Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

vote to approve the agenda or the minutes until we have quorum but if there are any questions or comments related to the minutes we could take those right now none okay and also want to provide a warm welcome to our newest school board members who are joining us for our first joint city county uh dps board meeting so welcome four of you one returning member um i'll just move us along into our first discussion item uh while we wait for other folks to join for our dps present transportation presentation and we have uh chief of operations officer kenneth barnes and senior executive director anthony white

If you just press the button on the microphone with the person, there we go.

All right, y'all can hear me now? All right, so good morning. My name is Anthony White, Senior Executive Director of Auxiliary Services for Durham Public Schools. Today I would like to provide an update on several transportation initiatives, including our exploration of public transit partnerships, an update on our crossing guard program, and information about school zone speed and bus stop arm enforcement. So let's begin with our work around public transit. So as we explore the possibility of partnering with public transit, our primary goal is to identify ways to improve access to transportation, reduce barriers for students, and ultimately increase on-time arrival rates. When considering a pilot, our focus has been on secondary students who are most likely candidates to utilize public transportation independently. As we evaluated potential schools, we considered two key factors. First, whether there's public transit stop located immediately adjacent to the school's campus. While several of our secondary schools have bus routes nearby, not all of our stops are conveniently located for students second we looked at school start times and dismissal times our middle schools begin at 8 30 a.m and dismiss at 3 15 p.m while our high schools begin at 9 15 and dismiss at 4 p.m any potential partnership would need to align with those students excuse me with those schedules to be successful This slide highlights the schools that meet our initial criteria for consideration. We reviewed each of this secondary school's campus, evaluated its proximity to existing public transit stops. While some schools have transit service in the surrounding area, these schools have stops located close enough to the campus that make them practical candidates for a pilot program. As we think about where a public transit pilot would have the greatest impact, it's important that we look at our transportation performance data. This chart was presented to the Board of Education in, I believe, April of this year when we gave our presentation about express stops, but I thought it'd be important to share this information again. This chart shows our on-time arrival rates from April 7th through April 10th with schools grouped into three tiers. So tier one represents elementary schools. Tier two represents middle schools and Durham School of the Arts. Tier three represents our high schools. Our district goal is 90% of students arrive on time. As you can see, our elementary students are consistently meeting that goal while middle and especially our high schools present opportunities for improvement. One point that I would like to emphasize is how we define on time. These percentages are based on students arriving 10 minutes before the first bell, not at the exact start of school. As a former principal, I believe that the buffer is important because it gives students enough time to get to class, settle in, and be ready to learn when instruction begins. If we measured arrival at the actual start time, these percentages would be much higher. But this metric gives us a more meaningful picture of operational performance. Taking that information into account, these are the schools we identified as potential pilot sites. We have Northern High School, Riverside High School, Hillside High School, and Durham School of Technology, and of course they share the same campus. Southern School of Energy and Sustainability, and also City of Medicine Academy. if we were if we were to prioritize one location northern high school would likely be our first recommendation his location in durham combined with the conversations we've had with school leadership about transportation challenges makes it a strong candidate for us There are other schools that are also viable options, but before launching any pilot, I'll go back, before launching any pilot, we would want to work closely with GoDerm to ensure that the bus routes and schedules align with the school's instructional day. Next, I'm going to provide an update on our crossing guard program. So this slide identifies each school currently served by crossing guards. As you notice, the majority of these schools are elementary schools. Several years ago, the implementation of family responsibility zones increased the need for crossing guards at many of our elementary schools. Some schools require multiple crossing guards because they have more than one high traffic crossing location. Before discussing some specific updates, I would like to thank our partners at the Durham Police Department and everyone involved in coordinating this program. Their assistance with training, staffing, daily operations has been invaluable for us and our students here in Durham County. Over the last year, we've continued evaluating each Cross the Guard location to ensure that we are using our resources where they have greatest impact. For example, Hope Valley Elementary remains a high priority because of the traffic volume and roadway conditions at University Drive and Chapel Hill Road. excuse me, at Dixon Road. The combination of higher vehicle speeds, limited visibility in certain areas, and significant pedestrian traffic makes this an important location to continue supporting. At CC Spalding and Sandy Ridge, we reduced crossing guard coverage after reviewing utilization and finding consistent, we've been finding that there's been consistently low usage for our crossing guards at those locations. White Smith Elementary was also reduced from two crossing guards to one based on the utilization while still maintaining appropriate student safety. Murray-Massenburg, which began receiving crossing guard support in January, serves an area with substantial pedestrian activity and continues to show a clear need. And for Lakewood Elementary, we're continuing to work with our contracted partner, which is all city management to ensure that coverage is in place for the upcoming year. One of our biggest takeaways from the past year has been that utilizing a contracted service model has proven to be the most efficient and sustainable approach. Managing the recruitment, hiring, training, scheduling, substitute coverage, and day-to-day supervision internally requires a significant staff and time allotment. Our partnership with all city management has allowed us to provide more consistent coverage while reducing the administrative burden. As we continue evaluating the program, we will use the utilization data and safety considerations to consider to ensure that crossing guard resources are deployed where they can have the greatest impact on student safety. As we consider expanding the crossing guard program, it's important to understand that there are a number of factors that determine where crossing guards are most needed. We maintain a priority ranking for each school using a scoring system that considers several safety-related measures rather than just relying on one single factor. We evaluate each location using a comprehensive a set of criteria, and some of the key considerations include the posted speed limit, existing traffic controls such as stop lights or crosswalk signals, the number of lanes that the students would need to navigate across, and whether the location falls in the high-injury traffic network outlined by the county, and also the distance between the school and the nearest crossing point. While every school values additional safety measures, our responsibility is to prioritize the locations where the need is greatest and where the crossing guards will have the greatest impact on student safety. The data-driven approach helps us to make informed decisions while ensuring that we're using our resources effectively as possible. And the final topic that I would like to discuss today is our work around school zone speed enforcement and school bus stop arm enforcement. Last July, in North Carolina, legislation authorized the use of electric speed enforcement systems in school zones. Additional legislation also allows for automated enforcement when motorists illegally pass a stopped school bus. And so here's how the process works. So a driver is speeding in the school zone or illegally passes a stopped school bus. A camera system captures the violation. The system records the vehicle's speed, photographs the vehicle, and captures the license plate information. Each potential violation is carefully reviewed by the vendor, then validated by our local law enforcement before a citation is issued. This review process helps ensure that only legitimate violations result in enforcement. Once the violation is confirmed, a civil citation is mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle. If someone else is driving the vehicle, there's a process for identifying the appropriate driver. It's also important to know that these are civil citations and not criminal violations, so no driver license points are assessed. The goal is not to punish drivers unnecessarily. It is to encourage safer driving behaviors around our students. At the end of the day, this initiative is about one thing, which is student safety. Whether students are walking, riding a bicycle, getting off a school bus, we want them to be able to do so in the safest environment possible. As a former and sometimes present school bus driver, yes, I still drive the bus sometimes. I personally witnessed motorists illegally passing stopped school buses. And it's one of the most dangerous situations that a bus driver can face because you never know when a child may step into the roadway and you never know what the driver's thinking. So it's important that we are evaluating different tools to make sure that our students are safe. Over the last few months, we've been focused on learning from districts that have already implemented these programs and we've met with several vendors to better understand the available technology and the implementation process. This summer we also attended a transportation conference in Asheville where we had an opportunity to speak with neighboring school districts here in North Carolina, and also from across the country who launched similar initiatives. And those conversations have given us some great insight into best practices, implementation strategies, and lessons learned. As we move forward, we will continue evaluating those experiences to determine the best approach that meets the needs of Durham Public Schools and Durham County. So the next few slides, I have a, if I can get to it. like a timeline, I would just say before I get started, this is a lofty timeline, but I think it's important to have a starting point, understand that it will need, probably need some adjustment, but we have flexibility, but wanted to have a starting point. One of the first steps would be working with our city, county partners, so each municipality, we need to adopt the appropriate ordinance, before the program can move forward. So together we need to establish operational framework for the program that includes what constitutes a speeding violation for a school zone. For example, is it five miles, 10 miles an hour over, 15 miles an hour over? What triggers a citation? As well as we have to define the review and validation process with our law enforcement partners. We've already begun laying the groundwork and meeting with several vendors and evaluating different implementation models, and we've examined everything from camera infrastructure, installation requirements, and data accessibility, and system functionality. Another area where we place a very significant emphasis is on privacy. Throughout our conversations with each vendor, We've asked detailed questions about how information is collected, how it's stored, how it's protected, and access, and privacy is our priority in Durham Public Schools, and it will remain a key consideration throughout this process. And as we move into the fall, our goal is to continue collaborating with our city, county, and law enforcement partners to establish procedures and determine how the program will operate locally. There we would identify the initial implementation sites and select a vendor. One consistent piece of advice that we receive from districts across the country is to start small and implement the program well before expanding it. Taking that approach allows us to evaluate effectiveness, make adjustments, and ensure that we're implementing the program in an equitable and thoughtful manner. A critical component of this work would be community education. Before any citations are issued, We want our community to understand why this program is being implemented, how it works. The outreach would include social media, local media, direct communication with families and community members. And during that initial implementation period, I believe it's the first 30 or 60 days, rather than just receiving the citations, drivers would receive warning tickets just to let them know that the program is here and to be mindful of the violations that may be occurring. This educational phase gives us an opportunity to raise awareness and encourage behavior that changes before the actual enforcement begins. So ultimately, this is about improving safety for our students by reducing speed in school zones and discouraging motorists from illegally passing stopped school buses. We're creating safer environments for our students who walk, bike, or rely on school transportation each day. And an additional benefit of this legislation is that any revenue generated from these civil citations remain with the local school district. That provides Durham Public Schools an opportunity to reinvest those funds into student safety initiatives. And as we move forward, we can explore how those resources help strengthen and sustain the program such as our crossing guard program and other safety efforts across the district. Our focus will continue to be implementing this program thoughtfully, collaboratively, and in a way that best serves the students and the community. All right, that concludes my presentation, and thank you for your time, and I'd be happy to answer any questions or further discuss any of these initiatives. Yes, ma'am.

