Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · April 1, 2024

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 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 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 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 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 once we evaluate that so no that makes sense yeah square footage wise 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 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 C J RC or Justice Services excuse me thank you Wendy commissioner Jacobs yeah first of all I really appreciate this checkin and I appreciate all the different things that you both are juggling I would like to understand a little bit more what you're hearing and what you know hearing back from nonprofits with the Outreach process because I am concerned you know I've had you know different folks who have contacted me along the way and I know I've always referred them to you Perry and sometimes to you Nancy who who have been looking for space and and then I do think there is a very important Dynamic happening with you know Urban Ministry 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 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 potential so 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 the property management company LSA is contracted 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 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 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 in some cases they they you know as I said the size may not be right the business opportunities may not be right for them in this location that that's as much as I can really tell you I can I'm happy to get more information on that point 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 like I said I I I feel like I want to wait until the RFP goes out around that we're about to put out that may open up some opportunities 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 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 we're going to have to figure out even the one that we know about how we want to bring that to you 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 we're going to talk to the manager about how we present that to you all 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 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 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 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 we have not received a letter of intent specifically the details that you're asking for have not been presented at this point 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 wow that's a good that's a I don't really know how to respond to that because again we've been this space has been available since March of last year so you know as ACM Delgado mentioned you know look the space is sitting vacant we put up a couple of bullet points in the slide presentation look we need to go ahead I we would like to generate some Revenue for the investment that the county made in this location filling the space would activate the area providing more Safety and Security and so those are things that we think you know should be worthwhile for us to at least consider you know like we said this this potential establishment so I I don't know if we have a true timeline we think we need to get it filled as soon as possible but again 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 I I do think that is very important and I've heard a lot about concerns safety concerns when you know employees from Health and Human Services are going to the parking deck it's a it's this is a complex issue 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 you know our aspirational goal has been for many years is to have 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 question 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 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 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 good afternoon again Commissioners this is actually a similar presentation on the 300 East Main Street and what we're here now to talk about specifically is to give you an update on the selection process for the childcare SL prek operator is many of you know the county has a contract with ccsa Linda Chappelle is here today to do a presentation on the actual selection process and just to have some dialogue with you about you know some con future considerations you know as as they sort of navigate the process and make selections based on the parameters again that we've sort of established for the project so just kind of in general the preas space is just over 10,000 square ft you guys remember a while back we made a decision to go from a 58 person space to a 86 person space 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 you can certainly update the board and get your questions answered good morning thank you very much Madam chair and Comm Commissioners I do I am Linda Chappelle from chalk care services Association senior vice president of our chalk care resource and referral services but I do want to recognize I'm joined today by two of my colleagues that are here I'm going to ask them to stand up so you can see them properly 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 my 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 what I would consider to be a really strong job in trying to engage The Early Education community in this effort 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 did an update to a downtown Durham childcare analysis that had been done back in the 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 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 it was a priority not a requirement and then we also wanted to really 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 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 there was a lot of questions about how that would work and what we did was explore opportunities to assure sure that residents had 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 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 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 been quite a journey and we we went through 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 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 no they didn't have to be in Durham it was open to any operator with a scoring preference given to nonprofits 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 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 we've.

Left it up there even though the process has closed we did in those 14 three were nonprofits and for 11 were for profit we have a Review Committee that we put together it consisted of the three of us who are here today from ccsa and in terms of bringing ccsa to the table but also consisted of a non-conflicted leader of a multi-side licensed Child Care programs parents of young children as well as 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 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 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 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 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 to the potential chare credits for licensing and then again as I already mentioned the quality improvement coach will work one-on-one with them 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 guidelines there are documents available about the true operation of their program that that is measured through the licensing regulations and the regulatory 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 consider themselves to be exclusive and don't have a open door for all of our families 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 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 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 how it is in the real world on the ground some programs don't really have an open door to to accept assistance and 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 the thing is that we took this on without a whole lot of guidelines 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 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 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 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 resources through the developer to help with the build out of a space that's part of the the building 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 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 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 the question of rent relief is a little more complicated than may have been understood when this process began I don't know if anyone from our office was involved in those decisions 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 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 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 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 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 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 well I mean the question is very open are you willing to provide rent relief 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 when you say nominal 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 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 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 to my third term in office 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 we the county has already subsidized the creation of this Durham pre by actually even building it so I I would be more concerned about the fact that we have already subsidized.

This and that 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 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 that this is not something that we said that we were going to do 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 so I I'm very concerned about this from a policy perspective for for all of our Duram.

Prek programs but I also had questions off of this for you Linda which is what is going to be the age range for the 86 children who are going to be there and also the the one during prek class that's being set up which is fantastic I love it 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 and the work that you do similar to the Bulls initiative and Maiden Durham's work you are great examples 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 within this environment that we know that a lot of 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 and thanks for Linda for hitting me up about that before the meeting 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 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 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 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 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 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 just be yeah that might determined which direction we go 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 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 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 subsidizing the construction of the space but it's going even beyond that in subsidizing the rent also 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 operator to get that but it's not required anymore I see well I I do want to thank you Linda and team so much for taking us through this process and making it as strong as you have and bringing this complex sort of question forward to us today you know I hear every I hear the conversations about how the county has.

