 Good afternoon. I want to call this meeting the special virtual meeting of the Durham City Council to order at 2 o'clock PM on Friday, January 15. I certainly want to welcome everyone here today. Good to see you colleagues. We're here for the special meeting for a single single purpose, which is to discuss and choose the search firm for our city manager search. Madam clerk. Good to see you. Will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Caballero. Here. Council Member Freelon. Council Member Freeman. Present. Council Member Middleton. I'm here. Council Member E. Here. Thank you. Thank you, Madam clerk. Colleagues, I am now going to turn the. Agenda over. To Miss Youngblood. Who's with us and who's done a great job. Helping us lead us through this process and Miss Youngblood, good to see you. Why don't you set the table for us. You're, you're still a. Still on mute. I see. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem and council members. You'll be hearing from two search firms today. You evaluated 11 proposals from responses, responsive bidders. And selected the top two firms to speak with you today. About their offering and answering any questions that you might have about how they would conduct the city manager search to introduce those vendors to you. I am bringing to the room, Jim O'Donnell. Jim, are you there? I am. Hi, Mr. O'Donnell. Good to see you. Good to see all of you. I am given the honor, I guess, to introduce several or the top two vendors. The first I believe is. Dr. Stephen Strauss, who is from developmental associates. He has worked with us on several different director level searches and executive level searches here at the city. And I am pleased to introduce himself as well as I know he has brought some guests along with him. So I'll let him do those introductions. As soon as he is able to. All right. Madam clerk, do we have Mr. Strauss and his team with us on the, let's see, I'll look on the list here. We have Mr. Strauss on the attendees list. Yes. And I see you've moved into panelists. Great. Mr. Strauss, are you, can we see and hear you? Well, let's see here. I'm here. Oh, great. Good to see you. Good to see you too, mayor. We're waiting. We're happy to have you and you can begin your presentation and colleagues just to remind you all the format that we have is. We have these two excellent firms and we have 45 minutes allocated to each. And we've asked that the. That the, the firms give, they have a 30 minute up to 30 minutes for presentation and then 15 minutes for questions. And Mr. Strauss, you can let us know whether you would prefer to have questions as you go or at the end of whatever works for you, but I'm going to turn the floor over to you and we're glad to have. Thank you so much. We're delighted to be to have this opportunity to present to you. I'm perfectly fine with questions at any time. Anytime folks would like to jump in and ask questions, we'd be glad for them to do so. Let me first of all, just give a brief little description. Oh, by the way, one other logistical question. So I was going to share our proposal. My thought was to put it up on screen share, but I understand all may have it as well. We do have your proposal, but if you'd like to put it on screen share, that's no problem. Okay. All right. We'll probably do that. Okay, great. So first of all, let me give you a little background about our firm. I want to then introduce my associates will be working with me on this process. And then I will walk you through our process and hopefully answer some questions that you may have. So first of all, developmental associates is, as far as we know, the only North Carolina based search firm that works with local governments. We work with local governments, universities, nonprofits, we were very much focused on mission driven organizations. We do operate out of Durham, and we have been doing so for 15 years. 15 years prior to that I ran a business as a sole proprietor. And my background is I'm a former assistant city manager and taught at the school of government for a few years and then went on to teach at North Carolina State and their masters of public administration program for 25 years. So I'd like to have our my two associates introduce themselves. Joe, you want to kick it off. Thanks a lot. Good afternoon all my name is Joe Durham, and I want you to know that my family did not name city of Durham. So it is a pleasure for me to be here with you. I have spent the last 30 plus years working in North Carolina. Most last 20 years I've worked as a county manager and also the most recently the county man the interim county manager as well as a deputy county manager for Wake County. And prior to that I've worked in local governments, cities and towns work in the private sector for a while and also the state. Pleased to be with you. Jim. Hello, everybody. I am Janice Allen Jackson. I have been associated with developmental associates for a little over a year now and proud of that association. I am a proud blue devil having graduated from what is now the Terry Sanford Institute at Duke University. And from there I had a management internship in Prince George's County, Maryland. I've been assistant city manager and city manager in Albany, Georgia, an assistant county manager in Mecklenburg County and administrator of the Augusta Richmond County consolidated government in Augusta, Georgia. So I also come with numerous years of experience in local government. I'm proud to be a part of this team and we'll talk about my role in the recruitment process as we move forward in this presentation. And I will say that I've had to be a peacemaker between Joe and Janice because at one point Joe stole one of Jan's better employees than she was a manager of Albany. So we've had to come to peace after that. So I will pull up our proposal and share, walk you through it. If you want to follow on your own proposal that starts on page 14. Let me just start off with a couple of key principles that we operate out of. First of all, we operate very differently from a traditional search firm. Our approach is we believe in using the very best practices and methods to get you the best information so you can make all the most informed decisions. We do not make any decisions for you. We do not try to steer you towards any candidates. We simply provide you with the best data to make those decisions and you will see as we walk through our proposal that our process is very much geared towards that. I don't know if you all remember but when we ran the police chiefs process. We had extensive public hearings. I think we had seven or eight such sessions. We do not know at this point whom you would like for us to engage with as we get input for this position. We really believe in having a good understanding of what the key challenges are that are facing the community. Although, again, being local I very much understand most of those challenges but we would want to get it in depth understanding and give citizens and staff an opportunity to share that input obviously including yourself. Joe would like to, I would like for Joe to talk a little bit more about this first step where we get input about the position which drives our process. Thanks a lot Steve. Good afternoon again and I failed to say that I worked with developmental associates for the last six plus years and had the opportunity to work on dozens of recruitments. The first step is Steve has talked about is step one is conducting the job and organizational analysis this is critical, critical phase in the process. We would come up with three or so questions and they were asking stakeholders to define those challenges and issues and expectations, and also those competencies they'll be required for the next manager. One of the things that we have talked about and continue to stress is transparency. This first step gives us gives you the opportunity to get involved in the process. As you can see with the following groups that will be involved and this is for your information, including the city manager department has included the assistant managers. You can also identify other people in the community who you would deem you would want to be a part of the process and you value their input as important stakeholders. And also we could administer electronic surveys to the public if that's possible, and we also would like to be able to talk to Tom Bonfield again it's important to get feedback from the former manager on what he thinks is one of those challenges for the city to unfold. Again, this is a critical phase in that first step, and it gives us a foundation for determining those competencies helps us with that recruitment process. It gives us an idea of those challenges and opportunities that are in the community. That's important for us as we build that the job and as we start that recruitment process so we had we know what those issues and challenges are from their front of us. And it also is something that we can identify as we talk to the perspective city manager candidates, we can talk about them about those future challenges for the for that upcoming manager, based upon the feedback that we've received from key stakeholders. And let me emphasize again on the under step one, the groups, you know, these are groups that we're recommending if there are other people that you think are important or other stakeholders that are important. We would love to get their feedback then obviously we're open with that process. Okay, we'll have to respond to any questions if you have any. And Joe and Jan would be the lead, our lead team in terms of getting the input from from various stakeholders I would also be on standby if needed, as well. We would then develop the job profile and put together an attractive job ad I'd like to show you an example of that as I'm speaking. And we would send this to you for your review to get your input and what we like to do is have a very attractive electronic brochure. This is one that we used in Chapel Hill about two years ago to hire their manager Maurice Jones. And as you can see what we would like to provide pictures of the community. We'd like to provide information about the position opening about the community. We find that this draws candidates eyes to the to the position. We also include information about the community itself as you can see here on the left side of the screen. We have information about the organization, the town of Chapel Hill wanted to share their values by which they operate so we included those also the description of the position the top priorities facing the next manager, the qualifications, what the key priorities are that communities looking for in the position and then last of all the nuts and bolts about salary how to apply and so forth. So, that's part of our recruitment process. Jan is then going to talk with you about how we. Let me mention this and then Jan will jump in. We use several different methods to recruit. Obviously, we would post the position on key professional websites. There are a number of those, some in particular, cater to females in the profession, some African American some to his Hispanic candidates. We would go with the mainstream sources such as the International City Manager's Association, the North Carolina League of municipalities. We also would reach out to some other states to get posted on their state associations also. So that's one method we used to recruit we also use social media. LinkedIn will post a position there. We have some lists serves that we're part of and we will recruit through those sources as well. Janet will talk with you about her targeted recruitment efforts and she'll take the lead on that. So, Janet. Thank you. Yeah, there are a couple other organizations that I'd like to mention that I am. One is the emerging local government leader. They are a young sort of up and coming group. And like ICMA, they do help recruit and they have an eye out for their members. Always to the National Forum for black public administrators. That's another outlet for us. I mentioned being on a listserv for North Carolina. I have contacts in South Carolina and Florida, Georgia as well. So I want to get the information out through their municipal associations and city county managers associations. In terms of what I would be looking for, I tie it very closely to that profile that we're going to build in step two. So I know exactly what it is that you're looking for and I can look for candidates who have those particular attributes and that set of experiences for this recruitment. I will focus on those that we have successfully placed in the past and are ready for the next step up in their careers. We know that the city county management field folks tend to be pretty mobile. So if there's somebody who's a step down and is looking for that next challenge or opportunity, we want to focus in on those individuals. I would also take a look at some people who may have applied for other positions. I recently been finalist and semi finalists for other jobs might not have been exactly the right fit for those positions, but could indeed be a good fit for your counsel in your community. And I would always want to just make sure that what is in that profile is clearly understood by the applicants to make sure that we don't get somebody that's just looking at dormants at all. This is a city of excise and you've got ex teachers, your university community, I want to be there. That's one of the aspects of what we look for because we know that's important to have people who can build relationships with the university and other institutions that you have. But also that they have grappled with some of the specific issues that are facing you right now so that would be the focus of my recruitment. Always