City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. It's great to see everyone here. Thank you. Good to see everyone here today. Let's start with a moment of silence. Thank you. At this time, I'll pass it over to Councilmember Wrist for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If this is your practice, I encourage you to rise with me to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

to the product of Mr. Sam's

All right. At this time, Madam Clerk, I'd like to call the roll.

Mayor Williams. 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.

Thank you so much. At this time, we'll go ahead with the ceremonial items. the proclamations, starting with Councilmember Rist with Cleft and Craniofacial Awareness Month.

Good evening, residents. I'd like to call forward Carly Jones from the Duke Cleft and Craniofacial team. Come on up. Even better. Thank you for being here. Whereas, orofacial clefts are the most frequently occurring birth deficiencies in the United States, affecting about one in 700 infants per year. And whereas, infants born with clefts and other craniofacial conditions usually require surgery as well as specialized feeding support, dental and orthodontic care, speech therapy, hearing intervention, and social and emotional support as they grow and develop. and whereas this complexity of services needs to be provided in a synchronized manner over a period of years and are best provided by interdisciplinary cleft and craniofacial teams, and whereas organizations such as the Cleft Palate Foundation and the American Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Association serve populations affected by craniofacial differences, and the professionals who care for them in order to help infants have a healthy start to life by providing their families with comprehensive information, support, and connections to these interdisciplinary teams. And whereas it is fitting and proper to recognize the efforts of organizations and programs such as the cleft and craniofacial program at Duke University and its families working to ensure a better life for those affected by cleft lip and palate and other craniofacial conditions. Now, therefore, I, Leonardo Williams, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim July 2026 Cleft and Craniofacial Awareness Month in the City of Durham and encourage residents to support the families and organizations working to aid those affected by craniofacial birth differences. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, this 15th day of June 2026, Leonardo Williams, Mayor.

It's all yours.

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor, Mayor Williams. Hi, my name is and I am nine years old. I was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, and so far I have had three surgeries. I am part of an academically intelligently gifted program for math, English, language arts at the school I go to. Also, I am in three companies at a dance school. Being born with a cleft and having a scar was hard sometimes, but mostly doesn't affect me in any special way. I often had to answer questions about the look of my face, my scars, and my nose. Most of the time, I explained patiently to those that really wanted to learn, but not everyone is nice or kind or just curious, and in those cases, the feeling was not great. I want to bring awareness and let everyone who doesn't know what a cleft is It is how it feels to live with one, and also that it is not a defect. Kids and people like me are the same as those without these kinds of scars. We are very smart, kind, resilient, and super fun to have as friends. This is happening to one in 700 children born every year in the United States, and yet not too many people know about it. I'd like to tell the world about the awesome cleft affected people. The Duke Cleft team makes my heart happy every time I see them when I go for my annual clinics. Those are fun days. I am at the clinic for a full day. I do a lot of special consultations, and I see up to eight or nine different doctors that work together to decide the next steps of my cleft journey. While I wait for my next specialist, I play fun games and learn new skills, like the ukulele. I will continue to do this until I will be 16 years old. I want to let all my teachers, family, friends, and Duke team know that they really helped me through this journey. One person who really felt like family to me was Miss Hill, my dear nanny. Many thanks to my teachers, like my third grade teacher, Miss Newford, and my kindergarten teacher, Miss Fruited. I would like to include two doctors that now I sadly don't get to see any longer, Dr. Bakuda and Dr. Frill, my first surgeon. My siblings, Sophia and Ethan, were my first personal speech therapists with their loving care and a lot of criticism. When I was not saying a word correctly, I've never needed real speech lessons. My family and team of doctors at Duke are the best in the world. They know how to support me and make me feel the most important in the world. I am really glad that I was born with a cleft and I am now under the great care of amazing health professionals at Duke cleft team. Just remember, you matter. Thank you.

And for the record, you are smart, you are powerful, you are wonderful, and you do matter.

All right, good evening. So I am going to read the proclamation honoring Ms. Leila Cash-Coley Royster. So if anyone's in here to receive the proclamation. Well, I'll receive it. Okay, so I'll go ahead and begin. Whereas Ms. Lela Cash Coley Royster was born on May 22nd, 1931 to Jim and Cora Cash and has lived a life grounded in faith, family service, and dedication to her community, and whereas Ms. Royster celebrated her 95th birthday and stands the youngest of nine children, the last surviving sibling of the Cash family lineage, and whereas Ms. Royster has been a faithful member of Tally Ho Missionary Baptist Church, for nearly her entire life and has devoted more than 60 years to her church choir, including more than 50 years serving as the choir president, and whereas Ms. Royster played a vital role in helping establish and nurture the church youth choir, helping inspire a generation of young people through music ministry and Christian fellowship, and Ms. Royster's enduring legacy continues through her loving family, including her daughters, Phyllis D. Coley and Gwendolyn Ott Coley, and her grandson, Lawrence Davis III. The City of Durham recognizes Ms. Royster for extraordinary longevity, unwavering faith, lifelong community service, and the lasting impact she's made on her church family and the greater Durham community. Now, therefore, I, Leonora Williams, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim May 22nd, 2026, as Leela Cash Coley Royster Day. in the city of durham and encourage residents to take note of remarkable life and legacy of faith and family devotion witness my hand the corporate seal of the city of durham north carolina this 15th day of june 2026.

All right, do we have Erica Scarlett Romana? Come on up here with me. Welcome. To have the honor of reading the proclamation for Tourette's Syndrome Awareness Day. Whereas Tourette syndrome is an inherited neurological disorder that is characterized by involuntary physical and vocal tics that occur many times a day. And whereas Tourette syndrome is often accompanied by other mental health disorders, such as attention deficit and obsessive compulsive disorder. learning disabilities and anxiety. And whereas Tourette syndrome and persistent tic disorders affect one in 50 children, more than 45,880 school-aged children in the state of North Carolina alone are dealing with Tourette syndrome. And although some of these cases are aided by medication, there is no standard treatment or known cure for the disorder. And whereas there is an important need for more professional help with interest and expertise to identify, counsel, and treat people with Tourette syndrome, a disorder that is often misdiagnosed and misunderstood. And whereas positive actions to assist children and families living with Tourette syndrome would result from a broadening of public and professional knowledge and acceptance of Tourette syndrome. And whereas the Tourette's Association of America is actively providing services to families, educating medical professionals, medical professionals and teachers and supporting research to better understand the science and treatments of TS. Now, therefore, I, Leonardo Williams, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim June 4th, 2026 Tourette's Syndrome Awareness Day in the City of Durham and encourage residents to promote understanding, compassion, and acceptance for all of our fellow citizens who deserve and need our support to break the stigma that surrounds Tourette's Syndrome. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the City of Durham, North Carolina, this the 15th day of June 2026.

Hi, my name is Scarlett, and I am 11 years old. I have a tic disorder called Tourette syndrome. I was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome last March, so I'm still learning how to tell people that I have it. I am very, very, very scared to tell people that I have Tourette syndrome, but my mom always tells me that it is important for me to help people understand why I do the things I do, and that I do not like it either, and that hopefully when they understand, they will not make fun of me. I cannot control my Tourette syndrome either, it just comes out. Some other people have different tics, like saying bad words, which is called corporellia. There are two different kinds of tics, vocal and physical. Vocal tics can be different sounds, words, or noises. And physical tics are movements that happen with any part of your body. People do not mean anything they do if they have Tourette syndrome. A lot of people think that it spreads, but it does not. It is something that you are born with, but you are diagnosed with it a few years later after you are born. So now you know all about Tourette's Syndrome and that if you meet any other people with Tourette's Syndrome, you will know that they do not do it just to annoy you. The most important thing is that if you know what Tourette's Syndrome is and you see someone else being bullied for it, please help them because they are just like you but with a tic disorder.

Thank you.

Thank you for being courageous, Scarlett. And I told her she was brave and looking forward to others learning about this throughout the city, all because of you. All right. All right, this time I'll entertain announcements by council. Start to my right.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, colleagues, staff, residents, those here in person or online. Good to see you all. It's our last meeting of the fiscal year, so it's a big meeting for us. Let me just get my notes here. I've just got a couple of things. First of all, go Canes. You see my scarf here. Hope everybody enjoyed the game six yesterday of the Canes, bringing the Stanley Cup back to North Carolina. It's super exciting, a lot of fun for everybody. I just want to say I know, and this is just about sports, right, and fun, but sometimes at its best, sports can teach us important lessons, right? I know we've got important work tonight on a budget here. We've got important work to do to sort of to grow and deliver city services and have a... wonderful, beloved community here. I think we learned a couple things last night. One thing, teamwork matters, right? So even sometimes needing a backup goalie, you need the whole roster to be able to win. We showed that last night. Another thing is that good leadership matters. We've got a coach who's an X's and O's guy, and we've got a general manager who knows the numbers. And together, they put together a great team that could win at the Stanley Cup. Another thing is that, sorry about this. You know, vision matters. Having a clear vision for what you want to do with your team or your city matters, and sticking to that vision. You know, for many, many years, the rap on the Hurricanes was they'd play well in the regular season and then lose in the playoffs. Could they win the big one? Did their system work? And I think they showed last night that by sticking to your vision, sticking to the clear plan you got, can bring results. And I guess the last thing is a little bit of patience, right? Sometimes we want things to happen right away, but Rome wasn't built in a day. And so it took the Canes eight years to get there, But they won it. So I think really some important lessons about life and about delivering on management and city government there from the Canes victory. So again, congratulations to the Canes. I hope there's going to be some kind of parade here in Durham, Mr. Mayor. Do we have that going on? Or I don't know. Is that just Raleigh? Just two other things. So I did want to say I was honored last Friday to join Council Member Kopech and the Mayor at the groundbreaking on for Sandy Ridge Station and Sandy Ridge Villas, which is a new development on Old Oxford Highway. A number of great partners made it happen. This is another 198 units that are 100% affordable, a mix of anywhere from 30%, 40%, 60%, or 70% AMI. 50 of those residents are transferring their assistance, it's called, it's in the public housing world, transferring their assistance from Oxford Manor to the new public, I'm sorry, to the new Sandy Ridge Stations. That's a great partnership between Durham Housing Authority and the city. There was a total of $10 million of city bond funds and other funds supporting that project, so something we can really be proud of. And I know we talk a lot about housing here, and I think when people see Durham growing downtown, they say, there's nothing affordable here, right? But the truth is, it's another 198 units of affordable housing We just dedicated last November 132 units of the Hardy Street complex as well. Again, all affordable housing for families who need it. So we're working hard. We can't build it fast enough, but we're bringing more affordable housing to Durham. So thank you all.

Thank you. Council Member Kopach.

Different order huh mixing things up good evening everyone it's a pleasure to have you here for our last meeting of the year. we're at the end of our journey in the budget, so I appreciate everyone who's been with us on that journey and i'll speak more of that when we get to that agenda item. Just a couple recent goings on want to thank housing for new hope for their annual breakfast we're ahead. a number of colleagues like Consuma Barista and Caballero and probably others in this big, big space, but I want to thank them for that event and for the great work they're doing supporting our neighbors in need. I want to thank artist Sydney Brody and the Religious Coalition for Nonviolence. They recently moved Sydney's memorial quilt to the River Church for a long-term installation while they looked for a permanent home. But it's just a powerful work of art and a powerful reminder of the impact of gun violence on our community as it serves as a memorial and also, in many cases, a cemetery for families who never got a chance to bury their loved ones. I was excited to speak at the Circular Triangle Sustainability Summit. And for those who don't know, circularity is a concept that we can do a lot to remove waste from our community and our economy, and in doing so, help support our people. And this is largely done by reducing and reusing and repairing. And it was an inspiring vision that they put forward, and I look forward to seeing more from them. This is a big week with Juneteenth coming up on Friday, so I look forward to all of the activities that have already started from the beginning of the month and will be going on until the end of the month. But, you know, really great celebrations commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Africans in our country uh and i really love how durham shows up and celebrates juneteenth um happy pride month once again a lot of great events coming up for pride month uh and uh i'll just join my colleague councilmember risk by saying go canes so look forward to a great meeting thank you once again everyone for being here thank you councilmember cook

Okay, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Just a few short announcements. Today Durham moved into stage two water restrictions. I know that we've been getting emails, texts, and next door posts and all of the things about that. So please do look into that. I'm not gonna sit here and say that Water and drought are not political. They are very, very political. We see that there are both the impacts and mitigation of climate change and our ability to be sustainable through these massive incidents. is on a local, state, and federal level policy. But what I will say is that the seven of us sitting up here, and I will speak for everyone, cannot make it rain, unfortunately, or we would do so. And so, yeah, I've been taking a lot of advice from folks in the community and doing some water saving techniques that I honestly wish that I had done, but I'm glad that I'm learning them now and will hopefully take them after this drought is over and continue utilizing those. So do appreciate y'all looking into that. And yeah, I know everyone's seen the water levels and that everyone is concerned and people are watching their crops die and I'm watching my little garden wither away. So yeah, just want to acknowledge that and make sure everyone is looking into what we can be doing. The second thing is that there was an article that came out in the Indy about the tax the property tax or the property revaluation that was done in the appeals that came from that revaluation last year more to say on that i think when the budget comes around but i do think that it's a really important thing that all durham residents should know if you haven't read the article you should read it it's information that's important we want to be transparent up here we are utilizing Income that comes from property tax and so how the burden is shifted on to our residents is really really important I think that article does a really good job of getting some data that we've honestly been seeking through in public meetings prior and hadn't been able to obtain. In my last minute, I just want to give my condolences and a shout out to a massive loss in the community. Minister Paul Scott, many of you knew out on the block, an intellect, an advocate, an amazing person who really believed in what Durham could be really believed and cared for our youth in a way that Is just impacted me and a lot of other people I think in this room and my heart is heavy with that loss So his memory will be a blessing for us after this time of grief but I want to appreciate all of the contributions that he's made and and hope that his legacy of handing out books and and and anti-violence and just belief in our Durham youth continues on. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Baker.

Thank you. Thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to see you in the building. I wanna also call out Minister Scott. In fact, two folks who we lost, two giants in our community who we lost recently. First is Minister Scott. On his birthday this year, he said, Instead of birthday wishes, I ask you to help me with my Bull City revolutionary birthday list. And he went on to list 12 items. I'm not gonna read all of those, but I wanted to read a couple of them. He said to join some revolutionary movement in Durham to crush the existing system and create a better one for our children. He said, teach the youth how to use knowledge as a weapon. And he said, read at least one book about black history or culture a month and teach what you learn to someone else. Definitely someone who has had a huge influence in our community. The other person I want to call out is a young person who is also very active in Durham and is well known beyond Durham, Thomas Crowell. He died in a battle with cancer. He was a member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation and had huge respect across our community and outside of Durham. So I wanted to pay my respects to both of those giants in our community. I ALSO WANT TO CALL ATTENTION TO THE INDY WEEK ARTICLE. I WANT TO ENCOURAGE EVERY PERSON TO READ THAT ARTICLE FROM THE BEGINNING UNTIL THE END. THE TITLE OF IT IS HOW $4 BILLION CAME OFF DERM'S TAX ROLLS LAST YEAR MOSTLY BENEFITING CORPORATE LANDLORDS AND BLOWING A HOLE IN THE CITY BUDGET. YOU CAN PROBABLY GUESS WHAT THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT. It points to something that happened. There were revaluations that were conducted last year by Durham County, our county parts over there. And there were a number of people who went and challenged those revaluations. There's a process to doing that. Well, in that process, the outcome was that large corporate landlords overwhelmingly benefited from those challenges in that process. I want to pull up a few different factoids here. Homeowners paid nearly half of Durham's property taxes last year, almost 50%, but received just 1% of the dollars that were returned via these challenges, these appeals. Of all the reductions won by residential appellants, nearly half went to landlords, investors and developers. Commercial property drove 93% of the $4.4 billion value loss, with apartment buildings as the largest contributor. This doesn't just affect this year's budget, and it doesn't just affect the budget that we're about to vote on this evening, it affects every budget until there is another revaluation, another revaluation process. And so, colleagues, I do think that this is something that we need to continue to look at, and I hope that in a future meeting we can bring in the journalists that did deep research on this. So, look forward to a productive meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Burris?

Good evening. Thank you to all who are joining us in council chambers and also watching at home excited. This is our last meeting before a break, a much needed break for all of us. I want to extend gratitude on behalf of my family for my council colleagues who reached out and expressed condolences and prayers on the loss of my oldest niece last Tuesday who succumbed to Lupus which was last month was Lupus Awareness Month and so just want to uplift that as an auntie who was a young auntie you always think you have enough more time and I honestly thought I had a bit more time with my niece so I appreciate you all the city manager is the first to reach out which means Bo knows everyone's business so Thank you for that. Also, just to associate with what my colleagues have already said, sending my thoughts and condolences to the family of Paul Scott. In addition to what has not been stated, there's a memorial that's going to be this Saturday, June 20th at 3917 Fayetteville Road in Durham. And his request was to provide donations of children's books to pass out to the community. Over the past two Saturdays, I have had opportunity to attend the Pac-5 Spring Fling that's hosted by co-facilitator Charlotte DeBirds as well as Mr. Eddie Hobbs and also had a great time on this past Saturday at Pack One's Spring Fling. If you see video of me floating around a giant plastic ball, that was me in the rotisserie chicken situation, but I did appreciate... was so hot sorry but i did appreciate the opportunity to hang out with community and want to give a special shout out to luis who i may get this department wrong because i have not memorized all from reorganization but i think it's like neighborhood services he's a health pack coordinator and luis was out there on the ground with us for two saturdays in the sweltering sun but very attentive and appreciate with all his hard work so thank you all thank you council member mayor pro tem

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Appreciate all of my council colleague comments. It is a big evening. It's one of our biggest votes of the year, not the biggest. I do also want to shout out all Durham Public Schools graduates, because graduation was last Thursday and Friday, including my youngest child graduated from Riverside. So I have the proud honor of being a Riverside grad, family 24, 25, and 26, which is a little bit A LOT OF FAMILY CAME INTO TOWN BECAUSE IT WAS THE LAST ONE. SO SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS AND SUPERINTENDENT AND STAFF AND FAMILIES WHO WERE CELEBRATING. IT'S ALWAYS REALLY GOOD TO SEE ALL THE TALENT THAT DURHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS PRODUCES WITH THE BANDS AT THE GRADUATION CEREMONIES AND THE CHORUSES AND EVERYTHING ELSE. ALSO GO CANES AND THAT'S ABOUT ALL I HAVE THIS EVENING. THANK YOU.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, this is our final meeting before taking a little time off. I'm just grateful for everyone showing up tonight. And thanks for all the remarks. Congratulations to the Hurricanes. I'm still trying to get the triangle to recognize that Durham is a co-host to the Kings. But that's OK, because we have our own professional team now, the Carolina Blaze. And the Durham Bulls and all of the amazing college programs around. There are lots of events going on this month, from Pride Month to Juneteenth, and I hope that everyone will take advantage of just all the things that are happening in the community. There's lots to take advantage of. I'm just going to jump right in. We have a pretty dense agenda tonight. I'm looking forward to getting to the budget and taking the most important vote of the year. All right. Mr. Manager, on you.

Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, members of council, the city manager's office has several priority items this evening. First, for agenda items number 16, 22, 28, and 38, additional information was added after the work session at council's request. For agenda item number 49, this is the resolution governing the use of law enforcement technologies. A revised resolution and a response memo responding to multiple council questions and suggested edits has been added under this item. For agenda item number 50, that's the contract for housing stabilization case management services with Family Promise of the Triangle. This is a supplemental item that has been added for tonight's agenda. And for agenda item number 51, that's the ordinance extending a temporary moratorium on development approvals for data centers, cryptocurrency mining, and related high impact data processing facilities within the city of Durham. This is a supplemental item that's been added and is also a public hearing. Finally, Mayor and Council Members, I'd like to just take a quick minute and invite our Director of Water Management, Don Greeley, to the microphone. As Council Member Cook noted earlier, Stage 2 drought restrictions went into effect today, and I wanted Director Greeley just to share a high-level overview of those restrictions for the Council and the public tonight.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of Council, staff and residents here tonight in the Council Chambers and those online. Thank you, Manager Ferguson, for the opportunity to provide a brief overview of where we stand with our water supply. Durham is now in stage two water response, and I want to outline how we got here, what steps we are asking our community to take, and what will it take to move out of stage two. We are experiencing an unusual severe drought, unlike any that we've had in the 105 years of record. Normally Lake Vicki and Little River are at full capacity on April 1st. This year, we were about at 85% on April 1st. And rain has to fall in our watershed northwest of our lakes for it to do any good. That just hasn't happened this year. Other area utilities are experiencing similar conditions. Last Monday, June 8th, our water model hit the triggers for stages one and two. We anticipated hitting stage one for several weeks now, and our team has been planning on working with other city departments for a couple of weeks to prepare. But as we moved out of spring into summer, we hit both stage one and stage two triggers, and we accelerated our plan to get stage two into effect as smoothly as possible. Stage two focused primarily on reducing outdoor water use. Spray irrigation is not allowed, and all irrigation systems should be turned off at this point. Hand watering is still permitted when a person is physically holding the hose with a shutoff nozzle, and drip irrigation is allowed within defined limits. In stage two, car washing should only be done at compliant commercial car washes. We ask that restaurants only serve water upon request. And there are limits to decorative sprinklers, spray grounds, and splash pads. As always, we ask our residents and businesses to be mindful, fix leaks, shorten showers, and eliminate unnecessary water use. Moving out of stage two depends on improved water supply conditions. This means consistent and significant rainfall in our watersheds. Our lakes must fill up. Unfortunately, until then, we have to follow our water shortage response plan and value our water wisely. Water management staff monitor these conditions daily, and when the data supports making a change, we will adjust restrictions after conferring with the city manager accordingly. I also wanna take a moment to talk about enforcement, unfortunately. Enforcement during stage two uses a tiered approach. First, it begins with education and a warning. If violations continue, a process escalates to a notice of violation followed by fines and only in repeated serious cases would it amount to or lead to service disconnection. Our residents do the right thing and we expect compliance to continue to be high. In perspective, we didn't disconnect any services during the drought of 07 and 08. The main message today is simple. We can do this. Durham has a strong track record of conservation and small changes across thousands of households add up quickly. There's nothing more powerful than a community acting together. This drought is temporary. We will get through this. It's also another reason to highlight the Jordan Lake water supply program. The major steps we have taken recently will help ensure our water supply for many years to come. I would encourage each and every one of you who has questions about this water shortage to visit www.durham-saves-water.org. Thank you for this opportunity to talk to you this evening.

Thank you, Director Greeley, and thank you, Mayor and Council. That concludes the City Manager's Office priority items.

Thank you. And can we get a copy of that memo just sent to us? Sure. If not already. Yes. Thank you. All right, Madam Attorney.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council. It's good to see you. The city attorney's office has no priority items tonight.

Thank you. Madam Clerk.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, and city council members. The city clerk's office has no priority items this evening.

Thank you. So it's best that we just read online.

I don't have, yeah.

So number two is not up here, but.

No, it starts with three. Starts with three, okay.

All right, this time I'll read the consent agenda. On number three. Durham Workers' Rights Commission appointments. Number five, Recreation Advisory Commission appointment. Number six, Durham Convention Center Authority appointment. Number seven, Participatory Budgeting Steering Committee appointment. Number eight, Durham Convention and Visitors Bureau, Discover Durham. Number nine, WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT BOARD APPOINTMENT. NUMBER 10, HOUSING APPEALS BOARD MAYORAL APPOINTMENT. NUMBER 11, HOUSING APPEALS BOARD APPOINTMENT. NUMBER 12, DURHAM HOMELESS SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE. THAT'S BEEN PULLED. WHICH HAS BEEN PULLED. NUMBER 13, CAROLINA THEATER OF DURHAM BOARD OF TRUSTEES APPOINTMENT. NUMBER 14, FISCAL YEAR 2026-2027. BUDGET IN FISCAL YEAR 2027-2032 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN PULLED. NUMBER 15, APPOINTMENT AND REAPPOINTMENT TO THE CIVILIAN POLICE REVIEW BOARD, OKAY, WHICH IS PULLED. NUMBER 17, CONTRACT FOR LANDLORD ENGAGEMENT SERVICES. with with hom incorporated pulled number 18 continuum of care and continuum of care governing board of interlocal agreement number 19 superseding grant project ordinance number one six one nine three fiscal year 2023 2024 city of durham and north carolina department of environmental quality food waste reduction grant project ordinance number 20 AMENDMENT NUMBER 1 TO CONTRACT NUMBER 18858 WITH DYNAMIC CLEANING AND MAINTENANCE COMPANY, LLC, FOR JANITORIAL SERVICES. NUMBER 22, IMMINENT DOMAIN ACTION TO OBTAIN TWO TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASEMENTS AND TWO PERMANENT DRAINAGE EASEMENTS FROM A LAND CORPORATION FOR THE SW45 BIKE AND SOLIDWALK PROJECT. NUMBER 23, ACQUISITION OF TWO TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASEMENTS IN TWO AREAS IN FEE SIMPLE AT 311 SOUTH LA SAL STREET FOR THE SW52 SIDEWALK PROJECT. NUMBER 24, IMMINENT DOMAIN ACTION TO OBTAIN TWO TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASEMENTS FROM REA RESIDENTIAL INCORPORATED FOR THE SW53 SIDEWALK PROJECT. NUMBER 25, IMMANUEL DOMAIN ACTION TO OBTAIN ONE GREENWAY EASTMENT AND ONE TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASTMENT AT 1500 AVONDALE DRIVE FOR THE DURHAM RAIL TRAIL PROJECT. NUMBER 26, LAND LEASE WITH THE NEW SINGULAR WIRELESS PCS LLC, 6605 FARENTON ROAD. NUMBER 27, NETWORK HUT LEASE AND LICENSE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF DURHAM AND GOOGLE FIBER, NORTH CAROLINA LLC. NUMBER 28, PROPOSED FIRST AMENDMENT TO LEASE BETWEEN YARBOROUGH WAREHOUSING AND STORAGE LLC AND CITY OF DURHAM FOR THE DURHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT. NUMBER 29, CONTRACT WITH SIMETRA LIFE INSURANCE, COMPANY FOR STOP LOSS INSURANCE COVERAGE. NUMBER 30, DESIGNATION OF CERTIFYING OFFICER FOR NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ACT, NEPA ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS. Number 31, approval for the first amendment to the contract for the administration of the eviction diversion program with legal aid of North Carolina. Number 32, contract with Preserving Home Incorporated for neighborhood preservation home repair program. Number 33, utility extension agreement with CF2REO 210 North Driver Street LLC to serve 210 North Driver Street. Number 34, utility extension agreement with ORTSA INCORPORATED TO SERVE CHANDLER ROAD SEWER EXTENSION. NUMBER 35, UTILITY EXTENSION AGREEMENT WITH DOVE CREEK PROPERTIES TO SERVE 509 SOUTH BRAKES AVENUE, DOVE CREEK WAREHOUSE. NUMBER 36, UTILITY EXTENSION AGREEMENT WITH SUNROCK INDUSTRIES LLC TO SERVE SUNROCK CAMDEN PLANT. NUMBER 37, UTILITY EXTENSION AGREEMENT WITH GKI BUILDING SOLUTION LLC TO SERVE TRUTH STREET LOTS. STILL GOOD OVER HERE. Number 38, 2026, first quarter crime report.

Yeah, it's pulled.

Yeah, let's pull. 38.

38, okay. Yeah, 35.

That's just a resource person. Okay.

So 38 was pulled.

39, DESIGN BILL SERVICES CONTRACT FOR STATE UTILITY CONTRACTORS INCORPORATED FOR THE PER AND, YEP, POLYFLUOROCULE SUBSTANCES TREATMENT AND ELECTRICAL UPGRADES PROJECT. 40, PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING SERVICES CONTRACT WITH KIMBERLY HORN AND ASSOCIATES INCORPORATED FOR THE SOUTH DURHAM TRANSMISSION MAIN PROJECT. 47 contract with hrna advisors incorporated to develop an affordable housing plan and investment strategy okay you know what i'm saying go ahead and just approve the consent all right colleagues that is the consent agenda with items 12 14 15 17 and 38 being pulled i'll entertain a motion so no second so move the property seconded All right. Madam Clerk, can you please open the vote? It's a lot of moving parts today. Is it opening? Mr. Mayor, please vote. Oh, here it is. Sorry, mine was frozen. All right, please close the vote.

The motion passes 7-0. All right.

Okay.

So I am going to, I'm going to colleagues, I'm going to read the general business items, and then I'll go back up to the port items for the consent agenda. And because the GBA is a lot tonight. All right, item number four in the GBA, Citizens Advisory Committee Appointments. Number 16, revision to the 2026 city council meeting schedule. Number 49, resolution governing the use of law enforcement technologies. Number 42, these are public hearings, request to permanently close the eastern terminus of Gilbert Street, 225 linear feet east of North Austin Avenue. NUMBER 43, CONSOLIDATED ZONING MAP CHANGE, GARLAND DISTRICT. NUMBER 44, TC 2600002, DEVELOPMENT MORATORIA, UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE, UDL TEXT AMENDMENT. NUMBER 45, MODIFICATION OF TIER BOUNDARY, PARMER EDGE LIGHT INDUSTRIAL PARK. NUMBER 46, ZONING MAP CHANGE, Z 2600002, PARMER EDGE 2. NUMBER 48, AMENDMENTS TO THE DURHAM MINIMUM HOUSING CODE. NUMBER 50, SUPPLEMENTAL ITEMS. NUMBER 50, CONTRACT FOR HOUSING STABILIZATION CASE MANAGEMENT SERVICES WITH FAMILY PROMISE OF THE TRIANGLE. NUMBER 51, ORDINANCE EXTENDING A TEMPORARY MORATORIUM ON DEVELOPMENT APPROVALS FOR DATA CENTERS, CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING AND RELATED HIGH IMPACT DATA PROCESSING FACILITIES IN THE CITY OF DURHAM. All right. Now at this time, I'll go back to the pooled items. Item number 12. It's a ROS, R-E-S. And Madam Clerk, so this is Ross, the speaker. Were you able to get the duplications? Okay, thank you. Welcome, you have three minutes.

Hello, can you hear me? Rain, rain, rain all night so we could see things in a different light. Grab the inner tubes and logs, save the people and drown the hogs. Kwezi Balagoon, born December 22nd, 1946 and murdered by the New York Department of Corrections, December 13th, 1986. The United States was founded on the genocide of Native Americans and the human trafficking and enslavement of Africans at the hands of white supremacist European settlers. This country has only existed as a location of oppression, tyranny, death for black, native, Latin, and poor people. So it is no surprise that the city of Durham and its city council would follow in these footsteps from chattel savory to mass incarceration to Durham County Jail, reporting at least 69% of his population as black when the population of Durham County is only 37%. This is the history from slave patrols to the cowardly Durham police and sheriff department. This is the history from manifest destiny and westward settler expansion to gentrification of black neighborhoods. This is the history from the mass slaughter of bison to starve the indigenous people of the plains to the poisoning of eastern soil by city incinerators. It is no mistake that this has happened in red line neighborhoods. This is the history. The city council could never address the needs of the people of Durham because this is clearly not its history. And it will never be because this council, like all city councils, is a government structure foundationally built to perpetuate the American legacy of extraction of wealth. resources from the people and the earth into the hands of the few greedy pigs. The people of Durham who are homeless and housing insecure have long awaited for action by the city on their behalf. The time for waiting is over. The period of action is now. The people require unconditional housing for all. The people require food security instead of constant insecurity. The people require consistent free access to water and compassionate health care. The people require access to the resources that are necessary for their survival. The people of Durham can and will organize for their needs by any means necessary. This message is approved by the dispossessed and those roaming the streets. This is a people's takeover. I will not sit down. This is a people's takeover.

Thank you. You're out of order. You're out of order. It's your first warning. You're out of order. This is your second warning. You're out of order. Please have her removed from the chamber. You are out of order. You are out of order. You are out of order.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

You are out of order.

That's your first warning. You are out of order. That is your second warning. You are out of order. This is your third warning. Colleagues, we will resume to, we will recess at this moment. Madam Clerk, we are in recess.

Thank you.

You are out of order.

Giving them the power. They do not have power. You do not have the power. The data shows it. This is by design that this is happening this way. You do not want anything to be better. Look at the history, the history of you selling out this community. You can keep sitting here recanting it and keep sweeping it up. The city workers are paying them to disenfranchise their people, but you want to sit up here and talk about a payment game?

All right, colleagues, I'd like to call us. Let's get the system back. Testing one, two, testing. Testing, all right. Colleagues, I want to call us back to order. And I am on number 14. Apologies about the... disruption, but this is democracy, and I'd rather live in a country where we can speak and be silenced, so. But that's your first warning. You're out of order. Item number 14, fiscal year. COLLEAGUES, THAT WAS THE ONLY SPEAKER I HAD FOR NUMBER 12. SO I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO reappoint Tasha D. Melvin, representing nonprofit organizations, and Humphrey B. Truitt, representing corporate private sector with the Durham Homeless Services Advisory Committee with the terms to expire on June 30, 2029. So moved. Second. It's been moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open to vote. Please close to vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. Now. All right, item number 14, fiscal year 2026-2027 budget and fiscal year 2027 through 32 capital improvement plan, CIP and other related ordinances. This is our budget. I'll start with the speakers. First speaker is Frederick Davis. Followed by Cheryl Chews, Italio Medelius. Welcome, you have three minutes.

Thank you, Mayor Williams and council members, city manager, city attorney, director of parks and recreation, if that person is present. I stand tonight to again ask for answers and understanding. As the chair and founder of the West End Community Foundation Incorporated, with the 1996 agreement, which has been changed at least five, four times. I am standing again to get answers and understanding why you canceled a 10-year lease agreement where we had no issues. And now, according to an ND report, you are planning to support us with a limited amount of resources. I say limited amount because the 10 year agreement, if you calculate the 10 year agreement, city attorney and city manager, you will discover that it was a 10 year agreement, which totals about $2 million. and you have planned according to Indy report to offer to the West End Community Foundation $191,000. I want to stand again to say to all of you that we have been very supportive and I'm just still baffled. Why will you move Durham Parks and Recreation? Councilman Risk, a committee member, you stated teamwork matters. And we were not informed of any decisions that's being made by the Durham Recreation Department. Why? Why would that be phased out? Why? We haven't even been told when it will happen. Information is important. We throw around the terminology transparency. This has not been a transparent relationship since the Parks and Recreation Director has been in place. As stated earlier by Councilman, teamwork matters. We stand committed, committed in honoring Minister Paul Scott, committed to honoring Dwarren Langley, who are great supporters. of the relationship of Parks and Recreation with the West End Community Foundation Incorporated. You all have stressed out our executive director. She don't even wanna come speak to you all because in the words of my ancestor from Florida, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, many of you are talking with forked tongues. Thank you.

Welcome, you have 30 minutes.

Good evening, thank you. Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp, City Attorney and City Manager, I'm here on behalf of Justice Matters in support of the increased funding for Immigrant Legal Defense Services for Durham residents. I just want to take this time to thank you for recognizing this critical need and for responding to it. These are significant services that not only recognize individuals' legal rights, improving stability and security for kids and families, but will provide an impact that will be multiplied across schools for kids and families, across workplaces for hardworking individuals, and faith communities for people who live and worship together. It's a privilege to be part of a group of service providers with Church World Service and World Relief Durham to serve our neighbors. This is a really dark and unprecedented time for immigrant communities, many of whom who have fled abuse, harm and persecution. And we're really grateful for the city's partnership in this work to speak on behalf of those who often cannot speak for themselves. I'm proud to be a resident in a city that recognizes this important diversity, who celebrates inclusion for this community, and is committed to making this a safe place for immigrants. Thank you.

Thank you. As the title is coming up, Leslie St. Dre, Michael Harris, Adam Clark, Pablo Freeman, and Taylor Reynolds. Welcome to Remains.

Thank you. Hello, everybody. Good evening. My name's Idola Medelius. I'm the Secretary of CAUSE, Carolina, Amazonians, United for Solidarity and Empowerment, General Counsel in North Carolina, Tenancy Union, Vice Chair of the Durham Workers' Rights Commission. Today, I'm speaking on behalf of CAN, Durham CAN. And I'll read a quick statement. Hopefully, it takes less than two minutes. So Durham congregations, associations, and neighborhoods, you'll see them over there in the black shirts, Durham Can, applauds the Durham City Council for hopefully including $750,000 in the city budget to support nonprofit organizations providing legal defense and critical services to immigrants and refugees in our community. I think we all know the issues that immigrants and refugees are facing. We've had people taken from their street, from their workplaces, and we, I think, are standing on our values by this investment. This investment reflects Durham's longstanding commitment to ensuring that our residents are treated with dignity and have access to justice regardless of their immigration status. Durham CAN extends its sincere gratitude to the mayor, the city council members, city staff, city manager, Madam City Attorney, everybody, and the community advocates who made this possible. And this work could not have happened without the work of CAN's Immigration Research Action Team, who are here today. Organizations such as our friends at Justice Matters, World Relief, Church World Services, they provide essential legal representation, advocacy support services that help immigrant families navigate complex legal systems, understand their rights, and remain connected to the communities that they call home. These are the true heroes and the foot soldiers of keeping people here and thriving in Durham. So again, thank you all very much. I hope this passes, and it's been great working with you all on this, thanks. Thank you. Next.

Welcome. You have three minutes.

Good afternoon. Good evening, Mayor. You can pull that up just a bit. No. That's all right. I got it. I'm representing the taxpayers here in Durham, and I'm basically pushing that you guys do not pass this budget. We're the ones who are funding all of you guys here and all the city officials who work here in Durham. I understand that you guys are equivalent about a 2.5% tax increase on property. We're the ones that are supporting all of these non-profit groups here that Durham is now supporting or have been supporting. I would like for you guys to consider cutting the budget as much as possible because And exactly in six years from now, most seniors who are on Social Security are going to get cut. Therefore, a lot of these projects that you have coming up, we won't be able to survive ourselves. So I know you had complaints, unfortunately, with people that are sort of disappointed because of things that you guys have probably done in the past. But look upon us. I have to push back on Mr. Matt. The taxpayers pay at least 73% of all the funds here in Durham, not 50%. So please check your records and help us taxpayers maintain this beautiful city. I know there's not a lot of things that people need as far as housing, but we have to think about the mental stress that are happening to a lot of these people here in Durham. So if you can look in some of the mental things that are happening, maybe we can get some of these other things out of the way as far as helping them. My other complaint is this money that you're asking or wanting to perhaps pass is not doing anything for 911. Just about 10 days ago, going down to South Buchanan Street, there was a guy walking up the street with an automatic gun, which I called 911. him and another person strapped to his side just walking down the street, and I did not get a reply from the service. So if my money is going into 911 help, and I'm listening to an AI person calling me back and cannot talk to a live person, what is my money doing? What are you using my money for? At least you could probably maybe contract an outside agency to do the 911 work. But that person eventually got away. I never received a back call from the police department or anything. So to me, it's a travesty what is happening here under those services. Thank you.

Thank you. And just, I need, are you Mr. Harris, Michael Harris?

Yes, I am.

Okay. Matter of fact. And I know it's a little confusing, but the city of Durham is not proposing a tax increase as it stands so far. Oh, okay. That's the county. Excuse moi. I stand to be corrected. That's the county. Next, I have Leslie St. Dre followed. That's a duplication. Adam Clark, then Pablo Friedman, and then Taylor Reynolds.

Hello, I'm Leslie St. Dre. I'm with Community Land and Power, a new org that's doing land, housing, and environmental justice. And I'm here to talk about the overall budget issues. So we do need for all of you to hold the county accountable. You can... you can demand that they replace the entire board of equalization and review.

Sir, thank you, but you add an order, please.

