Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our work session, our June 1st work session. It is 9 AM, well, a little after 9 AM, as a matter of fact, and we'll go ahead and get started. I'll read our public charge. Vice Chair Lum, would you mind reading the land acknowledgement? Okay. All right, the Board of Commissioners asks members and citizens to conduct themselves in a respectful, courteous manner, both with the board and fellow citizens. At any time should a member of the board or any citizen fail to observe this public charge, The chair will ask the offending person to leave the meeting until that individual regains personal control. Should decorum fail to be restored, the chair will recess the meeting until such time that a genuine commitment to the public charge is observed. Vice Chair Lum.

Thank you, Chair Lee. As we convene for the Durham County Commissioners' Meeting, it's crucial to recognize the painful truth of history. We stand on the stolen ancestral lands of the Catawba, Eno, Okaneechee, Shikori, and Tuscarora peoples, whose deep connection to this land predates our arrival. We acknowledge with humility the unjust displacement and violence that occurred leading to the dispossession of indigenous peoples from their homelands. Their resilience in the face of such adversity is a testament to their strength and spirit. May we humbly honor the ancestors and elders of these nations, both past and present, by committing ourselves to fostering understanding, healing, and justice for all who inhabit this land. Let us walk forward together with open hearts, acknowledging the past and embracing a future guided by compassion, respect, and unity.

Thank you, Vice Chair Long. first item on our agenda is closed session so i'll accept the motion to go into closed session for the for the for the following reason the board requests to adjourn into closed session to prevent the disclosure of sensitive public security information protected under north carolina general statute 132-1.7a3 pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143-318.11 .

Chair Lee, I move that we go into closed session for the reason stated. Second.

All right, our motion to go into closed session for the reason stated has been moved and properly seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, please use the same sign. We are now in closed session.

come out of closed session. No action was taken. We will now recess the meeting to attend the Juneteenth flag-raising ceremony. Attorney Williamson, do I need a motion to recess? Okay, so we are recessed. And we'll return around 1230.

earlier we had a closed session we came back we opened it back up and now we're continuing our we were in recess to do the juneteenth event and now we are back in open session for our regular meeting um so this is a re uh this is the second item on our agenda which is the third item which is we're reconvening from our recess the fourth item on our agenda our citizens comments we have two we have one in person and one online we have internet halls who is in person she will go first we have three minutes each and then we have amanda wallace who is online So after Ms. Hawes speaks, we will go online to Ms. Wallace.

Hello, my name is Antoinette Haas, and I think it's very rich that you guys go to the Juneteenth meeting and pay homage to the Indians every time you start your meeting, knowing that your actions are contrary to support and services for our current marginalized community. And I mean that. I mean, it's lukewarm. warm at best your actions to support this community and of course if for the record it shows and now you out here putting out fires because what you did last year put the working class in durham county in additional financial peril so i i mean you know i don't expect that you're going to do that again this year because it's going to be worse next year it doesn't seem like you have the citizen in mind when you're making these administrative decisions let me recommend you invert the pyramid right have the flat on the top which is the people and the people with the money and the corporations at the bottom serving us Let me recommend that. Or even yet, dig into your coffers, dig into your reservoir, and pull out some money that's gonna assist this community and help us stay afloat during this crazy administration. And for the record, I do believe that Durham County needs a drug court because we have a lot of people suffering addictions however we also need that one percent to go to see child protective services reunification and family development we need that and for the last time not really y'all need to audit dss she needs to be audited she's moving money and the money is available, and she act like she sent her social workers to court telling the judge, well, we don't do that. We don't have those funds. We're not able to do that, which is a hot lie. It's a hot lie, and y'all still supporting her. So, I mean, if you continue to do what you do, then you're continuing to do more harm to us and that's gonna cost you. It's gonna cost you your seats. I promise you. The decisions, some decisions have been made. And you're at the top. Because if we want our better quality of life, we gotta get rid of the thing that caused us harm, which is you. You're causing the working class in Durham County harm. And that's the end of the story. I'm going back to work to earn the money that you gonna ask me for.

All right, thank you. The next speaker is our virtual speaker, and that's Ms. Amanda Wallace.

Yes, you hear me?

Yes, yes, we can hear you, Ms. Wallace.

You have three minutes starting now. Before my time starts, I just want to say, Leslie St. Drew is in the waiting room, and she sent an email to the clerk of the board trying to sign up because she couldn't be there at 9 and then wait until 1 o'clock, but her plan was to be there. So I just wanted to put that on the record that she's in the waiting room and trying to speak.

Could you repeat the person's name, Ms. Wallace, that's in the waiting room?

Leslie St. Drew. Thank you very much.

OK, thank you.

So, yes, my name is Amanda Wallace and I am the founder of Operation Stop CPS, which is a grassroots campaign. And our mission is to abolish the family policing system, which some people call child protective services. I'm also a resident of Durham. And I want I'm here today because I want to clear up some misinformation that was spread by Commissioner Stephen Valentine at the last work session. Well, first, like he was completely right that there is a movement to abolish the family policing system, not just locally, but nationally. And the demand is to reallocate funds directly to families. And that should not be revolutionary. It should just be what we do. But here we are. Valentine likes to straddle the fence behind closed doors. He says he is reading books like Torn Apart by Professor Dorothy Roberts and committing to getting into the community to talk to people impacted by the system. But in public, he pledges his allegiance to the system. I'm very confused, right? So that may be why Valentine misquoted the amount 1% of the budget would equate to, even though we gave him the numbers when we met last month. We are demanding 1% of the social services budget, which is about 1 million total. And when you split that in half, it's about 500,000 for family reunification, which is currently just a mere $52,000 that's allocated to family reunification. and 500k for the for family preservation valentine also stated that some people in the community think money can just be found and used to fund these kinds of demands and i just want to remind y'all that at the may 21st work session wendy jacobs literally thanked staff for finding the money for the family treatment court proposal so y'all can find money when it benefits the system but not when it benefits the people family treatment court is harmful In the book, Trial by Treatment, it shows how reforms like Family Treatment Court that keep power and discretion in the same hands just further entrenches the very problems that you promised to solve. So with the same enthusiasm the commissioners have for this solution that research has already shown is ineffective. Y'all funded it before, and now you're trying to do it again. Put that towards allocating 1% of the budget to reunification and preservation. And in closing, today is the first day of Stolen Children's Month. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, history will show that you, you sitting on the dais, were responsible for funding the stealing of children.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Wallace. that's that's all we had uh for sign up for public comment all right so next on our item on our agenda is the consent agenda manager hanger good afternoon commissioners we have several consent agenda items for your consideration the first one is 260261 receive keep

DURHAM BEAUTIFUL'S 2025 ANNUAL REPORT I JUST WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE TONYA DOTLICK WHO IS HERE WHO IS THE DIRECTOR OF KEEP DURHAM BEAUTIFUL AND I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU AND YOUR TEAM FOR THE AMAZING WORK WHEN YOU LOOK AT YOUR REPORT AND The amount of funding that you get from the county and the city combined is really, and how much you raise outside of that is amazing, plus all the work that you do. It's just really incredible, the impact that you are having on our community. So I just really want to thank you and acknowledge all of that.

Okay, the second item is 260263, approval of budget ordinance amendment number 26BCC084 for the Department of Social Services to recognize Duke Energy Carolina's LLC Shine the Light funds in the amount of $16,909. The next item is 260264. This is approval of board review of the fiscal year 2627 county funding plan for the home and community care block grant for aging adults. The next one is 260266. This is an approval to enter into a contract with Southern Elevator Company Inc. in the amount of $148,200 to provide elevators, maintenance, and repair services across Durham County government facilities and parking decks. The next item is 260283. This is to approve and authorize the manager to execute a resolution and lease agreement with Bull City Slabs LLC for a suite at Shops of Hope Valley. The next item is 260284. This is to approve Durham County's support for and participation in triangle land controversy purchase and protection of 145 acres of farmland at 4209 4310 Hall Road, including a 750,000 county contribution. The next one is 260298. This is the library's request to award a contract for sole source purchase of digital content management services for e-books, e-audiobooks, and e-magazines and streaming content from Overdrive. Okay. This concludes our consent agenda items.

