 Good afternoon. I want to call this work session of the Durham City Council to order at one o'clock on Thursday, May the 20th. I certainly want to welcome everyone here today. My colleagues, our wonderful staff and all those who may be attending in one form or another. We're very, very glad to have you. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro-10 Johnson. Here. Council Member Caballero. Here. Council Member Freelon. Here. Council Member Freeman. Council Member Middleton. I'm here. Council Member Reese. Here. Thank you. And I thank you very much. Thank you, Diane. Here she comes. Council Member Freeman's here, Madam Clerk. Thank you very much. Colleagues, Council Member Middleton is going to have to leave our meeting early today. We're going to rearrange a little bit of the agenda so that he can be here for one of the important items. I'm going to ask our attorney, Madam Attorney, can we go ahead and give Council Member Freeman, sorry, Council Member Middleton. How should we handle his excused absence for part of this meeting? You can just call for the motion, Mr. Mayor, to excuse Council Member Middleton from the remaining items of the meeting at the time of his departure. All right. Thank you. We'll do that. Colleagues also, Council Member Caballero is going to be traveling and we'll be missing the... No, that's not true. Okay, good. We're good. I thought we had another excused absence, but turns out not. Okay, great. We'll now move on to announcements by members of the Council. All right. Seeing none, which is probably good because we have a brutal agenda. Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I just wanted to just make a note or bring it forward that I want to figure out how to put together a resolution around this critical race theory bill that's going through in the house. I just want to make sure we get in front of it. And so just noting that for the rest of you, I'll try to get something together before our next meeting. Council Member Middleton, that's a great idea. I think that one thought I have, if I'm not sure what the timing of that is in the legislature, if it's going to be moving more quickly than when we next meet, perhaps a letter that is drafted that we could sign. So I know you're... We're hearing from people about this and if you could ask someone who's working on this to draft such a letter, that might get us out in front of it a little quicker. But I think I'm going to work with Senator Murdock on it. Perfect. That'd be awesome. Thank you for bringing that up. No problem. All right, colleagues, if there are no further announcements, we'll move into priority items by the city manager. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Durham City Council. I have a few priority items for you this afternoon again. I apologize for lengthy agenda. It is that season and we will get through it as quickly as we can. Agenda item number 45, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Airport Coronavirus Response Grant Program. Grant offer 3-370056-054-2021 is a supplemental item that has been awarded. This grant is being awarded to RBU Airport for COVID related expenses and must be approved and executed no later than June 1st of 2021. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Airport Coronavirus Response Grant Program, Airport Concessions Addendum grant offer 3-37-0056-055-2021, another supplemental item that has been added. This grant to the Wally Durham Airport Authority allows RBU to provide relief from rent and minimum annual guarantees to airport concessions, car rental and parking. This addendum must be approved and executed no later than June 1st 2021. The council is being asked to suspend the rules and vote on those items today at the work session. Also, Agenda item number 12, amend the fiscal year 2020-2021 budget pursuant to council's request. Additional information has been provided as attachment number three. Agenda item number 28, fiscal year 2020-2021, third quarter financial report that will be a presentation made on this item. Agenda item number 30, development agreement with Lambert Development, Hunt Street to LLC. A brief presentation will also be made on this item. And we have one citizens matter today. And that matter will be by Hillary Ensminger. And that has been added. And finally, Mayor and Council, I have a couple of people here that I would like to briefly introduce to you. I am very excited to welcome Leela Peterson and Dr. Dwayne Campbell to the City of Durham as two of our four Fuse fellows. And I would like for them to turn their cameras on because these Fuse fellows will be helping the city advance important strategic priorities. The Fuse fellows program places individuals with significant experience in the private and nonprofit sectors into year long fellowships serving local governments at no cost to the local unit of government. Leela comes to us most recently from the North Carolina Justice Center where she served as a policy analyst and from New America where she served as the Associate Director, managing a leadership development program for social entrepreneurs. She will carry forward some of the work of the Recovery and Renewal Task Force, including identifying and advancing strategies that support our ongoing economic recovery, supporting the vaccine equity efforts, and supporting interim Deputy Manager Bertha Johnson in the strategic development of our American Rescue Plan federal funds. Dr. Dwayne Campbell, Dr. Dwayne Campbell comes to us most recently from the Emily Kay Center where he served as Director of Post-Secondary Access and from UNC where he served as a lead evaluator for the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Dwayne will support the work of the Durham's Community Safety and Wellness Task Force, as well as the work of the proposed Community Safety Department. Leela and Dwayne, welcome to our organization and we are fortunate to have you both dedicated to supporting this work for the next year. And that concludes my priority items, Mr. Mayor and Council. Thank you very much, Madam Manager. I'll first take a motion that we accept the manager's priority items. Move back, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, seconded by Council Member Reese that we accept the manager's priority items. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Shewell, aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, aye. Council Member Caballero, aye. Council Member Freelon, aye. Council Member Freeman, aye. Council Member Middleton, aye. Council Member Reese, aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And to Mr. Campbell and Ms. Peterson, we are thrilled to have you in the city. I know you've already hit the ground running. We've already heard reports of your work and we appreciate it very, very much. We're super excited to have you. Props to Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, who first helped us make the connection to Fuse Fellows and the manager jumped right on it and we've got more coming. And this is a super exciting opportunity for the city and we hope that this will also be a great opportunity for you, Ms. Peterson and Mr. Campbell. Let me just add that Mr. Campbell, I didn't know you had previously worked at an organization that has my favorite nickname, Hippie Dippy, the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Next to the Center for Advanced Honsight, I think Hippie Dippy is probably the best name around. But we're thrilled to have both of you all and look forward to working both closely with both of you. Thank you so much. And I would just add to Dr. Campbell and Ms. Peterson, thank you for being here and thank you for all of the work that you're going to do to help us advance these priorities of this community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all both and thank you, Madam Manager. Madam Attorney, any items to any priority items this afternoon? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and members of the city council. The city attorney's office does not have priority items today. Thank you, Madam Attorney. Yes, Madam Clerk, any priority items today? Afternoon, everybody. The city clerk's office has new priority items today. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. All right, colleagues, I will now move into our administrative consent items. This is long. You might want to take a nap while I'm reading. It's just a big one. What can I say? City clerk's office, item one, approval of city council minutes, item two, citizens advisory committee appointments and I believe Councilmember Reese, did you have something that you wanted to say about this item? I think what I spoke with the clerk and it looks like we have four votes to to reappoint the three folks who are reapplying and re-advertise for the other three positions and I think that's what we're going to do. Okay, thanks. Item three, Durham Board of Adjustment Appointments, item four, Durham Open Space and Trials Commission Appointment. I do have one question about that and I'm sorry I should have asked the clerk this earlier. The person lists their addresses in Chapel Hill. I know that there's some postal addresses in Chapel Hill that are in the Durham City limits, Madam Clerk, but I think that would be worth checking out. Item five, Durham Planning Commission Appointments, item six, Durham Spurts Commission Appointment, item seven, Housing Appears Board Appointment, item eight, Human Relations Commission Appointments. Mr. Mayor? Yes. Sorry, I also had a question about item eight. I don't know if I should pull it or just ask now. So previously when we've done HRC appointments, we've done them by race and gender but this level, this appointment asks us to just pick by race. I was wondering why that change was made. Let's see if the clerk has some thoughts about that. I had a request by the Human Relations Commission to that asked us to just advertise persons so that we would not be discriminating against persons genders. Thank you Madam Clerk. I believe as listed here the bylaws require that genders be equally represented. I don't know how we manage that without the previous system. I guess it's just something we should talk more about because I'm worried that the gender balance will become skewed if we continue to use this system. Okay, let me know what you folks want to do. Thanks. Councilmember Freelon and then Councilmember Capiata. Yeah, this is something that's come up a couple times in the HRC and the vice chair, Michael, has been the head of the folks looking at the bylaws. Basically the interpretation of the bylaws is that no one group makes over a certain percentage and I think they've accounted for that in how they're re-advertising. So it's different than what we're used to but it achieves the same goal in a slightly different way that allows for gender non-conforming folks to not have to apply with the binary. So that's something we could probably talk about in more detail to get to the bottom of but Michael will be the guy to talk to because that's been like a thing we've been talking about for the past six months. Okay, thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I think I mean yeah well we should figure something out in the bylaws that makes sense because right now for example if we had picked all women or all men for the appointment then we would not be in compliance with the bylaws and we had the opportunity to do that today. I'm sure we haven't but yeah we I think we're going to need a bylaws change to make that work and I feel comfortable with you know with the I agree that that's a that's an important consideration that folks who don't identify as either gender shouldn't have to identify as one or the other to serve on the board and I trust y'all can figure something out that works. Thanks. Thank you council member Caballero and council member Freeman. What council member Freelon just shared it's 51% there can't be a one whatever gender it doesn't matter. All right council member Freeman. I was just going to ask that there have been so in the conversations that you're having at the HRC is the focus I mean I get you trying not to get over 41% but the focus on persons could also erase women and so I just want to make sure that we're clear that you can't erase women for non-binary that's not equity. Thank you council member I think all these are very important points and it's complicated and we'll we'll ask what about our council member Freelon if you don't mind to work with the HRC and the bylaws and it's also complicated for the clerk's office and we appreciate madam clerk all that you all do to trying to maneuver appropriately in these in these spaces thank you. I'm going to go back to item four I see Ms Rowland has an answer for us. Ms Rowland. Good afternoon Mr Mayor and members of the council I know you had a question about item four in the applicant's address even though it's listed in Chapel Hill GOMAPS tells me that he is still ward three ward three president. Great thank you very much Ms Rowland that's just exactly what we needed to know thank you. You're welcome. All righty we'll move to item I believe I've already read item eight but if not human relations commission appointments item nine mayors council for women appointments item 10 participatory budget steering committee appointment departmental items item 11 audit services department uh neighborhood improvement item 11 neighborhood improvement services nis lean process performance audited dated April 2021. You can pull that question Sure. Item 12 amend the fiscal year 2021 budget under the community development department item 13 amendment of operating agreement with volunteers of america carolinas 8vac to provide services for homelessness coordinated entry with diversion. I don't want to pull it but I do want to congratulate the department on and this this group on fantastic results for our media's residents this is these are very very good results. Item 14 contract for habitat for humanity of Durham to administer the city of Durham minor repair program and application intake for the substantial rehabilitation and home consortium rehabilitation programs. Mr. Mayor I don't want to pull it but I do want to caution staff around just assigning to habitat for humanity and not taking into account other actually provide that service as well. Thank you council member. Item 15 contract for homeless management information system hmias lead agency item 16 lead hazard control application intake and eligibility screening services contract with a partnership effort for the advancement of children's health peach I'm sorry yeah. Item 17 lead hazard control marketing and outreach services contract with a partnership effort for the advancement of children's health peach. Item 18 department transportation 2020 bicycle and pedestrian advisory council b-pack annual report. I am 19 in a local agreement with Durham county for consolidation of access services. I have asked the manager sometime in the next few months to and give us an update on Durham access. I think it's something we can all stand to learn something about. Item 20 of the department of water management 20 and 2020 21 lift station improvements group a gravity sewer professional engineering services contract to McKinnon and creed incorporated. Item 21 2021 lift station improvements group a lift stations professional engineering services contract to high-fill infrastructure engineering PC. Item 22 2021 lift station improvements group b lift stations professional engineering services contract with Kim Lee Horne and associates incorporated. Item 23 amendment number three for engineering services from Raymond engineering georgia for various department of water management roof replacements. Mr. Mayor I don't want to add an item. Yeah but I did want to ask Mr. Greeley if he's listening to get in touch with me separately so that I could schedule the tour of those facilities and really be really interested in doing that. Thank you. That's great. I am sure Mr. Greeley will do that and maybe some of the others of us would enjoy going. Thank you. Item 24 Newman street waterline construction contract award. Item 25 south Durham water reclamation facility administration building renovations and women number one for DTW architects and planners limited. Item 26 water treatment plant residual and water reclamation facility biosolid services amendment number one to contract the San Agro central limited liability company under the final finance department annual insurance plan FY 22. Under continuing under finance FY 2021 third quarter financial report and this is a this is a presentation item. Item 29 resolution approving the application to the local government commission for the issuance of water sewer utility system revenue bonds i'm going to pull this item. Item 29 under general services department item 30 development agreement with labor development hunt street LLC and this is also a presentation item under I am 31 lease with salon lofts group LLC at the morgan wigsby parking garage under human resources department item 32 contract renewal of saba subscription and services agreement with saba software Canada under the public works department item 33 contract st 317 utility locate services. Can we pull that Mr. Mayor? Yeah under item 34 contract with wk dixon and company incorporated for a stormwater municipal separate storm sewer system ms4 program review item 35 petition process assessment rate revisions. Item 36 residential septic to sewer cost share project for the northeast creek watershed under technology solutions department item 37 contract renewal with granicus LLC dba granicus saslc under presentations department of transportation item 38 the greater triangle commuter rail gtcr study update under public hearings budget management services department item 39 fiscal year 21 22 budget and fiscal year 2022 27 capital improvement plan under city county planning department item 40 plan amendment can then have new tier change item 41 zoning that change rolling down to under community development department around the virus aid relief and economic security cares act public hearing on an approval of second member to the fyi 2021 annual action plan in 2025 consolidated plan under citizens matters hillary and sminger item 43 under supplemental item city calces office 44 creation implementation program to support achieving vaccine equity um and there are city manager's office item 45 us department of transportation and federal aviation administration airport coronavirus response grant program grant offer 337-0056-0054-2021 this is one of the items that the manager is asked us to ask us to act on but i'm going to come back to this for reasons i'll explain in a moment item 46 us department of transportation federal aviation administration airport coronavirus response grant program airport concessions addendum grant offer 337-0056-055-2021 and we'll also come back not a manager of the items that i have pulled are 11 16 29 33 the presentation items are 28 30 38 and 40 38 and yeah 38 item 44 um has also been pulled i should have mentioned that i'm sorry and then items 45 and 46 of the uh supplemental items that we will come back to in a moment is that is that what you have automatic uh it is what i have miss mayor thank you colleagues um i really am uh councilman melton as you all know um has to leave the meeting early and um but uh it would be good if he was able to be here for item 44 he's done a lot of good work on this councilman melton are you with us still i am mr american you hear me yes yes we can thank you okay i may have to go moment so forgive me for not being able to turn the camera on no problem uh colleagues i really wanted to do this councilman melton currently offered to do this before um he needs to preside at a funeral uh this afternoon and um so we're going to go ahead and move this item up this is the vaccine equity item uh and i had originally proposed that we uh contract with cure america's global for this uh after some discussions uh as you all remember i had uh proposed instead an rfp process councilman melton and several of you all questioned the necessity for that we had a brief discussion about it last week uh decided to bring it back to this work or monday decided to bring it back to this work session and um uh councilman melton um has had some uh important discussion in the meantime uh which has led to i think uh our ability to go back and indeed do the kind of do what we originally hoped to do which is is contract with uh cure america's global to do the work so we can get started quickly and the manager has been involved in these discussions i'll just ask councilman melton if he would like to say anything at this point um for uh to move us along i do thank you mr marron thank you colleagues for for the incredible amount of disgracesness and leeway uh with my schedule today as as has already been mentioned i'll be presiding