Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · April 1, 2024

I also want to say for diversion um this very body that I served on this very body did everything they could to protest us disrupt Our Lives send out letters about us knock on our doors maybe not some of you all but you got to understand it's some zealots with y'all everybody can't be controlled because you did not want us to build a youth home you know what was on TV last week all five of us walking around the youth home the youth home that is now complete that you all fought us on tooth and nail you know what's in that youth 44% of there's an assessment center because what we don't want we don't want kids going in and out of jail I question the fact why are there so many calls from our schools on black boys I question it but y'all don't go to the school board with this presentation you come to us with it and you know what this manager did in her Infinite Wisdom she took one of her management fellows and she placed that young woman over there to start running the diversion program I didn't know that till I got over there that's what this board does and that's and we and we approved it and we're happy that she did it um there there a lot of

things that you all went over today um the DUI Court I I do know I've been over in Dr Court the past couple I know they're working on trying to get one um any recommendation around the funding for some of that you didn't give some of that I'd be interested to see it because I have sit in drill Court me and Heidi both and I know that there's something they're trying to tackle and get their hands around but recognize the sheriff is on YouTube so it it's just interesting that yeah I know who he's met with sitting up here I know who he hasn't met with sitting up here I know there's some people up here afraid to law enforcement I I can respect that right you don't want to but we have to be very careful I from my understanding we don't have solitary confinement um it's interest again if you're in a room by yourself right uh but I would be interested to know the ethn dramas and then I'm going end because I know that we're over time it's just I some of this stuff y'all I I think I sat in there and I looked at it when you all gave us the proposal for the ethn dramas I remember it was like over $100,000 right and so it was over $100,000 and you all already had the te picked out who was going to film it

who's going toay that ain't how we do business if it's over $50,000 we got to put out RFP so we can't just hire your friends and I'm being real honest I'm going say it again we just can't hire your friends I know they do that over at the city council won't do that over here I know that the beginning you all had like a budget of like a million dollars or $2 million so I'm interested and I like where is that money at and I y'all know where I'm about to go with is we talked about how great the hackathon was if it was for me Brenda and Elaine y'all wouldn't have paid the consult for the hackathon until we had that joint City County meeting so I get y'all are asking us for money I just want to know how much money y'all got left oh so y'all have all y'all money the city has it okay well that's good so how much y'all going to spend on your still have that money we did not spend people's money no no that's fair and so the only reason why I throw this out I want to support y'all we we do it's no different than made and Durham but for two and a half years y'all have had over million dollar and you ain't spend it

yourselves but you want us to spend money so I would just be interested in seeing what you plan on spending your money on commissioner Jacobs thank you all so much um you know we've had a lot of task forces since I've been a county commissioner and I I've never gotten anything like this um the amount of documentation and work and thoughtfulness that has gone into this process I really value and appreciate it um I I think this work really gets to the heart of our community how do we keep people safe um how do we keep people healthy how do we keep people out of our jails out of our Criminal Justice System um it is it's interconnected to every single thing that we do um and so

um we know that there is so much that we can do um I think there is a lot of good work that is happening and I think a lot of your recommendations are really building on um things that are happening and so that's a testimony to what we have invested in but the Investments that we need to continue to make um I just want to say personally this is work that I'm very focused on now um as a county commissioner and so um related to um the opioid um epidemic I do co-chair our task force and I working I'm working on a Statewide task force called just one more thing and I I do want to hear from um Dwayne a little bit because we we do have a lot of money we found out we have about $20 million now um more than we thought we were getting um I'm sorry we've if you could tell us yeah how much money is increased but I

want want you all to know because I know that some of the recommendations come out came out and then we have actually moved forward that one thing is our board did approve recently funding of a harm reduction services within public health and I'm sorry that our Public Health director isn't here right now but that came to us from public health staff because they were you know handing out syringes and xyl xylazine strips um n lockone doing the drug testing kits from from the UNCC lab and really recognize that we need a designated people to work on this so one thing if if if Dwayne could talk a little bit about that but we have also we did move forward with funding some syringes and our Vital vital partner with the North Carolina harm reduction Coalition this is work that we cannot do in the community without them

um this is the work that that that the harm reduction Coalition has to do and that we have to support and I know it's a partnership um and I would like to get an update because what we um I I know that we have said that we do want to fund the um the equipment for in the field and I heard a few months ago was that staff needed to research that um and you know just how to actually make that happen but to me it is urgent I mean this is is to your point this is about saving lives and not only is our our number of overdoses increasing but it is a racial justice issue because what we have seen in Durham is that the number of of you know black people in our community um the the number of overdoses is disproportionately increasing um and it is because the drug Supply is so contaminated um and so we I I do feel

5 million that's even better news we can do more work with that we have a a number of items that the board is going to hear about very very soon um to tell you a little bit about where we are we have set up an internal work group it's one

of the recommendations from the presentation last year we've set up an internal work group so that we can establish a process hear ideas establish funding priorities and get this money into the community we have a a few programs that are um either have been approved or will be very very soon the uh harm reduction budget that the board saw I believe was back in November a few months ago that is going to use opioid funding Community linkes to care the opioid settlement manager position that is on the verge of being recruited for that'll come out of opioid funding uh the medical director for the Detention Center that also will come out of opioid funding we also have a proposal from our office of emergency services to expand the community Paramedic program the community paramedics I believe the memo said about 61% of their responses are directly related to opioids that's a great

program right now like um this department here it's it's limited in its hours because we only have I believe three staff members in the community paramedicine so we want to expand that if all possible using opioid funding um there's going to be number of of of resolutions coming to the board here very soon that actually gets this money out into the community but we're excited about the 22 and A5 million is coming to us the actually specifically by the machine I did reach out to miss gooder and she was traveling overseas to get specifics on the machine the ftir machine and that is on the list as well I believe if I'm not mistaken it's around $5,000 so that's something that we can go ahead and consider purchasing and uh equipping Us in the field to uh better prepare for this opioid pandemic thank you Dwayne that's really helpful and I would just really put a an aster next to us really trying to move

that forward as quickly as possible um and um some of the things that Dwayne mentioned I think it's I just want to mention also in the lock Zone we have now um if you go into our health and human services building um I think there's going to be want a main library if it's not there already there's one in the lobby of the detention center but they are vending machines for free free noock zone um and um I don't I don't think you mentioned the syringes but we are we we are um purchasing pre- syringes but the mat is also really important um and Dwayne mentioned um our fantastic um post opioid opioid response team who is now offering to start mat medication assist treatment in the field like when at the point of Overdose people can get started um which is amazing and our community linkage is to

care that also uses peer support to follow up with people but what I've learned like through my work and through this uh Statewide conference is uh I mean commission is the stigma we all have to really work together on that I know the harm reduction Coalition can really help with this but focusing on recovery long-term recovery and just the stigma around um being in treatment um so I hope I hope that that is something that we can all really really work together on um heart Services I I I would love to hear from the manager I know that she is working on this um this is a priority that I I've expressed for a while I know other members of our board have expressed um this as a priority because we know it works um and we know we want to free up our law

enforcement for what they are training to do and uh for for the um what they do best um and so if if the manager could just give us little update on that and I'll start off with it I'll ask ACM Bron to come up and talk about it more in depth but we are um we have started discussions um joint discussions with our city um leadership team about expanding heart um in in theory it's a it's a great concept and I see that we have support for it but I will tell you the implementation of it is very complex and so um we have gotten a quick snapshot of some very high level um cost estimations of what it would cost and I'm I'm glad to hear that you all kind of delineated the different components of the heart program and that will determine how much the actual cost of it is but I'll allow ACM Bron to provide

6 million so there's a lot of variation um and a lot of options in how we can do the heart program program expanding that out into the county uh the the other thing is that we've got a couple call centers we're not exactly sure how if we just did the

crisis called diversion how would that work having both call centers so we're trying to figure that out um and seeing if it would be a fluid implementation or if there would be extra steps involved with that so there is a program we are very interested in BO and I have met um a couple times it's always a topic of conversation it's just a matter of uh vetting vetting all this out and seeing what we can actually do this year to get started and there's been also conversations about merging the call centers correct we are also having conversations could I could I cuz man you bought up some something that may I think it was her who said the it's funny when people don't look at you when they lie um independent phone number does anybody in here have any information on whether or not CU I know Denver I ain't talking about you Dwayne you always tell the truth um I know Denver's program I visited their star program is anybody in the country got an independent number because we're sitting here and we're talking about it and again I'm not

against it I'm against people coming in here lying like that's what I'm against I'm against people lying in the community I'mma always be against that what I have a question about is we're talking about it it's not just the cost so there's a legality so before the city did their call center like some laws I mean somebody had to talk to somebody about being able to funnel those calls through and what they could legally do I know that the laws that um that the sheriff has to follow with our 911 Center it thank you careful shaking your drastically different from the city so along those lines as we're looking at scaling up and down are we looking at is that does that include us merging those two because that becomes questionable we don't have a horrible 911 Center the one cross the street is and if if it is um going to be an independent number you know what is that so you don't have to answer that now cuz I know you all are preliminary but those are things that we need to know you know when when we there's a suicide hotline there's a gambling hotline they just opened up bets last week and now we have a new uh gambling hotline right so these things

can be created and then where do we go from there when we like okay it needs to go to the Sheriff's Office because it's got danger so I just all of that I want to know like is this a merger or are we coming up with an independent number and then respectfully some of this stuff has not been discussed with the sheriff y'all know it and I know it I know who has sat with him I know who sat with him up here I know who is not before you vote on this that's going to have to happen or the attorneys are going to have to talk so we are coming up wait well we are way over time on this item but uh commissioner Carter had her hand raised first I do want asked before since this is such a detailed conversation if we can continue this also in because with the community safety Wellness task force they brought us pres uh recommendations for different areas of work if we can have this continued conversation broken up maybe like some of it is with the courts where we don't really have jurisdiction over but we can maybe have some representative some the court system come and talk to us about how we can

work collaboratively together on these recommendations same with DSS have them come together and kind of break it up into that if that's possible okay commiss I can I just finish can okay I was going to respond to something said okay sure about the four pillars of the heart program and something that Mau lifted up that I really um believe we should if if we're going to have to choose areas within heart to focus on I really like the knowing that based on the best data they could obtain that there are 69 involuntary commitments um that the sheriff has received or acted upon past year you know that's an area where I'd like to see us improve our crisis system is with involuntary commitments we we know that is criminalizing mental health issues it's criminalizing an illness and um so if we could have a heart you know response there if we had to be very small um in our thinking but I just that that's a good place to start in my opinion um so anyway I want to lift that up just one little commissioner but I did want to

lift that up is there so are these questions that you guys have for the safety Wellness task force right now or for staff um yeah I'm yeah I let me just say that I won't I won't ask yeah I won't ask for staff to respond but I anymore I was just trying to also provide information back to the committee members um because I think it's an iterative process um but I I do you know I agree that we need to hear more during our budget process process around the details um for this expansion and I just I I want to mention you you me you mentioned Mike The Familiar Faces initiative um which again is really important where we're really zeroing in on folks who were coming being diverted out of the heart program out of the opioid response program out of you know coming different ways that we we really have to do very intensive case

management with and we one thing we haven't talked about here is housing and we housing is so key for this and you know the caret Creek Campus um because we people cannot recover uh whether it's re-entry mental health substance use unless they have a safe place to live so I I don't I want to also lift up housing I do as a follow-up that the chair has mentioned I do one thing I'm would wonder about is um Madam manager if we can make sure that um there's so many different departments that are reflected here I I wrote down a list and I already had like 12 um that really um if we can make sure they get the specific areas um um that are related to them um you know as part of this process because some things are already happening like I just gave the example about the harm

reduction um so I I just think that that's going to be important for closing the loop because I'm not sure if everyone has actually even gotten um copies of this report um and I do want to ask also um my last request for the manager is when during our budget process if we could ask the sheriff to please uh respond to a lot of the concerns that we've heard today um that would be really helpful you're an elected official you can ask him yourself I'm not put just do it part of ourd we're I'm asking that for when we do get uh different uh requests we always have a presentation um related to the budget and I think that would be very helpful thank you since we're over time and so I'm going to ask my colleagues if you guys have any more questions or comments please direct them the staff I did see mju and muffin both had their hands up and since oh and Carol and since y'all

aren't going to be at this table uh for our next ver session to be able to give you the opportunity to close us out so muffin Munch you then Carol um I just want to um thank commissioner Burns for seeing me and saying that but also um just being out in the community and um we have a lot of people who overdose right and um those vending machines I went into the jail myself to get um the stuff out of the vending machine and the way that the security looked at me I was like I don't even get high but just the way that they were looking at me I was like people who get high are not going into those places so I just want to recommend that those um things come out in those like little I've seen Little Boxes around that might have um food in it or they might have books in it I think if those um if the neox I mean it's not neox no no lock if it's in one of those boxes where people can go get it without having having to be under the eye of someone watching

them go into those vending machines I think we would have less likely have people overdosing because people are not going in I'm going in getting those and I'm handing them out to people and they're appreciative of being able to get those and I'm just a regular person that says there's a need in my community for this to happen so I think that that should be one of the things that we should support is getting it out of those machines getting it out of the police I mean the sheriff's department I mean you know the jail getting out of the library and getting it out into the actual Community where people can just even at bus stops if it was in those folks can just go get them and not have to worry about anybody paying attention to them getting something that they may need down the line I think that's something that we should look into if we want to you know try to curb people overdosing and dying thank you Muffin mindu uh thank you so much commissioner burn for serving as our liaison for the community safety and wellness task force

and thank you so much for your question about whether uh there are cities that have tested the concept of having a direct line to their version of an unarmed skilled compassionate crisis response and the answer is yes in our studying other models in other places we saw examples of that um we do support the merger of city and county uh 911 response and could see more resources going into that so that those call times could be improved um and thank you so much for the question you um I'll be brief because mju just said 95% of what I was going to say but um again I do not know what I do not know as always but to the best of my knowledge the city of Atlanta Georgia their police alternative division um they dispatch non-emergent calls through the 311 system the government Municipal systems and they also have a nine-digit number that routes to 311 which may be a

clever way of getting around the FCC rules with three-digit numbers but you'd have to ask them so and thank you thank you very much and I want to reiterate that we're grateful for your time and that we remain imminently available to you for any expertise thoughts advice comments thank you so much and just to add to that we're not proposing that this direct line be in lie of 911 access most people have over Decades of Community Education come to understand that in a moment of Crisis those are the three digits to call and we want that to stay available especially in mental health crises but would love for um the many people who we are learning through Community conversations don't place a call in a moment of Crisis because they are afraid law enforcement law enforcement will show up that those people too should be able to access help appropriate help in a moment of need thank you all so so much again for all of your work and service and the detailed report I'm looking forward to

our continued conversations that the board's going to have that I'm sure the manager is going to be reaching out to y'all to also come into those spaces thank you um we now we still have about over 3 hours of agenda items um I will give cookies to whoever I will bake cookies for whoever comes next that gets us back on track but let's take a quick um five minute bio break and I mean for real five minutes for everyone to go use the bathrooms everything grab your lunch and let's do working lunch if that's okay with everyone okay so we'll reconvene at 12:20 12 no 126 1222

