City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good afternoon, everyone. We have a pretty loaded agenda, so I'm actually going to start off with comments and keep it really short. Congrats on a successful event last night. I'm sorry. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor Williams? I'm here.

Mayor Pro Tem Caballero? Here. Council Member Baker?

Here.

Council Member Burris? Here. Council Member Cook? Here. Council Member Kopach?

Here.

Council Member Rist?

Here.

Thank you.

All right, thank you. Just a shout out to the Carolina Theater last night. It was a great event. Also the Riding Silence with Mike Durham, great event last night. And also to the Life Skills Foundation for an amazing breakfast this morning. We have a loaded calendar of events today on the agenda. And I also have to leave early today. So we're going to try and get through a very heavy agenda, policy agenda. Looking forward to comments and getting to it. Next up. You hit the highlights, so I think, yeah, I'm good. Wow, okay. Not used to that. All right, Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, the City Manager's Office has the following priority items on today's agenda. For agenda item number 11, that's the resolution adopting the Durham Strategic Framework to Make Homelessness Rare and Brief by 2031. This item does include a presentation. For agenda item number 31, which is an overview of Durham municipal elections, there were modifications made to the slide deck, and a supplemental fact sheet has been added to this item. And then a supplemental item has been added. That is agenda item number 37, which is the lease to the Museum of Durham History, located at 521 West Morgan Street. Those are my priority items. I'd like to ask Mary Grace Stoneking to come to the microphone and make a very brief introduction, and then we'll be complete.

Good afternoon, Mayor, council members. I just wanted to quickly introduce our summer management intern in our office, Princess Mutasa, who is over here. She's a current UNC MPA student, and we're just really excited to have her. She's done some work with Keep Durham Beautiful in the past, as well as some policy work also with our general services department. So we're really excited to have her back. She'll be working with a lot of our departments this summer.

Welcome, welcome.

Thank you, Mayor Grace. Welcome, Princess and Mayor, those are our priority items. Thank you, Madam Attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good to see you this afternoon. The City Attorney's Office has a priority item, and that is to hold a closed session today at the end of all regular business. I'm happy to read the motion now, or we can hold it until the end of the meeting.

Yes, please read it.

The motion is to hold a closed session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143.318.11a3 for attorney-client consultation regarding the following matters. Isaac Woods, Jr. v. the City of Durham. That is a Durham County Superior Court case. The Cincinnati Insurance Company versus Lisa Mae Cranford et al. That is also a Durham County Superior Court case and also an anticipated filing of an enforcement action in Durham County Superior Court.

Thank you. Colleagues, I am going to ask for that motion to be entertained now. Second. It's been moved and properly seconded to proceed into closed session at the end of this session. on agenda. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Thank you. So we'll just proceed at the end of the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Madam Clerk.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, and council members. I do have a board and committee report. I'll go through that. Most have reached consensus, but a couple have not. The Durham Open Space and Trails Commission appointment, there are four. The nominees are Ron Barone, Lindsay B. Bickersbach, Benjamin D. Feldman, and Joseph Hofheimer. The second is the Durham Cultural Advisory Board appointment. There are three vacancies, and the nominees are Felicia N. Brown, David R. Long, and Margaret E. McNabb. The Durham City County Environmental Affairs Board appointment for the category of At Large, the nominee is Taylor Price. For the Durham Planning Commission, the nominee is Corey E. Pontiac. audit service oversight committee appointment there are two but only one has reached consensus and that is Nicholas W long so the other one is outstanding and a couple members did not vote so if they did vote we would reach consensus do you want to do it majority vote is what we're going for

Which one was that?

It was Misha Uncle Tree Morris. I'm missing a vote from Council Member Mayor Potem Caballero and Council Member Kopach and Council Member Baker. It didn't show up.

Should I put it on GBA?

We can hold it and put it on GBA.

Yeah, let's do that so we can keep moving.

Okay. The Citizen Advisory Committee nominations are Kaya Rudacil, and then there was no majority vote on the second, so we'll put that on GBA as well.

GBA is fine.

Durham Sports Commission, the nominee is Angelique Stallings. And the Human Relations Commission, four nominees are Kirsten Barrett, Diana B. Medoff, Jada Richardson, and Cindy Scarborough. And the last one, the Mayor's Council for Women appointments under the category of Cultural Recreation Fine Arts Sector, Stephanie A. Williams, Fair Housing Economic Development Sector, Sheena Matthews. Award three nominees, Sarah Stanfield, and the at-large position did not reach majority, and that will be put on GBA.

Does that conclude your report? That concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you all so much. This time I will read the consent agenda and then come back for public comment. Item number one, Durham Open Space and Trails Commission appointments. Number two, Durham Cultural Advisory Board appointments. Number three, Durham City County Environmental Affairs Board appointment. Number four, Durham Planning Commission appointment. And I'm reading these with understanding what's been put on DBA, which I don't remember which ones they were, but we'll come back and audit that. Number five, Audit Services Oversight Committee appointments. Number six, Citizens Advisory Committee appointments. Number seven, Durham Sports Commission appointment. Human Relations Commission appointments. Mayor's Council for Women appointments. For departmental items, number 10, request to amend the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget and other capital project ordinances. Number 11, resolution adopting the Durham Strategic Framework to make homelessness rare and brief by 2031. There's a presentation. Which is a presentation. Third amendment to the external auditor contract. Excuse me. Number 13, cooperative contracts, sewer vac trucks. Number 14, cooperative contracts, stormwater vac trucks. Number 15, contract for comprehensive facilities condition assessment with HDR architecture. Number 16, eminent domain action to obtain one temporary construction easement at 103 West Cornwallis Road for the SW45 bike and sidewalk project. Number 17, construction contract with Barr Construction Company Incorporated for River Forest Park Old Farm Park and American Village Playground Renovations Project.

I'm going to pull that one along with number 18. Yes.

Number 18, construction contract with Harrod and Associates Constructors Incorporated for West Point and on the Eno Parks Renovation Project, which has also been pulled. 19. IMMINENT DOMAIN ACTION TO OBTAIN ONE TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASEMENT AT 105 WEST CORNWALLACE ROAD FOR THE SW45 BIKE AND SOLIDWALL PROJECT. 20. IMMINENT DOMAIN ACTION TO OBTAIN ONE TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASEMENT AND ONE PERMANENT DRAINAGE EASEMENT AT 107 WEST CORNWALLACE ROAD FOR THE SW45 BIKE AND SOLIDWALL PROJECT. Number 21, imminent domain action to obtain one temporary construction easement at 2725 Stewart Drive for the SW45 bike and sidewalk project. Number 22, imminent domain action to obtain one temporary construction easement at 2737 East Shoreham Street for the SW45 bike and sidewalk project. Number 23, construction contract with Classic Electric Service Incorporated for parking facilities structural maintenance life safety project.

I'll pull that one.

My 24, contract with M-Cube and Company and Co. Global LLC for Economic Development Consulting Services Corridor Bounce Back Program. My 25, First Amendment to the contract with M-Cube and Co. Global LLC for Economic Development Consulting Services Business Registry and Legacy Program. My 26, contract with Exxon Enterprise Incorporated to renew and expand services. Do you have a speaker on that? I have a speaker.

I think everyone wants to pull it.

27 contract for licensing implementation and managed service support for Trimble unity construct With Trimble incorporated number 28 amendment number five to professional services contract with DRMP incorporated for design of Woodcroft Parkway extension with 29 one hour free parking program proposal Yeah, are we going to a presentation it is I? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm looking at the attachment. Sorry. Yeah, but is it pulled? Okay. Number 30, Vision Zero 2025 Annual Report. All right. Number 30. Number 31, Overview of Durham Municipal Elections presentation. Number 32, Presentation about Water Quality Investigation. PRESENTATION NUMBER 33, FISCAL YEAR 2025-2026 THIRD QUARTER FINANCIAL REPORT. AND OF COURSE NUMBER 34, BUDGET HEARING FOR THE CITY MANAGERS PROPOSED FISCAL YEAR 2026-2027. BUDGET AND FISCAL YEAR 2027-2032 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN. Number 35, public hearing on economic development incentive agreement with Cocofro LLC. 36, fiscal year 2027-2031, a contract for downtown Durham Municipal Service District operations with Downtown Durham Incorporated. And 37, lease to museum of Durham history located at 521 West Morgan Street.

I don't want to pull that. I just want to say I'm excited to see it on the agenda.

So you're not? OK. All right, so those are all items with the exception of 17, 18, 23, 26, 29, and 30. And we have four presentations. All right. I will have public comment at this time. I have my online speakers here. Do we have the in-person speaker sign up? Is she coming? Okay, cool. All right. Starting online, public comment. It's Jacqueline Wagstaff. Can you hear me? It's Jacqueline Wagstaff. Can you hear me?

I can now.

Okay, welcome. You have three minutes.

Okay. Good afternoon. I wanted to comment, I did sign up to comment on the changing of the election process, but my comments on citizen matter involve some disturbing, some things that are happening in Durham that I think that this council needs to address, or at least give the citizens of Durham some explanation of what is going to happen. One, we have a serious problem with unhoused individuals that basically are dying, killing each other. We just had an incident yesterday right at the urban ministry where there were two individuals that were stabbed. One was serious and one was treated at the scene. This has become an epidemic. It happens every day right here where I live at down the street. 50 feet from the front door of the elementary school, there's been two deaths in the last month. And it's gotten to a point that people are afraid to go out. They're afraid to be in the streets. They're afraid to be around Durham. And we keep talking about all these wonderful things that are happening in Durham. There's a lot of things happening in Durham that I can say that are well, but there's a lot of things happening in Durham that are not so well. And we have to get a handle on it. And hiring a consultant to come in and tell us what we need to do for our community is not the answer. I would urge that this council sit down with people that actually are boots on the ground that understand the dynamics of what's going on in these community and not try to shy away from those individuals because of our differences of opinion. But right now it is an epidemic right now in Durham that's a turn. And I also would like to, I guess I'll do this at the budget session, discuss the monies that's going into the hard team and what is it that they do? Because I thought that they were supposed to have some impact on some of these problems we're having with our unhoused population. So that's my comments today on citizen matter. I'll see you at number 31.

Thank you so much. Do I have Marquita Dorsey? Can you hear me, Ms. Dorsey? She's in person. Okay, gotcha. All right, those are all citizens' matters. Oh, I see. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. Now in person, Frederick Davis. And I'm going to be pressing the meeting on time today, so I'm going to start calling folks on up right after Mr. Davis is David Mavoli. And after David, Leah Bergman, Charlita Burris.

Welcome, you have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. Since 1996, the city of Durham and the West End Community Foundation Incorporated has been in partnership with each other through the development of the Community Family Life and Recreation Center. My name is Frederick Davis as chair of the organization and founding chair and executive director. We have consulted with legal advisors and many others in the Durham community to just let you know that what is being proposed is unfair, I would say unethical, and it's an egregious decision that is being proposed to pull away Parks and Recreation out of the Community Family Life and Recreation Center. We will say more when it comes time to the budget hearing, but I wanted to go public now to let all of those who believe in what the West End Community Foundation Incorporated organization has been doing for 30 years, not four years, not two years, but 30 years in the Southwest Central Durham community. So as chair, we're going to rally the troops. We're asking citizens and taxpayers that are being served by this community. And we're asking for a dialogue now, since we hadn't had it since a lease agreement was signed in December for a 10 year operational agreement for parks and recreation to be in, and we budgeted on that aspect, and now you're pulling away $191,000 in the lease agreement proposal. So thank you for your time and your consideration, and I hope that there can be something happening better than what is being proposed for the 10-year lease agreement for the West End Community Foundation and partnership of a 30-year partnership since 1996, since it was created in 2002. So we look forward to a further discussion because we have not had any discussion from Parks and Recreation, from the city, and why you sign a lease in December to effectively begin january 2026 and now june the 30th you're canceling the contract the lease agreement thank you for your time frederick davis chair of the western community foundation incorporated 919-616-4819 area address 1309 halley street you're just asking for the stalkers man all right um

Next up, I have David Mavoli, and if Leah Bergman can line up right behind him, followed by Shalita Burris and Cheryl. I'm sorry, say again? Yeah, that's fine. Come on.

Ms. Dorsey, who was signed up to speak, Ms. Dorsey wanted to make sure that her name is on the list to speak in person. Yep, got it. You got it. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Mayor Williams and members of City Council. My name is Leah Bergman. My comments are with regards to the 2026-2027 proposed city budget and the financial funding labeled eviction diversion. I have followed eviction diversion funding closely in the city's budget for the past two years. First, let's understand the term eviction diversion, as it is defined by the United States Department of Treasury and by the National Center for State Courts as having three core components. One, rental assistance, programs that connect tenants with emergency funds to help clear past due rent balances. Two, mediation. Neutral third parties who help landlords and tenants craft mutually agreeable payment plans or move out strategies without a judge's ruling. Third, legal advocacy. Nationally, a successful eviction diversion program is designed to help landlords and tenants resolve housing disputes, usually over unpaid rent, outside of traditional adversarial court litigation. The objective is to keep tenants housed while ensuring property owners receive their payments. Now, let's take a look at the past success of the City of Durham's eviction diversion program that has historically been managed by Legal Aid. Your eviction diversion program has no funds for rental assistance that Legal Aid connects tenants to. I believe that if you take a deep dive into where the eviction diversion funds are being spent, they are being spent on lawyer salaries. Please, I beg of you, allocate funds to rental assistance for tenants. Secondly, there is no functional mediation. Last year, a conflict resolution center received $25,000 for mediation, while the line item in the budget for eviction diversion was $700,000. That means that less than 4% of the eviction diversion program went to mediation. Secondly, the mediation center was contracted by legal aid. This is not a neutral third party. Let's take a look at the objective of a successful eviction diversion program working outside the traditional adversarial court litigation. Legal Aid has offices on our courthouse on the third floor and sits in magistrate chambers seeking clients to represent. By definition, if a defendant has been summoned to court, they are now in the legal system. So the City of Durham's current eviction diversion program is getting the majority of its clients within the court system, not outside of it. This is a failure on programming and the administration of city funds. I encourage you to look deeply at this program. It is missing the core components. Thank you. Rental assistance, mediation, and operating outside of the judicial system. Thank you.

A little taller than she is. Good morning. My name is David Mavoli and I live at 130 East Main Street here in Durham and I work in the affordable housing marketplace. The funding in Durham is significantly higher with regards to funding lawyers relative to other municipalities in our state like Raleigh and Charlotte. Other municipalities have focused their eviction diversion programs on funding rent assistance and service providers versus legal services. The significantly large Durham-funded legal aid presence in our city has led to some unintended consequences that I would like to bring to your attention. Housing providers or landlords like myself have asked numerous times for meetings with legal aid and for legal aid to connect residents to rental assistance and support services, as well as to point them towards newly created affordable units. There is no communication or engagement from legal aid prior to these civil filings. The only time we communicate or interact with legal aid is in the courthouse, which is within the judicial system. I'd like to take your attention to nonprofits like the Lotus Campaign. are not able to serve clients in Durham due to legal aid activities. The Lotus campaign runs robust programs to gain stable and maintain housing for its clients. And these work well in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, but will not work in Durham in the current environment. The delay tactics of legal aid cause a decreased supply of housing units at affordable price points. Housing providers who provide naturally occurring affordable housing might have to forego a half a year or more of rent if they find themselves engaged with legal aid. At the end of the process, these landlords have been financially adversely impacted and are much more likely to sell the property versus continuing to provide an affordable housing unit. This is reducing the number of those units in Durham. There is a financial hardship on housing providers who do not have access to rental payments for an extended period of time. A move out of a resident who has not paid rent for five or six months is not a favorable outcome for the housing provider. Many of the housing providers are non-profits in the community, like Housing for New Hope, faith-based organizations, or the Durham Housing Authority. As you are well aware, these organizations are also contracted and funded in part by the City of Durham. I would like to state that the most successful landlord or housing provider is one who files zero evictions. Let me repeat that. Housing providers like mine are the most successful if I file zero evictions in a year. It is my goal to successfully house all of my residents and work with them to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship. When extending a tenancy via the court legal process for a resident who is not financially able to make rental payments, the resident ultimately loses their housing and is opposed to being one or two months behind in the rent with a collection on their credit. They now may have five months or more of rental collection on their credit. This is a huge barrier to overcome when looking for their next home, as the tenant might now have over $8,000 in rental arrears. Finally, I'd like to thank this council and prior council members for their commitment to creating quality new affordable housing units. Your support and leadership in this area have made a significant impact on our community. Thank you. Thank you.

Next, I have Charlita Burris, followed by Cheryl Geiger.

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Apostle Charlita Burris today. I'm going to read something, 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 12. And we beseech you, brethren, that you come to know those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you. We do not know each other like I thought. Mr. Councilman Charlie Ritz, we have not seen you at any DHA meetings. You're supposed to be an advocate for the citizens of DHA. Safety is a big issue in Durham right now. Y'all are talking about Councilwoman... Caviero, Mayor Andrew, about defunding the police. First of all, I'm going to say this. If y'all don't live in our neighborhood, if y'all don't come down here to see what's going on, you cannot talk about defunding anything. We need our officers. We need more money. They need raises. Every essential worker need raises. We had a shooting some months ago, Mayor Williams. Me and Councilwoman Burris was down on East Main Street and she called to see was I okay. You drove through there and didn't even get out of the car. Now, as a mayor, y'all and city council need to come together and work with us. I mean, we cannot do this by ourselves. Everybody want to put blame on each other and all this kind of stuff. But when are we really going to come together? We talk about how beautiful Durham is and how we love to live in Durham and all this. But your actions speak louder than words. So let's start talking about defunding and taking things away from people. And then when you allocate this money to certain organizations, you need to have those people be accountable to where this money is being spent. Because you are getting money off the backs of the community And you say the money's for the community, but the community don't see it. And may I ask you before, I said let the community leaders be at the table so we can actually tell y'all the things that are going on in the community that you may not know. Because you don't know everything. None of y'all do. And I respectively ask y'all just stop it. Let us come together. Let's get a police department, EMS, fire department, whoever need these raises. Y'all get your raises. You get paychecks. You're never going to get what you really deserve in your life. So get over it. You took the job. You know the responsibility for the job. So let's get the job done. Simple as that. And if you can't do the job, Step down, okay? Bottom line, period, and let somebody get high. These advisory boards, I wish I know about them. Maybe I would be, maybe if you didn't know me, maybe you'd let me be on one of them. But because I'm in the community so much, I don't even have time to look to see what's available for me to serve, okay? Besides being a minister. So if you get offended, AI is here to stay. Get over yourself. Everybody know when you come and go. Believe me, they know when you change your hair and change your drawers. So get over yourself about what you don't want to see.

Thank you, Ms. Burris. Next, Cheryl Geiger.

Good afternoon there, council members. My name is Cheryl Geiger, and I'm the resident safety manager for DHA. And I stand before you with a plea. Shots are being fired not only on DHA property, but all over Durham. I work very closely with the police department. We need the police department. They're understaffed, and they need equipment. So my plea to you is to please, please support and do everything that you can for the police department. Thank you.

Thank you. Next I have Crystal Grace.

Hello, everyone. I'm Crystal Graves. Many of you know me as the Cornwallis president. Today, I'm not reading off this phone because I'm upset because y'all can't do this to us. You can't do this because we need the police, and you know we need the police. I do not care who don't like who. I don't care who don't agree with what. But until the crime that's on DHA property spreads into your community, which if you do not fund and continue to fund the police at full capacity, because you ain't funded enough now as it is. If you do not do this, we will not be safe. We are not safe now. I am losing my children. I am losing my neighbors. And I'm tired. And everything I do, I do it for free. And most of the people I work with, y'all are on the clock. I'm on nobody's clock. Nothing that I do at Lakewood Elementary has anything to do with my community. I am trying my best, and y'all got to work with us. And I am trying to work with my community to make sure that they pay their rent, to try to get resources in my community to minimize substance abuse. Mental health is at its all-time high. I have been in all of y'all emails, and I have been busting my behind, and I'm asking you to do the same. Why are we here? I should not be here about Agenda 26 at all. all this is unnecessary uncalled for you all know data shows it's there do not do it because you're making it worse you want more children dead on the streets and because you're really not concerned about it because it's mostly black and brown you want more adults dead on the streets you want more police stretch do you know how many police officers it take when somebody gets shot Most of you all need to attend a police community academy. It's the community police community academy. That's what it is. Attend it. It takes a lot of police officers off the street. Sometimes Durham, if you listen, if you listen to whatever it's called, you will notice that it be five shooters in one day. And our police officers who risk in their lives got to go to those calls. Just imagine how many people it takes when someone gets shot or when somebody is dying. Who's ever behind this? Who's ever doing this? I need them to go find something else to do. Go get a life. I don't care what she do. She can go be a gardener. He can go and do construction work. He can move out of Durham if he don't like it. Don't do this to me. Don't do this to us. And we deserve better. And I am trying. I am trying. You got to give us time. But Agenda 26 cannot happen. And it will not happen if it has anything to do with me. Sorry.

Can you ? Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your comments. Oh, that's right. And I was supposed to remember that. Markita Dorsey. Miss Kreps. That's correct. Yours is, is it general comment or is it item 34?

It's a general comment.

Oh, okay. Go ahead. I'll correct it.

So, hey, everybody. I'm here to talk about Oakwood Park again. I was here in February to talk about what was going on there. Since then, we've actually had a fire in the park near the Families Moving Forward area. It was a homeless tent that was on fire. Eventually, someone came in and put it out because I called 911 when I was driving by. Since then, I had heard that there was going to be work done to do something about this. I saw an email that said we were going to take care of it. And I asked, if you're going to do something, you got to follow up. Well, you did something. Unfortunately, there was a lot of misinformation about what you did. And that is on you. You know, people said they hadn't been informed. People said no help had been offered to people. And that's the narrative that's out there for you right now. I know you tried, but it's not what got out there. And then an hour after the park was cleared, six tents came right back in the gazebo with two more tents, one by the school, and there's one by families moving forward today. So it didn't help. And it's actually become now a flashpoint. So now there are groups that use Oakwood Park as a place to gather, and I'm all for having a picnic or having a community event to feed the homeless. We've had several of those. I support that. What I don't support is now I drive by the park, and there are people that are giving out supplies. They're giving out tents. They're giving out clothing. And when I call to ask about it, I'm told, hey, you know what? Parks and Rec told them that was OK. So we've gone beyond just an encampment to sanctioning activities in that space. and now it's a dog park so this morning when i drove by there was a transaction occurring between two gentlemen there were bags that were left things that were exchanged and one man just let his four pit balls run into the park they defecated all over the place i've called the sheriff's department about this a few times they'll come in now i don't know remove the dogs or they come in the dogs are now tied up to the park equipment So you really, this isn't a park anymore at all. And I don't know if I have to wait till 2031 for homelessness to be brief and not here anymore. I'm just trying to understand, do I have a park? Or if this is a sanctioned homeless committee area, what do we do about it? Because it's not well ventilated. There's actually red biohazard bags full of feces that people put in the park. So it's not safe. So I'm just here to know, what do I do? Because I've sent emails for a year. I've talked to you all. No one's come back to me and said, this is what you can do and this is how you can help. I'm tired. I know there's all this going on, but what can I do? What can we do about this?

Thank you. Thank you.

I left you some pictures.

These are what I give to...

I turn on one call every week when I say there's dogs in the park or there's biohazard bags or there's feces everywhere or needles.

Thank you, Ms. Kreps. Ms. Dorsey.

Hello, I'm here in regards to, my name's Makweta Dorsey. I'm here in regards to the residents of Falls Point and Magnolia. I've actually been there about four years and three years ago I experienced the same thing that they're going through right now. They're actually telling everyone they owe so much rent They're evicting people. They did the same thing to me about three years ago, and I had to go through legal aid, and legal aid helped me, but it's getting really bad for everyone there. They're telling everyone they owe so much rent. They're evicting them. There's actually some sexual harassment going on with the the management there, and it's been going on for years. They're actually telling everybody now that they gotta move out. And a lot of people are handicapped there. They don't know where they're gonna go. And so, like I said, I'm standing up for them because I didn't have anyone to stand up for me when it happened to me. And a lot of the people there are not able to move. and they're struggling and they need help. This situation with the management has been going on for a long time and it's been ignored. Nothing's being done. And so the other day, me and my neighbor, we went out and got over 100 signatures for petition. for this situation and she went to Magnolia and she's gotten some too. The people are tired there. They don't understand why this keep going on and every time you turn around, you owe money and your rent is not being accepted because you owe the money. So it's been going on for a long time and I feel that something needs to be done. Somebody needs to stand up for these people and make sure that they'll be okay because they're trying to get everyone out of there that are low income. and it's been told by the management there, telling other residents this, and telling residents business, which they should not be doing, and so I'm here to stand up for them. Like I said, we have over 100 signatures for the petition, and we're looking for something for them to look at this situation for us. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Emmanuel. Ms. Dorsey, my special assistant is going to speak with you just briefly. All right. Those are all of the public. Oh, that's right. Madam Clerk, I got your note. Do you know if there are others? I'm not sure what's happening. So, colleagues, what's happening is there are folks that did sign up that is not registering. And I'm seeing the screenshots where they did sign up. So I want to honor that. Sir? That was for Patrice Andrews. Patrice, yeah. I'm seeing some consistency here. Yeah, he's in person on item 26. Sir, please state your name. Is there an item?