Okay. Any discussion of the consent items that were presented by Manager Hague? Any discussion from the commissioners? Commissioner Jacobs.

I just have one question because our DSS director is here. The amount of money that we're getting from Duke Energy for the energy assistance, is that consistent or how does that amount compare to what we've gotten in the past? Do you know? Okay.

Can we have you come up here because there's no way we can, the audience can hear that.

Good afternoon. Yes, it is consistent. Sometimes it will range around anywhere from the 16 to maybe even 30 to 35,000 range, depending on the time of the year.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm sorry, I thought it was on. Any further discussion from commissioners or questions about the consent agenda? Okay, thank you very much, Manager Hager. These consent agenda items will go to our regular session for approval. Okay, so this starts our other business. And I'll turn it over to Manager Hager for this.

Yes, sir. We have two items that we would like the board to suspend the rules to approve due to the time sensitive nature of the matters. The first one is we're requesting the board suspend the rule and approve the budget ordinance amendment 26BCC086 appropriating $1,379,000 of general fund fund balance and authorize a manager to execute a contract with TKC Management Services for facility management at the Durham County Detention Center. And this is as a result of an RFP and staff have worked across the finance, budget, sheriff's office, and benchmark other places, and have done quite a bit of due diligence over the past several months, may feel like a year almost, in trying to see how best we support our sheriff in maintaining our detention center at a different level of service. And so we're asking that the board suspend the rules and approve this budget ordinance and the contract.

Okay. Any discussion about this particular item that I hear? Commissioner Jacob.

Thank you. I just have a number of questions about this. I know in the past this has been the responsibility of General Services and so I think it would be helpful to understand some context around this and also I don't think I saw usually the bid information is in here about the other Who else bid on this? I didn't see that. And I'm just wondering what our cost has been per year for doing this work internally, is one of my questions. And then second, I notice it's for a five-year contract, and I'm just wondering, because it would be a new thing that we're doing, do we have the ability to actually not continue the contract if we decide that it's not working for us? Sure.

I'll answer the question about the contract terms. For all Durham County contracts, we have the ability to end the relationship with that vendor with a 30-day notice if my county attorney nodding yes so 30 days is the time that's allowed to give notice and we've actually executed that for different reasons over the years for different vendors we can I'll have the folks from the Sheriff's Office to share about those who bid on the project as well as miss matrio to share about that as well

Good afternoon, Commissioners. There was only one bidder on the contract, and they are actually here with us today to help answer any questions you may have. These gentlemen here are from TKC Management Company. And, of course, General Services can answer some of the questions as well. But regarding your question about is this something that once we start, can we stop, we actually had a maintenance contract vendor in the facility from 2000 to 2012 through Aramark. Is that correct? That's correct. That's correct. And at that point, the RFP brought it in-house, and so now we're looking to do something that we did pretty successfully, I think, for, I wasn't here, but I think it was pretty successfully for 12, 15 years. But with your permission, can we invite up Ed Benton and his staff to answer any questions, because I sense that you have some questions about how this is all going to work.

So you've asked about Prefix. She's absolutely correct. We did have Air Mark here. Air Mark, their contract was started around $700,000 and went up to about $1.1 million before we terminated that contract and took off over services. General Services provides five individuals to maintain the facility. There's electrician, plumber, and then three general individuals that are in the facility. HVAC, they are called upon based on need with regards to the building and they respond immediately to the building if there is a need for general services. My understanding with regards to this contract is that the manager would very much like general service to manage the contract as we've done in the past when Airmark was the contractor who provided maintenance services for the facility.

So are you saying that you will manage this contract?

That's our understanding, is that with regards to the maintenance components and being able to ensure that the sheriff office has the right type of services, I have assigned this to my assistant director over operations, to actually manage the contract.

So it will be in the sheriff's office and managed by the sheriff. It will be a continued relationship with general services from a coordination of efforts. They have the history with the infrastructure, with the facilities, to ensure that it is seamless, that continued coordination, collaboration will occur. And I will say that looking at best practices, there are many different models that detention centers use across the state. Mecklenburg County has actually used this vendor and has had great success in the quality and the type of service delivery they've needed to achieve. The question I do think you're trying to get at, Commissioner Jacobs, is cost, cost savings. What does that look like? I will say that our detention center, with it being 30 years old, it has a lot of opportunity for us to invest in ways to make it more up to date in some areas. It may be a period where you may see some additional investments that are required. There may also be some overlap for a short period as we iron out the bumps and what needs to be done. But we are committed to keeping the board updated because from an affordability perspective, we have that in the forefront that we want to make sure that it is efficient. And so we started talking about this probably about a year and a half, two years ago. And timing-wise, we studied it further because it was a question of should we bring it in-house, should we keep it in-house, or should we bid it out? I'm of the opinion we need a different support level. General Services is also stretched. We've brought on a lot more square footage that they're supporting, but the correlating staffing has not been there. So this is our effort to try to move forward across county-wide operations with a different level of service while also not burning out our employees that we have.

Also, with this contract, general service is still on the capital side and capital needs of the facility. We're still responsible for any capital construction or capital issue that would come up. So this would be very helpful from a general service perspective. over the last few years, we're a little over 2.2 million square feet that we're taking care of. So this would be very helpful for us with regards to this contractor providing dedicated services to the detention center, almost in the same vein as we do right now.

i think it thank you and that's good to hear that perspective i do think it's going to be important for us to be tracking how it's working and what it looks like as a cost center over time yes ma'am yeah especially based on that we've done this in the past and then we stopped and so thank you you're welcome uh vice chair along

Thank you, Chair. I just had a quick question for the vendor. I'm just wondering, what is the minimum wage that you'll be paying for the services?

right the question was the minimum wage so we take a look at a market analysis we don't pay minimum wage right so we understand that for specific areas and specific trades there are prevailing wages for a specific trade and let's move the mic a little closer to you sorry no move the mic you don't have to just move the mic understood um So we leverage that market data analysis to find the correct wage for that trade in that region, and that's generally what we provide in our budget to our client.

Do you know for this region and this market, then, like what the lowest wage you're going to be paying our salary for?

Yeah, it depends on the trade, bread and butter.

Yeah, for general maintenance, Trey, which is kind of an entry level, that's around, I think, $23 to $24 an hour. But then it goes up with electrician, plumber, locksmith, depending on skill set and experience.

So then you'd say $23 is the lowest. That would be the minimum wage. Yes, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments about this before we suspend the rules? Okay, so we'll...

I'll move to suspend the rules. Second.

It's been moved and properly seconded that we suspend the rules for this item. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed please use the same sign. All right the rules are suspended. We'll accept the motion to approve Item number 260282, in the suspension.

Second.

Now that the rules are suspended, it's been properly moved and seconded that we approve item 260282 within the suspension. Any further discussion on this item? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, please use the same sign. That passes unanimously.

um the next item on in this section is board and commission's appointments attorney williamson yes good afternoon um three vacant positions for the durham county hospital corporation board of trustees and the board has elected charles cooperberg sorry charles cooperberg md dr charles cooperberg ellen rickow and gracie johnson lopez congratulations to all have been elected yes congratulations and thank you all for putting yourself out there to serve on that very important board or commission

all right we have on our next item agenda is discussion items and we have one item here and that is the approval of the final recommended fiscal year 2027 durham annual transit work program we have a lot of 20 minutes for this we've heard from the heard about the transit plan we've heard various aspects of it, and now it's time for the approval of it. And I'll turn it over to Ellen.

Good afternoon. Yes, that is what we're here for. So hopefully our final time here. We're back for the final presentation of the FY27 Annual Transit Work Program. So today, Brandi Miner, the Durham County Staff Working Group Administrator, will be presenting. the recommended work program. Today is informational in anticipation of approval at the next regular meeting. So per our interlocal agreement, GoTriangle staff have the option to provide comments to the board at this meeting, and Catherine Eggleston, the deputy CEO from GoTriangle, is here today to provide those comments. So we have 15 minutes for Brandy's presentation and a five minute for Catherine's comments. So we also want to recognize the other staff working group members who are here in the audience who have helped us developed this final work program. It was unanimously recommended by the staff working group. So we have Doug Plachinsky from Triangle West TPO and Nisha Reynolds from the city of Durham. Steve Sloshberg from GoTriangle as tax district administrator is also here who has contributed to the work program. With that, I'll turn it over to Brandy.

