 30 seconds to air. Meeting of the Durham City Council to order on Monday night August the second at 7 o'clock. I'm very, very glad to see everyone here tonight want to welcome everyone who's here in person and everyone who is listening and watching whatever form you're doing it. We're glad to, we're glad to have you here. I've got a, I've got some new technical challenges tonight. Some new technology here and I'm gonna do the best I can with them. So I hope you'll be patient with me. Colleagues, it's good to be together with you all and we have some good and important business to do tonight and so before we get started I hope you all will join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. Councilmember Reese would you please lead us in the punch of the flag. I think I remember how to do this. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Good evening colleagues, city staff. Those of us in the chamber and everyone home if it is your practice to do so and if you're able please join me and rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you Councilmember it's good to have you back and good to have you leading us in the pledge. Thank you so much. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll mere shul mere pro tem johnson Councilmember caballero here councilmember freelon here councilmember freeman president councilmember middleton i'm here it's a member reese right here thank you i think i was supposed to say here and not i'm at work ready thank you i am here colleagues we are fortunate tonight to have one important ceremonial item and i believe that major tate will be receiving that item is he here or is he here virtually do we know let's see if he's going to come up our screen okay i will um i'm going to go over here to this microphone and do the honors this is a proclamation for national night out as you all know this is always a really fun and important evening in Durham where many many neighborhoods gather to have celebrations and to talk about how to build a safer community and i'm looking forward very much to it so here's our proclamation tonight whereas after taking a year off for in-person events due to the COVID-19 pandemic national night out in Durham is a go on tuesday august 3rd 2021 and whereas the city of Durham will observe the 38th annual national night out joining forces with thousands of other communities across the country and promoting cooperative police community crime prevention efforts and whereas a local national night out 2021 theme back on the block pays homage to durham's back on the bull campaign and encourages residents to continue doing their part to further stem the spread of COVID-19 and the delta variant as encouraged by national local health officials and whereas durham residents are committed to promoting and achieving national night's out public safety ideals as more than 50 neighborhoods and community groups have registered with the durham police department this year to observe national night out and whereas national night out is sponsored annually by the national association of town watch spearheaded locally by the city of durham police department and formally championed this year by the city of durham fire department neighborhood improvement services the durham county sheriff's office and the durham housing authority and whereas national night out is supported by the active participation and in-con services of durham residents city of durham departments community agencies and businesses who are committed to the city's mission to provide an excellent equitable and sustainable quality of life and whereas it is essential that all neighbors of the city of durham come together with police and work together to build a safer more caring community now therefore i steven m shul mayor of the city of durham north carolina do hereby proclaim august 3rd 2021 is national night out in durham and call upon all residents of the city of durham to join in support of the durham police department witness my hand this the second day of august 2021 hello hello hello we got major tate yes great major tate were you able to hear that yes sir well even everybody thank you uh for being here tonight with us and uh do you have a few words you would like to offer about national night out i do sir go ahead on behalf of on behalf of interim chief sir migamary we would like to thank the council members uh for national night out support and participation uh national night out neighborhoods coordinators and residents are very enthusiastic about this year's observance members of the durham police department share that same enthusiasm interim chief migamary greeted several coordinators as they came to headquarters to pick up their national night uh packets promo packets the police department will like to extend a very special thanks to durham crime stoppers for sponsoring some of the feature items in the national night out promotional package which includes fans footballs barbecue aprons and note packs also this year durham police department implemented a local theme back on the block at all sites we strongly encourage national night out coordinators and participants to promote and practice covid 19 safety precautions thank you thank you very much i hope there's not a fight over those barbecue aprons we have more all right colleagues we're now going to move to announcements by members of the council and i'll start you all will see that tonight i and all of my colleagues are wearing masks last two weeks ago we were in a very different place in durham uh at that time in city hall and here in the council our rule was that uh if you were not vaccinated and you you could go unmasked uh and if you were not but if you were not vaccinated you were to be masked here in city hall and in our meetings tonight you will see that um we've been forced by the delta variant to change that practice so we are masked today tonight and we're asking everyone else who enter city hall to be masked and we will be officially beginning that policy today thank you madam manager today i have another important announcement uh is mr david boyd available i'm here mr mayor let's see oh great mr boyd i don't know that all of my colleagues know this and i know that there are many members of our community do not but uh i'm sad to say for the sake of durham uh that you have taken a great new job in wake county i mean in mecklenburg county yeah it was it was wake i'd be really mad in mecklenburg county um and that is great for you and for your family and we're very happy for you but i would do want to say that it's a tremendous loss for us you have been such a fantastic finance director for i think going on a dozen years and i have personally so benefited uh by my discussions with you over my 10 years up here and just learned so much from you about finance but more than that you've done an incredible job of keeping our city's finances in order strong well managed creatively managed the refinancings that we've done over the years have been just such a powerful engine of our financial well-being the way in which you've interacted with the finance and the budget departments the way in which you all have interacted has been just i've really enjoyed watching that over the years and our budget retreats and i just want to say to you mr boyd thank you we're really going to miss you david and you have been just an incredible incredible finance director we wish you godspeed and uh just are really really going to miss you here in durham so would you like to say a few words to us thank thank you very much for that mayor you know i couldn't have done all of this by myself i've got a great team in the finance department that that we've been able to build over the last dozen years um and the support that i've i've received from uh wander page who was uh part of the group that that hired me and then all of you on on council have been exceptionally supportive of employees as well as the finance department specifically um hopefully i've been able to take the uh sometimes uh dry accounting bean counter information and and conveyed in a way that made sense to those of you who aren't um i've especially enjoyed working with you mr mayor over the past 10 years that that you've been on council or or been the mayor i know that every time we have some type of an item that you will most definitely want to pull that item and talk about it um your intellectual curiosity and your questions that really get to the heart of the matter make make it fulfilling for an employee to know that um folks are interested in what you're doing um you know when when my family and i came here almost 12 years ago you know we came from claire across the country weren't entirely sure what what we were getting into but it's been great i've i've met a lot of of great people learned a lot of things and really been able to work on some very interesting things that have happened during them over the past 12 years and i certainly hope that i've um done my part to hopefully leave the the city a little better than than when i when i got here almost 12 years ago so thank you all very much i will definitely miss all of you um missing Durham to continue to grow and i'll be watching uh how you all address the the challenges from the future so so i appreciate the the kind words today thank you thank you mr boy madam manager would you like to just say a word about the interim leadership of the department the finance department certainly mr mayor and i would also like to add my thanks to uh david boyd for the excellent service that he provided the city of Durham government over the past decade uh in the interim as david says this is his last night here in the council chamber but he will be working until wednesday and that will be his last day in city government at that time the deputy finance director emily desiderio will be serving as the interim finance director she's been working with david boyd for some time now and has transitioned over to lead that department and i look forward to working with emily as part of the city's leadership team thank you very much madam manager colleagues i have a couple of other quick announcements one is that we are um we the as you all know we financed along with the county the hiring of 45 community health workers uh to be placed in nine different community-based organizations i just wanted to report that those workers have been hired they are on the street uh working hard and i'm very excited about that i heard about that today i also want to say that we are at a very different place with with the virus than than we were um just a few weeks ago three weeks ago we had fewer than five people in the hospital in Durham with covet we are now uh have 50 56 people with covet in the hospital in Durham we have we were down to less than five cases per day today we now have more than 40 cases per day this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated the vast majority of people who are in the hospital and who have cases are unvaccinated it is critically important to get vaccinated and to help the ones that you love to encourage them to be vaccinated the the coronavirus knows no political boundaries if you are unvaccinated the chances are very good that it will find you it's critically important to get vaccinated i'll say a word about vaccinations if you're vaccinated they don't totally protect you from the delta variant you can still get what's called a breakthrough infection from the delta variant but what we know about that is that those people who are vaccinated who and who rarely get the the virus anyway get it very mildly and have a much lower ability to pass it on to others please i urge everyone in the community to get yourself vaccinated if we are serious about beating this virus we really have to encourage everyone in our community to do that at this point we've done pretty well of our of our eligible people eligible to be vaccinated in Durham people over 12 about 72 percent of our community has had at least one shot it's very good so now we're to people who have hesitancy of various types or lack of access and our community health workers are going to do everything they can to reach those people with lack of access and hesitancy but for all of us it means one-on-one conversations with the people that we care about and i want to strongly urge all of us to have those conversations frank conversations to try to do everything we can to keep our community safe we are also going to be taking other measures which will be announced in the next day or two that we are taking as a city and a county that will also be measures that will help keep our community safe we need to go back back to the basics masking washing social distancing and everybody needs to get vaccinated it's really critically important we're at a very very delicate time and i just want to plead with everyone to please for those people that you know and love who are hesitant have that extra conversation listen listen to their objections that's really important and then have those conversations all right colleagues i've given some lengthy announcements and i'll now turn the floor over to others announcements colleagues councilmember freeman thank you mr. mayor i appreciate you taking the time to make sure that we're all on the same page around where we are in this covid pandemic i just wanted to share just from my perspective just a few things and i have some lengthy comments i just wanted to take a moment also to just note that in my moment of silence i was acknowledging robert moses who passed away last week civil rights activists born in harlem new york and he died at the age of 86 i just wanted to note he was a civil rights activist who was shot at endure beatings jail and led many black um voter registration drives in the american side south during the 1960s and later he helped he worked to help improve education for students of color and math um i also wanted to just note on a happier note uh happy black august and then the words of the late james baltwin i wanted to say not everything that his face can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced i want to note we are also at a critical time and my concerns for those in our community experiencing financial health and safety challenges indoor space safety challenges continues to grow and i'm optimistic about the decisions in front of us today and i know we'll continue to face these challenges over the next days months weeks and years but i'm i'm grateful to be here and um i just want to note that i'm here for the work in the conversations i know the stimulus payments have gone out from the federal government and we still have a lot of ground to cover our summer youth program during this pandemic has faced challenges overall i counted as a a great baseline to build on i know the continued gun violence brings the concerns that i continue to hear and the conversations in the community actually are really exciting noting that people are coming up with solutions that can actually address it and since they may already address the covid numbers i won't do that as well i do want to take a moment and just note that i intend to write a op-ed because i feel like the conversation around hb 324 is a little lopsided and i do want to give some perspective on how this country's history has impacted people of color that look like me um that are black brown or indigenous and it's important to note that there's there's a piece of this that's been missing in the classroom and we're going to need to make sure that our our students have that for their ability to critically think and assess with the eviction moratorium ending uh friday and as tenants try to play catch up i'm even more confident that our community will rise to challenge and find a variety of solutions as i know that a lot of us have been in those conversations as we continue i will uh just note that these are all the things that uh that have been going on the last few weeks and i just wanted to take a moment and say uh even though there's a pandemic we still have work to do and we still have to meet these challenges and i look forward to doing that so thank you thank you very much council member other announcements colleagues council member middleton thank you mr mayor good evening good evening everyone that's in the chamber and everyone at home watching i want to take up firstly a point of personal privilege and recognize my former seatmate uh who's in the building tonight representative the honorable vernetta austin uh former ward three uh council member who's in the building tonight couldn't couldn't stay away uh it was good good to see in the building um mr mayor i want to thank you for acknowledging the hiring of the vaccination ambassadors um you know looking back when we and i want to thank my colleagues for deciding to expedite um that contract rather than going through a traditional rfp process i want to thank my colleagues also at the county for partnering with us given the numbers and what's going on now with the delta variant uh seems like it was the right thing to do the expedited and and who knew uh that we would need them the way we need them now i know for several of us up here when we got vaccinated it was a bit of a media event and and we tried to spur people particularly in the bipod community to get vaccinated i want to underscore that and just emphasize if you are watching tonight and you have not been vaccinated please get vaccinated i don't know how to be more compelling than just rolling up our own sleeves and putting your own body uh in front of a needle i trust uh the black women that helped develop the vaccine i trust the the years of work that went into it so much of that i rolled up my own sleeve and i hope that um you will if you're watching tonight if you have not been vaccinated please consider doing so if there are people you need to talk to if you have hesitancy or questions whether it's a trusted faith leader or a community leader or a healthcare provider please get your questions asked uh and engage in discussions to to help address your hesitancy and getting the vaccine uh mr. mayor i wanted to just make a quick announcement tonight a couple of weeks ago i talked about a group of young people from derm who were participating in the junior olympics in florida i know a lot of us are focused on the big big olympics uh but the united states of america tracking field association held the junior olympics uh in florida uh almost daily i get called by people in the media to talk about gun violence uh in our city um but there are some other headlines going on in our city as well and there are some other things that are going on in our community and and i i'd love opportunity to talk about things like uh this um i want to send a shout out to coach carter and president beesley of the bull city track club when they get the numbers right we had about 57 young people mainly derm residents participate in the junior olympics uh they made it back home safely uh we ended up with 30 all americans and one relay national champion um put that on the air uh tonight in our newspapers tomorrow let me say that again 30 all americans and one relay national champion here from derm who participated in the junior olympics um i want to send shout out to them congratulate them go derm uh and uh you made us proud that's it mr mayor i want to thank you uh madame manager for your leadership um in um buckling up the ship and readying the house for uh what's coming with these uh increased numbers with covet you know it's one thing for a government to mandate but it's much more powerful to model behavior uh and and i appreciate the modeling of behavior going on in the chamber tonight uh and amongst my colleagues we know the mask aren't fun um they're not you know they're hard to breathe through sometimes they're hard to talk through but they're necessary and they work so i want to thank you for your leadership uh madame manager and and yours as well mr mayor and to my colleagues thank you all so much yield back thank you very much council member further announcements council member freelon thank you mr mayor and greetings community members um i just wanted to build on something council member um freeman said about just very briefly mentioned black august and uh i wanted to wish you and everyone in derma happy black august and just provide a little context for what black august is um black august is a time of year every year where we honor our ancestors and folks who are currently uh struggling for justice social justice warriors particularly in the black freedom struggle it started to commemorate the murder of george jackson he was a member of the black panther party and it was a movement that came out of prisons that was really about the grief and the revolutionary rebellion of black social justice workers and their fight against mass incarceration and criminalization and to free political prisoners so uh for a long time here in derm we've been recognizing and celebrating black august i see a member of the spirit house tribe in the building they do the black uh august haiku every year and uh we have a big event called black august in the park to celebrate and honor this history and heritage so you know similar to juneteenth or black history month i think uh black uh august is an important um annual time for us to reflect and to celebrate the black freedom struggle so thank you for mentioning it um and i just wanted to to share with the community a little more context about what black august is and why we celebrated thank you mr mayor thank you very much council member colleagues any further announcements i just wanted to thank council member freeline i didn't want to use all my well thank you for that's right all right thank you all we will now move on to priority items and i'll first ask our city manager if she has any priority items tonight good evening mr mayor madam mayor pro tem members of the derm city council i do have a few priority items for you this evening agenda item number 28 consolidated annexation 405 twl xander attachment number 12 was updated agenda item number 22 contract with made in derm pursuant to council's request additional information has been provided in attachment number two under the priority items by the city manager city attorney and city clerk section of the agenda agenda item number 31 derm guaranteed income pilot the item is being referred back to the administration that is all i have this evening thank you very much madam manager madam attorney any priority items tonight good evening mr mayor madam mayor pro tem members of the derm city council it's good to see you all in person the city attorney's office has no priority items this evening thank you madam attorney madam clerk any priority items tonight good evening mr mayor madam mayor pro tem and city council members the city clerk's office has no priority items this evening thank you very much madam clerk mr mayor point of inquiry sure may i ask just uh madam manager uh what the issue is with uh item number 31 the guaranteed income pilot uh city councilman the item was referred back due to uh continued negotiation uh with the contract uh we do not anticipate there being a long delay in uh bringing it back forward and the city attorney may have some additional information council member middleton the the manager has given you all the information that i have as well um i understand there are a few contract uh details that still need to be ironed out but we anticipate getting those completed fairly soon my thanks to the manager and the city attorney thank you mr mayor thank you for that question council member colleagues uh before i move on to the consent agenda i did want to also say i apologize to representative austin who i i got to give a hug to on the way in and then forgot