Good afternoon, everyone who come to order.

It's September 4th, 1 o'clock p.m.

Let me greet everyone who's in the chamber with us today to my honorable colleagues, our executive staff, to our friends and residents watching on whatever platform you may be watching this afternoon is honor.

The mayor is in route from a previous uh commitment, so in accordance with charter and our laws, I'll be uh conducting the meeting.

So this honor arrives.

Good to have you all here.

Madam Clerk, Dickness Call the Royal.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Mayor Williams is delayed.

He will be here momentarily.

Mayor Prote Middleton.

I'm here.

Councilmember Baker.

Here.

Councilmember Caballero here.

Councilmember Cook here.

Councilmember Freeman.

And Councilmember Rist.

Here.

Thank you.

And the chair's assessment.

We do have a quorum.

I haven't heard is colleagues.

Have you heard anything from Councilmember Freeman?

I'm going to um give her some time to arrive.

If she doesn't arrive at some later point in the meeting, then we'll go ahead and if you're an excuse absence, and we send our best regards and wishes to her.

Colleagues, at this time, I'm going to yield for any announcements by members of the council.

I'll yield to Councilmember Cook.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for being here.

I just wanted to send out us uh just quick congratulations to uh attorney Erin Miles, who welcomed a new family member into their family.

So congratulations to Aaron.

Um and then I'm gonna have two things that I have very briefly spoken with some of you about uh in other matters to raise um at that time, uh, and I'm happy to do it to preview it now or to just do it in other matters, whatever uh folks feel more comfortable with.

We'll be happy to matter if that's all right.

Councilmember Baker, good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, colleagues, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you all for being here.

I look forward to a productive meeting.

That's it.

Thank you, Councilmember Clavier, good afternoon.

Thank you, good afternoon, everyone.

Uh very quickly, I just want to highlight that we do have our um volunteer uh reception immediately following this work session.

So this is a thing that the city clerk's office hosts every year.

Usually we do it in December.

I think this is the first one we removed to September, and it's a way to honor and highlight the incredible work that residents give to the city of Durham.

I think we have 26 boards and commissions in the city, 28 uh boards and commissions in the city of Durham.

Uh, and those are all um many of them, maybe not all, many of them are resident-led, and so these are Durham residents who have stepped up and are providing service to the city of Durham.

This is a way to um say thank you.

So thank you to the City Clerk's office for organizing that, and thank you for our very wonderful little schedules when it tells us what pictures and what time we need to show up.

It's very helpful.

So thank you, Madam City Clerk, and all your staff.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Freeman, good afternoon, good to see you.

Do you have any announcements?

Thank you.

Just uh appreciation for the excuse absence on Monday to attend to a family emergency information.

Thank you.

Thank you, Preol, as well.

Councilmember Riz, good afternoon.

Thanks, Mayor Pro Tim.

Good afternoon, colleagues, staff, folks online.

Good to see you all.

Um yes, I look forward to the volunteer appreciation event this session.

Look forward to seeing many of you there.

Um again, thanks to the clerk for the uh scorecard, like the minute-by-minute breakdown of where we should be, so I appreciate that.

Also just want to say on my bike in on my way in.

I had a chance to swing by the Museum of Durham History, and I think we have an agenda item later today.

Mr.

Munklow's here in the audience.

Have an agenda item at the museum.

I just want to say, like, they've got another amazing exhibit that has been to think launched a couple weeks ago.

Unearthing history and stories from Gare Cemetery, first class exhibit.

It's worth seeing.

Take some time to check that out.

So again, thank you so much for the first-class work.

Small but mighty Durham Museum of History.

Really appreciate that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Uh colleagues, no announcements from the out this associate myself with all of the great comments and options you and A.

And so I'm going to yield to our executive staff for any priority items they may have.

I'm going to yield now.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Council.

Uh, good to be with you this afternoon.

The city manager's office has no priority items.

However, I would uh like to request uh a few moments to speak uh during other matters.

I'd like to update the council on some just the schedule of upcoming presentations that are previewed for the council, and so with your permission uh at the end of the meeting, I'll uh report out on those.

Thank you so much.

I'll yield now to rest in the attorney.

Good afternoon, Council.

Good afternoon, Mayor Proten, members of the council.

It's good to see you.

The city attorney's office does not have any priority items.

However, I would love to take a point of personal privilege to make a brief introduction, if I might.

Um we have a new addition to our team, Brendan Neal, who is an associate city attorney.

Several of you have already sent her warm welcome by email.

I thank you for that.

But wanted uh her to be able to see the council, you to see her, and she's gonna be doing some great work for us for uh the finance department in procurement.

She's also going to be working on technology solutions, which as you know is undergoing a C change of update and modernization.

Um we're really excited to have Brenda.

She is a proud UNC law grad, 2024, I believe, and comes to us from a fellowship, fresh from a fellowship at Cornell University as a contract um person doing that legal work for the university.

So we're really excited to have Brenda.

Here here on behalf of the city, welcome to the team.

Glad you're with us.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

But on in that shop, right?

Madam Clerk, good afternoon.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor Pro Tem.

I'd like to give the board and committee committee report.

Um the mayor's Hispanic Latino committee appointments.

The following five individuals have been nominated.

EDI and Dino.

And there's another um board that we are um staffing at the at the moment.

It's the Durham Housing Board of Commissioners.

And the first individual who's been nominated is a previous homeless individual, and her name is Angela R.

Holmes.

The second nomination is um is problematic.

We have received some correspondence from uh a public um public group, and they have indicated that the individual who has applied for the position may not be um a resident of the city of Durham, and I have forwarded the information to the city attorney's office, and um to make you aware the city clerk's office does do um checks on delinquent taxes with the tax administration.

We also searched the Durham GIS to determine if the um applicant's parcel or address is within the city, the city corporate limits, and um we did determine that there was no delinquent tax and that the parcel was in fact within the corporate limits.

Um according to the email received, uh, it was determined that the individual is not a resident of the city of Durham, and I did want to ask some direction from the council on this.

I mean according to the email.

There's an email sent with um It's an allegation.

It's an allegation, but there was documentation attached to the email.

But our own vetting, our own vetting and due diligence is yielded away.

Um we determined there were no delinquent taxes in accordance with the address that was provided, and um the GS parcel is within the city of Durham.

Apparently the parcel belongs to the applicant's husband, and that is a um a commercial address.

I want to be careful how much public hearing because it's it's valid.

I want to put it on GBA.

We'll move on the other one.

Okay.

Sorry, put it on GBA because you've already made these allegations about a candidate, an applicant.

Appreciate it.

I I don't know what other recourse we have because between now and the meeting, if we can do further due diligence, we need to pull it all together.

That that's uh but for the purposes of now, that's how we'll dispose.

We'll put it on GBA and give council member.

Um, Madam Attorney, do you do you need any further guidance from us or any anything else from us to I have not even had an opportunity to review the communications that the clerk sent to me, so I'd like to review that before I can weigh in from where we are.

Just want to make sure that that was clear that we we would love that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

It'll be put on GPA.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, Councilmember, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

And then in the future, if there are problems with applicants, can I just say resolve that?

And and to the Mayor Pro Tem's point, we need to be careful with how we um speak about these matters.

Um in in future, this sometimes happens.

Can we just say that there was not a determination made and it needs to be put on GBA and leave it at that.

Thank you.

I appreciate the colleagues.

Madam Clerk, you can proceed.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Um that is the last nomination I have.

I did want to remind you that the photo schedule is at each of your places for the volunteer appreciation reception tonight, and we're looking forward to seeing you all.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember.

Councilmember.

Madam Clerk, also I know that on the agenda would be updated.

Boards, committees, commission task force annual attendance reports.

Are those just updated?

Is that the what you have?

All of the the boards and committee attendance reports have been reviewed and updated if there were any um discrepancies in the in the per sect question of meetings.

There had been a problem with the formula.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

My thanks to the uh executive staff.

At this time now we'll I'll read to turn to reading our administrative consent items and our agenda of the day.

Of course, it's the prerogative of council members or members of the public to pull.

Subministrative consent items are the city clerk's office.

Item one, Durham Housing Authority Board, a commissioner's appointment.

Item two, Mayor's Hispanic Latino Committee appointment.

Item three, boards, committees, commissions, and task forces, task forces fiscal year 2024 through 2025 annual attendance reports under departmental items from budget management services department.

Item 4, a contract agreement with the Museum of Durham History to provide funding support museum operations.

Let's pull that.

Let's pull it.

Item 4 is pulled.

Continuing on the City County Emergency Management Department Item 5, 2025, EL HAR Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan Update.

Item 5 is pulled.

Under General Service Department, item seven, 2024 bond referendum project, East End and Long Meadow Parks, Long Meadow Parks Construction Manager at Risk CMAR contract with Ball Four Beatty Construction Holt Brothers Construction, a joint venture.

I pulled that one as well.

Item number seven is poll.

Item number eight, twelfth amendment to the assignment agreement for the DAP operating agreement.

Item number nine, twenty twenty-four bond referendum project, East End and Long Meadow Parks Design Contract with Surface 678 PA.

Item number 10, Environmental and Street Services, South Renovation Professional Services, Second Amendment with CPL Architects and Engineers PC.

Item number 11, W.

D.

Hill Combined Enhancements Design Contract with RVE, Inc.

Under our Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

Item number 12, contract for Durham Workforce Development Board, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity, ACT Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs with Eckert Youth Alternative Inc.

doing business as ECRID Connects.

Item 13, contract for workforce innovation and opportunity act for NC Works, career center operation between the City of Durham and Eckerd Youth Alternatives, Inc.

doing business as Eckert Connect.

Planning and Development Department Item 15, Utility Extension Agreement with Welcome Venture Park LLC to serve.

Welcome Venture Park Phase 3.

From our Technology Solutions Department, item 16, contract renewal with Azteca Systems, LLC for City Work Software License and Maintenance.

Item number 17, contract for audit of cities primary telecommunications service accounts under our transportation department item 18 First Amendment supplemental agreement number four, the master agreement number 18919 with Stan Tech Consulting Services Inc.

for design of Hortonrolled Multi-Use Paths and Sidewalk Gaps.

DIPBL-0063.

Just want to say great stuff.

Real important work.

Thanks again to the county.

Also added thanks to the Go Triangle Board as well.

Absolutely.

Honorable Water Management Department Item Number 20, Award of Contract Ext Contract Extension for Routine Generator Maintenance and Emergency Repair Services from National Power LLC.

This afternoon presentations from our finance department.

This presentation is slated to go 15 minutes.

From our water management department, item number 22, Western Intake Partnership Project Update.

And for citizens' matters to be heard at 1 p.m.

I have one pre-registered citizen, Darwin Langley of the Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation.

That ends the reading of our published uh agenda for the day.

Um I have items pulled item number four, five, seven, and thirteen.

Mr.

Manager, do you concur?

We'll handle these in order, then we'll go up to item number four.

I believe Councilmember Baker, you pulled that.

I'm sorry.

You're right.

Citizens' comments.

Uh Mr.

Langley, thank you, Calvin's.

Mr.

Langley, um, can you hear me?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, good afternoon, man.

Thank you for being with us.

You have three minutes.

Good afternoon, Mr.

Mayor, Mr.

Mayor, Pro Tem, members of the City Council.

I'm DeWarren Langley.

I serve as the volunteer executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation, which is an impactful impact-driven nonprofit organization committed to advancing equity and opportunity for boys and young men of color through competency-based learning, strategies and adventureship, and career-focused skill development.

Our mission is to dismantle system with systemic barriers and expand pathways to academic achievement, careers, economic mobility, and leadership.

At the foundation, we believe that when we invest in the skill development, coaching and career inspiration of boys and young men of color, we do not just say futures, we transform lives.

The career pathway program was created with this vision in mind to prepare a young man with the tools, guidance, and opportunities they need to thrive academically, professionally, and civically.

Consider the journey of one young man we recently supported, who connected with me in February of 2025 after my public advocacy before the Durham City Council for greater investment in youth development and career exploration.

Through the career pathway program, we walked alongside him step by step.

Together we revised his resume, clarified his career goals, for instance, interviewing skills, and apply for relevant opportunities.

No disinterest in land use and policy.

I encouraged him to apply for the Durham Planning Academy.

He was accepted.

From there, his civic engagement deepened.

He was appointed as an at-large member of the City County Appearance Commission by the Durham Board of County Commissioners.

This was not only a professional milestone, but also a powerful affirmation that young men of color belong to spaces where decisions are made and futures are safe.

Ultimately, he secured a four-time entry-level technology role in the research triangle park, earning $52,000 a year.

With steady employment, civic leadership, and a clear career trajectory, he is now on a path of economic stability and mobility.

That is what transformation looks like.

The impact of the career pathway program is clear.

When boys and young men of color have access to coaching, mentoring, and professional development, they can move from uncertainty to purpose, from underemployment to driving careers, from the margins to meaningful civic leadership.

Our charges is urgent.

Without intentional investment, too many young men are left vulnerable to undesirable influences.

But when we choose to invest, we unlock potential, strengthen communities, and create lasting change.

The Charles Hammond Houston Foundation stands as a bridge, connecting young men of color to skills, opportunities, and networks that will sustain them for a lifetime.

And as we've seen, this investment is not just transform one life.

It strengthens families, enriches communities, and builds a more just and prosperous future for us all.

We invite the city to join us through investment in partnership.

Mr.

Langley, thank you so much.

We appreciate the work you continue to do in our community.

I'm clear that is the only person I had for you.

All right.

All right, we'll now go to the pulled items for real.

This time I think Council uh Councilmember Baker, you pulled item number four.

I'll yield to you.

Thank you.

Um I just uh for my own edification.

Uh there is a little bit of information in the packet about the um location.

It's been a matter of conversation over the past several years of the museum.

Um I think uh currently, as it stands, the current location is seen as the permanent location.

But I just wanted to see if there was any update in terms of the conversation around location, um, especially as we uh as we consider adoption um at some point of the downtown master plan and some of the opportunities that might be opened up there.

Is there still a desire for a new location or open-mindedness for that, or do you think that the current location is going to be the permanent location?

Uh Christina Reardon, budget and management services, and I'm um looking to our city manager.

Uh we do have the Museum of Durham History here as well, so I'm not sure if your question is for city or for um you know the nonprofit itself, so I can't.

I think the nonprofit would be good.

I'll have um Art there uh director come up and speak.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Um great questions, thank you very much.

Um I would say to answer your question, we love where we are being at 500 West Main Street.

Um Councilmember Caballero has been part of a working group the past couple of years to identify and do the due diligence to determine the permanent home for the museum.

Um we are working towards making a recommendation to the city council um that a memo to be submitted soon via Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Caballero that uh we would uh the recommendation would be to stay where we currently are.

Great, thank you.

That's all that I had.

I was curious, appreciate it.

Thank you, colleagues, anyone else?

Director Mugglock, good to see you kind of uh telegraphed it with with that request, maybe um uh a request full disclosure for just uh a little bit more money to just under 50 grand.

Um I think maybe coming down the pipe um for us.

Just want to put that out there, we'll we'll deliberate it, but um to do two telegraph and I want to go ahead and put that out there.

Thank you, colleagues.

Anyone else on this item?

All right, we'll move on to item number five.

Councilmember Cook, I believe you pulled that out yield to you.

Hi.

Um this is I don't have any very specific questions, but I just think that this is something that's coming up a lot for residents, and so I was hoping that you could just give us on the record a a brief overview of the work that you've done with the surrounding uh municipalities and and sort of what this plan means for Durham and sustainability.

Yes, um Dave Sanders, deputy chief for emergency management.

The Eno Hall Plan is a regional um hazard mitigation plan which involved multiple counties.

Um it's sponsored by the state, and it's pretty much it's covered by the state.

WSP was the vendor that the state acquired to do the plan.

It included person, um, orange, Durham, Alamance.

Am I missing one?

Right.

Um and basically what it does is it uh identifies the threats and the hazards specific to each county in each area, including the municipalities within Durham, and for us that's the city of Durham.

Um we identified or through working with the same stakeholders that were involved within the last Eno Hall mitigation plan.

I identify the specific threats and hazards to Durham and implemented mitigation plans and processes moving forward to try to to address those concerns that were found in the plan.

Um flooding was a major concern for this one, and we included some wildfire concerns for this one while working with the relative departments that were involved with this.

They identified you know the specific threats areas and the the mitigation projects moving forward to help with these.

Um I believe one is can building resiliency for city and county facilities, making them more resilient to all hazards um type events and things like that.

Um adopting the plan, what it does is it it allows the city and the county to to qualify for any available funding that may be available for this any f any state federal grant or anything like that.

Um if the once the plan is adopted, then we we're eligible for that funding.

Um without adopting the plan, then we would potentially not be eligible for any funding for any of these mitigation projects Thank you so much.

Those are all my questions.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Um being pulled.

Yeah, so um there are several new action items on table 7.11 on page 396.

Um of them would come from grant funds, some of them would come from the county's uh stormwater utility fee, um stream restoration projects.

So I'm I'm curious if if these are kind of open-ended, if it if it's sort of a goal or if we already have some specific projects uh in mind.

Um some of the specific projects are gonna be up to the individual departments and areas that would apply for that grant funding.

Some of those are still open-ended.

Um I know we're we're working um to try to increase our flood awareness.

We're looking at new pages specifically for the Eno and try to revamp that process.

So there is some specific funding in mind.

We haven't obtained that funding yet, um, but some of these are still open-ended.

Um that answers your question.

Yeah.

Great.

Thank you.

Colleagues, anyone else on this item?

All right, thank you.

Good to see you.

Thank you.

We'll move on.

Councilmember Click, you're still up.

Item number seven.

I'm going to ask some some maybe basic questions, but I've read the materials here, and I don't really maybe understand what a CMAR service is.

And I'm just kind of curious about what we're looking at with this item.