I'm okay with that. So that's very necessary. There's a new campaign, a people's refund for a people's budget that I ask all of you to get involved in because this is our tax money. It's actually 19 million lost. in one year, nine million to the city, 10 million to the county, that's 19 million, that's 76 million over the next four years, and we cannot have that. We need a budget that prioritizes housing needs for our homeless people first, for people facing evictions, we need legal aid and eviction diversion programs, not just for this next year, but well into the future, since we have no other protections for tenants beyond their lease. um so we i really encourage you to i hear that you're mad about what has happened but it is your responsibility to use your leverage to get that money back i also want to talk about that it's corporate landlords that are giving getting these massive refunds that are impacting all of us the county is going to make us pay for the shortfall everybody in durham is going to pay for the losses and services that we need And so we need to work together and appeal the corporate tax appeals. And so we need you to leverage your power to demand that the county open up that window for appeals because they illegally closed it without letting us know. They don't publish their minutes. They didn't publish any of the data for any of us to know that we should appeal those corporate tax appeals. And where the city has responsibility is in that they continue to prioritize market rate housing. At all of our demise, even the county tax assessor said this, that market rate vacancies are a massive problem, right? jack our rents up, they cause gentrification, they cause more homelessness, and meanwhile, they don't trickle down, right? It's a mythology. So we need housing for the actual need. We need truly affordable housing. We need permanently supportive housing. We need y'all to stop the sweeps, including the one that's going to happen across from J.J. Henderson very soon, because we don't have places for people to go.

So thank you for listening. Thank you.

Next I have Adam Clark, welcome. Good evening Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, members of council, thank you for having us this evening. My name is Adam Clark, I'm the Executive Director of World Relief Durham and I'm here to thank you all on behalf of my colleagues at World Relief, Church World Service, and Justice Matters for investing in immigrant legal defense as a city. Thank you for recognizing the multiplier effect of these legal services, which will protect hundreds of Durham's immigrant families as well as hundreds of mixed-status families in Durham. These legal services help families stay together, and each year will keep hundreds of Durham residents staying in, working for, and strengthening Durham in our labor market, our public schools, our entrepreneurial community, our tax base, our places of worship, and more. It's not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do for Durham. Thank you. Thank you. Next.

All right. Good evening, Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, members of Council, City Manager Ferguson, the hundreds of people who care about democracy, and the millions more online watching. Durham's a messy place, and what happened tonight is the consequence of elections, Mayor Williams. You gave the order tonight. This was nonviolent civil disobedience tonight. I hope everyone on the council asks for the charges to be dropped. Where is heart when we fund heart? Where is the healing that we talk about when exercised in this house? I hope we can do better. Ruling me out of order for clapping on a matter of tax policy that has an incredible relevance to this city, that's weak leadership. Let's do better. But since you've given us three minutes, which is a rare luxury in public comment and in commentary to the council these days, let's talk about some things directly relevant to the budget that I think could be helpful. Number one, the occupancy tax revenue is now going to Discover Durham. i found out last week from talking to the county budget director that that occupancy tax revenue was paying the county debt 10 million dollars of which is now going to discover durham we at the city level spend a lot of money to subsidize festivals and whatnot i would like discover durham to start replacing some of the money that the city gives to organizations to do festivals and other things that bring revenue to the city and then use that money elsewhere maybe you might want to fund some merit increases maybe you might want to fund some of these non-profits here additionally if the reporting is correct and you will be putting back non-profit funding on the table i think you need to have a clear process for distributing that money There are some very strong programs that you're funding on the nonprofit side, but there have also been examples of the city by Fiat funding some programs that community members had a lot of concerns and objections to, and you didn't listen to them. And so I think you need to have, if you're gonna fund it, and I'm not opposed to it, make sure you have a very clear process for evaluating requests, figuring out where maybe more money needs to be given, and maybe where some money might need to be reviewed. And not just in this area. There's a lot of concern on homelessness services. Maybe you might want to also incorporate that, because you give a lot of money to nonprofits there. Lastly, I talked about this last go-around. This is an austerity budget. And City Manager Ferguson, when you proposed the budget, I was a little bit shocked. I wasn't expecting this, but I think it's a solid baseline to work from, and I applaud you for that. I think an example of austerity is everyone on the dais, including down there, to decline their increase this year in solidarity with austerity measures. Commit to that tonight as a show of good faith. Thank you.

Taylor, welcome. You have three minutes.

Thank you. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Attorney, City Manager, Council, and Durham community, good evening. I just want to thank you for your hard work on this budget. There are no easy decisions, and I appreciate the work that you've put in. I want to thank you especially for your support to meet the urgent need for immigration services. These services are essential to public health, Shared economic prosperity and public safety, they impact every facet of community life where immigrants, whether students, workers, dreamers, exist. This work helps people apply for relief. Youth apply for green cards. Domestic violence and trafficking survivors apply for protection. It helps people who escaped harm or persecution apply for asylum and protects our children from being separated from their caregivers. Thank you for investing in services to protect victims and keep families together. When we imagine what we want our community to look like in five weeks, five months, five years, this is an investment in workers, small businesses, and for our children and our schools. Thank you for your partnership in this work. We are grateful this work that protects the lives of our immigrant neighbors will continue for the preservation of our beloved community and our beloved neighbors. Thank you.

Thank you to all of the speakers. And I will call for the motion. Do I have to read all of that? Do I have to read all of that?

I think what we should do is.

One moment.

I mean, theoretically, yes. But I think.

It's the budget, so it's OK. I'll put it all on the record. All right. That's item number 15. It's 14. 14. I'll entertain a motion to adopt the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget and fiscal year 2027-2032 capital improvement plan ordinance and other related ordinance. So moved. Fiscal year. Oh, it's going to be a while.

I was going to say, we can package this because there's like 35 missions, right? And I think you could say something like, I'll entertain a mission to adopt. The budget and the CIP and other related ordinances as they appear printed in the published agenda. Okay.

All right. For the record, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget and fiscal year 2027 through 2032 capital improvement plan CIP ordinance and other related ordinances as they appear printed on public document. and in the published agenda. So moved.

Second.

It's been moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk. Please open the vote. Please close the vote.

The motion passes unanimously.

Durham, we have officially passed our budget. All right, I do want to just provide a brief remark. Colleagues, this was obviously the hardest budget that I've ever seen and have ever been presented with. And I've heard many of you all say the same. Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem, you have had more budgets on this council than any of us. I've heard you say those same words. I HAVE NEVER REALLY SEEN SUCH A TECHNICAL DOCUMENT MEAN SO MUCH PERSONALLY AND MORALLY. THERE ARE ALWAYS GOING TO BE OPINIONS. AND AS ELECTED LEADERS, YOU ELECTED US TO DO THIS HARD WORK. WE GET CALLED ALL TYPES OF NAMES AND YET WE STILL HAVE TO PUSH THROUGH TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE REPRESENTING ALL OF THE CITY. AND THAT'S JUST THE JOB THAT COMES WITH IT. I THINK TONIGHT WAS A BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE OF, YOU KNOW, THERE ARE FOLKS THAT ARE SPEAKING OUT BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, AND THEN THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT ARE SITTING QUIETLY AND WAITING FOR THEIR EXPECTATIONS TO BE CARRIED OUT. YOU KNOW, AND THAT'S WHAT THIS BUDGET REPRESENTS. THE MANAGER, MR. FERGUSON, YOU PRESENTED US WITH, WE ACTUALLY, WHEN YOU PRESENTED THE BUDGET, I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW YOU DID IT. but we didn't agree with it. And you did your part and then the rest was up to us. And we were probably on seven different pages. And yet we somehow came to a consensus. Not everyone is happy, not everyone is upset. This was a budget that showed us some insight on how we're going to have to move throughout the future. how we support outside organizations, what types of relationships we have with those organizations, how do we reflect in the budget things we want to see throughout the community of Durham, while also addressing the extremely, extremely important and vital needs and necessities. It matters. And that's what we're up here to do. And we will take insults, we'll take compliments, and we treat them all the same, meaning we are listening. We're listening. Some has to be like water on a duck's back and some has to be the thing that just keeps us going one more day. That's just the life of public office. But what I can say, out of this very tough and difficult budget, I think that we've put the best version of it forth and we've made some really tough decisions. We've made some serious cuts. We have somehow found miracle money or miracle allocations to still make some things whole. But what this budget does say is there are some tough conversations that we still have to have. um with with organizations but also with just our our county colleagues and our regional partners uh the development community like there are so many things that we have to address that this budget gave us insight to and we don't want to find ourselves here again we are a growing city And we came in short on revenue this year for a multitude of reasons. Ask the Midwest what's happening with population decline. They're receiving less revenue because of population decline. We had things that were unforeseen. And there's reporting on it. And yes, those things are real. But it requires all of us to have a very open mind and get as creative as possible like we did up here. So I just want to personally thank each of you. This is a budget where we're on separate pages, all seven of us. And tonight we just passed this budget unanimously. So that's for weak leadership.

Thank you.

Anyone else? Mr. Baker, go ahead.

Thank you for those words. First, I just want to commend staff. Mr. Manager, I'm not sure if maybe this was the first year that you had to do two budgets. You came out with a budget and then you have to come out with another one because of those late in the game property tax appeals. This is a hard budget. This is the first budget in institutional memory, looking at staff, that the general fund is less than the year before. I mean, that's extraordinary for a city that has been growing as fast as it has been. I think we need to lay out the reasons why. I think that there are a number of reasons. both within and beyond our control. And I think if you look across the state of North Carolina at municipalities, everybody is filling budget holes. Looking at Asheville, Raleigh, other places, they are filling gaps in their budget because of factors within the state. Over the past couple of decades, local governments in the United States have gotten a smaller share of revenue from and decreasing share of revenue from the federal government to the federal government has so much impact on local budgets. and could frankly solve all of our issues like that. State government gives us so few tools. I don't know if you've been following, but New York City had a huge budget hole that they had to fill. They are not raising taxes on ordinary people because they were able to raise taxes in other ways and collect from the millionaires and billionaires in New York City and people who own second homes. We don't have the tools that are available to us the same way. They were able to pay for some of their necessary programs with state funding. We are sorely lacking in those areas, so we need to organize at those higher levels of government. I also think that over the years we have suffered some self-inflicted wounds. I would say that a lot of the growth development and annexations have not been paying for themselves. I think some kinds of developments pay for themselves, some kinds don't. And I think that we are seeing the outcome and fruits of development that it doesn't necessarily pay for itself. The occupancy tax has come up. I think that's something that we're feeling. And I want to I want to commend in our last work session I want to commend my colleagues for for your push to ensure that we are funding some of these critical community programs kind of getting to at the 11th hour here getting to the last mile um and and ensuring that we were able to fund those um you know i am dismayed that we had to pull out a large chunk of money from what had been allocated for homelessness services by the manager's budget So, you know, these are a lot of different things that we are wrestling with. This is an extremely challenging budget. And I want to thank the community for all of the work that has been done to advocate for necessary community programs. I want to thank our city workers. This budget is being balanced on the back of our city workers who are receiving a 2% increase rather than their typical with merit raises. um not ever not every community is doing that but we are also unique in that we are not proposing to raise property taxes i want to commend my colleagues for that as well so again thank you so much to all of the city staff who have worked tirelessly over the past six months to put this budget together it it is is painful it hurts um and it also accomplishes a lot of really important things in our city so um just balancing those those two things so thank you

all right good evening again this is my first budget cycle and um i will say zero out of five stars did not enjoy the process it was hard it was a lot um i've learned i have some lessons learned and so um i do want to express appreciation for the staff for having the institutional knowledge and sharing that with us as well as hearing our concerns and uplifting that i've learned now when the city manager say is going to balance the budget out of the fund balance you ask for our itemized list of what's going to be in the funding balance because it becomes like a really hot and contentious conversation It was really important for me to think about for this budget cycle our economic times we're currently in right now and so just want to make sure we're fiscally responsible with the fund balance and so I was really gave a lot of thought about before we dip to that make sure we have justification because we can't foresee the future and we are in hurricane season. We have so many things going on that we want to make sure that we have the resources available for those unpredictable things as we prepare for these storms or hopefully get some rain. I also want to appreciate my colleagues. We did have some tough conversations and some of us are heard a lot from people in community, but we did make sure we didn't try to pit community members against each other. That was really important to me to ensure that we did not make decisions to cut some program, but then increase other programs. We want to make sure that we have the same messaging to all community groups and live by our values. I have also asked for moving forward that we have a more formalized budget process to ensure equity. and make sure that people just not going to be in perpetuity. I know we're not going to always get it right. I understand that if I had a magic wand, if I ruled the world, I would ensure that everyone had all the fun they had to. But unfortunately, those are not the circumstances in this budget cycle. It was also really important to me to make sure we did not raise property taxes. That's the number one thing I heard from a lot of people in our community when I campaigned last year was people are concerned about keeping their home. especially our seniors, those who are on fixed incomes and the cost of living is increasing. I often tell people, like, you know, ginger ale used to be like $3.99 pre-pandemic. Now it's like $10.99 for a 12-pack, just thinking about how our food has risen and all these gases going up. So it's really important to think about our neighbors who don't have the same financial situation that we do have and how the economic impact of that. And also think about how our public policy, ensuring that when we design a proposed policy that we think about intent versus impact. can have the greatest intentions in the world but if you're not relationship these communities and fully understand and impact your policy decisions there's no way we can fully mitigate that so like again to encourage us all to just we're living in interesting times right now but i do appreciate the fact that this budget cycle is not contentious amongst me and my colleagues and i think that we can get a lot further together if we have these hard conversations together we hear each other out and we figure out a pathway forward because we all have our different lived experiences that make us great but we're not going to get anywhere far if we do not get together so i appreciate everyone for this opportunity not looking forward to next year's budget cycle um but i am if we have different circumstances i know it's the one time one off situation but just looking forward to maybe hopefully address some of these issues in the future thank you i'll go ahead thank you

Yeah, I want to join my colleagues in thanking the community for your comments. We got an unusually large number this year given a tight budget, and we appreciate all the comments, and I responded to many of those, as you all know. I also want to thank the staff for the hard work on this budget. This was not easy. mr manager i think you called the stewardship in uncertain times i think that reflects where we are as a community um this is not an austerity budget y'all um this budget the general fund is marginally marginally smaller than last year but overall our total budget if you include all the funds is 840 million dollars it's a lot of money to invest in our city and i'm proud of that we continue fare free buses in the city for all our residents which is an important priority in the staff thank you mr williams for your advocacy on part of bike durham on that one especially We increased our Durham minimum livable wage to $25.09 per hour. That's a phenomenal figure, y'all. If you Google living wage ordinance South, you'll find one other one in New Orleans for like $13 an hour. Asheville's dropped their living wage ordinance. We all go to conferences around the country. I talked to my colleagues around the country. they are not shocked, they're impressed by that number. It's an important statement of who we are as a community. It's not a number we pulled out of a hat. It's a number that's based on the fair market rent. And we know that for our workers in Durham, we want them to be able to afford to live in the city they work in. And that's why we chose the number. I'm really proud of that number. And I think it reflects, again, our priorities and our values. We're investing in key council priorities such as the homeless strategic plan, public safety, youth works, right? A new staff for youth works to increase the number of folks, summer jobs for youth in this community. We're also listening to residents. We gave back or we refunded those contracts with our key community nonprofits. We also heard from the community about tennis courts and basketball courts. We're funding 4 million to make sure folks around this community can exercise and recreate on courts that are properly structured and aren't unsafe. There's no tax increase here. And I wanna make sure everyone's clear. This is not a low tax community. It's not a low tax council. We raised taxes aggressively the last couple of years to pay for our bond and increase salaries for our workers to market. This year, we were challenged on that. And I think partly what people are asking us to do is use a variety of tools at our disposal when we have a tight budget season. The last couple of years, we went back to voters and asked them to dig deeper and pay more in their property taxes. WE KNOW PROPERTY TAXES MARGINALLY AFFECT LOWER INCOME RESIDENTS MORE THAN HIGHER INCOME. WE WERE CHALLENGED THERE. THIS YEAR WE HELD THE LINE ON THAT TO SHOW WE HAVE A VARIETY OF WAYS WE CAN ADDRESS A TIGHT BUDGET. THE LAST THING I'LL SAY IN MY FEW MINUTES REMAINING. THE BUDGET, IT'S NOT PERFECT. MY BIGGEST REGRET IS THE FACT THAT WE COULD ONLY GIVE THE 2% RAISE TO OUR EMPLOYEES AND NOT GIVE PAY FOR PERFORMANCE. I WILL NOTE THAT I THINK PAY FOR PERFORMANCE WOULD HAVE COST ABOUT $10, $11 MILLION, WHICH IS ALMOST EXACTLY THE MONEY WE HAD TO GIVE BACK TO CORPORATE FOLKS IN THE TAX APPEAL PROCESS. SO THAT'S SOMETHING WE WANT TO ADDRESS WITH OUR CITY COUNCIL COLLEAGUES. BUT I HAVE SOME COMFORT IN THE FACT THAT WE ARE DOING A COMP AND CLASS STUDY AS PART OF THIS BUDGET TO MAKE SURE NEXT YEAR WE'RE MAKING SURE THAT OUR SALARIES ARE UP TO MARKET. Mr. Manager, Mr. Mayor, I'm proud to support this budget and I appreciate the work we've all done. And I appreciate my colleagues, as Councilman Burr said, the work we've done together to make sure that we've got a budget that we all can support. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, and I want to thank everyone who's participated in this process, community, city staff, workers, and my colleagues for how we work together to get to this result. I do want to start off by stating that the budget has a lot to be proud of. We heard about money for parks and traffic calming, bike safety, fare-free buses, eviction diversion support, youth works, a new fire station, and a new fire crew to help provide service in East Durham, immigrant legal defense, covering significant health care, cost increases for workers, an ambitious minimum level wage, and much more. And all this on top of no property tax increases. And so a public budget is meant to be the people's budget. And I do think we've really worked hard to get it to that point, despite clear limitations. It's a tough balancing act in a good year. And this was not the easiest year, which leads to the hard parts of the budget to see us have to cut positions, including really incredible long-term public servants to the city and really hard to be able to only do that 2% increase for workers and not be able to do the paper performance. for workers across the board, and so I understand and share the frustrations with that ultimate decision. And there were tens of millions of additional requests by folks with great ideas in the community about what else we can do. We were already going to have to make tough choices in this budget with federal and state cuts, and I encourage everyone to go speak to our other local government, Discover Durham, about occupancy tax. But man, did it make the budget harder with that $9 million hole. And I get that you are upset about that, and I am too. And I'm still grappling with how we got there, and I've requested the records, and I promise to do what I can to get transparency and accountability to how we ended up where we are. Of the tools at our disposal at the local level, property taxes tend to be the more progressive of the tools at our disposal. If you have a bigger house or a bigger company, you tend to pay more. But in this case, it's clear that we had a process that fundamentally benefited the people in corporations with the most, and that's not what we wanna see in Durham. And it's really unfortunate to see that be a part of this budget. So I want us to get to the bottom of what happened, fix this for the future, continue to be careful about our spending, be smart about our spending, make existing programs work better, look to phase out programs that we feel are no longer serving us. And there's a long list of great ideas from residents that we've heard that we can consider in the future as we enter into this budget process again very, very soon. So in summary, while it's clear that many of us have a bad taste in our mouth due to aspects of this budget, I hope we can all still savor the good things that we are able to deliver for this city. I want to thank also our staff for all of your really hard work over many months to get to this result. And as I said, we will see you all very soon. New budget starts pretty much now. Thank you all.

Council Member Cook.

Thank you, and I just want to appreciate my colleague's statements. I don't have much to add. A lot of it has been said already. Thank you to the staff. Thank you to the community partners. I do think that I share the frustrations of my colleagues with the biggest regret being that we were unable to meet our merit wages for our staff. I also this year really wanted to have a conversation about increasing our contribution to city parks. We currently do a half penny for parks. There wasn't space to have that conversation this year. And you all will see on our list that we are not doing a good job of upkeep in our parks. And that is something that I want to really be serious about funding in the future. That's part of a healthy city, has places and spaces for folks to have leisure time and safe places for folks to gather. And that's something that's missing and I want to acknowledge. I also think that, as the mayor said, we've really got our work cut out for us in terms of moving forward and understanding sort of where our battles lie and what community partners we need to pull in. The long and short of it is that we are subsidizing commercial landlords, and that is a problem. The process, I think that we all know that lots of processes are meant to move money away from vulnerable communities but we are seeing in durham that our process is speeding that along and that's not acceptable to me and i don't think it's acceptable should be acceptable to the residents of durham who are bearing the burden now of all of the programming and services that we provide We've had to fight for fare-free buses, and that is something that's not guaranteed moving forward. We also continue to have large swaths of land in Durham that go untaxed. So we are missing out on property taxes of a big portion of Durham. And so we've got these struggles, and I think that we know where in those struggles lie, and we have to really be the council that's willing to make comments on it and go after... the things that will actually help our residents. And it's gonna be a hard fight, and I don't know if we'll be successful, but I'm committed to trying to look into at least fixing some of that in a capitalist society late-stage capitalism. I'm not sure that our structure really holds space for major revolution, but as I talk to my advocates in the community all the time, the best we can do right now is try and pull our threads of our civic-mindedness in our little corners that we're working and keep in mind that there is a better system that can be imagined, and we have to have the creativity and also the passion and the belief that there is a better system that can be done. So I know that no one is thrilled with this budget, but everyone is sort of okay with this budget. It got us where we needed to be this year, but I am looking for bigger and better things in the future for this city.