My name is Achamela Dabala. I'm a citizen and member of the NAACP. What's this for? I would like to speak on behalf of support for the TASER contract.

Okay, all right, got you. So what's going to happen is you did sign up, I do see it, but it's for a specific number, and I'm going to call that number. When I call that number, then I'll call you up to speak at that time. Appreciate it. And anyone else... Madam Clerk, was this for a specific item?

Yes, Ms. Andrews is for number 26.

Okay, so I'll call those individuals once I get there. I do have speakers for item 26. But what we just finished was public comment. These are not a specific agenda item. All right, so we're on item number 17. ITEM 17 AND 18.

OKAY.

THANK YOU. GOOD AFTERNOON, MEMBERS OF COUNCIL. MY NAME IS CHRIS. I'M PROJECT MANAGER FOR GENERAL SERVICES. KATHERINE ROLAND IS ILL TODAY, SO I'M GOING TO REPRESENT HER ITEM 17, 18, AND THEN YOU ALSO PULLED MY ITEM 23. SO I'M HERE FOR YOU. Just your questions. Cool deal.

Thank you. I think that I pulled all of them. So the first two are just very briefly. I know the funding for these items has been in the works for longer than a year. But we did have major flooding in both of these areas last year. And I am wondering what efforts were made to look into state and federal assistance for some of these repairs.

I'm not sure that I can answer that question for you. Mr. Walcott is present. So we can give him a minute.

Is he online?

Yes, I think he's in a room. Chris is like, I don't know. He is here, but we were full. So I'm going to...

going to add if I can't so we had after tropical storm Chantal we had a thorough assessment from our risk division about about all damages that we had insurance for and so I know in general that we have a number of active insurance claims I can't speak specifically to the improvements in this park we would have to ask Heather Galeotti our risk manager to be a little bit more specific and I don't believe we have representation from risk in the room today So that may be information that we would get to you before the council meeting.

Those are that's our insurance.

That's our insurance and then I would want to coordinate with emergency management on a conversation about whether or not generalized federal assistance Was requested storm damage assistance. I know that I'm not sure yet that we have reached the threshold I do see mr. Walker has made his way into the room So I'm not sure if he has more information than that or not If not, we'll be happy to get that information and include it in the packet before this item moves forward on the general business meeting Can you repeat the question?

Yes. So I know that this funding has been in the works for some time. My question was whether there was any effort made to secure federal or state funding, given that both of these are in storm-impacted areas.

I don't recall. We'll take a look at it. Like you said, it was a long time coming in design and construction.

OK. Yeah, if we could look into that, I'd be interested to know. I think generally speaking, it's useful. I know, again, that the funding has already been in the system. I know that there is funding available for emergency repairs, and some of this is going to fall. I know maybe not as much at West Point, but specifically for some of the improvements at Old Farm.

I actually have a higher degree of confidence that the improvements in West Point are covered. I know we have an extensive insurance claim active on structures in West Point on the, you know, but again, I don't want to generalize for you. So we'll ask our risk department and emergency management to fill out what requests we may have made and what funding may be coming forward. And we'll have that information.

Thank you, and if that information could also come with a brief discussion, because I think number 18 is due to a DOJ settlement, and so what limitations we have on using our insurance when there is, if any, when there is an ongoing settlement would be helpful. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on.

Was that it for 17?

Yes, and 18. I'm going to move on to 23.

And 18, okay. 23. Which I...

I am wondering, well, oh, you want to speak on 18? Sorry. Oh, OK. 23. Yeah, I mean, this is, given the one I think that we've pulled, which is the pilot program for parking of interest to me, this is structural maintenance On parking facilities, right? I'm just making sure I'm on the right thing. Yes.

Yeah.

Yes. Obviously, we have to repair them when they're unsafe. I'm just curious about the sort of long-term planning that's going in and sort of understanding how these repairs are laid out and what scheduling we're looking at and if there is sort of creative options in thinking about consolidation of structures or enlargement of structures to reduce. We talked about reducing surface parking. Just anything that you can tell me about sort of this, how we're looking at repairs and the expenditure of repairs in the context of a broader plan to be more creative around parking.

Gotcha. You're asking around the life cycle of the parking garage. Like what is its current condition?

Yes, and I know that we've talked a lot about creative solutions because we have lots of land tied up in parking downtown. And obviously we are still car dependent in the city and will continue to be for quite some time. But I know that there's also an interest in sort of reducing that and potentially also reducing particularly surface lots and potentially building up the capacity in some of these areas. Lots that I know have lots of repairs that are needed. I just want to understand when we're thinking about long-term creative solutions around parking, if that is coming into play when we're also assessing when to do repairs and how much to spend on them. Oh, Sean is creeping up behind you.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of council. So as you said, Council Member Cook, we're looking at our parking footprint through downtown. And we're looking in particular at those surface lots that you mentioned. So those surface lots are the most ripe for redevelopment for other purposes. And so as part of the planning around this, we're looking at the assets that we have with our parking decks and saying, all right, let's make sure that those are in a state of good repair, that they're safe and fully functional, because we're going to have those and we're going to need that capacity in particular as we start looking at options to repurpose those surface lots. But I think the, so our first look in those conversations is at what are those potential other options for the surface lots. And while we're doing that, that process will take time. We want to make sure that our parking deck facilities are in a state of good repair.

That makes sense to me, yes. I think I'm also kind of just, we've talked about a little bit about potentially expanding just garages as opposed to these surface lots and what that might look like. And I'm wondering if as we're doing these repairs, we're thinking about possible expansions or if we're just kind of doing the repairs to make sure they're in good working order.

I don't think that we're exploring any additional capacity garage Capacity at this point. We're looking at all right. What is the? What are the five parking decks that we use today and making sure that those are in a state of good repair? and then thinking about right sizing our overall inventory of parking and the The most straightforward path to do that is by looking at potential other uses for those surface lots.

I want to make sure we're thinking about that stuff too as we're moving forward because there are big investments. This is not honestly that big of an investment for, I think, what we're getting here. I know that we do a lot of investing in the upkeep of these structures. I know they get a lot of wear and tear and they are intense to upkeep. And so I just want to make sure that as we're doing these repairs, we're thinking about this because there might be cost savings involved if we sort of ready the garages as we're doing repair work in anticipation of things further down the line. So I just want to make sure that we're thinking about it in that context. I appreciate those answers. That's all from me for 23.

Thank you.

All right, now we're on item 26. First up, I have Mr. Drew Marsh.

Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Drew Marsh. I'm a former district court judge here in Durham. And I am on the taxpayers' lunch hour, so I'll be brief. I'm here to speak out in favor of not hamstringing and hobbling our law enforcement. I've heard a lot of... skepticism and misinformation about AI and what it does and what it doesn't do. And I think we need to stop shortchanging our law enforcement and preventing them from having the tools that they need to protect our community. I hear a lot of comments that, and you heard Ms. Burris earlier about how she feels that attention is not coming to those who are disadvantaged. And we know that disadvantaged people suffer more challenges in terms of crime and the like. These comments against AI are frankly a bit paternalistic and condescending. And I am really offended by that. We need to support our law enforcement officers and give them tools. AI is here. It's not going anywhere. And we can either embrace it and monitor it. But our law enforcement have, first of all, the job of safety of our citizens, secondly, to protect our fourth, fifth, and, yes, other rights under our Constitution, let's embrace them, okay? For those that don't like AI, I'm sorry about that. It's involved in more of your daily life than you want to imagine. So let's not throw up unspecified fears about it. Otherwise, we can get some tinfoil and put it on your head so the government can't read your brain. Right, like that. So I think we need to support law enforcement, and I'm speaking in favor on behalf of not only my position as a citizen, my family's been here a hundred years in Durham, but also as chair of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People's Political Action Committee. As you know, the Political Action Committee doesn't end its work just interviewing and endorsing candidates, it's our job to monitor the performance of those elected to make sure that your actions are aligning with the values of the committee. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next, I have Walter Jackson, followed by Herman Sperling, and Reina Rusenko.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, Mayor Pro Tem, Honorable City Manager, City Attorney, City Clerk. My name is Walter Jackson and I am a long time resident and activist in the City of Durham. I want to add my second to the remarks of Judge Drew Marsh regarding the need to support item 26 and specifically that provision of it that as I understand it would allow for the implementation procurement of technology that would activate law enforcement body cameras when tasers are employed. as a previous speaker said so eloquently and colorfully, but accurately, AI is here to stay. And everywhere we go and everything we do and everything we say is on the record. We need to embrace the positives of technology, of course, while trying to avoid the traps, and there are many, of technology. But as I see it, this proposal would allow for the protection of both law enforcement officers and citizens of the city of Durham by providing that when these tasers are employed, it's on the record as to exactly what happened. I think we are fortunate in the city and county of Durham that we have not had the kinds of high profile incidents with citizens and law enforcement where citizens were victims of law enforcement and I think there are a number of reasons that we haven't had that and that includes the support of our governmental entities the kinds of people we have had in responsible positions in law enforcement and city and county administration so again my role today my concern is to voice support for the item number 26, and the adoption of that technology. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Mr. Sperling is next, followed by Raina Rosenko.

Thank you, Mayor. Since I know most of you, I'm going to elevate your status and say, fellow Durham residents, I'm Herman Sperling, and I'm speaking on behalf of Item 26. The question is not whether technology exists. It already does. The question is whether democratic government sets the rules for its accountable use. Smart doorbells record everything, and video are shareable without oversight. Cell phones record where we go 24 by seven, even within the sanctity of our own homes. The internet and social media provide data that allows unregulated entities, including criminals, know who we are, what we're interested in, who we communicate with, our personal and political views. Smart thermostats, alarm systems, and door locks let those we don't know know when we're home and even when we're in our home. The opportunity before councils to safeguard our community. We can have clear written use policies, public reporting requirements, independent audits, data retention limits, warrants where appropriate, civilian oversight review, and sunset clauses requiring reauthorization. Technology can reduce the need for broader or more aggressive policing by making policing more precise, reducing unnecessary encounters with innocent residents. Licensed place meters can identify a stolen vehicle quickly instead of conducting large area traffic stops. Camera evidence can narrow investigations to actual suspects instead of relying on generalized suspicion. And drones can search dangerous areas without sending officers blindly into harm's way. Why would we want to disadvantage those who pay to protect us? Law enforcement cannot remain analog while sophisticated criminal activity becomes digital. Many cities face staffing shortages and want to avoid property tax increases. Technology can help cities do more with existing staff instead of continually expanding headcount. can reduce administrative overhead, automated written reports and evidence organization, allow officers to spend more time on community policing, and help solve crimes more efficiently with fewer personal interventions. Some technologies protect citizens as much as officers. Think of George Floyd, the Boston Marathon bomber, and the recent murders in Minneapolis. Body cameras resolve disputes about what occurred. Digital evidence systems preserve change of custody and reduce accusation of tampering. Recorded encounters often improve officer professionalism and citizen behavior simultaneously. In closing, allow me to repeat. The issue before us is not whether technology will exist in society. It already does. The question is whether our city will use carefully governed, transparent tools to protect residents, officers, business, schools, and houses of worship while maintaining strong civil liberties, safeguards, and public oversight. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Raina Rusenko, followed by Acha or Acha Debla.

All right, good afternoon. My name is Raina Rusenko. I'm a Durham resident and a member of the Have a Heart Coalition. I am opposed to the contract to renew and expand Axon services. For one, the city's baseline expenditures with Axon for existing tools such as cameras and tasers are a problem on their own, and these expenditures should be fundamentally reduced rather than renewed. From here, though, I'll focus on problems relating to the proposed expansion. In the documents, The Tech Solutions Department argues that this bundled package of existing and new products comes as a bargain. But that so-called bargain doubles annual expenditures to Axon from $1 million to $2 million for products that the public is not asking for. Moreover, giving our money and our data to Axon for these surveillance products would compromise the true community safety we are looking to build here in Durham. The new products introduced into this contract include six drones, the FUSIS platform, and data storage services. For more information, I referenced the Axon and Skydio webpages to see what DPD might be purchasing. Axon is itself marketing its drone technology as an airspace security product. Drones are equipped with cameras that enable them to monitor public and private spaces and the people in them. Documents show that these drones include Skydio X10 technology. The Skydio webpage details that this tech, quote, provides live aerial intelligence to police officers and your real-time crime center, end quote, and enables police to respond to calls without sending officers by deploying self-driving drones. The FUSES platform, which manages video data, is a part of this larger mass surveillance project. Page 110 of the city contract also suggests that LPR data will be integrated into FUSES. To some, it looks like DPD is asking us to spend upwards of $1 million per year on real-time airspace surveillance, which starts with six drones but will likely not end there. Moreover, this project will likely be incorporated into the larger real-time crime center mass surveillance project that the City of Durham has tried to launch since last year. Recently, a proposed contract with Peregrine was dropped because of controversy surrounding mass surveillance in real time using cameras on the ground. I don't believe investing our money in the launch of a real time airspace surveillance program is remotely what the public wants right now. Axon is already proudly partnering with CBP and ICE, and this airspace surveillance data could also be used by these and other federal agents. It's heartbreaking that people cannot afford rent, food, utilities, healthcare, or generally make ends meet in this city, yet our government is thinking of spending an extra $1 million per year on airspace surveillance. In fact, to neglect people's needs while dreaming up opportunities to surveil them is cruel. Under no circumstances should this contract with Axon be pursued. I'm asking you to vote no should this come to a vote. Thank you. Thank you.

Next out to Deborah. And after would be Patrice Andrews.

Durham City Council Andres, Advancing Accountability and Community Safety. Members of the Durham City Council, fellow community members, and dedicated public servants, we gather today at a moment that matters, a moment where the decision we make will echo through our neighborhood, precincts and our shared future. The proposal before this Council is not simply about equipment, it is about trust. It is about the kind of community we choose to be, one where accountability and safety are not competing values but complementary ones. The integration of advanced safety technology, specifically tasers that automatically activate body worn camera during incidents, represents a meaningful step forward. When documentation happens automatically, there is no gap in record. There is no question of what occurred. There is only the truth. This protects our citizens, this protects our officers, this protects the integrity of every interaction between the two. When communities can trust that incidents are fully and fairly documented, confidence in law enforcement grows. And when officers know their actions are recorded, professionalism is reinforced. But not because it is forced, but because the standard is clear. Every neighborhood in Durham deserves the same quality of public safety resources, not some communities, all communities. For too long, equitable access to modern accountable policing has been treated as an aspiration rather than an obligation. Today this Council has the opportunity to move from aspiration to action and to say clearly and without hesitation that every resident of Durham matters equally. This is not a partisan issue, this is a human issue. What makes the proposal particularly compelling is what it invites collaborations between law enforcement and the communities they serve, between city leaders and every citizen, between the promise of public safety and the reality of it. When citizens see their government investing in transparent, accountable systems, they are more likely to engage, to cooperate, and to trust. Thank you, it's your time. Thank you.

Okay, and the last speaker I have is Patrice Hendress. Welcome, Madam Chief.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, and City of Durham employees and staff. So today I stand before you as a private citizen. I also stand before you in support of the Durham Police Department's Axon contract renewal and technology enhancements that are contained within it. I understand there are concerns here around surveillance and privacy. Those concerns deserve thoughtful discussion. But I also believe we must be equally honest about the reality our community is facing. The people committing violent crimes today are organized and increasingly sophisticated. Criminals are evolving. Our officers are being asked to respond to violent and property crimes often with limited tools and while under intense public scrutiny. If we expect law enforcement to solve crimes efficiently, reduce violence, and respond effectively in critical moments, we must equip them with modern technology that supports those goals. And once again, the conversation will likely become less about public safety and more about a fear of surveillance. It will be led and steered by people that would rather see a continued trend of violence and property crime simply because they hate government and specifically law enforcement. They are the loudest group in the building. It is unfortunate that the majority of Durham residents are often never heard in this forum. The majority that actually are subject to violent crime every day. It is even more disturbing when we do have residents that come and speak up and oftentimes they are ignored or looked past with their lived experience. This is not about creating a police state. It's about giving trained professionals the ability to respond faster, solve crimes more effectively, locate missing or endangered people who may have left in a vehicle, identify suspects connected to violent acts, and intervene before more lives are harmed. Across this country, technology has helped law enforcement locate kidnapped children, recover missing elderly patients suffering from dementia, identify vehicles tied to shootings and homicides, and stop dangerous suspects before additional violence occurs. These tools are not theoretical. They're being used every day. The same people who demand accountability from police should also support tools that create transparency and better investigations. but they would rather see lawless society and hope that the community alone can end violent crimes. In closing, I want to acknowledge that your job is hard. I also want to applaud the surrounding councils, Asheville, Raleigh, Cary, that believes in the work of their police department. Those councils understood that sometimes actually supporting their department means making the difficult decision to go against those that make the most noise. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chief. Those are all the speakers that I have for item 26. It is now who pulled item the entire council. Okay. All right. Who wants to go first?

And council members, I'll just, in introduction to this, let you know that there's a wide range of staff and consultants available in the room today to answer questions. This is a technology solutions item, but obviously primarily about police technology. So we have both technology solution staff, police department staff, and representatives of the vendor. Should any of your questions be directed, just let us know what your question is, and we'll find the appropriate person to address.

Thank you, Council Member Ferguson. All right, anyone? Okay, everybody pulled an item and no one's gone. Okay, go ahead, Council Member Kopach.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Manager. Really appreciate the resident comments and a fair debate and discussion about the benefits and risks of adopting technologies that can bring benefits that meet resident goals and also benefits have potential risks that are really important for us to thoroughly evaluate and weigh. I think there's going to be more discussions and I'll have more questions as we get into it about, you know, aspects of the technology, some of the aspects of the contract. But I just wanted to start with questions about civilian governance. Because I think that's something we've heard come up in prior issues, hear come up with this issue. And obviously our police department has a role to play. This council has a critical role to play in terms of governance. And then across issues throughout the city, we have other means of having civilian resident involvement and helping us to evaluate choices and ongoing practices. And so I just wanted to ask whether it's the manager or other members of staff, about where that governance plays a role in issues like this, whether it's the Civilian Police Review Board or others. How does that factor into these sorts of policy questions?

Can I add one more thing to that as well? I raised this during the Peregrine conversations too. But it's also my understanding that the, sorry to put you on the spot here, but that the city manager's office was already in the process of developing comprehensive citywide governance policy around data collection and use and retention and access and all of that. That was my understanding. And so just wanted to tack that on to the end of your question as well.

So I'll do my best to kind of address that range. So, Councilmember Kopach, you inquired in a briefing earlier this week about the potential role of the Civilian Police Review Board. The Civilian Police Review Board is a manager-appointed, council-confirmed board that has a fairly narrow focus at this time of reviewing of internal affairs investigations, complaints of officers and reviewing any decisions that get to the level of the police chief if they are appealed. That's what the Civilian Police Review Board has in its charter. The Civilian Police Review Board does have the power to request additional authority or powers. I think it takes five members of the board to request additional powers. The council could then consider a request from the Civilian Police Review Board Right now, their jurisdiction would not include review of technology. My very initial review, and I apologize to my friends in the attorney's office, this was a Google search, is that there is nothing in state law, and I know the police attorney is here and they could probably expound, would prevent civilian police review board from potentially providing advice oversight consent to police use of technology but that is not something that is in their powers now a second level of review that we discussed with council members was in some of those briefings was the role of the audit services Advisory Committee so the Council appoints members to the Audit Services Advisory Committee. Two members of Council sit on that committee. And the Audit Department, while the city auditor reports to me, the Audit Services Advisory Committee sets the annual audit agenda for the city's internal auditor. That auditor has powers outside and above the police department and has the ability to review any and all policies and programs within the city for either for program performance or for program compliance. The city, the internal audit department has had a number of reviews in the police department, very successfully been able to provide oversight and those reports are public uh... those reports are go directly to the audit services advisory committee so that is another uh... potential for civilian oversight of any any program frankly within the city and that certainly includes within the police department so uh... an opportunity that the city council would have would be either through its liaisons to the a sock or through direct request to the ASOC for them to consider, including in their audit plan, a review of police use of technology, whether that be for data privacy purposes, for compliance with guidelines that the department itself has established through general orders. Those are all very common roles for the Audit Services Oversight Committee to play. So I think those are the two most available tools. I would say immediately the ASOC would be a potential partner for the council if the council were looking to discuss some sort of civilian oversight. Their role is not to provide standing oversight, but they could repeat audits and reviews on a semi-recurring basis, which is something that the Audit Services Department does on a regular basis. As to the AI governance policy, that is something that is under development. About a month ago, we introduced our new technology solutions director who's in the room today. We have not completed that work yet, but across the organization, we are finalizing our guidelines for what it will look like in terms of the use of the technology in the organization. I do want to stress, as we mentioned in council briefings, that AI is not a significant component of the Axon package. And so I think staff and the vendor are here today and can answer questions about what elements of this technology package do have elements of AI. But I do want to say in answering that question that this is not primarily an AI-based tool.

Yeah, I wasn't asking about AI, just data collection.

policy yeah so i i do want to be clear that that city-wide policy right now does not have a primary focus on data collection we i would say primarily to the extent that we're talking about collection of public data uh public video public images that is governed very much by state and federal law and that certainly we have a lot of standards within the police department as we discussed extensively in council briefings the only information that is collected and stored by our police department is evidentiary information or information that we are required to keep by state law. So body worn cameras have a certain number of days that we're required to keep. Beyond that, we do not keep or store any information that's not directly related to evidence in an investigation.

Okay, thank you. I was curious because I was just told that we were developing a policy, so I was curious what that was.

I'll be happy to review the extent of the AI and data work that we're doing, and if I gave an inadequate answer here, I'll be happy to come back and revise that and give you more information.

Thank you for that response, Mr. Manager. And I think I would like to explore those other means of oversight. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a question of trust. And there was a speaker who said it eloquently that a lot of this work we do requires that we find ways to trust each other. And there's different ways to enable that trust. And one of it is having proper forms of oversight and it's been clear to me and I appreciate the response and you know the way that you know the Bike Pedestrian Commission has oversight over street safety than it has been over how we think about these sorts of tools and it's such a fast evolving space where I think one there are legitimate concerns that we've seen and two there's a lot of fear that sometimes leads to arguments that aren't necessarily based in you know the facts on the ground and in order to sort through that it helps to have more ways of pursuing oversight so I'll pause there on the governance question for now but You mentioned it, Mr. Manager, and I think it's worth airing in this venue. I think it'd be worth having the vendor come up and address just so folks can understand what are the ways that AI is provisioned, the way it's planned to be used with this technology. Manager said it's not a major component of it. I think it'd be good to hear what component is it. Also, there was an element of the contract that I saw that had to do about data sharing for model development for AI. So it'd be interesting to think about what is it in terms of the use and application of it, and what is it in terms of the way the data is used for other purposes.

All right, the vendor is in. Please come up, and as you're coming up, I'm going to call on Council Member Wrist.

Right, yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. If I could build on that question. So I appreciate the manager referencing AI. We had a great conversation the other day about some of these elements. So my question would be, as the vendor is coming up, is when we've heard concerns today about real-time crime centers, right, And I know the Real-Time Crime Center is not one thing. It covers a range of things that can use AI and machine learning to do things, right? So I think it'd be helpful to understand to what extent the Exxon technology is not a real-time crime scene, how do we understand that for residents who are concerned about that? I think it'd be helpful to understand exactly how this relates to that sort of concept. And I think also to Council Member Kopech's comments, if there are AI tools that are part of the Exxon package, are some of those turned on, turned off? Can we choose to turn on, turn off? So what is the relationship between AI and the Exxon package? And again, we had a great conversation the other day, but I think partly this is to make sure the community is aware of this and is informed about exactly how these different concepts kind of relate in terms of Axon technology, if that makes sense.

