 Good evening. We'd like to call the Durham City Council meeting to order. Monday, November 16th at 7 o'clock 1 p.m. And certainly want to welcome all of you that are with us this evening. We could just take a moment of silent meditation, please. Thank you. I guess if Councilman Brown would lead us in the pledge. Madam Clerk, will you call the roll, please? Mayor Bell. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Cole McFadden. Councilmember Brown. Councilmember Cotati. Councilmember Davis. Councilmember Moffitt. And Councilmember Shul. Let me ask are there announcements by members of the Council? And I want to recognize Councilman Shul for one. And then Moffitt. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The on Saturday, we had the fourth annual Shul challenge in which city employees try to beat me in a five mile race. Some did. And it was a great day. We had beautiful weather. We had 47 city employees and 14 of their family members. And we started at mile zero, the American Tobacco Trail went out to mile two and a half and back. I wanted to thank some folks from HRD buyers and Michelle Cash especially and Megan O'Neill who's works for Blue Cross and Blue Shield with the city and the county. And they did a great job. And according to custom, I will read the names of the people that beat me. But before I do so, I also commend the city for the Desk to 5K program, which is we have our employees, many of whom are sedentary, are trying to get up to running a 5K. And the HR department has now established a program where they are doing so. And about 10 of the Desk to 5K people are out and making progress towards their 5K, which is going to be held on December 12th. So I wanted to commend our HR department on that. Steve, I don't know if we have time for you to read all those names. That really hurts. Other people who beat you. That really hurts. Well, we're trying to shorten this meeting. So here's who beat me. First place was Jonathan Baker. I want to say that Jonathan from Public Works ran the five miles in under seven minute miles. So he's fast. I don't think Jonathan's here. He's tired. He's tired, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. He's exhausted. Dan Schulman in finance. Randy Stort from inspections, who likes to come in first every year, but didn't this year. Kristen Randall from Parks and Rec is listed next, but I'm pretty sure I actually beat her. Eric Halstead from Public Works, who always runs really well. Sean McKnight from Public Works. Todd Hoffman from Fire. James Leone from Police. John Scott from Human Resources. And I will say that I hate to say this one, Mr. Mayor, but William Bo Ferguson from the city manager's office beat me, which really hurt. Can you repeat the question? Yeah. Councilman Schulman, one thing I heard this morning, I'm sorry to interrupt, was that part of that challenge was anybody that beat you, you would provide them a beverage of their choice, but that you scheduled the race so early in the morning that by the time you got back, the bar hadn't opened yet? Oldest trick in the book. That's right. Tyler's was closed this year, so we will be having a happy hour, not only for those that beat me, but for those that didn't. And that'll be scheduled through the HR department. You're exactly right. Let me just, the last thing I do want to say is some of the departments there. Parks and Rec, the fire department had several people and they were fast. Budget and management. I did beat Melinda Squires Nelson this year. She keeps saying she's going to beat me, but she never has. I beat Don O'Toole. I just want to make that clear. So we had city attorney, finance, fire, public works, water management, human resources. Diana Schreiber was there from the clerk's office. Community development, solid waste, neighborhood improvement services, fleet management, including Joe Clark was there, which was great. And pretty much every department. So just wanted to thank the HR department. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, we'll be having a happy hour. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. That's great, Steve. Appreciate it. I recognize Councilman Moffitt. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to congratulate Mayor Pro Tim Cole McFadden for her election to the National Board of Directors for the National League of Cities. Glad to have your representation. Any other comments by members of the council? If not, entertain prior items first by the city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, everyone. Four priority items this evening. Agenda item number four, landscape maintenance and grass mowing contract for the fire administration building, garage, and fire training grounds. The contract was revised to accurately reflect the numbered pages that were listed in section four in the exhibits. Agenda item number 10, proposed economic development and incentive agreement between the city of Durham and Project Ironman. The title, motion, and memo agreement and attachments have now been revised to include the actual name of the company. Agenda item number 11, proposed economic development and incentive agreement between the city of Durham and Project Cavalier. The title, motion, memo agreement, and attachments for this also have been revised to include the name of the company. And we'll be reviewing that when we get to that portion of the agenda. And then, agenda item number 14, a quarterly crime report for the third quarter, the reporting presentation, and our update to the civilian police review board and the Human Relations Commission recommendations have been added to the agenda. Thank you. Enterting a motion on the managers prior to items. Second. It's been properly moved. Second, Madam Clerk, we open the vote. Closed the vote. Passes seven to zero. Thank you. Recognize the city attorney. Mr. Mayor, members of council, if I could just have a moment, I'd like to introduce Boy Scouts from Troop 424. I've got some notes here, and I'll have to go to the glasses to make sure I get this right. Again, we've got Boy Scouts from Troop 424. They're chartered by the Immaculate Conception Catholic Parish. These Boy Scouts are attending tonight's meeting as a part of their work for the citizenship community merit badge required for them to become Eagle Scouts someday. The purpose of this BSA merit badge is to encourage good citizenship through teaching Boy Scouts how local government works and how to participate in government so that they make a positive impact on our community. In attendance with these Boy Scouts is senior assistant city attorney Fred Lamar, who's an assistant scout master for the Troop, and is designated counselor for the citizenship in the community merit badge. Also, Ms. Deborah Pawsback is in attendance and is the Troop 424 outings chair. And if the troop could rise, that's all I have for you tonight. That's great. Welcome. I recognize city clerk. No items, Mr. Mayor. That being the case, we'll proceed with the agenda as public. The first item is the consent agenda. And the consent agenda may be approved with a single vote. If a council member or person from the audience chooses to remove an item from the consent agenda, we will discuss that item later in the agenda tonight. The first item in the consent agenda is the Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau Tourism Development Authority Reappointment. Item 2 is 2016 City Council Meeting Schedule. Item 3 is an ordinance to amend the fee schedule for hydrant meter deposit fees. Item 4 is the landscape maintenance and grassmore and contract for the Fire Administrative Building Academy Fire Maintenance Garage and Fire Training Grounds, which is a priority item with changes by the city manager. Item 5 is the proposed sale of various easements to 101 West Chapel Hill Street Partners, LLC. Item 6 is US Department of Housing and Urban Development Fair Housing Contract for Fiscal Year 2015-2016. Item 7 is Human Relations Commission Recommendations for Water Management Department, the report. Item 8 is authorization to execute an amended contract for a total amount not to exceed $91,323 for full staffing analysis of the Police Department by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Item 9 through 11, these items can be found on the general business agenda as public hearings. Item 14 is an item that can be found on the general business agenda. Entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda. The property moves in second. Madam Clerk, we open the vote. You close the vote. It passes. 7 to 0. We move to the general business agenda. Item 14, which is a quarterly crime report for the third quarter. Recognize the Chief of Police, Jose Lopez. Mr. Mayor, Council, City Manager, City Attorney. Giving the January to September 2015 report, first of all, start with the mission of the Durham Police Department, which is to minimize crime, promote safety, and enhance the quality of life in partnership with our community. The Police Department's quarterly report covers the Department 6 performance measures as listed. The report also includes additional statistics and information about significant accomplishments and highlights during the third quarter of 2015. Part 1 index crime was down slightly during the first nine months of 2015. There were decreases in reported rapes, burglaries, larcenies, and overall property crime. Part 1 violent crime was up by 16% at the end of September 2015. The rise in violent crime was driven by an increase in the number of aggravated assaults, robberies, and homicides. One incident in August accounted for 29 aggravated assaults, including eight people who were injured. The number of aggravated assaults is up 6% over 2015, while the number of victims, which is the way we count this statistic, is up by 17%. We've conducted two violent incident responses this year in response to increases in aggravated assaults. During these responses, officers focused on identifying possible suspects, gathering information, and being highly visible in areas where these crimes are being committed. The most recent one was during August and September in Hinson Drive and Southside Areas. The results of these responses are in your report. Part 1 violent crime accounted for approximately 17% of all Part 1 crime during the first nine months of 2015, compared to 14.5% in 2014. Although there were 25 homicides and two fatal self-defense shootings reported during the first nine months of 2015, 17 of the 25 homicides have been cleared by arrest. Two other cases were ruled self-defense, and one was an officer-involved shooting, leaving five cases open. One of the homicides is the case in which a victim was shot in 2011, but died as a result of his injuries during this year. Nine of these cases involve domestic violence, and four of these nine cases involve victims, three years old and younger. We've had fewer gang-related homicides during the first nine months of 2015. There were six member-based homicides in 2015, compared to 11 during the same period in 2014. There have been 34 homicides year to date, compared to 21 homicides on this date in 2014. Reported sexual assaults were at a three-year low during the first months of 2015. The number of robberies increased, but investigators made several arrests, clearing multiple robberies this year. Officers arrested six people in April, and members of that group were charged with committing a dozen armed robberies during April. Officers also arrested five people in September on multiple armed robbery charges. And this weekend, we also made a substantial arrest, arrested two individuals for multiple robberies that they've committed, in which we believe we're targeting Hispanics. Property crime was down by 3% at the end of September, due to drops in reported burglaries and larcenies. Larcenies make up more than half of our part one crime. Shoplifting accounted for 27% of our larcenies during the first nine months of this year. Larcenies from vehicles and of vehicle parts made up to 41% of our larcenies. During the third quarter, officers arrested several people for multiple property crimes. You can find more information on these arrests in your report. Clearance rates for homicides, robbery, and motor vehicle thefts were above the FBI national average of clearance rates for cities of our size. We've had several multiple victim cases this year, which are often harder to clear due to a lack of cooperation. We believe that in many cases, people know who did it, but they do not provide the information to the police. And we also have had an increase in violent crimes this year. We've not had an increase in the number of investigators. There were 6,585 priority calls, priority one calls from January 1st, 2015 through September 30th, 2015. This is a 29% increase over the same period in 2014. We did not meet our standard of responding to 57% of our priority one calls in under five minutes. And we did not meet our five minute and 48 second minute average response time standard. Also, the average response time was six minutes and six seconds, which are difference of 18 seconds. Although our sworn ranks are at full staffing, we currently have 37 operational vacancies due to recruit officers being in various stages of training. Because of attrition, injuries, sickness, court time training and vacation, patrol districts are never staffed at 100%. Individual staffing levels for patrol districts can range from a low of 42% to a high of 72%. Inadequate staffing creates an extra heavy workload on officers, making them call driven and not allowing the time they need to leave their vehicles for more positive interactions with citizens. A diminished police presence also adversely impacts the ability to deal with crime. Effective November 27th through December 31st, the police department is using our asset forfeiture funds and the amount not to exceed $60,000 to finance an overtime initiative to supplement authorized positions in uniform patrol that are temporarily vacant. This initiative will enhance beat integrity, allowing for a better distribution of workload in the city's five patrol districts. This will result in improved law enforcement services. And our objective with this holiday initiative is to ensure a minimum staffing level in the districts of 75%. There were 10 non-sworn vacancies at the end of the third quarter. 