City Council - workshop

All right. Give me a thumbs up. Awesome. Thank you. All right. I'm Beau Mills with FountainWorks. FountainWorks has been brought on to help you with the conversations we're going to have today. And I'm joined by my colleague, Olive, who will introduce herself. Go ahead, Olive.

Hi, I'm Olive Naiman. I'm a project coordinator at FountainWorks.

Olive joined FountainWorks, I guess, what, about a year or so ago, year and a half ago. I always like to say this about Olive. She finished her master's in public policy at UNC Chapel Hill in one year. Now think about that, how hard that is to get done. I'm so proud of her. Really, she's done a lot of the work to really make this program work today. Beau Mills, I worked at the League of Municipalities, retired in 2024 from the League of Municipalities after a 40-year career at the state, local, and federal level. I started my career out of school in Washington, D.C. at the EPA. Spent 10 years up there, worked on a variety of programs, and really fell in love with working with local government when I was at the federal level. We started a program called Brownfields in the mid-1990s, and it was so exciting to talk about federal issues and unintended consequences that federal government hoist upon local government, and I got to work with local governments all across the country and realized this is where my heart is always going to be, working with local government. Working in Governor Jim Hunt's office for a while, went to the League of Municipalities where, and Ian knows this from my time, we started an organization called the Metro Mayors Coalition, which is an organization that we started it with eight or nine cities. The mayors of Charlotte, Greensboro, and some of the larger cities created this group for larger cities in the state. Now there's 30 plus members. We took the organization and put it in the League of Municipalities. Burlington was a longtime member. I don't know if you've been able to participate in that group. It brings together the mayors and the city managers from the larger cities to sort of collaborate on a fast growing, fast urbanizing state. So it was really fun working on the cutting edge of the issues that the state faces. And my time working for Jim Hunt, sort of an institution in our state. He taught me all I needed to know about North Carolina, where my family has been for a couple hundred years, but Jim Hunt seemed to know things that no one else does about how you get things done in this state. So it's really, my career is, I feel like since I retired, I couldn't stop working, was able to join Fountain Works, an organization that's founded by a friend of mine who worked together in Jim Hunt's office, 20 years of working with local government, primarily public sector, universities and state agencies, some federal agencies and nonprofits. So we really do support. This is the kind of work we do. Strategic thinking, consulting and advising on public policy issues and how to approach problems. So we're excited to be with you all. I did a recent just one sort of moment of personal privilege. I did a similar project with Asheville three and a half months after Hurricane Helene, where they had, you know what happened in Nashville. I mean, all those things that we take for granted that you all do every day were really disrupted. I was talking to Michael about their water obviously wasn't working well. So a lot of challenges. The rush for recovery for them was they had they took their equal to their entire annual budget landed on them for recovery in one year and they had to figure out how to move forward with no additional staff at the city lots of help from the outside and helping them set priorities it was just a real sobering but enriching thing to be able to help them as they looked at the challenges they faced you have many of the same challenges but not at the same level and that's what's important i think that that really made it clear how important the work you do is because if it's not there man the world comes to a screeching halt so you should feel really good about where you are the challenges you face here are real and tangible and dealing with growth and the costs some of the really courageous decisions you've made just as a council i know this is a relatively new council this group and team that you have here but you've got some real opportunities to take it to the next level i'm going to invite the mayor to say a few words if you would like before we sort of jump right into the agenda i'll go through the agenda in just a moment and invite the mayor and bob if you want to say a few words before we sort of jump right in but miracle

Thank you, Bill. I just want to say thank you to everybody for being here. I was shocked when I pulled in the parking lot and there wasn't a place to park. That's just, I think that shows the dedication that you all have. Maybe you were told to be here and this is great because this gives us an opportunity beyond a couple of hours to really engage and do good work together. So thank you all for being here.

Bob, is there anything you want to add?

Thank you, Bo. Yes, thank everyone for taking their time to come here. A few of the staff, we said, no, you all have to be here. Please come, but if you've got more important things going on, you can come and go. So you may see a few folks get up and go and come back. But certainly thanks to everybody for being here today. Thank you to Rachel, Beverly, Haley, Morgan, Scott and IT folks for pulling this off. There's been a lot of planning over the last couple of months to make sure that we have what we need here in this room and to get the Justice Day set up. So thanks for everybody that was involved in that process.

Thank you very much, Bob. It's been really a pleasure to work with your team. Over the years, I've had a chance to work with Burlington. You all are, and this council, I think about this council, but traditionally, this has been one of the more extraordinary municipalities in the state. You have very stable leadership, both on the council and with the administration. Bob, you have a legacy that you're trying to live up to with some great city managers. Rachel, I've had a chance to work with Rachel over the years at Burlington, through the League of Municipalities. You've got an extraordinary team. All of your department heads are gonna be here as part of the day. One of the things I've learned about city councils is the ones that are really the successful ones are the ones that are firing on all pistons are the ones where there's good integration and understanding about where we're going, not only with each other on the council, but with your administration. and your leaders that are here with you today. It's really, and I've already, we've had a chance to, Olive and I both had a chance to spend some time talking to each of you individually. It's very clear that you all really like each other. I mean, let's be honest, that's a big, that's a, aw. but not only that you work well together you respect each other and I think that one of the goals we have is just to help you sort of take that to the next level the other thing we really want to help you accomplish is really establish the direction and one of the things that working with Bob and Rachel preparing for this and talking to you all clear Burlington has a lot of plans in place and you have that develop them over the years, your leadership and your department heads and the teams that support those department heads are really smart and they put together really good plans. I'm thinking, Jamie, of all the work that you guys have done with the plans and the land use plans and the capital plans, There's a lot there. There's a whole lot there. And I think the big challenge is how do you prioritize all those plans in a world where inflation is killing us? I mean, I work in the transportation arena a lot and the amount of money that it takes to accomplish projects in transportation now is probably double what it was five years ago. I don't know if that maybe that sounds about right to me. It's just insane how expensive it's come to do that. The other thing is the context and the landscape that we're operating in these days. Government is not really held in high regard by citizens generally. There's a lot of the politics of our country right now is all about who can get over on someone else and make someone else look bad. And one of the things that we've learned is the more aligned you are with each other and the more you work together well and think about building consensus and presenting a positive image for your community and the more you align with your administration team, and set those priorities, take all those plans, and we're gonna have a great opportunity today to talk about all the plans that the city has, and really start thinking about the priority, giving you all a sense of what are the things we wanna accomplish One or two years. This is not a strategic plan. You know, every a lot of communities have five years. Ian and I were talking about this earlier by five year strategic plans. We don't necessarily have the big picture plan. But what we want to talk about today and come out of this is a sense of what are the priorities? Where are we going to put our emphasis on? taking a look at all these plans, what are the things that we want to try to accomplish in the next one or two years and give direction to your administration on how we can plan, what are we going to do work sessions on, what are we going to be voting on. So that's part of one of the primary objectives and really strengthen the collaboration of this team that you have in Burlington. It's really, again, I think a pretty extraordinary thinking about the experience of former mayor Someone who should have been on the governor's cabinet, a former attorney for the town. You've had city managers serve on this council. You just have a tradition of really marrying deep understanding of how to administer municipalities and bringing the community perspective to the table. You have a diverse council. You have a really diverse. progressive council thinking ahead that really knows how to get things done. We want to help you take it to the next level today. Working with Bob and Rachel, I think that big challenge that we're dealing with is like, how do we spend the money we have? You made some bold decisions with the recent budget. And I think one of the beautiful things about local government, sort of wrapping this sort of intro up, is that you are incredibly competent. And the citizens surveys tell us that citizens have skepticism about government institutions generally. That's sort of where we are in America right now, there's skepticism. But for some reason, they seem to trust local government still. And that's because I think you earn it. And that's demonstrated very clearly here from the way you guys operate and the way your citizens support you. You made some bold decisions with this last budget and I think that it's been supported because they know, they trust you. They know that you're focusing on priorities and the word competence, extreme competence is something I like to talk about. You have extreme competence. Everything's extreme these days, right? Extreme sports. Well, you have extreme competence. And part of that extreme competence is being very strategic, thinking about what is real and how we get things done. And local government, as I said earlier, I've spent time in Asheville. I remember talking to the mayor of Asheville and she said, Bo, one thing cities know how to do is we know how to do projects. and we know how to get them done, and we know how to get them done on budget, on time, and build the communities that we wanna have in our community, that we wanna be a part of. And you do that well. I think that hopefully at the end of today, you'll feel really good about the decisions you've made and the direction. The way we're gonna work today is that you're all gonna collaborate, work well together, respect, listen to each other, try to make sure that you make an effort to explore what the other person is saying, understand and listen. And another important thing is I want Rachel and Bob to feel part of this conversation. Because if you're going to be successful, there has to be that clear alignment. They know all the details, so let's bring them to the table. One of the reasons we're doing the stations that we're going to talk about in a minute is you're going to get to hear from the experts on your staff teams and really understand what these plans are and how they work and help you sort of start really thinking about what are the top few things we want to get done in the next one to two years. So that's what we're going to come out with. All right, so I'm just going to quickly sort of walk through the agenda and the plan for today. We're going to have an opportunity for you all to share a little bit about your personal public service story, what brought you to this. Then we're going to talk about just sort of a primer, sort of, what is the phrase we like to use? Leveling, we're gonna sort of leveling the understanding just remind this esteemed group of well-educated, experienced municipal leaders. Probably don't need much of that, but it's nice to sort of remind you what municipalities do and how they function and where they fit in the context of public service. Then we're going to talk a little bit about the ways we work together and that'll be just sort of again sort of helping you sort of take your team to the next level in the way you collaborate. And then we're really going to start digging in on those plans and we're going to we'll talk a little more we'll give you some of the instructions but you're really going to have a chance to spend time with your. administration leaders at different stations where you're going to learn and talk about you've got the packets so you've seen some of the things we're going to talk about start as you start doing that again this whole thing is about helping set priorities start thinking about in the context of a world of limited resources how are we going to arrange our decisions over the next year And we'll have a quick conversation about what those core services are. I'll sort of set the frame for that and Bob and Rachel will be able to sort of weigh in what are the core services that we provide here in Burlington. And we'll have that priority setting conversation where we're gonna give you the opportunity to sort of share each other's priorities. You'll have talked about all these things and let's bring you all back together and start setting those priorities. So that's sort of the game plan from there. We hope to wrap up before five o'clock. That's the goal. And I think working with Olive on this program and walking through it with Bob and Rachel, that won't be a problem. I don't think we'll have any issue meeting that deadline. Any questions about the game plan? Awesome. All right. I'm just going to jump right in. The first thing I want to start with is just and I found this is really helpful. It's not always the chance that you get to share what brought you into public service. What sort of motivated you as an individual? And so I'm gonna ask you all to take a few minutes. You see these three questions here. What are your motivations for serving on the council? What has molded the decisions you make? What do you think about when you make decisions as a member of the city council? And what is the unique gift you bring to this council? Is it the way you look at things? Is it your experience? Is it your perspective? So I'm going to ask you just take a couple minutes on these sticky notes. Do we have sticky notes, everyone?

You each have a hexagon.

Oh, the big hexagon. Okay, hexagon. Stop signs. Oh, I wonder. That's probably interesting. with those sticky notes. If you'll just take a moment just to sit and think about those three questions. I'm gonna give you each a chance to sort of share your answers to those questions. And this is really just an opportunity to help your fellow council members sort of know your story and your perspective. You don't get a chance to do that very often. So let's just sort of take five minutes for you to sit at your places and do that. We're big Sharpie fans.

You should each have a Sharpie, so if you want to use a Sharpie, that could be good, but you can also use a pen.

Amen.

I meant to tell you, you probably figured out. Bob, I won't get in trouble with the fire marshal here. Oh, sorry. Maybe that wasn't an accident.

Does that work?

Alright. Mayor, would you like to start by sharing your sort of thoughts? Or would someone prefer to go first? No, the mayor is perfect. That's always the protocol, isn't it?

But you're such a good facilitator. I doubt that. I don't know.

You probably could be up here doing this.

Definitely. I'm much more comfortable doing that part than doing this. That's funny. So my... My motivation, the three questions for me were like an aha. Oh yeah, that's me. So my motivation for doing this is compassion for people and community. So not just people as individuals, but for building community. I think that a sense of community is essential for individuals and for community to be healthy. That's mental health, physical health, social health, all of it. Which all of that together is for me is about inclusion and belonging. So I think all of those things are my motivation for doing this. What has molded the decisions is the motivation, the people, community, so listening to the community, but also listening to the experts, the staff, for their input and for what they believe, because I think they have a different view of what the community needs. And I probably should be watching my time, shouldn't I? You're good. I think all of that listening, the community and the experts are what we need to build a strong sense of community, but also to be certain that we have the things the community needs. The unique gift that I bring to this is, and I wrote, This may be a honed skill, not necessarily a gift, but it is about listening and presence. I think that being present with people, when I'm with you, I'm with you, and I'm listening. And I may have two cents to throw in, too, but my purpose is really to hear.

That is awesome. Yeah, I work for a lot of leaders, and listening is always...

Yeah, I think it's essential. That's great. Thank you. I didn't take my medicine.

Does anyone want to volunteer to go next?

I'll be happy to do so. I hope my story's not too long, but in any event... Well, it is long. You've been out there for a while, Bob. I'm a native of Burlington, and I had the good fortune, quite frankly, early on in my career is that I went to... I was a policy major, and then I went on to law school. But in any event, during both of those experiences, I was able to work what was called the Institute of Government at that time. Now it's called School of Government. And then that sort of sparked an interest in law. and governmental service so that in any event after i graduated my first stop was a corporate attorney for burlington industries of greensboro then a position of city attorney came up and i applied for and had the good fortune of of being selected to serve in that position and i have grown since then but my motivation quite frankly a core motivation is and i've always wanted to make a contribution to where I lived. In other words, I wanted to be more of a participant than an observer. And that position, quite frankly, was just filled... Well, it suited me, and it also filled a need that I had. Of course, obviously, what has molded my decision over the years is my cumulative experience. Having served as a city attorney for 39 years, and now in my fourth term on the city council, I've learned a lot, and I'm still learning. And I think probably, you know, my decisions, quite frankly, have been molded, you know, by that experience. And I guess, bottom line, my gift, quite frankly, hopefully to some degree, is that experience helps me, you know, to do the best I can for our citizens. I believe that. I really, I think it's very, very helpful. Again, like I said, I've been blessed and had the good fortune of having served with the city of Arlington. Well, I don't know. I'd have to count up the years now. More than 50 years. Wow. And so, in other words, I couldn't have... In other words, when I think back, it's the kind of thing that I should have paid to have the experience I had rather than be paid to do it. Anyway, that's my story. That is awesome.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

And I enjoyed soaking up all of his knowledge. He's a teacher, too. He doesn't probably see himself, but that experience definitely has taught me in my first year of first term of city government.

That's huge to have that resource.

Yeah. I try to utilize it as much as possible.

Yeah.

Would you like to share your thoughts? Sure. Number one, I chose to serve on the council to provide a missing perspective to our decision making, like our views and our lenses. I started out in as a community advocate. I think my story is different. than bob's you know um i come from the community and so when i stepped into city government to have that experience such as bob because mine is different probably than any other council member but um number two doing what is truly right and ethical towards all residents staff business owners and our community And number three, I bring the community's trust because I worked on the ground as an advocate. Most of the, I would say the last 10 years, my role in our community was that middle ground before our residents go to council, before it gets into city hall. I think meeting some of those basic needs and working with other communities and resources to make sure our residents and the children had what they needed. helped offset a lot. My first presence into working with the city of Burlington was actually through when Chief Smythe was the police chief for Burlington. That's when I started really looking at it from a governmental perspective of actually what's happening in Burlington, who's making that decision, who has the power, what our issues are. um but yeah so now i was elected and i think all of that community um that community work definitely led to the residents electing me as their city council member but having that collaboration and to to be new a new member of council, but to have people like Bob would have teammates to be able to collaborate. So I may bring one perspective, but Bob always shows me the legal side of things. And I think that diversity on this council is beautiful. If I have a police issue, of course, I can go to Jeff. You know, Jeff, this right here is happening. How do I address the issues that are coming to me in regards to policing? You know, what are those rules? What are those laws? So I think just being on this diverse council and what I bring to the council, what each of us bring to the council together is great. I think together is powerful.