to announce so i want to thank council member middleton for uh recognizing her we're so glad to have you here glutton for punishment really great to see you and uh colleagues i would like us to stay after our agenda for just a few minutes tonight to talk about our plans for future council meetings i think there's we we should talk about whether or not we want to continue to be here and encourage people to come and potentially have a large crowd in the room or whether or not we want to go back to instead of these hybrid meetings go back to uh virtual meetings and i'd love to get the wisdom of the council uh after the meeting after our rest of our agenda all right we'll now move to the consent agenda the consent agenda can be approved by single vote of the council the consent agenda consists of items that the council has previously worked on in work sessions uh members of the public or council members can pull an item from the consent agenda at which time they will be heard at the end of the meeting item one citizen's advisory committee appointment item two during bicycle pedestrian advisory commission appointment item three during cultural advisory board appointments item four during this i'm sorry that item was pulled during cultural advisory board appointments was pulled by a member of the public item four during historic preservation commission appointment item five during homeless services advisory committee appointments item six during open space and trails commission appointment item seven during human relations commission appointment item eight mayor suspanic latino committee appointment item non-persistory budgeting steering committee appointment item ten recreation advisory commission appointments item 11 cemetery operations performance audit 2021 june 2021 item 12 bylaws for the racial equity commission item 13 approval of a multifamily housing facility known as trails of twin lakes apartments and financing with multifamily housing revenue bonds item 14 contract with the housing authority the city of durham for the provision of tenant-based rental assistance services for two years 2021 to 2023 item 15 interlocal agreement with durham county for the provision of housing assistance and related supportive services for two years 2021 to 2023 item 16 agreement with north kelowna state university for the development enhancement and maintenance of the triangle regional model item 17 construction contract with crouter construction company for the north durham water reclamation facility process improvements phase two construction item 18 professional engineering services contract with hazen and soyer pc for the western intake partnership water intake and transmission infrastructure engineering project item 19 professional services contract with raftelis financial consultants ink for the western intake partnership governance item 20 city county radio system service agreement renewal of motorella solutions ink item 21 change order for the durham parks and recreation administration building air handling unit replacement contract with hm current corporation item 23 catch basin insert pilot study sp 21 2021-01 professional services contract item 24 contract sw 81 public work street maintenance repairs 2021 item 25 contract sw 81c request for qualifications for inspections for public work street maintenance repairs item 30 contract for booking agent item 31 guaranteed durham guaranteed income pilot and this is referred back to the administration general business agenda so that's that's the consent agenda colleagues you've heard the consent agenda with the exception of item three i'll now accept a motion for its approval so moved second moved by council member freeman seconded by mayor pro tem johnson madam clerk are we going to use the clicker tonight we are going to make an attempt yes okay great mr. mayor yes i have some electronic speakers number 13 and 23 i think that the person for 13 meant 31 because it it's the they wanted to speak on the guaranteed income so that that item was pulled and the speaker on 23 is a speaker who i believe is just here to answer questions okay great yeah but thank you madam clerk um having these two computers here today madam clerk and and and madam manager is helping me to actually monitor those things uh but uh it is a challenge but i think it's going to be worthwhile all right um let me just make sure that i see nothing new here in the chat about that just to make sure i'm right yep we got it okay uh colleagues there's a motion on the floor that we approve the consent agenda with the exception of item three and you're the voting is now open council member freeline i don't know if you've done this before so the choices are simple i think he just ordered a pizza please close the vote he is a very very quick learner mr. mayor the motion passes seven zero thank you madam clerk's been a long long time since we've done that thank you all right colleagues we will now move to the general business agenda and we'll take up that other item at the end of the meeting we are at now at general business agenda public hearings and we'll begin with item 27 consolidated annexation parcel k i believe we're hearing from mr culture welcome mr culture you are a good evening mayor shul madam mayor pro tem johnson and honorable city council members danie culture here representing the planning department tonight the first thing i would like to do is state for the record that all planning department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law and the affidavits for affidavits for those notices are on file in the planning department um request for the voluntary annexation utility extension agreement and the future land use map or flume change uh and zoning map change was received from jared edens of edens land core for four parcels of land totaling 140.71 acres and the location is at 2705 and 2725 east us highway 70 and 4709 and 4793 leisle road the site is presently zoned rural residential rr industrial i industrial park ip and in the falls jordan watershed overly district b or fjb and is also within the suburban development here the applicant is proposing to resume the property and plan development residential 5.949 or pdr 5.949 for a maximum of 837 residential dwelling units consisting of 185 single family 220 multifamily townhouse and 434 432 excuse me multifamily apartment units the property is currently designated low density residential low medium density residential and commercial on the future land use map or the flume the proposed pdr 5.949 zoning is inconsistent with the low density residential and commercial future land uses if the proposed zoning is approved stack staff recommends a change to the flume to designate the property as low medium density residential and this consolidated request would become effective on september 30th 2021 the planning commission by vote of one to 11 at their april 13th 2021 meeting failed to recommend approval of the request since the planning commission hearing the applicant made modifications to the development plan they're proffering an additional commitment to install a traffic signal north of the site in the brightleaf development at the prospect parkway and northern durham parkway intersection subject subject to ncdot approval they also added a graphic inset to the site improvement sheet on the development plan that shows the boundary limit locations for each housing type and due to labor later discovery and per udo requirements they updated the building envelope in the northeastern section of the site based on a required minimum 480 foot distance cellular tower fall zone which is located on an adjacent parcel there are three motions required for the application the first is to adopt an ordinance annexing parcel k and of the city of durham effective september 30th 2021 and to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with jinx investment llc the second is to adopt an ordinance for the rezoning and amend the future land use map and the third is to adopt a consistency statement thank you very much staff and the applicant team would be available for questions thank you very much mr. culture colleagues you have heard the report from staff and i'm not now declare this public hearing open and first i'm going to ask if there are any questions for mr. culture councilmember freeland thank you mr. mayor um i saw that they offered to build the traffic light pending ncdot approval and i'm curious uh what that process with ncdot looks like is this the type of thing that they would typically approve you know what are what are the chances of it not getting approved in that being taken off the table thank you thank you councilmember mr. culture councilmember freeland i would probably like to defer that to bill judge who would have grant him that knowledge of that with ncdot so yes so this is bill judge city of derm apartment transportation the uh so the proffer would be subject to uh meeting the manual and uniform traffic control devices traffic volume warrants for needing a signal if it meets those and is approved by ncdot then the signal would be installed we transportation and ncdot in the neighborhood have been working together really at that intersection already to and convert it to a multi-way stop so i'm not 100 positive that it's actually going to meet the volume warrants for the signal but if it does then um then this developer would be required to do it especially once they add the additional traffic thank you mr. judge colleagues any other question for mr. culture at this time or for anyone out on for mr. judge all right uh then we will now hear from members of the public uh we have 22 members of the public who have signed up to speak uh we may have others also madam clerk who i have not who are here but those are the ones that we um have from the um for the presign up let me just uh colleagues if you will indulge me for a moment let me just look through and see if there are other people who are planning to speak on this item so i can figure out how long people be able to speak madam clerk i don't see a lot more people here uh to speak on that item would you agree mayor i have about half of the electronic applicants here or um registrants here tonight online okay i am not seeing a lot of let me look colleagues thank you for bearing with me yeah i see a few more oh yeah i do i see okay uh we have more than 30 people who have signed up to speak on this item and as is our practice when we have that number we each person will be able to speak for two minutes what i'm going to do first though is uh i believe some of these members are people are members of the proponents team and i'll ask mr edens are you presenting for the proponents mr jared edens if we make mr edens available to be heard uh yes sir can you hear me yes are you presenting mr edens yes sir thank you mr edens let me name some people and let me know if they're members of your team uh devon griffin murrell spanching lee steve george ryanel stevensson and maiden cotry are they members of your team as says steve george and ryanel stevensson are members of the development team and i think the the other three may be neighbors okay all right thank you how long do you think you need for your presentation mr edens i'll be brief in five five six minutes all right uh you will have time to reserve uh i'll be given each of the uh opponents two minutes all righty uh mr edens uh welcome we're glad that you're here and uh we'll look forward to your presentation thank you mr mayor members of the city council uh jared edens with edens land i appreciate your time this evening so i can be with you um also appreciate danie's work on this project and his summary and we've been in process with this one uh quite a while now i know danie's put a lot of time into it so i just want to acknowledge and appreciate his help with that i'm just going to touch on a few few high points here and again answering any questions that may come up as you know project we're located on leesville road adjacent to the bright leaf at the park neighborhood uh i lived in bright leaf for about 10 years it's a very successful neighborhood it's done very well it's very established now uh so we're in a good good part of town good location and honestly i think this is one of the more complete zoning applications that that i brought in in my career i've had a lot of zoning cases but i'll just touch on a few points but when you look at them individually it's a i think it's a strong application so again a pdr of about six units an acre we are proposing all three housing types single family townhomes and the apartments we situated the layout of those three types so that the apartments will be located furthest away from bright leaf so the color exhibit on on the last page of the development plan shows the apartments being located up at leesville and highway 70 so as not to really impact on the on the bright leaf community we got some notable commitments for open space in addition to the you know there'll be miles of sidewalk on the property along the roadways but we're committing to a half a mile of off-site trail we've got at least three pocket parks planned we'll have a clubhouse and pool for the facility we're also proposing a hundred-year stormwater detention for all of our ponds that's something that my firm's been trying to push i think Durham's probably headed in that direction where ponds eventually would be designed to attain a hundred-year storm because i think we see those those levels a little bit more often than we realize uh so for this site you know you're going to have 15 plus stormwater ponds here and then we're committing to oversize every one of them to detain the hundred-year event and i think that is significant and another significant proffer we have is is affordable housing and so we're offering five percent of the apartment section so that would be up to 22 or would be 22 affordable units but we're we copy the language from the Durham UDO we're going to follow the process the same process the city follows and requires applicants to follow as far as annual accounting and things like that to my knowledge i think it's the first project at least in the sorals basin that that is actually proposing real affordable housing you know 20-year deed restricted city standard affordable housing i'm hoping that if we can get this approved tonight maybe we can see a few more of those in this basin and maybe get that ball rolling a little bit better there and also there's a school within walking distance of the property which is a positive i'm going to touch on traffic briefly we did perform a tia obviously for 837 units i'm not going to name them off the all the individual improvements i mean they are extensive but i would point out that the signal at dot nickels and leesville road i think is an improvement that that entire community is going to benefit from we're also proposing improvements to highway 70 and leesville at that end and i do have some information and i'm glad bill touched on the the signal at northern durham and prospect parkway so we did perform that that analysis of the warrant study to see if it would if we if it would meet the warrant so that we could put the signal there the preliminary analysis we got back was that it would not meet the warrant so as of today per the analysis the signal would not be warranted there but we have we've contacted dot to ask them if we can still install it basically in spite of the analysis we've we've reached out to them about two issues for northern parkway we want to continue the conversation on the signal to try to push that to take place and we've also talked to them about reducing the speed limit to 35 in that location and we'd be glad to assist the neighbors as that progresses a couple proffers i'd like to to mention tonight a couple payments one we'd like to profit and a payment to the the affordable housing fund we have 837 units we would profit a payment of $150 a unit which would equate to $125,550 and we also have a profit to durham public schools per the staff report there'll be 177 additional students generated from this request and $500 per student that would be a profit of $88,500 both of these proffers will be do fire prior to the first final plat for the property so in summary again i think there's numerous positives with the submittal i think we're attacking it from from multiple angles both environmentally affordability traffic and design itself so i hope that we can get your support tonight and i'd be glad to answer any questions you have thank you thank you very much mr eden so we appreciate your being here well now move to other proponents who have signed up to speak mr eden i'm going to assume that mr george and steve george and ronald stevensson are not planning to speak unless there are questions for them is that correct yes sir mr george is my client mr stevensson is our traffic engineer if we have any of those questions all right thank you very much all right uh is devon griffin morrell here uh either virtually or let's see here um clerk let's see if we can hi hello hi how are you i'm doing well i appreciate you guys uh giving me the opportunity to speak this evening we're glad for you to be here and you have two minutes thank you so my name's devon griffin morrell i am a part of the ownership group of an adjacent property owned by dh griffin infrastructure so our family has owned the property for quite some time and i've known steve for about two years mr steve george so i'm a proponent of the development i think that they've proposed a plan that crosses all of the t's and dots all of the i's i find them to be a really responsible uh and conscientious groups so i know that they're going to do the right things for the area i just kind of want to hit a few highlight some of which mr eden's already went over but for me what really speaks volumes is just their commitment to the affordable housing their ability and capital contributions to the basin improvements the traffic infrastructure really just providing the diverse and well-planned residential community in this area i think would do great things for durham and help solve some of the housing issues that that the area has has seen recently just due to the tremendous growth so i think it could be a great keystone project for this area and i'm in support and hope that we can solve all of the issues and uh and get it passed thank you very much we appreciate you being here miss griffin morrell we'll now hear from fanching lee is fanching lee available we heard please come up we're glad to have you and you have two minutes thank you mr mayor and council members um it's my great pleasure to be here i'm a owner of 47 93 lease will roll i support this project because it bring a lot of positive impact i believe to the community i want to talk about a few things first is density at the density of 5.9 units per acre this is at the lower end of what is allowable to build and this is agreed by the city planning in that this you know allow a low density and in terms of traffic um it actually can bring significant improvement once it's built out because the builder has committed three to four million dollars in terms of building infrastructure improvements and the many improvement can be very important for the future growth of durham in my opinion and planning staff has pointed out that these improvements are highly desirable for the long-term growth to allow for further improvements and extensions for the prosperity of the durham city in terms of environmental this is also a very good project it has 25 acres of open space 28 acres of trees and streams and wetland reserves out of the 140 acres of land so so far as far as i understand comparing to for example the nearby brideleaf community in terms of percentage that's set aside for environmental benefit this is even higher and also the plan meets and exceeds all the regulations for example as mr edin says said it it has a storm capacity of 100 years rather than typical 10 years also affordability the builder has offered to provide five percent of the apartment unit 433 apartment units for affordable apartment units and as a minority and immigrant myself i understand how important the diversity and inclusivity is and i think this would build a very positive momentum considering that this is the first production builder in the area offering this that i really like this project's direction there and overall it also brings positive revenue for the city it will pay out 4.5 million for the southeast lift station that's funded by taxpayer money thank you very much for your comments we appreciate them thank you thank you for being here with us all righty we'll now move to maiden country is maiden country here and i hope that i have become somewhere near that name correctly let's see how are we doing with finding her madam cleric or i'm not sure do you see maiden country madam cleric oh yes i do i i see maiden country k h a t r i who wants to speak on item 27 hello can you hear me yes thank you very much for being here mr. cocky welcome and and you also have two minutes thank you i i think mr. Eden and the the neighbor has spoken very much about what needs to be said and i have been there almost now the 29 years and i think now that we are seeing the progress that eventually Durham city and Durham county both have realized how the area is growing and they are working towards that and i appreciate that i think i'm pretty sure the planning commission is doing you know all the due diligence required and hopefully things will move forward as the resident of the state now i like to see north Carolina growing as many other states have grown so i appreciate your time thank you thank you very much mr. catch we really appreciate you being with us thank you for your comments all right colleagues we now have a number of opponents who have signed up to speak i'm going to begin first with those people who've signed up to speak prior to the meeting and madam clerk as you all work through this list i'm going to be using that list so hopefully that will help us coordinate we will begin with lauren thompson is miss thompson available to be heard miss thompson glad you're here please come up thank you for being with us and you also have two minutes thank you mayor and council members i we just want to say i'm opposed to this project i live my name is lauren thompson i live at 237 cross blossom road in the bright leaf community and as one of the bright leaf members and one of the residents of southeast Durham i think that while this this plan has a lot of good intention there is still not enough planning behind it to support the impact it's going to have on southeast Durham particularly with the roadways i know they've focused a lot of energy on the leesville side but they have not even considered Sharon road and how much impact that will have on Sharon and the impact on the 70 and Sharon intersection as well as people trying to commute through 70 up to 98 and cut through across adding this much more traffic when a lot of those roads are still two lane rural roads i don't think it will be able to support that not not also just the community being built there but the people trying to cut through i also think that along with the traffic there's still a lot of consideration of the wildlife there i know we've seen a lot of coyotes and they don't you know they haven't talked about what the plan is for relocating or managing the wildlife so what i what i'm concerned about as a resident of bright leaf is that some of those displaced wildlife will start coming into our community and not having a place to stay or will be impacting those trails if they're not considered about what to do with them so that's really as as a resident of that area i would love to see more planning on a whole for