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e e move on to the update presentation on retail space occupancy process for 11 for 115 North Queen Street development former 300 East Main Street and I see our land development team coming up and we have 30 minutes allocated to

this Perry If you guys Nancy if youall want some home fresh baked cookies feel free to get us back on track with time we're going to try and make this very quick for you um you want a te us up sure sure so um Commissioners as you may recall uh when we were sort of establishing guiding principles for the uh 300 East Main Street development the new name of course now is 115 North Queen Street because that is the uh um address that the fire marshal uh designated for the facility so anybody Public Safety responders responding to the site it's now 115 North Queen so you hear that name often um we basically establish that um we were going to Target nonprofits and other organizations that had a positive social impact with urban ministries Justice Services and or human services and just to be honest um we

have been struggling mightily uh to fulfill um that uh that space and we just want to kind of have a checkin with you to update you on the process as to what we've done to date and to see if there is uh a potential to sort of pivot uh so to speak so I'll turn it over to Nancy and let her talk about this more specifically and then we can certainly have that dialogue thank you uh over the last couple of months we have received uh a fair amount of interest from at least one potential for-profit business it is a personal services business they are very interested in leasing space in this location um they do they are um Durham based very much in trenched in the community and I'm you can tell I'm avoiding naming names and being terribly spefic specific about uh who this interest is from but we have been contacted by our property manager LSA

and their marketing team at Maverick Partners um and so we are sort of in a position where we don't want to respond back and ask for a letter of intent until we have direction from you all that if we were to bring a lease to you under these conditions that it wouldn't be um dismissed um so if the intent of the board is as Perry said for us to continue to make these spaces available exclusively for nonprofits and other organizations whose missions and activities align with uh Human Services the Justice uh Center and with urban ministries we're happy to do that but we wanted to make you aware that to date that's not been a successful Avenue for us to pursue we have a tenant potentially who is ready to

go sorry I'll let Heidi go while I chew it's sort of chewing too but um how many spaces are there Nancy and I understand the predicament and I think what you're you know bringing forward to us and posing to us is a really good question it's there are three spaces three spaces there are three SPAC the smallest one is 84 ft and it is already that's C on the graphic that one is already occupied by progress Carol for a term that will end at the end of this year December 31st to 24 they're the general contractor who is building out the affordable housing component of this project and it made sense for them and for us for them to be on site so there's still even if um you were to bring forward a polias possibility with an organization that's not a nonprofit um we would still have two other spaces that could be kept open for

nonprofits with a priority of nonprofit you know and if that's came if that comes to fruition great if not uh you know then we might might want to consider alternatives there as well right well I I will say that there has been uh interest expressed in actually taking both of the vacant spaces oh opening up the demising wall between them and creating a larger space for for that entity to occupy and this would bring in revenue for the county of course which could be reinvested um in in ways that support the work of nonprofits that's correct um anyway I would be open to you know I would be open to filling these spaces in ways that you know align with our values that aren't necessarily related to nonprofits exclusively so that's my opinion I had a question now that I'm done chewing um it might be convoluted way of thinking but going back to like

our consent agenda items around like the pedigree Street property have we done like any sort of or is there a way to even do an analysis of like maybe we use if this space is more suited for a project like a Durham County project like City United and then pedigree Street was renovated and then leased out would that be more appealable yeah to other areas would we get a better M for a buck like what is the commissioner let me answer the question so uh based on what we've heard from you today and the issue with 826 pedigree we will certainly look at that space and evaluate whether it makes sense to move forward with BCU and alter alternative locations uh this one we got to remember that our charge to date has been to focus on nonprofits and other organizations that has a positive social impact working with urban ministries the

homeless shelter and AD Justice Services and we're simply asking you should we pivot from that now with respect to BCU um the spaces are small let's just be candid that that when the spot that we purchased for BCU was3 13,700 ft this is 1,000 each uh so we're not Apples to Apples here but we certainly will take a look at your requests and and and be able to respond uh once we evaluate that so no that makes sense yeah square footage wise um and then remind me which one of these properties the two parking deck is the one that's going to have child care or is it both the child care will be in the 300 East Main Street the 115 North Queen Street that we're talking about and we actually have a presentation after this on that so yeah you can actually see on the diagram that's on the screen now the child care facility is on the opposite side of the development it's indicated um in the

light purple you may remember on the renderings the interest was right at that Main Street Corner and it always said prek yeah yeah and so that's that actual corner there off of Main Street right across from uh C J RC or Justice Services excuse me thank you Wendy commissioner Jacobs yeah first of all I really appreciate this checkin um and I appreciate all the different things that you both are juggling um I would like to understand a little bit more what you're hearing um and what you know hearing back from nonprofits with the Outreach process um because I am concerned um you know I've had you know different folks who have contacted me um along the way um and I know I've always referred them to you Perry and sometimes to you Nancy um who who have

been looking for space and um and then I do think there is a very important Dynamic happening with um you know Urban Ministry um the way it currently functions which is basically U people you know being on the street during the day because we don't have a day Center um and then with the library there and everything so I I do think that is a very very important Dynamic I don't want to overlook and so I would first of all I want to hear what you've hearing back from folks like why urban ministries doesn't see or they don't have a connection to somebody who might want to use the space I also wonder about the RFP we're about to put out that is going to possibly involve a day Center and I I'm a little concerned about you know whether any of these spaces could function in that capacity

and then we would lose that um potential so um so anyway if you could just elaborate a little bit more on what you you know just is you're hearing well again the the the um the property management company LSA is contracted uh with Maverick partners and so I'm you know I'm not directly receiving contact or reaching out personally to nonprofits my understanding is that through the connections that Maverick Partners is making with and I mentioned a couple in the presentation one is DDI another is um a place of the table there there there's a long list of Outreach opportunities that they've taken advantage of and and they've told me that for various reasons some being either the space is too small um they are not the nonprofits are not always in a position to build out a space or have

the technical expertise or understanding to know how to even go about beginning that process so I think there needs to be a lot of technical support available to nonprofits to be able to you know take a brick and mortar space like this that is essentially a cold shell and turn it into a place where they can then do their business from that space um in some cases they they um you know as I said the size may not be right the business opportunities may not be right for them in this location um that that's as much as I can really tell you I can I'm happy to get more information on that point uh I don't have any more details than that at this time and do you know have they specifically met with urban ministries as well and sat down and met with them I don't know the answer to that question but we will find out okay I mean I I personally would like to have more

information about that and I also um like I said I I I feel like I want to wait until the RFP goes out around um that we're about to put out that may open up some opportunities um so that that's my feeling right now yeah I I appreciate that commissioner and that's a excellent point which brings me to one I've been thinking about another thing we've been grappling with is the time that it takes us to get confirmation as to whether it makes sense for us to be willing to entertain this and so the time that we're going to take to do this RFQ RFP is going to impact someone that's ready to move in now and so just think about that as we sort of go through this one of the things that we also need to talk about is we're going to have to get with the manager and legal as to how we bring these to you um you see we've we're making a change now we used to have a

lot of discussion like this in closed session and now it's more of an open session discussion which totally changes the dynamic and so um we're going to have to figure out even the one that we know about how we want to bring that to you uh and like we said they're ready to go they're ready to take down two of these spaces right now and that's all we can say about it so and this would be no matter what it would be like you said in the presentation Case by case so it's just you're asking us for support in just allowing the advertisement and then there wouldn't actually be an approval of anything unless it came to the board well everything absolutely has to be approved by the board so we would be bringing that back to you but the one that we're sort of dancing around uh we're going to talk to the manager about how we present that to you all um and we'll get more information to you but that's something that we'll be moving forward with relatively quickly because we we would like you to at least be made

aware of who that is and we won't dismiss it right I mean that was that was the language I heard you want didn't want to bring something we're going to dismiss it I don't think we would dismiss it just because it's not a nonprofit We would definitely want to know more yeah but again we're going against what we had established previously for the project the parameters we established so we just want to be clear yes and kind of building uh ACM dado just kind of building on Perry's Point okay as we look at the new facilities that we're building there's an operating cost with that comes with those facilities we also talk about looking for places that we could generate Revenue I would call it cost recovery so we don't want to close those doors right and that's why we talked about it getting your input could we looked at it and try to build some Synergy between uh profits and and nonprofits so we could make that building whole as they could operate with all the revenues and everything else so again just looking out uh

thinking out of the box we have talked about looking for ways to cut cost but also recover cost if that makes sense and do we know what this specific one that has approached you or has shown interest what type of lease they're looking for like are they looking for a very long-term lease would they be open to like shortterm and then if we do have more interest for nonprofits then we can always Revisited uh we have not received a letter of intent specifically the details that you're asking for have not been presented at this point um I you know I will point out that that we are not even certain that they are going to propose a market rate given the legal constraints that exist around what organizations we may be able to offer a reduced market rate to they would not qualify in terms of the service that they provide is not a

service that Durham County is in usted to provide and therefore eligible for a below market rate so you know we're we're very early in the process we're here looking for direction as to whether we want to encourage this business to develop a letter of intent and submit it to us or really not put them through the paces if we are not going to be able to really entertain the the offer that they're preparing I would I would like more information and also what is your timeline Commissioners uh wow that's a good that's a I don't really know how to respond to that because again we've been uh this space has been available uh since March of last year um so you know as ACM Delgado mentioned you know look the space is sitting vacant uh we put up a couple of bullet points in the slide

presentation look um we need to go ahead I we would like to generate some Revenue uh for the investment that the county made uh in this location um filling the space would activate um the area providing more Safety and Security and um so those are things that we think you know should be worthwhile for us to at least consider um you know like we said this this potential um establishment so I I don't know if we have a true timeline uh we think we need to get it filled as soon as possible but again uh we want to still be within the confines of what you all would like to see in regards to the St so we holding you up wow it's like just go straight to the port if we holding up we need to we need to need to help him move on commissioner Jacobs

well I appreciate the point about having an activated streetcape um I I do think that is very important and I've heard a lot about concerns safety concerns when um you know employees from Health and Human Services are going to the parking deck um it's a it's this is a complex issue um it is definitely a complex issue and the issue of Revenue of course is important as well I also want to lift up the fact that we've seen how hard it is with our admin 2 building um you know our aspirational goal has been for many years is to have um support a local restaurant or support an affordable restaurant support a local business and we see how long it's taken you know with the pandemic and and also just related I know your Comm um question um chair Alam is

that I understand people probably won't want to do a short-term lease because they're going to put a they're going to invest a lot of money into whoever comes in here it's it's a shell and whoever comes in and we've seen that with the restaurant uh across the street is going to be putting a lot of money into the space and upfitting it so I would imagine that people are not going to are going to want something more secure if they're going to be investing in the space so um anyway I appreciate all the complexities around this so so I am open to hearing more I just as you already heard I I also yeah I'll just stop there I think for me I'm also open to hearing more as commissioner Carter said and I think providing you with that guidance allows you to do it in a less convoluted way hopefully and be more straight forward for staff so I think that's is that all you

need that's it for that one thank you we're just going to stay here perfect that brings us to our next item again with you all for the child care pre do you want to introduce yeah sure I'll certainly open up uh good afternoon again Commissioners um this is actually a similar presentation on the um 300 East Main Street and what we're here uh now to talk about specifically is to give you an update on the selection process for the childcare SL prek uh operator uh is many of you know uh the county has a contract with ccsa Linda Chappelle is here today to do a

presentation on um the actual selection process and just to have some dialogue with you about um you know some con future considerations you know as as they sort of navigate the process and make selections um based on the parameters again that we've sort of established for the project so um just kind of in general the preas space is just over 10,000 square ft you guys remember a while back uh we made a decision to go from a 58 um person space to a 86 person space uh with the mission of providing a high quality standard Child Care location within that development and so Linda I'll turn it over to you uh you can certainly update the board and get your questions answered good morning thank you very much um Madam chair and Comm Commissioners I do um I am Linda Chappelle from chalk care services Association uh senior vice president of our chalk care resource and

referral services but I do want to recognize I'm joined today by um two of my colleagues that are here I'm going to ask them to stand up so you can see them properly um Monty Griggs who is our senior director of quality enhancement initiatives as well as Beverly Williams who is our business side of Child Care Quality enhancement manager and I wanted to recognize them because they've been instrumental in this work we've done it very much as a team and really today the conversation part is pretty important so I'm going to try to be quick with my uh my uh slides and presentation but you'll recall that you contracted us beginning in 2023 to lead a selection process because of your commitment to Quality and assuring that the program would be a model and we have done uh what I would consider to be a really strong job in trying to engage The Early Education community in

this effort um obviously that's why you hired us the I'm going to remind you just jar your memory that back in June of 2020 we um did an update to a downtown Durham childcare analysis that had been done back in the um early 2000s to really look at the availability of child care in downtown Durham and just to remind you at that point based on that review of the information we made recommendations to you we asked you to commit to a model program which you did and we appreciate that and we proposed to that an Advisory Group be set up to develop and guide or request for application process so we've been through that as part of the RFA process we decided on enrollment priorities and we went through to assure that it would be a high quality uh minimum of a festar rated program and we also wanted to prioritize the potential opportunity for

a nonprofit operator so that we could potentially have philanthropic investment um it was a priority not a requirement and then we also wanted to really um assure that we were following best practice around making the program something that you could really be proud of as an investment in Durham County we did consider um the rest of these things that we recommended as we were developing the RFA and in particular there was a lot of question back in 2020 from you about whether the program would be designated for residents in the building and um there was a lot of questions about how that would work and what we did was explore opportunities to assure sure that residents had um the ability to access the program by assuring that the operator was eligible for all financial assistance opportunities childcare vouchers from our social service

department as well as other financial assistance opportunities and so the program um was really decided to be one that would be open to anyone in Durham with extra supports to try to assure that we were meeting uh the needs where possible of residents or other downtown staff members so just quickly we've been through a whole process it's been quite a quite a journey and just to remind you you contracted with us not only to manage the RFA process but then once an operator was identified the process would include us in supporting that operator in negotiations with with the county to create create the best opportunity possible as well as once the program is underway our team of technical assistance quality improvement team members will be supporting the operator at no cost to the operator through our

arrangement with the county to be a supportive technical assistance provider so this process really has um been quite a journey and we we went through uh quite a bit of of work to try to assure that we brought to the table strong viable operators with an equal opportunity approach we um so where we are now is we have completed our RFA process and we are at a place where we need more input from you in order for us to move forward so quickly just just to give you that overview the RFA was open to any operator um no they didn't have to be in Durham it was open to any operator um with a scoring preference given to nonprofits um all licensed operators in the nine count area of Durham orange we

Caswell alamance's person Franklin gramble Vance were sent direct notices like really strongly solicited to be sure they were aware of the opportunity but then Statewide the opportunity was put out into the Early Childhood Community uh because we felt like that we didn't know what we didn't know we didn't know who was out there looking to come to Durham and bring potential potentially a strong program through the RFA process 14 operators ultimately submitted applications which actually 14 was more than we expected because the the process of developing application was rigorous it involved quite a bit of work and if you're interested in seeing more about the RFA it's available on the ccsa website for your review um we've left it up there even though the process has closed um we did in those 14 three were nonprofits and for 11 were for

profit we have a Review Committee that we um put together it consisted of the three of us who are here today um from ccsa and in terms of bringing ccsa to the table but also consisted of um a non-conflicted leader of a multi-side licensed Child Care programs parents of young children as well as um other technical assistance specialists in the community that don't work for ccsa so because we wanted to have a strong committee to review the the potential applicants so we have narrowed the field to four potential operators all four are strong I'll just say that all four bring to the table um the a track record of sustainability and all could be an asset to this potential

program quickly the next steps where we are the operator will sign anou once then oper the operator is finally determined they'll sign anou with us to be begin the process of developing um an Loi to bring to the county for negotiations the there are requirements the operator must agree to serve children on financial assistance you know many childcare programs do not accept public vouchers or financial assistance and that is not allowed in this setup um the operator must agree to participating in at least five years of technical assistance and and that's at no charge to them that that that period of time includes assistance with the lease and the buildout planning because the buildout planning is substantial given that it's a shell the um it also includes professional development for the staff at the center to meet the licensing

standards so they won't have to pay for the professional development as operators have to do when they have to get their staff uh to the potential chare credits for licensing and then um again as I already mentioned the quality improvement coach will work one-on-one with them uh to assure their sustainability over time they do have to agree and meet the standards to be a Durham prek classroom so they would be required to have at least one four-year-old Durham prek classroom and so that's another level the Duram pre program is another level of requirements beyond the five stars and they have to be able to meet that and all four of the finalists do meet those guidelines and the plan is to come to you with barring anything unforeseen to come to you with a information for a 15-year lease renewable lease so just quickly for background for

minimum standards they have to be very experienced and you can see those there they have to not only be very experienced but they have to have been operating a program within the most recent 5 years then the reason we did that is because it's public documents in their licensing um guidelines there are documents available about the true operation of their program that that is um measured through the licensing regulations and the regulatory um visits and guidelines that was just one piece of what we looked at but if they had operated a program 10 years ago or in another state a few years ago we wouldn't have had those kind of materials to look at they have to have a demonstrated ability and a track record for serving families that are economically diverse and that was really critical because some programs are really um consider themselves to be exclusive and don't have a open door for

all of our families um and obviously we want them to have a track record of being able to operate a program that has a mixed delivery method so we would we want to see a diverse program that serves children um without what some perceive to be a program that only serves any one type of group because we know the research shows us that that variety and that investment in a program that has diversity on all different levels really makes a difference in a child's development um again that they've started up and licensed the center some some programs are not licensed they are legally operating but not licensed and we felt it was critical in this endeavor that they have experience in a license program we did have some interest in from operators who don't have a license center and we did feel like that that was something that was

critical and again as I already mentioned the Duram preas standards and they have to be truly willing to participate in technical assistance we do have a lot of information about um how it is in the real world on the ground some programs don't really have an open door um to to accept assistance and um we want it to be a partnership with the program we don't go in and tell programs what to do we partner with them to provide the highest quality possible okay so where are we um the thing is that we took this on without a whole lot of guidelines um you know we said okay we will help you find a high quality operator but when you get down to the reality of getting a space and getting a

good lease that's good for the operator as well as the county the question becomes what are the guidelines that you expect the only guidance we got was that you did want somebody with experience and quality but also that you wanted there to be some priority for nonprofits you did not direct us to only work with nonprofits as there was with the other uh retail space so where we are is that of the four finalists there's one that's a nonprofit excuse me and three they or not and they're as I've mentioned before they're all uh strong and viable but they do all bring different things to the table and the question becomes if you are committed to a nonprofit operator then does that mean that you then are considering options to support the rent for a nonprofit operator you do

historically have Arrangements like that with um some other spaces in the county but it was not really set and for the nonprofit operator that is a you know certainly a big concern for the for-profit operators we've been very clear with all the candidates that there's some uh resources through the developer to help with the build out of a space that's part of the the building um but that they would have to be financially able to support the program you know that the lease would be theirs this is not Durham County's program they're being hired to run this would be a Child Care Program that they would be operating um the question becomes how strongly do you want a nonprofit and if so are you committed to a rent support or are you in a place as you have been looking at the retail that you want