Yeah, bringing all those, the parts coming together makes for a better whole. Absolutely. Yeah, that's great. I'll steal your post there.

you

I think, you know, my journey, 40 years of public service started as a baby cop in Arizona and just leaned into learning about policing. In the middle 90s in Scottsdale, Arizona, I was heavily enmeshed in that agency's journey on community policing. And we and I knew back then that community policing was really community-oriented government. How do you solve problems for the community? The police are one lever or one tool, but it's a whole systems approach. And we knew that back in the 90s, right? And so then a lengthy journey through two police chief stints, one in a much smaller town, my experience in Scottsdale, which is a much larger town. And so then Burlington landing in the middle of those two and ability to draw together those experiences from both ends has put me in a place here where I was, I think, successful as a police chief. successful enough that folks called last year and said, please step into the council role. And it wasn't something that I had ever entertained in my life journey. And so folks asked and I thought, okay, this is the next level service. So step up. and fill what maybe was a void in leadership created last summer. So that's maybe the first piece, motivation a little bit, good service, molded decisions is that 40-year history in community policing. And then I don't think it's a unique gift, but I think that I have it, like Dawana says, about doing the right thing, the ethical thing. So I have a history and experience of doing the next right thing. and seeing how small incremental decisions lead to big successes in the long term and look to put us on that path. And then the ability to have courageous conversations, right? There's no shying away from calling out the elephant in the room at the right time, at the right place. And that's what I think I bring to the table today. and into the future is building solid relationships like we already have and then leveraging those with courage and decision making.

Bringing that to the whole council. I think so.

All right, I'll wrap it up. So my motivations for serving on this council came, as some of you have heard my origin story, over a beer and the idea of the power of gathering people and ideas. And so my focus has been to create a more collaborative local government that evolves with the growing diversity of our community. that first originated with homebrew clubs that I would have on my back patio, and we'd have a mixture of long-term and new residents coming together over a beer, but more importantly, sharing these perspectives on a community that they'd either grown into or had come from another community and were looking with outsiders' eyes. This desire to participate in an ongoing conversation and shape that community for the future. And as an entrepreneur by heart and trade, I realized the power of bringing these diverse groups together to leverage their abilities to shape that kind of future decision. So my motivation has been how do we gather people? And my focus has been on how do the decisions that we then make best position the city for ongoing success and resiliency and really prosperity for the whole community. And so that always molds my decisions of kind of how does this decision not just affect tomorrow, but 10 years or 20 years from now? And will it build the capacity of the community to address future concerns that we may not even anticipate today? And then lastly, what do I bring to this community? I think I've always had this desire to reach out as a servant leader and kind of go out into the community and meet people where they're at. And then again, gather and bring those ideas and people back into the conversation. So y'all know I've knocked a lot of doors. I always love the conversations that people bring up on their doorstep when it's most kind of pure and, unadulterated by a lightning rod issue or something else. And then to say, how do we mold that into, again, these long-term visions that are untainted by the news of the minute or the headline of these pressing things? So we can think about what does the Burlington of many years from now look like that we want to share in together? Wow.

That is really the alignment here and the sense of... community is really strong. Was there anything that sort of struck you as you listen to all these?

The amazing amount of experience. I think I shared this with you. I mean, everybody at this table has more experience in municipal government than I do. And and I mean, I rely on this council, each member of this council, their opinion and their input. And I think listening to stories today just re-emphasizes that for me, that we are in this together. And I think Dawana said that quite well. We're in this together, we learn from each other and benefit from each other's sharing and input.

I've worked with a lot of city councils over the years in different contexts. I've not seen one with this breadth of understanding and experience. And you don't take it for granted. That's the really nice thing is you don't take it for granted. as you were saying, sort of emphasizing the idea that together we're much better. Always. And that's, you're bringing a lot of elements to the table that aren't common. So you're really in an extraordinary place. Bob, it's a lot of work. They're smart. They know what they're doing. Absolutely. But that makes for a really effective council. That's great. Anything else that you wanted to sort of identify before we move that you thought you just from hearing each other that you want to lift up here?

I think we're... hesitate to include myself in the lens as being self-serving but i think we are five really nice neat good humans and and that's just who we are as good people and so then it's easy to work together i don't love everything they're going to say and i don't have to but I still care deeply about them, and we all do the same thing, and I don't think that's a plus for us. Sure, that makes sense.

Definitely.

Not only does the... My perception is the citizens of Burlington trust you because of some of the things that you've done and that you support, but you also trust each other, and I think that builds a unique... dynamic that doesn't seem to be present in a lot of other public circles. So lean in on that and nurture it. Don't don't take it for granted. It's not easy. What I thought would be helpful is just take a few minutes to really think about the role of municipalities and gosh, I mean, you've already identified this very clearly. You're all very, very experienced in municipal government and government in general. But it's also nice when you have a new team brought together to sort of, Let's make sure there's a leveling of understanding and maybe I'm going to sort of hit some key highlights of how municipal governments work. And I'm going to ask Rachel and Bob and each of you to sort of add to it as we go to make sure that just everybody has a clear understanding of how this works. And one of the things I may Bob, I may ask you to think about how do you, when we get to the end of this conversation, how do you want the council to communicate through you to the department heads or just make sure that we're all on the same page about how you're going to operate in the context of municipality. I hope I'm not hitting you with a surprise there. That's just helpful for everybody to hear it so there's common understanding. I think that's really good. I'm going to move over here so I can see what you're looking at. Council-managed reform of government, the most common for communities of this size, the most popular of communities. I guess what, probably like 10,000 or up, or even 5,000 communities up in this state are council-managed reform of government, where the council sets the direction and the policy or the policy makers, and your manager and your administration runs the operation. You act as a body, you don't act individually, you don't make decisions and things don't happen just because you say it should happen. You are a body that operates as a body. And you're strategic and legislative, but not administrative. Next slide. The role of a city council is to set those policies, adopt those ordinances. Probably the biggest thing you do, frankly, Peggy, is the budget, right? I mean, it's how you, where you devote the resources that are bestowed upon you by the citizens. I'm setting that back. The other thing that you do is hire the city manager. Some cities hire the city attorney, some cities hire the clerk, but that's about it. Otherwise, you represent the public interest and provide oversight and accountability for the administration. What the council doesn't do is to hire direct staff. That's very clear. You do not direct staff. You may set some of the norms and it's important and I'll ask Bob at the conclusion of this to maybe share some of his thoughts on how he would like to make sure everybody's on the same page about communicating with staff. You do not make operational decisions and you don't promise outcomes. that require staff action or outside legal authority. Your legal authority, so you don't promise those outcomes. Next slide. Council members all have equal authority. Some cities, the mayors vote. Some cities, they don't. I work in Charlotte, for example. The mayor doesn't vote, but has a veto, which is an interesting model. It is decided by your municipal charter. Open meetings law applies, which we know very well. I'm microphoned up with Stuart because of open meetings laws. And you just need to be always, always mindful of open meeting law. Next slide. Role of the city manager, chief administrative officer, the CEO, if you will. You're like the board of directors of a corporation, and he's the CEO. He implements your policy and the approved budget that he works with. He oversees all the departments and staff, prepares the budget for the council for consideration with his team or her team, advises the council on legal authority. on how the actions they can take, the operational impacts. He shares what his thoughts are with you as the CEO. If you do this, this might be what happens, sharing their expertise and all the financial implications of the policy directions that you said as well. And the relationship that the manager has is serves at the pleasure of the council, usually through a contract. They are expected to provide that professional advice and policy as well as prepare a budget for your consideration and acts as a single point of contact, the siphon. It's sort of like the siphon for your communications with staff. It sort of goes through the manager as they would like. role of the city staff the staff responsibilities carry out the direction of the city manager provide technical expertise and professional judgment the staff serve the public consistently and fairly staff accountability is reporting through the city manager the council interacts with staff primarily as we've said before through the city manager of the process that the city manager prefers both in meetings and briefings and settings that you might be, as the manager deems appropriate. Next slide. I guess that's it, yeah. So does that make sense to all? Does that ring very familiar, very true? I think the unique thing, and we're going to have a chance to talk about core services a little bit, about the core services of a municipality a little later, but where you fit as a city council is also in the broader scope of providing government services. The national defense is at the national government level. We have some national guard roles, but that's primarily at the national level. Here in North Carolina, You have two attorneys here that will remind you of this all the time. You are creatures of the General Assembly, the legislature. I've had legislators for a period of time in my career, I was a registered lobbyist in Raleigh and Washington. But in Raleigh, some legislators will remind me, that's Charlotte, they get out of line. We just may say they no longer exist. because they have that authority over you as a municipality they are you are creatures of the legislature i think that would be very difficult but it's just a nice reminder so the roles you play public health is usually the state the county collaboration education you have little specific role of education Economic development is an interesting arena. It's really important, and it's a real collaborative effort between cities, counties, and state government in North Carolina, along with, in this state, we've actually created a statewide nonprofit economic development partnership of North Carolina. That is a partner for you all, but cities play an important role in that. Recreation is something that cities play a big role in. Public safety is at one of the core things that we do in municipal governments. Urban North Carolina, you are the primary provider of public safety, both fire and police. Your citizens know that very clearly. The other arenas, water, where's Michael? There he is. Water and sewer, clearly an urban service that municipalities play a big role in North Carolina. So you have a role in providing, but it's in collaboration with other levels of government. And it's always important to remember the legislature, you are creatures of government. the state, features of the state legislature. Any questions or comments about that, about the roles that you play? And then I'm gonna ask Bob to sort of say a few words about it from your perspective, especially like what's your preference on working with the staff? And that's something that I've found over the years. It's really nice for everybody to hear it all together and ask questions and make sure you understand. So I'll ask.

Yeah, and I think we all do a very good job of that. Whenever you're out or you get that phone call about whatever the citizen issue is, you funnel it through city manager's office with Bev and Rachel, and we distribute that to staff. And of course, if it's something to the chief or what not and copy us. I think that' s worked well. In the past there has been direct outreach to a department head or even a lower level supervisor and sometimes that makes them uneasy. Why is this council member singling me out with this? Shouldn' t that go through the manager? That' s why we try to help coordinate that message. And then, but like if you're just wearing your citizen hat and you've got a question, then, you know, you ought to be able to contact them just like anybody else. But I think you all do a good job of working through our office, and I appreciate that, and I think our staff appreciates that.

And I appreciate with Bob coming on during my second year when council decided to hire Bob to come on as our city manager, it's making a difference for me being able to have that trust. knowing that I can go directly to our city manager and the issue will be addressed. I think that's what keeps us coming to you first. Just having that trust in you and Rachel as well. So thank you for that, to know that our city manager does have the best interest of the city. The staff and council has been very helpful through that transition of you coming on. I can't say that I've always felt that way, even though I've always still dealt in that manner of going through the city manager, but it does make a difference to have one that I can trust.

I appreciate this review even though it's something I've lived for many years and studied and but I think this is a public meeting and so for the community Especially and like listening back through this over the coming years I think that's a really important level of perspective that the conversations were about to have Must fit within this scope of responsibility and these guardrails a lot of things that we may wish we could do but we act within this council manager government and this North Carolina system, so

I can't imagine what it must be like to go to the grocery store and someone says, you know that traffic on I-40? Golly, you've got to do something about it.

Let's explain which levers are in front of us and which ones are not in our court.

Anything else? Anything? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'd like to add one thing is that I certainly understand those relationships because I've been it and lived it. From a practical point of view in-house is that one of my first stops was Beverly. Now, Beverly is an extension of Bob and Rachel. And so, in other words, I think that's to be expected, and I know many of you do the very same thing. I know Bob and Rachel are busy, all of them visit from time to time, but I don't consider that going down dealing with staff directly. I see that as an extension of the manager and the assistant city manager. She's always been very helpful And like I said, I'm just telling you what I do. Is that okay, Bob? I will tell you, Bob, from my experience working with Burlington, that's exactly what I do.

No insult intended.

I don't want to go on and on about it, but I found that true working with a clerk of court. knowing which one of the assistant clerks to go to over there in other words they have about four or five different divisions they've been you know you you try to get the clerk one day you're not going to be able to you know it's hard to do but in any event i just wanted to add that to the mix because i don't see that as a violation of the you know jumping over to staff Well, there they are yeah, and I yeah, I See that as a it's just a good way to operate and I know they agree.

I don't think We have that trust amongst absolutely, yeah This family takes care of all of us And then the communication there's also times when you need to contact, you know, the city attorney about We keep each other apprised as

I'm dumb, remind me, does the council hire the city attorney? Yes. That's one of those, it's not the case in all cities, but both. With that, David, is there anything you wanted to add to that?

No, I just think that this council is very respectful, I think, for, I appreciate you calling me and asking me questions, and I would welcome you to do more of it. And recognize that I will have to say this, having served in y'all's role, too, is that, you know, everybody here is busy with their own. It's funny, I come in on, sometimes I come over on Sunday afternoon and put together my schedule for the week. By lunchtime on Monday, it's shot. And to the extent that, you know, you do make calls in and it's recognize that you're working into Bob's schedule already and all. And to give us an idea of the priority of what it is that you're talking about is always very helpful. If it's something that needs immediate attention and y'all need to get back to somebody on it, say that and let us know so we can do exactly that. But I welcome the call because it gives me an opportunity to kind of put things in perspective and sometimes give you background that you may not be aware of at that time.

I call on David all the time.

I'm sorry.

Also another good point, often you all may get the call but that citizen has taken a shotgun approach and they've called multiple departments already. We possibly have already worked through the issue or we're working on it. So that's good for us to know that to coordinate that response also.

Just sort of picking up on from my experience over the years in local government in North Carolina. It's just sort of a natural thing to have a conversation with a department head or something. But just remember, you've got to be really cognizant of the dynamic. Even though you may be two people that get along great, they're not in a place to say no to a city council member. So just be... Just be mindful of that. I don't think that there's gonna, like a wall's not gonna drop down between you and folks, but just remember that.

That was hard for me, I'm gonna be honest, because as a resident, you kind of know who's there and who's who, and not coming to any of them in a power of position I didn't think I was, but learning and being new to the council, I didn't have any issues, but I had to process on what does council look like? What does my role look like? But to me, having those conversations with the assistant city manager, with Miss Beverly or, you know, with Jamie felt innocent because they are the experts, right? I'm just trying to get the answers. But, you know, later learning that it does, you know, that my position does have that authority over them. And I couldn't just see them as, you know, in their role and and in that fashion.

Because I don't like to see people where they are. Yeah, so avoid that awkwardness, right?

Just avoid that awkwardness. Yeah, just, yeah. Just trying to just not even go there. But I will say that was different transitioning into my role as a new member of council.

Anything else? Rachel, I know you've worked together at this home.

I don't have anything to add. Perfect. Awesome. Let me just say this about the legal office. The best thing that I've done in my 13 years is to hire Sherry Childress over there. And she's here at the back table. And everybody, all the staff members know that. But as we carry on, our conversation goes on all day long. We keep each other apprised of what was going on. So you're welcome to call Sherry And Orly, either one. Because you recognize it, we're gonna be discussing it, okay? That's just the way our office operates at this time.

Good. Awesome.