Already subsidized this quite a bit at least $2.2 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 you contracted with us that's right we've contracted with you all to do that and the Durham prek and all that professional development that they are agreeing to go through as part of the RFA so that's all good one concern I still have outstanding is 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 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 for example in terms of the cost of Care on the free market so to speak in Durham yes a five star the yearly cost a five-star four-year-old in the marketplace the average cost in Durham is $1,981 for the year 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 child care and preschool and so will we be 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 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 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 w the old wited school is that one sub is that rent subsidized at the old wited school Durham Hub schools 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 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 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 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 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 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 yeah I mean I think we've got to be really careful we we're putting this in our affordable housing project 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 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 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 structurally in implemented I think that when we presented them to this body at that time for example we were recommending that you just 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 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 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 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 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 you know there's a lot of places like in California that have done this type of thing but there's not any around here that have but in in 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 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 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 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 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 thank you for wait saving the best for last all the transit presentations Ellen be Durham County transportation director here with Brandy Miner the senior administrative officer from Durham County and our Durham Transit staff working group administrator Steve slosberg who does the tax District administration at go triangle and we're here to present our final recommended work program which is the annual budget for the Durham County Transit plan so the staff working group is the four member committee staff committee that develops this work program 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 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 there could there.

Could be an opportunity to ask those questions later too so keep that in mind all right so this is the first time we developed the work program post the 2023 adoption of the new Transit plan and the governance agreements and the first time with Durham County serving as the staff working group administrator so want to acknowledge Brandy she's been here about a year and just done a tremendous job coordinating the development of this work program it was a lot of work to put put together a 200 Page budget document a lot of coordination with our partners a lot of like consistent and professional communication back and forth to develop this so really proud of the work we've done to develop this work program and that it advances the recently adopted Durham County Transit plan 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 I'm going to do a little repeat.

I'll try to be fast of what you received in February on the draft work program 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 yall know that we did an extensive public engagement process to develop that plan and those key themes reflect what we heard first and foremost improving the current system for current bus riders secondly better experience at stops and stations so improving all the bus stops in Durham and improving the transit centers thirdly connecting the region with quick and reliable Service we 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 in our plan and then lastly 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 the in terms of the more Pro getting more projects sooner this work work program implements the governance framework that we established in those agreements the work program includes a bunch of project sheets for all the different project s that we're funding those project sheets are going to be the exhibits in the project agreements so that's going to actually come forward in the next month or the or June for approval the Duram County you know com project sheets project agreements and those project agreements include implementation metrics the implementation metrics will be tracked on the website that we're developing y'all just recently approved the contract with a consultant to develop that website so it all fits together as a system to implement those priorities in the long-term plan and track fund loes on an annual basis and then track the implementation so in terms of improving the current system U the the work program funds a lot of the bus operating improvements in the recently adopt developed short range Transit.

Plans by God Durham and go triangle a lot of those services are for gorum at this point you'll hear from the city on the progress they've made towards the bus driver shortage and being able being in a position to expand Services next year we also when you're expanding service need to increase the capacity of the maintenance facilities so one big change that we made was to increase the transit plan share for the go Duram bus maintenance facility and the parat transit maintenance facility from $5 million which was in the 2023 plan to $30 million in total across those two projects so that that's really one of the most significant increases that we've made in this work program compared to the 23 plan we are also continuing to fund Durham County's share of the go triangle bus maintenance facility so in terms of better experience at stops and stations we made a big increase in the funding for dorm station improvements that was included in the Durham County Transit.

Plan at 2.7 million and now it is up to 99.9 million so it increases $7.2 million this is what the city submitted to the work program process we also are increasing the funding for the village Transit Center both of those projects Durham station and the village Village Mobility Hub or Transit Center are receiving a Federal grant there's two projects to provide access to Transit on Junction Road and Horton Road we are continuing to fund the go triangle Le Durham bus stop improvements program this is our commitment to improving every bus stop in Durham it's a multi-year project it's going to take a long time we're continuing to fund that the goal is to improve 50 bus stops next year go triangle will be presenting on their progress on the bus stop project and then we are continuing to fund the go triangle Mobility Hub or Regional Transit Center I will admit that 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 so we're continuing to fund that and then we're also continuing to fund the fville and Holloway transac quarter projects those funding amounts of have not changed from the 23 plan so for quick and reliable service we have a long-term placeholder for a large scale bus and or passenger Rail Project in the model and then we also have kind of a short-term placeholder of 500,000 a year for planning or Grant matching opportunities that arise and then we also have several planning studies underway that support this goal so the DCH sampo has begun project scoping on a bus speed and reliability study this will look at the opportunities for bus rapid transit or other type of infrastructure throughout the county we are contributing $110,000 towards the ncdot fast 2.0 study so this is a study led by.

Ncdot looking at opportunities to integrate Transit into Highway and arterial projects expect to have that agreement probably coming to this board later this month and then lastly we are getting underway with the project agreements on the Durham County Le East Durham railroad crossing study so we received a f Grant last year and we were also fortunate to receive an additional $850,000 from congresswoman fushi through the community projects funding so 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 as you can see the work program was.

