 Oh, is it here? It's here. This is it. Trying to stay out of that picture. Of course, she's got a couple things she wants to show you. Testing one, two, three. This is a test for closed captioning. Today is Monday, May the 15th. Hurting cats are hurting the best laid plans. Wait for you. Good evening. We would like to call the Durham City Council meeting to order on Monday the 15th. And certainly want to welcome all of you that are here with us this evening as you probably noted we had a very special occasion earlier and we're going to follow through for the rest of the meeting. This is a very signal event. It's an occasion where we've had the opportunity to have all of the former living mayors in the city of Durham. And I want to congratulate Councilman Eddie Davis whose idea was to bring all of this together. Eddie is sort of the historian of this council and he's the birthday keeper of all our birthdays. He remembers all these good things. Just a very special guy. So I'm going to first ask for a moment of silent meditation. Thank you. And then we're going to have the pledge of allegiance. We're going to recognize Councilman Davis on that occasion. Yes, Mayor Beall. We are honored to have the Cub Scout pack from St. Joseph's AME church pack 137 and they're going to lead us in the pledge. Will everybody please stand and recite the pledge of allegiance. And if you're in uniform salute otherwise put your hand over your heart. 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. Two. Madam Clerk would you call the roll please. Mayor Beall. Present. Mayor Pro Tim Cole McFadden. Councilmember Davis. Councilmember Johnson. Councilmember Moffitt. Councilmember Reese. And Councilmember Shul. I'm not going to turn it over to Councilman Davis. Thank you Mr. Mayor. We'd like to ask former Mayor Robert Wintz-Grabarek to come and join me. A proclamation and I want to read it. Robert Wintzel Wintz-Grabarek was elected by Durham voters on Saturday, May 18th, 1963 and served as mayor until May 17th, 1971. And whereas on the very same day he was elected, mass demonstrations advocating for the end of racial segregation at restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, and other public accommodations occurred in Durham. These demonstrations led to the arrest of hundreds of black citizens during rallies at numerous local restaurants at City Hall and at the county courthouse. And whereas on Sunday, May 19th, 1963, the black demonstrators continued their quest for equality and were met by a set of white counter demonstrators. Not wanting to see Durham join those areas that had experienced violence and bloodshed, Mayor-Elect Wrabarek went to the site of the demonstrations and conferred with black leaders Floyd McKissick and Hugh Thompson. And whereas through consultation and negotiations with Attorney McKissick, Attorney Thompson, Mrs. Bessie McLaurin, police chief WWE Pleasants and others, arrangements were made to provide food and cigarettes for the arrested demonstrators. At that point, dialogue began for the initiation of biracial meetings to discuss a resolution to the concerns of the demonstrators. And whereas on Monday, May 20th, 1963, Wint Scrabarek took the Oakley office and officially became the Mayor of Durham. Two days later, on May 22nd, 1963, the new mayor announced the appointment of a biracial group called Durham's Interim Committee. And whereas the work of the Interim Committee began immediately, the civil rights rallies and demonstrations continued. Without an invitation, Mayor Grrabarek attended a joint meeting of the NAACP, the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs, and other groups at St. Joseph's AME Church on May 23rd, 1963. Mayor Grrabarek rose and spoke to the mass gathering on that evening and asked that the demonstrations be suspended while the work of the Durham Interim Committee progressed. The mayor received an agreement to his proposal and a standing ovation from the audience. Whereas a CBS film crew was covering civil rights activities across the South and included this rally at St. Joseph's Church. This crew captured the mayor's remarks and the audience's reaction. On the next day, May 24th, 1963, that footage from the rally appeared on the national broadcast of Eye Witness to History with Charles Collingwood. The commentary portion of the program contrasted Durham's approach, the cooperation of the races, and the leadership of Mayor Grrabarek to other civil rights approaches that were taking place in other portions of America. And whereas on June the 4th, 1963, after meeting for 11 days, the Durham Interim Committee held a live local television press conference to offer its report to the City Council and the Durham community. In summary, the report stated the following, and I quote, Durham, North Carolina is pleased to announce that in a completely voluntary action of all hotel and motel operators and a substantial number of food service operators on this date authorized the Durham Interim Committee to announce that they will serve their customers without regard to race. In addition, the leading businesses in Durham have agreed to employ citizens without regard to race. All tax-supported units of government will similarly make all facilities and services available without regard to race. And whereas upon the request of the White House, a copy of the Durham Interim Committee report was sent by Western Union Telegram to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy via his assistant, Mr. Henry Hall Wilson. And whereas Durham's fortnight of fortitude in late May and early June of 1963 came before the March on Washington in August of 1963 and in advance of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, Merrick Gerbark's four two-year terms should not be remembered only for his civil rights work. It also should be remembered for the annexation and development of Crowsdale, the annexation of Hope Valley, the rezoning and development of South Square Mall, the relocation of the Ligon and Myers Company headquarters from New York City to Durham, the development and recruitment of several international and national firms to the Research Triangle Park. Durham's recognition by the Department of Civil Defense has the national leader in supplied shelters for all people during the Cold War era. The establishment of Operation Breakthrough after conferences with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and National Poverty Director Sergeant Schraver. The establishment of a sister cities arrangement with Durham, England, the designation of Duke Homeside as a North Carolina historic site. The negotiations with Durham banks to increase the interest rates paid to the City of Durham for its deposit funds and the little-known standoff against the National White Citizens' Council in response to Durham's policies on racial inclusion. And whereas Mayor Groberick has often stated that, and I quote, we strive to encourage that this day and every day in Durham's history will allow our diverse togetherness to give light to our collective soul. Now, therefore, I, William V. Bill Bale, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim Sunday, May 21, 2017, as Robert Winsall-Wintz-Groberick Day in Durham and call upon our residents and visitors to join the City Council in celebrating the 98th birthday of our illustrious former mayor, the 98th birthday. And finally, there's the last portion that says, Witness my hand and the corporate seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, on this 15th day of May 2017, and it's signed by another illustrious mayor, William V. Bill Bale, Mayor of Durham. This proclamation is yours. We'd like to have a few words from you. Thank you, Mayor Bale and Davis. Thank you, all the other consultants for putting together with us a rather bountiful proclamation. I thank you most sincerely. In all of our lives, there'll be a moment, maybe two, that's signed out specially. It goes with us and accompanies us to eternity. I want to assure you tonight that this is my moment. Thank you so very, very much. Let me just say a word or two here, and if I may, I came to Durham in 1942. The Army brought me to Camp Buttoner in Durham, North Carolina. When the City of Durham gave me my precious bride, Marion Pritchard-Nars, it was already more, much more, that I could ever repay. Tonight, tonight you put me deeper in your debt, but I'm grateful for it. Thank you so very, very much. There was a lot said, and I appreciate that very much. When Ed read the proclamation, there was a lot said, a lot was done, I would be terribly remiss and unfair to the many, many people, both white and black races, who helped in the area of civil rights in so far as Durham is concerned. I'm going to cite one example because I think it points up that actually we're all better than we are, and if we visit our conscience, we usually wind up at the right place. About a month before the demonstrations started, and they were planned incidentally for about 30 days, and I told the group of St. Joe's at that time that you have a perfect right to demonstrate. On the other hand, I know your plight fully and I understand it completely. Two demonstrations, three more, 10 more, 30 more days won't change my mind one bit. Please, as first class citizens honor my request to let me see if I can locate the conscience of my community. And that's what set up the committee that Ed mentioned. But there was one example, when I formed that committee, there was one gentleman in town who I knew had to be honored. He was Harvey Rape. Everyone loved Harvey. He ran a very successful cafeteria on Main Street. He was a very fine man, a religious man, and genuinely believed that segregation was correct. To the point where one day he took a rifle, cradled it in his arms, came to the threshold of his restaurant, and dared a black patron to come in. Fortunately, no one did. And yet I knew that on the committee I was forming to discuss as to whether we could resolve and reconcile the differences in our community. I had to have his voice. I spent about two hours with him. He said, I'll call you tonight. 11.15 that night I had given up. He called and Harvey Rape said, this is the ultra, ultra segregationist. My shirt is wet with my tears. I had just come in from the woods. Mr. Mayor, I will serve. What a beautiful moment in Durham's history. And he was one of the leading efforts to integrate our Russia. But it points out that in all our challenges that Durham has say in the future, let's put our conscience to work. We all have one and think it through. And we don't need demonstrations in riots and bombing and killing. Let's do it at the table. That's my sincere hope. Today's world in 1963, and let me say this too because in reference to the committee, I did when I was elected 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. And 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 of the city of Durham. In 1963, our country was rampant with riot. Today, our country is seriously, critically divided. In Durham, we decided that our diverse togetherness gives light to our soul. I hope that will ever be so in the future. Let me say finally that my wife and I and my family love each and every one of you in Durham and extend our very best wishes to each and every one of you. Always. Thank you very much. Mr. May, if I may thank the members of the Groberick family for being here and we appreciate your presence. Also, we'd like to recognize the presence of several other former mayors who are here. Some of you saw a photograph being taken of all of the living former mayors, but we'd like to recognize Mayor Sylvia Kirkhoff. We'd like to recognize Mayor Nick Tennison. And we were joined earlier by Mayor Whip Gully, who had to leave because his daughter's birthday party is being held today. I think we have in the audience some representatives from at least two other mayors. I believe that Mrs. Leola Jenkins is here, the widow of former Mayor Chester Jenkins. And I believe we have several representatives of the Harry Rodenhauser family, if they would stand. Harry Rodenhauser served two, not consecutive terms, two different times, like Grober Cleveland, I guess. And the other thing I'd like to do is we recognize the St. Joseph's Boy Scouts, and I think it's important that St. Joseph's is here because Mayor Groberick went into St. Joseph's when other people would not have. And we also have a Boy Scout troop here from Watts Street Baptist, which is Mayor Groberick's church himself, so they are here with us. And finally, before I turn it over to you, Mr. Mayor, I know you want me to get out of the way. I think that there are some representatives here of some of the people that Mayor Groberick worked with and went and talked with as soon as they were arrested. There were several people. Some of the real heroes along with Mayor Groberick were those people who put themselves on the line, got arrested for standing up for the rights that everyone should enjoy. So I'd like to know if there are other people here who are part of the Civil Rights Movement here in Durham, if you are here, please stand. I know Coral Cole McFadden is one of them. There may be other people. Leola was one of the people too. So thank you for the work that you do. Thank you Mayor Bale for enduring and allowing this to happen. This was a wonderful occasion. I'm glad that we took this time to honor Mayor Groberick and we're going to do more of that on which Groberick Day this coming Sunday. I want to again congratulate you for really being the person that pulled all this together. I certainly want to congratulate all that are here this evening. Sure, Mayor Groberick, sure. As you come forward, you're free to use the microphone. I told the Mayor Groberick when we were standing down there, I said the only thing that's missing was the carnation. You're free to stay but we understand if you need to leave, feel free to do that. We won't feel offended by any stretch of the imagination. Probably some of us would leave but we don't have to be here. Mr. Mayor? I just wanted to note that earlier this year Mayor Pro Tem Cork McFadden brought in a letter that had been put in a time capsule written from the Mayor at that time to the Mayor at this time and the author of that letter is here and Mayor Groberick and the receiver of that letter 50 years later is also here and I just think that's tremendous. Is Jesse Hellicott here by any chance? Oh, right behind me. This proclamation recognizes National Gun Violence Awareness Day and it speaks to the fact that whereas every day 93 Americans are killed by gun violence and more than 200 have sustained non-fatal firearms injuries over the last five years and whereas Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed with guns than people in other developed countries whereas protecting public safety and the communities they serve as Mayor's highest responsibility whereas support for the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns away from dangerous people and whereas mayors in law enforcement offices know their communities best are the most familiar with local criminal activity and how to address it and the best position to understand how to keep the citizens safe whereas on June the 2nd 2017 it would have been the 20th birthday of Hadiah Pendleton a senior teenager who marched in President Obama's second inaugural parade was tragically shot and killed just weeks later and whereas the help honor and the 93 Americans who live lives are cut short and the