Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · February 28, 2023

so miss Angela Nunn will come before us with the help of gudrin Palmer and lead us through that discussion so a very full day of updates and discussion and then day two will be a half day where we'll talk about living wage you know we've heard from you all that you want us to to lead the market in compensation and so we've also heard some numbers thrown out you know about 23 and 24 an hour so staff has looked at what that would look like and what it would take for us to get there especially as we are looking to get the findings from our class and comp study so we'll have some some really robust discussion about our living wage policy also look at the um the uh it says long time homeowners Relief Fund so we'll also have that discussion um tomorrow as well and then talk about the Board of Elections update you all proof for us to purchase the former shops at Polk Valley parking shopping center and

so one of the uses in that Center we know would be the Board of Elections relocating to that and so we want you to get an update on how we look to make that happen and what it will take for us to make that happen and then talk through our prioritizations as well we also did some priorities um in November when we had our board policy retreat and so some of the discussions that we've had have been with those priorities in mind will also have a discussion about what you all um offered to us in that discussion how we look to shape the budget based on those priorities so lots of lots of good discussions to be had um and if you'll go to the next I don't know who's who's driving I've just been talking thanks so much Keith for keeping up with me can I just make sure I'm sorry manager can I make one quick announcement if you could if everyone could pull their mics closer to them when they're speaking we're having a few people that are having difficulty hearing okay thank you very much first time in my life I have ever been

asked is to speak up commissioner alarm is on online okay and so on the screen you'll see kind of um a summary of what you all submitted to us as your priorities in that November um policy retreat but we'll go a little deeper um into that as we continue throughout the day okay next slide so our outcomes of course we'll share the context by which we'll develop the 2324 budget we'll also look at the Investments that you all want to make as a priorities for this budget as well as future budgets and I think yep and then after that we'll actually ask you to consider what your three main priorities are if you if you notice we are we are narrowing the tunnel in November we asked you for the the top three to five priorities now we're seeing the top three So eventually we're

going to get to where we have a really clear and concise um list of priorities and and with that I will also say even though we ask you to name your priorities we know that throughout the year other things come up that you all consider important and that you want us um to look at addressing we are always willing and able to do that this is just our way of getting to a point where Keith is not sweating and jumping up and down saying you're asking for too much okay we're gonna make sure we streamline this process so that we can develop a clear and concise budget any questions before we begin with the day well I know she didn't say you didn't limit the number of words that we could put into our priorities [Laughter] it is a bit of a loophole we knew they would find a way to get around it Keith and Claude yes I I think we have printed off copies of notes that were taken from the policy Retreat their highlights of things that you spoke of at that policy Retreat of things that

are important to you so you should have that printout available to you it's okay well it is coming soon and we'll also have a printout of the of the entire presentation today the rest of the documents are available in registrar they're all PDFs you can download them and read them at your leisure because this is all Leisure level reading you'll be doing all right I think we're ready for Susan teasai to come up and start she's going to give a financial overview of the county Monica there we go come on Susan good morning Susan how are you good morning everyone's doing well today we get my little stuff out here so I'm here today to give you a current brief update of the financial overview condition of the county and Susan I will ask you if you pull a

little closer sorry thank you there we go they don't normally accuse me of that either so we'll move right along so the board has always wanted in the past is a summary of the swap its performance to date and where we are right now with the swap the County swap so you can see it started um in 2005 fiscal years when we first started earning our distributions because the swap is um called an investment derivative so you can see over the life it started out small and of course as we got more into it and then in 2009 we increased the notational amount which is the amount of debt that goes into it we also increased it again in 2011. so then you can see as we're getting closer to the maturity date the interest was trending downward as we get closer to the maturity date it will continue to Trend down

we also have now another Factor the feds doing playing with the interest rates that has caught well first of all um it took a a value hit as soon as covet hit because everyone was so unsure about the economy so we went and we worked with our pfm who's our final swap advisor and we did a lot of analyzes and thought at the time that it was in the best interest of the county to maintain the swap and also even if the the monetary value goes into the negative the formula is such that you could still be in the negative but still earn positive interest income which is what we've seen over the years and that's because Durham County swap was very well negotiated on Durham County's behalf um it's a complex formula dealing with um sifma compared to Libor plus a fixed interest rate not too far into the weeds so um and even at that point in time we were still earning positive interest earnings

and of course it recouped as the economy and everybody realized that we're okay and our investors realized we're okay so um but now the feds about a year and a half ago um doing their thing with the interest rates it started the value of it has started to fluctuate up and down to give you an example just the first of this month the value was a positive of about 400k as of two days ago it was a negative of 27 000. as the first thing this morning it was a negative of 104 dollars the positive interest earnings as of this morning was um over 240 some thousand so um well now all that volatility started we reached out again to our advisor had them do a complex analysis to figure out if it was in our best interest to stay or to go um we also worked with our fa in making that determination and it was determined that we needed to stay because right now the interest between the library and the sithna is still in our best interest to

stay but the point here that you need to know from for this budget season is that the maturity date is March 1 2031. and so we're only about eight years out to maturity so this is not going to be the money maker that you've seen in the past just like for this year we're looking at an estimate of about 290 some thousand I mean 490 some thousand dollars in interest earnings and if you recall um if we were to get out and it's a negative then that's the amount that we would pay if it's a positive that's the amount that they would pay us um so and if you recall when we started the swab to be conservative we set us out a fund balance up to what would have been 50 of what we would need and that fund balance has stayed committed by the board as um to reduce any risk that it would have a financial impact on the county should we have to pay but I think

we're fine um our swap advisor things were fine and our fa thinks were fine but just to be safe we requested and we received reports in finance daily and myself and the assistant CFO for Treasury and debt look at that first thing every morning so um I guess ma'am Susan are you saying that if we were to pull out of the swap fund right now potentially it might cost us 17 million dollars no it would cost you the negative value that as of this morning was a hundred and four dollars and some change why then is the fund balance 17 million because um and Keith could speak to the Appropriations but every it's not appropriate as a transfer every year to fund Debt Service it's a planned financing over time so that's a build up to help assist with Debt Service to eliminate the burden on the taxpayers so actually it's a fund balance for something else besides swap what it's the fund balance for swap but the swap

funds have always been used to assist in funding Debt Service so that means when we decide to use it in the budgetary process whatever's appropriated in the budget is moved to The Debt Service fund to help pay the debt and it made a choice to get the county in this an opportunity to make a little money on some of the money we were already paying on debt through this swap fund it's a complicated issue the simple uh summary is is that the board back then and the board every year has continued as a board policy to set aside those funds for Debt Service annual debt payments we we spend about 60 plus million dollars a year on debt service and this money helps pay for that Debt Service the fund balance has grown because I use a number of different fund balances to try to help flatten out the tax rate needed to pay for Debt Service so when we have a project that comes

