Good afternoon, everyone.

Uh, I'm gonna go ahead and call our meeting uh to order this ninth day of April at 1 p.m.

Uh the mayor has an excused absence for today, so I will be presiding.

I just want to do a little bit of housekeeping before uh I have our Madam Clerk call the roll.

Uh we will be going into closed session in uh in the middle of our meeting essentially.

So what we will do is after public comment and after the consent agenda items have been read and pulled.

Uh the uh Madam Attorney will give us our language for the motion for closed session.

Council will move down the hall into our committee room for our closed session, and then we will come back and uh continue proceeding with our meeting.

So for those of you who signed up for public comment, you will be allowed to speak before we go into closed session.

I'm seeing some uh faces with a little bit of confusion.

Uh and for staff uh for uh staff, um we will have pulled your items so you will also know whether you need to stay or go.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Good afternoon, Mayor Williams received an excused absence for today.

Mayor Protest Caballero here.

Councilmember Baker, Councilmember Burris.

Councilmember Cook.

Here.

Councilmember Kopak.

Here.

And Councilmember Riz.

Here.

Thank you.

We do have a ceremonial item today.

Um today we have the National Public Safety Telecommunicate Communicator Week proclamation.

And I'm not sure who is here to receive that proclamation, but I would love for you to come to the podium.

Oh, thank you.

So it's a little different during our work session, so I'm just gonna read the proclamation from here and then give you all the opportunity uh to speak.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Whereas emergencies can occur at any time that require police, fire, or emergency medical services, or Durham County Safety Heart, where an emergency occurs, the prompt response of police officers, paramedics, firefighters, and heart is critical to the protection of life and preservation of property.

And whereas the safety of our police officers, paramedics, and firefighters, and heart is dependent upon the quality and accuracy of information obtained from residents and visitors who telephone the Durham Emergency Communications Center.

And whereas public safety communication officers and call takers are the first first responders, and most critical contact our residents and visitors have with emergency services.

Public safety communication officers and call takers are the first first responders, and most critical contact our residents and visitors have with emergency services, and whereas public safety communication communications officers and call takers are the single vital link for our police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and heart by monitoring their activities by radio providing them information and ensuring their safety.

Public safety communications officers and call takers of the Durham Emergency Communications Center have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fires, treatment of patients, mental health prevention, and interventions.

And whereas each public safety communications officer and call takers has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their job in the past year.

Now, therefore, I, Leonardo Williams, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim April 12th through 18th, 2026 as National Public Safety Telecommunications Week in the City of Durham and encourage residents to support the vital work of the most essential in our community.

Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the city of Durham, North Carolina this sixth day, April 2026.

We are honored to serve the residents of Durham, answering every call with professionalism, compassion, and dedication to public safety.

This recognition reflects the commitment of our telecommunicators who work behind the scenes day and night to support our community and first responders.

We're grateful for the city's trust and partnership, and we remain committed to serving with excellence.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, and now I have uh announcements by council.

I'm going to um go first, which I know is not typical, but I know that we had some hard news uh yesterday and this morning.

Uh I want to acknowledge the detention of uh Durham resident family whose students uh were at Burton Elementary.

They were detained uh Monday uh at their regular routine asylum check-in.

That means that they were here uh asylees from the country of Honduras.

Um they had family in the parking lot um who were waiting for them, and after 90 minutes, a federal agent reached out and said that the family had been, all four of them, including two elementary aged children had been detained and within 24 hours deported back to Honduras.

This is a completely illegal action by immigration enforcement.

Uh folks who are here with asylum and refugee status have particular rules and protocols.

They were following all of their rules and protocols.

It was a routine check-in.

Currently, I know Siembra, many elected officials and other community members are holding a press conference at Burton Park at 1 p.m.

Obviously, none of us could be there because we are here, but I do just want to extend uh all of our thoughts with this family.

I know that Durham will rally around them like we always do.

And there are conversations already happening about how we ensure Durham residents who have to go down to Charlotte.

It's the only place to do these routine check-ins in North Carolina, can be offered support.

We know when folks are able to show up with attorneys or pastors or community members or elected officials, their outcomes are significantly better.

And I think that one of the reasons that this family was detained is that unfortunately we did not know that they were going down there.

And so I pledge my support and commitment to any Durham resident who is going down to uh Charlotte and happy to escort you.

And I think I can speak for most of my colleagues and uh and elected officials.

So we are uh thinking about them.

I do want to remind folks, I think this is the first time in North Carolina we have had children detained in this manner.

These were very young, young children.

Uh I think a six-year-old and a 10-year-old.

So again, uh thinking about them.

Thank you, colleagues.

Anyone else?

Yes, Councilmember Baker.

Thank you.

Um thank you to all who are here in the building and here with us today.

Uh just want to lift up uh your comments, uh, Mayor Pro Tem and um associate myself with those.

Um we want Durham to be a place that is welcoming to everybody.

And unfortunately the federal government uh doesn't want that uh in Durham or other places anywhere else.

Um of course this happened in Charlotte, but these are Durham community community members, Durham public school students, and um just devastated and horrified um by by that and by what's happening.

Um I want to uh read a statement uh from the Durham Workers' Rights Commission.

Um the Durham Workers Durham Workers' Rights Commission voted unanimously to endorse the UE150 proposal to review and update the city's controlled substance and alcohol testing policy on Tuesday, April 31st.

We believe this is an opportunity for the City of Durham to move toward a more just fair, equitable system without sacrificing the safety and integrity of public services uh rendered.

So I wanted to share that as the liaison to the Durham Workers' Rights Commission.

Um two other items, colleagues.

I've spoken with all of you about these.

Um the first is that the mayor of Boone, Dalton George reached out to me.

Uh he's reaching out to communities across North Carolina and seeking to uh build a number of communities who will pass a resolution designating May 15th as endangered species day.

I've shared with you um resolution language from Boone that I think that we can replicate pretty quickly and easily here.

So I would like to ask my colleagues to place that on the next work session agenda.

Next or future when we deem their space, but yes, okay.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, y'all.

Um when I preside everyone gets two minutes.

Sorry.

Uh, one more item, I'll be quick.

Um I also reached out to each of you about uh potential ordinance around a moratorium on hyperscale data centers.

This is not just your average and typical size data centers.

Um these are uh large scale.

We've all been hearing about them.

Um there's a lot to learn.

It's an area where things are moving very quickly.

Uh many, many communities across the state of North Carolina um in a growing number are adopting one-year moratoriums.

Uh, and I would like Durham to uh join that.

I think it's important to assess what's going on, um, have a little bit of time to do that, uh, and then put in place any measures that are necessary to adequately regulate hyperscale data data centers.

So I'd like to put that on the next agenda for the work session and work closely with the planning department and the city attorney's office to draft that language.

Thank you.

Uh anyone else.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Any other announcements?

Councilmember Cook and then Councilmember Rist and then Councilmember Kopak.

Thank you.

I'll be very brief.

I just want to echo the comments of the account of the Mayor Pro Tem.

Those were uh very close to the exact comments that I had.

Um it is a wild time to read that news and also spend the morning in eviction court uh trying to keep people housed.

Um lots of lots of just uh acknowledging of state violence against civilians and um and watching that play out in real time is is really difficult.

So I just want to um throw in my support that you have um a council up here that is, I think unanimously behind supporting every single one of our residents.

Uh we are not discriminating on the basis of your income, your background, your where you come from, whether or not you have documents that say that you are legal enough for our federal government, which uh, you know, is on the line as well, what those documents might be.

Um just to just want to echo those comments made and and say that we don't support that.

I do not support that.

And I am very um very much want to make clear that uh that is that is not gonna fly in Durham, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that folks remain safe, even if the perpetrators are uh government agencies.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rist.

Thanks, Mayor Pratem.

Good evening, good afternoon, colleagues.

Good to see you all city manager, Madam City Attorney.

Um yeah, echo the comments from the mayor for Tem about the the incredible concern about ICE detaining families who are here illegally.

Um quite concerned.

Appreciate your comments, and we'll do all we can in Durham to make sure we protect our immigrant communities.

Um I've got a couple things to say real quick, I try to be as quick as I can.

Um first thing is I want to thank uh DPR Foundation and DPR for organizing today's annual um mayor's parks challenge.

Uh had fun working at Cornwallis Road Park with folks from Balfour Beatty, who's on the agenda actually today, and also from CUNY, so doing some erosion work there in the park.

It's always good to do that.

Work together with volunteers from around the community.

Um secondly, speaking of uh resolutions, I also have a similar res or not similar, but another resolution I like to bring before the um council at our works at our next work session.

This is one this may sound like stranger than fiction, but this concerns so-called 530A accounts, otherwise known by statute as Trump accounts.

These are accounts authorized by the federal uh bill that passed the budget bill that passed a couple years ago that creates a thousand dollar accounts at birth to save for education, home or or business startup for kids born as of January 1, 2025.

It also includes uh for kids who are born before that who are under the age of 10, also 250 asset building accounts for again homeownership, business startup, or education for kids uh as well.

We want to make sure that as many kids as possible, or all kids that qualify for these accounts in Durham access these accounts.

And so I'll bring a resolution that would encourage the city or demonstrate the city council's support for the city engaging to make sure all kids in Durham who qualify for these accounts are getting these accounts.

There's already a big community effort to do this, and I want to make sure the city is supportive of that.

So I'll bring that.

I'll send you a draft before the next work session of the 23rd.

Um but look forward to your uh conversation about that and hope you all support me bringing that resolution.

Thank you.

Good.

Manager.

Um let's see how much okay.

Uh shoot.

So the last thing I'll say is that yeah, I need to ask for while I've asked for that uh resolution, I'll also be gone that day.

I would like to ask for uh excuse absence.

If it weren't for my youngest son getting married, I'd be here for that conversation.

Um but the mayor can carry forward that um that conversation.

I also I don't have time to say it all, but I do want to say there was a key meeting this last week between folks from HUD and the Durham Housing Authority to to visit what's happening with the Durham Housing Authority, all the housing authority is doing to get out of its troubled status, and that's based on improving unit conditions, increasing occupancy, but also repositioning McDougal terrace.

And without going into great detail, I just want to say that if I can just briefly mention DHA is without any direct city support or federal support, is gradually transferring families out of McDougall Terrace into different properties that are being redeveloped.

Um is doing that work.

There's a plan now for half the residents, half the 360 residents will be, have been or will be moved out.

There's a plan for the rest of those residents.

This is a key objective of losing our troubled status or getting out of troubled status.

But it also aligns with city goals because the DHA has also committed that 92 units of public housing have been committed to the continuum of care to make sure that families leaving homelessness have a place to live, a permanent and affordable place to live.

So while DHA has had a lot of a lot of uh attention on DHA for good reasons, I want you all to know that DHA is also an incredibly important partner for the city, helping us to address our goals of providing home h homes and affordable homes for folks leaving homelessness.

So we'll be talking more about that.

But it's a good thing.

Thank you, Councilmember Rist.

Councilmember Cope.

Thank you, uh Madam Mayor Pro Tem.

So I just want to lift up the comments that you made and all my colleagues made and also pledge support for myself and this community to stand up for all of our residents to support this family that was detained and deported illegally and uh others that face harm is horrific to see this this happen.

Uh another harmful action by a regime that's held bent on um sowing chaos and and and fear uh in our city and across the country.

And so uh definitely heart is with, and I know I stand with my colleagues in support of folks who are affected.

Um I'll just say as well that uh I'm interested in the city exploring um the UE 150 recommended updates to the uh substance use policy.

I'm interested in looking at that myself and uh and reflecting on ways that we can make improvements based on the the um human relations commission endorsement and the UE 150 and other support for that.

So I'm just really glad to be here.

Uh feel really fortunate to be in this room with my colleagues, with staff, with all of you residents here uh who care so deeply about our city um to be working together um to uh support our residents in this community and and move forward good things for for for all of us.

So thanks everyone for being here.

Thank you, Councilmember Burris?

Thank you, and good afternoon.

So I want to associate myself with um the comments made by my colleagues and just thinking about what precious sounds we live in now with the suppressive administration where we're currently at war.

Country's probably bankrupt, and we don't know what's gonna happen from day to day, but it is still not time to give up and just want to make sure we encourage them to hold on, but also fight back against the suppressive regime.

Yesterday I had the chance to go toward Durham Tech.

Um really excited about all the growth that's happening over there and the vision for the affordable housing, which is so exciting to know that they're gonna prioritize foster kids and making sure they have somewhere to go.

So excited about all the programs at Durham Tech that's going on.

Also, a couple weeks ago, the city manager and I were at the graduation for um our police academy.

It was um a class of about 30, I believe.

So super excited.

It was good to see all those young folks and then seeing I'm an impact.

So watching the parents pin their kids who form DPD officers is really important to me to see.

So again, looking forward to a great meeting, and I got done within a minute.

I appreciate that, Councilmember Burris.

Um next up I have priority items.

Um City Um Manager Ferguson.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and members of council.

The city manager's office does have three priority items for your consideration this afternoon.

Uh the first is just to note that agenda item number seven, ST 332 C pavement conditions study presentation.

This this is a presentation on the PCI uh for council to receive today.

Uh agenda item number 25 has been added.

This is legislative priorities for the 2026 short session, and that does include a short presentation as well.

And then finally, agenda item number 20, proposed substantial amendments to the FY2223 and FY2526 annual action plans for CDBG funding.

This item is being referred back to staff and will show up on a future agenda.

Thank you, Manager Ferguson.

Madam Attorney Thank you, Madam Mayor Pratem.

Um do you want to vote on the manager's priority items real quick?

Oh, yes.

Uh could I get a motion, please?

So move.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

Motion curious to accept the manager's priority items.

Great.

Thank you.

Um, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, you've already mentioned that the City Attorney's Office needs a closed session today, mid-meeting.

Um, the motion for that, if you'd like to go ahead and vote on that motion, that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Okay.

The motion is to hold a closed session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143 318.1183 for attorney client consultation regarding a threatened but not yet filed liability claim.

Thank you.

Could I please get a motion?

Second.

I have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Attorney.

And we will do that after public comment and the reading of the consent agenda.

Madam Clerk.

Good afternoon.

Um the City Clerk's office does not have any priority items, but I do have the boards and commissions report.

Um for item three, the Durham Workers' Rights Commission.

Uh Council has voted a majority appointment for Tiana and Apple White for the Durham Workers' Rights Commission.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Rist, do you want us to go ahead and take up the your excused absence as well?

Sure, yeah.

Can we go ahead and what was the date on that?

April 23rd, I'm pretty sure.

That's our next question.

Is that right?

Just confirmed.

Yeah, 23rd.

Okay.

Uh could I get a motion to uh have an excused absence for Councilmember Wrist on Thursday, April 23rd?

Could I have a I have a motion and a second?

Thank you.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

We uh you have your excused absence, Councilmember Rist.

Um next up I have our under public comment.

Our first speaker that I have is Scott Harman.

And then following Scott Harman, I have uh Thelma Glenn White.

Um, although I don't know if she's registered for an item or not.

And then just for general under general public comment, uh Amanda Wallace.

Good yes.

Okay, number 25.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Okay.

So Ms.

White, we will call you when that item gets um discussed later during the agenda.

Good afternoon, Mr.

Harmon.

How are you?

Hey, how are you all doing?

Good.

You have three minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Scott Harmon.

I'm an architect and developer with Center Studio here in Durham.

We appreciate the chance to speak with you about the land development code.

At your last work session, we talked about Durham character versus neighborhood character.

We talked about the color of law by Richard Rothstein and the racist origins of our zoning laws, about the supremacy of four numbers, lot size, setbacks, height, and density, how we manipulated this math to create our infamous neighborhood character map, this map that bestowed government subsidized mortgages and other privileges to our wealthy green neighborhoods and denied those same benefits to our red neighborhoods.

This system also forced our red neighborhoods to carry the burden of the affordable dense housing that our community needed, but that our wealthy green neighbors didn't want.

We talked about how sadly accurate this map is today.

How our systems of land use politics and power keep getting the same results, even when the people who love Durham in their hearts want a different outcome.

If we don't change the system, we don't change the outcome.

The land development code is a remarkable commitment to housing justice.

Over a dozen different zoning districts and tiers are now combined into one zone, the RD.

Virtually every residential property inside this urban growth boundary will have this new designation.

The vision for the RD is clear.

Quote, compact, walkable residential environments that accommodate a full range of housing types.

This is how we create the polycentric, transit-friendly, climate-responsible, diverse, connected, abundant community.

This is effective policy, it's a new system, and it's fair and equitable.

Gone are the days when the green neighborhoods and the red neighborhoods play by different rules.

This is Durham character at its best.

Except when you get to Section 2.28 in field development, which requires new housing to honor the setbacks and height of existing housing in the same block.

In other words, instead of our new vision, we have to preserve the old system, the system that adjusted those four numbers in different neighborhoods to preserve privilege, wealth, and power, the system that prioritized neighborhood character over the needs of the whole community, the system that divided the people who love Durham for over a century, the system that continues to this day to force our red neighborhoods to carry the burden of the housing crisis, so green neighborhoods don't have to.

Everyone in Durham is impacted by the housing crisis.

Everyone in Durham deserves housing justice.

The people who love Durham in their hearts want to roll up their sleeves and do their part.

Everyone in Durham should play by the same rules.

I am asking the council and Director Young to get together and preserve Durham character.

The people who love you, the people who love Durham love you back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up I have uh Ms.

Amanda Wallace.

Good afternoon, Ms.

Wallace.

You have three minutes.

Thank you for being here.

All right.

So like I always say, every time I come here, I have to take deep breaths.

Um because you guys feel like you have the power to condense people's voice to three minutes.

I know for myself I never consented to that.

Um so I'm gonna sum, I'm gonna try to sum up what I have to say, but I don't want to feel rushed, especially when the people of Durham are being sold out right in front of our eyes.

And so I act for the same grace.

I've seen several county uh city council members go over their time and they've been given grace, and so I asked for the same.

So my first concern is that this governing body is attempting to curb speech speech by enforcing made-up rules that make it harder for people to speak at meetings.

See, when people break the quorum, county manager uh city manager, uh, you say that these are the spaces to have invoice concerns, but then you create these these roadblocks.

It feels like you guys really actually don't want to hear from the public.

Um and so at the last work session, the man the mayor said um he didn't he was enforcing this rule that it's a specific time because he didn't want to shuffle paper.

Y'all have a whole lot of city staff.

So if somebody needs to sit next to him to help him shuffle paper, I think that that's what needs to happen.

And so my question is that are the other city council members in agreement with enforcing this rule?

And if not, could this be addressed?

