I will uh call the work session to order.

Uh Counselor Lambert Melton has um said he will be a little bit late, and it looks like Councilor Fort is as well, but I believe both of them will be here shortly.

We'll go ahead and start.

Good morning, Council Ryan Bergman, the city manager's office.

I'm just gonna kick us off for a minute and then uh turn it over to OSI here.

Uh as you'll recall, leading into the mini retreat that we did back in September, uh, there was a survey that went out to City Council, uh, talked about uh big concepts, big ideas that you may want us to uh review a little bit closer.

Uh from that, we did have a discussion at that September retreat, uh voted voted with stickies essentially, and we did uh come up with three key ideas that uh would move forward for additional consideration.

Um that doesn't mean that the other ideas won't move forward, it's just as part of this process.

We did utilize OSI over the last few months as sort of an internal consultant uh working with the departments, but also working on research and benchmarking around these key ideas.

So they're gonna talk about them in a minute here.

Uh I do have to uh set the stage, be a little bit of a downer that we are about to talk at the retreat next week with finance and budget about some of the financial pressures that we're facing as an organization, just like a lot of North Carolina and a lot of cities throughout the country.

So when we talk about these big ideas, these big concepts, these aren't ideas that you can squeeze into a budget.

These are ideas that need can uh a considerable amount of planning, financial strategies, uh, but this is really just about taking that first step.

Uh so the way that we structured this is there's a lot of content today that they will present to you.

Um unfortunately, we know that that cuts into some of the council discussion time, but we do have time at the retreat uh for additional city council discussion time uh with a very small summary presentation, if that, to make sure that you each have a chance to talk about this.

Uh so with that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Heather and OSI.

All right, good morning.

I'm Heather McDougall.

I'm the um strategy and innovation officer.

Very fortunate to have that position and really excited to be here with you today.

Hope that you are looking forward to a little bit of inspiration this summer.

Or today, I should say.

So I would like for you to jump ahead with me to 2036.

And I have some good news.

We have once again been named Milkins, number one, best performing large city.

Yes, let's give it up for us.

Our city manager, she is very competitive, so she is particularly excited about this.

Our peer cities, not so much.

They're getting a little bit tired of Raleigh always being number number one.

But we earn it.

And Milken is here today, actually, and they wanted to just see a couple of these new projects that we have going.

Um so we do have an autonomous shuttle waiting for us downstairs, and we're gonna just take a quick tour of two of these projects.

So first we're gonna go over to Dorothea Dix.

And we have a very exciting new project with North Carolina State University.

We have created the world's first green technology playground.

So if you imagine a state-of-the-art facility that has lab space, it has testing space, conference space, you can do simulations, children can come during school and imagine their role in environmental sustainability.

It's a place in which children, adults, seniors, and students are thriving in this role that they have for our future.

It is hosting and gathering world leaders for conferences, and we now have our very popular Greenville Festival, which is akin to South by Southwest.

It's a huge economic driver, and you need to remember to get your tickets early because it sells out quickly.

This combined with the Gibson Play Park, Dorothy Adicks Park is the premier destination to play and to imagine.

So we're gonna hop on over and go to our next destination, and this is Foothills Estates.

This is right along our BRT corridor, and it's a hyperdense development featuring comfortable apartments with shared amenities and retail space.

But there's something that you won't see.

You're not gonna see a lot of cars here.

If you don't have a driver's license, no problem, this is the place for you.

It is unique because once you step off of the BRT transit, you are not walking across a busy street.

You have beautiful elevated pathways that are connecting you to residents, to amenities, to services.

You have everything you need within a 10 to 15 minute walk.

This is a purpose-built community 2.0.

So, what do these kind of headlines for the future have in common?

They are taking the fact that Raleigh is thriving, that we have tremendous assets of people, of talent that make us the leading place where people want to come to live, to work, and to raise a family.

You might have seen the new article by UHAL.

Again, we're number one again.

There are 19,000 cities in the country.

People want to come here because we are thriving.

And we are successful.

But what does success mean?

How do we how do we measure that?

So we won, we first won the Milken Award back in 2025, but we didn't win it in 2015.

So I was kind of curious.

What were the measures of success back in 2015?

And it was actually pretty narrow.

It was simply tech innovation.

So San Jose, San Francisco, Provo, Utah.

They were at the top of the list because of their singular focus on tech innovation.

Now jump forward to 2025.

The criteria for success are different because the world changed.

And the things that our residents need changed.

So Milken then defined success on sustainable growth.

It was community resilience along with economics and technology that led a city to be deemed successful.

And Raleigh was number one in 2025.

So this notion of more of a holistic view of success and how do we meet the needs of our citizens?

This aligns well.

So AARP has come out with this particular graphic, and they're putting this in terms of what they call domains of livability.

So it is around again the different components that work together to create quality of life.

As a city, you have control over the built environment, housing, outdoor spaces, and transportation.

And that provides a very powerful foundation to combine with the social elements to again foster quality of life.

Now again, we were number one in 2025.

How do we ensure that we continue to be number one?

How are we going to make sure that we are again forward thinking and are meeting the needs of our residents?

So this is where you came in.

So as Ryan talked about, at your retreat, you identified what are some transformative projects that would make a meaningful impact to our residents' lives.