looking for people with skill sets but also a diverse group of applicants that I think would be good fits for the Durham community at this time. We would have all the candidates apply. I think I know the city is used uses Neo gov. We also we've been using Neo gov for quite some time. We would structure an application again based on what we learned through the job analysis specific for the position. All the candidates would apply online. Obviously they would submit their cover letter and their resumes. But this is another way in which we're different from a traditional firm because with a structured application again tailored to the needs of the city. We get apples to apples comparison across candidates. We find that and I know you all have experience with this that when you get professional resumes. They're always done very differently. Some are based upon chronological chronologically others are based on accomplishments. There are quite a few managers who are excellent managers and can't put a resume together very well or have not put a very effective resume together. So you would have all that information but you'd also have the same information across all the candidates as they have to complete this application. By the way that's also a source of recruitment for us because using Neo gov is the largest source of government jobs in the country. It also gets the word out nationally so that's actually a fifth method that we use for recruitment. Our staff would go in and analyze the results of all the candidates that apply. We provide you in addition to the applications cover letters and resumes you'd have a spreadsheet where we give you the information across the board on all the candidates. And also at that point we do a Google search on all the candidates. We give you a brief summary on the spreadsheet what the Google search is revealed. But also we provide links so that you can actually link into those results and see exactly what the articles are all about and read them yourselves and get that firsthand information. We get you that information. We recruit for about 30 days. We get you that information two or three days ahead of time so you can review it. And then at that point we'd have a closed session with the council where we share the results and facilitate your discussion of that information during that initial meeting which is here step four. We ask you to reduce the number of candidates down to no more than 15. Those folks would then go through a secondary screening process. And where and I'm going to ask Joe to talk about that. There is one error that I noticed in your proposal and Joe just to give you a heads up about this at step five we mentioned that we would be doing emotional intelligence testing. That is actually not part of our proposal as I'll come back and explain. We will do that for those finalists who the ultimate finalists for the position but Joe if you would talk about the secondary screening that would be great. You're muted Joe. I'm sorry. One of the things you've noticed so far is that this is an extensive and detailed process. The second level of screening that Steve mentioned does employ multiple methods that we are conducting among the staff there are there's a firewall between those different methods. The video interviews this is the only time that will actually someone will be talking to the applicants that person will be me conducting a interview that has five questions that will be graded less based upon the matrix that you've approved. And also gives us a good idea as to the strengths of that of those particular applicants at that stage. Another part there is the electronic survey. This is short days essays on their accomplishments. This gives them the opportunity to detail more in a written form of what they have done detailing their experiences. And we think that's an important part of the process. And the back to the video interviews, we will do as many as 15. The purpose here is that this again this screening method is driven by the job analysis. As we review as Steve has talked about this spreadsheet with you will have the scores from the video interview electronic surveys, and we'll be able to rank each of those applicants based upon the scores that they've received. And upon the completion of that, then we would ask that you, of course there'll be a meeting with City Council to invite up to five as a part of that final assessment process. Again, you'll have a lot of uniform and detailed information that will allow you to compare each of the applicants and look at their, their strengths and how they've responded to the interviews as well as the survey questions. So, at the end of that secondary screen as Joe has said you would have identified your top five candidates. Those folks would then be invited to go through what's called an assessment center process. Some of you all have are familiar with our assessment center process others you probably have no idea what that what that's about. So let me just give you a little background on why we use this particular approach. You will notice that we have an interview as part of the process Joe will conduct a very intensive structured interview structured questions structured rating criteria that's more rigorous than what most candidates go through when they act when the final decision is actually made about who the candidate who the ultimate manager will be. But so we don't have a problem with having interviews, but the traditional hiring approach, approach uses interviews to screen, you bring the candidates to the, to the city, you interview them again, you might have two or three different groups interviewing them. Interview, interview, interview, interview, you're using the same method to assess the candidates throughout interviews are obviously universal whenever it comes to hiring a candidate. But, but they are a tool that has significant limitations. All of us are comfortable with interviews. I haven't met a council yet that doesn't think you can identify the best candidate through an interview, but very often employers get deceived by the interview. As we all know folks can be very practiced in terms of how they respond to interview questions, but more fundamentally interviews can allow you to only observe three competencies. Now these are important competencies, but they are not adequate to get a deep understanding of the candidate's ability to carry out a complex job like city manager. So when you interview candidate you can directly observe their oral communication skills, obviously you can directly observe their job knowledge so you can ask them questions regarding what they know, such as budgeting planning HR management and so forth. Another best practice in interviews is to use what are called situational questions. Those are behavioral based questions. And those might be, for example, you have a department director who reports to you whose performances at what it needs to be. How would you go about handling that situation. Now when the candidate answers that question, what have you learned, their judgment about how they would deal with this individual, their knowledge about how they would manage this person's performance in their oral communication. Here's what you don't know, no matter how intensive your interview is, no matter how insightful you are, no matter how truthful the candidate is, here's some confidence that you don't know about. Do they have effective conflict resolution skills? Well they told us they did in the interview. Well that's one thing to say, it's another thing to be able to demonstrate those skills. It's the difference between talking and walking the talk. We do not know that they have conflict resolution, effective conflict resolution skills at the end of an interview. We don't know if they're a listener. We don't know if they're a team leader. Now of course they're going to say they're a team leader and that they hold people accountable in the interview. We've not seen whether they have the skills to do that. Do they have problem solving skills? Can they write? Can they put together a plan of action? Can they make an effective presentation? Can they analyze the budget? Can they run an effective staff meeting or community meeting? We have no idea about all those competencies that are critical for an effective manager. So what we do is, again, based on what we learned through the job analysis, we will design exercises tailored specifically to the city and what's expected of the manager. And those examples of those exercises would be very typically for a city manager, we will give them some sort of a budgetary challenge that's specific to the city. Actually give them a link to the budget. Have them do an analysis and make a presentation. We will, again, depending on what we learned, we can set up meetings that they might be running with staff or with community members. We would set up what's called a coaching role play where they demonstrate that hypothetical scenario where we ask them how they might deal with that department director. We actually will set up a scenario in which to actually sit down and work out issues with someone acting as that department director. We always have some sort of a written exercise where they have to put together some sort of initiative and plan of action. So those exercises give us a much deeper read on the competencies of the candidate. With a background in academia, obviously, I'm aware of the research on this, I will just tell you that the research consistently shows that interviews reveal about 30% of a candidate's ability to do the job. That's if the interviews conducted appropriately. And the centers give us about a 65% understanding of their ability to job. Not perfect, but over twice more accurate and in depth than what you can get from an interview. So we would design those types of exercises specific for the position. We would then recruit assessors to help assess the candidates. Assessors can be again, we would seek your, your guidance in terms of who those assessors would be. For example, in the police chiefs process that we ran, we had multiple community assessors actually Councilman Middleton was one of those assessors in that particular process so we had some community members. And we also brought in professional experts, other law enforcement executives from the region and across the state. Now that we've gone virtual with our assessment center processes, we're actually able to recruit assessors from anywhere in the country. We just ran a process last week for a university and we had assessors from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, as well as North Carolina helping us with that process, doing it virtually. There's no cost to you there's no complication in terms of getting assessors from anywhere so again we would seek your direction, but we would have assessors external folks evaluate those candidates. So, before they begin evaluating the candidates. We, by the way, we structured this over a two day time period. The assessors get trained on the morning of the first day. They learn about their exercises and most importantly, again, we want to give you the best information to make your decisions. The assessment center is going to give you much more data about candidate competencies and you'll have from an interview. We train the assessors to give you objective behavioral feedback, keeping opinions out reporting to you factually what the candidates said or did throughout the exercises. And so you will then at the end of the second day, we would set up a debrief with you all again you would go into executive session as you see here. And we would have each assessor team and each team is made up of three to five people. They would come in and report to you on what they learned about the candidates in each exercise. Answer any questions you might have about them about the candidates as well. And so that you can get all the information conceivable about the candidates in each of these different kinds of exercises. Also, I mentioned that emotional intelligence. What our proposal includes here is we would only administer emotional intelligence testing to your to those candidates invited to the assessment center. So we would have an in depth analysis on all the from the candidates on all the factors that you see here on page. 18 and those you see those again listed here on this page. All the kinds of factors and competencies that you would be interested in if you're interviewing the candidate and trying to glean through interview questions, such as their self confidence. Their commitment to their work or self actualization, their ability to think and act independently their ability to be constructively assertive. Their approach ability or interpersonal relationships, their teamwork and mission focus on mission social responsibility. Their decision making approach in terms of whether they are too quick to rush to a decision or do they have adequate impulse control to get the data they need before they make a decision. Do they systematically work through problems? How do they handle stress? Are they adaptable and do they have a can do attitude. So we would in the assessment center. Part of what we're looking for is technical competency. So analyzing a budget and making a presentation, putting together a written plan. So at least about 50% of technical competency, but we're also looking at emotional intelligence competency. How they deal with people, how they problem solve and so forth. When the after each of those teams have come in and met with you and shared their results on the assessment center. We would bring in the results of the emotional intelligence testing and we would cross validate what we've learned in the assessment center exercises