Ambrose.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to my colleagues for all their comments. I first want to thank staff for this budget. You all worked really, really diligently. Our budget process starts in the fall with our community conversations. And so in the fall, I hope all of the folks who are here will start participating in that process. We have democratized our process in Durham over the years, more so than many communities. my ninth budget that we just voted on. And other than the COVID year, this is the hardest budget. And COVID year wasn't necessarily hard. As far as we had revenue, we just weren't sure what was going to happen in the future. So that moment was OK, but we weren't sure what was going to happen to sales tax. We did not know what relief we were going to get from the federal government. And so there was lots of very big question marks. I am also really proud of the, including myself, seven of us up here, because we could have fought. We could have had a lot of conflict and tension, and every one of us had a single thing we were really, really focused on, or a couple, and we didn't. We did the hard work. We all made concessions. If you want to go see some pretty grown-up work, go watch our last budget work session, where we came to terms on what we were going to do and found the consensus we needed to, and staff had a really clear roadmap about how we were going to get to tonight so that we weren't fighting up here. We were ready to pass the budget, which is helpful for staff. And that is hard work. That's called governance. It's not campaigning. It's not cute. It's not what you see in a campaign. It's what is on the other side. And that is far more challenging than a campaign will ever be.

And it takes a lot of grit and a lot of resolve to deliver for your community.

There are certain things that we've all said that we know we want to move forward. I really want to think through the nonprofit funding, how we do that in an equitable way. I think all seven of us agreed on that. And then the other place that I really want to mention in my less than one minute is that there are very hard conversations happening at Joint City County. That is a meeting that happens every other month. It is also public. It is also streamed. The city just had ours last week. We host every other month, so we will not host in August. We will host again in October. And there's a long list of agenda items that we need to cover with both our county colleagues and our Durham Public Schools colleagues. These are topics that overlap for both of us. For those residents who really want to pay attention again, especially on this property tax increase and other places, we are going to be having hard conversations. And that conversation started last Tuesday. So we do a lot of work here, but we also have a lot of relationship and work that happens along with colleagues and other boards and staff across those boards. And so it's important that residents pay attention to those, again, those conversations around governance. How are we gonna get there and how are we gonna move the work forward to deliver for residents?

Thank you. So there you have it. You heard the diversity up here. And there's more to come. There is more work to be done. And again, I just want to thank my colleagues for being the adults in the room and just working together. It wasn't easy. And all the pressures that we have from the community to meet the expectations of the loudest voices and the quietest voices. But thank you for itemizing some of the things that we had to address. And I'll be producing a video to sort of recap the budget and placing that out there. But I just want to thank everyone. Thank you to the community. And there are nearly 3000 city employees right now that are, you know, they're they're watching us and they're asking, you know, like, JUST MAKE SURE YOU TAKE CARE OF US. AND WE'RE TRYING OUR BEST TO MAKE SURE WE DO THAT. AND WE'RE GOING TO, YOU KNOW, WE'RE GOING TO MAKE SURE WE DO IT. I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO LEAVE US. SO WE, YOU KNOW, I THINK ABOUT NORTH CAROLINA MINIMUM WAGE, $7.25 AN HOUR. BUT IN DURHAM, IT'S $25.09 AND IT'S STILL NOT ENOUGH FOR WHERE WE'RE HEADED. YOU KNOW, BUT I CAN TELL YOU ONE THING, IN DURHAM WE'RE ALWAYS GOING TO TRY OUR BEST TO MEET THE MOMENT. It's not perfect. We are set up with government structures that just literally sets us up at a disadvantage. There's no progressive tax structure. We operate entire systems that we have no control over the funds. We need votes by other organizations that are not in this room, never come into this room. And we have a legislature who doesn't see things the way we do. That's the nice way of putting it. And we're required to pass a budget, which we just did tonight, and we're still waiting on the one in Raleigh. Our county, you know, we have a lot of things to fix with our relationship and how things impact us. I won't tell you that, you know, there is an issue with how the structure is fixed for taxes and property taxes and yes there was an evaluation year and yes there are a lot of commercial properties that submitted for their appeals successfully and at the last minute you know they followed the law that doesn't mean the law works for our best interest you know those are just realities and i'm not going to pit the community against one another because we're better off working as partners than enemies or adversaries. And I don't wanna provide false hope that if we come together and get really loud, something's gonna happen. We need to get together and take our energies to Raleigh and change the way this government works so we can actually have the power we need here at the local level. That is the reality. So it's easy to come in here and scream and shout at us. We're on the same team, buddy. Raleigh is where your issue is. And let's not even get started with the federal government. So this is Durham, Bull City strong, Bull City proud. We have passed our budget. Thank you. All right. So before we get into the next item, Ms. Peterson, just give me a little moment because you're up next. Let's take a break. Let's take a 10-minute break and come back at 9 p.m.

Recording stopped.

I'm sorry.

All right, welcome back. Hi, it was a, yeah, the speaker was Josh Gerald. Is there a Josh Gerald in the audience? Welcome. Is there a resource?

COLLEAGUES, BACK TO ITEM NUMBER 15.

I would entertain a motion to confirm the city manager's appointment of James Lehman, Arnold Eatman, Carol DeVera Johnson, and Catherine Sullivan to the Civilian Police Review Board with terms expiring June 30, 2030. I'll entertain that motion.

So moved. Second.

Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

I'll also entertain a motion to confirm the city manager's reappointment of Kendra Presley with the term expiring June 30th, 2030. So moved. Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. And also item number 17, contract for landlord engagement services with HOM Incorporated. I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a contract with HOM Incorporated to provide landlord engagement services in the amount not to exceed $400,000. So moved.

Second.

Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote.

Sorry, Mayor, could I just ask, are we not, is the public comment a duplicate or what?

The individual has been removed.

Okay.

I'll entertain that motion. Did I open the vote?

Is it moved and seconded?

Madam Clerk, did you capture? Okay. All right. Please close the vote.

Mr. Mayor, the motion passes 7-0.

All right, next is 35, Josh Gerald.

38.

Oh, resource. Okay, got it. So, these are public hearings now?

Yeah, 38. Item number 38. Victoria Peterson pulled item number 38.

Okay, did I actually pull 35 then?

It was never pulled.

Okay, all right, gotcha. All right, Ms. Peterson.

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. I'm a little irritated. I can understand when persons are upset. But I think there's one thing that we should never do, and that's being disrespectful to our law enforcement officers. I'm getting ready to say something. People can be disrespectful to everyone on this city council. Do not be disrespectful to our law enforcement officers. These men and women are out here to support us. We have a serious crime problem in this community. But what I saw in here tonight, yes, I'm a political activist. I don't have a problem in yelling and screaming and all that. But when we are rude to our law enforcement officers, when they ask us to do something, that is not good. I wasn't even gonna come up here and talk about that. But what happened, how our law enforcement officers were treated here tonight has really bothered me. We have a serious crime problem in this community. a serious crime problem, and it needs to be addressed. And when Mayor Bell was mayor, I mentioned way before Donald Trump that we need to bring in our National Guard in this community, in these areas. This past weekend, I was in Washington, came home last night got up this morning and someone had been in my car and stole my suitcase my luggage i found out the other day somebody hit one of my neighbors over there on ridgeway avenue we had a satellite police station in that area and it was taken out several years ago city council members and mayor We need to put that satellite unit back over there on Ridgeway. We need to make sure that our police officers are being paid a very good salary instead of being paid a little bit and then they go to another department somewhere else here in the state. These men and women are not being paid enough. We want them to run behind these young men and girls who have guns shooting and killing folks. And every time we call them, we want them to be there. But we're not doing them right and we're not treating them right. And I want our citizens to also know this. Thank you. Do not disrespect our law enforcement officers in this community. Thank you, Ms. Peterson. You can be mean to the city council members.

Thank you, Ms. Peterson.

But take your hands off the police officers.

You're being mean to me right now, Ms. Peterson. Thank you. I'm sorry. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Peterson. Out of order. Out of order. Thank you. THANK YOU. I WILL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO RECEIVE THE 2026 FIRST QUARTER CRIME REPORT.

SO MOVED. SECOND.

SO MOVED AND PROPERLY SECONDED. MADAM CLERK, PLEASE OPEN TO VOTE. PLEASE CLOSE TO VOTE.

MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY.

ALL RIGHT. NOW TO OUR PUBLIC HEARINGS. NO. Oh, yeah, GBA. I'm sorry. This this agenda was a little weird tonight.

So you also have one supplemental item that's not a public hearing, so I recommend doing those four before you go to public hearing.

Okay. Where do I start on the GBA? Four. Number four. All right. These are general business items. No comments, but there are. All right. Number four, Citizens Advisory Committee appointment. Madam Clerk.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madam Mayor, Pro Tem, and Council. The Council has nominated three individuals to the Citizen Advisory Committee, Lily Burdick, David J. McColl, and Kayla Rudisill.

Thank you. So therefore, I'll entertain a motion to appoint residents to fill three vacancies on the Citizens Advisory Committee with terms to expire on June 30th, 2027 and June 30th, 2029. And these are the names read by Madam Clerk for the record. It's been moved and probably seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. And number 16, revision to the 2026 City Council meeting schedule. All right. Did we get that situated? Is there a response to the memo?

You guys need to decide tonight.

All right. Hi, Mary Grace.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members. So you received a layout of two options in your response memo. So tonight we're asking that council decide on one of those two options and then we will make sure it's accounted for whichever date in the ordinance that the clerk records. so the options are um rescheduling it to tuesday december or december sorry tuesday september 22nd um 2026 and the second option is rescheduling the september 21st meeting to thursday september 17th 2026. okay um

First, Council Member Cook, did that meet? Okay, you're good. There was someone else that, Council Member Rist, you, Copac, I'm sorry. And Council Member Burris.

Okay.

Okay.

Preference would be the 17th, but we'll go with the will of the council. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Go ahead. So Ms. Stoneking, wasn't there something with the 17th that we'd sort of be publishing an agenda before? There was something we were sort of overlapping some kind of schedule. So could you explain what was maybe the hang of it the 17th?

Yeah, so we, council discussed that they would feel comfortable with us moving, if you decide on the 17th, with moving that publication date. Usually we publish the city council meeting agenda um the thursday the week before this would be the schedule we've laid out would be publishing it on that monday september 14th um before the 17th so um just a tighter turnaround but it's it's possible if council wants to do the 17th And we would, of course, publicize that, let residents know, and work with comms in the clerk's office to make sure that's well known.

All right. Let's see, 17th Ward's agenda published. Council published. Council meeting. All right. Colleagues, any preference? Option one or two?

Sounds like we're going to have six council members on option two and five council members on option one. Is that correct?

Yeah. So right now it sounds like option two. I mean, I think option one or two, you won't be here, right, council members?

I think we should go with the one that will have the most council members. Yeah.

So option two?

So you're saying if we do the 22nd, we're going to lose?

On the 22nd, we'll only have five. On the 17th, we'll have six.

Who's missing on the 17th? So Council Member Burris can't make either date.

So right now... So I move that we reschedule the September 21st City Council meeting to September 17th.

Second.

One second. It's just a language. Did you give us a, you just gave me an option for, I need to choose one of these motions, correct? They reflect option one and two?

So no, you would pass both of those motions, but you would just replace September 22nd with September 17th.

ALL RIGHT. SO COLLEAGUES, THANK YOU FOR THE MOTION AND SECOND THAT I HAVEN'T CALLED FOR YET. I'M GOING TO GO BACK AND CALL FOR IT. I'LL ASK THE SAME PEOPLE TO MAKE THE MOTION AGAIN TO MOVE AND SECOND. I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE A REVISION TO THE 2026 CITY COUNCIL MEETING SCHEDULE THAT SCHEDULES THE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2026 CITY COUNCIL MEETING TO TUESDAY, TO THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2026 AT 7 P.M. SO MOVED. It's been moved and probably seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes six to one with Council Member Wrist voting no.

All right. And I'll entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance rescheduling the Monday, September 21st, 2026 City Council meeting to Thursday, September 17th, 2026 at 7 p.m.

So moved.

Second. So moved and probably seconded. Madam Clerk, please open to vote. One more. Oh, me, sorry. I hate when that happens. All right, please close the vote.

Motion passes seven to zero.

All right, thank you. And item number 49, resolution governing the use of law enforcement technologies. 40, yeah, Pablo Friedman.

We on? We good? All right. Good evening, Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, members of council, city manager Ferguson, and the hundreds of folks in person who care about democracy and the millions of folks who watch online. So about this resolution, I have a couple thoughts for you. I've noticed it's become a bit of a pattern with this council that you all like to pass policy through resolution. And I think where this sort of, there was a little bit of an issue with this was when you were talking about the savings account for children. I remember Council Member Cook, you brought up around some policy implications in that resolution, how it was mandating city staff, or it might have been another council member, so pardon me if I'm attributing it to you. But I think it's really important when we talk about resolutions, resolutions express the sense of a council, right? They're not for policy. If you believe a lot of the policy that's in this resolution, I really believe you need to pass it as an ordinance or as a policy because that has more teeth. Resolutions are not designed for policy. Separately to that, I do want to reference something that the interim chief said when this contract came up for a vote at the last meeting. When CBP came to last visit us, I say last because they visited us multiple times, one of the things that community was talking about was the use of drones. I originally thought that was coming from the sheriff's department. So I talked to Sheriff Burkett about, he said, no, we don't use drones, Pablo. And I was like, who in the world is using drones in Durham? Nobody knew at the time until that meeting last week that it's the city police department using drones. And there was a question posed to the interim chief, is this surveillance? And he said no. And then he went on to describe surveillance-like tactics from the drones. So I share this all to mean I think stronger oversight is needed around some of these emerging technologies. We criticize our executive branch for implementing some of these surveillance techniques. And yet we're willing to sanction it at the local level without passing strong policy. Now, you may not like what I have to say on public comment. In fact, you may think I'm a little bit of a loon bag sometimes. Or you may want to look at your cell phone and not listen to what I have to say. And that's fine. That's your right. When the ShotSpotter debate was going on, former Mayor Pro Tem Middleton talked about creating an Oakland-style privacy commission to review all emerging technologies because we were uniquely singling out ShotSpotter. And I agreed with him. I think this is the moment to do it. Don't pass a resolution. Pass a real working group. Empower a council to bring you best use practice and examine all the technologies with an independent voice. I think this is a bit of a weak resolution when you could be doing stronger policy oversight through ordinance and or empowering a panel much like former Mayor Pro Tem Middleton asked when the Schatzmutter debate was occurring. Thank you all very much.

Thank you so much. All right. So all the speakers that have, colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to adopt a resolution governing the use of law enforcement technologies. Let me get the motion in second, and then I'll come over to the comment.

So moved.

Second. It's been moved and properly seconded.

Discussion? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So just to address the question about resolution versus ordinance, this was a discussion we had as a council. One of my colleagues raised that. And so I'm curious if that's worth sort of sharing why a resolution and not an ordinance on this particular resolution that we're looking to pass.

Good question. Is the policy that we've already passed, isn't that the ordinance? Isn't that a policy? It's not an ordinance, but it's a policy, right? And resolution is just for us. I guess to the Council Member's question, Madam Attorney, this might be for you, determining the difference for how we actually govern.

Mr. Mayor, would you like me to share the advice that the city attorney's office provided to the council on this issue?

Yes.

All right. I'm just going to read it to keep this very... With respect to the question why the legislative policy at issue is being put forward as a resolution rather than as an ordinance. Generally, an ordinance establishes permanent rules of conduct and regulates the behavior of everyone or a broad class of people within a jurisdiction, not just city staff. And typically, an ordinance contains an enforcement mechanism, giving the city the power to compel compliance under North Carolina General Statute 160A-175. By contrast, a resolution is a formal expression of opinion, will, or intent of an agency's governing body and is used to conduct day-to-day administrative business, particularly in regulating the agency's own behavior. The UNC School of Government has provided a number of helpful resources on this issue. And while there is no hard and fast rule on which tool to use in every scenario, it is worth noting that the School of Government has long written and taught that an ordinance is defined as, quote, a permanent rule of conduct imposed by a county or city on its citizens this explains why the city has typically used a resolution to legislate on matters of internal policy and to capture expressions of the council's will formally state city policy positions and to direct specific administrative actions particularly where the policy has nothing to do with durham residents businesses and the like um so While the directives contained in the resolution governing the use of law enforcement technologies are incredibly important, they are completely internally facing, dealing largely with city contracting and how public safety employees will utilize resources procured for various governmental functions. They are not directives to the city's residents or other parties external to the city, nor are they subject to enforcement under North Carolina General Statute 160 A 175. For those reasons, Manager Ferguson and his team determined and my team agreed that a resolution was the most appropriate mechanism to accomplish the city council's objectives with respect to the contract that has already been approved. By the Council and the city attorney's office recommends a resolution to memorialize these policy directives, it is our our position that it would be inconsistent with the city's historical practice to adopt an ordinance for internal administrative business matters.

Thank you.

Thank you. I've been pushing the CCOPs ordinance, which we've discussed previously, CCOPs, now i'm forgetting what it is um for uh police uh oversight of surveillance um as an ordinance because that exists and if numerous other community i think somewhere around 20 other communities have a c cops ordinance which also includes uh surveillance oversight in a lot of those communities surveillance oversight uh committees um I appreciate staff responding to my many comments and questions on this draft resolution and incorporating some of the comments, pushing back on others. I think this is a good start. I'm going to vote for this and support this. I've also run it past the ACLU. They've provided some comments. And so I think this again, I think this is a good start. I think we could we could go further in the future if we want to. But for now, I believe this is good. There are also internal policies, these general orders that we have, and this lifts some of those up into the more public facing realm. um that would now have to be changed by counts by an act of council rather than just internally and so this does memorialize and and uh some of those internal policies in a more public-facing manner i think that is useful um i was asked earlier today does this does this actually change anything or do anything and it does there are some some tangible impacts that this resolution has so i appreciate city attorney's office and city manager's office putting this together so that we can pass it tonight. And it can always be a work in progress. We can always go a little further. So thank you.

good all right thank you all so much for uh for your support on this resolution um i i i do want to say i noticed if i was an officer in the city of durham i'd be thinking like good lord um this is this is an interesting place uh to to to you know uh feel supported sometimes and i want to be very clear uh we do um support you i support you uh and many folks do we just want to make sure that you know One, I wanna make sure that we don't pretend that bad folks don't exist. Just recently, there was a young person with like, I think an AR-15 or something. Gun was confiscated by an officer with a nine millimeter Glock. And unfortunately, we have to deal with guns in this country. Some other countries don't. But the reality is the Second Amendment will not let us even touch it and do anything about guns to keep people safe. So we have those issues. But at the same time, I don't want our police force to feel like we are not supportive of them. And I want to make sure that we aren't putting the hammer down so hard here because of what police officers in other neighborhoods do. So I know there are folks that do not want police. I wish we didn't need them. But the fact of the matter is we do. And I don't want our folks here, our officers here locally and the sacrificial work that they are doing to take a hit because of what other folks are doing. Thank God we're not Florida. or other people, other places. But I think this is a really good compromise, making sure that we do our part to have oversight because that one bad issue, that one bad mistake or that one bad action can taint an entire department. So we're making sure that as council member just stated, any changes to the use of this technology would have to be a public act of the council. So that's where we are right now. Please keep doing your work and we appreciate your not being a police department that is out just jacking people up and all the other things. All right, I have a motion. I have a second. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, COLLEAGUES. IS THAT THE LAST ONE?