Good afternoon. I will begin the presentation today by providing a brief overview of the Durham County Transit Plan, the annual work program, and the role of the staff working group. In 2011, Durham County voters approved a half-cent sales tax to fund public transportation improvements within Durham County. The adopted 2023 Durham County Transit Plan determines how these public transportation funds within Durham County will be managed and spent. As required by law, the transit plan was approved by the Durham Board of County Commissioners, the GoTriangle Board of Trustees, and the Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization. transit governance interlocal agreement also adopted in 2023 establishes the duties and responsibilities of the staff working group the staff working group is a technical committee serving in an advisory role to the three governing boards staff from durham county go triangle city of durham and triangle west collaborate to plan and implement the annual work program and the multi-year vision plan the four voting members determine which items such as the work program and any related amendments should be advanced to the governing boards for approval Approval of any item before the staff working group requires a minimum of three affirmative votes. The work program is the annual budget for the transit plan and its primary goal is to advance the projects in the adopted plan. It is developed over the course of several months based on the approved development schedule. The work program must be approved by the county commissioners and the Gold Triangle Board of Trustees. As mentioned previously, the work program is developed based on the approved schedule. We encountered some delays this year, but the staff working group voted at last month's meeting to recommend the final work program to the governing boards for approval. As Ellen mentioned earlier, the vote was unanimous. The county commissioners are asked to approve the work program at the June 8th meeting, and following your approval, the work program will be forwarded to GoTriangle Board of Trustees for consideration. Because this year's development process ran about two months behind schedule, the Gold Triangle Board has already received a presentation on the final recommended work program, which occurred last Wednesday. They are expected to take action at their June 24th meeting. Moving forward to the work program, the work program continues the implementation of the four key themes of the Durham Transit Plan, which include improve the current system, more projects sooner, connect the region with quick and reliable service, and better experience at stops and stations. This pie chart represents the funding priorities of the Transit Plan. The final recommended work program generally maintains the priorities of the Durham Transit Plan with a couple of minor shifts, most notably in the operations and maintenance category, which increased by 5%, and the enhance and extend bus service category, which increased by 2%. As with last year's work program, our goal again this year is to maintain transparency and accountability within our project budgets, schedules, and implementation metrics. We have improved in this area by including a cost share for every project in the work program, which helps improve transparency and consistency in the reimbursement process. Additionally, the project implementation metrics continue to be tracked and displayed in the Durham Transit Tracker, which is updated twice a year. Moving forward to our projects, the final work program includes continuing operating projects that have the standard 2.5% annual growth rate and carryover capital projects. Some projects were updated to reflect additional funding, updated cost estimates, or modified scopes. There are three new capital projects that I will go into detail later in the presentation, and there is also a 500,000 annual placeholder that may be used for planning or grant matching opportunities. Continuing operating projects generally fall into 3 categories which are tax district administration, transit plan administration, and transit operations. There were several changes in the operating projects this year. For the City of Durham, there was a decrease in their GoDurham data processing and visualization project, and most notably, the City requested to delay service from FY26 to FY28. These delays affect routes 1 through 10, 13, 16, and New Year's Eve service. The most significant impacts are to Route 9, which will postpone the planned 15-minute daytime service on Monday through Saturday and the extension of Sunday service to midnight. on route 13 the implementation of 30-minute service will be delayed also in total operating costs for these projects decreased by 2.6 million and these savings help offset the additional one-time capital expenses requested by the city which i will discuss momentarily durham county is requesting to close the employment and education access project and the tax district administration consolidated two of their projects which did not have an impact on the overall budget The work program continues, many carryover projects that had either updated cost or scope elements. For GoTriangle, approximately 4.4 million is authorized for the Durham Bus Stop Improvement Program. 420,000 is authorized for design and construction of the Triangle Mobility Hub. 4.2 million is authorized for construction of the Nelson Road Bonf. 728,000 is authorized for vehicle acquisition. For the City of Durham, $1.1 million is authorized for design and construction of a quick-build improvement at the Village Mobility Hub. For their maintenance facilities, $22.5 million was previously authorized for construction of the Faith Street BOMF. However, this funding has been reallocated between the Faith Street BOMF and the Junction Road Paratransit Maintenance Facility. $3 million has been allocated to the Junction Road facility for design in FY27 and another $4.5 million in FY28 for construction. For the Faye Street BOMF, we now have $15 million allocated for design in FY27 and $7.5 million in FY28 for construction. Between both facilities, almost $50 million remains unfunded for construction. Lastly, for the city, $4 million has been authorized for their BRT project, which includes final design for the BRT corridor. The total project budget will now be $10 million. There are three new capital projects in this year's work program. The first is the Durham Transit Plan update, which has a budget of $650,000. The ILA requires the plan to be updated every four years. In this next update, there is a shared interest in improving the work program development process and adding reasonable flexibility in project funding, which will hopefully reduce the conflicts that arise under the current decision-making approach. Once approved, Durham County staff expect to begin the update in early 2027. These next two projects, excuse me, that was the update. These next two projects for the city were not included in the draft work program, but arose from the city's request to the elected officials to consider helping them address a shortfall in their transit fund. The deficit, which was approximately 8.2 million, will be funded through the following projects. Access to transit pedestrian connections to bus stops 3.2 million is authorized for sidewalk projects along several transit served corridors including associated bus stop and crossing improvements. This request also advances 3 million in planned CIP funding for the Route 4 bus transit corridor project as it includes related sidewalk improvements on Route 4. The second project is the vehicle replacement rehabilitation and equipment project. Approximately 5 million is authorized for replacement buses, replacement paratransit vehicles, electric bus charging equipment and related refer refurbishments for the city's baseline fleet. These items represent one-time exceptions to the Transit Plan's typical approach to baseline fleet and sidewalk funding. At the May 4th work session, the County Commissioners expressed majority support for treating this as a one-time solution for one-time capital needs, while emphasizing that the City must identify a long-term strategy to address its recurring operating deficit. This slide provides an overview of the city's requests and the new projects that were proposed to fulfill the deficit. the main takeaways i want to share today regarding the city's requests are these two projects do not set precedent for a future baseline or sidewalk funding through the transit plan the transit plan does not determine how the city uses any replaced city funds the city has stated its intention to use city funds for their transit fund operating deficit which is inclusive of the cost of fare free service And lastly, and probably more importantly, there is no commitment of FY27 or future transit plan funding for the city's transit fund operating deficit. Moving on to our carryover capital projects, there are about 20 shown on the screen, and these are just projects that were funded in prior work programs and are expected to continue in FY27 with no change in scope or funding. We also have six closeout projects that have been confirmed with our project sponsors. These projects will be closed on June 30th and all remaining funds will return to the fund balance. Moving to our budget, the projected revenues total approximately $62.5 million. Our largest revenue source, the half-cent sales tax, is projected at $44 million. The combined $3 and $7 registration fees are expected to generate approximately $2.5 million, and we will draw $16 million from the fund balance to maintain a balanced budget. As shared in earlier presentations, I will also note again that as compared to prior work programs, the sales tax growth has decreased in recent years. In FY25 and FY26, revenues were up 8% and 6%, respectively, when compared to the 2023 plan. Now in FY27, we are only showing an increase of 3%, which means the growth has slowed significantly and which affected our ability to add new projects this year. The operating budget is now approximately 27.8 million which is 2.6 million less than the draft work program. These savings are primarily from the city's service delays. The capital budget is now 34.7 million representing the 8.2 million that was allocated to the city for those two new projects I described earlier. The recommended expenditures by agency overall increased by 5.5 million. As the transit operators, the City of Durham and Gold Triangle will receive the bulk of the funding, which together represents 96% of the authorized funding. The final work program budget maintains the financial model assumptions, including all program funding in the multi-year operating and capital improvement program. The projected fund balance at the end of FY26 is $141 million. Our fund balance is necessary to ensure we can support future capital and operating projects throughout the life of the plan, which currently extends through FY40. Our adopted financial policy requires us to maintain at least $10 million in excess liquidity, and the low point in the financial model occurs in FY35 at $10.6 million. Lastly, I will provide an overview of the public engagement of the work program. This was our first year that was the first year Durham County served as the lead agency for public engagement. The public comment period opened on March 27th and closed on April 17th, which is a period of 21 days. During this time, information about the work program was available on the Durham County Transportation website and social media platforms, and comments could also be sent to us via email. residents were able to take a survey online and durham county staff hosted three tabling sessions at durham station during the three-week engagement period we received 80 responses and the public engagement report that i prepared was included in the agenda materials for reference are there any questions all righty commissioners questions

