City Council - Regular Meeting

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Recording in progress

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Durham City Hall. It's great to see everyone. And welcome to those of you that are online. I irresponsibly did not charge my iPad, so pardon me for getting started just a little late. But a meeting is called to order at 7 p.m., and you join me, please, in a moment of silence. Thank you. All right, at this time, I'll pass it over to Council Member Rist for the Pledge of Allegiance. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

If it is your practice, I invite you to rise with me and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

All right, thank you all so much. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Good evening, Mayor Williams.

I'm here.

Mayor Pro Tem Caballero. Here. Council Member Baker.

Here.

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

Here.

And Council Member Ruiz.

Here.

Thank you. At this time, I'll ask that my friends from Houser for New Hope join me at the podium. This proclamation tonight is in honor of the amazing work you folks are doing over at Housing for New Hope, an acknowledgement of Supportive Housing Week. The proclamation reads as, Whereas the Durham community works collaboratively to connect individuals and families experiencing homelessness to safe, stable housing and supportive services. And whereas access to supportive housing is essential to the health, dignity and wellbeing of every resident and strengthens our entire community. And whereas Durham continues to face a growing housing affordability crisis, making it increasingly difficult for many of our neighbors to secure and maintain stable housing. And whereas supportive housing has been proven to reduce homelessness, strengthen communities and improve outcomes for individuals and families while making more effective use of public resources. And whereas the city of Durham recognizes the dedication and impact of local nonprofit organizations and building a stronger, more compassionate community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. So now, therefore, I, Leonardo Williams, Mayor of the great city of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim August 24th to August 28th, 2026 as Supportive Housing Week in the city of Durham and encourage all residents to recognize this observance. support efforts to prevent and end homelessness, and celebrate Housing for New Hope's lasting contributions to our community. So witness my hand in the corporate sale of the city of Durham, North Carolina, the 17th day of August, 2026. I invite you to share some remarks.

Mayor Williams, members of the City Council, and friends, thank you for this proclamation and for recognizing August 24th through August 28th as Supportive Housing Week in Durham. I am Chante Addison, the Director of Client Services at Housing for New Hope. For more than 30 years, Housing for New Hope has had the privilege of walking alongside individuals and families experiencing homelessness as they move toward safe, stable, and long-term housing. Over those years, we have learned something important. Housing is foundational to the journey out of homelessness, but that journey almost always involves more than housing. At Housing for New Hope, we describe that through what we call our supportive pathways. Those pathways include mental health and emotional wellness, substance use recovery, employment and job readiness, life skills development, and relationships and community. And no two people's journeys are the same. That's why supportive housing works best when it is not the work of any one organization. It requires a community. We are fortunate in Durham to have extraordinary partners walking alongside our neighbors with us. Partners like Alliance Health helping connect people to behavioral health services and housing supports. The Duke University School of Nursing helping us strengthen connections to health and wellness. Freedom House Recovery Center, providing mental health and substance use recovery services, and Step Up Durham, helping people build pathways toward employment and economic mobility and stability. And those are only a few of the many public nonprofit, healthcare, philanthropic, faith and community partners who make this work possible. Supportive Housing Week gives us an opportunity to celebrate that collective work. But more importantly, it gives us an opportunity to remind us what is at the center of it, people. people whose journeys have been different, people who have experienced homelessness for different reasons, people who bring different gifts, face different challenges, and need different kinds of support. Our responsibility is not simply to help someone obtain a key and sign a lease. It is to walk alongside our neighbors as they build the stability, relationships, health, purpose, and community that help make housing a home. We are grateful to Mayor Williams and the City of Durham for recognizing Supportive Housing Week, and we are deeply grateful to all of the partners across Durham who make this work possible. Together, we can continue to build a Durham where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring, and where every neighbor has the opportunity not simply to be housed, but to thrive. Thank you.

All right, thank you so much. So at this time, we are going to have announcements by council. I will start to my right.

Right, I think there's two meetings in a row. We get to start on the right, I love it. Thanks, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Patem, colleagues, residents, staff, good to see you all, folks online as well. Just a couple of items. So first of all, a couple of welcomes. I did wanna welcome back all the students from Central and Duke who were back in town this weekend moving in. It's good to see all the students, good to see the energy. I think the mayor and I are gonna be doing orientation for some students. Thursday, yeah, a group of students who are interested in like civic stuff from Duke. So it's always fun to see the students back in town. Also wanted to issue a hearty Bull City welcome to our new police chief, Stephanie Martis, who will be starting on September the 8th. big decision for Durham. She's currently the assistant chief in Greensboro. I've heard great things about Chief Martis and I look so much forward to working with her and getting to know her better in Durham. I also want to give big thanks to interim chief Walter Tate who did a great job leading the force with a steady hand since I guess May when he took over for the previous police chief Patrice Andrews. A couple of congrats. First thing is, this is not exactly in Durham, but I want to give a shout out to the girls softball team from Johnston County. We talked about softball at our last meeting, right? They're the Little League Softball World Series champs from Johnston County. So that's like we got champs there for softball. We got the Stanley Cup here. So a lot of good things happening in the Triangle and around this area. I also want to congratulate North Carolina Central for the groundbreaking on their new Institute for AI and Emerging Research. The mission there is to advance ethical AI, which is really important in this world, in our economy. And there couldn't be a better place for the Institute than here in the Triangle and at Central University. So I'm so proud of the Eagles for that. THE LAST THING IS I WANTED TO CONGRATULATE THE DURHAM COMMITTEE ON THE AFFAIRS OF BLACK PEOPLE FOR THEIR 90TH GALA THIS WEEKEND CELEBRATING 91 YEARS OF IMPACT IN DURHAM. AMAZING. GLAD TO SHARE THAT WITH THE MAYOR. THE MAYOR PROVIDED REMARKS THERE. COUNCILMEMBER KOPAK WAS THERE. Great event, great to be there. The committee, of course, needs no introduction in this room, right? They're such an amazing Durham institution, legendary impact in terms of black voting power, black voting rights, so it was great to be at the committee's gala, always a lot of fun. And kudos to their current chair, Floyd McKissick, who's doing a great job leading the committee. The last thing I'll say, I think what am I doing here? Yeah, yeah. The last thing is now, it has been 20 years since the state of North Carolina executed a person. At the same time, the death penalty is still in the books in North Carolina. For those interested, I'll be joining folks tomorrow in Raleigh at 530, I'm sorry, 630 at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church for a prayer service and vigil to commemorate this milestone. Again, 20 years since we've executed anyone, but the death penalty is still in our books. So thank you all for being here, Mr. Mayor. Thanks for giving me a chance to provide comments and look forward to the rest of my colleagues' comments.

I think you took everybody's comments, but... Within my three minutes, right? Council Member, go back.

All right, good evening, everyone. Thanks for being with us here in person and online. Yeah, I want to echo my colleagues' comments. First of all, I'm thanking the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People for their 91 years of service and for the powerful banquet that they held this past weekend. I want to acknowledge and thank our city attorney's office and stormwater team. uh for their long time advocacy around the brentag chemical issue they were recently recognized by our north carolina attorney general for their work and thanks to their work partnering with the state we're actually bringing some accountability on that issue and so i'm really thankful for our staff for their work for many years in terms of our agenda tonight i'm excited first of all to be bringing forward our strategic plan of the top priorities we'll focus on as a council and city for the next three years across safety, economic development, housing, the environment, and having a well-run city government. And so I want to thank the staff for their work on this over the last year, and I'm looking forward to elevating and delivering with my colleagues on the initiatives in this plan. I'm also thrilled we'll be moving forward with plans at the 505 West Chapel Hill Street site, the former police headquarters, which after being stalled for close to 10 years, thanks to great work by community, by council, and by staff, we have a plan to progress on that with affordable housing on the site, as well as uses for other parts of that site. So I'm really excited about that. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we've had more incidences of gun violence this past week. And it's really important that we continue to have resident engagement as we move forward with the details of our violence reduction plan, which will be one of our big priorities this year. And I think it's an important time to be welcoming our new chief. And so I want to extend that welcome as well. Very excited to have Chief Martis be joining us. And I also want to thank Mr. Tate for his incredible service as interim chief, as well as his many years of service to the city of Durham. So thank you, everyone, and looking forward to tonight's meeting.

Thank you. Council Member Baker.

I'll be brief, thank you all so much for being here. I'll echo a lot of the comments from my colleagues. I do just wanna mention that there are really two reasons why young people in our city are losing their lives prematurely, and that is because of gun violence and because of traffic collisions. Those are the two leading causes of death for young people. And so I see our role as protecting the health, welfare, and safety of our residents and doing the very best that we possibly can. I don't agree with everything in the strategic plan that Council Member Kopach referred to. I think in general it's positive. I would personally like to see something that is more of a paradigm shift. However, it does include some I think some very important planning work that is happening has just happened or is going to happen. Violence, the violence reduction plan that was just referred to just very, very important work that needs to be done and done well and executed well. The affordable housing strategic plan, that's something that is happening this fiscal year and something that I think is gonna be very, very important. Hopefully something that can change the direction that we move in in terms of housing affordability in our city. The economic development strategic plan, something that I think is overdue and something that we desperately need. A strong vision for a changing economy. We all see it, we can all feel it. And so we need to be prepared and prepare ourselves by doing good planning. And then the homelessness strategic plan, which we have already adopted and then we're moving forward with, we need to make sure that we're funding it adequately. This is a major issue. I don't think anybody can deny that. The problem is growing across our country. Durham is no exception to that. We are all feeling it. We see our neighbors who are struggling and we need to tackle all these problems and many more. And so I'm looking forward to doing that work

and looking forward to our meeting thank you again for being here thank you uh council member cook thank you um i will also be brief because most of the things that i was going to say have already been said i want to do want to welcome back students as a few of us have talked about it is very fun to see the landscape of Durham change pretty significantly as the students come back. And for those of us who are teaching, the start of a ramping up of a new semester. So I'm really excited for that. I do want to, I can't remember if I've said this before, but there's an amazing exhibition at the Museum of Durham History. Currently it is to Love and Live Free, which is a celebration of LGBTQ, L-G-T-B-Q, okay, whatever. LGBTQ, there we go. History in Durham specifically, it's activism by folks who have lived here, who have loved here, who have fought for their rights in the city. It's a really, really cool exhibition. If you haven't been to the museum, I encourage that you go This specific exhibition is coming down soon, so I would encourage everyone to go see it. It's really beautiful and reminds us a lot of how much influence we can have on the community around us just as an individual person. So that's very cool. And otherwise, I look forward to a good and maybe brief meeting. Thanks, colleagues.

Council Member Burris.

You just jinxed us, so thank you for that. No, I tapped on the word. Okay, okay. I tapped on the word. I want to be home by 9.30. No, good evening. Thank you all for joining us here in Council Chambers and those who are watching virtually. Excited to be back with you all on this beautiful Monday. I want to associate myself with what's been said by my colleagues, so welcome back to the Eagles of the Illustrious North Carolina Central University, where I am a graduate of, and as we always say, Central is a prison in Raleigh. NCCU is our school, so we want to make sure we're clear on that one. I've done a bit of traveling over the past couple of weeks, so I did have an opportunity to represent us and young elected officials. I did my first panel discussion on the main stage last Friday, so super excited about that. Just discussing about how local leaders are navigating challenges that extend far beyond our borders here. As you don't know, I'm a member of sister cities. I was appointed by the mayor, and I look forward to hopefully traveling with them abroad next month if everything goes well to go to our sister city in China. I also had the opportunity to attend the urban plan for public officials simulation train that was organized by Haiti Promise CDC. THEIR URBAN LANDS TO INTERIM COMMUNITY COALITION COALITION EXCUSE ME IT WAS A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO ENGAGE WITH MEMBERS FROM VARIOUS TECHNICS OF THE COMMUNITY THERE ARE SOME YOUTH MEMBERS OF THEIR ALSO MEMBERS OF THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT COMMUNITY MEMBERS IT WAS A GREAT CHANCE TO HEAR LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT DEVELOPERS GO THROUGH AND OUR TEAM WE DIDN'T COME IN FIRST PLACE WITH OUR PROPOSAL BECAUSE WE DID TRY TO ADDRESS ALL THE COMMUNITY BENEFITS AND APPARENTLY WHEN YOU TRY TO INCORPORATE COMMUNITY BENEFITS YOUR PROFIT MARGIN GOES DOWN So I learned that very clear with what happens in development. So that concludes my announcement. And colleagues, I will need to ask for an excused absence for Thursday at some point. I will be at the session, but I need to leave early.

I'll entertain a motion for an excused absence for Council Member Burris. So moved.

Second.

Move the property seconded. Madam Clerk, please open and close to vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. It's good to see everyone this evening. I will also be brief. It's been a busy last few weeks, including this evening. We had folks from Kids Voting and Book Harvest join us. And it was my honor to be able to read this very lovely book, which was Rise Up and Write It. And I just thought it was a delightful way about direct participatory democracy and youth. And so if you are a parent or have young people in your life, it was a great story. And I always enjoy reading to our youth. as a former teacher. Last week, I was able to travel down to Charlotte for Governor Stein's Latino Advisory Council meeting. I will be asking colleagues and staff for some debriefing on some of the anti-immigration bills that have gone forward and the impacts that it has on both staff and obviously Durham residents. It was a great gathering, but also very sobering to see what the impact of some of these bills are going to have across our state, including with our state agencies such as highway patrol. And then I do want to shout out the heart team. I did a ride along not last week, but the week before and was able to participate on several calls and the level of care and empathy that our heart team members extend to our Durham residents. In this case, it was mostly outreach to some unhoused or homeless individuals. was top notch and I know that we've had some pretty sensitive events in the last few months around some of our homeless neighbors and I just want to commend the heart team and that department Community safety department for how. Just you know it was clear how caring they are for these residents and neighbors and I left that day, and with that ride along feeling pretty hopeful about some of the decisions that the city is making that's all, thank you.