Commissioner Britton. Thank you, Vice Chair Alam. Thank you, Mr. White, for your very excellent presentation. I really think this is timely that we're discussing this because on last Friday we had the Great Durham Attendance Summit talking about chronic absenteeism in Durham public schools. and trying to make sure that our kids go to school. So I'm really glad that we are thinking of solutions of how we can get our kids to school. I had a couple of questions. I had a comment first, because something was brought up to me while I was there on last Friday about the city has an Uber service or something like that, where it can, micromobility, and the question was asked of me, and I said I would have to check with my colleagues on the city council about how far out that goes, particularly with regards to unincorporated areas of the county because we have kids who live in those areas and trying to get to school. So I just wanted to put that out there. The questions I have is around, you know, how are we doing with our bus driver retention? You know, is the base pay, has it gone up? And I know they get the monthly stipend. So is retention and recruitment, is it going well? Are there still challenges in those areas? And then the other question is, do we know how many DPS students from the previous school year or previous school years utilize Go Durham to get to school? And if we don't, do we know how we can get that information? So thank you so much.

I'm going to start with the second question first. So we don't have a metric to track how many of our students are utilizing Go Durham. That's something that I'd be happy to work with our team and our county partners to see if there's a way for us to track that information. I know many of our, and again, as a former principal at Brogdon Middle School, I would see my students getting getting on and off the bus daily. And that was amid the bus crisis that we had two years ago, which we're gonna leave and not pass. But I know that our students do rely on that transportation, and I know some schools rely on it a little bit more than some others. Just geographically speaking and culturally, some of our students, they feel a lot more comfortable on utilizing that. But we can try to track that data and work with our county partners to kind of figure out what that is. As far as our bus drivers, I would say that we are in a good place. I'm gonna knock on all the wood I have up here. But we are in a good place with our bus drivers. We're not really, we're not in the same place that we were two to three years ago. As far as recruitment and retention, we have placed a significant amount of energy in that, even utilized some strategies from the school, gave a working condition survey to all of our bus drivers to try to figure out what we can do from a transportation leadership perspective to keep them here with us because we do really value our bus drivers. As far as the recruitment, we have some new individuals who are helping us with recruitment and retention, and they've been doing a phenomenal job. And we have several bus drivers in the pipeline. I think we're in a good spot. good spot to begin the school year and then we will be able to really bolster our workforce in the coming months after school starts and the way that bus driver recruitment works is you always you have to continue recruiting It's not a time where you stop. So just knowing that we have that kind of energy and spirit on our team where we are consistently trying to recruit. And again, the biggest recruitment is retention as well. So making sure that we have an increased focus on that this year. But I do feel like we're in a great place.

Thank you for that. And what's the base pay for a school bus driver starting the school year 26-27?

There we go, Mr. Teeter, he said 2022. I will also say that all of our bus drivers do receive the local $200, we call it supplement, per month, and our safety assistants receive $100 supplement per month on top of their hourly salary, which we're very happy that we'll be able to provide that for our drivers. Also, our drivers receive a $150 perfect attendance bonus per month if they are present each day.

That's good to know, and I'm glad that we as county commissioners were able to help with that. So I know we got more work to do, but we're just going to continue working towards it, right? So thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I first want to say welcome. I'm sorry I was late, but welcome to all of our new school board members. Great to have you here. And I know this topic came out of, I think, one of our previous joint meetings, so it's great to hear the follow up. I just wanted to understand, in general, is there some kind of a group that's working together right now? between our city and county transportation folks. Maybe you said this in the beginning, but are you, so you have like a working group that's?

Yes. Okay, Sean and Alan. We are here in the audience. Yeah. We have a team specifically with Durham Public Schools Transportation, and there's been a lot of collaboration

with the city county partners and it's been great we've been able to collaborate and really learn from each other throughout this process and working together okay um so yeah each of the areas that you focused on are really important i do have questions related to each of them related to the idea of um i'm trying to understand is the goal of a pilot with the um using city buses is that to improve the timeliness of kids getting to school what what is because obviously the high school is the one that needs the most improvement what what is the goal of that pilot or is it to free up bus drivers you know i think originally it was like we were dealing with the crisis of the bus drivers and not having enough bus drivers so like what is the focus or the goal of that pilot

The number one goal is to make sure our students get to school on time.

Okay, so whatever means, whatever method works the best. And could you talk a little bit more about what would that look like, for instance, a pilot at Northern? What does that actually look like?

So it would look like working with Go Durham, looking at the stops, the time of the stops and where the bus is going and making sure that the stop, the time where the bus is able to stop and the bus stop at Northern is right across Roxborough Road. If we wanna make sure that it comes at a point where it is synchronous with our bail schedule, not necessarily 100% synchronous, but we wanted to work... little bit before a little bit after you know just to make sure that we're able to get kids to school on time and if they happen to be late they're not that late um and that will work in partnership with our standard bus um school bus service that we have again just allowing some different options because sometimes you know we have children who miss the bus sometimes and so what's my next option to get to school So again, just trying to remove barriers. We started talking about attendance and making sure we're getting our kids to school. What are some of the ways that we can eliminate barriers to make sure our students are in classes and learning?

I think that sounds great. And if we can do that and then figure out a way to measure how many kids are actually taking the city bus, and then if the attendance improves, And the timeliness, that would be great. So I hope we can move forward with that. Related to the crossing guards, I'm on BPAC, so this has come up a lot. BPAC has especially been interested in the school walk zones and making sure kids can get to school safely. And especially they've done a lot of work around Hope Valley. Just to clarify, is the walk zone policy still in place for Durham Public Schools?

Yes.

Okay. So to me, that makes this really important. Because if we're expecting families and kids to walk to school, then we need to make sure they are going to be safe. God forbid something happens that would be horrific.

We call it family responsibility zone.

Okay, family responsibility zone. Okay. okay um thank you um so i know you highlighted certain schools where it wasn't really being utilized but other schools where they it really is and there needs to actually be more like at hope valley was one what so what are what are the solutions for that because you mentioned that it would be great if the city could help pay for the crossing guards like what what is going to really cost to have the number of crossing guards that we really need and what are the what are the possibilities for that

So you start talking some key words. You said possibilities. That means that when I hear that, I want to start dreaming big, right? So that means that all of our schools will have a crossing guard. And working with our partners here with the city, part of the work has been working through all city management, which has been a phenomenal partner for us. They handle the hiring, recruitment, the day-to-day operations, and things of that nature. also partners with Durham Police Department they've been phenomenal working with us and also staffing as well what it would look like again I don't have the exact cost per crossing guard exactly what it costs to they cross the guard for each location. I can definitely get that information. But big thinking and in the perfect world, every school will have at least one crossing guard. regardless of his utilization or not, because we never know when that family will choose to use walking as a viable option to get to school. So whenever they make that choice, we want them to be safe with that. The work that we've been doing is, I know I had a slide earlier that kind of talks about all these different criteria. We have a running spreadsheet, every school is ranked, and we kind of look at our priorities, and that's how we've been able to kind of place crossing guards. That's why Hope Valley, and again, I'm very familiar with Hope Valley, it rises to the top, and we want to make sure that we are prioritizing our resources in places where it will be utilized more.

it would also be great to get a follow-up on that on like what are the what are the well obviously there has to be a prioritization but just understanding like what are we looking at big picture because it can impact city fund it could impact county funding um and i know you mentioned it sounds like lakewood is the most time sensitive you said the funding runs out august 24th i think so But yeah, I think it's important that we all work together on solutions for this and to stay on top of this issue. And then lastly, related to the school zone enforcement, wondering what policies around the cameras, who has access to that information? Cause we know what's happening right now with, um, uh, you know, related to immigration. And I mean, just today I heard on the morning news that, uh, the Trump administration is revoking visas for people who have things like traffic tickets. So we, we have to be very, very careful, um, related to that information. I'm, I'm all for us enforcing this and also the schools getting money. having like an enterprise fund that you can then put back into school safety. That would be awesome. But just what I think we need to raise the issue around. the cameras and the information?