commissioner Jacobs thank you I appreciate you all trying to make clear something that is very complex so I appreciate some of the slides in your presentation where you're kind of laying out like this is what was proposed and this is where we are now and I think this also is just really important for the public because The community will often come to us about decisions that were not made by us, that were made by the city council and or that is recommended by city staff. And I think that's really important right now because what you have clearly showed in this presentation is that there is going to be delay in implementation of bus services and delays on bus routes and i think it's it's important for the public to know that that's we are not requesting that that is being requested by the city and that there are trade-offs for every single decision that is made so there's there are changes in the draft plan versus what is in this final plan And again, there are trade-offs here. So I just think that's important. So related to the fact that there is going to be decreased funding in the operating budget for these best routes, and there's also, you had a list of delayed, I should say, carryover projects. what is going to be our strategy around how we're tracking these carryover projects in terms of like why they're being carried over you know how can we make sure they don't get carried over for too long how do we you know like what's happening how do we make sure that they get executed um so i understand sometimes it's normal to just we we do carry over our budgets all the time but obviously we just want to make sure we're tracking it and making sure that it's not every year that kind of thing i just i just want to get your any context or feedback around this

Sure, so with our carryover projects, our sponsors, I know with our transit tracker is updated twice a year, so they are asked to provide updates at that time on the status of their projects. Outside of that, every year when we go through the work program development process, we ask them to update their project schedules to let us know that if what is shown in the work program is the actual current schedule, they are required to give us this information. And I mean, when they go to request their reimbursements, we can see on their reimbursement request if there's funding available. And throughout this process, you know, when I'm preparing the closeout list, I do reach out to them and say, like, even with this list, I say, can any of these projects be closed out? And, you know, they'll tell me yay or nay. Really, like you said, the nature of capital projects is that they will carry forward from year to year, but I, as the Staff Working Group Administrator, try to check in with them to make sure that these projects are indeed still needed and if they need to be closed out.

It might be helpful just even in the future if there's next to it an expected completion date because that might help give some context. Some of them may be multi-year projects or maybe whether they're on track or they're not on track, like just something really quick. Because I'm very grateful for the tracker that's online, but I think even a snapshot like this that anybody can look at to get a glimpse. I mean, that was one of our goals with this plan is to have the accountability, transparency. And then I wanted to... I really like that slide. Could you pull up the slide that just focused on... Yes, how did you know I was going to ask about that one? You read my mind. I did, I did. Okay. So I think this is really important because I want to acknowledge the very robust discussion that we had as a board, and it was not... unanimous on you know this decision that we indicated the majority of the board to move forward with but i i do think and i appreciate that you have put this in writing on the slide but i think we need to take it a step further and i just wanted to ask the board and see if there was consensus that we request that the chair on behalf of our board and with the help of staff drafting a letter Um, that is very clear on what is stated here that this is, you know, that is not a commitment, um, for going forward and that we really encourage. the city of Durham to begin planning on how they are going to be able to try to fund the, you know, fare-free transit moving forward. And this is not something that we will be, you know, considering every year. You know, this was a one-time, the board very clearly said this is a one-time. And I think also, I think from you all clarifying that the transit funding The intent has always been for it to be used for new or expanded service and not for replacement of existing services. I think that also needs to be very clear. And that we have an adopted plan That is, in order to achieve what is in the plan, we need to be honoring and upholding what is in the plan. So anyway, just wanted to see if there is consensus on the board to approve the chair to write a letter on behalf of our board and to the mayor and the city council.

I certainly would be in favor of that. I'm not sure what the Chair's particular position would be, but I definitely would be in favor with that. I mean, we had our public discussion about this. I was very clear that I thought that next year they would be back before us asking the same thing, particularly considering the gap that already exists. And so to the extent that we send that message, I would be in favor of that.

I'm in favor of that. Yeah and I think um I'm agree with that if the board sees that's necessary I think also Chair Lee and myself have attended meetings and have made that as well clear in meetings directly with uh our council leaders and city management as well.

Okay yeah I mean I think that's consensed to do that are there any questions that we have for this I did have a question so If I remember correctly, the working group was not unanimous at first. Am I correct? But now, back previously, like when you met, and then now it's unanimously going forward. Did anything change in the discussions for this? Maybe I'm just remembering it wrong.

no so we so in our process so the first time that we bring this to you officially is for the draft work program um and so we we bring that to you as informational and then the staff working group goes back you know we deliberate and then we vote on the final recommended version so what you have seen today is the final recommended version and we did have a unanimous vote to move that forward to you now you may be referring to the other discussion about go triangles requests that was not included in the final work program it was not voted to be added to the program so what you see before you today is what the staff working group recommended to move forward

Okay. I think that was kind of what I was getting at, what you said there towards the end, to go try and go ask. And going through the working group, it didn't get added to it, added to the final request.

Yes, we've had a number of discussions about the triangle proposal, and they came before you, I believe, at the May 19th budget work session. At our last staff working group meeting where the work program was voted to move forward, we did have a discussion about possibly considering their request as an amendment to the FY27 work program. I know you know the triangle is here to provide comments on their requests but just for the record yes it was voted unanimously to move forward as is at the staff working group meeting that we had last month

And remind me, is there GoTriangle staff on the staff working group?

Yes. So each organization, the city of Durham, Durham County, GoTriangle, and Triangle West has one voting member. So, yes. So GoTriangle was present at that meeting, and they voted.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. Any other comments? This is just for information, correct? We'll vote on this next time around. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah. Catherine from GoTriangle has requested to provide comments here. Yes.