You identified housing, transportation, and sponge cities as three that again combined create again those domains of quality of life.

And so you asked us, though, what is a big idea?

How do we actually define that?

And so throughout this presentation, we're going to be working on the focus that big ideas are ambitious yet practical.

They extend beyond our current operations and are designed to deliver lasting, measurable impact.

Raleigh has the assets and the talent to bring these ideas to life.

So we went out to our peers and we looked at some of the best ideas out there.

They have been done.

They are something that we could look at to bring here.

But if we were to bring them here, how do we evaluate them?

And we used a process of desirability.

Do residents even want this?

Is it physically possible?

And viability, is it financially sustainable?

And then, of course, we are the Office of Strategy and Innovation.

So we looked to the future.

So we also brought in mega trends, and I'll tell you about that in just a minute.

To again thinking about this is a changing world.

How are we looking out for these trends and making sure that the ways in which we move forward are in the best service for our residents?

So these are what they call mega trends.

So mega trends are large, long-term forces that gradually shape society.

Some of these will be pretty familiar to you.

There's actually more like 10 or 15, but we looked at the top five that are relevant to Raleigh.

One on here, aging population, I do want to really bring to your attention because I think it's flying under the radar.

The uh Department of Health and Human Services has recently released a report.

In 2042, Wake County will have the largest number of residents over 60 in the entire state over Charlotte.

This is a tremendous opportunity, and it's a tremendous responsibility.

So I just want to kind of put that one on your radar.

Community 2.0.

Oh, yes.

All right, can I ask a question about that?

Did they break out like Wake County has so many municipalities?

Did they break out Raleigh versus the merger communities?

In theirs, it was by county.

But again, overall, uh there's a lot of data to show that Raleigh is particularly drawing residents because again, quality of life, parks, ability to be close to family.

Um, and there's a lot of uh AARP has done some studies on this.

There could be an entire silver economy that we have around this.

So just want to kind of plant that seed for you because it really relates to a lot of the ideas that we're gonna talk about.

Um, community 2.0.

Individuals demand connection based upon their what they want, but we see the tension between loneliness and disconnection with that as well.

Environmental change for Raleigh, it's flooding and heat.

Technology, obviously, AI is something that we are grappling with every single day, and economic growth in urban areas.

This is an asset.

Some cities have population decrease.

We do not.

So these are things that kind of work together, but need to be on our radar as we identify and evaluate these ideas.

So these are the three big ideas that we'll be covering today.

Um, together, they work in concert for those domains of livability to again create a robust and dynamic community that is meeting the needs of our residents.

And so keep in mind what is a big idea.

It's ambitious yet practical and designed to deliver lasting measurable impact.

Raleigh has the assets and the talent to bring these ideas to life.

So the first, designing with water.

We are a beautiful green city.

We have beautiful parks and trees and greenway systems.

But like many cities, we have the challenges of heat and flooding.

So what resources do we have at our disposal to again use that built environment to help us face these challenges.

Now, my daughter happened to see this uh presentation, and she said, What are you doing?

You cannot include that in your present.

You have just turned the city of Raleigh into a sponge.

And I said to her, Well, what would you think if I told you we were already a sponge city?

What do you think that means?

What is a sponge do?

And she said, Well, a sponge soaks up water.

I said, yes.

And I said, Why is that good?

She said, Well, because it keeps it from spilling out everywhere and ruining everything.

And so, yes.

So, a fifth grader can understand what a sponge city is, right?

This is a concept that actually our residents can wrap their heads around.

So it's a little bit more complex than that.

Right?

So at its core, it's developing natural areas that can absorb storm water to complement traditional stormwater management techniques.

It aims to reduce flooding.

Lost our thing here.

Reduce flooding.

Need some technical assistance here.

There we go.

There we go.

Yes.

Okay, perfect.

All right.

We have a bad cable under the floor, but we have a beautiful new building being built right now, so we will take care of that.

All right.

So going back to our sponge city.

Um the benefits include higher water quality, groundwater recharge, urban reducing urban heat, and even resident, increasing resident wellbeing.

So I need to emphasize Raleigh is already a leader in Sponge City.

This is a picture of Wooten Meadow Park.

It's near Crabtree Mall.

And if you see it, it has beautiful looping paved and grassy pathways, open lawn areas, natural meadows, wetlands, and it's a habitat for a variety of plants and species.

Okay, it's an interesting technology day.

I'm not afraid of some challenges here.

All right.

So again, uh, what are some of the ways in which we are a leader for green storm water infrastructure?

Um we already have an entire strategy around it.

Our strategic plan has various initiatives that are working on this.

We have also been recognized by the National Wildlife Federation and the National Biophilic Cities for our commitment to sponge cities.

So the question you might ask is then how is this a big idea?

Our idea is to go bigger.

It is to be spongier, it is to be the sponge city in the nation because we already have the foundation and the assets to do it.

So let's go big.

Let's create sponge parks that are landmark destinations that draw people to gather and to interact as a community.

And let's build a holistic vision about becoming the sustainable innovation hub in the nation.

These can actually work separately, or they really work very nicely together.

So what's our first benchmark?

It's Cook Park in Atlanta.

And this is one of the most well-known and successful sponge city projects in the United States.

