 Good afternoon, everyone. I want to call this work session of the Durham City Council to order at one o'clock on Thursday afternoon, March the 18th 2021 and I certainly want to welcome everyone here today. And I want to say that this is the first work session where our new city manager. Wanda Page will be at the helm and we are so so grateful for that. Madam clerk, will you call the roll your school here near pro 10 Johnson here and some member Caballero here and some member Freelon here and some member Freeman present member Middleton. I'm here. And some memories right here. Thank you. Thank you madam clerk colleagues will now proceed to announcements I have a couple of announcements. First of all, we witnessed in Atlanta. Yesterday, a horrific event in which eight women were killed six of them. Asian American women. And we can accept this in our society. We know how hard we work in Durham to include all people. We have one member of our council who is himself Asian American. We've witnessed in Durham targeted robberies of Chinese restaurants. And thankfully, our police chief chief Davis took very, very constructive and creative action to work with those restaurant owners to stop that targeting and to keep them safe. But I just don't want this meeting to go by. Without us taking a moment to reconfirm and reaffirm our belief that everyone is welcome in Durham, whoever you are, wherever you're from, whatever language we speak, whatever your race, religion. We embrace you. We love you and we want you and Durham will do everything we can to support our Asian community and our Asian American community. All right. I'm now going to move on to my second announcement, which is a much happier announcement, which is that this is transit workers. Appreciation week. This is the transit equity campaign has submitted a proclamation, and I believe that Miss Stella Adams is here to receive that is that correct madam clerk. Yes, Mr. Mayor, she is great. Miss Adams available to be seen and heard. I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, I need to be promoted to host. Okay. Thank you. Let's see who can promote the clerk to host. Do we know how that's going to happen madam clerk. There's a representative from TS online so I think they need to make that shift. All right. Is that Daniel. He's listed yes. Okay, Mr. Terry or whoever is here from TS if you could promote the clerk to host that would be great. There we go. Okay. Great. And is Miss Adams now available to be seen and heard. Miss Adams, can you talk to us? Can we talk? Can we hear you? Yes. Great. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Yes, we can. Thank you for being here. I'm going to read the proclamation and then we would welcome a few words from you, Miss Adams. Whereas March 18th is the anniversary of the date that horse drawn vehicles, the very first buses are believed to have debuted in Paris in 1662. And whereas during the COVID-19 pandemic, we were reminded how important the transit and paratransit employees are to the Durham community. As they continue to operate and maintain the bus and paratransit services for essential workers to get to the stores and businesses on which we all rely. And whereas the physical separation required to keep operators and riders safe on transit and paratransit vehicles also limited opportunities for riders to express gratitude for their service on the buses. And whereas in this time of social distancing is more important than ever to find ways to express our gratitude for the sacrifices that essential workers continue to make. Now, therefore, I, Stephen M. Schulmehr, the city of Durham, North Carolina, you're here by proclaim March 18, 2021 as public transit and paratransit employee appreciation day in Durham. And to hereby urge all residents to take note of this observance. Witness my hand this the 18th day of March, 2021. Thank you very much for that for the for submitting this very important proclamation, because today is the day we decided to do it now rather than a regular council meeting. And Ms. Adams we will welcome any comments that you might have. Thank you so much, Mayor Schull city council members and our new madam city manager. We're so proud of you. Thank you on behalf of the Durham transit equity campaign, and on behalf of the Durham Committee on the affairs of black people. We are so grateful to our transit and paratransit workers for all the sacrifices that they make every day for the people of Durham. These five citizens and employees of the city of Durham, and other transit programs, leave their homes every day, leave their families every day to come out and make sure that we the citizens of Durham can get to and from our places of business to from medical care to and from recreation. They are there for us. They get up, they sacrifice to make sure that we're there at five o'clock in the morning we have a bus to get on and ride. That means they're leaving their homes at 330 and four o'clock to make sure that we get there. They're there when the bus service ends, and they leave and get home at two and three in the morning we are so appreciative, and we are grateful to the city for acknowledging their sacrifice and acknowledging their work. We on behalf of there were over 100. Thank you notes that we were able to collect on behalf of riders and users of the services as a person who has had to use paratransit services to get from one appointment to another appointment. In a timely fashion, I am so personally grateful as well for their service and sacrifice. We thank you mayor and city council, and we think particularly our transit workers in our paratransit workers for all that you do. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here and thank you for those eloquent words that we all share those sentiments. We're so grateful for our transit and paratransit employees and I can't say it better than you did so thank you so very very much for being here today. Thank you. And one further announcement, another happy announcement, and that is that Rachel Rudy Boris, our in the clerk's office who works with us in the city council is the mother of a first daughter, Darcy. And we send Rachel and her family, our love and affection and congratulations. Understand the birth went well. And the mother is tired. All right, those are my announcements. And I'll now ask for other announcements by members of council council member Reese. Thank you, Mr Mayor good afternoon colleagues city staff and Durham residents who are watching over the internet. I wanted to mention that I get my two weeks after my second vaccination I'll be at Rachel's doorstep to hold that baby a couple of days ahead of the mayor pro Tim sorry about that Jillian's too bad for you. But no but I did, I was going to talk about transit worker appreciation week, but now we've done a whole proclamation and whatnot about it I don't have too much else to say except to add this that during the pandemic. These across the country have seen their transit ridership plummet as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Durham has not. As a result, our transit impaired transit employees have had to work in heroic fashion to meet the continued demand for transit services. Not only have we done that. But during this pandemic we have also expanded more frequent bus service along critical bus routes and launched the better bus campaign that over the next year will continue to expand bus service to the folks in Durham who needed the most so just can't say enough about how great our transit impaired transit employees have been over the last over the last year and and always so thank you Mr Mayor for that very important proclamation appreciate you taking the time to do that. The second announcement I wanted to make is to welcome our friends at Google who are making Durham one of five engineering hubs across the country that made that announcement. Early this morning, the plan is over some period of years to bring at least 1000 new jobs to the city of Durham. That's really exciting. But I think as we get excited about that announcement. I think all of us here at the city and across our entire community need to be on our game about how we make sure that the benefits from this new expanded partnership between Durham and Google are experienced by all of the people of this city. As soon as I heard the news I reached out to our city manager. I love saying that city manager want to page and talk to her briefly about our need to really make sure that our pipeline of these types of coding and engineering jobs that Google will be hiring is super charged as soon as possible with our partners at North Carolina Central Durham Tech American Underground and lots of other community organizations too many to name to make sure that that those jobs are accessible to the folks in Durham who need them the most. And also, while Google has said that they expect most of these hires to be locally which is great news. There will be folks who move here to take those jobs and as a result, there will be impacts on our already overheated real estate market. And so I just want to make sure that we all know that we are going to have to continue to focus like a laser beam on our worker and affordable housing, especially with our partners at the county on a tax assistance grant program for long time low income homeowners to make sure that they are not priced out of the market that they help build. Last thing I want to say about Google announcement is that I'm especially gratified that from what I have read and heard Google is not asking for state and local government economic incentives. That is a welcome change for reasons that I rant on incessantly every time we consider one of those packages. So glad that I won't have to do that now. And third and finally, Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for your recognition of the horrible events in Atlanta earlier this week. As you as you note, I am a member of the Asian American community. And by virtue of my Japanese heritage my mother and grandmother immigrated to this country from Japan. Last night, a statewide organization called North Carolina Asian Americans together, hosted a vigil in partnership with the UNC Asian American Center. At the vigil, folks shared their thoughts and feelings about what's happened both in Georgia this week, but also around the country. And it was great to see our own Durham County Commissioner Nidda alum speak as well as a state senator from Raleigh Jay Chaudhury about the impact on the Asian American community. I, I prepared something to read today that shared a bit of my personal experience being bullied when I was younger for being Asian American my fears for my mom and my grandma. But instead what I think I'm going to do is read a bit portion of the statement that North Carolina Asians together put out yesterday about what happened in Georgia. I think it's probably better to center those voices than my own experience and so with your permission just briefly I'm going to read a portion of this so that folks kind of have a little bit more context about what the Asian American and Pacific Islander community has been facing over the last year. So I'll do that now this is a statement from North Carolina Asian Americans together. With heavy hearts we recognize the violence facing facing Asian American communities including the most recent incident in Atlanta yesterday. What happened yesterday has really struck an emotional chord with all of us here at North Carolina Asian Americans together and as a community we witnessed and share in the collective grief of it grief and mourning during this time. Last night, eight people were murdered in massage parlors in Georgia, six of the victims were Asian. This is another tragedy on top of the anti Asian hate that has been mounting over the last year. When speaking to the rise of anti Asian violence during the pandemic it is impossible to ignore the harmful and inaccurate racialization of the coronavirus as Asian. Such racist discourse as espoused by the previous presidential administration links back to a much longer history. Dating back centuries, East Asians were lumped together as an existential danger to Western countries under the racist label yellow peril. And we also understand this violence in the broader context of Islamophobia and xenophobia as our government continues to attack and other eyes immigrant communities. People continue to be deported and caged, regardless of which party is in power in the United States. The most recent attack in Georgia speaks to the dual misogyny and racism that Asian women faced. Authorities have hesitated to call the Atlanta attacks a hate crime because the attackers seem to have other motivations like sexual addiction, that the attacker frequented those massage parlors. This ignores the long history of fetishization of Asian women and sexual violence against body workers. This phenomenon has been referred as yellow fever often ingest, but with real consequences of violence like human trafficking and the murders like we saw yesterday. These examples demonstrate some of the ways in which Asian anti Asian violence is ingrained in our society. This violence takes many forms what shows up in the form of interpersonal violence from casual jokes, harassments and shunning all the way up to murder is a symptom of a larger system of state violence built from white supremacy. We recognize white supremacy as not only individual acts from a few, but rather a larger system we all live under, which has other eyes people through rhetoric discrimination immigration policy, and denying equitable resources to address basic needs, like housing healthcare access food and safety for all communities in color of color. Our pain and trauma are being used as a wedge between communities in the form of the model minority. We are incorrectly and harmfully lumped together into a monolith effectively erasing our diversity and struggles. We refuse to be used as media fodder as a tool in the system. We recognize that all oppression. All oppression is connected that we are not alone and experience in this state sanctioned violence. Solidarity is the only way forward. We must recognize the connection between our communities and the violence we face each day in all its forms. We cannot break these cycles of oppression without addressing our histories and healing our generational traumas. We must stand together and put forth community solutions that do not perpetuate these cycles. I want to thank North Carolina Asian Americans together for that powerful statement. I want to thank my colleagues for your support over the last couple of days. And I want to thank you for your patience this afternoon as I read part of that statement. That's all I had today. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you for reading that statement. That was an incredibly powerful statement. I had not seen that and I am really just grateful for it. And so appreciative. And you do have our support and all of our Asian and Asian American residents in Durham have our support. Our unstinting support and solidarity. So thank you so much. Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's time to take a couple of announcements request for folks to appear at, or for items that future work sessions. So I've received a resolution in support of black maternal health awareness week from the mayor's Council for women. And I'd like to introduce that resolution at our next work session on April 8 for approval at the following council meeting. almost finalized and just waiting to hear back from the mayor's council members about a couple of edits that I proposed. And so I'm able to send that out via email in the next couple of days to everyone. And secondly, a few of our artists, resident artists have contacted me about creating a poet laureate position for the city of Durham. And would like to come to our work session on April 22nd to share their ideas and recommendations for that position. So I'd like to request based on those two agendas for those two items. Without objection, those both sound great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon friends and colleagues and all watching on the internet. The colleagues have touched on a number of things, maybe say for one thing that I wanted to make an announcement about today. So I'll touch on the thing that wasn't mentioned because this is germane to me. It wouldn't have been mentioned. It wouldn't have been mentioned because as I said, it's germane to me. This morning, first of all, let me brag on staff a little bit. I wanna brag on Amber Wade who has been doing an amazing job in her support of our Mayor's for Guaranteed Income Initiative here in Durham. Had opportunity this morning to hang out with some Tar Heels to speak to a class of a public policy students at UNC. Yeah, I know, public policies. It was court ordered, sir. Public policy students at UNC. So shout out to Professor Langford, Professor McKay over there for allowing us to come and address their students about the work we're doing around Guaranteed Income here in Durham. Amber was absolutely brilliant in her presentation and fielding questions. I was there for comic relief for the entire presentation. So I just want to thank her for the incredible work they're doing. Ryan is taking care of his baby and Ryan and Amber make me think of aviation. And the reason why I say that is because our modern jet aircraft are designed to fly on one engine. The 747 has four, but that big plane is designed to fly if necessary on one engine after you trim it out to make up for the loss of the other three. And although Ryan is taking care of his responsibilities as a dad, we have not missed a beat. Amber's engine is still carrying this aircraft forward. And I am excited that we've gotten a little more runway, so to speak, in terms of bringing the initiative to bear and I know Councillor Freelon, as he's been working on this as well, is excited that we've got a little more space to get our proposal in. So we're looking to October, 2021 to launch the initiative, which gives us time to still rally and caucus with potential philanthropic partners and feed the trees to raise more money and to fine tune what I think will be a centerpiece of the national case for guaranteed income as a national initiative, which is not surprising coming from Durham. So I wanna thank you, Mr. Mayor, again, for providing the on-ramp by providing your signature to the mayors for guaranteed income to indicate Durham's willingness to participate in this grand experiment, which I think will accrue a great deal of benefit to not only the folk that participate in the initial iteration of this initiative, but thousands of folks down the road. So just to update on that, I know Councillor Freelon is excited. I'm excited and just thank Amber again and Ryan, the work he's already done in the work he will do when he returns and for a great showing today at UNC. I too am excited about the announcement of Google coming to Durham and I've gotten a bunch of messages. I'm sure many of you have. And I thank Charlie for his clarion call to what we need to do to make sure that all of us participate in this windfall that's coming to our city. But it's a windfall that will continue to come to our city because as I've said, there are two dirms. There's the Durham that is indicated and characterized by announcements that we have gotten from Google, which are not new for us in Durham. And then there's the Durham that we read about that's plagued by gunfire, that's struggling to participate in the economic boom. And Mayor Shul, you speak about this often very eloquently. And what I just want to reiterate to my colleagues today and to those watching is that we know that this stuff is not going to stop happening to Durham. We are the start-up capital of the South. We've got incredible human capital here in Durham. We've got RTPs here. We know that Durham attracts these type of companies and these types of windfalls to our city. And we constantly speak of the aspiration of having folk participate in this windfall. But oftentimes by the time these announcements are made, unless we've been doing the work to get people ready to three, five years before, there's no way that by the time Google starts operations that we're going to have the people who we oftentimes talk about need these opportunities the most ready. So I'm asking that we again, recommit to realizing our shared economic prosperity plan to our initiatives that we, to some degree have funded already under the umbrella in Rubica, our shared economic prosperity plan to not just, you know, repeat the same statements we make when things like this happen that we need to get folk involved. But as again, as Councilor Reece says, they really get serious about this. So I'm calling on us to revisit and revitalize, get updates that we need as to where we are on our shared prosperity plan. So the next time these types of announcements come from companies like Google, we will truly have folk that are ready to take these positions. I, you know, I think I have a little different view on economic incentive plans on the parts of government. You know, we don't really have many levers that we can pull, or buttons that we can push as governments. The only thing we can do is throw money around. And oftentimes the ways we can get companies to come to the table to make concessions is to talk money packages. Other than, I mean, we, you know, we hope that companies are good corporate citizens and that they'll be possessed by, you know, philanthropy and love of community as part of their natural fiber. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the way we get companies to do what we want them to do is to offer economic stimulus plans to them. That is what governments do. That's one of the only levers we can pull or buttons we can push as a government. It ain't pretty, but it is what it is. And oftentimes that's how we get them to comply. So I am hopeful, I'm excited. We welcome Google, absolutely. Google will not be the last company to come to Durham, but this will not be the last time also we call on the ability to have folk who are struggling in our city to participate in these types of initiatives. If we do not double down and put some muscle behind our shared economic prosperity plan and all of the iterations and all the plans that come with it. So I'm asking that with our new administration, with our new city manager, perhaps we can get some focus and leadership when revisiting. I still would like to know what happened to the $300,000 that we allocated to stand up the not-for-profit that was supposed to guide us through these type of things and to get folk ready to participate when things like this happen in the city. So I'm excited about that. And with that said, but I also would like us to be intentional about putting some more muscle behind our shared economic prosperity plan. Happy Transit Worker Appreciation Week. It's a bit gratuitous. A Sunday evening, Councillor Freeman and I spoke with representatives in the People's Alliance. And one of the things that we talked about were the concerns of transit workers, particularly paratransit workers and specialized transit workers. So I'm glad to have the proclamation read today and to put a spotlight on the concerns of those folks who work in that industry. I've said time and time again, no city can truly consider itself great until it crosses that threshold where residents and citizens can negotiate that city without a car. That's one of the rights of passage to be being considered a truly great metropolis. You got to be able to reach everything in it without a car. So happy Transit Worker Appreciation Week. And I'm glad that we focused on that. Finally, thank you, Charlie, for reading that incredible statement. Thank you, Mayor, for lifting up the concerns of our Asian American brothers and sisters here in our community. I want to add just a word of solidarity. I mean, I come from a community that's certainly no stranger to being fetishized and abused and we stand with them. I know I speak for countless folk in the faith community and for the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People as well when we say we stand in full solidarity with our Asian brothers and sisters here in Durham. I hope that also that Mayor, thank you for talking about what we did. Our police department did in response to robberies and the claim that our Asian business folk here in Durham. But I hope that in addition to response that our manager will direct increased vigilance before anything happens around city. And I know that she will. And I know that we always do with things like this happen, whether it's synagogue shootings or church burnings, we always make sure that we increase our vigilance. And I certainly hope that that will be the case with businesses that are owned and run by Asian Durhamites today as well. We stand in solidarity. Our hearts go out to the victims. We stand in solidarity with your colleague, Mr. Mayor and our friend, Mayor Bottoms and to our colleagues in the Atlanta City Council as well to also want to associate myself fully with the comments of my colleague and if you turn any brother, Senator Warnock who in his maiden speech on the floor of the Senate today spoke very forcefully about the violence aimed at the Asian community and the disenfranchisement that's going on, attempts at disenfranchisement that's going on in Georgia as well. We stand in solidarity because that's what we do in Durham. May God bless our city. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, friends. Thank you very much, Council Member. Other announcements, colleagues? Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and colleagues. I can't say how in these moments it's so comforting to have colleagues who are focused on these types of issues and know what it means to be in this work. I think across the board, everyone's pulling their weight in really different ways. And I just wanted to note that it's heartbreaking to hear those accounts regarding the Asian community and then to just have all of what happened yesterday. It just echoes January 6th over again and it's just a constant reminder that when folks feel like their power's taken, the responses are often violent. And I just wanted to just note, I appreciate Council Member Middleton highlighting all the parts of pieces around how we're standing in solidarity, especially acknowledging many organizations across the city and the county that do this type of, the work to do, to work on being anti-racist specifically and acknowledging how all of our collective humanness is tied together. I'm overwhelmed, I'm sorry, with emotion on it. And I just wanna say to Council Member Reese, I really appreciate you reading that letter. It hit all the high notes of why it hurts so bad. I can't say enough about what it means to be othered in community and it's just not acceptable to Mayor Schulz's point. I really appreciate you pointing that out. I wanted to also just on a lighter note to just note how it's also important to celebrate acknowledging yesterday was St. Patrick's Day and many folks in the Irish community do use the opportunity to share on their heritage because there isn't an Irish history month. There isn't a Scottish history month or there isn't an Italian history month in the same way that there's a black history month. And so just acknowledging that when we look at each other's cultures, we can all see how our humanness is tied together in ways in which I look forward to encouraging. I do want to note that it is still women's history month and as the president of the Women and Municipal Government for the state of North Carolina, I have the honor of hosting a listening session and trying to figure out ways to support women in leadership in partnership with Reflect Us, a national organization focused on women in leadership. And that's not just in running for office, it's also in being on committees, boards, commissions across the state. And so I want to invite folks to pour in and be involved, especially women, for a listening session on March the 31st that will be hosted on Zoom. And if folks are interested, I will share out more information and ask you to just kind of pour in and send an email just to follow up because I would like to find ways to make sure that we have supporting partners in place and align as many of the resources up alongside of it. And so just making sure that that's known and shared it with my colleagues and I want to make sure I share it with the public. Along the same lines, I also want to make sure that I know with that Google Hub, I haven't had a chance to catch up with our Madam Mayor, I'm sorry, Madam Manager Wanda Page on how to align that Google Hub opportunity with some of our youth who are definitely in that engineering track, but I'm excited about what the summer looks like. And I will also note that as a former board chair for the access transportation for Durham County, I'm excited about the proclamation that was read. And so I appreciate today's announcements were all covered. All of my announces were all covered previously. So I just wanted to make sure I say thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. I didn't know you were the president of that council and I knew you were active, but that's great. Congratulations and thank you for representing Durham in that way, that's wonderful. All right, any further announcements? Okay, thank you all very much and we'll now move to priority items. First, Madam Manager, are there any priority items? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Durham City Council. I am pleased to greet you for the first time in work session as your new permanent city manager. I did not hear in the announcements information regarding potentially dangerous weather this afternoon. So I'd like to take a moment just to remind you all as well as the list in public to please be safe if inclement weather does come through this area later in the afternoon. I also have for you one agenda item, one priority agenda item and it is agenda item number 12. It is Equitable Community Engagement. We have planned a presentation. It is a supplemental item and it has been added to your agenda. That is all I have this afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Manager. Colleagues, you've heard the manager's priority items. Can I have a motion for their acceptance? Moved by Council Member Freelon, seconded by Council Member Freeman. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council Member Cadayero. Aye. Council Member Freelon. Aye. Council Member Freeman. Aye. Council Member Middleton. How about aye? It's member Ace. Aye. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Colleagues, we'll now hear from our city attorney, Madam Attorney, are there any priority items today? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Durham City Council. It's good to be with you all today. The Durham City Attorney's Office does not have any priority items at this time. Thank you, Madam Attorney. Thank you. Madam Clerk, any priority items today? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members. I do have some very good news. I wanted to recognize LaKeisha Griffin. She's our new staff person, the new administrative specialist in the mayor's suite, and Council Suite, and I'd like her to turn on her video. Has she done that? Yes, she has. Okay, I wanted to say a few words about her. LaKeisha has jumped into her position and has hit the ground running, and speaking of running, her favorite pastime is running in the parks with her black lab mix, Chappy, and she so far has been doing a wonderful job supporting primarily Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members Freeman and Middleton, and we're really pleased that she's joined the City Clerk's Office. So please welcome LaKeisha Griffin. Thank you so much, and Ms. Griffin, would you like to say a word? Sure, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, everyone. I'm excited to be here, part of the City of Durham. It's been a long time coming, trying to find a way to be involved in this community. So I recently left higher education at working in the university, so this is the next stop on my career way, and it's been a really good experience. Everyone's very supportive. So I'm excited to see what the rest of the year brings supporting everyone in the office. Ms. Griffin, thank you so much. We're so excited to have you with us. We really appreciate you. You'll find that the Council Members that you're working with are reasonably decent people. Seriously, glad to have you. It's great, and we'll go for a run after a while. Once we're all back together again. Thank you so much. Which is terrifying. As long as we keep it to one mile, I'm with you. But after that, it's just you and Mr. Mayor. That's it, that's all I got. We'll start a run club. That sounds good. Madam clerk, I believe you may have another item. I do, Mr. Mayor. I would like to request a discussion about the housing appeals board. They've discontinued their meetings last year due to the pandemic. And we've received a request from the board's leadership and their staff liaison faith gardener to extend the term of their board members by one year. And that is Council's decision and vote to extend the term. So if we could address that. And then one more housekeeping item. I've emailed the disclosure statement to council for 2020. This document is used by our auditors for the end of your reports. And so if you can take the time and complete your disclosures. And that's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much, Madam clerk. Council member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to make y'all aware that I guess about a month ago, I had a resident reach out to me to ask if the council would consider uploading our, each council member's most recent disclosure form that the clerk just mentioned up to the city website. And I had not really figured out procedurely how to have that conversation. But I just thought I'd throw it out there and let you know that that's something that someone asked me about. I think it sounds like a matter for the council procedures committee of which you are chair. So awesome. I'll take care of it, Mr. Mayor. Give us your best advice. Sounds great. Colleagues, you've heard the, you've heard the clerk's priority items and I'll accept a motion for their approval. So moved. Second. Moved by council member Freelon. Seconded by council member Freeman. Madam clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. Council member Caballero. Aye. Council member Freelon. Aye. Council member Freeman. Aye. Council member Middleton. Aye. Council member Barice. Aye. Thank you very much. Colleagues, Faith Gardner is here now. And Ms. Gardner, if you could make yourself, there you go, available to be heard. I wanted to go ahead and take this up at this point in the meeting, colleagues, because Ms. Gardner has other business to do. And she has, I asked her if she could work around that business to be with us this afternoon. And so I wanna go ahead and take up this item. I'm gonna try to summarize and then Ms. Gardner, you can add in and correct me if I'm wrong. But the housing appeal, so as you all know, many of our boards and commissions continue to meet throughout the year. The housing appeals board, I believe, has not met this year and has, I assume, a backlog of work to do and has asked that their terms be extended for a year. And I believe the department supports that, Ms. Gardner. And I believe you're the liaison from the department. I think that it comes to us because this is a decision that the council needs to make. So Ms. Gardner, would you please give us your thoughts on that and welcome. We're glad to see you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council members, for taking the time to make this consideration. The housing appeals board is a little bit unique in that it's a quasi-judicial board and the state statutes, the way that they're written for us to have virtual meetings, basically the owners of the properties that are being brought before the board would have to agree to the virtual meetings. And of course, the property owners are not inclined to do that because we're looking at actually working on their properties, the city actually doing the work on their properties. So the virtual meetings do not work for this particular board. So the board has only met briefly twice this sentence last February. Once we did set up a virtual meeting and it became clear that the board would not be effective in the virtual setting. And then we met again to approve the report that we sent to council in February. So the members, because they've basically not been able to perform their duties for the last year, the majority of the members would like to have their terms extended by a year so that they can participate. And as you said, Mayor Shul, we do have a backlog of cases. We're very hopeful that by May, we may be able to begin to meet again in person, assuming that we have plenty of folks who have been vaccinated, certainly by June. That is our hope. And so the members themselves have made this request. There are five regular members, three alternates and seven of those members have requested that extension. So if the council is amenable to that, they would be very grateful to be able to continue to serve. Ms. Gardner, thank you very much. Colleagues, I believe you all know, maybe the council member of Freeland is not. So just for his knowledge that Ms. Gardner is assistant director of neighborhood improvement services. All right, colleagues, I'll just say that, so this has come to us both from the housing appeals board and from the department of and neighborhood improvement services. I certainly support it, but would like to hear from you all or perhaps someone would just like to make a motion that we extend their term for another year. I'd like to make a motion that we extend your term for another year. Second. Do we need to suspend the rules? Yes, we do. Thank you. Would we suspend the rules? Second. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thanks for the reminder and the motion. There's a motion and thank you, second for council member Freeman, that we suspend the rules and vote on this item. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll? Madam Mayor Schuyl? Aye. Madam Mayor Pro Tem Johnson? Aye. Madam Member Caballero? Aye. Madam Member Freelon? Aye. Madam Member Freeman? Aye. Madam Member Middleton? Aye. Madam Member Reese? Aye. Thank you. I'd like to... Thank you very much. Madam, council member Freeman? I'd like to make a motion that we extend the appeals board another year. Second. Moved by council member Freeman. Second by council member Caballero. Madam clerk, will you please call the roll? Mr. Mayor, I have a discussion. I'm sorry. Go ahead, council member. I just want to... I'm wondering if the circumstances that necessitate this extension, I wonder if those circumstances are germane just to this particular body or could we be looking at this request from other boards who assert that because of COVID, they were unable to fully do their work for whatever reasons or the exigencies and circumstances of the housing appeals board, are they unique just to them or could we be looking at this with other boards? That's more of a question, just kind of an advisor as we move forward. I do have one answer to that, which is you all may remember that we heard from Dono Tool about the Board of Adjustments had a situation that was, they're quasi-judicial as well. So I think it's possible that other quasi-judicial boards could be in similar circumstances. All right. I think all of our other boards have been able to meet unless they had quasi-judicial work to do. Gotcha. Thank you. That's the extent of my inquiry. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We may or may not hear from them, but that's a good point. Any other discussion, colleagues? Mayor Schuhl, I was wondering if the motion could be worded such that that the members may extend their terms. I don't want to require someone who does not want to have to extend their term. Thank you. I'll ask Council Member Freeman if that's acceptable to her. That's completely acceptable. I don't want to force anyone to remain on. I think you'll call too. And Council Member Caballero. Thank you. All right, colleagues, any more discussion? You've heard the motion. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuhl. I. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. I. Council Member Trevon. I. Council Member Trevon. I. Council Member Freeman. I. Council Member Middleton. I will die. Council Member Reese. I. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it. The motion passes unanimously. Ms. Gardner. Ms. Gardner, thank you for being with us today. Thank you. We're going to see the other assistant director of the NIS later on in our meeting. So we're glad to see both of you all today. Thank you very much. All right. Colleagues will now move to the administrative consent items under the city clerk's office item one, approval of city council minutes. Thanks to the clerk for a lot of extra minutes with those budget retreats. Madam Clerk, thank you. Item two, Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission appointment under departmental items on services department. Item three, procurement card performance audit dated February, 2021. Item four, selection of the external auditor. Item five, budget management services department, FY 2021 budget development guidelines. I want to pull that item. Item six, finance department bid report. General services department, item seven, change order seven for chase construction services LLC for the city hall HVAC and electrical renovations project. Public works department, item eight. Yes. Just for I don't want to pull item seven. Just noting there's a typo and I just want to make sure that it's not additional zeros after the comma. OK. It's in the memo and it's in the summary. Thank you very much. Good catch. And I'm sure the staff will check that out. Thank you. Item eight, public works department, city code revisions for work conducted in the right of way. And Mr. May, I wanted to pull that item. OK. Item eight, item nine, contract amendment number two to contract ST 301C. Saving services 2020. Item 10, contract amendment number one to contract WS 86D, professional services for water and sewer extensions under solid waste management. Item 11, trigal region solid waste consortium memorandum of agreement. And under supplemental items, neighborhood improvement services department, item 12, equitable community engagement update. And this is the manager's priority item. And we will be hearing a presentation on this item. All right, colleagues, the items that we have pulled are items five and eight. And there's a presentation on item 12. I will begin with item five. And I pulled that item. This is the budget guidelines. Good afternoon. I'm Bertha Johnson, Director of Budget and Management Services. This is our budget development guidelines. We finalize those since we discussed at our last meeting. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Good to see you. I am interested in your thinking. I know it would be very early thinking about how the American Rescue Act funding, what process you all are thinking about going through for the American Rescue Act funding. I believe we're getting a little upwards of $25 million sometime soon and then a like amount in another year. In addition to that is, we don't know all the rules about that yet, but it's fairly flexible funding. In addition to funding for, that'll come through our Community Development Department for Housing Assistance as well as Transportation Department for Transportation Assistance. And I believe that's all, but there may be other funds I don't know of. I'm interested in the process you all are thinking about going through to figure out how we ought to be spending that money. And if you've done any preliminary thinking. Yes, Mayor. First, I just want to confirm the amounts in the timeline. We do expect to receive a little over $50 million. The first one half of that $50 million we expect to receive within the next 60 days. So by probably around May 11, the second half we will receive no earlier than 12 months after the first installment is received. And we have to apply for that second half. We have until December 2024 to spend the funds, which is a really distinction from the CARES funding because we had just a few months to spend those funds. So we have some time to plan. And because this is one time funding, we want to be careful about the planning because we have to think about the impact of our decision on future year's budgets. Once we get this money and it's gone, that's it. So it is a great opportunity. We enlarge some of funding the county expects to get about $63 million. It is very the general application, the $50 million. It can be used for economic development, tourism, regeneration, resident community support, capital infrastructure like broadband. We can use it for hazard payable employees. Transit, of course, as you alluded to, transit has its own direct allocation. It can be used for homelessness, housing, rental assistance. There are several other direct allocations that we are aware of. One allocation is the public transit allocation, which is about $33 million. Of that $33 million, based on my discussion with Sean Egan, they expect that Go Durham would get about $18 million of that. And that would be for the Durham Chapel Hill Carborrow Urbanized Area. And then community development expects to get around $708 million. And they're basing that on the previous allocation in the first round, which came through the CRF funding. There are other direct allocations that we are not aware exactly when those would be allocated in the exact process. But I'm excited about those other direct