable. We had a third party evaluation of you know what what should that number be and at that time. There was a report that we had from a convention and convention center consultant who suggested that based on the size of our facility, we shouldn't be losing any more than half a million dollars a year so we were well above that. The first year that we entered into this agreement with spectra. The loss dropped to $300,000 in 2018 we actually from an operating standpoint got over losing money just slightly break even. And then, and then the pandemic happened and in 2020. We had a loss of 423,000 and then for this year. We're expecting to lose. Quite a million dollars. Next slide. So, the, the city and the county have to cover any of that, any of that operating subsidy, as well as any capital expenses that are necessary to maintain the building. Prior to 2021. The positive performance by the operator. And funds that we had accumulated in the joint venture had reduced the amount that the city and county were contributing to the facility to just $50,000 each. In 2021, the city and the county each had to contribute 200,000, and we exhausted all of the funds that had accumulated in the, in the joint venture in 2022. Both the city and the county will need to contribute $458,000 to cover what is the current projected. For fiscal year 22 to cover some life safety needs in the building that that we can't defer and to reestablish some level of working capital for the convention center. So, clearly, impacts of the pandemic pandemic felt that the convention center. Next slide. So, the, the new ballpark, we still call it the new ballpark even it's been there for a while is again a different arrangement, wherein we are the less or and we lease the ballpark to the Durham bowls. And they pay us a base rent of $135,000 a year. Plus a percentage of their gross revenue over a base of $11.7 million. The base revenue threshold grows based on inflation each year, and that has averaged 150 to $200,000 a year so. And so all in, you know, we're getting, you know, just under $350,000 a year from the bowls as the, the tenant of our facility. In return, though, the bulls pay all of the operating expenses for the facility and $250,000 a year that that increase that that threshold increases each year as well for other repairs and maintenance that that need to happen in the building in the city is only paying for costs that exceed $250,000 so basically large capital items at the ballpark. And just to to this arrangement, which we arrived at back in, I believe 2011 or 12. The city had a lot of operating cost exposure there. And this arrangement has worked really well to minimize the amount of city funds that have to go to the ballpark, but there is still a lot that we have to cover next slide. So we do have a separate fund where we, we recount for the, the activity for this particular facility. But the, but the rent is not what we get from the bulls is not sufficient to cover all the costs there we have to pay for the debt. We have issued debt to, to renovate the facility. And we subsidize that from the tax rate that goes to the debt fund in the amount of $950,000 and then there's also a contribution from the general fund of $200,000 that helps make sure there are funds sufficient in this separate fund to pay for the the capital needs that do arise at this ballpark. Next slide. Lastly, the, the, the deep pack. We have an operating agreement with PFM Nederlander, a private company that operates the building on our behalf, they pay all of the operating costs. And the city pays them a management and service fee of $365,000. And then we share along with PFM Nederlander in the operating profits from the facility. Based on how well the facility does the city gets 40% of any of the operating profit up to $2 million and then it grows as you see based on that schedule. Next slide. Based on history, the first year first full year the theater was open are the city share using that formula was $1.2 million. The highest year was in 2019 at $2.8 million. 2020, despite being being closed at the end of March we still got $1.7 million and then obviously we're projecting nothing for 2021. Due to them, them being closed. Next slide. Like the ballpark we do have a separate fund where we account for all the costs and revenues associated with the deep pack. But unlike the ballpark, the revenue that is flowing into this fund is sufficient to cover. The revenue that is associated including the $2.2 million worth of annual debt. Capital needs that arise. And that revenue is not coming from the general fund or the debt fund it's coming from a portion of the occupancy tax. That can only be used to pay for debt service that's capped at $1.4 million a year which prior to the pandemic we were reaching that that max facility fees. And we get half of that and that has average between $650,000 annually and then about $300,000 in naming rights for for sponsors at the facility. As mentioned, those revenues are sufficient to cover the debt service the capital needs and enable us to accumulate some funds here to pay for future replacements which which we have scheduled to take place going forward. That's what I've got on all six of those facilities and happy to answer any questions about any or all of them. Thank you very much Mr boy colleagues questions comments. Mayor pro 10. Thank you. Thanks David that it was really informative I'm sure I'm not going to remember it all. So many different agreements. But I did have a question about D pack you know obviously since we're not getting any money from the theater, what, what are we looking at in terms of what the city is going to have to pay. And I'm sure the occupancy taxes down to so like what are we out for the debt service or any other needs at D pack for this year. So, similar to my comments on the on the health fund. We have accumulated reserves in the D pack fund in anticipation of future capital needs. The funds that we have there now are are sufficient to get us over this. So we're not going to have to go back to the pandemic home, not getting the occupancy tax or profit share or facility fees at the levels that we had before will obviously impact our ability to do all the things that we perhaps want to do going forward but there will not be any additional contributions from the general fund or other sources that are necessary to keep the deep back at the level that it needs to be. So that's evidence of really good forethought and planning that we could weather this kind of disaster without any without having to put any additional revenue in. So that's great. Thank you. I will make it make a shout out to our to our folks at general services who were very closely with the D pack and the bowls to have a very long range financial planning model that we assist with to know really what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks. I think we're going to have to make sure that we have the funds for life on the stuff that's there and when do we think we're going to have to replace it to make sure that we do have the funds when those things come up and so we don't have to come back and say, hey, we've got this problem. We don't have any money to deal with it. So, general services does it does a great job and working closely with both of those facility occupants. I think it's a great opportunity is the repair schedule for the, the D pack and the ballpark, you might want to share that with council or as general services to do so I don't think I don't know if we have that's that's clearing out a zoom friendly spreadsheet. No, but it might be fun to. I don't know, Mayor pro tem might like to see it. I will nerd out on that spreadsheet. Yeah. I think we should say the names Patrick Baker and Bill Bell here too while we're shouting out the deep back. finances, for sure. The, I'm trying to remember you know we saw an initial very preliminary ARP. We saw, we saw what city city funds we believe are eligible for ARP reimbursement. And I'm sorry I don't have it in front of me but do we believe that the holes in the in these facilities in the budgets of these facilities are eligible for ARP reimbursement with those some of the funds that were on that sheet. I see the managers here. A couple of us pop then, Mayor, but the answer to that is, yes. We vetted revenue losses over the time of the pandemic and have that proposed in a number you might have in your head that's right around $8.1 million that we are advancing for that purpose. Great. Thank you. And there is, there is some on the ballpark, there is not on the D pack. I see. Okay, thank you. Colleagues questions comments for for Mr. Boyd, Council member Freeland. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This was really interesting to see Mr. Boyd thank you for the presentation. I have two really quick questions one was about the. I'm just interested to see how the Durham Convention Center numbers have shifted, you know, to see the, the gap of 1.4 million in 2001 get closed to break even in 2018 is, I think a great reflection on spectra as a as a partner. I guess, you know, if the standard is to lose half a million a year. Is there any data on the revenue that's generated from conventions and festivals and what that brings to the local economy. Because when I hear like we were just losing money. I don't think that paints the full picture of what you know, the institution provides to the city. Yes. So first of all, I'll say that half a million dollar number is dated at this point you know that was from the work that we did back in 2010 2011, but you did hit that you hit the nail on the head is the reason why public entities, you know, build and pay for convention centers isn't to lose to lose money every year it's for exactly what you're describing it's it's the spin off economic effect it's it's the positive impact that all of these facilities have on, you know, the culture. Of the city, you know the vibrancy of the city all the things that we want to see that you can't put a price tag on but I do believe that the that discovered Durham has some calculations on what is generated. What's the spin off economic impact of the convention center. We could certainly reach out to Susan Amy and see if she could, could share those with you. Yeah, I remember seeing our colleague in the State Senate Mike Woodard who's on the who's on the board at the North Carolina Arts Council has some great figures about what arts in general bring to Durham in terms of bottom line and the local economy. And it's tens of millions of dollars it's significant. And I think, you know for me as a lay person, I'm imagining a lay person watching this presentation and thinking this is a vortex sucking up our money. I would want to, I would want that to be part of the story that we tell so that folks are kind of clear on that in the general public I'm aware of that because I work in the arts know the value but I want to make sure our community knows about that. My question is about the shuttered venue of grants at the state. Are we applying for any of those grants are eligible for them as a city. I do know that that the the D pack folks looked at that and because of the size that they're at Bob Klaus wasn't sure that they would qualify over there. We had a conversation with with Becky Bolton, the manager of the convention center to see what spectra was doing. It was it was the operators that were eligible to apply I don't believe local governments were eligible to apply for for those funds for those purposes. But we can certainly follow up with both Bob Klaus and Becky Bolton to see what where they ultimately landed in their analysis is whether or not they would qualify. Okay, cool. Yeah, I would want to make I think that at least some of these I don't know, if not the pack there might be some or several of these that are eligible, there are billions of dollars going into this, you know, national issue around people not being able to go out to venues. PPP funds have run out but I'm on the arts advocacy listserv at the state, and they said that shuttered venue funds are still available. You know, so yeah please spread that to our folks. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Great point and I think also in addition to discover Durham I know the Durham Arts Council has some of those local numbers that we can also get from sharing degrees. Thank you, Mr. Mayor David good to see you and I certainly want to emphasize and so associate myself with a Councilor Freelance Councilor Freelance comments about arts and the value it brings to a city. Hard to put a price tag on that. David just two really quick questions. Do we ever realize any revenue from the Carolina theater ever and and secondly, why is it, why is the armory not listed on this list I think at the DPR. Operated venue but why is the Carol the Durham armory not on this list. So on the on the Carolina theater we do not get revenue from them we pay them to operate and provide certain programming so so we do not get any direct revenue from the Carolina theater. And then the armory is not on this list because we are operating it so so we were just trying to highlight those facilities that other entities are occupying or operating for us. DPR runs that the armory just like they do spruce pine lodge or, or, you know, like Mickey or any of their other facilities. Got you. So, so this list is is what distinguishes this list is that we pay other people to occupy to operate it for us. Yeah, there's a there's a third party that is that is occupying or operating a facility on our behalf. Got you. That makes sense. Thank you very much, David. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just had a couple of questions as well. Just noting that I think as council member Middleton was picking up on. Is there something that is that is there something in the facility. Is the where does it occur that the facility may or operations agreements come up. Is that something that community person proposes to the city or is that something where we're pushing out an RP to ask folks to operate. How's that. How's it that those are the only ones that that we have operating folks, I guess, operating agreements set up with. I think I think first of all, we don't have a lot of other facilities where it wouldn't. We don't really have any other buildings or venues that we would necessarily need to consider it but but I think the other pieces is an evaluation of the extent to which we think we have the expertise to be able to do it well. The theater business isn't something that the that the city is well versed in in doing, but we have done, you know, there are plenty of governments that do operate their own convention center. There's lots of things but you know it's really a case by case evaluation and when those agreements come up we do put them out for RFP like at that at the convention center most, most certainly. And then we have long term agreements with PFM Nederlander for the D pack, a long term lease at the ballpark. And then the Carolina theater and the arts council I believe those agreements come up from time to time for evaluation as well. And I just wanted to get in line just acknowledging, I think since I've been on council I haven't seen the agreements come up for for the DAP or D pack or for the long term bulls part. Are those coming up anytime soon. So I believe in the past couple of months there was an an amendment to the to the DAP that that came for council approval. The ballpark and the D pack are 30 year agreements, very long agreements and so unless there is some amendments related to them. You won't see them come forward for for quite some time. And then just one final question I understand that for Carolina theater and for the arts council they're nonprofits that are operating for the for profit entities. We have an advisory board with the Durham performance arts center, but not with the Durham bulls athletic park or the Durham athletic park. Is there a process in place to review the numbers. There is no there is no separate boards associated with with those facilities and I guess it would just be upon the request of council if they wanted more information about any of the details on on those facilities we can certainly provide them. I think Miss mainly just to keep an eye on how things are working, or if there's if there's a need there. Otherwise, I'm just, I'm just asking the questions. Sure. Thank you. Yes, I was just going to add in some of the agreements we do receive information as part of the agreement and the administration reviews that so whether it be a certified audit from the CPA, or a special some type of special use report that is linked to the revenue source that we may have if that is applicable. We do receive those it goes to the finance department and to the managers for review and comment. Any any of