It's a model for urban resilience because it transformed challenges like flooding into community assets rather than just relying on concrete pipes.

This was ambitious.

It's led by local advocacy organization with design and construction overseen by national nonprofit.

Opened in 2021, it became the place to go.

Playgrounds, splash pad, climbing boulders, fitness centers, sports courts, performance centers.

It was a place where young and old could come together to gather and to connect.

10 million gallons of stormwater catchment, but this does come at a high price tag, 40 million, funded by the Trust for Public Land, the city, and other donors.

So what might this look like in Raleigh?

First, I want to really highlight Smoky Hollow Park.

Okay.

This is the tremendous work of multiple departments that is a major project underway with a budget of 23 million and is opening in 2028.

So why not just be satisfied?

Well, Raleigh is not a city that is simply satisfied with what it does today.

It wants to do more.

So we have the opportunity to create a vast corridor of these destination sponge parks.

That transforms our city.

It is something that is visual, but it is something that people actually interact with as well.

Imagine sensory zones, strollways, opportunities for people to gather with concerts or other places is a place they want to bring their family to.

And it's something that would encourage additional private investment.

So in a secondary park in Atlanta, they have seen over 2 billion in private investment in the surrounding area, and they anticipate another billion dollars in investment.

So what do we have?

We have a corridor waiting for us to take the bold vision to transform it into usable community space.

So we're an S our assessment with this.

Yes, this is something that people would desire.

We have very popular parks here.

81% of our residents rate our parks high, and this is way ahead of our national peers.

Location will be important to think about.

Typically, residents support parks that are closer to them.

But if done well, this could be a park for everybody.

It could be a destination place.

But it could also have the secondary effect of beautification.

Residents also value beautification even if they don't understand kind of what's going on below it.

And this is in a high flood priority zone for the city.

All right, feasibility.

Yes, we have multiple locations.

Capitol Boulevard, Atlantic Avenue, Pigeon House Branch, Midtown Center, and Old State Farmers Market.

We could enact a strategy to pick which one we do first, but how they could feed together and build together to create a corridor.

Land acquisition will be key.

We do have some of these parcels, but we will have to have a strategy to obtain more.

Take you over to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And their 25-year Green City Clean Water Plan, which launched in 2011 and became a national precedent for sustainable urban water management.

The plan created a comprehensive, affordable, and multi-benefit approach that improved water quality while enhancing community environment and economy.

Now I do need to point out something that I learned from uh Wayne recently.

Um in Philadelphia, they are a single system.

Okay, so you have your sewer and your rainwater flowing through one.

And obviously that creates some very serious challenges around pollution.

Raleigh, we don't.

We wouldn't do that.

We've got two systems, right?

So we do have um separate for each.

So as we go through Philadelphia, theirs is going to be a little bit different than Raleigh.

But they had ambitious goals, 85% pollution reduction by 2036, one billion dollar commitment for GSI projects over 20 years, 2.7 billion gallons of polluted water prevented from entering into their rivers.

Again, remember though they only have the one system.

And they have become recognized as an economic driver with very strong resident and private interaction to create a holistic community that is focused on this.

What would this look like in Raleigh?

Again, we are already a leader.

This May, the annual meeting of the National Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange is going to come to Raleigh down to our convention center.

And they are going to gather and look at Raleigh as again a pioneer in this.

Let's build this momentum and let's keep it going.

Because we still have some work to do.

We do need to actually unify our policy, our different programs, our budgeting decisions, bring them together into a unified green policy, and to use measuring tools to be able to understand how spongy we are to be able to evaluate that.

We do need to make bold investments.

To give you an example, Philadelphia in 2025 spent approximately 16 million on schools and other investments outside of city projects.

The city with our rainwater reward program, we spent 550,000, right?

So there's a big jump in what it might take for us to commit to this fully.

We would need to have a branding strategy and really work with some of our partners.

So visit Raleigh and Convention Center to kind of build that brand and attract excitement for others to come here and spend money around this.

And again, though, this can help us attract economic investment.

If we brand ourselves, those types of conferences and conventions will come here.

So our feasibility study, yet again, there is strong support for something like this.

Environmental resilience is yet again a top priority for our residents, far more than our peers.

They value it and they actually want more of it.

We have wonderful partners, partners for environmental justice, urban sustainability solutions that are already helping us engage with the community.

And actually, our residents, again, they appreciate this also from beautification.

Again, they see the rain gardens.

They may not understand the flow of it below, but they like it and they'd actually like to see more.

Feasibility.

We have a beautiful logo that lends itself very well to this.

We wouldn't need to do much modification to that.

And it's really about building upon the strong foundation of our already existing programs to make the financial commitment to make them bigger.

We can include this in our capital planning, and we can work with private investment to help support it and complement it and to create again an entire community that is around this.

What is the cost of this?

So it will necessitate an increase in funding to our various programs.

It will increase funding and the needs to again work with partners around this.

So we anticipate approximately 10.2 million, but that's spread across a multitude of these projects.

Okay.

And we will need to probably rely on some federal funding as seed seed funding for some of these.

But again, we can kind of strategize and pick the ones that we want to prioritize first.

So we can think about small wins building up and leading to something larger.

So these are our two big ideas around this particular topic.

