Durham City Council Work Session August 20, 2026 (full meeting)

Hey, hey, hey. And good afternoon everyone. I hope you all are well. Excuse me. [clears throat] Uh welcome to Dorm City Hall and uh we have a packed agenda today with a lot of very heavy policy work. Uh so I look forward to uh to getting into it. Uh, we call this meeting to order at 1 p.m. Madame Clerk, please call the Well, hello there. >> All right. Um, please call the vote. >> Okay. Mayor Williams >> here. >> Mayor Prom Cabiero >> here. >> Council member Baker >> here. >> Council member Burrus >> here. >> Council member Cook >> here. >> Council member Copac >> here. >> Council member Wrist >> here. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, colleagues. any brief uh announcements that you may have under two minutes. Council member Cook, >> I'm just going to take a brief um moment of personal privilege and introduce my intern if I'm so sorry, but will you stand up? This is Tavara Andrea Brown. She's a m getting a master's in public administration at UNC and a Durham native doing really great work with me uh over the summer and into the semester. So really happy to have her. >> Thank you. Go back. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to briefly uh give congratulations and thanks to the Hayatai Heritage Center, which uh hosted Tanahasi Coats last night with a packed house. Uh so I encourage everyone to check out their upcoming lineup for this fall and next year at hai.org. Uh, the Hayatai Heritage Center is a real treasure for Durham, not just because of the important role they play in terms of our history and legacy, but also the role that it plays today in connecting us to each other and bringing in some really incredible um, you know, cultural opportunities for for all of us. So, so thanks to them. >> Awesome. Go ahead. >> Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon, colleagues, residents, folks in the meeting of staff. Good to see you all. Um, just a couple things. So, um, I had a great opportunity Tuesday after a meeting Monday to have joined the mayor, um, repres representative Zach Hawkins and I don't think he's here, Joshua Gun from the office of economic and workforce development at a visit to Verdesian life sciences in the park. Um, you may hear about life sciences. It's one of our fastest growing sectors. We're one of the top life science areas in the country. That includes things like biio manufacturing, a tech, medical devices, gene therapy. But a lot of that work goes outside the view of most folks in labs in the park and other labs elsewhere. Um our region is home to more than 500 companies that are life science companies. So we had a chance to look at some of the research going on, the product development, some of the trials and green houses. Just a fascinating view of what what the life science industry is like. Um and they're here in Durham. Verdesian's here because in part in great part because of the universities here because of the talent we have in our our community. So it's a great resource. The one thing we don't have in the life sciences sector as the mayor knows is a lot of headquarters and Verdesian is headquartered here which is a great great sort of asset to us. So again thanks to Amy and the team at Verdesian for letting us view their facility. Quite interesting. Also just a note we did get a message from the manager last week that three um tax credit awards were given to Durham this year. These are tax credits awarded by the housing finance agency to produce affordable housing. Those three tax credits to three different projects will result in 432 more units of affordable housing in our community. So, it's great news to Durham. Um, I think one was 9%, a couple others were were 4%, but it's great news for Durham. We need more affordable housing. Thank you all. Thank you. All right. Yep. I'm going to keep fighting for more tax credit uh credit and um and and uh shout out to uh what we went to the U. Council member Kobach and I uh were at uh Cornwallis community for the back to school bash and uh council member wrist uh we did the u vision as he stated uh yes my my goal is to get more headquarters here. We have like the sub of everybody's headquarters but uh we want to uh make sure that uh we're we're shining in that way as well. Uh there are many other announcements uh that I'd like to make, but I'm going to hold off on that until uh until the next meeting. I think we need to get going today. Uh Mr. Manager, uh and colleagues, I will be adjusting the agenda a little bit today. Um we will have the violent crime reduction presentation after the consent agenda and then I will go back to pulled items. Um want to get that while I have everyone in the room. Um [clears throat] Mr. Manager, priority items are you? >> Thank you, mayor, mayor prom, members of council, members of the public. Good to see everybody today. Mayor, the city manager's office does have a few priority items. First, as uh the mayor has alluded to for agenda item number 20, the violence reduction working group recommendations. Uh we have added a supplemental item. It includes a presentation and we are requesting this item be the first presentation and taken take place prior to pulled items. Also want to let council know that for public hearing items uh 16,1 17, 18, and 19, uh in response to actions taken at the city council meeting on Monday night, uh attachments for these public hearing items have been uh updated in accordance with the comprehensive plan amendment that the city council adopted. Those are my priority items. Just one uh quick acknowledgement, mayor, if I may, or two quick acknowledgements. First, uh I would like to unofficially welcome, we will officially welcome at a later date, uh our new chief of police who is joining us in the back of the room who was uh in town today. Um Stephanie Martis is here. Uh this is not your formal introduction. I will not let people ask you questions today. You will not be expected to answer questions today, but I do appreciate you giving us your time today knowing that this is a critical and important conversation that that you're going to be involved with. So, thank you. Wanted to introduce you. And then finally, uh, council members, on Monday night, you did, uh, take a momentous action in adopting your strategic plan, and I, uh, have warned you for a year, uh, to be careful what you put in that plan because we are going to execute on it. And uh just wanted to make you aware that on Tuesday the executive team had an all-day work planning retreat uh where we met um at the chamber headquarters who graciously hosted us uh in a working session to really plan out uh and operationalize the goals that you adopted in the uh plan. I want to thank uh Mary Grace Stone King and Justin in the city manager's office as well as the strategic plan staff who worked tirelessly to help set that up. I'm extremely proud of the work the executive team did that day. I'm really excited to get started on that plan and I think you can look forward to a lot of updates and progress as the year progresses. Those are my priority items, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh Mr. Manager, I do have one issue with the new police chief. >> Yeah, >> I've seen that everybody in the dang triangle has met her except me. LinkedIn, Facebook, everybody's shouting you out. I'm like, well, I haven't met her yet and I'm a little jealous. So, uh it's good to have you in the room. All right. [laughter] The council looks forward to meeting you. All right, madam. >> Recording in progress. >> Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Prom, and members of the city council. The city attorney's office has two priority items for you today. Um, first, a request to go into close session to um discuss potential litigation as well as a personnel matter. I have the motion language. If Mr. Mayor, you'd like me to read that out loud. >> Yes. The motion is to hold a close session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143318.11A3 for attorney client consultation regarding two pending claims not yet filed and pursuant to North Carolina general statute 143 3181 116 to consider an individual for appointment as interim clerk. >> Thank you. [clears throat and cough] I I'm going to entertain that now and then we'll move on uh into it at the post of the meeting. Uh colleagues, I'll entertain a motion to uh proceed into close session at the at the end of our uh public agenda today um in pursuant to the the language read by the city clerk. >> So moved. >> City attorney >> city attorney, I'm sorry. >> So moved. Second. >> Moved and probably seconded. Uh all in favor? I. All opposed. All right. Madam clerk, are we recorded? Good. Thank you. >> As to our second priority item, it's a point of personal privilege. The city attorney's uh pleased to introduce the newest member of our team, Ann Ross Pender, if she can stand. She is our litigation parillegal. She joins our office with substantial law experience supporting several uh numerous towns and public agencies through her work at Heartsog Law Group where she assisted assisted with public records requests, condemnations, and hearing prep. She brings bilingual capacities to our office as well. She has a dual bachelor's degree from NC State in English and Spanish. Um, a few years ago, her path was leading her to the Peace Corps, but because of federal priority changes, this has uh brought her career to this path, which is grounded in public service and community engagement that's clearly reflected in her work with us and her numerous community involvement um, ventures. So, we're excited to welcome Ann Ross to the city of Durham and look forward to the talent, dedication, and energy she's going to bring to our office and the organization as a whole. Thanks, Ann Ross. >> Such an underachiever. I mean, you know, no, it's great to have such talent in the city and thanks for coming from private to public. [clears throat] >> All right. Um, mad of Attorney, do you have the language for the other uh for the I'm sorry, for the uh close session? Did you read all of the language? So, okay. Okay. Thank you. >> Um, Madam Clerk, >> good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madam Pro, uh, city council members and staff. Um, the city clerk's office does not have any priority items today, but we do have the board report for you. Uh for item one, racial equity commission. I'm happy to announce the atlarge nomination is Chibo. >> Oh, did you need my You have what you need though, right? >> Not for mayor's council for women. >> Okay. Can you pass this down? >> Sorry. >> It's for the human relations commission. The nomination is Jamon Kim and Joy McCale. And for the mayor's council for women appointment item three, um we do not have consensus for the fair housing economic and develop. Maybe this is it. We still don't have consensus. [laughter] We have two votes for Alleta Elade, three votes for Tamara Bailey, and two votes for Carmen German. >> Could you change mine mind to Tamara? >> Sure. So, the nomination for the fair housing economic development se sector for mayor's council for women is Tamara Bailey. That's the end of my report. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, madam clerk. We have documents before us. Wait, is everyone in Oh, it's from Okay. >> They are from a couple of the public comment speakers that >> Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Uh >> oh. All right. Okay. [clears throat] All right. At this time, um I am going to uh read the public I'm I'm going to read the consent agenda. Um recognize pool of items. Then I'll come back up and we're going to adjust the uh the agenda just a bit today. So I'll need everyone's grace and patience. [clears throat and cough] All right. Item number one, racial equity commission appointment. Number two, human relations commission appointments. Number three, Mayor's Council for Women appointment. Number four, recognizing resolution recognizing Ashlin seniors in action and Willlet Street United WSU and affirming the role of tenants union in advancing safe quality democratic housing. I am pulling that. Number five, easement and encroachment agreement for Maison Durham Owner LLC. Number six, third loan modification agreement for Rockwood Cottages and Rockwood AH1 [clears throat] Limited Partnership. >> Pull that one. Uh, number seven, street and infrastructure acceptance Ruskkins Avenue. Number eight, utility extension agreement with Bingum Ben Bingham Project NC LLC and Atlantis Home Buyers LLC to serve 505 and 507 Bingham Street. Number nine, fiscal year 2026 2027 transit capital improvement plan CIP budget ordinance amendment. Number nine, reimagine Derm Freeway Study final report. I'm sorry. Number 10. Yeah, number 10. Reimagine Durham Freeway Study Report. No, >> it pulled that. >> Yeah, let's let's pull that. Um, number [clears throat] 11, fiscal year 2027, Durham County Transit Work Plan work program funding agreements. Number 12, award of a construction contract to TA Loving Company, DBA Pipeline, and Utilities incl. Incorporated or brown water treatment plant filter effluent. >> I'm gonna pull that one. >> Uh bypass pipe improvements. >> I'm gonna pull that. >> Pulled. Council member Cook. Number 13, 2026 sewer lining program. Number 14, amendment one to the professional services contract with Tim Group Incorporated for the improvements for access to utility easements and facilities facilities project. Number 15, uh, 2026 short session legislative update, which is a presentation. Number 16, consolidated annexation 822 Doc Nichols Road. These are for the next meeting. Consolidated annexation Avalon Place phase 9. Number 18, consolidated annexation Page Road town houses. Consol. Number 19, consolidated annexation, Oakrove Landing. Of course, we have our uh violence reduction workg group recommendations which will be a presentation as well. [clears throat] That is the consent agenda with the exception of items 4, 6, 10, and 12. >> Madam clerk, uh do I have inerson speakers or are there any items pulled? Okay. So, same ones item number 20 is presentation. >> Correct. >> All right. >> All right. So, at this time, I'll go ahead and do uh well, what are those again? Uh four. So, that's the consent agenda with items four with the exception of items four, 6, 10, and 12. Um all right. Uh I am going to go ahead and do public comment and then we will get to our first presentation. I'll start with my uh online speakers. >> Uh Miss Miss Jacqueline Wagstaff, can you hear me? >> I can't. >> Welcome. You have three minutes. >> Okay. Well, I'm going to beat this dead horse again today. Um, school is about to start on Monday at Fayable Street Elementary and we have to do something. The community has been playing with this council and I want to be able to get the same attention that was given to Oakwood Park with this encampment that is cropped up in the Fable Street corridor right across from 50t away from an elementary school. And as I said before, it's not that I don't have empathy and there things that we could be doing, but I want to seem to see the same due diligence that was presented to the Oakwood Park residents. I would like to see some of that $2 million that they found, miraculously found that's called flexible housing funds to go towards rehousing these people on Fable Street. It is a total mess. We have people that are dropping off house furniture for them, all of these things that are just causing serious problems. And with that school opening, and it's not just the encampment that you actually see on Fable Street, there's another portion of the encampment that sits across the street where we've had two deaths back near the playground of elementary of the elementary school. And we just had a murder in my community on Sunday. And I don't know if it was equated to what goes off on Fable Street, but we're only about a block away from that encampment. And this is just getting out of control. And I just believe that, and I don't understand that, that encampment in Oakwood seemed to get priority during the time that this council was out of session. And I'm assuming, and this is just my opinion, but it appears that the city manager has become the ace council member, and he just does things whenever. I don't I never remember a conversation going on with this council before you went on break that this was going to occur. Not to mention that you had a lady that came down there that didn't look kind of like me that came down there two sessions and the next thing we know that encampment was dispersed. So with the same due diligence that was used on Oakwood Park, I would like to see the same thing happened here on Fable Street because we have an elementary school that is about to open on Monday. parents who will walk their kids to that school, back and forth to that school, should not have to endure what we're seeing every day on that block. It is just outrageous. You need to do something about it and it needs to be done with the quickness. And I think $2 million is a small amount when you put these people in the hotel and supposedly dignified housing and wraparound services. Let's see if we can't get these people some dignified housing and some wraparound services and get them into a hotel environment before Monday. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Miss Wag Miss. Wagstaff for your concern. I do share it and I look forward to uh getting you an update. I'll be speaking on the updates on uh homelessness uh each Monday meeting. I requested those updates to be provided to me and I did share on Monday and we'll be uh sharing more. All right. Next [clears throat] speaker I have is uh Michael C. Harris. Can you hear me, Mr. Harris? >> Mayor, I don't see Michael Harris in the queue. >> Oh, you in person. Okay. Um All right. I'll be calling on you in just a moment. >> Okay. Uh next speaker I have Adil Ortiz. Yeah. >> Following speakers are in person. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm back again. My name is Ideal and I live in uh East Durham. And for the viewers at home and those in the room, I now live next door to a business that insists on holding loud concerts with music louder than the city ordinance allows in excess of 100 dB and with the bad traffic to match. I want to express some thoughts here today for the record and the public. first a deep gratitude um for the coordination that has happened so far um in assisting things to start moving in the right direction. Um I I want to appreciate that the planning staff doesn't [clears throat] normally have people who work weekend hours to review every newly approved site plan. And so I do understand that it can be hard sometimes to ascertain the truth of these things, especially if the activities are on the weekends. Now, let's talk about the truth of what's unfolding at 311 South Plum Street. based on the activities of El Toro Loco, which I want to call for the record. Since my name's got to be on the record, their name should be on the record, right? It's owned by someone we now know as Theo Savino. One can only consider that they have fraudulently applied for a flea market operation on land zoned for industrial light, while what they're really attempting to do is run an amphitheater. El Toro Loco LLC is owned by Sabino Ernnandez declassani of Oxford, North Carolina, who was also working with Luis Hernandez of Durham and Tyler Nunes of Fuqua Arena. Those last two work together at a company called Speedy's Underground Services, and they have municipal contracts with different cities and towns. This team's experience tells me that they know better than what they're doing because they do this work for a living. And so I want to know whether what they told the planning department about their future plans included their lovely outdoor concerts. I'm wondering whether they've told their land owner who is their landlord. I wonder um if there other clients know how negligent they are to Durham's municipal codes. I am disappointed for the potential vendors that should have been able to go and earn critical profits from their swap meat businesses especially in this economy. And that is through no fault of their own. Really, it is the fault of Sabino, Lewis, and Tyler for not providing the conditions necessary to a successful swap meet business by not following noise ordinances and not having a good way to manage traffic. The noise likely makes it very hard to conduct business when you can't hear your customers and the h customers can't hear you. So with so few vendors the money is being made somewhere and it is being made on ticketed platforms for concerts that they have promoted in the past and promote in the future. They are investing a lot of money in promotions on radio stations through flyers and other platforms to make sure that people know that this is where you can come for an outdoor concert. Another point to share is that it's terrifying to think that our law enforcement uh when engaged in offduty work might actually do the bidding of their paying client rather than upholding the ordinances of Durham. >> Thank you. Uh next person I have is Rachel Fer. >> Hello again. Good to see you all this morning. Good afternoon, Mayor Williams, Madame Mayor Prom Cabiero, council members, and the city manager. My name is Rachel Frier, and I live right across the street from my deal in Old East Durham. I want to thank council and the staff in planning, DPD, and the city manager's office for all of your help and attention to the El Toro Loco problem over the past few weeks. Many of you have reached out and met with us in person to see the problems for yourselves, and we are so grateful for this assistance and attention. Thanks to the city intervention, we have seen some improvements with El Toro Loco with efforts to address parking issues, sight buffers, and some efforts to keep the the amplified music below 60 dB in response to DPD's rapid response to our noise noise complaints. However, El Toro Loco has begun advertising large-scale concerts with multiple live acts for both August 29th and September 27th on social media and on flyers being posted around East Durham. I have included copies of these flyers in the packets the clerk handed you. You should all have a folder and if you look on the back, you can see the flyers here. As a result, we believe that El Toro Loco is a concert venue masquerading as a flea market. Our understanding from staff is that El Toro Loco may operate such a concert on an IEL zoned parcel only once every six months and that they must have a temporary use permit to do so. El Toro Loco did not have a TUP for its first large concert on August 1st when more than 1,000 people attended with amplified music in excess of 100 dB measured from inside our homes for eight solid hours. And furthermore, it appears they have not applied for a TUP for the advertised large concerts on August 29th and September 27th. We respectfully ask that El Toro, if El Toro Loco seeks a TUP for another large concert, that the city deny this request. If they continue to operate unpermitted large concerts, we ask that the city intervene either in advance of the advertised concert or on the day of the concert to stop it from happening. We also request that someone from code enforcement be present on August 29th to shut down an unpermitted event if necessary. Please know we are very supportive of our lawabiding local businesses in East Durham. In fact, there is an exciting Old East Durham series of events coming up soon. Flyers are also in your packets and we invite you to come join the party. And I do want to say that the organizer of this event definitely filed the proper permits. I also want to offer special thanks to my young friends Caroline and Aubrey who assembled your packets during our play date yesterday. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Um, next speaker is Michael Harris. Good afternoon, mayor and council member. We're back again. I my biggest concern right now again I've just received a another tax hike on my property. I think uh for those of whom are 70 and plus should also get the opportunity to be exempt from especially from companies that are coming here are getting exempt. So look at us. We're the ones who paying most of the taxes, paying your salaries, paying the the fire, the chief, the police, whatever salary. And for those that are those 70 and plus, there should be some kind of exemption at least. Maybe we don't mind paying 10% of what we have to have far as uh protection, fire, but at the same time, we don't need to extend uh money that you guys are just going to spend for projects of some of your friends and things would like to happen here in Durham. My other thing that's concerned is the fact that since I live in the Oak Grove area and representing that particular area up there, Highway 98 has become sort of the new drag strip from the middle school all the way down to Oak Grove uh elementary school. And it's time es especially to have some kind of law enforcement staked out up there for the traffic that are just speeding especially Oak Grove uh lakeside Oak Grove uh link side where the light is there. They're going through the lights. So we we need to have some kind of of deterrent for the speeding that is happening from there all the way up through going up to uh the food line. uh supermarket there. So, we're paying a lot of taxes, but we're not getting any, you know, conclusion of what our concerns are because there's a lot of elderly people, bikers, a lot of bikers who ride through there and up through 98 and we're not seeing any kind of reinforcement and safety that's going to be safe for the community in that area. So, why are we paying this extra tax on our property when and most of us are not receiving? We're the I mean everybody else is receiving some kind of benefit but the persons that are paying the taxes especially seniors you know it reminds me of what happened to uh when you look at certain cities around the country how cities can go in and just raise taxes on a community to eventually move people out because they can't afford it. So I think that right now you guys need to consider uh this uh portion of my uh statement in the sense that you need to kind of evaluate. I know that the that the the state of North Carolina kind of uh presents this to you guys, but it's time for you guys to take a halt to this and look at us. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Harris. All right, [clears throat] those uh that's all of the public comments. And before we get to pulled items, I am going to uh >> I'm so sorry. [snorts] I'm sorry about that. Yes, please come on up. >> Welcome, council member. >> Good afternoon. >> I'll make you very brief. I know you got a lot ahead of you and I don't want to take up all your time. Um I want to thank um Council Member Cook and Baker for continuing the fight and I want to hope that the newest council members are taking a page from their book. Um, before I get started, I just wanted to make sure I use my comments. Good afternoon. Jumping right in. I would like to propose a charter amendment to strengthen voter representation with the expansion of the Durham City Council from seven members to nine members by adding one at large seat and one ward seat along with a push toward a true ward representation. Durm currently operates sorry under under a council manager form of government and with all the city council members elected at large serving as a city's legislative body and final authority on city matters. This proposal is intended to better reflect Durham's growth in population um and improve voter engagement along with uh this growing city which has through the latest estimates grown from approximately 270,000 residents to over 317,000 residents. Under the proposed change, the council would improve balance between citywide and neighborhood representation, giving residents a stronger voice in the city. Durham has left lowwealth communities behind and our city's growth and our local government can correct that with an adjustment to strengthen representation. People don't want the city to keep happening to them in their pockets. A true ward system that adds one ward seat and one at large seat which strengthen that representation, improve responsiveness, and help ensure that more neighborhoods have a seat at the table. North Carolina allows citizens to initiate a referendum or proposed charter on a proposed charter amendments through a petition process and that petition includes the required signatures and residents addresses of qualified municipal voters. I want to encourage Durm residents and voters to engage and municipal residents specifically to sign a petition to support this proposal coming before the public. A small working group has been in conversation and before we start collecting signatures, we would like to hear from folks interested in being included in the conversation and I want to let you know that you can reach me at info@drianafreeman.com and I would love to have a conversation with each of you. I wanted to give that to you all at the same time and then also offer that same extended um olive branch to the public to have the conversation. My phone number 919-627-7044 is available and uh looking forward to hearing from any of you that are interested. Thank you. Let the record reflect that Council Member Freeman and I agreed on something. >> All right. Um let's see the next speaker I have Jacob Peter Jacob Peterson Shore followed by Cada Jabarel Jabarco. >> Oh I'm nervous. All right. Good evening or good afternoon. Uh my name is Jacob Shore. I'm here tonight I'm here this evening uh this afternoon with my wife Jennifer Bonnie. I reside here in Durham. I'm also a small business owner for Shore Dental Laboratory, the sole proprietor. Uh I'm standing here to bring to your attention an administrative loophole in housing and neighborhood services that strips Durm residents of their right and due process and creates a violation when there is none. On July 7th, our home was targeted by an anonymous Durm one call ticket. City audit log show uh the call was logged at 10:19 a.m. and marked as fail at the exact same minute. Inspector Dawnhill Austin inspected the sidewalk, saw it was clear, but issued a citation anyways, citing code section 26-183 for grass over 10 inches in height. Yet, she took zero measurements, and her property doesn't even have grass. I submitted photos of her own photo uh photographic evidence lacking obstructive measurements. Uh the city issued uh an official notice of violation threatening $250 administrative fee and daily civil penalties. But when code supervisor Rob Dam inspected our property, he verbally acknowledged these were intentional, well-maintained flowers and closed the case. Yet on July 10th, the department issued a compliance certificate, thanking us for bringing it in, bringing the violation into compliance, falsely logging us as code offenders. Uh, we formally appealed to clear this false record. Housing Code Administrator Clarence Harris emailed us on July 28th stating that our appeal was denied because the case was closed under section 26186. The department claims you can appeal an active notice. Uh there was nothing you all could do because the case was closed. It it we did not get our 10day grace period uh to appeal. Um I'm running out of time so I'm skipping ahead. Um I'm not the only one. This is a systemic issue. I've I've have two other DRM residents who had this happen. One uh she's given me verbal permission. Carlen Jules 1019 Lancaster Street. Uh she had the same thing. I submit I have a a DURM request 262855 public record. Uh what I'm asking tonight is that u today you all close that loophole. um uh direct the city manager to update our master file to complied uh avoid an error or unfound complaint. Order an immediate audit into enforcement standards and proof requirements at housing and neighborhood services. Fix the appeal loophole under section 26186 so that closing a case file never again strips a Durham citizen of their right to due process. Uh I'm a caregiver for my mom. I run a small business here in Durham and this is eating up a lot of my time. Uh but it's something that needs to be dealt with and fixed. Um you all are in charge of that and I'm asking you to kindly look into it. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Mr. Shore. Uh staff has recorded your concern and we'll uh follow up. Next speaker. Okay. Welcome. >> Thank you. My name is Cadia Jabar Hill. It's not my first time meeting some of you guys, but if you guys don't know, I live in 3000 East We Street. I live in Cornwallis. And this is not my first time um asking for people to come out there and help most of the youth. Most of us have to live in rough conditions. Depending on um where the area is in Cornwallis, most of the time the whole area gets surrounded by um gunshots, bullet holes, and most of the kids don't know how to control their emotions. Some of them are not allowed to even come outside or to Miss Tiffany's programs because of this. And I've been trying to um get most of the kids to come outside to join Miss Tiffany because how are kids supposed to go to school when they're afraid to walk outside because of the gunshots? And how are kids supposed to live regularly when all they can think about is one day they could be sitting down outside and all you hear shots going off and hopefully this never happens, but someone could get hit. And we had um someone uh when Miss Tiffany told me there's supposed to be funding going towards 30 year olds. I was saying how when there's 13 year olds, young kids my age that are constantly either in um jail or other children going to jail at a young age because they have nobody leading them in the in the right direction due to the bad stuff that happens in Cornwall's community. And this is not our first time. We had a youth lead symposium happen and no um when all the when my school showed up, the kids showed up, everybody showed up and we spoke to them. And I don't want to keep repeating myself to city leaders when there's no action um getting showed about how they're trying to help us, but it seems that you guys are just listening to me. Listen to what I have to say at the time. And then by tomorrow, you guys forget about what I said. >> You want to tell um by my house. Um a couple weeks ago, I had a um murder happen by my house. A a young man had got shot and before he even before they started shooting, my mom went out to throw out the trash and she was stuck outside midg gunshots. She wasn't able to enter back to the house until they stopped. She was shaking and she was afraid that something was going to happen to her. When she got back in, by the time Dan, we already heard yelling and screaming of the young man who got shot. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Cadia, for being brave enough to come over here and talk about your lived experiences. [cough] [clears throat] Next, I have Dr. Livingston, followed by James Davis. First and foremost, uh, Mayor, I wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and speak in between class, but I wanted to come and really, uh, echo what the young lady was saying there at Cornwallis projects in that we've had a number of incidences there over the past two or three years wherein the students have had to come on campus and do their podcast and uh, this presents a unique problem for us because we have students working in internships in McDougall Terrace and Cornwallis projects and having them work with children in summer programs, having them work with them in after school programs in places where there may be heightened violence is a problem for us. And so what we've had to do is to bring kids on campus. And so essentially what I want to ask uh the city to do is that this issue of youth violence is something that we got to begin to address because it's also affecting our campus as well. Moreover, our students who are in counseling, social work, psychology, who work with youth in the community, I mean, I just left a conversation with a psychologist about this that can we have our kids doing their internships from North Carolina Central in high crime areas? What's the cost? What's the risk? We want them trained. We want them to learn. We want them to be able to be to serve the city of Durham. But if in fact by them being on internship or practicum it puts their life in danger, something that we can't do. So we beg you police, we beg you city of Durham that this youth violence issue is something that we have to address because there are a number of kids here who do their internships in these communities. Thank you. >> Thank you for those remarks, Dr. Livingston. It's great to see you. And uh last speaker I have is uh Mr. Chavis. >> [clears throat] >> and we will be uh talking about the recommendations from the youth uh the um violent crime reduction summit which has a component on youth violence and hope you all will be able to stay around for that conversation. Mr. Chavis, it's great to see you. Good to see each and every one of you all. But I just heard something the city already knew about that I was going to ask. There was a job opportunity that was given to someone and in giving her identification her qualification all she stated she was bilingual. Now, ain't that the going thing here in Durham, North Carolina, and in the southern area? Our young black kids need to be taught how to be bilingual. The job market is not playing. And they don't need to be waiting till they get in ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade where it's so hard for them to become bilingual. They need to be started at the first grade. Just like y'all do the Spanish kids to speak English, they need to be in the first grade teaching and learning because guess what? The bilingual Spanish kids go home and help their parents learn how to speak English. That helped them to be bilingual. Not only are y'all looking in the job market, well, look right here in Durham. What do preferred by language means when you go and fill out an application? And you cannot be accountable for that. That means you're going to be lacking of a job, right? And you got this big team coming up talking about crime prevention. Well, how many them look into that? Huh? Not on that. You're talking about how our taxpayer pay others to come here and learn to be bilingual and our children are not being able, especially the black kids. You heard that young lady says they have problems because the low wealth area are not being treated fair. So I'm asking you all, I'mma pass this out. This got sent to me. Bilingual needed in Texas. They're looking for teachers. How many are we in Durham, North Carolina looking for bilingual teachers? How many of you all up here will help join the fight to make sure that our black kids start being taught by being bilingual from the first grade on up? We got some schools that doing it. We don't have all. So please, let's start putting our mouth our money where our mouth is. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Chavis. All right, those are all of the speakers that I have for public comment, uh, virtual and in person. Uh, the next items will be item number four. But before we get there, we're going to bring up the, uh, item number 20, violence reduction working group recommendations. Welcome. >> Good afternoon. My name is Crystal Harris. I am the director for Durm County's Community Intervention and Support Services Department and [snorts] I will be starting off this presentation. Um, and then I'll hand it over to my counterpart, uh, Mr. Ryan Smith. Before I get started, I do want to do a couple of quick acknowledgements. Um, first we want to acknowledge some of our working group members who are here in person. If they would just kind of stand up briefly. I know we have some that are also online, but just want to acknowledge those that came in person to support us in this presentation. >> [applause] >> I also want to um acknowledge um University of Pennsylvania's crime and justice um crime and justice lab policy lab as well as the violence reduction center of the University of Maryland and finally every town for gun safety who have all been partners in this um in this work in this journey that we've come to so far. So just want to give some acknowledgement to them as well. So I will start our presentation. So the purpose of today's presentation is to bring forward to the council um to present where we are our phase kind of a review of our phase one um and to um discuss our mission values and the five strategies um that were developed from our um working group through the summit on saving lives. also to hear questions and or feedback from the council um on these recommendations as well as to receive endorsement of these um recommendations and to provide any additional guidance to staff um as we move forward in implementation. So, as we started this work um to get us to this place, we hosted over 15 listening sessions that reached um hundreds of Durham residents. These listening sessions were held um some were virtually, most were in person. We did some in specific communities. We worked with Office of Survivor Care. Um we had some uh listening sessions with some of our youth. So it was just a kind of a various um sessions that we had with various um groups. Um we also had a data analysis that was conducted by UPEN, the Crime and Justice Lab. um and they examined all of the homicides from 2021 to 2025. In June, we had a three-day summit on saving lives that brought together um the morning of the first day brought together um community was able to come in to hear the problem analysis and then the rest of the summit um we had our 26 member working group together and we reviewed this data um from the problem analysis and we developed um a consensus of the recommendations that we're bringing to you today and then on the final day as I stated we came up with the five recommendations that we will discuss with you today. So, what did our data show? Um, our data told us that 13, we had 13 homicides per 100,000 residents, um, which was a 10-year average. Um, 90% of those homicides were committed with firearms and 66% were dispute related rather than tied to another crime. It also showed us that it's very the violence was very concentrated. Um uh 0.2% of our population. We we're looking at 430 to 685 people um in groups that were linked to about um half of those homicides. Um 57% of the homicides involved individuals aged 18 to 34 with the average age being 30. And then 14% um involve juveniles um under the age of 17. And of that we had 12 um we found that 12 had prior arrest on average among the victims and suspects. Four of them being felonies. >> Was that 12% or just 12? >> Um 12 prior arrests, not 12%. >> Oh, okay. I got you. >> 12. So, if as we're talking about our highest risk population, so who's at highest risk, as I stated, um we were looking at ages 18 to 34 um who were predominantly the victims and suspects were predominantly black males, which was 83%. Um as I mentioned, the average age was 30 um for the victim and or suspect. About 67% of those homicide victims and suspects, um 61% of those were non-fatal shooting victims and suspects. they had prior criminal justice involvement. A notable portion of our homicides and shootings were group and or gang member involved. Umif at least 52% of homicides and 32% of the non-fatal shootings involved group gang members as victim suspects or both. Um the blood and sets were involved in 33% of all homicides and shootings and then 73% of all group member involved homicides and shootings. What we heard over um the more than 15 um community sessions that we um led and outside of that we've heard for a long time is that Durham is very resourcerich but execution poor. Um, we continued to hear that from our residents as well as while we were do, uh, working with the working group that Durham doesn't necessarily need another program. We actually need to have focus, coordination, and sustainability um, to what we already have. So, what the community has requested from us, it was basically more focus on the few. Um, we need to look at our highest risk individuals, those that are actually doing the shooting. um and focus on that group of um those group of individuals and provide um those services directly to that high population. We need to be able to reach people before a crisis um through credible messengers. Um pair the change with uh real some real income. Rebuild what worked. We'd heard through some of the listening sessions, we asked the question of what were some things that worked in Durham before that may have ended not only um because of funding, but just kind of it worked for a while and then it just went away. So, we wanted to know those things as well. We actually during one of the sessions, someone brought up what was working when Durham had the lowest um amount of homicides or violence, like what was going on at that time and kind of look at those services that were being provided. Um, so kind of look at what we have to be able to sustain and protect the programs that are are that are currently working opposed to looking at new things. Um, fix the places. Um, invest in lighting, clean up, um, open public spaces, looking at housing and transportation where risk is the highest. Um, there was an emphasis on fairness, language access, transparency, and community partnership. And so that was the working group, the smaller working group. um we were very intentional about wanting to make sure that the community was involved. So all of the work that we did was wanting to be community-led. Um just like we wanted to be data informed and data led, we wanted the community to be a part of this process as well. And so the last one is build the engine. Um so we uh standing up a centralized accountable coordinating mechanism um so the city and county can uh point their assets in the right direction. As I mentioned, we had um 26 members um of who made up of the working group throughout the summit on saving lives. And as we were looking at who we should bring to the table, we wanted to make sure that we were including residents, um survivors of gun violence, those with lived experience. We had faith-based leaders um community organizations who either are already working with the highest risk population or who had the capacity or potential um to have capacity to enhance their services to um extend to the highest risk populations. We also had law enforcement. We had um representation from our court systems, our health and hospital partners and then also we had some representation from city, county and state agencies as well. Here is a list of all of the 26 members um that were on that working group. And as I stated, we have several of them here today. Um and I just want to thank them all for um committing to three days. Um that's a lot to commit um to being in one place for three days listening to data. We had people come in to talk about the different strategies and then be being able to come together um on consensus of the recommendations and being in alignment um with what we wanted to bring to you all. So this is our these are the missions, values, and vision that the working group came up with. Our mission is to save lives in Durham by reducing homicides, non-fatal shootings, and hospital hospitalizations due to shootings by 10% each year. The values our work will be community engaged, partnership-based, trauma informed, evidence informed, and datadriven. Our vision is to engage those who live whose lives are most at risk, keeping them alive, safe, and free, and invest in the places where lives are most likely to be lost. The recommendations. So, these are the five strategies that we agreed upon unanimously. And I'm just going to go over the I'm gonna name them and then Ryan will take over and go into more detail of each strategy. Um, one was to focus on support and accountability. Second was to strengthen street outreach. The third one was to pilot neighborhood partnerships. The fourth is to embed trauma-informed behavior change. And then the last one was to convene a youth summit. Um we recognize that we um the community does have a huge concern um for our youth violence and although our data show that there was only 14% of those homicides that were 17 and younger, we know that we still have to invest in our youth so they don't become a part of that 18 to 34 where we're having to make them part of the highest risk population. So we're not saying that we can't do both at the same time. We are encouraging there to be a concurrent focus on the highest risk as well as working with our youth so that we can do prevention work so that they don't have to get to the highest risk population. Um so that the fifth recommendation did come out that we do want to have a youth summit so that we could do the work concurrently and not one or the other but both in. So I'll now um hand it over to Brian Smith who will go through our strategies. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Prom, members of council, manager Ferguson, Ryan Smith, director of community safety. So, I'm going to provide a deeper dive on each of these five strategies. That deeper dive is going to have two main components for each one. I'm going to provide a little more detail about what what this means, what it looks like in practice, and then a little bit about what we know from the evidence, and then we'll we'll go on from there. Uh the first strategy I want to talk about that was recommended by the working group is focused deterrence. It has other names that it's also known by sometimes as group violence intervention, sometimes group or gun violence reduction strategies, but it's all the same thing. Focus deterrence isn't a program that someone enrolls in. There's no roster. There's no intake office. There's no eligibility form. It is a coordinated operating routine run jointly by the city, by county, law enforcement, prosecutors, service providers, and community messengers. And it typically has five main parts. The first is we need to identify those people who today are at most acute risk of harm from shootings. This involves weekly shooting reviews that identify those individuals at highest acute risk right now. That's not a standing gang list that was built two years ago. This is about looking at a rolling assessment of who's actively involved or at risk of conflict right now. Uh and that list is changing constantly. The second is once we know those folks, it's about direct communication. This involves face-to-face meetings and notifications with one message that is delivered. That message is delivered by people with the standing to deliver it. The shooting has to stop. We want you to be alive and free. Real support is available. And here is and here is what will happen if your actions continue which is accountability. That message comes importantly from law enforcement, from providers and from community members in the same room at the same time. And that ability to offer that message across those three different partners in the same room at the same time is an important part of the intervention. The next part is really important and that is that focused deterrence leads with support first. Support is not a brochure. Support means each person is matched to a provider that can offer the things that we know can make a difference. That can be life coaching, cognitive behavioral therapy, employment or other types of support, including relocation if immediate risk is is present. Support comes first in the sequence and that's deliberate. After support is focused accountability for the few who may persist in the behavior and in shootings, enforcement concentrates on that group. This is about precision and not about volume. This is not about mass arrest but about focused focused enforcement. The fifth piece is really important and we can't succeed without it. Real focused deterrence has to be managed well and relentlessly that involves a dedicated team of city, county, law enforcement and community partners that meet weekly to assess violence dynamics to focus interventions and to ensure follow-up reporting publicly on performance. We know a lot about focus deterrence. Of the strategies I'm going to talk about today, this is the one that there has been the most evaluation comparable to any other strategy. The reviews of this find that there are meaningful reductions and this is important when cities perform it well. Um they also find that when we do this well, there's not displacement. I think an important thing that people might think about is if we do this in a in a particular area, will the violence just move to the next neighborhood? And when done well, it does not. Baltimore is an example. Baltimore launched focus deterrence in in its western district in January of 2022. Within 18 months, shootings and homicides fell roughly one-third. Interestingly, carjackings also fell by about 40%. There's two other important findings that are worth underscoring. That is, there was no evidence that any of the violence was displaced to adjacent districts and that total arrests stayed flat. Arrests for serious violent crime rose, but overall arrest did not, which means the strategy redirected police attention towards serious violence rather than widening the net. Success in this depends on a bunch of things. I mentioned effectively managing it. But there are two other things that are important. You can't do this well without sustained police leadership commitment and without real provider capa capacity. What do I mean by capacity? I mean, it's about providing real support and making sure that our providers and partners who are providing that support have the resources to do it in a meaningful and timely way. When either of those things is missing, this strategy fails. The good news is those things are within our control. I will name the Baltimore itself tried and failed at this twice in 19 late 1990s and 2014, but in 2022, they put the pieces together and made it work. The next strategy is about street outreach, something that we have some familiarity with here in Durham. Street outreach, as you know, means credible messengers hired for their standing in a specific neighborhood, often with lived experience of violence themselves. The work often involves five things at a high level. Detecting conflicts before they escalate, mediating active disputes, responding after every shooting to interrupt retaliation because retaliation is how one shooting becomes four. connecting people to services and staying with them through the follow-through, which is often a place that programs fall short and shifting norms about whether shooting is an acceptable answer to a dispute. As you heard from Chris, from Director Harris, twothirds of our homicides are dispute related. And so being able to intervene in moments of disputes is really critical and this is a strategy that does that. I want to name one thing that we all know. Durham has done this before and that might be fresh on your minds. Bull City United was an example of street outreach. And I want to be clear about one thing the working group is recommending. The working group behind me did not recommend that we bring back Bull City United. They recommended that we reinvest in community violence intervention in the form of street outreach and that we learn from lessons in the past. That learning means putting safeguards in place because street outreach, as we see in other communities, can work really well when done well, and it's a hard thing to do well. Let me talk a little about what some of those um some of those safeguards are. So in other communities that have been successful, these are some examples. So requiring certification before an organization can be contracted with. I would say the working group uh was probably not unanimous in thinking about does this live in government or the community. I would say there was a leaning toward bringing it back and having street outreach live in community partners. Uh LA was an example. They had a 12-week academy for community partners so that they weren't giving contracts to folks just because they were willing to do it. they were giving contracts to folks because uh their their team members and staff had been trained in an academy. The second safeguard is structured hiring, supervisor training, and career pathways rather than a year-to-year uh contract labor. Right now, in most places that are doing this, the job often pays poorly. It can end without warning, and it has no career ladder, and that's a management problem. And that management problem often results in poor outcomes and inconsistency. Those are things within our control. A third uh important safeguard is that we have to think very clearly about the connection between focused deterrence and street outreach and about the connection between outreach workers and law enforcement. And the places that do this well outreach does not gather intelligence for prosecution. That line has to be bright. It has to be public and we have to be. >> Yes, sir. >> Are you on the next slide? >> Uh oh, let's do this one. >> Yeah, this one. >> Thank you. Sorry. Uh that line has to be bright and public and we have to be consistent in following it. Or else this work doesn't function well. And why? Because street outreach depends upon trust. And people aren't going to work with a street outreach worker if they're think they're providing intelligence to law enforcement. But these things can be done well. Baltimore does group violence intervention and they do street outreach. These things are complimentary. They are not an eitheror decision. They work well together. Um, another critical thing that we that we see in other communities that do street outreach well is we have to sustain the funding. And if we're going to be supporting local nonprofits in doing this, we have to make sure we're providing appropriate back office support, especially for smaller organizations. Detroit and LA are examples that have done this well. If you're a small nonprofit, running federal grant compliance is a really difficult thing. And setting that expectation without providing the right support sets people up for failure at the start. Let's talk about the evidence for street outreach. I'm going to say of the strategies we've talked about, the evidence is most uneven and mixed for street outreach. Um, and a lot of that has to do with the quality in which the program is delivered. The pattern across the last two decades of research is pretty consistent. We see reductions where street outreach is done really well. When it's not done well, we see either no effect or in some rare cases, things are actually made worse. Uh, in Los Angeles, as a place where it's been been well, homicides and outreach zones dropped 27% last year compared to 19% citywide. In Baltimore, John's Hopkins studied 11 different sites over 19 years and found average reductions of 16 to 23%. They also found a site where things got worse. But the variation, this variation in program, it really often tracks program quality. And the mixed evidence is really an argument for safeguards and not an argument against street outreach. We just have to do it well. The third strategy I want to talk about, so the first two I've talked about are really ve are people focused. Identifying the people who are at most acute risk of harm today and providing the right interventions. This next one is a place focused. It's identifying the places in our community, and we've already heard about that today, where violence and gun violence is hyperconentrated and providing place-based interventions. Um, the working group recommended this start as a pilot identifying two or three places from the data that we have already conducted that where we see real uh concentrations of violence in our community. At each of those locations, we want to build standing partnerships at each site, which would look like residents who live in that community, other community leaders, faith and civic partners, city and county agencies, and law enforcement coming together around the same table in that community with residents helping set the priorities for the types of place-based interventions they want to see and investing in those things. Uh the the group was also clear that this type of um you know we looked at research some of the research is very what I'd call environmental design focus which is what happens when you invest in lining and mow yards right and there's actually a lot of evidence that shows that small things like that can make a small difference but the working group was very clear that while they support those type of physical improvements they really wanted this to be more holistic and to think also about programmatic or other types of social investments that could support this work and not just be limited on uh physical improvements. Uh the evidence here is complicated. So we actually know a lot about and with a lot of confidence about what happens when we make physical improvements. There's been some really good research. Philadelphia has really helped lead the way in that. We'll take Philadelphia as just one example. Um, so in Philadelphia, uh, they actually took 541 vacant lots and they randomly assigned those lots to receive three different types of things. Some lots they spent a lot of money to do a kind of full greening of that property. Some lots they mowed the yard and cleaned it up and in some lots they did nothing. Now, you might think those things have nothing to do with violence, but they were actually able to show that those types of physical improvements in Philadelphia led in in the places where these lots were near a 29% reduction in homicides. And then citywide, greening cut shootings by 7% and mowing yards, those vacant yards by 9%. Um, actually, the cheaper intervention, just mowing yards, outperformed the more expensive greening. That's important to note. Um, so what we know from research about these kind of things are these type of physical investments, improvements, they matter, but the impact is small and it's small in that way that we shouldn't do it on its own. If our only strategy was placebased and physical improvements, we'd really be missing the mark. It'd be insufficient. But layered on with other types of strategies that we've discussed, it can make a real difference. But I want to go back to the group. the group really stressed that this is not just about let's increase lighting, let's mow yards, let's address um other types of of physical issues, but let's also think about the types of programmatic and social investments that we need. Let's think about reinvesting in youth programming and summer programming and other types of things within the areas that are are where we have the highest concentration of violence. What we know from the research about that honestly is not much. We haven't had a lot of good studies that show that. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It means that we should do it. we should evaluate it and then we should scale what works. But we don't know a lot about that. We don't know a lot about the type of coordinating and partnership work that we need to do that work well in communities. But we know that's going to be necessary. So again, this is about um focusing on specific places with real investments in improving physical properties and then thinking about the other types of programmatic um things that we might do within those communities or services or resources that we could bring within these specific areas where we're seeing the highest concentrations of violence. All right, the fourth strategy is about cognitive behavioral therapy, sometimes called cognitive behavioral intervention. What we know is that many people who are at highest risk of shooting or being shot are not going to walk into a clinic. And by saying that, I'm not trying to criticize or disparage clinical care. It's really important, but that's a design constraint. Any strategy that requires someone in an acute conflict to make an appointment and show up at an office is probably already failed. What we see in a place like Baltimore is working with a community partner named ROA to bring cognitive behavioral interventions out into the street and meeting people where they're at. What uh what does this type of intervention look like? Well, there's a uh some common features. So, the first thing is that it is relentless and it's outreach. And what do I mean? I mean that it might might start with knocking on a door getting turned away, but people keep coming back. There's this relentless outreach and hope. We know that many public programs record a no and close the file on that. That doesn't happen if we're doing CBI. Well, this is often about nonclinical skills that are taught by youth workers on the street. That's really important. Um, this is not about clinicians in an office. That type of intervention is important uh for lesser important reasons of cost and scale, but for more important reasons because it increases the likelihood that someone receives this type of intervention because you're more likely to receive these types of techniques and skills from someone that you trust than from a clinician that you may not know and may not trust. The types of skills that are taught in these things are really concrete. They are often about noticing the thing that triggers you, learning real practical skills for how to pause and regulate and to think about the consequences and building those skills over time can change behaviors and help people choose a different path in a moment of dispute. Again, twothirds of our homicides are dispute related. And so interventions like this that are about helping people regulate and make different decisions in a moment through real practical skills can make a big difference. Let's talk about what some of that difference looks like. Um before I do that, um when I talk about one of the interesting things that came out of the working group wasn't just talking about CBI as a kind of like new model or program that we would do, it was talking about this as something that we would layer across the other three strategies. That is that we want in focus deterrence. We want to be providing one of the interventions that we'd be providing is building up cognitive behavioral therapy and skills and access to that for folks that we're engaging. We want street outreach workers to have these types of skills and then to be uh teaching these types of skills as they're working with folks out in the community. We want to think about how we can bring this type of access to cognitive behavioral therapy into places where we see the highest concentration. So I think of this less as a standalone strategy and more as something that we want to layer on top of all of the work. Uh the evidence for this so the evidence for this uh is promising and also still emerging. We actually uh know a lot or know more about cognitive behavioral work when it involves people who have been formerly justice involved. We know less about applying this specifically to people who are at highest risk of gun violence. And I want to name that plainly. There are some early studies. These things are promising, but they're not conclusive yet. Uh one of the programs that is closest to the population that we are talking about focusing on, which is adults ages 18 to 34. That program enrolled 2,456 high-risisk adult men in Chicago and for 18 months those uh participants were offered employment plus cognitive behavioral therapy. Um they found that those program participants uh shooting and h Ladies and gentlemen, we have a fire alarm. We do need to exit the building. >> We're in recess. What about Which way do we podium. All right, folks. So, we can go ahead and get back to session. Please really appreciate everyone's uh cooperation. I will say that uh at the speed that you were leaving the building, you may have gotten burned up if we were on fire. [laughter] Uh there were casual conversations still going on but I thank you for your patience. Uh the building is not on fire. Uh and we are we are still in good shape and uh we are going to get back to the presentation at hand. >> You told me you had to start over from scratch. >> Thank you all for your cooperation. Um that uh we are uh it is 207. We're two >> can't see. It's 2:28. Uh we're back back into the session. >> Should I wait for the other council members or >> Let's get started. >> Okay. When last we were here, I was talking about the evidence in support of the four strategy, which is cognitive behavioral interventions. I was talking about work in a a program in Chicago that worked with a couple thousand um adult men and paired cognitive behavioral uh or paired employment with cognitive behavioral therapy. Um the results from that were uh were promising, but I will I think the last thing I may have said and I'm sorry I'm just getting up with my thoughts here was uh they showed significant reductions in violence. But it's important to name that in that study the researchers weren't able to say those findings were statistically significant and without being a completely like policy nerd. What does that mean? It means that we they're promising they're not conclusive and we don't know for sure that it was the thing itself that did it. But the thing that they did see and they did have conclusive evidence on was when a person was referred to that program from a street outreach worker, they saw even larger reductions in violence and those were statistic statistically significant. So what does that mean? It means that this idea that we want to pair these things, that we want to pair cognitive behavioral therapy with street outreach is really grounded in fact and that these things can really complement and strengthen one another. Um all right. Um we talked about uh director Harris already spoke a little bit about this. I want to name that the working group um wrestled a lot and talked a lot about the issues and concerns facing our youth. The group also took seriously the charge that we felt was given to us which was to think about what are the things we can begin to do begin doing now this year to save lives and uh reduce the number of lives we lose to gun violence. And the data on that was pretty compelling that the place to start and focus is adults ages 18 to 34. And so the group focused its time on that highest risk population because that's where we can have interventions that make a difference now. and prevention efforts are important, but those gains may be three, four, or five years down the road. The group also recognized that because we're talking about different populations, they recognize that different populations also require different interventions and may require different people be at the table. And instead of trying to do it all at once and maybe not doing as well by the youth, they recommended that we have a separate process that that process move forward with a sense of urgency and earnestness so that we can give our youth the same type of focused attention that this group gave to 18 to 34 year olds. Uh and that the one thing I would say about that this is not a recommendation that I hope people will read as let's kick the can down the road and talk about it again in a year. the working group members um especially working group members who are working in this space have already begun organizing to think about planning this. We're coordinating with city and county staff uh to make this thing something that happens sooner rather than later because it's really important but it really needs and warrants its own dedicated process. Um all right so the group in addition to five strategies recommended some things that the group feels are important to actually do these things well. I think one of the consistent themes in the research that I shared with you is every single strategy that I shared with you has worked someplace but it has also failed other places and that failure is often not about it's not about the strategy it's about how well we're implementing it. To be able to implement things well the group recommends five things at least five things. First, it's going to require some dedicated staffing. The working group recommended at least two dedicated staff that would be that would be part of a managing structure. That is, these aren't we're not saying two staff to do service delivery. We're saying two staff whose only job is to think about these strategies day in day out and to make sure that we're coordinating and managing this well because that's what's going to be required to do this work well. There's going to be many different parts and actors. We have multiple strategies and we need staff that sit either in the city or county who can be focused on that type of management work. It's really critical to success. The the two people I would say is a floor. It's not a proposal yet. We're doing some work to shore up what is needed to do that. The second is um a strong recommendation for some type of multiddisciplinary advisory board that brings together the right city and county staff with service partners with folks from directly impacted communities to serve on an advisory board that are not waiting for an annual report but are providing accountability and helping support coordination in real time through regular meetings. The third and this goes back to like implementation fidelity and quality is we need to invest in the right training and technical assistance and we can't skip this process. Cities that skip this process these these uh strategies may sound simple but they can be hard to do well. There are folks out there in this that can really support us in making sure we avoid some of the hard lessons that other communities have learned that we learn from our own mistakes and we do this well. We owe it to this work. That's not overhead. That's making sure that we do this work with fidelity. If we do it well, we're more likely to be successful and if we skip this step, we're more likely to fail. The fourth is resources. This is going to require some new new resources. It's also uh there are things that we can redirect that we're doing today that can support this work. Part of the work that that we are doing now is assessing what capacity do we have? What things could we redirect that we're already doing? Because some things we can do with existing resources, but some things are going to likely require new investment. An example is investing in our community violence intervention ecosystem. If we're talking about street outreach, that may require new investment and we're working on those kind of things. We do not come today with uh budget requests yet for this work. We're actively doing that work. But this idea that we need to inventory what's existing, think about what can be redirected and then identify the gap and new resources needed. And the five the fifth thing is we need to commit to some ongoing analysis. We just completed a really rigorous analysis of 5 years of homicide data. That data will go stale and the working group uh was also unified and saying that type of analysis needs to be something that we update periodically because the results in 20 violence is shifting dynamics. We need to know how it's changing and we need to be committed to doing that ongoing work to help inform this. What are we asking today from all of you? Um, we're asking for direction from you so that we can advance this work and figure out what the next steps are. Specifically, we're asking for a formal discussion today for direction of city and county staff who are in the room and for you to endorse the parts of this direction that you are ready for us to move forward move forward with. Um, the staff uh city and county staff are already working to lay the pillars of good implementation. So what does that mean? Between we've already been doing this and through October, we're working to identify some of the technical assistance partners we might need and where possible securing those or bringing forward the budget needs for that. We are completing a key capacity assessment. I'm going to talk about that more in a minute, but it's critical to understanding what is our capacity to do these strategies today and what are the gaps so we can address them. We are identifying uh we'll be working to identify some specific uh places to start the third strategy of a place-based intervention based on the analysis that was already done. Uh I talked about the management structure. We need to figure out where this work lives. What is the management team that is ultimately accountable for it? Where do they sit in either city or county? What other partners are involved in that work? What is the uh what types of staffing do we need to hire? What is the cadence of performance report outs? That work is critical and it's we're doing that planning now. And then finally and critically, we need to tell you how much it's going to cost to do this, which we cannot tell you today. We need to do some of those other things to understand what is the cost of doing this now and doing it well. Our goal is to be able to come back with an update in October. Uh I touched on these things. I'm not going to spend uh a a lot more time here, but again, these are two big assessments that are underway. a key capacity assessment which looks at what are the things that we know have to be strong in order to succeed in this work and you see them described at a high level here. We have to have the right type of governance in place and the right support of political strong political support for it. We need to have the right datadriven analysis if we're going to focus on the right people and places. We need to have the ability to collaborate well not only between agencies but also with our community partners. Collaboration is going to be critical. We need to be able to have we need to have a consolidated and accountable management team. You need to know who is responsible for all of this because right now this is this would be siloed across many different actors and someone needs to be accountable high enough position to direct this work be accountable and help uh help point everyone in the right direction. And then critically we have to talk about the question of infrastructure that is some of this is going to involve law enforcement. Does law enforcement have what it needs today to do this work? If not, what additional capacity do they need? And if we're talking about community violence intervention and things like street outreach, what additional capacity and infrastructure do we need to do that? That's all work that's happening between now and October to help advance our understanding of those things. And then I've talked a lot about partnership based management, but it's what staff do we need? Where do they sit in which organization? What how is that management process going to work? Who's involved? This is like weekly cadence of meetings. This is also regular performance report outs to the public designing all of that which is really critical. Those things are ongoing now that are going to lay the foundation for a strong implementation. All right, that wraps up where we're at today. My final remarks again, what are we here to do? We're we have u this is a chance for you to formally receive the recommendations from the violence reduction working group that's now happened. Uh our hope is for a discussion and direction from council on what questions you have for us and what things you are charging us to move forward with. And where possible among the recommendations that have been presented, which of those are you prepared to endorse uh at the next to to formally endorse uh through a past resolution endorsing this general set of strategies to be advanced? Uh I'm going to conclude with a note of thanks again to the working group members who are here. Uh, and for those who aren't here, I want to name some basic facts to you and remind you where this came from. Over three days, we had 26 leaders across Durham do the kind of thing that we want leaders to do, which is they put aside past differences. They came together with a diverse array of expertise that's really important in this and with a variety of different lived experience that's relevant to this type of issue. Then they looked at the facts and they did the hard work to try to align on something that they felt could make a real difference. you know many of these leaders and one thing that I think you know about these leaders is they have no problem disagreeing with one another and they're not shy about it and I say that to underscore the fact that what we're talking about today is a unanimous agreement across these 26 leaders and a belief that these strategies will do this thing the mission which is reduce homicides non-fatal shootings and hospitalizations based on homicides by 10% every year 10% may sound like a small number but compounded year-over-year that is real change and real life saved The group behind me today believes that these strategies and I stand with them give us a good chance at achieving that goal and may be doing better. But we stand unanimously in support of these recommendations and ready today to answer questions. I will also note that to help answer questions today is not uh just me. We're joined by working group members from the police department. Uh deputy chief Jackson, Assistant Chief Hayatt, uh Director Harris, uh Director Humphrey may be here also from Durham County. uh and we also have online some of our uh partners at University of Maryland and UPEN who have also been adviserss in this process. But again, we had 26 local leaders who bring these recommendations to you today. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Director Smith. Uh job well done. Uh let me I I usually share my comments last. I will again today. But I want to start as well by saying I witnessed the work firsthand. I saw the commitment. I uh also felt the commitment from people who were not even in the room who wanted to be in the room. The people who called me yelling and screaming, "I can't get in. They won't let me in." People really were hungry to to help be a part of this work. And I just want to thank you all personally and on behalf of the council for the work that you did and are doing. Uh so uh I'll bring it to the council. So, uh, I am going to start off to my left because council member um, uh, Burrus has to leave some. >> All right. Good afternoon. Thank you all so much for the presentation and thank you all for the 26th working group. Director Smith, can you please come to the stand? Um, so I will I'll say my remarks towards the end as I do have to leave in about 30 minutes, but I just want to get because as a member of the public or just elected official, it did feel like this working group was exclusive for a lot of people and that may not have included a lot of folks. So I want to know um how were the members of working group selected? Like what was the outreach process for that and what was your like logic behind the people that you selected for the work group? >> Sure. Thank you for the question. Um so first this wasn't a decision made by me. It was made by a group of city and county staff that we charged with working and developing this process. The process was informed in terms of the number of people in the room by our partners at VRC who were helping to facilitate this process and recommended that there is a size at which we go beyond and it's harder to have a really productive meeting where we're working toward alignment. They also recommended the kind of um not people but the kind of different um expertise and lived experience that we wanted in the room and we worked as a group to identify folks who were ex who were showing up at meetings who were expressing leadership at being at that table. So it was not a decision I made. It was a decision that we jointly made that we also sought advice from city leadership from the city manager's office and and from the mayor and some conversations about that. That's how the list was formed. I will say it is absolutely a fact that there are other people who have a lot of experience and expertise um that would be great at that table but the table I think practically had a size limit in order to be productive. I think we had a really great variety of expertise of people who are connected to this issue in really important and relevant ways who were at the table. Uh that is not to say that everyone's there and everyone wasn't there. I also want to name that this work um wasn't just about those three days. there was a lot of outreach over the previous six months that engaged with hundreds of other folks um who also were uh those what we learned from that was brought into the room and taken seriously by the group of of of local leaders that we had around the table. Uh so I'll I'll end there, but I'll ask Director Harris if she has anything she'd like to add if that's okay. >> Just one quick note to add that this list actually changed over time. Um our initial thought was what before we actually got our problem analysis we had a lot of youth organizations that we were planning to invite but then we saw our problem analysis and we realized that our youth are only is 14% if we're trying to work with the highest risk population. we kind of need to adjust and shift who we actually have at the table who are working with this population as well which helped us to identify that we do that is a gap in services that we have but we also wanted to look at those who have been doing this work for a long time some of people that are trusted in their community who are advocates so the list kind of fluctuated up until probably the two weeks before the actual summit because we wanted to be intentional on who we brought to the table also understanding that as we move forward in implementation we'll definitely bring for bring you know others involved in this pro um in the process when we get to implementation. >> Okay, that's let me move back for Vivian. Come get me again. Okay, so then my next question is like collectively do you all think this working group is representative of the population that is most impacted by gun violence in Durm? >> I believe so. >> And what like what um basis do you like what supports that notion? um first and foremost because of the folks that we're working with um currently if we're looking at that most of them are black males. Um we're looking at the individuals if we're looking just specifically to community organizations um the community organizations that we brought to the table. They do work with that population. We also brought in some um um partners from our Latinx community because we also know that they're they're impacted by gun violence as well. um one of the programs I was representing project build even though I'm part of the working group we actually already work with the population we do 10 to 21 so I feel like we were represent those folks were represented well based on not only the data but what we're seeing day-to-day and the services that we're already providing >> okay and then next question is did the working group like you mentioned a lot about Baltimore as well as Chicago did you have any site visits or did you go and meet with other partners in person to further discuss their work or evaluate the work >> so we have not done any site let's say the working group did not have any site current site visits, but we did have learning sessions where we had um people from Baltimore to come and talk. We had folks from Minneapolis to um speak. These were virtual things, but we also had someone from Greensboro, Office of Violence um prevention to actually come in person to kind of talk about what they have seen work, what's been working for them, what are some of the strategies that they had. So we had some learning sessions as well as listening sessions but we have not had any um site visits with the working group or the smaller group the three the three of us. >> And so from my understanding I do feel there's