50? 50 IS A SUPPLEMENTAL ITEM. BUT IT'S NOT A PUBLIC HEARING.

IT'S NOT A PUBLIC HEARING. I'LL GO AHEAD AND ADDRESS NUMBER 50. COLLEAGUES, I'M GOING TO ADDRESS ITEM NUMBER 50, CONTRACT FOR HOUSING STABILIZATION CASE MANAGEMENT SERVICES WITH FAMILY PROMISE OF THE TRIANGLE. I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a contract with Family Promise of Wake County Incorporated to provide housing stabilization case management services in an amount not to exceed $656,000. Second. So we move to properly second it. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

All right, thank you. To our public hearings. All right. Item 42, request to permanently close the eastern terminus of Gilbert Street, 225 linear feet east of North Austin Avenue. Ready for the staff report.

Before I begin, staff would like to state for the record that all Planning and Development Department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law, and affidavits of all notices are on file in the Planning and Development Department. My name is Peyton Blanchard, Planner in the Planning and Development Department. The street closing request SC2500004 is for the permanent closure of the eastern terminus of Gilbert Street east of North Alston Avenue and recombination with the adjacent city-owned park property addressed as 1000 Gilbert Street and identified with REID 111270. the recombination is shown on the associated street closing and recombination plat attachment d this section of gilbert street is currently open semi-improved and maintained by the city it provides access to 1000 gilbert street and 1100 north austin avenue with no connectivity between public streets the new parcel is intended to be reserved for future park redevelopment but plans have not yet been submitted access to the parcel will be maintained via the existing driveway The parcels on either side of this section of Gilbert Street are owned by the city. The two parcels abutting the end of this section are owned by Yarborough Warehousing and Storage, which are accessed from Calvin Street. If the proposed street closure is approved by council pursuant to North Carolina General Statute section 160D-501 and 160D-605, the parcel identified with REID 111270 as recombined with the former dedicated right of way should be designated recreation and open space on the place type map of the comprehensive plan. North Carolina General Statute Section 168-299 requires that the governing body make two findings prior to closing any street or alley. These are number one, closing the street or alley is not contrary to the public interest and number two, no individual owning property in the vicinity of the street or alley or in the subdivision in which it is located would be deprived of reasonable means of ingress or egress to that property. This request was submitted to service agencies for review and comment. Most substantive comments were addressed during the review of this case. A floodplain comment remains indicating that potential future development will need to be reviewed for potential floodplain or riparian buffer impacts. Duke Energy requested that an easement be established for the existing power utilities and water management infrastructure and the ESS GIS departments noted that there are water and sewer utilities present in the subject right-of-way. Staff requests that if approved, a condition be added such that the city is responsible for establishing a 30 foot wide overhead power line Duke energy easement and a 20 foot wide underground power line Duke energy easement on a separate plat prior to the recreation of this street closing plat. Water and sewer utilities are to be addressed if property ownership changes in the future. Staff is available for questions.

Thank you. You've heard a staff report. Any questions or comments technically?

Yes. So can you just talk about what would happen if we weren't doing the street closing? This property would still be maintained by City of Durham. Can you talk about the easement impact if we do the street closing versus if we don't?

for the city of durham easements those would only come into play if the property were ever to be sold in the future or change ownership um so at this time the only easement they were asking for is our is the duke energy easement for their power lines there and so the power lines already exist the that they already have that use of that land and so we would have to then just grant it in an easement if the street was closed that's the only difference correct

And you mentioned earlier that there's no plan for the park, although that's like sort of a has been a conversation. Is that does this road closure impact that potential in any way?

think well the the purpose for the closing is to kind of allow for more flexibility um yeah create a more contiguous parcel for uh future development so i think any impact it would be a you know a positive one actually help it yeah okay that's what it sounded like it just the way that it was phrased i wanted to make sure thank you those are my questions thank you you've heard this uh yes sir thank you

Thank you for the presentation. This is obviously for a very exciting project. I have a little bit of an unusual question for you. On the attachment C place type map, when you look at the public right-of-way that's being proposed to be vacated here, if you look to the east of that, it looks like it extends all the way to Calvin Street. Is that public right-of-way or is that some unusual thing with the map?

Yeah, that looks strange to me. That is not accurate to what GIS shows, at least. It should terminate right there at the eastern edge of the city-owned property. Okay, thank you.

Thanks for spotting that. All right, you've heard the staff report. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing open. And I did not receive any speakers for this item. THEREFORE, I DECLARE THE PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED AND BACK BEFORE THE COUNCIL. THERE ARE NO OTHER ADDITIONAL COMMENTS, AND THEREFORE, I WILL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO PERMANENTLY CLOSE THE EASTERN TERMINUS 225 LINEAR FEET OF GILBERT STREET EAST OF NORTH AUSTIN AVENUE.

SO MOVED.

SECOND. MOVED AND PROBABLY SECONDED. MADAM CLERK, PLEASE OPEN THE VOTE. PLEASE CLOSE THE VOTE.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. I'll also entertain a motion to amend the place type map of the comprehensive plan to designate the parcel identified with REID, R-E-I-D, 1-1-2-7-0 as recombined with the former dedicated right of way as recreation and open space. So moved. Second. So moved and probably seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. Next up, item 43, Consolidated Zone and Map Change, Garland District.

Mayor, excuse me, Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, and Honorable Council Members, I'm Aaron Kane with the Planning and Development Department. This case is Z2400047 Garland District. A request for a zoning map change and utility extension agreement has been received from Dan Jewell of Thomas and Hutton for 24 parcels of land totaling 8.88 acres and generally located south of Anger Avenue, east of Cardens Lane, north of Peabody Street, and west of Grantham Street. The current zoning is industrial light. The applicant proposes to change this designation to commercial general and commercial infill. The applicant is proposing a general rezoning so all uses would be allowed in these zoning districts would be permitted. The properties are currently designated established residential, general industrial, mixed employment, and neighborhood services on the place type map. The proposed commercial general and commercial infield zoning are inconsistent with the designated place types. If the proposed zoning is approved, staff recommends a change to the place type to designate the properties as mixed use neighborhood. The commercial general and commercial infill districts allow for a variety of non-residential uses, and the current place type designations imply a mix of uses in the area. Thank you. Staff and the applicant are available for any questions.

You've heard the staff report. Are there any technical questions or comments? All right, thank you. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing open. Mr. Applicant, how much time do you think you need?

I can probably live with eight minutes, but if you can put 10 up there, that would give me a little time. I promise to beat that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Payne. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council, Mr. Manager and Madam Attorney. My name is Dan Jewell. I'm a landscape architect in private practice. I've been practicing in Durham for over 40 years now. My wife and I reside at 1025 Gloria Avenue. I'm here tonight representing myself and a group of property owners who have a vision to restore this small portion of East Durham back to its former prominence as a thriving mixed-use business and residential district. We're here to request your approval to rezone several parcels on South Driver and Salem streets from the current light industrial zoning to commercial zone. This is a critical step in the continuing efforts that began over 15 years ago to reinvest in a neighborhood that has suffered many decades of disinvestment. The city has helped with that with the Angier Avenue streetscape project that was done 12 or 15 years ago, really good work. The city helped with getting the original Joe's Diner and the Trosa Market going about 12 or 15 years ago as well. And the city's helped with permitting and resources to enable some other really good projects over there, the repositioning of the former Andrew Avenue Baptist Church into what's now the nonprofit business center. and some of the other permitting along there, including what was the Eastern Bake Shop and Rofiwa Bookshop and Coffee and other renovations on this block. Our group has made a substantial investment in the former Garland woodworking buildings. The historic inventory that was done 25 years ago to help create the East Durham Historic District identified that block of buildings as historically significant, but by the time of that inventory, these buildings had been heavily altered and the last bit of insult to them was when Garland Woodworking had a fairly major fire and the company had to move out. When we got involved in these properties about five years ago, the roof was literally caving in. We've hope you've had a chance to go out there and visit some of those businesses. And we're able to bring the main building back to its former glory. And we received historic tax credits by faithfully doing so. but there is more work to do. Our zoning request includes properties that members of our group do not own. When it became clear to us a year and a half ago that a rezoning was needed to continue the renaissance of this neighborhood, we reached out to all of our neighbors on Salem and South Driver Street to see if they were interested in taking part. Some of them were, and those properties are included with their signature in this application. And some of them said, not at this time, but we support what you're doing. So what exactly is it that we're trying to do, we're trying to achieve? We feel that this area south of Anger needs is more people living here, just as it was up through the 1950s when unfortunately folks started moving away to suburbia. And that decline in the neighborhood, we feel, is why all these properties have been zoned light industrial for many years, even properties that still have or recently had homes on them, residential homes on them. The planners back in the day saw rail-related industrial uses as the highest and best use, and 75 years ago, that probably made a lot of sense. Today, though, it's an albatross, which is hindering further reinvestment in bringing back the 24-7 vitality that the neighborhood once had and could have again. If you visited, you've probably noticed that the former industrial uses that offered jobs for neighbors are mostly gone. All that remains are some auto salvage yards and repair yards, and of course, Brentag in the former Durham Cotton Manufacturing Facility just across the railroad tracks from South Driver. The light industrial place and zoning in place today allows more permitted uses by right. than almost any other zoning district listed in the UDO, but there's one huge omission. It does not allow residential uses of any kind. And that's why we're here this evening. With all the great intentions and startup investments that have been made over the last 12 or 15 years by small business owners, people repositioning their property, small businesses starting up, there's been an alarming amount of turnover. In talking to those people, the tenants, our tenants, and other folks in the neighborhood, it's clear what is needed is a lot more local foot traffic than is in there today to support those businesses. We can't do that with the current light industrial zoning. Our vision for the properties that we control, and we think of the property owners who have also included, is to do modest scale, mixed use infill development on the vacant properties and possibly those that have structures that are actually incongruent to the East Durham District. We envision these as primarily two and three story mixed use buildings, maybe mostly with ground floor commercial and upper floor residential. There may be some townhouses and row houses built up close to the street with parking behind. And these relatively small size of the parcels, if you look at the map, and fractured ownership would actually preclude larger scale development from occurring. These would be small one-off projects. But absent the general commercial and commercial infill zoning we are requesting, none of this can occur. Both of those commercial zoning designations do allow multifamily residential. And to reiterate, the current aisle zoning does not. Rather, without the requested rezoning, the properties will still allow buy-right uses such as auto salvage, junkyards, major vehicle repair with outdoor storage, transfer stations, recycling centers, and freight warehousing and movement. Those are the uses of a bygone era, and that legacy has created some of the environmental challenges that we have in the neighborhood today. We would like to do better than that. and ask that you follow the strong recommendation of the Planning Commission, vote to approve our request, and let us make the ongoing investment in time and resources in this little corner of East Durham, and let us help continue the efforts to restore the vitality that this neighborhood once had. Thank you for your time, and that concludes our presentation.

Thank you so much. yeah all right i'm going to start my online speakers uh rodney sherwood can you hear me yes i can all right set one more time for me uh yes i can sir yep there we go welcome you have three minutes

Thank you. Historically, this was a true mixed-use neighborhood of residents, makers, and retail. Currently, there's no housing that's permitted in this area, and that does need to change. The neighborhood has made great strides in the last few years, and the Garland Ventures development team in particular has contributed greatly to that. The next step is for people to be able to live here, So we ask you to please support this rezoning. Thank you for, I'm done with my time.

Thank you. Next, I have Adeel Lateef. Adeel, can you hear me?

Good evening. Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes, welcome. You have three minutes.

Thank you. I signed up to speak tonight to support this rezoning of the Garland District. I'm happy to see a zoning request that moves away from the heavier industrial uses. As everyone knows, we have our fair share of those in East Durham. And also, as many of you know, about a week ago, Brentag, the neighbor across the track, was being sued by the NCDOJ, given that those uses have had a fairly negative impact on our community and environment. i'm also really appreciative that this zoning would be more community friendly and allow it to be used more frequently by residents and for me i'm thinking long term this being properly developed would help push back possibly any option that the county might try to close the intersections at driver and at plum by the railroad tracks through a study called the durham repair at the county so in summary I'm supporting this rezoning for two different reasons. One, it's softer on our environmental impacts and it helps buffer us from the potential loss of mobility that the closure at a railroad crossing at Pettigrew and Driver would cause if it were not a more popular destination. I just felt like it's vulnerable as an intersection if we don't find a way to do this the right way. Thank you.

Thank you so much for those comments. I'll now move to in person. First I have John Warisela.

Welcome. You have three minutes. Thank you. I'm John Warisela. Good to meet the Mayor, City Manager, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, talk about this project. I got involved in this project 2019. I'm a manager of Garland Ventures. My background as an architect had us working all over American tobacco. We helped develop and revitalize the neighborhood at where Rue Claire is, so around the post office at East Chapel Hill and Rigsby. Also got very involved in redevelopment of Golden Belt. So this project to me is a continuation of really an arc of 20 or 30 years of work here in Durham. Our development team is all locally based. So we are not big corporate developers. We are very much local residents that want to make a better city, literally and figuratively. If there's a lesson we've learned in our work in that neighborhood over the past few years, is that the businesses really struggle because, as Dan alluded to, there's no foot traffic. So how do we get people there? We've got to build places for people to live. And the interesting thing, if you look at that neighborhood, is that corridor along South Driver was the main street for that section of East Durham. Today it's primarily empty lots. where there were buildings that could be saved, we've saved them, we've put them back in service. And we think the next step for us to work with over there is to get people living there. As Dan alluded to as well, we don't think, I mean, I live downtown, so I'm very familiar with the area around Gear Street and that whole area. We do not envision five-story buildings with parking decks buried in them. In fact, I think building parking decks will blow the economics of that neighborhood so we're really looking at a neighborhood that's two and three stories surface parking i think ideally we would redo the streets so you can get street parking as well but it's that level or scale that i think we're looking to accomplish there as a quick aside on new year's day i got a call from the daughter of the founder of garland millworks and she had picked up what we were doing in that neighborhood, I guess online somewhere, and she was amazed. And she'd lived in those houses and gave me a street, a housing, a house by house description of who lived there, what they did and so forth. So I think the continuity of That neighborhood coming back is a great Durham story. In fact, I spoke with her before I came over here tonight and said, hey, we're going to be in front of council tonight. I hope she's watching. And I'd love to see her come and visit and walk around the neighborhood as it develops. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next up. No, that's it.

This was a complicated agenda tonight.

Pablo?

Oh, OK, got it.

Pablo Friedman? That's why I need to wear my glasses. I crossed them out. That was a 49.

appreciate that i was like i signed up i was like why wasn't i called so appreciate that thank you um good evening again mayor williams mayor pro tem caballero city manager ferguson city council those of you who are on your cell phones on the dais the hundreds of folks out here in the audience and the millions of folks who care about democracy online at home um so i think the applicant this is a really strong application i think on the merits, there's a lot of really good things. And I think the applicant is making a lot of really strong arguments. And I also want to acknowledge in doing my own due diligence for this, I've acknowledged some of the debt that the applicant has taken on to fulfill this project. However, Council Member Cook, I think you put it very succinctly in your comments at the top of the meeting. You said the residents in Durham are subsidizing commercial developers in Durham, and you couldn't have said it better. And when I say that, it is because right now, and if you don't believe me, look at Jerry Ray's Facebook page. There are moments when you call EMS, and you can't get an ambulance in Durham. The county just gave an additional $3 million to allow more capacity for paramedics, which I think is a great step in the right direction. But if we, as a progressive city, are allowing developers to add more people into the public square, there's nothing wrong with that, but who is ultimately subsidizing the paramedics? It's us, the residents, right? Those of you who are also residents on the dais, you're subsidizing that too. And so I think from a matter of public policy, when we're talking around the expectations around zoning and developers, they should be proffering services regarding paramedics because right now the residents are paying for that at the back end. Subsequent to that, if you read the report that's included with this, this proposal will add an additional 14 students to the school system, yet there's no proffer around the schools. And so I actually think we're regressing around our expectations for proffers for the school system. Additionally, if you look at the impacts on education, it's gonna add high school students to a high school which is listed in the report as being already over capacity. There's nothing wrong with that. Adding more kids I think is a good public policy goal, but what are we doing in response to overcrowding at a high school? Is the applicant gonna offer some land in trust for the school system? What are we doing to remediate that? So again, the public policy decisions that we're making today have very real implications around paramedic public goods as well as the education public goods. I think there's very strong merits to the case, but I really think the applicant has to make some meaningful contributions so the residents don't fully subsidize this at the back end, which I think we've seen is happening very much of late. So thank you all. I'll give you back 23 seconds. Thank you.

Thank you. Right. Those are all of the speakers I have. So there are four at this time. No, I'm sorry. Would you all like to respond to anything? All right, thank you. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing closed and back before the council. Council Member Burris. Mr. Jewell, I have a couple questions for the applicant.

nice to see you mr jewel likewise um so just in regards to this app this project just has a little bit of clarifying questions for you um and i will try to frame the best you know articulates i can just the concerns around the current um like the brand tag across the street is a major concern for me we know the environment concerns around that but just thinking about as you talk about residential uses in buildings like are you so for some of the properties look like they're like junkyards or car yards like i want to make sure that we're not setting our community up for potential environmental harm because we are trying to rectify issues right now with some of our parts because they were formerly incinerator sites and so thinking about have you all put any thought into design like will you use those lots that maybe have um used for like as junkyards will those be developed to residential uses or how are you thinking about that

No, great question. We're way ahead of you on that. We've had, you know, the only site that potentially has or had some contamination is what we call the fuel center, but we've been having experts in brownfield stuff study that for at least three years now, and believe it or not, the amount of contamination is minuscule, and obviously we would be responsible for cleaning that up and making it right before we do anything on it. Good question.

I think I'm so not doing it quite my next question for you is thinking about just we know the train tracks right there we know the materials that brintag often come in on the train tracks have there been any thoughts or consideration around like a biohazard evacuation plan in the event that something goes awful over there because I've heard I've sat in some of those meetings and some neighbors have said like hey we've had some corrosive materials that have like and plumes and such so I want to think about the public health aspect and as we're considering like increasing the residential density have we even consideration to like what would happen if you had a major leak over there and how would you alert the neighbors to get out of neighborhood and ensure that no one's being harmed in that I'm not sure what would leak Well, the train cars. I don't know. Because they bring in a lot of things via train railroad tracks.

Oh, you're saying if we put people there and there's a problem with the railroad, what would we do?

Considering the corrosive materials that they are bringing into that site. Have you all thought about that?

That's that we need to have a conversation with the city and county fire marshals and see what contingency plans they have in place for the Literally thousands of people that already live up and down adjacent to the railroad tracks, but we will definitely do that Thank you Questions for the applicant, thank you I'll just stay up.

Yeah so We talked previously about this case. I appreciate you raising that. There is currently no project. We keep using the word project. There's currently no project. This is just a straight rezoning. There's no... DEVELOP TEXTURAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN EITHER SO WE CAN'T WE CAN'T GET COMMITMENTS EVEN IF WE EVEN IF WE WANTED TO CORRECT WE HAVEN'T DESIGNED ANYTHING YET UM SO ONE AND THIS IS ALSO IN AN AREA THAT CAN'T REALLY SEE ANY NEW ADDITION SIGNIFICANT NEW DEVELOPMENT UNTIL Maybe 2030 because of the capacity issues with the sewer.

The latest information we have from water management is this is in the 2030 at the earliest before the sewer situation is figured out so we can get water meters. That is correct.

So couple questions. One, why not wait? to see what happens with the LDC and get the zoning through the LDC? And two, why not wait until a project?

Yeah, no, good questions. We want to start planning very soon, okay? Because planning is gonna take a year or more, We actually talked to some of the neighbors who are interested in being part of that conversation. We need to get that going. And also, given the long, very long entitlement process in Durham, even within the zoning in place, we would want to be able to get site plans approved, and actually be under construction with whatever might be phase one, phase two of these small projects so that the runway and the landing all came together at the time when the water management department gave us a reliable level of assurance that water meters will be available and don't get me wrong you know these these parcels are not all going to be redone at the same time this is a this is a long-term project but if you back up from construction and water meters that all already and planning that already puts you in like 2027 maybe late 2026 but we we want to start planning now and know what's going on and you know it's the zoning, the LDO, the UDO, the Land Use Management Ordinances is out of our control, as you all know at this point. There's a bill in the General Assembly that's gotten sideways. And when we originally submitted this application last year, we told ourselves, you know, it's likely that the new ordinance will be approved before we get the council on this project, but let's just put this in as a backstop, a fail safe, just in case something goes sideways and the ordinance is not approved. So here we are today, and I don't think anybody in this room has a crystal ball and can say when we're going to get a new ordinance because it's out of our control right now. It really is. Good question, but we wanna be able to start planning now.