Either they work wonderfully alone, or combined, they create a really holistic approach to how Raleigh can become the sustainable city.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Christina Leos to talk about our next topic.

Good morning everyone.

Christina Leos with the Office of Strategy and Innovation, and I will take us through the next two big ideas topics.

And actually, transit is next, and it's a meaty one, so I will try to go quickly so that we can get to all the sections today.

But as we move into this section, I want you all to imagine a seamlessly connected transportation system where our residents can move between downtown, cultural institutions, regional hubs, all without relying on a personal vehicle.

Now, this is the vision that our residents have for our city as well.

Overwhelmingly, we see that they desire to walk, bike, and use transit to move around the city, and yet fewer than half of our residents would rate these modes favorably.

So today we want to think about ways that we might expand transportation options beyond vehicles to make our city more accessible and safer for everyone.

So we have four concepts under the transit section.

We looked at all of these again as a coordinated system rather than single solutions.

They each have different strengths, timelines, and potential benefits to our community.

So we want to think about what are those options given our current transit system that could help to create a more flexible and resilient system overall.

So for our first concept, this takes us to New York City to the High Line.

Many of us are probably familiar with this example.

It is a repurposed elevated freight rail line that's been turned into an elevated park.

This connects a multitude of destinations, transit access points, and neighborhoods in Manhattan's west side.

They have seen over 75 million visitors since opening, and it has generated more than $2 billion in economic investment.

Importantly, this is this walkway serves as a feature that is blending mobility and culture, recreation, making it a destination in its own right.

So City of Raleigh has an opportunity to create our own robust pedestrian network by connecting key major downtown destinations cultural, entertainment, recreational.

We can offer multiple corridors, pedestrian connections, perhaps even elevated walkways, all of which would make walking downtown safe, memorable, and convenient.

So this would include this could help us to serve, just like New York's Highline, it would help us to serve commuting, errands, recreation, all simultaneously.

So for this, we see that demand for accessible connections downtown is pretty high, just as we've seen with Dix Park and Gibson Play Plaza attendance.

These types of routes can also activate further exploration and community engagement with the neighboring communities.

We have several viable low traffic routes that already exist, including on South Street, South Saunders, and various others.

And we do also see emerging private sector interest to add pedestrian connections to adjacent projects.

Future expansions that are more complicated, like elevated walkways, additional bridges would require coordination with our NCDOT partners and others.

The segment of the strollway from Chavis to Dix is already funded through a portion of a federal grant, but additional enhancements, bridges, connections could range around four to five million dollars a piece.

However, recent local projects that are a bit smaller have demonstrated feasibility, and we can see that some smaller upgrades can reasonably be accommodated within city budgets.

So, city capital budgets, excuse me.

So this invites us to think about what could it look like to create a truly walkable downtown that is meeting multiple community needs at once.

Next, we have Raleigh Rail.

Now, for this, we will focus on the existing Raleigh Carey Durham Amtrak corridor and how we might make enhancements to make that more frequent and dependable for commuters and regional travelers.

The key to this work is to focus on improvements that are directly within the city's control.

Some of those include station area improvements, improving first and last mile connections, continuing to promote transit-oriented land use, and then aligning our local transit schedules with the rail schedules.

There are other enhancements that can have even greater impact, such as adding additional passing tracks, signal improvements, coordinating with freight, but those would absolutely need to be done in coordination with NCDOT and Amtrak in order to carry out.

In our analysis, we see that Raleigh Rail can connect employment centers, regional hubs, RTP, and have potentially very large commuter benefits based on where jobs are located.

Trains can bypass congestion on key highways, I-40, 440, US1, ultimately shortening commute times so that people can work, relax, or just otherwise enjoy not being stuck in traffic.

Some improvements are achievable within the existing right-of-way, and here it's really important to focus on those smaller upgrades we mentioned, things like adding bike racks, improving the platforms, aligning with BRT.

Those are the types of things that are much easier for us to implement.

But again, all of this.

You'll hear a theme in the transit section, all of these certainly require coordination with our regional transit partners.

So past projects have shown that frequent all-day service for rail can be difficult to sustain with dispersed growth and low density land use.

So that also makes it difficult to secure funding.

So these types of upgrades that are smaller can still provide some commuter benefits at a cost that is lower than what larger full-scale regional rail projects would take.

So ultimately, rail can provide a way to expand and enhance our existing transit system with these commuter benefits.

Okay.

Our next concept is around autonomous transit.

And for this, we will travel to Arlington and Jacksonville.

So we increasingly are seeing public agencies and private autonomous vehicle operators begin to move out of pilot phases into expanded use.

So in Arlington, their pilot launched in 2021 to provide campus rides to students.

Since then, they've delivered over 100,000 rides pretty successfully, although there are some challenges with wait times and app issues with their system.

Starting with this pilot that is a three and a half mile downtown corridor connecting key sites, but they do have plans to expand to additional neighborhoods over time.

So in Raleigh, Autonomous Transit does provide opportunities to serve as circulators downtown connecting NC State, Dix Park, and other key locations.

These are very flexible and adaptable systems.

They are easier to deploy than rail or full-scale bus routes.

They can also be scaled incrementally and they can be adjusted as land use evolves.

Also, when they are thoughtfully planned, they can serve to boost ridership for other, you know, BRT, other routes that we have, really ensuring that we can maximize the value of those larger investments.