Any other thoughts? Sherry's over there going, what are you doing? I'll call you, Sherry.

Jeff, anything else you wanted to add before we move? Nope. I hope that was helpful. It was, you know, municipal government 101, right? It's good. It's helpful. And I've already seen how you all talk and share with each other. And it's just that's what we want today is you all to share information and sort of take this team to the next level. It's like moving from the minor leagues to the major leagues. You're going to move up. I'm a big soccer fan in the UK and then they have the premier league and the first, you know, the championship division. You're moving up to the premier league and the big leagues and that's because you're gonna grow your team. I'm gonna do a little exercise now, sort of ways of working together. I'll have helped put this together so I'll be happy, I'm happy for you to jump in and help make sure I get the instructions right. Did you say one of each? Oh, that's right. Colors are important here, which is a challenge for me because I'm colorblind. So you all have worked really well together. You've made some hard decisions. Together, this relatively new council has made some of the hardest decisions this city has made. We've really made some tough decisions and I'm really amazed at the level of trust your community has given you. but you're still a relatively new comprised body. We have some different perspectives and you're a diverse body as well with different perspectives and experiences and makes for a better whole. One of the things we wanna do is just spend a few minutes. I don't wanna, you know, we're not gonna do like trust falls or anything, but it's nice to do a little bit of team building and just understanding. We talked about your perspective and what brought you together, but now we're just talking about the ways of working together. And we're gonna give you a few minutes to sort of jot down some thoughts about, let's see, when you think about your role and the way you work, what do you appreciate from others when working on a team? What do you appreciate from others?

What would you like to see your teammates, how they do things?

So that's one question we're gonna ask you. And what color is that one? So you have an orange sticky. You're gonna answer that question in orange, on the orange. The second question is, when you are feeling stressed or strongly invested in an issue, what changes, if anything, in how you communicate or participate? So when you're under stress, what changes? And this is helpful for your colleagues can say, oh, I can tell they're under stress here. I need to be mindful of that because we're all people and we want to be successful together. So it's good to sort of share that. And then the third question, what color is that one? pink. I definitely don't see pink. The third question, and what color is the third one on? Green. All right. Considering your working style, how can you best prepare yourself for council work sessions to make the most of your time together? Some people are big readers. Some people need to get briefings. Some people just like to show up and get the information, sort of the big picture information. I worked for Governor Jim Hunt. We prepared information for him in sort of sending ways. We did the one pager. Jeff, you know how that is. You do the one pager that you could just make a decision based on that first page. But there's a joint information below that. Some people like to read all of it. As a staffer, I never knew if he was going to read the whole thing or is he just going to read the first page? You better know your stuff, by the way. Bob, you prepare packets for folks. People use this information differently. What's the best way that you learn? What's the best information for you to make decisions? And it may vary. Some people work full time, some people work more than full time, others don't. It's just different ways of operating. So just thinking about considering your work style. How do you best prepare yourself? for council work sessions to make the most of your time together. Maybe what's your ideal, maybe what you find yourself doing more. It's just good to share that information with each other, being honest. So again, that's on green.

That's on green. One thing I'll add off that first question, things you can consider when answering that, because it can seem kind of broad, is think about things that would help you. So like if someone, you have people who are direct with you, or you like people, you like to ask clarifying questions, or you like follow-up after meetings, think of some things like that, too.

And also at the end, we're gonna give you 10 minutes to write your answers.

At the end, we'll give you a minute for each color to say your responses. We'll put them up on this template and then we'll go through the next color and the next question.

Make sense? All right, so you got three questions to answer on the appropriate color.

All right, any questions? Awesome. I didn't know it wasn't supposed to start. I've already done mine. You're already done? You don't need 10 minutes.

You have a 10 minute break, dude.

Yeah, we'll cut it short, less than 10 minutes. That's great.

10 minutes for all three questions.

No, a total, total. You're going to divide that 10 minutes up for all three questions. You should be doing this too.

Yeah, that would be good.

That'd be interesting. Yeah, I wanna hear Bob and Rachel's thoughts.

I really do, yeah. Stress.

Not David's, but Bob and Rachel's. I'm gonna walk out for my 10 minutes in, y'all.

I'm gonna walk out for my 10 minutes. I'm gonna go get a snack.

Thank you. Okay.

Yes.

when you're feeling stressed

Hi, I'm very similar. We have a concrete inventory that we use with a lot of furniture. They don't ask themselves these questions.

And while I do this, sometimes I reflect on my own self.

I don't usually do that. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

No.

We won't meet after this part. We won't meet until after lunch. We can move out of the way. Would it be fine to put it beside that door when we're done?

Back in there? Okay, we'll move it to that corner because then we won't meet again until like 40 minutes after lunch. And then that'll be like... Yeah, if that's the case, yeah. We're faster. See, you set a very high bar for us.

I know.

I just figured that out. That's for sure. 3.5 instead of 10.

Does that mean I go first?

You don't know if you want to or not.

We'll start with the first question. The orange one first? Orange is first. Orange is first. Yes, ma'am.

This will probably not surprise anyone. Honest and direct. Honest and direct.

Honest and direct.

And I share all the facts that I have on this. In other words, I lay it all out there.

Pro and the con. Do what? Pro and the con. Yeah, exactly. Everything that I know, I don't know. I don't need to lay it out there.

And I appreciate you saying that. Amen.

Honesty was a given. I mean, I just assumed honesty. And I know I should not, but I did. So I said, engagement, be engaged, give input, be open to others' ideas, and listen.

It sounds like you.

That's what that's what I need from people.

Uh, in no apparent order, but I'll start with the bottom on mine. I think working on a team, the first thing that I want us to do is properly identify a problem so we know what we're trying to solve for. And then on the downstream side of that, correctness, clarity. I'm always going to look at data and then finally see if that's possible, given the definition of our problem. So the first thing there is it's almost like Clarity of the problem, right? And then let's get it. Let's look at the data and let's arrive at a solution. And if that solution can be win-win, then that's what we're going to try to achieve.

I said I appreciate the knowledge and expertise and lived experiences of the people who come together as the team, as us. And specifically as that helps us formulate or look at things in a more novel manner. Our least favorite words are because we've always done it that way. So like how do we step back, pull together with what we've got, and then refocus.

So Bob, I'm hearing you. Well, we've always done it that way. It hasn't worked for some people. Your mic, Bo. I'm sorry. All right, I don't think I surprised any of you there. That's really cool. All right, so the second one, what color is it again? Pink. Pink, pink. Pink one, we'll start with you.

So my greatest weakness is impatience. I know that surprises a few of you. Since when? Yeah, exactly. Which I try to mostly control, but under a stressful condition it's much more likely to leak out and become apparent. And then when I'm strongly invested in something, my passion can leak. And I hope that isn't interpreted by the group in any way other than I'm passionate about the subject, right? And both of those lead to a place where I just want to cut to the chase and be done with the whole thing, right?

Your patience wears out.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely, it does. Yeah.

So it's helpful for your colleagues to know these things, and it's also the self-awareness.

Yeah, there's definite self-awareness there. That's super helpful. And they're pretty transparent about it.

Yeah, I can see that. We'll go back this way. We'll start with you.

Similar to Jeff, when I'm highly focused, I can kind of get tunnel vision or get a little more focused on how do we just keep moving along. Being an entrepreneur, it's a lot of quick decisions and a lot of smaller team dynamics. So learning government and learning the pace of government has been a challenge. So I get frustrated with that, especially when urgency is involved or perceived urgency is involved.

Well, y'all really need me.

That's right. Some of the parts, right?

Because when I'm feeling pressure, stress, my tendency is to step back, listen, try to take it in, try to see what's the win-win, and to slow things down. There is a point or maybe a situation, I'm not 100% certain about this, where I might just move into action and knock you out of the way and move forward. But that's rare. But sometimes that does happen. So most of the time it's a step back.

So people know, can they, is that like, they'll know?

I think I probably will tell you, like get out of the way.

Oh, when you're ready to go back the other door.

Oh, the step back piece you noticed. Is that what you said?

No, that we would probably notice maybe. Yeah, I think you would. Identify that you're hitting the pause button for a minute.

Oh, I think, I mean, I think we've done that in work session. And I've noticed Jeff over there going...

I don't think I can tell, man.

I wouldn't, even through the years of knowing you,

I wouldn't, I don't really know when you, you know, had enough. Because you're always still presenting in a way that feels to be collaborative. Go ahead. Even when you, you know, may not, I think, I look at you as a problem solver. The things I, my experience with you and in conflicts or when we, when things may not be on the same page with everyone involved, you seem to be more of the... I see you as a mediator. I've never seen you... I wouldn't know how to recognize yet when you've had enough.

I think I'm... I think I would say either we need to make this decision or we need to postpone.

Now that I recognize. Pause the conversation and come back to it.

So you have limits?

Yeah, maybe. It's interesting. I think it depends on the situation. It depends on what it is.

That's good. That's helpful. I think when I feel stressed or strongly invested in something, first of all, sort of like Jeff to some degree, I get a real good clear notion of what the issue is. I want to clarify what the issue is. And the next thing I do is I call people. I don't text them.

I don't email them. I call them. Wait a minute, what is that? You can talk to people on a phone?

I know that's old school, but I can gather more by call than I can, you know, emails, texts are sort of one-dimensional. You can pick up a little tone here and there, but bottom line, though, is that's pretty much the way I handle things all the time anyway.

You know, whatever issues, you know. I'm just adding to mine.

Yeah, thank you. That's good. And to be honest, in the profession I'm in, I deal with stressful stuff all day long. And I won't get into it now because you're not familiar with it. I work in a stressful environment at a certain place I work. But in any event, I approach it the very same way. I get folks on the phone and we talk about it and we don't exchange. We don't have this long chain of emails. But I can get more to the bottom of it by doing all of it. Like I said, that's old school. Of course, I'm old school anyway, which is fine.

It still works.

You just did something I think maybe I'm just going to do a quick, this is not in the program. You just wrote down call Bob. Yeah. And I'm going to ask each of you, what's your preferred communication? What is your preferred communication on topic?

Is it text, phone call, email? Generally, email. Email? If it's email worthy, I prefer to just have to be briefed through email. If it is... If we cannot come to an agreement, then I'm gonna call Bob. Lastly, that's the one thing that our previous administration and council, the one thing I learned with the... What do I call it? Tenured or seasoned council members, because most of them have been here, what, 20 years or more? And the one thing they preferred They always said, Dewana, just pick up the phone. Just pick up the phone. So I have learned to adapt to that. But in conflict, especially if it's something that we can't come to agreement on, I'm going to call Bob. Because I know that Bob is the person that's going to lay all the facts out. He's going to look at it from a lens that I may not be standing in. Of course, he has that legality behind it. And he has the pros and cons. So he's going to be that, for me, in that issue.

Very helpful clarifier.

And so generally, I'm going to get quiet. I'm sure everybody knows that kind of, right? If we're in a conversation and we're not getting anywhere and it's like the high pressure, I tend to either be overly, maybe my tone changes and becomes stronger, or I may just get quiet and kind of retreat because I know after this is done, I'm going to call Bob.

That's fascinating. That's helpful. I'm curious, so phone call, what do you prefer? I'm just curious.

It depends on if you need to share with me a lot of detail, probably send me an email or either send me a text and say, can we have a phone call? That would work. If it's something quick, send me a text. That way I'll see it more quickly. If you just want to share a lot of information, just send me an email. If I need to see that information soon, send me a text and say you sent me an email.

Oh yeah, that's what I do. Make me put this at the top.

I do have a full-time job outside of this, as many of us do, and so multitasking all the time, and sometimes I need the text message to know that there's something waiting on me.

Bob does great with us. If I haven't checked the email, he'll just send me a text message, Joanna, can you please check your email, and whatever. If he needs a response, just let me know.

That's helpful. That's sort of the priority setting tool.

Mm-hmm. My contact methods are going to be almost identical to Beth's, so I'm busy all day. I much prefer a phone call, Bob. I have it on my green card. One-on-one conversation on the subject, right? So I want the one-on-one call, but I can't just pick up the phone. So it's pretty much a text, like, when can we talk?

Yeah, right.

And then we'll walk it into a time for a call.

So initiate with a text.

Initiate with a text, conclude with a call. And then I'm very visual, so if there's data points or something, I push that in an email and then I'll bounce in there and check it out.

So you want to use all the available tools? Or pieces, yeah. Sequential. Hierarchy, yeah. That's good. Yeah, that's excellent.

I always prefer a call or a conversation. Okay. I have too many dang emails, so, yeah.

Let me just add in here, I appreciate everything y'all were saying, because you also do not create a public record. You recognize when people are asking for those things, so many of the times they are abbreviated, you might put some humor into the things, people take them out of context, and they're not thorough, but in the course of your conversation, you know, you are able to flush out all the facts. So I appreciate exactly what you're saying, and I think that's something that we have tried to emphasize with staff. Don't create a chain of emails or texts that have the possibility of being taken out of context.

Let me pick up on that, David, and I think it's part of my training, quite frankly, is that, you know, talking to people, you don't want to create Unnecessarily a trail. And of course, with the public records and everything, you can talk and I think you can get right down to it, quite frankly, you know, pretty, pretty easily so. And then again, you know, it's not to say there's not an appropriate use for emails and text, but it just matter of practice you know for a number of reasons and not the least of which are some legal implications you know that go along with it but i find that i can solve problems faster but i can't remember the last time anyway i asked jeff he has y'all text him you got time to talk he most typically he'll say now try to yep yeah he does

That was helpful. I know if I were in your shoes, that would be helpful to know, like, oh, yeah, this is what Jeff prefers, a text. That's helpful. It just makes you more efficient. That's great.

Also related to that, I appreciate that this council is willing to have dialogue for the sake of transparency in our public meetings. that's important because we we have our understanding of each other but also says the community of 66 000 people understands that these aren't decisions that are being made behind closed doors these are us preparing ourselves with the knowledge and absolutely the perspective to then formulate how we're making decisions people have to have dialogue and there's different ways of doing it in different forums yeah

And one is just a one-on-one learning experience where there's back and forth, if that makes sense.

So then to be able to share the cumulative sum of what we've learned back into these forums is huge.

I think, based on my experience, I think we do that more now. than previously with having those conversations kind of public facing through the work sessions. You know, we actually are having the conversations versus, you know, behind closed doors. And I like that because it's like we're all on one page and plus the public also knows the concerns of each one of us or where we stand i think they do deserve that and we make our decisions together and the public can see that yeah i remember hearing jeff say consensus is one of his stages and that it's a process it's a process and that having that in an open way

When you're working on something as a group, you have to do it in public. That's the law, right?

I've never had to ask all of them to find out where they stand. I think with this group, we kind of know where we stand. I don't have to do too many phone calls to find out. I think that we are transparent with one another and with the public.

And you've already heard how Bob prefers to share information and collaborate with you. Anything you want to add to that?

No, I think I kind of got that message from each of you, which is the best way to get in touch with you when we need to. That's great.

All right, the last one. What color is the last one? I'm sorry. Green. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. We jumped right at all the chicken scraps.

Did I read it? I thought I did. Didn't I read it? No, you did it.

You did. Yeah, she got it. But me again?

Yeah, why not? I prefer the briefing. Briefing? For the work sessions, right? That was the question. Kind of how do we prefer to be prepared? Like what does preparation look like for us ahead of meeting? Level information in an oral briefing. Like in a condensed, like hit all direct though. Not like the work session notebook. I want to know like what's coming up. That one pager. That one pager. I'm a one pager as well. Just hit the points. let me know and then let me know if council has to make a vote on it. That's what I prefer. That's great.

So like the agenda or the cover sheet for the topic, is that what you're referring to?