a community urgency right now around the issue of youth violence. And so it um so I'm just thinking like what is the actual timeline for that and what will you all do to make sure you're being more inclusive because it does feel like the working group and this is no disrespect to anyone a part of the working group my job is to make sure that we are addressing the issues and the urgency that we have and I think 14% is still too much. So I really want to understand like how do you p plan to mend with community who may have felt excluded and make this more inclusive so we can make sure we're getting everyone's voices here. >> So what I from my viewpoint because we do we I work a lot with community organizations. So we have a lot that we already have a list of that we know do the work um even from when we had previous like our my brothers keeper we still have that list of individuals that we know we work with around youth um youth as well. So it would be a matter if we could do a um a call out to those who are actually doing this work to ask who's in the who's doing this like what are our capacity. We actually did some a similar work with Vera Institute where they looked at who's already doing this work in the area. So we can definitely use that list but also reach out and say are you doing the work of violence prevention and then do you want to come to this table and then have that conversation and have them work with us on this youth summit. So we have again some already identified and those throughout this the morning portion of the summit where it was public a lot of people there identif um identified themselves saying I want to participate and work as well. So we captured those individuals too. >> Okay. Because I really want to make sure that in this journey that we I because I really couldn't understand why juvenile crime prevention council was not a part of the conversation discussion when they actually have those meetings and they actually get data. So I want to make sure that we have those people who work with these populations present. And so I would hope that you all moving forward would be more inclusive and actually like the same way your work group currently were able to agree disagree do the same work but also prioritizing it in a way to where for me it's not about who's take credit for it's about these babies not being dead in these streets and that's where I'm at with the whole thing is where I want to see actionable work and my final thing I'll leave with since we're saying recommendations what we want to see my biggest concern I get it that talk about the CVI and how it be different um my obs I've been in Durham for most of my life my observation from Bull City United it feel like we It feels that we put people in a lot of danger and a lot of harm by not providing the support that they actually need to be successful in their role. And to some extent, you waste a lot of money. And so I want to make sure that we don't have infinite resources, but we are not basically um subjecting people in our community to additional harm by not having those wraparound services, but also when you go into traumatic environments every single day, you need therapy. You need support. And I couldn't imagine a scenario where we are basically duplicating what's been done in some ways before and then making the same mistakes we've made in the past. So I really want to see the prioritization of a youth summit that is led by the youth. I want to make sure that the youth are at the table talking about the issues they have and adults are standing by supporting them with that work and figuring out resources for that work. So that's my number one priority. But also ensuring that if we do go the CBI route I understand the impact of the work but we cannot leave people out here by themselves. We must provide the support and do it the way for me. This is not about a vanity project. Um, we have a very real issue here in Durm that's happening amongst community violence in our streets and our children being impacted by that. And it's not about just data points. Those are actual humans behind that those data points. And I encourage everyone to take that same sentiment as we go out because we're all tired and frustrated. I want to feel good about the work right now, but right now I still have a little bit of une uneasiness about the work. I know there's a lot of piece we have to put together, but please try really hard to make sure we do that. >> Yes. And I totally agree with you on all that you just said and just wanted to also um mention that we did have the juvenile crime prevention um represented. We had director Rashana Humphrey who actually she manages the JCPC as well as several JCPC organizations at the table. So they were represented um even though it was not it may not have been the chair or vice chair but we did have JCPC represented. And I I also agree with you in instead of when we're looking at outreach, I did um compile a lessons learned from Bull City United and I'd be happy to share that um with the council, but part of that was as far as implementation, we have to make sure we get everything structured and have people uh professional development is huge in that and making sure that they are toolled up before we even send them out on the street. So, I definitely agree with that. >> Okay. And my final note, sorry I said I was done, but I do want to see the JCCPC chair as a part of this work moving forward around the youth and making sure we have all those things together. So, thank you so much for your time and I appreciate the work you're doing. >> Council member Cook. [clears throat] >> Thank you. I actually have some questions as well. Um, so the first question I guess I want to ask is more of an overall, this could be for either one of you, more of an overall question, which is that um, we've we've heard a couple of times that the recommendations that have been put in front of us are unanimous, but they are unanimous with or without prioritization. Is it unanimous all five of these at the same time? because I feel the request is for us then to deliberate what things we feel comfortable with but I don't hear a recommendation of prioritization. So I'm just making sure I'm not missing that >> the recommendations are not prioritized. It is recommended all of these advance. Now they will advance they probably won't all launch at the same time. It will take there'll be some uh pacing but the recommendation they're brought forward as one set of recommendations that complement and work together without prioritization. I believe that that's accurate. So, >> okay. Um, I know that you said that there was some disagreement about where it would live, but did we, if we were going to move forward, I think that we would probably need to know where a street outreach would live. So, did we come to some conclusion about that? >> Do you want to speak? >> So, we did not come to a conclusion of where it would be. Um, the majority I would say the majority did feel that it should be and I I can speak from let me speak for myself. I do agree with the majority that it should live in community. Um just based off experience of leading a um outreach program previously. I do believe based like I said I have a lessons learned based on some of the risk factors as well as some of the resources. Um I feel like it's it's better suited for a community. um and having that being um community organizations and not just one community organization, but community organizations that could potentially house um the outreach um program. So, I don't believe it needs to be one particular organization, but multiple organizations. >> Okay. So, when we're talking about sort of forwarding, I mean, I know that the direct ask was made for us and to endorse some of the parts. Um, we're sort of thinking about endorsing some of these things like outreach as a general idea with lots more strategy and how it's being done to come be presented to us in the future or to be started like what what sort of things what are next steps? Will we receive another update or will things move forward with best practices? Like what does that what does it look like moving forward? So, what I would say is depending on what strategies, if you all have an idea of what strategies you want, because for me, I don't feel like we need to have just one strategy. I feel like that's where we failed in the past. Um, it should be layered. Not saying you have to do all four of the major main strategies that we have, but we feel like even our partners at UPUPAN and VRC, there should be at least two of them um to layer together. And I would say if we are going to if we're not going to do all four, if we're going to look at um for me the the main two would be focus deterrence and um street outreach. Um I feel like the placebased some of that work is already being done in the community um with some community organizations. I feel like it just needs more coordination. Um, so I would say that depending on what strategies you decide to move forward with, then we would then be able to give you kind of the what does that look like and the what the implementation would look like and what's what resources would be needed for that. >> Okay. But we're prepared like to do all of them if that was the will of the council. Yeah. I mean, I guess for me, I'm just I mean, hearing all of these at the same go, I understand the the layering, and I think that that's sort of the important piece is that we've seen a lot of these strategies when they've been done as one-offs, we've seen them fail. Um, I mean, I think Council Member Burrus talked about quite a lot of uh weaknesses with one specific program, but I know that we've seen these happen in other cities, too, where it's just been sort of one thing that's failed. And so, it's I think it's a difficult request to present all four and then be like, do you endorse part of this? Right. And like how could I know because I'm like not an expert on this. Um but yeah, anyway, it's just a it's just something that I'm grappling with. I just wanted to bring up. Um and then what can we talk about the standing partnership at sites? Is that do we think of that as being like an actual physical standing partnership? Do we think of it as being like community groups that are already working in those spaces? What does that what does that look like? Uh I'm going to speak to that, but I want to go back to the thing that you were naming. I one thing that we have discussed with the city manager is that the next point uh touch point is that we come back to joint city county in October with an update on how plans have developed. Um we don't want to spend time on plans that the majority of council has no interest in advancing, but we are intending to advance plans on all of these and come back with a more detailed plan with budgets with those kind of things. You asked the work that we're doing now. I spoke about that a little bit. We are understanding what additional capacity we need to do each of these. Understanding the budget costs involved. We'll be able to come back and answer more detailed implementation questions which we can't answer all of the detailed implementation questions today on the partnership. Uh we have part of that work over the next couple of months is uh understanding like being able to answer in a more detailed way what that would look like to coordinate partners around specific sites. So I don't think that we have a detailed answer for you, but we know that the the spirit of what that work would be is identifying specific places and this not being just a government program, but bringing partners together who are ready to invest in a focus way in these specific communities that are at highest risk. And the sitebased work is really um a vehicle for coordinating that. We've seen some examples of that um in other communities of how they're bringing partners together in both actionable and accountable ways of like coming together. what are we hearing from residents coming back and providing accountability on the types of things that we can do when we're hearing, but we have work to do to actually talk about that in more detail. >> Okay. Yeah, the accountability piece feels pretty important to me, I will say. Um, which I'm going to skip to skip a couple questions go out of order because you just said something else that sort of tracked what I was going to ask. So, I heard you say that there's county staff that have been involved in the work. Um, are similar questions going in front of the county commissioners? So what is the role of the county in this and and what can we in expect in partnership? >> Yes. So we will be presenting to the board of county commissioners at the September 8th work session and so they will be getting the same information that you are receiving today. They received the recommendations already um but they will be getting a um an actual presentation as we're doing today with you all as well >> and they'll be asked for the same sort of guidance that we're requesting today. Okay. Yes. Um, and then maybe my last question for now, the I saw on the one of the earlier slides that there's public comment that you're taking on these recommendations specifically. I know you've done lots of outreach previously um, but it's only open for five more days and you've just said that you're going to present it to the county um, in a couple of weeks and I'm wondering why it's that short time frame. And then I'd also maybe like to know what you are going to be doing with that feedback and how it'll be incorporated. Okay. >> So, I'm not >> You look like I'm I'm Yeah. Okay. Let me find what I'm talking about. >> Um >> just so you know, colleagues, uh as soon as Council Member Cook finishes her questions, I am going to go back to the speakers that I omitted to call on and then I'll come back to the council. >> Um yes. So, I see on it's like the third slide it says re June 29th was recommend Oh, sorry. Yes. June 29th recommendations. I'm I missed that. says, "Consens recommendations delivered with a request for public response by August 25th." >> Public response from all of you. >> From you from us? Yes. >> From us, not public comment. Okay. That >> Sorry, that makes way more sense. Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. Those are questions for now. [snorts] >> All right. Uh I'm going to go to speakers and then I'll come back to the council. First speaker I have virtually is Dr. Wanda Boon. Good evening everyone. I'm so glad >> you have three minutes. >> Thank you. Uh good afternoon everyone. I'm glad to be here with you and I am speaking in support of the strategies as mentioned and particularly focused on um the youth summit as you might imagine along with several of us that are working together inviting other groups to uh join in with that conversation not limited to anyone but opening up to everyone. And so the reason that I am so intent about this is because many of you know how long and how hard TRI as well as other organizations have worked in this area. But what is this about? Is it about Wanda Boone and TRI or is it about our next best hope for preventing reducing violence uh in Durham? And I believe that um well, one of my favorite saying is holding young people solely responsible for underage drinking or gun violence or whatever you want to say is like holding fish responsible for dying in a polluted stream. Meaning that it takes adults in um all different aspects, whether it's uh in families or even just in our community, that we can make a difference. So, I just wanted to say that and we are committed to supporting this effort and particularly interested in the youth summit. Thanks so much. Thank you. Next, I have Kevin McCyver in person. [cough] >> Welcome. You have three minutes. >> Thank you. Uh my name is Kevin Maccgyver. I was the chairman for the JCPC and for months I did reach out to be a part of this working group. But all the way up until the day I got there, I was denied after the meeting was over and told that I could not be there. And what I have to hear as the recommendations is I was a part of the DURM strategy committee back when we had a gang reduction committee. We had this assessment done that was adopted by the county. Let me read off those five recommendations that was done back then so that you'll know that you're read you're redoing that same will once again. Recommendation number one, implement intensive placebased strategies to address underlying social conditions that increase the vulnerability of children and youth in the most violence affected census tracks in gang uh involvement. Number two, implement comprehensive intensive and neighborhood based services delivery specifically for gang related individuals in the highest violence neighborhoods. I think we talked a lot about gangs being involved in this. So we're bringing that strategy back again. Also number three because of the high level of gang exposure involvement youth risk exposure locally Durham policy makers should expand available gang prevention and intervention programs localize these services in the most violence gang affected census track and prioritize these services for children and youth who are at the highest level of risk and involvement because we what we did was we went through 12 different census tracks in Durham through this um gang initiative back then in 2022. too. Recommendation number four, more regularly collect and report data that reflects that the progress of the community's gang violence reduction effort. I think we talked about that in these recommendations about collecting data and going over and seeing how it works. Recommendation number five, institute standardized performance measures and track reductions in violence. improve existing criminogenic social conditions at census track level and more regularly report the outcomes attained by gain prevention intervention and strategies to policy makers and the community census track. Those were the five that was recommended in 2022. I was denied entry into the room and I had this manual right here that was given out and all of these come with bullet points bullet points with 246 pages of pretty much the same thing we about to go through again. They're gonna present this to the county in September at their work session. But when I was asked and tried to be in that room, I was told, "You don't you're not needed. We don't need you." And I think some of you have seen that email that I sent out showing my denial into that room and being a part of that strategic committee. And I am at a point where I'm not understanding why we continue to roll around this hamster wheel, continue to do the same things over and over again. I work for the department, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services at one of our state psychiatric hospitals. I deal with children and I work with adult patients. There was an idiom that was always placed out there that we use sometimes that you know is there's no medical science behind it, but it says you can do the same thing over and over again hoping for different results. It turns into what? Insanity. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. MacGyver. All >> [clears throat] >> right. Uh, those are all the public speakers I have. Yeah. So, I'll bring it back before the council. Um, may appro. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the folks who are here either online or in person. Um, I really appreciate all the information and I actually appreciate Mr. MacGyver's comments. I will note that that is a county um proposal. That means that I was on city council. I would have never gotten that. And I think that that is uh an example of why we failed. Earlier in the presentation, it talks about resourcerich but lack of coordination. That's why we failed. Uh in the presentation they talked about Baltimore having done it two times before they uh sought some real success. And I think that is one of the things that we um don't do well in Durham. And I think we see it over and over again. It's not just with gun violence, it's with homelessness, it's with housing. I mean, we're that's why we're getting these updates and I think it's critical um that there are three governing boards in this in this city in this county uh that make decisions collectively. That is our schoolboard partners, our county, and our city council. And if we don't have all of those players, all of those different electeds at the board at the table, then it's just not going to succeed. That's just a fundamental truth because each one of us has a different lens and a different priority. Um it's hard for residents to interact in that way, right? That's that's a structurally difficult thing. Uh but that's also the system we have and it's also how it's it's dem democratically chosen. Um I hope that we also present this to our schoolboard uh members. I know that they have been a critical partner in this work and so that this same proposal goes before them. uh I think that they'll be extremely uh valuable and a needed partner especially when we think about the youth component of this. Um and I'm ready to adopt all five. Uh I'm ready to hear the update um in October. And the only thing that I have a couple of questions on is primarily around I think it it should be community- based potentially. What we learned from HART and what we heard across the country is that the places that did it through nonprofits, they couldn't pay their people the level that government could. And that's actually one of been our biggest successes in heart was that it is embedded in government and they get city pay. And so if we're going to embed it in community organizations, we have to make sure that those folks aren't just getting nonprofit pay. I'm sorry, nonprofits just don't pay as well as government and we burn out those folks. So I I want us to be real clear on making that commitment. if folks really want it embedded in community that we're not burning out the folks who are doing really critical work and then aren't getting uh the the benefits that they deserve. Um I will say we had to bring street outreach into heart uh partly because Housing for New Hope, which is a critical partner to the city, but they didn't run a 24-hour hotline. They weren't in 911 radios. They couldn't get the street outreach the way it needed to into our homeless community, not because they're not an excellent partner partner, but because structurally it just didn't work. And so I don't want to make the same mistakes with this work. I want us to really think about the folks who are implementing which at the end of the day are individuals that we are supporting them and we are giving them their uh you know work with dignity. Um then the other part is and I'm going to call the county out on this. I don't want our county commissioners to adopt a plan and then not provide the money. Um which is what we're facing with homelessness. We have a very very strong homeless strategic plan that we're hearing the county is going to come in on their funding, but we had to adopt it and we had to uh vote on it. And that is, you know, earlier we had a resident calling out around an encampment. I will say maybe if the county had put in their dollars, we would have the the rapid rehousing dollars right now to to deal with that encampment. There's real consequences when we don't fund the thing that we say we're committed to doing collaboratively. So, I'm just stating that on the record uh right now so that folks are real clear where this council member sits on accountability. Um and um I think that that's pretty much it. I just I I'm glad I really want to give both the mayor and Dr. uh Lee um a lot of kudos for for being leaders in this way and and and leaning into this work. They are black men. they are the ones who have to see the consequence uh personally in a way that I don't. Um and uh it's it's really disheartening to see the level of gun violence um in in Durham. And I think that for those of us I I don't live in in Cornwallis, but I've had plenty of shootings on my in my neighborhood. I've had uh homicides down the street. Um, and I think many of us, if you live in the inner core of Durham, you've experienced that to some to some level. And it's not okay and it's not how anyone should live. Uh, especially the folks who are really really deeply impacted. So, uh, I'm I'm ready to get started and I'm eager um and and just thankful that we're we're here and that we can get so much learning from other communities who are further along in this process. >> Thank you. Um, Council Member Copc. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I first want to thank uh Director Smith, Director Harris, uh all the staff who worked on this uh the mayor and Dr. Lee, all the community participants who gave their time uh to this uh uh this working group and the summit and all the advocates uh now and over the years. Um I think you heard from a couple of folks, Dr. Boon, Mr. Maccgyver, others have been working on this for a long long time. Um and this is long-term work. Uh and so I really appreciate the folks who've been doing this for a long time with their their time and with their passion. Um I first heard about the possibility of this particular approach. Um we heard today a couple years ago actually in conversations I was having with Durham K and and faith leaders and other community members who were aware of this work happening nationally and wanted to see Durham uh explore this and see if it made sense for us as an approach. And I know the conversations were probably happening a long time before that. Um, you know, it is long-term work, but I'm so glad we have some specific recommendations um to do work in the short term that we have a strong confidence uh can deliver um some some real results in in reducing violent crime for for our residents. Uh and echoing my my colleague, Council Member Burrus, just uh making sure we always remember um you know, behind this work, behind the statistics, the the people and the real lives that are impacted. Uh and that's why we're here. That's why we're we're doing this work. Uh and so I'm really hopeful uh and supportive of the recommendations uh to be able to to to deliver uh on a really human level for for our residents who are who are facing the worst of of the crime in our community. Um I have a a few questions. Um so the first one is around uh resources. You talked that is talked about that as a a critical accountability um um you know lever right for this work. uh making sure we're we're getting behind supporting the recommendations, you know, as they're being developed. So, we passed the budget for this fiscal year um without any additional resources for the plan. The plan came after the the the conclusion of that budget process. So, I'm curious about the plan uh to to explore that resourcing, whether it's waiting to the next fiscal year with an ask uh there conversations with the new police chief. I mean, obviously she hasn't started yet, but is the plan to talk with with her and other department leads about how we rep prioritize existing u safety resources to be able to support this? What are the current conversations happening around the resource plan? >> Sure. Um, first of all, this would be an excellent point for the city manager to speak on who is not here now, but so let me just uh say a couple words on this and then I'll ask if any of the deputy city manager or others want to weigh in. Um, I do not think the expectation is that this work waits till next fiscal year. Part of what we're doing through the key capacity assessment and understanding is what are the things we can do right now with existing resources which may be redirecting things in a different way. We some of this work we should be able to do without any additional funding. We may have to make different decisions about reallocating things. Some of this work is going to require new funding and there are mechanisms for council and for the city manager's office to consider. There are things we may not do often but there are mid-year adjustments. There are other ways in which we can think about finding the funding. I think the first step is for us to come back to our elected bodies and tell you um this is what we can do with what we have and this is what the funding gaps are and then it's a matter of um our elected officials and city manager's office and city manager working to what are the options you know so if council wants to do something this year and you all can figure out a way to find that funding then we can do it but we have to give you the answer first which we haven't which is what can we do with the capacity we have and how much more is it going to cost to do all of it we are actively working on that now with the goal of providing an update in October. But I think that there are options available to city council if there is a funding gap. Um things like mid-year budget adjustments and others that would be available for you all to consider. >> I hope I didn't misspe. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you. Uh specifically around the street outreach work, you know, this feels perhaps one of the the most sensitive recommendations. Um, and I'm just curious, and maybe this is also to come in October, but just what you see some of the next steps are there, uh, in terms of those community conversations, uh, reaching out, working with groups who have been engaged in this. You know, folks who probably have different approaches and philosophies to this work. What do you sort of see as the next steps to help move that, uh, item forward? I'll start and then I'm going to turn it over to Director Harris because she knows a lot more about this than me. So the first thing I would say is we have named a key piece of this strategy which is we need technical assistance right and that's definitely true for street outreach. There are groups out there that know a lot and understand how to do this work well and I think it's incumbent upon us to go find the folks who have real experience in providing the right kind of technical assistance so that we can do this well. So part of our immediate strategy is we're already looking and to find out who's really great that can come in and help us figure out learn from our mistakes or just from the you know the the things that we learned from the previous iteration so that we don't repeat those errors and that we lay the right foundation which we have named a number of things already that we've identified that we did not do last time that we that we want to do. um more training, uh thinking about the right types of certification. There's a bunch of things that director Harris has already identified and I really commend her for being the type of leader who had a program who recognized those things that weren't working well and has already prepared that type of analysis. That will be further supported by other additional outside technical assistance experts that we will need to do this well. And then it's a matter of thinking about if this is making a final decision. Is this do we have the capacity and willing partners in the community who are prepared to do this? If so, it's providing an ai designing an RFP that has the right types of um uh and contracts that set this work up for success. So, I mean, those are the kind of basic steps that I think that we are on and working toward that can lay the right foundation for this. I feel confident we can find technical assistance partners who have a strong track record of doing this well um that can help and then I'll turn it over to Director Harris for anything she'd add. I don't have much to add, but um definitely when looking at street outreach, the previous iteration there were 25 employees because we're looking at a very concentrated group of individuals. We don't need that many that many outreach workers. So, we'll be looking at identifying no probably about five to seven individuals um that would be our street outreach workers that would be working with this concentrated population. Um and so the technical assistance partners would definitely help with um recruitment of those individuals, helping identify what u specific training is necessary, get those people um train and then you put them in the places where the highest risk um individuals live. So that's where um the focus would be. It would be very focused on who's the best suited to do this work, making sure they have the skill set, um they have the self-care, they have the trauma-informed training, all of those things before we put them out into the field. And again, if we decide that they live in community, making sure that those community organizations also have the same training and support that they need to be able to manage um manage those outreach workers. >> Thank you so much, >> Council Member Rrist. >> Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Um yeah, first of all, this is absolutely critical work. So, I really want to thank the staff for working on this. Um, the 26 members of the the working um team um our residents, I know as as council cop said, we've heard from folks like it can Susan Dunlap, thanks for being here. We've heard about this um violence reduction strategy a couple years ago. So, I'm glad we I'm glad we're taking advantage of the best ideas out there because parents, mothers, residents are begging us, please, like we got to stop the violence. So, this is really critical work. I really appreciate the work you've done. High level. This is great stuff. Um the report is well done. Um I guess my questions are similar to the ones my colleagues have had. So there's first question is like how do we know we're going to succeed here? And I think director Smith you were honest about this. Some of the data is like some of the data is pretty clear, some of the data is less clear. Um, and I think one thing you said over and over is like when delivered well, right? And we hear that as my colleague Mayor PM said like this happens housing in in you know everything we solid ways transportation everything around the city is like when when we deliver things well homeless services right when delivered well we succeed. And so for me there's kind of two questions. It's like how do we know we're going to succeed at this? We've done this work as as council cop said this is not new some of this work we've done this before um we've got other we've got other different uh multi-disiplinary groups doing stuff like this so how do we know we're going to succeed this time I know you talked about like data we need data there's questions about like who's going to what are the measures going to collect it how often right so for me for me I like all the strategies I know as as council cook said it's a little bit clear I'm not not quite clear what you're asking us here but I like the overall direction >> for me the management structure's got to be clear and I don't know if it's a collective impact model you're thinking about but I think that's got to be clear who does what >> again as mayor prom said we have we wrestle with the county all the time right so we got to be clear what that looks like before for me before investing big time in this >> that's great I'm happy to answer that question right >> that's my first question second question is timeline so I think in some of the materials we saw I mean you said like you're still working on the stuff you're going to come back to us in October with more recommendations but I also see in some of the the timeline in the in the memo we got with this with this item. There's conversation about like finalizing TA contracts in in August and September. So I do have a question about like so when are we really going in this and when are we still like building it because I want to make sure that we do build the foundations properly. >> Sure. >> And that and that relates to the financing but also this question of like management structure. So >> y >> say more about that. >> Great. I think there were three points in there. I'm going to ask you to help me come back to anything that I missed because that was >> mainly management structure and timing. So, first let me talk about like um what's different about this from how we've done it before. I want to talk about management structure. You are absolutely right that I think one of the keys to success and what we have learned from our partners and other communities that do this well is the management structure and coordinating is absolutely critical. We are working with um I think one of the national leading experts that is not just like studying this. They have been on the ground doing this in communities to put the right management structure in place. When I say that we are actively working right now on the type of management partnership based management structure working with many partners around a regular cadence of following the data of working together of identifying the actions of reporting out what's working and what's not that is very uh like data based that is exactly what we are designing and going to come back and answer a lot more details on you but I will I just want to underscore for you that if you've identified that management is critical I'm here to tell you it absolutely is and I think that we have the right partners and we come back and we're going to give more details. Something that we don't typically do, right? Let's talk about the cadence of this. When we talk about shooting reviews, which is a critical part of focus deterrence, shooting reviews have uh have a weekly cadence of meetings where weekly law enforcement is helping identify, but we are working with partners in meetings every week to identify in real time who's at greatest risk of violence from disputes and those types of things. We are putting together weekly real-time intervention plans. That feedback loop is coming with regular data on performance at least monthly to to leaders. Some of that is public. Some of that is in meetings with the city manager or the mayor and others for regular monthly accountability. We're not talking about something where we're going to go once these things launch that this work is going to happen and then there's going to be a quarterly report or an annual report. There is going to be weekly meetings bringing partners together to manage this in real time driven by data that we can hold ourselves accountable to. And why does data matter? because exactly the point that uh uh council member Copac and others said, this is about real people's lives. I know I've talked about data, but that's not lost on me. This type of rigorous partnership-based management is critical. I think that I have confidence that we have the right partners to help us do that well in a way that quite frankly I haven't seen us do in this area and it's going to be critical. So, we're going to say a lot more about that, but I want to let you know that that is a clear focus and we already have we don't need we're already uh have a shared contract that every town helped us pay for with uh the crime and justice policy lab at UPEN that is working with us on those type of management recommendations that we're going to be able to bring back and talk about in more detail. Um remind me I'm sorry the other parts timeline timeline. I said but so between now and October we are working hard and we have been to not launch this work but to lay the foundations we need to be able to talk about it in more detail to be able to answer critical questions around budget to think about where this lives and how it's managed once we come back that will be something reported back to you because you need to if there's funding involved in other things that needs to come to you you need to approve those things right so there's going to be that touch point in October once we lay that foundation the goal is to begin doing it as quickly as we can but we don't want to skip these last critical steps of laying a strong foundation. Uh you asked the question about technical assistance. We are actively working on identifying those folks. It's possible especially if you were to endorse these strategies and those things come in at an area that is in the city manager's authorization that we could get under contract and begin that TA work even before October if we know that these are strategies you support. If we don't know that, then we're doing this work. Maybe we're coming back in October. We're waiting and then we're working on a contract. But we're actively looking at TA and training partners that line up with these strategies that have a documented track record of doing this well that are aligned with the way that we want to see it done locally. So that work is happening now. The capacity assessment is happening now. Identifying the real budgetary needs and and where we don't need new budget. We can just make good use of the existing resources we have and deploy them in alignment with the strategy. That's all critical work that we're doing now that will lay the foundation. But to be clear, that's not if you endorse this today, that doesn't mean that next week you can expect there to be focused deterrence. You might be able to expect with our partners that we're beginning to do some of the shooting review part, but some of this work is going to take still a couple of months to shore up to figure out. We have to build more detailed implementation plans. We're prepared and we're already doing the work to lay that foundation. Your endorsement of the direction gives us greater confidence that we should invest a lot of time in each of these strategies and not prioritize them differently. You asked what we're asking of council today. Uh here's to ask and you can decide what's possible or not. We are asking you to look at these recommendations and through a resolution basically endorse and give a green light that we want to advance these strategies. We're going to come back to you with more details on what this looks like and how much it costs and there will be votes on that, right? Depending on it, but the the ask is in as much as you support any of these resolutions, endorse that strategy. If you want to line one out and say no, not yet, that's great. But we have put together a resolution that basically summarizes the working group recommendations and is an opportunity for you to formally basically bless this direction and say pursue this earnestly. Come back with an action plan. We're ready to do it. You might have some final questions that will work out and that and those further conversations. But it is giving an endorsement of this direction, a very formal endorsement that also builds confidence that there's real momentum behind this. So that's what we're asking today. >> No, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think the devil's in the details here and again this is like absolutely critical work. Timing is the essence. So appreciate those responses and I look forward to yeah this this continuing this work hearing from you in October but also as as you can as you sort of can as you free up resources or can find ways to sort of find resources begin to build this found because I think the foundation is so critical. Um so thank you >> council member Baker. I have just a couple comments and a couple questions. Um, first of all, I want to join my colleagues in in thanking um the folks for all of the work that you've put into to this um obviously very very important work. Um, also want to acknowledge Council Member Burrus's comments about the importance of inclusion and trust building. Um, so my my first question is are you c can you share just as an example of what what are some of the opportunities for redirecting those existing resources? And I'm think kind of like the office of survivor care. Is that something you might consider folding into that category of redirecting existing resources? >> Yeah, let's take that because that's in my department and I know more about it. So I can say yes, that's a great example, Council Member Baker. So, as an example of what that would look like, um, Office of Survivor Care is considering, so they've been having some conversations with DHA. We know that some DHA properties are also places where we see high concentrations of gun violence in focusing some of the Office of Survivors Care work in those communities. And specifically also developing a particular aspect of programming that could be focused in the areas that we prioritize initially. They're talking about, for example, when a shooting occurs, the Office of Survivor Care would organize community partners and canvas in those neighborhoods that are are that we have lifted up as a high priority focus, recognizing that the trauma and harm that comes from gun violence may impact any number of folks living in that community, going doortodoor, offering resources there, making sure that people know that we are extending uh support and care, recognizing that um DHA has been very interested in that. I think that's just a small example of a program that exists that could be focused and aligned with this strategy once that strategy is endorsed. I think there are probably other things that could be considered. That's work that we're actively doing. Um I don't want to get out over my skis to suggest things before we have a chance. >> I appreciate I just wanted to to get an example there. Um we've talked a little bit about metrics um measurable outcomes. um how do we build in in place um that that accountability so that if we have a 10% reduction target and we're not seeing those we're not seeing that happen. We're not we're investing resources. We're not seeing the outcomes. Um things go wrong, we're not implementing it well. Um how do we make sure that um we have the safeguards in place and we intervene and change direction? >> Great question. I'm going to restate some things because I think they're still relevant. So, I think part of this is we need to have the right management team. We need to have staff at at a high enough level that are accountable to this entire thing that are managing this. I think that's that's one thing that's critical. The other thing is I've mentioned this process is designed for high accountability, right? We're going to have measurable outcomes. We've already named at a highest level what some measurable outcomes are. You're going to know if we're hitting those or not. We're also going to have a regular cadence of accountability that is not a six-month report to council. We're going to have one weekly meetings with key folks that are implementing this work. Those meetings are going to circulate up to the manager and then can be other elected officials. We're talking about a public advisory board where we'll be regularly reporting out the metrics and what's working. I think this thing is designed with the right management structure the council member Ris was talking about to be high on accountability, high on identifying and being honest about what's working and what's not. stopping the things that aren't working. Um, this process is very designed to do that. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, and we know that down the line we're going to be receiving budget requests around this. I think this is a very high priority. Uh, we have young people who are dying in the city for primarily two reasons. They're um being hit by bullets and they're being hit by cars. And we have a vision zero action plan. Now we have uh this plan uh we need to implement uh both of them and invest the resources that's necessary to to make them both successful. We are also in tough budget times um that are only going to get tougher. And so um if we are serious about really tackling the issues of the day and the things that we need to get done in the city, we have to talk about revenue. We have to be very intentional about revenue and thinking about it uh and working toward more revenue um without putting more burden on our residents. Uh and we can't talk about that without talking talking about the largest uh land owner in our city that doesn't pay property taxes. Um and we can't just approach them for this program or that program. we need we need assurances every single year that um that they can um support support the general fund uh in a democratic way and I think that's important. Um so appreciate uh once again the work that's that's gone into this and um look forward to more to come. >> Thank you so much. Um thank you all for your comments. Thanks to the public. Um I want to recenter us on this conversation. This is about us. It's not about Duke. It's not about anyone else. It's about us and our decisions that we make first, right? And this is a this is a public health crisis as well. Um so we need to be very intentional about how we partner with uh our hospital, our medical partners. We need to be very intentional about how we partner with the county. The schools need to be at the table on this. Um I I the only issue I take with this whole presentation is breaking it down into options of you know asking us to peacemail what part we want. It's all or nothing. The work has been done. These folks have put in the work. They spent three days but hundreds of people spent months of engaging. This work is verified. It has been inclusive. It has been very inclusive. There are folk there are folks that should have been at the table that I well let me put it this way. There are folks that I wanted at the table that were not able to be at the table. You know, I had my perspect I did not get my way on this, not all of it, but I'm happy with the with the turnout. You know, there are individuals that I've spoken to on a daily basis that do this work professionally. Um, you heard Mr. Macyver who full disclosure, I am one of his biggest supporters of the work he do. He does and I I wanted him at the table. um he was not at the table. He held up this manual. Um the uh the work that was done before by the county, the name of that manual is Michelle Young, a very close friend of mine and someone that I would often go to for this work. She wasn't at the table. She's not locally. So my point is what mattered is we were able to get this process started and there the table is but so big and not everyone is going to be able to be around it at the same time but the table is big enough for us to make sure that everyone gets a seat at some point in time and so I'm going to endorse this work fully. My office is going to endorse this work fully and once we get the recommend we have the recommendations once we start getting the strategies hashed out and we start getting to the money part then we'll know what strategic partnerships we need to build. So you're not going to find me tearing anyone down. You're going to find me trying to find trying to wait uh ways to find as many people as possible to the table. That's what leadership is. And it's going to be more than just one institution. I want NCCU at this table. I want Durham Tech at this table. They they do a really good job at training when it comes to workforce development. Maybe they can be the mechanism that does that. You know, if we do nothing, then people are going to continue to have to go to the hospital. So, when it comes to the medical side of this, Duke Health, I appreciate having a hospital that's like, look, we want to be a part, but they could just say, nope, let them keep coming. We're going to keep making the money. So it re it it does [clears throat] require everyone everyone to be at the table doing this. The police department, the sheriff. We need to go back and look at technologies whether we like them or not. Whatever technologies that can help us with this work. But one thing I would never do is I would never put my political ideology over the lives and the quality of life of individuals that are dealing with this crap on a daily basis. And so I looked in the eye. I'm I'm looking in the eyes of the folks who did this work and I'm talking to the people who have engaged over months and months and months and I want to say thank you. And for the folks that have reached out to me and said, "Mayor, I couldn't get in or I wasn't able to be a part. I I hope that we still will be able to work together." The folks that uh like uh Kevin and some other Willie, all those guys that that I know have real life hands-on experience with this that I've asked to come and just advise me personally. I hope that we can we can expand that table as well. That's what it's going to take. But I can tell you one thing, we have prioritized just about every damn thing else. Finally, we are at this point where we can prioritize people's lives. We have done the studies. We've done the commissions. We've done all those things. There's no excuse now. The work has been done. And it wasn't an idea from up here. It was the work that was done out there. So I I nothing's perfect. I was one of the ones that was coming in like, "Wait a minute. Where are the kids? Where where where's the and and and I I stood down. I said, "Okay, I'm going to give it a chance. I'm going let you do what you got to do." Follow the data. But one of the recommendations came out that we should do a youth summit. And I'm glad to say that some of that work has already started. Some of that work has already started. I hope that there can be more collaboration in that work, but it's already started. So, um I endorse it. I look forward to uh making this uh my biggest budget request next year. Colleagues, thank you all so much. Um do you all have what you need, Ryan? I suppose this is going to come back for council for a vote on the next Monday around the, you know, endorsing. Um, so if you all have what you need, I have what I need. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> All right, colleagues, I I would say you need a break, but we had a break on the fire alarm. Do we need to How about this? I want to keep the agenda going. Uh, can we reduce it to five minutes rather than 10? All right, let's take a five minute breaking and we get back to it. >> Sorry. All right, let's uh bring it back, please. Ryan, could you just reach out and if he's still in the building? Uh before we move to the next uh before we move to the pulled pulled items, um there was just a little confusion on uh signups and excuse me, there were uh two individuals that I I that I looked over that I didn't see. So I'm going to call them up to provide uh commentary to this uh to to the item we just finished presentation. So Tiffany Swoop and we'll check in on the other We're checking on the other person. >> Yeah, Steve. >> Welcome. You have two minutes. Three minutes. >> I Good afternoon, everyone. I wrote notes and that's something I typically don't do, but I don't want to miss a beat today. Um, greetings to you, mayor, uh, council. Um, thank you, uh, very much uh, for keeping this issue a priority. First, I want to say I support this evidence-driven approach to violence reduction and the city's commitment to creating a trauma informed, evidenceinformed, healing centered response uh to the trauma that's impacting our communities. I especially appreciate the recognition that reducing violence requires more than enforcement. It requires uh collaboration through partnerships, services, support, healing, and community engagement. Um thank you again, Mayor um Williams, for keeping this a high priority. And I also just want to mention people don't know how uh Councilwoman Burrus shows up at almost every homicide site um and is there supporting the family off to the side. That needs to be acknowledged. Uh she's carrying a heavy load uh that I think we all should share in this city. Um I want to speak specifically about recommendation number five, the youth summit. Um, I absolutely agree that the voices and experiences of Durham's youth uh must be included in our violence reduction strategy. However, I want to make sure that we recognize that this work has already begun. And uh, Grac, Inc. has already hosted a youthled summit focused on gun violence and the issues our young people are experiencing in their communities. We also have participated in cityf funded research to better understand the community. That work was pushed forward by councilwoman uh, Dr. Hosley Hyman. Um that project was a collaboration between the office on youth under Laura Khalil's guidance. Um partnered with youth mentoring collaboration myself and Larry Thomas of TMLA who was here earlier. We were a part of that team for a year and a half. We spoke with partners in the community. We spoke with youth in the community. We spoke with providers in the community. Where is that report? Um also um Grace Inc. has um done further research with UNCC Chapel Hill Gillan's uh Global School of Public Health. This is definitely a public health crisis that we're living through. Um in addition to our work being supported by North Carolina um Central Psychology Department under the leadership of the psychology chair, Dr. uh Livingston uh who is a clinical community psychologist who um has actually done work similar to this in Michigan over 25 years which is the ADP version of our youth centered strategic um plan that I presented to the uh council and mayor last year. Um rather than convening another summit, I'm asking that our young people uh to tell us and asking our young people to tell us again what they need. I would like to see us build upon the information and the youth voice we already have, identify any remaining gaps and move forward towards implementation. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. Uh we'll now go to our pulled items. Item number four. All right. Item item item [clears throat] item number four was pulled by uh Mayor Williams. Mayor Williams, will you please give us your comments? Oh, yeah. Talking to myself there for a moment. Uh, the first person I have uh for this item is uh Elise Balon or Balon. Can you hear me? >> Oh, you Oh. Okay. Well, just come on up. I I had you sign up as virtual. No worries. We're going to figure this out. >> Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Madame Mayor, Prom, City Council members, staff, and Durham community members. My name is Elise Balon. I'm the chair of the Durham Workers Rights Commission, and I'm here to voice the commission's wholehearted support for the resolution recognizing ASIA and WSU tenant unions. We believe that tenant sorry we believe that unions are the way forward to advance the rights power and dignity of the working class and we believe that tenants unions are a vital part of building and exercising our power as workers as housing security directly affects a worker's ability to negotiate live and thrive safely when residents and workers are forced to live in unsafe conditions as the ASIA and WSU communities have been the imbalance of power against the working class is further exacerbated Just as the elite ruling class understands that exhaustion and the at least you have a job messaging are profoundly effective to have us accept work that keeps survival and thriving just out of reach. Going home to an unsafe building with increasingly unattainable affordability reinforces the messaging to accept crumbs because the threat of losing even that is everpresent. Parasitic landlords, like exploitative employers, benefit from the imbalance of power that unions seek to disrupt. This is Durham's opportunity to reject that residents should just be grateful to have the bare minimum roof above their heads. This is the council's opportunity to reject the cycle of abuses of power that beget further abuses of power. We believe that recognition of tenants unions and supporting their formation and maintenance in every capacity the city has is essential to building the democratic and safe city that Durham strives to be. Thank you. >> Thank you for your comments. Next person I have Oh, you signed up twice and okay, I see what you did here. All right. the other folks are uh resource. Uh so [clears throat] basically I I pulled this item because I really wanted to uh just uh this item was re um recommended to the council by council member Baker and I appreciate the um the the I appreciate you bringing this to the council. I uh wanted to say that I also support um the ability for residents, tenants, or anyone to be able to unionize, to be able to come together. Um I also wanted to recognize that that the folks that are named in the resolution, the the housing units have their concerns, and I have personally listened to them, the residents, and their concerns. the developer named in the resolution. I have personally sat down and met with the developer and I have bought those two conversations together as well. And what I wanted to really focus on were the residents in their request. And I just wanted to state publicly that um for whatever reasons the residents wanted to meet with the developer and they said they couldn't. And the developer said they wanted to meet with the residents and they said they couldn't. And I wanted to rectify that. And now both have agreed to meet with one another. Uh and the city's community engagement uh department has availed themselves to be a part of uh mediating that conversation. And I feel like now is really truly centered on the residents and them getting what they want. Uh the ability for folks to unionize as tenants or in whatever capacity, I do support. So in regards to the resolution, I I support that idea. Um, but I do not want to utilize this body as a way to go after any particular organization or any particular people or residents because it becomes less about the actual people. Uh, it becomes less about the actual people in general and more about that specific location. So, I just wanted to state publicly I I support the idea and wouldn't be against that, but I do want to modify I would recommend modifying the resolution to be about the idea of residents being able to do as such rather than just this specific one. And I'm not speaking that for my own uh opinion. I'm actually speaking that after having verified conversations with both parties there. Yeah. Go ahead. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, yeah, I think that, you know, over the years we've had several, and I'm just going to say it. I mean, there are a lot of bad actors and there are a lot of bad landlords. Um, I think we have a eviction diversion attorney. Uh, I've spent a significant time amount of time in eviction court. [laughter] There's some pretty crappy landlords out there in the city of Durham. Um, I would support a resolution that is broad, uh, not targeting a an affordable housing provider that is a critical partner of the city of Durham that was actually coaxed into coming into the city of Durham and that many people are actually watching um, to see what we do because other affordable housing providers. Um, my mom, just full disclosure, not in Durham, but in the city of Tucson, lives in subsidized housing, senior housing. Um, that is, uh, partly funded with with their housing authority and another entity. Um, and it's probably the most protected housing she's ever had since she's been a renter. We know what her rent's going to be because we know what her social security payments are going to be. We know they can't kick her out just for any BS reason. We know they can't jack up her rent. It has provided a very very stabilizing um housing for my mother psychologically and for her family. She had been in substandard housing in the city of Tucson with the landlord who never fixed anything and continuously increased her rent even though her social security payments weren't going up. That is what we know many of our seniors face until they are able to qualify and to get into this kind of housing. I understand there's been some very detailed emails that have come through from the landlord about the the fixes that they've done. We've had similar issues at some of our other properties. Sometimes management companies change, sometimes residents change and they're not following the rules, right? We've heard that in other places where people propping open doors and then folks who um shouldn't be in the building or in the building and you have to do some re-education with residents around safety. And so I think we should support a resolution that is broad around tenant union organizing broadly in the city of Durham and strip out any language that identifies any affordable housing provider or affordable housing um funer. I think we are shooting ourselves in the foot otherwise. Um so that's where I am as an individual council member. Uh I think that uh and this is just to speak to the activists and organizers. Look, I've been on this council for a long time. Every single council I've ever sat on has been super responsive to these kinds of things. But I'm also just getting tired of the activist class coming to Durham because they can think they can get a thing to get some clickbait to push a campaign in another community. We know where the problem and who lot has a lot of the issues in this state and that is the general assembly. And we know that is a harder fight. It's going to take more discipline and it's going to like take a lot more time than showing up to a council meeting in the city of Durham. And so I am getting increasingly frustrated with these tactics. Um we are responsive to residents. We always have been. Uh but I need our folks to really start to to challenge power where the power really is. and in the state of North Carolina and where so much preeemption lies with the general assembly. That is where I really need folks to turn their energy towards. Happy to continue having conversations. I was supposed to meet with the tenants this morning. A few of them were sick. I will be happy to meet with them in the future. Everyone deserves dignified housing. Um but there are a lot of folks who do not send us detailed emails figuring out every single thing that they could improve with their property and it's substandard housing. and that's where I feel like we need to put our attention. Thank you. >> Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the comments from my colleagues. Um I'm feeling the similar way. I'm happy to do a resolution that supports um the right of of tenants to join unions. That's pretty clear. I don't think anyone who's been watching this council for the last 10 years should have any question about this council or previous council's support for folks organizing. That's pretty clear. We passed like three resolutions in the recent past about organizing. Um, I'm happy to take some language or strip language out that refers to particular parties because I think that would be um not our role. I'm worried that we are waiting into sort of uh essentially questions about strategy between two parties in a negotiation. That's not our role here. Um the you know to me um to hear that landlords in this case identified as parasitic landlords is a joke. Okay, we have landlords in this community that are that we want to improve the what they're doing. They're not great landlords. We have other partners who do affordable housing that are we're so lucky to have here and that includes self-help and DHSC. To be honest, when we developed Willard Street, as I recall, self-help actually encouraged DHS to come to Durham to do this work with us. So, we need to identify who are the bad actors and who are the mission line partners that may have challenges and stuff and they got to manage their properties and that's clear. But for us to wait into the middle of a dispute between two parties makes no sense and that's not the tool that a resolution should be. A resolution is a policy document. I'm happy to pass a resolution clarifying our clear support for tenants joining a union but not waiting into the middle of a dispute between two parties. It makes no sense. though I don't also I'm really concerned about wasting more time on these kind of resolutions and not spending time on other important things on our agenda like the Durham Freeway an item coming up like the legislative update because the legislature is the biggest throne on our side right we've got a closed session coming up so I'd appreciate this council focusing on the work that we have before us and not getting dragged into sort of small items like this that I think are really not worthwhile so happy to support a resolution that generally supports organizing but let's not wait in the middle of a dispute between two parties. Thank you. Thank you. And before I move to anyone else, I do want to state that I spoke to the landlord as well as the residents. And when I'm saying remove individual parties from the resolution, I mean that on both sides. Uh yeah, cuz because the residents, they have very valid concerns and we took those valid concerns to DHIC. They had support through the tennis union. They had support through their mayor, through elected officials. Uh, and those concerns are being addressed and not only have they been committed to be addressed, they're actually going to be having a sitdown. So, what I what I'm really trying to do is depoliticize residents and their lived experience and also like not pretend that our very few supportive affordable housing developers are painted in the same bad light as slum lords. All right. Anyone else? >> Go ahead. So, are folks suggesting sending me uh requested language modification if I can respond to that? Typically, yes, that's what we do at the work session. We talk about our concerns and we offer edits back and then the author can accept them or not and then um that that's what moves forward. But yes, that would be the the the opportunity for your colleagues to um send back um track edit changes. >> Okay. >> I will um certainly accept um requested edits from colleagues uh sooner rather than later, but um over the next week and a half. Absolutely. Um C, [clears throat] do you want to go and then go ahead? >> Yeah. So, um I I don't think that uh residents organizing um in these buildings that um Ashton Seniors in Action that Willard Street United I don't think that's that's a waste of time. I don't think resolutions like this are are a waste of time. Um and let me explain why. um tenant unions and unions in general have such low density in the state of North Carolina and in the city of Durham and very little legal structures around tenant unions in particular um that make it very difficult um to to organize. And so when there are these rare and unique and precedent setting opportunities, we need to highlight them in order to lift up tenant organizing in general. It's not like building after building after building in Durham, North Carolina is unionizing. Um, I agree. We shouldn't be have to spend tons and tons of time discussing something like this. I think it should move through pretty quickly and easily without um much much challenge. I believe that um we are standing on bedrock progressive principles and human rights principles of the right to organize. Um this uh this is not an amendment to any contract. It's a statement of position. This is not taking sides and it's an expression of basic support that ordinary people should be able to sit at the table that there are sides not taking sides that acknowledging that there are sides. Um while this is in some ways precedent setting um something like this is not unprecedented. We've made statements like this before um and and in fact not not that long ago we uh we've passed things like this. Um this is not an amendment to any contracts. It's a statement of of position as I mentioned. Um this is not a small group of disgruntled disgruntled residents. Um this is a broad and wide sweeping uh or organization and organizing uh work that has been happening. Um is there unanimous support? No. Is there unimous support up here for a lot of the things that we do? No. But we should still um lift ourselves up and and and acknowledge that that we need to exist and be here and do the work. Um this is not about shaming DHIC. Um not at all actually. Um nothing in here shames DHIC. Um, the residents love their building. They love where they live. They celebrate it. Um, so this is not at all about shaming DHIC. Uh, if if I could if I could pick uh a different place uh with a predatory landlord. Um, I I would, but the but the tenants organized. They want to do this. They want to be here. They are here. Um, they're sitting here. I would actually when I finish I would like to hear from a couple of you um if you do wish to speak um and why this situation again because the residents organize and because they are here uh workers should be able to unionize tenants should be able to unionize. I hear my colleagues say, you know, it should be general, but again, this is a unique potentially precedent setting opportunity. And my hope is that this could be a celebration um and in fact set a model, not not the resolution itself, but that the relationship between the tenants and DHIC could set a model. And and I and I say that um because I want to encourage um successful and good faith conversations between the tenants and DHIC. I think it's a really big opportunity and could potentially serve as a model for other buildings, whether it's buildings receiving public funding or not. Um I think it's a a really big opportunity. I don't um think this is a waste of time. I think it's important. Again, I'm happy to entertain language modifications. Um, and we'll gladly accept those between between now and and Monday night. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to all of my colleagues. I first want to give a thank you to the Ashton Seniors in Action for coming forward and for uh speaking with me and many of my of my colleagues. Uh I want to start by honoring and acknowledging um you know the situation that you have been facing. Um the real issues that you and the residents in Willard Street have faced uh both uh with challenges with property management uh and also uh some of the harms and issues you faced with fellow residents um that you've tried to get um response and satisfaction on. and it sounds like it's been some really difficult uh situations and so I appreciate bringing those forward uh and definitely I think that's uh really critical and it's important we're talking about this. Um I also support uh and commend uh your work around democratic organizing to support yourselves uh and your fellow residents. So thank you for that. Um I I I also want to acknowledge the importance of missionled uh housing developers and financers like DHIC and self-help and others. uh you're important to Durham and we do need the work you're doing here. Um I'm glad to hear that a lot of the issues have been addressed. Um I do know that more work is to be done. Um and so I'm glad that there are some conversations happening that their their their groups are talking to each other. Um I've also heard in talking with with folks that there's some clear misunderstandings too, which is a benefit of of of having those conversations uh issues around the role of month-to-month leases uh about no fault evictions. And so I think it's important to get real clarity uh on on those for everybody's benefit um to help uh everyone to be able to move forward. Um I uh I appreciate the original resolution that brought forward um uh and also the the call to have a more general resolution uh which I also uh support that highlights the importance of of unions and tenant organizing uh and I think not only elevates the work of the case in front of us uh but also does provide that opportunity to highlight you know the importance of of organizing uh at large in this uh sort of circumstance. Uh and actually at the end of my remarks uh it's actually not that complicated. I can actually suggest language here that I think would address it. I'm getting a no from the mayor prom, so I will maybe not do that. Okay. Yeah, I just Okay, we can do it after, but I think it actually will be a pretty uh pretty quick um amendment process. Um you know, I I I appreciate that folks um you know, come to us uh and and I know that you know, I know personally as a council member and I know my fellow colleagues, we care deeply and want to be here and and be of support. Um I do think that you know broad statements of principle have a role. Um I also do want to be careful uh as a council of of of setting false expectations about what's possible by coming to the council. Um and I want to be you know careful about you know and I think the general resolution also helps that to to not necessarily see us as kind of that a mediating force or something like that when there's a private uh dispute between folks. Um but I understand the unique you know nature of this situation and why having the broader resolution makes sense. Um I think it's important uh now and in the future to look for those real um you know mechanisms of accountability um that the city can influence and just be real clear about what we can do uh and and what we can't do um but still on this issue as other issues that we do as council members and as a whole council uh to do what we can to help. Um, I think it'd be worth having a conversation in the future with our Department of Housing and Neighborhood Services. Um, I, you know, some of this the the challenges that I see in in this situation seem to be at times systemic. Um, you know, when it comes to uh, you know, kind of similarly structured and funded uh, uh, housing developments. And as we're looking to push forward another litech projects, um I'd like to explore if there are ways that we can proactively try and help avoid um some of the challenges that have come up. Maybe the answer is um there's not much we can do to influence, but I'm at least interested in having that conversation uh to see about what are the things that we can concretely do uh as a council to be of assistance in these sorts of circumstances. So, uh, thank you to all of my colleagues, uh, and I I support the the recommendation to have the the general resolution in support of the work that y'all have been doing, uh, and and hopefully others will do in Durham around organizing. >> Thank you, Council Member Cook. >> Thank you. Um, I have also sat down with everyone. Um, and these are partners. And I think that something that's important is that this resolution actually is written in such a way that makes the light of it sound that um, self-help and D and DHIC have actually been working with the tenants. And I don't think there's anything in the language that says otherwise. So I actually asked them yesterday sort of what in the written language felt like an attack and a lot of the conversation was around what the context is moving into this resolution. Uh so I just want to talk a little bit about that um because I do think that the context is important and I also think that the context can be shifted and changed. There's two sides to this story. Um and I what I hear from these folks is that they're actually relatively aligned. um around our want for more tenant organizing and for diverse groups and opinions at the table. Um I think that we all understand that folks have often by the time they get to places had bad experiences with housing. Um it is now if you are a low-income renter, you are more likely to have unsafe housing than at any time previously in the history of our country. Um, and so I think that everyone understands the risk and they also understand that um that it's important to have a value statement that aligns with Durham's values of organizing and and collective bargaining. Um, I want this to be a celebration of the union that has the unions that have been formed. And I think what Council Member Baker said is really important. We don't see a lot of these unions formed. And I do think that having them named is really important for that reason. Um, we actually did a very similar resolution and we named the business not that long ago. Um, and it wasn't related to us at all, right? Um, but this business is related to us. We partner with this business. And so to me, it's an indication of who we want to partner with and what we want these partnerships to look like. And so I think that the naming feels important. Of course, I'm only one person, so I'm happy to read um any suggestions and and see where it goes from there. Um but I do think that naming is important. This isn't something that we can we're not getting in the middle of anyone's interactions. This is a resolution. We're not going to impact leases. We're not going to impact disputes that are ongoing. We can't get in a legal setting with this. This is just a value statement. That's all it is. Um, and so I guess the question to me is like, do we want to support tenant unions and lift them up? Do we want to have collective bargaining? Do we want to say that we are folks who are looking in the future when we're developing these more as uh council member Rristston I mean sorry Rrista mentioned earlier in his comments and council member Copak has just stated when we're looking towards these future developments that have affordable housing um and specifically on some city-owned land. Uh what are we indicating that we want from our partners? And I think it's that we're looking for partners who are equally engaged with collective bargaining and the values of the city. So, do we want to be protenant or do we not? Do we want to send that signal out or do we not? I do. Um, and that to me feels like an easy vote. I think that this um I think this is really straightforward honestly. And I um was hoping actually to hear from some of the folks today after a conversation that we had yesterday about it um because I think that DHIC and self-help should also be excited about this too. What a great message to say that we are we do low-income housing and also we support collective bargaining and we're excited to see that folks are organizing and we are excited to come to the table and listen and for then tenants to be able to say, "Oh, I want to move into these places. They're great buildings. They're right downtown." And also, I know that I'm going to have a voice and be listened to. I think it's super important if we really want to be uh a council that is actually protenant rights. Um, we can say it all we want to, but we also have to demonstrate it as well. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Thank you. Um, this is actually for staff more than anything and partly because it's been coming up as we are moving residents into newer DHA supported or GAP financed by the city. some real strong education because I think that part of what's happening here. People have entered into these agreements with really bad housing experiences, right? And so there is a lot of fear about my rent's just going to go up. They don't actually have to think fix a thing. And that's not how these properties work because they actually have a lot more rights than your average renter in North Carolina. And so if we could do some real robust education with folks as they move in. I think one of the questions around the leases that people didn't think that they they had a choice if they if they wanted to go monthtomonth or if they wanted a year-long that it wasn't prescriptive that there was a lot of flexibility with that. And so that um we can get uh to a space where folks aren't adversarial necessarily even if they've come from having to be adversarial. Uh and rightfully so. Right. I think many of us remember, I mean, we've all had a bad landlord, right? We've all had landlords who didn't respond, didn't fix things, were predatory. Uh, and that's the experience that folks are walking into, especially if you're a senior, right? Um, you've had probably a lot of bad landlords at that point. Um, so and I do think that that is incumbent on on city staff maybe working with engagement like when we have residents moving newly into these buildings. What are your protections under federal law? If the tenant union wants to really work on that, that education campaign is going to go a long way, I think, to help um mitigate some of the fear that I understand why people feel that way and I would too in that scenario. But I think we need to work towards calming and not towards uh again just agitating just because and we're in a moment where everyone is agitated and we have to do the work in this community to tone it down because we have done this before. Durham is not New York. Durham is not Denver. Durham is not Seattle. We've got 15 years of really intense progressive work here. And so what are the lessons that we've learned and how do we do the work in a way that is affirming of folks and not adversarial? Uh especially when they're new folks who have come here and maybe lived here for five years and they're taking their own fights from their own communities and it's just not how we do it here. So um that's the other thing that I really would like for staff and others to work on. [clears throat] >> Thank you. Um so I think I think part of this why I gave some interest to this is one um it it really is about managing expectations and and partly how I'm here is I have had not and not these not the residents for this particular site uh but I've had residents in the past tell me if you pass this resolution then XYZ will happen and I don't know who tells folks that if we pass a resolution then it's going like it's going to solve every problem. So part of it is managing expectations. Like everybody on this council supports um tenants being able to unionize. I mean I if you can unionize and you should be able to do it. God for God's sake with the state that we live in where unionizing is attacked all the time. I think we're there. So if anyone is insinuating that there are some that support unionism and some that don't, you're absolutely wrong. anyone that has that perception. Sorry to say that is the wrong perception. What I don't personally want to get in into is all right. So today we have a resolution that names uh ASIA and Wilbert Street and then tomorrow is what property and then the property after that. I'd rather just have as you all say position statement for uh residents throughout the city. Period. Now, I'm also while we're talking about this, I'm not going to pretend that there hasn't been some politics in this for the individuals that said the mayor said he's a hard no on this resolution when you haven't even talked to me and taking that to residents or when the landlord say, "We want to talk to the residents, but we can't talk to them unless we do XYZ." or when the when the the uh or the residents are saying the landlord won't talk to us and it's it's mediation that's going on that's just totally inaccurate and then when you talk to both sides and you bring in those you bring both sides together and realize that wait a minute this sounds familiar back when Birwood Avenue apartments were given 30 days to vacate after being there 40 or 50 years I was on council at the time and I go there to help although we had no jurisdiction and it's we can't talk to you but there was a white board coming up with demands to bring the city council my background is with the education union and one thing I learned about it is we do have to function in good faith and I think that the union folks here Bull City Tennis United North Carolina Tennis Union are providing a level of support that many of our residents have never even received before so I support that work. But I don't want to be I I don't want to project false expectations that we're going to start doing a resolution for every property in the city when we can do a blanket pro blanket position statement. And so I don't think that anyone this is a celebration. I don't think anyone is disagreeing, but I didn't run for mayor to spend all of my time running writing resolutions when we can actually put policies forth to actually do something about it. So whether we're leaning in on resolutions, whether I'm leaning in on proclamations, or we're actually going to lean in together and actually do policy work. And part of that work is actually working directly with people. And so if we have residents that want to unionize and they have demands, we can do all the fanfare you want, but if we can actually get it done immediately because we are using our platforms to bring people together and they get their demands met, that is the celebration. But I think some folks want to make it about them rather than the actual residents. And that's when it gets a little frustrating. So, I'll say to anyone out there, please don't use the mayor's name if you haven't spoken to me to intimidate residents or anyone else. But I think that we're at a point, at least I hope, where the the sentiments of this resolution will get passed. Uh I I'm just not interested in doing a resolution for every single property when we could do a blanket statement that talks to every that talks to that brings this point to everyone and talks to the actual spirit of it. Um, I know uh, Council Member Copek, we don't have time to to like do the word smithing now. Uh, Council Member Baker, I will ask because you're the one that bought this to us. I'll ask that, you know, once we send you modified language, my I'm fine with the language as it's written. I just don't want to start getting into specific uh, tenants or specific landlords. Uh, I'll ask that you read that out at the next meeting and then we take a vote on it at that point in time. Um, but that that's I for some reason on this council sometimes we tend to act like some are for and some are against, but I think we actually all for the same damn thing. Same thing going on. >> Pardon my language. >> Mr. Mayor, are you saying just put on GBA? >> Uh, well, I think we have to because there's going to be some words missing. >> Okay. >> All right. Okay. >> Thank you folks for coming. Thank you all. >> That was it. Yeah. The next one was item number six. Third loan modification agreement for Rockwood Cottages with >> council members Baker Copek and Rrist having all pulled it. >> Oh, the council pulled number six. All right. Uh Baker, go ahead. >> Thank you. Uh the only question that I have for this uh is um and I I support this wholeheartedly um is um for what period of time moving forward we're at the end of the 30 years. For what period of time moving forward will there be affordability? >> Sure. So uh good afternoon. Richard Valzanos, senior project manager with housing and neighborhood services. So there's an extended period of affordability until April of 2030. And so that was kind of the framework we worked around when we were in >> Was that 2030? >> Yes, 2030. So that was kind of the framework that we worked around when we were having that discussion with Woodland Associates. So the goal there was try to come up, you know, could we modify the loan agreement and to make sure we didn't impact the existing residents at the at the uh at the site. >> And then in in 2030, >> there's probably going to be some more conversation, right? And it probably would be to the extent of can we get an extended period of affordability, but my guess there'll be a funding request associated with that conversation. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Go ahead. Go back. I don't know who was next. >> I mean, I I have a similar question. So, I appreciate the spirit of this. I appreciate that we're trying to maintain affordability in this property. Um, but it I do have and I it does feel like we're forgiving 40% of the loan in return for four more years of affordability. Right. >> So I So and I don't know if that's a high cost or a low cost. I guess my question would be um is there like what's the is there a little more analysis here? Like so what is the what does that look like in terms of the cost per unit, you know? So, like just to break this down a little bit, >> right, >> to get a sense of like what is this a, you know, we is this a no-brainer or is this is this a lot of money for four years of affordability? >> Well, I think it's a no-brainer because I think the overall goal is to keep the residents in place. I mean, in speaking with Mr. Pew, who's the principal at at Woodland, I mean, we've got two residents in there who are over 90 years old. We got six who are over 80 years old. So, I think, you know, the spirit of it is to try to keep our residents in place and um prevent Mr. Pew from going out to the market and having to get a conventional loan to repay the city at $691,000. So, it's, you know, we're looking at 280 divided by the 20 units. Can't do that math in the top of my head, but, you know, over an extended period of time, I think that's that's that's a cost that we should be able to absorb. And um again, it it it doesn't replace, you know, it cost us x amount of dollars to replace a new unit. So, we're continuing to, you know, keep these 20 units in the u in the in the inventory for affordable housing. >> So, so the the amount to be forgiven is about $280,000. >> Yes. Over a four-year period. Correct. >> So, divide by 20. So, it's like 14,000 per unit over the over the four years. >> Four years. Yes, sir. That seems like that seems like uh given we were just having a conversation the other day with director Venus about the the the delta needed to to like for an to bring a market unit to affordability which at that last presentation was around like $50,000 or I think in 505 was like so this seems this seems affordable. I guess I guess then my further question would be so if it's only four years down the road like and it seems like the the owner may have the same four years from now he's going to have the same concerns, right? He's got a loan he's got to either refinance or do something, right? >> What are we doing between now and then? >> Well, I think we have conversations on, you know, what do we need to do beyond that four-year period of affordability? You know, what's it going to take for Mr. Mr. Pew, James Pew, who is here with what's it going to take for Mr. pew to be able to keep the the units affordable for an extended period of time, right? Because at year 30 typically these investors are going to recapitalize, reinvest in their projects and Mr. Pew most likely is going to come back to the city with a request for that. You know, I think that gives us four years to have discussions on that request and what that amount of that request would be >> and we we would do some more in-depth analysis as you suggested. >> Yeah. Thank you. Just may, you know, this is ironic. We're having this conversation after the last conversation that one of the partners in this city that has actually bought rental [snorts] properties and kept them affordable long term is self-help. They've done the same thing. Yeah. >> And yet we're going to consider a resolution calling them some kind of a what was the word? Parasitic landlord. >> So like >> no, one of the one of the speakers here said that exactly those exact words. Right. So let let's be clear like this is a model. This is one model partner. just on the other in the previous previous item >> suggest yeah right suggesting they're somehow not a good actor so like crazy stuff but yeah I get it we need to work with this with the with the owner and figure out something because that four years will have we'll be soon so but for at this price for another four years I think it makes sense thank you >> yeah thank you Mr. Mayor, uh, most of my questions have either been answered by my colleagues or by staff uh, in advance. Um, I just want to just highlight a bit more this question of of maintaining affordability is such a critical part of our strategy and I just, you know, appreciate the work the city is doing, you know, on this project that we're directly connected to. Um what was what's sort of the status of the city uh kind of tracking projects that are coming to maturity sort of aware um and have the opportunity to act like we have in Carver Creek and other projects and and are we in upcoming projects sort of establishing like a right of first refusal or other uh ways to help give ourselves you know the opportunity to do as much as possible like y'all are here to maintain affordability for a lot less less than new units. >> Okay. Do you want >> Sure. >> Good afternoon. Sarah Vinius, uh housing and neighborhood services director. Um so that is uh a part of our strategy is to track both Noah properties as well existing tax credit expirations. Um and we are can support those projects as they near the end of that affordability by having proactive conversations with owners. Um Durham has a lot of LITC properties that have expired that were missed opportunities. So that's something that we want to do better going forward um and will be an increasing part of our strategy because it is more cost-effective to preserve existing um affordable housing than it is to build new housing. So that is something we're actively tracking and monitoring will be a part of our new housing plan. Um, and the other exciting thing on the horizon is that we're getting ready to relaunch our affordable housing loan fund, which will be a resource available um to developers to extend the affordability period um for existing Noah or for existing LITC properties or to acquire Noah properties and preserve them longer term as affordable housing through affordability restrictions. So, um we are working with self-help um and Duke University on that and are planning to launch the fund um this fall. So, that will be a resource available. And as you all know, we had a $10 million affordable housing loan fund that was uh very quickly deployed when it was launched some years ago. So, we're very excited to have that tool in place um to help preserve projects like this one going forward. That was my question and just when the housing plan comes forward and I'm so excited about that except for the price tag um [laughter] the also just um whatever you're mapping as far as what that cost will be for us because we're going to have to have that hard conversation. Um >> absolutely. >> Um yeah, we know lots of stuff is um losing their stuff after 30 years or whatnot. All right. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm sorry, Baker. >> No, I just Thank you so much. I don't have any more questions for you. I just wanted to briefly correct the record. There's nothing in the prior item that uh calls DHIC parasitic. >> No, it was a speaker. >> I know. I just wanted >> It wasn't just a speaker. That's the person on a cityointed board and council member Baker is the appointee there from council. So, it's not just a random resident. I'm sorry. Like, we do actually have to do like >> Right. But but I want to correct the record. It is not in the resolution language. I >> I understand that. I'm just also >> correcting the record >> relations matter. >> All right, guys. Let's >> Sorry, Director Vignius. I'm sorry. Uh I'm a little uh slow in jumping back in here, but um on the affordable housing loan fund, I'm just curious when we'll get an update on that, you know, sort of the the size of it, uh how much contributions we brought in. Um, uh, yeah. Do you know when that's coming back to us? >> Um, we can work on assembling an update for you all. >> Um, this has been something that we've been working on. I can work with the manager's office to prepare an update for you all. >> Well, and it doesn't have to be a formal update. Um, it's something I'm sure the Durham will disseminate and communicate that's happening. Absolutely. >> Uh, I'm just really interested. I know, you know, my colleagues are too. Uh, so yeah, even just informal would be great. >> Yes. Excellent. >> Thank you. And we also are working with our partners on a more public launch um coming forward in in the coming weeks. >> Thank you. >> All right. Item 10 is next and that is good afternoon mayor, mayor prom, members of the council. I'm Sean Egan. I'm the transportation director. I'm joined by uh two assistant directors for transportation, Evian Patterson and Bill Judge. >> So I I forgot I know Yeah. Yeah. I was going to pour this as well. I just want I mean this is a really big deal and I just wanted to celebrate I know folks have probably seen me on the news a lot lately talking about it. Wanted to celebrate the work that has gone into this. uh this vision plan is a culmination of the public's work and and I appreciate the consultants and their engagement. I appreciate your staff and you and your staff and I appreciate the fe the people who have actually contributed to it. Uh I have my bias on the options. Uh but I I think that this is an opportunity. The way I've looked at it is, you know, government, you know, the government made a decision back then and the government today is going to make a decision. And I hope that we could write the the past wrongs um of what what happened with our community being torn apart. And I do welcome people to just, you know, Google highway through black community and you will find it in several cities across the country. Um, and you can also look at some of the work that they've done, the repairative work, uh, that they that they've done, and I hope that we can do the same from Dallas, Texas to Richmond, Virginia. Um, but just wanted to open up with that, Council Member. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. No, that I'm glad you pulled this. This is a big big moment for Durham. You're right. This is a chance to write the wrongs that we all know about with the freeway, which is such a scar across our community, and it's been there, and it's will continue to be there, I guess. Um, so yeah, thank you for the work. Thank you for the engagement with the community. Great process. Um, I was glad to be a part of that early on as it was going on. I guess I have two questions. So one is um, one is so we got these three different recommendations and I know you or three different like sort of like scenarios, right? And you're not recommending one or the other. You're just presenting these as scenarios, right? Um, so I guess my question is number one like so what's next? And I know we talked during the um during our brief uh uh interlude there when we had the fire drill that like part of this is we need to have this kind of plan in place. So in the future if and when federal funds become available we'll be able to be at the front of the line saying we got a plan here. So so until then like what are the next steps for Durham? And then I guess my second question is given that these are these scenarios are sort of similar but also different in some ways right so at what point if and when there's federal funding or other funding available how do we then begin to because like free is a lot different than sort of a boulevard you know so so those are how do we begin to make decisions about what direction we really going because folks will have a lot of thoughts about that I'm sure because I think it's easy now just it's they're great scenarios but when like what does that process look like? >> So, thank you for the question. You know what we're doing now? Uh, we're finishing up this study, but we're certainly not finished with this work. So, we're continuing along a few different avenues. So, one of them is working with the North Carolina Department of Transportation and um so we've submitted a request to the department for uh them to provide some information about all of the bridges and other elevated structures in the corridor area. What's the condition of them? Uh what's the remaining useful life of them? because that's going to be a critical uh factor in the decision making about uh h how to choose among the three uh options that are that are presented in the report. What's the what is that condition? What's the what's the timeline associated with that? What are the costs associated with uh either replacing or removing all of those bridges and elevated structures? So, we're working with NC DO on that. they've agreed to uh to work with us uh to provide that information. We're also working with a group called the Reconnecting Communities Institute. Um so we appreciate uh our our partners at the Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization uh reached out to RCI and said that they thought that uh we would benefit from some of the technical assistance that RCI uh which is working with. As the mayor said, there are cities all over the country that have done this uh or that are working through this. So rci is working with our peers across the country and is available as a resource to us. So when we do get information like u the uh the condition information from NC do we have uh the technical we have some technical resources available to us uh to uh complete uh additional analysis uh and and help us evaluate uh which of the uh the three options that are presented uh would be the um would be worthy of additional u study uh or development into a design. So, we're continuing that. Um there's no uh there's not a federal funding source for this work for the major infrastructure improvements the way that there was when we started this study. U so uh we're going to we're going to continue doing some of this due diligence work in the background. Uh but the benefit that we have now is that we really do have a a community-led vision for the corridor. Uh you know, we we were able to put into practice the principles of the city's equitable community engagement blueprint. Uh the report acknowledges the harm and division caused by the construction of the freeway. uh and uh we worked to rebuild trust within the community, listening, learning, documenting community priorities for the future of the corridor. Uh and so um we uh have really built a strong foundation here. uh there's some technical work that we can continue to do so that uh when an opportunity does come around for partnership at the state and federal levels uh we've got the uh we've got that strong foundation of the community-led vision uh and then we'll have done uh additional technical work to uh help inform the decision- making around options. So I guess my my final question is like under under what scenario would it still remain a freeway the modernized freeway because in some ways like the cost for all three are their same order of magnitude right so under what scenario >> would it remain or at least be this modernized freeway I imagine that's the option that's probably the least attractive to folks around this das and the community I'm guessing so so >> so I think if the information comes back that All of the bridges and elevated structures are in excellent condition and then can last for another 50 or 100 years and don't need major rehabilitation or replacement, then that's um going to really swing some of the cost and benefit analysis. Um what we have seen though with other cities and other projects is that it was that it was that kind of life cycle analysis. Are we going to replace this infrastructure for the next 50 years, 100 years? It's been here for 50 years. It's reaching the end of its life. that decision point and the cost of rebuilding a series of bridges and and other structures in Rochester and New York, for example, the decision makers in Rochester, the uh local community, the state uh and their federal partners, they came together and said that that wasn't the um that that that cost to rebuild and and replicate exactly what was in place, that wasn't what their community wanted. So um those uh so that that information uh that we're working with NC do uh to develop will be critical to inform uh that that decision- making. >> Thanks. I look forward forward to more conversation about it. Yeah. But again, thanks big moment in Durham. >> Yep. Go ahead. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, this is huge. Thank you, Director Egan, for bringing this forward. Um, and thanks to past council staff and community for really advocating uh on this and and putting us in the position now to receive uh this report today. A lot of this really is long-term with a with a with important relay uh races that happen. Um, you know, I'm really glad that we're raising this. I mean, 147 remains uh as a very visible scar and and rupture from urban removal. Uh, and so I'm excited that we're talking about reconnection. I mean, for me, the Boulevard and CAP ideas are the ones with the greatest appeal. I'm not sure how we would get to a place where we would just do the modernization. If the orders of magnitude funding are the same, for me, it sort of seems like the difference between the first and the second. It's like, how much throughput of traffic do we still need regionally? And if we still feel like we need it, then we cap and reclaim as much as we can. And if we don't need it, we boulevard it. Um, but, you know, I may be maybe jumping ahead on it, but that's my initial analysis. Uh, I just love the options that, you know, allow us to reconnect places like Hayai and West End and College Heights and to have, you know, downtown urban space, potential for more affordable housing, more development to help us hopefully pay for it. Uh, I love the call outs of potential for community equity stakes in the redevelopment. Um, as well as the storytelling, which I think is going to be really crucial about what happened in the past and why this is happening. And that's all in there. So, uh, thank you all so much. you know, the price tag of $500 million, you know, definitely is a little daunting. And so I understand it's like being ready for the opportunity that this fits within NC DOT priorities or, you know, winds change, sees change, maybe that will happen at the federal level again where there will be funding for these sorts of projects. So I'm glad we'll be we'll be ready at that time. There's certainly an argument for for why we want to be prepared on this. Um, you know, one thing just of caution, and I think the report does does recognize this, is that while 147 and these sorts of freeways across the country did a lot of harm, um, taking them down or redeveloping them in new ways doesn't necessarily fix that harm and also has the potential to create new harms. Uh and so I appreciate uh how intentional the report was and I know we need to continue to be that way in our analysis of this to make sure that by trying to fix a thing that we don't create the new challenges because a lot has sort of grown up around it uh where you have people who are now established in their homes in the businesses and I just would want to be really careful if we move forward in the future that that is kept in mind and I do feel like it's reflected in the report. Uh the last thing I'll say is that you know uh great to see all the many stakeholders that were engaged in this was particularly glad to see NCCU as a crucial stakeholder uh and I see them as as a really key stakeholder going forward as well as many others that that were included. So uh thank you and I look forward to um the work that's to come the next recommendations and hopefully changes uh at the state and federal level that allow us to really lean in on this. It would be uh just incredible. >> Thank you. Uh and I I know I did receive some notes from community members and community organizations about their perspective on it. Um and and you know, there there are folks that are going to have, you know, their preferences. Um I I love the idea of a freeway cap just because it gets to connect the community. It creates real estate out of the air and uh you know it also gives us more um autonomy rather than just having to deal with the state. Um you know but also a modernized uh you know freeway. I mean I just as long as we're not doing what I think it's Highway 70 did to uh uh Johnston County. I forgot what highway it was, but all of their [clears throat] businesses died because they built a bypass uh that was faster and um so they can connect Interstate 40 to Smithfield and uh it it it just killed the entire industry out there. And I I don't want that to happen to our downtown. I want people to slowly you want to go around Durham, go around Durham. But if you want to go through Durham, stop and spend some money. So >> yeah, I'll associate myself with um the comments that my colleagues have made. Um this feels very pie in the sky and abstract. Obviously, it's a beautiful plan. Uh feels like a dream. Um but the reality is you never know what's going to happen and it's good to have some of these well thoughtout plans in place for something if things change down the road. Um there was I I worked in the city of El Paso >> when >> Yes. Uh, I like the optimism. I worked in the city of El Paso and um we had a plan to bring back the historic street car that went all over the city in downtown and even went over the bridge in Mexico and um felt the same way very pie in the sky and then one day Texas Department of Transportation funded it and it happened and um got constructed and so yeah, we don't know what's going to happen. So I'm glad that we have this. It's a really exciting plan and thank you for bringing to it. All right. >> If I may, just um just want to express gratitude to our partners at Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization and the North Carolina Department of Transportation for their support to provide funding for this study, collaboration, and support throughout uh and their continued partnership as we work to advance this gener generational project in the years ahead. >> Thank you, director. All right. Next item is number 12. >> That's me. pulled by council member Cook. >> Good afternoon. Lori Montgomery, senior engineering manager, Department of Water Management. >> Thank you for staying this whole time. I very much appreciate it. Happy to be here. >> I don't have like too many disin questions, but I am curious about this um the high density polyethene piping. Yes. Um, and so I just had a few questions around it. I guess the way that I've asked these questions is maybe doesn't make sense, so I'm going to go backwards. Um, what were what were we looking for in the alternate bid? Why did we choose to not go with that alternate bid? Also, I'm I'm considering why that second bidder put $1 in the alternate bid, which I think means that they maybe don't have capacity to do that. But I was just hoping you could talk about the alternate bid and why we at the end of the day chose to stay on this. I think it was all steel piping, >> correct? Yes. So, either piping material would be appropriate and workable for this application. Um, steel is really going to be a little bit easier to install because of the way you can sort of weld up shorter fittings when you have very tight tolerances in a small space, which is the situation we have here. Um but the price of steel was fluctuating dramatically during design and development of these construction documents. >> So we we didn't have high confidence in the price that was going to come in. So we felt like it was a wise thing to do to give ourselves a couple of options. And since HDPE could have been a workable solution, we included that as a potential option. Um, as to why the one bidder only chose $1, I can't answer that question. That was just part of the strategy of their bid. >> Um, so although English Construction had the lowest total extended bid, the lowest base bid was still pipeline utilities at 10.37 million. So that worked out well. um we didn't see any reason to pay any extra money for the HDPE since steel was slightly the preferred option and it came in as a reasonable good value for the project. >> Okay. And so now we feel like steel is not fluctuating or at least we're going to be able to lock a price in for this >> this this price is locked in. >> Okay. And so included because I know we are including the contingency fund but that is that's not going to [clears throat] account for any changes in material. It would not change in any it would not change anything um about the cost of the project should steel continue to fluctuate. This price is locked in for the steel product for this job. That 10% contingency would just be to cover >> unknown things that could come up during the during the course of the project. >> Okay. Yeah. I mean it's it's a massive project. It's a big expenditure. And so I guess when I when I see the multiple materials, I'm always thinking about like is it just that one is cheaper for now, but like maybe doesn't last as long or maybe is easier or harder to repair. But it sounds like steel is actually the preferred material and in terms of both installment and longevity or it's comparable at least. >> It's comparable. Um, it it it has a slight edge on HDPE, but had steel come in massively more expensive, we certainly could have made HDPE work for this project. >> Okay, thank you. Those are all my questions. >> Thanks. Thank you. >> Thank you. Item number 15 is a presentation. >> All right. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Perim, uh, members of the city council. I am Carisha Wallace, assistant city manager and my colleagues uh Aaron Miles from the city attorney's office is approaching the podium and we are joined today by uh John Easterling and Derek Applewhite of uh Checkmate. As many of you know, they are our um state lobbyists that's been working very closely with us for the last uh I think we're approaching a two-year mark now. So, uh, without further delay, I'm going to turn it over to, uh, to John and Derek, uh, and they're going to walk us through, um, the legislate some actions from the, uh, North Carolina General Assembly, um, to include some of the priorities that have been identified by the city council's legislative committee as well as city council. So, I'll turn it over to checkmate. >> Uh, good afternoon, council. Um, it is good to be back for you all again. John Eastilling, [clears throat] partner at Czechm Government Relations, joined by my colleague, government relations director, Derek Apple White. Um, it is always good to give this end of session um overview and kind of recap about what we see as wins or gains for the city of Durham and for the residents here, but also those things that we envision to happen um over the horizon. Some things that we're looking um forward to, some things that we're probably going to have to combat against um but some things that we all ought to be aware of as we move forward. Um I I will share this with you as we approach this legislative session. I believe Durham um stands out amongst um your other uh sister cities and municipalities. While we were able to represent uh municipal governments across North Carolina and played a really good defensive game, uh Durham was also able to play good offense and were able to secure a win for this city that we'll uh dive a little bit uh deeper into that we've worked um over the past two years. I know has been a priority for council member uh RZ. So, we'll jump right into our um legislative um update. Uh this is our team, just so you're familiar. Derrick and I, you all are familiar with, but our team is uh growing. We just added a new individual um who will also be helping us on the municipal side. So, just want to make sure that you understand that uh though me and Derek are always here to get all of us uh at ChickMe to continue to work on these issues for you. Um so, short session by the numbers. uh very very short session, 45 legislative days, 540 plus uh bills filed, 54 session laws. Um there's been eight uh vetos uh uh by the governor. Uh four have been overridden and four are awaiting override votes. Um and eight bills that are currently as of today still pending the governor's uh signature. talking a little bit about some of the the policy and spending that happened in the general assembly this year. I'm sure you're all aware that there was a state budget comprehensive state budget that was passed this year uh $ 34 billion across the state um after some prolonged negotiations uh that we've seen. Uh other conversation related to municipal government and how it would affect you here in Durham, in the city and in the county, uh property tax constitutional amendment will be on the ballot this fall. voters will have the ability to answer the question of if they want um uh the state government to address property tax. It is vague language and we'll talk about that shortly. Uh also to speak to some of the winds that you got here in the city um with the speed limit changes. Uh we'll talk about those as well and then I know uh staff as well as our team have some updates on the land use and zoning side as well. So some um overviews from the state budget. Um as we as we talked about cities had to play on defense. Power bill is one of the ways that we can uh continuously be in the defensive posture for um our local government. So we uh that remains stable. So we saw no attacks there. Um economic development appropriations to be used only for the purposes expressly allowed by law. And so this involves the state auditor's office and about notification. Uh Derek and I have had conversations with the said auditor um his director of external uh uh affairs David Fox as well just to make sure that we have uh clarity on that. And so we we we've made sure that we've briefed the legislative committee and also as well as staff. Um just so you all know there's been some changes. So reduction of funding to parks and recreation trust fund all that's been because of the hurricane um out west um hurricane Helen directs for studies into firework legalization. Uh firefighters association has been 100% against this. This was um a move that the legislature has been looking at for a number of years and I'll say uh a particular number of legislators. Um and so um the firefighter association of North Carolina has been against this uh legislation, but also the country celebrating its 250th anniversary. Uh this was something that was um of major interest, but this is one of those things that we'll continue to talk about as well. Uh POS in wastewater and effects on firefighters. uh what we saw in the last uh budget was a shift of the governor's appointments from um his office to the legislature and so there's been some changes uh secretary of state Elaine Marshall who uh is still currently a member of uh local government commission I think at the end of the year >> um her term will expire and that will go over to >> it's a general assembly appointment >> general assembly appointment so there's been some changes um so some appointments now the auditor has um a seat on some few more commissions as well as the state treasurer Bradinry. Uh so things that we're constantly looking into. I think 80 plus appointments have changed in this last budget that shift from the governor um over to the legislature. >> I can speak. >> Yeah. Uh and one thing we want to flag for uh council and staff is aware of this is there was a provision in the state budget related to SNAP benefits and the cost share uh between counties and with cities. Um from the impact of the one big beautiful bill down to the state. They're trying to recover money uh from SNAP benefits. Um and if the state's error rate is above the 6% threshold established by the federal government, there are funds that are required to be sent back to the feds. Uh as a solution for that, the general assembly has decided to um use the sales tax revenue from counties and cities across the state uh to help with that uh funding back to the feds. Uh so right now cities while you have no impact over uh SNAP benefits uh here in the city uh could have uh a bit of your sales tax revenue uh pulled. Um at this point there are conversations amongst members of the general assembly to rectify that problem. Uh and this would not go into effect until uh later next year. So there's still time to to address this issue. So Derek, you're saying so so potentially to fund the whatever is needed to make sure there's no the air rates not above 6%. They could [clears throat and cough] take some of our sales tax revenue to do that. Sorry, I'm just >> That's correct. >> Yeah. >> You know, this stuff is so bad is making my council members chill. >> Exactly. I'm [clears throat] ch >> But also, I think you said something about cost sharing between counties and cities. Do you mean between like state and county? Because we don't cost share them snap, right? At the same time, >> right? So the uh you're making a good point. the city does not administer SNAP benefits. Uh the idea under the provision uh I think when it was drawn up was to uh where some counties have contributed to the area rate being greater than 6% the idea was that the state would capture some sales tax revenue to make them the state whole for the requirements of the feds. Uh with that, the language is written in such a way that it would um go after sales tax revenue for both cities and counties based on how they wrote the provision. Um I'm not sure at this point if it was uh done on purpose, but uh there are some uh some uh work underway to address to address and rectify that issue. Vivian, are we able to get the presentation back up? Yeah, >> just to add one thing while we're waiting, which is that um another thing that happened in the state budget I talked about in an announcement I think meeting before last Oh, it's up. Um but just that there's further erosion between um the sort of independence of uh of attorneys in this state because um we have had our our board of who manages our IELTA funding taken over and uh re-evaluated and all of that money has been sort of had extra added restrictions. So, I'm just seeing some some very intentional I mean, we might some of these other things might not have been so intentional, but some very intentional erosion of autonomy between um attorney representation, which is a very scary thing to think about and something I think they're trying out in North Carolina to then see if they can adapt in other places. >> So, we've already spoke about property tax and the constitutional amendment. One of the things I will note is that the general assembly already as it stands now is the most powerful legislative body in the country and already has the authority to enact this. Uh their move is to make this a constitutional amendment to enshrine it um in the state constitution because one general assembly cannot tie the hands of of the other of the next. And so we do not know what the makeup of the next general assembly will be. And so um their focus is that we will >> you said at the beginning >> what what did you say about the our general assembly? It's the what? >> It is the most powerful legislative body in the country. >> Thank you. >> Um and so one of the things I will I will add is that when the legislature does come back, they'll come back in November for a session um already and we'll talk about these things too about what's on the horizon. Uh they'll come back, they'll do a reg reform bill, they'll also do a tech corrects bill as well and um addressing the implementation of the constitutional amendments if they are passed um as well. So, these are things that we'll be uh continuously keeping legislative committee and council informed and updated on as we uh move forward. >> And I I know staff will speak to a few of these provisions um and I think you'll have another slide coming up so I won't go into so much detail, but know that there were a number of changes this year um as we've seen over the past several years. uh the general assembly uh seeking to make changes to to local authority, local decision- making related to development and land use. Um I I'll allow staff to to expand on a few of these and you have the slides before you. U but there are some pretty substantial changes that I think y'all will have to address as a council and related to u the the ordinance moving forward. >> Okay. Um so pending veto overrides. Um so house bill 437 which all these um city has some level of interest in uh 96 171 which um the house has overridden 171 the senate has not um and SB50 um so what'll happen when we return back to session after November and this is the thing that's so telling about the November session it will be the furthest point away from the next election that this general assembly will have and so depending on the outcome of the election will depend on the things that are that are taken up at the uh November session. And so all these things we expect to be at least that we're being told right now u that they will be brought up for potential override votes. And so the House has done a number of these still waiting on the Senate I believe for 171 and for um a few others. And so those are things that we'll address when we return back for November session. Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor, >> question because I [clears throat] can see this going really really really bad. Uh we we have a housing a homeless reduction plan and we have that work underway. We're funding it. Does HP 437 does that require us or it gives us the ability to because if it requires us then residents going to say the law says and you're not doing it or the ability to allows us to continue our plan and which we're trying to do it. We're we're uh in regards to like encampments. >> So what this law specifically will do is it will require us to remove encampments or not allow them on public property. >> So they're providing funding for us to >> they are not providing funding to to pro to allow us to do that type of policing. Um, and then we could designate specific areas around the city that could be designated for public camping. Um, but if they're not designated as such, they would, this law would prevent the public camping from occurring. >> So, they're not they're requiring without funding support and pretty much mandating us to create some type of encampment or holding place. >> Correct. And if I can add, Mr. Mayor, >> or into incarcerate And then if we incarcerate, it drives more business to the private. Gosh. >> All right. >> And and not not to add insult to injury. Um if we do not enforce um private citizens can bring civil actions against the city. And it's yes. >> Whoa. >> And there's mandatory attorneys fees for any land use decisions where the city is found liable. >> I I think staff covered it well. Um but I I I do think that that is going to be an important conversation uh if and when this bill is overridden later this year. Uh, and we will certainly let staff know as soon as uh the override vote happens when it happens. Um, I I believe the I I can double check the effective date too because it may be have already passed. Um, and there are a couple of other vetoed bills uh that were recently vetoed. Uh they include um House Bill 377 2026 court changes and House Bill 958 election law changes. I can I'm happy to elaborate if y'all have specific questions. I will say I stood with the governor on Monday, colleagues, to veto uh HP 958. >> Could we get a list of that in our inbox with just a little Maybe you did put it in there and I just missed it. We'd be more than happy to send you a little blurb about >> Yeah. like all where kind of where everything's landing >> and where to your point some things are extended beyond their timeline and and then basically it means it's not going forward and the veto holds. I guess is that what you mean by that or no? Oh, well, in the original language that passed the general assembly, the effective date may have been uh, for example, June of this year. If they allow it to move forward, they pass it, it will be effective immediately. >> Okay. I now I understand. Okay. But then to >> to the there's some things that have been recently vetoed and then just having a better understanding. I mean, I can get some of this stuff, but some of the other stuff is >> kind of vague. >> We can absolutely pass that information. >> Thank And then could you get us um because SP 153 was also overridden, right? Doesn't really affect us. Well, it kind of does. >> Um the immigration bill that was overridden. That would be great to get some information because that is highway patrol. >> And then within the budget, you know, there's now flock cameras as part of that budget vote on all stateowned roads or the ability to put flock cameras up. So, I think that there should be some understanding uh and and and followup and we're going to need to have some conversations once we have our new police chief in place like what is what are the risks for residents um especially in Durham where we've really worked hard to to not have that type of of tech up. >> So, Mayor Portim as um and I'll be more than happy to send this to you and so we shared it with staff. I know this was flagged as a concern for us about the fly cameras on DOT roads and so we reached out to the governor's office got a response from uh state department of transportation about that existing contract and how long those cameras have been there and exactly what's been the use and the purpose of them. I'll be more than happy to share that with you as well after this meeting and get that to you as soon as possible. >> Colleagues, I we should just probably prepare. We have some big conversations to have. I'm going to use work sessions for us to be able to address some of these coming up. uh because I think we're about to have something on our hands that I I don't know if we have the capacity to even handle. So, [clears throat] >> well, I'll share this um this few point then I'll let Derek take over. This was the fun part this year for us. Um we got in some really tough negotiations with the state department of transportation. Um inside baseball seemed like we were going to be in a position almost stopped their bill from moving forward if we did not address this for the city of Durham. Uh and we are so appreciative to um the local delegation um um especially uh Representative Hawkins who really championed this for us and helped push it through it. But uh it was a team effort um and so we're appreciative of um all the delegation, your House and your Senate members in getting this done. Uh Derek spearheaded this uh for the team uh and I can tell you he did a heck of a good job uh for the city and negotiating with u such a tough agency like DOT who usually gets their way. So Derek, I'll let you talk about >> Sure. Uh, and John reiterated, the delegation has been working on this and the city has been working on this at least since 2019. Um, and I think it it goes far beyond them. U, one thing I'll note that it does provide the city with two tools. Um, that is unique to Durham and Durham alone. Um, the first being the ability to set uh citywide speed limits uh at the minimum of 20 mph, though you may not want to go that low. um and to create an ability for you to save money while also keeping your residents safe. Uh so I think that's incredibly helpful. Uh as well as a fasttrack review where it puts [snorts] DOT on a timeline to approve changes uh to state road speed limits. Um where there is no uh framework like this for any other city. Um so I I don't know whether it will be uh tried to be copied. Uh but I do know that and I hope uh staff on the transportation side see this as an oper uh an opportunity to work closely with the division to advance the priorities uh division zero priorities as well as just keeping not only um vehicles and pedestrians um safe but also those that use other modes of transportation in Durham. Um so happy to answer any questions but uh this is a significant win for the city and I I hope that y'all can leverage that moving forward. >> That's a big win. I just want to thank Council Member Ris for taking lead on this. This was him being very dogged in his pushing of staff and of our lobbyists uh and and again to the delegation. It has been at least since 2019, maybe even 2018 a legislative priority for the city of Durham. And so really glad to see it. So thank you. >> Appreciate the shout out. But yeah, you're right. This has been a priority since 2019. The state delegation, you all, my colleagues have all supported this. So I'm so glad this is over the finish line. Just to just for the record to say again, so this is we're the only city in North Carolina that has this ability. Correct. >> Particularly on the fasttrack review. >> Yes. >> But also >> and yeah, this is a new framework uh that DOT did not want to uh to to allow and uh >> publicized. That is very true. >> But also with the with the speed limit though because no one else has the ability to set that. Yeah. That's really great. Good afternoon. Sarah Young with planning and development here for the fun part. So, um, obviously in light of some of the changes that Dererick alluded to, we need to make some updates to our unified development ordinance to ensure that we're in compliance with state law. So, we uh have already started working on omnibus 20. It's hard to believe we've done 20. This will be our 20th omnibus, but um you see the case number up there. We are planning to bring it to JCCPC in September, planning commission in October, and then forward to the elected bodies for adoption um by the end of the year. That omnibus will include uh several fixes to make sure that we're compliant with some of these new uh legislative moves. First of all, uh clarifying that appeals no longer have to go to board of adjustment at first. that folks can appeal straight to superior court. Um, also basically mirroring the language um from that legislative uh bit about interpretations to make sure that ours reads the same. Um, we are also going to remove glazing requirements where they are now prohibited. So, as you know, in our design districts, we um have standards for the minimum amount of glazing required um at the ground floor and in some cases upper stories as well. So, we need to make sure that those percentages are uh acceptable. Uh there are other some other minor needed clarifications that we'll make as part of omnibus 20 as well. And then there's a few administrative changes. So things that um you all will not see that we thought were important just to let you know that we're working on them. Um in order to comply with the new statute about uh fee methodologies and transparency um we will our fees are posted online but we are going to kind of update and make a little more transparent um some information about the methodology. Uh and then we are updating our internal procedures for staff in terms of permit choice since now permit choice goes all the way back to legislative action. So someone can invoke permit choice at at the resoning stage. So that is what we are going to be working on. >> Can you just clarify this? I know this we got an email about this board of adjustment issue where you where so that what the issue is that if someone is unhappy with a decision on the council on a reasonzoning here or annexation? >> No. So it is for the essentially appeals of like administrative decisions um go to board of adjustment >> by the council or by by applicants, >> but these are administrative decisions by >> by staff. >> By staff, >> right? So, >> give an example. Yeah. >> Like a site plan approval, >> right? If someone wanted to appeal a site plan approval, they would have to go to appeal to board of adjustment or what we often see, more often, we rarely see site plan appeals, um, but we do see appeals of like notices of violation, right? So, now instead of going to board of adjustment or appeals of my interpretations, right? So someone could instead go straight to spirit court instead of having to work through board of adjustment first. And should we not prevail then automatically we have to pay attorney's fees. Yep. >> Yeah. Can we just um at the JCCPC can we get the language from the legislature? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We'll have that. >> Thank you. for the city attorney's office. Are we going to track for this new law like what the city is incurring in these fees if we don't prevail and then publish it for residents so they can see how the state is wasting our money? >> We can absolutely do that. >> Thank you. >> I I second that. Yeah. >> All right. [clears throat and cough] as we continue through the rest of the year, John alluded to it earlier that we expect that there will be a lame duck November December session uh following the election. Um as we progress through the next few months, y'all are well aware there's going to be elections going on. Um legislature legislators will be spending more time on the campaign trail will be a bit checked out. Though the um uh the opportunity for them to return still exists, we don't expect that they will until after the election. Um and we've mentioned during that November session uh as we expect that the constitutional amendment particularly around property tax will pass by voter approval. Uh they will seek to implement that uh language that um could include a levy limit or assessment caps or some combination of that uh which will certainly have an impact on on budgets next year. Um, beyond that, there are going to be continued conversations around downzoning uh as well as existing uh bills that have yet to be uh dealt with. Veto overrides u as well as rag reform that typically contains a number of land use items uh may come back in a new fashion later this year along with a budget technical correction. Um so we will certainly keep uh staff and the legislative committee and the council as a whole updated. Um, but as we go through the fall, we will also be uh talking with staff to plan for what the long session looks like and what your legislative priorities will look like heading into 2027. Uh, so give some thought to to what those may uh may be and we're certainly here to help as y'all decide. So, I know we've been waiting for the down zoning repeal or some action on that, right? So, um, given that you mentioned that, like who is who is motivated to lead that? Because it seems like until now there's I mean I know the House did pass a bill or maybe the Senate did and then the House pass a companion that sort of became one of those kind of weird what was it? Wakeboarding thing or something. >> That's right. >> So, is the Senate still potentially going to drive this? We're going to have new senators after the election. So, like where do you expect the like impetus to come from to to repeal down zoning? I I truly think it's going to come from cities, towns, and counties across the state. This has continued to be a problem u since the the language was passed into law. Um there's continued efforts underway by not only folks like ourselves uh but also statewide associations like the league and the county commissioners association. Um and it seems like the timing uh to strike will be later this year. Um though there is a lot of time between now and then. Uh so we will continue to be working on that and talking with legislators and staff about it as well. Yeah, [clears throat] go ahead. >> Can we also track what the sales tax thing and what it might cost us and know and work with the county around if we're having to if they're basically um garnishing our wages. Um uh what what that I want residents to really be real clear because it's just like an opaque box over there like oh the Republicans are in charge. It's like yeah and with that there is actual dollars and cents that you are paying um that they are not using wisely for folks who thinks that they're you know that supposedly small government and stewards of public money. They are neither. Um and so um again for that piece around educating our our our residents around what is it actually costing them with how business is being done or politics are being done in Raleigh. >> Sure. And and I I will add that there has been uh language put together uh our team along with uh folks at the league and the department of revenue. Bless the language. Uh so we expect that uh perhaps there may be some movement in the November session to rectify that problem. >> Yeah. like a little counter on the city website for every dollar or every little cent, you know, just like a visual like this is what they're taking from you now. This is what you're taking from you now with no accountability of how they're spending it or what they're doing with it. >> Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I'm glad we had a a bright spot um um a huge bright spot in amidst uh some dark news. Um, but I'm just curious if there was any discussion around kind of energy affordability, uh, energy access, um, any discussions around like the plug-in solar, uh, idea. I know you said that you'd heard some of that previously and you've seen it bubble up in other states. Were there any sort of quiet conversations where there were any parties who expressed interest in those topics that might be able to lead with Durham being more of a quiet party? >> Sure. And I can't say that there was any uh outward conversation about it. There were bills filed earlier um both this year and last year related to balcony solar. Um but there was no movement on those. Um beyond that, I think a lot of focus has been uh placed on energy rates and affordability is certainly a concern um from folks on both sides of the aisle heading into the November election. Um so I think there's been news from the attorney general over the past week. Um but related to specifically solar, there has been no movement. Um, but we'll certainly keep you posted if we hear anything headed into November. >> Yeah, thank you. Who do you know who uh introduced that? I can just find online, too. But >> I can certainly track him down. I believe it was Representative Phil Rubin out of Raleigh uh was one of the primary sponsors and he had a couple of co-sponsors as well. Uh but I'll double check that and provide it to you. All right, [clears throat] those are uh I I well, let me just say I really appreciate you guys communication. Um just your constant engagement. I appreciate getting calls from you. I appreciate you all always answering the phone from my colleagues when they're calling and [clears throat] I I know communication or frequency of it was a concern when we first signed up. We didn't know what it was going to be like. Uh, but I do appreciate you guys like just I mean you call me more than I call you. Just keeping me aware of things I should know and then just uh you know just being available to my colleagues and talking to staff twice a week. You know you guys are you're doing a great job to represent us. So thank you. >> Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you council. [clears throat and cough] >> I uh I believe we can now settle the agenda before going to close session. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We are ready to settle the agenda. >> Yes, madam assistant manager. >> All right. On consent, we have items 1 through three, 5 through 14, and number 20. On GBA is item number four. On GBA public hearings is items 16 through 19. >> All right. Those uh those are the settled items. Um, I'll entertain a motion to settle the agenda. >> So moved. >> Second. >> So moved and properly seconded. All in favor? >> I. >> All oppose. Thank you. We will now uh proceed to close session. Thank you all for attending. Who's still present?