at the funeral of one of the young men who were killed killed in our city by then balance last week so i want to thank you for allowing me to be with that family and also i understand this is an important and critical time in our in our the work of the counseling for the city uh and i you know it's all hands on deck so i don't take lightly uh you work with me and moving the schedule around today agenda the agenda allow me to speak to this so let me just briefly say by way of framing uh i am not by way of disclosure i was not fully read in on the issues um surrounding the uh recommended vendor for this what what prompts me and what motivated me as i said at our last meeting i'll uh say it again today um i think that there's nothing more important than getting black and brown people vaccinated particularly as the country opens back up and that is my prime motivated the reason why i pulled the issue the reason why i raised a question about the rfp versus just naming a vendor uh is solely solely based upon uh my belief that this is perhaps the most important thing uh if not the most certainly one of the most important things we've we've been doing uh relative to our covid response uh the marriages recently issued a statement to to rescind revoke to stay at home or i think it's an important watershed and i really see this item as perhaps the last great iteration under emergency powers this is like the final chapter i think of of the way we've had to operate in that special kind of covid emergency context in which we've operated and i think that given that doesn't saw us to be taken we're going to get back to regular order we're getting back to regular order but this is really i think the last piece that deserves that special kind of um expedited consideration particularly given the subject matter when we look at disparities in vaccines uh for black and brown community for me if there's anything we were going to be expeditious about and you know with all due difference to back on the ball and and getting money to our businesses if there's anything we're going to be expeditious about i think it's it's closing the uh at least attempting to close the disparities in vaccine rates for black and brown folk particularly considering that the country is opening back up so that's a commercial just to say that that's the only dog i had in this fight that's the only reason why i pulled the issue um and pursuant to to me pulling it i did have opportunity to have a discussion and i'm going to take this time to shout out uh our colleague uh at the on the county commissioners commission non-machine of burns who i think is an incredibly important voice and our public square i did have opportunity to have conversation uh with her about it it should be said that uh in fairness to her at no point did commissioner burned at least it was communicated to me intend to block this or to derail it uh or to hold it up in any way but what she was concerned about and i think we all should be concerned about were some issues that were raised about the particular vendor that we that were identifying now i'm going to be very careful because i don't want to errant lee or is in some flippant way impugned the reputation of any vendor or anyone who does business with the city um as i said i wasn't fully read in or dialed in on what the concerned issues are but i will say this um i i trust that the mayor of our city would would do at least reasonable due diligence and would not bring a group before us uh that he had concerns about i just trust that he wouldn't do that um and if he does you know that's another conversation we'll have to have uh down the road um and you know this council certainly isn't afraid to have those kind of conversations but in my conversation with her she did raise what i thought was some legitimate concerns about prioritizing cbo's in our own community and making sure that cbo's are paid in a timely manner uh she brought she raised important concerns that that all of us should be uh uh brought into about um due diligence when it comes to city coffers and county coffers making sure that our money uh spent correctly in the ways that we wanted to be spent that's something that we all should be concerned about so her concerns i think should be taken seriously and noted uh and i want to echo them and i again i want to echo that um she was attempting to look out and is attempting to look out for the county's money and the city's money not to block anything the importance of getting vaccines and the odds of black and brown people isn't lost on any of us that elected electing the city and county so i will say this um again i i i think that uh i'm prepared to move the the motion forward uh or a new motion forward and i think our city attorney has crafted some language a new motion uh naming cure americas and i will say this uh by way of of advisory to our friends listening um this is not the city and this is not the issue and this is not the pot of money for there is for there to be any shenanigans surrounding i'll just put it that way this is not the issue because this is nothing short of black and brown lives at state in this issue um and if anything were to go left i can assure folks listening that the blowback uh would be direct it would be constant and it would be withering and i'm sure i still say characterizing that way because i would be leading the blowback so with that said uh i i think that this is an important issue i think this is the last great flexing if you will under emergency um standing emergency flooding for the city i think it's incredibly important that we get the work of vaccine equity on track as quickly as possible uh particularly given the disparities in the community disparity uh for black and brown community relative to the white community in terms of vaccination rates uh i am i'm deferring to my colleagues who who who have recommended to your americas and i'm also advising uh everybody in the public square and everybody who's seeking to do business with the city that we expect excellence we expect due diligence and we expect accountability uh when we make this investment because this is this is an issue that goes straight to the heart of our city that is saving the lives and protecting the lives of black and brown people and marginalized people in our city so with that said mr mayor i i think uh at least as my understanding and where i am that that we should be comfortable uh forwarding a motion and i'll be glad to forward that motion to proceed uh with a non-rfp uh proceed without an rfp and contract with cure americas to lead our efforts for vaccine equity thank you very much councilmember and thank you for having those discussions colleagues um i'll first ask for discussion then we will need to move to uh suspend the rules and vote on this item as we agreed to at monday night's meeting and then we can take up the motion but uh i'll next uh invite discussion councilmember freeman thank you mr mayor i appreciate councilmember middleton reaching out to commissioner burns i think what what resonates for me in this conversation isn't isn't really around the organization it's also it's also around the process and acknowledging how much of an emergency this is and when you're in an emergency what you rely on is the way that you operate um from a stance of what's been going on i mean throughout the throughout the throughout time and i just want to just read just echo again that it's important for us to invest in our local community it's important to look to invest in our in our community-based organizations it's important to um make sure that we're using our tax dollars to do those things and uh and to make sure that we're doing it as quickly as possible acknowledging that this is a health emergency i do have have some concerns about the the where was all because i also have not been read on on the issues with cure america and i'm hearing that some issues with cure america and i just want to be on the record and say tonight the cure america pieces that is the only piece that's that's bothering me in this and that if if there were some other organization i mean namely any other organization that was named to assist in this process it would it would seem a whole lot more seamless and a lot less of a less problematic just acknowledging how local organizations are are kind of being passed over in this i i know that the there was a comment that i i'd heard commissioner burns mentioned that when you squeeze a sponge you you kind of get at the core of what it what's what's happening in this situation and what you do when you're being squeezed is what you do when you're not when you're when you're at your core and at my core i want to support our local businesses our local nonprofit organizations that are doing the work on the ground and sending six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to an organization that is not here in derm as is is problematic for me at the least and there are just namely a few things that i'm not certain on with the organization that that still just don't sit well with me and that being said i'm willing to support the will of the council acknowledging that this is an emergency i um thank councilmember middleton for having a conversation with commissioner burns and i thank commissioner burns for raising the issues as acknowledging that i mean we have a plethora of organizations that could all be the receivers of these these dollars so thank you thank you councilmember mademere pro tem thank you mr mayor um i just wanted to appreciate councilmember middleton's efforts um with getting this to the finish line i think if we had not had the conversation if he'd not burst the conversation on monday about um going back and trying to work this out with the county commissioners we would have moved forward with an rfp and we would have had to wait a lot longer to get these funds out into the community and now we're going to be able to do it more quickly with the support of the folks in the county commission so i just wanted to thank councilmember middleton for the work that he did to make that happen and um if there's no further discussion i'm happy to make a motion to suspend the rolls i'll second mr mayor thank you mademere pro tem i do just have one other thing to say what just is to just to be clear is that of the six hundred and fifty thousand dollars uh roughly six hundred thousand we'll be going to local community-based organizations so just want to be clear that the money will be spent with our organizations in Durham all right council mademere pro tem uh your motion yeah i need to suspend the rolls is that moved by mademere pro tem that we suspend the rules and vote councilmember re seconded madem clerk please call the roll mayor shul ah mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman abstain councilmember i don't think you can abstain it you have to if you're here you have to eat about yes or no i abstain okay go ahead madem clerk councilmember middleton i will die councilmember reese all right thank you the eyes have it uh and the motion passes um madam attorney maybe you can give us an interpretation of what an abstain would mean in this case so mr mayor i think because we're still operating under our session law 2020-3 the remote meeting statute um votes are by voice call and so if a member does not vote yay or nay um there's just one less vote all right thank you all right uh eyes have it and the motion passes six to zero now we will need a motion uh to approve the the contract with cure americas uh as uh as written into the item by the city attorney is there a motion to that effect so moved i'm moved as written thank you uh moved by councilmember caballero we'll take that as a second councilmember middleton thank you madam madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul ah mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman abstain councilmember middleton councilmember middleton can you hear me yes thank you and councilmember reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it and the motion passes six to zero councilmember middleton thank you for hanging with us um and uh we're sorry that you'll be having to preside over this funeral but we are grateful to you for doing it thank you thank you mr mayor and i carry with me uh your regards in the entire city thank you and we'll give you an excused absence for the rest of the meeting thank you thank you colleagues can i have a motion to give councilmember milton excused absence for the remainder of the meeting so moved second moved by councilmember freeman it's second by councilmember freelon madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor shul ah mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton councilmember reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it uh the motion passes six to zero thank you all colleagues i see that there is someone here uh mr isaac woods who would like to speak on item 24 i did not pull item 24 i'm now going to pull item 24 which is the moon and street waterline construction contract award um okay now we'll hear from miss uh haley ensminer uh who is here for public comment uh madam clerk can you make miss ensminer available to be heard please miss ensminer thank you for being here uh you have three minutes to address the council we're glad to have you go ahead hi can you hear me yes we can hi sorry i'm using assistive technology so um the first thing hello everybody my name is hillary honig ensminer um i'm here today to address a concern regarding uh well an item that i would like to be included in the 2021 budget uh specifically addressing assistive technology uh of web content web and digital content for people with visual and other disabilities um so um let me get my assistive technology going here sorry about that um uh okay here it is i sorry i said my name okay hold on let me go up okay i've got to listen to my own notes because i get nervous and i don't talk in front of people hh g hh g okay i'll tell you a bit about myself all right i've been a resident for over 47 years i've been involved in the community um and uh one dedicated active and involved in the presidential and uh i've been quite dedicated to the community at large and i love Durham uh i also happen to be blind as a result of a congenitive degenerative disease um i had probably the very first food truck in Durham in the 1980s before it was even permitted so i started going before council back when i moved here in 1970-82 because we wanted to bend on the street and it was not permitted so over the years i've come before you guys um uh here i'm trying to get here i also have a seeing eye dog that allows me to peruse the streets of Durham and have a somewhat independent life lastly great dancer with a lastly i'm a great dancer and i dance with a ad and you know been involved in this community for a while so going forward for those of you who don't know people with visual disabilities and other disabilities use a screen reader to access digital content uh a screen reader is a form of assistive technology and there are many versions of them um but what's most important is that the web content must be formatted properly in order for the screen reader to work properly um uh an amazing form of assistive um let's see if i get scared here accessibility of web content levels the playing field accessibility of web content levels the playing field for people who have differences um it also allows us to be included in for example if i was wanting to get a job in the city and work with the city sites if i couldn't access the city sites um i couldn't work for the city and other digital content like pdf so um i'm trying to not skip around be be with those and don't know ah trying to get to my own notes okay i got to the proper formatting the problem is the problem is the digital a lot not much of the digital content and web remains inaccessible in dura and i've been dealing with it very good i won't get into names but i've been dealing with it for about 15 years and i've been screaming and yelling and screaming and yelling um i have gone through the regular channels i i think i've done my due diligence i've been to the mayor's committee on disability i've been to it i've been to public affairs and i've spoken with the city manager as of late who is new to what's going on and i have recently spoken with steve mirshuel um there is a federal mandate as you all probably know there is a federal mandate that requires that municipalities provide accessible content on their webs there's you know as there is for physical barriers um this is under title one and two it's not just municipalities as you know it also it governs educational institutions and other entities um uh the real problem is is that it i despite all my efforts it remains inaccessible so i wanted to get to the root of what i think could be done to fix it and it will require some consideration in the budget at this time during does not have a certified qualified at this time done does not have a certified or qualified single individual who is given the authority to write policy uh in first policy and oversee the accessibility of web content as well as design we have a team it's made up of different people but none of them have all those credentials rolled into one and they even admit it is difficult um unlike general services department where the ADA compliance officer oversees physical barriers um like ramps um this is my ramp by the way this is the ramp for those of us who are quadriplegics who need digital content or use dragon without this ramp we cannot we're not in part we're not a part so what what i after looking at it there are several problems one the site is decentralized there are about 110 webmasters who are posting for all of them to know and understand ADA content it's physically impossible it's also physically impossible for public affairs to monitor it with a tool this really requires somebody who has credentials he would no more put a baker in to a building working with engineers to build you know structural elements or a surgeon surgery on your toe be done by a dentist so after speaking with logan small who is in the in the general server oversees ADA compliance i mean it's admitted there is no they could use a project manager like they have for physical barriers oh simply oversee content it is a big job and that person would work in conjunction of course with it and public affairs so that's what i'm proposing i think it needs to be done because the fact is the city is in great part has been for years kind of non-compliant and they're not being proactive they're retroactive so it's like going if you have a wheelchair and you can't get up you got to call the ADA compliance officer i would be on the phone with logan small all day long who's answering there who's answering there yep thank you thank you for your comments and we really appreciate hearing from you i know that the staff has sent a response which is in our agenda and uh you have spent a lot of time talking to our staff and including our discussion as well last week a good long discussion i will as i said be in touch with me in another week or so and we'll talk again about this one last thing to say after our discussion i did speak with katie directly and with everybody individually and they all with they all agreed they would it including you know it would be helpful to them as well it so thank you for saying that i have to say yeah i just want you to know that it's not just me going help help help thank you we understand and we appreciate thank you thank you very much okay thank you guys appreciate you okay all right colleagues we're now going to move to back to the items that the city manager needs for us to move on today because they are grants that the airport needs to receive and it requires our action on a timely basis the first one is item 44 creation implementation of a program to support achieving back no i'm sorry item 45 us department transportation federal aviation administration airport coronavirus response grant program uh and um we would need to suspend the rules and vote on this item is there motion to suspend and please suspend the rules and vote second moved by mayor pro tem johnson seconded by council member reese that we suspend the rules and vote on this item item 45 metham clerk will you please call the roll mayor schul ah mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember middleton oh sorry councilmember reese hi thank you madam clerk the eyes have it the motion passes unanimously uh and now we would need a motion to approve to accept the federal aviation administration airport coronavirus release grant and to authorize the city manager to execute the associated grantage agreement so move second moved by councilmember freelon seconded by councilmember freelon madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor schul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it the motion passes unanimously we'll now move to item 46 us dot federal aviation administration administration airport coronavirus response grant program airport concessions addendum we'll also need a a motion to spend the rules and vote on this item second move by councilmember freeman seconded by mayor pro tem johnson madam clerk will you please call the roll mayor schul hi mayor pro tem johnson hi councilmember caballero hi councilmember freelon hi councilmember freeman hi councilmember reese hi thank you thank you madam clerk the eyes have it and the motion passes unanimously all right college we now move to the polled items and we'll begin with item 11 neighborhood service improvement nis lead process performance audit and that was pulled by councilmember reese and i see miss bruneton is here miss bruneton you're um you're not able to be heard thank you very much good afternoon miss you madam mayor pro tem johnson council members madam manager to make bruneton director of audio services thank you dr bruneton councilmember reese thank you mr mayor thank dr bruneton good to see you today um i'm sorry i was not at the audit services committee meeting where this was discussed um can you help me understand the actual problem with the foreclosure process that the audit identified because it read to me as though the problem was not enough foreclosures were being filed by the city i don't think that can be right so i'm hoping you can help me understand what i'm actually supposed to be reading in that report so there were a couple of issues councilman reese one there was a shift in the responsibility of this department whether with the nis or the finance department which department would actually provide the list of items that would be sent to foreclosure so that was one issue um and the finance department director mr boy uh made a decision back in 2020 um that they would make that shift and so part of the problem was that because there was no policy around um determining the criteria for foreclosure that took some time so part of the issue was before let me just say this the reason the number of foreclosures dropped was twofold one prior to 2019 the finance department had the staff person that was working on that that person transitioned from the city another person from the finance department took over um and they they been financed determined that they didn't really understand or think the criteria criteria was efficient um and so they started studying that and so that was part of the reason that they were not setting any items of foreclosure because they were developing a policy and that policy was discussed in the report and then the other um issue was that there were no items being sent to foreclosure because of covid and the city manager's office suspended that so so there are two prongs in this process there's the lean process which we thought was working well and then there's the foreclosure process which simply was the criteria was not in place to determine which properties should be sent to foreclosure so foreclosure is what happens after the lean is insufficient to generate funds to cover the the fines and fees is that right yes that's the collection piece of that process yes okay generally what happens is a lean is filed in order to remove the lean the property owner then pays whatever fees or fines have been assessed and then the lean is removed exactly and when the when the property owner doesn't do that then a foreclosure process is initiated exactly yes and is it the case when a foreclosure process is initiated would the city ever um recall that process if the fines and fees were taken care of by the property owner prior to uh it's kind of consummation of the foreclosure itself i i think the answer to that question is yes um but data board is also present at this meeting and he could probably confirm that but i i think the answer to that is yes because you're saying if the owner comes back and then says hey i have the funds i really you know i want to pay all the fees can we take that that property out of foreclosure and i think the answer to that question is yes it looks like someone from someone from finance has popped up hi emily does a derrio deputy finance director the answer to that question is yes we can pull it back if the property owner does end up paying it is that what usually happens or does it usually just go to foreclosure um we've seen kind of a split in cases so we've had a handful of cases where the property owner comes forward and pays the fees and then we essentially pull back the foreclosure um but we have seen it and if i understood correctly something on the order of 264,000 i think was the number in fees and fines related to these sorts of of violations in is violations um have been rendered uncollectible because the statute limitations on them has passed uh is that is that right that is correct yes um and that's because we didn't file foreclosures on people um and so they didn't have that last little prod to get them to pay we just didn't do anything and the statute limitation has passed and so we couldn't file foreclosure again exactly okay and is the is the policy remedy here to file more foreclosures i don't think the policy remedy is to file more foreclosures i think i think the policy remedy is to determine what criteria should be standardized so that they can file the foreclosures timely okay i see lots of other people have popped up to try to answer my knowing questions so this would be a good time for someone to do that mr brod or manager page uh whoever wants to get started i will start there very briefly um you know certainly there are some criteria that you know would make one of these cases you know be be a good case to pull clothes on and then there there's criteria that would make it be not a good case at all um i think dr brouington has bought uh some information forward about during the pandemic um you know certain cake you know it would not be a policy decision of ours uh if we have these cases that are 10 years that's how long the statute is it's an extended period of time so certainly during a pandemic we would not be you know foreclosing on residents who were you know properties where there were people living in um just as we have minimize to other policy implemented other policy decisions that minimize people becoming without a resident you know residents during um you know during cove it so before uh mr board speaks i i did want to bring that point forward because you know that the statute is a really long time um and only certain of those cases are running out of statute and others have you know have statute left so and mr board might want to speak as well uh yeah david wood finance director um foreclosure is one of the collection tools that we have but it is not always the appropriate tool to collect on um outstanding nis leans um could be that the amount owed is more than the property is worth um it could be that the attorney's fees exceed the amount that is owed or it could be that there is really not a material amount that is owed on the individual uh lean and foreclosing on on someone's property because they will uh $250 on a nis lean is not viewed as as an uh an appropriate collection tool based on the amount that's owed so while there was uh in this particular period that that dr brunington's staff looked at $260,000 worth of of of items that went past the statute of limitations i don't think it's appropriate to say that all of them would have been remedied by use of a foreclosure tool success going forward is to make sure that we have a criteria that is um defensible appropriate and consistent that we can apply um and that everyone agrees is the the right the right way to evaluate when we should and should not use that tool and to make sure we've got that in place and we execute it consistently i just want to thank everybody on staff who's uh who's um come on to help me understand this process i think david the piece that you just said really closed the loop for me on that um i i guess i i read i read the report in it um it definitely struck a nerve uh because it really seemed like the the gist of the report was uh the city wasn't foreclosing on enough people and we lost some money because of it um i think now that i've heard a broader range of of kind of explanations about what's happening here david especially what you said about this is just one tool and it might not be appropriate in all cases i guess i'm a little more comfortable with that i guess the other the other thing i just wanted to say is that i guess this is the first time i've ever come face to face with the fact that that when nis um uh takes an enforcement action that that has a financial cost associated with it that really the the biggest teeth that we have in the process ultimately at the end of a long line is foreclosure um and that was um a sobering moment for me um and i appreciate all the care with which folks have talked about it today the care with which we have used that process and we'll continue to use it in the future but it's just something i have not been exposed to yet so um that's all i had to say about that except now mr gardener is online and might want to might want to end the conversation but i think i have what i needed from the item but i'm happy to hear more thank you mr where you can ask them ever miss garbier welcome hi uh faith garden assistant director mega hood improvement services uh just wanted to add that you know we we have had a um effective collaboration with the finance finance department in past years um and um you know criteria in place uh they're not um codified in a policy way i did want to add um that in the past and i'm suspecting in the future with the future policy um we do not foreclose on low-income property owners who who are living in their homes um so that would be an additional criteria that the policy would not seem appropriate to foreclose on those folks so just wanted to add that in the next in case anyone knows concerned that helps a lot faith thanks thanks a lot thank you mr man thank you dr brood thank you council member council member i had uh some of the same questions that i had written mr boyd uh an email which he responded to with some comments from miss desideria i probably should afford him to all of you i didn't but i just for him just now uh so that might ask i think that those were the points they covered but in at least you have it in writing now also so thank you very much mr mayor if i had uh reviewed this agenda item before um 12 30 at night last night i might have done the same so appreciate you uh you taking that step thanks well it's a long agenda um i i give us all a's for getting through it uh council member freeman my mouse disappeared sorry uh i was just going to note i appreciate council member reese highlighting this i do appreciate the opportunity to hear from nis on a bi-monthly basis for north east central derm specifically around this which is why i i mean i could see how some of the procedures are in place but i i did want to just note that there are some sections of derm that might need a closer look like southeast southeast derm um well mainly south side and um down 98 just acknowledging that these are the places where we're seeing uh the highest like weights of of growth and development in a way that that mirrors gentrification and so just noting those few things for my council i um again offer the north east central derm subcommittee as a space to kind of explore some of this conversation because i do i do believe that the foreclosure pause um was due to do the staff leaving but i think it's kind of served a dual purpose and and giving us a chance to not foreclose on some of the properties but it also made it very lucrative for folks to just pay taxes off and purchase houses and um i am noticing that in my own neighborhood i um i i just want to make sure i point that out and give you an opportunity to do that because i think you've got some memories thank you very much councilmember are there any further questions from miss brode dr brodington thank you dr brodington we appreciate you being with us thank you colleagues we'll now move to our next poll item which is item 16 and this is an item that was pulled by councilmember reese uh hello mr johnson how are you today greetings uh councilmember reginald johnson director and department of community development thanks reginald thanks for being with us um why why is it taking so long for this these two contracts to get to us well actually uh councilmember it's a great question this is actually a set of six there's six different services under the lead program and we've actually had to for some of the procurements go out of gang and uh for a second time on some of them and so all of them need to be rolled out at the same time so now we are reaching out the point where we can roll the entire program out uh with all of the uh different components to it you actually have a couple of more contracts agenda items on your next agenda cycle great that's that had been my assumption i just wanted to ask about that and say when do we expect um kind of the the marketing and intake to begin in earnest after after we if assuming we approve these two items well let me uh councilmember ask our project manager miss uh nisha reynolds to answer that question on in terms of when the marketing and outreach is expected to begin she's on the line but like i said we have a couple of more contracts that have to come before you for your approval before all of the uh programs are uh are completed and we're ready to go the very complex grant uh that i would add miss reynolds good afternoon this is nisha reynolds with the community development department um in response to your question our vendors um who have been awarded contract are ready to go as soon as we are so upon execution they're ready to begin application intake and marketing and outreach program they're already actively engaged in this work and they will be expanding you know their current portfolio to accommodate our program that's fantastic i really appreciate uh the the answers to these questions also appreciate um the the unfortunate way this has had to be delayed in many ways because i think there's really only one uh vendor who's uh who's well situated to do it and so i understand there's certain federal regulations where you can get one response you have to go back to the market again and that has had the unfortunate impact of delaying what i think is a much needed program in the community uh so thank you both for your work and trying to get us up to the starting line of deploying these resources and this important led reduction program into the community um and look forward to seeing that happen real soon thank you thank you mr. mayor thank you thank you very much council member are there any more questions uh for uh for mr. johnson all right great thank you very much and now we'll move on to item 24 madame clerk uh isaac woods is here to come in on item 24 this is the um newman street water line water construction contract to access utility um i see mr. Greeley here mr. Greeley why don't we hear from uh mr woods and then uh you may have some comments so mr woods welcome you have three minutes thank you uh mayor uh can you hear me okay yes we can okay uh good afternoon uh mr. mayor and that approach and council members thank you for giving me this opportunity um as i stated or this is really deals with two items i think there's other item is uh mr. drones want to speak to you in regards to the uh local ordinance on the petition process so i'm going in essence of time which i hope you appreciate i'm going to address both of them in my limited time on behalf of myself and the other property owners on art more drive that doesn't have water or sea water or street payment um we're glad to see the city city recognize and prove the extension water service to the newman street to meet the fire demands in the area and provide water service to 208 and 210 newman street uh we're so excited about that because as the mayor and council is well aware a part of art more drive petition has the same issue no water to meet the fire demands no water service the part of the properties on art more drive therefore we look forward to the mayor the mayor pro tem and the council are reconciling the lack of fire service to areas of art more drive and the lack of city water service and street payment to all the property owners on art more drive we're all in the city and we do not need to promote disparities between people particularly on the same road our more property drive property owners have been in the city limits and pan profit taxes for forced annexation for over 40 years that's four decades we thank you for your time in consideration and we ask that as you deal with the newman street that you consider that we have a lack of fire demands which uh forward to you earlier we have had houses on the street burn down in your park chief that they cannot save our houses if they catch on fire which is a sad story to lose one already so we ask you to consider our fire protection our water and street payments for everybody on art more drive we appreciate your time i'm gonna have all the property owners on art more drive thank you very much council thank you very much mr woods we appreciate your being here with us um mr griller would you like to comment certainly uh don really department of water management good afternoon mayor shill major mayor pro tem johnson and members of council um i just wanted to clarify this is a slightly different situation than what exists on art more um the new ministry water line is an early out project as part of the east storm the greater east storm project the greater east storm project is an area of the city bounded by taylor street to the north faithful to the west awesome to the east and linwood to the south um we're replacing or upsizing all of the water and sewer lines in that area in east storm um it was identified early on that there would need to be a there was a gap in the water system between ramser and east main along faithful as you can see from the attached map in the agenda item newman street parallels faithful and they're actually in the same right of way um so we needed to close that gap to support the and improve the overall fire flow and service delivery to the greater downtown area and the growth that we're seeing there um so we needed to close that gap we weren't really looking forward to having to tear up faithful street um but there was also a there used to be an older two-inch water line that went down newman street that actually provided suit provided water service to both of those properties that water line has caused us numerous problems with breaking and um ultimately when those structures were torn down at those two addresses 208 and 210 um we actually just turned the water off so that line wouldn't leak anymore so the decision was mostly to move the um with the modeling showed that we could move the water line out of newman's out of faithfuls and put it into newman street to avoid having to tear up faithful street which of course is a major thoroughfare and Durham but it also reestablished the previous service that was there um that we're obligated to reestablish at those two locations thank you very much mr grily and i appreciated that you all did take the time when i was reading the item to not try to disrupt to try not to disrupt the faithful street traffic i think that was great and very creative i know mr woods is in touch with our staff uh on numerous occasions and we appreciate him being here today as well counts member freeman yes thank you mr mayor and i just wanted to speak to mr woods and say i completely understand why you're you would try to use the opportunity than you to highlight the parallels in this case to um your situation on our our more drive and i would say that i would be willing to bring it back forward to we consider if the votes were on council i don't believe that they are and i um continue to support you and continuing to bring this forward because i think it's a it's a it's a travesty that you you don't have the water um in place and it's been over 40 years thank you i want to thank you for being thank you council member all right colleagues uh thank you mr grily uh we're now going to move on to item 29 this is an item that i pulled this is the resolution approving the application the local government commission for the issue with orders and sewer sewer bonds revenue bonds and i see miss desiderio uh the first thing i want to say is that these were those items that goes by you know we put it on consent and um we barely give it a thought and it's 300 million dollars of refinancing so i thought maybe we should at least notice it that's the first thing um but also uh i have a question which is why don't we use the bands i'm not sure how we