Joint City County Planning Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, item number 14, fiscal year 2026, 2027 budget, and fiscal year 2027 through 32, capital improvement plan, CIP, and other related ordinances. This is our budget. I'll start with the speakers. First speaker is Frederick Davis.

No, so, well. That's what it says, but.

Yeah. followed by Cheryl Chews, Italio Medelius. Welcome. You have three minutes.

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

Thank you. Welcome, you have 30 minutes.

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

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

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

Welcome. You have three minutes. Good afternoon. Good evening, Mayor.

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

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

Yes, I am.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taylor, welcome. You have three minutes.

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

Thank you to all of the speakers. And I will call for the motion. Read all of that.

Theoretically, yes, but I think...

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

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

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

Second.

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

The motion passes unanimously.

Durham, we have officially passed our budget. All right, I do want to just provide a brief remark. Colleagues, this was obviously the hardest budget that I've ever seen and have ever been presented with. And I've heard many of you all say the same. Councilmember, Mayor Pro Tem, you have had more budgets on this council than any of us. I've heard you say those same words. Have never really seen such a technical document means so much personally and morally They're always going to be opinions And as elected leaders you elected us to do this hard work We get called all types of names and and yet we still have to push through To make sure that we're representing all of the city and And and that's just a job that comes with it you know I think tonight was a beautiful example of, you know, there are folks that are speaking out because they don't like something. And then there are people that are sitting quietly and waiting for their expectations to be carried out. You know, and that's what this budget represents. The manager, Mr. Ferguson, you presented us with, we actually, when you presented the budget, I don't even know how you did it. But we didn't agree with it. and you did your part and then the rest was up to us. And we were probably on seven different pages. And yet we somehow came to a consensus Not everyone is happy, not everyone is upset. This was a budget that showed us some insight on how we're going to have to move throughout the future, how we support outside organizations, what types of relationships we have with those organizations, how do we reflect in the budget things we wanna see throughout the community of Durham, while also addressing the extremely, extremely important and vital needs and necessities it matters, you know, and that's what we're up here to do. And we will take, you know, insults, we'll take compliments, and we treat them all the same, meaning we are listening. We're listening. Some has to be like water on a duck's back, and some has to be the thing that just keeps us going one more day. That's just the life of public office. But what I can say out of this very tough and difficult budget, I think that we've put the best version of it forth. And we've made some really tough decisions. We've made some serious cuts. We have somehow found miracle money or miracle allocations to still make some things whole. But what this budget does say is there are some tough conversations that we still have to have. with organizations, but also with just our county colleagues and our regional partners, the development community. There are so many things that we have to address that this budget gave us insight to. And we don't want to find ourselves here again. We are a growing city. And we came in short on revenue this year for a multitude of reasons. Ask the Midwest what's happening with population decline. They're receiving less revenue because of population decline. We had things that were unforeseen. And there's reporting on it. And yes, those things are real. But it requires all of us to have a very open mind and get as creative as possible like we did up here. So I just want to personally thank each of you. This is a budget where we're on separate pages, all seven of us, and tonight we just passed this budget unanimously. So that's for weak leadership. Thank you. Anyone else? Mr. Baker, go ahead.