Thank you so much. I'll be at my time limit probably on this. Just one, I wanted to shout out to some of the amazing work that's happening in the city, organizations. I tried to make some. Unfortunately, I injured myself and I just started walking two days ago. But we had the Light Up the City event with First Calvary Church. where they paid utility bills, they gave out stipends to families, they gave out school clothes, shoes, they had performances, and they took over the entirety of Durham County Stadium. And it was a beautiful, beautiful convening of the community. Also, each year, and they're not expecting this, but I'm gonna call them out. Each year, Run and Shoot Sports gives out they have a program called Project 300. And they give out so many pairs of shoes to kids, over 300 pairs of shoes. And that also happened this Saturday. So Mr. Sherrod, could you stand please? Nope, yep, stand up. Thank you for your work. And that's a huge undertaking. And I really appreciate the work you do every single, every year. Councilmember Rist took many of my comments. I know that AI is a very, very sensitive topic. We are either going to be victims of AI or we're going to help shape the existence of AI. And I want to congratulate North Carolina Central University, also my alma mater, twice, for being the first HBCU in the nation of opening a center, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research. This is a really big deal because of the partnerships that are coming with it. And I'd rather be a part of shaping or having an entity locally to shape that conversation and shape the evolving of it rather than you know, just being a victim of it. It aligns with some of the work that I'm doing, a white paper on how AI companies cannot be so intrusive into our communities, but also how we can shape ourselves to use it to our benefit. So kudos to NCCU also for securing $110 million for campus improvements. That's also making national news. So North Carolina Central is doing a really good job and I'm really proud of them. There's a lot that's going on in the city. I know you've heard about some of the gun violence, and we never want that to happen. We've experienced some serious domestic violence issues lately, as well as some violent crime. We are doing what we can to address that with the Violent Crime Reduction Summit. You've seen the recommendations come out, and there's more to come on that. I won't spend time talking about that tonight. But in regards to just violent matters that are happening, I want to acknowledge, and I've been quiet about this because I don't want to overstep, but a young black boy was found hanging from a tree in Raleigh. And for some reason, it's not like, I mean, we don't know the details. We're waiting for the investigation. But for some reason, it's not making big headlines. And it's just, it's too damn quiet for my comfort. And I don't know what's going on with that, but I hope that the family will be able to seek some resolve sooner than later. It's been really tough for me to stay quiet on this matter. And you know how I feel about what we make noise about versus what we don't. So hopefully we'll hear something soon regarding that. Lastly, I did wanna provide an update. We know that housing and homelessness are two topics that come up a lot in this city. And while it may not always be visibly present or seem like it's progressing, progress actually has been made. So I do want to share some updates and some incredible work that's been done in and out around the city about getting folks housed. The community safety department started its third and largest ever housing sprint this past Monday with the goal and means to house 60 individuals, including 14 families over the next 45 days. We have four more sprints planned over the next year. with the goal of housing 400 people through these sprints. This concentrated effort maximizes efficiency and is unprecedented work being done by the government to quickly house Durham residents. We're also pleased to report that one of our partners, Families Moving Forward Shelter, has received the lowest length of stay and the highest rate of moves to permanent housing this past quarter recorded in at least the last five years. Their current rate of moves into permanent housing is at 79%, greatly exceeding expectations, which is a testament to the work that can be done when nonprofits and government work together to improve the lives of our residents. So thank you. I'm not sure of the area here, but thanks to the team. Thanks, Bo and the city staff. Ryan, thank you to your team and the work that you all are doing, and to all of the nonprofit partners that are helping to house people. This is important work, important work, and I wanted to highlight that to let folks know that there is progress. Way much more to do still. We have several encampments that are in need of attention, and we're gonna get to them as soon as possible, but the work has been done, and I wanna thank you all for that. All right, let's get to the agenda. on the priority items. And while we're doing that, Madam Clerk and Emmanuel, could you all check the status of Ms. Theresa House? Because I don't see her in the queue, and she's pulled several items. And that's going to impact the considered gender.

If there is, if she has a- Mr. Mayor, I don't see her in the queue at all.

Okay. All right. She signed up. If there is contact information, please reach out. If not, I'll move forward. All right. Priority items. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Mayor Portem, members of council, good to be with you this evening. And the city manager's office has the following priority items. For agenda item number eight, that's the FY27 through 29 strategic plan. Additional information that was requested during the August 6th work session has been added under agenda item number eight. And for agenda item number 15, the third amendment to the contract for Third Fork Creek phase two trail professional design services contract with Kimley Horne and Associates. Additional information requested at that work session has been added under item 15, There was also additional information requested during the work session regarding a event that did not require city special event permit. We've also added additional information in your packet for that item. Those are my priority items.

Thank you so much. Madam Attorney.

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

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

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

Thank you so much. All right. Getting into the consent agenda. Item number three, Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission appointment. Number four, approval of city council minutes. Number five, down payment assistance program performance audit. Please remind me of what's been pulled. Number six fire inspection feeds performance audit June 2026. Number seven General Services Department inventory management performance audit June 2026. Number eight fiscal year 2027 2029 strategic plan. Number nine 2027 City Council mini schedule. Number 10 Wait, was this pulled also? Number three?

It's been pulled, but he doesn't have the number on the line.

He has something else. Okay. This was resourced. Oh, resourced.

Okay.

Number 10 is on the list. Okay.

Number 10, grant budget ordinance accepting the African American Mayor's Association Economic Mobility Leadership Institute estate planning cohort grant. It's been pulled. Number 11, resolution to accept donations to support the strategic framework framework to make homelessness rare and brief, been pulled. Number 12, priority dispatch corporation quality performance review service agreement. Number 13, contract with AECOM Technical Services of North Carolina Incorporated for municipal separate storm sewer system technical support. NUMBER 14, FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICES DESIGN CONTRACT FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND STREET SERVICES ADMINISTRATION BUILDING ROOF AND ENVELOPMENT, ENVELOPE, SORRY, REPAIRS PROJECT. NUMBER 15, THIRD AMENDMENT TO THE CONTRACT FOR THIRD FORK CREEK PHASE TWO TRAIL PROFESSIONAL DESIGN SERVICES CONTRACT WITH KIMLEY HORN AND ASSOCIATES INCORPORATED. Number 16, third amendment to the contract for R. Kelly Bryant Bridge Trail Professional Design Services contract with Kimberley Horn and Associates Incorporated. Number 17, proposed sale of surplus property located at 103 South Driver Street to communities and partnership. It's been pulled. Wait, are those?

Yes.

Okay. Number 18.

There's a person in person.

Number 18 acquisition of property in North Peace, Pea Ridge Road and Seaforth Road, parcel number 0066855 and 0017538 for the Western Intake Partnership. 19 acquisition of one permanent maintenance easement for the University Weymouth traffic signal project. NUMBER 20, DURHAM STATION TRANSIT CENTER IMPROVEMENTS, PROJECT AUTHORIZATION TO INCREASE THE CONTINGENCY FUND FOR THE CONSTRUCTION MANAGER AT RISK, CMAR CONTRACT FOR CONSTRUCTION SERVICES. NUMBER 21, HUD GRANT PROJECT ORDINANCE GPOS FOR CDBG, HOME, HOPWA, AND FAIR HOUSING HAS BEEN PULLED. NUMBER 22, Number 22, development loan commitment for 505 West Chapel Hill Street in an amount not to exceed 6.3 million with Laurel Street Residential LLC. Number 23, utility extension agreement with Ashley's Corner LLC to serve 2019 Anger Avenue. Number 24, SUBSEAS GRANTS PROJECT ORDINANCE NUMBER 16524, THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, 2025 HIGHWAY INTENSITY DRUG TRAFFICKING AREA HIDTA GRANT PROJECT ORDINANCE. NUMBER 25, 2025 NATIONAL POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE'S MENTORING GRANT PROJECT ORDINANCE. Number 26 second amendment to contract number 22041 supplemental agreement number one to governing agreement number 21533 with a Morton Thomas and associates incorporated for design of multimodal improvements on city maintained streets. Number 27 municipal agreements with the North Carolina Department of Transportation for 12 locally administered projects in Durham. Number 28, award of a services contract to Hearns Real Estate Solutions, LLC for easement acquisitions, acquisition services for various utility projects. Number 29, interlocal agreement for the Western Intake Partnership Raw Water Intake Facility. Number 30, professional services contract award to Highfield Infrastructure Engineering, PC for the Huckleberry finished water storage tank rehabilitation. Number 30.

General business, yeah.

Number 31, for public hearings, number 31, extension of 2019 affordable housing Govon order. Number 32, comprehensive plan amendment A2500002, evaluation and asset assessments, report policy changes. Number 33, zoning map change 505 West Chapel Hill Street. Number 34, confirmation of assessment role of curb, gutter and paving on Amber Place from Humphrey Street North to East Pettigrew Street. Number 35, confirmation of assessment role for ribbon paving on Brunson Street from South Miami Boulevard West to the West property line of Reed, REID 163690. 36, CONFIRMATION OF ASSESSMENT ROLES OF CURB, GUTTER, PAVING AND WATER AND SEWER LATERALS ON CHALMERS STREET FROM HEMLOCK AVENUE TO THE NORTH PROPERTY LINE OF REED REID 133231. 137 CONFIRMATION OF ASSESSMENT ROLES FOR RIBBON PAVING WATER MAIN and water and sewer laterals on Lane Street from Glencoe Road East to the East property line of Reed, REID 164518. I don't need to do these.

Mr. Mayor, we did get an email today about folks who signed up to speak. I think agenda item three was pulled by one of the speakers who signed up earlier to speak.

Cody Waters?

Yeah.

That is listed as a resource.

Okay, thank you.

That's the only one I have, at least. But that's true. Is there Cody Waters in the room? Cody Waters, DC? He's online. Online, all right.

He's online.

Okay, all right. So I'm going to have item number three pulled as well. Just to clarify, because I... It says opponent. Yeah, all right. So item number three has also been pulled. 3, 10, 11, 17, 21. And then public hearings. Okay.

I can make a motion.

All right. I'll entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda with the exception of items 3, 10, 11, 17, and 21. So moved. Second. It's been moved and properly seconded. And of course, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. All right. Starting online with item number three pulled. Mr... Where is it? Cody Waters. Cody Waters, can you hear me?

I've allowed him to speak.

Okay, Mr. Waters, can you hear me? Mr. Waters, you're still muted. Are you able to unmute yourself? Okay, I'll come back to that. What was the next one? 10, all right. Number 10, Mr. Bompas, can you hear me? Is that Cody Walters or Walters?

Walters. Walters.

Mr. Walters, Cody Walters, I'm sorry, Phillip Bompas.

He's been asked to unmute, still hasn't.

Mr. Bampas, can you hear me?

Mr. Mayor, he just came off mute.

Mr. Bampas, can you hear me? Yes. Say it again. Yes. Great, I can hear you as well. Welcome. This is for item number 10. You have three minutes.

uh and item i'm sorry item number 10 is i didn't know that we were getting to this point item number 10 is the uh the the african-american mayor's grant that we were able to receive on the budget ordinance you pulled this item for economic mobility leadership institute oh yes um well i guess there were multiple Multiple items that, and I think this one included that as well, which involved housing or things that would involve housing. I do think that economic mobility also involves housing as well. And all of the agendas that had something to do with housing just wanted me that, that, that, I guess, encouraged me to bring up something that I did a few weeks ago. I was canvassing for the Southern Union Workers, or the USSW, and we went to Nightdougal Terrace to talk to the community about certain issues that they dealt with. And one of the things that we realized is that they had carbon monoxide coming through their apartments and occasionally electricity would be cut off and they were told that they could cut the electricity on just by messing with the exposed wires that were in their apartments. And those are just, I think those are just two issues that I thought were very disturbing to hear. And I, and I just wanted to say, I think that's something that should be taken care of and dealt with like a long time ago, really. And, I know there's other, I'm sure there's other issues that people deal with in their apartments, especially in these lower income areas. And that's just something that I wanted to get out there. And I felt like that agenda and multiple other agendas that I put down were related to housing. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And just for the record, oftentimes when I'm engaging with organizations throughout the country, I find opportunities for my office to apply to bring resources into the city where we don't have to use taxpayer money, but more so whether it's any organization that's granting resources. This is specifically for estate planning. And it takes folks through a class of training how to prepare their estates. And then it actually signs them up for it. It's all free. And it's $5,000 to do this cohort. This is sort of like an extension of the mayor's financial playbook that we did before. Specifically to the point you're speaking of, that would be a Durham Housing Authority matter. Well, we do have a representative there and we'll make sure this is documented for their awareness to check in with their residents. Thank you for bringing that up. I also have you, Mr. Bompas, for item number 11, but I will need to hold on just a moment to entertain a motion. Colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to... ADOPT THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN MAYOR'S ASSOCIATION ECONOMIC MOBILITY LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE EMILY ESTATE PLANNING COHORT GRANT BUDGET ORDINANCE IN THE AMOUNT OF $5,000 SO MOVED SECOND MOVED AND PROBABLY SECONDED PLEASE OPEN THE VOTE PLEASE CLOSE THE VOTE AND THE MOTION PASSES UNANIMOUSLY Thank you, and I'll also entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a grant agreement with the African American Mayor's Association in the amount of $5,000 to support the implementation of a six-week estate planning and economic mobility course series. So moved.

Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, colleagues. I really appreciate your support on this and also to the African-American Mayors Association for making these funding opportunities available to us as African-American mayors. This results from the African-American Mayors Association alone, close to $200,000 in grants that we've been able to provide, whether it's housing, whether it's economic mobility or food and security for the Durham community. And we have more to come. We have some funds where we're going to be having a major celebration on hopefully a landmark function around food insecurity in the city. So thank you to ALMA, African American Mayors Association. And I'm happy to say that one of Durham's mayors was one of the original founders of this organization, Bill Bell. All right. Item number 11, Mr. Bompas, if you're still available.

Yes.

Welcome back.