southeast eram and multiple other communities are being trying to be developed and i'd love to see a full plan for the whole of southeast eram and not just acceptance of different plans thank you thank you very much miss toms and we really appreciate you being with us madam clerk i'm now going to call uh the next three people will be caroline hurley elissa mcgallon and lauren mcgallon is caroline hurley available to be heard miss hurley i think you are available to be heard can you unmute yourself miss hurley i believe you are available to us could you make yourself heard do we lose her madam clerk we did well if she comes back we will enjoy having her with us we'll now move to elissa mcgallon is miss mcgallon available to be heard mr mayor there's no elissa mcgallon in the queue all right thank you how about lauren mcgallon there's no lauren mcgallon either all right thank you uh we will now hear from her nanny krespi followed by jerry fulmer followed by steven cannell is her nanny krespi available to be heard mr mayor i see no her nanny krespi in the queue i'm either all righty how about jerry fulmer good act good evening mr mayor mr fulmer welcome we're glad to have you you have two minutes yes sir this will be short um good evening mr mayor and also the durham city council members thank you for giving me this time my name is jerry fulmer and i do reside in the bright leaf area and you know even though i'm an advocate for development i'm just i'm still not satisfied or and i'm still very unsure of the uh as it pertains to the traffic infrastructure plan it doesn't seem to be a plan and i'm not saying a plan just for circle k but you got to include all those other areas because of the traffic but especially as it pertains to the sharing road area and durham parkway it just doesn't seem like there's been appropriate planning and those written plans for the traffic patterns and infrastructure that could affect or even make better that area i know if you've mentioned that there's going to be a traffic light that could be on the durham parkway and the other intersection however that's again proposed there's still not a definite plan on what that traffic pattern infrastructure would be like so as a result of that me being still unsure i'm i'm imposing this this project thank you thank you for being with us mr fulmer thank you now we'll hear from steven nill followed by calib chapman and nick deal i believe mr nills available to be heard welcome and you have two minutes thank you um um mayor schrull mayor pro tem council members staff and especially our friends of bright leaf at the park um i'm steven nill from one oh two one restoration drive i'm the co-founder of leaseville road coalition thank you all for allowing me to speak tonight last tuesday uh we sent mayor schull and the council response to his july 16th letter to us on traffic in southeast durham he had spent a significant amount of time putting together figures and sharing information about durham in general and we thank him for that um while his data focused mostly on current conditions our detailed analysis shows with all the developments being approved in the southeast durham area by 20 27 traffic on leaseville road will double the maximum daily trip capacity as approved by nc dot building parcel k and opening the connector road to bright leaf will contribute significantly to this overcrowding your even your support documents for this public hearing include some of that impact but not all the complete lack of public transportation in this area will not support your vision for a reduction in personal use of vehicle usage in fact with all the building usage will greatly increase a lot less public transportation grows in connection to the comp to the comprehensive plan and commercial development is intermixed throughout the area allowing for walking and biking versus driving to the store additionally nc dot told us they won't even consider any road infrastructure improvements to this area until at least 2035 so we've asked for a slowdown and improving developments like these until these siloed plans can come together in some sort of rational infrastructure funding or bond plan can be developed so we we oppose the uh the approval of parcel k tonight thank you for your time thank you very much mr nil we're glad to have you with us we'll now hear from Caleb Chapman madam clerk is Caleb Chapman available to be heard mr Chapman welcome you have two minutes thank you very much i am Caleb Chapman i am a resident of the townhomes here at brightleaf and i would like to oppose the adoption of parcel k on two major grounds firstly the grounds regarding the conservation of natural habitat and secondly the for the connection to brightleaf since it is a since the townhouses include a private road regarding the first issue with the conservation of natural habitat i am concerned about the habitat of the turkeys the deer the box turtles the owls and the bats and birds and such that live in these area and the streams and that's where they make their home about them being displaced or perhaps simply being forgotten about in this development secondly i am concerned about the connection to the brightleaf area because these in bryfley we have private roads and these roads are maintained by our hoa and the in the hoa will have to cover any increased maintenance costs and also any issues regarding traffic that is now moving through these roads that was not initially accounted for thank you very much mr Chapman thank you very much for being with us we appreciate your comments madame clerk went out here from nick deal followed by sythia wittall and then so first i'll ask is nick deal available to be heard so hang on one second mr deal mr chapman could you uh yeah thank you uh mr deal welcome we're glad to have you and you also have two minutes thank you um i'll keep it very brief people already said basically what i was going to say probably better than i would my name is nick deal i live at four three four carthage court in the vistas at brightleaf i'm here as president of the vistas homeowner's association and i'm representing our board in an official capacity um we are probably the most impacted by partial k development as it backs up directly to a large number of our homes but i want this to be clear this isn't a case of not my backyard we all understand accepted development is inevitable but also necessary as our city continues to grow i don't want to come off with anti-development we all know that more housing is needed this has to be done in a very planned responsible way taking into account our infrastructure again our concern is very much with sharon road it's a very narrow very rural unlit curvy road the traffic already backs up pretty nasty along it during rush hour it could take several cycles of the light at sharon and 70 to get through that's only going to get worse as other developments have already been greenlit further up sharon road adding this massive development here was exacerbate that so much and as mr mill had mentioned there's no plan to invest in our roads i do commend the city for the lift station like that's a start for our infrastructure but our roads really need our attention and that is our biggest concern so i thank you for your time and consideration mr deal thank you very much for being with us we appreciate your comments madam clerk is synthia wittall available to be heard yes i see miss wittall can you unmute yourself and we're glad that you're here and you also thank you you also have two minutes thank you for being with us thank you mayor and city council members i just want to definitely echo all that you've recently heard but i guess most importantly that the planning commission that is part of that presents a report to the city council also almost unanimously voted against adopting this proposal the traffic is going to be a major concern the lack of plan transportation to connect so that we don't have to use our cars is not much of an insight or helpful area and as it stands right now the page road extension glenn wood avenue and leesville road those two lights are an absolute mess in the evening where one backs up into the other causing more so i can only imagine with more traffic coming off leesville what that will continue to look like please vote to oppose this parcel i understand we all need revenue but it needs to be done responsibly thank you thank you miss wittall we appreciate your being with us we appreciate your comments ma'am clerk will now move to neil mayhem followed by laura wood and monica sebo nieste so first we'll hear from neil mayhem mr mayor there's no neil mayhem in the queue all right thank you madam clerk i will now move to laura wood is laura wood available to be heard mr mayor there's no laura wood in the queue either thank you thank you madam clerk monica sebo nieste hi um my name is monica sabon yesterday thank you mr mayor and city council for hearing me um i am a resident at brightleaf i've lived here for 10 years now and i am really happy that the developers um are paying attention to the problems of um needing low-income housing affordable housing but i feel like echoing what has been said before me Sharon road is a nightmare on a regular basis just today i had an event where i went out was trapped it was just backed up there was an accident backed up to other intersections in all directions there's just no outlet if something like that happens and until they deal with the roads you know how the people who live here are going to get around i just don't see adding more people but um like others have said i you know once they deal with the roads i think i would be in support of something like this but you have to put the horse before the cart otherwise we're all going to be you know losing our minds waiting in traffic so that's my biggest concern thank you very much thank you very much for being with us miss sabon yesterday thank you so much madam clerk we'll now hear from adam lamana followed by margaret esri and nicole walton uh so is adam lamana present mr mayor adam lamana is no longer in the queue all right how about margaret esri is margaret esri with us the sry yes miss esri thank you for being here we're glad you're here and you have two minutes thank you very much mayor and city council i reside at 2608 tear mark lane immediately behind my house is um is another street that's going to back up to parcel k my concern is the elevation and the imper impervious surfaces at this time my house sits less sits lower than the house behind me um when it rains hard um we get considerable runoff not from their yard but from their roof um the grass absorbs the water but it's the roof the impervious surface the ground or the land immediately behind um where we live is higher and when i when the when the sorry when the developer developers spoke in a zoom meeting initially the information was the water would not be running into brightly but the park area and then later he said the water will continue to flow as as it has been which means it would flow into our area um i'm concerned about the uh the runoff and i'm concerned about um our current areas that hold water getting the additional flow from the new development um the other concern i have is traffic um we have considerable traffic uh people cutting through our neighborhood and with the development behind us i would just see that increase i would ask the council to vote no to parcel k and thank you very much for your time miss esri thank you so much for being with us we appreciate your comments we'll now hear from the co walton miss walton i see that you're available to be heard we're glad you're here and you also have two minutes hi thank you i just would like to reiterate everything that everyone has said about the traffic on shearn road in northern Durham parkway that's going to be an absolute nightmare trying to get out of bright leaf i am a resident out here so i just kind of wanted to add my two cents to uh what everyone else has said thank you thank you so much for being with us miss walton we'll now move to a number of other speakers uh i'm going to i see there a couple of speakers listed as pro who haven't spoken yet but i'm going to go keep continuing uh down the list uh david halk h-o-u-c-k um madam clerk can you make david halk available to be heard good evening good evening mr halk welcome you also have two minutes thank you uh my name is david halk i live at 1707 wandell court i am a member of the board of the h-o-a of bright leaf the the entire community uh as as can be said with a lot of everyone has already talked about uh there are lots of problems traffic being one of them uh the proposed uh the intersection at northern Durham and prospect parkway uh it has taken us two and a half years of bouncing between nc dot and the city of Durham to get a stop to get a four-way stop up and the speed reduced to 40 miles an hour because of people cutting through because share and road will back up all the way to 98 at times in rush hour and when people cut through they go fast and they flip their vehicles right across from the school going 55 60 whatever miles an hour that according to the proponents oh this school is in walking distance we constantly get complaints about that that area that entire northern Durham parkway i'm also concerned about the infrastructure uh at one point we wanted to be more sustainable and use public transportation i live about as close to share and road as you can and i live a mile would have to jaywalk across a very busy share and road to get even close to the bus stop over a mile away from my house i think there's some very poor planning going on uh i'm from a city in south carolina columbia south carolina we're really bad planning really really harmed the city and i think we're in the same position and i think uh it's would be very uh pertinent to revisit this at a later date and time when the proposed infrastructure is actually there uh instead of being promised and pulled away such as the former 70 expansion thank you very much thank you mr hawk we're glad to have you with you with us and we appreciate your comments madam clerk could you make patricia prints available to be heard please miss prince welcome we're glad to have you can you be heard you'll need to unmute yourself miss prince miss prince can you unmute yourself the clerk has made you available to be heard all right madam clerk we'll come back to miss prince i don't believe that she's there all right uh i see two other speakers who are uh i'm sorry i have one other person listed as an opponent no i'm sorry two other proponents one of them is here with us jackie brown miss brown welcome we're glad to see you miss brown thank you for being here and you also have two minutes thank you and good evening mayor city council members city staff and my fellow durham residents once again my name is jackie brown in the past as a member of the durham can strategy team i've spoken at public meetings to advocate for issues that i feel strongly would benefit durham as a whole today i'm here in support of the parcel k project because i believe that this project benefits durham as a whole i'm in support of the proposed plan because it demonstrates how land can be developed in a way that helps the community i like there are several things about this project that i like i like the fact that it takes into account the environment by minimizing the crossing of the streams on sites and preserves a huge acreage of stream and wetland it offers extensive improvements to the surrounding roads including the extensions of the norm northern durham parkway which will not only totally mitigate the impact of the project but will also improve roads and traffic situations that currently exist it proposes to provide five percent of apartment sites units as affordable housing making the project one of the first to provide an onsite units in that area and the thing that i like the most is it provides diversity in that it has apartments several different sized town houses and two different sizes of single family housing this last point the diversity of housing is one that i most appreciate growing up in the west side of charlotte i lived in a community with such housing diversity as a result i live near people who were dentists principles entrepreneurs bus drivers factory workers like my grandfather and domestic workers like my mother i would like to think that my academic achievements being a double graduate of duke with a bachelor of science and mechanical engineering and a master's in business administration has a lot to do with where i where and how i grew up so i strongly support and encourage the advancement of this project thank you miss brown thank you very much for being with us we appreciate your comments we'll now hear from debora shaw who i believe is with us virtually madame clark can you make miss shaw available to be heard yes hi mr mayor thank you for your time i'd like to say that i am a resident of durham county like like long resident and an adjacent property owner with about approximately 20 acres of land i've reviewed the the proposal post plan and do not have any objections to this moving forward i have to say that i agree with everything that miss brown just said wholeheartedly and i i think that this this growth would be very beneficial to the community and i hope that you will approve it thank you very much miss y'all thank you so much for being with us we appreciate your comments madame clark do you see anyone else who have missed uh in the in the queue um for item 27 is there anyone else for item 27 who would like to be heard could you raise your virtual hand or if you're here in the audience could you raise your actual hand is that is that correct councilmember re said i'll know virtual versus actual is really virtual versus molecular or something i'll allow it okay mr mayor jared edens would like to make a comment i'll get back to mr edens in a moment is there anyone who was not spoken uh who would like to be heard or who has mr mayor yes erin dyche would like to speak all right thank you could you make uh erin dyche available to be heard please can you be heard can you hear me yes miss dyche thank you for being with us you also have two minutes thank you i just kind of wanted to reiterate but also wanted to clarify that from what i understood the northern drum parkway would only extend into a portion of this neighborhood it doesn't actually extend to leesville um and correct me if i'm wrong which then means that all that traffic will then be diverted into this new community so that includes our 1700 homes if they choose to drive through that community or anybody else that lives off of sharon or 98 or anybody trying to cut through um so i understand that having northern drum is very important but since it's an unfunded project we don't know when it's actually going to continue piece by piece to be built so it's not actually helping either community at this point in time and so that's why we've been so um worried about the traffic impact uh along that road especially because we do have a school and all the kids were scared for the kids and the runners and the bikers um along the road and that's it miss dyche thank you for being with us we very much appreciate it i'll ask again miss prince are you available to be heard patricia prince all right um i think we've done our best with that madam clerk madam clerk is there anyone else that you see who has raised her or his hand i don't see anyone else all right thank you um mr edens a madam clerk could you make mr edens available to be heard mr edens uh you still have some time go ahead uh thank you mr mayor i just want to touch on obviously traffic seems to be a the theme of of some of our opposition i understand their concerns for sure i just want to talk a little bit about about about the the traffic the tia process and what that entails and what it takes to what goes behind the scenes to get to where we are tonight um you know before we even file the rezoning you know we we have a pre-submitted meeting with the ncdot n city of durham regarding traffic and we work with durham and dot staff members to identify the different intersections adjacent to our property that we would need to study you know based on uh current issues and what's going on in the area one of the intersections we were asked to study was uh sharon road in northern durham parkway which is the intersection that has been referenced several times tonight i was pulling up the traffic study uh just to refresh my memory on on those different levels of service and as you recall we have to be at a level service d or worse or i believe it's maybe worse than level service d but we have to bring it um any intersection that's not meeting the the current threshold we have to bring that up to the current standards but uh when we studied sharon road in northern durham parkway if you'll notice in the study it's currently operating at level service b uh for most all the different approaches i think there's one level service a in the current conditions and even projected out um because our traffic study as you know we have to include background traffic for all the existing projects in the area that are approved and planned so uh durham's actually ahead of the curve in this regard that have been required some time on the traffic studies by we don't just look at these in a vacuum we actually look at these considering everything else that's in the queue to try to make sure everything's covered uh but what we found is even with our new development um you know the level of service at sharon road in northern durham parkway is still uh acceptable even at future build-out conditions with with everything else included and in fact i i think you could argue you know it's true that northern durham parkway will not extend to leesville road day one uh but our road network itself does connect the brightleaf project to leesville road so i would imagine if you live on the on the eastern portion of brightleaf and you want to go to riley uh i know how big of a hassle that can be to meander through brightleaf get on 70 make your u-turn or even go to sharon road uh when parcel k is developed you'll have the option to go to riley by simply driving through the parcel k collector roads there's two main collector roads going in connect to leesville road and then you go to briar creek in that direction so i think that's part of the reason that you see in the study that the levels of service are still acceptable even after we're completed because i think in reality i'll see some some traffic this is just given another relief valve so to speak for brightleaf when when this is constructed so we just want to talk on traffic there brief i think we've we've really hit the traffic hard with this one and i think the the offside improvements are significant uh but you know appreciate the chance to speak on that mr mayor and i'll be glad to answer any other questions that come up thank you very much mr heathens friends this is a public hearing and i want to make sure that everyone who would like to be heard on this item has been heard is there anyone here in the chamber tonight who would like to be heard on this item who has not been heard uh or is there anyone virtually who is attending who would like to be heard if so could you please raise your virtual hand mr mayor yes nicole walton had a comment in the chat i don't know if she would like to speak or not all right thank you miss walton has already spoken let me just look at that comment i think we're okay thank you miss walton thank you for your comment all right is there anyone else who would like to be heard on this item who has not been heard all right colleagues i'm going to keep this public hearing open and ask for your comments or