someone who is is going to be able to um make their own way so to speak and pay pay a a negotiated lease Arrangement lease amount so we're just looking for some guidance we can't we haven't selected the the operator out of the four because we knew that there's so many different pieces so many different levers to pull to make it happen thank you I'm going to start first I see our attorney hand up so I want to start with him first yeah thank you um the question of rent relief is a little more complicated than uh may have been understood when this process began I don't know if anyone from our office was involved in those decisions um I know Mr mckenny senior assistant County attorney mckenny who

supports real estate has done some research on this and had a lot of conversation with the school of government um and if y'all have deeper questions I'm certainly going to defer to him because he's done the hard work but generally when you get into giving away space you're not doing it to somebody who's making money and even a nonprofit or a not for-profit who's taking vouchers or contract in with people is making money so you'd have to take a hard look at are Income restrictions I mean if legal aid gets community space at the courthouse because they're not charging people to provide services that's a much easier thing to justify and of course the first question is are they providing a service the county can provide um so it's not as simple as are you willing to give somebody rent relief

cuz they're a nonprofit and that sounded like what you were saying and I just wanted to make sure everybody understood it's not that simple a thing um so I'll just let that stand for now M real quick move to general questions from the can you raise your hand colle if you have a question specifically for attorney Allam I do not for the attorney I have my questions yes let's do questions to attorney Allam first and I'll here mine is really simple only because um one we can talk about our presentation later it great but you did say that there was four and one was a nonprofit the reason why I I don't feel comfortable answering that question it would no matter what answer we give since that applicant pool is so small what we say narrows it to that one and I'm concerned if we can even legally say that sitting here so that's why before we answer any questions could the

attorney say and maybe uh he can just say give us Direction not to answer that one since if you've gotten down that small and there's only one I don't want to say something that puts a thumb on the scale so if you could give us some direction on that so that we stay clean on this I'd appreciate it I might ask Nathan to stand up in case I start to say something wrong um well I mean the question is very open are you willing to provide rent relief um and I noticed in the slide it talked about for a nominal fee which really sounds what we in the law called di Minimus which is you know rent it for a dollar um when you say nominal um to give a business even a nonprofit making money even though they don't call it profit they keep it internal you'd really have to get into looking at or there are they depressing

the value of their work if they are going to a sliding scale for tuition and to what extent does that make the value of the lease less but the fact that they have to contract with DPS like any other vendor doesn't do that um to the extent that they agree to take vouchers for whatever reason businesses may not want to but they're still still drawing that income so it it's hard to say could you do something but it would have to get into what is the value of the lease because of any restrictions on their program I I hear all that what I'm saying the discussion today and and maybe I'll do it this way if it's okay with the board can we answer all of Dr Chappelle's questions except for that one and then that way they can pick the best one and then we will deal with that uh when it comes to it whether the nonprofit is Select or for property selected can we deal with the rent issue

at that juncture as opposed to discussing it today since the applicant pool is so small I'm just throwing that out there to see if my colleagues would agree and I just want to look at Mr mckenny in case I said anything crazy okay I'm safe so far well and I do want to say that it can it can be opened back up I mean the reality is that we followed your charge to identify candidates and there were more than four qualified candidates we just narrowed it for the purpose of trying to get to a a place of selection commissioner Carter had a question for the attorney I guess you answered it it just it doesn't make it's not logical to me that a nonprofit even is not an entity that we could provide rent relief to because they're not making a profit yes they're generating income but it's it's not it's not a profit they're making like you know they're not profiting off of what the families are paying they're they're making enough to sustain themselves I don't know but I hear you

that's the way it is right I'm understanding you correctly if they generate any Revenue even if it's not for a profit I think it's more about like the fees that they charge if it's a service they're providing for a fee versus not for a fee like you used the example of legal aid they don't charge fees right but the fee again does not provide the the agency with a profit you know but it would be more accessible it if it was free versus there's still in accessibility well and this also gets into what does it mean to be a nonprofit yeah it means you keep the money internally you're not paying out shareholders yeah you if you remember some years ago there was a resale store and it came out that the CEO and his wife who were both senior Executives were making over a million dollars each from a nonprofit not saying that's what's going on here people attaching cach a a nonprofit that doesn't always mean okay all right that's very helpful thank you that answers my question let's move on

okay commissioner Jacobs and commissioner howon yeah I think for me this is more of a policy issue I mean first of all I think it would be really helpful for our staff to actually first of all share how much we have actually already subsidized the building of the Sturm prek the county this was not originally a part of the plan for this building this goes way back um to my third term in office um sorry second term where we we added on the idea of building the Duram prek afterwards I mean the prek center and then it came up and and bar Perry you can elaborate on this that we needed there had to be a lot of foundational structural work done um we the county has already subsidized the creation of this durm pre by actually even building it um so I I would be more concerned about the fact that we have already subsidized

this and that um with the kind of budget that we're facing we're that if we were now going to be subsidizing the rent for the space what does that mean for other Durham pre programs that we have in the Durham prek um I think we start setting a precedent that frankly I'm concerned about and also just related to our own revenues because I would I want to understand what does that really mean for ongoing cost to the county as we're looking at you know wanting to expand prek other places so I think I'm I'm mostly concerned about this from a policy point of view um that this is not something that we said that we were going to do um we said that we were going to build and create the ability to create a prek center there which is what we're doing and so this is going to a whole other level by saying that we're going to subsidize the rent um so I I'm very concerned about this from a policy

perspective for for all of our Duram prek programs um but I also had questions off of this for you Linda which is um what is going to be the age range for the 86 children who are going to be there and also um the the one during prek class that's being set up um which is fantastic I love it um how many children will be in that prog in that classroom those are my two questions okay in a during prek classroom you can have no more than 18 children in the classroom 18 Max yeah the the center is we based on the downtown Durham chalk care analysis that we did we recommended that the seats be broader than just four-year-old prease seats and and so it is proposed as a birth to five Child Care Program with infant classrooms because there's a shortage a severe shortage of

infant classrooms in dur awesome I'm really excited to hear that age range and also I just want to applaud you on the process that you laid out for us as always you all are so thoughtful um and the work that you do similar to the Bulls initiative and Maiden Durham's work um you are great examples uh for our community of just being very intentional very thoughtful having in great process so thank you so much and I mean amazing that 14 providers applied um within this environment that we know that a lot of uh prek providers and early childhood providers have really struggled with the pandemic and everything so the fact that we got that many providers I'm it really blows me away that is fantastic thank you so commissioner Jacobs I do want to answer your question so um and thanks for Linda for hitting me up about that before the meeting um

the lease agreement that we have through the development as you know the developers constructing it and so the county is leasing back the child care space from the developer for a 15-year term and we're starting out at 176,000 a year 15 years 2% increase annually we're at $2 million and so that $2 million is exactly what you're talking about in terms of what we've already committed to the making the development deal work now the developer uh through the agreement has agreed to fund $198,000 worth of design and construction costs which is one of the reasons why we are really urgently trying to get the operator on board so we can go ahead and Design be the space so we we're not lagging too far behind the opening of the affordable housing which is slated to be complete in December and so just kind of putting it all in perspective for everyone that's sort of where we are with things so and

so to your point we are already subsidizing this project absolutely yes ma'am commissioner Auten thank you just reading and reading here but I think you may have answered the question so I've been asked in the community several times if the person if there's um a buildout for the pre Car prease Center that's wanting to be there and you I think you mentioned that they will not have to pay for build they will will yeah but but they as Perry just mentioned the 198,000 is from the developers going toward the buildout but that is nowhere near enough investment to build out the space because it's just a shell and you've got not only once the space is built out of course you've got to fill

the spaces with developmentally appropriate supplies of materials so there's that issue but the actual buildout um will cost a lot more than the $198,000 allowance because there's no classrooms right now it's just a completely empty shell so do you have an approximate cost no it really will depend upon the design this is the whole thing about the operator and this is also why we didn't want to just select one and and move away from the others because the negotiations would what may happen is once the operator gets in there it's possible they might they might feel uncomfortable that it was going to be too much so we were trying to have a backup plan of course but in terms of cost it's very hard to predict I I mean I expect it will cost at least a half a million dollars to build it out personally just my experience with child care

but uh that may not be right I I would go a a little higher than that the thing of it is being that this is a shell space we're going to have to put Plumbing mechanical electrical we're going to have to put some case work in we got Furnishings we've got just a myriad of stuff that it's going to take to make this thing work um and all I can do is go on my experience when we did the Head Start way more experience than me yeah the 198 is not going to carry us far we'll be lucky to get designed for that quite honestly so um just be yeah that might determined which direction we go um because you've got to be gener some income to be able to afford the buildout that's going to need to happen so I'm not going to say any more about that but um it's not going to be cheap yeah no not at all yeah thank you

I kind of piggybacking off of that last comment so um so all of these and since I know this is a rough estimate that you're coming up with just being in the space do all four of these groups kind of know how much they should anticipate their costs for the construction of the facility will actually be well we've tried to have realistic conversations about potential costs but in the absence of any kind of parameters that's pretty hard to do and that's why we were coming to get a bit more Guidance the other piece that you need to also be aware of is that when you open a childcare program the first six Monon period this State Licensing regulations require that you have what's called a temporary license it means you're you're legally operating and you're under review but you cannot receive vouchers for example you you're not eligible for those and so the operator is going to for the first six months any child care operator in a

licensed environment is going to have depressed revenue and so that's another piece of the puzzle around how much the rent ends up being and how much the build out costs and that type of thing okay and then my second question and attorney Allam you can tell me to shut up if I need to but going back to like this being more so of like a policy conversation about the direction we go in in my mind I'm thinking of like you know with the rent aspect of I see it as when the county starts to step in in that way then it's like the county is providing a part of that service and we've already been providing a part of that service by um subsidizing the construction of the space but it's going even beyond that in subsidizing the rent also um so with it becoming like in my mind more of like okay this is County supported child care even more then like if this was like County run hully I'd be like well what type of sliding scale options do we have for because then I

want to make it even more accessible to low-income families since the county is stepping in in such a significant way will there be sliding scale will there be priority for lower income families over like more seats at that lower level of the scale than the higher level um and yeah I think that would also factor into for me of just like CU it's now County funded programming kind of right so you see the complexity and I think that um the reality is that in the the other complication is in this post pandemic world where the federal stabilization Grant dollars are disappearing in June for our early Educators in North Carolina uh those funds have really propped up the system for our early Educators and unfortunately the timing of this the pandemic has really impacted the timing

of this you know prior to the pandemic the landscape of possibilities were C certainly much broader you know we we were thrilled to get 14 and of the 14 way more than 50% were high quality so we were happy with that but the reality is that because of the environment in child care and the lack of supports the legislature has not passed any additional resources to extend the stabilization grants beyond June that that was Federal money and the reality is that we are facing Statewide a tremendous uh potential loss of chare programs in the coming year and so again this this is a costly Endeavor and the question becomes you know are we looking for or are we looking for an operator with Deep Pockets that can operate the program and

we will have less ability to ask for things like potential sliding scale or you there's there's a limit to what you can dictate if you are leasing fully in the marketplace so just reality but but some of those um dictates have already been been included in the RFA it seems like so that's really good yeah but they were very they were modest compared to what you originally talked about like um commissioner you were saying you know more sunning scale or priority or whatever all of that was removed okay right so so no sliding scale well the operator could choose to do sliding scale but we're not requiring it what we were requiring them to do is to be good standing be in good standing with Durham DSS have no kind of Mark against them um be eligible to receive chare financial vouchers of which they can't receive

them in the first six months that's really interesting yeah the state as a state thing um but there were some other things y'all suggested like at one time you were considering County employee priorities at one time you were talking about school system teacher employees there were all kinds of things that were bandied about as Innovative approaches but all of those were stripped out to get to what we consider to be the a absolute non-negotiables like for example a festar rated license if they can't if they can't be a fivestar rated license then they're not the quality operator that we would be looking for and that's why they had to have a substantial track record operating at that level yeah I really liked the dictates you built into the RFA I thought they sounded extremely strong already but I hear they very much compromis there were a lot more that were that were desired for example we talked about requiring na accreditation which is you know the national level accreditation and we hope to support an

2 million according to what you were just telling us Perry for just construction stuff we're also going to be subsidizing sub subsidizing quality in a sense because um you contracted with us that's right we've contracted with you all to do that and the durm prek and all that professional development that they are agreeing to go through as part of the RFA um so that's all good one concern I still have outstanding is um if they're a for-profit do you think that that means that basically they'll be paying these

additional costs that we're not going to the rent full rent Etc right if we decide not to subsidize because they're not a nonprofit and they're generating income will they then be you know paying for this on the backs of families um alone or you said they have Deep Pockets already because maybe they're National well no I'm not saying they're Deep Pockets I'm saying you would be looking for more de I'll tell you that as of March 27th 2024 uh for example in terms of the cost of Care on the free market so to speak in Durham yes um a five star the yearly cost a five-star um four-year-old in the marketplace the average cost in Durham is $1,981 for the year um a infant five star $1,475 wow incredible that's as much as as much some people make for pree right and so you know this was one of

our main goals I think was to have affordable high quality Child Care accessible because it's affordable high quality um child care and preschool um and so will we be um will we be ensuring that we're going to be going along with these Market rates and and will families be able to afford it with the vouchers or with a you know the the subsidies that they're going to bring um what do you think well when when you qualify for a voucher you based on your income you're assessed a parent fee the parent fee is not related to the fee that the Child Care Program charges it's based on your income okay and so for those families who qualify for a voucher the state the complicating factor is that the state reimbursement rate for that age group is in all cases of every age lower than the average cost of tuition in Durham and so what that

means is that there will be fewer children able to access a voucher in this program if the provider is fully paying the cost for the program because in order to cover costs they will only be able to accept a certain number because their reimbursement rate would be less than what they need to charge to be able to cover their costs so in actuality it may become a program that's really not accessible to families well obviously we would be making every effort because we would be putting a dur prek classroom in there that would be a universal access classroom um would would families really be able to access these seats at a high percentage you know I I think you obviously would have to do all the math but you know in reality it's it would be a lower percentage you know I mean we would try really hard to get them to 20% of their

seats but again it would be quite challenging if the rent is at the market and if there's 3 to 500,000 they have to come up with for the rest of the buildout and you know long term they have to look at that over 15 years of their lease and all that how does this work at um w the old wited school is that one sub is that rent subsidized at the old wited school durm Hub schools um they're they're operating their program they don't charge there's no fees involved that is operating as a school and they are being reimbursed by the county through the county public school budget they're being reimbursed through dur prek they have use exceptional children's federal dollars they have braided funding streams to operate with and wied school as part of their facilties budget gotcha well this is really hard it is I don't know the

answer yeah do you have a recommendation pick the best one and then come back I mean we can pick the best one and come back but what we can say to you is that the best one may not work out in the lease arrangements and we would just I mean you know what I mean we would then have to go back you know I want families to be able to afford this clearly you know that's one of the reasons we're building affordable housing here and one of the ways you help families afford housing is to be sure they don't have to pay every dollar they make to child care and so no I I agree with that but what I'm saying if that is the case like let's really be honest then we should have written an RFP that was just for nonprofits and thought about this as opposed to today I'm not negating any of the claims that have been brought up here today but again I want the best for the kids and even through your very competitive applicant process there was only one nonprofit left there were three there were three excuse me thank you one so I I'm not I agree with everything I'm just saying we might have should and this is a learning experience cuz I didn't know this stuff either right so I'm not kicking anybody um but if that was now

that we know it's a priority you know I I'm curious you I don't know what the pleasure of the board is and I'm holding my questions I email I had a few but you know do we open this thing back up because we didn't think about these little Edo secrecies well one thing for clarity just to be sure you're aware there are not anywhere near as many nonprofit childcare programs in the state of North Carolina as there are for profit and in Durham in particular there are very few nonprofits so and and I can send you a report that tells you exactly how many I'd be happy to send you all that information but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do that I just want to be sure that you know that um we had of the 14 applicants three were nonprofit and that ratio felt about pretty correct to US based on the number that exists do we have um legal authority to provide Durham County issued voucher sorts of things like let's say for-profits are able to be selected to you know occupy this

space and run the high quality child care and we're going to make it more accessible because we are you know providing vouchers over and above what the state provides and we're paying we're going to pay more I mean is that even an option something like that right off the top I do not know but but we can certainly talk with the DS just thinking of all kinds of ways have to make sure it's an eligible Community for public assistance yeah right well just for just to share with you you are praying for subsidizing is that what you call wouldn't that be subsidizing you'd be subsidizing Families versus subsidizing the you just for just for clarity you you have your SS voucher program for child care that's paid for through state and federal dollars then you also support that by the money that you pay indirectly for those by having a social service office you know all the the the

money you contribute to help run the office but also we presently ccsa we administer through your arpa Grant we administer a chalk care voucher program but that will come to an end next year in May of 25 that program is designed to serve families who are not eligible for the state and federal vouchers through DSS we're looking at families who are at about 400% of federal poverty that can't afford child care as you can see from these rates that's that was funded through arpa we you know yeah I think I think for me it's kind of like with the RFA you've put all the minimum requirements like that's something that we all agree on and they're all meeting I think for me like personally the next priority is that how accessible is it to the families um as someone who has a