with what we see in the emotional intelligence assessment. That way again you can get more depth and more confidence in terms of the results that you're getting on each of the candidates. So, at that point, we would expect you would be able to reduce the number of candidates down to two or three that you would be interested in for final consideration. So we would work with you to figure out how you would want to orchestrate those the assessment of those top two or three candidates. Joe is going to talk about that in just a moment but one of the key points I want to emphasize to you is at this at this juncture, you will know much more about their competency level than you could ever expect to get out of a traditional interview driven approach. Still, of course, interview those final top those top two or three candidates, but with respect to the competencies to do the job, you do not have to get that question resolved by the final interview. You're going to have much more information about that from the assessment center, your final interview can allow you to focus a lot more on their fit the and the synergy that they have with you all with the community. So, Joe would you like to talk about that piece to which which pieces that Steve I'm sorry that's that's when they would want to bring in their final two or three candidates. And that's one of the things that really is clearly it's up to you to make that city council to make that decision, whether or not you want to have a public forum I know that has successfully been done in other communities. You can decide what format that that would take. And that's something that we could conduct virtually, we will work with you on questions in the format, who is invited, and, but again we offer that as a potential opportunity to have that public forum again, under that theme of a transparent I'm sorry, let me just interrupt you for a minute. If you all could. We very much appreciate the presentation and if you all could wrap up because I know the council going to have some questions and so if you could kind of hit your final points and we can get to the Q amp a be great. The last thing I want to point out is that we have so much data on the candidates in terms of their skill sets that we will provide executive coaching to your top candidate and if there are any internal candidates which I would expect there might well be. If they don't get to position we also provide executive coaching to them as well. This includes the behavioral feedback they acquired during the assessment center process, and also the results of the emotional intelligence testing. This is consistent with what elite professional institutes for professional development provide executives, and we want them to be successful as the Durham city manager you want them to be successful. I think that it can be a very helpful first step for them to get their feedback from the process, as well as our understanding of what the key challenges are that they'll be facing the position and help them put together a plan for how they're going to go about addressing those challenges. So we're done with our presentation mayor, you'd like to kick off question. Thank you so much. Mr Strauss really appreciate it and just want to say, you know, huge leg up because Miss Jackson is a Duke and a Sanford graduate. Doesn't doesn't apply to all of our council members but there are a few of us for whom that's extra points, but really appreciate you all. And just want to now ask my colleagues questions that you might have for Mr Strauss and his team, who would like to get us going. Mr Mayor I'll get started. Okay. Thank you, Council Member. Absolutely. First of all, good afternoon to everyone and happy new year Dr Strauss is good to see you. There's no governing legal requirement for me to do this but I think it is important for me to disclose Dr Strauss has already alluded to the fact that I participated in an assessment center I've actually participated in I think to one for the chief of police and then one for the director of our attention center. So my familiarity with developmental associates is more than passing are kind of a casual knowledge that I have worked with them on a couple of things. And during that time I developed great affinity and appreciation for their methodology and work and I think it's important that I just put that out there on the record with that said, and also I should say I think that I don't think I'm out of line for saying that I think the seed of a nation friendship also were planted with Dr Strauss during that time as well so I want to put that out there with that said, I'll be bringing myself to hold you on the merits of the presentation today and I'm going to be governed greatly by the questions and input from my colleagues as well as they examine rigorously as I know they will the two presentations of the forest, but I did want to acknowledge that I have more than just a passing familiarity with developmental associates with that said I want to ask how many top executives for cities I know you alluded to the town manager position in Chapel Hill how many chief executives for cities have have a developmental associate health seat. Gosh. If you're talking managers and assistant managers. I'm just going to guess I'm going to say at least 50. And, and, and that's cover several states as well. But at least I would say at least 50. Yeah, I was going to ask how far as long as that was in the country and I know you've done a couple of things for us here in North Carolina and your local reaching. When we first started we only want we're only interested in working in North Carolina. And, by the way, one of the reasons that got us going with executive processes as we saw some searches that occurred in Durham 15 years 15 years or so ago that did not go very far and after observing that I thought we can do better than this and they were during was bringing in some national firms to help with those processes, spending a lot of money sending it out of state, not getting the results that they that they really should have gotten. And so that was a bit of an impetus for us to get involved and we just, again for many years only focus in North Carolina. We are doing quite a bit of work in Georgia. We, and Virginia, and we just broke ground in Florida this past month we're starting a process there as well and we're, we're definitely interested in expanding. And, but I also want to emphasize there's a tendency sometimes to assume that because we're North Carolina based and Durham based that we don't recruit nationally and that is completely false we've recruited candidates. From California from New York, we've had candidates from Montana and Wyoming, Florida, obviously we've covered the entire country in terms of our ability to recruit. So, again, I hope you won't assume that because we're a local firm that we only focus on candidates in North Carolina that is by no means the case. By the way, that also leads me to say one other thing. The city has developed quite a wonderful reputation nationally, both in terms of the great achievements that the city has accomplished in the last 1015 years, both through the reputation as well as through the reputation of Tom Bonfield. I actually, again, will recruit intensively will use those five different methods for recruitment. I think your toughest issue is going to be assessing the candidate competencies. I think it's good that's going to be much more of a challenge for you, then it will be to recruit quality candidates for the position. Thank you, Dr. Strauss. Thank you, Mr. I'll yield. Thank you, Council Member, Council Member Caballero. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for your presentation. I really appreciated so full disclosure I used to do this professionally. You talked to me about competencies, recruitment, how it all works. So I'm going to get kind of in the weeds with you all because I'm a little bit of a dork around these things. So the whole idea of competencies and creating a process that is not, you know, we use, you all are saying assessors, we would create processes that really got to the nitty gritty part of the job. I worked in education so often it was for principals and principal supervisors. And so what we would create often is a snapshot of the day of the life of a principal and what would that go through parent meetings, leading staff observing teachers. You know, you got 10 minutes, you know, before your next meeting, and you've got this many emails show me how you're going to prioritize what you're going to do in that 10 minutes snapshot of time. So I very much appreciate what you all shared out of curiosity. I'd like to understand a little bit of more about your assessment centers. Because the way we developed our processes is we would often identify the key stakeholders who needed to make the judgment on hiring, and they ultimately were the assessors for that district, whether it was a mixed group of parents, principals, central office folks. So I wanted to understand a little bit more about the assessors. I would like to understand a little bit more the demographics because one of my concerns is around the diversity of the folks who you're bringing into the assessment centers. And then I would also like with your final applicant pool so the folks not folks through the first phone like through your phone screens, but the folks who are getting into your second. I would like to have percentages on on demographics of that applicant pool out of your searches and I know that you may not have that information today. But if you could provide that to council that would be really helpful. Okay, well, first of all, I'm delighted to hear you have that background I've never met you before and I'm delighted to hear that you have that I'd certainly love to talk with you a little bit more about your experience as well. The assessors as I mentioned, we do have, we typically do not use folks inside the organization, we can we've done so, depending on the position. The reason we tend not to use folks inside the organization is we may have candidates from inside the organization and we want them to have the objective as they as they assess the candidates. So what we typically do is bring in subject matter experts, those are folks again that. Well, by the way, some community members, plus some external folks who are in similar positions so city managers from other cities as well. So the demographics of our assessors, I can assure you that we are always do a great job in terms of getting diversity on all levels. Reverend Middleton can talk with you about what what he's experienced in the process is that he's participated in that we've run. In terms of having diversity in terms of the assessors, in terms of the candidate pools, I will tell you, again, I can't give you the data offhand but I will also tell you that we have had a really great track record in terms of diversity. And the folks that make it to the make it through our initial screening and get invited to our assessment center processes, as well as by the way, the managers that get selected from those processes. Again, I'm not quite sure how many African American managers there are in North Carolina, but over the last two years. I've held higher five African American managers in North Carolina. I'm going to just step off the ledge and say that I think that's a very significant percentage of the managers in North Carolina right now in larger municipalities. So, Joe Janice, I don't know if there's anything you want to add to respond to that question. Yes, I would just add I was first exposed to this process when developmental associates was doing a recruitment for states for Georgia. I was in Augusta at that time I got a random call asking me if I would be willing to participate in the process and I drove down the states for about an hour and a half away drove down there were probably eight to 10 of my colleagues from the state who are also a part of the process. So, that is to say that a strong effort was made to make sure that there were people who a know what they're looking at and P be who are open to a diversity of candidates because we were a diverse group so I think the developmental associates were very hard to make sure that all of the assessors they are represented women in fact women were probably over represented you may know that only about 14% of all city managers in the country are female. So, and I think there were at least a couple of us there so we were probably over represented but there were also there was also a diverse candidate pool I think we had four or five candidates in that process. At least two of them were African American. So, and wound up hiring the first African American in states for Georgia for the position as a result of that process so I think by getting the right people in the room inviting the right people in the room developmental associates does a good job in terms of assuring that there's diversity and assessment and diversity of candidates. Thank you. Thank you council member. I did note also in your, your presentation that for of the five African American women chiefs who've been placed in North Carolina you also also placed. Alright, colleagues, other questions for Dr stress. I have one. I'll tell you my, I mean, I have been fortunate to observe your work. And we're, I think we've got two great firms in front of us you are an absolutely great firm. And you've brought us some really, really great employees in the city of Durham no question. My, my biggest question for you all is and you you you addressed it to some extent but I think that Durham is going to be able if we if we're presented correctly and if we if the recruitment is right to be able to get to where we can