countless survivors who are injured by shooting every day a national coalition of organizations has designated June the 2nd 2017 as the third annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day whereas the idea was inspired by a group of Hadiah's friends who asked their classmates to commemorate her life by wearing orange they chose this color because hunters wear orange to announce themselves to other hunters when out in the woods and orange is the color that symbolizes the value of human life whereas anyone who can join this campaign by pledging to wear orange on June the 2nd to help raise awareness about gun violence whereas by wearing orange on June the 2nd Americans were raised awareness by about gun violence and honor the lives and lost human potential of Americans stolen by gun violence whereas renew our commitment to reduce gun violence and pledge to do all we can to keep firearms out of the wrong hands and encourage responsible gun ownership to help keep our children safe therefore I William V. Villebell Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina to hear by proclaim June the 2nd 2017 as National Gun Violence Awareness Day in Durham and hear by urge all citizens to support their local community's efforts to prevent the tragic effects of gun violence and to honor and value human lives and witness my hand in the Corpus City of Durham North Carolina, this is the 15th day of May and I'm going to present this to you for any comments that you might have Oh, I've got quite a few. Thank you Mayor and the Durham City Council for this proclamation today it is so important to keep this issue front and center for the City of Durham and we must stand with the families that have been directly impacted by gun violence this proclamation serves as a call to action for citizens to get involved in finding a solution if you want more information you can find Mom's Demand Action for Gun Sense online I invite everyone in our city to wear orange on June 2nd the color of gun violence prevention that celebrates the vitality of life we will have several buildings glowing orange in Durham on June 2nd including the Mutual Building and the Carolina Theater and DPAC and again thank you to the Mayor and the City Council and everyone here tonight this proclamation recognizes National Public Works Week and Fast and Modern Williams our Director of Public Works to join me speaks to the fact that Public Works Services provided in our community are an integral part of every of citizens everyday lives where as the support of understanding and informed citizenry is vital to the efficient operation of public work systems and programs such as water sewers, streets and highways public buildings and solid waste collection where as the health, safety and confidence community greatly depend on these facilities and services where as the quality and effectiveness of these facilities as well as their planning, design and construction is vitally dependent upon the efforts and skill of public work officials where as the efficiency of the qualified and dedicated personnel who staffed public works departments is materially influenced by the people's attitudes and understanding of the importance of the work they perform and therefore I, William V. Bilbell Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina to hear my proclaim the week of May 21st of May 27th, 2017 as National Public Works Week in Durham and hereby urge all citizens and civil organizations to acquaint themselves with the issues involved in providing our public works and to recognize the contributions which public works officials make everyday to our health, safety and comfort and quality of life and with my hand, Corporate City of Durham, North Carolina 15th of May, 2017 Thank you Mayor Vell, Mayor Pro Tem members of council there's several members from the Public Works Department I think it would be great to recognize them for National Public Works Week here tonight so if they would all stand so they could be formally recognized tonight so it's great to get that recognition because public works is one of those fields where you normally don't know about us unless we're doing something wrong so it's good it's really good to actually have the staff recognize for a positive thing so next week is National Public Works Week officially we'll have several activities as we do every year Monday we'll have our display in the lobby for the public to see and any city employees to get an idea of what public works is on Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 2 30 a.m. at our maintenance operation center on MLK we'll be having an internal many public works type college just to give employees an idea of what public works is and then also on Friday at Southern Boundaries Park next to the operation center at 11 a.m. we'll have our annual lunch all members of council the administration are welcome to join us lunch will be served at 11 30 so please feel free to stop by talk with employees and thank you for recognizing all the work that staff does within public works every day I can let me ask are there any comments by members of the council I can ask them to approach them Good evening everyone could we just pause our meditation we lost Chuck David Chuck Davis and his loss is difficult for all of us and I would like to propose that we move forward with the resolution and when we present it to present it in the style that Boba Chuck would like it with his African American ensemble here in city hall thank you the other piece Mr. Mary is that I worked with every mayor that was here with the exception of the one who would be 98 years old and I learned something from each of them Comments by members of council if not recognized for our times first body city manager Thank you Mr. Mayor good evening everyone no priority items Likewise city attorney no priority items Mr. Mayor and city clerk no items Mr. Mayor we're proceeding with the agenda first item being the consent agenda if persons want to pull an item we'll pull the item and discuss it later in the meeting I'll read each item heading item one is approval of city council minutes item two is street and infrastructure acceptances item three is proposed FY18 planning department work program item 14 is amendment one to the local agreement with the county of Durham regarding homeless services and homeless services advisory committee item five is the Durham computerized signal system item six is the Durham bike plus walk implementation plan item seven is adoption of 2018 ward and sewer rates item eight is the annual property casualty insurance plan FY18 2018 item nine is professional services contract with the John R. McAdams company incorporated for the snow hill road park master plan project item 10 is the local agreement for fire stations slash EMS facility in southeastern Durham county item 11 is the contract with imagine it LLC for asset and space management software item 12 is citywide classification compensation study for non sworn persons item 13 is compensation plan recommendations item 14 is the contract with Eckert youth alternatives doing business as Eckert's kids to deliver services for the training to work reentry grant four item 15 is the sewer only utility extension agreement with Brackton summers to serve 2643 Burton road item 16 is the contract SW 46D hill and dale road bike and pedestrian improvements tip number you 4726 H N item 17 is the government agreement with the U.S. geological survey for deployment operation and maintenance of rainfall and stream flow gauges at the city of Durham's public works operation center item 18 can be found on the general business agenda 19-23 items that can be found on the general business during public hearings item 25 is the designation of John Hope Franklin memorial highway I entertain a motion for the approval of the consent agenda it's been property moving second all in favor of the motion they can present aye those opposed the motion passes unanimously turn it over to the city manager this is a general this is a gender for the proposed physical year 2017-2018 budget and physical year 2018 2023 capital improvement plan Mr. Mayor in light of the incredible comments that were just made by Mayor Grubarak I would remiss because I know that any comments that are made by me the rest of this evening or anybody else for that matter have no chance of being as relevant and pertinent to this community not only from a historical perspective but for our future I'm going to ask for a pass on making the presentation tonight I don't think I'm going to get it but I'm going to at least ask for it in respect to to Mayor Grubarak alright we'll go anyway good try good evening Mayor Bell, Mayor Pro Tem call McFadden did you say okay oh members of the City Council sitting in for City Attorney Baker City Clerk Gray City Staff, residents of Durham present here tonight are viewing on the Durham Television Network or on Facebook Live I am honored to again be here before you this evening to present the proposed 2017-2018 fiscal year budget for the City of Durham to continue our tradition of making the annual budget presentation relevant to current happenings in the City you might recall that last month Vogue magazine called Durham the hippest city in North Carolina we just couldn't let that go without comment and what a better way to do that than with something as mundane as the annual City budget the Vogue Writer mainly focused on our great restaurants and other attractions that make Durham as they called it so hip few days after the article appeared a local columnist wrote that there was so much more that goes into making Durham hip and it's something that we've known for a long time and he urged Durham residents to keep it quiet as he correctly acknowledged the fact that Durham is hip is nothing new we've often described ourselves as funky, authentic, cool and now hip but to be fair no one has ever accused government of being hip well that might be debatable a few weeks ago a citywide spring cleanup unearthed some decades old photos of what I'd describe as a few hip looking city employees whose jobs were to do what some might call square work protecting Durham residents safeguarding tax dollars maintaining city vehicles and property and in general running the city now my younger days there are many things that I thought were hip extended mustaches flare leg pants, double knit suits a dark suntan and eating out, eating late night takeout but now I know better and in the words of the prolific singer Huey Lewis I'm working out most every day watching what I eat they tell me that it's good for me but I don't even care I know it's crazy I know it's nowhere but there's no sign that especially as we get older it just might be hip to be square the 2018 budget continues and builds on the city's everyday square efforts to responsibly meet residents basic needs while at the same time introducing creative and innovative or hip ways to address community challenges in developing the budget the administration continues to be guided by the city's strategic plan while it's encouraging and actively seeking community input this year in addition to the various ways the city has traditionally reached out to the community we've also taken into account the priorities identified in the 2016 resident satisfaction survey which results can be viewed on the city's website as always I want to thank you mayor bell and the city council for your guidance and participation throughout this budget process from the construction cranes downtown to the residential building boom happening all over town it's obvious that the secrets out on many of the factors that went into vogue's assessment of why Durham is hip and indicates how Durham's economy is faring maybe not so visible are the people working to make their neighborhoods even better places to live this year's proposed budget helps to sustain this progress and implements and funds new and innovative ways to address many of our community's most challenging issues and I'll highlight a few of the key components of my recommended budget this evening the proposed total budget for fiscal year 2017-18 is $429.4 million which is a 6.1% increase from last year the proposed general fund budget which covers the city's core services is $189.4 million a nearly 5% increase from last year this year to meet the city's need to cover expanding priorities particularly in affordable housing and public safety I am recommending a 1.79 property tax increase per $100 of assessed value bringing the city's total tax rate to 57.86 cents values for new construction and annexation will push the value of a penny on the tax rate to $2.79 million what this means for the average homeowner is a city tax bill of about $1,041 per year or $86.75 per month on a house value that the median house value of $180,000 which is $32 more than last year or less than $3 more per month proposed general fund expenditures include increases for personnel costs and significant increases in transfers for more street resurfacing while operating expenditures have decreased by a little more than 7% as a result of a variety of operational savings and prior year one-time expenditures the proposed budget uses a little more than $6 million of fund balance for a variety of one-time costs the projected fund balance at the end of the fiscal year is $49.9 million which is 27.6% and helps safeguard the city against economic uncertainty and emergencies in the future the city continues to enjoy an outstanding credit rating by all of the rating agencies do in part to sound fiscal management and our percentage of fund balance this year I propose using fund balance to address some of the concerns $2.6 million is provided for additional street resurfacing above the $4 million included in the recurring paving expenditures budget and $900,000 on top of the $800,000 in recurring funding for deferred maintenance needs both of these were top priorities raised in the 2016 resident satisfaction survey also to encourage police officers to reside in the city and provide assistance nearly $1.7 million is being allotted for the second year phase in of the take home vehicle program I continue to enjoy leading the city nearly 2,400 employees and firmly support keeping rewarding and retaining them high on the city's priority list the proposed budget continues the pay for performance plan and reflects the full implementation of the public safety employees pay plans an average of 4% is budgeted for general employees while 5% is budgeted for sworn personnel in line with the pay plan adjustments that were approved earlier this year while health care costs continue to rise again this year some premium increases are necessary to maintain the financial strength of the city's self-insured fund that covers the lives of more than 6,000 employees and their dependents participation in the blue local plan has risen 7.5% this year thanks to special efforts to inform employees about more cost-effective health care options this year the budget proposes to add 53 positions including 30 new firefighters to staff the soon to be completed fire station 17 in southeast Durham the budget also includes the conversion of a significant number of temporary and part-time positions to full-time permanent status along with a limited number of new specialized positions to address such issues as cyber and building security keeping the community safe continues to be a top priority and continues to be reflected in the city's budget C.J. Davis