child in child care right now about $118,000 a year me and F used to want four kids until we started Alia in daycare and we're like no we can afford to and I think there are is just looking at like for my preference would be looking at which option is going to be opening the doors the most for our Durham County residents to have this option for child care that's affordable and accessible that's my personal priority yeah I guess I misunderstood um that slide when you go back to recommendations at the very back to that yeah I mean I guess I misunderstood I thought that was more like had more teeth to it um yeah I mean I think we've got to be really careful we we're putting this in our affordable housing project um we we definitely want to make sure that residents who live in that building can afford the child care that's the whole point so I guess my

question would be um how do we actually Implement some of the when it comes to a contract some of the things that are in here that we are ensuring that this is accessible to right um all people in our community so that that is you know that's the whole reason we subsidized it in the first place so I I really misunderstood that these were not something that were going to be um structurally in implemented I think that when we presented them to this body at that time for example we were recommending that you just uh provide an infant toddler program but you guys weighed in that you really wanted also to serve older children and so you know that was an example of you giving feedback and US adapting but in the absence of of of an actual Financial commitment what we did was we looked at what can we actually

require and once we get to the to the lease the feeling was once we got to those lease negotiations what depending on what the county decided to do I mean because if you go with a for-profit provider and there are not supports other than the ones that are already there then you have a lot less um ability to require prioritization of people who can't pay a market fee and since the state reimbursements don't meet the market fee either you know it gets really tricky yeah I mean I think the two bullets except accept children receiving public subsidies and other child care financial assistance consider income based sliding scale tuition I think it would be if I think we we probably need actual percentages or numbers or real targets I mean it's similar when we do our economic incentives contracts we actually have built in numbers and

things like that we're happy to do and we did require that they accept those subsidies and childcare financial assistance what we didn't do was absolutely require a sliding scale yeah but we can certainly do that if that's I think I mean I we don't know but I think what you're hearing from all of us is we we do want to make sure that this is is access as a priority yeah and I don't know whatever you think is the best way to incorporate that into the actual contract or whatever we yeah well we're more than happy to come back with this with a proposal also what I what I is here you say lenda with a with a private owner we have less control over what they do and who they accept right I mean you can put your requirements in the lease um but there's you know there's going to be a limit to what you can do

they they've got to be able to cover their costs you know so but obviously with your Economic Development and agreements you do with businesses you put a lot of um benchmarks in and requirements and that could certainly be done thank you all right do you have what you need from us and inclination of where we're well I would I don't think I do no I think okay what I'm hearing is that you would be more comfortable with more specificity in terms of how many um publicly subsidized children we believe the provider could afford I hear that and I hear that you prefer to have more teeth in requirements for the provider and we could certainly develop some proposals based on other um you know there's a lot of uh places like in California that have done this type of thing but there's not any around here

that have but in in uh different states and we can certainly come up with some proposals for you but all of them at their heart mean that you would have to invest and it sounds like attorney Allam may have some uh restrictions that I don't know how to navigate yeah that was going to be my question was the other thing we need to know is how can we invest in a way that will increase accessibility for lower income families that's legal so maybe attorney Allam can provide Perry and Nancy with that extra research and findings yes ma'am I mean it sounds like you're renting to Head Start because they aren't charging any fees to Children ex right I'm sorry could you repeat that said it sounds like you are providing nominal rent to Head Start okay I'm not familiar with our at Seminary at Seminary because they are a federally funded headstar program and

not accepting okay they don't accept TR a dollar a year yeah I was just going to say the Head Start pays the county a dollar a year to use the building they I mean it's but they otherwise provideed the services at no cost right so which makes it a lot easier to say here they are providing that service without generating Revenue right as a federal as a federal funded federally funded program yeah I also wanted to make the point earlier that we're not talking market rate in the center part of downtown Durham versus a dollar a year I think what we're saying is somewhere along that Continuum will'll find that sweet spot between the the selected provider what they need to be able to operate what we can charge them in rent and whether there remains a gap that then needs to be filled by an additional voucher program or some assessment of

the requirement ments that we're placing upon them and it sounds like affordability accessibility is a higher priority now while we can't as I understand my attorney's advice we can't offer a reduced rent rate below Market to a for-profit organization we may be able to provide a reduced Market rent to a nonprofit provider but that doesn't mean that that's the only mechanism by which we can subsidize the operation to achieve the policy goals that you're seeking and and with the nonprofit it's going to have to get into basically detailing the restrictions and qualifications they have to meet is 501c3 not the standard for that I'm talking about in terms of the services and how how their income is depressed

because are they accepting lower reimbursement are they taking a larger number of clients who cannot pay the full Freight they qualify for public assistance they are in the voucher program and that's what you've got to start looking into and that's going to the trick is we don't turn this into forensic accounting but that there is a way to be able to validate that there is reduced value in the space based on the restrictions and what they are giving up in terms of income to provide the services going back to the question about Head Start you know it's like hey they don't make money because the feds are funding it all and taking care of it okay great um not quite but but when you get into and just like we like well we look at a sliding scale okay what's that scale going to look like and how many spaces are they

reserving on the lower tiers that you can say okay there are now restrictions on your income and so those restrictions on the income make them eligible for rent support is that what you're saying potentially it what it does is it reduces the value of the property I see well yeah I mean there's no question that if we Implement more specific requirements regarding seat allocations then there's no question that it does diminish the value of the property for sure and of course then you'll get into getting that appraisal opinion as well yeah I mean it's not just yeah we think this is a good number cut it down yeah okay well I suggest that I confer with my colleagues more and that we just figure out do some more work and come back to you again thank you thank you thank

you we are even more off track with the time but I think it was very cookies yeah no cookies for you Perry even though it is our fault so um the next presentation we have is the presentation on fy2 Durham Transit work program we have 30 minutes allocated I'm laughing at that cuz we're Ellen you're a champ I know you can do it in three I'm joking I believe in [Music] you no I'm going to put this one on my colleagues guys let's try to keep within the time for our questions and comments when we get to the question and comments portion get straight to the question we don't need all the

background the button on the right all right okay um thank you for uh wait saving the best for last all the transit presentations uh Ellen be Durham County transportation director uh here with Brandy Miner the senior administrative officer from Durham County and our Durham Transit staff working group administrator um Steve slosberg who does the tax District administration um at go triangle um and we're here to present our final recommended work program which is the annual budget for the Durham County Transit plan uh so the staff working group uh is the four member committee staff committee that develops this work program um it consists of member from go triangle the dccm Durham County and the City of Durham and we're proud to say that the staff working group unanimous unanimously recommended this final work program for approval at their meeting on March 20th uh we have several staff people

from the organizations here in the audience too and you'll see that the city of Durham and go triangle are both presenting after this so in terms of speeding things up um there could there could be an opportunity to ask those questions later too so keep that in mind um all right so this is the first time we developed the work program um post the 2023 adoption of the new Transit plan and the governance agreements and the first time with durm County serving as the staff working group administrator so uh want to acknowledge Brandy she's been here about a year and just done a tremendous job uh coordinating the development of this work program um it was a lot of work to put put together a 200 Page budget document um a lot of coordination with our partners um a lot of like consistent and professional communication back and forth uh to develop this so uh really proud of the work we've done um to develop this work program and that it advances the recently adopted Durham County Transit plan uh the the next

steps are the final steps are for it to be adopted by two boards the Board of Commissioners and the go triangle Board of Trustees so uh I'm going to do a little repeat I'll try to be fast um of what you received in February on the draft work program uh this final work program is very similar we didn't change that much but we want to make sure that it's well understood that this work program maintains all the key themes from the Durham County Transit plan um yall know that we did an extensive public engagement process to develop that plan um and those key themes reflect what we heard first and foremost improving the current system for current uh bus riders um secondly uh better experience at stops and stations so improving all the bus stops in Durham and improving the transit centers uh thirdly connecting the region with quick and reliable Service uh we uh Durham still a priority for Durham to connect to Wake County

Orange County with you know faster more reliable bus or passenger rail service so that's um in our plan and then lastly uh more projects sooner so we both want to maintain focus on those long-term projects that take unfortunately decades sometimes to develop as well as things that can be accomplished more quickly so uh the in terms of the more Pro getting more projects sooner um this work work program implements the governance framework that we established in those agreements uh the work program includes a bunch of project sheets uh for all the different project s that we're funding uh those project sheets are going to be the exhibits in the project agreements so that's going to actually come forward in the uh next month or the or June for approval the Duram County you know com project sheets project agreements um and those project agreements include implementation metrics um the implementation metrics

will be tracked on the website that we're developing um y'all just recently approved the contract with a consultant to develop that website so it all fits together as a system uh to implement those priorities in the long-term plan um and track uh fund loes on an annual basis and then track the implementation so um in terms of improving the current system U the the work program funds a lot of the um bus operating improvements in the recently adopt developed um short range Transit Plans by God Durham and go triangle um a lot of those services are um for gorum at this point um you'll hear from the city on the progress they've made towards uh the bus driver shortage and being able being in a position to expand Services next year uh we also when you're expanding service need to uh increase the capacity of the maintenance facilities so uh one big change that we

2 million uh this is what the city submitted to the work program process uh we also are increasing the funding for the village Transit Center uh both of those projects durm

station and the village Village Mobility Hub or Transit Center um are receiving a Federal grant there's two projects to provide access to Transit on Junction Road and Horton Road uh we are continuing to fund the go triangle Le Durham bus stop improvements program uh this is uh our commitment to improving every bus stop in Durham it's a multi-year project it's going to take a long time uh we're continuing to fund that uh the goal is to improve 50 bus stops next year uh go triangle will be presenting um on their progress on the bus stop project um and then we are continuing to fund the go triangle Mobility Hub or Regional Transit Center I will admit that um we are not consistent in all of in how we what we call this project we need to do a little cleanup because names sometimes change over time but the regional Mobility Hub and the Regional Transit Center are the same thing it's the main bus stop in RTP area where all the go triangle routes kind of converge

0 study so this is a study led by ncdot looking at opportunities to integrate Transit into Highway and

arterial projects uh expect to have that agreement probably coming to this board uh later this month and then uh lastly we are getting underway with the project agreements on the Durham County Le East Durham railroad crossing study uh so we received a f Grant last year um and we were also fortunate to receive an additional $850,000 uh from congresswoman fushi uh through the community projects funding uh so um we'll be getting underway shortly on that unfortunately there was a fatality at one of those Crossings in the last month which you know underscores the importance of looking at that issue all right I'll turn it over to Brandy to give all right so I'm going to discuss a little bit about our schedule and some of the updates that we've made since the draft work program was released um as you can see the work program was released for public comment for a period of 21 days beginning January 31st uh

during the month of March we also presented the work program to the mo board as well as the go triangle audit and finance committee to which we received positive feedback and support uh from both the work program was finalized by the staff working group in uh March at the March 20th meeting and as Ellen mentioned uh it was voted unanimously to recommend to move forward for approval uh the last two steps in this process is to receive your approval uh from the board accounting Commissioners and then following your approval we will have approval from the go triangle Board of Trustees in June here we go this one okay there we go uh as it relates to the engagement period which I mentioned was 21 days we had several uh forms of advertising uh we advertised on the go forward website which is managed by go triangle um we had three tabling events at Durham station um where we were out well well

go triangle staff were out uh interacting with some of the Riders of the buses um we did also advertise on social media via Instagram Facebook and Twitter um there was also a email campaign which was also managed by go triangle and we also had um residents email us at the Durham County Transit plan email address uh we do feel the engagement period was successful um but we will look for ways to improve our engagement efforts so that next year we can have a better reach um to our residents uh one of the things we know we will do next year is to create a summary document because this was a 200 Page document um a lot of people kind of got discouraged you know with reading it that was one of the comments that we received um to make it more reader friendly uh so we will explore that next year in our work program maybe a one to two-page summary document to include with the work program the three key engagement themes that we received during the public

comment period uh with the first was for specific route or bus stop requests we have shared those with our partners at Gold dur and go triangle uh for future Improvement planning uh the second was continuation of Fair free Transit and the low-income Fair program there was a lot of support um for continuing those efforts and the last recom the last item was the recommendation to improve the work program which I just mentioned um with us creating that summary document that will help our readers be able to see the highlights without having to go through the entire uh document so we will consider those for next year's work program okay so we did have uh four updates from the time the draft was released um until the to the final recommended program uh we had four total updates uh there were three from the city of Durham the first is the increased cost of services uh which decreased our budget by about $33,000 the transit governance Ila

allows the city to use up to 1 half of the $7 vehicle registration fee revenues to cover the increased cost of existing services and so now the Isis allocation will be calculated based on the actual uh registration tax instead of the budgeted so we had a slight decrease um in that project the second item for the go uh for city of Durham or go Durham um was the gold Durham data process and visualization uh this will increase the budget by $162,800 this was a new request um and this request is so the city will be able to execute their own contract with swiftly for the data processing and visualization tools that were previously funded through a go triangle sponsor project the last item for the city was the vehicle repower project they actually rescinded this request and decided to use previously approved funding for this project so this will decrease the budget by almost $792,000 since they'll be using the

previously approved funds there was one project from go triangle uh kind of related to item two for go Durham uh which is also the performance data process and visual visualization Tool uh overall this will decrease the budget by a little bit over $999,000 so go triangle swiftly contract will now only cover their Fleet and so what they've done is they've taken their portion of the swiftly contract and they've Consolidated it into another project and also included about $88,500 for their no uh dues and so they're completely closing out this project and they're consolidating that project those funds into a different project so overall that will decrease the budget by $995 so those were the only four updates that we had from the time the draft was released until the final recommended overall the revenues the projected revenues will remain the same that were

5 million total for revenues the four updates that I mentioned earlier will affect the transit plan Administration as well as the transit operations as you can see both of those items um you can see the the variance in those items from the chart but overall the operating expenditures increased by $3,664 on the capital side the Capital expenditures decreased by that almost $792,000 which was uh when the city resented that vehicle repower project

sheet so that's the that's the variance you're seeing in the capital expenditures overall the recommended expenditures by agencies have changed for the city of Durham as well as go triangle as mentioned in those four updates um so overall our recommended expenditures have decreased by 761,00 244 and with these changes this will increase our um transfer to fund balance by the same amount $761,000 U policy minimum that we must maintain in fund balance the fund balance is necessary to ensure that the durm County Transit plan has the financial capacity to implement larger scale projects such as bus rapid transit or passenger rail improvements in the

future and as you can see uh we do not reach the 10 million we get a little close um outp pass FY 35 but overall um our fund balance is pretty healthy this next slide just covers our carryover project um these are projects that were previously approved in Prior fiscal years um you'll see the Holloway Street and F Street that Ellen talked about earlier um and just the list of all the projects that are carried forward into this work program these are not new requests again these are projects that were previously approved in Prior fiscal years but we wanted to highlight this in the work program and you will see all of the project sheets associated with these projects in the appendix section of the final recommended so that was not included in the draft but it is in final recommended plan and I'll turn it back to Ellen okay uh all right so with all of those project sheets um you know there's

detailed um funding tables that show the total cost of the project uh what is the Durham County Commitment if there's other funding sources and if there are unfunded projects so we want to make sure that it's very clear to you and our partners what the Durham County Transit plant is committed to um so this chart shows the six projects that have some unfunded Pro uh funding unfunded cost in those um project sheets um real quick the you know First Column here is the total cost of the project um sometimes there are other funding sources particularly for go triangle projects that are shared across the Three Counties uh the green column it represents what the Durham County Transit plan is committed to this is either what has already been approved what is in the 25 work program or what is modeled in the future um and then of course we um encourage and support our partners in applying for federal funds um some of these projects have awarded

federal funds or have active applications for federal funding uh but then there are some unfunded costs as well and uh we want to make sure that it's clear that that at this point you know in terms of what this work program says uh the Durham County Transit plan is committed to those numbers in the green column and the blue column are really a project sponsor responsibility at this point um so there the durm the 2023 Transit plan you know made it clear that this funding source was one of many funding sources to support Transit and transportation projects in Durham um Transit agencies continue to have Financial commitments for maintaining the Baseline needs and funding some of the more general transportation needs uh Federal on local funding was um always planned to be necessary to fully fund all the projects and so this work program is consistent with that 2023 Transit plan policy statement um and we you know will continue to work with our partners um in Partnership to make sure

that there is a plan for these unfunded costs um you know if if without a plan there is a risk that we won't be able to achieve everything that's in our Transit plan um and then lastly you know working through this whole process we discovered that there are some projects that were able to be closed out so there's a table of close out projects in the work program um some of these are closed out because they are finished some of these are closed out because they are replaced with other projects or um transferred to other agencies um and some are are no longer needed so uh we we intend to formalize that project closeout process in coming years so with that that is our uh unanimously recommended FY 25 uh work program if there's any questions we'd be happy to take it thank you El and team sorry I had to step in and out um but I will bring it

to the board for questions and we have three items from Ellen so mind her okay commissioner Carter then Jacobs Well first thank you what a great presentation and and Brandy so glad to meet you in person and really appreciate what seems like very complicated and detailed budget work that you tried to help us understand today and I feel like I have a good grasp on it thanks to your presentation thank you so much and you too Ellen as always um and you too Steve um the one question that I have I I really um appreciate the fact that this is unanimously approved by the staff working group and um feels like we should definitely give it our stamp of approval as well my one question is about the slide towards the end where um I guess there's $30 million non-funded costs for the city for go Durham's bus