So the agenda is called or the resolution to accept donations to support the strategic framework to make homelessness rare and brief. And I apologize for maybe getting into semantics, but I feel like the goal should be making the goal should be getting rid of homelessness altogether. And I understand that. it's people may not want to get or be perceived as saying one thing and then not being able to execute something perfectly or or not be able to do it like as well, or not being able to have an outcome that the exact perfect outcome that they wanted. But I still think it's, it's okay. And, and it's probably better off if the goal is just getting rid of homelessness altogether. I think that should be I think that should be a more aggressive goal is getting rid of homelessness altogether, as opposed to I guess, it's expecting it to still happen. Of course, homelessness exists all over the place. But I just it seems like there's a there's a to me, it felt like there's a little bit of a lack of confidence in terms of what the agenda sounded like to me. So that's, that was just my comment for that agenda.

Thank you, Mr. bombers for engaging. Thanks for your concern, truly. That's what matters. That's the only speaker I have for this item. So colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the city manager to accept donations to support the strategic framework to make homelessness rare and brief. So moved.

Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Did we have three sounds?

Yeah. See a Teresa house online yet. Okay. What's the next? All right, we're gonna go down to our number 17. Proposed sale of surplus property located at 103 South driver street to communities and partnership. And first, I'm gonna call all the speakers up. Muffin Hudson, Scott Harmon, Cameron Smith, Ernest Smith, and Cameron Smith. It feels good to have something positive for so many people pulled the item. I get to have muffins say nice things.

I will be saying nice things today.

Welcome. You have three minutes.

Thank you. Good evening, y'all. I don't have my glasses. I don't have my phone. I left a lot of stuff. I don't need my phone to tell you how good CIP Communities and Partnerships is at 103 South Driver Street. That's where we have our participatory defense meetings every Thursday. That's where we have food giveaway for over 600 families once a month. That's where we have belly dancing classes. Zumba classes, all the things happen at CIP, Communities in Partnership, right there at 103 South Driver Street. There's a cooling station when it's hot outside, it's a warming station when it's cold outside. And so I think that with it being central to East Durham, it's very accessible, right? And the people you're going to hear from are part of CIP. And it's very easy to feel like you're at home when you're at 103 South Driver Street. But that's only because Communities in Partnership is there. And so we partner with them. We love them. And we want to see them there where they are. And that's where I had my son's graduation party. That's where I had my daughter's 30th birthday party. So those are the things that happen in the community, and it's not a price tag that you can put on what they do for the community. Thank you.

Let the record reflect that Muffin Hudson came in tonight, said some really nice things while I was sitting in the seat. Thank you for your work, Muffin. Scott, it's good to see you.

Welcome. Hey. Good evening, Council Members, Mayor, and our many friends who administer the great city of Durham. My name is Scott Harmon, and I'm a member of the leadership team of the White People's Caucus of Durham Organizing Against Racism, also known as OAR Durham. Would my friends in the White Caucus please stand? Thank you for coming out with us tonight. We support the sale of this building to communities in partnership. No one in this room needs me to explain what CIP has accomplished for our neighbors in East Durham, so my comments tonight are directed to our white friends and neighbors in the audience and on the podium tonight. CIP is the parent organization of OER Durham. OER Durham started hosting racial equity trainings over a decade ago. Our studio where I work took the trainings in 2017 and 18. How many folks in this room have attended a groundwater or phase one training of the Racial Equity Institute? That's right. CIP and OAR have not only helped their community in East Durham, they have lovingly and diligently helped our white friends understand the power and privilege that we carry and how these inequities run through every system of our government, culture, economy, and laws. CIP and OAR have given the white community their humanity and incubated a culture of white anti-racist culture and activism that thrives in this city even when those ideas have lost their national luster. We say thank you, CIP. Congratulations on your new home, and please don't stop.

Thank you. You guys open to franchising in some other counties?

We are working in other counties, and I'm glad you mentioned it. Awesome. Thank you, Mayor, Madam Pro Tem, and members of the council. My name is Ernest Smith. I'm the Transformative Justice Director for Communities in Partnership. I'm going to speak briefly about one aspect of the work that Communities in Partnership does. This weekend, we had our quarterly expungement clinic. We're trying to offer folks who may have had encounters with the justice system an opportunity to have access again. And speaking of working with other counties, right now we're working with the North Carolina Justice Center and other organizations to try to see if we can expand the work that we're doing here in Durham, which touches both Person County, Orange County, and Wake County, into some of the more rural counties in North Carolina. We're trying to orchestrate to have trainings for attorneys and others In the past, we've done a CLE for attorneys around expunctions, and we hope to do even more. We're talking to folks out of Rocky Mount to do trainings in Nash County, Edgecombe County, and Wilson County. OIC out of Rocky Mount, if you've heard of them. We're talking to folks in Hickory to do some trainings out in Catawba and in Catawba, Burke, and Caldwell County. So we're trying to expand the work that we're doing, but our base is here, and the work that we've been doing in our community is being requested to be done in other communities. Thank you.

I grew up in OSC summer camps in Rocky Mountain. Thanks for your work.

Welcome. Good evening, Cameron Smith. I'm one of the co-founders and the executive director of Communities in Partnership. I just want to thank everyone for allowing us to be here this evening. Communities in Partnership started as a community-rooted organization way back in 2012 with one of the unfortunate acts of violence in our community. I am a resident, as all the founding members of Communities in Partnership are, and we came together and decided that the narratives and the outcomes in our community, we wanted to have a voice in what our community developed into, how people thought of it, and what they thought of us. And so out of that actually was born one of the organizations is Communities in Partnership. And I am very honored to serve our organization and our community. So I just want to thank the city for just working with us. This has been a long and arduous process. So many people have put so many hours in, you know, Deputy City Manager Wimbush, Selena. I can't remember her name. She's the city attorney who we've been working with so wonderfully. Just so many people have been working so hard, working to help us kind of come to this point. We have been so blessed to be able, because a lot of nonprofits right now are not in the situation that we are in. And even though it's not as it once was, we still are able to not only take care of ourselves and our communities, but actually branch out and lock arms with other communities. And so I just want to uplift that. You know, Durham is actually being recognized in so many different areas of the work that we are doing even in these very difficult times that I think in the state of North Carolina that our city is really a beacon and a lot of people look to us because we are going to remain dedicated to everyone being humanized and everyone having what they need and everyone being able to reach for the dreams that they want to aspire to for their lives. So I just want to thank you for allowing CIP to work in this area for the years that we have. And we look forward to serving Durham many more years and look forward to partnering with each of you in the coming years on how we can just make life even better for people who traditionally do not have a voice and are traditionally not thought of. So thank you so much.

Thank you. So Cameron, Emmanuel is going to speak with you. There's an organization, Ernest mentioned something, and one of the things that you all are doing, there's an outside organization that reached out to my office that want to bring additional resources to the city. And we didn't really know where to send them. So now we do. So he's going to talk to you. All right. Colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the sale of 103 South Driver Street to Communities in Partnership.

So moved. Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

All right, we're gonna keep this same positive energy all the way to the zoning cases. Take note. All right, before we get to the public housing, not public housing, but the zoning case hearings, number 21, the HUD grant project ordinance, GPOs for CDBG, home, HOPWA, and fair housing. Mr. Bombas, okay. Mr. Bombas, can you hear me? No, I see him online. Mr. Bompas, can you hear me? Hello? Hello? See there? Philip Bonfus, can you hear me? Okay, I'll come back to it. What's the next one?

Yeah.

Here we go right here. All right. I'll come back to that item, but we'll go ahead into our public hearings. Oh, I'm sorry, number three, Cody Walters. Can you hear me, Cody Walters? All right, I'm going to proceed. This is, colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to appoint MacArthur C. Daniels, representing at large, and Scott Powell, representing recreation, urban trails, and greenways to the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission with the terms to expire August 31st, 2028. So moved.

Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Yeah, I'll go ahead to item number 21. I'll entertain a motion to adopt the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD Community Development Block Grant fiscal year 2026 to 2027 grant project ordinance GPO and authorization to execute grant agreement in the amount of $1,900,653 and program income estimate of $50,000 for a total appropriation of $1,950,653. So moved. Second. Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. I'll also entertain a motion to adopt the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD Home Investment Partnerships Program Home Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Grant Project Ordinance, GPO, an authorization to execute grant agreement in the amount of $995,941.18 and program income estimate of $100,000 for a total appropriation of $1,095,941.18. So moved. Second. Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

I'll also entertain a motion to adopt the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, HOPWA, Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Grant Project Ordinance, GPO, and Authorization to Execute Grant Agreement in the amount of $1,037,322. So moved. Second. Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. And lastly, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD fair housing cooperative agreement grant fiscal year 2025 through 2026 grant project ordinance, GPO, and authorizations to execute a grant agreement in the amount of $81,400. So moved. Second. Moved and properly seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. All right. Here's the public hearing. Item number 31, extension of 2019 affordable housing GO bond, GEO bond order.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and council members. My name is John Reese, the city's debt administrator. The purpose of this public hearing is to adopt a resolution extending the maximum time period for issuing these affordable housing bonds under the bond order from seven years to 10 years after November 5th, 2019. Key points to be made are the current bond order was approved by voters in referendum on November 5th, 2019, and is set to expire on November 5th, 2026. The city has issued $54 million to date, leaving $41 million still authorized but unissued. Absent an extension, that remaining authority will expire in November. State law allows the city to seek a one-time extension of that issuance period from seven years to ten years. Approving the extension grants the city more time to spend the remaining outstanding proceeds from the first-issue tranche and issue the remaining authorization of $41 million in better alignment with an updated financial plan for the Forever Home project. In consultation with the city's financial advisors and bond counsel, the finance department plans to issue the remaining $41 million in taxable general obligation housing bonds sometime in spring 2027. I appreciate your consideration and welcome any questions you may have.

Thank you. You've heard the staff report. Any questions technically or technical comments? Council Member Cook.

Thank you for that report. I do have a couple of questions, and I think they're just more so for transparency. I think everyone wants the money to get used, and I understand that this extension seems like the way that we're going to need to do that. There's a big portion of the money that's left unspent, more proportionally than the years that we're asking for the extension. Is it, are we sure we're gonna be able to do the expenditure in the amount of time?

I believe so, yes.

I'm seeing a very positive nod from Director Flora, okay. And is it normal that we get extensions on bonds?

I'm not aware of the city requesting this type of extension before, but it is something that local governments do, and it's a very straightforward process.

Okay, but it's something like relatively frequent that other cities have done, but we have not, to your knowledge. Not to my knowledge. Okay. I think that for me, when I hear this, it's just a little bit confusing because I, The bonds when we go out for them, we are like everything is shovel ready shovel ready shovel ready right we talked about this all the time we're going to be able to expand this money we're going to be able to do it quickly we're ready to go. So what happened here that sort of didn't allow us to be ready to go and expand within that seven year timeframe.

Well, so this referendum was passed back in 2019. Obviously, between now and then, we've had a number of changes. We had COVID happen. We had changes in scoping. I know our colleagues in Housing and Neighborhood Services could speak more to the Forever Home project overall. But I think there were a number of factors in some of the bigger projects and federal funding. But I can only speak from the finance perspective and the

know the issuance and the financing of the actual projects i can add additional thoughts thanks so i would also note that um for an affordable housing bond like this uh you are talking about a much more complex and layered set of projects than you would say with capital projects so with capital projects obviously it's sort of a design build scenario with these projects you had financing you had private and public partners you had structured debt And so while I think it was certainly the intention to complete these projects within the timeframe, I think the conditions that led to this extension are not beyond the realm of sort of normal business practices for these and I think should we issue uh debt going forward for additional affordable housing i think we will certainly take into account our experience with this bond and and try and give as a reasonable uh projection for the council as possible about when we think we can reasonably expend that but i would just add that to the description because i do think the the affordable housing nature of this bond is different than what my many voters might be useful used to when we when we do this for capital projects thank you that's my questions

All right, good evening. So I just have a question. I don't know if, well, maybe you are an appropriate person. So to what so much my colleagues already stated, I just have a question in regards to, at one point we saw that there was some money reallocated for the down payment assistance program, I think about $1.4 million. If we had 8 million left in the first batch and haven't touched $41 million, why was that money? And I believe the explanation was because the project was moving slow, other things. So I want to know would that money be reallocated back?

We'll bring our colleagues from Housing and Neighborhood Services.

Good evening. Sarah Venias, Housing and Neighborhood Services Director. So Councilmember Burris, you're speaking to the funding for down payment assistance. So that funding was reallocated to a development project at the time. My understanding was that that project was moving forward more quickly. and down payment assistance was moving more slowly we have subsequently allocated additional resources to replenish that funding given that now down payment assistance program is moving forward and we're seeing a lot of interest in receiving a lot of applications to that program so to be specific and clarify will you guys will you receive that 1.4 million dollars back do you have a proximate amount of money that will be reallocated back since that was the money that was

reallocated because it was moving slow. So I think at one point last discussion, you guys were running out of money or you only help a certain amount of families. So I would think that if you guys were receiving $1.4 million back, then you would be able to help more families. So that's my question. If you could specifically say, tell me how much you guys are gonna be receiving, that would be really helpful.

Okay, we can provide you with that additional detail. In this fiscal year's budget, we are planning to use dedicated housing fund resources instead of bond because the remaining $95 million bond funding has now been planned for the full amount of funding available for existing projects. So the remaining projects that haven't come forward to Council in contracts for approval are Tribute Rising, which is a Durham Housing Authority large-scale redevelopment project. And then there's a small remaining amount of funding for rental housing redevelopment. And that's the balance of the funding that hasn't been yet brought forward to Council for approval.

So what I'm hearing is you'll provide additional information in regards to the approximate amount of money that will be utilized for that at a later date. Okay, so do we have, can anyone speak to then if we hadn't, again, I think my question was we had eight million left from the first batch and 41 million, then why would we reallocate the money in the first place? Because the program was slow, but you had additional money in the harbor.

We can follow up and provide you with additional details about that.

Okay, because my thing is that when we are investing public dollars, as my colleagues already stated, it's really important to be transparent. And I know there's a lot of work, there's a lot of campaigning around the bond, so it's really important that people, and we know that it's important that our city workers have access to housing, opportunities to purchase housing here in Durham. So I just want to make sure we're clear and transparent about how that money is being utilized and how it's actually pitched to the community.