is nearing her first anniversary leading the police department and she and her command staff and officers continue to work to build and enhance relationships in the community the budget is included in this budget to replace and upgrade electronic equipment support programs including body-worn cameras and to continue recruitment and retention programs that are underway funding is also included to replace mobile data computers and in-car cameras as well as hiring a new crime analyst Maribel frequently says strong neighborhoods make even stronger communities over the last year we've seen how engaged residents contribute to making neighborhoods better some examples of these efforts include the transformation intent initiative neighborhood mini grants such as the one shown here at Southside and City Hall on the go I'd also like to highlight here some of the improvements to our neighborhood parks made possible by the dedicated half-cent for parks which will continue in the proposed budget if you haven't visited them lately you'll find a noticeable improvement in ball fields, parking lots and even restrooms major upgrades to other parks and recreation facilities will continue this year and will be funded in the capital improvement plan at the direction and support of city council I am pleased to include a special emphasis on more proactively engaging the city's youth in this year's budget beginning June 1 to encourage youth to better take advantage of recreational opportunities all centers and activities outdoor and indoor pools and daily pass fees will be eliminated for Durham youth under 18 years of age additionally new teen programs will begin September 1 at four recreation centers including a drop-in program from 3pm to 7pm immediately following school hours DPR will also be hiring youth ambassadors to enhance marketing efforts to help inform teens about these programs the administration has heard the council call for better partnerships between the city and other agencies to work together and supportively for the good of the city's youth youth now and in the future earlier this year the city was awarded a 1.2 million dollar grant to be used over three years to address justice-involved youth employment beginning this summer the goal is to improve their lives and job opportunities lower violent crime rates and reduce high levels of poverty in certain areas of the city as Durham basks in everything that makes us hip it no doubt makes the city very attractive to others seeking to be a part of it while that's great for the city's economy it also creates challenges for many of our lower income residents many of whom have lived here all their lives with issues of affordable rent and home prices last year the city identified goals aimed at addressing the significant affordable housing challenges for lower income households while these goals provided a strategic path forward they also highlighted the significant gap of available affordable housing these gaps include the need for affordable home ownership new affordable home ownership and rental units preserving existing affordable rentals enhancing collaboration with the Durham Housing Authority and ensuring housing stabilization and appreciating neighborhoods priority gap areas of the city's affordable housing strategy all start and end with adequate funding and that is why I am recommending that this budget increase the dedicated housing fund by one penny which combined with federal entitlements and the existing penny will bring the annual commitment to shelter and affordable housing to almost nine million dollars I will be requesting that the city council set aside a significant amount of time during the upcoming budget work sessions to discuss the adequacy of the proposed level of funding and appropriate allocations of funds within each of the affordable housing priority areas once these levels are approved staff will be positioned to solicit and fully vet proposals from housing partners to implement specific initiatives and projects another high priority identified in the recent resident satisfaction survey was traffic as the city grows accommodating travel in the city is mined for many residents the city will continue to support transit services and grant funds will pay for updated technology to more effectively manage traffic while the city has enjoyed the support from Duke University over the last eight years for the bull city connector Duke's funding will be reduced in half this year and will cease entirely in fiscal year 2019 the coming years work will include an evaluation of all bus routes and headways including the bull city connector once again this year no transit fair increases are included in the proposed budget making go Durham one of the least expensive transit fairs in major cities in North Carolina the city is also further enhancing traffic management needs by adding staff to traffic system maintenance such as pedestrian signal and signal upgrades and for fiber maintenance of these signals as we mentioned the proposed budget will more than double funding for paving and street maintenance to 6.6 million dollars a year parking needs continue to be addressed with on street parking meters introduced earlier this year we continue to work through the issues not unexpected and other solutions are in the planning stages including the construction of a new garage at Morgan and Mangum adding new garage equipment and increasing monthly parking the budget continues to support the arts and cultural programs throughout the city including over 1.6 million dollars in funding to support the Durham Arts Council the Carolina theater and St. Joseph's Haytai Heritage Center last December many of us celebrated the return of the Durham holiday parade which was by all accounts a great success and funding is again included in this for this event funding is also included for the wonderful festivals that we've come to expect and appreciate including the art of cool, MOG Fest full frame documentary film festival and the American Dance Festival and finally as we talk about arts an increase from 20,000 dollars to 75,000 dollars for public art is included in the proposed budget D-PAC continues to also be an incredible success story providing a significant economic impact and attracting thousands to our community without any property tax funded subsidies to support. Durham also took a big step forward in April with the grand opening of the development services center and thanks to the city county planning and inspections departments for leading this effort which is streamlining the development review and permitting process for businesses as well as residents and while I've mentioned a few capital improvement projects earlier I'd like to call your attention to a few more listed here on the slides approximately 1.6 million dollars for subsidies, 2 million dollars for public safety radio replacements and 1.5 million dollars for sidewalk repairs have been allocated in the proposed budget overall the capital improvement budget includes 136.9 million dollars for new and existing projects so I've highlighted many of the key budget recommendations and I invite you to take a closer look at them over the next few weeks there are many other projects and initiatives that might not be so hip necessary to contribute to keeping neighborhoods healthy and thriving from eating our infrastructure needs to keeping our community and our environment clean the staff looks forward to delving deeper into the details of the proposed budget at next week's budget work sessions developing the budget is always a collaborative process in Durham relying on the groundwork of long-term financial and strategic plans developed over the last few years and at the same time trying to predict what the future holds and it's now time for the elected leadership and the residents to review and scrutinize the proposed budget residents are invited to share their thoughts at the next council meeting at a public hearing on Monday June 5th we remain committed to transparency in the budget as well as in the total operations copies of the proposed budget are now available on the city's website in the city clerk's office and in the budget and management services department and if you don't have time to review the entire budget document I encourage everyone to at least read the transmittal letter which is an excellent summary of the budget proposal I also want to encourage residents to engage with us on any of the platforms social media platforms listed here as always a special recognition goes to Bertha Johnson and her management and budget and management services team along with the department directors for their leadership to ensure that the strategic plan guides and aligns with budget priorities and finally as this is Mayor Bell's final budget presentation I would like to offer my deepest appreciation for his guidance and leadership through 17 budget presentations nine of which were from me Mayor Mr. Mayor you have set a great example by illustrating the value of listening and valuing the viewpoints of each person while acting for the good of the entire community and I will truly miss working with you I also continue to value the close working relationship that I have had over the years with each member of city council on a personal note doing good and doing the right things for the community and for the benefit of future generations means more to me every day two years ago I introduced you to my first granddaughter Sable and Karen and I welcomed our new granddaughter Jordan just a few weeks ago while unfortunately our two granddaughters Derm they are a constant reminder to me that decisions we make today will impact generations in our community for a long time I believe this budget supports the square as well as the hip city services that our residents come to know and love and as a community we must continue to work together to make Derm a place that is welcoming supportive and a place that everyone can call home thank you wait back to the music can you go dance Tom I want to again thank you and your staff for bringing a balanced budget to us something for us to really begin to start the discussions with it's apparent that you listen carefully your staff is listening carefully to some of the issues that have been raised and I think in the budget this will go further to finalizing the budget we still will depend on the staff and certainly the public input that we receive as we try to craft a budget this is not a public hearing but it does for persons and opportunity who have been here who want to sign up to speak on a particular item to make comments and I'm going to recognize these persons but before I do that in the council let me call these names each person has two minutes one is it says is that person here okay the next is Romero and the last one is is that correct okay we have two minutes if you proceed to the podium to the right please and again could you just state your name and address address Mina Eleanor Durham you have an address yes 2707 is my zip code alright okay thank you so much for the presentation on the fiscal budget for this year I'm here to speak about the public safety budget last year almost 70% of that budget went to the police department and that did not include the $70 million that was allocated for a new police headquarters as a resident of Durham I believe this is way too much money to go to policing when we know they are more effective and more community accountable ways to ensure public safety which include unarmed crisis response workers and mental health care and using restorative justice methods to mediate conflict also the current police department has the ability to the residents of Durham the Durham police department has killed two residents this year within a less than a six month period with no repercussions speaking to some of the residents who live just across the street from the new headquarters are most affected by the issue of policing in Durham we asked them how they would have spent that $70 million and went to the police headquarters $70 million is enough money to give each person in Durham $300 each a few of their answers was they would use it to pay their rent they would use it to pay off loans we spoke to some children about what they thought they could do with that money and one little girl said she would buy a hair shop because she wants to be a hairdresser and so those are just some of the ideas that Durham residents have about what public safety looks like to them and what they want to see that money spend on Jose Romero Hello City Council my name is Jose Romero my address is Durham Hello City Council and fellow Durhamites I'm here speaking quickly as a representative of Durham Beyond Policing to share as Mina did some letters from the community members that live across the street from the new police headquarters who are not consulted in the process of choosing a location for that police headquarters so we want to make sure that their voice is present in where the police budget goes since it wasn't present in the designation of the new headquarters so quickly one male member from the Liberty Street department said that he needed to help with rent being able to use some of that funding money to help the housing gap that was identified earlier in the budget discussion is one of those elements that we think should really be emphasized in the budget proceedings moving forward secondly a female resident from Liberty Street departments indicated that they would like support for the underfunded classrooms that our students need to develop and to learn so there we have it we have education and housing are what the community members of Durham that directly are in the line of sight of the police officers are asking for we believe this is fully within the power of the City Council to actualize and we will be continuing to share these voices with you all as the budget continues to be discussed so we want a Durham that is not only hip, not only square but maybe a haven for the various community members that live here so thank you for your time you're welcome Nick Johnson Good evening Council Mayor my name is Nick Johnson I live at 508 South Buchanan Boulevard I'm one of the owners of Pony Soros Brewing Company the Cookery and Dashi restaurant in downtown I don't believe that I can convince you with my two minutes to spend the 12 million dollars that I would propose to cost to get rid of the downtown loop but I would just like to take a moment to focus your attention on the opportunity that we have as a city to pay attention to how we structure and plan for the future many years ago we spent a large sum of money on the streetscapes in downtown and as we are now seeing some of the fruits of that I would encourage you to to take into consideration perhaps not spending the 12 million but now that it would take to accomplish getting rid of the downtown loop which basically chokes our downtown into a small island but at least spend the money that it would take to do a detailed study there I'm sure you've heard a lot about this and I don't know all the details to share with you about this but I have certainly read a bunch of them and would encourage you to get the experts in here that can share it with you Durham City and County owns tremendous amount of land which could be used to offset some of the costs of restoring downtown to a more grid like structure that it used to be which would do a world of good for creating a walkable