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

All right, good evening again. This is my first budget cycle, and I will say zero out of five stars did not enjoy the process. It was hard, it was a lot. I have some lessons learned, and so I do want to express appreciation for the staff for having the institutional knowledge and sharing that with us, as well as hearing our concerns and uplifting that. I've learned now when the city manager says we're gonna balance the budget out of the fund balance, you ask for our itemized list of what's gonna be in the fund balance, because it becomes like a really hot and contentious conversation. It was really important for me to think about for this budget cycle, our economic times we're currently in right now. And so just want to make sure we're fiscally responsible with the fund balance. And so I was really gave a lot of thought about before we dip to it, make sure we have justification because we can't foresee the future. And we are in hurricane season. We have so many things going on that we want to make sure that we have the resources available for those unpredictable things as we prepare for these. STORMS WILL HOPEFULLY GET SOME RAIN. SO I ALSO WANT TO APPRECIATE MY COLLEAGUES. WE DID HAVE SOME TOUGH CONVERSATIONS AND SOME OF US ARE HEARD A LOT FROM PEOPLE IN COMMUNITY BUT WE DID MAKE SURE WE DIDN'T TRY TO PIT COMMUNITY MEMBERS AGAINST EACH OTHER. THAT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME TO ENSURE THAT WE DID NOT MAKE DECISIONS TO CUT SOME PROGRAM BUT THEN INCREASE OTHER PROGRAMS. WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE HAVE THE SAME MESSAGING TO ALL COMMUNITY GROUPS AND LIVE BY OUR VALUES. I HAVE ALSO ASKED FOR MOVING FORWARD WE HAVE A MORE FORMALIZED BUDGET PROCESS TO ENSURE EQUITY and to make sure that people just not going to be in perpetuity. I know we're not going to always get it right. I understand that if I had a magic wand, if I ruled the world, I would ensure that everyone had all the fun they had to. But unfortunately, those are not the circumstances in this budget cycle. It was also really important to me to make sure we did not raise property taxes. That's the number one thing I heard from a lot of people in our community when I campaigned last year was people are concerned about keeping their home, especially our seniors, those who are on fixed incomes and the cost of living is increasing. I often tell people, like, you know, ginger ale used to be, like, $3.99 pre-pandemic. Now it's, like, $10.99 for a 12-pack. Just thinking about how our food has risen and all these gases going up. So it's really important to think about our neighbors who don't have the same financial situation that we do have and how the economic impact of that. And also thinking about how our public policy, ensuring that when we design a proposed policy that we think about intent versus impact. We can have the greatest intentions in the world, but if you're not related to these communities and fully understand and impact your policy decisions, there's no way we can fully mitigate that. So again, to encourage us all to just, we're living in interesting times right now, but I do appreciate the fact that this budget cycle is not contentious amongst me and my colleagues, and I think that we can get a lot further together if we have these hard conversations together, we hear each other out, and we figure out a pathway forward because we all have our different lived experiences that make us great, but we're not going to get anywhere far if we DO NOT GET IT TOGETHER. SO I APPRECIATE EVERYONE FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY. NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT YEAR'S BUDGET CYCLE, BUT I AM, IF WE HAVE DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES, I KNOW THIS IS A ONE-TIME, ONE-OFF SITUATION, BUT JUST LOOKING FORWARD TO MAYBE HOPEFULLY ADDRESS SOME OF THESE ISSUES IN THE FUTURE. THANK YOU.

GO. I'LL GO AHEAD. YEAH, I WANT TO JOIN MY COLLEAGUES IN THANKING THE COMMUNITY FOR YOUR COMMENTS. WE GOT AN UNUSUALLY LARGE NUMBER THIS YEAR GIVEN A TIGHT BUDGET AND WE APPRECIATE ALL THE COMMENTS AND I RESPONDED TO MANY OF THOSE AS YOU ALL KNOW. I ALSO WANT TO THANK THE STAFF FOR THE HARD WORK ON THIS BUDGET. IT WAS NOT EASY. Mr. Manager, I think you called the stewardship in uncertain times. I think that reflects where we are as a community. This is not an austerity budget, y'all. This budget, the general fund is marginally, marginally smaller than last year, but overall, our total budget, if you include all the funds, is $840 million. That's a lot of money to invest in our city, and I'm proud of that. We continue fare-free buses in the city for all our residents, which is an important priority on the staff. Thank you, Mr. Williams, for your advocacy on the part of Bike Durham on that one especially. We increased our Durham minimum livable wage to $25.09 per hour. That's a phenomenal figure, y'all. If you Google living wage ordinance south, you'll find one other one in New Orleans for like $13 an hour. Asheville's dropped their living wage ordinance. We all go to conferences around the country. I talk to my colleagues around the country. They are not shocked. They're impressed by that number. It's an important statement of who we are as a community. It's not a number we pulled out of a hat. It's a number that's based on the fair market rent. And we know that for our workers in Durham, we want them to be able to afford to live in the city they work in. And that's why we chose the number. I'm really proud of that number. And I think it reflects, again, our priorities and our values. We're investing in key council priorities such as the homeless strategic plan, public safety, youth works, right? A new staff for youth works to increase the number of folks, summer jobs for youth in this community. We're also listening to residents. We gave back or we refunded those contracts with our key community nonprofits. We also heard from the community about tennis courts and basketball courts. We're funding 4 million to make sure folks around this community can exercise and recreate on courts that are properly structured and aren't unsafe. There's no tax increase here, and I want to make sure everyone's clear. This is not a low-tax community. It's not a low-tax council. We raised taxes aggressively the last couple years to pay for our bond and to increase salaries for our workers to market. This year, we were challenged on that, and I think partly what people are asking us to do is use a variety of tools at our disposal when we have a tight budget season. The last couple years, we went back to voters and asked them to dig deeper and pay more in their property taxes. We know that property taxes marginally affect lower income residents more than higher income. And so we were challenged there. And this year we held the line on that to show that we have a variety of ways we can address a tight budget. The last thing I'll say in my few minutes remaining, so I make my notes up here. The budget, it's not perfect. My biggest regret is the fact that we could only give the 2% raise to our employees and not give pay for performance. I will note that I think pay for performance would have cost about $10, $11 million, which is almost exactly the money we had to give back to corporate folks in the tax appeal process. So that's something we want to address with our city council colleagues. But I have some comfort in the fact that we are doing a comp and class study as part of this budget to make sure next year we're making sure that our salaries are up to market. Mr. Manager, Mr. Mayor, I'm proud to support this budget and I appreciate the work we've all done. And I appreciate my colleagues, as Councilman Burris said, the work we've done together to make sure that we've got a budget that we all can support. So thank you very much. Thank you.