allocations because that gives us a better opportunity to leverage what we get in our general allocation. So there's a homeowner assistance allocation program to help with mortgage payments to reinstate mortgages. There's a water assistance grants program that will come to the state to help families with their water bill arrears. There's a small business allocation that's a program to allocate $10,000 to eligible small businesses. There is also a specific allocation for restaurants. The Small Business Administration is gonna set up a program called Restaurant Revitalization Fund. And restaurants can actually get up to a maximum of $10 million in grants for their restaurants. There's a relief for airports and of course, relief for the education and public school system. So there's a lot of unknowns. There are a lot of direct allocations. Some will come from the US Department of Treasury, like our allocation. Some will come through the state through CRF funds, the fund. Some will come through the state to counties, some to cities for the water assistance program. And some of those they will go directly to cities that have utility services. So we're still working on it. And what, to your second question, what I propose is that we, and we've had an internal discussion at executive team as that we have an internal process to identify potential uses of the funds. We have a process with city council as we've done with the last couple of items that we've talked about with city council priorities as well as the infrastructure bond discussion. Have a process with city council. And I think it's very important that we also have a community engagement portion of this. Some type of engagement with the community more than just having it on an agenda item. And if you wanna show up and make comments, make comments. I don't know what that looks like, of course. We just found out last week, but I do think that it's important that we have those three components. The internal city council as well as our community because there are a lot of eligible uses that can have a very positive impact on our community. And then we will design some process to come back together and prioritize those requests. Again, we have until, and I'm not minimizing the immediate need in the community at all, but we do have until December, 2024 to spend the resources. Are there other questions? And have it answer any other questions? That was a great report. Thank you so much. And I just will say that from my standpoint, I think that process sounds good and that I agree very much that we need a good way to engage our community and appreciate you all think about that. And I know you'll take advantage of our community engagement folks to help with it. Absolutely. Colleagues, other questions and comments for Ms. Johnson. Ms. Johnson, I don't see any and I appreciate you very much for being here. And this is, I would just, what you said about all those other direct allocations, I am so struck by how this is such an unusual moment. I don't remember in my lifetime, this kind of resources coming to our community and to communities all across the country. We have, I mean, individuals, families are going to be getting, many families of four are gonna be getting $5,600. Our, we have the unemployment assistance, the childcare assistance, changes, positive changes in people's ability to get healthcare support as well as all the institutional support that you spoke of for our schools, for our transit system, for our city, for our county. We are going to have hundreds of millions of dollars coming to our city through the American Rescue Plan. And yes, as Council Member Reese is exactly right, there's never been another bill like this. Council Member Freeman. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you pausing and just reflecting because it gives me a chance to reflect as well. Just noting, I think that it's important to make sure that we thank the many different organizations and institutions across the country that have been organizing for years around these issues pre-COVID. And then COVID is highlighting them as we're coming to this realization that we have to do way more and to land at some place different than we, than where we were prior to COVID. And so I definitely want to say that it's the work of US Conference of Mayors. It's the work of the National League of Cities. It's the work of Fight for 15. It's the work for so many groups that have stood in solidarity for working people across the country consistently. And I'd like to just make sure we acknowledge that it's the organizing that's been happening. And so I think there's been a change in the White House. And of course that has carried through through the House and the Senate. And this is what we can see and how we address the issues we have in our community. We have some support. We have way more support than we had three months ago. And so I am excited. And I just want to note that in addition to the funding that's coming online, there are also, I want to say it's because Vice President Kamala Harris shared last week at the National League of Cities City Conference that there was $350 billion of grant funding that will be available for nonprofit organizations and partnerships with municipalities across the country. We'll be coming online and we need to be prepared to push and make sure that the projects we have in mind are moving forward so that the supports that folks have been providing on their own dime are covered in ways that actually build infrastructure and support for our residents continuously, I think. And in essence, some of the things that Council Member Freelon and Council Member Cabrera brought forward could be funded from grant funds that have been made available. And I think it's important to note that for our budget cycle this year, we may be incurring the cost, but next year we might not have to and what it looks like to make sure that that's taken advantage of. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member. While we're talking about organizing, I'm gonna give all the credit to Council Member Caballero. She went down to Georgia and elected John Ossoff. And, okay, and Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I can assure you that it was Councilor Caballero's flexing that got Senator Ossoff elected irrefutable. I just want to say, Mr. Mayor, that just to associate myself with you and Council Member Freelon have said that elections have consequences. And this is what it looks like when a superpower flexes its muscles and it has nothing to do with nuclear weapons or carrier strike groups. Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. We'll now move to item eight, Council Member Freelon. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just for item eight, hello, Daniel. I see came on the camera, on the front, online. I just wanted to ask the question. I recognize that the shift away from bringing all of those items to Council will be helpful. But I just wanted to know how the reporting will come back to Council because I would like to know what has happened. Sure, yeah, at your direction or at the administration's direction, we can prepare an annual or quarterly report on licenses we issue, you know, to whatever detail you'd like. I think just based on, if you could give a recommendation based on the number, because I don't know if it's like hundreds or thousands, honestly. Oh, well, for signs and mailboxes, honestly, we haven't had a mailbox in probably over 10 years coming, but signs are maybe two to three a year. It's not much, which is why we kind of wanted to gather it in with what we already were doing, so. That works, thank you. So do I understand? Oh, first of all, my name is Daniel Valero Public Works. I just got right into it. Good afternoon, City Council, Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, so in my understanding, I guess what you just said, what you'd like an annual report. I'm thinking if it's only two or three, that seems like overkill, but just acknowledging if there is some increase and you see like 30 in one month, there's probably like some, just some trigger to let us know that there's a lot happening because I'm afraid of letting it all just go behind the scenes. That's just me personally. I don't think that's all my counsel, but yeah. Thank you, Council Member. Mr. Valero, thank you very much for being with us. Thank you. Anything else, colleagues? All right, thank you, Mr. Valero. We'll now move to the last item on our agenda, which is an item we're all very interested in. And I'll see Ms. Stansel is here with us. Welcome Ms. Stansel, good to see you. Good afternoon, Mayor. Mayor Schwell, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, Council Members and City Manager Page. I'm Constance Stansel of NIS. First I wanna thank all of you for appointing this page as our City Manager. That's a big clap goes out to that. And I want to congratulate Wanda. I worked with Wanda for 18 years. I look forward to her visionary, incompetent, innovative, strong, and I tell you straightforward, no nonsense leadership is wonderful to work with. And we all plan to support her to the fullest extent. We are here today to give you an update on the city community engagement blueprint, which is based on the city's racial equity plan. And I'll work with the Durham community and other city and county departments. Mr. Mayor, if I just say this for you before we go into the presentation, when I heard a council member read his letter, I was moved to tears. As a praying person, I want him to know that we appreciate what the Asian community is going through and I have continued to pray and we'll continue to pray for the Asian community because when there's one person who's hated, we all hurt. And I just believe that our humanity is tied to each other's humanity. And I just want you to know, and all Asians to know that we are with you and we support you in this traveling time. The presentation that we will present today, thank you for allowing me to say that. The presentation that we will present today is presented by our community engagement manager, Linwood Best, and two of our senior community engagement strategies, Laura Biedega and Alexis John. Linwood. Good afternoon, Mayor Schur, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, and the members of the Durham City Council. I am Linwood Best, the community engagement manager. And we are thankful and pleased to make a presentation today to update you on the city's equitable community engagement blueprint. As many of you will remember, in August, 2018 was a long meeting that night. You direct the city administration to come back in 90 days with an equitable engagement plan for the Downtown to North Durham Rail Trail, also known as the Belt Line, formerly known as the Belt Line. The city administration direct that test onto NIH's community engagement team. During those 90 days, we work with community leaders and residents and staff from city and county departments to respond to your requests. In November 2018, we're presenting you with a Downtown to North Durham Rail Trail and an equitable engagement, equitable community engagement blueprint. Next slide, please. Today, I'd like to provide you with an update on the city's equitable community engagement blueprint that has served as a framework for city cooperation and coordination equitable community engagement efforts. Today, we'll talk about why. The why of equitable community engagement. Why is it important for the city to make this work a priority? To share with you the how. How do we plan, organize, implement this work? How we work with the residents, how we work with and support engagement in Durham neighborhoods around the many city projects, programs initiative. How we collaborate and promote the city blueprint in areas with other municipalities as well as at conferences and webinars and on telephone calls. Finally, we'll share with you the impact of our work. But before we begin the presentation, I'd like to introduce you to the community engagement team. Next slide, please. As you can see from the picture here, we have our great director, Ms. Constance Downser, assistant director, James Davis. But also importantly, we have our community engagement team, Laura Breaker, who will be a part of the presenters today. We'll talk to you about the equitable engagement plan as well, and she's leading this process. Turn out to New Gupta, who many will remember from the 10.02 initiative, is working with equitable engagement. Now for us. And I want to introduce you to some new members that you may not be familiar with, but are very important to us. First, I'll go with district one, Jennifer Bell. She's new to our department. She was hired during the pandemic through COVID-19. She applied for the job, was in the frugal job and is still in the job. Jennifer right now is working in the East Central Durham, but she comes with a wealth of experience. She's fluent in Spanish and her past experience including being working with refugees and the immigrant population. So she's really important to us now in the East Central Durham community. This is Alessa John. Alessa John is in district two. She's a former firefighter and but her compassion is really in the community. She is working with us for manners. She is working with Bluefield and a club Boulevard, as well as other areas in North and Durham and she is on top of her game and we really enjoy what this is. She'll always be present as well today. So I want to assume you're also being familiar with is Carmen O'Taz. She came to us as a strategist for the Latino community, but she's also stressed out to work in our community. She's in district three. She works very hard when we were out doing the census bringing people information about the census and she worked very hard on the PB getting people involved in that. And so we're really excited about having her on board and all the things she's doing in that community. And brand new to our department is Kevin Jones. Kevin actually came from Parks and Ritz. We don't say that loud, but he know you have worked with him when you went to see your dancers for the holiday dances. He was part of that group that helped those dancers go on for many years, but we're very glad to have him in district four and a new downtown district. And currently, Kevin is working to help reorganize Pack five, as well as continue to work with Mr. Chestnut in district four. So you see, we have a mixture of experience, talent and more than we ever have before. We are so proud of this team and we're just so glad of the diversity in this team. And we're just really excited about the work they have done and the work they will continue doing in the future. We're greatly blessed. We'll go on to our next slide. When we look at the why of equitable communication, we are led by our department of vision. And that is that the city is, where residents are actively involved and have the power to choose their destiny and influence what happened in their communities. And that is our logo and that's what we go to stand. That's our vision. And we're just really proud and excited about that. Let's move on to our next slide. Our next slide is we're also led by the racial, the city's racial equity vision mission which states that all residents thrive with power and purpose. And