maintenance facility and the par Transit facility and I see go triangle has unfunded maintenance cost to but they're applying for a Federal Grant and maybe I should just ask this when the city presents but I was wondering what is the plan there for $30 million in unfunded cost between the two but I can ask the city perhaps yeah I mean the the project sheet um and I'll just to give you a little context the you know 2023 Transit plan included $5 million for these two projects so we are increasing that yes by 25 million 2 30 million okay um which represents 50% of the projected cost there was a study that kind of developed better cost estimates for these projects but also we always knew that 5 million was low like we right we always when we developed the transit plan it was a balance of how much do we fund this and how much do we fund that so that we can uh try to achieve the most right and so that was one of the things where we said well you know we're we're going to fund

this at a lower amount and hope that um there's other funding sources uh so with the uh increase in revenues you know that we've modeled and uh we were able to increase this so we so we increased it by 25 million across those two projects uh but yes it still doesn't fully fund the projects um it's probably going to take several years to develop these so hope we can work with the city on identifying the other $30 million um okay through local funding or applying for Federal Grant or some other Grant okay thank you Jacobs I had a very similar question about this and I I do look forward to um hearing what the city has to say but I do I wonder alen when we decide what we're going to invest in whether it's a go triangle or a A or a

city project what type of vetting process are we going to be using to determine if it's a good invest if um adequate planning has been done whether there is a plan for project delivery uh for going after other other funding sources H how are we incorporating that going forward in our new process um everything goes to the staff working group first I guess that's the purpose of the committee is to represent the four agencies and be a forum for discussing budgets and strategies uh before it comes to the to this board or the go triangle board so um that's that's that's where it should begin um we have an amendment process as well every year so you you know youve you've approved that various times and we'll have an amendment actually next month um

so there's a regular process where we revisit that and bring forward any changes um you know we generally you know ask that our project sponsors present um memos or presentations at those staff working group meetings okay I can't I mean it's a yeah it's an art it's not maybe right well I think um I think you know in what you presented today about the project sheets and all of that I think is going to really help us but you know I I glad I'm glad you almost like um it was like a disclaimer that you just said at the end which I appreciate because it's important I mean we are just one funding source um you know the city council can can uh they can they need to um designate revenue for Transit and transportation Investments whether it's through property tax or their budget or through Bond referendums like we're just one little piece and also going after

state state and federal funding and as we know project delivery is very key because the longer it takes to actually execute then the the more the costs go up um so I think the the structure that we've created um the system there's a lot I think there's a theme of systems that work and the fact that the system that you all are creating um your St you Brandy and Ellen and everyone all your staff that you are implementing is I think is fantastic so thank you um I was also one great news about the additional funding for the great uh railroad um grade crossing that 850,000 what will that be used for does it can it be used for like the next step or does it have to go through the for the planning great question um this is very new and really we just had a

conversation last week with our F Partners about this um so there some options that we're looking into I can't say exactly what it's going to be used for at this point but okay all right well it's good to have the money and I think lastly I just want to say I I just think it's so exciting all of the studies that are in this year's Transit plan because as we know with transportation funding the first step is you have to do a study that's the first step so it means that you know that's the pathway to actually getting funding and implementing it's a very long process but the fact that we're getting going with these things is and a lot is happening and it is super exciting so thank you ni chair Burns I because we got other stuff um one uh we've always talked about how you how we have all these bus stops that are coming right

like 30 then 50 next year 60 I just want to say we're seeing them like we are seeing them and um that means a lot to me it means a lot to the folks that um we represent the community I think people did not believe it I can think of two on Gear street that are especially impressive like they're not stakes in the ground they're concery they shelters and folks are super excited about them so we always ask y'all about them I just you know we do that every time we come here we ask about the number we ask about the tracking that's about the progress I just want to give some flowers to say I got some folks in my neighborhood that don't have to stand in the rain no more so um please keep that work up uh and I do I I know that a congresswoman Fu she sent it out so I know the grant is called a repair Grant and it's on her disclosure um I don't know if since I don't want to hold anybody to it but I don't imagine that what the project what it was supposed to be used for would be too different but I I'll just wait and wait for you to get the answer back to us about specifically about what it can and cannot be used for

and I'm just happy that we are doing one also Kudos The Ellen I remember that day weed talk I said go after all of it you came back I went after all of it in the next minute you came I got 850,000 all I'm saying to you Ellen could you do me just one favor just go do it again like four more times let go more so thank you so much there are a couple applications in be great to receive funding for those and those are from the city of Durham and go triangle so I believe in you everyone requires everyone to aggressively go after fun funding these thanks thank you so much I think that's all the questions for this item I just really like that you guys have a staff working group on this also I think that's really cool that the transit team has that I'm wondering what other departments and areas of work could we have like a staff working group because I feel like especially when so much comes to us when I'm listening to this presentation I'm like well if it was unanimous among staff then it's pretty

straightforward um but thank you I think so Madam chair I know you were looking at me but um I'm in this conversation so much I felt like the board the other board members need to ask the questions um but thank you thank you and thank you all for your presentation team Ellen you can stay in the hot seat we'll move on to the presentation from the city of Durham of the FY 23 go Durham annual report report good afternoon my name is Sean Egan I'm the director of transportation for the city of Durham uh thank you very much for inviting me here to share with you uh the exciting work that we're doing uh with the god Durham system and some of the highlights from our annual report

for fiscal year 2023 uh so for the go GM transit system fiscal year 2023 was defined by continued recovery from the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic and transition to a new management approach slide thank you this approach focuses on performance and accountability while establishing a strong foundation for for delivery of major service and facility improvements in the years ahead in May 2023 city council authorized a new service contract with financial penalties and incentives tied to the concerns voiced by Riders during Community engagement such as ontime performance cleanliness and customer service the new contract is directly managed by the city transportation Department's new Mobility Services team led by two of our Region's

most respected Transit professionals Brian fahe and Jennifer green fairf free service ease the burden for those essential workers our community relied upon throughout the pandemic at hospitals skilled nursing facilities pharmacies and grocery stores in particular it made a big difference for the 77% of God Duram Riders who do not have access to a vehicle where Transit is their transportation they count on it every day we also laid the foundation for the expansion of our zero emissions bus program we joined the zero emissions bus resource Alliance to share data and best practices with our peers across the country and we are providing training to bus operators and mechanics so they have the skills to maximize the benefits of this clean energy technology for our

Riders and our community our senior shuttle addresses the importance of access to Fresh Foods for residents in senior living communities who have limited Transportation options we expanded the program in 2023 adding new sites at Carver Creek Morehead Hills 519 East Main Street and the witted School in February 2020 3 the Durham city council recognized 16 inductees to the million Mile Club recognizing extra the extraordinary achievement of bus operators who safely navigated a 40ft bus through our streets for more than 1 million miles without a preventable Collision we provided over 910,000 more annual passenger trips in FY 23 compared

to fy22 a 19% increase and average daily passenger trips increased by over 2400 compared to fy22 as shown in the chart we're now regularly providing more than half a million trips each month and we are on Pace for more than 6 million trips in 2024 by population the city of Durham is the fourth largest city in North Carolina but our transit system has the second most ridership in the state this is the clearest demonstration of how much Durham residents count on transit for their daily Transportation needs it also indicates a strong appetite for more and better Services we can provide thanks to support from the Durham County Transit plan the remainder of the presentation shows key key performance indicators we

have established for the god Durham system city of Durham and God Durham operations staff meet monthly to review progress and identify opportunities to improve performance safety is our top priority so we will start with these kpis we track incidents at our Durham station terminal where we have nearly 12,000 daily boardings as well as onboard incidents on all of our routes across the system as shown here rates are consistently below Target but we continue to develop training and customer engagement tools to reduce the frequency of safety incidents on our system we continue to closely track operator assault incidents and even the one we experienced in FY 2023 is one too many improved training and coordination with law enforcement have helped to

limit the number of assaults and threats to bus operators what you can also see here with onboard incidents is that the majority of these are minor General disturbances or rule violations such as playing music without headphones what we call preventa bles can be a major Collision or something as minor as a side mirror stri striking a canopy or a tree branch note that in September 2021 we had zero preventable crashes we are working to make that a regular feature rather than the exception we created the million mile program to recognize those bus operators who have logged 1 million miles without a preventable crash due to the importance of transfers at Durham state station the target for ontime arrivals at the station is

org careers for more info and please spread the word that we are hiring the red line here shows scheduled

hours and is used to measure the share of published 2020 service levels that we provided uh in 2023 taking into account announced service reductions due to Staffing shortages we're consistently around 100% for this measure of how we match how how much of the service that we publish we deliver the blue bars show the difference between budgeted service and actual service delivered reflecting the reduction to Approximately 80% of budgeted service levels for FY 203 I'm pleased to report that in January of this year we increased service to 100% of 20120 service levels and hiring continues and will enable service expansion to begin on the 27th of this month uh on routes that serve Durham Tech uh the Duke VA campus uh the

m. with 30 minute Service uh as part of the first expansion that we've been able to do in more than four years can you just explain this side so the blue so the the 100% the blue bars are if we had enough operators to deliver 100% of the service that's in our budget so we lined up the dollars there were there was funding in the Durham County Transit plan for us to be able to increase services but because we didn't have the staff we fell short we were only able to deliver 80% of the service we had the dollars for but so you would still provide we're still providing 100% or more scheduled hours of what we publish right so what we tell the community so we told them

we're going to be cutting back service on these routes and we're in terms of what we've published what we print in the so it's not 100% of scheduled hours that we've been providing like the 100% that we've been getting from July 21 through May 23 is not the same it reflects the published service Cuts right so we're we're providing 100% of the reduced service levels in in 23 but we're back up as of January of this year to those blue bars if they extended to January of this year would be up at a um at 100% because we're back to that 2020 service level we've done uh major uh hiring over the course of the last year and that's enabled us to get back to uh full 2020 service levels uh and then on the 27th of this month uh will start expansion Beyond those 2020 service levels so uh we're going to continue uh to push to be able to have the Staffing

in place to implement and deliver all of the services that uh you saw in Ellen's presentation that are funded by the Durham County Transit plan so each month uh you know when it gets to Staffing I have the pleasure of meeting with some of the most recent graduates from our bus operator training program to thank them for making these service Restorations and the expansion uh that making that possible the expansion that we'll see at the end of this month we've set an aggressive Target of more than 20,000 miles between failures and we fell short of this goal repeatedly in 2023 as onethird of our Fleet is at the end of its useful life and scheduled for replacement with the arrival of 18 new buses in 2026 keeping the fleet in a state of

good repair is critical to avoid service disruptions that can impose a significant hardship on our Riders an important change we made with the new contract was to add a senior director of customer engagement and marketing focused on the customer experience e godurham since taking on this role in July Brenda Jones has brought strong Focus to addressing complaints and using customer feedback to improve training and procedures to provide a better customer experience including the QR code initiative we announced last month to enable Riders to report cleanliness and other concerns at our bus stops the customer response rate is a standout indicator for us because we want our customers to know their concerns are heard and their concerns are being addressed we consistently respond to

100% of customer concerns within five business days so looking ahead our future is bright with the support of unprecedented funding for God Durham in the 2023 Durham County Transit plan design is underway for bus stop and access to Transit improvements on the Holloway and fville corridors and the revitalization of Durham station as well as dramatic increases in system service levels of more than 50% in the years ahead the 2025 draft Transit work program for Durham County uh shows more than $26 million for the city of Durham and God Durham projects including service frequency increases and new cross town routes $7 million an increased funding for Durham station to make the gorgeous image you see there a reality an additional 4 million for God Durham and access

operations and maintenance facilities as well as $374,000 for the direct investment in Mobility Equity dime Grant to support continued fairf free service on go Durham uh as I close I want to thank our partners at go triangle whose CEO is up next as well as the Durham Chapel Hill carbo Metropolitan planning organization represented here by Kelly Richard um for making these improvements possible but in particular uh I want to recognize Durham County transportation director Ellen Beckman who has been instrumental uh in advancing this critical work with that I'm happy to answer any questions thank you thank you so much on uh for this presentation and all of the work of the city providing uh the bus services we start question to see commissioner hton thank you madam chair thank you for

your presentation and all this great information I just have two questions one has there been any are there any incidents that's happening around the bus station yes so uh you'll see uh we track incidents that are happening at durm station um as well as incidents that happened on board uh our service U so we're we're tracking those uh and we're coordinating uh with law enforcement as well as uh with the city's um Community safety department to find the right response to um the issues that we're seeing if it's a crisis response uh the heart team has staff who are trained in mental health response or other crisis response so we want to make sure that we're providing uh the appropriate response for an incident whether it's at Durham station or across the system so are you saying that it has not

risen to be be a real problem it's a concern it's it's certainly something that I hear about from our staff as well as some of our writers uh so and our response to that uh is many of the concerns about Safety and Security at Durham station are included in the station improvements project so we put a strong uh emphasis on Safety and Security in that process we conducted uh a threat and vulnerability assessment to look at the design of the facility and how we can use things like increased lighting for example uh to uh address crime prevention concerns at the station uh so those facility improvements are part of the response uh we also have uh Durham Police Department uh officers uh on site at Durham station uh and then we're also working uh with uh other uh crisis response to be able to uh address those

concerns but it it's certainly a concern I hear about from our staff as well as our riters okay all right I may want to follow up with you on that um the other one is infrastructure um we've had so many um complaints in southern Durham about transportation and the infrastructure that's not there is there any plans around um transportation in those areas what I'm I'm talking about southern dur uh so uh the the city transportation department uh has prepared a whole set of proposals for uh improved um sidewalk uh and other uh pedestrian safety improvements I gave a presentation at the um City Council budget Retreat on March 1st uh

identifying projects uh that would uh uh be Bond eligible if the city were to issue a transportation infrastructure Bond what types of uh projects would be candidates for funding through that uh Bond so uh that decision um is under consideration by the city council but we've put forward uh a number of proposed infrastructure improvements that uh could be funded either through the city CIP or through um a bond and many of those are um in the uh the southern portion of the city okay all right thank you commissioner Jacobs then commissioner Carter uh well thank you so much Sean I really appreciate you um coming into presenting to us um I think it's really important as we strengthen our Partnerships and working together and especially since

now uh with the new Durham County Transit plan 70% of our funding is now going for local uh bus service other types of investment in bus and just to remind everyone that when the Durham County Transit tax was approved to voters it was really supposed to be designated for Regional Transit of course we've updated the plan and now we're allocating 30% and the majority of this is going um to bus service so it is really important that you are coming before us um I do want to look at um the slide the one right before this I mean what strikes me is that it looks to me when I look at the orange that the the amount of funding that the city is uh that the in the orange has stayed relatively flat

um and you know since 2016 um and that we see you know what's projected out it it it's flat so and so and then you know obviously we have our Transit plan as you can see that we continue as we move on through the years that we're increasing so could you explain why the Orange is flat sure so this is not uh a dollar value this is the cost of an hour of service okay uh so it used to be uh five or more years ago that we were paying less than $100 an hour uh for service I think the 25 work program has us at about $147 uh per hour so we've seen a really significant increase uh about a 50% increase in the last several years in the cost of an hour of service uh and the bulk of that uh is attributable to

increases in uh bus operator compensation uh so we've made um significant Investments to recruit and retain uh Personnel for uh what is an incredibly difficult I call it the most difficult job the toughest job in transportation um is being a bus operator and so we've seen a really significant increase in that compensation that increase has enabled us to get back to 100% uh service levels um and put us in a position where we can expand uh later this month and continue expansion in fiscal year 2025 uh but uh each each one of those units each one of those hours is costing a lot more today so it's requiring uh significantly more investment for those hours that are funded U by City sources um and then uh the the assumed cost per hour uh has risen for those hours that

