City Council Zoning Meeting - Regular Meeting

if you're not ready to file a police report. Whatever you're feeling is valid.

You're not alone. There are resources out there for you. We stand with survivors and we are here to support you in whatever way we can.

Thank you.

We have a quorum. Good evening.

Thanks to all for joining here in person and those watching online. We'll start with introductions going around the room, starting with our city clerk.

Billy Tons, deputy city clerk.

Andrea Leslie-Fight, city attorney. Good evening. I'm Victoria Wellington. I have the pleasure of serving you as a member at large.

Joy Mayo, representing District 3.

Good evening and happy Pride Week, Charlotte. Dante Anderson, District 1.

Good evening, everybody. Mayor Pro Tem James Mitchell. Good evening, everybody. Rob Harrington, Mayor.

Marcus Jones, City Manager.

Kimberly Owens, representing District 6.

Malcolm Graham, District 2.

Luana Mayfield, Council Member at Large.

Good evening, JD Masueta-Arias, District 5.

Good evening, Renee Johnson, and I'm honored to represent District 4.

Good evening, Dimple Ashmera, Council Member at Large.

Thank you, and again, good evening. We will start our meeting with items with consideration of the consent agenda items. Before we take a vote, are there any comment or any for separate vote? Council Member Johnson first. Council Member Mayfield.

We're both trying to get out. I haven't, I'm sorry.

No worries. Item number 22.

Item number 23, please. Just pull for discussion.

No others. Council Member Johnson. Council Member Mayfield, when you're ready.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Actually, I was able to tune in on Friday for our check-in, and I have asked questions, so what I would like is for staff to give the responses. to the items that we were checking into. So I guess what I'm pulling out for a separate discussion, do you have the response for, what was it? 36. And my apologies for not having this up right now. Staff is looking number 48, 47. Thank you. for us to have full discussion, as well as number 45, trying to have a better understanding. So, Mayor, 45, 47, 48, that I would like for staff to go over the responses that they submitted to us. Because I see 46, 47, 48, but it looks like 45, which was a very specific question on the 2026 tax collector settlement statement that is not in here. So want to get those for separate discussion, please.

So council member Mayfield, the list that I wrote down from you is 36, 45, 47 and 48. Yes, sir. Thank you. And I propose that we take a vote on the remaining items. And also, given the length of the agenda here in particular, my proposal intent would be to take up the items that are no longer in consent at the very beginning of the business meeting in the session in chamber just to fill some time here. Any problem with that?

Great.

Okay, then we'll vote on the items other than those accepted.

Second.

And the items that have been pulled out just for clarity in the motion are 23, 36, 45, 47, 48. Any further discussion on the remaining consent items? There has been a motion made and seconded to approve the consent items other than those listed 23, 36, 45, 47, 48. All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? All right, they pass. I believe we are now ready for the action preview and I will turn that over to our manager.

thank you mayor members of council tonight we have three items on the action preview and as you may recall what we attempt to do on the second Monday of the month. thank you Mr. Chair. I would like to queue up some items that may be voted on on the fourth Monday of the month. Right now what we have coming out of committee would be the youth protection ordinance revisions model cities initiative grant and parking on sidewalk ordinance revision. Mayor if there aren' t any questions I would like to So with that said, Mayor, this coming out of the Safety Committee, I believe that we would have Councilmember Anderson tee up this discussion.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, City Manager. We are about to proceed to walk you all through the full council through our discussions and some of the findings that came out of the Public Safety Committee meeting that was held as a special meeting over our summer break as it relates to youth protection ordinances. We all have seen the video and some of the news updates as it relates to teen takeovers and unfortunately some of the challenges that have occurred throughout our city from north to south to center city and i've been working very closely with chief patterson and attorney jessica battle and dc brayerly as well as DCM Sean Heath on how we can advance this topic and so you'll get a briefing today from from the team on this topic it's important to say that we will not be voting tonight on this particular topic because this we are addressing an ordinance that already exists so this is for council's review and council's opportunity to ask questions and delve in and with that I will hand it over to Chief Patterson and her team. Thank you

right good evening mayor and Council. I want to thank you for allowing my staff and I to bring a topic to you that is becoming increasingly disturbing and that is the safety of our youth and the community in general due to what we have been talking about which is I would like to take a moment to thank all the supporters who are in the room today those who are joining us in person and also online. I would like to begin this presentation by providing a video compilation that we shared with the public safety committee when we brought this topic to them back in July.

It was like being in a movie and scary all at the same time.

What you're seeing is video captured by one of our viewers showing the large crowd of teenagers at Camp North Head.

The park was shut down. All the floodlights were on.

Vanessa Bravo lives in a nearby apartment building and got caught up in that commotion. Now, another very serious situation happened at Romare Bearden Park early Sunday morning. CMPD says they were trying to enforce a youth curfew when suddenly shots rang out. Officers say they found two victims who had been shot. They were both rushed to the hospital, but we are told they should recover. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are keeping their promise and cracking down on teen takeovers.

After receiving tips of a teen takeover planned for Saturday, CMPD implemented a coordinated operational plan that resulted in more than 20 arrests. That includes 12 juveniles and 10 adults. Those adults cited for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Witnesses say they saw 100 to 200 teens filming each other, blocking traffic.

Let's start first at Briar Creek. Police say around 1027 Saturday night, police got a report of a fight happening near the movie theater. They said this was part of a teen takeover. Nearly 3,000 teens were said to be there. Then let's go to Glenwood South. Around 1.30 Sunday morning, officers responded to multiple shootings. There were about 5,000 people involved in that teen takeover. Then, three hours later, a fight happened at a gas station. That fight led to a shooting, and two people were shot. Nine people shot after thousands of teens take over the streets.

Parents could be held liable in Raleigh if their juvenile kids are out late committing crimes after a curfew is eventually put in place. A violent brawl breaking out in South Carolina. A North Charleston police officer tackled to the ground and pummeled repeatedly during a Fourth of July gathering of teens and young adults that descended into chaos.

13 people were arrested between the ages of 13 and 20 years old.

And a growing number of cities are dealing with the surge in the so-called teen takeover.

That was what Newport Beach, California, looked like over the holiday weekend. More than 400 people were arrested, most of them young and minors.

Orphans allot madness in Newport Beach. More than 400 people arrested. Officers just declared an unlawful assembly. In Newport Beach, police say influencers are streaming, encouraging followers to join the chaos.

And this is just some of the July 4th chaos that took a dangerous turn in Newport Beach. Video shows fireworks, fights, and damage to businesses.

Tonight, dramatic new video of Chicago police pinning people down and struggling to quell massive Memorial Day crowds.

It's just becoming a big, big problem in Charlotte, unfortunately. We have been bombarded with this chaos.

If you see kids out, you better stay home.

These young people know they cannot be arrested. They're not going to be charged, and they know that they can keep doing this.

So we wanted to share this video because what you see is today's reality for our youth and their desire to participate in behavior that is becoming increasingly harmful to them, to our law enforcement personnel, to businesses and patrons, and also to the community at large. Much of what you just saw, we've experienced right here in Charlotte and over the last two months, and members of my team and I have experienced it in real time. I'll give you a short preview. Back on June 14th, I saw firsthand what happens when a group of teens congregate with no specific purpose and nothing in mind to do, especially after dark. Early that morning, there was a shootout in Center City at Ramir Bearden Park, which you saw some of the images of, in which a 15-year-old and an 18-year-old were shot. The shooters subsequently were two 16-year-olds and a 15-year-old. In that incident, we saw a clear example of victims and victimization of our youth. Additionally, several innocent bystanders and businesses were impacted because of the actions of the many teens who were out there. On July 4th, we saw another large gathering of youth around Ramir Bearden Park. I was out there. I worked, in fact, until 3 o'clock in the morning and saw the mass of youth that we had out there. We did not have any incidents that morning or that night in Charlotte, and the reason being I am confident is because we had over 200 officers working in a small geographic location. We know that we cannot sustain that. We cannot have that kind of manpower or personnel power every weekend or whenever there's a pop-up event pertaining to our youth. On July 11th in University City, near the boardwalk, we had another mass gathering of 200 to 300 youth that resulted in fights, disorder, and a firearm being confiscated from a 16-year-old. We had 12 juveniles who were arrested in that incident and 10 adults were cited. We had several officers who were assaulted when they're trying to break up. the fights and break up the incidents going on, and we had businesses that had to shut down early, could not carry on their business because of the teen takeovers and the number of teens who were in the area. I am very concerned that if we don't get a handle on these events and what is going on, the consequences may become fatal. This is why I'm proposing a modification to the existing Youth Protection Ordinance, and that modification is simply... That one, we increase the curfew age to all minors 17 and younger. That we lower the curfew time to 9 p.m. every day of the week so that there's no confusion on what time or where you have to be and that kind of thing. And also, too, that we keep the existing exceptions such as a youth going to and from work or going to a sanctioned event by their school or religious place of worship or something like that. And we're going to talk more a little bit about that. Mayor and Council, please hear me clearly when I say that we are not proposing to criminalize our youth. We don't want to criminalize them for being teenagers. We will not be instituting a curfew police. I don't have the staffing for it, so we will never do that. We are not creating a prison pipeline for youth of color. We're not punishing good kids for doing the right things. But instead, we are proposing a tool that gives law enforcement the ability to intervene and keep our young people from being harmed or harming others. Today we have a brief presentation with data to support our assertion that youth are being victimized when they are permitted to stay out late and unsupervised. I will close by saying this to you. As we look around this room, those who are seated here, there are a number of law enforcement agency partners, community leaders, safety youth advocates, educators, and business leaders who have either been negatively impacted by these teen takeovers or are extremely concerned about our youth and their safety. I believe that they stand with CMPD and they stand with me in saying that we have to revise our youth protection ordinance. I am proud of the work that my team is doing to try to get ahead of these takeovers, to try to be in those places. However, we cannot mitigate these just by using personnel resources. It's very expensive, it's very taxing on our resources. And while we can put a price on the resources that we're using, we cannot put a price on a life that is lost as a result of the events that happened because of these teen takeovers. So we're asking you to consider that as you think about this use protection ordinance. And at this time I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Jessica Battle for a few legal points and then to Deputy Chief Briley and also Dr. Stewart from our Office of Youth Opportunities.

Good evening, mayor, city council members, and Mr. Manager. Jessica Battle with the City Attorney's Office. Our Youth Protection Ordinance was first implemented in 1995. It started off as a pilot program, but given the results of the curfew and other section of the Youth Protection Ordinance, it remained a permanent part of our Charlotte City Code. And to give you a little bit of procedural history in how we got here today, on June 30th of this year, former mayor allows signed a policy referral for the safety to committee to take a look at our current youth protection ordinance to do some benchmarking of other north carolina and u s cities to determine what if any public safety considerations that this council could take into consideration when we are looking to mitigate the public safety issues associated with juvenile curfew issues. On July 14th, the committee heard recommendations from the CMPD and also heard from the city attorney's office on their legal authority as it relates to curfew. And in that special meeting, the committee members voted unanimously to support CMPD's recommendations to send before this full council for consideration, emphasizing what Chief Patterson just stated, that being updating the curfew to include all minors and making it 9 o'clock p.m. on each day of the week. Our current youth protection ordinance applies to two different subsets of minors. For children who are 12 years old and under, the curfew is at 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. on the following day, any day of the week. For children ages 13, 14, and 15, that curfew is from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. the following day on any given day of the week. We do not have any other tiers related to weekends or geographic locations in the city at this time. I'm sorry, there's a slight delay in the clicker. As it relates to offenses that arise out of our curfew, a juvenile can be charged with violating the curfew if they are present and not at home, remaining in a public place after the curfew hours. A parent or guardian can be charged with a curfew offense if they knowingly permit their juvenile child for being outside of the curfew hours. Also, owners, operators, or any employees of an establishment can be charged with an offense if they knowingly allow juveniles to remain on their property after curfew hours. There are also offenses for persons 16 years old and older who aid or abet or otherwise assist juveniles in violating the curfew. And also, it is a violation for a parent or guardian to refuse to take custody of their child after they are notified that their child has violated curfew and police are seeking the parent to come and retrieve their juvenile. There are some exceptions that Chief Patterson went through. If you are accompanied by your parent or guardian or any authorized adult age 21 years or older, authorized adult meaning someone who has permission from the parent or guardian of the juvenile, to be responsible for that child after curfew hours. If the juvenile is running an errand for their parent and they are on a direct route to that errand or back to their residence. Likewise, if they are doing employment activities and again on a direct route to or from work, they can be outside of the restricted hours or if they are responding to a true emergency. Lastly, if a juvenile is attending, traveling to, or directly from an official school, religious, or recreation event that is, with emphasis here, supervised by adults or sponsored by a public or private school, religious institution, government entity, or civic organization, they can be outside out of the restricted hours. And if a person were to encounter law enforcement, they would certainly try to verify whether or not the juvenile is falling under one of these lawful exceptions to being out in the restricted hours. Forgive me for the technology. All right. When we look at our benchmarking, we look not only at North Carolina cities, but we looked at several sister cities across the United States. When we look at Winston-Salem, their curfew applies to all minors, persons 17 years old and younger, from 10 p.m. to 6 p.m. on any day of the week. And currently, the city of Raleigh is also considering changing their juvenile curfew. They are also considering having it apply to all minors, and they are looking at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. for their standard restricted hours. Some other cities of which who were featured in the recording that was played at the beginning of this presentation are Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, that has a curfew for 17 and younger. This is a citywide curfew of midnight. However, they have a geographic or territorial curfew in their downtown area, which starts at 9 p.m. It's important to note that last year Myrtle Beach instituted an emergency curfew that was a little earlier. They had that because of incidents that had occurred in their jurisdiction. Once that temporary curfew was lifted back to the former 11 p.m., they did see a spike in crime that they directly correlated to the changes in their curfew restricted hours. In Atlanta, Georgia, the curfew is 17 and younger. um during school nights 11 p.m to 6 and then friday and saturday have a tiered curfew at midnight nashville tennessee also applies to all minors and they have different tiering related to different times of day of the week and they also have a summer exception and we give you all of this benchmarking just so that the council can be aware of what other cities are doing and know about the different options and level of changes that are being sought as they consider CPD's recommendation of the 9 o'clock p.m. curfew for each day of the week for all minors 17 and below. And now I will turn it over to Deputy Chief Riley, who will talk about teen takeovers from the law enforcement perspective.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and our guests. I'm Deputy Chief Jackie Briley. I'm over patrol operations for the City of Charlotte and CMPD. So part of our teen takeovers, these are planned gatherings with no true purpose. Some of our youth genuinely use these as opportunities to get out of the house, spend time with their friends, hang out. But unfortunately, others use this as an opportunity to meet up, plan fights, settle social media disputes, or oftentimes end in violence. With approximately 40 planned takeovers thus far, CNPD has demonstrated its ability to respond effectively and efficiently and successfully address these incidents as they occur. But as the Chief stated, unfortunately these are manpower and staffing intensive and not able to be sustained. So a little bit of the numbers. For our calendar year, we've had 431 of our youth that were victims of violent crime. 127 of these victims were 16 and 17-year-olds who are not part of the current youth protection ordinance. 393 of our youth were black or Hispanic, with gun-related assaults driving many of these cases. The numbers on the slide speak for themselves with their percentages. But as much more troubling as myself was a parent who's raised 2 teenagers and currently raising a 3rd. Thus far this calendar year we've lost 6 young people to gun violence. These were all 17 years and younger with our youngest juvenile victim of homicide 14. 13 young people in our community were age 17 and under were charged with homicide calendar year date. Of these incidents, every single one of them occurred after 9 and between 6 a.m. So no matter what side of these tragedies a family's on, these lives are changed forever. As part of our research into this, we looked at some of our alternatives, SNAP, Tiered Age Group, and Geographic. These various alternatives to our current recommendation do have significant challenges. Again, staffing is not sustainable for SNAP, tiered, or geographic. Officers are still responsible to respond to calls for service in a timely manner because that is what is expected from our community that we serve. Therefore, we are unable to pull resources from all over the city to go from one location to another In theory, it sounds okay, but we have significant practical challenges in its application. Currently, CMPD leads many efforts on many fronts to engage with our youth. Our power program that has been around for many years, year to date, serves on average 500 young people in our community. This is a program that's led by CMPD officers and volunteers. Our REACH program has continued to work with 60 youth, 30 men and 30 young ladies this calendar year. With multiple city and county partners and under the leadership of ours and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office Community Engagements Unit, we had 1,800 youth successfully participate in 14 teen summer jam events to include two pool parties at Ray Splash Planet with zero incidents. as well as 64 community-led national night out events. With that, I'll hand it over to Dr. Stewart.

Good evening, Mayor Harrington, Manager Jones, and members of Council. I'm Rekeshala Stewart, Director of Housing and Neighborhood Services and the Office of Youth Opportunity. And I wanted to just take a moment to share with you some of the things that your staff with the Office of Youth Opportunities has done and what we plan to do next. So we have expanded our career experiences through strategic outreach, meaning we have created more flexible opportunities for our youth To date, we have provided 683 career experiences, and we're on track for our goal of 1,000 by the end of the year. Understanding the need for third spaces, we realized this a little bit last year, so we were able to partner with the YMCA, I believe our partner is with us this evening, to provide 200 YMCA passes. It was initially for three months, and we recognized the need for the youth to have activities to do, so we were able to extend it through December. This summer we were able to provide 250 county and park rec and teen passes, which is great because they have an opportunity to visit and participate in any activity at any rec center across the county. And then we continue to strengthen through our youth safety initiative, our violence prevention campaigns with our youth diversion program. We work closely with CMPD and our school resource officers and our alternative to violence initiative, which is in three different corridors across the city. So as it relates to what's next, our team is ready to pivot with the purpose. So we are looking at developing a partnership grant to support organizations providing safe third spaces. So what we'll do is we'll partner with CMPD to look at the data to make sure that our scope of work is the right impact and that we're offering these third spaces in the right places across the city. We had a great conversation with the park and Rex department today to coordinate youth activities during teacher work days. So we're looking at any free and available time that the youth have. How can we contribute to giving them something else to do that's going to help them with their upward mobility? And last but not least, we're looking at partnering again with the YMCA to expand programming and partnerships with their Teen Activation Center. And with that program alone, we can additionally touch and impact over 200 youth. I'm going to turn it back over to Chief Patterson.