much like Hope Valley or new projects or projects increase and we're able to pay for those increases and new projects without raising taxes I go and Dabble in that fund balance and pull from our savings account that 17 million is just a savings account that we have it by board policy it's applied to Debt Service there's 17 million in it now partially we have to keep half of it because we're in this Fund in case it turns into a big negative remember Susan said it's only a negative of a hundred dollars right now if we were to get out of it this moment but we've been earning money but there's 17 million in there but I have that money allotted out in future years to pay for the Geo Bond referendum to pay for animal shelters to pay for all sorts of new things and unknown things we would use that fund balance that's why it's at 17 million but that doesn't mean it will just sit there in perpetuity and over the past years there have been fiscal years where funds were appropriated to transfer to help with the debt it's on the planning model but um

to add to that you can look at this as like this was additional funding to take tax burden off the taxpayers if we had not have entered into the Swap and it had not been the salucative we would not have had that additional funding source so that was a positive also um when the swaps became popular a lot of entities in North Carolina several and several large entities entered into swaps theirs was not as lucrative but it depends on the terms of how you negotiate in that swap Durham County has has been and we've been very fortunate that it has been but like I said the negotiations on behalf of Durham County were very very good um I've been to some continuing education they've asked I know years ago who always got a swap raise your hand several people did um as time went on at one point I'm the only one that raised my hand and they're like you still have one well yeah it's doing really really well so so Susan and George Quick's credit

7 that means you you've used 17

7 million already to ease the phone to use as funny sources on behalf of the county over over the years so is it you got a question okay just to follow up on something that Keith said so what would cause this to go away and it went away what would replace it um at this point the swaps are not turning into a good idea to do a new investment we are looking we are tracking that as well with our fa and with pfm our swap advisor if at any point in time that does look like it is the way to go for Durham County then you would be approached with that um but at this point in speaking with both advisors it is going away and so when it matures as of 2031 March 1 that will be your last distribution

because it will have amortized over the life of the swap hey and just to reiterate we are looking at it daily because if anything were to go south we will make sure that any impact would not be significant to the county it will be minimal okay thank you and then here you're looking at the um five-year trend for your percentage of budget in the general fund for your revenues and expenditures you can see um we've been very fortunate I think it's been 13 years consecutively that we've earned over a hundred percent of our budgeted revenues um that was during hard times as well as good times you can see um I think and someone else can speak to the budget but when Kobe came we weren't sure what the economy was going to be so it was my understanding we budgeted conservatively but we're very fortunate again that Kobe

7 million so Durham County is very much fiscally sound

not no Vice chair Jacobs has a comment but I just want to take this moment to thank Susan and her team for the great work you do and making sure we maintain that sound fiscal stability thank you absolutely are we hearing right you're retiring yes ma'am he called you well don't leave me Susan was that supposed to be quiet well I guess it's not a secret okay no more it just wasn't on the agenda but um I've loved it here if I had it to do all over again I do it all the same I would give you no less than everything that I've given it has been the best experience you've done a wonderful job thank you we're going to keep her close don't worry I'll leave that alone

so now we're going to this um I put this presentation in so that you can see how we have compared with our peers we consider the Big Ten be five cities Big Five counties are peers um as you know we are a member of that this is the large city County finance Officers Association and it was founded back in the early 70s by CFOs as a networking tool for the larger entities of the state of North Carolina and um you can see uh of course Mecklenburg and wake they're significantly bigger as far as revenues expenditures but how you can see like for instance percentage of budget everybody pretty much trended okay Guilford came in at slightly under 100 percent we came in at higher than anyone um then you look at the percentage of budget for expenditures we were in the middle of the pack compared to our when you look at our budget compared to an actuals compared

5 million of their fund balance for FY 22. and then you can see what the ending fund balance was for each general fund for those entities I just thought it'd be nice to have that as comparison as far as performance so we are performing in line with our peers where with these new numbers where are we I have a slide for that so here we are

um fund balance percentage and this is a percentage of fund balance that's available for appropriation of your total expenditures of course that changes every day your encommentence change every day your expenditures change every day this is a picture at a certain point in time and that certain point time is June 30th of 2022. 92 percent so what that means is that that takes out of the equation anything that you cannot appropriate okay so like your stabilization by State Statute those are combined of your receivables it's not money in the door if it's not in the door it's not available

um the goal for total is 35. so we've exceeded those so um we need to manage toward our goal so that's the key to take away from there we I would like to interject I guess last year we presented a framework for the board to consider revising the fund balance policy and that is something we do need to Circle back to there's a note there about how some of the reserves help with our finance plan but our financial advisor and Susan and I had some conversation so within the next couple of months we do want to to bring that back to the board to formally look at our policy align it with our patterns and especially where it can support us in priority areas such in cap as capital Investments

yes and you have to look at um what pot is available for what purpose all that has to be looked at when you're looking at what do I use what do I not use how do I plan Susan I had a few questions that the um that the slide that I had wanted to ask a question about could we go back to it um she's honestly were you trying to get okay can you can we hear her hi can you hear me yes okay thank you so much and Keith for this person just in comparison of all of these counties so our fund balance is one of the factors that contributes to what our bond rating is right well it's they look at fund balance they look at the percentage but they also look at you

know how financially strong are you so all that comes into play so it's not just fund balance but it's how fiscally strong you are overall but yes it plays a huge part because as our fa has told you all in the past if you go by the total formula criteria no one in North Carolina would meet the Triple A um so one of the factors that comes in is like fiscal management um so how how are you managing to make sure you have sufficient resources to adequately fund the needs of your citizens those types of things that and that Durham County has always been well always been successfully so given do we have that like how well the other counties are doing in those areas as well like can we add a column to this possibly that just shows what the bond rating is for these other comparable counties yes and we have provided that before what I can do is get an update um because you know that changes uh constantly as well but I can get an update from probably uh I try to get

that from movies and s p as to what entities in North Carolina are currently AAA because everybody didn't do a bond this year so we won't have it for all those counties well we would just have their most recent ratings a year beside I don't want people to you know apples and oranges like I know we did one Guilford did one wait did one but everybody didn't do one so I wouldn't want that confusion out there thank you I'm sorry can we go back to that side to ask a question about I think it was before that it was oh I'm sorry I think it was before this one well maybe we can technical challenge here it's not moving okay well yeah I went that way I think oh okay there we go you're slow kind of like me I just I I do want to just um looking at this

um do we I know we have a policy that as you just mentioned that 16 percent of the unrestricted fund balance from the general fund is supposed to be um 16 right now right well that's the goal for our fund balance policy currently okay do we have a general um okay I'll just leave that I guess I I think the good news when I look at this and when I look at the other side you just showed us is obviously that we're doing well with revenues but I think for me it also says we need to make sure that we are you know we've been cautious because of the pandemic but also making sure that when we look at things like a tax increase that we avoid that because we're sitting on a lot of money um so I just want to make that really want to make that point that