Yes. As I stated earlier, the privacy of this is going to be key because if we are able to move forward with this, our community has to know that riding past a school is not something that's going to put them in danger. I don't want our families to be scared of schools and school zones as we try to move through this. Again, one of the big concerns that I bring up and things I want the companies to talk about is privacy. How are you protecting the data? Who has access to it? And by and large, the companies that we spoke to, and again, they're not just three companies who do this work. They're multiple. But as we've been going through this process, The overwhelming sentiment has been that the company has the access to the data. And like one company, for example, they talked about how the level of security in their cloud, it's like government level security in order to get to it. The only other people to have access to it are our law enforcement partners. Again, as we continue this work, if we continue to move forward with this and we have a partner, I would want to have a very, very clear statement for us, our community, everybody in Durham about what privacy looks like and make sure that we are not discouraging people from driving near our schools because they're safe places for our children, our families, and we don't want them to shy away from that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a line of folks, but just before I just want to jump in, just to ask clarifying, because this was something that came up when we were discussing agenda prep also around the safety and security around cameras. Can we just get clarification if you can share those privacy security policies that whatever company you guys move forward with, sharing that with the city and county? well and for them to define when they say law enforcement agencies which law enforcement agencies that data is going to be shared with feedback from our conversation and I really appreciate your

your insight we've gone back and we're asking for some very specific verbiage and some very specific information and before we're able to move forward that information will be provided specifically around What are your stances on privacy? Who has access to the data? Which law enforcement partners? And when I speak of law enforcement partners, in this sense, we were talking about either Durham County Sheriff's Department or Durham Police Department. But I will make sure that that is out in writing for our community as we move forward in this process.

Thank you.

I just do want to also state that we currently do have cameras on our buses now. These cameras that Mr. White is speaking of will only be operational once that stop arm goes out. So the current cameras on our bus now records footage in the front of the bus and on the sides of the bus, and those are always on at this point. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you. And this stack I have is Chair Joy, then Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, Council Member Carl, and then Mr. Tabb. Oh, and Gabby. And I'll have to slip out in about five minutes to catch a flight, and I'll be passing it on to Chair.

Thank you. Many of the questions, thank you so much, Commissioner Jacobs, and people who have spoken have already been addressed. But I had one point of clarification around the conversations that you're having about the aligning Go Durham with the bell schedule. Does this also, I'm just wanting to know if you're talking about the frequency of how often the bus is. Is that not just the beginning and the end of school, but like, how the classes are in case, because even if the children are late or something does come up, it can be able to make more of the classes than just being there at the beginning or the end of school.

Yes, ma'am. The frequency and the times are definitely a part of the conversations and would be part of our discussions moving forward if we're able to move forward with this initiative.

All right, thank you. That was my only point of clarification. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good to see our school board friends. A couple of questions. First of all, the driver around, especially high school students taking Go Durham isn't just about safety and getting to class on time, it's about increasing ridership for Go Durham. Long term we want as many Durham residents to use our transit system and the easiest way for folks to do that is to grow up riding the bus. You go to any major city and that's what happens. People use transit, they're used to it, they're not 35 and afraid because they've always been in a car. So that's also. a huge, at least from the city's perspective, a huge motivator. The county and the city spend a lot of money to build out and run a world class free or fare free bus system. And we want to keep doing that and we want our young people to utilize that service that they also pay for. Award winning, right? Award winning, literally. Best large transit system in the state of North Carolina. And then secondly, I know that when we, as a city council with Axon just a few months ago, we had an additional addendum. And so I actually asked DPS folks to talk to city attorney's office. There was very strong language around privacy. And there are certain things that, regardless of the contract threshold, so even if it's under the manager's contract threshold, for it to get turned on, for tech to be used, it actually has to come to council. And there actually has to be a vote, even though administratively maybe that wouldn't have had to happen. And we did that in order to ensure that whoever our police chief is, whoever our city manager is, and whoever's sitting in city council, that is an open and transparent conversation. We felt very confident in our chief and very confident in our city manager currently. Um, but personnel changes, uh, and, and different electeds come in. And so you want to create a culture in this, in a system and processes that it doesn't matter who's in the seat. They're going to have to have that conversation publicly. Um, so that's a suggestion I, um, uh, encourage DPS to do around the tech parts of it, who holds it. There are companies that you own the data. They don't own the data. Um, that's something that we just did as well. Uh, and so. Again, I encourage DPS to talk to our city staff around the tech that we just put in, what, like three months ago? Yeah. And then with the timeline and things, I think I probably need to see the slides again, but I just want to... uh and commissioner jacobs the city is paying for crossing guards in our current budget so we extended that program um for this fiscal year i think the hope would be that that fund potentially funds like that's how you pay for the crossing guards you you collect the fees and then you pay for them that that would be the hope um So I just, whatever you need to hear from us around whatever approvals or whatnot, just let us know. I am very, very interested in, again, ensuring that people can take, and I want to commend city transportation staff. Riverside and Northern used to be on the same bus route. Four years ago, five years ago, they were on the same bus route. We've increased frequency every 15 minutes. We've separated the bus route so that they're not on the same bus, which was a very long route and folks really weren't utilizing it. And then finally, county and city is really going to need to talk about infrastructure. Riverside still doesn't have a good sidewalk in front of it. students and staff potentially right to take city buses we need to make sure the infrastructure in front of those buildings is safe i know northern is is well suited for that pilot so i'm excited about that i know hillside also has really good infrastructure in front of it and so does jordan but not all of our comprehensive high schools and not all of our schools do and so that's a conversation that we're going to have to have with city and county partners around how do we think about that and how do we prioritize the infrastructure in front of our school buildings that those are all my comments thank you so much for being here with us

Council thank you chair.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Great to see everyone this morning again Sorry, I was late as well. So I'm good to see everybody especially our new colleagues on the school board. It's great to have you here Thank you. Mr. Mr. White for the presentation. This is really important stuff. I think it's I'm glad that we flagged this I think at an earlier Conversation is something we need to talk about among the three boards. It's really important conversation. I guess my I'm still unclear because this is like this is a key objective for our city I think we all agree on that we want kids to get safely to school we want to use these resources efficiently what's not clear to me is like what is the ask here so certainly the questions that Commissioner Jacob asked about what is the cost so at least we get this this is a really important but I think what's lacking here is like okay what a what is a school board what does the county need from the city what do we require of you all so I'd love to have this conversation but we've got to be a little clearer we have these meetings once every whatever quarter this is valuable time so we need to use this efficiently so I just I need to know like what's the ask you know I get the timeline and all that so that's my big question there because I think we we have extended our budget this year to extend the crossings on a Hope Valley but To strengthen that, to expand this to other schools, what is the cost? What are we asking? That's one question. I also would urge, and I think Council Member Jacobs also mentioned this, if we're going to do pilots, then let's gather data, right? So let's find out how many kids are riding these buses to school. Let's find out if there's not utilization in certain schools, why are families not walking to school that we've got crossing guards there? So let's be smart about that. So those are two things I would ask. The other thing I want to say is I do see two red flags here. So we did have a conversation recently about Axon. We've got tons of emails recently about flock cameras. Are they allowed in Durham? The state authorized those. I think that was part of your slide there. The state authorized that. I think this last session, right, allowed this on state roads, right, across the state. So we've gotten emails about, are there flock cameras in Durham? And what we tell folks is like, yes, there are flock cameras on private property. There are flock cameras on state roads. They're allowed on state roads now. But if we're not saying there's, I don't know if this flock is a vendor or who the vendor is, but these automated license plate readers are a thing for our residents in Durham. and so i can see if we say yeah now we have flock cameras in all school zones people are going to freak out about that so we got to be clear if we're going to do this i i get that it's a tool to control speed but we got to be clear we're doing that what the implications are for our residents so i want to i want us to think about that the other thing i want to think about because we've seen this conversation over and over is you mentioned a contractor to manage the um to manage the crossing guards right so again we can't require contractors to pay a living wage in the state And we've had this conversation over and over. We hire contractors. What wage are they paying? And then we get sort of sideways with our residents. So if we're going to use a contractor, let's be clear what that means in terms of wages and benefits for those workers and whether it's not better for us, if we need that support, to have that in-house and to pay for that. So those are the questions I have. I think this is really important, but I think we need to think through a lot of these big issues. So thank you.

Board Member Rivera.

Thank you, thank you everyone for welcoming us in this space. Thank you Mr. White for your presentation. I had a couple questions and I'm so glad I kind of went in this line because some of my questions got answered by other members. So thank you for asking the ones that you did. Specifically, so I'm going to start with my first one on the pilot schools conversation. You mentioned that the goal is to get kids to school on time. That is the main goal of this whole thing. So I was wondering, do we have any data around the go dorm bus routes and what their percentage is on getting to places on time as well to ensure that we're not just causing another problem? My second question with that is if we are going to replace for Northern High School and do this pilot, are the bus routes going to be somewhat similar to what they are right now? Or are we asking students to go to further distances to get to the bus? And how do we ensure that our students are actually having access to the bus routes that we're now kind of shifting back to Durham? So that's my first question if you want to start there.

Okay, so the first question is phenomenal. I would say that I do not have the access to Go Durham's arrival data. Me personally, I can track Durham public schools, but since I don't have the information as far as the on-time arrival rates of Go Durham. You wanna come join me? Okay, all right.

