And that is fine.

All right, good afternoon, everybody.

Thanks for coming to the meeting.

First order is the Pledge of Allegiance.

If we can please stand, I'll lead us.

I'm going to turn it over to the city manager because we have a recognition and special awards.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

If we can have Stephen Bentley come to the podium.

It is my honor and privilege to acknowledge our Parks Recreation and Cultural Resources Director as he kind of brags on some of the work that his staff has been doing along with this elected body, along with the city's management team, and along with the community to bring our parks um forward in a way that is exciting and in a way that celebrates who we are as a community.

So that I won't steal his thunder, I will turn it over to Stephen Bentley.

Yeah, thank you, City Manager Adams David, and thank you to my supervisor uh Nikki Jones.

Both have been fully supportive of what I'm going to talk about today.

Three years ago when the city manager made me director, I said, I want us to be nationally accredited, and she's like, Are you sure?

And I said, Yes, I'm confident.

So we are here today.

Um I'm Stephen Bentley, Director of Raleigh Parks.

Uh thank you, Mayor and Council for giving us a few minutes today.

Uh I'm excited to share that the Raleigh Parks Department, Parks Recreation and Cultural Resources Department made a significant milestone the last 18 months by becoming nationally accredited.

Um you might ask, well, Stephen, what does that mean?

Uh there is an organization called the National Recreation and Park Association, which has a group called the Commission for Accreditation for Parks and Recreation Agencies, better known as Capra.

Uh it's the only national accreditation program for park agencies in the country.

And to put into context, there's about 10,000 park agencies in the United States, and approximately 2% are nationally accredited.

And to be even more, we scored perfect.

So there's a hundred and fifty-four standards we have to meet.

That's fiscal management, that's planning, that's community engagement, that's safety.

Because our community deserves it.

Of course, as the director, I had the opportunity to stand on stage with some of my peers in this picture.

But I didn't do a lot of the work.

The work was really done by our staff.

We had uh an impact of probably 60 to 70 staff that were involved.

There's 10 chapters.

Every chapter had a team lead of which they are in this picture here today.

But they did this in addition to the duties that we asked them to do every day.

So we might have had someone take on an HR chapter, but they weren't an HR specialist, but they said I want to lead, I want to learn more about the city organization.

Same goes for fiscal management and safety.

So I have a bunch of my staff with me here today.

If you were a part of that team, could you please stand up?

I do want to give a special acknowledgement.

Stay up.

Andrea is our social accountability and strategic manager for the department and an advisor to me.

She led this entire process.

So not only did we have to submit information, we had people come and basically audit our park system.

And the four people describe uh Andre as passionate, a fierce leader, detail oriented, and relentless, which I like.

So thank you to Andrea.

Um she led with passion and compassion and coached a lot of people through leadership and really elevated the thinking for our park system.

So thank you, Andrea White, for all your commitment.

So we score it perfect.

We have to uh do this every five years.

I told the staff we have set the bar so we would be perfect again in five years.

Um but we also will um will be audited each year.

We have to submit an annual report so the work continues, it becomes a part of people's key job responsibilities and everybody's work plan.

So uh the next thing after this, we'll seek a gold medal, so we will be the next best park system in the United States.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

If we didn't already know we had a world-class park system, we know it now.

So thank you for all of our park staff for everything you do.

Absolutely.

It's your meeting now.

All right.

Next, we have the consent agenda.

And uh there was uh one item polled, which was uh the pool at Lake Johnson Park, uh Wolfpack Elite, and um otherwise, does anybody want to make a motion for the remainder?

So moved.

Second.

In favor of approving the remainder of the consent agenda, aye.

All opposed, nay.

All right, so that passes.

And then um I don't know who to turn it to, but just a discussion on the uh Lake Johnson.

And I I will just say I I just wanted to understand better.

You know, this is a uh again, we have an incredible parks department.

I lawed the initiative here.

I just want to make sure, you know, in terms of precedence that we're kind of being cautious what sort of precedent we're setting with this um transaction.

Um I I don't know again whether to refer this back to Nikki or or Steven or or where the response is, but maybe other people can just talk about their questions.

Yeah, I I too would like to find out more about it.

First, we always recognize partners who want to help uh our parks department uh with the contribution.

This one I think comes with uh uh exclusive use uh of the pool.

I just have to go back to my role as commissioner.

We we did allow exclusive use, but it was for religious purposes, those who are both Muslim and orthodox Jewish uh requested for uh modesty reasons.

So I just wanted to understand uh just the exclusive use of a lap swim uh and not somehow dividing it into two where it's available for a group to use, but also keep some of the laps uh open for the general public.

So I just had some questions about the program.

Or at least the agreement for the gift that or contribution that the city of Raleigh is going to receive.

And I believe Councillor Harrison um also has some Do you have a question or comment?

Yeah, just to kind of add to it.

Um thanks, Ken, for being here with us, and thanks for working on this partnership for you know, any accounts or the public viewing um there's an opportunity to enhance the Lake Johnson pool and to make it heated year-round in a partnership, uh, public-private partnership.

So very excited about this opportunity.

Um the only concern that you know I still hear that um I wonder if we can you know work on is the opportunity for recreational swim time, lap swimming in the summer months from 8 to 10 a.m.

That's the only time that currently uh we would have a reduction in public access.

Other than that, we would be adding public access.

So um, you know, just want to put that out there because I know some residents had still reached out to me about it.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Uh Marshall or City Manager Marshall Adam David.

Uh Ken Hissler, Assistant Director with Raleigh Parks, also pleased to uh welcome our partner, Mary Holloway, president of Wolfpack Elite.

Uh so a couple questions I can speak to is uh the focus of this project is to expand our access to community aquatics for lessons for recreational swimming and also for competitive swimming, while at the same time contributing with the financial investment in some aging infrastructure where we currently don't have the resources to be able to do that.

So a little bit of history.

This project started in 2022 as we were coming out of the pandemic.

And at that time I stood at the podium with a different direction that was given how can we expand access to our pools without putting additional pressure on city resources?

It was at that point that Wolfpack Elite approached to us and said, we would like to talk to you about the opportunity to have a dedicated time for our team to swim, and in return, we will replace your 40-year-old pool and upgrade your existing pool infrastructure, filters, pumps, those type of things to be able to do that.

So we'll bring in a heated uh pool to be able to do that.

And really in return, we're looking for guaranteed times to train.

So what we looked at when that approach came was how can we provide that access, looking at times that had little to no impact on public use.

So right now the times that they are requesting are prior to.

So we're going from 6 o'clock to 10 a.m.

Monday through Friday in the summer, and then in the winter, it's about that same time frame.

It would be till 9 a.m.

And then they would come back in the afternoon from 3 to 5.30.

So the key to this right now is it would impact as Councilmember Harrison brought forward, about an hour to an hour and a half right now.

So when we first started the arrangement, our lap swimming started at 9 o'clock.

And then this year we did open it up till 8 o'clock.

And so when we looked at those opportunities, really looking at low to no use times to let the partner come in.

In return, that $2 million investment that they will have in the pool infrastructure will allow us to create a year-round opportunity.

So just some simple math that I was looking at, we would lose about 68 hours of public access during the summer.

That's that lap swimming time that we're talking about.

In return, if I look conservatively at numbers where we would operate the middle of the day during the winter, still not sure how many people want to swim outside during November or February, we could gain as many as 960 hours of access.

If I bring that down even lower, just to weekends where we might be open 10 hours, Saturday for six, Sunday for four, we're looking at 240 hours of community access.

So instead of a loss of opportunity, you're actually getting an increase in opportunity.

Councilmember Silver, to the point of exclusive use.

We do often this often.

So any time you rent a Raleigh Parks facility, whether it be a tennis court, a gym, a pool for a swim meet, that is providing exclusive access for that group to use it without the other public in there.

I said a real key benefit to us in when came back in 2022 was the opportunity for Wolfpack Elite, because they have certified lifeguards as part of their training program.

We don't need to staff the pool when they are in there.

They would be required to provide the lifeguard, the life-saving services during that time.

We would acknowledge when they're in there through our entry process to know that they're in there, to know that they're responsible for that.

So again, we're able to expand use of the pool, provide this opportunity, and it's not putting more pressure on our staff to be able to manage it during those current time frames.

Current third-party groups when they use our pool spaces.

We provide the lifeguards, we provide the emergency operations plan in the event something happens.

So if that inside if there's any other questions or other things that I'd like to that you would like me to speak to I, for one, because I am looking through the background.

The points you just made are very compelling.

When I've been exclusive use, yes.

I'm very familiar with parks, is that there are one-off events where people have exclusive use.

This one is for an extended period of time.

I was very uh very compelling what you said about the hours lost of public use and then gained.

If somehow you can just share that with us so that as we deliberate on authorizing uh the City of Magic to continue, that we just have those facts.

So that is very important for me.

Uh we definitely want to establish partnerships, but I just want to make sure that it's uh that we do avoid just exclusive use for one organization.

If it is, it's for a very specific period of time.

So I just need a little bit more information before I feel I can vote on this one.

Uh but I do appreciate your responses, and I definitely appreciate the fact that uh there will be an increase in hours uh for the public to use.

And I guess I would just say I also I like the idea of public-private partnerships, and I know the City Parks Department is looking at more, and of course I worked on you know the Dix Park.

I just think I would like to know what the policies are, because there's naming rights, which we totally get.

That's just, you know, the right of a name.

Sometimes it's just a philanthropic donation with nothing in return.

Um then in this case, there really is, you know, almost a contractual use of of an outside third party.

So I would just like to understand more clearly as the parks go into more public-private, just understanding the guardrails and making sure that we're not trading off too much.

In this case, again, it sounds like y'all have done a great job, you know, working with the Wolfpack elite, but um just just cautious that we're you know, closing off uh facilities at times to the to the public.

Yeah, and I want uh want to underscore, we certainly appreciate the Wolfpack elite's generosity in helping out the city.

So I just want to make sure that this is not a negative message in any way.

We just want to make sure that we're very comfortable going forward.

Should this be a precedent for some future facilities?

So from my perspective, we really embrace the public-private partnership, uh, but just want to make sure in terms of some of the details about access.

For me, that would just be very helpful, just so we can kind of set uh I think a standard going forward for other type uh arrangements for a longer period of time, not just a one-off uh event or use.

Yeah, and I guess I just add, you know, if the council is amenable to hold this for two weeks uh into our next meeting, there might be an opportunity to look at any additional public swim time in that 9 a.m.

period, especially.

Right now, two out of eight lanes would be available to the public.

Can we get four?

I don't know.

Um there was also a an ask to keep that 8 a.m.

time, you know, half the lanes for the public.

So I recognize, you know, that's a negotiation that you all are working on, but that would be my ask.

Okay.

So we'll just hold it for two weeks.

Oh, yes.

Um I was just gonna add, I agree with a lot of what I'm hearing today as far as um looking forward to additional public-private partnerships.

It may be helpful to have a little more clarity, maybe a work session on what the uh goals look like and considerations.

Um, for this one today, I would be prepared to approve.

Um I think a lot of work went into it.

I think you have clearly articulated the benefits, and I think it is very clear that we're actually expanding a great deal of public access overall.

And so if the will is to hold it, that's fine.

Uh but I would be prepared to approve today, and I'm fine with having additional conversation before we see another one of these in the future.

Yeah, I would just add uh for the cover memo, everything you described, Mark would be very helpful about just the hours and how that would work.

You know, I went through both the the cover memo and then of course the actual agreement.

So that I would find very helpful to get both myself, potentially my colleagues, and the public sum comfort that it's a net gain because initially we saw this, we weren't sure.

So everything you said was extremely positive, and if those could just be added to the cover memo as an addendum, I'd appreciate that.

Okay.

Sounds like oh, do we have yes, Council?

I was gonna say I'm happy to support holding it for two weeks for further discussion about the public hours.

Okay.

Do we need a motion to do that?

Okay, I think we can just hold it.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

You need a motion.

Oh, we do need a motion to move to our net city document meeting.

Second.

Okay.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Okay.

All right.

Uh next we had the report of the Planning Commission.

Good afternoon.

By and I'm Walter, Raleigh Planning and Development.

I'm joined today by Chair of the Planning Commission, Nicole Bennett.

A reminder of some upcoming holidays.

None of these conflict with the November 4 public hearing date that we're suggesting for everything coming out of planning commission.

You do have some items scheduled for afternoon hearing at your next meeting, four items there.

And then currently on the at the November 4 meeting, there are no rezoning requests scheduled.

There is a uh joint public hearing with the Raleigh Historic Development Commission to consider two local landmark applications.

So the four items coming out of Planning Commission, we are suggesting for evening public hearing on November 4.

The first one is 2230 South New Hope.

This is on the west side of New Hope.

It doesn't include this piece.

There's a little carve out in the menus in the middle.

This is on the west side of New Hope across from a lot of what has already been built of old town.

The request is it uh would increase the residential entitlement here.

The request is consistent with comprehensive plan, future landings map.

Planning commission recommends denial here.

There were mixed opinions about the appropriateness of residential increasing residential density here.

Uh we did suggest a public hearing date of November 4 for you on the published agenda.

Since that time, the applicant has been in touch with you and me and asks, please, could you wait until your next meeting to take action to schedule that public hearing?

So could you please hold this until October 21?

The second request is uh text change to zoning conditions.

This is uh TCZ 1325 on the west side of Sunnybrook, the north side of pool.

So this would change the zoning conditions.

The base district and height would remain the same.

This is consistent with the comprehensive plan and future landings map planning commission recommends approval unanimously again, suggesting that November 4 public hearing date.

Another item, Z 1735 on Lewisburg Road.

This is on the northwest side of Lewisburg across from St.

Matthew Baptist Church.

They are uh the the applicant here.

This request is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Although it is inconsistent with the future landings map, planning commission recommends approval.

We're suggesting a November 4 date here.

The church's intention here is to develop this property for residential use to subsidize what they want to build on this other piece of property that is behind the church.

So this is a request to rezone, just under five acres.

They want to go from um R 6 to R 10.

So uh increasing the residential entitlement there.

This is consistent with the 2030 comprehensive plan as well as the futurally in use map and planning commission recommends approval.

Any questions that I or Chair Bennett could answer for you before you make a decision?

Counts uh Council.

Can you go back to uh Z 11 for one second?

And this is for Chair Bennett.

I'm just trying to understand a bit more.

As I understood you um Bynum, you said that uh it was consistent with the comprehensive plan and future land use map, yet there was a note there.

I'm assuming those were the two that were not in support, mixed opinions about the appropriateness of residential growth.

So I'm just trying to understand.

The comprehensive plan calls for residential growth.

So I'm just trying to understand the deliberations.

So I'm clear uh about how that particular case unfolded.

Sure.

So there's a motion to deny offered by a member of the commission.

Six members of the commission supported that.

So you have six folks in favor of denial.

And then there were two two folks who voted against the motion to deny.

So they thought approval was appropriate.

Uh and the heart of the discussion was around floodway and floodplain on an adjacent to the site.

Okay.

You want to, Chair Bennett, do you want to add anything?

Add a follow-up.

Yep.

Just as a follow-up to this.

So the denial was from what I read is because they wanted to add another, I think uh just under 200 units.

The denials because they want to see the commercial piece built are helped me understand.

The logic was really that additional residential density here would the folks who voted for denial were concerned that adding additional residential density density here was inappropriate given the environmental condition.

Okay.

Sure.

Good afternoon, Councilman.

Nicole Bennett, Chair Planning Commission.

Um the current zoning on this parcel prohibits residential.

The city staff report noted under detriments of the case, risk of flooding.

So we had some um those, the six of us who voted to deny, had some concern about allowing residential when the staff report is saying that there is a risk of flooding.

We were concerned about the public interest.

Even though it was consistent, we were concerned about the public interest and wondered if perhaps maybe that's why residential had been prohibited previously.

Okay.

And we're talking about the part in the blue, just so everyone is aware, not all of the red, just this case.

He's talking about down there.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So it sounds like per the applicant's email, they attended a SMAC meeting.

And that it sounds like that was at y'all's direction or encouragement.

That was at SMAC's invitation.

Okay.

Got it.

And so and they've asked to hold so that they can be responsive to the feedback they got.

And it sounds I'm just trying to I'm just trying to figure out that if they're aligned, right?

Like the feedback Smack gave might have you know be responsive to the concerns you all had too, and it sounds like it may.

I would expect yes.

We just need to set the hearing, though.

So I feel like we'll probably find out when it comes for the set the hearing.

They want us to hold it, yeah, for the 21st.

Yes.

So I I had just one additional question.

So I know that we have since the 80s and 90s gotten rid of hundred-year floodplain development.

So there's there was a lot of things allowed in areas that would not be appropriate today.

But I am curious about this contradiction that the comprehensive plan and future land use map are saying this is appropriate land.

So what is this a 500-year flood or a thousand-year flood?

And that's what's prompting this risk, and that's why we're having this this sort of disconnect between compliance with the plan.

And why would a plan recommend floodable land?

