Note: The provided meeting date is September 9, 2025, but the official minutes indicate the meeting was held on Monday, September 8, 2025 at 4:00 PM. This summary uses the date from the instruction but notes the discrepancy.
The General Government Committee of the Winston-Salem City Council met to consider three agenda items and approve consent items. All votes were unanimous (4-0) to recommend approval to the full City Council. The meeting adjourned at 4:36 PM.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the uh meeting of the general government uh committee meeting uh with the clerk. Please call the role for the members of the committee, please. Chairperson, Mayor Pur Tim Adams. Here, Vice Chair, Councilmember Joyner. Present. Councilmember Burke here, and Councilmember Hall. Here. Thank you so much. Uh also uh, as many of you know, we have two parts to our agenda. We have the consent agenda, and we have the general agenda. And uh we have only one item on the consent of agenda, so and we're gonna do that by voice vote. So if someone would please uh make a motion. Move to approve item C1. A second. It's been moved and properly seconded. All those in favor, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, like sign. Uh our next part of our agenda is a general, and we do have three items, and I will ask the clerk to go ahead and call the first item. Item G1 resolution removing a city-owned parcel from the list of city-owned sites for affordable housing development and authorizing the sale of that land to Triad Cultural Arts Inc. to support the shotgun house legacy site. Yes, uh, thank you, Mr. Rao. Good afternoon, Chairperson Adams, Mayor Joins, members of the City Council. In April 2023, the City Council authorized the sale of two shotgun houses located within Happy Hill to Triad Cultural Arts for one dollar to establish the shotgun house legacy site. In May of 2024, the city council authorized a contribution of 70,000 from occupy occupancy tax fund reserves to assist in the rehabilitation of one of those houses for the project. And then this past February, Tri-Cultural Arts held a grand reopening of the restored house at 716 Humphrey Street with over 100 members of the community attending the ribbon cutting ceremony. Staff from Tri-Cultural Arts has approached city staff about acquiring uh a city-owned parcel that's directly across the street from the shotgun house legacy site. It's marked uh lot number 249 uh on the map that's included with the uh council action. That parcel is part right currently part of the uh list of city-owned uh sites that have been designated for affordable housing development, but they're interested in acquiring that site to uh develop it for parking and for a gathering place uh to accommodate their current programming and tours of the site and also to support the next phase of the shotgun house legacy project. I'd like to introduce Bria Armstrong, the executive director of Tricultural Arts, who uh provide a brief presentation on on their request. Thank you. Wonderful, wonderful. Good afternoon, Miss Armstrong. Would you please provide your name and address for the record, please? Absolutely. Good evening. My name is Abrea Armstrong. I reside at 51 East Forest Street, right around the corner. And I also have our architect with us, Glenn. Hi, my name is Glenn Falk. Excellent. So I'm very grateful that we have the presentation in front of us, but uh City Council member, there's so many of you here. I'm so pleasantly surprised um at the number of you here, and so I just want to send first certainly greetings to you all to Mr. Mayor, um, and also a special thank you uh to Ben Rao for all of his help in getting us here. So, first, today is a great day, council. Today is a great day uh because we at Tri-Cultural Arts are finally able to present both updates on our current programming needs um and how to protect that previous investment that was mentioned, and also share an opportunity, a new opportunity for us to work together to continue to serve our city proudly. So last year, thank you, Glenn. I got a banana white, y'all coming up in the world. Um last year the city was generous enough to support the shotgun house preservation efforts with that 70,000 dollar gift.