5 sent possible tax increase when I look at this I think well maybe we don't have to do that for the bond you know because we've this is this is a lot I mean it's 17 million dollars between the the revenue and the expenditure here it's the biggest Gap we've had friends so anyway that's just my takeaway when I look at it well um it's also very important um that number can be impacted which is why it's important that we have Revenue

that's due to us we get it in the door if it doesn't get in the door by June 30th it can't be included in a calculation it can't be appropriated so that's you know one thing timely collection of what's due to do to the county um I think also in my opinion that there needs to be constant analytics like we um what I'm doing right now is trying to find the time take the time to see where we are right now in the current year and then I think an analysis will probably need to be done with each scenario to see if there's any impact one way or the other before you go too far one way or maybe not far enough you know all that just needs to take place the other thing is I know Dwayne we're going to do the rebound when 20 it'll be effective January 1st of 2025. so fiscal year 25 26. since we haven't done a reval in a long time if we had done one these this number may have actually been even bigger yes if you would not have also done a

revenue neutral rate yes ma'am yeah and the list of the counties when you make the comparisons I also want to know I think it's um if the next slide forward okay I'm not buying a lottery ticket on the way home didn't want to move none okay you know looking at um you know just the size of the counties we're we're showing for instance our fund balance is almost half of mecklenburg's but they are about three or four times bigger than us and also same thing with Wake County so um I know it's a complicated thing but I think it's important that we think also about the size of our counties and our budgets too

and like I said the reason that we consider them is because we are all in the lower the Big Ten and we um Network also when you're looking at the percentages we're comparing our actuals to our budget so that it's even though they're larger of course their budget is larger their collections are larger the percentage of what they're collecting to their budget would be in line in the same methodology so exactly thank you but if I can just add various dew point Vice chair Jacobs and that's something we've been talking about internally so when we talk about being intentional when we are developing our budgets as departments we have to make sure that what we are asking for in our budgets that we have the capacity to expend that and if we don't then that contributes to the growth of our fund balance and as you noted that is not what why we charge the taxes we do and so we're going to

have to really sit down and be intentional and very purposeful about what we ask for and making sure that we spend what is in our budget so I've been on my soapbox about that but thank you for lifting that here because then everyone gets to hear that that's a consideration that our board wants us to make as well Commissioners just so you know when finance and Susan talk about fund balance and she says the general fund it's more than one Fund in front of the document there's a page that shows funds it's a real colorful sort of graph of all the funds that make up what the act for and finance calls the general funds that swap fund 17 million dollars in fund balance that I told you is allotted by board policy for Debt Service is included in that large number the capital financing plan fund has a significant fund balance Again by board policy you use that money to pay for Debt Service and we used to flatten it out it's not just the general fund as

you think of it like which is where ninety percent of the county activity happens that's one part of this fund balance but we've been building up fund balance in a couple of other places in expectation of a 500 million dollar Geo Bond referendum and how we're going to pay for that with minimal tax rate increases and then we've got future costs and we have cost of capital projects Rising so a significant chunk of that total fund balance is already being planned to be used out in future years to remember I told you to help flatten out the tax rate related to Debt Service so you're not wrong in in considering and recognizing that it's growing but I just wanted to let you know that a portion of that fund balance is already allotted to help pay for debt service thank you And to clarify the reason they're all combined at act for level is because per gasby 54 they do not meet the definition of being a standalone fund so we do what I call sub funds during the fiscal year to track them separately but when you consolidate at your act for

80 they they collected almost all of the all of the revenue so that just just to frame this right it is

80 percent of Revenue wonderful yes the primary contributors were the tax collections being well over budget as well as um local option sales tax those are the huge biggest factors but there are factors all over which is why if you want to see the analytics to see what happened where for the entire fiscal year and what was significant if you read your management discussion and Analysis at the beginning of your act for it'll tell you the whole story kind of summed up in what 20 some pages the uh the we'll be talking about in a

couple of budget slots coming up that'll give you an idea of where this Revenue came from another thing you all need to remember is you all sold the American Tobacco South deck I think for 14 million dollars and that money came into the general fund as a revenue Source it was an unplanned unbudgeted Revenue we immediately moved it over to the capital financing plan fund to help pay for future Debt Service but that is part of the growth in fund balance from one year to the next we don't normally have 14 million dollar sales yes and that is also one of the significant analytic variances that is in the mdna okay this is the answer we could get later if you think it's a reasonable question um I would be interested in knowing what are all the fund balances that we have set aside you know the designated fund balance like the swap fund The Debt Service fund balance the general fund fun fund balance yeah we have all these

fund balances some are unassigned some are restricted some are designated some are I don't even remember what all of them right and I do have those separated out by sub fund yeah um I don't have it with me today but I can certainly make sure that I get that to you as well as the Triple A's if that's a reasonable question yes it should help you plan when you're planning like for for the individual purposes I would think so yes ma'am thanks for for us to remind the board to on how some of the other jurisdictions um budget their reserves they sometimes do things differently and I know sometimes Susan will drill down really deep and when you start looking at how for instance Wake County once that comes to mind they often had would have very little if you look at wake County's AG fur you'll see that they have zero unassigned fund balance would that

exactly so what they do is whatever they had at fiscal year in they move it to a fund balance called working capital um so so I said that to remind you as you look at the table and Target you have to make sure you have in context what other jurisdictions are doing and when we come back with the policy we will share some of that context but part of wake strategy helps them to plan for Capital keep their Debt Service low similar just like we're doing it but it's just captured in a different way yes and fund balance should always be used for one-time purchases not to continue with operating that will put you in a severe Bond I also wanted to raise on this slide and it was mentioned in one of the other presentation I think was one of the maps that Durham County has the highest GDP of any county in North Carolina and you

look at this slide with the revenues for the counties ours not only exceeds Forsyth and guilford's which are have a higher population but um if you look at Mecklenburg and wake I mean there are three to four times bigger than us and their revenues are not three to four times bigger than us um so I think it's pretty significant and pretty amazing when you look at what our revenues are for this not just the square footage of our population that the the square miles um but the number of people we have so I wrote down in my notes when I was looking through when I saw that slide I wrote down we're The Little Engine That Could that's right so I just think it's really amazing to look at what we what our County does