questions Madam Mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um i had a question for staff about Sharon road a lot of the people who came to speak tonight mentioned Sharon road but i it doesn't seem to be directly adjacent to the development i was wondering if we or what impact we anticipate this development having on Sharon road if any yes this is bill judge transportation so as Jared Eden's indicated the traffic impact analysis did extend to the intersection of northern Durham parkway and Sharon road and it it was the intersections are operating and acceptable level of service so we think that should have very minimal impact to to Sharon road but it was included in the study great thank you so so just that intersection would be impacted or that's the only intersection that we think would be impacted significantly enough to look at that was the only one in within the study area obviously the intersection of Sharon road Mineral Springs us 70 is part of the future interchange and great separation of conversion to us 70 so so those improvements are basically will be completed with the ncdot freeway conversion project okay thank you that's the one that is scheduled for like 2035 uh it's not quite that far i think but i want to say right away is like 2027 it's still pretty far out though okay thank you yeah thank you mr judge thank you madam mayor pro tem and there are if you look in the attachment that says uh not the north calana department of transportation tia but the city transportation tia you'll see that um northern Durham parkway and Sharon road intersection uh analyze there um the at the am and p.m peaks and you'll see it confirms mr judge's uh comments thank you all right uh other other comments or questions colleagues uh council member caballero and then council member millton thank you good evening everyone um i had a couple other questions for staff just based on some of the comments that i heard from some of the opponents um both leesville and Sharon road are state maintained roads correct correct they are both uh state maintained roads and um i thought i heard and i wanted to thank mayor shul because i had the exchange between some of the residents out there was really really helpful it seemed that uh ncdot isn't has no plans to address any of the issues out at leesville road for i thought i heard until 2035 i was just wondering if we had any idea about Sharon road so there are no roadway improvements funded through the ncdot um tip process other than the conversion of us 70 to a freeway in this area so that that project is funded and that would include as i indicated the interchange at us 70 miami mineral springs um would include a grade separation at page road extension and a road extending page road up to leesville but in terms of like the extension construction of northern dorm parkway or andrew avenue and an interchange there at andrew avenue extension those improvements are on our adopted long range plan but none of those are funded at this point um i have another question about northern dorm parkway did the the developer i was out there today and and it's a 45 mile per hour road and i thought that it was shared that he was willing to work with the neighbors to get that lowered and i just didn't know if i was heard yes so the we uh the neighborhood and the city and ncdot have been working together on a number of changes within brightleaf at the park to the roadway it was designed um and posted at 45 miles per hour because it's intended to be a basically a four lane divided roadway similar to um larger facilities such as um yeah like ml martin luther king jr parkway across southern dorm um but the uh but the state has agreed to lower the speed limit and uh we're working on that now thank you are there any other traffic calming that we would be allowed to do out there i know we'd have to go through ncdot but you know some of our roads are we're limited on what traffic calming we can do i'm just thinking because of it's a it's a school right there and i'm i know around well we did um we did make some changes at school to improve the crossings and high visibility crosswalks as well as flashers um as part of that the uh beyond that in terms of like speed humps or other types of things that's unlikely that the state would have would approve that for for that type of facility the uh but we have we have been working with them to the extent that we can okay thank you thank you very much councilmember councilmember middleton thank you mr mayor and i want to thank everyone uh who participated it's not either in the room or or virtually for taking the time to to help us get to a decision on this important case and really there in lies to rub for me uh we have to make a decision an actual vote and uh oftentimes in these these debates and discussions regarding annexations and zonings and approving uh project development there there are comments that are helpful some of them are interesting some of them are titillating but often sometimes it's challenging to distill those comments into actually actionable policy what what does it mean when we say certain things and how does that translate or inform a particular vote i live in southeast durham and and i'm i'm aware of the traffic there i sometimes even coming down miami to get to 70 that ellis road light and then that light right there to turn on the 70 pack a snack um you know it's a growing city uh and folk um want to be in durham i do however want to to first i want to say something about uh when we float the idea of a plan this this this plan that we need for southeast uh durham and and that plan relative to making decision in real time right now uh plans are only as good as the council that has to honor them or vote on them and and i want to kind of disabuse ourselves with this notion that if we just kind of put our heads together and come up with this plan that'll solve all of our problems um we need to have a plan but but there may be a different council that sits here by the time that plan is put in place um and there's no there's no magic pill i believe that's going to unless unless we want to use a word that has been bandied about but no one wants to really seem commit to it anything short of a moratorium on approving development in this area is going to require us to substitute some variables in very concrete terms and i and i have i'm going to try and get some of those i'm going to ask a question to the proponents and the opponents relative to that uh filling in some of these variables at least for me i'm old enough to remember when some of the folk that are complaining about the traffic used to be the impending traffic problem for people who are already there um and now you know it what a difference a closing date can make um so i i want to i want to just honor the the how long this situation has been going on and some of the exigencies of of managing uh a growing city i think the mayor one time in the past session made a comment it wasn't a throwaway comment it kind of gave me pause he said this is a city it's a growing city and there are some things that come with living in a city um so with that said i want to ask the um opponents if mr. nill from the leesville road association i don't know if he's still on but he uh made a comment that intrigued me um he said uh to slow down he didn't use the word moratorium but rather to slow down development and and as a decision maker i i'd like to know from the leesville road association what does slow down mean and and what are the metrics what are the hard metrics for approving a development under a slowdown as opposed to not approving one what what what's acceptable under a slowdown regime of approving development in this area is it the number of units is it what the what the developer offers so if i don't know if mr. nill is still on but i'd like to put a question to the leesville road association mr. nill is here councilmember mr. nill um you're you're uh welcome to respond to councilmember middleson's question thank you um wow i didn't know i was going to get called on here but um i think what what we're what we're thinking of we we took a look at sort of where all these developments are and they kind of look like a patchwork and the challenge with the patchwork is that it really doesn't allow for contiguous improvement um so you have a development over here and then you have more county and land and then you have a development over here and it seems like development here is pretty much where the developers can buy land than they just build so while this happens it doesn't really help work toward the vision that we've seen in the comprehensive plan about you know more density more more sidewalk more walking more more commercial more small commercial even mayor pro tem talked about um you know a small grocery store you could walk to to buy a gallon of milk none of this type of development is ever going to get to that point um if it just continues to um you can you continue to approve developments that are just like the rest of the ones that are here um if you add that to the fact that there is no transportation out here i mean go Durham's cutting bus routes not adding them how are you ever going to get people that don't rely on cars to move to an area like this so i think a little more forethought of where these things are put in relation to each other and then you know how how you manage the traffic that's here while finding a plan to um to to start to dial back the traffic um it doesn't seem like traffic is going to dial back with any of the plans that we've seen over the past year and a half did i don't know if that helps any we and we did send kind of some numbers on this back to the mayor and the whole council was was copied based on what's been approved already and what's in the queue now granted you may not do all what's in the queue but there's going to be other things as well well thank you Mr. neil the help that that that is indeed helpful and and and i uh there's not going to be any slowdown to traffic anywhere in Durham because people are moving to Durham so that that that's baked in i do want to ask however again pursuant to your your slowdown um prescription could you help as a person who has to cast a vote could you help me uh by what would have developed what would an acceptable development look like that doesn't impact traffic that doesn't i mean what's the number of of of units so what type of unit mix would pass muster under a slowdown regime to be approved for this area i don't i don't think i think it's it's a number that the um that the combination of personal vehicles and public transportation can can manage well um again you know i i understand that that you know we have in Durham we have a lot of things that need to be fixed and and changed in other areas of Durham than this we just like this to not be the next area that needs to be fixed because of how things were done at this time does that make sense and i don't think there is such a thing as a a number a number at this point the number has to match you know every other piece of infrastructure that's there roads schools um uh you know public transportation all of those type of things and right now uh built building all these communities is leading by a mile there's because there's there's no plan there's no connection between the tri-county transportation plan and the Durham comprehensive plan there's no discussion about buses on any of these roads there are probably residents here who would use them and certainly the residents that you're you're trying to attract in with apartments and with and with the you know uh townhouse developments probably more would use public transportation but there's no what there isn't any and there doesn't seem to be any plans for it oh thank you final question is no thank and i appreciate the not listen i resonate with much of your analysis but i i guess i'm looking as as as a person with the mantle of governance on them how do i operationalize slow down uh i guess what i was looking for but let me ask this my my my suspicion is that if and when we do come up with a small area plan many of the things it seems that this developer is telegraphing in a development plan is is going to be the kind of stuff we're going to ask for in that plan more affordable housing more commitment to um transportation infrastructure that is outside of the purview of ncdot in other words the areas where we can flex our muscle and do things we want developers to spend significant money in making those type of commitments and those type of expansions um that you know i'm telegraphing i have no idea what what a final plan would look like but my suspicion is that many of the elements we would want in that plan are are are being uh hinted at suggested um touched upon by this plan would would you agree with that um i would it's it's it's a start but it but the things that they don't control and uh you're saying that you can't control are the things that are going to hurt how how it comes together i mean that's why we we've talked about this idea about an infrastructure bond or something like that cities counties take out bonds all the time and and not just for this area but for other areas um we we voted you know for a 95 million dollar affordable housing bond two years ago there you know roads that i mean our national government is is doing an infrastructure uh bond for infrastructure plan for for roads it's it's it's a hot topic it's the time to get it get it put together thank you so much mr and i appreciate you um i'd like to ask mr eden's a question if he's available yes sir thank you thank you uh for hanging in uh with us so as as you know the the um the comments and written comments from our planning commission are our play a big role with us there we use them as as touch points and to inform our decisions while they're whether or not determinative they're certainly impactful on the council and i wanted to give you an uh opportunity again in my quest to operationalize things and and and try and translate you know some of the comments that go on and and um discussion that goes on in these decisions and to actual actionable you know useful tidbits for me as a decision maker i want to read um a quote from one of our um planners uh commissioners and i want you to to respond says like many of the other projects designed in the base and this proposal suffers from inadequate design commitments showing how the project will harmonize with its neighbors and how the internal layout and individual dwelling units will work to make the well-designed well-designed neighborhood that our comprehensive plan goals objectives and policies favor um you want to talk to us about your design commitments uh sure yeah um i appreciate the opportunity to speak on that i mean um i design in general you know you know does i see design commitments as i mean obviously that's architectural but that's that's site-wise as well and you know i believe if if you were to study this as you had mentioned i believe if you were to study this property and and just say okay if we're going to have these three housing types where are we going to locate them uh we would locate this single family adjacent to the existing single family we would locate the townhomes adjacent to the existing townhomes and we would locate the apartments as far away from those two uses as possible and up with the visibility close to Leesville and 70 so i mean from a design standpoint i'm not i think it's it it is thoughtfully thoughtfully laid out and i think it would um i think it's consistent with what with what terms looking for both from environmental affordability uh traffic improvements um so yeah i don't i don't know i don't know what the specific issue was with the that planning commission member if they have any specific suggestions on what it should be but i feel like that their approach this evening is pretty sound well i thank you for that and i'm going to to really be listening intently to my colleagues questions and comments during the rest of this debate i will say for whatever it's worth uh you know i've sat through a number of these now i i i imagine it must have been um tempting to you to choose either a a donation to our affordable housing fund or affordable housing units i don't think i've ever seen a developer propose both i don't know how this vote's going to turn out and which way it's going to go and i'm like i said i'm going to be listening intently to make my decision but i do want to note that at least in my tenure this is the first time i remember seeing a a a commitment to a cash donation to our affordable housing fund and also building affordable housing units as well uh so i thank you for that and um i look forward to the questions and comments from my colleagues i yield back thank you mr mayor thank you very much council member um council member cover y'all come back to you in a minute let me just make sure others who anyone else have any comments or questions at this time council member freeman and then i'll get you council member cover y'all thank you mr mayor i uh initially i just had a question for staff regarding the um comment that i heard around the hoa being responsible for maintaining the road once the connections were made and i just wanted to get some clarity and make sure that that was not correct this bill judge once again i i think there may have been some uh confusion related back to the bright leaf at the park and northern dorm parkway the uh the hoa there is actually still um responsible for maintaining uh northern dorm parkway uh due to some issues with ncdot they've been delayed and accepting it for maintenance but we've been working the city has been working through that with the hoa and and ncdot trying to get ncdot to accept it for maintenance so beyond that just the only thing that would be maintained by the hoa would be any private streets within within the development and jared can probably better explain where those areas may be thank you i um i appreciate that and just noting up because like i didn't see i can't see my my notes is clear this small the screen is small but um to whomever that was that mentioned that i just want to make sure that if there is a issue around the if there is an issue around having the charges for an for an hoa and maintenance i would really love to get to dig into that question and really figure out why it is your current cause for northern dorm parkway that seems a little off and then um just also just noting from some of the comments that were made that when we decrease the speed on roads like sharon road or whatever you are any of those roads around there just know that that means more traffic stops and it calls for traffic stops and i just want to make sure that we're not setting ourselves up for failure uh there were also a few a few of the questions definitely made me think i'm i'm on the fence about this so clearly um the comments that folks have been making makes sense in that you know the runoff and the you know the traffic are the concerns of people who are closest to the property and as councilmember middleton mentioned living nearby and notice that i made the note of the get a snack um just kind of hit me where where it's like there has to be an understanding that this is all tied together but we've got to find a way to make sure that each developer is not being dinged for it and so i appreciate mr nill explaining what his measure would be around i guess creating a slowdown and i appreciate the line of questions that councilmember middleton acts the one thing i don't want to miss in this conversation is that i didn't hear mr eden's offer or mention anything about solar panels on the roof but that could be something that we could talk about and so just know that the conversation doesn't i mean just because it's presented doesn't mean we have to accept it and this conversation is ongoing so i just want to make sure that's clear and then just noting as well when you say 15 ponds on a parcel um it implies to me that there's a lot of runoff there's a lot of concern for runoff and when we're when we're down this path where you know that the previous regulations don't account for the runoff that's already in place it just creates a kind of disconnect between what is real and what it what what is kind of legislated and so just being clear like i don't want to dismiss the the voices of people who are saying that they're concerned about their runoff from the roofs or runoff from impervious surfaces but this is yeah i'm just i'm i'm stuck in the thought of of how of how you actually can approve a project like this knowing that there could be a much i mean there could be much difference the fact that they have included the five percent affordable housing in their plan up front and they've also disclosed where their building envelopes will be allows the city to be more proactive about where or how we're we're looking at runoff but there's still opportunities here that i'm i'm i'm mindful of and because of the state legislature it's not something i can just ask for so i i'm happy to continue the conversation but um those were my questions thank you thank you very much council member council member caballero thank you um i wanted to just highlight because this is the first time i've seen it in a memo where there's the two you know alternatives which is usually a denial and then the second one which is to continue the public hearing partly to get uh where it's a city council could elect to open the public hearing etc to ensure the proposal is consistent with policy being developed through the southeast Durham focus area work and so i'm just curious to hear from staff when are we when are they thinking that's going to be done i know it's i know staff's been working really diligently on it thank you council member uh see miss young is with us good evening i wanted to fill you all in um in case you haven't seen the policy recommendations including our new kind of future land use recommendations so a map and policies in draft form are available on the engaged Durham website for the southeast Durham area and so i wanted to briefly um touch on a comment that was made earlier one of the things that if you go to that site um and i'll i'll put the link in the chat in just a minute for everyone um you'll notice a variety of policies um some are many of the things that we've talked about tonight um some are some additional uh topics that we haven't explicitly covered but the map in particular calls for a very large portion of the area mostly to the east to be called a future growth area and that is kind of the area where we're proposing um to not go into until we are better prepared so picking up on comment that was made earlier by by a previous speaker um that is something that we're looking towards but not in the geography of this particular case tonight which is so close to us 70 thank you um can i continue thank you um yes so i am on the fence but leaning guess i'm just sharing where where i'm at i spent about two hours on the site this morning i did not lightly trespass i trespassed um and almost got my van stuck um so some of my concerns have been allayed by some of the things that um the developer already shared the commitment to dps the commitment to the affordable housing uh fund which were not in our in our memo i appreciate that the other thing that stuck out was that 45 mile um speed which did not seem like it made sense where it was and so the fact that that was also extended uh was very helpful and i think that you know i drove i drove down sharon i drove up to brightleaf square i timed everything it's a really well located place and the fact that we're going to have single family and apartments and townhomes it's also very large which is what my big concern is it's a lot of housing