25 during police recruits graduated from the Basic Law Enforcement Training 41 on August 3rd. And we currently have a Basic Law Enforcement Training class in progress. October 21st, we had our annual employee lunch serving them for serving us, where we served our employees at the police department. In October, also hosted a statewide violence summit here in Durham, where we had members of, command members of different police departments throughout the state come in and discuss the trend towards violent crime issues, its trends and also to try to identify violent crime reduction strategies and also set the conversation for January's North Carolina Chiefs of Police Association meeting. I was one of 23 law enforcement representatives that attended an armchair discussion about crime at the White House in October with President Obama. The Durham Police Department was chosen, I believe because of the diversion programs that we have in place here in the city and much of the discussion was relative to diversion programs and keeping individuals out of jail. Like to end this presentation with a photo of our newest patrol car. We'll have five of these mothers against drunk driving patrol cars, one for each district. These patrol cars will be used on regular patrols as well as special events such as Boozit and Luzit and DWI checkpoints. We also will move into the holiday season. We hope that these new cars will serve as a reminder not to drink and drive. And as I understand it from Mad, the city of Durham is the first ones to have mad cars. So you'll be seeing them out there. And with this, this concludes my last crime report for the city of Durham. Thank you. They are the best. Thank you, Chief. And I'm sure there are probably some questions by members of the council, but I want on behalf of the council thank you for your service and your report. And although you still have some more time with us, we'll be seeing you around. But since this is your last report, I wanted to publicly thank you for your service to the city. Recognize Councilor Brown. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Chief Lopez. I guess most people don't realize that the average tenure of an urban police chief is about, I think, three and a half years. You've been here close to eight, I think. Over eight. Over eight, excuse me. Willing to do 10. So you have far exceeded the national average. And we just want to thank you for your personal service and wish you good speed and good luck in your retirement, which is well deserved. Not prepared to retire, so we'll be working. Oh, okay. Well, please take a hiatus period of vacation, long vacation, cruise, whatever. I do have a couple of questions. During the recent campaign for city council, the hewing cry was for more community policing, part of which is, I guess, for police officers to get out of their patrol car and walk the neighborhood. So the question I have in your judgment, is this really a worthwhile endeavor? And can we actually do this with the staffing report that you gave us this evening? And I say do this in a meaningful manner, not just as a gesture. Well, currently the Durham police officers do a lot of driving, and then they park their cars and walk. They do have a lot of hours that they put to that, the park and walk. As far as having officers assigned to just do that, like many other police departments who say their community policing efforts are that, I don't think with the staffing we have at this point in time that we'd be able to do it, although we are currently looking into reallocating our resources and seeing what we could do. So we're working with the consultants in reference to seeing how to best use the resources that we have. But nevertheless, I think that with more resources, there's a lot more that could be done. And I think that's reflective in a lot of other police departments. It's always good to step out and speak to and meet your community. And I think that's something that we emphasize with our officers, but at the same point in time, we have to look at their workload. My second question concerns a rather interesting report that some of us received this afternoon from South Elk Credit Union. And they did an analysis of marijuana arrest and it showed according to their analysis that blacks comprise over 80% of those charged with this misdemeanor and white people much, much smaller. And under the age of 25, blacks who only comprise 15% of the population, but represent 46% of those charged once again with marijuana possession. And apparently even after the recent reforms that this council supported in terms of making marijuana arrest a much smaller priority within the department. We still arrest more people than other so-called progressive cities in the nation. Now, a misdemeanor, some of you know can cost close to $400 in court fines and court fees, I should say, in fines, what is your response to that? What is your response to that and these of the two? Well, first of all, I'm not familiar with that report. I've not read it. I just got it. That's one. Second, marijuana arrests have not been as long as I've been here a priority with the Durham Police Department in spite of what other people may believe. I would have to really look at the numbers to see exactly what and why because the numbers don't tell the full story. You really have to look at it. And I would recommend to people out there who are concerned about this, that they not smoke marijuana. I'm sorry, that they- That they not smoke marijuana. Oh, well, perhaps I did in the 60s, but that's a long time ago. I think the statute of limitations saved you. Yeah, I think so too. Of course, I said perhaps, but. And then finally, I'd like to get your insight. We are obviously disappointed in some of the numbers that we see with the increases in various crimes. But the more I read, including the recent report from the Charlotte Police Chief as of last week, this unfortunately is becoming particularly once again in the urban cities, a national phenomenon. Do you have, what's your insight on why this is happening? As far as why, I think we still have too many individuals who are, especially our youth, who are more inclined to use weapons and use violence as a means by which to deal with their issues. I think that's one of the biggest problems. We also, as I've been saying for eight years, we need to get more of a community commitment to find solutions and address this problem. And when I say find solutions, I don't mean make a demand. I mean find a solution. Work with the different groups within your city, work with the police department, work with social services, work with the education, and also work with other parents to mentor them so they can better raise their children and find a way out of it. I think there are a lot of different programs out there that we have to look at, and we have to take the mental health issues of our youth very seriously. Sadly enough, through media, they're experiencing so much trauma as they look at the violence that occurs throughout the world, and it impacts them. And I think that we need to address that also. Their access to social media is not helping. Parents have to be a lot more guarded on it. That's a danger that a lot of us maybe did not know as we were growing up, but it's real today. So all these things put together, I think the community really needs to step up and start working towards it and finding the solutions that need to be had and having the conversations that nobody's having. Thank you, Chief. And let me conclude, I know that at times, perhaps you and certainly some of the officers here this evening, I think the city council may be a little naive in certain areas, but rest assured, gentlemen and ladies, that no one up here on this council does not dismiss the challenging job that all of you have, all of you have on a day-by-day basis. And we fully appreciate that. Well, it's just an unbelievable challenge in every city and especially here in Durham as well. And we thank you so much for your good service. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You're very welcome. Are there other comments? Recognize Councilman Moffitt and Councilman Schuhl all about a mayor protein. Excuse me, thank you, Mr. Mayor. First thing I just wanted to comment on the report just a very small comment, but I wanted to underscore that I noticed that you're using Justice Assistance Grant funds in support of the mental health outreach program. And I just wanted to just express my support. I thought that was a great use of the funds. I also wanted to ask a question on behalf of Councilmember Gillian Johnson who read the report and asked about, noted that the number of homicides related to domestic violence and asked about the work that you're doing today, your department is doing with organizations that focus on domestic violence prevention. We have a domestic violence unit that works very closely with the different advocacy groups here in the city. And we also work with them in order to get the message out and get information out to this community. Okay. And do you think that there are additional opportunities for further collaboration or? There's always opportunity for more collaboration. I think that we need to get more people involved in it. It also needs to be more of our awareness and also more of a desire for a community to feel safe to contact its police department in order to report any domestic violence. Thank you. Earlier today, not much earlier. I don't know if you got it because I discovered about 230 that I hadn't actually sent the email. I asked you two or three questions from the report. Did you see that by any chance? Don't go looking for it if you're... We had three great camps. And in the great camps, we had 85 campers participate. We also had 11 kids participate in the Thomas Membership Academy. Thank you. And then we corrected the type of graphical error that was on the slide. Was that it? I can't remember if I had one more question. I was getting a haircut at the time, so I didn't memorize all of them. Okay, no, that's great. Thank you. I appreciate the information on the great camps in the Thomas Mentoring event. Thank you. And like everybody else, I want to thank you for your service. I know you're on duty for several more weeks yet, so not quite out the door, but do appreciate the years of service that you've brought to the city. Recognize Councilman Schuhl, Councilman Martin, and Councilman Schuhl to Mayor Pro Tem, Councilman Cotadi. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Chief. A couple things that, I wondered how we're getting towards the body cameras. I know we've got a couple chosen and we're testing them. I wondered if you could sort of give us an idea of the timetable. Well, as far as the body camera's concerned, I think we're pretty close to identifying a product and trying to see if we can get that product delivered. Hopefully beginning January, we should be able to outfit a good portion of the police department with body cameras and then move forward in that endeavor. The challenges, of course, deal with the ever-changing electronics, the products, and also the backdoor area there as far as trying to store, things of that nature. What we're trying not to do is make costly mistakes that other police departments have. We also wanna make sure that whatever product we choose, we can be with that product for years to come because even one of the products that we were looking at earlier in the year that we were testing, that company sold out to another company and that happened within a span of three months. So unlike other police departments that maybe rushed into it, we're looking to make sure that whatever we put out there is something that's gonna last for a while and that's pretty much has been my philosophy for the eight years that I've been here. It may be a little slower, but it turns out to be a lot more right. Great. Well, I'm looking forward to that and thank you for being so diligent about making the right choice. Could you comment a little more about the increase in the priority one calls? I mean, how do you account for that? That's a huge increase. Aside from the fact that people are feeling more comfortable calling us, which is the positive side of it, I just think there's more things that are occurring. I'm just glad that when their shots fired in the community, that people are more apt to give a call and also that they trust this police department enough to bring their concerns to them. I think that's increasing. And then if you look at the fact that our population is growing here in the city and not only our population as far as residents are concerned, but our traveling population both coming to the city to enjoy the city as they should and also working in the city and doing business in the city. All that's been really increasing greatly and so that's why we've had to address all these issues that come with that. And the, do you have any more comments on the aggravated assaults? I mean, we've seen such a huge increase in the last year really and wondered if you have any more observations to make about that because that really is driving a lot of our increase. I think that we need to get a lot more individuals in the community who are aware of not only who's involved in violence, but also who's selling, who's maintaining, who's loaning, who's has firearms, especially teens with firearms. They really need to start collaborating with the police department and getting us that information. And we have so many venues by which to do it that individuals don't have to be scared about being discovered. I appreciated your remarks also. Thank you for that. I appreciate your remarks about the staffing levels. We read the watch reports and I see the percentage of, the percentages by which we're down many times and I know that you all are working on that and I know the city manager's working on that and I appreciate that you all are working with the consultant and I'm looking forward to hearing the results of that. Well, when common sense is enough, you hire a consultant. Okay. Well, hopefully one of those two things will prevail. I appreciated also the, that as I always do in these reports, the descriptions of the solutions to crime, the homicides that were solved, the robberies and so forth, the individual cases that you add into this report and it's good to, I think it's important to read the good work of the individual officers. And also the, I noted the digital forensic units, recent accreditation and kind of uniqueness of their accreditation. I wanted to also commend them and commend you for that. So I think that's all, Mr. Mayor, thank you and thank you, Chief, for your good work. Recognize the Mayor Pro Tem. Good evening, Chief. Thanks for that report and thank you for your service to the city. As usual, I am concerned about our children, our youth and in particular, the Lakeview School and how effective you think that is or do you have any opinion on Lakeview? I don't work for the, I don't work for the public schools. So my opinion- The reason I asked you that is because I see police officers there and I thought maybe- Well, a lot of the schools have police officers that are hired by the school system in order to maintain security at the schools. So that might be what you see. But also we have police officers who go there in order to mentor some of those young men and women who quite frankly do need a role model of sorts in order to set their lives back on track. I do think that we need to start looking at options and other ways to ensure that these individuals get an education and if they cannot navigate through life, that we at least put them in a place where they can navigate through life and then go back to getting the education instead of putting them in one place where all it does is indicate to everybody else in the community that they were in trouble at some point in time and it kind of stigmatizes them. It does. And that's why I've adopted that school and that's the reason that I wanted to find out exactly what involvement the police department has here. You need to get the involvement of the professionals in the city. Mentoring. Mentoring is the big, they need to see that you can make it and you need to also come in with a lot of boxes of hope because many of them are lacking that and if you can bring in hope through different individuals, different people and letting them see what life could be, maybe it might be a change. Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to bring in food too. Food's good. Food's going to them hungry and clothing and different resources. Thank you very much. That's Councilwoman Katani. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report, Chief. I also wanted to highlight the Digital Forensic Unit certification and that Durham's first in the country. I think that's a really great achievement and also want to congratulate again all the officers that received special recognition or awards at the end of the report. I really like reading those stories and lastly, I want to thank you for your service and leadership, thanks. Chief, I would echo the comments that my colleagues have made in terms of what the police do and we understand they have a tough job and some things stand out. I do read the watch reports, but I want to congratulate those two officers that apprehended those two young men this morning. Yesterday, that to me was really great police work and I hope you pass along our congratulations for that. Let me ask you a couple of questions and one, Steve sort of alluded to, but you raised the point. These numbers are numbers of what they are. They're individual numbers. That's compared to last year. I understand. It will also be helpful to see these numbers per 100,000. I'm sorry? It would good to also see these numbers per 100,000. Our population has changed and has grown. We're now the fourth largest city in the state of North Carolina and if we look at the indexes from 2001 when I first came in office to at least in 2013, those numbers had gone down per 100,000 in all cases. I know we've had a terrific hit this year and last year, but it's still be comfortable to know how does this measure per 100,000 individuals in our city. So if you can get that to us maybe in other reports that would be helpful. Could you just for the public's sake, could you explain what is priority one calls? What falls under that? Priority one? Well, I guess I'm trying to get to the point about your response. Priority one response would be an emergency response. We would need to have an office there as soon as possible either because someone's on premise or because someone's injured to the point of where they need some medical assistance. So that's the 6,000 plus type calls that you had? Yes, they would engage those types of different crimes. Something in progress? Now, how do you take in consideration when you receive a call and you're having a change of staff? Does that impact your response? I rely on Jim Sukup to staff to put these calls together as far as their priority is concerned, but the response depends on whether I have a police officer to send. Fortunately, we have the vehicle identifiers where we would know where the units are and we can dispatch the closest ones to them, but even with that, you have to have a unit available. Well, I guess I'm trying to respond to current concerns that I've gotten and I too happen to be one of those that made the concern whereas we call, you had a false alarm, a burglar alarm go off and the police gets to call and they don't show up into 30 minutes later and then what I hear as well, they call around six o'clock when the staff is changing over. Does that reflect the entities priority one calls also? That would impact, shift change would impact. We're trying to see if we can have enough staffing in order to be able to put some officers to kind of overlap that period of time, but that does impact. Well, I've heard that a lot and it happened to me and that was the explanation that we had a change of staff so we had to wait for somebody to get a car before they could come out and respond. Mine was minor because it was a false alarm, but I'm just wondering if it had been one of these priority one calls that you talked about that still been faced with the same situation. If it's a priority call and it's an alarm, you're gonna have to send two individuals to that call and it does turn into a priority, but it also, like I said, depends on where the officers are and who's available at the time. And then also the priorities start to get stacked as far as one might be more important than the other if we have in a situation where we do definitely know that there's somebody on a property or there's somebody that's injured that needs to be addressed by a police officer then we need to go to that first. Well, I guess this is to the city manager, but it also, we're doing the staffing analysis now. Yes. I would ask them to take that in consideration when they started looking, do we have enough staff to respond to different type of calls that we have? I'll start to recognize Councilman Davis. And thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief, thank you again, as all my colleagues have said before your service. We all are greatly concerned about the horrific shootings that we saw in France. And without giving away any kind of priority information, can you assure the citizens of Durham that our police department is plugged into the networks that are available so that we can have proactive stances to avoid any kind of thing like that here in Durham? Well, I can assure you, you have one of the best police departments here in the state of North Carolina and that they are connected to not just best practices, but also through our federal partners and task forces to just about everything that's possibly out there that any other city would have. We also had networking with other cities and looking into it just years back. We were part of assisting the FBI in addressing a terrorist issue that had occurred in this vicinity and we made arrests in response to it. There have been quite a few in the area that the Durham Police Department has been part of the investigation and part of the solution as far as addressing some of those issues in partnership with federal agencies. So, yes, I can say you don't have to worry as far as your police department's concerned, you're as safe or safer than most in this country. Okay, well, again, we appreciate what you've done and what you continue to do during your remaining time in office and wish you the best. Thank you. Thank you. The general business agenda of public hearings. Item nine is FY 2016, 2017 annual action plan. Greetings, Mayor Bell, members of city council. This is the first of two public hearings that the city of Durham will have concerning the needs of the city of Durham as it rates to our entitlement jurisdiction, the funds received as entitlement jurisdiction. I'll turn it over to Ms. Wilmew Conyards of federal programs coordinator to have the particulars input into the record. Good evening, Mayor Bell, members of council. Wilmew Conyards, federal programs coordinator. The purpose of this public meeting is to receive citizen comment on the community development needs in Durham neighborhoods as it relates to the use and receipt of community development block grant known as CDBG, the home investment partnership known as HOME, the emergency solutions grant referred to as ESG, and our housing opportunities for people with AIDS referred to as HOPLA. This public hearing is a requirement for the preparation and submission of the city's FY 2016, 17 annual action plan. Notice of this meeting was advertised in the Herald Sun, the Carolina Times, and the K-PASA newspapers, as well as via a general listserv and the department's website. As a recipient of CDBG, HOME, ESG, and HOPLA, the city is required to hold at least two public hearings prior to submission of the annual action plan. The first meeting must be held early in development of the plan, and we anticipate that the second meeting will be held approximately late April. In addition, the city is required to publish a copy of the draft annual action plan for at least 30 days prior to the submission to HUD. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has not yet announced the FY 2016 entitlement allocations and has advised grantees not to submit their consolidated plans or their annual action plans until the final formula allocations have been announced. The city's annual action plan must be submitted to HUD by May 15th. However, for planning purposes, the city expects to receive approximately $1,807,500 in CDBG, $776,000 in HOME, approximately $160,000 in ESG, and $282,000 in HOPWA funds. A summary of the comments from this public hearing and written comments received from citizens during the development of the annual action plan will be incorporated into the final 2016 plan. Thank you. You're welcome. Let me first ask other questions by members of the council. We have 15 persons that have signed up to speak on this item. Is there anyone else that wants to speak on this item that has not filled out one of the yellow cards? If so, I would ask you to go to the table to the left. I'm trying to determine how much time we allocate for this item. Okay, let's do it this way. Each person has three minutes. And as I call your name, if you will come to the right to the podium. It's a clock in front of you that will indicate the time. Asian, Yim, Yishrik, I can't pronounce it, I can't read it really. Okay, thank you. And again, when you come to the podium, if you'll not your name and address, that will be helpful. Janice Johnson, is Janice Johnson present? Janice Johnson. Michael T. Wilson, is Michael T. Wilson present? Jimmy Gibbs, Jimmy Gibbs. Cheryl Smith, I saw Cheryl. Joy Mickel, let's see Joy. Okay, James Chavis, I saw James. Jim Svarra, I saw Jim. Deborah West, is Deborah West present? Deborah West. Debbie Case, no Debbie White. Marion Spicer, Michael Hudson. Gwendolyn Hudson, Chambers. Edith Thompson. Tanya Hall. Now, is anyone present whose name I did not call that wishes to speak on this item? If I did not call your name, if you go to the, no, if you have the card, that's fine. Thank you, that's Aria Sands Bell. So she will be the last speaker. Come forward, please. Again, if you just state your name and address for the record. And Mr. Mayor, my name is Awesome. In Sherrod, I live at 308 Dunstan Avenue here in Durham. I live just three blocks north of North Carolina Central University. I consider it a low income neighborhood. There's a great need in our neighborhood for maintenance and repair of housing. Many of the people in my neighborhood own their own homes, but they can't afford to maintain and repair them. And I wish that we would use community development, like grandmoney to provide loans and grants to people so that we can maintain our properties. And that would be a great help in stabilizing our neighborhoods. We appreciate what's been done in Southside. You know, one development changes in area, but I hope that you won't forget that homeowners also have an investment. Homeowners also can stabilize and support a neighborhood. And I wish that we would increase the amount of dollars that we give for loans and grants and possibly even eliminate the income level. Some people have good incomes, but we're still struggling with mortgage. And so to have an income level, I think you have three categories, income, age, and possibly handicapped to qualify for the emergency loan grant program. I'm sure that other people here are more informed than I am. I just heard about this meeting tonight. But I simply want to express my opinion, living in a neighborhood that really needs funding. Loans and grants would be greatly appreciated to help us stabilize our neighborhoods. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Janice Johnson. Good evening. As you noted, Janice, my name is Janice Johnson. I live at 1230 Willowdale Drive, which is in the same community that the organization that I represent or at one time worked for and volunteer for now, the AIDS Community Residence Association, sometimes known as ACRA. ACRA is over 25 years old and has worked to provide affordable housing for people who are living with HIV and AIDS. During that time, over these years, we have constructed two facilities which are operating now. Another one, we were able to get funds to rehab and it is presently closed because it's in greatly in need of additional work to get people back in. Affordable housing is so key for people who are living with disabilities, particularly HIV and AIDS. I think a lot of people feel that there's not as great a need because people are living longer, but there's a great need. Their incomes just, they don't have the income to support the rents that are charged in the city and they need more affordable housing. We cannot afford to keep the housing up. We are in a real pinch when it comes to rehabbing the current housing that we have and the monies that have been appropriated under HAPA, $282,000 is just not adequate. It does very little to do any repairs when you are trying to upgrade appliances, the facilities themselves. Our housing, right now we've got 14 apartment units that have been operating since 1992 and a group home for six individuals. We hope to get the other facility up and running when we have adequate funds, we don't have them and somehow we need someone other than the small amounts that are being appropriated through the government to help us to get this housing in place so that people with disabilities that we work with can have safe affordable housing. Thank you. Welcome. Michael Wilson. Good evening everyone, my name is Michael Wilson. I'm one of the residents and one of the housing developers that Ms. Johnson spoke about. I'm fortunate like everything she said was absolutely true. We all, I've been there for a year, I live in the one for a year now and we do have a lot of disparities of not having adequate maintenance services and stuff like that. And it took me a while actually to get the housing and I thought that was kind of odd because I've been here for almost eight years and I have to, I was living check to check and I really didn't have no money to actually live here and I was actually deciding to move until actually I did obtain the housing for myself and it was very, it's helpful but then I'm still in a little bit of a struggle. And then if they can't upkeep departments, it's not safe for me to be there. It's a nice area but it's not, we're not up to standard zone and I thought I was moving somewhere to better to make it better for me. I am a, I'm really grateful, I'm a 29 year HIV survivor and I'm doing well but I can be doing better for myself and I tell everybody we just have to hold on. We rely on you all to support us and helping us to make it better for us. I keep myself active so I don't get so depressed about some things that we cannot do or we cannot help, we have no control over because we can't do so much on our complex. We want to do more. It's other people that want to come out but they can't because they do not feel well. We have small projects like we need stuff to be maintenance work to be done inside the apartments let alone on the outside. But I mean, if we don't have no funding and I looked at the London dollar amount I said well that's not even enough to even to restore the two empty apartments that we have to give someone some housing. I mean, we just really, really, really need the help of you all to overlook with the dollar amount and then reassess what we're asking for and you know, it's really, it's a hard task. I mean, I do a lot of work for an HIV in the community and it's just like I come home and I want to come to a nice place I want to be comfortable and I want everybody else to be happy around me. I give out a good impression because I'm a survivor and I can tell people that it's not, we all believe in, we all have hope and that we're just going to get better for us and for us to stay here in this city. We don't want to have to go to live no one else. We want to stay right here in Durham. I've been here for eight, my eight years I've been here I was to be, excuse me, I was debating on staying and I did decide to stay because the fact that the opportunities were going to be there for me but now it just seemed like I'm going back to where I started at when I first got here. Well, I would appreciate y'all just taking a look at what you're offering for us and maybe you can just take over the view of what we can assess for us and I keep up the momentum that's going because we do have very limited housing for people with HIV in this community. Thank you. You're welcome. Jimmy Gibbs. Good evening everybody. It's good to be back in Durham. As a fifth year president of ACRA, the AIDS Community Residents Association, we do have a little known fact. Our Fitz Powell apartments were the first apartments built in 1992, funded by HUD as a 811 project for people living with HIV and AIDS between the nation's capital and Florida. And that has a lot to do with the determination of and resolve of the people of Durham, North Carolina. If it were not for Patricia Bartlett and Gretchen Durham and those folks that have put forth a lot of effort, we would not have these apartments today. If it were not for the speaker before me, Janice Johnson and her resolve, we would not have the HUD 811 on the other end of Cook Road. That's a $500, $500,000 group home that we have today. It was converted from a 24 hour care facility to a group home because people are living with HIV and AIDS they're not dying from HIV and AIDS as you can hear from Michael. And the need for housing is important. The need for housing is greater than actually the supportive services. People need a home to stay in. And the allocated amounts that HAPA is bringing in to our community is just not enough to provide that housing. The subsidized housing rents that we have for our properties that we're trying to make sure that people have the right maintenance on their apartments that we get the right subsidized rents for and that we're able to maintain them is just incredibly, incredibly high for us. I just met with our HUD rep yesterday and told her how difficult it is for us to maintain our housing here in Durham because of the rents on these 811 properties. And it's just hard. It's high. It's very expensive to maintain housing. We know how much it is to maintain housing for us at our own homes. So when you look at maintaining 14 units plus a group home, it's very expensive to do it on the HAPA funds that are available. A lot of it's going to supportive services but look at the needs for housing. We need money for housing. Thank you so much for your consideration and put some more money in there for housing instead of more for supportive services. Thank you very much. Welcome. Cheryl Smith. Good evening. My name is Cheryl Smith. I live at 302 North Holman Street, apartment two. I'm here on behalf of affordable housing. I've noticed in my community, the Northeast Central Durham, that they're coming in buying up homes, fixing them up, but after they fix them up, the rent is so high that we can't afford to rent them. And a lot of these houses because they had a rent so high and still for rent signs is out there. We're getting a lot of homeless children. When I was at, I mean, you can go, when the school get out, go to the motels. You see all these children getting off the bus at motels. We have families that's working two and three jobs and still can't afford to pay rent. And then this guy to the point now, you have to have to make at least three times the amount of the rent in order to rent anything. And I mean, I had an opportunity to move this spring but I didn't want to leave Northeast Central Durham. Everything that I seen that was bought and fixed up, it was too high. Everything 1200 and up. What happened to affordable housing? That's not affordable. Some of us live from paycheck to paycheck. Some people live off disability. I mean, it's getting ridiculous. Usually you can find a house in Northeast Central Durham for six, seven and $800. You can't do that anymore. They buying the house, going to the owners, asking them by their houses, and then the people that's living in the houses have to move and then it's been so hard to find anything that they can afford. So they having to move into motels or they have to move way out by Southern high school. I mean, I even got a section eight voucher this summer and couldn't even find anything. So I chose to stay where I was at. I mean, it almost seemed like nobody wants to deal with section eight anymore. Section eight is a waste of time. We have a lot of landlords, a lot of real estate, but nobody wants to take section eight. They make the vouchers hot or they make the rent higher than the vouchers. And then when you find somewhere, it's so where you don't want to live or the houses shouldn't even pass inspection from Housing Authority. I mean, things need to change. We need to help save our children. If our kids are homeless, they're going to be in the streets. They're going to commit crimes. We need to help our children. The kids are suffering. Parents are getting tired and giving up. So I'm here to ask you to please just think about the children. Thank you. Joy Mikkel. Good evening. Joy Mikkel, 3111 Ivywood Lane. I'm a part of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit. And today we agreed and approved a letter that I'd like to read to you about affordable housing. Dear City Council and County Commission, we do plan this and this to them as well. Affordable housing in Durham is a critical issue that we as a community must deal with in a serious and comprehensive way sooner than later, sooner rather than later. We appreciate all that has been done by the Council and Commission to honor the voices that have raised awareness of the issue and continued housing affordability in Durham. We think that a meaningful conversation about how best to include affordable slash workforce housing around transit has to include the management and disposition of publicly owned land in and around targeted transit stations in Durham. We propose that there be a policy created that will help with the long-term