The General Government Committee of the Winston-Salem City Council met on December 8, 2025 at 4:00 PM. The committee approved the consent agenda and discussed seven general agenda items including an update on fire classification market study, approval of federal and state legislative action plans, adoption of Civil Service Board appeal hearing rules, proposed amendments to planned residential development standards, zoning regulations for needle exchanges, and modifications to the affordable housing development program. All votes were unanimous (4-0) with Mayor Pro Tempore Adams, Council Member Joiner, Council Member Burke, and Council Member Hall present. The meeting adjourned at 5:33 PM.
A general government meeting. Um would the city clerk please call the role for the committee, please. Chair Chairwoman Mayor Pratim Adams. Here. Vice Chair. Councilmember Joyner. Present. Councilmember Burke. Here. And Councilmember Hall. Here. Thank you so much. As you know, we have two parts to our agenda. We have a consent agenda and a general agenda. And today we have two consent items and we have seven general agenda items. If there are any uh questions or want any consent items pulled, uh let that be known from the committee or the council members. And if not, may I have a motion to receive and accept the consent agenda? Make a motion. Second. It's the mood and properly seconded to accept the consent agenda items. All those in favor, let it be known by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. Thank you. And it passes. Item G1 update on fire classification market study. And that would be assistant city manning Wolfia. Manager Wolfia. Yes, uh, good afternoon. Um committee members and uh council member Burke, can you hear us okay in the room? Councilmember Burke, can you hear the assistant city manager? Is she please? What's going on? All right, we'll we'll work on we'll work on that. Um in the meantime, I want to kind of key this item up and I'll turn it over to Dr. Kina Cofield Jones, our human resources director, and Matt Reese with Piemont Triad Regional Council or PTRC. So this item is a follow up to some of the conversations we had earlier this summer with the adjustments to the accruals for the fire department and the discussions of the what we call the third, third, third, um, updating our classification and compensation studies. We had committed to looking at a third of our employees each year. So over the span of three years, we would have evaluated class classification and compensation for all of our employees over the three-year period with the adjustments to the fire accruals to bring their accrual rates on par with the rest of the city employees. We agreed to look at the fire department um classification in that first round. So we have hired PTRC to do that work. So Dr. Keena Cofield Jones and Matt Reese will go through. You want to if you want to go to the so they'll cover just kind of an overview of the work that was done, the cities or fire departments that were included in the compensation comparisons, um, provide a summary of the analysis and the results of that initial analysis, and then we'll talk through next steps. So with that, I'll turn it over to Keena and Matt. I have a question, please. Um I guess again, going back, we did have a study done years ago. Uh it was a part one, part two deal uh that would have gotten where we are now if we had voted to do it. Uh, my concern is or my question is I know you're doing uh fire department first. Uh I'd like to know how did you come to do that?