City Council - Regular Meeting

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Testing 12. This is a test for Durham City Council meeting September 17 2026.

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call our meeting to order at 7 p.m. on September 17th. Mayor Williams is out of the city, and so I will be chairing the meeting this evening. If we could please pause for a moment of silent meditation. Thank you. Council Member Wrist, if you could lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I invite you to rise with me to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, if that's your practice. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll?

Good evening. Mary Williams has an excused absence for tonight. Mayor Pro Tem Caballero? Here. Council Member Baker? Here. Council Member Cook? I'm sorry, Council Member Burris? Here. Council Member Cook? Here. Council Member Kopach?

Here.

And Council Member Wrist?

Here.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Our next step is our ceremonial items. Our Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation has been postponed until October 5th, and so our next proclamation is World Alzheimer's Day. I invite Councilmember Baker to do us the honors. Thank you.

Thank you. And can I call up Adam Hopler, please? Whereas September 21st is World Alzheimer's Day, Dementia Inclusive Inc. holds an annual forum in the month of September to call attention to ways we can all make our community more inclusive for those living with dementia. And this year's theme is understand, act, together. And whereas dementia is a syndrome characterized by decline in memory and thinking that affects behavior and the ability to perform everyday activities, Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia. And whereas dementia is currently the seventh leading cause of death worldwide and sixth leading cause for North Carolina, evidence suggests that when people with dementia and their families are well prepared and supported, their shock, anger, and grief are best balanced by reassurance and empowerment. And whereas Durham invites you to join in partnerships, collaborations, and advocacy efforts to promote well-being, inclusion, and health equity for people with dementia, Now, therefore, I, Leonardo Williams, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim September 21st, 2026, as World Alzheimer's Day in Durham, and urge all residents to join Dementia Inclusive Inc. throughout the year to support people with dementia and their caregivers, especially on September 21st, and to attend their annual forum on September 23rd, 2026. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the city of Durham, North Carolina, the 17th day of September, 2026.

Thank you, Councilman, and thank you for the rest of the city council and neighbors who are present here today. My name is Adam Hopler. I'm the chair of the board for Dementia Inclusive Incorporated. We aim to build a community culture of well-being, inclusion, and hope, both for persons at risk of or actually with dementia and their care partners here in Durham County. Creating this type of culture requires all of us, and so it's greatly appreciated to have World Alzheimer's Day recognized. As an attorney in the community, I regularly work with friends and family who have to actually care for their loved ones who can no longer care for themselves. And I see the way that dementia creates a void that pulls us in, pulling us away from community. When strong bonds are not already in place, it's incredibly difficult to make them in the midst of that kind of a scenario. And so it becomes even more important that we work on seeing those bonds secured long before. I personally have felt this and been greatly thankful to have many bonds that kept myself and our family in place. Dementia Inclusive does participate in World Alzheimer's Day each year in September by holding a forum. This year's forum, as it was said, is on September 23rd at the Durham Convention Center, right around the corner. It'll be from 8.30 until 2 p.m. It's themed Understand, Act Together. We'll have speakers talking about different needs to address the effects of dementia, both on the personal level and on the community level. including Durham County Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. Our council is, of course, invited, as well as the general public. You can find information on the website dementiainclusiveincorporated.org. So to all those who are present here today or who are joining us online, I encourage you to check that out. Again, thank you very much for raising awareness and participating in World Alzheimer's Day through this proclamation, a forum here next week. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Next up we have our announcements by council. Colleagues, because we have a light agenda, I am letting folks have three minutes instead of two. I'm getting a little bit, I'm getting smiles and looks. You can't please everybody. Council Member Kopach, I'll start with you and then just work down the dais, thank you so much.

Sure. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Good evening, everyone in person and online. So great to have you with us. I want to start with just a solemn acknowledgement of the harms that our city faces in terms of gun violence and unsafe streets with multiple recent shootings, including a 16 year old youth today and a nine year old who was killed recently on his bike. While a city can't do everything, I'm grateful that there are steps that we can take as a council, as staff, and community. And I look forward to the work together around the violence reduction plan and our ongoing Vision Zero work to help limit the harms of guns and also stop pedestrian and biking accidents. In this holy season of Rosh Hashanah just passing and Yom Kippur coming up very soon, I want to wish all of our Jewish Durhamites an easy, fast renewal in peace. I want to celebrate the Keep it Durham Owned event that was hosted recently by our Office of Economic Workforce Development. I want to congratulate my colleagues, Council Members Rist and Baker, for their early support for Keep Durham Owned to help support maintaining ownership by workers of businesses in our city, and to Director Gunn's team for executing, and to Council Member Rist for his years of work on economic empowerment and advocacy on the strategic plan. I want to say this is especially meaningful, having the cultural roadmap coming tonight, but it was really wowed by the Durham Choral Society and the Durham Symphony on the 25th anniversary of 9-11, with their performance of Mozart's Requiem at the Armory. It really is a treasure, and it was just incredible to be able to be there. In that vein, I want to thank the police department and fire department for inviting me to join them in running 2,200 steps at the Durham Bowl Stadium. on the anniversary of 9-11 in memory of the first responders who rushed into the Twin Towers on that day and lost their lives. And finally, I want to congratulate North Carolina Central University for being the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge HPCU Quiz National Champions, the first time that NCCU has won that championship. And so we're all very proud and look forward to celebrating with them this weekend. So that's all I have. Thank you. Look forward to a great meeting.

Thank you so much, Council Member Kopach. Council Member Baker.