race is not a predictor of outcomes with a mission where Durham intentionally engages the community. And we take that to heart and we work by that. Let's move on to our next slide. Why equitable community engagement is good governance? It's playing. It's good business. It's good governance to engage residents. And they should be inclusive. They should be responsive, transparency. Accountable to residents. Good governance districts that we are serious about racial equality and we are who we say we are. It promotes accountability and transparency and builds long-term relationship. And really most important, it builds trust, lesson trust, long-term trust. I'll like presenting you now Laura Bealiger and this is John who will share you with you our blueprint update. If you have any questions about the presentation please feel free to ask them. Otherwise we can answer the question at the end of the presentation as well. I thank you for your attention. Laura, I pass the mic to you on the list. Thank you, Linwood. Good afternoon, city council members, mayor, and mayor pro tem and everyone else joining us this afternoon. Next slide please. So Linwood already touched on this a little bit but just to review how we got here today. There was originally the request from city council for an engagement plan related specifically to at that time the Beltline project. Our team expanded that to this equitable community engagement blueprint from our experience working with the community and having to try to manage several different projects and share them with the community. We thought that having a broader blueprint to help with all city projects, plans, and also kind of looking at programming would be really helpful. We presented that in November last about a year later. They created a dedicated staff position with just the position that I now hold. And then we did our first community partners pilot. The community partners I would say are really the most pivotal piece of the equitable community engagement work. And we'll talk more about it in the slides going forward. But the main gist of it is we're a resourcing community members to design and lead their own engagement. And by resourcing, I mean, at levels that we never have before as a city at contract level engagement, which is really exciting, not only for the short-term investment but also them being at the table really making the decisions that impact their communities. Then we held a partner development course from the things we learned during our first pilot to really make the contracting and RFP process for community partners more accessible. We'll talk a little bit more about that coming up. And then currently we're working through our second round of contracts with community partners. This one is funded by the transportation department. And the next milestone we have coming up is an update of the blueprint which we will complete in April and present to the executive team in May. Next slide, please. Alexis. The equitable community engagement blueprint has five different steps. And I'll just touch on a few of those really quick. The first step is what kind of engagement process do we need? And this is stemmed from the IAP2, the International Association of Public Participation of the type of project and the effect that it's going to have on the community that determines the amount of engagement that we need to do. Are we just sharing information to them or are we actually going to the point of bringing them in the conversation? Step two, who do we need to engage? It's obvious that our modernized or underserved areas are impacted first and they are the last to recover. So it's important to start there and work our way out. And step three, how should we engage them? That is recognizing the barriers that we have within the community and making sure that we are doing what we can to provide resources to them to overcome those barriers. So it's one thing to hold a meeting and document that two people were there but let's take it a step further and try to get an understanding why aren't they coming to those meetings and then providing the resources for them to come to the meetings. Step four, how will we measure successful engagement? I mean, it's important to collect data and not only quantity but quality data and making sure that we are collecting demographics throughout the data collection process to ensure that the residents are represented appropriately in the projects. And last but certainly not least, step five, building for the long-term. So it's important to see when we're going into these communities, how do we leave them better than how we found them? And that looks like providing funding for the residents or the organizations there but also how do we train our residents on certain topics before we come in and ask questions about projects? Next slide, please. So the next few slides, we're going over the main piece of our update and this slide kind of goes over the three main buckets that we've been using to organize our work. The first is continuing to understand equitable community engagement, what really makes community engagement equitable, developing that model and sharing out the why. The second piece is then taking the learnings that we have and working with our coworkers and across the city to implement that within city projects. And the third piece is the external piece of supporting the community to really be able to fully participate in this engagement. So for the first few slides, I'll talk about the expanding equitable community engagement. Next slide, please. As with any kind of projects that you really need to start with a strong why. And I've been with the city now for eight years. Often we would talk about, if we talked about issues of inequity in the past, it was very surface level. We might talk about 147 or redlining and not much more beyond that. So in starting this equitable community engagement work, we realized as especially a city staff we needed a better understanding of inequities, especially historical inequities within our community and to really be able to see our communities in a more holistic way. So this is some of the work that we've been doing of helping city staff, but it's also resulted in community members having a better understanding of the why. We host our monthly history sessions. This is a screenshot from one of those around Brookstown. We've had eight of those continuing to plan those throughout the rest of this year. The community engagement team has also been hosting racial healing conversations with community members which will continue and also implicit bias trainings that have been available for staff and community members. And all of this throughout the presentation you'll see kind of in the bottom left-hand corner. We've identified how this also aligns with the racial equity plan that staff have put together and presented through the office of equity and inclusion. And the specific piece, and we see this in every public meeting that we have a really understanding and recognizing the trauma that continues to shape and impact our residents today. And if we don't step back and have a better understanding of that, we really miss a lot of how we can do a better job engaging in building relationships with our residents. Next slide, please. The second piece is this piece of developing the model. So again, we created that blueprint after looking at a lot of other cities, but it wasn't something that we straight up copied from anywhere else. This is something that we put together in conjunction with community members and are still really kind of figuring out. So the blueprint, we also have kind of more tools and implementation pieces that we're making available to staff. And then just trying to figure out, this is what we said that we needed to do. How do we make that work within the city organization? And that's been a lot of the last two and a half of years of if we've said we're really gonna be transparent, how can we do that? We've said that we're gonna fund community members logistically, how can we do that? That's still within the city's parameters, but also really meets the needs of our community members. As I said, we are working on updating the blueprint over the next month and a half. And then continuing to share this out through the city organization so that we have standardized engagement, but standardized doesn't mean that everything is one way. It's more that we all are adopting a common approach to engagement and this common planning and thought process. Next slide, please. And like I was saying before, we're really building something new here. And it's exciting because other cities contact us regularly. We were speaking to Raleigh earlier this week, Raleigh Community Engagement staff and they were saying that they really looked to us as a model for engagement. We've talked to Charlotte recently, Burlington, but also places as far away as San Diego and Minneapolis. They contact us to learn more about the engagement that we're doing in Durham, as well as different universities and consulting firms. And we also have presented several times to the WRP, to Durham area designers, INC, Alexis and I recently presented to the North Carolina City County Management Association. IAORA is Human Rights Agencies, I think, and then IAP2 is the Public Protection Group. We recently also submitted two proposals to the Government Alliance and Racial Equities Annual Membership Meeting. So we're hoping that we'll be able to present one of those and then we're presenting the human rights workers this year also. Next slide, please. We're covered the Expand Equitable Community Engagement and I'm here to cover the Build Equity Community Engagement within the city. Next slide, please. One thing that Laura talked about was training city staff. So one of the main trainings that we provided was public participation training. And that's a value-based training and we were able to bring in an outside consultant and not only provide this training to 55 city staff, but also 10 community leaders. And it's important for us to start integrating our community leaders in our trainings and conversations as well. We also partnered with different departments within the city to have meetings. If we're providing this equitable community engagement blueprint, we wanna make sure that we're supporting the other departments as they're utilizing this, not only to see where there's room for improvement, but also just to support them as we all are doing something new and trying something new in the city. Monthly engagement coordination meetings and we offer this to any staff within the city to be a part of right now. There's typically about 16 departments represented in these meetings and it's not only to train. We typically have small trainings at the beginning of the meetings. For example, the Canva training, plain language training, but also just creating that space for other departments to come together and talk about their engagements moving forward. It's one thing we've heard a lot of residents talking about over surveying or different departments coming into the same resident area and asking the same questions. So if we're gathering this information separately, what if we brought all that information together so that we can coordinate our engagement better and just talk to the residents one time as opposed to different times? So that's just a good space for the employees around the city to come together. One thing that we would like to do in the future and that we're working on right now is creating sort of a one-stop shop for all engagement to be on one calendar so that not only residents can look at, but also for our employees throughout the city to look at and see where they can bring information to residents and doing that together as opposed to separately. And we wanna make sure that we're continuing to train, put different trainings in the blueprint and that will be a part of the update coming soon. A lot of folks are asking for different tools. So we wanna make sure that we're providing that. And like Laura mentioned earlier about the racial equity plan, this kind of touches on that too. As we are encouraging departments to do or to use the equitable community engagement blueprint, definitely when we're collecting the data, we wanna be able to separate the data and see the similarities and differences that show up there. Next slide, please. Tools for city staff. This is one that we have provided already and we just went through the blueprint and took out questions that would be good for our teams to look at before they do engagement. And it just helps you talk about topics that need to be resolved before going into the residential areas and having these conversations. Discuss tool needs during the blueprint feedback. So like Laura mentioned earlier, we've been having conversations about the blueprint. We want to make it easy for our departments to use. So definitely getting feedback on what tools we need to create and making sure that we're providing those tools. Create engagement calendar. Like I mentioned earlier that we want to do and then develop engagement data sharing. For example, the comprehensive plan. We went into communities and got so much information on how we can improve our city. And that it can kind of be a hub for other departments to use to guide what they do in the future. So we just want to make sure that that information is accessible to all departments to kind of use as a hub before they go back into the community and ask questions. Next slide, please. So then the third part of our work is supporting the community for equitable community engagement because there's a piece of changing how we work as staff. But if we really haven't helped to support a community infrastructure and community members to really be able to fully participate, we're still missing the main piece of the equation. Next slide. So this kind of brings together some of the work that Alexis was talking about. This is, I think pretty much all of the projects that we worked on in the last two and a half years. And as you can see, it really varies from long-term strategy and vision plans like the COMP plan all the way to kind of short-term programs and initiatives like Asceptic Cost Share and stimulus check clinics. But all of those are opportunities to work and engage with residents. And they all need to be really thoughtfully implemented so that every, like especially the marginalized communities have to them, but that we're making sure that we're following the same approach in doing the statisticity. And then the asterisk is noting where the projects that currently have community partners or have had community partners or are planning for community partners coming up. So the Beltline Trail, I know that some of the general services is already planning for shared streets was a project this summer, run through one of our community partners. We have community representatives who are part of the Finds and Fees Justice group that I'm working with with OPI. So these are all projects that have active community partners involved and are providing resources and compensation for community members to do engagement. Next slide, please. This is more about the community partner. So in the last two years, we funded over $250,000 when I added up like that extra, like