I've said that before and and I phrase it as Durham punches above our weight do things bigger exactly and then this is the end of the presentation and that um there should that's a link and I don't know why it says 21 because it's supposed to say 22. what I turned down was 22 I thought but okay maybe it's a senior moment at the end of the day the presentation that you have in the handout and on the registrar is to the link to the 22 and so that'll take you directly to finance's webpage and we'll take you directly to the akfer which I think you already have a PDF that was sent to you and you'll be receiving a hard copy as soon as they're back from the printer foreign like I said the mdna gives you a summary of the entire fiscal year the letter of transmittal pretty much tells you how we are doing as Durham County entity

thank you Susan thanks again any other questions or comments I just want to also thank you Susan for your outstanding work thank you thank you that means a lot thank you for your support and for always making sure that Durham County stays fiscally strong we are at the top of the pack if not the leader now Kudos goes to you and the staff manager yeah because we we get on a spending speed and just spit y'all didn't hold us tight [Laughter] okay anything else alrighty so next we'll turn it over to is it um you Dwayne the text update

good morning again Commissioners Madam manager Dwayne Brenson Durham County tax administrator got a presentation this morning as you've seen in past years meaning of the same slides just updated information we are tax staff is planning to come to the board at the April work session to do a presentation more on the upcoming revaluation statistics where we are with the economy compared to the tax base that'll be coming at the April work session this presentation focuses on budget where we are right now and I'll remind you and I actually have a slide to explain this this is very early in our evaluation process so what typically happens each year the first of each month I will provide County budgeting City budgeting anybody who's interested and updated valuation spreadsheet because this

changes not only as we go throughout the budget cycle but all throughout the year that's one of the things that makes it so challenging to have a precise estimate of Revenue and here are the limitations that I was just referencing basically four classifications of property you have real property that is the most established at this point in time it rolls over year after year but even that is not stable the the assessed values as of January 1st of each year but then in the spring of each year you have the appeals period and you know we're sitting here in February and the the appeals board the board of enr will not adjourn until May so we don't know what appeals may be coming and we don't know the result of those appeals so we have to uh like it says there we have to provide that safety net for potential appeals

the unknown appeals refunds releases exemptions that happen all throughout the year February March coming up and we are still submitting releases and refunds we're still finding exemptions in the current year that we had to allow last year this time in the tax base estimate so this happens all throughout the year we just have to account for those a variance that happened all throughout the year and I'll remind you the last appraisal date was January 1st 2019. all real property values in Durham County right now reflect market value as of January 1st 2019. a lot has happened since January 1st 2019 we've seen it we've seen a housing market like we haven't seen in history but the next reappraisal will occur as I mentioned earlier January 1st of 2025. and at that time all rural property in Durham County will be updated to the then market value whatever that

may be commissioner Burns yes sir really quick I don't know what to call you now Mr van then she quit on us make it custom tax administrator we'll wing it okay really quick you said a second ago that the appeals and for I know I've been unusually quiet but I did my homework so I've played my questions accordingly for today uh you said the the appeals board doesn't come back until May um I do remember we had that one big random appeal one time that we were able to fix I'm wondering I don't need it in the report but off the top of your head on average do you know how much and you really like we might have to readjust is it a million dollars is it four hundred and fifty thousand dollars or does it fluctuate from an appeal standpoint I'll tell you what refunds like the whole Gambit yeah um it's most certainly in the millions um because we talk about one one of the

safety nets we account for uh like we had a report go to the board and um that was a couple months ago and we had some brand new exemptions that came on board high dollar exemptions they met the statutory requirements to be an exempt property but we just didn't have that at the beginning of the year and we have to account for those sorts of things so it's in it's in the millions of dollars that we have to account for now as far as appeals the farther away you get from the reappraisal we are uh four years out now from the reappraisal the farther you get from the reappraisal the fewer appeals that you get on an annual basis 20 the the reappraisal in 2019 took effect January 1st 2019 we got seven or eight thousand Appeals as a comparison right now I think we have eight so um it it varies dramatically year over year as far as real property appeals

okay okay that you know oh we think that this is a number but you know throughout the year we might now be short three million dollars that we thought were gonna get because something passed at the general assembly and there's this new exemption or there's a refund or the board approved something I just want to we're excited about all these numbers but now I just want to make sure I'm catching everything you saying like hey we might lose five million dollars before December so that was the only reason why I asked it thank you so much sir absolutely absolutely so the other classifications of property we're looking at personal property it includes individual personal property boats Motors airplanes and then your business property we have RTP we have a significant business personal property tax base the especially the businesses you can request an extension through April the 15th to file your listing form with our office and until we have that listing form and until it's keyed we don't know

the value of that business property so another limitation sitting here in February of providing the estimate public service companies we don't give that value from the state until around September of each year and then Motor Vehicles we you know kind of like the housing market the motor vehicle Market has been crazy as well the used it's just been something like we haven't seen before but we are estimating the value of Motor Vehicles that we won't actually see until maybe next February next march as people renew their registrations so these are the limitations um as far as estimating the tax base so what we're looking at right now this chart shows the tax base changes by classification we just discussed the four classifications and this gives what we're looking at right now from a valuation standpoint real property a little over three percent growth your personal property

12 percent real property growth changes we mentioned the holdbacks the safety net that we have to do every year to account for these things that happen all throughout the year and you know just like the appeals that I mentioned earlier as a as you move away from a reappraisal you experience fewer appeals well that's because the tax base becomes more stable and more stable the further you get into the revaluation cycle and with that the percentage of holdbacks that we do you'll also see decline throughout the

reappraisal cycle you might start at two two and a half percent in 2019 you might start two and two and a half percent and you know four years out we're budgeting at one percent for holdbacks now we believe this amount as you see the two bullets there holding back too much well that reduces the budgeted Revenue that we can plan on holding back too little makes us vulnerable makes the tax base vulnerable so we try to find that good balance depending on where we are in that cycle and what we are seeing what's on the horizon here's what we're looking at just to put some numbers to that one percent and you know this this is real property that's the raw real property tax base the 41 billion 796 million one hundred thirteen thousand two hundred seventy six dollars that is where we are right now that's the raw tax base we're allowing about 150 million for

appeals in the upcoming year we also have the voters inventory which would come at a later time and then the additional exemptions that come throughout the year and they they have they have time throughout the fiscal year to get the paperwork in and qualify for exemptions and we have to account for those that are going to come later in the year we also have not just current year appeals we have some prior year appeals that aren't yet resolved some have gone to the state we have to account for that potential loss in tax base as well and you can see down the bottom once you work through those numbers it gives you a net projected real property value so when I talk about the one percent hold back this is a way that it could shape up this is the way that it would look when you apply numbers to that one percent right

and you know tax base is well you see the real property tax base here this it doesn't this doesn't include personal property doesn't include Public Service it doesn't include Motor Vehicles I think our the actual tax base is closer to 50 billion uh but yeah so so one percent it it's a lot of dollar amount we also have a lot of vulnerability within the tax base as well and one percent is probably as low as we have budgeted for holdbacks especially in this cyclist because I came here in 2019 and it's the lowest percentage that we've had in this cycle so even though one percent's a lot it's it's we're moving into that conservative category because the tax base is becoming more stable or it will be accounted for because we won't collect as much so if you pull your makeup I can't hear