the agreements where where there's any type of a payment or compensation that's based on revenues or expenses we do get audit reports from from independent entities to validate the numbers. And then facilities like the Carolina theater shares their financial reports with us. The convention center has to has to. There's an audit that's conducted at the convention center annually so so there is a significant amount of the kind of administrative oversight that perhaps you all don't see. Thank you. Thank you that's helpful. Thank you council member colleagues any further questions for Mr. Boyd. Mr. Boyd we appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thank you. David. So, mayor council members, we are on time, which is very good. We certainly, and we appreciate that we built an ample time for discussion and your questions. So I would propose we press on and then perhaps after we get through CIP might want to take five minute break but that is at your discretion. I think let's press on. So I'm I am here to present to you the proposed capital improvement plan for fiscal year. FY 21 22. These are the recommendations. Next slide. So just some some reminders about the starting with the general fund. We created a number of years ago in a fiscal year 16th, a multi year plan. Some, some know this as the 10 year plan. Fundable CIP at one time and we continue to maintain and monitor that. This year, as we mentioned, additional funding proposed by city council and included and in the prelim budget by a city manager page to fund green and equitable infrastructure projects. So everything that we do where we forecast it's subject to review and reprioritization to accurately monitor and reflect changing needs under dynamic circumstances. So this slide represents what is being proposed as new general fund plan. These are the total recommendations, and I'll kind of go through these because the print is a little small. Microwave upgrade associated with the emergency communications department $2 million, some athletic court resurfacing. And these next ones are all within the realm of general services $230,000. Public renovations. Public Works operation center is the acronym for P walk $4.3 million. The beginning of the planning and design phase of our newest fire station fire station number 19 for $950,000 LED lighting to DPR courts and fields $270,000. Getting to the Morgan Rigsby parking garage $1.2 million. A joint project with the county the Durham County emergency operation centers $6.5 million sidewalk repair and public works on paved roads program, which is a continuing multi year program $1.2 million some bridge repair maintenance $750,000. Sidewalks just under $3 million trail system repairs $2.2 million. Signalize pedestrian upgrades in the transportation department of $361,000. $5 million of upgrades associated with the Durham Bulls athletic park. Many things out are some it and technology infrastructure projects. Durham housing, housing authority campus fiber network project it projects of $5.3 million associated with our it governance program. And then finally, some additional funding for the Duke fiber network project $2.5 million. If any of these projects have associated costs and out years there was a handout provided to you called exhibit a, which is not really very manageable to pull up on the screen, but if you want to see the multi year implications of some of these projects or other projects. That is there for you if you want to nerd out on spreadsheets mere pro tem. And what I'd what I'd really draw your attention to with anything with that is the color chart, meaning what we're talking about on this slide is represented in yellow. And what we're talking about for the future on that spreadsheet is represented in ochre. And that's kind of the difference there. Next slide. So our other enterprise funds. We have approximately $950,000 and solid waste projects proposed for this year. The stormwater projects of $8.5 million transit $1.3 million in projects and water. Making up the majority of these enterprise projects at $88.2 million for various capital infrastructure needs associated with these enterprise funds and the solid waste fund transit. I don't want to forget our partners in fleet fleet maintains a very robust five year replacement program for our rolling stock of vehicles. And this year, this slide shows to you the various funds that are in need of vehicle replacement and the source of those funds in some cases the amounts are so large. And in some cases, they're small enough that you can use pay go money, or you can, you can basically pay for them you don't need there's no requirement to finance the vehicles, 8.5 million dollars in the general fund some inspection vehicles. Solid waste $3.2 million, some large trucks associated there. The stormwater about a half million dollars in vehicles and water and sewer $750,000 in vehicles and I would remind everyone that this is vehicle replacement. This is not the cost of new vehicles that would go under a separate request and would not be covered in this fleet program. We want to spend the remainder of our time here talking a little bit about where we're going with the CIP and what's next. This is associated with the work we know we need to do around the selection the prioritization transparency around green and equitable infrastructure projects, but it does involve the entire so CIP. So we have the CIP viewer a dashboard, which we talked about this dashboard at the budget retreats. It's something new that our partners in IT developed alongside the us and finance to be a little more user friendly. And when we reflect the capital improvement plan. What what's new best about this, and I won't go to it here, because I don't really want to gum things up but we put the link in the chat, you can go to it yourself. And the public has access to this, and you can explore to your hearts content capital projects in the city, probably most useful is the GIS map component that has been developed. And we really want to use this in the future as a platform for CIP discussions and move to the next slide and talk a little bit about that. So in association with the project viewer. We also began about the first of the year, developing CIP stat meetings. I'm sorry we don't have a better name for it, but if you get a fancy name you tend to forget what it means but it is what it is it's, it's an ability to to show data and projects in a, in a, in an arena viewing both, both to our internal stakeholders with capital projects and ultimately to our community. And we're still developing this tool as a means of monitoring projects and making sure that CIP projects are completed in a timely fashion. And particularly related to our continually racial equity discussions. We realize that, you know, sometimes the CIP is perceived as a, as a black box and impenetrable we want to open that up a lot of that has to do, I would say with people with history with the city. And what's on the table at any given time. Over the course of my time here the public has got interested and involved in the CIP. Depending, you know when we do a large bond referendum and those kind of things. Certainly, we're anticipating that there'll be a robust and needed discussion around the additional debt service that we're offering for green and equitable projects. So we, we are proposing in the summer that staff will be providing updates and begin planning. What is really racial equity strategy. This is being done in conjunction with our partners in equity and inclusion. And then in the fall, staff will meet to preview this strategy. And we, we hope to incorporate this. Our goal is to incorporate this in the CIP process for FY 23, which will begin December of this year. And this is just, I've actually used up a lot of these words, but it's, it's just more words on, on where we intend to be going. I'll note some things here that we do want to partner in this very heavily, in fact, already began to partner with some groups in the city that sometimes in the past have not really come to the table with CIP discussions. We have a comprehensive plan. Certainly I mentioned the racial equity implementation implementation team. And, and last but not least our participatory budgeting staff. Andrew Holland and myself have had many discussions about this in ways that we can can use what we've learned. And I think it's the, the, the, the initiation of the PB process and replicate a lot of that. A lot of that transparent currency and in working in the community into CIP oversight. And I think, I think with that, that is our last slide. It is and it's time for questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Allure. Great questions and I'll go ahead and start. Great presentation. I've already nerded out over exhibit A. And one of the things I wanted to say to my colleagues that I know we get asked about this a lot. It looks like between new and between sidewalk repair and new sidewalk. For the Durham walks plan, we have about $15 million in sidewalk expenditures and FY 22, which is a big number, which is great. And it's something that our residents really care about. Plus, there's some couple of million dollars in there for pedestrian signal improvements and other things that will improve the walkability of our city. So I'm really happy to see that. The I was also real happy to see where they that the Hoover Road athletic park. This is the last year that we've got CIP funds there. So that means we're going to do it. We're going to finish this year. It's super exciting. And I can't wait to be there, you know, please let me know I want to be there when we cut the ribbon. But that's, that's, you know, I want to kick out the first soccer ball. That's what I really want to do. And, but that's great. And I want to congratulate our staff. I know it's been a big lift and it's been pretty quick. And I'm very excited about that. How do I see in this. So so with the green and equitable infrastructure, the funding that we're that's in the manager's budget. This is going to provide about $6 million a year in additional CIP. Where do I see that in this plan or do I see it in this plan at this point. The funding is in the plan, but you do not see it associated with any particular project. Because we certainly want to take the work we did at the retreats and then at the, we had a specific council work session to try to focus and reprioritize. At that time, what was discussions about is the direction to go towards a bond referendum or is the direction to go towards some some additional funding right now. One of the things we learned from that discussion was was we weren't quite ready yet, based on a lot of prioritization that we did around what could be considered in within the sphere within the arena of that additional capacity to begin selection. So we want to post haste, move to a selection process. But we weren't quite the funding this year's decision came after a what after our CIP process was completed. So we need to go back and commence that makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you that's great. And just the the the $37 million that there's on the slide that you presented john for general fund FY 22 funding plan recommendations that $37 million is is the new money recommended but the total for this year in general fund spending for CIP is or for you have not not for the enterprise funds but funds other than the enterprise funds is about $97 million. That is correct. Yeah. So, when you factor in existing projects that were approved in a prior year that had additional funding and when you factor in, wait, this is an existing project that when we rescoped it needed additional funding. Great. Okay, thank you. colleagues questions or comments. Councilmember Middleton. Thank you Mr. Marin and thank you john for for this really wonderful presentation I was anticipating it greatly. Because I think, I think it's really difficult to overstate how transformational this moment could be in terms of addressing some some historic inequities and disparities in our city. Really it's a national it's a problem written nationally but you know I worked for Durham so the local iteration of the problem here in Durham, or the challenge here in the city. I think we could potentially have our own kind of Marshall plan or Marshall s plan type intervention for Durham, but by boldly, and unapologetically, really leaning into the prioritization of these new CIP projects I think about reimagining things in the city. This is the kind of stuff that I actually hear people talking about kids walking in ditches and the need for sidewalk so so this is an area that beyond you know the professional organizing class and beyond City Hall that regular folk that I talked to these type of things that they talk about. So, and I agree with the mayor there's a lot of money in the plan for sidewalks and I think historically, folk have perceived the issue has never been there hasn't been a lot of money in the plan for certain things it's just where the money spent. And what neighborhoods get the money for example is $5 million for the ballpark which I'm sure needed but, but folk look at that gleaming structure and you know from a layperson's point of view said what could possibly be needed there. So it's you know still has a brand new ballpark smell in it. But I went when I had to come here I had to wait at a bus stop in a ditch. So I'm hoping that we will really take this opportunity, as we're doing other creative kind of radical revolutionary things that that's a really lean in and take the opportunity to develop which had a better comparison Marshall plan for legacy neighborhoods in Durham and historically neighborhoods that have been historically disinvested in if we were to declare you know what we're just kind of in a blitz kind of move pave every unpaid road or we're going to focus on Bradtown or Merrick Moore or or or or paytie and we're going to fix every bus stop in that area or whatever something that that is that is that is transformative that that is demonstrative of our desire about equity as much in this area as we're committed to doing it in other areas this moment I think this is a moment that can be transformative. And and paradigm shifting, not just for Durham but for other cities as well. And I'm going to be looking for, you know, not incremental kind of stuff but some really bold kind of transformative declarative action on on putting a big piece of money on some type of project that demonstrates our, our, our commitment to equity, as we were doing another area in the city so I want to really thank you for the presentation I'm looking forward to really digging in on the CIP. Thank you, thank you, Mr Mayor. I'll just add to that that to point out all of our partners are in on the zoom meeting this morning from the associated the departments that do the heavy lifting and capital and everybody is here to listen so thank you. Thank you. Madam manager. I really wanted to pop in and show my face as city manager to those comments. We understand that we have a large CIP and some of it is buckets of money. And we also have new money that we are adding to, you know, our investment. I wanted to show my, my presence as city manager that it is a high priority for me for us to make some equitable decisions as we read read, you know, we bring forward our CIP proposals to this Council. Thank you madam manager and your, your chops and your passion for those type of things are well known in our community and I think that's a large part of why you're in the seat that you're in now was an accidental so I'm really excited about that. And I know my colleagues are as well. This could be transformative. And finally, speaking with some authority with some money to the legacy communities in our city and I hope we don't let this opportunity pass, because this is the headline. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you madam manager. Thank you very much. I just wanted to mention just when looking at exhibit a the, we have nine years of a paving unpaved roads in there. I mean, I just, I really think, you know, that's one area where we could do so much better. Very you know that that was first on my list, maybe second on my list and I think that that needs to continue to be very high priority. I also want to just the the CFP project viewers is fantastic. And want to thank our staff for that I'm not sure. Hello, or could you just see Christina put the link in the chat. Can you talk about who has been working on on getting to getting the project viewer to where it is. I mean, Chris, you know, you know, primarily Christina talks in in budget. Jennifer Evans and finance. The folks in GIS were instrumental, instrumental in, and I have to give a shout out to carry good in his team for steering us in the right direction we were we were originally going to go with a tool and a product that was different. He directed us towards Esri and said, you really, you know, we have in house, the people and the expertise to get this done, you don't need to go to some third party contractor we can use our current as retools. So it was, it was critical. And I thank them for that. Thank you and congratulations I think it's great and and it's going to be so useful for our residents. Thank you so much. Thank you. I remember Freeman. Thank you. I thought my hand was going to fall off. I'm trying to get in there. I really want to remember Middleton's comments and make sure I fully associate myself with them acknowledging that it'd be a really huge oversight to not acknowledge that these legacy neighborhoods could be the headline and making sure that we cover downtown, Haytime, Merrick Moore and many other neighborhoods across the city, specifically with things like those paved roads or sidewalks. I think I also just wanted to know I really can appreciate the evolution of the CIP and the process and the way that things have moved and I wanted to just make sure that every year that I'm sitting here that I want to make sure I have the opportunities that Nina took in her work. I had the opportunity to serve on the CIP community board advisory board and from that time there to now this is completely like, like an evolution that I couldn't have imagined and I just want to ask for an additional round, acknowledging any dollars or goals that can be set to make sure that there's MWBE or local funds spent, you know, with some type of acknowledgement on the like project itself. And so just noting like even if it was a 10, 20, 30% goal set on the front side of it, I know that it's in there embedded but if we could bring it up so that it shows on the slides themselves, that would be so hugely beneficial just to make sure that we're not letting the opportunity to make sure that, you know, 10, 20, 30% of the millions of dollars we're spending to do these capital improvement projects aren't going to subs that are of color or women or folks who are here locally in business. And so just noting those three things. I'm really excited about the next 10 years. I'm really excited about a green and equitable bond opportunity. And I'm grateful that we're, we're moving ahead with the funds this year is 37 million added. And I know there's so much more that we can do, especially looking at what Christina took has been able to do over the last five years so thank you. Thank you council member. Any more comments or questions colleagues. Thank you Mr. Mayor I just wanted to appreciate and underscore what you said about, for example the unpaid roads. You know historically, when you look at a city, you know there's that proverbial train tracks who lives on one side of the tracks and the other side of track you can you can actually tell which part of the city was was highly invested in and was highly invested by roads, which roads are paved which ones aren't paid and that was by design. And you know in a modern era to have a metropolis to even enter the conversation of being a modern metropolis, and you still have unpaid roads and they're still in mostly in those disinvested neighborhoods that's something so graphic and so readily I think addressable right at the top so we, I mean, we don't, we don't need to start a new department if it is we can say you know we're just going to pave every unpaid road as a priority, just to at least bring us into the 21st century. As a city to start doing away with those graphic kind of very dramatic in the heat of the night type, you know city layout where you can literally tell where the poor folk of black folk live just by the road and they've historically been that way so I think those types of decisions and interventions are things that are within well within our power and ability as a counselor to do. So I just want to thank you for that for that example that's one of the things that I think is most kind of graphic and dramatic, and also might be low hanging fruit for us as to telegraph our commitment to seriously doing some the work of equity, reflective and real dollars in our CIP and in our policies and output as a government so thank you Mr Mayor for that and I look forward to partnering with all my colleagues to do something big in this area. Thank you. Thank you Council Member colleagues any more questions or comments on the CIP. Thank you Mr Mayor. Hopefully the Wi-Fi situation is a little better. I just want to make sure I understand kind of the timing of this there was a good, a Johnny presented a good timeline about staff work and engaging with some of the racial equity principles that we're going to need to make sure that we don't have to compromise big chunks of the CIP. That's obviously as my colleagues have said, that's critical work but we we're increasing the CIP tax rate in this budget. What happens with with that money. What are we doing with it until the, the kind of the new this process that you laid out, we get to the other end of that. It's not about appropriations not authorized in other contexts, but we don't really we've never really used it in the CIP context, and in with the operating budget we, we, we usually use that term to say the money is going to be put somewhere because it was sort of a late game table, and then we're going to figure out the playbook and do this but we know on principle that this, this, this program or something needs to get done we just need to work it out. So that is essentially what is happening with in this case. It was, it was late to the table, we're going to take the money and put it in essentially an appropriations not authorized project within the CIP. And then we're going to, we're going to work out the process surrounding it. And when do we expect to see, like I guess I wasn't didn't follow the timeline far enough, what when what's the timeline for identifying projects and getting them put out for bid. Identifying projects I can, I can say that we're probably looking at the fall into November December getting it out to bid is is not, not my sphere of expertise so I wouldn't I wouldn't want to venture there. That's my, my question is, this is going to be sound blunt but I don't know how else to ask it in a more politic way. Why in the world are we raising the tax rate this year if it doesn't sound like we're going to spend the money this year. Or put another way, can we spend the money this year. Can we, are we going to spend any that money this year. So, I will, I will speak first and then I will, I'm sorry. Thank you. So, council member recent council members. When you ask a question, are we going to spend the money this year, and you talk about projects, projects that are yet to be specifically identified, unless coincidentally they may already meet the criteria that we are looking to to set up. We typically don't have trans, you know, transformational kinds of projects that we can spend the money this year, you know, we may have some, you know, designed money this is capital projects it's not, you know, it's not operational money. You know, we may be able to get some contracts that are designed work, but it, but it does, you know, most projects have a little bit of lead time, and I want us to be transparent, and I want us to set realistic expectations about brand new projects. I have people who are here with me, who can probably say it a little better, but I wanted to get out there first to, to bring that, you know, bring that aboard. What I can commit to is that when we say that we're, we're allocating or we're putting money aside for a specific purpose that we can do. And we can be transparent about that part of it. And I'm going to ask the manager, Council Member Reese. Yeah, I guess. So, logistically what happens then, like we're, we're raising the tax rate half a cent for this specific bucket of projects. And now we're beginning, we're going to begin a process to figure out what those projects are going to be, where they're going to be, what communities they will improve, and then get them in the field as quickly as possible. I totally understand, trust me, I get it. It takes time to go through the first process, and then once we even get to that point, then get to the second process to really start, get up to the starting line on putting a shovel in the dirt, for example. My question is, and again to be blunt, do we have an extra half cent in the tax rate this year just to demonstrate to people that we're going to start doing things? And if that's the only reason, can we not do that and still tell people we're going to do things? Or does the half cent do anything for us now? Or are we, are we, are we collecting additional taxes during this year and putting them in a bucket that we'll use to borrow money when we decide what we want to do and that it's time to start doing it? And if these questions exhibit an ignorance of how all this works, I'm deeply sorry, but there's a disconnect I'm not getting, so thanks. So I'll speak again, Mayor, if it's okay. So, you know, there are two things that happen when we raise taxes. You know, when we raise taxes that generates a revenue source. In our capital program, we do have cash that we spend, you know, from, you know, from revenues that are cash, and we also use, you know, tax revenues to pay debt. It depends on the project. It depends on the goal that we have at a particular time. But, you know, very specifically, if we raise taxes this year, we're going to have money that we did not have in the past that is part of our program. And we don't have those projects identified and planned. We don't have the tax yet. So I am going to call on Mr. Boyd and then I think Council Member Freeman had her hand up. Thank you, Mayor. I think setting aside the exact date that that, you know, a shovel is in the dirt. You'll recall the kind of rough capacity chart that I gave you all about, you know, how much a half a cent is going to generate. What we can actually do with it. The sooner we do that, the bigger that capacity becomes. Right. So if we don't, if you choose not to increase the tax rate this fiscal year, then that's using that math $6 million over time or $16 million at once. That is going to get pushed out one more year into the future. So, so the sooner you do it, the more you can do once we know what it is we want to do. And the timeline for doing it. So it just increases your capacity to be able to do things sooner than if you wait one more year that there's going to be that much less capacity for for us to actually execute on projects once we know what they are and how long it's going to take. Can I ask a follow up, Mr. Boyd will quick. I apologize. Sure, of course. No need to apologize. So, so if we if we if we do as the current budget plan calls for include that have some increment and increase our capacity $6 million in the upcoming year. We're actually going to go to the market and borrow that $6 million and put it in a bot in an account. No, what is the extra capacity do for us this year if we can't get started with it. So, it's not so much going to give us extra mean it gives us capacity this year and if we don't do it, then it's going to be. If we're going to put a shovel on the ground and spend it, then we've got that much more capacity next year if we find so let's say that that that you identify a project that that or a bucket of projects that we'd like to do that we can we can't execute on this year, but it's generated in the taxes that we're going to generate this year. It gives us that much more to be able to do next year when we're ready to pull the trigger on so the the tax will sit there with with a fence around it not to get used for any other purpose not to supplant you know stuff we were already intending to do. And then you've got you know that much more ready to go when we've gone through the process to identify what are those projects, and when can we start on them. If you wait one more year, then you're starting one more years worth of tax collections behind and what you've got to when you say go. David that's exactly what I needed to hear and I appreciate you putting in a way that get through my dense brain thank you Mr Mayor. I would just say your brains on a specially dense to moderate to moderately dense brain. Those were very important questions and I appreciate Council Member Freeman. Thank you, I was just going to try and dig in a little bit on Council Member Reese's question, but I think he covered it. I just wanted to add to ask the question to Mr boy, if it would possible to just, I think for certain projects that we do have in this coming year. Any of those funds could be made available like to add a bus route. That wasn't included in initial transportation plan or to add bus stops to additional locations that weren't included in this coming year, or you saying that the dollars have to be held completely intact. I mean, if we are able to come to a common understanding about what we want to use the money for we can we can do that at any point when when we're ready to go. Once once folks are ready to go and we know what it is that there's no reason to sit on it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or questions. All right. I don't see any thank you for this good discussion everybody. It's now 1114. We're going to take a five minute break. Is that okay Mr alarm. It is before we transition. I want to acknowledge one thing and that's when I said come internal stakeholders and mentioned the comprehensive plan. Everyone thinks the planning department but I also mentioned that most certainly the neighborhood improvement services department and all of their work they do an engagement they would be a stakeholder as well and I would be remiss if I did not mention that so thank you. Thank you. Let me just also say before we break I see that we have a couple of our department directors here that we haven't seen in a long time. I know that we're not going to hear specific presentations from them. Marvin Williams gene approached. Kerry good. Joe Clark. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You all could make yourself visible and so we can see you and thank you and appreciate you. There may be some other department directors that I've missed as well. But we are always grateful to you. We miss seeing you. We're looking forward to seeing you in person when we get back together. Thank you so much for your attitude that we feel to all of you all looking forward to see it. All right, it's 1115. And John if it's good with you will get back at 1120. Thank you colleagues remember to mute your microphones and we'll be back at 1120. Are we back. John, I believe I missed my time. We certainly are. I'm sorry I'm late. I'm sorry. I was all involved in my phone. It's a really bad mistake. Happens sometimes though. Thank you. Thank you all apologize for being a couple of minutes late back. Mr. Allure welcome back. And we're ready to move on. All right. Thank you mayor members of council. We're going to move now to the community development department and Reginald Johnson is with us. To talk about their plans for the coming year. Mayor pro tem members of the city council. Reginald Johnson director of the department of community development. And we're glad to be here to share with you. A little bit about what we have planned. For the upcoming year and in terms of this budget presentation. I want to say thank you to all of the community development staff as well as partners who are watching. This pre presentation and for their support, especially during this time of challenging time of covert. Just to share a little bit before we begin our work we did share with you detail presentation. Maybe about a month or so ago six weeks ago to outline what we hope to accomplish in the year and of course I won't be repeating that here, but just to talk about a couple of things that of note as we move forward next slide. This is our chart for the upcoming year. We had requested two additional employees that I'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation but you see those in red. And so we'll be requesting a total complement of 32 fte's for the upcoming year. Next slide. This is the resource allocation table for the upcoming year. And one thing that I would share with you the resource for the new employees is going to be in the dedicated housing fund to support the additional staff that we are requesting. Those won't be coming from the general fund. I would also point out that grants have had a slight increase from federal federal grants from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Next slide. So in terms of the budget highlights of that to share with you for the upcoming year. One is like I said we requested and we're glad that the manager, city manager page putting