Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · April 3, 2023

good morning good morning uh James savara 12 Susanna drive and I'm here speaking on behalf of the Coalition for affordable housing and Transit um I'm coming to encourage you to include a support for extremely low-income tenants as you make your budget allocation particularly as you use your remaining arpa funds the burden of paying rent is substantial for most extremely low income households the city's Community Development Department states that over 8 000 households in Durham with income less than 30 percent of every meeting income are spending more than half of their incomes on rent these extremely long perimeters in enroll in own commanders are at risk of eviction if they are not able to pay their rent the number of evictions doubled in 2022 to almost six thousand we seek to help and as a result about 1700 tenants were removed from

their homes in 2022 we seek to help those who are in greatest need because of a combination of extremely low income and high rents let us help these struggling households before they face eviction and greatly improve their quality of life by offsetting the negative impact of pain more than half of their limited income on housing by providing them with a payment of six hundred dollars a month through the rental assistance guaranteed income program we hope that County will take the lead in starting this pilot program you took the lead in creating the low-income homeowners relief program and the experience with this program was even stronger in its second year it looks like the city is committing all of its housing funds to low income housing construction Larisa Seibel and I hope that the county will be willing to start the program with a scaled back number of recipients 250 to get the program started it would be a strong guaranteed income pilot program the center for home

875 million dollars Opera funds could also be used to fund the second year of the program it since the funds can be used into next year it would be great if you could persuade the city council to get on board as well to double the number of recipients but it's important to get this program started and provide relief to the struggling households before they face the disruption of eviction not just some help after they

have gone through that process and have had to find a new place to live thank you very much for your attention to this important matter thank you Jim the next speaker is James Chavis good morning my name is James Davis I'm a pack of facilitated for Pat one district one and done and I'm glad first time getting back to see some of y'all face to face but my first part of this is going to be done with the letter that we requested County Manager to come to our Pat meeting but you did not show up

and this is why we wanted her there to deal with the same thing that this young man just talked about affordable housing and the impact that I'll developers are doing today and how the county was going to be acting in since her new becoming what she did not show up but Brenda Hamilton showed up in place your County Manager do it and she said she was there to support the manager and she tried to call her on her phone and she said she didn't know why she didn't answer her and she was supposed to get back with us this was saying 20 22 of July now July is about to come again I got the email that we sent out Brenda why are you looking so Disturbed I got the email that's why I brought it to let

you know you any kind of manager lied to us the reason why I'm calling your Liars to your face is because you didn't do what you claim you was going to do you as a kind of manager when you first took off in you said you was coming out to the community and what find out and work with the community Brenda housing you told us you was going to come back and tell us why she did not show up well see this will make us have suspicions of some of you people because Elias make us look very different at you so this year I'm coming to you again I got some flyers we're talking about the impact again of these Developers Gwen came to you all and I couldn't make it asking you all to get on board I'm asking you to get on board

because this is definitely not only to us with low income like he's saying for rental property what about those your homeowners that cannot afford to stay in their property these developers are trying to take over Durham and some of our commissioners and city council members are on the take I'ma say that again I believe some of our County Commissioners and our city council members are on the take but guess what we the citizens got to come and ask y'all some questions so please come out after I said in April thank you so Mr Chavis I have to address you calling uh either the manager or I a lie that is not something we do if the manager was not there

I there was she did not receive the email and I said to you that she probably did not get your email and that if I said I would be back then I was probably waiting for you to give me an invitation to come back which I have not gotten so just saying that in public is so disrespectful so I'm asking you to when you address us please don't do that I would not do that to you okay if if we didn't get it if we didn't get it right then let us know and we'll come back and try and do our best Miss Hamilton this is the problem with us black folks you're black just like I am okay and y'all don't got y'all these positions I'm not going to debate with you you all are taking it Mr Davis you are you are finished your time is up and I'm not

going to debate actually talk to me I'm not going to debate with you I'm not going to beg with you either but I'ma let you know how I stand okay that's fine so we have two other um speakers virtual um Robert Chapman see on the line hello my name is Bob Chapman I live in 2525 Lanier place in Durham and I just wanted to give you a quick update on the simplifying codes for affordable development text amendments I'm part of the team that worked on this project for nearly a year and met with many many Civic groups and on March 20th the city

council considered the Amendments and decided that they should have a more thorough analysis and would very much appreciate the planning department taking the task of going through the proposed little item by item and providing additional information which will be presented to the council on May 1st and at public Hearing in the meantime the team members are offering to meet with anyone who has questions we've had a number of meetings already and we look forward to the next few weeks being able to address all of the concerns questions suggestions and going first to the city council after the report is done and then coming before your board and I just wanted to give you this quick update thank you Mr Tedman our next speaker is DeJuan Langley is he

on the line yes I am good morning chair Hamilton Vice Chair Wendy Jacobs Jacobs and Commissioners Burns along Carter as well as County Manager Dr Sowell and welcome to Durham I haven't had an opportunity to welcome our new County Manager uh attorney Andrews first I would like to thank Miss Joanne Pierce two years ago throughout cover I was frequently uh asking the Commissioners about the My Brother's Keeper initiative as well as the MBK Equity framework and Miss Pierce met with me told me a lot about what was happening internally within Durham County and I just appreciated her for informing me and ensuring that a lot of the recommendations in terms of adopting the equity framework filling the vacancy with my brother's keeper and the continuing work that is ongoing with the community intervention and support services department so I just wanted to publicly thank Mrs Pierce for that as

well as the Commissioners for their continued support of My Brother's Keeper and I firmly believe with the creation of the board of revised local action plan we will have an opportunity when implemented to have an aligned and sustained ecosystem that improves Education Health employment outcomes by reducing the likelihood of Justice involvement this local action plan will build and sustain will be a transformative ecosystem to serve as a and read them document the guys to work and is reported out on and assist and evolved as necessary but I'm also here as the volunteer executive director of The Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation I was heard a lot about the Surplus to Durham County will have available this year through uh increased revenue and I'm just requesting especially considering this last week where we had five young and a cup of boys of color victims of gun violence here in this community for an investment of 250 000 for for our career exploration and

development programming that will provide career and skill focus mentoring to boys and young enough color in Durham County as we may be aware this population is disproportionately represented in areas such as low academic proficiency College and Career Readiness short and long-term suspensions Dropout rates acceptance to college life sustaining career opportunities perpetrators and victims of gun violence juvenile petitions and rep presentation in the Durham County Detention Facility our program seeks to address these disparities by providing career exploration and development opportunities for boys and young men of college and skill focus mentoring academic enrichment and leadership development with your investment we plan to expand our reach to a larger number of participants because we know that a Workforce Development strategy increases the likelihood of boys and young men of color making better decisions when they understand and see the connectivity between their lives and the opportunities that are relocating and expanding in our community by providing

these additional resources for programming activities we will be able to build our capacity to ensure our program's long-term sustainability through our program and we aim to equip boys environment of color with the skills resources and support they need to achieve academic and Corrections improve their social economic outcomes and become productive members and contributing members of our community your investment will help us make a significant impact in the lives of the boys and young men that we serve and broader Durham community so thank you for this consideration and I'll be reaching out to each one of you to have a meeting to share about our programming our outcomes and how we can collectively partner to ensure that boys of color and young men of color have opportunity to seize all the greatness that is happening in Durham thank you thank you are there any other speakers hearing none thank you for all of you sharing your

comments so we're down to our consent agenda and we have about 19 items that the board will go through facilitated by a manager and see if there are any questions or concerns with these items manager so well thank you so much Madam chair so we will begin with agenda item 230094 budget ordinance amendment number 23 bcc-00082 for the Department of Social Services to recognize funds in the amount of 473 659 from the low income household water assistance Federal program as part of the program's arpa American Rescue plan act funding and America rescue plan act

Administration funding to provide emergency assistance to low-income households to prevent this connection or provide assistance with reconnection of drinking and Wastewater services questions okay two three zero one nine two Capital project amendment number two three cpa-00020 appropriating 875 000 of future taxable limited obligation Bond funding lobs to the 500 East Main Street Downtown parking deck Capital project 4730-2635 dc151 as well as authorize an increase in the owner's contingency in the amount of eight hundred seventy five thousand dollars to execute any necessary change orders for the deck development agreement with the zom living for a total not to exceed of 32 million seven hundred one thousand one one hundred

dollars 230193 Durham County Sheriff's Office contract approval with jna engineering LLC in the amount of 145 520 for the electric security system replacement project at the Detention Center foreign budget ordinance amendment number 23 bcc-00077 appropriating three hundred thousand eight hundred dollars of general fund fund balance to fund a contract with child care services Association for provider selection services for the operation of the 300 East Main Street Child Care Pre-K space as well as authorize the execution of the contract with child care services Association for the provider selection services in the amount not to exceed

three hundred thousand eight hundred dollars commissioner Jacobs thank you well I I really just wanted to highlight this issue because this is like really exciting um and I'm just wondering I mean how many counties nationally are creating Child Care Centers and not just you know Child Care Centers but model Child Care Centers so my question is really how can we lift this up as a model for you know just our whole Community I mean the business Community because we really want our businesses to take the lead from us or uh to do this um you know we just had our incentive with the company from Norway that said they would open a Child Care Center in their facility but

I guess you don't have to come back to us now but I guess I would like to hear more from staff about how we could really hold this up as a model and a pilot and share the practices that we are following by engaging ccsa with you know looking at that scope of work and share out um you know just you know how we can just leverage this for our whole Community really so that's just what I want to say as I this is like a really big deal and I'm really proud of what um the county is doing here um just respond to what commissioner Jacobs just said um Naco is always looking for initiatives to highlight and this could be one that they could highlight nationally

um and because we got emails on yet this weekend or it might have probably was Friday they're looking for things that they can highlight in their in their newsletters so we can do that one commissioner that was literally what I was about to say so ditto same thing okay all right I mean I am excited about highlighting at the national level but I'm more frankly I have a greater sense of urgency around highlighting it locally in the ways that Wendy Jacobs was describing yeah yeah um we can do both of course but um this this there's never been a more important time frankly to increase access to high quality child care in our country and our community I'm feeling it personally with my my own daughters who are seeking child care for babies for infants um so it's after after you know after the pandemic it just seems like things have only worsened and

um this is this in particular can affect working women so there are just so many reasons we all know that's why we're that's why we're opening but what more can we do to get the business Community involved and on board I think that's a fantastic suggestion this is a six-year contract you know they'll be looking the scope of work will continue for six years to be sure that there's excellent staff development for the teachers there the providers there it's going to be super high quality and this is exactly what we need to have happening throughout our community you're so right commissioner Jacobs yeah I thought somebody else was going to highlight it I just want to Elevate that these is I think our second major investment in daycare downtown and we talk about food we'll individuals in here talk about food deserts all the time but we don't think about the fact that they're daycare deserts in Durham and I know that's offensive to some people but there are black women who have daycares that you know can't get into our system we have individuals who are low income who come

downtown to work in these buildings to run these buildings and then they don't have access to child care so I do want to highlight the locality and it there's a geography a geography to the lack of access to child care so I do appreciate the fact that we have put two of them downtown one was a recent ribbon cutting over to American Tobacco and now we have this one so uh we we talk about modeling it nationally again I had to agree with commissioner Carter I think we need to be modeling this locally because there's a lot of affordable housing going up and they have not taken the step that we've taken to put it here so for me I don't know if anybody else is looking at it this way I'm actually excited because I think we talk about 300 and 500 so much that some people are like well I see a parking deck but I don't see the building yet and so I just hope that this also signals to the community we would not be taking out a six-year contract for daycare if we did not think the building was coming so I do also want people to see this is coming this

building is coming this housing is coming and we want to make sure that folks have a safe place to go for their children when they come to work in this building any of these other buildings downtown and I'm hopeful that we can get some more folks in the pipeline and that as we recruit the teachers and the students who are going to be in this space we do so locally let me just say why I say highlighting nationally highlighting naturally means that there's money available this is a national conversation it is the number one conversation that's being lifted up affordable housing and child care commissioner it is being lifted up so that when I say nationally I'm thinking the money that can come into our community to help the businesses that are coming here that are National businesses that can help with child care so I'm not thinking I agree with that

ma'am let me let me finish please let me you try to clean up what I say I wasn't talking about you I just wanted to make sure let me finish please well you're going to clean up today so this is so when I I want the community understand why I say what I say is that you know when I was in DC there were Child Care Centers almost on every corner now for us to do that it takes the business community to partner with us to get that done and when you got companies that are coming here that are National companies they need to know that they need to know that this is a conversation not just in Durham but it is a conversation in other places as well so that is not a I'm not taking it from a that I don't see it happening here I I live here this is where the people

this is where the people elected me to make sure that we are doing everything we can to take care of their community so just just to clarify why I said nationally well we will certainly we hear the charge that we will certainly look at what we can do to highlight this book locally and nationally so thank you all so much for your passion and for making sure this was something we incorporated yeah it's it's really exciting to see us get to this point so thank you all for your commitment to this all righty 230200 award contract for feasibility study of Durham County Farm campus RFP 23014 to RH and a advisors Mr Jacobs well this is also something that's really awesome I just had a a question I looked at the scope of work

and I just want to make sure um I know part of it will be looking at you know possible locations but I did want to just specify that I would like I I would request if it's not already being done that that includes looking at all of the publicly controlled land uh so that means you know lamb that the county owns the city and also Durham public schools because you know off the top of the of my head I think about the um the location of what will soon be the former Northern High School so I just want to just make sure that we're we're also assessing at those properties thank you absolutely commissioner Carter I just want to say how excited I am about this item and this uh idea this Farm campus idea was

lifted up recently at the Duke Health Summit which was all about the urgency of now around food security and also you know increasing land ownership and food entrepreneurism opportunities in communities of color communities that have historically been excluded from those kinds of opportunities and so I just am very excited to see this taking the next step forward foreign increase the 500 East Main Street affordable housing Redevelopment Master development agreement through Pago funding of 10 million six hundred eighteen thousand four hundred Seventeen dollars for loan number four execute the revised lender commitment letter for the loan in the amount of 10 million 618 417 as well as a proven Amendment to the master development agreement for the project

I know you're excited I know what she's so we we all excited here about go ahead go ahead I I just I just had a I think first of all this this project shows how expensive it is to execute these projects because we keep coming back and allocating more funding I guess I just wanted to get some clarity on some of the changes because it says that it's the it's now going to be the 500 is now going to be 195 units and I didn't see I wasn't clear on how many we were we were supposed to be or what was previously um plan so just getting clear on that and also just wanted to be clear on the total amount of um money that the county is providing

1 million for the financing loan Gap knowing that we would have to come back at some point when the design was further along to really nail down what the development would look like and so now obviously the design has progressed to a point where we're comfortable with bringing forward an estimate for you and so that is why we're showing that we have 195 units of

5 million for subleasing the space back so we can get a child care operator inside that space so that's another number that should be accounted for and

not we should also mention the parking that we're providing to both developments basically that parking is through just a commitment from the county you know the county is basically going to be providing parking for the 110 tenants plus some shared parking for visitors that will be coming to this to that um to visit them at that location sort of after hours and on weekends and so we saw similar numbers um to that with the 500 development as well so the county has made just a considerable amount of um I guess financing and participation commitment toward affordable housing and and this project just totally exemplifies that so there are a lot of numbers there but uh it's a lot and it all should be recognized thank you Perry so we're looking at 305 units total for affordable housing

and a very significant um investment in the child care and the parking and the affordable housing I just think it's important for the community to know and and how challenging it is to execute these projects and thank you we look forward to the groundbreaking for the affordable housing part yes ma'am thank you yeah anyone else and we always appreciate Perry the work this has been a major undertaken thank you and you and all the staff that's been working with you on this project okay two three zero two zero two budget ordinance amendment number two three bcc-00076 for the Department of Social Services to recognize funds in the amount of Thirteen thousand two hundred thirty dollars and thirty six cents from The Adult Protective Services APS

essential Services funds to arrange for essential needs on behalf of an individual receiving protective services for adult planning and mobilizing services 230203 approve the purchase of VMware site recovery manager license in the amount of 151 150 using existing CIP funds 230204 approve renewal of Durham County's contract with gather Consulting service in the amount of 161 800 dollars using existing funds 230205 renew the current license agreement and continue our Enterprise license agreement for DocuSign and DocuSign contract life cycle management

CLM in the amount of ninety seven thousand seven hundred forty two dollars and five cents using existing funds 230206 approve the usage of existing funds in the amount of ninety nine thousand eight hundred forty four dollars and Thirty One cents for the renewal of Half Point Cloud governance software licenses and online Support Services manager because of the public would you say what you mean when you say existing funds um it it means that we already have funds in the budget to use this but we still need to get agreement the funds for this are already located in their budget so we will not have to appropriate fund balance or any other source yep we have to get your approval

or the contract thank you okay two three zero two one three budget ordinance amendment number 23 BCC 00078 appropriating four million thirty thousand nine hundred sixty one dollars of general fund fund balance to purchase eleven replacement ambulances through the savik copper Cooperative purchasing agreement for the office of emergency services EMS division commissioner long um thank you so much to all of the staff who worked on this Jim Groves I'm was really excited to read this uh item especially looking into like the details about the new system that's in place regarding the idling of the vehicles that lowers the emissions I know commissioner Carter is probably very happy about that as well but I was really excited about that because when I

was first sworn in or before I was first born in me and commissioner Burns went on a tour with the sheriff's department and we had learned that one of the biggest issues that causes them to have to purchase new vehicles so frequently is because the cars have to be left idling and that ages the vehicle so much faster someone I was just wondering you know with this new technology that they have uh does that increase the lifespan of these new influences from what we've seen before it it could we do not have any of these units in service yet so I think that's to be determined but we believe that a diesel engine just idling creates a lot of wear and tear and obviously it it will make the um vehicle wear out sooner however if this is successful and this the these self-power is able to maintain

the environmental controls and and making sure the um equipment is charged up on the ambulance then this could gets significantly extend the life of the ambulance right um and and make an incredible impact on our carbon footprint right so we're really excited about the opportunity to put these in every single new unit that we have ordered to help the county meet their environmental goals but also to help it a little bit better for our folks as well right so we look forward to being able to come back and give you a report on how this is doing and see if it's meeting our expectations in the future thank you so much Dr Groves and I had one question for manager swell also on this item I know the DEQ has like grants available through the state for when we're per when local governments or entities are purchasing electric vehicles I know this isn't an electric

vehicle but could we look in to see if they have any grants available that could support the cost of these since it is an environmentally friendly vehicle absolutely that you know we have reached out to Tobin and we continue to work with Tobin very closely to see if we can find grants and support this as well thank you just want to also highlight that the supply chain issues and I appreciate the staff planning ahead and just to note that there are seven ambulances that we have already approved that are going to be delivered I think within the coming year so just for the public to know that we are trying to get ahead of this issue because there has have been some previous concerns about

um the condition of our vehicles and and I just want to acknowledge that you all are trying your best are clearly um trying to address that issue so thank you yes ma'am and I thank the board for that I'm Sorry Miss manager I was just going to add um thanks to to Jim and his team especially those in the business services units because we really have stabilized our ambulance Fleet to make sure we do have vehicles on the road now and they were successfully recruited I think we have two main maintenance staff positions field now correct so that when they need to be repaired we can get them repaired and back in service as soon as possible so thank you all so much for the work on that a question on that do we know how much we save when we have a maintenance person on staff versus I know we have to contract it out like what are the savings when we have I believe we can put that for you we

don't have it right in front of us but uh from talking with our business services manager uh when we've had turbo issues or transmission issues with the existing ambulances every time we get it back it's a six thousand plus bill so you look at the vast number of ambulance that we have uh you could infer that we could pay for at least one FTE but we're happy to put that together and bring it back to the board any other questions all righty 230222 budget ordinance amendment number 23 bcc-00081 Public Health to recognize funds in the amount of fifty three thousand seven hundred twenty three dollars from the division of child and family well-being North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services for Durham's Innovative nutrition education dying program implementation including using the funds

J Cog for low to moderate income solarize program Mr Jacobs yes um I mean this is such a fantastic program and I just was wondering um I guess I'm assuming from the how much it costs ten thousand per unit and that we allocated fifty five thousand I just want I I just want to get a confirmation on how many residents have been able to be assisted with this and whether we're going to continue or expand this program and and what what the interest was um that was unmet

um I think Monica Tobin may be on the uh his own link she's not okay well she previously informed me that I know she has four uh participants slated for this 51st trunch of 55 000 that we have and I know the request is it is in the upcoming budget requests and so that's something obviously engineering has not met with upper management yet but we will be reviewing that uh this week actually and so we hope to continue that um obviously this contract with TJ Cobb they're going to be administering the the actual funding for the county and uh going through that betting process and also making sure that we have the appropriate quality insurance on the installations and so that's what the in a local agreement is for did I also hear Vice chair Jacob do you like to know if there were residents that we could not um fund for the program yeah I mean I

think it'll be helpful in the budget when we're going through the budget to know if we should increase the funding for this program absolutely Tobin did mention that there were others that were interested in the program and so I don't have the exact count in front of me but we certainly will get back to you with that and we'll be speaking with the manager this week about that okay thank you great thank you so much Perry moving on to 230224 Durham city county appearance commission interlocal agreement renewal 230226 approved the purchase of servicenow Professional Services in the amount of 204 thousand dollars using existing funds to provide technology strategy support and training 230228 execution of the contract Amendment with DTW Architects Inc for

0229 execution of the contract Amendment with metcom metcon Inc for the twwtp utilities administration building in the amount of forty three thousand three hundred forty dollars project number 7100se057 and 230246 application for funding for triangle wwtp Rehabilitation and upgrade project for utilities division okay Madam chair that concludes the consent agenda thank you manager and the staff for responding to Commissioners

questions prior to this meeting and this meeting all commissioners we are ahead we're going into our discussion items or the is there any adjustments that Commissioners have to these these items commissioner Carter um here Howerton I was going to suggest that in trying to get down to the number it's after lunch the last item it's the item related to a letter regarding um socials a Statewide plan for yeah thank you the it's 23-0251 the laboratory Durham delegation supporting modifications to Senate Bill 156 house bill 340. um I I would suggest we delayed the discussion

briefly not too long I do think this is time sensitive but we received some additional information on Friday that I've not had a chance to discuss with the manager yeah um I I had suggested we put this on the agenda so if everyone's okay pulling it for today so that we can confer with the manager and others perhaps offline before we have public discussion sure I don't see everyone feel about that okay so we'll delay that one yeah I would just suggest though that since it is time sensitive that we would get it on the April 13th meeting yes I was hoping that would happen give us this week so we'll have a conversation with the manager even if we have to do two two uh with the manager within the next week or so and then see what is recommended yes yeah yep okay it has is no indication of its low lack of importance it's hugely important I just think we'll have a better discussion if we delay it slightly and have some more discussions