Some of these things are very vague.

Some of these words are very vague, and they also seem like things that we maybe had already done as part of the bond process.

So just wondering if you could speak to what more specificity we're getting and sort of what construction manager and risk services are.

Thank you.

Chris Let's go, project manager for general services.

So construction manager at risk is essentially a partner with us during the design phase.

We can utilize their resources, their expertise to help us minimize our design risk as far as what what cost implications may come with certain aspects, constructibility reviews, engaging our trade subcontractors to get them excited and participating in this project.

And just the general involvement in management and organization of that design process.

Yes, so at this at this size, it is recommended that we utilize ACMR early on in the project again to minimize your risk for change orders and things of that nature that maybe the design team and the project management team can't see early on, but the CMR with their expertise and their tools and knowledge, they can help see those risks early on to make sure the design is good and clean so that when we go into construction, we don't have some unforeseen conditions or things that we could have mitigated earlier on by having their expertise at the table.

And how did we find this particular company?

So we we put on an RFQ.

We had four firms submit for that uh RFQ, and the team narrowed it down to two teams were selected and invited in to do an in-person interview.

Um and then the selection committee selected Valford Bailey Holt as the highest ranked and most qualified for this project.

Have we worked with them in the past or have they worked on other maybe large-scale projects in North Carolina in this area?

They have.

They're very well-known company in this area.

Um as far as the city of Durham, I'm not sure if I can speak to our experience.

I may ask Jean to come up and speak to how much.

Good afternoon, Gina Probible, Security City Manager.

Construction Manager at Risk is one of three types of delivery methods in North Carolina.

You've got design bid build, you have um design build and construction manager at risk to kind of level set.

That's a procurement process that we use.

It is perfect and so appropriate for projects of this size.

There's a lot of risk.

Um having a construction manager at risk in the pre-construction phase, aids and the delivery method, um, the conflict avoidance, constructability, logistics.

So it is um it's a great procurement and delivery method.

Um, this firm has worked on several projects with us in the past.

Holt Brothers is part of this as a joint venture.

They've not worked on some of our projects, but the other the other thing has.

So they scored well.

We had actually really good firms, and typically we find that in C-More processes and this firm rank uh excuse me, right to the top.

Thank you so much.

Those are all my questions.

Councilmember.

Um, thank you so much, and appreciate the comments for the questions for my colleagues.

I just want to say I'm excited.

We passed the bottom last fall.

This is a big part of the parks um bond that we passed, so I'm glad we're moving forward.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember Baker, you have a very hard job.

This is a very complex uh project.

Um do we balance the remediation waiting on NCPEQ, looking for state money with moving forward with the bond money that has that that is being used uh from the residents of Durham.

How do we balance that?

What are you concerned about?

Uh, what are you hopeful for in how we move forward?

If if I may, I'd like to uh ask my colleague Wade Wolcutt to come up to help stick to that.

Hello, Wade Walcott, Parks Mercration.

So the process we're looking at right now that is outlined in your agenda item is to take a look first at, I believe, at the Long Meadow Park area.

So we don't have any issues right there related to the preregulatory landfill program.

So that allows us to start the design and thinking about the construction now and not have to wait while the state continues to do their analysis at all the sites, but including East End Park.

So that's why the team has laid it out in this phased approach so that we can start doing the work now, planning the work, and then move forward, and by that time we're hopeful that we'll have more data.

And then at that point, staff will come provide their recommendation on how to move forward along with input from the community and their thoughts and opinions and recommendations as well.

Thank you so much.

Are we confident in the timeline of the end of 2025?

And I ask that because wasn't there some testing that we were supposed to receive by this summer?

And is that the same testing that we're hoping to receive by the end of the calendar year now, or is this additional testing?

I can't recall exactly which which testing.

I'll answer your first question.

Confidence level, I can't control that part with the state.

I think what you might be referring to is related to the above and below ground testing.

They may have some samples in already, with again, I am not the expert, I just play one.

I believe with this kind of analysis of above and below ground water and vapor, what they're trying to do is collect a longer period of samples so that if they take a few samples April, May, they don't want to release those and say, this is what we have.

And I think it's helpful for them to say April, May, June, July, August, September, and show that there may be fluctuations with the data throughout the year, and so I think that's why they're waiting for for a December time frame to give them a broader uh spectrum of analysis.

Thank you.

This is a tough, tough project, tough work, so I really appreciate the work that's going into it.

Um I also appreciate the wanted to say I appreciate the um all the background that was included in the staff report.

So whoever wrote the staff report, great job, um, really appreciate that, and uh good good luck, and we'll we'll be we'll be here um available, you know, if if you need stuff from us, obviously we want this to be a success, and a lot of people are are watching this project move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I would just council member Council Member Freeman and Council Member.

I would just like to add um things specifically.

Is there any conversation in this design process about how you do some storytelling just about the history of this area?

Yeah, yes, that absolutely can be part of.

We have a uh one of the elements that we're adding is a storytelling terrace to the fire pit.

That's one of the new park elements that we're actually adding to this site.

So absolutely.

And then um just around the litigation, is there any update from the parks interact around uh what the plan is and how that's gonna move forward?

Sure, no more than what I was just sharing as far as uh receiving more data from the state by the end of this calendar year.

When that is completed, that is the last uh scheduled testing and analysis the state has to do, and then at that point we'll have uh comprehensive data and all the information that they will test for.

And that'll be all of the parks, not just the correct.

Yes, yeah.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Um Mr.

Walking, can you also remind us?

I know back going to the to the bond sort of issue and the sort of like the public education there.

I know there was um communication with Parks Rick about how things might move around where where pools might be to the sports to address some of the lead that we know is there.

So can you remind us again how the design and where things might be is being influenced by sort of what we know about lead so far?

I'll try.

So that is another reason why we're looking at this phased approach and starting where we are.

So as our teams and when these contracts are are able to be finalized and move forward, we'll have a great design team, we'll have a great CMAR team, and we'll be able to start at that other end.

What we are also contemplating and talking about with the state and everyone is depending on what solution that we collectively come up with, there may be some uh advantages at East End with the amenities that our residents said they want that may also serve in a way to cap or provide a barrier between anything that uh could be deemed risky below the surface.

So for example, uh we know it's clear that uh we need more courts spaces, whether that's tennis, basketball, pickleball, what have you.

We know there's interest in the community for additional skate spots, dots, and parks.

And so with all that uh kind of information, or I'm sorry, all those kinds of amenities that we've heard previously, those may also serve the purpose of providing that barrier between uh people at risk.

I appreciate you also becoming setting up on the lead piece of what your your your uh background and appreciate becoming the most the foremost expert in doing one of lead, it sounds like redact that.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Ms.

Mayor.

I just wanted to uh add on to and and commend our staff in parks and recreation specifically under Wade's leadership.

Um, you know, uh as they have uh as they have worked to you know very closely with DEQ to uh restore these parks to the public use and good.

Uh I've been really impressed with their uh dedication and intentionality about not just restoring the parks but really thinking about how this might present opportunities to really enhance and improve the parks.

And I think you know, obviously restoring the parks is job one and one that they take very seriously, but but I appreciate the thoughtfulness uh around how uh we might reimagine some of these spaces to be better than they were uh when when the lead was discovered and and uh we started this work.

Uh and I think this project in particular is a space where that philosophy is playing out.

So I just wanted to commend them uh publicly for it, and uh I'm really excited uh as as those options come forward uh and as we hear from the public, people are really anxious to get these parks back online.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Manager.

Thank you, colleagues.

Gentlemen, thank you.

See, I'll yield to Councilmember Rich, item number 13.

I believe you pulled that.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Yeah, thank you for coming.

Um I just question my number 13.

So I I I know that 12 and 13 were both contracts with Echo under the workforce investment and opportunity act.

Um the contract I saw from for the number 12 had nice performance metrics in there.

For number 13, there were no performance metrics in that statement of work.

And I just want to ask, I know as a lot of questions about performance metrics.

This is critical work as as you all know.

So I want to make sure that we are clear about what our contractors are doing and have a way to assess their performance.

So I just want to ask, I don't know if that was an oversight, or just want to ask about that and make sure those performance metrics are included in the in the final contract.

There you go.

Russell with Office of Economic Workforce Development, I want to show that that information is in there.

Um they are measured through enrollment through Wagner Python.

So when an individual actually comes into the career center and they are actually um get an account in their role through the NC Works Corporate PNC Works Online system.

What's that role in that system?

Um we then uh try to get them to have a service.

When we perform a service, then those services count as the performance for the actual career center.

And it's a little different from the previous contract where it has the different metrics of the second quarter FX and fourth quarter acting, um, the media earnest.

So those are particularly WIOA metrics.

But with these particular metrics, is more so the enrollment, the services that they are actually getting once they actually in the local risk center, along with maybe it may be resume building, may be um guidance and counseling or something of that nature, but it is based on those.

So just understand so on the on the first contract number 12, that's sort of adults under the we owe a uh funding from the feds.

And so those metrics come from the that's sort of federally mandated in terms of like jobs and wages, right?

Yes, that way so it's different under the contract for youth services, is that what is that what you're saying?

So the build is located work and youth, there are WI federally funded programs.

With the career center, the career center is a program that we got the funding from from the adult dislocated worker.

So it wasn't technically funding from the federal government.

With the city of Durham of the Durham Workforce Development Board it was contracted out once the um state stated that they did not want to run the actual career center.

So it wasn't it's that then we had to figure out a way to actually find the funding to actually have an actual manager for the career center to operate with different partners there.

So this is different but is is it's WIA funding but the metrics and stuff are a little different.

For the career center yes I and again so like what's what are the key metrics then in terms of like as you think about performance for the career center is it mostly like numbers of people served is it sort of like what what's the how do you how do you how do you all assess that and I will yield to Ms.

Chisel she is the actual manager that works with Eckert and she can give you a little bit more information on that.

I got that afternoon everyone Yolanda Chisholm with ECOConnect so yes we do manage the career center and all of the partners who come to the who operate out of the career center and provide services to all of the job seekers within the city of Durham as well as employers who operate out of the city of Durham from last year we had almost 1600 distinct individuals who came through outdoors to receive services examples of services is getting assistance with creating a resume doing online job searches applying for jobs interviewing skills some of those soft skills development that they need that employers say that some of our um job seekers are are lacking so those are examples of some of the services that we provide in addition to that when we're working with employers we help them to post jobs online so job seekers can apply for those positions as well as if they need any kind of assistance excuse me assistance with labor market information oftentimes you know we have conversations with them if they're coming in and telling us that they need to hire someone and the the wages are still $10 an hour we kind of let them know hey there's a lot of competition out there that's not sustainable wages for um our citizens especially in this area so just giving them some realistic information that they can go back to the table to to try to you know see if they can increase the wages so all of our residents can can earn sustainable wages.

So again if you all could add an OEWD some of those performance metrics in the scope of the work that'd be really helpful.

Much appreciated thank you thank you Council McColly anyone else on the sign?

Thank you both good to see appreciate the work you do.

We'll go turn now to our presentations our first presentation which is slated to 15 minutes for our finance department fiscal year 2024 through 25 fourth quarter financial report we do have the speaker on decide but we'll see the presentation first we'll then uh entertain our speaker and then we'll turn to the council good afternoon Tim for finance department so before we get started I would like to uh say uh this is a collaborative process uh between the finance department and the budget department and so uh I'm so uh appreciative of the fact that I have my co-pilot here uh Christina Reardon budget uh the management services director um to help uh answer any questions that we might have as well uh I have my navigator since I'm using the airplane theme I guess uh with me uh Julia Brennan who is my senior analyst uh who did a lot of work on doing the presentation together and so uh while we are calling up that presentation I will also say this is the Q4 report so this is as of June 30th 2025 I will also say these numbers and this information is unaudited we are currently in the process of going through our audit the audit is going well but uh there still are invoices trickling in and invoices coming in and some revenue trickling in so um and we still have lots of accruals to make so that information will be uh provided and uh we are looking forward to having our audit done by August October 31 and uh everything is going well with that so to get started uh just uh as I said the Q4 report is it is online so we would encourage uh you and the residents uh to go online and check out that uh financial report uh what I'm providing to you today is just sort of a very general high level overview of some of the financial numbers but the financial report the quarterly report has a lot of other information uh in there so we encourage you to uh you and our residents to look at that information um not only does it include the budget to actual information that it also provides a debt and investment update uh there's lots of information on in there on some of our contracting some of our claims uh a CIP stoplight report as well as some additional information that we're putting in there for general services uh to meet um sort of uh requirements resolution requirements for real estate division report and then also just a very brief update on the American rescue plan where we're at on that and so um certainly encourage you to to look at that information so jumping right into the general fund

Uh there's lots of information in there on some of our contracting, some of our claims, uh a CIP stoplight report, as well as some additional information that we're putting in there for general services uh to meet um sort of uh requirements, resolution requirements for real estate division report, and then also just a very brief update on the American rescue plan where we're at on that.

And so certainly encourage you to to look at that information.

So jumping right into the general fund, uh we have uh uh a little bit to talk about today.

So our year-end expenditures are projected to be 14.8 million dollars less than budget, so that's good.

We always like to come in under budget.

We always have to come in under budget by um general statute requirements, so that is good.

Year end revenues projected though were 2.4 million dollars less than budget.

We're gonna talk about that here in a few minutes, uh, with an overall budget variance of 12.4 million dollars, which uh uh and so that is that is good having that variance, but uh ultimately that variance is not as big as the amount of money that we have used uh reserves to um pay for that.

So ultimately, uh right now we are anticipating using 9.5 million dollars worth of our fund balanced reserves, and so we'll talk about that here in just a few minutes.

Uh but uh big overview, general overview of our projected uh expenditures.

So you'll see uh 305, uh 304, almost 300 five million dollars uh is what we um um spent in total expenditures uh or expecting to for the general fund.

Uh 77% of that is for personnel services.

So the majority of our uh general fund budget does go to pay the salaries and benefits of the employees that are uh doing the work.

Um 18% is for operating expenditures, um, and then uh just a s uh a small amount goes either for capital A and then the electoral transfers for other funds.

For um, and so this is just sort of uh a summary uh uh uh by department of the expenditures, and you'll see what we like to see there on the the the far right hand side is the fact that all the departments with the exception of a very small uh over budget um in in departments, so we're right where we need to be.

We were anticipating that uh small overreach in the communications budget, so there's absolutely no concerns there.

Um and uh as you're all aware, we we do budget by the fund, so um, we can go over in a department.

Uh it's just we're looking at um by the way you adopt it, the budget is is where we have to be compliant as far as um being under budget.

Uh for year-end revenues, as I mentioned, um they were uh less than budgeted, but we received about 295 million dollars uh in uh total revenue.

Uh 52% of that was for property taxes, which is absolutely what we expect.

35% sales tax, so those are two big uh revenue streams, and then uh this the 7% intergovernmental, that's uh uh the money that comes from uh the county for the services that um we provide for them and then 4% charges for service.

If we go to the next slide, you can see sort of a breakdown where we're at on that.

Um no surprises, the sales tax number, again, we're projecting 2.8 million dollars to be under budget.

We'll talk a little bit about that here in just a second.

Um, but uh no surprises.

Um but what we got here, this is the slide that I really kind of want to show and to illustrate where um where we're at.

Um this is reflects the the last uh several years of our expenditures and our revenues.

And so if you can see uh the last uh couple of years or last year and this year, uh we are uh spending more than we are bringing in.

And so when that happens, clearly we have to we have to uh tap in to our reserves, which have been strong.

We have strong reserves, and and that is you know that is anticipated, that is is how we work it.

Um but you will also notice that three years prior to that we we had more revenues than expenses, and so that is where we were building up those reserves.

And so we're almost to the point now where um we have eaten up all the reserves that we've accumulated over the last few years, and and as you all know, we have we operate by ratios as to what kind of reserves we should keep.

And so as every year our our expenditure budgets increase, that percentage number uh while it stays the same, that means our reserves need to um sort of increase proportionally to to maintain the reserves we have, and so we're keeping a very close eye on where those uh where that fund balance and those reserves are are landing.

And so this is just I I I don't want to use this uh but it this is maybe it could be the canary in the coal mine where we just need to be aware uh moving forward that you know um we we have used those reserves.

Um we are still in very good shape, but we just need to be, I think, careful as we move forward as to um how we are looking at um spending our money.

That we're having a couple of technical issues with our camera.

Um council member could I hope you're getting your inside because it's locked on you, so you're getting a lot of airtime today.

I know, and I am like supporting it.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Yeah, I sound very knowledgeable.

I mean, it's my tim, I'm sorry, thank you.

Uh and so for the for the revenues, I I just pulled out uh you know, sort of the the the big uh the big numbers.

Uh so again, sales tax uh were were 2.8 million dollars under budget, and then I've got a slide for that here in just a second.

Utility franchise taxes, um that 1.4 million dollars.

I think we've had that discussion before that those that revenue stream is slowly drying up, and so um we're not surprised by those numbers.

Um good news, PAL bill, um, we were up for eight hundred forty-five thousand dollars over budget, property taxes are coming in strong, our collection rates are are strong, and so so that is that is always good, and our charges for services um certainly have come in over budget as well.

And so this is just a quick overview of our property taxes, sort of just collection by year, and you'll see um you know uh the bottom there, the increase, the four or five percent, and and there's a big increase uh last year.

That is just indicative of the fact that there was a tax rate uh change, and so that is why you see significant increases in the um property taxes.

Uh going into sales taxes, so sales taxes are have been interesting.

And so if you see the prior year, we were two that two million dollars over budget.

Uh this year we're look we're we're projecting to be 2.8 million dollars, 2.9 million dollars under budget.

I will say part of that is uh the the numbers look wonky, but I will also say that there have been issues with the Department of Revenue and how we have been getting refunds towards the end of the fiscal year.