So we will wrap up. today by just again going over these recommendations that we put before you. We want to increase our curfew age to include all minors 17 and younger. We want to lower the curfew time to 9 p.m. every day of the week and then abide by those exceptions that we currently have in place. We certainly appreciate your patience and listen to our presentation. At this time, we'll open up to any questions you may have of us.

Thank you, Chief Patterson. I know we have three council members who have asked for, and I'll start five. I'll start with Council Member Ajmera.

Thank you, Mayor Harrington. Chief, thank you for your leadership, and thanks to all the law enforcement here in the room and all the partners who are here today. I did see the U.S. Attorney. Thank you for being here and for your leadership collaborating with CMPD. We appreciate you. So if we can go back to the exception slide, because I am getting questions about, oh, my child is working night shift, would that apply? Or they have youth camp, would that apply? So I think I do want every parent to understand that this would not apply to employment activity or if they are part of some sort of organized opportunity. Yes. So I just want to make that very clear. To your point, Chief, this is not criminalizing our youth. This is to keep our community safe. I know this is just the one tool that it's in our hands to keep our community safe, but our bigger responsibility is to have safe spaces for our youth. I remember growing up, I used to go to mall during my summer breaks when I was not working. And we are seeing some of those opportunities are going away. There are not a lot of gathering spaces or safe spaces for teens anymore. So I appreciate the work that Dr. Stewart is doing, collaborating with the county to provide opportunities to our youth. Dr. Stewart, if you could talk about how many youth so far have been engaged through some of the opportunities, whether that's directly with the city or that's in partnership with other agencies.

So as it relates to youth being involved, 683 as it relates to employment or career experiences, and a little bit over 5,000 as it relates to us just having contact with them through pop-ups, through training, through meeting them where they are. So we've had a really impactful year this year, and our plan is to continue that work going forward.

If I could add to that, Council Member Ejmer, Deputy Chief Browley talked about over the summer when we realized these teen takeovers were happening, we coordinated with families, with parents to be able to drop their children off at a responsible location. We had over 1,800 youth for the six events that we partnered with the county with.

And I think those are the opportunities that we need to continue to highlight so that teens have safe spaces to go, safe spaces to have opportunities, whether that's through mentorship or a job opportunity or workforce development opportunities. Because I think that's where we need to continue to focus on. So if we can continue to expand that program, Mr. Jones, I know this is something we started. The council had approved in our budget just last year. And I think we've come a long way to seeing hundreds of youth that have been engaged. I would like us to continue to expand that program, not just in the summer, but especially when there is a teacher work day at CMS. I'm a CMS parent, so I can tell you they have many teacher work days, and I think that's where we need to continue to provide safe opportunities for our youth so that they have a safe environment. Well, that's all I have. Again, Chief, I appreciate the work that you and your team are doing to keep our community safe.

Thank you.

thank you mr. Mayor thank you chief and Dr. Stewart and all the CMPD staff and our partners for the work that you're doing and thank you to members of the public who have weighed in on this and are keen on ensuring that we're investing in our youth I've got a couple of questions, because I want to make sure I understand the intended cause and effect here. You all mentioned earlier in your presentation here some of the other benchmarking cities. And you mentioned that Myrtle Beach saw a correlation between their time period, their 9 PM, versus their later. I'd like to understand a little bit more about why we believe that 9 p.m. is the correct time as it relates to when incidents are happening. And then if you could talk to me a little bit about the nature of these activities. You all have already mentioned that you've been able to host several of these activities without incident for large numbers of teens. So I just want to understand a little bit more about the factors that you believe are influencing juvenile crime and why this is the answer.

Does that make sense? Yes, ma'am, and thank you, Dr. Watlington, for that. So we'll start off with you saying how did we arrive at the 9 o'clock time frame. And so really just looking across at the time where we see the most youth starting to gather, and then also, too, from a safety perspective, that about 9 o'clock is when it starts to get dark. And so looking at that and just knowing after it gets dark typically is when we start to see the youth congregate and they're out. With our current ordinance, we have to wait to 10 o'clock if they're younger children. We have to wait to 11 o'clock. By then, it is so many young people in one space. It's hard to disperse them. It's hard to determine who's who and who may have a weapon on them. So that's where we landed on the 9 p.m. That is that general time when it starts to get dark and we can get a handle on what's going on.

And just basic crime theory, if you will, forgive me. I'm obviously not a law enforcement officer. Why does it matter if it's dark as it relates to incident rates?

Right. We just have seen from our data that after dark, under the cloak of darkness, is when we tend to see crime occur. The numbers that Deputy Chief Briley shared with you, we looked specifically at victimization after 9 p.m. just to see what those numbers were. And we compared them with last year's numbers, with 2025 numbers. In FY 2025, there were 406 victims. juvenile victims after 9 p.m. So that seems to be the time where we see those spikes kind of go up with our crime, and that's how we use that in determining as well what a good time is.

And just for comparison's sake, do we have those same numbers for the 11 p.m. and later window? What is that additional two hours? Right. We did not pull those numbers, but we certainly can. Sure. That would be great. I'd be very interested to see what the difference would be between those two hours. And then can you speak a little bit to the nature of the activity? Why having structured events after 9 o'clock for teens may result in low incident rate or no incident rate versus the unstructured?

So since Deputy Chief Browley still has young people in the house, I think she can... She can address that probably better than some of us. Perfect.

Good evening, ma'am. So one of the things and I'll just use a real life experience with in university at University Walk. So before dark, we had a lot of teens gathering, just kind of walking around the boardwalk, hanging out. Again, as she says, as soon as 9 o'clock, darkness hit. Ski masks come on, hoodies come on, and then you can just see the energy. And until you actually are in it and feel it, it's really hard to explain it. As we started with educating the kids around there and myself and many of the team from, again, Uptown and University Division started walking around and educating kids, hey, you need to go home, it's getting dark. I will say of the 300 kids, About 75 to 80 were like, we just came here to hang out. If y'all talk about we got to go home, we're going to go home. And they started calling their parents. And they started going home to the point where we had to stop traffic on University and Harris to let parents get in to come and get their kids. Because they genuinely did drop their kids off to hang out. unknowing that it was going to turn into a teen takeover. Now again, the other 200 and some kids who decided to stay, that's the one video you saw where the fights began. There were several parents who were pepper sprayed by other teens trying to get their children from being assaulted by other kids. Obviously, we took a gun off of a juvenile. So a lot of it is they are looking for somewhere to hang out. portion of them, but some of them is not. And so again, as someone who's currently raising a 13 year old who's raised two adult kids now, they are just looking for somewhere to go safe. And with a major tell us his team and Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office, they were able to put on these events. that had hundreds of kids at them with zero incidents because those kids are looking for somewhere to hang out and do something. But we have to be very cognizant. There are a group and there's a sectionality of kids who are looking to cause disturbance and settle disputes. And so they will meet up at that place to do it because they can't, you know, school is out, so they're not going to trespass or something like that.

That makes sense. So it sounds like for the structured events, a particular seeker, if you will, shows up for the structured events because most of the kids are just looking for something to do. And it is because there are other kids around that those who have other motives are able to come in and be disruptive. Yes, ma'am. Okay. That makes sense to me. Just a couple more questions. I wanted to understand how... Walk me through, for someone who would say, 17-year-olds out at 9 p.m. in and of itself should not be an issue. We've heard the exceptions. If there is an event, however, that's not school-sanctioned, for instance, they're going to the movies or something like that, can you walk me through what implementation looks like in practice? Because I heard what you said, Chief, in regards to you simply don't have the staff to try to catch some of the adult criminals at this stage. So certainly you don't have extra bodies to be practicing. curfew police. That said, what then does this enable you to do?

How would it look? Yes, ma'am. And so 17, the reason why we went with 17 is because you cannot distinguish the age of these young people. And typically, they don't have IDs on them. So we know, and I know for a fact, when I was out at Romero Bearden Park on 4th of July, when I approached some young people just to entertain, just to have conversation with them, the ones who were 18 says, I'm 18. Here's my ID. And they pulled it out. the younger ones did not because they don't have an id so it's hard for us to determine the ages of these youth right so 17 is a safe age it's still there's still a minor and they probably don't have an id card now the second part of your question as far as them going to movie theater or something like that so we understand that is what young people do we are not trying to keep them from doing those things lawfully that they enjoy doing however there needs to be supervision in doing it If a parent writes a note saying that their child can go to the movies or supervise, we're not out looking for those individuals. In fact, we're not going to be out looking for teens necessarily that are violating this ordinance. We need a tool. that when they do congregate and it starts to go the route that the deputy chief talked about where the ski mask come on and the hoodie come on, we just can't sit idly by. We can actually detain them. We can actually call parents and that kind of thing. So that's what we're looking at now in terms of this passes by this council, the way we will implement this is how we do with many things as a progressive enforcement that begins with an education campaign. We want people to be well educated. We'll work with CMS schools, all our partners that are in the audience to get the word out. From there, we will do lots of warnings. And then when we have to take enforcement, we will take enforcement. So that would be the progressive step that we would take.

Thank you for that. And then in the wintertime, when it gets dark at 5 p.m., how are you all thinking about that, the hours between 5 to 9 in the wintertime?

Sure. That's going to be more challenging, of course, because it is dark and you might have people hanging out. I think we're going to run into kind of the same issues because it's going to be dark. If they want to meet up, they're going to start meeting up. We're going to have to kind of wait until 9 p.m. before we can take effective enforcement. However, I feel that through the education campaign, once the word gets out, parents will know. And we really need parents to be involved with their youth. As long as they're doing something productive and they're working and they're doing whatever, they're going to be covered. But we want to prevent them from just getting in those situations that can cause violence.

Thank you. And my very last question, I think back to a couple of years ago where we had these conversations with the General Assembly around raising the age and then lowering the age that relates to juvenile crime. Can you just talk to me about how that overlaps with this work?

Yes, and I'm going to ask Attorney Battle if she'd just kind of address a little bit with raise the age.

I'll stand so you can see me. So we raise the age that where 16 and 17-year-olds were changed for as it relates to juvenile prosecution. And so, you know, when you think in hindsight, sometimes changing local ordinances to fit state law at a concurrent time frame is helpful. But I also think changes in data, changes in trend affect laws at a state level and a local level. And so this coincides because a lot of the crimes that we see 16 and 17-year-olds committing after this 9 p.m. time are crimes that are non-divertible, crimes that can be charged as an adult. And so if those same 16 and 17-year-olds who are oftentimes committing these associated firearms offenses that Deputy Chief Briley mentioned, talked about if they are in that curfew time frame again when we talk about youth protection and raising the age it all coincides because that demographic of youth would now be required to be inside earlier for an earlier restricted hour and not have to worry about the sort of raise the age issue with our 16 and 17 year olds as well thank you

Just for planning purposes, I'm going to come to Councilmember Mayfield next. I am going to move the other two items, at least one, probably both of the other two items, that are on the action preview here to the manager's report so that we have time for the, we have another matter that we need to discuss and I want to start that at least by six o'clock. So if it's possible in our comments, we have 15 minutes before six o'clock. If it's possible in our comments to avoid redundancy of questions, if that's possible, I just ask that council members please do that. Thank you for those questions and council member Mayfield.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, chief and team and all of our law enforcement. This is getting ready to get captured in a minute. So y'all can give us a report for the questions that I'm going to ask. Basically, I want to have an understanding of it was mentioned, Dr. Stewart, the park and rec passes. I want to know exactly how those are going to be distributed to the youth. Because if the youth that we're talking about are youth that get together online, then they're not necessarily the ones that we're already capturing if they're showing up. So it will be helpful to know exactly how that's going to happen. Also, I want to identify how the three priority communities were identified when we've seen takeovers happen in Camp North End, in University, out at the outlet, Potentially can happen at South Park. I want to know, have a better understanding of how these priority communities were identified. I also want to know what current organizations do we have that have events after nine o'clock for our youth?

What? I'm sorry, one more time.

What current organizations or partnerships do we have that have events available for our youth after nine o'clock? So back in 2020, and Manager Jones knows, and you may have read about it, Mayor Harrington, in 2020, the city partnered with YMCA. We supported the Level Up program, which specifically was a youth-led lock-in on Fridays and Saturdays in the evenings where they had access. The biggest challenge, which if I'm understanding correctly, is that our youth don't have the same access that I had as a child. Park and Rec is where I lived at. It's very expensive to go. You're paying to go into Eastway. You're paying to go to Sugar Creek. You're paying to go to Tuckasegee. And even at that, their business hours are daytime business hours. So understanding what actual events do we have for young people that are 9 o'clock, will be helpful or even if it's, I believe YMCA used to be six to 11 and it was very targeted. So having an update on the level up program, Dr Stewart, you did mention a partnership with the Y. It would also be helpful to know in 2020, 2022, when did it stop? When did the programs that were specifically created for outreach to young people during those evening hours, when did that stop? And to see if there's any data that correlates when we've seen the uptake. Not to mention, if you're capturing information, are these new children of new residents? Or are they children of current community that lost access to a program? I also want to know specifically, more detail with our partnership with the county, what exactly is Park and Rec doing to outreach? Are they opening up their services for no fee? Because we pay a whole lot in taxes. between city and county taxes that pay for our park and rec services so it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what access do our young people have because a lot of us in the room that have been here long enough, you grew up playing basketball, you grew up playing soccer, you grew up playing a lot of these things because you had access to it. That's one of the challenges that we're seeing but mainly, I will repeat, the wet current after 9 p.m. meeting places have been created specifically for you. And lastly, we put a lot of energy and time in our relationship with the National League of Cities and our membership. National League of Cities has seven strategies for cities to increase meaningful youth engagement for violence reduction. Has our team, Chief, I'm not even sure if you're aware of the relationship that we have with the National League of Cities, but that membership, they are Studies that have already been created with experts around the nation that looks at the top seven strategies for cities, center the voices and experience of young people most directly impacted by the violence, include youth in the creation of the events, establish advisory boards, invite youth into existing meetings, diversify the communication outlets, connect young people with their professional goals and opportunities to grow, integrate youth as facilitators and participants into existing programs. There are models out there. We already have this membership, so we're not spending money on a study. It would be helpful to get that information back And I'm not going to try to get you to answer all of it right now, Chief, because my colleagues also have questions. But those are the things that will be helpful for me. Yes. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Mayfield.

thank you mayor and thank you chief patterson you and i have spoken and i won't belabor the issue for me to vote in favor of this i'll be candid i really would need to have a lot more comfort with respect to what happens to parents we've heard from a few parents over the course of the last few weeks with respect to job consequences and other consequences that are brought to roost with them and i'm just asking perhaps attorney battle if you could help me parse the language here that has the parent responsible, quote, if knowingly permitting a child to be out, and how that jives with the exception that says if a child is running an errand at the parent's direction. That seems to be in conflict to a degree that feels unworkable for me. Can you help me understand that? Yes.

Yes, thank you, Councilmember Owens. I believe that those two areas of the law still intersect in a positive way. If a parent knowingly allows their minor child to be out in a way that is not an exception to the curfew, then the parent would be liable under the curfew law for their child being out. However, running an errand is an exception. So if the parent were to be knowingly aware that their juvenile was out under one of the exceptions, whether it would be an errand or going to or from work or out with someone who's 21 or older, then they would be subject to an exception and the juvenile nor the parent would be responsible. And so the only time that the juvenile's parent or guardian would be responsible under the, excuse me, under the ordinance would be if the juvenile were to be out in violation of the curfew, meaning their actions are not subject to any exception. If the juvenile was out under one of the exceptions, again, with a 21-year-old or with their parent running an errand out for an emergency or a school event, if the juvenile has an exception to be out, then that exception extends to the parent, and the parent would not be held responsible and charged with a violation under the ordinance. It's when a parent knows that their child is out at a teen takeover, for example, when the parent would be responsible. But I wouldn't follow it.

So just a brief follow up. And again, we can we can talk offline and perhaps, you know, when we bring this back up, you can give me some additional comfort. What support attorney battle do we have for families who are having an issue with a teen who they are unable to enforce restrictions on in a meaningful way, either because of their job schedule or because the child is just quite honestly unruly? If someone comes to court, what is it that they're asking for? What support are we able to give as a community to prevent them from having an issue?

I think the first level of support starts before a juvenile were to be charged, and that would be offering parents the resources of juveniles being involved in PAL, Mayor's Youth Enrichment Program, REACH Program, all of those sorts of things. I think once we have a juvenile who is not listening to their parents. Juvenile court happens in a couple of different ways. Some children are abused and neglected. Others are undisciplined. Others are delinquent, as in criminal. If a juvenile were to be what we would legally call undisciplined, as in they are skipping school, they are not listening to their parent, A juvenile's parent certainly could contact the Department of Social Services to assist in getting resources and having monitoring on that situation. That is not a situation where automatically a parent's custody rights are at stake. It is a way a parent can tell the court system, my child was charged with a youth ordinance violation. My child is undisciplined. They were out. I was trying to keep them in the home, and they were not out. And so the judge and the Department of Social Services And the Department of Juvenile Justice can offer resources once we get to a situation where we use the legal definition of a child being undisciplined and they refuse to follow curfew despite their parents' best efforts.