attract not just the best state town the best regional town the best national town. And I just want you to talk to us about your ability to have a true national reach. What what what would give us confidence that you are able to do that. Let me just respond to the first part of what you said Mary it's very gratifying to hear you comment on the quality of folks we've brought to Durham one of the proudest moments I've had in my career. Actually one of our staff members picked up on when there was the gas explosion in downtown Durham. It's been I guess a year and a half two years ago now. The three most prominent members, besides yourself or the community of the city that we're responding where the police chief the fire chief and the deputy city manager, all of them we'd helped hired we were extremely proud about about our connection to Durham and and and being a partner with them in those processes. I'm not sure what I can tell you about our perhaps. Janice and Joe may want to also jump in in terms of our ability to recruit nationally. I would, I would just say, you know, our track record is such that we have, we have done so. You know, you're, for example, your police chief your fire chief from from other states, one from the north one from the south. We've demonstrated that already in Durham. And so we do have that track record. I shared in my proposal, some of the states that we've recruited candidates from. I don't know Janice and Joe if you all want to share anything further that you might add to the mayor's question. I can, as in anticipation of getting this because hopefully we will be successful. I started thinking through people I know who are as far away as the West Coast, Rocky Mountain States, etc, who are in this business. I mean, I definitely have in mind some people already that I would call who are not necessarily on the East Coast but do have the skill set to handle this job. So I think between our social media presence, as well as personal contacts that I know, I don't think we'll have a problem touching base with potentially interested parties from throughout the United States. Thank you very much. Sure, go ahead, Mr. Yeah, just just very quickly. I mean, the position sells itself awesome. I think it's important to note that that this is the city of Durham's great place to work and live. There'll be natural attraction from other people throughout the nation. I think the targeted recruitment that we're doing as well as the social media presence, the ICMA and others that we're advertising. And that's it. That is a national reach. And the position itself again will attract people nationally, not just in Southeast and part of the United States, but the entire nation. I have no I have complete confidence that we will get a great diverse mix of people from across the United States. I would add one more thing to as Joe and Janice were speaking and I thought about one other angle on this, which is Tom Bonfield is the gift that keeps on giving because he will. His, his reputation is the fact that he was a Durham city manager and his involvement nationally. That's immediately going to draw a lot of interest in the position right off the bat. Thank you very much colleagues. Let me just talk about time for a moment. I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to have their questions answered. We're now at we started a little, you know, after we've gone about 45 minutes. I'm going to go ahead and just keep this going so that we can everybody can get their questions answered. We got a big decision to make today. And so I just want to make sure that everybody gets to hear everything they need to from this team. Colleagues, other questions for Dr. stress council member framing. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to hear about your work and to actually have seen some of it in action. I think, and the city clerk process had the opportunity to see some of some of it happen or unfold. And I really would love for you to speak more to how you engage local residents, taxpayers, business owners, people who are invested in our community is as well. I think I'm particularly struck by how COVID is going to have an impact. And most of this will be virtual. How, how will I would like you to just speak to it because I don't think it's been said. And I think it was in it was included in your presentation a little bit and and in the packet a lot. So, let me just mention just a couple things. COVID obviously is is going to limit some things from what we customarily do. Just as an example, when we ran the police chief process. One approach we use to get community input is we actually went to the largest local Catholic churches and ran a session in Spanish to get input from the Spanish speaking community and Durham as well. So we were very proactive about that. What we usually find is, again, we'll be as engaged with the community as you'd like. And again, I'll ask Joe to talk a little bit more about that and maybe Jen may will just jump in as well. We'll structure that the way you would like to structure it. We use multiple methods. We are very glad to have open forums for any member of the community to participate. We're glad to have invited groups come in and participate in our sessions. We are glad to reach out through surveys. And so we use multiple methods to get to get input. So is there anything further you want to add with regard to that? See, I think you did a great job with that. But but there are two opportunities to provide that with greater opportunities for the community to be a part of this process. One is the first step with the job and organizational analysis and again targeting people there. We'll be just get off for a side. I've worked in City of Raleigh for about a year last year. And of course the transition from having face to face meetings to virtual meetings. And a lot of the success with that is reaching out to people. And that is something that has to be done. You have to encourage people to be a part of it. We'll utilize all those resources in order to make that happen. Second opportunity is to the community forum. If you decide that you want to bring the top two or top three finalists forward, we would help you in setting up that community forum. And again to maximize citizen participation. And it is amazing now people are accepting video conferencing. This is a part of our life now. It's part of our life going forward. So I am amazed at what I've seen my experience in terms of people participating in the process, even during these times of COVID. So I think there'll be great opportunities for citizens to be a part of this process. I would add one more thing too. I just thought about it. Councilman Freeman, that the opportunity to be involved is an assessor. We think is really, really helpful to have community members do that. I think because they can all there by the time they get, they participate in this process. I don't want to get too far out bragging about our process, but they're very sold there. They had no idea how thorough the process can be and how thorough the process would be for the city of Durham. And having a few community members we think is always a great thing to do. And they can advocate for other community members too about what a comprehensive job the city is doing in terms of assessing candidates. So we see community involvement involves several objectives in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. One of those obviously is to make sure that the public process is transparent. It's to get citizen their ideas in order to sort of help to shape the thinking of how we go about or what we're looking for in the next manager. But it's also, I think, an important part to build trust and also to build support for the next manager. And by having a comprehensive rigorous process, not a very subjective process like most interviews tend to be. I think that also adds adds a lot to the process as well. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Council Member. Other questions colleagues or comments for Dr. Strauss, Mr. Durham and Ms. Jackson. All right. We really appreciate you being here. Hi. We're going to have a hard decision to make because we have two absolutely great firms and we're very grateful to you all for being with us if we're giving us such a great presentation. Is there any final comment that you all would like to make before we wrap it up. I don't know, Janice anything further Joe you anything further than that. So we appreciate the opportunity and we believe we can do an excellent job and finding the right candidate for you. I know that you can you found a great candidates in the past, and we're really, really grateful to have you. Let me add just one thing to this would be our most important search that we would do this year. There's no doubt that Durham City Manager would be our very top priority this year. It's our community. We have loved our working relationship with you and with the city. It would be our top priority. We would be extremely enthusiastic. This was this is not just a project for us. This is a very, very special opportunity for us. Thank you very much. Dr Strauss, we appreciate it and we really appreciate you all being here with us. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you, folks. I'm going to now turn it back over to Mr. O'Donnell, who's going to believe now introduce our second team second. Yes. So again, thanks very much to developmental associates and Dr Strauss, Janice and Joe. And right now, I believe he is on but I'm not exactly 100% sure the person I'd like to introduce is Ellis Hankins. He is the Senior Vice President of the Mercer Group. If possible, could you let Mr. Hankins into the Zoom call? Unfortunately, I don't see Mr. Hankins in the attendee list. I saw him previously. I wonder if he somehow lost connection. I did email him when I heard he was not on the call and I can and I tried to call him but got his voicemail. Let's see. I saw him earlier. Don't see him now. So Mr. O'Donnell, why don't you give him another try and we will. Yes, I'm calling him now. Just wait patiently. Mr. Mayor, while we're waiting, so it is Hankins, not Hawkins. Hankins. Ellis is joining us shortly. He tried to call in but realized that Steve Strauss and associates were still on, so he'll be with us shortly. Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, I've just promoted Mr. Hankins to panelists today. Thank you. See if Mr. Hankins, there he is. Mr. Hankins, welcome. Thank you, sir. We're glad to have you. Members of the council. We're very, very glad to have you. Well, thank you. We have, as you know, we have two firms in the finalist for our search for our Durham city manager. And both of our firms, both of the firms are great. You have a wonderful firm. And as the last, as did the last, the first applicant that we just heard from you also have a lot of experience you personally with the city of Durham and a lot of knowledge of our city and, and all the things that make Durham a great place to be and live. We're, our, our, our process today is, as you know, we've, we've, we've been grateful to have your material. And we're going to give you 30 minutes to present. And then the council will have questions for 15 minutes or so. If it's up to you whether or not you want to take questions in the middle and so on happens to have one, but I'm going to now turn it over to you and welcome you and appreciate you for being here and thank you for, thank you for this and congratulations for being one of our two finalists for this. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members and everyone else on the call it's good to be with you and thank you for considering our proposal. I won't take 30 minutes for a presentation. I have a few PowerPoint slides if the screen can be shared but happy for you all to stop me during my presentation on behalf of our firm and certainly happy to answer questions at the end. So, let me see here is the PowerPoint presentation and can you all see that is it on the screen. Yes, it is we're good. Very good well let me run through that very quickly. But first bit about our firm and I'll talk about me and my partners who we included in the proposal. And our process timeline be and etc but let's start with our firm. Our firm has worked with the city of Durham before. We are the largest most active nationwide public sector consulting firm. Jim Mercer founded this firm by the name of the Mercer group 30 years ago. Jim Mercer our present CEO was the person who worked with the Durham City Council 12 years ago. When the council selected Tom Bonfield to serve as city manager. Jim started out as an assistant city manager in Raleigh. So in a way the firm started in North Carolina. He now lives in Santa Fe. Jim is 82 years old but he his hand is still actively in this work. We didn't put him in this proposal but he is available if we call our firm does almost entirely management consulting for local governments. Occasionally another unit or level of government some federal or state government projects, but mostly local governments. We are proud of our track record in North Carolina and nationally. Some of you know me but but not in this context as a consultant. I worked for many years for the state municipal league, including 17 years as executive director retired. One year ago now I was thinking this morning one time early in my tenure as executive director I was on the Durham City Council agenda. I don't remember why I was there but I heard these words come out of my mouth at the time I said Durham might be the one of our cities with the greatest unrealized potential. I looked up 25 years ago and I thought what did I say but I looked up and Mayor Tennyson and council members were nodding. I