0230 and that's greater triangle commuter rail feasibility study update on this item we have Ellen Beckman Durham County transportation manager is here to induce re introduce her team and that is I said 45 minute item okay good morning everyone Beckman Durham County transportation manager uh here today is go triangle staff chuckletuka CEO and Catherine Eggleston Chief development officer so the Board of Commissioners last received an update on the greater triangle commuter rail feasibility study in September when the feasibility study results were released since then go

triangle is conducted public engagement so they're back with the results of that public engagement and there's been additional financial and technical analysis in the presentation so I do want to remind everyone that no decision is being requested today the the questions at the end of the presentation are to prompt discussion and are for your consideration as well as the dchc mpo and the go triangle board in the decision-making process the Board of Commissioners will ultimately have a role in deciding this through the approval of the transit plan and then the new interlocal agreement also specifies that the Board of Commissioners approves the annual budget so any appropriation to take the project to the next step as well as a cost share agreement between the counties so with that I'll turn it over to go triangle thank you

good morning Commissioners thank you for having us back again and we've uh pleased to share this update with you um you've been through the public Outreach process as Ellen has just said and we have some good results from that to share with you today uh just like to open up here as to uh why are we looking at the commuter rail as a uh to help us move people around the region as you see on the map here are the 2050 population vehicle ownership and congestion uh populations in the Triangle region will be over 300 3 million by 2050 and they're going to bring more than 2 million cars with them uh by 2050 and the impact on the roadway network is going to be quite severe as you see in the red that's uh if that's you know with all the plans that we know about to expand the roadway Network this would be the impact of having that many vehicles on the uh in the Triangle uh on the on

the roadway Network so it's quite severe next slide the job growth is also going to go uh you know very favorable for the triangle for the next 30 Years we're going to add 800 000 new jobs by 2050. and if you see the uh the uh on the left on the the green line the squiggly line there that represents uh one mile on either side of the North Carolina railroad Corridor where the commuter rail would be built over time and you can see a lot of those jobs more than 350 000 of those jobs reside within one mile the corridor so the corridor is ideally located to accommodate a lot of the new jobs and get people to work in the future okay so so thank You Chuck and for those of you who are here in 2020 you'll remember that we started this phase of the feasibility study with an open-ended

engagement process asking people what their priorities were for a Rail Project what benefits they would want to see and what information they believed was important for decision makers like yourselves to consider when we got to this point in the process this took place early during the pandemic and included a mix of online engagement in-person engagement particularly with current bus riders at bus stations throughout the triangle and Partnerships with direct service organizations that were open and serving customers and clients during during the pandemic more than 2 700 people participated in that engagement providing more than 5 000 comments interest in reliable all-day service was one of the key pieces of feedback that we received from that round of Engagement as well as you know a lot that we've heard throughout the study and we've tried to incorporate that as

much as possible into our planning we recently completed a second round of Engagement which this was around the results of the feasibility study and we had more than 6 000 people provide feedback in this round we were very forthcoming about the results of the feasibility study that due to high costs and Technical challenges identified in the corridor particularly in Durham that delivering the full project all at once is not feasible at this time despite those challenges more than 80 percent of respondents to the survey expressed support for continued planning for for the rail project with more than 70 percent indicating strong support this level of support closely aligns across key demographic breakdowns this graphic disaggregates the responses by County as you can see the level of

support is very similar those bars are for Wake County Durham County Johnston County and Orange County all with more than 70 percent of people in the strongly support category there on the left when an additional almost 10 percent in the somewhat support category we don't have slides for every single demographic breakout but the basic takeaway holds for all of the demographic breakdowns that we have looked at I'm just going to run through a few of them for race ethnicity for people who indicated the race ethnicity is black or mixed race including black those numbers were 86 percent of respondents expressing support with 72 percent strongly support for Hispanic or Latino that number was 88 percent expressing support and 77 percent strongly support for the lowest income category twenty thousand dollars household income or less 89 percent support 79 percent

strongly support for the lowest two income categories fifty thousand dollars or less 87 support 76 percent strongly support and then for respondents who said that they currently ride the bus Which of those six thousand people almost a thousand indicated that they currently ride the bus in somewhere along the project Corridor 85 percent Express support was 74 percent strongly support in your packet you have additional disaggregated data for responses that are just that subset from Durham across those uh breakouts those numbers that I just listed off are for the corridor for the total respondents by category and then again in your packet uh thanks to Ellen we were able to get that in there that shows just the breakout if you're looking only at Durham if you are interested in that deeper level of disaggregation so you may remember that the first phase of the feasibility study looked at a larger area of the corridor all the way

from Mebane and Alamance County to Selma and Johnston County at the conclusion of that earlier phase of the study this board participated in a decision to look at the area between Durham and Garner or Clayton to find the most feasible project for a first phase of implementation recognizing that it would take many years and multiple extensions to build out the full vision for rail in the region including Orange County Johnston County that's in the 2050 mtps or Metropolitan Transportation plans in this phase we've looked at a number of different options for implementation all these numbers here are provided for your reference I'm not going to read them all out loud but just to orient you to what you have here our base case if you will is in this First Column building from West Durham all the way to the edge of Southeast Wake County all at one time that was determined not to be feasible at this time due to challenges

including rail infrastructure issues uncertainty of federal funding and limited resources balanced with local needs for shorter shorter term improvements to the bus system we've identified a couple of implementation options that would be affordable with local revenues and Federal loans to be able to pay for the project over time the smallest lowest cost option is the option in southeast Wake County that's in the second column Auburn to Raleigh Union Station the option that we're hearing a lot of support for is what we've called the central option from Raleigh to RTP or potentially a little further into Durham County that's in the third column we've also looked at an option at the request of the Capital Area mpo to understand the financial feasibility of building the full Wake County portion at once based on our current assumptions and current understanding costs that would not be feasible within 10 years without additional Revenue outside of the Wake Transit plan or

re-prioritization of the projects within the plan we'll get back to some specifics about Durham and the Durham Transit plan in a few minutes but first I want to briefly recap some overall findings that are relevant to the discussion first on cost the primary cost driver on the project is new track and track related infrastructure while using the existing rail Corridor does have benefits it is still going to be an expensive project to add rail service to the shared Corridor where the freight and Amtrak Intercity trains are already running the current base year for the cost is 2022 and we've assumed four percent annual escalation that assumption is consistent with the assumptions in the Durham Transit plan as well as the Wake Transit plan we also have you know reasonable contingencies included in the cost estimate for the feasibility phase that we're at right

now and it's important to keep in mind that these these all are estimates all you know we're we're making assumptions and we should expect these cost estimates may change as the project advances particularly as decisions are made about station locations Design Elements and and so forth on ridership you've seen a graphic like this before when we're looking at the full corridor from West Durham to Auburn in that scenario we see in the ridership projections robust bi-directional travel when we have both downtown Durham and downtown Raleigh in the project this graphic is looking at just the initial implementation options and what we see here is a different pattern here we see a more conventional suburb to City type of pattern with a lot of Park and Ride activity at those end stations RTP or Auburn going to downtown Raleigh to a

lesser extent NC State there is another key finding on ridership related to the decision that this board is going to be focusing on in Durham and I'll Circle back to that in in a couple slides coming up first on funding it's previously been the intention that this project would seek up to 50 percent of its funding from the Federal Transit administration's new starts program which you've all heard us talk about before the feasibility study has identified that based on the current cost and ridership estimates it's not clear that the project would be eligible for this funding planning for jobs population density and affordable housing in the station areas may make the project or future extensions more competitive in that program in the future if decision makers in the region do want to move forward with an initial phase for implementation now it's going to be critical to identify local funding for

the full cost of that project in the short term the timing of implementing future extensions is really dependent on a number of factors but a major one driving that is going to be identifying additional funding if more additional funding can be identified then those extensions may be able to happen sooner moving forward with any project even a smaller project is not going to be without risks there's significant railroad coordination issues to resolve in the corridor particularly west of Raleigh Union Station where in addition to Norfolk Southern we also have more Amtrak trains operating and we have CSX in the portion between Kerry and Raleigh where the S Line overlaps This Corridor and then of course as we've talked about at length here additional concerns in Durham where we have an active Freight

yard that really constrains the capacity of the corridor to support additional passenger service at those increased frequencies railroad coordination issues can cause scheduled delay frequently cause schedule delay on projects like this around the country we know that delay costs money so ultimately if a decision is made to move forward with any project in this Corridor it's going to be critical to secure buy-in from the host railroads early in the process really as part of the next step of the process to be able to begin documenting the requirements in legal agreements so let's focus now on the issues specific to Durham as you've heard from me before the cost of the western portion of the project the Durham portion far exceeds the financial capacity of the transit plans to be able to deliver it in the next 10 years or even 20 years without additional revenue

from Grants or other sources currently in the recommended Durham Transit plan there's around 200 million dollars for rail Capital costs and about another 100 million dollars for rail operations looking at the central portion of the project as potentially the first phase for implementation today we've looked at two options for the Western end of that either Raleigh to RTP or Raleigh to Ellis Road which is further into Durham the total ridership and this is what I mentioned before we would Circle back to the total ridership is very similar in both of those scenarios with more than 80 percent of the ridership at that station either RTP or Ellis Road coming from park and ride we've also looked at in response to some requests from Durham stakeholders we've also looked at a potential station

location a little bit further north of Ellis Road closer to Andrew Avenue near Glover Road which is uh highlighted on this map kind of in that green bubble there we see that doesn't substantially change the total to ridership either although we do believe a station is feasible in that area about a mile north of the Ellis Road station so what that tells us is that regardless of where an initial implementation phase is able to get to in Durham whether that's RTP or Ellis Road or this green bubble a little further north closer to Andrew Avenue Park and Ride access is going to be important the first mile Last Mile connections planning for microtransit planning for non-motorized Access people walking to the station people being able to bike to the station is going to be important and it's going to be critical to provide high quality bus service potentially brt connections from Durham

station and other key areas in Durham I don't have slides in detail on the bus service piece but based on requests received last week I do want to highlight a few additional points on that for you all to think about in the event that a decision is made to move forward with an initial implementation option where RTP is the West end of that we can significantly improve bus service connections to RTP within the next 10 years regardless of rail so right now today go triangle operates our route 700 and 100 that provides service between downtown Durham RTP and Raleigh every 30 minutes all day hourly in the evenings and on weekends we also have the DRX service which provides a direct trip between downtown Durham and downtown Raleigh

more frequently during the peak hours of the weekdays uh we within the next six to 12 months want to get our Saturday service back up to every 30 minutes um we have funding for that we've just been struggling with operator shortage um so we we are beginning to make progress on that hope to have that delivered within the next six to 12 months um there's also funding in the recommended Durham Transit plan to increase the span of our service on Sunday so increase the number of hours that we operate on Sundays as well we're looking at options to rework the schedules for Route 700 100 and DRX to be able to provide a more consistent direct trip between Durham RTP and Raleigh without requiring a transfer that we hope can happen within the next few years as part of the bus plan and go triangle short range service plan we are

looking at that potential restructuring of those routes to make that more direct service available pretty soon that would operate every uh 30 minutes all day 15 minutes at Peak during weekdays and then maintain hopefully by then the 30-minute service on Saturdays and hourly service on Sundays the recommended Durham Transit plan includes funding to take that to every 15 minutes all day within the the next 10 years that's slated currently in the recommended plan for 2031. so all of that together is really represents a lot of improvement to the regional connection between Durham RTP and Raleigh within the next 10 years really regardless yes ma'am just have a quick question though but we'll will the they be operated as a bus

priority or a brt type situation because if they're not they're still sitting in traffic like everybody else so I think the key point is how to make them fast and reliable and not sitting in traffic so I'd like to hear more about that yeah great that's that is the next two points that I have here so um one Improvement that is already funded that will help the bus speed and reliability for the 700 is relocating the regional transit center from where it is now which is um you know not right on I-40 it's some distance away our buses do get stuck in traffic at Peak when roads are congested they have to go through a lot of traffic lights between I-40 and the current location so the recommended Durham Transit plan as well as the awake and orange plans do have funding for relocating the regional Transit Center to a permanent home at the site of the

future RTP rail station so that location that you see on the map so that will improve at the RTP and our bus speed and reliability that's a location very close much closer to I-40 and we'll be working with ncdot to look at options for potential priority to get buses quicker from 40 into the station and back out so that's one piece that's you know just one project one small element but that is a way to incrementally address this challenges traffic increases so the other piece is that the recommended Durham Transit plan does include funding for a bus speed and reliability study that's going to be led by the mpo and that is going to start looking at the potential for brt corridors that can help us address the reliability of that bus as the traffic on 147 8 85 and I-40 increases it's already bad we already have issues

with on-time performance during peak times so working with the mpos working with ncdot to really figure out how can we address that 147 885 Corridor or alternate Corridor between Durham and RTP is going to be really important again regardless of rail and this is already an issue that needs to be worked on incrementally going forward so we you know we are in conversations with Ellen as well as the mpo about how we can support that study and we're really looking forward to that getting underway here in the short term again really regardless of what we're talking about on rail that is very important to move forward um and then on the rail side um your staff Ellen is coordinating with ncdot to look at options to increase Amtrak service and CDOT is already planning to increase the Piedmont service that runs between Raleigh and Charlotte passing through with stops and

carry and Durham they're already planning to increase that by one trip this year and then they're applying for funding for looking at service improvements and a number of corridors Statewide including this one so that again is already underway and will be coordinating and supporting that however we can moving forward go triangle is also partnering with your staff and the mpos to move forward with projects that will offset the cost and reduce the complexity of bringing more frequent rail service to Durham in the future so we've recently least supported Durham County to submit two applications for federal funding for the Durham repair study which is looking at how to address some grade crossing issues identified in East Durham which would be critical to being able to get rail service or more frequent rail service through the area that we're looking at on this map here we've also

identified a substantial list of additional improvements additional opportunities for Durham County to partner with ncdot ncrr the mpos and others to seek funding for double tracking station enhancements and other Corridor improvements in the coming years that could meaningfully offset the costs of implementing the infrastructure improvements that were identified in this feasibility study we're also working with TJ cogg to support development of a regional Vision plan which that is for land use affordable housing other components that are really critical to improving the Region's competitiveness for future grant funding opportunities so we're really looking forward to helping TJ Cog to identify a funding source to be able to get that study kicked off that

planning exercise kicked off here in the next year so ultimately within the next three months we're working towards a regional decision on whether and how to move forward with this project the two mpos have established subcommittees to work with go triangle to support the decision-making process in particular to identify the initial implementation phase and then look at the options for how the transit plans would share the cost if a decision is made to move forward as Ellen mentioned earlier go triangle would work with the mpos and the counties to complete the procedural requirements necessary to commit the funding to the overall program and then get funding identified in the current annual work plan or fy24 annual work

program in order to support those next steps so this is the the information we have prepared for today we would be happy to answer your questions receive your comments and we'll continue to work with your staff as this effort moves forward you know it's just like the ad I think the the subcommittees at the npos who are meeting jointly um should provide some information back to us hopefully by the end of June questions comments commissioner Alam thank you so much for this presentation I have a question regarding the cost I know we're not sure what type of funding we're going to be able to receive from like federal grants and everything but for the plan that you know you really went into detail about the Ellis Road connection do we have an idea for the

25 miles versus the distance within Wake County right let me switch back to that slide that had the table on it with all the stats we sort of start to get to this um in here so um for that third column the Raleigh Union Station so Ellis Road column um the total Capital cost for that portion is 878 million dollars and that's a very specific number that's tied to you know a financial analysis scenario that we've pulled together the stats on the bottom of this show the miles in Wake County the miles in Durham County and then that percentage split by the mileage in each County um and uh we also have that for Auburn to RTP

8 percent of the 878 million in a situation where mileage was the

8 percent that doesn't necessarily need to be the basis for that calculation okay I think that's going to be a large portion of the discussion at the subcommittee level at the mpos on you know how to address um the the county cost shares and whether that's based on mileage or for some other uh some other basis so it could go down who knows and let's commission do you mind if I do a follow-up would you I because you might have others um I I'm noticing all the words y'all are saying but I actually want to I'm I have the same question she has you all keep saying if that's the path we take if that's the recommendation we take if that's the way we choose to calculate it you know I notice these percentages but I would be interested and I imagine that my constituents would be interested um let's just say we did take this third column Raleigh to Union Raleigh Union and Ellis Road right so that gets us uh

8 percent I get that of what we would build I would really struggle to go to my constituents and say that we're going to pay 50 with only 23 percent of the road is there so I would be interested in hearing what are the other ways in which you would calculate it because you keep saying well if we calculate it that way what other way would you calculate it you know I think akin to the discussion and cost sharing that was developed for the Light Rail between Orange County and Durham there was a negotiation there where um you know where it wasn't necessarily based on mileage right so um that that's a discussion that hasn't taken place yet right uh I think once the project is further defined uh and then that discussion can take place as to what the cost share should be between Durham and wake uh for the percentage of the project that is in Durham uh for

sure so I think that um you know we can't answer exactly how that discussion is going to take place because it's going to take place at the NPO uh you know but if if we this this is a very rudimentary way of looking at it I would say is 23 percent um you know it's based on I think kind of like an old idea that oh you have this many miles this number stations this much this much ridership so we you know when this when the project first started it was like okay when we were considering the whole 37 miles two-thirds was in wake and one third was in Durham so it was over two-thirds one-thirds but very basic but I think that I think this discussion that's going to be held at the NPO levels is going to be critical as to how Durham uh finds you know how much it may have to contribute to the project for the miles that are based in Durham and and and just uh to to follow up Y'all Gonna Keep I get that you know I don't have a problem with you sir some of your staff they don't like the questions I asked but I you know I get

this seat so I get that right so I I recognize you know for us we make investments you know for our constituents so it's not going to be oh we're only gonna do one-third because we get one third like I wouldn't do that especially if it was in the best interest of my constituents like I'm smart enough to know that so we might at some point have to be burdened with more than what somebody might think is our equivalent share that being said we have to ask these questions because we are now 10 years down the road we are past Light Rail we won't be RT now we want everybody does not get to sit in those rooms like everybody's not on all these boards and that's it they're 338 000 people in Durham so they I think that you have done a decent job in being more and being transparent or at least coming here and answering our questions but it's it's going to be like this every time only because we want to make sure that the people who eat sleep and breathe here and who are going to

utilize this bus feel comfortable with this investment in their tax dollars that's it and I think you understand that I need your staff to understand that but I I personally feel like you understand that so you're going to keep getting questions like that from us and it I don't have a problem if we have to go over our percentage again if it's in the best interest of my constituent because you're looking at a bus rider I when I didn't have a car the only way I could get to downtown Raleigh was the bus so I get it yeah and today I don't have a car I'll be on that bus again I might be on that train again but I'm not going to do it um by burdening folks I want to do it to benefit folks I think Durham has some very significant uh uh bus expansion needs that are looking at in their Transit plan uh I think that you've done a great job surveying the community and how what they want and certainly you can bring this uh this discussion point to the mpos and in the cost sharing uh because you have priorities uh that you want to meet for your constituents at the same

time you know um you know Durham is going to want to participate in some manner on the commuter rail and I can't I keep saying commuter rail I think the name is going to change over the next period of time because it's it's uh this because of covid I think we're looking at all-day service now uh and uh and it's it's not really going to be just commuters anymore right so uh so I think that's also a way to change in how we talk about the project um Catherine could I could you switch to the Durham slide just to put the percentages into actual numbers I want to make sure you y'all saw this that right that your uh the box in the bottom center is saying that if we based it on mileage and went to Ellis Road the capital cost for Durham would be around 210 million and in our Transit plan that you've seen you know many times we have about 195 million so it's

pretty close when you're talking about numbers that big right um so uh you know I think that is financially feasible for Durham to do um I think it's important for you as a board is to consider you know the other what we're doing with the rest of the money right and that we are improving bus service substantially in that Transit plan that's number one priority we are doing that BuzzFeed and reliability study we have some funding set aside to implement the recommendations of that but it really depends on what comes out of that study what it might cost Durham to do a bus Rapid Transit project or other improvements to determine if we have enough to really do that uh to do whatever project or projects come out of that um and then um oh I had another point I made my blank on but you know I just you know

overall you know look at this in terms of the system and write all of the improvements that are being provided to Durham and if it only goes oh yeah this is my point if it only goes to Ellis Road it will be critically important or RTP it will be critically important that we provide that connection to downtown Durham and the go Durham bus Network that's where the majority of writers are and that really would make it accessible to more residents of Durham I just want to quickly piggyback on your comment Ellen before we leave the slot because I think the key issue though is that when you look at the ridership numbers there is no difference between Ellis Road and RTP so for me that is actually the key consideration is it worth investing 200 I mean 90 I guess the additional cost between going stopping an RTP and going to Ellis Road could you clarify that

cost um are we saying it's an additional 115 million so is it worth 115 million to go another what two miles or something and we don't get any increase in ridership or can we use that money in a better way for instance and I'll make further comments later but I I just want to highlight the issue is about the ridership and the cost to only go another two miles for a park and ride lot so I think that's the key and you may also want to consider um the road Network and how best you can connect buses to either Ellis Road or RTP it actually may be easier to connect RTP on the bus Network on the road network but I think that's something we need to take a closer look at

who's did you finish but now it's slipped my mind because I was looking at the numbers so come back to me okay whichever one okay you want to go I I think Ellen did a great job of summarizing um how we need to organize our thoughts about this um and to me and it sounds like this may be what others are thinking as well um are really the only two options we would consider are Raleigh to Ellis Road or Raleigh to RTP and I guess that means Auburn to RTP um because there's not a column just for downtown Raleigh to our to RTP but maybe maybe that's immaterial for us we're assuming it would be 95 million for us and so you know probably that's probably what our share is is that shorter

distance I guess um and I think it's you know a really important point that it doesn't seem like there's a benefit for us to go to tell us road unless I'm missing it I mean I guess I would that would be a question I would have is what benefit is there for Durham um that we would get for that additional you know 100 plus million dollars it would cost to go to Ellis Road versus just going to RTP do we do we have some thoughts on that now or I think I think yeah just very briefly I think that that would be um determined by what the land use planning and connection planning to that Ellis Road station is over time go triangle owns a piece of land at the Ellis Road station part of that would be used for park and ride the remainder of it could be developed for other uses including affordable housing or some other more public uses that were being discussed earlier in the meeting during

your consent agenda so um you know publicly accessing publicly controlled land there could be a benefit that is not to say that it wouldn't be a benefit in the future either so I think you know the ridership model the ridership model is just based on what you put in now based on what's in the MTP for those future year population employment projections and the roadway network connections so more work could be done to really do small area planning around that location to maximize the benefits if a decision was made to move forward with the Ellis Road station as part of the initial phase or as an extension see that that and so in that regard the TJ Cog study will be very important to get that off the ground yeah we're really looking forward to working with TJ Cog on this critical study it'll pull a lot of all the

different Transit and transportation elements into it as a visions of the land use and housing which is something that the region really needs especially as we you know continue to seek federal funds it's nice to have a unified snapshot of what we can show folks that were providing us funds uh in the future right right um do we know about anything about sort of like implementation timeline or cost differential if we were to go with the option of having it go from Raleigh to just RTP first then how long would it then take to extend you know in further into Durham Ellis Road Glover Road whatever looking at the chart you know it's 10 years to go either to RTP or to Ellis Road so presumably it wouldn't take 10 years to go from RTP to Ellis Road um and it would it be quick

it really depends on funding and then sort of what what we know about that timeline in advance if it's if the planning and Engineering work is done at the same time and it's deferred for future implementation that could make it happen more quickly on the other hand if you wanted to consider it as a standalone project that you're sort of weighing against these other uses of the funding like brt the recommendations from the bus speed and reliability study as an example you know it may take longer the railroad negotiation piece could make it take longer but I think it really comes down to the funding and when funding can be identified for that implementation is gonna set that start point to to be able to deliver it I think there is particularly

if we're talking about Ellis Road or the slightly more North location Glover Road Andrew Avenue there is definitely an opportunity to position the double tracking of the corridor that would be needed between RTP and that location you could position that for a standalone Grant opportunity because that double tracking is going to benefit the freight traffic and definitely going to benefit the inner city traffic ncdot has previously submitted a Grant application for double tracking that portion it wasn't successful last year but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be successful in the future so in any case here we would be working with Ellen and working with the mpo staff to identify what are those opportunities like that that can bring grant funding to the corridor and reduce that you know that number that it would cost to implement the commuter rail or increase passenger service frequent service component um to the project