you down here if if we if it turns out that the one percent hold back is too conservative then that like we just heard um Miss Tuesday present that sort of thing would cause us to go over from a revenue standpoint that would cause an overage with like the nine point or nine point six eight percent I think it was we just saw that would that would cause some of that overage as well right but we have to allow that just because of the vulnerability of the tax base so that would go into um that gap between the expenditures and the revenues does that answer your question what I'm really interested in is If We Hold Back 500 million dollars the one percent of the the overall tax base projected what percentage of that will we end up not either collecting as revenue or we'll have to you know spend it on appeals or you know reduction you know do you see what I'm saying we're holding

it back because we think we might need to spend it in some way or we won't get it what percent how close are we to being right how close is one percent spot on what's the trend for realizing there are two things happening at the same time that we cannot guess and you've heard of two people financing you also or Dwayne say it's been an extraordinary last couple of years so even with hold Backs from valuation during the year we are also increasing valuation new things are coming online so what has happened to allow us to over collect in property tax revenue not only the property tax collection rate but largely the valuation has grown throughout the year again the budget office and the finance office and Dwayne were asked to look out a year in advance and say what are we going to collect a year from now Dwayne's saying I have to have some hold back and that we also have to budget some amount of growth and valuation what

has happened in actuality is that growth and valuation has covered up any holdbacks so even if you held back 500 million dollars we still grew by a billion dollars does that make sense so we over collected revenues today to answer your question we haven't spent anything or lost Revenue in aggregate due to hold backs because our valuation growth has grown year after year over and above what we had estimated does that make sense again we we do conservative positive estimates and we do conservative holdbacks the conservative holdbacks have held true the conservative growth has not held true because it's been extraordinary growth Apartments going up everywhere somebody spoke of the Miracle Man last night lots of new businesses going out in RTP you know throughout the county plus residential all that is growth and valuation so even if you have a little bit of hold back I've got more growth and the net is over collection of that revenue does that answer your question

kind of yeah you're wanting to know the dollar amount that if you did 500 million dollars worth of percentage of the net effect is at hardest we could do the math you have to divide it by 100 and do the tax rate to see what hold back of 500 million dollars would be can I interject one moment do know that as all the way up to the budget passage we are pressing Dwayne hard um to to help refine the numbers whether it's looking at the base grow are we projecting additional valuation or do you feel like based on collections that maybe we can push the number up higher so so we here I hear what you're saying are we squeezing enough out of it but as Keith said and Dwayne it's complex you know when when we get down to the last days of our budget we're quibbling over fifty thousand dollars you know even but this makes me think why are we quibbling

over even millions of dollars if we've already held back 500 million do you see what I'm saying um it just seems like wow we we have done such you all have been such an amazing amazing job of being sure we're in a secure sound financial position that it just I I feel you know a Gog almost that we quibble ever over anything I will show you when we have time when when the budget side of this how much we're budgeting and revenue growth the net of all these things happening related to property tax and you will see that number's already built in when you all are looking at the end of the fiscal year and you're looking for a hundred thousand more fifty thousand that really is a negligible amount of money either in property tax or sales tax or whatever Revenue Source we magically find I will tell you this I'll give you a little hint we are budgeting without a tax rate increase over 13 million dollars in additional property tax revenue for next year

without anything happening due to valuation growth that is the mixture of the holdbacks plus valuation growth that we're seeing in planning for in the future now we may squeeze that tournament a little bit more and say can you give us a million more because we got other things we want to do Dwayne you know might scrunch his eyes up and say be careful already squirming a little 18 million dollars in increased property tax without a tax rate that's the Delta number that's new money in your pocket without doing anything is almost three cents on the tax rate we'll talk to you also about how quickly we're going to spend that money so that's an extraordinary number the hold back issue is minor in the whole scheme of things thank you [Music] so the total value of partial exemptions I present this every year just so that

94 million in Revenue that Durham County is seeing from exemptions and those are State exemptions they qualify and by by law they get it real property change real property value change by property time we have residents we have commercial and this shows you the year-over-year change for those two classifications I'll remind you 2016 was a reval year and 2019 was a reval year

and you'll see a bit more of a spike in those years because the properties were brought up to market value that's the same same chart just breaks it down to a percentage and again you can see that big spike in 2019 for the 2019 revaluation for residential property commercial property much of the same big spikes 1619 very typical of a reappraisal in a growing economy all right that is all I have from Tax Administration be happy to take any more questions I like the money thank you Dwayne uh David's going to come up here and sit beside me I think we have 30 to 40 minutes to go through a budget presentation I'm going to go through it relatively steady I'm not going to try to burn through it too quickly because this is where the rubber

meets the road in a sense and we can come back to it or there's lots of slides that you can look at on your own or feel free to ask questions during the presentation after it during lunch we're here to help and answer questions we always have a set of guiding operating principles this document hasn't changed I'm not going to go through it basically we pay attention to Debt Service we look at our metrics there are a number of points in here this document is is in the legend star and you can download it and take a look as as you see fit give you an update on the budget process highlight sort of the calendar of events some things have already happened but what's upcoming major is most of March is going to be spent with departments and management going over departmental budget requests uh we have lots of new folks we're around here at the table with acms and Deputy managers and looking forward to getting them up to speed around their departments May 8th the county manager is going to deliver her recommended budget to the board then you all have

the fund between May 16th and June 7th of debating that recommended budget and working towards an approved budget that hopefully will happen on June 13th and then we can all go enjoy our summer a little bit sounds good themes of this year's budget of the last couple of years frankly plus the upcoming years is investing in the future that includes affordable housing those are artist renderings I don't know if they're correct or not or the 300 deck and 500 deck housing but those are investments in the future we've increased funding for Durham Public Schools 38 million dollars that's annually the total increase from over five years almost 40 million dollars we just passed a 22 500 and some odd million dollar Geo Bond referendum for investments in dtcc and DPS in the museum and we continue to be leaders in life science and and just continue to grow uh this is something I show you every year and I want to remind you the choices you make today

can potentially limit your options in the future you choose to spend money on things your default agreeing to not spend money on other things that is the other side of this equation if you get yourselves in the food security business it might be hard to extract yourself from that if it's necessary or affordable housing or education this is not good or bad just be careful and always have in the back of your mind if I'm a budget person if you choose to spend on this you're limiting potential options to spend that money on other things in the future as needed cascading effect of dependency we are becoming more and more dependent on economically support variable revenues particularly sales tax we're really stretching thin one of you I think commissioner Jacobs you said with all this growth and fund balance you're not looking forward to a tax rate increase part of us not having a tax rate increases having amazing growth in our sales tax revenue sales tax revenue