Thank you. At this time, are there any other questions or comments? All right. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing open. Mr. Bompas, can you hear me?

Philip Bompas, can you hear me?

Yes.

Welcome.

Hello. Sorry. I apologize for last time. Technical difficulties.

No worries. We have you here for item number 31. You have three minutes.

Yes. Um, so I, I guess I just had some questions on it also, because when I, when I do research i guess when i do research on it i see that there i'm not really finding i guess access to where someone would want to use these resources so i guess my question would be where is there are there like are there ways are there easy ways for people to get access to this program or or and is there a uh i think i also if i if i'm understanding correctly uh some of them some some of the or like an amount of money wasn't fully used is that correct that there was not that that the They weren't able to use all of it or or that is, I guess the the details are kind of confusing to me, but for one it sounded like to me is that there was. There was an amount that. wasn't used within. There was. I don't know i'm sorry it's just. Those details were kind of like. confusing but. I expect that if, if this is for affordable housing, then this was, this would be something that I'd like to hear more about and it would be something that was a lot more popular, but I have a hard time trying to find like where people would go to get those resources. And, um, uh, yeah, I guess that's all the comments I have for that.

Okay, thank you so much. So Mr. Bombas, we have your information and what we'll do is set up a meeting. My office will reach out to you and can answer some questions for you. I appreciate your concern in affordable housing. We do want to make sure that we capitalize on your concern because if you're concerned and therefore you understand the information, then you could help inform other people about how this stuff works. So we're going to be reaching out to you. All right, those are all the speakers I have, so therefore I'll declare the public hearing closed and back before the council. Are there any questions or comments? Council Member Baker.

Yeah, just some comments. I think my colleagues asked some questions that are in the spirit of my thinking on this. I would like to ask why we still have this remaining $8 million from the first bond tranche unspent after six years. And I think I'll just kind of point out the obvious that, and I hear that, when we issue bonds for infrastructure, sidewalks, parks, those kinds of things, it is a very different kind of expenditure than affordable housing and the ecosystem of public private partnerships in the construction and development of affordable housing. I hear that and also our city went through one of the greatest growth spurts, one of the greatest levels of displacement of our residents in our history, some of the greatest changes, some of the most growth in many of our neighborhoods And we spent half of the money that we really needed to at the time that we needed that to be spent for the people of our community. And so I think that's important. I know that we've had some structural changes in our city since then, but I think that's just really important to point out and that there's a lot of learning that we need to do from, what has happened between 2019 and today. I think that's really, really important. I'm still excited about the remaining, the second tranche. I'm absolutely going to support this. This is really important. we should extend the authority, but we shouldn't treat this extension as a blank check. I would like to receive more details on the plan moving forward, the projects, what is coming down the pipe. And if residents are assuming the debt through property taxes, I think that the resulting housing should be as deeply affordable, permanently protected, democratically accountable, and publicly or cooperatively controlled as possible. I think that that's really, really important. And... I don't think that this should just be another round of, just a round of gap financing for private housing market. I think that it should be a down payment on permanent and public and social housing. So that's my hope. And I think that I would probably join my colleagues in requesting some additional information following this meeting about what we can expect from the next round, from the tranche, the second tranche. Thank you.

so i i can appreciate those comments and i i do think framing is very important so i'm going to ask staff to come back to the podium right now and i want you to speak non-government speak i want you to speak to the people who are listening at home because i don't need interpretations of what we have before us to be sidelined so there was a 95 million dollar bond we have we've spent 50 um what 53.8 some million. We have 41.1 million left over, 41.2 basically. Why? What's different? What happened? What's different? And how are we going to do better moving forward to expend this funds?

I MIGHT GO AHEAD AND ASK DIRECTOR VENUS TO COME TO THE MICROPHONE. I FEEL LIKE COUNCIL'S LINE OF INQUIRY IS MORE ON THE STATUS OF THE FOREVER HOME DURHAM BOND PROGRAM. SO WHILE I APPRECIATE OUR FINANCE STAFF BEING ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THE MECHANICS OF THE BOND EXTENSION, I THINK THIS IS REALLY MORE OF A PERFORMANCE PROGRAM. Remind council that we have started and I'm excited about the master plan, the Housing and Neighborhood Services is leading on affordable housing. So council will have multiple touch points over the next few months, over the next six months or so to talk about past and future work in affordable housing. So I say that in prelude to any updates that Director Venues can offer. I appreciate the questions and certainly wanna show transparency around how the bond money was acquired, how it was spent and what program is left to be implemented.

So I'll repeat my comment. Government speak can be very complex. And when you're explaining this, I'd like you to make it as simple as possible. If not, it's easily, it can be easily manipulated or interpreted in a way where folks think, okay, the city is holding on to 41 million. Why they won't spend that on people? You know, so I just, if you could please explain just the basic one plus one equals two on this.

Sure, and we will follow up to provide you all with additional information. I also, to the speaker's comments earlier, wanted to share with council and the public that we do have information on our website, on the Durham City website, including pictures and details about all of the projects that have been funded with bond funding so residents can see what progress is being made and what projects have come out of the ground or in progress. one of the things that is really important to keep in mind with affordable housing projects is they often take many years from the initial planning to the units coming out of the ground we also had a pandemic as was already mentioned over the last several years and received an infusion of federal dollars that were also available to support affordable housing projects. So that's part of the reason that when possible, we use those federal resources to support projects and held on to our bond funding to stretch those local dollars as much as we could. So that's a factor that's been at play. We have, I mentioned this earlier, but to your point, Mayor, to try to say it as simply as possible, we have plans for all of the $95 million bond. The projects are in various stages of either they're in planning, they're underway, or they're forthcoming. But that $95 million plan that council approved where we showed voters the plan for all of the items, All of those things are in the works currently and at various stages. There are a couple of projects that we'll be coming forward to. I mentioned Tribute Rising, which is a project that we're partnering with Durham Housing Authority on that will be coming forward to Council to approve that contract. But all of the bond funding is planned for projects. It includes a range of things from development projects to down payment assistance, to small lot development. And when we follow up to provide you all with rent information, you can see all of the details of that.

So thank you for the clarification. That just want to make sure that from where I'm coming from, because I wasn't on council in 2019, so I was just simply a voter when it came around to the bond. So it's really making sure that in terms of transparency, we know how, and I do support this and I'm not going to block because we have urgent need and we're seeing what's happening outside. So that's where the urgency comes from to know that we have these robust plans in the pipeline and then to also to know that we have money that's just kind of like we have it fully utilized and I do get this is a large bond and there's a lot of lessons learned. So for me simply is the questions I've already posed for you, I would like to have those answers and it's just more so like having a clear understanding and maybe have dialogue moving forward about how the money is being utilized and understanding how the money is being exchanged or if they're moving to different pots of money from like the bond fund over here, putting that in plain context is all we're asking for, what I'm asking for.

agreed thank you i think that's that's important and that's why i want to make it very clear so because it's it's been a lot with this going on since 2019 so thank you yeah go ahead thank you if if possible i think at some point with the details that you're providing director venus just there were additional projects that were funded that were not in the original plan because of federal arpa dollars uh durham tech project that was with the county The county also gave us money. They gave us, I think, $10 million. And so we front loaded those because ARPA dollars were going to expire sooner. And so if there could be actual, and those were decisions made by previous councils, right? So we basically used money from the feds that had a sooner expiration date than what we could do with their own local dollars. And there are actually additional projects that were not envisioned in the bond that were able to get funded, if I'm not mistaken. And so if those could all be provided to council, including the time, and if it's, okay, this moved here because it was ARPA, and I know you were not the housing director at that time, but that I would hope has been memorialized somewhere, I think it would be helpful. I remember the decisions that, I'm I think the only one left that remembers those decisions.

So that was Arbor with Mayor O'Neill. Correct. Yes. I remember that.

Yeah. So there was a lot of, for lack of a better word, horse trading on projects because we were trying to front load federal dollars that were expiring sooner. And now, you know, there's a consequence to that decision. Luckily, we have this mechanism to extend our local dollars further. but I think it would be helpful for council members to see kind of the thinking and strategy and why we did what. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And I appreciate colleagues digging in on that. All right. So at this time, I'll entertain a motion. And Madam Clerk, I canceled the vote. Okay, thank you. Entertain a motion to conduct a public... to adopt an order extending the maximum time period for issuing bonds under the bond order from seven years to 10 years after November 5th, 2019, conducting a public hearing concerning the authorization extension and providing for certain other related matters thereto.

So moved.

Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Awesome, thank you. And also I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager or his designee to execute other associated legal documents as necessary to complete this transaction and to make changes to any of the legal documents prior to execution, so long as the changes are consistent with the intent of the agenda item memo and the existing versions of the documents.

So moved.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Item number 32, Comprehensive Plan Amendment A2500002, Evaluation and Assessment, Report Policy Changes. And ready for the staff report.

Good evening, Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, and Honorable Council Members. I'm Aaron Kane with the Planning and Development Department. 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. Staff has completed the first phase of the First Evaluation and Assessment Report, or EAR, of the comprehensive plan. The EAR is mandated by the UDO to be completed every two years to monitor the progress and implementation of the goals and objectives of the Comprehensive Plan and to make any adjustments to place-type map policies. This phase of the EAR contains staff recommendations related to the D policies of the Comprehensive Plan. The D policies are specific policies that are identified to address development. These are the policies used in the Comprehensive Plan Consistency Review document that is included with case materials for zoning and annexation cases. Throughout the last few years, staff have noticed that many policies of the Comprehensive Plan Consistency Review have redundancies, were always or nearly always not applicable, or were always met by meeting UDO standards rather than a zoning proffer. The resulting proposed changes aim to address the identified ambiguities and inconsistencies. These changes are largely technical in nature with the goal of refining the comprehensive plan consistency review by creating clarity and conciseness in the policies and the way they are applied. Staff has also noticed proposed changes to the commentary of these policies. The commentary is not a part of the comprehensive plan, but it's something staff is including with this report to provide context regarding the intent of the policy and how the policy is applied in order to create consistency and transparency in review. Staff began work on this project in the summer of 2025. and took the proposed edits to the October 2025, November 2025, and January 2026 Planning Commission meetings. During this time, staff met with various community groups to receive feedback on the proposed policy edits. The resulting proposed policy changes in front of you tonight reflect the incorporation of feedback from various community groups, boards, and other City of Durham departments. The updated edits were then taken to JCCPC in April of 2026 and a JCCPC subcommittee later that month to review the proposed changes in detail. In June of 2026, staff brought that version back to the JCCPC, provided input and endorsed a final draft. The proposed policy changes were approved by the Board of County Commissioners unanimously on August 10th and are before you for your consideration tonight. And I'm here to answer any questions if you have them.

Thank you for your report. Are there questions? Yes, Council Member Rist.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Kane. I just have one clarifying question. So I appreciate that the UDO requires the planning department every couple of years to do these evaluation and assessment reports to make sure our code is up to date, sort of useful, streamlined, that kind of thing. I'm just curious since we did get, we got comments by email from folks about, and I think also in the planning commission comments about some concern about lack of sort of engagement or whatever. So can you say more what the UDO says about what's like, what's the, what's the, what's the prescribed sort of engagement when we do these reports, right? I know you mentioned we went through JCCC planning commission, but I wonder if the UDO prescribes any sort of level of community engagement just so we make sure we're getting that right on this.

Sure, yeah. The UDO does not prescribe anything for community of engagement for the EAR beyond the minimum requirements for public hearings at Planning Commission and at City Council. There's nothing more than that that is required. Again, it's expected to be a technical in nature, and the intent here is not to really change any policy in any direction that we get from Council. It's really more of a clarification exercise. We did meet with groups such as DOST, Preserve Rural Durham, and others regarding input on those policy changes, but that's not mandated by the UDO.

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying, appreciate it.

All right, thank you. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing open, and I have several speakers. I will start online. First up, Katie Ross, can you hear me? Ms. Ross, can you hear me? You're still muted. Can you unmute yourself? Sorry. I'm here. Welcome. You have three minutes.

Okay. Just what Councilmember Wriste was just alluding to, I'd like to point out that what's required is an evaluation and assessment report. There is no requirement to make any changes. to the comp plan. So that's number one. And change is not always good. I want to go back to Trayburn and the place type map, which you all very thoroughly considered on May 18th and then bounced it back to the JCCPC, among others. Well, nothing has really changed since then. And I think a majority of you were not in favor of changing the UGB. I know that is a big concern up here in North Durham. And what I'd like to... point out what there was at the time. They said it was just overlooked. It should have been changed. You know, I don't know when 10 years ago, but that is not true. I read you the report that it was thoroughly considered and I believe, uh, uh, vice mayor, um, Cabrera remembered that it was thoroughly considered. Um, it's the same, it's the same 193 acres and was thoroughly considered. Uh, so the only thing that's changed, it's a B O C C. passed the amendments, but there was no engagement there. And in fact, I was the only person that tried to speak and I was not allowed to speak. So they got no community input and we are going to be requesting they rescind that vote and have a full hearing. So that's one. And I would say, if you're going to consider changing the UGB, at least know what they're changing it for and what's going to go in there. And that's what they've repeatedly said. We don't know what might go into Trayburn, but we just want to change UGB in case something wants to go in. Well, I think you should know what's going to go in before you take that drastic step. So there's that. I would like you all to be very careful about making changes in the comp plan or even in the commentary because it i'm sure you realize that there's a big movement towards eliminating public hearings and having all zoning decisions and and individual building projects approved administratively and shutting out the public from those decisions that would not be popular at all i can tell you that And it's only through public hearings that we have learned about real mistakes within the planning department, such as Mason Farms, which the county got very bad advice on that, and also Discovery School, in which the planning department was allowing the school to admit 11th and 12th graders when they're conditioned to only teach up to 10th. So just- Thank you.

Wait, she's online. Oh, okay, Melina is, okay. All right, Donna Stanback, can you hear me?

Yes.

Welcome. You have three minutes.