Hello and good evening to everyone who is here in the building and watching at home. Council Member Kobach, you took my comments, so I want to associate myself with what you've said. It does feel particularly heavy this week. We lost several young people and we had kids get hurt. And I dream of a society where it's not a danger to be a kid and we're not there. Um, too many kids getting hurt, too many kids getting killed and we lost, someone shot today. We lost three kids. Well, there was an 18 year old who was killed on the same day as the nine year old. And, um, Every time this happens, it reminds us that we have a lot of work to do because our job is the health, welfare, and safety of our residents, and nobody's more important than young people are. And colleagues, the aunt of the nine-year-old wrote us a very, very beautiful and thoughtful email that I would encourage everyone to read. I ALSO WANT TO LIFT UP THE LAUNCH OF THE KEEP IT DURHAM OWNED INITIATIVE. REALLY, REALLY EXCITING. SOMETHING THAT I'M VERY PASSIONATE ABOUT. HAVE BEEN WORKING CLOSELY WITH COUNCILMEMBER RIST ON THIS ONE. I THINK IT'S A HUGE OPPORTUNITY. IT'S A SMALL STEP KIND OF LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF SOMETHING THAT COULD BECOME MUCH BIGGER MOVING FORWARD. It is intended to help existing business owners who are, particularly those who are nearing retirement, sell their businesses to their workers, not just try and find another business owner or private equity or close up shop, but actually sell the business to the people who have been doing the work all along. And so there's a lot of behind the scenes work that has been happening with assistance from DAWI, Democracy at Work Institute, and NCEOC who have come in and we're very lucky that they're working with us as well as the city of Raleigh and other places around the country. So major, major opportunity, I think, for our city. I'm really, really excited about it. I think it'll be great for business in this era of concentrated wealth. This is also a way for workers to gain some of that wealth as well. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Council Member Burris.

Good evening. Thank you all who are joining us in council chambers. A light crowd at night, but excited to see all your faces and those who are joining virtually at home. I'll associate myself with me and the comments made by my colleagues, but unfortunately this morning, I had the unfortunate accident. I stumbled upon the crimes, a fresh crime scene, because I live off Barbie Road, and I was on the phone with my dad this morning, going to get my nails done, which they said I didn't get done, but we're going to run an errand, and I'm like, Daddy, I think there's an actual live crime scene happening right now, and I watched the tape go up at the red light, and then the other day, the other Saturday, not a couple blocks over from me, a woman was shot and killed in front of her children, at Revere and Sedgwick, so it's hard to come here and pretend like our city is not blazing right now, and there's not a lot of things happening throughout our community, and I understand that we are putting a lot of faith into the violence reduction plan, and I am excited about that, but there needs to be a little bit more urgency for now in what's happening in these communities. I live alone. I'm a single woman and I don't really feel the safest right now knowing that all this is happening in our community and thinking about what's happening across the city. So we must honor that and look outside of our privilege when we talk about it. It's just not a moment on a Monday night. It's a reality for folks every single day. So I want to just uplift our neighbors, particularly thinking about the children who who unsuffered just a, I don't wish it on my worst enemy, but also uplifting for Keegan's aunt did send us an email, which is, as someone who lost their niece over the summer, I can understand. I send my heart and condolences to the family in thinking about how do we Yes, life is really precious and thinking about how do we make improvements so our children can ride down these streets safely, thinking about a little bit more safety around some of these e-bikes that we see people darting in and out of traffic. So I think there's some policy decisions that must be made very soon about how to keep our community safe. So just want to uplift that. Don't want to have a completely somber moment. So I will advise that you may not be hearing from me for the next week or so. I leave Sunday to go to Kunshan, China. for Sister City, so I'll be there for a week. So my email corresponds maybe a little bit, I will not have any city devices with me, so therefore I will not be responding to anything. So don't take it personally, we'll connect when we get back, but I look excited to go celebrate with our Sister City. And as a tourist, I'm not on official trip, just wanna clarify that for visa purposes. but look forward to seeing all the technology they have, and I'm really excited most about the humanoid robots. So colleagues, I will have to ask you at the appropriate time for an excused absence for next Thursday's work session.

Thank you, Council Member Burris. Let's go ahead and let's do the excused absence now so that we don't, I don't forget. Could I please get a motion for excused absence? Second. Okay, on Thursday, September 24th, is that correct? Okay. And on her birthday, look at that. I've got a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, you've already opened up the vote and you're waiting for me, I think. Can you please, well, I'm missing one. Well, okay. Can you please close the vote?

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. Council Member Wrist.

Thank you, Mayor Patem. Good evening, colleagues. Good evening, Deputy City Manager Winbush. Good to see you here this evening in the chair. Good evening, staff, residents here and online. Good to see you all. First of all, thanks to my colleagues for lifting up the concerns about victims of violence of all forms. It's been a heavy week here. We deeply feel that. As Council Member Burra said, our violence reduction plan can't happen soon enough. This is an imperative for the City of Durham. So we hear the concerns. We share those. We grieve for the families that have lost loved ones. A couple things I wanted to say. Congrats to the Eno River Association on their 60th anniversary celebration. As you all probably know, there was no festival on the Eno this year, right? July 4th, it's getting hotter and hotter. So, Eno River Association did a one-day outdoor celebration and a day-long, I'm sorry, day-long event, and then a benefit concert at the Carolina Theater of Durham. Thanks to the Carolina Theater for hosting that concert, and thanks again, or congrats to the Inner River Association for the 60 years, and we'll see what happens next year. I think there's some kind of festival coming, so stay tuned. Sounds like some of the folks in the room may know about that. Also wanna lift up the folks from the... Alzheimer's Society, it's great that this is September as Alzheimer's Awareness Month. Next month, I hope I'm not jumping the gun here, but next month, this is Hispanic Heritage Month. I was honored to join the mayor and Mayor Pro Tem at an amazing reception this past Tuesday in honor of Durham City and Durham County. I hope not, I'm not stealing the bar of thunder here, am I, on the Mayor Pro Tem, sorry. We got together for a reception to honor Durham City and Durham County being recognized as a certified welcoming community by Welcoming America. We're gonna have a resolution I think maybe next month on that. This is great stuff. It's all about being welcoming for immigrants and refugees in this community. As a son of an immigrant, this is really important stuff to me. Very joyful to be at that reception. I'm so proud of us for being a welcoming city and I hope we continue to do so. Final two things I wanna mention. Two things related to our strategic plan, and actually one of them that actually Council Member Kopach Baker mentioned this. So one of our five goals is inclusive economic prosperity. Two big events this week sort of connected directly to that priority. One, as Council Member Kopech said, was the launch of the Durham Keep It Durham Owned campaign. Again, I want to thank Council Member Baker for being my colleague early on to work with Democracy at Work Initiative to bring that to Durham. This is a really critical piece of building wealth in our community, a critical part of our economic development toolkit, making sure especially that business owners, as they're thinking about retiring, that if they don't have a family member or someone willing to buy that business, that one option would be to sell to your employees. We've got a number of employee-owned firms in Durham. Several were there. It's an exciting part of economic development package. I appreciate Joshua Gunn and OEWD for being a part of that. And I look forward to sharing more information with folks about this great tool to maintain jobs and build wealth in our community. The last thing is, I have a couple seconds. Actually, I'll save those comments for my next time. So good to see you all. Look forward to good meeting tonight, colleagues.