Like, yeah, like whatever the work session and whatever those topics are going to be. Like if I can get an overview from you guys of what, you know, the expectation, well, what it is and the expectation is all I need.

overview expectation short overview when we have a Packet for either the work session or council agendas will have the the agenda and then for each item we have an agenda request form that the department had just filled out with the summary okay and so that's sort of the one that recommendation and and a Suggested council action and then behind that we'll have backup information. It may be just a PowerPoint. It may be a contract it may be

to pick up on that. That's a little form. It's easy. You can read it. It's very easy to read. And I look at those. And a couple of things, I look at recommendations. And another thing, I focus in financial impact. And when it says none, I keep moving. Just cutting to the chase. Financial impact, you know, I dig into it. But in any event, I read and study the agenda, and I try to get my questions answered before we actually have a meeting. You know, I mean, that's been the way I approach it, because sometimes you have questions and need more information. I mean, I really don't wait until the meeting time to try to get the other information I need. I try to get it as soon as I can to sort of fill in my gaps.

You're an attorney. You prepare for court.

Absolutely. You can never over-prepare.

And you don't ask a question that you don't already know the answer to. Absolutely. Exactly.

I love the agenda packet and that cover page. Like my colleagues here, go through and see what the staff recommend, what's the financial impact, and just get the summary too. But then there's always the detail in there too, and I find that interesting. The way I prepare is I get that packet electronically. I frequently read it in the wee hours in the morning in the dark on an electronic device, scrolling through. That's the way I do. But I read it, I think about it, you know, how does it hit me? How do I feel about it? I do some research. I usually ask Bob lots of questions. And that helps me to prepare. the way that I prepare for every meeting is I sit down with, I'll say the city manager staff. Sometimes it's four people, sometimes it's one or two, and we go through the agenda and if I have extra questions, I bring them up then. That's extremely helpful for me.

That's a very common thing from my experience with mayors, just because you're gonna sort of MC, manage the discussion. So it's helpful to have had that. perspective. It's a little extra preparation as the mayor because of your role. But it's very helpful.

And that's why you get the big bucks.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. We know you're all in it for the big bucks. That's right.

So for for me to be effective, I prepare ahead. I look at the data. That's going to be my first go to is what are the numbers tell me? as Bob said, have some free conversations when I need to, to gather perspective. So that's a call to somebody or whatever, follow up, get that information. And then for Bob and staff, I wanna see in the materials, the outreach that the city has done to the public components, right? That if you front load that, then I don't have to ask, but that's always gonna be one lens is what has the committee input piece been? What's our level of transparency been? And so when I see that, then I'm good. and if not, we're gonna wanna have that further dialogue. That perspective from the community, is that somewhat determined by the topic too? I think it's widely different, yeah, for sure. I should have added that one. Types of communities or depending on the circumstance. And then last, my commitment to not dine out staff in public. So if there's a coaching thing, a gap or a question I need to ask, I'm gonna try to do that offline and not in the public meeting to embarrass somebody.

I was like just I love our packets I like reading through all of them and I find that I'm more deliberative when I am reading through something so then I find that I often try to find another couple sources and just read through it because it that perspective changes the way I think about what I've just read so I don't like being popped into a brainstorming session because I'd rather be deliberative ahead of time to then formulate into the room and talk, so yeah.

So Bob, it sounds like the team, all that hard work they do to prepare those packets is actually appreciated. Absolutely.

And I use them later for reference. So I will say that the packet is helpful when a resident has a question or maybe they question something we just discussed or they want to know who that developer was on this certain project that we just discussed. So having that information available, I can go to it and make sure I'm giving correct information without even contacting you guys or emailing you for the information. So.

Boy, that's the golden nugget, isn't it?

Those are archived on the website too. So if you ever want to connect your resident directly with the source material, they're there to get their residents to go find the information themselves.

That's only the nerd public administrators that do that.

Let me follow up on something Ian said earlier in the previous color, and that is when it comes to saying things in public, you know, it is important, and the whole purpose when you have rezonings and they have a consistency statement there, that's to get you by legally. You had a couple of cases, Bob knows this, cases that came down and then obviously got codified that you you know have to make a certain thing but that does not keep you from articulating in fact that was the whole purpose of the case it's trying in a lot of ways it's trying to move you from a legislative matter where all you have to do is vote you don't have to articulate anything as for why you're voting closer to kind of like quasi-judicial where you have to make you know, written findings. It's somewhere in between there, and the whole purpose of that case and the codification of it later on was to get you, as a legislative body, to articulate why it is you're voting in a certain way. The consistency statement is just a base foundation to make sure that it passes the legal muster, okay? But as he indicated, you're free to turn around and add on to that what your thoughts are and get it out in the public as much as you want to. You don't just have to read the consistency statement.

I'll just say one of the things that Jeff highlighted is the community. One of the rules is you don't wanna be surprised by opposition to something. It's okay that people might not like the decision you made. That's your job is to make hard decisions and you've done it. But to be surprised by opposition is not a good thing either. And I think that's what you're talking about a little bit, Jeff, is just understand the perspective so I understand where people are. Does that capture that properly? I hope that was a helpful conversation. And it's also, I thought that how best to communicate with me, but that wasn't in our agenda to do that. We're definitely gonna put that in there in the future and that was probably helpful to you all too. We're gonna take a break. What do you think, Olive? What you're thinking about timing?

It's a lot of pressure.

No pressure? No pressure on time. I think we're in good shape, right? Seven and a half minutes. Say that again? Seven and a half minutes. Seven and a half minutes. That's way too much. That's too much. All right. Just seven minutes. Seven minutes. What time? Do we have a clock here? You have a timer right there. Oh, you have a timer. All right. I'll set it for seven minutes. Seven minutes. You have a seven-minute break. Does that sound good to folks? That's perfect.

I'm going to miss you. Thank you very much. and they said they were going around cramming it together.

Thank you. . . . . And apparently Beverly Rock

I'm not saying it's not.

So I will tell you.

Thank you.

All of that. Thank you.

Yeah, so the last one they should be taking.

Thank you. Thank you.

We try to do that.

All right.

Jeff, I really appreciated your comment about making sure we're moving. So the rest of the afternoon, you're going to be moving.

As the mayor says, we need to be listeners. I'm a good listener. Good thing. All right. So we've had an opportunity to sort of help you build your team and the way you work together. And now it's time to get some work done. When we were planning this event and bringing you all together, one of the biggest objectives was you've got lots of plans. Lots of great ideas. Your staff and you and the previous councils and administrations have put together lots of great plans. But you can't do it all. And that's really what we're getting. We're going into a stage of this conversation now where we're going to sort of level the playing field of understanding of all the plans. Oh, yeah, there we go. Sorry, you were all looking at that and I'm like, okay, you're already jumping to the work. I want you to think about what you're going to be doing. You're going to be going to these stations and learning about all the great plans that Burlington has. You're going to have this great opportunity. Bob and Rachel are going to move around with you in and out of the different conversations. We're going to break you up and look at two different different stations here. This is really about everyone having a full understanding of what's out there. What's the plans for Burlington? As I said, you can't do it all, right, Bob? They can't do it all. So let's start thinking as you go through this process of sitting at these stations, talking to the experts, the people that wake up every morning thinking about these particular things, your experts in the leadership team in Burlington, you're gonna be the opportunity to have dialogue And Jeff, we're gonna move around. We're gonna move around. You get a chance to have a conversation with the people that really understand this. And I want you to, the way this is gonna work is we're gonna divide up and Olive will make sure I get the logistics right in a second. But you're gonna have an opportunity to go to a station. This station is staffed by the experts on those topics. And I'm looking at the first one over there, Greenways and Bikeways Plan, LINC, the Five-Year Development Plan, the Pedestrian Master Plan. Those are opportunities for you to really understand those things with the people that do it and live it all the time. In many cases, they are helping put those plans together. So this is your opportunity to have dialogue. As you go through this process and take in that, some of it's new to you, some of it may not be new to you, but it's an opportunity for everybody to have an understanding. They're gonna give you like a upper level, here are some key things you need to know about this, about these topics. Two to three minutes. They've already your administration team has already thought about these things. They're going to give you that sort of upper level. And then it's your opportunity to ask questions. You're going to have, what do we say, 12 minutes total at each station. And honestly, if we're seeing lots of important dialogue, we might extend those three minutes. You can stand, Jeff. You don't have to sit. I encourage you to stand actually around the posters if you want to write down. So you're going to have the staff are going to be there. There's going to be one of them is going to be designated as sort of like a note taker in addition to sharing information. So they're going to be capturing your questions, the things you say that are helpful when they when we bring you all back you're going to get a sort of upper level these are the few key takeaways the staff the key staff person at those stations is going to share out those key takeaways and then we'll have some chance to talk about it but as you go through these start you've got in front of you a packet and i think there's a place ian if you look just real quick i think there's a place we have all of these the detailed information a little more detail here we go and you've got a place to take notes Be thinking about your priorities. The last part of this conversation, we're going to be asking you to start thinking about priorities. In fact, we're going to be kind of ranking priorities because guess what? You have to make decisions, right, Bob? We have to prioritize. Can't do it all. Can't do it all. So that's sort of the game plan. The staff are going to be there. They're going to be at note takers as well as sharing information with you. They're going to give a report out from each of these as we move through them. We'll come back and you will have a conversation about what you've learned at these stations and then we'll move into a priority setting process. Anything else I need to head on there?

It's going to be one group of three and one group of two break up however y'all want to break up.

and then again you'll cycle through each station have about 12 minutes that's including the staff overview if we have some flex time so again if there's a lot of conversation then continue so we've got three stations so one station will be idle and i'm going to ask that we make sure that station three which is a lot of the capital projects could be a little more involved conversation i'm going to make sure that number three is in that first round And then one and two, we'll just have to pick one of you. So one of the teams over here gets to sit and wait, sorry. Does that make sense to folks? All right. How would you like to, I would encourage you to maybe split up with one or two people that you have not had as much time to talk with or share just for information.

We can also number you off, 1212. However you wanna do it.

You guys choose.

Okay. So let's have one over here at number one and one over at number three. So two people at number one and three people at number three. So you're just going to sort of amble over there and make it happen. Okay. Oh, I like that. You're sitting back. So there we go.

All right, we got our three over there.

Bob and Ian, you're at number one. Yes, sir.

Yes. Thank you.

but i will say

Yeah. That's kind of the question. . . . Thank you. Yeah, that's awesome. Greenway, pathways, . Thank you.

I just want to know that she's going to take it before we go through all this. Much better. . . . .

Thank you.

Well, I mean, Sarah's like, this is so weird. I'm like, yeah, this is so weird. I think she won't talk about it.

You know, just the last, say, you're going to be in the class, you're going to be in the class, you're going to be in the class,

Which?

Did she just do that last year?

Thank you. It adds to the cost . Yes. Practice. Thank you. All right. Also. I just .

um is

Yeah, it's just amazing.

Thank you.

What's up? Okay. Okay. I think let's do... Yeah, we have 25 in the debrief. So I think...

Thank you. Most recent.

Thank you. Oh, yeah. . . . . . . You good? Yeah, they don't flavor that. And it may be .

That's what I'm saying. They don't like you for dealing with property, but if you grant money for that, they'd be proud of you.

Just keep that in mind. I mean, things change. Yeah, we'd go on to the next situation to make sure that we did what we did.

Either of you Thank you. Well, we're hoping that in the next 12 operations, that is added to our contract for hours. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

It takes money for cattle, it takes money for all fish. We estimate how much we have to double up

That would take a full route.

It doesn't make sense to say everybody . And we evaluated how they . Well, we see how we look at that.

This should be . This should be . That's how we're moving .

I'll almost put it that way. .

But yes, yes, we should progress in a different manner. Keep that in mind as you go through that. We'd love to do more service, but the purpose of our service is to give you the oldest part.

I know what you need. I think Don, I think you might have been right, is buying a pretty high option. Don't they break into that market?

I don't think so. I don't know. Thank you. It's a real simple situation.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

No, it's not right. All right.

Thank you. um um Thank you. We're working long haul. We have a new project for the ADA.

We're in city park number five. We have a restroom out there. So it's the ADA plan.

It's called Spring Street 2015. are not moving to get any barriers out of the way for anybody. So they put a 15-year window every year. So that is, so in 2018, we took on the project and started the whole roadmap. And that initially gave us the 2030 green to finish.

With that, we did what's called a window of all That gave us an extension of 25. So basically, here what you see, even as a breakdown, they looked at any barrier that could keep everybody from being accessible to any events or structures.

So when I say ,, that's like our sidewalks, curb ramps, things like that. So we've got 110 miles of sidewalks and over 6,000 stations. . . . . Yes. Everything. So the key, this is our plan right now. There's a copy of the clerk's office. ... ... ... ... ...

to go check to make sure that our plan is efficient our action plan is

That's right. Right. Right, so every time we do something, I have a big mistake. So we've developed a community within the city.

So it's not just a, Tommy said we're gonna do this. This year we have $645,000 to work on and we had to ask for a project for this year. So last year we tried to look at the Fairchild Community Center because we one of the big That's why we were taking on that. Thank you. Yeah.

Right now.

Yep.

I'm playing along. I realize that. But I need to depend on the experts to help me know what that skill is.

OK.

. . .

Thank you. Thank you. 30 seconds. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's $50 million. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe we could say rec center most likely or possibly. Recommended. Recommended.

I think we start there.

It's really fun. who's doing fundraising for our freedom and that Western currency. Is there, are they expecting an action from the city?

Or is it absolutely not?

The Arboretum, I think they . Okay, and we realize that. Something to mention about .

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

. . . . . . Um,

Well, if that happens, that's why I'm leaving here.

That's what I'm thinking.

Thank you. Oh, that's a good one. Today. Somebody about my warranty. Let's talk about the . This plan was done in 2013. It looks like . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you feel about how we're in this section? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that's one of the . Thank you. So try to get out of the way, guys. Yeah, if you want to stay in front of the barriers, get out of the way so we're accessible for everyone. Seriously. This is an emergency. This is an emergency. This is an emergency. Thank you. we did a uh Two plans. One plan was to look at all of the information. That's good.

As far as the existing route,

. . . Thank you.

Oh, it's . That's the one .

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

We could do that, could you? Thank you. Thank you.

I mean, that's what it is. So that's our service.

I do like that. We'll be right back. Thank you.

Thank you.

and so when is

That's good. Thank you.

If they do sell it, you know, it would be a nice place to sell it. If not, you can get the minister to send you out of the house. If not, you can get the shop owner to report it. If you want to do that, you can do that. If you want to do that, you can do that.

If you want to do that, you can do that. If you want to do that, you can do that. If you want to do that, you can do that.

If you want to do that, you can do that. If you want to do that, you can do that.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A lot. you Thank you. Thank you.

I know that.

The old.

Thank you.

I don't know.

Thank you.

Yeah.

is um

Thank you. Thank you. Oh no! Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

We are conducting your business in public. Right here. Right there. Right here. All right. Excellent. Well, I hope that was really helpful. We're going to shift the plans just a little bit. We're going to take a few minutes and sort of quick do an impression. I'm going to ask each of you just for one minute, just give me some thoughts after doing that exercise. Then we're going to take lunch. Everybody's going to give us the logistics on lunch. And during your you're not going to just get to eat and chat. We're going to have a working lunch talking about something that we heard in your interviews, which is very important, which is council expansion conversation. And you've had some material that we're going to sort of refer to. I think you might have some of you might have it with you that will work. It was a reference. I'm going to sort of frame it a little bit. David will be a resource, but I'm going to like facilitate. It's mostly just an opportunity for you all to have a conversation about that topic. It's important. Then after lunch, that conversation will be done. We'll shift gears back to what you've done at these stations. And this is the thing that's different. We had talked about doing a fuller debrief from the conversations where the staff were gonna talk about the key takeaways. We're gonna shift that to be after lunch. And then that'll really sort of get you heads back in that game after talking about the Council expansion will really get your heads back in the prioritization process for all these projects will will get a debrief from the key staff. They're all good with that. Then Bob and I will sort of frame up core service. I'll sort of give a. 30,000 foot about the core services that we provide as municipalities and Bob will sort of give some insight from his leadership position. He and Rachel's thoughts. And then we'll have this prioritization. We'll just really start working on setting priorities. So that's the game plan for now. We're gonna take just a couple minutes to sort of get your quick thoughts. I'm gonna ask each of you, just off the top of your head, you went through these stations, one minute each. Real quick, anything surprise you or what did you get out of those conversations? And I'll start. Mayor, would you be happy to just sort of one minute?