I think you get Durham were to invest um in the engineering portion cost of getting Ellis Road or a little further maybe Andrew then you have a shuttle ready um right so so if you have working going on in the ground between RTP and Raleigh and then uh there's a notice of funding availability from the usdot then you have a shovel ready site project that would connect to another project that would make it very attractive so and I think and this is kind of how the um how dot is advancing the S line or in phases you know their project so it's um I think I think the engineering portion here and then and and that the value of that work would be you know would be with us for a long time it wouldn't just expire after a few years for instance like an environmental analysis Mike so you know whatever the whatever the engineering is to get the Alice rotor further uh I think that would be uh I think Durham should have an interest in perhaps having that part

done okay sounds reasonable do we have a cost estimate for that going offhand but it's something we could pull together and okay a fraction of that fraction yeah okay um yeah so one thing about big numbers almost like oh whatever I mean I am encouraged by the possibility of having moving forward with commuter rail it seems like there's a clear consensus among all the counties among all the demographic groups including bus riders that we continue to move forward with passenger rail increasing passenger frequency on rail as one of our transportation options one of our regional transit options and it's really encouraging to hear about all the bus improvements already happening regionally with the 100 and the 700 on the DRX um and it's hopeful to think about the possibility

of having beginning the commuter rail to RTP and knowing that the sort of benefits so far that we know of as far as ridership goes will be the same as going Dallas Road but if we only go to RTP we have over 100 million dollars left to perhaps invest in the results of the the bus study that we're doing um and those last mile connections seem super important otherwise we're really not going to be able to maximize the benefits for Durham residents by building the the rail out so I you know at this point based on what I know um I'm leaning towards the Durham to RTP um option for implementation first thinking that you know continue with the engineering studies to Ellis Rhodes a project would be shovel ready should some other funding opportunity come along um I do think it would be good for us at some point as a board to

home in on specifically what how are we going to make this decision you know like what's our framework for decision making what's it based on what you know what priorities do we say to ourselves does it hit this does it hit this does it hit this then yes yeah you know or no so not this okay that that decreases our likelihood of investment here um I just don't feel like we've done that sort of what's our what are our values around how we make the decision so there are some elements Heidi that commissioner Carter that we have discussed at the Go triangle board that this board don't have privy to yet so they're they're awesome other questions that we are discussing at the at the board level at the Go triangle board level that

um at some point I need to have a conversation with this board about we just haven't had the opportunity there's some information that I've requested um so you've got the mayor myself uh and uh Stephanie Williams on the on the go triangle board for Durham and there's some questions that we have not gotten the answers to yet so for us to say yes we're ready to move forward we're not we're not there I mean I personally feel like I'd be rude ready to move forward with commuter rail in some way you know how limited the investment is it's a different question and I think I've indicated that right now I'm kind of like the most limited um that we've seen um and really I'm glad that our Transit plan options that are coming

forward our prioritizing bus service a lot 75 or something of the so um but we need both and how to do both is what we're trying to puzzle together here and I just think a framework for decision making would it would help me um and one question just another little question really but is um you know we assuming when we have the commuter rail ridership number projections are we assuming that we're going to continue to run the regional Bus Service at the same level of service because it seems like if we don't maybe the mural ridership numbers would go up which would increase our chances of getting funding at the federal level make it look more appealing I don't know just a thought I had yeah I I don't have we've run a number of different scenarios so I don't have offhand the answer to what is the bus Network assumed in that particular ridership

case but in every every time that we're running a ridership model um go triangles service planners which also do the planning for goderm are looking at what are reasonable assumptions to make for what are those bus services that connect with the stations so there's a lot more work that would need to be done to figure out what that Network actually would be when it opens but there are reasonable assumptions based on what we know right now about what those bus services would be thank you I may have another question or two that are small but that's all I can think of for now thank you so much really really interesting important information very well presented too thank you can I just make one comment to Commissioners Carter's request so we are working with we have a group that we've contracted with to help guide the framework you were asking about to help guide conversations and help this board come

to uh consensus of how we want to move forward and answer some of the questions so DCM Jones and I were just talking about this Friday I shared it with him he thought it was a good approach so we'll be in touch with you soon to schedule meetings to have those conversations thank you thank you you have okay yes I remember my questions I wrote them on my napkin so I wouldn't forget this time yes all right um the first one going back to the initial question that I had about the cost sharing um I know you had mentioned that the cost sharing decision would be made later down in the process I was just wondering if we know like at what point in the process and like how much will have been spent and invested in this project by the time we reach that decision making point so um the cost sharing discussion is going to happen over the next three months and that's going to happen in the

mpo um mpo level um and in the investment to date for this feasibility study uh the company's committed nine million dollars of which most of we have expended uh in order to get the feasibility study completed so if we hit the uh at the end of June I think you're only in it for nine million dollars but we hope that there's a very active discussion about the cost sharing over the next three months at the npos we're going to support that discussion uh uh dchc and Campo and I'm sure that we will probably be back here before then to talk more about that and then my second question is kind of jumping off of commissioner Jacobs and Carter's point about the Ellis Road versus to RTP of figuring out is that extra 115 million dollars worth it do we have a cost estimate or can we

work on something of what it's going to cost to expand bus rapid transit to Ellis versus what it's going to cost to expand bus rapid transit to RTP because I think that would also help our decision of which option to go towards like if I think um some considerable and I'll let Catherine give you the real expert answer but I've done some brt in the past and you need a lot of study uh looking at a corridor if that's your Corridor you can get the first of all figure out if that is the corridor certainly you want a strong bus connection to the rail whether that be a brt or conventional bus connection um you know and then once you get into a brt where you want to have a vehicle running in most in its own in its own right away or its own lane for the most part certainly that uh that will require considerable investment uh I believe on the County's part but Catherine you want to add anything to that yeah I would say on the the service side is where we

would have the most concerns that in the network today Durham station is the location where all the goderm bus routes come into Durham station the Regional Transit Center or what will be at the RTP rail station is where almost all of our regional routes come in so the route from Durham station that we talked about earlier the 700 comes in there but as do Ruth from South Durham 800 which goes from downtown Chapel Hill through South Durham to RTP and routes that get to places in Wake County that are on the rail line now but also some that are are not so we have already two pretty substantial hubs in our bus system both the local bus system and the regional Bus system um at those two locations so to add an additional location at Ellis Road may

result in some need for duplicating service if you're really trying to drive connections at those locations um and I think I think Ellen alluded to earlier um you know that connection at Durham station where you know everything comes into is really the one that's very important for ensuring access to as much of Durham as possible so to try to duplicate that at Ellis Road would be very expensive we should also look at four-door to see how it performs today I think today it may only be a 20-minute bus ride between RTP and or Ellis Road and uh and Durham station um you know and I think determining if some investment is made in the corridor would signal priority and other improvements you could get that down a few more minutes and then after that how much do you want to invest in order to get perhaps a 10-minute ride out there

and uh but I think right now we really need to take a good look at the the time it takes for a bus to get to those potential station sites and kind of report that back to our board and to you so Commissioners I this is such an important issue we slated 45 minutes for this item before approaching an hour already so I know you have quite a few questions and I do too um so I may have to haul my questions for uh the board meeting so you go ahead and ask her it's my whole mind until later can we just hear what Ellen was about to say were you finished I'm sorry Ellen was yeah go ahead yeah dad a bus Rapid Transit scenario so we have some very high level costs that could be shared of what that would cost so we could come back with that

um when the trains and plans are brought forward if you tried let me just ask this one while you're talking about cost I haven't just mentioned anything much about Austin Road has been RTP so I'd like to know what the cost would be to go to Austin Avenue foreign so we have on this map the RTP station location the Ellis Road station location the possible location for a station near Glover Road and then well Andrew Glover or Andrew Avenue and then the Eastern station which is at Olson Avenue so what we've looked at um would be the incremental cost to move that Ellis Road station up to the Andrew Glover location that's in the range of 50 to 70 million

dollars for that additional one mile on the 50 million end of the range if you're moving the station from Ellis Road North and more on the 70 million dollar range if you're adding a new station so retaining the Ellis Road station adding another one at the anger Avenue Glover Road location okay I just needed to know that go ahead yeah um I just want to first of all let the board know that I am part I am representing the county on the mpo's uh work group The dchc mpo and Campo the subcommittees that are looking closely um at this issue and we had our first meeting I think it was last week or the week before yeah um but I think first I just want to go back to the big picture here which is that you know the slides that we started out with that this Corridor is a very important Corridor this is where you

know major population growth eight out of the ten job centers so this is a very we're lucky we have a very important Corridor to manage our growth and also access to jobs so for me personally what is most important is investing in this Corridor and not just around Transportation but also around land use and I don't think that we should be talking about Transportation without be without talking about land use and that whatever we do moving forward we need to have a plan and a strategy that integrates both so I think it's really important that we also get back from you I would like to get information about how much land is publicly controlled around each of these stations that are on the Durham side okay so West Durham downtown east Durham Ellis Road

because the whole issue around managing our you know the issues that Durham is facing right now the the conflicts around growth strategies how we can have high density development around the station areas but most importantly affordable housing because if there's publicly controlled land we can pursue public-private Partnerships like we're doing with 300 and 500 leverage those to do affordable housing the second thing that I think is really key is that the job growth for 2050 the most jobs are going to be in Raleigh downtown Raleigh and for me sitting here as a county commissioner right now I do not want Durham residents to be left out of the future I am really concerned about making sure that our residents that we're not just meeting the needs for now but we have got to make sure that our children and our grandchildren

are going to be able to get to the jobs in 2050 which are going to be east of us um so I I and the third thing I want to say is that I I it's important to know to think about um just heard Jared Walker speak who's a national International expert on Transportation wrote a book called human Transit where he said don't it's not about the mode it's about what you're trying to achieve connecting people to Opportunities so for me I think it's really important that we adopt this corridor regionally as a first step and the station areas and then figure out a land use plan around the station areas that we adopt for Transit oriented development because to get the funding from the federal government we have to increase our ridership that's why we're not qualifying right now for FTA funding we're not qualifying because we've got

to get our population up at the station areas that will help us do that the second thing is that we I do want to know and great questions that my fellow board members were asking we need to have a better idea about how we could do a strategy around brt buses not only directly from downtown Durham station to RTP or from downtown to downtown Raleigh but also something that incorporates the station areas so that we we can start doing the Tod and to understand whether it may not be a designated Lane we may not be able to afford that or it may be something we have to work with DOT over time as they make improvements on the roadways um SEC the third thing is we have to remember the context that's happening around rail we have as was mentioned

the Biden Administration all the money right now is an fra funding it's in passenger rail it's an Amtrak so we we have to keep in mind the passenger Rail and the S line and how we go after those improvements which are going to help us for this more local rail service and I want to would like to see you mentioned a plan for how we can Chip Away working with ncdot rail Division and also fra chipping away at those pieces I would like to see that plan um fourth thing or I just mentioned those are together but then the next thing is we haven't talked about which is the rail yard in East Durham needs to go it is not an appropriate place to have a rail yard in East Durham and that is costing that's a billion dollars a third of the cost of the projection for the commuter rail it's not safe talk about

environmental justice issues talk about what just happened in East Palestine Ohio which was our partner Norfolk Southern that is not an appropriate location so we need to have a long-term strategy conversations with Norfolk Southern about moving that rail yard for the long term and then lastly you mentioned the regional transportation Vision so important we learned at the Joint Campo and mpo meeting last week that the last time that we had a regional plan for for our was in 1969 when there were about 440 000 people living in our region so it is time to do that and um I I really look forward to the next steps in this process thank you

so I think there are a lot of questions this board has I have a lot of questions and there's so many things that this board has mentioned that we've brought up at the board level that we need more information more research done more is to say that we are even anywhere close to moving forward we're not and um one of the things that commissioner Jacobs just mentioned was that the ridership and going to DC with FTA and hearing from them that we do not have the ridership to move forward so there's a lot more to be done a lot more questions to be asked and answered and I'm not going to prolong this meeting today because I'll be with you guys in a few in another week or so on another meeting

so I'll get some of my questions answered then but the one thing I do want to you know just mention for the audience is that TJ Cobb is planning to do a plan because right now we really don't have a plan and we've got to do that and that was one of the things that art that was mentioned in DC as well is that we don't have a plan that they can give us money for so there's too much that's unanswered right now for us to even move forward and um so we thank you so much for your presentation today and um will you be providing answers back for the questions Ellen will those answers be forwarded back to the Commissioners that were asked today oh yeah I'll work with them to work to get those answers back

um and I will for I will ask a lot of my questions at the board meeting so thank you so much if you've got something else that you want to say otherwise we will see you at the next meeting thank you so much for being here just remind me when we make a decision Brenda when are we we don't know when we're going to make a decision yet because it's there's too much uncertainty right now when we approve the transit plan though would that be the decision point we we've already done that the transit plan what did we need what do we need to do with the transplant so I'm hoping that it will come approval by the 3 three boards May June we were waiting on the governance Ila to be approved which that goes to the MPL board next week yeah we got a little we got we got a little conversation to have about that so the ilas for the Three Counties

have not been approved yet so that's the that's the stalling right now we've got some more conversation to have with I am I right about that Chuck um orange has been approved wake hasn't approved one that's in existence um and I think our board last week approved the Ila so um I think it's up to the NPO I think it's the last step right now yeah the approval by the MP of the Durham Ila by the mpo is the last step okay I thought that Durham and orange had already approved theirs and wake has not ilas from way back in 20 right 13-11 so this is a the Durham and orange ones have been you know greatly changed and right but there's some questions about about wakes wake is uh doesn't I don't think their Ila expires until for another

17 years or so yeah I'm 17 20 35 I think is when the Wake Ila expires and we'll have to be reapproved but there are some other questions that I understand that it has to get answered so there are some uh there have been some questions about the differences between the Wake Ila and the Durham and orange ilas you know and which is um have come up at our board level right and especially how you treat certain uh revenue streams that go triangle has and I think we have a solution for that uh uh although we may not agree we we believe we have a solution it was always about it always bombs down to money okay it really does all right I just I just wanted question five to commissioner Carter's point though that we will be made about in June and it may be a joint thing

where it's CRT and brt but I I personally do support moving forward and our board being able to come back and make give direction I believe the subcommittee the mpo schedule I believe kind of does for the most part match up with the transit plan Durham Transit plan schedule uh so I think there'll be some good information uh coming out of the subcommittees and the npos that will help inform the Durham Transit plan so you said you wanted to move forward in June with what we're gonna I do support our board weighing in on the issue yeah well I agree with that weighing in yeah yeah but without without all the information I can't say we are going to make a decision move forward yeah we will it's going to come back the two the two the subcommittees work will be ending I think around in June and come back with a recommendation but that our board will need to move we need to weigh in on this okay so whether

to go triangle board weighs in at the end of June and the counties come in August or or all at the same time I I think more remains to be seen and how things are progressing yes the department of plan is high level long term um how we prioritize our funding over the 20 years so that's first that will come first and we can describe it in a way that kind of gives us some flexibility perhaps um but the the next step on any engineering studies or you know design studies with Wake County that will require a budget amendment and we'll have to have some agreement on how those costs are shared so that also will come to this board but it would come after the transit plan does that make sense okay all right there's a lot to coordinate it is it is we're going to be back here on the boards we got that so thank you for being here this morning thanks for your report and we'll see you

soon okay our next item Commissioners is 230231 now annual reporting update from the greater Durham Black Chamber of Commerce the greater Durham Chamber of Commerce and downtown Durham Inc so they will do it in that order and we will start with the greater Durham flight chamber okay good morning Commissioners I'll just briefly start us off with a few comments uh to get us started today um Andy Miracle director of Economic Development with Durham County so so much of the work that we do in Economic Development just like the rest of the county has done through Partnerships and so we've been trying to bring some of our partners forward over the last couple months to provide some updates today we

will hear from as the chair noted three updates from those organizations and so to start a softball DJ Broderick yeah good morning everyone um I'm going to go over a little bit of work with Durham County in the last year or so but also share a couple things about our Organization for those that haven't had a chance to work with us or hear from us before so um have a short presentation for you all the first thing I'll share is just about our organization foreign all right so uh about our organization right so we are a non-profit organization it's been around for about 15 years um they're really uh our big vision is to make sure there's black economic freedom in Durham um our mission as an organization is to support the growth and development of black entrepreneurs black businesses and the black business ecosystem uh in that

mission we provide advocacy access education and opportunities through various efforts um our organization is right now is comprised of over 200 members from various uh backgrounds various Industries and our board of directors is who leads the Strategic development of our organization 17-member board of directors that operates across five committees including development Finance marketing membership and programming and our work is executed by a small staff of about five people and myself being the leader of that staff as a president CEO um you'll see here a a showing of a lot of our board members that lead this effort um and um and have been doing so for for many many years again I mentioned we're a 15-year organization um let's just kind of highlight the big picture and then get before I before I get into the work that we've done in the last um year and a half or so because it's a

this is our second um second annual year Contracting with Durham County north of redo I want to highlight the big picture and just kind of bring it back to focus into how how what we do uh supports the our Solutions right so the big picture um here is that as a focus as a as a result of systemic racism everywhere Durham included there has been a large amount of economic inequity as it relates to share Prosperity inclusive Economic Development all these different things so this is a lot of work that we work in um you may have heard terms like the racial wealth Gap and just use other disparities but they all focus on this root cause being systemic racism and how it's affected all of us over many years um well while that problem existed and we were trying to solve that beforehand um the coronavirus pandemic really highlighted and exacerbated a lot of what these disparities were doing and so we're happy to partner with Durham County as a function of that pandemic to help solve some problems that a lot of

businesses were having in Durham and as the county was looking at different ways to ensure that businesses weren't shuttering and closing for good we were able to partnered with it with the county in uh in in in some services to help to help solve that problem um some of the things that we learned from the coronavirus pandemic included a lack of maintaining a lack of businesses uh being able to maintain adequate Financial records to actually get some support from a lot of federal state and local support efforts and many businesses missed out on opportunities because of a lack of profitability in businesses a lot of businesses missed on opportunities because of a lack of understanding of their business of their business not just in what they do but in running their full business lack of maintaining compliance with local federal laws lacking relationships with regional and National Banks a lack of appropriate certifications and also lack of access to timely information or or also capital and so looking at all these problems we have been a part of a

solution with Durham County over the last again 18 months or so to help businesses the entire small business Community not just our members but the entire small business community in Durham to have resources in doing so so in summary what we've done a lot of is provide trainings right and Consulting right and a lot of what we've done is to provide trainings uh broad trainings to help businesses that uh solve those problems that just listed there but in also the one-on-one consultations Beyond those trainings to help them apply uh those theories to their businesses and our goals here is to help stop our businesses not just survive the pandemic but to thrive beyond the pandemic and to also prepare for future disruptions uh future economic uh hardships and any other things that may uh pose a threat to them in their businesses so in the past year I want to walk through some of the things that we've been able to do through this contract and some of it outside of this contract but just again one of the tasks at hand was to give you what we've done with this contract but also give you a little broader information about who we are and what

we're doing um so a list here I'll list them here you'll see one-on-one technical assistance business plan Support Review Financial software review and recommendations financials review and support Business Development boot camp workshops Grant and Loan provisions and assistance local State national certification support referrals and networks building enhancement leadership development Economic Development Consulting Workforce Development Consulting um and I'll get back to those bottom two in a bit here um this is one of the things one of the ways in which we do it is through uh through getting information from online resources right so we have a form on our website and also through different partners through their websites that that promotes small businesses promotes our capacity to assist small businesses and getting support and you'll see the one one of the snapshots of that Forum here uh where we share that during businesses are eligible to get free business assistance through through us

we've also designed based on the list of problems I've listed earlier there we lost a design um some some digital webinars that we've conducted three and we're in the middle of our fourth one right now three so far for for businesses in the area at no cost to them they just sign up and they can come to one session or they come to all sessions we make this information available to them and I lifted them listed some of uh some of those uh sessions here uh Define refine your business idea uh same thing Define refine your product and service your target audience setting goals in your business understanding compliance uh loss taxes Etc understanding your business finances being ready um the importance of sales managing business scaling your business and also success and planning for your business and exit strategies and and so in presenting these various sessions we are also collecting a lot of information from businesses about which ones uh which of these topics or even topics that are not here that are affecting their businesses and have prevented them from being able to sustain or grow their

businesses and um and so the next slide here shares with you some of the things we've done in addition to just those uh those uh those sessions um we've done sessions on crowdfunding for your business certifications I mentioned earlier um how to scale or grow your business and uh and we've also spent a lot of time also promoting a lot of uh City uh County uh Regional and National products that also help businesses as it relates to um getting getting access to Capital we promoted the Durham opportunity Loan Fund and other other services like that that are that I think have been interesting uh here are some results that you can think about from our partnership and and and uh in this last fiscal cycle we provided about 200 hours of one-on-one technical assistance to businesses we've connected to 49 businesses to grant opportunities 28 businesses the loan opportunities help 44 business apply for certifications I'll help 21 business refine their

business plans 52 businesses refund elevated pitches uh businesses I thought businesses seek join Venture opportunities 34 of those connected 49 businesses to local Contracting opportunities helped 87 businesses launch their marketing campaigns and it helped 12 businesses connect with bookkeeping services um a couple key lessons that we learned that I want to point out that I think are really important in this 18 months one of the key things in addition to some of the services we've been providing one of the key things we realized is that bookkeeping has been at the at the Crux of what is affecting a lot of businesses that um you know that have not been able to to receive or apply for help and so we've been in the process of Designing a pilot program that we're about to launch right now a couple of our key Partners as you all may know for sure is tax season right now so we haven't released the product yet because a lot of our key Partners saying well wait a minute don't release this yet because we're not ready right now we want to make sure we can get through tax season but we're going to run a pilot pretty soon as to what

what it would look like to to uh to be able to offer a complimentary bookkeeping services for for early on or small business business ventures so we can start to to ensure that that you know that we understand some of the needs right and some of the theories that we're testing around how businesses May survive and be able to access resources if they're if their bookkeeping wasn't was in order so we're going to collect some data on that um this pilot program is going to cost us about an additional sixteen thousand dollars to run um and and we've looked at a couple different opportunities for that um but next year we plan to run the the full program with with key uh Lessons Learned From from that pilot program that we think will also be and also be able to expand the program a little bit more um other another key thing that we've learned is that although we focus on this uh of those or we have a contract right now that focuses on um um you know technical assistance again mostly trainings and consults in consultations uh you know I do sit on

academic development and Workforce Development Workforce Development board for the city and county and and I was stressed and we've been coming to this organization Durham County for a few years now stressing the opportunity to get involved in more Economic Development Workforce Development um you know planning and execution and I think that one of the key things we realized is that a lot of the data that we're getting from small businesses and the people that we're providing um a lot of the a lot of a lot of what that points to is that economic and Workforce Development our ability to be further engaged in economics and Workforce Development in Durham would be very very advantageous to these businesses present situation and future um and so that remains I think one of the biggest key Lessons Learned um and and so in some information uh we're excited about the work that we're doing I think has been wildly successful um and I think uh two things that we want to push for uh that I think are really important to to increase that success is that a um we would like to request some more funding for