And so last year um the nonprofit refunds, um, we got a negative refund.

I suspect the way ultimately it played out that last year we probably would have hit right on budget, which would have been helped this year's budget because the two million dollars should have been accounted for this year.

Um, but it is a very wonky thing that has happened for the last couple of years, and the Department of Revenue uh the budget department has uh very much been on top of all this.

It's just we have no control over that.

There really is not a whole lot of transparency into the Department of Revenues and some of their things, but but know that we are we are on it, and and so with that final month, we still have one more month uh of uh sales sites to come in.

And so um why I'm also sort of careful as to what what our final financial position is is the fact that we're just not quite sure what that final month is going to look like because if we were to go to trends, uh we would think it would be one thing and the information that we have uh on refunds, but it just doesn't seem to play out that way because uh of things that are going on at the Department of Revenue.

So um so I just want to be aware of that that it it's not really a for my standpoint, it's not really a budgeting issue, it really is a remends issue with the Department of Revenue.

So pivoting on to our enterprise funds, water and sewer funds, so total operating revenues came in above.

It wasn't hold question until the very end or deal with or uh I'm open.

If if you have a question, I'm more than happy to hold it.

Subsidia, yeah.

Okay.

So uh for water and sewer, our total operating revenues came in above budget by 256,000.

Um operating revenues falling short by um um 559,000, so a net revenue shortage of 303,000.

Um again, I I I call this sort of precision budgeting.

Uh, there's never usually very many issues that we have with our our water fund if you want to go to the next slide.

And so um what what I will point out from the revenue standpoint is if you look at the non-operating revenues, there was a million dollars of uh inspection line loan, and so that was a for a forgivable loan uh that we uh gone after.

Um we have just started doing the work on getting uh using those loan proceeds to expense so it's not that uh we just haven't got the loan this year.

We we fully expect to get that that money uh next year, and so um not that we're not gonna get it.

And then the other is an investment income.

Sometimes the market um plays tricks on us, and so what we were projecting it to be came under what we anticipated.

Um so we were short there.

But from the extension standpoint, um we're slightly under budget, so there is a negative overall budget variance, but again, um no surprises there.

It's a strong fund, lots of reserves and fund balance, and so no issues or concerns there.

Uh the transit funds, so expenditures are projected under budget by $635,000 due to varied savings and operating expenditures.

Um overall, the funds only negative budget variance of $2.6 million.

Um more than happy to address any questions there.

Total revenues fell short of budget by $3.2 million with only tax revenue exceeding its budget by $124,000.

And so understand that as well that this fund is supported by $3.75 of the tax rate, which is $16.1 million.

If you want to go to those numbers, that sort of gives you an overview.

Since those services didn't have we didn't get those revenues.

And here's the expenditures.

So solid waste fund, revenues, total revenues are $33.1 million, which is $2.2 million below the adjusted budget of $35.3 million.

The shortfall is mainly due to the operating revenues coming in at $8.4 million, which is $78.2% of the budget.

Expenditures, actuals were $454, $481 over budget driven mainly by higher personnel cost.

If you want to look at there, this is the revenue numbers, you'll see they're illustrated there.

Yeah, we're yeah, there we go.

Thank you.

So you can oversee the overall budget variance, but budget variance, which was a negative 2.6 there.

And so again, a lot of the revenue funds were sort of I I will say uh Q4 was not as as good as we would have liked to have seen it.

Uh and so um, but uh again there's not any not any major concerns, but it could be of indicative of uh circumstances forthcoming.

So there is just an awareness that that we we probably need to keep.

Stormwater fund.

So uh this one is doing uh adding is doing well.

The storm uh water fund is a self-sufficient fund um and receive no tax support, so I always like to point that out.

Total revenues are projected to be $32.1 million dollars or $3.9 million over budget.

Um those revenues are coming in strong.

Expenditures are expected to be under budget by $1.2 million for an overall budget variance of $5.1 million dollars.

And so um even though even though with the large one, the budget variance, um, a lot of that um um negative net revenue, uh the $455,000, a lot of that is because we use reserves in that fund to pay for capital projects, and so that's absolutely what we expect to do.

Um parking fund here and the parking fund received 99% of budget revenues ending the year with a total revenue of $7.6 million.

Conversely, the fund is projected to spend only 94% of budgeted expenditures ending the year with expenditures of $8.5 million.

So revenues continue to be insufficient to cover the expenses with the debt service fund subsidizing the existing debt portion of the fund.

I think we've had this conversation a number of times before, and we're it's still sort of the same situation.

Or we're in there.

Um again, no surprises where we have uh where we anticipate uh landing.

Ultimately, what ultimately what ends up happening is um we're in a situation where we have a negative fund balance for them, and we just treat it as it as it's an enterprise fund.

We just treat it as a um sort of a loan from another enterprise fund, and so there's certainly um lots of funds there as we try to figure out how to move forward with parking.

Uh enterprise funds, the ballpark fund, D Bank.

Uh I think both, just go to the next slide.

They're both uh go back to that.

Sorry.

Um positive revenue, the ballpark fund, $54,000, DPAC fund, the overall budget variance is projected at $710,000 with net revenues being $2.3 million.

Um continues to be uh deep a very successful fund for us.

Um and so we're very in solid shape with both of those funds.

And then finally, just uh a very, very high level overview of the ARPA projects.

This is the report.

So we're required to report on a quarterly basis to the U.S.

Treasury and then submit an annual report uh to the U.S.

Treasury.

Um and so the numbers where we're at, total obligated funds, um, as you all are aware, $51.8 million is what we were obligated.

We have uh expended $25.5 million of those funds, and we certainly currently have 25 projects in process and have completed five of those projects.

And so with that, if there are any questions, more than happy to entertain them.

City director, we actually have a resident who's going to uh wants to speak on this item, and I'll give colleagues an opportunity to exhaust all their questions and comments.

So at this time I want to welcome thank you.

Uh I want to welcome Dale and you stick around.

Uh I want to welcome Dale McKeel.

Um they virtual or in it's okay.

Thank you very much.

I uh like the shop clock.

It's a nice touch.

Um wait for my presentation to come up.

Okay, so I want to comment on um the CIP stoplight report, which is part of the uh finance presentation.

Next slide.

Go back one more.

There we go.

One more.

Okay.

I want to focus on one project this year.

Restart the clock, please.

We give you a full three.

Great.

Um so I want to focus on one project, a third Ford Creek Trail, which uh phase two, which goes from Southern Boundaries Park up to up to the American Tobacco Trail.

Thanks, thanks.

So this slide, this uh project has had continually sliding completion dates when the city council awarded the design contract in March of 2019.

The expected completion date was winter of 2022.

These other dates are taken from the uh city website, and currently the expected completion date is winter of 2027.

So you can see that that project has slid five years from what was originally anticipated.

Next slide.

The uh project appears to be stuck at 65% design for almost three years.

So that's again it's based on these reports from the uh from the quarterly financial updates.

But yeah, when you look at the stoplight report, it says that the project is green, which I assume means it's kind of on track.

So the stoplight report doesn't appear to be a whole lot of providing a whole lot of meaningful data, doesn't provide uh uh means for accountability when these projects are kind of getting stuck in the process.

And um this is not an isolated example.

The uh the uh Kelly Bryant Bridge Trail has also been sort of stuck at 65% design for three years.

And the Durham Rail Trail, the downtown rail trail completion date has also slipped when that project went out to design in February of 2021.

Uh we said it was going to be completed in the fall of 2024.

Well, uh now that is sped to spring of 2027.

And I would say most of our trail bicycle and sidewalk projects are chronically delayed.

Next slide.

The Acosta Trail, which is a rail trail up in the mountains.

Uh the first six miles of that trail opened in July.

Uh the design firm for that project was selected in November of 2021, so that was like eight months after the downtown rail trail.

They've completed design and construction and cut the ribbons uh and the that project was actually delayed about six months due to Helene.

Next slide.

So my request to you is just uh improve the CIP stoplight report, and I understand that there are some changes to that that are already in progress, so uh kudos to that.

But also I would ask you to focus on the chronic delays in our trail bicycle and sidewalk projects in Durham.

Uh as many of you probably know, Bike Durham did a report last year, which has uh 10 recommendations would ask you to look at those.

And uh we just say we've got millions of dollars invested in these projects, and project costs, construction costs are continuing to increase.

So uh, you know, every time all the delays will just dig myself into a deeper hole.

And uh appreciate you.

Thank you so much, sir.

Uh let me acknowledge your arrival of the mayor and say good afternoon to him.

Um and clerk if you'll let your record reflect that.

Also, colleagues, the there is staff um working on this project present in case any if that presentation prompted any queries from colleagues from council members there is staff here uh to address that if you want to uh pursue that.

But at this time um I'll yield uh the colleagues for questions, comments for director floor on the uh quarterly report, finance report, and any questions you may have from our our residents uh questions prompt of our residents uh presentation as well.

So important questions from Mr.

Floyd.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for presentation as always.

So I'm just trying to understand the sort of story with the general fund.

So we we budgeted, we budgeted um for the the budget we proposed about 297 revenues for the general fund, right?

And expenditures of 306 million.

So we were expecting some variance from the budget, right?

And we were planning to use some general fund to cover that.

And so this from your presentation, we're just having to we're having to dig a little bit more of the general fund to cover a little bit more since we had a shortfall, particularly on the revenue side.

Yeah, so historically, when we we do all budgets, we balance the budget with reserves, right?

And so um, and then usually through the course of the year, there are savings in areas where um those savings account for the appropriate appropriate fund balance that we use to balance the budget.

It's just in the last few years we've been using more of that appropriated fund balance than we could anticipate.

And so it looks like for your projections to the year, as we'll have to use a little bit more of the fund balance than we had planned in the budget, correct?

About something more.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

That's one question for now.

Council McCovey.

Well, actually, I think um make sure I'm clear.

I I think what I'm saying is we're using yes, so from we can get the presentation up again, so I can show it.

Um because there is there is there's the adoptive budget, which which we used to balance right in.

Which then we're moving over the encumbrances and then all the carryover requests.

And so if if we want to look at um go on the next, you know, go go up to there we go.

No, I'm sorry.

Go back right there.

Because we're not one, is it there?

Okay, so the right.

So if you look at the net, the net revenue less expenditures, that very bottom line, right?

Or you see the the adopted, and so when we balance the budget, it's 8.4 million dollars.

And then when we do the carry forward, so that negative is is is really represents the the reserves that we've budgeted.

We're drawing on, right?

And so then when we do the adjusted, so the adjusted budget, that's the carry-over request and the carry forward request.

So the encumbrances from the prior year that we move, and then the additional projects, and so ultimately then that that means we are we are budgeting then 21 million dollars of reserves um to cover then those that those adjusted by uh uh adjusted budget items.

And so what we're totally looking at there is 9.4 million dollars.

So it's not one million dollars, it really is it's one it'd be one million dollars over what the adopted budget is.

Yes.

Thank you.

Councilman cover your thank you.

Could we get a slide on the fund balance?

And because we have to your point, we have policies uh around what is it, 16.7%, and so what what we are over that, that would be really helpful.

Yes, and so uh director Reardon and I had that discussion, and we we purposely did not put it in there because I really don't have final numbers yet at this point.

And so it you will see that slide um, I think during the the carryover presentation, which is which will be in a couple of years.

That's what I was also gonna ask is what when we were gonna see carry over and carry forwards.

Uh that's so one question I'd love to see the fund balance slide when you all get it too.

I was gonna ask about carry forward and carry over.

And then I I mean to your point, I think everybody's been watching the economy carefully this year, trying to figure out what's happening.

I think to your point, it's a care canary and coal mine.

Uh I think things are going to slow down like a lot.

Um, and I I think while while y'all both finance and budget staff in this city are excellent.

We have a long history of excellent work.

We have been awarded things for it.

Um, so I have deep trust in in y'all's expertise.

Um I think you're saying the same thing, and so we have to get ahead as best we can, and I think you're prepared for that, which is why we're starting to have conversations earlier than we usually do.

Um we're gonna have to dig deep into what is actually happening in our budget, what is in there that is old that is not, which is why I know why we're doing the strategic plan refresh, right?

We gotta dig in there, figure out what's old, what has to go, where we can get more efficient.

We need to have conversations with the county where there's duplication, and how because otherwise, like there's also expectations around employee pay.

And we you all already highlighted that last year when we were adopting the budget.

So none of this is you telegraph what's happening.

Um we're in for a real tight budget cycle next year.

Um and don't think our revenue is going to get better because we what's happening nationally is not going to get better.

Um so I want to just go ahead and telegraph very publicly that we're gonna have to do a lot of due diligence in in getting rid of either initiatives, programs, whatever it is that you know, they're from 10 years ago, they were put in the base budget, and are they really necessary anymore?

Do they align with the sort of strategic plan uh to get us to where we need to be next year?

Uh we all are very aware that we I think the county did three tax increases in a row.

We did two in a row.

We have to be real thoughtful about what we're asking residents to pay if our economic um like the macroeconomic uh circumstances cutting.

We've had mass, you know, USAID, you know, pretty much got completely defunded, and we know there's a lot of folks who live in Durham who have jobs that don't anymore.

And so those headwinds, we have to get as close as you know we have to be very thoughtful and intentional and understand what's happening broadly and those effects on our residents.

I don't think sales tax is going to get better.

I think it's gonna continue to decrease as people tighten belts because people are very unsure of what's coming, and we rely on that revenue.

Um, and so I think y'all are very aware of it, and I just want to go ahead and flag it and say that I expect this council uh to to be ready to dig deep uh and and spend some real time with staff on our budget next year.

That's all, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Baker.

Mr.

Florey, you talked a little bit about the wonkiness of the sales tax.

Can you just give us a little bit more on that, the um nonprofit reimbursements a little bit more on that process?

And so I may defer uh to my colleague who really manages that.

Christina Reardon, budget and management services.

Um so the way that um nonprofits work is that um they will uh pay sales tax and then submit a refund to the Department of Revenue, and so um sales tax initially comes in and then it gets deducted.

Um and so when that kind of happens sometimes is a little wonky, as um uh director Flora um you know kind of mentioned, and so um it's one of the reasons too that when we are making projections, especially at the end of the year, because sometimes they come in um every six months, and so the end of the year tends to be um a time where we're there may be some volatility.

So um another reason we wanted to wait to give you a fund balance number, um, and and it does affect kind of how we project sales tax um those refunds.

Thank you.

And and wonkiness timing is inconsistent.

Uh timing, and we have seen um a couple of negative refunds, which are unusual, but some some things where they've taken them in and taken them out, and so that's something as well, too, that has happened, and we have been in contact with them, and uh we are very careful in watching those.

We do keep very close um ties on what is happening in the community as far as nonprofits and try and get a sense of what to try and predict, but also um we don't have control over when those might come in and kind of how they come in as well too.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And I will say, you know, it drew it's very it's easy, it's it's predictable, right?

So just like uh Duke University or uh even us, we go after ourselves refund we time it.

And so we expect every year to see this, and I think what we had seen in previous years is that they were giving more refunds than we were anticipating because it's like we know who the big players are and when they hit when we see those negative refunds, that is when you're like what what just happened, and so which is why I I will pin this on the Department of Revenue.

And that's just one giant chunk for all of the different tax uh exempt uh entities in in Durham.

Right, so they go after so they decide when they want to go after it.

And so it's usually on a pretty routine schedule.

Um, but if they get off their routine and they do something, but which is what is weird because it's like, oh, well, we see it looks like based upon historical information, we've already gotten all of these, and so we should be in the clear.

And so then when they start going back and forth and they give it as a negative refund, it adjusts it it wreaks havoc in with uh the uh the books.

And even when we reach out, it's it's it's a black box over there sometimes.

They're not as um, I think they'll tell you it's by general statute, but um it's hard to sort of drill into a lot of that information.

Do we have a ballpark?

I mean, I know I'm putting you on the spot.

Do we have a ballpark of kind of what that amount is of the uh reimbursement amount for overall that we see?

We can get you that information.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

Council Member Cook, did you have any questions?

Um thank you, and thank you, Julian.

Great presentation.

Um just I was wondering a little bit about um kind of the separating out of operating expenditures from personnel services.

Do we ever see any overlap there?

Or I guess I'm just thinking about like I don't know if this comes into this into play, but like workers' comp and things like that where like they might not be specific to salary or wages or care, but might end up being in operating costs.

Do those ever that we ever see overlaps in there?

Hang on just a slide.

Yeah.

So workers' comp, I think most of that is budgeted in our risk fund.

So which then ultimately charge back uh as a sort of indirect cost, but um, but otherwise pretty separate.

Okay.

Um and then I had that question, but that one was answered.

Um I'm gonna have pass, but I do have some questions that are like not as related, so I'll let my colleagues have an opportunity to ask about this data and then I'll come and come back to me.

Absolutely, we'll give you opportunity to ask all the questions you have.

Council member risk and the council member Freeman.

Uh thanks, Mayor Tim.

Um Mr.

Flora, well, the session of sales taxes.

So I seem to recall during the budget process that we like scaled back our estimates for sales tax because it had been coming in slower than we thought.

So we're always scaled back.

But yeah, we're still looks like we're showing that career year we're expecting 2.8 less than we even like expected, right?

Right.

And again, what I what I'm what I fully think happened in this situation is is what we're projecting is 2.8 million dollars really should be more like $800,000 off budget because the two million dollars that you see that we were over budget last year, I think goes back to the wonkiness of the Department of Revenue in a like in the it would be like this month of last year.

We thought it was to be accrued back to the prior year.

And so when in rally in reality it probably should have been on our books this year, and so which would which would then make it like we hit the budget because I think last year in our discussions we really did expect that we were going to hit the budget.

We scaled back on on the amount of increase of budget that we used for the uh in developing the budget, but sales tax is going up, it's just how much of a percent is actually going up.