Thank you. Yes, as Alan said, the ILA provides for GoTriangle to provide comment at the time that this board receives the recommended work program. So thank you, Dr. Lee, members of the commission. for the opportunity to speak here. Before I begin, I just want to thank Ellen and Brandy and members of the staff working group for the considerable time and effort that they've invested in developing this work program. While there have been a variety of perspectives on a number of issues this year, the process really has reflected a shared commitment to improving transit service for Durham residents. So just want to be clear about that up front. The item before you relates specifically to the Durham portion of the Triangle Tax District, which is administered by GoTriangle. These revenues are dedicated for transit and are separate from the county budget, while the transit work program is Considered alongside the county budget process, it is governed through a distinct structure. And the associated budget ordinances are ultimately adopted by GoTriangle. It's also important to note that there's not a single unified regional transit plan. Rather, there are three separate county level plans that guide expenditure of the transit tax revenues in the triangle. GoTriangle's role is to administer the triangle tax district. and to provide regional mobility between Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, RTP, and other key destinations. So as we were just discussing a few weeks ago, I presented two cost-neutral adjustments to the draft Durham Transit Work Program for 2027. That's improved reliability for Route 800, which runs between RTP, South Durham, and Chapel Hill, as well as increased midday frequency on the Durham to Raleigh Express, or the DRX. These changes do not require any county funding. They don't increase total operating allocations for regional bus service, and they don't affect the county budget. However, under the current interlocal agreement framework, Even cost-neutral adjustments require a vote of both the Board of County Commissioners and the GoTriangle Board of Trustees. The need for these adjustments is well established. Route 800 is among the highest ridership regional routes and currently operates on schedule roughly 77% of the time. The proposed adjustments provide additional running time and recovery time to reflect current traffic conditions and improve reliability to help riders make their connections and reach their destinations on time. The Durham's Raleigh Express proposal is part of a broader set of service improvements, primarily within, that will be funded with Wake Transit revenues. Together, the changes for the Durham Raleigh Express and the Route 100 that's funded by Wake Transit would support 15-minute weekday service between RTP, RDU Airport, NC State University, and Downtown Raleigh. And a frequent all day connection between downtown Durham and downtown Raleigh on weekdays. In practical terms, this delivers a higher frequency Durham to Raleigh connection than what was envisioned under prior commuter rail concepts. And it can be implemented in the next fiscal year without a tax increase. We understand and respect the county's concerns regarding long term financial sustainability, capital needs, rising operating costs, and competing priorities. Those are important considerations that will require continued regional work as long-range plans are updated in the coming years. At the same time, the changes before you for this year are modest in scale, less than 1% of plan revenues, but address known reliability and connectivity gaps using existing resources. These adjustments improve service today. while strengthening ridership and performance needed to support future investments such as bus rapid transit. At a time when gas prices are high and transportation costs are an increasing challenge for many households, improving the frequency, reliability, and usefulness of transit is one of the most effective ways to strengthen both current service and the potential for future transit investments. I also want to be candid about where things stand. As Brandy mentioned, the GO Triangle Board received a presentation last week on the recommended plan. The current recommended work program does not reflect the direction expressed by the GO Triangle Board in that meeting. As a reminder, the GO Triangle Board is composed of representatives appointed by Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Cary, and the three counties, reflecting the broader regional perspective that GO Triangle is charged with serving. While the board has not yet taken final action on the FY27 program, members have indicated that these issues should be resolved prior to adoption. Management shares that view and does not believe a status quo program that's not aligned across the three county plans and leaves known reliability and connectivity issues unaddressed represents the best use of transit resources. Go Triangle's strong preference is to resolve these items now rather than risk further delay through future revision cycles. In closing, I want to thank county staff and members of the staff working group for their continued partnership throughout this process. We appreciate the thoughtful discussions that have occurred, the significant work that has gone into developing this work program, and the opportunity to bring these items to you today.

Okay, thank you for that statement. Now just for clarification, so the GoTriangle asks could go through the work program or we could fund it on our own? Is that what I hear? Am I hearing that correctly or am I, or are you saying we can, as a county commission put it in the work program? I'm not sure, because if the staff working group recommended it not be in there, what are the options that you're saying that we have here?

Yeah, there are a number of procedural options, and I don't know that we're interested in getting into all the details of that today, but the staff working group could meet again in June to resolve this. difference of perspective between the boards, or it could proceed as recommended here, be voted on by this board and voted on by the GO Triangle board. The interlocal agreement provides the opportunity for either this board or the GO Triangle board to, rather than approving the work program, to deny the work program with a listing of significant concerns minor issues or technical corrections what we shared with the go triangle board last week is that we would consider this to be a minor issue if it does come to that to be a minor issue so the go triangle board could elect to return it to the staff working group with a listing of minor issues for these items to be addressed following the meeting in june okay

Go ahead, I think you may answer what I'm about to ask.

Yes, so to piggyback off what Catherine is saying. So typically at this stage of the process, we're coming to you with a work program that the staff working group has voted on. It was a unanimous vote, but to Catherine's point, these issues with the GoTriangle proposal were not resolved in time for the final recommended work program. So my role as the staff working group administrator is to bring forth what was recommended. Now, as she mentioned too, the process is it comes to you per the ILA, it comes to the county commissioners first for approval, and then if you approve it, it moves forward to the GoTriangle Board of Trustees for approval. Now, they do have an option to not approve. They can come back and suggest the minor corrections, technical corrections. And they have the option to not approve it. If they do not approve, you know, we will go into an interim budget process where on July 1st we would just have our FY26 operating budget be our budget and there would be no new capital funding allocated for any of the partners.

Okay. So if we don't approve it, right, It'd have to go back to the staff working group anyway.

If the county commissioners do not approve, then you have the option to give us a list of, like you said, of things to address. Yes.

Okay. But if we approve it, and it goes to go triangle, and they don't approve it, they have the same right to say... we disapprove this, we reject this, but these are the corrections that need to happen. And then that would then come back to us for approval with the technical corrections.

That is correct.

But if it doesn't get approved somewhere down the line, if it doesn't get approved by both bodies before July 1st, we go to the status quo, but from last year, just carry forward.

That is correct. Interim budget on July 1, and that interim budget would be in place until a new budget is decided and approved.

Okay. Okay. Any other? Commissioner Valentine.

Yeah, so GoTriangle is essentially one of our key partners here. Are we at an impasse on what you have characterized as minor issues?

Based on the conversation of the GoTriangle board meeting last week, and others who were there would certainly invite them to speak, yes, I believe so. there was clear unanimous commentary from those members that were present at that meeting and unfortunately dr. Lee wasn't able to be present at that meeting but yes that they would like to see these items in this work plan before it comes to them later this month but the staff working group

I said no. Yeah, but we have a complicated process here, right, with multiple boards, and we've never had this situation occur before either. So, you know, I think there's kind of two separate issues. One is the whole timing of this and, like, what happens when, what board needs to approve it. You know, it's June 1st. We're supposed to have this finally resolved by the end of the month. There's only a certain number of meetings between now and the end of the month. It would be challenging to send something back to the staff working group and get it approved by the end of the month. And that's an uncertain outcome, too, right? There's four members. Durham County is only one of those members. So that, while I'm not going to say it's impossible, it would be challenging timing-wise. And then secondly, you know, there is the content of the request, right? And having it be reviewed and vetted and having everyone feel comfortable with it. You know, as Catherine noted in her comments, we have a lot of uncertainties right now. We have uncertain rising costs, right? As we talked about throughout this work program, the sales tax revenue is down and we're not certain when it will recover. We have funding gaps on existing projects. Those maintenance facilities have significant funding gaps and that's not resolved at this time. And then we have you know, what's up here right the city's ongoing transit fund operating deficit Wow while we can be very certain that it's a one-time request I think we should anticipate that there will be More requests, you know, and I would urge caution at this time So I think I think that's a part of it too, you know, not just like do you can we do it logistically? but like, you know, should we do it and I what time and process do we want to follow to vet that and make get everyone comfortable with that i guess it's our recommendation that that would be better able to be accommodated through an amendment okay and mrs minor there was a there was a statement you made i'm wondering if if the not including this in the

staff working groups recommendation was it is it technical is it like we just didn't have enough time to work it through that's what it sounded like so my question is with your experience if there were enough time to work it through do you think this would be this request would be looked on favorably by the staff working group. If it had come earlier or whatever, if you had enough time to have worked it through.

yes i definitely think the timing played a part um like i said at this point we should have worked out all of these issues um the cost neutral proposal did not come to us until may 1st up until that point it was you know go triangles original proposal which was increases on the route 800 and the drx as as presented in the partner budget priority document so in my opinion this is not speaking for the staff working group had that been proposed earlier we could have had those conversations to kind of like ellen mentioned vetted uh make sure that orange county you know we have conversations with them about how it's going to impact them um but i mean we we've spent months we've been working on this budget since august so i mean to ellen's point again i don't have a vote in this process but i do think that this was something that could have been worked out and now we're just at a point to where we have to approve a budget whether it is what is before you you know it's not my decision but i think i share ellen's sentiment that we could just work this out through an amendment approve the work program as is and consider the go triangle proposal as an amendment

Okay. And I don't so much have a problem with the, I understand the timing because it's creative. Like you're sitting, you're saying, well, how can we do this? Oh, here's a good idea. Let's try to bring this forward. So I get that. Were you saying something, Mrs. Burton?

You know, because I was trying to figure all of this out, like about the time, and you explained it very well, like how did this get missed and everything. And so for me, You know, if I like the idea of an amendment, if we could approve the work plan, but, you know, I will hear from my colleagues. I think, for me, it's about, okay, the consistent, us being consistent. It's the consistency and making sure that we are doing things in a timely manner because our residents are dependent on us for that. So that's just my, My opinion about that, but I would like to hear from my colleagues.

Valentine. Yes, could I hear from Go Triangle on the last proposal about the amendment? What are your thoughts about that?