understood what I meant and look what has happened all these years since. And congratulations to all of you on everything mostly good that has happened since then. Seven years ago I retired I had some other things in mind I wanted to do more teaching. Now I've had that opportunity at three pretty good universities still do some of that mostly short courses now it's been a while since I've taught a full semester course. I wanted to do more volunteer work and I've done that I've certainly done a good bit of work as a volunteer guardian at Lightham trying to help children in need and foster care. I'm still a member of the board of the statewide League of Conservation voters. There's a new volunteer effort and I'm very pleased about it I wanted to disclose it. The Wake County Board of Commissioners has appointed me to serve as a member of the Raleigh Durham Airport Authority Board. I don't view that in any way as a conflict with respect to this potential work with you. If you see fit on your city manager search. I don't want to disclose that since Durham obviously is one of the airport owners and it's your members to the board. So I look forward to that service still have a law license. I am a member part time of a firm. The mothership offices in Chapel Hill. The firm does almost entirely local government work and I do some of that but not much these days. I mentioned that you all really don't know me probably in this context as a consultant. But we did list on page 14 of our proposal which I trust that you have. We listed the searches over the last five or six years that I've had my hands in in North Carolina and nationally as the lead consultant and project manager. From small towns to large cities, counties, state municipal leagues, public risk pools. The only current city manager search I am involved in is High Point, which we're just starting. We are wrapping up I am with our Minnesota partner a state municipal league executive director search. It is in Vermont, no trips to Vermont this time, which is not a good thing, but that one is about to wrap up. Confession is good for the soul. I mentioned this in our proposal but do want to disclose also that when our firm with me as the lead consultant work with the Charlotte City Council on their city attorney search. You know who they selected. Patrick obviously was always going to be a leading contender if he decided he was interested. And I spent a lot of time talking with Patrick and Ray about that about potentially moving to Durham and they decided they were interested and so was the Charlotte City Council. So I hope I don't get too many demerits for that. We also did a project again with me as the project leader with Durham County several years ago, helped them select a department director who is still there. So done a good bit of work in North Carolina and nationally and certainly our firm has. And there's a list of some of those other projects, the state municipal leagues. I've now, this is my eighth state municipal league search. I'm pleased about I with my California partner have done a project for Los Angeles County. We worked on the California State Municipal League search and the county state association search, some public risk pools so it's been an interest in several years. Let me apologize for cause the other members of our firm who we included in the proposal are both occupied this afternoon on projects. Lisa Ward is in Georgia this afternoon. She lives in Florida. Mike Ledger is in Arizona working on a project. Lisa is the only person I know who has served as a military officer in three branches Army Navy and Air Force for 23 years active and reserve service. A lot of that was HR related. She then was she served as an HR director in the private sector and then as the HR director for the consolidated city county government in Athens and Clark County, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is located. Mike Ledger has served as a budget director HR director finance director, and it's the city manager in Tucson. And left that position several years ago and since has worked for our farm with our farm, both have a master's degree and public administration MBA degree and do a lot of this work. I added Philip Robertson here. Philip actually lives in North Carolina. If another set of eyes and ears pans or to be needed Philip would join with us. And probably our Maryland partner to David Deutsch, who has retired city manager worked in Pennsylvania and Maryland. So why us the mayor is absolutely right. Steve and I know each other well, you all do have your choice between two firms with a good track record in North Carolina, certainly, our firm has done more work in more other states. I honestly don't believe any firm has a better understanding of municipal government operations in our state and the responsibilities of city managers and qualifications and characteristics that tend to make managers effective. Then we do then the members of our firm, we have an extensive network across the country, among local government managers, including in North Carolina, and we take full advantage of that in these searches we talk a lot with each other. We have folks in 14 different states. So we have a broad reach to recruit and we share a lot of information and help each other. And that contributes to the effectiveness of our work. So the process. If you all retain us, you will hear me say many times, what is obvious, this is the city council search, not ours, we would be there to assist you all to help recruit a sizable group of well qualified and diverse candidates and provide our best professional advice and assistance to you along the way. First step is to very carefully and take as much time as it takes to come to Durham or and or do a lot of work virtually to discuss not only with you all but starting with the council with individual meetings and the council meeting to discuss what background qualifications experience and personal characteristics you're looking for. We would have those individual mayors meetings with you all with a group of your senior staff. It's always important to make sure that there are abundant opportunities for senior staff members and sometimes a more representative group of city employees to have some meaningful input into the process at the beginning. And for us to listen to what they say about what they think you ought to be lookable, not names not people but in terms of qualifications capabilities personal characteristics, maybe particular areas of expertise that they think the city really needs. We would certainly want to reach out to a group of interested citizens that you all help us identify and have sort of a focus group discussion small group discussion for the same purpose. And we like to make a lot of individual phone calls and just talk and make sure we hear from a representative a diverse group of citizens and I know in Durham you all have no difficulty getting citizens interested in what their city government is doing and what you're doing. So the steps and key dates after those initial meetings and discussion with those abundant opportunities that I mentioned for input by interested citizens apart from your council and city staff. One work product is a recruitment brochure. We put the Charlotte City Attorney brochure in our proposal for you to see as one work product, a sample. We would work with you all on that without taking too much of your time we certainly would send a draft of the text. Invite you all to add subtract change, get it back to us, we will get digital photographs from your staff. And it'll look very much in appearance like the Charlotte City Attorney brochure but it will be about Durham. It's customized and at the end there will be a bullet point, a list of bullet points that we will we will draft based on what we hear that you all say you're looking for and your employees and those folks in the community say you ought to be looking for. Obviously we'll place the job ads. We will place those in some of the usual places, ICMA, National League of Cities, the North Carolina League, North Carolina Association of County Commissioners. We will make sure to place those ads in places that will make the availability of the position known to a diverse group of well qualified candidates. National Federation of Black Public Administrators for example. I mentioned that we're working with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns now. You all know Vermont is not necessarily the most diverse place. It was important to them and it's always important to us to recruit a diverse group of candidates and we always work hard on that. We did with respect to Vermont. And when we had the conversation with them last week about candidates to invite for an interview among the group, certainly were women and an African American woman. It was a diverse group of very well qualified candidates. That's always important to us. We engage in very active recruiting and we are trying to do two things. The quantity of the candidate pool, how many candidates is much less important obviously than the quality. We want to attract a group of very well qualified but diverse candidates. And I mean diverse in every way. Race, gender, different points in their career, different stages of their career, geographic diversity. We're not going to have a lot of difficulty I truly do not believe in getting people interested in considering Durham. Durham now is so well known in so many positive ways. I think it will be an attractive position. But we'll take full advantage of that my partners and I if you see fit to engage us to help attract a group of well qualified and diverse fit. I'll keep you informed of what we're doing. We're not going to disclose or discuss names until a bit later in the process, but we'll give you a good idea of the numbers and in our view of the quality of the candidate pool as it progresses. If you have been involved in the searches before, then you know what tends to happen. You tend to receive the strongest applications toward the end of the process. It almost always happens that way the stronger candidates seem to take more time to do their due diligence they might call us two or three times. Talk to a lot of their friends, maybe folks in the community of or in this general area if they know folks. And the stronger applications tend to come at the end. That's not a bad thing, but it always makes us get nervous. We put in our proposal a proposed timeline, but we sent the proposal in November. It's been a while. So that timeline is outdated. If you all see fit to select us one of the first things we will do is revise that timeline and send it to you for discussion and eventually the council's approval so we can all stick to it. But if we're able to start this search soon. We will get those job ads posted will get going on that recruitment brochure. Probably the application deadline is going to fall sometime at the around the end of March. We need to run those ads for about six weeks, at least to reduce the risk that qualified candidates just don't find out in time despite our making a lot of recruiting phone calls. As applications come in, we obviously will review those carefully. I along with with some help from some of my other partners will start talking with the candidates who appear to us to be the strongest best qualified. We'll begin preliminary background checks, I mean, extensive Google searches, everything else we can find out about those candidates along the way. And when the application period ends, we will assemble a package of written materials to send to you all will make it as concise as we can but there will be a lot of information in that written material for you all to consider. We will include a summary of the strongest candidates in our view. And I don't mean just five or six or seven. We very probably will will give you recommendations as we see it of the strongest five to seven candidates but we also will include maybe another tier of candidates who also appear to us to be well qualified. Maybe not as strong as that top group. But we think you all need to hear about a somewhat larger group. And sometimes councils will select candidates to invite for an interview from that other group. So we think you need to see and hear and discuss with us the relative strengths and weaknesses of folks in that other group. But we'll do that we'll have that discussion with you in a closed session as obviously North Carolina law allows probably about mid April. And help the mayor facilitate that discussion and help you all select a reasonable number of semi finalists for an interview. Your RFP RFP said two to four semi finalists. We would suggest about five. And here's why you always run the risk that some strong candidates who you select for an interview are going to withdraw later in the process. It happens often. It happened in our Vermont search of the search committee selected seven candidates to interview. And one of them thought about it she happened to live in Washington D.C. And you know some things happen in our nation's capital last week. She decided that for now she needed to keep working where she is and it wasn't the time to move. And we respect that decision. That's one good reason for selecting about five instead of a fewer number because you certainly can lose a candidate or maybe more than one. They are they are their spouse might decide that the time and circumstances are just not right for a move now. So after you select those semi finalists we will do our formal background checks right then before your interview. We prefer to complete those before your interview. So there are no surprises. And if there's if we discover things of concern, maybe problems with credit history, we'll ask a lot of questions about