pronounce that for the first three years what is the advantage for that interest only financing up front why don't we go you know what i want to or the financing of this size why don't we go to just that you know the financing that we're doing now so i'm like desiderio um deputy finance director the main reason why we do a band is to match our spending with our borrowing so we're not borrowing to pretty much early and paying all the debt service up front so by doing this interest only we're essentially just paying for what we're using so it better aligns our spending with our borrowing got you so you when is the decision point that you that you do the the kind of financing we're going now what makes your mind up um it's basically the timing of when we think the spending is going to occur so we're our goal is to kind of align the spending with the borrowing and with the projects that are in the capital plan for water and sewer this was the best the best option great and is there some threshold for that you know what i guess i don't understand is it at the beginning does that mean for the interest only financing we're just not spending very much during that period and then when we need to spend a whole bunch that's when you're is there some threshold that you that we reach um there's really no threshold other than it's just a combination of a lot of different projects so as we start to spend spend it down over the three years we're better able to align it with what we're with the spending with with the borrowing so there's not really a threshold with it it's more just so we don't have to borrow a bunch of money up front and then not spend it as quickly as we had originally thought we would thank you and i do want to notice also i would appreciate the inclusion of lube capital and the the the effort to ensure significant minority participation in the financing work thank you for that any questions any other questions colleagues on this item thank you i will now move to our last poll item which is item 33 this item is contract st 317 c utility locate services and i cannot remember who pulled this item but i bet you it's council member reese that would be me yes ma'am yes sir go for it hi miss johnson how are you today good afternoon um can you tell me this isn't the first one of these contracts we've done is it no sir it is not okay is this uh um is this a new vendor to perform this service for us uh or is this additional utility locate services in addition to some other contract that already exists so good afternoon to everyone tasha johnson public works assistant director this is the same vendor that we've used previously we re-advertise the contract with new funds allocated last or this current fiscal year f y 21 and um this is the third i believe contract that we've done professional services for locating so we must like this vendor okay since we're re-upping with them again there are not a lot of vendors in the market that have been on this work fair enough um do we think that utility locate services are going okay in Durham right now and i ask because uh within the last couple years we've had a couple of pretty spectacular incidents in which certain utilities were not uh or somehow uh not identified and and gas breaches have occurred um and i just when i saw utility locate on the agenda i really wanted to find out are we switching vendors for some reason number one the number two kind of get your sense of if you think that service is going okay right now this particular contract in the city itself is responsible for locating the city's utilities so that's water sewer and storm water um and so in that regard i think we're doing okay but other utilities are responsible for locating their own infrastructure that's the piece that i forgot that's exactly right thank you uh miss johnson i appreciate that i didn't have any other questions this is i've got you here from public works let me just say that i'm really excited about that septic sewer pilot program um it's the kind of program that is never going to get a lot of press but i think it can make a huge difference in improving water quality um and the the dollar cost isn't that extreme the more homes we can get on sewer and off of septic the better our water quality will be and i just want to thank you uh in your department for being for being so innovative to get that off the ground i look forward to seeing the results of that so that's all i had thank you miss johnson thank you thank you thank you miss johnson i really like your background and uh councilmember riece thank you for those questions um we have three items uh that are presentation items items 28 item 30 and item 38 that would be uh items item 28 is the third quarter financial report item 30 is development agreement with Lambert development hunt street llc and item 38 is the radar triangle commuter rail study update i'm going to ask the manager uh madam manager i will go through these as their numbered unless you have any reason to want to um prioritize any of them for this present for this afternoon mr may i did not receive information from staff that would take them out of the order on the agenda so i suggest we go with the order in the agenda thank you madam manager so that means we'll begin with item 28 which is the fy 2021 third quarter financial report and um i see mr boyd here with us welcome mr boyd thank you good afternoon again david boyd finance director um i'll be joined with by uh by john allore if there are questions that i cannot answer and we'll go through the results through the third quarter starting first with the general fund where i think that the takeaway here is general fund is is um doing better than we had expected when we came into the year and better than what we had told you after the second quarter i think that if you take nothing else away from from today that that's the that's the message next slide please and then just looking at at departmental spending you can see um all the departments in good shape if you go to the next slide please you can see the the biggest positive variance is is as you might expect in parts and rec obviously the the most impacted by the pandemic and uh so many services and programs that just didn't happen this year next slide please and then you can see looking at it expenditures in the general fund different way again the biggest amount of savings on the personnel side overall we're projecting total personnel uh total i'm sorry uh spending in the general fund to be under budget by just over five million dollars next slide and that's what i had just told you next slide on the on the revenue side again um going into fiscal year 21 lots of uncertainty um i want to make sure we were conservative but the um uh potential for uh lower collection rates on property tax does not seem to have materialized so we've got positive expectations on on collections there by the end of the year and then most markedly on the sales tax side spending did did not um did not fall off as we thought perhaps what happened uh a ten million dollar projected positive variance on on the revenue side and then you know on the negative side uh not surprising occupancy tax and then charges for services many of those again on the parks and rec programmatic side so um a ten and a half million dollar positive variance on on revenues combine that with a half a million or a five million dollar positive variance on spending total 15 million dollar positive variance compared to budget um for the general fund next slide property taxes as i said there was some thought that perhaps collection rates would decline we have not seen that next slide and again sales taxes uh far above where we um had ever hoped they might be going into the the pandemic next slide is a recap of what i just went over and then the next slide kind of just shows you that overall this time compared to this time last year we have more total revenue collected this year than we did last year at this time next slide uh fund balance for the general fund compared to our our policy requirements um current projections are that will be 23.6 million dollars uh above our 16.7 target level that number is about seven million dollars higher than uh when you saw these numbers in the second quarter questions on the on the general fund before i move on to the enterprise funds colleagues i can't see all of you all on my screen so i'll just wait till the end mayor okay thank you mr boy sorry uh enterprise funds starting first with the water and sewer fund um operating revenues rate revenues from customers is tracking right along as projected um we did not um budget you know a a a covid decline in um water revenues um and we're tracking very close to to budget um the so on the revenue side we're we're looking looking good next slide on the spending side of uh water the biggest variance there is related to to debt service and that has a bit to do with what we just talked about on what what will be the the city's largest ever single bond issuance um is uh is that we had projected perhaps taking out that line of credit that that ban in this fiscal year and because that won't actually happen until fiscal year 22 you'll all be approving it this year but we won't be closing on until fiscal year 22 we've got a positive variance on the on the debt service on the expenditure side which is where most of the savings budgetary is coming from in the water and sewer fund pardon me uh next slide is a recap of of the the charts we just went over on the next slide in one of those areas that's not going well and it's not you know improving is uh transit it's not getting any any worse it's just related to the suspension of fares compared to the the expectation that we would have fair revenue this year offset a bit by um the uh the large influx of federal dollars that that we got this year but then again offset by a reduction in state grant dollars that that we're not getting this year and then if you switch over to the uh to the spending side you know we're not uh really projecting to to save any money because we've gone forward with um some spending on a fleet replacement that had been deferred and that's where a bulk uh much of that uh that grant money went this year was to replace our aging fleet some of those shiny new electric buses that that you all have have seen this year that that's part of that effort next slide uh and the next one after that solid waste has been operationally affected by the pandemic with the transportation being closed for a number of months we've got lower operating revenues and then next slide on on the spending side the folks out there have had to deal with you know shuffling personnel and trying to deal with a limited number of people in trucks and running extra routes and those types of things as resulted in us probably spending more in overtime than we otherwise would have in dealing with personnel costs so slight negative budget variance in solid waste fund but but not nearly as bad as it might have been next slide is a is a recap of of the solid waste fund moving on to the parking fund which has probably you know been the most impacted by just a complete drop-off in in parking demand not improving more than three million dollar negative implications on our our revenues on the spending side you know we have been able to spend save some money on on operations because of that but overall a 2.3 million dollar negative variance overall in the parking fund we may be able to use some of the new rescue plan money for revenue offsets in parking that's one of the things that's being evaluated as to whether or not that's viable or not um and then the last slide skip two there Diana is the last slide the other funds um obviously the ballpark and the d-pack operations have been significantly impacted i was able to get out and go to a baseball game last night hopefully some of you have been able to experience some degree of normalcy so i was i was there they're they're playing ball again but you know revenue sharing from both ballpark and d-pack you know non-existent due to the closures last year building is still continuing so the inspections revenues continue to to exceed um exceed what could have been and then the stormwater fund not really impacted by pandemic related things just based on on the way that those fees are collected that positive variance there has been considered in the keeping user rates low as we move forward that's my report happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you very much mr boy um i have one question and i'm sure my colleagues do as well um i am first of all what a what a what a uh relatively happy report the fact that our revenue has maintained itself is i think a big surprise to everybody and and now here in this next quarter report we see even more we're using and so our our um i'm trying to remember and you may it may be that i have to wait until our budget sessions next week but the the the fund balance surplus over the 16.7 percent is i believe is at 23 million dollars roughly there abouts but that's the expectation and um all right is that when we as when we were making the budget for next year and uh deciding upon uses of the fund balance was that the number we had in mind at the time uh john law is uh interim uh budget director yes that's correct so when you what what was proposed on monday was then using 10.4 million dollars of that available okay above the 16.7 threshold thank you thank you mr lord that's what i wanted to now appreciate it and then on the parking um i was a little confused about the parking revenue transit operations done sorry not parking transit operation funds revenue um this would be uh not sure the slide number there but um the of course the operating revenues were way down the uh taxes were yeah the grant revenue i'm trying to understand how the i thought that the that the grant revenue was going to end up giving us a positive variance here and i'm kind of confused about yes so so our conversation early in the year mr mayor was that that we had we had included that 12.2 million dollar cares grant revenue in there before we had actually included it in uh in the budget so there was a early reports had a you know a 12 million positive variance on on revenues solely attributed to that grant so so during uh during the year we brought forward a budget amendment to include that revenue so now you're not seeing a a variance there but that revenue is shown and will be collected so so that's that's why you you know you saw something confusing before we fixed it and and now you're recalling uh where it was before but now we corrected it so that that doesn't show this big 12 million dollar variance throughout the whole year all right thank you mr boy and uh just big congratulations to all of our departments and everybody for getting weathering this storm as well as we have colleagues questions for mr boyd or mr allure anyone all righty thank you very much we really appreciate the report uh it's it's i'm glad we where we are and i think if we to i don't know about you all i'd be curious to ask you in private but uh six or nine months ago i don't think any of us thought we'd be here and uh so good thing thank you thank you so much all right colleagues um we're now at item 30 for the next presentation um and i think i'll one second i'll get it together this is the development agreement with Lambert development hunt street uh two llc um miss perish are you here to introduce this item to us sir good afternoon mr mayors and council members i am robin piersh from the general services department of the state division our presentation will be given by ben koo and jeremy anderson representing the developer Lambert development and this time i'll turn the floor over to mr koo and mr anderson thank you miss piersh colleagues before we get started uh you you're we don't usually have these kinds of presentations but the manager you know from private developers but the manager given the nature of this and the fact that involves um it involves easements uh and and uh a essentially a deal with the city thought it would be wise for us to hear this at this point so i'm going to mr koon welcome we're glad to have you go ahead thank you very much uh mayor shul mayor pro tem fellow council members uh yes my name is ben koon and um i'm here on behalf of lambert development uh hunt street two llc uh and henry lambard um and together with me today um this jeremy anderson with the culture jewel firm here uh there in durham um we both worked with uh lambord development and and obviously uh the folks with the city of durham various stakeholders um parties with respect to uh the development agreement the proposed improvements regarding the development agreement um as well as the easements that are at issue in this matter um i would like to start i think today with just basic background information um on the project and the existing site conditions which some of you will know about and then move real quickly into the basic request before you in connection with development agreement uh and the easement agreements that are being requested so um we move forward with respect to the project location to give you a little bit of the sense of the surroundings apologies um it's uh the vega site um is at 214 hunt street um as uh it is the site of the former vega metals building located at the northwest corner of hunt street and rings of the avenue obviously on the north side of downtown dorm uh and located in the southeastern corner of the durham central park uh a property as you can see from the area here um there's several residential projects around uh the park area including foster on the park uh liberty warehouse in the brand and brand and being um a prior project by this developer uh lambord development and henry lambord that was built i believe to uh finished in two years ago or so two or three years ago and is now fully occupied um and so um the durham the vega vega metal site is about a six point six acre property uh can the the old building you see there the form former vega metals building has been demolished um and uh back in about well last year um and so right now it's a a vacant lot it is currently i believe in the process of remediation with respect to it's brownfield property so um the property is is being cleaned up and uh being uh prepared to be utilized for future development which you'll see here in a moment and so it's obvious from the area with this um the development team is is that's included of course is lambord development you have mha works they're doing the architect work uh cj cj2 cjt doing civil engineering and landscaping and our general contractor is resolute building company um so that's part of our development team and so if we move forward on the slides um so that's basic background on just the site and what's around it we'll get into a little bit more discussion on that later um this is the basic easement request that you have before you in the next two slides um uh the building as you'll see is outlined shaded in gray and then there are two easements shown here that are needed these are primarily for construction of the building um one is the area shaded in red there's two areas shaded in red um those are approximately eight and a half feet wide um by looks like I think it's about 140 to 150 feet long about 2160 square feet total that are needed for fire separation building separation maintenance purposes for the side of the building that's to be constructed on the vega metals property um the other the blue shaded area is the temporary construction easements that will be required for the period of time that the building is being constructed and obviously the temporary construction easement once construction is over would terminate the cease um then the second set of easements are the easement requests that are required for uh the improvements to the park that the developer will be undertaking in consistent with the terms of the development agreement you'll see along rigsby going in a vertical fashion um the area where the skate park improvements the temporary construction easements are going to be needed for the skate park improvements and then to the west on the western side is the area that's being known or referred to as the overlook area um that's required for various improve improvements that are going to be known as the overlook area which you'll see in a moment so um uh that's where those are the basic elements of the easement you'll see some of the existing conditions of the property here on this slide um you'll see in the middle it is an area just uh to the west of rigsby along that sidewalk where you have a denuded area of an old of the slope uh that goes down towards the skate park um uh that is obviously it is not a condition that hopefully we would want um the the improvements will include that you see the existing Durham Central Park stormwater devices um there's two of