um for bookkeeping service piloting and a plan for that long term so that our businesses in Durham can be assured that um that that there's an organization or a community commitment to helping them really truly get access to some of the things that are really hurting their ability to to build viable businesses and when I say business I mean organization is Holy not just for-profits but non-profits as well and then the second things I think there also needs to be Institution representation in our economic and and academic Warfare development that is inclusive of small businesses minority businesses that are right at this time in Durham's history have in my opinion not being adequately represented in their process so those are two things I think that I want to highlight for moving forward but again a big point is that I think we're doing a lot of great work together so far uh and with that I'll yield Commissioners so um bring with one organization up at a time if you do have questions for CJ that would be the

perfect time okay questions Commissioners commissioner Burns how you doing Mr Roger hey I I see I thought I'm not mistaken is that your board chair in the back yes our boys chair Mr Larry borders is here thank you I don't know the board member is here as well another board member is here as well well Welcome to our Chambers I thought I recognized you all thank you for the numbers we like numbers we like to invest things and see numbers back but I'm gonna push a little bit further it will be really cool if we could see some success stories too yeah and I know you have those so at your leisure uh that will be helpful because we want to know how these dollars um are you know really impacting folks and I think um for me when you have a success story already right now you you have an investment from a body like us right you have numbers now once you get that I I would love to see you all be in a better position to not just get capital from us but from some of your other partners and I know y'all are working on that I bring

it up because McKenzie put out that study post George Floyd what was it 380 billion dollars they said they wanted to invest in black business we are two three years post that now and 280 billion of those dollars have not been given away and so now you see financial institutions saying that we want to reallocate those dollars before they reallocate those dollars I'm I I want to I like the fact that we've invested in you I want to see somebody else invest in you right because now you got a track record so I am hopeful that we're going after some stuff like that I know you spoke about the Workforce Development board I see a couple of people in here on the board I know you chair one if there are nominations that you feel like we should be taken into consideration you know bring other I will say this other people make nominations all the time so this body makes um we vote the same way um the city votes I can say for other boys and commissions in this uh County when folks uh and I was about to say one uh they'll

say well this is the incumbent and the board feels strongly that blah blah blah blah blah should be on there if that is how you feel the other folks in the community feel communicate that to us especially if you see that that is a gap um the other thing um I wanted to point out I'm excited about the technical assistance piece because I think a lot of times people say we don't need technical assistance what they do it's just people need different levels of technical assistance and my question I think we're always talking about access to Capital with Melody Hopson brought up in her Forbes article she was like the real issue that we're going to have post pandemic is not necessarily always going to be access to Capital but access to cuss stores in your survey are you seeing that that is one of the things like we can give people money all day but if they can't access customers are you seeing that in your data and where can we fit in in that narrative yeah um you made a couple great points uh um so I'll go back to the beginning I think one of the more important things I'm seeing is that I think is necessary and I know all of you have been doing a

lot of great work for years but I think one thing I think that I think is novel is that there have to be institutional partners that are well versed in how you can better deliver um your services to that Community right so we happen to be I think an organization that again focuses on economic Workforce Development and business development and we have a 200 plus member organization that we get we're getting data from all all the time right and so this is one case of an institution right in our organization that can be a great partner to you all in delivering um you know inclusion and Equity as relates to economic Workforce Development but I think that same I think that what's novel I think is that that same thing doesn't exist as it relates to a lot of other Industries a lot of other topics that you're working on per se and I think that when you mention [Music] um nominating folks for the uh for Workforce Development board and those kind of things right I think it's important for us to think about people

and individuals right I think but the more important thing is to think about institutions right how do we build how do we work with and contract with and institutions organizations that that's their mission that's where going to do because the individuals will will leave right they'll be you know they'll go do other things right and so one day sooner or later I'll I'll go do something else right but how do we create a relationship that ensures that that that inclusion and Equity or front and center as to how you are able to do your work and that you have access to a wide range of thoughts um from a body right and so I think that's important right um and and and that that that segues into the other point you made I think about how do we design a Durham um that everybody can benefit from right and so um you know when it comes to building a building the building a a an economy of the future right when it comes to building a x of the future right um we we have to we have to find and

partner with in in a meaningful way organizations institutions um that can bring the voices of of their constituents you know in in ways that have not been done before um and I think in many cases you know the blueprints have been defined for 50 years 60 years but I think it's all of us to learn more and more about how to practice Equity how to practice inclusion we can start to make sure that we're we're doing things like that and so that's my big push um for how we can do that working and uh yeah thank you so much for your presentation Commissioners we've got a couple more minutes if there are any other questions try to give each one of the groups uh 20 minutes each for 60 minutes It'll um trying to get through this okay yeah if you've got a question commissioner Carter yes thank you so much for your presentation I'm really glad we're working with you and I appreciate the numbers you've provided and appreciate

Commissioners commissioner Burns suggestion for success stories look forward to seeing those two but your numbers look really solid really strong it's clear you've provided a lot of assistance and a lot of connections which makes me think about the fact that it it feels like you're trying to improve the equity of our entrepreneurial ecosystem in Durham um and if I'm right about that I'm wondering if you're connected at all to the person who came to us to present from forward cities I think on eee Equitable entrepreneurial ecosystems to help businesses of color be successful and get off the ground and succeed um I don't remember that person's name Andy's nodding a little bit um I remember being very impressed by that woman when she came I just am wondering if you're connected to her at all uh short answer is no right so um but what I will say is this right is

that again I mentioned uh you know I mentioned that uh we've been around for 15 plus years in Durham building uh and we've been to this body for five years in a row asking for access to not just entrepreneurial uh this is the the problem we're trying to solve extends well beyond just entrepreneurial development we've been doing that for 15 years right the thing that I think is more impactful right for us as a community thinking about is bigger than that right it's improving Equity within economic and Workforce Development much of what you all have been advised on and continue to be advised on is the ways in which you know um organizations that have had access right are bigger organizers that have resources that can that can that can hire two three people to say hey this is what our economic development plan is this is we want the county commissions to know that has been that has been done right for 100 years right and you all have access to that well you haven't had access to is is smaller businesses right

disadvantaged businesses understanding what that plan looks like what it what it feels like and how they can get engaged in what that process looks like you have business owners have been driving by vacant land in in their neighborhood for 50 years and had no idea that there's a process for how they as a community can develop that land and so on and so forth that that is the work that is not being done and that's why you have such a huge disparity in Durham and other places around what's happening now because the people that live there and experience that community have no idea what these processes look like and feel like and so when I'm talking about institutional representation I'm talking about organizations unions whoever that represent people right that have access that you are working with in a meaningful way contractually they're saying look bring us numbers bring us data but also provide information provide resources provide that education that necessary to show people what these processing procedures look like so everybody can benefit from that right and uh and and so in short

um that that's that's the more full picture right is that is that I think I think that produces a lot more impact and I think it produces a lot more inclusion equity and obviously a better quality life for everyone and I think and so I hope that answers your question there but um but to to your other question I'll say this right and it ties into something that you've both have shared um we're part of a national network that is working on this right uh working on these issues um we we do also do work you know with the SBA on this um we've been fortunate to be partnering with the uh the the North Carolina Department of administration on on this work for some time uh the North Carolina the North Carolina mbda office is also um just obviously just been just been uh been funded and been uh and been a part of our community we're we're entering into an agreement with them because you can do this work also so um so to your point uh uh commissioner Burns um you know the the need is is is is is

is is is huge and I think many organizations are starting to are starting to work with us in in that way um and I think uh and I think our county has an opportunity to benefit from that um but they're also think about you know what works for us as well thank you thank you that's helpful thank you CJ we appreciate you bringing this to us and when you talk about institutional wealth um it's important that we Embrace this conversation thank you so much for your presentation and we need to move to the next group we need to move to the next group and if you if you can ask it really quick Wendy Jacobs otherwise we could follow up with it yeah he can follow up with you okay um yeah I was really curious to know more about how you're working with the SBA because we heard vice president Harris speak recently about how much money the Biden Administration is investing in

the SBA in credit unions and Community Development Banks and so it's an unprecedented opportunity so I would love to hear more about about some of the successes that you've had with with um getting people connected to those resources thank you thank you thanks so much um the next group is the chamber Commerce foreign with the Chamber of Commerce we have Matt Glady who's the vice president of Economic Development and Brian Fox who is the vice president of public policy yeah thanks uh just very briefly to try to get back on track good morning

Commissioners good morning we're also joined by our vice president of community investment Angelique Stallings here but really uh just on behalf of our president and CEO we are glad to reintroduce to many of you and introduce to some of you Matt gladek our vice president of Economic Development um you've got the clicker so just very briefly we've already touched on some key points that we all collaborate on uh in general and you're all familiar with the traditional role of Chambers of Commerce Matt maybe one more slide we've had some great events uh recently and upcoming and we look forward to continuing to see many of you there but we are here to focus on the economic development piece that we are all working together on so I'll turn it over to Matt thank you Commissioners it's great to be back it's nice to meet some of the new Commissioners who weren't here before I left um so I'll be very quick brief I know

6 million dollars in rural grants the CNBC has rated us the number one state for new businesses looking at for our numbers over the last uh three years these are a selection of some of our big announcements that have come out 11 000 jobs 3 billion uh in

investment that has come through there um not all of these required incentives to get here these are Google meta can you remind me of the other one since I've only been here for 30 days Fidelity and biogener also didn't need uh incentives to come here but selected our community on their own uh to get here we've had we respond to requests for informations through Economic Development Partners from North Carolina EDP NC some of the interesting trends that we've seen moving forward is that we responded in 2021 116 requests for informations 21 to 22 95 and so far we've only hit 22 in uh this past two quarters and a lot of that is some of the changing trends that we've seen the pandemic really pushed a lot of information to come through the RFI process versus site visits so we only had 10 site visits in 20 to 21 but we've

S made has brought a lot of advanced manufacturing and clean tech to us that are looking to locate here and to bring in in new sites it's made our RFI processes a bit more involved of more site visits more communication less just done through EDP and C but we've seen really really great increased Regional collaboration it's been really exciting to come back to Durham see how much we get to work with Wake County on this and we're not competing with but we're working and presenting together especially around the NC biotech Center has been a really fantastic collaborative partner as well uh so um we're projecting um based on

4 billion dollar economic impact that leads to more local opportunity it's really important as I come in here understanding Durham and having lived here for a long time that we want to make sure that our academic development is servicing everyone in the county it was really great to hear CJ and all the work that he's doing to really focus on that from uh equity and inclusion standpoint and working with small businesses we hope to be very collaborative in in working on those issues can keep this really tight and I'm going to end with any questions

that was really quick we're doing our best to help you get on time we're happy to answer any questions and anything we can do thank you thank you let's start on this so thank you so much for those very long and thorough presentation um I have a question um just regarding and this is not something that's in your presentation but just came to my mind because we were all at uh wolf speed last week and I know that they're expanding and this is also ties into the transportation conversation we had earlier since they are a durham-based company and they're building that really big facility in Chatham County um what type of work do you think our board and that we're going to be doing to make sure that Durham County residents can also benefit from those jobs that are coming whether it's investment in public transportation in that area or just job training opportunities that maybe we could partner with wolf speed for our Durham Tech students for our DPS students to be

trained for those jobs I'll just make one quick Point um you know part of the promotion uh for that event um last week Durham Tech was really able to showcase the partnership that they have in place with wolf speed um and a number of training opportunities I think it was um eight to ten different uh kind of program area certificates so that has been in place since 2020 at the last time um that that wolf speed then at the time Cree was looking to expand for a new project they had and while some of that investment did go to Upstate New York there was a substantial investment in Durham as well at that time and so those trainings have been in place since that time so yeah no I think that's great I mean I think you know working on the transportation infrastructure and I think you know bus service is going to be really important in terms of being flexible and how you know jobs changed and moved and it's going to be important and Durham tax

training that serves both orange and and Durham County has been really important you know I think a lot of the chem power and bringing those 600 jobs here and the the skill set that they require and I think about the investment in Durham Tech and the life sciences and Nova nordis bringing their investment to bolster the County's bond is really important as well yes welcome back Matt good to see you nice to see you um and thank you for the presentation only 30 days boy it just flies off your tongue you talk really fast um one question I have it's kind of related to community benefits that businesses bring in addition to jobs clearly and the growth in our tax base um and and the one that's you know uppermost in our minds maybe is child care access to child care services for workers and if we're going to have inclusive Economic Development that's going to be really important just

wondering if you guys already have or you know help us think about how to better Engage The Business Community around that key key issue of child care and help I know this has come up in conversation since I've been here already but I'm Gonna Let Brian handle that since he has been here longer yeah and I know we've uh already had a little bit of conversation about this this morning and really feeds into some of the regionalism and other aspects that uh Matt mentioned earlier we are blessed with folks who go all around the region on a daily basis and so there's a few different factors that all sort of come together uh Transportation Health Care Child Care housing um education it all fits together and I I love the opportunity that we have today to try to help connect some of these high-level Economic Development Trends into the work that's happening on the ground through Partners like we've

already heard from and will there's a Statewide Child Care Coalition that's been formed to look at some of the public policy needs at the state level and some of the connections into the federal level but ultimately we're seeing a lot of businesses particularly larger institutions taking on some of this work themselves it's not always something that they're going to commit to in the course of an incentive process but it is something that we are seeing National Trends and we're starting to see locally as was discussed earlier today so we will absolutely highlight the child care as one of those emerging needs within the business community in both what we're working on and how we're connecting into the local Regional and state efforts that are happening around this issue but I really appreciate you raising it and we can in the course of some follow-up include some information on what's Happening and what's happened

and what we think will happen yeah well that's really encouraging you know to hear and as we continue to try to build this you know ethos that in Durham our corporate partners are going to help with our main goals and that certainly is one of them um and I also you know what you said about housing Transportation health care and education I really appreciate the chamber focusing on those sort of social determinants of success and um you know and success in the workforce you know they're caught they're all connected and I really appreciate also the Durham your the chambers what I've perceived as increased interest and focus and support for Durham Public Schools as far as Workforce Development goes and really hope that continues and expands as well anyway thank you so much thank you thank you you know I just want to kind of chant in on that a little bit when you talk about we talk about child care we all we you know this board is committed to maternal health

so if we're going to help healthy babies be born then moms and dad has to go we'll have to go to work and they have to have somebody to take care of babies while they're working and then they had to have great housing to take care of them and jobs so it all kind of fits in what fits together so thank you I'm going to pass it over to commissioner Jacobs thank you welcome back Matt um yeah I first want to say that I really appreciated the chambers recent event um at the Carolina Theater um and I personally felt like it was the best one Gathering uh you know yearly event that I've experienced um and I really appreciated the focus on the issue of talent development and

education to jobs Pipeline and that we need to grow our talent from within you know investing in the people in our community and connecting them to the good jobs that we have here that was just the theme that I heard over and over again from you know from the nccu football coach to highlighting norvo nordis investment in Durham Tech so I guess my request is that we really keep focusing on this with a laser focus because at the end of the day the reason that we are attracting jobs is because of the talent so if we don't keep investing in the talent it's it's going to stop and we we also need to really make sure that the priority is internally investing in

Durham residents investing in our children investing in adults who need opportunities um and so I I hope that you all can share again the model of the partnership with Durham Tech that we've seen with Noble Nordisk um companies like Fidelity that do so much with Durham public schools and now we've got kempower who is going to build who's going to have child care at their facility the Norwegian companies so we've got examples here but I think that we need we need to keep building on it and thank you for mentioning Transportation commissioner Alam because the S line is going to go down to that direction and so that's where we get back to the regional transportation system and how we want to make sure that sure that

Durham residents can get to the S line which will go through carry station and go south to Chatham and Lee counties then fast you know the wolf speed there's a lot of jobs that are going to be down there and I grew up in the Northeast where it was very typical for people to be on a train it's still today for an hour 40 minutes 45 minutes to get to a good job so so thank you all for helping us um make sure that you know we're moving in this direction thank you commissioner Burns I would say welcome back Matt but I don't know you but I did see the press release so welcome um uh one of the things that um I did want to point out you know we've seen some of those numbers about you know what the state has brought in what we've brought in but I I don't think anybody would disagree that you you look at Wake

County and they have you know Economic Development partnership right and you look at Mecklenburg County and they have an economic development partnership and state has one Charlotte's is so strong at 16 can I think Florida counties are down in South Carolina I would never say that we I'm not going to push to say that we need to have something in right much like they have I think between you all and our Black Chamber and discover Durham I see Susan Amy and I think between DDI and uh the Research Triangle Park Foundation everybody has really great work every day every week and Workforce Development also but I think and I'll go back to something Mr Broderick said if we bring up an interesting point we're at the precipice right now where everything we bring in is a false multiply for something else which is a beautiful thing right um every time one big plant comes ten other little things pop up around it uh we Tammy Hall is here now but you know by

if it wasn't for her Durham would not have gotten back the mbda center so we talk about Commerce we talk about SBA but the mbda center is actually here in Durham it is welcome back home we have all of these really great partners that do great events I just want to see everybody working together because I really think if we work together on everything it'll be for our good so to my colleagues point about Talent um in the event that we don't start working together every day all day every day there's nothing that's going to say that folks won't cross the line and saying we're willing to cross the line to go out of there so I do want us to work as as specifically as we possibly can there was a map that somebody made 36 different counties coming to Durham every day to work every day it's only there's over a third of the counties in the state come into this County to work every day and our folks are struggling to go out when we bought in 11 000 jobs like in the past couple of years so I'm not going to beat that dead horse but I want some folks to start having some conversations I want

some folks to start meeting more regularly like I you know I want those folks I don't have to like you to work with you I don't know if y'all notice I don't I don't need you like me to work with me I need you to not have low self-esteem I need you to be respectful and I know a lot of times in Durham we work in our own silos we don't brought too much in to keep working in our silos so I am hopeful that when this is done y'all out there in this foyer trying to figure out how you all can work together because and then I'll stop here Kim power coming in they got to build that building Apple coming in there's a Food Truck Rodeo that's gonna be across the street because those folks got to eat right so clothes have to be clean there's a cleanest uh things have to be printed I'm pretty sure in CJ's organization there are folks who do printing there are folks who do a whole bunch of different type of work I'm sure Tammy even though she just started can give you a laundry list of the Hub certified companies that are right here in Durham I'm pretty sure that folks are going to need service workers they just did a Hospitality one who has the best list is

Susan Amy I just want to see all of that working together and that doesn't take us so that's that's what I want Matt welcome back but that's what I want to see from you is that fair that's absolutely fair and I think one of the benefits I have of coming back is a lot of existing um uh relationships you know with we used to work for Nicole and no Susan Amy and I've met CJ before my what I was a p on that DDI so I look forward to working more with CJ there I completely agree and I look forward to meeting Tammy as well and thank you just very briefly let me applaud uh Durham County and particularly Andy and his Department uh because they are helping catalyze a lot of that work so uh thank you thank you both and Anjali Stallings back there with the chamber so thank you all for your report we look forward to continued working with you great now it's um downtown Durham Inc

okay we've got uh Nicole Thompson coming up yeah she's on her way up and CEO hey Nicole good morning intro take two everybody full time take two let's go president and CEO downtown Denver you all look like you needed a little bit of a laugh [Laughter] good morning glad to be here um very happy to see you all I'm happy to have this opportunity to speak with each of you and show you share a little bit about what downtown Durham Incorporated Incorporated is doing and has done over the last year um to address the question that was raised about the Partnerships and collaboration I will say that we are working very closely having conversations as we are aware of opportunities to collaborate um

to bring interesting Innovative things into the community whether that be downtown or Durham or the city so we're having those conversations all of the entities in this in this group and in this room in fact um so your your words are certainly encouraging for the work that we're already doing and we need to continue to do that and also make sure that you're aware of some of those conversations all right um I have the clicker right there we go DDI we have been around we are celebrating 30 years this is our 30th Anniversary we started in 1993 and I won't read our mission and vision statement it hasn't changed much over the last 30 years basically we are here to make sure that the downtown rent is vibrant continues to grow and continues to be welcoming and inclusive of all who want to be in the downtown area our district for those who may not know we probably should have included a slide but our district includes um it's three quarters of a square mile

it is from the old ballpark to the new ballpark and it is from Golden Belt to just shy of East Campus so a relatively large footprint but one that that we continue to focus our attentions on our goals within the um within downtown Durham and corporate or DDI we continue to be the entity that handles clean and safe in the downtown area with our 11 ambassadors we monitor the streets I'm keeping making sure that public trash cans are emptied trash has picked up and that graffiti is removed in a timely manner we also offer Hospitality services to individuals directions Maps things of that nature we are also working closely with the heart team to address the unhoused population within the downtown footprint and then we also work very closely with the police department to address the growing threat of aggressive panhandling that it does exist in the downtown area our team though is a Eyes Only We are not a security Force so we have very

close connections with the sheriff's department the police department and the Heart Group economic development that is something that we have done since our the beginning of our of the creation of DDI focusing on Equitable economic development in the downtown Durham area that Economic Development includes working with property owners developers investors to bring new development into into downtown but also very much focused on keeping the local vibe that we currently have I'm focusing a lot of our attention on the small locally owned independently owned businesses in the downtown area our street level businesses are happy to report that we have a um 70 of the businesses street level businesses that you see were started in Durham and 90 were started in North Carolina we like that we like that feel we know that that brings a different feel to the downtown area Place keeping is something that we are stepping more and more into that is bringing events festivals partnering with event managers to bring activities into the public area we are doing some of our own now that is something new that we have started but

we also work to identify other groups that we can partner with who also bring diverse troops into the downtown area in a more laid back Festival event kind of way marketing is a big foundation of what we do it is how we push out the information and the things that we're doing but also how we market downtown whether that be to a business owner who wants to start a business in downtown or a larger economic development project that is interested in developing in the downtown area um we also do quite a bit more of communicating with our stakeholders ensuring that we are maintaining the level of service that they're interested in and also keeping on top of things that they would like to see us accomplish in the downtown area just a little bit on um oh I will stop there and say that we have over the course of the last year and these are numbers through December 2022 because you have to come to our state of downtown Durham event in April to get the latest and greatest numbers but at the end of 2022 we had served over a

5 million square feet of office space um between the two between the two years the only commercial development that we had to complete construction was the uh Roxborough at venerable um 202 000 square feet of office space that is located next to the historic Venable Center that currently sits vacant but they're actively working to fill that space it was built spec and it started before covid um so it's one of those

that was able to start but it is now given the industry and Commercial development kind of slowing down a little bit but we do have every confidence that we'll see a tenant in there and many additional tenants in the near future um a little bit about in the pipeline as you all know meta announced just a few months ago of their presence in downtown and for office developments in the pipeline we have the ATC phase three or the expansion on the Ford site the Durham ID phase two which is located behind the Imperial Building and then the Gregson which is a Wexford development that is um being constructed by the pedigree parking garage that is adjacent to the bright leaf square area residential units this is the thing that is really leading development in the downtown area the cranes that you currently see out of the ground are residential developments as you see we have four to 4 700 that were completed in December total amount is