Also, Shenetto brought up that the city, this the city government was forcibly removing people who had nowhere to go, removing people who do not have homes because of the intentional disinvestment by this city.

Leo code this called the situation complicated.

This shit ain't complicated.

People who need houses, that's that's what they need.

Like how many more studies do we have to do to realize that?

There are thousands of empty buildings right now in this city and people sleeping outside.

So that's not complicated.

It's capitalism, it's gentrification, but I may love gentrification, right?

So it's not surprising that we are here.

And I don't expect anything different from any of you.

I'm here for the historical record.

So on April 6, 2026, at the general body meeting, item 10 was on the agenda, and it was for the second amendment to the housing for new hope contract.

As I look at these contracts, I see a common denominator, which is Ryan Smith, the director of the community safety department.

I'm really seeing it clearly how this y'all moving a lot of money to this department.

And you know Ryan, Matt, right?

His wife helped you steal your seat through fundraising.

So the contract is for landlords engagement.

And my concern with this strategy is that Durham, through DHA, Durham Housing Authority, you you tried to say that they're trying to save their image, is the biggest slumlords in this city.

The city government, through its intentional policies, is one of the biggest reasons why people do not have housing.

And so I'm trying to understand what other plan do you guys have?

I'm I'm finishing up.

And so item 14 was also on it.

And the city used imminent domain to take or slash steal four pieces of property at 515, 517, and 519 East Trinity Avenue.

Like literally just taking people's land.

There are businesses there.

There are people who are who are just like living there, right?

Thank you.

And so you guys are taking this.

But this is to the historical record, this feels a lot like Urban Renewal 2.0.

When you guys gutted hate, I do not want to call you out of order.

Definitely able to email whatever you would like to your city council members.

I signed up twice.

Don't I get three more minutes?

No, ma'am.

You signed up for a specific item number six.

And so when we get to the case, I signed up twice for public comment.

Is there a question?

I have you down as a public comment work session.

And I have you as a consent agenda item number six.

So when we get to item number six, when we call the agenda items, which we have not done yet, Ms.

Wallace, then you will be provided another opportunity to speak.

Did I sign up twice?

That is what I have in front of me, Madam Clerk.

She did sign up twice for public comment.

We do not let folks sign up twice.

For public comment.

Ms.

Wallace, I'm happy to set up time with you.

The attorney what the policy is that people can't sign up.

I'm speaking on something else.

I have more concerns.

I I appreciate that.

But what I have in front of me is we do not allow folks to go three two, you know, three-minute public general public comment.

You have been given three minutes.

I did allow you some grace on that, which you asked for, which I I got you got.

And then what I have in front of me is you also signed up under item number six.

When we get to number six, you would get an additional three minutes.

That is the Can the Count Can the City Attorney please explain the policy?

Matthew.

I didn't see anything.

Um happy for you to do that, but I would like us to continue on our business.

We do have a closed session today.

So thank you.

Appreciate your comments today.

Thank you so much.

Can the city attorney please explain?

Yeah.

The Mayor Pertem has addressed your concerns and she's answered the question, which is the policy.

But is there a policy that says that?

It doesn't need to be written in policy.

Okay, so there's no procedure, Ms.

Wallace.

I'm just trying to verify for the for the people, right?

Because you guys just make up rules as you go.

And so I'm just saying, I have more things to say that's not what I just said.

And I signed up to the city.

You're out of order.

I keep telling y'all that.

Thank you.

Um next up under, I will start our administrative consent items.

Um I think that's all I had under public comment for today.

Uh under administrative consent items under the city clerk's office, uh, approval of city council minutes.

Item number two, item number three, Durham workers' rights commission appointment under departmental items, uh, under city council number item number four, grant budget ordinance accepting or share our strength no kid hungry grant under city manager's office, item number five, approval of the Wake County multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan under community safety department, item number six, interlocal agreement between the city of Durham and the County of Durham to fund community solutions consulting work on the homeless strategic framework.

Under environmental Oh, thank you.

Ms.

Wallace, you are registered under item number six.

Um that is the item I have you pulled on four.

Uh thank you, Manager Ferguson.

Environmental and street services department, item number seven, ST-332C Pavement Condition Study Presentation.

Uh we will take this up when we do our other presentations.

Under General Services Department, item number eight, proposed ten-year lease with Liberty Arts Inc.

for the Arts Pavilion at 505 Rigs Rigsby Avenue.

Item number nine, Durham Rail Trail Construction Manager at risk, CMAR, contract with Balfour BD Construction, Holt Brothers Construction, a joint venture.

I'd like to pull that one.

Okay.

Uh I have two folks who I think Councilmember Cook and Copac have both pulled item number nine.

Sorry, Councilmember Rist.

Um that was item number nine.

Uh number 10 interlocal agreement for fire and emergency medical services, station number 19 or 19.

Pull that one.

Under planning and development department, item number 11, utility extension agreement with Jason Jones to serve 102 North Maple Street.

I'm gonna pull that one and also number 12.

Item number 12, utility extension agreement with the light CERD LLC to serve 2502 Andrew Avenue.

That has been pulled.

Under technology solutions department, item number 13, third amendment to the contract to the contract with Duke University for City Fiber.

I pull that one as well.

Item number 14, FY2023, state and local cybersecurity grant program, L C excuse me, SLCGP grant program ordinance and authorization to execute memorandum of agreement under Transportation Department.

Um item number 15, Federal Transit Administration Bus and Facility Grant Project Ordinance.

Pull that one.

Item number 16 purchase grant with Gillig LLC for 10 diesel buses for GoDurum.

The items also been pulled by both Council members wrist and COPAC, is that correct?

Okay.

Under Water Management Department number 17, uh service contract with Palmetto, Underground Solutions LLC for the 2026 lead service line inventory field verifications project.

Item number 18, award of construction contract for PC construction company for the Williams Water Plant Treat Water Treatment Plant Basin Improvements Project.

And then under uh presentations under the city manager's office, we have item number 19, American Rescue Plan Act Update, ARPA 25 for 25 minutes.

And then um we also have uh for public hearings, which we will take up at our next council meeting.

Um housing and development.

Excuse me, housing and neighborhood services department, uh, but that number 20 has been referred back to staff, planning and development department, item number 21, consolidated annexation Bellar Ridge.

Item number 22, consolidated annexation Patterson Hall.

Item number 23, consolidated annexation Morgan Farm, item number 24, consolidated annexation uh 9415 NC 751 highway.

And then under supplemental items, we have uh the city manager's office item number 25, legislative priorities for the 2026 short session of the NC General Assembly.

Um before we go into closed session, I would just go ahead and like to um share what items I have pulled with you.

Um I have items number six, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen.

And then I have presentations number seven and twenty-five.

Okay, I think um, we will do the polled items, and then I think we will do um presentation seven and then twenty five and take up the present number nineteen last so that staff can leave.

After yeah, after close session.

Okay, so at this moment, yes, Madam Clerk.

Um, item twenty five, Miss Thelma White.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Uh, at this moment, then we are going to pause and go into closed session, colleagues down the hall, and then we will return.

Thank you so much.

We're we're back.

Um I think the first pulled item that I have is item number six I gotta find it.

Which is apologies, they gotta find it.

Uh interlocal agreement between the city of Durham and the County of Durham to fund community solutions consulting work on the home of strategic framework.

I had a speaker for this item, Ms.

Wallace.

Good afternoon.

You have three minutes.

Thank you.

There we go.

I'm gonna start where I left off.

Um because all of this is connected.

And so like I was saying, the city is stealing people's homes, businesses, and land through eminent domain, and then wondering why people are unhoused.

It's kind of like your outrage, like folks voiced outrage um about the federal government attacking families through the deportation.

Um while the city and county work in collaboration to separate families right here in Durham through your family policing system.

So I guess I understand how you guys ideology uh just doesn't connect.

But going to this contract through it, community solutions.

I'm confused at like the whole thing.

It feels like just a lot of words on a paper without any real outcomes.

And so starting with the timeline, technically, this contract is over, and I'm confused at what the deliverables have been.

Like they are still increasing number of people who are unhoused.

Like in the agenda packet, I don't see anything about again what the deliverables are, what what was happening, what meetings happen.

And so again, I'm just really confused by this.

And then the total was a hundred thousand dollars.

And you guys, this contract paid somebody 200 an hour to do this work.

And I'm also confused that if this community solutions is based in Durham, because what I'm seeing, like they're out of New York or like this other state, so I'm confused at like why y'all chose them.

And then I got a minute and a half left.

So I really want to talk about again the common denominator in a lot of these contracts, which is Ryan Smith, because he is on this contract as well.

And so I'm confused at how this just keeps happening.

And I really want to ground in what I saw from the heart team this last week, which is them working in collaboration with the police to remove people from their home.

And so I know Ryan Smith is over the heart team, and you guys act like he's like this is this like saviorism that's happening.

And so like you guys are just moving all of this money to this department, but I'm just here to call this shit out.

Like this is not, this is not helping people.

You guys are again a hundred thousand dollars to develop a plan when you know the plan for people who are unhoused is to have a house.

Again, it's not complicated.

And with 25 seconds left, I know that uh Thelma White with the Committee on the Affairs of Black People are here and is supposed to talk.

And when they show up, I know y'all ready to sell some shit.

Because the committee was integral in selling out black folks.

The committee is about class.

And if you are not of the class of the people who associate themselves with the committee, then they will sell your sell you out.

And so again, I'm just here to put it on the historical record that what Durham is doing.

Thank you, Ms.

Wallace.

Uh the next polled item I have is item number nine.

And I think Councilmember Brist pulled that.

Oh, sorry, and Councilmember Kopak.

Good afternoon, Mike Arzco with General Services.

Good afternoon.

Councilmember Rist and then Councilmember Kopark.

So um yeah.

Exciting project.

Really appreciate you being here.

Um I know that when this is done, it's gonna be a signature project for Durham, signature destination for Durham.

Um residents are like excited about this and they keep talking about it.

So two questions though.

Um, we had initially plan to complete this by fall 2024.

Now it looks like it's gonna be June 2028, right?

So I guess my first question is like what assurance do we have that there will be no more delays in the rail trail number one?

Are there like incentives built into the contract to ensure that?

If not, can we add those?

Like that's so that's my first question.

Yeah, so currently there are no incentives built into the contract.

Once we do work towards a GMP, that could be something that does get added in there.

That would be a uh a motion that comes to the council for a schedule around December.

Is it was it a GNG guaranteed maximum price, which is part of the CMR um delivery method.

So we there incentives can be something that does get added into the actual construction piece.

And that comes that comes when that'll be back to the city council in December.

That will be back to the City Council in December.

Okay.

So we can both that that would be helpful.

And again, not to say like this is a really important project.

I just want to, you know, there's been so much conversation about this, so much you know, excitement about this.

And so I just want to make sure that we are delivering for folks as we promise.

And there's no sort of any more reasons why we need to delay this.

Um second thing is appreciated general services taking this this far.

You all have done a big job to sort of the initial concept.

I know we expanded the concept and all that kind of stuff.

All great stuff.

My question is like so once this is completed in um in June 2028, who's gonna manage the rail trail?

And is that the Department of Parks at Rec?

And are they sort of are they on board with the plan for what the trail is going to look like, all the elements of it?

Are they um are they prepared to take on management light?

Will that be a seamless process?

I just want to make sure that once we complete this, that it will be a seamless handoff if it is DPR, so they can manage it as we all intend.

Yeah, so I I certainly don't have the answer today, but I also do know that there are ongoing discussions between general services, DPR, and trying to iron out the details of how it will be maintained, uh, who will be managing it from a trash perspective, uh a landscaping, mowing.

Um but as of today, uh there's not a definitive answer.

And those are those conversations that are happening with DPR about what that looks like when we complete this?

I believe so, but I'm not positive.

I can't speak on that.

Yeah.

I just want to ask the manager to make sure that we have complete alignment between if it is DPR to manage in the in the long run, that there's complete alignment between what the plan is here to develop it and DPR's role going forward.

As as those uh discussions continue and come to resolution, we'll we'll update council with the full plan and answer any questions that you have.

Okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember Kopak.

Yes, first of all, and perhaps this just requires a bit of a historical perspective I don't have yet, but um understanding the $300,000 um agreement here for pre-construction services.

Um what was McAdams' role in this work?

And wasn't this work that was already programmed um and budgeted, and how does this relate to that?

Certainly.

So Mick Adams was the designer of record for the project.

Um so it's it's all their prior design work um from the CMAR pre-constructive perspective.

We're bringing a construction manager at risk, is really here to help with pre-construction services, cost estimate, constructability review, um, schedule phasing, um, help with early site plan packages and phasing from the from a construction standpoint.

Okay.

So building on the design work that was done, we're entering this new phase for pre-construction.

That's what this is getting a startup.

Okay.

It's validation of the work that's already been completed as well.

Okay.

Um my other question, I think is just maybe a broader question for for staff, is that it would be interesting and helpful to see.

I guess we're not at the end, so it's not a post-mortem, maybe like a mid-mortem.

Um I don't know the right term for that.

But uh to sort of understand, you know, where we are today, where I think we were projecting 11.6 million dollars in 2020 for this project now.

I think we're looking at $36 million uh for the project.

You know, just to understand and communicate.

Um, you know, what are the reasons for that?

You know, are are some of the factors outside of our control?

Some of it decisions made by council, is some of it, you know, approach by staff.

I just think it would be helpful to tease that out.

I mean, just would love to have gotten, you know, three rail trails um, you know, instead of like, you know, one for the price of three.

And and you know, I think about Third Creek uh uh Fork Creek as well, which you know, we ended up adding, you know, years and millions of dollars uh onto that project, um, I think based on decisions from the council at the time.

And it all may be perfectly valid, but I just think it would be good to surface that and understand to help educate and inform us as we enter into future projects.

You know, is it because we want everything to be a signature project?

And what does that mean, right?

Is there something scrappier we can be doing that helps us achieve ninety-five percent of what we want?

Um but I I guess I just helpful information on that to help guide our future decision making on these sorts of projects.

So uh I don't know if my colleagues would be interested uh in seeing that.

It doesn't have to be on a strict timeline, but I would be interested in seeing that information in some venue um to understand the reasons why we see like a tripling in cost over time.

Certainly.

We can definitely take a look at best practices, lessons learned and come back with a report of how we got to where we got to and of the plan to move forward and uh for future trails as well.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Does anyone else have any questions?

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Um item number 10 was pulled, I think Councilmember Kopak, that was you.

Um that is the interlocal agreement for fire and emergency medical services station 819.

Oh, it's a super easy one.

Just first of all, excited to see this moving forward.

These investments are so critical for the department for our residence, and also just want to highlight the work of General Services uh to be um um uh installing uh renewable energy solar as well on these projects as they roll out as well, uh which helps us work toward our climate goals and decoupling from fossil fuels.

So thank you.

That was it.

Thank you.

I think the next three items, I think are you, Councilmember Cook.

So the first one is uh item number 11 utility extension agreement with Jason Jones to serve 102 North Maple Street.

Hi, good afternoon.

Um so I I want to talk about 11 and 12 and tangent.

I'm assuming they're about the same.

So can you just give us a little bit of a background on about how this came about and how it's related to the to the issues that we're seeing in that area?

Sure.

And uh, you know, you recently received a present Sarah Young, sorry, planning development department.

You recently received a presentation about uh Goose Creek specifically.

Um these are the first uh utility extension agreements that are coming through as a result of that.

Uh the water management department has been meeting with folks, you know, there were a number, and Rob Joyner is here uh with me um to answer some more detailed questions.

Uh but so these are the first few to come through where water management was able to find solutions that work with these properties.

Uh you may recall that uh one of the things they were looking at were, for instance, if there was no additional flow, like it was demolishing something and putting something back, and it was basically going to be the same number of bedrooms or maybe with a nominal increase that was already accounted for, we would be able to move forward, but we would still require a utility extension agreement.

So that's what these two are.

And I'll I don't know if Rob wants to add anything to that.

Robert Joyner, Water Management Atari Assistant Director.

Um I just wanted to let you know that the reason that you're seeing the extension agreements is that is the best vehicle to memorialize everything so that reviewers can understand it, but it also provides uh a vehicle for banks and loan officers and other things that underwrite a lot of these projects and allow them to go forward.

They need something in writing from the city.

And because this adapts well to that process, uh and it's used traditionally in the development process for all new development, which you see all the time, extension agreements, UVAs as they're often referred to, or part of your standard zoning packages and things of that nature.

Thank you.

That's awful context.

So back to what you were saying, Director Young, that we had these numbers were accounted for in that presentation as ones that we thought that we were going to be able to have a fix for.

Yes.

Uh so nothing surprising with this, but just to that we are moving forward with those solutions.

Um and then I guess uh to you, Mr.

Joyner, but or to either, but these are still going to be at cost to the developer.

Is that correct?

100%.

Okay.

But they will be able now to utilize loans or underwriting because of the emplo because of the what how the instrument that we're using.

Correct.

Yeah.

The Department of Water Management is going through and meeting with each of the customers who have contacted us.

And these are the solutions that we have that we brought forward, contacted close to 90 uh customers that are operating in this area and looking at solutions and or finding a wide variety of solutions for folks to be able to move forward at least in some part.

Yeah, thank you.

That was all my questions.

I appreciate y'all coming up.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Crook, you also had item number 13, the third amendment to the contract with Duke University for City Fiber.

Hi, good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Um so I have a couple things.

The first I want to say is that I just want to publicly identify that I do work at Duke University.

I will not be um financially benefiting from uh city fiber.

It is not related to my work at Duke University at all.

Um I my very quick question is just that we saw a first amendment for the trending cost of the site going up.

We saw a second amendment for a massive amount of increase due to rock underneath that we didn't know about.

And then we have this third amendment.

It didn't really have any reasoning in our memo, and I was wondering if you could speak to uh that and whether or not we should be looking for future amendments increasing in cost moving forward.

This is the final amendment.

Um this is uh finish paying Duke for construction work uh that has been completed to initiate fiber at all of our city sites.

And it as do we have a reason that it was just more than it was more I know than initially contemplated, but then it's also been more since we've had two amendments since that time as well, and why uh we weren't able to contemplate this amount, those first two amendments.

We have some history on that.

Thanks speak to that.

Dwayne Kendall, assistant director of technology solutions.

Um we learned that you know Durham sits on a rock quarry um as we were boring rock and getting the fiber laid.

Um there were additional uh um costs that were just the sum total at the end of this project.

This project started FY team um and all of the money's have been expended except for this last shrub.

Um and again, it was uh just to finish the the finalization of um last mile work that the that Duke was doing from their contractors.