Okay. Good evening, City Council. My name is Donna Steinbach. So our background with these policies is long and pretty extensive. And we worked the comprehensive plan in 2022 to 23. And then we've been working on these policies, how they apply to development for since 2020. So my concern is over these one and a half years, there's been so many requested changes and they are major as indicated by the Planning Commission members that made comments that at least two of them said there were major changes and they didn't feel that they got the right amount of community and neighborhood involvement. I would like to see the same kind of neighborhood meetings and investment that happened with the comp plan before making these major changes to that document. I feel that some of the policies were weakened. Well, so do I. And so I'd like to speak about a couple of policies real quick. Policy 120 is to protect the rural character of Durham outside the UGB. They're requesting that D to be removed. I want to request that it stay. This policy is different from the reference policy 121 because policy 121 is talking about place types for inside and outside the UGB. versus character. We gave the planning department a list of items that represent character and that we look at. And we've been presenting on this policy several times recently because of some of the conflicts between the rural and the more urban areas. So I'd also like to speak on policy 165. I feel that this is regarding non-contiguous properties and allowing people to be involved just by them, people saying they were involved. There's no formal process for the handover and This is very important because we've had people in the past, like with Gateway and the Stewart property, and people can speak on that more, that where they weren't even invited to the council meetings and didn't get invitations, and they were significantly impacted.

The rule- Thank you so much, Ms. Stanback. Next, I have Wanda Allen.

Yes, this is Wanda Allen.

Welcome, Ms. Allen.

My address is on file. Yes, ma'am, you have three minutes.

Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am, thank you. You have three minutes, go ahead.

Okay, thank you. The concern with the EA has been expressed to the planning department, especially many, many times, but I'd like to express again tonight the policy 120, protect the urban character outside the urban growth boundary. They are suggesting the removal of D. That is not acceptable. Policy 121 does not cover this, and I'd like to expand a little bit on that. This will destroy the plan to maintain 30% of the county remaining rural. Also, this policy shows the needs of the farming community and the impact on the impact when you annex their farms. Policy 167, future growth areas. This policy addresses infrastructure such as fire, EMS. If you remove this policy and make it not a D, What you will do is continue to put your citizens that you're supposed to be protecting in jeopardy. As we have seen in the past, they have taken property out of the future growth area and immediately it comes back to the city council and they put it in for a vote. For an example, Perry's Farm, Howard's Place, they were brought back to the city council, leaving Durham citizens without a fire station and the infrastructure. Vote against the EAR because it does not, it has not incorporated the citizens' comments, nor protects the Durham citizens. Thank you.

Thank you. Next I have Laura McCall.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, welcome, Laura. You have three minutes.

Hi, Melora, address on file. I emailed you earlier, but I believe this process has moved beyond technical in nature. Some may be technical, but many are substantive changes to how the comp plan operates to accommodate an internal review document. I think there's an important question about what exactly is being approved tonight. Perhaps two things, policy updates and approval, or at least apparent approval of staff's internal interpretations for the comp plan consistency review. The 2018 EAR report had a brief justification column, and what we see tonight is much more developed text with multiple iterations, and it appears to serve as staff's working interpretation for consistency review, yet no revised consistency review document was also provided. So is this commentary the proper justification for changes to an adopted plan? Is it establishing how staff will interpret compliance during development review, or is it both? Did other voting bodies have this clarity? The public should not have to guess what the voting bodies are being asked to consider and approve. And these distinctions have consequences. Policy 165 says annexations should not create donut holes. The commentary creates a new standard under which an annexation that creates a donut hole can nevertheless be considered consistent if the affected property owner was invited to join the annexation that test does not exist in the adopted policy but staff has created it are you approving that tonight 15 items have no policy track changes but the commentary does are we missing a history of changes or clarity about exactly what is being considered endorsed and voted on At least five policies have no track changes at all. So what exactly has been considered? And policy 167 and 168 raise another serious concern. 167 losing its D designation and 168 being modified and interpreted to apply only to a UGB amendment request. If an annexation results in a UGB expansion, as we see in practice, that interpretation risks making the policy unavailable in precisely the development decisions it was intended to guide. If removing a D designation is a technical edit while adding one elsewhere is justified because, quote, staff considers the policy important to development review, end quote, Then that designation plainly has substantive meaning. It changes how the communities, even bodies like the BOCC, can rely on them after nearly three years. Those aren't administrative. The proposed changes and expanded interpretations change how adopted policies function in practice. The plan went through extensive public process, but tonight we have technical and substantive changes intertwined without the level of engagement appropriate for the substantive policy changes. This process has exceeded its mandate and importantly does not have a defined deadline. Please don't approve or selectively approve changes tonight. Send this back to separate technical from substantive changes. Provide clear justification and clarify what exactly is being approved regarding consistency review interpretation.

Thank you. Next I have Christina Falcon Lingley.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, welcome. You have three minutes.

Christina Falcone- Great. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Christina Falcone-Lingley. My address is on file. I'm speaking tonight urging you to reject the proposed edits specifically to policies 167 and 168. First, removing the D designation from policy 167 strips its binding regulatory weight and silences community input. D policies exist so residents can hold developers accountable during consistency reviews. Removing the D designation turns requirements like demonstrating infrastructure capacity and clear community need into optional guidelines, ignoring years of extensive public engagement. Second, the proposed edit to policy 168 creates a direct incentive to breach the UGB. Adding language that names generalized community goals like affordable housing as justification for UGB expansion creates a false trade-off and incentivizes urban sprawl. Affordable housing and rural preservation are both vital, but they serve different purposes in the plan, having policies targeting each one specifically. This language, that affordable housing justifies expansion into the rural environment and is considered compliant by staff, is clearly not a technical edit, given how easily council could debate its merits tonight, which signals that it is significant in nature. You can build affordable housing anywhere inside the boundary, but you cannot relocate rural farmland or critical watersheds once they are lost. It uses a critical general community need as a loophole to bypass smart growth strategies embedded in this plan and is counterproductive to the policy to preserve character and vital resources outside the UGB. And I'll end with, as a lifelong Durham resident, I've always been proud that Durham is a beacon of progressive and creative innovation, a city that leads, does things differently, and refuses to settle for the status quo. Allowing developer interests to erode our rural boundaries isn't progressive. It's a standard suburban sprawl. Let's lead with real creative planning that protects our environment and serves our residents and not fall into the trap of becoming just another city that looks like everyone else. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And next, I have Annette Rice.

Good evening, council members, staff and involved community members. My name is Annette Rice, and you have my address on file. Tonight, I urge you not to adopt the EAR as presented this evening. I've been following along in this adoption process, and the main thing that has stuck out to me is it doesn't seem as if any of the proposed modifications either strengthen or reinforce the goals and aspirations of our comprehensive plan. you've already heard several examples of changes the greater public community fields have been diluted in intent within our these changes while some of the proposed edits are clearly technical or provide helpful clarification for staff do eliminate existing redundancies many of them including the removal of the d designations for some policies while adding it to others without public input Please go well beyond technical edits and alter the intent and application of policies were developed through Durham's extensive public engagement process on our comprehensive plan. Regardless of whether these changes are viewed as beneficial or not, there are substantive changes being made to the comprehensive plan in the year, and these changes deserve the appropriate public review process. Thank you.

Thank you, and lastly, I have Elizabeth Miller.

Mr. Mayor, she's not online.

She's no longer on? Okay, and Teresa Howells is not still on, all right. All right, at this time, I'll move to our in-person speakers. I have Tammy Suwaya, Robin Barefoot, Pam Andrews, Tina Motley-Pearson, Rebecca Freeman, Thomas Freeman, Mary Molina.

Hmm. I do not see it up here.

It's not loaded. It's not loaded.

This is not ours. Okay. It's not loaded.

I'm not seeing it.

And did you all sign up in the order you need to speak or are you going to go your own? Okay. All right. Gotcha. All right.

Sounds good.

That's not it.

Thank you. It's done that every time.

Well, we're getting close to nine. So I'm gonna just call for an early break while we get that set up. And by the time we get back, hopefully we'll be ready. So colleagues, let's take a 10. We're in recess.

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All right, is the presentation ready? Ready?

Sure, I'm ready.

Welcome. You have three minutes.

Okay. All right. Okay. Tammy Swaya, my address is on file. Preservable Durham got involved when the comprehensive plan came out first. When the EAR was wrote, we gave in our thoughts on changes that we felt like would be important, especially being in the rural area. As we understand, in June, like Aaron had said, the JCCP was going to take the EAR offline and we felt like we would be getting some feedback or have time to go through the EAR, the one that would be presented to council and it was presented to our county commissioners last week, which we honestly did not realize it was coming up for a vote. So we are taking that up with our county commissioners separately. We've realized that it's not the UDO, we know the comp plan's not law, but it does influence the UDO, and we're about to do another UDO rewrite. And I wanna make sure that I point out here that The partials that Ms. Ross pointed out, out in Stadville, there's four parcels here that are lots of acres, but when I was looking at this this weekend, I realized that it butts up against Merck and Company. If you take this EAR and if you look at rezoning, those four parcels talk about the EAR. And this was controversial before. If this is passed, would this give policies to have those four parcels to be annexed? I'm just putting that out there. This council has been consistent on the sensitivity of annexations that move the UGB. And in my opinion, if you take these comments and you approve them, then I think you're going against past things that you have stood for, which we definitely appreciate. The changes in this EAR does impact the rural areas. It's more than just technical. And I hope you will pause and take that time to really look into it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up.

I just want to hold this up. This is the work of Preserve Rural Durham on this topic in the last six months. We have studied this intensely. The EAR process has been followed by Preserve Rural Durham closely with copious amounts of comments submitted, meetings with the planning department, and emails to leaders. After the June JCCPC meeting, we thought there would be more community follow-up, not straight to a vote. Next. The policy 120 is very important to those that live in the rural parts of this county. Don't remove the D. This policy is not captured in the policy 121. For example, policy 78 says it's supposed to have 30% of the county remain rural when this is all said and done in 2050. This is not likely to happen with all these annexations. This is real life for those of us that live in rural areas. This policy would be added to the consistency review document. How big are these facilities? What is a rural commercial? What functions do they provide to the community? What are institutional campuses and community institutions? What about the critical watershed? Here is an example of parcels in the critical watershed trying to be sold for commercial after hundreds of loads of illegal dumping occurred. Rural parts of the county need to understand what is being done to impact our way of life. This will be a permanent change for those little rural land areas. Does public work facilities also include data centers? 167, what policy will protect the future growth areas and ensure the infrastructure needed will be put in place to these FGA areas if the designation is removed? The FGA label was removed in October of 2022 for Perry's Farm on Kemp Road and Howard's Place as a prerequisite to being annexed. Three years later, there is still no improvements to the infrastructure in this area, specifically the fire station promised at Kemp Road. No police station, no EMS improvements, no schools. Finally, go to 13, gross numbers show that there's a need. There is less fire equipment and firefighters at Station 8 and 17 presently due to the latest reassignments.

My name is Tina Motley-Pearson. My address is on file. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. As you probably noticed by now, changes in policies can have an intonate in 17 or both within a 10-minute drive from Perry's Farm. The national standard for fire response is between preserving life and property. So ask yourself, could changes to these policies negatively impact citizens?

Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Rebecca Freeman, and my address is on file. I have a little bit of overlap with Tina just a little bit, but I've got some different depth from her. Posse 1, number two, Howard's Place on NC 98 is under construction now, 499 dwelling units. Number three is the Durham Charter School at NC 98 and Kemp Road. Nothing, the slide number 11, this slide gives more in depth about the critical lack of fire protection presented to city council at the third hearing of Kemp Road and Annie Perry Farm. The redevelopment pool from the future growth area approved to develop, there's still no fire station from this future growth area. And a developer has already conducted one neighborhood meeting for proposed Laurel Creek development along Kemp and Cully Roads in the heart of this future growth area? Will they be allowed to develop? No fire station in the works, not in capital improvement plan budget for southeastern future growth area. Policy 167 should remain D. Thank you.

Thank you, my name is Thomas Freeman. I'm a lifelong citizen of Durham and a Durham County homesteader. I'd like to draw your attention to policy 165. I will not read it, I'll go directly to the commentary, the underlying portion. An annexation that creates a new donut hole would be consistent with this policy if the applicant invites the property owner of the donut hole to join in the annexation petition, even if the property owner does not join the request. Is this consistent with state law, the general statutes? You have plenty of attorney pose it to them. An applicant invites others to join the annexation process, should not rectify the donut hole, which would still exist. Continuing on with policy 165, Laurel Creek, as was mentioned just prior, is a proposed development that is not contiguous to the city limits and is in the future growth area. Does an invitation to neighbors one half mile away correct the non-contiguous situation? Let me say that again. Try not to laugh. Does an invitation to neighbors one half mile away correct the non-contiguous situation? I don't think so. Donut holes, enclaves, satellites. The Stewart family, a family that I hope, I hope you remember the Stewart family. This is off US 70. The Stewart family was left living inside a donut hole. Let's ask them what they think. Thank you very much.

Good evening. I'm Robin Barefoot. My address is on file. Mayor Leo, I'm going to have a positive attitude because I was so happy to see Cameron Smith here tonight and CIP getting the opportunity to purchase that property. So that was really good news. So I had made a lot of notes to talk about a lot of the issues you've already heard. What I'm gonna say is that Ms. Melora and Ms. Christina and Ms. Annette spoke really eloquently about the fact that these are not just technical changes, these are substantive changes, and that they are prematurely adopted if they're voted on tonight. And I think they were prematurely adopted when they were approved last Monday night by the Board of County Commissioners. I don't think the board knew what they were doing. I don't think the public knew what was going on that evening. And I've emailed all of you my concerns about the public notice to that meeting and also the ludicrous of this land chaining, that I can get 25 people between here and Virginia to agree that I belong to the Commonwealth of Virginia if I just get them all to consent to an annexation to that state. So I think that there's a lot here going on and I don't really think that we can trust what's coming out of the planning department because I think there's an agenda to make things easier for developers and I think that there's an opportunity for us to think more carefully about the beauty of the comprehensive plan. It talks about making sure that we preserve rural character. It talks about making sure that there are reliable roads and utilities. I think it talks about the fact that we want to make sure that there are adequate services. And you heard PRD go into robust detail about those things. And so I think the comprehensive plan is intended to be a community effort. And I think the community has not been adequately notified and engaged. If there's time, I'd like to allot it to Pablo Friedman, who was unable to sign up tonight because he was held up at the front gate. So I'm signing off.