J Henderson which rehabbed 177 affordable units and we're excited about the hopefully the opening of the Joyce in the next few weeks actually April I think is when they're doing their their grand opening but on that note these are the pipeline developments that are are the residential development that is in the pipeline those that are in red are what is deemed affordable housing and the rest are market rate most of these are in fact multi-family but there are a few condos that is an interesting thing that we're seeing that we are seeing a bit more ownership opportunities in the

downtown this number also or this thought also recognizes that we are tracking residential development outside of our district this is one of the few statistics that we actually go outside of the boundary that I mentioned earlier because we know that people are coming into the downtown so it's a bit difficult and a little deceiving if we don't include that information um Merchants these are the street level Merchants you cannot compare those two numbers in June 2021 we were not including service Professional Services in these numbers we were just reporting on restaurant bars and Retail we have now started to report Services Mills hair personal trainers things of that nature so the numbers cannot be compared I will share that my slides are out of order which is a problem for me but somewhere I have

don't know where that is um 25 of that 255 is a minority and about 48 of that 255 number are woman owned um so we are very proud of that and we continue to work with our partners and work with businesses that are interested um and and especially giving a lot more hand-holding and technical assistance to minority owned and women-owned businesses on that note I will say that as you may know we have some retail space adjacent to our new location at new we've been there over a year at 307 West Main it's about 300 square feet and we are working to solidify a partnership with a local organization to put a small retail space in that in that space with the hope of emphasizing or encouraging and supporting either a minority or woman or minority women-owned business in that area that is not so much a pop-up whereas it would be more an establishment and then hoping to get them to grow in the downtown area and

find another location for them to grow into so more news on that in in the coming months as we solidify that that partnership um since I don't know what's happening with my notes here in front of me we'll just go off of the slides here these are the merchants that are in the um that are in the pipeline I will say that a number of these have opened Glory has opened that is an African-American female owned business manga Indian Grill has opened in the Durham Food Hall milk lab has opened in the food Hall and Weldon Mills has also opened Owen's well Izakaya has opened um so so we're excited that a number of these are open Yonder lust has opened they have a coffee shop and the outdoor retail spot will be opening in the com in the coming weeks and a number of these are underway and you will see a few of these or be in the space of a few of those when you come to our state of downtown Durham event April 19th major initiatives so these are some of the big things that we were working on

we continue to work on permanent outdoor dining we have five businesses that are still participating in that they are the structures that you see within the downtown core that are currently protected by the orange and white construction barricades the city did make this a permanent ordinance a permanent program a little over a year ago we continue to work with the city to determine what the structure needs to look like and most importantly what the pricing will be for those ensuring that businesses will be able to afford and and can reasonably ensure that they can afford into the future the use of those spaces but right now Luna Copa mothers and sons Mateo and queenies are using those spaces and if you were to walk around downtown you will see that they are actively used throughout the evenings another major initiative that we have been working on for the for the last year has been Parking Solutions with the city the increase in the hourly rate has put a burden on our hourly Workforce and

we continue to work with the city on how best to address that so that we can ensure that we keep that very vital and important group within the community I'm going to ensure that we have places for them to park that they can afford the Fayetteville Street reconnection we are working actively through a number of resources to look at how we reconnect recreate reconnect downtown with the hay type the hatai community we are doing this in a number of ways but working very closely with Angela Lee and her team at the haytai Heritage Center and very closely with DHA through their choice neighborhood initiative funding we are the one of the lead Partners on that around the neighborhood connection while through the choice neighborhood initiative this is something that is of great interest to the DDI board recognizing that 147 severed that relationship and how we can rebuild that and ensure that we maintain the authenticity and the fill and the the wants of that Community but

how we can also support and uplift that Community Based on the successes that we've had in the downtown area a huge major initiative as many of you may know and this took quite a bit of our time was the creation of the bullpen our social District I won't go through the pound of Flesh that has been left for us to get this across the Finish I've been waiting I've been waiting on this one this one was um this is near and dear to my heart I dream of this in the evening late at night I am happy to report that we have had no issues good in December when the police gave their report they had no issues whatsoever we have not seen an increase in trash we have currently I believe because again my oh we're looking here um 74 of our businesses are serving um are so they're participating by serving drinks and 33 are allowing drinks in uh we are hearing quite a bit of interest in this we have a few that are still

holding off um just to see how it goes but this has actually been quite a success we do recognize though that we opened we started this December of 2022 it has been a maybe on seasonably cold winter but it has been a winter season the Durham Bulls have now come have opened up they will be participating so we know that we will see more activity we think that's a good thing but we will continue to Monitor and manage the the use of this the the compliance of this it's a difficult job but ever so often the team has to go out and participate and make sure that they're completing the the necessary requirements by putting dates and things on there but it's a hard job and someone has to do that and we have taken that on but I am happy to report that this is doing quite well for the businesses those who are participating are very excited about it they are seeing a bit of an intake and they are pushing it out as best they can we are doing events we will never lead with the social District so it will never see

from DDI come down and enjoy the social District have a drink but if we do an event we will say and while enjoying the event partake of the the social District we did that with the opening day Sarah party that we had last Friday where it's come on down come to CCB Plaza and while you're here you're in the bullpen make sure you pick up a drink if you'd like um other major initiatives and all of this is under driving traffic into downtown without the office workers we are seeing that some of our small businesses are struggling during the day so we are trying to find ways to draw to drive people in the downtown so our desire to bring the the bullpen into the downtown area was to bring people into the downtown area to support those locally owned businesses that we have in the downtown area other things that we are doing we have a spendable program which is in the gift card we have about 59 52 businesses that are participating in that the downtown Durham Feast we run that in the winter it really is more of a local program come eat downtown turn your receipts in and you'd be entered into a drawing to receive a gift basket

comprised of gifts from the local retailers we have a downtown map that I think all of you all have seen as I mentioned 307 West Main we do a number of holiday events December 3rd the big kickoff of the social District was probably one of our largest we had 10 000 people within the downtown core over the course of that day from 11 to to to attend that night so quite a big big event shop small Saturdays through Friday and of course the opening day for the Durham Bulls so we are doing a few things on our own to drive drive people downtown and finally I'll end with um what we're going to be doing in the future in 2023 is our downtown Durham blueprint 2023 that is as you know we do a master plan this is a new name for a master plan we are looking to what can we do to ensure that we continue that downtown continues to grow it continues to be the striving thriving place that everybody wants to be but how do we also protect what people love so much about it the authenticity the local the local

ownership the local field the fact that Durham is very different from our neighbors and we're very very proud of that um so this report will be looking at that I'm very happy that the county manager along with the city managers serving on our steering committee to help us as we move through that process with that I will end with Willie bull because with that you probably won't have any questions because you'll be enamored with that picture thank you Nicole for an awesome report um you know you answered my question about the social district and uh I guess the only other question I have is uh are you going to be closing the streets again this year with um with the restaurants yes we are looking at um what the streetery whatever variation this would be with a full-time Place making person on staff she's taking a look at where we might be able to do that I will say that that this Focus will be much different than what it was in the past

um so it would have more of a block party feeling we would have a a few artists performing but also we are going to be working closely with the businesses that they would be coming out and offering specials and deals so it would be more of a block party feeling versus just a place to come and hang out um so the the pieces of that are a bit more difficult to to coordinate but we're hoping to do that in the the cooler months possibly one before the end of our fiscal year and then later on in the in the fall months we have learned a valuable lesson that nobody including us wants to be outside in July and August okay thank you Commissioners commissioner Jacobs thank you Nicole and I just want to really thank you and your staff for the great work that you do and are doing um to really um still deal with the impact of covid and the change in in work Trends with not

having the office population still downtown um I mean I when I listen and read about nationally what's happening with downtowns all over the country it's still it's a it's a big struggle and I feel really fortunate that here in Durham everybody is working together and the work that you all are leading partnering with people like Susan Amy discovered Durham but really making sure that we we keep our downtown vibrant this is the biggest source our our biggest per capita source of tax revenue is downtown we cannot forget the economic importance of downtown Durham to the county um and I just also want to mention not only the struggle with the pandemic but also with the national crisis about having our mentally people dealing with mental illness and substance use who are

living on the streets and again I'm hoping that Durham is going to keep staying above the trend by investing in permanent Supportive Housing the heart program which has we've seen has made a difference with you all partnering with with the heart program I just listened to a podcast yesterday about what's happening in Phoenix and it focused on a local business a sandwich shop that is being devastated by a huge homeless encampment and we have to stay above that and up in front of that in Durham and we that's why permanent Supportive Housing is so important because you can't just get people into treatment you have to have somewhere for them to live or else it's a revolving door so I know personally I'm committed to that and I know we have a great opportunity soon before the city and the county to help with that but that's vital for our small businesses downtown

I would love to hear I love that you were working on the Fayetteville Street reconnection and I guess I I wanted to know if you were involved with the study that the city is supposed to be doing right now looking at the reconnection um you know undoing the damage of 147 and I don't know if Ellen you have any update on that but um you you all should definitely be involved in that study which is supposed to lay the foundation for getting Federal money to look at what we can do to undo some of the damage of 147 so um Ellen do you know anything hate to put you on we know anything about that why don't we put that on the agenda for an update so the staff can get us the information yeah yeah make sure that you

are plugged into that yeah we'll do that later thank you thank you all commissioner alum hello thank you so much Nicole for this presentation so some of us were chatting about this earlier me and manager and business manager um Hager so yeah this weekend I was very lucky uh to be able to go and uh to Raleigh for the dreamville festival and you know it was an amazing time but seeing how many people from all across the country came uh for this weekend long festival and were there not just for the weekend but the whole week and buying and spending in the local businesses in Raleigh and it really made me think of you know the art of cool Festival that we used to have here is there any efforts that are being made to revive this Festival I know the last one was in 2019 with covet and everything

I'm sure like what will it take for that to be revived if those conversations have been being had um so it has lots of pieces to it um I will say that that Durham has had in the past festivals and events on par with with dreamville um different in its fill Phil but but on par with that we are disappointed to know that the full frame Festival wasn't coming back um you know that was a vital Festival around this time of the year a little too cold to be outside but people were moving about um so we we are hopeful that something will come in 2024 uh the art of cool you're correct their last um the the last article was in 2019 the last of everything was 2019. um not sure how that's going to come back it is no longer owned by the uh the Durham resident who was kind of spearheading it it was purchased in 2018 I Believe by a group out of Raleigh I

don't know what their plans are to bring that back we also lost the Moog Fest that was another large event that brought people from across the country into the downtown area and into Durham at this time we don't have and and Susan is it may Susan Amy with discover Durham may have a little bit more knowledge of of other events we work closely together um but I think it it's going to require [Music] um the collaboration that was mentioned but that collaboration also needs to be intentional in the way events can be handled in the downtown area um you know we're happy that centerfest is still here so that that will come back um they had their first centerfest since covid this past September there are plans for that to come back but there are challenges now in closing streets in the downtown area we don't have a big Park like Dorothea Dix where we can run shuttles back and

forth but it's an interesting concept to consider what we could do but I think we we have a little bit of time to really decide how we can be intentional and how we might be able to go out and recruit I think there is some interest but but making sure that they're getting the support the event managers are getting the support to bring those things because dreamville is not something that the city the city does it was brought to them by by a private group so making sure that private groups know that as they approach the city in the county to do something similar that they have the support and the individuals at the table who are willing to think big picture and try to make those things work and I think I know commissioner Burns sits on the memorial stadium board finding ways to use that space more I guess I think would be great very very excited though on that that what the door and sports commission has been able to do with with the the events that they've brought there so there's a quite a quite a bit of um enthusiasm around what they can do there and the possibilities of what they might be able to do with another facility if if and

when that happens so your the time has expired for this conversation if you've got something that you can do really quick appreciate it and so we can move on I had a bunch of questions but Nicole I'll just call you on the phone since time has expired for everyone but me uh my big question is um we could you give me a percentage if you have it off the top of your head because this is the most important question of available office space I feel like we usually get that at the state of downtown um and it was I think one time you told us 93 of all space was being used up but now we see that folks are at home and maybe not coming back so I don't know is it tilting the other ways and not telling the other way so just do you have a number maybe approximately of like what might be available downtown well our office vacancy sits in the low 90s I believe I'm still okay I'm pulling

that off of my head um but if you're pretty smart hit 20 20 third state of downtown Durham event on April 19th I'll have the exact number yeah got a plug um but I think it's in the the the low 90s yeah okay even with the news your question is that that is you know those are people who are leasing space that doesn't necessarily mean that the office workers are coming into that space right or the the hybrid nature that we find ourselves in so the number of people in the downtown we're trying to get a better handle on that using um a database that we have called Placer which kind of tracks phone um phone movement and phone movement um so some of that information will be presented because we're digging in that information now for the for the state of downtown Durham so there are two questions there yes when the official report says the the low 90s I think um interestingly the last time I looked our class C office space was actually close to 100

um occupied so there was very little vacancy with on Class C office space um but you know we we do know that we have a 202 000 square foot building that that sits empty um so that you're asking two questions and there are two ways to answer that but thank you paper it's the low 90s the other question hopefully we'll be able to shed some light on that thank you Nicole for your excellent report and we look forward to seeing you on the 19th at your meeting Heidi is it something that you have to ask today I can just get it out there maybe get the answer later that would be great thank you Nicole first of all for all the different components of work that you do keeping Durham safe clean fun um you know authentic all those things strong economic engine my question is about the social District in plastic um does downtown Durham Inc in the development of your blueprint 2035 do

you think you'll be focusing in some way on sustainability and you know re-re some sort of reuse um approached in the in the district in the bullpen you can answer later if you'd like or I can very quickly I'm sure it will um in in some some way um your question about the the the the the the bullpen uh we did look at how we might be able to have the cups um be sustainable um that was a difficult thing to do and the the burden on the businesses was too much we continue to work with organizations like don't waste Durham on what we might be able to do we do know that a few businesses are up charging a little bit so that they can have compostable cups um it was not a requirement that we put on it but we do know that that was a question that that came out quite a bit when we were launching the social District we have not solved for that I don't know what the answer is with the city and the county not accepting plastic cups that has just made it that much more difficult to solve for

recyclable paper cups don't work for beer and wine um so so it's a difficult I like to drink beer out of them okay well I'm glad you're thinking about it I can understand the answer is difficult thanks for continuing to ask the question thank you thanks Nicole thank you everybody thanks see you all on September I mean April 19th and uh thank you um we have we'll have why don't we go ahead and do one more before we take lunch break uh 22 0 2 12. informational report for the Beast OCC on Durham County's emergency preparedness and um we have our Emergency Management director here to Jim Groves to lead this conversation

it looks like he's got his whole team afternoon commissioner afternoon you want to come here are you going to stand over there you're going to have everyone else up there I'm going to let them have the the stage okay uh but I wanted to just to do a brief introduction about the topic we've received a request I'm sorry Jim grossier Emergency Services director thank you uh Reserve received a request to talk about uh Durham County's preparedness for um uh potential rail incidents Hazmat anything like that so our chief emergency manager Elizabeth Schroeder will be given the presentation and she has a lot of our response Partners here in the city in the county to be able to field your questions should you have any once the presentation is done okay thank you for having us today my name is Elizabeth Schrader I'm the chief of Emergency Management here in Durham County and for the city of Durham you

want to pull the mic up a little bit yep is this better that's better thank you I am joined by several of our response Partners I will allow them to the opportunity to introduce themselves David labar Sheriff's Office Bram Tong um Captain Denver Fire Department hazmatine Darius Thompson I'm a driver on uh Ninja 3 for the HazMat team Mark Lockhart chief for medic from EMS thank you thank you we are here today to respond to your inquiry regarding the Ohio train derailment and hazardous materials uh release and talk about our preparedness and response if a similar incident occurred here locally in Durham and first of all I want to thank all of you for your question and concern and also for the opportunity to talk in the work session today about this really important topic so today we will provide a very high level overview of some of our capabilities we'll also talk about a few of our gaps that we've identified and a

few strategies that we've mapped out to address some of those gaps so for individuals that may not be aware back in on February the 3rd there was a train derailment in East Palestine Ohio that resulted in the release of hazardous chemicals that seeped into the air water and soil this was a relatively large incident that the media is still covering because there continue to be impacts unfortunately we do not have a lot of control over the rail race or what passes through on them on a daily basis so no matter how well we prepare there will always be that risk however we do continue to develop and expand our capabilities to mitigate these risks I want to point out a couple of differences between the incident in Ohio and one that we might have here in Durham first of all is the difference in train speed when traveling in a rural area versus a Suburban one the speed is based on the location of the rail and what the main line is designed to handle So In general the speeds for a passenger

train max out at 75 miles an hour whereas a freight train maxes out at 75 excuse me at 50 miles an hour it's also important to understand the types of Commodities that pass through our area on a regular basis we have conducted commodity flow studies in the past which provide us that snapshot in time of some of the threats so we can more appropriately plan for and mitigate these potential impacts and we also know that through our tier 2 reporting which is an annual federal requirement for companies that store hazardous materials that there are 275 reportable quantities that are stored here locally but most importantly we want to emphasize that every situation is unique and it must be treated that way so these situations are very dependent upon a multitude of factors that includes the location so where a derailment might occur in its proximity to other businesses homes Etc it also depends on the type of chemical or chemicals that are involved the amount of that chemical or chemicals

the weather including precipitation humidity temperature wind speed wind direction additionally there may be some situations where it's safer to let a particular chemical burn off opposed to allowing it to form a plume so even though every situation is unique the initial response is still going to be the same public safety personnel will respond they'll Don the appropriate PPE they'll assess the situation and they'll make appropriate notifications an incident of this magnitude would elicit an immediate activation of our Emergency Operations Center or EOC for high-level coordination and to obtain that common operating picture it would also qualify for us to issue a local state of emergency I'm happy to talk about this process if there are questions but in respect of time I'll continue to move on so I am very proud to report that we have a lot of local capabilities right here in Durham especially embedded with the Durham fire department to include subject matter expertise personnel and

Equipment Durham is extremely fortunate to have a specialized hazardous materials or HazMat team that resides with the Durham fire department they possess extensive experience and knowledge that requires hours of training education and frequent continuing education they have 16 Hazmat technicians that are spread throughout the city on every single shift and they also engage in frequent training throughout the year including regular training on rail-based incidents Additionally the fire department has an extensive amount of equipment including drones meters suits remote monitoring capabilities and something that is very unique to Durham I'm like nowhere else in the country they also have a highly specialized air monitoring device or sniffer that attaches to the Drone that helps collect additional data that is used for that critical decision making additionally through a recent Duke Energy Grant Emergency Management is building an all hazards drone program that could also help support one of

these responses Emergency Management also has a lot of capabilities one of our primary functions is coordination and the type of incident that we're talking about is highly complex and requires extensive coordination with a large volume of local regional state and federal partners locally we have a task force that's comprised of Public Safety Chiefs the sheriff as well as some executive Command Staff and subject matter experts we meet on a regular basis to discuss test and plan for a complex incidents through this task force we have developed strong working relationships and a mutual understanding in the importance of unified command so that all of the decision makers are co-located communicating face to face and are on the same page with how to manage the incident in the safest and most efficient manner possible um currently the emergency management team is comprised of five individuals that provide a 24 7 on-call coverage one of our team members specializes in hazardous materials planning

additionally we have capabilities for sending community-wide messaging we have a tiered alerting system that allows us to Target specific geographical areas or reach everyone through ipaws which is the integrated public alert and warning system this uses a wire emergency alerting system that is similar to an Amber Alert additionally we have capabilities for Mass Sheltering we do have a plan in place we're well equipped and we just executed a successful full-scale exercise on March 28th if evacuations and Sheltering were required for a local incident the location of the incident among other factors would drive the decision for the specific Sheltering location we also participate and provide a an extensive amount of training um we participate in training with our HazMat team locally we also run our local emergency planning committee or lepc they are actively working on expanding that group they meet quarterly and review incidents and they're working

on developing an exercise subcommittee that will facilitate an annual tabletop exercise additionally Emergency Management has a lot of very strong Partnerships we have County to County as well as Statewide Mutual Aid and access to an abundance of resources that could be brought in to assist in one of these situations our strong positive relationships can be evidenced by a recent search and rescue operation that took place back in October we also have access to the North Carolina regional response Hazmat teams located in Raleigh Greensboro and Fayetteville they can come in to assist with containment confinement and mitigation furthermore we have positive relationships with Durham Water Services NC deaner for monitoring air and water quality as well as the Environmental Protection Agency furthermore we have a lot of plans in place including our Emergency Operations plan that has a Hazmat Annex we have our continuity of operations plans for City and County departments our all hazards planner is currently working with

individual departments to ensure appropriate updates and testing of plans we also have emergency action plans that outline evacuation versus shelter and place activities we're in the process of revising our eaps to make them more user-friendly for our employees and also working on developing online modules to become an annual requirement so at the beginning I mentioned that we have a lot of capabilities and I feel that we are well equipped for one of these incidents however I'd be remiss if I didn't also address some of the gaps that we currently have you can never have enough training and for more for awareness than anything else our team has applied for a 25 000 Grant to support a regional trained derailment Hazmat exercise for this fall we do currently have an evacuation plan in place for East Durham however it is outdated we are working um currently with a vendor to develop an updated plan that will address a five mile radius out from our Brin Tag Facility um the plan will take around a year from

start to finish because they will have to develop traffic models at different times of the day during different seasons taking into consideration the public school system hospitals RTP Etc we're selecting Brin tag because it does have the highest concentration of chemicals it's near underserved communities waterways highways downtown so we do take that area very seriously I am also happy to report though that brintag does engage with regular training with our HazMat team um the last two areas are probably of the greatest impact for our gaps currently our team is a little Limited in personnel as well as bandwidth um we're comprised as I mentioned earlier of five individuals who rotate 24 7 call um often times due to the breadth of our responsibilities um and taking this all hazards approach and due to the complexity of our threat profile we may only have one or two emergency managers in Durham on any given day we currently also don't have the capability of launching that immediate messaging because we don't have enough individuals

to sit and monitor for situational awareness so this is this is something we're hoping to obtain to address this Gap we have requested some additional ftes to support our team so we're able to fully carry out our mission and more safely and appropriately address the threat profile here in Durham and finally our Emergency Operations Center we are currently functioning out of that building that was constructed back in 1946 and never intended for use in that capacity um we're understanding that it may be considered as a capital Improvement project to help support that we have submitted an initial application for a congressional earmark Grant in which we have requested three million dollars for our Emergency Operations Center so enclosure we are immensely grateful for all of your support and concern in ensuring the best interests of our community I will pause for a moment to see if any of our additional stakeholders have anything to add and then we will open

the floor for questions you've done such a great job they are [Laughter] nothing else for interview to add okay we'll open it up for the board for questions do you want to start with you Heidi I just want to thank Elizabeth for the report um how thorough you know somewhat technical but still accessible to lay people like me um and I I feel it increases my confidence that our community is in good hands regarding these situations of emergency I appreciate you bringing forward the information about gaps and how some of that requires local funding it's really important for us to hear um and thank you all all of you for the

the different work that you're doing in all the different areas um I'm glad you're all here today it's good to see you in person every one of you no I don't always and so um thank you so much for your very very important work for all the work you do uh keeping us safe and healthy in so many different ways um in addition to the the Staffing capacity issues that you mentioned do you think have you seen from just how the response has been to the East Palestine issue or disaster of you know with the water pollution and all of the follow-up issues that have been had of any areas that your team would need more support and to be able to respond to those type of disasters that's a great question nothing specifically I think having a little

more bandwidth for our team just so we can assess um really the magnitude of the situation and appropriately coordinate the resources as I mentioned you know just given um the all hazards approach that we're taking you know even though we have five individuals that doesn't mean we have five individuals Sitting Waiting to respond all day every day we do have the 24 7 on call but we are spread out um across the county and sometimes going into other counties to to support their missions as well okay commissioner Jacobs yeah um thank you so much for this excellent report and I would hope that anyone from our community who listens to it would feel some sense of comfort to know that we are really cutting edge in terms of the HazMat team and the training and the equipment that we do have it is definitely a source of comfort for me to know that and I hope

that with the upcoming budget and this is a city county issue that we do really look at what the gaps are and what we need to do because you know the fact of the matter is we have a railroad cutting through the middle of our downtown major population areas we have the East Durham rail yard and you know come you know companies Chemical Company Brent tag operating right there next to where people are living and unfortunately the issue with East Palestine has really brought to light just how many train derailments do happen every year and so one of my questions is how I'd like to understand more about what kind of information are you getting about exactly what types of chemicals are on those trains every day I would

like to understand how much information you get and could there be better communication and collaboration with ncrr and Norfolk Southern who's operating those freight trains about letting making you all giving you all a heads up to know the schedules and when things are coming through so that's one of my questions the second one is from what I've been reading there's been a lot of and I know the federal Congress is going to be looking at this but about things like braking systems increasing the strength of the cars themselves um funding that's needed for regular maintenance of the brakes and the other types of things that evidently there hasn't been may be sufficient investment in just regular maintenance and then the other thing I've learned about is issues with

the tracks themselves being properly maintained so I would just like to understand how much understand what you all are doing but how much help are you getting on the other side to know to you know yes um so as far as the quantities of what's coming through there's a flow study that can be done to see what typically comes through but on any given day you it's just like the road you're going to get chemicals coming through that's going to a different part of the country that you won't necessarily know exactly um at any given time what's coming through if there is an incident we do have tools at our disposal to say hey we know what's in this car they're going from a more paper-based um version to apps so if something wrecks

we can find out what's exactly on that um a train car or roadway something like that but as far as what type of chemicals are coming through every chemical or every company that you saw on a couple um presentations ago with all those companies those big companies that throw millions of dollars um they use chemicals that if they get out of their facility are going to be bad for everybody but yeah just the nature of so in other words it's not just the trains we need to worry about it's well if you start thinking about it it's everything yeah every road it's going to be facilities yeah yeah well I guess you know I I just I hope maybe with maybe the county managers leadership team looking at this and just any other any opportunities to to improve the sharing of information with with you know not just the Norfolk