somehow it's like really extra exciting, like a quarter of a million dollars to community members to design and lead their own engagement. That is like nothing, it's not nothing, but it's not that much in the scheme of how much the city invests in external consultants but other external consultants for communications and engagement. But it's really significant for the communities that we're working with. Again, like even the short-term immediate impact of having these additional resources so that when they're doing engagement, it's not based on door-to-door donations. This is compensating people in their community to really be involved. So we were able to that last year, largely due to a budget request or a budget funding specifically for equitable community engagement. This year, the bulk of the funding is from the transportation department. The transportation director really understands and sees this vision as very supportive of our work. So we've received $100,000 to fund community partners specifically around the Better Bus Project. And again, as I said, after the first year, we realized that we really needed to lower the barrier, lower the barriers and increase access to the contracting process. So we held this community partner development course in the fall. Over 52 people participated, but we had six, I think it was six or seven residents completed all of the classes, and those four of them are pictured here. And then going forward, we're working on continuing to develop the training. We actually had another call today with NCCU and we're probably looking at a mini-mester course to help community members understand what we're calling the business of engagement, this piece of accessing the cities and participating in the city's procurement process, as well as data collection and project management, so that when the city's doing these really big projects, they're really able to partner with these community members to do engagement. But the other piece of partnering with them is that then they are at the table when these decisions are being made. So they're helping to get data, more of their communities are often involved and knowledgeable about the projects that they're weighing in on. But then these community members are also at the table, really seeing what happens to that data and advocating for their community, so that in the longer term, their community is better served by these projects, which is really exciting. And then we're already talking with transportation about future funding, maybe from what Ms. Johnson was talking about, maybe it'll be additional funds coming up for this work. And again, this aligns with the current racial equity plan and I would say even goes a little bit farther instead of just providing stipends and childcare and bus passes, this is providing significant funds to these groups as well as they are leading the engagement. The city isn't telling them how to do engagement. They are saying, this is how our community needs to be engaged and they're making those decisions. Next slide please. So this is a list of the community partners from last year and this year. You'll see some overlap because some of the groups like Fayetteville Street quarterfellows kind of really, I would say we're birthed, if that's the correct, like Lingo, they're kind of birthed out of the, one of our original community partners and started work last year and then are one of our contracted, we're directly contracting with them this year. Other groups like the Lakewood community project, we are funding at a smaller level and through, we've received a GAIR implementation grant. So we've been able to fund some of those and, but the four groups that are funded at the contracts level this year through the Transportation Fund near Bradtown, the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People Inc, Fayetteville Street quarterfellows and Luma Consulting, their project name is EMEA and that group is our first partner focused specifically on the, of the contracts level partners focused specifically on Latinx families. Next slide, please. As far as building relationships and trust, this is my favorite part. And so a few of the things that we have accomplished throughout this time, the bike rides has been a hit within the different neighborhoods, specifically Oxford Manor and Club Boulevard, definitely would love to expand on that. This originated from during the pandemic and it was requested for residents to get out and, you know, get fresh air, but that seems so easy for some of us in Durham, but not easy for a lot of us in Durham. So I wanted to focus on the folks where it's more challenging and make sure that we're able to provide and break down those barriers for them. This was a partnership with DPD, DFD, DHA and bike Durham and then the bike co-op and they're able to provide bikes and all the safety equipment for the residents in this area. And they asked me every time I go in, when are we going on our next bike ride? So that's something that we definitely look forward to. The weekly trail walks with the Latinx families and that was led by Carmen Ortiz, who's in district three. This was also kind of birth through the pandemic. Again, getting fresh air, but also it was a time for us to continue to build those relationships throughout the pandemic and see what the residents need and bring those resources to them. Virtual art and cooking classes and yoga classes, that came from the neighborhood matching grants. Before the pandemic, we're supposed to do in-person virtual art classes and then the pandemic happened. We really wanted to still do them. So the resident was able to do it virtually and pack the art supplies up and drop them off at the door and then the afternoons, the kids logged on to the art class. And then they're also able to come for a art show on a specific day, which was really nice. And the same thing for the cooking classes. We partnered with the American Heart Association and this was another program that was supposed to happen in-person, but then the pandemic happened and we quickly switched it to the virtual classes. So we're able to provide food for them. And also in the evening, they would log on and go through the cooking classes with the chef. And we also talked about decreasing sodium intake and things of that sort, focusing on high blood pressure and diabetes, which is very prevalent in our black and brown neighborhoods. And the yoga also stemmed from community and wanted to get out during the pandemic. And this was a COVID safe engagement that we could do. We were able to bring in colors of yoga to do a community led yoga within the Bradtown area. We also wanted to let our residents know that we're here for them during the time but get resources for them. And so we were able to pack 1500 holiday resource bags and distribute those throughout the city through our partnerships and throughout the food banks as well. I know many of you guys know about the digital divide and what that has created for a lot of our residents. So that was, it gave us the opportunity to get back in the community safely and provide those resources. We've also hosted 12 community conversations and these are led by residents in the city. And it's led in English and in Spanish. And it's looking to bridge the relationship between the police department and the community but also talked about COVID and residents were able to log in and ask any questions and get any information that they need on those topics. And we also pivoted the e-newsletter in our Facebook pages. We were able to create the Facebook page during the pandemic as well, which is nice. It gives us the ability to talk to many of our residents, get information quickly but also allow them to give feedback as well. And what's coming up next, we would like to continue to support and rebuild the packs. So that's something throughout the city. I'm excited about that. And I'm excited about building those relationships with more residents. And as Laura mentioned, it's also a part of the racial equity plan. Provide info through more communication channels. So not only just meeting, we have the front porch conversations that I enjoy, the Facebook page, more social media utilizing the websites just so that we can reach more residents within our city. Next slide, please. Also throughout the pandemic, we switched the neighborhood matching grants to the COVID-19 neighborhood partnership grants. And this was to continue to not only build capacity within our city, throughout the community leaders, but also to get those needed items in the neighborhoods that really needed them. So the neighborhood matching grants previously before the pandemic were to bring neighbors together. And typically we're looking like beautification projects and that was really fun. And the pandemic gave us the ability to make more connections through this. The majority of the residents that have received the COVID-19 grants are residents that we haven't worked with. So it's been fun to be able to still meet residents throughout this time and start building that trust and communication with them. And a lot of them are excited about the truck city hall on the go to come into their neighborhoods. So that's been a lot of fun too. And coming up, we would like to continue to foster the relationships that we've made through these grants. A lot of the neighborhoods were very appreciative and excited to work with us. So I'm just excited to continue to build capacity in them. And I look forward to seeing what we can do in the future. Next slide, please. So this is about our last slide. And I think I took this screenshot a week before last. And I think this is a really good summary of all of the work that we're building and the things that it leads to. So this is a photo. Angelique Stallings is on the left, the main vertical photo. She is the project manager for the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People Inc. our contract with them. And they are doing engagement in the Holloway Street Wellands Village area for the Better Bus project. And then on the other two side are consultants working with a team that says part of a team of consultants on the Better Bus project. This is the second outreach committee meeting. And you can probably see there are like 30 some people on this call. This is a space that Angelique would not have normally been in the Durham Committee may have been there, but not at the level she wouldn't have been. They wouldn't have been stipended or resourced at this level. And we have the community partners from the other groups also on this call. She's here, she's actively advocating for improvements in East Durham through this project coming up. And this is just, this is really pre-engagement still. But this really summarizes I think the work that we're doing with the building the model. So even in the consultant responding to the RFPs, this is something that they know now that they really need to say they're familiar with and spotlight and their work. Again, we're working closely with transportation throughout all of this, both this project, but many of their other projects. And then this piece of resourcing community members to do the engagement. But then that also means that they're being resourced to be at these tables where the decisions are going to be made. So this is the outreach committee meeting, but the study committee meetings are coming up soon. And so again, Braggtown, the Durham Committee, our Latinx community partners and the Fatal Street community partners will be at the table with the planners and engineers when decisions are being made around these projects. So when we talk about the impact that we're having, I think this is the piece of good governments of being efficient with our funds, the piece of racial equity and really prioritizing black and brown communities. And then the piece of self-determination of these communities really being a part of making the decisions that affects their community. Next slide. I can't leave without promoting this month's our community stories. We have College Heights and the duo of residents presenting here, we had a rehearsal last week and they're amazing. The rehearsals are sometimes as good as the actual events. So I'm very honored to be a part of that. And especially if any, I mean, it's a Durham community so you should be on board anyways, but especially anyone who has ties to NCCU then the ties of this neighborhood has to NCCU are really astonishing. So I hope that you'll join us for this will be our ninth of this series. And I think the last one is just our information slide. That's it. Thanks. Thank you very much for that great presentation. Ms. Stansel, Ms. Betiger, Ms. John, Mr. Best, really great to have you all here. I know my colleagues are gonna have a lot of questions and comments. I'm gonna start with council member Reese because I know that he was trying to respond to the comments of Ms. Stansel before the presentation started. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to take a quick word to say Ms. Stansel, thank you very much. Your prayers are much needed and much appreciated. And the great thing about living in a place like Durham is that we understand what solidary really means. And so I wanna thank you for that. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Manager Page. I will be brief, Mr. Mayor, but when I reviewed this wonderful presentation and we got to the college heights slide at the very end, I saw my sister-in-law at that birthday party. And it was really, it was really, really cool as well as my husband's aunt. So just wanna throw that in here. That's awesome. That's awesome. Council member Freyland. Yes, I was thinking about city manager Page on that college height slide as well, just about the late Ms. Mack, Ms. Mozella McLaughlin who we lost over the weekend. She lives over there on lived, over there on Cecil Street, two blocks away from your mother-in-law. So just thinking about her and just in general, what a great slide to end the presentation on. It was really wonderful, really beautiful. The work you're doing is amazing. I just wanted to shout you out. Alexis is just an OG and Oxford manner. Everybody loves and respects her so much. The bike rides, but also it's the time in between the events that you put in that has engendered the true sense of community and trust that I know is something that I hear a critique. Frankly, in the community, a lot of people critique the trust feeling, especially through the historical lens of the 147 and the redlining, there's a lot of distrust there. And I just really couldn't speak more highly of Alexis with whom I've had a lot of interpersonal interaction, but really the presentation helped illuminate really the broad extent to which this is becoming a part of your ethos. And I just, brava, I loved it and really appreciated the presentation. It was a thrill to watch. Thank you, Council Member. Other comments and questions, colleagues? Council Member Freeman and then Council Member Caballero. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I think Council Member Freelon hit the nail on the head and I just have to echo the same sentiments for Kevin and Carmen and, I mean, and Jennifer, I mean, she's, I don't know if you realize this, but Jennifer has to manage community events with Mr. Chavis and she's managing. And I know Mr. Chavis, I say that with love, but it's just- Don't hit on Mr. Chavis, come on now. Take the proofs, I'll tell you. He ain't gonna let nothing slip, nothing slide, but I really appreciate that real support that's being provided. And so I knew through COVID, I really was, I felt supported in directing folks to the resources you guys were making available because I know folks were shut in for the most part and have an opportunity to connect and making sure that they could reach the community, reach the city because it seemed like we were cut off. And so I just wanna say thank you. I realized that the work that happens on the ground can't happen without support. And so I really wanna thank Linwood Best and Constance Stansel for supporting this team. I know you've put this team together and this is definitely my heart's work and making sure that the community has access to the city. And so I thank you all for making it come to life. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Caballero. Thank you, that was an excellent presentation and I think back to how much work has gotten done so quickly when I think about back on that council meeting when we asked for this to be developed. And so a lot of kudos to you all because it's not hard work. I often think about is Carmen cloned? Is there like a second Carmen somewhere? Because I'm not quite sure how she does it all. Which is where my next question is, seeing all the work, seeing what we're doing with the comp plan and the transit plan. I hope you all ask for the resources you need. I see at some point the capacity of your team needing to be expanded. And so our job as council members is to find the money because if we wanna do this work, this is not, it's not cheap to do this work. It takes a lot of resources. So do not hesitate. And that is our job to figure out how we're gonna fund it. And it's also residents' job to understand that this is done through public money and that's done through taxation. So I'll leave that there. Thank you. Thank you council member. Other colleagues, council member Middleton and then Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And to this incredible 18 before us, thank you for this magnificent piece of work. I'll just simply say, and I wanna echo with council Caballero said the amount of work that's been done since the genesis of this when we were having the belt line discussion. And I would just remind us, when I say us, all of us, but particularly those of us that have a vote that the genesis of this conversation, and you found this out when you were talking to folk, I know, was not just to hear people and collect our stories, but for those stories to have actual impact on policy. We can collect the whereas all day. What matters is that therefore, therefore we shall do this and we shall do that. So I just wanna simply say as hope, prayer, wish, whatever you wanna call it, that as an institution, not just as person, but as an institution, may our response be worthy of the work you've done and may our actions honor and take seriously the work you've done because the part for us that's gonna be important, us who sit in these seats now and us who come after us is not only spending the money and we're gonna have to spend some money, but being able to explain to residents who may not get it, who may not get why we say that based on history, we've gotta prioritize this neighborhood first as opposed to this neighborhood. While based upon history and the corpus of American jurisprudence since the advent of the nation, how it's impacted us and contoured and shaped the context in which we find ourselves. Why we have to do some of these things and explain this to someone who may not have had the benefit of seeing your report or sitting in a racial equity training class and who just watched the news all day. So this is just fabulous work. We know it would be, but again, I'll just simply say may our response be worthy of the work you've done as a government. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, council member. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you everyone for this presentation and for all the incredible work that y'all have been doing. I just wanna echo my colleagues in appreciating how far this work has come in such a short time and all of the amazing events and programs that y'all have been able to do, especially during COVID. It was really great to see how well y'all have been able to pivot to doing the classes online and doing the engagement even though we're in this really challenging time for engagement. And I feel like y'all's department, in addition to several other departments around the city but especially the ones who are out working directly face to face with the public have had to do the most work to figure out how do we do that during this pandemic and particularly with equity in mind and equity at the front when we know there are so many issues with digital access for our low income communities and communities of color. So just wanna appreciate y'all leading the way on that for us as well as we continue to figure out how we work through the pandemic and continue to live our values while doing this community engagement while also recognizing we still need to get things done. And so it's really important to figure out how to do it in the context that we're in and y'all have done a great job with that. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro-Champ. Other comments, colleagues? Anyone else? Council Member Freeman and then Council Member Rees. I just note that Council Member Rees had his hand up in the background on the little corner. I don't know if you see that. But I just wanted to just note also, in addition, I really appreciate just the way the destruction I didn't wanna leave out, having Laura and Tanu citywide acknowledging that there are a lot of projects that are happening across the city making sure that our departments are really using the resource because, I mean, Sharon's on the race equity side. And then you also have this aspect which is in the community on the race equity side. And so just noting like diversity, equity and inclusion are all pulling all of that work together. And so I really, really appreciate the work that Laura's been doing and making sure that this is happening. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Rees. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate Council Member Freeman for the assist there. Always, always a good idea. One of the great things about almost going last is that everything's been said, but not everybody's had a chance to say it. I'm gonna try to avoid that this afternoon by just saying that it's amazing to think about where we started and where we are with this incredible work. I don't know about my colleagues, but I will confess to not thinking it would ever be this level of work and this level of product that you've delivered. And I just wanna say from the bottom of this Durham residents' heart, thank you very much for dedicating so much time, energy and passion to what is really, really hard to do. I think one of the things it's easy to lose sight of as a policymaker at this level is how difficult it is to build trust in the world that we live in today. And that difficulty is exacerbated by the fiscal separation that's required due to a global pandemic. Y'all have fought through that, planned through that, organized through that, leaned heavily on the experience and the expertise of people who live in the neighborhoods that we're trying to engage with. And that is an extraordinary act of civic duty, it's giving voice to a civic life that I think is what we all wanna be a part of. I just wanna highlight Council Member Freelon said that he can feel community members learning that trust again after a history of not having that kind of trust be violated. But I also wanna underline what Council Member Milton said. It's important to listen, that's how people begin to trust, but people learn trust when we actually put it into action. And so I know we're seeing some of that in the Better Bus Campaign, some of the results of that deep engagement are being physically manifested in the choices that are being made in the Better Bus Campaign to increase transit service across the city. And we're gonna continue to see work like that in all the areas that we need community engagement in. So I wanna say that that slide that talked about all the different projects that you're working in was absolutely extraordinary. I don't know how we could possibly spend enough money doing this work. I don't know how y'all are doing it, but please let us know how we can continue to be supportive. Last thing I wanna say is the Community History Project. Laura, I know you've spent a lot of time working on that individually. I just wanna say how much I have gotten out of that. Only one of us on the council is a Durham native. So I think we all have a lot to learn about Durham history. I know I do. And those have been some of the most extraordinary community moments I've had as a resident of Durham, let alone as a member of the council, hearing those stories and understanding what these places and these people mean to the neighborhoods where they are is something that's definitely helped me understand a little bit better of the issues that are facing the people of this city. So thank you for that. And also come hell or high water, I'm doing the next bike ride because that looked totally awesome. If nothing, if for no other reason that you ended up at Pelicans, that's totally great. So thank you very much. If I can be of service to you in any way as you continue that work, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much, Council Member. Colleagues, any other questions or comments? Can I say, Mr. Mayor, that that was the first time these young people had been out of their community to do bike rides and the trail is not very far from their homes and they had never visited the trail before. And it's just amazing to see how Alexis has worked with other groups to expand the horizon beyond just their little small area that they live in. That's great. I have a few comments and questions. I really appreciate what my colleagues had to say. On the, in the memo and the issues and analysis section, there were four items that you put that I thought all were important. But I wanted to especially ask about the last two. The first was overcoming delays in project completion due to equitable engagement efforts. You know, we're constantly called upon in the city to explain to people that if they want more democracy and if they want more voice, things are gonna be slow. And there is an important balance that we have to strike between listening and getting the work done. And so I'm comfortable and super supportive of the idea that it's going to take longer if we wanna hear from more people, especially people who don't have access to the kinds of technology perhaps or groups perhaps that we normally hear from. But I wondered if you could speak to, since you listed this as one of the issues, I wonder if you could speak to this a little bit and just any perspective that you might offer on this overcoming delays and project completion due to equitable engagement efforts. One of the things that we focused on, Mr. Mayor, is really working very closely with our departments and helping them understand that it's really important for them to tell us about the projects that they are planning. You know, it might be years away, it might be a couple of years away, but give us a heads up early on so we can start talking to the people in the community. So that will help with not having the projects delayed any more than they have to be. But it's very difficult for us to help them get information out in the community if we only know like two or three months ahead. If we can have more time, advanced time, then we can help get that information out in the community. But it also helps that with the work that we're doing around building relationships. Since we have these strong relationships in the community, it's easier for us to bring people to a meeting at a very short notice because we build that trust and there are trusted voices in the community that we rely on. So that's part of our strategy. And I think that's working because we're getting more and more departments reaching out to us in advance of projects. Yeah, I would agree with everything that Constance said. And I would say the community members we work with don't want delays either. Often because they see a project that won't be implemented in five to 10 years being for the people who come after them because they've been pushed out of their community. So actually they're like my director who I've been saying lately for deadline is always like yesterday or last week. So that's probably one of the reasons that we were able to get so much stuff done. But I would say the community members we work that we work with also don't want to delay and we regularly have outlets to engage them. Carmen has an event coming up this weekend or next weekend, Alexis, the bike rides. Those are all opportunities for engagement. And it's that piece of bringing us in early enough so that we can help staff, other projects to access those opportunities. The other piece that Alexis highlighted in the tool section is that we do so much engagement and get data both from the COMP plan and these other engagement opportunities that often just still sit with that project. And so residents have contributed their thoughts through surveys or focus groups or things like that. And it's used in that project and that's it. And it's data that could help have informed a care survey or could help these other pieces. So that's something that we're looking at is how we can centralize that so that we can potentially have less surveys and communities don't feel over-surveyed. How we can really make better use of the data that we have so that, again, you can start, you're not starting from scratch. We know that residents on Ross Road are already having this issue so we don't have to start from scratch. We can know that this is what we've heard from them in the recent past and then build off of that. So I think that's all part of the good governance being more efficient and effective with the engagement that we're doing. I really appreciate that. And I thought that that idea about using that data that you've collected during the comp plan process and sort of centralizing it, making it available to other departments was sounded like a really great idea. And I hear you about the over-surveying and I've heard that in myself and communities when I've been out. And so I think that's a really great point. So thank you for those responses. That's really helpful. The second concern of the four that you listed that was on my mind was that last one, forecasting the potential increases in property values near the city's improvements and projects and discovering our residents in these transitioning communities can benefit from the improvements and avoid displacement. We talked, we had the belt line discussion. Was it two weeks ago at work session where this concern of course is very relevant? And this also speaks to, I thought the council member Middleton raised this earlier. You know, we're listening, we're engaging and we