75 cents on the property tax so that's about U $15 million uh I think round numbers 15 million okay so we're are other yeah uh fees and and yeah okay so I just want to really lift that up because $15 million that the city is currently funding for Transit um when that is the city's responsibility that is a primary responsibility of the city of Durham to provide for Trans Transit

and Transportation um and you know I don't know it' be interesting to see the trend of over the last 10 years how the Investments have changed in that amount because again we are investing 26 million this year um in in transit and so I I do want to raise that up because um you know we the city cannot be dependent on us for funding something that is a city responsibility we are we are again we're investing majority of our Transit dollars back into this function that is a city function um but this is something you know we have to do it we we we continually are increasing our funding for Education things that are our primary responsibilities um and so I just really want to make that clear I think there from some things I've heard there's some misinterpretations uh about whose responsibility is what what and I

certainly do hope that um that the city will seriously consider investing in things like sidewalks and um taking over some of the streets downtown because that that is really going to help us um move forward I I would also be interested then to know even um the things that we are investing in that we saw earlier in the transit plan what what is the plan to for the city to meet those funding needs for the fville street quar the Holloway Street quarter uh the best maintenance facility um all of these things are going to require local city funding um the downtown station um so if you could um let us know um in a follow-up email um what what what local funding from the city is being provided for those things um and I was really excited to see about the tri triangle signal

priority project that you're doing could you tell us about that cuz that's you know that's it gets into the goal one of the things about getting traffic getting the buses moving more quickly so love to hear more about that sure so um for uh those of you who've been on our buses you know that um there it can happen where the bus pulls up serves the stop folks get off folks get on and as soon as the bus is about to get moving again the light turns green yellow red and then everybody you know all 30 or 40 people on that bus are stuck at that light through another cycle what the traffic signal priority does is it allows the bus to request additional green time so if the bus is uh about to make its way through the intersection it can say can I have just a few more seconds of green time so that I can clear the intersection uh and stay on time uh and what we see is that um it

can significantly improve uh travel times uh and the reliability of the uh of the bus service uh it's pretty uh exciting technology uh so there is equipment on board the buses that communicates with equipment um that's associated with the traffic signal system uh so we've been undertaking a major study for the last couple of years of uh how we could uh take advantage of this capability we've already implemented it for emergency vehicles so if there's a fire engine or an ambulance that needs uh signal priority that's granted U so the next level really is for us to offer that signal priority to uh our buses uh and so what we did on the fville corridor was to look at all 13 of the signalized um inter sections from the heti Heritage Center down to Hillside High School and

say all right well can we coordinate this so that uh we have the right equipment on the buses and then the right equipment uh at all of those 13 signalized intersections to give the buses that extra advantage to give the buses that extra green time uh and our hope is that we can have a successful deployment on the fville corridor this year and then look at the Holloway Corridor as as the next one up to be able to offer that same Transit Advantage there well that's very exciting and I hope we can replicate this on other quarters thank you commissioner Carter yes I just want to thank you Sean for coming and presenting to us and your this report was had a lot of really interesting data points in it um all of your kpi uh data collection that you're doing I think is really um interesting and helpful I'm sure in in the planning that you all are doing um it's exciting to

see the the improvements that are happening partly funded by the city partly funded by the County County Transit tax dollars and really grateful for that partnership um one of the standout data points you presented today in my mind was the fact that and I just want even be sure I have this correct but that Durham has the second largest ridership in the state that's right ahead of Wake County even you know ahead of the city of Raleigh's goale system as measured by unlined Passenger trips which is the federal standard for ridership measurement incredible um so it is important that we um fund waste fund this work and um and also fund our regional transit needs as well one question is there any um particular investment in Vision zero goals that you would want to note that are you know particularly noteworthy I guess out of

out of this presentation or out of the work work program that we just approved I think that the access to Transit improvements that we're doing are really a critical step in addressing our vision zero goals so uh for example when uh uh Congressman David Price reached out a couple years ago and asked us um if he could come and tour some of our project locations uh we took him out to Junction Road at the intersection of Junction Road and NC 98 and you can see along the west side of Junction Road preceding North uh this dirt path uh that folks uh are walking along the railroad tracks yeah kind of squeezed in between the railroad tracks and Junction Road where uh the vehicle traffic is uh very fast uh and and we've had a number of um collisions serious injuries and fatalities even along that stretch and many of those folks were walking to or

from the bus stop uh and so that's why we included The Junction Road access to Transit project as part of the raise Grant application that we did for the US Department of Transportation for the Holloway Corridor so it would be the Holloway corridor from uh Roxboro to us70 but then also um sidewalk and pedestrian safety improvements along Junction Road uh because that has been a high crash location uh there's clearly strong demand uh based on the dirt path that you see uh beside the road U and so we're uh we're moving forward right now with the design of those improvements along Junction Road uh we also have uh an access to Transit project um at on Horton Road uh near guest uh and proceeding West from there um and those access to Transit making sure that uh Riders can safely walk to and from uh the bus stops

75 and the way that the County Transit Tax Works that was something that was like voted um and allocated separately to have larger Transit tax dollars what is the dollar or the scent amount do we half a sent yeah sent just yeah just like Wendy like just thinking about the 15 million that the city Only budgets versus like yeah the county has that fund but also it's for the larger County or not larger City County projects which is wondering why

the city is only funding 15 million um when it is one of the main services that the city provides is Transit and especially when we talk about equity and making sure that we have more frequent bus is the step of the traffic signal priority so I think that's like a conversation up thing you having with our Council colleagues of we need more money in transit from the city Side uh it's certainly an important issue um that um city council um will need to address uh we're right now uh still able to use some of the federal covid relief funding that we got over the past several years uh but uh that funding uh and the the remnants of that funding uh will be uh fully expended uh in fy2 uh so when I spoke at the city council last month identified that um there is a significant uh budget

need that's that's developing um in FY 26 and Beyond uh and that really is driven primarily by uh Personnel costs the cost of wages but also uh fringe benefits healthc care retirement uh as we raise those wage rates all those other U benefits are are rising along with them uh and that's increasing the cost of an hour of service uh and so the that will be something that the city council uh will need to address uh in future years we have one more year uh where we can utilize uh the balance of that uh Federal covid funding um but there's going to be um an important discussion happening uh next year over the next year in that um and how we fund Transit going forward would would you say the same is true for the fair free you know policy that I know is very popular and that we

certainly endorse um but you know how that's going to be funded going forward is you know seems like that might be a policy discussion I think Ellen's even requested some input from us on on that like would Transit tax dollars be appropriate to use for that um uh so that certainly is a part of it um it that's about um we expect that we would bring in around $2 million a year um through Fair Revenue U the the dime Grant from the Durham County Transit plan uh picks up about 20% of that uh Revenue loss um and so then um the city sources are responsible for the other 80% uh but the uh the fair policy is just one part of uh kind of the structural budget need over the next several years um and I think you're seeing for example in in Raleigh they're

seeing a structural deficit of about $8 million wow a year of which about two is attributable to the fair policy so even if U they decide to reimplement Bears they're still looking at about a $6 million uh annual structural deficit for their budget uh and that's again driven by Personnel costs uh so I would say that you know our our numbers are are kind of in that territory okay thank you so much Sean for this presentation thanks for joining us at the city or at the county okay that brings us to our our final Transit conversation which is the presentation from go triangle hi good afternoon thank you for having me today to uh give you a presentation and update it's been a while since we've been here uh I think uh so uh happy to do this and uh thank

thank you to Shan and to Ellen our Transit Partners as we plan and deliver service uh throughout the region uh especially in Durham County and Durham city uh we connect with them I also would like to thank your colleague Barbara Auten our chair at go triangle for uh Le her leadership and uh and helping us uh uh walk the right path in order to deliver more Transit at a at a more affordable cost so I'll start our presentation now uh just an overview of go triangle if you haven't uh thought about it in a while uh we were established in 1989 it's our 35th Anniversary coming up in December uh we have a 13 member board 10 voting members three are appointed through by NC do and we have about 280 employees uh uh for operations and administrative functions so we are the connective tissue for the region um it's about a if you went from one end of Orange County to the other end of Wake County it's

5 million passenger trips uh that is steadily going up just like Durham um we are

almost 100% of pre-co uh levels um and our weekend service is even higher than pre-co levels uh we also provide um this Ada trips vanpool and on demand microservice in partnership with Research Triangle Park a little bit about our funding sources uh we do collect sales tax uh uh we don't collect this we collect it as a Transit as a trans as a sales tax District administrator uh some of the sales tax as you saw in the Durham Transit plan uh um uh presentation does do go to help fund go triangle part projects and Service uh we have the rental vehicle tax rent vehicle rental tax uh which uh along with the vehicle registration fee is the main stay of our Revenue uh we do receive some state grants like map and also federal grants uh and uh we do we are going to start collecting fairs again July

1st so a little bit about the return to fairs uh we are are uh just prior to uh covid happening we did have a increase in the fairs this is our our chart uh this is where we're going to start July 1st uh we're going to return to fairs uh and also Implement mobile ticketing and cashless payment methods that we didn't have before uh we will still take cash at our Fair boox uh we were looking at taking exact change in order to simplify our uh dwell time at stations uh we also are going to uh um work with our part partners that create a low Fair uh a low-income Fair program so uh money does not become a barrier to uh our most needy uh residents in the region uh we're also working with orange counties and wake counties on similar programs I think it's going really well um and also um you know having trip planning services using the technology that's available today is going to help make

our Rider experience uh a little bit better so we have a um we have a study happening now that's going to kick off in the next week or two uh for go triangle Financial uh uh review its systems and its processes so since its Inception in 1989 uh go triangle has uh grown uh in order to meet the needs of the region and also grown to um um as a tax District administrator with All the Monies that are coming in since the sales taxes were enacted in or and durm County then later on in Wake County so it's time uh uh that we uh look at our systems our processes uh our technology our forecasting our structure uh and how do we report this out to our board and also the public uh and I we're looking forward to bringing the results of this study to our board uh in about 12 weeks

and we'd be happy to come to this body and give you a report on what our findings are um I think it's time to for us to look at streamlining uh what we do and also be a more transparent organization to our partners uh as we go forward with all these projects and as the funding for Transit increases in the region um we do have some projects um we are um we are building ADA Compliant bus stops for all providers in Durham County and City uh and also we also work on stops and wake and or orang County for go triangle stops uh go triangles Capital plan uh also includes Park and Ride facilities uh the regional transit centers um and um and also we are looking to buy more electric buses although for us in the large region we serve the electric buses do not serve us uh very well right now but we think the technolog is coming along pretty quickly to for us to buy more electric buses in the future but we do have a few in the queue uh and we are planning for future

Regional passenger rail uh in conjunction with the no Partners there's a joint subcommittee on Regional Rail that's been established with dchc and Campo uh some of you are participate in these meetings uh and we are looking forward to a uh study that DCC and Campo are going to do jointly to uh identify projects that will help us uh partner together on on a more incremental uh process for delivering Regional Rail the bus stop Improvement program you've seen you've heard a lot about it today um right now this is we're looking at 381 bus stops over the next several years uh believe it or not it's a it's more complex than you would think to improve a bus stop so there's planning there's design there's permitting uh sometimes you have to go to Dot and ask for encroachments uh you have to put it out for construction and bid it out uh but it is uh it's it's we're looking to

deliver 40 uh this fiscal year and 50 the next fiscal year and we are accelerating this program and I got to tell you we wouldn't be able to do it without help from the transit plan and uh with a couple of FTE to help us accelerate this program Chad can you just explain those on [Music] hold I don't have an explanation I can get that for you on what's on hold it might be that there's something going on with the design or we need to get a real estate uh that we haven't been able to get our hands on or we may have to relocate the stop we never take real estate by condonation uh so for a bus stop either if we can't get cooperation with the owner and a lot of times we're only looking for a couple of feet uh on the property so it's negligible you know most of the time to the property owners but certainly uh if we can't do that we will have to re relocate the stop in conjunction with the city and figure out where that stop will go but you have 1,000 stops in uh in Durham and this is more than a

third of your stops and we're really happy to be helping deliver this program and improving Transit experience for people in Durham um so we have some large Transportation oriented development projects happening uh we got a bill grant for $20 million from usdot uh for something called the rust bus project the Raleigh Union Station uh bus Transfer Facility uh project so rust bus is the short name uh it is a ground floor Transit Center so it'll have a roof on it uh you'll see that where the Bus Loop is there there's going to be eight Bays we had some property that we owned uh right behind Raleigh Union Station that was all a bunch of old warehouses uh it was purchased uh a long time ago for a different Rail Project that didn't occur uh so now uh this project this site is being redeveloped uh the everything is been demolished the old warehouses are gone you'll see the project uh picture in the upper right hand side of the screen uh is kind of a progress picture

the site has a lot of activity on it right now and actually this picture probably was taken about a month and a half ago it's already dated because there's concrete and steel coming out of this site um we have a nice time lapse uh that I can provide to you a link to that shows the progress we've made today it's it's pretty amazing the project s on schedule to be opened on the fall of 25 uh on top of this bus facility you'll see uh a 300 uh or so uh residential complex uh so it is a public private kind of partnership here where you know where $40 million in federal and local money is going to uh leverage another 250 million or more dollars uh for this commercial and residential development there'll be 20,000 sare ft of residential uh the bottom picture is a concept drawing the bottom right uh when it's done and uh people will be able to to walk uh very easily from this site uh over to Raleigh Union Station and back and forth and

visit the uh the new restaurants and uh they'll be parking there too expanded parking for the amp Trak station you've heard the term triangle Mobility Hub Ellen uh correctly said some people call it the triangle uh the Regional Transit Center um whatever you call it it's going to be a great new Transit oriented development over at RTP on a 19 Acre Site uh right next to the ncrr corridor for a future rail platform uh that dot is taking a look at uh building um the concept drawing we have right here right now is a little bit Limited in its view but the state the upper uh left hand drawing is a would be uh from you know a high up you really can't see the station other than it's just kind of a straight line there in front of those buildings um and then some the other pictures are from our archives that our existing pictures uh but rust bus is $40 million driving $300

million $200 $300 million I would think that there's a large multiplier on how much uh the investment at this site will drive because there's so much more room to develop a Transit oriented development around the site and it fits in very neatly with rtps plans uh to redevelop and put in many uh thousands tens of thousands of housing units and new commercial development within the park so having this new access it's closer to the highway it's at the corner of 54 in Miami uh than the current Transit Center is and uh we're very excited about it uh RTP uh Foundation is very excited about it uh and uh dot uh if they do get a grant to put the platform in uh uh we will be providing the place where passengers would wait for that train to come into that platform so uh this could be truly a multimodal project when it's all done uh so to I guess if you don't remember anything from this presentation

just remember that Transit dollars Drive development and uh and drive private dollars and that's that's a really good thing um you've also heard about our bus maintenance facility we need to expand our bus maintenance facility it's uh rather dated uh uh uh our Workforce is growing our number of buses is going to grow over the next several years uh it's not a cheap project uh to build the transit plans have money uh committed from each County to help uh build this facility uh and uh it's going to provide uh us a better workspace and safer workspace for our Workforce um and give people uh our operators especially a place to rest and when they're uh in between uh their routes uh sometimes we have a a split in our shifts where an operator might have to wait two or more hours before they begin their next run uh and uh we're very limited in the footprint we have here today so just like Durham we are looking to expand our facilities to meet the needs of tomorrow

in the coming years so the next three slides are going to be a little bit about the go triangle and the counties okay so we already talked a little bit about how many employees we have and the number of trips we deliver uh that number will increase for fiscal year 24 when we update our data we have 29 pairat Transit vehicles on our uh that also help us serve uh uh the population here um by Route you'll see on the uh right hand side of the presentation of the of the of the slide uh our highest performing routes the 100 is the highest performing one and then it graduates down lower as uh you get into the different routes uh some of the very longdistance routes aren't as well performing uh but we continue to evaluate our routes uh to make them uh to help help them to perform better and deliver service that people are need and we have some expansion plans coming up in August Durham County um your population is rising quickly uh we provided 638,000

4 million in fiscal 23 uh was uh spent on go triangle activities whether be managing or administering uh the transit sales tax dollars uh there's money for that uh there's bus operations there's bus infrastructure Capital planning uh some of that was for the computer rail uh

6 million on go triangle activities activities that we uh conducted for them whether it be

administrating uh the uh the the tax money uh whether it be building out a parking ride uh we have several capital projects or delivering more service um the sales tax dollars just keep in mind these are dollars when go triangle gets them it's either to provide a service to um uh an administrative service to the county or something that the county did perhaps uh if the county increased frequency on one of the routes where we meet that route uh the sales tax uh there's an interest in using sales tax money to help go triangle meet that same frequency so uh helping us match up so um again this is a collaborative effort uh as we go through and plan our Transit and deliver service go triangle is kind of like um uh the the you know the middle connective tissue and uh as things change in each of the counties we also have to change to meet that demand uh W County uh has a similar number to

5 million was expended for go triangle activities uh so uh this I thought this would be interesting a little snapshot to see you know what does your sales tax paid for what does go triangle do with your money that's you know into your in your Transit plan and I would say say they we go through a the the staff working group here in Orange and Durham counties uh and then way County we go through a slightly different process but it's a uh it's a vigorous process to determine uh how much service we can deliver with the dollars that we have on hand and with that I'll take any questions that you may have thank you so much for that presentation and for all your work for go triangle and thank you commissioner

Auten now Barbara apparently for serving as our Le on she she she hears from me every month CH I don't I don't think you realized you you said that she was Barbara Auten and not Brenda how who said that me you said I apologize I should to say commissioner howardson i' be safe um but I will bring you back to the board for questions commissioner Jacobs thank you so much for this information Chuck um I would I U would love for you to come back and share with us uh the results of your financial over overview that would be great and I appreciate that you all are doing that um really exciting about um the r bus project and I think that's a great model of a a multi-use um public private

partnership um love that includes housing um how much affordable housing is a part of that project currently 10% 10% okay that's great um and I'm super excited about the triangle Mobility Hub I mean I think this is really really key for our future a place where you know rail bike bus brt you know everything is going to to come together especially um also one thing you didn't mention was a direct route to the airport so you know we didn't mention in this presentation but we are meeting with the airport to see how we can help them uh especially since they have like a if you treat the airport like RTP it's a campus of many different employers right so we're working we just met with them a couple of times to see what we can help them with van service or carpool service for their employees uh to help reduce some of their stress on their parking needs uh and also we are looking at

doing a congestion mitigation air quality Grant uh application uh in conjunction with the airport to deliver some type of service uh that would be like an Express service from Durham and from Raleigh into the airport for both employees and passengers uh we haven't developed it very far yet we just started this conversation with airport but we are engaged with them uh uh you you know now in order to see what more can be done than the than the service we have going in there today great because I know there's been talk of you know some kind of just a brt or a shuttle or whatever but yeah um I think whatever we do making it seamless um I'll never forget you know getting off the plane in Boston and just walking out the door getting on a bus and the bus just took me directly to the the Metro um in Boston and you know people will do whatever as long as it's easy and seamless uh people don't really care what the mode is it's just about getting to where you want to go and