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

Council Member Cook.

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

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to my colleagues for all their comments. I first want to thank staff for this budget. You all worked really, really diligently. Our budget process starts in the fall with our community conversations. And so in the fall, I hope all of the folks who are here will start participating in that process. We have democratized our process in Durham over the years, more so than many communities. my ninth budget that we just voted on. And other than the COVID year, this is the hardest budget. And COVID year wasn't necessarily hard. As far as we had revenue, we just weren't sure what was going to happen in the future. So that moment was OK, but we weren't sure what was going to happen to sales tax. We did not know what relief we were going to get from the federal government. And so there was lots of very big question marks. I am also really proud of the, including myself, seven of us up here, because we could have fought. We could have had a lot of conflict and tension, and every one of us had a single thing we were really, really focused on, or a couple, and we didn't. We did the hard work. We all make concessions. If you want to go see some pretty grown-up work, go watch our last budget work session, where we came to terms on what we were going to do and found the consensus we needed to, and staff had a really clear roadmap about how we were going to get to tonight so that we weren't fighting up here. We were ready to pass the budget, which is helpful for staff. And that is hard work. That's called governance. It's not campaigning. It's not cute. It's not what you see in a campaign. It's what is on the other side. And that is far more challenging than a campaign will ever be. And it takes a lot of grit and a lot of resolve to deliver for your community. There are certain things that we've all said that we know we want to move forward. I really want to think through the nonprofit funding, how we do that in an equitable way. I think all seven of us agreed on that. And then the other place that I really want to mention in my less than one minute is that there are very hard conversations happening at Joint City County. That is a meeting that happens every other month. It is also public. It is also streamed. The city just had ours last week. We host every other month, so we will not host in August. We will host again in October. And there's a long list of agenda items that we need to cover with both our county colleagues and our Durham Public Schools colleagues. These are topics that overlap for both of us. For those residents who really want to pay attention again, especially on this property tax increase and other places, we are going to be having hard conversations. And that conversation started last Tuesday. So we do a lot of work here, but we also have a lot of relationship and work that happens along with colleagues and other boards and staff across those boards. And so it's important that residents pay attention to those, again, those conversations around governance. How are we gonna get there and how are we gonna move the work forward to deliver for residents?

Thank you. So there you have it. heard the diversity up here and uh there's there's more to come there's more work to be done and again i just want to thank my colleagues for um yeah being the adults in the room and just just working together it wasn't easy and you know i all the pressures that we have from the community to meet the expectations of the loudest voices and the quietest voices But thank you for itemizing some of the things that we had to address. And I'll be producing a video to sort of recap the budget and placing that out there. But I just want to thank everyone. Thank you to the community. And there are nearly 3,000 city employees right now that are, you know, they're watching us and they're asking, you know, like, Just make sure you take care of us. And we're trying our best to make sure we do that. And we're going to make sure we do it. I don't want anyone to leave us. So I think about North Carolina minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. But in Durham, it's $25.09, and it's still not enough for where we're headed. But I can tell you one thing. In Durham, we're always going to try our best to meet the moment. It's not perfect. We are set up with government structures that just literally sets us up at a disadvantage. There's no progressive tax structure. We operate entire systems that we have no control over the funds. We need votes by other organizations that are not in this room, never come into this room. And we have a legislature who doesn't see things the way we do. That's a nice way of putting it. And we're required to pass a budget, which we just did tonight and we're still waiting on the one in Raleigh. Our county, you know, we have a lot of things to fix with our relationship and how things impact us. I won't tell you that, you know, there is an issue with how the structure is fixed for, you know, taxes and property taxes. And yes, there was an evaluation year. And yes, there are a lot of commercial properties that submitted for their appeals successfully. And at the last minute, you know, they followed the law. That doesn't mean the law works for our best interest. You know, those are just realities. And I'm not going to pit the community against one another because we're better off working as partners than enemies or adversaries. And I don't wanna provide false hope that if we come together and get really loud, something's gonna happen. We need to get together and take our energies to Raleigh and change the way this government works so we can actually have the power we need here at the local level. That is the reality. So it's easy to come in here and scream and shout at us. We're on the same team, buddy. Raleigh is where your issue is. And let's not even get started with the federal government. So this is Durham, Bull City strong, Bull City proud. We have passed our budget. Thank you.