them one there uh scm one stormwater control measure one and storm the area of the other one is stormwater control measure two near the overlook area um all of those areas are going to be improved with developer improvements that will be made to the park um and so um the overlook area will also incorporate a formal access uh ADA accessible access uh from hunt street into the park as well um the next slide yes and so uh you see here um the area of the of the existing skate park showing rigsby and the denuded slope existing conditions you see um that there is really no area of refuge of comfort there is a bench there what looks like there's two people sitting there um and and an area that that otherwise it could could could be better bell landscaped and and hardscape which is what the improvements will bring to this area and will also provide some respite and resting areas for people so those are the easements in general um the proposed development that is um would be located on the vagametal site is a seven-story mixed-use building it has two stories of parking tucked into a gentle slope in the property together with some retail and office space um it would have uh 57 residential units approximately 5,672 square feet of commercial space uh something the retail would face the park and hunt street um has plenty of parking for the users of of of the kind of many buildings as well as some retail and the office space space that's also in the building we anticipate an 18 month construction timeline we expect and hope to start construction in june um this development green is one of the last elements we need to put in place to be able to get our permits finalized and to proceed and break ground with with respect to construction of the project but also immediately with construction of the skate park improvements and uh and some of the other improvements to the park um this is again as i said a brownfield redevelopment project uh being administered by the north county department of environmental quality to make sure that the environmental hazards that were present on the site are cleaned up uh in a way that's required pursuant to uh dener regulations uh we estimate that there's 450 construction jobs uh that will be created by this project and obviously once it's completed there will be a substantial increase in the tax base uh by the improvements uh on the property but also we believe um community improvements to the park we believe the substantial prove community improvements to the park in terms of aesthetic value um rest and respite areas um other ways to activate park uses and otherwise we have talked with our general contractor resolute who was indicated they have a 10 to 15 percent uh mbe participation commitment with respect to construction jobs with their projects um next slide please and if if there's anything that comes up while i'm making my presentation please don't hesitate to interject and and ask any questions if you'd like to direct any of the conversation to any concerns or issues that raise um this next slide comments to the end of your of your presentation mr. thank you um the next slide gets into some of the more particulars of the location and and and the design elements of both the overlook area as well as the skate park um you'll see to the left the overlook is on the western side of the building and on the north side portion that faces the park and the stormwater facility um those uh design elements are a result of design charrettes with uh Durham Central Park and Durham Parks and recreation uh there were meetings with stakeholders in that area that included obviously folks with the city of Raleigh uh pardon me city of Durham apologize for that um general services the attorney's office um uh we've worked with people there rob and perish of course uh donna tool stacy poston and others with the city of Durham uh we worked with the general services office uh drp and others um we've worked and activated the community with respect to the this project including uh the neighborhoods and residents uh park patrons um Durham Central Park Inc who has been involved in the design charrettes and we've worked closely with representatives for the skateboard community uh who are active obviously users of this skate park which is the only skate park in the city of Durham uh park system i believe um so we've done everything well we we we think reasonably we could to try to activate people um take input in terms of the design that that they felt was going to be helpful for the way they use the park and for ways that we can improve the park property so that it makes them more inviting not just people who um will be will be living nearby but also people who will be coming to the city or living around in the community and be able to access the parks through the better access that's being provided by some of the park improvements that we're making um next slide please so um as i mentioned we we we felt it was very important to initiate this with a collaborative approach and uh i know Jeremy was involved uh early on in this process which started two years ago in engaging the community in 2018 in fact where the development team held meetings and discussed with stakeholders these various um these various elements of the park improvements um Durham Central Park uh and an appointed task force uh the Durham Parks and Recreation Department General Services, skate park users, neighbors and adjacent property owners um so we we felt like we we got really good impact um we were able to tweak some of the design in ways that we think make it a better uh better um project for the park but but also for the developer as well in terms of uh in terms of just basically um blending into the park to the extent we possibly can which is what our goal is to do um the site plan has been approved uh we received a variance that was approved by the Board of Adjustment um and so we have gone through the administrative process of getting the various approvals and so we're seeking the the request for the approval of the various easements um that are at that are that are have been shown to you which we think are fairly um fairly uh uh minimal easements with respect to literally a eight and a half foot uh sliver of property uh Durham property uh park property that's adjacent to certain portions of the building um these park improvements um are ones that have been deemed to be consistent with the unified development ordinance and they're consistent with uh the dcp master plan uh it completes two of the 13 dcp master plan elements so uh we believe we're we're we're plugging policies that policy makers have viewed as important and critical for this park and we're plugging them right into this project and into this development agreement um there are various the um the benefits of the uh we can go to the benefits and the financial benefits slide uh that we have which i think is important to lay out the develop the value of the developer offers to the city include a housing fund donation of a thousand dollars per unit for the for the property which will be fifty seven thousand dollars to the city's housing fund uh housing fund affordable housing fund the developer is undertaking at its expense the cost of the skate park improvements which is approximately sixty seven thousand dollars together in addition with the cost of the overlook area improvements which is approximately hundred thousand dollars um and we are paying for stormwater facility usage on the park property during design and construction and with the interest from funds that are being escrowed by the developer into the city's uh escrow counts uh we estimate that approximately 24 thousand dollars of interest with a crew which is being uh uh allocated to the city which comes up to a value total value gross value offered to the city uh pursuant to this development grade approximately 295 thousand dollars um the value of the easements that the city is providing um there's the three easements basically uh the the the five two fire separation easements and the various temporary construction easements based on um appraisal information that we provided to the city and the city used uh city staff used to evaluate the value of the easements came up with a value of 145 thousand dollars in change which when you net that out there's a net value of um of of financial gain benefit to the city of approximately 150 thousand dollars which we think is uh is is is a good benefit to the city um not only uh financially but with respect to the improvements to the park um the value um for the uh skating community that's going to be realized um the additional tax base and uh and the jobs that are going to be created and the additional community that's going to be created around the park property which we think is obviously um there's people if you look at the uh first slide that we presented there's obviously a very strong community around the park and that's what this is helping we believe to continue to build on and uh for that we um we uh obviously would answer any questions you have or any information that you would like to further consider um the issues that are before you on this and um i will stop and take your questions thank you very much thank you mr kuhn and if uh the slideshow could come down that would be great thank you uh jared martinson uh has signed up to speak on this item uh mr martinson are you available to be heard mr americ this is jeremy anderson with cjt he's he's the architect with the development team and he was here just to answer any questions got you thank you mr anderson thank you all right um i'll start with a question uh thank you for your presentation mr kuhn and we appreciate the offers that you've made to um to support the improvement of the storm order as well as the skate park uh and they are certainly have value what are what are the one of the what will the um will these be apartments or condominiums you probably told me i can't remember they're going to be 57 uh condominiums yes right what will the sales price be for these condominiums uh i believe they will be going for north of uh 600 000 dollars okay um the this is not a rezoning we have no um we don't have to be concerned about uh our this is a business deal um where the city is has interest here that we are uh and you all have interests you want the easements and we're essentially selling them to you um and so i'll just say for myself that having thought about this a lot and especially here in the value of those condominiums i'll just say that the formal housing contribution is uh significantly under what i think would be acceptable um i have i have a number in mind that i do think is acceptable um i don't think i don't i think a thousand dollars a unit on a 600 000 unit um is uh way too little and uh and so i think that what seems fair to me uh would be approximately five thousand dollars a unit so that would be uh i guess a 285 000 profit of the affordable housing fund um i think that would be much much much more in line with what i think uh is is fair uh in this situation so i just put that out there i appreciate that we're willing to to discuss that um and i you know i i'm i'm happy to talk to Henry Lambert about that and and how we respond to that um i i think i would point out that you know it's um other projects have and i understand that this is a business deal and and we're we're willing to uh work with the city and and on this um is this something that we can get back to you in the next couple of days and discuss yeah of course we're we're not voting on this until uh 10 days from now um sure and so of course uh you know that i'm just i'm i'm putting out what to me uh seems like a a a uh that's a bottom line for me i'll just say that other questions colleagues and comments cal's maryse thank you mr mayor just wanted to point out it's actually two and a half weeks we had an extra week in between this work session or in our next monday yes thank you um uh mr keen thank you for your presentation i have a couple of questions about the temporary easements but my biggest question is about the permanent easements i guess the gentlest way i can ask this is why in the world did you design this building to need more land than you bought what why are you coming to us for this i don't i don't i just don't understand that help help me figure out why we're having the conversation about you needing more land to build the support these condos than you bought on this property well i i i generally if you want to help out look on on that issue but the building itself is located on the property um and there's simply building code requirements that require buildings to be separated it's as if you would be building another five-story building on the city park property at this location and the you know my sense is that's not part of the park development plan um so it's nearly proper area that is reserved for for not to be developed we're not putting any part of of the the building that's being developed on park property we're in fact building improvements on the park property that are value value to the city it's not any part of the building that's going on to the park property at all yeah i got that i can read the map i appreciate that um the the question though is did this will get sprung on you after you designed the building you're like oh my gosh we built to the edge of this property now we need another eight feet we got to go by this easement or was this kind of the plan all along was to build up to the property line and then know that you're going to come to the city and ask for eight feet of our property permanently and i'll address that a few if you want me to take that Jeremy Anderson with CJT thanks councilman reach for the question it's the the fire separation easement is as ben said a building code issue in order to have glazing um and glazing that would be something um you know aesthetic to the side of the building both both both portions where we have that um easement requirement we need assurance that there wouldn't be a building built within 10 feet or essentially we couldn't have any glazing on that side of the building so you either request and it's not we at we request to the same on foster on the park i can't recall if the Brandon did but in order to have residential units and that ground floor commercial with the amount of glazing that is uh tribute to a building like this you need to have an assurance put in place that there couldn't be anything built within 10 feet so you either have the the 10 foot separation to to get the glazing or you end up with a building facade that has no windows on it and Jeremy correct me if i'm wrong the site plan was was submitted and reviewed by the city and approved by the city correct that's correct with the applicable setbacks for the city of Durham correct that's correct not really any setbacks i mean i think councilman rishu you understand downtown development is encourage encourages to maximize the parcel so to set back 10 feet from either corner um actually makes it tough to meet some of the the downtown design guidelines but um it's i don't want to speak out of turn i know foster on the park had the same no-build easement off the side of their park uh or side of their building that had faces the park you know yes so it does you know obviously there's a value to that easement because the city could not build a building within that eight foot zone but let's hope there's never a building built there and the park remains and becomes a you know remains a park forever so that's why the ask is is is what it is just to be clear advocating that another building be built next to yours i'm just trying to understand how we got to this point i still i'm not clear why the building couldn't have been designed to meet the building code without coming to us for an easement but the good news is you did that so thanks um and we're gonna um we're gonna work on on the as the mayor said the business deal side of this i just was wondering what that's about i still don't get it i don't need to that's fine i'm just i'm not a building designer developer i'm just a politician um the the wetland uh temporary easements on the wetlands and notice that at least one of them on the maybe the one on the west side indicates that that will be rebuilt wetland to oh no the one on the north is to be rebuilt correct um does that mean that the that the temporary construction easement is gonna make it is it's gonna do something bad to it that has to be rebuilt or is it or does rebuilt mean um rebuilt from its current condition it right now there is a i'll say it's it's uh it's an under maintained and really not functioning um level spreader there that does treat some of the skate park um it's really not functioning today but it is still there and there's some water that goes through it um it is being rebuilt because with the additional impervious surface we're adding to the skate park area between the skate park and rigsby additional impervious it creates additional strong water to go to that device so it's being rebuilt to be bigger and actually uh treat more storm water so uh because the additional additional impervious we're adding to the skate park we need to increase that facility it could not function as it is today what about the one on the west what's gonna isn't that where like isn't that where the creek is there's a there's actually a a device between this project and the overlook improvements and the creek there is a wetland well not really wetland i think it's a bioretention area down there there's very minimal work i think maybe we're raising a uh an outlet structure or a pipe a little higher but that facility will remain okay and are you gonna put like construction materials on top of it while you're building building it no it's it's in the temporary construction using only because we had to get down there and um to increase a riser but the plants and all the material will actually stay so it's a little the temporary construction usement is uh bigger and better than it really looks like it is going to be there yeah yeah that that's that's the piece i was missing that that's actually really really helpful thank you um that's all that's all i have right now i appreciate your time thank you mr mayor thank you council member other questions or comments colleagues council member freeman thank you mr mayor uh and thank you for the presentation i definitely i don't know that i've been in a development meeting before so this is probably my first in the three years and so i i did have a few questions uh do you own the property already yes okay and i appreciate council member risa's question because it also added another question um to my list in and acknowledging that the so what you're you're talking about going up 10 stories the 10 stories is already essentially by right it's a it's a five-story residential building with two stories of parking tucked underneath um so it's not it's not 10 stories uh it is what we have shown and and the site plan is i believe by right is that jeremy is that correct jeremy that's correct yes so five stories and two stories underneath by right correct okay and then um the the the skate park side i think i remember this coming forward and the folks at the skate park being upset about this being built i think that was some of the conversation in community but uh just noting that is there any conversation or anything that's included in the uh the developer agreement that acknowledges that this is a kind of a very youth centered area and so the folks won't be buying 600 up 600 and up condominiums and then thinking that they should call the police to tell the kids to stop playing in the skate park it's it's it's very clearly um noted on the plans of the skate park being directly next to it it's being marketed as being uh directly next to an active urban park and we think that adds value um and we think there are people that want to buy directly next to an active urban park and evidence of that is is folks at at the other communities that are located around and surrounding the park people do want to be next to and in direct proximity to an urban park and there's a good market for that and we think that um that uh you know there there are obviously people that use the park and make various uses of it and we think people that want to live there will welcome that that's what we're marketing for and then i just have a question for staff really around uh assessing whether or not the space should remain open versus built i'm not sure who exactly that would be directed to okay misperish i was just wondering so what is the what is the like criteria look like when you're making the decision on a development plan um like this where you might consider uh actually buying them out and um continuing to to expand our open space availability before we answer misperish let me just ask uh i believe um there's a matter of public