is economically driven we haven't seen a recession in Durham County in forever and even when the state the state or the nation has a a recession we tend to have a much softer version of that those are but we're always that's always a possibility for us and we need to be aware of that we're continuing to see significant growth in annual fixed costs what are fixed costs Personnel costs insurance for folks Capital costs utilities a whole host of issues are fixed costs and we're continuing to see growth in those with all that in the back your mind your job and the Management's job is to strategically apply resources to meet current ongoing and new needs while also maintaining long-term operational resiliency what does that mean in summation you have two choices you could spend like drunken Sailors right now and make everybody happy but you wouldn't have long-term operational resiliency or you can be a little less magnanimous

and say we have to always be aware and plan for future downturns as much as we love the good times and they've been here for a while and they're happening right now you always have to have the ability to plan for something being a little worse I second that motion yeah oh thank you okay so areas of focus compensation and quality of life for employees is a big issue for the manager and for the board I think one of the things that came out of the board policy retreat was focusing on how to compensate our employees and there were some even talk about including DPS or pondering those employees as well which is a whole nother issue because that's a lot more employees than Durham County inflationary increases we are asking departments to try to absorb those within their existing budget we are evaluating all vacancies before requesting new positions uh closely and we'll try always evaluating our fees although fees in general compared to our other Revenue sources don't bring in a significant amount of Revenue significant is a relative term millions

of dollars just not tens or hundreds of millions which is the kind of money we need to keep doing the things we're doing some of the revenue issues we are experiencing for the upcoming fiscal year and have experience for the current couple of years is fantastic economic growth part of the reason our fund balance has grown is sales tax revenue growth and property tax revenue growth we're continuing to see that we're seeing some economic signs that make us wonder when that's going to not grow as robustly as it has been growing and it's coming David and I don't know when we thought it was going to happen after covid but apparently everybody saved their money and then apparently they are spending citizens are spending their money like drunken Sailors and that the amount of money they had in savings we have a slide showing that the savings rate for Citizens across the country is dropping precipitously from 2020 when they couldn't buy anything because everything was closed for covet occupancy tax was hit hard by covet but has bounced back we'll show you a little

slide on that Revenue but we are worried about and starting to experience growing Revenue variability economy inflation is going to take a bite out of people's ability to spend on the one hand that helps sales tax if a shirt you buy went up ten dollars we get an extra seven percent on that ten dollars the shirt went up in inflationary cost on the other hand people buy less because everything's more expensive and then a recession is always out there looming other people even Dr Walden may speak of that when and if it comes we don't know quite how it's going to affect Durham County but we need to be aware of it so I'm going to give you a quick overview of 2223 kind of sum up don't worry about these graphs these are just pictures I'm going to show you a couple more I see commissioner Carter leaning down and looking closely but I'll show you a couple other ones uh about this what I want you to get from the next two slides or two things I want you to walk away remember it our two major Revenue sources property tax and sales tax account for 75 percent roughly of our

74 percent everything else we do Public Safety detention center youth home EMS DSS Public Health On and On fight over 25 percent of available Revenue because 75 73 percent of our expenditures are for personnel costs and for education just a good way to remember two major Revenue sources two major spending sources you heard Susan talk about uh showing you a trend of our expenditures over the years at 90 some

odd percent a year what I'm showing you here is a dollar amount and what I want you to see is how much money we have left on the table at the end of every year from an expenditure standpoint the dark blue line in those columns are operating dollars that are unspent each year we are talking with and I think you heard the manager speak up earlier about reallocating existing dollars looking at our spending patterns and what we are spending money on because we're leaving money on the table the last two years that you're looking at 2021 and 2122 are largely related to an increased significant increase in expenditure dollars coming through to help for covid no Grant dollars that need to be spent but also we have a problem with vacancies and when you have 20 vacancy rates you don't have the ability to do the things you want to do in a department therefore you don't have the ability to spend those dollars but we need to take a close look at our expenditure Trends because it's been dropping thank you

I can't even see her hand I'm waiting on her to hey can you hear me now yes ma'am wonderful you're on a roll I had a question about the last salaries portion I know this may be like a very simple question but just wondering how does that work like if there are a long number are vacancies that have been held vacant for a long period of time and the county continues to fund them where is that funding going and sitting uh well these positions are being filled and does that money come back to like the general fund balance at the end of the year if they're not filled or that they just stay with the Department great question you just about answered it completely yourself so well done I'll give you an A on that pop quiz uh the lap salary does a number of things at the end of the year if there's lap salary and that's that light blue line

7 those are lap salary amounts that money falls back to fund balance it's budgeted sits there the problem with it is that it doesn't get used all year long and that's a problem but then if it isn't used it falls back to fund balance and we sort of re-budget it next year in some form or fashion however over the last couple of years between our interim County Manager Claudia Hager and particularly with Dr so well we have used that lap salary to do retention bonuses to do longevity bonuses to do to help support salary increases for hard to feel positions so commissioner Alam instead of using new money to do those things we transfer that unspent vacancy related dollars to pay for some of those things does that answer your question it's a mixture of both yes that's exactly what I'm saying thank you Keith yes ma'am that's an expenditure trend on the other

5 million dollars those are taxes that's lumped together property tax and sales tax over collection 24 million dollars more than what we had budgeted 2122 was 31 million dollars and you see 16 million dollars further remember we also I didn't make them what's happening Monica's telling me to speed up apparently we're jumping forward here all we're saying here look David as good as we are as good as Dwayne is as good as Claudia we are playing a game of Monopoly when we look out into the future and we say we think this is going to happen with revenues we looked at 21-22 remember we were sitting in the middle of covet had just cranked up in 1920. everything was shut down we for sure didn't think our property

tax in particular our sales tax revenue was going to increase with nobody doing anything but we were wrong and we said okay 21 2021 was an anomaly to be sure we'll drop back to the average for 21-22 no citizens still continue to spend like drunken Sailors yay for us in one way but at some point that's going to be that's going to come back to us but that's part of the over collection Plus in 2122 we sold the American Tobacco deck that was an additional 14 million dollars so that's how we had over collection in revenues so we've undersent expenditures and over collected revenues now commissioner Carter you're welcome to lean down and take a look at these two historically we look at that bottom right hand graph you see the ex Revenue over collection 102 over collection or two percent two percent one percent but then you look at 2021 and 21 22 you see them growing significantly on the

revenue side and you see our expenditure dropping rate again vacancies make it harder for us to spend money a lot of money coming into the system after covet that we have to digest and spend a little more slowly but that Gap needs to that Gap needs to become closer together the net effect of that Gap is a growing fund balance that you saw Susan talk about any questions real real quick give me a chance to take a breath all right moving on now we get to the good stuff 2324 estimates and this is a great little uh picture to show because the farther out we look the less accurate we get and we are trying to be accurate but these last couple of years have been so extraordinary that accuracy has somewhat gone out the window because we don't know how to digest these last two years plus the year we're in now which is doing really well as compared to the last 10 or 15. what's normal now it's the big question these are information dense graphs