Southern but even all of the facilities that use chemicals I mean I know you do that anyway but it just feels like this is is really important and the other issue I think is I would wanted to ask about the alert Durham system and how many people we actually have who have joined it and whether we have a um siren system my daughter lives in West Arkansas she literally just the tornado that came through just missed her apartment complex and a lot of people she knows have lost their homes and the fact that they actually had a siren go off and a very good alerting system her partner her fiance was able to get from their apartment with their three dogs to the federal courthouse she was Sheltering in the basement because of the advanced notification and

I believe I I would imagine the death toll would have been higher in Arkansas in Little Rock if they had not had such a good notification system because the physical Devastation has been enormous but the fatalities have been thankfully not as high as you would expect so I'd like to understand how many people are really I mean it feels like something we might need to really improve on certainly Jim may remember the exact numbers but I can say that we have continued to see an increase in individuals that are registering for alert Durham it's a very positive trend we also re-filmed our alert Durham promotional video on Friday so we will be pushing that out to increase the publicity they are increase awareness of the platform um do you recall I think we're roughly 65 000 people that have opted in through

the online portal to be able to receive all types of information but the Emergency Management has used a new um feature that's provided by everbridge or the company that actually hosts alert Durham and I think we have 407 000 numbers that includes individuals and businesses homes um that greatly increases our capability to reach out and deliver a message so the the Lord Durham system and if you look at the resident satisfaction survey it continues to inch up in a positive way not making huge Leaps and Bounds but it's showing a positive trend and I believe we're well Above the Rest of the country in that which I'm very proud of the emergency management team and their work on that to answer your question about the sirens when I first worked here from 93 to 2003 the sirens were being decommissioned in the late 80s early 90s and so those were the old civil defense kind of air raid sirens

that were used for for weather and the reason that was explained to me then as a young emergency manager was that there was there was not there return on investment to keep the sirens up and running right so I think another thing that we can use to maybe give us some level of comfort is most folks not everyone but most folks have a telephone with them a wireless telephone and so the Weather Service can give a wireless emergency alert or we well before Simon would ever go off so we do have a good way of reaching our public for a hazardous weather event and we don't have to take any action mods so if it occurs on its own I hope that helps answer okay well I guess to Mata manager maybe we can think about ways to kind of push out the alert Durham um you know to the community especially with recent events and also just with climate

change and having more severe weather and things like that um and unfortunately gun violence it's we've had to use that a few times so it's a it's a great system and and 65 000 is good but we still have a lot of people that aren't on it but thank you all so much thank you so much for this this update and report I think we're all a little I've been having a little anxiety um when we heard about what happened in Ohio especially when you've got friends and relatives lives in the area you know because you start to think what happens if it happens in your area so thank you so much for your report and um we appreciate it thank you okay so Commissioners our Lunch is ready if you wanna

what the board would like to take a 30 minute for a lunch break or 15 minutes whichever the board prefers oh you want to take 15 minutes or half an hour we want 15 minutes 15. okay try to get through because we've got Joe thank you sir

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uh yeah my staff okay all right your crew is coming in all right [Laughter] that's all right welcome okay Dwayne you want to take it off and introduce your team uh good afternoon board Dwayne Brinson assistant County Manager for Community safety we have a presentation as we do annually here for the board just a market update this particular presentation I'm going to focus pretty heavily on Revenue neutral and what that means once we get

into budget season after the reval have some esteemed staff here with me today I'm going to take a little bit of this presentation they're going to run through some of it I'll allow them to introduce themselves and then we'll get started and guys make sure that the button is pushed to activate the microphone we'll start with this more Mr Moore right here good afternoon Commissioners manager soel thank you all so much for this opportunity I'm Corey Moore on the staff development supervisor in the Durham County Tax Administration okay and good afternoon I'm Kiara Doyle uh he's a manager of real property uh Starlin Beatty deputy assessor real property and I had to read that to make sure I was the right one [Laughter] okay all right all right so just wanted to um bring everybody up

to speed um and talk a little bit about um reappraisal I'm sure you all know what that is and we are embarking upon that experience um here soon um a reappraisal is required by law at least once every eight years and I know that you all have had plenty of conversation with regards to our next reappraisal you know some of the things that have happened over the you know last few years with regards to the pandemic and and um the Cyber attack you know they have delayed the reappraisal and then you had discussion to bring it back again so we're excited to you know that we're embarking up in that now the purpose of a reappraisal is basically to equalize the tax base when I say equalize the tax base we're basically bringing everything up to market value 100 of market value Duane will talk more about the Reverend neutral Revenue neutral um piece of it but we follow the North Carolina Department of revenues the appraisal

standards that were established in 2017. it's a manual um based on the International Association of assessing officers um their standards with regards to how to carry out a reappraisal in a jurisdiction so we do everything from you know the initial data studies the frequency of the the reappraisal development of the reappraisal plan data collection valuation development of the schedule of values that you all will have to approve sending out the notices the appeals all of that stuff in accordance with this North Carolina Department of revenues standards and just to slide that that'll show you our um most recent reappraisals you know going back to 2008 course 16 19 is the one that we're operating under currently um and then you know the conversation

with regards to the one for January 2023 moved to 26 moved back to 25. so we're kicking in in gear and getting ready for that one and we're excited about it so January 1 2025 will be our next reappraisal date foreign so with that we're going to move into the discussion on Revenue neutrality and what that means when you conduct a county-wide revaluation I've got a couple slides here to actually work through some numbers to show an illustration of how this may look with some hypothetical examples we'll start at the 10 000 foot level and then it will break it down into how some potential taxpayers may experience the revaluation with different increases in their property value as Mr Moore just said

the goal of a reappraisal is to equalize the tax base it's not to generate Revenue and that's where the revenue neutral the rntr comes into play the rntr it's intended to show the tax rate that would keep the local government's Revenue neutral given its News 10 News tax base so if you experience an increase in your tax base due to re-evaluation you would have an offsetting Revenue neutral tax rate it's kind of an inverse relationship there the tax base increases Revenue neutral will be lower back in 0809 when the tax basis contracted severely the revenue neutral rate was higher than your current tax rate so it's an inverse relationship there ncgs 159 that's 11e requires rntr and I have emphasis added here to be included in the submitted budget it is not required it is not required to be adopted

now this is the reference point for your new tax rate so any deviation from revenue neutral would be a decrease or increase but it does not require to be adopted it only needs to be shown and included in the budget as a reference point so here's our ten thousand foot view of what I mean when we say reevaluations are designed to be Revenue neutral in and by itself some hypothetical examples so going into the revaluation the budget season going into the revaluation the tax base is 55 billion dollars we do the county-wide reval and tax base the tax base increases up to 71 and a half billion dollars so what you do is you take the 55 billion which is a tax base from last year just before the re-evaluation and you take last year's tax rate

and you move on and I wish I had a laser with this but you move on down to the the very middle row of that chart there where it says revenue generated well look at that okay there we go all right so with the tax base and the tax rate from last year you're allowed to compute the revenue generated all right 397 million 210 000. all right that's the information that we have used from last year hypothetically now this this is a I won't say it's a complex calculation but it's more involved than what you see on this chart here the local government is allowed credit for its natural growth that has gotten since its last reappraisal so when we calculate the revenue rate we're going to look back to 2019 and we're going to figure out on average what that average growth in the tax base has been or purposes of this illustration I've plugged in four percent which is not unrealistic

78 cents

22 cents because we have a larger tax base to account for now we're able to the revenue neutral rate is lower than the previous year because we have a bigger base to adjust that from so it could feasibly go down 15 cents using these numbers it would go down fifth the revenue neutral rate would be 15 cents lower than the previous year very good teacher that's what we say when we say it's designed to be Revenue neutral basically the only way we can generate revenue from property tax is through a tax rate increase we have natural growth but even in um I've had I've had I see David back here as well but I've had Keith explain

this a time or two as well but when we show um tax rate increases year over year for the revalue years if there's a tax rate increase it's based off the revenue neutral tax rate right so this looks like a 15 cent decrease but that's actually a new tax rate yeah your tax base would be inflated right commissioner Jacobs yeah I just assume I mean related to this I would just say I I've been through 2016 and 2019 revise and I don't think we kept the neutral rate I mean if I remember correctly we that was where we started but that's not what we adopted and so I think it's I just think it's important to note that that's and you said it in your in your presentation that's the starting point because the reality of it

is that we're always going to have needs that we have to meet that are not going to be covered really realistically with the revenue neutral rate absolutely I just think it's important to say that because that's that is what happens in practice yeah yeah and can I just follow back up again and I I can appreciate that I can appreciate that context but in preparation for this presentation I did look at other counties and I know you got to finish um and I don't want to prolong this but I do think it is it's nice well to see that we have a wiggle room which is what I'm trying to highlight so even if we don't hit 57 if we hit 60 we have still made a bunch of money lowered its some and it's still Revenue neutral so again I know this is advantageous like this would be like oh you know but um again and thank you for breaking this down like a fraction like I feel smart but thank you for that context also okay so that's a 10 000 foot level I'm going to take it down to what and again

hypothetical examples but to show you how different taxpayers in different situations in different parts of the county may experience the revaluation and the tax bill differently so here you have taxpayer a taxpayer B taxpayer C taxpayer a the value of that property of taxpayer Ace property it increases 17 percent after we do the 25 reappraisal and again this is using Revenue neutral tax rate which like I said does not have to be adopted this particular taxpayer whose property increased in value 17 percent the tax bill with the revenue neutral rate would actually decrease by 144 dollars taxpayer B had a higher a substantially higher than average increase 125 percent and again using the revenue neutral tax rate that particular taxpayers tax bill it almost doubles it goes up by 1155

dollars and then taxpayer C had an average increase 25 percent and applying the revenue neutral tax rate that particular taxpayer would experience no change in the tax bill once the new value is combined with the revenue neutral tax rate there'd be no change in that taxpayer's bill so you can see there there will be different impacts to taxpayers throughout the county depending on what's happening in their neighborhood in that part of the county there will be very different impacts to our community members and this is just an example showing that question oh you're looking at my face did I add that what does that mean um and I was trying to figure out if the revenue neutral

in Denver and B but they still got a tax increase right so that so the county adopted a revenue neutral rate that uses the average increase county-wide right right so the average right the increase to the tax base in the the increase to the tax base in this previous slide is 25 percent okay right so any taxpayer whose increase is lower than 25 percent using these numbers would experience a decrease in the tax bill any taxpayer whose increase is larger than 25 would experience varying degrees of an increase okay right if they had 50 percent it'd be an increase this particular example here 125 that's an exaggerated example hopefully right um but it just shows you how because we have different pockets in the county we have very popular areas we have areas that are experiencing less Demand right

now and depending on where you are in those areas and how your property is appreciating that ultimately at the taxpayer level that's going to determine your experience with your tax bill after the reval got it okay commissioner Carter this is a really great slide and I think it um is relevant to our long-term low-income homeowners program right where we're trying to protect homeowners long-term homeowners who might be in the neighborhood with taxpayer B um that's probably gentrifying and you know we're trying to help those people stay in their home because their tax bill has gone up inordinately and disproportionately more than the others and so that's you know why we adopted that program and this is a great slide to illustrate it and it you know it's just I just think it's nice to call that out right this is a good demonstration of why we needed to do it

that's exactly right yeah okay okay if there are no more questions at this time on Revenue neutral we'll turn it over to our real property managers here have a few more slides they're going to go into some stats about where we actually are and you know the sales ratio that we talk about so often with the board it it has continued I won't steal your thunder it's it's continued to drop and I wanted to show you um I want to show you these slides first so we have a good understanding of these numbers we're going into okay yeah Durham County Market Trends and I usually don't need a mic and you can see here where we start comparing uh the the sales in the county from 18 to through 22 if you look at that from the year at 18 if you look at

the blue line which is our average sales we had an average valuation of a sale in uh for 287 018 then we went to 297 316 362 and last year in 22 our average sale price was 419 000. that was a 45 increase over the average sale price in 18. then if we look down at the second line that is our median uh sale price which means the number that's in the middle not trying to be Elementary but the number that is in the middle and that's 399 000 but you see in 6 and 18 it was 264 to 273 to 287 to 331 to 399. that is a 51 increase in the middle number of our sales uh so you can see how our values in the county have and that's that's

overall that's everybody lumped in no neighborhood consideration just the entire County at one time you can see how that is going to have an impact on overall value so it that just that simple explanation there would tell me that gee whiz we're looking at a 51 increase but that may or may not be so necessarily be the case because things that did not sell may not have that type of increase so because simply they may be not desirable or something of that nature any questions on this particular slide you want to mention one thing really quickly when we came to the board in 20 early 2021 and asked for consideration of delaying the next reappraisal so we could update our tax software we were looking at the 2020 sales data and the trends from there and nobody could have predicted what happened in 2021 2022 the astronomical increase in sales prices we were experienced we were we were thinking

modest increases just as it always been and then if anything during cover we're talking about recession and 20 unemployment and but things have just skyrocketed since then good okay and here we have uh so I just we're going to talk about the North Carolina Department of Revenue the written reappraisal standards and uh what our timeline is for uh adhering to that uh standard all right so the um staff the real property division we are responsible for trying to make sure that we get everything in place and get these things in processes in order to make sure we hit these timelines these are the timelines that are standard for this upcoming 2025 reappraisal so we have the random sample data review began and that was January 15 2022 um that was basically a process of Staff going out doing their job collecting the

data that data's processed reviewed and analyzed and that all helps us go through with this process but that started or that that review began January 15 2022 um and that's just a date we really start these are things we're doing day to day but January 15 2022 data review results submitted to North Carolina Department of Revenue September 1st 2022 reappraisal plan due to North Carolina Department of Revenue January 1st 2023 and the internal reappraisal work begins January 1 2023 and again that's just a date these are things that we're constantly reviewing and looking at day to day throughout the data that we receive from the wonderful job that staff does day to day to go out and pick up these listings and their job day to day creates the data that we use to review and analyze to actually show us these sales and where we are with these items uh North Carolina North Carolina uh dco

tax reappraisal timeline for our county is kind of reflective of what we just showed but this is the field GIS desktop reviews January 2023 through 2024 this is basically the two years prior to January 25 basically this is the two-year period that we use for the data that'll be heavily weighted for these particular analysis um so that work started January 1st as far as the actual data we can use extenuating circumstances you do tend to go into 22 and whatever you have to based off circumstances but the true scope is the two years prior to January 1 2025 so the field review and GIS desktop reviews that started January 2023 um staff is already working hard daily to continue that process of collecting the listings and doing their part analyzing the sales is an ongoing thing but it's specially focused on in this

two-year time period between January 2023 to January December 2024 building the actual schedule of values ongoing process but focused in on more between March 24 and August 24th I'll tell you United something that we do daily now we already started in 23 so we're already looking at what types of changes we have to do but it'll be focused on more intensely uh March 2024. um land pricing again big big critical part of what we're doing um for this 2025 reappraisal the dirt and Durham completely different than it was in 2019. um Improvement pricing August 2023 through July 2024. uh that's the actual structures the buildings final edits July 2024 through December 2024 and Adoption of scheduler values September 2024 through October 2024 and

that's when we'll be hopefully presenting you all with that schedule of values to be adopted notices should go out January 2025 February 2025 and that should probably be some uh preliminary notices or just Communications with the public prior to that but those are the notices that will be uh definitely for the public in regards to the actual January 1 2025 reappraisal uh the appeal process should start March 2025 July through July 2025 and hopefully it will not be overwhelming we um we hope to have a pretty good appeal system and we can get some pretty good uh values out there to the public so that is the timeline for the reappraisal what does the schedule of values look like is it a list of um I don't know sales ratios I mean what is

it it is um very it's a lot more than just a list but um we actually have access to our 2019 schedule values actually on the website but it is a lack of a better description of a Bible of a Bible of all the characters yes it's basically a footprint or a actual blueprint of what was used to go into the 2019 reappraisal you could go into that particular document and find coding you can find pricing you can find land pricing structure pricing neighborhood information but it's it's pretty intense and it's pretty um pretty long it's some we do provide it yes yes you could you could actually look at the 2019 one um it has been online since January 1 2019. so the the one thing that it doesn't show you to be clear it doesn't

show you individual values right so the schedule values a good way to describe it it's a toolbox of everything that we can use to arrive at a value if there's ever a code that we are to use a landline we are to use the classification of personal property versus real property it has to be in the schedule of values it's not it's not what you use for any one individual property but it's it's a when we print it out it's a binder of all the codes all the language all the the methodology that you can use to arrive at a value of properties and we can I can send a link to the 2019 to the board for reference as well would have a large a bunch of numbers very little words but it's a bunch of numbers and those numbers are the things that we use to create the individual value but it doesn't tell you that your property will be valued at this you have to go through the process

get that value out of those numbers okay so just in terms of you know for our boards information can we go back to that previous slide that had the schedule the one right before um in terms of the action that our board takes do we are we involved with approving anything related to the the new values before I'm looking at the fall of 2024 is there a decision point that comes back to us as a board the the biggest the decision point for the board is going to be regarding the schedule of values okay that that will occur october-ish time frame um and it's I think it's a 51 day process where we present it to the board

it has to be open for public inspection um you have to allow for public comments and then after a certain period of time after it's presented and put on display the board can approve the schedule that's that's the decision point for the board okay so so the board will approve because that will be this board because I want to make the point that there's going to be a new board sitting here after the first Monday of December of 2024. so just to be clear on the process of what what this board is going to to vote on and decide will be the schedule of values now um then that goes out um with the property value notices to the public will be in January is what you're saying January to February okay and all right so that's when residents in Durham County property owners in Durham that's when they actually receive here's your new value the value but then the tax

rate will actually not be set until the new board the new board is sitting here and we'll do that as part of the budget process in June so just yeah that's right and and then were you are you planning to do what was done last time so the 2019 rebound had a tool a web-based tool where people could see their property and the comps were there right there for them to look at the comps like you know other neighbors properties and what they were what their the latest sales data um so are we going to be doing that again too right we we've continued that okay we've actually I'll say that we've improved that since then because now you go on that site and if there are differences between the properties like if you know one property is 1500 square feet the other property is 2500 square feet they aren't really comparable you

have to adjust for that difference and the way we have a program now it'll go in for the taxpayer and it'll it'll make apples to apples it it does it does appraisal based on our schedule values for them we are continuing that I think that's a great products in a lot of counties We are continuing that okay [Music] seen some things like on um next door are you are you out in the field right now physically out in the field looking at properties because I've I've seen things on next door like people saying I saw somebody you know taking a picture of your house and then you know people will say oh they must be working for you know the tax office or whatever but just wondering kind of what you all are doing now and how you are identifying yourself to the community because I think that's important people are hyper Vigilant about you know fortify on everything and then you know

that's good yeah I like that yes um we should definitely still be out every day every work day um picking up listings and that does entail photos at certain properties um the tax the appraisers where Durham County apparel and they should also be wearing um vests it's that acknowledge that they are with the tax office okay do we have anything on the cars like those magnetic stickers or whatever they actually have yeah the logo is on the vehicle on vehicles okay great thank you and that's something that I I want to use in the next reappraisal is next door in the neighborhood-based methodology of next door so when we go out into neighborhoods um we can we can let them know ahead of time that in between these dates we're going to be in this neighborhood because that that's such a great resource that we can use yeah and we learn from the survey

that we just did the um the city and the county and Durham public schools that more people get their information from next door so that they do from our own from Durham County you know stuff so yeah commissioner Burns really we are so sharp thank y'all because I you know I complimented the Wayne he feeling himself because he got a new title so I needed to compliment y'all he put respect on his own name when he started but uh I'm picking on it because I congratulations brother I really am excited I'm so happy that commissioner Jacobs went through the timeline because that was the exact thing I was going to ask so I can go to my last question I do think it's important uh for us to think about we're going to be the ones that adopt the sov but the next board will be in a position to make changes if they so choose to the tax rate right so I I would love to see and I do see people taking pictures of

these slides Duane thank you for putting hypothetical on on every slide I want to I'm gonna say this to the folks in the audience again these are hypothetical numbers these are not numbers for you all to email back to us and say you all need to do this because Dwayne said this that's that's not what it was hypothetical so I'm watching y'all and watch and and we'll be we're I'm pretty sure on YouTube it still says hypothetical so it's hypothetical but I would love to see and this is for my edification and could you send it to our board this is request of mine what it would I want that same exact chart that you have with the 72 and the 57 cents and all three of those but you know what I want a third column at the bottom I want you to show me how this one right here I want you to put 20 25 but I want you to keep the tax rate at 2019. um I want the world to see it since it is going to be up to the next board to make that change I want the world to see what it would look like for somebody who had a 200 000 house

to stay at that same tax rate and that tax bill is five thousand dollars that's what I I'm making Dwayne I saw your browford but we saw it doubled it it's gonna change for everybody I just want to know what it would look like in 2025 if we kept it there because commissioner Jacobs brought up a good point like it doesn't always work that way but I want to have that somewhere on the record so we can see how devastating it could potentially be maybe not for a b and c but it's going to be devastating for somebody and I want that and it goes along to the point that commissioner Carter made and that we both made last week you know we sitting here with this kind of the lean tax system and we robbing Peter to pay Paul by putting money through DSS DHHS and DSs to make sure that we keep our low income tax program up so I don't have a problem doing that I'm one of the people that's fighting to keep it where it is but if we maintain at the next board wherever it is blessed to sit in these seats keeps it at 72 and that person's house does go from from uh 200 to 450 we're

going to be looking at more than 2500 or 2600 so I would I just I would like to see that um if you could share that with our board later like what could potentially happen if we do not lower the rate at all absolutely so thank you we have one more slide thank you all right as we conclude our presentation wanted to just just give you all an update on our software conversion and we're happy to announce that we have converted I got to the tax office like five years ago and the first thing I spoke into the atmosphere was there has to be a better way gotta be a better way and and and this man was then brought on board and he um agreed that there had to be a better way and so we've been working with the North Carolina property tax Solutions program Farragut based out of Durham and we've been working with them since 21 really February 8th when

you all gave us to go ahead and we have converted both our LR and kamma which is Our Land records and our residential side you know both of those are real property and then the building and collections which is our personal property and collections side um so LR and Kama they went live a few months back and we just went live with billing and Collections and we're so happy it's been a big learning curve but um with with the leadership that Dwayne has provided and the positive attitude that the folks in the tax office has um you know brought to the table and demonstrated every step of the process um we did it and we did it successfully and we are there now and we are slowly but surely putting our old dos based looking system one tax to to sleep so thank you all so much for creating those funds for us I'm sure the NC ncacc is Happy I've been hearing about that for

years they have come to the Commissioners conference and presented and so I'm sure they are excited that this has happened so thank you and one quick final point then it's a thank you to the board um we were scheduled for a January 2023 reappraisal and I came to the board and we had a lot of stuff going on even outside of the old tax system and I asked for a delay in the reappraisal right and the board granted us that and I'll tell you and Starlin as well Starlin is a former tax administrator himself I'll tell you if we would have had to do a 23 reappraisal combined with where we've been the last couple years with this conversion and it's consumed as we I would not be sitting here and guarantee it would it would have been a disaster so um thank you all for allowing us that time as a business practice a business need to get where we need to be and now we head into the 25 reappraisal strong with

a good system that we can do good work with and go paperless and environmentally it's it's going to be a great thing so thank you all wonderful commission alum thank you all so much um you've made taxes very interesting and also just to piggyback what you were just saying Dwayne thank you to your whole team for having that forward thinking and being you know honest with our Board of like this is what our capacity is this is what we're going to be able to handle and making sure we stay on track and got everything done properly um I had a question that's it's a slight tangent but still connected because as you were discussing you know how do we look and analyze how our taxes are impacting um our low-income communities the most and how do we lift and ease that burden off of them one of the things that always comes to my mind is how much revenue we are losing from Duke University not being taxed and I was wondering if there's been an

analysis of that of how much revenue we lose a year from them not being taxed and how we can approach that as a board to look into if the state legislature allows if our attorney is looking at me real funny um or if we can have conversations with Duke with like a payment in lieu of uh these taxes because that would lift a huge burden that is being placed on our residents right now from them not being taxed any takers or can I have it so I will I'll say um just for clarity that and I know we know this but Duke is not a state institution it is not automatically exempt from taxation Duke so the Duke University itself does not pay taxes because it qualifies as an educational Institution but Duke does own property that it pays taxes on uh the the JB Duke Hotel the