connected safe and enjoyable downtown area I think that without us taking an active role and seeking out a well thought out plan for what this city will become in the next 10 years if we don't do that now we will end up with a piece meal this seems like a good idea at the time we'll do a little bit now where we could create a vision of the future of downtown Durham beginning with a modest expense this year in deciding how to go about doing that I'm here speaking for a handful of downtown business owners who I'm sure will you'll hear from them as well but thank you for your time if there are no comments by members of the council I'd entertain a motion to receive the manager's budget that's presented it's been proper to move the second all in favor of the motion and to keep a say in aye those opposed the motion passes unanimously thank you we move to the next item which is public hearing item 19 urban open space plan good evening I'm Scott Whiteman from the city county planning department the new iteration tonight is the urban open space plan which adopts strategies for the preservation and improvement of open space in the urban and central compact tiers this draft open space plan categorizes the many different types and purposes of open space and provides recommendations to create and preserve open space areas through a variety of tools and resources if approved by city council the urban open space plan would be adopted as an element of the comprehensive plan staff recommends approval as does the planning commission which voted in favor by a vote of 12-1 at their February 14th meeting with that I'd be happy to answer any questions from the council okay thank you this is a public hearing we do have one person that has signed up to speak but I would ask first are the comments and questions by members of the council recognizing Mayor Pro Tem and Councilman Schuhl in that order I know the planning commission suggested did you do some tweaking did you we did tweak the wording tweak the wording in response to the commissioners concerns that were raised at the planning commission hearing so I think we've addressed those okay thank you councilman schuhl thank you very much Mr. Mayor Scott and the planning staff again and very clearly and effectively written and I really appreciate how you looked at the problem from so many different angles and started at a very high level and then drilled down to the neighborhood level and even to the very very specific project so congratulations on that I also really appreciated the environmental justice lens that you took and the emphasis on finding out which of our methods were underserved in terms of open space and the I thought the methodology for that was really very interesting and compelling and appreciated that so that's my first question did you all invent that methodology or did you find it somewhere I wish I could say yes but we stole that from our friends at the MPO who used that for their environmental justice analysis page 18 I just have a few specific questions streams polluted by cooking related waste oil grease and food that was one of the biggest pollutants in all of these streams so how does that get into our streams cooking oil, grease and food that's probably a better question for my colleagues in public works we used our watershed protection master plans to extract that information so I don't know the exact detail maybe you could send us an email about it at some point I couldn't understand how that happened I believe it but it was just interesting to me to see that as a major pollutant one of the major category in all of these so on page 20 what are some of the keystone sites and the urban gems any of those named I didn't quite understand like what they might be so those are two things that are also found in the watershed protection master plans that the public works prepared so they are the keystone sites are larger sites in the urban areas in the watersheds where those have been prepared that are vacant and could provide water quality protection if they're acquired and the urban the urban gems are smaller ones that could be acquired but would have a less of an impact so give an example of a site let's see I think there's a there's some vacant properties down near the stream that goes just south of central and Olson Avenue those were some of the ones that were identified in the third fork Greek master plan urban gems are would be more like smaller like a vacant lot that's adjacent to a stream okay so I see so they're all vacant lots or they're all vacant or a property that has a significant portion of it that's still vacant on page 24 there's a reference to strategic plan goal 5 and it notes that in that goal we target 40% of our land to be shaded by tree canopy that's our target urge that we review that because we're currently we know from general services report a couple of months ago our tree canopy is currently at 52% and it seemed to me that we want to review that that number in the strategic goal we don't want to we don't want a goal that sets us significantly back in tree canopy so I just want to urge you and our city management to look at that goal 5 figure there um page 29 I just want to note that there are 23 more miles of trails that are in our trails master plan just in the urban tier alone and so what I want to say about that is we need to build those trails um our our residents want this they always rank extremely high and I just want to say to our colleagues and the manager and our city administration that this can should continue to be a priority for us and I'm hoping that we can speed up the rate at which we're building trails feel very strongly that we need to so I'm glad to see that we have some money set aside in the community for planning the 5 alter trails but I just want to continue to urge us to speed that up so I'm not asking for your response from you that Scott unless you want to I don't have a response to that so no thank you Mr. manager on page 36 there's a quote beginning a future Durham let me try to find that was one of the most interesting um it was just such an interesting um sentence trying to pull it up Scott if my computer will let me maybe you can find it a future Durham do you see it on page 36 uh page 36 in the doc in the report I'm about to think I'm about to find it here just came up on my computer thank you Gillian a future Durham will see more community gardens more small lots with trees the steady replacement of dying street trees throughout the city increased tree canopy on public properties such as parks cemeteries schools and public facilities as well as a program to plant trees on residential properties initially targeting districts 3 and 5 where the canopy is most deficient that is a great sense uh and a laudable goal and uh I just want to highlight that because it calls for doing many of the things that we want to do and I want to just again urge us to keep that in mind that is uh those are things that I think are critically important to us and I think funding those things uh is is just very important and so again I want to mention that to the manager and to my colleagues um on page 43 playground inspection legislation by the state is now an impediment to cooperation with our schools like Brogdon what is the can you talk about what the inspection legislation is that's an impediment to our cooperation with schools so again I'm afraid to say that that would be something better entered by our colleagues in parks recreation they they raised that issue during the interdepartmental review um since one of the key strategies to kind of leveraging our existing services to use schools as as a recreate for open space and recreation um but there's it has something to do with the fact that schools don't have to have the same inspections that um city parks do or something to that effect so that the school playgrounds aren't up to the same standards that our city playgrounds are so um I may not be getting that exactly right but it has something to that effect well I have a couple reactions that one is we should know what that is and we should see if there's a fix for it because I know that that parks in Iraq has had a very um um conscious plan to try to be working more in terms of our playgrounds with the schools and it makes all the sense in the world because we have those playgrounds we have those facilities and we ought to be able to share them especially at times schools aren't in session of course the weekends and so forth so and then the other thing is the particular mention of Brogdon so Brogdon is not a playground problem you know Brogdon is a you know so one of the sites that you all pulled out as an important site potential site for one of the few neighborhoods really that doesn't have a park nearby you you you mentioned Brogdon is a site where a green space where people could play and it is I coached soccer at Brogdon for a lot of years so that's there's no playground there that's a problem so I just want to I just would like to understand what it's going to take to get that cooperation and I think it's important I can get more details from parks recreation and we could probably use the uh the Durham open space and trails commission as a uh advocate for that and I know again I know parks and rec is really interested in this um you mentioned on page 45 more cemetery open space amenities what is a cemetery open space amenity well I think the key thing we were getting at there is that cemeteries are well in some ways they serve as kind of the open space and relief in areas that don't have parks necessarily but they're also one of the assets the city owns where tree canopy could be increased relatively easily so I think just just looking at cemeteries as an open space not all open space has to be actively used for recreation I see so the amenities might be simply tree planting that's right we're allowing them to be open so that people can walk through them things like that okay um so I guess my last question is for you and for staff in general which is how we you've got a kind of plan for you have all these objectives and sub-objectives and there's a ton of them and they're awesome I mean I guess I need to say that again this is this report is tremendous I just think that what it puts forward for us in terms of a vision for what this open space can be the urban open space and the specificity with which it attacks the problem you know you talk neighborhood by neighborhood park by park I mean just all the improvements that you recommend are great but my concern is how are we prioritizing these many objectives and sub-objectives and kind of I guess what I'm interested in is this was an interdepartmental effort so who owns the plan now and who's going to drive this now and I don't know if that's a question for you or for the manager but I'm just trying to find out so here it is it's awesome but again it's a very big interdepartmental effort how will this be who will make sure it happens well as an element of the comprehensive plan the planning department I guess owns it I can say that the members of the Durham open space and trails commission particularly their open space committee have already started looking at all of those and they've used this kind of kind of like their own strategic plan for at least for the urban part of Durham to start highlighting the recommendations they think should be focused on first there are some things that don't require the spending money we can actively now if a property is about to be considered for surplus or something like that we can review it based on this plan so if it's going to be for open space the city can or the county who also has a lot of surplus land can hang on to that for open space purposes so each of the departments or each of the objectives had a department or somebody that was going to look after that so have those things kind of been assigned to those department departments at this point or how does that work so when we did our review we sent it to those departments to make sure they at least had buy-in on what the recommendations were it'll be up to that advocacy role of the DOS to kind of pick the ones that they think are most important and that we can work with those departments to implement those things okay all right well that's my concern I appreciate what you're saying about DOS but DOS is a volunteer group and I do think that our departments are going to have to be paying a lot of attention to these recommendations so but again I think I urge our residents to read this or it's pretty dense maybe not read all of it but find your neighborhood and see where your open space is and what the opportunities are because I do think that it really is if we can do these things this will be a tremendous tremendous achievement in terms of open space so thank you thank you for a great report thank you Councilman Schuyl are there other questions recognized I just want to say thank you Mr. Mayor I just want to follow up with Councilmember Schuyl's piece about school recreation facilities we went on a tour the environmental affairs board looked at the playground at George Watts School and that is a wonderful place that can be used for that community as a park area also so lots of things might be considered with our schools are there any other comments by members of the council if not Chris Drepps sorry about that thank you Mayor Bell City Council Chris Drepps the Executive Director of the Ellaby Creek Watershed Association and I live at 520 Wildwood Drive and I just want to stand up here tonight I think it's a great plan and the association fully supports the urban open space plan I want to commend your city planning city county planning staff for the good work they did particularly I want to point out since she didn't get a chance to be here tonight she's not in the position anymore Helen Youngblood who worked hard to include many stakeholders in the process of developing the plan she did a great job with us too and I want to stress that the Ellaby Creek Watershed Association has protected lands that are actually keystones in this urban open space plan for example the Beaver Marsh Preserve and we hope to assist the city in protecting priority properties in the future where our conservation goals are aligned CS is a resource there are several of those and I won't talk about those obviously in this meeting but we do look forward to the opportunity to work directly with your staff on those projects in addition the cost of urban lands is skyrocketing as we know by several of the conversations here tonight and it will be critical for Durham to budget adequate funding to protect the priority properties identified in this plan we request that you commit funds for urban land protection to implement this plan your focus on these priorities will lead to a better greener healthier and more livable Durham in 20 years and that is the window we have for this plan so thank you all for the plan thank you for the work that has been done and passing the plan supporting the plan and I also want to say that Greece is put in by people who are flushing it down down their kitchen sinks and other places and it's one of the reasons why a lot of your staff work really hard on trying to educate the community about not flushing the drain it clogs the drains up and it causes overflows in that one area that is talked about in this plan is a real problem area I know it's probably cost the city a lot of money over the years thanks for that education I