One note here is that most autonomous vehicles do require dedicated lanes or semi-dedicated lanes.

And we see that most US deployments are currently on very restricted routes or and certainly nothing at the scale of large buses in a complex urban environment.

So that's something to keep in mind.

So we see autonomous transit is very good at reducing walking distances and improving first and last mile connections.

Typically, these are very easy to use with tap-to-pay and app-based systems.

Feasibility, technology is still maturing.

In some cases, onboard attendance are still required, so that's also something to consider.

Deploying around the city would likely require infrastructure changes to create these dedicated lanes, kind of curb platforms, and to meet regulatory compliance.

Also, because of the smaller footprint of autonomous vehicles, these can probably operate on our existing streets with minimal infrastructure changes, but we would need strong partner buy-in in order for these routes to be set up, as with everything else.

So the cost for these systems also varies quite a bit.

Jacksonville, Jacksonville system costs $65 million, but these can go up to 400 million, depending on how large the network is.

We do need strong financial planning and ridership to sustain the long-term sustainability of these systems.

But locally, a downtown circulator could offer greater flexibility and lower operating costs than our existing R line.

So ultimately, autonomous transit seems to work well to fill small transit gaps and as a complement to larger transit investments.

Okay.

And our final concept under the transportation section is a streetcar.

So for this, we will travel to our neighbors in Charlotte, North Carolina.

This streetcar connects key destinations, medical facilities, universities, and other locations.

It complements their bus and their rail network.

We've seen that it has increased property tax revenue, it has stimulated economic activity along the corridor, especially retail and office development.

However, ridership is quite low, and mixed traffic operation has led to some slow speeds and reliability issues.

Nonetheless, they voters in Charlotte approved an $845 million extension funded by a dedicated sales tax in 2025.

So to do this here, a downtown streetcar could help to create a mixed-use corridor that can complement our own transit systems and attract further private investment.

It could serve as the backbone to a broader growth strategy with supportive zoning and development that would really focus housing, jobs, and destinations along that corridor.

We do again see that mixed traffic operations face challenges, so we would be advised to consider how dedicated or well-enforced transit lanes could be included in this.

So in our analysis, a streetcar could provide a high capacity link between key destinations.

It can support place making and also offer additional economic growth opportunities along the corridor.

Maybe we'll get this back.

Okay.

We do have some narrow streets downtown that would likely require utility relocation, kind of infrastructure changes.

Um also based on Charlotte's benchmark, this could be quite expensive.

I believe there's the extension is 141 million dollars per mile.

So we would definitely need dedicated funding strategies for planning, design, and construction.

However, a downtown streetcar could help to enable some new routes.

It supports placemaking.

It also might be a nod to Raleigh's own history with streetcars.

I just wanted to do a time check so that we make sure we have time for QA.

Um do we think we're gonna wrap up within maybe five minutes or so?

So we do have some time.

I know.

I just I I know you've got a lot of material here, so I but I just wanted to make sure we have QA time.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So here are the four once again that we just discussed.

And the final section, well, I said, Yeah, I think housing you can do in a couple of minutes.

Okay.

Okay.

So the next section is on housing and really focusing on partnership-driven approaches that can help us expand development and housing services.

So for these, we have three concepts.

Um the first is establishing a philanthropic-led housing fund similar to Charlotte.

They very successfully raised $50 million as a private sector match to a $50 million housing bond that was approved by voters in Charlotte.

This is a wonderful uh example of bringing together private dollars in order to support these community goals here.

So we could do something quite similar here in close partnership with philanthropic and other intermediary institutions that would help to administer the fund, giving us more flexibility for capital for these affordable projects, being able to leverage private dollars to supplement public, and then just strengthening commitment to housing across all sectors.

The fund in Charlotte has been quite successful.

That initial investment has been leveraged to create a total of $343 million in total development with highly affordable units included.

Uh we do see that our philanthropic landscape is quite different from Charlotte's, and so aligning to the right donors would be critical to make this a success.

Um this fund in Charlotte is administered alongside a bond, so that's something to consider.

Um then also just noting that philanthropic dollars can complicate eligibility for LITEC.

So again, just would require some careful thinking around how that might work here.

Our next concept takes us to Dallas and their street-to-home initiative.

Um they have successfully rehoused about 100 people experiencing homelessness in highly visible places in less than 100 days.

This was a huge effort backed by 30 million dollars in public-private funding, and is actually the same model that has been used here for our unsheltered homelessness response pilot.

Now, this really requires deep and sustained commitment from multiple partners in order to be able to deliver all parts of the model.

Some of those are listed here.

You need shelter and housing placements, case management, access to health care, resources, investment coordination, all kinds of things that the city cannot do alone.

So certainly this would need to be a strong, strong partnership.

We've done this at a pilot scale locally, which is shows promise for this approach.

Our downtown unsheltered population is also smaller than Dallas, so we can achieve similar outcomes with a smaller investment.

Um but really the key here is that all these partners need to come to the table to be able to deliver.

That was really at the core of Dallas's success in being able to do this.

Our last example comes from just down the road, Durham, North Carolina, um, how they secured healthcare partner investments.

This example is around the Commerce Street Apartments.

