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.