didn't really connect that to the other level of pollution but maybe that is what they're talking about so thanks Chris are there other persons who want to speak on this item that's been a public hearing matter I'd like to recollect no one else has to speak public hearing to be closed matters back before the board now the staff has recommended requested that we approve the plan as presented and we've heard some comments by the mayor pro tem and councilman schul so I would entertain a motion if someone wants to make a motion to approve the plan in consideration the comments that have been made both at the desk and public hearing it's been a problem to move the second discussion on the question hearing on all in favor of the motion those opposed the motion passes unanimously we'll move to the next item on the public hearing which is street closing for east road b good evening kyle t with the planning department I can affirm that the public notice for this item has been executed in accordance with general statute in the UDO and that affidavits of such are on file in the planning department south side renovation phase 2 lp proposes to close 28 linear feet of road b the applicant proposes to close this section of road due to the relocation of the road associated with south side east phase 2 the right of way is currently dedicated but not improved the portion of the street requested for closure is bordered by property owned by south side renovations and the right of way is approved and the right of way is combined into one per of land with an area of 5.31 acres staff recommends that council approve the permit closure of 28 linear feet of road b thank you and staffs available for any questions this is the public hearing staff report question by council and staff report does anyone in the audience want to speak on the item I'll let the record reflect that no one asks to speak. I'll declare the public hearing to be closed as a matter of fact before the council. It's been properly moved in a second. All in favor of the motion they can present aye. Aye. Those opposed the motion passes unanimously moved item 21 refunding of general obligation bond series 2007. An issuance of general obligation two thirds bonds. Good evening David Boyd finance director. The public hearing tonight is being held pursuant to state law relative to the issuance of not more than $6.6 million in general obligation two thirds bonds. After the public hearing city council we asked to consider the adoption of bond orders for both the two thirds bonds along with not more than $18.2 million in general obligation refunding bonds. We've included the relevant information with your agenda packet and we're happy to answer any other questions you might have. Thank you. This is a public hearing. All the questions of the staff by members of the council. Likewise is anyone in the public that wants to speak on this item. I'll let the record reflect on the one in the public asked to speak on this item. I'll declare the public hearing to be closed in aspect for the council. It's been properly moved in a second. I assume that's the move in this terms of the staff recommendation. That being the case all in favor of the motion indicate by saying aye. All those opposed the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Item 22 public hearing on economic development incentive with reinvestments partners. Mayor Bell members of council. My name is Chris Dickie with the office of economic workforce development before using item to consider an approval of a proposed agreement between the city of Durham and reinvestment partners. Reinvestment partners has applied to OEWD for a neighborhood revitalization grant incentive in the amount of $100,000 in support of its proposed expansion within the community development area outside the downtown development tier. The investment partners is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advocate for economic justice and opportunity by navigating a change in lending practices of financial institutions and to promote the health of wealth building for underserved communities. In addition to advocating reinvestment partners have been actively engaged in commercial revitalization of properties in selected neighborhoods by partnering with the city of Durham such as 1201 and 1202 North Roxborough Street, 836 North Mangan Street, and 902 North Mangan Street. These projects receive $148,370 in positive dollars and private investments of $533,377. The investment partners proposes to renovate a vacant, blighted two-story apartment duplex at Choloway Fayetteville Street and convert into 1,765 square foot of office space. The office space will be leased to Sunrise Recovery Resource Center, a non-profit substance abuse treatment program. The total project costs would be $416,000 and the public cost into this project would be $100,000 if approved. In addition to that, other deliverables the company should expend a minimum of $309,500 in hard costs and also the company will adhere to a Durham-based business plan for construction-related trades. The proposed project when completed will be a key step in implementing the neighborhood assessment plan that was approved by City Council. This costs a renovation of blighted and underutilized buildings as a means of attracting private capital investment to promote business development along this targeted core. The opportunity to attract this type of capital investment is somewhat challenging since it is considered a high risk for successful economic development. The project will serve as a callix project to attract additional business and office-based development to this area. Staff is here to answer questions. Recognize, Mayor Progen? So, which plan for construction are you adhering to on this project? Did you say the local? No. The Durham-based? The Durham-based place, right. The City of Durham has a, we have a Durham-based plans. Any, every neighborhood incentive grant that the Office of Economic Development has brought before you, what is included as a Durham-based business plan. What we try to do is promote business development here within the city by having an agreement assigned with, in this case, would be in reinvestment partners and then they would set a goal to hire Durham-based business or purchase services and goods from Durham-based business. Yeah, I understand that part. I just wanted to know, I just wanted to make sure that since you would be in the HATI area, that there would be some sensitivity to the use of businesses based there. Right. Thank you. Other questions? This is for Recovery Center. Yes, well Recovery Center will be, it's for the development of office space, but a Recovery Center is a non-profit organization that has an agreement with reinvestment partners to lease that space. But I want to make sure the purpose of the use of the building is for clients who are recovering. Yes, yes, sir. Are there questions by members of the council? Again, this is a public hearing. Let me ask other persons in the public that want to speak on this item. Let the record reflect and the one in the public has to speak. I'd call the public hearing to be closed as a matter of fact before the council. Recognizing the approach, Jim. You're gonna serve clients who live in Durham and Raleigh or just Durham? Since I see that Sunrise is a program, it's a Raleigh-Durham area based non-profit. So I just want to know who they are. Madam Pro-Chair, we have Peter Skilling from reinvestment partners and he can give you more detail. Council Member, there'll actually be primarily serving people from that neighborhood. From that neighborhood? Yes, ma'am. Are there other questions on this item? The house definitely needs renovation. The only concern I had was the use of the house and how the neighborhood would accept this. And I don't know if you've had any comments with any persons in the neighborhood in particular. Yes, Mayor Bell, we presented to the PAC-4. Okay. Very lively and extensive conversation and at the end, questions were answered and they supported it. I've also received a letter of support from the Lincoln Community Health and we've done outreach to all the adjoining property owners and we hope to continue building in that community. Thank you for the record. I'm glad to say that. Any further discussion? If not, I'll entertain a motion on the item. It's been proper to move the second. All in favor of the motion, indicate by saying aye. Those opposed, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Item 23, public hearing to consider adopting a resolution rescinding six previously ordered petition utility improvements. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'm Robert Joyner, Public Works Department. Item 23 is to consider adopting a resolution rescinding six previously ordered petition utility improvements. Staff recommends that council conduct a public hearing, receive comments and adopt a resolution rescinding the six previously ordered petition improvements listed on the agenda. Be happy to answer any questions council may have. All right, recognize Councilman Schuhl. Is there anyone else on the council? Councilman Schuhl for comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Robert, I missed the February 9th work session for my son's wedding. So I have a question that I'm sure you probably answered at that time, but maybe could answer again for me. So these utility extensions originally were made for some good reason. And how will these needs now be fulfilled if we rescind them? So all of these six utility projects were petitioned by a majority of the residents in the selected area at the time. And they were brought forward to council and deemed as sufficient petitions, sufficient petition at that time required in the service area, it required the majority of property owners and the majority of frontage. And so all of those items were deemed accessible and those items were brought in front of council in the event that these utility petition projects are not accepted or are not rescinded. Yes, sir. Then the citizens would look at alternatives to serve those. They could band together and fulfill their own utility extensions and seek petition for utility improvements and possible annexation under city of Durham rules. They could also seek additional protections and other items under the state. New wells, new septic systems, new community systems as afforded under those rules. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, that's city manager. Rob, could you please just for the record, I know we covered this at the work session, just clarify the reason for the staff recommendation and what's changed that is the basis for this recommendation to rescind the petitions. Yes, sir. So in the process of reviewing these developments and setting them up for designs, preliminary meetings were held with the public works department and NCDOT and some of the other affected partners that look at the design parameters of these items. Substantial changes in those requirements would require entire rebuilds of the street sections in the affected areas, which is significantly increasing the costs. These cost projections add about $2.2 million to the total cost of the six projects. And then just to go a little bit deeper. So the original approval, what was the cost sharing arrangements between the city and the property owners in the original approval? So the original approval contains a couple of different items. So there are actual set rates based on linear foot frontages, but in totality, the original estimated costs for the initial estimates were about $930,000. The maximum assessments that could be made for all the citizens if everything was collected was roughly just shot of 800,000, about 797 in change. So as a result of the increased costs then the under the current methodology or the current petitions, those costs for the residents are capped and the city would be expected to pick up. That is correct. So yes. And none of these properties are in the city limits? That is correct. None of these properties are in the city limits. And so if the petitions were rescinded, would the petitioners have the opportunity to refile under a new set of rules? Yes, sir. And what were those rules being? So the petitioners could refile and they get petitioned for annexation under those and they would have higher assessment rates but those all wouldn't fully capture the costs. The citizens would also have to petition for acceptance, you know, annexation. And there's not an opportunity for them to petition without annexation unless their services are deemed unusable or problematic by the health department. Yes, sir. So there would be some basically fact finding that they'd have no other options. Thank you. That's councilman Moffitt. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. To join her at the work session, I asked about the possibility of installing utilities not in the redway but in adjoining property if the property owners were willing to have the city do that. And I don't remember, it's not like what I recollect was that you were going to take a look at that and just to see about the possibility. You remember that? That is possible in some cases. In other cases, the houses are sufficiently close to the road frontage as to prohibit that effectively. In addition to that, one of the other notes that was made is the actual use of the heavy equipment would physically destroy the roads themselves. And so we would be liable just replacing the equipment on the roads to access the utilities adjacent to the roads. So that was one of the terminations made by NCDOT as well. So in some cases, I think even if we did install utilities outside the physical roadway itself, there would be additional damages that would have to be dealt with. Good. And do we have one more question? It's more of a curiosity. But if people on both sides of the road petition for annexation, does NCDOT then still have the road? Is the road itself not in the city limits? Is that, it sounds like it wouldn't be up for our standards. Don't worry about it, thanks. If it's an easy question, I was just curious about. So the petition for annexation is completely separated from acceptance of a roadway infrastructure. So those are two separate council decisions. Other questions about, remember the council at this time? If not, we have several people that have signed up to speak on this item and I assume that they have numbers beside their sign up sheets which indicate they may be interested in a particular road. I'm just gonna call each name and if you can come to the podium to the right. Each have three minutes. And I only have one person that is speaking in support of this, those are opponents. Kellogg Kynes, is that the name? I have a problem with reading this, you're right. Skip Couch, Skip Couch's present. Callie Kerner, Callie Kerner. Come to the podium to the right. I'm sorry. Does the person want to sign up to speak? If they want to sign up. Okay, who is, what is his name? Okay, Kellogg Kynes, we have your name. So Alfred Eisner, let me say this, the process that we have and I know some of you probably have not been here, we don't yield time so if you want to speak, you each have three minutes but you can't yield your time to someone else. So if you want to speak, you perfectly privileged to speak but you have to speak on your time. So Alfred Eisner, I spoke to Theresa Price. Now is there anyone's name that I didn't call that would like to speak on the side? What, could