And so really ultimately what I'm saying is I feel like sales tax is about where we had budgeted it, it's just a it's a booking it's a booking issue from last year to this year because of the information we got from the Department of Revenue.

But across two years we're still about about 800,000 short.

Yes, so yeah, it's a little bit short.

But 800,000 on the amount that we're receiving prices, it's it's a smaller route.

I guess I'm also wondering like what like what are the models you run to project sales tax uh revenues.

That's is that the state provides to us, or do we run models?

Like what are how do we get that?

I mean, we use historical information, but I think we just it's a standard and all that uh director reard and sort of just knows how they project that.

Yeah, uh Christina Beardon, um we do have models that we're using basing a lot of historical data, and then uh we're looking also at trends.

Um so we're looking sometimes at the sales tax data, not just on what we're collecting, because we do have refunds in there that can be very volatile, but also looking at gross collections as well, too, and seeing kind of what um is happening on that end as well, and then kind of what are the trends in the economy and stuff and some of our um you know uh uh experts in the field and stuff like that in the area and um so it's just a historic trend.

So it's also looking at like things like inflation rates, right?

So consumer confidence even a big factor.

We have our league municipalities, they do a revenue report.

We sometimes use that for some information as well too, to just see what's going on.

So it's not one big model, you're right.

Sort of like you're using some historical data using sort of inputs from other It's it's it's a little bit art and science, yes.

Yeah, because it is and it's a harder um revenue source to predict.

Okay, thank you.

That's right.

Freeman.

Thank you.

I just wanted to track back to the transportation and transit.

And you mentioned that the county services were not occurring.

I just want to figure out exactly which services those are.

Uh we have Director uh Egan here to help us with that.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mayor Pro Tem, and members of Council Sean Egan, Director of Transportation.

Uh so what you see uh with the county funded services for transit was uh that we had uh major expansion of East Durham services uh on the Route 3 and the new Route 13 that was planned in the second half of fiscal year 25.

Due to some of uh the issues that we were having with aging equipment uh not having enough buses available for service, we were unable to implement those services uh in the second half of fiscal year 25.

Uh so we've been working uh on two fronts.

One is to uh purchase additional budget buses, so the council approved that uh in February, so those buses will be uh arriving in the next few months.

Uh in addition to that uh we uh are also uh stepping up uh in approving our maintenance programs so that uh more of our buses are available for service.

So the expansions that were planned uh in the second half of fiscal year 25.

Uh a portion of that was implemented on August 23rd uh with evening and uh Sunday uh additional service frequency, uh but the bulk of that is scheduled uh to be implemented in November.

Uh so since we didn't run, we budgeted the revenue from the Durham County Transit Plan for those services.

We were unable because of the vehicles to provide those services.

Uh so uh we didn't uh receive that revenue, but we uh are uh now on track to be able to implement those services in November.

And I just want to know how that's gonna impact, I guess, for the fund, what that looks like.

Is that gonna hit well because it's gonna be delayed?

It's gonna hit in 26, as opposed to even being a part of like the I don't know what quarter is it from September to December, is that the first quarter?

Sorry.

So it'll hit for first quarter for next next budget cycle as we just find.

So we have worked with our partners at Durham County, and Go Triangle and the Triangle West TPO to line up uh full funding for those service improvements in the 26th budget.

So when we start delivering those services in November, they'll be 100% reimbursable from the Durham County transit.

I just want to make sure those funds will be available of us, not like it'll be taken back and then have the re reallocated.

Yeah, they're thankfully they're uh in the approved uh budgets for the transit plan for FI26.

Councilman Cabriera, you have to make it with the carry forward and the carry-over items.

Are we going to do an analysis if that's the best use of funds if we need to if we're worried about fund balance?

Because usually those are items like basically a department thought they were going to spend X, they didn't spend it, then they want to use that money for these items, right?

That's essentially what that decision is, and we get a list and we usually adopt that list.

Are we going to have a conversation about is that the best strategy based on what we're seeing with with um with this presentation when it does come to council?

Uh Christina Reardon, um, and so uh that will be coming in the next work session.

And so um you will be getting a chance to um we'll bring it forward as an agenda item.

We have had a kind of um modified carryover process this year um in light of some of the um you know things that you've been talking about as well, too.

So did we did ask for departments to be leaderless to be to be very conservative this year, um, and so you will see that that that list is lighter than it has been in years past.

The carry forward is not something that we control.

That is something that just happens because they are encumbrances that we sit on the books and bring that we've already saved carry over carryover things that we have control over.

Okay, so perfect.

Thank you.

Councilmember McClump, did you want to revisit?

Um, Tim.

Um I was wondering, I would I'm just and this is my mistake because I have been now looking through the whole report as opposed to the slides that you put in front of us, and so um I'm too deep in the weeds.

Uh but I was wondering if you could just speak briefly about our investment report and how that sort of plays in with the information that you've given us.

So the investment report, so um, you will notice that there is no investment income that is in the general fund because all the investment income is is using in the capital project fund.

And so most of those investments are any interest we make on those investments are are usually in in capital funds.

So all those investment already or enterprise funds, respective enterprise funds.

And so if it's if it if there's a fund balance in an enterprise fund, we proportionally allocate those investment income revenues to that fund.

Otherwise, the investment off of the general fund uh um fund balance goes into the CIP debt fund.

Okay, yes, that answers the question.

And so that default sets.

I see.

Okay.

Okay, that's helpful.

Um it doesn't appear.

Is it broken down by funds in my in probably what you're seeing in the the Q the in the investment report, no?

It's just because it's all we do it all as one big amount, and then we just uh push it out and allocate it to uh the departments or their respective funds just based upon the percentage of the the amount of um investments.

Okay, that makes sense, thank you.

Um and then this is an unrelated question, um, but there have been some folks that have been asking about the purchasing of the bonds and whether that information is available.

Could you speak to that?

Yeah, so when we go to the market, so when we uh when we go to the market, usually it's it's like a it's a I don't want to say it's like a private sale, right?

So we have we have brokers or firms that that will will in one market that buy uh these funds.

And then for individuals, they're usually buying it on the secondary market, right?

So they go through a they go through a broker account.

So you know, if you have a brokerage account and you want to buy um the uh the Durham bond, it is through one of the other pass-throughs that it bought the bonds originally.

And so it's usually individuals usually buy on the secondary market.

So in the in the the primary market, when we first go out there, it's usually you know, insurance funds, mutual funds, um other investment services firms that that invest in our um in our our bonds initially, and then they um then some of them use them just for their own portfolios, and then others will put them on the secondary market and sell the bonds on the secondary market.

Right.

So I can appreciate then the secondary market sales are we're totally disconnected from um but we are is there access to the to that primary sale?

It is, but it it usually is it's it's usually the bigger they're buying big chunks, so it's not like we're selling individual smaller amounts.

It there's like a bidding war that sort of goes on uh for um for this and usually I think in past experience you don't see many individuals that do that.

And and so I did print off, because I was sort of anticipating off uh from the the last big issuance we did for the the bond referendum, who were the the the agencies or who who were the companies that were were buying these.

Umly enough, the majority of those were insurance companies.

Um so travelers was like the number one big purchase, state farm, uh safety national, um Indiana Farm Bureau Auto Auto, and so they're buying them uh for their portfolio because they're mitigating risk.

Right, and so it it's it's almost like guaranteed uh income for them, and so there's stability and predictability there.

Um but then there were some other uh firms that I think are called authorized participants, and so they're buying, and they're they're the ones who are actually putting it out there uh into the um the exchange uh for others to invest in.

And and so that so that would be my, you know, if someone wants to buy some of our our bonds, to me that is the route to go is to do it through uh your individual brokerage firm um and buy it on the secondary market.

That's helpful.

Um thank you for looking into that.

Uh and then my next question is I actually am curious about Mr.

McKeon's questions about the um stop line uh report and its accuracy, so I don't know if you want to pass that off.

Thank you, Mr.

If I if if I'm gonna um appealing, I if I because I'm curious about that as well.

I was gonna let them kind of cap it off for us since the staffs here, but I if the questions still remain to the financial part, I know that's the member is council member freeman, and then we'll bring up staff.

That's okay.

Yeah, therefore, thank you so much.

Customer Marissa and Captain Member Freeman.

Thank you, maybe for 10.

So um I'm trying to still see the big picture here.

So especially related to fund balance.

So I don't think so.

I mean so we're we have a negative fund balance of like 9.4 million for the general fund.

For several So that I mean, I'm sorry, we'll we'll have to draw down, essentially.

Right, but yes.

And so in several of the enterprise funds, we also have a negative variant, meaning we'd have to draw down on the fund balance.

So do we have anywhere in this presentation like what the expected total draw would be on the fund balance?

Because we have again sort of individual enterprise funds, but like is there and just to go back to Councilmember uh Cavier's question about um sort of where the fund balance is, so having sort of a sense of like what is the fund balance, and then what's the expected draw on that from both the general fund and all these separate enterprise funds to give us a sense of like what's the total impact?

And so normally we don't do one big cumulative fund balance, it's we treat the general fund separate from sort of the all the other enterprise funds.

And and so I will say in the enterprise funds, you know, there is a a significant fund balance in water and sewer.

Um and I think as you go, I think the one where we're running a sort of a negative fund balance right now is just the parking operation.

Um we're in in solid waste, it we're we're about there.

Uh but but you know that but those what we're we're running those like businesses, and so we we treat those separately, and so we're so like for the parking fund, it really is just be an offset for the most part as a loan, treating us alone by from water management.

So for the general fund, we have significant fund balance.

And so I I don't want to give you any impression that that we are that there's not a lot of fund balance there.

I mean, I think um when we I think when we're we're I think we're projecting somewhere we're in the ballpark of somewhere around 60 million dollars that we are going to have in in the general fund balance and we know those ratios and work that we we should be maintaining.

You know, there's the the 12% minimum and the 16.7% target, and then and then we look at that information.

We are just sort of apprehensive about putting those numbers out right now while we're while there are still preliminary information out there.

And I I really do feel like that by the time we get to um the carryover um in the next couple of weeks that we will have a better understanding of that.

And I've present uh don't suggest in any way any kind of concern.

It's more I think it is more the sense of like the visibility.

Just want to sort of see those numbers when they're ready to so we can have a good understanding of that.

And absolutely happy to um collaborate with uh my colleague here uh on how we can sort of get that information to you and so you can see that much appreciation called you and staff.

Sure.

Captain Freeman.

I was gonna just say that's not quite my main question.

But uh, and then just touching back on the green light was uh okay.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

Um that staff was here that's working on the third floor.

If they want to come up and speak to the uh our residents inquiry about the stoplight, and if you want to demystify anything about the CIP process and the timeline of deliverance of projects.

Good afternoon, Mike Boyd, General Services Project Management Group.

Third Fort Creek.

Um I acquired that project in the spring of last year, and we are currently we've gone through our internal reviews with the client departments.

It's with DOT right now for their review.

We we've received comments back, submitted back to them.

They're working on that, and it's also in tier four site plan review as well right now.

Same thing with our Kelly Bryant.

R.

Kelly Bryant, we're scheduling, we're we're targeting the fall of 27 forbid, winter 27 to begin construction.

Anything beyond that in prosperity.

Artificial manager can speak to that.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Henry Prosperity General Services.

Um the trails have absolutely been experiencing a lot of delays for a number of reasons.

Um Third Fort Creek was the example in the presentation.

Um, so I can speak to that as an example.

Um, about 2022, and the plans were actually submitted to NCDOT their approvals uh during that uh submittal, there was some requests also that the trail be picked up out of some of the environmentally sensitive areas.

Uh they asked that the alignment and the profile of the trail be brought out of the hundred-year floodplain.

So that was also a significant delay.

Um so again, the aggregate of those two supplemental agreements cost the project about two and a half years.

So I think that accounts for the big gap between 2022 to 2024, which was probably noted uh some of the um the information that the Dale had presented.

Why would the designation re remain green during all of that time and when when does it turn yellow or red?

I think that that's an error.

I think that the stoplight report, obviously, the project is way behind in delayed, so I can't speak to the accuracy of that, but I would think from my perspective that that project would be in the red.

Who's in charge of the satellite?

Um all the project managers input that information on a quarterly basis.

All right.

Thank you for your help, colleagues, if you have any questions there.

I would say our budget management staff can also speak to uh plans to update that process, which has been underway, or are you guys comfortable just giving a status update on what's going to be replacing the stoplight report?

Good afternoon, this guy assistant director with budget management services.

Um which you are seeing the current version of the stoplight report is the last gasp of a technically obsolete system that we use to collect and distribute this information.

We spent uh about a year trying to fix it, but with the upcoming change to our new um ERP um financial record system, uh decision was made in springtime to let that go and begin transitioning to a new process for both gathering information, so we will gather more and better information, um, and also at the very least uh an administratively easier um task to collate this and get this out in a meaningful manner.

Um and so I did meet with uh Mr.

McKeel and a few other folks uh earlier in the spring.

Um, and so we were able to hear some of these concerns.

We shared many uh of those concerns, and so we have a new report that we'll be uh rolling out for Q1 of the current fiscal year.

Um many of the concerns that you uh heard here today will be addressed.

Um we won't have an option anymore for um continually changing um project delivery dates.

There will be a original delivery date along with you know uh the actual now uh expected delivery date, um, much clearer direction on what the red, yellow, green uh means.

And so, you know, working with our our project managers uh to be able to clarify so that someone looking at the report does have a good sense of where we stand with each of these reports.

So for about a year, we will be in this interim reporting uh phase uh until we get fully stood up in this new system, at which point then we can start um looking at other opportunities to communicate more clearly with y'all, with the public about where we stand on these uh major pro major projects.

Specific questions?

Appreciate that as to the manager actually wants to interject something and we'll turn to you, colleagues.

I wanted to commend uh the budget staff for their work on the report.

I also uh want to say that this uh coincides with I think an organization-wide effort uh to do uh a more regular cadence of project updates and management, uh project updates and reviews by senior management.

Uh uh give a lot of credit to uh DCM Propes uh who began this work under DCM Wimbush, uh, whereby now on a quarterly basis, uh senior leaders from across the city are meeting with general services staff to review the status of each project, uh, to identify barriers and to try and find uh creative solutions to move those along.

One of the things that uh the staff are reported out on the trail today didn't talk much about, but I would highlight is is we have experienced significant delays in project reviews by the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

I don't in any way want to pass the buck, but I do want to acknowledge that especially for our trails projects, um that can be a significant delay, and especially coming out of COVID, we saw NC DOT suffer um major staff turnover and major vacancies in project management roles whereby we would go months without getting updates.

I think that is something that I'm very interested in.

The DCMs are very interested in trying to elevate uh our tools for working with our partners who have to permit these projects in order to avoid these delays, uh, and that's something that we are working on now.

But I think going forward, uh I feel a little confident saying that I think there'll be more public transparency and more transparency to council about the status of projects and specifics around where delays are being encountered and what's driving them.

Thank you, Mayor Burton.

Thank you.

We'll go all around.

Don't worry.

Councilmember.

Thank you, Mayor Tim.

Um appreciate the additional comments from the city manager and the comments from Mr.

Scott.

So like this is one of the areas we we end up hear a lot, right?

And when we talk to residents, what we hear a lot is like, what's going on with these major projects?

The rail trail, South Elizabeth Creek Restoration Project, and other things.

So this is one that residents have a lot of concern about.

And so, but I think everyone's dies, and I think all our residents understand that things happen, right?

There's delays from DOT, there may be environmental things that happen.

I think what people are partly asking for is like when we have uh delays that may happen.

Like, what are we doing on our end to maybe speed things up in other ways?

So we say, like, hey, there's a delay for some reason, but we're gonna do this to kind of get it back on track.

So that's what I think people are looking for.

And I want to manage and the mayor, I think we need to do a better job of figuring out ways.

Are there internal things happening that we can say for this internal process we can speed that up to get us back on track?

Because I think people all they see is like delays.

They don't see in this project, we're actually speeding it up a little bit.

So I think we need to be creative on our end to figure out ways when the inevitable stuff happens that we can get stuff back on track in ways that we show our own sort of creativity and like innovative spirit here in the city.

So I think that's something that I think our residents would really appreciate because it all they hear is like delay, delay, delay.

And I think as Mr.

McKeel showed, like when the it's not just about transparency.

When the website says, well, one day we deliver this day, we just change the dates.

That doesn't really like we need to have much more visibility in the council.

If that's if we're pushing something back, we need to know and know why, so we can communicate that to residents because there's a lot of concern about our ability to deliver these big projects.

I think again, Mr.

McKeel mentioned a lot of them are sidewalks and paths and stuff, so we've got to get better.

Cool.

Oh, thank you, and good to see everyone.

So what I'd like to contribute to this, and I appreciate the information, but I'm more interested in what I get foot along the language and lines what we can do to uh to expand the process or make sure we stay on target on the timeline.

Uh I want to make sure that I publicly see that I I will utilize my political capital and my position, my influence uh up to hierarchy.

You know, and we're getting a delay at DOT that I want to know because I can call board members, I can go on a circuit of DOT, and I can call it a governor's office, and they're gonna answer the phone.

Um and just like we're looking at what internal efficiencies we need to aspire toward, they can do the same thing.

Uh I just cannot take DLT as issues, and we don't know where those issues are.

I want to be a part of helping to push them to seek better outcomes.

Um I I'm just going to be the nuisance on this.

The private sector has the leads, but it does not function this thing.

And I know that we're not in the private sector, but things are getting done there, and we should aspire to do this and have the same type of outcome.

So I understand, you know, government has its bureaucracies.

Um I understand all of those things.

I'm just not going to accept it.

So we need to find out what we need to do, and if that means you know, some relationship, you know, um uh just some relationship massaging, then we'll have to do that.

But I don't want to find out a year later at a report at our work session that what DOC had an issue.