Thank you. Council Member Cook.

Thank you. I'm going to be very brief. I totally would like to associate myself with all of my colleagues' comments. It's been a really heavy week, and I'm not going to say too much on that because I think that I will start crying up here. But yeah, it's a heavy time as well. For those of you who are Jewish or as my husband likes to say, live in a Jewish household or have Jewish community members, you know that this time is a, it is a happy new year as well, Shana Tava, but it is also a time for reflection. In Yom Kippur, it's our holiest day of the year when we think back to all of the wrongs that we have done and all of the people that have wronged us. It's also, for me, the Yartzai for my dad who died of dementia, so that feels very salient to have that read this evening, and I think my colleague, Council Member Baker, who did offer me that speaking role, and I did not think that I could make it through that either. But yeah, it's a heavy time, and so just want to recognize that there's a lot of folks in grief in our city, and that we feel it up here, and are working as quickly as we can, but we can always work with more urgency. That being said, I think that is all my announcements. I hope we have a good, productive meeting. Thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Council Member Cook. Good evening, everyone. Good to see you all. We have several folks out here, I think, in a celebratory mood. We will be taking up that item here shortly. I want to just thank all my colleagues for their very poignant comments. It's always helpful sometimes to go last because you don't have to restate the things that have already been said. But everything you all said resonated deeply with me. I do want to talk about a few extra things. It is Hispanic Heritage Month. Governor Stein had a beautiful event earlier this week, kind of launching it. It was quite warm. But I think the other part of this, so Hispanic Heritage Month is from September 15th to October 15th. It is tied to many countries' independence days. A huge percentage of Latin American countries have their independence days during this month, including my home country, Chile. Tomorrow is our independence day. So I hope that you are out there . So I hope that all of my folks from my home country are celebrating both here and there. The interesting part about Chilean Independence Day is it falls exactly a week after , which I always consider my actual 9-11. And yesterday was the 56th anniversary of the murder of Victor Jara. So September is an interesting month. It is also the month that my grandmother, my abuela, was born and died. So it coincides with lots of cultures, moments of reflections, but for me it is always that question of what would my home country look like? Would I even exist had there not been a coup? I was born five years after a coup. and left soon after I was born to come to this country, to migrate to this country. And so September is always both celebratory and hard. This was the first year since the reintroduction of democracy in Chile where there wasn't an official federal, their government system's different, but where the president didn't actually commemorate the coup. And it is because a fascist president was elected. in Chile about a year ago. I think we can all resonate about what happens when our stories, our histories, all of our history starts to get erased because it's inconvenient, because the people in power who don't want to remember those stories and don't want to own up to them conveniently try and disappear it, just like they tried to conveniently disappear 3,000 Chileans and the harm that that's caused and how many people have been disappeared here. It doesn't change. I think that the impact that somebody like Victor Hadda had, you had the Prime Minister, the President of Spain lifting up his voice yesterday. So the impact of him on history and what happened to him lived on and lived on in a way. So for those of us in this dark moment, we're looking at elections in November and we know what's coming and we know what they're going to try and do. Please remember that we will triumph. Maybe we don't know when or how, but that is what I believe in. So I look forward to the rest of this meeting. Thank you so much. Next item on our agenda is our priority items. Madam Acting Manager.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and members of council. Bertha Winbush, Deputy City Manager. I have several priority items for you tonight. Agenda item number 19, Durham Cultural Roadmap. Additional information requested during the September 10th work session to provide a summary and update of the Durham Cultural Advisory Board's efforts regarding public art proffers is attached under agenda item number 19. Agenda item number 25, 2026 Federal Legislative Update. Additional information requested during the September 10th work session to provide an analysis of local impact on the city of public law 119-101 prepared by the Ferguson Group is attached under agenda item number 15. It is under the no action agenda items for informational purposes only section. Agenda item number 26, capital investment and job creation incentive agreement with Abbey Incorporated public hearing. This item has been referred back to staff and postponed to the October 19th, 2026 council meeting This additional time will allow staff to complete responses to outstanding questions and ensure City Council receives a fully informed briefing. As mentioned earlier, the Hispanic Heritage Month Proclamation has been postponed to October 5th, 2026, City Council meeting. Those are all of my priority items.

Thank you so much. Madam Attorney? Good evening, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Council. It's good to see you. The City Attorney's Office has no priority items tonight. Thank you. Madam Clerk?

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Pro Tem, and Council Members. The City Clerk's Office has no priority items. I do have an update for the nominees for the items on the GBA. We can go over that then, if you'd like.

That would be great. We can go ahead and do that now.

You'd like to do it now?

All right.

So for item two, I have a majority vote for to Mario M. Howes for the appointment. And then for item three, I have a split vote currently and I'm missing one vote for the Durham Workers' Rights Commission.