Thank you. Just briefly, if you'll follow up again on whether that does prompt the opening of a neglect case. I've been told that it does, and that gives me pause. Thank you.

Council Member Owens, if I can just address that as well, because I had the conversation this morning with our district attorney, similar to that matter. They do have diversion programs. We are not trying to get in a habit of where a parent or a teen is. is in the criminal justice system per se. So they do, the district attorney's office does do diversion, they do classes where the parent has to do a parenting class so that the charge isn't on their record essentially.

And likewise, Councilmember Owens, I think it's a situation where, in general, a lot of curfew violations I could see being diverted, especially if it is a first-time offender versus a child who has other pending criminal matters or is a repeat curfew violation or, excuse me, a repeat curfew violator. But once at the courthouse, the Department of Juvenile Justice, as in DJJ, will take a holistic look at a child who is charged with a juvenile offense. And if there were to be factual circumstances that led to a neglect case that could happen but that is not automatic under the law for a curfew violation it would be facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the court or djj that could turn into an abuse neglect or dependency case but it would not stem from the charge itself directly or not automatically thank you council member owens council member mayo

Thank you. I had a quick question. Can staff show us like a map, maybe at a later time, of where the youth opportunities actually exist and where you have these partnerships? My concern is that there's a gap in that, particularly when we're talking about Steel Creek, Nations Forward. This is a continuous conversation I've had with our county commissioners. The fact that there is a lack of recreation centers are placed for kids to go and then it exacerbates these kind of issues so I'm just curious based on the programming that you all are already doing how equitable is that and is are we really thinking through the needs of our community so looking forward to seeing that on the map to see where is it occurring and I'm hoping that we're using data to think where should it occur in the future and how can we bring all our various partners particularly our county partners who need to bring additional resources like recreation centers to still creek and nations ford thank you

Thank you, Council Member Mayo. Council Member Driggs.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I believe this is a very serious issue. It's part of what I consider to be a troubling breakdown in civil conduct. Noisy cars, road racing, retail theft. So we have to fight back. I get that. I appreciate what CMPD is doing and intend to support what you're doing. I will just point out I have a concern somewhat along the lines of Councilmember Owens in that I would estimate that of the population of Charlotte, about 200,000 are below the age of 18, 17 and under. About 60,000 round numbers are in the 13 to 17 bracket. And how many of those are actually offenders? How many of them are actually causing this problem and how many others will be limited in their freedom because we have to address this issue? And in particular, I would highlight the fact that I think the offenders are the ones who are least likely to obey their parents. And so you have this strange situation where we're cracking down and the problem exists precisely with the people that won't listen to their parents. And then you have this recourse to the parents in which they are exposed to penalties. So I guess my question would just be, will parents have a defense against liability for these fines because they are in a situation where their child is out of control?

Yes, go ahead, TC. Thank you, sir, for that question. So I will say oftentimes, and this is practical application, I've seen it, I've been a part of it. If we pick up your juvenile after curfew, obviously we make the phone call. We have had multiple incidents where a parent and said, hey, you know, as Ms. Battle said, my child is undisciplined. I've reported them missing 14 times in two months. They won't go to school. They won't listen to me. You guys bring them home and they walk right out the back door, right? We're not giving that parent a citation because those are conversations that they're having with the supervisors, with our J team, with the officer that has that child in their custody at that time. And so this is not a situation where the parent shows up to get their kid and they're immediately handed a citation. There are multiple conversations that are taking place and I've been part of those conversations. I've seen them happen where we sit down and we try to give that parent resources. So there are opportunities where we are able to pull that juvenile's information up to see if indeed that parent's account is true. And oftentimes in different cases it is true and we try to connect them with as many resources as we can to try to help that parent out.

Right, it means that you will have to use a certain amount of judgment in your administration of these rules, both as it relates to the who's out and what they're doing, and as it relates, so I appreciate that you have a tool here that can be brought to bear against the juvenile or the parent, and I trust CMPD to use that authority judiciously and not penalize people who really aren't guilty of anything. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you, Mr. Driggs.

Thank you, Council Member Driggs. I think next is Council Member Graham.

And I'll be quick, Mr. Mayor. I understand your time limit at 6 o'clock. I just want to thank CMPD and Chief Patterson for their leadership on this particular issue. I was at University City joining the team takeover, and it was... different at best for sure. There was a news article interview where three football players actually supported, high school football players supported the teen curfew and wanted restrictions and guidelines for themselves as well as their peers. But they also wanted something to do as well, right? Where they can go for a safe space and be responsible and hanging out and doing things that teenagers do. And so I do want to echo some of my comments in reference to really making sure that this is intentional year round, not when something happens, not when there's a shooting on New Year's Eve, not when there's a teen takeover. We have to be very intentional about interacting and engaging our young people every day of the year. And we have to have some collaboration with Mecklenburg County and Park and Recreation and how these rec centers are being utilized all over the city for sure. And we have to answer the question about all these schools that are sitting empty during the summer months with pools and gymnasium and an empty classroom space where they can do a wide variety of things if we come together as a community and fund those activities and utilizing these schools, Councilmember Mayo, throughout the county, throughout the city. Lastly, There is a team takeover that I'm aware of. It's a positive thing. October 24th in District 2 at the Bloom Studios, there is an art takeover. Mural painting, canvas painting, drawing, sketching, a recording studio, all will be in the Iron District. It will be from 4 to 8 p.m. before the curfew takes place. And so this is an example of where parents are coming together, trying to organize creative activities for their kids. So we need the school system, the county, nonprofit organization and churches to be very intentional every day of the year, not until there's a major incident. And then everyone is excited about helping the youth. And then four weeks from now, we're off to something else. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Graham. Council Member Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. What happens if the curfew is violated?

If the curfew is violated, there's a couple things. One is our officers will detain the youth, will call their parents, will talk to the parents. If warranted, let's say this is about the third time or something like that this has occurred, then they would do a juvenile arrest on them. The officers have discretion in that area. And if this is passed, like I stated earlier, we would start with the education campaign and then from their warnings and then enforcement. So you're keeping track of the children that you detain? Yes, we're able to do that.

Okay. And if they're 16 or 17 years old and they're arrested, are they charged as an adult? No, no.

Jessica, do you want to clarify that?

No, they are not charged as an adult, but they, is that a misdemeanor? It will go to juvenile court, um, as a misdemeanor and it will be, it will be heard there. The only time that might be charged with an adult is if there's an accompanying offense that would make them as a 16 or 17 year old held as an adult.

Right, that would be the crime anyway, right?

For the curfew alone, no, juvenile court.

Okay, so you say that if they have a note from their parents or they're on their way from work, If they're in a car, are they able to be pulled over for curfew violation, probable curfew violation?

Legally, if you look at the black and white letter of the law, seeing a minor out who is in the age demographic of the curfew, that would give law enforcement reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle. However, Chief Patterson has authority to set directives on how and when officers would enforce the curfew. But yes, it would be reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle.

Thank you. Do we have a youth council where we're hearing from the youth?

Actually, we do, and I have Major Tellis is here. I know we're in the interest of time. We can get more information, but we do. We did reach out to the youth even at the beginning of the summer to get ideas on things that they would like done. So we will get that compiled, and Major Tellis, we'll make sure we get that over to you.

Okay, and then one of the slides said if a business knowingly, I'm looking for the slide, if a business knowingly supports curfew violation, the business can be penalized? So if a teenager goes out to dinner after a football game, they're in a restaurant, the restaurant is responsible or how's that business affected?

I believe the intent or spirit of that particular part of the exception is for businesses that encourage juveniles to violate the curfew. Businesses that conduct sort of juvenile dance halls or juvenile clubs that allow juveniles to be out in violation of the curfew with the intent of violating the curfew and breaking the law. But it wouldn't be something where CNPD would be curfew police going to different restaurants to look for juveniles. But if you allow an unlawful assembly of juveniles to occur in your business, you could be held responsible for allowing that restricted violation but the offense is the same regardless of the intent right it is however i believe the intent goes to the enforcement of it in that cmpd would not go out not going into restaurants or movie theaters looking for juveniles but if it were intended to be a teen excuse me teen takeover hosted inside of a business That would be where that particular part of the law takes place. We don't usually see that. That's a rare charge. It's typically the juveniles and or their caregivers. That's fine. Just a couple more questions.

I told you, Mayor, this is an important topic, and we should be able to ask these questions. Okay. The object or the intent or the purpose is to address the teen takeovers. That's why we're discussing this today. Is this a temporary measure?

I would like to see this permanent. Certainly, like Myrtle Beach, if we impose this and then we start to see reductions, we're seeing where teens are not being harmed or hurt, then that's something else we could bring back to you for a modification. But we would like it to be a permanent change.

So could we increase the, could we bring in some of these youth to look at social media and to stop these teen takeovers before they start? I heard that there's been some activity and there's been some monitoring, and because of that, some of the planned events have fizzled out. Is that true?

You're saying some of it has fizzled out.

Has there been recent reduction due to our monitoring?

So we had how many teen takeovers DC Briley, um, that we knew of the exact number that we've responded to over the summer or six.

Okay. What I would like to see is some of these solutions enacted. And maybe, I don't know, before we enacted a curfew or maybe a temporary curfew, and then we take a look at opening up these third places, working with the county. I think this is an intergovernmental issue, the county and the state. We need solutions. There's not a skating rink in a reasonable district in this city. So if we want to fund something instead of increasing criminal, I mean, there's Kate's, but if you're in the university, it's very, very far. So if we want to fund something or be intentional about something, let's be intentional about third places or solutions or helping the youth. You know, we have a, we have universities, we can work with them. Maybe there's some options. I just don't want, and I said, I was not going to, you know, I was going to just be neutral and really listen, but I don't support increasing, interaction with our youth and and police on a negative basis or possibly impacting their criminal record in their future if there's something more that we can do so I think we should take a look at other options before we proceed especially when you talk about parents being responsible I've spoken to a parent that's asked for help numerous times her child is committing crimes and she can't get any help So we have to look at this realistically, in my opinion. But, you know, when the chief says if you don't do something, children are going to die, I mean, that's something we also have the responsibility. We want to protect our youth. But protecting them is also providing solutions and protecting their future as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Johnson.

Council Member Masuera-Aries. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief, and thank you, staff, for really putting this presentation. I really appreciate it. I take particular interest in this issue of being the council member closer to being a teenager. Just ten years ago. And so, and I start with that because ten years ago, there were pools, there were bowling alleys. There are places for myself and my friends to go to that. A lot of places now impose restrictions for young people to be at. I have an 18-year-old sister who I just asked recently, what does she do for fun? And the only place she was able to say was South Park because everywhere else is for folks that are 21 and up. And during the World Cup, I had family visiting from Colombia, which, by the way, Colombia is in my thoughts and prayers today after the earthquake that they experienced. And we couldn't watch a World Cup game because a lot of our bars and restaurants impose 21 and up restrictions, right? And so intentionally or unintentionally, our policy decisions and the business environment that we've created has made this city, in my belief, unsustainable for younger people. to really thrive in and get involved in. And I take the recent youth takeovers and safety concerns seriously, but I do believe we should target harmful conduct, not make simply being young and outside after 9 p.m. grounds for police intervention. I think the proposal right now, as it stands, would impose the 9 p.m. court fee on everyone under 18, and I do think that's extremely a broad response to incidents involving a much smaller number of incidents. We heard just now six incidents, right? I also have some concerns as well because We're not getting much help from the state. We're seeing gaps within the county as well as our schools. We mentioned empty school buildings throughout the summer. And also my concern about our county jail system and how we have violent criminals who commit violent offenses who are let out of jail uh... five hours later you know and and so how are we going to keep at pace with this so i have a few questions and i don't i don't want the uh... the letter the point but uh... i i currently don't support this as it is without a complimentary humanitarian youth centered solution attached to it Some questions and follow ups that we can take offline are one, I would like to see the data on the effectiveness of youth curfews. I did my research, systematic review of 12 studies found no meaningful evidence that youth curfews reduce crime or victimization. A curfew may disperse one gathering, but it could simply push young people into different and potentially less safe locations for their teen takeovers. perhaps in the woods, in the forest, places where we will have no idea where they're at. The other thing I have a question on is the sister cities examples. I saw that they're much more flexible with Myrtle Beach having a youth curfew, 17 years old and younger, citywide at midnight. Atlanta, 17 years and younger, Sunday through Thursday, 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., Friday and Saturday, midnight to 6 a.m. And then Nashville, 18 years old and under, Sunday through Thursday, 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday, 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. And with a summer exception, all curfews are from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. from June 1st to August 31st. So I do would like to know why ours is a little less flexible and more strict. and what studies and data led to that solution being presented. The third thing is, we as a council, and we've heard this from CMPD as well, we have limited resources. They're scarce, and so we also heard we won't have no curfew police. Well, then I asked them, why a curfew? But that really ultimately leads to another broader conversation. how will we have the capacity and resources to process curfew violations, particularly when we have a lot of targeted operations happening in Center City that are taking those resources away from other districts? And I hope this is jotting down, and I don't expect answers right now. I just want to make sure it's jotted in the meeting notes. The Office of Youth Opportunities, I want to hone in on that. I know you said not to be redundant, but I just want to make sure it's out there. What results have they produced? And why are sustained youth investments not a central component of our corridors of opportunity programming? Particularly because I have not seen that in the east side. I do not see... youth programming attached to quarters of opportunity funding happening at the east side. And then I want to touch base on municipal service districts. So in locations such as the University Boardwalk, what responsibilities should property owners, security providers, and municipal service districts carry instead of relying on a citywide youth curfew. And then my last question, will the ordinance include a sunset date and independent evaluation? The data does indeed show, and this council decides to pass it, pass this ordinance, If the data shows that it won't reduce teen takeovers or improve safety or that enforcement is racially disproportionate because we did see that, what was the number? 91%. 91% of victims are black and Hispanic slash Latino. Will it automatically expire? So those are some questions I want to put out there and just being conscious of time. we can follow up on that. But thank you so much.

Fair enough. Yes, sir.

Thank you, Council Member Masuera Arias. Council Member Anderson, I think you have the last question.

thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you council for a very good conversation on this topic that the safety committee has delved into a lot of really good questions and perspectives one thing I will say and I want to thank the chief and her team for all of the work that they've done you know both you know i would say you know inside the building doing the research and collecting all of this data and information but also equally if not more importantly out on the streets engaging with our youth and our residents to try to curtail some of these events one of the most important things i think we've had a lot of comments around how We'd like to hold some of our partners accountable for their work and their efforts in a collaborative nature, but the reality is the structure of our state and therefore the structure of our local municipal government, we don't have the same ownership or managerial rights as some other cities have. So there's a reason that there's a board of county commissioners and they have a charter and a purview. There's a reason that there's a CMS school board and they have a charter and a purview. Many of the cities that we look at, especially within our size, as we're growing, they have different governmental structures. Some of them do, some of them don't. we happen to not have parking recs under our purview that should not however deter us for from doing all we can within the scope of our charter and within the scope of our safety measures to ensure that our our children and our residents are safe and we can encourage our partners to do as much as they can you know i think that um Slide 10 sort of speaks for itself. And right, wrong, or indifferent, we're seeing that our black and brown and Latino juveniles are being victimized at a higher rate. That's real information. It's not anecdotal. It's real information. And then when we look at the percentage of those victims that are 16 to 17, that's a third of all of those of victimization and right there within this this space and I've had lots of conversations with residents and have received a lot of information and spoken with folks but really within this space of 16 and 17 is really when you get in that great area. where something can really escalate off of something like a curfew violation to some type of violent interaction, where then you are deemed to give that permission to the courts to decide and exercise judgment if a 17-year-old should be that we have been charged as an adult or should have the responsibility of an adult it just goes down into a rabbit hole that I think we need to be proactive as municipal leaders about. We also already have a curfew ordinance so this is not something that we' re creating from a greenfield perspective there is a curfew ordinance on the books now and today 13 And I loved being outside when I was a young kid and had bicycles and wanted to do all that kind of stuff. But, you know, it's 10, 45, 11 o'clock a time for a 13- to 14-year-old to be outside unsupervised. That's really a question around, are we exposing them to higher moments of potential victimization? Or can we do something protective to ensure that anything we're doing as a city council program would help protect them and give their parents opportunities so in closing you know this is our first conversation of course we'll come back to council to answer some of these questions but I would also encourage council if you didn't see or view or participate in the public safety committee meeting you know go back and review several of you were there and thank you for your engagement but this is a really important topic in its it's I think it's gonna be difficult to appease every single person but as we've heard six youth have lost their life due to gun violence I think that's one too many and clearly six hundred percent too many and we have to create spaces of course in third spaces and collaborate but really and truly the onus is on us under our charter and our purview as a city council of charlotte north carolina to do as much as we can to protect our young people thank you mayor thank you councilmember anderson i know there are others who may want to make comments we have had a chance for

everyone to make one comment or ask have one set of comments or ask questions. And so I want to hold it there because I know this is going to come back to us in some form. Um, but I don't, I want to make sure that we're even handed and how we have the round of questions. Um, great discussion. Important issue is council member Johnson has said, uh, chief Patterson, thank you very much. Are there any final comments that you'd like to make?

No, that is it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Council.

Thank you very much. All right, I think we're going to flex a little bit and skip down to the parking and sidewalk ordinance revision. Manager, if that's okay with you. And we will hold the other item until your report during the session downstairs.

Absolutely. And Mayor and members of council, before I turn it over to Council Member Graham, I do want to make.