Released for public comment for a period of 21 days beginning January 31st 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 from both the work program was finalized by the staff working group in March at the March 20th meeting and as Ellen mentioned it was voted unanimously to recommend to move forward for approval the last two steps in this process is to receive your approval 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 as it relates to the engagement period which I mentioned was 21 days we had several forms of advertising we advertised on the go forward website which is managed by go triangle we had three tabling events at Durham station where we were out well well go triangle staff were out interacting with some of the Riders of the buses we did also advertise on social media via Instagram Facebook and Twitter there was also a email campaign which was also managed by go triangle and we also had residents email us at the Durham County Transit plan email address we do feel the engagement period was successful but we will look for ways to improve our engagement efforts so that next year we can have a better reach to our residents one of the things we know we will do next year is to create a summary document because this was a 200 Page document a lot of people kind of got discouraged you know with reading it.

That was one of the comments that we received to make it more reader friendly 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 with the first was for specific route or bus stop requests we have shared those with our partners at Gold dur and go triangle for future Improvement planning the second was continuation of Fair free Transit and the low-income Fair program there was a lot of support for continuing those efforts and the last recom the last item was the recommendation to improve the work program which I just mentioned with us creating that summary document that will help our readers be able to see the highlights without having to go through the entire document so we will consider those for next year's work.

Program okay so we did have four updates from the time the draft was released until the to the final recommended program we had four total updates there were three from the city of Durham the first is the increased cost of services 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 registration tax instead of the budgeted so we had a slight decrease in that project the second item for the go for city of Durham or go Durham was the gold Durham data process and visualization this will increase the budget by $162,800 this was a new request 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 kind of related to item two for go Durham which is also the performance data process and visual visualization Tool 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 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.

Issued in the draft work program the final recommended work program maintains the same projected revenues as the draft and it is an 8% in sorry it is a 8% increase over what was indicated in the 2023 Durham Transit plan we still have 43 million budgeted or projected for the half cent sales tax and overall a little bit over 45.5 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 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 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 so overall our recommended expenditures have decreased by 761,00. 244 and with these changes this will increase our 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 Durham 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 we do not reach the 10 million we get a little close outp pass FY 35 but overall our fund balance is pretty. Healthy this next slide just covers our carryover project these are projects that were previously approved in Prior fiscal years you'll see the Holloway Street and F Street that Ellen talked about earlier 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 all right so with all of those project sheets you know there's detailed funding tables that show the total cost of the project 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 so this chart shows the six projects that have some unfunded Pro funding unfunded cost in those project sheets real quick the you know First Column here is the total cost of the project sometimes there are other funding sources particularly for go triangle projects that are shared across the Three Counties 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 and then of course we encourage and support our.

Partners in applying for federal funds some of these projects have awarded federal funds or have active applications for federal funding but then there are some unfunded costs as well and we want to make sure that it's clear that that at this point you know in terms of what this work program says 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 so there the Durham 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 Transit agencies continue to have Financial commitments for maintaining the Baseline needs and funding some of the more general transportation needs Federal on local funding was 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 and we you know will continue to work with our partners in Partnership to make sure.

That there is a plan for these unfunded costs 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 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 some of these are closed out because they are finished some of these are closed out because they are replaced with other projects or transferred to other agencies and some are are no longer needed so we we intend to formalize that project closeout process in coming years so with that that is our unanimously recommended FY 25 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 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 and you too. Steve the one question that I have I I really appreciate the fact that this is unanimously approved by the staff working group and feels like we should definitely give it our stamp of approval as well my one question is about the slide towards the end where 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 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 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 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 there's other funding sources so with the increase in revenues you know that we've modeled and we were able to increase this so we so we increased.

It by 25 million across those two projects but yes it still doesn't fully fund the projects 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 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 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 adequate planning has been done whether there is a plan for project delivery for going after other other funding sources H how are we incorporating that going forward in our new process 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 before it comes to the to this board or the go triangle board so that's that's that's where it should begin 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 so there's a regular process where we revisit that and bring forward any changes you know we generally you know ask that our project sponsors present 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 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 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 you know the City Council can can they can they need to 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 so I think the the structure that we've created 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 your St you Brandy and Ellen and everyone all your staff that you are implementing is I think is fantastic so thank you I was also one great news about the additional funding for the great railroad 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 this is very.

New and really we just had a conversation last week with our F Partners about this 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 one 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 that means a lot to me it means a lot to the folks that 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 please keep that work up 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 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 but thank you I think so Madam chair I know you were looking at me but I'm in this conversation so much I felt like the board the other board members need to ask the questions 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 thank you very much for inviting me here to share with you the exciting work that we're doing with the god Durham system and some of the highlights from our annual report for fiscal year 2023 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 99% or better for all of the time points across our system the target is 90% or better and we're trending in the right direction but more work is needed analyzing delays adjusting schedules and hiring more bus operators to reach our reliability goals the data visualization and Route performance analysis that you just heard about in Ellen's presentation is a critical tool for us to be able to improve the ontime performance across our system and we're continuing aggressive hiring the current starting wage is.