affordability of housing through using publicly owned sites for real estate development, including commercial and mixed use development projects. The policy should ensure that any disposition or development of publicly owned land near transit stations includes some provision for affordable housing. This policy would help implement the city and county affordable housing goal of creating and preserving at least 15% affordable homes around each transit station. We propose that the City Council and County Commission adopt such a policy and develop a set of guidelines applicable to the disposition of publicly owned land. We believe that this will ensure that critical attention will be given to the severe need to build and maintain affordable housing near transit in Durham. We can, as a community, ensure that accessibility to housing for all income groups will be expanded as publicly owned land is developed going forward. Sincerely, the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit. Next is James Chavis. Good afternoon, Mayor. City Council members, my name is James Chavis, 2813 Ashbury Apartment B. In the last year, 13 new homes has been built in our area. But I wonder, do you think that building new homes beside run-down rental property is a good investment? But guess what? The people that's living in these run-down houses paying rent that's going up ridiculously because there is no rent set. But guess what? Out of these 13 new homes that was built, not one of them are East Durham residents. No one is really looking at the people in the area when they come and build. I asked them, go and ask the neighbor, they still, when you build that house that you're gonna go across and build another home, ask some of them around there, do they would like to become homeless? Show them how to become homeless. I talk to people, yes, we try to get people's out. Guess what? We don't have the right tools to get them out. We ask them to come to the meetings. We can't get them, because the first thing they say is, what? Why should we? What are you really gonna give us? I can't give them nothing but some words and encouragement. But you all can come out there. How many have you been out there? We need this money that's been set aside to come out into the community for people that really need affordable living, not to the expensive owners and others. We need you all to make sure that affordability, please determine what is affordable. It's $18,000, some of those apartment downtown affordable, $12,000, some of affordable. Now coming on out earlier, nine to $1,200 for a one bedroom, is that affordable? Please determine what is affordable when you get ready to spend this grant money. Thank you. Welcome, Jim. Jim Savara, thanks, James. Good evening, my name is Jim Savara. I live at 1114 Woodburn Road. And I am a member of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit. Looking through the consolidated plan, it provides further documentation that the paramount housing need in Durham is for affordable housing. We've had previous estimates of 14 to 19,000 units needed. The consolidated plan estimates that 20% of all households are paying over 30% of their income for housing. That's 18,000. And 16%, almost 15,000 are paying over 50% of their income for housing. The plan itself, as opposed to the careful analysis of needs, focuses to some extent on homelessness, on housing for persons with AIDS, but it devotes a great deal of the resources to completing the longstanding commitment to revitalizing Southside. Through 2019, the plan provides for only 100 new affordable housing units all in Southside. Thus, the consolidated plan is not an affordable housing plan and it does not address the whole city. That's nothing new. We've been dealing with that for some time. Although it identifies needs, the response will need to come in other programs and use other resources and it will take the creative response of the city council and the people and organizations throughout the city. We look forward to the additional analysis and proposed action plan that will be coming from the report that Karen Lada was doing and then we will really need to get down to work. One other minor point or one other point with regard to the homeless dimension in the study. Using the American Community Survey, the study identifies the number of units that are overcrowded. Good friend and a perceptive colleague, Broray Erkhart, has pointed out that we have three categories of homeless people, the unsheltered, the sheltered, and the doubled up. That is people who are living in other households and it's possible that more detailed and depth analysis of those survey results might be able to identify the extent of that doubled up need. Thank you. Debra, Wes? Yes. I am a former tenant that lived in housing as well, particularly fish power and there was a lot of repairs that needed to be done and I lived there paying my rent faithfully for about 10 years or more and they need to really work on some stuff. Now I'm living in a one bedroom and I'm paying a lot of rent and can barely meet the bills because landlords don't wanna do nothing. The property is not the best. I have a driveway, it's all chopped up, people don't even wanna pull up in the driveway or anything. It would be good if we could see more funds and the landlord had more consideration and also one thing I wanna say about fish power apartment, yes, they charge tenants 30% of the rent but what they do not tell you is that you have to pay your electric bill. They give you 20% towards your electric bill but when the winter comes, your bill is so high that you don't spend that 20% that you supposed to save and more on that. There are housing out there where everything is included and you just pay that one straight price but when you have to pay the rent plus the electric bill, it's like why I'm where I'm at now? Why pay all that when you can just live in regular housing but it is very, very hard for me to have to pay the rent that I have to pay and my electric bills and maintain everything else to keep it functioning. So if y'all could help out in that area it would be greatly appreciated, thank you. Debbie White. Excuse me. I was calling Debbie White, you were from West, right? Yes. Okay, Debbie White. A lot of Debbie's tonight. Good evening, my name is Debbie White. I live at 60 Citation Drive and Derm and I'm the financial officer for CASA and I'm here to speak tonight about the need for developing additional permanent supportive housing in the city of Derm. CASA is a non-profit developer and manager of permanent rental housing for low income households, particularly focused on people with disabilities and veterans. These are households who live on income well below the poverty level. CASA's typical tenant is living on disability income and earning less than $10,000 a year. Beyond income, our tenants face barriers to finding quality affordable housing, barriers such as poor credit, poor rental histories, needing funds for utility deposits, renter insurance requirements, housing discrimination and zero tolerance eviction policies. CASA currently owns 44 apartments in Derm and there are 243 Derm County households on our waiting list. Two thirds of these families and individuals are currently homeless. The rest are either in substandard housing, temporary housing or renting but paying more than they can afford. 11 people moved out in 2014. At the current rate of turnover and with our existing inventory, it would take 22 years to house everyone on our waiting list. The need just keeps growing. More housing is the solution and we are actively looking to acquire land and buildings to expand our Derm inventory so we can make more units available to those who need them. The approach CASA takes to ending and preventing homelessness is permanent supportive housing. It's a proven best practice. It works not only to permanent to end, it works not only permanently to end an individual's homelessness but to decrease the cost of communities of constantly managing that individual's homelessness through temporary interventions like emergency shelter stays and hospital visits. CASA's experience supports national data trends that show that 85 to 90% of tenants placed in supportive housing stay in that housing at least one year and once a tenant stays for a year, they are less likely to return to homelessness as long as their housing remains safe and affordable. Supportive housing works by addressing the barriers mentioned above and by offering tenants the option to work with service providers in the community allowing them to learn to live independently and retain their housing. While services are optional in CASA units, the vast majority of our tenants engage in services because they see the value of having strong support. And CASA's service provider partners in Durham include Alliance Behavioral Health, Housing for New Hope, Healing with Care and the HUD VA Medical Center. We asked the city council to prioritize the CDBG and home funds to serve people who need housing the most, people who are experiencing homelessness and people with disabilities who are low income. It's a wise investment of people and in housing for all members of our community. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Marion Spicer. It's Marion Spicer. Mr. Mayor and everyone else on the podium. I've talked about this before. I am a Section 8 voucher holder. My name is Marion Spicer. I work at Club Boulevard School. I'm an instructional assistant. We don't really get paid enough for me to just pay my rent. So that's why I have a voucher. And one day I went home and I found out that I had to move and that's because the landlords and Fox Fire decided to put everyone out that was on Section 8. So I have been looking now for maybe two months for an apartment, a one bedroom, which no one's renting to us. So it's been less than a week. I was told that I can get a two bedroom for a one bedroom voucher. Okay, so I'm still looking. There's so many other people that need this help rather than just me. I'm not sure if I'm the only one but I appreciate someone giving me that choice to let me get a two bedroom for a one bedroom because I've been looking for a long time. I hope that you will make housing a little more affordable for people. I would love to live downtown, but we can't afford to. They will not take Section 8 anywhere downtown but Main Street condos. And then there's a lot going with that. I still can't get in there. I've been on the waiting list for like three years. I can't get in there because you have to have a second person on your lease. So I'm still single. So and by doing that, Housing Authority is not gonna accept that. You know, I haven't heard that they would accept it. But I just hope that we will get more help, more housing, more landlords to rent to us. And I'm staying with my niece right now. Sometimes I stay there most of the day. LaTonya Gilchrist, they just went up on her rent and she has a voucher. I don't understand why they go up on people's rent when they have a voucher. I mean, they know we can't afford it. Do they wanna just keep us in poverty? So would you please just think about us? Because I'm really how homeless if my daughter and my niece would not let me come and stay. So please. Thank you. Can you give us your address and the name of your landlord? From the landlord? From the landlord. Fox Fire Apartments, where I live, or now? Where you live previously. That's where I live, Fox Fire Apartments. And the name of the landlord? A company that manages it. All I know is Fox Fire Apartments, they change management. So I really don't know. I just know I received a note on my door, she said, but I didn't get the note. That was kinda upsetting also. I didn't even get the note on my door. I said, why would you put an important notice like that on my door? And I wasn't even home. I was out of town taking care of my sick sister. Thank you. Michael Hudson. I know Mayor City Council members. I guess I have a little different approach. I am a house, I own a house made by my brother and sister. And I've worked for the Cedar Durham in 2002. I got hurt from 2002. And ever since then, I couldn't get a job from Interweb because my injury was never fixed. And so I had to start working for myself. Then I got in another situation, got bit by a spider. So I was not able to get a job, so I started working for myself. Okay, anyway. How Durham supposed to help people, but instead of helping them, it seemed like they put more pressure on them. I've been sick for the service since 2002, pushed into work, making me have to work, having to get out there no matter what. And if you're gonna do right, you're gonna do right and get a job, do some kind of work to make money. But the city supposed to help you and instead of help you, okay, say taxes. If you have trouble paying $1,000 taxes, how are you gonna put $6,000 on you? I mean, that's kind of ridiculous. If anything, I see they ought to have some type of program to help people that run into medical problems that can't be able to not be able to get a job or have some type of difficulties and help them rather than hurt them because it seemed like