Thank you. Andrea Swan from Axon. Thank you, Council, for letting me speak today. I appreciate the time. Which question would you like me to answer first? There were a couple, so I want to make sure I answer everyone sufficiently. I'll start with the piece that's in the contract today. So the piece that we are looking at in the contract today that would be considered AI is basically when you look at the screen behind you and you see the closed captioning, it's transcription. So voice-to-text recognition is in the contract today, which could be considered an AI tool. Not generative AI, but AI that gives you speech-to-text. That is the only piece that is active in the contract today that has an AI component linked to it. So does that answer your question?

I guess it was part of it. And then there was an element of the contract that referenced sharing of data for AI model building purposes. My colleagues can tell me if I'm interpreting that right.

I may need to have Tony weigh in as well, too, if he had. OK.

Based on the conversation we had in one of the council briefings, I think the question that was raised was about an optional choice whether or not the city's use of the technology could be anonymized and used for service improvement by Axon. It was made clear to us that we have the opportunity to opt out of that and that it would be our intention to opt out of that, if that sounds correct to the team present. Chief Tate, am I saying that correctly? So it does make reference. That does speak to my question. Thank you.

Certainly. Thank you for that. So as you just said, so the only AI piece in the contract before us is this kind of voice-to-text piece, right? Correct. But in the Axon package of tools you have. In the world. Right, yeah. Are there other AI tools? Are those things that we have opted out of? Are those things we could opt into? Are those things that we could choose in the future? So just to know the whole range. Again, so if the citizens know exactly all the potentially AI related here, understand like what's our, what are we choosing or not choosing or can choose related to AI and Axon? Great question.

There are a host of tools in the Axon portfolio that agencies can choose from. What Durham PD has chosen is not any of the tools which are considered in the AI centric components of those pieces. When you ask, can they opt into them? software would need to be contracted at a cost to be able to do that so at this point in time in the contract as it's built today those pieces cannot simply be turned on the pieces that are inside of the contract today, including transcription, are all part of what's called a software stack. So inside and the back end, for those of you I see nodding heads, that software can be turned on and off, but it has to be contracted in order to do that. So all of the pieces that Axon is building and has built today that are sort of the AI grouping of choices are not part of this contract. The pieces like transcription and the pieces like FUSIS, which I know FUSIS came up in this, there are components of that that we can walk down this road together over the next several years and decide as a team if there are additions that might be useful with the group and everyone here to say, is that something functional and reasonable for DPD to use? But it wouldn't be without a conversation, without paperwork, without having that kind of conversation with the entire team.

And so that's helpful. So in the future, if there were, if either the manager or the chief or others wanted to add some of the AI components, that would be, would have to be a new contract that then the city council would see that contract or not.

Hi, Brenda Neal, associate city attorney. So what that would look like is a contract amendment essentially. And so as other contract amendments, that's based on the dollar amount, whether it has to come back to council or whether it's under the city manager's purview.

As we discussed back when council changed my contracting authority, the decision whether or not to, what you delegated is the right for me to execute contracts like that, but it is within my discretion to bring those contracts back. I would be very comfortable committing today, as part of my employment from the Council, that any modifications to the Axon contract would be brought forward for Council consideration, that I would not use any delegated authority to modify this contract in any way that adds a new technology or use of technology without consulting with the Council.

I appreciate that. And that gives the Council member Kopeck's comments about trust, right? So I think we need to have trust among the Council. The DPD, the chief, the residents, I appreciate that. Thank you.

I'd like to make one more quick comment about this. The other piece is a piece of hardware inside of the contract. It's called a core. I'm sure you guys who have seen and looked over some of the information in the Axon contract are familiar with that term. That's for FUSIS. FUSIS is basically the core is a piece of hardware that sits on the network that allows those camera feeds, which have been selected, to be able to be viewed on one screen. So whether it's... city cameras, whatever has been delegated by DPD to be able to see in there, that core hardware is what gives the potential to be able to see them during an emergency response. For instance, on the network, on the network, that core, the cores that are in there have AI potential to be able to be used, but will not be turned on without any kind of conversation or agreement between all parties. I want to make sure that's clear.

Thank you Sorry, I was she had her hand up earlier, so I'll go here and then to you Thank you I appreciate my colleague my colleagues question so far. I think everybody on council knows I'm probably the biggest tech skeptic and I will just say I do have a lot of concerns around this just generally. I will say that I appreciate city staff. I think I kept you all way over our hour the other day, so appreciate you. Some of the things that have been shared that I feel more confident, I still don't know where I am. We have until June 1st. But some of the things that I know that I feel better about is, and this was different than Peregrine and, quite frankly, ShotSpotter and some of the other tech that has been presented as options in the past. One, it is our data. It is not going to be anybody else's data. I think that that's a huge difference I think that the other piece that I feel better about is that we are thinking through What are the oversights? I really appreciate the city manager committing to whether it's above or below his threshold Anything comes before council. I think putting it with audit services makes sense and All of those things are the guardrails that I need to, and I want to hear where other colleagues are as well, but all of those are the guardrails that I at least feel more comfortable than any of the other tech solutions that have been brought forward to date, and that goes all the way back to 2018. I think some of the other things that... made a lot of sense to me is that, in many ways, a lot of this technology is already here. We already use it. We already have Axon as a contracted partner. This is a bundle. And there was one other piece, and I want to make sure I don't lose it. Oh, I think the other piece which we haven't spoken about yet is, in some ways, partly because of the way that prosecution is moving forward in North Carolina. Some of this is because of the tech that the prosecutor's offices are using or district attorney's offices are already using. And so in many ways that they've made a choice in a tech platform, and to make their jobs easier, we're having to move in the same direction. And so that's, in some ways at least, for me, very different than... Somebody, you know, saying as a council member, oh, I think we should bring this tech piece in, which is what has been done, you know, before. Or just this kind of outside piece like Peregrine, which honestly didn't make a ton of sense to me. This is a movement in some ways partly outside of our control, what prosecution offices are doing across North Carolina. and what tech platforms they're using, and then a bundling of tech that we already have and are using. And so those are, I think, pretty large differences in what other things have come before in council. One. Two, I think we will need to explore, and I think by June 1st, I really would like to have that clear. Is it audit services? What's the plan? How do we plan on having oversight? Is it going to be quarterly, annually, however that council can see? by default, the public can see how is this moving forward. And then from my perspective, as you all know, I'm not interested in any kind of add-on beyond what we have here. This makes sense to me. A lot of the other things that maybe you all have and other communities want and it's bells and whistles, I'm not particularly interested in. And then the other thing is I know that within the, I don't know if it's FUSIS or somewhere, there is the license plate reader and that's something that we can decide to turn on or off and my recommendation or my Hope is that we would not add that or if we do it's and I think the three areas that were listed It was it was pretty narrow in scope and so either it's off or we make sure that that is very very narrow in scope Those are all the things I have to say

not gonna have questions for you if you want to take a seat I mean you don't have to but I just want to thank my colleague actually a lot of those issues are ones that I ones that I also am thinking about. For me, a big piece of this, and Council Member Kopach talked about trust, a big piece of this for me is that councils are volatile, and the manager, therefore, is volatile, and also cultures within our police department are volatile. Not to say that we are hiring and firing people en masse, but that is always a potential for those things to change. And so we talked about this a little bit in our briefing that some of these things, we're willing to enshrine those in writing to ensure that stuff like the license plate and car reader doesn't get turned on. That's not a cost situation, so it wouldn't necessarily come back before us, even if it were within the manager's discretion. But I think, for me, it would be helpful to have some of these things in writing. And the ones that I've made a list So if folks want to, and I'm happy to hear from my colleagues about some of this as well. But to the extent that these things are not already binding policy, I am interested in not storing recordings unless it's required by state law. And I want that to include any of the drone footage, because I know that that's not regulated in the same way. What?

I'm just curious, if they're building a case against someone, right? Yeah, that's required.

We're required to hold evidence for that purpose. Anything in addition to that, like anything over that we would be just holding? And that might already be. We don't do that now. I want to be really clear. Our department does not do that now. But this I'm talking about as things to enshrine for moving forward. So it already might be written. That's the other thing. And I don't know. So this is just things that I'm thinking about. And I do think that there's different laws around drone footage. So I'd be interested in sort of hearing about what is required, if anything, by the state. Not using that plate or car reader text I would like to have in writing. The encryption remaining in-house for all of our data, I know that that is the case, but I would like it to be in writing if it is not already. The only AI usage is from within the city system. So right now, my understanding is that the limited AI that is in this package is coming from a model that is in-house. And I would like it to stay that way. No responses to anything outside of a formal and legal subpoena that we don't give our data over. I think, again, that is policy, and that probably is written down, but I just want to make sure that we're opting out of that data training that we talked about earlier, or the model training, and we're not providing our data for that training. Committing to modifications coming before the council for consideration. I just heard the manager do that, but I'd like that in writing as well because, again, might not always be the manager. And then anything else that aligns with the culture that we'd like to enshrine, and I'm open to suggestions, but those are the things that have kind of come up for me over this discussion. Hey. Hey. Did you turn that on? I absolutely can send you the list. I saw the manager over there making scribbles. And again, I'm open to, because this is just things that have come up that I think align with what I see as already the culture of the police department, but would maybe like to have enshrined. The only other thing that I have that is a little bit of concern to me is the longevity of the contract. And I know that this is in part because we will have savings over time. The reason that this is alarming to me is that it is a huge monetary contribution and it's not just right now it's like over time and it also will increase. We're signing ourselves up ostensibly to make these payments over time every year and we also have a violent crime reduction summit that's coming this summer and so Maybe these things will all align with that, but maybe they will not. And so my concern is that we won't have the flexibility to further those goals if we have tied up money here. So that's the only thing. And I know that this is a cost-saving issue with a bundle, but that's something that's sort of just playing in the back of my mind about Sort of tying our hands to this specific tech over a long period of time and also this might not be The tech that is the most useful in three to five years I don't know and so the the sort of having our hands tied over a long period is is making me feel a bit alarmed.

Okay Sorry, it's me again. We do have the option to terminate for non appropriation of funds within the contract So just an option That is good to know. Thank you

And thank you, Council Member Cook, for your comments. I want to remind staff that you take action based on the council's direction. So I'm going to make sure that this is information purposes only, your request for information. Okay.

Well, I'll be brief. I did have an opportunity to connect, not during your time, but I did meet with Jordan from Axon a couple weeks ago and was able to ask a lot of questions about the usage of the tool and the equipment as well. What I haven't heard, and I think Council Member Copac slightly got around to it, is no one has really raised community concerns that we heard in chambers today. And it really illustrates the tale of two cities here in Durham, where we have people who come and advocate but don't step foot into these communities until there's a photo op. or they feel confident in speaking for people that you don't have any relationship with. So if we're going to talk about building relationships, I think it's by building relationships with our city employees. And I'll remind folks that our city police are employees as well. And we would not send a firefighter out to do a job without a fire engine or a fire hose trying to put a fire out. And so as we think about that, my concern, because I did do a ride-along with our police last month, I did get to see some things happen in real time. And it's a great deal. I did see how some technology is used. Like the drones were used when I was at a drug bust last month that I watched that the narrative just went totally different. By the time we left, people were like, oh, they were throwing people on the ground. They had dogs out on people. And none of that ever happened at all. I watched it from a police cruiser, right? But we had our, yeah, city staff kind of caught some flack for that from people, some advocates said in the community. So it's kind of interesting when you don't go out into community and you don't see things firsthand. you're more likely to repeat things that are simply just untrue. And so I want to encourage us to maybe do a ride-along or get to know our police staff because what I fear is going to happen is that we're going to have a hard time recruiting high-quality individuals. The public perception is that city council does not support their police officers. We have the right to be where we want to be on the spectrum, but I don't see this level of scrutiny often happen to other city departments. But I also don't see people hearing what the community is saying. Someone's crying out for help. someone saying, look, we want community police, we want support, we want to have these tools and resources to make our communities feel safe. And just because some of us are able to go and walk and bike to our nice, safe home, not everyone has that privilege in our community. And I think that you have to see the nuance in what the needs of a growing city are, and that's making sure our police force has adequate equipment to do their job.

I know that Asheville recently approved a contract with Axon. I'd be interested, whether you have this in this meeting now or not, in a little comparison between what Asheville has done and what we are doing, because I think there are some differences that are interesting. So I'd be interested in that comparison of what is similar and what is different between here and Asheville. And also just, we talked about this yesterday, comparisons between Durham in general and the technology that we're using and what other cities are doing and using as well. I'd be interested in having some sort of comparison there as well. There are actually in this proposed contract some things that I think make policing safer and more transparent. So we're actually doing things that I think people who are concerned, those of us who are concerned about privacy and surveillance, doing things that are actually beneficial in this. I think body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, and accessibility to those and transparency are good things. There are other elements of the contract particularly those that are being expanded upon or would be expanded upon, where I think putting in and ensuring that there are those guardrails and oversight is an important part of it. And I don't think we should downplay those concerns either. So if you kind of think about this in two buckets, surveillance, the technology and technology needs of our police department so that they can do the work that they need to do in one bucket I think the other bucket for me is that we are seeing drastic cuts in our city budget and concerns and employees not getting the raises that they hoped and expected. And at the same time, not just an increase in the annual expenditures here, but more than double the expenditures for this contract. Um, can you, can someone speak to, speak to what, if any savings there are, I'm not talking about savings because of the longevity of the contract, but I'm talking about savings around. We currently have drones. Um, there are now drones in this contract. Um, and, and any other kinds of, you know, training, we're talking about training, um, what is being, what is replaced versus what is enhancing or expanding what we are already doing? Can we learn a little bit more about what kind of savings that we've heard are happening? What kind of savings, what are we seeing in terms of the savings?

Sorry, Sean Huey, I'm the fiscal services manager for the police department. So, I have a cost breakdown of what we currently pay per year for our Axon contracts, which is about $954,000 a year. If we did not include if we did not do this bundled contract and we did a continued five-year contracts for each of the items that we currently use the body cameras the in-car cameras and the tasers we would be seen cost increases elevated based on whatever the consumer price index is each year. So instead of paying $1 million per year right now, which would be $2 million under the new contract, we would be seeing a cost over the eight years of about $12.2 million for the status quo. Nothing changed, nothing added, but that does not give us some of the items that we crucially need, like the unlimited storage. Right now we have some storage in a couple different places. One of our contracts with another vendor, they do not offer unlimited storage. So at the rate that we're increasing our storage, It would increase almost exponentially as the amount of data that we have increases. For the unlimited storage for under the Axon contract, it adds $1.5 million to the cost. The other item that we need, we are short by 100 cars for in-car cameras. That alone is another million dollars. So you add the unlimited storage, the in-car cameras, 2.5 million there to the 12.2 and we're already at 14.7 over the eight year or seven and a half year contract. Compare that 14.7 to the 16.1 And it's only about a $2.4 million difference over that eight years. But for that $2.4 million, we get the virtual reality training with our tasers, which provides a number of different scenarios, makes it safer for the officers to deploy that type of equipment. It does not include the transcription services, which we talked about earlier Transcription is another million dollars over that eight years the virtual reality For the tasers that would be another 2.2 so all of these little things add up to a lot more cost and if you include the the drones the fuses the LPR and without doing this bundled contract, the cost would be about $24 million. So we're seeing about an $8 million cost savings by doing this bundle. I don't have specific information for what it costs to deploy a drone, for example. I could do some research and pull that information for you, but I don't have that specific information with me.

Mr. Huey, would it be possible to, so we have a current drone fleet that would become obsolete at some point and need replacement. So I think one piece of data that might get to the council member's question is an estimate to what the individual cost of replacing the existing drones in the drone fleet would cost if we were to do that under another contract. I think if we could also collect the information you referenced to what we're paying for data storage to an outside vendor, because obviously that's something that comes under this contract. So those are at least two data points. And if there are other data points of...

other technologies uh we could provide that in follow-up information in the council packet if this comes forward that would be that's exactly what i'm looking for yeah it's a comparison what the drones going obsolete right we have existing drones we're not going to replace those because we will have these instead right um There is already tasered training. Is this enhancing that, or is this replacing some elements of that? Those kinds of questions, I'm curious. Where are we seeing expanding some of what we're getting here versus replacing, and what are the rough, if any, cost savings associated with those? That's what I'm interested in. Okay.

I'll work on that.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Can someone repeat, because I missed it, the contract can be terminated if what?

Attorney Neal, do you want to? Terminated for non-appropriation of funds. So if in the budget, there's not money for it.

Okay, thank you so much. And then coming back to Councilmember Cook's comments about you're going to send the list, I guess, of all these things you're interested in. And this, I think, comes back to something we talked about during the Peregrine conversation is the ACLU surveillance program. language that they have, the model language. So I'd be interested in what does that look like? We had an exchange of emails, Madam Attorney, about that. So anything that's in that that could be explored and tailored specifically to Durham, I would be interested in if the answer is, we're already doing this, this would be duplicative, we already have this built into policy or in the contract, I think that'd be useful information. That's it for me now.

Yeah, thank you. And this is a question more for Manager Ferguson. It just sparked it with the drone conversation, because we also know that the fire department has drones, and I brought it up during our briefing, was as we were moving forward, really doing, I understand the purposes or the nature of what the fire department needs to do is going to be different than the police, but where are the opportunities for cost savings? Because The tech's going to, their job is to sell their tech. I mean, they're salespeople. It's like when you go to the car place and they're going to try and sell you the car with the fancy sunroof and you're like, I don't need that. Just give me a car that works. think as we're having these conversations on tech and the the desire which is I get it from departments to really have Rose robust tools especially when you're thinking about saving lives right at the end of the day where are we how are we approaching it to really collaborate across community safety apparatus the entire thing police, fire, community safety, and I understand it may not be in this contract, but I really need staff to start thinking about that so that we're not every few months, every few years, oh, it's another few million dollars for this thing, for this department, when really we could have been doing this more holistically.

Thank you, Mayor Pertem. One of the things I'd like to call out for council that I'm really proud of, that our technology solutions department has had a fairly longstanding practice of a robust external review of departments and the technology primarily software packages, but I think it's a model that we could explore with this, which is what technology does the city own, what capabilities are within those technologies, and how can we make sure that we are making the best and most efficient use of those technologies. We have a governance process that requires departments to go to technology solutions, thus why Axon is coming forward as a TS item. And as part of a department coming to technology solutions, they don't come to TS and say, I want to buy Axon. They come to TS and say, we would like these capabilities. TS then runs a process to look at What capabilities do we have in the city? What packages do we have? What are the risks of these technologies? What are the benefits of these technologies? And then what is the most efficient solution for this department, but also for the city? So basically, every question that you are asked is fundamentally built into this governance process. Because I would say that drones are a mix of technology and equipment. I would not want to say today that that would automatically fall under that process, but I think that process gives us an excellent template to do exactly what you're asking for, which is it makes sense from an efficiency standpoint and from a mission standpoint that we try to get the most out of those partnerships. And I'm proud to say I think the police and fire department have already had a lot of collaboration

with their use of drones and other technologies so i'd be more than happy to follow up on on your uh interest in that thank you thanks mr mayor um yeah on this this question of cost i want to go back to the question of cost i think it's a fair question in a tight budget year so mr huey if you'd come back up so i wonder so and i want to like and we had this conversation when i met was briefed by the staff um I think it's a little difficult to get a sense of. We've got a lot of moving targets here. We got the current contract. We got the new contract over time, which is bundled, which is going to save us on some stuff. There's also, if we got this stuff a la carte, there's different costs over time. So it's hard to compare all these different pieces. So I wonder if we could do some kind of almost like a present value calculation. So with the current contract, if we continue that for, what, eight, 10 years, what's the present value of that? If we did, like, the present value of this new Axon contract with all the stuff that's going to, and all the pieces that are involved in that, what's the present value of that over, again, 8, 10 years? And then if we were to a la carte this thing over 8, 10 years, what's the present value of that, given the costs are going up, we may choose some things or not? So that would give us at least, like, one way to look at one number to compare these different scenarios to understand exactly what the cost implication was. I don't know if that's something we could do, but that would allow us to really, again, sort of compare in an apples-to-apples way what the different costs are, and then the difference, and also what we're buying for the different cost scenarios.

Yeah, I can certainly work on that. My present value to costs aren't calculated in my head just yet.

No, exactly, no, I'm sure it takes a little spritzing or something, but I think that would be really helpful to have, again, then you're sort of controlling for, yeah, that'd be helpful.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, to my colleagues for those great questions to get more information on this topic. I wanted to return back to the comments of Ms. Graves, just to make sure that we honor and elevate that because she is someone who really is a perhaps some of the most boots on the ground as you can be to help support our neighbors and residents. And I want to direct a question, I think, to the police department based on her comments. And I have communicated with her. And so I want to be careful not to speak for her. But I do want to elevate what I believe I understand, which is a concern around putting funding toward this sort of technology in part because of a desire to see more officers in her community. And so I would like just to ask, when you're thinking about the budget that we are seeing, when you think about strategy going forward, you think about the environment that we're in, how do you think about the relationship of these things, these choices that you have as a department, when we're thinking about choices between new technology or more personnel? And I know it doesn't have to be an either or, but sometimes there's choices, right? And so I'd love any thoughts you have on that.

Good afternoon, Council. Interim Chief Walter Tate. Good afternoon, Mayor, Pro Tem, Council Member, City Manager. My thoughts on that, I think it has to be a balance. There's a tough decision that has to be made here. We've heard a lot about Exxon right now, and I appreciate everyone's comments. I like the fact that we had some folks to go out and ride and actually see what happened and what happens on a daily basis. It's tough. It's tough budget-wise. It's tough for equipment, but what I will tell you is that A community member like that, that is passionate, that has came forward and brought their concerns and all the community that brought their concerns. I think there's something that I listen to, you listen to. And so when I'm looking at a balance over equipment or personnel, for me, I always take the personnel. Because if you had equipment and no personnel, who's going to use it? Right. But I also understand once I get that personnel and they come to me and they say we don't have these tools or we don't have certain things that we need. Then I start looking at, OK, I have the personnel. Now I need to start equipping my personnel. Right. But we we to me, I think we're a little bit beyond that. We know what personnel looks like. We know what projections might look like in the future for us personnel. We know what percentages we are in the department. We're averaging around 70%, 76% folks, right? That's what we're looking at. Right now we're looking at about 48% to 55% on a daily basis people on the street asking calls. That's what we're looking at, right? And I've said before in meetings with y'all that, you know, when I was a patrolman, We had about 60 to 70. That's a big difference, right?

I really appreciate the comments, and I don't want to stop you, but I just wanted to jump in. If you could help me understand the percentages you're referencing and just make sure everyone's clear on those.

Absolutely. So the percentages I'm talking about is how many patrol officers are working per day. So if I say 48%, that's 28 officers. If I say we hit 55, 54, we're talking about 33 offices somewhere around in there. So each squad has about 12 to 13 positions allotted. So if you just take those and you add those, all of those up from four districts except for, it's five districts except for District 5, which doesn't have 12 to 13 allotted positions. It's actually... like five, four to five, five to six, a lot of positions, that's including, um, these supervisors. And that's how we come up with the numbers of how many people you have working per day on a squad. And that formula has been used for years. And it works. And that gives us an idea of how many people we have out there. So back to your question is, what do I choose? Like I said, you know, we need both. But I think we're a little bit, we have staff. We just need staff to have things that they need. Now, are we building from where we And I think our previous chief hit this before about rebuilding the department. And she did an excellent job of rebuilding the department. We are a whole lot further than we were in 2020, 21. But it just takes time. It takes time for recruitment. And we have to sell our department. And that's what we've been doing, selling our department. And we're competing against other departments around the area. And it's tough. It's not an easy job.