That was discussed at the meeting last week. The Go Triangle board, as I said, had fairly unanimous comments that they would like to see this addressed now rather than waiting for an amendment cycle. And the reason for that is simply the urgency. With respect to the Route 800, these are known reliability challenges. This request has been made consistently by GoTriangle staff initially when it was put forward last September as part of the work program process. Actually, in the case of the Route 100, as a requested amendment for FY26, and then as part of the work plan for FY27. This is based on current operational data that's necessary to be responsive to what we are seeing riders facing today. And the GoTriangle board has conveyed comments that are sensitive to that, really wanting to, to your point, address the needs of our riders of residents today rather than waiting for additional procedural items to play out over the coming months.

Commissioner Jacobs.

Thank you. Let me just ask, in terms of the, I know one part of this is that the Orange County commissioners also have to approve this. Is that not correct? And I think another issue is, from my understanding, that is not a given at this point. So I think we need to be realistic. Timing is a real issue. There's no, there's really, I mean, think about it. We only have two more meetings after this. It's just literally the physicality of each of these bodies being able to meet. We have to hear from the Orange County Commissioners before we could make a final decision because this has to be in their work plan as well.

Could you explain that, Alan? Well, before you start, I don't really think we have to hear from them first.

Well, if they're not going to fund it, then that would be an issue. Is that right, Alan? Can you explain?

So GoTriangle routes that cross the county boundary are typically funded 50% one county, 50% the other county. So the 800 crosses the county boundary. Yes, to your point, would also need to be approved by the Orange County Board of Commissioners.

They have to provide funding as well in their work plan. This is a regional route, and so if they don't approve it,

Well, I'm just saying I don't think Durham County needs to sit and wait until somebody else approves it. If we're going to approve it, we're going to approve it. And then if they don't, they don't.

Well, normally when we do things like this, we know we have, they've at least given some indication that they support it, and we don't have that at this point. I know that the staff working group did, but.

Well, I just don't want us to get in a situation where everybody's sitting around waiting for everyone else to do something.

Right, but that's why this is an issue that it came up at the last minute, because it normally needs time to go through the board. So I support this getting properly vetted and brought back to us as an amendment. I would be very surprised if the Go Triangle board votes against this, work plan that has been put forth supported by the staff working group and also our it's our work plan a Durham County work plan I would be very surprised if that happened I think that would actually be problematic so I am I support us addressing this um with as soon as we can when we get back in august um or july for staff to start working on this as an amendment deputy ceo thank you yeah if i could just speak to the the timing concerns so there are two requests here one is for the derm to raleigh express um the

Wake Transit portion of the funding for the Durham Raleigh Express expansion is in the Wake Transit recommended work program for FY 27. That is moving forward. That's expected to be voted on by the Campo Board and the Go Triangle Board, which are the governing bodies for that component. So the Durham Raleigh Express funding is moving forward in the other county process. With respect to the Route 800, the orange portion of the funding for that has been recommended by the Orange Staff Working Group and will be considered by the Orange Board of Commissioners. We can't speak to how they would vote, but that is on their agenda for later this month. From GoTriangle's perspective, for any of these, in order to move forward with it and seek reimbursement from one or the other of the counties in these cases we wouldn't do that until both are in place so with wake moving forward for with the Durham to Raleigh Express if the Durham components not in place we're not going to be seeking reimbursement from wake or for Durham for that and the same is true for orange so if the orange funding is not in place if Durham were to adopt this change and have that approval in place but Orange chose to defer, we would not be seeking reimbursement from Durham. So Durham can lead without a risk of not having a partner in place.

Okay. All right, I don't think there's any other comments. This was for information for today, right? Then we vote later. Am I right about that?

Yes. Yeah, it would go on the regular meeting agenda for approval.

All right, okay. All right, thank you all very much. All right, I do believe that's, oh, we have one more? Where am I? Oh, oh yeah, the data center discussion. All right. So the next item on our agenda is the future data center policy discussion.

do we have is someone coming up no it is a follow-up to our conversation in may to get board feedback about information desired and there were some directions given to staff at the last meeting and there were some questions asked and you will see some of the answers for some of those questions at the table when DCM Jones may desire to give some additional context to the questions but this was just another time for our board to give staff any additional insight or direction as we move forward in this conversation.

All right, Vice Chair Lum.

Thank you, Chair Lee. I'm trying to remember all the ACM versus DCM. DCM Jones's email about the existing centers. I was wondering when those applications were filed, so it says use cases data center. Was that like when they submitted their request to the planning department, they requested it as the use case of data center? Because in our planning department documents, like the current plan of organization, we don't actually have any application sort as data center, correct?

That is correct. The current UDO does not list data centers as a specific use. Without going back and looking at those specific site plans, the couple, I don't know that they specifically called out data centers. Sometimes these have come in as another use or as, you know, flex office, flex warehouse type space, flex industrial space. But that's something we could certainly look at.

That would be helpful because I think for me, again, going back to the moratorium and the purpose of a moratorium is to have the time for staff to make amendments and adjustments to the UDO to address how we handle data centers when they come in. And since that hasn't been defined in our UDO, We haven't had it listed as a use case for developers when they apply that a moratorium would make sense, in my opinion, to be able to give staff the time to define what is a data center and then also the scope of data centers that we're looking at, because they are all very different. We have companies like like IBM Frontier that have their data centers that's necessary for the functioning of their work. Durham County, City of Durham has it. Those are functioning parts of the services that they provide versus these data centers that are just very significant scale that aren't providing a particular service to an existing company here in the area that is more so for extracurricular activities. So it's more so a comment of what I think a moratorium would be able to allow us and our staff the opportunity to address within the UDO.

So when you say moratorium, are you saying like an immediate pause of everything until staff can create those amendments or carve outs or whatever it is? That's so a moratorium meaning any data center, period, until we can get that defined.

I think if we, like the construction of any new data center, and I mean, my preference would be, and like if anything has already been submitted and applied, obviously that those have been approved before the county or the city were to institute a moratorium, but My bigger concern is these larger scale data centers that are consuming significant amounts of energy, significant amount of water, and emitting significant amounts of pollution. So I personally would be looking at a moratorium on data centers that are like, considered like the nationally recognized as large scale and hyperscale, which I believe is like some folks say 50 megawatts, some of the research institutions. And I think that's what the county should be looking at considering.

So do we have, okay, do we have any other? I'm sorry. So I'll, I'm going to come to you in a second. I'm going to... So I agree with a moratorium for the larger data centers. The research I've been reading and so forth kind of classified around the 100 megawatts. I would even be okay with going down to 75, 80 megawatts or so forth consumption. But what I can't support is a blanket moratorium on data centers, I just can't. I'm just not gonna do that. And so we had our meeting, we had a group come in and talk about this and they said they'd been at it about 18 months I think, right? Been at it about 18 months working on data center moratoriums. But nobody yet has shown any research that has actually started. Right, no information. They're saying we need to pause for 32 months so that we can study. But they're 18 months in and nobody has done any studying yet. So like what have you learned? So there's things you can learn in those 18 months from where you are that you don't need a perpetual 32 month moratorium to study. They mentioned sound. the sound of data centers. There are data centers around already that studies could have been done in those 18 months they've been at it. My fear is we would get in this perpetual 32-month loop that you're going all around the state of North Carolina doing, and nobody's actually studying anything until everybody's on a 32-month moratorium, and by that time, the people who were first on the 32-month moratorium are coming to the end. They're gonna need more, and then they're gonna need more. What I need us to do as a process is common sense. There are some rural counties that don't have businesses coming to them like we do. Businesses need data centers. Large hospitals, large enterprises, manufacturing, all of these places need data centers of some sort. None of them go up to the mega, the hyper, whatever you wanna call it now that are, there's, I think I read one, there's a being built that's the size of Manhattan, something like that. Nobody's arguing that. Nobody here in Durham is arguing that we need to pause on that. What I'm arguing, and this is just Mike Lee, what I'm arguing here is I can't support a blanket moratorium unless we allow the businesses that we're recruiting here to have their own little data centers on the side. Even in the presentation we had at the little staff thing, they were saying even the 1.5 megahertz is a problem. 1.5? I can almost get that done in my house. And then they say, well, they're gonna start at 1.5 and they're gonna go and they're gonna get another one and they're gonna get another. Next thing you know, they're gonna be at nine and they're gonna be at 18. We need common sense and governance in Durham. And I'm one of five. If you all support it, cool, I go with that. But I'm going to stand on the place of common sense. So we can write it up, we can do the larger data centers, I'll support it, I'll stand on top of this and support all we want. But I cannot support a blanket moratorium that does not allow common business data centers. I'm in IT, I've been in IT since 1997. I can't tell you the number of data centers I've been in. I've actually racked and stacked in data centers. I can't go against that for me. I know how much data Avalara uses, the data centers we have. I can't go against that. So to my fellow commissioners, to the city council, to whoever else, all the other millions of people that are watching this meeting, I'm going to go on record saying I can't support a blanket moratorium. That's just where I am. I'm going to go to Commissioner Jacobs and I'll come back to you.