If folks could please we' ve got limited time please be as quiet as you can exiting and moving around and if council would give attention to the manager.

thank you mayor. Mayor and members of council before I turn it over to council member graham for the sidewalk I want to make sure I mention one thing about the collaboration between the city the county and the school system. County manager brian is out of town and I would hate for him to come back and me not at least say that Dr. Stewart and dcm hefner have been working with cms staff as well as the county staff For many of the questions that you've had tonight, for us to have different schedules with different camps and things like that is just not a great way to operate. So they have been working on that for a while, and so more to come with that.

Council Member Gray?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Interim Community Relations Director Terry Bradshaw and the Assistant City Attorney presented a proposal ordinance amendment addressing sidewalk parking, asking the committee to advance it to the full council because of time sensitive nature. Mr. Bradley explained that the issue was identified through the city's Americans with Disability Act ADA program after staff recognized an operational gap conflicting language in the city code of ordinance. The action is the council, the committee rather, made a recommendation to the full council to amend the ordinance for consideration at the August 10th meeting. And so they're here to provide an overview of that meeting that we had with the Budget and Governance Committee. Mr. Attorney, Mr. Bradley.

So good evening, I think. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council and Mr. Manager. I'm here as the interim director of community relations department and the city of Charlotte's 88 coordinator. I'm here this evening just to briefly give you some context over the sidewalk obstruction that we're wanting to kind of bring to your attention. The parking ordinance amendment that you're about to hear from our city attorney's office is an issue that really impacts not just the disability community, but pedestrians. This is about safety. As we use the sidewalk as a path of travel, we're also looking at opportunities where people have to step off the curb to get into oncoming traffic, and that's a safety issue that we want to be mindful of. Um, so we, we get the complaint, um, by way of it came to the ADA program and we met with different departments, um, that, um, we collaborated with, with CMPD as well as CDOT and other agencies to kind of talk about what are the ways that we can kind of resolve this issue. That's kind of ongoing. Um, and with that, um, we came up with something that was probably showing some conflict in the language in the, um, in the ordinance. And we have our senior attorney, Lisa Flowers, who's going to walk us through what that language is and what we were recommending that it be changed to. So with that, Lisa Flowers.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Manager's Office, and others in the room. So as Terry mentioned, this is about sidewalk parking. Our current ordinance language creates some challenges for enforcement clarity and community safety. And so why we're here is that BGIR committee was charged with reviewing the ordinances and we found that two of the ordinances that speak to sidewalk parking were not fully aligned. And so why is this a problem? It may seem like a small nuisance, but as Terry mentioned, it can cause problems for our disability community. Even if a vehicle is partially obstructing a sidewalk, It can create a complete barrier to someone in a wheelchair, somebody pushing a stroller, or someone just trying to walk down the street safely. Also, sidewalks are part of our right-of-way system, and vehicles creeping into that pedestrian zone sort of breaks down the function of that pedestrian zone. The impacts... is if the sidewalk's not usable, then pedestrians end up in the street, and this is especially risky for kids and the elderly. But then there's also broader policy implications. It sends the message that our pedestrian zone's secondary. We lose that sense of neighborhood connectivity. And then as we've already mentioned, the ADA compliance issue, if the sidewalk is blocked, then it's inaccessible to individuals with disabilities. Also, it damages the sidewalks. Our sidewalks are not made to handle vehicles, and so it can cause an increased cost to the city for and work time. So these are the two provisions. Oops, did not go.

There we go.

These are the two ordinance provisions that address sidewalk parking, and they both prohibit parking on the sidewalks, but one 14-130 has an exception for driveways. And because they don't align, that risks inconsistent enforcement and potential citation disputes. So to eliminate, the simplest way was just to eliminate that exception from 14-130. This clarifies that parking is not allowed at all on the sidewalk, makes a clear standard, makes enforcement easier, improves consistency, and strengthens our accessibility. So this shows... And the committee did vote to approve this change, to send it to this full council. And this is the change, basically just to eliminate that exception language. Everything else stays the same in 14-130. And I'll take any questions, if anybody has any questions.

Questions? Council Member Johnson? Council Member Mayfield?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. The only question I'm going to ask for this particular example is delivery drivers. UPS doesn't pull into residential homes anymore. We have a lot of area where the sidewalk is right up on the street. They don't pull into the driveway, so they literally pull up on sidewalks in order to not be in traffic because it's one way so whether it's UPS or some other large vehicle how does this apply to delivery and or pickup services in the city when we do a lot of we have a lot of services that do that today?

Technically that's a violation but if it's a temporary issue I don't think it would cause a concern as much. We do have the concern of it being on the sidewalk, but just a temporary measure and then they're delivering a package and leaving, I think it would be difficult to catch that for one.

What I'm thinking, and please correct me if this isn't accurate, what you all are anticipating is in residential neighborhood when you have people that are visiting or you have a vehicle overnight or for an extended period of time where you got a small driveway that's made for two vehicles, but you have three or more vehicles, so they're blocking the actual sidewalk. instead of either parking on the street or in the designated driveway. That's what you're anticipating. Correct. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Mayfield, council member Johnson.

Thank you, mayor. So the purpose of this is to serve individuals who are in like have mobility challenges. Is that the purpose of doing this?

It's for everybody, but it did come in through a complaint, an ADA complaint.

Okay. An ADA complaint. So there's a term, I was talking to a developer today, and he used the term drive aprons. I think those are shorter driveways. So I'd like to hear from planning, if we could, if that's a thing. Are we moving towards shorter driveways in the city? What's the requirement for the driveway length? Because if we're allowing shorter driveways, drive aprons, this seems like a conflict.

what we're building and what we're trying to solve also does this apply to define vehicles does it apply to scooters on sidewalks it it does not apply to scooters on sidewalks there's the there's an exception except well if you look at the 251 it mentions in 14-130 that it does not include e-bikes and scooters, except for 14-251, does prohibit them from parking on the sidewalks in a certain area of Uptown. There's a geo-fenced area in Uptown where they're not allowed on the sidewalks.

So my concern, and I was on a call, and Councilmember Mitchell, Mayor Pro Tem was on the call also, and there was a developer who said, well, they're inexpensive. They only have one car garage. Yeah. So that's kind of where attainable housing is going. One car garage, shorter driveways. And so people almost need to buy the one car garage in order to be able to afford to live here so if if they're not allowed to park in their driveway i think i'd have a concern about that i i'd rather see an exception in someone's home in the driveway because people have you know what more than one car you know you have to have more people in the house to afford to live here right so i think we have to be careful with that i'd rather see the exception for scooters being parked on the driveway than not being able to park in your own driveway.

They can still park in their driveway. They just need to be totally in their driveway. What we're seeing like in this particular neighborhood where we've got the complaint, um, is they weren't pulling all the way into their driveway. They're just stopping at the, at the bottom where the sidewalk is. And that is an ADA violation. Um, uh, If the DOJ were to come in, they would say that if we're not enforcing our, making our sidewalks accessible.

I know there's a neighborhood in the ETJ, and they're not allowed to park for their cars to block the driveway, but it really is problematic for the people that live there. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Johnson.

Council Member Masuera-Aries. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for the presentation. My questions are aligned with Council Member Mayfield and Council Member Johnson when it comes to social gatherings that folks might host. And my concern is particularly with the speed of us approving rezonings for townhome neighborhoods that have, and colleagues, you all might remember we have some a debate about the length of the streets and how many emergency vehicles can come in and out and whether there are enough exits available for this. And so I think, and this can be answered offline, is this transitional? We have the mobility plan and the sales tax that is coming into effect. I know we're trying to transition. into becoming a less car-dependent city. But as well, we are making decisions via our zoning meetings where we are embracing high density and very narrow driveways and narrow streets, while at the same time, people will continue to be gathering. And so I'm wondering if we're just... Um, I'm not sure. I'm just, uh, I just have all those questions to ask in terms of like, how does this relate to infrastructure, to our planning? Um, as well as is this as transitional? Um, is there going to be a grace period? Uh, if folks get cited, um, if they're in violation of the ordinance, I'm just being, I'm being conscious about us becoming a growing city. Uh, that is embracing high density, that is creating more narrow streets and less spaces, and particularly with the General Assembly passing that, or discussions of a no parking minimum, right? So I'm just, I know I'm all over the place, but I hope you understand where I'm headed towards. Yes, I do.

Thank you. And it is, I know that there's lots of issues that go into why somebody might be blocking a driveway. There could be four different, you know, 10 different reasons with 10 different vehicles in a neighborhood. But this would be, there's an education period that we would be implementing for sure. The ADA team has actually already been working on in that particular neighborhood, and the officer who's been involved in this has been educating the neighborhood, and they've actually improved out there. It's just been an education of, you know, some people are just, they just don't pull quite enough up, you know, and they have room in their driveway. They're just not doing it. So it's definitely an education piece. Thank you.

Okay, we're going to transition to the council chambers. I know we have at least one more question. Council Member Ashmera.

Thank you, Mr. Harrington. So this will only apply to sidewalks, right? We are not talking about driveways. Even if the driveways are short, to some of my colleagues' question, we are just talking about specifically sidewalks. I just want to highlight one of the... things I have seen where a parent pushing a stroller, because that happens to me quite a bit, or a senior walking to the bus, they're being forced to go into the traffic because sidewalks are blocked. So this is about safe infrastructure, and I have seen that because We can build sidewalks, which we are continuing to invest in because this is one of the tools that we have to address to get to Vision Zero. But if we have blocked sidewalks, it is forcing and it's putting pedestrians at risk. So I think that's another perspective to consider of seniors, parents of young children, folks with disability. That's all I have, thank you.

Yes, Mr. Manager. So I want to make sure that I'm understanding this, okay? So my understanding, it's a driveway, and if I pull my car all the way out of the driveway and I'm blocking the sidewalk that's a part of my driveway, that's the problem. So it is the driveway, okay. All right. Okay. And what's happening is CMPD wants to write a citation, but we have a conflict in the, and so we need to figure out is the conflict going to be eliminated so that blocking the sidewalk becomes something that is some type of citation. Okay.

Great.

Are there, are there, are there any other questions from council on this point or comments? Anything else, manager? Thank you very much. We are going to transition to council chambers. We will take up the model cities initiative grant just so folks, particularly online, will know during the manager's report there. And we'll also take up the items that were deferred from what was the consent agenda that were pulled out during that session.

¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶ We'll now call the meeting to order.

Good evening and thank you for joining us in this in-person and those watching online for our August 10th business meeting, Charlotte City Council. Now let's begin with introductions around the dais, starting with the city clerk.

Billy Tons, deputy city clerk. Andrea Leslie-Fight, city attorney.

Good evening, Dimple Oshimura, at large. Good evening, I'm Victoria Watlington and I have the pleasure of serving you as a member at large.

Good evening, Joy Mayo, representing District 3.

Good evening and happy Stella Awards week in the city of Charlotte. Dante Anderson, District 1.

Marcus Jones, City Manager.

Good evening, Rob Harrington, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. James Mitchell, Mayor Pro Tem.

Good evening, everyone. Kimberly Owens, representing District 6.

Malcolm Graham, District 2. Ed Dreeks, District 7.

Good evening, Luana Mayfield, Council Member at Large.

Good evening, JD Masueta-Arias, proudly representing the East Side, District 5.

Good evening, I'm Renee Johnson, and I'm honored to represent District 4.

Thank you all. We begin our meeting with an invocation, expression of inspiration, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. The invocation is intended to solemnize our proceedings. We celebrate the religious diversity of our community, including those without a religious faith. Tonight, Councilmember Owens will give our invocation. Councilmember Owens.

Thank you, Mayor. I will start by saying that when we start our year, we are assigned certain dates, and obviously today is my date. In anticipation of that, I reached out to a variety of faith communities who find home within District 6. And the following was given to me by Nasif Majid, Jr. With the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate, we begin by acknowledging the one who created us in our diversity, different backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives, yet united in our shared responsibility to care for one another and to serve the public good. We pray for wisdom for those entrusted with leadership. May they be guided by honesty over convenience, courage over comfort, and service over self-interest. Grant them clarity of mind when decisions are complex, steadiness of heart when pressures rise, and humility to listen to the voices of the people they represent. We ask that our leaders be strengthened in integrity, that truth be spoken clearly, that justice be pursued sincerely, and that policies reflect compassion for the vulnerable and fairness for all. Bless this gathering with respectful dialogue, thoughtful deliberation, and a commitment to what uplifts our community as a whole. Help us remember that leadership is not power over others, but responsibility for their well-being. May our work today contribute to a future marked by trust, accountability, and shared prosperity. Amen.

Thank you, Councilmember Owens. Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

We have one proclamation for this evening and I'll turn it over for that to council member Graham.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'm honored to have the opportunity to read the city of Charlotte proclamation. Whereas national black philanthropy month is observed annually in August. to celebrate and elevate the rich tradition of generosity, volunteerism, civic engagement, and charitable giving within black communities, recognizing philanthropy as a powerful force for positive social change. And whereas the Foundation for Black Philanthropy, an affiliate fund of the Foundation for the Carolina, was established to inspire charitable giving strengthened led black organizations and advanced economic mobility, educational success, health equality, and a community wellbeing throughout the Charlotte region. And whereas the foundation for black philanthropy brings together donors, community leaders, advocates, critical challenges, and create opportunities that build stronger families, more vibrant neighborhoods, and a more equitable future for all residents. And whereas in 2026, the Foundation for Black Philanthropy awarded $25,000 in grants, $5,000 each, to the various organizations, STARS Math and English Academy, Mind, Body, Baby, and See, Strive CLT, Mothers of Murdered Offspring, and Youth Development Initiative, each dedicated to improving educational achievements, maternal and family health, youth development, violence prevention, workforce readiness, and economic mobility. Whereas these grants exemplify the spirit of black philanthropy through their commitment to expanding opportunity, fostering resilience, promoting healing, and creating last change across Charlotte and the surrounding region, demonstrating the collective impact that strengthen our community based on solutions. Now, therefore, Robert E. Harrington, Mayor of the City of Charlotte, Dubai proclaimed August 2026 as Black Philanthropy Month and encourage all residents to not only recognize and celebrate the contribution of philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, volunteers, donors, and community organizations, but also to participate and support their efforts that uplift communities, expand opportunities, and help build a stronger, more equitable, and more prosperous Charlotte for All. Congratulations, and this is Black Philanthropy Month. Congratulations to all. Mr. Mayor, there are a number of individuals here that received the proclamation, so if they would join me in front of the dais, I will hand it to them.

Should we move? Okay, it's just so weak.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Graham, and thanks to all who were recognized for all you do in our community and the really important work that you do. As we transition into the remainder of the meeting, I'd like to just give a little bit of background. I'd like to thank all of you for attending. On behalf of the city council, I'd like to thank all of you. I ask that audience members be civil and courteous while in the chamber. We want to ensure that everyone has a positive experience while attending tonight's meeting. And that takes us now to open public comment on amendments to the Charlotte City Map and Charlotte Streets Manual. Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers? No, sir. Do I have a motion to close public comment? So moved. And is there any question, discussion there? All in favor, raise your hands.

Thank you.

Council Member Johnson.

Number seven, right?

We're at number seven.

So I wanted to ask Looks like we're changing the manual. I wanted to know how cumulative impact for traffic studies is going to be considered. Do we have, is there anybody from the city to answer the question?

Debbie's coming. Okay. Just close the hearing. She has a question about cumulative.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Debbie Smith.

Before we get there, I think we probably should take a vote on the motion to close the public comment and then move into questions from council. So let's go ahead and take a vote on the pending motion to close public comment. Any opposed? All right. So public comment is now closed. Council Member Johnson, please proceed with the questions.

Thank you. It's my understanding We're going to review guidelines for traffic impact study guidance. So I wanted to know, we've talked about in the past looking at cumulative impact or changing the guidelines for traffic impact studies. Can you answer or tell me if there are going to be any consideration to cumulative impact?

Good evening, Councilwoman Johnson. Debbie Smith with Charlotte Department of Transportation. I appreciate the question. So as part of the Charlotte Streets Manual that we're looking at right here, we're really looking at the recommended changes that are illustrated in your document. And so as part of this process, we're really trying to do very streamlined administrative changes that clean that up. Right now, currently, there is a referral to the Transportation Planning and Development Subcommittee of Council to talk about the question of the cumulative impacts that you've talked about. So we will be bringing back to you some more information through that process.

But right now, the number is still 2,500 trips to trigger a traffic impact study?

Yes, however, I would say that there are more details that I'd like to be able to get you because depending on the size of the development to be able to answer that question more thoroughly.

Okay, so we've been talking about this for a while and there was a presentation from staff that we were going to be looking at it. So are we revising the manual now and then referring this item to committee? Is this something that can be considered in this version?

So in this version right now, we are making very strategic administrative changes. We're not looking to change those thresholds.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Council Member Mayfield.

Thank you, Mayor. Debbie, if you can explain the difference between a collective street to a local street. as well as what could the impact of that be when we keep a proven development and then there's not a street to help mitigate the congestion.

Absolutely. Um, councilwoman Mayfield, thank you so much for that question. And so collector streets are just a type of street, uh, that is a collector. So local streets feed into collector streets. So with collector streets, we are able to get a cross section or a roadway width that can accommodate things like on street parking or turn lanes. And so in the classification here that we're speaking of, we are Now changing that classification to a local street. However, any development that comes in would still have to mitigate any impacts of a development if a development were to come in on a local street. So it would still be required to, uh, address certain conditions.

So a collective street potentially can have recess parking on street. A local street could not.

It's typically by its design, it tends to not have a lot of those changes. We could still look at it on a site-by-site classification to determine what street impacts would need to be.