All right. Thank you all for all of these comments. I think it's very clear that we care about the safety in this community. We care about the resources that our offices have. But we also are, as a whole, very skeptical of safety. how fast that technology is evolving. But I also think it's very clear also that we are evolving. And Durham by itself is not going to get rid of technology or we're not going to stay in the Stone Ages. And I don't think anyone on this council believes that either. I also don't think that you all want that. I think that the questions are going deep to ensure that we have all the information that we need. I think Mayor Pro Tem stated it. She said, you guys probably know I'm the most skeptical person on here. I know that. And I appreciate it. Your line of questioning as well. I also think that you guys probably know I'm skeptical. most unfavorable of what's new. And I've done quite a bit of work on this. Before we got here, what grabbed my attention was we have about 300 mayors on a text message chain across the country. And we just talk about, you know, what's happening in our cities. And I started to see a thread where folks were just jumping over to Exxon and leaving their use of flock and other area, other technologies. And I... We didn't have – we don't have Flock, and I wasn't sure what we were using, but I was intrigued of why that was happening. And just folks started saying, you know, they're just a much more responsible company. I don't know Exxon. I met you guys when you were doing a demo one day. But what I do know is there are folks that are – There are folks that are on our streets, like in other cities on their streets, that are very sophisticated. They have semi-automatic to automatic weapons. There are folks that, I'll tell you, if they organized politically like they organized on the streets, sometimes they would win any election they wanted. They're very sophisticated people. And I would employ every council member to, if you haven't, to do your, I forgot what you all call it, but it's like this highly, it's not classified, but it's like sensitive briefing. I was blown away at the sophistication of folks that are sometimes wreaking havoc on our streets. What scares me is someone with an AK-47 and then you guys have your little handgun. And the reason why I'm talking about this is because it is real. You know, we can't run from it. There are folks that have their own drones to see when the cops are coming or the scanners. There's an app, even I listen to it sometimes. We are going to have to evolve eventually with the times. And we cannot let our, we can't let fear put us in a dangerous situation. We can let fear or skepticism allow us to ask very targeted questions and get as much information as we can so that we can ensure that we are making the right policy decision. But at the end of the day, while I care about cost, trust me, that's why we have this next presentation coming up. The value of a life doesn't have a dollar next to it. It doesn't have a dollar sign next to it. So some things are worth making that investment. And that's where I lean. I think that some of the things that we're not opting into for this, I don't agree with. I wish we would. I want to make sure you guys have all the resources you need to get things done, to be able to do your job and do your job well and be able to, you know, I'm not worried about drones. I think, you know, if we have 8,000 people out at a No Kings March and you're using drones to say, all right, let's make sure everyone is safe. I appreciate that because the moment someone gets hurt, they're going to look at you and say, how did someone get hurt? And the worst thing you can say is, I don't know. We didn't have eyes over them. So, you know, the way I look at it is, in a matter of course, you can just give me my second round. It's running out. I always wait till the end, so you just put it in there. I just want to make sure that we're resourced enough to be able to do the job that is required. And we can be theoretical as much as we want. We can be philosophical as much as we want. But at the end of the day, what's inevitable is real life will smack you harder than anything else. And I've seen the emails coming in when people say, we don't want this in Durham. Durham does not deserve this. I would implore people to please speak for yourself. Please speak for yourself. There have been so many times where folks even come to me when I'm walking down the street outside of a coffee shop and they surround me and tell me, this is not what Durham asked for. Speak for yourself. Oftentimes we have the folks that are living in these conditions that are just infested with crime. We have people living in, you know, they're having to ask for a shuttle from their doorstep to the bus stop. There are folks living like that right now. So when the young lady comes in and she's crying or trying to hold back her tears, it's because she's one of the folks that was like, can you get me a shuttle from my doorstep to the bus stop? You know, so these are realistic situations. And then I... I'm glad today was a better conversation, but oftentimes it's a lot of folks that come in here and say what Durham needs and what Durham doesn't need, and they are the folks that really don't live in those communities. So I really appreciated the targeted questionings today, questioning by my colleagues. I think this is a really good representation of Durham. We dig deep. We ask the hard questions. We get all the information we need to be able to make the best decision for us. So I'm going to be fully supportive of this when it comes before us for a vote. I wish we were in a better position to be able to, you know, utilize technology more and in a better way. I'm not going to pretend that when I pick up this phone, the AI is not present. But, you know, we'll get there. We'll get there. And I, you know, This is a representation of who we are as a city right now, and that is our reality. And I'd rather be here than some other places, because there are some folks where they're actually weaponizing their own police department against people. So I appreciate the culture in which it's set here in Durham. So we'll just keep working together to try and get the best version of this. And again, colleagues, I just really appreciate all of your line of questioning. And anyone who have requests, I know Council Member Cook, you had some, and Council Member Kopach or Baker, just make sure we get all of those together and provide it for staff so we can look at it. I wanna know, mine is really simple, my request. I wanna see everything that's possible that would make you be able to do your job the best. Every possible technology resource in it. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. And just as we're bringing this one to a close, I am going to alter the agenda a little bit because I have an agenda item and I want to be able to speak on it, but I'm going to have to be on stage in 30 minutes for something else. So go ahead, Council Member Cook.

I just, and Chief Taylor, I'm going to ask you one more question if you want to come up. But I just want to appreciate that... We were all briefed on this ahead of time. So the information was made available to us. I know it's a really divisive topic when we're talking about tech and what that looks like. And in a time that we are, as the mayor said, watching other communities. use technology against citizens, I think that these concerns are real. And I also think that what is real is that we do have crime, and we are limited in the number of tools that we have. And our police department needs to be able to function at this time, because we don't have alternatives. And Chief Andrews and I have had this exchange before. But in the same way that I wish that my job didn't exist as an eviction defense worker attorney, I know that the police also wish that there was not crime. We do not want these things to exist. It would be better if there were different structures. That's not the world we live in right now. And so we're working within these parameters. And I understand that it's divisive. And I just want to thank staff and particularly the police department for, I feel, what was really a thorough research of tech technology that's available and out right now. I think you all did a really good job testing these things out, really looking to see what fit with the culture of Durham, picking and choosing based on those priorities. And so I just want to extend my thanks. The one question that I have for you is just to ensure that I heard correctly, but that this tech is not not an attempt to replace actual officers and people in decision-making spaces, and it's not going to deter us from recruiting and that sort of thing, that it's not meant to replace any actual officers. If you just would confirm y'all's priority around that would be helpful.

So the priority is never to replace a human being or replace an officer. The priority is always to support and undergird for what they're doing. That's the sole purpose, as many of you have heard and said, is that the purpose is to provide resources and tools that we need. I said it in the meetings with everybody in here. We can buy more paint. We can buy more glass, but we can never buy a life. And so this is not to replace an officer or human being. It's just to help.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much. Did you have a comment? All right. Thank you, colleagues, for this. All right. So we have two more pool of items, but colleagues, I'm going to have us move one of the presentations to now. That is item... And colleagues, we'll make sure item 26 is on GBA. Okay, all right. Two minutes, guys. Let's run. If I say two, it'll be five. Two, two. We're going to take it while you guys are getting... Oh, you're set up. We're going to take a two-minute break. Let me use the restroom so I won't lose quorum.

Go ahead. Yeah, thank you.

All right. All right. Thank you all so much. And as I said, we've adjusted the agenda items. There are two other items that are pulled. After this, I'll depart. Before we get into it, I do want to announce, in case I forget, tomorrow at 12 noon, Council Member Rist and I have some big things we've been working on. Everyone should have gotten invited, but we'll be announcing a $9 million campaign to ensure every child in the city of Durham has an investment account. We'll be doing it with Brad Gerstner and the state treasurer and governor's office. We have representation. It's a bipartisan efforts to utilize public policy to change the entire financial trajectory of every kid in the city. So it's a really big deal. Really excited about it. And thanks for your partnership, council member. All right. Next up is item 31. And before you guys get started, I do have one person signed up virtually. Jacqueline Wagstaff. Can you hear me, Ms. Wagstaff? I can. Okay. Ms. Wagstaff, would you like to speak now or after the presentation?

I really want to hear the presentation to see what it was that this council is proposing at this point.

I know what- Thank you, I'll honor that. You can get started. Okay, thank you. That's a good question. So today is a presentation on, I believe, three different parts. It's term for the mayor, election cycle, and ward, I believe. And so right now is information for us. Mr. Manager, did we, how do we set this up? Was there a direction for us to take action? Or was this presentation? Okay, just a presentation, yeah. So no action will be requested at the end of this, but we will have information for action to be taken in the future, if desired.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and City Council. I'm David Boone, the Chairman of the Durham County Board of Elections, and with me today is Derek Bowens. He is the Elections Director. We're going to talk about today is the Board of Elections, the Durham method and form of election, the cost of elections, charter changes regarding method and form of election, charter provisions, other triangle municipalities, even numbered year municipal elections, cost-saving opportunities, and then at the end, there'll be time for some questions. The Board of Elections is made up of five members, and we're responsible for overseeing local, state, and federal elections within the jurisdiction. The Board is responsible for administrating municipal elections for five municipalities in accordance with North Carolina General Statute 163-284. And the Board is made up of Ms. Pamela Oxendine, she's a secretary, Ms. Dawn Paxton, a member, Mr. James Weaver, a member, Ms. Natalie Beauchene, a member, and of course, myself.

So just a quick overview of the city of Durham's method and form of election. Under NCGS 160A-1017D, the city has opted to operate an at-large ward combination, three ward seats. where the candidate has to live in the ward, but every resident gets to vote on all contests. That's done by 32 municipalities in the state. 45 opt for both residency requirement for the candidate and residency requirement for the resident between ward and district breakouts. um you operate under the nonpartisan primary and election method or plurality as the statue calls it you're one of 17 in the state that operate under that method 512 municipalities operate under the partisan plurality method which means one election either in the odd numbered year or the even numbered year assuming a local act was passed allowing that transition from odd-numbered years to an even-numbered year. So you're in the minority in terms of form of election.

Can you say that again? More time, just to make sure I understand that.

So 17 municipalities in the state that conduct elections operate under the nonpartisan primary and election or plurality method. The remaining 512 operate under a nonpartisan general election or plurality. But there's multiple methods, just two, the latter being the most common amongst municipalities. And that's comparable to the city of Asheville, city of Raleigh, both of which have had local acts passed to move to even-numbered years. So you are comparable to some larger cities.

Okay. At the cost of municipal elections... Most of the costs administering the municipal election consistently increases due to salary adjustments, inflationary pressure, expansion of voter access initiatives, statutory and regulatory changes. Reimbursement charges paid by the City of Durham to neighboring counties for the administration of the 2025 municipal primary and election include Orange County, which was 6,977.53. For 42 City of Durham residents who reside... are registered in Orange can reside in Durham County and registered in Orange County in Wake County the number is thirteen thousand seven seventy six seventy four and it's six hundred and fourteen residents are impacted by that I'm sorry I'm not following this data could you could you rephrase what you've just said yeah

So just making the point with regards to Orange County and Wake County, we have registered voters that live in the city of Durham that are in Wake or Orange County because of annexation. So he was giving you the stats related to the number of registered voters responsive and the cost for the 2025 municipal elections.

I don't understand. So I see on the box, so 2 million eligible voters.

Yes, that's non-distinct. So those are folks that would have been eligible across the 10 elections you've had since 2017.

In all those years, OK. We were all like, what?

There is no inflation of the registration rolls in Durham County. That is across.

OK, thank you. OK.

So other costs are early voting, absentee by mail voting, and radio advertisements are optional municipal election expenses authorized by the city council. The total expenditures for these three activities during the 2025 municipal cycle was early voting was $207,128. Absentee by mail was $3,734. Radio advertisement was $9,439. eliminating one or more of these optional components would result in a cost savings. Any additional repealing of the authorization of the absentee or early voting must occur no later than 60 days before the next scheduled election, according to the General Statute 163-302-A.

And just as a supplemental point, as the chair mentioned, you do have the option under the reference statute to eliminate early voting and absentee by mail. You currently have an active resolution that allows absentee by mail voting during municipal elections no later than 30 days prior to the election. So you do have elective expenses that could be cut. So if you wanted to get rid of early voting, the statute would allow you to do so. If you wanted to get rid of absentee voting, the statute would allow you to do so. I think it's proper for me to let you know what your options are if we're looking at cost savings in addition to the other options that you have available at your disposal. So just general cost of municipal elections, what we charge you for. We do have an agreement with the city under 163.284 governing what it is we can charge for reimbursement to the county. So election day workers, early voting workers, temporary employees, overtime, variable costs associated with the conduct of the municipal elections, paper supply, laptop rental and encryption, legal notices, multiple things that we have to charge you for in the conduct of those elections. So I wanted to give you a brief overview of those types of calls. And in deference to Attorney Ray Byrd, I want to give you a quick overview of charter changes and the method for doing so. So of course you have a lot of options. You can change your form of government. So if you wanted to transition from a nonpartisan primary and election method, you could move Just to a plurality method similar to those 512 municipalities that do that already in our state, you can change terms of office, which we'll talk about here in a minute if you opted to do that under the provision of statute that allows you to do this via charter. So if you wanted to take the option of doing a charter change to adjust your form and method of election, that's Governor NCGS 168-102. And there is a path with a couple of prongs as options. So the first thing council would do is adopt a resolution of intent. And of course, that would include what it is you were planning to do and consider. The second step would be to call for a public hearing where individuals could come and speak on the proposal that's included in the resolution of intent. That must happen at least 45 days from the date that you pass that declaration of intent. Then you'll have a public hearing Once that public hearing is completed, you'll have an option to adopt an ordinance to amend your charter. And you have a couple of options. You can allow that to be subject to voter approval, and a special election would be called under NCGS 163-287. And of course, we would guide you as to the proper date of an election consistent with that statute. And you also have the option not to. City of Raleigh, when they made their change to a nonpartisan plurality election back to a primary and election method in even-numbered years pursuant to Session Law 2021-56, I believe it is, they did not elect to have the voters make a decision on that change. And there's a QR code in the presentation if you want to look at that 2024, May 2024 resolution. And then, of course, the fifth thing you'd have to do is publish a notice of adoption if you opt to adopt that change pursuant to a charter adjustment. If you do that without voter approval, then 5,000 voters can sign a petition requiring you to place that item on a ballot, and then the voters would be able to decide under NCGS 160A-103. So a couple of QR codes, again, one to the city of Raleigh showing you the resolution they passed in 2024. And then the town of Louisville is an example of where they changed the term of the mayor specifically. And just one point of clarification, Session Law 2021-56 is where the General Assembly opted to move via local act, which we'll talk about here in a moment, the city of Raleigh from odd-numbered-year elections to even-numbered-year elections. The city of Raleigh came back in 2024 and said, we're fine with that, but you also, you changed our method from an election and runoff method to a nonpartisan primary and election. We want to go back to, or they, sorry, they went from an election and runoff to a nonpartisan general election. They opted in 2024 to go back to the primary and election model in even numbered years. So you do have some options, of course, even number year transition would require local act. So just a quick brief on Triangle Municipalities and the breakdown. So Durham, of course, as we've stated, operates under the nonpartisan primary and election method. The term of the mayor is two years, council's term length is four, and you do operate under a ward model. Raleigh, same form of election, but their mayor, as per The charter change went up to four years, council term is four years. They also do districts which are based on residency, so the candidate has to be from the district and the voters get to vote based on their residency in said district. Chapel Hill, they're all at large, but their mayor term is two years, council members four. Cary operates under the same model as per a charter change in 2024 of August, moving to the model that is most common, which is the nonpartisan plurality election model. So the mayor's length is four years, council term length is four years. Morrisville also operates under that model and they have four years for mayor and four years for council. So the city is effectively, if you look at neighboring municipalities that we conduct elections for, is in the minority with respect to the term length of the mayor.

So for – I keep forgetting to move this mic. The only means by which a municipality can transition from an odd number year election to an even number year election is through an act of the General Assembly. Total municipalities conducting municipal elections in even number years are 75. Session Law 2021-56, or SB 722, transitioned the City of Raleigh to even-numbered-year elections beginning in 22. And other municipalities conducting the even-numbered-year elections include the City of Asheville, City of Winston-Salem, and, of course, the City of Raleigh. And there have been approximately five bills filed in the General Assembly seeking to move 12 cities to even-numbered-year elections.

And I'll say that's just in 2026. And most recently, the town of Pink Hill. There's currently a bill, I think, in both the NC House and the NC Senate where they're looking to make that transition actively right now.

And an opportunity to save costs. Adjusting the city's charter to decrease the number of elections held in odd number of years significantly reduced eligible reimbursement expenses. If the General Assembly transitions to city elections to even-numbered years, the costs will reduce even further when assessed against the ordinance initiated from the form and method change. Charter change by ordinance reduces your expenses by 50-plus percent by transitioning to nonpartisan plurality method, establishes term parity between the council positions, reduces administrative burden on election officials, and reduces voter confusion. even-numbered year transition, reduces reimbursement charges by 70-plus percent, enhances voter engagement and election visibility, increases voter participation, and reduces voter confusion.

And just an additional clarifying point, just so you have it, 169 municipalities operate under a two-year term for mayor, 351 operate... Yes, we're trying to... 351 operate under a four-year term model, just so you have that for additional context. We got some data from the Wake County Board of Elections. If you look at their 2019 municipal elections in comparison to 2022, which was the effective date of the local act change transitioning them to even numbered years, they saw the cost of Raleigh's reimbursements go from $833,000 approximately to $263,000, amounting to a 68% decrease in expenses to the city of Raleigh. Same thing for Kerry, when they transitioned there from the election runoff method to the nonpartisan plurality method, they saw a 58% decrease in cost. So there are significant savings by ordinance change, by reducing down to one election. And of course, moving to even-numbered years where we already have scheduled elections will reduce it even more. And you do see increased turnout generally because there's more engagement when you're dealing in even-numbered years.

Do you have bottom line numbers for us based on last year's election versus what it would be? If you give us that number, then what it would be, 50% and 70%?

So in 2025, collectively for both elections, you paid $813,000. to Durham County. So if you cut that in half, that's approximately $400,000. If you go to the 70% threshold, you're looking two to threes. It would significantly reduce. I actually think it would be way more than 70% because we're already conducting an election. So the types of things that you would be paying for is coding costs that generally we have to pay for increased ballot contests. any size of ballot differential. So if the ballot was 14 inches, we add the City of Durham's contest and it moves the ballot size to 17 inches, then you're going to pay for the three inches on every ballot that we order. So it's not a significant cost. We bill a little bit differently than Wake County, but you would have significant savings. So it would be much less than the $400,000 approximately you would pay if you just moved from the nonpartisan primary and election method to just the general or plurality method of electing council members.

Mayor. I'm trying to understand. So why is there a 70% reduction in costs if we do General Assembly elections? initiated transition versus the ordinance-related ones.

Because you're moving to an even-numbered year where we're already conducting an election.

Wouldn't that be either way? If we change the charter?

You can't change the charter to even-numbered years.

That's only to do the nonpartisan primary.

That's just like term length, your form of election. So even-numbered year is strictly local act, which you can support by way of a resolution to encourage the General Assembly to take that action. Continue Unless you have something mr.

Chair questions go ahead council member go back Thank You mr. Mayor, so I'm curious if we know in some period of Durham's history the number of times that the results after the primary were changed at the general election I

I can tell you since 2017, since I've been here, the answer to that question would be no. We do have archive data going back to 1968, so we would have to go back and take a look to give you a more finite answer to your question.

Colleagues, I'm going to share some remarks and then I do need to pass it over to Mayor Pro Tem. I appreciate you all coming in to provide this information. Obviously, we've been talking a lot about cost savings. That was the the true premise of the last conversation with the police equipment. I am definitely interested in, you know, I wanted to make sure we had this conversation in further, basically, colleagues. We tried to have it without the presentation before we realized that it was a rich conversation. Obviously, you know, going from nearly a million dollars, and I believe the cost keeps going up every year, correct, Madam Clerk?

Okay, so... And just a note, since 2017, in total, it's been a 118% increase from 2017 to 2025, if you look at it on the whole. Jesus. Okay.

So obviously, I'm definitely interested in it from a cost-saving perspective. With the two-year mayoral term, we all have run for office. We all know how exhausting it is. I envy you all when you don't have to run in the next cycle, and I'm running again, or whoever's in the seat is running again. It is exhausting. I don't wish that on anyone. uh it's i i personally like it to be consistent with the rest of the council uh so for those two two reasons why i really was interested in having this presentation and i think the next step would be uh i'll request a request some direction from from council after you all hear the rest of this presentation i do have to run uh but thanks for uh coming to provide the information but you want direction in particular well then we have the presentation the information that just so I'm not rushing you, and I think what I probably will submit to you all and request is four to three options. What would you like to do? Would you like to execute the process of addressing to the General Assembly on a charter change for even year elections? Would you like to begin the process of changing the mayoral term? And And the wards, you know, basically right now we have a ward system. You are required to live in the ward, but everyone across the city votes, so you... You run in a ward seat, but you elect in a general election at large. In a sense, do we want to keep it that way or would we want to make the voter reflective of the actual candidate where you vote for the person in your ward and not for everyone across the city? So those are three directions that we'll need to determine. Is it four?

There's a four because it would be moving to plurality versus primary in election. That's the other option on the table. Because there's three things we can do with the charter change, and there's one that we actually have to get General Assembly permission from.

Yeah. So there's a combination. You guys can do multiple things, but the transition to even-numbered years would require that local act.

Yeah. So I'm going to pass it over to you. That would be... the direction I would ask of you all to determine what we'd like to do on those four options. Mayor Pro Temo, I'll ask that you kind of lead us on. I'm going to run.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Burris and then Council Member Baker.

I just have a question for probably you, Derek. Sorry, no shade. But if I recall correctly, during 2020, the election cycles, some municipalities across the state were delayed and actually administered elections because they have true ward districts, and they had to wait for the census data to be able to draw the wards. So if we were to switch over to a true ward system, would we rely on a census data from 2020 that was a little bit janky back then because of who the president is? But, you know, it was messed up back then, or how would we, like, make sure that we are drawing a ward that's reflective of the current population here in Durham?

So I think that's something we would have to assess in kind of your reapportionment of the wards pursuant to charter and statute. So we would have to come back with that answer to get specifics, but we can circle back.

Okay. Council Member Baker.

I have comments. I know that Ms. Wagstaff was going to speak.

Thank you for that. I don't know if we can see. Yeah, and that's the only speaker I have for item 31. Madam Clerk, can you see if Ms. Wagstaff is online? I am. Good afternoon, Ms. Wagstaff. You have three minutes.

Okay. Thank you. Um, when I was listening to this presentation, there was a couple of things that I noticed that might've been left out. Um, I remember when this downsides happened, I happened to be on the council when this, uh, proposal came before council, I was on the floor of the kiss and several of there was a 13 member council. And at that time, we had a Republican named John Best that wanted to get elected, but realized that under the current status of it, it would be impossible for him to get elected. That's just a little history lesson. But the problem that I have with downside change in the voting process to go to an even year is that right now there is, when we went to, when this process was changed to go to seven members, went from 13 to seven, we had true ward system. We had a true ward election process, meaning that if you ran in a ward, only people that were assigned to that ward could vote for or against you. The system that we have now is not a true war. It's a modified system, which does not work particularly well for Black people without means. And I think that the focus should be, if you want to make any changes to this charter, should be to increase this council by two members, because since the council was downsized from 13 to seven, this county has grown. They all annexed in all kinds of big development. So you've annexed in the county people into the city. So the... area has changed. We need two more seats on there to have true representation, but we need to go to a true ward system where you actually have ward representation voted on by ward people that live in the ward. Because as it stands now, you could be running for Ward 1, and I'm gonna use that as an example, and the person that Ward 1 people that are assigned to the precincts in Ward 1 want may not get elected because people in other wards, especially when we have political action groups in Durham that seek out to make sure certain people don't get elected, they will make sure that that person that the ward actually wants do not get elected. So we have to change that process so we can go back to a true ward system. And then we have to do our homework on how we got to this point. And I do remember that when they were changing it the first time, I don't know if that process is still in place, but you can collect signatures. And I'm not sure how many signatures would have to be collected to petition to have this put on the ballot. And that's what they did when they changed it. John Best and a group, a small group. But the problem that happened was we probably would still have 13 if they had had that voting process done during the election that happened in November. Instead, it was put off until December and it was voted on as a separate item in December. So people just didn't come back to the polls other than the people that wanted the council downside. So I think we need to look at the history of the first change of the council And we need to look at expanding the council to nine members instead of seven and have true ward system, four at-large seats and four ward seats. And I don't think we need to change the mayor's seat to anything but what it is, two years, because I think two years is enough for us to figure out whether we want to keep you or not keep you. Thank you for allowing me this time.

Thank you. Those are the only public speakers I have. Go ahead, Council Member Baker.