really are. We really are. And yet we have the problem of, and we know, and councilor Marie's pointed out, the better bus plan, we can make real changes. You know, the streetscapes, those were community driven. And when I went out and I participated in those, I could see that. But there are times when our ability to engage in what residents want, and this doesn't just happen through, you all know, this just doesn't happen just through equitable community engagement. This happens all the time in the city where people want things that we aren't able to deliver on. Either we don't have the power to deliver on or they're competing interests and we have to make a hard decision between them. And a lot of times that falls to us as elected officials to have to give that what can sometimes be an unhappy truth for people to hear. And I wonder how you all face that in the community because as community engagement specialists and deeply engaged in the community yourselves, you're out there, you're listening to people. And you had a slide that spoke to this at some point in your presentation. But I wonder what the experience is and how do you level with the community or individual community members when there are things that they want that you know, you're just in the interest of transparency and also would say, and in the interest of creating trust because people want to hear the truth. If you don't tell them the truth, they're not going to trust you. So I just wonder what the experience is like out in the community with the people that you talk to, how do you interact with them about things that are hard, that are hard to tell them, especially if it's things that they want? I'm sorry, that was an overlong question, but I think you get the point. Well, I can tell you, Mr. Mayor, transparency is number one. And you really have to be able to tell them, this is what we can do, this is what we can't do, this is what you can influence and this is what you, these are the decisions that have already been made. And if you're upfront with them, you'll be amazed at how people, once they know what they can influence and they know that there are certain things that by state statute or by federal statutes or by city codes, if you're honest with them, they can understand that. But then you really have to listen because there are going to be people who are going to push back on that. And we have, I guess, have tough skin right now. We go in understanding that people are going to say things that are maybe hard for us to hear, but we realize that we have to listen and we have to come back to other city departments and help get resources if we can, but if we can't, we go back and we let them know this is what we can and we can't do, but it's just absolutely being transparent and also building that relationship, those trusting relationships. So we guard our relationship and reputation in the community. When we're working with other organizations and they want to engage the community a certain way, we really push back and challenge them that that is not the way the city of Durham engages is residents. And so we won't be a part of your project if that's the way you are planning to engage the residents because we value our trust in the community, we pay our reputation in the community. So now let Laura and Alexis add to that because they're in the community on the ground much closer to it than I am. Yeah, so one of the first pieces I would say is being clear up front of where there's room for influence. So that's one of our early pieces of our blueprint is don't go in asking really broad questions that might create expectations that are unrealistic. So sometimes that's really hard because it's already starting with a very narrow space for engagement, but that's better than kind of giving this false impression that there is a lot of room for influence. Then I think it's just, it's a conversation. So hard conversations like that aren't like good over surveys. So that's just sitting and having conversations with residents and community leaders to hear their questions and be as honest and transparent with them as possible. And I think there's a piece of what is happening right now and where they can influence things in the future. So we had a round table recently around the annual action plan that was mostly already developed, but what is the space that community leaders can already understand how to influence next year so that they have a space that they can already kind of look to and begin earlier how can we do this better next time? And I think in other pieces, the community members know that that you're not gonna get everything. You're gonna, they're gonna fight for it though because it's their community. But I think, and Constance will talk about this, like it's how they felt in the process. So it's that piece of have you been honest with them? Have they been included? Do they think that you sincerely considered the things that they wanted? So that even if I disagree with what may have happened, I at least maybe feel respected in the process. I think that's a really important piece of that relationship building. But the other, one other thing I would add to that is also the more opportunities that our community leaders can be at these tables where they see those decisions being made that not just us being transparent, but like they are actually at the table during the experience of making that decision. I think that is really powerful. So it's not just that a decision was made and relayed to them, but they were there and understood all of these pieces of weighing, of weighing different pros and cons. So I think that's the other piece of, even with the work that we're doing with the community partners, they will be at the table to see how decisions are made around these projects. And they'll continue to advocate for their communities. They may not get everything, but they'll have an understanding of how the process worked. And Mr. Mayor, when we have conversations, I encourage staff to have communications with understanding that your humanity is tied to the person you're speaking with. And when you can actually see, hear, and respect the person you're talking with or engaging with, you have a different way of, they feel the sincerity in your conversation with them. And so we talk about that all the time, reaching out to the other person and understanding their humanity, your humanity is tied to theirs. And also understanding that a lot of times when you hear community people who are loud and they push back hard, they've been traumatized. And you have to realize the trauma that they've been through. And sometimes they're speaking out of their hurt and that pain. And if you can just stop, be still and listen to that pain and acknowledge their pain, then you can work with them. And so we pushed that all the time in our staff meetings. We talk about that kind of stuff all the time. I'm sure they're tired of me saying it, but that's what we do. I also just wanted to add that that's the time to lean in. Whether it's crime that's going on in the neighborhood or whether it's something that they didn't hear the news they wanted to hear in a meeting, that's my time to be there for them or the pandemic going on. I think I was at home for like a week and after that I've been in the community the whole time because when we're going through things, that's the time to be there right with the community and be able to rebuild with them. So for me, that's the time to just lean in, share with them, whatever the bad news is, if it's bad news and be there with them throughout it. Well, those were fantastic, fantastic comments. Thank you. I know that I think that probably the kind of person that gravitates this work might be similar to the kind of person that gravitates towards elected office in the sense that we tend to be, we want to please people, we want to make people happy. And I know that that's true if you're in community engagement work too, but then the problem comes when you have to give somebody a hard truth. But I think what you all have said about how you do it, what you said about leaning in and I think what you said also about when you do it, people do respect that, they appreciate it and they are grateful for it. And it's just sometimes, I know just for myself and it's hard to give the bad news, but when the bad news is given in a way that has the kind of humanity that Ms. Stansel was talking about and the kind of remaining in the room, being there to listen to what's next. And so anyway, I wanted to appreciate that. I do have one more question, which is related to the PACs. And I saw that the slide about rebuilding the PACs I read it the other night and then saw it again today. Let me just give you a couple of thoughts that I have. Over the many years that I have been involved with the PACs, we've included my years on the school board and counsel and this mayor. One of the things that I have liked about the equitable engagement a lot is that it has gotten us beyond the PACs. That for a long time, the PACs were kind of the sort of officially designated way we would hear from people. And I often found that frustrating because it's often a lot of years it seemed like the same people. And what I love about what you all are doing is it's so far beyond the same people. And then you've engaged and you've gotten so many voices involved. So I just wanna put in a plug for that as you think about the PACs themselves that the PACs are sort of officially sanctioned. They've got some wonderful leaders in there. And but I hope that you will, as you rebuild them you'll try to rebuild them with a multitude of voices. So that's just my editorial comment. Yes, yes. We're working with the PACs to bring in new blood, new leadership, new way of thinking, bringing in young people and realize that it is an institution that has helped the city of Durham over a number of years but it now needs some rebuilding. And that's what we're about. Alexis has taken on that. And as Councilman Freeman said, he knows that if Alexis is involved it's gonna be, she's gonna do a great job. That's great. I'm sorry, I'm taking up so much time today but my final comment is just, I can't remember which my colleague said this, but I will second the notion that when we got started doing this that I really didn't expect the level at which this has blossomed so quickly and that it's become a city-wide enterprise, the city's committed to it. It reminds me all the time, the city work reminds me all the time, I'm reminded all the time that when the city administration takes something on like this and our department directors get ahold of it and sink their teeth into it, we just usually crush it. And, but I don't always expect that. I mean, I think that I'm, okay, we're gonna do this but you guys have just absolutely knocked it out of the park and I'm just so looking forward to how this process grows and becomes even better. And it's so cool to see the whole organization embrace it, not just NIS because at the beginning it was really, it was you all down in the trenches doing it, making it up. I know you got some help from some other places but, and now you're the experts, not just here, but you're the experts across the city and you're the experts when other cities come. So, second phrase that everybody heaped on you all. I have one observation on that and I think part of it is that when we had to deliver something in 90 days, which I'm not recommending that to be clear, but when we had a tight deadline, we put together this vision but we didn't have everything figured out. We still don't have everything figured out. That's what we're working on. But I think it forced us to really come up with something simple, but clear. And then the last two and a half years we've been trying to figure out how to do it. I feel like it's a version of iteration or innovation or those different pieces. But we've talked with other cities and I feel like they've taken an approach of like we're gonna take a year and we're gonna come up with a plan and we're gonna implement the plan. And it's like, you can't do that with community engagement. I mean, it's constantly learning something and responding and really be like being able to be flexible and regularly responsive to the community. And so I think that this has been like bold enough that it keeps us moving, but it also it's something that we continue to learn along with the community. And so I am a planner. So that's a weird thing for me to say, but that's something that I've realized in the past few years looking at how other cities are doing this, that us kind of starting with something more general and figuring it out through our work in concert with communities is I think it's better than trying to like structure a bunch of focus groups and put together a 30 page implementation thing. So that's just my side thoughts on that one. So thank you for the 90 day deadline. Yeah, we knew we were doing something good. Alrighty, Director Stancil, do you have any final comments? I just want to say thank you for believing in us that we could do something in 90 days and then just leaving us alone and letting us do it. And that's great. I mean, you didn't give us, you just said do it. You didn't even say what to do hardly because we went back and read the directions, directives that had come out of city council and kept saying, well, what do they really want? What do they really want? And then once we started talking to the community and other city departments, we put it together. And so just thank you for your leadership and your vision and believing in us. It wasn't really a vision. It was born of necessity, but you did it. You all create the vision. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here today. What an awesome report and I'm glad because we actually had a kind of a short agenda we could devote all the time we needed to it. So thank you all so much. And thank you. I'm gonna move on now to our city clerk. And Madam Clerk, did we have a verdict on our agenda item? Yes, Mr. Mayor, you have nominated Adam T. Pibern to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Mission for the category of bicycle commuting. And that's it. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Madam Manager, I believe it's time to settle the agenda. Yes, it is. I have for your city council agenda consent items one through 11. That's my kind of agenda. Okay. Colleagues, thank you very much. It was a good day at the Durham City Council and appreciate everyone. And we will, oh, Madam Clerk, I'm sorry. Mr. Mayor, you need a motion for the city. I sure do. I need a motion to settle the agenda. So moved. Second. Moved by Council Member Reese. Seconded by Council Member Freelon. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Mayor Schuyl. Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Aye. It's member Caballero. Aye. It's a member Freelon. Aye. It's member Freeman. Aye. It's a member Middleton. Aye. It's member Reese. Aye. Thank you, Madam Clerk, for reminding me of that. And now I'll say it's been a good day at the Durham City Council. Good to see you all. Stay safe this afternoon. It's sunny right now, but I expect that won't last and we'll see everybody very soon. Bye, everybody. Have a great afternoon. Meeting adjourned at 322. Have a great afternoon, y'all.