and a very large site which is you know where my discomfort is i'd like to hear what some of my other colleagues have to share i'm just being really forthright with you all um just having heard from planning director young that their recommendation is more to the east of here about continuing i don't feel like that's the right course of action um so and i i do want to really appreciate what the developer has done i feel like our planning commission keeps moving the goalpost a little bit on our developers and i don't necessarily think that that's fair uh now in some of the notes there's will wear the green building commitments so they got the affordable housing commitment and now the goalpost has been moved to add another layer and we need housing in the city we do not live in a town anymore there's 300 000 people in Durham county and is growing quickly the development issues that think people think they're avoiding are not going to be avoided they're going to go into person county in granville county where the zoning rules are not as strict our water quality will still be affected our traffic will still be affected and i think we really need to think about that and i think our residents really need to think about that the open space commitments all of these commitments are significantly better than any of the developments are already out there so uh that's where i'm at tonight thank you thank you council member let me um ask miss young uh if she could come back to us and clarify something miss young thank you i have not seen the map and uh i appreciate your letting letting us know you probably already did let us know i'm sure you did and i haven't seen it yet but thank you um and could you clarify what you said about uh the geography of this development versus or vis-a-vis the area which you were saying yeah yeah could you could you explain to me what you explained to council member cabrera sure and i apologize if i was not clear the map the draft map recommends that anything east of kemp road basically be basically held off in terms of development not a moratorium but we need to do more planning we need more infrastructure in place there so that geography is the kind of future growth area we have proposed land use categories for what that area should look like eventually but what we're saying is that we're not ready to go there yet and so we want everything between 70 and camp to start filling in as you know we have a lot of gaps as development has come through piecemeal which is the way the development always happens and so we need to start filling those in in the in the areas where we already have a lot of the city limits extended where we have infrastructure planned and in place and particularly for this case being so close to us 70 i think this is one where we don't have any concerns about this case tonight we think that it is well situated to be developed at this point in time does that help thank you it does help me thank you very much colleagues uh council member freelon thank you mr mayor and um playing director young i just have a follow-up question i remember um at one point discussing the kind of the way development happened in rally versus kind of how it's happening in Durham and once we reached a critical mass it kind of triggered some of the nc dot and other infrastructure pieces to kind of go in and fill in the gaps is that the is that phenomenon you've described relevant to this scenario where we need to kind of fill it in so that the connective tissue of infrastructure can be greenlit and it won't be done until we reach that critical mass i'm just trying to connect what you just said with the a conversation we had and i just remember rally being mentioned in that context could you speak a little more on that sure be happy to so i think the conversation that you're recalling we were talking a bit about rally has had a pretty robust series of transportation related bonds specifically aimed at modernizing not just widening but modernizing roadways throughout their jurisdiction and so they now those have happened many decades after development was in place they did not happen anywhere near the time that the development actually occurred so but i think a difference is that where we are the kind of point in time where we are in is we still have a lot of undeveloped land left to fill in and as you know as development occurs we ask developers to pitch in and do their part and make the necessary improvements that handle the impacts that their project is creating that their project will also benefit from so it's both mitigation and kind of community benefit that we ask them to make those improvements so i think a lot will be filled in in terms of the infrastructure in terms of the roadways by development as it fills in but there may come a time where there may be some very small remnant parcels that the city would then have to look into and decide to make an infrastructure investment itself to make some final connections but this is a bit of a different on the rally example those were areas that had been long developed and were not filling in anymore so not quite apples tapped okay thank you thank you council member mayor pro tem thank you mr mayor um i just wanted to make a couple of comments around the traffic issues which we're hearing about more and more with development in this area and lots of other areas of Durham and i think that we can't let traffic become the enemy of housing and particularly of density because while more housing won't necessarily lead to more affordability less housing will absolutely lead to less affordability and that's what we're seeing now um in Durham where we are we are we don't have enough housing for all the people who are moving here and there isn't really a way to prevent people from moving here we don't have we don't have that ability so the solution to traffic to traffic problem is it less housing it's more transit um and more ways to get people where they need to go without driving themselves one person in an automobile um and but we're also in this tricky space because public transit traditionally comes after there's more density so we have these low density areas that aren't necessarily transit supportive but where traffic is increasing and causing concern to the community because because of that um i'm really interested in bringing more transit to this area and areas all over the city i think we're more likely to be able to do that once more people are living out there but of course there's this intermediary period where more people are living out there and there still isn't any transit um there are some solutions i think we can look at and i'm sure our staff um is already looking at uh and i know they're already looking at things like on-demand zones where people can get a ride um without being on a bus route there's also things like fan share and park and ride that might help people get through this period where um where maybe we don't have enough density to support to support transit investments but we may actually just have to have low density transit i mean i i think that if we if it comes to a point where we are spending where we are making the choice to invest public money in transit that might be more expensive because there are fewer people living out there um but we're doing that because we know that we need to be able to build more housing because we know that the environmental cost of single vehicle travel is really high um that we might you know want to make those choices as a city to continue or add bus routes in low density areas even though um they're not necessarily going to be uh the most um like well utilized routes right now knowing that um there are people out there who need transit and that we are anticipating those areas to grow in the future uh i also just wanted to say a little bit so folks made some comments about how development is happening piecemeal uh and is very developer driven and i and that's true i think the issue that we face is that that's a consequence of private land ownership like the city doesn't own this land and zoning is a very blunt instrument for creating the kind of development that uh that communities want that neighborhoods want we can't tell people what to build on their land that they own we can't tell them what to do with the land that they own um we're dealing with state roads which are not going to be expanded or modernized with the city infrastructure bond we're actually we're looking at an infrastructure bond right now but it would go towards neighborhoods that lack investment communities that lack investment in southeast storm certainly doesn't qualify as a community that lacks investment it's getting tons of investment right now um so i think that we you know we as we focus on what we can do i think you know continuing to figure out how we can get people how we can mitigate the issues of traffic without jumping to we need to build less housing there are people moving here they need somewhere to live we need to build housing we just need to figure out how to get people from point a to point b without putting them in without every single person driving their own car um and i'm excited to think through some more creative solutions about that um and for the city to continue to invest in in solutions even though they might be expensive because we recognize that there are greater benefits um to that investment of creating more transit opportunities in these lower density areas anticipating that they're going to grow and that they're going to be used uh now and as developments like this as more development like this happens in this region thanks thank you madam here pro town colleagues other comments or questions at this time anyone all right colleagues any uh anything else before i close this public hearing we can of course still have comments after that and questions all righty i'm going to declare this public hearing closed and the matter is now back before the council i'm sorry councilmember caballero mentioned that we have some options let me go to the um mr mayor if you're ready for motion and i'd make a motion all right uh let me let me find the daggone thing anyone one second i think daggone is a bad word i know that that is to yeah i got it uh to adopt an ordinance annexing parcel k to the city effective september 30 2021 to authorize the city ministry enter into utility extension agreement with jinx investment llc is that your motion madam mayor pro town yes that is my motion is there a second second seconded by councilmember freelon all right i'll now ask any further discussion i have a few comments i'll maybe i'll go ahead and make them um i thought this was a tough call i'll just say that i'm going to vote in favor uh but it was a difficult choice for me uh i've thought that uh the comments the initial comments of planning commissioner amondola and the comments of commissioner miller about the could we do better here uh in terms of design especially um were important uh and i definitely weighed that in the in the negative uh but i have been thinking a lot about this and also visited this parcel uh and just wanted to say a few reasons why i'm going to vote for it um this was before i had seen uh the uh or heard from miss young about the what they're going to be recommending in terms of the searls basin and the fact that this is in an area where they are representing representing current development is helpful uh but even prior to that uh i had the same point of view and i want to say a few things about that uh madam mayor pro town spoke very eloquently i thought about some of the most important issues i want to reiterate what she says one of the things that she said was that having more housing is not necessarily going to make housing more affordable and durable but not having housing will make it less affordable supply and demand is an actual economic law that is real and i um i can't overestimate there's no way to overestimate the importance of this we have got to have supply if we're going to keep housing affordable and durable it's just critically important i also want to reiterate one of the points that she made about transit transit follows density as more people live in this area we will have the density that supports transit and i think that some of the other points that she made are also very important looking at on-demand transit is something that we're doing here in the triangle already it's happening in rtp with go triangle durham is experimenting with it and we can do more of it we can create the transit our the folks some of the folks who spoke tonight spoke of the importance of transit some of the opponents and i agree it's super important i do want to say that was mentioned by one of the speakers that durham was cutting transit routes i want to say that we like all the other uh transit routes in our region are temporarily cutting back because of a shortage of bus drivers that does not mean we are cutting transit routes durham has greatly expanded transit routes in the last few years and we will continue to do so we have big commitments about that and i just wanted to make that clear there were important concerns expressed about natural habitat and we all know that we want to preserve a lot of green space in durham and i understand that if you live in the next neighborhood over that's developed and there's a neighborhood and there's an area behind you that is green you want to keep it that way and one of the reasons that we can't always just listen to the people who live next door is that of course no one wants to have the land developed behind them behind them develop no one i understand that but what is best for the community that's what we have to look at and i do think that this development does a good job in terms of open space preservation relative to a lot of developments that we see the hundred-year stormwater commitment is important i want to say about the affordable housing commitment this is a very unusual commitment i have in my memory we have seen it one other time which was down at farrington road about 20 units back five six years ago that and and councilmember reese and mayor pro temp can correct me but i think that was the only time that we have seen any substantial number of units actually included as affordable housing mandatory affordable housing with a time commitment that can be monitored and councilmember millton mentioned this is important it's a big step and i don't think it should be minimized um i want to talk a little bit about the transportation in a little bit more detail i just i wrote this i sent it to my colleagues and uh the couple of the speakers mentioned that they had responded to my letter i response which i appreciate and i focused my letter on leesville road because that had been such a important point of contention over time and just to reiterate it okay i won't read you my entire letter okay thank you uh yeah um but just to reiterate some of the points leesville road for the four miles that people have been concerned about to to in order to significantly uh to do the drainage work that needs to be done to add sidewalks and curb and gutter would cost about seven to eight million dollars per mile according to our transportation think about that amount of money that's 30 let's use the loan over 28 million dollars we're not talking even about sharing road and some of the other nearby roads think about that amount of money as infrastructure in terms of what we're able to do with infrastructure we just passed to put a half cent he half sent in and we're creating six million dollars a year in infrastructure and we're targeting that infrastructure to those neighborhoods which have been historically marginalized and disinvested from that is not and i it is hard for i won't be on the council i won't have to make these decisions but i'll just say that it's hard for me to imagine that this council or any council that followed would be wanting to make a priority investing in infrastructure here as opposed to the communities which have been historically marginalized and that's why we targeted those with the infrastructure work that we're doing this is not to say we won't be doing any infrastructure work there of course we will but with the with the uh extra infrastructure funds that we're able to provide helping the communities that have been historically marginalized i know is the priority of this council we've demonstrated that and it will i believe continue to be um and i should add that that amount of money the the seven million dollars a mile would not provide it would provide more pedestrian safety because it would provide sidewalks but it would not provide more capacity on the road that would be even more expensive to do that now especially and i quoted mr bill judging here think about thinking about the widening of hope valley road through hope valley farms where he talks about the you know the the purpose there versus the you know what we did with the bike lanes and so forth versus the purpose here mr judge makes the point that there are not many cars on leaseville road there are four thousand you know four thousand cars a day versus nineteen thousand on hillandale road twelve thousand on sharon 21 500 on garret road and so forth widening that now for more traffic capacity would just create a more dangerous road with more speeding which of course we're seeing a lot of endurance now is that a wise policy i don't think so so just to try to summarize which i think that it's hard for me to imagine that during we want to pass an infrastructure bond to fix state roads that the state ought to fix and to target that infrastructure away from neighborhoods that need it the most to neighborhoods that have long that that have the investment and have experienced investment and then finally we have as i said high volume two lane roads that are carrying four and five times the amount of traffic that leaseville road is carrying we would certainly want to make those investments there before i as i after i get off traffic i i have to say one other thing it is it concerns me that neighbors who have been in this neighborhood for two and three years and have had and moved have moved there recently now don't want other people to move in to the neighborhood next door when they have already you know the the neighborhood they moved into was a greenfield once also and they're living in i'm so glad because these are wonderful beautiful neighborhoods and these and these are you know wonderful wonderful people who we welcome to dirham we want to melt welcome more people to dirham who want to be here and and make them and let them afford to live here so that that bothers me okay i'm voting i'm going to be voting for this and those are my reasons councilmember reese thank you mr mayor um as my colleagues know i usually like to go first uh on stuff like this but as you've heard me say before the great thing about going last was that everything's already been said but not everybody's had a chance to say it so this is my chance not to say everything that everybody else has said i came into the evening really skeptical about this particular project for many of the reasons that were expressed in the written comments of our planning commissioners and as always i find myself owing all of them a debt when it comes to learning about these projects as they come through our agendas and coming to some sense of what the issues are at least when we come to the public hearing like all of us i try my best to keep an open mind until the close the public hearings otherwise what's the point of having it um i could just go out into the parking lot while the public hearing's done and come back about already made up my mind um i will say that i'm one of the folks on this council who has been more skeptical than most of a large scale dense residential development in this part of Durham county um i'm cognizant of my colleagues who say that we are a city and that city's new more housing this ain't the city yet it is a wooded part of Durham county that we have that we have to decide is going to be part of the city um having said all that one of the reasons uh that folks often vote no on projects like this is because it's not what we say we want for Durham that this kind of development is not in the best interest of our city and we vote no in the hopes that we will get something better from developers the next time around from what i can see that's what we've gotten tonight we've gotten a lot better as the planning commissioner has almost unanimously said it ain't good enough and i get that but it's a lot better than we usually get what incentive will future developers have to continue to do better if we say no to something like this there are strong storm water protections in this project that i haven't seen in another project as the mayor mentioned it's been five years ish the early 2016 since we've seen a private developer come forward on their own and commit to affordable housing it's a tiny portion of this project but as councilman middleton said they're also putting cash in the in the till for us to continue to develop affordable housing in other parts of the city there are a lot of small things that add up to tipping the balance for me but on this measure i intend to vote yes tonight thank you mr mayor thank you council member council member freeman thank you um mr mayor i just following up on the comments just noting no like shade but uh i'll be voting no on the annexation in hopes that it doesn't pass and if it does i will vote yes with the rest of council um just noting that this is um a phenomenal project i have to say and i'm really impressed i however and really moved by my my understanding of how these projects do move forward and so just noting like i think i was on the planning commission in 2016 and it wasn't the developer who decided it was really the engagement of the residents who organized around making sure that the developer understood that that area was it was their home and so just be mindful that it's the annexation that moves us forward i do not want to approve that aspect of this case but i am in favor of of if we are annexing this section of the community that that this project is should definitely um move forward so thank you thank you very much council member further comments colleagues all right thank you very much everybody uh madam clerk uh we have a motion on the floor uh would you please open the vote and we'll see how council member freeland does this time please close the vote okay he's one out of two mr. mayor the vote passes six to one with council member freeman voting no thank you ma'am cleric uh colleagues we would now need a second motion to adopt an ordinance submitting the udo move to adopt second moved by council member middleton second of our mayor pro tem johnson madam clerk will you please open the vote please close the vote the motion passes seven zero thank you madam clerk and the third vote would be uh third motion would be necessary to be the consistency statement move to adopt consistency second moved by council member middleton seconded by council member freeland madam clerk will you please open the vote please close the vote the motion passes seven zero thank you i want to thank all the people who have been here to be heard on both sides of this issue i think that everybody here has had really good and important points to make and i want to thank those that came down here as well as those who have been participating virtually mr. edens uh we're counting on your team to do a great job on this and we appreciate everyone for being here thank you uh madam mayor pro tem uh i was wondering if you would be willing to uh preside over item 28 sure happy to thank you very much uh yeah just just one minute oh captioners good idea uh we will