$165 per hour with generous benefits and that will increase over $20 an hour in July of this year so visit godurham transit.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 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 on routes that serve Durham Tech the Duke VA campus the regional transit and the Regional Transit Center so our six 7 8 n the.

Nine route in bragtown and the 12b will'll all see service improve after 7 p.m. with 30 minute Service 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 at 100% because we're back to that 2020 service level we've done major hiring over the course of the last year and that's enabled us to get back to full 2020 service levels and then on the 27th of this month will start expansion Beyond those 2020 service levels so we're going to continue to push to be able to have the Staffing in place to implement and deliver all of the services that you saw in Ellen's presentation that are funded by the Durham County Transit.

Plan so each month 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 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 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 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 for making these improvements possible but in particular I want to recognize Durham County transportation director Ellen Beckman who has been instrumental in advancing this critical work with that I'm happy to answer any questions thank you thank you so much on for this presentation and all of the work of the city providing 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 you'll see we track incidents that are happening at Durham station as well as incidents that happened on board our service U so we're we're tracking those and we're coordinating with law enforcement as well as with the city's Community safety department to find the right response to the issues that we're seeing if it's a crisis response 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 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 so and our response to that is many of the concerns about Safety and Security at Durham station are included in the station improvements project so we put a strong emphasis on Safety and Security in that process we conducted a threat and.

Vulnerability assessment to look at the design of the facility and how we can use things like increased lighting for example to address crime prevention concerns at the station so those facility improvements are part of the response we also have Durham Police Department officers on site at Durham station and then we're also working with other crisis response to be able to 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 the other one is infrastructure we've had so many complaints in southern Durham about transportation and the infrastructure that's not there is there any plans around transportation in those areas what I'm I'm talking about southern dur so the the city transportation department has prepared a whole set of proposals for improved sidewalk and other pedestrian safety improvements I gave a presentation at the City Council budget Retreat on March 1st identifying projects that would be Bond eligible if the city were to.

Issue a transportation infrastructure Bond what types of projects would be candidates for funding through that Bond so that decision is under consideration by the City Council but we've put forward a number of proposed infrastructure improvements that could be funded either through the city CIP or through a bond and many of those are in the the southern portion of the city okay all right thank you commissioner Jacobs then commissioner Carter well thank you so much Sean I really appreciate you coming into presenting to us I think it's really important as we strengthen our Partnerships and working together and especially since now with the new Durham County Transit plan 70% of our funding is now going for local 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 to bus.

Service so it is really important that you are coming before us I do want to look at 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 that the in the orange has stayed relatively flat and you know since 2016 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 a dollar value this is the cost of an hour of service okay so it used to be five or more years ago that we were paying less than $100 an hour for service I think the 25 work program has us at about $147 per hour so we've seen a really significant increase about a 50%.

Increase in the last several years in the cost of an hour of service and the bulk of that is attributable to increases in bus operator compensation so we've made significant Investments to recruit and retain Personnel for what is an incredibly difficult I call it the most difficult job the toughest job in transportation 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% service levels and put us in a position where we can expand later this month and continue expansion in fiscal year 2025 but each each one of those units each one of those hours is costing a lot more today so it's requiring significantly more investment for those hours that are funded U by City sources and then the the assumed cost per hour has risen for those hours that are funded by the Durham County Transit plan okay so it just going with that then it shows that we are going to be.

Playing a very key role then critical okay I it would be really helpful how how much is the city providing of just local funding not State not federal not County what is the city's current budget that they is being allocated for Transit so it's 3.75 cents on the property tax so that's about U $15 million I think round numbers 15 million okay so we're are other yeah 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 when that is the city's responsibility that is a primary responsibility of the city of Durham to provide for Trans Transit and Transportation 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 in in transit and so I I do want to raise that up because 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 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 and so I just really want to make that clear I think there from some things I've heard there's some misinterpretations about whose responsibility is what what and I certainly do hope that that the city will seriously consider investing in things like sidewalks and taking over some of the streets downtown because that that is really going to help us move forward I I would also be interested then to know even 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 the best maintenance facility all.

Of these things are going to require local city funding the downtown station so if you could let us know in a follow-up email what what what local funding from the city is being provided for those things 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 for those of you who've been on our buses you know that 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 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 and stay on time and what we see is that it can significantly improve travel times and the reliability of the of the bus service it's pretty exciting technology so there is equipment on board the buses that communicates with equipment that's associated with the traffic signal system so we've been undertaking a major study for the last couple of years of how we could 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 signal priority that's granted U so the next level really is for us to offer that signal priority to our buses and so what we did on the fville corridor was to look at all 13 of the signalized inter sections from the heti Heritage Center down to Hillside High School and.

Say all right well can we coordinate this so that we have the right equipment on the buses and then the right equipment at all of those 13 signalized intersections to give the buses that extra advantage to give the buses that extra green time 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 all of your kpi data collection that you're doing I think is really interesting and helpful I'm sure in in the planning that you all are doing 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 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 so it is important that we fund waste fund this work and and also fund our regional transit needs as well one question is there any 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 for example when Congressman David Price reached out a.