CVS Aetna contributed 17 million dollars to the construction of this development, producing 172 units and including free on-site services, including workforce development, early learning education, wraparound health services.

This was a project led by the Durham Housing Authority, but in close partnership with other key stakeholders, the city, uh developers, private financing partners, et cetera.

We could consider something similar here, and I'll actually skip ahead because this is something North Carolina has several healthcare organizations already located here, which could make it easier to find partner organizations.

We've seen Alliance Health, United Healthcare, and CVS Aetna have all invested locally and nationally.

So some proof of concept there that they are supporting housing developments and services.

We do have some existing partnerships with healthcare orgs, but these would need much larger investment in buy-in to reach a scale like that of the Commerce Street apartments.

And then Durham leveraged multiple funding sources, including federal, local, and private for this development, which is around 339,000 per unit.

So this approach can you know brings together a targeted partner for development.

And then I'll kind of going back to the previous example with the Dallas and Street to Home Initiative.

That was an example of how you can bring together partners for more than just funding, more than just money, but also to accelerate um development, to provide additional services and just overall enhance our capacity for the city's programs.

So we made it through the three housing concepts.

I think I did it in close to five minutes.

Awesome.

All right.

So thank you for a lot of information and big ideas of open it up for questions.

Start with Council Ford.

Yeah, I have a question on your slide about Dallas.

Can you go back to that one?

Thank you.

One of the things you indicated is the population for the unsheltered in Raleigh's downtown is smaller than Dallas, but we would probably be looking at a larger approach to deal with homelessness across the city, not just in the downtown corridor, correct?

I imagine that would be the case.

Okay, because I I'd want to clarify that we wouldn't be just focusing on unsheltered folks in downtown.

We would try to deal with everybody across the city.

Yeah, it's a great question.

So Dallas did a specific initiative, and they actually housed 250 people and they ended visible homelessness in their downtown core.

They also have a broader initiative where they've housed thousands of people at this point.

So yes, I mean they they did that targeted and they're also working on a broader scale.

Thank you.

So I gu are what you're looking for from us right now is like kind of like star stick metaphorical star stickers on which of these we want more attention.

So my understanding is at your um next gathering you'll have an opportunity to talk a little bit more.

Um really this would be you know departments doing further research.

This is by no means comprehensive.

These are not full recommendations at this point.

This was the research that we did for you.

Yeah, anything we can help with now that might assist the discussion on Friday, and that can include contacting us after today as well.

Got it.

Okay.

Um I'll let you go to the other side, Mayor and I'll might come back.

Yep.

Thank you so much for this.

I had two just two thoughts on Sponge Cities.

How uh and we referenced our partnerships, but things like RDU, they're doing an amazing job in stormwater.

So how do we use those to amplify so that we don't always have to do the work, but how the city can be that kind of partner and using those big examples so that we're teaching residents that it's not just the city that does this, it is also private funding.

So I I heard you recognize that.

But if we can have a little bit more detail when we get into it of what that partnership actually looks like, that's what I'm looking for for that.

Absolutely.

Um then a specific question on that.

Are we the only city that has separate stormwater and sewer systems?

I know we reference Philadelphia.

Wayne can answer that for us.

Hi, Wayne Miles, Stormwater Manager Engineering Services.

Yeah, good question.

So the combined um sewers are mostly the older cities in the Northeast and the North and the Midwest that were developed well in the 1800s, it was common to put in one combined system that handled wastewater and stormwater.

And the idea was to flush out the wastewater.

This was before we had any wastewater treatment regulations or anything.

But Raleigh was developed much um later, which we have a a completely separate sanitary sewer from the storm sewer.

And that is much more common in the South and in North Carolina.

Um all of the North Carolina communities are separate systems, similar to Raleigh's right now.

Thank you so much.

And I think as we further discuss this, um, if we can use uh examples of that of which we are similar to instead of Philadelphia, which we are not.

So I'd love to hear, you know, what that looks like in a system that is like ours.

And then in transit, um I'll ask specific questions later.

But for me, a lot of my district is up in um Briar Creek area.

And so when we talk about, I think the automated the autonomous transit sounds really cool.

And instead of always focusing on what can be used downtown, how are we utilizing our other really dense areas of the city and saying could we pilot it here instead of always downtown?

I don't want my residents in the north or or the far south who are always hearing that we're focusing on downtown, be left out of the conversation.

So when we're talking about big ideas, I'd really appreciate hearing how that can go beyond our downtown corridor.

Yeah, absolutely.

We we've talked in some of our other uh presentations about kind of those transportation deserts, right?

And so what are some of these more flexible models that could be implemented and as um you know patterns change, then we can move them and meet the needs that are that are constantly evolving.

Right.

Yeah, thank you so much for the presentation.

Thank you.

Um we'll go uh to Mayor Burtim and then uh Counselor Silver.

Yeah, thank you.

I just wanted to mention on the sponge city idea.

Um I think I saw a couple notes there about you know private development and opportunities for green storm water infrastructure.

I think something that I'd like to see in the future are real incentives that get our you know private property owners to be thinking about how to play with us in this space.

The sponge parks sound wonderful.

I want our developments to be like that as well.

And I find a lot of times we don't have those incentives or those requirements, you know, get taken away.