So we're gonna do some internal pressure here.

Uh we run into a situation in another agency.

I want to know about it and not later, I want to know about it then, and let me get on the call and and utilize my influence.

Right.

Thank you.

Um I appreciate everything that's been shared and agree with my colleagues.

Um at the end of the day, we're the the electors are the ones who often get, I mean, y'all get some of it, but we get the wrath of the public, and it's their tax dollars, and so we have to be as efficient and effective as possible.

That is our burden, both staff and elected, uh, and we have to do it responsibly.

So I while I appreciate the internal, and I think there are some changes coming, council needs to be consistently updated.

We cannot improve budgets, we cannot increase taxes, we cannot ask the community to pay for things when then things don't get delivered.

It it breaks trust and and it makes folks not believe in government.

Uh so when then when we do want another bond in a few years, they're gonna vote it down, right?

Because what do you what are you paying for?

It's something that's gonna build, be built 15 years late.

Um so and and the NC DOT thing, I get it, but at the end of the day, there was a trail built after lean and NCDOT had to do reviews there.

So at some point, whatever pressure needs to happen, we have a new division uh engineer.

Um several of us sit on these boards.

Uh we have relationships where they're needed and we need to do a better job collaborating and communicating elected to staff.

We understand that there are limitations to what y'all can do, and so then there is the politics of these things, and that is a component of the work.

So I appreciate everything that staff's done, and I expect uh some real clear wins in the next year and movement on projects.

Thank you.

I appreciate the the intentionality and um of the approach that you've outlined here, the pivot of how we'll be uh reporting and receiving the reports.

I want to emphasize the low-hanging fruit here, which is even before we get to the stage of what Council Member was speaking to, figuring out how are we going to pivot when there's a delay, just the communication.

Um I think that's one of the biggest things I hear is I think I think people I think people understand that there's uh a lot of different factors.

These projects are complicated, there's a lot of stakeholders, there's a lot of entities that are involved.

Um, but so many people that that I hear from are frustrated just because they don't they don't know what's happening, we don't know on a lot of projects what's happening, um, why something's been delayed, um, to the mayor's point.

I mean, is it N C D OT?

Who gets involved at that point?

Um so I think I think that, you know, it's sort of the lower hanging fruit here is what I would want to emphasize here is just when there is a delay that we get to learn about it, um, that we get to learn about it and why it is and is there uh some other option?

If not, okay.

At least there's a communication on on that and people can understand.

So um, but again, I I appreciate I appreciate uh folks like uh Mr.

McKeel coming and and uh uh you know push pushing us on on this uh as well as others.

Um and uh again the the thoughtfulness and the intentionality of you know, we we see this report, it's not working to the extent that it should, and we're gonna pivot and start doing this in a new way.

So thank you.

I think that you're having to stand up there and take all of this today, because I know that you came up just to talk about the new tool.

Um so this is not like aimed at you or or anyone in particular.

I uh I just want to like absolutely agree with what my colleagues have stated and I was gonna say something similar to what everyone has said about folks understanding delays and and the transparency being the important part.

I am curious though that we knew that there were issues with this tool, that we decided to release it anyway, and also we left these mistakes in it.

Um I mean it hasn't been updated, there's still says green on all of these ones that we're talked about today, and so I'm just kind of curious about that, and then I know you said that there was gonna be about a year-long rollout for the new system, and so like maybe you just could be a little bit more detailed about what we're gonna do in the interim.

Sure.

Um so when we made the decision that we could not use the current system anymore, which did generate that, it was too late in the process to collect all the new information from our um project managers.

Um there are a lot of project managers who are contributing to um to this report, and so we we did make the decision to go with the information that we had and that had been consistent with what we had previously provided.

Um following the same same guidelines uh as the project managers had used before.

Um the delay between the data collection on the Q4 report and when it when you actually receive it is is longer because of the recess.

So it I know it doesn't seem like that was a long time ago.

Um but we are in three weeks when we start collecting the new information for the new quarterly report, which will be fully different.

So I did mention the year-long process.

That's the stand up the ultimate financial reporting system.

Um the report that that we're talking about, which will clean up much of this, um, you'll receive at the close of the first quarter.

So approximately what six weeks after um after the close of the first quarter, so what early November, I think.

Okay.

So the project managers already have the new or they have new guidance.

And and and again, m much of the information isn't fundamentally different.

Um completion data, keeping track of it.

Um and again, this is not to say that it's not checked anywhere.

This I'm I'm speaking only about this quarterly stoplight report.

Um, but this will be a way for us to have it to improve accountability, improve communication, transparency, um, for you all, because again, we we are in budget, we're very much a go-between in in this process.

Um, and so we can play comedian and communicating role, and we hope to really improve on that and uh beginning next quarter.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Jobs were free.

Thank you.

And I appreciate the explanation and my colleagues' comments.

I just want to add that I think what I think so I don't I don't want to repeat everything, but what I do want to say is is that the communication piece is not limited to just the communication office, making sure that there's a way to navigate or at least have some open line of communication with our engagement team uh might be helpful.

And just making and also just knowing like there's gonna be delays.

Um what I think I heard most in Mr.

McNe McGeal's um presentation was the changes and the misrepresentation are the main concerns that I'm following up on.

And then just knowing like is if this rollout is gonna be automated, it sounds like it's gonna be some automation in there.

Um there are new tools you can use.

And I would love to have a conversation on that.

If we can do that online.

But um I understand the consistency is is key, and I want to make sure that we're not sacrificing consistency for truth, so to speak.

Like there's yeah, that's a little wonky, but um yeah.

I I understand, you know, that the process is the process.

And whatever's happening with NCDLT, I mean, there are many levers uh that you can use.

Also matching uh the this process up with stakeholders, um prior to and post, making sure that there's no uh kind of drag in the information because I feel like what held up third fourth freak was that some folks got the information and others didn't, and then we had to go back and have the conversations and yeah, there was a lot of back there's a lot of back and forth on that.

And uh just trying to make sure.

And then I'm hearing that the project managers are the point of update.

There has to be some there has to be some automation there too, because I don't want what I what I want to be clear is the project managers doing their own updating doesn't feel very audit friendly.

There should be some, yeah.

I'm gonna keep saying the automation.

So uh hoping that whatever's coming forward, we'll have that included.

But thank you, Justin Cover.

Yeah, just real quick, when we are done with the processes around the communications uh piece, ensuring the public is also aware that this has been updated, so especially our advocates who are, you know, they're they're very involved.

Um, and uh so they can also see that the tool has been updated and that we have followed through with the thing we were gonna say.

Or gonna do, sorry.

And then also making sure that wherever communications is dialing in.

I would love to have more communications to our boards, committees, and commissions.

I think the there's kind of a a flat layer to staff and counsel, but those volunteers who are engaged should also um beginning that updated as well.

I think that'll help and make it trend of that.

There's some background, some back and forth there.

That's where this is confirmed.

So for the first quarter of the next fiscal year, we will see some the the new version of the stop by report we will see.

Is that gonna be available for the first time in that new first quarter?

That'll be the first time that that data is collected and callated, yes.

Next is good or less clear.

Sorry.

First quarter of FY26.

I'm sorry, when you said next we're wanted to be only because we're talking about.

We've been trying to ask you.

Colleagues, anyone else?

Alright, thank you all for for a great presentation.

Colleagues, our next presentation is slightly 30 minutes.

I'm gonna um call a break until 3 p.m.

We'll start with 3 p.m.

and then go right into our presentation.

I'll yield back to the merit in time as well.

Thank you.

We're in here until we're in resistance.

I was like, I don't know how to call the chance.

And that's just paying us to work.

Um

All right, we're back in session.

Uh item number 22 is a Western Intake Partnership Project Udate.

Few, sir.

Good afternoon, Mayor Mayor Pro Tem members of Council, Don Greeley Department of Water Management.

We're here to talk about where we are and give you an update on the Western Intake Partnership Project.

There'll be a number of important agenda items coming to you this fall.

So we wanted to give you kind of a refresher about where we are, what's been accomplished, and what's coming ahead.

Prior to starting, I did want to also mention that also here is Sid Miller, who's been our project manager, assistant director in water management, as well as Jeff Atkins, who's been the project manager with HDR for our program manager.

Both of them have done an outstanding job through this project, dealing with all of our consultants, all the regulatory agencies, local state and federal, as well as all the outreach that they've done with the community, with the construction community, with our local businesses and our minority businesses, making them aware of this project as we now move and transition out of the preliminary engineering into more hardcore design and potential construction.

So to give you an overall update of what we'll be talking about today, we'll be kind of giving you an update, as I mentioned, where we are where the state is of the numerous agreements and construction design elements, and then what's coming up front.

So feel feel free to ask questions along the way, or Sam if they have either way works for me.

A quick refresher, you know, the Jordan Lake allocations are up here.

Um the up the round four allocations, you know, were given out in 2017.

The city got 16.5 million gallons of water in the allocation process.

Um the current intake that uh Kerry Apex has is not large enough to take out the water that's needed for the Western partners, which is us, um Wassa, Chatham County, and Pittsburgh.

So, you know, we went and you needed to have another intake built on the west side of Jordan Lake.

And there are only two locations at the Corps of Engineers where we're going to allow intakes, one on the east side, one on the west side.

So there is currently about nine MGD unallocated with the reservoir for the water supply pool in Jordan Lake.

Um there is the modeling potential, similar to Falls Lake, that potentially at a future date that there could be some modeling done to increase that water supply pool, but it wouldn't be very significant.

It would be shared both on the east.

Um eastern utilities and the western utilities as well.

So the overall project is building a new intake on Jordan Lake, building a new treatment plant adjacent to the lake near the intake, and then pumping the water back to Durham, as well as making internal improvements to our distribution system to be able to handle the water coming in to our system.

So it's you know roughly um almost 17 miles of pipeline coming back into town, and then we'll have to build over 10 miles of pipeline within the city to accommodate that because the water's coming in at a higher pressure.

And I'll be talking about that later in the presentation.

Thank you.

Uh the water transmission line back to Durham.

Um as I said, over 17 miles, we'll be building two elevated water tanks as part of that project.

Um the actual intake is out on the lake.

We discussed both with the Corps of Engineers and North Carolina parks about whether we would have the intake would be in the would be on the lake itself, or would it be on the shore in the park area?

And we got direction to put it out in the lake, which is similar to the intake that Carey Apex has.

So the intake is going to be out in the lake, and will the pump station will be you know off uh North Carolina Parks property and Army Corps property.

So the location is the uh where the um old New Hope Creek, so it's at the lowest part of the lake, so we can pull water in should Jordan Lake ever get really low.

But that didn't happen during the drought of 07 and 08 because Jordan Lake is such a large watershed that it wasn't impacted like the rest of the area was during COVID because the watershed is so large, basically any drop of water that falls as it goes across North Carolina hits their watershed.

So very resilient water supply.

Um that's an illustration of the tower that will be constructed out on the lake.

Um this is uh kind of an aerial shot of where the regional facility will be constructed, the treatment plant.

Um recording stopped.

Okay.

Um it's a 121 acre site, it's currently owned by Awasa, so we're in the process of uh finalizing this land sale from Alasa to Durham for the property.

Um phase one for the treatment plant will be uh we'll be building a 20 million gallon a day treatment plant, but the site plan or for the plant has been ultimately expansion is out to 77 million gallons.

So we've can completed an ongoing water quality sampling in Jordan Lake, so we know what type of treatment um options we need to do with the treatment plan, as well as looking at what we need to do as far as PFAS and the Jordan Lake water and how to how to treat that.

Um this is a rendering of what the initial phase and footprint of the treatment plant will be located adjacent to the lake.

Um we completed the original memorandum of understanding for WIP with the partners.

Um of the at the bottom of the screen, we had four major projects going on that have been completed.

Um the governance, the intake and transmission preliminary engineering, the water treatment plan, preliminary engineering, and the biomont permitting, and we're completing all of those and moving into design and construction.

And up to this point, all the costs associated with that were distributed between the four utilities that's shown on the screen there.

Um in Chatham County, um, we executed an interlocal agreement with Chatham County back in 2023 that allows the city to purchase property within Chatham County as well as condemn land in Chatham County, and that's mostly for the transmission main as we go along and need easements and search and easements and for the um potentially for the the tanks as well.

Um we've done uh rezoning of the property to allow the treatment plant there in order in Chatham County, um, as well as having approval for a septic system for the administration building that's there.

Um and we're currently in negotiations for the uh parcel that's that will be within Chatham County for the tank.

So what's changed uh over the last several years?

Well, for Durham, no changes.

Um for Owasa, they've chosen not to participate in phase one.

So they're they're currently there they're they're a long-range water supply plan that they don't need their allocation at this time.

For Pittsburgh, who really needed the water when we started this project, they've merged with Sanford, the Tri-River Water is their uh water authority.

So they're now um Tri-River is now the overseer and owner of and providing water and sewer services to the town of Pittsburgh.

Chatham County also has merged with Tri-River, and they were also gonna be a participant or you know, with the initial construction.

Um but now that they've merged with Sanford, um, Stanford um has done a number of improvements over the last several years, a lot of that around for the economic growth that was occurring in Chatham County, um, Binfast, Wolf Speed, etc.

They got a large grant from the state of North Carolina to expand their water plant.

So the needs for coming in to the Western Intake Partnership at this point have now been minimized.

So that's what you came in something.

What would our prerogative property in Chat County be applicable for property we didn't we don't own?

If we if we if we could own it, what are we condemning?

If if we had to get an easement and the owner, you know, we couldn't agree on the whether the terms, the terms or the the monetary that I allow us to allow us to condemn the property.

They won't sell it to us that we can that's for state law.

Sure, sure.

So that that's certainly having Pittsburgh and both Janam County had a major need for participating in the Western Intake project, and that kind of changed the landscape pretty dramatically as far as Durham is concerned.

So you know, we are for the most part going alone.

Um Try River may or may not participate, um, but a lot of the negotiations and a lot of the work on the all the agreements is to make sure that Durham is compensated when they come in at a later date, and they will be able to you know pay for our investment that we have.

So phase one is at this point is just Durham.

So potentially a little bit with Tri-Rover.

So we'll know that in the next couple months.

Um as I mentioned there, they're they're right now leaning heavily towards participating with just a million gallons, but that still is a significant amount of money in building a treatment plan.

So does that mean that we that we then bear more costs up front?

Is that yes?

We will when they come into the partnership, they would then we'd be a reimbursed for those costs, right?

We will work out a financial agreement with whatever entity whenever each entity comes in, and then we'll recover our our all of our costs that have been accumulating over the years, as well as you know, ongoing costs.

And so I think the previous slide it showed that that the original MOU has now expired, right?

Um no, we've completed that, and um the terms that the terms of how the different entities can onboard and how the financing would be set up.

But that original MOU, it didn't end, right?

That was completed.

Right.

That the agreement was completed and ready to be executed.

And so and we're now entering like a new MAUs that well we'll be executing that MOU.

Okay.

Right.

If they particip if they save one million gallons, then we'll execute that MOU with receiver.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

I hope second teaser.

Okay, we'll keep going.

All right.

You know, as I still stated, we moved out of the preliminary engineering into engineering.

Um earlier we approved uh council approved doing the amendment with uh Pazin kind of uh to move forward with a traditional design dead build for the transmission line and they are and the booster pump station and the elevated tanks and they're underway working on the design.

So uh I think the field survey is almost in the is nearing completion at this point.

Um as far as the treatment plan itself and the intake and raw water um pump station, um we've uh when working with the partners and HDR, we decided that the best way to keep this project um on schedule, which is to try to bring all the facilities online by 2031, was use um progressive design build.

And what progressive design build is you hire the contractor and the engineer together as a team up front for the whole project.

So and we are in the middle of that.

We have for the treatment plan, we've already advertised the um the um progressive design build contracts.

We've made the selection, and now we're currently negotiating the contract with that team.

So and we will that's one of the items that we'll be bringing to you this fall.

Um we're currently just received the um SOQs for the intake.

Um there are eight firms that um came in that submitted on the intake, and there were four firms that submitted on the treatment plant.

So we're we're currently um starting to our review of the SRQs that have come in.

Sorry.

Um the overall schedule, I see I think that's kind of hard to see, but it basically shows you where we are with the permitting, the treatment plant, the raw water intake, and the bottom is the transmission, all of which kind of coming online in 2031.

Another part of a big part of this, of course, is executing a non-recreational out grant with the Army Corps of Engineers in the state of North Carolina.

I won't go into details about that, but we've those have been now hammered out, and now we're those applications are moving forward.

There's also some mitigation that we'll be working with for North Carolina parks.

To be able to build the intake, we'll be having to close down the Sto Point recreation area for about a three-year period.

And that is one of the largest recreational areas on Jordan Lake.

And it's a major boating location as well as the only sailboat ramp on the lake.

So we're as you can see here, that's where the raw water pump station is at the intake, so we'll be having to use the park right there on the tip of VISA point.

We'll be the what's highlighted in red is the construction area that we believe will be impacting.

And so that we're impacting their revenue stream, they're impacting their ability to launch sailboats as well as impacting the overall site, which there's also an RB site that they feel that they need to close down.

So we're we'll be working out the impacts to them and the compensation for closing for that three-year time period.

Three years.

So overall, you know, the most of the will be building as part of that compensation will be for the construction of another sailboat launch at another facility, the extra traffic and the other additional manpower that's needed to man those other recreational sites because there'll be higher levels of activities in those sites because this will be closed.

There's a little expectation that having to close the recreational facility for three years that when it's reopened, it's going to look newer and fresher.

We've had those discussions with the city manager's office about that that we feel is a reasonable request.

So we're negotiating the terms of some improvements there, both in the shower facilities and the RV's facilities and something at this point.

So when it opens up, it'll look like a fitted new facility.

We're also working on an interlocal agreement specifically for the intake itself.