your, your her budget for your consideration, additional support for the forever home during implementation. We're going to we're requesting two additional employees, one for neighborhood stabilization and the other for homelessness. And then we're going to have the resources to increase the personal infrastructure required to a needed to make progress. We have shared with you when we designed the plan some time ago, that we would be checked back in periodically, as we thought that additional staff would be needed but we didn't know exactly and when I will share with you that these two teams that are in need of this assistance. One is neighborhood stabilization team that includes the emergency rental assistance the lead program, as well as a long time homeowner grant program. So within that team, and then in the homelessness, and I would say homelessness has been has been challenged because we've been overtaken in many respects by the work of covert covert implementation and covert funding, which in some respects, dealing with all of the nuances and specificities of covert the covert challenge. Those two teams are in need of homelessness is needed assistance as well. I want to highlight for you that will begin to see the fruit of a previous allocation that you would you have made in terms of communications about what we now call forever home Durham, in terms of the affordable housing plan progress to help you to see the consequences of communication updates we talked about that at the last presentation with you but you'll be seeing during the upcoming year, the fruits of that labor so to speak. And I'm very excited about that. You know we've already been sharing with the affordable housing implementation committee will be I just did a preview earlier this week of web the new website roll out. We also did presentations with the citizens advisory committee, and also format to do presentations with community groups as things begin to open back up for updates. So we're excited about that. And then another highlight for FY 22 will be the another game fruit of labor that's already been been been planted which we're much appreciative of is the investment in the equity in terms of supporting MBE MWBE participation and helping MWBE firms to navigate the procurement processes of forever home Durham projects. We hope to bring back after your summer recess within the first couple of cycles, you'll be having at least our goal we negotiate now contract with the vendor to be able to help us and support us in that and really excited about that. I don't want to name the vendor yet like I said we're still in negotiation, but as soon as you return. We hope to have that right there squarely in front of you for your consideration. Next slide. And with that, I'll stand for questions. Thank you very much Mr Johnson. I'm very excited about the MWBE having that vendor on and also the communication plan website and so forth. That's all great great progress love to see the way it's moving forward. colleagues questions or comments council member Reese. Good afternoon Reginald good to see I guess still morning wow. What do we know, can you just give us a brief sketch about the, the new property tax assistance grant program that the county is included in their current budget proposal, and what that would mean on the city side. I don't know all of the details to be able to articulate them in this forum about the grant program and know that we're making a contribution to that effort. We're still moving forward with our program that we that we have, but I see city manager page as time is just come on the screen so I defer to her. Good afternoon again. We are daily having conversations with Durham County on the details of rolling the plan out with the Department of Social Services. There was a governing board that was also involved in, you know, accepting that proposal. We do have in my in this proposed budget funding to cover what is expected to be grants that would be given to residents city residents for the city portion of their taxes and that amount is about 500,000. And we also have an additional amount to support a component of the administrative part of managing that program in in the SS. We anticipate that there that there will be any implications for our current limited geographically limited grant program in this kind of the same area. Are we still doing that is my question sorry, I'll be application program is open now we're setting applications now with the deadline June 30 as program has been previously extended if you remember the council asked us to extend it for a year. Last year and we're doing that. Now application process is open. I saw Miss Johnson pop up and she has been directly working with the county on the program of the last couple of days but you know obviously what I will say is that the, you know, the criteria for, you know, receiving a grant with you know it's totally different with the new program as it is the program we're currently operating but I'll let Miss Johnson add any additional detail. Thank you, Mr. Johnson interim deputy city manager, I was just going to add to that we have this as an agenda item for the June 10 work session. The county staff will come and present the proposal to you all. You also will obviously have access to the memo with the details around the program. The county commissioners are going to discuss this on Thursday at their meeting at their budget meeting so you also have an opportunity to hear that presentation and their feedback as well. Thank you very much interim deputy city manager. I like the sound of that. So that's all I have on that Mr. Thank you. Good questions always like it our as always our staff is about one month ahead of us. That's great. Other questions for Mr. Johnson Council member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a follow up, I just want to note that I believe wall town has made an express request to be included and so I would love to hear feedback from staff around that request is acknowledging that they're feeling a lot of concern with gentrification in that area. And I think there may be others but that's the one that I did. I didn't let the community know I would ask for recommendations on. Thank you. So I would say thank you for that question we had not considered adding any areas will be glad to take that under consideration. If you recall when the council approved the program. I think there was a city investment for housing in that particular particular areas. And the reason those areas were chosen. I can't remember, you know, off the top of my head and right now, you know what investments we had in the period from 20, I think it's 2011 to 2015. So I don't have a recommendation for you right off the top of my head, but we will to look at that and return something to you. Thank you council member Reese. I have a little post script to that. I'm one of the folks who was on the council when this program was created and those limits were were circumscribed around the program. And I will just say that I opposed and then I pose them now. This program should have been citywide from the beginning. There were reasons that I ran it on about at length. I want to say four years ago. And so I just want to kind of draw a line into that I understand the reasons that our city attorney, gay for limiting the program but I just disagree with them, and hope we can look at an expansion of the type. Council member for even mentioned, thank you. Well, we've got the citywide program coming. So that's good thing without limitation. Thanks. Other comments. Council member Middleton. Thank you, Mr Mayor, originally good to see you man. Good afternoon to you. Um, quick swim a probe a little bit on the equity investment support for mwb participation and help mwb firms. So what the, the, at least a percentage goal is for, for some reason I'm thinking a hundred some odd million dollars or a percentage of our goal to get minority contracts into minority hands for the, the overall forever I guess the number of our home. We had a goal for mw participation you remember those numbers are. So it was about 130 million dollars over the progress includes our program as well as the housing authority. All right. I remember addressing a, a trade organization, I think at wait tech sometime last year and there, there were some questions about our concerns raised about making sure that we start doing this early enough in the process. I think that's a good term because some were concerned that money was already flowing or already posting numbers successes in it. And are we is our end our mwb efforts keeping up with the work that's already ongoing are we missing some opportunities because we're already, you understand what I'm asking could you just kind of just reassure folk a little bit how our mwb efforts are going relative to be glad to and I appreciate you asking that questions we actually talked about in the presentation a couple of months ago. And so this is just a reminder that just because we're hiring this firm does not mwbe does not work does not start with the hiring this firm that work with mwbe and our goals are ongoing even before that the firm is designed to help support us in terms of of outreach in terms of working with general contractors in terms of working with compliance in section three businesses in section three employees. That's the role of the firm, but for work that we have and particularly for the work for the housing authority, which is the work that's already ongoing. They already have goals and have mwbe general contracted us in the hiring work already. So that is ongoing now. So, so I just want to be clear about that that there's no magical data we're going to get this firm and then we're going to start doing mwbe mwbe work and support has already been going on. And I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of trumpet that clearly to the listening audience and also just want to stress that with, we're talking about the entire supply chain we're not just talking about straightforward contracting we did there are a lot of opportunities in the supply chain for firms to get a piece of the action short of actually correct is that yes, yes, yes, there are. Okay, because it's a robust goal, you know, 130 million dollars that's real money. And we want to make sure that that, you know, we, we get as close to meeting those goals as possible and do the work necessary and I want, I want the minority contractors and women contractors watching to be reassured that, you know, because this was this was a big selling point for the affordable housing bond and for the entire initiative and I'm going to make sure that we were committed to this aspect. Could you tell me a little bit about the two additional staff with what you have titles for them or what what they would be doing or for some some degree specificity. Yes, I do have some so they're the actual titles are the committee and economic development analysts. One is for the homeless team and one is for the neighborhood stabilization team. In terms of neighborhood stabilization, the person will be helping with contract preparation, as well as program design and actually helping to monitor the sub recipients and also the invoices that they come in a lot of research needs to be done, because a lot of the work that we're doing is new and novel for us. And so that person will be doing that type of work in terms of neighborhood stabilization and help forwarding those goals. In terms of homelessness. If you recall as I mentioned earlier, homelessness and some respects and I just be candid with you has been a homeless in the team has been taken by COVID because we've had to, in some respects. In many respects, stop doing or not necessarily stop doing but add on to all of the funding that's coming that we normally do in compliance as normally being done and add COVID work on top of that in process. So this person will also be helping with system work as well as managing contracts with our sub recipients that work in the homelessness area. And thank you so much for that, Reginald. Always good to see you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That's it for now for me. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any further questions or comments for Mr. Johnson. Council member race. One last time at the apple and then I'm going to let Mr. Johnson go I just wanted to say about the staff additions. Mr Johnson I don't know if you remember a conversation that I that we had in your office about three or four years ago I was agitating to add more money to the dedicated affordable housing fund and you said to me Charlie I think that'd be a great idea the problem is you're trying to put 30 gallons of water in a 10 gallon bucket. We have to grow the capacity of these systems to accommodate more money. And that's exactly what you and your staff have done over the last three years with a hiccup for the COVID pandemic that kind of put a pause on some of that work. I think you've, and I'm just really glad to see this continue. And I want to make sure that you know that I'm supportive of whatever efforts we need to make going forward to make sure we get that bucket bigger, because the problem isn't getting smaller and Durham is you know, better than any of us. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. Thank you very much, Council Member. Any questions for Mr. Johnson. All right, Mr. Johnson Thank you, we appreciate you. Thank you so much we appreciate you. I want to know that don't appreciate you stealing my assistant. Yeah, good point. All right, see Miss Stancil is with us. Mr. Laura, would you like to introduce the Stancil. I'd love to custom Stancil director of NIS is here to give us an overview of what NIS will be working on in the coming fiscal year and she's brought her team here as well we're happy to have them to answer any questions. Good morning, Mayor, Mayor Schult, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members. Again, I'm Constance Stancil Director of Neighborhood Improvement Services, and I'm here representing a 44 wonderfully dedicated and highly performing team that our FY 22 budget. This is one of my men, our management staff with us today, a faith gardener, assistant director of a code enforcement and impact team. James Davis junior, who is our assistant director over community engagement human relations we have a limit best the city's community engagement manager Gary Richard, senior business services manager, Phil Jordan the human relations manager and Del Hedge path the impact team manager so we brought most of the management team here with us today we also have with us, we've invited our brilliant and exciting and dedicated senior assistant attorney, Sophia, your nine days with us today. So we came prepared to. If I can answer your questions I have enough people behind me to answer any questions that you have today. Thank you. We'll start with our org chart which reflects that we have for new FTEs to support the new non discrimination discrimination unit in the human relations division will have one supervisor position. And we'll have one intake specialist and two investigators to support that unit. And you can see that in yellow there. That's our total FY 22 general fund budget is $4.9 million for which an increase of approximately 340,000 over FY 21. The increase is primarily driven by an additional funding for the non discrimination program, as well as benefits. We have for our grant program we have 107 we expect to have 107,500 dollars, and that's primarily from the hood of fair housing cases that we generate every year. Next, budget highlights, just want to highlight the fact that we are getting a code info have been a code enforcement reclass, we're reclassing a supervisor plan review position to the code enforcement housing code administrator position, and that is to create workload balance and efficiency. Right now we have our AD serving also as the housing code administrator which so she has two positions that she's carrying right now, and we're separating that so that she will not be doing two jobs. The next is the non discrimination ordinance which you passed back in January, and that we are as a recurring costs, and we are looking at the first year 228,000 probably close to 229,000 dollars. Next, and I just want to take a few minutes to go over the to highlight the NDO or the non discrimination ordinance. So we're looking at on the team currently have a team of myself so Sophia James Phillip and Brian who's an intern that works with with Sophie with Sophia. We're holding weekly planning meetings to plan so that we can plan to bring the unit online by effective July one that was the mandate that was given to us and that's what we're working to achieve. We're working weekly with Sophia who's working to help us develop the procedures