thank you council member we will break uh should we say madam mayor pro tem five minutes back at 9 31 sounds great right so colleagues remember to mute your microphones and um everything else you can mute bull city today is back new episodes begin august 3rd watch the city of durham's daily news series at city of durham nc on your favorite social media platform and get the information you need to get the most out of life in durham why is community engagement a crucial component component in the development of this plan we're developing this plan for how we want to manage durham's growth and development over the next couple decades we know it's important that that vision for the future comes from our residents so that means first we need to improve our overall community engagement from how we've done things in the past we need to empower residents to shape what's included in the plan and work to engage residents in that process across the community in addition we know that many residents in their perspectives have been left out of past plans which means that the rules have been unfair to some residents especially residents of color so in addition to improving our communication community engagement generally we need to focus on equity in our engagement see a pothole there's an app for that missed pickup there's an app for that need to set up water service there's an app for that too introducing the one-call app report your service request online on your schedule just download for free from the app store or google play store then sign up to start using it to report problems check the status of your service request or just find out more information try the Durham one-call app today the Durham city council meetings and planning commission meetings are now available to live stream on all devices via the city of Durham social media accounts this means you can follow along with the latest developments in the Durham community at dinner your kids game the mall in bed during a breather in the bathtub and even on the international space station to watch simply go to city of Durham and see on youtube facebook or twitter devices include phones tablets laptops desktops streaming boxes and sticks and smart tvs the easiest way to view the live stream on smart tvs and streaming devices such as the rocu apple tv and amazon fire tv is via the youtube app paint does not belong in our creeks and rivers to avoid paint pollution remove paint from brushes before you wash them and wash brushes indoors never dispose of paint in streets or yard drains it's not just bad for the environment it's also illegal remember that paint thinner and oil based paints are considered hazardous materials and cannot be put in the trash by taking a few simple steps you can do your part to preserve the health and natural beauty of our creeks streams and lakes let's all work together to keep our waterways clean and paint free for more information please visit durham nc dot gov slash storm water all right good evening everyone um it's now two and we're going to continue with our meeting um our next item is item 28 consolidated annexation 405 tw alexander and we are ready for the staff report we might be having a little technical difficulty with the staff report just give us a minute we'll get that figured out sara if you're there could you let us know what we should do now um and he will be back in just one tiny second try one more time um if not we'll go to plan b okay i think he's having too no worries this is the new era in meeting technology there we go i think he had to switch devices okay i switched to my phone how is that we can hear you that's great all right my apologies no no we'll try this again good evening mayor shul madam mayor pro tem johnson honorable council members i'm alexander cahill with the planning department i'm happy to be here with you we did receive a request for utility extension agreement voluntary annexation and a zoning map change from jared eden's of eden lands corp and this is for one parcel of land totaling 8.914 acres this is located at 405 tw alexander drive this annexation petition is for a contiguous expansion of the existing corporate limits the current zoning is office and institutional with a development plan on the site and this the applicant does propose to change this designation to plan development residential 19.745 or 19.745 dwelling units per acre this is to allow for a maximum of 176 multifamily residential dwelling units with an amenity center this site is located within the falls jordan lake watershed protection overlay district and this overlay would be maintained and remain applicable if the annexation and zoning map change are approved this property is presently designated as this office on the future land use map as you can see an attachment five in your agenda packet the proposed pdr 19.745 zoning is inconsistent with this designated office future land use if the proposed zoning is approved by the council tonight staff recommends a change to the future land use map to designate the property as medium to high density residential and if approved this consolidated annexation request would become effective on september 30th of 2021 the associated zoning map change request was heard by the planning commission on may 11th and received a favorable recommendation by a vote of 12 to 0 subsequent to the planning commission's recommendation hearing on may 11th the applicant has clarified the building and parking envelope and the buffer strip on the proposed condition seat of the development plan they have also removed general note seven that reference offsite parking all parking for the proposal will be cited within the proposed project boundary staff does recommend that the city council approve the utility extension agreement voluntary annexation petition and zoning map change for the proposed consolidated annexation we've made this recommendation based on the future proposed land use map designation change to medium to high density residential we believe this is an appropriate land use next to the more intensive land use nearby and may act as a transitional use between the more intensive land uses to the west and the less intensive land uses of rtp to the east and south this also will contribute to housing to help support nearby workers in the rtp area without displacing existing residents as a reminder three motions are required for this application the first is to adopt an ordinance and annexing the property into the city limits and entering into a utility utility extension agreement the second is to approve the zoning ordinance the third is to approve the consistency statement thank you for your time this evening staff is available for any questions the applicant team is here tonight as well thank you mr. cahill for that report this is a public hearing item i'm going to declare the public hearing open and we will first first ask if there are any questions by members of the council all right seeing no questions we are going to move on to our speakers there's one person signed up to speak in advance um and there are no speakers in the chat um is set event here not in the zoom all right so it looks like we have no speakers is there anyone present who would like to speak on this item i'm sorry um madam mayor pro team johnson this is jared edens with the development team i was muted hi go ahead mr. edens i apologize for interrupting you thank you for telling me this evening i know we've had a long evening i'll try to be to be brief i appreciate your time on this case um you know i'll just touch on some of the high points as alex mentioned this property is about 8.9 acres on that tdb alexander drive this property is set vacant for quite some time i think it's been zoned office for roughly 15 to 20 years we've analyzed this site in multiple different ways both for office industrial even single family every use you can think of and it does appear that that apartments are definitely the highest and best used for the property just based on on the shape the location and the constraints it has um i will point out that this this property is about a five minute bus ride on the data route from from here to the new apple campus obviously you're going to have a lot of jobs coming with apple but office but you have a lot of ancillary support positions coming with that as well for all the companies that follow apple so i think this kind of density this close to our tp with all the commercial work that's going on at our tp i just think it makes a lot of sense for this location uh two proffers i would like to mention uh we will be making a payment to the affordable housing fund as is typical we have 176 units at $150 a unit that would be $26,400 and we would also like to profit a payment to Durham public schools uh per the staff report we have 37 additional students here at $500 a piece that would be a payment of $18,500 to Durham public schools both of these would be made prior to the first final plat for the property and i'd be glad to answer any questions you have thank you thank you mr edens and thank you for those proffers uh is there anyone else who'd like to be heard on this item all right seeing none i'm gonna um declare the public hearing closed and the matters back before the council are there any comments from members of the council all right mr mary you gave me the easy one um if there are no comments then um if someone would like to make a motion the first motion is to adopt an ordinance annexing four or five twl xander into the city of Durham effective september 30 2021 and to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with eden lands corp so move second uh moved by council member freeman seconded by council member freeland madame clerk would you open the vote please motion passes seven zero thank you madame clerk uh our second motion is to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance by taking property out of the office and institutional with a development plan oid falls jordan lake watershed protection overlay district b fjb overlay and establishing the same as plan development residential 19.745 pdr 19.745 falls jordan lake watershed protection overlay district b fjb overlay moved as right second moved by council member middleton seconded by council member freeland madame clerk would you open the vote please the motion passes seven zero thank you um and our final motion is to adopt a consistency statement so moved second moved by council member freeman seconded by council member middleton madame clerk would you open the vote the motion passes seven zero thank you madame clerk thank you colleagues i'm going to pass the proverbial gavel back to mayor schull for our final item thank you for presiding madame pro town colleagues item three was pulled from the consent agenda and uh we have one person who's here virtually to speak and may have others who are here in person to speak uh first we will hear from miss jackal and wag staff welcome a former member of this council and uh miss wag staff you have three minutes thank you mr mayor can you hear me yes ma'am okay always a pleasure as i always say always a pleasure miss wag staff right and um thank you for allowing me to speak tonight but um the reason that i pulled item number three is because i was really upset when i i didn't have a problem with most of the people that were being considered for this cultural art appointment but when i looked at one in particular i harken back to the days when there was an issue with some um conversation that went on about a year and a half ago that basically went against what i believe to be totally against what this council stands for i think this council stands for being progressive and not um supporting racist inequities and things of such that goes against the people of Durham with this appointment if this person is appointed to this culture basically you're saying that we can overlook any action that is taken by an individual in Durham whether it crosses racial barriers or racial lines that causes discomfort to other people um most of you are politically active and i'm pretty sure that you remember when a statement was sent out it inadvertently was released but there was a release of a statement that included several of your community members black women that are active in the community that do a lot in the community and it was not a statement in support of those black women it was a statement basically because of a vote that was taken and they didn't agree with it so they decided to put out a long rant about certain black women in Durham myself included i don't know why i was included in it because i was not a part of the original conversation that went on about the vote but i was included in the rant i think if you take this vote tonight and allow this person to sit on any committees or votes that you appoint to it would do damage to the reputation of Durham and damage to this council now i understand that there are certain black voices that have more credibility with this council than other people even though there are other people that do a lot in the community in the community respects that but tonight is one of those nights that i just had to come before you and speak on this matter because if this vote is taken you will definitely have set the precedence on basically saying just look the other way we you know we can add this person and we just have to overlook their indiscretions even though they boarded on races they had a racist agenda behind it so i'm asking this council tonight to not consider mr. Dorfman for a position on the cultural art advisory committee thank you mr. mayor and council members for hearing me tonight miss wax have thank you for being with us we appreciate your comments anyone else like to be heard tonight miss Ortiz miss Ortiz welcome you also have three minutes the improvement of our lives and so i think it's an easy three hours to sit to stand in defense of them given mr. Dorfman's actions towards these people i don't think he has made amends or spent the last two years attempting to rectify the harm that he did in that time i don't know if anyone in with trajenta that feels like he has helped to seal together the wounds that he ruptured open i don't know that he has apologized to you by yet have yet uh for displaying a lack of confidence in your candidacy and the way he had chose to approach the issue i don't think that he has apologized to you mr. Middleton or to you peers for the original and terrible things he said in that email or to mama nia or to jacklyn who just spoke so i'm shaking because you know i just can't believe that he would have the gall to even apply for this position and so i just want to say rodrigo's history and the latinx community has been troubled for some time especially within members of nuestra gente which is a latinx caucus within the people's alliance and i write to you to oppose his appointment to the Durham cultural advisory board bearing the burden of his bad behavior many of the latinx women in that group devoted many hours attempting to call him in to bring him into accountability so he should have known better before that email ever went out but his arrogance his hubris was that he thought that he would be protected for his anti-blackness for his anti-unifying statements that he decided to put out with lots of mischaracterizations of everyone involved and he chose to put that into writing and to slander people's reputations in community and was refusing to be called into account even after those statements so no amount of patience or diligence or thoughtfulness extended to him has been received i think in a way that is effective and he has instead decided to double down on his errors and he can to need to do that well after having his mistake brought to his attention as a person who has served on several commissions and boards i don't see rodrigo as a good choice for the Durham cultural advisory board as his presence does not bring healing it does not bring accountability and dedication to being anti-racist in this city which is something many of you have committed yourselves to in your elected office i can't imagine how many times he would talk over his femme identified counterparts on any commission he serves being dismissive of other black members and how distracting he would be if another crazy thing popped off that these boards would then have to contend with with his behavior his appointment would say that you can slander black women in Durham and get away with it and actually be celebrated for it thank you resortees we appreciate you being here and thank you for your comments all right colleagues um we have before us the this item hang on i'm losing it uh and so uh i will begin by accepting a motion and then we can discuss this is there a motion that we approve uh this appointment hang on my computer is not helping me mr mayor before you move the motion i would just like to get some clarity from our clerk on the vote for um mr rodrigo dorkman sure i don't know if the clerk has that uh handy no okay all right mr mayor i would move that we approve the appointments to the cultural advisory board all right is there a second mr may i'd like to make a substitute motion that we hold this uh council member let me see if there's a second first and then you can do that is there a second to the motion that we approve the members of the cultural advisory board second been moved and seconded that we approve the members nominated to the cultural advisory board which um okay and then uh council member freeman would you like to uh thank you madam manager my my internet doesn't seem to be helping me on this computer i'm gonna shut it down and use yours thank you um thank you very much yeah this would be to appoint michael betz eldrin d's rodrigo dorfman rave pernsley lar richie and to reappoint tom janes so uh council member freeman did you want to offer a substitute motion yes mr may i'd like to offer a substitute that we hold um the nomination for rodrigo dorfman all right uh is there a second to that second all right it's been moved and seconded uh that we have a substitute motion to hold the end to hold the appointment could you clarify what you mean by that i think it would be um harmful to continue with that appointment and so i just want to make sure we revisit it okay so revisit it at the next work session that would be a good idea okay so council member freeman uh councilor middleton you heard council member freeman's uh explanation of what the holding that means was be to reconsider at the next work session is that your do you second that motion um actually i already yeah i already seconded okay sorry if you i'm sorry if you could restate no worries what's in you i just want to make sure i was trying to clarify council member freeman's motion which is as i understand it to hold this to reconsider at the next work session hold the appointment of of uh rodrigo dorfman to consider at the next well yeah i'm i'm prepared so i'm actually prepared to debate it tonight i mean i don't need another session but but if that's the council member's uh motion i my second stands on it but i'm i'm prepared to debate it tonight okay thank you all right um we have a motion on the floor uh that a substitute motion which would be to hold the nomination i i i guess it would be to approve the others and to hold the nomination of rodrigo dorfman till we could discuss it at a work session if if we could just identify who voted for rodrigo dorfman i just know that i did not and so i just wanted to know if if he received four votes from this council who those four votes for okay well people can talk about that when they speak yeah yes mr mayor i'll go on the record i i didn't have that thank you the math okay um all right colleagues uh now i'll open the floor for discussion anybody want to get started council member middleton thank you mr mayor and thank you colleagues um i don't think i've ever been in this situation since being on the council i can recall only one time i have ever actively um advocated for someone not to be placed on the board or commission and and it wasn't because i thought that any one person should be defined by something ad infinitum forever i did that because i i felt the person at that time was unrepentant for it and i thought that it would be dangerous for that behavior writ large to be imposed upon potentially thousands of people in the city uh by that person being placed in the position of trust um an honor uh all of these positions on the board and commissions as are these seats on this council are are not by right there by privilege uh and because they're privileged you you you voluntarily submit to levels of scrutiny that you might find uncomfortable and even invasive uh but that that's what it means to sit in a privileged position i want to say i remember well the the issue that our community members um alluded to and i i issued a statement um about it if it were not if the relationship weren't consummated there was certainly flirtation with some of the ugliest most hurtful tropes about black intellect that have ever been parried in in this country uh by mr dorfman um that happened but i want to say that part of it what made it painful for me personally is that there are some other data points and experiences i've had with mr dorfman that caused dissonance with it uh intellectually and emotionally um there are some other data points that seem incongruent with that type of language uh and the things uh that he said i'm a person who's personal in my personal worldview i believe in redemption um i believe that we are not the sum total of our worst mistakes um i believe that you can come back but i also believe that redemption is a road that you have to travel it's oftentimes not instantaneous um it's not overnight and you can't drive on the road you have to walk the road um it is clear to me that some more work needs to be done um and i hope that because of those other data points that i've experienced with mr dorfman that he will do the work of making the overtures to those that have been offended and hurt and i hope that roads of grace will be available to him as well uh from those folk but it is not my place to dictate uh when someone should get over something it is not my place to tell someone how long they should be offended or be hurt that's not within the purview my purview as a council member it is my place however to protect the brand of this city and to protect the integrity of these boards and commissions and i believe until that work is done this will be a distraction from our our boards and commissions at this time clearly based upon uh the statements from members of the community and i would also add curiously the lack of statements from council members in support of him tonight um those two things together taken together to me clearly at least demonstrate to me what the course of action should be um i believe in redemption um i hope mr dorfman does the work and i hope a path is afforded to him to do the work uh but until that happens um i don't think this this uh appointment should go forward i think it would be a distraction um i do not want to in any way minimize the incredibly hurtful um flirtation with racist tropes um that clearly were not meant to go public um so there was a conscience of mind there was a state of mind there that the things uttered were indeed hurtful and should not have been said publicly uh but you know they went public as things often do in this business uh and until that restoration and that that healing is done with those community members which i sincerely pray that it will happen um i think at this time it would be a distraction i think it would be um really for at least for me i'm not speaking for the council but for me it would be irresponsible to impose that type of distraction