Um there were some contract increases um that like like you spoke about um between ROC and then just cost increases for laying fiber just in general from the contractor.

So this is just the last, this is the last bill for for the full fiber.

So we're kind of just seeing the remnants of like increased costs from that rock, which we covered quite a bit of that before, and I know this is like in comparison to that second amendment quite small.

Okay, thank you.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Baker.

Yeah, thank you for asking that.

That was my question as well.

Um just wanted to ask, because this is very exciting.

City owns fiber.

Um state legislation says we we can't sell this to to residents, right?

It was so successful in Wilson, North Carolina that the legislature got lobbied by the companies and said you cannot be more efficient than the companies.

Um I think that's important context.

Are we uh so we're we're done here, but do we still have the door open to say we wanted to make uh we wanted to take this to city parks or other facilities and make it accessible to people in these specific locations?

Could we do that at some point in the future with this fiber?

Yeah, so um I like to describe the fiber that we've laid as like the is like the highway.

Um so it was the fun, it was a foundation of anything we want to enable to do in the future um ultimately, and that's smart city technologies that is that is providing residents free access to you know uh external wireless from part, all of those things rooted in the fiber being the foundation.

So to answer your question, yes, those are those are all possibilities.

Matter of fact, there are some existing projects that are uh that are that uh other departments are working on right now for providing some some outdoor wireless to uh certain parks locations.

So but this is the foundation of all that.

Cool.

So we we can't sell it towards the butt but we can we can uh provide Wi-Fi and public places for the same.

Yes, and and and a lot of the fiber project dollars were expended at the very beginning of project because of our uh commitment to DHA, which we are still the ISP for.

So we are providing um uh free wireless to uh eight uh Durham Housing Authority sites that have children based on pandemic conditions uh in 2020, 2021 year.

So we are providing those free.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Consular.

So in the future, if we as Consider Mr.

Baker's appreciate the comments, if we if we plan to extend this further using the sort of that the backbone you described, do we need to get like Duke's sort of like authorization?

Like how much how much authority did we have just to do that?

That's a great question.

So what happens is so who ultimately owns the the network.

Yeah, so I'm I'm glad you said that.

So that's one of the magic behind this this uh agreement.

So Duke, the county, and us all cost shared.

So if we were to do this by ourselves, the cost would be three times what it ended up being.

Um so the uh the cost share agreements are all based on where the sites located on the spur.

So we say we stand up a new fire station.

Then if it's right off the the ring, then we're paying the just the last mile since the ring is built.

We don't have to build the ring anymore.

So um our cost to stand up a brand new site is significantly lower, but we we would own the last mile parts.

The can the ring has been constructed.

So Duke, we do pay Duke a um uh a maintenance fee to help us to maintain the the fiber if there are cuts and those those types of things.

But we can we we own our destiny when it comes down to adding new sites.

Right.

So we have a new like a new rec center.

We want to add sort of we want to extend to that rec center.

Do we have to and we would we would the city would have to do it at our expense, it's our rec center.

Yes, sir.

We would pay the the construction costs.

Right, but do we have to get approval from like Duke and the county to do that, or can we just say, hey, it's one of our sites we want to extend, we do it.

Well, we would work with them since the ring is still connect there, they they own kind of the ring part, but the the mechanism to do it is we have a very easy process to stand up a new site with Duke.

Um and they do authorize us to to plug things to the backbone, but it's a it's uh it's a part of a service agreement at that point.

We do need their sign-off essentially.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

And is there some what's the contractual relationship between Duke and the city on that?

Is there some Yeah?

So we do have a um, so we're we're working on the process of the SLAs essentially for managing and maintaining the support, but the original agreements cover our um the build and the growth parts of the uh the whole network.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilmember Kopak.

Thank you.

Um having not been here for the prior discussions, uh just some other quick background.

So yeah, so this is a cost share between the city, the county, and and Duke University.

How much would is the kind of the entire investment in total uh for this work?

Yeah, so our our part uh was 9.6 million dollars over since FY 17.

Um so we we've been in construction with them since FY17, but um the total Duke has been building their back, they were going to do it anyway, just give you some context.

They were their original intent was to just build all of their sites, a fiber network for their sites.

Um and then they they offered uh and and gratefully uh they offered us to be a part of the cost sharing.

So um so we paid for our parts up to a specific up to a specific spur on uh on the um on the network note.

So um it would have been a lot more if we would try to do it ourselves.

Our mission was to divest from um Spectrum Metro E and those kind of so we're kind of we're we're beholden to Spectrum's costs and uh their SLAs and by us having our own fiber network, we can deploy you know gigabit connections to each of our sites.

Um so um yeah, our our portion is not point six.

Okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Does anyone else have any questions?

Okay.

Um next up I have item number 15.

I think Councilmember Riss, you pulled that.

And that is uh the Federal Transit Administration bus and bus and bus facility grant project ordinance.

Good afternoon, Sean Egan Transportation Department.

Good afternoon.

So exciting stuff.

It's always good when the FTA is giving us money to buy more buses to replace our buses.

My question is why diesel.

So a couple of reasons.

We had a conversation at the budget retreat in February of 2025 about the uh the additional costs that we see for electric buses uh and the change in the federal policy position around battery electric buses.

So, you know, with the new administration coming in January of 2025, uh they made it clear at the beginning of the administration that they would not be supporting uh electrification projects, electric vehicle charging, electrification of buses, uh, and that to the extent that they were making decisions about things like grants for bus purchases, that their priority was uh fossil fuel fuel powered uh buses.

So uh the combination of the additional cost associated with the electrification uh as well as the lack of there had been prior to that support, the city had received millions of dollars in federal grants for bus electrification previously, uh, but it became clear uh in early 2025 that um that would that the policy direction had shifted at the federal level.

Um and so if we were going to secure competitive federal grants, uh we would need to use a we would need to apply for a fossil fuel powered vehicle.

So my recollection of the conversation, and I'm I'm getting older, so I maybe maybe it's sort of like a little bit uh sh shaky on this, but I thought we talked about hybrid buses back in in the the budget conversation last year that we were sort of going hybrid, not sort of full electric.

Uh as I recall, the the conversation was electric or diesel.

Our experience with hybrid buses to date has been very unfavorable.

So our highest failure rates as well as our highest maintenance costs are with our hybrid diesel electric fleet.

Uh so after we purchased buses in 2010 and 2012, um we discontinued the hybrid program.

We were seeing uh very little savings and lifecycle cost or emissions and a significant increase in failure rates as well as maintenance costs.

So I I guess I appreciate that.

I guess my question would be then so what does this do to our I mean our climate goal is related to like city facilities and our fleet, right?

So what is now buying is it like it's six of them, right?

Ten.

Ten.

So what does that do to our like where we are in in sort of on the progress to reach our climate goals?

And do we need to do something to sort of like mitigate for this now, these these 10 buses?

Because diesel's not- I mean I know diesel has been not like the old diesel, but still it's the dirtiest form of combustion, right?

Uh so I'll say that, yeah, diesel does not have um the advantages that the zero emissions buses do on greenhouse gases or some of our other climate goal targets.

I think where we're focused right now is really on looking kind of more broadly at growing our transit system, getting more people to ride transit, getting them out of their single occupant vehicles and onto transit.

And in order to do that, we've got to have reliable uh transit, and we've got to increase uh the amount of buses in our fleet as well as the amount of service, the frequency that we're providing.

Uh and so uh our ability to do that is uh it relies heavily on you know having uh that availability of vehicles um and then being able to replace uh our buses.

So we're seeing uh a replacement cost of 2x for the battery electric compared to the diesel buses that uh when you include the the bus as well as all the charging equipment that's required.

Um that's a particularly uh challenging uh position for us financially without the kind of federal support that we were previously receiving.

No, I totally understand the sort of like the the challenge, the budget challenges and I understand um the uh the and I'm as you know I'm completely on target with the the goals of increasing ridership and making sure our buses are reliable and frequent.

Again, uh the question is like so what does it do to our climate goals and do what do we need to do to compensate for that since we are bringing 10 diesel buses now online?

Councilmember Rust, if I can, I would I would just say that you know we we track our our progress against the sustainability plan uh annually and uh in all cases with our buildings, with our vehicles.

We're constantly going to be in need of making adjustments on though the staff uh we just had a strategic planning discussion earlier this week, indicated a uh a need and a desire to update the sustainability plan.

So these types of decisions as as we move forward will be incorporated into the plan.

Council would get a chance to see any updated changes.

Obviously, this transition does make the goals more uh more challenging, but we will continue to look for opportunities to address them.

Um I do want to uh I do want to um underscore, I think uh Director Egan's recollection.

I uh I I think we were fairly specific in that in that uh budget retreat about this being an unfortunate but necessary transition based on the finances in this fund that uh uh we simply could not fund the difference uh between between diesel and electric when once federal support just um disappeared.

I'm glad my colleagues' recollections are better than mine.

So thank you, Councilman.

Uh thank you, uh Councilmember Baker, sorry.

Yeah, it is unfortunate.

And I very specifically remember the conversation and where we landed because I I think about it a lot.

I think about it a lot because it it does suck.

But I do think coming back to getting people out out of cars has a huge positive you know benefit um for the climate.

But the battery-powered um has many more benefits besides just the climate.

They're much more comfortable to ride.

They're much quieter if you live on a bus line.

Um so yeah, it is unfortunate.

Uh I was just gonna ask one question because um previously when we when we talked about this I I believe, Director Egan, that you mentioned we were still looking into maintenance costs um and how those compare.

I remember hybrid being by far the the worst.

Um but maintenance costs between diesel and battery-powered.

Do we have any more information about how those compare?

So we have a little bit more.

Um we received uh in the last three months uh 15 new battery electric buses.

So we have 22 battery electric buses in revenue service right now, but you know, two-thirds of those uh have only been in operation for a couple of months.

Uh so we are seeing uh good performance from them, improved performance.

Uh and uh we're also seeing um that uh the cost, uh sort of lifecycle cost, especially with uh diesel fuel prices where they are right now uh is shifting uh very much in favor of the battery electric compared to uh our diesel fleet.

So I'm glad that we have them because it is helping to uh mitigate the impact of uh the recent increase in diesel fuel prices on our budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Cook.

Yeah, thank you, Director Egan, and for kind of returning back uh my my colleague to the question of that comparison.

So as we get more data, we'd love to see that.

And uh you know uh the the unfortunate and totally unnecessary uh international state affairs that we're in um you know uh are contributing uh to the issue, but uh we see volatility generally, right, around fossil fuel prices, which I know EVs over the long term can help us to mitigate.

So thank you for studying that.

Uh the only reason I wanted to raise my hand.

I'm sorry, I know that 15 and 16 were polled.

Are we just on 15 now?

Are we on 16 yet?

They're related.

They're related.

Yeah, I would just say that uh uh maybe I misreading it, but under item 16, I saw uh a statement around the lowest responsible bid for 40-foot low floor battery electric buses.

Um I just wasn't sure if that was intentional or if that was meant to be diesel.

I think it was meant to be diesel.

So the way that we bid it was that the vendors could offer across uh different propulsion systems and vehicle sizes.

Um we may have um uh listed the wrong propulsion type um in the memo, and I apologize for that.

Okay, that's fine.

Understand it's diesel.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Um did anyone else have any questions on 15 or 16?

No?

Okay.

I just had one quick question.

Director Egan, a few years ago, and I know it doesn't matter now, but it would just be helpful to be reminded of where we were pre-January 2025.

What were the original goals on the full like there there were clear goals on electric electrification of the fleet, and we were being really aggressive.

So I just wanted a reminder of that.

So uh what we um in the um carbon neutrality plan, uh we set out a goal to be a hundred percent electric fleet by 2035.

Um so we will not meet that goal.

Electric fee electric fleet by 2035.

Yes.

And then based on what we're doing now, and if you can't provide that currently, that's fine.

Um to your point, we know that diesel is more expensive, so we may the the cost-benefit analysis of that might change.

What what do you all think would maybe be our target then?

Uh I think we'll be to the top of the year.

Yeah, I mean is it 2045?

Is it 20, you know, like what's the damage done, I guess?

Uh I think you know, we're looking at 2040 or later.

Um, and so it'll depend on um the advances in the technology uh to the extent that as the technology advances and is more broadly adopted costs um come down.

Uh that is typically what uh we see.

So uh the uh should the costs come down and should there be uh a change in federal policy support for electric buses.

Um I I think we could we could look at that 2040 or later range, but um you know this is a four-year term.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So um that's a um just a important reminder.

I remember at the 2025 budget retreat, it was a long conversation specifically on this, and it was painful then, and this is just a reminder, and that the the you know, these these vehicles are extremely expensive.

The help that the federal government was providing us was critical to getting us to that goal.

And so this is a a direct reflection of what what the kind of uh domino effect um on municipalities who were also not just Durham who were trying to do this.

Go ahead, Councilmember Rest.

Yes, and my question, so by 2035, like how close will we be like like 80 percent there?

Like how close will we be roughly?

What's the at about a third now?

Right now.

Um at this point uh we're not expecting to purchase any more battery electric buses at this point.

Uh our uh forecast is that we will be purchasing uh diesel buses uh at least you know through um 2028 into 2029 uh when um the the current administration's policy framework um is in place.

And so um that's what we're uh that's what we're anticipating is that we're we'll hold at that 33 percent uh until there's uh some significant changes either in the cost or the federal support.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's that's that's tough.

That's a tough uh tough blow.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you.

I don't think anyone else has any more questions.

Thank you, Director Egan.

Thank you.

Um I think those are all the pulled agenda items because we did number 16 kind of tied up with number 15, and then um I think we were gonna do presentation number seven, and I flipped it, 25 will be our last presentation.

So if those folks could come up.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

And this is for the S T-332C pavement condition study presentation.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Good to be before you.

Here to present also with Scott Gordon, who is our consultant.

He's been before you a few times before.

Some of you may recall.

And also Clint Blackburn, who is over our contracting group, and probably the only other person in the city who likes talking about asphalt more than I do.

So we are providing for you an update to the city's pavement condition study.

Every three or so years we come before you and present those results.

We were last before you in 2022 with the 2021 results.

Just a couple of quick things.

We currently maintain uh 830 miles of streets plus.

So that number continues to grow one to two percent per year.

The study only analyzed the city maintained streets.

There are hundreds of miles of DOT streets within the city limits.

We do not uh assess those or maintain those.

Um let's see.

Uh uh.

Yeah, city maintained streets.

Oh, the average PCI is 68.

Uh Scott will get into those details a little more.

Uh we are happy with those results, but we're also concerned with those results.

We expected the number to go down uh because we have not been sufficiently funding the program until recently, so that aligned with what our expectations were, but we are also happy with that number that we were able to stabilize it as much as we did in 2022.

Our average score was 69.

And so we believe that through the application uh pavement preservation methodologies, we were able to stabilize that score.

Uh we have one of the largest programs in the Southeast, and it has been critical to maintaining the average PCI within the city.

Uh there are a lot more details, and I will leave time for Scott to get into those.

Uh Clint and I remain available for questions as well.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Scott Gordon.

I'm president of roadway asset services.

I'm also a licensed professional engineer in the state of North Carolina.

I've been doing pavement evaluation, pavement design for over 35 years now.

So this is as exciting as it gets.

We love asphalt and we love pavements.

But uh pretty exciting stuff.

All right.

I wanted to go over a few uh definitions first before we kind of dive in.

We talked about centerline miles.

Uh right now we're measuring about 782.

That changes as you bring in new streets into your network.

Uh paved areas measured at over 13 and a half million square yards.

Uh that's your asset.

That's what you maintain.

That's to kind of put that in perspective.

If we were to pave a two-lane road, we could go from Durham to Dallas to that kind of uh square footage or square yardage in there.

A network replacement value, this is a big number of a billion dollars.

That's if we were to go treat every road right now in its present condition and bring it up to great conditions.

Uh so that's a lot of money.

So that just gives you an idea of the value of this asset that you are maintaining here.

Lane mile by definition is just uh uh a mile length, which is 5,280 feet by 12 feet wide, typical lanes.

This pavement condition index, or we're gonna reference a PCI value.

That is a number score from zero to a hundred that's raised up uh determined based on how many distresses we have in the road.

We're looking at cracks, we're looking at potholes, we're looking at rutting.

A lot of different factors go into that score, and they're each weighted based upon the structural uh value that they have in the performance of the roadway.

Uh if we talk about preservation, we're talking about surface seals.

It is usually lightweight, cost-effective seals to extend the service life of a road pavement.

And then the standard that we use is ASTMD 6433.

It's a national guideline we use to evaluate pavements.

It's been around for over 40 years.

Uh is by far the most common.

Uh we've North Carolina State did develop another method that we have used in Charlotte over the years, but now they've moved to ASTM.

So it's by far the most accepted method of doing this.

Uh just briefly look at the performance of a pavement.

If you look at that uh line on the left that deteriorates down, the black line going down, that's a typical life curve of a pavement, whether it's asphalt or concrete, they're gonna follow under the similar deterioration uh theory.

Uh what I want to point out here is if we do preservation or light uh maintenance treatment, which is represented by the blue lines.

We can do those more often.

They're much cheaper.

They extend the service life by shifting that curve, if you will.

And based on your dollars at $5 a square yard for maintenance at that level.

Contrast, if we let the road deteriorate down to where we started getting structural failures down in the poor category.

Uh, we're looking at about $29 a yard to come in and repair that to get it back up to a good condition.

So if you look at the life cycle cost analysis of a pavement, it's going to be much cheaper to do those uh cheaper treatments more frequently.

So that's part of what we look at balancing here.

What is that scale on the bottom?

Is that like a year, five years?

What are we talking about?

There is no definition of it.

It's going to be in years, typically what we measure.

So if you look at a pavement and we design it, it's going to last about 40 years on average.

Four.

40.

40.

4-0.

For very good pavement.

Yeah.

Well, that's how long it will last before we have to rebuild it.

So you're going to have deterioration and that type of thing with that.

Go over real quick the equipment we do to do the measurements.

This is a most important on the back end of the van, cantilevered off there is the LCMS laser crack measuring system.

This is state of the art looking at one millimeter resolution imagery along with uh uh lasers that are shot on the pavement surface.

The biggest thing we get out of that is the texture of the pavement surface.

And based upon that texture, we can measure cracks, widths, lengths, patterns, those type of things, and that's what gets us to this PCI score of determining what type of of deterioration or distress we have.

We've got GPS antennas all over the van.

That way every image we take out of the van is geolocated.

We know a timestamp when it was taken.

We also know the location of where it was taken within the roadway.

Uh you see some other pieces of equipment, the front bumper there is certified as a profiler, gives us the ride quality, the smoothness of the road of what you feel driving down the roadway.