and the administrative processes going forward, and to make any to identify any amendments to the, that will be needed to the ordinance. And we're also as we do this we are also working to get the tracking and monitoring system in place to do intakes and investigations and reporting. We're working to have that in place by in this June we're working to have it on online starting June. We've met with the Office of Public Affairs to develop an outreach and education plan, and we plan to face that that that plan in starting June just doing a general notice letting people know that the program is coming in July we will play more detailed information get more information and do outreach in the community more aggressively as we as we ramp up. We're working with HR to to develop our PDQ is a PDQ is a position this is just a description questionnaire for the staff positions. Our plan is to start advertising late June as soon as you approve the budget we plan to have paperwork ready to go to advertise. We'll be recruiting in July, and we hope to hire someone in August and September and bring them on board. We are prepared to post the intake special investigative position, like I said, as soon as you are approved the budget. We're working with the Fuse Foundation and thank you Mayor for getting a fellow for us through the Fuse Foundation. We're in the process now working with their staff to interview candidates in June, and for the supervisor position. And we have a target date for them to start August, I think it's August 2. That's the date that they gave us something like that, but sometime in August. And so, our team has reached out to for an orientation to the federal EEOC office in DC, and they held pretty extensive meeting with us talking to us about you know just how to do this work and and what it would take for us to become a FIFA again and a FIFA is a fair employment practice agency and the city used to be a FIFA back in the early 2000s. And and how we can become we get a substantial equivalency to to have a work sharing agreement with EEOC. And in the past we had a work sharing agreement with the with EEOC where we did the intake, begin investigation for the cases, and then we passed them on to EEOC, and we were paid for that work. And so we hoped, in some time in the future that we can have that kind of agreement with with the federal EEOC again, we've been working with the state, the state office, who does EEOC work for state employees. They have been really great they provided us a lot of good information, they've given us an overview of how to how to do this work they've helped us look at how to set up processes. They're going to work with us to do interviewing they've already shared their, their job descriptions with us. We've had two meetings with them. One was just an intake how you do the intake and the importance of intake, how you do investigation so we've had a lot of a lot of feedback from them, and they were thanking us for coming to them, because they said they need other people in this work and they're so glad that that the city city council city administration have taken this proactive steps to make sure that this happened because they're lonely in this work and they need other people to help them. So they were very appreciative of the work that we are trying to do in the city of Durham. And our discussions with an artist, we are also in discussion with people from Raleigh, the Raleigh office EEOC office, and Charlotte as well as well as Greensboro. One of the things that that we talked about with them. Council members is that bringing the starting the program on July one is, it won't be feasible for us to do intakes at we won't be prepared to do it because we just be hiring people, just bringing them on and getting them on and they and they told us it was really prudent for us to at least take two to three months to train the people, people, so that we don't make any mistakes early on in the process which would hurt the unit's reputation and help hurt the program going forward. But in the meantime, what we're planning to do, because if we're going to be open July one, we have a intake specialist fair housing intake specialist, and we're setting up a process to provide that fair housing intake specialist can take inquiries, because if we are saying that we are effective July one we want people to understand that they can they can call us and have somebody to answer their calls. So that's what we're going to do with bridging a transition process to make sure that that we are what we say we are we're open, and we will take those inquiries. And so, persons will be able to leave their information, and then we will tell them, give them a little bit of information about what we're trying to do and when we'll be able to process their, their complaint or their issue. And I have my team on here so if I've left out anything when we get to questions they will help me. The next thing is key FY 21 budget highlights. And the first thing I want to highlight is the neighborhood improvement amazing staff, I want to tell you I know other departments have wonderful staff, but we just have the absolute best staff, I think in the community. They are absolutely amazing. Council members they and they're doing covert 90% of in IS staff works out in the community. They practice social distancing the mask in the hand washing, and as they taught people in the community how to do all those things safely. There's so many wonderful things with people in the community and I can't tell you what a privilege it is to work with such a wonderful dedicated staff, and so many of them I listen to them talk, and they talk about this is is not work for them. It's a privilege for them to do this work and they just feel so proud to have an opportunity to serve to serve residents. And so it goes throughout the department, and I just want you to know that you have wonderful staff, working for the serve residents in the city of Durham, and I know some of you having a have had an opportunity to do work with some of our staff and you know how dedicated they are to the residents. And so I'm going to go to the slide now and and I just want to focus a little bit on some of the time, but I first wanted to highlight the staff. In 2021, we have had four community partners that we've trained. These are community partners who actually not necessarily. I think we have one as a nonprofit, but these are people who are live and do in community engagement. We have to understand the business of engagement. We've trained them how to respond to RFP how to do contracting, and all those kinds of they have to do project management. And we have been doing wonderful work in the community and we are so excited to have them work with us on some of the projects that we are working on, especially now the better bus project. I want to tell you, when you were talking about the CIP projects. I want to tell you, I want to, I think Lin was going to put this in a link in the chat for for me, but one of the ones you know that the city is using the community engagement blueprint. We have, we have across the city departments who are using that blueprint. And one of the, one of the, one of the projects that they are working on is in Bracktown. One of the, one of our community partners is Bracktown, Bracktown, they put association, and they had come to our meetings and they had been talking about the sidewalks, the poor conditions of the roads and stops and those kinds of things like that. But through our training, they have found their voice. And one of the things that we have done. One of our community engagement coordinators who is Alexis John who is in district to pull together a meeting with public works, Marvin and his staff. Transportation, Sean and his staff, go Durham, and I think go triangle and North Carolina DOT and other people around these type of projects, and they had a meeting. And those residents came so prepared. One of the things we've been focusing on is helping residents build substantive approaches to how they approach the city and making sure that the city understands exactly what, what their needs are and not, you can be emotional and putting emotions back, and then just be give data and facts. And I want you to know that this is one of the best community city staff meetings that I have participated in. And we have recorded it. If you want to see how the city of Durham is moving forward to actively engage its residents around projects. This is a, this is a video you really need to watch, or audio you need to watch. It is absolutely it shows you where Durham is and where we're going. We're not there yet but we're on our way and I'm telling you we are certainly moving forward to make sure that we, when we say we're actually engaging residents, we are doing it. And I'm just so proud of the city and I'm proud of the staff for doing this work. You can tell I get excited about those things. The next thing I want to just cover a little bit about is the community stories. Our community stories are being recognized nationally. And actually, one of the, I think it was someone from, from Fort Bragg, who is contacted Laura and he wants to talk to us about how we're doing community stories how we're doing community partners, because he's getting ready to go on to on some special assignment in Africa and he wants to use our model in Africa. And so when I say international I mean international. And we've had an opportunity to make our presentations at the national level at the gear grant, the gear grant, the gear conference, and other places. We're working with John Hopkins University. We're working with Duke University, and we've been working with, I think it's seven or eight cities that we're working with who want to adopt our model. And so we're just so excited to be a part of dorm and knowing that Durham is the city that's leading the way around that engagement. And so, of course, they talked a little bit about, oh and our community conversations, we have, with our community conversations with our community stories with our covert grants, and all of the other things that we've done, we have touched and connected with over 135,000 connections and engagement opportunities through all of these things. And so we're just excited. When we looked at, you know, what are people saying about the working community? There were 97% of the people who said that they learned more. They were more informed as they engage with us. 80% felt satisfied or very satisfied. And 97% said that it was beneficial to engage with us. And so we're excited that we're doing this work. We've done a lot of work with the Latino and immigrants and refugee communities. We've done a lot of outreach. We've done a lot of community conversations around COVID, bridging the gap with police and community, those kinds of things and jobs and digital divide. And so we're really excited to continue that work. In human relations, this is really, this is really, really, really important and exciting. We've had nine cause cases thus far. And that is, that is really amazing because until this year, I don't think we had, our last cause case was back in, let me see, early 2000s, something like that. And so it's been a long time since the city has had a cause case. I think that Phil Jordan and James on the call, and at the end they can explain to you what a cause case is. I can give you the technical, read you the technical, give you the technical view of it. I can tell you what the technical thing is, but I'm going to let them do more, explain to you. A cause case is where a reasonable cause is present when facts exist that support the fact that the law was violated and a reasonable person can conclude that the respondent violated the law. And so, but the two of those guys can really give, can break it down for you even more than I did, but these are cause cases that are very difficult, they're long, it takes a long time to develop them. And our city attorney has to get involved. And I know she's on here, she could also tell you about the work that she has to do with it. And HUD is, and so what is even work site, the complainants, the people who may file complaints, we have been able to get $98,000 in monetary leave for those complainants. And that is huge. HUD is recognizing where we will be recognized nationally by HUD for our work around these cause cases. And the impact team. Okay, the impact team. The impact team has seen, well, first of all, the impact team loves the city of Durham. Darryl, absolutely. Just, I can't tell you, this guy, I don't know if he sleeps at all because he, anytime I text him about anything that's going on in the city, he is, he's on it. I just want to, I just want to mention that this fiscal year as of April, there's been a significant increase in both graffiti removal and roadside debris. There's been a 23% increase in graffiti and a 20% increase in roadside debris that they've had to take care of. And I want to tell you that 90% of the keep Durham projects, cleanup projects, Darryl and impact team do the cleanup for those. And 90% of all in-person community engagement projects are taken care of by the impact team. And one other thing I just want to mention real quickly is the college height historical marker installation. Wanda and I got the information about the same time that these markers had not been installed. And when I went to tell her about it, she says I already know about it constantly. And we worked, we worked at a one level to make it happen, but the people who made it happen on the ground was the impact team. And it, and I want to say it was not their responsibility, but that didn't matter to them. What mattered was that the markets got up in the community for the, and the people were served. Okay. The next is the code enforcement, the code enforcement team. The code enforcement team and I want to make sure that I stay on track. Mr. Mayor and I talked too long. The code enforcement team, they have, the code enforcement team has, they have a community-centered approach. And I can tell you that other cities around the state contact them about how we, how we work with the residents in the city of Durham. Before COVID, we when our code enforcement officers would go around in communities and knock on doors and introduce themselves and help people understand what, why, why they do their job. And, and also just, and during COVID, rather than citing people, we would actually just leave an information tag on their door to explain that, you know, your grass is too high or whatever. We, we did not, we did not cite people during that time during COVID. You know, then the heart of COVID. One of the things that they did was, I think was really important. And it didn't, it happened just before the beginning of FY 21, but it was just as COVID was starting and there were residents, Magduga residents in the hotels. And it was really important that we get help get them out of hotels and back in their units. So our code enforcement officers volunteered even time, their time off they went and inspected units to make sure so that those repairs could be made and people could get back into the units much faster than they were scheduled to be. And I can tell you they were just absolutely wonderful. We're still working with Magduga Terrace. Right now, we have expected inspected over 343 units. We have another 138 units that remain in violation and we're working with them to bring online. We're working with them at the Hoover Road Apartments, and we're working with the big private private firm, a garden terrace apartments with you might have gotten a lot of emails or calls about this but we're working with the tenants to get problem solved and our next thing that we've done is our neighborhood preservation program. And that is a program to assist owners in their homes to help them help mitigate the effects of gentrification with trying to help elderly and disabled people be able to stay in their homes rather than the need to sell them. So as of April, as of April this year, we had 66 of those owners that we've identified that are auto-occupied houses and we're considering helping them, assisting them with repairs in their homes and no costs to them. So far, we ourselves without any money other than volunteers and people like Habitat, we've helped seven homeowners stay in their homes through our neighborhood preservation program. And the senior assistance project, this is one of our code enforcement officers got a call from someone about a situation of sidewalk situation. And when we got there, there was an elderly lady, the entire code enforcement staff and the impact team staff went out and cleaned, helped clean whatever situation was the sidewalk, I think it was caked with mud and everything in grass. And they went out, took their volunteer time, just go out and do