And so anything we can do in that space uh would be huge for me.

Absolutely.

So again, it's about increasing awareness about some of those incentives, but then also increasing the financial resources behind those incentives too.

I'll go very quickly.

First, really enjoyed the presentation and the visuals when it stayed on, but I'm sure we'll have that solved for this afternoon.

Uh just in terms of sponge city, uh great idea.

Um also would you consider looking at no cost to the city options?

For example, I was very intrigued by the Capitol Boulevard opportunity for a sponge park.

Uh but zoning changes as we contemplate uh the comprehensive plan, you could now recommend up zoning and property, which then would help facilitate some of the changes, and then hopefully there will be some standards and requirements for the private sector to contribute to that sponge green infrastructure approach.

Uh another one is to also enjoy the walkable uh Raleigh.

Uh don't know, you kind of hinted, uh, but is it very explicit about a connection, walkable connection from downtown to Dix.

I know we have the strollway, but you talked about elevated, so don't know if that was in between the lines, but that's something I think that's very exciting.

And then the last, uh yes, I know there were challenges with streetcar.

Uh we just had an intercity visit to Kansas City.

They had a very interesting funding model, putting aside navigating the roadway, both having the streetcar and the cars, but they did something quite unique using, I think utility companies for funding.

So as we look at that option, uh I saw the price tag of both local, state and federal funding, uh, but also look at their model just since you shared some of the case studies.

I think that would be a good one to look at since we just visited there last year.

Other than that, that's it for my it's more comments than questions.

But uh don't know how this is going to feed in uh to the conference of planning exercise, because a lot of this seems to dovetail very nicely.

Absolutely.

And uh just speaking to a few of those, so like the midtown area for Sponge City Parks has an urban projects group has thought through again what could be those incentives for private developers to take that on.

Uh the walkways, actually uh we we really didn't have a good photo of it, because it doesn't really exist, so we could be the first.

But the idea is again not be satisfied with just a linear connection, but almost imagine a little web of connectors, beautiful bridges that people are going through, connecting to different venues from Chavis to Strollway, going down to downtown.

So it is beautiful architecturally designed that doesn't actually exist yet.

So maybe we get to be the ones to do that.

Um Lambert Melton and then um Patton.

Uh just a few things.

On the transportation section, I really liked the uh reference of trying to see what we could do to use the existing infrastructure.

Um, in particular trying to work with the rail department of NCDOT to see if, like, for example, the temporary um train station at the fairgrounds.

Is there a way to make that more of a permanent station?

Can we program it for concerts and NC State football games and basketball games and things that are happening at the fairgrounds or at any of the uh stadium or arena venues over there, particularly as that area is now going to become more of a entertainment center.

Um right now they run it for the fair, but you actually can't take the train from downtown Raleigh to the fairgrounds.

They only run it the other way because the stops are too close.

And that would be, I think, a uh maybe short-term fix we could do.

Uh and then I had a question.

It's kind of in the weeds, but of the autonomous vehicles.

I don't see any reference here to how many passengers they move.

Do we know how big they are in Arlington or Jacksonville?

Yeah, I can't I don't have the exact numbers, but these are definitely low capacity.

Think about you know, like sedans, little shuttles.

Um that's also why they're good for short distances and kind of small transit needs, but not something at a large um distances or volume.

Personally, you know, that's basically just a private vehicle.

I mean, you know, electric cars are still cars and they still contribute to traffic and autonomous in private-sized vehicles are really no different than you driving yourself.

And so I would hope that we would focus on more mass transit and moving more people frequently.

And so working within the existing infrastructure than C DOT.

And this is not an intended dig on Charlotte's streetcar, but you know, it runs and missed traffic.

It doesn't even have signal priority, and so it's not really moving people any quicker either.

And so I just want to make sure that the models we're using are actually green and sustainable and actual mass transit.

And maybe we can start with just working with the existing infrastructure and scaling of what we have.

Thank you.

Yep.

So just a couple of things to talk about the rail piece.

Go triangle had a plan working with the county for regional rail system.

And there's a lot of data and information that's already available that we can pull from and use to implement within maybe Raleigh proper.

So I think you know that is probably some low-hanging fruit that can be pulled upon.

And it might have been used as you are doing your researching your data.

Also, when we talk about the autonomous vehicles and the last mile part, the regional transit authority did a trip to down to Florida a couple years ago, and Brightline is using this last mile idea model as far as connecting people to the mass transit.

So I think that could be something to utilize and look at as well.

I know it wasn't mentioned here, but I know down in the Miami area they were using that and looking at how, you know, if I'm palm and I need to get to the union station, I can use this part to get there.

So I think we we're in a place where there are some real live examples of things that are being implemented.

So we there's lessons we don't have to, there are mistakes we don't have to make because of lessons learned as we move forward.

But at the end of the day, it's going to come down just this is to the whole council.

It's going to come down to a cost.

And it's not cheap.

So I think the more partners we can bring in the better we are.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I um I will like sort of uplift some of the consternation.

I have a little bit of heartburn about the autonomous vehicles too.

Um certainly I've heard anecdotes where riders feel more safe than they might riding with a manned manned vehicle like an Uber from a potential like personal safety situation, but also have heard of these uh cars being sent to to do misdeeds because they you know the app allows you to sort of hack and create a little bit of mischief.