Thank you.

Good evening, council members. I haven't been here at this podium for more than a year, but I figured this was pretty important. My name is Mary Molina, and I'm asking you to vote no on item 32. The county recently streamlined UDO rules to freeze industrial threats. This amendment forces a premature urban growth boundary expansion before our joint data center utility and environment studies are even finished. Passing it hands developers a back door right past our moratorium lines. Tonight, we hold you and your exact public promises from May and June to account. Mayor Williams, you called for an indefinite megawatt ban. Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, you warned against trusting unvetted developer timelines. Councilman Baker, you pushed for a strict two-year freeze. Councilwoman Burris, you warned us that a weak pause feels like just seconds. A yes vote breaks those promises. It moves over 700 acres of Traeburn inside the urban growth boundary. And it invites hyperscale data centers right onto our critical drinking water sources. Councilwoman Cook, you demanded environmental data, but this text uses weak square footage rules instead of megawatt limits, and it creates an AI loophole. Councilman Rist, you said we must trust our staff, but you can't trust them and rush this too. Councilman Kopach, you warned against figuring out utility costs at some later date. This would hand developers a blank check. Finally, voting yes strips the city's leverage over donut holes, and it triggers systemic planning failures. Hold yourself to your words, to your own words. Stand by your public commitments, and vote no on 32. Thank you.

Thank you. Those are all of the speakers I have signed up. And let's see here.

I'm about to. I just want to make sure I think all the speakers I had signed up in person. I did it once virtually.

All right, at this time, I'll declare the public hearing closed and back before the council. Any comments, colleagues? Yep, go ahead. Council Member Kobach.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, just a few questions to start for planning staff. Thank you, Mr. Kane. So first of all, just a point of clarity, Trayburn. Yes. Is that under consideration this evening?

No.

Okay. I just want to make that clear. It had been the last time we heard about the EAR, but it is not included in the package this evening, correct?

That is correct.

Okay. Second, can you speak to the commentary section and more broadly to the comments in policy 165 about the donut holes?

Yes. So we had a case several months ago and I do not recall exactly which one it was. and I checked with other staff on the team and they don't recall exactly which one it was but we had a case that was creating a donut hole and there was discussion about whether or not we should it should be considered consistent with the policy and there was a council member who stated that if if the applicant reaches out to the property owner of the to be created donut hole if approved and that we should consider it consistent with the policy if that person can if the applicant can document that they reached out because state law does not allow for anybody to require somebody to annex if a property owner is going to be part of a donut hole because of an approved annexation there's there's nothing in state law that mandates that person be annexed and so the request was to um allow the policy to be considered consistent if the applicant could document that. And we have been following that direction since then. That was at least back in February, I want to say, or maybe even before then. We've been following that direction and that's why we included it in the commentary. If Council directs us to no longer apply it that way, we'll take that out of the commentary. It's our attempt to follow the direction Council gave us several months ago.

Thank you. Can you just speak more broadly about the intention of the commentary section, providing that, publishing that in the EAR?

Sure. We are just trying to, we are doing our best to be transparent and to provide to you all in the public staff's thinking and interpretation of the policy as written. It is not part of the comprehensive plan, so it can be changed. you know, at your direction, but it is our attempt to, it is our best attempt to follow the policies as you all have directed us to do.

Do the changes to the comp plan through the EAR impact the upcoming UDO or LDC?

No, not directly.

Can any of these changes allow a backdoor for data center development where they wouldn't be possible under the moratorium?

No. As a reminder, these are policies. They are not ordinances. We are not changing. We are not proposing any changes to our development ordinances. We are not proposing any changes to resolutions and moratoria that you have approved. None of that is changing.

And then some of the policies where I'm hearing concern about, you know, has to do with policy 121 and 120, around 167 in the relation to 168 and 119. Could you just talk about the rationale for kind of the removal of the D's in those cases and what staff was trying to accomplish? Sure. Where we hear that tension.

I'll read policy 120 in its entirety. Protect the rural character of Durham outside the urban growth boundary. That is very difficult for staff to analyze on a particular zoning or annexation case as it comes to you. What exactly is the rural character? Those are subjective assessments that you all take as elected officials. And remember, removal of the D designation does not remove it from the comprehensive plan. Our intention, it will, should you approve this, it will stay in the comprehensive plan. You may still cite that as a reason to deny an annexation that is perfectly valid. It is just difficult for staff to make an objective assessment as to whether or not a rural character is being altered by any particular development. That's a difficult thing for staff to do, and we would prefer that that be a policy decision made by you. And so that's why we're requesting it be removed from the D designation. Policy 121 is much more, objective it says only these particular place types can be outside the urban growth boundary and follow this policy again you all can make a decision to annex to assign a place type that is your prerogative these policies are simply guidance for you to help you make your decisions and for staff to provide its professional assessment of the proposal There were questions asked today about rural commercial. What exactly does that mean? It's generally small-scale neighborhood commercial. Rural commercial does not include a data center because, again, rural commercial is intended for outside the urban growth boundary where there is no water and sewer service. So it would have to be some sort of commercial enterprise, a cafe, a veterinary clinic, some sort of commercial activity that can operate on well and septic. Because again, there's no public water and sewer provision. Utilities and public works, those are public facilities the city and or county owns. An example would be a water treatment plant or some sort of other public facility. It's not a private entity. That's not what that's intended to be. Community institutions are things like churches, schools. And we do want to have access to those things outside the urban growth boundary. So that's the intention here to provide us a little more of an objective policy by which to review any applications that come forth outside the urban growth boundary that's helpful thank you can you speak also to 167 and the related policies and what staff's assessment was there yes 167 again to us is similar to 120 in that it is quite subjective um it says that there should be adequate public facility public utilities what What is an adequate public utility? What is a significant change? Our preference is to use 168. That is a little more prescriptive and a little more cut and dry than 167, which is why we're looking to follow that rather than 167. Again, 167 would stay in the Comprehensive Plan. It is certainly a policy that we encourage you to use and your assessment of any projects and annexations that come before you. We just as staff find it moving into the realm of policy rather than professional judgment, and we'd prefer to not be put into that box. That's really your realm rather than ours.

And then there's concern about this process of removing parcels from the future growth area, steps that's been taken in the past by past councils. What is the impact of recommended changes to the comp plan through the EER to the ability to remove properties from the FGA?

None. There are no proposals to change any boundaries of the FGA through any FGA through the EER.

And maybe some of my councillors can pick this up, and I don't remember which policy was referenced around that, but thank you, at least for your response to that. I will pause there and probably circle back. Thank you for your answers. You're welcome.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Burris.

Thank you, Mr. King. So just want to go back to the policy 165 and some of the change in language. A concern for me is a situation like what happened with the stewards in the gateway where it feels as though that when you, you're kind of forcing people out when you have, like, just think about the quality of life experience, right? When you have all this development happening around you and you are in the middle of that. So I just want to think in terms of like addressing language change, but also the quality of life we're providing, because I do see how some residents may have a little distrust and i would hope to mend their relationship amongst planning departments so i want to know what considerations are you making for folks and their quality because it does feel like there's a pattern of and correct me if i'm wrong i've gone out on mineral springs and been down the area you can kind of see clearly where okay i can tell this person did not sell out and so then you're subjected to all this massive building around you and all the quality of life so just try to think about how to mitigate that if that policy um We're given a lot of good merit to trust the developer actually is going to engage a person, but how do we manage that or ensure that actually happens?

So the way we do that, let's say there's a proposal brought forth and that proposal for annexation is going to provide a donut hole. We ask for documentation, usually in the form of an email, to the property owner of the donut hole. inviting them to join the annexation, not necessarily the rezoning, but the annexation. And we work with the applicants to think about ways that they can provide that. Again, that does not remove the donut hole. The donut hole will still be there. It does not force anyone to annex. The reason the donut hole is coming in is because the property owner does not want to annex at this time for whatever reason, and they have every right to do that. What we heard council members say in the past was that if a good faith effort has been made to reach out to property owners who are going to be part of the donut hole and they still choose not to participate in the annexation, which is their right, then we would still consider this policy having been met. council if if if you all do not want us to follow that line of reasoning anymore we're happy to take that out again it's our attempt to follow the direction that this council has given us previously

Thank you for that because I just, I don't feel like just the email, I think about the technicalities in that and if you have the wrong email address or people, if it goes to spam, is there a timeframe they have to respond to the developer?

We don't get that specific. It's all a case by case basis. Often there have been times when the applicant has provided us an email response that says no, I'm not interested. And we let it go with that. This doesn't happen that often. I don't want anybody to think that this is a regular occurrence. It's certainly the minority of cases that come before you. But again, that was us attempting to implement your direction. And if your direction is different, we'll change it.

Now thank you for that, because I just want to, as we explore the ways to build upon efficiency, so it doesn't feel like a really efficient process, there's not anything that solidifies it, but just thinking about sometimes how, in recent meetings we talked about the proffers and how we monitor and tracking those, so I just want to make sure we're really clear on how we're engaging community and how we're building community as we go out forward, because this doesn't feel like the best opportunity for this, so I'll yield first to my questions.

Councilmember Baker, you have any questions? Go ahead.

Thank you. I feel like I'm processing this, but maybe I'm mishearing. But it's really interesting because in the answers, I feel like we flip-flopped like 12 times in these answers. The first thing that is very worrisome to me is that y'all have already changed the recommendation based on a comment that was made by a council member. We never formally took a vote about that. And now the request is, tell us if you don't want us to follow this recommendation as opposed to like, do you want us to put this in and start using this recommendation? Which I think should have been how it should have gone because that comment could have been case specific. And so the fact is that now we've been getting recommendations from staff that say that something is consistent that might have just been because someone reached out to neighbors about annexing.

i want to be so our interpretation of that meeting was it was mentioned by a council member and i asked is this how we want to move forward and i got head nods and so we changed it again we will go back to you know we will go to another interpretation if you want uh we're fine with that yeah i have no memory of that and i mean and and i also like head nods

I don't know, that feels a little bit iffy to me because also it's like we didn't talk about it clearly and we also didn't talk about it maybe in like the broad applicability. Yeah, that to me feels really strange and I didn't know that that was happening and I feel like I take copious notes, and I don't recall us ever taking any sort of formal, making a formal decision about that. There was not a formal vote. But also, it's interesting because then the reasoning for some of the other things is that we're taking out more subjective decisions, but in this situation, Policy 165, we're actually adding in more subjective decisions and taking out more prescriptive decisions. There either is or is not a donut hole. That is distinct. But then did they do enough to reach out? Did the email go through? I don't know. It's like we're adding in subjectivity. But I also, this is not going to be questions. You don't have to respond. Yeah, I think what's really getting me here is that we have a lot of conversation in lots of different spaces about subjectivity, right? And for a long time, we've taken data that we have only done quantitative data, right? And for a long time, we've been missing out on really important things because we're not looking at qualitative data. And I think that in the same vein, this policy document, it's a guidance document and it is the language that is subjective in there is meant to be subjective. That is what community decided was important. And we put in subjective findings And there's lots of places all over the comp land that is a vibe check. And we've had this conversation. I've asked staff this conversation multiple times. How are we making this decision? What does it mean that it's sort of like the character? And that's an example that you gave. But we've been talking about this in lots of other spaces. And it is often vibes. And I have asked in the past, maybe we should think about having more of a metric for some of these things. But without going back to community and the community-led document, to me, just taking out the subjectivity isn't the right move. And I understand that the policies still exist, and so we can still apply them, but it's not what we're going to be given in our packet to make our decisions. And so I just, I'm finding this to be very strange. Like, this to me is like, counteracts the entire point of the guiding document, which is that we want to have more subjectivity. We want to have decisions that are made up here based on policy after hearing the input, right? Like it's not, we don't have to follow any of these things. They're all guiding documents. We don't have to follow the comp plan. And oftentimes we don't follow the comp plan. We get projects up here all the time that are not consistent with the comp plan and we vote them to annex them, create donut holes. We do these things all the time. So to me, this is like, If we're gonna make these decisions and we're gonna change what is coming before us, what is prioritized, then we need to have community input on that. It's a community document. So this isn't meeting the mark for me tonight.

Governor Baker, were you in the queue? Go ahead, yeah, then I'll follow you.

All right. Colleagues, part of what we're seeing here is that Durham is unique. A few years ago, I worked on the Wake County Comprehensive Plan, and I remember at the time thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to be incredibly complicated because there are so many different local governments in Wake County. There's all of the different municipal governments. They each have a planning department. They each have a planning commission. And then Wake County has a planning department and planning commission. Oh my gosh, this is gonna be crazy. I think what we're seeing is how complicated it is when you have one planning department, one planning commission, one comprehensive plan, and one unified development ordinance between two different elected bodies. It makes things very complicated. And I've heard it from staff as well. It's hard and it's laborious and it's time consuming to take these kinds of documents and changes between multiple different elected bodies. And part of what makes it complicated as well is that we also have another joint body for planning, which is the Joint City-County Planning Committee, where some of these conversations occur, but It's a quirky committee. It's a quirky board. A lot of people don't know when things are going there. And sometimes that's the last shot for really thinking through comprehensively about different documents or amendments to documents, because then it moves on to each individual board. And we can't function as a local government if county commission is approving one set of amendments and city council is approving another set of amendments. So Durham is unique. THERE ARE SOME BENEFITS, I THINK, TO HAVING A SINGLE SHARED PLANNING DEPARTMENT, PLANNING COMMISSION, COMPREHENSIVE PLAN, AND UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE, BUT AS WE CAN SEE, AND WE SEE IT AND WE CAN FEEL IT RIGHT NOW, JUST STRUCTURALLY SPEAKING, THERE ARE A LOT OF COMPLICATIONS WITH THAT. ANOTHER THING THAT'S A BIT UNIQUE, WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES, BUT WE'RE CERTAINLY IN THE MINORITY, IS THAT THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT DOESN'T MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND TO US. that's a decision that has been made and carries on in practice. But in many or most other cities and communities, planning departments are making recommendations, evaluating critical thinking, looking at, the quantitative and qualitative analysis in making a recommendation. Not that it has to be followed, but folks who are doing deep dives on all of this, making those recommendations on each of these separate cases. To that, I do have one real quick question for staff, thinking about, Councilmember Burris' reference to the Stewart family in that case, which created that donut hole. Has staff recommended against cases that create donut holes?