All that data is pulled together and calculated to get the scores that we're going to review here in a little bit.

We do follow your GIS mapping.

We don't recreate your segments or GIS.

We use what the city is established.

We follow that.

What we're doing is adding information to your geo database files with pavement information that uh we'll be able to update every cycle that we do this.

The image on the right kind of illustrates the little blue dots is where we're taking imagery.

So, like I said, we can locate where each one of those are.

We can associate those with images and where we're measuring distress.

So it keeps us able to track where we are within the network.

So when we get into the results, um, you see the table there with the different colors.

Those scales illustrate really the condition description is just a noun in there saying what we think the condition is.

The score on the left is really what we're evaluating with.

Uh as we go green is a very new road, good condition as we go down through the colors there and the score drops.

You'll see we get into very poor serious and failed.

Uh you'll see the categories of the percentages within each of the uh the categories there, how much of the percent of the network is in that category.

Uh we've put up there the 2018, 2021, and the 2024 numbers for comparison.

I was involved in the 2018 with another firm.

We started RES and we did that in 21 and now in 24.

So if you look at the average PCI, this is just one parameter that we look at with the condition of the network, but it's an average score of all the street conditions.

And you can see we've hovered around 6869 for the last several cycles.

Just as a comparison, the national average we see is around 65 to 75 score.

Most cities are targeting 70 as a goal.

So you guys are right there, just a little bit below what most cities are going to want to target as their ultimate goal.

Uh so we're there.

The number that we're watching that uh we're wanting to take a little more action on is that backlog number.

So if we define backlog, that is a road that has a score of 40 or less.

To get to that kind of score below 40, we're seeing enough structural failures or structural distress that the pavement is starting to fail.

We're starting to lose serviceability, it's gonna be a rougher ride, and we need to go out and structurally repair that roadway.

So when we say backlog, it's things below 40 that need major structural work.

You've seen that number climb from 2018 at 12 and a half percent to 21, it was 15 percent, and this last one in 24 at 16 and a half percent.

So we're seeing that number grow.

Our goal now in maintenance is gonna be to stabilize that number and reduce it and keep that from growing because that's where most of the money is gonna have to be spent in maintenance.

Looking at this bar chart, you can see the distribution of the network within each of these categories.

Um it's a nice stair step there.

What we want to see is majority of your network above 50 percent is up in those green categories, which is where we are with your network, so that's good.

Uh the fare to satisfactory of where you really want to focus on preservation treatments to try to extend the life.

Like I said, once you get out to the poor, you're starting to look at a few overlays, very poor and lower, you're starting to do major structural repairs, in-place recycling, reconstruction, that type of thing.

So that's how we focus there.

But the distribution is pretty typical of what we'll see in networks.

This is just looking at how we define maintenance.

Uh, worked with your staff to go through and look at the scales.

So you'll see a minimum PCI and a maximum PCI range of where we would reply apply each of these maintenance treatments.

And then there's also gonna be an improvement.

The other thing to look at is that dollars per square yard category.

We work with your team based on the bids that you are getting to do this kind of work so that we have real dollar cost in there.

And that is how we determine in our models how much a project is going to cost.

So we'll look at the area of the pavement along with those unit rates in there to determine that.

So you see the different things that we're doing from reclamite, which is a surface seal down to a microsurfacing down into the cape seals to where that's really more the preservation range.

Then you'll see the overlays and down in rejuvenation where we're having to do structural repairs to that.

One thing we don't want to forget is the flat work concrete cost that may be associated with these projects.

So when you get into some of the street work where we're having to do some structural repairs, uh often associated is we have to upgrade the sidewalks, the ADA ramps, the curb and gutter.

So that cost is burdened into that unit rate I was showing you so that when we get a project cost, we are understanding and realizing the extra work we're going to have to do with the concrete flat work with the project.

So how do we decide what road to go treat within our models?

So a couple of different things I want to define here.

There's prioritization, which is simple ranking.

We can basically go through and say what's the PCI of those roads, rank all the roads from top to bottom of how they score as far as our payment condition index.

Some people want to look at that as what if I just start working on the worst roads and do worst first?

That's not your most cost effective way of handling this.

You're going to be spending all your money on big major projects.

In the meantime, all the roads that are in fair condition are going to deteriorate down into that same bucket, if you will.

You're going to be chasing it.

You're never going to catch up with the money.

So what you have to do is an optimization where you're doing a balance of treatments.

So what we look in our model is looking at how how can we most cost effectively use our money to get the biggest benefit for what we're providing.

And some of that is going to mean when do we treat roads, what roads do we treat?

And I'll give you an example in just a little bit.

But we're looking at financial optimization, how to best spend our money to get the biggest bang for the buck.

So some examples of prioritization, like I said, we could rank based on PCI condition.

We also look at traffic classification.

Of course, an arterial road, and that goes down into your high commerce areas of downtown, a higher volume road is going to carry a little bit more weight than maybe a lower volume residential street as far as the priority of how we're going to treat things.

Surface types, majority of your network is asphalt.

That's generally going to carry a little bit higher priority.

That's also requiring more maintenance than concrete pavements do.

The final part is the equity lens.

We looked at this in the 21 analysis also, uh, where we're running through looking at the FIPS districts within the latest CENSA data and using that information to put a weight factor on there.

So basically what that's meaning.

So we have several roads in the same category.

We're going to look at the underprivileged neighborhoods to be able to treat those first and ensure that we're getting to those areas and not ignoring them.

So as we move through optimization, here's the weighting factor.

Like I said, the PCI condition is really a 70 percent.

That's carrying the majority of it.

It's telling us the condition.

Traffic, classification, the volumes is a 15 percent weight, and the equity lens is another 15 percent weight in that decision process.

So when we go through and start looking at some of the results of how this program really works, I wanted to show you an example of a couple different conditions.

So the road on the left, there are scored of PCI 64.

According to our breakdown, what we're gonna do is go through and put a cape seal on that project.

It's gonna cost $11.91 cents a square yard to do that work.

The break point, if you were to go back and look at a previous table at 60, we start doing a more expensive treatment.

If you look in the picture on the right, that's a PCI 44 that falls into that mill and fill category.

That is $29 a square yard.

So the difference between those two treatments is $17.09 per square yard.

We call that the cost of deferral.

If I ignore that road on the left long enough, it's gonna fall into that category on the right and cost me an additional $17 a yard.

So if we look at that road on the left, being at a 64, that's in a critical range, meaning if we ignore it for another year or two, it is gonna deteriorate into that much more expensive treatment.

However, the road on the right at 44, excuse me, we've got a few years before that's gonna deteriorate into a more costly treatment.

So we could defer that a few more years.

I know people want to see that road improve, but back to cost efficiency and financial optimization, it makes more sense to treat the road on the left before we get to the road on the right, because we have more time and it's a better use of our money.

So that's just an example of why sometimes doing worst first is not the best option.

So when we run our models, what we do is build several budget scenarios that we run through a 10-year analysis and look at the improvement we can do to your network based on certain amount spending annually.

So the number on the bottom is the years of the analysis, the network PCIs on the Y.

The different colors represent different budget amounts.

So the bottom white lines would do nothing.

If we didn't spend any money, how fast would your network deteriorates what that represents?

Then you start looking at the orange line, that is 20 million a year.

You see we still deteriorate from our present condition.

Move up to the next purple, it's 25.

We get up to the blue of 30.

Now we're finally starting to hold steady in our models of the condition of the network.

If you want to spend more to go 35, now we can start seeing some improvement in the network condition.

So I wanted to point out a few things here in the result tables that we came from our analysis.

One thing I do want to point out in the scenario, what we're labeling as a $25 million project really includes $5 million for inspections, programs, testing.

You have got to have inspectors out there watching these projects.

So there's cost associated.

We recognize that in the budget.

So we're really only spending 20 million on the street.

But you'll see each year of where we apply that treatment, what the ending PCI is for each year and how it builds up.

So even at 25 million, we're still dropping that PCI slightly from where we are right now.

The number I do want to point out is that far column on the right says ending backlog percentage.

If you recall earlier, we were at 16 percent in the network.

That number is significantly lower now.

The reason for that in our models, we took into account the additional money you started spending in 25.

So back in 23 and 24, we were working on around 15 million.

We went up to, I believe it is 25 in 2025, and we took into account those projects that you are working in spending that money, and you can already see the impact that is making on your backlog by reducing that significantly.

Now the key is in this model is how can we keep that from growing back up?

And you see at that 25 million level, that number is still starting to creep up when you get to the bottom there.

Now look at the table on the bottom right.

We've moved to a $35 million budget, and you can see we have stabilized that backlog.

It's not growing.

We're maintaining that.

Our PCIs are climbing and going up.

So these are the kind of numbers that we look through to try to determine how much money we think we need to spend annually to be able to keep this network growing.

This is just a trend line from the scenarios that allows you to quickly look at the X-axis is the annual budget being spent.

You can look at the blue trend line and go up and intersect and go over to the Y axis and see the network PCI result after 10 years.

So the yellow line represents a steady state of 68 of where we stand today.

You follow that over to the blue line, we're probably about 27, 28 million to maintain that annually.

So that concludes what I had.

We are happy to answer any questions you've got.

Go ahead, Councilmember Burris.

Sorry.

Thank you so much.

Who new aspect would be so delightful to learn about.

In regards to the PCI, I just had a question.

Just wanted to know for those that have been listed in the poor, be poor series category.

Is there anything that you can like?

Is there a pattern around geography?

Like are you all clustered in like certain communities, or can you like just unpack that a little bit more for me?

We can look at a map.

We we often study that.

I have not seen any trends that would indicate that it's a a geologic feature of soil conditions that is causing the biggest problems.

I think it's pretty well dispersed.

You might have a better feel, Clint, of where some of that is occurring.

Good afternoon, Clint Blackburn with Environmental and Street Services.

No, it's pretty much scattered all over the city.

If you look at the PCI map that we have, it's it's kind of like a gunshot that went off.

I mean, it's like a shotgun.

It's just everywhere.

It's just it's there's not one specific neighborhood.

Councilmember Cook, then council, Councilmember Rist?

Um I just want to say that I appreciate y'all.

I math is not my strong suit.

My spouse has a PhD in it, and I'm like listening to y'all do these prioritizations and just so grateful that it is not on me to make these calculations.

Um there was a there was a statement in here talking about types of pavement materials and the difference in deterioration.

I am assuming you are also putting that into the the analysis on what to use, but I am wondering if we know that asphalt is deteriorating more quickly.

Like are we just using an extenuating circumstances?

Is that still our go-to?

Like what is that determination look like?

To answer your question, yes, the different deterioration rate for asphalt is much quicker than concrete.

So on average, an asphalt is designed for 20 to 30 years, concrete is expected to last 40 to 50 years.

It's a more durable product.

The problem is the cost is quite a bit more.

Um concrete costs can be three to four times that of asphalt in initial construction.

Uh if you do a lifecycle cost analysis over those 30 or 40 years, the asphalt starts catching up because of the maintenance that's required with asphalt concrete.

It's not a whole lot of maintenance other than ceiling joints and maybe replacing a panel here and there.

Uh so asphalt is much more intensive on the maintenance side, but still, if you run a 30, 40 year, most analysis will say asphalt in the long run is still a little bit cheaper.

And to add that, a lot of our most of our pretty much all of our streets have utilities underneath them.

So as soon as you start cutting concrete, your your maintenance costs skyrocket.

So for us, asphalt really makes a lot of sense because of our utilities and what we have underneath the streets, um, and trying to maintain that and still maintain the upper surface.

Um asphalt is very easy to repair, very easy to cut a trench and put it back.

Um and concrete is not.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is something that comes up a lot for folks they're just driving down the roads and they're like, oh, this didn't have a crack in it last year.

And or the oh, the city just repaired this road and already it look we can see blemishes on it.

And so I think it's it's just an important thing for us to be able to be to explain accurately.

Um, but that makes sense to me.

Um those are all my questions at the moment.

I think it's go ahead, Councilmember Rist.

Thank you, Mayor Pratem.

Um thanks for the presentation and really appreciate the sort of like the analysis, kind of looking forward where we need to be.

Um, residents uh in our in our annual survey talk a lot about roads having sort of good roads in Durham, and it's something that around the country, like have keeping the potholes paved is something that every citizen cares about where they live.

So appreciate your work on this.

I guess I'm trying to line this up with where we are.

So for the last couple years we've spent 25 million, right?

And that's maybe like 10 million on CIP and 15 from the bond, or was it where are we?

Yeah, yeah.

I was gonna put my budget director on the spot.

Yeah.

So the the bond had a significant impact adding our adding resources to our paving budget.

That those dollars are running out, but I'll let uh Director Royden uh share where we've been.

Uh good good uh good afternoon, Christina Reardon, um, budget management services center.

Um we did have pre-bond 15 million that we were um kind of providing for streets.

11 million comes from operating, four million from CIP, and then the rest right now we're doing 25 million, the rest of that would be bond funding.

Um we will extra 10 million.

The extra 10 million, yes.

So we will be um, you know, that will be expiring um uh little bit above before 2027.

About 2020 yeah, about another year or two of bond money, and then um we will have to figure out a way to um maintain that 25 million after that.

So we think so through 20 through fiscal 27 we can do the 25 million.

Yeah, I can get we can't.

Roughly, uh, yeah, that's good.

And so your analysis says that like by doing the 25 million, we're sort of like essentially steady state.

So we've it's good to we gotta as we think ahead, we gotta figure out how do we what do we do to keep our roads.

And I guess the other question related to that is like so how many if we've got whatever I forgot the number you had there for paved roadways, but what's the how many how many miles do we add every year of paved roadway?

Like what percentage do we add to our to our network?

Our network is increasing about 1.6 one and a half to three percent per year.

It depends on the year.

Some years we have a lot of miles added, and some years we don't.

But it's roughly about 1.6 percent per year.

So we've got to factor that as well.

And is that a fairly geometric, sort of like sort of the more miles is is it like exponentially greater cost, or essentially like is it sort of proportional?

We usually put an inflation on it, uh even in the costing in the model of about four or five percent uh to account for that as far as far as what you're growing.

Um we looked at that.

I don't remember the exact numbers on the growth, but it's factored in.

It's it wasn't significant you know in the number on that.

It's it's gonna go up several hundred thousand, yes, but it's not gonna add millions to it as you add those in.

So we may need to be thinking about like like after 27, 25 million plus, right?

I mean your model shows 35 million, we're sort of getting to actually like improving over time.

So somewhere in that, right?

Okay.

That's really helpful.

I guess my other question is um I appreciate the thinking about the priorization versus optimization.

It's very helpful to think about that.

I imagine like environmental street services already doing that kind of analysis, right?

Um I guess my question is is whether and I I know that's I know we hear this from residents, like Clint, I call you all the time and say, hey, well, when's whatever road gonna get paid if I get I get emails.

So is there gonna be is environmental and street services gonna prepare like a list or a plan for like which roads in the next say three to five years will be paved.

So that's so that there's a little more clarity for residents about okay.

I live on whatever street, I know that in three years it's gonna be done because it's on the list.

Because I know right now you've got the the pavement can uh the PCI or the index, but it doesn't really say like which roads are gonna be done when.

So will there be a list that citizens can see to know like when will my road or my neighbor's roads be done?

Absolutely.

So we are actually working on a 10-year plan mostly so that we can work with uh you know other departments like water management and transportation to plan out their work.

Um but and we will probably publish like up to maybe five years.

Really after three years, uh the plan gets really washy because you don't really know how things are going to degrade over time.

This it's uh it's a guess.

Um so yes, we will publish you know some amount of years.

I don't know how many we will wind up.

We're gonna have to look the model.

We're we're we're w wrapping it up in the next couple of months, and so we'll get it on the um get it out there to everybody this summer.

That'd be great.

Yeah, no, and I've realized things do change, but I think some kind of plan that gives residents visibility on when and where would be really helpful.

I know also like I think DOT does us it for state roads, right?

And to make sure that we're gonna do that.

Yeah, and and if you look at the DOTs, you'll notice that from year to year those roads shift.

So every time they redo their plan and they do it once a year, those roads will shift years on occasion.

Um so that you'll see but we'll be redoing ours like every three years.

So every three years you'll see the shift.

And that's why I don't want to publish too much, because I don't want anybody to really get set like, hey, my road's gonna be done because it's not always on that exact because as we see things deteriorate, they'll shift from year to year.

Um because it's all about optimization.

I get yeah, but that but the greater visibility even in the short term, like three years or so.

Yeah.

And then does that mean we also do do we coordinate our work also with DOT if we if we see a road, I don't know, that's on their list.

Do we want to for like another restriping is something we try to do when they're repaving.

So do we is this plan also include us coordinating with DOT for what they're doing?

Um not really, because we are real like I said, we're go ahead.

Hello again.

Uh Tasha Johnson and Johnson.

So transportation does coordinate with NC DOT for their striping work and trying to uh make use of those opportunities.

Uh but this plan, the the work that we do, we do not often coordinate with T.

So it's this is all it's all local roads.

So you don't you don't correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Look forward to the plan.

I know I know residents on a BPAC, everybody's gonna ask them about that, so they'll really appreciate that.

If I could expand on your question earlier about the time.

Yeah.

Um so if you take a street and you do nothing to it, um, it's five 15 to 20 year maximum life cycle.

So what we're doing, trying to extend the life to 40, and I actually kind of would like to see if we could make it to 50.

Um so that's what's what we're trying to do is extend the use usable life cycle of a road, the level of service out many, many more years um from like 15 to 40 or even more.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilmember Kopak.

Yes, thank you.

Um appreciate the presentation, helpful to see that that the direct um relationship between that increase and investment that we're seeing with bringing down the backlog and increasing uh our PCI.

I think this is for a lot of folks the most evident um and visible indication of their tax dollars at work and you know, both with the increase uh I think in the operating and CIP and then the decision around the budget, which residents voted for.

I mean, that is a direct relationship there.

Uh and so it's helpful to see that result.

Thank you.

Um council member is mostly covered the main question I had about thinking about what's coming.

So I understand that you can project out to about three years, but something that might be closely following after that point, you know, in three years it might change because something else may deteriorate faster.

So it is a little hard to predict.

Um but do you have like a a database of all of the identified um projects and how how long does that list go?

How far out does it go, even understanding that we should be careful about um how to interpret that and making any promises about where it will fall.

So that's what we're working on right now.

So right is up until this point we've been doing it from year to year.

Um but we we've been working over the last year to put together the 10-year plan.

So at that point, we will be able to say, you know, in the next year, next few years, this is exactly what we're planning on doing.