Thank you. I have very strong opinions on this. First of all, I want to say thank you for putting together a really good presentation. Thank you to City Attorney Rayburg for, I know that takes a lot of work. I also know you've had a lot of people ask you, council members ask you about elections over the years. And I appreciate he left, but Mayor Williams for putting this on the agenda. I think this is really important, and I do think that we need some changes. And so my position on these items are that, first of all, I am vehemently against moving this to even year races. I think it's important that we have odd year races for local elections. I think we will easily get lost in the mix for even year races. I think a lot of people will show up to vote for president or to vote in federal elections. elections and will have no idea who the folks are at the bottom. I think it's our job to inspire people to get out in odd year races. I think having, I get that it's, I get the exhaustion factor of having elections every single year, but I also think that it's almost like democratic maintenance that when we pound the pavement in odd years, we are making sure that people are registered to vote, their voter registration is up to date. It also frees us up during even year elections so that we're not competing for attention. We're not competing on all the other important races that are happening. And we can all kind of speak in unison in those elections. And so I very, very strongly believe that. in keeping our odd year elections in odd years. I'm also deeply in favor of converting to, kind of lacking the best terminology here, true wards. I know you've used a different term for that, but wards where you don't just have to live in the ward to run in the ward, but where you are specifically only voted on by people who live within the ward. I think that that's really important. I think that that gives people an actual representative on the council rather than 100% of council being completely at large. I've had people reach out to me and ask, who is my ward representative? And I say, I can tell you, but they are elected at large. It also means that council members or people who are running for council are often chasing after areas that have higher voter turnout. And those tend to be concentrated in certain areas. I think if you spread it out across the city, you have more people incentivize to pound the pavement in areas where you might have lower voter turnout and give more power to those kinds of people and more inspiration to get them to show up. I am open to the plurality election, not just as a cost savings, but also as a way of and be cutting down on electoral exhaustion. Also, I think that there is confusion sometimes. People have voted and don't realize that they have to vote again. And to Council Member Kopach's point, I'm not sure The last time that there was a change between the results in a primary and then the results in general. So yes, there's a cost savings, but I also think that that could potentially be beneficial. It's not something I had thought about, but I do think based on this presentation, that's an interesting piece and something that I would be open to. um i support i'm open to it but i currently support keeping the mayor at every two years not because i want to punish mayor williams but because i think that it's important that people um are able to to vote and are inspired to vote in local elections for the sort of top of the ticket um i think that it creates more excitement more interest and um you know i think if we look at mayor bell for example that people in this city don't want to ping pong back and forth between different new uh mayors every two years um i i understand the exhaustion factor of running every two years but i also think that um there you have a strong incumbency factor uh when you are when you are mayor um and so so those are my those are my uh positions on these different items um I actually think the idea of expanding the council is very interesting and the cost savings could factor into that. I think that for me, I would want to learn a little bit more about our capacity. And I think given our budget situation and cuts, I would probably seek more information, but that is something that I'm also interested in exploring in the future.

Thank you. Anyone else? Go ahead, Council Member Harrison, Council Member Burris.

I have a question first. So on this issue of the cost of municipal elections, this is the back on slide, what's that slide, like three or something like that. I just want to understand, like those numbers aren't adjusted for inflation, right? So between 2017 and 2025, I think inflation probably went up like 35, 40%. So these are not adjusted for inflation, are they? Yeah. Could you give us those numbers adjusted for inflation? Because it looks like the cost has gone up, but I'm just curious relative to inflation how much it's gone up.

Okay, we can work on that and provide it.

That'd be helpful. Because I do believe, as my colleagues said, I believe that local elections are in part like kind of democratic maintenance. I think it's important. So I think spending money on local elections that our residents get to, where they get to choose their local leaders and have visibility, I think is a value. And so to me, sure, all things equal, I'd like to save money, but I think I don't want to just sort of say, I just want to save some money if that's going to threaten some more democratic sort of like engagement and principles in Durham. So I want to be careful about that. But it would be good to know just relative inflation, what's the actual increase. I guess my other question is, like, I'm not sure where we're going with this conversation, because we've got, we're, like, almost 4 o'clock. We've got a lot of stuff to do today. This is more than a 15-minute conversation. So I can give you where I come down to these different pieces of, like, the four years versus two years or whatever, but I'm just kind of curious, like, where are we going with all this?

I'm happy to answer that in a second, but I'd like to give Council Member Burris and then Council Member Kopach and then, did you, no, yes or no?

Is this the conversation or is this going to be?

I'm not sure. I kind of want to hear from other colleagues and then we can kind of circle back. I can say what happened at legislative committee, which is what spurred this conversation.

I just for like information purposes only more so like we were not going to take action. So but I'm more than happy to provide commentary on just to be democratic. So I want to be like explicit. I know that what was mentioned was as a cost mechanism is eliminating absentee early voting. And I wanted to be on the record and say I would never support a scenario where that ever happened in his life or the universe. any other universe um so and then also like i'm also not in favor of municipal elections to the even years particularly for me is around long ballots and the educational piece that required people to flip the ballot over but also compete in the top of the ticket when you have the president or if it's a midterm u.s senate race it makes it really hard for those candidates like who are some women who is hard fundraise for some of us to actually raise money, kind of indifferent about the mayoral going to four years. I do feel as though it keeps someone in a perpetual campaign cycle when you have to come to the campaign. So you're not able to really get your footing on the ground because you're going right back. You need like a year, then you're going right back into campaigning. So, but that's not something to make a break with me. I do have a question. You may not be the person to answer, maybe the city attorney. But I'm curious about, in light of some recent activities, who would be the governing body to... explicitly state that candidates, local candidates, that our local PACs cannot ask candidates for money. I'm concerned about that because I feel like it gives like a pay for play. And so when you have these PACs in our community that say like, hey, we'll endorse you, but now you gotta give us like $3,500. What governing agency would be the one who can mandate that or say like, you know, change that to where it becomes, we can't do it anymore?

That is not a question for me. It would not be a municipality in our state, but I'm happy to research that for you. I mean, it would be whatever larger governing body kind of dictates ethics and rules around elections, campaigns, electioneering, and that's not a municipal function.

And I'll just say that's governed under Article 22A of Chapter 163 of the General Statutes, which authorizes that transaction up to a certain threshold. So there would be nothing statutorily that would limit that request.

Because I believe I read somewhere, and I might be wrong, that Carrboro has an ordinance where they have capped donations from individuals for their candidates at $250.

So I was just trying to figure out, like... Yep, I think that's pursuant to a local act. Okay, thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Kopach.

Thank you, Madam Chair Pro Tem. So my thoughts on these. So I appreciate we've heard that both going to plurality and even years are both ways to reduce cost, reduce voter confusion, and increase voter participation. And so I think those are both worth considering for me for those reasons. Which two again? Oh, the plurality and even year. And I get the idea around the odd year elections and some of those advantages. I don't see elections as being the only way to do democratic maintenance. In some ways, not having to put the energy and cost into those odd year elections could free up people and money to do other forms of democratic maintenance to help support involvement in the process. So I don't think it's the only way to achieve that. also say that I'm always a little bit uncomfortable when I hear this discussion about preferring to not have lower information voters in our electoral process, which for me I see as a bit more of a conservative position on elections. I get the benefits of having the most informed folks, but I also think elections often are about getting people involved who are low information. So that always makes me a little bit uncomfortable when I hear that. Well, I think there's often an argument that we want odd years because we only want to have people voting who are the ones who are the most committed and knowledgeable about municipal elections.

It wasn't said here, but it's been an argument. No one said it here, but I've heard that many times, talking about why you have elections on off-cycle years.

Yeah. I think the four-year term for mayor makes a lot of sense I don't think it's the most critical issue before us but I mean at the end of the day based on the way our system works while the mayor has important duties the mayor is principally a member of this council as one of seven votes and that just seems like a lot of effort to have to put out to be in constant campaign mode and if it's four years is okay in terms of turnaround for the rest of council it seems to me to make sense to do the same for the mayor but like I said that's not like my you know, like a top concern. In terms of the ward transition, I'm definitely willing to consider that and possibly support it. I like the idea of also having the local ward representation where you're a bit closer to the population. I'd want to make sure we're clear on the rationale and the criteria for moving to that. to make sure that it's really based in data for the outcomes we're hoping to achieve, and not just the feelings we may have about that change. It came up quite a bit during my race when I ran, and I was really proud to win the Ward 1 vote, as well as the citywide vote. And so we just have to think about, like, you know, what are the outcomes we're trying to achieve? What are the reasons for doing it? making that change fulfills those criteria and objectives in an objective way, then I'm definitely open to it and supportive of it. So in terms of expanding the council, I think it's an interesting idea that has merit. I do think if we're willing to go that far, it might be time to talk merger and think about how many people we need electing us for Durham just collectively instead of our two local bodies. But I'm definitely open to the expansion idea.

Thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Cook.

I'm going to be brief because a lot of people have said what I wanted to say. But just out of curiosity, I have two questions. This conversation about Ward is not impacting the staggered elections, is that? Is that right? We're not... No, that has not come out. We haven't discussed... Okay. I do think that that's an important thing to sort of keep in mind, especially as we're talking about the mayoral term. But anyway, I do... I just want... I know we haven't talked about it, but I do think that the staggering is really important. I watch other cities where complete boards turn over and the incontinuity is really traumatic. And so I... I'm very, very pro the staggering, and so that makes me lean also pro the every two-year mayoral election, because then that allows the mayor to run with each of the council runs. I think that is, as somebody has said previously, and I'm losing track of who said what, but it does excite people for that ballot. It's a higher ticket than just a city council member, even though ostensibly it is the same position. And also... I think that it opens up conversation around local governance and is part of this educational campaign. So I'm very, very pro-staggering. And therefore, I feel like I'm pro-leaving the two-year mayoral. I understand that it's difficult to run an election. I've just run one. It is really difficult. I do think that if you're doing a good job in your governance, that that is part of campaigning as well. I understand it, and again, I feel like someone said this, but not to penalize the current mayor, but we've had decades of mayors running every two years, and many, many examples of mayors who have been able to stay for long, long periods of time, multiple terms in a row, without being impacted by that campaigning. Who draws the maps? Can someone talk to me about this? Because map drawing is like, we did this with the most, I mean, we are watching it in real time become a tool of major oppression and silencing. How do we draw maps? What happens if we were to do it?

You all draw the maps. You approve them. After the last decennial census, the city attorney's office brought forward maps that were largely put together by GIS, like their planning staff and GIS folks. And in Durham, we don't draw, you know, snaky maps. The goal is to get the wards roughly proportionate in population size. And having like chunks of the geography together. And they're compact, contiguous districts. Like we don't really draw a map. We just try to get the city divided into three equal pieces of pie, essentially. And we present those to you The last time we did this I think there were two presented maps and the council selected one and it you know it's moving a precinct here, but a lot of it is the result of Certain areas of the city growing much faster than others and so after ten years you have to kind of rebalance it and play catch-up, but it is unlike map drawing at the state level or the federal level Or for state and federal offices where there is some gamesmanship there. Like here, we're just trying to get roughly the same number of people in each ward.

And are those redrawn as it is right now? Are they just looked at on census years or are we looking at?

We've only done it after each decennial census. We don't do it mid-year. decennial census time period. Interesting.

Yes, I feel very in favor of ward representation, and I know that my, I don't, I feel like my ward colleagues might have the same experience, but I do have people reaching out to me all the time about ward-specific issues. I think that the way that things are aligned now, it's extremely confusing about who to reach out to, and not that it's like overbearing or anything. I'm happy to deal with those issues, but I am also like, constantly in mind of issues that are going on across the city because i am also elected at large and so i feel like it's my obligation to then govern at large and i do think it would be really awesome to have just a specific advocate for your community and i think council member baker might have said this but then also being able to really engage your own community. And I like the idea of us all going to wards because then the population within those wards is smaller. Three wards to represent a city of this size feels just overwhelmingly not like appropriate because folks I just feel like are not truly represented if they're bulked into with a third of the city. So it's 100,000 people together, more than 100,000 people together. um so for those reasons i feel like the moving to award system and having all and having the city broken down into six wards or if we need to have a conversation about more i'm open to it but again i think that's a bigger conversation as councilmember gopac has stated um but i do think that for clarity uh purposes that that feels really important to me i am Interested in the cost-saving aspect of the plurality and I think once we see those statistics from going back from before 2017 Oh, you have them. Oh No, okay. Oh I was like, whoa, that was fast. Okay But I do think that we're gonna find that it is pretty consistent across time and it also like Wow, they're back-to-back. They're so confusing people are like I already voted for City Council I don't understand why I have to vote again like it it's it's It is a lot, and I, like Councilmember Burris, and I think we got some vehement nods over here, I'm not interested in taking away any early voting or mail-in ballots, but this does feel like a way to save costs without actually really impacting any rights. So I feel very in favor of that, particularly given the cost savings. Did you want to say something on that? I have one more thing, but I'm looking.

I just wanted to really emphasize how strongly we feel. I think I can say this on behalf of the board about the confusion associated with the primary and election method. It is incredibly confusing. You also have municipalities or you have Orange County. They just have to conduct an election for that primary for 42 people. And then you get a $6,000 bill for 42 people. Wake County, they conduct an election for 614 people in a primary just for Durham voters. So it's confusing for them. It's confusing for us. It is, and I know this typically doesn't matter, but I have to say it, it's a huge administrative burden for us. and also those other counties. So I just wanted to emphasize the fact that it's incredibly confusing. It's an administrative burden, and I don't think that it would reduce, based on data, turnout. We always see higher turnout in the elections versus the primaries.

In the regular, I suppose. OK, yeah, then that's helpful context too. I know we hear it as candidates, but it's helpful to hear it from you all as well. I also feel pretty opposed to moving to even years. I think a couple of people have stated reasons for that, that democratic maintenance and the education piece were really, really important. We've also seen, particularly on the national election scale, lots of advocacy from our colleagues during that time. And I don't want folks to, I mean, I don't want folks anyway to be turning their back on specific issues. But I really don't. I like to see that folks are engaged with local government and that we are out pounding pavement specifically for those races. If we get on to a ballot, I think this was brought up earlier, that's like a PAC ballot. recommended list or something. I just feel like it's so easy to lose those small elections and you're going to be seeing people out campaigning for national seats or statewide seats, which are really, really important. But we lose a lot of opportunity for education in that and a lot of opportunity to engage people who might not otherwise engage. So for me, that one feels really important to stay on the odd years. Would love to have conversations with other folks in the community, particularly the Durham school board and county commissioners. Thank you, Council Member Cook.

Sorry. Well, I mean, other people have gotten to speak twice. No, no, your timer went up.

Yeah. You can do another three minutes. About having conversations about sharing that cost in off years if it feels really, really vital to people. But it sounds like we have an option for cost saving that doesn't actually impact or impede our ability to do that local education.

Thank you. And I'm actually going to... Sorry y'all I'm gonna do a thing this is supposed to be an information item We're not supposed to be deciding things and unless people want to be here because we have several more items We have a training and we have a closed session, and it's 407 So I just want to remind folks that we also have staff and folks who are waiting for their items still in the audience and so I do want to be mindful of comments and if you can do five seconds literally i'm looking at both of you councilmember baker did you have something too okay literally five seconds um measure we mean by engagement i ran for county commission even here it felt like more local people were engaged so how would you define it thank you customer rigger

I want to know when we're going to bring this back so that we can have that conversation. And I'd like to bring it back sometime in the fall. Thank you. So we can have direction. But I do have two quick questions.

One, I think it'd be really... Can you email the questions to Director Bowens? Okay, okay.

Okay, and maybe you can get back to me. I'd be curious to see if we can engage with the school board, if it's possible for them to move their elections to odd years. I think that'd be interesting to know and engage with them, see if they're interested in that. And I think also as part of this conversation about wards, it'd be interesting to talk. with the community about the PAC districts so that they'd be more aligned with those.

I'm going to very quickly, Council Member Rist, I'm actually starting to get frustrated with colleagues. Please be brief. I'm trying to move us along on the agenda. Thank you.

Yeah, well, it sounds like you're getting a temper to check. So I didn't even weigh in on the four issues. That's why I just said.

And I haven't either, and I'm just trying to move on.

So if you want, I'm happy to weigh in. If this is the time to weigh in, I'm happy to weigh in. If it's not, then I'm happy to weigh in later.

It seems like what I was going to do is just this got brought up very quickly at legislative committee, and it was clear there was robust conversation there. The only thing that then we decided to bring forward. It seems like this needs to be discussed again. It seems like there's lots of conversation that needs to happen.

I'll just say then, for me, pro-odd-year elections, right? Very open to the nonpartisan plurality election. I think the mayor should have a four-year term. I think it's crazy to run over two years. I do think I may be in the minority here. I've talked to a number of folks over the last year since this came up in procedures. about a true ward system, serious concerns. My colleagues around the country have said like, be careful. What you do is you buy a lot of parochial folks who don't really necessarily care about the big city, especially on zoning cases where often the courtesy is if there's a zoning case in your ward, whatever you want, other council members just kind of do what you want. And there's challenges there. So I want people who represent, who can come from different communities, but represent the city at large as a team. So that's my feeling.

Thank you. Very briefly, in general, my belief on all of it, including even if we were able to get local action, which I think we should, to me, it would be a modernization of municipal elections. And we would put everything in front of the voters and let voters decide. As somebody who spearheaded a bond in 2024, which is a presidential election, it still passed overwhelmingly. It doesn't actually matter. If you do your job and you do it right, you're going to get people interested in the issue. That's all. I'm going to move us on. Thank you so much for being here. And we will think about after the August break, Council Member Baker, you had suggested or you wanted this to be returned as an agenda item so we can make sure. Madam Clerk, can you just help me remember that? So we will look to do something after our summer break. Thank you so much.

Just one small thing. Yes. Generally on the municipal elections, we have a very low turnout. it averages like 15% of the eligible voters. Just one thing to consider. Thank you for having us.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next presentation. Sorry, I lost my agenda. We do have to go to, you're correct. Thank you, Council Member Burris. Item number 29 is the next polled agenda, then item number 30. I'm just going to go ahead. I think several folks polled item number 21. I don't remember who all polled it, but it wasn't just one council member. 29. And then Council Member Rist, I have you for number 30. You polled 29? Okay, I just remember. Okay, go ahead, Council Member.

Yeah, Council Member Cook, go ahead. I actually this, you know, I pulled it three and a half hours ago when I thought that we might want to have a conversation about this. It sounds like we're moving forward with the one hour free parking. Anything like that has majorly changed as we talked about this the last time and also I I know that we're already in a deficit in this parking fund I know that that deficit is continuing Any conversation that we can have about and we're in a very strict budget year about what what we're looking at with respect to this parking Pilot. Is it pilot? Am I allowed to call it that? It doesn't have that in the word. Anyway, will you just address those couple of things? Sure.

Evian Patterson, Assistant Transportation Director. To answer your first question, we're bringing this back to you in response to a request to put together one hour free parking program that we're calling it. There's not much that's changed that's in the proposal. It's an operational action. We just program our meters, sorry, program our gate to extend the 15-minute grace to 60 minutes. But I think one of the other things that might be different this time is that we've partnered with DDI who are here and want to thank them for hanging out all day with us. Partnering with DDI to help monitor and evaluate the program, do some data collection and also utilize their marketing and communications networks for getting the word out to local businesses. I think that's probably the change. In the packet you have the reduction in revenue that we would have to address. I mean, it is about $75,000 annually for two garages. That is something that we bring to you and the council to make that decision. But the two garages that we've selected have availability now and can take these additional parkers.

And so this is for a period of... how long and which garages, and it's not meters. Can you just like, for those who didn't read the agenda item?

Sure. It's two garages at Morgan Rigsby and Church Street. These are geographically located north and south of the downtown area. Also within five minutes to some of the major destinations and restaurant and entertainment areas. The gates that were used to operate, I know I said meters, but this is for off-street facilities. So those would be operating for a definite period right now. We would do an analysis. We would collect some data and then bring it back to you and the council to see if this is something you want to continue. And that, again, working with our partners at DDI to gather some of the feedback from the businesses as if this is really activating economic activity downtown and if it's something that's worth sustaining.

Do we have a time frame when that data will come back to us, or do you all have an estimate?

We don't have a timeframe. I mean, we have a general in the proposal within six months. We could come back with some kind of report on the health of the program.

Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you, Council Member Wrist.

Thanks, Mr. Patterson. Just to confirm, so you said the cost is $75,000 per year?

$75,000 in revenue reduction. Right.

I'm looking at the memo. The memo looks to me like, is it not $55,000?

So that's for the first three quarters. We're talking those estimates that were given based on the first three quarters, but today.

These are estimates of $75,000 per year. Correct.

Correct.

And so how do we pay for that?

That's a question for council. Definitely in this budget year, that does come out of our revenue. But I will leave that to the city manager. The parking fund is right.

So we're subsidizing parking funds.

The fund is negative. Right now, it would increase the negative balance. That's balanced against other funds. But at some point, we would have to rectify that. And we've already identified... kind of a major financial analysis is necessary in this fund in the coming year um i do think it's wise for council to consider that that as a as a factor that doesn't mean this comes with without our recommendation i think you clearly directed us to develop the program and i want to show it to you but i want to be very transparent that this is already a fund that's underwater and this will take it this much more underwater

And so we're being asked to vote on the first on this proposal, yeah, to do this. Yes. It's not a sort of idea. This is, okay.

Yes. We felt this was responsive to direction we got from council.

Thank you.

Council Member Kopach.

Yeah, that was a clarification I wanted. So this is currently proposed. In next year's budget? Yes. In anticipation of us voting on it in the next GBA?

I'll make sure that Director Worden can confirm that for me.

June 1st.

I can confirm that with the department, but we received our revenue projections from the department, so I assume that they incorporated that, but I'll confirm.

No, I just want to clarify it. So this will be something that gets voted on June 15th? This isn't like an item for the June 1st GBA that we support.

So you will vote on it on June 1st, and then it will be incorporated into the budget. So it's in the budget numbers you have.

Okay. So the June 1st vote will lead that to be incorporated.

But it sounds like I think the department has already included this. In the budget, but we have to vote for it on June 1st. If it's approved, yeah.

So based on the feedback and the direction that we got in December, we brought this forward as an informational item. We researched there is authority delegated to the city manager in the ordinance to implement promotional programs in support of city objectives. So This was not submitted as an item to be voted on. It was submitted as responding to the concern that you had and to show you a plan that would exercise authority that is available to the city manager to see whether there were any questions or concerns about the city manager using that delegated authority.

Okay, so I think I mostly get it. So this will be on our June 1st agenda, but you've already been responsive and included this in the budget proposal going forward. And so when we have it in June 1st, I guess I'm wondering, what happens if the council says no?

You would want to give that direction to the manager, right? Yeah.

Okay, before the meeting. I'm not saying, yeah.

Right. So what is before you is to accept a report. The report, the intent of this conversation would be for you guys to acknowledge that you would like the program to move forward or to tell me that you would not like the program to move forward. If the program moves forward, we've provided an estimate of the revenue that you would not bring in. So you would have a reduced revenue. And I think the question that's being asked is... Does the budget that I presented Monday night show the parking fund with or without this revenue in it as of today? And if you don't have that answer, don't guess. We can confirm that and get it to the council before the June 1st council meeting. I'd like to confirm. Okay, so let us confirm what is shown in the budget that I presented. Either this revenue is out or in won't change the format of the program, but if that question answers... I think the... Important part that we know exists either way is the fund is already negative So this is just a question of do we predict it going more negative?

Yeah, I mean just for some perspective this represents approximately 1% of annual revenue of the 75,000 so it's And one other question so

Where is Raleigh at with its program? I thought I heard they might be ending a pilot, and if so, do you have any information as to why?

Our understanding is Raleigh's proceeding with their two-hour pilot program now, and it's included in their recently announced budget. So they ended the pilot because they're making it permanent. I have to confirm if it's making it permanent, but is in this next year's budget. Thank you for confirming that.

Go ahead, Council Member.

And just to follow up on that, are they doing all their parking decks or just a few?

I believe it still maintains the five downtown. We can confirm that. But the previous pilot included five garages downtown.

They have more than five.

They have more than five though, right.

Sorry, I was getting a text from a kid.

Hope the kid is okay. Nicole, hey, what, it's your birthday. Can you come please up here? You are better than me because my birthday comes around, you will not see me here. Yes, it's Nicole's birthday. And she's 30. Yes. I'm 30, yes. I'll be 29 next year. Yes, welcome. Just want to, of your support, I read the letter that you've proposed, because I'm thinking about, it's like, you know, I know that the fund is, we're under some financial constraints, but I'm also thinking about another major revenue source is being sales tax, and then also how we support our business downtown. So can you provide any insight on how this pilot or may support some of our downtown businesses or what we hope to accomplish by this pilot program right now, or what's going to be the return on the investment, maybe?