some people, they have trouble just getting houses. When you got a house and then they take it from you, that ain't no better. I mean, you're supposed to be able to, people forgot where I guess when we was taught in school and in church and for my parents that you're supposed to look after each other, you're supposed to make sure you get a job, don't do nothing wrong, you know, out there in the streets cause anything that you do is gonna come back and hurt you. So we was taught to get out and make an effort to make money and make it the right way. Well, you can do that, but if something happened and you get sick, it ought to be something that the city can do to help you keep things going until you can get back on track and help you be able to, I mean, help people. I mean, it's like nobody, love nobody no more. You know, nobody has no concern about nobody. Everybody is about money and it shouldn't be about money. It should be about people. People should be able to help each other. I mean, and they come and take all the communities, tear down houses that they could fix up and fix for people, even if the city take them over. The city could take the houses and fix the houses for people and give them low income, you know, $500, $600 a month. But instead of that, they tear the houses down and then build these, me, these $200 houses. But anyway, that's my opinion. Thank you. Gwendolyn Hudson Chambers. Good afternoon, mayor and the rest of the city council, and ladies, I am here because I received a bill from neighborhood improvement for $5,250 on a house that I have been working on for the last two years, trying to get in shape. But I can't get it in shape because the vagrants come in and do what they want to do with it. And it's boarded up. It has no trespassing signs on it, but they do exactly what they want to do. I've put somewhere around $30,000, $40,000 in the house. Then I had furniture in it. I had appliances. They went in and they took everything out, everything they wanted, including the pipes, the water pipes and the copper pipes for the heat, heating system. Now the city of Durham wants to take this. I've been in Durham 65 years today. Today. Never left the city of Durham. Never turned my back on Durham because I was born. I am a native Durhamite. Been here all my life. And the way this city has treated my family for the last 47 years, and it's been coming. I mean steadily, 47 years. The neighbors started it on both sides and they kept right on coming. They wouldn't let up. They still want that up. And neighborhood improvement has taken sides and they are just doing an injustice to me. I need to talk to someone who can help me. I've been sick this whole weekend, but I need to talk to someone because I don't usually let things bother me because I know who can help me. But this has truly gotten me down because it's not fair. Can I have an appointment with someone who knows what's going on in this city and can help me? I think I've been here 65 years. I would owe something. Ms. Chambers, I want to make sure I had your name correctly. The city manager has taken note of your comments. Thank you. And I'll assume that you'll get in touch with her. Thank you. What's the address? My address is 2923 South Roxborough Street. The address is that I'm concerned about 708 Colfax Street and 1003 Gillette Avenue. Thank you. Thank you. Edith Thompson. Good evening. My remarks were set for five minutes because I thought we had five, but I'll try to go through real quickly just to stay in context with your instructions. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on behalf of Rebuild Durham's leadership. We want to commend the leadership of the city of Durham in making Durham a destination of choice for individuals and businesses seeking the great quality of life that we offer and the economic opportunities that have now become available in Durham. We understand the goals of mixed income, high density and accessible transportation for cities with tremendous growth potential. We also recognize the need to stretch limited resources to address as many community needs and priorities as possible. Therefore, we are here this evening not to ask for already strained city resources, but to thank the city leadership and the Department of Community Development for the opportunity that you gave Rebuild Durham to reinvest our rental income back into the properties that we own for management and maintenance and improvements, ensuring a continued supply of quality, safe and affordable rental housing for approximately 30 families over the last couple of years. Rebuild Durham's a nonprofit affordable rental homes program that provides some an opportunity to save while they prepare to become homeowners, seniors and disabled people, stable long-term rentals and families who have lost their housing equity in the disproportionate impact of the foreclosure crisis to get back on track. We are certain Rebuild Durham homes are part of the solution to decreasing the displacement of low-income residents who are getting priced out of our growing local housing market. We strive to counter the impact of absentee landlords and negative property owners and corporate investors who see our neighborhoods as only low investment high yield assets and whose commitment is tied to profit and not people. Rebuild Durham homes are managed by local conscientious property management professionals that take pride in stable communities. As for the demand for housing near downtown continues to expand, we are hopeful that historic African-American neighborhoods will not suffer from unintended neglect and or planned encroachment. Rebuild Durham looks forward to a continued partnership with the city and identifying and leveraging new financial resources to address the problems we face in communities that are impacted by historic disinvestment. In closing, we would like to thank the housing chair on the mayor's chairs on the mayor's poverty reduction task force for supporting our upcoming housing conference scheduled for January the 9th. We look forward to working with you to preserve Durham neighborhoods and find solutions to some of the problems that we are confronting. I thank you. You're welcome. Tonya Hall. Thank you. Good evening Durham citizens, city council members, Mayor Bell. My name is Tonya Hall and I have lived in Durham often on for the past 20 years. I first came to Durham in 1986 to attend NCCU. It was then that I fell in love with this city. I tell my students of Durham's rich black history and heritage and how proud I am of the decision to stay here and raise my children. I graduated from Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland in 1991, did a master of arts and literature at the University of Maryland College Park and I hold a master of science and criminal justice from North Carolina Central University. I am a teacher and instructor of professor. I spent seven years, six years at NCCU in the Department of Criminal Justice 2007 to 2013. Adjunct professor at St. Augustine's College, I am currently a substitute teacher for the Durham public school system and I work at Durham Technical Community College part time. I'm also a mother of 12-year-old sons, Malik and Keenan Cain, who are in the sixth grade at Central Park School for Children. I wanna publicly state that the safe and affordable housing for low-income citizens is almost non-existent. There must be greater choice for safe and affordable housing for families like mine and individuals that are struggling to pay extremely high rents in neighborhoods all over Durham. I moved from a single-family home in Northeast Central Durham to Ambulan Valley off Iveywood Lane. I lived there three years after my townhouse was burglarized. I moved into Grove Park neighborhood off 98. When my rent went from 1250 a month to 1400 and I was no longer employed full-time, I had no choice but to move. The struggle to find affordable housing for my sons and I in Durham was unbelievable. I was approaching homelessness, mostly due to the fact that I had two part-time jobs and they didn't consider that to be enough. I didn't make, I wasn't 40 hours and it wasn't enough to cover three times the rent and I'm pretty educated and I make a good wage. I have a number of students that would also be considered homeless but due to their age and their non-parental status, they were unable to meet certain criteria for housing programs here. We need your help. We need your help. Housing is a basic right. Thank you. Aurea, Sans, Bill, someone signed up for you, right? Thank you, Mayor Bill. And to our council, I'm accompanied tonight by Al Medavis, our director of shelter services and we represent the Durham Crisis Response Center and I want to start off by thanking the council for its unwavering support of victims of domestic violence in our community. I was thinking tonight that I want to share with you that the number one request that our agency receives for assistance is emergency shelter. We are in our community and for the size and I listened at the mayor as he asked for statistics. We for our community of size have only 18 beds and for the size of our community, we at least need to have a double of that. The number one reason for our clients when they leave here, who often return to their batterers, who often return to violence, who often return to situations that compromise their safety and the safety of their children is because they have nowhere to live. And so we continue to see the cycle of violence in our community. The funds that are available to us through HUD have been expressed on a federal level. Domestic violence victims are considered a special population. However, Durham Crisis Response Center has not been able to participate in that funding resource because of some of the barriers that are centered around regulations and many of the things that I think our COC has designed not to hurt us, but it certainly doesn't help us. And we would like to ask the city council tonight if you would help us to encourage our local COC to decrease the barriers that impede safe living for victims of domestic violence and to help us to work with our city staff to ensure that certain things that are, I'm sure, requirements that we can get up to speed but they are exhaustive to us. They cost us a lot of money to provide those kind of services because they're administrative dollars of which we have none. So my plea tonight to council would be to help us to come up with a way that an organization that meets the needs of a very special population can participate fully in funding to provide emergency shelter and affordable housing. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Let me ask is it anyone else that wants to speak on this item, this is a public hearing item and if you haven't had an opportunity to speak now it's the time to do that as part of the public record. I'd like the record reflect that no one else has to speak and I guess there may be some comments from council members. I do have a couple of questions for the staff. Where is the staff? We've heard in this last comments and I guess throughout the question about barriers and I know this is federal dollars so we've got certain guidelines that we have to follow in terms of how we allocate funds for different projects. One thing that struck me, and I'm not sure where it comes in, the housing opportunities for persons with AIDS hop on. I heard comments about money being used, asked money to be used for housing. Is this money being used for housing that's being proposed or is it for services? I see that the amount you're having is $280,000 and I assume that's for a complete physical year, is that correct? That is correct. Are any of those dollars for actual housing or is that more for services being provided? At this particular point in time, we have an application process that's underway and one of the things that's important as we are new entitlement is that the past, what the state has been doing has been services. The state of North Carolina has not been doing any housing and so one of the things that's very important is poor regulation. We have to have a continuity of service. So one of the things that we're working on as we go through the application process is making sure that we are able to transition because one of the goals that we have is to be able to do housing but we're not able to do that right now because we have to maintain continuity of service for those people who are currently receiving services through hop on as we transition from the state to the city of Durham as the entitlement jurisdiction. Well, I'm not speaking about the six month period, I'm speaking about what's being proposed in this funding budget, which I assume is actually one year, physical year going year. So within that portion, would you be able to use those dollars for housing or is that still services? It's probably, sir, like I said, we have application process underway. It's probably gonna end up being services simply because a good portion of that has been used for services currently and we have to transition from if the balance of it is all of it's been used for services, we can't just stop using services because