 Welcome and I wanna call this meeting of the Durham City Council to order on December the 16th, 2019 at seven o'clock. And certainly wanna welcome all of you all here today and those of us who are watching our meeting on television as well. We're very glad to have you and welcome to Durham City Council Chambers. Before we have our moment of silent meditation, I want to mention that over the weekend, Durham lost one of its first citizens. Mayor Wenzgrubaric, age 100, whose 100th birthday we celebrated here in these chambers not very long ago, passed away on Sunday. Mayor Grubaric was a tremendous champion of Durham. And when he took office in Durham, it was a time of strife, it was a time of controversy. And there were very important issues of civil rights and racial justice that our community needed to sort out. And Mayor Grubaric was a leader in that effort. He did many other wonderful things for Durham as well. And when we have our moment of silence tonight, I will be remembering him. So could you please now join us in a moment of silence? Thank you. And now, Council Member Rees, could you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you, Mr. Mayor, colleagues and members of the public. Thank you for being here tonight. It's your practice to do so. And if you're able, please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge 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, Council Member. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Alston. Here. Council Member Cavalliero. Here. Council Member Freeman. Present. Council Member Middleton. Here. And Council Member Rees. Here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. And now we'll move to our ceremonial items. And we have some wonderful ceremonial items tonight. And I'm first going to recognize Shelly Green, Co-Chair of the Durham 150 Convening Committee, and ask her if she would join me here for a wrap up of our fabulous 150th, where would you like Shelly? Sure, our fabulous 150th birthday of Durham. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor Schuyl. And members of City Council. Our sesquicentennial year is almost over, and what a year it's been. More than 150 events were created and presented this year by community members, businesses, and organizations. And thanks to the generosity of numerous donors, we were able to award $100,000 in grants to make many of these events possible. Patrick Muklow and I will be back in a few months to give you an in-depth report of the entire year, including a final accounting of all the funds that were raised and dispersed. But we did want to do a brief recap tonight. And to begin with, I would like to publicly recognize and thank the Durham 150 staff. They worked so hard all year long to make this a great year. And they are here tonight. Janine Cargo, who is the project manager. Janine, if you want to just stand up. Shadeh Shakur, the project assistant. And Alyssa Noble, who is our social media specialist. Their role is coming to an end now. And I wanted you to see the individuals that did so much work this year, as well as thank them publicly for all of their work. I also want to recognize the in-kind hours of time and resources that were given by Discover Durham and the Museum of Durham History. And of course, some of the city staff as well. Susan Amy, Discover Durham's president and CEO is here tonight, as well as Beverly Thompson. Where's Beverly from the city? She's not here. She's not here tonight, okay. And they both served on the convening committee and Eddie is here as well. And I don't know if any other convening committee members are here, but Eddie Davis, thank you. I also wanted to give a special shout out to Amy Blalock from the city and Margaret Pentrack from Discover Durham, who led the communications committee. Where so much of the public facing work that you saw was done. And Margaret, and I don't know if Amy's here, but thank you to both of them. We've got a three minute video capturing a few of the highlights of the year. And I hope you'll get a sense of how hard we tried to keep this year long commemoration real. And not just pretty at all up with only celebratory events that might miss some of the important conversations that Durham wanted and needed to have. The video features the new Durham Anthem written by Joshua Gunn entitled, I Choose Durham. So let's roll that three minute video. Thank you. It's hard to put 150 events in three minutes or less, but thank you again. I think I speak for everybody that's been involved. What an honor and privilege it has been to serve our city in this way. And let's look for the next 50 and see how it goes. Thank you. Thank you, Shelly. And I wanna say that Shelly was a wonderful grand marshal at our holiday parade. Great job. Thank you so much. And thanks to all of the people, many of them in this room, who worked on the various aspects of our Cisco Centennial celebration, whether or not some of our wonderful staff, thank you all so much. Our volunteers and all the community groups and community people that came together to make it such a great celebration. And I should add also, thank you to Eddie Davis, our historian, our public historian. Eddie brought us a lot of wonderful history in the past year as part of our Cisco Centennial celebration. So thank you, Eddie. Next we're gonna move to our neighbor spotlight and I'm going to, our first one is gonna be presented, our November 2019 recipient, Connie Becker and Brenda Barber, if you all would please come forward. And if Mayor Pro Tem Gillian Johnson would come forward to help me do the honors. Thank you so much. So Connie Becker and Brenda Barber are the recipients of the neighbor spotlight for the month of November, 2019. The Neighbor Spotlight Award recognizes community members that have gone above and beyond in volunteering their time to serve the community. This month, Connie Becker and Brenda Barber, residents of Creekside at Bethpage were nominated and selected because of the wonderful work they have done in their neighborhood, including, but not limited to, organizing a medical loan closet to meet residents' needs for medical equipment at no charge, organizing countless health and wellness seminars and training sessions for community members, such as Vile of Life and Get Your Affairs in Order, organizing a network of volunteers known as Pay It Forward where neighbors help neighbors, organizing others to get involved and make a difference in the lives of others around them. Congratulations, Ms. Becker and Ms. Barber, for being the Neighbor Spotlight recipients for the City of Durham, and thank you for all the work you do to improve our Durham community. And I can see there are, but any other residents who are here to support them, feel free to stand. And if you'd like to be in photos, you can also come up. Right to have you here. Thank you. Come on up, everybody. Look at this. We brought the whole community. We love it, we love it. Really don't deserve this. It's this community that deserves this. We may have had some ideas and got some things going, but the community is what got it, kept it rolling. It's an awesome place. I want to thank all our friends and neighbors who came out in support of us tonight. That shows what kind of community we have. It's wonderful, and we're proud to be part of Durham. Congratulations, Sarah. I don't have to owe you, join yourself, hug, and kiss to your heart's content. Thank you. It's good. Yeah, I'm ready to pick them all. But you have to put a sign in here. Oh, yeah, we'll come up. I'll put it all sometime. Will you? OK, thanks again. Congratulations, fantastic. Thanks for what you do. It was amazing. All right. Thank you all so much and congratulations. And now we are going to have another neighbor spotlight presentation. And this will be the presentation to Ms. Delma White from PAC-4. And she is our December 2019 recipient. And I'm going to ask Council Member Deidre Anna Freeman if she would join me at the podium to do the honors. Thank you, Mr. Chair. May I show you? This is such an honor, given this lovely lady, a young, young lady. Like I need to visit. Delma White is the recipient of the Neighbor's Spotlight Award for December 2019. And the Neighborhood Spotlight Award recognizes community members that have gone above and beyond in volunteering their time to serve in the community. Ms. White is a resident of Emory Wood Estates. She was nominated and selected because of her wonderful work she has done in her neighborhood, including but not limited to, helping to maintain neighborhood safety by patrolling the neighborhood and reporting suspicious activities, helping elderly residents with their trash bins, offering landscaping advice to others to help them care for their property, and so many other things that are not on this list. Congratulations to Ms. Delma White for being the December Neighbor Spotlight for the City of Durham. And thank you for all of the work you do to improve our Durham community. If there were any other residents that are here and shown up in support, please stand. And if you'd like to come up and take photos as well, please, please stand up. And the family. Hello. Come on up and join this white here. Yes. Congratulations, Ms. Delma White. I just want to say I have been the president of Emory Wood Estates for a number of years. And I have, as you see, this is my part of my family, my immediate family. And it has been an honor to adopt my neighborhood. And it's an honor to be able to be the president. I've been it for ever since 2020. It's been an honor. And I really enjoy working and living in the Emory Wood Estates community. And I know that everyone else enjoys their community working for it, too. Thank you for this honor. And one of my neighbors said my name here. And I was hoping she was going to be here tonight, but she had to work. My name is Quincy Tate. I know some of you all know Quincy. She has two doors down for me. Thank you. God bless and Merry Christmas. Congratulations, Ms. White, for all the fabulous work you do in your neighborhood. And thank you, Council Member Freeman. And now we're going to move to another really great recognition. And this is for the Camelot Academy Cross Country team and Magdalene Sims, their coach. And if you all are, I know you're somewhere out here, please join me at the podium. And I'm also going to ask Council Member Vernetta Austin if she would join me to do the honors. Come on up. While we wait for everyone to make their way up here, I just want to say I had the pleasure to attend one of the Cross Country meets that Camelot Academy participated in this past season. And I can attest in my formal capacity that they are very fast. So take that for what it is worth. So thank you all for joining us. The Camelot Academy Cross Country team won the Central Carolina Athletic League five kilometer championship, which is the highest championship for their league and will be recognized tonight. Let's see. Everyone knows what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or athletic and feel stalled. Are fewer or persistent enough, patient enough, to see this work come to fruition. Five years ago, when a small group of students petitioned Camelot Academy to create a Cross Country team, no one could have imagined what fruit their labor would yield. Five years later, the smallest school in the league has, for the first time, won the Central Carolina Athletic League championship. This season, more than half the runners beat their personal best with senior Mac Taylor, setting a stunning course record of 17 minutes 55 seconds. Is that right? OK, that's very fast. So I will introduce just briefly all the runners and then invite their coach, Magda Sims, up to say a few words if she would like. And then we'll take a photo. So first, Mac Taylor. First place, league record, 17 minutes 55 seconds. That's you. Yes, great. Thanks, Mac. Jackie Winslick, first place for female runners. Maya Callan, third place female runners. Patrick Ireland, Alec Corliss, Travis Fountain, Ethan Salomey, Ryan Rosconi Warner, Seth Hurley, William Harrison, Dylan McLean, Holly Daniel, Alina Hongfu, Michael Laurenti, Mira Salomey, there we go. Tyler Wilson, Cooper Terry, Hardid Bhutani, Ziggy Lim, and coaches Magda Sim and Tom Mitchell. So on behalf of the mayor and the council, a hearty congratulations. This is a wonderful accomplishment. So yes, indeed, the smallest school in the league has won the Central North Carolina League championship. And as was said, with stunning athletic achievements, Mac Taylor, 17 minutes and 55 seconds for five kilometers. Now, as stunning as these athletic achievements are, I think what is truly incredible about this group of young people is the fact that this sense of camaraderie and leadership that was demonstrated throughout the entire season, what's most impressive, for example, is whenever some of our most junior runners struggled to complete a 5K, the teammates would join along and run that last lap with them, encouraging them to finish. The fact that they made it a part of their team culture to encourage and cheer on all runners, regardless of what school they're attending. And we believe that these feats and this display of character is, compared to any physical accomplishment, quite extraordinary. And crossing the finish line seems like a mere, mere accomplishment considering the great character and abilities and leadership that these young people have displayed. So thank you again to the city council and to Mayor Shull for inviting us here this evening. Have we, can we have some of the parents maybe come up and take pictures? A picture for a scrapbook. Definitely full year post spread. Congratulations. Thank you, Coach. Good job. Good job, everybody. Have you the record set on, Jeff? Good job. Thank you. Yes, Nick. Thanks. Great. Congratulations. Coach Sims, congratulations to you. I've coached a lot of high school sports myself, and I know the agony and the ecstasy. Congratulations to your team for this great accomplishment. And our final ceremonial item tonight is a proclamation for Human Rights Week at Bill of Rights Day. I'm going to ask Joan Walsh if she would come up to accept the proclamation and ask Council Member Charlie Reese if he would issue the proclamation on our behalf. Well, Ms. Walsh is coming up. I'll just say that was that 17 minutes and change for a 5K? My personal best is about twice that, so it's amazing. Just one moment. All right, I'm going to read this proclamation. And then Ms. Walsh is going to say a few things. Whereas the city of Durham is home to a diverse population and is committed to the human and civil rights of all its residents as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. And whereas on October 20th, 2003, the city of Durham adopted both the Bill of Rights Defense Resolution and the resolution supporting the rights of persons regardless of immigration status. And whereas the city of Durham recognizes the importance of maintaining a climate of acceptance and solidarity, thereby decreasing fear and promoting the cooperation of all residents with law enforcement. And whereas over the past three years, there has been a disturbing increase in the arrest, detention, and deportation of immigrants throughout the region. And whereas the denial of human, civil, and constitutional rights begins with the most vulnerable, whose plight may be ignored or even accepted by those who consider themselves invulnerable. And whereas the silence of many permits such abuses to grow and spread, encompassing ever more individuals and groups who may be targeted by a despotic government. And whereas this situation represents a dire threat to our government and our way of life, as well as to the human, civil, and constitutional rights of each and all of us. Now therefore, I, Stephen M. Schul, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim December 10th through 17th and December 15th, 2019, as Human Rights Week and Bill of Rights Day in Durham. And hereby urge all residents to join me in reaffirming our support of the Bill of Rights and of the civil rights and liberties it guarantees to all. I urge all residents of Durham to support the city's efforts to welcome immigrants and to resist in whatever ways each are able. All threats and dangers to the human, civil, and constitutional rights of immigrants and others. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, the 16th day of Durham, 2019. And Ms. Walsh will come up and say something. Thank you very much Mayor Schul and City Council for this proclamation. I'd like to ask anybody who's here in support to come up, if you would please. Thank you. The assault on human and civil rights continues in our country perpetrated and condoned by the current administration and affecting immigrants most of all. As a yard sign seen around our wonderful town says, first they came for the immigrants, implying that the rest of us may be next. We now have federal level disregard and disdain for the truth, the rule of law, and the separation of powers so wisely put in place by our country's founders. We all need to do whatever we can to protect our most vulnerable neighbors, both because it's the right thing to do and because any of us could be next. And we need to secure the right to vote this next year especially. If we don't have a different president by January of 2021, we may all lose our rights and our precious democratic republic to a dictatorship. Please vote and please encourage everyone that you know to vote, especially people who don't live here in the triangle. Thank you. Thank you all. All right, that concludes our ceremonial items and we'll now proceed to announcements by members of the council. I know that council member Reese has an announcement. Would you like to get started? I do thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had two announcements. First, I just wanted to thank all the city staff, especially Durham Parks and Recreation who were involved in putting on the holiday parade in downtown Durham this weekend. Saturday morning was a fantastic event for those of us who could participate. It's a huge amount of work. It's a labor truly of love that our employees make this work and it's a logistical challenge, the likes of which few of us can really understand I think and I just wanted to say that I know we all enjoyed ourselves despite some perhaps unwise wardrobe choices that some of us made Saturday, but had a wonderful time. I just wanted to say thank you to our city employees for making that possible. The second thing I wanted to say is in relation to some of the remarks you made prior to our moment of silence. As you mentioned, former Durham Mayor, Winscrew Barrick passed away over the weekend. He cast a tall shadow of our city, both literally and figuratively, and he was here earlier this year celebrating his 100th birthday. But when I learned of his passing, I actually thought not of that visit with us, but the first time I met Mayor Crabaric, which was in this chamber about two and a half years ago. And when we named May 21st, Winscrew Barrick Day here in Durham, he delivered some remarks that I found very affecting. And I went home that night as soon as the video became available and transcribed a portion of them. And I wanted to go ahead and read those. I've kept it since then. I wanted to read those for everyone tonight. I won't do it nearly as well as Mayor Crabaric did, but here we go. We're all better than who we are. And if we visit our conscience, we usually wind up at the right place. And all the challenges that Durham has in the future, let's put our conscience to work. We all have one. Think it through. We don't need riots and bombings and killings. Let's do it at the negotiating table. That's my sincere hope. When I was elected, I did what I thought I possibly could to improve all levels of our life in the city of Durham. And I felt that every time I had the opportunity, I had to really seize it because that's what you need to do, seize the opportunity. But rather, I look at it more really as a privilege, as a privilege to serve the wonderful people in the city of Durham. In 1963, our country was rampant with riot. Today, our country is seriously critically divided. In Durham, we decided then that our diverse togetherness gives light to our soul. I hope that will ever be so in the future. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. Those are wonderful words and thank you for bringing the words of Mayor Grubarak to us again. Other announcements? Anyone else have an announcement, Council Members? All right, thank you very much. And now we'll move to priority items by the city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, everyone. I don't have any priority items this evening, but for the benefit of those in the audience, agenda item number 18 is a public hearing item related to closing a portion of Urban Avenue. This is a continuation of the public hearing from the last several meetings. And when that public hearing is open, Mayor, we will be requesting that the public hearing be closed and the matter be referred back to the administration. So for those who are here who may not want to wait throughout the evening, it may be late, that is what that'll happen. And assuming you agree with that, Mayor, there won't be any need for comment and we'll refer the matter back for the administration. And at some time in the future, it will be again, duly noticed and advertised when the public hearing is ready to be considered again. Thank you so much, Mr. Manager. I don't believe we need to vote on that item. Thank you very much. And now I'll ask if there are any priority items for our city attorney. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor for Tim, members of council. It's good to be with you this evening. I apologize, I'm a little under the weather. I have no priority items, thankfully. Good to be here. Thank you, Madam Attorney. Madam Clerk. Good evening, everyone. I wanted to make some remarks about the volunteer appreciation reception tonight. And I wanted to thank all of my staff, my assistant clerks, Tanetta Amos, Sheila Bullock and Laverne Brooks, who is your board and committee contact. And then I wanted to thank the ladies in the mayor's suite, Juliet Black and Rachel Ruta-Bores, and then my deputy clerk, Ashley Wyatt, for putting on the event for all the board and committee volunteers tonight. Very nice. Thank you very much. It was a wonderful event and it was well attended and congratulations to the clerk staff. It was truly a great event. Thank you so much. And it's a really nice addition to our year and it's become a wonderful annual event. So thank you. All right, and now we'll move to the consent agenda. The consent agenda is our items that the council has previously considered and can be approved for the single vote of the council. An item can be removed from the consent agenda by any resident or council member. And if it is removed, it will be considered at the end of the meeting. For the consent agenda, approval of city council minutes, item one, item two, grant agreement to fund STEM equipment and entrepreneurship program provided by emerging entrepreneurs Inc. Item four, interlocal agreement with Durham County to contribute funds to central kitchen feasibility study. Item five, resolution certifying declaring the results of the 2019 special bond referendum. Item six, 2019 clean fuel advanced technology grant award and project ordinance. Item seven, Southeast sustainable communities fund grant. Item eight, eighth amendment to assignment agreement for the Durham athletic park DAP operating agreement. Item nine, first amendment to training to work reentry grant for contract between the city of Durham and Eckerd youth alternatives incorporated DBA Eckerd kids. Item 10, stormwater infrastructure repairs SD 2020-02. Item 11, purchase cooperative group, citywide automated vehicle, location AVS systems purchase. And that concludes our consent agenda and I will accept a motion for its approval. Move approval. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda. Madam clerk, will you please open the vote? Please close the vote. The motion passes seven zero. Thank you very much. We'll now move to our general business public hearings and just to reiterate, if you did not hear the manager, item 18, we're expecting to be returned to the administration and will not be discussed tonight. But we'll be getting now with item 14, the consolidated annexation at 1001 Olive branch road. And I'll ask for our report from staff. Good evening. I'm Jamie Soniak with the planning department. I would first like to state for the record that all planning department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law and affidavits of all notices are on file in the planning department. Request for utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation and zoning map change have been received from our Naldo Escavera of Withers-Revenal for two parcels of land located at 1001 Olive branch road totaling 216.241 acres. This annexation is for a contiguous expansion of the city limits. In addition, the applicant has applied for a zoning map change from rural residential to plan development residential 2.944 when that associated development plan that stipulates up to 616 single family attached in townhouse units. The area is designated low density residential on the future land use map, which is consistent with the zoning request. If approved, the annexation petition and associated applications will become effective on December 31st, 2019. The case was associated with a voluntary annexation petition, which was BDG 180008, which the city council denied by a vote of four to three on June 3rd, 2019. Without the annexation, the city council did not have jurisdiction to act on the zoning case. Key commitments associated with this new case include a maximum of 90 dwelling units prior to a second point of access to the roadway network, additional asphalt for the construction of future bicycle lane, dedicated right of way for roadway improvements in a series of transportation impact analysis required roadway improvements, which are outlined further in the staff report. There are proffers for 61,600 towards the Durham County public school system, and 77,000 towards the city of Durham affordable housing program. In addition, the applicant has offered the following proffers, which have been reviewed and approved by staff. These include the proposed development shall include a mix of residential unit types with a minimum of 30% townhouses. No residential driveway shall be allowed off any street classified as a collector or highway within the local adopted plans. A minimum of 2.5 miles of off-road natural trails with limited disturbance shall be constructed by the developer and privately maintained by the homeowners association. The trail system shall include a stub on the northern section of the site to provide the ability to extend the future Lick Creek greenway system. Trail lengths and locations are subject to the approval by federal, state, and local regulatory agencies. Trails and amenities within a particular preliminary phase shall be completed no later than 18 months following the recordation of the final plat for that phase or prior to recordation of the final plat for the subsequent phase, whichever comes first. No less than 50% of the developed area shall be treated by constructed storm order wetlands. The proposed storm order control measures shall attenuate the peak discharge for the following frequency storm events, one, two, 10, and 25 years. This commitment exceeds the requirement of attenuating only the one and 10 year storms. The post development peak discharge shall not increase from the pre-development conditions immediately downstream of the site during the 50 and 100 year storm events. Approximately 26 acres of the site located northeast of Olive Branch Road are identified in the Eastern Open Space Plan etching as a natural NCNHP to heritage program county inventory. This development proposes the following commitments with regard to this section. A minimum of 12 contiguous acres within this section of the development will be preserved with limited disturbance to the understory vegetation as needed to implement recreational trails. Nutrient removal for this portion of the development north of the Olive Branch Road shall be managed to meet the target loading rate entirely by onsite storm order control measures. And impervious coverage within this portion of the site shall be limited to 20% instead of the maximum allowed 24%. The public works and water management departments have determined that the existing water and future sanitary systems associated within the Searle's project will have the capacity for the proposed development. The budget and management services department determined that the proposed annexation will become revenue positive immediately following the annexation. Additional information can be found in the staff report. It should be noted that the Durham Planning Commission at their October 15th, 2019 meeting recommended denial of the proposed by a vote of four to nine. Staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. Three motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property and entering into utility extension agreement. The second is to adopt a consistency statement. I'm sorry, the first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property and entering into a utility extension agreement. The second is to adopt a consistency statement and the third is for the zoning ordinance. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Ms. Sonia, could you talk about this having been noticed? Yes, I mentioned at the beginning. Thank you. Thank you very much for your report. We have heard the report from staff. I'm gonna now declare this public hearing open. And I'm first gonna ask if there are any questions for staff by members of the council. Any questions for staff by members of the council? Council member Freeman. I had shared a few questions prior to the meeting around the cost-benefit analysis. And I just wanted to make sure that I noted. Also, I haven't received an update from the water treatment facility that's being brought online and recognizing how much is pulling from that. So I just wanted to make sure I tapped your next question about whether or not I would receive that information before this evening was over. No, and we did receive your email and I know that there was a response. But unfortunately, that information pretending to the specifics and the water demand was not able to be provided. Thank you. Any other questions at this time? All right. If the council has no other questions at this time, I'm gonna ask that we have several people signed up to speak on this item. This is a public hearing item. And I'm going to see I have one, two, three, have four people signed up as proponents and two people signed up as opponents. And I think what I will do is I will give 10 minutes to each, both the proponents and the opponents. And if we need to add time after that, we can do so. I'm gonna call, I have to speak here, Mr. Randy Herman, Mr. Chris Simmering, Arnaldo Echeverria and Brittany Chase as proponents. How would you all like to, who would like to go first? All right, Mr. Herman. Welcome. How do you feel about the 10 minutes? Do you think that'll be acceptable? I think that should be fine. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor Shul and members of council. I have a couple of slides as well. I don't know if those are coming up. I'm not gonna spend too much time on them, but I just wanna run through them pretty quickly. Okay, so here is a summary of the project as Ms. Sinyak stated, it's located at 1001 Olive Ranch Road, about 216 acres. Under the current zoning for rural residential, it would be allowed to be developed up to 71 units. And we are requesting rezoning to PDR at 2.944, which would allow up to 616 units. That's a little bit less than three units per acre. This is the location of the subject property, located north and south of Olive Branch Road, just south of the intersection with Doc Nichols Road. And that triangle area to the north of Olive Branch Road is the area that Ms. Sinyak mentioned as being of particular concern. When we were before planning commission, representative of the LRB Creek Watershed Association appeared and spoke about the importance of that part of the property environmentally. So since then, we have met with the LRB Creek Watershed Association and Triangle Land Conservancy and discussed with them our plans to limit the impact on that portion of the property. And that's what resulted in the text commitments that Ms. Sinyak read. This shows the existing conditions on the property. It is heavily, it is very hilly, it has a significant topography. There are a number of streams running through the property and all of these issues do affect the ability to develop the property. This shows the vicinity of the property with Highway 98 located at the north and Highway 70 at the south. This kind of gives you a sense of the location within the city of Durham. The existing zoning is rural residential again, although the adjacent properties are zone, PDR at, again, a little bit less than three units per acre. So what we're requesting is similar to that. This property is located in the Suburban Development Tier and on the Future Land Use Map is shown as low density residential, which is four units an acre or less. And again, what we're requesting is about three units per acre. We believe that this redevelopment is, or this project would be in keeping with the comprehensive plan, specifically these objectives that I've listed here, to provide land in the Suburban Tier with development at low and medium densities to assist in expanding home ownership opportunities, protect floodplain areas from inappropriate development because those floodplain areas are being significantly restricted under our development plans. And to construct and maintain a street and highway system through collector streets, we are going to be building a collector street kind of through the middle of the property, which would in the long-term connect to the adjacent property, which is being developed by another developer. I would like to introduce the other members of the project team quickly. Speaking after me is gonna be Chris Simmering from Mungo Homes. He's gonna be speaking about the developer's vision for the property. Also, Arnaldo Atavaria from Withers Ravanel is going to be discussing the technical aspects. He is the engineer for the project and Brittany Chase is our traffic engineer and she's gonna be talking about the traffic impacts. Thank you, Mr. Herman. Mr. Simmering, welcome. Hey, good evening. It's good to be here. It's good to be back. We're very excited about this project. We're excited about it the first time. And since then, we've worked it around so much with everybody, got a lot of feedback from the leadership of Durham and the staff and the other groups that have interests in the area. And we feel like we've really tuned in on something that is gonna be an exciting project for this area. We have 616 lots in it now. So we were able to get the density up as high as we possibly could on this piece of property. So we feel that it's gonna be a great place for these 616 families to come into Durham and live. We were able to introduce a lower price point product than what we originally had. We don't normally get feedback from a council asking us to increase density and reduce price point. Usually everybody's pushing us the other way. So we were very excited to do that. We feel we'll have options in the very low 200s just over 200 available in this project at this location. Some of our single family detached stuff is gonna be in the high 200s, mid to high 200s. And we just feel like there's a real pin up demand for this especially given its location towards Briar Creek. We're excited about all the walking trails that we've got that will allow the people to experience the nature that's out there and we're big amenities that they'll have in this neighborhood. So I'm gonna turn it over to the technical people. They'll tell you all about our stormwater features and the networks of trails and traffic and all the infrastructure we're gonna bring to this area. If you have any questions, you can ask me later. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Simmering. Mr. Etcheveria. Yes, welcome. Thank you. Ronaldo Etcheveria for the record address is 115, Keenan Drive and Kerry. So I'm gonna change the slide here for a little bit. So I wanted to take the opportunity and present the development plan. I don't know why it's, okay, there you go. As you can see, that's the proposed development plan which is very limited in terms of the information shown. That's the way that the rezoning process requires. And it shows the main developable areas of the site which are gonna be designated for single family or townhomes. You can also see how the streams are being protected and the buffers. Most of the streams, if not all on the property, are gonna have riparian buffers, some of which are actually gonna be encumbered by an additional 50 foot buffer based on the watershed overlay. We also show perimeter buffers along Olive Branch Road and along the perimeter of the site north and south. So for orientation purposes, in this slide, north will be on the right side. So the thick dashed line going through the middle of the site shows the collector roadway which provides connectivity between Olive Branch Road and the adjacent future development along the west of the site. The dashed area or just to the right of the sheet represents the portion of the site that's covered by the inventory site identified in the Eastern Durham Open Space Plan which we had an opportunity to work in detail with folks from the Triangle Land Conservancy, the Ellipa Creek Foundation as well as Trish Durham. And that's basically how we came up with some of the commitments that Jamie read a moment ago and I'm going to just take another stab at them and write a little bit more detail in a minute here. So just another overall view of the site location within the existing sanitary sewer basin that's the south east regional lift station sewer basin. This slide shows where the south east regional lift station is going to be located. The purple lines and green lines are being installed by the city, at least the solid green line is. And as part of the development, we have two options. One to build the pinkish dashed line along the right side of the project through the green highlighted area or propose temporary lift station. Those are identified in the utility extension agreement that's already being executed. So we are exploring both options and we'll work with the city as to which one is going to be the best alternative for them. And some of the commitments that we added include like Ms. Onyek mentioned. So minimum of 30% townhomes. And that like my colleagues just mentioned a moment ago, it introduces the opportunity to bring in some of the prices down. Mr. Echeveria, excuse me, I'm sorry. We're going to add five minutes to you all this time. Do you think that'll be sufficient? That should be sufficient. Thank you. Thank you so much. So the 30% minimum of townhomes, like I said, adds another product, some affordability to the neighborhood as well as diversity in the housing choices. So we've mentioned no residential driveways allowed on the streets classified as collector or hire. So the reason is it provides additional safety for the community members that are enjoying the facilities as pedestrians or bikers. So the collector street will have a set of bike lanes and side on both sides. So we want to make sure that that's not going to be a safety concern. The development also proposes a minimum of two and a half miles of off-road nature trails for the enjoyment of the residents. They're going to be like mentioned earlier concerted by the developer and maintained by the HOA. And there's some commitment in terms of when those are going to be required based on the plating phase. Another commitment is that no less than 50% of the development areas are going to be treated by stormwater wetlands as opposed to wet ponds which are more efficient in terms of pollutant removal and enhancement and blend with the natural environment features surrounding them. Then we have some commitments in terms of the attenuation controls for runoff which we go above and beyond what's required by the city and the UDO. And needless to say, we have done extensive engineering work to make sure that these are real commitments that can be achieved for the site. And then I wanted to mention on the northern section of the site, the triangular piece that's identified in the Eastern Durham Open Space Plan. So we're reserving about 12 acres of contiguous area. That's a result of the meetings with the Triangle Land Conservancy, Trace Durham, and the LRB Creek Foundation. They express some interest in making sure that this is gonna be sort of an example project. They were very excited that we gave them the opportunity to sit down which from our perspective, we feel very excited that they actually were able to sit down and express their concerns and give us opportunity to address them on the site. So we're basically proposing these commitments in order to provide tree coverage protection as well as opportunities for the community to enjoy the natural features as well as save some of the open space for the potential of future species that even though they may not exist near the area at this time, this location proposes the opportunity for them to move in in the future. So with that, I'm gonna pass it over to Brittany Chase and hopefully may not have as good. Thank you. I'm here but not. Okay. There it is. Good evening city council members. My name is Brittany Chase with Exalt Engineering in Raleigh, 304 West Milbrook. Exalt work closely with city staff and NCDOT to prepare a traffic impact analysis, otherwise known as a TIA to study the existing and future 2023 conditions of the roadway network surrounding the proposed site. The purpose of the TIA is to analyze the potential traffic impacts of the proposed development and to identify any roadway improvements necessary to mitigate the impact of the project traffic. The analysis showed that there are traffic concerns present under existing conditions as well as future conditions even without the build out of the proposed site. The developer has committed to constructing roadway improvements that not only mitigate site traffic in the future, but will also address these traffic concerns that exist today. As shown on the figure, the developer will construct turn lanes at the proposed project driveways and widen Olive Branch Road to a three lane cross section in between the northern project driveway and the southern project driveway. The developer will also construct turn lanes at four of the surrounding study intersections. I'm gonna add five more minutes. Thank you. Yeah, five more minutes, that's a lot, but go ahead. Thank you. The developer will also construct turn lanes at four of the surrounding study intersections. As shown in red on the figure, these intersections include Olive Branch Road at Doc Nichols Road, Olive Branch Road at Carpenter Pond Road, Leesville Road at Shady Grove Road, and Leesville Road at Doc Nichols Road. The developer has also committed to installing traffic signals at two study intersections if warranted. These intersections are Olive Branch Road at Carpenter Pond and Leesville Road at Doc Nichols. These roadway improvements shown on the figure have been approved by city staff and NCDOT. Based on similar projects in the area, the cost of the design and construction of these improvements is estimated to be over $2 million. It is also important to add that there are additional roadway improvements committed by other developments in the study area. City transportation staff has indicated that if these improvements are not completed as planned by others, these improvements will be required of this development as well, and those are shown in green on the figure. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Chase, Mr. Hermey, I'm gonna wrap up remarks at this point. The only thing I wanted to add is that of course all members of the project team stand ready to answer any questions that any members of council may have. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, we'll now here, we have two people signed up as opponents and they are Mr. Brian Calloway and Mr. Nate Baker. Mr. Calloway and Mr. Baker, welcome. Mr. Baker here. He is. Mr. Calloway, go ahead. Thank you. Please give us your name and address and the opponents also have 20 minutes. All right, thank you. My name is Brian Calloway of 307 Gresham Avenue here in Durham. And I wanted to start just by for the record stating that I have no direct financial ties to this project in any way. I also wanted to just open with a reading. We believe that everyone deserves to live in a healthy community. Durham faces many threats to our city's health and sustainability, including global climate change and overwhelmingly car-centric development patterns. We should make land use decisions that help combat urban sprawl, protect our watersheds and preserve natural environments. That's a reading from the Bull City Together campaign platform and it's a great kudos to y'all. Those are excellent words. And I want to encourage you now to put some deeds behind those words and vote against this today because I believe that this annexation and this rezoning exemplifies what you spoke about in your campaign platform. And you have heard this before and there was a public hearing before the Planning Commission in October. Additional people spoke and our advisory board voted four to nine in denial of recommending this to you. So the community and its advisory members have spoken in many ways. It is remarkable a bit to me to hear the cost-benefit analysis that was presented by staff earlier. I'll also say that I came to Durham by way of UNC where I studied city planning many years ago now. And I actually grew up in Florida and this exact type of development is one of the reasons I wanted to study city planning. We know that this type of development has tremendous costs both to the city, to our infrastructure, to our services that we can provide but also environmental impacts and especially in light of climate impacts that we're all very well aware of. And we've made many moves in this community to address those. We had a albeit contentious hearings in the past to help direct development towards downtown and densification and Mr. Mayor, you'd made public comments in some of our local news organizations that one of the main thrusts of the EHC for instance was to mitigate our climate impacts. This is the best opportunity to shape and guide this city's development patterns by rejecting this annexation request and encouraging better development. It is remarkable though that our staff can vary in so many ways. When I was a planning student at UNC, I remember hearing many times Mitch Silver, a nationally known planning director that they had on staff. He's since moved on to positions with New York City but he said it very bluntly when he would go through Raleigh and tell folks, do you want your taxes to go up? If so, continue to allow sprawl. And that is precisely what this development would do. I'm a bit confused by the tunnel vision, maybe the silos that we make our analysis in because when we speak about even issues like affordable housing, when the house itself may be slightly more affordable, there's so many additional components. There's a transportation piece, the utilities piece, but in this case, the transportation piece is remarkable. I mean, where are folks gonna go grocery shopping? I mean, we've spoken numerous times about the difficulties with single family zonings, the history of single family zonings. You before you this evening have a single family zoning, rezoning request. So it should be pretty clear, I would hope that the answer should be no. This kind of development does not belong in Durham. Perpetuating single family zoning does not belong in Durham. And we are on the cusp of rewriting our comprehensive plan as we speak to watch an over 200 acre parcel be forever locked into this very 20th century development pattern is something that I believe that our future generations are gonna be questioning. How did you do that? How did you know about the climate impacts? How did you know about what the city needed? How did you know and see the direction, the course correction that we've been making of concentrating our development around nodes and specifically downtown and densifying these things. So I would ask this evening that you vote no for contributing to costly urban sprawl. You vote no for perpetuating uncreative single family zoning. A vote no for increasing our community's climate impact. Vote no for putting a permanent blot on the periphery of our community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Callaway. And now we'll hear from Mr. Baker. Hello everyone, Nate Baker, 609 North Roxborough Street. I am on the Planning Commission, but I'm not speaking for the Planning Commission. It was interesting to hear from Brian just now. We don't always agree on things, but we did go to the same planning school. And so I think that we learned a lot of the same lessons. I think it's easy to kind of lose sight of the scale of this project. It is extremely large. It's larger than the Forest Hills Floam Amendment that you're going to be seeing in a little bit, 216 acres. Trinity Park is 262 acres. So it's almost the size of Trinity Park, which has a lot of uses, has a lot of housing types. So I wanted to come up here to ask City Council to vote against this application. Because I think that it, I think the voting for this application would be responsible. And that is acknowledging the hard work that has been put into the review of this by city staff, the professionalism of the development team with whom I did meet. I think that this application violates precedent that was set by City Council in your original decision to deny this case. I think that it maintains an exacerbate sturm exclusionary built pattern. It eliminates gains fought for by climate advocates in Durham and increases greenhouse gas emissions, not just in total, but on a per capita basis. It prohibits the possibility of future transit options or makes extremely difficult to have efficient transit options. I believe it contradicts many, many policies in the comprehensive plan, which I've listed out in my comments to you. I think that it threatens to have much larger consequences on land use policy as we do embark on the new comprehensive plan. And it doesn't meet the needs of our growing population. And I also do believe that this is fiscally imbalanced. In general, based on studies, many fiscal impact studies and cost of land use studies that have been conducted around the country and in the Southeast, more specifically, these types of developments tend to not pay for themselves when you do sophisticated cost-benefit analyses. And I also simply believe that it doesn't respond to the large and growing demand for walkable, livable green communities that we want to advocate here in Durham. So planning and zoning can be very complicated and it can be a peer very complicated. But I really do think that with annexation cases, we get to ask a very simple question of ourselves and that is what do we want the next extension of the city of Durham to look like? In this case, what do we want the next 216 acres to look like? So I think that if you think that we have not enough single family housing stock, we have about 65% of our housing stock as single family. If that's not a high enough percentage and we need more sort of exclusionary, single family only developments, and if we want developments with streets and blocks that are just so long that it kind of renders them unfeasible for walkability so that there can't be any walkability within these 216 acres. And if we want the future of Durham to be without any type of accessible uses, including access to services for the daily needs of human beings, if these places shouldn't include sort of civic space to strengthen our democracy or employment uses that foster vibrancy, equity and opportunity, if they shouldn't include green and sustainable building in this time of climate crisis and they shouldn't weave in a fabric of missing middle housing in a dense environment and sustain multi-generational living, if that is what we think that the next 216 acres of Durham should be, then we should vote for this application. If that is really the best that we can imagine as a city, then we should vote for this application. It would be our eternal imprint on this city. But if we think that Durham is better than this and that Durham should be integrated and should be sustainable and walkable and should foster diversity and should foster transit accessibility even if it's not next year or in two years, but using a development pattern where transit will be accessible in the next 10 years or 20 years or 100 years. And if we think that Durham should begin building with a climate and equity crisis on the forefront of our minds and if we should begin the process as many communities have of transitioning from that built environment where over 80% of the population has no other option but to drive, which of course has many externalities, we should be building differently. And I know that we're in the midst of this comprehensive plan and that is of course your consideration. I do think that that is an important consideration when we look at developments like this. And I also think that we cannot wait for the comprehensive plan to be finished before we embark on the necessary simple UDO changes for developments like this and for other developments. Those UDO changes should increase developments with compact variety of housing types, connected streets with short walkable blocks internal and external to the development should include sidewalks and street trees, a variety of accessible and appropriate uses for employment and services should protect and make accessible and celebrate green spaces and should place homes within a quarter mile of a variety of uses and a variety of civic spaces should include multimodal infrastructure. And there are a variety of different ways that we can code regulations to be able to do these things. So my recommendation to you is that you do vote to deny this application. I know that that's very difficult, but I think that it's the right decision. We've spent a lot of time considering this and weighing all of the different options. I do think that is the responsible thing to do. And then it should be followed up with the appropriate UDO amendments to make Durham a sustainable and equitable and inclusive city that is taking an understanding of the climate crisis and taking strong action on it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Baker. We've had another person sign up for this item. Ms. Peterson, are you a proponent or are you an opponent of this annexation? I have some concerns. How many minutes do I have, Mr. Mayor? Ms. Peterson. It doesn't matter. It matters to me, Ms. Peterson. This is a legal proceeding and there are rules. And I'll tell you why. Okay, thank you. How many minutes do I have? You have three. My name is Mrs. Peterson, Victoria Peterson. And right now, why I am against this, this vote, I'm concerned about my city council. And I'm glad the city attorney is here tonight. The public needs to know that some of us, and I'm one, that there's a possibility that there's a person that is on this council that should not be voting. If we have this vote, and my question is to the city attorney, and she may not wanna answer it publicly, but I would like to get an answer in writing. If it is true, and if the law finds out there is a hearing on January the 13th, at the Superior Court dealing with the Board of Election, with the State Board of Election, there is a hearing. The hearing is about Durham City and it's about our election. If it is true, if it is true, if there's a possibility that there's someone on this council that should not be on this council, my question to the city manager, not to anyone else on this council, my question to the city, excuse me, to the city attorney, if they vote on this issue, could it be challenged afterwards after a decision is made later on if we have a person on this council that should not be on the council? Is that a possibility? Have you finished your comments, Ms. Peterson? Let me finish. You finish your comments, Ms. Peterson, and then we will deal with your question. No, Mr. Schuler, I'm not finished my comment, and I want some extra time, since you're being rude. You've got one minute and 15 seconds. Mr. Schuler, I think you're a very rude mayor, but that's a whole other issue. You're not gonna knock me off my game. I'm asking the city manager, is there a possibility if somebody is sitting on this council and the court finds out, or the state board of election finds out, that this person is illegal and they should not be on this council and you folks vote and you continue to vote on various issues in this community with this individual on the council. If you find out that that person should not be on the council, what can the public do about all this voting that is going on with one of these individuals that is on the council? And Mr. Mayor, I'm not asking you to speak. I'm asking the city attorney to address my concern about this voting that may take place tonight. That's the only person I want to hear from. Ms. Peterson, you have nine more seconds. Ms. The City Attorney, do you mind addressing my... Oh, I'm chairing the meeting, Ms. Peterson. But I'm asking her. I will call on the city attorney at the appropriate time. Please take a seat, Ms. Peterson. And while you take us, once you have taken a seat, I have some comments for you. No, so I want to hear from the city attorney. Ms. Peterson, you need to take your seat. Mr. Schuler, I want to hear from the city attorney. If she does not want to address me right now and you want to put it in writing, that's fine. But the public needs to know that there's a possibility that somebody sitting on this council should not be on this council. And I know you, Mr. Schuler, you don't want to address it and you don't want to talk about it. But we have citizens in this community. Ms. Peterson, you will be seated. And the public needs to know this also. And that's fine. Ms. Peterson, you... I don't want to hear from you. Ms. Peterson, you have been abusing... I do not want to hear from you. You have been abusing our process the last several weeks. You have to respond. Ms. Peterson, and let me just say that you're... I'm not having want to hear from you. I'm not having want to hear from you. Ms. Peterson, I'm going to have you removed from this room in a minute. I'm sorry? I'm going to have you removed from this room. Well, I don't want to hear from you. Okay, you... Ms. Peterson, I will have you removed from this room in a moment. Your inferences about a member of this council are without merit, they're without basis. They have been ruled on by our Board of Elections and by the State Board of Elections. They're without grounds, they're without merit. And they're an indication of your prejudice. The period for January 13th is your problem on this issue. Ms. Peterson, I will have you removed from this meeting unless you... I'm telling you. Kenji, did the city attorney answer? Mr. Herman? Mr. Herman, you have three minutes. Sorry, but it's clear there was a little bit of a disruption. Can you repeat the question? I don't have any question. I just wanted to know, is there... I'm asking you, I'm saying that you all have another three minutes if you need it. If you would like to respond or not respond to that, but if you'd like to expand on anything. Okay, so I do have a few things that I would like to expand on. So absolutely, I'll take them all. Part of the... It was unthinkable, wasn't it? Say that again? Yeah, you're right. Go ahead. So I forgot to mention earlier that part of the work that we have gone back and re-engineered on the project also has to do with the preservation of water quality. So for the northern section of the project, which is within that open space plan, we are proposing that all of the pollutant removal that's required for the project for that particular section is done on site with onsite stormwater control measures. And instead of going and using the allowable amount of offsite that can be buy down for the project. So it was no offsite credits will be obtained for this section of the project that is affected by the inventory site overly. So another component that we are also committing to is a reduced impervious surface for that particular section of the site as well, limiting it to 20% as opposed to 24. We have consolidated the infrastructure for the development in order to preserve more and build a more sustainable development for the community. And it's hard to tell from the development plan that's included as part of the application, but there's definitely walkability on the site. So it's a 200 acre site, right? So even though we have several streams, the development is being proposed in blocks and not call the section at the end in between confluences of streams. So this is gonna be developed also in conformance with the UDO requirements for connectivity of a 1.4 ratio or better. We propose site walk on both sides of the streets and needless to say, as previously mentioned, over two miles of pedestrian trails. So we understand that there's no grocery store within 100 feet of everyone's future home site in the community. But the last time I remember going to the grocery store and being able to carry everything back was when I was in college living by myself. So right now I live with my wife and my son. Every single time we go to the grocery store, there's no way that we can carry everything back just walking and we're a small family of three. So the grocery stores go where homes go. So you cannot have one without the other. Thank you, Mr. Echeverria. All right, this is a public hearing item. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item? Is there anyone else tonight that would like to be heard on this item? All right, thank you. And now I'll ask if there are any questions or comments for the applicant or for our staff by members of the council. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've got a couple of questions for staff. Planning department staff. Thank you. Good evening. Could you remind us what's the impervious service maximum in this watershed overlay district? So if the applicant is using the low density residential option, the maximum would be 24%, which is what they have shown on the development plan. If there is an option to go up to 70%. Committed to 20% remember. Right, up in the northern part, yeah. And just as a reminder, as part of my proffers and also the applicant reiterated on the northern part of the site north of Olive Branch Road, they've committed to a maximum of 20%. They've reduced the impervious coverage from 24 to 20%. Thank you. Also, is there like a technical planning definition of sprawl or is that more of a generalized understanding? I don't know that we have a technical definition. I think there's a general understanding. Which is development on the edge of an urban area? Or how would you define sprawl? I think that sprawl would be, I mean, everyone probably has their own definition of sprawl. However, I think that sprawl development is defined as occurring potentially on the outliers of the area where there isn't infrastructure in place where there is not compatible and contiguous development. In some cases where there may not be certified infrastructure, public transportation could be part of it as well. In your professional opinion, does this development meet that definition? Based on the findings in the staff report, I believe that this application is contiguous to other compatible development. It is actually more consistent with the future land use designation of the area. The current residential zoning falls under the density that is recommended in the future land use designation. So this rezoning does bring the project into more conformity to what our current comprehensive plan recommends for. I believe that the applicant has done a very good job to address some of the concerns that have been raised through the previous application and this current application to enhance the site and to provide amenities and improvements to address some of the concerns that have been raised. I do think that this site will be designed to be compatible with the already approved residential development that's to the West, both in connectivity through the roadway network as well. And staff would also recognize that we do have a number of other applications in this area. So it is a growing area of Durham and oftentimes we view these applications sort of independently because you're really focused on the one rezoning site at a time, but myself, I've got several applications so that we'll be going through the same process as well. Thank you. This might not be in your area, but in our upcoming transit plan, is there contemplation of bus service to this region or is that something we're evaluating? Good evening, Pat Young with the Planning Department. The transit plan update that's underway, we haven't got to the level of planning to be looking at routes and areas of specific areas, but I will quickly try to answer that by adding to Ms. Sunyak's excellent response by saying that one of the defining characteristics of sprawl is unplanned growth, where the growth is driving unanticipated infrastructure and service costs. As Ms. Sunyak alluded to, this proposal brings the site into greater conformity with the 2005 comprehensive plan in the sense that it's a higher density development and that the city and county have made substantial investments in a fire and EMS station in this area and in the Southeast regional lift station or SIRLs, which again, those investments will not be capitalized upon or utilized effectively if the area isn't developed. So I would add that and so I think transit services would definitely be part of that mix of services. We have not planned that specifically yet. The lower density does make it more challenging, but it does not make it impossible. Thank you, that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Other questions at this point? The manager has a clarification. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Freeman had asked a question to Ms. Sunyak about an earlier email that she sent today related to the utility capacities. And I think staff is prepared to respond to that question for the record, if we could. Both Ferguson, Deputy City Manager for Operations, speaking on behalf of the Department of Water Management. So there has been an evaluation in this area. The Searles Southeast Regional Lift Station was actually planned to support development in the area and is a more efficient system for providing a regional sewer capacity than the individual developments, I think that had previously been anticipated in the area. The development at its current density was anticipated in a planning model that was used to design the Searles Lift Station and the utility extension agreement that's in the packet tonight does prohibit the issuance of any significance of occupancy until the Searles Lift Station is complete. So we do believe that there's, we can confirm this adequate capacity on both the sewer and the water side. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ferguson. Council Member's question. I think Mr. Rees, did you have a question? No, I was. I'm sorry. Council Member Caballero. Yeah, I had a follow-up question because you had suggested or you'd shared that there was other planned developments and I think it was brought up because of other traffic improvements. So I'm just kind of going with this thought. If we voted no today, we'd have several other similar developments. So really I'm just thinking about some of our commissioners in their comments, essentially what they're asking for is a moratorium on any development in this area based on what I'm hearing and just thinking through if we're putting infrastructure out there. I mean, I'm just having this question of we put, the city has made a decision to put a fire station out there because of growth. We've also made improvements and investments in our water and sewer because of growth. And so now the development is following. And so I kind of think it's almost becoming a chicken and an egg. We put it out there and so people are gonna build. And so other than declaring a moratorium and not allowing any development, I just don't see, even if we said voted no on today's case, I just don't see the issue will still be there one way or the other. Thank you. Other comments or questions by council members? Mr. Mayor. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you to all of the speakers tonight. I, there may be good reasons to vote against this development, but I wanna caution folk that I don't think the use of the precedent metric is particularly helpful in this. A four or three votes, not a precedent, it's a split vote. We're a legislative body, not a judicial body. And I think Charlie will check my Latin, the stare decisis, let the decision stand doesn't really apply to us. You can go through any number of this council's votes and you will see, I'll put it this way, you will probably see some inconsistency or at least perceived inconsistency on a number of votes, on a number of issues. So, and I wanna echo with my colleague, the spirit of my colleague, Councillor Caballero, my duly elected colleague, Councillor Caballero has said, if we wanna set this as the case to establish precedent, then it would behoove us to police ourselves in a way where every other case subsequent is based upon this particular vote. I don't think that's gonna happen. So I wanna be very cautious about applying the term precedent to a previous action of this council. Some of the comments of the planning commissioners, some of them have flipped sides during this process as well. So if we're going to take each case on a case by case basis and look at the merits of it, I think that's a safer way to proceed than to suggest that prior to adopting a new comprehensive plan and prior to adopting a comprehensive strategy as a city that we're gonna, in a de facto way, start acting as if we've adopted it if we're not prepared to do it continuously. I don't think that's gonna happen. And then the question will be, well, what's different about one developer getting a yes vote as opposed to another? Is it money? Are they larger and more wealthy? We get into who wins and who loses based upon capriciousness on the part of the council. So if there's a reason to vote against it, then I wanna hear about concerns from the community, a traffic impact that isn't addressed. The precedent argument is less compelling to me because I don't think, we're legislated, we're not judicial, and you're gonna be frustrated by the way we vote in the future on something that we're not gonna be able to point the consistency on. So I'd like to just address the merits of the case of the developer's plan. The staff has recommended approving it and I think I'm speculating that the reason why they did it is because they applied development plan or they looked at development plan and applied existing standards that we have in our comprehensive plan and our flume. And they've done a magnificent job. That doesn't mean we always just wholesale adopt what the staff says, but the fact that they have, at least from a starting point, I find compelling and I believe that they're conversant on what our comprehensive plan says, what our UDO says and what our flume says. So haven't decided yet, but I do want to at least establish a marker that I'm not gonna be bound by a precedent, which I really don't think exists. I don't think we're prepared to say that we're gonna vote on every development plan henceforth based upon anticipating what our new comprehensive plan is gonna say, anticipating what any changes we may make is gonna say. That's a standard that I think we would be raising expectations that are unrealistic at this point. But the merits of the development plan are plentiful to debate and to consider. And I'm anxious to hear comments from my other colleagues. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Rason and Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As occasionally happens, much to my frustration, my colleague, Council Member Middleton, has stolen my thunder on the precedent issue. But I just want to second what he said about that and just make sure that Commissioner Baker takes away with him back to the planning commission that we don't set precedent on zoning issues in this body because every zoning decision is different, fundamentally different. No piece of land is similar, is identically situated. No development is as identically designed. No earth is similarly situated, is identically situated. And so there will be differences that we point to. I will depart from my colleague a little bit because I pray to have the wisdom to be consistent in my decisions, though often that wisdom is lacking. So let me just say that. But I do also want to take a slight issue with my colleague, Council Member Caballero, when she said that rejecting this particular proposal to annex a completely new piece of property into the City of Durham, failing to do that is akin to a moratorium on development in this area. Fundamentally disagree with that. I just couldn't disagree more with it. I think if we've heard anything from the planning commissioners who reviewed this proposal and submitted their written comments to the new proposal, it's that they want to approve something out there. They really want to. Many of them voted for the first one. And the idea that saying no to this means saying no to everything else just seems pessimistic to me. I'm hopeful that we can get something that works in this parcel because let's not forget. This is not a piece of this. This is not part of the City of Durham, right? Okay, they want it to be. Y'all want it to be part of the City of Durham. And in order to do that, they're telling us lots of things they want to do. If we like that, then we should vote to bring it into the City on that basis. If we don't want that, if we don't want the next 268 acres of the City of Durham to look like what they're proposing, we should vote against it. And we shouldn't worry about creating a precedent because every project and piece of property is different. We shouldn't worry about giving this since that there's a moratorium because there's not. We should make the decision that is in the best interest of the City as each of the seven of us see that. So that's my little soapbox about where we sit on this. With respect to the merits, I haven't heard anybody talk about that, so I'm just gonna rush boldly in and hopefully briefly in. Please do. I'll try to do both. I talked about a number of concerns that I had with the original structure of this project when it first came before us back on June 3rd. And there's been a little bit of work around the capacity of the water and sewer system around in this area. I appreciate staff providing some of the information about live stations. Also got a little bit out of that diagram that y'all put in about the water system. I think I figured out what you were getting out there, although it's close. But my larger concern, which I expressed at the time, is somewhat consistent with what Commissioner Baker and Mr. Calaway brought forward tonight, which was we're talking about putting an inordinate amount of people in cars and a part of the county that is not set up to deal with it. And I appreciate the fact that there is a chicken and egg problem with transit service. If we want transit service in a particular area, we need to have the residential capacity to draw transit service into that area. But ultimately, this is located on the state road that the city has no ability to maintain, improve or anything. And it seems challenging to me to ask this body to plop 600 and some odd homes into this piece of property without a better plan than we're talking about it in the transit plan. And maybe when we get there, there'll be enough demand, that's the line out there. I don't know, that's just me. Also wanted to thank Mr. Calaway for bringing into the room some of the things that I at least had a hand in writing. I appreciate that. Didn't know you were a fan, but good to know. And appreciate that as well. But on balance, and I'm not 100% sure what I'm gonna do. I'd like to listen to my colleagues and hear what y'all have to say. But I think that the main thrust of my concern has not been addressed in fact. In the attempt I think to make some folks on the council happy has gone in the direction I didn't like at the first time and that we're now talking about even more people and cars on that two lane road. So, but anyway, that's those are my thoughts and answers for you. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Council Member Rice, Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I also want to make sure I address that moratorium comment and recognizing like, as a former planning commissioner, I appreciate our council our commissioners coming in this evening and sharing from their own personal opinion how they feel about this development. I know the work that goes into reviewing these cases and the time you spend talking to developers and residents and people in a community really thoroughly address a lot of the details that I might not get to on the council like I could on the planning commission and I truly appreciate everything that you share. I will say that I understand completely how the planning commission could see that this was not the best benefit to the city of Durham recognizing that this is an annexation we're talking about. It's not existing land. We're not doing infill. We're not talking about existing infrastructure that's in place, which is why I consistently keep asking about the cost-benefit analysis. I recognize that we're at a crossroads in that either we are going to push this towards a commercial node that we're going to actually put the time, effort and abilities of our staff, which is in the planning department to plan around because there's so many elements of this that are so frustrating because I know that the developers put a lot of time and effort into really trying to figure out how to satisfy the real need in the city of Durham, but this is still the county. And so it's hard to, and we had this conversation beforehand and I said it to you then, like the transportation aspect of it and the load of how it all falls in this community is going to be like that crux. I'm still not sure yet because I'm just kind of like, this is a difficult decision to make because I do know that it's not about the consistency of whether we have a UDO or any man-made pool. It's actually around climate change and it's actually around how we build in the future and recognizing, like I said before, seven generations forward to do what we know is not sustainably feasible and the community that's a two-lane road just feels wrong. And so I'm cognizant that we could spend billions of dollars in this section of the community and make it as sustainable as we'd like to, but is that what we need to do right now considering all the issues we already have in Durham? And so I know we're talking about issues of gun violence, we're talking about issues of homelessness, we're talking about issues of overcrowded schools, which I know that 61,000 goes a long way to address, but it doesn't address adding any new schools. And as a city-county issue, where our students are, these families that are coming in matters. And all of these elements are factors that I put into play or that I run through in my mind to assess whether or not it's the greatest benefit for the city. I have no desire to stop developers from developing, but I do have a desire to protect my community and recognize that we can do better, we have to do better. And so recognizing that, I know I misspoke when I spoke to the city manager to say it was 30 acres, it's 216 acres, it's like three briar creeks. I'm like, this is, there's a way to go about developing in this area, and I am for certain that single-family townhomes and houses is not it. That being said, I don't want to ding the developer that comes forward first or that presents the plan that actually could fit in the space that aligns with the future land maps. But I do want to be cognizant, I keep going back and forth, but I do want to be cognizant that this is not something we're going to solve tonight. And I really would like to ask for more time because I would like more time to look at how much it's really gonna cost us, seriously. I'm not trying to delay it just to delay. It is really a concern of whether or not this is something that's gonna benefit the city as a whole. So yes, bringing in 216 acres of land from the county to the city, putting water and sewer in, that's phenomenal, but it will cost. And what are we giving up? And I've had the conversation about the water loads and how much development. I know that residential is our highest water use. I'm like, where are we going with this? How many developments can we do in this area? What does it look like? And I can't see it right now, I just, I'm not sure. Just honest. Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've got a couple of questions for the developers. That's all right. Could you talk a little bit about walkability, trails, amenities and those issues in your project? Sure, we've done a lot of work to try to preserve the piece of property to be usable for the people that are there. It's got meandering streams that go through it, as you could see on the slide. So it's got all these fingers and what we've done, we've kind of created individual communities inside of those. So there's little, they're blocks, they're not a lot of long streams, long roads with call to sacks and the typical kind of thing. You kind of come in, you'll be meandering through around all these streams and there'll be like little individual neighborhoods. We've connected those with an interconnection of trails that are off-road trails. Of course, there's sidewalk on both sides of the street and all the streets. But in addition to that, there's all kinds of, I guess nature trails is the way to say it, that we'll go along the streams and buffers and those will be at least two and a half miles. Some of our plans have them up to three miles but we're gonna put those in, we're putting in a large amenity swimming pool and the park system that you see in neighborhoods of this size, I don't have that as well. Now the closest grocery store is not walkable to this piece of property right now. But it's not far. It's four or five minute drive up the road. Thank you. Could you also talk a little bit about your building practices as regards sustainability? So we're what's known as a production builder. We build very efficiently designed homes. They are highly engineered down to try to shave out every nickel out of the project and every little piece of material. You might know we were recently purchased by Berkshire Hathaway. One of Warren Buffett's big reasons for acquiring builders was to try to push us into a more factory oriented production system. One of our sister companies is a manufactured home. So a lot of what we do is build off site in the factories and brought in the walls systems like that and they're very efficient. We build very efficient homes, very well insulated, very little material waste in what we do. Thank you. So we talked a lot about density when I talked to you about this project and about when I voted against the original wanting to see more homes and smaller homes on this site. I feel like we're, I'm probably one of those people that Charlie was referring to about some of my comments making it less exciting for him. And I feel like we're kind of in this balance of wanting to have denser development for both environmental and affordability and growth reasons, but also that you're building in a watershed that you have a number of streams that the topography is difficult. Could you have gotten any more units on this piece of property than you did? I don't believe that we could have. We were limited to the 616 that was the maximum amount for the studies that we had. But even if we were to go beyond that, it's very mountainous piece of property. If you go walk it, it's got a lot of topo. Mountainous may not be the word, but there's a lot of streams that go through. There's a lot of topo on the property. I guarantee you if you walk for 10 minutes, you'll be out of breath. You're not running an 18 minute 5K across this piece of property. 17. 17, 22. Don't shortchange them, buddy. So that kind of topo reason I brought that up makes grading of high density stuff very difficult. When you're trying to take something that's shaped all your regular and just flatten it out, you have to go in and clear cut, clear grade everything, make it level. And there's really no opportunities for preserving trees, buff streams, natural areas to do that. When you try to pack large structures together or long strings of townhomes together, it needs to be made flat to do that. There's no yard there to kind of absorb some of that topographic change. So the answer is no, I don't believe we could have gotten more on this property. Thank you. Yeah, making these decisions is always this complicated balance between the fact that Durham is growing and we need more housing. That density is environmentally beneficial that we are trying to protect our environmental assets as well as our infrastructure that we know that we need additional transit. I think that the proposal that's coming before us today is significantly improved from the proposal that we heard several months ago for a number of ways. Additional townhomes, especially at the price point of the low 200 is something that I believe Durham needs. That housing, that price point is affordable to folks at 80% of AMI, which is about as low as we're gonna get without a non-profit or government subsidy. So building that kind of, having private developers build that kind of housing, I believe is important for meeting our needs and for meeting our needs specifically for housing that's affordable to lower income families in our community. I believe this does, it makes a good balance between density and environmental protections if the maximum impervious service is 24% and you're at 24%, can't really ask for more of that. I appreciate the trails. I think that significantly improves walkability even though the style of the project is more kind of suburban and windy with longer, like windy blocks and longer blocks rather than kind of straight square blocks that you might see in a more urban area. And I think that it's, personally I have said, I don't care if we ever build another $400,000 single-family home in Durham. It doesn't bother me if we never build another one of those. It does bother me if we don't provide housing at this price point and more dense housing and missing middle housing like townhomes. So yes, I think to respond to some of the opponents, yes, I think 65% single-family housing is plenty of single-family housing but I think that it's not, we still don't have enough housing overall and having this kind of product, this townhome product that's affordable to more people is beneficial to the city of Durham overall. And just a quick comment on the traffic issue, from the study, it seemed the roads were under capacity even though they are smaller, narrower. I think as we see more development in the area, we'll have to think about more traffic improvements. The developer here is doing a number of traffic improvements but we're only eight miles from the city center. We're not going too far out into the hinterlands and I don't, from the studies and the information that we received, the traffic generated by this development is not going to even get those roads close to what their capacity is even at their current levels with the improvements of the developer's making. Yeah, I think that we often consider zoning recent proposals in the context of build nothing or build this but we're actually looking at build a very small number of homes that would be on walls and septic and would be much bigger and much less affordable or build this and I think this is much preferable to that. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Mr. Mayor, if I may, I'd like to say something on the transit question as well. Not unless somebody asked you that question, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, would you like to ask him any questions about the transit? I would love to. Could you expand a little bit on your thoughts about transit for the site? Thank you, Ms. Mayor Pro Tem. The point that I wanted to make is that currently Olive Branch Road, the only houses along there are single family houses on multi acre lots. There's no way as it's currently structured that anybody is gonna wanna run a bus line down there. The addition of 616 additional homes is what's going to add the density that eventually makes it make sense to run a transit line. The developer has committed to set aside space for a bus stop in the future when the line is planned. We would be very happy to have a line run down Olive Branch Road, but it's not gonna happen until the houses get there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Freeman. This had a question for our resident planning commissioner, and I just wanted to ask for some feedback around some of the comments that you've heard and just get your sense on much of this urban sprawl. I had Mr. Baker, did you hear a question? No, I did not. Council Member Freeman asked if you could, Council Member, do you wanna go ahead and restate it? Yes, thank you. I was just gonna ask your, I mean, you're hearing most of this conversation, and I'm assuming you're having some deliberate thoughts about the comments that you made. Just wanted to give you a moment to say whatever it is that you are thinking. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, a lot of things, so I appreciate that. You know, I think that a lot of the things that have been said tonight are absolutely right, and I definitely understand the comments about precedents and not using precedents, and so that was appreciated. I think that we need to reimagine what Durham can and should be, and I don't think that it can and should, I don't think that it should be single family only developments, and it's easy to focus on sort of the location of where this property is, and thinking about sprawl as kind of into the hinterlands and on the edge of the city, but we need to remember that Northgate neighborhood was once in the hinterlands and on the edge of the city, and et cetera. There were many developments that were once on the edge of the city and are now integrated in part of the city, and if you lift out whatever is on your table right now and look at the table, look at the table that you're sitting at, and look at the urban fabric that lies just south of I-85 and north of 147, you see a very compact development type, compact streets, highly integrated, very short block lengths, and if you look further south at the map that's on your table, you'll see very disconnected types of development, and that is what we build. That is the DNA that builds Durham, so it's not just, we talk a lot about use, we talk a lot about density, to talk more about form and about what Durham is so that people can just get places. They can get from point A to point B, and I know that it's hard to imagine because frankly one of the worst sprawling places in the country were surrounded by sprawl and it's hard to sort of figure that there would be anything else but that, but we can, we can be different and many communities are being different and the way that they're doing it is by changing the DNA, the way that they grow, and they're doing that by coding it into their regulations and it also makes that, makes it much easier for developers because they just want to be, they just want to get their project through. They want to get their project through quickly and efficiently and we can have two winners when we have the right standards in place, when we have the right regulations in place so that we are creating a sustainable and integrated and inclusive and equitable and greenhouse gas efficient city. We can code that into the regulations and create a much more efficient and effective process and predictable process for the developer, for you, for the planning commission, for the citizens, for residents and neighbors and that's something that we need to do. We certainly don't need to stop building. We need to continue to build. That is absolutely critical and absolutely important but this development is going to be here forever. So we can build something wrong but if there's connectivity we can fix it over time. We can always change land use but once streets are on the ground it is very difficult to change that because those are legal, those are dedicated. So just as an example, a good block length, a good block length is somewhere between 300 and 600 feet. You can go up 700 or 800 feet and have that be a good walkable block length and so if you go to some of the neighborhoods, the pre-World War II neighborhoods, those are the block lengths that you'll find. The types of block lengths that you find in this part of the city, in this area, we're talking about not 300 or 400 or 500 foot long block lengths, we're talking about 3,000 or 4,000 foot long block lengths. This is never going to be walkable. It's never gonna be enough, there's never gonna be an opportunity to fix this once it is put in place. It will be too difficult and if we continue to build this way, if we continue to do what we're doing, it will be virtually impossible to reach sort of a greenhouse gas neutral city. So if we imagine a scenario where the Green New Deal passes, we can't just flip a switch and somehow reach greenhouse gas neutrality. We have to change the way that we live and the way that we grow and that doesn't mean social engineering or anything like that. In fact, what we're doing now is social engineering by forcing people to live with cars. And the last thing that I wanna say because I've gone off way too long right now is that we oftentimes think of sort of housing affordability but what planners and what the direction that planning is going, the planning profession is going, is thinking more about housing and transportation. So, and I mentioned this in the Planning Commission meeting, when city planners look at a map of any city, any American city where we have that dense mix of uses in the core and walkability and accessibility and then the much more auto oriented development on the outskirts of the city. When we look at a map like that and we look at housing prices and we look at the percentage of families that are housing cost burden. So they're spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Those people live closer to the city center because houses are more expensive. But then when we look at how much, how many people are spending more than 45% on housing and transportation and the map flips. People are spending more than 45% of their income on housing plus transportation in areas outside of those dense mixed use areas. And so I think that that is a very important consideration. And also considering who gets to live where, who can afford to live where, we often think about housing but we don't think enough about neighborhoods. Not just housing affordability but neighborhood affordability. Not just the provision of housing but the provision of neighborhoods and making sure that we have enough housing but also enough neighborhoods. So I hope that that gets at some of the, helps you think this through and gets at some of the thoughts that you had. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I would add to that that it's not just housing and transportation that planning will have to look at. It's also economic development and recognizing that there has to be engines in the community that actually help facilitate jobs and access that's not just where you live. A lot of bedroom communities and not enough mixed use, so thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanna thank the Mayor Pro Tem who actually helped me with the clarifying questions around transportation and the ability to handle the load of commuters on the road. I also wanna say I totally got what Councilor Caballero was actually saying. I didn't get the sense that she obviously can speak for herself but my sense was that she was responding to the notion that was in the air of precedent and if that in fact took place then it would be a de facto moratorium if we took the precedent seriously. So that was my sense of her. I didn't get the sense that she was actually advocating or suggesting that we were imposing moratorium. My sense was that as I sensed as well that if that precedent germ took place or took hold and we tried to adhere to that then by definition if we adhere to it it would be a de facto moratorium. So I just wanted to put that out there. We have tears for a reason and living in the suburbs is different than living in the urban core and a lot of people head out to the suburban tier because they can't afford to live in the urban core as was already intoned. And if there is an attempt and I'm not suggesting that this is a foot but if there is an effort to urbanize the suburban tier then I hope we don't bring the baggage of pricing folk out of the suburban tier like we do in the urban tier. And I resonate so deeply with what the commissioner said about accessibility and leaving your cars at home, Google, Middleton and Light Rail. So I understand the importance of it but as a legislator, as a policymaker I have a decision to make tonight that's before me. I'm not interested in making this developer the test case or the poster child for our aspirations. And part of the reason why I'm feeling more comfortable not doing that is precisely because of some of the questions that the Mayor Pro Tem asked around the actual impact transportation wise and car wise. Again, I'll just say and this will hopefully be my final comment on this. The staff's recommendation to approve, I believe was predicated upon a reading of our comprehensive plan as it stands now. And I do not want to, this developer, I appreciate the proffers that you've made in terms of DPS and relative to our affordable housing fund. Absent some really kind of dramatic impact that would be had on the quality of life of folks that are already out there. I went to the opening of station 17, was there when they cut the ribbon. So I'm aware of our increased capacity out there and someone earlier mentioned the reason we've got it out there is because we're anticipating a development. I don't see the suburban tier looking like the urban core anytime soon and in some ways I hope it doesn't in terms of pricing folk out. I appreciate the price points of the homes. More people are moving to DERM. If we could hold that number static, then the 65% single family housing number would be contextualized a little different for me. But there are more people moving here and many of them simply can't live in the urban core. And I think it's instructive to remember that the expanded housing choices is for the urban tier. So I put that to you. So I'm inclined more now to vote approval based on everything I've said, based upon the Mayor Port Tim's comments, questions rather, clarifying impact in terms of traffic. But I'm still listening. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be brief. I think many of the concerns that were raised by the Planning Commission and that we've discussed tonight are completely appropriate. I think they're relevant and I think we should be having them for all of these cases. And I most certainly think that they should be a part of our planning for our new comprehensive plan. I'm gonna vote for this project for many of the reasons outlined by the Mayor Port Tim. And I just look forward to continue to have this conversation. I think these considerations around transportation and density and the provision of public utilities and climate change are very urgent and should be foundations of our future land use planning. And so I just wanna say that and say that I intend to vote for this project. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. Colleagues, we have had another person sign up to speak on this item. Deborah Williams, Ms. Williams. Ms. Williams, are you a proponent or a proponent? I think I'm a proponent. Can you speak briefly on this? I will. I just have a question for the Council because I was here the last time that the developers came forward and there were questions about DPS and I did try to find it and I heard Councilman Freeman mention a little bit but I wanna understand better what is the offering for DPS? We will have to develop or answer that. Okay, and then the second portion is I live at 3319 Redgate Drive which is between Highway 70 and 98. Right now it feels a little stressed when we talk about the traffic that would lead to Olive Branch. And I just wanna understand and right now it feels like there is a food desert in that area to me. Although I have the ability to go where I need to go, I just wanna understand, I know this is kind of in between the county and city so I wanna understand how we're going to support number one traffic through that zone of 90 Highway 98 and also how we're gonna support what's already there and that is lacking. Thank you, Ms. Lee. Especially for DPS. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I'll ask the developer to please respond concerning your proffer regarding during public schools or developers representative. Sure, Mr. Mayor. The proffer for public schools is $100 per unit since we are anticipating 616 houses comes to $61,600. In regards to the question about food access, we looked at this when it was before the planning commission. The nearest grocery store to the development is about a mile away on 98. Food Lion, if you go the other direction going south towards Brier Creek, it's about three and a half miles to Brier Creek and of course, there's several grocery stores down there. Thank you. And I'll ask staff to respond to Ms. Williams' comments on transportation. I believe that her, she talked about the road connecting 98 and 70 and Mr. Judge, welcome if you could perhaps comment on that aspect of this development. Yes, Bill Judge, transportation. As you heard previous, there was a traffic impact analysis and the developer is making all of the required roadway improvements to provide acceptable levels of service at the offsite intersections. So beyond that, the only other roadway improvements are essentially a three-leaning of Isle Branch Road adjacent to the site to provide left-hand lanes into and out. Additionally, they are providing the collector street that would connect with adjacent development to the West to provide a collector street between Isle Branch and Docknickles Road. Do you wanna comment also on the general, on the changes and level of service that this development will or will not cause? So, yeah, primarily, yeah, the existing traffic out there is very low. That's why there is a lot of capacity, but there is a lot of development pressure in the area. So when we looked at the cumulative impacts, there were a few of the larger offsite intersections that did require either signalization or turn lanes. Thank you. Thank you for your questions, Ms. Williams. All right, other colleagues? Any other colleagues? So I originally voted no when this came before us, and my inclination right now is to vote yes, and partly because I think that the developer has worked very diligently. I know that there were several comments within our planning commissioners asking specifically around trails and open space, and you had the conversations with key non-profits and made those commitments. I also think, and this is what I meant by moratorium, I meant that the other types of development that are going to be designed for this area or people are gonna be putting are similar to this. While I very much appreciate Commissioner Baker's sentiments and actually agree with him, a moratorium to me means that we'd have to literally put development on pause to get the things he's talking about, to get transit out there, to get the streets in the way that he is indicating that we don't, most of the main streets out there are state controlled. So there's vast limitations. And my concern is if we, I think that the developer has worked so diligently with staff and with planning commission and with others around their concerns, and I think it sends a very high expectation on what we expect from the folks who are coming down the pipeline. And so my fear is if we say no to this, then developers will see that as a, well, we will do what we can by right. And what we will get is not any better for the environment. And we will miss a good opportunity showing the development community the expectations and the tone that we want in Durham. And so that is why I'm moving my vote. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have another person who's signed up to comment, a Mr. Matt Kopak. Mr. Kopak, welcome. This is a public hearing item. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on the side? Would you like to speak, sir? You do. Thank you. Mr. Kopak, welcome. You have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. I'd like you to take less. Yes, I will take less. I rise actually without full information or background on this particular issue, but I understand that y'all are grappling with some difficult questions where there are tensions that exist between our needs for housing, for connectivity, for transit, and the impacts that I can have also on the environment, which is so important to our quality of life and health. And I rise on behalf of the Durham Environmental Affairs Board, City County Board, which I chair, and just want to offer the Environmental Affairs Board, which are here to work with you and advise the city council staff on planning commission as well and offer to be a partner when you wrestle with these sorts of questions in the past. I don't think we are set up currently. We don't have the connectivity to pull that group, which has expertise to offer in these difficult decisions that we're wrestling with. And since that's what we're here to do, I just want to offer us up and would love to find out from the right staff points of contact, how it is that we can appropriately loop in the Environmental Affairs Board in some of these sorts of questions that our city and county are wrestling with. So that's all that I wish to offer this evening. I'd love if we could find a way to make that happen. I can reach out to Mr. Hayes and others or Mr. Young and see if there's a way to do that. Thank you. I think one of the main ways will be involvement in the comp plan, which also includes our transit plan rewrite. Yeah, absolutely. So it'll be critically important for the EAB members to be involved in those discussions. Yeah, and so we intend to be engaged in those comp plan discussions as these come up more one off, more periodic. I think it'd be great to figure out how we can make those connections as well so we can be a thought partner and supporter. Great, thank you. Thank you, and I think talking to Mr. Young about that's a great idea. All right, we have another speaker signed up on this item. Mr. Harold Rassenin, did I get your name right? Yes, sir. Are you a proponent or an oponent? Mixed on that, but I've lived in this neighborhood for 20 years or almost 20 years. So I don't have heard my perspective on what's going on. The food line is two miles to keep you accurate. The Barrier Creek is five miles. I know they kind of underestimated those. Some questions I have is if the city annex this piece of land, what about the surrounding residents that are in between, will they be annexed? Will the whole community become rezoned or will the existing housing be restricted to the existing zoning? Let me ask Ms. Sunyak if she could answer that first question and then we'll take your other questions. Ms. Sunyak? So if this application is approved, the annexation area would only be effective for the portion that has been included as part of the application. You would not, if you were a surrounding property, it would not automatically then assume that you would be annexed into the city. Same thing with the zoning, the zoning change would only affect those properties that have been included as part of this application. Right, but the concern I have is there's this project, there's one directly behind me that's going to be proposed soon. There's several on Dock-Nickels Road. So you can see that the whole area is becoming city. I feel for the deer herd. Let's put it that way. And the barn owls that live out there. I had one other question. Oh, as far as the traffic is concerned, a lot of people use that area as a shortcut going from Wake Forest down into the park to avoid traffic on 98 and to basically shave off a few miles going into RTP. So if you will go there and sit at that corner of Dock-Nickels Road and Olive Branch Road at four o'clock in the afternoon to about six o'clock in the afternoon, you'll see that it's queued up, halfway up Dock-Nickels Road. And in the morning, because it's a right turn, there's a lot of people that just fly by through there, but that's should be considered in traffic. That's all I had. Thank you, Mr. Reston. You're absolutely right that our city is urbanizing. And this is, we have so many people that are moving here and they are demanding housing. There is a huge demand for it and housing being built all over County and you're absolutely right that this is there is a cost to nature. All right, council members, any other comments? Any other comments? All right, if not, I'm going to declare this public hearing closed and the matter is now before the council. If anyone wishes to make a motion at this time, the motion that we would need would be first motion. Mr. Ramu to adopt the ordinance and next in 1001 all the branch road into the city of Durham. Thank you. That's the motion that we would need. That's a motion by council member Austin. Second. Second by the mayor pro Tim. Madam clerk, will you please open the vote? Please close the vote. And the motion passes four to zero with council member. Four to three. I'm sorry, four to three with council member Freeman and Reese and Mayor Schull voting no. Thank you very much. We'll now have the motion to adopt a consistency statement. So moved. Second. Madam clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote. And the motion passes five to two with council member Freeman and council member Reese voting no. Thank you. And now for motion three to adopt an ordinance of many the Durham UDO. So moved. Second. Madam clerk, please open the vote. I'm sorry, did I have to say close the vote? I apologize. Madam clerk, please close the vote. And the motion passes six to one with council member Freeman voting no. Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone who's been here tonight. Thank you to the developer. Thank you to the people who have spoken on this issue. I think we're having a very important discussion in Durham. This discussion will mainly be joined in our comp plan rewrite. And, but it also playing out in other ways as we discuss these individual developments. I will appreciate again all of you all for being here tonight and for what you've had to offer. Thank you. All right, we'll now move to item 15, zoning map change for 1612 Carpenter Fletcher Road. And we'll first hear the report from staff. Hello, Ms. Struthers. Good evening. I'm Emily Struthers with the planning department. I will now present case C19 00017 for 1612 Carpenter Fletcher Road. A request for a zoning map change has been received from Daniel Jewel with Coulter Jewel Thames PA for two parcels located at 1612 and 1562 Carpenter Fletcher Road. The site is presently zoned office institutional, OI. The applicant proposes to change this designation to commercial general with a text only development plan, CGD. Text only development plans are relatively new type of development plan. It allows proffer text commitments that specify limit and or prohibit uses within the zoning district requested pursuant to UDO section 531, the use table. No graphic plan is provided with the text only development plan. This rezoning request includes a text commitment. The uses will be limited to UDO section 525F, retail sales and services, and further limited to health club or studio. The site is currently designated as commercial on the future land use map, which is consistent with the proposed zoning change. Durham Planning Commission at their October 15th, 2019 meeting recommended approval of the proposed commercial general with a text only development plan, CGD. The zoning district by a vote of 12 to one. Staff determines that the request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. Two motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt a consistency statement and the second is for the zoning ordinance. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Others. You have heard to report from staff and I'm now going to declare this public hearing open. And first I'm going to ask, are there any questions from four staff by members of the council? Hearing none, we do have one speaker to this item and that's Mr. Dan Jewel. Mr. Jewel, welcome. Mr. Jewel, I'll give you three minutes and it turns out you need more if that could happen. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council. I am Dan Jewel. Cultural Jewel Thames at 111 West Main Street. Here this evening at the request of our client, Mr. Steve Escheverry, just to tell you a little bit about the request, Steve operates this great fitness outfit called a Rickey on hot yoga currently located in the shopping center at Fayetteville in 54. But Steve has dreamed for a long time of owning his own space, where he's room to expand and be closer to where his customers live and work to be able to keep up with the ever evolving trends in fitness training, which I haven't been aware of, but learning a lot. Steve found this location, a former daycare center that has been closed for several years and it seems ideal for what he wants to do. We first tried to convince the planning department that the use might be perhaps considered closer to a dance studio than anything else, which actually would have permitted him to move in without a rezoning. That didn't work though, possibly because the staff looked at the same video I did that showed that what folks do in this fitness training is not exactly the same as learning the sampler or the foxtrot. So that's why we're here tonight to request the rezoning to general commercial with a very, very specific use limitation, that being a health club or studio. And as Emily explained, the future land use map already designates this property as commercial. So at a minimum, this request brings the zoning into conformance with the flume and the surrounding area is already generally commercial in character with a self storage facility right across Carpenterfletcher Road, commercial uses to the east and south and an active railroad abutting on the Western property line. The site's less than an acre. And once we incorporate all the ordinance required, setbacks, landscape buffers, tree coverage areas, stormwater management of parking, we have just enough land to maybe build about 7,000 square feet of building. And Steve said that works perfect for him. So given our specific self-imposed use limitation, the limited additional development opportunity on the property and the character of the surrounding area, we hope you can find that this is an appropriate request and find in favor of that request. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Joule. This is a public hearing item. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard? If not, are there any questions or comments by members of the council? Mayor Prottam. Thank you. I just have a quick question for staff. Thank you. So I was a little confused about why this wouldn't be allowed in OI. Could you just say a little bit about that? Sure. The use is a little difficult to pinpoint specifically in our ordinance breakdown of uses. So there was some back and forth as to whether it be considered more like a gymnasium or more like a health club. And so after back and forth, the determination identified the use as outlined there, which would be specified in commercial given that health club overlap. Okay, so closer to a health club than a dance studio, but a dance studio is allowed in... Yes, the initial request was more towards the language of gymnasium. And we were concerned that that would potentially produce should the proposed owner not follow through could produce even a higher traffic impacts from a more of a gymnasium standpoint. So through the rezoning process, we tweaked the language there a little bit more to be more specific to their specific use. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Others. Any other comments? If not, I'm gonna declare this public hearing closed and the matter is now before the council, we would need a motion to adopt a consistency statement. I'll move. Second. The moved and seconded, we adopt the consistency statement. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote. The motion passes seven, zero. And we need a motion to adopt the ordinance amending the Durham Unified Development Ordinance. So moved. Second. The moved and seconded. If we adopt an ordinance amending the UDO, Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote. The motion passes seven, zero. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Joule. Thank you. Good luck to you and your new business venture, sir. Have a nice day. Now we'll move to item 16, the plan amendment for Forest Hills and we will hear the report from staff. How are you being? I'm Carla Rosenberg with the Planning Department. This is case A180004, Forest Hills, requests for a future land use map amendment and development tier change were received from Timothy Profeta, represented by Bill Bryan of Morningstar Law Group for 450 parcels of land totaling nearly 200 acres. The properties are located within the Forest Hills neighborhood, which is bounded by Kent Street and Shorm Street to the west, Stewart Drive, Summit Street and South Rocksboro Street to the south, American Tobacco Trail to the east and East Forest Hills Plaza, Welles Street and Biven Street to the north. The original application submitted in April 2018 contained parcels pertaining to the Pinecrest Development. These parcels were removed from the application in a subsequent revised version in August 2019. So the applicant is proposing to change the future land use of 177 acres of land from medium density residential to categories of lower density based upon the existing zoning designations. If zoned RS10 or RS20, the applicant proposes changing from too low density residential. If zoned RS8, RSM, RU5 or RU5-2, the applicant proposes low medium density residential. Approximately 20 acres of land designated as recreation and open space, open space will maintain the current designation. In addition, the applicant proposes to change the development tier for the entire 197 acres from urban to suburban. The Durham Planning Commission at their September 15th, 2019 meeting recommended denial by an even vote of six to six. Staff determines that the requests are inconsistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. Two motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt a consistency statement as required by the North Carolina General Statute, 160A 383. And the second is to adopt a resolution amending the future land use map such that all parcels currently zoned RS10 and RS20 shall be designated as low density residential and all parcels currently zoned RS8, RSM, RU5 and RU5-2 shall be designated as low medium density residential. And that the development tier of the stated parcels along with the adjacent recreation and open space be amended from urban to suburban as shown in attachment three. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Ms. Rosenberg. You have now heard the report from staff and I'm gonna declare this public hearing open. We have speakers for this item. I do wanna mention that someone at the address 706 East Forest Hills Boulevard, if that's you, you didn't put your name on the card. So if you're here and you live at 706 East, Ms. Pless, gotcha, okay. No. Ma'am, no problem. I figured we could figure it out if we just asked. Okay, I'm gonna do this a little differently because we have non-speakers who are proponents and two speakers, I believe only two speakers who are opponents. And I'm gonna give everyone three minutes and I'm gonna begin, I'm sorry, I should have first asked colleagues, I apologize. Are there questions that my colleagues have for staff at this point before we hear the speakers? Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Hi, thanks. Could you explain a little bit about our procedure for this kind of resident initiated comp plan and zoning amendment proposal? A procedure, you mean differing from- Like how does this happen? What's our policy for an individual bringing this sort of request to the council? I mean, we review it as any other request that would come in. It's a plan amendment, it's a private citizen, whether there's any other group behind it, it's reviewed as any other request would be. I guess why I'm confused is we mostly get these sort of requests from people who own the property, whereas this is a request from a single individual for a large piece of property. My understanding is that the applicant lives in the area in that vicinity. Right, okay. But they're asking to change the entire neighborhood, which is of course not entirely owned by them. I think it's very different from what we usually see. And so I'm just wondering how this comes about. Right, so good evening again, Pat Young with Planning Department. So the action before you is only to change the future land use map designation, not the zoning, and that can be done without the affirmative consent of all the parties. So there were a number of signatories in the area in support of this, including your attachments, but it's not required that the affirmative consent of all the property owners be provided. So that is unusual, but it's legal and it is precedented. Is that, would that be the case even if the applicant didn't live in the area? Like, could anyone apply for a slum change for anywhere in Durham? Yes. Interesting, okay, thanks. Mr. Mayor? Council Member Freeman. All right, one more question, Pat. I was trying to prevent you from walking back and forth, but you'll get your extra steps. There you go. Okay, I like that. You got in your extra steps. Thank you. Did you catch that? I need it. So I'm just trying to make sure I understand. Is this proposed slum amendment trying to undo the comp plan changes? Is that the gist of it from 2005? I would have to do some research on what the plan designation was prior to 2005, but it is requesting to take it to a lower proposed future density than the 2005 comprehensive plan called for. Okay, because I think it's, well, I'm just noting and I think it's on, I can't tell what page number, but in the report and the summary around site history, it's showing the tier designation was changed from medium density or changed from low density into medium or converted to medium density in that same area. I just wanted to know if it was the same. Well, 2005 was the first time that the tier system was put in place through the comprehensive plan. The proposal before you tonight, substantially, I wouldn't say completely, is proposing to bring the future landings designation into consistency with what exists today. In terms of land uses and density of land uses. Thank you. It could be some minor accommodation for additional density, but very little. Thank you. Any other questions for staff before we hear our speakers? All right, I'm gonna first hear from the proponents and I'm gonna ask, as I call your name, if you could line up over here to my right. First, we'll hear from Matt McDowell. Second, Camille Blommer. Third, Christy Ferguson. And fourth, Tim Profetta. If you all could make your way over here to my right and speak in that order, that would be great. Mr. McDowell, are you here? Great, thank you. Please come up, give us your name and address and you have three minutes. Thank you very much. My name is Matt McDowell. Our address is 1540 Hermitage Court. And of course, I'm here to ask you all to vote in favor of this petition tonight. The core of the issue really is whether Forest Hills should be designated as part of the urban or the suburban tier. And I thought it was illuminating to read the definitions in the current comprehensive plan of the various tiers. I was interested particularly that the definition of the urban tier is, and I'll quote here, land primarily developed before the 1960s with small lot sizes in traditional grid patterns and differing uses in proximity to one another. And yeah, that definition is very useful. I've lived in urban neighborhoods, I love them, I get why other people do. But I guess what's confusing to me as an ordinary person is that's just not Forest Hills. For several reasons, the topography of Forest Hills, not to be captain obvious, but it is really hilly. And there are winding streets, the park on both sides of university really render the neighborhood more suburban. And accordingly, Forest Hills zoning designations, it's mostly RS 10, RS 20, they align with that suburban feel. And so granting this request in my mind anyway really irons out the discrepancy that we have between zoning designations in the UDO and the flum tiers. And I think it's important too, I was able to take the Planning Academy's course earlier this year. And when we're talking about the future land use map and petitions to change it, it was really clear to me that, I just always or just about always petitions to change the future land use map were brought forth by developers in the course of proceedings. And I think it's important to remember that this proceeding was brought forward by a group of ordinary people who have had to really dig in and learn the UDO and learn how these processes have worked. We see there's been a great deal of development in Durham and clearly tonight's hearing is evidence there's going to be a great deal more. And that's appropriate given the fact that so many more people are coming here, as the mayor has said. But I hope you all will consider this as sort of a modest way to a iron out of discrepancy in our current laws and to acknowledge that it's important to hear the concerns of ordinary. Some use the term citizen planners. I'm not sure I've earned that term yet but just ordinary people who bring forward ways to improve things. So thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. McDowell. We'll now hear from Camille Blumber. And I hope I've said your name right. Thank you. And please give us your name and address. You also have three minutes. Camille Blumber, 52 Beverly Drive, Durham, North Carolina 27707. Mr. Mayor, city council members, where do you stay? For those of you who grew up in Durham, I'm pretty sure you have either been asked that question or have asked it yourself. The significance is the answer meant something. By responding Northgate Park, Walltown, East Durham, you immediately knew the community a person belonged to. It was a neighborhood, not a development. I believe all of our Durham neighborhoods are significant and we have an obligation to be good stewards of these communities. I also support growth and change. And yes, we can do both. We do not have to destroy the character of our neighborhoods to do both. We just have to be thoughtful and deliberate. To that end, I support and I'm asking you to support this amendment. This will allow our neighborhood to grow and increase density without the risk of losing the forests and forest hills. By the way, a couple weeks ago, I attended my 40th high school reunion, Durham High School class in 1979, Go Bull Dogs. I mentioned to someone that I had moved back to Durham about 12 years ago and he asked me, where do you stay? It's good to be home. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Blommer. We'll now hear from Christy Ferguson. Dr. Ferguson, welcome. Please give us your name and address and you have three minutes. It's Dr. Christy Ferguson, 1011 Homer Street. Good evening. I'm here to request that you vote for this amendment. The current flammer flume is at odds with what's on the ground in the neighborhood. Taken to its logical conclusion, it means we want forest hills to disappear. And I don't think that that's what anybody wants. Contrary to the stereotypes of forest hills, it's economically diverse. There are very large houses, but there are also small houses. There are some under 1,000 square feet. The current policy encourages builders to roll up several small homes, knock them down and build something expensive in their place. As part of the new comp plan, Durham could design something more nuanced and flexible more nuanced than bubbles of increasing density drawn in somewhat arbitrary locations. We could have a plan that would allow our neighborhoods to evolve instead of endangering them. Forest hills still has undeveloped land that could incorporate more diverse housing types. For example, there are two large adjacent parcels with owners who've signaled their intent to sell in the next couple of years. We could plan something in those and other locations that would meet the goals of the city. Maybe quadruplexes, maybe apartment buildings would be right in those locations. We risk losing the opportunity to be intentional by continuing to ignore both the reality of what's in place and the actual real opportunities that we have. If you think that as a matter of policy, Durham's historic assets are worth preserving, not for me, not for the current residents, but because they're important to the city, then I ask you vote in favor of this amendment. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Ferguson. Mr. Proffetta, and as Mr. Proffetta is coming up, if I could ask the next three speakers to please come over here to my right. That would be Merle, Richie, Tom Clayton and Ellen Pless. Welcome, Mr. Proffetta. Please give us your name and address, and you have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem and the council. And my name is Tim Proffetta. I reside at 1014 West Forest Hills Boulevard in Durham. I'm also a signator, as you noted, on the petition. I just want to speak to that briefly. When I signed as the party on this petition, I was signed on behalf of a large coalition. My neighbors had organized themselves. The staff's talked about the signatures on the petition. So I don't know procedurally if I should have joined myself with 40 others, but I offered myself as a signatory, but didn't intend to be a single moving party. I'm here to ask you to vote in favor of the amendment for the amendment of Flum and Forest Hills. And I want to make three quick points. I want to first say that, as we all know, Forest Hills is the distinct diverse neighborhood that serves as a beautiful resource for all of Durham. Just come to our park in the weekends and look at the pickup soccer in the park. Look at the people down at the water park. Come to our neighborhood in Halloween and see how our streets team with everybody. It's a, there's a character in the neighborhood that I think we all value and enjoy. Second point I want to make is that there's a fundamental disconnect between the Flum and the neighborhood. The neighborhood plan and the neighborhood zoning right now, which is completely unknown to most of my neighbors and residents of the, until recent years. It seems I've been creating this 2005 planning process that did not really inquire into the neighborhood's character and desires, but simply created a plan that was more based on the proximity to the town center. And it had no inquiry after where our hydrologies like our transportation capabilities look right and our historic development is. And most of us who moved that neighborhood, I moved in 2009, didn't know it existed. We just knew that the neighborhood for the character was. Third point I want to make is our neighborhood wants to be part of helping Durham evolve, not stay static. My neighbors and I are not resisting any change at all. We want to be part of creating a plan for change that does not lose what makes forest so special. We are awakening to these needs. We want to work with the city to create a new comprehensive plan that allows for growth, embraces our diversity and makes Durham thrive with forest hills remaining as part of its historic center. The council knows we're all engaging in that planning process. Our neighborhood is engaging in that planning process and hoping to bring our neighborhood together to support the city's needs. What we're asking for today and we're hoping to do is work forward with you and work with you in partnership to create a new comprehensive plan allows Durham to grow while also preserving things like forest hills that make it special. To be grant this amendment today, that'd be a great first step in that partnership by protecting the neighborhood until we can create the process to ensure the new plan fits our desires for the evolution of forest hills. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Profeta. We'll now hear from Merle Richie. Ms. Richie, welcome. Please give us your name and address and you also have three minutes. My name is Merle Richie. I live at 1552 Hermitage Court. Mr. Mayor and Council. I've lived in four houses in forest hills since being born in Watts Hospital, now the North Carolina School of Math and Science in 1942. Durham has always been a diverse city but diversity has increased as population has grown. Durham is now on a roll. It is fully celebrating its diversity. Sometimes we think of diversity in terms of people but I want to speak to you with regard to diversity in terms of neighborhoods. The feeling that I want to impart to you tonight is that forest hills represents a factor in Durham's diversity. It is internally diverse and externally diverse within Durham. If it is made more dense, it will lose its special character. Presently, I think all the races, girls on the run, moonlight biking, all the races, I don't have the statistics but they all come by my house and it's wonderful really and it's nice that they have this place where they can experience a tree cover and not so heavy traffic to have these activities which benefit our community greatly. Perhaps our diversity is what makes Durham special. We don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. We should celebrate our diverse neighborhoods and not change the diverse character that has put Durham on the map. Please vote in favor of this amendment. Thank you very much, Ms. Ritchie. Ms. Ritchie, I run by your house a lot of Sunday mornings but you're in really call it racing. Yes. Well, I wanted you to actually race. I know they did. I know they did. I know because it's very consistent. Scholars and people who have data. Yes, that's true. Thank you. Mr. Clayton, welcome. You also have three minutes. Thank you. My name is Tom Clayton. I've lived at 1016 Homer Street in Forest Hills for 33 years. Unfortunately, a couple of you have heard me make a very similar statement at the Durham or the City County Planning Committee meeting recently but I think it's most appropriate that I make the same point with the rest of you tonight. So what I'd simply like to say is that cities don't grow in concentric circles as there are more significant factors impacting housing decisions like varied topography, prior development, proximate, proximity to transportation arteries and existing commercial enclaves than imaginary lines on a map. The purely theoretical concept on which the current future land use map is based might be elegant in its simplicity yet entirely flawed in depicting what exists. Far from conforming to homogenized tiers, Durham's multi-talented, innovative and independent citizens have created a rich patchwork of neighborhoods and housing options throughout the city which for the most part are quite viable. And now with the implementation of expanding housing choices and the affordable housing bond can become an even more beautiful, thoroughly realized quilt. So I urge you to support the proposed Forest Hills Amendment to the Flum as a step away from the hopelessly flawed doughnuts of density concept and a step toward a comprehensive plan that more appropriately reflects the multi-hued city we all have built and which provides an effective way forward that avoids the imposition of such an ill-fitted, entirely artificial construct. Thanks so much for your consideration. Thank you very much, Mr. Clayton. And now we'll hear from Ms. Pless. Welcome. Thank you so much, Mayor Shul. I'm sorry, I forgot to write my name on the card and I appreciate you catching it for a return for you correcting my math. Thank you. Please give us your name and address. You also have three minutes. Yes, indeed. My name is Ellen Plus, I live at 706 East Forest Hills Boulevard and you have heard the staff's report so this is kind of a citizens report. The site is located between Moorhead Hill and Tuscaloosa Lakewood neighborhoods both of which already have special designations. One has a local historic district and the other has an NPO. The site is not contiguous to the downtown. The site is developed and built out according to the original designer's suburban plan. That plan and its associated district are recognized by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Park Service. The site contains a mixture of hardwood and pine forest including old growth trees surrounding an active and expanding FEMA floodplain, floodway and floodway fringe. The site has numerous steep slopes and supports headwater zones for the most contaminated stream in Durham County, Third Fort Creek. Third Fort Creek flows into Jordan Lake and serves as a source of regional drinking water. In their 2019 Third Fort Creek TDML response plan planning staff site construction and development sources of sediment and runoff from impervious surfaces as significant contributors to the stream's unacceptable and worsening condition. Third Fort Creek's water quality indices continue to decline, excuse me, despite a previous stream restoration project. The site overlaps the National Historic District of Forest Hills, protections for which are available through the state of North Carolina Session Law 2015-86. The site is developed and built out according to the original developer's intentional suburban plan. Through consistent citizen stewardship, it has remained one of Durham's most intact historic assets for almost a century. The intentional suburban plan and curvilinear street layout support one of the historic district's most major landscape features which is the hardwood and pine forest for which many streets in the neighborhood, which, sorry, for which many streets and the neighborhood itself are named. In turn, the forest supports the environmental stability of the steep slopes and Third Fort Creek. The applicant proposes to adjust the future land use map to more closely match the environmentally sensitive built-out environment, whereas the current future land use map prescribes densities that fundamentally threaten the forest, the recognized historic built environment and its setting, and the damaged creek. This application is consistent with compliments and or is supportive of the comprehensive plan, Chapter Five, the Eno Hall Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan, Third Fort Creek 2019 TDML Response Plan, North Carolina Session Law 2015-86, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior's Standards and Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties and Districts written by Sally Jewel and Ken Salazar. It is important to note that these guidelines call for, quote, retaining the historic relationship between buildings and the landscape. Thank you, please vote in favor of this. Thank you very much, Ms. Plass. Before I call the next two speakers, I just wanna ask, is there anyone else? This is a public hearing item, and I have Mr. Dick Hales and Mr. Dan Bach who are here to speak. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item? Mr. Ghosh. Okay, did you do it on this item? I did, and the next one. Okay, well, I don't have the card, but... I won't out-promise. Mr. Ghosh, are you an opponent or a proponent? Proponent. Proponent, you're right here, it's my apologies. Yes, you're a proponent, Mr. Ghosh, please go ahead. You have three minutes and please give us your name and address. No problem, and my name is Neil Ghosh. I'm an attorney at the Morningstar Law Group at 112 West Main Street, here in Durham. Good evening, Mayor Shuler, whatever you're going by these days, and Mayor Pro-Tim Johnson and members of the city council. Be careful, be careful, Mr. Ghosh. Actually, I didn't know. Anyway, I'll be brief in my comments because the residents here in Forest Hills have done a lot of great work and said a lot. I mean, said basically all there is to say. And frankly, I'm very proud of them for being a group of neighbors that has taken advantage of a development process which oftentimes I think neighbors find themselves trying to catch up when there's a development in their community, trying to catch up on learning how to do that and what it all means. And they have taken, I think, an extra step in actually taking advantage of the tools available to them in the unified development ordinance, which is not something, as Mayor Pro-Tim Johnson alluded to, not something that you see happen all that often. And I think this case is important for exactly that reason. And I know that it's not conceptually something that we're used to seeing and it's not an easy case. And I think the 6-6 vote at the Planning Commission supports that conclusion as well. But these neighbors, I think, are making a statement about what they would like to see in their community. And I know that there is an effort in the city to redo its comprehensive plan and rewrite its comprehensive plan. My sincere hope, regardless of what my clients think, and I mean, just as a citizen of Durham, my sincere hope is that we move away from the concentric circle ideas because Durham is more than just a set of circles. There are neighborhoods in the urban tier, what we call the urban tier today that are not urban in nature and they were designed that way. And one of them is Forest Hills. And I think that in our next iteration of a comprehensive plan, I would hope that we take the time to be more intentional about how we're describing our different areas and what we want to see there in preserving some of those areas, those neighborhoods that are worth preserving. And I would say, I would argue that Forest Hills is one of those neighborhoods. Sure, it is not at a density that is consistent with what you would see in an urban tier. However, it is an important part of Durham that I think is worth preserving. And this application, of course, is not associated with any type of development plan or concept for the next construction. This is literally a policy statement and these are your constituents and they are asking you to make that statement. They are making the statement for you. They have applied for you to vote on that. And they hope, and I hope, that you will support their application tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Ghosh. And I apologize to you that I didn't get you out there the first time. Our next two speakers are Mr. Dick Hales and Mr. Dan Bach. Let me ask again if you all could please come over here to my right. This is a public hearing item. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item tonight? All right, Mr. Hales, welcome. You also have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. I'm proud of my neighbors tonight too. I live at 100 Briar Cliff Road in the Forest Hills neighborhood. I'm in the Southwest part of the neighborhood where the lots are considerably more compact than the larger lots you see down along the park, up on Hermitage Court and other parts of the neighborhood. So I really don't have any opposition to anything I heard any of them say. It's just that the proposal on my property would make my property non-conforming with a future land use map because my lot's a little less than four units per acre. In addition, the possibility of being able to build an accessory dwelling unit or a duplex, particularly my part of the neighborhood where houses are smaller and so on, could make the density considerably higher than that. So I expressed this concern a year ago. I've talked to Mr. Bryan and Mr. Ghosh. And the Southwest part of the neighborhood, particularly within a block or so of University Drive, the lots are considerably smaller and the proposal for my property doesn't fit and technically makes me non-conforming. So that's why I'm speaking in opposition. I also, definitely, I've lived in many locations around the city and county in the last 40 years. And I think the area fits in a suburban tier just fine. We have a shopping center nearby, we have a big park, we're close to restaurants out on Chapel Hill Boulevard and so on. I don't think that's really much different than if you lived in other large neighborhoods in East Durham, Trinity Park, Watts Hill and Dale and other places. I think I certainly love being easy distance from downtown and everything down there and I think that's a good reason to keep an urban tier. Thanks so much. Did you say this is not different from suburban tier neighborhoods like Trinity Park or did you say urban tier neighborhoods like Trinity Park? I think it's similar to other urban tier neighborhoods. Okay, thank you. You don't find neighborhood grocery stores in the middle of Watts Hill and Dale and not many parts of East Durham or Trinity Park either. Thank you, Mr. Hales. Thank you. Mr. Bach, welcome. Please give us your name as you have three minutes. Dan Bach, 915 Urban Ave. I was talking against this proposal. It goes against the staff recommendation, it goes against the planning commission recommendation. More importantly than that, I think it goes against our values as a city. Our values are, one neighborhood should not be able to come to the city council and get themselves exempted from the rules that apply to everyone else. And our city growth should happen equitably, not just in gentrifying neighborhoods, but in all neighborhoods, including in Forest Hills and in my neighborhood Trinity Park. And our city growth should happen sustainably, not just by clear cutting forest to build a car dependent suburb outside of town, but through infill development, missing middle housing built within walking and biking distance of employment centers and centers of shopping and other amenities. And so that's why I'm against this. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Bach. All right, this is a public hearing. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item? Is there anyone else tonight who would like to be heard on this item? All right, now I'm going to ask council members if you have any questions or comments. Councilmember Freeman, is that a yes? I'll take a moment. I think Councilmember Austin. Councilmember Austin. Thank you. And forgive me for folks in the staff if you address this in your staff report, but could you discuss the alternatives that you referenced briefly in the staff report, the infill standards in local historic districts? So addressing infill standards would be form, setback. Ms. Rosenberg, would you speak up a little? Sure, thank you. So infill standards, those could be fleshed out more fully in the future to include more standards regarding setback and form and the character of the neighborhood. And then the local historic district would be a citizen initiated request that would cover the historic portion of the neighborhood to cover to preserve the historic character as has been described, covering landscape site and the actual building structures themselves. Just one follow up. Let's say hypothetically, this neighborhood order would go through that process for the historic neighborhood designation and succeed if an individual property owner wanted to say remove the historic designation from their properties, that's something that would be possible. I'm just trying to understand the parameters of this. Once it has been designated. Right, like hypothetically. It would have to go through another process. It would have to come back to City Council. But it's possible. Technically it's possible. It might be expensive. Sure. Okay, thank you. I might have a follow up, but I'll let someone else jump in. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. The last speaker kind of threw me off. And I have to say this. A resident from Trinity Park that has a historic district is telling Boris Hills that doesn't have a historic district. They shouldn't have a historic district. It just messed me up. I'm sorry. There were a number of concerns raised or a number of reasons why this was raised. And I really appreciate as a former inter-neighborhood council president and member the thought that you've put into this process and recognizing that there's not very many handles that neighbors have to do anything about what's happening in their neighborhood around development. And so I can appreciate what you're trying to do and trying to put some parameters around how development happens in your community. I do also understand the comment around, I think it's some decal and saying that your property would be non-conforming, but I would only be an issue if you were planning to tear your house down. Could staff help me with this? And then also with the ADU, the expanded housing choices is not prevented by the density. It's not prevented by any of those things that were raised. And I'm just trying to make sure that I have this clear in my mind before making a decision. So it wouldn't prevent you doing accessory dwelling units and it wouldn't prevent you from, I mean, it doesn't force you to do anything different with your property. Am I right? Am I missing something here? Good evening again, Pat Young with the planning department. So right, nothing in this proposal would prohibit non-conformities from continuing. And nothing in this proposal would undo the provisions that you all recently passed in the expanding housing choices. Thank you. And so I just wanna note that this was the issue in passing the expanded housing choices I was concerned around and not having the conversations on a more local kind of localized basis so that neighborhoods understand what their handles are. You get this kind of knee-jerk reaction to try and stem the tide of having any untold number of units being added or developments happening. And I think that I'm clear that we just need to be better stewards of how or better communicators in how we provide these resources that should be available through planning and zoning to community members who feel like there's an upcoming zoning or parcel that should be addressed. I don't know that this overarching push is really where you wanna, the direction you wanna go. But I mean, if the purpose or the point is to get to the fact that it takes three to five to seven years, like in our case for the local historic district, and you don't wanna have a number of developments coming along in that time period, I think it's important to know that if you've already acquired an attorney from Morningstar Law Group that they could essentially assist with that. So I'm trying to understand how this all came to be at this point where you have an attorney and you're putting forth a plan to change the flum for the whole neighborhood. That was a question, right? You are. Yeah, okay. Is that a question, Council Member? Yes, that is a question. Is that for Mr. Gosh? Yes, Mr. Gosh, if that's... Yeah. Or Mr, I'm sorry, Mr. Prof. Prof. So when we met with the neighbors in Forest Hills, the first thing we talked about doing, in fact, the first thing we attempted to do was to apply for an NPO. And that, I know you know how that process works, but just for everyone's edification, it was on the back of the Old West Durham NPO, right? So we applied after that one was approved. And I think that at least my understanding is the Old West Durham NPO, that process maybe didn't work out the way that everyone had hoped that process would work out. And so there had been I think some discussion with planning staff and probably amongst you all about changing that process. And that's the point at which we applied for an NPO in Forest Hills. And it was, I will say tumultuous to get that thing to, I mean, to JCCPC, whether it was going to be prioritized, it was also on the same budget as the current rewrite of the comprehensive plan. So it was prioritized, but there was no money to pursue it in terms of the budget. So that application has fallen off the map, but I wanna be clear that this neighborhood has tried to take advantage of the other tools in the UDO. And just the way it all shook out, the NPO application is now at this point essentially expired. It's not going to be prioritized before it ever gets any work done to it. And so one of the other things we did, which is going in our minds is less effective than an NPO would have been was this, apply for a future land use map change, which is a process that can be run through its entirety without a lot of staff hours. So it doesn't have that same, a prioritization type of limitation that an NPO or local historic district would have had. So we were working from a limited bag and we actually did try to make use of other tools in that bag. It just wasn't successful, not for lack of trying, just for lack of budget, frankly. And so we're also taking advantage of another tool in that bag. I appreciate that. And then I just had a question for staff. I would have, if you have a clarification, I think. I was just informed by Ms. Plus that actually we were able to get reprioritized for the NPO with the JCC, all the acronyms, meeting. Yeah, yeah. So we are not technically on the product, we were able to get it. I, since I have the microphone, just want to sort of speak to, we have looked at like, we do want to pursue every option we have. We're not asking for stasis. We're asking while we can work through the comprehensive planning process, while I can work through the NPO process to stop this complete, the similarity between the way we're zoned and the way we're planned. And just if you could, so the request here is really for the neighborhood to be able to not have to fight any other processes coming through while we do it, while we work in partnership with you to figure out the right way for this neighborhood to evolve with the city. And if there was anything that was not in compliance or conformity with this, that was not our intent. Was for this, every parts to being conformity with what we were requesting. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up with staff on the noting that it is within your, is it in this year's work plan, next year's work plan? And then also noting like, I'm concerned that this is going to create a situation where more residents are going to feel like this is the only option they have to kind of stem the development that's urbanizing their community based on their understanding of what's happening in planning and zoning. Well, I'll first, Council Member Freeman, I'll first just co-sign what Mr. Perpetta just said. The earlier this month, the Joint City County Planning Committee did re-endorse, reprioritize the NPO application. So we will be seeking resources for that. We don't currently as same as we were, same situation we were in this time last year, we do not have the internal resources since we're doing the comprehensive plan primarily internally. So we will be seeking a potential budget allocation that Council wants to resource that item. I think Ms. Rosenberg did a nice job of characterizing the opportunities that are available through the local historic district and then through any potential modifications to the infill standards. If I might take just a moment, I think I would want to acknowledge on the record kind of consistent what I think was in the year of staff report from Ms. Rosenberg that the tier model that was developed with 2005 comprehensive plan is imperfect. It does kind of look at it concentric rings going from the middle. We all know communities don't develop that way. But what it was getting at was a very, at the time very innovative idea, which is that we want different things from different place types. We want them to feel different and operate differently. And there are now place type models in planning that are much more subtle and nuanced and sophisticated. We intend on using those with the ComPlan update that's underway. The 2005 ComPlan had density as a foundation. I think we want to look more at form and function and impact on services and infrastructure. So that's again consistent with that more nuanced approach to a place type. But I will kind of end quickly with, I think what we are using as a guiding principle, unless we get substantially different input from you all from the public, which is that the high demand for urban living and the scarcity of urban land are the key drivers of housing unaffordability in Durham. And we think every neighborhood needs to be able to adapt incrementally and modestly to change. And if we're gonna begin to substantially address our housing affordability problem, you all approved a project late 2018 in this neighborhood called Pinecrest Project. There was, went from 12 acres with one unit on it to when they're gonna be about 57 or 60 units. And we think because of the design commitments and other review that you all provided that project, it's gonna be very context sensitive and fit in with the neighborhood without damaging, destroying, or diminishing the character of forestels neighborhoods. There are opportunities for substantially increased density without creating the negative impact we've heard about from the proponents tonight. So thank you for the opportunity to just expand on those items. Just one more question, Patrick, around I guess the availability of staff. And I think it's clear that the resources are slim and planning to even address. And so any time you see residents hiring an attorney, seriously, there's already an issue because I think it should be a public service that we're providing to our residents, especially as taxpayers, to make sure that they have the information and like available resources. And so is there anything in your work plan that's gonna address that aspect of this conversation? Because I think that this case would be very different had the residents in the community had access to staffing. Well, the best way I can answer that, Council Member Freeman, is with our intent is to address that through the comprehensive plan process and applying this place type Rupert, which looks at more form and function rather than density and addresses the concerns, the rightful concerns the neighbors have about protecting character, neighborhood quality, environmental quality. To do it on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis is incredibly resource intensive. We spend over 1700 hours on the old West Arm MPO and with us implementing the comp plan, we don't have those resources in-house. So that's why we'll be seeking resources for an outside consultant to help with that. Thank you, Mr. Young. Thank you, Council Member. Other Council Members, questions, comments? Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. A couple of questions for staff. Sorry. Lots of up and down tonight. Thanks, if this, if forestills were part of the suburban tier, would that prevent a resident from converting an existing home into a duplex? Duplexes are allowed because of the housing choices. So the expanding housing choices provisions are applicable within certain districts in the suburban tier. And it's a smaller list of districts that are applicable in the urban tier. I don't want to speak from the hip on what those are, but the RS-20 district, which is somewhat prevalent in forest hills, is already exempted from some of those provisions. It may limit the flexibility of EHC in some of the districts. So if you look on, it's on page nine of the staff report, it goes through item by item where those changes would be. So I would not limit the ability to do the duplex in the, so bear with me. Sure, thank you for looking it up. Yeah, the, right, so the duplexes are already disallowed in the RS-20, but in RS-10 and RS-8 districts, it would be disallowed if it was converted to suburban tier. So in part of the neighborhood, part of the neighborhood is already not allowed to do duplexes, even under EHC, it would disallow it in the part that is currently allowed. That's correct. Okay, and is that the same for doing the small house, small lot, flag lot situation? Yes. Okay, are there any other ways that it would functionally limit, that this change would functionally limit people from building more units on their existing lots? I can't think of anything else, but. Only the ways that we just discuss. Okay, thank you. Right, because the provisions you referenced are tier-specific in the EHC. Right. So the other EHC provisions would apply, but those would be limited. Okay. Council Member Caballero. I have a follow-up question to that. Thank you. So based on that, but with local historic districts and MPOs, most of the EHC stays intact. That's right. The local historic districts don't speak to the underlying zoning. What they do is allow a case-by-case consideration of the design to ensure that it's historically contextual. So by designating this whole area, a suburban, it basically usurps EHC. It reduces the applicability of some of the provisions of EHC. Thank you. Within some of the districts, zoning districts that are in foresales. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Profeta. Mr. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The Romulan leader, Nero, in the Star Trek movie, when Spock was about to crash into their ship and ignite the red matter, said, fire everything. And that's what Forest Hills is doing. I actually pushed for the MPO to be reprioritized, and it was. So there's an MPO live, and this request is live right now. So they are almost firing everything. I don't know if there's a historic designation request forthcoming. Every neighborhood is special. Haytie is the actual Golden Goose of Durham special. East Durham special. Waltown special. Forest Hills has retained its character for years, even while downtown was blighted. So what's happened? What has happened now is the market is asserting itself. That's what's happening. And neighborhoods want to protect themselves from the market asserting themselves. No problem with that. Some neighborhoods have fared better than others in our city's history. I'm glad the development, and I forget the name, but that was alluded to earlier where we approved a character sensitive and aesthetic sensitive development in Forest Hills. I forget the name of it, but we approved it. And I think that demonstrated our ability to, as a council, the people you hire to respect the character of a neighborhood on a case-by-case basis. But it seems to me to use government power to essentially, at least in my assessment, dramatically change a designation to protect an area, essentially from market forces, when we can't do that for any other area that's being gentrified. Government can't do anything about getting Haytie back or East Durham. The market is the market, we always say. And to suggest that, in a prior case, I talked about urbanizing the suburban tier and now we're talking about codifying the suburbanization of the urban tier. Because I think the most telling phrases I've heard were character and feel of the neighborhood. I get it, I get it. We want to preserve the character and preserve the feel of the neighborhood to the point where we're being asked to disavow or disregard the recommendation of the staff to go against our comp plan and to change our future land use map. And it may be pressing in it, I don't know. But from a neighborhood that most people, I think in our city, consider downtown to the suburban tier, I'm wondering if we can preserve the character and feel of Forest Hills while also preserving our integrity as a government. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think on a case-by-case basis, you got the NPO already in the chamber. A historic designation might be something worth looking at. But I think on a case-by-case basis, and it's a beautiful neighborhood. We can preserve, but there are many of them in Durham, we can preserve the character of this neighborhood without so blatantly using government power to essentially change the rules or flip one, even if it's within our ability. I'm wondering how the rest of the city, particularly folk who live in neighborhoods that the government could not preserve the character or preserve the feel, how it would appear to them for us to do this in opposition to the staff's recommendation, in opposition to where we say we're going as a city, particularly in the urban tier. Nobody wants to destroy Forest Hills. We've passed tree canopy standards. We've got all kinds of things in the pipe to preserve our city as a whole and character in our city as a whole. Nobody wants to destroy the character or feel of Forest Hills. There's no neighborhood envy going on here. But I think we ought to be very careful about the message we send if we use the authority of this government to simply call it suburban because of concerns about character and feel. And those concerns about character and feel are now prevalent because of market forces, market forces that are having its way all over the city right now. That's what this is about. The folk are now at your gate. And what's going on in downtown and what's going on in the city is now upon us. And that's why we're here now. And I think the question before us is are we capable as a city with sending a message about values to the rest of our residents and preserving the character and feel of this incredibly beautiful neighborhood among many beautiful neighborhoods in this city. That's what's informing my vote. That's what I'm struggling with right now. And I've yet to hear a compelling case as to why we need to change the flum as opposed to doing what we've been doing and preserve the character and feel of this neighborhood while not signaling to the rest of the residents in this city that will just change designations or tier designations if you present the right case. I'm struggling with this. As a resident, as a citizen of Durham, I love the feel of foresters. I love many neighborhoods going through many neighborhoods. And I understand of the character and the feel sentiments about the neighborhood. This is one of those moments where I think the decision we make will send a signal to a lot of people in the city who far beyond of Forest Hills. And it'll also point to, I believe, values. We should protect and preserve Forest Hills to the best of our ability, but we should do it by being able to look to rest of our residents and citizens in the eye as well. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Is there anyone, this is a public hearing item. Is there anyone else who would like to be heard on this item who has not been heard? All right. Any other comments by members of the council at this point? If not, I'm gonna declare this public hearing closed and the matter is now before the council. I actually have some comments. Anyone else have any comments? Sure. Council Member Austin. Sure, and I'll largely kind of echo my colleague. So first, I also kind of appreciate the goal of preserving the character of this neighborhood. I understand that and appreciate it to some extent Forest Hills is a beautiful neighborhood. I do think along with my colleague that this flum change creates too many concerns for our infrastructure and our values for it to be a good decision for the city. We can't simultaneously promote density and promote the values that kind of underlie are the expanding housing choices initiative and also approve this kind of carve out. So I intend to vote against this flum change but I do wanna kind of say and reiterate that I appreciate the goal and I am interested in alternatives whether it's the local historic neighborhood designation or the MPO process which we might have an opportunity to have some input on in this budget cycle this upcoming budget cycle. I'm interested in those and kind of look forward to hopefully kind of continuing this conversation but just not through this mechanism. Thank you council member other council member Reese. I promise I will be gentle with everyone's time. First I wanted to say that as with every kind of resident initiated process I have so much respect for the folks that go out and do this. As we said when the last MPO was here before us this is one of the only the MPO and this kind of flum amendment are some of the only levers available to ordinary residents to impact directly these types of planning issues. And so I know it's not easy to come up with this stuff it's not cheap and I respect the work that's happened with it. I think my concern about the as council member Middleton said Forest Hills saying fire everything is that we are not about to start or put it making an effort to as Mr. Goche said but we are actually currently rewriting our comprehensive plan. That's work that is happening right now in consultation with many people across the city using an engagement community engagement process that is going to be cutting edge of world class and that will I think uncover many issues like the issues raised by folks today with respect to the slum amendment and other parts of the city. And I just think from a process perspective it doesn't make any sense to me to amend the flum right now for this particular process for this particular neighborhood when as our planning director has said the concentric circle model is an outdated way of thinking about it and our new comprehensive plan will come up with lots of better secret sauce to solve these problems aside from the concentric circles. So for that reason I'm going to oppose the flum amendments tonight, thank you. Thank you council member. Any other comments from council members to this point council member Freeman. I just want to make sure that I make clear that I can't see how a flum is how we ended up at this point without recognizing that this is an over like this is a miss from the city standpoint and not being able to reach. This has been an ongoing issue for community residents. As a resident myself I faced this with golden bell and as the internet council president I faced it with a number of other issues that have come up to a ride like that have arisen in having conversations with the planning department. And what I'm consistently noting each and every time is that we don't have enough planning staff to cover the area of how much our city has grown and to the level that we need. So that each and every neighborhood is respected in a way that makes them feel included in the process of planning which is why I've been consistent in saying that we need to do the planning at a level that is engaging on a neighborhood basis so that there is some feedback because it doesn't feel like that's gonna happen the way that things have been going in the past. And I will say that history is the best predicted of the future and based on how the NPO process was handled I would be here, I mean if I were in your shoes in Forest Hills I could see being here saying you guys are ignoring me and I have to pay an attorney to come here and say the thing so that you will pay me attention. And so just noting like I recognize that this month this NPO was submitted at least a year ago and while I may not agree with the context of how it's said, recognizing that I do think that this area can afford more density I don't think it's appropriate to push density onto neighborhoods like Forest Hills. And so I'm mindful of the tension but also recognizing that I wanna be clear that I do support building more density in that area. I actually was one of those folks who were pushing for Prinecrest to actually build more units. And so I hear you, I think we need to do a much better job of making sure that we hear you consistently over the course of the year because work plans are developed in a silo. And once we see them it's kinda like you gotta fight to jockey to get your project ahead of another project and it doesn't always work out for you year after year after year. And so that process has not been updated. It hasn't changed since I've been here and I'm committing to you all to make sure that I pay closer attention to it because it's unfortunate that you have to go through this flum process to try and make the change is necessary to feel the protections that you need for your neighborhood are in place. That being said, I cannot support using a flum change to make this adjustment but I will support pushing forward your needs and desires for your neighborhood to keep this character and context in our community because it is important. I did not graduate from Durham High School in 1979 but I can realize what it means to grow up here in Durham and watch every single street that you go down change block by block and not have any say so over it. And so I just wanna be mindful of those things and note that I hear you but I can't support this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any other comments? I have a few. I appreciate very much the residents who've done the work to be citizen planners and it's hard, I know that. We have a lot of residents in our city who are working hard on all kinds of issues and this is an important one and I wanna appreciate you all for doing it. But I do have to make a decision on this not based on who's bringing it to us and I'm very appreciative that you all are doing the work to bring it to us but on the merits and let me just tell you my thoughts about the merits. I do believe that the staff response to this was very compelling. I think that the problem with privileging Faris-Tills in this way would be that it would have deleterious effects on other neighborhoods. I don't believe that the expanding housing choices will result in a changing character in this beautiful tree-lined Faris-Tills neighborhood that we all cherish, whether or not we live there. But I do believe that will result over time in some increase in density in Faris-Tills and as in all of our central city neighborhoods and that this is very important to the life of our city that this be a possibility. No central city neighborhood should be granted the status of effectively being single family only while other neighborhoods in the urban tier are and always have been open to other types of housing. And also it is true that Faris-Tills was originally developed as a suburb. I live in Watts-Hillendale, it was also originally developed as a suburb and I don't think that either of our neighborhoods are by any reasonable definition of the term suburbs. I hear what you're saying about the topography and so forth but in my belief, Faris-Tills like my neighborhood is right smack dab in the center of Durham and clearly should remain in the urban tier. I have also another concern and it's an enormous concern for me that supporting this application would simply open the door to other neighborhoods in the urban tier coming to the council for their own special exceptions. How would we deny them those exceptions if we granted this one? Each of those neighborhoods would have good reasons as you all have and it would result I think in Council Member Middleton said this earlier and I completely agree with the situation that would be untenable. The Faris-Tills neighborhood is beautiful, it's very special. But as you all know and as you've said it's no more special than the many other neighborhoods in Durham which are inside the urban tier. Each of them is special in their own way and each of them should share the same opportunities for the creation of duplexes, flaglots and density. I do not believe by any stretch of the imagination that the policies that we have on the books now are going to have, I can't remember the exact term that was used earlier but are going to change the essential character of Faris-Tills or are going to damage it in any way. I believe that Faris-Tills is going to continue to be a neighborhood that's very beautiful, that is tree lined. It may have a couple more duplexes than it used to. Expanding housing choices just to put it perspective is predicted to produce about 45 more units city-wide in the next year. We're not expecting that expanding housing choices will create a whole ton of new housing, we are expecting that over time it will marginally increase density. And I think that's very good and very important thing. So I'm going to be voting against the proposal. I appreciate the work that's gone into it but in my mind the merits are clear. All right, colleagues, I'll now accept a motion on the item. Sumo. Second. If I can get to my agenda here on my iPad, I can tell you. I move we approve a consistent statement. There's a motion that we approve the consistency statement, it's been seconded. Madam Clerk, will you please open the vote? I'm sorry, could you open the vote again? Please close the vote. The motion fails seven zero. Thank you very much. Do we need to do the other ones? Do we do the other Madam Attorney? No, because we did not adopt the consistency statement. All right, so we did not adopt the consistency statement so we will not be taking up the other motions. Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone who came today. I know this is disappointing for some of you but I think we have given good deliberation and tried to make a decision on the merit. So thank you very much. I will now move to item 17. Let me remind colleagues that it's now 1047 and we do still have two more items. Item 17, Consolidate and Annexation, Kendrick Estates. This is Struthers welcome. We'll now hear the report from staff. Good evening, I'm Lace Struthers with the Planning Department. I will now present Consolidated Annexation Item, Kendrick Estates, BDG 19-0014 and Z19-00049A. Request for utility extension, voluntary annexation and initial zoning map change have been received from Neil Gauch of Morning Star Law Group for 20.927 acre parcel located at 3,500 Randolph Road. The property is contiguous to the city limits by the northwest corner of the property. Additionally, the property is connected to existing city limits by two lengths of Kendrick Road right of way. If this annexation petition is approved, two areas within the county will become surrounded by city limits creating what is referred to as donor holes. The site is presently zoned for residential suburban dash 20, RS 20, and staff recommends an exact translation of the zoning designation. Based on an administrative site plan that is currently under review, the development is anticipated to include 38 single family lots utilizing the cluster subdivision development standards, cluster subdivision standards, allow for reduced lot sizes in exchange for an increase in open space area. Again, this is a, in relation to administrative site plan which we don't typically have when we're reviewing annexations. Ms. Druthers, could you say that again, I'm sorry. Sure. What I'm referencing there is that we have a site plan that's currently under review administratively. We don't typically have a site plan to reference when we're doing annexation. So this, I am providing more information than sometimes because more information is available than others. And then sometimes because more information is available than sometimes. Thank you. That development through that site plan would have to meet or exceed ordinance requirements. And with regards to open space, as that's been an item that has come up recently, this site plan would include access to Hollow Rock Nature Park, 30 foot natural buffers are shown between the site and the adjacent parcels. And that parcel specifically is not identified on the New Hope Creek corridor open space as an area with recommendations. So given that background on the site plan aspect of it, jumping back into the annexation specific elements, city and county operational departments such as solid waste, fire, police and EMS have reviewed this request and have not identified any significant negative service delivery costs or impacts. The public works and water management department performed the utility impact analysis for the utility extension agreement and determined that the existing city of Durham, water and sanitary sewer mains have capacity to serve the project. The budget management service department performed a fiscal impact analysis which determined that the proposed annexation will become revenue positive immediately upon annexation. Should the council act favorably tonight, approval of the annexation petition and zoning would become effective on December 31st, 2019. Staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances. Three motions are required for this application. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property and entering into a utility extension agreement. The second is for the consistency statement and the third is to adopt zoning ordinance. Staff is available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Struthers. You've heard the report from staff and I'm now gonna declare this public hearing open and first I'm gonna ask, are there any questions by members of the council for staff? All right, hearing none, we do have a number of speakers. I'm gonna ask a couple of speakers who signed up and did not indicate whether or not they were proponents or opponents. So Ms. Driscoll, are you here? Are you a proponent or an opponent? Opponent and Ms. Boyarsky? Not sure yet. Okay, thank you. Okay. All right. We have signed up one proponent. That is Mr. Ghosh. We have Ms. Boyarsky and then opponents, we have one, two... We have 14 opponents. I'm going to give each speaker two minutes, two minutes. Mr. Ghosh, I'll give you more time than that since you're the only proponent. I'll give you five minutes, Mr. Ghosh. And I'll give each of the opponents two minutes. And as well as you, Ms. Boyarsky. All right, Mr. Ghosh, we'll start with you. Welcome. Please give us your name and address. And you have five minutes. And if you want to reserve for your time, Mr. Ghosh, you feel free to do so. Thank you. And good evening again, my name is Neil Ghosh. I'm an attorney at the Morningstar Law Group at 112 West Main Street here in Durham. I'm representing the applicant for this annexation tonight. I'm gonna reserve the majority of my time, but I will start just by simply saying this annexation request is kind of a unique one in the city of Durham because the county properties that abut our proposed annexation area actually are serviced today by city of Durham Utilities, sewer and water. So while it does create a technical donut hole, there actually are utilities being run right down Randolph Road, right in front of the property that we're having annex. And there are county properties that are being serviced by city of Durham Utilities. So we're not creating kind of a satellite area where you're gonna have to extend services to an area where you otherwise wouldn't have to run the garbage truck already. It's already going there. It's just that those areas are operating on a double rate for water and sewer rather than being directly annexed into the city through an agreement that my understanding isn't typically used anymore. So why don't think we have that available to us to get access to city water and sewer through a double rate, which is why we're applying for annexation. So I'll reserve the remainder of my time for a medal. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gosh. All right, we will now hear from, I'm gonna call the rest of the speakers. And if you all could go over here to my right as I call your name. First, we'll hear from Barbara Driscoll. Second, Gail Boyarsky. And third, Tiffany Friesen. I hope I've got your name correct. And if you all could come over here to my right and we'll begin with Ms. Driscoll. Ms. Driscoll, welcome. Please give us your name and address and you have two minutes. Hi, Barbara Driscoll. I live at 504 Redbud Road in Chapel Hill. I'm here as the president of New Hope Audubon, which covers Durham, Orange and Chatham counties. In 2006, Durham, Chapel Hill, Orange County and Durham County all came together to create Hollow Rock Park in order to protect this critical corridor, which connects the Enell River watershed to the Jordan Lake watershed. New Hope Audubon has several concerns about this proposed development, which borders Hollow Rock Park. The Baker development is proposing to clear cut 20 acres of land next to the park, which will create an edge effect. The area of the park closest to this open edge will fill more impacts from wind, invasive plants and will no longer get the protection afforded by contiguous forest and brush. In addition to the loss of habitat, there will be new neighbors whose land has no protection or buffer for the current woods. Their property will create runoff and degradation of the park, especially in light of the frequent heavy rains that we have been receiving lately. Our recommendations are to increase the buffer next the park to no less than 50 feet, consider options other than clear cutting, leaving some existing trees which will increase residential home values, cut the number of lots to 35 or fewer, require native trees and shrubs to be planted, no invasive plants to be planted, discourage or eliminate lawns, reduce or help the use of fertilizers and reduce street lighting. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Driscoll. Ms. Boyarsky, welcome. Please give us your name and address and you also have two minutes. Okay. My name is Gail Boyarsky. I live at 6410 Mamosa Drive in Chapel Hill. I'm actually right over the county line from Durham and some of my neighbors have a Durham address. And just so that you don't think I'm an outside agitator, I am a native of Durham and I'm going to my 50th Durham High School reunion in April. There you go. I'm not going to, I'm coming to you as a citizen. I was a member of the first New Hope Corridor Planning Commission that started in 1989. Our charge, and I'm going to quote then mayor, Chester Jenkins, is to preserve an open space corridor linking the Eno River State Park, the New Hope Creek Army Core Land and the growing communities of Durham, Chapel Hill and Carboro for aesthetic, educational and recreational purposes as a mean of shaping the urban form and the environment. We started work in 1989 and the master plan was adopted by the town of Chapel Hill, the city of Durham, both Durham and Orange County in 1991, the beginning of 1992. I have to say it was historic that all four of these jurisdictions worked together since we all know that that's not usually done in this area, sadly. So I'm not really speaking for or against rezoning. I'm just saying that the city of Durham, there are lots of reasons to be careful about how that land is treated. Anything we do there will have an enormous impact on the New Hope Creek, which is drains into Jordan Lake, which is a league of drinking source. And I'm asking that whatever is done that the council consider how to minimize the negative effects on the New Hope Creek and the New Hope Creek corridor. I think I don't need to go through all the corridor acts as wildlife habitat, it's got important botanical interests. It's one of the few open spaces left between Durham and Chapel Hill. It's having a corridor keeps the wildlife being fragmented. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I have one more thing and that is the city of Durham and lots of people have made a big investment and a lot of effort has gone into this. I just ask you to honor that investment and that commitment. Thank you, Ms. Boyarsky. We'll now hear from Tiffany Friesen. Welcome, Ms. Friesen, did I get your name right? Yes, thank you. Great, and please give us your name and address if you have two minutes. Okay. Hello, I'm Tiffany Friesen and I live at 4313 Branchwood Drive. A few blocks away from where Kendrick Estates will be built. I received an email today about this issue and wanted to share my personal experience with stormwater with the city council. I live in a nearby development. Hope Creek and the property I live at is frequently flooded by stormwater from blocks away. The current path designed for stormwater does not provide for the volume of water that comes from Pickett and Cambridge roads and upstream from that location and Kendrick Estates will be very close to Pickett and Cambridge roads. Four homes, including the one I live in, routinely have flooded yards, landscaping destroyed and standing water sometimes for days or weeks and this is from water upstream that makes it way above ground to New Hope Creek. The path it currently takes goes through our yards and through the adjacent school's property. I am concerned more development nearby without assessing this existing issue and solving it will make it much worse. To protect our foundation and physical structure we've raised the backyard two feet and put in a stone wall, added a new sub pump with a water backup in case power goes out and purchase flood insurance but it doesn't solve the water problem it only protects our home. Prior to this we routinely head up to two feet of water during storms in our backyard sometimes pouring into our foundation. Another concern is what this current water issue and flooding does to the market value of these homes. A new developer may not be aware of how their plans affect us a few blocks away or realize the current design doesn't manage the current volume of stormwater. So please delay zoning for three months so this can be evaluated by city engineers and the impact understood to downstream property owners. This isn't just about how the developer manages water within their site but how it affects the property owners downstream. Along the path the water takes to get to Hope Creek and the need for a dedicated path. Thank you for allowing me to voice my concern. Thank you Ms. Friesen, I appreciate your being here. I now like to ask three more speakers to come to my right. Thomas Link, Audrey Wynn and Buck Wharton. And we'll hear first from Mr. Link. Mr. Link welcome, please give us your name and address and you have two minutes. Thomas Link, 126 Salterra Way, Durham. Our community, which is the Co-Housing community is also right next door, right next to this proposed project and they're proposing a 30 foot barrier there with trees but even their drawings show that the barrier is not there. They cut the barrier off where they have a traffic turnaround lane. So even their drawings don't comply with what they said they will. My main reason here, I just received a whole study of the New Hope corridor open space master plan. There was approved by city of Durham, Durham County, Orange County and town of Chapel Hill in 1991 and 92. And the things that they raised, which were approved is preservation of 100 year flood plan. Steep slopes should not be modified with 20% or greater. Creation of open space and access areas. Protection of wildlife, maintaining the environment. And the 200 foot buffer needs to be maintained, adjacent to the flood plain. Now, I don't know if anybody studied any of this. I'd like to know and this has to be studied either by one of your engineers or we'll hire one. And that's why I'm asking for a delay for three months so all of this homework could be done. Thank you very much, Mr. Link. I appreciate your being here. Ms. Nguyen, welcome. You also have two minutes. Thank you. My name is Audrey Nguyen and I live at 134 Solterra, adjacent to the proposed development. As I'm sure you know, the Holorock Nature Park was the culmination of much hard work and fundraising efforts by people from all walks of life, as well as the Durham and Orange County governments. With this in mind, I feel it's most important that the city of Durham now do everything within its power to ensure that there are no negative impacts to this magnificent open space that they helped to create. It was created as a gift for future generations and as such we owe it to them to preserve what has been achieved so far. There are other major concerns about the annexation that other people would be addressing so I will just speak of two. One, we are concerned about the public street lighting that would come with the development and request that it be as non-invasive as possible. Downward oriented street lights would decrease the amount of light pollution which would not only have a positive impact on the neighboring homes but the wildlife in particular. The proposed development will affect the wildlife in the park. Something as simple as down lit lights could limit that negative effect. Additionally, the proposed buffer between the development and the park is a concern. As currently proposed in most areas it's only 20 to 30 feet. This development borders onto a nature park that was created to preserve the land and its wildlife. Surely the buffer requirements for the nature park should require a different consideration than say if it boarded on to a strip mall. Therefore, I request that the size of the buffer be increased to limit the negative impact to park lands. One way to do this would be to reduce the number of proposed home sites. Once you clear cut and build on a parcel of land there are no do-overs. Let's get this right to preserve what others before us have worked so hard to preserve. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Wynn. We'll now hear from Mr. Horton. Mr. Horton, please give us your name and address and you have three minutes. I'm sorry, you have two minutes. Okay. Mr. Horton is speaking if Mr. Brett Walters and Ms. Catherine Stone and Kerry, Ms. Kerry Bishop Coon could also come to my right. That would be great. Go ahead, Mr. Horton. My name is Buck Horton. I live at 156 Solterra Way in Solterra. About 24 years ago when Solterra was formed there was no park. We had no public access to that land and yet we built into our covenants or a prohibition against using chemical fertilizers, non-organic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, et cetera because we wanted to preserve the pure water in those creeks. Part of that land was bought with money from the Clean Water Fund. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of it was donated by people from our neighborhood and neighborhoods all around Irwin Road. And a lot of the reason was to preserve that land and not have it polluted, but for some reason it's not in a watershed protection zone. I don't understand why that's true because it's the high park, it's the top of the valley that forms the park and all the water that falls there and forms rain is gonna go into those creeks. There's already been a little bit of erosion just from the minimal clearing that was done by a developer to make soil tests. I know they're gonna have erosion control plans, but my experience with that is erosion control plans can fail. 30 years ago I lived in a different neighborhood. They built an apartment complex on the hill behind us. The first big thunderstorm we had, my entire property, one in three quarter acres, was covered with mud. There was a creek there before the flood. It was a nice little sandy creek that my kids could play in. It never recovered in the 17 years that we lived there. So my question is, what happens if the erosion control features that they do employ fail? Is there any, there's no, sorry. Thank you very much, Mr. Horton. Mr. Walters, welcome. Please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. Good evening, Mayor Schull. Members of Council, my name is Brett Walters. I'm at 108 Solterra Way in the Solterra neighborhood. Next door to us, as mentioned, is Hollowark Nature Park. If you haven't been there, I suggest you go. It's beautiful. I was just there the other day hiking with the kids. We noticed a new Beaver Dam on New Hope Creek. This is within a couple hundred yards of Erwin Road. So the wildlife is thriving there. Tonight, I'm thinking about the theme of the Durham Sesquicentennial. Particularly this question, what decisions do you as a council make and vote on that will become part of Durham's legacy 150 years from now? As you know, and you've heard tonight, the water that runs downhill from the land called Kendrick Estates makes its way to Jordan Lake by way of New Hope Creek. That can be part of this legacy. Practically speaking, it's the drinking water for all of us here, our friends, families, neighbors of Durham. And clean water, I believe, can be one of those legacies we leave for the future generations of Durham. I think all of us here would agree with that. But how do we, as a community, deliver on that legacy? I would argue it's through deliberate, methodical, and thoughtful consideration of items that come before this body that will have a potential impact. The future generations will look at not only what we pronounce by our actions and their second order effects. And to this end, I ask you to delay vote tonight on this. I don't think we know enough about the effects. You've heard some things just this evening that may be new information. I know that as residents, we weren't notified, I think other stakeholders, truly for the New Hope quarter, were not notified. And so I would ask that you consider delaying, allow us to understand the effects and really think this through. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Walters. Now we'll hear from Ms. Stone. While Ms. Stone is speaking, if Ms. Bishop-Coon. Like me, I'm sorry, I didn't, am I supposed to speak now? I'm sorry. Hang on, I'm sorry, I apologize. No, I heard you. I'm sorry. Silence. No, hang on one second. Ms. Bishop-Coon, Mr. Nekomias, not sure if I've got that name right. And Ms. Ballin could make your way over to my right. Thank you, Ms. Stone, sorry. You have two minutes. Okay. First of all, I'd like to thank y'all, the city council, because you guys do a lot of work in regards to balancing the vibrant community that's growing and also preserving and being a steward of our environment. So thank you for that hard work. There's a couple of things, 12 days ago, we've received something in snail mail that said there's gonna be an annexation and zoning change and I had no idea what that meant. But over those 10 days, I've gained some information and I have a lot of concerns. There seem to be a number of inconsistencies. The annexing arch, when changing the zone from county to city, it doesn't seem like a lot on the books, but the reality of it, when you walk that property, there's a significant change. That property itself is also directly spoken about through the new head corridor plan. So Durham has five different conservation areas and the first one that was ever created is the new head corridor and that's land that we're speaking about, that tract of land, the Hendrick Estates, is directly on that corridor. So the decision you make here is really, I would say it's really historic for a number of reasons. The property itself, it borders the nature preserve, but it was also funded through the EPA's Clean Water Act of 303D program, which protects waters that are sensitive watershed areas. This property is uphill that contains wetlands. It's on the 100-year plane. There's a wildlife area. It contains the easement, but I think the biggest thing is the fact that in the master plan that was created in 1991, there is reference to that specific piece of land and it tells us what to do with it. And can I read that? You may. Okay, because in this, so on page 36, it gives you a map of that component, which is component four, and this section, area A, is the property we're speaking about today. And then two pages later, it tells us what the recommendations were made back in 1991. And it said, at Durham County, I'm compon- Ma'am, would you get a little closer to the mic, please? Ma'am, would you get a little closer? Sorry, I wanna hear it. Okay, thanks. Excuse me, Ms. Sumair. I wanted to make sure you guys could at least get a little bit of a feel for it. But it said to acquire, the recommendation is to acquire the developmental rights to land zone R20, which is one dwelling per half an acre, so that a resulting density is one dwelling per two acres, which is considered, it's consistent with a rural buffer that they're trying to create. But the second part of this, which I think is really important, if that's not created, the second option is to make sure to preserve a 200-foot undisturbed buffer adjacent to the wildlife area and the flood plain. So I feel like we already have a document that was created through Durham, City of Durham, Durham County, Orange County, City of Chapel Hill that all came together for this. Thank you very much for your comments. And I think we should use it. And I hope that you could just give us time. Thank you, Ms. Stone. Ms. Bishop, Bishop. It's actually Bishop Coon. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Apologize, is Ms. Stone here? Sorry about that. Ms. Bishop Coon, my apologies. Okay, thank you for their extra time. Ms. Stone. Ms. Quigley. Please give us your name and address. I'm Catherine Stone. I live at Six Blue Bottle Lane. Good evening, City Council, Mayor Schull. I received a notice from the City of the proposed annexation of the undeveloped land to the east of the preserve. I did appreciate the time the developers took to meet with the neighbors after they were contacted with questions from us. It felt like they were responsive to our questions and following the city's planning rules. I did hear them address concerns of how the development would impact the park. However, I became concerned that it might have fallen off the radar that this is not just a park, but a culmination of much hard work by multiple cities, counties, individuals, and organizations to preserve a special resource. The preserve adjoining the development is not just a park, but a part of the headwaters for New Hope Creek, which ultimately empties into Jordan Lake Reservoir. This serves as drinking water for a large portion of the triangle. After doing a small amount of research, I saw that the New Hope Creek Corridor master plan had some conservation easements abutting the land, easements to protect the water, wetlands, and unique flora and fauna. So we have one chance to make sure all of the stakeholders are involved, including the New Hope Creek Corridor Committee advisory board. And I would ask the city to make absolutely sure they're doing their due diligence and to make sure the development will not create any long-term problems for the preserve that cannot be undone. I feel a delay on the annexation decision would be prudent to be absolutely sure any development is planned responsibly. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Stone. And now Mr. Nechamayas. Yes, thank you. Sure how you say your name. Council, I live at 122 Saltero Way, adjacent to the proposed development. Rather than reiterate what everybody has said, just would like to say, I would like to ask for a continuance on this. The reason is we see 50-foot buffer on a development that was approved. Here we have a 30-foot buffer. The other night the developers said in some places it might be as small as five to 10 feet. So I would say there's a bit of disconnect here. Why does it get approved with a 50-foot buffer elsewhere? But here it might be approved with an average of 30 or maximum of 30. So I would ask for a delay in order to further study the subject. Essentially that's what my message is. Not anti-development would just like to be have smart development. And we would need to be on top of all of the factors. At the moment, we're not. Thank you, Mr. Nechamayas. I appreciate you being here. After this. We'll now hear from Ms. Ballin to be followed by John Kent and Jo-Ellen Mason. You all could come over here to my right. Ms. Ballin, welcome. Please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. I'm Lois Ballin. I live at 122 Saltero Way here in Durham. I want to speak about two issues. The first one is lighting. The conditions of approval that were submitted by the developer to the city include requirements for lighting to be downlighting. And last week when they came to our neighborhood to answer questions, which we actually really appreciated, they seem not completely familiar with the concept of downlighting. So I just want to emphasize that downlighting makes a difference in the life of both the nearby residents as well as the wildlife that are in the preserve. So actually their conditions for approval define really clearly what the lighting should be. And I'm asking that if the development goes through, that the city make sure that they follow their conditions for approval. And that we, the city, we hold them accountable that all exterior street and home lighting be downlighting. And I actually have this handout of, well, I'll give it to the developer of the appropriate and inappropriate types of lighting as examples. The second area I want to address has actually been addressed really clearly by most everyone else. And so I just want to reiterate that I understand that smaller lots are in the plan so that they could put the 30 foot buffer between the lots and the preserve. And that trade-off, we don't know enough information to know that that is enough land to protect the preserve. And so I'm requesting that the decision about this project be deferred, be delayed so that we can evaluate. And when I say we, it's not we the neighbors, we need to pull in some experts to evaluate the impact on the watershed. It's possible that decreasing the lots from 38 to a few, perhaps 32 lots could allow for a larger buffer. But the most important. Thank you very much, Ms. Ballin. We'll now hear from John Cant. John Cant, 39, is this on? Okay. Yes, it is, John. Thank you. Yes, I did take the bus and the bike tonight, so. Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. So I live at 394 Cup Creek Road in Chapel Hill and I'm a technical advisor to the New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee. John, can you step back just a little from the mic? Is that right? Perfect, yeah. So this has not been routed through the commission which was set up by the four jurisdictions that passed the New Hope Creek Corridor Open Space Master Plan back in 91 at City of Durham, County of Durham, Orange County and Chapel Hill. And I am thinking that it's not unreasonable or unresponsible for the council to delay this and see that it's routed through the committee before acting on this. Also, for 29 years now, I have been checking the water in New Hope Creek last. We did our 350th month this weekend. And one of the best sites for habitat on New Hope Creek is Irwin Road. That's one of our sample sites from the beginning. And this drains through the park into that area. This is a robust area because you have the Duke forest, good land use and you have waterfalls that aerate the water. But if we abuse, we're just not going to keep the wildlife that we have. We have something like seven native mussels that are state listed endangered in this area. And we need to keep that. Also, if you need an adequate buffer, you have what's called the edge effect from development over the property line. And it degrades into the forest. I am just, the, I just wanted to, my final thing is there has been a massive effort by the conservation community to study the Eno New Hope Wildlife Corridor. And they have just come out with their plan and that would be involved if we can get this put off and better advice on how that it's the New Hope Creek corridor between the Jordan Lake, Jordan Lake game lands, the Duke forest and the Eno to the north. There is no alternative. If you've heard me talk and Bob Healey would be here tonight, but he's not out of town, but on Patterson Place. And so we're back, same issue. Thank you, Mr. Kent. Thank you very much. Ms. Mason, welcome. Good evening, council members and Mayor Shull. I'm Joellen Mason and I've been a resident here since 1993. And my current permanent address is 3822 Hill Grand Drive, which is not in any way adjacent to this property. I'm speaking from several perspectives which may seem like odd bedfellows. I'm a realtor in the area and have had a career here since 94. You would think that I'd be all four more houses, especially this close to Duke. And I am asking for more time just for this to be studied and reviewed more carefully, especially from the other odd bedfellow to this, which is that I have a very strong belief in the environment and environmental conservation. I served on Durham Open Space and Trails Commission for a while and also on the Eno River Board. Procedurally, I just am concerned about the lack of voice in this and that's where I would love to see some more of the time spent if you will grant a delay for this. And I do respect the expense and frustration that that causes a developer. I know that there's a lot in that, especially if any funds have been borrowed for the land purchase. So I get that. However, I reached out today to colleagues at Durham Open Space and Trails who didn't, the ones I spoke with didn't know about this development. Also reached out to Matt Kopeck with Environmental Affairs Board. He was here earlier and he asked me when he was leaving if I would just reference his comments from before that they'd like to be involved in the discussions, particularly when there's an environmental sensitivity. So just requesting more times so that those processes can be included. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Mason. All right, those are all the speakers that have signed up. Is there anyone else? This is a public hearing. Is there anyone else who would like to be heard who has not been heard tonight on this item? Yes. Come forward and give us your name and address. Hi. My name is Spencer Jennings. Let's give us your address and you have two minutes. 3612 Randolph Road, 3614 Randolph Road. I'm on the south side of the property. So I'm directly affected by the runoff in particular. And that's my biggest concern is the amount of runoff that I'm gonna experience as this development is built. My concerns are it's gonna probably devalue the property. We plan on building back on that property some time ago and I had not gotten to that point yet but my concerns personally is we're gonna be directly affected by the amount of runoff that's gonna be directly on our land. I've seen the plans, I've just got those today so I've not had time to really get into detail on it to study what the impact is gonna be. I know that there's gonna be, there's quite a bit of impervious area. 30% I think is gonna be the area that's gonna be impervious with the streets and the rooftops and driveways. And so there's gonna be a lot more water flowing through that property. They've got a sedimentation pond built for it. I just don't know how that's going to work and how that's going to mitigate the amount of water that's gonna be flowing through that area. So I'm just got really concerned about this, the stormwater runoff in that area and as it personally affects me. And I'm in support of this Sultara neighborhood folks. I love the area and as much as possible. So. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Sir, would you do me a favor? Would you go to the table and fill out a yellow card so the clerk will just have a record of you being here? Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item who's not been heard? Mr. Ghosh, you have reserved some time. Thank you. And I'm glad I got to hear the comments from a lot of our neighbors at Sultara who we did meet with as they mentioned and some other folks. But I will say I was surprised to hear a lot of the misinformation just now because we shared a lot of information with those folks and maybe we didn't do quite as good a job as we should have. But I wanna make a couple of things clear. First of all, you can see Sultara neighborhood here in the blue, which ironically enough is about 37 lots on about 20 acres, which is the same type of development we're talking about in the area to be annexed. The other thing is the buffers. It was mentioned that the buffers might be as low as five feet and a maximum of 30 feet wide and that's simply incorrect. It's a minimum of 30 feet and that's, I don't know if the mouse works. No, along the west side, that's a minimum of 30 foot buffer. On the north side up against Sultara, our buffer is actually more like 100 feet wide. In fact, there's about one acre adjacent to Sultara on the north side that's completely undisturbed. The only place where there's five feet of grass is adjacent to those roads that come out to Randolph Road and that's literally the grass strip next to the road. So there's far more than five feet of buffer around the entire thing. And I'm surprised to hear that that wasn't clear from us in our meeting with the folks in Sultara. I understand that there is a concern about runoff. And I know that this council is fully aware of the stringent requirements that the city has with respect to runoff. And to be clear, 100% of our impervious is treated on site. What I'm hearing a lot of is, the annexation is going to allow them to build a lot more houses than they could in the county and that is true. However, it's also important to understand what county development looks like and what that looks like is multiple septic systems near these very important headwaters. And instead of getting a lot of very clear city treated water and runoff, what you would get is effluent coming out of the septic systems near these important waters. But some of the environmental features on this property I think were overstated. We are not near a floodplain and we don't impact any wetlands. There are important natural features here and it is important to take a lot of things into consideration, especially with how the property drains. However, it's not accurate to say that we're impacting the 100 year floodplain or impacting wetlands. That's just not accurate. And all that can be verified on the site plan. Full cutoff lighting is required in the city of Durham and that's what we're using. And I believe the site plan will show that or at least there is a lighting plan that would be associated with site plan. And the other thing I wanna touch on is that there's been a lot of talk about how this is a special resource and we could not agree more. This is a small neighborhood that is not capable of supporting its own pool clubhouse. We're only talking about a handful of homes. Our amenity for this neighborhood is Hollow Rock Park. So our interest in Hollow Rock Park matches that of the people who live there. And I recognize that we don't live there and there isn't anyone living there yet. That doesn't mean we don't care. We want Hollow Rock Park to continue to be a very important and beautiful feature in the city of Durham. Oh, and on the preservation, what I wanted to say is the site is about 20 acres. Eight of it is open space on the site plan. Eight acres of open space of the 20 and five of that is completely undisturbed. So this is a cluster development that is meant to preserve open space on land. That is the point of a cluster development and that's what we're trying to do. Making special neighborhood like Salterra near Hollow Rock Park. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goge. Colleagues, you have heard the speakers and I'll now ask if there are any questions or comments for staff. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Could you tell us what could be built here without the annexation? So the buy-right density permitted is the same. The difference comes down to needing the city utilities in order to construct that number of units. So even though the buy-right density is the same, they wouldn't functionally be able to build as many homes if it were, well, in septic, that's the... Okay, do you know, like, could you give me a ballpark of how many they would be able to build on wells in septic? I don't have that expertise. I think here comes Mr. Young. I bet he doesn't have it either, but he's gonna pretend to have it. I don't have the expertise, but I've been doing this for over 25 years and I've seen a lot of sites very similar. The minimum without extraordinary and costly onsite enhanced septic systems and minimums are usually an acre. So I think that probably the maximum would be about 20. It would probably be less because not every lot can perk. So that's not an expert, but I have seen enough to feel comfortable saying that. Thank you. I consider you an expert in everything, Mr. Young. Expert enough for me. Could you also give us a sense? So if there were a delay, residents are asking for a delay and it seems they're asking for a delay for the planning department to do more research, to ensure that there wouldn't be an impact on the park. Is there any research that y'all could do additional research if there was a delay to ensure that? Well, I guess to answer that in part, I would say that we have done some research, especially as these concerns specifically have come up. So with reference to the open space plan, I had put on the screen there, the location that was referenced by one of the speakers, just to clarify that the area called out was not actually the area of the site location. It's up-site. So the 200 feet from the wetland, sorry, from the floodplain wouldn't actually apply on this site. So with regard to the open space plan, we have done some review there if we would be, I guess, open to further review by partner agencies. I think the thing to point out with this is that it is an annexation request and annexations are effective quarterly. So with the December deadline, that's why we are likely here with their goal of completing that within the year. As far as any other additional research that staff could do, just keeping in mind that this is a direct translation and an annexation. So we don't have the opportunity for proffers to be applied through this mechanism with regard to additional buffers or different buffers or wetland sorts of things. So it would be specifically meeting the ordinance requirements under the request that they've come in with. Thank you. That's helpful. Can I ask Mr. Groesch a quick question as well? Could you give us the square footage and price point for the homes? I think Mr. Bowles, who is with Kendrick, or I'm sorry, with Baker residential would be better suited to answer that question. Thank you. Mark Bowles with Baker residential 401, Harrison Oaks Boulevard and Raleigh, or Cary, sorry, the square footage range will probably be approximately the upper 2000s to maybe over 3,000 square foot and prices probably starting in the mid 300s. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, Madam Chair. Other questions? I just had a question for staff regarding, I think I heard a comment around this plan or this annexation or some part of this needing to go before a different body before coming to us or in some way. I just wanted to hear if you had a response to that comment that was made. Sure, there was a reference to the reviews by DOST or other environmental specific groups. This annexation, since it doesn't have a development plan with it that there's not much to it was not sent to those departments, typically annexations are sent to a limited number of departments. So this has not been routed through them. Yeah, thank you. I want to, I think that's worth repeating because Ms. Mason mentioned, for example, that had not gone to DOST. So just to explain that, if there is a rezoning it goes to lots of our different commissions for them to comment on. But since this is a direct translation of the county zoning to the city zoning that is usually not sent to our various boards and commissions, which I was wondering about after you made that comment. So I appreciate that clarification. I have a couple of questions as well. Mr. Young, were you gonna make some comments? I mean, just to quickly thank you Mr. Mayor just to address, expand on Mr. Other's response to the Mayor Protam, I think. Obviously, we're willing to take this back and meet with any party you deem appropriate, but we did assess the site. It does not appear from the information we have and it's on the document camera. If we want to look at it that this site was identified in the New Hope Creek plan. There's no stream buffer on site. There's no floodplain. There's no natural heritage area. There are small wetland areas that either need to be protected or modified pursuant to the ordinance standards. We have very strange sedimentation erosion control and stormwater standards. There's a 30 foot buffer being provided as required by the UDO. So we feel like the potential impacts on the park have been mitigated either through the site conditions or through the ordinance standards. But we, and we didn't hear anything tonight. That was something that was not previously addressed. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The, just to, can you help me understand, again, the, I think you said this already. What is the relationship of this land to the, the floodplain and the New Hope Creek headwaters? Sure. So the floodplain in there, I'm sure there's a graphic available that can, I think, help show this better is considerably, the nearest floodplain is considerably to the east of the site. I would say at least 1,000 feet off site. Thank you, that's helpful. Yeah, the context map, which is attachment one, you can see it there on the east side of the Carolina Forest neighborhood, not this one. It's attachment one. Yeah, looking at it now. To the context map. The context map for the zoning report, which is attachment eight. I'm sorry. Attachment one. I think you mean the overview map, Pat? Attachment three. Yeah, I'm looking at it as it, it's coming up as attachment one and what we have here, hold on. One A would be the overview would also. Yeah, there you go. This one here shows it. That's the floodplain on the right side of the screen. And again, the subject properties on the far left side of the screen, you can see the scale, about one inch is about 500 feet. So it's well more than a thousand feet. The area down first. Okay, thanks. In the area, one more quick comment. The area to the south and east, you can see the very, very corner of it, just the south and east of Pickett Road there is the. West, I think west. Is the, I'm sorry to the west, you're right. To the south and west of the site is the another floodplain area. That's I believe Mud Creek, yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I was going to ask the density compared to Solterra, do you, and I believe Mr. Ghosh has commented on that. The density is approximately the same as the density for this. Yes. For this development. There was some questions raised about notification. Can you talk about notification? Sure. All notification as required by the ordinance was provided as Mr. Others alluded to, we have not notified, this is a direct translational zoning. So there's no, there's no change as you've alluded to and other other Council members have alluded to. There's no change in the zoning standards. So there's been a longstanding practice for at least over 15 years that we have not done extensive notification of partners since there's no change in the zoning requirements. We understand that when a property comes into the city because of the availability of utilities it makes development more likely. We certainly will look at potentially increasing or expanding that list of notified partners with these direct translational zonings, but we're following a policy that's been in place for a very long time. So we did not notify our DOS group. DOS is a group that typically as one of the speakers alluded to reaches out to the New Hope Creek Corridor Committee and so they were not required to be noticed. They were not noticed directly. Okay, thank you. I do think that's worth looking at given the number of annexations we're getting lately, but thank you. Okay, any other questions or comments? Colleagues? Council Member Freeman? I was just trying to understand. So when you have, I guess, because the area down in the Southwest, it kind of shows that they're building into the flood plain and then on the Northeast, there's also like building into a flood plain. Is that taken into consideration at all in the calculations that are needed to alleviate any hundred year flood issues that might occur? Because I'm understanding from what I'm hearing from residents is that there's been some concerns about the existing level of flooding that's occurring and noting that there's quite a bit of development into these areas that are flood plain already. How do you calculate or attach some type of analysis around acknowledging that we're already building into those flood plains? Right, so if there's evidence or information that the proposed development is going to significantly exacerbate an existing condition, our stormwater development review team tries to work with the applicant to mitigate that, but our ability to do that is limited because it's a problem that's not being caused by this developer. So what this developer is saying that they've done analysis, and this is what's required by the ordinance that there will be no increases in the one, two, and 10 year storm events at any point of analysis leaving the site. So there'll be no net impact, no increase in flow at those designed storms leaving their site. And so because of that, there was no basis to require this applicant or even request this applicant to do offsite mitigation of an existing problem that predated significantly and predates. Some of these developments were done prior to the stormwater controls. And then just noting that I heard another question around the failures of those mitigation tools. Is there some way that we're checking like annually? I'm trying to make sure I'm answering that question because I think it was raised around if there is a failure that occurred in the stormwater mitigation that's occurring on site, how is that reviewed? Well, during the construction and development process that's handled by the county sedimentation erosion control office who do inspections on the site. I don't know the periodicity. We'd have to have those folks in here to get into more detail than that. After it's completed, there's a stormwater maintenance bond that's required and an inspection prior to the facility being, prior to being COed. So there's a administrative mechanism to both ensure that it's functioning properly at the time of closeout of the project and in perpetuity going forward. So annually it's reviewed to make? I don't know if there's an annual site inspection. Again, I would need someone from our stormwater team to speak in further detail than what I've given. But there's a bonding requirement that if it fails and it's not maintained by the HOA that the city can come in, the city can have access to the property and complete it and then use the bond proceeds to reimburse the city. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Young. Any further questions or comments this time? I'm gonna just make a couple of comments. First of all, I appreciate the neighbors coming out and thank you for staying with us so long. To me, there were a couple of important questions raised that one is the question of notification. And as Mr. Young said, certainly the planning department followed our regulations. I do think that there is, I think we frequently faced with the need to change. I think that given the frequency of annexations and what they mean, even though there's a direct translation of the zoning, I do think it's worth looking at that again. And I appreciate Mr. Young mentioning that. In terms of the concerns of the folks in Salterra, I very much understand that the folks in Salterra enjoy and love the beauty of the park that is right behind your neighborhood. And you have a wonderful neighborhood. And this annexation and the translation of the zoning to be the same zoning as it is now will allow another neighborhood almost exactly the same size as your neighborhood to also enjoy this park. And we have a lot of people moving to Durham all the time and they need places to live. And we need to make sure that it's done well and we have regulations to make sure it's done well. But I do think that we, I think that all of us who live here now wish that all of the nature that we have next to us could be preserved. I know that this is not built on now this land. And yet we ourselves have come here and built on nature. And so I think it's really important that we be consistent in that way and that we recognize that new people need to places to live to. So I especially appreciated the concerns that were raised around the issue of the New Hope Creek headwaters. And the floodplain. But I am satisfied upon hearing the explanation and looking at these maps that there is again roughly a thousand feet between the development and the floodplain. That's a long way. And that again gives me confidence that what we all agree as a cherished resource won't be damaged by this development. In terms of stormwater, that's the other important issue. And we hear this a lot. And as the climate changes, stormwater becomes more and more of an issue. We know that. And as not only the climate changes, but as we build, as we build in pervious surfaces, it creates stormwater that needs to be managed. And we have in the city, I think very good regulations for the management of the stormwater. It is true that there are times when stormwater facilities do fail. Certainly true. But it's also true as Mr. Young said that we have an inspection system that we have a system of bonds. And I have seen the system in operation over many situations over a long period of time. And I've seen these bonds come into play. And I have seen stormwaters. I have seen the failure of stormwater systems that have need to be corrected. And it's not impossible that that would happen. But I do think we have good inspections and assurances in place that would be corrected. They don't often fail, but they do fail on occasion. So given this, I'm not inclined to support a delay. I think that none of the concerns I've heard, and I'm speaking only for myself, not for my colleagues, rise to the level that I think that a delay would be and a good way to get at change. I think that the, or to get at something better. I think that the density on this is quite reasonable. I think that the distance from the floodplain is far. And I don't think the stormwater concerns are any different than we have in any development in Durham all the time. In any development, we have the same stormwater concerns. So those are my comments. And I've welcomed any comments that my colleagues might make. And then we will close the public hearing and proceed to about it. Council Member Caballero and then Council Member Ruiz. Sorry. I would just like to say that I would actually be in favor of a delay, partly because the checks and balances that we do normally put in because it's an annexation did not happen. I am concerned that DOS did not get a chance to vet this. I am concerned that the New Hope Creek Order Committee folks who did an excellent job on Patterson Place and were able to get a result where everyone was happy, the developer and the folks who had environmental concerns. And so, although I may get outvoted, I would propose to do a delay. Thank you. Council Member Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to second Council Member Caballero's remarks and adopt that position as my own. Our four local jurisdictions came together to protect the New Hope Creek corridor. At around the time, I may have still been in college back then, Mr. Mayor. So it's been some time. And integral to their plan was the creation of what ultimately became Hullarock Nature Park. And I don't think that the southern portion of Hullarock Nature Park, that is the portion south of the Pickett Road that is of gravel right now, is necessarily at risk from this potential development. But I think the northern portion deserves some consideration. The developer is attempting to develop a piece of property that is adjacent to that portion of Hullarock Nature Park. And as Mr. Goch is ably advocated, they are required to follow the city's requirements when it comes to stormwater, buffers, whatever the other impervious surface, et cetera. My position is that given the proximity of this particular piece of property adjacent to the northern portion of Hullarock Nature Park, that it deserves some additional consideration. And that's why I believe a delay is appropriate here. We have seen the folks at the New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee work well with developers in other situations. And they meet on the second Thursday of every month, which is coming up not too far from now in January. And I think a delay would be appropriate to allow the developer to go to the advisory committee and talk to them about their plans and see if they can work something out that's amenable to all the folks that are having concerns here. And that's how I intend to vote tonight. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. Other colleagues? Mr. Mayor. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the concerns raised by both my distinguished colleagues, Councilor Caviera and Councilor Rees. However, I do not feel that this development does violence to the original intent of said organizations. I was listening very carefully. I'm convinced. Well, I don't know what more, based upon what I've heard from the staff thus far, unless they want to add anything that we will learn during the period of a delay, what study we would commission, what fears would be elade. And I'm certainly open to hearing that, if there are some substantive matters that can be uncovered with a delay and how long that would be. But I'm satisfied with the information we've gotten from staff and from the developer that the original intent of that conglomerate of interest that came together to produce this beautiful park, no violence is being done to that intent, at least as far as I'm concerned, and I will support the development. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Council Member Middleton. Mayor Pro Tem. No, no, thank you. Okay, Council Member Freyman. Mr. Mayor, I would also agree with Council Member Caviera and Council Member Rees as well, noting that the noticed information has not been shared with many of the folks in the neighborhood. That not alone leaves me calls for pause. And I would acknowledge, even if it were just a two-month delay, I would be willing to make that motion if you felt like it was appropriate. Well, it's clear to me that what I'm seeing, I haven't heard from Council Member Alston yet, but we're not here from Council Member Alston. I hear at least three people who are interested in a delay and I think that's good enough for me. I'm gonna keep this public hearing open. And I'm gonna keep it open until Council Member Rees, when did you say that that group meets? Well, they are scheduled to meet the second Thursday of every month at 5 p.m. And as he well knows, he's putting his thumb up. I can't tell you for certain whether or not they have a meeting planned for January, but they have every other January that in the list of minutes. So I suspect it'll be. I'm gonna continue this public hearing until February 3rd. And that will give anyone interested a chance to talk to the folks at the New Hope Creek Quarter Study Group. And as usual, collective wisdom is a good thing. And I appreciate everyone's thoughts. Council Member Alston, do you wanna add anything by the way? Well, I think the Mayor first had a comment as well, but you are moving in the direction that I was going. Yeah, I think this is not to burdensome on the process. I just wanna know what's gonna happen. I mean. In the interim? Yes, what is the effect of the delay that we have? I think that the neighbors will need to go to the New Hope Creek group and talk to them. And if you wanna have further conversation with our planning staff, Mr. Young, do you have any thoughts, comments? I would just make a request. If there's interest in continuance, staff has a number of conflicts on the evening of February. Do we have any other items scheduled? Could we ask for either the meeting before or the meeting after? A meeting after. February 17th. February 17th. February 17th, then the public hearing will be continued to February 17th. And we'll look forward to seeing you all back here. Don't plan on everybody getting up and talking again. No, I can tell you that right now. Okay, thank you all very much. I'm gonna continue this public hearing to that time. Colleagues, we're now gonna go back, unfortunately, to item 16. And we'll hear from our attorney. We need to take one further action. I apologize to the members of council. So I thought that when the council voted down the consistency statement on the Plum Amendment that that would moot the second motion. But my esteemed colleague and land use guru was watching the meeting and said, you know, you guys need to vote on the second motion. So if we could go back to item number 16. Colleagues, we're back at item number 16. Excuse me, friends. We have two more items of business to do. It's gonna take us a while. So we're dying to go home. So y'all could take the conversations out. It'd be awesome. If you wanna stay and enjoy the rest of it though, feel free. All right, motion to adopt the ordinance of entity comprehensive plan. Is there someone like to make a motion? Someone saying it. With the intent of voting no, I would assume. Madam clerk, could you please open the vote? We're on item 16, motion two. Okay. Everybody with me? Please close the vote. And the ordinance fails, zero to seven. Thank you so much. And thank you, Madam attorney and Mr. Young. And now we'll move on to item 18. This is the Urban Avenue Street closing and development agreement. And we'll hear from Ms. Struthers. Good evening. Ms. Struthers with the planning department. So regarding Urban Avenue Street closing, due to a high degree of uncertainty around the timing of resolution regarding issues associated with the street closing plot, staff recommends the public caring be closed and the item referred back to the administration. Once all outstanding issues, including those related to the location of Duke power easements and related concerns have been addressed, the item will be re-advertised and rescheduled. The staff is available for any questions. Thank you. Does that require a motion? So you would have to close the public hearing? Close the hearing? Yep. You close it. You close it. Did I, did I, it was... You can close it. It was closed open. I will now close the public hearing and refer this back to staff. Correct. Is that all you did? Yeah. Okay, great. Close it, close it. I don't believe there's any more business to come before this body. I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at 12 o'clock. Oh, good. You've been made.