So, I'll say that we've set a goal of at least 90% on-time performance for GoDurham. We are right now, we had our performance review yesterday, we are above that 90%. threshold right now. We are, as Councilmember Ritz said, the best urban transit system in North Carolina. So that's one of the criteria that we submitted when we were an applicant for that award. So in addition to the on-time performance, on-time performance is important, but frequency is really important as well. As Councilmember Caballero said, Two years ago at this time, Riverside and Northern High Schools were served one bus per hour. Southern High School was served by one bus per hour. So even if that bus is on time, if somebody gets there three minutes after that bus departs, they're waiting about an hour for the next bus. And that's going to be really disruptive to students and teachers and educators. So our focus has been on looking, and we know that our best chance of providing really effective student transportation is with high school students. So we've looked at, there are 10 DPS high school sites. We traditionally have served them one bus per hour, but we have been on a campaign over the last two years. So two years ago in 2024, we went from 60-minute service at Northern and Riverside High Schools to 30-minute service at both of those schools. In 2025, at Southern High School, we went from 60-minute frequency to 30-minute frequency. And we also went to we added jordan high school to our 15-minute service on the route five and then on august 22nd so later this month two days before the first day of school we will add more service on the route four the route four the majority of the route four will become one of our frequent service routes so northern high school which like i said two years ago was served by one bus per hour we'll get a bus every 15 minutes so the on-time performance we're going to continue to focus on that but the frequency is really critical to address those concerns about someone who's running a few minutes behind who misses that departure if there's another bus coming in 15 minutes that student is going to is going to get to school a little bit tardy but is going to have the majority of that day of education available so of the of the 10 sites we have 15-minute service at seven of the 10 dps high school sites we have two sites with 30-minute service and then one of the sites which is in research triangle park is served by the rtp connect micro transit zone which is uh operated by rtp foundation and and go triangle so there's transit access at all 10 of those our focus is really on the frequency and and building up and these these improvements that we've been making over the last two years are possible only because of the support of the Durham County transit plan so all of these service increases that we've done that have doubled quadrupled service at Northern High School these investments are coming from that half cent sales tax for transit that's collected across the Durham County without the support of our Durham County transit plan partners none of this would be possible we'd likely still be at that that 60-minute service at at most of our schools so we're going to continue to do that we have we have some boarding data that we can collect and share in terms of the what we're seeing at the stops closest to the schools in terms of the how many boardings a day we're seeing there we're seeing heavy activity at the high schools we're also seeing significant activities at several of the middle schools so Brogdon Middles is a good example of that where we're seeing really strong ridership so we're happy to share that and to the extent that infrastructure improvements are needed say at Riverside High School it would be great to have this this enterprise fund with the revenues from the you know the school bus and the speed camera citations to be able to pay for not only the the crossing guards but also infrastructure improvements that are needed at DPS sites to provide those safe that safe access to transit services.

Thank you so much for giving that off the cuff quick presentation. And so my follow up question to that and just so just for me to understand kind of what the goal is and the end. So is the goal to actually have no buses from Durham Public Schools going to Northern High School. And instead, we're now solely relying on Go Durham as the transportation. No, that is not the goal. Okay, so what is the goal?

Our goal is to allow students some optionality in how they get to school. We want to make sure that our yellow buses are getting there early and on time. And in the event that a student chooses to not get on the yellow bus, they can choose to go down. But we want to, again, break down barriers for students getting to school on time.

Thank you, that is very helpful. Okay. So then second question, um, I'm just going to kind of go through the rest of the questions I had, except other people, um, also ready to jump in as well. So a second question, as we kind of keep going through, so after pilot schools, I noticed that you mentioned that some of the schools for the crossing guards, they weren't utilizing them. And thank you, member Risk, for mentioning that we need to get some information on the why, why they're not utilizing them. But then a follow up is if we're noticing that maybe they're not utilizing a crossing guard, can we reinvest the money for a crossing guard into a speed bump or Can we reinvest that to other infrastructure needs to actually start addressing it if it's just that they're not using it? That was my second question.

That's a great question as well. I'm not sure who, do you have, okay.

so we evaluated more than 30 potential sites for crossing guard locations there's there's merit and value in in all of those sites right now we're able to do a maximum of 19 sites so we have 15 school crossing guard positions that are managed by the Durham Police Department, and then we have four sites that are provided through the contractor. focus really is on using the available funding to get as many of those 19 sites covered as possible and then we have alternate sites so we've done the analysis we worked in partnership with DPS on that analysis but I would say we have well over 20 sites that would benefit from crossing guards the program is really it's oversubscribed in terms of the need for that and that's why the possibility of having the revenues from the school bus cameras and the speed zone cameras is really a great next step because that would allow us to fully fund all of the best candidate sites for crossing guards and then Potentially make some additional investments once that's taken care of but right now. We're not in a position where We're able to fund all of the good candidate sites for crossing guards Thank you for sharing get and

That makes sense and what you're saying. And so thank you as well for creating the system and helping us even understand the need and providing the resources to fill this need. That kind of leads into my final question is in the security, what are we calling this? I just want to make sure I'm using the right words. In the security cameras that we're talking about, So I know we've been talking about making sure that we're keeping data secure. So I guess really my concern is, is there really a way to keep it secure? And at what point with the current climate we have and with a lot of this overreaching of if there's information out there that there's policies that can be put in place that says, hey, anyone, as long as information's out there, anyone can take that information. Is there really a way to protect it? Especially if we're using these in school zones. So that means across all of our Durham public schools, there's going to be almost a half a mile of information that we're just gathering so is there what policies or is there anything that we already know for sure of it's going to be on only on at these specific times during the day and it will be off the remaining times of the day like can can we put measures in place to ensure that our communities are actually safe Because when we keep talking about safety, and we're speaking safety of the kids, and that's great, that is the main goal. How do we not cause unintended harm to our communities in trying to keep one population safe as well? So that's my question.

So I think that's an excellent question. One, it's gonna be in the education that we're able to give out to the community if we're able to move forward with this. I'm gonna address the first thing that you spoke of with the privacy. Again, I just wanted to reiterate definitely how in our priority list, number one, safety, privacy, and again, they go hand in hand. We don't want people to feel scared just to drive through. We've been doing a lot of information gathering about When the cameras are active, again, that final decision will have to be made in collaboration with law enforcement and just everybody that's at the table. It's not something that would be set by Durham Public Schools, so again, that's going to be collaborative conversation and we will all have to be on the same page about what this looks like and that will have to be established first before we can get out there and campaign to say hey this is here and I personally I feel like before we even get to that place there needs to be a lot of information about why we're doing it, how this works, what would be shared, what's not shared, who has access to information. The information that I've received in talking to different vendors and talking to different contractors over the course of the last two months is that the company that captures the picture or the video, they are the initial owner of the information. There are some companies that allow us in Durham Public Schools to access the information on a secure server. There are some that only allow the local police department to access the data on a secure server and we don't have any I would not have any access to look at anything, and again, there's no final decision about what we're gonna use or what's company, but I think those are the questions that, I just wanted to let you know, those are the questions that we're asking, and that's the data that we're gathering in this process, so I just want to reassure you that these, it is at the forefront, and we will make sure that we keep that there as we move through this process.

Thank you for that. And thank you for even thinking about those questions. Um, and also thank you, um, mayor pro tem for speaking earlier that there is an option of us being the owners and we will really, really love the information as well.

All right. Um, board member bird, did you have any questions or comments?

Good morning, everybody. I appreciate everyone's questions. I appreciate the presentations. Thank you so much for what you're doing. I do want to just double click on a few things folks said, which is around the parent responsibility zone, student responsibility zone. The issue is there aren't enough sidewalks. especially around Hope Valley, I've heard a lot about that. So y'all know better than me, but who pays for the sidewalks? Is there a schedule prioritizing for that? Because I think that's part of the bigger picture that we're looking at, needing more sidewalks so that folks can use the walk zones, the cross guards, things like that. I did have a question about the contractor's risk. You brought that up. do our entities have kind of, do we ask groups that we contract with, for example, the cross guards, is there like, we want people to get paid this level? Is there a different rate for contractors? I know employees all have a certain wage that they're all supposed to receive, but do we have a ask around who we contract with and what they're paying their workers, or are we just, hands off with that, that's a question which you may or may not have the answer to. I also have more questions. I think all of our entities, our institutions, we're trying really hard to build trust with the community. and so i think we have to be really careful when we're thinking about finding people in our different in our communities to um at all basically and i know you're well aware of that because you brought it up but just want to make sure like we need people to trust us and so i wouldn't want to damage our relationships with our community members Do we have information on how much the camera systems will cost? I feel like there wasn't a number on how much that costs there. Do we have a number on how much could potentially be made? Do we have a number on what is the current data of how people are speeding through these school zones? Is that a big problem to start with? just using this as a way to make money to pay for cross guards. I don't know like where the problem starts and ends and what the solution is without some of that information. And then do we have, I love the idea of like warning people ahead of time with getting, but do we have a process for community engagement on this idea Councilwoman Javiera brought this up, or maybe Ritz brought this up, that people are not gonna be happy with this idea. So where are we engaging community? Because maybe community is actually like, hey, we're tired of people speeding around the schools, we want a solution. I mean, that could be something that folks want, but where are we engaging community on this idea? Another question is, when, where, how does a vote happen on any of this? Has there already been a vote and that this is a process that's moving forward? Do all three of our groups have to have a vote? I know I heard the word ordinance, but what's the before that part? Yeah, how will success be measured is my other question. Will it be kids attending school on time? Will it be having money to pay for crossing guards? Will it be less speeding? I just could see a rubric with like, here's all the stuff we want out of this and here's all the stuff that happened. But I'm not sure exactly what all that is. The last thing I wanted to say is I love the city bus. I didn't have a car for years, not by choice, so I would ride the city bus. And I had a youth group and I would teach students how to ride the city bus so that they could have some ownership and agency over their own lives. But you have to kind of teach people how to use the bus. do we have an education component to teach young people how to use the bus maybe there's partnerships that we could work on definitely an education campaign and the city bus has been awesome for years also because I was writing it back in the day and it's been great so I'm super excited about making it more accessible to young people so thank you so much

All right, you gave those questions really, really fast. Is there one that you would like for them to follow up on or something?