And we anticipate that Tri-River, Awasa, and Durham will all sign that intake agreement.

And why is that important?

Because that shows that hopefully that'll show to the General Assembly that this truly is a regionalization, a regional project, and that maybe will allow us to maybe potentially get some grant funding for the construction of the intake itself.

So similar to what the grant that they gave Tri-River for their water plant expansion.

So the next steps is to take those to the various boards this year and the uh the draft governance uh in a local agreement.

So all of that will come out later this fall.

Um the uh the the governance in a normal agreement, it defines the role of how partners either own a reserve capacity as they go forward and come on board.

Um Durham is going to be the owner of the facility.

So how are we um how we execute the contracts, how we expand the plan, the terms of what upfront costs that they have to pay us when they're coming on board and how do they the schedule payments finance it with them?

So all of that is kind of covered within that agreement.

As I said, that's been reviewed both by the finance department and the city's office.

Um as far as the land sale agreement, um, we're just about that close to agreeing on a final price and expect to have that later this year.

Um thing I did want to just highlight a little bit about we talk about the project and bringing it in to Durham, and I did mention earlier in the presentation that there are impacts to our distribution system.

So while we're we're over the next 20 years, we could be bringing in anywhere from 8 million gallons up to 27 million gallons on any any given day, and that amount of water coming in to the southern part of our system, which is that which is at a lower elevation, and that water is coming in at a higher pressure, has a big impact on our system.

So we've had to do a lot of analysis with McKimming Creed, who's been our hydraulic modeler.

We've been working with them for over a year now.

We just finished the final workshop effectively yesterday to look at water age and how the water is going to be mixed in the system between we have Jordan Lake water coming in, we have treatment coming from the Williams plant, treatment coming from the Brown Plan.

How does that water mix and does it cause any problems with the system?

And also looking at how the how all of that affects all the different pressures and all the individual homes in and around southern Durham.

So as I said, we looked at you know future demands and how the growth is going to be there as well as part of that modeling effort.

A lot of the variables we talked about is that you have demand, both our system demand and is when is a loss it going to come on board.

We're going to have to create what essentially is a southern pressure zone, a new pressure zone in our distribution system to make sure that the pressures don't get too high to our customers, mostly in an area of southern Durham.

We'll have to have some pressure reducing valves to ensure that those customers in that southern pressure zone don't get too high a pressure.

We have some main size pipe size selections that were done and whether or not how we would get water when a wasp came on board, how they would get water from our system and where that pipeline would be.

So all of those are some of the variables that were considered.

There were 264 different model variations that were done, and looking at all this from 2030 to 2040 to 2050.

And then it's simplified with or without a WASA.

Do we do tanks or no tanks?

Do we have a dedicated main and undedicated main, etc., etc.

So anyway.

This is a map that just shows when we look at where the existing pressure is at any given home based on the elevation that the homes are in Durham.

So as water came in, those dots would change color depending on an impact.

So we went through all of this modeling to make sure that we weren't impacting our customers as we bring these facilities online, not just in 2031, but up through 2050.

So as I said, we we just finished the final modeling results yesterday, so they'll be working on the report and moving forward from there.

So what's coming?

So what's coming for council will be the land sale agreement, and we think that's going to be in excess of four million dollars.

There'll be the intake ILA, which is the agreement about with OASA and Tri-River on the intake.

There'll be the governance in our local agreement with Tri-River if they're participating in the project.

We'll have the regional uh water treatment plant contract, the progressive design bill.

We expect the initial first initial phase of the contract to be $50 million, and ultimately that'll with the different phases of the project will you know the overall project cost is around 500 million.

Um the intake, that'll we think the initial will be 16 million, and then the overall project will be 136 million.

Um we'll have the initial internal water improvements, which we're also going to do progressive design builds so we can ensure that those the internal improvements are ready when the treatment plan and the intake are ready to go online.

That's around 73 million dollars, um up to 73 million dollars, and then the parks uh mitigation is gonna be around 4.7 million dollars.

So significant amount of money is a huge investment for the city.

It's a generational project for the city to ensure that we have adequate water supply for the next 20, 30 years, and we wanted to ensure that we have the safety net to make sure that we are getting being um compensated as the other utilities come online with the facility.

So with that, I'll open up the question.

Director, thank you for the presentation.

Made necessary undertaking for our city colleagues.

Councilmember could you want to get started?

Um yes, I know y'all have put so much work into this, so thank you.

Um I had a couple questions about maybe the cost of phase one.

Uh I'm wondering, first of all, uh if we had thought about a plan where we did not have those partners, or if that has like drastically changed the cost for us up front.

Um there was an expectation with a financial modeling that we've done each year as far as the rates.

Um, and as things played out, we have adjusted, but we've done the rain modeling with both with partners and without partners just to see the disparity and what we needed to do.

Um, and it became more significant as we got closer to this kind of time this this past year or so.

Um, and certainly as Tri-River when Pittsburgh first turned, there was the potential of them talking to Tri-River, and that really we knew that was going to really shift um financially the the burden back on Durham.

So we've done that with the modeling, we've worked closely with the finance and budget office to to make sure that we're we're minimizing the the rate impacts and what you saw with the rates this past spring for this year was that was reflected what you've what I presented here today.

Yeah, I remember.

So nothing's gonna change from what you we projected.

Okay, and this this is I just have some financial questions.

Sorry if this is like too much, but um so is everything included in that phase one, like I'm talking about purchasing the land and the compensation for the Vista point for their loss and services and all of that.

All that's programmed into our financial model through 2031.

Okay, and then do we collect interest?

Yes.

Okay, good.

That was okay.

That was what I was wondering the whole time because I was like, oh gosh, like this amount of money is not going to be the same amount of money in ten years, right?

Right, and the interest on the revenue bonds that the city will have to sell.

Oh, okay.

So all of those costs are you know are going to be recouped eventually.

Okay.

Now if it, you know, I I go back, I won't go back, but the early on when I first showed the allocations, Chatham County and Pittsburgh had very large allocations, right?

And Tri-River is gonna is definitely is going to need the that to help with you know their planning for Pittsburgh and Chatham County for utility.

You know, they're catching up with their planning because you know that all of those that take over happened recently, so they're doing the modeling.

So we'll know probably early next year or maybe mid, sometime next year, kind of when they would probably be on board or wanting to increase you know capacity at the treatment plant.

Okay, and and it basically they would notify us at least five years in advance that they need the capacity.

They would we would negotiate the terms with them.

Durham would expand the plan since it's our plan, and then then we reimburse us up front for the expansion 100%.

I see.

And then they would be charged for the our operation costs and the water that we're producing back to them as an ongoing cost.

But when they do that, we'll also be recouping our additional investment costs as well.

Okay, that makes sense to me, thank you.

Um you had a slide and and we went through it quite quickly, but it said the allocations have been separated from the NRO applications.

I was just wondering if you could talk about that.

Um I might ask Sid to step up and talk about that a little bit.

And thank thankfully Tim is here to talk about financing.

You're doing great.

Who answered all my questions?

So very reticent of this microphone.

Good afternoon, Council.

So the Oh, sorry.

I'm sitting there uh assistant director for water management.

Um so the regulations around Jordan Lake are complicated.

Um Jordan Lake is owned by the federal government.

And the state bought the water supply storage in that lake.

So the state has its own rules for how it allocates that water supply storage to units of local government in North Carolina, right?

The core in the last 10 years decided it can only have agreements with the allocation holder of the lake, which is the state.

But the state doesn't own and operate water facilities.

Local governments do that.

So that means there has to be subagreements between the state and any unit loc, I feel unit with local government that wants to build something and operate something.

So historically, that has only been the towns of Kerry and Apex.

Literally.

And now they want to do that.

And the state is really not happy about that.

And so our whole project relies on permitting from the Corps of Engineers.

These non-recreational outgrant requests are that's what they're called.

So we can't build anything in the lake unless the Corps of Engineers says, yeah, you can build something in the lake.

The Corps can't tell us that.

It has to tell the state that.

And the core, so anyway, all of our non-recreational outgrant requests that we need from the Corps of Engineers got wrapped up in the mess between the Corps of Engineers and the state of North Carolina.

And only until recently, in the last two months, that the Corps finally agree, oh, we'll allow you to separate those issues.

That we actually submitted over a year ago.

Okay, that is helpful.

Yeah.

The way the L Copium makes total sense.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

And if you want to know any more about that, feel free to call me.

Wow.

Okay.

Fascinating.

Thank you.

Wow.

Okay.

There's a lot there to put it very succinctly.

Yes.

Expounded probably 30 minutes on that.

Yeah, I believe that.

Um my final question is you talked really briefly about design and stages.

And I just kind of like, I mean, this is not my area of expertise, but what we I what I know that we're seeing is, first of all, changes in water screening and what is allowed and not allowed.

Um, and so we're seeing sort of like things on what we have to produce, but also on the side of technology and how we do our water processing, and I know it's changing very rapidly.

Uh, and so I was just kind of wondering as y'all are building this facility many years down the line that might incorporate technology that we don't even have yet, like kind of what y'all are doing to balance.

Um as much as possible, we accommodated that in the design of the treatment plant.

So when you look at the footprint of the 77 million gallon treatment plant, you will actually see footprints for things like um uh RO.

Um what else did we include, Jeff?

Oh, can you come to the mic and talk about just a little bit about what we call it?

There's a lot of acronyms so I don't want to say I'm wrong.

So uh Jeff Atkins, with HDR, the program manager for the Western Intake Partnership.

So what Don's alluding to is um we we have planned for treatment with the regulations and the technologies that are in place today, anticipating that there's going to be change.

We already know it's very dynamic with with PFAS, for example.

And so in order to be able to account for a larger plant, perhaps different regulations, different standards for water quality, um, technologies like reverse osmosis, ion exchange, um, and different kinds of technologies which utilize carbon uh granulated activated carbon or powder activated carbon are both ways that we can we can achieve a high level of quality for PFAS and other types of of um of chemicals that we may want to remove in the future that are required or even known of today.

So all of those have been incorporated into where how the layout of the plant is.

So there's space on the plant to accommodate those future processes, should the regulations change and we need to bring those future processes online.

And as as you mentioned, Councilmember Cook, there could be technologies in 10 years that we don't even know about that.

We'll replace some of those technologies, but there's space on that master planning to accommodate those in later days.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful.

I think those are all my questions.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilman Baker, if you had to think.

Yeah.

Yeah, when you said Mayor Proton, when you said this is major undertaking, I just that's all I can think of with all of this is what an enormous uh project, you know, we need we need uh food, water, and shelter to survive, and and here we are.

We're talking about one of the most basic uh human needs, which is which is water that's being directly provided by local government.

Um we just go back to square one.

Um first of all I want to say you've provided us numerous updates, and I appreciate that.

Um I uh hope that we can continue that.

Um these are very, very informative and helpful.

Um just going back to the explanation of why do we need this, um, why are we doing this?

If you could just give us the big picture there again.

Okay.

Um we have you know, with our two water supply lakes, both Little River and Lake Mickey, um, we we are basically nearing our capacity to be able to provide for growth of the city.

So, you know, and to be able to um without this project, we would be in a period probably where we would have to initiate our water shortage response plan, which is we don't have enough water to meet the demand on a regular very regular basis and almost maybe even constantly.

So we are at the point where that we only have so much water at both of those lakes.

So we need to have another water supply on hand to be able to continue to grow as a city.

Thank you.

And then um we talked about the intake, we've talked about the site uh and the process of uh development and some of the complications there, closing off recreation space for three years, those kinds of things.

Can you talk a little bit about um what we're thinking about regarding the actual treatment plant itself, um, what kinds of good considerations are going into it, uh innovative practices, um accessibility if that's a thing, uh sustainability, um I'm gonna show a little bit of uh naivete here, but I know that there's a water treatment plant that's underground with uh above ground recreation.

I'm guessing that's prohibitively expensive.

Yes, um, but I'm just curious about what kind of thought is going into what uh what the treatment plant itself is gonna look like, certainly.

Um one thing I didn't highlight is you know you're all familiar with LEED, right?

For building structures, and that the building is the administrative building is being built to the current city standards, which is gold.

Um Public Works Projects has a um similar program called Invision, and it's taking kind of the lead principles and applying it to public works type projects.

We embrace that envision for this project.

And there's a number of criteria, and we'd happy to bring back and talk about the different criteria that are in there, and they're very expansive and across the community, talking about access, talking about how you're impacting the community, what kind of improvement is the facilities going to bring to the community.

So some of our out um our outreach when we're out in um Chatham County, we were listening to what were their needs, you know, as we built the large diameter water lines up and down the roads in Chatham County, which ones were going to be on their open space and trails plane.

You know, where do the any road widenings that are needed?

Um how about access, better access to the recreational facility?

There's uh on C4th Road, which is right up the street, is a high school that was built after we started looking at this project.

You know, how do we impact them and how do we incorporate maybe any improvements that would help that community?

So the envision process um is very broad.

And we are it's um bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and we are currently at gold nearing platinum.

So then it's a very um rigorous process to submit all the documentation because you have to submit it from the beginning of what you've done prior to the project starting through design through construction.

You know, what are you doing at the construction site?

You know, are you recycling?

You know, how are you minimizing dust?

How are you minimizing traffic?

So it's very broad, very comprehensive, and we'd happy to happy to bring that back and talk about that the next time we have a project update after that program.

That'd be great.

Um, uh thank you so much for your work for your updates and look forward to learning more as it progresses.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilman Caballero.

Thank you so much for the update.

Um, and um why I'm always so impressed with what we do with water in the city of Durham.

Uh it's one of the things we do uh best.

Um is there is there a world where they they don't need the intake, right?

Because they've already the communities that you know, Pittsburgh and Chatham and Owasa, right?

Is there is because they're you know not going in on phase one, which I understand there's a plan like, okay, well this is how we bring them online and these are the cost for that.

Right.

Is there a world uh where like the state gives uh the Stanford plant, the Tri-River plant even more state money, and so then they don't need our intake, like if we thought about that within our financial modeling.

Right.

I mean certainly that's a that is a risk, but um, you know, there's you know they have not indicated that to us at this time, right?

There's a limited amount of space that they have to uh expand their plans, and yeah, their plan is they have a river intake.

So how how much the state would allow them to increase their river intake, especially knowing at this time, knowing that they have allocations in Jordan Lake, and certainly increasing um uh river allocations, certainly, you know, part of the outreach we've always done through the the Jordan Lake Partnership and now the Triangle Part Water Partnership is do a lot of outreach with the downstream utilities down to Fayetteville all the way down to Wilmington, uh keeping them abreast about what we're doing up in the triangle.

But certainly they're very you know, all of their concerns are you know, are the is there enough water still coming down the Cape Fair River that they can pull water out of the river?

So we were continuing to do that.

So there's there's a there's a lot there that of course that could be a risk if but we don't believe that'll at this juncture we don't believe that'll happen.

OWASA um uh they know they don't need to use the water right now, but they're afraid of losing their allocation.

So that's why they want to sign in on the intake ILA to show that they're committed into Jordan Lake to the state because they're fearful of if they didn't um participate in some way the the next round of allocation for that remaining allocation that they're you're not purchasing anything, you're not using it for 230 years, we have these other communities that need it now, they would lose their allocation.

Thank you for that.

And that to your so go it goes back to your earlier point that the uh Jordan Lake, like the the quality of that water source is clearly better than the Tri-River because of so it so some of that also then plays in like what people have access to and the w what other water sources they have access to may not be as high quality, and so it might make sense for them.

Right, and the and the cost of for them to expand their facilities versus the cost of an paying for the facilities where we are, where we already have like the intake we're building uh to the ultimate size, but we're we're we're putting in not all the pumps and not all the electrical equipment.

So we're we're not we there's some things you just have to build to ultimate, like the tunnel out to the middle of the intake and things like that for the initial investment.

But we're just like we're only building 20 million gallons a day in the treatment plan, ultimately it could be 77 million, but we're also scaling back what's the inside the the the raw water intake pumps pumping station so we can add pumps and intakes later on.

Okay, thank you so much for another question.

Thank you, Councilman.

Councilman Freeman didn't have a uh thank you.

Uh really appreciate the presentation.

I would say that I'm excited because I get to share this with some of the leaders across the state in a couple of weeks.

And I think it's really uh innovative the way the Tri River has come together uh to try and I guess pool the funds to do this work.

And so I I'm happy that we're leading.

And I I did have one question.

Are we locked into this model that you're sharing today, this this model scenario?

As far as as far as as like does this became become the the one way, because you said there would like 276 different models.

Oh for for the for the um excuse for the um improvements within our system.

Yes.

We we pretty much settled on that, but once again it's a it's a 20-year projection, so in a couple once um the WIP project comes online, and then we'll have initial and we'll be able to have actually have real information with our collection system.

You know, you model it, but then you have to look at did the modeling reflect what's actually happening.

And we'll have that, and then potentially growth patterns might change a little bit.

So we'll be changing maybe some of that and tweaking it.

That's why we're constantly updating our master plan.

That's good.

And then I was just gonna say that it's really helpful to see uh the breakdown as far as looking at the um all the variables.

And I wanted to just ask what would be, I guess what is exactly is the deciding factor in the main size.

Is it just like are you using population growth based on today or uh we we're you know we 2020, I think we launched our long-range water resources plan.

Um it got put on pause with COVID because the comp plan got delayed as well.

So um once the comp plan was completed, the Durham Comprehensive Plan, we were able to then incorporate the Durham Comprehensive Plan into our long-range water resources plan.

And um and that's looking at demand across the whole city, where development's gonna happen, how much water we're gonna need.

And as those plans evolve, we'll be updating that long-range water supply plan and using that as an input into our modeling and what we need in our capacity.

So that's a kind of an ongoing effort that we'll continue, just keep doing as we go along.

And then I noted uh you indicated that the contract was set about what is that, 152 million?