why that's not necessarily failed. If it's, you know, a serious illness in the family a lot of medical bills. That's one thing. Serial bankruptcies obviously is another thing but folks will be dealing with public money. We want to know about that if there's a disqualifying piece of information, then we want to know that before your interview. But we'll send you a second package of concise written information about those selected semi finalists along with more information than we had before your selection meeting. We'll get from the candidates their answers to written questions that will give you some more insights. If you want us to, we will administer some assessment instruments like what I like is a management styles inventory, which certainly will give you some insights into their management styles. Some can some councils want that some don't. I will tell you we have a different difference of opinion, compared to some other firms. Some other firms use those psychological assessment instruments to screen candidates out of the process early in the process we don't. We believe that it works better and what we prefer to do is administer those management style assessment. Inventories later in the process after you select semi finalists and give the results to you and discuss the results with you as one more relevant piece of information, along with the other information, but not to do that and use it earlier in the process to screen out candidates who appear to be well qualified. So we would work with you all to schedule the interviews we would work with the candidates that you select to get them scheduled probably about early May. If, for example, you interview five candidates and maybe you spend an hour with each candidate. That's most of the day. We worked with council certainly who have in state league search committees who have interviewed as many as nine candidates. We do not recommend that. That's a day and a half. You certainly can, depending on the quality of the candidate pool. I don't think you want to do that. You can certainly get this down to a reasonable number of well qualified candidates around five, maybe seven. So after those interviews, you may be able to select the candidate that you believe is the best fit. You may get it down to to one, not quite sure, maybe two that you want to invite for a second interview. Maybe more informal. But in any event, we would work with you to take the process wherever you decide you want it to go. I don't know if I'm going to get to another possibility on the next slide, but when you're ready, when you selected your preferred candidate. We will talk with you about the parameters of an offer of employment. And we under our agreement we will assist probably working with your HR director. The attorney and I know well to negotiate the terms of employment with the selected candidate under those guidelines you've given us, then I will work with Kim. On the drafting of an employment agreement that most city manager candidates now do prefer and I'm for those agreements I prefer those as long as they are well drafted, clear, well balanced. And certainly protect the city's interest as an employer. I think you all will be able to get through this process productively and make this final decision. If you start soon, at least in May. So that the new city manager assuming that he or she is employed somewhere else and external candidate could begin work, at least in July, August at the latest. And engage in a productive transition period if it's internal candidate. Obviously, the person could start work sooner. Let me, since I mentioned internal candidates, let me just say we obviously have a lot of experience working in on search processes where they are internal candidates. Our advice is to treat the internal candidates just exactly like all of the other candidates, certainly with respect. Give them the same consideration as external candidates and treat everyone the same in fairness and because it sound HR legal practice. So, here's one other possibility. North Carolina law certainly allows you all to conduct this process from beginning to end. And the law requires that you keep the application information confidential, unless until near the end of the process, the finalist consent to disclosure. If you wish, we certainly can help you all design a public forum, a facilitated moderated public forum. To allow interested citizens to see and hear from one or two finest, we have experience doing that. We do not necessarily recommend that. But in the law, certainly does not require it. But particularly in larger cities. Sometimes the city council does prefer something like that. We can discuss with you if you want the various iterations of that best practices. And if that's what you wish, help you design that and help implement it. So important points, and I'm almost finished there. You always, you will hear from us this advice. No preconceived notions, no presumptive finalists keep an open mind until the interviews are completed. Don't decide you absolutely have to have someone who's worked in North Carolina, you're going to get. You're going to get the opportunity to consider strong candidates who have not worked in North Carolina, but who are well qualified have have a good amount of experience like your current like your recently retired city manager who came from Florida. The information is confidential, and you all certainly owe it to each other to maintain that confidentiality. You owe it to the candidates to keep the information confidential to protect the integrity of the process and North Carolina law requires it. Lastly, your citizens elected you council to make this decision, we want to provide meaningful input for interested citizens and your employees but this decision blocks the council, and it would be our job to assist you and make a sound decision. Our fee. We have proposed what we believe is fair and reasonable fee that will fairly compensate us. We know the time is required. We could have proposed a higher fee didn't feel it necessary to do that. So our proposed fee is 24 five plus expenses, actual expenses but no more than about $5500. Obviously, I'm not very far away. There are no travel expenses here. My other two partners, several of them that I mentioned are in other states. But the we haven't discussed whether you all would prefer to conduct your meetings and maybe even the interviews virtually, we certainly have worked with other clients this past year, productively do did at least the initial interviews by zoom or some other electronic remote means. And it's worked well. You might want to at least invite the preferred candidate or two to Durham to talk face to face. But our partners obviously who take place if they participate in those remote meetings with you don't have to travel. And, you know, for the most part, what I am going to do if you all see fit to retain us is is primarily work with my partners in those other states to get their assistance in active recruiting to improve the to enhance the strength and the diversity of the field. In our proposal there's an extensive list of guarantees. We mean that. And we stand by our work. Our firm has a good reputation. I enjoy doing this work and I enjoy working with my partners in the firm. We hope that if you haven't already you will talk with our references. We've given you several from Mayor Liles in Charlotte to several folks on the North Carolina coast. So please talk with our references. We will welcome an opportunity to work with you on this search. You do have your choice of two good farms or won't hear people out of us if you seek that to select the other farm but we hope you will select us and so we would welcome an opportunity to work with you. I am happy to answer questions that I know you very probably have. Mr Hankins thank you so much for that excellent presentation and we really have a hard choice in front of us we've got two great firms. Let me just say that I did mention that the last presentation one of their. I gave some points to them for one of their presenters being a Duke Sanford professor but you were too. So I guess. And still have and still are good. All right good. So just want to make that clear everybody. And we do take points away from the fact that you did steal our city attorney. Don't even think about trying to steal the current one. Two things two points. Good people get good opportunities. Your current city attorney obviously was ready well qualified and so she got a well deserved opportunity. I mentioned those guarantees in our proposal. One of those is that if we assist you with this work Durham is off limits for two years completely. And the city manager candidate whom you select that we help you place in Durham is forever off limits while he or she is employed by the city of Durham for what that's worth. Thank you very much for that Mr Hankins colleagues. So who would like to begin. First question for Mr Hankins comment. Thank you Mr Mayor. Good afternoon. Thank you sir. Good to see you. First let me say I currently sit on the board of directors for the league. No kind of league and let me thank you for your past service. You left a house and thank you. Strong order of the build on so let me just honor your past service. It was enjoyable almost every day and when it wasn't it was usually because of the North Carolina General Assembly. You took the word right out of my mouth but I'll leave that to you. Thank you. I want to ask the in your rubric if you will for choosing the candidates the management style assessment instruments question mark and see if it's you know you left as an interrogative it. I want to unpack management style assessment instruments a little bit are the only instruments you're referring to just a battery of test or their do you engage in real world scenarios or or role play type so could you just unpack the instruments a little bit. Thank you for that question. The instrument that I mentioned is exactly that a written instrument that we administer and then we interpret the results and discuss them with you. The one I prefer is called telemetrics management style inventory it's one of the longer standing better known ones that has been refined a lot over the years. It's academic was developed years ago by a couple of psychology and management professors and their successors have refined it over the years based on real world results. So it's validated the but I spend a lot of time and my partners do on the phone with the candidates who appear to be well qualified getting to know them, figuring out who they are. It's very important to me and in fact it may be more important than anything else to assess their level of personal and professional maturity. Emotional IQ whatever term you want to use and to talk with them a good bit spend a lot of time on the phone before we come and discuss candidates with you but we talked with them a good bit that management style in general. And we do provide some scenarios how about this situation have you dealt with this tell us what you would do. If this situation were to arise how would you work through that and obviously later in the process we would work with you all on interview questions for the candidates that you select. And you also could pose some of those scenario questions, same questions to all candidates, so that you have an apples to apples comparison but we would work with you to make sure that you get a good, useful picture. Who those candidates are and how they do the work, how they work with the group of elected officials. How they work with the department directors and assist those department directors in getting the work done under your policies and products. So by the time we come to have that semi finalist selection discussion with you all, we will know a lot about these candidates and be well informed to discuss what we see as their relative strengths and weaknesses with you, including if you want us to do it. That management style inventory with those results which can give you some meaningful insights. So when is everything you just said not a good idea. Why is that negotiable why don't you insist on that being part of your normal rubric is there some industry understanding or body of wisdom. Some councils just some councils just don't want it don't like it don't trust it. We caution over reliance on it, but we believe it absolutely does provide another piece of relevant information. I like it. I'm comfortable with it. I've gone back and I've assessed some results and kind of it by talking with some of the elected folks and managers after the fact after the fact after the person has been employed for a year or two. I've kind of double checked to see whether the results that I discussed with the council were valid and were validated on the ground in the real world, and the answer is yes, and every case so far. So, I certainly wouldn't discourage that. Very happy to do that. And it's within the scope of our feet that we proposed if you if you want us to do it there's no reason not to. Thank you for that. I'm sorry we didn't get one. Now one. I'm sorry. One thing. Sorry. No, go away that I know is different in our methodology. We have not proposed an assessment center process. We prefer the process that I discussed with you all for a city manager search, certainly with positions that are more technical in nature. Police chief fire chief planning director positions, those assessment centers work well in our experience, they don't work as well in a city manager search. So we've not proposed that as part of our process in the search. The process that we have proposed is exact, almost exactly the same as the process that our firm used with your city council 12 years ago with good results. Thank you for that. You kind of anticipated my next question about the potentiality of changing landscapes in 12 years ago but but I will I'll forgo that question. I'm sorry we didn't have an opportunity to meet the rest of your, your executive team and your partners. Could you tell us a little bit about the demographics of your leadership team. The group of consultants that we propose to you Lisa Ward is a quite female. I mentioned her background to you. She lives in Florida. Mike lecture is an African American male. He had he held several positions up through several city governments that I mentioned. HR director budget director finance director eventually city manager city of Tucson. Black male. We mentioned David Deutsch retired city manager who has worked in Maryland and Pennsylvania. White male. I included in the proposal demographics about our firm. It is a it's not a large group. There are a total of 20 of us, including 16 active consultants but some other folks associated with the farm. There certainly are members of the farm who are African American, many women. One Hispanic partner. Pretty well diversified group and including professional background police chief bar chief. The, the police chief who was within our ranks is a white female retired police chief was police chief in Bellevue, Washington. Others from other backgrounds, two of us are retired state and discipline directors. I'm the only lawyer in the group. Try not to let that be an impediment. We think it's a proud of the diversity. Not only demographically but the diversity of thought within our firm. Sure. And final question if your firm is selected. Can you make a guarantee that you will bring us candidates that will cause profound pain and disruption to the city of Charlotte. You can get back to me later on that you don't have to answer that now. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Queen city. The great state of Mackleborough has. Yeah, whatever. Sometimes demonstrate. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council member. Are there questions colleagues who would like to go next council member cover Yaddo. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation today. Just real quick question. I wanted to dig in a little bit about the assessment center. I think it was a really good question. I brought it up. It was real clear in your RFP. I've done a fair amount of hiring professionally before and so have relied on that method. And so out of curiosity, What teases it out differently for you for the city manager role because you shared that for other roles that makes sense, but not necessarily for this role. So just wanted to hear your thinking on that. And then I'm going to go back to the panelist who has great people skills who obviously can work productively with the group of elected officials and be a strong effective manager, working with the group of department directors and make sound decisions, not only personnel decisions, but others and relate well to the community or soft skills and in some ways. And we could assemble as we do with other positions police chief fire chief positions, we could assemble an assessment center panel some from North Carolina, maybe elsewhere, and recommend to you a smaller group of candidates and not have a discussion with you about a larger group of candidates that we view as well qualified. We prefer to do the latter. Without the assessment center panel and process with respect to the city manager circles, we have done them with assessment centers Lisa Ward certainly has abundant experience in doing those. But we, we stand behind the results of the process that I mentioned to you with us spending more time on the phone, zoom, whatever means, getting to know these candidates and asking a lot of probing questions, and then having that in depth discussion with you all about a somewhat larger group of candidates and giving you the opportunity to ask us well why did you not recommend this candidate in that top category. How about this candidate. We think you all just need to have that discussion, which is more difficult to do when assessment center process has recommended to you a smaller number of candidates and has said, we think this is the group you need to interview. That's just our preference based on our experience, our traffic. It's perfectly reasonable to do it the other way. And I don't mean to to this is nothing is negative in what I said. We just believe in the results of the process I mentioned to you, and we're proud of the traffic. Follow up question to that. So, I really appreciate the answer because I find it a very, I find it very interesting. My one hesitancy in your team is diverse so I'm less reticent, but the, as you know the, the best practices with an HR have changed significantly, partly to mitigate for bias, because we know in hiring so many folks have entered, who were well qualified and not picked because of their ethnic racial gender, we can name many many things. And so these assessment centers or not necessarily centers but where I consider more instead of scenario based questions are actually lean more towards a competency type process. So you're able to measure folks against a standard and everyone's measured against the same process so it's easier to mitigate for bias. So I guess for me that is my, you know, as I said a little bit I do have some reticence on how do you then mitigate for bias with the process that you're laying out. Pretty good about doing that. Certainly, the members of our firm individually and the discussions, the assessments that we make. You absolutely should make these hiring decisions and we should help you and we do will help you make these decisions based on competence professional capabilities. We absolutely will help you recruit a diverse group of candidates. We think one big advantage of doing it the way we we recommend is to give you the opportunity to compare and contrast a somewhat larger group of candidates that may also have the advantage of being a more diverse group of candidates. So we think that's an advantage. Thank you. Those are the only questions I have. I appreciate it. Thank you, Council Member. Next questions, colleagues. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I appreciate the explanation and I do value. I think that's that's specific to why it strikes me. That's an interesting because of it because you're measuring against the standard. I just wanted to note that. And concerns, concerns around specifically where the standard sits. So there's a lot in there. And just specifically to my question, I, I would love to hear you unpack a little bit more around how you will engage locally. I know that you guys are kind of, you know, out of state and more around the country. But I think it's going to be important to make sure that the voice of the people of our community here in Durham are included in a way that makes it authentic. And so noting it that I think that in, in a previous conversation, the assessments kind of built some of that in, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that. Because it's a little bit in your presentation or in your packet. But definitely will love to hear more. Thank you for that question. We are our firm is national and scope, but I'm here not far away in Raleigh. I said the firm really started in North Carolina and then went national in scope. I certainly know a good bit about the city of Durham and the history and the culture and understand a good bit. Raleigh is like a whole world away just so you know. Oh, it, I believe me, I understand that and I do not disagree. I certainly watched with great interest at how Durham has evolved in recent history. And I want you to know I'm sensitive to that. I mean, I know that first of all, the thing that probably matters more. Apart from the givens, strong professional competence proven track record of candidates. Personal professional maturity. The thing that matters the most beyond those things is fit. The fit of the person in the current time and circumstances in Durham. And no one can make that determination or assessment for you. That is your assessment. It's our job to assist you after the process that I mentioned. And we would do that I guarantee you very mindful about Durham and keeping in mind the comments that we have heard. I would not just show up and tell you how we are going to conduct those community listening sessions. I would want to talk with you all and some members of your city staff. And make sure that we design that community engagement process at the beginning of the process in the way that you want us to. So that we do hear meaningful information that we can use in drafting that recruitment brochure and through the process. Hope that answers your question. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Council Member other questions. Other comments or questions at this time. Mr Hankins I have one. No question you all have a national reach and a. And a wealth of experience and that you do know Durham you're you are. And you know North Carolina you're you have great experience at this. The. Is your. Talk more about what the community engagement would look like. Council Member Freeman asked a little bit about this but I know a lot about the other firms community engagement because I've seen it. Around the choice of our police chief. But tell me what that might look like like what form do you think that should take. You know, let's say we're down to a few people or the final two or you know what are your thoughts about what ought to occur. You're talking mayor and I gather towards the end of the process. Yes, not not the discussion early on. Yeah you discussed that already, but but towards the end of the process. Yeah. We couple of different ways that we have worked with clients to do that. Usually a public forum. And another public forum so that any interested citizen who would like to is able to attend. With a facilitator or moderator. Someone from the community who has some some stature some standing in the community. Who can pose to the one or two finalists probably a series of questions. The same questions we would suggest to their two candidates and the same questions to the two candidates. Sometimes an opportunity beyond those questions posed by the facilitator and opportunity for interested citizens to suggest questions that might be answered. We would want to review those questions to make sure that they are lawful and appropriate. We would work with the facilitator or the moderator to do that. So that's a that's an open public forum. We also have worked with councils and sometimes we've done both of these things in the same search process the larger public forum and a smaller group discussion. Including some interested citizens from the community that you all might suggest that we reach out to. And include in a smaller group discussion with the finalists or maybe two. I mentioned that you know I will have spent some time on the phone early in the process with some and a good number of citizens in the community usually. So I will have gotten to know some folks and I don't already know and dorm. In that way, but we wouldn't try to. We wouldn't decide who to involve in a small group like that we would look to you all to help us do that. Thank you very much Mr Hankins colleagues other questions or comments from Mr Hankins. All right Mr Hankins would you like to any any final words you'd like to leave us with. I think we've had a thorough discussion thank you for your questions and your consideration. Again we would welcome the opportunity to work with you all on this important process if you see fit. I really appreciate you and it's good to see you again and we had a hard choice in front of us. We had two great firms and we're just really grateful for you being here for your presentation and for the excellence of the of your application to us. So thank you so much. Thank you very much. Best wishes. Right. Well colleagues, we have heard from both of the firms and now we're going to have some discussion but let me just turn it over to Mr O'Donnell for any comments that you might have. No, and thank you very much but just again wanted to thank Mr Hankins for his presentation and I agree with you I think you have a two excellent firms and it's going to be a tough choice. That's what we're meant that's what we're built to do right guys make tough choices. Okay. So colleagues just to remind you the idea is that we will make a choice today on the of the thumbs up variety or probably take a vote. But it will be informal because the contract will be brought to us for whoever we decide on today at the next work session. And so we can keep on our schedule. And so now I'll, I'll just tell you I what I said I really meant I think we and as Mr O'Donnell just said I think we have two great firms. I think we're going to be well served by either and so we just have a tough choice to make. So I'll now open it up for any questions or well my questions but any comments that anyone might have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think I decided to go first because I'm really like. Torn and I wanted to just give like a little insight into saying that what I was saying earlier about the standard and so the way that we set this up I want to say that the first group with development associates actually weighed out a lot higher. In my, I guess the grouping assessment that we set up, but I have to say that in meeting and or having this discussion with Mr Hank and even without the two additional folks that he had with him. I have to say that they think it kind of makes sense for for the process that we need and so I'm really even more torn than I started. And I just want to just put that out there and say that you guys are