record so um maybe what was the price of that land mr kuhn um i don't have that information right in front of me mr mayor i'll be glad to get it for you i believe it was at the time it was sold it was the most expensive land ever sold in Durham yeah so i'm always saying that councilmember frame because i'm pretty sure we couldn't afford to to buy that yeah but i'd love that yeah but coming to councilmember freeman and and misperish do you have any any uh and i can i can give a little bit more precursor on this i'm concerned that we you know we still don't have open space staff and um i know we've been having this conversation a little bit but just acknowledging that these are the types of projects that are going to come forth with the most expensive piece of land in Durham being purchased and then um we move forward with development agreements um at a thousand dollars a unit for affordable housing or five thousand dollars a unit for affordable house and no one can't build it for five thousand but these i'm just trying to figure out how staff is making an assessment in this independent of council i'm interjected what one issue let's hear from mr ferguson thank you mr ferguson thank you mayor bo ferguson deputy city manager i just wanted to to frame the issue for council that uh these discussions with the council are rare but they come forward when a developer requests a certain property transaction to make their development happen the analysis we bring you is just that it is it is an analysis of a real estate transaction we attempt to verify the values we attempt to assess the impacts to our property and we attempt to lay that before the council for you to make a decision i would not want staff to represent that we have made a detailed analysis of keeping this as open space versus using it versus the private development moving forward i think really that that lies in the purview of the council so the information we're presenting today is an analysis of this transaction it is not necessarily a recommendation for or against the transaction but in an attempt to assess the fairness of the value that's been laid forward and as has been represented to to vet the proposed improvements to the park to ensure that they are consistent with the policies that dorm central park and our relationship with dorm central park has brought forward over time so i would i would say we don't have the answer to councilmember freeman's question we have not done an analysis of this as open space uh because it is not our property thank you thank you and i acknowledge it i think they're i'm not sure how much of that area is actually cityland i noted the dorm central park is a private non-profit and so i'm just acknowledging that this this area has a lot of open space in the central dorm area and yeah we're giving up we're giving up more more open space for this development so just note on that i i um one councilmember just just one one thing um that and i think mr. dawson may have been uh coming on to comment uh mr. dawson can you comment on the ownership of dorm central park tom dawson assistant director for dorm parks and recreation the park is publicly owned we have a lease with dorm central park incorporated to manage the park and manage the farmers market they've been involved with the negotiations as has um uh the um the skaters and uh dpr throughout the two two or three year process so all of central park is owned by the city of darn and we could expand all of central park if we could manage to purchase the most expensive strip of land purchased in there and um this conversation is about negotiating for eight feet at a thousand dollars uh per affordable housing unit and i forgot how much for schools i think i didn't see that actually on there but i i will note that the the the numbers are really low and um it's interesting so i'll leave it at that let my colleagues cover thank you councilmember mr. koon did you want to comment i mean we're willing to continue that dialogue and and and we'll discuss that i i absolutely i understand the issue i will point out um i this is a formal metal fabricating site it it it's contaminated um so i mean it's it's obviously Durham city of Durham probably has other contaminated product properties but this is a contaminated property and this this is to make it an active part of the tax base again and that's what this project was proposed to do and um and and that's what our client um proposes to do uh and and we'll address the issues i understand i understand your concerns and i appreciate those and we're going to be talking with those and get back to you very shortly thank you mr koon colleagues other questions or comments mayor pro tem johnson thank you mr mayor um i had a similar concern around people who are moving into this area having a sense of what the area is like before they move in based on some of the previous um issues that we had with the park and the folks that lived at the liberty warehouse apartments um and in my previous conversations was assured that the marketing would include information about the park the activities in the park so that people who are moving here know the kind of neighborhood that they're moving into but i just want to reiterate that we you know we all like what's happening at Durham central park we like that there's a lot of people there we like that it's noisy we want it to be that kind of community gathering space where everyone feels welcome and so as we're as we're continuing to build up the areas around the park i just think it's really important to reiterate our vision for downtown that is inclusive um and that we you know that that we expect that folks are coming to live in downtown because they value that as well um and not folks who are going to uh be concerned about things that might be happening in the park we are excited about kids skating and drum course practicing and and cipher's happening and all the cool stuff that that happens in our downtown and we want to protect that and keep that um and keep that energy as we as we continue to build um to build these developments and i think you know it's concerning when you've got people buying a really expensive piece of property which is you know um i they're making an investment um and we just want them to make we just want them to know the kind of investment that they're making and the neighborhood that they're moving into so appreciate any of y'all's efforts to proactively communicate um with your clients and potential buyers that um that the park is is how we like it and we hope they like it too um i think the i just wanted to say um i think this deal so i i do agree with the mayor i would love to see a a stroke or contribution to the affordable housing i was trying to remember the um the deal that we negotiated with the foster i believe and i think this one's better i'm not sure i'd have to go back and check but i feel better about it so i feel like it's better i would rather um sorry Jeremy do you know the information on the on the foster i i could probably pull it up pretty quickly i believe it was a hundred thousand it was a lot more of units though so i think per unit it was less of a contribution but it was uh maybe overall a larger dollar amount okay good to know um i was also thinking back to the developer exchange we did for the property over on the the future um loop trail where we traded a section of parking um and the staff had essentially negotiated like an even trade that the value was coming to the city was the same as the value that was going to the developer i of course from my position like a deal where more is going to the city than is going to the developer and i think that is the kind of deals that i think those are the kind of deals that we should be negotiating um we on behalf of our residents and also because we honestly all need us more than we need you so i think this is a this is a good a good deal for us for the people of the city and that i want to um just communicate to our staff that i appreciate this negotiation that we that we've managed to get more value than we are putting into this deal um unlike the the previous one and i with love for us to keep doing that whenever we have the opportunity these deals are you know unlike a rezoning and some some of the other um ways in which we interact with development that are highly regulated by state law and restrict have lots of restrictions on what we can do and what we can ask for these are opportunities for us to really maximize the potential public benefits of of these development agreements and i want to um appreciate our staff for moving us in that direction thank you and i would like to do that on behalf of the developer too we had a very positive experience working with all of your staff it was um it was that they were very helpful in in working out some of the issues and it was a good process that's great to hear thank you thank you mayor pro tem and council member freeline thank you uh i've appreciated to hear the discussion i just had a kind of a question you know if this is a business transaction and we're negotiating for uh resources to kind of sweeten the kitty for the city which i like that um as well mayor pro tem i'm curious to what like walking away from the table looks like i mean what if we said no what what uh do we have a clear could someone explain to me in clear terms in case i missed it what would happen if we said no we wouldn't correct me if i'm wrong jeremy would we wouldn't be able to build that building for which a site plan was approved by the city and for which the board of adjustment approved variances and i thought that's correct man i mean that's that's the kind of the the cold heart truth about it it would probably end up being redesigned to be a building that would be smaller um to councilman risa's point maybe pull back 10 feet from each property line so we don't need a no-build easement um probably not need any easements and which case would need to ask for any you know um you know just to be frank about it the the the outlook the overlook improvements and escape park improvements i mean they're a they're an exchange for the easements so we could possibly just redesign the building to be smaller and 100 by right but that's not what what the developer wants to do both from you know building a project that he wants as well as improving the park and the the the appearance around the site in his project so thank you yeah i'm not suggesting that as a desirable outcome i'm just hoping to understand what uh what that would look like and i mean i i think i would i would presume that that means less density well yeah definitely less density um and maybe even more expensive than 600k for a smaller number of units um so anyway i'm just as i think about pros and cons here because a lot of you know a lot of what's done here is by right you're really just talking about eight feet um if there was a significant contribution uh on the proffer side in addition to what you're already offering i mean i see that as as the better outcome than the alternative so you know in case anybody's scratching their heads about how they're going to vote today that that that's what's informing my vote is that um this is a better outcome so thank you councilmember i see miss poston is here and may have some comments and then we'll get to councilmember cabillero miss poston uh you're not available to be heard yet i apologize mayor uh says he posted in general services department just a point of clarification on the site plan the site plan well approved does include language that is contingent upon the uh the securing of these easements uh by council's approval so just point of clarification thank you very much thank you very much miss poston councilmember cabillero yeah i just wanted to provide a little bit of historic context because i was on the central park board as a city council liaison when this piece of property first came on i know councilmember felon is the liaison now and council former councilmember allston was there for a minute as well and there was discussion on the city purchasing this land and it was just way with you know way beyond our reach uh at the time so to councilmember freeman's point it wasn't that that wasn't thought through or you know discussed it was just something that we couldn't find the resources for uh additionally you know i appreciate my colleagues leaning in a little bit more on the affordable housing uh donation i think that that's absolutely the right way to go and then one thing that i do want to make clear is that there was robust outreach to the to the skater community and i want to appreciate um tom dawson from parks and rec around that he has done deep engagement with that community for several years um and i do want to emphasize what the mayor pro tem said it's not just the skate park hunt street has constant vending food trucks in front of it um and so it is it is a high trafficked piece of property uh so to really let folks know that they're moving into an urban core and not the suburbs is something that we really need to emphasize to folks there have been plenty of battles around this in Durham and um we want a vibrant community if folks want the quiet idyllic suburbs there are other options than moving into the downtown area thank you council member council member freeline thank you uh mr moore um have you originally both of you mentioning that makes me think about a potential for kind of collaboration um i don't know maybe it's something we could talk about more at a later date but i think um you know advertising something as urban has clearly has not been sufficient to prevent folks uh paying these exorbitant prices for a downtown condo from calling the cops on kids uh when they're making noise in the park and so i wonder if there's an opportunity for some you know i don't know some political education for your residents around um you know just what being a good neighbor is about um i don't know i'm just kind of thinking dreaming but it would be that would be an interesting avenue for collaboration with the city um and particularly now in a post george floyd you know americas people are beginning to understand the relationship between you know calling the cops on somebody for a noise violation as a as an extension of violence systemic violence uh against usually you know people of color kids youth um that's a that's an act of violence and maybe there's some stuff we could do on the city side around kind of noise ordinance and maybe with safety and wellness we could think about who we deploy to address those types of complaints um to reduce harm but anyway uh i would i would love if y'all would be open to i don't know including that in your informational packet you know like i don't think there's any i think that's a good idea i mean if you if you have literature on those types of things if it's something um um you know i'll talk to the client about it for sure i mean i'm i'm not the marketing director so i don't do that but i would definitely keep that dialogue open i'm and and um we want to have people to be happy living here because that's what we're selling so that's that's part of what we're doing in terms of our marketing to make sure they do understand and they have to understand i mean it where it is where it is it's in a it's a dense urban active environment and that's um that's what you should expect which is noise and sound and trains and horns and the like this is what i live next to i live 125 feet from the center of a freight corridor so i understand it you have to you have to understand they're going to be freight lines and people going by your house and anything else so it's it's it's something and i love it there's lots of people to love it great well thank you for indulging that little brainstorm i know we have a long meeting so i'm going to give the mic back to you mr mayor thank you thank you council member that all these are valuable comments i appreciate them and the comments colleagues or questions at this time mr kone mr anerson thank you for being with us we appreciate you um thank you very much for your time and attention and consideration we really appreciate it we'll definitely touch mayor yes thank you very much and i i do want to say again you know um we're offering these rezoning situations where we have zero leverage uh on things like affordable housing but we're not in that situation now um and i just will say again i i think that for a six hundred thousand dollar condo five thousand dollar per unit contribution to our affordable housing fund makes a lot of sense it seems quite proportional mr anerson's right you know we we at foster on the park i think it's called foster on the park um you know it was less and it was substantially less but also things have changed in downtown Durham the prices of these units are going up and um i think that this is a is a good opportunity to reflect that reality but yeah so i appreciate your being with us thank you so much thank you very much thank you for the work that you all have done thank you all right uh colleagues uh we have a final uh item uh and uh that's item 38 and this is the community rail report but before we do that uh we're going to take a five minute break um and uh we will be back at 330 we'll be back at 330 we're all going to go and get a snack so um well i'll be back at 330 and so i remind you to please uh mute your mute your uh mute your microphone all right colleagues i hope everybody has had a refreshing snack and it's now 330 and we're going to continue our agenda and we're going to now hear a report on the greater triangle community rail uh update and i'll turn it over to the folks from God Triangle thank you mayor shul good afternoon um uh mayor madam pretend and members of council my name is jay hikas senior transportation planner with good triangle i'm also joined on the call today by elise billen from our consulting team who will deliver an update on our first phase of public engagement let's see i'm also running the slides and we have to multitask this feasibility study um is this is a feasibility study we are early in the life of a major capital project set some context that's represented in the graphic below um the goal of this study is that your triangle on behalf of locally and regionally adopted transit plans as well as our county partners and nbo partners provide information about the viability of the rail project to the community and elected officials in coordination with the transit plan updates to help reach a decision on whether or not to proceed with the rail project and if so how when and at what cost share among local state and federal partners the triangle is the project sponsor we are coordinating the study among these partners that you see here as mentioned this includes the metropolitan planning organizations ncdot north carolina railroad um in the counties of course so what are we talking about large regional transit capital projects um the triangle continues to add new jobs and be a popular place to move um even during the pandemic and as we recover from the pandemic um during county alone is projected to grow by over 100 000 people in the next 25 years the larger three county region will add more than 600 000 people um and again it's not just about the new people coming um the benefits and costs of this growth um are felt by everyone and they're not equitably distributed among the people who live here now and this is particularly true for people who do not have a car and it's especially when it comes to jobs and job access over the next 20 years two out of every three jobs in the larger triangle region will be located in wake county and it's essential to provide transit that connects Durham residents to opportunities for career advancement and good paying jobs both in Durham and across the region across the region there are over 40 000 households where there are more workers than vehicles and that's just today and that number probably grows into the future um and this includes households with no vehicle access but it also includes households where there is only one vehicle um but multiple people with jobs um and in those families um folks have to and households folks have to find a way um to share that vehicle or align another way of getting around and today as you can see from these maps this is from a 2019 report that the Metropolitan Planning Organization released um job access without a car is a challenge um these jobs show how many jobs that someone can get these maps show how many jobs someone can get to using a car compared to using transit um and these maps are at different scales red means more jobs um green means relatively fewer jobs um and on average um someone with access to a car can get to about five times the number of job opportunities as can someone without a car um and the way these jobs are laid out um reflects where the jobs are in the region um the ways