Joint City-County Committee Meeting - February 11, 2025
STREAMING COPY IN PREPARATION — RECORDING AVAILABLE FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
Joint City-County Committee Meeting - February 11, 2025
The Joint City-County Committee held its meeting on February 11, 2025, at City Hall. The agenda covered four main items: approval of prior minutes, updates on strategic youth initiatives, a discussion on Durham Public Schools transportation challenges, and an update on community intervention and support services. The meeting lasted from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., with extensive deliberation on collaboration, resource allocation, and addressing community violence. No public comment was taken.
Consent Calendar
- Approved the draft minutes from the December 10, 2024 Joint City-County Committee Meeting.
Discussion Items
City-County Strategic Youth Initiatives Update
- Lara Khalil, City-County Youth Initiatives Manager, presented on the Office on Youth's work, highlighting engagement of over 300 youth in leadership positions and a listserv of 480 youth-serving practitioners. The office distributed $300,000 in grants to 18 grantees, focusing on collective impact and reducing silos.
- Commissioners and council members raised concerns about scaling reach to marginalized youth, including refugee and trans communities, and asked for better data on total youth impacted. Khalil noted the office plans to expand in-person convenings and amplify youth stories.
- Mayor Williams emphasized the need to connect disconnected youth with the office, especially those involved in violence. He suggested integrating youth center planning with future convention center discussions.
Durham Public Schools Discussion: Transportation Services
- Dr. Larry Webb (DPS Chief Operating Officer) and team presented on bus driver shortages, family responsibility zones, and infrastructure needs. Nationally, 88% of school districts report driver shortages. DPS has added 15 new drivers since January 6, 2025, and all routes have been covered since January 23, 2025. Family responsibility zones (walk zones) were implemented for 21 elementary schools starting January 28, 2025.
- Kristen Brookshire highlighted needs for improved crosswalks, sidewalks, crossing guards, and transit access. She noted that most DPS schools lack transit shelters and requested city/county support for infrastructure.
- City and county officials questioned the link between the DPS strategic plan and the city's Vision Zero Action Plan. Councilmember Freeman asked for data on how many high school students use school buses versus GoDurham, suggesting increasing transit use for older students. Commissioner Jacobs called for an immediate meeting of city, county, and school staff to address walk zone safety, particularly at Hope Valley Elementary.
- County Manager Hager confirmed a joint infrastructure working group would be reconvened. The committee directed staff to meet before the next joint body meeting to address immediate sidewalk, crosswalk, and crossing guard needs.
Community Intervention & Support Services Update
- Krystal Harris, Director of Community Intervention and Support Services (CISS), reported on Project Build (gang intervention for ages 14-21, serving 95 active youth) and My Brother's Keeper Durham (MBK) focusing on Milestone 6: youth safety from violent crime. The department's total budget is approximately $1.7 million, with $160,000 in operational funds (city: $19,008; county: $25,000; JCPC: $130,000), and MBK has only $11,000 operational.
- Harris highlighted plans to expand Project Build to ages 10-13, develop a comprehensive community safety plan, create a countywide data hub, and address food and housing insecurity. She noted that 113 people have been killed since January 1, 2023.
- Mayor Williams expressed frustration that despite investments, youth violence remains high, stating priorities are out of balance. Commissioner Holmes countered that the county invests heavily upstream (e.g., $10 million in pre-K, $5 million guaranteed income) and that gun violence is a national issue beyond local control.
- The committee expressed support for a coordinated community safety plan and for leveraging existing data and assessments to avoid duplication. The next steps include Harris meeting with city staff to align strategies.
Key Outcomes
- Approved December 10, 2024 meeting minutes.
- Directed city, county, and DPS staff to convene an immediate joint working group on school transportation infrastructure, focusing on sidewalks, crosswalks, crossing guards, and transit improvements. A report back is expected before the next joint meeting.
- Agreed to explore pilot programs for additional crossing guard services in family responsibility zones.
- Recognized the need for a comprehensive community safety plan and for expanding Project Build to younger ages pending additional funding.
- Next meeting scheduled for Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at the Durham County Commissioner's Chamber at 9:30 a.m.
Meeting Transcript
One two test test one two. I'll just call you test, test, testing. Is this working? Yes, we do. It's perfect. Is that working? All right, I think we're ready to go. Thank you for that presentation. I will uh give it to my colleagues for questions. I also have to come all the way around. Just have to get the work around and we'll cheer in the hour. Um, thank you so much for your presentation. I really enjoy listening and learning about what the office of youth is doing. Um I guess I had more of a comment than a question. It's a question. One of the things, as I'm in this role now, and I've transitioned out of being an educator, teacher, school librarian for 30 years, and being in the public schools. And you have all these programs, right? And somehow you feel like they're just not connected, right? There's all these things going on. And like using your presentation of these silos, right? And there's like, for example, I'm hearing of there was a youth center in East Durham. Many of you may have heard it called booth. And then um, and it was needing resources, and then um a colleague for a colleague of mine came to me about um another situation with youth. I wonder how many, how can this be scaled up? Or the better question is how many young people is this serving? Because we know the needs are great, right? Um, and we know so many of our young people in Durham need this. So I want to know how many of young people is this serving. I want to know, okay, how does the message get out? Is it profitable to work through nonprofits? And then also how can we market it better? Um, one of the concerns that I'm having is, you know, people, I love Durham, I love Durham County, I've lived here for 32 years, and one of the things when I look at Instagram reels as something I like to do in my spare time, and I'm seeing these Instagram reels with young people saying how dirty and dangerous Durham is. That doesn't sit well with me. So how do we market it? How do we scale it up? How many young people is serving, and you know, what can we do better to have impact on young people? Yeah, thank you for those questions and comments, Commissioner Burton. Um that's yeah, there's a lot of questions there. So let me take them one at a time regarding the silos. Yes, that is something that we hear about, we continue to see over and over again, and through our grant program, we can do that on a very boutique scale, right? With just our 18 grantees, we can really nurture them together as a community, and what we've seen is a lot of blooms from that investment, right? Relationships, new partnerships that are emerging, and also people are working together on shared goals. So you're seeing that kind of collective impact. What we want to do is scale that up. So right now what we have is a listserv. Essentially, this came out of COVID times when we couldn't gather together, and there's over 480 practitioners working with young people in Durham on this listserv. Um we know there's a lot more than that, and it grows every day as people hear about it. And what we want to do is actually start convening that group and beyond in person together to have more of those conversations around what's happening in East Durham, what's happening with food, how can other people support? What are you working on? What am I working on?
openpublica.com