really making this decision and I'm just going with you. I'm so there. I think we got a tough call council member cover yet. I just want to acknowledge that. So I'm just going to share kind of my pros and thoughts of pros and cons in my head that are going through my head. I think that if I'm thinking about national reach which is really one of my top criteria. I'm leaning towards Mercer for that, just because they have a, you know, broader evidence of having those relationships. I very much appreciate the assessment model that development associates presented to us. I am a little bit reticent because so much of that choice is not left with council, at least not the way I interpreted how they presented the assessors kind of. And we are not the assessors and our staff at least the way it's designed and presented to us are also not the assessors. And while I understand thinking behind that, I've certainly not ever been part of a process like that. Usually, there are very crucial kind of inside the organization folks who are involved in in the process along the way, including interviewing. So I will say that that gives me pause. I appreciate how the Mercer group kind of distinguished by their process is slightly different for this level of position, which then kind of has me leaning back towards Mercer. But also just from relevant work experience understand the other model better. So that's essentially where and how I am torn. And I'm eager to hear where other folks are. Thank you. Councilmember Milton. Thank you, Mr. Marin. Thank you colleagues. These are two wonderful presentations. I'm going with developmental associates. For a number of reasons. I think it's interesting enough. I think Mr. Hank has actually gave you permission to do so. I think both firms are capable through the paradigm of interviews and assessment. I think they're both equally brilliant and will both be probing and thorough in checking the background of candidates and doing interviews. I think the assessment center, having lived through two of them adds another element beyond the interview paradigm that I think is incredibly useful. I watched the and the fact that it seems somewhat negotiable in the Mercer rubric and then beyond it being negotiable when I asked to unpack it, the assessment tool that he outlined the test. And then he seemed to suggest that the, the, the skill sets necessary for a manager or the police chief didn't translate to a manager. But I know that those assessment tools can be contoured and crafted for the specific job that you're seeking to fill. For example, during the gas explosion. We saw a city manager that had to deal with multi coordinate multiple departments. They had to deal with the press deal with council members, and they're a real world kind of scenario you can describe you can craft to replicate those kind of conditions. And I think that was incredibly useful. Interestingly enough, you know, 12 years ago, the process that that Mr. Hankins described gave us Tom Bondfield. And finally, as Tom was on his way out the door he himself opined about how things had changed. And he was sensitive to, to how Durham has developed and moving forward. The necessity for a leader for today. As, as big a fan as I am of Tom Bondfield, I'm not certain that the process that developmental associates described today would necessarily have given us a give us a Tom Bondfield today for today's Durham. I can't for that time, but I think that the Durham that we're going into now. I think that what developmental associates have described has described and what I've experienced with them is far more suited to to give us a leader that I believe the competencies needed for the city manager can be replicated and can be captured through that process I'm absolutely convinced that both groups would do a great job just left to the interview process. But I think that that the assessment center, having seen it is a powerful tool for getting beyond what the interview can give us and if we can get more in the process. Why not. Finally, the work product I remember when the assessment centers were done. We were brought in and we spoke to Tom and the and the DCMs, the work for it. We didn't cede authority to the assessors, but there was a wide variety of folk. It was a cross section of community folk who were given a rubric and who scored each candidate on the same metrics. We couldn't deviate from questions and that was incredibly useful and that work product was turned over to the counts to Tom at least his level for the city manager and to the sheriff for the detention center director. And that was just more information added to what they had already done with interviews. So I think it's a much more robust approach. I think that 12 years ago Tom Bonfield was the right man for the right job and the right rubric was used in. I'm not confident that I just want to replicate the rubric that gave us Tom 12 years ago for the Durham up today. And I think that the model that Developmental Associates presents is much more suited to the Durham we find ourselves in today that's not to take anything from Mercer. Finally, as I've traveled around the country to that NLC events and other things. I am blown away that as soon as I mentioned I'm from Durham, the response, you know, that we get and the accolades that Tom gets Durham, I'm not so much concerned about the national if it were pre-enter, internet, maybe, but this job, people know that this job is open. And I think that folk are going to self identify from all over the country. And CJ, Chief Davis came from, came from Georgia and, you know, we are fire chief came from up north. So I'm not so worried about the ability of each firm to reach nationally. Durham's already got a national reputation. They're going to self identify. So for all of those reasons, out of two incredible candidates, I feel much more comfortable with Developmental Associates given all of the reasons I've enumerated. That's why I'll be supporting today. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Council Member. Other colleagues at this point have comments or that they would like to make. I'll just add, I am, I think that Council Member Middleton makes a very good point about our ability to reach nationally. I think that's right. I think that Durham is, this job is going to be, I believe, you know, a hot commodity. I think the thing that makes me, I am impressed with a couple different things about Developmental Associates, which is one, their ability to place, you know, to get hired, you know, good African American leadership, you know, to produce those candidates and in the case of town managers, get them hired, police chiefs, but also to, I'm impressed with who they brought us. Of course, our city clerk was already here, but they were involved in that process. Chief Zaldis, Bo Ferguson, and Chief Davis are, you know, these are top notch people. And so that's the way I'm leaning, but I'm happy to hear other thoughts. Anybody else? Mayor? Yes, sir. Interrupting. Just came up earlier about involvement in the assessment centers and previous assessment centers with Developmental Associates. There has been an interview panel that was part of this where there were, in particular, Tom Bonfield, whatever deputy city manager and typically some other folks were on an interview panel that was part of that assessment. So that has happened in the past. Thank you, Mr. O'Donnell. Colleagues, I'll tell you what we could do. Do you want to take a straw poll at this point and see where we are? And then we could keep talking if there's no clarity. Does that sound good? Do I see some thumbs for that? No objection. That sounds great. Okay. All right. I'm going to give everybody 10 seconds to think about who they want. And then I'm going to ask people to and write and you have to do a council member Reese is doing. You have to put your hand to your temples. That helps. And then I'll just, I'll just take a vote and then we'll sort of see where we are. Okay. Alrighty, I'll say first, all those who favor Mercer, please raise your hand. Put a thumb up. All who favor development associates, developmental associates. Okay, I see five for developmental associates and I see two people who didn't, who didn't put a thumb up. Am I right about that council members for you? All right. Well, then let me just ask you all, what is your comfort level council members for you and in Caballero with with going with developmental associates or would you rather keep discussing for a while? I actually appreciated the information that James shared with us about the different because that was the one thing that was giving me. That was the one area that gave me a lot of pause. And so getting that extra information. I'm comfortable with moving forward. Thank you. Council member Freeman. Are you do you have a comfort level with that? I think council member Middleton covered most of the ground. Okay. All right, good. All right, colleagues, then I think we have a unanimous recommendation for developmental associates. And Mr. O'Donnell or Mr. O'Donnell or Ms. Youngblood, either one, our clerk is going to need, you know, the appropriate motion and materials for our work session on the 21st. So, would you all like to give us any other comments and advice at this point? So I have created the agenda item for the 21st work session and I am in communication with the agenda coordinator, letting them know that you all will get a refresh information after this meeting. Now that we have your decision, I'll be modifying the motion in the agenda and on the memo. Can you let's talk a little bit about following steps. So we would have that at the work session. We would, you know, that would be on consent, you know, I mean, I assume we'll end up putting it on consent for the following council meeting. We would make our decision at the following council meeting and what would be the next couple of steps that you would need from the council or either from our small council committee, myself, council member Freeman, what would be, what would you need from the council next? So what we would need from the council would be a prioritization of core competencies. And so Jim O'Donnell will be working with you on getting that done probably through a multi-voting tool to find out which are the competencies that you want to focus on. And we'll pass that information on to the vendor developmental associates so that they can begin their work. And they will, of course, also want to have a kickoff meeting with the council, either the entire council or the subcommittee that certainly is up to you to discuss the go forward. Great. Thank you. That's very helpful. And will you please, I know you will be in touch with Mr. Hankins and let let him know how much we appreciate their presentation and that while we have chosen another firm we're very grateful to them for their application and respectful of their work and look forward to working with them in the future on other hires. Yes, we'll do. All right, anything else, Ms. Young-Bled or Mr. O'Donnell that we need to do today? I don't think so. All right. Colleagues, thank you so much. I thought we had a really good session. And is there anything that you all want to add before we, before we adjourn today? Okay. Thank you all so much. Very quickly. Yeah, sure. Of course. Today, sir, today we're celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. And I just want to say how proud and pleased I am to be involved in a company that does so much to not only keep the dream alive but forward it. So happy holidays to all my colleagues. Thank you for that. Thank you. All right, colleagues. Well, it's always great to be with you. And I will, we will be together on. On Monday night, on Tuesday night, Tuesday night. And I am happy to say that I'm presenting the key to the city to Secretary Mandy Cohen. And this is, you know, these presentations are rare, but I'm excited about that. Make sure she gets that mass vaccination site set up quickly, Mr. Mayor. Maybe hold it back and say, so when we get this done, Secretary, you want, oh, here. I have some, I have some news on that. So the way the I spoke this morning, this is off the agenda, but it's not. It's fine. I spoke this morning with Patty Gawanda of Secretary Cohen staff and invited our new County Commission chair, Brenda Howard joined me and we had a good discussion with her about the general COVID situation, any other impending actions that she thought that we ought to take to keep our community safe as well as the vaccination. And previously and other discussions, I've been led to believe that that there would be a separate so-called mass vaccination site. But what I learned this morning is that the state is going to be working with the county with the county and Duke, the county and Duke to have pooled pooled doses and that the mass vaccination site would include the state supported mass vaccination site would include Southern high school and other sites in Durham that will be rolled out soon. So I think that what I'm trying to say is I don't think it's going to be one mass vaccination site like I had originally been given to believe. I think what it's going to be is several sites that are high-volume or high-throughput, as they say. So as I learn more, I will let you know more. And I think that, yeah, and I think I let each of you all know individually over the last couple of days just that we're expecting 10,000 doses next week. And I hope we'll be getting all of them out. We need to get them all out. All right, friends. And with that, I'm going to adjourn this meeting at 4.19 p.m. And I hope everybody has not only a great but a very meaningful Martin Luther King again. Great weekend, everybody. Take care, friends. Thank you. Thank you.