The question that I've come away from that with is how do we create policy that helps to prioritize not just things that have to be done, but things that we know our city wants to be done in addition to the have to. I'm trying to focus on policy. I mean, what does that look like? And how do we do that so that it's not just for now, but offers something that's ongoing?

Yeah, that makes sense. What do we have to do? What would we like to do? How do we bridge those two? And how do they both fit with policy? and how do they reflect our policy priorities? Because these are really projects. It's very unique, by the way, in my experience, that it's such a direct correlation between projects and priorities. The municipalities, as I said earlier, one of the things an elected official told me one time was, we're really good at building things. Municipalities are the best at doing that because we do it on time, on budget, that's pretty amazing.

I mean, I think the biggest thing that struck me is we've got a lot of great plans, a lot of hopes, and zero headroom in our budget to do any of it. Like, zero. And shrinking with inflation and affordability and the cost of everyone trying to keep their head above water and support their families. So, like, that's the biggest thing that strikes me is, like, the environment around us is going to continue to change. The needs for our recreation, for our transit, for all of this, there's what we know and what we've planned for right now and what we anticipate. And then there's the constant state of change. And we have basically no flex in our budget to address that change and to be ready for it. Even with our latest budget and the tax increase.

Reality check, isn't it?

Thoughts? I would say I love that I'm being debriefed. Again, just for me, it was being debriefed and finding out where we stand. Of course, I knew about all of the projects being on council for the last three years. And but just to know what that update is and what that looks like. And when you think of that hierarchy thing that I spoke of earlier, that was different. I love that I had an opportunity to hear what staff thinks. You know, generally it's more of what, you know, the census is and what they want council to know. But for me, it's important too, to know what the experts feel like is a priority is number one is number two. So I liked to hear that. And of course it's always, we just had a budget change, a budget increase, excuse me. And it's like, how do we do this? Like we just, you know, passed something that was, you know, unprecedented when it comes to the tax, the tax rate and tax increase. So it's like, how do we meet the needs of, or what is the priority back to that? So what is priority number one? But I also love to hear about the different sources. I'm glad that our staff and our directors that are also presenting these plans, you know, it sounds like they have done their due diligence to find out other sources for paying for the projects. And I was happy to hear that. I was happy to hear that.

Just succinctly looking forward to the afternoon piece on the core services because we're just going to be saying no to a lot of wishful thinking kinds of things. I mean, it's just that's the reality we find ourselves in. Way too many things and no money.

I've been around a long time and really to be perfectly honest, we've been fortunate over the years to get mostly what we need and what the citizens want. But just hearing all of the things and all of them are really very, very good and it'd be good to have. But when you look at the hard cold facts and talking to Peggy about our tax base only growing about 3% a year, it doesn't take long. You really don't have to be a math major to know you know, some of these things we're not going to be able to afford. And so to pick up on what Jeff said is that I think where we are is, you know, the critical thing is priority. We need to make sure of what our citizens need and the emphasis of all need, you know, and then we get down to the wants. No decision is going to be very, very difficult. And it just, again, like I said, because that's our job. We've got to make those decisions. I didn't hear any project that I didn't like.

I mean, I like them all. You like all the options, right?

Yeah, I mean, I really, I mean, it's really very good, you know, but I'm, I'm, the reality is, I think, again, I think, I think this afternoon session about priorities is going to be pretty revealing, and I think, I think Bob and I think the staff need to know from us so they can sort of shift their gears in that direction. So, anyway, that's... Bob, you just told us what our goal was. Thank you. But in any event, I'll close with that. I just, like I said, if we have a horn of plenty, you know, where we keep checking out money or whatever we want to be one thing, but that's not the case. So that's it for me. Thank you.

You're right. Just ask Bob. That's awesome. Well, thank you. I hope that was helpful. So again, just to remind you, I will come. We're going to have lunch. We'll talk about the council expansion conversation that I heard from a number of you was important. Shift back into this prioritization after lunch. We'll get the debrief from the stations, from your key staff. Bob will talk about the core things. Bob will sort of help with that. And then we'll get you all to start talking about how do you want to, what is the direction? It's not fun, it's hard, but it's so important. And I can't imagine a council that's better equipped to do it than this one. All right, so with that, I'm gonna check we're in good shape. I'll hand it over to who else? Beverly.

So we've got lunch in like a box lunch. on the table out here, I would like for us to sort of dismiss for lunch to allow this table and our participants to go first, and your facilitators as well, and the AB team to grab theirs first, and then the rest of us will go get lunch. But that way, since you have a working task, then you can get back to your seats and kind of get settled in and get that accomplished.

And during lunch, the staff are welcome to listen in, but those especially that worked on the stations, maybe put your heads together and, you know, make sure you want to know what you want to bring up in the debrief. Gives you a little more time than we originally thought, so that's a good thing, I guess, right? Awesome. All right.

Catering today is from Elon's Catering Services, and if there's a food allergy that I'm not aware of, just come see me. There's just a variety out there to choose from. If there's something that you just cannot I have, let me know.

My son went to Elon. Food there is really good. It is really good.

It is. So, all right, well, thank you.

Awesome. Thank you, Ms. Beverly. How about it? You want to direct them when they get out there? So let's get back. We're going to start our conversations. I'm going to, I mean, are you comfortable, like, in six minutes, get your lunch, get to eat? All right, 10 minutes. I'll give you 10 minutes. No, we don't need that much time. I don't know. I thought Jeff was laughing at me. So what our objective here is, I'm gonna help sort of frame this, but this is really an opportunity for you all to share, talk with each other, see where we stand on this, what the path forward might look like. And the ideal thing is that there's a sense, Bob and his team have a sense of like, so what's the path we wanna take on this? We're not making any decisions here, clearly, but we're just getting a sense of where people are and what's the path. that we want to take. There's some time constraints depending on what path you take. So that'll be important to know. David and I spent some time talking about this topic. So the way we're going to manage this is I'm going to sort of frame it. This allows him to be a resource as opposed to having to present. And the real goal is for you all to sort of share with each other. So I'm going to be a very, unless it needs something else, I'll be a very light facilitator. I might even just sort of step away and let you all talk. But one of the ways we thought about framing it, David, when we were talking about this, went back and looked at Robert Joyce's, which I don't know if any of you had a chance to watch that 17-minute, I think it was, David, 17-minute outstanding presentation i think you were on the council then and some others may have been you were probably around to see that robert joyce is an extraordinary attorney at the school of government and i also noticed in his notes he said michael kroll who is sort of the one of the most premier attorneys that had worked at the School of Government also helped frame this, the questions that you have to answer. So we thought we would use the packet, or at least the first seven pages or so of the packet that you all have, I'm gonna propose to you all that we just kind of quickly work through those questions. And I can tell you right off the bat, you're not gonna change, if you'll look at that first page, I can tell you off the bat, you're not gonna change the name of Burlington.

At least I don't think you want to.

You're not gonna change the nomenclature, which is city or town or village, so number one and two. Number three, whether you're a city council, board of commissioners, board of aldermen. I haven't heard any conversation about that. So we're on a great pace here. Number four, whether the terms of board members are to be two years or four or a combination. and staggered or not. So that's number four. The fifth question, and I'll come back to them and go back to them. What number of members of the governing board is to be between three and 12? I know that is a primary conversation. Number six, whether elections are to be at large through districts or a combination, and what kind of districts? So I know that's part of the conversation I've heard you all want to, so we're really nailing down some things you wanna talk about. Whether elections are partisan or nonpartisan, or if nonpartisan, what kind of nonpartisan? Although I will admit, I'm not sure I understand what that means. It's either partisan or nonpartisan. I have not heard that be a conversation here. I will tell you the state legislature has been dictating to some municipalities on that topic. Whether the mayor is to be elected by the voters or from within the governing board, That's one of the questions that Mr. Joyce has lined out here. And whether to use the council manager form of government or the mayor council form of government. I don't think number nine is up for any conversation. As we look at these nine questions, I think one through three, I don't think there's anything to discuss there. I wanted to just offer up maybe number four as a jumping off point. whether the terms of board members are to be two years or four or a combination and staggered or not. I think your current format is what, David?

And they're all on the odd years.

Do you want to be a part of the bigger election cycle or do you like having the sort of off-year election cycle?

Let me just take a minute. I've spoken with each one of you, I think, at different points in time over the last couple of years. year on some of you but i know ian when you were the mayor you talked about frequently that it's really disruptive to have a two-year term for the mayor and a four-year term for everybody else and it put put pressure on the mayor to try to get something accomplished in a two-year cycle which really is difficult to do and that's you've also expressed interest of course in the district some combination of the district. I know, Bob, you have been very clear and adamant about whatever we do, it needs to go to a referendum for the voters and all. Ian's also addressed the point that how much input do you get from outside, you know, going toward this at different stages of the process. Today, I don't really, I almost don't even want you to I want the 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 kind of answer, but I'm not concerned about the labels that you put with it. I just want to hear what it is that you envision as the best way to go forward, and then our office will figure out how to get us there. and what kind of timeframe works best to try to do so. I know, Beth, you also talked about districts and such. Chief, I've heard you loud and clear that, If it ain't broke, don't do anything about it. And Dabani, you've also expressed a little bit of that too, and some questions. So having said that, I'd kind of like to give you a jumping off point. If each one of you could express kind of what it is that you envision, what you think is missing and important, and to the extent that you use four, five, six, seven, and eight to kind of frame it, that would be wonderful.

And my notion of at that time still is today is we go from five to seven. I think I think I don't think we need more than seven, okay, having said that. And the question is, how do we get those seven? Let me also say, Tate, let me answer this first question about two or four years. I think it's sort of a combination as we now have it. I know it puts a burden on the mayor if we continue to elect the mayor. voters who elect the mayor i think uh i think that's good uh there are two schools of thought one school of thought is that you know of course with five members if you elect two elected mayor every two years and council member every four years you could conceivably have a totally new majority at that time and i i don't have any problem with that and the reason i don't have any problem with it because if people if the voters are dissatisfied with what that council is doing they have the prerogative to go to the polls in that year and install three new people a new mayor and two new council members that's with the current composition of five members okay so i still don't have any problem with a two-year mayor term or four-year council member uh with respect to partisan or nonpartisan i i definitely think it ought to be nonpartisan i i don't want to go to a partisan um i i don't know i just i feel i feel like that there's a lot of well there's a lot of good reasons to keep it that way i i think Again, like I said, I won't get into the details of it. But with respect to whether or not the voters select the mayor or selected from the government board, I've been here under both. Both have advantages and disadvantages, as you might imagine, or you certainly know. I'm not... I don't know... Again, like I said, I think clearly what we have now is working, and that's not to say that if you were to elect all the council members and then the council members would select a mayor. I'm not making the argument that that would not work. I think it could work because I've seen both work. Now the big question here quite frankly in my opinion is do you go to some kind of at-large or do you have some kind of district system? I'm a proponent of the at-large and the reason for that is I think there's more overall accountability that everybody on this board is selected by all the voters. And like I said, that's just a broad form. We can debate it the rest of the afternoon. So anyway, bottom line is we go to seven, we've elected at large, in staggered terms, the way we have now. That's pretty much where I am. Now, the question I have is if anybody else would propose something, I don't know. And again, too, like David said, I'm in favor of whatever is decided that would go to a referendum. I'd like for the voters to have the final say as to what direction they want their city to go with respect to their governing body. I don't like the idea of us changing it by ordinance. I just I don't know. I think this is such a critical decision that needs to be made by the voters. So but anyway, that anybody have any questions made, but that's pretty much in a nutshell. you know, where I stand. I think that will work, and I don't know, look back over the materials and how many, is it 281 cities now that have elections at large? wait that's a great question i don't have the answer that sounds about right they're 281 yeah and how many municipalities would have i don't know of course they got different forms but i'm saying at least 281 yeah it'd go with the at-large so i think that number correct me if i'm wrong david includes some that have both district and but they 281 have an at-large

Component it's enough Page number six Bob you know now that you've raised it you have to live through both systems where the mayor was Elected from the council as well as the mayor Pro Tem what the county commissioners and This changed in 1981 Do you you recall that?

Yes, very clearly

Let me say I was part of that board and just say the reason why it didn't have anything to do with representation and such it had to do with the fact that it was a bit disruptive at the very beginning of a two year. term that people were actually jockeying to be the mayor of the mayor pro tem and they found it to be You know, I hadn't I had no earthly idea that if anybody would ever run I don't know we've even thought about it back then that anybody in the middle of a term before your term will run for mayor on the same board, but that's happened four or five times and and it serves to be as disruptive to the board also. So the other part about that is it was elected from the council. If you have a situation where You're not getting along well, and you can always change mayors every year because it changes around. Furthermore, doing it, electing it from the board, basically de-emphasizes the mayor's role for much more than anything of running the meetings and for legal service of process, anything else ceremonial, but it emphasizes that that individual is a member of the council and it is a council manager form of government. So when the press goes, the press, I think, likes to go to the mayor as if that's a strong mayor form of government. We're not New York City, okay? That's not how it works. Each one of you has a vote, all elected at large, okay? And the press, you know, really should talk to anyone because you have the same... same vote but that was something that was done in 1981 i remember it well um and you know it it i think there had been an incident bob back in 1976 where the election of the mayor got a little squirrely and uh it wasn't it just it was a strange sort of thing that happened and i think At that point in time, members of the council just wanted to do away with that. But I just wanted to fill that out for you. Let me pick up on that point.

If you do have the mayor selected from among the members of the seat of council, that to some degree reinforces the council manager and the equality among all of the members, okay? I don't know that it's any better and any worse than a separately elected. But I do, like I said, I do know both work. You know, because I've been under both systems, worked under both systems. I think it really, really, as the world turns, it boils down, quite frankly, to the group that you have and how well they work together. And I have no doubt in my mind this group will work together well and continue to work together well. We communicate well. We're issue-oriented. We want the best for the community. And like I said, when you have that kind of environment you really just don't worry about it you're not trying to be against something or trying to correct something because we're here just trying to do the business of the folks of the city you know the best of our ability but anyway sort of summarize i i'd like to go to seven members not less than i like an election uh I'm in favor of it at large. There's a lot of arguments pro and against, but I do think that overall accountability is there. The piece of it is, is it still the argument, well, you know, there's going to be some people that don't feel like they're represented, okay? And I say, don't feel like they're represented. And I use that word carefully because I believe that's the case. I don't, it's likely there's a group here. I don't believe there's any... of the five of us, we consider ourselves representing everybody of the city. Like I said, maybe in times of past, there were groups that did not feel like they were represented by the five. But I have no doubt in my mind that this five will represent every citizen fully. And I think when it comes to election time again, The people who run, each time they'll be accountable to all of our residents. So anyway, I'm circling back here. I'm gonna stop with that. I think everybody knows where I stand at this point.

I would ask, I don't know if you have thoughts on the runoff versus plurality versus... I think that's the other kind of piece in this packet.

You know, I guess for lack of a better way of saying it, well, I kind of like the system we have now. And I guess it's, you know, because I'm familiar, comfortable with it and how the other, I don't know, I don't know exactly. you know, but I wouldn't want to go through the routine of changing it and see how that worked and go back. I just, I believe this worked, you know, and it would continue to work. But the plurality, you and I talked about several years ago a little bit about it, and I could say we're, well, really, yeah.