that work. And that's the kind of staff that we have. It's just throughout the whole department, that's what we do. FY 22, next slide. Oh, okay, next. Community Partners Development Course. What we found is that we had a six-week course that we did in-house. And it took a lot of staff time and a lot of effort. But we've started working with NCCU to take this course over to NCCU and help us develop this course. And we wanted it, we wanted to be a certificate course, but not one where you'd have to pass an exam or anything like that. And it's going to be an interdisciplinary course where we have business, law school, public administration. Thank you, public administration. Thank you, Linwood. Help us do this work. And we want to train people in the community to do the business side of engagement. What we found is that we really still, we hold monthly meetings to help our community partners and we are finding that we still have to provide technical assistance for them. What we want to do is have this course, have the people at NCCU, and of course city staff to help continue to develop more people in the community so that they can become subject matter experts around the work that they do in the community. And we feel that that's building in community infrastructure. That's infrastructure, people infrastructure, and that's what was really important that we develop people, the capacity of people to do to understand how to engage the city staff around these projects. And we understand the language, the lingo, so that they are truly experts and we found this Mr. Mayor by one of one of our community partners, who really became a community subject matter expert and when we listen to her talk to people in the community and we understand what transportation or public works is saying and using using the language that the people in the community can understand. We're realizing that that's that's what we need to do. We need to have more of those community subject matter experts to be in the community, be grounded in the community and do in community engagement to help people really understand what's going on to understand a budget process. A CIP process and those kinds of things like that. What goes on when people are talking about transportation and sidewalk development or whatever design. And so we're pretty excited about that. We are completing our update of the equitable community engagement blueprint, and that that will be online, coming online in in June, and we're making that easier to read. We're putting in tools that people can use so they know exactly what what steps to take to move through to actively engage the community. We are enhancing our city hall on the go concept and and strategy. We want people. We want to use some of our vehicles that has City Hall on the go on the side, and when we're in the community people know that the city is coming to them, and that we are there to help address their needs. When we're in the community, we will continue to expand our NDO outreach. And we will amend the, the cost case administrative hearing process. And that and our city attorney is going to be working with us on that impact team will implement a new enterprise system for data collection, which will improve the tracking and process. And they want to maintain the six hour or less response time on all concerns was notification, which is really good. The code we have we have the neighborhood preservation program expansion, we were working with me to development who is providing some resources to help us serve 15 families this year. And so the code enforcement modification updates that are coming to you soon. And we just want to share, I'm as the employees share the community development to support a minor program. And so, oh, this is really important. And so, you know, he has this, he talked about a capacity that he didn't have. And so what we're doing until he does get a capacity, we're sharing one of our code enforcement offices for one month. I think it's July. And then we're going to be sharing him for three days at that until regional can get more capacity to do the work that he needs to do. So I think that's, that's it questions. I'm going to end up make sure I got everything in here. Great report. Miss Stancil. Wonderful report over a wide range of fantastic activities and so great to hear your enthusiasm for your staff and the work. Yes. We love colleagues questions and comments for miss Stancil. I just asked council member Reese because he asked a question about the CA about the, I'm sorry, the central equivalency but I think after that, I think the explanation came after your question. Council member reason you I think it looks like you felt like miss Stancil covered that enough for your, your question. Just to be clear, Constance, first of all, thank you for that very extensive and good presentation. Is the substantial equivalency issue that you want to make sure that our staff are doing the intake on the initial complaint in such a way as to then be able to easily hand off to EOC for subsequent action is that what substantial equivalency means roughly. It means that roughly, but it means something else too and I see that Sophia is on on the call. I understand it but I'm, she can say it better than I can tell her answer that question. Good afternoon everyone Sophia Hernandez the city attorney's office. So substantial equivalency means a variety of things and certainly being able to coordinate or hand things off to the EOC seamlessly is one of them. But ideally, it also means that we will be able to have our ordinance. So substantial equivalent to the federal laws that protect against employment discrimination, so that when someone files with us, we will be able to do will file the investigations and the complaints both under the federal acts and laws, as well as our. Did I freeze. Very similar to what we have in place with HUD where we are substantially equivalent to the federal Fair Housing Act and complaint filed, we have access to resources from the federal agency including like case management software which I'm sure you know can be quite expensive and so being able to have access to those to those databases is really useful as well as training and resources so it presents a lot of benefits. So, are we as part of the reason we're needing to do that is because we're adding components to our non discrimination ordinance that may not have been originally contemplated by the corresponding federal guidelines around discrimination is that why we're trying to make sure that they're substantially equivalent. Now we're not doing it for for that reason. Well we're trying to make sure that they're substantially equivalent and I guess for those benefits that I mentioned case management to also have the cloud of a dual filed investigation process to access to training. That being said, our ordinance does have categories that aren't included in and work contemplated in the federal laws and from those categories we will still have our own internal just citywide mechanism for pursuing and enforcing those protected classes. Again, it gives us it gives us more. It gives us more latitude to do the work that we, we can still do it without without its substantial equivalency, but with that it gives us more enforcement assistance because we become a FIFA, and then we get to become a part of their system and we have access to their trading and all the all the systems that they have. Specifically just to be clear the fact that our ordinance has those additional things doesn't doesn't pose any problems for us to our ordinance or have any other implications. Correct. We've discussed it with regional and federal EOC and talked about categories that are a side of what the federal law say and, and those are okay. Again, we won't be able to do will file those we won't be able to have access to the EOC resources for those cases that fall under those protected classes, but so long as we cover, you know, most of our up to what the federal law does subsequently should be able to move forward. It's just fantastic to hear. Sorry, I just want to remind you that those the ones that we have covered under there is military status sexual orientation gender identity and protected hair styles. That was what you passed back in in January just put that out there so people would know what we're talking about. I want to, I want to put you are said the rest of our city attorney's office and my colleagues on notice that in the fall will be come back from our break. I'm going to want to initiate a conversation around a source of income discrimination in housing. I know that the impact. I've heard a concern about the fact that that adding that passing an ordinance to forbid source of income discrimination and housing might jeopardize our substantial equivalency with the corresponding laws and if it's the case that we can do things that are extra without jeopardizing that I think that's a conversation we ought to have. So let's let's let's get into that I'm not today obviously we'll dig into that in August September. Just wanted to flag that and thank you Sophie if your time and helping us understand that. The other thing is I wanted to say some nice things about constant center staffs and take a little bit of that right now. Of all the city departments that have to deal with me calling and emailing them endlessly. Whether it be public works transportation. Surely Pamela Brown in this in the city manager's office who manages our email and tick system. I wanted to say that some of my best interactions have been with Constance and her staff and then I asked especially in the last month or so I've put an increasing number of demands on the time of our impact team. As I think probably mostly because the at the end of the school year at the college year, there's always lots of kind of dumping of old furniture and whatnot. The responses have always been so positive. So, so really grateful to me for raising these issues and really refreshing. And that's on top of the incredible work that that Constance your staff has done during the pandemic around this equitable engagement and the neighborhood stories that I've tried to log into as many as I can, and go back and listen to the recordings of the rest have just been so affirming. And it's the kind of thing that really builds trust with the folks that we want to serve. So Constance I want to thank you for just doing that really base building work of making sure that all that stuff works, and that we have that this kind of new relationship with our residents and I think the important thing to remember about community engagement is that it's good for building that trust but it also builds expectations on the part of our residents that things will change as a result of this equitable engagement. And that is really up to you Constance as amazing as job as you and your staff do that's up to us as elected officials and policymakers to make sure that we follow through and take and not just engage with folks, but that that government transforms the way that government does business and deliver services and builds our our community. So, but Constance it's not possible without the work that you and your staff have done. So thank you so much. I look forward to another great year. Thank you. Thank you council member. I'll answer questions from the Stancil. Council member Freeman. Thank you. I appreciate council member Reese's comments I just really want to echo a little bit I know I brought up the, the conversation and it's been mentioned a number of times and I've been very interested in that source of income discrimination conversation so I'm looking forward to our August conversation. I just wanted to also just know as well. I truly appreciate the covert pause on the, you know, we be lots and towing and all of that. But I do want to note that there is a backlog that is kind of a crude in the neighborhoods, on the east side and just acknowledging that I've been getting a lot more calls so please, please, please note I have been shifting as many as I possibly can, and I'll be sending more emails as they're coming in but folks are complaining about the rats and rodents that are living inside of those fields that are now there. And so just acknowledging that there's a there's a duality in this that has to be addressed in a very balanced way. I really, really, really want to appreciate the equitable community engagement work that's been happening because it's allowed for more folks to be able to speak to that. And I'm glad that the packs have started meeting virtually as well just acknowledging that there's so many folks who are unable to attend our meetings and you know this has been their viable way to get most most of their information and updates. And so I know I attended a few of those in the last couple of months just knowing they've been getting back rolling and it's been on, like, I'm so appreciative that you're giving up off more than often your Saturday mornings and your evenings to attend these and I just want to say thank you for being committed to our residents concerns and answering their questions as fully and and most of the staff who they've invited answering their questions as much as possible but I really want to thank your staff for for being a point and trying to figure out a direct folks in the system which is the city government. And I also would add that I really am grateful for the college Heights historic marker and I'm looking forward to one day seeing the Stokesdale historic marker as well. And I know that's more local than than than statewide but just noted. I think that there are there are lots of historic markers that have been missed because they weren't downtown, and it's time to make sure that they're all on on the record and I'm grateful to the staff to your staff once again for collecting those stories orally and through video with many of the folks in the community. Before we lose them and I think I can say I can go on for a while and I can also add that I'm always grateful for the impact team showing up and picking up those bags for the cleanups. We're also doing that way and to kind of tell us exactly how much we've actually picked up. And I'm, I'm noting that that that I'm mindful that there's there's so much there's, there's so many people on your staff I don't want to start calling names, but your department is probably the one I'm closest to by proxy, by proximity when you when co is not happening and I've missed seeing so many of those faces so I'm mindful that I need to figure out how to see some more of you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take care of the lots, we will take care of Saturday lots. And I want to be clear is mainly those private lots that have been yes, and it's like a farce like seriously. Yeah, investor lots. Thank you, Council Member other comments or questions, colleagues for Miss Stancil. I'll just echo what Council Member Freeland just echoed in the chat. We are so grateful to you and your department for all the great work that you do. Wonderful work that we've that we've seen grow over the years. The impact team, the equitable engagement and the great work of the the inspection staff and just really appreciate all the ways in which you all have expressed our community's values. And now with the non discrimination ordinance whole new whole new piece of work for you all. And we know you're going to do it incredibly well so thank you we appreciate you miss Stancil and all of your staff. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Okay. All right, Mr. Allure we are down to I believe our last presentation of the day. And that's good because we're getting towards the end of our time, and I hope we can keep on schedule and be able to end this meeting at one o'clock. And I believe that we will be hearing from Mr. Pettigrew is that correct you want it would you like to introduce him. Great point. Okay, welcome. We're glad to have you. Well, great. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and Madam pro temp and members of city council. My name is Andre pedigree I'm the director of the Office of Economic Workforce Development. I'm pleased here to be able to discuss the upcoming fiscal year and budget highlights. I'm joined on the call with members of my leadership team. My name is Danielle, who is our assistant director, Ed Nixon, who has been handling our administrative contracts. Adrian Graham Scott, who is our senior workforce development manager, working with the workforce development board and Zelda white who has been our budget lead on this call. And he just maybe prefaced this very quickly. Again, this has been a challenging, but a very productive year for the Office of Economic Workforce Development. Obviously, COVID was the challenge. But in responding to that challenge, it was productive because the department did some things that it had not done before. And in responding to that, we appreciate the support that you provided. The department put together to capital access programs, the recovery fund, as well as the cares grant program. And through those programs. There's $1.7 million, excuse me, $2.2 million that has been distributed to 235 businesses in our community. Again, without the support of city council. That's what not have happened. The other thing that I think is important in terms of being productive is the partnership that the city garnered in putting this program together with Duke University and the county. That relationship was important. We're maintaining that relationship. Again, there's $1.2 million still available in the loan fund program. And again, we're taking applications for for loans as we speak now. Again, here's my org chart. Again, 19 FTE. We are not adding any additional staff. This this year. The other thing that I always note on this slide is that we are supported. My staff is supported by contractors. The workforce development program is managed by Echo Connect. It's both for adults and youth. And the business improvement district is managed by DDI. And again, those are very important programs in the Office of Economic Workforce Development. Next slide. In this RAT table, it reflects not only the basic personnel salary increases, but it reflects the budget increases that we'll be talking about next. And again, that increase reflects approximately 11% as we expand our work for next year. Next slide. Again, this grant table. The only thing that I want to note is, again, the employment and training grant. This is our federal funding. We have not received our allocation as of yet. And so the proposed number of $1.7 million is a plug number. And then, even as we speak this week, there are discussions going on at the state level about the federal grant, and then that will be allocated. And again, I think typically we don't know this number at this time. So let's go to the next slide. Again, budget highlights. The work that we've done this year has informed our budget requests going forward. So we'll go into detail on the next slide. But again, the Durham Youth Works Program, this time last year, we were standing up or had to make a decision whether or not we even have a summer youth program. And we decided to do a virtual online program with just short of 50 students. It was a success in that we got it done, and it now provides the model that I'll talk about of an expanded program where we're trying to reach just under 500 students this summer. So it's, you know, increasing the program tenfold. So technical assistance for small business. As we stood up this program, and we sort of had just short of 500 applicants for the grant program, as well as the recovery loan plan program. We learned from that data and engaging those organizations that technical assistance really was the thing that made the difference in terms of the outreach to the minority community. Again, I won't go back over this report but as you know, that $2.2 million, the majority of that money went to minority owned businesses locally and women owned businesses. The outreach and the technical assistance that we provided through working with organizations like the Black Chamber, the Small Business Coalition, and even the mayor's reopened task force, again, has helped inform what we're going to do this current year. And the third area is the money, the budget requests for $380,000 for Built to Last. The Built to Last planning grant is the work that we are continuing to do to stand up the nonprofit, the Built to Last Innovation Lab, which includes an equity fund as well as a training center. Again, standing up requires some legal counsel, as well as some capacity around the dorm compact. You can go to the next slide. So, again, want to give you an update in terms of where we are on the initiative around the Built to Last Innovation Lab. Again, there's $380,000 that have been committed to this project. The first phase is just about to get under the way. We are in the process of contracting with the Forest Firm. The Forest Firm is the law firm that was selected through a competitive process to do this work. They will provide all of the required legal review and documentation required to file with the Secretary of State, as well as the IRS for a 501C3 status. They are reviewing their contract. I spoke to David Morris, who is the partner leading this effort. And we are expecting to get their final documentation next week. Once that's done, the law firm will be fully engaged. They have already received all of the draft bylaws in organizing documents that have been developed by staff. And so in some ways they'll be able to hit the ground running in this regard. This process is important because in order to access the additional funding for the planning grant, we need to have an entity that will receive it and have the fiduciary responsibility of, again, spending it and managing it. The primary purpose for the planning grant is in fact to put together the business and strategic plan for the new nonprofit. What's in that strategic plan includes the operating plan, that's all of the financial documents and estimates in terms of what they need to manage. It also includes the funding strategy. As a nonprofit, the city is providing this advance money, but it's our expectation that with this strategic plan, business plan, it will be an opportunity to provide this information to a broader set of funders, both in the foundation as well as in the financial community in an effort to do two things, sustain the operations of the business of the nonprofit, but equally importantly to capitalize the private equity fund, which is a fundamental part of what this project is all about. The dollars will also go to putting together a personnel plan. Again, this new entity will be started with a inaugural board. I met with the inaugural board or the individuals who are considering being the inaugural board yesterday. And again, as they better understand what this planning grant is for and how to use it, we'll be continuing to work with them to make sure that they understand it. And again, the lawyers are going to be a part of the resource for them. And Dr. Jim Johnson of Cedar Grove, who has been working with us from the very beginning around here at Economic Prosperity and in the development of the built the last roadmap. He is available. He's still in the contract with us. And as a part of that contract, we are providing his services again to support the nonprofit. Actually, Dr. Johnson and the preliminary board are meeting later this afternoon. I'll be joining that discussion in an effort to, again, get this project moving along going forward. Now I'd like to maybe move over to our Durham youth works and again obviously I'll take questions at the end but I want to try to get through the balance of this. I mentioned, again, we appreciate the city manager support of an expanded youth youth works program. This is a program in which they are our three modules. The first one actually begins June 7. We actually for our summer youth program received just short of 680 applicants for our program. We had an orientation session on Monday we have one tonight for our students on Monday we had 94 of our students for getting oriented around the program. And this afternoon, I think we're at 104. So there is good interest of our youth around this program. It's a hybrid program and that is is part virtual where the students will be receiving training online. A lot of the training around soft skills, you know, computer related sorts of training. However, on a selective basis, there is an opportunity for some onsite work for kids to be able to participate on the biggest thing in saying that is is that we're following CDC guidelines. And so for any business or agency that has onsite youth on their program they've got to meet that standard and I think one of the biggest one for us is making sure that the kids are practicing social distancing have the appropriate mask and that in transporting them to various sites. We want to make sure that again they're not all crowded in into a van moving around so those are some logistics that we're working with some of the agencies who are considering working on that. Some of the business participants in this year's program which is always important. Again, Duke, Duke Health Duke University has always been a leader in our program and they've provided a an online program to complement the soft skills training that all the kids will will do. Mark Pfizer, representing our biotech industry. Again, these are the types of jobs that are growing in our community these are the types of jobs that we want our kids to have an experience in. We're pleased to have strata solar strata solar is one of the biggest solar developers in the country. They're actually headquartered in golden belt. They're a new addition to our program. But again clean energy is is again a job of the future. The Biden administration will be investing dollars in this sector going forward and again I'm pleased to be able to have kids getting some experience in a clean energy economy going forward. And finally, in partnership with discovered Durham, who has helped us coordinate with businesses in the hospitality sector. Again, as you all know the hospitality sector has been hit the hardest, but the hospitality sector has always been a good point of entry for young people to enter the workforce. And so working with Susan Amy's team. We actually have some of that sector also participating in this year's program. So again, we are still taking applications for any parents or young folks between the ages of 14 and 24, who are interested in participating in the second and third phase of the program. And again, they can visit the city's website to get more accurate information on that. And so finally, again, the small business capital access funding and technical assistance, I referenced the work that that we had done to stand up the various financial tools for our community. The technical assistance has just proved to be the differentiator and OED for the first time this year contracted with outside service providers provide technical assistance. I think you all know that Caroline small business fund who is managing the recovery fund program is providing front end technical assistance for all the applicants going forward. But they also are providing one on one technical assistance for the 34 loan applicants in our program. Again, to be able to have technical assistance and management advice is important. OED before COVID pioneered a new program that we are starting a cohort tomorrow, and that's our momentum 360 program. This is a program where essentially we've put together groups of entrepreneurs total between 15 to 20 in a cohort group to go through a anywhere from a four to six week curriculum. And again, the first one we did was with a group of women entrepreneurs and again, there's just a lot of value to this approach and we're going to expand it this year. Let me tell you what the value is. First of all, the, the peer learning that goes on when entrepreneurs are working together, though they may be in different businesses they may be of different size and experience. It's always a form of accelerated learning when entrepreneurs can share their perspective in a training setting. And again, we are going to do more of that. The second aspect of this training is in fact, it creates a network for our African American legacy program, where we again did a similar cohort program. These are some of the most veteran businesses in Durham, and many people, many of them knew of each other, but few of them had an opportunity to work together. And again, the opportunity to be in a cohort group, the network and find opportunities to do business are really important. The final thing about the technical assistance approach is the importance of, you know, when we say technical assistance I think a lot of people said well what are we talking about here is it just sitting at the table and advising folks. Well it's part of that. But what we know is that we need to have a hard deliverable. The first session that we're starting tomorrow, we had 40 applicants and have selected 20 firms to participate is around financial accounting. Each of these individuals participating this program. You know we'll go through the curriculum, but they get one on one assistance to in fact set up their books. Whether it's into it, or some other software coming out of the program. Everyone will have a revised set of books, a formal set of books to move forward. Again, this was one of the weaknesses during the process for the PPP loans, the idol loans, even for our grant program. And so for us to build the financial capacity of our firms and our small business. We believe that this is a very important strategy and one that's been informed by working with over just under 500 businesses to our program. So I will end it there, Mayor. I'm sure there are questions that you and Council might have and so looking forward to engaging you. Thank you very much for a great report Mr Pettigrew and you all really have had to pivot during coven and I know it's really been a tremendous effort and you all have done a great job. Your business is so grateful. And I'm going to. I'm going to call first on Council Member Middleton who has some questions. Thank you so much Mr Mayor and Andre, it's good to see you brother and I know it's challenging time to manage to personally and professionally given covis I'm really glad to see you standing strong with us today and I was greatly anticipating this presentation and I want to thank you all for it. First, I just want to connect some dots because I've made some, some public utterances on the record and ask some questions so I just want to kind of create an arc. I don't know if it'll be closure but at least to connect some dots that I've that I've raised publicly. The planning grants for 380,000 for bill to last. That represents the $300,000 that I had made queries about in previous meetings is that is that correct. Again, the city manager has replenished the 300 that was in the budget last year. Again that 300 was used to stand up the, the recovery loan program, but that's been restored. Additionally, the city is providing the 10 to stand up the organization, a chicken and egg situation to stand up a new organization you need to advance some dollars, and essentially we've set aside $10,000 of the 380 for the legal prep work that the city has to do. The 70,000 was a part of our budget requests. The 70,000 is being provided as additional managerial support for the transition of the Durham compact into the new nonprofit. Just as a reminder the Durham compact was developed and was a part of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. We have a new manager Dr. Joyce Johnson who manage that we have roughly 46 civic corporate volunteers who've been working via five committees. Again, it, we are transitioning that program. She is in better alignment with the innovation lab. And so Joyce Johnson is actually has already provided the, we're paying for her through this process through this fiscal year, but she's already put together a transition plan in terms of how to best incorporate the Durham compact into the new organization. So I hope that that that gives you a sort of the accounting of the 380. It does not and I appreciate it my thanks to you and specifically also to the city manager who did I think it's such an incredible job in explaining the funding and making sure that it was put back for what I think is a is a vital initiative any sense on so I assume the compact manager 70 grand is for a salary. And for FY 22 highlights the bill to last innovation lab and the Durham compact any sense on timetable as to significant pressure across. So, no pressure but if you have it just well now we we we are getting closer to a full sense of it but again there's urgency from our standpoint I just wanted to say that the 70,000 is funding that's available for this sort of transition period. Again, this is a planning grant not an operating grant and again I've spent a fair amount of time explaining what the difference is. The city is essentially advancing the capital to lay out the business plan and operating plan which every new organization really needs to be able to do the 70,000 allows the Durham compact to transition. During this period so timing. I mentioned that we expect to have a final contract with the forest firm completed next week. Again, I think everyone is continuing to work just says I was meeting yesterday and we'll meet this afternoon with the board and Dr Jackson so there's work going on. Again, it was our hopes that quite frankly, we would actually get