Thank you, Chair, I appreciate your comments. Yeah, I think it's really important that we are making informed decisions, as you said, common sense, but also that we're educating ourselves and that we educate the community. I understand why this is a very alarming issue, and it is a reality in many places in the country. Um, it is really scary and really horrifying, especially in rural areas. Um, and where there's a lot of land, um, what is happening to those communities? And those are very valid concerns. You know, we've gotten emails about North Hampton county, for instance, having a 32 month moratorium, and that may absolutely make sense for a county like North Hampton county. That is a rural county. total of 16,000 residents and a total budget of about 48 million dollars that's not Durham County so we are we are a very unique County in North Carolina where we have RTP which is one of the economic engines of the state we have trayburn industrial park that is has a lot of advanced manufacturing jobs that are providing very good jobs for people with high school degrees or associates degrees and even in rtp the same thing with our life sciences jobs so i think we for instance we are focused on the county which would be our Treyburn Industrial Park, RTP, and then outside the urban growth boundary. So I think the other thing is we need to understand that what the city needs to do is very different than what the county would do. We have very different spheres of influence and investments and land uses, and so You know, for one, let's be clear, to build something at the urban growth boundary, that property would have to annex into the city. So that would be affected by whatever the city does because they would need city utilities. Um, I, I think it is a good idea for us to study this issue with the help of our planning staff and others. Um, we definitely want, we need to have an ordinance that specifically addresses this land use. And I, I do want to hear from you about this, Sarah. Um, I recently read that Surrey county is adopting. a land use around data centers and they did this with a 60-day moratorium they're going to extend it but they have completed a ordinance in 60 days that again that's a much smaller county than us they don't have the resources that we have we should be able to thoroughly study this issue and have our staff come back with a proposed land use ordinance around data centers, you know, hyperscale data centers within, it should not take 32 months. I think it took that much time to do an entire, you know, our UDO text amendment, which is like many, many, many, many ordinances. So we also want to be grounded in common sense around how long something like this should take um so i agree with you um chair we um you know if we're going to move forward with something i think we also need to look at what the states i know we're going to move forward um considering a joint city county and then will be brought back to us using the state that the state ordinance around moratoriums is that correct that do a text amendment so that we would be following what the state says i think one thing to consider is what is in the state statute and there are some very clear things in the state statute about your rationale for being able to do a moratorium and i also have concerns about whether we have we meet the criteria for a rationale it's we have two um existing data centers here in in the county possibly three and to my knowledge we've never had an issue with either of these So I would be concerned also about whether we are meeting the criteria around we have to be careful about what we're requesting based on our current conditions. And I agree with you, Chair. We don't want to have unintended consequences. We got a memo from the RTP Foundation that also raised another issue, which is that not only are there companies that have their own secondary data centers, but also we have like 400 businesses in RTP alone who need the support that data centers provide. And let me just say, Durham County government, we rely on a backup data center for all of our data, which we had to pursue after the malware attack. So yeah, I look forward to really digging into this and doing this in a very thoughtful, well-informed way. We absolutely want to protect ourselves against any type of a hyperscale attack. data center but we also don't want to prevent the type of economic development we desperately need in our county and the jobs that people in our community rely on especially after things like the federal policies where we've lost 6 000 jobs in durham county in just the past year and we know a lot of those jobs were in rtp And we know that also from the data that we share with us from the RTP Foundation that we have manufacturing facilities that use 50 megawatts. So we have to understand that. There's other types of businesses that use energy. And so this is part of how we need to educate ourselves and use a common sense approach. Thank you.

Thank you. I think, you know, I just want to reiterate again that I've also sent everyone a draft of like a potential ordinance that I know the city is considering their own. We will work on that with the city on the other end. But what I've proposed and brought forward to the board is 12 months as well as the language in that ordinance and that moratorium. Yeah, moratorium ordinance and resolution. is calling out the hyperscale and the large scale data centers that again are the ones that are you know, a threat to our environment at this significant growth that we're seeing. I don't think anyone here is talking about the smaller scale, the regular business data centers. So I want to put everyone's mind to ease, at least from Commissioner Alam's standpoint. That is not what I am proposing. So I don't think that, you know, we necessarily need to get worried or hung up on that because if that's where us as a majority are, then we are fine there. The hyperscale piece, I think, of moratorium allows us to provide that definition, because I know we have the data centers here, but as Sarah mentioned, there wasn't a use case for data centers when they applied. when they applied and like we're building we weren't seeing this level of development and growth of data centers and this is really a different time that we're in um and i know we're different from all these other counties our land is more expensive so who knows if we'll even get one um to come here but i don't want us to be at a point where who knows, hyperscale data center company is coming to Durham County and we don't have anything in our UDO that says like, any sort of restrictions or rules that they have to connect themselves and pay for all of their infrastructure needs related to connecting to water, to sewer, to electricity, and all of that being in place. If we don't have any of that, our residents are gonna end up having to pay some sort of AI tax, because we're seeing this happen in other cities across North Carolina as well as across the country. that these centers are coming and residents are having to foot the bill um and when and we also like we run off of what are our waterway is not falls lake wake county is falls lake are we jordan we're jordan lake jordan lake is not an endless supply of water When that runs dry, God forbid, it's going to be the residents' taps that no longer have water coming through it. And so there needs to be protections in place against all these things because these hyperscale centers use a million gallons of water a day. and that is a ridiculous amount of water for a man-made lake to be able to provide water for as well as sustain all of the residents in this area and it's something that's going to impact our future generations like my kids need water my kids need and all of the kids need to be able to breathe the air in our communities and it's not about that they are coming to Durham County as we need to be prepared if they do, just like every other county and city in this state and country need to be.

Okay. Commissioner Burton.

Yes. So I have a question. How long would it take to create an ordinance around data centers? Or just an ordinance period? How long will it take?

So staff feels comfortable that we could do it in a year or less. You have to understand that the adoption process alone takes roughly four to five months, maybe longer, depending if Planning Commission, because it has to go to Planning Commission, and Planning Commission could continue the item. So that accounts for about half the time. And so another half a year of staff research, drafting, getting feedback from key stakeholders, et cetera, getting feedback from the Joint City-County Planning Committee, So we're comfortable with a year that we could reasonably do with that.