So as you mentioned, we don't make recommendations on these cases. We provide the information and we provide our review on the comprehensive plan. If memory serves, that case happened previous to the direction we thought we had gotten. And so we would have, I would have to look it up, but I believe we would have said that it did not meet policy 165 because it was creating a donut hole.

Okay, thank you. And the comprehensive plan specifically says staff will recommend against approval of annexations that create donut holes. My day job is writing comprehensive plans, and I can just tell you this is an art, not a science. Creating comprehensive plans, interpreting comprehensive plans, and implementing comprehensive plans is an art, not a science. And I'm not ragging on the planning department right now for pointing out that and Council Member Cook pointed this out. We don't, how do you follow this? I mean, there's so many different ways you can interpret it. It takes critical thinking. So whether this passes tonight or not, I mean, I think that shows it's about critical thinking. It's about looking at all the different pieces put together and making a smart decision based on the context of the situation. The comprehensive plan is excellent and important guidance. And a lot of this is based on the culture in each jurisdiction as well. And I'm talking too much. So we did discuss this at the June Joint City County Planning Committee. I had a lot of questions. Some of them were clarified. I think there's some things that are counterintuitive that look like we're loosening things, but we're actually tightening things up. There were some changes that we were able to make. And then there were some instances where it was just kind of an agree to disagree on certain things. I will say this, this feels, can I get a little extra time, like one more minute? Thank you. Sorry, buddy. I think that making this level of detailed amendments to the comprehensive plan, unless we are really, really sticking to every single word and following every single word in the comprehensive plan is a lot of work for not very many payoffs, not a lot of corresponding benefits. I'm not sure that I recommend that we do this kind of thing again without a more comprehensive overhaul with more community engagement. I feel like we see a lot of different cases where the place type calls for green, walkable, mixed use transit development and the proposal that comes before us is like single family and town homes. you know, the ComPlan, the interpretation of ComPlan is, you know, meets 19 out of 22 different policies. And where's the strong guidance in implementing the comprehensive plan there? So I agree that some of what we are seeing in this item I think some of it's perfectly fine. I think some of it is beneficial. I think in general, if we step back, I don't think this is a great use of everyone's time. I disagree with some of it. I have an issue with the general spirit. I DON'T THINK THAT PASSING THIS WOULD MEAN THAT THE WORLD IS ENDING, BUT I ALSO DON'T SEE THE BENEFIT. I DON'T THINK THIS IS NECESSARILY MOVING US IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION AND TIGHTENING THINGS UP AND MAKING THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN BETTER. SO THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

COUNCIL MEMBER RIST. THANKS MR. MAYOR. I'LL BE BRIEF. IT'S GOT A COUPLE QUESTIONS FOR MR. So I did read through all the 19 pages of the changes. I appreciate that it sort of had the track changes there. I mean, I appreciate some of the comments from residents and here on the dais. And the one thing that did stand out to me was 165 seems like the language that says, you know, as long as you sort of talk to somebody, you know, that does seem a little bit sort of like, A LITTLE BIT NOT VERY, IT SEEMS A LITTLE BIT SOFT. SO I WONDER IF THERE IS A WAY TO SORT OF STRENGTHEN THAT SOMEHOW TO MAKE SURE IT'S A REAL REQUEST, THAT SOMEONE'S ACTUALLY REALLY REACHING OUT WITH A SERIOUS REQUEST TO JOIN AN ANNEXATION, NOT JUST CHECKING A BOX. I DON'T KNOW IF THERE'S A WAY TO DO THAT, BUT I DO THINK THAT'S ONE THAT SEEMS LIKE IT'S A LITTLE BIT LIKE PRETTY VAGUE.

WE CAN DO THAT. AGAIN, IT'S COMMENTARY, SO IT'S NOT PART OF THE CONFERENCE OF PLAN. IT DOESN'T, YOU KNOW, REQUIRE A VOTE OR AN APPROVAL ON COMMENTARY. What I think I would recommend at this time is that we remove that language and at some point in the future, unless you all direct us otherwise, that we remove that language in the commentary for 165 at this time since a number of you seem to be uncomfortable with it and we can ‑‑ I hate to interrupt.

I don't want us going down the same path of loosely making decisions. So whatever is gonna be suggested is, if we're taking a vote on something, we're taking a vote. But I don't wanna make the mistake of, we nodding heads and it becomes policy or not. And that tends to be where we are. And I just wanna be clear. I appreciate that, yeah.

It's the one thing that jumped out at me is like, that seems pretty vague. So like, yeah, if there's a way we can agree to that, I think that would make sense. Okay. My second question was on this, the issue that came up from several residents about these land chains. So in the review you all did at the staff level, is that something that you contemplated, that that was a possibility of these kind of land chains?

No, and I'm really not exactly sure what that is referring to. There's nothing in the proposed EAR that changes anything about the procedure for annexation. You still cannot annex property that is part of another municipality. That is just not something that's allowed under state law. There's nothing here that would allow that. It does not change the boundary of the UGB. It does not mandate annexation outside of the UGB. There's nothing here that is getting at that issue. So I'm really not even sure how I'm gonna respond to that.

And so the process would have to be like, you couldn't just simply ask someone to sort of be part of it. I mean, we'd have to annex, right?

So you'd have to actually do that. It would take an action of the city council to approve that, correct. There's nothing here in any of these policies that automatically annexes anybody or does not annex anybody.

Mayor Mrakas, I appreciate that you know I appreciate the staff there's a lot of work that's gone into this. Mayor Mrakas, And I think, frankly, from my perspective, I think, as applicants come before us that these hearings are like high pressure hearings, I think they want as much. Mayor Mrakas, objectivity as possible right not more subjectivity, so I appreciate your efforts to really make this clear and give the give guidance to staff and the. the council about sort of what sort of what crossed the threshold to sort of be either meet or exceed the policies. I appreciate the work there. I know it's hard getting seven people to agree on pretty much anything. This was probably one of those issues right here. I do take some comfort that this has been, as I understand, pretty much scrubbed by JCCPC and the planning commission with a positive vote there. I mean, I would love any more comments from my colleagues who worked. It sounds like I spent a lot of time looking at this language because it seems like that was it sort of passed through those hurdles. I'm a little bit surprised that there's there's sort of like sort of this concern now, but it seems like the bodies that we rely on to do this work through the detailed work have approved this. So, again, I would love any comments from colleagues that have involved that to help shed some light on that process. Thank you.

Well, just as a follow-up, so as someone who believes in co-governance, I do think it's important that we hear the concerns. We've already established, based on my colleagues, Council Member Cook and Baker, well, then also from staff, that this language around 165 was kind of like a suggestion was made by a council member. I'm trying to recall. I do know for the working group, since I am new on council, that working group was for me primarily to understand in-depth what's happening, since I am trying to catch up, and other folks have had the luxury of being a part in these in-depth conversations. I just want to know that if we're getting to this point where we say, hey, there's been one member on council, how we arrived here is that someone made a suggestion and we nodded heads and moved forward, but it was not brought back and discussed by the council's entirety. Why are we not afforded that opportunity now if we are to move Because I don't want people to feel like development is happening to them. I want to feel like it's happening with them. If we put all this energy and engage in community members, we want to make sure that they are comfortable with the changes that we're addressing that moving forward. Because they are a task space, right? We want to make sure that their voices are heard in this process. So I don't know the harm in removing that language or just taking it out because we are just figuring out another way to move forward.

So I'm pretty sure it was me. So I'm just clarifying that, that asked for that. So I just, yeah, I think I asked for that. So I think it was a case where somebody was getting dinged, essentially. And I was like, well, it doesn't seem fair if they really did reach out to the neighbor and you can't force an annexation. It seemed like an unfair position to put somebody in. And so I'm agnostic on that. Folks can move since I'm the one who suggested it. I think doesn't really matter to me. Um, I Will say that we did scrub the language painfully carefully at JCC PC. There was a subcommittee I know council member Copac spent an inordinate amount of time. I know lots of people met with residents and And I'll just say, I appreciate that Preservable Durham comes often, but this is a community of 330,000 people. And so I will say that 20 people showing up to a thing, you are a part of a community, but you are not the community. And I think we need to be just real transparent on that. And, you know, we do community engagement pretty robustly in the city of Durham. We are known nationally for that. We have an entire department on that. We have one of the best and largest run participatory budgeting programs in the country. And so, you know, we set ourselves up to do an update. It makes sense to me that maybe the first pass after passing the comp plan might be the most kind of robust analysis moving forward. I hear the concerns. I will say that JCCPC and the subcommittee and folks spent a lot of time, and there was a lot of wordsmithing that happened, I want to say even in the June one. So I feel comfortable moving forward. If colleagues want to remove the part about the donut hole, since I'm the one who I think initially, like, my feelings will not be hurt. I'm comfortable with that. And that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I first of all want to say, I don't believe this was rushed by staff. And I do think staff has entered into this with, you know, intentions of understanding the will of council and will of community. This has been over a year process with many, many touch points with community, groups, with residents, with boards and commissions, with planning commission, with JCCPC. So I do feel like it has been a robust process. It doesn't mean that we got everything right. But I do want to acknowledge staff's work in this, and I think the intention that they brought to it. You know, I was personally part of the working group of JCCP see is spent a lot of time with other fellow electives and staff, you know, really going line by line. Of everything that was recommended from everybody we heard from and tried to be really intentional about incorporating. I think we did incorporate a lot of those recommendations. I know it's disappointing that it, you know, we that Not every recommendation is included. I think that's always going to happen at the end of a process. But I do think we did try to be really intentional about hearing. I think this is a confusing process to be doing this update to the comprehensive plan, like these technical changes while also working on the update to our UDO, which is supposed to bring to life our comprehensive plan more directly. And I'll say a lot of the comments that we got were actually attempts to make substantive policy changes to the comprehensive plan to make it more robust. And we have noted those, and we will return back to those when it's time to update the comprehensive plan. But I think it's fair to say this was not meant to strengthen the policies of the comprehensive plan, nor to dilute them. And I do think staff tried to take themselves out of the policy equation. Those policies don't go away. And just put it on us to have to make those difficult decisions when those cases do come before us and have real tension, real trade-offs, and real impacts on people's lives that we have to do our best to weigh. You know, I do think that I'm hearing a lot of fear of what might happen. And I think that's partly a reflection of the reality of what does happen. But I don't know if I see in most of the cases of the technical recommendations in this EA process to the comprehensive plan that it is going to be what leads to the outcome that people are afraid of. I went into this process thinking, oh, these are a lot of policy changes. And when I went line by line with staff, I was like, oh, I really get where you're coming from from that. And that doesn't bring about this fear that I had going into the process. I get that maybe it was a miss to after JCCPC, after we had agreement from, I think, four members of this body, you know, to like move it forward to council. But I think we really felt like we had we had internalized, heard and made a lot of changes based on that feedback. And so, you know, it's not a step that we took, maybe a step we could have taken. But it's really helpful to hear from folks this evening about areas that may have missed. I personally am fine taking out the commentary in policy 165 and also like, you know, in forgiveness from colleagues for putting this out here on the dice. But like It seems that, could I have another minute? Thank you. It just seems that there's concern that the removal of the D means that we'll forget it or miss it somehow. But staff doesn't want to have the D on things they feel like they can objectively guide us on. So is there a way on the policies where staff is no longer rendering judgment on the D for those to still be visible to us as relevant policies, even if staff isn't telling us if they're IN, YOU KNOW, ALIGNMENT OR NOT IN ALIGNMENT WITH THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN SO THAT WE DON'T LOSE SIGHT OF THEM OUT OF ALL THE MANY POLICIES. FOR EXAMPLE, SO WE WON'T LOSE SIGHT OF POLICY 120 TO THINK ABOUT RURAL CHARACTER, EVEN THOUGH STAFF CAN'T TELL US WHAT'S RURAL CHARACTER. AND I DON'T KNOW IF WE HAVE A DEFINITION OF WHAT'S RURAL CHARACTER. THAT IS A VERY SUBJECTIVE THING THAT ALL OF US HAVE TO WEIGH. SO IS THIS SOMETHING WHERE WE COULD JUST HAVE, LIKE, INCLUDED IN THE APPLICATION JUST A LISTING OF OTHER POLICIES TO CONSIDER, YOU KNOW, EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE NOT GOING TO RENDER JUDGMENT ON THEM?

I think that is certainly something we can do. If you'll look at the last page of the attachment, you'll notice something that was suggested by Commissioner Jacobs where we include policies that were previously included but are now met through UDO standards. So we could certainly also include a list of policies that were previously depolicies, just as a reminder to you all, and it would be at the end of every Comprehensive Plan Consistency Review, we can certainly put those there for your review and as a reminder to you to be cognizant of those policies when they are applicable. Staff has no issue with that at all.

All right. Colleagues, you all have said a lot. I appreciate all of the comments around it. I appreciate staff and the work that you all have put into this. And I am just going to go ahead and bring us to a vote on this.

I KNOW YOU HAD MADE A REQUEST TO NOT MAKE ANY CHANGES TO WHAT IS BEING PROPOSED. I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE US CONSIDER STRIKING THE POLICY 165 COMMENTARY LANGUAGE AS PART OF THE MOTION. FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD FROM COLLEAGUES, THERE'S RELATIVELY BROAD AGREEMENT ON THAT. FOR ME, WHEN I LOOK AT EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN INCLUDED IN HERE, IT'S THE ONE THING THAT FEELS LIKE A SUBSTANTIVE CHANGE. that isn't somehow backstopped by another policy that staff has pointed out.