Washington Duke Inn they have prorated exemptions they pay taxes on that property Duke still has to qualify it's not an automatic exemption right so if it's not used for educational purposes or if it's not used for a purposes outline explicitly for an exemption they would pay taxes now there is a lot of property that Duke doesn't pay taxes on because it does qualify but there are properties that dugones where it does pay at least a portion of taxes some cases the full tax bill and I'm happy to provide that to the board as well to show you how that looks and those exemptions are determined by County policy or state policy we are a Dylan's rule state uh we we can only do what the general assembly allows us to do right so at all 100 counties in North Carolina we all have the same tax law so we can only do what's provided for in the Machinery act which is our tax code for North Carolina

staff delegation to tackle I'm chair if I could just take a moment um I think what's been requested and I hate to restate but just so we know is an assessment of the revenues that would come if the property that is not traditional education property and I say that and I think we all just said that that I'm restating it because we don't want the headline tomorrow to be that Durham County Board is removing the tax status of Duke University because we cannot do that and what we don't want inadvertently to happen and this is a conversation we have is for there to be a anti-durham county move made because of an impression through a headline which was not well founded so what we're looking into is the property that is not clearly educational you know Duke and to do trust in the Duke Association and the 15 llc's by commercial and residential

property in Durham County for whatever purpose that property could be looked at because it is not clearly exempt clearly exempt property we don't have the authority probably not even a North Carolina General Assembly because it's federally categorized property that is subject to question can be the subject of litigation we could say we don't believe this property meets the qualifications for exemption and we challenge that and it can go through administrative processes and then judicial processes doesn't mean the general assembly won't have a thought about that because the moment you mentioned Duke then they have a battalion of lobbyists bigger than what we have because they're more you know they have a bigger budget than we have so they could deploy them but that's a rally politics things but we can certainly produce something that indicates and because it may go public just be mindful of that when you produce it

thank you attorney Andrews for making that absolutely Plum clear sometimes the languaging ones that hit suppressed it's a little bit different than what we say so I appreciate you making that really really clear um just a second commissioner Jacobs um were you finished uh commissioner alum okay where you finish commissioner Carter you hadn't started yet well y'all gonna have to stop I guess so we've got one of our commissioners have to be out of here by three by three something and it's already two o'clock so I'll just put back on Knitter real fast yeah let's try and accommodate our commissioner okay I wouldn't want to do anything adversarial with our good partners at Duke but I do think that through the partnership it's very reasonable for us

to you know explore this idea of a payment lieu of taxes um you know a a substitute for not paying as many taxes um and we have so many good programs that align with their their mission um especially the neighborhood Partnerships you know Mission and it would be great if a pilot p-i-a-l-o-t payment lieu of taxes program you know if Duke participated in that with us might be something to discuss maybe it's been discussed I've never been part of the discussion though I think it would be interesting yeah I agree with commissioner Carter and we have so many Partnerships with Duke and we don't want to start any confusion with Duke because we work closely on so many initiatives so they are a partner so let's not let's go not go down that road commissioner Jacobs

I I think there's a lot to build on um one one way the Duke has been a great partner is um in helping the revitalization of downtown Durham because they have chosen to not own property in downtown and have deliberately been a major tenant and all the uh revitalization of American Tobacco and also the Durham Innovation district and other the Chesterfields different locations so um that that um that has been a great model for how they have been supporting the revitalization of downtown Durham you well we certainly thank you for your presentation and we'll look to see what's next yeah something else sure say one thing

before we get up and leave I would like to commend uh uh our County Manager for successfully stealing our leader over to this side of the street and I want you all to know that he will be sorely missed over there and we cried no that was just me when when uh he gave us the news that he was coming across the street and I want you all to know that one of the best things ever happened to Durham sits there in that blue suit all right [Applause] thank you thank you all right our next item is 2302-3-2 and that's our uh the board is requested to receive an update on our American Rescue plan and Deputy manager Claudia Hager

will present this item to us uh let's see and you have to leave by three commissioner Jacobs ten to three so it is two o'clock now um so you won't be able to finish all the items okay yeah all right important topics here at the end of the agenda she'll just have to catch up later we'll this is 45 minutes okay good afternoon today we are here to have some conversations about the American Rescue plan act and this has been a ongoing conversation um one second please let me

last year this time we the board adopted a framework on how we would use our Opera dollars and um the good thing is that we've been moving down that path and today we'll talk about where we are as well as chat about some next steps because there are steps that will continue until we get to the Finish Line whether it's project alignment compliance updates Etc grateful for the commitment of this board and my colleagues throughout the county and Community Partners that have aligned with us with this work today as I shared we will give some high level updates with some updates on the community grants contract process and these will be real quick I'll give a highlight on our great grand award process and with our Focus today primarily on the joint and to local agreements with the city of Durham there

S treasury originally adopted for arpa fund use those categories did expand which helps us today as we talk about some of the areas that we're considering to join Lee move forward with with the city these this is your framework as a reminder to share I said some of my talking points a little bit too early but it was last May when we looked at

3 million dollars worth of community grants that we're moving

forward with it's for it represents 49 proposals 45 Partners there's a lot of Partners to make sure that we establish contracts with those staff is working through that process now and then we'll give some highlights on that we did over the last few years identify places we may potentially fund arpa dollars and those categories those dollars were budgeted in the current year budget as well as last year we are cross walking that with treasury guidelines to make sure we do all there's a lot of paperwork with that so although the board identified some areas we still have to make sure it aligns with all of the necessary paperwork so I do have a listing of those as well but those are areas that you've supported in your framework document there were dollar set aside for Broadband affordable housing water sewer Workforce

Development academic recovery and these are areas that are in process that are pretty significant or um we will bring something close soon as far as the Board review for broadband and digital Equity there's an uh a joint potential Ila that we're considering with the city of durma we'll talk about that shortly for our affordable housing we are recommending a joint partnership with the city of Durham to support housing the funds will serve families earning less than 80 percent of the area area median income there were dollars aligned in the project for water and sewer infrastructure sewer infrastructure as well as the plan still focused on Workforce Development our board priority and so we'll bring some recommendations to the board about those categories at the main work

3 million dollars that's available for we for alignment in other areas and there's one note that we made about the broadband and Equity digital Equity category there were dollars that we were not privy to that came down the pipeline after we made the award the the board plan and some were related to digital

Equity some related to broadband and as a result of that we're recommending that this may be an area because we're not having to use the dollars at the level we originally planned for potential realignment at some point later so we'll move forward as I shared we're moving forward with contracts 49 proposals 45 Partners will not spend much time on these at the next work session at your 14th meeting we will have those contracts for you to consider there are about um 20 plus more that are we're still working through and uh it's a very iterative process as mentioned before I will not go through these you've seen these and know quite well what those categories are but um just so that you know as you look at your notes because

you have some big binders with information although the the proposals will be fleshed out in even greater detail as well as the performance measures which is where we will be judged by the feds when they evaluate what we do but I just want to show you what will come forth for the 14th meeting and we'll again not go through that in detail this is familiar information another quick update on broadband it's almost been a year or so that the state has been negotiating with Frontier and we finally received notification that the state is about to move forward with finalizing that contract and as we shared this is an area that originally we thought we would have to budget at a larger level but because of the state's process and

we've been updating you along the way on this they are handling this step which is phenomenal because contract negotiations related to this type of complex work is quite tremendous so with them taking link with that for jurisdictions is helpful for those that that did move forward with the great Grant there are two other grants that the state will move forward with soon and we will also con put our name in a hat for those and we're hopeful to receive dollars for that as well there will be a board action requesting local dollars to offset funds for this there are a lot of if then statements with with the dollars and so at your retreat in November we said versus using Opera dollars for this particular Grant we would recommend that local dollars were spent because if you used arpa dollars or federal dollars you

basically removed yourself for the next two types of Grants so this will be on your agenda for the next meeting for that appropriation so we will now sort of talk about the the three Joint City County Partnerships and we've had some conversation about some of these for some time this one we've talked to you at your last work session about the potential Joint City County affordable housing partnership at the November board retreat we encourage the board when looking at in Investments that if there were several ready projects that had gone through rfps considerations occur joint Partnerships with the city of Durham as you know the city of Durham is authorized to do this work and as

such we staff both city and county staff present to you today a joint effort and based on your last conversation this was something that the board did consider and in your agenda item the full in our local agreement is there but there is a commitment for the county to support up to 10 million dollars as a match contribution to the city's contribution for affordable housing projects and one of the points that I made earlier is that we at the March meeting also talked about permanent Supportive Housing there are other projects that we're looking at one is in the permanent Supportive Housing space there is vetting underway with staff on both city and county staff and we will bring that to the board for consideration in May as far as how we

move forward in that space as well as other areas as it relates to housing the the board over the years has also supported efforts for home repair initiatives for seniors in our efforts four years ago to look at options to support our residents that are in low income status that need support with their taxes or rent there was a recommendation actually from Dwayne for us to expand our land trust Investments the city has used some of their dollars with arpa to do that so that's another area that we will consider bringing forth and so that work is underway we're moving really fast because the clock is ticking but I also wanted to make sure I shared about those

I just put in here the guidelines that the treasury added related to Opera funds and affordable housing they did with the final rule expand our ability the housing must benefit disproportionately impacted populations and communities that means the affordable housing must be one automatic eligibility criteria or it must serve an eligible population as determined and So based on us targeting those at 80 percent less of the average median income we would in fact meet those thresholds the other proposed joint partnership and we've talked about this in previous conversation is to allocate dollars to a digital Equity Fund there have been efforts underway to look at how do we address digital digital Equity the city is

moving has moved forward with some Partnerships in their arpa funding as well as taking on some of these efforts within their department and so we propose for this effort to happen in coordination with the city on this particular area we've also received funding in this space from the state and Partnerships are happening with the library as well not this particular funding but through other resources so we fill this again coordinated effort is the best approach in serving the city and the community and then the final proposed joint effort is one that we started talking about last year again this time and this

is related to culture and arts funding this would be a match of a million dollars to the city's amount and the dollars would support large and small local Arts and Cultural non-profits businesses and venues Independent Artists through grants training planning and marketing initiatives and so we're excited about this and excited about the the Partnerships for moving this forward receiving federal dollars and the um accounting associated with it is a lot and so I'm I'm grateful that we can partner with the city on this and so there aren't duplicative efforts so it that entities can leverage the dollars and it's not they're having to do city and county efforts but it's a combined coordinated effort so we're excited

about this recommendation and so that is the very big overview we've had conversations about some of these for a longer period than others we welcome any questions that may arise and Mr Johnson is here and I'm sorry I just I just went fast Reginald Reginald is our you know this is with the city with the Community Development Department and he is here to answer any questions at the last meeting he gave an update on where the city was and process of reviewing those four entities four properties that were being considered and Reginald my apologies that I didn't I just sort of went on lived there were any any comments that you would like to make uh thank you Claudia um I would just uh

like to say uh you know thank you for your consideration we are still vetting those projects we've made a great deal of progress as you know the information that I shared with you uh was from the last uh RFP request for proposal process and we have been talking with the various uh projects to get updates you know a lot of them are dealing with interest rate uh increases and construction costs increases construction cost increases as well as defining them projects but we've able to settle on the numbers for for the projects and we're able to move we're going to be able to move forward please you can see and and I would also say that uh through another one of the projects uh the funding for that project is going to come from a development agreement so it really will be it'll be funded in another way oh so that's going to take one of the projects off the list but through the increases that we have is still going to be uh adjusted above 20 million dollars

we'll still make those projects uh work so I'm really happy about it Reginald thank you and thank you Chloe of course for presenting this to us and you know as far as the the this board is more than happy to collaborate with the city around the affordable housing and other projects that we've take undertaken so I we appreciate the collaboration and to be able to do that um also I'm I'm excited about the frontier award Grant that's is that that's more funding yes ma'am that is the state award to Frontier because there are three different rounds and I don't have all my cheat sheets but the first round of funding that the state allocated were for internet service providers

and Frontier as well as some a few others applied for funding and the state awarded the amount that amount to Frontier and so they've been in contract negotiations since the fall and so it takes a little bit of time takes a little bit of time and so they have made that award and we also have an RFP for provider to assist us with Broadband expansion and we'll come back to the board with additional guidance this is what this is one that has been a little tricky because we've tried to follow the path of the state as well and this is just a complex space and so we have our request for proposal as well as it relates to broadband to also do coverage in our update a couple of meetings ago we also shared how one of the providers

actually expanded absent of city and county funding in a pretty Major Way 50 million dollars between orange and Durham County and um and so we're fortunate we're just at a different place than we were a year ago which is phenomenal and if for those of you who are on the board um three of you were here five or years ago when we were trying to get somebody anybody to just do an assessment of what the needs were no one would bite so this is exciting so although it appears slower than we like I'm just excited because of our journey we've been on trying to get to this space so in one of the bullets we stated that if we were timing wise to come to the board and say we recommend a certain amount from broadband or in digital Equity to move into a different category and use local

dollars to offset that because of timing that is because we knew all along the board supported this space but we're also trying to make sure we are ex sort of expedite some decisions based on the clock that's ticking with December 2024 so so that's a additional context thank you Claudia um you have questions Wendy Jacobs I called on her because I know she's going to have to yeah I don't know you shortly but I want you to go ahead and get your questions and ask and I don't have any questions I'm just totally support all of the collaborative efforts with the city I do want to acknowledge the loss that you all have had yes in the budget yes staff so so sorry for your loss yeah and um so just I'm excited about supporting this and other joint efforts that we will be considering in May thank you

okay commissioner Burns I'll be quick also because now that you said she has to go my only question is and I guess this is not just for this staff um but also maybe for our clerk staff Frontier I looked it up really quick so I could be prepared uh ACP the affordable connectivity program will cover thirty dollars or less of somebody's bill so I'm excited that the folks that we are partnering with are folks that is funding uh so for y'all the great grant money that we're using to explain front to here my quick question is do we know the other partner that's doing the 50 million dollar expansion outside the grant grant because we find out whether or not whatever name that is I'm looking at the list now I don't know what it is if they're taking it I also just want to say to the clerk and to our folks on the pr team since we are getting this money coming in and expanding Broadband we always think oh my gosh you know we brought this wire to people so now to be able to access it we still got to pay for it so I do want us to elevate in the

same vein while we're doing our part the body Administration has set up this really great program a network for Taylor that a lot of y'all know who works at dit is a state digital Equity officer they're really pushing for people to apply for this funding or put an application in I know we did it last year I would really appreciate it if we could if that is me doing that y'all I'm sorry it's really close I see y'all looking around it's the mic is really close I just want to elevate that 30 program as as we move to it because I noticed it all right I know the county is doing their part hey I just want to make sure people can pay for it you know since we're paying for it to come I ought to come here but I along with my colleagues support all the collaborations I look forward to voting for them and affirmative and thank everybody for working together in the same who's doing that yeah somebody rubbing on the mic it could have been me I'm so sick yours was off it wasn't you it's somebody okay

all right the name of that is lumos is and they um yes that it was in September 2022 they launched um they announced an investment of 50 million dollars to durman Orange counties uh commissioner Carter um thanks to the city it's always great to work together I'm glad you wanted to partner with us especially on these affordable housing units if we give the 10 million and you know also adding in the subsidy that we're making for the 300 and 500 block that we looked at this morning um that'll be over 30 million dollars worth of subsidy that you know we're putting into affordable housing so that's quite a substantial number um especially uh when just five years ago people thought counties don't you know do brick and mortar for affordable housing only services so anyway thanks for parking partnering with us on that

2 million dollars allocated right so that is an area potentially because because of digital

3 but in addition I will say they're in the where we said in the top two categories that the spending isn't at the pace it may need to be we may come back and say well it

looks like the spending isn't where we thought it should be and this is an area we may need to realign or other dollars came through so this will be an ongoing conversation because our right now our deadlines are all funds must be encumbered by December 31st 2024. okay and and so that's that is that so it's the nine plus potentially an amount from the Broadband digital Equity category and we can come back with the potential recommendation for a number for for realignment I think it might be like one million or closer to nine thinking it's closer is I would say in the five six okay million range yes yes yes yes ma'am um yeah just trying to think about other you know proposals we've heard from the community for how we might spend some more of the arpa funding and I know that this whole

board is interested thanks to the championship of Neda and Brenda about the universal basic income and maybe some of that would need to come from the arpa and then this morning of course we heard from Jim zavara about the low income substantially low income renters and there's a way to sort of connect that to the universal basic income and so just sort of wanting to make sure there's still some money left over plus I thought there were some other um results from good Community Partners that were transformative that would require a chunk of funding and and will there be another RFP process then for that so this is where we need to have another policy conversation okay so in based on this discussion it sounds like a staff recommendation for a number to potentially realign from broadband digital Equity is something that the board may consider so we will come back with that number um then the question becomes you know if there are other areas that you desire to

do rfps and you know what does that look like I would suggest that again we're looking at transformative space and we're also must have an eye on what does it look like when um 2026 comes around because right now in looking at this list there are about four million dollars of potential costs that could be reoccurring Beyond 2026. that's almost a penny on the tax rate and so when we do when we present our five-year timeline but fiscal Outlook that will be something that we consider we have a model so we build so by the time we get to at least I will coordinate with budget that model they haven't seen it by the time we get to 2025-26 we've already transitioned those items that's it so that has to stay in the context of whatever decisions are made with with cost

thank you Claudia I'm sorry I heard you say something about the guaranteed income what did you say about that I was just lifting up other you know other ways of spending our funny funding that we have discussed as possibilities and how you and nitta were championing that okay I was just mentioning it that is hard I just knew we hadn't had a conversation about that yet I just wondered if it was something that I did heard it mentioned a lot yeah we've been talking about it there's been a lot of conversations and I and I believe that we are committed to it we just haven't had the money conversation yet you have it in May [Laughter] so we've got some substantive conversations I that we've got to all have to be a lot of competition for the little bit of money that's left and yes it's never not what is it what is it you used to say I've got more more something than I got money something is

more more end of the month than money is something something well since commissioner Carter opened the door for what what are the you know if there is more I just want to say for the record that I think the most important thing that we can spend money on is housing everything related to housing affordable housing Supportive Housing transitional housing rental assistance because that is foundational to everything else and this is this money is not coming back again so that's that's my priority personally yeah and and I agree with Wendy Jacobs and there is there are some other pieces that has to go with the housing and that had they have to have money they have to have income they've got to be people have got to be prepared to be able to be sustainable so we we're creating affordable housing

but we also have to look at how do they stay in those houses we've got it I think it's dual there's it's not either or you've got to have both and all right any other questions I guess that's it unless you have something else for us no ma'am we will I'll coordinate with a manager with next steps and timing of we want to move these ilas along as quickly as possible so the good work can start I I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge um Bertha Johnson my colleague at the city she is absolutely phenomenal we have been in the trenches throughout this and so I just want to thank her for all of her efforts and and I also want to mention you lifted up the cultural arts focus and that's something I'm sure going to be coming to us really soon I'm excited

about the the projects and the initiatives that they're taking on yeah that's a lot of work all right thank you thank you all right let's see what else we got here um our next item Commissioners is 230173 Criminal Justice Resource Center detention services and I saw goodrin is coming forward to introduce this item thank you thank you Monique thank you Monica okay good afternoon Madam chair Madam