I think what you're hearing from the planning commission and SMAC is a lack of confidence in the safety stormwater regulations and not a um because what you're saying is true, right?

We have increased regulations significantly.

And so a concern that this site is sensitive and needs more than what is required as a standard regulation.

We'll hold it as well.

No, no, no.

Yeah.

I mean, I I guess I would be concerned.

Let's say somebody owned land that was a thousand-year flood and and and yet we're holding them to like a hundred-year flood.

Yeah, it's a hundred-year floodplain.

It is a hundred-year floodplain.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Right.

That's all I needed to do.

All right.

Uh we need motions on things.

Um move to see this item.

Yeah, special item on October 21st.

Okay.

Second.

Second.

Um in favor of that motion.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

All right.

So that covers just that one.

Reschedule the others?

No.

We yeah, we need to.

I have questions.

Okay.

Um.

The two that are across the street from one another, Lewis Berg and Kyle Drive.

Um I sent through questions.

I don't know if they're prepared for now or they just need to be brought to the public hearing.

But just in general about connectivity in that area, I saw like I think one of them has a condition to not stub the street.

And I was just curious, like, where are we getting any connections out of these?

I I am aware.

I am aware of your questions.

I know transportation was working on that today.

If you're comfortable, we could bring that at the public hearing, please.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's fine.

Then I would move to um said the remainder of the public hearings as recommended by staff.

Second.

Okay.

So uh all in favor of the motion, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

All right.

So we've set everything we need to.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh next we have special items.

And we have Ms.

Millet.

Right.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

I am not going to go over the process because I think by now we've ironed out all of those details.

So we'll just start with your balances prior to this request before you.

And now before you have three requests, one from Councilmember Patton to fund the Wake Audubon Society for $1,000.

Councilmember Silver is requesting $1,000 for his daughter's legacy, as well as Councilmember Harrison requests for $1,000 for the North Carolina fly the fly there for their fly with me event.

Any questions?

I don't.

I have a motion and then I have a question, but well, a question about the process, but move to approve.

Second.

All right.

All in favor of the motion.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Motion passes.

Is it now that we have this process in place where everything is fully vetted and the requests are made at the table?

Can these just go on the consent agenda?

Not that I don't love seeing you every meeting, but we will talk about it.

We always vote to approve.

Does this have to be here as a special item?

Do they have to be?

I I would be in favor of having them just appear on consent once they're fully vetted and all they need is asked.

Yeah.

I don't know if it needs to be a motion.

I'm just saying I don't know that it we need to do this.

Um, I would move that we just have these on the consent agenda moving forward.

Okay.

Alrighty.

Voting.

Uh we already voted.

Uh the motion.

No, no, no, no.

They were just talking about Jonathan made a motion.

Oh, to make the motion.

Oh, to put it on consent.

Okay.

All right.

All in favor of that motion.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

I was sitting there looking at the balances.

Okay.

And thank you, Lambert Milton, for removing me from the agenda.

Okay.

And I just had one comment.

I did want to say for the U.S.

Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, just to invite everyone to the event.

Fly with me.

It is Saturday, October 18th at Dick's Park in the Flowers Field from 11:30 a.m.

to 5, and it's to celebrate the Afghan cultural tradition of kite flying.

Um should be really beautiful.

Um, but it also is to fundraise to support refugee and immigrant families in our community that have seen a lot of funding losses in this past year.

So hope you can make it again October 18th at DICS.

Okay.

Madam Mayor, the next item.

May I take us back to the report of planning commission.

I'm sorry, there was an item that I did not mention that was on your agenda that you'd need to take action to set a public hearing.

Okay.

It's a text change that would alter the regulations around Green Main Greenway development.

This is TC 325.

And we are suggesting a public hearing of November here.

So moved.

Second.

Okay.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Ayes have it.

Thank you.

All right.

Next we have the city code text change for CBOard station.

And we have Whitney Schoenfeld.

All right.

Good afternoon, Mayor and members of council.

Once again, I'm Whitney Schoenfeld with special events within the city manager's office.

For the purpose of today's item, which was presented during your last month's meeting, we'll review updated boundaries for the CORD station social district request.

As a quick reminder, state statute defines a social district as a designated area where alcoholic beverages sold by an ABC permittee for on-premises consumption can be consumed.

Staff has prepared an ordinance for your consideration today.

And this request is to create a new social district within Seaboard Station.

This request comes to us from Hoffman and Associates who owns, operates, and develops Seaboard Station.

This is a map of the revised boundaries.

What's changed is the inclusion of the 11 C board business outlined here, and then the southern edge of this building here.

So that's all that's changed in the boundaries.

After comments made during the last meeting is when Hoffman and Associates and staff in our team reached out to York properties, who manages 11 CBOR about their interests in being a part of the social district.

Staff on our team also went door to door to educate businesses and get their input.

Regardless of the inclusion of the property itself within the boundaries, each business would still have the ability to choose to opt in or opt out of the social district.

But it would alleviate guest patron confusion when they don't know who owns what part of the property in that area.

So this is a reminder of the summary of the request that again you saw last month, but now it does include the revised boundaries.

The operating hours, proposed operating hours are daily from 10 a.m.

until 10 p.m., which is consistent with sip and stroll downtown and the proposed effective date is November 14th.

So included in your agenda materials is an ordinance amending city code to reflect these changes.

Should the council desire to proceed with establishing an additional social district, it would be appropriate to adopt the ordinance.

If adopted, we would continue to work with Hoffman and Associates as well as York properties now to educate all businesses on the rules regarding the social district.

Hoffman and associates would be responsible for signage and additional receptacle deployment.

Details regarding the social district would be added to the city's website, and the city would submit registration materials to the ABC Commission before it could become operational.

Once again, we do have representation from Hoffman and Associates here today.

And with that, we're happy to hear your questions, comments, or any other feedback.

Okay, questions from Ms.

Schoenfeld.

I don't have any.

I'm ready with a motion.

Okay.

Move for adoption of ordinance.

Second.

All right.

Any discussion?

All in favor of the motion, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Okay.

So we had two no's and remainder and approval.

Thank you.

All right.

Next, we have the noise ordinance recommendations for amplified sound from commercial establishments.

And once again, we have Whitney Schoenfeld and then Dottie Kiddler from the City Attorney's Office.

As well as our consultant from Austin, Texas.

Yes.

Great to see you all again so soon for back-to-back items.

Once again, I'm Whitney Schoenfeld with special events within the city manager's office.

For this item, we're here to help on a follow-up request, a proposed amendment to the noise ordinance.

So how we got here at the July 1st City Council meeting is when council directed the city attorney's office and staff to do a comprehensive review of the noise ordinance.

To provide some context, we previously moved from a decibel-based standard to a reasonable person standard.

We're now proposing a hybrid approach that uses a decibel-based standard, but only for commercial amplified entertainment.

Our team has helped with engagement efforts since earlier this summer, and also working with a sound consultant to help inform the proposed changes to the noise ordinance.

The engagement efforts have included an online survey that collected over 800 responses, a focus group session with some Glenwood South residents, observation visits from residential units during peak nightlife hours, one-on-one meetings with venue operators and owners, and a late-night weekend walkthrough of Glenwood South with venue operators and owners with our sound consultant.

In today's presentation, you'll hear from Brian Block, a sound consultant of Sound City Planning, who will share his expertise, outline his process, and present his recommendations.

Following this, the city attorney's office will present the draft noise ordinance for your consideration.

To provide some background on Brian Block in Sound City Planning, he is the founder and president of this company.

He has over 25 years experience in nighttime management at the City of Austin in Texas.

His scope of work included review of Raleigh's past and current noise ordinances and two separate on-site visits.

His visit here today marks his third visit to Raleigh.

He used decibel meters to measure sound in Glenwood South and a handful of other locations throughout the city.

He's actively participated in community engagement efforts with residents as well as venue operators and owners.

He's here today and will now present his recommendations and his full report is included in your agenda materials.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council and City Manager.

As Whitney said, I'm Brian Block, the president and founder of Sound City Planning.

It's been an honor and a privilege to get to know Raleigh and support this important work for the city.

Sound City Planning specializes in helping cities balance hospitality and residential quality of life and resolving noise conflicts by developing a proactive and comprehensive approach to entertainment-related sound management.

We understand and appreciate the importance of leveraging the nightlife, music, and entertainment that makes Raleigh a great place to live and visit and helps attract companies, young workers, and residential development.

But as a growing city, Raleigh also needs to maintain residential quality of life and livability.

It's 24 pages long.

So what I'm going to do is cover the approach in the process and highlight some of the key recommendations.

So how do we do this?

How do we propose kind of balancing vibrancy of hospitality and residential quality of life and livability?

Our approach is based on our key principles for effective sound management.

I'm going to highlight just a couple of them.

Standards are tailored for amplified music.

That means they're effective at measuring and managing it.

Standards are customized based on location and context, and they're fair and balanced for each location.

So this is kind of opposed to a one size fits all standard.

This is a more customized approach.

For example, a hospitality district may be different from downtown generally, which is different from outlying neighborhoods.

That's kind of a framework that you see in cities often, and it's one that we've seen here in Raleigh as well.

It provides predictability for all stakeholders, and that just means business and residents know what to expect and can rely on it.

And then it includes dedicated and responsive compliance and enforcement.

If people are going to agree to compromise and find common ground, then they need to have trust in the system, and that demands responsive compliance and enforcement.

Our report and recommendations, as Whitney said, are informed by in-depth observations, sound data collection, and stakeholder engagement in Raleigh.

And this is all customized for Raleigh.

And from businesses about what's needed for vibrancy and success of the district, but not too much and certainly not anything goes.

And our observations weren't just limited to Glenwood South.

That was a big focus.

We also did observations through the rest of downtown, at neighborhood locations like Five Points, and at establishments outside of downtown, including Bowstring and Tap Yard, and spoke to residents around both of those establishments as part of the process.

The recommendations propose, as Whitney mentioned earlier, decibel levels, using both DBA and DBC as the standard for commercial amplified sound.

That achieves two of the principles that I mentioned at the beginning.

One is it's tailored for amplified sound, and two, it provides a predictable and measurable standard.

Amplified sound is a core part of the programming for nightlife and entertainment establishments.

It's an essential part of what they do.

It's really different from things like barking dogs or after hours construction, where the goal there is to eliminate that sound.

At hospitality establishments, the amplified sound can't always be contained inside the building, and we see it really as sound to be managed versus noise to be eliminated.

And decibels are the best tool for measuring and managing amplified sound.

DBC is important because low frequency, which is the base, is prominent in amplified sound and not so much in other kinds of noise.

It's also often the most impactful thing to nearby residents.

So what DBC does is it measures low frequency and it allows it to be managed versus DBA, which is geared towards higher frequencies, is good, but needs DBC to more effectively manage amplified sound.

The recommendations also propose customization, another one of those key principles, based on location and context.

And there are three key components of our proposed solution for Raleigh.

One is a citywide baseline standard that prioritizes broadly protecting residential quality of life.

So as opposed to a one-size-fits-all standard, it's a baseline with standards that are quite low.

And then incorporates customization through districts and permits.

So opposed to one size fits all, this is much more customized and precise.

So in addition to the baseline standard, there's an optional permit.

This is for businesses citywide that want to obtain additional amplified sound over that baseline.

This will include a robust review criteria to ensure it's appropriate, but it includes necessary conditions and restrictions.

And I'll talk a little bit about why this is valuable and why the review criteria are so important.

Establishments can provide unique hospitality, entertainment, cultural and community benefits.

Raleigh has a great independent live music ecosystem.

I'm not aware of any venue, music venues that would need a permit now, but what this does is sets you up for the future, where if there were venues that needed it, they could get a permit like this.

That said, the proximity to residential, the size, the scale, the conditions of establishments can vary widely.

They're very different.

So again, one size does not fit all.

This also provides a framework for creating additional districts, perhaps downtown, and can even be elsewhere, but downtown seems to be the place where the first additional one might come.

So now I'm gonna finish up by taking you into more detail on the um the proposed sound level recommendations, starting with the citywide baseline.

Um I think the key thing to point out here is as I mentioned earlier, these sound levels are quite low.

70 dBA and 75 dBC, only till 10 p.m.

weekdays and 11 p.m.

weekends.

Umwards think of restaurants with some patio speakers on their outdoor patio.

Um commercial strips with residential right near it.

I think we visited five points.

I think that's a good example.

I think we went by this place, think of Lola's little patio.

This is kind of geared towards things like that.

During nighttime, it drops extremely low, barely above kind of the ambient level, and overnight anticipates there being nothing.

And so, again, um this isn't one size fits all.

I'll make a comparison here to Charlotte, who has more of a one-size-fits-all standard.

There is a permit option, but it's quite limited.

So Charlotte has an 85 dBC level.

Um, you know, it's less precise than what we're proposing here.

It might be too loud in some cases, it might be not enough in others.

So 75 dBC compared to 85.

Um, that's not just 15% difference.

Um decibels are on a logarithmic scale.

So 10 decibels is 10 times the power and kind of for reference, most for the average person, 10 decibels is perceived as twice as loud.

So not just 15%.

So just trying to give you the context of this is quite low.

It's meant to be very protective citywide, and it's why the districts in the permits customization is important under this model.

So next up is citywide with a permit.

As I said, proximity to residential size, scale, and conditions varies so widely, and the sound impact is so site specific.

I did a case study of Bowstring to kind of reflect how site specific sound impact is.

Again, the permit approach allows the allowances and restrictions to be site specific as well.

Important to point out here, it's an up to limit.

It's not this number.

It could be, and in most cases will be below this.

What this does is council policy sets a framework and review criteria and then gives staff the administrative authority to use those review criteria and develop the appropriate site specific details for each location.

I think you might find that in some cases you could even have more than this or later hours.

But rather than recommending something like that now, I thought best to start with this, and then it could be iterative as you learn what your needs are.

You could make changes to this.

For example, maybe there's something that's far enough to residential and low enough sound level that they could go to midnight on a weekend without disturbing anyone.

That's something you could add later.

Maybe there's something so far from residential, perhaps in an industrial area where you could have a little louder sound level.

This gives you a starting point.

You could certainly expand it later, but I didn't want to add too much complexity to start with.

And I think you learning from the system and sort of adapting it to your needs is really the best approach anyway.

As I've been saying, this acknowledges the differences in kind of location and context around the city.

It acknowledges this district as Raleigh's primary, primary hospitality district with outdoor spaces and amplified music in those outdoor spaces, and as an existing and fast growing residential area.

What it seeks to do is bring more consistent balance between nightlife and residential quality of life.

I think the important things to point out here are weekdays are quite moderate.

It sort of follows the activity levels that exist in this district.

A lot of the late night places aren't open during the early part of the week.

The level of kind of visitation from patrons and the level of intensity is lower during the week.

This mirrors kind of what happens in the district.

It's quite moderate for weekdays, and then it focuses the higher level of allowances when there's more patrons, which is on weekend nights when there are thousands of people in the district, all the establishments are open.

The general kind of background and ambient noise level goes up when all those people are present.

And this sort of takes into account a sound level that is vibrant and robust, but also still limited.

This is not as much and nearly as much, even during the primary hours as what we observed happening.

Some of that will have to come down quite a lot, but this does meet the more balanced approach of what residents felt was better, and what businesses also thought was workable.

Not everything they would want, but but workable.

And like the rest of the city, nothing audible during the after hour during 2 a.m.

to 10 a.m.

And so how I wanted to close was this does bring an approach that's not one size fits all.

It's much more precise and customized.

You know, for some cities, I think doing this all at once might not be workable.

Maybe they would need to kind of incrementally get there.

What I think about Raleigh is you have such a strong foundation around hospitality and entertainment with robust policy and programs and economic development strategies, an office dedicated to special events in hospitality.

And a police department unit dedicated to hospitality.

I think this approach is a very good fit for Raleigh.

I think it can be very successful here.

And if adopted, I think this makes Raleigh a national leader on entertainment-related sound management.

And with that, I will turn it over to the City Attorney's Office.

Good afternoon.

So today I want to go over the proposed ordinance with you to hit the highlights and the key elements.

Again, the key focus of the ordinance that's in the packet is to implement these recommendations.

Top of those recommendations is to replace the existing noise standard for commercial amplified sound with this decibel standard.

So the prior rules, which will continue to apply for all other types of sound or noise, but for amplified entertainment or amplified sound from commercial establishments, this new decibel level will be the operative noise control.

If sound meets those decibel standards, it complies with the ordinance.

If it doesn't meet those standards, then it does not comply.

And as we said, current rules continue to apply.

And so those have been added.

Let's talk a little bit about that permit that uh enhances only the citywide noise or uh additional sound regulations.

That permit sets a maximum decibel level, but it doesn't require that the permit be granted to provide the full uh decibels allowed.

The permit can actually be issued for a lower level of sound.

It contains an expiration date of one year.

No further can a permit be issued, it can be issued for a shorter period, but not longer.

A permit can be canceled even after it has been issued, it may be canceled.