All right, I appreciate that. I got a question for staff as well. So when we look at the, all of this is currently zoned light industrial. When we look at the place type map, it's a little bit odd in this area. The place type map is interesting. I'm not quite sure we would do it the same way again. If this is rezoned as requested, what would the future place type map, sorry, what would the LDC zoning districts be?

So our recommendation would be to, if you approve the rezoning, to change the place type to mixed use neighborhood. I can't speak on that right now. That's a conversation we'd have to have internally as to how we might adjust the proposed LDC zoning districts. Likely, if you look at what was proposed previously, there is some CX3 in the area that seems to make sense, but that's an internal conversation we need to have. That's not something I could connect to.

All right, thank you.

Thank you for that.

I just want to share what I'm wrestling with here because there are a couple things that are true at the same time. One, light industrial is not the appropriate zoning district in this area. Two, the requested zoning districts and especially the commercial infill, much more appropriate for this area. There is no project. The LDC is currently on hold, potential something in the future. And there's no opportunity here for any commitments that would be beneficial to the community. And Mr. Mayor, back in late 2023, we talked about small area planning and bringing back small area planning. And we talked about, what would you be most interested in? You chose this area that you would be most interested in for a small area plan, which is an opportunity not just to follow the vision of landowners and developers, but to follow the vision of all stakeholders and all community members, including landowners and developers, key stakeholders and so are are we by by approving this reason are we missing out on an opportunity to think more holistically about this area, which is a. exciting area. There's a lot of great things happening. People already live here. There are community members who live here. Are we missing out on a key opportunity? Could we work on commitments? Could something also involve community investment, public investments and infrastructure so that both private investments and public investments are greater than the sum of their parts? That's something that I'm wrestling with right now is does this currently make sense right now or does it make more sense to think more proactively, maybe do a charrette that is bringing folks together. The planning department is about to recreate the urban design studio would this be an opportunity to to take this through the design studio and uh engage with all of the neighbors so that that's just something that i'm wrestling with and i look forward to hearing more comments and questions from my colleagues everyone this is a question for staff um wasn't this area left out of scad initially because it was il

I don't know that I would say that it was left out of SCAD. SCAD, my understanding is, My understanding, and I didn't work, I wasn't in the planning department at the time, but my understanding was that there was one earlier version of SCAD that would have allowed for residential development in the IL district, and that was removed through, as it went through the review process.

Yeah, I thought this was the part of town that folks were, small developers were interested in because of requesting for that because They were so limited in being able to bring any kind of mixed-use project residential small commercial At least that's my memory of it, but maybe maybe but you weren't I Wasn't I wasn't here at that time Yes, I do think that this is one of the areas where the proponents of scad we're looking at specifically in terms of

Allowing residential by right in industrial districts which had pros and cons and was ultimately not adopted But this is this was kind of poster child.

I think for that ask yeah, thank you So I'm just thinking about and I appreciate councilmember Baker. I just feel like kicking the can down the road We already kicked it down the road to your three We're on your three of kicking that the can down the road to give some actual relief to this neighborhood. It is not particularly nice Right now, in that part, it is close to light industrial it's in some ways an environmental justice. issue as well, which neighbors don't get to not have that type of hard environmental use. In their neighborhood like there's lots of residents there who've been stuck living and not great conditions, and this is an opportunity to improve the land quality. and allow much better development than what is there and what would be currently allowed. And so I'm assuming that considering we're not seeing a big packed room with the neighbors saying don't do this, it seems like the applicants have done their due diligence in doing their neighborhood outreach and basically doing that kind of community design and including folks. So I'm perfectly happy to support this application tonight. I think the Planning Commission comments were useful. I think that the applicants done their homework, and I think that it certainly benefits the small businesses that have been slowly popping up but really do need a lot more support than they currently have based on the land use designations that are there presently.

Thank you. I remember vividly that night. This was one of the main ones that was left out that was actually requested by residents that lived over there as well as folks who own properties over there. Sorry.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Mr. King, not so fast. We got another question. So we heard some comments tonight about, I mean, this is largely commercial development, heard some comments about the impact of commercial development, sort of paying their fair share, potentially what other public benefits would come for that. I know that there's an extensive body of research that would suggest that residential property development doesn't always pay for itself, right? I think that's pretty clear. And I think in a growing city like Durham, we do ask developers to proffer for schools or for affordable housing or for other uses. Can you tell me, what does the research show about the, I'm sorry, does commercial development, does the research show that commercial development, what does it say about commercial development? Does it pay for itself or not?

I can speak to very general broad terms, generally residential development, residential uses do not pay for themselves, so to speak, in terms of tax revenue, non-residential does.

Does? Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Any other comments? All right, thank you. And I look forward to supporting this as well. This is one of the areas where the Just Cities Fellowship with Harvard, this is the exact neighborhood where Harvard and Bloomberg and U.S. Conference of Mayors are looking to provide resources. This is an area, as Council Member Baker stated, that I wanted to really focus on a small area plan. I just want to take a moment in this space to really thank the small businesses that have taken a chance over there. We've had folks take a chance and we've lost them and we've had more take a chance and they're trying to thrive. And this is an area where the residents, the tenants, the property owners are not waiting for the city to come and do it for them. They're taking a chance to do it themselves. This is literally building a community up from the ground up. And so I appreciate that as a business owner myself, it is not easy. AND IT'S THERE IS A SENTIMENT THAT IS NOT AS SUPPORTIVE OF BUSINESSES THAT IS NOT A MAJORITY IN THIS CITY. SO THANK YOU ALL FOR ACTUALLY TAKING A CHANCE. THANK YOU FOR HUSTLING TO MAKE PAYROLL. THANK YOU FOR PROVIDING JOBS. THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THAT COMMUNITY BACK TO LIFE. NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO DO IT FOR YOU. SO WHAT YOU'RE DOING IS IT MATTERS. THANK YOU. I LOOK FORWARD TO SUPPORTING IT AS I CALL FOR THE MOTION.

I think this can pass tonight. I would just say that I think moving forward, I hope that we can engage with the entire community and look at this area for when the planning department restarts their urban design program. looking at this area maybe it's not even a full-on small area plan but looking at four or five six blocks in here um to to find opportunities to really make sure that we're doing the very best and thinking holistically about this area making those capital investments and making sure that they tie together with private development

And really quickly, and just to add on to those comments, many of the folks that are trying to revive this community are architects, are developers, are experts in planning. And it's just a really practical, holistic group of people over there. But to Council Member Burris' point, I think there is some changes going on with some of those properties where they're looking to get rid of some of the junkyard stuff and hopefully turn those properties around. Whatever mitigation that needs to happen, I've gotten word that there's they're trying to turn some of the brownfield over into actual communities. Obviously that can't really happen until this sewage situation gets fixed. But I think that this community is gonna look really different in the coming years. I'm looking forward to that. I think it's a disservice to residents to have to live amongst such light industrial conditions. Imagine owning your home and it's low value because there's a freaking junkyard next to you. Durham is a growing city and downtown is extending east. And I wanna make sure, and I think we all know the demographics in that area of town. I wanna make sure that everyone across the city is having a fair shot at enjoying the city. So thanks to the small business owners for taking a chance. And thanks for the folks that are living over there that are patient. And I'm going to actually say thank you all to the applicants for taking a chance on revitalizing this community. And I think this is something Councilmember Baker and I can work together on and continue to support what the growth over there. Councilmember Cook.

Thank you. I want to just, I want to give voice to some of Councilmember Baker's concerns and some of the concerns that a resident raised. I also don't think that the current zoning is correct for this neighborhood and and I do think that there is justice and seeing it changed and allowing for development. I want to be really upfront that the voices we've heard tonight aren't really representative of that neighborhood. And so that is also bringing me pause. This is not to say anyone is coming with bad intentions, but we don't have a lot of Anti displacement and environmental protections that exist in this zoning already and without any proffers. We have no ability to actually enforce any of that to happen. I think that this project is going to pass. I'm going to be a no on it tonight because I don't want to set the standard for this to be how things come before us. I understand the want to make the moves to progress the design plan site plan to be ready for this. Development, I get your timing, but for me, that's not how I want to be governing in the future. I want to make sure that we are ensuring that those things happen, and I'm going to trust that you're going to HOLD YOUR TEAM TO THOSE THINGS AND TO BE FOCUSED ON ANTI-DISPLACEMENT METHODS AND TO BE FOCUSED ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. SO THAT IS MY EXPECTATION, BUT THIS IS NOT HOW I WANT TO SEE THINGS MOVING FORWARD. SO I JUST WANTED TO EXPLAIN WHY I'M GOING TO BE A NO-VOTE TONIGHT.

THANK YOU. AND JUST FOR THE RECORD, THE VOICES THAT WE DID HEAR ARE RESIDENTS OVER THERE AND OWN BUSINESSES OVER THERE. THEY LIVE OVER THERE. THEY'RE WORKING, DOING BUSINESSES OVER THERE AND LIVE AROUND THE CORNER. I'VE SEEN THEM ON THE FRONT PORCH. So I will entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with Garland Ventures LLC. So moved.

Second.

So moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Okay. Madam Clerk, please close the vote.

The motion passes. Five to two with council members Baker and Cook voting no.

Thank you. And I'll also entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance by taking property out of industrial light and establishing the same as commercial general and commercial infill. So moved. Second. So moved and probably second. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

The motion passes 5 to 2 with Council Members Baker and Cook voting no.

Thank you. And I'll also entertain a motion to adopt a consistency statement as required by North Carolina General Statute, Section 160D-6005. Second. It's been moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

All right. Congrats to East Durham. Thank you all. Next up, item number 44. TC 2600002, development moratoria, unified development ordinance, UDO text amendment. Ready for the staff report.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. My name is Robin Schultz with the Planning and Development Department. Here to present to you all in TC 260002, which is a staff initiated text amendment to unified development ordinance. This amendment seeks to remove the additional barriers which are imposed by the Unified Development Ordinance, or the UDO, on the governing bodies in order to institute a development moratorium. Additionally, it will remove redundant standards which are already required by the state law, specifically NC General Statute Section 160D-107. Note that this text amendment will need to be approved in order to approve the proposed moratorium extension on data centers, which is on tonight's agenda. staff is available for any questions.

Thank you very much. I think you answered the technical questions some may have had. There are no technical questions or comments. I declare the public hearing open. I have no speakers for this. Therefore, I declare the public hearing closed and back before the council. All fair and well. All right. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance incorporating provisions to article three applications and permits.

So moved. Second.

Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open to vote. One more. Please close to vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, and I'll also entertain a motion to adopt the consistency statement as required by North Carolina General Statute, Section 160D-605. So moved. Second. Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. Where's the motion? Colleagues, I'm going to come back to the other public hands and just go ahead and address the moratorium. 51. So to be close to it. Mm-hmm. This is ordinance extending a temporary moratorium on development approvals for data centers, cryptocurrency mining, and related high impact data processing facilities within the city of Durham. Ready for the staff report.

Good evening, members of council. Sarah Young with the Planning and Development Department. This agenda item is a proposed extension of the 60-day moratorium. It is drafted for an additional 10 months and has similar exclusions to the previous version with some additional clarifications added by staff. So we are here if you have specific questions or would like to get some more information, we're happy to answer them.

Thank you so much. You've heard the staff report. Are there any technical questions?

OK.

Just one quick question, Ms. Young. So could you just explain, so why the 10 month, why choose the 10 month? Just to make sure we're clear on that.

We will team tackle this one. Okay. So the 60-day original extension plus 10 months would bring us up to a one-year moratorium. That is what has been most prevalent in other jurisdictions that have imposed moratoriums. In addition to that, I will defer to our attorney who can give a little more information on the timeline.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. What has been shared by Director Young is correct. That is what we've seen across the state, as well as that was a consensus of members of council when we spoke with you all. And that's what has been provided, as well as some additional guidance related to the legality around 12 months or longer.

Can you say more about that issue of the legality of 12 months or longer?

Yes, so there was a case, the 2002 case. It's around Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe passed two moratoriums that were totaling 32 months. The Supreme Court reviewed whether or not timeframe was a specific taking under the Constitution. What the court decided was that, in that instance, that it was not a taking and decided not to put a specific timeframe on when a taking would occur, but would add additional level of skepticism or scrutiny of anything over 12 months. So that is in line with what has been provided to you all.

Thank you. Appreciate that clarification. Yes.

All right, thank you. So therefore, heard the comments and questions. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing open. And I'll start with my online speakers. Speaker, Annie Duran, or Duran, or Duran. Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Welcome. You have three minutes.

Thank you so much. So I wanna speak in, I am in favor of the blocking of the data centers in Durham County. I am a little concerned about the timeline. I think a lot of us were hoping for a longer timeline. Data centers are really dangerous in Durham County. It's not lost on me that today we bumped up our water restrictions, the water usage of data centers, as well as the infrastructure necessary to put in pipelines and fuel sources could be very dangerous for our current water sources, which are a really precious commodity these days. um and furthermore i think what we would like to see um if we do end up um you know ever allowing data centers um which you know i know a lot of us would like to not see but you know if we ever do that will be at a place where they will be more sustainable. They'll be paying sales and use taxes and they'll be able to, you know, reduce some of this energy and water usage and noise pollution. And I just don't believe that 10 months is going to be enough time for those industry changes to occur. So I understand that, you know, there may be legal reasons why we're not able to extend it further. If we are, I wish we would consider that. But I hope that if we don't see these industry changes that you're all willing to step it up and extend this moratorium should we come to the end of this 10 months and decide this really isn't a good move for Durham and Durham County. I don't see a lot of benefit at this time of allowing data centers in Durham County, not only from resource and environmental perspectives, but they don't really provide a lot of jobs as far as I can tell from my research. So yeah, so I'm in favor of the moratorium. I would love to see it extended. And if it cannot be extended for legal reasons, then I hope we're all willing to come back to the table and extend it again down the line if necessary. All right. Thank you.

Thanks so much for those remarks. Next. Leslie St. Dre, followed by Ashley Daniels and Samuel Scarborough.

Hello Council, again, I'm Leslie St. Dre, here speaking with Community Land and Power and the Stop Data Centers in Durham Coalition, which is currently 20 orgs across Durham. That is city workers, that is environmental justice groups, that is arts groups, it spans from a lot of different people that care about living and breathing and drinking water. So we do demand the longest and strongest moratorium of 32 months. I've written all of you, so you've seen why we do need that time to research the impacts and understand the overall capacity of our water and energy use. I ask that y'all do environmental impact studies, displacement impact studies, and feasibility to understand what the current data centers in Durham use and what their impact is. In the end, we'll need overall caps on data centers because if you allow small ones, they add up to hyperscale impacts. We demand no loopholes for the tech industry, dirty energy and developers. That means no carve outs either. City Attorney Rayburg, I'm curious if you will include since I think you wrote it, no expansions of existing ones. That's a major loophole right now. Cirrus One has caused problems in different cities and is bringing a hyperscale data center to Lee County. We know that that's the biggest facility here, 420,000 square feet, currently 50 megawatt capacity that can be expanded to hyperscale. So if that's not included in this moratorium, that's a gap that I ask that you all close tonight. For the secondary use carve out for the industry, right now, there's no guidelines on what they do. So that's another loophole, like what AI are they using? Is it replacing workers? Is it essential? Right now, every one megawatt uses 600 to 1,000 homes worth of energy and 300 plus homes worth of water. That's one megawatt. And we've heard from city and county reps that, oh, these are small, but every one matters, especially during a drought. So we ask that just ban them during this time and hopefully permanently. We need to study the full impacts and we need more information. The Supreme Court ruling does not say you will be sued. That is a misinterpretation. It says maybe longer than 12 months there should be added scrutiny. It doesn't say it's definitely flagged and under their interpretation Lake Tahoe was in the boundaries of the law and so will Durham if you decide to do 32 months.

Thank you. Next. Welcome, you have three minutes.

Good evening. My name is Ashley Daniels and I work as the Program and Organizing Director at Toxic Free NC. While studies have linked PFAS to cancer, North Carolina still does not have a maximum standard for the amount of PFAS residents in the state are exposed to. This is relevant because data centers rely on PFAS chemicals to operate. Approval of these centers in our city would expose residents to even greater risk of harmful contaminants. Data centers negatively impact air quality, releasing carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter that can exasperate asthma and other health-related issues. Already, North Carolina workers pay inflated energy costs while Duke Energy owners make record profits. Allowance of data centers to be cited in Durham would only increase the disparity between residents and the energy monopoly. As always, workers, elders on fixed incomes, and low wage earners would be the ones paying the most. Lastly, today Durham is reckoning with the impacts of record breaking drought. Residents are prohibited from spray irrigation of landscapes, use of water in fountains and pools, and restricted from washing vehicles. If we consider that as the population of Durham increases in the next one, five, 10 years, so too will the water use of residents. Council should consider how our already strained water resources will reconcile with an industry that uses over 1,000 times the water as a single household. yet it's free from water restriction. We call on council to pass a 32 month moratorium to research the impacts of data centers and the impacts they would have on the region with no loopholes or carve outs for industry interest and a ban on expansions of existing data centers as a part of the moratorium. Lastly, as a personal note, I want to add that the community bringing attention to death in our detention centers and the displacement of unhoused people is not and never will be a disruption to city business.

Thank you. Next, welcome, you have 30 minutes.

Good evening. Members of Council, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem.

You actually, Sam, you can, Mr. Scarborough, right under there with your right hand is a control where you can lift that podium up. No, in the middle. Vivian's going to help you.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I didn't know that was a feature up here.

It's a new thing. All righty.

Well, good evening members of council, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, city manager, city attorney, city staff, and members of the public. My name is Samuel Scarborough. Today I'm here to join many of the public comments today in calling for an extension to the extension for a 32 month moratorium on this data center. You know, proposal, if we do not take our time with this and if data centers are rapidly approved prematurely without the proper infrastructure in place, we're going to become more dependent on AI than we already are. And we will continue making our planet harder to live in for ourselves and future generations. In essence, shooting ourselves in the foot once again. We all know where these data centers are going to be first and foremost. They're not going to be in Hope Valley. They're not going to be in largely wealthy white areas. They're going to be in low income areas. But another side, I actually today I traveled nearly over 300 miles, particularly around this issue, working with the Southern Environmental Law Center. And there's currently a hearing going on in Raleigh with the North Carolina Utilities Commission. around Duke's carbon reduction plan. And one of the things that jumped out to me is that for Duke Energy, in their total energy production now, nearly a third of it comes from natural gas reserves. By this time in the next decade, they're looking to increase that number to half of the energy production, being natural gas. Moreover, because these data centers require a lot of energy, it's going to raise the projected amount of energy on the overall grid. And at the same time, Duke is hesitating to lead the charge in building more nuclear plants, and they are also not putting as much effort into developing solar and wind alternatives. So in essence, the massive amount of energy that these data centers would require to function won't be powered by renewables, but rather the same, if not more amounts of fossil fuels that are accelerating climate change, making our summers and winters harsher, and contributing to extreme conditions like the historic drought we're experiencing right now. And so I know data centers are praised for expanding local tax bases and all of these different things, but if we ought to keep it real, what good is that if it makes it harder for us to survive here in the first place? And so that's why I'm here calling for an extension for a 32-month moratorium on these data centers. Let's take our time on this and push for a longer moratorium. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you to all the speakers for your comments. Right, those are the speakers I have. At this time, I will declare the public hearing closed and back before the council. Colleagues, are there any comments? No question? Go ahead.

thank you so i just have a question for the city attorney who's beside me um just going back to the first where we had to change the ordinance can you help me and look at the state statute around the authority so section a of 160d um just to kind of my clarification point it says the duration moratorium shall be reasonable in light of specific specific conditions that warrant imposition of the moratorium and may not exceed the period of time necessary to correct modify or resolve such conditions, so can you help me unpack that a little more in regards to like how do we deem like what is reasonable timing and like what they mean by that a little bit.