Um that way we can better coordinate with you know water management on their repairs and transportation with striping and other departments on the work they plan on doing as well.

Okay.

Uh that will be super helpful and interesting to see.

I have to say I love the map.

I'm very visual person, and that was super helpful to be able to go across and see, uh, which also just you know is evident in what we hear from constituents about what they're experiencing on their uh road networks.

And so thank you for that that presentation of the data.

Um my other question just has to do about uh about different treatments.

Um I understand that Greensboro may have backed off of some of their use of microsurfacing on high volume roads because of concerns around how quickly they deteriorate uh in those high volume networks.

Um what is our stance on that and what have we seen in our use of the microsurfacing treatment on high volume roads?

Good question.

Um what you've seen, I'm sure you all have seen some of the roads like MLK and Barbie where we've had some failures.

That's a phenomenon called stripping.

Um I won't get into the details, but uh it has to do with the the soil.

So in the southern um Durham, we have the Turassica Basin and it and the soils are um hold a lot of water and we have a lot of groundwater.

So it's affecting those streets.

So we are um we have discussed not doing micro on the thoroughfares, high volume streets in the southern portion of Durham, mostly because that's where the traffic based basin is.

We've had a lot more success with it up north.

Um so we're we're looking into that, trying to figure out exactly where that is and how that's going to affect the micro and where we can do better use those those dollars and not have it deteriorate.

And we're also kind of um, you know, the the conversations we've had with um industry experts across the nation, or really in the south, um this is uh this is a problem that many cities have and it's and it's and as far as we can be tell, it's not it's not something you can easily predict um because it's about groundwater and and and there's there's a lot that goes into it.

And um so yeah.

So we are looking so we're not gonna stop doing it.

We're just gonna try to be smarter about where and how we're doing it.

Great.

Thank you, Mr.

Blackburn and team.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Baker.

Thank you.

Um thanks for for being here and for the presentation.

I think it um rivals that uh parking presentation that we got.

Um just uh uh first of all, that this shows I mean, this is so important.

I mean, this is um consistently the largest uh line item in the CIP, so being as efficient as possible is vital um given how limited the resources are for the for the city.

Um just a couple questions.

One is let's say we we have um streets that are 36 feet wide and we go down to 28 feet or something like that.

That kind of dimensional change, does that have any significant impact on reducing costs or is it pretty comparable?

I'll I'll take that one.

Uh so yes, it will reduce the cost uh because we're not paving, we're not using as much material, paving as much roadway, so it does reduce the cost.

Um if before I turn it over to Scott to see if he has more to say, um, I do want to reiterate going back to the 10-year prioritize plan, that would be a financially constrained document.

And so assuming that the funding remained consistent throughout that would only be how we could deliver it even on the first couple of years of that plan, much less the other years.

If you want to address it you got it covered.

Um then things like shade, uh shade on um pavement, uh street trees, those kinds of things.

Does that have any impact on uh how on the quality of the question?

Well, most definitely.

Um the deterioration of asphalt is usually due to oxidation, UV rays on the surface, uh deteriorates it, starts it, makes it gray faster, so you'll see it visibly.

Excuse me.

We're talking about allergies earlier.

Uh trees is the other issue because of the roots.

So if you look at the location of the tree, imagine those roots are pulling in moisture.

They're trying to survive.

So it's pulling all the water out of the soil, it's causing it to settle more.

When they're wet, period, you get more moisture around the root ball because of the tree, and then those routes also pop up looking for moisture and they'll heave the sidewalks and the pavement.

So trees are probably the biggest thing that affect and water.

Perfect the performance of pavements.

Okay.

So some good from trees and some bad from trees.

Good from trees.

Good slow, but the roots are the issue.

Okay.

I'm just going to assume they even out.

I love trees, but from an engineering standpoint, yeah, it's tough.

All right.

Okay.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council.

Well, I just wanted to build on one of Councilmember Baker's questions about uh you know reducing the you know the the amount of of street in the street, I guess.

Uh and so as we're pursuing greater efforts around traffic calming, um, you know, across the city, you know, projects that are going to, you know, shrink uh city streets that are four-lane highways, uh, or some cases DOT, but streets that are like going through our city that are four-lane highways down to two lanes that instead have um, let's say bike lanes on the side.

Like, you know, it you know, uh do we track and think about like if we do a lot more of that, that it can like reduce our maintenance costs uh overtime as well, because obviously uh a bike or pedestrian crossing across that that asphalt air concrete is not gonna be having the same impact as a large truck rolling down or or cars.

That's not influence our our maintenance decisions.

Um that's more of a safety, so that's more falls into our vision zero um in transportation, some of the decisions they're making.

Um so as far as our decision making process goes about maintenance and about that's not because it's it's a it's a not a it's not a majorly significant amount of money difference.

When you're reducing from like, let's say 30 feet to 20 feet.

It's I mean there is it's a sm you know, because we do have a square footage cost, and that's how we price things out.

So there is it does affect it, but not significantly to the point that that we would really make um maintenance decisions based on that.

Okay.

It's really about safety, about vision zero and about making um you know good decisions about how to keep people safe.

Okay.

Thank you.

I think I'm gonna use my the privilege of my colleague as well to to do some of my own mental math and assume that it still nets out in the favor of uh some cost reductions too, as well as safety.

So it will save us money, but that's not a dis that's not part of the decision making.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ruth?

Thank you, maybe.

So while you're doing your mental math, I'm I'm gonna try my like my elementary physics here.

So like it just occurs to me that so like so I know that like heavier cars cause payment to degrade faster, correct?

Yeah.

So what about the relationship between like speed and like pavement conditions?

So like more speed equals like so like there's so there's a relationship there, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you your high volume roads do deteriorate faster because they have speeds, they have heavier vehicles.

Um yeah, absolutely.

Um that's why we see more of the deterioration on our micro on those heavy streets instead of our residentials.

Um and and in fact, you know, with um, you know, some of our high volume bus routes really beat our streets up, and we're having to go and um beef those streets up.

When we when when those routes change, um, like uh transportation is working on their uh uh bus rapid transit, um, and they're gonna be running these buses every 10 minutes.

We're gonna have to work on those streets and and make them make the profile thicker.

But again, so like so weight times speed is e is more there's more stress, yeah.

So we got it.

Where's our we have our lobbyists from checkmate here?

We'll be talking later, but right, about our about our legislative agenda.

So like if we if we drop the speed limit on all our city streets from like 35 to 25, like what does that do to maintenance costs?

Slower volume, slower speeds equal healthier roads.

It is true.

Would you agree with that?

Yeah.

So can you quantify that anyway?

No, you're just doing it.

Um, uh I I can I could not quantify that.

No.

Yeah.

So it sounds so there is a relationship.

It's a good idea.

There's a resolation.

It's it's tough because you're you're looking at the load per axle if you want to get into the details of it and and the speed.

So there's a combination of a lot of factors.

It's really more the vibrations due to speed, because if you hit a bump and that load is is pounding, you know, it's gonna make a bigger difference.

So that's good to know as we think about the speed limits.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else before we start to continue geeking out on pavement?

Come on, we've had fun.

I I do actually have a question because this is around our um street tree program and and our you know, native tree planting and things like that.

Some trees are better about the type of root system.

So when we're thinking about our native tree planting guides for residents, are we are are we are we thinking about the types of trees that we're encouraging folks to plant?

Because I think it's like sycamores that are like terrible and they're like their root system is really gonna cause a lot of damage.

So um the conversations I've had with our city arborists, they are very much considering what types of trees that they put in the right-of-way.

Um they have a list of approved trees that they you know will publish.

And when we, you know, with our sidewalk projects, when we put in trees or work with them to put trees back in, um, they have a list of trees that they give us for that.

So they are thinking very closely about those types of trees.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

We're all good.

One parting comment.

I do this work all over the country, and I've got to say your your group is one of the best that we work with.

We agree.

Including Charlotte.

Good.

But yeah, and we heard that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Um, next up is our uh presentation number 19, I believe.

Uh it's our American Rescue Plan ARPA update.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Mayor Pro Tim and members of City Council, I'm Bertha Winbush, Deputy City Manager.

Also have for with me here for this presentation, Andrew Holland, Assistant Director of Budget and Management Services.

Um, with this work, we have had many partners.

Um, and you see some of those uh with us in the room today.

You might wonder why they're still here.

Um we are really excited about our partnership, and we've been working on this project since 2021.

I want to bring attention to our theme, which is on our first slide.

Durham's down payment towards transformative change.

This has been our theme since the beginning of this project.

As I stated earlier, we've been working on this since 2021.

So obviously, we can't include all the information in this presentation.

We would be here for a really long time.

So we wanted to add all of the agenda items that have come to council related to ARPA funds, so that if you would like to go see any of the projects, any of the agenda items or watch the meetings, you have those here before you.

As a budget director on March 18, 2024, I became I came before council and I proposed a process by which we spend these funds.

We knew that we wanted this money to go out into the community, and so but first we wanted to think about looking internally.

We had an internal process where we had committees internal that talked about things like revenue loss, um, economic development, and other areas in our organization that we could use the funds for in the eligible categories.

We wanted City Council to also have a process by which they could prioritize proposals.

But more importantly, we wanted to go out to the community.

We wanted the community to help us decide number one, which categories we want to focus on, the eligible categories, and also where we need to focus our dollars.

We created a website, as I mentioned before, so that we could let the community know one that we have this funding coming to us, and two, what our process was going to be.

So we started with community engagement.

Externally, we had two community-wide events in partnership with Durham County, also North Carolina Central University, and also other organizations.

We heard from hundreds of residents doing this process.

This was an exciting process because North Carolina Central University had already decided to have these events, and we showed up to events and said we actually have real dollars.

Folks were really excited, and some of the comments we received was you talk to us all the time, but you don't come with money.

And this time we actually came with money.

We also developed a survey so that residents who may not been able to attend the events could actually give us their feedback.

Before the July 31st deadline, we received 80 proposals for funding.

This is just uh the flyer that we use for the budget healing event.

Again, this was in collaboration with Durham County and North Carolina Central University, and also we had our partner departments that were as well to help us facilitate those discussions.

So our final applications for funding.

Ultimately, 71 final applications of funding were submitted, reviewed, and scored by committees made up of residents as well as city staff.

The applications totaled 136 million.

Obviously, we did not have 136 million dollars to allocate.

And I wanted to show you the breakdown of the demographics of those applications on this slide.

So on December 21st, 2021, BMS came to City Council, and we made a recommendation to fund all projects that scored 24 above by resident staff committees.

City Council appointed us a group of council members to look at our recommendations and also do work behind the scenes to make a recommendation of their own.

On May 18, 2022, City Council came forth and recommended approving 34 projects, which awarded 70 percent of the organization's requests at a maximum of 1 million.

Three organizations formally withdrew funding requests resulted in 31 projects.

City Council also created a list of deferred proposals for joint city county funding, and we also funded some of those projects at a later date.

So here is a list of those proposals that were approved.

This list was immediately posted on our website for residents to see.

So this slide shows how those proposals were funded and the categories they were funded in.

Other funding decisions were made.

So again, we approved $13.5 million for affordable housing, which was matched by Durham County.

We approved 10 million for Favor Street Quarter projects.

We also approved 466,000 for Central Hispano, and that was because that was in that category health and wellness.

We had a very small proposal amount that we allocated initially.

Council approved 1 million for Haytai Justice Reborn, and that was a city council budget request.

Durham County came later and matched our 1 million for arts and culture, and then the Durham County also awarded $750,000 to match the city's $754 digital equity.

So if you think about the amount that was allowed to Durham County, they actually provide a lot of their funding to us to support our initiatives.

When we came to you in October, we showed you this reconciliation.

And I'll give you a few seconds to look at that.

At that time, we told you we had an unobligated amount of 249,000.

We proposed using that to support staff salaries.

You all shared with us that you wanted that money to go back into the proposals and also provide any other funding requests related to the deferred items.

So I'm going to turn it over to Andrew.

All right.

Thank you, Deputy City Manager Wimbush, Andrew Holland, budget management services department.

So I'm going to focus on the 34 approved organizations that we initially started with.

Three organizations formally withdrew funding requests, which left us with 31 organizations remaining.

So today we have uh 15 projects that have been completed.

We have 11 projects that are in process.

It's important to note that a good portion of those projects are close to being completed.

And last but not least, we have five projects that have been suspended.

So now I'm going to talk about the activities that have been completed and also talk about the performance measures in which we have been managing since the inception of monitoring these 31 projects.

So the ARPA team has completed 40 of the 67 desk reviews.

There has been a total of 490 490 hours in direct one-on-one meetings with with uh sub-recipients, and we have paid uh 366 invoices equating to about 17.7 million dollars in our expenditure goal for these 31 projects is of around a little over 19 million dollars.

And we have paid uh 366 invoices equating to about 17.7 million dollars in our expenditure goal for these 31 projects is around a little over 19 million dollars.

So next I'm going to talk about uh potential reallocations and some uh potential um remaining dollars as relates to specifically to these 31 projects.

So we're estimating a total of two FTFT FTFC projects, uh which is about 330,000.

Also wanted to highlight the contracts of concern.

Actually, one in this particular organization is in our intervention process.

So we continue to work with work with this organization to make sure that they are meeting their milestones and that it's a great segue into some of the practices and the work that we do within our ARPA team where we want to ensure that uh these subrecipients have access to staff.

So that includes having one-on-one meetings.

Um also we uh want to ensure that we provide technical assistance to these recipient uh subrecipients, and also uh we continue to conduct desk reviews, site visits, and we have our biweekly ARPA hours as well.

So I'm not gonna go into great detail on this slide, and I know uh Deputy City Manager Wimbush um highlighted some of these projects, um, but I really want to emphasize that what you see on this slide in the next few slides.

Um, this is captured in our quarterly uh report that we submit to the U.S.

Treasurer.

Um, and here some other projects as well.

Um please note that this information um is um in reflection of uh December 31 uh of uh 2025.

So our goal is to hopefully um have uh a quarterly update submitted by the end of this month, and uh this information is also published on our ARPA website.

And um as uh Deputy City Manager Wynn Bush alluded to, um, this is how these 30 projects are um I guess allocated into these four buckets of categories.

Um again, um this is um submitted in the quarterly report to the U.S.

Treasury, and this is based off of uh December uh 31, 2025.

So next I'm gonna hand it off to Deputy City Manager Winbush.

So here's where we are now.

Um as close as we can get to the numbers of where we what we think we're gonna spend as well as what we think we're gonna have available.

We asked the finance department to actually project out our interest earnings through December 31st, 2026.

And as you can see here, all of the categories that we talked about earlier on this screen.

The bottom line is we believe we will have about 1.6 million available.

And we wanted to bring this to you now because as we are talking about the budget and budget priorities, we want you to know what we have available, and this is interest earnings.

There is no timeline on these dollars.

So they are available to support our budget, uh, city council priorities, um, any other uh discussions you want to have about initiatives.

And so this is where we are now with the projected interest earnings, which again I want to repeat that because those are projections out to December 31st, 2026.

And we've allocated interest before for some for some of our projects, particularly DHA in the past, but we wanted to make sure since the we have to spend all the funds by December 31st, we got as close to the number as possible.

So another look at those numbers in a different way, showing the interest earnings total and also how much of interest earnings we have spent on projects.

So if you have any questions about what we shared with you before, this is a good time to ask those questions.

After that, we want to showcase some of our projects.

Thank you.

Oh no, I was gonna see who had questions first.

Okay.

Go ahead, Council Roberts.

Thank you so much for this lovely report in April.

Um lovely.

And also all seriousness, glad to see our ARPA money at use again.

I said earlier when I toured Durham Tech, I got to see where the affordable housing dollars will be utilized at.

So I'm really passionate about that.

And I saw that there's a new banner up on the benefit building on Fed Village Streets.

I guess 10 million dollars is being utilized appropriately.

Um, my question about the suspended funds.

Um, can you just tell us like that means basically like they were not not in compliance, or like how are we defining that?

Or they just like half the process or for the orgs, and it's back to the um the ones that the slide the 15 completed 11 process and five projects um suspended.

So just wanted to like unpack the definition of that.

Okay.

Um we can give you details on those projects.

Do you want to share that?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um there were a number of reasons.

Um each um organization was different.

It may be due to uh low levels of uh spending their funds.

Um again, there were a number of reasons, and we'll be happy to provide you um with you all with uh the pro the reasons of suspending those contracts.

Okay.

And then so for the intervention phase, is that just only the one organization for the $768,000?

Yes, there was um another organization which they are transitioning out of the TFC because we've been working closely with them to um make sure that they are at a level on which they can expand all of their funds by the day alignment.

Can you uh provide a definition of T IRG of TFC?

Yeah, termination convinced.

Yeah.

Um Madam Attorney, do you what you like to?

Yeah.

So um basically it is uh where our organization um has reached a point where uh we feel as though that they may be at risk of not fulfilling um, you know, their obligation of their contract.

So um it is just best for us to work with that organiz.

Okay, go ahead.

Yeah.

I'm not attorney.

Okay.

Um, Carlos Fernandez with the City Attorney's Office.

So T TFC is not meant to be confused.

Uh termination for convenience, not cause.

So a lot of people get those confused.

Termination convenience is a contractual right that the city writes into the majority of its contracts to have the ability to exit a contract without any kind of cause.

So it's not necessarily a negative um anything negative uh in terms of the party.

It could be shifting uh priorities of the city that we decided a TFC a contract that no longer aligns with our strategies.

Uh it's for any reason.

So seeing a TFC doesn't necessarily mean that the vendor did anything wrong.

Uh it's just uh to clarify.

Uh now in certain situations where we don't feel that it's rises at the level of breach uh or default, but we aren't satisfied with maybe reporting or uh where the organization is managing uh the program, then that we could also use a TFC without having to go through the process of proving a default and and a breach.

Thank you.

And then Andrew, not to put you in a hot seat friend.

Okay.

Um so and just to clarify for us, just to have it on record.

So out of that 1.6 million that's available that I know is gonna have some clause out there if you just said that, um, is that 330K like factored into that amount already?

Yes, it is.

Okay.

And then so someone magically like say, we hope this doesn't happen, but the um org that has the 768,000, um, if they default, would that also go back to that pot of money as well?

Correct.

Okay.

Because the ultimate goal is uh we do not want to send any money back to the Federal Government.

And at what point, I guess in the timeline, would you know definitively if they're going to be successful or if you guys are gonna do like the um Yeah, so we typically meet with the organization on a weekly basis.

Okay.

Uh we were um actually in conversation uh with the organization today.

So um we are again, we are accessible.