Couple years ago and asked us if he could come and tour some of our project locations 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 this dirt path that folks are walking along the railroad tracks yeah kind of squeezed in between the railroad tracks and Junction Road where the vehicle traffic is very fast and and we've had a number of collisions serious injuries and fatalities even along that stretch and many of those folks were walking to or from the bus stop 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 Roxboro to us70 but then also sidewalk and pedestrian safety improvements along Junction Road because that has been a high crash location there's clearly strong demand based on the dirt path.

That you see beside the road U and so we're we're moving forward right now with the design of those improvements along Junction Road we also have an access to Transit project at on Horton Road near guest and proceeding West from there and those access to Transit making sure that Riders can safely walk to and from the bus stops is really critical to meet those Vision zero goals thank you those are two really good examples really appreciate you lifting those up for us thanks again for being here today you're welcome I had one kind of question about so the 15 million that the city allocates so that's three and a half cents you said 3.75 3.75 and the way that the County Transit Tax Works that was something that was like voted 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 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 it's certainly an important issue that city council will need to address we're right now still able to use some of the federal covid relief funding that we got over the past several years but that funding and the the remnants of that funding will be fully expended in fy2 so when I spoke at the City Council last month identified that there is a significant budget need that's that's developing in FY 26 and Beyond and that really is.

Driven primarily by Personnel costs the cost of wages but also fringe benefits healthc care retirement as we raise those wage rates all those other U benefits are are rising along with them and that's increasing the cost of an hour of service and so the that will be something that the city council will need to address in future years we have one more year where we can utilize the balance of that Federal covid funding but there's going to be an important discussion happening next year over the next year in that 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 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 so.

That certainly is a part of it it that's about we expect that we would bring in around $2 million a year through Fair Revenue U the the dime Grant from the Durham County Transit plan picks up about 20% of that Revenue loss and so then the city sources are responsible for the other 80% but the the fair policy is just one part of kind of the structural budget need over the next several years 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 annual structural deficit for their budget and that's again driven by Personnel costs 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 give you a presentation and update it's been a while since we've been here I think so happy to do this and thank thank you to Shan and to Ellen our Transit Partners as we plan and deliver service throughout the region especially in Durham County and Durham city we connect with them I also would like to thank your colleague Barbara Auten our chair at go triangle for Le her leadership and and helping us walk the right path in order to deliver more Transit at a at a more affordable cost so I'll start our presentation now just an overview of go triangle if you haven't thought about it in a while we were established in 1989 it's our 35th Anniversary coming up in December we have a 13 member board 10 voting members three are appointed through by NC do and we have about 280 employees for.

Operations and administrative functions so we are the connective tissue for the region it's about a if you went from one end of Orange County to the other end of Wake County it's about a 65 mile wide region we serve four or five excuse me main Transit nodes Raleigh in the red Carrie in the in the purplish blue and then we have our regional transit center over on a perial drive behind our plaza building that serves about 1,200 passengers a day and then we connect to Durham station so we're only about 10% of the passengers pass through our Transit Center that pass through Durham station and then we also go out to Chapel Hill and and past Chapel Hill the carboro and we actually link up with the pedmont couple places so it's a big region and we provide a lot of peak Services although we are seeing the services are demand is more all day since covid we provide about 1 Point as fiscal year 23 we provide a 1.5 million.

Passenger trips that is steadily going up just like Durham we are almost 100% of pre-co levels and our weekend service is even higher than pre-co levels we also provide this Ada trips vanpool and on demand microservice in partnership with Research Triangle Park a little bit about our funding sources we do collect sales tax we don't collect this we collect it as a Transit as a trans as a sales tax District administrator some of the sales tax as you saw in the Durham Transit plan presentation does do go to help fund go triangle part projects and Service we have the rental vehicle tax rent vehicle rental tax which along with the vehicle registration fee is the main stay of our Revenue we do receive some state grants like map and also federal grants and we do we are going to start collecting fairs again July 1st so a little bit about the return to fairs we are are just prior to covid happening we did have a increase in the fairs this is our our chart.

This is where we're going to start July 1st we're going to return to fairs and also Implement mobile ticketing and cashless payment methods that we didn't have before we will still take cash at our Fair boox we were looking at taking exact change in order to simplify our dwell time at stations we also are going to work with our part partners that create a low Fair a low-income Fair program so money does not become a barrier to our most needy residents in the region we're also working with orange counties and wake counties on similar programs I think it's going really well and also you know having trip planning services using the technology that's available today is going to help make our Rider experience a little bit better so we have a we have a study happening now that's going to kick off in the next week or two for go triangle Financial review its systems and its processes so since its Inception in 1989 go triangle has grown in.

Order to meet the needs of the region and also grown to as a tax District administrator with All the Monies that are coming in since the sales taxes were enacted in or and Durham County then later on in Wake County so it's time that we look at our systems our processes our technology our forecasting our structure and how do we report this out to our board and also the public and I we're looking forward to bringing the results of this study to our board in about 12 weeks and we'd be happy to come to this body and give you a report on what our findings are I think it's time to for us to look at streamlining what we do and also be a more transparent organization to our partners as we go forward with all these projects and as the funding for Transit increases in the region we do have some projects we are we are building ADA Compliant bus stops for all providers in Durham County.