0 of course the Hub um and and housing are you are people looking also similar to rbus with the um triangle Mobility Hub is there any conversation with also looking at housing mixed use also on site this is what has the research Triangle Park foundation so excited uh you know they they they uh we we're meeting with them almost every other month uh lately on this project uh to uh do a good uh Transit oriented development around this so they'll be commercial they'll be office there'll be residential around it eventually um we are seeking a uh we have been seeking federal funds to help us build this project I think the half the money

there's some strong support in the in the transit plans for the project but we need more to to get it going uh and uh RTP is committed to uh you know helping us with the property that we need in order to build the project and then once that's done uh all around and perhaps even on top of the of the new Mobility Hub you'll see this new uh Transit oriented development um I don't know if you're familiar with new Carolton up in Maryland outside the DC but that's that's would be a good example what I anticipate I feel like this is going to be rust bus on uh fivefold uh when it comes to the level of investment matter of fact Brian Fox is sitting back there still so yeah I am working with the chamber with Brian and my staff are working together to get some of the Durham folks out to see the rust bus project uh in person and get a briefing on that and also an updated briefing uh in in conjunction with uh Travis kraton over at RTP to update folks on that project so on what we're doing there so

uh we're really excited about this is this is this is actually to happening as we speak in in the triangle and and it's going to trigger a lot more great cuz this is really important I mean we can build up I mean we talk about how do we protect our environment and places where people don't want development this is you know a great place to put density and um I mean there are a lot of people that would love to live over a Transit Center and roll out of bed and go down the elevator and get on whatever wherever they need to go um that way and I saw that in Vancouver at the revolution conference um went out to University Vancouver and their um bus station on campus they had dorms built right on top of it with the students so so you're You're Building infrastructure for future customers right so you're driving not just development but ridership yes and to your comment about

um that it's a real estate project the bright line which is the fastest growing passenger rail in the United States it's a giant real estate project and it's being privately built because of that so Y and and uh I know if you went on the tour that was a very eye opening tour what they're doing down in southeast Florida and they're doing La now and they and you know though they have a lot of regional coordination there probably uh hopefully we achieve that here thank you so much commissioner I got shair Burns will this day never end sorry no it's not no it is absolutely positively not you um I I have like a myriad of questions but because I respect everyone in this room I'm only going to ask one um you said that you all are going after a grant for the platform for the triangle Mobility Hub I recognize that I appreciate multimotive as much as anybody else how much is that Grant and what are you all looking to do so do is

actually a theat and what we would anticipate is that our Transit Center would be the uh the customer interface for that platform so you know whether there be a a station or a waiting room or something like that that would probably do is expecting that go triangle would incorporate that into the transit center uh and then they would build do is seeking funds or you know was seeking funds for that platform is it for the actual platform or feasibility stud to say yeah that one was an actual platform so they they recently put in a um a request under the reconnect communities grant program uh for um Henderson I think uh Wake Forest Apex and uh and and RTP uh was about $100 million build platforms thank you that yes and I think I think this is about $18 million for the for the platform at RTP okay thank you sir thank you I guess um they did not receive that

Grant like they weren successful and neither were we successful I would say at least we know the number right so we go to something else or for somebody I mean people sit here and say they care about multim motal they care about bus but they don't ride the bus they talk about it they ride it in other cities and countries they don't ride it here no and so when we sit here we talk about the reason why I'm asking about numbers if we lose something and if we really care about it we will go after it again we're going back out after it again okay yeah yeah and we are uh yeah we are we are going to continue to be aggressive uh uh for the RTP multi uh Transit Center and also uh working with our partners at dot so they get that platform and that's just not on y'all and if you need letter a recommendation Ellen knows how to we appreciate that thank you thank you I think thank you Chuck I appreciate your presentation and all your good work and six hours is my limit for coming up with good questions sorry yes I appreciate that some of our

most dense conversations right at the end so apologize for that but thank you all so much for sticking with us and presenting all of this information has been really helpful that brings us to our final presentation for the day um which is the minority and women business Enterprise update and I believe we have Shannon our chief of staff Shannon trap presenting this one and CC Lambert president of C2 contracts Richard fua director of real estate and Community Development and we have 45 minutes allocated to this item be warned as commissioner Carter has mentioned we are six hours into this so please be kind to our minds we will reduce that 45 minutes accordingly yeah ma'am and keeping part of that minutes about 15 20 minutes for

questions so perfect thank you so today um Madam chair Madame Vice chair Commissioners County manager attorne is not there but um you've been asked to receive this presentation from our Duram County mwbe program manager and so we have with us today um Mr Cornelius lamber CC as most of us know him who um serves as president founder of C2 contractors and then we have Richard F who is a director of real estate and Community Development and before they begin I just want to acknowledge Vice chair burn shouted out one of our management fellows earlier who was now serving in a capacity of Youth diversion um coordinator with our uh youth home and so thank you for that shout out for her but we have another County management fellow Mr Nicodemus monz who today effectively today serves as our supplier diversity analyst and is officially stand up Take a Bow stand up

Take a Bow proud of you son proud of you and so Nico is a officially part of the mwbe team we are very excited um that our fellows have been able to have this opportunity to work in the county manager's office to participate in different projects and to chart their own paths forward and so we're excited to introduce Nico as a member of the team and with that I will turn it over to Mr Lambert good afternoon chair lum Vice chair Burns you've already scared me you said the day long you should be very afraid today I'm sorry Dr soell Commissioners uh Mr County attorney uh happy to be with you I'm going to go quick but I got to go somewhere first um one is why we do this work and again uh I'm going to turn over to Richard Fuquay in a moment but in May 2020 I lost a part of me and what makes me who I am and how I got here and that

was Andrea Harris uh Miss Harris invested in me 20 30 years ago in fact she I met her in 1995 uh it's 19 yeah 95 and what she did was pull me in and say look here boy and she always called me boy Vice CH Burns you know what I'm saying right yeah yeah I'm just saying I'm sorry I'm just saying um that was her I'm boy though I'm 55 years old I was boy when I was what that's 30 years ago when I was 25 it was boy she trained me she sent me all over the country to learn business business development and I'm talking Dartmouth UCLA Carolina Duke I've studied business Economic Development all over the country and she paid for every piece of it she never asked me for anything monetary in return all she said is boy

when you come back here invest in our community do it for our community so I sit before you and I celebrate success as relates to community engagement and who I am but I honor Mama because she made me who I am so when I show you and I Endeavor to show you today all that we've done and how we impact Community we do it in a different way I built a business that went from zero to 6 and A2 and we had 12 a half million but how many people really understand that all the businesses in this country only 3% of them are minority own 3% only 3% only 1% of that 3% do of a million dollars a year I'm a freak of nature but who really did it that's a Mama That Grew me up right down the street main Main Street everybody knows the Institute that's where I came from that's who I am so when I give back or when I pour into a community because I've done it you

know you can do a lot of things if you've been there I talk to people all the time about how do we really engage the community but people that look like us because at the end of the day I can show you how to be another me and if you can see it you can be it so this is our engagement this is what I Endeavor to do can I thank you because this board chair Vice chair manager Chief invested in me let me show you what can be done if we're intentional but more importantly When You See It Through My Lens and you don't accept all the excuses that have gone historically down and kicked us in the tail and I can address it head on then all of a sudden we can change outcomes that's what this is about Richard thank you CC good afternoon everybody uh as was heard before uh we it's been a long day uh we will do our

very best to be efficient in our presentation and to allow time for questions so what we wanted to do was to share a little bit about C2 contractors as well as the work that we are doing here in Durham County let's see make sure I'm pressing the right button here all right all right thank you all right so who are we um even though it says we established in 1984 we actually went fulltime more more like in 1994 uh with a mission uh to build strong long- lasting relationships uh with every customer while utilizing our extensive knowledge and experience to plan design and deploy projects we truly live by the Mantra of being built by strong relationships this whole company has been built on the fact that once you once you show that you can do what you can do and that you do what you say you're going to do a relationship is built and so those relationships can be and have been built over

time the business has four main pillars first is general contracting uh telecommunications and cabling product dist distribution as well as Hub participation Consulting uh we will focus on General Contracting and and hub participation Consulting in our present ation today first just a little bit about this this this small company of C2 contractors um it is a unlimited general contractor I say that factiously uh the company has really done uh marvelous work as you'll see uh a couple of pictures there uh we were instrumental um in building the uh the Herold L Martin senior engineering research and Innovation complex on aent State University's campus uh as well as the Student Center um much of our construction delivery methods include uh construction manager at risk uh single Prime uh construction management as well as design build uh our project size

ranges from as low as $50,000 up to $90 million uh we were awarded the opportunity to be the construction project manager um for Guilford County Schools uh in excess of $600 million uh as an example of the type of work uh that we do I mentioned before uh the two projects that we did over on North Carolina an State University's campus uh both of them in excess of $90 million a little bit about our Hub participation Consulting work um as CC mentioned uh built a business over 30 years in making sure that there were opportunities for his business as well as other businesses to um gain experience in um building more of that Minority women on business participation and so we utilize that experience in the work that we do here so a couple of examples uh which I mentioned uh one is

1% systemwide as a comparison our involvement with the project uh with the bond project we had uh for an overall project of 36% her participation of which 65% during the preconstruction and design phases so we see that we we are able to show um um we're able to show progress and to show that we are able to do the work we also have done work with the city of Greensboro where we were contracted to increase her participation in all areas of of procurement and

6% during the engagement we increased that to 15% however after our engagement uh it went back down to 7% and I think that speaks to the leadership that is needed to really make this work and I believe at the time uh there were leaders all up and down the line in addition to c2's participation to increase those numbers and so um one of the lessons that I've learned during during this process is that you really have to have the leadership on all levels to really make it work and then our last example for Durham County we've been contracted to do the same thing and we are uh working with the county to increase the her participation toward their aspirational goal of 25% an example of the types of certifications that we have as a company uh we certainly went through the North Carolina Statewide uniform certification to obtain um The Hub participation or or

Hub uh certification uh we're also uh dbe certified AC dbe certified which is associated with airport concessions MBE certified as well as certification from the Carolina's Virginia minority supplier Development Council our management team uh it is not a one or two person show uh it is a staff uh of experienced uh individuals that have come together to to utilize the the hopefully the best parts of us uh to to um to produce products that are um um um that are well-managed uh and that that experience comes together so we see uh with um CC uh has been you know in business you know since '95 full time uh and you see his experience just want to highlight that he was a part of the governor's advisory Council for historically underutilized businesses from North Carolina uh as well as being the past chairman of that effort uh Ed Browning who is our co uh

32 years of supervisory experience uh ex-marine uh so we have you know that that type of experience on the team uh many many years uh and and helps to lead the uh telecommunications and cabling um portion of the business I myself as director of real estate and Community Development I have over 30 years of experience in business and and Community Development uh MBA from Chapel Hill uh go Hills uh as well as a Bachelor of Science of engineering from Tennessee Tech University uh Brandon Lamberth our senior project manager uh Sports and NBA from NBA uh and a Bachelor of Science from King University all right let's talk a little bit about uh the projects that we have been contracted uh for with within Durham County the first off is the Hub participation Consulting uh work uh as I mentioned before we are um working with Durham County to assist them to reach their aspirational goal of 25% uh contract initiation was back uh

July of last year uh one of the uh projects that we were asked to do was to look at how how can we help Durham County um identify Hub certified firms more easily uh we one of the first things we did was to look at uh the state's Hub um uh search system and we said there there's a better way to do this uh we saw that that um if if you've ever had an opportunity to go on the system it's it it it is cumbersome uh and it's really based on uh commodity codes so if you don't know the commodity code you have to go through a series of lists to try to find that as opposed to uh which we'll we'll see a snapshot here in a minute uh what we created was more of a of a search method so if you want to find a plumber you look in the particular County that you want to look at and you type in plumber and all the plumbers that are Hub certified comes up in order to get to that point with the state system uh little more cumbersome okay so

uh we have um we have given the product for review for Durham County staff uh to be able to uh review and give their feedback a summary of activities just want to give you uh a list of the things that we have done as a company uh to fulfill uh the work that we've been contracted to do so we have we've done uh everything from meeting with uh organizations such as durm uh the Durham chamber uh we have participated we participated in in this past Year's Durham minority Enterprise development week uh we see where we started working on the Hub spreadsheet database uh we've met with Economic Development uh so so we continue to show ourselves and want to work with individual organizations as well as individuals uh to help them uh to reach those goals and here from December through this past month a couple of things I want to highlight in December uh we did

host an Outreach event to County departments uh what we learned was that uh Durham County has a procurement Department but each department also does its own at least at a certain level procurement so we want to make sure that if we're going to help the county reach the goals of 25% at least then we need to not just work with the procurement Department we work with individual departments so we had an Outreach event uh to let them know that we that we look forward to working with them uh to help reach those goals we had 30 in attendance at that event and then um just a couple weeks ago uh we held a historically underutilized business Outreach event uh that was um sponsored by Durham County in conjunction with uh the Research Triangle Foundation uh and we had over 120 people in attendance most of those were uh small to midsize minority women on businesses that were looking for opportunities to work with all the great work that's being done uh

with the development of the Hub uh area with RTP this is just a snapshot of the uh database that was put together uh that is uh web- based so if if if someone in a department wanted to find I use a plumber they can go in and say okay so what county would we want to utilize you can use you can look in all the counties that are Durham County and surrounding counties or you can focus on a county and you type in the word plumber in the search uh search uh bar and all the Hub certified plumbers will come up and you can go to that list and call those people and reach out to them to to get quotes for whatever you would want um to to have and we have that uh for at least a hundred different Search terms so anytime you're wanting some it could be catering it could be uh electrical work it could be carpet cleaning anything of that nature you can find in this database in those

counties just a couple of slides pictures of from the U Research Triangle Foundation or Research Triangle Park Outreach session I mentioned before uh we had presentations from of course uh Scott Levon who's the president of the foundation as well as a couple of uh presentations from U some of the primary uh or a couple of the primary developers out there samit as well as Cho and the goal the goal is and was to for those entities to identify what what services do you want what products do you want how can we match that up with companies that are in Durham County that could provide those products and services and and marry those two so upcoming deliverables uh we we will be meeting weekly with uh the Durham County mwe M mwbe staff uh to uh listen in to see how we can assist uh the staff as well as Durham County to

meet those goals uh we will be following up uh the meeting that we had with uh the the department heads to see how we can meet we're going to meet with them individually to see how we can help uh marry the uh entities the the the needs that they have versus the companies that are out there that can meet those needs we'll also serve as a resource for the Durham County leadership academy uh group that is working on an mwe project as well as finalize the mwbe database uh based B upon feedback that we'll get from a county manager and staff our second contract is development Consulting where we will assist uh providing or evaluating Equitable practices so that as development opportunities resent themselves that we will always keep in mind that we want to make sure that uh those are participating are local businesses but in particular those that are from historically underinvested areas can I interject right here real quickly I just

want provide some context quick context for the board as to why I felt this Consulting um opportunity was needed so and we talked about a little bit about it today that we have all of these various County owned facilities and sites that are vacant and we need to develop plans on how we would use them one of the things that was really frustrating to me is that we seem to be playing whacka and we don't have a true sense and a good grasp on how we will get to a decision point on utilizing these facilities this is one of the things that I have asked C2 to help us with in addition you all remember I asked your permission to speak with the Board of Education this was last year and this was really about um at the time the decision was made for DSA to move and relocate to a new place I don't know where that is now but at that time that was the decision and there is a concern that we would have a very prominent

location in downtown durm the former DSA site and we have no plans for what we will do with that Durham count neither Durham County nor dur Durham public schools has in at CIP any Redevelopment Project funding for redevelopment of that site and it was important for us to start having those conversations and that's why I wanted to meet with um the Board of Education members and so we asked C2 to also help us with those those conversations and to also help identify some options that we could present to that board and so you'll hear about some things that that happened um after those conversation as well but I wanted you to know why felt the need for that okay thank you thank you to build upon that uh a number of activities and meetings and research has been done uh to look at those opportunities uh we see a lot of we see a lot of mentioned about public private Partnerships I think I've heard that

even in some of the presentations earlier where a lot of the developments the successful developments that have happened um in a number of other areas uh have been because not one entity has all the resources so if you partner uh to get those things done and so uh there have been me I know CC has been involved in a lot of those meetings um um traveling uh to where a lot of those opportunities are to research and to see okay okay how are you doing it there so how can we bring those those ideas here uh for the opportunities that are here um in particular uh there are a couple of uh certainly projects that uh we were asked to look at uh of course right here next door to2 East Main I know there was a development report and so we looked at that and assessed that uh we also uh submitted a development report for 3825 South South rockboro um and and and so there are a number of opportunities is where we've done research uh and and and hope to