To be clear, that would be to adopt a resolution amending the Durham Comprehensive Plan by incorporating revisions to Section 2.4 policies and actions with the exception of Policy 165D.

Commentary.

I mean, just make sure I have that language right. Madam Attorney.

It sounds right to me.

I mean, it's staff. Is it 160? It's 165, right?

And can I say with the list of policies that are being removed as Ds just for us to pay attention to, even if staff is not rendering judgment?

Give me one moment, colleagues.

Yeah, I mean, I think as long as staff can identify it and pull it. Okay. Or the adopted version.

And with the exception of once they survive commentary, right? And was there someone else?

The other amendment was, since there's concern about us losing track of the policies that staff feel are either subjective or redundant, that we list those policies to make visible to us, even staff is no longer making a recommendation to us and whether they feel they're consistent or not with the comprehensive policy. So example like, do you need that say, you know, check policy 120, I don't know.

Do you need that as an, does that need to be, that doesn't need to be, okay. So I'm just gonna, okay. You guys are killing me with the thumb and head nods. I'd love to hear other comments from colleagues and just a suggestion.

It's not a formal modification to this language.

You say you don't need it, correct? You don't need the operable language.

We don't need that. I don't believe we need that in the motion.

Right. You just need to know what to exclude, correct?

Correct. And it's the policy. Yeah, if that's in the motion to remove the policy from 165, that way there's no... There's no misunderstandings or, you know, we have a firm direction from the entire council on that. That would be great. Adding the former D policies to the end of, we don't need that at the motion. We're fine. We have that.

Thank you. So that being said, yes, ma'am.

So at the motion, as it's being read, we are voting on both the changes, but also on the commentary. Is that correct? Because we're taking the commentary out of 165. So does that mean we are voting then to approve the commentary on the rest of the items?

We would not see it that way. The commentary is not part of the comprehensive plan. Staff added that for greater transparency. Do you want to go for it?

Good evening. Sarah Young with the Planning and Development Department. Since the commentary is not part of the plan, we do not, that is not something that needs to be approved or adopted by you all. However, giving us this additional clarity, just like we're being transparent about how we're interpreting, you all being clear with us about, hey, we want this interpreted this way. So technically, you are only approving the changes to the policies, not changes to commentary.

So it sounds to me like we don't actually need to change the motion. We just need the commentary to be struck from 165. So let me do this.

Colleagues, and this is clear direction. I can read the motion as is without having to amend the motion, but you're getting, for the record, clear indication from the council to strike commentary in policy 165.

Yes, we have that and we will do so.

Madam Clerk, do you have this recorded? All right. So therefore, I'll entertain a motion to adopt a resolution amending the Durham Comprehensive Plan by incorporating revisions to section 2.4, Policies and Actions.

So moved.

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

And the motion passes four to three with council members Baker, Burrs, and Cook voting no.

Thank you. Now we'll receive a staff report for item number 33, zoning map change, 505 West Chapel Hill Street. 505 West Chapel Hill.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of Council. The City of Durham is the applicant for this proposed zoning map change, which is to change the designation of one parcel of land totaling 4.09 acres and located at 505 West Chapel Hill Street. The current zoning is downtown design core with a graphic development plan. The proposed change is to downtown design core and to remove the existing development plan to allow the city greater flexibility in redevelopment of the site. This is in furtherance and support of item 22 that you previously approved on the agenda earlier tonight. The properties are currently designated downtown on the place type map. The proposed DDC zoning is generally consistent with the designated place type, and staff is here to answer any questions if you have them.

Thank you for your report. Colleagues, are there any technical questions or comments? All right. THEREFORE, I WILL DECLARE THE PUBLIC HEARING OPEN. OKAY. I DON'T HAVE ANY SPEAKERS FOR THIS ITEM, SO THEREFORE, I DECLARE THE PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED AND BACK FOR THE COUNCIL. ANY COMMENTS? Therefore, I'll entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the Unified Development Ordinance by taking property out of downtown Durham Design Core with a graphic development plan and establishing the same as downtown Design Core.

So moved. Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

And I'll entertain a motion to adopt a consistency statement as required by North Carolina General Statute Section 160D-605. So moved. Second. Move the property seconded. Madam Clerk, please open the vote. And please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Item number 34, confirmation of assessment role. Item number 34.

Good evening. Good evening. I'm Justin Miller with the Planning and Development Department. Item number 34 is for the confirmation of assessment for curb gutter and paving that has been constructed on Amber Place. I had an objection to the assessment. Annie Woody, who represents every lot on there via City of Jesus Promised Land and Jesus Word of Church, And so the recommendation is to conduct a public hearing for assessment without further advertising and refer these assessment objections to the 10-19-26 City Council meeting for further consideration.

Thank you for your report. Are there any technical questions or comments? All right. At this time, I declare the public hearing open. I have one speaker, Torianne Goffrey. I do have this person is in person. Torian Goffrey calling once, calling twice, calling three times. All right. That's the only speaker I did have signed up. So therefore, at this time, I would declare the public hearing closed to back for the council colleagues. Are there any questions or comments? All right. Therefore, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the resolution. This is 34. Adopt the resolution confirming the assessment role for the curb gutter and paving improvement to Amber Place from Humphrey Street to North, Humphrey Street North to East Pettigrew Street.

So moved.

Second. Moved and probably seconded by the court. Please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

All right. I'll receive the staff report now for item number 35.

Item number 35 is for the confirmation of assessment roll of ribbon paving that's been constructed on Brunson Street. There were no objections, and so staff's suggestion is to, recommendation is to approve the assessment roll.

Thank you for your report. Are there any questions, comments, technical? All right, thank you. I'll now declare the public hearing closed. I have no speakers for this item. BEFORE THE PUBLIC HEARING IS NOW CLOSED AND BACK BEFORE THE COUNCIL. ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? THANK YOU. THEREFORE, I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO ADOPT THE RESOLUTION CONFIRMING THE ASSESSMENT ROLE FOR CURB, GUTTER, AND PAVING IMPROVEMENT TO CHARMER STREET FROM HEMLOCK AVENUE TO THE NORTH PROPERTY LINE OF, OH MY GOSH, YOU'RE RIGHT, 35. THIS IS COUNCIL MEMBER BURRES' FAULT. I'll entertain a motion to adopt a resolution confirming the assessment for the ribbon paving on Brunson Street from South Miami Boulevard West to the West property line of REID, read 163690. So moved.

Second.

Moved to properly second it. Madam Court, please open the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Next, I'll hear the staff report for item number 36.

Item number 36 is for the confirmation of the assessment rules of curb gutter paving and water and sewer laterals that have been constructed on Chalmers Street. There were objections to three property owners, four properties, 812, 813, 816, and 818 Chalmers. They have objected to their assessments on this project. Staff recommends that City Council confirm Chalmers Street assessment role except for those filing objections and continue the public hearing on these assessments without further advertising and refer these assessment objections to the 10-19-2026 City Council meeting for further consideration.

All right. Any questions, technical questions or comments? All right, therefore, I'll declare the public hearing open. I do have two speakers for this item. Annie Woody and Katrina Reed, are you all in the building?

I took Katrina Reed's and Annie Woody's objections, too, so that they wouldn't have to stay the whole time.

Oh, gotcha. Understood. Thank you for that. Those are all the speakers that I did have signed up. Therefore, the public hearing is now closed. back before the council.

Comments, questions?

Oh, did you want to read them or you just said you received them?

I wrote down their objections so they would not have to stay here to object.

Okay, got it. And so we'll consider this, the 1019 council meeting we'll have, we'll further consider that, right? Right. So what staff is recommending, colleagues, is for us to approve with the exception of the properties that voiced their opposition and they will consider. Do I need to state the public hearing to remain open for those or is it reflective of your comments?

Those will be just lined through on the assessment roll, and a new mini-assessment roll will be created for the 1019 meeting.

Okay, so reading this, I will not lock them into approving?

Correct.

Okay.

Wait, just a question. How will they be reflected in public record?

The staff report stated approval with the exception of those who voiced opposition.

Yeah, I'm saying, but their opposition, like what their language was around that. Like you say, just gathered it. So I'm just trying to make, like just determine how this could be reflected in public record. Like will you scan it in or like just want to know, like did they provide written remarks or?

No, they gave me their information. Okay. And we have a form that we fill out, which will be put into the folder to show that they initially objected and that those were re-reviewed on the 1019 meeting.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, good question.

I think that's the first time I've seen that. All right. All right. Therefore, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the resolution confirming the assessment role for the curb, gutter, and paving improvement to Chalmers Street from Hamlet Avenue to the north property line of Reed, REID 133231. So moved.

Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. I'll also entertain a motion to adopt the resolution confirming the assessment rule for the water and sewer lateral improvement to Chalmers Street from Hemlock Avenue to the north property line of REID 133231. This is motion two.

That was motion two. Oh, I'm sorry. So moved. Second.

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

And the motion passes unanimously.

Right, and I'll receive the staff report for number 37, item 37.

Excuse me, I just want to clarify that for the ones that will come back on the 19th, that essentially we will not have to re-advertise. I think that was part of the motion, and I wanted to make sure that that was clear. Correct. Okay.

But you all, you'll prepare the presentation with us. Just, I guess, remind us of the continuation of this item here, I guess.

All right. Item number 37 is a confirmation of assessment rules for ribbon paving, water main, and water and sewer laterals that have been constructed on Lane Street. There were no objections.

That's it. All right. Any questions or comments? All right. At this time, I declare the public hearing open. I have no speakers for this item. I don't have you registered, so make sure you see the clerk after the meeting. So once you're finished speaking, just go see the clerk over here to make sure they get your information.

Okay, okay. My name is Nancy Bishop. I just want to say I save all year to pay my property taxes. My property taxes this year was $5,325.48. This assessment is $14,310.00. I am almost 65 years old. I would like to retire. All these papers said that I have nine months to pay this at 9% interest. How do y'all expect that the average citizen can pay this? I didn't sign up to have this road paved. It was paved, you know, I was told it was going to get paved. I mean, this is ridiculous that you want me to pay $14,000. I mean, and I can show you the papers that came. I just got these two days ago. I was out of town.

what I'm gonna ask you to do. Staff, could you all respond to this? Because I know the tax bills are combined between city and county. I know, and also, ma'am, there is a resource, but I think the deadline has passed. If we could provide some details or information on tax payment assistance, but.

The city offers financing as a one payment per year for eight years at a 9% interest rate.

That's for the assessment. Yeah. So, Mayor, if you're looking for staff to provide guidance on sort of paying the tax bill, maybe your assistant could connect with the resident afterwards. I think staff would be available to talk about the assessment process and how the assessment gets paid and what the assessment's for.

Yeah, because I think you have more than eight, nine months. So what? Okay. Emanuel, could you get her for me? We're going to get you some assistance, Emanuel. Just come on up. And make sure, get her information as well. Welcome.

Hi, my name's Amy.

Could you step a little closer to that?

Sorry, I'm short. My name is Amy. I bought our house on Lang Street in early 2021. At that time, I was told that a paving project and installing city water was in the works. I was provided no further information. The project began in late 2022 and was completed in early 2023. Um, we got no head notice that it was starting like no notice. Um, and after it was finished, there was no follow up. So we still have not been told how to connect to city water. I reached out earlier this year when we were having issues with our well and was essentially given the run around and nobody could provide me any information. And then we received Friday the letters stating that we're going to owe a lot of money for this project that was completed three and a half years ago. So it's just very frustrating as a homeowner. There's been a lot of talk about affordable housing tonight, which is truly an issue. But even after you, you know, own a house, live in a house, there are these continued surprise bills, essentially, not just for your home upkeep, but for, you know, I had no idea that this was coming and that it was going to be this hefty. So it's just very concerning as a citizen.

Thank you. I'm going to ask you to do the same. Get your information to Emmanuel. Emmanuel, raise your hand. Okay. Colleagues, I feel a little unsettled about this one, and I'd like to get some information out there. I think we have two residents here tonight, but it seems to be a situation that may be happening in that area. I'm going to ask that we continue it, but I'll need your support on that. We could do that, actually.

Yeah.

What was the suggestion? Well, I was going to ask to continue, but I could just leave the public hearing open, and I could leave it open. Director Young, would that be appropriate? You have to continue it to a date certain. I would have to continue it to a date certain.

Yeah, you do need to continue it to a date certain, but you would leave the public hearing open.

Okay. So what would be preferable to you all? I just need to get some information. This is also a surprise to me tonight and to us, and we don't want to put our residents in that predicament. It does seem like we need to look further into it.

Can we just continue it to the October 19th? October 19th works? Okay. Go ahead. Okay. So for the residents who are here this evening, you're going to connect with staff. We're leaving this part of the public hearing open till October 19 so that we can figure out Why were the letters so late, et cetera, et cetera? I mean, if you and we can show you the agenda item. Part of it is the decision was made to pay back in like 2011, 2010. And so maybe neither of you were homeowners. Right. So we just want to make sure that staff communicates with you effectively and lets you know what's happening and that. So it'll be continued to October 19th. Potentially, but we're going to have staff talk with you right now.

Because we can motivate the neighbors.

Well, the idea is to get some clarity on what's going on here anyway. So we're getting your information because we're going to be contacting you really soon.

I just have a follow-up question for clarity. So this is regarding when is the bill due date? And so are we putting them in any harm of incurring an additional cost by continuing it? What's the realistic aspect of continuing it? And they say they're receiving the bill, so does that put them at any risk or liability while we continue to study it?

The billing letters are sent out 20 days after confirmation. Okay. And just for clarification, like Lange has, I think almost every home on that road has changed hands because of the length of time. And real estate attorneys send pending assessment inquiries to our department. And so they should have done that if they'd done their due diligence and they would have made any new buyer aware, assuming they did that.

So lots of clarity to get. So we're going to figure it out. And so I'm going to leave this public hearing open. We're not going to take action on it tonight. So there's information to gather and we're going to be in touch. And that's also the last item on the agenda tonight. So colleagues, we'll address this one also on October 19th. All right, that being said, we'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 1018. Thank you.