So when you follow up to Council Member Johnson, when you give her the response, it will be helpful. for me to have a breakdown, because we just had a conversation about parking on sidewalks. We're also having a conversation regarding shortening driveways, which is an oxymoron in itself. But if we're talking about that a collector street is the street that actually potentially has the recessed parking, because again, crazy thought. People have vehicles. They might decide to have a gathering at their home. Where are they going to park? So what could the impact of this be? It would be helpful to know.

I'd be happy to follow up. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments? Anyone else who has a council member as mayor first? Come back to you, Council Member Johnson.

Yes, so obviously this is not just simple modifications here. There are two things that... were key. One, it was the first was the fee in lieu. So if you can talk about just the implications when developers will contribute pay in lieu versus building directly.

Sure.

And then I'll talk about the second item later.

OK. Councilman Ejimera, I would love to invite Jake Carpenter down, my subject matter expert that you all see on your rezoning nights to talk about the fee in lieu.

Thank you. Jay Carpenter with CDOT. So the fee and lieu changes as part of this are really administrative to give staff options when a development can't meet their criteria that's outlined in this manual. So it has to do with the multimodal changes and finding improvements to make. within a certain area of the site. And so this just kind of outlines a little more what the options are for fee in lieu for multimodal mitigations. It's really not tied to fee in lieu for the greater development process or for CIP projects or things like that. It's a very specific situation that is just outlined a little better as part of these changes.

So if you can give me an example

So a development has to perform a multimodal assessment as part of their development sometimes. And they have options in the manual, say, to upgrade ramps to satisfy ADA criteria. But in some cases, the manual says you can look within a quarter mile. there's nothing available because everything's been upgraded and there's no options. So they could instead, to satisfy their development requirements, do a fee in lieu to say construct two accessible ramps. So instead of constructing them, they would contribute a dollar amount to the transportation program to satisfy their development requirements.

So when they contribute in pay in lieu fund, would those funds be used to build that?

Well, in this case, there's nothing in the immediate vicinity to build. So the department would be able to go maybe a little outside of their vicinity.

Where the greatest need is. Yes. Okay, that's fair. Second, I noticed there's Tier 3 parking reduction. Those were the only two major items I saw as part of the clarification. Could you speak to those parking reductions?

So this is another case where the, the goal is to kind of outline the options a little bit better for staff. They're, Over time, there is a request for parking reductions, and this sort of just outlines the process. So if a development requested this, the CDOT would work with the planning department and do a parking study for the development to see the various factors that could affect their parking need and determine if it was allowable to have a parking reduction for this specific development. So you could have a multi-use development where you had multiple uses that maybe had peak parking at different times. So you could reduce the total parking that's needed. And this is a rare situation. And staff has worked through it to this point as best as possible. But this just gives a little more clarity to kind of how to run that process.

So for those of you who do not know tier one, two, and three, could you just explain that? I'm sorry explain tier 3 parking reduction park tier 3 specifically because that's the only tier 3 That's the only parking reduction.

It speaks to as part of this I Think the the so the new the section 3.8, right And the the tier 3 parking is really it's a planning a It's a level of parking from the planning side of the development. So the manual is CDOT, but the requirement is planning. So it's just a level of development that would require a certain amount of parking.

Okay. I'll have more questions, but I'll follow up with you later. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Esmira. I'm going to come back to Council Member Johnson, but are there any other questions or comments from Council at this point? Council Member Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I'd like you guys, Council Member Mayfield and Ashmira, that you ask for staff to explain the impact. When we talk about cumulative impact, Ms. Smith, can you explain cumulative impact and the difference in what we're doing now?

So Councilwoman Johnson, I think the way that I understand that question is really to talk about what are the impacts when a development comes in to let's say whether it be by right or whether through a rezoning, but to be able to talk about the traffic impacts. And I would love to be able to have some time to be able to put together some information and follow up with you.

And the reason I ask, I've been bringing this up for at least probably five years or so, and why it's important is because currently, if I'm correct, the number to trigger a traffic impact study is 2,500 trips, unless that's changed. It's lower, yes. 1,500 trips? 1,500. Fifteen hundred or two thousand trips. And that's one petition has to have two thousand trips before we have a traffic impact study. But if you have three petitions next to each other and they each have a thousand, there's no study on how traffic is impacted. So this is happening all throughout the district and traffic just continues to increase, but we are not requiring traffic. A study because it's not triggering that study. So we've talked about it for awhile. So Mr Manager, I think this is important. If this could come before committee sooner than later because you know it's meanwhile traffic is just increasing and increasing and we're we're ignoring this problem. So do we have an idea of how soon that can come to committee?

It has been referred, so we can make sure that this is something that's, as you just said, it's in the queue now.

Okay. Thank you. And speaking of that, I hope that we're looking at a referral tracker because I've probably been referred a while ago. Good. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you. I see Council Member Ajmera has another question. Are there any other questions from those who have not spoken to the motion? Let's go Council Member Watlington and then Council Member Richmond.

Yeah, mine's quick. I just wanted to lift up. You're right. This conversation feels like it's been going on since at least 2019. What is the gap? Mr. Manager.

It is in committee. It got referred to committee and we're going to put it on the top of the list of the committee.

Sure. I know that this isn't the first time staff has worked on it, though. So I just want to understand truthfully, what is the barrier to delivering a response to this cumulative impact? Because if there's something real structural here or legislatively that we need to understand, I'd rather we be clear about that.

Because as I've said, this has gone on for a very long time.

So is there a real structural barrier to be able to adjust such that we can have cumulative impact considered?

And so, manager, is it okay if I take a stab at that question? And so what I think is the opportunity that we have is to better be able to explain the process by which we consider all of the traffic. And I think over time, we have found that through our processes and our procedures, we haven't been explaining all of the background information that goes into the decision-making around that cumulative impact and the impact of the developments that are happening are absolutely considered in the decision-making that happens. And I think being able to convey that more clearly in a way to you all is really where the opportunity presents itself through committee.

Okay, I look forward to hearing that in committee. So it sounds like what's in committee is not a policy question, it's a matter of explanation. What are we working on?

Yeah, I believe that it is really in clarity around explaining the technical components that we have behind the work that we do in a way that is very tangible and relatable to the topics that you all are talking about.

And then will we also understand, once we understand the explanation, the outcome, will we understand what's going to close the gap to the outcome? Because what I think I hear you say is that even though we're seeing 1,500 for each petition before there's a threshold, there's some other mechanism that's looking cumulatively.

Yes.

If that's the case, the outcome feels like there's still an opportunity to improve our traffic and transportation planning because what we're seeing is overcapacity in these particular areas where we're building. Will we also be getting some recommendations of what we can do to make adjustments?

There will be clarity on the way that we're presenting the information, and then we will have a council conversation if there are other changes that we should be making.

So will you be bringing back recommendations? I'm trying to get a sense of what's going into committee because if what we're going to get back is the explanation, we may be able to get that as pre-work before a committee discussion. Sure.

So we can provide you that information.

I'll let you spend the committee discussion on the actual recommendations versus the explanation. Do you follow what I'm saying? Yes.

Yeah, so I'm sorry. No, go ahead. So I think it's important, I don't know if we have it before us, to just go over the referral, what the referral actually does, to make sure that it is addressing the need.

Yes.

We'll take a look at that.

So we'll go back and look.

So is it happening right now or no?

Because if we need to adjust the referral, this would be the time.

I believe that the best course of action, if you're asking for my recommendation, is for us to take a look at that and work with city manager's office to make sure that we're in alignment with what you need and we can provide any of that pre-work via written information for you rather than playing it out right here today because I don't have that information with me today.

So I don't know if that's a question for the clerk. Before we move past this, this is the opportunity to adjust the referral to capture the need that Council Member Johnson has brought up. So if no one has the referral right now, is that something that we can see before we close business today?

Yes. You already have it. I understand, but what I'm saying is that the law. I just want to reflect her questions. Correct. Yes.

Thank you. Okay. I'll work on that.

Council Member Esmiral.

Yes, so since we are talking about fee in lieu, I would like to lift up one specific request that's been pending for almost a decade or longer. That's in District 4, and I know residents, this is right behind that pavilion amphitheater where the neighborhood has lifted up that request because it was between collector and the local street. So I would like to make sure, and I think, Debbie, your team has already looked at that, but there was no funding for it. But now with this fee in lieu, I would like us to make sure, because that request has been pending for many years, and the neighborhood has tried many times trying to get that infrastructure request filled. So I hope we elevate that.

Okay, thank you.

Do you know which one I'm talking about?

I believe I do.

Yeah, right behind that pavilion amphitheater. Council Member Johnson has been advocating for that for a while, and they had reached out all. Harris-Houston Road. Yeah, Harris-Houston. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes. Are there any further questions, any further discussion from Council on Item 7, the motion with regard to streets map and streets manual?

Nope.

Is there a motion with regard to item seven, the proposed changes that are in writing on item seven in our manual book? Is there a motion?

May I ask a clarifying question, Mayor?

Yes.

Because for item 7, it's just receiving public comment on the amendments. Well, so there is not an action.

This is just public comment. You're exactly right. And my little notes here are off. So we will move on to the public hearing. There are no further comments. We're now going to open the public hearing on the general obligation bond referendum to be set for November 3rd, 2026. Madam Clerk, are there any speakers?

Some more. Do we need motion, right, before we open?

One. Matthew Panik. Matthew Panik.

Good evening, Mayor Harrington, Council, Matt Panik. I'm with the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. Tonight, I'm here to express our support for the city bonds that are before you. And I'm not here to speak for one industry or one company, but really all the thousands of businesses and all the residents here in the city of Charlotte. Everyone wants every resident in every neighborhood throughout the city to succeed, to have that opportunity to better themselves and advance themselves. That is the Charlotte that has been the foundation for success for so many residents over the years and the Charlotte that has attracted so many additional residents that have come to our city over the years as well. The bonds before you tonight represent a continued commitment of Charlotte to being responsive to the needs of residents and of creating a world-class city for its residents. The investment in transportation, neighborhoods, and affordable housing builds on prior bonds and is incredibly impactful for residents. Notably, the $125 million for affordable housing is historic in its amount and will be critical in addressing continued housing shortages facing many neighborhoods throughout the city. The bonds essentially allow Charlotte to keep up with the important infrastructure needs that make the city so livable. Connected roads, affordable housing, strong neighborhoods, that's a recipe for a strong city. Brought together, the bonds help the city keep up with the needs of residents as they live their lives, go to work, go to school, to enjoy restaurants and entertainment throughout Charlotte. Simply put, the bonds ensure that quality of life remains high for residents in Charlotte. The alliance has long partnered with the city and community leaders to shepherd the bonds to voter approval. We appreciate your foresight tonight on the bonds and your consideration going forward. Moving forward on the bonds is an important step for residents, your constituents, and is a signal to them that Charlotte continues to invest in meaningful ways in our community. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Panik. Do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

Second. Second.

and a motion to adopt bond orders introduced for $280 million of transportation bonds, $20 million of neighborhood improvement bonds, and $125 million of housing bonds, and adopt a resolution setting the general obligation bond referendum for November 3rd, 2026. Is there a motion?

I vote to adopt B and C. I vote second.

You asked for a motion to close the hearing, so do we need to vote on that separately? I would move to close the hearing and approve B and C.

Since we've got the motion out there, let's just go ahead and vote on closing the hearing, if that's okay. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? All right. Let's move to the motion itself to adopt the bond orders introduced for the $280 million of transportation bonds, $20 million of neighborhood improvement bonds, $125 million of housing bonds, and to adopt a resolution setting the general obligation bond referendum for November 3rd, 2026. Is there a motion? So moved.

Second.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Okay.

Council Member Watkins.

So 16875 a must accuse myself from this bill.

I can't hear.

Okay.

Got it.

Okay. Are there, is there any other discussion? Council member Watlington is recused. Council member as mirror.

Yes. Uh, thanks to the business Alliance for your continued support with the bond. Uh, this is $425 million in our infrastructure. And we often hear during our zoning meetings, Our city is growing and our infrastructure has to keep up with it. So this is a step forward. Appreciate the work of the budget team, Mr. Jones, for helping us with capital investment. So now let's hope that we continue to deliver the projects in a record time. That's all I have. This is about safe roads and safe infrastructure. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Esmir. Are there any other questions or comments about item number eight? Okay, I'll call the question on the vote. All in favor, please raise your hand if the motion is outlined. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay, next on our agenda is the city manager's report in our policy section. We deferred discussion of one, two, three, four, five items from our consent agenda that were pulled out of the consent agenda. I would like to proceed with that discussion now. And the five items were 23, 36, 45, 47, and 48. 23, I believe that was Council Member Johnson.

Yes. I just wanted it pulled out for discussion. Hear more about it. Which one?

Number 23, correct? Yes.

That's the question. I just wanted it pulled out. Can you give us some information about this project?

Sure. This is a great news story. It supports mobility, accessibility, and Vision Zero goals. We're going to be constructing new sidewalk. We're going to be closing some gaps in sidewalk, building curb ramps and pedestrian crossings. And this is along, including along an intersection at one of the city's high injury networks intersections. This crosses between District 4 and District 5. And you may have seen this on the list that CDOT provided in your packet last Thursday. This is one of those projects that has helped them meet their performance metric. Okay.

I just wanted to hear more about it. Okay. Okay, go ahead.

Council Member Masuera-Iris. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank staff for their work on this. Deeply appreciate it. As you know, this council, one of this council's priorities is Vision Zero and reducing traffic fatalities across the city of Charlotte, and particularly with District 5, which has seen an enormous amount of traffic fatalities, and just deeply appreciate that this is being focused and invested in our community, particularly a high-injury network. So thank you all for the work. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Any other questions or comments on item 23?

No motion to approve. Okay.

Is there a motion? Motion to approve.

Okay. Second.

Any further discussion? All right, the motion is to approve the contract in the amount of $661,706.65 to the lowest responsible bidder, Carolina Cajun Concrete Inc. for the W.T. Harris Boulevard and Greer Road intersection and sidewalk project. We're ripe for a vote. All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? Motion passes. Council Member Mayfield, I believe you had items 36, 45, 47, and 48. Correct. And please proceed with 36.

Thank you, Mayor Harrington. So for item 36, which is a request to approve a contract in the amount of $1,203,308.75 to the lowest responsive bidder, what I wanted Well, I reached out to staff because we only received one being so that's not the lowest responsibility. That's the only better. So the first question that I asked was one, why did I go back out for an additional bid? What we have in here in our language is that initially no bids were received. So the question that I asked is what was in our language? and did we do an inquiry to try to identify why there was no bid on it initially, and when we sent it out for a reissue in July, only one bid was received then.

Yes, ma'am. Excuse me. Stormwater did reach out to some contractors that frequently bid on stormwater projects to ask those same kinds of questions that you just asked. And this project requires the protection of the fish habitat through construction. And so because of that, it requires some specialized work. You have to maintain water levels. at a certain height to keep oxygen for the fish. And so because of that, there are few contractors that are interested in performing the work and that can perform the work. The other reason that staff thought perhaps it didn't receive many bids is because there's an abundance of work available right now. And so this specialized work is a little bit less attractive.

And that was just a clarification that I wanted. As we're having to transition based off of federal and state language, when we're putting out bids, making sure that we're creating as many opportunities as possible. But yet, because this needing a specific skill set because of the aquarium safety measures that needed to happen, I just wanted for us to be able to identify that. Move to approve A and B. Second. Second.

Any further discussion? All in favor of approving A and B and agenda item 36, please raise your hand. Any opposed? All right, motion passes. Council Member Mayfield, we have 45.

Actually, my question is for 46, so for 45, move to adopt a resolution authorizing the refund of property tax assessed through the clerical or assessment heiress in the amount of $8,030.50.

So question about 46.

I just moved to approve it.

Second. Any further questions? All right. All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? All right. So 46 carries. 47.

I'm sorry, Mayor. Just to clarify, I believe 46 was approved in room 267. Okay. And it was 45 that was pulled. That's what I thought. So I think 45 is the one we either need questions or a motion.

And then 47.

Yes, ma'am.

So 45, are we set? And then 47 was what we. So we're good on 45? Yes.

You need to vote on it.

You need to vote on, so 46 is not.

We voted on 45.

We voted on 45.

Right, 47 is the one that we are discussing right now.

Right, okay, 47.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Harrington. 47 is the one I asked for discussion. So I wanted to clarify, this is a, Request for my numbers. My apologies. My iPad is doing something a little interesting over here. So item 46, which we just approved, it was asking staff to give, give us another column. because the columns that was initially presented just had the net levied uncollected amount in percent that was collected. I wanted us to have an additional column with the total amount that's been collected up to date to clarify those numbers. So for the minutes, that's why I had pulled item number 46 to make sure that we have an opportunity to have the full clarification. But we did just approve that item for item 47. which I asked to be pulled is that in the public hearing on the Jefferson first union tower district landmark, the specific question that I asked for staff was what is the true impact of deferred taxes? If this is a pool as well as when we take into consideration, the state is having discussions on limiting our taxi taxing authority. in the future and staff was going to check into that because based on this language, if we were to move forward based on the current value, the potential amount of deferred taxes would approximately be $124,525 for the city, $5,440 for the special district, $17,595 for special district three, $209,397 and 50 cents for Mecklenburg County. So that's looking at the estimates based on the county's current appraised value of this property. However, given the April 23rd, 2026 sale of the property, which was for $36,500,000 in the upcoming 2027 countywide property re-evaluations, the potential amounts of deferrable taxes is likely to decrease. But this is a collective conversation of how many properties, when we're having challenges identifying seeing the growth of our property tax base and that is our main source of income i wanted to understand what potentially is the impact yes ma'am and so each of these historic landmark designations is really a case-by-case basis you know the the

balance of preservation and revenue generation and in this instance at the jefferson first union tower it actually is going to be beneficial because the historic landmark designation is part of a redevelopment package it's just one piece of the puzzle this is a tower that has been largely vacant since 2023 and up for sale so there have not been tenants in it and so through this redevelopment the office tower will be converted into housing units a hotel and office space with retail across the street from it and so the historic landmark designation and the um property tax abatement is only for one of the five acres of the redevelopment. So this redevelopment will generate additional property tax revenue for us despite the designation.