And City and also we also work on stops and wake and or orang County for go triangle stops go triangles Capital plan also includes Park and Ride facilities the regional transit centers and 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 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 and we are planning for future Regional passenger rail in conjunction with the no Partners there's a joint subcommittee on Regional Rail that's been established with dchc and Campo some of you are participate in these meetings and we are looking forward to a study that DCC and Campo are going to do jointly to identify projects that will help us partner together on on a more incremental process for delivering Regional Rail the bus stop Improvement program you've.

Seen you've heard a lot about it today right now this is we're looking at 381 bus stops over the next several years 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 sometimes you have to go to Dot and ask for encroachments you have to put it out for construction and bid it out but it is it's it's we're looking to deliver 40 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 with a couple of FTE to help us accelerate this program Chad can you just explain those on 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 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 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 on the property so it's negligible you know most of the time to the property owners but certainly 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 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 so we have some large Transportation oriented development projects happening we got a bill grant for $20 million from usdot for something called the rust bus project the Raleigh Union Station bus Transfer Facility project so rust bus is the short name it is a ground floor Transit Center.

So it'll have a roof on it you'll see that where the Bus Loop is there there's going to be eight Bays we had some property that we owned right behind Raleigh Union Station that was all a bunch of old warehouses it was purchased a long time ago for a different Rail Project that didn't occur so now this project this site is being redeveloped the everything is been demolished the old warehouses are gone you'll see the project picture in the upper right hand side of the screen 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 we have a nice time lapse 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 on top of.

This bus facility you'll see a 300 or so residential complex so it is a public private kind of partnership here where you know where $40 million in federal and local money is going to leverage another 250 million or more dollars for this commercial and residential development there'll be 20,000 sare ft of residential the bottom picture is a concept drawing the bottom right when it's done and people will be able to to walk very easily from this site over to Raleigh Union Station and back and forth and visit the the new restaurants and they'll be parking there too expanded parking for the amp Trak station you've heard the term triangle Mobility Hub Ellen correctly said some people call it the triangle the Regional Transit Center whatever you call it it's going to be a great new Transit oriented development over at RTP on a 19 Acre Site right next to the ncrr corridor for a future rail platform that dot is taking a look at building the concept drawing we have.

Right here right now is a little bit Limited in its view but the state the upper left hand drawing is a would be 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 and then some the other pictures are from our archives that our existing pictures but rust bus is $40 million driving $300 million $200 $300 million I would think that there's a large multiplier on how much 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 to redevelop and put in many 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 than the current Transit Center is and we're very excited about it RTP Foundation is very excited about it and dot.

If they do get a grant to put the platform in we will be providing the place where passengers would wait for that train to come into that platform so this could be truly a multimodal project when it's all done so to I guess if you don't remember anything from this presentation just remember that Transit dollars Drive development and and drive private dollars and that's that's a really good thing you've also heard about our bus maintenance facility we need to expand our bus maintenance facility it's rather dated our Workforce is growing our number of buses is going to grow over the next several years it's not a cheap project to build the transit plans have money committed from each County to help build this facility and it's going to provide us a better workspace and safer workspace for our Workforce and give people our operators especially a place to rest and when they're in between their routes 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 and 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 that number will increase for fiscal year 24 when we update our data we have 29 pairat Transit vehicles on our that also help us serve the population here by Route you'll see on the right hand side of the presentation of the of the of the slide our highest performing routes the 100 is the highest performing one and then it graduates down lower as you get into the different routes some of the very longdistance routes aren't as well performing but we continue to evaluate our routes to make them 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 your population is rising quickly we provided 638,000 trips 778 th000 miles that is a large about more than a third of all the trips that go triangle U delivers to each of the counties so the transit plan is performing very well some of your revenues are coming in at $46 million in fiscal 23 and we put this chart in here to show you what your money goes for when it comes to go triangle so out of the six $46 million that that go into your Transit plan through the various Revenue sources mostly sales tax 6.4 million in fiscal 23 was spent on go triangle activities whether be managing or administering the transit sales tax dollars there's money for that there's bus operations there's bus infrastructure Capital planning some of that was for the computer rail study that we wrapped up last year and again a lot of these numbers will.

Shift in the next fiscal year when we get done with auditing that program but this is how go triangle this is the number of dollars that go triangle spends that come out of the transit plan and how we use them and I think it's it's it's over your 1.12 billion dollar Transit plan that you have going to 20 240 I think overall the go triangle will consume about $200 million of that Orange County similar story here of course you know less trips there less passenger service but lower population our lower performing routes head out to Orange County but of they they collected $13 million in their Transit plan of which they expended $1.6 million on go triangle activities activities that we conducted for them whether it be administrating the the the tax money whether it be building out a parking ride we have several capital projects or delivering more service the sales tax dollars just keep in mind these are dollars when go triangle gets them it's either to provide a service to.