Yeah, I know it's just created some, Having been through a number of primaries, it's created a number of situations where we effectively run two elections with the same outcome. Yeah, and almost within two or three weeks of each other, almost. Yeah, which seems a little redundant, especially when we're paying the Board of Elections to run these elections for us.

The expense item is certainly legitimate. However, I do think, I don't know, at least at a minimum, if you have a primary and a general, you can sort of, it's sort of like with a ball team. You can make that good big cut at that time. Really, there's more burden on the candidates and more expense. That would be the thing you'd be saving. I don't think the citizens wind up any... any better off with that you know because i don't except for the maybe the director well the indirect expense through through the election but but if we're all running at the same time the board of election all the municipalities is an odd year uh don't i guess to address that the only thing the only advantage i could see would be saving you know the candidate money i don't know i don't know maybe there's some arguments that it promotes the citizens interests over you know, the candidate. I think it's less in terms of something that saved me. You know, at the end of the day, you just want to Well, like now, you want the best candidate running in a general.

I think that ends up being confusing. I think that's the hard part. The confusion for voters that you have a primary and then general. Didn't we just do this two weeks ago?

Essentially, it's because there are municipalities that will elect in March or October, so it can be...

The difference is, of course, is that... For example, in 1979, you had 12 people running for two seats. That way you could have ended up with somebody with 23% of the vote is on your city council for the next four years. Instead, you had a situation where four people and then with the runoff for the general election, the person in fourth place went to second. and from second to fourth place, so it was a change.

Yeah. That's a good point because you could have somebody that... Well, it's clear if you go primary and general, the person who wind up winning are the people who get the majority votes. At least they satisfy more people. Yeah.

Yeah, I think of the runoff versus plurality, I think I like runoff a little better than plurality for exactly what you just ironed out. But again, having been through the cycle and heard the confusion from voters and knowing that the Board of Elections has to spool up and pay and have the polls running twice every single time that we have more than two candidates. So you can have just one extra candidate. Five people running for four seats. And you gotta have two sets of polling, all the early voting, all the absentee ballots, all of that. has to happen twice just because one more person filed. So that's a lot of effort. Yeah, it is.

And if you really like to run, it's a fun thing.

I don't know that all of our poll workers who are dedicating their time and energy would agree that that's the best use of their time and energy. But just wanted to pull that into the overall.

Yeah, well, I'm glad you did. That's a good point. Like I said, I think the overall advantage, even though it's a workout for the candidates, is is that i think you wind up i don't know i think you wind up you know of course other arguments i think you wind up with the candidates that get the most support and the most representative of the citizens but anyway let me stop talking um I'm pretty passionate about this topic, because I tried several years ago, and to be honest, I tell this somewhat facetiously, but if my wife had not shown up with her two friends at the time the council gave me hearing, I wouldn't have had anybody there. So I'm glad that at least my wife came and her two friends. I asked for a public hearing to increase the size of the city council. And so I was finally able to get a public hearing. But what's that saying now when you don't hear anything? I guess it was crickets. When the mayor called for hearing on it, didn't nobody want to say anything. I don't know. Were you there, Ian?

No, I think it was before my time. I've been advocating for this for a long time. You've been advocating for this for a long time. I'm glad we're at the table having this conversation.

Yeah, I am too. I'm absolutely delighted, and I've told you on several occasions. I mean, I think it's a good conversation, and I really do think it's time now, you know, we consider, you know, going to, you know, seven members. You know, it... Anything larger would be, I feel like, unwieldy. And I think you can have a minimum of three. I don't advocate cutting the council. Certainly going to seven is reasonable. I promise this time I'll stop.

I wanted to sort of wrap this conversation up at one o'clock, which is how many minutes? Ten. Ten minutes. Boy, that's not much. I'm so sorry. It feels like we...

So I'm gonna ask that we move a little faster yeah, so I mean I think there's I Think we've generally had somewhat of a consensus around seven members. I don't know if there's any steep opposition to it, but I think that's been a community conversation for a while about the idea that there's 66,000 residents and go either way on whether more members truly serves that. But I think having more people in the community doing this work, being a listening ear, receiving some of those phone calls from residents who have a concern is helpful. I mean, having served on a number of different councils, the ward or district conversation is really important to me. And I think, Dawana, you nodded your head at some of the representation stuff as well. There was a number of years where I was the council member who was the easternmost council member, and I live west of the railroad tracks. that's how we met and that's how we met so and whether that ends up being an actual change in representation there's definitely a very visible type of representation that that creates when folks know that they live so many miles away from... Can I ask you a question?

This is a question for you and Bob. I've worked with one local government in North Carolina where they are elected at large, but they literally are required to live in a district. You would run from a district, but you're elected at large.

That's one of the options. If you have districts, who is allowed to vote on you? You have to reside from that district. But everybody in the town gets to vote there. One of the drawbacks to that is that one of the things that's worthwhile is the cost of running for office. You have a smaller geographic area. You go door to door. When you're doing that over the whole town, you've worn out some shoe left. But if you're in your district, it makes it much, much difficult. But the positive thing about it is, is what Bob has been talking about, is that you are elected by everyone.

If you decide to be too specific to your district, you lose that support of the broader community. At the same token, like... it does increase the barriers to getting elected because you do have to have the resources to appeal your message to the whole community. We're now 32, 33 square miles. It's a lot of people. It's not getting any cheaper to maintain a city. It's not getting any cheaper to run for office. And so I think a big focus that I brought up in my opening comments is how we create a more collaborative decision-making process and make that government attainable for more people to step into the conversation. And for me, creating a stepping stone role as at one time the youngest mayor, somebody very young and fresh into this process, how do we create that pathway for new and emerging leaders to step into this role and learn and serve and provide their input? And so those wards and districts, I think, are a really important step of creating that more bite-sized piece of how do I step in? We've got boards and commissions, but it's still a... There's a number of rungs on that ladder to go from a board and commission to an elected leader. And I really want to see how this conversation can shape that progression of encouraging more people at some point in their life to take up the mantle of public service in the elected role. Bob, you've been doing this for many, many years, and that's a lot. You've had to give up a lot of your life and family and time and career to serve in this seat. And it'd be nice to be able to share that responsibility more wholly in our community. But when we create that barrier and take the rungs out of the ladder, it makes it a lot harder for folks who may want to serve to step into these seats.

I'd love to hear from others.

I'll just share my perspective. So I put it on one of those stickies over there, which is to find for me the problem. And I hear the bits and pieces of what you're saying, but I don't think there's anything substantively broken that we should be fixing for. I look back a decade or two, and if If the goal is gender diversity, we have that. If the goal is racial diversity, we mostly have that. We have a cohesive group that decides a lot of things five to zero. Meaning that the five of us sync up or the prior five of the folks sync up on what is truly best for the city. And if you add a couple of members, then you create divisiveness. And I look at neighboring cities that have significant infighting with district and ward based systems where It's I'm going to do for me and I'm going to come to you and say you vote for this. I'll vote for that and you and I will agree to subvert the will of the council based on very narrowly focused ideas that are not what's best for the entire city. And I would be diametrically opposed to saying that we would have a district where you vote within the, you know, that I think that's divisive and that's not where we're at. We're very cohesive and I would argue that we continue to be as cohesive and well-managed.

So that uniform, seven members.

No, I don't love it, but I mean, I can go with seven. I mean, I'm okay with that. I mean, I think there's some opening then to have a few more people involved. The downside I see from seven to five is then that's seven people that Bob and Rachel have to manage and not just five, right? So when you have compartmentalized conversations leading into big decisions, that that's exponentially more difficult for you to manage then right when beverly's got to say okay i've got to have a one-on-one he's got now you got to have seven one-on-one meetings as opposed to some more manageable number, that becomes more complex to manage. With less upside, the return on that investment is not... Yeah, we won't put Bob on the spot to answer a question.

I won't ask you to answer anything.

Let me follow up on what he says as far as gender and race is concerned. Of course, we've had... Women on the city council since 1972, Barbara McCall was the first woman ever elected that I know of. That's correct. Okay. And followed by Kathy Hikes and then followed by Caroline Nonsbacher at one point in time for a period of six years. He had both of them on the council at the same time. And Kathy's recycled back through a time or two and such. On race, you had Devonna going backwards, CeeLo Fawcett, and David Maynard. So you've had black representation on the city council going back to David Maynard being elected in 1974 for the first time, or 76, I can't remember which time. And he was on the council, of course, for a total of 31 years. And with the exception, you've had of two years, I think you've always had black representation on the board, 20%. One in five. One in five. 20%.

Not representative of the diversity of the community, which is a big... Big important fact. So the representation for it has been one in five to have a black representative, yet the community is closer to 40% plus members of color. If you include his name, yeah.

Tawana and then I think the mayor.

For me, initially, I understand. I'm just gonna be direct. Being the first black woman elected to city council, I understand the barriers to becoming elected, right? I understand the hurdles. I also understand, I represent that it can be done. Unfortunately, it took to 2023 for it to be done. I do not I think having one black representative or one person of color does not reflect. My ideas may not reflect every person of color in Burlington. I hold the weight. It's just the invisible weight that I hold where anytime I speak, I'm speaking for people of color. I do feel I love, the five the five-man council i'll say that but i understand the need of to have more i understand with those barriers so if we went to seven what i would like to see is that we find out you know we do the research and find out where those two seats should like if we do districts where should those two seats form from? I would like to still remain at large. I don't see myself ever running as a district person because I love all of Burlington. I represent all of Burlington. Not only black residents contact me, as Bob and Rachel can tell you, all residents, and I represent all residents, but there is a need. I still believe there's a need. I know when I ran the first time in the primary, I think I placed out of six and Wal was running that year and he's known to be like one of the most popular candidates before Beth came along. But I think in the primary I was top two out of six and then doing the general failed to the very bottom I think that the money the resources that it takes and if you have a council that is willing to work together do negative campaigns and things to keep people off the council, it becomes even more of a barrier. So I still believe that there is representation in Burlington that is needed, but I don't necessarily want to place that in the hands of just anyone. I can't say right now that this certain area needs it and we're gonna elect them and give them a district simply because of where they live. Like is that conducive to the council? How do we know that we're actually getting a good teammate and a good representative for the council if we're doing it solely? So I still have questions. I do feel like there is a barrier and I feel like I'm okay with expanding. I'm okay with not expanding, if that makes sense, maybe not. But I do know there's a need.

Well, I think to your point about how do we best choose if geographic representation is important or how would that get divvied up? There are experts we can bring in. Oh, sure. Processes for citizen involvement in shaping those districts. and experts who can help kind of shape that district. So the last thing I want to see is a gerrymandering process like we've seen within the state where the elected leaders are choosing their representative. So yeah, that's a fear too. This is really about making sure the community is at this table. And the last thing we need to be doing is drawing those lines on the maps. But there are processes and things we can bring into that.

I would like to see that. Tell me more about how that looks like in the future of if we had these two extra seats and make the council seven, and if council would like to see those two extra seats be district, and then we have, what, four at large, four at large, two districts with those two members, that's the two additional seats on the council.

You actually cannot have more at large than you have in districts. Oh, really? So you'd have to go to three to three. But I'm hearing what you are saying. This is working out. I don't know how everybody else, but it's working out great for me because I'm able to hear y'all articulate what it is you're talking about. Are you going to reach consensus today? Heck no. And I don't expect you to, okay? But it's good to hear what you're all saying. I hear what you're saying. I have some further conversations with you.

I want to make sure that the mayor gets a chance to say a few words. And then I think I just want to do a time check with you all. We want to reconvene for our prioritization process at 1.15. So working backwards and you want a quick break before we come back. We want to go for how many more minutes? Say 1.10. What time? How many minutes is that? Five minute break. just a few more minutes. And the one question I just wanna make, and I'm gonna look at Bob and Rachel and make sure, one question that has time sensitivity to it is if there is a referendum, do you need some sense from the council? Just because there are timelines, then you're introducing timelines for this conversation if you want a referendum. Am I correct in that?

Yeah, we'd have to work with David and and if that were the case then you'd have to look at when the election at which election and then work backwards to get your steps in place.

That's another key question.

Depending on how, you know, if it's at large, there's one probably one timeline. If it's districts, then there's some extra time to determine, you know, what those districts are. So that's precisely so.

So we are. That's what we're talking about here. And if the different ideas that you have, it's obviously this can take a conversation.

Oh, I would insert myself. I know, I know, but I just want you to know. I just want to clarify that a referendum is not necessary. That community conversations could serve the same purpose as understanding what the community wants. I wanted to be certain that I was certain about that. That was correct.

By statute, it's not required.

Right, it is not required. Unless there's a petition that 10% of the people the citizens that then force you to have a referendum. Right, right, right. That's the change. 10% of the voting constituents in the city.

Did you finish sharing what you wanted to share?

I think so. I'm just more concerned of, you know, if we do... the districts. From what I'm hearing from the council members is that we need the districts due to make sure that we have fair representation. So I'm just also a little concerned about, you know, what those lines look like. Because as of right now, I'm in what you call what North, is that North Burlington? Yeah, North Burlington.

You're actually in Graham 4.

Graham 4? So that area It's just me. And then you have Bob, like all of us are pretty different. Jeff is on the way in on the outskirts of Burlington as well. So I'm just thinking about how those districts would be drawn. and even in our current capacity, what that looks like. I think only you and Ian live probably in the same district, but the rest of us are already in separate districts. Precincts, not districts, yeah. And would the districts be drawn, like would the precincts be a part of that formula of how districts are drawn when you're talking about

The most important thing, you're equaling up the number of people in each district. If you have three districts, they're supposed to be about equal in number, okay? And they will be adjusted every 10 years based upon the federal census. And any time that you have enough of a growth in a certain area, I think you may have to visit it during the middle of that 10-year term if you had a Macintosh by the lake come in, okay? And that changes. That's 9% of the voters last time I checked. in our city. So that would be fairly significant.

But... And it's one person per district. One representative would run. It's just one.

You couldn't have... Well, you could have multiple people run, but one would be elected.

One would represent that whole district.

I think those details are the space where a consultant would be helpful. And we're not there yet. I don't think we're there yet. I just want to... put my two cents worth in. And I'm gonna go right through four through eight because those seem to be the ones we were really looking at. I think council members should serve four-year terms. I don't think they should serve less. As mayor, I'm what? a few months in now, nine, eight months in, and I'm just now beginning to figure it out, right? And there's still a lot more to learn. However, I'm not going to be the one who recommends the mayor's position go to four years. I think I can work with two. That's just the way it is. But for council members, I don't think that should change. I like the idea of seven. I think our city's grown. It makes sense that we would have more. Definitely not cut it. Not cut it. I'm with Bob on that. Definitely not cut it. But I don't think we need more than seven. I would love to see us have at large and district representation. I think that... there would be more opportunity for more diversity on our council if we have districts. I also think, I mean, I love everything that's up here, but I think we might would see some different things up there if there was representation from other parts of the city. if there had been over time, especially. And we have an opportunity. I mean, any improvement that we're doing to the city of Burlington anywhere, Let me say that differently. Any improvement we are doing to the areas of Burlington that I don't immediately think of first is going to improve all of Burlington. So it's important that we have people who are thinking about their neighborhoods and not just my neighborhood. So I am passionate about districts. I'm like nonpartisan. I think that's... Oh yeah, I didn't mention that one.

I'm sorry too. Yeah, definitely nonpartisan.

I like that. Whether the mayor is to be elected by the voters or from within the governing board, I was elected by the voters.

That was a huge boost to my self-esteem.

And I mean, maybe it would have been too if y'all had elected me. But that's... I just... I'm not... I really... I don't know that I feel strongly one way or the other on that.