Vice chair commissioners Madam manager um based on a conversation with the county manager several months ago we thought it would be helpful for you to just receive an update on the level of services that the criminal justice Research Center soon to be renamed um will is is providing at the Detention Center I know you hear a lot about detention but you don't hear so much about what um what we do in that space and so I have invited um three cgrc supervisors and they will tell you about the programs that they operate in the detention center and will um answer any questions you may have we we are determined to stick to our 30 minutes of 20 kind of 20 minutes for presentation and any questions you may have we this is how we laid out and on

the detention we have geometal health star and pre-trial services and we will start with Tremaine Sawyer the star program supervisor good afternoon okay there we go all right all right so good afternoon my name is solar star program supervisor um star sesame's treatment and recivatives and reduction um it is a 33 year old program um I have been a counselor for three years in the last seven years I've been the program supervisor my program started out for abstinence base and from now from then to now we are gender specific trauma informed and Client Center approaches when we started for a screening referral we're doing a different approach so before we only provided two levels of service intensive or none and now we provide array of services for substance use services and that's with the help of welfare and public health where we increase the substitute screening tools

that are being used in the facility such as the dash 10 so when the individual comes in um the nurse staff automatically if they report opiate or alcohol use to put on a protocol and that generates a referral to the sud team or the mat team we were hands on with the um mat team that's in there we've provided like clinical administrative supervision um assist with form development policies and procedures as well so from those screening tools then it's either additional screening or go to a brief assessment where we're then determine which level of severity their systems you see is with a mild moderate or severe when mat was developed there were short-term and long-term plans for the short term was to those individuals that were continuing on their medication-assisted treatment to continue it in the facility so during that time that was our goal is to support them and that to rapidly either refer them back to a provider or

get them linked with a provider as well so we do weekly multiple dictionary and clinical team meetings so during these meetings with all of the pretty much programs and services involved collaborate with the integrated models so we talk about what we what we can do what referrals are made what the next steps are so that we can't plan a appropriate discharge plan for the individual well we just started newly is our star expert so that's screening brief intervention and referral to treatment so that's based on the initial referrals that come in from medical staff so once individual is screened positive for a substance use then we as substance use that's our first interaction with the individuals while they're there so we do know there are short terms and those interviews that stay the longer because of the nature of the charges so that's just a media intervention that we do provide for them for those at all short terms we again try to connect with resources um prior to their release and then they are released we do also try to bridge a connection with the provider on that

level as well so this is something that we started based in motivational interviewing it is evidence-based as public health model father screening brief integral brief intervention and reported treatment and that's something that's ongoing for us that's what expert yeah those are the acronyms for experts screening brief intervention referral to treatment in a Samsung okay now the long-term plan because star has always been a closed program and again it's General specific so we have men and women separate we do it in a pause now since covet there are some restrictions as far as bringing individuals down to the classrooms we have so now we provide all the services in the pods and start as a closed program so that's why one of the things that we did was evolve from that closed program to an open program so that we can meet the needs of the individuals that come in the facility so that way we can still operate on the closed program but also again meet the needs of those that come in short term so star these are evidence-based practices that we follow and the modalities

um star is a precursor to Star grad where you see different level of skills or providers the story is generally the basic psycho education disease concept of addiction um develop a rap which is a Wellness Recovery and action plan with a peer support specialist and harm reduction and we kind of collaborate with North Carolina harm reduction they provide a class but individuals are training how to use naloxone and also prior to release individuals are eligibility receive Narcan and a lot so based on their preference but then it's also those that don't have an open use disorder we also allow them to get Narcan kids too for those that they do know who may be using so again to help with the overdose on prevention um star grad is our continuous model so we do things for Change and also other interventions working with jazz box quit with the dart team she and I collaborated with developing a parenting class we're not developing a parenting class but using triple p as a partner to provide those those services for our women's program we use Family Resources

Family Resource connection for our day-to-day Dash program so both our clients are receiving parenting classes while they're incarcerated and that's also based on what we found using the aces average childhood experiences on average participant in our program has an ace of four and the most prevalent is of household dysfunction so we're using this also to a way to um address the need for us the trauma and the family systems and start after care something we recently developed since the onset of covet so since we can't provide as long as the services start in grad we extended our services and focused on these two concepts such as Angus management and our discharge planning that goes along with our multiple disciplinary team meetings so where we try to meet with individuals and develop a plan we also include attorneys anybody that they're connected with family members and also try to do soft handouts so if we have to do a video consultation with them so they at least get a face with

the name before they actually release that'll help bridge some of the connections we are involved with Community providers and again harm reduction is also like I said entwined in every phase of service that we provide and this is just some of our statistics as far as our recivatives and Falls that's not arrested based on completions let me will you go back yeah the um the the bottom chart is the not re-arrested is the FY 2020 that's the cohort that's clients that entered the Start program in FY 22 and and so we look a couple years out to look and see whether they have been returned to the detention center and as you're looking at these numbers please please keep in mind covid is a very very different situation inside the Detention Center than it is outside so everything has changed since

2020. yeah good afternoon I'm Kelly ignazik I'm the a little closer I thought it was loud I thought you'd be able to hear me I'm Kelly ignazik I'm the mental health supervisor at the jail and I've been with the county and at the jail for 26 years and I've been a supervisor for up 12 I think of that time so I just want to talk to you a little bit about what we do for jail Mental Health as Tremaine was saying wellpath does all the intakes because we do intakes 24 hours at the jail because there's 24-hour facility so well past screens all the detainees for mental health it's a self-referred so they ask the detainees questions and they report whether or not they have mental health they also look for cues if an inmate detainee says that they have mental health but don't have mental health but they seem like they do and also I've been there a long time so I Scout the list for names of people

that are kind of I know could possibly have mental health that are denying that they have mental health um we see the clients for intakes within 24 hours of them coming into the facility so they get seen pretty quickly and the first thing we try to do is get them connected to their provider if they have a provider we want to call their provider get their medicine started because it's crucial for the detainees walking in the door to get their psychiatric medicine as quickly as possible once the medications are verified they go on our caseload and then we follow them through their whole stay at the jail and discharge planning starts the second they walk in the jail because we never know when they're getting out that's the most challenging part of being at the Detention Center I'm sure everybody will tell you that is trying to do discharge with people because we there's just so many variables we just never know we also besides the people on our caseload we see anybody in the jail that puts in a sick call and we do not charge

for that service so if somebody's just having a difficult time because they're there miss their family first time arrest we see anybody that wants to be seen but they're not on our caseload so we just provide like Social Work services for them um we have a psychiatrist that comes 16 hours a week and her role is to follow up with everybody that's on psychiatric medicine to see if they have any changes if they're stable what they need and then also for people that come in that don't have a provider but do need to be on psychiatric medicine they might have been closed by their provider because they don't have insurance you know they've kind of got lost in the shuffle a lot of clients got lost in the shuffle during covid because everything went remote and a lot of clients didn't have phones and couldn't get places so a lot of the mental health clients that were kind of connected before kind of got lost in the shuffle so we try to bridge that Gap get them in to

see the psychiatrist get them on Med so when they leave the facility they are on psychiatric meds we provide supportive counseling we do treatment plans with the clients if they have a substance abuse problem then we would refer them to the star program or other agencies and everybody that leaves the jail gets a 30-day supply of their medicine free that they can pick up at gurley's Pharmacy because we found that we were calling in everybody's medicine and they weren't picking it up because they didn't have the money to pick it up and that's a big barrier doing all this work and then they don't pick up their medicine so now that they get a 30-day supply of their medicine about 98 of our clients pick up their medicine now so we're really happy about that or we pick it up yeah if we know they're getting out we put it in their property but sometimes we don't we don't know so um we also have a therapeutic housing unit it used to be called the mental health pod for those of you that have been around a little bit we changed the

name it was established in October of 2017 and there's 24 beds in this housing unit where a regular pod would be 48 beds so it's a half of the size and those clients are seen every day by a clinician and they are placed in there not by charge but by their diagnosis and these are clients that have usually severe and persistent mental illness and we want to make sure that they're eating they're taking their meds they're being taking showers they're being taken care of and they don't get victimized in in the jail or you know bullied or anything like that they just need a lot of treatment um some of the detainees will get on medicine and be able to go into population and then some of them are just never able to leave the THU why they're in the jail that's the safest place for them to be and they like being in there because they get a lot of services because they're seeing every single day by a clinician

um we also do groups in there um you know anger groups we do some substance use groups because they're some of the clients in there are not able to participate in the star program because of functioning level um we do psychosocial activities with them to get them out of their cell and kind of getting them used to being around other people and things and they seem to really like that and then the last slide is um the first one is showing the referrals that get referred to us at intake and as you can see in 2019 35 of the detainees booked in the jail were referred to Mental Health and so far in 2013 2023 we have 52 percent and last year we had 47 percent of the intake so we're seeing about half the detainees booked in the jail get referred to Mental Health sorry to interrupt but this is like a stunning slide yeah I mean and I if you

could explain what is going what you think is going on I mean I'm sorry you being there for 26 years God bless you um and just that that's just stunning to see that number it really is I think we're I think we're doing a better job of identifying people I think some of the people were there before and we just didn't catch them you know I think as we advance our screening tools I think that helps I also think now I think about maybe a year and a half ago we started seeing people that were first arrested their very first time in jail were before we were not seeing that and that got flagged as like a risk factor for people when it's their first time in jail they wanted them to have somebody seen for mental health so unfortunately we're seeing a lot of first-time offenders come in more than I'd like to see and we also see anybody that has a violent charge so any kind of assault or anything we

all were asked to see them also because of high risks so I think that's kind of probably many other things but those are kind of three things I'm thinking of perhaps and then the last slide is our psychiatric provider and you can see like in 2019 she saw 1148 people and in 2022 she saw 1525 so it's it's growing our psychiatrist is extremely busy um that's all that I have indeed 2023 numbers are through February so you can expect those numbers to continue to Rise um and one one comment one additional comment to your question um Vice Chair Wendy Jacobs Jacobs I think as you see the overall percentage is is is rising and it's very unfortunate but because the the num the numbers uh in

the Detention Center you see jail intakes fiscal you to date that's the purple number that number has significantly decreased from 2019. it's um so the numbers are getting a little bit lower I mean getting much lower for the Detention Center they're also getting a little bit lower for they were getting a little bit lower for geo mental health but it looks like if we have 15 44 so far through February we will be at least reaching our 22 numbers so it's just a a lot of them don't stay connected with providers in the community so they keep coming back into the Detention Center so we probably have a number of familiar faces that you that keep coming back so the longest that you have any kind of care you said is up to eight weeks jail mental health is for law for as long as they stay in there but once they

are back in the public that we have a number of different approaches for one Kelly's team will work to commit to reconnect them if they have a community provider if they open with a mental health provider then they will make sure they get reconnected the provider knows they're in the detention and when they leave we also now have and you approved that in the last fiscal year we have jail reentry where we have two two individuals that that work very closely with Kelly's team and tremaine's team to to work with individuals that are discharged that don't have a community provider yet where cgrc staff will meet them before they get get released and and and then work with them after release to then get them connected and and that is is is developing and then we have mental health court and then and mental health court expansion which is increasing and expanding this

year to serve more individuals and we also work very closely with the heart program the city's heart program where if they see someone and be trying to develop more venues to more more opportunities to work together where if they come across someone in the community who clearly has mental health unmet mental health needs that we can we want to be the bridge we we cannot be long-term providers as a as as our agency because we don't build Medicaid or insurance or anything but our our goal is to connect them with a community provider as soon as possible but in the meantime we will provide the bridge and we also help them get the meds and housing and all that [Music] I guess what uh where I'm heading to is if they are not connected to you once they are back in the public what's available for them

to get to to be healthy and whole and to be able to get a job we have the you have the sequential intercept map with the number of providers in the community we have you know Alliance fund has contracts with a number of providers um I think that the hard part is the people that come after attention to to make that bridge to make that connection yeah and now with Medicaid expansion we we are very hopeful that that more individuals that are leaving the detention will be able to to get services and and and we need to make sure we get them connected to an end signed up with Medicaid yeah but that's the con that's the Gap that I see there is once you're back in uh individuals are back in the public um being able to connect them with a service and also at the same time

have for them to be able to have job training to be able to get a job because ultimately that what that's what we want is them to be able to be employed and be self-sustaining and if they are are not healthy that makes it a little bit difficult for them to to get a job and just to add to what um chair howergen just said there is a proposal coming out of the stepping up initiative to address the Gap that you just mentioned what we don't have in Durham County is a forensic team yeah and so that the um the there is a proposal that will be submitted to the county manager because that is what we're one thing that we are lacking we're needing that okay good afternoon my name is Christy long I am also with the criminal justice Research Center with pre-trial Services I've been with cjrc since 2008. I've

been the supervisor of pre-trial Services since 2011. our um process with cgrc and and helping the detainees and custody is by providing the judges with criminal history information so that they have something in addition to the allegations before them we also attempt to meet with the individuals before first appearance to provide information about Community ties community support and any other family obligations we also um check the criminal histories in North Carolina and out of state so the courts are aware of any matters that they have outstanding so that they can make appropriate decision about Bond um we also prepare a pre-trial Public Safety assessment which is based on their criminal history it will also indicate whether or not they have a high probability of a new violent criminal activity while they're awaiting trial as well as indicate a level of supervision in the event the court deems that pre-trial supervision is appropriate as

a condition of bonds if a individual is not released or with an unsecured Bond at first appearance and their bond remains ten thousand dollars or less I do review the jail list every two weeks and I meet with the teams to determine whether or not they are appropriate to be addressed by the DA's office and the public defender's office and the Durham bar to see if they will revisit their bonds and possibly have them released either on an unsecured Bond or on supervision if someone is not released with a low Bond they can be referred by the attorney at a later date for supervision purposes or at least for us to provide a summary of information for them to make a decision about Bond at that time if someone's released onto pre-trial supervision we will supervise them based on what the court approves which can include telephone contacts in office supervision as well as electronic monitoring our PSA will recommend the

level of supervision but is ultimately up to the judge to decide what is appropriate and our electronic monitoring is GPS only em with a curfew house arrest with permission to work or electronic house arrest with no restrictions aside with all restrictions except for court related appointments and medical appointments the court makes that determination about the appropriateness for the use of that tool in addition to the electronic monitoring we do have a victim buddy device that we can use if the court wants an individual to be monitored with the companion device and that in that device is given to the victim so that if the defendant or um person is within so many feet of them that person can be notified and so can we and that way we can kind of get an idea of whether or not this is just a drive-through situation or if this is a frequent pattern so if we need to notify the court we can free trial Services has been in

operation since 2005. 50 in fiscal year 2021 so there's a quite uh jump between fiscal year 2020

and 2021 despite the number of individuals in the jail having reduced we've maintained the number of detainees in custody right now around mid 300s so we've had a few days that they've gone right around 400 but they have not surpassed that and and remained there since prior to covet and one more point about the PSA that that Christie mentioned that is um that is an assessment tool that is used across this country we moved we received some funding from MacArthur um from the MacArthur Foundation back in 1819 to to to work through the implementation steps for this this assessment it's supposed to be the most unbiased it's possible way to determine someone's

um need to be intention or not and and so we worked with our code Partners through this process and that concludes our presentation um we stuck to our 30 minutes Madam chair [Laughter] and um I'm sorry I hope uh if there are any any questions thank you any question commission alum thank you so much uh your whole team for all the work that you all do I had a question um when I attended the ABC last board meeting that was at cjrc and we did a tour of the facilities something that came up was around I think it was 10 years ago there used to be family drug treatment court but there was due to a loss of like funding um that program had to be cut and you don't have to answer this now but if that can just be shared of like data that was available of how successful was family drug treatment

Court the impacts it had the benefits on the children in households who had to go through that process and also how much was that cost that got lost in funding so before in in 2010 2012 the state defunded all the drug treatment courts and the in Durham all the drug treatment courts were state programs so we don't and we were not involved with the family drug treatment Court um so we don't have any information any data our involvement was always only with the adult drug treatment court and when that was defunded we we basically took over the coordination of that court but we haven't we had nothing to do with the youth treatment court or the family drug treatment Court oh okay sorry that's okay um and then my second was just a quick point I saw an article recently that because we're talking about you know other sources of revenue that Mackenzie Scott actually just opened up another

round of 250 million dollars that she is trying to give out to uh organizations non-profits that are doing work within communities in different ways and so she's doing like an open call for applications for that I think some of these programs could be really beneficial if anyone has the information please thank you because we jump on proposals and grants we are good we are good at Great writing grains yes any other questions commissioner Burns uh in to piggyback off annetta uh commissioner long um and she's not doing anything under a million dollars so she's made it very clear that her 250 million dollars is for 250 programs so it's not like you apply it's a half a million is a million she wants to give everybody a million so I did see that it will be cool this was supposed to be done doing commissioner comments but I didn't know if gujar was gonna run screaming for the heels after

we asked a bunch of questions So for anybody who you know doesn't just know about the great work that guden does here she's also doing some good work on the national stage so if no one has seen it counties buildings safe and healthy communities actually featured the work of cjrc is a copy over here for all the Commissioners and it even has quotes from gudrin and it outlines some of the really great stuff their staff is doing so these are 12 impact stories so out of the 3 000 and some plus counties they picked 12 and Durham was one of them and gujar was highlighted again this is not mine this is commissioner Jacob she wanted to pass it out commissioner comments but I thought I should highlight it while you were here with your wonderful staff and your noteworthy work this is also available online thank you commissioner Burns appreciated all right other questions commissioner Carter not necessarily a question although something might pop in my mind but I feel like today has been um interesting and very positive in the

fact that we've seen we've heard from I think three different departments and and and the people doing the work on the boots on the ground people came and presented to us and I found that so uh informative in just very real ways you know I've read brochures like that on cjrc a lot and they're very impressive you know they're always their evaluations and there's good data but it's really nice to hear from the people doing the work in our detention center with those who are detained being sure they're screened being sure they're connected to Services you know changing your program over the years you said star used to be an abstinence only program boy it's anything about that now and you've got the different levels of it um the fact that you're checking the bonds the people who are in the detention center and haven't been released on bonds and seeing if we can you know make make some progress on getting them out of the jail that's fantastic too it's really great to hear and of course the mental health services in the jail 50 of

those who are detained need those services and thank goodness we're doing a better job of identifying them and connecting connecting them to the services that'll help reduce our jail population in the long run right and it saves money um so and we look forward to additional programming you know hearing from the Justice Resource Center about what more you know we we can do as a county to decrease the familiar faces in our detention system and our housing system and our medical system be sure people are getting the treatment that they need and they leave the Detention Center connected to services thank you very much really important work and it was great hearing about it from you firsthand today one final question you may not know right now you can get back with me later of that number was it 56 50 some individuals with mental health how many of those individuals are reoccurring

that they have they've come back would be interesting to know how many have been you know have been that before yeah been out and then they come back primarily because of the mental health illness the second part is probably more of a guessing you know but we absolutely have the data on on on how many people have been there before okay all right thank you so much thank you thank you thank you your report okay so our next item Commissioners is [Music] um 230225 budget ordinance Amendment on number am I reading the right one yes I am okay 23 B C

c00083 corporate extension to appropriate 28 million 258 000 57 of general fund balance weight contract with farmer food share to provide funding for Durham County double books program the board is requested to suspend the rules and vote to approve budget ordinance Amendment as stated corporate extension to appropriate the 28 million 258 thousand fifty Seven dollars of general fund balance for a contract with Farmers share food share with food farmer food share to provide funding for Durham County double bucks program and Mary oxendine is here our County funds security coordinator is

2 million dollars a month that was available for families for the last two years and that no longer is there and so there were two proposals that were made there were three different categorical proposals made and we the board supported those efforts we were asked to go back to determine how to support that the recommendation that

we're bringing forth will use some dollars from local dollars and we will also use some from arpa funding the amount that we're proposing from arpa funding was also included in the number that talked with you about earlier today and so the remaining amount is from local funding is because of the arpa rules we need to do an RFP so we're asking that the board supports the use of fund balance just for this expense we the team will come back to uh share which entities were awarded the RFP at a later time but this will help us to move forward with that process thank you go ahead I was just going to add that I'm so appreciative of um Deputy County Manager hager's support on all this and and all of your support

and bringing these proposals together and making sure that we get some support out into the community sooner than later so I just wanted to highlight for this particular one that we're talking about right now the um 28 thousand dollars is for Farmer food share to support the double bucks program which we've talked about a few times here and just making sure that we have enough funding for incentives for the next couple months before we're able to have a an RFP to continue funding until December 31st 2025. I think I got excited and said 28 million dollars is that what I said I don't I don't remember but it's 28 000 if I did but that's I take that back yeah 28 000 okay yeah and I just wanted to mention that we do uh Kelly Warnock is here from our dine team at Public Health that actually works directly with this program normally so um this is very much a collaborative effort across our departments and across um efforts for the for the county and for the people of

Durham County okay thank you any questions from this board commissioner Burns no if they weren't and I was gonna make the motion okay if there are no question we make a motion I'll make a motion to suspend the rules just going to say first of all may I I was going to ask a question I was just waiting for anonymous unit to ask hers because I like to have more time to formulate my question usually is why I'm always trying to go last um now y'all got me off track anyway I just really wanted to lift up the double bucks program I feel like it's one of our signature programs in a sense here in in Durham at some point it'd be really and maybe it's included in this information which I did read but I'll go back and read it again if it's in here but I was just it'd be interesting to know you know per per farmer's market how how much money is spent in the double bucks program you know and how many people are spending it uh just how many are benefiting from that and it's also a benefit from our for our Farmers you know it increases the market the

demand for fresh vegetables and fruits and so it's and you know it's a double whammy benefit um our funding it I think somebody just gonna answer your question Heidi hey Kelly our Public Health Department actually does all the evaluation for double books so Kelly is very much more familiar with that yeah and I'll give a shout out to Naseem who's probably online somewhere but she's one of our dine team members who does the evaluation along with Megan um but to the the farmers markets all track on an Excel spreadsheet that we have access to so we can get that information for you of course it's seasonal right so right now not many people are going to the markets but they do have regular customers and then in the Summers it really increases but we can definitely get you that information okay any other questions or statements hearing none

I will ask the board for a I will entertain a motion to suspend the move it's been moved and properly second has this been the rules uh all in favor aye okay motion passes four to zero now I will entertain a motion for approval Madam chair I'd like to make a motion that this board contract with Pharma food share to provide funding for Durham County double books program in the amount of twenty eight thousand two hundred fifty Seven dollars and fifty Seven cents it's been moved and properly second to approve this item all in favor aye motion passes five to zero and then we have another item 230227 budget ordinance amendment number 23

56 of General fund balance and approved contract with Interfaith Food shuttle to provide food to persons seeking food assistance in Durham County there the speech that I shared earlier applies to this as well apply to that one as well so we just asked the board to support the item and suspend the rules so I need a motion to suspend the rules if there are no questions from the board Madam chair still moved second it's been moved improperly second all in favor I I motion passes four to zero now I need a motion to approve the item Madam chair I'd like to make a motion to appropriate 503

56 of general fund balance and approve a contract with the Interfaith Food shuttle to provide food to persons seeking food assistance in Durham County okay need a second second it really does feel like we're whittling down our fund balance I promise you we will be in a still being a solid position okay it's been moved improperly second all in favor aye thank you passes four to zero thank you for you so much Miss oxidine and your leadership Donna great work thank you all right uh 230251 was pulled from our agenda um now we're down to our any Commissioners comments or questions that

they would like to entertain today seeing on that ends our items today um if is there anything else that needs to be brought before the board by the by this board before we go into closed session I have a commissioner question um and I apologize if we have done this and if I just am blanking I would love a manager so well we have uh so many new team members on your team if like at a future meeting can we just have a moment to introduce uh your new team members to everyone of who's going to be working in the executive office and the manager manager will do that yeah thanks yeah we let her let her drive that one all right so now we have the board is

1186 oh get a motion to move into closed session we are in closed session we had to vote aye aye all right

it says Carter's point you're referenced on here Carter's point whoa thank you yeah thank you sir come here

oh she said let's go all right you need permission oh I forgot I still work here yeah

thank you vouchers okay

I'd like you know

exactly

thank you

all right foreign it's a charger for this yeah yeah the Commissioners we have been in we went into closed session um to a point we will be appointing Teresa Hairston effective today as the interim tax administrator and I need a motion for approval move approval and couple it with a large thank you

second all in favor motions approved four to zero okay any other business before the county hearing none I will ask for a motion to adjourn okay moved four to zero we are adjourned what is this charges new it's new it's okay when you use them for seven hours you have to