Uh we want to go and make sure that organization is successful by any means necessary.

Um, but we understand that you know challenges do come up, but as far as opera stuff, we want to go and make sure that we are providing um the best support that we can to these or to that organization.

Thank you so much, Andrew.

It's always a pleasure to see you.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Other colleagues.

Anyone else?

Do you have okay?

Go ahead, Chris.

Councilmember Rist.

I guess my only question is like, so what kind of input do you need from the council?

I mean, I appreciate the update, uh, you know, and all the work that's gone in the last five years.

But like, what are there questions you have for the council?

Any input you need from us.

No, I believe Deputy City Manager Wimbush, she made a recommendation um in regards to the one point uh 1.6 million dollars.

So perhaps uh city manager, perhaps there can be conversation conversations around that.

Uh primary purpose of this was an update.

Uh given the complexity of the program, given uh the significant number of dollars, and I think uh uh a certain amount of pride that we have that we were able to get these dollars out in the community and very proud of the work that uh a number of departments did to make sure these program, these dollars were deployed, deployed into our community and for the most part uh spent very successfully.

Um there so there was a there was a timing factor and uh and uh informational factor to the presentation as DCM Wimbush indicated.

There are some dollars, and I would very much love the flexibility to bring you a proposal uh in conjunction with the uh proposed budget that I'll bring forward in May, uh finding a place for that to support council priorities within the budget.

Um, but obviously we wanted to be transparent about the fact that those dollars are uh available, available to the city, and and uh it is at council's discretion how we allocate those.

Uh my recommendation is that we uh do that within the budget process this year.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

Um I missed those don't have the expiration date because they're interest dollars, correct?

That's what was stated.

I just want to make sure I just did that.

Thank you.

Uh any other colleagues?

Okay.

I just want to say thank you.

Sorry, did you want to have she just wanted to take the questions?

Oh, yeah, you have more price.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

Uh now you have the happy news now.

You have all the the uh the good, like the the amazing things that got done with this money.

I just want to thank uh staff.

This was a long, arduous process.

Um and we we what we did what we said out we were gonna do, set out to do.

We put a lot of money back out into community at a at a very trying time.

So thank you.

Yep, thank you.

And uh we'll be uh very brief with the pictures.

Um this was an event um that took place um August 22nd.

Um this was the 100 book um hub event, and this was um this was uh an event that was spearheaded by Book Harvest.

And as you can see, we have a couple of council members in the picture, Councilmember Riss and uh Councilmember Javier.

Lee Farm Park, right?

If I recall that.

Sorry, absolutely correct.

Correct.

Um this is um for justice, in which they held uh the C2 Supper event, um farm to Fort Metzer, and this was held December 5th.

And also wanted to highlight another event, um, and this was centered around health and wellness for justice.

They held another event on December 6th, and this event was actually held at WG Pearson.

Um, so wanted to highlight uh the Corridor Bounce Back um program in which um MCU um administered this program in partnership with OEWD.

Definitely want to go and shout out OEWD and also uh Chris Dickey on the great work that they have done in providing uh business assistance to 16 businesses along the Fed Street Corridor.

So if you look at the photo to the left, uh this is uh business alone a corridor, Luster and Beauty Bar.

Uh this is a beauty salon, and actually the ARPA team and I, we actually did a site visit um at this particular location several uh weeks ago, and they used the ARPA dollars to purchase a new chair, new mirror, and also some other equipment.

And if you look to the far right, um this is a photo of Rhythm and Bruise.

Um this is in the Phoenix Square Um complex.

Um this particular business used the ARPA funds to purchase new lights, uh new ceiling, and also a new refrigerator and uh freezer.

And also I want to highlight uh superior fragrance.

Um, and I just wanted to make sure that I captured uh the quote from uh Hakeem Mohammed.

Um he states he quotes uh much appreciation.

My head goes off to the Fairville Business Corridor Renovations Project headed by Tanya Taylor of Durham City and their consultant Anthony Taylor.

I want to give you all all much uh deserve and thank you and congratulate you on a job well done.

The renovation project of the property located at Superior Fragrance was extraordinary.

So definitely want to spotlight that.

And also wanted to uh spotlight a great digital um inclusion um division, which is in our new uh community partnerships and engagement department.

Um they are working in partnership uh uh with uh Durham County and um getting out uh uh free w MAFA.

So um, you know, they have distributed uh uh 650 MAFAs, and they have uh provided these two uh two participants since uh September 2025.

So definitely want to go and shout out um the digital and equity inclusion team team.

And last but not least, um youth by youth.

So you showcase it was specifically the future founders.

This is where students delivered their business pitches and completed for scholarships, um, money, and all of the students were recognized with a certificate.

I believe there was um I believe there was a $5,000 scholarship.

Um this was um this particular contract project was led and administered by ECO systems.

And that is it.

Any questions?

I wanted to add uh one other reminder.

We have some of these small projects, but they were meaningful to the businesses.

But remember, we we actually allocated $27 million to affordable housing, um, $1.5 million to DHA, other projects that you don't see here, not necessarily projects, but a large partial part of those funds went to really large projects.

But we highlight our small partners here who were really impacted significantly by you know small amounts of dollars in some cases.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Uh said this earlier, but I'll just just add uh I I think Durham can and should be very proud, and and this council and its predecessors can be very proud for the unique approach that Durham took towards ARPA funding.

Um it was uh there were there were a lot of uh municipal governments who who did not push the money out into the community the way that Durham did.

Um I will say on behalf of staff, I think it was much harder, much more complicated to uh do it the way Durham did it, not unusual for Durham.

Uh, but also you see the benefits uh in what you saw here in the the additional projects that Bertha mentioned.

So uh I just want to um commend staff once again and and the vision of council to to see these dollars pushed out and and to really highlight uh how many of these dollars got spent.

Um, because so many of these uh recipients were small first-time recipients.

Uh, there was a lot of education that needed to happen, a lot of hand holding.

It is very hard to spend Federal dollars effectively and to be able to keep those dollars.

And so it's a testament to our staff for the amount of work that went into making sure they could do that successfully, and I'm I'm really proud to have uh seen that work played out.

Thank you.

And then Councilmember Cook has a question.

Do you need a thumbs up for us, or is that money just gonna default back into budget?

Uh in in the budget presentation, I will identify a use for it.

Certainly, if council wanted to have a conversation about alternatives, they could do so now.

If you do not, I will bring forward a presentation in the budget.

That's totally fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um our last presentation.

Oh, sorry, I thought you had a question you'd forgotten.

I was like, uh is item number 25?

And I think we have a public speaker on this item.

The under our city manager's office, our legislative priorities for the 2026 short session of the uh North Carolina General Assembly.

I think we have Ms.

White here.

I see her.

Good afternoon, Ms.

White.

Thank you for being with us.

You have three minutes.

Good afternoon.

My name is Domaglyn White.

I am Mayor Pro Tem and City Council members.

I live at 1015 Jerome Road and Durham North Carolina.

I am the Chair of Vice Chair of the Committee on Affairs of Black People and Precinct 34 chair and my committee.

I am here to speak on election reform packet.

I have passed out a print of the 2425 election results.

As you see in 25, uh, there was just a few numbers different.

And when you see the cost, when President Biden was in office, he did a lot to help the cities, small business and others come back.

Now that with the current president, he isn't renewing any of those things.

Instead, he is cutting them and more.

Raleigh and Charlotte, two of the largest cities in North Carolina, as we know, has stopped having municipal elections and combined them.

When we have uh combined elections when the President and all the council state and others, and in Durham, the city, uh the county and city board of elections, I mean board school board and others run.

Also, as you see, the very low turnout in municipal elections.

As I said earlier, I am precinct 34 chair, and I always work my precinct on election day, and I also help at South Library.

South Library is one of the highest turnout or the boat sites.

My precinct is one of the highest.

And we have a low turnout on those in those two areas.

That means you're gonna have a few people voting, but we pay a lot of money.

Both of them are some of Durham highest uh turnout precincts.

And I also said, I also would like to say that as precinct chair with the Democratic Party, we do resolutions when we have our primary, when we have our uh meetings in the spring.

And one of our resolutions is the same to stop having elections every year.

Also, uh at Pac 4 meeting in March, the police department said we are 34 offices short.

The monies could be used for safety, education, housing, health, and others.

And I've heard a lot of things today that as well.

Uh and it would be nice if we would consider combining these elections so that we can save money, and you will not raise our taxes.

I would also like to say to ask that we find ways to cut down on the use of petroleum, I guess, uh, oil products, like plastic bags, plastic bottles.

When we go to Costco, when we go to Sam's, BJs, and Aldi's, we are responsible for how we back our products and get them out.

And at Harris Tetas and at Food Lines, they have plastic bags.

They have brown bags.

Is that me?

Yes, ma'am.

You can finish what you were about to say.

At those stores, they have brown bags, but you have to ask for them.

And at Whole Foods, they have brown bags, even in the Produce Department.

I know the State has passed a law against it, but we need to find ways to cut down on everything.

And with the crisis in the Middle East, our gas has gone up a dollar in the last month.

And on top of that, the turf was already clearing everything up, which doesn't make any sense.

So we need to find ways to bring stuff down so people can live.

And also on using the use of no plastic.

When you go to the laundry department, you can find laundry sheets, kind of like you find dry sheets, and then cardboard boxes, which can be broken down.

And when the water hit them, they break down.

And they clean your clothes just as well.

And you don't have those chemicals on your in your family's bodies.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

White.

Thank you.

Please consider these things.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor Tim.

Good afternoon.

Members of City Council, City Manager, staff, my name is Carmesha Wallace.

I am the assistant city manager, and I am here to discuss our legislative priorities for the upcoming short session of the North Carolina General Assembly.

I am joined by uh Derek Applewhite and John Easterling, um, who both work for Checkmate Government Relations, which is the state lobbying lobbying uh firm that the City of Durham has had under contract.

So um I'm gonna turn it over to to uh John and he's gonna walk you through the legislative priorities that have been discussed by the City Council's uh legislative committee.

Um Madam Mayor Pro Tim, members of council, Mr.

Manager, it is good to be here with you.

Uh I am John Easterling, I am partner at Czech Mate Government Relations.

Uh for some of you we have had this interaction before.

For some of you, this is my first time meeting, interacting with you, so I thank you.

Um I run our relationships um as a relationship municipalities, and on the Democratic side of the aisle.

I want to introduce my colleague here just for a moment, Derek Applewhite.

Good afternoon, Derek Athlite, uh government relations director with Czech Mate um and have been working with John for a number of years in my service with the legal municipalities and joined Checkmate in October, and looking forward to working with you all.

Thank you, Derek.

Um, the we've worked with the legislative committee and uh Carmesha and Aaron to come up with a uh thoughtful legislative agenda that reflects the priorities of this council.

Um so we have a few overarching topics.

We will kind of tag team between myself and Derek uh to uh expand on these.

And so we'll try to move through them quickly to give some time for uh some QA and have a little conversation with council.

That's fine.

Um as relates to housing, which is a major priority here in Durham, um, expand local authority to increase housing supply support for workforce and affordable housing development, address the tax loopholes affecting affordable housing ownership structures, which is something that has been um called in the news cycle.

I know this was brought up during our large legislative committee meeting uh with Councilman uh uh wrist um and extend local authority for temporary shelter solutions and preserve municipal revenue and zoning authority.

One of the things is being a municipality, uh when the legislature is in session, um, we have to constantly be on the defense.

And so we um as a team are armed to do that with our representation of multiple municipalities.

We try to stay on top of what's going on to uh make sure if we're going to leave session, um, we leave session, um, not losing any of the current authorities that we have.

And so we're working diligently on restoring those authorities that we have lost.

Another focus area, and um Carmesha and the rest of the staff did a good job of trying to take the input from council uh and then devise kind of overarching themes or buckets for the legislative focus during the short session.

And I think that's one thing that we shouldn't be remiss to mention is that this is a short session uh to be differentiated between the long session that occurs during the odd number years, short session during the even number years.

Typically, this is when the General Assembly comes back to do budget adjustments or any changes for the second year of the two-year state budget.

Um as many of you are aware of, there is no current uh 2025 state budget.

Um the state is operating under a continuing resolution that uh includes those um numbers from the last past state budget.

So just want to make sure we're clear on that.

Uh the next focus is on environmental quality and resiliency, um, invest in renewable energy and disaster resiliency for local government, and and along with that is uh to support renewable energy development and incentive models um for um locals and municipal governments here in North Carolina and Fort Durham specifically.

Uh another item is to address and incentivize uh PFAS and emergent contaminant remediation and water systems.

We know that the um Department of Environmental Quality and the EMC are looking at PFAS right now, and uh we want to make sure that Durham is positioned uh to address those issues here locally.

Uh transit and transportation, one of those other um overarching themes as well.

Uh three main points here authorize local transit revenue options, provide municipal authority to set safer speed limits on DOT roads.

Uh, this is something I know that has been set out as a priority for council.

Uh again, Councilman Riss has brought this up um time and time again.

I think there may be a pathway forward for us to do this.

Um, seeking some um direction as well from council so we can proceed on filing a local bill, which I believe local bill deadline is Monday.

So um would like to leave here with some direction on um what bills we would like the local delegation to file so we can move forward on that as soon as possible and have that language filed.

Improved state reimbursement and increased cost sharing from NC DOT.

Um, there are a not um a number and multiple ways um to um create create local transit revenue um options.

We were um very much involved, and I would say it was our baby um to move forward with the PAV Act, um, which moved forward with the uh sales tax um piece that was on the uh ballot in Charlotte just this past year, um, which attract uh which established a local authority to move forward um with expanding light rail options in um northern and uh uh southern communities in Mecklenburg County.

And so those are conversations that we'll certainly be armed with as we go into the short session as well.

And the the local bill options and priorities, uh, I think this has already been uh a topic of discussion uh amongst the committee as well, uh, looking at even uh year elections here in the city.

Um that would certainly need to be something that is discussed amongst council um as we approach the the deadline for a local bill this year.

Um perhaps this is something that we can build the groundwork for moving forward if the council um does desire to do that.

Uh another topic that came up is uh in regards to the Falls Lake rules um as they're under consideration uh by DEQ and uh then the EMC and to make sure that there is representation and local input uh from the city and from partner uh partners within the community um as those are uh developed.

Um appropriations requests.

This is where things kind of get very interesting, as Derek alluded to.

We do not have a budget.

We have a we had a primary election that was an upset for the President Pro Tim of the North Carolina Senate.

Uh, but there is some level of agreement and conversations that have existed amongst the coroner offices of Speaker and the President Pro Temp about moving forward with a budget compromise.

We do not know what that looks like yet.

Um we go back into session on the 21st.

Um we'll have more of an idea as we inch and creep closer um to the convening of legislative short session.

But our team will advocate for targeted funding requests aligned with City Council staff priorities as opportunities arise during the short session.

Um short session uh presents moments, they present unique opportunities.

We want to make sure that we're all aligned with what those requests can be and what they and what they will be if those moments do arise for us to make such requests.

And as there will be a number of interesting conversations that will be tied up in conference committees that will uh le uh make way for negotiations, we want to make sure that we are armed with those requests to give to those individuals that advocate um as well on behalf of Durham within the delegation.

So our legislative agenda implementation, um prioritization, uh council adoption, um our del the legislative delegation meeting, um which we have done in the past and continue to do, uh those relationships are uh very vital.

Um I'll be remiss.

Um I'm a Baptist pastor as well.

I believe the best way to get places are ships, relationships, friendships, and fellowships.

Uh and so we're moving forward um on those ships as well.

Um and we want to make sure that we have the partner, stakeholder, and legislative engagement and our team, which we're very diligent about as soon as session um uh commences, we'll we will move forward with our um weekly uh kind of progress report on how things are moving.

Um we'll update this city um whether it's through engagement directly with council, through the legislative committee, our weekly talks that we have with both Carmesha and Aaron to make sure we are keeping the pulse on the attitudes um that exists here on Council and if things need to move and making sure that you all know, because certainly a short session with a short window um and a there uh therefore short runway, there is limited opportunity for us to get things moving.

And so we want to make sure that we are um all aligned and that you all have the most accurate and up-to-date information as we move forward.

Okay.

And we'll take any questions from members of council, Ms.

Manager.

Thank you for the presentation.

I think colleagues, um, if folks are comfortable, I think the way we were imagining this conversation proceeding, and could you put the PowerPoint slides back up?

Because that will help me.

I mean, I can pull it up on my iPad, but I think the idea is that we want to prioritize one with just large buckets, right?

So those those headers, you know, is that is that the right way forward?

Is there anything we want to add that is not currently there?

And is there anything that we want to take off that really there's just not consensus on council?

But we do want to leave today's meeting with that idea.

We will do a formal uh adoption, it will be on our agenda at our next meeting.

And then I do want to just let folks know is the reason we hired our lobbyists is that they are going to be our our path forward.

So even if we prioritize something today, that doesn't mean anything other than if there's an opportunity, uh they will they will inform us of that and we will move forward on that item.

Um again, the short session is really um a different strategy than the long session.

That was something that was uh very clear to us during our legislative committee, I think last week.

And uh at this moment, the only thing really on the table as far as sponsorship for our delegation is the speed limit bill.

Um the other kind of spaces are around kind of advocacy and opportunities.

Councilmember Kopek, I saw your hand up.

Yes, thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

So the ones that I have on my mind are first of all the speed limit uh uh issue, which it sounds like that could be a local bill that would be filed.

So my understanding is as part of this process, we would just need to decide as a council if that would move forward.

Um then you asked about other local bills.

And the other one that I saw on the list of all the priorities uh on the slides that I think would fall in that category is around the move to even year elections.

I just wanted to dig uh more into your comment um uh Derek about uh what the path forward could be on that if it was the will of the council given the short timetable uh and what steps would need to be taken there.

And then the third is I'd like to talk about the renewable energy bucket, but I'll wait to get your feedback on the first two first.

So I think uh in it's my understanding that the council has moved forward with the um the request of a local bill on um the change for speed limits on municipal or on DOT roads within uh the city previously.

So I think that that's something that the legislative delegation is aware of uh that we can move relatively quickly on and could pursue opportunities that arise throughout the session.

Well it's helpful to also just as we learn into this uh to be on the same page about the the process too.

So my understanding is that was the one item where there was consensus among the legislative committee, which does then make it a majority of the council.

Uh and I also will just say that I'll give a thumbs up on that, uh, even if I don't need to.

Um but I appreciate the work of the legislative committee to come to consensus on that issue for a local bill.

But I just feel like it's useful here for others of us to voice support or not support for it too.

Um but is that where I understand that's at uh in terms of the process?