I was writing this fast. The sum up is sidewalks, what's the process? Contractors, is there a guaranteed pay for contractors? Another process for community feedback. Will students be educated on how to ride the buses? Just because it's there doesn't mean people know how to do it. How will success be measured is another question. Yeah, the actual cost of the cameras. What is the data currently on people speeding around schools? Is that the problem we're actually trying to address? and then when, how, and where is the vote for any of our organizations, and is this a proposal or are the wheels already in motion? And all that's asked very humbly, because I just really want to know, and I appreciate all of your work.

All right, so out of those questions, I have a couple of them that are mine. He has a few, and then maybe some of them are going to be answered at the table here. So as far as the cost of the cameras, there is no upfront cost to us for the camera systems. It would be provided free of cost from the company, and a part of that agreement is that there would be a revenue split, and each company has their own metric and different ways to go into it. So, for example, we can say, all right, Company X will receive 50% of all revenue generated from any tickets, and Durham Public Schools will receive the other 50%. There may be another company that says, hey, just pay us a subscription fee per month based on the number of cameras you have, and then any revenue that you keep is what you keep, but each way you go about it has pros and cons, and again, that's what we are kind of really digging into, because we don't want to put ourselves in a negative situation. The question about the crossing guards and how much they're being paid, I did not have that data, but I will find that data out, and I'd be happy to get that to you, and I apologize for that. the current data about speeding data, current data around speeding in school zones. I don't have that, but I will give you this quick anecdote. There was one morning, I remember this morning very vividly, I was standing out at the street helping with carpool with Officer Coghill. Shout out to Officer Coghill who always helped us out at Brogdon. And we were standing there and he was talking to me about the cars that's coming past. And he said, I want you to look at this car that's coming towards us right now. The car was going, he said, from my training. He's a retired officer who's doing off duty. He said, my training, that car is going about 55 miles an hour down the speed zone on Leon Street. And he said, I can't get out and stop it right now because I'm not going to be able to catch it, but I'm going to try to do what I can to try to slow it down. So as he saw the car, and he did something that he's way braver than me, he kind of stepped into the street a little bit to try to get the driver's attention. And then he had to move out of the way quickly because the driver wasn't paying him any attention. And to think if they would do that with a law enforcement officer in a uniform standing on the street, imagine what kind of feeling that would evoke for some of our children. That's something that I witnessed firsthand. again, around the data of how frequently it happens. I don't have that, but I know that it does happen very frequently here in Durham. The process for community engagement, any vendor that we elect to move forward with, they have a community engagement plan and team that work with us on getting that out so that's not something that we have to manufacture or produce ourselves these companies have been working with different cities states and so they have a playbook on community engagement that we would partner in and disseminated the information and the educational component to riding the bus we do have someone on the public school staff who specializes in safe routes to school that is something that we do i know that there's also information with go durham about riding the bus, and we actually give some of that information out to our families. And lastly, success being measured, safety for our students, getting the kids to school on time is not so much about the profit. Profit is great, but at the cost of, I mean, student safety is number one, getting our kids to school on time so they can learn is one B. So those are our priorities, and that's how we would measure success.

I do have some data nationally. According to the National Association of State Directors and Pupil Transportation, it's estimated there were about 45 million stop-arm violations in one year. Had about 130,000 bus drivers that participated in the survey, and that equated to about 95,000 stop-arm violations in one day. At the state level, it's about 3,000 per day. And so you put kids attached to those numbers. one kid attached to those numbers but we know there are multiple kids that get off stops it's definitely and I would imagine that our bus drivers probably would estimate around maybe 90 to 100 per day here so it's definitely an area that we just can't continue to watch the numbers on this one

So following up on the incidence of speeding, so we don't have data collected here in Durham for our school zones, but we are participating in a peer exchange and so we recently got a presentation from the city of san francisco the city identified about 30 locations for speed safety cameras what they found was that they had multiple corridors where 25 or more of drivers were going 10 miles over the limit so that's one in four vehicles going 10 miles over the limit and they introduced the cameras at those locations and across the board they were able to cut that number to two percent so they're there and everything we hear from our residents our community is that speeding is an issue across durham and excessive speeding is an issue across durham and these locations where children are coming to and from school and you know we have the school zones with the flashers active around the bell times but there are students and families and staff going to and from schools throughout the day and so making those places safe throughout the day is a critical goal that that i think we share with our partners at dps and then with respect to sidewalks the city and county recently completed our 2026 update to the bike and walk plan we identified 25 locations for new sidewalk 25 locations for sidewalk gaps in the network and then 25 locations where there are intersections in need of safety improvements. So that prioritization process has now been completed through that plan, and that's been shared with the BPAC and other bodies.

And Director Regan, also with the bond funds, there's still more sidewalks we're actually building right now, right?

Correct, yeah. So we're moving forward on sidewalk improvements. Just in downtown, if you go up to Corporation and Mangum, you'll see out on Holloway Street, as you're approaching Miami, you'll see sidewalk that's going in now. And those projects were made possible because of the Connect Durham 2024 bond that got 75% approval from voters.

all right um um i have board member katafe and then mayor williams um mr tabb and caballero okay all right so yes i got you on there all right so i'm just giving a few more okay

Great. Thank you. Thank you, commissioners and council members and everyone from DPS for being here today. My questions, you kind of just hinted at one of them. I was wondering if we have any analysis between the efficacy of the camera monitoring versus other traffic slowing measures like built environment. speed bumps, signage, things like that, in terms of how much of a difference it makes when we're kind of analyzing, like, is the security risk to our population worth the payoff of the increased safety? And then as far as this is for if we do enter into these surveillance camera contracts, is there possibility of ensuring contractually the safety of the data if the company is purchased, changes ownership? We're seeing a lot of private equity buying up things. That's always at the top of my mind, making sure that, like we talked about before, other law enforcement organizations outside of Durham Police Department are not able to access any of that data. And then my last question is just that, are go-derm bus drivers prepared and trained to potentially handle large populations of children getting on their buses dealing with kids and high school students are still kids is a different population than adults and durham public schools bus drivers are trained in that area so just want to make sure that everyone in the community is ready for that for liability on all sides thank you

You stand side by side. I think some of it was kind of .

So I'll start with effectiveness. We implement traffic calming infrastructure improvements and we see significant reductions in average speeds. We'll see one, two, three miles per hour reductions in average speeds from our infrastructure improvements. And those reductions are significant and they're adding value. What we saw from the peer exchange in San Francisco was an 80% reduction in gross excessive speeding. So from the time that they launched it, within a year, the number of citations in the same locations was down 80%. We do not have built environment interventions, countermeasures that provide that kind of reduction in that gross excessive speeding by drivers. That was for speeds 10 miles per hour or higher above the speed limit in those areas. In terms of effectiveness and tools in the toolbox, this is an incredibly effective tool. And then with respect to transporting teenagers on our GoDurham buses, we do it every day. I hear about it from our other customers who are going to work. and bothered by rambunctious teenagers on their buses. I think the best thing that we can do to address that is to address the crowding issues that we're having. on our buses the more crowded that bus is the more risk there is of kind of disruptive behavior and so what we're doing with the northern high school service where we're going from that 30 minutes to 15 minutes later this month is we're spreading those out we're also starting some of the trips on the southbound just just about at northern high school and so we're hopeful that those those trips will pick up a lot of the students and then reduce some of that crowding and disruption that's experienced by our other passengers and I'll say with respect to training we do train we're carrying thousands of DPS students every day so we're training our bus operators on how to manage how to de-escalate reduce incidents some are better than others some of our veteran bus operators would probably you know have employees with the same strategies that are employed on your yellow school buses. They're very effective. Some of our newer operators, we're always hiring. If you know anybody, Go Durham is hiring. We have very generous wages and benefits, so spread the word. I'm glad to take this microphone.

Durham Public Schools is hiring for bus drivers as well.

But so we continue to work on that, that training, making sure that we're setting a tone of respectful behavior on the buses and that we maintain that respectful behavior. But it is a challenge and it certainly is something we hear about from folks who are going to school going to work that but we think it's providing a really valuable service to the Durham community transporting those students so we're going to continue to manage that and train our folks to maintain that respectful environment

And I believe the one question that I could respond to is about the privacy if the company decides to sell. That is a great point, and I appreciate you lifting that up. And there's something that I have down to make sure that is added to any kind of questioning or any kind of privacy questionings or information that we receive moving forward. Thank you for that.