Can't give you a solid number. We have pushed this out to the small businesses. We did get responses from about five or six who immediately said, be great if it were two. They all are aware of what's happening in Raleigh. Great if it was two. We don't want to stop one. We'll start with one and see if we can build upon that. We've also heard from one of the larger venues in downtown that also said this would be great to at least have one, two would be wonderful. It will drive traffic. We have mentioned in our letter of support some of the concerns we have that one hour isn't enough. Will it really entice? But we're willing, as was mentioned by the Transportation Department, to work with our businesses and have things in the restaurants to see if people will respond and let us know is it enough. We will use our software to supplement the data that the parking department will collect with pool tickets to see are people staying later, where they might be going. That's a little difficult with our software. because it can't really pinpoint, but as best we can. That's why we're not clear. We need to sit down if you all move forward with it to really talk about what we can and can't do. Anything to help bring people into downtown is a positive, which is why we don't want to stop one. But we did share concerns about the one hour and also that it's in just two parking decks, not all of them. People who know Durham know where those two parking decks are. People who are visiting may not. And then just the confusion that that might...

that that might cause thank you so much nicole uh-huh thank you okay okay go ahead councilmember the other question is just about the decision to do the decks versus the street um just what was the rationale for that in terms of maximizing traffic flowing through and also the revenue implications of it

In our last presentation, we talked about the constraints of off-street versus on-street. I think we see our on-street as facilitating shorter trips, getting the turnover of spaces for those quick trips, picking up deliveries or just popping in girlies, if you will, for prescriptions. And so for the longer term, which we heard from The interest from our partners that people are looking for longer stays, and that's what this program would address by taking just one hour free. So we want to facilitate more long-term parking in our facilities.

Thank you. Last poll item is item number 30. Councilmember Arrest, I think this is your item.

Hello. Lauren Grove, Vision Zero Coordinator of the City of Durham.

Ms. Grove, yeah. I just want to say thanks for the report. This is really important work. I know a number of my colleagues, we talk about this all the time being in Vision Zero City. I just wanted to ask, because the report does a good job of identifying that we've reduced fatal crashes in last year, but injury, serious injury crashes are up, right? You identified a number of things we've done, sort of building things we've done, curb ramps, high visibility crosswalks, stuff we've done in terms of like, so outputs, even though it doesn't necessarily translate to impact in terms of serious injuries or crashes or fatalities. And there's also, if you look at the Vision Zero Action Plan, there's a lot of things we've done, but a lot of things still to be done. And so I guess my question, I'd love for your thoughts on this, your honest sort of sense, is given where we are and where we're going by 2045 to reduce all deaths on roads, whether walkers, bikers, drivers, where are we in making progress towards that goal? Big picture, right?

Yeah, I think, well, first I'll just say the successes that are in this report are not holistic. We've pulled out things that are specifically tied to what are called proven safety countermeasures. And so we want to cite the things that we know are known to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries. So the things like high visibility crosswalks. Rectangular rapid flashing beacons, those are known to really tackle what we're after, which is reducing traffic deaths and serious injuries. So that's what we're really trying to double down on when we're talking about implementing the plan and achieving our milestone of reducing to 50% by 2035. is focusing on those proven safety countermeasures, implementing them at scale citywide on our high-injury network and looking more at risk, so where we know there are dangerous streets, maybe they don't have the crash history that our high-injury network does, but there's speeding concerns, for example, so really making sure that we're targeting these safety countermeasures where we know the need is highest. And I think we're working on that. We're working on being very strategic But that means saying no to maybe some things that aren't on our high injury network, right? So we want to be responsive to our community. We know there's safety concerns everywhere. But to tackle this goal, we really have to be looking at where the needs are highest, and that tends to be on our high injury network. So as long as we focus there and focus our resources there, we will be on our way to zero.

Thank you. That's all I want to know.

Sure.

Thank you. Oh, go ahead, council member.

Just two questions. One, street design manual, that's in the planning department work program. How involved is transportation and you in the creation of the street design manual?

Yeah, I don't know that we've really outlined that. Maybe somebody else in the room can speak to that, but I imagine it'll be much like what's happening with the multimodal transportation impact analysis that's currently happening. It's being led by the planning department, but transportation is at the table. There's several of us that are helping guide that discussion, and so I imagine it'll be very similar with the street design manual.

Okay, thank you. And then this is probably another planning question, but the LDC is on pause. We're sitting with the UDO. I'm curious, there were two really good street design cross-sections in the LDC draft. I'm wondering if there have been conversations about just going ahead and pulling those into the UDO. Pulling those, the draft LDC street design cross sections into the UDO, or if we can just use those anyway without having to do that.

I'm not sure I'm following the...

He's saying if we can go ahead and like through a text amendment or something like that, incorporating a current UDO since we can't update the LDC the way we want. I gotcha.

Yeah, I think that would have to be a conversation with the planning department. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah.

Go ahead, Council Member Kopach.

Yeah, I appreciate that idea about maybe pulling forward. I like the fact that these elements are on the LDC to help make our streets and our residents safer. Just to clarify, you said the street design manual is in the work plan, which also means that it's funded? yes okay head on thank you um and i just want to say i love the idea of the rapid street improvements i think we can get bogged down in wanting things to be perfect and that adds so much time and cost which deprives our residents of the benefits of the improvements um and those will start rolling out in 2026. yeah we have five corridors that are currently under under designed through a consultant and then two are being designed in-house Awesome. Do we know when will we know those sites and the ones that are sort of in the pipeline?

Yeah, they will be listed on our website if they're not already. I'm happy to name them right now. They're five of the corridors are high injury network streets that are city owned. So that's Liberty Street. driver street south roxborough hoover road and then there's a north point drive between guest and broad so those are the five sort of street corridor levels that we're going after for quick builds and then there's two intersections that we're tackling and those are you know specific because they're city owned and we can move quicker great exciting thank you The intersections are Holloway and Hoover and Linwood and Alston. Those are not solely city-owned, so we're coordinating with NCDOT on those.

Thank you. Will you do us a favor if you all are going to do, I know sometimes we get some celebratory things around, just invite counsel. Of course. Those are always fun. It's like the nice part of our job. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Good to see you. I think those are all our pulled items. We've already done presentation number 31, so we're going to do, it'll be just numerical order 11, 32, and 33.

All right, good afternoon, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, Manager Ferguson, Madam Attorney. My name is Ryan Smith, I'm Director of the Community Safety Department. Today I'm gonna provide an overview of something that many of you have heard before of the five-year plan to make homelessness rare and brief in Durham by 2031. This is an ambitious, yes, but a credible plan. It has been built by a unified coalition and it will require a shared investment for us to realize. I'm here talking as a single department director, but the one thing I want to say off the bat to remind you all of is this is the work and the result of many partners across our continuum of care who came together over this past year to develop this plan. You see a list of names. I'd like to recognize one of our core leadership members. Tiffany Bryant-Solomon, who's one of our HSAC leaders who is here today. But we had a core leadership team that met throughout this process that included Alliance Health, Duke Health, Families Moving Forward, Urban Ministries, Housing for New Hope, and leadership in HSAC as well as city and county that worked together to develop this in addition to many other partners that we involved in this process. This is the second time that we have publicly presented this. And I say that because for those who may be watching at home, or if you weren't here the first time we presented this, When we first presented this, we had standing shoulder to shoulder, Duke Health and Alliance Health and Families Moving Forward and Urban Ministries and Housing for New Hope and city and county leaders who all stood behind this plan and talked about their belief in this. And I want us to remind us of that as well as that this is a collaboratively funded venture that was supported by the city, the county, Duke and A.J. Fletcher. We'll start with where we're at today. Where we're at today, which I know we're all painfully aware of, is something that isn't working very well. The status quo in Durham is we have over 600 people who are currently, by the best of our data, living unsheltered in Durham. We have now over 140 active encampments that we are working in. We have a long wait list. We have over 200 single adults on a wait list to get into shelter and over 50 families on a wait list to get into shelter. I always like to stress wait list and shelter because sometimes people might just hear housing, but that's just to get into shelter. This creates a very difficult situation for our street outreach workers. As you know, the city employs street outreach. They're often in an impossible situation. They're out working in encampments, supporting people to get into housing, and all they have to offer is a wait list and to shelter. What I'm here to talk about today is transforming that system and getting us into a much better place. Of course, we have the bottleneck. We have roughly about 12 permanent supportive housing units that come open per year. This is where we're at today. Where we want to be by 2031 is a place where homelessness is truly rare and brief. What do I mean by that? I do not mean that by 2031, no one will ever be homeless again. What I do mean is over the next five years, we will have built a system that is resilient enough, well resourced enough, and working well enough together that when someone in Durham experiences homelessness, we will be able to house them in 30 days. We're a long way from that today. but we have laid out a plan to get us there. That plan includes not just something, you know, I've heard people say we can't wait five years. This plan has milestones for every single year, and by next summer in one year, we want to reduce unsheltered homelessness by 30%, youth homelessness by 50%, homelessness among veterans by 30%, and by seniors. These are significant milestones. This is a lot of work that we are excited to move forward. I talked about this, so we have identified annual reduction targets for multiple different subpopulations, and it's important because there are different challenges that we have to face in working with different populations. You see here at the time we did this, and this was back probably in December, drawing on our HMIS, Homeless Management Information System data system, how many households by our best data we believe were homeless. So 200 families, 30 youth, 140 veterans, 600 people who are living unsheltered, and 700 singles. You can see on here the goal for when we will reach functional zero, which I'll describe in a second. But there are annual targets across all of these subpopulations every year, including a 30% reduction in unsheltered homelessness in one year. Functional zero, it's kind of a wonky term, but what it means at the end of the day is that when someone experiences homelessness, we can house them in 30 days. That's ultimately what we're talking about.

Dr. Smith, just on that one, if you could go back there real quick. So under each of those categories on the left side, families, approximately 200 households, that's like those numbers represent, that's not right now, right? You just said, I think you said there's about 50 households. So what do those numbers in parentheses represent?

Those numbers represented the data at the time that we were working on the plan and setting the initial reduction targets, which was back at the end of the calendar year. We're updating them now. We actually have a live website that tracks the annual data. This slide just exists at the point in time in which we were doing this. The numbers, on average, our numbers are increasing about 20% more entering homelessness than exiting. So the number has been growing, which we, I think, all see and experience, that homelessness has been growing. Just a quick reminder of how the framework was developed. First of all, I say the word framework. You've heard, I think you've heard us say that. I want to talk about why we try to talk about framework as opposed to plan. We talk about plan, oftentimes we think of something in which we know every step we have to take and how we're going to get there in five years. The part of the framework is there are things that we are going to have to learn and what we have developed in this is not just a set of actions that we think can get us there, but a way in which we can be learning together, looking at data and making changes that will be necessary in something that is complex like this and when situations on the ground could change due to federal funding or other issues. I think that's really important that we don't pretend to know all of the answers. We have set a set of credible steps that can get us there, but we're also going to have to be learning together as a continuum of care. and learning about some things that aren't working well using data to inform that and making necessary changes this plan was built in a number of ways first we went out and found a national expert that has worked across a bunch of communities this national expert didn't come looking for us they weren't taking any communities and we had to sell them on the fact that we were serious about this work we got the benefit of that of working with someone who has worked in a bunch of other cities and learning some of their hard lessons that we could avoid This has been a very collaborative Durham-built plan. Yes, we worked with a national expert to learn, but this was built, again, with a core leadership team that included our many providers across our continuum of care. It included an advisory group that was even broader than that, that included philanthropy and business leaders and faith leaders and others. And importantly, in the far right, we spent time out in Durham, out meeting with folks who are actively living unsheltered today, to make sure that this plan was responsive to things that people actually would use if they existed. And that was a really critical part that I'll talk a little bit more about. Most of what I want to talk about today is what this will look like next year, what are the tangible things we want to do. But underneath that, this plan is not just about a set of tactics and strategies. It is about the way that we work together as a system. We have these five pillars that the plan is built on. This is a much abbreviated slide deck. I think when we presented it back to Joint City County, it was 50 slides. So you only have like 12 today or 20. But these are the main broad things. So one is like, what are the foundations that it takes for an effective system, especially a system that requires many partners? That's having good data. That's having the right governance structure to support it. That's understanding the inventory and resources that we have available. How do we work together effectively? Sometimes this gets in our way, but how do we have effective case conferencing where we're bringing our various providers together and working in real time to understand the challenges that are preventing someone from getting housed? What are the feedback loops we need? How do we work across sectors, which is critically important and something that really cuts across housing providers and economic development and cuts across health systems? So thinking about and building in place the things that we need to have effective cross-sector partnerships. What I'll talk most about today are what are the strategies we think today that can help us reduce the number of people who are experiencing homelessness. And then undergirding that work is what we call a backbone operation, which is the city's role as lead agency and as a backbone in supporting our continuum of care and the many other folks outside of the city that we need to do this work and moving in a coordinated fashion to advance these ambitious goals. This is a system paradigm shift. These are just a few ways in which things are different. Historically in Durham, we have been relying on an annual point in time count, right, which we do in the wintertime. That's a good thing, but it's not sufficient for the type of data that we need to be taking stock of where we're at month by month and are we seeing the reductions that we need. We have already moved toward, and we have an online dashboard, if you haven't seen it, that gets updated every month for how many people are coming into our system, how many people are leaving our system, what do we know about them. That's a really important piece that moves us beyond relying on a single annual point-in-time count that often undercounts. Instead of moving from endless wait lists, we are talking about having the resources available through the Flexible Housing Fund that we can line up resources in advance of working with someone in an encampment. I'm going to talk more about that. We have relied a lot on federal funding. This plan calls for a community-wide investment that will also bring in public dollars. And that's important because federal funds are both insufficient and they often come with a bunch of restrictions that make it harder for us to pathway clear and to get people into housing. And then a lot of this work is about working better. This work requires a lot of collaboration with many partners and the city's role as an accountable partner in that. All right, I'm going to talk the most about this. If you just want to understand what's different, what will be different. Again, I'm going to tell you what happens today with street outreach. We go out to an encampment. Our team is engaging out in encampments every day trying to find housing, and they have a wait list. What's going to be different? Because of a flexible housing fund that we have recommended $9 million of, of which the city, under the manager's budget, is putting in a couple of million to start, that flexible housing fund will provide dollars to pathway clearing, get people into available units that are out there today. That means that when street outreach is approaching encampments, we will have already lined up units in advance, approach an encampment with real options to offer people, And that radically transforms that whole experience when you can come with real offers of units that you can take someone to see today. addition to the units that we have available we want to expand interim housing interim housing can take different shapes it can be pallet villages which are single units that have a door and a window and your own heating and air that provide that provide greater dignity greater autonomy greater safety than even a concrete setting or hotels leasing hotel rooms or other options there's a variety of ways that we have been looking at and then finally Once we get someone into a unit, we want to be able to provide the right support and the right housing stabilization case management so that they can stay in the unit, so they can build stability, they can make sure that they're accessing benefits, a variety of things to make sure that once someone is housed, they're able to stay housed. I've already talked about this. I'm not going to spend much time on this slide other than to say we already have a dashboard. We have already made significant improvements in the data. That's going to be really critical in understanding our ability to meet the goals that we have set and to be held accountable to that and also to understand where we're not to have the data to help us learn about why we are not and how we can make changes as a system. I want to talk about this slide. The things that we have asked for investments in are not only the things that we see evidence will work, they are also the very same things that we have heard the most from our neighbors who are currently living unsheltered, said they would use if they existed. The top two things. So we spent time out in community talking to well over 100 folks who are living unsheltered. And we asked them, if this existed, would you use it? The top two things were some form of independent housing, which could also be satisfied by interim housing, but having your own place. The third thing was case management, that having case management made a real difference. There's oftentimes a long wait list for finding case management. The plan that we talk about today are the things that people who are actively experiencing unsheltered homelessness have said they want the most.

I want to talk a little about why we're confident that this model can work.

I've already talked about this is built on evidence from other communities. I could talk about Denver as one example in which they invested in interim housing. They scaled that up. They had real resources to get people into units. And the first 1,000 people that they approached who were living in encampments, all 1,000 people voluntarily said yes and left to go into interim housing and to housing. And then they've been able to move 6,000 more people into housing through that and have significantly reduced unsheltered homelessness, which is a much higher number than we have here over a couple years' time. I could talk about that, but instead I want to talk about local validation. So we spent time working on this model. In the first part of the year, as we entered the new calendar year, we had two winter storms that hit. We worked together across our continuum of care and added a bunch of rooms, community safety, ran a hotel for families and medically vulnerable folks. When that storm subsided, we had a problem. We had no exit strategy for 10 families and 14 children that were staying in a hotel. And so we went to the manager. We said, Manager Ferguson, we want to use this as an opportunity to do a first proof of concept of the kind of things we've been talking about in this plan. We partnered with Families Moving Forward, with Housing for New Hope. We created a small version of a flexible housing assistance fund that families... that Housing for New Hope administered, families moving forward had families that were effectively stuck in their shelter because of some financial barriers that prevented them from accessing units. And so our goal was, can we use a flexible housing assistance fund to pathway clear to get families who were in shelter and ready for housing into housing that would free up spots for families who were in the hotel with children to come to? Our goal, again, we had 10 families, 14 children, and our goal was to do that in 30 days. In 30 days, we worked together with our systems, we had case conferencing, we brought all families to our site at Rigsby on one day, along with property owners, along with, we filled out applications on that day, Housing for New Hope paid for utility arrears, rental arrears, paid for rental assistance where it was needed. And instead of 10 families in 30 days, we housed 15 families. This is a quote from a member of my staff who has been doing this work for a while. And I share this quote. This was at the end of that day where we had this housing sprint. And he said, I've never done, I've done nothing this important or this transformative for people in any day that I've ever worked, which is kind of shocking to think about because I've been doing this for a minute. I read that quote because that's an experience that I want more people to feel and realize as a result of what we can do together, that things that have felt really difficult that we can collectively, if we lean in to this framework, that I think more people can feel that sense of joy that comes from doing something that felt really hard to support our neighbors who need that type of support. The plan is, again, not just about the strategies, but also about the implementation structure and governance that we need. The plan calls for some changes. We have had a homeless services advisory committee of 26 people. Many people on the homeless services advisory committee, as we went through this plan, talked about that committee being too large, being ineffective in some ways, but filled with people who are very committed to it and needing to be restructured. The plan calls for, and you will see coming up in an upcoming work session, a restructuring of HSAC that continues it for its purpose, which was created to guide the usage of federal dollars, to focus it on that and to reduce it to 13 members. In addition to that, we want to create a separate table that represents the key sector leaders that we need to pathway clear to accomplish this. That will, again, be about 13 people that will be charged with helping us champion and advance this work. The kind of backbone behind that is community safety staff that will be supporting this collaborative effort across our continuum of care, as well as Durham County that the plan calls for specifically supporting inflow reduction strategies and working with county agencies in that. This plan is really built on providing more meaningful ways for people across the continuum of care and for people to be connected to advancing this work. These are all new ways that we will be managing of engaging that work. We will have an executive director roundtable that we've already started that brings executive leaders from across our nonprofits to meet regularly so that we are aligned on this and learning together. System improvement teams, because we know that our systems will need to improve over time and these will be staffed by community safety, but bringing together as we identify opportunities pain points in our system to be targeted and focused on that specific pain point, bring folks who may be working or using those systems together with frontline administrators and think about how we need to redesign this to solve this problem that we're experiencing. Case conferencing, which is a crucial engine of this work, which is bringing together all of our case managers. Before we started this work, we were working with maybe case conferencing 10 people a week. And that we have, I think, raised to like 80 or 90 people a week that we are case conferencing, which means that we are bringing case managers together to talk about specific individuals who are experiencing homelessness and understanding as a continuum what are the barriers that we need to be working on that can pathway clear to get people into housing. Communities of practice because this work is complex and we want to be committed to building up the practitioners in this space. I mentioned case managers. It's a hard thing to do well and we want to help create a uniform standard of excellence in these positions and really commit through a community of practice and building up skills in that and learning together. And then finally, a lived experience advisory group that is providing accountability and input from folks who are actively experiencing, who have recently experienced homelessness. for direct feedback loop as we go through this that we can make necessary changes. Next year's goal, which is built on meeting the reduction targets that I shared of reducing youth homelessness by 50%, unsheltered homelessness by 30%, et cetera, calls for a $13 million shared community investment. That ask is not entirely of the city. The ask that we made of the city is fully funded in what the manager has recommended. But that if you look at how it's broken down nine million the lion's share of that is going to direct financial Assistance to people who are currently experiencing homelessness to get them pathway clear and get into available units The next largest part is system-wide case management And I want to remind you of the slide in which we talked about the two things that people are actively experiencing Unsheltered homelessness and homelessness said they wanted most and those are the two things that we are spending the most money on in this plan I Just briefly, sometimes someone might see the cost of $13 million next year and think that's a lot. The truth is that in our community, we spend more of that collectively on worse outcomes today. We know from the best national research that on average communities are spending between $30,000 to $50,000. The truth is that we could put someone in housing with case management for less than that. So that's a national figure. I want to talk about a local data point. So our team, we have a familiar neighbors unit you might be familiar with where we work with folks who are living at the intersection of unsheltered homelessness and severe persistent mental illness, sometimes substance use. This is a real case of someone who in the year prior, or we worked with that person for a year. It took a year to find housing. And in that year, that person went to the Duke ER 97 times. We got that person into housing and ER visits dropped to 12. over the next year. That's over $100,000 in savings that is based on principles of Housing First, that housing creates stability that then we can build on and reduce things like the frequency of ER visits or entering the jail. The challenge that we face in this is, while it's true that I think the solutions cost less, the problem is that the costs of that are borne by many different systems and actors, right? So Duke Hospital accrues costs. We accrues costs. Durham County accrues costs. There are costs that are even hard to calculate that might be accrued by businesses or other folks. Those costs are distributed out. That's why we are calling for a shared investment strategy and creating a single fund that people can contribute to who all are accruing different costs. Let's collect those costs. Let's point them in the same direction. Let's increase the ability to pay for the things that we know will work. And then over time as we do that, the folks who are experiencing the shared costs will also experience those savings. But creating a shared fund is a way of solving the problem of costs being distributed across many different folks for something that affects all of us. Again, the $9 million flexible housing fund, which is the key driver of this, it's about removing barriers so it can pay for rent, utility arrears, application fees, a whole bunch of other things. It can help us recruit landlords, and it can help us pilot and develop more interim housing. It's just a reminder of the things that we're aiming to do in 12 months. If we are successful at getting $13 million, even if we don't get $13 million, we are going to make meaningful reductions with the funding that we have. But our goal with $13 million, $9 million in flexible housing is 50% reduction for youth and young adult, 30% reduction in unsheltered homelessness, 30% reduction in veteran homelessness, 25% in seniors, 10% in families. And again, our final vision by 2031 is that Durham is a place where everyone has safe, stable housing to call home and where no one experiences homelessness for more than 30 days. I'll pause there.

Thank you for your presentation. Colleagues, I'm back. What a rich conversation I missed. Yeah. Any comments? Go ahead.

Thanks so much for your presentation. So I just have a couple questions for you.

Are you OK?

Is it on?

OK, there it was. Sorry.

Of the cities that you all review, which one of those were similar in size, geography to Durham, North Carolina? Population-wise, you mentioned Denver, and I'm like, we don't have that many. So I'm just trying to make sure you're aligned.

I wish my partner in these fans was here because he could tell you I'll rattle off all the cities. What I would like to do is by reply to all council members, let you know all the cities that we learn from. I can do that by tomorrow. Okay. But it was cities like... Dallas. Nope, I'm not going to do it because he knows this by the back of his hand and I don't have it memorized. But there were seven or eight cities that we learned the most from that informed this. Denver probably informed that work the most. But I will reply by email to all council members with an answer to that question. Thank you.

Thank you. So next question for you is, and this may have been covered a year longer, so I appreciate you for the truncated version of this presentation, but what does support look like? When I look at some of these encampments, and I don't want to make assumptions, but when I've gone out there, there's a direct correlation from those who are battling from addiction. What does treatment look like for rehoming those people who may be having that battle and support look like under this plan?

Sure. So one reason we're investing in housing stabilization case managers to make sure that people are being able to get connected up to the treatment that they need. Treatment is not required to get into housing first. There's a lot of research that shows that providing housing as a baseline is a good foundation for then doing the recovery work. But one of the reasons we're investing in housing stabilization case management is to provide that support and connection to treatment.