those people are in need of services. Okay, I guess I need to have that discussion offline. One of the other questions that was raised, it's no question that there's a need for affordable housing in this community. I think anybody can see that it's been in time. We're certain this council recognizes it. What I'm hoping is that when the consultant comes back with their report, it will give us a better guideline as to how we might consider approaching the issue of affordable housing in this community. But we have to do that in conjunction with the fact that we have federal dollars that requires us to use it for certain ways and be spent according to certain certain criteria. So I hope that that's understood. One way that some of you may be of help as we go through this process is to come back with maybe very specific recommendations as to how you think we might be able to confront the barriers that we have and still accomplish the goals that you're looking for in terms of providing more affordable housing. I'm just throwing that out. I know we've got a lot of smart people out there, a lot of you spending your time on this, but it would be helpful if you came back to us for some very specific recommendations as to how you think we might be able to use those dollars to provide more affordable housing. And I think we also need to get on board with what affordable housing is. And one of the other things Mr. Chairman, Mr. Manager and to the staff, I think we need to really understand whose medium income are we speaking about? Are we speaking about the medium income for our MSA? Are we speaking about the medium income for Durham? I really think we need to make sure of where we are in that and we just saw a report that says we are one of the 20th richest cities in the country. But that took into account Chapel Hill, Chatham and Durham. So, but if we're talking about Durham, we need to make sure we're talking about the income for Durham, not for the MSA. And again, I don't know if that conflicts with the federal guidelines or not, but we do need some clarification on that. Well, I can speak to that, Mayor. As it relates to HUD funding, we have to use the area median income as it relates to the MSA, which does include Chapel Hill and Chatham. And the regulations are clear about that. Well, that makes a big difference. If that's the regulations, that's what we have to follow with. And I just hope others understand that also when we start talking about medium income for affordable housing, whose guidelines are we using? If we're using our own dollars, I guess we can do what we want with it. If we're talking about federal dollars, then it appears we have to follow the guidelines for the MSA, which puts it a lot higher in terms of how it impacts our people. May I do need to make a correction that does include Durham and Chapel Hill, not Chatham? Well, whatever it is, we just need to make sure we know whose medium income we are speaking about. If it's Chapel Hill and Durham, that even makes it even worse. Recognize the Mayor approach? Yes, good evening. And we need to look at alternative funding. And I'm hoping that the penny for housing requirements are not so stringent that even local money cannot be used to help our people, especially ACRA and Durham Crisis Response Center. It just doesn't make sense to me. So we need to look at policy to make sure that we don't have barriers ourselves to helping people. Thank you. Recognize Councilman Shul? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to appreciate the people that came. It was very moving to hear you. It really was. I mean, a lot of us work on this whole lot. The Council's works extremely hard on affordable housing. We think about it all the time. We try to figure it out. And we try to do our best with the money that we have. But hearing you all tonight really redoubles my interest and commitment to this. And I just thought it was a tremendous testimony. A couple of things I want to particularly address. One is the gentleman who spoke first about maintenance and repair. I'm not sure if he's still in the room. I agree that that's an area where we need to do better. And I think that we can help people maintain living in their homes if we can do that. And I'm hoping that our consultant who several people have referred to tonight will help us with a recommendation for that. And I was not aware of the situation at ACRA with the group home. And so I was appreciative of learning that. It's been a great institution for many years here. And similarly, it was really instructive to hear the level of need from the crisis response center. So thank you. I know there's need, but I was appreciative of hearing the specifics. Similarly from CASA, which I think is one of our very best housing organizations to hear the need again for permanent supportive housing which we know. But hearing again the expression of this need. I wanted to mention one thing about section eight which Ms. Spicer mentioned and Ms. Spicer and others came to the Durham Housing Authority Board of Directors about 10 days ago and spoke with the Board of Directors and made the case that we ought to be able to offer, that we ought to be able to use our one bedroom vouchers for two bedroom units, which the Housing Authority had not previously done. The after they came, the Housing Authority checked it out with other jurisdictions thanks to the recommendation of Ms. Spicer and others. And in fact, the Housing Authority is now doing that a practice which we should have been doing before, but we are now doing. And so I think I want to make that known to the public to make that clear. If you have a one bedroom voucher, you're now, if you can get a two bedroom apartment for the same price of that one bedroom voucher that's now possible, which would previously was not. And so really that was due to people like you coming, making your voices heard, and it had a big effect. And I think it will help many people. That's a short-term solution, however, because as everyone here has expressed the pressure on our housing market is extreme. The great thing is that people want to come to Durham and they want to live here. The downside of that is that they're forcing rents up. Our ability to affect that is limited. That's one of the things I want to say. We can't change that. We're not going to fight the free market and beat it. Supply and demand is an immutable law. But what we can do is we can mitigate the effects, the ill effects of that. Not all of them, but we can make a difference. And we can make a difference in the ways you all were talking about. And I think that we have a lot riding I think on enterprise community partners, our consultant. I think they're going to do a great job and I think they're going to lay out for us what we need to do in terms of what the city needs to do and can do, the resources that we're going to need, the money we're going to need to spend. And then we need to figure out a way to make that happen. So again, I'm really appreciative of you all being here and hearing such sincere and authentic and real testimony. Again, just redoubles my commitment and I know that my colleagues share this commitment. It's very, very important to us. I wish we could say we had all the answers now and all the money now we don't, but I know that we will do our best. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Although the comments, if not, again, we appreciate your time. Yeah. Councilor Brown, I would see you. Councilor Brown. I want to echo what my colleague Steve Short has said and as a liaison city member with the Durham Housing Authority, I note that technically there's no longer a Section 8 program. And by that I mean, and Steve, you can help out here, it's no longer called Section 8. Well, what is the new name? I'm sorry? Housing Choice Vouchers. Housing Choice Vouchers. So maybe when you're talking with some future landlord, don't use the term Section 8. Tell them you have a Housing Choice Voucher and maybe that will not carry the same stigma perhaps as some of the others, but anyway. Thank you again for coming, all of you. Okay, let's move to the next item, which is proposed economic development and sense of agreement between the city of Durham and the Frontier Communications of the Carolina's LLC. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council, Mr. Manager, Daryl Solomon, Office of Economic and Workforce Development. I have a brief presentation on the proposed agreement between Frontier Communications of the Carolina's LLC and the city of Durham regarding incentives for job creation. First off, the company profile, Frontier offers broadband, voice, video, wireless internet data access, data security solutions, bundled offerings and more. The company currently operates in 28 states and has more than 18,200 employees based entirely in the United States, including approximately 244 in Durham. The project itself, Frontier is seeking to locate a site for a new call center to support operations from to be acquired markets. They're in negotiations, I guess, with Verizon, so those negotiations have not been finalized. The employees that will be performing these new positions that will be created will be performing business to business and customer service duties. The facility would be located within the city limits in Durham. The potential job creation, the project is slated to result in the creation of 150 jobs over the three year period from 2016 to 2018 with a wage range of 35,000 to 70,000, including benefits. The job mix includes, again, business to business and customer service duties. Frontier has made it very clear to us and our negotiations with them that they would be more than willing to work with our NCWORK's career center system to source talent and through that system we also have access to leverage our relationships that we have with North Carolina Central University, Durham Tech, and Duke University. Financing for the project, the proposed offer is up to $430 per job for 150 jobs for a total not to exceed 64,500 to be paid in one lump sum. All the jobs must be created in order for the company to receive the full amount. Pro-ration is possible if 85% or more of the jobs are created. And those jobs would also have to be retained for a minimum of one year. The conditions, again, they would have to create 150 jobs within three years and retain those jobs for a minimum of one year, completion of $4.3 million of capital investment within three years, inclusion of a workforce plan stipulating the use of NCWORK's career center as a source of the recruitment of talent, as well as the inclusion of a Durham-based business plan promoting the use of Durham-based contractors and vendors, including minority and women business entities. Why is an incentive necessary? The creation of 150 jobs within three years, oops, I didn't go forward, the 64,500 in city investment, potential city investment is needed to make the project feasible in Durham because the telecommunications and IT industry, jobs within that industry are very coveted. And there is strong evidence that without our incentives that the company would look elsewhere and move the project elsewhere. The company currently has a presence in Durham and this incentive could create an opportunity for expansion in Durham. And the state of North Carolina is proposing an incentive requiring an adequate local match from the city of Durham. Why this makes sense for Durham taxpayers? 