I'll just add to that we certainly want to be partners in this and so if there's an ever an opportunity where there's a Jordan Riverside southern city bus where your drivers are experiencing a significant amount of challenges please let us know we work with those schools principals to just have some conversations with those those students and I will also say based on some national data although we have not piloted the school bus cameras cameras here. There was a pilot done in Pennsylvania where they looked at the annual data for the entire school year over close to 31,000 school buses and they had about 667 citations. The pilot they did over 47 days with just two buses yielded 205 violations. So those were traditional enforcement measures, cops, signs, speed bumps versus the two day pilot for these cameras. And I will also say based on some of this data, ninety percent of those individuals that violated the the stop arm didn't repeat that violation so there is some success in terms of you know we know better you do better when you get caught you know because again people are rushing in the mornings and I would just hate for something to happen to any one of our scholars Mayor Williams good morning everyone just quick

Well, one, I want to manage expectations. When I ride the bus, especially out to South Point, I don't think there's any managing behavior of those kids, which is not going to happen. I've witnessed it myself several times, and one of them said, hey, ain't you the mayor? And they all started apologizing for cursing. It's just not going to happen, but also as a reflection of just people. And so I think we have a real opportunity here. And I appreciate all of the questions. This is one thing I love about new elected officials, because you go back and ask the foundational questions that some of us become, after you've been in office, then what happened to you as well. you're going to have so much information in your head that you're not going to think about those foundational questions and you're just going to continue to build on the policy and eventually you may leave people and they're not understanding why you're making certain decisions they're going to be people to say i don't want cameras involved at all they're going to people they're going to be people that says please put cameras out there I always say remove the labels and remove the bias and think about what the end goal is. What are we trying to do? Keep kids safe, make the environment safe, and get them to school on time. And also maybe alleviate some of the struggles that we have with driver shortage. We're sharing the burden now. My question is, is there an opportunity, and you don't have the answer to this yet or now, considering the federal administration is special. Are there opportunities for us to resource stack between the Federal Transportation Administration and the Department of Education?

So I'll say one of the things that hasn't come up yet but I think is important for us to clarify is that there are federal regulations that prohibit bus systems that take federal funds from being used for school transportation. So to the extent that we plan a service that is specifically designed to replace a yellow school bus, that is a violation of federal regulations.

Right, and I don't want to cut off, but I'm not saying we are becoming the school bus providers or the school providers for buses, more so resource stacking around uh educational institutions or leaids becoming safer there's a safety component ridership increase in those settings are there any types of resource stacking where there's some creativity without having to designate the purpose of a city bus with federal resources to become the school bus or student transportation provider

the best example is the partnership that we have around safe routes to schools so safe routes to schools is a federally funded program it used to be administered by the city but we found it challenging because a lot of it was getting in integrated into the curriculum getting in front getting you know into schools into students and so we reached out to dps several years ago suggested that we would sponsor basically those federal funds that come from from the federal government to go to DPS and then they would build their own staff so they have multiple staff now at DPS and who are providing information about pedestrian safety about bicycle riding about how to ride a transit bus and we've had a really strong partnership we continue to work closely with the safe routes to schools And it's been a great example of how we can work together, leverage that federal funding, but make sure that we're getting good information and providing that travel training to students. And the DPS folks on that team have been excellent for us to work with.

Thank you.

Mr. Taft.

Thank you. Good morning to everyone. Mayor Williams hit on something that I was going to mention, and that is we're going to have people who are going to be for and against, and some of them will come out strong about these cameras. And so we just have to be prepared for that. I do want to raise this notion about when you're using cameras we have to also be concerned about the data of what areas people are going to say that we're utilizing more officers in this particular area and um then it's unfair you know you got we just have to be aware of those those kinds of things and i do want to offer do we have areas where we're utilizing the radar uh speed signs more that with the led lighting that tells you what your speed is i know a lot of areas use that in lieu of uh writing a lot of tickets so but i'm wondering in durham do we actually utilize letting us know this is your speed and is it effective or do we have any data on that

Whenever we put up those radar, those Your Speed signs, they collect the speed of every single vehicle and we capture that data and then we can do analysis on that data. What we find with our analysis is that when, a lot of them you'll see are kind of on a trailer, they're designed to be mobile. When they're first deployed, we see reductions. And then after a few weeks, sometimes a few months, the behavior essentially, because there's no consequence to it, to the excessive speeding, the behavior basically returns and we go back to the baseline. So some of them are, and some of them are fixed, like on Gregson Street, for example, there's a location that's been fixed. We have not seen that to be effective in reducing speeds. There's that initial response where people are thinking about it, and then once they get used to it, and they know that there's no consequence associated with that excessive speeding, the speeds return to baseline.

Well, I tell you, it works for me. So I don't know about anybody else, but I don't need any more tickets. So it works for me.

Are you done? Okay, Mr. Kaysen.

Good morning, everyone. This conversation really touched on two things that I really love, collective impact. and community education. Thank you for the presentation and the great discussion. I do want to just reflect the fact that when we have these public meetings and these great Q&A sessions, that's community education as well. This discussion is also informing the community about what we're thinking about these things. My one question is this, one thing that the community may not be aware of because they're not deeply into the details like many of us are here, are we talking about two sets of cameras, a stop-arm camera as well as cameras that are placed in neighborhoods around school zones? That's not really clear in what we've heard so far.

thank you for that question so we are talking about two different sets of cameras one set being sets of cameras that are affixed to our yellow school buses that will be monitoring for drivers who are violating the stop arm meaning that once the stop arm is out the stop sign is out and they pass that that school bus that is one camera system the second and which many of these companies they they do both things um so we would want to partner with one company that could that could do both things um the second one is the school zone cameras uh where there would be a camera at like either end of the school zone that would capture that information as well thank you for bringing that up for clarification

All right, Mayor Protean.

Thank you. And then with the second kind of camera, that's just basically a motion thing. Like it's just gonna capture you if you're going faster. It's not just constantly recording.

So the information that we've gathered so far is that it can be set for different times. It could be set for, you know, just throwing this out there for an example, 30 minutes prior to the start of the school day and 30 minutes after. So it would have like a runtime. Like at the middle school, it'll run from, eight to nine during prime time, and then again at dismissal. It can have that kind of functionality. I think that, of course, we wouldn't be able to turn the cameras off, so if you drive through there at 12 o'clock, I think that the cameras probably would be able to still capture you, but I'm not sure exactly what that would look like as far as enforcement is concerned. But again, these are all the small details that we work out with the company and make sure that one is collective, amongst everyone here and make sure that our community knows what the specifics are surrounding that.

Yeah, I think it's one thing to have timed thing versus constantly recording. So I think that being vendors who can meet that need or have that ability to turn things off, I think is critical. I just want to remind folks it doesn't really matter. We know that the different law, regardless of, quote, who has access to data, if there's an appropriate warrant, appropriate process, they can, and that's current now, right? That doesn't change. I do want to remind folks that we think we have all these safety things already, and we don't. so that doesn't mean you can't put as many guardrails as possible on a thing um but i want to remind that and i think when we talk about the community engagement i really hope that dps staff talk to city staff we have an entire engagement department the city does an incredible job we run participatory budgeting We run budget workshops every fall. We do community engagement very, very well. And so I hope you lean on us. We've done many rounds around tech at this point in the city of Durham. I think we've done at least four around this issue. we're very we're veteran with this question um and so again talking to our law or our city attorney's office really structuring what kind of contract you want with the vendor you know who does what you do have choices even if they say you don't have choices you do actually have choices because if they want the money they're going to do the thing right and so I just want to really lean in on that to please look to others for that expertise. And then I think the question on sidewalks that actually didn't get answered. The city funds sidewalks in city limits. not all school sites are in city limits we do not pay for infrastructure that is outside of city limits and there is a lot of um compli complicated factors of even you know okay we're going to build a sidewalk outside of out in the county you think it'd be straightforward it's not so i just want to flag that because it's been like every two years every three years this comes up i will say that Almost every single rezoning that comes to the city of Durham and has for years has voluntary proffers from our development community. That just goes to DPS. You could earmark that. It just goes into your general fund as far as I'm concerned. You could earmark that for infrastructure around schools. Y'all have choices there. I don't know what your, but once there's a certificate of occupancy, that money just goes to DPS. um and so that's a that's a question and then and i'm just going to put the county on the spot here they're not going to like it the transit fund can also fund infrastructure outside uh for certain things it is not what it is used for currently but there's no reason not to right so i'm just offering these things as all kinds of ways that infrastructure can get built around our school buildings um i will say that it is a priority of ours i will say that the bond in 2024 was a huge success and it was also run on an even year which was a first for a municipal infrastructure bond sidewalks and street improvements for the city are consistently ranked as one of the highest priority of city residents in our surveys so running another additional to our cip thinking about another bond identifying those things that's another tool that is asking residents to increase their own taxes but at least it's asking them versus just us doing it to them

um that's all thank you just one part on that we have enough city on streets sorry chair uh city on streets to stretch from durham north carolina to dallas texas and if we were to put sidewalks along every one of them it will cost 119 billion dollars so we have a long way to go we'll just make it a life priority all right thank you councilman barrist

thanks madam chair um great conversation and again thanks mr white for for your comments i want to go back to your like high level goal right so the goal here it's not about profit right it's about safety for kids and getting them on time that's that's the key thing right so i i just want to say like this idea of like having cameras they collect fees for a private entity and also pay for school guards i just got a lot of heartburn about that it feels like sort of like ultimately feels like a predatory thing, we're collecting fees to pay for a program. I wanna go back to member Ben Katev's comment about are we thinking about all the options? Because one thing we haven't talked about, and I appreciate, Sean, all the stuff you mentioned about sort of speed bumps and all that kind of stuff, traffic calming, but one thing we haven't talked about are school streets or car-free school zones, right, that many communities around the country have. I know LA, New York, San Francisco have those where we close the streets in front of schools in the morning and the afternoon. Is that something we've considered? Where are we on that? Because I know as a member of BPAC, I know we talk, and I've been at a ton of conferences, as Sean has as well, about bike and pedestrian stuff. Closing streets in front of schools would be a way to ensure for sure that there's not unsafe behavior, but also could address some of this kind of, know the utilization people not really using that this crossing guards if we close those streets in front of schools we can ensure safety and that's a vision zero thing right we got to design safer environments for kids right so they're not in conflict with cars so where are we on conversations about actually closing streets in front of schools and i know not every school could do that where they are but a lot of streets and neighborhoods or a lot of schools and neighborhoods could do that so is that not an option