Okay, and then my final question, as far as the current city investment that we're looking to, how much of that will go into administrative costs and how much will that go into programming?

Sure, I'm going to do this off the top of my head. The $4.55 million that the city manager has recommended, $2 million of that is for the Flexible Housing Assistance Fund, which is for direct financial assistance. $1.25 million is for case management. which is, again, the critical thing that we were just talking about of providing support. Roughly $900,000 of that is for the staffing that was recommended to us that we will need to do this work well. $300,000 of that is for ramping up landlord engagement, of which we currently spend about $150,000. And if we want to get more units and more landlords involved in this work, we have to spend more money on that type of effort in doing it well. That's most of it. That's roughly, I think I'm missing $100,000, which I think is for technical assistance.

Can you all get that to me? Just a definitive breakdown of how this money is going to be utilized? Yes.

Thank you. Sure.

Council Member Cook.

Okay. We talked a lot about, or we've seen quite a bit about folks getting out of the system. And I know you said a statistic earlier about 20%. Can you talk about in numbers what it looks like for people entering homelessness? making you do stats off the top of your head.

I cannot do stats off the top of my head. But I'm happy to provide, again, I'll add this to the email that we'll be providing you all by tomorrow. I can tell you that, again, that homelessness has been growing by 20 percent, I'm sorry, by 20 people a month. We've seen some decrease in that recently with some of the work that we have been doing. I think part of this work is, again, part of this work, because we're investing in better data and better systems of learning, is going to be actually, we have to learn more about where, how folks are entering our system. We don't know all of the answers to that today, but we are going to learn that, and we have built a process for regular learning and answering these questions because a key part of it is not just for the folks who are currently homeless today and getting them into housing. We have to have better strategies that are about inflow reduction, reducing the number of people who are entering homelessness in the first place. We will have work to do in that, but the framework builds a way for us to be learning together in that, and I'll provide a more detailed answer for anything that Anise could add or others in a follow-up email that, again, I'll share with all of council.

Yeah, and that $20 a month, colleagues, is over. That is the additional number that we're getting. So that is not just people moving into homelessness because folks are moving in and moving out. This is the number over the amount. So that is the actual number that is increasing every month. So it's not net 20 every month, right? So yes, thank you. Gosh, my brain. Just as a piece that we're thinking about, stemming that net influx is another really important component of this. And so we've talked before about the cost-effectiveness of eviction, diversion, and defense. I did some more research on that. It is indeed one of the, if not the most cost-effective ways of preventing homelessness on the forefront and partnering then with this strategy. But without that partnership, I mean, we're still going to, of course, move forward with this strategy, but that is an important piece is stemming that inflow as well. And so just thinking about these things holistically as we're seeing contributions that are coming from the manager's budget, there's so much that we're doing already in our payments that are allowing for this flow. strategy to move forward. But if we were to take away pieces, then this strategy would be more complicated and would be potentially halted from moving forward. So it would make that investment greater or not effective, essentially.

Council Member Cook, I do want to add that the plan recommended and asked Durham County to contribute $1.2 million in inflow reduction strategies for this next year.

Thank you. What exactly is the framework, the slide deck? Or is there a document?

The framework is, yes, a longer version of the slide deck. It's kind of the core principles there. There are other supporting pieces that we could provide. For example, for the backbone agency, we have a... a tool that we will use to assess and then be assessed by our partners in the continuum that have observable, measurable things that define an effective backbone that we will be using every year to become a truly effective backbone that is, again, a measurable tool that we have through this project that we have not presented here. We have a bunch of things like that that for the sake of of a presentation like this are not included, but happy to share those.

Okay, yeah, that'd be great, because we're going to be voting on the resolution which adopts the framework, so it'd be good to have the complete picture of what the framework is. I'm curious if part of the framework or part of a future conversation that comes out of this is very geographically identifying locations where safe parking locations, safe camping locations, potential other housing. You've talked about pallet housing. Any of those kinds of things, those are going to be tough conversations, but is that to come? It's already underway.

Okay. So the manager convened a working group that we have been meeting with that includes multiple city departments to look at various different city land and various options that include a range of things that you mentioned that include also looking at hotels, looking at pallets, looking at these things. So we are actively in that and we'll be bringing the manager some additional recommendations soon. So that work has been underway. Basically, the second we presented this plan, we have been at work laying the foundation for it.

Okay, thank you. How much is this framework and the affordable housing strategic plan, how much are they informing one another?

This came first, and so what, you know, Sarah and I have a great relationship, Housing and Neighborhood Services. We will be working closely to make sure that that plan, as it develops, is working with this plan. I think that will be an important piece, and excited for that work to be underway so they will be in close conversation. We'll be working closely together on that. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I think this is necessary. I think, as you've pointed out, there are... This is an empathetic approach, but it's also about efficiency. It's extremely expensive the way things are, which is terrible and broken and awful. And we're treating downstream pollution from upstream polluters like the federal government could just end homelessness like that if they really wanted to. This doesn't do that, as you've pointed out. But such an important thing for us to do and the reforms that are necessary. I think if I lose my election next year, I think this will be one of the things that I'm most proud of. And I'm very hopeful that we can successfully fund it and implement it the way that it needs to be. Last question. What's most likely to go wrong? What are you most concerned about as we move forward with this? Sure.

I appreciate that question. Like I said, this is complex work, so I think there are a number of things. I think... The thing that I am most interested in that I think that we have to focus the most on is as we get, I think we'll be successful at getting folks into units. And I think that we will be successful at investing in good housing stabilization case management. I think the question, and we're learning from other communities, but it's about what we can do here, is how long does it take to build stability? How long do we need to provide financial assistance for? We think that we know that, on average, we can do that over a year. But there's going to be wide variation. And some folks are going to need financial assistance. The hope is also that we can clear out some folks who might be in permanent supportive housing. Maybe those are folks that could transition to other units. So I think that piece of the things that we know that we need to do but figuring out how quickly we can do that, which is why we need to be in this place of regular learning, how quickly can we do that? Because that's an important piece of the overall strategy. To me, that's the thing that I'll probably be most focused on over the next year is like learning about being curious and making sure we're looking at the data and thinking about all that we're learning in that. Thank you so much. Sure.

Rest in Quebec.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks, Mr. Smith, for the presentation as always. Really appreciate all the great work and the attention to this critical issue for our community. I have a couple of questions. I guess the first thing is, that you just said like you you think we'll be able to get folks into units and so my question is And it's based, I'm so glad you referenced Denver. We chatted, we were texting when I was in Denver, actually there at a conference, talking with the homeless director there and the mayor even. Part of the, and I know Mayor Williams and I have talked about this, part of what they did in Denver was they got sort of like, they got this emergency decree, emergency orders to essentially build like what, 1,200 units in like nine months, right? So I appreciate that you're confident that we'll get people in the units. I guess my question is like, what units? what units will they be in, right? Because I don't know, I'd love to build, I'd love to build the, we talked about tiny home villages and all, or pallet villages, but like, what, how quickly can we develop more units? I will also say that we just heard about this net 20 folks per month. I know that we talked to the last time you and Anise presented about this, the whole, the book, homelessness is a housing problem. And the more we are also like building more housing in Durham, the better off we're going to be. So where will the units be?

sure well first the last thing of those i'll just point to council member baker's point this is exactly why i'm really excited about the work that sarah and her department are going to be doing around housing plan i think that is a piece of this we built this plan knowing that we also we're not going to build ourselves out of this either we have to be taking advantage of the units that we currently have available I will just tell a quick example. We had a great meeting this week with Self-Help. Self-Help has a number of units, a number of units that are sitting vacant right now, and they are prepared to partner with us to make those units available. We have also, even in our family sprint, we had new landlords come to the table because they have vacancies that they want to address and are happy to partner with us in advancing this work.

DHA is also committed.

DHA was a part of that as well. We are... So I think, again... I cannot tell you that we have found every unit that we have, but that's also why we're making some of the investments that we're making. I do feel that we will make a lot of progress on that. And as we go through this year, this first year is going to be a critical learning year of coming back and being able to talk in more detail as we do this about, yes, we've seen this in other places. I want to answer a question. This must have been phoned in by a friend. Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, Hartford, Connecticut, Denver, Seattle, and Raleigh. Raleigh actually has been doing something like this in a smaller way that we've been learning from. I'll put it in an email too. Sorry, I wrote my train of thought, but yeah. I do think that, yes, we can also expand interim housing. Interim housing, though, I want to be clear, is meant to be a throughput. So it's not a final destination, but I'm also very confident that we can.

Like hotels, you mean?

Hotels or pallet villages, I think of those as interim housing. That is, it's not meant to be a long-term solution, but it is certainly more dignified and more safe than living unsheltered and exposed to the elements.

My other question is about the dollars. So I'm looking at your slide. So is the total budget, is this $13 million, the braided budget, is that the total for year one to implement the plan, right?

Yes.

And included in that is the $9 million flexible housing plan.

Correct, yes.

I know there's different, I know there's like, I know the manager's budget proposes a $2 million increase. Is that what we're sort of contributing?

$4.5 million total. Total, but like. $2 million into the flexible. Okay.

So can you give us... 4.55 of what you see in that $13 million is covered by the manager's budget.

And then two of the nine is covered by the manager's budget.

The nine is part of the 13. So $2 million for flexible housing assistance, $1.25 million, all of the money you see there requested for case management. I believe roughly $900,000 in staffing because we're growing our staff to support and administer this plan. And then $300,000 to ramp up landlord engagement.

I guess what I would love would be like just a quick spreadsheet of like the $13 million budget, like how much for the city, how much for the partners, and where are we on that?

Yes, we have that, and I'll send it to you. We have it divided by city, what we're asking for the county, and what we're looking for for the community. The community is all going into flexible housing assistance.

I know Duke is a big part of that, as I understand.

We're in conversations with Duke.

Yeah, that'd be great to see that, just to know where we are, because I know we're digging deep here in the city. I want to know what all the other partners are doing.

Great. Thank you. Happy to provide that. Thank you.

Matt, and then Javier.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Director Smith, for this presentation and this work. I also want to just uplift what Councilmember Cook said, the importance of trying to stem folks entering into being unhoused and sheltered in the first place is a really critical part of the equation, and then the downstream work with Director Vignez. I'm really excited about how that will knit together, so thanks Councilmember Baker for raising that. You know, and appreciate our compassionate, flexible approach that we've taken for a long time as a city. We're sort of getting at with some of the questions, but I'm really curious about kind of the like the interim-interim I mean, we have interim as part of the framework, but, you know, we have, you know, folks who are unhoused in unsafe conditions today who are asking for other options. We have neighbors who aren't safe in their parks. We hear from cyclists and pedestrians who don't feel safe on the greenways. And, you know, one thing we've heard is, like, these are incredible milestones, progress we'll make that's going to require a lot of effort and investment. Right. in order to make progress over time. Are there things we can do more immediately that while they may not be the number one choice for unhoused residents, for other residents, for the city, but they're still better than where we are today? Are there other options we have for more immediate responses, particularly in more immediate, urgent, unsafe crisis situations? I appreciate that question. I don't want to be leading. I just saw number four, for example, on your list of what folks would want. It wasn't one of the top three, but it was on your list was sanctioned encampment. What are the possibilities of the immediate response?

So one of the options that is being considered by staff who are looking at city-owned land and other options, as I mentioned, it was, yes, it's hotels. Yes, it's pallet villages. But, yes, we're looking at land where we might have in sanctioned encampment. That planning is something that we are actively working on that would be something that we could stand up quicker. But we also will begin to start accessing and have a flexible housing assistance fund as we enter the summer. We'll have an administrator who will be ready to do that work. That work is not something that is a long time away to begin, especially where there might be camps where there are heightened concerns. We'll have resources available where we can approach and offer real resources, real units. Interim housing... Itself, putting up a pallet village on city land as well, which I take as a step better than a section of campment, also is not necessarily a far-removed reality. I think Denver was able to build a 60-person pallet village in 30 or 60 days. So... I think that there are a number of options that are on the table that are being evaluated by staff. I don't think those options are six months away. Some of them may be, but I think we are trying to think about what are things we can begin doing this summer. And a sanctioned encampment is among those options that we're kind of weighing and thinking about what we can get off the ground.

Thank you. One other question is just... When you look at other cities, are other cities seeing the same increase in unhoused populations, or is there something about Durham despite the programs and investments we've made that makes it more challenging here?

I cannot quote the facts from my head, but nationally we see a growing number of people who are experiencing homelessness. I don't think Durham is unique in that. We do see cities that are making these types of significant investments going the opposite direction and really driving down the number of folks who are experiencing homelessness. So it is not a foregone conclusion that if we make the kind of investments that are recommended in this, we will begin to bend the curve toward fewer people experiencing homelessness. But Durham is not an outlier in the growth of the number of people that we are seeing in-house. And I think some of the decisions from the federal government are certainly contributing to that.

Member Oten.

Thank you. I would love to see the breakdown of funding. And then I was out of the room. So what was the commitment for the county in their fiscal year?

The county manager and the county manager's budget was $500,000.

The ask is $1.2 million. Is that correct?

No, the ask was over $3 million.

Over $3 million. Okay, thank you. That's what I needed. Thank you. That's all. Excellent work. Thank you very much. Yeah, I know it's going to be challenging, but we've given your department a lot, so I have deep faith that it's going to get done. Thank you.

I would just say that my deep faith is, yeah, we have amazing people in my department. They give me faith. But we also have a bunch of amazing people across the continuum that we're going to need to do that. And I think we can make real progress.

Yes, and I hope you all are able to make real progress, especially since we are in a year of economic downturn where we have some departments that are being cut, but also invested in this department. So I do have two final questions for you. I've heard a lot of mention about pallet houses, and some folks in the community are like, well, where are those houses going to go? Particularly thinking about the equity in which neighborhood gets to house that. So can you explain the process or thinking about where you'll stand that up and how you're going to engage those neighbors?

I would just say that that is the process that is currently underway of looking at city-owned and other land, land that nonprofits have, that they're interested in this. We do not have, we're not ready today to bring forward a recommendation for specific locations, but that work is underway and being evaluated.

Okay, and then my next follow-up question is, we know that Durham is really resource-rich here, and so we have other counties that have as many resources that are sending some of their unhoused people here for certain programs and treatments. So I can think, I won't name them explicitly because I don't want to get a cease and desist, but have you made impact with some of these programs who are maybe recruiting people from other counties for their shelter. And then the people get there and they realize that like, hey, this is a little bit too strict or maybe too religious for me. So they end up on our streets. I think that's also contributing to some of our unhoused population.

I think that that is contributing. What I can tell you today is that we don't have enough data for me to give you an informed answer of how much that's contributing. I think it would be all of our providers with the exception of one large one uses the same homeless management information system, which means we have less line of sight into the issue that you were naming. We have been engaging with that provider in the hopes of bringing them in and being able to share data in the homeless management information system. um i cannot tell you exactly how much of folks who are coming in is driven by that factor but it is something that we are curious about as well and i don't have enough answer to or enough data to weigh in on that definitely and then my final question is and this may have been captured elsewhere but i'm thinking about people who are not i don't have like the most eloquent language for it but they're not like technically on the streets they're like couch surfing

And so those folks who may like have a criminal record or just like, you know, staying with family or all those, do we have a way of engaging with those individuals as well so they won't potentially move into a situation where they don't have any shelter?

Sure. So, I mean, one of the things we have through Durham Entry Point is Durham Entry Point, which we just had an agenda item. We have been working with Volunteers for America. There are single kind of entry point into folks who may be both at homeless, but to your point, at risk of homeless. And so Entry point is always reporting to us on a weekly basis how many families or individuals that they're aware of are at risk of homelessness. That's another important data point for us to look at and understand how effective we can be at diverting folks who may otherwise enter homelessness. So we do have some data on that, and we do have a partner that is providing a way of tracking that. And I think our Durham Public Schools are another important partner in that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Just a follow-up on that data question. So we have an HMIS system. I'm wondering if you can just sort of give everybody sort of a brief overview of what that looks like, but also the folks that are coming through Entry Point are self-reported. Is that correct?

Help me understand.

They're self-reported. So we're using data that comes from Pit Count, which we're doing now every two years. We're using folks who are self-reporting homelessness or... You OK? Bless. OK. Sorry. Folks that are self-reporting homelessness or housing instability, where is the good data about sort of more widespread outside of pit count? Because pit count has its own limitations.

I mean, so HMS is not simply self-reporting. It's every provider. So everyone who enters into urban ministries, everyone who works with families moving forward. So providers, with the exception of one, are all using HMS. So when they are interacting with someone, They are using HMIS to be able to track, and we can see that across the entire system. Street outreach. So, yes, it is both self-report, but when street outreach workers are going out, we are often calling Entry Point for someone to make sure that we are connecting, that we are capturing that data as well. So I'd say it's a variety of someone could call in themselves or go into Entry Point, which is currently located at DSS. Anyone who's connected with a one of our major providers in the continuum of care is entered through that interaction and then street outreach is proactively engaging out across Like a set of 140 encampments and in that we are asking if we can call entry point with them and enter their data So there's a variety of different mechanisms Could you

So I'll tell you what I'm wrestling with. Okay. And let me just preface this with I'm 100% on board with supporting the homelessness plan. But I still, if we're going to be raising money, and a large part of that comes from, you know, I mean, we're all going to be doing it, but the mayor is going to be doing a lot of fundraising. Okay. There are some, when we're going to the private sector, there is some really hard data we're going to have to be able to provide. And there are some things I'm not comfortable answering yet, such as what you've heard mentioned here on several occasions, what types of homelessness we have, how they are getting there. And I think, I don't want to say his name, but I know who you're talking about with the example of getting the person housing, and it costs less frequent trips to the hospital. I remember the collaborative work, but I also remember the heavy load it was and how long it took. If I'm going to private philanthropy, I have to tell them, we have X amount of folks that are homeless in our city. This is how they're getting there. This is how we're addressing the root cause of them getting there. And this is how we're reducing the cost, the cost load that, you know, it takes to resource someone who goes from homeless to housed. There's just some real, I mean, we're talking a lot of money here and I have to, and I'm going to support it, but I just need to be able to get some much I need much finer detail, information to provide when we're trying to raise money. And that's going to be really hard if we're getting people to invest in a hope and a dream. I don't know who solved homelessness in this country yet, but I want to be able to historically be the city that did that. And in order to do that, we do have to get those root causes. We all know there's homelessness here. We don't know why. And we're raising money without being able to truly answer that question in a succinct way. Maybe that's my ignorance. I don't know how to answer that yet.

What I'm happy to do is provide the best answers that we have today. I'll do that in a follow up of what we know about the source and where, like, what do we know about those who are currently experiencing homelessness and from our data, the way in which they got there. I can't do that off the top of my head, but I'm happy to provide that. The other thing that I'll share is I think that we are making the kind of investments that are only going to build that data, that is going to better position us each month to tell that story. And I think that it will be critical in the first six months, and we're already doing some of that now. We have a small pilot that we're working across three encampments right now to house 14 people. These things are about learning about the work, but then positioning us to be able to tell an effective story about what this work can look like so that other people believe and invest in it. But I hear you, Mayor Williams, and city staff are fully committed to supporting you and any other member of council who wants to go make ask. And hearing from you, hearing from our working with philanthropic partners around what things do we need to be best positioned to make a strong case. And we are building that case and we will build that case to put you and others in the position that you need to be in.

I know you will. And I have full faith in you guys. And I just wanted to put it on the record. Because the private sector isn't going to emotionally invest in anything. And so we do have to be able to speak both languages, the purpose and the practice here. Tell me more about the landlord recruitment program. How are we working with landlords?

Sure. One, we have an RFP out now around landlord engagement. I really wish I hadn't lost Denise because he's my expert in this and had a family emergency that he had to step outside for.

If you don't feel comfortable putting it on the record, I can always follow up.

I'll do that. I'll follow up.

Okay, let's do that. How does the county do eviction diversion?

Can't speak to you in depth about the county's current eviction diversion program This is actually came up with one of the public speakers earlier And I was trying to remember and so this is really just a broad general when we set up eviction diversion way back in 2018 the idea at least if I'm remembering and was that the city would fund attorneys and the county was going to fund rent assistance and i don't think that that ever got set out that way um so i think that that's a question that i and i appreciate your question because when that public comment was being made i was like oh yeah that was how it was supposed to be structured and we never set the program up that way because that's not how it got funded um would love if anyone could any staff from that We can certainly find that out just because I don't want to be like, that's what happened. And then maybe, you know, 2018 was a long time ago. But that's what I remember that I kind of asked what's from community when the eviction diversion conversation came up was that it was supposed to be a co-funded model.

And that's why I'm asking. One, I want to make sure that we aren't duplicating services. Or if we need to duplicate services, DHA is our biggest affordable housing provider, and they're oftentimes in court at war with legal aid. And I think internally, that's something we're going to have to figure out. Right now, we're funding the plaintiff anti-defense, and we have a homeless reduction plan that we're trying to invest in as well. We're going to have to reassess allocation of funding where things are are we gonna fund the law firm to you know kick the can down the road or we're gonna find direct resident support or we're gonna find landlord engagement or are we gonna fund it all I just wanted to get a better understanding of how we're going to be much more streamlined and strategic on that So, yeah, I think there's a lot more need to know about the county if we're going to be working together on this. And I think it's on us as electeds to work with our elected colleagues over there to ensure that the priority on reducing homelessness and reducing violent crime are equally top priorities. I know we have our portfolios, but... We mutually agreed to go into this work, so I think we have some work to do as well on the elected side. All right, colleagues, we have two more presentations. One, are we gonna move? Okay, good. And colleagues, I was going to ask you guys if we could pull that, how you felt about pulling the finance one. It's already done. That's good. We'll put it on the next agenda. Thank you, Ryan.

There's one person on for the financial update. We could hear from them now, give them their three minutes, but then not actually hear the presentation. It's up to you, Mayor. But I just didn't want us to miss the person who's here. Or we can tell them that they can come back.

We can actually, I don't mind hearing, we can hear from the resident. And what we can do is we do have the financial report in our document. Instead of placing it on another agenda, we could do our homework. And if we have any questions, we can just have it on GBA. I mean, it's a presentation.

It's just a presentation, so it would just go under informational items on our take action agenda on the first.

So, colleagues, just do some reading. Okay, thank you.

All right. We're going to hear from the resident.

I don't have my sheet. Do you have it?

I do. Go ahead.

Is it in person?

No, it's a person online. Item number 13, I have Emily Sutton who's here. Ms. Sutton, I don't know if you can hear us. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Good afternoon. You have three minutes. To be clear, I'm sorry. I think I messed up. One moment. Oh, I got my items confused. Wait.

Volker Blom.

Oh, number 32.

Volker, are you online? Can you hear us? Volker, can you hear us? I think I'm Lisa. Do I hear something?

Yes, the audio was not on. Can you hear me?

Yes, welcome. You have three minutes. And just so you know, we're not going to receive the presentation today. We have it in our documents, so we'll do our homework. And if there's any discussion, we'll bring it up on June 1st at the next meeting. But we're going to delay the presentation today and hear your comments still.

understood, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I am talking about the quarterly financial report, but a specific item and I think several of you know what i'm talking about, but I think i'm really concerned anyway about this from a presentation point of view in the report. and also from the overall thing. So the specific concern is about the timeline and handling of an item on page 37, Hillandale Road bike lanes and sidewalk LCH 85. And I think you know why I'm talking about this. This is massively delayed. There are other projects in there like it, and that's a concern. So Hillandale multi-use trail is a crucial connection between I-85, hopefully north of it, NC 147 and south. connects to the traffic safety issues that several of you, but not all, were there. Thank you to those who were there yesterday, were there for the right of silence. So that road is heavily used as a commuter stretch, currently not safely navigable unless inside a motorized vehicle. And so a set of similar projects have been massively delayed. They've been discussed since 2013. Public input was finished in 2019 for Hill and Dale in 2022. So I kept writing to city council in 2022 when it already seemed late. Completion was 22 as of April this year. So there were several interludes. It was 27. Now it's 29. I think actually that's the first time a correct plan has been made. Bidding will happen sometime in late summer. But in your report, it's noticed that the bidding will be complete as of 515. right so if you have an 11 million dollar item in there and that's incorrect that's a small problem so i wouldn't be here to bring this up in an isolated financial report but the problem is the timelines on the websites have been consistently off and that's that predates it being with public works actually that's been for years the planning has not been correct the planning actually has always been cursory but your decisions as a city council for budget and the previous city councils and also voters on the bond were influenced by incorrect timelines and wildly incorrect timelines that were sent to you by, well, It's the city manager whose job it is to provide accurate information. And inaccurate information that leads to $115 million as a sidewalk fund, to be honest, is a fiduciary problem. So I want the funding. I'm not against the funding, but what I do think is that the funding should be informed by correct numbers. And it's not currently. We have a culture of having projects that are infinitely delayed that only move forward when somebody writes an email and then they're being moved forward on an email basis. And those are expensive projects and they're important. They should be finished. But we don't have any oversight. We don't have follow-up. I warned of this with the sidewalk bond in 2024. I said it needs outside oversight, not to harass people, but actually to provide measurable outcomes that are not determined within the city. but outside so that there's some kind of polite oversight saying here we're on track, here we're absolutely not on track. And so these things matter because as you know, a 15 year old died recently. And if I had time, I would read you a different accident message from somewhere else that a friend just sent to me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Now, how do I stop this? All right. Sounds good. All right. And that's for a tag, right?