the filing done before the end of the fiscal year and again I'll hear more from David Morrison that I want to make the distinction here. We're asking that the filings be done at the Secretary of State and the IRS. And again we're not waiting for a IRS 501 C3 approval before we dispense the money and I think that that's important. It's for everyone to understand. Again, we want to make sure that the set of bylaws in operating requirements are in place for a new nonprofit this is often a part of the filing that's required for an entity to one make sure that the infrastructure is in place. For the new nonprofit board to be able to operate their volunteers. Again, the scaffolding that they have is legal. Again, Dr Johnson will continue to be there. The staff support that's being provided by the compact is some additional capacity, but the balance of the monies that are available the balances of the 380 is money that is discretionary for the board. And again, we are emphasizing that they need to put together the operating plan in order to move forward. They're not starting from scratch, because our staff has put together a number of preliminary numbers as a part of it. But the difference is, those are numbers done by my staff, and they need to at least be reviewed, and maybe even adjusted based on the needs and requirements of the nonprofit so that's part of the process that we're doing. I think, at least over the next couple of two three weeks, excuse me, over the next couple of months are going forward. We had a discussion about the standing up of the, the private equity firm. Again within the requirements for use of the money is the preliminary design of the equity fund I reassured the board that there's no expectation that with this money, they're going to be able to stand up a private equity fund, but they will be able to set up the operating model, the legal terms and conditions that are required in putting together an organization that is going to be getting dollars from other places. Andrey finally thank you for that. That's very helpful. Could you tell me a little bit about how, how's the board being populated. Are you soliciting membership or they are applying or these people that we would know names we recognize. I think you would recognize the names. And so first of all, there was a list of individuals who expressed interest in being on the board. And again, this was my last year. Because we didn't stand up the organization and we're doing so now staff went back to check to see which individuals who are still interested in doing it so they have a critical mass of three who've expressed interest to be be there. Again, we've asked and again my staff has told me that there is additional outreach being done to find additional board members. Again, this is a working board. And so their abilities to understand what the responsibilities are and creating a new organization is important it's different than coming to a board that's been operating for five years. This is a board that essentially needs to rely on the experience of standing up a new organization and quite frankly, you know, being a novel board member. There's a lot of sweat equity a lot of work that has to be done. And again, we spent some time talking about what that role is with the individuals I met with and again we'll reinforce that again today with Dr. Johnson. Thank you for leading on this and leaning in on it. Appreciate it back and be helpful. Please let me know. Thank you, Mr. Mayor call on you. I yield back. Thank you council member other questions and comments from Mr. Pat a group council member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Councilman Middleton for covering many of the nonprofit questions I had. I really wanted to just take a moment and and just know that the I still have like some concerns around how everything is operated. The, the main thing that I mean I understand that the funding is being used and kind of an infrastructure way. The problem is that with COVID, we've experienced a whole like commercial gentrification push, and folks have been losing their commercial properties, in addition to residential properties and so not being able to stand up the nonprofit, and not being able to stand up like a substantial like push in has harmed many black and brown businesses in ways that I can't like just do nothing about. And so I want to be really clear and upfront with my colleagues and with with you, Andrea and noting that I have been very actively pushing more activity around the business side of this conversation so that folks can get the support they need in the community, whether it's through private partnerships or what have you. But it's, it's just not enough. And I know that we're doing what we can. And like I said that the infrastructure is being put in place but I can't stress enough, like it's, it's, it's, it's not like I'm, it's not an attack on you or your work. It's really just on like, we need help here. I know that the business community had to push for us to get, you know, COVID funds out, and the dollars were out as a loan as opposed to grand and all of the conversation around whether or not we could we couldn't. I really want to figure out how to find a way to support your work in a way that's more actionable. And this is what I can say at best. And, and whatever that is, I'm really looking to you to kind of dial in and point in that direction. And so I just want to give those, those few pieces of feedback that's all. Sure. No, I, once again, I appreciate the support Councilwoman that you and other members have provided. So let me maybe just add a couple of comments. There has been a significant amount of infrastructure, new work being done in the Office of Economic Development that this time last year did not exist. The set of relationships and the work that's being done in terms of outreach and technical assistance specifically touch the hundreds of businesses that we have been working towards. And again, that was always the plan, the Office of Economic Development was always going to be aggressively pursuing its shared work shared economic prosperity agenda. Again, if you go back and review the strategy, what you'll see is all of these initiatives that I've talked about then and I've talked about you to you this year that again I appreciate this report have always been a part of our work. To see the innovation lab in shared economic prosperity. Again, I'm going to claim some parentage of this idea and this work. When I became the head of the Office of Economic Workforce Development. It was always envisioned that the innovation lab and the fund would be complimentary. But again, it would have to evolve over time. And again, I think that though we delayed this, we're on track now to be able to do it. Again, I don't like counting my eggs before they hatch, but I want to reassure you that the infrastructures that has been built this year is still there. We have the ability to review both loan and grant applications and deliver those grants and those programs including technical assistance. If federal funding is available. And we actually have a proposal out as part of the, the city's process of identifying things to be done. So grant programs, technical assistance programs, and neighborhood revitalization programs, where we're looking to provide technical assistance directly to minority, you know, property owners in our targeted areas. So those those performers are up and ready to go. And again, it's anticipated that some of the American rescue monies are going to be available to be able to do that. So we're not sitting idly by. We've got a plan and a program that's built. And we are leaning into accelerating the efforts to put the innovation lab in place. I think we've got good lawyers, you know, Jim Johnson will provide the continuity. And again, there's an additional 300 plus thousand dollars to put the planning together. And it is planning. Again, there are a number of things that the department has already submitted. And again, at the appropriate time I can provide you the list of things that we have under consideration. This is the time now to respond to continue to respond to the needs of our community. And again, as a director of the economic workforce development, I'm actually lean very hard to sort of make sure that the department is being responsive. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm take I was taking a look at the list that was provided previously around the budget items and I'm just trying to make sure that I like the items that you're specifically talking about and hold on two seconds. I was just looking at it. I'm sorry. It's not in the brief. The document that was shared that John, I believe the John shared had a list of all of the submitted items. And I can see that based on, I mean, I'm thinking just going off of memory based on what I saw there was like two from economic development and I want to be clear that those are the two that you're talking about. So I don't have what you have. But again, I provided a longer list but what's in that list so I can at least validate what it is you have. Council member why don't you send that in an email. I think rather than trying to do that now with when he doesn't have the document. That's, that's fine. Thank you. I want to copy all of us that would be great. I will be sure to do that. I think I just want to make sure that I'm clear that if there are items and the American rescue fund that should be looked at, I think you need to be speaking a lot louder. Okay. I think I think if you would email that information and that would be very helpful. Thank you. Peter grew one of the questions I have is the $100,000 for technical assistance that you have in your slide. How will that will that be spent. You mentioned working with partners like the black chamber. Is that are we going to contract out that technical assistance is that your plan. So, again, one of the things that we learned through covert is the importance of community based on the ground entities, helping you do business development and long development. Again, all the research show that in order to get these monies out fast, you have to have people who are on the ground that are credible. So within the African American community, the black chamber was an example. They did a very good job of doing the outreach that was the front end of the, the Durham Small Business Recovery Fund. We're seeking to continue that relationship. We have been interviewing some Latinx organizations that who are part of this. It's my intention to engage a Latinx, you know, business development organization economic development organization in a similar way. Again, we think that that's capacity that is very helpful for us in the goals of shared economic prosperity. And so there are dollars that that we will be investing in those groups. Even our training. Again, note that I didn't ask for additional staff. I'm asking that we invest in existing service providers in our community, because they're on the ground, but also it helps their capacity. Instead of us adding staff. So again, that's my theory of change. Again, you know, we'll see if we can, you know, make this happen, but I'm pleased that those entities that have worked with us last year or this year are looking forward to continuing the relationship with us and I'm intending to explore that. Thank you. Yeah, I'll just add, finally, that I think the, you know, this, the ability to getting a fund like the, you know, getting an equity fund together is hard. And you I think that the councilor Middleton alluded to this earlier I think that the members of that board are going to be crucial in our ability to raise those funds that that and I want to offer my assistance in any way that I can be helpful in this process. I am thrilled about the funding and the expansion of the, of the youth works program I think that's just a fantastic development and want to appreciate that very much. Okay, any other questions colleagues or comments from Mr pedigree before I turn it back over to Mr. Allure. Just one Mr mayor. Sure. And if you could speak to the request around the, the main and Durham, I wanted, I wanted to know if there were some shifts or changes that have been made. So, made and Durham has been a long time partner with the Office of Economic Workforce Development. Principally, they actually supported our summer program. We've not requested that of them this year. And again, this is where the county and the city are now in alignment, because they also find made in Durham, and much of the work that made in Durham is being asked and again we're accepting the scope of work that the county has is really around the outreach within the there's the bulls initiative, biotech, something for you, labor and you, but it's a, it's a training program that we have been working in part of with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. And again, made in Durham is developing that program, doing a combined outreach to the business community in that sector, as well as engaging the young folks in that program. Again, we've did the coupled that work that they did for us previously in the Durham youth program and have focused in on being in alignment with the county in this area that made in Durham is doing. That sounds good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pedigrew. All right, we appreciate your being here. Thank you very much. And I'm going to now turn it over to Mr. Allure for any final words that he may have just really briefly because we're over time and I want to be sensitive to that. And in answer to Council Member Freeman's question about the list I sent out last night, I will point out that the OEWD department submitted for budget requests, and all four budget requests were moved forward into the prelin budget. There was nothing not done. And yes, the items that he was Andre was talking about were addressed on the slides. And then in addition with the follow up with the made in Durham money, that was included as well. And you may ask why that is before it had been in as one time money now it's in as reoccurring funding. So I hope that clarifies things. And with that, I was just one, I'm sorry just one follow up so this. So this didn't go through an RFP or anything like as if it's just essentially just going straight to made in Durham every year for now on that I that I can can't answer all steps. So yes, I will, I will take a stab at that. You know, certainly there are some, you know, arrangements, I will call arrangements or partnerships that predate the current budget year. And this partnership has been one where are the contract has indicated, you know, continuous funding for a particular initiative or particular entity, provided that it gets approved in the budget. So I'm going to teach you going forward, which in the case of Mr. Law's comments that has sometimes been the county makes, you know, an approval the city makes city manager makes an approval and it goes in one time. What we have it in right now is in the operational budget as ongoing support. That is the way it's currently showing. Thank you. If you could share the metrics for I guess whatever it is that they're going to be doing like exactly how many folks, they're going to be engaging with that will be helpful and how many students they're going to be making available for that will be really helpful. Yes, and you will actually, you will actually get the agreement. You know, putting it in the budget is just making the funding available the council gets gets the, you know, agreement that would have a scope of services and all of that going forward. Before we pass the budget. So what is it, what is in the current budget is proposed for it for next year. And, you know, we will follow up, we will follow up, I will make sure that department provides the level of detail that you actually need in order to just want to make it I'm sorry I don't want to pick on me and Darren but I do want to know that there's overwhelming push to make funds available for organizations that have already had established relationships, and there's this kind of like seeking through without any oversight, or conversations with council that concerns me, because it doesn't happen for other organizations in the same way and so I just want to make sure that that the same oversight that we put in place for a war for life or Durham try or peach is in place for organizations that have this kind of Cavalier, you know, relationship already and so it's sitting that song. Thank, thank you for that and we will make sure that we provide follow up information about any history or or anything that may be relevant to this partnership. Thank you madam manager. Mr. Laura any final words, we will see you tomorrow morning at 9am. Thank you. I will now declare this meeting adjourned.