Okay, thank you, Madam Clerk. Since they are on GBA and I have one speaker, we're not gonna be able to take them up to vote on them anyway and we have to figure out that second one. Next up, I have under our consent agenda. So the way our consent agenda works is that a person, we've previously taken these items up at a work session, but all items can be removed. We vote on them on a single item, but it can be pulled by the public or a council member. And then those items will be considered separately prior to a vote on the consent agenda. So under consent, I have item number one, Mayor's Hispanic-Latino Committee Appointments. Item number four, Durham Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Commission appointment. Item number five, Priority Dispatch Corporation Extended Service Plan Agreement. Item number six, Joint Funding Agreement with the US Geological Survey for Operation and Maintenance of the City of Durham Rainfall and Stream Flow network, item number seven, contract SD-2026-06, municipal separate storm sewer systems inspection. Item number eight, North Carolina sheriff's contract patrol vehicle upfitting. Item number nine, North Carolina term contract patrol vehicles. Item number 10, acquisition of one temporary construction easement in one area and fee simple at 4607 South Alston Avenue for the SW-51 sidewalk project. Item number 11, construction contract for the Environmental and Street Services North Administration Building Roof and Envelope Repairs Project. Item number 12, Junction Road Paratransit Facility and Bay Street Transportation Renovation Project. Amendment number one for design services with Teeple Architects USP.C. Item number 13, preliminary guaranteed maximum price amendment to the Construction Manager at Risk Seymour contract with LeChase Construction Services LLC for the City Hall and Annex HVAC project. Item number 14, preliminary guaranteed maximum price amendment to the construction manager at risk, CMAR contract with Balfour Beatty Construction, slash Holt Brothers Construction, a joint venture for the East End Longmeadow Parks Project. Item number 15, construction manager at risk, CMAR pre-construction services contract with the Christman Company for the Junction Road Paratransit Facility and Faye Street Transportation Renovations Project. Item number 16, 700 Colfax Street, REID number 119184 and 119185, public sale. Item number 17, eminent domain action to obtain one temporary construction easement in one area and fee simple at 2538 South Roxborough Street for the SW-45 bike and sidewalk. PROJECT, ITEM NUMBER 18, CONTRACT FOR PUBLIC ART AT DURHAM AQUATIC CENTER. ITEM NUMBER 20, ACQUISITION OF FOUR TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION EASEMENTS AND THREE AREAS IN FEW SIMPLE AT 3301 SHANNON ROAD FOR THE SW-69 SIDEWALK PROJECT. ITEM NUMBER 21, TAR RIVER LAND CONSERVANCY, DIKES TRACKS, WATERSHED PROJECTION Protection Project Authorization to Fund. Item number 22, Design Build Services Contract with CDM Constructors, Inc. for the Jordan Lake Water Supply Program Durham Water Treatment Plant Project. Item number 23, Construction Award to Carolina Civil Works, Inc. for the Downing Creek Lift Station Improvements Project. Item number 24, Construction Award to Carolina Civil Works, Inc. for the Audubon and Glenview Lift Station Improvements Project. That is what I have for consent and I don't have anyone signed up for any consent items. Thank you. Could I please get a motion to adopt our consent agenda? So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, thanks for opening up the vote. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. Under general business agenda, I have item number two. I have, I think... I have a speaker, Pablo Friedman, under item number two. I do not see him in chambers. Is he online, Madam Clerk? Okay, so my understanding is that one did have a consensus. Okay, so could I please get a motion to appoint a...

I can read it off if you'd like.

Thank you, yes.

To appoint Mario M. Howes on the Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners for a citizen who has demonstrated experience in analyzing financial statements, demonstrated understanding of financing housing developments with tax credits and bonds would be helpful but not necessarily required, and some experience in the successful development and or management of real estate and housing construction would also be helpful but not necessarily a requirement. The term will expire on September 28, 2031.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Can I please get a motion? So moved. Can I get a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Thank you for opening up the vote, Madam Clerk. Please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you so much. The next item that I have under general business agenda is the Durham Workers' Rights Commission appointment. I don't have anyone signed up to speak on that item, but I know that we are not at consensus and we are missing a vote.

Madam Mayor, I was just consulting with Madam Attorney and she consulted me that since it is a split vote on that and we don't have a majority, then I should just re-advertise it.

Okay. Thank you so much. We are going to re-advertise that so that item is getting referred back and we do not need a motion and we do not need to take it up. Thank you. Next up under our general business agenda is item number 19, Durham Cultural Roadmap. I have several speakers signed up to speak, but I will start with our virtual speaker. I have Duane Brayboy.

Yes, so Duane Brayboy . Greetings to all of you, the Durham City Council. My name is Dwayne Brayboy. My Tuscarora name is . I'm Bear Clan and I have crossed 56 winters. My title is . I'm a citizen of the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina and enrolled at Prospect Longhouse. Today I speak for my people with the permission of our clan chiefs, clan mothers, and other title holders. Long before Durham became a city, Tuscarora people and the Tuscarora language were part of this land. The first Surveyor General of North Carolina described Tuscarora as the lingua of the country, understood beyond our own territory, of which Durham was part of. That language still survives in the landscape. One example is Camp Ganada Lake in Durham County. Ganada refers to a settlement in the Tuscarora language tradition, the same word from which the name Canada ultimately derives. The Eno people associated with Durham also became part of our history. We Tuscarora called them Eno, meaning distant, reflecting that they came from distant lands and came under Tuscarora protection. The Neuse River, which begins here in Durham County, where the Eno and Flat Rivers come together, also carries a history connected to Native peoples, especially the Tuscarora. We are asking to have our own place in the history of this land acknowledged. Tuscarora history is Durham history. It survives in the waterways and the place names and our language and in a people who are still here. As you consider the Durham cultural roadmap, the Tuscarora Nation asks the City Council to recognize this history and to consider establishing a Tuscarora historical marker within the city. Thank you very much. I appreciate you all.

Thank you so much for being here with us. Those are all the virtual speakers that I have, Madam Clerk. Next up, we have several folks that are signed up in person. I'm just going to call you up in groups of five, unless there's a certain order that you are wanting to be in. There is a certain order. Can you just give me a thumbs up if there is a certain order? So if you could please go up. OK, thank you. So first, I have Pablo Friedman. I have Jose Manuel Cruz. I have Charles McClatchy. I have Margaret McNabb, and I have Tim Walter. Good evening. All public speakers this evening have three minutes, so I'm just going to go ahead and say that out loud so that I don't have to speak to every single person that comes up here. Good evening. Thanks for being with us.