So the additional information will be helpful for me since what we're doing is setting the public hearing for September 28th is between now and then it will be helpful to know what they, language is in the contract of what is going to be preserved as historic because council has already been a part of media concerns and community concerns on a building that was designated as historic. The building was so the building was sold again somewhere in those conversations made There was demolition that challenged the history that I believe council members thought they were preserving in their vote. And we do not have language that protects us and say the moment you destroy what was identified as historic, you're going back on the tax rolls. I don't think we've ever had a conversation where we ever go back and look and see if something was designated as historic district or historic building where they had deferred taxes. And then if somebody came along and demolished what was historic, will we go back and find out, okay, now you're back on the tax roll and what's that impact going to be? So because we had an incident earlier in the year where a building that was thought to be a historic building had some major demolition happening to it, it will be helpful to know exactly what is the language that protects and what is the clawback if you destroy what we are trying to preserve.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Any further discussion, Council Member Ejmer?

Yeah. Council Member Mayfield raises a good point about following through. So I do see we have Stuart here, Mr. Gray here from the Historic Landmark Commission Department. Could you speak to, is there any sort of enforcement once the property has been designated as Historic Landmark, and if it gets demolished, What are the implications?

Yes, thank you.

What happens to the property tax that was being deferred?

My name is Stuart Gray. I'm the director of the Historic Landmarks Department with Mecklenburg County, and we serve the city of Charlotte for your preservation needs for individually designated historic properties. State law dictates everything we do. State law indicates, and thank you, Council Member Mayfield, for the questions. State law does anticipate what happens if something is torn down. And there is a clawback for three years of the deferred taxes if a property is, I'm sorry, I said torn down, demolished. If we're talking about the Excelsior Club.

That's not the one I was thinking.

Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. For example, that property was torn down, and it's an exception. But if you weren't talking about that one, then whatever property that was torn down, they are... The landmark designation is removed. The tax office reaches back to them and sends them a bill for the tax deferral for the past three years. And again, that's not a program or not a policy that we or Charlotte have put in. That's just written into the state law.

Thank you, Mr. Gray. We appreciate the work that you do.

Well, thank you.

That's all I have.

Any other questions? Council Member Mayfield.

Thank you, Mayor. So just follow up. If it is not a demolition, if it is a partial removal, or if it is presented during the redevelopment, as we reimagine space, but this facade, anything within, I don't care if it's a plaque, if that is what helped it receive the historic designation and that is removed... that is a different conversation to me than a demolition, because that is what we're trying to preserve. So if that preservation doesn't happen, and if it is there, please just send me what the statute is at some point from where that is protected. And believe me, as you mentioned, we have language for demolition, yet I have not seen the language that protects if something that was identified, if a piece of that, if the main piece that helped to warrant the historic designation is the piece that is removed during the reimagining or redesigning and that's identified, what is the clawbacks? That's the language that I want to clarify. And the Excelsior club is the building that I have in my mind, but we have received emails on a building near uptown where there was a lot of thought of what the designation was on it. And through the resale process, from multiple entities somewhere along the line, what is being built is not under the understanding of what its designation was. So I just want to make sure we have the language to protect the few resources that we have left in our city that help tell the story of Charlotte.

I'll be happy to get you that information and have a discussion if you choose.

Thank you.

Any further discussion? There were a motion to approve to adopt the resolution set in the public.

Yeah. September 28.

Any further discussion? All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? Motion carries. And finally, yes.

Before we proceed item 45, um, I believe we read the language 46. And so if we could just have a motion for item 45 that, encompasses or includes the language under action A and B.

Okay. Is there a motion to approve item 45 A and B as set forth in?

Vote to approve A and B.

Any further discussion? All in favor raise your hand. Any opposed? Okay. Are there any other items, Madam City Attorney, that we're missing?

Mr. Mayor.

So we have now approved all of the items on the consent agenda, including those that were pulled out.

I'm sorry, number 48. 48 that were pulled out.

Is 48 still out there? All right.

And that was me.

Council Member Mayfield.

Thank you, Mayor. Same question as the last. This is to set a public hearing on the, excuse me, Lytle McNinch House Historic Landmark. What we've identified is based on the current. value the potential amount of deferrable taxes will be approximately $5,104 for the city, $9,175 for the county, plus an additional $238 37 for special district one taxes again bringing that information back as well as a snapshot of what is the totality of defer taxes do we have in the city right now because I think it will be helpful for us to actually run. Start running a tab to keep track of where we're not receiving taxes. And if that's creating shortfall for us yet, I will move to approve the, to adopt the resolution setting the public hearing for September 28th.

Second, any further discussion?

All in favor, regime. Any opposed? Motion carries. I think we are now finished with the items that were on the consent agenda, correct?

Correct.

Okay. That takes us to the city manager's report. And in the city manager's report in the policy section, we had postponed earlier discussion of model cities. And Mr. Manager.

If you would proceed. Thank you, Mayor, members of council. As the mayor just mentioned, we postponed this. And at this time, I'd like to defer to the chair of the Public Safety Committee to introduce the Model Cities grant.

Thank you, city manager. This particular topic was referred to, well, this particular topic, it was actually something that arose at the federal government level over the last couple of months. It's an opportunity for cities all throughout the country to potentially apply for a grant that is multifaceted. The umbrella of the focus is on safety, but it's through the entire ecosystem of safety. So not only policing, but also behavioral health. youth opportunities as well as other opportunities around reintroduction back into society after being interfaced with the judicial system. And so the chief, and her team put together a myriad of subject matter experts to work on this effort. I was one that worked on this effort over the summer as well as Assistant City Manager or Deputy City Manager Sean Heath. And we provided an update in the Public Safety Committee for full transparency around what is before us. I'm going to let the chief and her excellent staff walk you through it, but I'll just preface the conversation by saying this is an opportunity to apply for a grant. We are nowhere near the finish line here. We're at step maybe 1.5 or 2 as it relates to a 10-point step process of even... being chosen as one of the final cities and accepting a grant. So lots and lots of steps before we get to any decision criteria. With that, I'm going to hand it over to the Chief. Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Council Member Anderson. And hello again to Mayor and Council. My name is Estella Patterson, Chief of Police for the Charlotte-McBurke Police Department. And with me today is my Business Services Bureau Team Lead, Kelly Highfoster. And both of us are here today to seek your support to take the initial step for applying for a Department of Justice Model Cities Initiatives Grant that we believe will greatly support crime reduction, victim recovery services, youth crime reduction services, and behavioral health. care in Charlotte Mecklenburg. As you are all aware, reducing violent crime is one of my key priorities and top priorities. But in order to do so and to sustain reductions, we have to have a strategy, of course, that incorporates many pieces and many partners. So the model cities initiative grant dollars that we are seeking emphasizes a whole of city, whole of county or whole of system approach. It's not just a crime fighting tool. and it is something that I believe will make our city and our county safer. What we are proposing to do with these grant dollars, if awarded, and there's a big if there, as Council Member Anderson stated, we're at the very, very beginning stages of this, but if we are awarded these grant dollars, we will knit services and agencies together to create and sustain a Charlotte Mecklenburg that thrives. The Model Cities Initiative grant follows a framework that brings a lot of partners together, from city to county, Federal and community partners, partners such as Atrium, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the Safe Alliance, the Umbrella Center, bring us all under to work collaboratively for what's best for our city and county. And for us, this means fewer victims of crime. And if someone is a victim of crime, they get adequate recovery services. Also, too, it's support for our district attorney's office, for more judges, for more advocates. and greater resources for the Sheriff's Office and adult corrections. It's also an opportunity to help come up with something to reduce recidivism through more reentry programs and greater behavioral health resources for both youth and adults. So in the end, with this grant, if we are able to get some dollars, it will, we believe, make our community stronger. We did present this to the Public Safety Committee last week, and now we are seeking your approval or your support to apply for the grant. At this time, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Kelly High Foster, who's just going to give you a little bit more information about the grant, our proposed strategy, and then also to the next steps, and then we'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Questions from council? I know Council Member Mayfield, Council Member Esmiral.

I think she's getting ready to do an actual presentation.

Yes, just a few slides. We haven't gotten to the presentation yet.

So good evening. My name is Kelly. Hi, Foster. And I'm going to take you through the MCI Model Cities Initiative. We're going to review the solicitation, the proposal strategy, and the framework by which we will apply. So for the Model City Initiative, the Department of Justice has approximately $300 million to be available nationwide, but will only choose two to four cities. to give the funding to. This award will be structured as a cooperative agreement rather than a traditional grant, and that means the Department of Justice through the COPS Office, the Office of Justice Program, and the Office of Violence Against Women will be a part of the grant oversight. This is a three-year grant, and we are in phase one of the application, which is due September 1st. Cities are invited. will be invited to advance to phase two. And that will be a presentation process. And we don't know at this time whether they will come here or the cities that are chosen will have to go there to do their presentations. But we should know whether we would be in that group of cities by the end of the calendar year this year. To make a successful MCI proposal, Um, we'll begin with a direct incredible connection to crime reduction. That's the basis of the initiative itself. The department of justice, like the chief said, is looking for a whole of the community approach. Um, public safety is a shared responsibility where we create one coordinated regional ecosystem, technology, modernization, and data governance are also critical to this proposal. All projects will reinforce one theory of change. Our theory of change is that violent crime declines when the region rapidly identifies the people, places, networks, and conditions driving violence. As we build our proposal, we are looking at sustainability. We're using model cities funding as an accelerator, not as a permanent funding source. The goal of the, the goal is to build capabilities, partnerships, infrastructure, and an operating models that Charlotte Mecklenburg can sustain long after the federal award wins. And lastly, there are seven goals that they require that we meet here. We've made a presentation, that really shows a visual connection with the public safety ecosystem. The framework starts with the understanding that we cannot do this alone. Safer communities require integrated action across law enforcement, behavioral health, victim services, corrections, technology, youth services, workforce development, and community partners. The model connects the work across a continuum, detecting threats, analyzing information, intervening effectively, and stabilizing individuals and families, supporting reintegration and creating the conditions for people and the neighborhoods to thrive. We will use technology as a and data as a connective tissue. Regional data sharing, real time intelligence, analytics, and modernized public safety technology help our partners develop a more complete picture of threats, needs, interventions, and outcomes. This is what makes Charlotte Mecklenburg competitive. The region already has many of the necessary partners, capabilities, and initiatives. The MCI opportunity will allow us to connect, accelerate, and scale them. While the whole of the city approach describes how the system works at a macro level, the micro level view asks what happens to an individual victim or alleged offender as they move through the system. At the macro level, MCI builds a coordinated public safety ecosystem. At the micro level, it ensures that that ecosystem works for the individual, protecting the victim, holding the offender appropriately accountable, addressing the conditions that contribute to the future violence, and creating a pathway towards recovery and stability. Our goal is not simply to respond to an incident. Prevention, crisis stabilization, investigation, treatment, supervision, housing, employment, and other services create multiple opportunities to interrupt future violence.

So as stated before, in order to move forward, to take these initial steps, we will need support from all the individuals listed on this list here, beginning with the mayor, from the manager to our prosecutors, our U.S. Attorney's Office, our district attorney. Our U.S. Attorney, I believe, is in the audience with us today. Our Sheriff, our City Council, Director of Health and Human Services, and then also Adult Corrections and Community Partners. So far, we've been successful in speaking and meeting with all these entities, and we feel comfortable that we can move forward in at least doing the initial steps of this grant. And at this time, we will open up to any questions you may have of us.

Thank you, chief Patterson. I've got three council members who have asked to, uh, to be now for starting with council member Mayfield.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Excuse me, chief and team. Couple of questions. What's the financial expectation of the city at, since this is only a three year grant. So after that, what happens?

Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. So the city would have to assume any positions that we are asking for. If we were able to award those, we are asking for a few positions. for our crime gun unit and also for our Jade and our gang units. So the city would be responsible for continuing those positions after the grant funding runs out.

So it will be helpful to know exactly what that cost is. We just passed our budget. So you're talking about us having to identify additional staff that will not be paid for through this grant. I also want to make sure that my colleagues understand that A concern that I have is, one, that the details may determine whether this initiative functions primarily as a targeted crime reduction grant or honestly becomes a major federal accelerator for local surveillance infrastructure. So when we look at what was just mentioned as far as the fact that the initiative supports a wide range of public safety activities. I want us to be very cognizant that the city selected for funding will be expected to demonstrate measurable reductions in crime while serving as so-called national models. How do we measure identify measurable reductions. So let's think about for-profit prisons. They're only as successful as the bodies that's in them. So when we're talking about potentially accepting a grant, which is interesting that 300 million is the new magic number that keeps throwing around, but if we're talking about this 300 million that may be available in awards, but it's only expected for two to four jurisdictions, I have some concerns as far as the expectations of the fact that we will be turning our local law enforcement over to federal agencies because there will be a lot more scrutiny when we look at the cities that will be selected for this and that scrutiny will be under federal guidelines versus We have put a lot of energy and I feel like we potentially be setting ourselves up with being very contradictory to say that we care about our local community and we're trying to create a safe neighborhood and then we're bringing in federal level engagement utilizing of which the grant itself shows the opportunity of advanced artificial intelligence access how they plan to invest in technology. What they say is strengthening behavioral services for a three year period that we're looking at a longterm impact on. And I'm very concerned about what that could mean for our local community as far as enforcement and militarizing our police on a federal level. and how that will be utilized, how that can be used against our residents and our citizens. So I did want to share the concerns that I have mayor for that. I am not going to support us moving forward with this, but I do want to make sure that we have some very transparent conversations around what it potentially can be and what it actually looks like, especially when this is a part of the alleged big, beautiful bill. I have a lot of concerns of how that impacts our majority minority community that we have worked hard to become a city for all and how that could create an environment where we are not a city for all. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Mayfield. And again, just for understanding, this is a preview item held over from our earlier session. This is the first time it's come before us. Anticipate that it will come back before us, but this is a preview. I have Council Member Ajamira.

Thank you, Mayor Harrington. So, Chief, as you know, I supported this item at the committee level because we should always look for resources to keep our community safe. But since then, I have received a number of calls from various community organizations, especially from immigrant and refugee community concerned about this, as well as I read about what are the implications of this dollars in NPR as well as Guardian about how these dollars are attached with the federal immigration enforcement. So if you could just help me understand. So I have a number of questions which I'm going to take my time asking because I do want the community to know that we are doing our due diligence. So first, do we have to certify compliance with immigration enforcement if we were to be awarded this grant? And precisely, what would that require CMPD to do?

Okay, yes, ma'am. And I'm asking Ms. Battle to come down just to talk from the legal perspective. But I will state as the chief of this city that we would not consent or we would not accept award dollars that is inconsistent with our values of this city. As a police department, we don't enforce immigration laws. That would be our stance and that would be our position because that's what it currently is right now. But I'm going to ask Ms. Battle, she'll come forth just to talk about our compliance or what this grant may require as it pertains to ICE.

Good evening. Again, Jessica Battle with the City Attorney's Office. The grant application process would require the mayor or a senior official from the City of Charlotte to sign certain certifications as part of the grant process. That certification document does reference several federal statutes. that the city would have to comply with. Those statutes on their face do not create any affirmative duty on the law enforcement agency or the city to communicate or share information with immigration. The certification document that would need to be signed also does not create any affirmative duty on the city of Charlotte or the applying law enforcement agency to have any affirmative duty to share information with ICE or federal immigration entities. If CPD were to be awarded the grant, when those grant documents are presented to CPD, they would be thoroughly reviewed by the city attorney's office and any other affected city departments to see what, if any, Clauses existed about cooperation with the federal government and cooperation with ICE specifically. And at that point, between this council and the chief of police and the collaborative discussions like this, it will be determined whether or not CPD and the city would actually accept the grant based on any clauses related to immigration and the city's overall goals and objectives.

Thank you, Attorney Battle, for that clarification. Just wanted to follow up on that. So before any application proceeds, will council receive the complete certification including conditions and criteria and proposed commitments in writing before we publicly vote?

Yes, the certification document is a one page document with several clauses on it that would certainly be shared with this council before signing. And again, the signer being the mayor or another senior official at his designation, but there will be full disclosure and discussion of each of those clauses. And we do have line by line summaries of each and every federal statute reference in that document.

I appreciate that. And I add to, I'm sorry, Councilman, and we would add to our partners as well because we would not enter in this by ourselves. So we would have all our county partners, our community partners as well, bringing them to the table so they know all the provisions that are part of this grant.

Thank you. I always appreciate your collaborative leadership, Chief Patterson. So one more. So I noticed in some of this, as I was reading through and doing some research on this, it talked about potential financial exposure under the provision requiring reimbursement for future federal law enforcement intervention. Could you speak to that? And who decides when the obligation is triggered?

so we won't know what the terms and conditions are until we actually receive an award and so that would outline what you know is expected and right now all we know is exactly what you're reading there and there really is no more information at this point in time so we would have to wait until we received an award and then it would outline what we were required to do so so do

Follow up on that. If we were to be one of the cities that receives the award, would that come back to council with all the criteria and terms and conditions before we say yes?

Yes. We would have to come back to council. It would go, like Ms. Battle said, through the city attorney's office because it is a contract. And then it would go through council to accept the award or not. Okay, that's fair. And our partners.