On what partisan?

On the mayor being elected by voters or from within the governing board. That's one of those things. It's fine the way it is. And so if we were to have both at-large and districts, then it would have to be three and three if I'm reading this information correctly. And that would be four districts.

I mean...

No, three and three and mayor. Say it again, I'm sorry. That would be three at large.

Or two and one. You could have four districts, two at large, and the mayor, of course, is at large by definition. Okay, that's... Or you could have four districts, three at large, and then you could choose the mayor. And I haven't just thought about this. Could you limit the mayor and mayor pro tem being chosen from... those that were elected at large? I'm just thinking off the top, okay? I'll bring that back to you.

Yeah, I think that is... My biggest concern is representation. um that we have people from across the city who are participating in council and um and we're also right we work well together but that has not always been the case in the city of burlington and um and who's to say that it will continue to be the case after the election Next year. Next year. That is a part of my concern too. If we believe in the whole city, then the whole city needs to be sitting up here.

Mayor, to your point there, I think it's really important because we've talked about diversity of skin color, but I think even in a nonpartisan election, we are seeing an increased polarization within politics. Without some type of water districts, majority can generally always rule. And we're seeing this in Alamance County where there's one party on that board.

One party.

And, yeah, they may always vote together. Yeah, we may always vote together. But I never want to lock the door to anyone and say, you're in the minority and you just will never win a seat.

You can't even get on the library committee.

So, like, I think it's an important concept to think about is how do we make sure that You never lock that door. And having those wards or districts is a way to ensure, not perfectly insure, but to ensure that there's a pathway.

I did forget to mention, I'm sorry, Bo. I did forget to mention that I have concerns on the districts and those coming in, because how do we prevent them only caring about their district? I feel like that's gonna be confrontational. If me, I'm running for, if I'm running at large, you know, and the districts have the majority, or the mayor could decide the majority, if it's three-three, then you have the mayor, if those three are gonna be concerned about getting re-elected in their portion of where they live at, and then how can myself, somebody who won at large, I don't have that same freedom to just focus on that neighborhood. Like, how does, like, how would that work when we're talking about these type of plans if three of us are at large and three of them are districts representing one particular area? Like, how does that work?

Have the whole city vote on, they have to reside, the candidate has to reside in the district, but the whole city votes on them. That's addressing what you just asked. That is one way to address it.

Maybe the only way to address it. So their district doesn't just vote for them?

Or is that an option? Those are the questions that are going to be before us. Today, I mean, I think what you said was, let's take a pulse. Let's see kind of what we're working on. So we're refining the questions. Right. And so now... We've generated some of that, and now we've moved to a place of trying to figure out some of those details. What are all the possible scenarios? And, yeah, we're not going to do that. We already passed the break time.

I think we all understand this. I think we all agree that the seven, we could come to a consensus on we all pretty much feel could go with the seven.

So I heard Jeff say he is willing to go along with that.

That's consistent. That part we did kind of...

I think you have a consensus on, he probably should talk about partisan more, being in favor of partisan.

Oh yeah, and being in favor of non-partisan. That's another one.

Not on the question list is the even odd year and what that impact is for the election cycle. I don't know enough to have an opinion on that until we get some kind of. briefing on that. I think there's an economic equation of that, right?

You do pay for a separate election for an odd year.

Yeah. That's $100,000 or more per cycle that we could save if we shifted, but I don't know. Well, that settles it.

That we could move to Greenways and Micways.

There you go. There's also a piece to that, which is participation. So on an odd year, the council is elected by a very small minority of the community. Yeah. which is that's still an open question yeah we've tried from the question is is that representation more people are participating and listening i want to look at david and bob and i just have is this helpful for you is this giving you sure yeah

And then voting in Graham. Burlington doesn't like to go to Graham to have to vote in the primary. That is true. They never understand. For early voting. Yeah. Like, why do I have to go to Graham? Why do I have to go to Graham? And a lot of residents don't feel comfortable. A lot of my supporters don't feel comfortable.

It's all about the money. The cost would go up if we had early voting somewhere in Burlington.

And even near election, it would not matter. Yep. Yep. And it would be if we would have the option for Burlington.

And I have one last question about the referendum piece, right? So is it that the referendum would be for go to seven at three districts and these are the boundaries of the district or is the referendum go to districts and then the boundaries will be determined procedurally after the fashion of you have to will after the fact.

Okay, that's drawn up. But you in your in your intent resolution of intent have to lay out exactly what it is that you you're proposing okay sure along the lines of what we're talking about here right okay and if it changes at all after that or y'all try to change it after that you start the whole process over okay and it goes to a referendum up and down of course the the um

But the referendum would include the exact boundaries of the proposed districts. All of it's in the reference. No, it's not.

Just about that for drawing the districts? Oh, wow. No, it just says you're going to a district system. Okay.

That's an important consideration to understand that sequencing and that matter. The clarifier at work.

Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Jeff.

Okay.

Yeah.

yeah map that out for us on the timing start at the time of the referendum bring it back what are the steps and how do we engage ourselves into that right those are important that's exactly what we were hoping to get out of these things that's progress and i'm for even years to go with the other elections as well to be

I mean, if it takes even years to make sure that our voters don't have to leave our city limits to vote, that's a huge win because it's ridiculous that we have to go into another municipality to vote in our city election.

We can set up a voting call, but your cost would be astronomical because the early voting runs every day. And so you have to man that. So, I mean, it's up to council, you know, whether you choose to incur that expense or not. And the other thing I would point out is voting on even years would give you a much wider participation. Yes. I like that.

More representation. There it is. And the last thing I want to say is the first thing he talked about or the first thing Mr. Joyce talked about. The legislature could do whatever they wanted to.

Oh, that's another issue. We won't bring that to the table now. Because they have dictated to a number of communities, I would agree. Recently. Did away with districts. I mean, yeah. So there's all kinds of things that can happen.

Not as recently.

That's another reason why you need to have a good, strong relationship with your delegation. All right. Are you guys comfortable with this conversation? Sort of? Finishing there, David, do you have some good direction? Kind of creating a work program for your attorney to bring information back to you all for those official conversations from the dais and decisions on going forward.

You're finally getting somewhere, Bob. More than two people showed up and had your back today.

Hang with us, Bob. Are you OK with that? OK, good. All right. So we're going to take a five minute break. We're going to come back. We're going to have presentations from the staff on the key salient points from the conversations you had. Then Bob and I will lead a conversation around core services and then we're going to start getting you guys to work. All right, doing some prioritization. So five minutes, what time will that be? 1.25. 1.25, back in your chairs.

Well, you've already worked with them. I know. He said working later, but then we'll start working. We will work.

That's exactly where I was going.

I've got interest in the city. I was in Omaha. Yeah, you should. You live here. They did.

Oh, yeah.

I think they did. Yeah, we have Monday. How do I never think about it?

Well, I'm not a big...

Okay.

Rose. Beautiful. People that know what they're doing. And you can... Yes I think that's a good idea.

I saw it before.

Okay, so we're gonna do that. I don't know. Thank you. You want to get this?

They won't put that raw meat. They can put it in a bag. That's raw. They're like, yes, meat. That's what a game is, you can get meat. I'm sorry.

Thank you. Come on. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. It's huge. I'm only positive this one. Thank you. Back on microphone. Don't say rude to me. I know you want to. All right.

So I'm gonna look at our staff teams. Station one, station two, and station three. Do we have all the folks to sort of present? I see Peggy's here. Station two, you have your designated presenter. All right, is that you Tony? Oh, excellent, all right. And then station one? Jamie, are you the presenter? Who was the presenter over there? And these are just the big takeaways that we want to get. So we're going to shift gears back to picking priorities. I was just talking to Bob and Rachel. When we start thinking about priorities, maybe it's not just as specific as a project. It could be a particular theme that may have a small, portfolio of projects, that's okay when we start thinking about that. So just keep that in mind too. You don't have to say, oh, I've just got to pick one project. It may be a theme, if that makes sense, or it could be a project. All right, so I'm gonna start over here. Tony, are you guys ready to start? All right. And this is just 30,000 foot key takeaways, just to get your head back in your conversations. No longer talking about elections.

Right. All right.

So the transition plan we heard from our conversation, I'll just go over a couple of things. The city, all of them are looking at the same numbers and kind of making the point that cities across North Carolina are all going to be looking at the same large million dollar sums that are needed to accomplish this goal and we heard a couple council members talk about the state's likely going to be in a position to give us grace we think we hope we need to plan like that that's not going to happen and then good faith unless continuing to be working towards something would put us in great standing which we have lots of good documentation about the project that we are doing Last year we did Fairchild because it's the county's emergency shelter. This year we're gonna do the annex. Everybody seems to agree with those two priorities that our subcommittee here of staff are making. And we'll continue to do that as we're giving funding in fiscal years to prioritize those projects. All of our estimates are in today's dollars. But we recognize that that's going to change as the years go on. Something else that wasn't taken into account was the dollars associated with staff that are managing the ADA project, who is also a cost that's not really captured anywhere, but it is a real thing. That this is just repairs to existing sidewalks, not adding anything new. So that's a good clarity point as we think through ADA. It's not about expansion, it's about fixing what exists. Nine years left. There is a document in the clerk's office for the public, for council, for anyone who wants to see it that continues to get updated as we complete projects. So that was kind of the conversation that we had there. Then we get into our recreation and parks projects and plans. So around Recreation Park's master plan, we discussed that staff has not formally done this, but we're beginning to see a theme around Davidson Park and thinking about the next rec center. And that kind of flows into all the changes that you see in the master plan, too. We've heard from some council members that there's some pushback on replacing the ball fields and discussed a lot around that, that that was a landfill, that that's going to be constant maintenance if it maintains as an athletic field. Therefore, it's probably in the seat of interest for it to turn into something else so that we're not maintaining it with dollars. And then the council asked staff what their priorities were around this master plan. And the rec center being added. And then the ADA things. Willowbrook Arboretum. Yeah. And the southern area part of Frank. That was a priority, I did not pack that. And then the Willowbrook Arboretum, that we'd like to see this type of work done in other parks around town. We spoke about stormwater work that's happening in Robinson Park, getting ready to, and that New Leaf has been involved in that process too, and is interested in maybe partnering with that project. Maintenance facility needed, and that was part of the Willowbrook needs that were identified. Dog water fountains, maybe add the human water fountain to that. And so he's gonna low hanging fruit and kind of work on that. New Leaf Society's capital campaign has started. City Park master plan. Staff was asked their priorities. They identified the West Woods as priority number one and railroad expansion as priority number two. New Leaf is also currently doing bug raising and this will be part of that. And then our wreck maintenance. is an issue. Here is an operational problem that is addressed in this plan. And then the landfill again. And then an idea of fundraising to do park tours with Tony.

Real quick, anything you want to clarify before we move to the next station?

Any questions? That was awesome.

the need for recreation south of the interstate. Do we have an idea of what percentage of our residents live south of the interstate?

I'd just be curious.

Station three. This was the complicated one.

So I will stay here. Matt Lawrence went over the fire needs, the fire plan. You got a brief overview at a work session. It is available. He can send it to you again if you want the whole detailed study. But I believe it recommended three fire stations were needed. And... see and it will take two years to build a station two to three years to get a fire truck we're hoping to fill in the gaps with some interim steps and maybe some working together with surrounding counties and municipalities in the meantime asked what were the capital cost two years of started 1 million we just did did a PA for 1 million dollar fire truck for fire truck just a rough ballpark estimate five dollars top million dollars for a building I indicated that just to staff a fire truck today with three people, three shifts, nine people, just the personnel cost is 1.25 cents on our tax rate. Anything else you want to say about fire?

Just saying that the plan we've got, we recognize the multi-year plan. We do, and we've talked about some priority locations, but just understand it's not all at once.

look at the first two priority is locations first ones Guilford County and the second one is the airport and they are looking using we've applied for three grants one for the fire safety house one for staff and one for fire equipment at the airport coming back to the budget size no different than your home budget our wants are much greater than much greater than what we can fund. For every million dollars that you want to add to the budget right now, that's 1.1 cent on the tax rate increase. Our tax base growth and sales tax for years has been around 3%. That'll give us roughly two and a half million every year and I try to One of my main goals is to try to fund an increase for the employees with those funds. Bob had asked, what would the tax benefit of Food Lion be once all the incentives are done? Somewhere between three and three and a half million, about five years before we'll see the benefits of that. And it depends upon how much depreciation on the equipment inside has taken place as to where that number lands. But that will certainly be a big benefit for us. So, and Ian certainly asked and challenged all our department heads to say, what are our other options for funding? You know, can we cut? And I will say that every year at budget time, we tell our department heads, you come with a new idea, come with a way to fund it or what you're going to cut. Because, you know, we are, you know, we are limited with what we can do. One thing I did want to mention is we didn't talk about the, utility and the water and sewer fund but there are some big projects coming down the pipeline for the water and sewer plants water plants for the PFAS regulations and so the city will be looking at issuing revenue bonds to keep up to do that work any quick clarifications or anything you want to check in on

With the PFAS, I know that right now the EPA does not have the regulations, and we have how long to come up to code?

2029 is when the initial regulations will go into We can delay or ask for a delay in our compliance with those regulations until 2031, but there has to be sufficient reason. So hopefully we'll have the upgrades that we need.

It can't be financial to ask for?

going to be a technical thing and a really can you get the construction, get the engineering done and the construction in place in order to meet the deadlines or not.

Thank you. Well, one more question. What was the amount of that projected? I know the numbers are from maybe two years ago. What was the projected cost? Do I remember 29, 30 million? Is that what I remember?

No, it's much more than that, but we don't have farm estimates. but it would be on the order of probably 15 to 20 million at the Macintosh point, at minimum, and closer to 75 to 100 million at the Ed Thompson point.

Well, you have a very healthy public enterprise, and it can do the job. It's a little different than the general fund changes, obviously. So I guess that's the important thing. That's one reason it wasn't a big topic.

So it's self-sustaining. We're at a point to self-sustain to be able to do the PFAS regulations to get them under control on our own.

It will require us raising the rate just the same way back in 2010 and 11. we had to comply with the Jordan Lake mandates. And so for three years in a row, we raised the water and sewer rate seven cents each year. So 21 cents in three years to cover that. And so I imagine we do have some money set back in the water and sewer fund. But when you look at... What has happened downtown? Just very little miles of work, and that's $14 million. You know, we have that money set aside, so if we have a major blow-up, like happened in Kernersville with Salem, Forsyth County recently, we have those funds immediately available to take care of that need. It's like a rainy day fund.

So we hate to remove those funds to take care of those issues, but we may have to.

You need to keep some of those funds set aside because you never know. We are replacing some aging lines, and we have a program every year where we try to replace some aging water and sewer lines every year on a consistent basis. But still, something could be a surprise, and you have to be able to take care of it.

So when we have major, you know, large capital expenses like the planned improvements, then we issue revenue bonds similar to how we did the general bond, general obligation bonds for general fund projects. We issue revenue bonds, and then the rates would have an increase to help pay that debt service.

It's a mathematical calculation. Yes. that Michael can figure out. It's really simple. I mean, it's not simple.

It's really simple. In September, we'll have a report and a contract on the engineering firm that we've selected to be our representative through those construction projects, and we'll have more information to follow.

I had the same question. All right, so we're going to go to the other group, station one. And we're going to pick up the pace, I hope. Thank you.