So I think I that is something I would need a lot more information on like the safety and the safety as compared to the impact and and that kind of thing before I would want to sign off on that.

Um I am interested in the part of the transit that that talks about enhancing these modalities that already exist.

So getting the trains to come at the right time or more frequently, and also ensuring that our buses are potentially stopping there.

Like, do we have the right lines, stopping at the new transit center?

Like are they as well integrated as they can be?

I I am interested in in that work.

Um definitely putting like a star sticker on the sponge city efforts.

And then in the housing section, uh very interested in seeing an enhancement to our philanthropic contributions in our city.

I think when we went to Kansas City, every time we said, oh, how'd you do that?

Great project.

Their answer was, well, our billionaire went half size with us on it.

And so I'm interested in us heading in that direction.

And uh in Dallas is mentioned as the case study here, but I I also think in Houston, maybe they've gotten to functional zero on their homelessness initiatives.

And so I am interested in doing the thing that is the most effective the fastest because homelessness is a public health crisis, and I I think you know, we're called morally to solve it.

And so interested in how we can do that.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

All right.

I will uh go last here since we got about two minutes.

Um I thought all the topics are great.

Appreciate all the work and the lofty thinking.

For the sponge city, I mean, building on what Councillor Jones said, we've done a lot of this already, and you've said that, right?

We have incredible, we have water fees, we have a stormwater system.

So I liked when you had the stats in Philly where you talked about they've saved 2.7 billion gallons of polluted water from it just makes me want to know what's we having a baseline before we even had stormwater system.

And then let's add on NC State doing the Rocky branch, you know, uh enhancement, whatever RDUs doing.

What we've done since we've already invested a lot of money, understand what we've and then quantify and figure out the lowest dollar improvements, given that that's probably where we have the best funding sources uh to start, but quantifying and sort of looking at that.

So that was my thought there.

On the homelessness initiatives, one question I have is I know we uh the uh bringing our neighbors home.

I can never remember what we've rebranded it as, so I'm just gonna keep using that.

We've said we need to see how that goes before we move on to the next round.

And I given the urgency of this issue, as Counselor Patton just said, I mean, do we need to wait?

You know, it's been a success for a year.

Do we have to wait another year before we you know invest more?

And and that's probably one of the most urgent umes.

So how do we move faster?

And then the question on the philanthropic, I love that idea.

I do have questions about cannibalization of existing donations to our nonprofit partners.

I don't have a sense of the stability and overall fundraising of CASA, passage home, urban ministries, all these different partners, the asset mapping of who's doing this work, and just making sure we don't create some new big bucket that ends up just really not adding more money to the pie, but um, you know, hurting maybe some of these these partners uh through well-intentioned efforts.

And then I mean the health care stuff.

I am curious given all of the hospitals and presence in this area, you know, what was it that made Durham more attractive as an investment for Aetna than Raleigh or other areas?

Um just that's interesting to me given the amount of health care presence and how little we've really seen them partner philanthropically on projects, and maybe I'm misnaming that, but uh I don't have an understanding of how the hospitals have worked around things like housing here in Wake County.

So I'll add that the Durham project was funded through a choice neighborhoods grant through HUD.

Um and that was 40 million of the project.

And that type of funding really encourages that type of partnership.

So I think sometimes the funding sources can be limiting, and you have to really find that instance and that situation where you have funding that will allow sort of those all those different kind of layers to go on top of it.

Um the timeline of waiting.

How how long do we have to wait on the bringing neighbors home before we kind of put more in?

Yeah, so I think um, you know, we are working right now on our annual report.

Um, you know, we had a six-month report showing a 90% rate of, you know, we ended homelessness for 90% of those folks.

I think we know that this model works in general in other communities.

Um, we also are the this working with the continuum of care, who's putting out a strategic plan.

So they are really taking the city's unsheltered homelessness response pilot and report and kind of um, you know, coordinating across the county and the city and all of the um nonprofit partners that are involved in the COC to come up with a strategic plan to put forth the entire community.

So I think we're really waiting to see um what that looks like so that we can sort of all have one big plan that we're in lockstep on.

And the the other thing that I would add about the the nonprofit partners, I think, you know, whatever funding comes towards this effort is going ideally is going to uplift nonprofit partners because they're the ones that have to do the work.

So I think you know, uh they're the ones that need to be on the ground working directly with people to house them, to provide them services, um, to do the street outreach, all of the things that need to be done for a plan like this.

So I think the the overall vision is that something like this would ever flexible fund it would be would really be there to uplift nonprofits to help do the work that they're currently doing, with just more of it in a much more coordinated way.

What's the timeline on the plan?

This the COC strategic plan.

Uh they're working hard now.

Um they're also dealing with the the COC annual grant process.

But I believe that they're looking to the spring.

We can get you more information on that.

Um why don't we do that?

And I can report out.

We also are gonna report out more at the retreat on the unchildren homelessness response.

So we can we can get into all of that and I can get you that information.

That would be great.

Yeah, I just want to agree with the mayor on this point.

I think it's been successful.

There's a need.

If there's a budget opportunity in the next year, I hope we take it.

Okay.

Thank you for that, and we will wrap this work session up and reconvene at one o'clock for City Council.