continue to work with Durham County to see how we can bring those projects to fruition here we see an example of that one of those uh reconnaissance uh visits was uh to actually to Atlanta uh to talk about how uh schools have been converted uh to a affordable Workforce housing so in in in light of uh with DSA and maybe other opportunities uh here are just some pictures pictures of of of how it can be done and how it has been done in other places so as far as upcoming deliverables uh we'll continue uh to work with the county to uh investigate and help to plan out uh development options for 220 East Maine uh 325 South rockboro as well as 826 East pedigree Street uh the former Boys and Girls Club uh we will also uh continue to work with the county to uh uh to compile a list of

vacant and underutilized sites owned by the county as well as during public schools and to see where there may be some opportunities to repurpose those sites so that they can um either for housing or for development or for whatever you know the the the market says would would be good for those sites let me give some background to this um Madam maner We snuck this one in uh this was uh he's if the picture can you get that back up because that's actually an employee um here at the county and he was on site with um Chief tell me with RTP foundation and the young man walked up and was communicating with me all the things that he was doing and he all I think I was thinking that he was a separate business but he actually worked for the county and I later found out he was in leadership Academy with the county but he did not know the manager so I'm talking to him

saying you had a great program do you know how that all came to fruition all this stuff he said yeah yeah and from a distance I've seen her but uh I don't know if she'll talk to me and say hold up bro come on let's go so I went over and introduced him and I mean I thought he was going to fall in the floor but um I wanted the humble approach to someone under your leadership uh that's a picture and I I know you didn't know I had it but at the end of the day this is the kind of folks that were in the room and they're inspired by all the work that they see and more important to leadership so we do appreciate that any questions well thank you so much for this presentation I have learned one thing from this I thought the C2 stood for cc uh was c squared contractors but I have learned something from just your name excellent but no thank you so much for this presentation and I'm really glad to see the work that like the county is doing

around mwbe I know the thing that's parked in my mind that I had talked to the manager about recently was just like the economic development aspects of like companies coming to Durham and like us having our goals of mwbe and wondering our company saying no to the goals because they just don't want to meet them or because they don't even know where to go to find uh contractors and businesses that are mwb certified to even reach that goal so I'm glad that that website and database that you have will hopefully be really beneficial to the companies coming to Durham um for that reason I'll start with I saw Vice chair Burns's mic is on and then this ain't about to be the sweet end of this lollipop um um it's going to be the fuzzy end but I'm going keep it Germaine to just this presentation thank you gentlemen for want to for wanting to

come and help us in Durham and it is my prayer that when I look back 5 years from now that is what you all will have done wow um if you don't whether I sit in this seat or not I'mma come for you I'm I'm just it's not even a joke um you know when we Elevate names like Andrea Harris in this room we got to think as a lot of people that she helped out and it's a lot of people that can watch this and they see I I can't there's some things hiy know more about public education than I do commissioner Carter knows more about public education than I do she served on the school board um I'm just I just you know there everybody has their issue area and I know enough to be dangerous I think one of my first things I don't I I like the fact that you all came up with a database but let's really be honest cuz commodity codes and next codes are what Private Industry utilizes when they want to work with people right like we can for anybody who doesn't know what

your next code is somebody make sure I'm not making this up your North American uh industry classification system and I'm looking for somebody in construction to nod their head that's the code that they use if you want to work with the fed you want to work with the state so I do like it but I want our people using their next codes I want them using their commodity codes we can't stated because it's cumbersome we we don't just want them to do business with us we trying to make them resilient and Reliant I want them to go out and get business everywhere else so I do appreciate that we have uh some of this I want us to go back to why we thought we needed to bring somebody else in we all knew the disparity numbers were going to be bad we a know the report was going to be bad but let's be honest the report been bad and we ain't seen that yet and so that's a that's a big issue so we brought y'all in to supplement that work um because we do we don't want want people to feel like well I didn't pick a company and now the Commissioners the women the people of color going to feel funny I get it y'all don't have a list we we making a list great wonderful um but I

want us to I want us to be very clear about a couple of things the night that we brought this forward I historically I'd never done this people want to make accusations about why I did it but much like this presentation until this morning I got emails approv I didn't know y'all were presenting I didn't um and I said something about it the same way when we did that contract that night I recused myself or stain cuz I had not seen it on our our our report and so I do want to make sure that I understand the scope of work and I and I'll go back and I'll pull it it should be on legis La I'll get it from um Monica but I also see these additional scopes of work I know that pedig is um pedig is our boys and girls club I know that this right this 22 East M well 22 Main right here is um our social services building I noted that Roxboro address is not just the DMV as the internet will tell you but that's the property we purchased on MLK so I would love to see these reports that you all have turned in because here's main the the DSs building my

first year in office we had Sarah Odio to come in here three times I don't know where um I was about to say per but he done done his stuff today we've had like four groups to kind of sort of look at it feasibly figure out what we're going to do um I would just be interested in what y'all scope of work is and how we extending this thing because I didn't know what it was the first time I can see that y'all are doing some work and I'mma throw this out and you know what I mean what I'm about to say and I'm not going to be the dead horse what I don't want us doing is doing what contractors that don't look like us do and that's us doing work we don't never see it right we have feasibility studies all the time I they don't never make it to me we put people on contracts and we don't utilize them and that's the last thing I'm going to say about that cuz y'all know what I'm talking about and number three if I I get hit by a bus tomorrow all us got to be able to work together so we got to figure this thing out and I'm not going to say nothing else about that but I would love to know if somebody could provide me what is the total scope of work because you keep saying Hub but everybody's not a hub some people going

to be dbe some people going to I saw that you had the concessionaries in there like there are other certifications out there that folks are going to have to get um yeah just what is the what scope of work were y'all giv to do so um I heard a lot and I'm I think there's a big answer one is Hub so historically unutilized business um you know I know what Hub is right yes ma'am so um what I wanted to make sure happened when we came on site and unlike some others perhaps in front of me or to do this work or say they do um you cannot self-certify and call yourself a hub right all right so if if you have data that would suggest that you have Bard participation but you had it uh begotten because they were self-certifying you do know that that data is no good okay so and just so we're clear the state deregulated a lot of stuff during Co so that has not always been how

things have always been done but to be fair but go ahead yeah so we use the database and the information provided by SW we find that they have the most stringent certification process and across the state again we're not do anything in a vacuum here's what's utilized to identify a historically unutilized business with that said Durham was not using that so when you ask okay so um let me press upon that so let's go to the next subject which was um you want to see numbers change uh in order to change there has to be a change Insanity to think that we continue to do the same thing and we get a different outcome how many know and I know when we presented our very first report which was to go out and look at how are you spending money I only wanted to look at what did we say 500,000 and Below how many of you really understood that you are actually making purchases on a daily basis from Individual solos that added

up to 500 you spent I think close to1 million under 500,000 and nothing was bit out I can show you every commodity code I can show you everything that was bided out so if today or if I walked into this establish it started in June and I'm saying manager and chief the very first thing I have to know is how is the money being spent and if no one can tell me can I tell you hold before you go go any further I let let me let me clear something up the reason why I fought like a crazy person of force year for the disparity study is because I know everything you saying we are here now I am going to ask again and the most respectful like what is the scope of work that you have been assigned to I ain't worried about disp we we know them numbers were bad we know that folks was in here bidding stuff not bidding stuff out some of it was Niche I get that you know and they just didn't have folks in place to tell them this is the proper way to do it like I get that we are here now and I know that there some work that our staff has to work on but I see like

you're doing Hub you're doing uh minority Women Business you're doing sight I mean you're doing um uh blah blah blah Economic Development review I just like what is what was the task you holistic and in its simplest form is to increase minority participation now the beauty of that is you or someone else may deem or come up with a systematic way to do it we have a systematic way to do it and so if I can increase monor participation I am successful and the first thing you have to do is know what you spent and where you spent it right so I'm sorry manager well I was just going to say and and just for the record this is not the first time time we've had this um a program manager it goes back to 2019 I think the um Institute was the program manager so we are not asking them to do anything differently than the other ones but what I can tell you is we are getting different results so I have not and I asked for reports

from the prior program manager I didn't have anything that shows us what we have spent on those procurement um transactions below a formal be threshold they were able to give us that now they are meeting with departments to say hey this is how much you all spent below formal be thresholds and let's look at where are the opportunities that we have now to match you with some minority and women on businesses so that you now have an expanded group of people to choose from and you're not just picking up the phone calling the same people that you use over and over again they are doing that they are also for the people that were at Research Triangle Foundation they are meeting individually with those businesses and with Cho as well as with Salon one to help them through the pre-qualification processes this is not something I have ever seen done before they are sitting and having CH and samon to schedule pre meetings to to look at

the pre-qualification process and inviting people there to sit with them and help them get pre-qualified that's not something that has been done before okay I'm G let you finish I'm gon let you finish and then I'm G be done because I'm over it at this point we I just wanted to answer your question that's what so you're asking what are we doing that's what we're doing they will also be serving as the resource so one of the projects for the leadership academy groups is to help um develop a plan for how the county can increase our minority and women business participation this one is to help get ideas and suggestions from people that don't do this work to introduce them to it and to help them understand how important it is and so now they have someone that they can go to with questions we only have two people in our mwbe program Nico is one Nadia Phillips is the other and so they're going to be helping to meet with departments and help us to make intentional efforts this

lastly meeting with um those once we have our incentive agreements in place not just taking the list but working with they've already met with Andy miracle in their group meeting with those companies to say hey here is the list but let help us we can help you identify what the Scopes of work are and then also help to make the connections because if you just give people a list it's easy for them to say well I really didn't know who to choose so having those in-depth conversations with the companies to help it be more intentional about who we will use to to help meet our participation go and then as it goes to the economic development piece I needed that for my sanity because you all are asking us to do a whole lot with these sites our staff members feel like they are at capacity and it's not much more that they can do so we needed assistance with that I did send you all a copy of one of the things that they've done is develop a preliminary RFQ for

the Redevelopment of the old DSS main property that's something that we haven't had the capacity to do and so they will also be working with the group um DFI out of UNCC because DFI is working to update the cost projections that we have on upfitting 220 um Maine and so they will be meeting with them so that then we can have a more collaborative discussion and if you all choose not to upfit or do whatever with that building if we need to put out an RFQ for it we already have one developed that you can look at and you can provide input to us on what it is you would like to see in that RFQ so that's that's a snapshot what we're doing but we're certainly willing if you would like to have you know more standing reports on a monthly basis we I just want to know their scope of work and I'm happy you were able to provide it I wish they would have been able to provide it um all I'm going to I'm that's just real talk like um I I want yall to be success

no uhh no I mean we got it on video now on YouTube it's in writing too we we the the scope of work is in writing you said simply what are you heal to do I never gave anything that said we had to do it the way it had already been done ho see like I I get it let me let me help everybody in here out at this point we preaching to the choir and I know that there's a lot of external stuff that's going on that ain't got nothing to do with me and it show ain't got nothing to do with the 338,000 people that I represent that have set me here to do a job and to make sure that it's done well and to make sure that the dollars come out of here are representative of that population on the other side of that glass door so that is why I'm here and I'm going to push as hard as I can possibly push I can appreciate the fact that that that you're here to do the work that you're here to do um I am hopeful and I'm prayerful that when you reach out whether it's choke Sam Gil bang Chase whoever it is that we we you are not doing this in a silo cuz the day you get

hit by a bus Dwayne got go the way you got and so I so if and if people are having arguments in public like all of that got some of this stuff got to squash like that's that's the other thing like I don't want your report to be something and I'mma keep I I've only seen one that was shared with me I don't need weekly reports I'm not a hall monitor I don't micromanage people but um I know how important the RTP project is to this entire Community as you can see with um transportation it is interwoven into everything it's interwoven into housing it's going to be inter and had that sheriff saf and Fidelity Investment work so there's a lot of Partners there so that's why I'm going to keep asking questions and I do want us to be involved um I'm going I'm I'mma let it go because there's some there a lot of other things I want to ask I just I want you to think about what Miss Harris would want you to do yes because I I I I'm concerned if all of that is getting done and and it's because it's early but um I I wish y'all the best of luck thank you thank you

commissioner J Jacobs thank you so much um yeah I was sitting here listening to your presentation again there's just for me some themes today in our conversation and it it just felt to me like you're looking at our system uh again like how is our system currently working and how is it not working and um you know and a lot of times it really comes back again to it's about the you talked about this in your introduction it is about building relationships so I hear you talking about building relationships with you know the business Community but with smaller contractors but also with our staff and really um I appreciate the fact that you're meeting with department heads um the idea that people are individually procuring at the same time that we you

know have a procurement department and how these little purchases can really add up and you know I think it's a lot of educating people we don't realize um you know what the impact the collective impact that could happen if we could change some of our practices and I I really I look forward to um uh when the database is finished just looking at it I mean I have a lot to learn um and um you know it goes back to even the conversation um about you know similar this morning we were talking about the Bulls initiative and building relationships with employers but similarly with our aspirational goals with the Durham public schools that how we we really have to work together so I appreciate that you're getting really um in the weeds it feels like yes of of some of the you know how things really

work and and a lot of it is really personto person and um helping us see what we're doing isn't isn't really working um and the impact that that we really should be able to have because we spend a lot of money um you know when we and and the schools now with our bond so I appreciate your experience with uh Guilford County Schools because um you know we just we just passed a big Bond here in Durham um and the whole issue I think um manager so well you put it so well that we haven't had a plan for how we use I mean Northern High School right I know that there's a plan to use that as swing space we learned the other day that was a new term I had never heard of that but yeah we we've traditionally moved forward with things I mean we still have an old school Lowe's Grove Middle School that's been sitting vacant for I don't know how long I mean

yeah haunted it's haunted maybe that's why uh but behind you know our South Library that's like Prime real estate South Durham so anyway I um thank you um and I look forward to um oh I wanted to mention you were you were showing us pictures of a school in Georgia but I do want to lift up Durham County um we took the the old witted School former um historically black high school in Durham and turn that into senior housing called The Veranda huge uh and also um a prek program so we do have a track record on this but thank you so much no thank you Comm commissioner Jacobs thank you um the CC team and um you know I just want to acknowledge the event that you had in the park um out at RTP and you

know I went not knowing what to expect but what was really gratifying was to see there were so many people there so many business people entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs that were connecting with one another ex uh exchanging cards and really looking at how they can connect and build businesses and I have not seen that happen before and as a um past business owner and trying to get certified years ago that is not an easy process I don't care if how smart you think you are it is not an easy process to so to have someone that can walk people through that process is it's the difference between making money and not thank you yes so thank thank you for the work that you're doing and the work that you're going to do thank you so

much common commissioner Carter just quickly also want to thank you express my appreciation and and and to you know lend some Credence to the concerns that commissioner Burns has too like I was wondering if you have performance metrics that you're tracking so you'll know you know when you're successful and that's kind of connected to scope of work um and I'm sure you do and we'll see those in the future and I'm really grateful for you know anything you can do and that you do end up doing to help us raise our our actual you know participation to to what our goal is to what our aspirational goal is one question do you think I've always thought that it was much easier to meet your goals if if we're talking about construction versus other services would you say that's right or is that an accurate U belief you you you're jumping on something scary commissioner Carter so let me tell you in reality we've never

really captured information on goods and services so the real answer is it's a whole lot easier to do it on goods and services if you're committed to it I see so from a construction standpoint in Senate bill 9914 which is WR written years ago there's a good faith effort that goes along with construction constructibility you can get 50 points if you do x amount or whatever and I can write you but no one has ever addressed uh goods and services believe it or not this past uh legisl legislative session there was a p yes ma'am you saw it so we pushed as a member of the uh Governor's Council on historically underutilized business we push to get goods and services should have good faith effort it would match construction MH if it did we would absolutely increase participation oh I see but they threw it out they threw it out you feel me so you

asked a pertinent question but beautifully stated because if we were able to really dig in and capture numbers on both sides which the manager ask us to do show me everything nothing's off the table you would see that there's funds spent on both side that are extensive I mean huge numbers we could change the game I'm sorry and if I can just add he's not going to out us out out ourselves we don't have a system for tracking our participation we don't we are able to get it on construction because Perry is good at manually documenting that but in in any other area we cannot tell you what our participation is right and so they are also going to be helping us with our implementation of a um software to help us track so that was one of the things he asked me how are we going to be able to track the success and results and I

had to you know embarrassingly say I can't do that right now um but we are we are launching a project um to implement software to help us track our participation thank you very much I learned a lot um and look forward to learning even more going forward pleasure speaking with you thank you so much and thank you for all your work and for this presentation I think that's it from questions beautiful thank you so much for your time s hours thank you everyone so much for joining us today sticking through the seven hours especially our Durham County staff on the first day of Durham County or national County government month we kept you here this long um but with that we I will ask for a motion to adjourn or just all in favor do we need I any opposed okay we're

adjourned oh and we have agenda prep for e

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