Thank you for your comments. I have not engaged in any conversations around closing off the streets in front of schools. I think that that's definitely an interesting and innovative way to kind of look at the problem solving. And if there are conversations around that, I would love to be at the table and being able to kind of help work through that. As far as the stop-arm program being the sole funder for the crossing guards i would like to say i was very i use the word supplement because i don't believe that i mean again we don't the goal is not to go for profit and that's why i'm not saying oh just remove all funding for crossing guards and durham public schools is going to be responsible because a lot of the data that we've seen is that initially the violations are up, but the goal is to reduce violations and reduce the instances of people violating the laws. And if you look at it that way, as the violations go down, lies the revenue as well so that would go down so again as we are moving to this model i think we also want to be very cautious about where we are before we say hey we're just going to take on we during public schools is going to take on everything before we know kind of where we are that's why i was very careful about using the word supplement versus we would take it on initially because again it's not for it's not 100% for profit yes there are dollars attached to it but if our goal is safety and making sure our students are you know safe when they're traveling to and from school, we can't solely look at the dollar amount. The dollar amount is extra, it's icing on the cake, I would say, in comparison to the first goal of the initiative, if that makes sense.

Appreciate that, and I wonder, Director Egan, if you might comment on the car-free school zones. I know there's competing priorities, there's safety, there's folks wanna get to wherever, so I'd love your thoughts on that.

So right now we have established 55 school zone locations across Durham. Many of them are not right in front of the school. they're along a road that's used to access the school so and we're seeing you know significant speeding issues we hear about it from the crossing guards the amount of speeding that is going on on roadways that are around the corner from a school so a lot of our school zone locations are not just the the stretch you know the frontage where the um where the school building is but it's on those key points of access those key points of access are also major arterial connectors across our community that are used by tens of thousands of vehicles every day so i think there may be a few cases where that could be something right in front of a school location but between the number of those locations that are on state roadways which would be very challenging to close and then the number that are on arterials that are carrying 10 000 or more vehicles a day the disruption. We already have a very constrained roadway network in Durham. We have a lot of dead end streets that don't connect to each other. And so the idea that we would close off some key connectors that are used by tens of thousands of people every day. And then I think the other piece of it is, I don't know what the stats are, but There's a very large share of families that drive their kids to school. They drop them off in a car. So how do you manage that if you've closed the street in front of the school? How do you manage pick up and drop off? I don't know what the share of families is, but as a DPS parent, I can tell you that The car lines are very long at pickup and drop off every day. I get to see them from a bike, so I get to skip them, but they're long every day. And so managing that pickup and drop off, I think, would be another really critical issue for making sure that kids can get safely to and from school.

Appreciate that. And that raises a larger philosophical question, right? So we create incentives for car drivers all the time. So when do we create incentives not to be in a car? But that's probably a larger conversation.

Commissioner Jacobs and then Board Member Katave. Oh, no, I'm good. You're good? All right.

Well, this has been a great conversation this morning and really important. I just want to follow up on a few things. One is for the school board, you know i love i love the idea of pilots um pilots it gives you the opportunity to try things out without a huge commitment so even you know just thinking about that with how you approach you know moving forward um i also appreciate all the conversation about date you know making data-driven decisions but at the end of the day it will you know we're all going to manage As different people have said, um, different issues. Um, so, uh, but we know that the safety of our students is number one. Um, I did want to, um, also give the perspective that, um, cause I've been involved in just regional transportation for a while is that, you know, speeding is a national issue. Um, since the pandemic, we have seen the change in behavior of drivers in this country. And it's a problem and it's a, it's really, really, it's a, it's a big issue. Um, and it does come down to behavior and it is a national crisis that we're seeing and here in Durham and in North Carolina. Um, I love the comments about how do we help educate, um, bus riders. And I think that is really key. I was at a. transit conference in Portland they actually had youth ambassadors who were like helping actually older adults to get used to riding the bus so we can think of some great ways you know Bike Durham is an awesome nonprofit partner now that the Safe Routes to Schools program is in the schools but I think and I think that also could be a way to help manage behavior also so I think that sounds really exciting I do want to mention, I know the Durham County Transit Plan was mentioned, this one for education of everyone. We have a finite half cent sales tax for transit. We have an adopted 20 year plan, is that right, Ellen? We already have a plan that's projected 20 years out of how that money is projected to be spent. 75% of that goes for bus service, and that is already spoken for. 20 years out, uh, and also to only 25% is for regional transit. And that means things like implementing bus rapid transit, which we know is expensive, but really key for Durham and for creating regional connections. So, um, you know, if you want to take money out of that for sidewalks, then it's going to take away from other things that are already actually allocated in the plan. So I just wanted to give that perspective also. Um, micro transit, um, this is commissioner Burton brought this up. I wonder if Ellen or Sean could talk about the micro transit program. It's a pilot that the city and the county are doing together, where we found that majority of people using it, our kids going to school. Um, and I, I w I think I would like us to learn more about that because there's also the question of, is it cheaper? more cost-effective to expand our microtransit program rather than to put another bus on the road, the cost of the bus, the cost of the driver. So I think when we're talking about data, we need to look at that and think about that. And I wonder, so two things. If you could tell us more about the data from that program, who it's serving, who's using it, the cost, what are the ideas about that moving forward And the second is related to the sidewalk. This is the first time the city and the county have done a countywide, I think, plan, city and county together. Actually, we haven't heard the results of that yet. But also, one of the issues being addressed is, as Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, we have a problem with sidewalks in the county that was flagged as something that we need to work on. I don't know if you all are prepared, Ellen and Sean, to talk about the recommendations on that. But anyway, those are the two things I just wanted to flag for follow-up.

So we have what we call the Go Durham Connect microtransit program. So we've established two zones, one in East Durham, one in North Durham. The North Durham one goes all the way up to the Trayburn Research Park. So we have been doing a lot of work to get the word out about the program. The idea is that we have what we call a first mile, last mile problem. transit where people who live more than a mile away from a bus stop can't get to the system in an efficient way and so the idea of the micro transit is that you can call and a vehicle that looks like an uber or lyft will come and pick you up and then it'll take you to a bus stop and then you can hop on that next bus and be on your way and you can also travel point-to-point within the zone. So families in North Durham, for example, because of this, can travel to the Museum of Life and Science, which is part of the North Zone. So that's been a key partnership. Actually, if you go to the Museum of Life and Science, one of the first things you see when you walk up to the front door is a sign promoting the go durham connect program so we've seen continued growth in the utilization of that i can follow up with specific numbers it's funded at about seven hundred thousand dollars a year to put you to put that in context that's about what it costs to run a bus for a year one single bus so we're providing really critical connectivity to places that are hard to reach like the wheels fun park for example is not close to a bus stop but we know that a lot of residents and families want to get to wheels and some other of our DPR facilities for example so This is a way for transit to be used to make those first mile, last mile connections. And it has been very cost effective in terms of providing really broad access to areas that are difficult to serve with a 40 foot bus. And so for the cost of running a full 40 foot bus for a year, we're able to provide coverage across North Durham and East Durham. And then Ellen, do you want to speak about the bike walk update?

Good morning. I'm Ellen Beckman, Durham County Transportation Director. and before i talk about the bike walk plan just to add on to the the micro transit pilot we did get some statistics back in april that we presented to the board of commissioners that there were about 8 000 trips and about 700 of those were to dps locations so i know it's serving some of those areas that are hard to reach as sean mentioned schools like the school for creative studies neil middle school oak grove you know some of those schools that are kind of out there on the periphery and so for the bike walk plan yes we have been working with the city over the past couple years on the development of that bike walk plan it is in its final stages there are some issues though that we need to work through before we can bring it forward and one of those is the responsibility for maintaining sidewalks in the county we've kind of run into some legal issues about that so we're trying to work through that um i think sean gave a good overview of it of how it identified you know 25 locations and corridors and intersections i know that several of the locations that you guys have mentioned this morning were recommendations so like riverside high school i know that's one of the prioritized corridors and hope valley i think the chapel hill road was one of those prioritized corridors for the county projects in that plan know the vast majority of sidewalk needs are in the city you know certainly want to recognize that you know it is not going to be possible to build sidewalk throughout like rural durham county so for the county we're mostly looking at those areas that are right on the edge and all four of the you know county projects that we prioritize were near schools so places like oak grove elementary lyons farm neil southern high school forestview elementary school so think of those areas and in each of those locations you know we looked at the network and looked at what gaps were there and made some recommendations i think all of those recommendations included networks that span city and county like you couldn't really you can't really build an effective sidewalk network in those areas without going between city county city county as you know you know these the parcels the individual parcels are annexed and um those don't always correspond to a corridor so um i do think this is an issue that we that durham county does hope to work through with the city to identify how we can address areas like that on the edge so it is not ready to be brought forward for adoption yet but this is one of those

topics that we need to iron out before it can be brought forward thank you all right colleagues are there any other questions or comments before we okay miss rivero

