Remarks by Nida Allam
60 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 3
- Play at 1:32
“Thank you. As we convene for the Durham County Commissioner's meeting, it's crucial to recognize the painful truth of our history. We stand on the stolen ancestral lands of the Catawba, Eno, Okanichi, 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,…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 15:12
“I'm really excited and grateful to the real estate team for finding this property and as well as our justice services team for all the wraparound services. I just wanted to make some comments because I don't think this is the intention, but I just want us to be mindful of when it comes, like when we're talking about the transitional housing, when we talk about like the standards we're setting, of being mindful about, I know it's more so about like the cost effectiveness, but lowering standards and to lower costs when it comes to transitional housing. I don't want that to kind of set a…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 20:24
“And I just wanted to add, yeah, just as the liaison for the Museum of Life and Science, that they have, overall, I think the project increase was, as Manager Hager and David mentioned, is like $3.5 million. They have raised about $1 million through private fundraising, and they're still pushing for more private funds to be able to come in through their annual... gala that they do and then also the after dark events that they do for you know community members so if anyone wants to go to the library after dark they have their spooky season event coming i think it's like horror after dark at the…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:13:41
“Thank you, Chair Lee. Thank you so much, Jillian and Russ, for coming and all of the work that you have been doing with this time period of the SOAR project, but also outside of this funding allocation. And also, thank you, Russ, for taking my call yesterday on a Sunday afternoon to talk through providing services for some of our unhoused neighbors. I appreciate it. I had two questions I wanted to touch on. First, one on the data piece of I see where the medical services, like the breakdown of what you have been able to provide the most of. During this process or with y'all's work, have you…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:17:50
“And then my final question, and then a quick comment, was around hearing loss. It is a much more expensive treatment and care to get hearing aids, but we've seen that our unhoused neighbors are the percentage of individuals who have suffered from hearing loss in the unhoused population is more than double than the general population. And wondering, are there service providers within Durham County that are able to provide low cost or free hearing aids? And I know Commissioner Jacobs and I actually had a conversation about this recently because we just went through the process of getting my dad…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:20:00
“Great. And then also, I want to confirm, you all are connected to the Durham Benefits Access Coalition? Or if you haven't been, I can connect you guys. It's a group of... different nonprofits and Durham Public Health, social services, started by former Mayor Steve Schuel and a researcher from Duke University to try to bring in all the benefits providers and organizations that try to connect folks to see how we can make sure our residents who need benefits aren't leaving anything on the table. Because I think it's like nationally $800 million worth of benefits that are already federally…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:58:04
“Yes. I want to echo the sentiments of Chair Lee and Commissioner Burton. Thank you so much for this work and this robust presentation. I just, like, as I'm looking at this and hearing you all speak, really want to see, like, is there an opportunity for us as commissioners to come and, like, tour the space and kind of walk through and learn about, you know, see this all in action, because it's something that I think if we're able to learn from you all also and bring to our other partners, that would be really great.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:30:28
“Just a point of clarification for that decision that they make about how they're pulling those cases. Is that something that has been written into the statutes, the bills, or whatever that they use to Decide these are rates or it's just the practice of DHS.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:34:35
“I just wanted to add also, it's not only specific to Durham County, but NC Budget and Tax Center also, during a lot of the conversations in the legislation when it was coming through the state legislature, they had made a booklet of stories that they've compiled from individuals all across the state of North Carolina. in very red counties and blue counties everywhere who are being impacted by the Medicaid changes. And so I can get that document. They have a yeah, this through NC Budget and Tax Center that they have all those stories that we should be.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:56:19
“Before you go back, sorry. I had a question just to break it down more. Would you be able to, David, provide us the debt services payments of splitting that also into the debt services payments that also go related to education versus other?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:57:05
“And then the vehicles and IEP, so when you put economic development, those are the incentives. Can you separate those out, too? Okay, yeah. We'll break those out. And also provide for us, like, for us when we're talking to residents and they ask us, they're like, well, you're giving, you know, this amount of money to these economic development incentives. Also, if we can have, like, on the side of that, for that year, how much that project may have brought in revenue. Is there any way to?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 3:59:34
“And that's also helpful for us as commissioners for that storytelling piece when people want to understand why do you provide economic development incentives to try to paint the picture of how it's creating jobs for residents. And then the last question I had, and this doesn't have to be urgent or anything, but I know we've had lots of conversations about when we brought in the public health nurses or DPS nurses into public health, wondering if there could be a breakdown around the benefits packages that we provide as county employees versus what DPS provides and has available for their…”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 4:01:19
“Yeah, and I think what I'm asking for is to have that information, to be able to look at it and say it definitively and know it definitively. Because yes, it will cost us, obviously, to have them on the county, but then also giving it directly to DPS, then we also lose that percentage, almost 20%, to charters. And so where is there that balancing act of like- Is there a way for us to equalize that? Does it overall get more money to DPS by remaining internal to the county, that type of thing?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 4:03:00
“Yeah, because that's also, and like not just for, sorry, the county, but I know we talked about this on inner city, but also for like parks and rec from the city to be looking at some of the general services and maintenance that they run for parks, like that with the lawn service and maintenance that DPS has to run, is there a collaboration ways that like the city could also be stepping in, but just like knowing what those costs are?”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 4:32:25
“Be careful what you wish for because Keith will just show up with a gif of a rainbow in his presentations next.”