All right, good evening, Deputy City Manager, Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, members of council, City Attorney Rayburg, staff, the millions of folks who care about democracy, and Mayor Pro Tem Caballero, thank you for giving us three minutes, because when you have chaired prior meetings, you've given us one minute, so I take that as a good faith of Hispanic Heritage Month, so thank you very much, Mayor Pro Tem. So I'm here tonight to speak on this particular item, because for those of you who don't know, my father is an artist, and that has been his career for his entire life, and he's also an arts educator. And one of the things I think is really important in talking to local artists here in Durham, specifically about this, what is on for you all to vote tonight, is the need to create more financial opportunities for smaller scale artists to survive in Durham. A lot of what's here is incentivizing big scale projects, nothing wrong with that, public art is good, but also how do you build the ecosystem for smaller artists, the ones that built the fabric of the city to survive and sustain and persist. And I can tell you that because my own father is not a very commercially successful artist. He does it because he cares about it. And I think we need to be prioritizing our very limited taxpayer dollars to sustain that ecosystem. I also know on the earlier item, which I wasn't able to speak to, but I'll briefly speak to, I'm glad you're reopening that. I think that appointment to the Durham Housing Authority is perhaps one of your singular most powerful appointments that you all have. and so I'm glad that you're reopening for that, and I think you should use a full core press using all of the city's channels to market that and get a robust set of applicants. There's been a lot of tension between some of the folks on the dais and the Durham Housing Authority, so make sure you get that appointment right. Thank you, and I'll cede the rest minute back to you, Mayor Pro Tem, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. Thanks for being with us.

Good evening. My name is Jose Manuel Cruz. I've been an art educator for 38 years. The last 11 years been at James E. Shepherd Middle School. And I'm also a professional artist here in the Triangle area. And I'm here representing the Durham Arts Council. and sit on the board there and I think that it is important for not only the community but even as an educator as I see the students and I try to nurture them that they not only know about all the artists like Picasso and Van Gogh but that they know what's actually in their backyard like here in Durham. We have so many different artists here and role models here and I just hope that you guys adopt it and that do we also have also maybe an investment in an office so that we can manage everything there and just thank you thank you for your time thank you so much good evening thanks for being with us

Hello, everybody. My name is Charlie McAlecki. I'm a co-founder and a producer with Switch Theatre Company. We are a 501c3 located here in the heart of Durham. We're actually in the midst of rehearsals for Radio Golf by August Wilson, which is rehearsing and being performed at the Durham Arts Council. And we've been kind of watching the development of the roadmap from the sidelines with great anticipation and just wanted to throw our support behind this. One of the biggest issues affecting our theater in Durham is the lack of affordable space. Durham's the only large triangle city without any sort of city-sponsored community theater program and we're looking to help start that by partnering with other local arts organizations, we've started that process to form a Durham theater collective that is ready and willing to pounce on some initiatives once this bill gets approved. So very much encourage you to approve this roadmap so that we can continue providing theater to for a changing triangle arts and culture or what make a place a destination and Not just a way station so and that's what we're going to provide if you guys pass this so thanks very much Thank you Good evening.

Thanks for being with us

Hello. Good evening, Council. It is so nice to see you all again. I'm Margaret McNabb, Chair of the Durham Cultural Advisory Board. I want to first thank everybody for giving me and Vice Chair Joey Medrano an opportunity to speak with you about the plan. I was so encouraged by the potential and opportunity that you all see in this plan and in the arts and culture community. So I wanted to acknowledge, first of all, how much time, thought, and energy went into the development of this plan. It was past DCAB board members that recognized the need for this shared direction and greater intention around arts and culture in Durham. That came to this proposal to make this, to develop this plan, which was led by former Mayor Steve Schewel and Zena Howard. who brought together the Cultural Planning Group, which was just a tremendous number of people in the arts and culture, different organizations and partners who worked on this for several years and brought their perspective and ideas to the table. The Public Art Committee was also very involved in this effort. and then de-cab ourselves. I can't also have to acknowledge how much effort and energy our city and county staff also put into the development of the plan. That just truly cannot be understated at the same time as we were making some great strides in the program all at the same time. The process was led by our consultant, Margie Reese, and MGR partners. It's a tremendous effort to lift up all these voices. Thousands, thousands of residents, artists, and creatives weighed in on this plan, which I think shows you just how much this community cares about this and all the potential that we see for, I don't know, for all across the county and in so many different areas. I wanna also acknowledge the support that we got in addition to the county and city funding to develop this plan. Also, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation was a funder, Duke Arts, Triangle Community Foundation, Fox Family Foundation, and Man Bites Dog Theater Fund. I think that the best thing that we can do to honor all that time, all that energy is in the implementation phase and that's when things are gonna get really interesting if we get your approval today in addition to the unanimous support that we got from the county earlier this week. I'm sure that there are plenty of folks that I've left off of this list and I sure have.

Thank you. Good evening, thanks for being with us.

Hey, thank you. I'm Tim Walter. I'm the founder of The Fruit, an art center in Near East Durham, and a native of Durham. Thank you all for hearing this out. And thanks for passing this. So way to go. It's good to put a close to this chapter as we look forward to the next. So one thing I want to say is that the fruit is a social enterprise. We're not actually looking for funding to sustain us. We want to sustain ourselves through the work that we do. We focus on local and alternative artists, primarily from overlooked communities. We also do world-class stuff, too, but that's why we get out of bed in the morning for the local artists. So my three quick points are, first, an apology. Leaders of the Roadmap process and I thought that this passage also included all the budget stuff that has been talked about, and I was going nuts about that because none of that had been done in public. or had been scrutinized in public. And it was making me very worried. So I realize now this is, we close this chapter and we start the next, which is going to be haggling over budget. But I made, I think, some of the staff's life miserable. And I apologize to Rebecca and Jackie. You know, we can have coffee later. Okay, so second point, testimony. The Fruit also focuses on artists of limited means. We deal with people who are on food stamps and Medicaid. A lot of folks that we're working with really don't, they actually can't afford or they're pre-commercial, so they're not at the Carolina Theater, the Arts Council, certainly not at DPAC. So we provide a lot of subsidized theater space. free studios, grants, and a lot of coaching to artists. So that's good stuff, it's in the plan. The other thing, we had the great surveying work mostly in East Durham by Wexler and Marshall, and then you should feel comfortable about the plan because it's Americans for the Arts talks about very much arts as a civic infrastructure and Discover Durham talks about heritage based arts and then Norfolk refers to neighborhood based and Incubation so it's all it's all there Last thing is to then say just get ready for one heck of an analysis battle That's coming forward because the arts plan doesn't include an asset map yet it doesn't include a discussion of what is a healthy arts ecosystem and And I would say that it seems to imagine just a very small sector of really what the arts and culture sector is. I think they miss about two thirds of it. And I think that we're gonna look for some system leverage points, not just command and control ideas. So thanks again, pass it and let's go on.