So while, if we can also look at, in addition to financial exposure, I would also like us to also look into funding concerning homelessness and mental health treatment or public space enforcement that we would be liable for in terms of enforcing. that could be part of the due diligence if we were to be awarded this grant. Council Member Ajmera.

Yes. If I may add another statement about the financial obligations, there is a clause in the grant application that if there were to be a, quote, surge in violence, in the city of Charlotte that required deployment of federal resources, the city of Charlotte would be, or excuse me, the grantee and any associated sub-grantees would be responsible for reimbursement for the cost of that federal deployment in the city.

So that's in the application right now?

Yes.

Okay, so that is something concerning to me, because we do not know what that exposure is. If we can put that exposure in numbers, if you're receiving $300 million, but if our exposure is $700, $800, or $1 billion, we need to be talking about that now. If you have a follow-up, sure.

We would not have a number at this time. If federal resources were to be deployed to this city, it would be calculated based on whatever calculations that the particular federal agency uses, similar to if the city of, excuse me, if CMPD has to use resources for certain events and where we charge for the resources of officers that need to be deployed in a sort of emergency situation caused by a private business, for example. the city has calculations for the cost of that resource. The federal government has the same. We would not know the exact cost unless and until federal resources were actually deployed here. And then we sort of get an invoicing of the costs of that deployment.

I get that because it depends on number of days, number of troops that are involved, right? All of that. But I think we should have some sort of understanding going into this before we even apply. what that looks like because some cities have gotten large invoices. So lastly, just has the city attorney, Andrea, if you have independently reviewed some of these conditions and their compatibility with our existing city policies?

I have reviewed them. I've obviously had staff engaged in the matter. and we will continue to explore it based upon the additional concerns that Councilor Ayers and I.

Okay, I have a couple of questions. Hold on. So... Chief, I appreciate you saying that we will not compromise on our values, and one of our values is that we value the trust in our communities. regardless of where they come from and what their immigration status might be. Because if someone, when victim is afraid to call 911 or a witness is not willing to testify because they are afraid of CMPD collaborating with federal immigration enforcement, then we are losing that trust. And that makes all of us unsafe. I appreciate you saying that we will not compromise on our values. So the question remains about our financial exposure. I think we need some more clarity on that. I certainly appreciate and support all the grants that are available to keep our communities safe. But a line that I cannot cross is any collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. And that's all I have.

Thank you. Council Member Ejmer, for the council, I would say that we work with our federal partners right now, each in our separate zones. So we, as a police department, we enforce the law. We don't enforce immigration. We don't enforce administrative warrants and those kinds of things. So we have no intentions of deviating from that. We will remain in our lane. where we enforce the law and any criminal action that occurs. Council Member Watlington.

Just one last comment, if I may, because I appreciate you saying that, but today, this morning, NPR released an article that stated that this funding was specifically tied to federal immigration enforcement, Guardian as well. So I think we just want to double check. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Watlington.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Following up on that, I'm actually looking at the NLC website that is speaking to this particular initiative. And there are a couple of things that jump out at me. The first one being that exactly like was just mentioned, It says here that finally local government should carefully review all eligibility requirements and certifications. The solicitation includes provisions related to federal immigration information sharing requirements and identify certain activities that are not eligible for funding. So I would like to understand very, very clearly what specifically that means because it does raise concern and it's not something that I will be prepared to support at this time. The other piece that stuck out to me about this particular initiative is that it says DOJ will administer the initiative through cooperative agreements rather than traditional grants. This structure allows DOJ to maintain a more active role in project planning, implementation, and oversight throughout the award period. Communities should be prepared for a higher level of federal engagement than they may experience under other grant programs. So both of those things for me are frankly red flags. So I would really want to understand much more specifically what has been reviewed. I know both the attorneys have mentioned that they reviewed it and that nothing on its face is in conflict. I'd like to see that line by line because what I'm reading here is extremely concerning for me. I'd also like to understand... What specifically we would be using this or hoping to use this funding for if we're looking at $300 million and two to four million or two to four cities being awarded essentially 75 to $150 million. And if what we're able to purchase, if you will, or what's eligible for support is hiring and retention, purchase or lease of equipment, tools, or technology, training and professional development, facility costs, mental health and substance use services, reentry, transitional support, and recidivism reduction programs and services, victim services, and youth crime prevention and intervention services. I'd like to see what it is specifically that we would be asking for to the tune of 75 to 150 million before I could be in position to support anything. I would want to see what we have currently, particularly as it relates to technology. Is it doing the job? And what additional investment would actually get us? Because I've got tremendous concern in regards to how this enables the acceleration of artificial intelligence systems, et cetera, et cetera, I would want to know specifically how it's used, especially given that the federal government would then be much more involved in the implementation and oversight. Where I sit right now, I'm not interested in supporting this. It feels far more risky than what we know at this point, just given the track record, frankly, of this administration, respectfully. It feels like we are opening Pandora's box, but... I know we're not voting today, so certainly I remain open to additional information, but there's a lot here that I would need to be a lot more comfortable with.

Sure, and thank you for that, Dr. Wallington. And so we do have a listing of items that we are asking in meeting with all our partners to be able to put this whole system together. So we're happy to get a listing of that as we're still working through those final details. We just have a deadline of September 1st, and so we wanted to bring it before you, but we will certainly get that list to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Watlington. Now we have Council Member Masuera Arias.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. And thank you, Council Member Anderson, for all your work to bring this forward to Council. I want to thank you, Chief, for your unwavering commitment to reduce crime in our city. I really appreciate it. and I support pursuing resources that generally make Charlotte safe. But I do have some concerns and hesitation, particularly when in the DOJ website under the Office of Public Affairs in the press release, this grant is titled Making America Safe Again. And I want to talk briefly about just I have a question. In the presentation and in the grant, are Memphis and Washington DC stated as models for this initiative?

They are. They are. However, they are not receiving funding. Memphis is not receiving funding for this.

They're not receiving funding. Thank you so much. I only bring this up to my colleagues because the type of federal local policing this program seeks to replicate has already produced serious consequences. In Memphis, four people were killed in officer-involved encounters connected to the Memphis Safe Task Force within approximately two months. One was Tyreen Johnson, a 24-year-old father who worked in his family's construction business. Another was Jonah Nill, a 25-year-old reportedly experiencing a mental health crisis when he was killed during an encounter involving a Homeland Security agent. The individual circumstances remain subject to investigation, but for people losing their lives, I don't think can be treated as an administrative detail for a grant. And then national, in Washington, retired Army Captain Anna King was detained by guard members outside her own home. Her attorneys allege she was assaulted while exercising her free speech rights, and authorities have offered a different account regarding an earlier encounter. I also want to talk about last year. Operation Charlotte's Web lasted only a matter of days, but its specs were immediate. Approximately 370 people were arrested in the Charlotte area over five days. Children missed school because their parents feared family separation. Workers stayed home. Families avoided grocery stores, medical appointments, and public spaces. And heavily armed federal agents operated in our neighborhoods and used unmasked vehicles. Now, I understand This is a grant. Memphis doesn't have the funding yet. But it's a model, a pattern we're seeing when federal law enforcement agents are in our cities. East Charlotte small businesses were also harmed. Businesses reported losing an average of approximately $2,500 per day. Some reported losses as high as $12,000. And nearly half of the surveyed businesses closed for at least three days. CMPD has reportedly assured residents that it does not participate in planning or executing ICE or CBP operations. Thank you, Chief Patterson and the divisions in East Charlotte, Eastway, Independence, Sacred Grove for your commitment during the operation to ensure our immigrant communities were safe. However, after doing some research, the Model Cities solicitation prioritizes supporting law enforcement operations, including immigration enforcement. contains conditions involving DHS access, requires honoring certain DHS requests and providing requested notice. So my questions in regards to that, can you guarantee in writing that CMPD personnel, facilities, databases, surveillance technology, intelligence, and other resources will never be used to support immigration enforcement through this agreement?

I would tell you that under our current law where we are not compelled... to do that. We are not doing it and we won't do that.

If DOJ directs Charlotte to provide assistance that conflicts with CMPD's current policy, can Charlotte refuse without losing funding or being required to repay it?

That is what we need clarification on. I don't know that we have the direct answer to that just yet. We are asking those questions of the DOJ so that we can know better what that means.

Thank you. And we just spoke about this briefly. The solicitation says a participating city could be required to reimburse the federal government, we just spoke about this, for a future intervention following an increase in violent crime or quote unquote public disorder. That to me raises several unanswered questions, particularly who defines quote unquote public disorder. Could it include demonstrations, civil rights protests, or opposition to federal activity? Who decides when federal intervention is necessary? Who determines what personnel resources are deployed? Is there a maximum amount to be required to repay and Charlotte taxpayers who just recently saw an increase in their property taxes be charged for an intervention? The city did not request and does not support. And so I and then we. You all just mentioned we still have no knowledge of terms and conditions until awarding, which seems like, and now I'm talking to my colleagues, a pattern we're running into with signing agreements that we don't know what we're walking into re I-77. And I just don't think we as a city who is welcoming to immigrants and people from different backgrounds should sign a blank check for a future federal operation whose trigger scope and cost have not been defined um this is not a traditional federal grant as the press release has mentioned as npr the guardian and other news agencies have reported on it is a cooperative agreement that gives doj substantial involvement in charlotte's implementation plan the budget the selection of partners, program milestones, potential direction over implementation, and before any application submitted, and Chief, please correct me if I'm wrong, we counsel would receive a complete proposed application, every letter of support or proposed commitment, and a written legal analysis explaining every obligation Charlotte would accept.

We would prepare information to give to you related to the grant itself, what information we have about some of the questions you posed, and what we will or not accept. Because at the end of the day, if Charlotte were to be awarded this grant and it laid out all these stipulations like you stated, like Dr. Walton stated, the council member Mayfield stated, and we were not in agreement with that, we would not accept these funds. And I have said that repeatedly to our partners and everyone else. We don't have all those answers, unfortunately. We're seeking those answers. I am clear that we would not accept a grant that goes against what we as a city and a county feel are our values.

I appreciate that. Thank you. So to my colleagues, I want us, the Queen City, to have the resources needed to prevent violence and protect our residents. We can invest in youth intervention, victim services, housing, which we will be meeting tomorrow to talk about our housing trust fund policy. And accountable community policing, we can make those investments, but I believe we can make them without giving the federal government undefined authority over our residents. And Charlotte has already experienced what happens when a federal surge enters our community. Memphis and Washington provide those additional warnings about how federalized and militarized operations can escalate. And Charlotte should not have to choose between federal dollars and the rights, safety, dignity, and trust of our residents. And so unless we get clear, written, and legal abiding answers regarding immigration enforcement, federal control, National Guard deployment, information sharing, civil rights protections, financial liability, and Charlotte's ability to withdraw without penalty, I cannot support moving forward with this application. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Ms. Vera-Arias. Again, this is a first read of this or a first preview of this. I want to come to Council Member Owens next.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate you. I just want to speak for my colleagues who were not at the safety committee meeting. I did elevate some concerns that I had that I was I was graced with Chair Anderson's good discretion in letting me ask a couple of questions even though I'm not on that committee. And the response of my residents with respect to the questions that I put into the room is why I have some confidence bringing these here before you. One of the comments that I made during the initial presentation to the safety committee was around my concern that there seems to be a lot of energy around data collection and the use of data. And we've already seen through a number of really unfortunate misuses of flock data, misuses of systems that exist that store our comings and goings around our cities. I wanted to raise that into the room because while I am very supportive of a number of the elements of these seven items that have been listed for us that are supposed to be the hallmarks of what would be part of your plan, I am unsupportive of a continued collection of data just fairly blindly against all of our citizens and the access that that data provides to either federal law enforcement or as has been shown with CMPD and other officers misuse of that data that gives me great pause. And so I did elevate that into the room in addition to the ICE concerns that have already been raised by my colleagues. I would simply say on this point that one of the things that gave me the most pause from the presentation was any descriptions of the ability, I believe this is a very tiny slide, but I believe it says in here to predict crime. And I just want to be very clear that I understand what we mean by that and what we are doing with the data that we would be getting in addition to what we already have that would be in furtherance of predicting crime. Can you speak to that element and how much of your grant application would involve predicting crime as opposed to some of the things, like I've been told the Katie Blessing Center might get more money for mental health. That obviously is a net good, but help me understand your percentages.

Sure, and we would ask for probably a minimal amount for predictive analysis kinds of things. What we do is with crime is we gather data about where it's occurring, where the hotspots are located, and then we know where to effectively deploy our resources, similar like to the corridors of opportunity. So that is what we do primarily is data collection, and we're asking to be able to expand that so that we can have more analysts who are looking at that data and being able to determine where the crime is occurring and where we should have our resources. For instance, we're asking for more analysts for our crime gun unit, also for our rapid DNA unit. Again, these are just people who are going to process information and help us to understand where crime is. We have not had any discussions, I don't believe, and Kelly can help me out, of any devices that are just like a predictive analysis kind of thing. I remember very clearly having something like that in 2010 under Chief Monroe, and we have kind of moved away from that now. It's more just about data collection and knowing where to put our resources effectively.

Thank you, Chief. If I can continue, I've received some information from, again, some of my constituents who have been very concerned about the use of flock cameras, particularly an expansion of the network of cameras that would exist in Charlotte. And they've cited for me, and I have not done my own research on this, so my apologies if this seems off. It seems to be well supported in some of the journalism that I've been handed. But the experience in Atlanta, where they've got 28,000 integrated cameras, a number of the headlines that I've been provided suggest that that has not improved the city's crime clearance rates. Could you speak to your thoughts on that, if you have any? Or if not, we can comment later.

As it pertains to flock cameras, so we don't own any flock cameras at CMPD. We have access to the data, but we do not own any flock cameras. My experience has been with cameras, they do well for a city. They do well for crime reduction because that's more eyes and ears in various places. And that's why we have been asking with our FUSIS or our Connect Charlotte to have more cameras connected. I think we have examples where we have solved crime as a result of having those cameras in place. We do not have flat cameras for a reason, but having access to that data does help us to determine where crime is occurring and who's responsible for that crime, and we can put the pieces together.

So if this grant were awarded, would there be an expansion in your mind of our ALPR technology?

We would probably use Summit for it because there is value in our LPRs, but we are wanting to use specifically for our evidence management system to expand it, for our camera trailers so that we can do speed enforcement, our consolidated CAD, which is with our fire department. That is something they have asked for. That's the technology that we're seeking with these dollars. Also to evidence sharing platforms so that we can move cases along with the district attorney's office and with our other law enforcement partners. These are some of the areas we want to make the investments in the technology. Also to our cyber crime unit, our internet platform, because we have so much data that's always coming in from phones as they store more information. We need to be able, when we seize that as evidence, to be able to get that information. So these are things that we have in place. We want to expand them as our city is growing. Resources are moving faster. And the fact that we can't keep up with it as it is. In this grant, if we were awarded dollars, we'd want to use them in those areas of technology. And there's others as well. I don't know if Kelly wants to chime in, but these are the main ones that I've noted.

With respect, Chief, and I really don't want to substitute my judgment for yours, I'll simply say that I'm elevating the concerns of our citizens who feel as though there are a lot of potential downfalls to an increased reliance, particularly around any sort of predictive analytics, particularly around the retention of otherwise law-abiding citizens' comings and goings and the ability of folks who do not need to have access to that data to continue to access it. So I would not be in favor of anything that would increase that spend on technology. Some of the other aspects, particularly around mental health, if you were to advance a mental health program, I would be very hard-pressed to say that I would not delight in having 75 million or $150 million to put into mental health and some of the other aspects of quality community policing. I'll end simply by saying that one of my concerns with this, and I tried to articulate this earlier, but I hear you say that you wouldn't accept it. But acceptance of this grant feels to me that it would put the potential for a real target on Charlotte if we were to decide later on not to accept it after applying. I fear that that would make us appear to be a scoff law of violent crime prevention strategies. And that is nothing could be further from the truth. None of us wants to see an increase in violent crime. And all of us want to enable you to do that. My concern, though, is that enabling you to seek this grant, that we set ourselves up for some tentacles that we're just not fully appreciative of. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we can get to a better spot on this. But thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Owens. Thank you, Council Member Owens. Council Member Driggs, and then Council Member Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. It's interesting to me that this conversation is actually quite different from the one we had in committee. My initial impression was, wow, you know, an opportunity to make a huge investment in safety at no cost to local taxpayers sounds great. there are strings attached in the way they present it. So, Chief, I guess what I would say to you is I still hope that we can get the benefit of an improvement in safety at no cost to local taxpayers, but I think what you're hearing here is that we have our strings, too. And so... The question to you then as you listen to what you're being told is, do you remain confident that you can uphold the values of Charlotte and push back against interference in our conduct of our affairs if we accept this money? So I hope that we won't kill this now. I hope that we will continue to explore this and that we will potentially get the benefit, if successful, which is not assured, but that we will hopefully get the benefit of investments that really further your purpose and align with what we want. And so for now, I guess I would just say to you, I hope what you've taken away from this is the fact that you need to look harder at what they expect to get out of this. I would express a personal concern that this gets political, given that it's coming from the federal government, and so wouldn't want us to get drawn into any sort of... representation of this grant and of the partners in this grant by anybody at the federal level. I do have one question about the funding thing. Given the nature of the investments that are allowed here, assuming we got this, is it possible that we could make substantial investments in in capital goods, technology and things like that, during the three years, and then actually have a reduced rate, a reduced need for additional funding after the three years, just to sustain those operations. So if there is a way, if this is something we want to do, can be kind of front-loaded in such a way that the need that we have doesn't have to equal the amount of the grant, but that we could continue everything that the grant funded at a lower continuing operating cost. So I'd be interested to know the answer to that, because there is definitely a concern about the budget impact in year four.

