Yeah, like people have no idea.

So I did uh have you have you read the book Let Me Retort by Ellie and South?

So he's a lawyer.

I think he recommended he also worked for Mama.

But I just started listening to his book yesterday morning.

And he's he's also that commentator with an assembly.

We're here at the beautiful department of water management facility in Durham North Carolina for our second day of our city council.

We've got full day on yesterday, so we're expecting the same today.

So we'll go ahead and get started.

Turn it over to Mr.

John Lord, the director of budget and management services.

Good morning, sir.

Good morning, Mayor, Tim and Councilman, Department Heads, City Scott, welcome to our second day.

Thank you for coming back.

As always, a few housekeeping things here this morning.

If you haven't had the chance to have coffee and breakfast, throw behind us.

Know what uh we have planned uh for this morning and uh first morning after I didn't say again as John Warner Budget Management Services with City.

Um we're gonna begin this morning with these housekeeping remarks and then we'll have some opening remarks we're seeing your page um followed by um the first presentation which will be Jason Garado from ETC Institute will come and give us a presentation on our annual residence survey and take a brief break um and then uh come back in the second portion of the morning we'll have uh Dr.

Michael Walton uh professor of Mary's which is uh state university to give us uh uh economic update.

It's it's been three years since we've had live presentations for both these individuals, so it's great it will be great to have you back and engage them in certainly I think uh welcome all of the questions regarding the presentations that we've already seen offered some interesting um information.

We will take uh uh short on 45 minutes um uh from 12 to 1245 in the afternoon.

We'll begin with a strategic plan update uh given by Sherry McCaff from our department.

Um and then we'll close the day uh with the session uh as we always do with these project retreats uh around the budget guidelines.

These are these soon after use the term guardrails, sometimes just the tenants to help us shape the craft the budget that we come to you with proposed budget may supposing remarks from uh mayor town council offices and that so with that um I'm clearly vamping here because I'm watching to see if our guests will arrive uh arrived yet, but um we will provide that so we managed thank you as our seeing our council uh turned our attention to uh court and we'll call our role Mayor I'm present there Middleton Council Member Calavero, Council Member Freeman, Council Member Close Hyman, present council member Johnson here council member's yes here thank you morning uh Madam Mayor O'Neill, Mr.

Mayor Protell, your own council members, city staff and residents.

I am one of the pay and girls as we gather this morning.

We're hopeful that the guest presentations that we have aligned up with you as well as our staff presentations and updates will continue to be valuable to you.

We'll continue to inform the important decisions that you have before you.

Umce again look um in the room here.

Uh we have build this room with staff who are intently listening at your direction.

Uh they are here um with uh just request to provide uh information if you need it, uh response to any questions that you might have for us, and we will continue to uh facilitate conversations, keep us moving uh that will continue to progressively provide us the budget development guidance that we need uh for our fiscal year 2024 uh budget and capital uh operating and capital budgets.

Again, I'd like to thank you, John Moore.

I see Christina Reirner.

Welcome to the back looking for the guests.

For being a team, we are a team that's always listening, always reviewing information that we put together, make sure it's accurate, making sure it's representative of what you need always doing additional analysis and analysis taking in your information and analyze it again.

But most importantly, as council member Holmes Hyna often mentions, finding ways to bring new ideas in innovation to the table as we put together a budget that reflects the values of this organization of Durham City municipal government, as well as this community that we all love.

Three years.

So central to this year's budget, you you've already heard that equitable investment is a high priority for us.

We have a rural community.

Most of our budget goes to personal personnel service because we are public service, that's what we do.

We use our we use our knowledge, our hands, our feet, uh tools in order to give a service to our residents.

These priorities are evidenced by the inclusion and our preliminary budget uh projections that we give you.

Um, inclusion of step and performance increases for all of our employees, all of them.

Um, and we approximate that number to be around five percent.

But it's very important to say we'll include every single employee that works for CIC government.

Uh it includes an additional five million dollars to uh our street maintenance based budget, and we hear about uh the importance of a good good and excellent streets in our community as a high priority from our residents uh from all of our stakeholders all the time, and programming of up to 25 million dollars in equitable and green infrastructure investments that we are implementing programmatically with the half set uh tax increase that the council um the council approve in previous year.

So discussing and prioritizing uh all of these business studies.

Um I'll move at this point to uh a request of the council, which is that as you continue your discussion and prioritizing the city council new budget request.

We would like to uh schedule another uh special session just for that.

Just for that.

And what I would like to do is work with your administrative staff and city clerk to set a date and time for that.

We believe that another two hours would likely be long enough for us to get through all of those requests and you provide us the information that we need as we continue to prepare the budget.

Every single day, we're doing something with the budget.

So we are hopeful that we can get this special meeting schedule very, very soon.

For those who have history with this, it's not the first time we've had to do something like this.

And we we'd like to because we know you're very busy, potentially look at a day that you want to always already be focused on city uh city services, which we like a work session day, a date that your work sessions already set up for, but adding some additional time to that.

So you'll hear more about that request uh at later, but um hopefully I see in class that you go okay with us doing that.

Thank you very much.

Um at this time I see my back saying he's not here.

Um more egg jokes.