um in energy away from the important work of the cultural advisory board um so with that i would strongly urge this council to to allow mr dorfman to do the work of redemption to walk the road um to to engage in restoration and repair with those that have been offended and i would also urge my council members to protect the integrity of our board and commissions from this type of sideshow and this type of scrutiny we should be beyond reproach on this um it is not in question that he made the statements and it's beyond question that the statements were racist and hurtful and they got out in public but i also believe that you should not be the sum total of all your mistakes but you got to do the work he needs to do the work and we should not approve this appointment period thank you mr mayor thank you council member council member caballero thank you mr mayor good evening i did vote for rodrigo dorfman he was one of the candidates who was recommended by the four the folks who also reviewed along with the five other residents um that that is the privilege of the cab we obviously have the um authority to override that recommendation i do want to speak tonight because i feel i really appreciate the words that you just shared um that election was extremely painful hard in fact and i'm going to own this right now um the challenge to my citizenship just finished in the fourth district on saturday i have been fighting that charge for almost two years so when folks want to talk to me about accountability and they want to talk to me about pain and damage there are plenty of folks who come in here at public sessions and apply for boards and commissions who have caused a deep amount of damage and drum and i'm here to have that conversation and i agree with what you said but then that list is extremely long we've had folks and come in here and say appalling things about every single person on the styus without any reproach and that that is part of the job and i'm okay with that but i think if we're going to have a standard let's be honest about that standard and let's not just target and to me anti-semitism racism homophobia it's all the same water it's all damaging and there are been members in this community who've shown shown here and said very hateful and harmful things thank you council member let me council member melton hang on let me see if there's anybody else who'd like to speak council member freelon thank you mr mayor um i appreciate the uh remarks and um glad that you recently got through that um difficult period or i guess it's still ongoing and i'm sorry that that you had to go through that um javier um and stand in solidarity with you to rebuke all the things that you talked about um and think that and agree with you that we should have a standard bar for all folks who uh who's speaking away that is harmful to the community and hold all folks to that to that level um i was one of the people who who voted for mr dorfman um i remember two years ago hearing about the harm that harmful remarks were made at the time in 2019 my father had just passed away and i took an intentional step away from social media and so i had a couple friends reach out to me about the remarks and and i chose not to not to engage because i was in an emotionally vulnerable uh space personally and uh didn't have the have the bandwidth to take that on um and hadn't really heard anything about it uh since then i guess it was it was kind of a big issue um that that um didn't come up again really until tonight i'm hearing more details about the fact that um an effort to repair those harms have not been made i'd forgotten that my name was mentioned at some point i'm not sure in what context because i never uh read the letter or uh or looked into the details but um you know what i'm hearing from from community is alarming i agree with uh brother middleton that that it seems like this would be a distraction and i guess i'm kind of curious from a a staff uh question maybe this is for uh the city clerk um but is this the type of thing if we decided not to vote on this particular individual but yes on the other five that we would re-advertise and solicit new applications or would we take the current list of applications that we already had and and go back to the drawing board and try to find a sixth like how to work if we decided thank you for that question um this would be re-advertised in the next cycle and we did have other applicants for this position so all the other applicants would be included in the re-advertised position okay okay um yeah again uh this is a first for me we've done quite a few appointments and and i haven't uh yet in my you know nine ten months on council experienced this kind of um public outcry with an appointment to a board um and i agree with council member middleton that there it seems like you know if you really put the uh benefit of the doubt hat on it's an opportunity for healing um it's an opportunity to be called into accountability and i think uh not only as the uh liaison the city council liaison to the cultural uh to the cab uh but also as a previous vice chair and um city council liaison to the Durham human relations commission the hrc exists to create public hearings around uh racial tension uh and i'm reading this directly from the website it's bullet point number one under commission powers to bring parties together involved to discuss the facts and assist in the resolution of such complaints uh around situations involving racial tension so i think that there's an opportunity to invite the human relations commission into a process or a conversation that could hopefully result in some uh reconciliation healing dialogue uh and accountability and i think that um you know from what i'm hearing tonight i think that could be a useful uh lever to pull and we have it kind of baked into the system through the human relations commission so um i appreciate you uh uh jackie uh wag staff and i deal or tease for coming and speaking and sharing uh your perspective and pulling this item um this is is news to me and uh we'd love to hear from my other colleagues about if you have experience mayor shul or precedent for this type of thing in the past or what you recommend in terms of you know what type of action we should take but i hear the merit of the women the black women who have come to speak today uh you know on the second day of black august and i take their their word very seriously so um i'd like to like to get thoughts from my colleagues who've been around a little longer than i have about it thank you thank you councilmember i don't have comments at this time but i do want to say that um the way i heard the motion is not that this will be re-advertised that would happen if we decided to turn this person down what i heard the motion as being is that we would it would come back to the work session for our discussion uh yeah thursday so we don't have to have that motion there could be another one but that's the one that we've got yeah if it helps mr mayor i can change the motion since we're having the discussion i wasn't sure we would have it tonight but if we're having the discussion tonight i think it's worth you know not taking the time on thursday again to rehash it i think it's pretty painful um and i also want to note for um councilmember caviar i feel you're paying i heard i heard you on that and i think it's important to note that when it's me who's attacked it's very different i expected that's what people do when it's members of the community who are attacked it's kind of it's kind of oh there should be some there should be some measure here and acknowledging that we're selecting people for the boards and commissions i don't i think i'm in i'm in the same space of understanding like i didn't folks can do and say as they please that is not my i'm not here to police that but i do think it's important to note that if we're in community together then we need to be in community together and that's not what i've seen or heard or i'm hearing um as i ask folks in the community about um mr. dwarfman and so i am quite concerned and selecting him being selected and just noting that the words that that miss orteez um spoke here this evening ring true in that if black women are are just not acknowledged in the way that that if there were far too many times far too many times we've had situations arise where race or racism and all of those things have come about and all of the discussions the debates the conversations the point of it is not to to fuel it but to actually kind of to dissipate and i really appreciate councilmember freelon's point around the human relations commission being someplace to probably do that because i don't think that there should be like there's no point of no return there should be space to kind of rebuild or read whatever it is to i want to note that the councilmember middleton noted but it's essentially that this this just not it's not like there's not grace and mercy in in your actions but when you're not apologetic about your actions it says that you're going to repeat them and if you're going to repeat that behavior that that that does disrespect leadership whether it's a member in your board or your committee or a member in the community i don't want to make i don't want to make that a overture like i don't want to push for that overture i want to make sure that we address it where we can and so just noting that i don't think i've objected to many board members um but this one i would and just just based on on the folks who i know were hurt and harmed there were many black women named in that letter and i also wrote a response because i thought it was pretty um insidious in the way that this white organization or white led organization the people's alliance had kind of developed this new ashrah hente and not acknowledged the the kind of dynamics that will be created for black latinx people who were who were being subjected to racism by the white counterparts and that is yet to be addressed in our community and i just want to make sure that we can table it for another time go ahead i just wanted to just note that these are the topics and discussions in our community and i don't think that the way that we nullify them or get to the bottom of it is by appointing folks who are creating that harm to boards and committees so if we can if we if we're at the point we're having a discussion this evening and we want to make sure that that we don't send that message forward then i'm i'm i'm all of all four adjusting the adjusting the motion to just go ahead and re-advertise for for that one position thank you councilmember uh councilmember carriero and then mayor pro tem and i think councilmember middleton i've gotten you out of line i apologize but we'll get to you yes sir i just wanted to say something about the nuestra hente caucus which uh miss ortiz was a part of for part of it but there was actually no accountability for several members in that group that has nothing to do with this group i don't want to tread into that group the processes and decisions were contained within that group and that group no longer exists because of the actions of several folks in that group who were not held accountable i guess that's what i'm saying i'm saying that in my mind regardless of where we land on this from what my memory is mr dorfman resigned from nuestra hente resigned from people's alliance and those were his public actions there are other folks in this community who have caused not just to me but are hurtful and hateful and say xenophobic and anti-semitic comments and if we're going to have a standard i'm saying that's fine but for all boards and commissions and it has to be redefined thank you councilmember mayor pro tem and then councilmember middleton thank you uh thank you mr mayor i also voted uh to appoint mr dorfman to the cab and plan to continue to support the appointment of mr dorfman to the cab some broad comments i've been reading a book called conflict is not abuse and i would recommend that book uh to term broadly um the specific conflict that has created this conversation occurred between a small group of people in the context of a very polarizing and contentious election um and then was exploded into a conflict that was exploded and magnified into a conflict that then became an article in the local paper um with this idea that there that this somehow needed to be heard by the entire community that was somehow more than a small conflict between a very politically connected group of people who were interacting in a context of personal relationships political and organizing relationships and an election um and taking actions in that context specifically designed to and the entire conflict was about the council election there is a political component here there's a personal component here and i don't think it's the role of the city government to mediate private conflicts between residents there are a lot of people on our boards and commissions who have caused harm in our community we intentionally appoint people who are involved in the justice system because we believe that that perspective is valuable on our boards and commissions um the fact that we are having an entire conversation about one person when i know for a fact that there are people on boards and commissions who have done far worse than write an insulting email um a highly problematic email which i believe redrigo has taken accountability for has resigned several positions in order to avoid um in order to avoid being a distraction and avoid making the conversation about him and that particular email and that particular conflict i think that there's just this broader question of who gets to define harm and who gets to decide whose harm matters and we have an egregious double standard which council member cubby arrow has pointed out with regard to people causing harm who that harm is caused to and how we hold people accountable for harm and i don't think that a small group of people gets to dictate how how those relationships should play out on a public scale we are appointing this person to a commission to represent cultural arts in a city of almost 300 000 people um most of whom have probably caused harm at some point in their lives or have been in a situation of conflict with someone i don't think the standard that is being proposed here to deny mr dorfin this appointment is a reasonable standard or is in any way equally applied by the people who have these concerns and i would love for there to be a standard trust me my life would be a whole lot easier if there was a standard for who we respect in public life um but i think this is i think that this level of criticism of this particular person um it feels very personally motivated to me and it feels very wrong there are a lot of people who do work for this community who have done harm in their lives in a variety of ways and i don't think that we can or should have a conversation have this level of conversation put every single person under this level of scrutiny i don't think very many people up here would survive this level of scrutiny that we are discussing here right now um and i know there are lots of people who come into this chamber all the time whose voices are very respected by a number of people up here on this day as who have caused a lot of harm to a lot of people in this community um so yeah i i think this is unreasonable i'm going to continue to support mr dorfin i encourage people to um to manage their private conflicts to seek accountability to try not to cause harm all of these are important but this is government i feel like this is i feel like we are taking a private issue and turning it into um a very public conversation in a way that feels actually harmful to me what we are doing right now feels harmful i think we're compounding the problem rather than solving it thank you mr mayor thank you madam mayor pro tem councillor middleton thank you mr mayor i think if you want to keep an issue private you shouldn't use the internet um that that's the best way to keep it private um i'm i'm you know i'm i'm really i mean i find some of the statements um tonight uh fascinating i i think you should be able to be engaged in a contentious uh situation and not say racist things i i don't think that's too high a bar um the the suggesting that that black women are stupid or lack comprehension uh you got deeper problems than just uh keeping things personal and i think to minimize the harm that was done by this exchange um is not helpful i i do want to i want to um thank um my um my colleague uh sister cabillera for for what she said and i listen the attacks on on council cabillera her citizenship were abhorrent they were disgusting anybody that was offended by what happened to barack obama uh should have been just as offended so much so that that you should have spoken out when that happened i issued a statement uh uh um condemning the statement and the person for three weeks i got uh uh uh messages from folk uh about uh breaking unity with black elders in our community for the statement i issued uh but it was the right thing to do um and as far as this two quote way uh kind of equivalency argument i i don't know where all these nazis and homophobes and racists are that we're putting on our boards and commissions but there are a number of people that have stood in here who have stated boring things who will never get my vote to be on the border commission and and i don't know who these folk are that we've been putting on uh that have had uh uh uh these these these kind of brushes with this this kind of far-fetched statements who have been codified who have been in sconce on the border commission but but i'm you know i'm willing to scrub my votes over the last four years and see who i put on a border commission that has stepped into that realm or who has gone that far made statements um that offensive listen you can't attack gay people in Durham and get elected or be on the border commission not in this city you can't say racist things in Durham and get elected and be on the border commission and you you you can't call uh or suggest that black women who are engaged in code switching or using black dialect have a comprehension issue or an intellect issue thinking it won't get out and if it gets out sorry you can't do that in Durham and then be unrepentant about it that's the standard and that's the standard we try to uphold and listen i open my statements with i believe in redemption because you know there's a saying in my faith tradition that said all have sinned and fallen short and you're right mayor pro tem we all have our stuff to deal with but we all have our stuff to deal with and like i said these these boards and commissions this is a privilege not a right these seats on this council it's a privilege not a right we're getting ready to have a job interview in a few months to see if folk are still worthy to sit on this council or should we get in new people and things that we've said and if we said things privately and they happen to leak publicly that's part of the game that that just comes with the territory but i you know the the the black woman that that raised me the black woman that i call a sister the black woman that i love um they're not stupid and and you can't say things like that and then uh i'll just say well to quote way other people have said you know harmful things and they sit on the commission where are they i'll i'll take retroactive votes uh to scrub our boards and commissions but no one that has crossed that threshold will ever gotten get a vote for me um and i can't recall anyone that i voted for to be on the board of commission that has caused that type of harm now i do agree that i think it's unfortunate that it would be centered on on on one person uh i do and i you know if it weren't pulled um i was prepared to vote listen there have been people that i voted for put on boards and commissions that i that did not make my original ballot but out of deference to my colleagues they got enough votes on on the from the council and all of us are prescient intelligent people we know what happened but if he passed muster and got five or four of you to get past that i was fully prepared by consent to vote for but because it got pulled and because we've heard from our community and because we you know we are here that's why we're having a discussion i i don't like to call people out single people out um there have been people that i've voted for board and commissions that i know have talked junk about me i've seen the post but but you know they they got the votes and and i thought they would do good jobs and it's not about me personally um so that's where i draw the line between the personal stuff because if it were personal there'd be a whole lot of people i wouldn't have voted for to put on a board or commission but here we are um i think that some work has to be done some healing has to be done i i'm asking members in my community to to give mr dorfman the grace if he's willing to do the work and make amends and sit and listen and i'm asking mr dorfman to do the work but it is clear to me that he has not done the work and this is Durham you can't attack gay people you can't attack black women you can't attack uh poor people you can't attack marginalized people and get sat on a board or get elected to these seats this is Durham that doesn't happen here thank you mr mary yield back thank you councilmember other comments colleagues okay i have a comment which is um these are uh i um i've definitely voted for mr dorfman and i think that he would make an excellent member of this group um he is uh has made a tremendous cultural contribution our community continues to do so i am uh and he's a friend uh i respect him and i think he would do an excellent job i am and although i have been sort of i don't know aware of you know kind of atmospherically aware of this situation uh from a couple of years ago um as you all know i don't read social media it's a no idea what was said um but also um i'm concerned when i hear from councilmember middleton um you know your description of of what was said and so if we're if we were going to be voting tonight as to whether or not to approve mr dorfman i would definitely vote to approve him if we are voting to as the motion currently exists that we will take this up uh at the work session um i would support that because i would like to know a little bit more between now and the work session about i don't know this email i've never seen this email you know if if this email uh was uh racist and there has not been reparative work done i'd like to know more about that i heard what mere pro tem said about that reparative work i'd like to know so that's my feeling uh i've if we're voting tonight whether or not to appoint mr dorfman i will definitely be voting to support him if we're voting to spend a little bit more time get a little bit more information i also am concerned that it's about you know i worry about us getting into a big discussion about one person and their record and their personality and their that's a worry to me um and it's exactly what you said councilmember middleton we're what we do is we vote and usually there's some plurality then we get in here we all vote by consent to approve the motion but that's a that's a heavy charge and i've been hesitant to move on beyond it without doing a little more examining so i hate i hate that but that's where i am mere pro tem thank you mr mayor um i i share your concern and i would about i really think we should do this tonight i i worry that continuing this um makes i i i don't think that we should continue this conversation beyond what is absolutely necessary to make this decision um i read the email in question a couple of years ago um with all due