Remarks by Chelsea Cook
72 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 3
- Play at 3:12:21
“Can we get language for how one might do something like that? I feel like we've done somewhat comparable proffers previously. Is there language that”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:12:34
“We haven't done it for signage, but we've done it for other things that required permissive usage, like bus stops, if a bus is going to be routed there, shelter, if there is going to be lots of potentials.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:13:21
“I don't, okay, thank you, those are my questions.”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:46:42
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:47:01
“Okay, thank you. Those are all my questions, thanks so much. Yes, I'm gonna echo a lot of what my colleagues have said um i talk a lot about affordability up here i feel like we've all sort of got our things that we talk about um and my my piece is affordability and i'm and i'm watching people right because i'm an eviction court every day and so i'm watching what is impacting people and what what it means to actually be able to afford your rent or your mortgage, because we see people losing their mortgages a lot too. We have a huge number of folks in the city that are cost burden for their…”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:58:37
“COULD WE JUST MAKE SURE THAT WE GOT ALL THE PROFFERS FROM STAFF?”
City Council · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 15:26
“Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I will be brief. I just want to say that yesterday, several of us had the opportunity to go to the Museum of Durham history to celebrate the securing of a 30 year lease. And that securing happened because actually the city was the one who leased that property out. I'm really happy that the museum will have at least a semi-permanent home moving forward. If you haven't been, that museum is located on our downtown loop, right in the entranceway to downtown on the west side. And it is an amazing museum. I said yesterday, which people thought was funny, that it…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 37:45
“Do you want to entertain a motion first?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 38:23
“Thank you. Do I have anybody on this issue, on the?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 38:36
“Thank you. So just a couple questions. So of course, we're always in favor of going after more money and grant money. Not a problem there. But I'm a bit confused about why the budget estimate was so drastically different, especially because we put this out to a bond. And so I have a couple of specific questions in that. One, I'm just going to read the language from the memo, which says, the estimate did not include several costs necessary to deliver the project, including professional design and engineering fees. construction cost escalation project management permitting testing and other…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 40:12
“I mean... i'm not sure that answers my question about maybe why um these are costs that we i would assume know that we would need to take on and so and we put this out and i think my extra concern is that we put it out to a bond and we told the public a general cost and obviously we can't we can't always um anticipate everything but these do seem like things that we could anticipate and so i'm just i'm wondering if there's any more information you can share on that”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 42:25
“were initially included what professional services and so I don't have that specific information we'd have to provide that as follow-up yeah and I guess I'm concerned too about how much the scope can change after it's been put to a bond and and so those things feel unclear and I'm gonna maybe address those a little bit more but I have a couple more questions that I wanted to ask is this a grant that we're likely to receive”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 43:16
“And if we don't receive the grant, is there a backup plan?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 43:41
“And then I'm not sure if this is a question for you or perhaps someone else. I don't know. But we've set aside about $15 million for remediation. And is that money being tapped into at all for this work? Or do we have plans to look at it?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 44:55
“Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I see my colleagues have some questions too. I'm feeling, I understand the immediacy of the issue, and certainly I don't want to get into the way of grant requesting, but I am feeling uncomfortable with the fact that the scope of this has changed so much that we are having to look for an additional, I think it was like a million, 15 million, $15 million after we And we and I'm going to say week is all of us up here, I think, signed off on on publicity around this and went into the community talking about what we were going to offer for the vote of this bond. And it's…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:00:38
“Thank you. Yeah. And I don't want to belabor this. And this is not, I know y'all are in the hot seat. It's not about y'all. I think that everyone up here wants to ensure that it just is working well moving forward. I think for me, additionally, with what Mayor Pro Tem Caballero said, other things that would be helpful would be a breakdown of where these costs are coming from. Because I hear you saying a couple of things are kind of carrying the weight. But again, the memo sort of includes all of these different things. And several of them were absolutely predictable. Like, we absolutely knew…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:02:45
“Okay. It is listed in the memo as something that's adding to the cost, so maybe that in the cost breakdown would be way more clear. And then the other thing is, to go back to Councilmember Rist's point, and I just want to ensure that we're having sort of collaboration among departments, like, what is that collaboration looking like, and at what point”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:03:38
“Because, I mean, we've had you and your colleagues standing up here as we've berated you on other deliverables, right? And I do want to make sure that there is that conversation happening. It's happening early enough. Yeah, we don't get here.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:18:35
“Hello. Sorry, I know I saw your name and I was like, oh, he's going to be thrilled. This is going to be so, so quick, but actually slightly in line. I know, really. Famous last words. In line with the last questions, which is that I know that this is based off of a study from 2021. I know we're going to have costs that we don't anticipate, but some of these costs we can anticipate, like repainting and these other things. So can you talk a little bit about”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:20:06
“And this is the second amendment, right? Correct. Okay. And so will we be able to finalize?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:20:39
“Okay, and then I asked this question of Director Egan when this came up previously, but In as we're thinking about parking as a whole And we're sort of setting aside money to repair these garages What kind of are we also like looking at a more holistic? i see looking over are we looking at a more holistic picture of downtown parking um i know we're also like this fund is short um we're now offering free parking which is going to short us on this fund even further and so what are we doing and where are we in this like more holistic picture and looking at parking i'll take it um”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:24:27
“I think it's 10 and it's also me, but it's not Chris, so that's good. Everyone's happy. This is the compensation and classification study.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:24:51
“Thank you, Director Miley, and thank you for this. It was interesting to read about the responses to the RFPs. This is a very quick question, which is that I'm assuming you've already done sort of an assessment about cost of hiring somebody to do this in-house and having access to the resources. I know that there's some data that's not necessarily accessible, but the cost of having somebody come in-house to do that work and having access to that data versus expending the 400,000 on a contract. I'm curious because it seems to me that compensation and classification is gonna be a thing that we…”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:26:32
“And when you say that it's going to take us a really long time in-house, I know we don't have that person currently, but even if we were to get an expert in this field, it would still, just because of resources, take a very long time in-house?”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:26:51
“Okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions.”
City Council · Sep 24, 2026