Thank you. Before the next, oh, that was the last speaker. Okay, so the next five speakers I have are Scott Frawley, Alexandra Valladares, Heather Wilson, John Michael, in Spanish, Colón, Colin, and then Aya Shabu.

Good evening, my name is Scott Frawley. I'm a member of the Durham Cultural Advisory Board, but tonight I'm solely providing comments in a personal capacity. I'm speaking tonight to encourage you to approve adoption of the Durham Cultural Roadmap. The roadmap is not perfect, but that's okay. Its implementation can be decided by the people of Durham over time. Tonight's vote is most importantly a vote to mandate dramatic boosts in arts and cultural funding as civic infrastructure. With this windfall and approach to civic investment, we stand to gain some invaluable tools for shaping Durham's future. See, given its purpose to leverage culture as an instrument for economic and workforce development, growth, and placemaking, adopting the roadmap opens the conversation around deeply interrogating how we might reorient our economy and society around the culture we wish to create and embody. I suggest this sets us up for two paths to consider. The first path I'll call the abundant route, which is business as usual. I'll briefly address the route and we'll hear later about the alternative path, the community route. So let me clarify. The roadmap opens with a summary of what the community affirmed the need for in strengthening our desired culture, including greater racial equity and leadership and funding, affordable housing and working spaces for artists, and preservation of heritage, memory, and cultural identity. That is the call to action, but we know accomplishing this will be an uphill battle since the mayor is on record as loving gentrification and because members of this council approved no developments while flippantly mocking natural heritage site designations. Business as usual will never achieve our collective vision of resilience and solidarity. Power and moneyed interests control narratives to sell us on things that nobody wants or needs, things like AI, advertising, mass surveillance, or a new Durham Convention Center. this short-sighted thinking expects us to blindly accept a vision for durham led by the powerful and advanced by as one example the related durham next destination master plan overseen by a board that includes members from morningstar law group and the streets at south point mall what kind of culture and economic prosperity can we expect to cultivate from that kind of leadership This roadmap could be something different, but we must be cautious and strategic with its possibilities that could be for the people, because its recommendations for corporate sponsorships, greater tourism, and building more playthings for the rich are not visionary or transformative. Still, other aspects offer much-needed innovations toward building a socially and ecologically just future. For those reasons, I encourage you to vote to adopt the roadmap and take seriously the ideas to come in the following comments. And to all interested in exploring this work, I invite you to reach out. and share in co-creating the Durham we will win together. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Members of the City Council. And I just want to open with gratitude for the work, especially this cultural roadmap. There I go. I can hear myself now. And just let you all know that I'm Alexandra Valladares, community organizer for decades. And it is an honor to be here. I am here because for many decades, the work that I have led with many others is about heart. It's a hard work. And I see that the work that has been done in the cultural roadmap is including room and space for hard work. And I do want to read a quote about what I mean when I say hard work. Hard work happens when we are in relation to the natural world and ourselves. And in Durham, that relation starts with the truth. And so I find that this is an opportunity for affirmation and to do some justice to a history that has been erased. Because all along, a lot of the so-called immigrant community has been told that we are foreigners, invaders, and the culprit of so many things. But the narrative is different when you talk to the Tuscarora Nation, who knows that history, who's been here thousands of years, and they tell us that we are the people of corn. And that we've actually been connected for thousands of years because corn originated south of Mexico, as city council member Carl Rist was also sharing, that that history is there and available to us. And so as people of corn, corn migrated. Corn got to us here in North Carolina because of people who moved, because of people who felt affirmed in being able to exchange the wealth, that ecological knowledge. And so that is also vibrant, that is also life, and that is also hard work to share. And so affirmation is foundational. The Tuscarora historically occupied the coastal plains and river basins that include Durham County. This was a confluence area. And that confluence area meant the Uconnichi Band of the Saponi, the Tuscarora Nation, the Eno, they all shared corn and other things and so that is also why this has been a beautiful place for Black Wall Street and the innovation that we see here because this has always been a place of sharing and community and so many wonderful things and so I do see that hard work is included in this cultural roadmap. The other thing I wanted to say is that we're going to celebrate the welcoming and Hispanic Heritage Month And this is also part of that. It's a part of telling the stories of the people that preceded us and that welcoming that happened thousands of years and continues to happen today. Spirit People Land is more of the work that I'm doing with vigils. I do see that the cultural roadmap includes affirmation. practices of the things that allow our communities to thrive and so just let's keep an open mind when we think about what the cultural roadmap can be if it's led by people who are connected to other people in relation and doing this hard work I have three seconds thank you gracias