There was consensus at the legislative committee, but if there was, I mean, we wanted the opportunity to really have the full council weigh in.

And so that was a decision that the legislative committee made was that we had we wanted it to be fully discussed with the full council.

And so if there were, you know, real adamant like no's, I think then we need to have a conversation about that.

I I'm not seeing anybody being like no.

So I think that in that case.

Oh, okay, go ahead, Councilmember Burris.

Thank you.

And John, now that you say it passed right makes complete sense how you were like kind of talking.

But um under no circumstance, why ever support moving our municipal elections to an even year?

Um I have worked in electoral politics for a very long time.

I have worked in of the state level and the at large programming.

When you make the ballot longer, it it kind of might materialize to voter suppression.

And so I'll be concerned about how that would impact that goes to the cost, but I haven't been presenting anything outside of something without Yeah.

And so that's where I'm gonna be it.

And I've been opposed to that for a very long time, and I'll never be in a situation where I support that.

Thank you, Councilmember Burris.

We're just talking about the speed limit one right now.

Well, I just wanted to be ex- you know.

No, that's fine.

Um so specifically on the speed limit local legislation, um, which was the I'm sorry.

Yeah, just just on the speed limit one.

Um it didn't seem like there was any real uh disagreement there.

So and I'm seeing head nods yes.

Um so that one can move forward.

Go ahead, Councilmember Russ.

Just to clarify, so it's so it's not 25 on state roads.

It's state it's 25 on all roads across the city.

Right, correct.

So and I'll allow um Aaron to weigh in on the difference between those two.

Good afternoon, Avery with the Durham City Attorney's Office.

So currently we have the authority to change um municipal roads, any roads that the city operates, and we could do that by ordinance, and we'd have to put a sign out on each of those roads to make that um speed limit um uh enforceable.

In order to change the entire city, which would include NC DOT roads, we would need some sort of legislative action by the General Assembly.

Correct, correct.

Because otherwise the default is 35, right?

So it's because I think Derek said it was on state roads.

So it's like it's on all the roads.

Yes, it would be it it would be on anything in the in the uh within the city limits, which would include the NTD road into DOT roads, which we currently do not have the authority to make changes to NC DOT speed limits.

We have authority on the city.

But on city municipal roads, city roads that the city of Durham operates, we do have the authority to reduce those reduce or increase the speed limits currently under State.

But we'd have to post it.

That's the thing.

Yes, we just would allow us to like reduce it.

The default would be 20 overall overall, and we wouldn't have to post on every road.

Right.

You wouldn't have to post everywhere.

It would be those uh those larger green signs when you're coming into the municipality, it says what the speed limits are.

If you're familiar with those, it would be that type of sign that this legislation would allow.

Thanks.

Thank you.

So I think on that one we're good.

That one will go move forward.

I think the other two um opportunities around local bills um for this session that we did talk about uh pretty extensively at our legislative committee was around the falls lake rules and um the even year elections.

And I think where we left it was that not necessarily pursuing uh a local bill, but if there were opportunities uh to have conversations to um participate, if there was another community that was potentially asking for things around their elections um that that we were interested in that opportunity.

That's where we left it at legislative committee.

Um I don't know, Councilmember Rister Cook, if you wanted to share anything else.

Um but that's kind of how we left that conversation.

I don't know, Councilmember Rist, if you want to talk a little bit about the Falls Lake rules, because that is important.

Um and we do need to to um have a strategy around that.

So on falls, like I think we did talk about that briefly at the meeting.

I don't think that there's no specific request at this point.

It's just that we want to maintain maximum flexibility as we go forward with the rules readoption process in the falls that we have the ability to to do whatever sort of is in the best interest of the city, but also work potentially with other communities who have similar challenges in their watershed.

So um yeah.

So I think that that's just so no specific request, but just want to maintain that ability to do that.

Yes, right.

So do folks feel comfortable with that item and that strategy on that on that one.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then the last one, and Councilmember Burris, you your um your discomfort was heard.

Uh is there um any conversations we want to have on even year elections and where folks uh are again, it's not necessarily a local bill.

It's just if there's opportunity, other communities are starting to move their elections to even years.

And so if there are conversations happening, our lobbyists would kind of just let us know.

And if we want to um again strategically join those conversations.

Councilmember Cook.

Thank you.

Yes, so we talked about this at the legislative meeting and and just for clarification, our our decision at the legislative meeting was to come with no um uh no suggestions for the whole council.

We wanted to have everything in front of the council to discuss without any necessarily.

Yes.

Well, yeah, I think I think actually all of them was what we decided, even though we were all in agreement on the speed limit one.

I voiced this at the at the legislative meeting.

I'm going to just reinstate that this is the lowest of my priorities.

And pretty severe equity concerns with it.

I know we had talked about potentially ballot.

So I do there's some ways that feel a little bit more palatable to me in this moment.

But yeah.

Potential question, this is going to be like the last of the priorities for me.

So I let those down on this one.

We're going to think across the board on this as it was another first priority.

It feels like we are we've sort of like ranked up both topics for me.

We've been talking a lot about political power.

Oh, I'm not mine's just not talking.

It's dying.

Well let's just assume that was like the most beautiful speech you've ever heard.

I did get a long email.

I got a long voicemail on my uh message uh on my phone about my use of the word like and not speaking well enough in public.

So anyway, um let's just assume that was perfect.

But yes, I think that this is uh I'm very concerned about our uh political standing and and power, and I think I want to be really conscientious and intentional about how we use it, um, even if it is just in support of other bills and municipalities that are moving forward.

I think we have a lot of pretty major priorities listed throughout this uh that I would support above this one.

So I think what to do with this is just on.

Did you see it?

Oh, okay.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember Cook.

Go ahead, Councilmember Kopak.

Yeah, thank you.

So I'm glad to see this one on the list of uh consider uh issues under consideration.

Um I think in terms of any uh well first of all, like I'll echo that you know I would you know trust and want to follow the recommendations uh of our advisors in this area around is mine too.

Okay.

Um I'll try and lean in and see if that helps, but otherwise uh we'll get the other mic.

Um council member.

Why not we pass it on the well?

Okay.

Knocking everything over here.

I've been a mess today.

All right.

Oh, and this is permanently on, so we can just pass it around.

Uh so first of all, yes, it was would welcome guidance on any legislation we want to bring forward or join in terms of understanding its potential to um, you know, bring back, you know, sort of ire and harm upon uh our city.

And so I I definitely am uh uh supportive of of of hearing that advice about where to be cautious.

Um in terms of this or any suggestions around electoral reform.

I always think it's really critical to uh analyze it.

And so I'd want to know what the steps would be for the city to to look into the issue of even years.

Um it sounds like there's uh you know uh valid opinions, concerns uh as well as support for this issue, and it'd be good to do an analysis to understand what the impacts could be of this this shift.

Um, I uh would uh you know be in favor of the idea of having much higher voter participation and also saving money.

Um if there are other reasons to be concerned, we should uh we should hear those.

I guess my question is is so it sounds like the recommendation at this time isn't to make this a local bill.

Um, you know, it was to consider it as one to join in on.

Uh I would I would support that with the caveat is like I would like to to to study it to assess it.

So I guess the question is what is the process for looking into that, who does that um in order to look and see what would some of the pros and cons be of a move to even year elections.

Um well member might thank you.

Um the legislature kind of works, especially as it relates to local elections, is it gives us the opportunity to attach language to an already drafted bill.

One of those can be a local election omnibus bill, where it would cover multiple municipalities in North Carolina, you move beyond a local bill uh when you have 15 or more uh local government entities that are part of it.

Those bills require governor's signature.

Anything that's uh less than 15 requires just a simple majority from both chambers of the legislature.

Um so with language like this, we will be looking for um if it was a priority uh prerogative of council to insert it into a local elections omnibus bill.

And sometimes honestly, it's in bills that actually have nothing to do with local elections.

Um there has been a move to some down east uh school boards, move those elections from nonpartisan to partisan.

Uh there are certain um municipalities and um across the state that have had to change their terms in their election years.

Uh I think Greensboro about 10 years ago, and there might be some others that we could recall.

Um so this would be a process where we'll be looking out for what's coming.

Um if we understand that there's a local election omnibus bill, we would go back, share that information with both Carmesha and Aaron to give that information to council, um, maybe even the legislative committee, so you all know what's going on in real time.

But more than anything, it's about updating USS stuff moves.

I'm sorry, Carnish.

Um I I'll also add um this is not a new request.

This request has come before previous councils.

The City Attorney's Office has done some research on it.

Um so I can certainly do some follow-up with with Aaron and I know I think it was Kim who actually um did the work.

In addition to that, Mayor Williams has made a request of uh Derek Bowens to come to of uh what's Derek's title?

I forgot his title.

Director of Board of Elections.

And so he's been invited to a work session in May to make a presentation.

So um so not sure that that will be an analysis, but at least I know he Derek has uh Director Bowens has some cost-related information.

So between the information that we already have from the attorney's office along with the information from Director Bowens, I'm sure we can um answer some additional questions.

I would want to see that analysis from uh attorney Redberg.

Uh and with that in mind, I'd would lend support to keeping an eye out for those opportunities while we we do our uh analysis, and then I guess at some point it would then require uh a decision uh like a trigger in the future about going forward or not if the opportunity arose.

Uh but at this point, in terms of keeping eye out for those opportunities, while we get more information, I would support that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Baker, I think I saw your hand.

Yeah.

Um I am definitely open to to the uh an analysis and and conversation where I currently am, I'm in in line with um Councilmember Burris on this one.

I think um it's it's very enticing to look at higher voter turnout uh that we would get and see in even year races.

Um, I think that we would see a lot more people who are showing up to vote for the Senate or voting for uh the president who turn over their ballot and have really no idea who the people are at the back of the ballot on the bottom of the ballot.

Um whereas I think in even in odd years, we we have much more uh educated uh folks who are interested, who are paying attention um in local races.

I think that makes it incumbent upon us.

It is our job to to increase the the turnout for those those odd year races.

We need to get people excited.

We need to show people that it matters that they vote uh in local races.

Um I do think that we can have I I would be interested in in a in an even bigger conversation.

Should there be other local races on the even on the odd years?

Um, should school board move to odd years.

Um and should this really be a focus on local elections.

I also think that it's really important.

It's almost like annual maintenance, annual democratic maintenance, you know, pounding the pavement, get making sure people's addresses are up to date, um, maintenance on, you know, making sure people are registered to vote, checking in on those things.

Um I think there's a lot of benefit to doing that year after year.

I also think that it opens us up to we get to be advocates in even year races.

Uh we all get to be kind of on the same page.

We we we we find our differences here, but we tend we get to be on on the same page for the most part in um with some exceptions on on even year races.

We get to get out there and advocate for the people who we know will uh be advocating for Durham in those even year races.

And so I think that that is another really important reason.

So for all those reasons, I support uh keeping our local race uh during the the odd years, but I'm I'm definitely open to some conversations about how we can make it better and make it make it work better for for the residents of Durham.

Is there anyone else?

Councilmember I have a couple comments.

I was a thanks to all my colleagues for the comments.

I think this is obviously like a discussion.

I don't think I need to sort of re um rename all the issues you all raised.

I think I mean I can thank them with with Councilmember Cook that essentially I'm interested in this conversation, but it's sort of my lowest priority.

So thank you.

Um I think where I'm at is if there's opportunity, I'm kind of where Councilmember Kopak is.

This is a conversation that's come up, I feel like three or four times since I've been on council.

This is not new.

Every council talks about it.

Um appreciate the analysis is going to get sent to us.

I think if there's opportunity, I am interested in moving towards even years.

I think honestly, at the end of the day, getting permission of the General Assembly, we did talk about this at legislative committee.

There's three areas that folks have talked about when it comes to municipal elections that have come up every year almost since 2018 since when I first joined the council.

It's moving to even years.

It's lengthening the term of the mayor, and it's making ward seats or districted seats, real ward districted seats.

Those are the three issues.

And so in my mind, I think ultimately I do think the voters actually have to decide if they want that.

And I would propose, like if we were able to get the authority from the General Assembly, we would then put it our that action would then come to us to put back in front of the voters for all three things.

And so it would basically be a modernization of municipal elections.

And if the voters want their things even years, they get to decide.

If they want their mayor term to be four years, they get to decide.

And if they want true districts, they get to decide.

So it's actually one of the reasons I also like bonds.

You you want a better PCI score or whatever on your roads, and it's going to cost 35 million.

Well, maybe your taxes have to go up and you ultimately get to decide whether you want your taxes to go up.

So that's kind of my um thought, and that's what we talked about legislative committee.

So if there's an opportunity, sure, I'm kind of like, no, I don't want to waste too much political capital on it, but I I think it could be uh a good robust conversation in the city of Durham of what are we doing with elections at the municipal level.

So that's where I am at colleagues.

Are folks at least comfortable?

Councilmember Burris, I know you noted you're a flat no, but for those others, are folks comfortable with at least the kind of approach of if there's an opportunity, please pursue it.

I think it was if there's an opportunity, let us know.

Yeah, but I mean pursue it.

Bring it back to us to make a decision at that time.

Okay.

Are folks comfortable with that?

I mean, I guess my question is so like this is a fast moving process.

If if there's an opportunity, then let us know.

We'll decide then.

Uh is is that a realistic I think piece of the agenda, right?

It's worth considering if this is something the councils and I can a lot from me should weigh in.

I I want to highlight something that uh Baptist said it's it's it's there are opportunities because there are several bills that go through the General Assembly.

And sometimes it can be tucked in something else.

So there is an opportunity.

It's just a matter of whether we want our state delegation to use their political capital to advance that portion of any bill on our behalf.

So I th I so to say is there opportunity there will be opportunities.

So um what do we want to do with them?

Yeah.

So is it possible that if we if there were an opportunity and we got the legislature to say, like, sure, Durham, you can do this if you want.

Does that then but we don't have to act on that, right?

We could we could say we want to put it on referendum, we don't want to like so could we at that point sort of decide what we want to do with it once we have the authority.

Can we can we just hold that card or do we does this commit us to doing something if it's in the local bill?

Well, the time when I'm thinking about other referendums that we've had, like a parent mill.

Um we were granted the authority, but we had to make a decision at certain date.

And that that date was included in the bill.

Right.

And so and the other thing is it doesn't have to happen in the short session.

It certainly could occur during the long session.

So we can do analysis, we can get the presentation, we can get some more information in this short session.

Um then as we prepare that information, then when when we approach the long session, then we can have a bit more insight of what it is that we want to do, if anything.

Uh Councilmember Burris and Councilmember Cook.

It's maybe for John.

I don't know if you remember when Raleigh did um when they switched over.

Oh, are we all dying?

Okay.

Um when Raleigh did their um they changed for the I think it was during the pandemic, they put the bill in to change their election.

So they didn't they didn't require them to go back to the voters.

It actually became law once they lobbied the state, and so it didn't require any intervention for voters, right?

Okay.

That's correct.

Okay, hold on, John.

Um there are different solutions or situations for different areas of the state.

This past legislative session, um, there was a city out west or a county out west who all the municipalities in the county were not in favor of uh particular change to move from nonpartisan to partisan.

Uh however, the agreement that they determined with their legislative delegation was to take it to a ballot.

So that was kind of a negotiated solution.

But by and large, most of the election election changes are happening by uh the general assembly's authority and by no uh requirement of the voters.

Thank you.

Councilmember Cook.

Yeah, I'm I I don't want to go delve too much into this, but I do feel like y'all have limited time and energy.

And uh we've got some big priorities, particularly in this short session.

So for me, I'm I am like not interested in pursuing this at all.

So that's that's a hard note for me.

I'm I'm if y'all have limited time, I want you to be in rooms talking about some other things that are impacting us, I think a little bit more intensely at the I'm gonna stop there, but I think colleagues know what we're talking about.

Councilmember Cook, might I add this, is that if there is a consensus from council, we will not actively pursue it.

I think we would just actively monitor the situation.

And if things do arise, we'll communicate that.

But also understanding as well, if if we're not being proactive, there's a very limited window for action.

And some of these, especially local bills, I was working on one of the school system last year.

I have like two two days react before it went to the floor.

And so, and especially when they have you know regularly occurring uh board meeting, um, these things can be very, very difficult to reach a decision and consensus all.

So are we, colleagues?

Because I'm hearing and the mayor is not here.

I do want to say that he is an advocate for moving to even years.

So I by my I think there's three or four of us who are okay with it moving forward.

Maybe it's not a huge priority.

There's two of us who are not really interested, and there's maybe one maybe.

That's kind of how I'm tallying it, but I'm not a hundred percent sure if that's accurate or not.

Sounds like an accurate assessment.

Okay, so I think that then there is enough enough of council that is at least interested in in furthering those conversations if there's opportunities.

Okay.

Based on the conversations at the legislative committee with the mayor as well.

Thank you.

Um, we are gonna go to just kind of our large buckets.

Um housing, uh environmental quality and resilience, transit and uh transit and transportation.

Um each bucket, if folks just want to again do they like the approach, is there something that they don't want in there?

Uh do they have a question about something, or is there something um missing that they would like us to move forward on the Go ahead, Councilmember Kopak?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem.

Um so I had emailed you some of this uh about, or maybe you've all seen this at this point.

Um, under the renewable energy development bucket, um, I think there's a really interesting opportunity in what's referred to as balcony solar or plug-in solar.

I'm sorry, Councilmember Kopak, can we just go by like let's do housing first because that's the very first one, and then we'll go to environmental um and I that was on me, I wasn't clear.

Uh under the housing Absolutely.

Thank you.

Under the housing, do you all see the several bulleted lists?

Is there anything that add and again this is just kind of spaces opportunity advocacy?

This is not uh asking our delegation members for any actual bills or action.

Um is there anything that folks are feeling isn't reflected, not a priority uh or folks comfortable with this kind of approach under housing.

I am not hearing one way or the other, so I'm gonna assume we're good.

And go uh go ahead, Councilmember Cook.

Can you just talk about a couple of things?

And I know we talked about them a little bit at the legislative meeting, but the um the tax loopholes we had a conversation about, and that does seem to be like kind of moving.

Uh so I want to I want my colleagues to hear about that.

And then um the first bullet is very vague.

So I'm wondering if you can flush those flesh that out for us.

Sure.

John Clip is in here.

Um so I'll speak to the first bullet point.

Um right now there are a number of uh opportunities at the General Assembly related to housing supply, whether it's related to zoning reform or incentive-based programs.

I think last session there were nearly 30 bills filed, um, some of which are still eligible to move forward during the short session.