150 high-paying jobs within the growing industry, those jobs that obviously add to the sales tax, purchases through food, gas from the employees, traveling, eating out at lunch, retention of a great corporate citizen. Frontier has supported and they have pledged their support if we were to again engage in the telecommunications and energy training demonstration project, which we did undertake in conjunction with North Carolina Institute for Minority Economic Development, NCIMED. Also, they have pledged that they would support the Durham Youth Work Internship Program through hiring on some of our interns. And then two, with the quality and the name recognition of a company like Frontier, that's also gonna assist down the road in attracting additional companies. And with that, we could take questions and comments. I would like to recognize we do have someone from Frontier here, Dennis Blos, is with us. You say first of all, this is another piece of good news, economic good news for our city and I wanna thank Frontier for considering to stay and continuing to grow in our community. I need to ask one question, I read Triangle Business Journal, has the state already committed to this funding or not? The state, the announcement for the state was a timing issue, so the state wanted to make their announcement today but they made it very clear to us all throughout our talking with them that their announcement was going to be that any state approval would be contingent upon local funding. So that's what their official press release was, that local funding had to be secured before they would commit. And we told them and they understood that that would not be taking place until this evening with the city council meeting. So TBJ was just jumping ahead of them. Let me ask, are there, this is a public hearing. So I wanna make sure that any persons in the public who have questions that want to comment on this have an opportunity to do so. Recognize Ted Connors from the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce. Well, good evening Mayor Bell, members of the Durham City Council. I'd like to also thank Kevin and his staff for doing a great job of pulling together the information and presentation on this. I'm Ted Conner, Vice President with the Economic Development with the Durham Chamber of Commerce. And I just wanna kinda do a prelude. We've got two public hearings back to back. And I just wanna say, in economic development we try to recruit a range of jobs that create a diversity of job opportunities for Durham residents. Recently we worked with Harrison Corporated to retain and grow their distribution center in Durham and East Durham. And tonight frontier may bring, we hope, a 200 customer service oriented jobs to Durham. And shortly we'll hear about Willow Tree Apps which may bring another 80 to 100 mobile application development jobs to Durham. This is quite a diversity of jobs to bring to our community. And one of our goals in economic development is to bring, always try to bring a broad range of jobs to the community in order to meet the broad range of community resident job needs. One of the things in economic development we always have to remember, not only do these projects create direct jobs but they also create a lot of indirect jobs in their community for other companies to service the needs of the company or meet their facility needs. Frontier has made a commitment to invest substantial sums of capital to upgrade their system in the next few years to enhance their competitive position with respect to other telecommunication products here in Durham and elsewhere. They are really moving to upgrade the speed of their service. And today they provide gigabit speed telecommunications and this is a critical enhancement of our economic development ecosystem that our clients find very important and it's also critical to the future of our economic development success. Seems like communications is such an important part of what we do in economic development and what our clients need. Frontier is committed to having a diverse workforce as it is a key foundation for its operation and allows the company to realize the benefits of its workforce and meet the challenges of the current marketplace. Having a diversity of thought is very important. Frontier will start hiring its workforce if our community is selected for this new customer service center this month and they will train these employees for three months before that center goes live. So this is a wonderful opportunity to prepare a lot of residents for great futures. And Dennis, I hope that we will be able to with our Durham support and the state support we'll be able to bring this project to fruition here in Durham. I'd also like to thank the Durham City Council for hopefully for their support tonight as well. Thank you. Well, are they any other comments? I think it's pretty apparent the opportunity we have here and seems to me the only thing we need to do is authorize the city manager to negotiate the contract and hopefully if he's successful with that we can beat out Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, all right? Oh, you got a closer look at that. Yeah, I want to do that. So let's reflect no one else wanted to speak, declared appropriate to be closed as a matter of fact, before the council. Hold the item. Second. It's been properly moved. Second. Any further discussion here? None. Madam Clerk, will you open the vote? Close the vote. It passes seven to zero. Thank you. Thank you all. Okay, let's move to the next item, which is item 11. Proposed economic development incentive agreement between the city of Durham and Willow Tree, Inc. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of city council, Mr. Manager. Again, I have a brief presentation on the proposed contract between Willow Tree Incorporated and the city of Durham regarding incentives for job creation. A little bit about the company. Willow Tree provides mobile strategy, design, development, and analytic services for Fortune 500, 5,000 companies in large government and non-profits. They have consistently been listed on Inc's 500, 5,000 list of fastest growing U.S. companies over the last four years. What's very impressive is that their major clients include HBO, Johnson & Johnson, GE, Turner Sports, Fox News, Harvard Business Publishing, PepsiCo, American Red Cross, McDonald's, Wyndham Hotels, the Comedy Channel, and the Game Show Network. With these types of clients, Durham's profile as an IT hub would be certainly enhanced if we were to bring a company like this here. They would be certainly a name brand that we could bring here and with the clout of their clientele that they would bring, that would bring recognition as well to Durham. The project itself, Willow Tree has signed several large clients in recent months, and thus it needs to accelerate the growth of its team. Their expectation would be to grow an office similar to the size of their existing Charlottesville, Virginia office, 100 plus employees over the next several years. Their initial facility would be located within the American Tobacco Campus downtown. If they were to come, they would have to eventually identify a much larger facility to accommodate that growth. They do not have that facility identified at this time. The potential job creation is very impressive with a tremendous salary. The project is projected to result in the creation of 98 jobs by the end of 2018, with an average annual salary of $84,118 with full benefits. The job mix includes software developers, mobile designers, project and quality assurance managers. And again, with these types of jobs, that's going to add to the tax base through employees, purchasing food, gas, commodities around downtown. And again, they also have agreed to utilize our NC Works Career Center system. And again, we could certainly leverage our relationships with Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and Durham Tech's IT department. The project financing, the proposed offer is up to $750 per job for 98 jobs for a total not to exceed $73,500 to be paid over a three-year period. And again, the possibility for peroration exists if they create at least 85% or greater of the jobs. The conditions of the proposed agreement, creation of 98 jobs within three years, they would have to retain those jobs for a minimum of one year. And they would have to adhere to the workforce plan, stipulating the use of the NC Works Career Center and to encourage them to hire locally. Wise and incentive necessary, it's a tremendous project and opportunity for the city. 73,500 in the city investment for a coveted industry. And there is very strong evidence that without this incentive that they would relocate to another area. They are also seeking these funds to help offset upfront cost for training and developing highly skilled employees that they would be bringing on. And then to the state of North Carolina is proposing an incentive, which would require a local match. And why this makes sense for Durham taxpayers? Again, the 98 high paying jobs within a growing industry, and we certainly have a talent source and a talent base here in Durham to assist them with hiring this level of high talent. And again, these jobs are going to bring a lot of additional sales tax with gas purchases, food purchases, things along those lines. The reputation and quality of the company is gonna help in attracting other quality firms to the area. Durham's profile as an IT hub, again will be enhanced if we were to bring them on just because of their notoriety and the namesakes of their clients. And then the possibility of synergies with other Durham based companies that provide related services allowing for joint bids on large projects, which could eventually lead to additional jobs, either through Willow Tree or other companies that they may partner with if they were to win large bids. This company Willow Tree has also agreed to support our Durham Youth Work Internship Program. They have an existing practice of volunteering and speaking at local universities and community colleges, which they would do so here as well. The company is committed to creating high paying jobs, primarily recruiting from local universities and IT software boot camps and workforce development programs. Typically 60% of entry level employees are recent college graduates and 40% are from coding schools or similar programs. Talented coding graduates from high school and community colleges would also be considered. And again, we could leverage through our NC Works Career Center our relationships that we have with the School of Business through North Carolina Central, Duke University's Career Center, as well as Durham Tech's IT department. And then the creation of high paying quality jobs is also going to have a multiplier effect. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis using their Regional Input Output Modeling System, it would result in the creation of an additional 200 jobs and $51.2 million in Durham and about 222 jobs and $15.6 million throughout the region over the next five years. And then also the hotel restaurant revenue that would be generated from their frequent company visits by their employees down from Virginia, as well as their clients. So all of our new fancy hotels that we have would be getting certainly a lot of business. And at this time we can open up for questions and comments and I would like to recognize we do have a company rep, Tobias Dingle from Willow Tree Incorporator. Okay, thank you. Again, this is a public hearing. Let me ask first are there questions, comments by members of the council? Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this item? Recognize, take honor. I will try to keep it brief in light of the evening but I just will say that if Willow Tree Apps comes to Durham which I hope they will be gaining a really exciting company that'll be a wonderful addition to our impressive list of mobile app companies. If you wanna ask me what mobile app companies are I'll just ask Tobias. But one of the things we have with our type of economy with a technology driven economy such as ours it is essential that we keep expanding the depth and breadth of technology capabilities in our community to remain competitive and having Willow Tree Apps join our base of technology companies will allow Durham to keep its economy progressing forward. It was great to hear that Tobias is gonna remain active in our community. I know they've been active in Charlottesville and hopefully we're gonna learn a lot from them. One of the things that Daryl pointed out was about 40% of their employees right now go to a coding school. And I find that incredibly exciting because that means 40% of their employees don't have a computer science degree which opens up job opportunities for our residents. As a member of the Business Services Committee of the Durham Workforce Development Board we are looking really hard at trying to figure out how to increase the enrollment of students and residents into education and training programs for two of our major industry clusters which is life science and what I call the IT Informatics Cluster. And we feel by looking at this, understanding what Willow Tree Apps is doing that we'll be able to figure out a way to integrate some of our local resources like Durham Public Schools and Durham Tech into our community effort to better engage our residents in quality jobs here. So this is pretty exciting and I just hope that Tobias, you will be hearing something shortly if the state will allow us on your company's announcement here. This is just gonna be a win-win for Durham and I thank Durham City Council for your support tonight. Yeah, and certainly we want to thank you and Willow Tree in particular, hopefully you'll be joining the Durham family. I think you'll find Durham a very exciting place to be, a lot of talent, a lot of energy, a lot of good things happening in our community and you coming on board just makes that a plus. And certainly I want to thank Kevin and his team for making this happen. If there's no further questions in the public, I'm going to declare the public hearing to be closed and matters about the board of council. Second. The item is to authorize the City Manager Execute and Economic Development, Senate agreement with Willow Tree Inc. for total incentive payment and not to exceed $70,500. If there's no further questions, Madam Clerk, will you open the vote? Will you close the vote? It passes seven, is it? Thank you. Let me ask, are there any other items to come before the council tonight, recognize the council? Did you have a question, Councilor Davis? No. Councilor Moffett. Well, I just wanted to briefly just thank people who worked on these two projects because I think that getting these jobs in the Durham is a great thing, so thank you. Okay, if there's no further comments, meeting is adjourned at 9, 10 p.m. Thank you.