Good evening, thank you. My name is Heather Wilson. I am the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Downtown Durham Incorporated. I also serve as the co-chair of the City's Public Arts Committee. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of DDI as well as the City's Public Arts Committee in support of the Cultural Roadmap and urging the Council's adoption of its recommendations. DDI recently completed our Downtown Blueprint 2035, which is our 10-year strategic plan unanimously adopted by this council last December. And as we move into implementation, this cultural roadmap has become one of the clearest and most useful tools available to us, not just because it echoes many of downtown's Blueprint 2035 in spirit, but also because the recommendations map directly onto specific commitments we have already made to this community. Those include our Rooted and Ready goal. This goal calls for the infusion of downtown's public realm with arts and culture and names the cultural roadmap explicitly as a reason to act now alongside the Public Arts Committee's own planning work. The roadmap's cultural investment framework and grant-making recommendations give that early action a structure and a pathway that we previously did not have. Additionally, the roadmap's recommendation to expand artists' workspace and cultural production infrastructure aligns closely with two of our own early recommendations, our master leasing program as well as our commercial land trust work under our downtown works goal. DDI is prepared to be a downtown implementation partner for affordable creative spaces and to preserve, I'm sorry, affordable creative space preservation, and the roadmap gives a role to countywide framework for us to be able to plug into. The Roadmap's proposed arts and business partnership platform speaks directly to, again, our Blueprint's goal for Open for Business, called Open for Business. Our downtown's business improvement district is a natural pilot environment for this kind of platform, and we want to make sure that this table is able to make shape. Finally, another connection between the Cultural Roadmap and Downtown Blueprint 2035, our plan calls for tactical action groups, which are temporary coalitions of aligned partners to carry specific recommendations forward. The city and county's team commitment to standing up a leadership table for coordination and structure behind the recommendations in the Cultural Roadmap can provide a meaningful forum to align downtown's DDI plans around arts and culture work. And without a lot without requiring DDI to need to stand up any parallel structures from scratch. And so again, I urge you all to approve it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for being with us.

Hi, everyone. My name is John Michael Colon. I work a corporate job in the health sector in the Triangle. I'm also a writer, essayist, and editor. I want to start by saying I'm grateful and thankful to the whole town of Durham because, frankly, it has welcomed me, not just as a person, but as an artist. I can't say that for every place that I've lived in. I've lived in a lot of places, or a lot of the places that I could have lived in. I've danced at the Fruit and Ruby's the whole night away. I've listened to amazing music at Pinhook and the Boom Club. Become a consumer owner at not only one, but two little consumer co-ops, right? Letters Bookstore and Durham Supermarket Co-op. I've spent whole afternoons and evenings in the coffee shops around town, like the Daily and Cocoa Cinnamon. And at these places, I've met and befriended, even in the short year and a half that I've been here, some amazing people. DJs and musicians and poets and editors and writers and philosophers and painters and the whole lot of them. And I love them. I think that this is a great town. I love the artists in town. The artists need funding because all artists always need funding. So obviously I'm in support of the initiative. But in this proposal, you hear a lot about innovation hubs for the arts. All right, well, what is art for and what is innovation for in an age like this? an age of concentration camps and genocides, potentially of dictatorships, potentially of things even more violent than dictatorships. I think that in an age like this, what we need is something that I worry we aren't hearing much about in the proposal, and that is empowering people, empowering ordinary people, empowering ordinary artists, I mean, think about your artists. Your artists work overwhelmingly in academia where the jobs have been getting worse and worse for decades and are frankly disappearing under fascist assault. And if they don't work there, they work in the service sector, in your small and medium enterprises where they have to work two jobs to make rent and have no savings afterwards because guess what? The rent is too damn high so they don't have any left over. They need resources, but of a particular kind. You have writers with magazines and small presses. They need cheap printing presses. The typical intellectual magazine maybe is like $11,000 a pop for a print run of 1,000. Can we do better than that if we have some kind of public version of that resource? You have artists who need studios with canvases, sculptural materials, tools. I mean, if they can't make rent, How are they going to make rent on another thing that would have all that equipment? Same thing with musicians, maybe even worse. Not only conventional instruments, but things that people in the avant-garde need to do the things that they do. Analog synths, recording studios, right? And these are the cheapo arts. Imagine the more capital-intensive ones like film, right? So obviously it seems to me then like innovation hubs means community maker spaces for the arts, but I think that it should also be owned by the community. This is a city with a tradition of consumer co-ops. I say that we make one, and I know this is something that perhaps Carl Rist, it seems like you might be interested in based on your work with Democracy at Work, and Nate Baker, maybe this is something that would be of interest to you. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you so much. Good evening, thank you for being with us.

Thank you. I am Aya Shabu. I am an ordinary artist, and I wear many hats. And tonight I am here as a business owner of Whistle Stop Tours. It's the arts that brought me to Durham, and I continue that legacy artfully and innovatively, making Durham a destination. But I can show you better than I can tell you. John Merrick's stature was made of brick, iron, tobacco, and silver. Still sucking his mother's breast while chained, a tiny John Bey began working on his knees as a teenage slave, the product of a black woman's flesh bought and sold. John reshaped his own clay, breaking his white earthly father's mold. John, a strapping young man who, when he stood, was still only the height of the white man's shoe. Industrious, he polished his own reflection into the leather of the well-to-do, a boot black by trade. Brick by brick, he built the walls of Shaw U so that black men could ascend while he never stepped a foot inside its halls. A mason freed, an entrepreneurial barber not greed but tactical mathematics. Whites only signs gave him Jim Crow access. He owned three shops for whites and three more for his own kind so that black men could enter and exit through the same door and not have to go around and behind. White men befriended him, himself white collared, only bowed under the weight of duke and car dollars. But as the story grows, be it Duke or Washington, he sowed the seeds of an insurance company, North Carolina Mutual Insurance and Providing Association, the world's largest Negro enterprise. But before that, there was RKKD, a mutual aid society, collecting the coins for black widowed women and their orphan children. Not a frat house of the Duke sort, where never to become men, boys lay black sex workers down on lacrosse and ritual sport. Merrick was a true reformer. He left Reconstruction politics and the vote with racist, redshirt marauders who stole, burned, and massacred. But John didn't let the Wilmington dead bury their dead. He built wealth instead, a colossal monument that needs no statue. Black Wall Street of America is his virtue. He built wealth that could dig graves with dignity, wealth that could house, loan, and ensure that little Haiti would always be debt-free. So the real pioneers first saying the name and their southern twang, spelling it with only one I, H-A-Y-T-I-Y, because IET lives within us. We are self-named and self-possessed, and we call ourselves paytai. Thank you.

Thank you. The last four speakers that I have are Matt Tintera, John Wesley, Keeber Oxidine, and Kayla Cyrus. Good evening. Thanks for being with us.