3 million

5 million do you notice anything different between the first three years on this graph versus the last three years on the right hand side Little Pop Quiz commissioner Burns here I noticed that it went down and in the negative but it's been progressing up at a much higher Pace than 17 18 19 and 1920. 23 we were sitting here last year again we took a guess but we didn't know that the current year we're in now is doing as

well as it is we're experiencing over 10 percent growth in our sales tax I don't budget 10 growth because I'm still I've been here 25 years I've never seen these three years so 2324 is kind of capturing a little bit of the unexpected growth in 2223 plus some additional growth that I'm four or five percent growth that I'm planning for next year and that right there is a key point every year when we're doing this we're doing this as Keith has always told you 18 months in advance so at the same time as we're projecting next year we are making up for what we now is are knowns from the prior year in addition I always want to point out about the sales tax we these last couple years are going to be an asterisk in perpetuity for a lot of things one of the things that happened at the beginning of this pandemic is the state passed legislation that online sales are collected sales tax it would be fascinating in a geekish way what would that have done to a sales tax

had we not had the asterisks of the pandemic would we have seen a reset of a four percent three percent annual growth to a seven or eight that's the stuff that there's no way to really decide describe it so the dance of what is a normal sales tax growth is the challenge although I I have seen have seen discussion that people are well I guess it doesn't matter if it is sales tax but people are ordering less online you know Amazon's cutting back and people are doing more brick and mortar sales purchases so I don't know if that makes a difference we don't have the data the DOR and this is uh has been a soapbox of mine for as long as I've been here getting more sales tax data from the Department of Revenue we get very limited data and we've extracted all the information we can out of that data so we frankly do not know how much of our growth and sales tax is due to online sales we just know that since then the numbers been higher than it has

been and basically since covet you can see I've not included article 40 and 42 sales tax in this assumption because those two by board policy go to pay debt service those have increased significantly but they help offset Debt Service and help you keep a lower tax rate related to Geo Bond referendums and capital projects and things of that nature Keith Keith what about they are increasing yes ma'am what about we'll talk about that we have an economist that will do a better job of talking about that I it hasn't affected our Revenue collection so much yet yet it's affecting our expenditure Trends in the cost of doing business paying for utilities literally everything from an operating standpoint from Department requests are being hit by inflation that's the simple answer to your question is that enough we can talk about it a little bit later if you'd like

I wanted to show you our local occupancy tax revenue this is dedicated for Debt Service and for the sports commission but I wanted that this one again it works the same way remember the the thing you want to most pay attention to are the gray columns that's the Delta amount and we lost money in 2021 and 2122 why because of covid which is like how's that people didn't come and stay in hotels in Durham because it was shut down nobody was traveling nobody was doing anything and you can see that what David would like you to see is that 2223 saw a huge jump and now in 23-24 we're back to normal back to our normal growth pattern as we're getting back but this is a real good indication of how the economy did affect certain County revenues I do want to add though because I'm we have it discovered Durham board meetings and I just read the agenda um they have the latest data we we're actually while our price per room has gone up we're still at only about 50

occupancy so I I think that's interesting to know that while we see that so the the occupancy tax revenues are going back up but we're actually it's more because rooms are more expensive not because we're actually which is an inflation you asked about inflation that's how it can affect revenues in a positive go ahead David so let's just say yeah we we're in communication with Susan Amy and Tony Hall of leaving the finance person and they're seeing the same thing where and I think commissioner Burns is indicating we're really kind of now where we were where we would like to where we were four years ago so we we've that asterisk unfortunately just drew a straight line in the end hopefully we're going to start seeing that growth which is what you're talking about is the occupancy rate picks up as well as the inflation of the pricing remote work may have forever altered how we think about occupancy rates I don't know that people travel especially business-wise which is what we would be with RTP and RDU right down the street that we will ever see but ever don't ever say the word ever

that's a strange thing but I definitely think that's had an effect on what you're talking about Register of Deeds fees are another economically uh relevant fee and this one's interesting for a different story that has happened at the same time during covet you see those numbers skyrocketed in 2122 and 20 but then in 22 23 we saw actuals drop even though we budgeted more do we know what happened there register of deed fees are collected from the sale of houses largely of property mostly residential what happened in Durham in 2021 21 22 and 22 23. what happened and I'll tell you I won't put y'all in the handle here but we had ultra low interest rates housing sales exploded yeah fantastic from a register of deeds point of view not so fantastic if you owned a house and you can't afford to buy the next house in Durham but so revenues went up for the register of deeds but then interest rates went up way high in the current fiscal year and

now we're seeing a drop in that Revenue source and expect lower Revenue next year by a million dollars if not more commissioner Burns any um mine was really quick I'm kind of I still have my chart my all my charts here so like I'm I think I'm getting where you were leaning like we've seen like this astronomical rise in sales tax right I mean sales tax historically you say you've never seen that before like on the growth level we've had the last couple of years right and then when we look at occupancy tags register these fees this is where we're seeing the leveling off kind of start so we've kind of hit this peak and we're starting to see stuff uh level or either get back to normal I guess I guess my I know that I I raise my hand because I know on the register these fees to your to your point about we had these really low interest rates for housing and now the FED has these fixed kind of rates set at seven and six I know we're gonna be down there low when these fix kind of sort of set rates stop do you think that this one's going to fluctuate or do you think

we're going to maintain some normalcy I I think it will I'll ask the next person yeah Claudia I heard you speak up you wanna this is the hottest region in the country right right so and so it and again we'll wait for Dr Walden um the interest rates the prices based on you know our our population and ability right pay it is a inventory right like so it's relative okay yeah thank y'all it's on and Dwayne is correct and I just want to add one what uh Realtors were saying was people were fighting over houses you know they put it on the market it was sold that day it's not happening today the houses of the city there we have a slide if we can get to it in the economic slides we may not get to it but you will have it available to you that shows the value it's not just the number of houses being

sold it's the value of the house so that's what the register of deeds fees but the key thing to remember the value the average cost of a home in in Durham went from 318 that went up a hundred thousand dollars in two years the average which means there's close to 50 percent higher than that and that could be weighted and some lower but went up a hundred thousand a hundred thousand dollars so each house has gotten more expensive which brings in more Revenue but that's a negative as well as you all know for struggling for people to buy in that slide that we hopefully will get to we also show that the number of houses sold last year was like seven thousand plus and were dropped down to five thousand plus this year so it the number of sales have cooled off while the value of the house is continuing to increase and and I think it's important to remember what is causing the increase in the cost it's not just the market it's also the actual cost to build a house the cost of Labor the cost of the supplies so it's just everything it costs more