So we wanted to make sure that uh we are representing the desires of council to find opportunities to help Durham increase housing supply and to provide any sort of uh whether it be financial or otherwise opportunities within the city uh to do just that.

Um so we tried to make sure that we represented the desires of council in a way that was fairly broad, I'll admit.

Um but if there are any specifics that come up throughout session, we'll flag those for you.

Um and then I have my notes here for the uh nonprofit uh affordable housing tax loophole.

Um currently many nonprofit housing developments qualify for exemption under the general charitable property tax statute.

Um and there is a loophole that is was exposed through a court case a few years ago that's had a a pretty drastic impact on the amount of property tax revenue that has come in to cities and counties effectively for-profit developers are adding one seat to their board, reclassifying their project as a nonprofit project, and then uh you know not meeting the requirements for low or moderate income uh affordable housing for that project.

Uh so the proposal right now in the House Select Committee on property tax reform would be to close that loophole, um, kind of create a new um affordable renter uh property tax statute within the general statutes and uh make some other minor adjustments to kind of close up that loophole.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um I just I wanted to catch everybody up on that because I do think that one is potentially Oh, sorry.

That's okay.

I don't know what it's gonna be.

Sorry.

It wasn't used to the cord.

Um the the committee also asked uh the city attorney's office to do some research into other states that that may have similar provisions.

Um I had Brenda Neal uh assist me with that research and looking at other states, there are what we in the states we looked at, we did not find any states that have a similar loophole that North Carolina does.

The only state that we um that had something in the hopper was Virginia, where they are looking at currently they do not have to be a hundred percent nonprofit ownership, but there is a bill that's being proposed um currently in this session in Virginia that looks at um changing the ownership structure to allow both a nonprofit and for-profit to share ownership ownership in a way um similar to North Planet, however, the nonprofit has to have majority um controlling interest of of the entity.

So I just wanted to share that.

That was a request of the committee that we do that research.

And go go ahead, Councilmember Cook.

And then I think I saw Councilmember Baker's hand and then Councilmember Rist.

Thank you.

So um thank you.

Thank you for that background.

Um I am good with most of these.

I do want to be specific that it's uh for the first point of like increasing housing supply that specifically I'm looking at methods of increasing affordable housing supply and also in um in methods of ensuring that the housing supply is actually utilized.

Uh so I would like I'm happy to keep it pretty vague, but to me it's broader than just increasing.

I don't I don't need more tools to incentivize more vacant market rate housing, for example.

So I think um Councilmember Cook, one of the uh main items that came up during uh last year's uh legislative discussion and the previous session was the issue of ADUs accessory dwelling units.

Um and so as we um talk about increasing housing supply, uh that is one of the main ways that the legislature has looked at.

It's been a very contentious issue.

And so that's something that we'll continuously monitor as well.

Thank you.

And I know that doesn't necessarily impact Durham because we we've done that.

But I think it's still a good opportunity to be uh to pay attention to those conversations.

Uh Councilmember Baker, go ahead.

Yeah.

Um I the uh same same kind of question as as uh Councilmember Cook.

I'm I'm not quite sure I understand the first bullet point, but I support definitely support the second one, the third, I I support all the all the other bullet points.

I think they are very straightforward, make a lot of sense.

Um again, I'm not sure I understand the first one, but if it is kind of leaning toward what the second bullet point is, then yeah, support that.

Thank you.

Uh councilmember Riston.

I just wanted to also again uh back to the tax loophole and just confirm.

So when you said and we talked about this at the at the at the uh at the session.

I'm trying to recall.

Right.

So um you say close a loophole, say more about what that means.

Because I know that um as we talked about here, we've we did at least one of these projects in Durham Pearson Flats, right?

Which was 100% affordable, no city subsidy, uh, well though the tax credit.

Um so is closing that mean just kind of tightening up the ownership structure or eliminating that possibility?

It's to tighten up the ownership structure, right?

Right.

And there are in the way that the bill is structured right now, um, it would still aim to support gov or aim to uh maintain government supported projects so long as there's affordability uh targets that are met.

Um I think it's specified uh in the bill um for at least 15 years.

Um so the the aim of the the intent of the legislation is to make sure that um affordable projects can continue, but to make sure that uh for-profit developers are not just using the loophole to avoid paying taxes.

Like a shell kind of thing, where there's like a one percent.

Okay, that's great.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I have a for did you have your hand up?

No?

Okay.

No, okay.

Um with the with that piece, it's it's because also the the ownership threshold is so low.

Are there also just discussions of like increasing the threshold, but not necessarily like getting rid of private?

Because I think in some cases it's not a terrible idea to have private companies doing some of this.

It does take the burden off government in some like to Councilmember uh to Councilmember Risk's point, we didn't have to subsidize anything with city dollars on that project.

So it's a good tool.

It's just kind of being abused.

So I guess that's where I'm trying to, I don't want to say no, you can't have anything, but I think is it like one percent?

They only have to have like one percent in the stake of a company or something very low, and that seems deeply unfair.

Yes, point zero uh point zero.

Yeah, like that's that that's a shell game command now.

Um but you know, okay, you put 15 percent in or whatever it is.

So I just want to have a better understanding of the legislation that's that's already been introduced.

And we can um share some insight onto the bill as it's currently drafted, and we expect the uh committee, the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reform is gonna meet again next Wednesday uh at 10 a.m.

and they're gonna review all these proposals and have mentioned that they aim to take a vote to vote these out of the committee.

So there may be changes between now and then.

And so you'll flag for us.

Okay, perfect.

So other than the questions asked, are folks generally okay with the housing uh bucket?

Okay, so we're gonna move on to the next one.

Environmental.

Oh, sorry, go ahead, council member.

I don't I don't need to belabor this point, but this conversation is so sad.

I mean, the overton window is so tiny.

I know everyone probably agrees with this.

I think I just needed to needed to say it out loud.

Like the things that we're talking about here are just not at all addressing our core, our core needs.

Um I think everyone agrees with that, but I just want to say it out loud.

We know where we are, we know where we live.

Um thank you.

Under environmental quality and resilience, Councilmember Kopac, I think you had an item.

Yes, thank you.

And this sort of gets at the question of the state of of where we are, trying to identify items that align with our values uh as a city that you know that can potentially move, right?

Because they've shown evidence of of having support in the state and and and other places, and that there's like a practical way to pursue it too, because there's like you know, real legislation being discussed.

And so that's a framework I tried to bring in mind to get a little bit more specific about the renewable energy development.

Um so first of all, say, you know, the idea is specifically around what's called balcony or plug-in solar.

These are smaller um uh uh uh sort of uh uh you know modules that can be plugged into a regular outlet, um, often are less complex from an installation standpoint, which reduces cost, can be easy to have them hanging off a balcony, uh, on a deck, uh, on a roof.

Uh and they are a tool that uh states have started to avail themselves of across the country, um, including in places that are um you know much more liberal progressive, places that are more conservative, um, because it is uh uh a tool that helps address this big challenge we're facing in Durham and across the country around energy affordability and uh in energy you know costs being being being driven up uh for a variety of reasons.

And uh it's particularly been shown to be helpful, beneficial for folks who are renters uh who uh otherwise wouldn't be doing um installation on the place that they live, and and also that would be something that's bigger scale, it's smaller and can be a bit more DIY in places too.

So um I've heard that there are actually discussions about this being potentially included in uh a bill around zero export solar uh that's been discussed.

I want to be careful about trying to uh lend support to all the parts of a bill that I don't know uh might be in it for now.

And I've heard from the environmental community that there are some concerns about things that might get put into a broader piece of legislation.

Um but I think in terms of something that's very tactical, something that helps address issues that we care about, uh something that has an actual chance of making it through and that there's a vehicle that could do it.

This seems like it has uh a lot of benefit.

And so I wanted to put it forth to my colleague as something more specific.

I'm not recommending it as something that Durham would take the lead on, um, but something that um you know we work with where we we have relationships where it may be moving to signal uh support for it, as long as that support will help the bill and not hurt it with Durham's role um, you know, speaking in support of it.

So I wonder if folks have any questions about that or or you know, thank you, Councilmember Kopak.

Anyone have any questions or suggestions I'm personally comfortable with adding it uh to the to the point that you made, Councilmember Kopak, just again, the the general approach of advocacy if there's opportunity, uh knowing that we're we're not gonna take the lead on it.

But I'm not sure we're okay.

I've got one thumbs up.

I just Okay, we're good.

Thank you.

We're good on environmental quality and resilience.

Is anyone else have any questions on that approach?

Carmesha, do you Ms.

Wallace, do you have no no?

We're good?

Okay.

Um transportation.

Anyone have anything takeaway add conversation discussion?

Yes, ma'am.

Go ahead, Councilmember Burris.

Can we just um explain to me the authorization of local transit revenue options?

Like what is that entail?

For uh since the passing of the PAV Act in Mecklenburg County this past year um by a referendum on the ballot, uh it authorized uh additional one cent on the dollar sales tax for uh I believe it's uh 60 percent for transportation funding, 40 percent for transit funding um aimed at expanding light rail services across Mecklenburg County and beyond.

Um that authorization has been mentioned by um uh members in the General Assembly as an option that could go to other communities across the state and other counties across the state.

Um uh Mecklenburg County has a transit authority at this point of uh I believe it's 27 members.

Um so certainly uh something in Durham may not be as um uh uh as large.

However, the involvement from uh every layer of government in Mecklenburg County and business groups, business alliance, um, help usher that across the finish line.

I think once we see some um value proposition from that, there may be some opportunity to replicate that across the state.

So uh could be an option for you all.

Thank you for that explanation.

Um does anyone have any other further questions?

Conversation?

Are we good with this bucket?

Yep.

Okay.

I'm seeing uh alignment, and then we already talked about the other things.

So I think Oh, go ahead, Councilmember Wrist.

Didn't come up at the legislative committee meeting, but I also wonder, like in the past there have been, you know, there'll be the General Assembly will propose, you know, preempting this or that, all kinds of things.

So in terms of like defensive posture, like what happens if there's a bill that comes up to preempt, I don't know, like school lunches or whatever or some of your jobs, some crazy like so.

Will you let us know if there's something that that comes up that could preempt something we do in Durham that you know have no idea, just so we know these things are happening.

Oh and well and can you help us if something like that comes up?

Yeah, as uh as I told you, you know, um we we're trying to be proactive, but mostly representing municipalities puts us at a defensive posture.

Uh I also got to commend uh Aaron Maus because on every call she's gonna ask me about 20 or 30 bills that she's monitoring for the city of Durham and making sure that, hey, you know, we've got this program in Durham.

I need to make sure it doesn't affect us.

So I promise you that we are proactive on that engagement.

Thank go ahead, Councilmember Baker.

Have you all worked at all um with municipalities on tax increment financing?

Because I know that that enabling legislation in North Carolina, if it even exists, is very clunky in the state.

And I'm wondering it's not we've used synthetic TIFS, but I I'm I'm not sure if we have all the enabling legislation that we could have that other states have for tax increment financing.

We do not.

And I think that um in bygone eras of the General Assembly and legislators that have come and gone, there was a a reason at the time for why they did not want that uh to be an option in North Carolina.

Um there are several notable examples across the state and across the country with that did not play out well.

Not to say that there would be any issue moving forward, uh, but I think it's a bit of a hangover on on past policy decisions, and that's why it's not been approached here recently.

Okay.

Um did you have did you go ahead?

Um conversations about TIFF uh surface from time to time, especially I know legal municipalities uh has talked about it.

There is legislation in the state, but as as our consultants advised, um there's a a bit of a bad taste in the mouth of of the General Assembly, but to their point, I think um if council has a particular concept in mind or process, I would certainly bring it to us.

We will work with our advisors to determine, you know, if if there are red flags or possibilities to move forward.

Um, you know, uh my personal opinion is uh is I know TIFF has been used very effectively across the country in a lot of situations, and there's a lot of frustration in the state that it does not have the reputation in the state that it has around the rest of the country as a fairly bread and butter uh economic development tool and infrastructure funding source.

Yeah, I mean, any, you know, we can't get state income tax.

We can't do a lot of things with uh finding revenue.

And so this is kind of a way of trick for getting some revenue around redevelopment projects.

Of course, it can be used very well.

It can also be used very poorly.

Um I am interested in um having adding that tool to the toolbox.

Um go ahead, Councilmember.

I'll say that one.

So um appreciate raising the issue, like not a fan of TIFFs.

So for the work I've done historically around incentive reform around economic development, it's a tool that's been abused as well.

So I I would have some serious questions.

I'm not a big fan.

Thank you.

Um seeing as it's five and the legislative committee will be meeting again.

Would folks like your idea, Councilmember Baker, if we just continue that conversation?

Is that are you comfortable with that?

Okay.

So we're not gonna add that at this this time.

I think you all have a a lot on your plate.

Um I think we are done.

So appreciate Councilmember Riss.

So just one last question about this question about like what's the proper way?

Is it the like regular weekly standing call?

We know there's issues around.

Do we get a quorum of the legislative committee?

Like, what is our what's the best plan for keeping us updated about what's going on to give you the information you know, but also not to overlay burden and come encumber you all in your in the work you're doing.

I just want to make sure we're clear on that sort of process for communicating.

Yeah, and I appreciate that.

Um we do this work.

Um we're proud of this work, we're committed to this work.

I want to acknowledge um Aaron Miles, who's been a tremendous partner from the city attorney's office.

Um at last week's legislative committee meeting, you made the ask that we have uh that we meet.

Um yesterday was the first day of that standing meeting.

So if it is the desire of the legislative committee to continue um the recurring meetings that I created, we're happy to do that.

We meet every other week.

Um and then once the General Assembly goes in this session, we will be meeting every week.

That's that's just a standing time.

We communicate on the regular.

So it's totally up to to the council and legislative committee how you'd like to be informed.

If the the weekly meetings do not work, then we can certainly communicate um uh try to be mindful about what we put in writing, full disclosure.

So it's just a matter of what works best.

So if you want to do something different, certainly let us know.

Thank you.

I think uh if folks are comfortable right now, we do have that sta standing mini meeting.

I think we should just stick to that for now and see how it goes uh and then maybe change tactics if we need to.

Councilmember Cook, you have a a question on that.

And then Councilmember Burris, you had something, right?

If Attorney Miles wants to speak to this or someone else, but I think that this the standing meeting as it is now is a bit complicated with noticing.

Um so I think that's we're trying to maybe find a workaround from that.

Okay, got it.

So that's what I I did not attend on Wednesday because I was like, oh, maybe there's there's no quorum now.

Yes.

So we will have to notice those meetings.

Um and we likely will have to move them to a Zoom platform to allow for public participation.

Um I just that is we did mention that at the meeting yesterday.

Um moving forward, if the meetings do continue, we will have to notice them.

They'll get added to, I believe, the week the weekly calendar that identifies the public meeting, and then we have to.

Seems onerous.

Okay.

So uh I think why don't we um I mean last year I would just bother Carmesha a lot.

I bother Ms.

Wallace a lot.

Um so that that was just how I got up to speed on what was happening.

I understand that everyone has limited time.

But um maybe um since that I I agree with you, Councilmember Cook, I don't think that that's the right approach.

Um let's go ahead.

Go ahead.

So go ahead.

So isn't there a tool, like a legislative tracking tool that we can all I don't know if the city currently has one, but they do make the tools to where you can follow certain bills of interest and you get like an immediate update on those bills.

So I want to know if we A have access to it or if there are any recommendations for a tool that we utilize to monitor the bills of interest in the state legislator.

Absolutely.

We we use it.

It's come it's from the school of government, the legislative research um division, and there's also one that the League of Municipalities has that we use that as well.

So like maybe it can be a mix of things, like some um self- you know, study a little bit when monitor some of those bills so you want to meet or try to notice every week, but you let them tools that currently exist to kind of monitor and track those bills as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Burris.

Okay.

Hold on.

What is there something that you want to say?

And the checkmate has a distributional list, and we can we can add you all to that distributional list.

Okay, thank you.

You okay.

Uh Councilmember Bruce and Councilmember Cook.

Right.

I think that I think we're trying to sort of find the the sort of like the balance between something onerous with like having notice all the time.

That didn't seem to work.

And I think I think that thought what we talked about in the legislative committee was just having the time, whether we needed it or not.

And then there was a question yesterday about like who would make us that call.

So I'm trying to find some in the middle where because if we just individually following stuff, that doesn't mean we're as a as a council at least uh you know, a quorum or majority of us having conversations about stuff.

So if big things come up, I think we need a way that we can quickly get together, trying to find, you know, organize a call on the fly is always hard.

And so like is there something in the middle we can do?

Thank you, Councilmember Cook.

And then I'm gonna go ahead and just we because some of us are on legislative and that that's really a conversation for legislative committee.

I don't want to keep all of us here past the time that we're at.

So Councilmember Cook, this is the last comment on that, and then we're gonna move on.

Thank you.

I don't really need to make one, but I'm just saying the Council Member and I have talked about it.

I still in favor of keeping the time frame just not having a regular standing meeting and then leaving it up to if someone on the legislative committee or if our consultants feel like it's important given our priorities that we just voted on today that we need to have a meeting that that gets told to us and then get just goes ahead and gets noticed for that time and assumes that we will all be there.

Yes.

Okay, but I think we might need to work on the time, and that's totally fine.

Okay, so we're gonna have something a hold on our calendars, we're gonna move forward.

We're gonna have a process and we're getting a distribution list.

Okay, thank you.

Uh I'm ready to settle or colleagues.

We're gonna just so that you all are aware, I share this with the legislative committee.

The next step in the process is for me to communicate with our delegation.

I heard one uh local bill request.

So this is not a new request for them, so this this shouldn't be problematic.

The next thing is to schedule the legislative breakfast.

I have been communicating with your administrative coordinator for weeks to identify your availability.

Identify Wednesdays in the month of April.

There is no Wednesday in the month of April that all of you are available.

So I have shared dates with our delegation.

I'm waiting to hear back from them, but that is the next step in the process.

But I will move forward with at least making them aware of this one local bill request.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Wallace.

Go ahead.

Yeah, we should all want to be there for the legislative part.

So what is the day we're looking at?

We're not gonna do that now.

We're gonna talk to our admin coordinators who are our very amazing folks who help us not drive other staff crazy and coordinate ourselves.

Thank you.

Um settling the agenda, uh Manager Ferguson.

Thank you, Mayor Pratem, Council members, appreciate a good meeting today.

So to settle the agenda, uh we have uh on consent items two through eighteen and item twenty-five, uh and on GBA public hearing items twenty-one through twenty-four.

Thank you.

Could I get a motion to settle the agenda?

So move.

Second.

Have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

I think that is all the business in front of us today.

We are adjourned at 5.07.