Good evening. I'm Matt Tintera. I have been a Durham resident since 2014. And I'm a local artist of sorts, of the non-commercial sort. And I want to express a couple of things. First, appreciation for the cultural roadmap. Since moving to Durham in 2014, one of the things that has kept me here is this has felt like a place that values and invests in individual creative projects that pours resources, that celebrates those sorts of things, and I think many of us here feel the same way. The other thing I want to express is a concern regarding how the budget is distributed, how these funds are used. I think the concern is that large-scale projects will be privileged, that money might pour towards NGOs or non-profits, which is not a bad thing per se, but these sorts of things are easily wrapped up in the processes of gentrification that we see happening here, elsewhere in other cities. One of the things that caught my attention that one of the earlier speakers said was that we want to make Durham a destination, not a way station. What makes a place a place to be is the individual expression of the particular creative capacities of the people who live here, not some sort of large-scale, top-down implementation of what everybody thinks every city everywhere should look like, by the way, which is what everything is starting to feel like. You go to any city in the US, and it feels the same, the same sorts of bars, the same sorts of murals. Anyway. What we are hoping is that you all will consider a participatory budgeting program for the distribution of these funds that draws in local artists to have immediate decision-making impact on how the funds are distributed, Since stepping away from academia earlier this year and getting connected to the local art scene, I have met dozens of artists who are incredibly talented and incredibly smart. Durham locals who have been here for decades. These are the people you want making the decision of how this money is used because their ideas and their projects are what are going to make this a place you want to be, other people want to visit. I don't know, there's not much more to say than that, but if this money is to actually support local artists and actually be a sort of resource invested in making Durham particular and special in the way that it is, include local artists in the process of decision making. Thank you, anyway.

Thank you. Next up I have John Wesley. Okay, you all wanna go together, okay. All right, so technically, our rules do not allow that, but I'm going to, because we don't have a ton of speakers, I'm gonna let, if you all wanna go together, that is fine. I don't know if that's what you're trying to indicate to me.

. So we say thank you and greetings to all of our friends here in Durham. I am, he reaches across the sky, and his name is he is on the path. We are Tuscarora of North Carolina. This area you call the city of Durham is some of our stomping grounds, as folks say. So we're here to offer support in the plight of the Durham Cultural Roadmaps. We've heard mention of lives lost here in the community, acknowledgement, lives lost across the continents. We wish to acknowledge those lives that have been lost by exhibiting our art through song. So if you would please.

. . . are on my mind every time the birds sing your name every time the wind blows by me whispering your name I wonder when we meet again if you'll love me like you did so long ago. Hey-oh, hey-oh, hey-oh.

Yeah, we give thanks to the Durham Cultural Roadmaps Council and Committee for inviting us here, and we give thanks to the creator of all of this, as well as the Board of the City of Durham for allowing us this time to acknowledge those that need to be acknowledged with the gift that creator himself has given to us to express that acknowledgement. Yahweh. In our language, that means thank you, and we do not say goodbye. We say etketket. That means we'll see you later.

Thank you so much for being with us. Good evening.

Thank you for being with us. My name is Kayla. My people are the Grimm's of Bolton, North Carolina, the people. I'm a mother to four children and a local teaching artist throughout the triangle. And I go to elementary schools and community events to present North Carolina's Native American culture to our young scholars. Because imagine living in the land of your ancestors and being surrounded by people who don't know you exist and can't name a tribe outside of the Cherokee tribe. My goal for this program is for young geniuses to know the names of our people the same way they know the Pledge of Allegiance, in a fun and very interactive way. My program also presents the importance of Indigenous sovereignty and of indigenous sovereignty and black liberation being hand going hand in hand so they will know that the name of the eastern band of the cherokee tribe as well as alumbi tuscarora wakamasuan kahari halawa saponi saponi okanichi band of the saponi and the maharan tribes supporting cultural artists like me help us keep doing the work that we're doing expanding the minds of our young scholars So, it seems like a lot of people shared some really heavy news today, and today I am wearing my jingle dress. This is known as the healing dress and the healing dance. It's a medicine dance that began with the Ojibwe people of the Great Lakes, but reached natives all across Turtle Island, and I wanted to share it with y'all today in hopes of lifting your spirits, and this is the dance that I share in my program with children.

Madam Clerk, can you pause the time for them, please? Thank you. That's fine. Thank you. Yes, thank you for asking. That's fine.

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Thank you so much for being with us. Madam Clerk, those are all the speakers I have signed up this evening. OK, thank you. So colleagues, the motion I need from you all this evening is to approve a resolution adopting the Durham Cultural Roadmap.

So moved. Second.

We've got a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, thank you for opening the vote. You can please close the vote.

And the motion passes unanimously.

thank you so much thank you to all the speakers for coming this evening i've had many interesting meetings over the years i'll take dancing and singing over being yelled at any day of the week i think that is all that is before us this evening Okay, I thought you were going to tell me no, there's more. I was like, please don't tell me there's more. And so we are now adjourned at 8.13 p.m., I think a record, honestly, in the last few months. Thanks again for being here with us, y'all.

In January, two winter storms hit Durham, and community safety expanded emergency shelter operations alongside a wide network of partners. Afterwards, 10 families were in hotel rooms with no place to go. Now, we had been working for the past seven months on a new approach, and here was our first chance to put it in action. The whole plan is built around this one big vision, that when someone experiences homelessness, we're able to house them in 30 days. From where we are today, where someone can be unsheltered for years or stuck in a shelter for over a year, this is an ambitious vision. So we asked ourselves, can we move 10 families with 14 children into housing in less than one month?

What is a housing sprint?

Our team ran what we call a housing sprint. That's just a focused effort over about a month where we try to move as many people as possible from homelessness into housing. We set a goal of helping these 10 families, but we did it a little differently than usual. Instead of just referring people to services and hoping something opens up, we came prepared. What made this approach different? We showed up with real options already lined up. That included money to help with things like deposits and rent, housing units that were actually available, and case managers ready to stick with families after they moved in. Then we worked directly with people one-on-one, helping with applications, dealing with pay...