Sure, I'll try. And I actually have senior assistant city attorney, Erin Miles, who this is her bailiwick. So I will probably punt to her after a couple of words. So great catch, Council Member Burris, 160D107A is the... A state statute that authorizes localities to impose a temporary moratorium and so a couple of things that have been said this evening, you know, we would like to block or ban. These types of uses in our Community, that is not the purpose of a temporary moratorium. A temporary moratorium cannot be used to completely eradicate a use in a community, and it would exceed our authority if we were trying to use it in that fashion. So I think one of the things that the statute is trying to get to, and Aaron, if you wanna come on up to the mic, because I might need a rescue here. A moratorium is intended to be used when We see a potential use land use in our community that we are not prepared for. That could mean we don't have on the books development regulations that address that type of use. And it would not be good for that use to start to proliferate in the community without us being able to regulate around it. It could be a situation where we do have development going on and we can't supply that development with whatever the case may be, water, sewer capacity, things like that. And we may need a temporary moratorium in order to address that. We've heard a little bit about areas of our city that have insufficient capacity and certain sewer outfalls. Historically, you know, a community might have used this authority to pause development in order for them to play some catch up. And Aaron, I'm going to toss it to you because I might be butchering this a little bit.

Attorney Rayburg has covered it greatly because that is that is the intention that reasonable is in in light of what is the problem that is needing to be fixed? And is the timeframe reasonable in order to research and conduct the work to fix that problem? And generally that comes in the form of regulations, but it can come in the form of INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE MORATORIUM THAT HAS BEEN DRAFTED ADDRESSES BOTH NOT JUST THE UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE BUT ALSO ANY ORDINANCES THAT WOULD NEED TO GO INTO THE CITY'S MUNICIPAL CODE AS WELL.

SO I THINK IF I CAN TAG TEAM WITH YOU A LITTLE BIT, ERIN, WHAT The question was it was posed was we don't have provisions in our current unified development ordinance that address these uses these hyper scale data centers very hyper intensive uses. And we need time for our planning and development staff to develop those things they may need they need to do some research, they need to gather some data. But we need to get those things on the books. before we might consider even permitting such a use. I think one thing to consider is that All of the communities in our state generally have set a limit of 12 months in order to engage in that process, to do the research, to develop regulations that are going to apply to these types of uses. I believe there's one community, Northampton County, that has adopted the 32-month moratorium. Northampton County is a very different community than the city of Durham. It's very rural. Probably has some applications coming to it. I don't know that for sure. But I think it's very difficult for the city of Durham to express, quantify why it's reasonable for us to take a substantially longer time than multiple other jurisdictions in our state. So I think that's a consideration that the council should weigh carefully.

And thank you so much. And as a follow-up, well, I have two follow-up questions, but have we heard anything about Northampton County having any consequences or backlash from the state legislator in regards to their 32-month moratorium? I'm not aware of any. Okay. And then I don't know, maybe this is for my colleagues to consider, but I know that a couple of weeks recently, the Senate passed, sorry, House passed House Bill 730, the Right Pay Protection Act. And so where it does kind of address some of the things around data centers and like thinking about like they had the closed loop for water and liquid system prohibit foreign ownership of data centers, requirements for utility service contracts data centers, like, no, you can't condemn land for data centers. So I'm thinking like, and there is a possibility it may pass. Are there things in here that you, that are missing or are there things that you feel like are missing from this bill? that need to be like more specialized in Durham that we can't do in 12 months just like this is my colleague so I'm not not you so yeah if they've read the bill and I just said it because I just want to make sure like the state ledge is proposing a bill about data centers and moratoriums so I know that we're you know preempted by them so I just want to think if there are things that we haven't thought about yet as we're advocating moving forward good point

Any other comments?

Yeah, go ahead. A couple questions, Attorney Miles. One is, and I think that we got the answer earlier from our city attorney, but I just wanted to confirm the current draft of the ordinance does it addresses new data centers does it also address uh expansion of existing data centers or would we have to change that this evening to address that it does not currently um address existing data centers but if it's the will of the council to amend that ordinance staff is prepared to make that change with um tonight okay i i would support that um the other question if if because we're picking the 12, currently it's drafted as 12 months because so many other communities have selected 12 months, but if hypothetically we extended that time period because we believe that the planning department needs more time to be able to do that, which has come up in conversations before, let's say we had a longer time period, but then adopted new regulations prior to the full length of that time, would the moratorium end at that point?

Yes.

Okay. So we could select that longer time period and then that would give planning department enough time to do what they need to do. If they don't take the full amount of time, adopt new regulations, that would be the effective end date of the moratorium.

Yes, currently as written, the moratorium will end at the earlier of either the timeframe that is set by council or the adoption of the fix, which would be the ordinances to address the data centers within the unified development ordinance.

Okay, thank you.

Just for a clarifying question for the plan department, because when we had our briefings. In our one off groups, but also about articulate that you all felt confident that you can have this done within 12 months we'll we've already had two down so additional 10 months, I just want to like clarify to make sure we are aligned with the statements that have been made to some Council members.

Yes, so staff does feel comfortable. I feel comfortable that we can accomplish this in the next 10 months. I will say that this is not a new topic for us. The draft LDC had regulations, so research had already occurred. Now, granted, we agree they need to be strengthened. In addition, staff for many months now has been participating with the Central Pines Regional Council of Governments on a cross-jurisdictional task force, evaluating best practices and ordinances. We feel well-equipped to complete this in that amount of time.

Just to build on that point. You're recommending the 12 months in total because you feel that is the time it will take to write the effective rules, which is what we've been requesting, which is also why we believe other counties, towns, and cities have adopted that as well. You're not proposing the 12 months because other municipalities and counties and towns have proposed 12 months?

No, I am proposing that because I believe that's the reasonable timeframe that we could accomplish that in.

Okay, all right, thank you. Yeah, I wanna celebrate the advocacy done by community groups that brought this forward and recognize the rigor that our staff and council have brought to this issue on a short timeframe. I think this proposed moratorium is really a win for our residents and for Durham. And so I'm excited that we have the opportunity to move this forward. And it's thanks to that coalition of groups, the hustle of staff, council who've dug in, and it gets us to our goal of getting the right regulations in place to ensure that we are taking into consideration issues of climate, issues of water usage, issues of impact on energy bills. And I've already seen some of that work product from staff getting to some of these THESE OUTCOMES ON REGULATIONS. YOU KNOW, THE ORIGINAL REQUEST WAS FOR A LONGER MORATORIUM, AND I ADVOCATED ORIGINALLY FOR AT LEAST 24 MONTHS, AND, YOU KNOW, I THINK MORE, YOU KNOW, CERTAINLY, YOU KNOW, SOUNDS BETTER AND MORE RIGOROUS, AND I WAS COMPELLED BY THAT, BUT I'VE BEEN CONVINCED BY STAFF THAT THAT, YOU KNOW, ISN'T NECESSARY TO COMPLETE THE WORK THAT WE'VE REQUESTED, AND ALSO JUST AVOIDS US GETTING TO ISSUE OF ENHANCED LEGAL SCRUTINY. And I guess in theory, we could get to the end of the 12 months. And if we feel like we haven't been satisfied by the work we could choose to extend at that point and accept any legal risk we want to accept at that time. But I do have confidence from what I've heard that 12 months is an appropriate amount of time. And so I have changed my position on the months and I do feel like the 12 months 12 months is appropriate um i appreciate what's been raised around uh expansions uh and i do think that is is compelling um and makes sense based on what we're trying to achieve and so i would also be in support of that councilman thank you um this is a staff question

As part of the research that you've done, have we researched the impact that existing data centers have had on the environment or our water resources?

Not yet. I'm hearing from staff.

Not yet?

Not yet.

OK. And I'm wondering, I think, was it Ashley? Is Ashley still here? Hi. Hey. Could you come back up, actually, to the mic really quickly?

Sorry to call you up unprepared.

You mentioned at the beginning of your comment about the usage of PFAS. I was wondering, can you speak a little bit more to that?

yeah the data centers require um they don't shut down so they run constantly one way that they keep their machines cool is using a large amount of water and they use pfos chemicals in that water to help keep the machines cool okay and that and my understanding of how that works is that the water is potentially goes back into the our water source but after it's been utilized to cool

Is that correct?

I don't know enough about them, but that is my understanding as well.

Okay. Thank you. That's all. Thanks so much for coming back up. I appreciate the, I do appreciate that staff, I think in our one-on-one we talked about, or it was not one-on-one, there were a couple of us in the meeting, but we all had meetings with staff, and I appreciate that staff feels confident that they can get it done this work done in a year. I also think that y'all can get the work done. I know that if we give it a year that y'all will move folks into those roles and spend the appropriate time to get these regulations on the books. My concern is that we just will not have access to the data that we need because we have not seen the long-term impacts of these data centers. I'm concerned that we haven't even looked at the ones that are in Durham already. I know that I'm hearing about PFAS. We're like in the middle of all of this work to try and get PFAS out of our water system. And so it's just like these kind of little pieces that I'm concerned about that I just don't think that we will have the data that we need in a year. It sounds like Colleagues are not online for pushing for longer, but for me, the 12 months doesn't sound long enough to get the data that we need to make really smart choices to keep our residents safe. We've seen the impacts of these large data centers in other places. You all know that I grew up in Memphis. I'm watching that in real time impact folks in that community. And as one of our speakers said, it's not in the wealthy white neighborhoods. That is impacting poor neighborhoods of color in a big way. They're bearing the brunt of that. We're talking tonight about burden shifts and who sort of bears the costs long term. And so for me, the safe way to go is to get the data that we need. I feel like three years would be a good amount of time to do a study. I understand that I don't feel like I have support up here for that, but the more I'm learning, the more I'm feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data that we do not have. I agree with my colleague. I think that the expansion feels like a no-brainer. If we're going to actually do a moratorium, then we need to do an actual moratorium while we study the impacts, and so we can't have that loophole existing, so I would support that as well. Yeah, those are my comments. Thanks.

All right. I have a question for attorney miles. Sorry. Okay. So going back to the state statute that I mentioned earlier, um, when the 60 D dash one Oh seven. So just go into, um, portion F of it around expedited judicial review. And so just want to unpack that. I'm just trying to weigh all, I'm not against like a moratorium, but I'm trying to weigh all our options out in a contentious environment, especially our general assembly right now, where we do not have the numbers to maintain the governor's veto on anything. And so just really want to think that you don't have the courts at this point. So thinking about the long-term implications of, data centers and want enough time to study, but also thinking about the burden that some of our rural counties are going to bear when we think about they have more land and all those things. And we saw what happened in like what, Franklin County just recently, or they did let the water grab or all those things like that. So we're seeing how it's impacting rural. So I want to just like, just the expedited judicial review, unpack that. Is it basically saying that like any person who's angry, upset about, you know, our moratorium that's not reasonable or goes beyond time period has the right to like pursue expedited legal action against us or, I'm not the attorney, so I'm just trying to figure out the language or what the consequences are for us if we are not able to reasonably justify our timeline for the moratorium, if there's any economic impact that we face as a result of that as well.

Of course. So what subsection F it talks about expedited judicial review, which means that any aggrieved party that feels that the development moratorium affects them, they have standing to bring it forward. They would they could file an action and superior court and they would receive an expedited hearing, as outlined by this section of it would if that does happen then um the attorney's office would uh represent the city and and make our arguments um we would likely have to make arguments that are um in place of that lake tahoe case um because that is that is the case there's other there are other cases as well so we would make those legal arguments and it would be before a judge to make a determination on whether to grant an injunction or not it's this section is specifically about injunctions so that would possibly stop the moratorium and and any effect that it would have if it were granted so just to reframe like so essentially um we could have our moratorium stopped early as someone comes up and brings this an injunction about because and i'm just thinking about like i'm going to start rambling thank you for that it would stop early but it also would not have the effect of getting the ordinances in place as well because an injunction would pretty much stop the action entirely. We could, on the back side, continue to do the research and things, but we wouldn't have the pause and the developments or any expansion, if you all decide to add that to your moratorium, that the moratorium would actually have in place.

Thank you so much.

okay um thank you mr mayor yeah um i think you know i think i don't want to speak for my colleagues i think everyone's dice is concerned about higher risk data centers clearly and i think staff as well i'm proud that we have this um before us i appreciate the community folks who brought this to us i think the main thing is we heard from from attorney rieberg attorney miles i think we want to get this right And I trust staff, if staff says we can do it in 12 months, then I trust staff to do it in 12 months. And I think I'm happy to go with that. This is important work, and I appreciate my colleagues considering this. Thank you. I'll be supporting 12 months. And I think the expansion, it makes sense as well, too. It makes total sense. Thank you.

Thank you. A quick question on the expansion language. What is the language that's being proposed?

So what I've written since I've been in council meeting tonight to try to gather all of the questions is the moratorium shall apply to the following expansions of existing data centers. and then list out as well as any new development applications related to data centers, data processing facilities, and crypto mining.

That's in section one.

Yes, it will be added under section one, the first paragraph, and there will be a list outlining what the moratorium applies to that includes the expansions.

And then in section two, the carve outs would also then be applicable to those expansions. I just wanna make sure that our expansion language isn't then damaging some of the carve out language that we created specifically for our hospital center. So I just wanna make sure we're not shooting ourselves in the foot.

So the carve out would still, the carve out would still apply to only those that are listed in the carve out.

Okay, so by adding expansion language, we are not then limiting those types of... So, like, somebody might need to do an expansion. They already have a data center. It is for allowed use. What is their...

It would not apply to anything that's in the carve-out. So the expansions would be...

It follows the same.

It follows the same, yes.

I just want to make sure that we are not creating a problem for ourselves by doing that.

Yes, the way it's going to be written, it will not based off of the, it will apply to only the things that are listed, and then the entire moratorium will not apply to the things that are listed in that second paragraph.

Okay, thank you. I just want to make sure, because I do not want us to do, I mean, we know, like, think all of us are concerned, but we also rely on this tech already. And a lot of this tech is, you know, much of it is crap. And a lot of it is maybe 20% is actually lifesaving. So we need to make sure that we are tailoring it and I think that that's the point of the moratorium and in the first place is to be able to tailor the correct language so that we have the stuff that we need and that we don't have the stuff that we don't want or don't need and so want to make sure that we are are doing our due diligence on that so I'm in support of the expansion language I think we would be hard pressed on a longer than 12 month for many reasons. And we got a whole UDO or LDC rewritten in 12 months. So I think it would be a little complicated to prove our case in that way. So while I would love to do more months, and I had looked eagerly at that longer example that folks had been bringing to length in ours here, It makes sense why staff, and that's what we want from them, are really helping, you know, guide our decision-making and making it sound decision-making that can really muster a challenge if that was to present itself. So I will be in support of the 10-month additional moratorium, and I also am in support of the expansion language.

All right. Yeah, go ahead.

Appreciate appreciate colleagues supporting that. One other thing would would colleagues support limiting subordinate or incidental uses to 5000 square feet or less?

Can I respond to that?

Yeah, I mean, I think that the initial and Councilmember Baker, you and I were both at and Councilmember Copac in that conversation at Joint City County Planning. Is to have those conversations with our economic development folks because they're really going to understand the impact. negative and positive right, and when I say that I don't mean like Oh, we just want to be able to do whatever they want, but we do need to have a better understanding from those economic development folks and. What is the right approach, what is that Taylor approach, and I would say, with having just this arbitrary square footage without that kind of vetting. does not seem responsible to me. That was the request that I made at Joint City County Planning is that whoever was doing this work, I was very clear with staff that we needed to have the folks at the county and the city really digging in to make sure that we, again, are allowing the things that we already do and we need, and businesses at RTP and other places that have small data centers supports their main purpose And we are keeping out, for lack of a better word, the bad guys. And so I don't feel comfortable putting that at this point because I don't have enough information.

All right. Thank you, colleagues, for a really good deliberation on this. I realize the reality that we're in, that AI is something that is growing. The presence of it is growing. And I think that we are going about this the right way. And I think I've stated this before and worked with a few mayors and companies that actually are you know, to have data centers working with them to write this white paper on how to work with local governments to ensure that they are not overly invasive. The worst thing that could ever happen to us is Northern Virginia, where they actually welcomed it. And now, as I said, their communities are humming. They enjoyed the revenue that came in and now they're realizing how big of a mistake that was. I do not want that to happen to Durham. I think that, you know, As someone who, yes, I use AI sometimes. As someone who actually uses it sometimes, I realize the damages as well if you are allowing what happened in Northern Virginia to happen here. I realize that we have some companies here, some businesses here that have to use data centers, like our health system. You know, educational institutions, they're small, they're not hyper, hyperscale. One, we don't have the land for it. And two, the reason why I initially was asking for a longer term on this is because I did not want some wealthy company to come in and buy up a large swath of land and replace it with a data center that could be hyperscale. So I think that what we're doing here is extremely important. And I think it's also gonna be very helpful to the language that we're trying to draft for just to have a national stance on this as well. I do wanna make sure that we're not just making it political. I don't wanna just put it on paper and say, hey, look, we have the longest moratorium. I wanna get to the actual policy, have the ordinance written so that it could be an actual practice here. and be an example for other cities to follow, other urban areas like ours. So I'm going to support the current standing. I appreciate all of the contributions to the conversation from my colleagues, from community members. I think this is one area for sure, you know, in toxic free NC, this is one area where I think that your voice should be actually louder because there's some information that we could learn from. SO THANK YOU. YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN VERY ACTIVE ON THE LEAD IN THE PARKS. SO THANK YOU FOR THAT WORK AS WELL. AND THERE WERE SOME OTHER ORGANIZATIONS BUT I KNOW I'VE BEEN ON ZONE WITH YOU GUYS AND FOLLOWED YOUR WORK. SO THANK YOU TO THE FEEDBACK WE'VE GOTTEN FROM THE COMMUNITY. DURHAM IS THE SECOND MOST EDUCATED POPULIST IN AMERICA. AND YOU HEAR THAT WHEN FOLKS COME TO CITY HALL AND PROVIDE VERY VERY WELL RESEARCHED INFORMATION. AND LASTLY, I DID CALL A MEETING, I KNOW COUNCIL MEMBERS BAKER AND KOPAK WERE ON THE SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE JOINT CITY COUNTY, JCCPC, RIGHT, PLANNING COMMITTEE. YOU GUYS REPRESENTED THERE. I ALSO CALLED A MEETING WITH OUR CHAMBER AND SOME OF OUR RTP PARTNERS THE COUNTY AND CITY, AND COUNCILMEMBER KOPAK, APPRECIATE YOU JOINING THAT CALL. JUST TO MAKE SURE WE'RE BRINGING ALL VOICES TO THE TABLE THAT HAVE THE MOST PRACTICAL APPROACH TO THIS. I THINK WE'RE GETTING THERE. I REALLY TRUST STAFF AND WORKING ON THIS FOR THE NEXT TEN MONTHS. SO IN TOTAL, WE'LL HAVE A 12-MONTH MORATORIUM. BUT I THINK THAT, YOU KNOW, THIS IS AN AREA WHERE WE CAN REALLY LEAN IN ON. I THINK THE WORST THING THAT'S EVER BEEN SAID PUBLICLY WHEN IT COMES TO AI AND DATA CENTERS, MR. ALTMAN SAID THE ENERGY THAT IT TAKES TO RAISE A CHILD, A BABY TO A CHILD AT 21 YEARS OLD IS THE SAME ENERGY IT TAKES FOR A DATA CENTER. I THINK THAT'S JUST ONE OF THE MOST INSENSITIVE THINGS EVER COULD BE SAID. SO LET'S CONTINUE TO DO WHAT DURHAM DOES AND I APPRECIATE ALL OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS AND LOOK FORWARD TO SUPPORTING IT. ALL RIGHT.

I was going to add, but it looks like Attorney Miles is already coming up, but could you read us the moratorium with the amended language?

Yes. Thank you. Do you want me to read the entire moratorium, or do you want me to just read the amended language?

Just the first.

The language that you all would like, we will add, this moratorium shall apply to expansions of existing data centers and new development applications for data centers, data processing facilities, cryptocurrency mining operations, and any other uses associated with data processing facilities. And that would be at the end of paragraph one, of section one.

One more time.

Yes. This moratorium shall apply to expansions of existing data centers and new development applications for data center, data processing facilities, cryptocurrency mining operations, and any other uses associated with data processing facilities.