respect i think that councilmember middleton's characterization of it is rhetorically problematic um mr dorfman did not say black women lack comprehension he referenced a couple of specific black women which he felt lack comprehension whom he felt lack comprehension i think that's a very important distinction um speaking to uh making a a claim that would clearly be racist about all members of a group versus making a claim about individuals who are members of a group um and i think that that distinction is often ignored in conversations where um private conflicts are for whatever reason um raised to where where someone wants to raise a come a private conflict to the level of a public discussion um an accusation of a of a broad attitude of racism is very effective in doing that um i personally think that the the um the root of this letter is a personal conflict um and political disagreements and if you can't have political and personal conflicts with black women without being accused of racism i think we have a really serious problem uh maybe if people feel concerned about um understanding more clearly exactly what was in this letter we could look at it right now um i i feel like i personally would very much like to resolve this matter tonight and not give it any more airtime than it requires to make a decision thank you mr mayor was referenced directly hang on one second i'll get you to sit thank you madam mere pro tem is there anybody who hasn't been heard from that would like to be heard from which i guess is council member reese would you like to be heard from absolutely mr mayor thank you i get to you council i only get a chance waiting my turn um you know i was involved in this situation as uh bystander two years ago like many of us on this dais i also issued a statement about the email and the horrible things contained therein um um i will say that uh that i put a lot of weight in the recommendation of the cultural advisory board about their cultural affairs board uh for the folks that they want to work with going forward but i also put a lot of weight on uh the fact that uh unbeknownst to me it certainly sounds like there are folks in the community that still have a significant beef with redrigo dorfman does that mean we shouldn't appoint him to the board does that mean we should um go deeper into the letter and figure out exactly what the badness was um and if that if if an email like that uh you know makes it so that that person who says those things can't be on uh city board despite the fact that the board wanted made that recommendation i don't know how to answer that question mr mayor it's not entirely clear to me like how how procedurally where we are um there was a motion and a second to approve the slate of nominee of appointees then a motion for a substitute motion was made which i think requires the the i don't i don't know how that worked procedural but i'm sure our attorney will tell us so maybe if he could clear some of that up we can figure out exactly where we're going here thank you councillor middleton thank you mr mayor and i appreciate uh the mayor pro tim's comments i again i think you can disagree with black women without attacking their intelligence and we've seen this time and time again in this modern political climate how these special coded terms and phrases maxine waters um april ryan we can go down the list of black women who have been uh suffered a particularly nuanced type of attack um i read the letter um i i remember it well and yes um he did talk about a specific group of black women but let's recall what he said about the specific group he said quote you could tell by the way they spoke by the what does that mean every every black person who read that knew exactly what it meant he was talking about code switching and black dialect and and the way we annunciate sometimes comes off what i mean why was that even necessary um and why was that connected to comprehension this is something that is ancient it's part of the american dna the response was visceral and we knew exactly what it meant and that's why it was said up privately and not meant to be consumed publicly so there was there was state of there was a presence of mind in a mens rea that that it was understood what was being said in every black part well let me not say that many black people that read it understood exactly what it meant um so yeah it was a specific group of black people but there's a reason why when maxine waters was called low iq why so many other people viscerally responded to that and didn't say oh well that's just maxine he's not talking about us we understood exactly what that meant um and listen i do not believe you should be judged by the sum total of your bad acts i believe in redemption but i also but we got to be honest and tell the truth about what that was and what happened and just you know the other great thing about derm is do the work we we bend over backwards to bring back people back into the fold uh and extend grace just do the work and i and mr. mayor if if if we need more time uh to you know we we've held up some discussions plenty of times that i think we didn't we didn't need to hold up if there was ever a time to give us more time to make a right decision this is that issue now we've done it for for zoning cases and other things we've kept a public hearing is open i don't know what is so pressing tonight that we have to settle this matter tonight when clearly there's there's there's pain there's concern in our community even on this council why can't we take a couple more why is it so important that we have to do it tonight why can't we take a couple more days and i would certainly support that uh mr. mayor to give you time as you've indicated that to get more understanding and to diverse yourself more on what's happened that's a good idea we should do that for the sake of our community i'm going to ask councillor freeland and go ahead councillor i would just echo the the the last comment about being open to and seeing the i would like to read the letter that's really what it is i'd like to be informed and not hear through my colleagues what their interpretation is make my own opinion and would like to not feel the need to do that over the next five to ten minutes yeah councilmember caballero okay with that as well okay with that also i i will plan on reaching out to there or maybe through the liaison i want to know i mean we trust the cultural advisory board they give us their recommendations there were several other latinos but i will say that um that has not been a board that has had great representation from the latino community and uh we all clearly have opinions on the resident on this individual but to um the impact he's made on the Durham latino community the cultural richness of his work speaks for itself so i think that i would like to know their thinking um on what their recommendations were thank you colleagues um yesterday morning i got on an airplane at 8 30 um at midnight last night i finally flew out of dallas fort worth and arrived in charlotte at 4 a.m i then got on an airplane i'm sorry then got in a car rental car and drove to rolly durham and i arrived here this morning at 7 30 picked up my car at the airport and drove home so i'm very tired um so but i did not want to miss being with you and i'm glad i'm here uh i would like it if we could move to some sort of resolution on this so i'm going to suggest that we go ahead and vote on the uh the amended motion uh the attorney has told me that we're calling it and i'm going to state what the amendment is the amendment the amended motion is that we take that we that we appoint all the members of the five members other than mr dorfman and that we take up at our work session uh the whether or not we want to appoint mr dorfman on thursday i'm going to be voting for it i resonate very much with mayor pro tem johnson said about you know the possible additional harms here the way in which i think we are unfortunately blowing up what i think i had a lot of personal you know was in some ways just a dispute between people into something bigger i worry about that i worry that we are i don't want this to be a precedent for us to getting into a whole lot of you know judging people isn't on an individual basis i don't think we want to go that way on the other hand this is a very serious charge and i think we have to look at it so that's that's why i'll be voting any final comments um calzary middle thank you mr mayor i will say and again i i want to you know associate myself with concerns about this being kind of being revolving around one person but you know i i heard you know i think it was james carville once say that the interesting thing about political folk or politicians is that they're willing to fail so publicly that you you voluntarily go to a job interview where everybody's going to know who got the job um mr dorfman was fully aware that he had that this issue was part of his public record when he signed up for um to you know to be on the the uh the commission um now he's a grown man and he's highly intelligent i i can't imagine that he didn't think that this would possibly at least come up so in fairness while i'm uncomfortable and certainly um have some reticence about having this type of level of scrutiny uh about one person who's not running for public office because the any of us who run for public office know that our personal stuff is is public but i i take solace some comfort in the fact that he had to know that this could possibly have come up um so with that said i'm i'm prepared to vote thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember yeah go ahead councilmember thank you uh mr mayor uh i just uh this is a broader ideological question that i'm getting to know the culture of the council and what we think on different issues personally i think that uh this level of scrutiny is appropriate maybe that's the millennial like social media person and me but just as an analogy if we found out you know somebody was parading downtown with the swastika or said something incredibly misogynistic uh or anti-semitic i would hope we would grab them by the collar and say hold on a second and i don't care if it adds that an extra 30 45 minutes of scrutiny to our conversation because i think that's as councilmember middleton said that's what you that's what you're signing up for with this kind of thing so the i'd like to hear also more maybe we could talk offline mayor pro tem about how you perceive this as a harm to the process um because that part isn't that's a part that i'm not that's not quite computing and i would love to have that conversation before thursday to get your thoughts on that so thank you mr mayor thank you councilmember councilmember freeman this is going to be the last word thank you mr mayor i do appreciate the conversation i didn't intend for it to happen this evening i was trying to push it for thursday because of the lateness of the hour but i do want to know that there was a very recent incident in greensboro where it became very newsworthy and i don't want to see us in that position um acknowledging that when when you see those types of tropes and you see that type of reaction and response um repeatedly when you don't listen to them you open yourself up to the liability and so i just want to make sure that we're not creating that harm on our boards and commission and so i do appreciate um the conversation this evening and um i do want to end with saying i'm not perfect i have my own errors mistakes but i am always repentant and that would be the difference and um what i'm understanding this evening is that there's been no repentance and that the harm that the people who felt the harm don't feel like they've heard our response back on it so thank you thank you council member colleagues we have a motion on the floor to um approve five of the members of the cultural advisory board with the sixth member being mr dorfman whose nomination we'll discuss on thursday madam clerk will you please open the vote please close the vote the motion passes seven zero thank you i know you all think we're finished um i want to have a brief discussion on how we ought to proceed uh with our upcoming meetings uh i'll just go ahead and say that i as a i have been as you all know big advocate of coming back in person i have really wanted to come back i wanted to come back without mask because i wanted to show people the important benefits of vaccination um and i appreciate all the work madam manager and especially madam clerk uh that you all have done to make these meetings possible and all our folks in the media department and just it's been amazing uh this hybrid meeting has been taken a lot of work and it's been quite amazing but now i i am thinking at what i don't want to do is start encouraging people to come down here and i think if we have meetings in person that's kind of the purpose is to get is for us to be here and encourage a whole bunch of other people to be here and i don't think that's right now and so i'm recommending that we go back to uh the virtual meetings only for a period of time until we have the virus more under controlling you but i'm i'm happy to abide by the majority of the council that's not something that i you know i understand that there might be another way to you know we might want to continue to do this so i'm very interested in just hearing quickly each of your opinions or anyone that would like to express them so we can give some direction to our staff anybody councilmember freeland i'm i'm cool going back virtual thank you admirable admirable brevity and councilmember cabrera you are yeah it's um just for my concern and i'll say this quickly is several of us will be having kids who go back in person and so my fear is that their exposure i know there are folks here who have grandbabies who are unvaccinated kids who are home who are unvaccinated and so that that i appreciate your consideration of it mr. mayor councilmember middleton thank you mr. mayor and i appreciate your sentiments and i resonate with them much i do i do i guess i have a an impact question i mean we we sit at the top of an organizational chart and i'm wondering what what does that what is the implications of that for the rest of the functioning of city hall and the rest of the staff that's begun to repopulate this building um how does that trickle down i shouldn't use that phrase how does that uh impact or you know the policy impact of us kind of not being here for the rest of the building the rest of our employees maybe the manager would like to comment on that but i won't i won't ask her directly i'll let her know that you've asked it and if she wants to comment she can colleagues any others i'm fine with it but i i do think it does beg the question if we don't think it's safe uh for us to meet here and encourage people to come here does it make sense to continue to ask our employees to come into the office if they could work remotely so i share councilmember's concerns and i hope the manager will speak to that not tonight but whenever well i think if she's going to speak to it she should speak to it tonight because we are here tonight we're going to decide this tonight at least temporarily at least for our next meetings let me speak now sure if i could if i could just make sure i add an additional point to just note i think um when ma'am shul asked if we wanted to return i made this point in acknowledging that we are going to have ups and downs and just making sure that we tie some not metrics but some actual data to that so that it's not just arbitrary would probably be helpful yeah thank you manager would you like to comment um yes mr. mayor madame pro 10 members of the Durham city council the changes that we made uh on the 26th last monday were changes i would characterize as minimal changes to operations in city hall we had the building open on tuesday wednesday and thursday we added monday and friday and we went to our regular operating hours for residents who would seek to come to city government during regular business hours to do business with us and any of the departments that we have we did not mandate or i did not mandate a number of employees to be present in any particular department certainly didn't discuss having employees sitting like we're sitting here you know one and two feet away actually i discouraged that because uh it it you know we we we work all day and certainly would not want folks working in open areas near each other so while we did bring additional employees back into this building it is certainly not at 100 percent so you know i do believe that is related to the decisions that you make here uh but not specifically directly tied to them thank you very much madam manager that's helpful colleagues let me just say what i've heard that the word i've heard from several people is i'm fine with that i'm fine with that is not the same thing as i'm in favor of that and so let me i mean one option is we go ahead keep doing what we're doing for another couple of meetings and see if because people are i'm assuming if you're fine with not doing the saying that you're fine with moving to a all virtual meeting also implies to me that you're fine being here for this and so either we you know one possibility is we keep doing this for a couple more meetings we see how it goes we see what our cases look like and so forth council member reese i would definitely prefer to move our meetings to a virtual format for the foreseeable future i'm sorry that that wasn't clear but i also think the the risks that we're responding to and making this decision i hope the administration will continue to keep those in mind as we ask our employees to subject themselves to similar risks here in this building that's all i'm saying yeah but i don't but i don't think we should continue to meet as some sort of weird solidarity movement i mean we we can minimize harm we should do that by not meeting in person because that reduces the risk that folks will come here and get exposed to the virus but my comments are more geared toward hoping that the manager and the administration will take that into account as we go forward in the days and weeks ahead thank you yeah thank you that was helpful and i appreciate that strong expression of opinion it's very helpful and and i appreciate the manager's comments you know the distinction we're not asking our staff to sit here two feet apart from each other we've been here now four hours doing that um that's not something we're asking anybody else to do and then really inviting other people to come and as much as we love having representative austin here and others it you could imagine a situation where there was something where people really wanted to come a lot of people any other thoughts councillor middleton yeah i if there are employees here for an eight hour shift or however long their shift is and say if somebody's paying that water bill and they may i don't say a hundred people during that day from across the counter i mean i don't think they're six feet apart from across the counter i just i just for me it's just difficult for me to divorce yeah any actions we take from the rest of this organization i mean we're the head of it so if if if if the numbers and indicators have crossed the threshold where we need i think just for the the the final arbiter arbiter arbiter of policy in the city to resequest ourselves because of what the numbers are doing now i think that's just a very dramatic message to to the people of our city and if we do that i don't see how that can't that can't ripple down to the rest of this building or or folk in it in some substantive way i just have a hard time conceptualizing how that can't be the case if we're going to do that that's all i yeah whatever my you know my the avenger say i'll bye bye okay colleagues anything else i'm free thank you mr mayor i think my personal intuition is like i'd be fine at home but i i am of the mind of councilmember meadowton and acknowledging that there are a lot of folks who are um watching us and what we model they'll model and so just keeping that in mind that's all i mean to me that's a double-edged sword i think that i understand the point uh well taken about our employees who are here um i do think we want to model for our community that it's not a good time to be together inside that's to me is a super important message right now i just think that's just a super important message and so it's it's tricky very tricky and yeah councilmember caballero what's our current positivity rate right now i'm not sure their positivity rate i know that uh i think i said earlier that the cases are we've gone from less than five a day to 40 a day for a seven-day average i'm not sure our positivity i'm wondering if it was up above 10 percent as of a couple days ago in my last check yeah i was wondering when councilmember freeman talked about metrics if we could tie it to a positivity rate then it would make it easier i think my what i know is going to happen is once schools are back in person all of them our numbers are going to go really up and so if keeping ourselves in person for the next few weeks um before that kind of big and then deciding i mean that if i'm really thinking about where where the risks are that's going to be the risks because we're because we're going to have so many kids who can't get vaccinated in building well let me suggest then just in the interest of i'm going home that we um that we that we stick with what we're doing now through the next through this work session and the next money night meeting and that we and that we ask our administration to think with us a little bit about the about a metric that we could use to make our decision does that sound like a reasonable approach no it's all right i i i i'm just you know i'm i'm i'm comparing my public duty to the level of how tired i well just uh i mean before we you know just agree on that i mean i think i don't see why we couldn't go straight to virtual especially and then just leave it to the city manager to decide what to do with the staff you know what i mean like i don't see sticking around for an extra two weeks to give them time to figure out what how the staff needs to react is that they're not mutually exclusive we can make a decision that's best for this council and give the staff time to come to a reasonable conclusion based on the data for everyone else true that and that would be my preference okay and and i'll reframe it from i'm cool to strong preference i'm kind of more in charlie's okay so uh we've got a couple we've got at least two strong preferences uh for uh virtual i prefer virtual as well i wouldn't say strong but moderate moderate preference all right they're doing that right now yeah just yeah to to going virtual immediately and to um to you know asking our city manager to consider some stronger um covid related precautions for our staff all right i think that well that's not exactly a consensus i think that's the majority opinion and so uh unless someone else has a different reading i'm going to uh say that we will be meeting virtually at least in the temporary future and we'll uh think about some metrics to be associated with when we are virtual and when we are not virtual and um yeah i think that's where we are okay thank you colleagues uh it's a valuable discussion and a good evening yeah well i i just want to the director reflect that i i well i certainly will abide by i i just think that that's that's problematic optically i think uh for the people of the city and and so i'll just leave it at that but i'll abide by what my colleagues decide obviously okay thank you all right um i'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at 10 to 55 i was actually flying through dallas i was in missouri with