If after that permit is used, the sound is determined to be detrimental.

It must be canceled if the business receives a verified noise violation while using the permit to exceed those citywide standards.

And the ordinance itself defines what a verified violation is.

It's not simply a call of someone concerned about a noise level.

It is either civil penalties are issued for a violation and are paid, or they're issued and not appealed, or an appeal to the city manager's office is upheld, or if there's a criminal charge, that criminal offense, the person charged is found guilty by a court regardless of an appeal.

In uh this particular uh case, there is a fee that applies.

It's $500 for each issuance of a permit.

And the standards that apply before a permit can be issued are um highly rigorous.

Uh it's not a permit that is going to be able to be accomplished by every business, and the standards incorporate all of the recommendations, all of the considerations that uh Sound City planting had suggested, uh the factors that the city can include or consider uh when it makes its ultimate decision, and that ultimate decision is whether the permit or the additional sound will cause a significant harmful impact to the community.

The ordinance lists includes proximity to residences, the hours when the additional sound will be provided, the details of the sound system, topography, the capacity of the particular venue, and the sound mitigation designing features, as well as the intensity of that amplification.

As well as this proof that no significant harm or harmful impact will be provided, there are other restrictions before a permit can be issued.

A business cannot be located in a residential zoning district, and that business cannot be listed or operated within 300 feet of a noise-sensitive area, which was defined in the existing code.

A very important provision and a very strict provision is this last portion where a permit is not allowed if a business has a verified noise violation within the prior 12 months.

As drafted, this is not a clean slate, as drafted if someone has a verified noise violation predating the enactment of this ordinance, they would not be able to get a permit for additional sound until 12 months elapsed from that time.

One last bit for the permit standard, there is an appeal provision, but it's limited to those who are denied a permit only.

Except for Pea Streets, businesses that front on either side of the street would be included in the Glenwood South proposed district.

For P Street, only those businesses that are south of P Street would be included.

For the Glenwood South District standard, Mr.

Block explained what those standards were.

The report had two options for consideration.

One was this step down to late night.

And so that in that instance there was a little more sound that was allowed during the primary hours.

And then during late night, we had that step down to a little less noise during the late night provision.

That is what the draft proposes, but the council could take whatever position it wishes.

There's additional changes that we have proposed.

We've strengthened the definition of plainly audible, so you don't have to hear the words or be able to sing along with the song to have something plainly audible.

If you hear the sound and can identify it, or if you feel the base reverberations, that's enough.

So if someone has a problem with an establishment, they have a way to contact someone to get that problem known and perhaps solve that neighbor to business.

We continued the exceptions that exist in the present ordinance for these commercial amplified sound establishments, such as special events that already are governed by sound restrictions in permits.

There were other changes that we made to make enforcement a little bit easier.

Understanding that we are governed by what the law allows in terms of enforcement.

We can't stop their water service, but we can do the steps that the law allows.

We are making it easier by not just allowing RPD to issue citations, but to allow the city manager to designate any city employee to issue civil citations.

And instead of having to take multiple readings over a certain period of time, any decibel reading over the limit is a violation.

We also continued existing tools that are already in the code.

Those will continue to apply, and that includes misdemeanor citations, so someone who is a violator who won't come into compliance can be subject to misdemeanor enforcement.

So someone who is a violator who won't come into compliance can be subject to misdemeanor enforcement.

We've also added some additional penalties.

We've added a $1,500 penalty that kicks in at the third verified violation.

And it applies to all the third verified violation within 12 months, and it applies to every violation thereafter.

For the fourth verified violation in 12 months, we prohibit the use of outdoor sound equipment for 18 months.

And this applies to the business violator and the property where the business is located.

So there are a couple of other things that are not on the slide that I want to mention in enforcement.

And that is that Chief Boyce with RPD plans to hire and train new civilian officials or civilian employees who will be part of a new enforcement team directed at amplified sound and noise.

And he is here and can speak with you about that issue.

Also for implementation, it's important to know that the city has always had an education period prior to stepping into enforcement like civil penalties.

And so it's our anticipation that there be something similar to what we had done before, which was approximately a 60-day time period where folks become familiar and know about the ordinance's provisions.

The current ordinance reflecting the priority that this issue has an immediate effective date.

So the next steps, this is one of those ordinances that requires that the council receive the draft ordinance at one meeting and vote on it at a separate meeting.

So if the council has revisions to the draft, the cycle would be the same.

We would come back with any revisions as directed.

And at this point, directions are needed to the team and to staff about how the council wishes to proceed to consider the proposed ordinance.

And the team is also here and able to answer any questions council might have.

Thank you very much to all those who worked on this.

I know we'll have a number of questions.

We'll start with counselor Harrison.

Yeah, I just want to thank uh Brian, Dottie, Whitney, everyone that's been involved in this.

Um it's been a real uh all-team effort to council for continuing to take this up.

I know the noise ordinance has been a source of frustration among many.

And uh looking forward to changes and making great improvements.

So this is really a priority for me to get over the finish line as fast as we can to update the noise ordinance.

Um just a couple comments and questions.

I want to make sure that there is great public awareness if we move forward with this.

So I'm thinking about you know whether that's a you know, a press release or some kind of uh even a press conference to make sure people really understand what the new rules are, communicating it out to everyone is going to be critical.

So communications, we're gonna need your help.

Um perhaps some kind of a user-friendly guide that really explains this noise ordinance for venues, for residents, you know, a simple tutorial about how it works, that would be helpful.

Um I am curious for a couple questions.

How, you know, when we look at that citywide permit eligibility, would that be within the Office of Special Events to determine?

And you know, just who is deciding that so the way the ordinance will be written, it will be the city manager designee.

So ultimately it would be up to the city manager's office's discretion.

Currently, that permit has lived within our team in the past.

Um, I would expect that it likely would moving forward as well.

And I wonder if Brian could just speak to that about you know how those decisions get made, any advice because at the end of the day, that that could be an issue.

So I think it's important, and I kind of touched on this in my presentation, that it be a framework that's council sets as policy that's in code, but also give the staff the flexibility and the review criteria to deal with the site specificity.

So I think having the rev the review criteria, uh Dottie kind of mentioned all of them.

Um having those spelled out.

And then having a sort of as you start this, you know, a check-in to make sure kind of things are going well.

Is it what council intended?

Do you have any sort of fine-tuning to the policy framework?

I see it as kind of a sort of a dialogue back and forth between the policy framework and the review review criteria and just making sure it's on track.

But I think having the flexibility and the agility to kind of deal with it in a site-specific way is what makes it work.

And so that check-in period, I'm just thinking about let's say we have a business that gets the permit, and then it turns out that sound is bouncing ways we didn't realize affecting neighborhoods a half mile away.

Is that an annual decision then where we could you know say maybe this is no longer appropriate now that we understand the sound movement?

And I was thinking more broadly in terms of the policy framework.

You know, on an operational basis, it would be the staff using the review criteria to make sure that doesn't happen.

And there is a cancellation provision if there's a determination that uh essentially that it's harmful to the public, uh so that that permit could be canceled.

Okay.

Um just a couple more questions.

I think to Brian.

You said the Glenwood South Max recommendation is 82 DBA and 92 DBC from 10 a.m.

to midnight.

What does that sound like we walked the district with the hospitality establishment owners?

It's enough to be a robust, vibrant kind of um experience in the outdoor areas of the bar, but not too much that it is kind of excessive and it's gonna create too much sound impact and disturbance at nearby residential.

And again, these levels kind of correspond with when we were in residences and they were telling us, okay, this seems more balanced.

So I think beyond hearing it for yourself, um that's kind of where those numbers came from.

And then dropping it after midnight would be a significant drop.

It's not down to nothing, of course, but at that point it's either you know, turn off the base because it's not going to be able to be accommodated, or closed doors and windows if you want to stay at kind of the the louder sound levels.

So I believe you might have visited the Paramount uh residents.

I'm just curiously, you know, with this 82 DBA, what does it sound like then in that residence, you know, if the business has that number?

Yeah, and so I think you know, certainly um that's audible but not too loud on a balcony and much more minimal to nothing inside.

Okay.

Um and just one final question.

Um this would maybe be back to Dottie for enforcement.

Um I'm really excited to hear about the new personnel that would be hired within RPD.

How many individuals and when would they get started?

So I'll I'll defer to Chief Boys.

Okay, thank you.

Good afternoon, Chief Boys RPD.

Oh, yeah.

So the proposal will be to hire four non-sworn positions.

Uh I will attach two of the four to each of our two hospitality units.

Currently, hospitality team one would get to, hospitality team two would get to, so we have coverage on every weekend.

Um they will then work uh and handle most of the all of the civil violations.

And if there's a violation that turns criminal, they already assigned to a hospitality unit that can take criminal enforcement action if need be.

Forest or start date once I talk to my ball city manager, and we get those positions hired, trained uh as quickly as we can do that, we will have those positions uh out on the streets working, not only Glenwood South, but throughout the city.

Okay, I'll continue here.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to start.

I have a question for Brian and then for the attorney's office.

We were just talking about sound.

When when you were walking through, do you have a current estimate of what our sound is right now?

Since we're going to be a decibel limit, did you guys measure that?

Like inside this room?

Do you mean or not this second?

I mean like when you were in the residences, did you measure what that decibel limit was currently?

The ambient level inside a unit without anything taking place?

Right.

Is that well, not without anything taking place?

I'm saying if you're Glenwood South.

How much Glenwood South, when you went that night, did you take decibels of what we currently have?

Okay.

That night you were out?

Yes.

What is that decibel that we have that we're doing right now?

So I don't have that in front of me, but I can certainly look it up for you even while I sit here.

Okay.

Yeah, that is helpful.

Thank you.

Is it I'll need to kind of quickly look at my own.

I can come back if I'm going to do that.

I can ask the city attorney's office while you look at that.

So just to kind of zero in on what you you know, what were the levels at different times when we measured them inside the unit?

Yeah, just if you measured them at all while you were out there.

Because if we're going to say that we're doing 80 to 85, but when we were out there it was at 100, now I know we're lowering it drastically.

But if when you were out it was only 65, then going to 85 isn't going to make their lives any better.

So I'm just trying to figure out what that number was when you were out there so that I can see where your your recommendations fall.

Yeah, that sounds great.

I'll look that up for you.

I appreciate it.

I'll come back to you.

Um for the city's attorney's office, uh the last time, because we've done this a few times so far, and I know we mentioned we talked briefly about it before, but we changed from decibel to reasonable person, which you acknowledge, and now we're coming back.

How is this decibel limit different than the previous one because we change it to reasonable person because it was too hard to measure?

How is it become easier to measure now?

So let me kind of go back.

Some of the past problems were uh the crowded areas that we were having, difficulty obtaining reasons uh readings, uh, the lack of the technical skills that were required to take readings, the variables, uh, and then the challenges to device devices and violator behavior.

So some of those we are addressing by making it easier to measure.

So we are instead of requiring measurements to be taken at a property line, we are uh allowing measurements to be taken on any point outside of the property.

So let's say you can't get a decent reading from the front of us an establishment, but you can go to the back and you're hearing the same level.

So more flexibility there.

The dedicated individuals who are trained and and become civilian experts is extremely valuable.

Uh those folks are going to be able to do the testifying and the work in court that we need if we're challenged.

So we're putting more resources.

Uh we also instead of under the last series of decibels, we had that lengthy period in which you had to take readings and then you had to do some averaging and and coming up with a final level.

That doesn't apply any longer.

If the uh if the reading that is taken is a violation, it's a violation.

And so we've tried to be uh reasonable in the approach, but still uh uh try to address some of those uh problems that have been designated in the past.

We also talked with counsel about the problem of violators turning the sound down when people were seen.

If you can go to any point exterior of the boundaries, it makes it easier not to be detected.

Um it's also good uh uh to have a decibel that applies across the board, because you're not ending up with people competing for customers by raising the sound level.

Everybody's uh at the same level.

And our hope is that that's going to also encourage compliance, which is uh important for uh the neighborhoods and important for the business.

Right.

And I think the biggest thing that I remember was saying like if if we were at a business, but I think it was at the property lines what you're saying, that I couldn't tell if it was business A or business B.

I couldn't attribute it to that.

But what I'm understanding you're saying is that if you can go closer now, you can be a better measure of where exactly that sound is coming from.

You can do that as well as uh you can go to different locations, and the training that's going to be provided and to those civilian soon-to-be experts is is going to be able to help address that issue.

Um when Mr.

Block was present in through Glenwood South and elsewhere in the city, he was able to take those uh those measurements based on his expertise.

And it's our our expectation that he'll be sharing that expertise with our civilian and other employees.

Okay, great.

And then last question for you was uh at the end I saw uh significant harmful impact.

What counts as a significant harmful impact to the community?

So that is that is the the standard that the decision maker uses.

And so the decision maker looks at that particular the factors that that I um shared with you, and based on those factors, the decision maker decides.

So uh there's not a definition of significant harmful impact.

That's what the decision maker has to determine.

And certainly some of those factors that I described were the orientation of the equipment.

And it's reasonable to think that it a certain level of equipment that can produce a huge amount of sound and great amounts of base, if they're oriented in a way that face a residential area is likely to cause a significant harmful impact.

So there may be other things that that would be considered, but the factors are what have to be applied so that this is a decision that's made at administratively at the staff level.

Thank you so much.

Can we go back to Mr.

Block?

Your question about do you have the answer?

I'm curious too.

Okay.

Um so here is the sound level readings from inside the units.

Um this is not, you know, we didn't precisely have the bars and clubs operating at the proposed level.

That would be a level of orchestration that we just didn't have.

But they were close.

Um I think more precision, you know, could be done if everyone's exactly at the proposed level.

You know, we could look at this again.

I think this would be close.

Um we were inside two units.

One was in the mid-40s TBA and 60 DBC, the other similar low 40s DBA, 60 DBC.

We measured on those balconies too, and then looked at kind of how much was the building mitigating from outside to inside.

So the balconies were similar, 68, 78 one of them, 70, 76 the other.

The buildings were mitigating, and this makes this is kind of how it works.

DBA is a lot easier.

Um it doesn't travel through doors and windows in buildings as well.

That was coming down between 23 to 26 DB from outside to inside.

And the DBC was coming down 16 to 18.

So from 76 down to 60 DBC.

And so similar.

This by saying we're if we're doing 75 to 80, let's just say we're in that range, but you're on a balcony and it's at 40, and the residents are saying that's too loud.

Can they on the if you measure from the residence, can they go up to 75?

Um the measurements are taken down at the property line of the commercial established.

So that's where that measurement is.

So it wouldn't be, we wouldn't be going into residence home.

Okay.

So we did kind of and I would recommend this as part of the review criteria.

Take that into account, analyze what the level at the commercial property line is and how that impacts the nearest residential and calibrate accordingly, which is what we've recommended here.

But the ultimate kind of enforceable, measurable, predictable level is down at the commercial establishment's property line.

It's much easier to isolate which venue that is.

It's a lot easier for that venue to self-regulate.

They just walk out to their property line with their own meter and make sure they're complying.

It's a lot easier for the city's enforcement staff to come to the property line, find a location on it anywhere on it, as Dottie said, or beyond it, where you can isolate what you're trying to measure, which is that establishment sound.

Right.

Thank you.

I know um Council Silver has his hand up, but I think Councillor Lambert Melton wanted to ask you a follow-up.

Clification.

That is all very helpful.

I think we agree with you.

I think what Councilmember Jones is trying to figure out is how loud were these bars on Glenwood operating the night you went out there that it was registering on these patios at 4060.

So for example, if now the bars are allowed to operate at 80, the night you walked it, if they were operating at 120, then we can tell residents, hey, you've been telling us that on existing conditions your windows are rattling.

We're going to make them turn the noise down now to this level, which should substantially reduce how much is getting to your balcony.

I I think it would be helpful for us to know what your readings were, not in the residence balconies that night, but when did you take any readings from the sources of the bars?

What were those?

So those these numbers I told you for the residences correspond roughly to the proposed recommended levels.

We kind of like you're saying, we also took some readings inside a residents when it was more.

And so that would be mitigated.

So that was instead of 60, it was 64 DBC inside the residents.

That would be mitigated.

Okay.

And so for so and I also want to take it back a step, because I think we're kind of now talking about the same thing.

For the residents where you were in their homes and you registered at this amount, those are the ones that told you I can live with this.

This is comfortable.

I'm not sure if they use those exact words or if they would say so, but I think what they would say is this is not so bad.

This is more balanced.

And that is what they told us.

Okay.

And we specifically they were kind of saying, well, you didn't come on the right night.

It's not as loud.

Is what it you know, what it is often, and we said, no, no, no, that's really helpful.

This will help us calibrate the recommendations.

You're telling us this isn't so bad.

Well, why don't we set the levels according to to this?

So the night you were there, the ratings you just gave us from their homes, that was when those residents were saying this is not so bad, and then you backed into this 80.

There were other nights where residents were saying it is way worse, and this would prevent it from getting as loud as that, so that they're saying it's way worse.