All right. I'm good. Okay. Thank you. So, colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to I'll entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance imposing a 10-month moratorium extension, totaling a 12-month moratorium on development approvals for data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, and any use associated with data center processing facilities within the City of Durham pursuant to NCGS State Statute 160-107. So moved. Second. Been moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. Colleagues, let's take a, it's been two hours, over two hours. Let's take a quick break and then we'll finish up the last few public hearings and call it a night. 10 minutes.

Yeah, you're good.

ALL RIGHT. STARTING BACK. THINK WE ONLY HAVE TWO MORE HOURS TO GO. I'M JOKING. I JUST PUT THAT OUT THERE FOR THE FACEBOOK COMMENTS. ALL RIGHT. And folks, I apologize. This agenda was all over the place tonight, so I was trying to follow along. Where are we? 45. All right. Item 45, modification of tier boundary, Palmer Edge Light Industrial Park. Ready for the staff report.

Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, and honorable council members, good evening. I am Peyton Burgess with the Planning and Development Department, and I am happy to be here with you tonight. Elliot Brewer of Carlin Real Estate proposes to change the development tier designation of 10 parcels and a portion of three more, totaling 154.2 acres and located at 651, 675, 683 Ellis Road, 3402, 3520, 3532, 3540, 3602 Rigsby Road, 3426 3442 3516 andrew road and then portions of 2505 2590 glover road and 3654 brigsby road the current development tier is urban the applicant proposes to change this designation to suburban in order to utilize the suburban tier development standards There's a concurrent rezoning petition associated with parcels, with four of the parcels, and that is KZ2600002, which is the next item on tonight's agenda. Thank you. Staff and the applicant are available for any questions.

Thank you. You've heard the staff report. Are there any questions? All right. Therefore, I'll declare the public hearing open. The applicant is present. Welcome, how much time do you think you need? Pardon me? How much time do you think you need?

Three minutes is fine. All right, five minutes, please. Welcome. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Madam Pro Tem. Thank you, members of council and members of staff, city attorney, Mr. Manager. I'm Mike Thielen, 555 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, Womble Bond Dickinson Law Firm on behalf of AbbVie Inc. We are the record owner of certain of the parcels that are up for the tier change today, also for the rezoning today. You have owner acknowledgement forms identifying which parcels my client, Abby, is now the record owner of. We are in support of the application. We are here simply to endorse the application, although Mr. Biker, on behalf of The original applicant, Palmer Edge, still record owner, who's certain of the parcels as well, is going to speak more substantively on behalf of the applicant. But I'm here to answer any questions on behalf of ABB Inc., if there are any from the council. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Williams, Mayor Protean-Caballero, members of City Council. I'm Patrick Biker. I live at 2614 Stewart Drive. I'm an attorney representing Palmer Edge for the development tier change and the rezoning that are on your agenda tonight. I do want to thank Peyton and Aaron for the outstanding support we've received from the Planning Department on these agenda items. For the development tier change, we need to discuss changing from the urban tier to the suburban tier. Long story short, our goal is for Palmer Edge to be like an RTP campus, which means more green space, more trees and more pervious surface, and then less asphalt, less concrete and less impervious surface. I won't go into this in great detail, but you can see in regard to street yard, side yard, and rear yard setbacks, the suburban tier allows for much more green space between buildings and rights of way. The same principle applies to minimum lot areas and minimum lot widths. Again, the goal is to create a more RTP-like campus development. We envision Palmer Edge to be RTP North, but with more flexible zoning than the historic SRP Science Research Park zoning that existed in RTP from 1960 to 2025. Here's an excerpt from the 2005 Future Land Use Map that dictates the boundaries of the urban and suburban tier within Palmer Edge. As you can see from the purple shading, all of the area north of Glover Road was designated for industrial use back then. The urban tier is essentially a three mile radius around downtown. And unfortunately the tier line splits the Palmer edge assemblage. And so what we need is to bring all 185 to 190 acres into the suburban tier. This is very important since there is no watershed overlay for this section of Durham. And therefore this proposed development tier modification fosters more green space and pervious surface over asphalt buildings and impervious surface. Next, it's important to reference the 2020 Industrial Land Use Study, our planning department published about six years ago. I've relied on this report many times since it was published in order to advise companies that want to increase and improve Durham's capacity for top quality economic development. I also think it is important for the city council to know that this 2020 industrial land use study evaluated 179 sites across all of Durham County. And based on that analysis, the Palmer Edge site we're talking about tonight is one of the top five sites in Durham County. And this site is very important for Durham's economic development when we look at new job opportunities for Durham residents that have been approved by the city council over the past five years. When I first started working in Durham back in 1994, our only solid opportunities for economic development were RTP and Trayvon Corporate Park. While I worked hard on industrial recruitment to RTP and Trayburn back in the 90s, I realized that those good paying jobs were pretty far away from the vast majority of Durham residents. To help remedy that problem over the past five years, It's been my privilege to work on developing job opportunities much closer to Durham residents. The first one that we worked on was with Scannell Properties, and that was for around 200 acres of junction and trail roads. Subsequent to that, a few months later, about six months later, we also worked for Scannell Properties for an industrial park at NC 55 and Hobson Road. More recently, the council approved Welcome Venture Park, which is just to the east of the Bragtown neighborhood, and that brought 160 acres and 1.2 million square feet of light industrial and manufacturing space to the east of the Bragtown neighborhood. And tonight we're talking about Palmer Edge, which was originally 140 acres, and now we seek to increase that this evening with the next agenda item. As you can see, Palmer Edge is the most centrally located economic development site that has been recently approved by the council. It has outstanding access to NCCU and Durham Tech so that job training is readily available for the good paying jobs that will be coming to Palmer Edge. I'd be remiss if I did not note that we received a unanimous recommendation for approval from the Planning Commission for this development tier change. And accordingly, for all these reasons, we ask for your approval. Mr. Thielen and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you. You've heard the applicant. Those are all the speakers that I have for this project. So therefore, I'll declare the public hearing closed and back before the council.

Any comments?

all right at this time yeah go ahead thanks my mayor i just have one question so like um i appreciate that i know we talked about this in the past this is sort of as you talked about almost like rtp in the city right so this is exciting stuff love the economic development impact here or the potential because my only question is if the park is moving away from the old model of having these larger sites with a lot of sort of green space setbacks whatever Why are we going the other direction here, like recreating that model? I mean, why not, if the urban tier bisects the parcel, why not make it all urban tier?

Because for the type of use that AbbVie is, the urban tier standards simply are not appropriate. For the type of pardon me, sir, except for the time of use that Abby is contemplating a large manufacturing facility. You that needs to have significant setbacks more green space, rather than building the building right on the sidewalk. It's better to have the building have a more campus environment. If you remember what the Burroughs welcome facility was like back in the old days or the Glaxo welcome Glaxo campus. I think those are the best analogies to what we're going to see developed here. And so that needs to be done in a way that that fosters more green space and more buffering to surround that type of facility from the railroad tracks to the east and the freeway to the west.

So this is what they intend to occupy, most of the parcel or part of it? Almost all of it. And so this is what AbbVie wants, needs, just help me understand, the setbacks are important to them, why?

Because it's to have a more private, suburban, protected environment for that type of manufacturing facility, which again, if you remember, when you would drive down the Durham Freeway back in the 90s, 2000, you would be driving down and you'd pass Alexander Drive, and then you'd see the Burroughs Welcome Campus on your right as you were driving south. It was a hallmark building for RTP for many years, and that's what this type of facility is going to be. It is going to be a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that needs that large campus environment, which is what the suburban tier standards foster.

Yeah, it just seems a little bit, again, as sort of like as the parks model changes, it seems like, and again, as we talk about like RTP in the city, why would it be a suburban campus? I'm a little bit confused.

Well, keep in mind, Council Member Riz, all of RTP was developed. Very small sections of RTP are going to be migrating to the 3.0. It's not going to be like all 7,000 acres all of a sudden become an urbanized. It's going to be very discrete nodes within RTP that become more urbanized. The vast majority of it will stay similar to how it is developed right now.

I understand that. I know when the foundation talks about sort of like the future, they talk about the desire for more kind of dense. Oh, I agree.

I agree, but that's only in specific nodes. That's not all 7,800.

Okay.

I agree with your point for those discreet sections that need to be more urbanized to bring the amenities into the park that it needs. But that's what we have here with Palmer Edge and with this proposed development is putting these jobs where they would have access to NCCU and Durham Tech, but have that campus environment, which is what these types of companies need.

And this is like, obviously there's transit along Anger, there's transit also maybe Glover, right?

No, it'd be along Anger and there'd be the bus route that serves the Durham Tech campus.

And so does that less dense development, does that sort of defeat the goal of transit here?

You'd have to have some sort of a shuttle bus system to serve it. That's what'll have to be done. You'd have to from Abbey? Pardon me, sir? Abbey would have to create some kind of shuttle from there. If that were something that they would contemplate, I can't speak for ABFE, I'm just saying that that has always been, I did my master's thesis on transit, so pardon me while I sort of wax on about it. It would have to be, a shuttle from a discreet, either Route 2 going down Andrew Avenue, or I apologize, I don't remember the route number that serves Durham Tech. You'd have to have some sort of a shuttle from one of our existing lines. Okay. But the good news is that the transit service is in fairly close proximity to it.

All right. Thank you so much.

i'll entertain a motion to adopt the resolution amendment mr mayor sorry i just um not not much to add but i i wanted to just appreciate uh the comments and questions that councilmember wrist has raised because i do think that the suburban style uh is not an efficient use of land and we are increasingly developing and building out our city and um so i do think that we need to be more considerate of every square foot of the land that we have within our city. Moving forward, I'm gonna support this, but I do think that that's a better practice is to be more efficient, especially if we have a property that's adjacent to a transit route, being able to actually make it so that people can ride transit to work instead of having to ride transit and then walk. of long distance to actually get into the to the building so i hope that's something that we we consider i hope that's something that that um you know um the manufacturer that advi will will consider as they build out this this site that's all mr president

Thank you, there will be opportunity, I think, with brt down 147 85 and we'll just have to really be thoughtful about how we integrate that carefully with that job Center. It does, it is adjacent to it. Based on the aerial map anyway. So we know that that's a. corridor that we're looking at carefully. and

just don't want to miss the opportunity when those conversations are happening all right thank you at this time i'll entertain a motion to adopt a resolution amending the tier boundary by taking property out of the urban tier and establishing the same as suburban tier second it's been moved and probably seconded and of course please open the vote Just waiting on one more. Oh, no, I'm sorry.

Motion passes six to one with Council Member Wrist voting no.

Thank you. And thank you, number 46. All right, ready for the staff report.

Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, and honorable council members, I am Peyton Virgis with the Planning and Development Department and I am happy to be here with you tonight. A request for a zoning map change has been received from Elliott Brewer with Carlin Real Estate for seven parcels of land totaling 57.17 acres and located at 2435, 2505, 2590, 2801, and 2815 Glover Road and 3602 and 3654 Brigsby Road. The current zoning is residential, rural and industrial light. The applicant proposes to change this designation to industrial light with a textual development plan to allow for a variety of uses within the industrial light district. The properties are currently designated mixed use neighborhood on the place type map. The proposed zoning is generally inconsistent with the designated place type. If the proposed zoning is approved, staff recommends a change to the place type map to designate the property as general industrial. Thank you. Staff and the applicant are available for questions.

Thank you. Have you heard the staff report? Are there any technical questions? All right. Therefore, I declare the public hearing open. Mr. Biker, how much time do you think you need?

I realize I'm the last person standing between you and Chris. You are correct. So well under five minutes. Well under.

Okay.

Good evening again, Mayor Williams, Mayor Protean-Caballero, members of City Council, I'm Patrick Byker with Morning Star Law Group. I still live at 2614 Stewart Drive. The zoning map change we're discussing is entitled Palmer Edge 2 because the City Council approved the annexation and the water and sewer for approximately 185 acres of the Palmer Edge assemblage back on October 7th of 2024. Since that was a straightforward annexation, we could not alter any of the zoning or development tiers within Palmer Edge. Be that as it may, it is important to note that Palmer Edge already has a proven track record in the Durham County section of RTP. Mr. Scott Levitan, the CEO of Research Triangle Foundation, has recognized the importance of what Carlin, which is Palmer Edge's parent company, what Carlin has accomplished in RTP. I remember very well 25 or 30 years ago when Glaxo was a major player in RTP, but those days are gone. And fortunately, Carlin Real Estate came along to revitalize what was Durham County's number one taxpayer back in the 1990s. RTP business leaders have praised Carlin's work to transform the old Glaxo campus into a multi-tenant facility with great amenities to strengthen Durham's economy. In regard to this rezoning, here's an aerial showing the 140 plus acres that has already been zoned IL and has been zoned that way for several decades. That's shown in light purple, along with about 50 acres zoned RR just north of Glover Road, which has the bottom of this slide in yellow. Now here's the entirety of Palmer Edge in red, alongside the 50 plus acres that needs to be rezoned tonight, so that approximately 185 acres from Glover Road north to Ellis Road will have industrial light zoning. The bottom line is that Palmer Edge needs consistent zoning between the railroad tracks to the east and the Durham freeway to the west, to bring the initial graphic back up for your review. Again, because it was straight annexation back in October of 2024, we could not make that zoning map change at that time. But we do want to emphasize in closing that Palmer Edge has removed 26 of the permitted uses in the industrial light zoning district in order to continue the outstanding track record I mentioned earlier. We did receive an eight to one recommendation for approval from the planning commission. And so for all these reasons, we respectfully ask for your approval of this zoning map change. Thank you for your time tonight. Be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. All right. You are the only speakers I have. So therefore I would declare the public hearing closed back before the council. Any questions?

um did you put did you give any consideration to planning commissioner woke's um comments here she mentioned uh tree coverage impervious surfaces green infrastructure and native plants yeah unfortunately council member baker we're so early in the engineering process it's very difficult to give a specific um

percentage, say for tree coverage as an example. And here's what's the wild card. If there's an area of the 180 acres that's bisected by a large Duke Power easement, very large one, and Duke Power is contemplating putting a large substation within this location. We don't know if that's going to happen. We've had conversations with them. It may work out. It may not. But because that would be a large area that would have to be cleared, it's really not possible for us to stipulate to a specific tree coverage percentage or or native planting percentage or something like that just because we have so many unknowns at this time mr thielen and i will be happy to bring those concerns back to our site engineers so we do the best we can but because there are so many unknowns this time in terms of building coverage parking coverage and the duke power substation we we certainly took those comments seriously but we're not able to specify a percentage at this time yeah green infrastructure in terms of native plants and those types of things. Again, because of the uncertainties with how the site will ultimately be built out, we're not able to specify any percentages in those regards.

Green building techniques?

I'm not aware of that. I'd be contemplating that at this time.

I'm sorry.

Sorry, Council Member Baker, what was the question?

Yeah, just coming back to Commissioner Wolk's comments, you know, you already mentioned

site layout issues but i'm just curious green infrastructure or green building techniques anything like that that you've con that you've considered uh for the grid infrastructure to serve the project ultimately the question yes that's i mean that's part of the planning that's that's underway right now there's there's ongoing discussions and there's i believe still a negotiation underway with duke as to the final version of how this will ultimately be served from a power standpoint as far as the development side part of the suburban tier logic to answer councilman risk question uh is to as mr biker explained earlier is to pulling the property inside and creating that suburban campus like field does allow for less pervades and does allow for more tree cover in terms of the design it also provides for a more secure facility so that was also in service of some of what the commissioner had expressed concern about with her book

Can you go back to that list of prohibited uses?

It's not on your screen? No. There you go.

Oh, there it is. Thank you. There was one. Okay. No, never mind. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't, when it came to transit, that we weren't. causing damage, but I think we'll be fine.

Are you okay with that list, Mayor Pro Tem?

Yeah, I was just looking at the rail and bus terminal one.

But I think it's... Yeah, I don't think that's a bus stop.

No, that's, yeah, I just wanted to make sure, a major facility, which it wouldn't do because that's going to be down at RTP, but thank you.

Yes, thank you.

So no nightclub?

Council Member Kopach may not like that. Well, that's a long list of exclusions. What's the list of inclusions again?

Well, it's mainly going to be... biotech manufacturing is what it's really going to be, along with amenities. Our team does a good job, I think, with site amenities. So there could be recreation and dining options for the employees here. And that's included. That's obviously permitted uses in IL. So it's really a fairly small list of permitted uses. What we did was strike off most of the uses that are not appealing and are not

appropriate for this location yeah and i'll just echo councilmember baker's questions and comments um and commissioner wolk's comments that you know i i definitely understand the intention of this site you know i'm you know from what i hear is that based on your plans for how to design the site that overall palmer edge you ex you anticipate um of over indexing on tree coverage and green space and things like that it is hard to see a case you know rate low on comp plan consistency because of a lack of alignment around trees and green infrastructure native plants and so i understand her consternation and so i share some of that too um And so you're saying it's just for this one portion of the site you find it's difficult to make this commitment, but you believe overall for Palmer edge you're going to exceed those those minimums for the comprehensive plan.

I think that's a fair statement it's just impossible to specify a square footage or a percentage, because we really haven't begun the site engineering yet and we have that. unknown factor with how many acres will have to be dedicated along with the roadway connection for a Duke Power substation. I mean, keep in mind Duke Power hasn't built a substation to serve, to provide redundancy for downtown or East Durham for 20 years. So it's a desperately needed facility and it'd be great if it worked out, but it's premature to say whether it will or will not.

mean the one element native plants isn't dependent on how much you can deliver it's just the characteristic of what you deliver what what is the what's the limitation there well primarily it's because the nurseries have very at certain times they have very limited inventory of those types of native plants my friend Dan Jewell is

has said that in many public hearings. And so when we have a major economic development project, the landscaping is usually the last, it's the last yard. You're on the one yard line and you've got to put in your landscaping. And if we commit to a percentage that the nurseries just don't have in stock at that time, we will have built a, Mr. Thielen's team will have built a factory that we can't open. And so it's certainly something we'll take back to our team and we'll make sure they emphasize that, but that's why we're not able to commit to a specific percentage.

All right. Colin, is that the same company that we saw on the inner city visit in Indianapolis?

I'm not sure, Mayor.

Austin, Texas?

Okay, yeah. Oh, Austin, yes. Yes, that would be, they've developed a lot in Austin. All right, good deal.

All right, I'll entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the university, unified development ordinance by taking property out of residential rule in industrial light and establishing the same as industrial light with the development plan. So moved.

Second.

Moved and probably seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. And I'll also entertain a motion to adopt a consistency statement as required by North Carolina General Statute Section 160D-605. So moved.

Second.

Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

Motion passes 7-0.

Thank you. We're almost there, colleagues. Where is it? 48.

48.

There it is. All right. Ready for the staff report?

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of City Council. I'm Alexis John, Assistant Director of Housing and Neighborhood Services Department. This public hearing is held tonight to receive comments on the proposed ordinance modifications to the city's minimum housing code. The notice of public hearing was posted to the city's website and listed in the local newspaper. The last major update to the minimum housing code was completed in 2016 and since then areas needing clarification or revisions have been identified. Housing and Neighborhood Services conducted a comprehensive review of housing code standards and enforcement practices in municipalities including Cary, Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington, Greensboro, Fayetteville, and Chapel Hill, Orange County. The department also worked with the National Center for Healthy Housing to compare Durham's minimum housing code against the National Healthy Standards and the International Property Maintenance Code. The proposed amendments reflect a focus on improving resident health and safety, clarifying code requirements, increasing consistency in enforcement, aligning with state statutes and national standards, modernizing the code to address current housing conditions. These changes will help ensure Durham's minimum housing code remains clear, effective, and responsive to community needs. I'm available to answer any questions as needed.

Thank you so much. You've heard the staff report. Any technical questions? All right, great. At this time, I declare the public hearing open. I do not have any speakers for this item, so therefore I will declare the public hearing closed and back before the council. Any comments? All right. I'll entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance amending certain provisions of Chapter 10, Article 6 of the City of Durham Code of Ordinances. So moved.

Second.

Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. One more. Please close the vote.

Motion passes seven zero.

Thank you. Thank you, colleagues. It's been a great year. I will see you all in August. Enjoy your break. We are adjourned at 11 48.