you pronounce your name? Because I couldn't read it. Well, that's fine, it's not your problem, it's my problem, I couldn't read it, what is your name? I hadn't called your name because you were speaking for, you weren't against, right? So I hadn't called you. All right, no problem. Okay, if you can come to the podium, I know this is the first time but don't feel bad about that. Come to the podium, just state your name and address and you have three minutes and we have a clock over to the right for you to speak. And these are all persons who are speaking in opposition to what's being proposed, correct? Yes. Okay. My name's Theresa Price, I live at 1503 Stallings Road so I'm requesting that you not rescind the improvements on Stallings Road. I purchased this property in 1998, I did all the necessary steps, I was sold the property under misguidance, it had no water at the time, a fifth of a gallon a minute, which is not much, it takes 50 gallons to do a load of clothes. We could not, we drilled wells, we brought in water from other cities, I got a huge tank, I had to do bottled water, we had every well collapse, there's three wells on the property and we dug a fourth one that collapsed. We got, I've got a neighbor to agree to allow me to go through my back part of my property 4,000 feet through another road. The city required me to do a petition. This was in 2007, 10 years ago. I did the petition, I was required to pay fees to connect on my road and the temporary easement, fee, the connection assessment for my property, plus what was called a capital facilities fee at the time just to get the temporary easement through my neighbor's property. It's a temporary easement, it's only good while I'm alive, I cannot sell my home, the property owner would not sell me that easement and I paid the first payment, it was put on hold in 2008, that was the last communication I received until this hearing. I did stop making the payments because nothing had ever happened, it was put on hold and I felt like it wasn't fair for me to be making assessment payments on property that hadn't even been approved to build. This recent announcement I was told that it was approved to be built in 2010, seven years ago, I mean, nine years ago. And today, it still hasn't been even put into the plan to be built and I still, if I were to die tomorrow, my children can't even use their own home. My son was born when I bought this house, he's 18 and graduating now. I have went through all those resources, the wells I've had water tested, I have done everything and followed every process that the city required and now I have paid money in and still do not have water 10 years later and I'm not in a subdivision that can have community wells or access and I have spent well over $30,000 just in digging wells alone. So I just ask that it not be rescinded and I ask that it not be 10 years to build if it's not rescinded to please do it at some time so I can do something with my property or at least my children will be able to do something with their home. Thank you. My name's Kelly King, my address is 5611 Redcoats Road which is in the Grand Oak subdivision which is one of the six subdivision being considered tonight. I'd like to say that I've been there, I was there in 2007 when this petition was filed, I was there in 2007 when the city approved this petition and signed it. I was there in 2007 when the perceived work order was signed by the city of Durham. I was also there when work commenced on this project in 2007 and 2008 and stopped for reasons that no one seems to know why. I was also there and had meetings with the state of North Carolina in probably 2006 concerning the septic system in this subdivision which is who told us to come and do this petition to the city of Durham. I also have been in meetings with the county of Durham in probably 2006 concerning this sewer system and what were the options for the neighborhood. I'd like to agree with the lady before me that the city staff's recommendations of they could, they could, they could. Well, we have, we have, we have. This was our last option. This is what the state of North Carolina and Durham County told my neighbors and myself, this is your only option. All his other options that he mentioned, he just does not know. He was not there and he hadn't done the research. I've sent documents for you guys to use through Laura Headcott. I don't know where they are. No thing I'd like to mention. I've been sitting here, my neighbor's been sitting here for 10 years wondering when are they gonna finish it? We have heard nothing, nothing from the city of Durham in 10 years about when they were gonna finish it. We got this letter to the city of Durham drafted on May the 5th, which does not mean I got it on May the 5th. I got it on May the 7th or the 8th and today's the 15th. Now the city of Durham has took 10 years to come up with this idea and we're not even talking about the cost. We're just talking about what is fair to Durham residents, which I'm a taxpayer in the city of Durham also. What is fair, the city of Durham has took 10 years to think about this and then just decide, oh, we're not gonna follow through with obligations that we signed to these people in this neighborhood. 10 years ago that we agreed to and we signed work that we commenced on. Now all of a sudden we got new staff members that says, oh, we're just not gonna build it. We're gonna spend $100,000 over on this part. We're gonna spend $100,000 over good projects. Just finished the one that you started. Thank you. You're welcome. My name's Skip Couch. I'm at 1823 Grand Oaks Road in the Grand Oaks Subdivision. Been there since 1985 and I've been through, been there with Kelly just talked about. Since then, they've had Water and Sewer brought down the Umstead Road, which is probably a mile from our subdivision or less. They built two subdivisions right around the backs up to our subdivision that has Water and Sewer. And so cost should be a little bit better than it was when they first started talking about this stuff. This is a failing Sewer system, folks. And it's, we don't need to go talk about anything else, but what's really going on in our Sewer system now? Where is it going? Who's talking about kids in the future and everything? They're gonna be playing in those parks and stuff around our neighborhoods and stuff. Where is this Sewer really going to now? Thank you. My name is Alfred Eisner and I live on 5, 6, 10 Redcoach Road, which is involved in this issue. I was surprised to receive this letter on just basically five days ago. And I just want to make two points. I purchased my property maybe four years ago. And when I discovered the issue of the Sewer system, I made a contact with the city engineer and invited him to visit me and was nice of him to show up and explain all the engineering aspects of construction that will be necessary. But of course, one things of my concern was the cost. And one thing that he explicitly emphasized that the cost to property owners is capped regardless of the delays of the work. And no one should worry about any cost increases in case the work is delayed. And he promised that the work will start within a year of me purchasing the property. And it's almost four years and nothing happened until this letter suddenly shows up in my mailbox. I followed the instructions in this letter to contact Miss Laura Edcock in terms of questions. And I got no response, which of course is not a pleasant experience. My question was why did the city wait 10 years to commence this project when everybody knows that all works of this nature increase in cost all the time. Thank you. I apologize. I think I checked that card wrong. I'm for water and sewer and I'm on East gear street, which is the Gorman community. Let's just put a record, state your name and address. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm D. Shankle at 2919 East gear street Durham 27704. 30 years ago, maybe 20, I don't know the chronology exactly. A sewer line was put down parallel with gear street all the way out in Falls Lake. Water was put there too. We got water. That's not a problem. Here's the problem. You have a subdivision called Panther Creek and another one called Carpenter Pond that were incorporated into the city. They look like little islands on the map and they got water and sewer full services. Gear street once again was left there with no sewer. These homes are the original homes on highway 15, which was the road to Oxford before they built 85. The septic systems are 50 and 60 years old now. We don't have the money to start digging new wells and septic tanks unless you're gonna lend it to me. It's ridiculous to suggest otherwise. We just want healthy water and sewer the way every other person in the city and the city out processes have. The demographics of these six places that you have here are middle-class blue-collar people that work for a living. They have jobs and they pay taxes. They're not on the public dole. And frankly, without being ugly or getting thrown out of here, we're sick of it. I guess you heard me that time. I can fix the sound system for you. That's the worst PA I've ever heard, but that's my business too. It's terrible. I couldn't hear anything anybody was saying. It just needs to be tweaked out. And yeah, I do have an anger issue when it comes to like, I want clean drinking water. And when I flush my toilet, I don't want the dog bringing it back in the house. My system's pretty healthy. I take care of it. I'm an engineer by trade on many different levels. But my neighbors don't feel that way. Most of them are elderly. They think they're gonna be rezoned so you can bulldoze their houses and build a bunch of crap out there. We are in our ancestors' homes that we've lived there for three generations. We just want a fair shake. We want clean drinking water. We want sewer systems that'll overflow and pollute the groundwater. We also live within two landfills that were there for 30 and 40 years. And the groundwater there, frankly, has not, you know, I wouldn't use your labs for this. I work at the EPA. I can have the water tested in that area. And I guarantee you it's not gonna be up to standard just because what's been in the ground for that long. We just want a fair shake to be treated like. Everybody else that works for a living and works hard and we can't go digging community wells and septic tanks and systems like that. It's beyond our economic grasp. I hope you understand that. I hope you do the right thing and just give us the same benefits and health processes that each individual has in Durham City. If you want to annex us, that's fine. You did with Carpenter Pond and Panther Creek. Look at the map. Look at the sewer line that's been there for many years. Thank you. Is there anyone else that wants to speak on this item that hasn't spoken? Sure, come on. You're Ms. Price. One thing that I forgot to mention while I was up here. My road, there's city water at Wyndon. City water 800 feet from my house, the main. There's about a thousand foot difference that doesn't have the city water. It's amazing there was a petition filed at the other end of my road, but it was a builder. They built new houses, they got city water. My little section, nothing happened. So I just think that it's 800 feet, maybe a thousand max. So I just wanted to make that clear too that builders can get it done with the city, but if you're an individual owner, it's very difficult. What's the name of the street you live on? Stallons Road. And it butts up to Middle Springs Road, which has city water. Part of Stallons has city water. Hi, is it in there, Pro Tem? I just have a question for Robert. Could you explain this 10 year gap in movement if that's what has occurred? Bargain Rouge Public Works. So over the last several years, we've had a lot of our focus in our capital side shift. It's really been moving away from a lot of these utility extension projects over to transportation projects. So we've had the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects that we've done. We've had multiple sidewalk projects, street projects, our annual resurfacing program, just a lot of maintenance type capital projects. So really our focus has moved away from utility extensions. We haven't had any that have been built in the last several years. And a lot of the construction that the residents are referring to have been private developers in this area that have extended city water and sewer. So it's not necessarily that the city staff have done it for other neighborhoods. It's been other private development and our attention has been on other projects that have been given a higher priority over the years. The escalated costs have to do with. So the cost increases our combination of time. Obviously the construction costs have gone up. And also changing requirements from the North Carolina Department of Transportation that would require us to essentially go in and rebuild the roads when we installed city utilities at these locations. So that's a big part of this cost increase that we've never took into account initially when these estimates were prepared years ago because it wasn't a requirement at that point. So new requirements. And so, Ms. Price, you've spent $30,000 already? Or more? Ms. Price, can you come over here? Thanks, sir. When I actually purchased the property, I was told that the property already had easements paid. That there was no assessments due. I took that to mean city water went by the property. The day we moved in, we discovered otherwise. So after that, I sought legal advice, was told there was nothing that could be done. I was stuck. I drilled wells. The well went 400 feet deep, had to have a liner. It collapsed. There was three other wells. The well, I think, ended up costing me close to $15,000 with all the lining and everything on the property. I've been, had the water tested. I had to have an 18-wheeler bring me water in a big, e-glue, 6,000 gallon tank that I had to put chemicals in. And my children weren't allowed to drink it for six years. And I had to climb up there and put it all in there. And this truck would deliver me water once a month. And I did that for eight years. And then I finally had a neighbor agree to give me the easement. And that's when I was told that the only way the city would allow me to do the temporary easement through my neighbor's property that gave me permission was that I start paying the assessment fees, the $23 a foot for my entire lawn and pay all the other fees. And then 10 years later, it still hasn't been anything done. I didn't even know it was approved to be built in 2010 and that they were gonna start because I was never notified until the five days ago when I got the letter saying it was gonna be rescinded. But I've gotten collection calls saying they were gonna foreclose on my house because I didn't pay. I stopped paying after a year. I stopped paying the annual assessment. They started making me pay the fees to bring city water down my road. To the city. I paid over $1,000 in assessment fees for something that wasn't even was put on hold. So then I stopped making the payments. I made phone calls. I never got return calls. I got charged interest every year. They're telling me I owe $9,000 now to the city. But there's not even anything being approved to come down for my 800 feet to my property. Who was going to foreclose? The city. The city told me they were gonna put a lien on my house. And when I called a lady over the phone said, oh, don't worry, they're not gonna do that. I said, well, it's in a letter you sent me from your collections department that you're gonna foreclose on my house for me not paying assessment fees for something that hadn't even was put on hold in 2008. So I've spent over $3,000 just to the city for dual hookups. One to the temporary one, one that doesn't exist. One for fees to do the planning. And then all my road frontage, which is about 400 feet. And I did leave Laura a message as well. And said, if this gets rescinded, is the city gonna pay me back my $1,000 with the 9% interest that I've been charged over the years and pay me back this capital assessment fee that I paid for and the hookup fee? And I haven't gotten an answer. Now, granted, I give her credit. I did not call until I was out of town last week when the letter came in. So it was first thing this morning when we discovered it on Sunday when we got back in town. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for your time. Let me, first of all, I don't wanna close the public hearing. I really, Mr. Manager, need to get a better understanding of what's being proposed here. I've heard the comments from the residents have been impacted and I've heard the staff report, but I'll just be honest with you, I haven't absorbed at all and I just need more time to understand it. It troubles me that we talked about an event that supposed to have taken place 10 years ago that for whatever reason, it didn't happen. And I'm not saying who's fault it was, but I just need to have a better understanding of it and right now I really don't. But all of the other comments that the persons have, I recognize Councilwoman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm still not totally clear on the timeline. So what happened in 2007, what happened in 2010 and why there was this long gap in the process of doing this. So really it's Marvin Williams' public works. It's really essentially what I said earlier. It's reprioritization of projects. Public works, we are limited on staff. We're limited on the amount of money that we have available for design consultants. And as we go through the budget process every year and the reprioritization of projects that are assigned to us, transportation related projects have been our focus for the last at least six to seven years. You also have taken into account that we have the large general obligation bond payment program that happened in 2010, 2011, 2012. When you combine all those projects together, it really takes a lot of staff time and these projects, unfortunately, utility extension projects, not just for these particular developments, but just all of the utility extension projects have been pushed down more in our list of priority projects to move through the process on an annual basis. And while that was going on, we were in discussion with the North Carolina Department of Transportation about their ever-changing requirements, about construction related to utilities on their roadways and their requirements have been changing over the years. So it is really a somewhat of a perfect storm, unfortunately, where we had a lot of other projects that were happening at the same time. These projects, at some point in time, weren't deemed to be a high priority, so they were moved down to a lower level and it's just taken this long for this issue to really come to the point of coming back to council for some type of policy direction of where we should go next. Do people generally pay assessments before the work starts? No, they don't. I would like to talk to the residents after the meeting to find out what it is that they're paying or have paid because I'm not aware of any assessments that have been imposed against them because we normally don't assess until after the work has been completed. So I'm not sure what it is that has been paid, but I would be happy to talk to you to get more information and clarify what that has been for. And we don't have any plans to put leans against the property or foreclose either. So that's something that we do when it comes to these types of projects that are in general in public works. Great, thank you. And could you, or all these properties are in the county? Correct. Could you, I feel like there might be a little bit of a misunderstanding of what the city is required to do in terms of extending utilities to county properties and how people in the county can get access to city utilities. Could you just go over the options for how county residents can get access to city services? So really this process, the petition process is the best way. I think there was another agenda item recently where residents outside of the city came for, they may have been inside of the city, but they identified that they had a failed well and that they had no other option to have access to clean water other than through the city utilities. Well, we either need to have that sufficient petition or some type of notification from the county or state health department that clearly shows that there is a failed system that you do need access to clean water and this is, the city's utilities are the only option at that time. And is that the kind of petition that we're talking about today? Someone applied saying we have a failed system and the city utilities is the only option. So I believe this petition was just a straight petition to connect to city utilities at the time it was originally presented by the members of these various communities. I do not believe in correct me for long that we had the documentation. I'm speaking in general about all of the projects and its totality. There may be one or two that have that specific documentation but not all together. Do we have all of the information showing that there's no other option for other than city utilities? Okay. And so in this situation, the city has discretion to connect or not connect properties to the water and sewer system. At this point we do and that's why we brought the item forward once we saw the cost escalation to see what was the pleasure of the council since it is serving residents outside of the city if there was a desire to move forward with the project at this time or reevaluate allow the residents to repetition under the current rates so that there is a higher cost recovery because as a department public works we have no opposition to the project. We're just making the council aware of the cost implications if we do move forward under the old structure of this petition. And for folks who currently don't have access to water and sewer or the wells or septic are a health hazard, they would have the option of petitioning for a hookup under those rules that we would be obligated to hook them up if their system tested. They would have to come back and repetition us for that. No ma'am, there is no explicit, Robert Joyner Public Works, there is no explicit requirement where the city is required to do that for properties outside the city limits. But we generally do. If it is available in most cases where you see a petition that occurs on a well that has contaminated water supplies or a completely failed septic system, those utilities are actually already present adjacent to the properties. So the hookup is instantaneous. There's not actually an extension of mains to serve the area, which in this, all of these cases would be required. Okay, thank you. Councilor Schull, you have a question. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Excuse me. So are there others like this out there? Are these, are there other similar, will you be coming back to us with other projects to, or at least can you anticipate that you'll be coming back to us with other, that would be rescinded? Or is this kind of the group that you have? This is the group that are outside of the city limits. We have some others that are within the city limits, but these have the most extraordinary costs at this point. Yeah, and the costs, it sounds like are really due to two things if I understand you correctly. One is the fact that time has passed and construction costs are higher. And the other though, it seems like a very significant one is the fact that NCDOT has informed us that there would be road work required, street reconstruction required that would be very expensive. Correct. Is that most of the cost or is it most of it from time passing? A large portion of it is the rotary construction. That's something we did not take into account during our initial estimates. In terms of the notice that people got, did they get the required notice and under the required timeline? Yes. Do we have a requirement? Yes, we follow all timelines required to notify people that will be impacted about this project. And so would that include people getting notice for tonight as late as I think May 5th was mentioned 10 days ago? I believe that might have been. That is correct. Okay. Yeah, so I guess Mr. Mary, in terms of the public hearing, I mean, I'd be interested in some more information about these projects and I can see why, I mean, this is an enormous cost and I can see why we, why you brought this forward. And I also, the city doesn't have a responsibility to fix everybody's lives in the counties, water and sewer situation, even if it's difficult. And so I know that's not what you wanna hear, but I think we have to, we are trying to be good stewards of our taxpayers' money and you all are in specific situations, all of you are in different situations because of decisions that you made and also unforeseen things that happened. I understand that and I know that's difficult. But I do think we have to measure that against what the costs are to our taxpayers and what our obligations are. But I would be, it seems like, one of the things I can't quite parse here is that it seems like there are, there's six separate different situations and I can't tell, are the sewer and water projects, are there any significant difference in why we should care about extending one of them over the other, that kind of thing. And so I just, a little bit more information and guidance I would find useful, so thank you. Councilman Moffitt. Yes, I'm glad you mentioned being good stewards because I wasn't only concerned about the city but I am concerned about the city taxpayers who would be asked to fund $2 million to run water and sewer to homes outside the city. My question is, I can see there's six projects. How many homes do we know? I mean, I know you know. We do not have that information tonight that we can have that available in the follow-up demo to the council. And so one alternative would be for them to petition for annexation, is that correct? That is correct, they do have that option. But if they petition for annexation and water service, we're back in the same, they'll become city taxpayers so they'll help carry the burden of the extra $2 million. A portion of it. But we'll still be in the same situation of having to rebuild state roads. Correct. Okay. And is it, one of the things that Mr. Joyner said was that when people come with failed systems, typically the water and sewer that when we approve those, water and sewers nearby and connections are relatively quick. I'm putting words in his mouth, relatively painless. Correct. Is it just been that all of those failed systems have been when the easy access of our utilities or are people who don't have easy access to city utilities decide it's not worth it to push the petition forward? What happens? How is it that the only ones we've seen are near city utilities, do you know? Most of the residents who find themselves with no available access or direct access to those city utilities have tremendous amount of trouble listing a petition and getting enough signatures to make it valid. It's a very difficult process. In order to get everybody to sign the amount of money that is spent on some of these things and the potential cost implications are can be tremendous. There is some cap, but in outfalls and other things those are assessed at cost. And those costs can be tremendous for extension of a sewer outfall. Okay. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Robert, in a normal course of things when persons petition for utilities such as this case and they get this required number of signatures then what does the city tell them? So at that time the city takes the signature list and vets it against the existing property owners to make sure that the petition is sufficient. And once city staff has determined the sufficiency of the petition then we bring forward an agenda item to city council petitioning on behalf of the owners. It holds a public hearing exactly like this one and the homeowners have the opportunity to petition the council directly for those findings, sir. Well, I'm saying what happened in this case because they did the petition. It came before the city council at some point in time. That is correct. These petitions were done in 2007, 2010, and 2011. They were brought for the council and the council at that time voted to allow those petitions to be successful. Okay. So if I'm a petitioner I assume that since the council has approved it at some point in time I'm going to get to service. I would assume that's it. Yes, sir. Until what, until I don't get to service until the city come back and tell us when I'm giving you service. At the time when the projects are looking at closer to construction we hold meetings with the residents and inform them of when the project will come forward. In this particular instance, as those projects were being reviewed and looked at for design solutions one of the requirements of doing that due diligence where the design is to talk to the local reviewing agency. And in this case that local reviewing agency was NCDOT since all of these projects are located in the county. Upon review of those projects with NCDOT it was determined that the roadway requirements essentially the entire road would need to be rebuilt. And those costs and the cost of building those utilities in an adjacent to those roadways are what have triggered the substantial increase in dollars. But I think what I also heard and correct me from Marvin is that the reason that the staff didn't move any further on the project is because other things were coming up, transportation, et cetera. And therefore they never really focus on these units. And when they decide to focus on it then that's when NCDOT said, here's what it's gonna cost you. And then the staff decided that that's the cost that you need to come back to the council and tell us here's what it's gonna cost. So your recommendation was to just rescind the project. So I think that's what I heard. Yes, sir. Okay. All right, one other question about the assessment process. If a resident, I know what our assessment is. We have a rule that we use to assess property. But if in fact the property owners want to pay a higher assessment, does anything say that they couldn't do that? No, sir. Not that I'm aware of. So if in fact they wanted to pay a higher assessment to get these services, they could do that. And we could strike an agreement to say, okay, your assessment's gonna be in $10 a foot, $10 a foot is $20 a foot. If they agreed to that, would that be legal or something we could do? I would have to consult with the attorney's office to get all the specifics of that, sir. All right. But I'm not aware of anything. Anything what? I'm not aware of anything that would prohibit. Prehibit it from doing it, okay. Well, I'd just like to keep this open for a little bit more. I'm sorry, councilman Rees, I didn't see you there. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So these are called utility extension agreements. Is that right? Utility petition extension, sir. Utility petition what? Extensions. Okay, but it's not a utility extension agreement of any kind. Here's what I'm asking. Did we sign a contract with these folks? When it was voted under the utility petition, those owners completed what is referred to as an assessment role. And that role concludes all of the names of the individuals. And that is included in the package when it's voted on as an agenda item. So it's not a utility extension agreement in what you're used to seeing, but in a similar form. Do we have a contract with these people to extend their utilities or not? And maybe the city attorney would be a better person to ask about that. I am not aware of one where I could get that information for you. Okay. I guess my concern here is that we agreed 10 years ago, in some cases, in some cases, seven years ago, in some cases, six years ago, to deliver a service to these folks. And I'm sure in many cases they could come up and explain to us what decisions they made in their lives between then and now in reliance on our agreement with them, whether it was an actual legal agreement or not, our agreement with them to provide this service. And maybe it's just because I'm a lawyer, but it doesn't feel right that these folks could make those decisions in their lives in reliance on an agreement that we reached with them to extend services. And so, I don't know how we get them back to whole if we decided that we're just not gonna do it because we don't think it's too expensive, but at the very least, I'd like to have someone in the staff explore what that looks like, at least very minimally with the fees that they paid in. I know this woman's got a different situation, I think, and we're gonna have staff really dig in on what those assessments were that she paid. I know Marvin's gonna look into that as soon as we're done here. But I think for me to have comfort in agreeing to rescind these, I'm gonna have to understand what the staff would have the city do to make these folks whole. And if we can't do that, then I'm gonna support doing what we said we would do. And if it costs more money, then I can explain that to the voters of the city because we, in a sense, the city because we made choices to delay this work for, in many cases, 10 years. I'm not sure why they should bear the burden of the risk that is assumed when we decided every year or we're gonna bump that project down the list. Perfectly valid decision. I'm sure had I been here, I would have agreed with it. But at the same time, every time we make that choice, there is a risk associated with that choice that the project will get more expensive when it was when we agreed with these people to do it. And the question I have now 10 years on is, which party should bear that burden of risk? And we're saying here that the city apparently has the legal authority, although I'd love to hear the city attorney opion on this, the city has a legal authority just to shrug our shoulders and say, no, we're not gonna do that. We waited too long, it's too expensive now. We have responsibilities to our taxpayers instead of the folks we came to this agreement with. That seems, like I said, I'm gonna have to have someone in the city attorney's office help us understand how we have that authority to just walk away from these folks. And so I just wanted to make y'all aware that that's kind of how I'm looking at this as we go forward. And I appreciate the staff pausing to take a look. But it certainly wasn't put on our agenda as we're pausing to take a look and raising a flag. And so maybe a little, the language that you used to communicate to us about that could have been a little different maybe. But I appreciate all the staff work that went into this. I certainly appreciate all the folks who are here tonight to talk to us about their problems. And hopefully we can figure out a way to do what's right. Thank you. I recognize Councilman Schuhl, Councilman Moffitt, in that order. So one issue I just wanna raise again is the issue of notice. I know that we met the letter of the law, but it does seem if folks got this as recently as early May, and this was the first time, was this the first time they might have heard of this after we have agreed previously to extend the utilities? Yes, sir. Under the requirements of the notice, we go to the city council work session and if the item isn't deferred at the work session, it will continue on to the council meeting. We mail those immediately that day or the following day to provide the required notice under the law, sir. Okay, so the meeting was February 9th, I think if I read this correctly. Yes. So you mail those on February 10th? No, sir. The original meeting where we asked for direction from council on whether to bring this item forward was February 9th. Okay. And that was, so we held a meeting with council to make a determination on how to bring this item forward. Okay. And then at the previous council work session, That's right. Approximately two weeks ago. Yeah. A little under two weeks ago. Okay, and we just pass it on consent and here we are. Yes, sir. And when we pass it on consent or we put it on the consent agenda, you then the next day mailed out the notices. Yes, sir. Is that a practice that we have or is that a legal requirement that we do it that way? It's a combination of things. Okay. We do that as a practice to allow city council time to, that's our first introduction of the item to city council and that allows them to push that item back to staff for additional information. Okay. And if we mail out immediately after that, we then meet the notice as required by law. Yeah. So let's just say this went off by all of us. We would put it on consent at, always public hearing item. That's why we didn't talk about it. I got it. Okay. And so thank you. Thank you for that. And then, but none of these folks would have known to have been there because they wouldn't have had any notice. Yes, sir. Right. So I just want to say that does seem like a problem. In the future, I think we really need to think about that. I can see if it's something very recent, but if it's something that's gone as long as these have, it does seem like that we need to give more notice than that. I can see why these people are upset that then they could have come to the work session. We could have had that discussion there. We could have been more prepared for tonight. The whole thing. So I hope y'all will think about that. Yes, sir. Yeah, so I have a grand with the mayor that we need a little bit more, so. That's Councilman Moffitt. Thank you. Just to be clear, sorry, Mr. Joyner. I'm not opining. I'm questioning. Just to be clear, we have a sidewalk, I mean, not a sidewalk. We have a petition process for numerous kinds of improvements, right? Yes, sir. Sidewalks, dirt road, dirt street paving, and so forth, right? Yes, sir. And if I understand that process, and I think there are similarities, but if they're not, please correct me. People bring a petition forward. They said we would like to have this stretch of sidewalk built, this water main run, and that when the council at the time that it's accepted accepts it, they don't budget for it, they put it in the queue. Is that right? That is correct, sir. And I recollect that we have unpaved streets that we have petitions on, we have sidewalks that we have petitions on, and now we're finding we have water mains and sewer mains that we have petitions on, all of which are not yet funded. Is that correct? That is correct, sir. And so it then falls to the council to budget to say, well, let's not do the park. Let's run the water main. Let's, it falls to the council to decide how to budget that money. Is that correct? That is correct, sir. Correct, all right. I got Mr. Williams up. So Marvin Williams public works. So it's a little bit different because they're different funding sources with the various projects, but in general the concept that you're talking about is the same that it would have to be accounted for in the annual capital improvement program that comes before council with the budget process. So I just want to, I mean, I understand that angst and the concern that people have, but I certainly don't fault staff at all. I'm remembering that we have been dealing with a lot of failed subdivisions, for example, and that a lot of things have gotten reshuffled post great recession that had to be dealt with. So including falling tax revenues. So we're in the situation and I do want more information. I'm with everybody else here. So we're gonna, so at the proper time, one of us, I'm sure we'll move to refer it back to staff for the time being and we'll go from there, I guess. Oh, I did want to ask on the petition process. I'm assuming that if people file petitions in 2007 that some of those people no longer own the property that they own when they sign the petition. Is that correct? That is correct, sir. So what happens then? We have to re-verify the petition. Does the person who bought the property have the obligation, the liability that the person who sold it signed the petition or what? That is correct. The liability for the petition carries through to the new property owner. Okay, so we don't have to go back and re-verify. People here don't have to be concerned that petitions won't be valid any longer. That's correct. At the time of the petition, the sufficiency is determined at the time of the petition itself. So when it's voted on by council, all those items are verified at that time. So any subsequent property transfers carry with it through to the new property owners. And at the time of the assessment process, after the work would be completed for a physical construction product, we notify all those property owners through a formal assessment role, which is a public hearing. So when it, because I'm fairly confident it's coming back to council when it does, when we see it, I would like to have some information about how many homes, a little more detailed information into these projects. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me suggest that we continue the public hearing until the 19th of June. Let me tell you why. It'll give us time between work sessions. It'll be our last meeting. I think the fifth of June, which is our next meeting, it's not gonna give us the time to discuss it because we don't have another meeting until the 18th. And I don't think we'll have this information about the 18th, which is Thursday. So I'm suggesting that we hold it, this public hearing open until the 19th of June, which will be our last meeting anyway. And meanwhile, we can figure out how we can have the discussions. Probably we could have the discussion of the work session. And I would assume that it will be proper to have the discussion of the work session, even though it's the public hearing matter. And normally we don't discuss public hearing matters if they're rezoning issues. This is not rezoning issues, it's a utility issue. So I assume we could have that discussion at that time. Recognize Councilor Shul. That sounds like a great idea. One other thing I'd be interested in knowing is in terms of what else is out there like this. So you mentioned that these are the only ones in the county, but that there might be other ones, I assume, then in the city that would be in similar situations vis-a-vis the DOT road construction. The two that I know of that are inside the city limits are on city-owned streets, or city-maintained streets. And when you say the two that you know about, you know what about them, exactly, Robert. You know what I'm asking? Yes, so the two projects are utility extension projects and both of those are on city-maintained streets. So are you saying that besides these six, there are only two other utility extension projects total? That I know in the queue, yes, sir. Okay, in the queue, meaning that there have been some sort of petition. So we do get requests from residents all the time about various types of petition projects, but not all of them are successful in getting a number of property owners that necessary to bring the item back to council. So there are other petition requests out there, but none have been deemed sufficient enough to bring back to council for action. Okay, I guess what I'm trying to get at when you come back to us with more information is, if we do this, let's say that we were to fund this entire amount and do these extensions. Is there something else out there like this waiting for us? Are there more? What would that expenditure imply? So what we can do is go through all petition projects for different types of infrastructure and compile that list and bring it back to the council so you have a total picture of what is out there pending some type of funding in action and that way you'll be able to make a better informed decision. Okay, that would be great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are there any further questions? If not, entertain a motion to continue the public hearing until June 19th. It's been a problem to move a second. All in favor of the motion, then kept by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion passes unanimously. Now for the persons who are out here, what this means is that the 19th would be to date that we would continue this public hearing and hopefully be able to make a decision. In the interim, the council doesn't meet again as a body until the 18th of June, which is our work session, and we won't be discussing. No, we have work, no we have work session in the 18th because I wanna ask for a skews meeting. Don't we have a work session in the 18th of this month? May? Yeah, that's Thursday. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I was trying to explain. I was trying to explain to the public what holding the public hearing open until the 19th means. It means that on the 19th of June, we will have this public hearing again to discuss this matter and hopefully we'll make some kind of decision. No guarantee, but that's the plan. Meanwhile, the council only meets as a body on the 18th of June, 18th of May, which is this coming Thursday at a work session, which is open. We probably won't discuss it then because they might not have all the information relevant. The next work session is in June, which will be June the 8th. So in all likelihood, we'll probably have a discussion on this matter at our work session on June the 8th at one o'clock on the second floor of the committee room. A discussion doesn't mean we take action because of the plan. And then based on that information, hopefully we'll be in a position June the 19th, which is a regular city council meeting at seven o'clock to take some type of action on this. Is anyone unclear about the process? Okay. Mr. Mayor. Recognize Councilman. I'll just add, because we continued it to a date, certain there will not be another letter of, you won't get a letter informing you. You guys are here. You know it, pass the word. Thank you. Any other items to come before the council? If not, we're adjourned at 9.43 p.m. Thank you. Mayor Bell, you need excuse absence with the receipt? I'm sorry. I need excuse absence. I have to attend a mayor's conference on the 18th. It's been a problem to move the second hall in favor of the motion. Okay. I don't suppose the motion passes. Meetings adjourned. Thank you.