We came back a second time to one of the residences and the levels were more elevated on the street, and they said it's now louder.

We came earlier and they said, okay, this isn't as bad as usual.

We came back.

It was more.

And on the street was more.

Okay.

And so this takes it back to when they said not so bad.

I think there are some residents, just frankly, who don't want to have any compromise, and that's their kind of perspective.

But this is a more of a common finding a common ground approach.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Um I just had one question for Dottie.

Um the slide that says permit for citywide, not Glenwood South, uh additional sound.

So I'm clear on the cancellation provisions.

Uh the second bullet under cancellation said must be canceled if business receives a verified noise violation while using a permit.

This is for the additional sound, exceed normal uh DB limits.

So is this three strikes?

Is this just one and done?

So I just wanted to be clear because it seems that you know they'll be told for the additional sound, you're getting a permit, but one violation and it's over.

I just want to make sure I'm hearing you correctly.

Yes, sir.

This is an extremely um restrictive, rigorous set of permit standards.

Uh and uh it's within council's discretion to advise whether it is too rigorous or too or or too or or not rigorous enough.

But with this, the the permit encourages people to comply by saying that we must cancel it if you receive a verified noise violation while you're using it.

Okay.

Counselor Potton.

Yeah.

I'm several.

Um so related to this extra sound permit.

Um I guess I'm trying to think through how this gets operationalized, and it's sounding like it'll be an administrative decision.

But that some of the definitions are um very discretionary, like what counts as significant public impact or or whatever the term of art was that you used.

And that also, you know, we that we have a lot of um staff administrating this, we'll will have a lot of discretion about like this noise mitigation plan.

And I guess what I'm ultimately trying to get to is if there's uh is like about training of the the person who will be administering these permits, it sounds like there's like some pretty specific technical expertise about how sound travels that might not be uh universally shared by all of I mean it sounds like you need some special training.

And then I guess I wonder I'm playing this forward.

A business comes to get this, they make their noise mitigation plan, we tell them here's your here's your special allowance if you do these things, they do them.

It's still loud.

We take their permit away and they say, Well, you made us go through this very onerous process and we did all the things you asked us to do, and you're still taking our permit away.

Like if they're complying with the things we approved them to do, like yeah, I guess I'm just gonna try trail off and hope that you answer have an answer.

And so it is sometimes difficult to know what the impact of that additional sound will be until the sound occurs.

And if there are unanticipated uh sound reverberations that then are problematic, the city has the ability to uh cancel the permit.

And that that's just a provision here.

And it it I think of it this way in terms of the permitting.

No one's entitled to the permit, and it's only after the city receives proof that there's not going to be significant harmful impact to the community that the city would consider to issue that would consider issuing the permit.

And there are specific things that the city must consider in making that determination, and those are listed in the ordinance.

But if the city discovers that there's another factor um wind or some other uh factor that no one anticipated, but during that process, the city determined that could also be considered.

So essentially it's you're not entitled to this additional level of sound in the citywide area until you we prove that it's not going to be harmful to the community.

Sure.

And I'm fine to recognize it's you're not entitled to it.

I'm just wondering we've if like we've edited and this we didn't anticipate the wind, and then they get six months down the road and it's like, oh, actually in winter it's really windy on this site or whatever, then we just joink the permit and the property owner is like, but I did all the things you asked me to do.

Like, do uh is there a uh a revision option rather than a yeah, I guess I just wonder if it's uh if we can't anticipate everything, then I just worry we're putting ourselves in some like vulnerable place to be like, well, we didn't anticipate the wind, but it exists, so we go and get your permits pulled.

Well, certainly we uh we are here today to get that kind of feedback and then to take that feedback and operationalize it.

Any other questions?

Uh yeah, I have some more, but I'm I can wait.

Okay.

And it's kind of piggyback off of that.

And that's just for Brian.

Brian, in Austin Texas, um, the sound ordinance that I say they've landed on that is in place now.

How many times were modifications made prior to them l landing where they are now with their overall ordinance?

Okay.

And with the ordinance itself.

Um especially uh the the permit requirement first went in place in 2003.

And then in 2008 or 2009, significant changes were made.

Initially there weren't this robust review criteria.

It was more of the permit has just one-size standards, and you either get it or you don't.

And that turned out to be not enough, not site-specific enough.

And so that's when the review criteria went into place.

Six, seven years later, when it more problems were cropping up, more conflicts that weren't addressed without having the review criteria.

So hopefully we can avoid that.

And Raleigh skip those pain points and resolve it more proactively.

But probably 20 or more times between, say, 2009 and 2014.

And it's been pretty stable since.

And not a lot of changes to the system.

I mean, I think with something new, certainly you want to see how it goes and fine-tune and adapt it to both specifics of Raleigh or what the community priorities or values are and what you learn.

So I would say some level of fine-tuning should be expected.

Um but that's a good point twenty or more times between those four or five years.

Definitely thank you.

And that and that's kind of the point I want to make with my fellow council members is as we make a decision to move forward today.

Our s this landscape and the skyline is going to change.

I mean, we have a new building that's being built over there.

That's going to impact the way some of the sound travels and moves.

That's just how waves operate.

So I definitely think we get to a point where we move staff forward to go ahead and let's try to, you know, plant this flag a little bit, but let the community know that we want and staff know.

Come back and sit some monthly with some information, and then you know, maybe in the years times from that, we figure out what changes we need to make because we all know that our winter months are a little lighter than our summer months, but I definitely think we need to go ahead and put something down and kind of move and you know, like I said, no pun intended sound moves, and we may have to make some modifications to this as we move forward.

So those are just my comments as I was listening to she sees you.

So that um we can kind of you know keep it moving.

Okay.

So I know Councilor Patton has more, and Counselor Silver.

Anyone else?

Okay.

Um do you want to just finish yours?

I'll just um prattle through mine and maybe response can be provided by staff after, and then we have more agenda to do.

So um, you know, one thing I am interested in understanding is that the enforcement uh the uh consequences presented to us go up to the fourth violation, right?

Uh first is a verbal warning or lower fines, third is a $1,500 fine, fourth is $1,500 fine, and you have to move your music indoors.

What happens on the fifth time when they don't move their music indoors?

That's a question I have.

Um I would like to understand how long this hiring process will take and uh for these civilians and and what we do in the meantime.

Um I also want to know how we landed on $1,500 because I think that's something we faced with some of the proprietors is that that the fines currently are just the cost of business, and this uh sounds like an amount that could still be considered the cost of business.

Um I'll just sort of put those out there, but I will I I know we're just sort of moving forward the first reading, and so I'm happy to do that so that we can move on to the rest of the items.

Okay.

Thank you, Council.

I want to concur with councilmember Branch.

Um this is a very good, as both Brian and Daddy said, this is a good framework to get started.

And it's also refreshing to know that there'll be some lessons learned from Austin's journey on getting this right.

Uh I do believe we have to move forward on a new approach and everything I'm hearing from moving to a level that could be measured uh to having civilians uh support RPD uh and giving the community some relief to me is going in the right direction.

So I'm very comfortable moving this forward and ask, as Councilmember Brant said that in about a year we have good data as we look at those violations that we could actually see the numbers so we can write size and make adjustments to the levels so that we can give uh the residents the relief that they need uh to make sure that they enjoy their quality of life regardless of where they live in a city.

So um piggybacking on Councilor Harrison's uh thoughts on how much public education is needed.

There's also been uh could there be a public hearing so that folks can just you know put their questions out there, put their comments out there.

And so I just wanted to move to set a public hearing for next Tuesday, October 14th at 6 p.m.

So that's prior to our 7 p.m.

public comment.

Um so it would be for one hour only, and I would make that motion.

Okay.

Any other discussion?

If not, all in favor of setting a public hearing for the noise ordinance.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

No.

No.

Okay.

And I have I just have a question.

Do we have a work session that day at four?

So do we we we'll go four and then we'll do a six o'clock meeting and then a seven o'clock public comment?

Okay, just wanted that clarification.

Okay.

So that was a six-two vote.

Five-three vote.

Yeah, as a no.

Okay.

All right.

So that passes, and we'll have a public hearing at 6 p.m.

on Tuesday the 14th.

And otherwise, this is really just received as information, and we will have the second hearing on October 21st.

Second reading, yeah.

Okay.

Thank you all very much.

Next, we have the report and recommendation of the city manager.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

We have two items today on the agenda and then one announcement, and we will kick it off with Sarah Shaughnessy from Planning and Development, who will be bringing forward the Civic Assembly as part of our reflect in Raleigh, which is our comprehensive plan update.

Good morning, or good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

As the city manager said, Sarah Shaughnessy, planning and development here with some information about Civic Assembly.

At your recent fall retreat, staff presented on the Raleigh Civic Assembly, which is a component of the reflecting Raleigh comprehensive plan development.

Civic assemblies learn and deliberate and then provide recommendations around a specific question or remit.

And so we are here today to share some information based on feedback you provided to us, share a recommended or proposed remit, and seek your adoption of that remit.

Alternatively, you could defer to a future meeting if you wish to direct staff for more information or if you just with wish for further discussion.

Before diving in, just a visual reminder of where we are in the reflecting Raleigh timeline.

The Civic Assembly will be part of phase two plan development.

So a successful comprehensive plan really requires engagement from a broad representative sample of Raleigh's population.

And at the beginning of this process, we created an engagement strategy built around four primary goals, really with the underlying objective of hearing from people we hear from all the time, as well as extending the opportunity to people who are typically under or unrepresented entirely.

And a civic assembly is one strategy we're using as part of this process to achieve these goals.

It's part of many strategies.

It is part of a suite of tools, often called deliberative democracy.

Again, it's a strategy often used to reach residents that are underrepresentative, underrepresented, and it's one of many engagement methods of the process.

It will use a civic lottery or a random selection process.

People will opt in and then they will be selected randomly to participate.

There are four main components of a civic assembly.

The first is a government commissioned assignment or remit, which is what we're here to talk to you about today.

It's a stratified random sampling process where people opt in by providing some key demographic characteristics.

We will work with our consultant to stratify people based on those characteristics and then select a group of people that represents Raleigh's population as a whole based on those demographic criteria.

Uh, trade-offs, they will hear presentations from experts.

Then the second part, they'll have an opportunity to deliberate and discuss with one another.

And then the final third is decision making, which for this process will look like a series of recommendations that they will provide to staff and potentially to you city council.

Um the fourth and really key element of a civic assembly is government acknowledgement.

Um and so what this means is that um city staff and city council are committing to receiving the recommendations and acknowledging them.

You don't have to act on them.

It will be one of many points that will inform the comprehensive plan overall.

Um so I went over some of this information.

Um there is a detailed timeline in the memo that was included in the agenda backup materials.

Um but generally the process um will begin it later this fall.

Um a thousand residents will be invited to participate by mail, and so again, they'll be invited to enter the lottery by providing a few demographic criteria and then be stratified based on those criteria.

We will work with our consultants, the National Civic League to select randomly based on those criteria a group of 40 or 50 people who represents the population of Raleigh as a whole, broad broadly represents.

Um then we'll go through the process.

Um we are anticipating the process will start in January, and they'll meet for six or seven consecutive Saturdays to go through the learning deliberation and recommending process.

Um we continue to try to reduce or eliminate known barriers to participation by providing child care, food, um language interpretation, and other accommodations, um, such as ADA accommodations if needed.

We are also planning to pay civic assembly members a stipend for their participation, and we're doing this for a couple of reasons.

Um the first is that we want to reduce financial barriers to participation.

We understand that somebody may have to take time off work to be able to participate, and we want to at least give them some remuneration to cover those lost wages.

Um the second is that we want to show that we respect people's time.

We're asking them to commit to a number of Saturdays away from something else that they would be doing.

The 40 or sorry, the $1,000 represents approximately $25 an hour for 40 hours of work that they're giving us.

And then a final reason is that paying them really shows that we as a city value the process and are committed to following through on the process.

So we heard a few things at your council retreat that we have used to modify the remits that we shared with you at that time.

I think we heard that the remit really needs to be broad enough to be relatable and yet specific enough to be meaningful and give clear direction for the comprehensive plan.

We heard that the process overall, the reflecting Raleigh process, as well as the Civic Assembly should help the public understand emerging issues and potential challenges over the next 20 years.

So not just aspirations envisioning, but really sort of a frame of trade-offs.

We heard an interest in developing tools to help the public and help staff and council envision the location and intensity of future growth.

An interest in clear definition of planning terms.

We tend to use a lot of jargon, so defining smart growth, specifically what that means, defining managing growth, what that means, and then a follow-up on some policies and conversations around neighborhood mix, um, specifically retail and commercial opportunities, finding a way to integrate that into the process.

And so based on that feedback, um, we sort of modified some of the contextual information and the question to ask a question specifically about where new growth should occur over the next 20 years.

Um so this is um we actually presented this map as part of our neighborhood change community conversation.

Um the 2030 plan set a goal um for channeling 60 percent of new development and designated growth centers and transit corridors since in the last 16 years since 2009, seven uh those areas have actually absorbed 70 percent of that development.

And so as Raleigh looks to 2050, how will these growth centers and transit corridors continue to develop?

What is the appetite for continuing to absorb that level of development?

How should it be distributed across the city?

Um so a specific question, and this, if approved, would be included in the invitation that is mailed to people to opt in.

Um question is Raleigh's in the process of improving transit service around the city.

How should the next comprehensive plan help improve access to the new service?

What should the neighborhoods around frequent transit look like?

And so, based on this question, we believe that the assembly would have an opportunity to learn about and discuss the challenges likely to arise in the next 20 years, specifically around growth and development and how that's distributed across the city.

Um early on in the process, the Civic Assembly would develop a shared vocabulary, so some shared definitions of terms like smart growth and growth management.

They would work collabor collaboratively to identify the key components of thriving neighborhoods.

So this might be transportation infrastructure, this might be a mix of land uses, it might be specific recommendations for housing types, um, sort of from a land use perspective what the area around frequent transit lines should look like.

Um then ultimately I think we're we're looking for um residents to share their values to help us develop recommend recommended strategies to fairly distribute the benefits and burdens of population growth and increased development.

So again, your recommended action today is to approve this remit.

Um again, it would be included if approved, it will be included in the invitation that are mailed to Raleigh residents to opt in to participate.

Alternatively, you uh may provide us additional guidance and defer uh council action for additional discussion.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Uh thank you, uh Sarah.

This is certainly a great idea to increase the level of involvement, particularly those that are sometimes difficult to reach.

Uh just a couple of questions.

I don't know if you want to go a few slides back.

Um you asked the community a question, just wanted to understand when you say transit service, you know, that could be I'll just say rail or rubber.

And that will change land use patterns dramatically.

I know during our retreat, we talked about a regional transit system, which may include heavy, light, whether it's bus rapid transit or bus, so transit will inform land use.

Light rail tends to generate more density than bus rapid transit or just a bus.

So, with that question, are you unpacking it more for those that are there or just as just transit service because each one will have a different land use and density response?

Sure.

I think um in framing this question, we are specifically looking at examining the existing growth framework map and how the frequent transit corridors are defined in that context.

There is certainly an opportunity to work with the assembly to further define and refine what frequent transit looks like as part of that.

And my second question, and this is going back to the growth framework map.

I recall from the retreat from uh the plan director, Patrick Young, that looking at 2050, if I remember, we're expected to grow between 200 and 250,000.

Uh is that something you're going to share with the residents as well?

Because I think it's also important to understand, you know, that is a lot of people to accommodate, and you're correct.

Back in the 2030 plan, looked at between 60 and 70 percent to give the public some predictability of where the most growth was going to go.

Is that something that's gonna be shared?

Because that is always a very difficult number to digest.

Uh and if I look back, I think we added about 120,000 from 2009 until today.

So that's just something I'm just hopeful that will also be discussed with the assemblies so they get a better understanding about how much land and how much density the city will get between now and 2050.

Absolutely.

Yeah, the first third of the assembly's time together will be receiving information, receiving presentations, um, receiving um key themes from the public input, so all of the engagement that we've had to date, um, working on packaging, a number of um different types of information for them to digest and reflect on.

Last question I'll turn over to my colleagues.

I know we talked a lot about uh not just the themes from civic engagement, but some of those emerging issues we have to address, land, water, all the other issues.

Will that be part of the conversation with the assembly?

I'm just I say it's starting in January.

I don't know the timing.

Um I don't recall the timing of the emerging trends and issues, although I think some were disclosed.

Will they benefit from that information or will that yes, yes, they will.

We are working on a community inventory, a existing conditions um report, essentially, that will be a report and an interactive dashboard.

Those materials will be available um by the end of this calendar year, so December, and that will be shared with them.

Um then um Patrick Young is coming back at a work session next Tuesday to follow up on a lot of the points brought up during the retreats.

Council Patton Hi.

I think this looks great.

I'll be happy to approve it at the appropriate time.

Um thing I did want to ask is how much um molding will be done if this if the assembly um desires things that are not le not strictly legal.