Uh how do you I guess how do you how do you foresee I like and I don't know how you're gonna be able to figure it out, but how do you foresee the effects of tariffs on that cost?

It's very hard to hard to know.

Um we've that's been talked about a lot.

And um and also just delivery.

Um one of the things that we are trying to do, which is also one of the decision making that we went into the progressive design build is um to do some early out purchasing because S cost escalate for some of the more expensive um uh pieces of process equipment um that we could maybe order that early.

And one of the things we talked about and uh questioning with all of the the different uh combination of firms when they came in um was you know, we would like to do that, how are you gonna handle that?

And you know, how would they store that material and how would they, once it's stored, how would they do the necessary maintenance to make sure that when it was installed, we would have the correct warranties for that.

So a lot of that is hopefully we'll be able to mitigate some of that because you know it's 2025 and online there's gonna be a lot of potential tanks and impacts to the construction costs.

So we're gonna try to mitigate that as much as possible to probably as much early on as we can.

And I would I would just like to draw that back to some of the conversation we were having earlier.

If Tim could just say, would that be included or could that be included in something like the carryover?

Well mo most of the funding is out of the CIP, so if the funds are actually, once they're approved by council, they're carried over.

I just wanted to make sure that the full council understands like that's the type of thing that will come forward and making sure we don't leave out the impacts, you know, acknowledging that tariffs are here.

Yes.

And that we're making adjustments based on the needs that we have for the future.

So don't want to leave that out.

That was actually one of the questions that we had during the selection processes.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Is how they how would how what would they were going to do to minimize cost if these kind of gain dependents?

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Calmerisk.

Thank you, Mr.

Tim.

Thank you, Mr.

Greeley for the presentation as always.

And I want to also want to thank the manager for for bringing this forward to the council.

This is really important to know about this.

I know this is pretty technical stuff.

It gets um pretty scientific in a hurry, but I really appreciate you sort of like sharing this with us.

Um we had this conversation earlier about community and sort of you know, sort of feelings about this major projects and things we're not getting delivered on.

I think this is the flip side of the coin.

This is like a major, major investment, a major project that most of us have no idea we're doing.

But the fact that we're thinking about this and investing in this major, major essentially public works project is really um is really accredited to your department and to the leadership of the manager.

So I want to thank you for that.

Um the question I had, uh you may have answered this already, but I know that in addition to PFAS, there's concern about one for deoxygen, right?

And I think there's a story on the radio to celebrate about that in the in the ha river of that whole watershed.

So I imagine, so that you so you're so when you're thinking about water quality, how you gonna mitigate that?

So 1-4 deoxy is like this is included, yeah.

Yes.

And is that and so that you mentioned earlier potentially having potentially a reverse osmosis that we would engage in to to uh to um to mitigate PFAS.

Is that the same same strategy for 1-4 deoxy or is that a different what's the I'll I'll point to Jeff because once again, that's it's hard to keep everything in my head, and he's got a little bit more time to think about it the way because he walks the podium.

So for one four dialogue, uh part of the I didn't hear the report, but part of the way I've heard about it in the media uh in the last few years has been Pittsburgh is downstream of some sources of one-four dioxide in Burlington and further upstream as part of and um so the uh the treatment facility, you know, we've in we've um invested some time and and regular monitoring of the lake to understand what it looks like when you take the source that's concentrated in the Haw River, but you also have other ways that water gets into Jordan Lake that are less that have lower levels of one-four dioxide.

So overall it's diluted in the lake.

But we do have treatment um uh embedded in the um in our treatment facilities now, uh not requiring reverse osmosis, but things like ozone uh filtration that can address the levels of one four dioxide in the water that the plant produces.

Great, thank you, appreciate that.

And then so Mr.

Really, for the for the council, I think you you listed a whole bunch of contracts that are essentially gonna be coming to us in the next year or so.

So is that anything else we can do to support you in this project?

Um just your continued support, and which has been tremendous.

I this is uh kind of as I said, it's a generational type of major undertaking for the city, a huge investment, especially since we've got lots lost some partners along the way, and but we've continued on.

So just in your continued support, uh, which is you know huge.

And thank you all.

I know that we've like increased water rates slightly right to the beginning, paying for all this.

So again, the strategic planning, the four seconds all very much appreciated.

Uh we look forward to continued updates.

Thank you.

Thank you, fellow just very with the final word on this.

Thank you for the presentation.

Uh thank you, colleagues, for the uh the conversation today.

Uh I've had a lot of things I've been managing in our factory meetings, and I'm grateful to Matthew Tim for leading us today.

And um I'm all good.

This is I'm looking forward to the uh the amusement park that's gonna go with uh the water park that's gonna go with this uh intake project uh out there.

So we're gonna replace the recreational with the additional components of this.

Looking forward to that.

All right.

We'll work on that.

For sure.

Thank you.

You know, I haven't gotten the votes that to take Miss Lake Disney Hall, but I'm still working on it.

So enjoy that often.

You're welcome any time.

Thanks so much.

Colleagues, that uh has we've exhausted our published agenda for today.

Um rather than settling the agenda now that I know there are a couple of other matters that we talked about at the beginning of the meeting.

Uh council member um Cook, you had a matter, but um, if you don't mind, I'm gonna defer to the manager to do his first, and then we can uh come to council members and manager and a couple of items as well on the other matters, and then uh I'll turn to you.

All right, thank you, uh Mayor Portama.

I appreciate it.

So uh three quick items.

Uh the first is a major oversight on my part that I wish to apologize for.

Uh it was uh an oversight uh from me to not point out at the beginning of the meeting and recognize our new permanent uh director of communications, Amy.

Uh is as counsel uh knows Amy has been uh a fixture for the city, a fixture in this department, and then serving as the interim role uh uh since uh since Beverly Thompson's retirement in June.

Uh and so I'm used to seeing her over there, but uh that uh uh does not uh decrease the importance of noting the occasion of Amy being uh named to this role officially.

As I captured in my message to each of you yesterday, um Amy has been a critical part of this department's success and growth over the years.

Uh but uh despite the fact that Amy is a a an internal candidate, I think some of the most exciting things we've added with Amy before making this decision are uh uh her vision for uh growing the breadth and the touch of this department uh of leaning into I think new and as of yet unknown uh communication tools and strategies.

Uh I think I've had conversations with many of you about uh your thoughts uh uh about the fact that it you know is just becoming increasingly challenging and complicated, but uh all the more necessary to get great messaging into the uh hands of our residents, and I am confident that Amy is up to that challenge.

So I want to welcome and congratulate Amy uh and recognize her in front of you all.

I'm really excited to see where she's going to bring us.

Thank you, Amy.

Thank you.

Uh Amy's gonna do a great job.

So that was item one.

Uh item two.

I just wanted to note uh you may have uh picked this up on your agenda that you do not have any land use items.

Uh there isn't the utility extension agreement, but no zonings or rezoning, so which caught all of us a little bit by surprise on the administration.

Uh I wanted to highlight for you that uh in discussing that with Director Young, uh, she noted that for for many years dating back to COVID.

We have been uh we have had a backlog of planning items for council's review and the items that he cleared.

The planning commission uh were then uh queued up for slots on the city council's agenda.

Uh that backlog has been cleared, and as a result, we are now tracking along with the agenda of the planning commission.

Because the planning commission also took a July break, like council did, uh, we are at that point in the workflow that the items that that were that there were no items coming out of the planning commission, but I wanted to highlight for that for you because I think for some time that has been a concern.

I know the development community has expressed concern to council about the length of the process.

So I I didn't want it to pass uh that uh that we are uh at a at a place where that that backlog has been cleared.

And then finally, uh I've got uh uh slide up in front of you.

So uh I've I've met with each of you in my one-on-ones through the month of August uh and had conversations with you about uh I ironically, I think we talked a good bit earlier today.

More transparency, uh more frequent updates, getting projects in front of council.

Uh and uh so I got your feedback uh about the first projects that you would like to see uh highlighted in front of council.

Had a number of questions about when they would be coming back.

So I just wanted to uh prepare this overview for you uh and present and let you know when these are coming.

Uh the Durham Rail Trail project, an update on that project will be on your October 9th, 2025 work session.

Uh the Durham Athletic Park feasibility study is scheduled to come forward on your November 6th, 2025 work session.

Uh I think this may be up for some discussion today, but uh the staff uh will be believe we'll have significant uh updates to provide on the West Chapel Hill 505 West Chapel Hill uh redevelopment process on the 20th.

Um I am uh I want to make some come back to that one and make some comments before we close.

Uh the uh 2024 bond referendum projects uh we will be one year from that referendum at the end of August, October, early November.

We're planning uh an overview on the progress of implementing the blonde uh the bond that will be coming to council.

And then uh an update since I created this slide, the South LB Wetland Project Update will actually be on your next agenda on September uh 18th for an overview of an update.

So it's gonna be sooner than when I put this slide together.

I also wanted to mention uh knowing that trails were on the conversation today that there is a planned update of all city tail trail projects going to the RAC at their meeting on October 8th, uh, and that same presentation comment will be offered to DOST.

We don't have that schedule with DOS yet, but we envisioned that would be October or November.

Um I do want to come back and talk.

There's been a number of you have brought back to me a conversation about 505 West Chapel Hill.

Uh so I wanted to clarify uh several of you have mentioned correctly that in your work session in June uh you asked that we come back as soon as possible after the break within the month of August to have further conversations.

Obviously, we did not do that.

Uh we have not scheduled that because we don't have uh we don't have decision points uh that responded to council's direction uh it at the June work session that would be ready to brief.

And so we uh my proposal was that we come back to council as quickly as possible once we've got results from those conversations with uh NC preservation uh and also from staff efforts on um the master planning that that we took forward.

Uh I've heard some comments from council members that that uh they felt like an interim conversation would be worthwhile to further discuss whether or not uh affordable housing is something that should be underway right now.

We have been approaching that affordable housing component as part of the master planning process.

Um but obviously I want to make it clear that the the agendas belong to the council.

If you would like to add this item at a sooner date, I just would want to set expectations that I don't feel like we have a lot to report out, but that we are working uh uh with with intentionality about being prepared uh for the next update.

I also wanted to let you know that uh we will be there will be a column in tomorrow's City Connect updating the public on the process of 505 Westchapel Hill.

So I wanted to leave that open as several council members have raised that with me and certainly want to be in a position to respond to council direction if you would like an earlier conversation on that project.

That's the update I intended to offer.

Happy to answer any questions related to that.

Thank you, uh Mr.

Manager, appreciate you.

Um Council McCook, a meeting.

Thank you.

Um so I have two matters that I'd like to bring forward.

Uh one, as the manager has stated and already knows, is uh a sooner conversation on 505.

Um I know that we talked about and I understand the the reasonings for not having the meeting in August or having that on the agenda in August, uh, but this is uh November 20th is almost three months away uh from now, and and I do want to make sure that if there's any clear guidance to be given before then that we are not exhausting staff resources and ensure that we are sort of all in agreement and given guidance.

So I would ask that that be put on.

Um I've talked to a couple of y'all about this, but not the next work session, but the work session after, which still gives us a large chunk of time because we have a an off week, so that would be that right, they've 9th, the 9th of October.

Um so that is my proposal, which would be about five or six weeks before the presentation, understanding that of course staff will be ready to do a full presentation at that time.

Did you want to raise your just clarity?

What what do we what if for conversation to do why?

Um for a couple of things.

The first is that we did say that we were going to bring it back a lot earlier, and so that was the expectation that was put out for the public.

Um and the second thing is that uh we had a lot of conversation that day and didn't end up giving a whole lot of guidance.

And so if we do want to ensure that we're not kind of like sitting on that lack of decision and and staff sort of going in the direction that they can best go with kind of like how non, I don't feel like we were very clear.

And so I what I don't want to happen is that staff kind of goes down a process of putting a lot of time and effort into doing something that's um maybe not exactly aligned, or if we can give clearer guidance in the meantime that would be more efficient for staff time, um, I want to have that conversation as well.

I think my only thing is I went back to Washington writing, we we didn't give a lot of clear and instruction, but I think that's probably because the process has already been done.

So I think I need clarity on are we going back to rewriting this whole thing again?

Are we going to do the community engagement component again?

Are we wiping the initial priorities all over, which means we have to go back to the community engagement again?

Um I think I think they have to say that we're having a conversation to have a conversation, or we what what is the guidance beyond what's already been done?

I think that's what I mean clarity on.

Yeah, I mean, and I think that that's part of the of the issue is that we sort of left it with this idea that we were segmenting off just the Milton Smalls building.

We had a lot of conversation about affordable housing and moving forward in that at that time, but there wasn't really a conversation about whether we'd like to see possibilities of segmenting off something for affordable housing, or if we wanted to be thinking about moving forward with affordable housing and also looking at the project as a whole.

Um, and so what we've come back or what what staff is planning to come back for us is is a master plan, sort of like a high-level uh statement.

But we already have done this process as you've brought up several times, and so I don't really want to sit for three months and and have another master plan drawn up if that's not really gonna help us make decisions.

And so my my question is gonna be can we get a little bit more clarity?

Can we get a little bit more detail on what we want staff to be doing and bringing forward for us so that we can make decisions a little bit more quickly?

All right, Mr.

Manager, a question.

Are you all looking for us to decide this?

What do you exactly need from council that hasn't already been done?

Uh we don't have a request of council.

Uh we uh I agree that based on conversations I've had with uh several of you individually, uh there seems to be uh there seems to be some disagreement about how much or how independently we should be looking specifically at affordable housing right now, uh as I've shared with many of you individually and comfortable saying publicly that at this point affordable housing shows up in two different places in the direction that that I I believe we got at the June 5th work session.

One is that should our conversations with NC preservation open opportunities for the Milton Small Building to be repurposed as affordable housing, that that is certainly something we feel the council wants us to fully explore and and highlight options for you there.

Secondly, as we bring different staff resources to the table to create sort of a high-level master plan or master plan concepts for your consideration, obviously, on the site, that that there is a extremely clear expectation that affordable housing be a part of that.

I have received comments from some council members around whether or not, independent of those two things, there are conversations going on directly with or being solicited directly with affordable housing developers or entertaining future conversations, and at this point, my response has been no, we did not perceive that to be part of the conversation.

My my opinion of re-watching the meeting is that was discussed, and that I did not feel like we got direction.

I welcome clarity from council if that needs to be the direction, and I and I think should you have another conversation, I would seek again to see if we have a consensus on council or a majority on council that wants that to be the case.

So I have a question for our colleagues that were here for the four of us.

So three men and two are based on what I mean the three, I'm talking about four of us who are not here.

Um the three of you all that were here, based on the conversation that we're discussing now, how is this different than what's already happened?

So, if I might, Mr.

Mary, I think we're doing it again.

We we are we're getting into mission creep again.

I I would I would just remind my colleagues that we got here because when we reached a decision point, based upon the five priorities that we had agreed upon, we at the last minute change the sale of the land.

We we we we and that plenty of that added more time to the decision point.

The last meeting that we had, that the June meeting, as I recall, I there's no I don't really see it as ambiguous.

We did have a lot of conversation, but the final where we landed was uh looking at breaking out the the Milton Smalls building, which could be purposed for affordable housing or could be purposed for other things, but breaking that out and looking at uh a master plan.

And I think we also talked about perhaps the the exploration of some interim programming as well to combat blight.

So we were clear on that.

What's happened is some of us have had conversations with activists in groups, many of which I'm a member of, that some of us feel beholden to, and we are, and and and and I don't want to confuse the conversation we've had subsequent to that meeting and use that to cast kind of uh confusion about what we said that day.

I was clear what we came with on that day.

What's happened is some of us have had subsequent conversations, which is fine.

Um and my inclination, my my recommendation would be we've charged the staff with from that day any conversation that we want to have about augmenting or doing anything, I think we should have to give the staff opportunity to do what we've already asked them to do at that June meeting.

Just before that, like before we were on council, which I did in 2019, 2022.

We had yeah, we had the five priorities.

I mean which the y'all remember the five priorities, those five priorities are what informed the RFPs that came back.

Those RFPs were kept fidelity with those five priorities.

When we were prepared to vote on one of those RFPs, which I contend and I contended and I contend now, would have given basically everybody what they wanted.

We would have had the building that had affordable housing.

The contention was rather than sell it, which would have given us the financial windfall, which is one of our priorities, we decided to lease.

That was the trigger point, which sent it back to the staff.

So before that, it was the five priorities that that informed the uh RSE outcome officially that informed the RFP.

For me, the master plan, um, if if if we move forward, and affordable housing is always going to be the 505 West Chapell Street, that's non-negotiable.

If we move forward with doing affordable housing first and now, I I would just caution us, that now becomes a neighborhood.

The master plan is a plan.

So when folk move into that neighborhood and years later we tell them, well, this is really part of a master plan, we're going to put a hotel here now or something like that.

This is the beauty of master plans.

You you you advertise what you're going to do at the beginning, you do it in one fell swoop.

Because those folks who now live in that neighborhood, they will be a neighborhood, and they may not want the master plan at that point.

They may not care what we talked about four or five years prior to that.

So the master plan now becomes you know, a plan and the whole idea of if we're going to do the the affordable housing piece then first, then we need to remember that the master plan is just that a plane, and I would want the voices of the people that live there to be honored when we're going to you know do their um thing.

We can bring this my first time really talking at all today, so I've been very patient.

Go ahead, Mr.

Mayor.

I I I think I'm just uh still we'll go ahead then.

He was, I think trying to wasn't just the five items.

I mean, the five folds are the five folds, but the you're trying to get to some of the history pre when you were on council.

Is that right?

Which I think if I so you guys came when you did a it was the process of getting to the process.

Yes, the process was a there was a community engagement back in 2016 at this point, right?

And so those were the five priorities that the mayor putemas identified.

There was a there was a decision by council.