Board of County Commissioners · Oct 5, 2026
- Play at 1:40:15
“Yes, I just wanted to add on to Commissioner Burton and Commissioner Jacobs' comments about the property tax amendments. There is a really good resource out there that Carolina Forward has put out. I think they published it just like two days ago. It's actually a calculator where you can see the impact to your community, Like, for example, they have Wake County listed, or you could choose whichever county you live in and how much the county would lose for every one cent in reduction of tax revenue, as well as who also benefits, and showing when we lose that tax revenue on the local level and…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:47:37
“Thank you, Jason, and to the entire Duke Regional Hospital team as well as the board. I'm really excited to be able to, I know I'm going to be stopping by for the beginning portion because then we have to run to Pride as well. But I really appreciate the intentionality that the team put this event together with, with including the community, but also part of our conversation, we were talking about how to make sure that the community is able to access it with public transit and for folks to know that there is, you know, Durham's bus station at Duke Regional Hospital, which backs into the…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 2:20:06
“I think, Commissioner Jacobs, were you saying we approve even those three and then just have discussion on them? Yeah. Either way.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 2:28:31
“Okay, go ahead. I know with us coming up on this trip tomorrow to Grand Rapids for the inner city visit, I'm also really excited for us to look at opportunities of, I know there's tours or spaces that they have in Michigan and Grand Rapids where they've utilized public spaces to provide affordable housing, child care, and other things like, what is it called, like public first housing, just like they also did in Southeast Raleigh with the YMCA partnership. And so I'm excited to see what type of ways we could possibly build these public-private partnership relationships to develop these into…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 2:41:44
“I just want to echo all of the compliments and lifting up our amazing team that we have here in Durham County from Ileana to Kate to Linda and her team and Durham Tech and all the partnerships we have. And I think it's also really important that we're having this conversation here in Durham but in North Carolina because one of the things that we constantly hear our legislators in Raleigh as well as at the federal level saying is North Carolina is the number one state for business but we also saw just last month or a few weeks ago that we were also ranked the worst state for workers and child…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 2:50:25
“Yes, first I want to say thank you so much to Ileana for championing this and really taking this idea that I brought to her, and I'm pretty sure like a rambly email, and bringing us to this point where we're about to launch this task force. none of this would have been possible to reach this point if Ileana didn't take the lead in bringing together so many folks. So I want to give her her flowers for the amazing work she does and also elevate that, you know, some of the conversations we've been having already as like a mini task force of bringing together the task force is also how we collect…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 2:59:09
“Yeah, I can take that one. But first, for the previous one, I know DCM Jones told me for the child care facility that we have, I believe the RFP is being reposted. Perry and DCM Jones have been working on that. It's definitely, you know, goes to the conversation about the cost of running a child care center and the barriers that exist. And to the other piece, I do also want to ask clarification from Attorney Williamson on this, because we do have a list of folks that we compiled of different sectors that we have been, or folks as well as backups in case they are not available. We wanted to…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 3:00:47
“Okay, wonderful. Yeah, because I think, yeah, when we had the conversation about if we're good to move forward on the 29th, I thought we were clear, but we will get you that list. I believe that, you know, myself, Ileana, Ramsey, and Kate were reaching out to each of the entities that we wanted to invite to see if who they would recommend and nominate we also asked the city of Durham the county and well the county we have Ileana as well as DPS to put forward staff members too so we're waiting for those names from city and DPS any other questions”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 3:09:46
“well first thank you so much Julia for all the work that you put in to you as well as John but really for you know thinking through this to make sure that we provide this type of opportunity for programs that support our youth as Commissioner Byrne mentioned this is one of the areas that you know is really vital and important because when we talk about like you know the upstream analogies of really getting to the top of the stream of how do we provide programming and services so that our young people feel the love and care that we have for them at Durham County from the very beginning to give…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 28, 2026
- Play at 1:28:05
“Thank you, Chair Lee. As we convene for the Durham County Commissioner's Meeting, it is crucial to recognize the painful truth of our history. We stand on the stolen ancestral lands of the Catawba, Eno, Okanichi, Shikori, and Tuscarora peoples, whose deep connections 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…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 14, 2026