So I could imagine that if you put this question forward, they might say, well, every frequent transit area neighborhood needs a grocery store and a this and a that, and might be wanting to recommend to us like a level of requirement that those things exist that we wouldn't be able to accommodate.

So are the is that feedback that would be given to them at the time, or is it really like a Yeah.

So the um again, the first part of their time together will be a learning phase.

Um, and I think really key to that is helping people understand what the legal requirements are, what the trade-offs are involved in different policy decisions, and what the city can legally and feasibly implement.

Okay.

Thanks.

Any other questions.

Okay.

So we need to approve the remit.

Motion to approve the remit.

Second.

Okay.

Any further discussion?

Not all in favor, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

Next, we have Pat Young, Director of Planning and Development, who will walk us through an overview of the development review process.

Good afternoon.

Uh as the city manager said, Pat Young, Planning and Development Director.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to provide this high-level overview of our development review process.

We're going to focus on the administrative components that you all don't interact with.

And you and the public don't uh are less visible in that you don't interact with as frequently.

Before I get into the presentation, I do want to introduce some teammates that help um run and administer uh this pro these processes.

Uh they are the folks that really manage this every day.

Uh Alyssa Haley Shram is here.

She's our business and strategy manager.

Alyssa's role and her team is to help um improve and inform our business processes, and she does a great job at that.

Daniel Stagal is here.

He's our um continuous improvement in customer service assistant director.

His team does plan intake, responds to customer inquiries, and does final reviews on plans to make sure that they are complete and correct before they go out.

Travis Crane is here, he's our zoning administration assistant director.

Travis's team does uh development review on the planning side uh for all the different plan types you'll see.

And then Jason Ruff is our assistant director for building safety.

Jason's team does our building and trades uh code compliance.

I also want to acknowledge the approximately 145 teammates across eight departments that uh have really important roles in this work that you'll hear about, and we'll talk about those roles here shortly.

So we're gonna follow the traditional journalists, who what, when, where, why, and how uh rubric here, but we did change the order a little bit for better uh show flow, why, what, who, when, where, and how.

Um, not as easy to remember.

So, why do we do this?

Well, why do why do we regulate, right?

Um it's to support the crucial missions that you see on this slide, right?

As complex as our development process is, you're gonna hear more about that.

Uh, it adds enormously to the safety, quality of life, and economic vitality of our community.

Uh our constant goal is to administer these council adopted requirements and these other state and federal requirements in a manner that is efficient, timely, predictable, and customer oriented, and we'll uh explain how we're trying to strike that balance as I go forward here in the presentation.

So, what is the development process?

So these first three, one, one, two, and three, are items that you are very well versed in that you see at every one of your meetings, uh, which are legislative planning processes.

So legislative means that you as elected officials are final decision makers, uh and you have broad discretion in whether to adopt, amend, or or deny these approvals.

Um items four through eight are items that staff review and approve based on rules that you all have adopted or that are federally state mandated.

So the the final five steps uh are really what we're gonna focus on today.

Subdivision step four is how you create a new lot for it to be sold or developed.

Uh site review is review and approval of all land improvements, so think about horizontal things that are in the ground or on the ground, and infrastructure, building permits or anything that come out of the ground from an ADU to a high rise.

Um inspection is the site evaluation to make sure that the plans that we reviewed are in fact what was built on site and that it's safe and meets uh meets all community requirements.

Insurities are the way we help ensure that infrastructure stays functional and safe, right?

So things like stormwater devices uh and other things that we have maintenance responsibilities to successors.

So who regulates development?

So, of course, Raleigh, as you all know, we apply our own regulations to shape development, create our desired community outcomes.

That's adopted through the Unified Development Ordinance, the or UDO and uh and other provisions of law.

Uh in addition to the city, there are many agencies that regulate development uh or create rules that the city enforces.

So, for example, the federal government often requires wetland disturbance permits that folks have to go directly to the federal government to get those.

The state sets out requirements for stormwater regulation, which we uh incorporate into our regulations and enforce.

Same with building and trade codes, right?

We administer that essentially on the state's behalf.

If we stop doing it, the state would have to step in and do it for us.

And then Wake County regulates things like food services, health code, uh, well and septic tanks, child care requirements, and kind of a handful of other things.

So coordination across those levels is is absolutely crucial uh to the success of the user experience in the development process.

So who in the city does this work?

Um, as I mentioned at the outset, we have eight departments, uh, 145 teammates to talk about coordination, right?

Uh the planning's role is to coordinate this process, but we rely on the expertise of these peer departments uh to review technical aspects of development proposals.

So planning development um staff, Daniel Stagal staff uh does the application submission, or we what we call intake, uh, and then that final review piece.

And then our peer departments conduct their own reviews and field inspections as their knowledge and expertise is crucial in applying rules in areas such as trees, fire protection, stormwater utilities, and transportation.

So that the eight departments are planning and development, engineering services, specifically stormwater division, um, parks and recreation, particularly urban forestry and greenways, Raleigh Water, Fire, Information Technology, Solid Waste, and Transportation.

So, really any project other than very small projects, all eight of those departments are looking at the case.

And you'll see, as you'll see, the success of these reviews uh is relying on alignment, communication, and coordination between these eight teams.

So, talking about who, we who are our external stakeholders, right?

So we have many different publics and many different stakeholders that we work with uh to try to make the development review process successful.

Um, our highest volume of inquiries are uh come from property owners doing home improvement projects, such as renovations and additions, adding a fencer deck, things of that nature.

These are smaller, simpler touch points, the rules are less, and we have a really high success rate.

Those things typically go very smoothly.

Uh next in scale are kind of neighborhood and community members who reach out to our department uh when they see a development project or hear about a development project in their neighborhood that they're interested in, very understandably so.

Uh and we we attempt uh to answer their questions, um, particularly since they're for most of these administrative processes, there's not a notification requirement to the public, right?

We're just approving them under rules that have previously been adopted.

So we do spend a lot of time communicating with neighbors and interested parties to make sure that they understand what's going on in their neighborhood or with their project.

Uh and then finally, uh we work with institutional partners such as NC State and Duke Energy as examples.

They require kind of constant communication, strong relationships because we are dealing with them on a daily or weekly basis.

Um our lowest value uh volume, but very high impact stakeholders, and a lot of the folks I think that you all hear from our mid and large scale developers, and really that talks that's referring to things like new subdivisions uh for housing, mid to high-rise buildings.

Um I recently had a developer tell me that all the good land in Raleigh was developed in the 1990s.

You all have probably heard a very similar story.

Uh what was what was meant by that is that the remaining sites that have not been previously developed very frequently have topography or environmental features or other challenges, or the redevelopment sites.

And of course, redevelopment is always challenging and can often be complex.

So this is a common reality in fast growing cities, uh, but it does add significant complexity to as many of our adopted requirements really were done with the concept of flatter, easier to develop sites in mind, right?

So trying to adapt this these 600 plus pages of rules we have to these complex sites is a real point of challenge and pain and complexity.

Um I think it's important too that you know that we have enormous volumes of human connection in this.

Uh uh we've conducted over 120,000 inspections annually for the last two years.

Uh and each of those is an opportunity to provide excellent or poor or poor quality customer service, and we really are proud of the fact that we have a very high rate of satisfied customers.

Um we also have uh 40,000 inquiries, right?

Approximately.

Um these the numbers I'm showing you are through June 30th of this year, so those are about half of what I just said.

But um the um and so making sure those customers are engaged fully.

The picture you see behind there is uh you see Daniel at the front leading the conversation, is one of our um quarterly stakeholder meetings for our development community, folks that essentially are submitting applications.

We have all of our um we call use the term matrix for our partner, the eight partner departments.

Um we've hosted uh 11 events like this.

We have monthly development services advisory committee meetings, which is a subset of this group, these quarterly stakeholder meetings, which are the large group with well over a hundred attendees at each one.

Um, and we have a newly launched uh what's called permit pathways event, which is really meant to be interactive, where we hear about areas of complexity or concern for the development community, um, where there's something that's unclear or something that's taking too much time, and we have a dialogue about solutions or improvements.

We're really proud of that as an innovation.

And we have topic-specific focus areas for process improvement initiatives.

So, when does development happen?

So this chart shows our site review and new building permit applications.

So that's um if you'll recall step five back on that initial chart.

Um, for 2023 through June of this year.

So the the early pandemic years going through 2023 were kind of banner years for Rolly Development, interest rates were at historic lows, housing demand was at historic highs.

We are seeing a slight cooling, but it's still very near uh her historic highs.

So you see our projection for this year is about 1,800, and we had about 2,000 in 2023.

And this is uh inspections, which is our on our on our building uh safety side, a little bit more of a um reduction because we are seeing a s a slowing pace of new starts and constructive buildings um in the last six to twelve months.

So where does development take place?

Development takes place everywhere.

I know this map isn't very helpful, but it's really just meant to tell the story that we have permits in every part of the city.

Of course, many of these, the majority of these are renovations, additions, uh driveway permits, mod minor things like that.

But um we we do have this work really everywhere in our community.

The the remaining slides walk through the the how of development review, which which we understand to be the interest that your constituents and interested parties contact you the most about, so we want to spend the most time on it.

The how includes how long development review takes, uh how many review cycles it takes for approvals, and how our reviews and cycles are tracking with our established benchmarks.

And I want to emphasize it we'll conclude with some challenge areas and then recent improvements we've made.

Uh and most importantly, perhaps a promise to come back to you with more specific solutions that will need your uh visibility and endorsement in December or January.

So, how long is development review, right?

So you all often hear, boy, it took six months, it took however long to get my permit.

Uh so what you're looking at on this slide is how long in total time.

So that's the little green uh uh diamonds on top.

It takes to get through our site review processes, which you'll remember is approvals for development of land, such as stormwater utilities, building heights, tree preservation, everything, kind of the site requirements.

The dark blue is the number of days that these applications were uh under review with staff.

And the light blue is the number of days that applications were back with applicants.

So when applicants submit uh an application, staff reviews it, we submit, we provide comments back to them and say, when you're when you've reviewed these comments, please provide responses.

So again, you'll see that uh a majority, uh about five-eighths to two-thirds uh of the time is back with the applicant, and that makes sense, right?

Because they're the ones that are having to look at the ordinance and make the required changes to ensure compliance.

So the average site review time is about 144 days, um, but only about 60 of those are with are with staff.

Uh and this is the same data for our building processes.

And you can see that breakdown is um similar, but but usually with less time with the uh reviewers.

Usually these this comments and building side are narrower, right?

They're about a fixture or building material and can be responded to quicker.

So you see that the staff takes more time, but the um but the applicants usually take less time.

So that's uh 52 days is the average there.

So how many reviews does it take for approval?

So um every time an applicant submits information uh to us and then we provide them back revisions or corrections needed, that's called a cycle.

So when we talk about cycles, um the the UNC school of government in the early 2000s set an informal benchmark standard that we've adopted that we shoot for, which is three review cycles.

You should you should not have to submit more than three times to have your plan approved under normal circumstances.

Uh that's essentially ideal.

Um what this slide I think reflects is that in our less complex cases, so minor and uh and minor and major site permitting review are usually um smaller to mid-scale development versus subdivisions and administrative site reviews, which are usually new development of a moderate to large scale.

We have we're having much more success meeting that three benchmark.

We are gratified that even for the ones where we're not mentioned meeting it, we are usually meeting that in the fourth review.

Usually that's a very small number of comments.

One of my priorities and our our priorities as a group is to try to get a much higher percentage of these uh in three reviews or less.

And we'll talk more about how we're gonna do that and how we've tried to do that so far.

And this is that same data for building inspections and building safety, and I think you'll see the same uh dynamic there.

Really proud of the really uh efficient work that our team does, especially on new residential townhouses.

But as you get into commercial buildings, which includes apartments, um, there's less uh less success with timely reviews.

And again, that's a combination of uh applicant, the quality of their submittal, their level of knowledge and understanding of the code, and staff's ability to communicate effectively the comments.

So there's areas for improvement across the board there, which will work which will recommend a number of different treatments that you'll hear about.

So the city sets benchmarks for the time it takes for each review cycle.

Uh these vary on the complexity of the application type from about five business days to 20, depending on the application type.

So what's reflected in this slide is our assessment of each staff review of applications.

So, for example, a new typical subdivision or mid-rise building, all eight departments would have to review.

So therefore, it would be eight reviews per case per cycle.

So you're talking over 20 reviews before the final approval in most cases.

Um UNC SOG set that benchmark about 85%.

We are quite close to that.

We're really proud of that.

I think that represents success.

What um and we see a very similar dynamic with in our building permit side.

Um, but the the next slide tells a different story, which is how many full reviews.

So this means eight all eight departments review equals one review.

Um we're on time.

And you can see that um we are not meeting anywhere near our benchmark.

I do want to note that it uh individual staff reviewers.

So what what we see happening is out of the eight reviews, there's usually one or two departments that have late reviews, which is what's preventing us from meeting that higher benchmark.

I want to emphasize that that's not always bad.

What we often see happen, I would say in a majority of cases, is uh applicant is asking for more time uh to work through a comment to get the comment resolved before so they don't have to go through another review cycle.

So when that happens, I think we I've always encouraged staff to say it's better to be a day or two late than go through an entirely new review cycle, which can take five to twenty days.

But it can also indicate that a staff reviewer um you know is spread thin, that there's vacancies, that there's um folks that are in leave of absence or or uh either in our department or partner departments, and that and that can cause process delays and timeliness issues.

So we're trying to pull all that apart, and we've identified some solutions on that, and we'll bring you more in the coming months.

And this is the equivalent um metric for our building side.

So, how are we doing it?

So I think there's really four areas of challenge that um we really have to work on all four in order to move the ball to change the user experience, to reduce the number of concerns and complaints, and for people to feel like they're they're having a better experience.

Process clarity, technology, administrative coordination, and timeliness.

So, some examples that I'll I'll mention are you know having one reviewer out on leave and these smaller development review teams that usually have two or three, four members that can create a significant direct impact and cause delays.

Staff training and thus review quality is impacted by lack of or outdated standard operating procedures that don't that haven't always kept up with changes to our rules and administrative standards and long intake times because sometimes it's unclear to applicants which approval an applicant needs to submit, right?

So a minor change could mean that you have to go into one category versus another, and that can cause delays.

So those are some examples.

Uh again, we'll certainly come back and talk more about this when we come back to you in December.

Want to be respectful of your time today, and of course, take any questions you have.

Um I personally and and our team are really focused and committed to continuous improvement in development review.

In 2023, we formed a innovation team, which was a staff across planning and development to analyze challenges with the process and identify opportunities for enhancement.

The staff put together a very robust report, uh, which includes feedback from hundreds of development community stakeholders and customers, other customers.

The report recommended improvement actions that staff uh have been working on and implementing, and that we've embedded into our departmental business plan so that we have long-term focus on implementation.

Um we've also implemented uh so several of these recommendations include um combining um site plans uh and building permit reviews in certain instances, uh administrative site reviews and site plan reviews in other instances.

We have we're piloting those, those are not gone full yet, but we we've made good progress.

We've added more uh development applications to our online portal system, which increases increases the ease of submittal.

Previously, you had to email and there's back and forth of emails, information could get lost.

We have an online portal that allows that direct submission and allows staff to let folks know what is needed.

And then we've implemented the first phase of our decision engine software to assist uh applicants in getting to the right place to get information.

We're gonna continue to continue with that with the citywide CRM that's being planned.

We've um set up uh additional step uh what we call bookings, which are essentially appointments to meet with staff to uh ensure that um homeowners and applicants submit the correct information in the the correct application.

Uh supervisors do uh we've increased our audits to intake process for uh quality to ensure that everything's there the first time, that we don't have to keep asking for information after submittal, and we've introduced a peer review mechanism um to ensure consistency of comments across reviews.

Another area of pain has been that one reviewer will see something that another didn't.

It feels like a new comment to the applicant, even though it was maybe something that was just missed previously, or is based on a change to the design by the applicant.

Um I think I want to mention we we've established a special projects team that works directly with our affordable housing projects uh to ensure that they get through the process smoothly, and also our large community projects such as the Raleigh Convention Center expansion and the Omni Hotel, right?

So we we give them extra um kind of concierge care to make sure that each step of the way that there's there's not any uh delays, significant delays or areas of concern.

So before I turn over to you for questions, I again want to thank my colleagues uh mentioned earlier uh all 145 of our teammates who work in this important area every day.

We're we're really committed to protecting the public interest through fair and consistent application of these required regulations.

We believe these support economic development, balance community growth, and we want to do this in a timely, predictable and customer oriented manner.

And so our team will come back to you in, as I said, December or January to provide further updates on additional process improvements and potentially administrative uh organization changes that will help further the goals you've heard us uh talking about continuing wanting to meet.

Thank you for listening and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Young and Mr.

Counselor.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Um I'm hoping members of the public will see exactly what happens behind the curtain because there's a lot of development and seeing these volumes uh it's very impressive.

So I just have just kind of one comment and then a question.

Uh I know very often people say, wait a minute, there's something being built.