Thank you. I just had one final comment. I know I just wanted to be very clear. I know we've been talking a lot about attendance and security cameras on buses, etc. And it just seems as though we're all kind of feeling a little hesitant in some ways. I know myself I am on just what that looks like, who has access, how to keep people safe. I would just just lean on the side of caution of finding other solutions first before we go to the big one of like the cameras that we're all that many of us are feeling really unsure about. So if I'm so glad that member Jacobs was even mentioning like, what are the other options as well as come from a risk what are the other options and just keeping that as the forefront of keep trying to think about what a pilot what can we pilot at the schools maybe this year maybe next year that we can get some more data around what are the other options before we go to this one that we already know is going to be controversial we already know there's a lot of overreach that's happening So I just want to say that, and then the last thing I want to say, and I would be remiss if I didn't say it, is just the bike bus. I know we keep talking a lot about what can we do, and the bike bus is something that some schools are piloting. and trying where kids get to school, not on bikes, I mean, not on buses, but on bikes. And they go in big masses of 50 plus kids getting to school. So just thinking through like, how do we utilize the resources we currently have so that we don't get ourselves into this sticky situation where we're feeling a little bit uneasy of how can we actually protect

our families how do we actually protect our students while also really wanting safety for our students i just want to throw that out there and just kind of leave it at that so thank you all thank you for your presentations thank you for everyone that's spoken so far thank you miss rivero um my only other final comment um very short is just what i'm thinking about is we've had this robust conversation is just around um our community engagement and our community guardrails around their safety and so i'm hearing administration like this is ultimately coming back to the school board around these conversations that are going on with the contractors and what they're going to be able to offer and part of that discussion is what their community engagement plans look like And so I'm looking forward to understanding more as we get more information about these different contractors and they're exploring the cameras, what that community engagement process will look like and how we'll be able to understand what the guardrails for the community are around their safety, what their temperament is for these kinds of, surveillances and things like this and how that can also inform decisions we make around you know transportation and our safety in general so curious to see how how that comes forward so very interested in that if there are any other comments or questions or not Oh dr. Lewis

Yeah, I'll just reiterate the fact that cameras on buses are not new. I think everyone understands we have cameras that are always recording on our buses. These cameras would go out, as I mentioned, when the stop sign goes out. I think it also allows an opportunity to take the bias out of some traffic violations. Police officers keep what they call stop data. And it's just generally the make and model of the car. But there are other descriptors of cars that they don't keep data on that bias tends to play in. For example, if you see a low-rider truck riding down the street, you probably know, come out and make some assumptions of who may be riding in that car, or some cars on rims, right? um so i think it allows to take the bias out of it and also when you think about just our current ridership for our city transit is around one percent of our students uh they're participating in the safe routes to school survey that they administer every march in um november it's about one percent with um i think northern and hillside um taking advantage of of bus stops and so i also wanted to remind this these boards and our public is that we have a tremendous amount of resources on our website transportation services the safe roster schools we have the micro transit transit guides on there as well that tells families that every 30 minutes this bus stops at this school or every 15 minutes for Jordan and hillside every 15 minutes the bus stops there so there are some data that we can continue to to leverage and one of the open-ended questions that we're asking that surveys what are some of the barriers that you feel in terms of getting to school and reckless driving and construction and traffic was was one of those and so the more that we can provide safe opportunities for our scholars to get to school and on time you saw those high school numbers a biggest implication of that is our high schools are making programmatic and shift shifts in their systems within their schools i.e not putting their core curriculum classes at the first period because the buses can't get to and that should not be you know our jobs is to make sure we're getting the kids to school on time and our high schools should structure their day based on best practices and so uh excited about the continued conversation as we work to keep our students and community safe and get our students to school on time thank you dr lewis

I'm sorry, I feel like I need to say this because I'm just traumatized. When it comes to the big back surveillance conversation, I feel like I'm not in my own interest, but I do feel like I need to say this for the folks that constantly do reach out and say where they request these types of resources. It is a part of our reality now that there are cameras around us, including these devices that are filled with AI, and yet there's a big public debate about anti-AI. So I just want to be able to function in reality on it, and I also want to highlight my appreciation for the cautionary approach that we're having around this table, because it's easy it's easy to be reckless and just say yeah go with it so i appreciate that but i also want to be very clear we can ask as many questions as we want at the end of the day we're going to have a purpose to fulfill and that's going to be policy and there are folks that are asking every day that right now why don't you all put more cameras out here and they do not look like the folks that come to our meetings and say we don't want surveillance in durham So I just want to put that reality out there. And that's what we're going to have to struggle with when we have these meetings and who comes to talk to us and also listen to who don't come talk to us. That's it. Thank you.

Yeah. I appreciate those comments. And...

Mine's just logistical. We had talked through the meeting schedule. I just don't want to adjourn us before, and I'm not seeing invitations on calendar, because we had the leadership team meeting in July around, we had moved some of the meetings around, because technically we wouldn't meet with DPS, and again, all three boards until February, and there was a decision made to do another all three boards, and I just don't remember the date on that. And so I'm looking for staff, because since everyone's here, I want to flag it, and I want to flag what the agenda items, because I already got decided that's what I thought but I'm not seeing I just want to go it's I think it's helpful to go ahead and state when the next meeting is and at what time and where it's gonna be because then it's been stated first and what the agenda is And I thought that there was staff that took that information down at that leadership team meeting in July.

Oh, thank you. Good morning. Monica Wallace, clerk for Durham County. So I was just speaking with the clerks and the admin for DPS and for the city, and we just wanted to make sure we had it on our end as well because of some of the changes. So I'm showing here our next... combined meeting it was actually scheduled as a city county meeting but we are adding dps that meeting is scheduled for october the 13th at 9 30 a.m it will be hosted by the city And the agenda topics for that meeting that are listed is Durham minimum livable wage, your request in the presentation from Sally Hodges, COPEL, NC Budget and Tax Center, as well as a 2027 Joint City-County Committee meeting calendar. So I guess we'll be approving the calendar for the next year.

thank you i love when we did good work at some point um that that was my only uh i just wanted to make sure that folks had that information thank you so much and and i'm sorry if i could also just add you all have a city county dps leadership meeting on september the 1st at 3 p.m okay hold on

But that leadership, that's just... That's just leadership.

That's not including the full board. So September 1st is... Yeah, okay. I have that one. Thank you.

All right, at the beginning of the meeting, we didn't have a, we didn't have quorum, so we didn't approve the minutes. So at this time, I can entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Thank you.

I'm sorry, we do not have a quorum for the city, I mean, for the county.

Can we still do the vote?

Because the minute meetings, one is for city, county, and one is for city, I mean, county and DPS. And we do not have a quorum for the county.

So we did, but now we don't, so.

Right, so I've already spoken with the clerk, so we'll just move all of the minutes over since all three groups will be here in October. We'll move them all over for a vote at the October meeting.

All right, thank you for that. Okay, well, I see Wendy Jacobs.

just related to agenda items one is could we it could just be in the form of maybe a written report but just to keep following up on the transportation stuff that we discussed today if we could just have any some type of follow-up information or update would be great and I did want to ask if we could briefly talk about one thing which is whether we want to try to have a coordinated strategy between each elected body around the upcoming state referendum on property tax, limiting local government's property tax revenues. That affects each of our bodies. I was recently at our National Association of County Commissioners mid-sized county caucus there was robust conversation about this issue because this is a national issue that's happening all over the country and one of the county commissioners emphasized that we have a responsibility just like we do with bond referendums we have a responsibility to educate the community about number one what What is property tax? How are we spending our dollars locally for property tax? What is the role of property tax in our communities? And number two, what will actually be factual information about the impact of local governments not having adequate property tax revenue? And one commissioner literally said, we need to be putting it out there and If we don't have enough money, which program are you willing not to fund? And putting money to the program, and that is incumbent upon us as elected officials. And so I'm just wondering, can we start, in the past we've had blue ribbon committees to promote bonds. Do we have that? Do we get our PIOs together? But I just want to. to have a conversation with everyone about this, and it's time-sensitive.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Commissioner Jacobs, if you're comfortable, we have a leadership team meeting on September 1st, so we can at least take up the topic and figure out, you know, if chairs can have conversation. Because historically what's happened is there's been folks identified from council or county commission to be the lead on a thing as an elected, and so we can have conversations there saying, you know, who's going to talk to their board members to see who wants to lead a commission or whatnot. we could talk through, is there an opportunity to do a joint op-ed that we run all together? I think that there's some opportunity. I don't, at the late hour, want to talk through that, but I do want to flag it for city and county and DPS staff if we can just make sure we have that as an agenda item on September 1st. I'm seeing some head nods. and also including in that a broader community-wide effort where we involve the business community kind of like what we do with bonds not just yeah agreed so we can we can make sure to talk about that and if that ends up being like something that staff says we really need the electives to take the lead i'm happy to to make sure we talk through that carefully on september 1st all right

just want to be clear on the follow-up transportation items i did hear commissioner jacobs mention a potential written report at the october one is that something we also want to talk about at the september meeting in terms of how we because we'll have to think through agenda items carefully and and how much time we want to allocate this was great because we had only one big robust but we have a few on the october one so we'll just have to think through the timing of that i think that's probably a lesson learned for future meetings maybe one topic is enough

all right well um i'm gonna slide on down here to public comment is there anyone here for public comment all right seeing no one um we are at adjournment so at this time the meeting is adjourned thank you