It's that the original uh entity retracted, right?

So like I think that that's a missed point.

I mean the reason we were gonna sell the land because there was it was uh it was there was the value was good enough at that time, right?

That was the initial economic premise.

That economic premise does not exist in the same way.

And we saw that in subsequent proposals.

The initial response did not require city subsidy to do anything, if I'm not mistaken.

The economic headwinds for many reasons completely changed.

And that is why I think we have struggled.

Now, the mayor pro tem is correct that subsequent proposals, there have been other things, but in the fall of 2019, if I'm not mistaken, a decision was made by council, a vote was taken, a group was decided on, and the proposal was decided on as well.

And that proposal fell through, not because of any decision or lack of decision or changing of a decision by a council, right?

Post that, yes, correct.

There have been decisions that have uh changed or waffled, but we would have had a building built by this point if that initial developer hadn't pulled out of the out of the deal.

So I just want to correct that that so that the folks are are clearly aware, no, there was a decision, there was a vote, there was a process.

Um just to the whole conversation.

I am open to having, and I said this to Councilmember Cook before, I am open to having a conversation.

I've also said, because during my one-on-one with the city manager, we had this conversation, I want to go watch that meeting.

I need time to go watch that meeting.

Um I'm, you know, folks are saying there was some clarity, there wasn't some clarity into what I said to Councilmember Cook, Councilmember Cook, at our subsequent work session.

If I don't feel like to your point that it was there wasn't clear direction, I'm open to having that conversation on the ninth.

If I like, so I'm not prepared to provide you an answer, and I wasn't prepared to really provide an answer before the work session.

So that's where I'm at.

Um I've also met with advocates, and that what I have said to advocates is I would raise it with the city manager.

I have done my due diligence on that part.

My next step is to watch a meeting and see what was the guidance or not, and um that is where I am as an individual council member.

So um I'm not prepared to answer your request.

I would like to wait to the next work session, uh, which is the 18th, right?

I think, and then open to having something on the 9th.

Um if I feel like, yeah, there is something we need to provide staff where it's clear where we landed.

This thought quickly facts from the comments, because I don't think anything you've said to controversial, I agree with everything you said.

The only thing I would I would I I think more clarification is that the decision um not to sell was not an economic basic decision.

It was it was predicated upon the notion that in order for us to maintain control and to get what we actually want in terms of affordable housing that we needed to own it.

That was not an economic argument.

It was an argument based upon the belief that the only way we can ensure that we'll be affordable housing is that if we own the land, that that was the reason for for for pulling it um at that at that last meeting.

Um I just want to clarify that.

Yeah.

Actually can we I have a simple question for the manager so if you had any input on the conversation that's happening.

Yeah so my question is just what what would we expect for the meeting on the you know the uh the tw November 20th.

What what would what would we expect?

Sure.

So I I would hope by then that we could provide some context.

So so comments were made at the June 5th work session on behalf of or by Preservation North Carolina that a significant factor in the rehabilitation of the Milton Small Building has not been part of our consideration because we were talking to uh master plan master developers and not talking to historic preservation developers they they made an overture to the council that um that should the council be interested they would work with staff to identify more refined proposals for that building uh that we could then vet I think with our partners uh HRNA being one of the our our critical partners uh to to come back and give you an assessment if we if we believe that to be credible that that portioning off the Milton Small building going straight for a proposal on that building so I I think by November 20th we could provide significant context for that.

We're having conversations both directly with NC preservation with groups who have worked with NC preservation and with our private consultants all of which we are trying to coalesce into our our typical sort of hopefully unbiased analysis for you as to is this really something that's different and meaningfully different than what we've experienced in our prior efforts.

So I think we'd have an answer for you on that.

Then I think we would be able to share with you concepts and ideas from your professional staff around what a physical plan for that site might look like if we were to rather than a master developer say here's what I want to do with that site if we were to say you know here are ideas and uses based on your comp plan based on conversations you've had based on feedback from the public we've heard based on the priorities of the council has said so I'd like to bring back what I still think would be a high level not a highly specific master plan for the property.

And then as a subset of that that would include concepts for activating the space because I think what was central to our June 5 conversation is the staff recommendation was that based on prior conversations from council we did not think doing anything quickly on that site was advisable given the development climate.

So I think you heard that and said yes we gave some options well I think we heard you say yes but again I'm open for you revising that or or telling us we heard that wrong.

So we would bring some ideas for what it might look like to have interim uses on that site.

So I think that is what we feel could be ready in November.

Any meeting you have prior to that I'm very comfortable with us sharing what we know to date in all of those areas I just am not comfortable saying that work would be complete sooner than that November date I'm gonna invite TCM Probes who's leading most of this effort to see if I have over or understated any of those uh summaries very rarely wrong but I will just add that um there are meetings underway right now tomorrow there's a meeting with preservation um the preservation staff as well so the work is while it's not completely visible that this work is going on as well along with interventions with Parks and Rag planning department and we're also meeting with our new Office of Economic Board Force Development Director he's he's new to the he's new to us now to talk about those interventions um of this space that could be short term maybe long term come back with um college proposals especially as we look at what is or isn't going to happen in the marketplace in the next year or so and we're aware what option may be that we will still be holding on to it and doing things and um to activate the space minimize the blight and um hold on to our asset and use it while um other activities are underway so basically you're you're investigating what are the potential you know opportunities on the site um that's an ongoing process by November 20th there'd be a very high level here's kind of what we've explored here's the direction and and some some options potentially some options.

Yes.

And then as part of that do you anticipate and and was this something that you heard potential partitioning of this larger other than just the Milton Small Building partitioning as one of those options?

I'm not opposed to the conversation but I will say I will not be here on the 9th and um I'd like to be here for the conversation so I'd hope you find a different day.

And then also add there's a long laundry list of all of the documentation that's occurred for this project on the website and I encourage everyone to take a look at that.

It's extensive because I think in 2017 the decision was made and then in 2019 the building became empty and I know there was a lot of um activity about what should happen to the building uh externally and that activity has continued so I have not met with anyone it's um following up on this from our meeting in June and so it's interesting but I do want to make sure that the historic preservation piece is investigated to the fullest and whether it's affordable housing or not I want to be clear like I want that process process to continue and be done.

I will say that there's not much difference between uh the 9th of October and November 20th except an election and so I'm open to whatever uh needs to happen uh whether we have the conversation beforehand or not I've been an advocate for partitioning from the very beginning.

That was I was in the minority and went with the majority on moving forward with across in the beginning.

So um if we were to move forward with partitioning I would be excited to see a piece of it you know taken off for uh affordable housing or and the Milton Small Building but I think until the historic preservation piece is explored we won't know whether that is I don't think it's a like I don't think it's a problem if it doesn't if you have affordable housing in both.

But I do want to make sure that staff is focused on getting getting what they need to get so that on October 20 on November 20th we can make a decision on whether or not we'll be forward with preservation North Carolina or not.

Thank you.

Um I don't know any really clear about what I'm asking for.

So and this is like we're pretty much doing it now which is not what I what I wanted was for us to be prepared to do it in a few weeks.

Not interested in doing that again if we had the right takeaways or if we didn't like I'm not interested in that I don't feel beholden to anyone I've met with what I want is for when this comes up again in late November, which is quite some time away for us to have the information that we need to be able to make a decision.

And so if there to that extent if there are more things that we would like to see from staff um and and I will say this is more detail than I had understood was coming in front of us in November.

So price prices around activation and site activation, I didn't know that that part was going to be coming before us.

So that is already more information but if there if we want to have specific information on like costs around moving forward on an affordability piece and these other things like I would just want us to go ahead and have that information ready so that we can make a decision in a more efficient economical way.

That's my only point in bringing this up now is not to like make any major decisions but I also like I don't want to have to redo the plans.

We've already redone the plans a million times and so if we are going to go a different route I feel like we should talk about it sooner rather than later instead of letting all the time slip by and then not getting the information that we need to make the decision.

So that's my point bringing it.

Thank you, Ms.

Mayor um yeah Council Cook I I I hear you know the urgency I I feel the same pressure maybe that we sort of this is one of the things that's sort of taken so long so I sense the urgency.

I also agree with you that I'm not interested in sort of going back and rehashing what's happened in the past we need to move forward on this project.

I'd so I so to have a meeting in October and then when again in November may not be as efficient I think but I think again I I sense the urgency if we can do this before the 20th of November let's do that right if the staff say they can't do it before then we may be stuck with that but I'd say let's do it as soon as we can.

I think what you were asking for in part was just enough right when they sort of find that more and give into it right so um if there if staff is if what staff is saying is we'll have information and proposals and options to really look at it to give um guidance on on the 20th I think that's a productive conversation to have.

If we can have that sooner all the better if not let's do it on the 20th.

So if we talk about it that's that's exactly what I was going to say.

And I yes there there's an election between that and I don't really care about that for me is the information.

I don't want to have a conversation just to have a conversation.

I want to make sure we have all of the information prepared.

And so I'm I'm along the same line.

What I want to make sure, and that's how we have this conversation.

As in our conversation happens, we are making a decision on where we're going, or you know, or at least determinate the next week to make a decision.

A hard decision to go forward with.

I I don't want to talk just to talk.

We've been on a lot of that.

That's why I ask for the institutional history on it.

So I'm going to go to the middle talk.

Yeah, I don't want to rehash the last meeting.

The only reason that I think is operational is because there's going to be some some suggestion that there was ambiguity at the last meeting.

That's why we're talking about what actually happened.

So that's rehashing.

And secondly, I for me, it's a council member cook's point, the more that November 20th meeting, that's what it's going to do for me.

That's going to give me the information to have to to weigh options because for me, I even if we if we wanted to do a standalone affordable housing piece, I I I'm not going to support building affordable housing, brand new apartments.

And when they look out their window, they see a blinded Milton Smalls building.

I mean, to me, what what is absolutely critical is the disposition of that building first, because you know, if if it's still looking the way it is, and we're building affordable housing, who wants to live in the neighborhood like that where that's where they're looking out the window?

So that that that high level um presentation from the staff on November 20th is just jump-off point for me to do exactly what you you suggest that that will give me at least a starting point for what it looks like to break off that building.

What it if if we're going to do a standalone piece, what will we be doing?

What will the neighborhood look like if we do that?

So for me, that November 20th meeting accomplishes that, all that we've said for me.

So Councilmember Cook, do you feel what the information that staff has provided?

I I hear what Councilmember Riss said.

I think staff has heard it clearly.

Um if if they can come sooner, please come sooner.

But now that you've had that kind of update that there's more information than maybe you initially thought, can we just like if they can come sooner, great?

If not, can we just say it's gonna happen on November 20th?

Would you feel comfortable with that?

Yeah, I absolutely feel comfortable with a time frame.

I just want to make sure that the level of detail for us to actually make a decision is before us.

And previously, the only words I've heard are high level, high level, high level.

And I've just now heard, oh, we'll actually look at portion eight off.

Well, actually, and I hadn't heard that before.

And so I don't know, I don't I don't know exactly what we're gonna get because those those words don't feel very descriptive to me.

So that's been my only concern.

It's just that we we provide guidance so that when we get here in November and we have the preservation piece and we have every we ha we'll have all of the pieces in front of us that we need.

So that's what staff feel like they've heard from council what we're hoping for that presentation, whether it happens November 20th or sooner.

Well, just because of the the again, the the conversations about how much detail or how much is uh you know I think we will be prepared to vet for council and analyze for council the the offer or claims made by Preservation Durham.

So I I'm describing that as high level because that will not be you will not have a development proposal to vote on.

You will not be looking at proposals.

So I I have described that as a high level overview, but I do think you know we will be in a position to say this seems like a viable option if council's choice is to subdivide.

And so then you could give us that direction and say yes, pursue a development proposal.

I I do think I want to be clear, I do think the master plan will be very high level.

So I I don't I just in this question of what will be actionable on I would rather underpromise and over deliver than leave any of you with the notion that there will be you know very specific action items on the 20th, because I think what you asked us for is go talk to an NC preservation and see if this seems viable.

So I think that that's what I took as our direction.

Um so I just to council members cook's concerns about whether or not there we will be ready for action on the 20th.

I don't want to overpromise that and say yes.

I do think all of the detail that Gina provided will is under that umbrella of we hope to inform your next steps, whether or not there are next steps on the table at the 20th.

I I don't want to commit to that.

I'm not sure you're comfortable with us committing to that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Do you feel based on that?

I'm just because you're the one who brought it, so I just want to yeah, I mean I I'm not I feel like we're talking in circles.

Like I don't feel like I've gotten the answer that I want.

Like, will we have tangible things to look at and make a decision outside of the preservation piece?

And it sounds like maybe no.

I don't think so, like that is what that's what might have been re my only request is like we're gonna get this preservation piece.

I understand the timing on that.

Sounds like it might not come back to us before November.

That's totally fine.

I want to be able to have the information when I make a decision, but I also want to have some other pieces too, so that we can talk about on the November 20th meeting.

Oh, are we gonna segment off the Milton Small Building?

Are we also gonna segment off for affordability?

Are we all like, or are we gonna keep it all together and are we gonna move forward on one piece first?

Are we gonna face it like these are decisions that I'd like to make sooner rather than later, and I just don't feel like I'm um I I understand that that information will come in front of us at that time.

I think that's a big determined.

I I mean I I listen, I share your frustration, but we don't have any pro the the decision point that ship is sailed.

When we had the RFPs, we said we're not gonna deal with people anymore.

I think we have to resolve ourselves that we have set the clock back on this project.

Um in November, the short answer quest is no, I don't think we're gonna maybe, well the easiest is maybe.

I mean, it depends upon what the staff brings, but I I don't think that we ought to be on the under any illusion that any quick decisions are gonna be made on that property because that ship is already sailing.

We we don't have any RFPs out, we don't have any proposals, it'll be high level, and and we're just gonna have to tell folk the truth that we are not maybe at the total beginning, but we have added time to this project and we want to get it right.

I'd rather get it right here quick.

Let me uh use your hand up.

I just wanted to appreciate, I felt like there was more than just the um Milton Smalls building.

I appreciate what DCM probes shared.

I'm comfortable with that.

I look forward to that conversation.

I think that's you know, we we've said that there's urgency, and and we understand you also have lots of other things going on.

So if you can come before November 20th, great.

If it doesn't, I feel comfortable with what staff has shared, and that's just where I'm at.

Thank you.

Yeah, uh that that's pretty much what I was gonna say.

Uh the staff has some message that was urgently.

Um but I I don't want to have a meeting earlier with not enough information.

Uh when we do meet, I want as much information as possible so that we can't give guidance on dating going into a decision making process on how we move forward.

Um so I I think the message is clear.

Okay.

Yes, I had another one.

Um so I am I've talked to everybody about this at some point in time, maybe not today, but um the staff has done um some research on the wildlife feeding uh ordinance that y'all might remember.

Some folks came up and were talking about the squirrels in there.

Yeah, the squirrels and the deer and all of their wildlife in their neighborhood.

Um and so uh the attorney and I have met uh talked about what an ordinance might look like, and so I would like to bring that forward just for um to address that council or that excuse me, that constituent request.

Um and I'm happy to put that on the next work session or two work sessions from now, whatever the attorney thinks is the right amount of time for that conversation to happen.

Well, I think there's some staff feedback as well, so I kind of want to defer to the manager on how he wants to.

For our conversation yesterday, we're we're prepared to report out on the information that the housing and neighborhood services formerly NIS code enforcement staff collected over the summer.

Um my recommendation in a conversation that the attorney and I had that this might go into parts that we bring you the feedback on what other communities are doing and how it might look in Durham, and then if council's decision is to move forward with an ordinance that that that the attorney would bring the ordinance forward, we can do it like that, or if council's direction is to bring an ordinance with the staff report, you can give us that direction today.

Either way, we are certainly prepared to bring the staff feedback forward and uh the staff is already preparing the agenda item for that.

So I guess the only clarity we need is do you want the ordinance with it or would the ordinance follow a council conversation?

Um I don't feel strongly about this.

I do think that the ordinances are pretty straightforward, so I don't think there's I don't think that y'all are gonna see something that's gonna really surprise you out of that.

I do think we could probably talk about both at the same time.

But if folks feel more comfortable having the staff report first and then the ordinance second, that doesn't matter.

I haven't uh I never talked about it.

I remember vaguely.

Um I I'm not for careful to see whether the actual staff report is going to inform better or not the actual ordinance.

Um I see less purpose for the staff report if we're coming with the ordinance to make a decision on the following meeting, so I'd like a staff report and then go with the uh ordinance.

That'll be my decision.

Yeah, I just the only thing is that I don't want us to ha talk about things that we aren't gonna put in our ordinance, right?

Because the staff report's gonna be, I think, a little bit broad, and so I just want to make sure that we kind of taper it down to like the things that we're actually gonna talk about.

And so I just want to make sure that we kind of taper it down to like the things that we're actually gonna talk about.

Uh so we what we could do, I think, is have the staff report in the next work session, and we could already have a draft of the ordinance at that time so that folks can try to see what's relevant, and then we could actually put it on for the ninth as a full discussion.

I'll follow you at lead on it.

Um I'm okay either way.

I uh um but I do want to see the staff report before I even think about shape on an ordinance.

So can we do the staff report in one work session and then have the ordinance conversation in the work session following?

Okay, I'll go with that.

Great.

Those are all of my matters.

And we're ready to send.

Second.

All right, so probably second Audator.

Okay.

Thank you all so much.

We are returned at four.

I can I can't say oh, right.

Four thirty-seven.

I saw I really worked hard as a meeting guys.

Uh uh when I have to take a break, but please let's get downstairs.

Uh see your little armory.

Uh at the armory uh five ten is our photo.

Five ten photo for audit services, and five forty-three, our photo for the mayor's suspending Latinal Council.

Oh sorry.

Can everybody go through Armory?