Why wasn't there public review?

And I think for the public to see that there are, and I know the plan review varies in scope and scale, 12,000, that means you cannot have a thousand public hearings a month.

It would probably be a backlog of 10 years.

And so very appreciate the work that all those eight departments and 145 staff are doing.

Uh so thank you for keeping the engine running.

You had mentioned at the tail end that very often there are some delays because you have conflicting comments between reviewers.

Do you have a quality control that is there someone if there is a different approach that takes a look at it because it's partly training, that there's consistency.

You know, rules are supposed to be uh objective, not subjective.

So what training are you doing?

Because I've heard that, and even the mayor and I we met with some subset of the development services group that they're getting conflicting comments.

So is that on your list to address so that there is some consistency or whatever quality control so that that uh either comments missed or at least can be corrected so that there isn't frustration or confusion on the development side.

But overall, great presentation, very illuminating, and I just really hope that people will rewind and watch this again.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Really bringing up an important uh point.

I think there's two aspects to that.

One aspect is where um two reviewers within the same division or department are looking at a plan in consecutive cycles, review cycles, and making different comments, right?

So that's a really matter of internal training and support.

I think what what we want to do is continue this process is is certainly well underway, but continue to try to have uh expand our efforts at ongoing staff training and um ensuring that there's uh internal interpretations and consistency about how things should be applied.

I think uh uh a related issue is when there's conflict between two different departments, regulations and requirements, and that happens very frequently on these constrained sites, right?

So stormwater requirements are a great example.

I've had applicants tell me I don't uh engineers and designers say I don't design buildings, I design stormwater devices and buildings go around stormwater devices because those requirements are so challenging.

So we have something called development management team, DMT, which is a staff level review where we try to meet weekly and resolve those conflicts.

But but we do think one of the areas kind of teasing what you might see here in December or January is we do think having a team that's really just got this narrow focus on resolving these types of conflict areas and and pain areas both in the minute, so like quick resolution to a comment where that's stuck, but then systematically doing after action reports and really making sure sure there's that focus on continuous improvement.

So I hope that answers your question.

Thank you.

Um, counselor Jones and then Pat.

Thank you so much.

Um I wanted to discuss staffing with you.

If we have, as we saw that permit chart, as it's going down, and it's not drastically, but it is going down.

Um is any of that due to staffing levels?

Is 145 people doing that enough for you to do?

When was the last time you you added staffing to that?

What are your concerns there?

Yeah, so so here's what I'll say.

So our overall staffing level in in this area is about the same as it was 10 years ago.

Our volumes are higher, right?

Even with the decre decrease.

That being said, we've made a lot of efforts to um improve efficiency, right?

So we have automated online system to track plans back in the day, you had to like pass giant plan sets around.

So I think we've we found some efficiencies that mitigate that.

But I I do think we'll continue through the budget process to look at um whether additional staff are needed in in in certain areas.

And what again we'll work with the manager's office and and the budget and finance office to to do that.

But um I uh one another thing I'll say is until recently, this has changed in the last six months, we had a high level of vacancies.

We certainly didn't feel comfortable coming forward requesting more positions when there were a lot of vacancies.

And that I think positions us to start continuing to make requests as needed.

And we want to make sure those are thoroughly justified.

But yeah, we do want to make sure I mentioned it a couple times.

We've designed a system that works really, really well if every single member of the team is there.

If we have vacations, uh extended leave of any kind, it can be a challenge.

And thank you so much because my next question was going to be about vacancies.

So I appreciate your work in getting those filled.

Do you think that that adds to the I don't want to say slowness because I think you guys are doing fantastic, but if we're decreasing in our permitting, do you think there's a frustration in the community of how long they it is perceived that it takes, and that may attribute to some of the decrease?

Yeah, that's a really complex question.

I I don't think there's really the decrease in permanent activity is direct relation to macroeconomic conditions rather than any action on our part.

I do think it creates an opportunity, and though that's the way I look at it.

We have this slight decrease in value, you know, again, we're talking five, seven percent.

But that gives us the ability to really look at how can we help customers through faster, help support customers through where they get stuck on some of these complex requirements.

So I think repositioning our I'm personally more focused on repositioning some of our existing staff on helping customers get through the process than adding new staff because um even though that's important too.

Uh when it when this is an area that really requires expertise and specialization, it takes usually a couple years for folks to get really efficient at it.

So I think um refocusing our existing staff on helping customers through and then looking where we need to add strategically.

Does that answer your question?

It does.

Thank you.

Hi, Pat.

Just a couple from me.

Thanks.

Um is that um this is maybe a little bit afield from the scope of this presentation, but we know that in the General Assembly there are sometimes these sort of shot clock bills that are run.

And I'm just curious.

It's it's looking like we we tend to not run a I mean, I know they haven't passed it, but presuming some future state where one does it.

How how do we stack up against what we've seen?

Yeah, I know that's a great.

So the the council member is referring to uh most of you will be familiar with a shot clock bill where the General Assembly is going to require us to review a permit in a in a specified time.

I mentioned that we have um our our internal benchmarks are five to twenty days, depending on the the scope of the project.

20 is really the outliers are really large projects.

Most of them are that five to seven range.

Um the the most ambitious shot clock bill I've seen introduced was 30 days.

So we're we're we're meeting that now, and I think we'll continue to meet that unless the General Assembly you know pushes that to a shorter time frame.

If they do, you would expect that we'd have to come back to you and say you know, we that's the that would become a real challenge.

But uh based on what's been submitted to date, I think the bills have been really aimed at communities that are taking much, much longer than we are.

Helpful.

Um then the IB chart you showed with the the concentric circles of communities that you serve.

Um the one about like communities that are interested in something happening near them.

Um I'm curious what explorations you've made to not that we don't want our residents to be able to email the planning environment and say what's going on next door to me, but like what um automations and dashboarding have been are you all exploring to make it so that um that type of like direct communication is perhaps deflected.

Yeah, that's a great question.

So we do have a lot of tools currently where people can find out about what's going on anywhere in the city, per permitting dashboards that are online now.

I I will say an area that I've been asking our team to work on and they are working on is making those a little more user-friendly.

You really have to kind of know what you're looking for and how to search for it.

We use a lot of nomenclature like ASR subs, like that's not terminology that the average person understands or should have to understand.

So I think translating that into something that's more transparent and maybe sharing it out through community organizations as an area of improvement we're looking at.

Okay.

Well, I wanted to just say I appreciate this update.

It's a huge number of the volume, tens of thousands.

Um, and I appreciate the specialty teams on affordable housing, tax credit projects, and the special projects.

That's great.

Um just a couple follow-up questions.

In person.

We've heard, I think when we get feedback sometimes, well, back in the day, we could just come down, sit it, work it out, punch through.

Do you still do in-person meetings?

Is that something that you think would be uh assist in some of these more complex projects?

Yeah, so we we still certainly do in-person meetings.

So we we very we very frequently, especially when a case is stuck, meaning that there's comments that are unresolved, the applicant can't resolve them.

Um we do have somewhat less uh availability of scheduled in-person meetings that you can schedule in advance, right?

So we try to assess each situation, and if it really if a if an in-person meeting will benefit it, um we we proceed with it.

The reason we've cut back a little bit on those sketch the scheduled ones is to it was the same reviewers that were doing the in-person meetings and the non-in-person meetings, and it was really impacting the review of the projects that were not being going through the in-person process.

So I felt in order to ensure that there was more equity in the process and that the standard process could be completed quickly.

The the only communities that are really successful with an on-demand in-person system are those that have dedicated teammates on that, and we have not made wanted to make that investment heretofore.

We can certainly discuss that.

Yep.

Okay.

Second question is specifically kind of around stormwater.

We had heard a lot that we had new ordinances passed, just the technical understanding of what's required, our requirements, the cost.

Uh so just any thoughts on a year plus into that.

How are you feeling about those new ordinances?

Yeah, I probably ought to let my teammate Ben Brown, who I saw earlier, uh still here, uh, come speak to that.

But I'll give I will share my perspective as a non-stormwater expert, but as a development practitioner for 30 years.

Um I think they've helped some.

They were a little, they were somewhat more stringent, but a little bit more specific.

I think one of the areas that we I hear about is that it's a lot of engineering judgment goes into this, and that can cause delays and deliberations.

Um I think that's a continuing, continually improving.

And I think uh Ben, Sally Hoyant, Wayne and Miles' team does an excellent job of trying to communicate and explain with uh customers uh you know what they need to be successful.

So good afternoon.

Uh yeah, just to echo um just what Pat said, like I do think we're um working on some fine touches now to take some of the subjectivity out of it, because there's a few places on like the perimeter of like the design manual update that have that's more subjective than than we thought it would be going in.

But overall, I I'm uh really proud of the work that went into the design manual.

Our regulations are a lot more predictive.

Just before we had a 20 year old a 20-year-old manual, there was a lot of guesswork, a lot of well, I think it's like this in Raleigh, but let's see.

And also the fact the engineering answer, it kind of depends on your point of view.

Like I do think downstream is really being helped out by our efforts with the stormwater design manual as well, especially on redevelopment and retrofit type projects, because that's something that is getting a little more attention from and from from the engineering side, and we knew that would be a little bit of heartburn the first year or so to kind of get people used to that, but I do think that is very bearing some fruit.

But those things on the edges that are more subjective than they thought they would be.

We are working to kind of clean those up, and you'll probably be seeing a couple of text changes for those coming up.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Other questions for Mr.

Young.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all.

Awesome.

And the last thing is I would like to introduce to some but announce to others the newest member of the city's management team, um, Mr.

Byron Sanders, who is our new engineer and services director.

You will recall Rich Kelly retired this summer after a long career, and Byron, who was serving as one of our assistant directors, has stepped up to the plate.

He currently is responsible for three divisions, um, roadway design and construction, special projects and public safety under construction management, as well as parts under construction management.

He came to us from the state in 2023 with the loan career of roughly 20 years almost.

And with that, he is an engineer from NC State.

So Jonathan, Michael Moore, Go Pack.

So when they wrote the comments for me, they didn't think I was gonna do it, but anyway, go pack.

Um maybe Kevin will appreciate that.

Um, but I'm glad that you're here.

I'm glad you said yes.

So his first official day was Saturday as a new member of the management team.

Just let you know we start at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

I'll be there.

Okay.

I'll be there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam City Manager.

Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Council.

I am Byron Sanders, and I am ecstatic to uh have been selected as the new engineering services director.

We have a very talented and very dedicated team in engineering services that I've had the pleasure of working with for the last two years now.

And so it is a privilege to have the opportunity to lead that team.

So really looking forward to the opportunity.

So thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

And that concludes my report.

Other than like to keep Adrian Cole in our thoughts and prayers as she lost her mom this weekend.

Okay.

Next, we have report and recommendation of the environmental advisory board, and we have Megan Anderson and Scott Greenman.

Hello, good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Happy to be here today to introduce our EAB environmental advisory board chair, Scott Greenman.

I want to give him a big shout out for all the work that he does.

Megan Anderson, I head up sustainability for the city.

One thing you'll notice about the their annual report, which he'll be presenting today, is that it follows very closely along with our community climate action plan that you recently heard about.

And so just want to give the EAB a big shout out for all their work looking across the whole city and community in these different topic areas today.

So with that, I'll pass it over to Scott.

Thanks, Megan.

Thank you, Council.

Really appreciate you uh supporting our initiatives throughout the years and Madam Mayor for being our liaison this year, really appreciate it.

Today, we're asking for you to accept our annual report from 2025 and uh approve our 2026 work plan.

Uh in 2025, our report, our work plan was focused around, of course, championing and hosting the Raleigh Environmental Advisory uh awards and then topics around urban forestry, urban heat, looking back at how the city was implementing some of the studies that have been really successful.

Um stormwater and transportation focused.

Uh this year, the environmental advisory awards have kind of gone off the hook.

Uh really big shout out to Mary Alice for all the work she did this year.

Moving it to Dix Park has seen and coupling with Earth Day has seen it really grow exponentially and it's come a event that the community really looks forward to.

And we appreciate everybody who's able to come out every year to that.

Switching to topics that we focused on this year, we teamed these two together because really they go together.

Urban heat and urban forestry needs to be tackled together.

And we wanted to understand how the city was using some of the tree canopy studies, the heat island mapping in order to make recommendations, implementations for how the city could proceed with that information.

Uh our recommendations really uh boil down to making a holistic approach to tackling this problem.

Um it's often felt at the pedestrian scale, so a focus on how the pedestrian experiences our streets, uh, not just street sidewalks, but getting out of your car, walking to the store from the parking lot.

What does that look like?

That's oftentimes a pretty um expansive part of pavement.

So, how do we um look at that holistically?

How do we grow the tree canopy through public-prior partnerships?

We know the city only has so much jurisdiction, but how can we be creative in the comprehensive plan, maybe implementing comp um pocket parks, which are small parks within the city, less focused on large distributed area.

And lastly, we want to um think about the future.

Those studies were moments in time, and they helped us to develop strategies that are being implemented, but trees take time to grow.

Processes take time to develop.

So we want to look and recommend that the council thinks about and looks with staff how often it's appropriate to redo that study so that we can re-evaluate and make sure strategies that have been implemented are being used to the best of their abilities in the future.

Stormwater is always a challenge.

We want to think about how we are able to tackle storms that are increasingly big.

Uh 500,000-year flood plans have been talked about today.

And a couple of eye-opening things were discovered.

Um a green stormwater infrastructure master plan could be overlaid and talked about how that could be implemented across the city so that when we do stormwater management is tackled in a sustainable way uh to mitigate uh these things.

Another really important um topic we discussed at length was um the FEMA flood maps and how often those are actually updated.

However, um there are cooperating technical partnerships that the city could adopt that will take on that ownership and allow the city to update our maps more frequently and regularly to our specific area.

So we would really ask that working with staff, we look into that process because it could be pretty important and impactful in how we make decisions and planning in the future.

Uh transportation, you'll hear a few about these coming up in different topic areas.

And one we wanted to really um champion again is the e-bike voucher program.

It's been extremely successful.

We know staff is working on how we can continually fund that.

I almost get hit by an e-bike almost every day, so they're pretty awesome in my neighborhood.

The kids love them.

So I really hope we can find ways to continue to fund that.

And then I know transportation is working on an active mobility study that should be coming in front of you guys shortly.

Um and we are in full support of a lot of the recommendations that they're putting forward.

So that concludes kind of our look back at last year, and then looking forward to next year.

We will, of course, continue to manage and host the environmental advisory boards with support of staff.

And this year we wanted to focus uh our topic areas around 3D focus studies, uh, continuing to understand and how the implementation of the transportation transportations act and mobility plan is coming forward.

Uh we wanted to look backwards a little bit on a study we did a long time ago around solid waste and see how those processes, some of the recommendations are happening on that, but also looking forward and understanding how the city's handling new and divergent waste streams, composting, e-waste specifically, um, these things are coming to the city, they're coming to the recycling, how are we handling them?

What's the plan?

Because whether we want them or not, it's happening.

So, what are what are we really trying to do?

And uh lastly, a focus area, which I'm really excited about as an architect uh around affordable housing, understanding that good sustainable design does not need to be more expensive.

So, how can we make sure that our dollars we're putting forward are sustainable, they're affordable, that the what is being provided is good for the environment, but also the people holistically, and really understanding what are our aspects that we could help to grow that initiative as the city looks for more affordable housing.

Uh so with that, I will take any questions.

Great.

Um thank you both.

And uh we'll start with Councillor Lambert Melton.

Hey, thanks.

Not a question, but I like on the work plan um review for growing waste and the specifically on the demolition projects.

That may be a good opportunity for y'all to work with RHDC, the Raleigh Historic Development Commission.

I've talked to them a few times about could we find ways to divert some of these materials, particularly when um not designated historic properties because they wouldn't be demolished necessarily, but properties that have salvageable materials and how we can incentivize them being diverted from our waste entirely.

Folks may actually want to reclaim them and reuse them in future projects.

So that may be a good opportunity for y'all to just um maybe have like a joint meeting or something.

But just wanted to flag that for you.

I think this is great, and that may be an opportunity there.

Thank you.

We'll look into it.

Uh Council Brandt.

Definitely a great presentation.

Thank you for your work.

Just a quick question.

Um, can you speak to your work with maybe some of the other committees that you all may do?

Uh we are a smaller board, office of sustainability is not huge, so we don't have a ton of subcommittees.

We kind of keep together.

Um we do outreach a lot to different departments within the city, but not necessarily to different boards and commissions as much.

Just an idea with some of the ideas and things that you may have.

Like when you talk about stormwater, we we have a whole committee that deals with stormwater, like whatever interaction information you all can share with them.

Because they're the ones that any policies we make with stormwater is going to come through that committee.

So I think that could be a good no in addition to some of their work, just some of the ideas that you all come across, just sharing that information, as well as like anything with transportation, even just sharing that with the transit authority.

Yeah.

So for sure.

And this year we didn't um get a presentation from that board, but in the past we have collaborated with the different boards on those topics when they come up.