maps are laid out um and that means it's probably a factor of the fact that we have a large region um jobs are in greater RTP Northwest Wake County um as well as Raleigh um and our transit network does not today does not do a good job of connecting folks um outside of the downtowns um to these job centers I'd say this is not a new challenge we know that our region is large um and this is one of the reasons why we why the region and the voters approved a transit investment a transit plan to invest in transit access to destinations within Durham as well as destinations within the larger region including a rail project connecting Durham and Wake counties and this map shows those regional transit connections across the region I'm envisioned and currently adopted county transit plans at a high level the overarching objective of these plans is to identify transit investments to build a cohesive network that meets the needs of transit riders employee employers and the community as a whole both to destinations within each county and across the larger region so on behalf of and in coordination with the transit plan updates we are studying an initial rail service between Durham and Garner with a possible inclusion of service out to Clayton um it's a primarily be service um during peak periods for about four hours in the afternoon and in the evening service every 30 minutes um as well as some trips um in the midday and evening um for a total of 20 round trips per day and this compares to about 18 round trips per day on the Durham Raleigh express service today the study includes um five stops in Durham those are in West Durham near Duke and VA medical centers Durham station East Durham near Austin Avenue Ellis Road and RTP in each of these cases we are looking at ways in which the bus network as well as our bike and pedestrian network provides access to these stations and in particular the station at RTP would be co-located with a new regional transit center allowing convenient multimodal last mile connections whether they be micro transit or shared ride or bus connections or bike connections up to destinations in and around RTP such as Hub RTP in places like the Apple campus and RDU airport as mentioned the study builds on previous studies and from those previous studies we've learned a number of things that we are looking to validate and get more precision on as we continue this study and the first is that there'll be more than 10,000 trips by 2040 today we have about 2200 bus riders in that order among those bus riders 42% do not have access to the car 44% are from in-households earning less than $25,000 and 67% of those 2200 riders are non-white in terms of the travel time we're looking at about 45 minutes to 50 minutes from Durham to Raleigh and that represents a significant time savings over the current express bus today and even larger time savings over the routes that are not expressed the capital cost is about $1.8 billion for that shorter segment from Durham to Clayton that is a year of expenditure dollars so if the dollar to build the project was spent in 2028 the dollars inflated out to that year the higher cost 2.1 billion is the cost of including service to Clayton operating cost is similar that's reflected in base year dollars 2019 that's 29 million dollars for the shorter service 37 million for a longer service both the assumption that that's sort of it that all the trains are going to Clayton and I'd add this this is an estimate that is based on other peer railroad systems it is all inclusive cost for operating it includes staff includes fuel includes maintenance it also includes things such as the cost of liability insurance as well as any access payments to the railroad that occur on an annual basis so that's that's what we know now what are we working on now to under better understand the viability of this project excuse me there are three main components of the analysis on the first is the analysis that focuses on service on the infrastructure that's needed to support it and as well as some of the technical work that also supports it and the second is the opportunity analysis and it's made up of several component parts you see here on the screen that is primarily being led by Triangle J council of governments and then the third major piece is engagement both with the members of the public and organizations and focus groups as well as engagement with our stakeholders such as local governments and railroads and I'll go into some more detail on each of these in a few more slides so one of the primary tasks that's a part of that first bucket of work the rail analysis is the downtown Durham engineering analysis and this is we're undertaking this now to help us understand how new tracks and station platforms can be added to downtown Durham and how that will affect things like the current street crossings traffic and utilities and in around downtown from previous efforts we know that these issues are incredibly important to many in Durham and from a project viability perspective it is essential to understand how these challenges will be solved early as a part of this study prior to a decision to move forward with implementing a rail project this work is well underway there the existing conditions such as environmental screening and surveys as well as existing and base year conditions for traffic model have been completed we have initiated and continue to meet about monthly with the city county npo ncdnt and north carolina railroad to review and obtain concurrence on the technical materials as this study progresses go triangles entered into a reimbursement agreement with the city the city has procured a consultant believe it's kimmy horn to help support their review of some of these technical materials that are produced as part of this process and we're also continuing to develop the concepts that would show how we would add tracks and other rail infrastructure in coordination with these technical stakeholders including city staff and as these concepts are developed and their impacts are better understood we will share them with downtown stakeholders in the community as a whole as a part of a future phase of public engagement we really want folks to have a good understanding of what the impacts and how rail infrastructure could be added in downtown before we reach a decision point at the end of the study the second component of the study work is this opportunity analysis that's being led by the triangle j council of governments the first report which is nearing completion is an analysis of affordable housing along the rail line this report identifies how many legally binding affordability restricted or lr homes as well as naturally occurring affordable homes are located near rail stations um this slide that i have shown on the screen is focused on those legally binding affordable homes and as you can see a significant portion of those homes about 37 percent are within about a mile of the rail quarter and even more or a short bike or bus ride away tj cog is also looking at planned affordable homes through the investments planned by the city county Durham housing authority and including those funded by the housing fund the number of affordable homes near stations in Durham will nearly double over the next 10 years tj cog is also working on an access analysis primarily looking at connecting neighborhoods and communities to jobs which will help understand how rail will benefit various communities around the region and this map shows how it would provide those connections the first map there on the left shows disadvantaged neighborhoods using a regional metric so you see homes that have relatively low incomes lower vehicle access are non-white and also in purple there you see have large concentrations of affordable homes on the right side you see where those job acts this job major job centers are within the region as report is still ongoing and we hope to have more to share about this soon and the last piece so that third element particularly stakeholder engagement is the last one I want to touch on before I turn it over to the leaves to talk about our public engagement let's see so this project were to move forward federal transit administration would require the go triangle as a project sponsor must identify third party agreements and commit to a plan and schedule for executing those agreements as a part of project development which would be the next step should decision be made to move this project forward giving the importance to this project of identifying and addressing critical project success success factors the length of time involved and lessons learned from previous projects your triangle has developed a plan to ensure that progress is being made with respect to railroad engagement and coordination as a part of this study which is ahead of when fta would otherwise require it so our railroad stakeholder coordination plan is a safeguard to ensure that his technical work progresses and deliverables are completed that agreements with railroad partners are also simultaneously progressing the goal is to continue to incrementally reach points of agreement and then progressively build on those points the first point was the memorandum of understanding that memorializes the party's understanding understanding with respect to ongoing and future partnership on this specific study let's see and as of last week the triangle ncdot north carolina railroad railroad and north folk southern railroad have all signed and entered into an agreement for rail network modeling and acknowledging the route and also by acknowledging the railroads position on indemnity and liability requirements pertaining to the implementation of rail service and at the conclusion of the study the triangle intends to seek another mou or similar agreement to clarify the parties including the railroads understanding of all major issues affecting rail implementation and how those issues will be addressed should this project move forward so to wrap up our technical update here at the end of the study the goal is to achieve regional consensus on the following elements the project concept which is the components that make up the project the cost share among all the partners community support of the project as well as support from railroads local governments and third parties the study outcome would be a decision point to undertake engineering final engineering and construction including the fta new starts and you go process with that i'll turn it over to Elise to talk about our public engagement thanks jay and thank you mr mayor mayor pro tem and council members for your time and attention um the public engagement piece of this commuter rail study consists of three rounds the first round was completed in fall of 2020 with the goals primarily of raising awareness about the project and the study and to obtain public feedback and also as jay spoke about coordinating regionally with our regional stakeholders and partners the primary piece of this public engagement round was a large public survey that was offered online and in paper form for people to fill out we saw large numbers of participation and lots of enthusiasm about participating in the survey there were 5600 survey views 2700 unique participants who participated interacted in some way with our survey and you can see the enthusiasm that we really had at the beginning especially we had 500 participants within just the first three days of putting the survey out there all this participation led to nearly 5000 project related comments those comments were in the form of open-ended comments that we included on the survey so we got to hear perspectives from a lot of different people and a lot of different ways next slide please so a topmost goal for this survey and this outreach effort was our equity and inclusion toward that goal go triangle put forward their maximizing participation initiative through which they spent a lot of time utilizing community partnerships to reach populations who are historically underrepresented in the transit planning process with groups such as advanced community health Meals on Wheels of Durham and the North Carolina Society for Hispanic Professionals to partner with us for getting that survey out into the public one of the very creative I think kind of pivots especially during the time of COVID that the go triangle team did was they worked with advanced community health to give out information about the survey to give out brochures about the study at a COVID testing site in Durham which I thought was really creative way to reach people in a time when we're not always we were reaching people in person very often the survey was also made accessible in a variety of non-English languages to sort of bridge that gap due to this initiative 203 unique participants were reached directly and it resulted in 399 or 8% of our project related comments in the survey a variety of efforts were undertaken again since during our our year plus of COVID so a combination of both in person CDC compliant outreach efforts and virtual efforts were undertaken to reach the public for for this outreach effort in particular there were pop-up survey centers placed at Durham station and at the village in Durham to to reach transit riders next slide please and a variety of both kind of modern innovative outreach methods and in addition to traditional paper survey distribution brochures on buses all that kind of stuff a variety of methods and materials were used to be able to get out into the public and encourage participation in our survey next slide please we did see a lot of engagement through our social media outreach through the go forward website there was a feature on the project placed on a spectacular magazine and one of the things that we saw was that the average time spent on the web page for the rail project was three minutes and 38 seconds which you know in this time of clicking around very quickly and scrolling we actually thought that was a pretty good amount of engagement that people were spending thinking about and learning about this project next slide please okay so we had one of the things that we had in our survey was really good kind of participation in people providing us with their demographic information and this slide gives us sort of a snapshot of who we heard from and we're going to be talking about that in some more detail in the upcoming slides so this slide gives you the breakdown of the the race and ethnicity of our survey participants and also gives you the kind of the raw numbers of folks who participated a lot of surveys see very much lower numbers than this one did so we wanted to highlight that we saw in across our categories we saw pretty robust numbers of participants next slide please so importantly how does the participation from the survey mirror the actual breakdown of racial and ethnic makeup of the community so this slide shows you the corridor counties which is Wake Durham and Johnston counties combined and how they combine two census data and our next slide let's us see Durham County specifically and Durham County survey participants and we can see where we where we reached where we see maybe gaps that need to be addressed in future outreach efforts next slide please this slide gives you kind of just same that same information well as you see our total survey population our corridor survey population which again is Durham Wake and Johnston County is combined and then shows you Durham Wake and Johnston County is separated out one thing that you can notice that in Durham County we did have a more diverse participant universe than in the other counties next slide please this slide gives you an idea of the income bracket breakdown that we had among our survey participants and also how it compares to census data next slide please this slide gives us kind of just a bird's eye view of inner triangle area where were our participants coming from you can see that Durham had great participation there particularly South Durham next slide please Wake County give us the highest percentage of participants which makes sense but Durham had nothing to be shy about with the 25 percent of participation in our survey Durham was the highest municipality in terms of participation with 608 participants in our survey next slide and this slide just gives you a little more of a zoomed in look at what zip codes the Durham participants were coming from so in terms of what we heard from our participants in the survey the major takeaways that we heard were that in terms of benefits that people saw coming from commuter rail people saw commuter rail as reducing congestion in the triangle generally as having environmental benefits versus driving individual cars people expected commuter rail to decrease or improve their commute and we saw a lot of comments about bringing the triangle up to sort of modern metropolitan standards people pointing to peer cities and other areas that they would like to see the triangle compare more favorably to in terms of transit offerings and we saw also a lot of comments about commuter rail helping to bring sort of a sense of connectivity throughout the triangle uh where we did hear concerns we heard that people were concerned about project cost and funding allocation um there were concerns about the effectiveness of commuter rail to serve the transit needs of the community um there were concerns about the inclusivity about commuter rail about whether it would serve only kind of nine to five commuters um in certain income brackets um there were concerns about equitability um and whether all geographic areas were being served by the project um and then uh sort of the more uh physical project impacts um right of way noise that kind of thing next slide please um so these are i'm going to jump into the questions that were actually asked on the survey and then we'll kind of see what what people said um the first question was what would you like in a commuter rail that connects Durham and Wake counties and what we saw was that people want in commuter rail the same thing they want in all kinds of transit they want reliability they want a schedule that works for them they want frequency they want affordability those are kind of the the top um the graphic that you're seeing here is these are the the topics that came up most frequently in the the comments that people made and the comment at the bottom um is the the most um upvoted comment that people were able to see uh other uh participants comments and uh indicate if they agreed with it so this is the one that got the most um kind of upvotes um and that comment was pretty pretty succinct frequency reliability accessibility and affordability next slide please so our second question was what do you see commuter rail doing for your community um the effect on congestion was number one among what people people said um second to that people talked a lot about um benefits to the environment um people also talked a lot about um connectivity in the area um i'm sorry this yeah um on that question we uh are also able to look at um because of the way the question was worded it gives us a chance to say are people saying that they're seeing positive things coming from commuter rail they are they seeing negative things are they seeing the outcome of commuter rail to be a positive or a negative so this is one of the things we looked at overwhelmingly we found that people um answered this question in a positive light um so in our overall survey universe um the positive question uh positive responses were 87 percent um with 10 negative um if we sort of filter out that data and then look take a closer look at who's sitting what if we're looking at um the minority or non-white population um that positivity rate actually went up to 90 percent if we look specifically at the city of Durham and we um and further uh filter down to uh lower income bracket of less than $50,000 a year um we're still at 90 percent positivity rate um if we're looking uh at Durham city non-white population it's an 89 percent positivity rate so overall very positive next slide please um this light just gives you an idea of when we did have negative comments what were people talking about and when we did have positive comments what were people talking about one thing I would point out that is that um you can see the the brawn numbers of the comments are are much lower in the negative um than they are in the positive but nonetheless we wanted to point out what are people talking about when they're pointing out negatives versus positives um so project cost was was number one when people were seeing negatives with um the commuter rail project um and and like we talked about congestion, environment, connectivity were the top things in the positive comments next slide please and the third and final question at the end of this study local leaders will decide whether to move forward with the proposed