Which is the presentation?

All right. We'll go ahead with the presentation. What's the speaker's name again? Okay. You can go ahead with the presentation. Ms. Sutton, can you hear us?

Yes, I can.

You want to go ahead and provide your commentary?

Sure. I can go before Michelle's presentation if that is best.

Okay, good. You have three minutes. Let's get started.

Great. Good afternoon. I'm Emily Sutton. I'm your Haw River keeper and executive director at Haw River Assembly. I do not envy the position Michelle Woolfolk has been put in to be the liaison between you all, Brintag, and the legal teams. Fortunately, I have no obligation to stay tight-lipped about this situation, but rather I'm obligated to speak up for our creeks and the communities that are being impacted by this ongoing public health and environmental crisis. Durham has suspended $47,500 in civil penalties against Brintag in good faith, expecting that the company will fix this problem. Four years since the violations, Brintag has still not fixed it. The contamination is getting worse. It is time to collect those penalties and impose new ones that accrue every day until the discharge stops. The city's February 2024 administrative order suspended those two civil penalties pending ongoing good faith self-inspection and improvement. The rationale was reasonable, pressure the company to fix the problem rather than pay the fines, but it has not worked. In April of 2026, two full years later, acetone at the Brentag outfall hit 19,400 micrograms per liter, nearly 10 times the North Carolina surface water standard, and the highest reading in the entire dataset. Ethanol has ranged from 25,000 to 144,000 micrograms per liter, against a standard of 5,000. 1,4-dioxane, which is a likely human carcinogen, exceeded the EPA's surface water health advisory at every sample location. Phenanthrene hit 10 times its standard in March of 2026. These are not historical readings. This is what is in the water right now, confirmed by Brentag's own consultants. most damning of all brentag shut down its on-site groundwater remediation system the system that has been designed and permitted specifically to treat contaminated groundwater before it reaches the creek and as of april 2026 it remains offline Each of the four most recent sampling reports states the same thing. The only discharge from the outfall is groundwater seepage into the stormwater pipelines or streambed as the groundwater remediation system was offline. It has been offline for two years. This creek runs behind Burton Elementary School, through Burton Park, and through McDougal Terrace, Durham's largest and oldest public housing community, a neighborhood that is 99% Black and Latino and 46% low income. These creeks were once home to fish and wildlife. Thank you, Emily.

Thank you.

I will submit these comments.

Yeah, I was about to say that if you could submit those, I'm going to, well, you're going to hear me make comments about a letter to the governor in just a moment. But if you could submit those to our email, I'd love to read over those.

Sure. I did print out copies for you all, but I commend you for your persistence to this long agenda. I will send my comments by email.

Thank you. Michelle, it's on you.

Good afternoon. Good evening. Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, I'm Michelle Wolf-Hook. I'm with the Environmental and Street Services Department. And I'm here to talk about the Brintag investigation at your request.

Oops.

OK, before I talk about the investigation per se, thank you. I want to talk a little bit about the background and the authorities. So authorities first. The place that the stormwater program gets its authority is from the Stormwater Pollution Control Ordinance. I haven't copied the whole thing in your presentation. It's quite a bit longer than this. But this is where we get our authority to do our investigations. This ordinance is used when there is pollution getting into the drainage system. It is not used to protect the surface water per se. We are responsible for the drainage system and that's all. The stormwater program does not have authority over the stream. We don't have authority over air. We don't have authority over soil or groundwater. All of those things are governed by the state. If there is a problem in those areas, we have to refer that to the appropriate state agency. We also do not have authority to make statements about public health. So please don't ask me any questions about that. I do have authority to make statements about aquatic health. And if you want to know about what's living in that creek, I can tell you. As could Emily, actually. So I think that's all I want to say about that. So a little bit of history about the site. I'm sure you've all read this. I just wanted to point out that this site has been in industrial activity since 1884. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act wasn't adopted until 1948, which was 60 years after this site already started doing industrial activity. The Clean Water Act, which is where the stormwater program gets its authority, wasn't adopted until 1972, almost 100 years after this site entered industrial activity. So there's a lot of things that happened on this site before regulations were put in place. It's a location map. I'm sure you all know where the Brentag facility is right next to Highway 147. It's in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The turquoise line is representative of the stream that comes. It actually starts above the Brentag facility, goes under the facility, comes out, then goes under Highway 147, and then meanders down through Burton Park near Brentag. the elementary school in there, McDougal Terrace. We call this stream the UT, the unnamed tributary to Rock Creek. So when I spill that out, that's what I'm talking about is the name of the creek. This creek goes to ultimately Third Fork Creek, which goes to Jordan Lake. So this investigation initiated in 2022. It was based on some of our staff who observed dark colored water, this color water in the stream. That's not normal. So we did an investigation and looked upstream to try to figure out where this was coming from. The investigation included visual as well as water chemistry measurements. And that's how we isolated the problem to the Brintag site. So we've had a lot of regulatory activity around the site, many notices of violation as you can see here, administrative orders that are signed by the director. We had a joint compliance meeting with water management that lasted for a couple of hours and ended with some big high points. In between these notices of violation and the administrative order, Brintag did start to do the water quality monitoring that the city required them to do. And they have been reporting that consistently since we asked them to do that, since we required them to do that. They did also install a dam in the pipe that is shown kind of in the picture that the city also required. The city required Brintag to pump the water from behind the pipe take it off site for proper disposal. So they aren't allowed to discharge any water from that drainage pipe. We asked them to, we required them to investigate the groundwater wells that are on the site. As I said, this is a very old site. There is stuff buried under there. That is the standard practice for a very long time is just to bury it out of sight, out of mind. So bury it, whatever the pollution is. whatever the pollution is. The site changed hands multiple times and the industry changed each time the site changed hands. So there's things that are buried on the site. We asked them to investigate the groundwater wells, because this is a groundwater fed stream. We also asked them to I keep saying ask. We required them to determine what the black material was because we had a lot of comments and questions from the public and from folks that are on this floor. What is that black material? Is it dangerous? Which of course I can't answer. So a few more pictures. I can show you a lot of pictures today. Another technical term, hopefully this is the only other technical term I'm going to use, the word outfall, which means where the drainage system comes out into a ditch or a creek or something else. So that leftmost picture is the outfall. It has two pipes coming from it that are going to pumps that Brintag uses. was storing the water into until they took it offsite for proper disposal. So what you see here is the outfall is actually leaking, which is against the notice of violation. So they're in violation of the notice of violation at this point. This picture, the farthest left most picture of the outfall was taken last month. The middle picture is something we called iron oxidizing bacteria. It is not dangerous and we find this all over the city. The reason why this is in this presentation is because we normally find iron oxidizing bacteria in pockets about the size of your hand, maybe in extreme cases about the size of two of your hands. It was all across the stream and it was tens to hundreds of feet downstream, so it was a very large area that had this bacteria. The middle picture was taken in 2023, so I'm starting to give you a little bit of history now. The rightmost picture is what we took out of the stream also in 2023. I'm gonna use the word, it's mucilaginous goo. So, mucilaginous, meaning that there's something in the water that is producing mucus, right? Mucilaginous. That's what you're seeing there is the mucus. And there are things in the water as well, different kinds of very small bugs that will make fibers so that mucus can hang on to fibers. So, this is clearly a biological reaction that's happening, and it's only happening because of the discharge. So, mucilaginous is your new word. Short story is that the stream is having a lot of biological impacts because of the discharge. So the biology is just going a little bit nuts. The stream's taking a beating. And what we're recording is the stream taking a beating. Again, the stormwater program does not have the authority to regulate what's happening in the stream. We use what's happening in the stream to inform us of what's happening at the outfall. You did approve a contract last fall to give us some help with the UT to Rock Creek, which is the stream that we're talking about today. That includes an assumption of the monthly stream monitoring that the city staff had been doing, including what we call response monitoring. So if we find a problem at our site in Burton Park, then the response is that they have to go upstream and collect other samples. It includes summarizing the data that the city and Brintag had already collected and put that into a nice report, nice presentation, preparing a one-dimensional steady-state stream water quality model, which is also in response to citizen comments as well as EAB comments and comments that we got from the second floor. to better define how far downstream the problem might be occurring. We have regulatory support because everything that we have done so far, we as the city stormwater program, indicates that the problem is not an operational problem on the site. We can't find anything operationally that Brintag is doing actively today and for the last few years that would cause this discharge. So our nearest guess, which is upheld by a lot of the data that we've collected, is that the problem is coming from groundwater, which again, the stormwater program does not regulate. There are also three public outreach events in this contract. The first one was to do a presentation at the Environmental Affairs Board that happened in March. The second one is scheduled to be a presentation that may be virtual, may be in person. We're kind of vacillating on that right now. But that will be to discuss the results of the modeling and what it tells us about how far downstream things are going. And then the third one is a catch-all meeting that's not scheduled right now. I'm not sure when it will be scheduled as of yet, but before we get the contractor off, before we lose the contractor. The only thing that's delayed in this list is the one-dimensional steady state model, and it's delayed because we needed to collect some additional data in the creek. The creek has not been flowing except for the discharge from Brintag, so we haven't been able to get those measurements. So that is delayed until hopefully we get some rain in the next few days. Everything else is on target. So as of now, there are four agencies that are working on the site, not just Durham's stormwater program. The North Carolina Division of Water Resources is at the top of the list because they have the most authority in this situation. They can deal with surface water, groundwater, soil. They just don't deal with air.

They issued an NOV. And the creek is their responsibility?

The creek is their responsibility, yeah. They issued an NOV to Brintag in November of last year. They have the biggest bucket, so they are listed at the top of this slide. The next biggest bucket is Durham stormwater, which I've just told you all of our limitations, so take that with a grain of salt. The North Carolina Division of Waste Management has now been at the site as well, and the North Carolina Division of Energy Mining and Land Resources has also been at the site. We got all of these folks to the site within the last year. It took a little work to get them there, but they're there. So the biggest thing that you need to know about this is there's no overlapping or joint enforcement at all. We are all doing enforcement individually. So if Division of Water Resources issues an NOV for something, that doesn't mean that Durham Stormwater can't also issue an NOV for that. We are parallel. We are not joint. Same with the other two agencies. So stormwater has some authority. We don't have complete authority over this site. And the only other thing I want to leave you with on that is that we also don't have expertise. When you start talking about groundwater, you have fully moved out of the expertise that we have within the city stormwater department. So I can read things. I can follow things. I can't tell you if it was good or bad, and I can't tell you if it was missing something. This is what the stream should look like. Oops, it went away. This is nearby stream that goes through Haytai called the Branch. And this stream has the same amount of area above the railway as the stream that goes through Brintag. It just doesn't have a Brintag facility in it. So it should be nice and pretty and green. The water should be clear. You should be able to see the bottom. At that particular location, you should be able to see some rock in it, even though it's probably concrete rock, but you should be able to see some rock. So that is my presentation for today. And do you have any questions?

Thank you so much. I'm just going to start out really quickly. First of all, Council Member Kopach, thanks for bringing this forward. We talked about you getting it here for this. Thanks for leading on it. Are you all talking about this in any of your UNRBA or?

It's not a topic for UNRBA now. I mean, this flows into Jordan, so it's really out. Jordan, okay. I don't know if it's a topic of JLO, but it's a topic of JLO, yeah.

JLO, okay. You can just keep an eye out. There are a lot of unknowns here, but I'll save my remarks, questions to the end. Council Member Wrist.

I just have one question. Thanks, as always, Michelle, for the presentation, for Ms. Wolfolk. So the question was raised by Ms. Sutton from the Harbor River Keeper about these civil penalties, that the city, can you just sort of fill some of these civil penalties? She's saying that we suspended them and expected good faith from Brentag, is asking us to reinstate those civil penalties. Can you say more about that? And what our legal authority is to issue those and, yeah.

Right. So we do have legal authority to issue penalties, and we actually just issued a notice of penalty two days ago. So Jim Mazzarello, he is the manager of my investigations and inspections unit, and he is going to answer your question otherwise.

Sure.

Of course.

Good evening. Thank you very much. Thanks for your question. All right. So specifically you're asking about the... Smooth. You're specifically asking about the $44,000 something penalty. Yeah. So our philosophy behind issuing civil penalties is, first of all, we have a long process before we get to them. Second of all, we always prefer that, and it is structured into our penalty assessment process, that a responsible party for a violation spends the money to fix the problem and prevent it from happening than to actually assess the penalty. It's also worth noting that all of our civil penalties that we collect go to the public school system by law. So there's no city recovery on any of that. In this specific instance, yes, there was a $44,000 penalty. It was, if I recall correctly, a prolonged failure to deliver some reporting to us in this specific case.

And... So it's about reporting. It's not about any kind of, like, any sort of, like, storm. Because it's only stormwaters that we have the authority to regulate. So it's not about stormwater. It's just, like, reporting stuff.

Right, it was a failure to perform some of the earlier analyses that we required as a part of understanding what was going on. And we still, to some degree, don't understand the full impact of what's going on. So early on, we tried to set that framework up. OK, what's going on in the stream? How does it compare to another stream in the city of Durham? What is this black, mucilaginous goo that is in the stream? And deadlines were missed and deadlines were missed. And these reports were not delivered to us. And that led to the $44,000 penalty. And every day that a violation continues, in this case, every day that a report is overdue is a separate violation. So we decided, you know what? We're going to set out in this administrative order a lot of work for Brentag to do. And in good faith, we will suspend this penalty as long as you meet all of these subsequent requirements in the administrative order.

And are they meeting those at this point?

Most of them. Yes. I can go into specifics if we want to.

I guess, yeah, I guess the question would be, like, sort of, so if it's most of them, we have some folks saying, like, find these guys. They're sort of, like, they're not delivering. You're saying you want to kind of work with them, kind of not just sort of, not just sort of, yeah, poison the relationship by saying, like, we're just finding, so you're trying to work with them. So, like, you know, so... Yeah. I mean, what a... Some people are saying, like, hey, let's be tougher, right? Oh, yeah.

And we were two days ago, for sure. So the parts that we're willing to work with them on are the investigatory parts. Because it takes a long time, and it requires a lot of people in the room with a lot of very specific expertise. But other parts that we have... have had zero tolerance for are the actual discharges of these contaminants from their outfall that Michelle mentioned before. And that is what led to our most recent notice of violation and most recent notice of penalty for $113,000 and change.

So we're now fining them for a separate thing?

Yes. Another instance of something that they had previously committed, and we also fined them a couple of years ago for it as well.

Would you consider the $44,000 a partial fine? If they're cooperating on part but not all, could we partially fine them?

We can. We still do have the option, yes. Is that something you're considering doing? Yes. Soon?

Not going to commit to that one.

Yeah, we can't commit to that. We can consider it, though. It's not off the table. OK, thank you.

Council Member Kovach. Thank you so much for bringing forward this presentation and updating us on work you've been doing for a long time that I know has been quite difficult and limited in your authority. But it seems like we've learned a lot along the way, and hopefully there's better coordination between all the authorities now to try and address this. How do we determine appropriate penalties? Do you have guidelines that determine how much you're allowed to charge?

Yes, good question. Thank you very much. So every, okay, our stormwater management and pollution control ordinance sets out a number of directives, prohibitions, et cetera, okay? And when we gather evidence that a violation has occurred, we have evidence that links it to a responsible party. And then we start off, depending on the gravity, the seriousness of the violation, we can start with a warning. We can start with a notice of requirement, which basically says, here's the problem, fix it. If you fix it, or square. For more serious or repeat violations, we go to a notice of violation. Notice of violation usually carries with it a civil penalty. And those penalties are calculated like this. Each type of violation that a responsible party can commit in the ordinance is assigned a base penalty amount. And those base penalty amounts range from $50 to $275, depending on the nature of the violation. And those were assigned back in 2006 when our current form of the ordinance was codified. Also in our portion of the ordinance is a list of 10 criteria that must be considered when assessing a civil penalty. And those 10 criteria we have actually set up in a spreadsheet. And each of those criteria have different selectors, essentially. One of those, for instance, is the duration of the violation. That's simply the number of days, for instance, that something occurred. Another one is, what is the degree of impact to property or the environment? And that's a simple high, medium, low assessment based on certain criteria. And those can have multiplicative effects on the base penalty. So a relatively low-level violation with no aggravating factors essentially could end up just costing someone $50, $100 for a very low-level issue. Something high-level, as you can see, that has gone on for decades nearly a month, as in the case of this most recent $133,000 penalty, it can escalate pretty quickly. So yes, we operate via city code. We have written procedures and guidelines. And all of this is done in as objective a manner as possible so that it's applied fairly over all of our cases.

Okay. Thank you. I mean, I don't know if this is correct, but if I can trust a quick Internet search, it looks like as a global company, Brentag has over $17 billion in annual revenue, and North America appears to be north of $500 million. And so I just wonder about the size of that. of uh of awards too if it's something that is you know even really getting their attention um based on what they probably budget you know uh annually for um you know various legal issues that they may may face that's not a question it's just a statement um i guess my my statement or i guess my question is like just trying to assess like what we can do going forward and how the council, the city can help. Is this the process we're in? We evaluate, we assess penalties, and we keep ratcheting them up. Is there something that can be done with the state to advocate and influence what's happening at the state level so that where there's state authority to bring more pressure? Any thoughts on what you think we can do going forward to try and do better? Maybe it's a question for Attorney Miles. I see you looking expectantly. And maybe we're doing all the right things, but I'm just curious, what else can we do?

Good evening, members of council. So we are looking at all available avenues that are available to the city of Durham in order to require compliance, both on our ordinances and other authorities that we're looking at. So we are exploring all available avenues. And we'll continue to do so in collaboration with the department as well as city council.

Okay. But isn't that not a super fun site? I mean, it seems like a pretty...

It's considered an inactive hazardous waste site. So it falls under the state rules that are for inactive hazardous waste sites.

Inactive hazardous? Inactive hazardous waste sites. So it wouldn't rise to the level of sort of EPA kind of?

No. Now, one thing that was not in my timeline that I presented to you was that the manager actually did send a letter to EPA two years ago, I think, a year ago. February 2024. Okay, 2024. The manager did send a letter to the EPA asking them to become involved, and EPA called us back, and then we didn't hear from them again.

They essentially declined, it sounds like.

Yes, I didn't have any dialogue beyond having sent the letter. And I would just reiterate what Ms. Woolfolk had in her presentation. belaboring the point here that the state has the most authority in this case. I think staff is working under direction from our office to maximize the potential of our regulatory framework, but I think perhaps to your comments, Councilmember Kopach, the reality is the maximum penalties that we have are not very effective in this case, and so As Attorney Miles said, I think we have definitely been having conversations with our colleagues at the state. I don't want our staff speaking for the state. We did invite the state to be here today. And I think, well, I won't speculate as to why they're not here, but I will just say that I'm very comfortable telling you that we have made very clear to our partners in the state the level of priority that Durham has for this, and we will continue to identify any opportunities we can for the council to apply leverage in that case. Overstepped my bounds any, Michelle?

No.

Okay, thank you.

I think the only other comment I wanted to make about the penalties is that we have one penalty calculator. We have probably 200 plus investigations every year and a large portion of them are for individual residential units. So we do not want to have a penalty calculator that puts people out of their homes.

Council Member Cook.

I feel like I heard the answer to this, but I just want to reaffirm. So I mean, $47,000, to Council Member Kopach's point, is not doing anything, I think, to this company. But it is money that I would like to get to DPS. So how do we go about that collection process, and what does that look like?

Do you want me to do that?

We'd have to make some decisions as to messaging in our notices to make sure that we review our language, to make sure that it wasn't taken completely off the table, which I don't believe it was. However, if we have evidence that they did not fulfill their end of the bargain, so to speak, then we can issue another notice of penalty for the $44,000 or some portion of it. keeping in mind that our penalty calculator under the ordinance does require us to give them credit for anything that they did complete. So if they completed all or part of the task, they would get some credit for that.

Which might make then going about the process of actually getting the money more expensive than potentially the finest worth.

Interesting.

Interesting.

The actual, so issuing a notice of penalty and sending that to finance to create an invoice is our end of the bargain. That's what Stormwater, that's what we do. That's the procedure that the city has set up. Once it has gone to billing, that is a separate matter apart from what we're responsible for.

Okay. We're going to add some information about collection, but I'm not hopeful. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, go ahead.

Good to see you all. Again, thank you for all the work you've been putting in. I've got a whole list of questions I'm not going to ask them. This whole Q&A feels like a straight jacket. But I'll just emphasize, as the city manager has already stated, that this is obviously incredibly important and that this needs to be That this is a multi-billion dollar company that is engaging in practices that are having environmental justice impacts. And that obviously these potential fines are so small that the city is wronged in all of the work that you all have had to do, that the city has had to do. as have all the other entities involved, the nonprofits involved, the community members involved. And first and foremost, the community, the people who live there, the kids that go to that school who are crossing over the bridge right there, who are going over to Burton is most wronged and has been wronged for a very long time. And there's been fencing around it. People can't go to go in. It smells bad. Other dangers. And so I do just, I just want to emphasize as a member of council, and I think my colleagues would agree that this is incredibly important and that setting things right first and foremost is cleaning up the problem. but that really setting things right is uh making sure that people are compensated for the the many years that they have lived um in uh under an environmentally injustice situation so thank you again for all the work that you're doing and um hopefully there's light at the end of the tunnel um thank you for those comments at what point does this or are we anywhere near identifying this being a uh a legal matter

mean we're finding we're tossing out fines and penalties like oprah right now but at what point do or are we on track of identifying any type of harm done in a sense where we could potentially take legal action mr mayor we have the city attorney's office has information coming to the council very soon on this issue all right thank you all right yeah

With the community meeting that is maybe, or not, one of the meetings, because of the part of the city that it's in, are we thinking about, just to the point of Council Member Baker, that is Burton Elementary, there are a lot of kids there. Do we need to think about doing some community outreach in that neighborhood?

So in terms of the meeting, the meetings that are in the contract, one of those is supposed to be in the community. So that's a future thing, obviously. When this investigation, well, not when it first started, but when we first found out about what was being discharged from the site, My group walked the neighborhood and put flyers on doors and rang doorbells for every household that was adjacent to the creek. So they were out there, actually Jim was out there for about a half a day making sure that people knew that there was something going on with the creek.

Because this issue is extending in too many years, it might be worth doing another neighborhood sweep like that. I just worry, I mean, I know I played, I played in creeks all the time growing up. I mean, that's just what, you know, so that's my, a little bit of a worry of mine is what are the kids in the neighborhood doing? To your point, there's another creek that is clean and fine, and so an eight-year-old doesn't know that, you know, so.

We can consider activating community partnerships and engagement and provide some assistance to stormwater staff.

So that's my only concern right now is, you know, it's hot. People are going to play in the creek.

All right. Thank you all. I appreciate the focus on this. Ms. Walker, I just sent you an email. Actually, I sent it to you and Bo and Javier about just some advising on how we can apply some, how we can do some outreach. I'll leave it at that. All right. Thank you. Yes, so that's the last item before we go into closed session. So at this time, we have to settle the agenda.

Thank You mayor mayor Pro Tem settling the agenda on consent we have items 1 through 4 7 8 10 through 25 27 through 30 and 37 on GBA we have 5 6 9 and 26 and on GBA public hearings we have 34 through 36 Thank you.

I'll entertain a motion to settle the agenda Second moves and properly seconded all in favor aye all opposed All right, we've already passed, we've already entertained and passed the motion to go into closed session. Colleagues, let's take about 10 minutes.