We we've wanted to focus specifically on that topic this year, so for us.

But for sure.

Council Harrison.

Yeah, hi Scott, good to see you.

Thank you for all your work.

Um, I know as we've talked before, um, one of the important topics in our region is the presence of forever chemicals, so like uh Gen X or POSS, PFOA.

And I do believe Raleigh residents could benefit from a greater understanding of these chemicals and their impacts.

And I think the EAB could play an important role in educating our community.

And so, in that spirit, I want to move that the EAB incorporate a public educational event uh about Forever Chemicals into your 2026 work plan.

This event would help educate the Raleigh community about forever chemicals, and then also how we can reduce exposure to those chemicals in our daily lives.

And I'd ask that you collaborate with sustainability with Megan, with Raleigh Water, any other departments, agencies or outside organizations that would be helpful to host such an event.

So I guess that's a motion for council to consider.

Yep.

I mean, I'll I'll second it.

Um is there a requirement of I mean money to do something like that?

I'll turn that to Scott or Megan.

We've had some conversations.

Hello.

I think with an event like that, we can probably handle that internally for the most part.

Uh depending on the scale, if council had something specific they were looking for, we could bring a budget forward.

But if it's uh a one-time event, we can we can probably make that happen.

Yeah, I'm thinking within your current uh capacity and resources.

Okay.

Any other conversation on that?

Do you want um so we have a motion and a second?

All in favor of that motion, aye.

All opposed, nay.

All right, so we will add that.

Anything else for we need to approve the board.

All right.

Do you have somebody for approval?

All right.

Uh all in favor of the report as amended.

Uh aye.

All opposed.

Appreciate y'all's work.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay, next we have the report and recommendation of parks, recreation, and greenway advisory, and we have Kim Serrat.

Great, thank you.

Uh good afternoon, Mayor, members of council and city manager.

I am Kimberly Suran, uh Greenway Project Manager and Landscape Architect.

I have with me Ellie Hare and Bentley Ruggles with Dewbury Engineers.

They are our consultant for the Mine Creek Greenway Trail Improvements.

I'm going to provide some project background, the community engagement summary, and then Ellie's going to talk about the proposed improvements, a detour route during the Greenway closure during construction, and then I'll talk about next steps and schedule.

So this is an existing Greenway Trail located in North Raleigh.

The specific trail corridor and section is located just south of Shelley Lake from Millbrook Road, about a mile down to North Hills Drive.

The proposed improvements include some structure replacement, some accessibility and safety improvements, trail resurfacing with widening, some stream stabilization, uh proposing neighborhood connections and improving signage and amenities.

This is a 2022 Parp Spawn project with a 5.6 million dollar budget for design and construction.

Our public participation goal was consult level where the public is informed of and can provide feedback on options.

We held two open houses.

We sent out about 1,500 postcards to property owners, put up 16 yard signs around the neighborhood surrounding the corridor, sent out in informational flyers, everything was provided in Spanish, and then we also advertised on all the digital sites as well.

So the first public meeting was held at the Sertoma Art Center.

It was a weekday evening attended by about 70 uh members of the public.

The second meeting was a Saturday morning from about 8 a.m.

to 11 a.m.

where uh city staff as well as the consultant staff was stationed along the greenway to interact with users during that Saturday morning timeframe.

The feedback we received were uh providing connections from the Inman Park neighborhood as well as Yorkshore Downs neighborhood, improving safety, questions regarding schedule, of course, how long is our beloved greenway going to be closed.

We are coordinating, I'll talk a little bit later about this with uh the Raleigh Water Sewer Improvement Project as well as the Shelley Road Bridge replacement project.

Questions regarding natural habitat protection and then the need for lighting in that Millbrook underpass.

And I'll turn it over to Ellie to talk about the proposed improvements.

Yeah.

Good afternoon.

Yeah, so I will quickly run through the technical design items related to this project.

Um first proposed improvement is trail resurfacing and widening.

There are some cracking and buckling happening along this trail.

And currently the trail is six to eight feet wide, so we're bumping that up to uh 10-foot wide asphalt path with a two-foot gravel shoulder on either side, which is the current design standard.

We are also proposing some stream bank stabilization in about a 200 linear foot area of the greenway that is shown on the right-hand side of the screen.

A couple of options for stream bank stabilization include Lex MSC walls, which can be planted with live stake plantings.

That's in the middle images on the screen, or a block retaining wall at the bottom of the screen.

Our next proposed improvements are structural improvements.

We are doing a full replacement of bridges 32 and 33, as well as full replacements of 17 and 19.

17 and 19 are not part of this design project, but part of the bond money that's coming from this project.

And we are also proposing concrete decking improvements to tributary bridges 29 and 31, and hoping to make improvements to boardwalks 27 and 28.

And just a quick history on structures 32 and 33.

These are the bridges that are going to be fully replaced.

This is due to uh city council decision that was made spring of last year to replace these structures and keep the trail on the east side of the creek rather than removing the structures and moving the trail.

And the estimated construction costs of these structures is 1.2 million dollars.

And this is what just a quick image of what these structures would look like.

Our next proposed improvement is at the Shelley Lake parking lot, the trailhead here, which is just south of Shelley Lake along Millbrook Road.

We are proposing uh replacing these stairs and adding in a pathway that connects the parking lot as well as the new path to the Millbrook Road um sidewalk.

And here's an image of that area.

You can see the existing stairs that we're proposing to replace, as well as adding lighting under that Millbrook Road and replacing the signage and amenities to implement the new wayfinding sign package.

And finally, our proposed improvement is to improve neighborhood trail connections to Yorkshire Downs and Carter Street, or um Yorkshire Downs at Carter Street, excuse me, in Inman Park at Standard Trail.

Currently, those are gravel paths, and we're proposing to bring that up to the standard asphalt trail as well as deal with some drainage issues that are there.

Oh, I went the wrong way.

And then our detour route during construction because we do anticipate Greenway closure, and we're hoping that we can phase the closure during construction.

But what this will look like is traveling north to south, starting at Shelley Lake parking lot along Millbrook Road and traveling down North Hills Drive to reconnect to Mine Creek Trail where it crosses North Hills Drive.

And here are the next steps, the anticipated schedule, and I'll pass it back to Kimberly to discuss.

So next steps, uh talking about schedules.

So design and permitting, we're hoping to be completed.

Uh Dewbury is going to submit after they're done their design, probably around the fall of next year, so about a year, and hopefully we stay within that 144-day average review cycle that we just heard about.

Um then again, we're coordinating with the uh Rally Water project, which will be sewer replacement that uh covers our area.

It goes a little farther north and a little farther south.

We're trying to work right behind them so that as they are finished and perhaps some of the permitting is approved for their project, that we can come behind them.

That's of course subject to the schedule, unforeseen conditions, uh weather delays, etc.

But that is we are very actively coordinating that construction um schedule.

And then, of course, with the Shelley Road Bridge replacement project as well.

Um so we are hoping to start construction in summer of 27.

It'll be about a year construction for the Greenway specifically.

So just recommending approval for the schematic design, and then if anyone has any questions for us.

Well, I'll just say this is such a great part of our Greenway network.

Shelley Lake's just the bomb.

It's great.

Um so when they're replacing the bridges, people won't be able to make the full circle around the lake, right?

So there'll just be all the signage diverting people.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's not specifically part of this improvement.

That's a different design and construction, but it comes out of this budget.

Okay.

Yeah.

That is being coordinated as well with the sewer replacement that's happening under those structures.

So that's all combined into their schedule as well.

But yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, it looks like a lot of great upgrades and an area that has definitely seen some wear and tear.

So just unavoidable sewer is an essential service, obviously, uh, you know, on a unavoidable in some of those areas where we have to close for safety, et cetera.

Just one question.

Uh the mayor and I were talking because we're both runners and we know this route very well.

Um, in terms of the construction period, because I know I hear it because I run with the group, falls of news, you know, when it gets to like a year, two years.

I know you may not be able to answer this one, but is there an effort from the parks department uh to minimize it?

Because even that, you know, I'm looking at North Hills Drive.

That is a hilly hilly, hilly, hilly hilly hilly detour.

Um shrinking that construction time.

I I support the changes, sorely needed.

I'm definitely going to support it.

Just looking at the time of construction and the detours.

So one is that how do you message those detours?

Because normally in a greenway, you just see closed.

Um will you do some messaging as part of that package?

And then, secondly, in terms of your experience, and maybe not be for you, Kim, but for parks.

Uh, how close are you?

Because when I saw 26 to 28, I don't know if that's first quarter, second quarter.

How long is construction?

Is that the full two years?

Is it 18 months?

And I know it's said depending on weather conditions, so just some help there so we can communicate it out to the entire community bikers, runners, walkers.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And one, like I said, we are coordinating with Raleigh Water for their project.

Their project is about the two-year time frame for construction, best case scenario.

And then ours is about a year.

So we're trying to feed into that and follow them.

They're working south to north for that replacement and sleeving.

Um we are very actively coordinating with them.

We're talking about all sorts of different ways we could handle that bid process, that we could maybe maybe not write something into the bid documents, um, make sure the contractors are aware of what's going on, that there would be two different contractors.

We talked about making it the same contractor.

So we are actively coordinating that with Raleigh Water.

As far as the signage, um, there would be our standard signage for detours.

There's also the Greenway Alert page that keeps everyone up to date.

If you happen to get there and you don't know where to go, you could definitely look on that page and it would show you a routing map.

Um agreed the sidewalk.

Um, you know, it's never an ideal situation with driveways with shrubs and trees that encroach with topography, et cetera.

Um, but we try to mitigate, yeah, uh as much as possible.

But of course, empathetic to all the groups using it, whether it's children, you know, people with disability, you know, runner groups, all of that.

Great question.

So beautiful trail and semi-district when we're ready, I'd be willing to make the motion.

But I'm very excited about this.

Any other questions?

Go make the motion.

Uh let me go back to that page.

So with that, I recommend approval of the schematic design for the Mine Creek Greenway Trail Improvements Project.

Thank you.

Second.

Okay.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

All opposed, nay.

Thank y'all.

All right.

Next we have matters scheduled for public hearing, and we have rezoning Z5224 try-on road.

Hannah Reckow.

Good afternoon, Mayor Council.

Hannah Reco Planning and Development.

This is rezoning Z 5224 on Try and Road.

Um from uh previous meetings, this hearing is open, it's been continued.

Um in response to some of the discussion last time, the applicant has revised the request to remove uh one of the parcels at 1600 Trion Road, which was this uh hook-shaped parcel here.

So um now the request is just two uh two parcels, um 21, just about 22 acres, um requesting just Rx4 conditional use.

Um the signed copy of the request has been received, and um you could act on that revision um if you would like to.

So just as a reminder, um the conditions uh only conditions now pertain to the uh property that's left um to be rezoned RX, and they include these, um, some prohibit prohibitation on um some land uses, a cap on uh residential dwelling units for the restriction of building height, um, a commitment to pursue a traffic signal uh in a certain situation, and then uh providing cross access, an affordability requirement for residential units, and then an additional buffer along uh one side of the property.

So that's the the um update to the case.

Happy to answer any questions you have.

Okay.

Thank you for the updates, questions.

Okay, so this was held open, right?

And just should I close it?

Any other questions?

Okay.

So we'll go ahead and close the public hearing.

I just have a couple comments.

I did uh get in touch with there's a development a little bit east of here that had been of concern to neighbors and it had been affecting, I think, people's opinion about this particular rezoning case.

So I was able to speak to the developer of that site.

And I just want to note that there had been some significant public safety issues at this development and its department complex.

And there is now new management of that apartment complex as of August.

And my understanding is they have spent $70,000 on cameras, on new gates and locks because they were having issues with people coming in their property, both on, you know, just outside the property, but also coming inside the apartment complex and causing property destruction as well as nuisance and other criminal behaviors.

So I think my hope is that with the new management, that is not going to be the case anymore.

But I just want to kind of reflect back that, you know, a lot of neighbors' concerns over the safety issues of having a new, you know, dense development near there was because of some of their you know poor experiences with another neighbor.

I hope those are going to be resolved.

Um as it you know comes to this case, you know, it obviously every every property is different, and I hope that we'll have great management here.

Um I still have a couple issues with the case that I will note.

One is just the condition of the road of Fairway Drive of Bruce Circle.

Um they are not well suited for dense development.

Par drive is privately owned, um, so it can't be used.

So I just don't know when or how those roads will be improved.

And then I'll also note that this case only requires two percent of the units to be affordable, and so it's not you know uh necessarily going to be a fully affordable uh property, but I am hopeful that it will be given that that is the proposal the development team has uh put forth.

Okay.

So I'm gonna make a motion to approve if there are more no more comments.

All right.

I move to adopt a proposed consistency statement dated October 7, 2025, containing agenda materials and to approve the zoning amendment with the adoption and effective dates described in the agenda item under recommended action.

This approval is also deemed to be an amendment to the future land use map to the extent described in the adopted consistency statement.

Okay, any other discussion?

Not all in favor of the motion.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Okay, so one in opposition.

Thank you very much.

Okay, next we have the report and recommendation of the special committee on council advisory boards and commissions.

And I have information, but is Evan Raleigh going to also think Evan is going to tee it up for you, and then he'll hand it over to you, Mayor.

Good afternoon, Mayor, members of council.

Uh so the special committee on boards and uh commissions has been meeting for a number of months back in earlier this year, um, late winter, early spring, the council uh charged the committee with uh examining a number of things related to the way that our boards and commissions are structured, the way they function, the way that council engages with them.

Uh you'll recall uh several months back, there was a series of initial recommendations that the committee made to the council that were adopted.

Uh the committee has continued this conversation and has come back with a series of additional recommendations uh that I will uh defer to the chair to to review.

But uh and I think one of those recommendations is to conclude the uh uh to dissolve the committee as well at this point.

So with that, I'll uh turn it back to you, Mayor.

All right, thank you.

So uh yeah, the the special task force um met and made a few recommendations with split votes as was reported was disband the community engagement board, which was created in 2022.

Um that uh members of that board um if interested, we could reassign them to other advisory boards where there is need for some of the outreach that they were working on as part of this um effort.

The second was to remerge right Hispanic and Immigrant Affairs back into the Human Relations Commission and then not to seat the African American Affairs Commission, African American Affairs Board, but to sort of reconvene all of those groups working collectively as they did prior to, I think it was 2022.

I think when I don't know when the Hispanic and Immigration Affairs, but sometime in the last two cycles.

And then finally that the appointees for the uh Hispanic and Immigrant Affairs Board would be incorporated into the Human Relations Commission, and then they could work with the subcommittees.

I have been talking to the chair, I know uh counselor Jones has as well.

So she's had a number of questions about budget, et cetera, which would be combined on that, and then they need to just work out the times.

That would, with natural attrition, um, end up with about 20 something people on that board, which would be the largest, but um I think we could manage that.

Um those were the main recommendations.

Um then finally uh with those coming back to the full council, we would recommend that we would uh dissolve the special committee.

And that is the report.

Yep.

Um thank you so much.

I just wanted to I I was the uh vote, the split vote um and just explain my my no.

I think we did a great work, and I do think that there were some uh strides ahead.

We combined or not combined, but we made uh streamlined our bylaws, which I think was was definitely needed to clarify where I had hesitation was on the merging.

We heard loud and clear in that public hearing that those boards did not want to be merged.

Um since then it has come to the attention that it is the minority boards that have been merged, and so that is a big concern for for those members uh of that they that out of the eight that we had discussed, only the the minority boards were the ones being merged.

And so for those reasons, um I did not think that um getting a larger when we have uh seating uh quorum issues um across the board were not every board, but we are having issues with quorum in making them larger that didn't solve that.

But on a broader scale, the concerns that I have for boards and commissions are how we receive information and how we give it back.

And so we did not address those in in this in this setting.

Um I was really excited about the Ashville report that I read and I had passed out to everybody.

Um but I I feel like we're still gonna have the same concerns that brought us to this point because um I I felt like we needed to do a little bit deeper look.

But though those are the reasons why I voted against it.

Um I just wanted to make that clear.

Thank you.

Yep.

Councilor Lambert Mill.

I just have a question.

Uh I was on the council um when the Hispanic and Immigrant Affairs Board was created.

That was at the request of Mayor Baldwin.

Um at the time she felt, I believe, that uh HRC what didn't have enough focus on the Hispanic and immigrant issues.

Uh and then I was also on the council when the request came to us for the African American Affairs Board, again, because I think there was a concern that there wasn't enough focus on those issues on any of our other boards and commissions.

I think HRC is the board and commission that should be addressing all of the issues that are affecting underrepresented communities in our city.

LGBTQ issues, Hispanic and Immigrant Affairs issues, African American affairs issues.

Um there are some other boards where we have designated seats for different members of our community to make sure that those divorce diverse voices are represented.

So for example, our police advisory board has a designated seat for mental health professional, for a victim's advocate, for an attorney, for an LGBTQ member, just to make sure that as those issues are being discussed, there's a focus on it.