commuter rail train what else should they be excuse me what else should they be considering to make that decision um project cost was top of mind for people equity was also very important um growth as in population growth in the triangle and how that's being handled and the effect on the environment those were sort of the the things that bubbled to the top in terms of what what everybody was talking about um and the course of excuse me the comment that um was most upvoted voted 150 people said they agreed with it or uh they agreed with this comment um was we need to catch up with other regional metropolitan areas like charlie and atlanta to stay relevant for industries and businesses considering relocating to the mid atlantic or southeast us mass transit will be the way of the future and if not now then when um so there was a lot of sentiment like that um next steps uh the public involvement group at go triangle um conducted focus groups which allowed them to focus in on um certain groups that they might not have heard as much from in the survey and to kind of further investigate themes that were raised within the survey um so looking at people's understanding of the project looking at um costs and affordability um what does that mean to them to be for the project to be um for for a trip on the train to be an affordable trip on the train for them um about completing those first mile last mile connections for people and their service needs um uh we have our two um upcoming public comment periods um in the summer and coming up in the fall um in which uh we're going to have ongoing education and outreach um to uh to keep up the uh the flow of information um uh about the project and make sure we're continuing to to have um in public input coming in uh so with that at j and i are happy to answer any questions about um the project um or our public outreach thank you very much mr hikes and miss belan have i got your name right miss belan right can you take down the slides please thank you well good job you had 30 minutes allocated and you did it exactly my kind of presentation um colleagues uh questions and comments for our friends here from go triangle council member freeman and then council member reese thank you mr mayer i was just going to know i really appreciate the presentation and just know i feel like i shared some feedback previously and i feel like a lot of it's been incorporated and i just wanted to say thank you thank you council member council member reese thank you mr mayor i just want to thank the folks from go triangle um and their consulting partner for what i think is probably the best presentation i've seen about the community rail project and i've seen a ton of them so um so great work in getting a lot of information out i did have a couple of questions um i didn't notice anything about talking about the specific agreement between go triangle and north southern railroad has that agreement been finalized there'll be a number of agreements with the railroads the first of which is that agreement for rail what's called rail network modeling um and that has been signed great um and did that um did that include the requirement that um that north and so north and southern being demnified for their own gross negligence and willfulness conduct i am not a legal expert so i'm not going to take a stab at that but i'll be happy to get that question back to you get an answer back to you on that okay what i can say is is that there was a apart from the specifics of what was agreed to it was a less of an agreement and more understanding of railroads position is okay great well our legal team go back to you and possibly correct me on what i just said but that is my layman's non-lawyer understanding of it awesome um i think the short version is the railroad has been insisting that uh the that they be indemnified for all sorts of things that could happen along their track in connection with this project including the railroads own gross negligence and willfulness conduct which is obviously a huge problem uh because without their their agreement there's there's not any possibility of building this project um so they they have the project of a barrel they understand that and they're extracting this um this really severe form of indemnification as as one of their prices and i just think that's something we gotta we gotta be aware of and understand that's because that's something we're all going to be in the hook for if bad things happen um but i wanted to talk a little bit about the ridership estimates for this project i if i if i read it correctly um they showed growth from about 2,200 current trips to something in the neighborhood of 10,000 trips uh in 2040 is that directionally correct so i i didn't show you um base year ridership trips those 2,200 are the number of transit users on bus services that parallel the hikers we're having the 700 hikers sorry is that again we're having a little trouble hearing you and you're apparently having a little trouble hearing me so yeah let me let me try that again can you can you'll hear me yeah better okay perfect i'll i'll stand closer to the microphone here um so the the 10,000 is that 2040 estimate um the 2200 is the number of current transit riders on those bus routes that are operating and stopping in the crt corridor today so that's a pretty big increase um and i guess i'm a little bit concerned about that those projections just because you know we've just gone through an experience with the pandemic where a lot of employers are taking a second look at remote work um and i wonder if there's any um any if there's going to be additional refinement of those estimates in light of some of the trends we're going to be seeing uh post-covid 19 yes there there absolutely will be um one of the things that fta requires you to do is have an up-to-date um on-board origin destination survey that was previously scheduled for the region this past fall but that has been delayed as fta um is determining the guidance how it conduct that study going forward great um do you do we know what the fair is expected to be for this commuterial project so the fair for this project has not yet been set um what i can say is is that um similar peer systems have a that have been implemented have a fair premium over the local bus um so in this case local bus being go Durham go Raleigh which go Durham um previously was one dollar go Raleigh was previously approved to be 150 um but the recent peer systems have a fair premium somewhere between zero about three dollars per trip more expensive than the local bus um our region has relatively low ends at fairs um so i would expect us to be um probably in the lower to mid-range of that fair premium however that's a that's a decision that um remembers good triangle board members would make i'm assuming you heard that mr mayor you did i listened to everything you say council member all your questions awesome um i guess i just want to put a pin in that because fairs seem to be really important for this project for a bunch of different reasons but especially because the folks who have concerns about it uh pursue it to the to the engagement work the fantastic engagement work that you did on this one of their concerns is that this project would not serve those who need uh transit service the most and to the extent that we expect the fair to be something well in excess of the current fair for the go trans go triangle bus system um it puts this service out of reach for many writers so i hope that that the project is thinking about how to mitigate those impacts obviously the service needs fairs to to survive and to thrive totally understand that but that's one of the reasons i think why folks are concerned about it um is because um because of that that equity piece to it it's going to be hard for those folks to afford that level of service especially when and i think i read this slide right it looks to me as though you're projecting somewhere between 15 and 30 minute um transit improvement over current service like the like the travel times will be reduced by about 15 to 30 minutes it's not 100 clear to me that i see the value in that transaction for most folks um uh and so so that's another thing i hope that we'll keep in mind as we go forward um and more broadly as i've said about this project from the very beginning i think commuter rail is an important part of our regional transportation strategy i think commuter rail should be implemented the issue is the same issue that again the folks that you have talked to in your community engagement process have told you isn't is a critical concern to them and that is project cost and funding allocation which is the funding allocation between the jurisdictions that are jointly going to fund this project if it when it goes forward um and uh i will not beat the dead horse too much uh in this meeting but the central fact is the folks who use who will use who use go transit service now and will use the future commuter rail project look very different from the folks who use go-derm buses um and who rely on it as their sole means of transportation and that is that those are the folks those are the the transit systems that are competing for very limited dollars under the germ county transit plan i know i'm not telling y'all anything you don't know i just want to make sure that everybody who's watching this understand that these are the choices that we're going to have to make and for better or worse we as a city council aren't going to be the ones making them so this is our only chance to beat the drum um and hope that folks are listening and talking to their elected officials who do have an impact um and get to vote on the germ county transit plan uh to make sure that these issues are addressed so that's all i had to say about it but again this is probably this is 100 percent the best presentation i've seen on this it's a great job and appreciate all the work and look forward to seeing how that project develops going forward thank you mr mayor thank you council member other comments and questions colleagues i i have uh i have a couple uh one of the on the issue of fares and i appreciate council member race raising the issue of fairs is super important with fair capping with the same sort of fair capping uh be available on uh on the commuter rail that is and and and for that matter if we had uh bus rapid transit as is available on go try uh on on you know local bus service i would be a strong advocate from a staff perspective for integrating the crt figures um into our mr heikas i'm sorry i'm really i'm so sorry i'm so sorry um the answer is that's a decision that has not yet been made but i i think given the importance of building a cohesive network um that builds builds those local and regional connections i i would hope that we would make that decision and hope that our board would consider that paramount thank you um i think that a couple of the issues that council member race raise are so important and what i want to say about them both the indemnification and the well and i you all really raise the the issue of going through downtown durham and and i just am very appreciative of the fact that you're taking this on now and not not at the end and we've been there where it happened at the end and it can't happen at the end and so i just very much appreciate you taking on these threshold issues now and i think you're doing a really good job of that and i'm really i'm grateful um i will say uh you know the i think the most important uh piece of information in here me and we didn't see the nationally occurring of formal housing lease i didn't know that chart that's not on the chart is it that was not on the chart that i shared but that will included in the report that we're finalizing yeah good i mean to me that's what is you know a potential uh a real game changer here is if the you know we're going to have i think you know seven thousand units or something of of um of which the the uh this subsidized housing what we often call permanently subsidized housing and you all call l bar um the um that these are legally bonding affordable restricted units um i think that yeah well you know i think we'll have uh you know five six seven thousand of those units in this quarter and especially near downtown uh you know five or six years from now and to me that's a real that is an incredible asset for the for the commuter rail and i think one that's underappreciated when we do think about our ridership and what they need because i think they will be transit riders i do think the fair is an important issue there and i think faircapping is going to be critical okay those are my comments others colleagues questions uh mayor pertin thanks sari my hand keeps fading into the background um i'm wondering in terms of timeline like at what point do we commit to we're going to move forward with this um and i'm so so i can get a sense and get a sense from colleagues about like what information what parameters we would need to know by then to be like okay we are comfortable moving forward on this project sure and in terms of timeline we expect that this the study itself will be complete by the end of this calendar year after signing the agreement we understand from the railroads that they expect to move expeditiously through their work which is one of the main um drivers of timeline speak up mr hikers i'm sorry we expect that we'll be able to keep our schedule to the end of the year um and then following the completion of the study um we'll have a about a three month or so period of um regional decision making among um the the parties of the mo the counties the npo's municipalities the railroads as well as third party institutions um so that would be early 2022 thank you and is that when the cost-sharing negotiations you think will be completed we would not we yes they would be completed um in advance of making a decision to move forward with the project or it is go triangles recommendation that that be determined um prior to advancing additional phases of this project and what level of uh the engineering through downtown Durham or the design through downtown Durham uh or maybe maybe a better question is when do you think just to go along with mayor pro tem johnson's question when do you think that that engineering uh and design uh and kind of decision making around that because that's clearly a threshold issue as well i assume for going forward so is that in that same time frame early next year that is correct um we are hoping that we will have um public engagement um in our our next phase of public engagement which Elise mentioned will be um sometime during the summer um one of the drivers of that timeline is making sure we have information coming out of the technical study components that we're able to share with the public um the design of downtown Durham is a important piece of that um so we're hoping to at least have some preliminary information out there this summer um and then i believe we'd be about 10 design um by the end of the year for that downtown Durham segment great thank you other questions colleagues anything else Ms. Bieland and Mr. Huygens thank you so much i want to agree with what councilmember Reese said i think you're you're and it just makes sense your your information's better all the time you're doing a really good job of refining it your your your councilmember Freeman i think alluded to the outreach and i think you you know it's it's all it's all moving in a good direction and i think we're going to have our community is going to have a lot of information by which to make this decision uh and we're grateful to you for being here thank you so much and thanks for sticking with us through this meeting thank you thank you for having us yes thank you appreciate it all right colleagues uh that was our last item and we'll now move to our city clerk uh for a report on the appointments madam clerk good evening everybody i know this meeting's getting a little long so i'll try to um buzz through them the board's committee and commission appointments efficiently um first of all we have the citizen advisory committee council has nominated leave on barns dr monique holsey hyman and brian w langlis to be um reappointed on to the the cac and there are three seats that have been agreed to be re-advertised on that committee the Durham board of adjustment appointments ian kip and chad meadows have both been nominated for reappointment Durham open space and trails commission appointment this particular board the um position has been voted on to re-advertise that so there was no appointment or nomination made for that the Durham planning commission council has nominated erin m durkin and bruce n herrid to fill the two seats on that particular board the Durham sports commission appointment dan w hill the third who is reapplying has been nominated to fill that seat housing appeals board appointment um the position for at-large alternate elizabeth a houstead has been nominated to fill that seat the mayor's council for women appointments for the civil rights justice sector from kashimiya ramirez has been nominated for the public safety sector nana asante smith has also been nominated and both of those are reapplying so they're reappointments for the ward two seat ingrid poll has been nominated and finally for the ward three seats anita a daniels kenny has been nominated for appointment for the participatory budgeting steering committee appointment council has nominated gen fry and she's also reapplying so that it's a reappointment for the at-large category and then finally we have the human relations commission i skipped over that because it sounds like we need to do some discussion the appointment for residents to fill five vacancies on the human relations commission representing three african-american persons and two caucasian non-hispanic persons under the african-american persons um council was allotted three appointments and erin and karson is a reappointment c duane hint and darious j whitney whitney is a reappointment and that brings us to a fifth we do not max out over the 53 percent i think it's like 52.9 percent on the mail um allocation and then under caucasian non-hispanic persons council was instructed to choose two um christina l crossbeat is a reapplication as well as jeffrey r king is a reapplication and with all of the decisions of council for the nominations again we did not exceed the 53 percent thank you madam clerk um it sounds like we uh we did what we needed to um is there anything that we need to do now madam clerk i think i think all of our appointments wait there's nothing we need to take up at this time is there no there's that one position that is open for re-advertisement but everything else was decided on and um there was some emailing about the process if we put the news release information on the ballot i think that'll clarify um how many and which type persons can be selected so that we don't violate the bylaws of the 53 percent requirement all right thank you very much thanks to you also thanks to miss roland i know what a job this is to manage now we're very appreciative of you and miss roland thank you yes i want to um echo that because miss roland and ashley have been very hands-on when it comes to reading the bylaws understanding them making sure that all of the requirements are being met and um we've had some situations where um the the boards and committees want to do things outside their bylaws and we have to lay down the law so i know we don't make it all that easy for you either so thank you well i appreciate everyone's cooperation thank you good night good night madam manager are we ready to settle we uh are ready to settle but i did want to get direction from the council on item 30 uh we did ask the um developer who spoke to you today to bring some additional information and i need to know if the council would like that item on consent or gba gba please so for consent we have items one through 29 and items 31 through 37 gba we have item 30 and gba public hearings we have item 39 through 42 thank you madam manager colleagues you've heard the manager's recommendation to settle the agenda and i'll accept a motion for its approval second moved by council member freelon seconded by council member reese or vice versa madam clerk please call the roll mayor shul uh new pro ten johnson hi council member caballero hi council member freelon hi council member freeman council member reese hi thank you thank you so much everybody thank you madam manager great meeting a long meeting but a lot of good work thanks to you and to our whole staff and thanks to you colleagues i think we we did pretty well today um have we done it i believe we have awesome i think our next terms together will be the budget meetings next week and i very much look forward to that and uh i will declare this meeting adjourned at 4 24 p.m. thank you bye thanks everybody