An administrative service to the county or something that the county did perhaps if the county increased frequency on one of the routes where we meet that route the sales tax there's an interest in using sales tax money to help go triangle meet that same frequency so helping us match up so again this is a collaborative effort as we go through and plan our Transit and deliver service go triangle is kind of like the the you know the middle connective tissue and as things change in each of the counties we also have to change to meet that demand W County has a similar number to go to Durham as when it comes to number of trips and pass and but more miles way County is a little bit larger territory to get through they are their Transit plan is doing very well $147 million collected in fiscal 23 of which $8 million 8.5 million was expended for go triangle activities so 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 and then way County we go through a slightly different process but it's a it's a vigorous process to determine 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 but I will bring you back to the board for questions commissioner.

Jacobs thank you so much for this information Chuck I would I U would love for you to come back and share with us the results of your financial over overview that would be great and I appreciate that you all are doing that really exciting about the r bus project and I think that's a great model of a a multi-use public private partnership love that includes housing how much affordable housing is a part of that project currently 10% 10% okay that's great 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 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 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 to help reduce some of their stress on their parking needs and also we are looking at doing a congestion mitigation air quality Grant application in conjunction with the airport to deliver some type of service that would be like an Express service from Durham and from Raleigh into the airport for both employees and passengers we haven't developed it very far yet we just started this conversation with airport but we are engaged with them 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 I think whatever we do making it seamless 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 in Boston and you know people will do whatever as long as it's easy and seamless people don't really care what the mode is it's just about getting to where you want to go and having it be integrated and and easy for people so I'm I'm yeah I think that's another key key partner I was wondering the planning for that I know you mentioned you know the importance of the RTP 3.0 of course the Hub and and housing are you are people looking also similar to rbus with the 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 you know they they they we we're meeting with them almost every other month lately on this project to do a good Transit oriented development around this so they'll be commercial they'll be office there'll be residential around it eventually we.

Are seeking a 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 and RTP is committed to you know helping us with the property that we need in order to build the project and then once that's done all around and perhaps even on top of the of the new Mobility Hub you'll see this new Transit oriented development 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 fivefold 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 in person and get a briefing on that and also an updated briefing in in conjunction with Travis kraton over at RTP to update folks on that project so on what we're doing there so 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 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 that way and I saw that in Vancouver at the revolution conference went out to University Vancouver and their 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 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 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 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 I I have like a myriad of questions but because I respect everyone in this room I'm only going to ask one 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 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 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 a request under the reconnect communities grant program for Henderson I think Wake Forest Apex and and and RTP 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 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 yeah we are we are going to continue to be aggressive for the RTP multi Transit Center and also 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 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 Madam chair Madame Vice chair Commissioners County manager attorne is.

Not there but you've been asked to receive this presentation from our Duram County mwbe program manager and so we have with us today Mr Cornelius lamber CC as most of us know him who 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 coordinator with our 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 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 Mr County attorney happy to be with you I'm going to go quick but I got to go somewhere first one is why we do this work and again 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 Miss Harris invested in me 20 30 years ago in fact she I met her in 1995 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 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 as was heard before we it's been a long day 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 even though it says we established in 1984 we actually went fulltime more more like in 1994 with a mission to build strong long- lasting relationships.

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 telecommunications and cabling product dist distribution as well as Hub participation Consulting 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 it is a unlimited general contractor I say that factiously the company has really done marvelous work as you'll see a couple of pictures there we were instrumental in building the the Herold L Martin senior engineering research and Innovation complex on aent State University's campus as well as the.

Student Center much of our construction delivery methods include construction manager at risk single Prime construction management as well as design build our project size ranges from as low as $50,000 up to $90 million we were awarded the opportunity to be the construction project manager for Guilford County Schools in excess of $600 million as an example of the type of work that we do I mentioned before the two projects that we did over on North Carolina an State University's campus both of them in excess of $90 million a little bit about our Hub participation Consulting work as CC mentioned built a business over 30 years in making sure that there were opportunities for his business as well as other businesses to gain experience in 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 which I mentioned one is the Guilford County Schools 2020 school bond program it is actually the management entity is actually a.

Joint venture between C2 and high caps of which C2 is the majority owner the dollar amount of that is in excess of $650 million as a comparison the H parti anticipation for Guilford County Schools before or or during the 2122 fiscal year was 2.1% systemwide as a comparison our involvement with the project with the bond project we had 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 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 contract and letting in the early parts of our engagement our H participation numbers were 10.6% during the engagement we increased that to 15% however after our engagement 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 there were leaders all up and down the line in addition to c2's participation to increase those numbers and so 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 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 we certainly went through the North Carolina Statewide uniform certification to obtain The Hub participation or or Hub certification we're also 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 it is not a one or two person show it is a staff of experienced individuals that have come together to to utilize the the.

Hopefully the best parts of us to to to produce products that are that are well-managed and that that experience comes together so we see with CC has been you know in business you know since '95 full time 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 as well as being the past chairman of that effort Ed Browning who is our co 32 years of supervisory experience ex-marine so we have you know that that type of experience on the team many many years and and helps to lead the telecommunications and cabling 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 MBA from Chapel Hill go Hills as well as a Bachelor of Science of engineering from Tennessee Tech University Brandon Lamberth our senior project manager Sports and NBA from NBA and a Bachelor of Science from King.