I can think of several other boards that when Cassidy reads out to us, she says this is the professional member position, this is the renter position.

So if we are going to move Hispanic and Immigrant Affairs and African American affairs back into HRC, I'll support that.

And then also, do we want to consider sending some direction to make sure that there maintains diverse representation on these boards so that the Hispanic immigrant affairs issues are not forgotten, the African American issues are not forgotten, the LGBTQ issues are not forgotten.

That could be done just as the council members who are sitting here in the future saying, hey, we're missing these voices, but we may want to take it a step further and make sure that there are always certain seats designated to those community members.

Well, and just in responding to that, I think the direction has been in the conversation I've had with the chair is that we would then have the subcommittees that would be dedicated to those topics as a start.

But I mean we could go further if they felt they needed to with you know specific designated seats.

But yeah, I just think that if there aren't members of those communities on the HRC board, then they're not going to have folks to populate the subcommittees.

And so we may want as a council, knowing that these needs for these other commissions came out of, well, HRC is not the feeling at the time was HRC is not focusing on this issue or that issue.

Then if we make sure that as HRC is moving forward that there is more structure on what the council ought to be considering to appoint to the positions, and that may help all those issues.

So maybe that's the direction we want to send when we make this merge.

Counselor Silver and then The only thing I've added I agree with everything I've heard uh and I do support the consolidation.

While we can't require it, I would certainly encourage the work plan, uh pursue uh a diverse uh set of goals that reaches issues that affect all the various parties uh and members of our community.

Uh I don't want to put that in the ordinance per se or as we do our resolution, but certainly that would be my expectation, not only make sure we identify seats that reflected the diversity, but also as we see their work plan that they're dealing with issues, whether by subcommittee or by work plan, but that would be my expectation.

Yep.

And I just wanted to clarify uh in speaking with some former chairs of the HRC, that came uh up because it was a recommendation from the HRC.

So I think Mayor Baldwin had said, do should we do this?

And they created Hispanic and Immigrants Affairs Board.

They so I there's some confusion in past board chairs to say, well, we were tasked to do this, and we we asked you to do it, and now you're sending it back.

So now that's where the confusion as been discussed in the last week of where that came from.

So I just wanted to, it's not I'm not saying that anything is different.

I just wanted to clarify that point.

All right.

Um councillor mountain.

Yeah, sorry.

Just wanted to clarify no change to the Raleigh Transit Authority.

Is that right?

Correct.

Okay.

That's all I need.

And uh Mayor, if I may, before uh you move to the next item.

Just want to, if if it's the council's pleasure to move these recommendations from the committee forward, uh be in order to take a uh uh receive a motion to adopt the ordinance that's uh attached and and commemorates and memorializes all the changes that were just discussed.

Yep.

So I can move to adopt the ordinance that was included in the agenda materials.

Okay.

Um all in favor of the uh motion, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

Okay.

So we have three no's and five yes.

Thank you.

Uh all right.

Next we have the report of the various committees, and that was uh economic development.

Yes.

Uh we have no items to report out.

We're holding the Faithful Street Streetscape plan updates in committee.

Our next meeting will be this month on Tuesday, October 28th at 130 p.m.

in the city council chambers, just for purposes of the rest of the council.

What we anticipate doing is taking this in pieces and then referring out piece by piece uh specific recommendations, hopefully with funding sources attached to it.

Um and that way it's a smaller um initiatives that we can advance.

Great.

Okay.

Next, uh the Growth and Natural Resources Committee.

No report, no items pending.

Okay.

And then safe, vibrant, and healthy.

Um we reported out one um item.

It was around hospitality and nightlife, um, really around the noise around that part.

Uh we addressed that earlier in this meeting, but it was reported out with no action to be taken.

So I don't know.

Do we need to make another motion from here?

Uh no, and then you just got the items pending on the code.

And there's one item pending that we will bring back on September 28th.

Okay.

And then we had the report and recommendation of transportation and transit.

Transportation and transit committee met uh a couple weeks ago to talk about pavement markings.

Um there's no action taken, so we reported this out with uh for for information for the context of the rest of the council.

Um there's an there's a robust uh plan for how we update these pavement markings.

Those are things like the center line markings, bike lane painting, the stop bar where you stop your car.

Um, but federal guidelines are changing and our city is growing and so folded into budget progressions, there will be um for need to be further investment in this program.

Okay.

Next uh report of the mayor and city council.

Uh Mayor Pro Tem, if you're ready, we can start with you.

Um we received a or saw a media report this weekend about um the status of our um firefighters and um have had some conversations uh around that and um as you know for years I've advocated changing the shift system as it relates to um the firefighters and so with that um I think they had almost 1200 people apply for um positions um this year uh so we need to address like appropriate staffing levels, um firefighter burnout, uh voluntary overtime and some other issues.

And so um this seems like a good time for me to formalize a request to the city manager and the fire chief to assess the concerns made by the local um president of their association um to develop and submit a uh RFP um for shift modification, reduction in hours work uh to reduce firefighter burnout, um, look at the appropriate staffing and workforce model to accomplish the shift modification, review other public safety department shifts, uh including RPD and ECC to help minimize potential payroll implication challenges, um, and consider workforce policy revision.

So that's my request.

So just as a point of clarification, I think um councilmember Patton just asked if the staff and study will address that.

It will not, it will address what the appropriate staffing level should look like with the current setup and the current operational model that we have.

I think if I'm correct, what the mayor pro tem is asking is to take that a step further from previous conversations to actually putting out an RFP.

That is correct.

Okay.

And moving forward with adjustments to the shifts.

Okay.

Is it possible to just add that to the scope of work of the existing staffing studies so you don't have to run the whole public bidding process again?

So we will go back and talk with the consultants and see if that is in their wheelhouse and their level of expertise to be able to do that.

And if we have already executed contracts and can't go too far beyond that, then it wouldn't be too difficult to create a specialized scope to be able to get that done.

Okay.

All right.

Uh Councilman Lambert Melton.

Um I have one item today.

I've received some concerns about um cleanliness at our bus stops.

Um most of the concerns have come from Southwest Raleigh, Southeast Raleigh, um, perhaps where there's higher frequency of use at some of these stops.

And I elevated them to my policy analysts, and the specific bus stops were cleaned, the trash was emptied immediately, uh, which was great.

We were very responsive.

But then I got the same concerns a few days later because I think it had just re-accumulated.

And so I would just ask as a formal request if we could look at some of these high traffic areas and see if we could go upstream a little and figure out ways we can adjust this.

I don't know if we need larger receptacles, more receptacles, more frequent um cleanings, but I just wanted to put that out there because you know, obviously we want residents in the area to feel comfortable, and we certainly want the us and transit users to feel comfortable.

But I also want to thank staff also because when I sent the specific concerns last week, they were cleaned immediately.

It just seems to be like we're uh we're downstream at the moment.

So City Manager, and I know Council Branch wants to uh on this topic too, but I believe there's already work going on with some of this, correct?

Yes.

So we are looking at the higher uh high volume areas to kind of figure out if we need different infrastructure in place to be able to meet the needs and demands of that.

Also, I think we're looking at trying to create some type of communications um strategy to kind of inform folks of the negative sides of trash and a lot of the trash we saw.

I think we all got those same text messages, and I labeled her the um the trash police that weekend when she was sending us the um text messages, is that a lot of the trash is on the ground and the trash can is right there, and how do we get people to be ambassadors within the bus stops to ensure that it is a clean and safe environment?

So we're gonna do some education around that, and in addition to that, we're staff is looking at what kind of operational adjustments can we use and what additional infrastructure.

We do have dedicated staff that currently goes out, but as you can imagine, time we pick it up, it's back out there again the next day or the next afternoon to the same afternoon to be honest.

Yep.

Uh Council Frank.

Because I probably talked to our director call Paul Weekly about bus stops and trash needs to be picked up and things of that nature.

So hopefully we'll have some good information in the near future.

Yeah.

And I do think it's all over the city.

It's up on highway 70, I know Pea Street.

I mean, there's just uh there's a lot of spots.

Capitol.

Yes.

But appreciate you raising it and appreciate the work already getting done and the responsiveness, as you said.

Okay.

Uh counselor patten.

I'll flow into my stuff, but I'll just also add that uh I think the Great Raleigh Cleanup is doing like a citizen science project in partnership on this, and they're doing like some trash audits like are the things getting left because they're to go boxes that aren't like physically fitting in the frame.

So if we haven't already tapped them for whatever insights they've already found, too, that would be another good information source.

Um but flowing into my stuff.

Um I wanted to announce a town hall on November 6th uh from 6 to 8 p.m.

at Marsh Creek Community Center.

Um our topics will be traveling, trees, and taxes.

Um more to come on that.

Um and then good stuff we did through the consent agenda today.

Um, happy retirement of the police dog Hugo.

Um we also accepted a grant from the Trust for Public Lands to facilitate training on how parks can strengthen social cohesion and build stronger communities, which is important, more important now than seemingly ever before.

Um we awarded we approved the bid for the second package of the new burn VRT and lowered some speed limits and um solidified some funding sources for the Strickland Road affordable housing apartments.

Thank you.

Uh I said this on Saturday, but I want to really reiterate, I want to thank the city manager and staff for a very enlightening and engaging retreat.

Uh learned a lot.

Uh I know I was alone, but I could have gone another hour, but I know it was a Saturday.

But I want to thank you for the wealth of information.

Yes.

I was alone.

Um We were with you.

Okay.

Your colleagues and your colleagues.

Yeah, I I appreciate it.

It was a lot of rich information, and I felt I left a lot smarter than going in that day.

So I want to thank you and my colleagues for a very robust conversation.

Uh another point, just remind everyone, I'm having a district A meeting on October 29th from 6 to 7 as a Wednesday at the Anne Gordon uh Senior Center.

Uh last point, and I don't know whether it's for the city attorney or city manager.

I do know we pass an ordinance that provides safety for those panhandling on our medians.

Uh is there I I know we're supposed to roll this out, it goes into effect, I believe, November 1st.

Uh is there any work because I'm still getting emails from members of the public expressing concern about people on very, very narrow medians on some of our thoroughfares.

Uh is there a public campaign?

I know we talked about putting up signage and education.

Just wanted to be able to respond, because I told people yes, it goes into effect November 1st, and it was kind of the size enforcement.

What does that mean?

So any clarification on that uh would be helpful.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Um also thank you for the retreat and all the work that went into that.

Um then uh we are gonna be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States uh founding uh next July 4th.

And I know there is a state committee working on it.

I know the county's got a committee working on it, and I know we have a city committee working on it.

Um but I do I've been getting some emails recently.

I believe there are um a number of folks that are, you know, private foundations, family foundations that are interested in sponsoring events and showing off the culture of one of, you know, since we're the one of the 13 original colonies and this city is an 18th century city, and I just want to make sure, you know, uh to just ask staff like what else do we need to be doing?

Do I it would be nice to uh our explosure with one of the groups that had um had inquiries about um what our plans were.

So if we need a broader internal and external committee, and if you need anyone from the council on it, I mean I'm I'm happy to volunteer, but just want to make sure we're all about nine months out.

What do we need to be doing?

Yep.

All right, just a few things.

Our next district e community meeting will be October 8th, so uh tomorrow from 6 to 8 at La Cusina Italian restaurant.

Uh also our decoding democracy book club will meet on October 18th from 9:30 to 11:30 at the Oberlin Regional Library.

We'll be working on Article 6 and 7 of the Raleigh Charter.

And lastly, over the weekend, I attended a memorial for the victims and hostages of the October 7th attacks.

It was a somber reminder of the pain and loss that so many continue to endure.

No one deserves to be murdered or to live in fear, and the hostages who remain in captivity must be released.

My thoughts are with every family still grieving and with all those yearning for peace and safety in the region.

Today also marks my 13th wedding anniversary.

My husband is truly my rock, the calm in every storm and the constant reminder of what unconditional love looks like.

He sees me in my best and worst moments and still chooses to stand beside me to support me and push me to the best version of myself.

And even though our anniversary falls on a very dark day, it reminds me that love, kindness, and connection are always worth fighting for.

It's in that balance between sorrow and love, darkness and light that we find our shared humanity and remember what truly matters.

Thank you.

Happy anniversary.

So once we have more information, I'm sure everyone will be invited.

In the coming weeks, speaking of housing again, Habitat Wake will celebrate its 40th anniversary.

So again, congratulations to Habitat Wake.

And the next district C meeting will be October 27th.

Um location to be determined, but it will be October 27th at 6 30 p.m.

Yeah, the next district D meeting will be on October 18th.

Um I guess competing with Councilmember Jones, 9 30 a.m.

at the Crowder Center.

Um it's fine, go to either.

Um I will say we had a record high turnout at our September district D meeting, and this is a challenge to you all.

I believe we had 70 residents that came out, and they were primarily there to support the Athens Drive community library staying in Southwest Raleigh.

So just thank everyone for their uh advocacy on that and um hoping that we will be able to keep it in Raleigh.

Right.

Uh next we have appointments.

Good afternoon.

First is Arts Commission one regular vacancy.

Council members Patton and Harrison nominated Lindsay Pullham, so that will be coming back on your next ballot.

Fair Housing Advisory Board, one regular vacancy.

Damien Goob received one vote.

Diana Yusuf seven, so Miss Yusuf would be appointed.

Police advisory board, one regular vacancy for the attorney slot, no nominees, so that will be coming back.

Reminder attorney for attorney slot.

Um next nominations, design review commission, one regular vacancy.

Term of Jonathan Best is expiring.

He does not wish to be considered for reappointment.

Past practice has been to elevate the longest serving alternate, uh, which is Brooke Funkhauser, and then declare an alternate vacancy.

Move forward.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

All right.

All opposed, nay.

Great.

Next is Board of Adjustment.

One regular vacancy, term of Rodney Swink is expiring soon.

He's not eligible for reappointment due to length of service.

Again, past practice has been to elevate the longest serving alternate member, which is Kay Crowder.

Yeah, I'm prepared to uh move Kate Crowder into the position.

I haven't been able to touch bases with her, so I just want to make sure.

I guess when if we approve her, we check and make sure she wants to.

Because it is slightly different to be in the alternative versus full.

Do we want to wait and just see if she's interested?

Staff did reach out to Miss Crowder and she is interested in the city.

Great.

Okay.

Then so moved.

Yeah, big bid uh time commitment there.

Sick.

All right.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

All opposed, nay.

Right.

So that one passes.

That's it.

Okay.

Report and recommendation of the city attorney.

No report.

Okay.

And then the city clerk.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Two agenda items for you this afternoon, and then one uh update.

Uh the first is it is time to uh establish the filing fees for next year's municipal elections.

Um that is something that's totally within the discretion of council.

Uh based on what you determined, we'll report that over to the Wake County Board of Elections and they will proceed from there.

Okay.

Thank you.

Ums or questions, or does somebody want to make a motion?

I just had one question.

Um I noticed in the information you said previously at like last three elections in the amount.

Is that just because that's when we changed it?

Um, I'm just wondering.

When's the last time that we've changed the I think it's two elections ago?

The fees the fees were set at $250 to file for the mayor or mayoral race, $200 to file for the council seats.

Prior to that, they had been one hundred dollars for a number of years.

Okay.

But to your question, I don't think that was related to the change in the election format.

Okay, it just changed.

Maybe following up on that.

No, they they will they will uh perform the functions of conducting the election, um, and I don't I think it's irrespective of the filing fee.

Um move to adopt these filing fees as laid out in the agenda packet.

All right.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

All right, so those pass.

Okay, next item.

Uh, we have uh received uh draft minutes from the September sixteenth work session, regular session, and the uh September twenty-seventh council retreat in your agenda materials.

Move for approval.

All opposed, nay.

All right, that passes.

And then of course I just lost my motion for closed session.

And uh one just one last update.

Uh, on September sixteenth, council all council authorized the uh sale by upset bid process of the parcel located at eighty-nine nineteen hunting trail, and I've said bid was received, so that kind of that process will continue until there is no longer uh a higher bid.

Thank you.

I did.

Thank you.

Um so a motion is an order to enter in a closed session pursuant to general statute one forty-three three eighteen dot eleven A three to consult with the city attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege and to consider and give instructions regarding the handling and or settlement of a potential claim in the following matters.

City of Raleigh versus ASC 509 LLC and the estate of Williams versus City of Raleigh.

Then there's general statute one forty-three three eighteen eleven A six to consider the qualifications, competence, performance, character, fitness, conditions of employment, conditions of initial employment of individual public officers or employees.

So moved.

All in favor of the motion, aye.

All opposed, nay, and then ayes have it.

Yeah, all we're doing.

Okay, but the phone with the heart of thing like the phone with the half and the third light.

So the weakness you can pick up the pick up.

Oh, you're not going to be able to do that.

I think you're doing it.

Okay, I think we can't get it.

Oh no, you want to do that?

Do you have to do that?

I don't think I'm not sure if you're not going to be able to do that.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Council met in closed session and has nothing to report out.