We're going to combine. We have the pedestrian plan, greenway, bikeway plan, and transit. The discussion of the focus was we have the tools. We have a citywide plan for sidewalks. We have a citywide plan for greenways and bikeways. So we have the tools to show us where to go. The implementation piece we just picked up in 2019, which is OEDS. So now developers are required to build those sidewalks per our plan, required to build those greenways and blockways per our plan. Our questions were around how do we get what we call the inbuilt sidewalks completed. Those most likely will be city products, city funds. So there's a whole nugget to chew on there. We will get things in new neighborhoods. We will get sidewalks on one side of the street. We will get the greenways built. There will be missing segments. So how do we get the city portion of that done is sort of the questions we talked about. We also talked about there's some developer pushback still. you know, in 2026. When we go to other communities, these things are being required. We still get the questions of why are we building these? Why do I have to pay for them? Why isn't the city doing them? So just need to keep that balance in mind as far as understanding. We continue to have to protect that. That's the only way we're going to build our network is really to get that development when it's done at that time. And now both items are, again, city-funded elements. Link Transit, we have two items in place. We looked at our operations for a five-year period. As you know, we've been a business for, we're operating for 10 years. We looked at the next five, and on the horizon is the microtransit, taking one of our routes and putting it into more of a call-for-service type environment where those riders can use our system but not have to have a bus circulating in that area at the time and sort of maybe save some on expense and save some equipment. The second part of that is capital. We have two items planned. We have a maintenance facility and we have a passenger transfer hub. Two different facilities, two different locations. The key being there, there will be a local match, it's 10%, but that will not go forward until we get the federal money, which is 90%. So that will take

Any questions, clarifications, questions? Gotta love those 90% federal, 10% local. Used to be the way we ran water systems, wasn't it, Michael? Used to be that we used a lot of federal money for water systems.

Kind of few and far between now for federal systems.

All right. um the next thing we're gonna do we're gonna be thinking about you're always thinking about priorities and as ian pointed out it's going to be after a really sharp pencil on this but before we do i wanted to take just a minute and i'm going to work i'm going to hand it over to bob in just a second um just to talk about just to remind you about the core services and jeff we're going to let you get up in a minute too thank you I've been able to stand the whole time. I'm sorry. Bob, I know that we talked a little earlier. I just mentioned some of the things about the core things that municipalities do, public safety, water and sewer, economic development, some of those core things that we do as cities. But I know that you have to put the pieces together. And I know that you're trying to make all these things fit together. when you look at priorities for projects, which is what we're really here about is priorities for projects. So I think, I don't know if you would like just to sort of take the stage for a few minutes or two and just talk about from your perspective what those core things are that we need to really be thinking about and what are the challenges we face with that. Is that the best way to describe it?

Sure, yeah. Thank you, Bo. Yeah, so you've seen we've got lots of needs over here on the wall and already have established that there's not enough money to go around to fund all those needs. And to have a focus on our core services, what are those core services? As Bo mentioned, public safety, our police and fire, roads, sidewalks, solid waste collection, water and sewer service, building inspections, planning and zoning, code enforcement. I think those capture most of those primary core services that we provide. And then there's city support services behind that, finance, IT, legal, engineering, and other departments that support all those efforts. And we face challenges to maintain those current levels of service as we grow. Increasingly limited revenue sources and replacing and maintaining aging infrastructure, whether that be utility lines under the streets or our buildings and structures that the city own and operate. And we have growth. We're positioned along the interstate corridor, in between growing regions, we've been talking about it for years and we're seeing it more and more now as as the population of North Carolina Carolina expands our area is growing and that geographic growth eventually will require more services you know Public Works vehicles to collect the trash to remove snow to maintain the streets We talked about fire station impacts and staffing needs there and code enforcement and all that growth also puts pressure on existing staffing levels because at some point as we grow geographically or even with infill and there's more demands for services. the current staff can only do so much. In the 20, almost 29 years I've been here, we have as a city have added staff, but I think if you look at Burlington compared to other cities, and I haven't done this, this is just my gut feeling, is we have not grown staff as, staffing numbers have not increased as much as other municipalities. We've been doing more with less staff for years. We've already discussed deferred maintenance and the growing cost to maintain staffing with market forces. We've seen competition for employees, not just between public safety, but from other departments. As Peggy mentioned, our retirement contributions that are required for the state retirement system have continued to increase through the years, health insurance increases. So we have those budgetary pressures, and we still would like to see those projects in the master plans and capital projects move forward. not to be more of a downer but here's some more more challenges that we face you know streets and sidewalks maintaining that that resurfacing funding so we don't have to do a bond every 10 years and that investment in our streets sidewalk and repair and replacement in addition to filling in those those gaps and making our community more walkable and livable And those new sidewalks, there's that cost of the installation, but often we need to acquire right away because there's utility poles and other obstructions that don't make those projects feasible. We touched on the utility needs. We have major plant increases to meet the EPA requirements for drinking water regulations due to PFAS. the next five years or so probably will be looking at a capacity expansion needed at the south arlington wastewater plant because that' s where our growth area is. Again staffing for water and sewer I was there for 19 years I think we added three positions as the city grew three full-time positions. And then we've got line extensions to serve the growth areas and industrial development and annexation areas. We're also looking at renewal and updating our municipal agreements. And along with that, establishing annexation lines of agreement with our neighboring municipalities where we don't have those agreements. City facility needs. Jeff brought up when we last had planning meeting like this and prioritization the number one priority was a new police headquarters that was 2017 16 and I think the cost then was estimated at 40 million dollars that was one of the drivers why that building didn't move forward but that's a need that we're gonna gonna have to address maintenance building at rec parks and recreation water resources with part of the ed Thomas plan expansion we will have to relocate the plant maintenance facility the water and sewer pipe maintenance division has outgrown their their facilities we'll need to be looking somewhere maybe a co-locate for them and that could open up the water and sewer pipe maintenance building perhaps for recreation but those are all ideas and not not implemented or planned yet With community engagement, we've seen increasing expectations for engagement and transparency across multiple initiatives here recently with the North Church Street corridor study to get more public input directly to the folks. We have a community engagement team of two people. They do it. outstanding job but that really stretches their resources recreation and parks we're working on the Western Rec Center that will if that moves forward and we build a facility there's also operations maintenance and staffing that goes along with that indoor aquatics will be coming back as the exterior exterior structure of the main or aquatic center is completed so we'll be ramping up staffing back to that full component in fiscal year 28 And the maintenance of current facilities the tennis facility is going to need to have the surface renewed There's various estimates of that up to a million dollars. Just just to renew the tennis. We're looking at less expensive options, but That's looming Information technology you've all heard heard that in the news about various cyber attacks cyber threats different municipalities being attacked and Their whole operations kind of billing systems payroll things of that nature out of out of commission for weeks So we're working, our IT department stays on top of that, but that's always looming, those increasing threats. We heard the report about AI use in the city. Those devious folks also use AI, so we have to constantly stay ahead of that. And then we have the evaluation and implementation of new technology across all the departments. That can be a force multiplier, but there's always an increased cost on the maintenance and contracting for those types of services. And lastly, but not least, animal services. We provide a county service. and contract with basically with all the municipalities to provide that service. There's the changing economic landscape, the increased expenses and inflation puts the pressure on citizens across the county. And we see more pets and more animals come into the shelter because folks can't afford them. We've been able to maintain that no kill status. but shifting resource and trying to shift resources to the spay and neuter clinic and keep focus on that to to decrease the pet population that comes to the shelter but those are all stressors on the system and those partner municipalities also each year question their their costs and expenses and we have to justify that these are or their costs because we incur them. But we've had many successes over the last several years. Since our last retreat, went back and looked through our list of projects. While we did not do the work on the police station, we completed the carousel house and the restoration of the carousel, moved it out of the floodplain We completed the right field entertainment venue at Burlington Athletic Stadium. We've extended water and sewer lines to support economic development, especially the Highway 61 and Behold the Haze, our food line site. We have the planning and programming underway for the Western Rec Center. We established a visitor-friendly aesthetic buffers in City Park. That was a major contention for years, the jungle that was there. We connected fiber with the city of Greensboro to enhance our IT backup and infrastructure support We've done planning studies for the BDOT transit hub and the maintenance facility We've completed many of the improvements at North Park including the facilities and the trails And while there are many gaps in sidewalks across the city we did complete many smaller projects to fill in gaps. And we worked on some of the Front Street Greenland. So there are many successes that we need to celebrate and observe, in addition to providing stellar service in our core services. Those are kind of some of those highlights that we've put together, that we've accomplished, I'll turn it back over to Beau.

Wow. I like finishing on the idea that you actually got things done. That was awesome. Thanks. I really appreciate it. So you've got some challenges. I mean, you're not unique. These are some of the challenges that all municipalities are facing across the state. You're still growing. Not every community is growing in this state, so that's a good thing. It presents challenges, but at the same time, it presents a bright future for Burlington. And there's no question that you have a bright future. You're such a unique place geographically. I mean, I live in Raleigh and Burlington is just around the corner. If you live in Greensboro, you're right around the corner. It's really quite unique. And I think that you're doing your best to leverage that and probably will in the future. All right, so any questions for Bob before anything pop up in your head when we were talking, when he was making that presentation? I do have one quick question.

This is just kind of like a general question, Bob. In speaking with other city managers in the triad, I'm sure you go to meetings and have retreats and things, how the number one thing I hear about people who are against growth in Alamance County because they understand the burden and the pressure that it puts on the taxpayer help me understand or have you been able to talk to other city managers to find out how do we market off of that growth rather than the burden from it that is a good question um our location

puts us convenient to many areas of the state and, you know, job centers outside of us. And we're trying to attract those jobs here as well. And the all of the amenities that we have as a city, our parks and rec, our water, our water, strong water system. So those are all selling points. We still are very affordable compared to other regions of the state. So I think those are all selling points.

Why are we not, if we're having new people move into our area, why are we in a deficit of the water, you know, the projects and things like the extra tax base or the extra, like, why are we not seeing a financial side of growth?

Well, I think that we see that in that about 3% tax-based growth every year. The residential development, it takes a whole lot more residential development to grow that tax base than one or two larger industrial projects.

And the residential requires services. People need things where industries don't need as many things from us.

That's what Adam's job is very important to to attract new business to not only build new facilities, but also to infill and fill our existing

Yeah, the infield is probably what I should have used. I should have used that word. I've got that now, infield. So how do we use, you know, why, you know, it sounds like we're behind on some projects. So even though it's growing, we still had a need before that. And really it's not the tax, that 3% tax growth isn't catching up for us to do the water and sewer projects and all the things that we have that were our top three priorities, because those are things that's been lingering. Is that what I'm, can I take, can I digest and put it that way? We have more projects, we have growth and things that we need, but we don't have the funds.

One of the things I saw is as we're doing all these summaries is like economic development was only briefly mentioned. But that's, I think, absolutely critical when we talk about priorities, because 3% growth is growth, but inflation is higher than 3%. The inflation is in ground. So even though we're growing at 3%, we have less dollars every year because the cost of everything is increased beyond that. 3% is not sufficient growth to be sustainable. Hence why we're tighter and tighter and tighter every year. The economic development question, which is what is the right type of growth that we need for our community to ensure that we can even provide the same level of services that we provided last year. We can't do it at the present plan.

Residential growth is typically in growth a little more burdensome at the earlier stages as residential growth because you have more services to provide. The payback is there over time, but the initial cost of residential growth is a little more challenging. However, economic development and job-related growth has a quicker payback because it doesn't, the burden to the services a municipality provides, usually it's just taking advantage of existing investments in water, for example, or transportation. So there's a bigger, shorter timeframe in payback for, and that's why all municipalities, I've worked with a number, there's one or two that I work with that got way out of kilter on residential development. as opposed to commercial development of various sorts. And they really are struggling. They can't raise their taxes anymore. And the payback on the residential growth is a long horizon. So it's a challenge. And that's why, as Egan said, and Bob, that mix and having that economic development piece is really important. Does that make sense?

It does. It does. See, I'm looking at you.

most appropriately placed, where residential growth is most appropriate. I say it's a new day, not just because I've been here a year and a half, but the water and sewer running in eastern Guilford County, or as we call it, the Burlington section of Guilford County, there have been 292 acres annexed into the city of Burlington in that part of the world, North Carolina 61 and I-40 85. When you talk about how do we balance residential growth and industrial that's prime industrial growth area and as they've highlighted here that's where your highest return is going to come from while we also do things like the north church street area plan look at infield redevelopment strategy a totally different strategy totally different economic development job understand but all contributes to a rising tide got it so it's a quicker turnaround faster return i will definitely keep that in mind

I don't know about the faster return though, because we're talking about as we grow that way, we need a fire station. We need all these other things. There's a lot of infrastructure that we have to build that we have to preemptively build as mentioned with the food line thing. We're not going to actually see the real tax benefit for five years. At the same time, we're already putting dollars in the ground. So, like, the fastest return is on infill, because we've already, the police already serve it, the fire already serve it, the water's already in the ground. Like the North Church Street. That's the infill area. If we get those investments infill, we've already built everything. It's only minor tweaks. So, yeah. Got it. The greatest opportunity from a lot of the modern economic development is greenfield.

That's helpful. Thank you, all. All right.

Sorry, Beau. No, there's no question that's not good. That was excellent. Thank you. All right, so we're going to give you a task now. Olive has some sticky notes. Do they all? They don't all have them. Yeah, you have them. Okay. Each of you have a specific color, so we're going to keep up with who's what via the color. Not me, because I'm colorblind, right? I'm no good at this stuff. We're gonna ask you to take five or so minutes you can get up and walk around but I want you and you can in fact you might want to go glance over these or even ask a question at the folks at the station but I'm gonna ask you this is gonna sound really frustrating that you can pick three priorities. And I think that's probably a good start, and we'll see where we land. But I think three, that's a pretty limited set of priorities. But looking at all these things over there, it could be, I wouldn't say no to this idea, if someone doesn't wanna pick a particular project but a theme, just keep in mind that it's gotta be very discreet theme as opposed to a specific project. But I'm gonna ask each of you to pick three things, one per post-it note Bob, one project per post-it note. Because that way we're going to have you, each one will get its stand on its own. We may, people are going to be voting on these things. Okay. So we need them each on an individual post-it, right? Can I get that right, Ollie? Yeah. Yeah. And feel free to use a post, sharpies too, because my eyesight's not only not colored by it, I can't see really well.

So question. Yes, ma'am. The current context, significant capital project commitments are not part of this because they're in process. Okay.

That is correct, yes. I want to ask you to confirm that.

So the significant capital projects, this is Downtown Streetscaping, Western Sportsplex, Maynard Aquatic Center.

Those are still open questions, right?

Yeah, I think I will clarify a little bit in saying some of them, your funds have already been obligated, and it's just a matter of getting it done. Others, you've yet to obligate all the funds, so in my mind, that still is part of your priority setting going forward.

Yeah, if you haven't committed the funds for it.

Sports play. You can say, you're a new council, you don't want to do that. We don't issue that debt.

Except that the voters voted on that, so... It's not a requirement on that law.

Got it. We don't have to use it. Yeah, legally, it's up to you to identify where that priority fits for this point.

Streetscape, we're funding a piece.

Yep, but just two blocks, right? Just two blocks.

You know, if you want to continue that.

So, making hard choices. Take those post-it notes. I want three post-it notes back from each of you. You've got five minutes. You can walk around, go look at those. You can go to the corner and ask Bob questions, right? Because we ask Bob questions. Go to the restroom.

Let's go for my own restroom break.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I was going to say, I need to get this done.

How are you feeling?

Good? Sorry. OK. You're back. Thank you.

I've got one minute left. I'm still working on it. Yeah, it is.

That makes me feel better. It's not like you haven't given it seven contacts.

I'm going to need another red one. I need one more red one because this one's bad.

Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

It is. I'm sorry, is that my loud voice? It sounds like it is. Thank you. Four, five, I got everybody.

I'm going to start on this end and go down. Is that okay?

That's a good way.

All right. You've got five minutes. Tell us about your career. You don't need five minutes. Go speak in five minutes. Wait. Counselor? They're your colleagues. All right, here we go.