So I would be open to 12 months figuring this out. I don't think hyperscale data centers are gonna come to Durham County because the land is too expensive. However, we don't have anything around it. So taking at least, I don't know, a year to create some ordinance around data centers so we have it. And then that way it's on the books. We know what we don't want. We know the hyperscale data, I know the hyperscale data centers probably won't come to Durham County. The one that's being built in Person County is really, really huge. But because we don't have anything, you know, it kind of leaves us open to, you know, whatever. So I'm just putting that out there that I would be willing to, I don't know if we call it a moratorium, but like we take a year or even 60 days or what have you to come up with a plan about in an ordinance of around data centers so we will have something to go by.

director young thank you for being with us here today you look great sitting there beside our deputy jones um my question is uh well let me say let me first say initially i thought that the moratorium made sense but as i begin to receive more information i'm caught in a quandary between the splitting of hairs know we're talking about the hyperscale on one hand and what the implications are for that and oh by the way data centers are already here which has already been um discussed so how do we bridge that gap in order to to make sense moving forward about the information that we seek versus the moratorium get to the goal i think we all have in mind which is to make sure that our community isn't harmed in any way by the potential and i don't think there's a large potential for a big hyperscale data center to come here but just potentially that it would come here theoretically and potentially be harmful for our community like where do we find that balance

So I would say that I think you can put whatever parameters on a moratorium that you find are appropriate. Just by way of example, the city's moratorium has exceptions for... Data centers that are associated with another primary use. So they have exceptions for, uh, medical institutions, educational institutions. You know, the universities also have their own data centers. Um, so you could put exceptions in the moratorium as to what it would not apply to. Um, you could also structure it, um, you know, for data centers of a certain size. Um, I would just caution, you know, there's a lot of talk about megawatts. That is not something that we on the planning side can enforce. That's not information that is available to us when someone applies. Um, so I think, you know, uh, by proxy like square footage or some other method to quantify the size of a potential data center. But I think you have options for putting parameters on the moratorium so that it does not apply as a blanket. And it recognizes, like the city has done, that there are existing things that are necessary and are not the type of hyperscale that there are concerns about.

And Commissioner, I would also add that in addition to that, as the staff is working through their research, we could do regular check-ins with the board as well to make sure that we're on the right path and that the board's comfortable with the direction of the work that's taking place. We could do that as well.

Sorry about that, Chair Lee. I believe fundamentally what you had discussed about governance. And so just like I said, I initially was on board with a moratorium. But again, with the amount of information that's now coming in, it's giving me pause to do sort of a blanket. But to the extent that we could draft something that would um put us in position not to have um some unintended consequences which is never you know there's no such a scenario that would exist um but to the extent that we can continue this conversation i don't think i'm prepared today today to say whether i would be support 100 or not around a moratorium but definitely in getting information that we need to move forward now um that could change tomorrow with you know available information but that's where i'm at today i just want to do what makes sense for our community uh commissioner jacob

Thank you. I just want to say I really appreciate this board discussion and with staff as well. Yeah, I would be interested in staff coming back to us in also coordination with Sarah and also with our partners that we have in RTP and also Trayburn as well. And if we're going to move forward with something, I would want to have very clear language around the exceptions that are really specific and pertinent to Durham County and the reality of what we do have in Durham and what we need within our existing ecosystem, being sensitive to things like RTP 3.0, Um, also, um, but I think to your point, Sarah, it sounds like we should be looking at uses. It sounds like we should be looking at acreage and it sounds like we should be looking at, um, square footage of the building. Uh, we can't regulate the mega Watts that's through Duke energy. Is that correct?

can is can we look at water usage or that's really the city or is that is the water usage even we don't normally regulate that through a land use ordinance no we don't and my understanding from working with the city water management folks is that under state law once someone has water service from a municipality the municipality can't

kind of cut off their water so however much water they use is the amount of water they use okay so we don't normally regulate land I mean through our land you and a land use ordinance would not regulate power or water and that noise is something that we do regulate so that would be the other issue because also we can and this might be related to what we look for Also, we should really have a discussion about what we want to look at for the land use ordinance that's separate from the moratorium language, because we can also think about how do we incentivize what we want to see as progressive data centers, because now there are data centers that are using solar energy. They have closed-loop water usage. they are um have they don't you know not not allowing generators you know we've never had complaints about noise with the data centers that we have so um we can we can also look at what is kind of best practice or state of the art kind of thing but maybe that could be for later on but anyway i would like to hear to your point uh commissioner valentine it would it would i think helpful next step would be staff coming back with some proposed language if we're going to look at a 12 month and also what is specific to durham county and what makes sense and how do we define the what is omega's data center versus having exceptions very clear in in whatever we would consider i i would that that's my what I would like to have for information as the next step.

All right. Commissioner, I mean, five-year alum, you have the last word.

Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to, yeah, round it all back up that I think to Commissioner Jacobs' point that we can't regulate water and things of like when something exists, but when somebody is applying for applications, like we could could we not put in like questions about like how many gallons of water do you expect to be using because it's also about our infrastructure support or the cities or so that what capacity are they even able to withstand Because we constantly have conversations on our end about pump stations and getting water out to RTP, getting water pushed into these other areas. And so that's an infrastructure need that would be needed for a facility, a hyperscale facility of can we even get them the millions of gallons of water that they need? So when I talk about water regulation, it's more so about that because again, they come and they build and then it's like they're gonna need this water, they're gonna need more water pushed towards them. Who's paying for that? Is it gonna be the Durham County or the City of Durham has to now pay for another pump station or increase water lines? That's what I mean when it comes to water regulations in our UDO.

Yeah, so I'll just chime in and share that infrastructure, the city in terms of water sewer infrastructure, even roadway infrastructure, any new development pays for its own infrastructure. The city does not build pump stations for private development or extend water lines or anything like that. So that is not an issue. The city's water management department does do an analysis to make sure that there is sufficient capacity and that what improvements need to be made to the system to serve a property and then the developer has to you know build all that but my remark earlier was and i am not the expert in this so i will kind of uh pause and just say that i know under law once someone has water service like if we have determined that there's enough water capacity for that if they use more water than the capacity we ran the numbers with there's nothing we can do about that

And would they not, like if the capacity infrastructure that even if they paid for it and built it, if they are going over that capacity that was instituted, that's causing a like, you know, load over whatever on the systems that they paid for, then what would happen? Who is responsible for any upgrades?

So I will have to talk with water management about that. I don't know that that is something that, uh, has happened so i'm not sure that you know what their answer would be but i could that's something we can certainly look into that as we develop regulations right so the first step may or may not be a moratorium but the next step definitely will be uh developing regulations and as we do that we will they'll be one of the stakeholders that we meet with to learn more what we can and can't do

So I think, Chair Lee, if I may, that what I'm hearing from my colleagues is that there is some openness to a moratorium if at our next regular session or one of our regular sessions in this month of June, since we're going to be on summer break in July and the city is already one month into their moratorium. two-month moratorium if we could get proposed language of a 12-month moratorium for the county to consider on hyperscale facilities and have that at our next or next next in june meeting i'm good with that i can kind of push for something of that sort for us to consider

manager yeah i i would need to confer with our attorney on timing um we would do our best okay i'm not sure if that's sufficient time yeah but we we will do our best okay

Yeah, I think one is just staff timing. Obviously our next meeting is next week, so that's not going to happen. But, yeah, what our staff feels like they need to come back with a recommendation. But also, Sarah, I also want to check with you. Do you, you know, what is planning staff's capacity to, I know you said that something, a new ordinance, and this is separate. I mean, we need to move forward with an ordinance on this, one way or another right you know one question is do you need a moratorium to actually come up with the ordinance or can we just get going on this ordinance right i mean that's also another thing is you know we could decide on wednesday at our joint city county planning committee meeting that we want to direct planning staff to prioritize working on an ordinance like we can do that on wednesday right and you can start working on that right away so but my question is do you all feel like you have the capacity to start working on an ordinance right away or do we need to bring in allocate resources bring in any outside expertise or help so i know you all have a lot on your plate

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that question. So staff is already committed to doing that because on the city side, there is already a moratorium and it is likely going to be extended. And because we have a joint ordinance and a joint department, so staff resources are already prioritized and committed to working on that.

Okay. Thank you all very much. All right, next item on our agenda. Let me make sure here, because I got it wrong last time. All right, next item on our agenda is closed session. The board requests to adjourn a closed session to consult with an attorney employed or retained by the public body in order to preserve the attorney-client privilege between attorney and the public body with privilege which privilege is hereby acknowledged in general statute 143-318-1183. I'll accept the motion to go into closed session for that reason.

So moved. Second.

It's been moved and probably seconded. We go into closed session for the reason I just stated. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, please choose the same sign. We're now in closed session. Back in open session, the board met in closed session. No action was taken. Advice was given to staff. Direction was given to staff. And that's how we ended our closed session. I'll accept a motion to, no, we don't need a motion to adjourn. It's a work session. All right, we're adjourned. Where's mine?