University all right let's talk a little bit about the projects that we have been contracted for with within Durham County the first off is the Hub participation Consulting work as I mentioned before we are working with Durham County to assist them to reach their aspirational goal of 25% contract initiation was back July of last year one of the projects that we were asked to do was to look at how how can we help Durham County identify Hub certified firms more easily we one of the first things we did was to look at the state's Hub search system and we said there there's a better way to do this we saw that that if if you've ever had an opportunity to go on the system it's it it it is cumbersome and it's really based on 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 which we'll we'll see a snapshot here.

In a minute 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 little more cumbersome okay so we have we have given the product for review for Durham County staff to be able to review and give their feedback a summary of activities just want to give you a list of the things that we have done as a company to fulfill the work that we've been contracted to do so we have we've done everything from meeting with organizations such as Durham the Durham chamber we have participated we participated in in this past Year's Durham minority Enterprise development week we see where we started working on the Hub spreadsheet database we've met with Economic Development so so we continue to show ourselves and want to work with.

Individual organizations as well as individuals to help them to reach those goals and here from December through this past month a couple of things I want to highlight in December we did host an Outreach event to County departments what we learned was that 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 to let them know that we that we look forward to working with them to help reach those goals we had 30 in attendance at that event and then just a couple weeks ago we held a historically underutilized business Outreach event that was sponsored by Durham County in conjunction with the Research Triangle Foundation and we had over 120 people in attendance most of those were small to midsize.

Minority women on businesses that were looking for opportunities to work with all the great work that's being done with the development of the Hub area with RTP this is just a snapshot of the database that was put together that is 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 search 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 to to have and we have that for at least a hundred different Search terms so anytime you're wanting some it could be catering it could be 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 we had presentations from of course Scott Levon who's the president of the foundation as well as a couple of presentations from U some of the primary 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 we we will be meeting weekly with the Durham County mwe M mwbe staff to listen in to see how we can assist the staff as well as Durham County to meet those goals we will be following up the meeting that we had with the the department heads to see how we.

Can meet we're going to meet with them individually to see how we can help marry the 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 group that is working on an mwe project as well as finalize the mwbe database based B upon feedback that we'll get from a county manager and staff our second contract is development Consulting where we will assist 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 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 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 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 Durham 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 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 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 a number of activities and meetings and research has been done to look at those opportunities 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 in a number of other areas have been because not one entity has all the resources so if you partner to get those things done and so there.

Have been me I know CC has been involved in a lot of those meetings traveling 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 for the opportunities that are here in particular there are a couple of certainly projects that we were asked to look at 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 we also submitted a development report for 3825 South South rockboro and and and so there are a number of opportunities is where we've done research 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 reconnaissance visits was to actually to Atlanta to talk about how schools have been converted to a affordable Workforce housing so in in in light of with DSA and maybe.

Other opportunities 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 we'll continue to work with the county to investigate and help to plan out development options for 220 East Maine 325 South rockboro as well as 826 East pedigree Street the former Boys and Girls Club we will also continue to work with the county to 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 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 Madam maner We snuck this one in this was he's if the picture can you get that back up because that's actually an employee here at the county and he was on site with 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 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 I wanted the humble approach to someone under your leadership 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Monica but I also see these additional scopes of work I know that pedig is pedig is our boys and girls club I know that this right this 22 East M well 22 Main right here is 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 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 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 yeah just what is the what scope of work were y'all giv to do so I heard a lot and I'm I think there's a big answer one is Hub so historically unutilized business you know I know what Hub is right yes ma'am so 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.

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 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 let me press upon that so let's go to the next subject which was you want to see numbers change 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 minority Women Business you're doing sight I mean you're doing 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 a program manager it goes back to 2019 I think the 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 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 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 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 DFI out of UNCC because DFI is working to update the cost projections that we have on upfitting 220 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 all I'm going to I'm that's just real talk like I I want yall to be success no 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 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 I know how important the RTP project is to this entire Community as you can see with 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 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 I I wish y'all the best of luck thank you thank you commissioner J Jacobs thank you so much 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 again like how is our system currently working and how is it not working and 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 I appreciate the fact that you're meeting with department.

Heads 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 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 when the database is finished just looking at it I mean I have a lot to learn and you know it goes back to even the conversation 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 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 helping us see what we're doing isn't isn't really.

Working and the impact that that we really should be able to have because we spend a lot of money you know when we and and the schools now with our bond so I appreciate your experience with Guilford County Schools because you know we just we just passed a big Bond here in Durham and the whole issue I think 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 but behind you know our South Library that's like Prime real estate South Durham so anyway I thank you.

And I look forward to 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 we took the the old witted School former historically black high school in Durham and turn that into senior housing called The Veranda huge and also 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 the CC team and you know I just want to acknowledge the event that you had in the park 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 exchanging cards and really looking at how they can connect and build businesses and I have not seen that happen before and as a 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 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 goods and services believe it or not this past legisl legislative session there was a p yes ma'am you saw it so we pushed as a member of the 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 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 but we are we are launching a project to implement software to help us track our participation thank you very much I learned a lot 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 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.

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