Sure, and that is fair. Thank you for that. I would say that oftentimes we find that the startup of something is more substantial, more expensive than to maintain it. So that would be something we would look at. And I do want to just address your first point, which I have to say I'm deeply appreciative of all the concerns that have been expressed, everything that each council member has brought to light. These are things that will weigh on us, and I want to make sure that we are being responsible with any decisions that we make. But I just stand firm on my position that I would not put our city in jeopardy or our county, and that we would bring everything to you in writing as we are able to really get these answers out And if we are not in agreement with it, we would not move forward.

And I want to tell you personally that I would be very inclined to back you up on the outcome. We've just heard some things here that do require further thought. Thank you. Yes, sir. Council Member Johnson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, when a person shows you who they are the first time, you have to believe them. So we know that a Trump bill that says make cities great again, what that

Make America say it again.

Yeah, what that entails. And then Todd Blanch is the Attorney General. I mean, the grant specifically, or it says that we have to comply with different federal regulations. One of the things the city attorney said, there's no affirmative duty to do what? To report to, where is she? To report to ICE, is that it?

There's no affirmative duty or obligation for the city to share information with ICE or federal immigration based on the application or acceptance of the grant.

Is there a responsive duty?

I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

Is there a responsive duty? There's no affirmative duty, but do we know if there's any duty to report the information?

So as part of these federal grants, there could be clauses that state if requested, CMPD of the City of Charlotte would have to cooperate with federal immigration entities There's no details on what that cooperation looks like. As the application is drafted currently, the city would not have to change any of its current policies regarding immigration and ICE that we currently have in place. What that means is that right now, we do not have any city policies that require employees to violate federal law, and we could keep that the same.

Thank you. My colleagues have made some great points. I agree with Councilmember Owens. If we There's only two or four cities in the whole nation that are gonna be awarded this. If we get this grant and then rescind, again, right, or rescind, that's going to be problematic. And I think we as a council have to learn lessons from some of the decisions we've already made without enough information. Let's think data centers. I have a 2.5 million square foot data center in the university area because we made a decision without enough information. I-77, we're looking at a $64 million penalty because we have information, we listen to our constituents, and it's a problem when we do that. We've received hundreds of emails just since we've been sitting here tonight. So I think that we have learned a lesson, and I won't say Bank of America, where it's listed as one of the worst economic development deals in 2024, where we made the decision without details. So council, we have to learn from our past mistakes. And so I won't be supporting this. It seems like we have six council members that are prepared today not to move forward. So, Mr. Manager, I would like to make a motion or no, I won't do it. Never mind.

Sorry.

I think he got it. Okay. All right. I think that we I'll wait.

We've got two more council members who asked to be heard. Seriously, obviously serious questions being raised. This is a preview. We'll see where this goes from here. But Council Member Johnson, are you good?

I just, again, those three, we have to think about the decisions we've already made and how this applies, how we move forward. Mr. Manager, I really, really would like to change the culture where we're not getting the information. We have the answers to our questions before it's presented to Council. Thank you.

Council Member Graham.

When is it coming back to council? When is this coming back to council?

It's not on a agenda.

Council Member Graham. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think Council Member Drakes is right. This conversation is different from the committee meeting because now we have details that we didn't have two weeks ago. It is called research that we were not able to do when we started the the presentation before. Chief Patterson, this is not about you. It's not about trust and confidence in you. It's trust and confidence with our federal partners. Let's be blunt about it, right? And once upon a time, cities and states would roll over backwards to do business with the federal government because they trust the partner. They had confidence in the partner. they had confidence that is a relationship built on trust and confidence what you're hearing today is there's still confidence that they will keep their word that they will do what they're certainly going to do they'll just make it up as they go along and so i think the questions that's been asked tonight is legitimate for sure the research my colleagues have done and I supported it in the committee. And as soon as I got to my car, someone called me and said, um, proceed with caution, read the details and, and sent me information. And so I kind of, kind of got their initial presentation. All of it is good. Council member Walton is pretty similar to the continuing wishing him a care. We had a year, a year ago, right? Where we talk about all the agencies working together, all the departments, what's the city's responsibility. the county's responsibility, mental health, substance abuse, all good things. And if the federal government wants to give us $300 million to execute it, fine. Can we trust them?

Valid question. Council Member Graham, thank you for that perspective.

So I... Don't know if you can answer maybe 80 questions by September 1st.

Your large task. I don't know.

All very legitimate. And some you can't because you got the policy and then you got the politics. And I'm letting you know that there's just no trust. Duly noted.

Thank you, sir. Council Member Graham, are you done? Council Member Anderson.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. And Chief and team, thank you for the presentation. And colleagues, thank you for some really, really great, robust questions that I think are really important and they all deserve full answers. I think the task of what Chief has before her in trying to answer 80 questions is, She might be able to answer a percentage of them now, but quite frankly, probably until there's an advancement of a next round in the grant where there's additional details. You may or may not, I don't want to speak for you, but you may or may not have that information around what would be the real stickiness to what are the affirmative duties, right? I'll leave that in your court to figure out what you can answer and what you can't answer. I will say that some of these anticipatory questions regarding affirmative duty and how we would take care of these things if we were advanced, et cetera, is sort of a mixed bucket between sustained sources, so actually FTEs and sources that we'd have to take on after a three year window and then some accelerating opportunities to invest in spaces where we might not have capital in our budget or might not want to put that burden on taxpayers. And certainly you have that in the mix that you are putting forward. All of the concerns around ICE I think are extremely valid but We did have an event in our community just a short while ago, and we did stand true to what the chief said in terms of abiding by the law, but making sure that if it's not within our purview, we don't participate in those activities. There are other entities that do that, and I think I commend CMPD for executing themselves very well during that small window of time, but very, very difficult period of time within our city. We always want to be a welcoming city and protect our immigrant community who just make us more beautiful and diverse overall and a better city. The last portion I'll say is just sort of connected to this technology piece. that we've talked about because just a short while ago, we approved red light cameras that are going to track vehicles and other things that come within its purview. And we have 621 cameras at intersections all throughout the city of Charlotte. And when something arises, like the event that happened last week in Dilworth, those cameras were tapped into to try and very quickly find an assailant. And so I think that I bring that up to say that I think our stance on technology and how we want to leverage technology in terms of how we advance policy and accelerate certain things like crime enforcement or reduction or even in other areas outside of Public safety is something that I think needs to be more pronounced and not just simply at one one-off conversation where technology is a critical piece of how the answer gets solved, but rather take a step back and take a 5,000 step foot view of how the city of Charlotte wants to embrace technology to advance ourselves in these spaces as others as we continue to grow and celebrate the first year of the Pearl and our innovation hub and the thousands of doctors and med tech and health tech folks who come to the city of Charlotte. and advancing the tech innovation hub that's going to go along North Tryon and connect to UNCC's R1 research status. There will be industries that are tangential to education and other things that technology will grow and advance here and effectively become incubators. And so we might want to have a position, city manager, on how we would like to interface with technology and the advancement, just given how quickly it is advancing before us. So that's all I have, Mayor. Thank you.

I think everyone who has asked to be heard has been heard. Totally robust discussion with lots of very good questions. I'm not inclined to do a second round because I think we've got the sense that they are very serious questions. to be answered. I look forward to getting answers from the chief. This is not scheduled for an, it's not an agenda item. We know that there's a deadline for the application and I think council will have to consider how to, how to move forward one way or another with that.

I have a question for the manager, manager Jones. This is 22 days out. I believe from the questions that have been asked around this council that the At minimum, six of us have shared very clear concerns. I do not think there is support for staff to continue using staff resources to even try to investigate this grant. We have just gone through this and we are having a conversation where council supported our representative to go say yes for discussion to get more information. We are now looking at 60 plus million dollars going back to 2018 because we said yes that we would listen to the potential of a partnership. If it needs to be in the form of a vote so that it's very clear and or we need to identify a date, a deadline date prior to 22 days from now since this application is due September 1 where all 80 plus questions are going to be answered in full for council to have time to have a real discussion and before any more time is put towards this grant application. But that falls within your wheelhouse as the manager.

Thank you, Councilman Mayfield. What I would ask, and it's very clear what the council's position is, the chief has done a great job with her team talking to different entities within our community, concepts like trying to fund a non-congregate shelter, many things that Council Member Owens talked about, things that are along the mental health spectrum also. So I have a strong sense of where the council's position is. I would just like to give the chief and her team an opportunity to have conversations with some of the partners that she has talked to up to this point, if that's fair.

That's fair.

Okay. Any further comments or questions on this? Last word from Council Member Ashbira. Hopefully, let's be conscious of the time.

I know, Chief, you said a lot of the terms and conditions are not something that we know. So just knowing that we have financial exposure, I think that should be a valid reason for us to not pursue this further. And I agree with Council Member Mayfield, not invest more time in our staff's resources in this opportunity, because I think you hear from at least the majority that we are not excited about this opportunity. That's all I have. Okay.

The rest of the agenda.

So from manager's report. So we're finished with the manager's report. Okay. So we go to the business.

Now we'll move to the business section of our agenda. Our first business item is for authorization of 2026 stormwater revenue construction period financing. Are there any speakers on this issue?

No, sir. Okay.

For item 10, this is item 10, is there a motion to adopt a bond order and resolution authorizing the issuance of up to $110 million of construction period financing and calling for the execution and delivery of various documents in connection with that issuance and authorize city officials to take necessary actions to complete the financing, including making the application to local government commission. So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

Any questions, discussion? All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? It passes unanimously. Number 11, the second item on the business agenda is for land purchase for CMPD's Northeast Division Station. Are there any speakers on this item? For item 11, is there a motion to, A, approve the purchase of an approximately 5.566-acre parcel located on the corner of W.T. Harris Boulevard and Old Statesville Road in the amount of $3,745,000, and, B, authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute all documents necessary to complete this transaction?

So moved.

Second. Any questions? Councilmember Mayfield.

Thank you. I actually, when we had to check in with staff on Friday, asked a question specifically about the land purchase. I don't know if anybody there who was actually on that call, but I have a note where I was waiting for a response specifically to the question that I asked on this particular item. And it's unfortunately not in my... follow-up that staff gave to me earlier. Did they pass the question on to you?

Not after the session that we had, the information session we had. Dave Johnson, Major, with the Police Department. I'm glad to try to answer the question now, or we have resources here from real estate also.

Okay, Major, what I was just trying to... We're looking at a purchase price of this of $3,745,000. So I did have a specific question that I asked staff, but the staff are not here nor did they respond to. So that's not helping me. So Manager Jones, if we're going to have a meeting on Fridays, As well as Monday, it will be helpful whatever questions we ask actually make their way back to it. Major, I'm not going to hit you with a question tonight that you didn't have two days to prepare for since I initially asked this on Friday afternoon at our check-in time.

Any further discussion on this motion or any other motions with regard to the action item?

Okay.

Calling the question. All in favor of the motion as outlined in item 11 and previously read, please raise your hand.

Okay.

Any opposed? The motion carries. Tonight, City Council will also make nominations to boards and commissions. The council members submitted their nominations earlier to the clerk via email. Names of nominees will not be read at the dais tomorrow. The clerk will email City Council the names of applicants that received at least two nominations. These candidates will be considered for appointment at the next business meeting. Any applicant receiving six or more nominations can be considered for appointment tonight on a motion, second, and majority vote of council. The names of all nominees will be recorded in the official minutes of the meeting. The clerk will now proceed with announcing the results of the nomination. And then Councilmember Mayfield, do you have a question after those are read?

He's calling on you. I was not clear the way you started out, Mayor Harrington, but I believe at the end you stated that the clerk is going to announce who received six or more votes.

Yes, correct.

My apologies. When you were reading it, it sounded like we were saying we weren't going to announce who was nominated.

We're not going to announce other than... Those who are actually, thank you.

Thank you. I do have a question and we can talk about this with, with the clerk's office later, but the, these boards, how are we hearing, uh, how has council hearing from the boards? Um, I know that there are city staff that they, the liaison, but I'd like to hear from the boards sometimes, um, specifically the domestic domestic violence board. I want to know if we are intentional about having survivors. on that board. And then what committee does that board report to? Um, and have we had presentations from this board or any of the boards? Domestic violence is so serious and tragic in our community. So I'd like us to be intentional about making, I know the recommended, um, individuals, I think they were both males and not that men can't be victims of domestic violence, but I want to know how intentional we are about making sure there's peers on these boards. That's all.

Yeah. So just for clarification, I think the only thing we will decide tonight is that if there are nominations by six of the members, but let me also let council member Anderson respond.

Thank you, mayor Harrington. I just wanted to respond to your question. Yes, the Domestic Violence Board falls underneath the Public Safety Committee, and we've actually had them already come to committee and present to us and share with us some of their concerns. And so we're committed to doing that at least on a quarterly basis is to have one of those committees that fall under purview of public safety come and present. But you're spot on. They've already come, and they've already participated.

Great job. Thank you.

Any further questions before the clerk reads the issues?

Nope.

Okay. Okay. Again, Mr. Mayor, I'm only reading the ones that received six or more. So for the CRB, Andrew Davis received 11 nominations and Cherie Pannon received 11 nominations. For the Community Relations Committee, it was to nominate four, but only two received six or more votes. So that was Travis Barnes, who received seven nominations, and Tiffany Sims received nine nominations. So that one will come back. For the Domestic Violence Advisory Committee, Edward Brathwaite received 10 nominations, and Dustin Hovis received 11 nominations. And finally, for the UDO Board of Adjustments, Tamara Schamberger received nine nominations.

And just to be clear, on the committees where you said things will come back, it's for the folks who did not get six. Even for those committees, if they got six nominations, we are voting on them tonight, correct? Correct.

That is correct. So for the Community Relations Committee, it was to nominate four, but only two people received six or more nominations. So that will come back for the other two.

Got it. And I understand that will fall into the anticipated motion for acceptance by acclamation from Council Member Mayfield.

Second.

Any opposition there? Let's go ahead and do it formally. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. We are done. And we have had a request for a close session.

Excuse me. Yes. Point of order. Were we going to follow up with this referral model question from earlier?

So remind me what the question was.

I wanted to make sure that the concerns that Council Member Johnson had lifted up were addressed. covered in the referral. And as I've read it, it appears that it's, I want there to be some clarity because it feels like it may be out of scope from what's written on this paper. And I just want us aligned on whether or not it's in scope or not because as I look at what the charge is, it says review current council adopted policies and practices that inform transportation infrastructure requirements through the rezoning development process. EVALUATE HOW TRANSPORTATION REQUIREMENTS ARE CURRENTLY DOCUMENTED AND COMMUNICATED TO COUNCIL, STAKEHOLDERS AND THE PUBLIC. RECOMMEND POTENTIAL IMPROVEMENTS TO ENHANCE CLARITY, CONSISTENCY AND TRANSPARENCY. BUT I DON'T SEE THERE RECOMMEND IMPROVEMENTS TO THE PROCESS ITSELF.

AND SO I GUESS THE QUESTION IS WHETHER WE NEED A REFERRAL In addition to this referral to make that point, right? And is that something that I will ask the city attorney for per input? Is that something that we need to do tonight? Or is that something that should come as a referral in the normal course?

Because if so, I mean, I'm happy to second a referral request from a council member.

That's how we just have it done on the record.

You can have it on the record. Certainly in the mayor, you can send a referral at a time that's appropriate.

Is there a motion? I think we need to state really clearly what the motion, what the item that's being referred is. Happy to take that outside of this meeting if we can do it with better clarity of what's being requested. But it's the council's pleasure if a motion is requested and a second received.

So I have a question. One of the things the city manager said had already been referred to committee. I was looking at the tracker, and I didn't see anything specifically to discuss cumulative impact. So if this is redundant, then we can, I guess, work that out afterwards. But I do want to, I guess, make a motion then to refer the item to you, to refer the item to committee. Which committee? TPD, I guess, right? TPD committee, Transportation Planning and Development Committee, to discuss cumulative impact.

And could you state, just so we have it on the record, I know we're saying to discuss cumulative impact, but I think it would be helpful to be more descriptive of exactly what we're referring, other than saying cumulative impact.

I guess to discuss revising the policy, the UDO policy, for transportation studies, the TIS.

To address cumulative impact. To include. To include. He moved to move back. Second. Is there a second? Any discussion?

And make recommendations.

Policy. And make recommendations to the policy, yes.

Yes.

That's where the rubber meets the road. And Mayor, can I ask? If we want to add truck parking, we can add that. We talked about that earlier. Okay, I'll leave it alone. But we do need to discuss commercial parking. But I'll leave it there.

Why don't you restate just so that you can cover what Council Member Mira said. Or the city attorney can read it. But I just want to make sure we have clear in the record what the full motion is, and then we can give us that.

That's awesome. Thank you.

What did you get? Yeah, what did you get? Please do. So the motion by Ms. Johnson, seconded by Ms. Mayfield, was to refer the item to the mayor to refer to TPD committee to discuss the cumulative impact, revising the UDO policy for transportation study, and to make recommendations to the policy.

Are we good? And that's why you do. We've got the motion. We've got the second. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. That carries.

Okay.

Again, anything else? I think we've had a request for closed session. We need a motion to do that.

That's right, Mayor. Thank you.

I would ask the city attorney to read the language, and then someone can make a motion if it's their pleasure.

Thank you, Mayor Harrington. The request for the motion is to go into closed session pursuant to NCGS 143-318.11a.3 to consult with the city attorney regarding the legal implications of a proposed action and to preserve the attorney-client privilege.

Is there a motion to do so? Second. Any questions? All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? All right. We are going into closing.