7 million dollars in new Revenue without a tax rate increase now here comes the and what is one cent on the

7 million dollars in new Revenue without a tax rate increase at this moment in these key revenues question David no okay what I want you to note though is that key Point since 1718 our annual increase in those key revenues has been a hundred and twenty one million dollars more a year you have now to spend on different things and you did just seven years ago do you feel like you have lots of money to spend we've already spent it and that's my sort of overarching line about conservative and being careful about what you spend money on

7 million dollars in new Revenue without a property tax should be rubbing your hands what are we going to spend it on a lot of things we need to do well here comes the bad news we have potential expenditure pressures that are that are significant increasing demand for services within Human Services and Public Safety function continued support of public education operating in capital budgets that's K-12 that's Pre-K as well Community College needs employee Recruitment and Retention is significant we got a MAG study coming down the pike fixed annual growth costs inflation highest level 40 years that's going to hit us in terms of operating budgets operating costs for all the stuff that County departments need to buy and then we've had an increase in positions for the last several years of a significant amount we're going to have to have more County space at some point Hope Valley I mean the shops at Hope Valley are have

helped with that a little bit but we've still got a lot of other positions that are going to need space now and if not now soon in terms of the future and new buildings aren't cheap what is our growth in ftes this is the total County employment all funds most of that's in the general fund we've grown from 2043 and 1617 to 2242 employees in 2023 that's 200 employees we haven't had any major space addition to that maybe the library we've renovated this building and the building across the street but we don't have additional new space what's that mean in terms of the Delta remember the columns are the number of new positions each of those years look at the number of new positions since 1920. 31 37 64 48 new positions how many positions are being requested by departments as part of the 2324 budget 126. 8 million dollars in new Revenue

8 million dollars it literally Easy Come Easy Go

25 guaranteed again this gets back to the number of employees you start adding the more employees you add to our payroll so the more potential it is for our health insurance costs to increase outside over and above natural increases in health insurance costs our potential ongoing arpa supported cost Claudia has done a

rough estimate or a very tight estimate of around close to four million dollars these are choices we have made to spend money on arpa dollars to start doing things the arpa dollars drive we still got to pay the cost of positions and other choices we're making around food security school health nurses things like that so those are ongoing future costs and then there are other departmental requests that add up to 22 million dollars that includes 126 new positions what does that all mean at 28 million dollars in in major increase in revenues without a tax rate increase but I got 60 million dollars in known expense so I'm out 30 million dollars that's where management comes in and it's going to be a hard job between the new acms and Deputy County managers and doctors so well it won't be hard to figure out figure out how how we get that number to zero that 40 mil 30 million dollar difference that is essentially the budget request just a reminder about the 22 Geo Bond

referendum the public was notified of a potential two and a half cent property tax rate increase this year I know we heard not wanting to raise taxes we we will have to look at that a little closer there will be a tax rate increase related to the 22 Geo Bond the voters basically said they're okay with it I don't know if it'll be two and a half cents it'll be closer to that than than not um and we'll we will come back to you with that discussion but I just need you all to know out there even if you hold the tax rate flat for the general fund everybody agreed to a tax rate increase related to the 222 Geo Bond remind you again the choices you make can potentially limit future options you have available to you we are really stretching our economically sensitive Revenue sources and we are experiencing continual and significant growth in annual fixed costs so your job is strategic application of resources to meet ongoing and new needs well really

and this is important maintaining long-term operational resiliency and I wanted to leave you something sweet I want to acknowledge we all have to pay attention to things that aren't working as well and maybe let go of those things and do other things that's part of reallocating existing resources your funny slide usually comes to demonstrate but look I was surprised because you usually do funny slides all throughout and you didn't and I was like it's gonna be the last I did my homework again the point is is that we also part of dealing with what we do is we are already doing a lot of things we have to to control growth to control property tax rate increases even in years where we've had extraordinary Revenue growth we have to look at things that we're doing and maybe not do things stop doing things that we're not doing as well as we want them to do and do other things

that's okay to consider that yes ma'am thank you Keith great presentation on the first slide where you mentioned plans that we need to to consider I just want to mention Also let's not forget the renewable energy plan that we adopted that obviously that's going to impact yes yes and I also want to throw out other plans that they may not be that are also ancillary like our Transit plan the new comprehensive land use plant and then there's a new plan for downtown Durham and also discover Durham for for tourism so we're good at doing plans everyone's doing plans now everybody we're probably going to update our strategic plan everybody's doing it but I think it is really important to always be putting those lifting those up so I appreciate that you that you mentioned those um and I just respond to that real quick so we have already had

our internal discussion about making sure that we are budgeting for the renewable energy plan we don't want to get to 2030 and then say oh yeah what are we going to do to make sure we can achieve that goal so the budget and the Engineering Group are already in conversations about what can we budget every year to make sure we're achieving our renewable energy right and I I want to put a pin in when we have board discussion later talking about how we follow our plans or not um actually also will impact our costs and our revenues because within embedded in all of those plans are the opportunities to make money and save money um so I I I wanna I would like to have a board discussion about the opportunities in those in those plans in different ways um I also want to mention I don't know if you all saw the news that the City of Raleigh

has there there was an article I read recently that there they have a funding Gap so we are really thank you to our staff for being conservative because we're not facing that um a a question about all of about the ftes is I would like to see information where we're benchmarking um ourselves to other counties of a similar size okay other other counties of similar size just to see how we're tracking um on on ftes with our population and wondering when we look at you know requests for 126 positions I would like to know whenever it's appropriate just are we looking at the existing positions and reallocating um and you know also and and also Keith

related to the tax increase for the bond how are we going to look at the general fund to maybe offset that so those were just some of my questions around grants we are leaving a lot of money on the table by not having someone designated to look for Grants especially around energy and the environment there's a lot of money out there and we just got to have somebody that's designated to go after the dollars I want to put a ditto 10 times on what you just said I'd like the tint the motion so that's the opposite FTE number 127 uh manages so well and I think future pin on board discussion would be other potential Revenue sources of revenue

which grants would be included in that but I think there's some other things too oh oh ask Deputy County Manager Hager to give us an update on the grant position so we are in process of seeking a grant administrator County Enterprise wise and the budget this past year we also added I believe two positions that were Grant related I think one in the environmental engineering area I can't remember the other one and so we are refining our strategies on how we do grants that's our ownership too that's department-wide and we we do that because although we may not have just one person it's what are the targets for the Departments so it works in concert in in doing that work so we'll have more horsepower we work with the um triangle J Council they have a resource

that they're offering to those who've participated and we are one where they give us a learned of grants that are on the table and in our departments receive that and they help us as well so in the interim we do have a strategy also and I did want to elevate you know we throw that out but I also want to throw in some context we don't I I don't throw that out without some context right like I know when we gave out our Opera dollars that first discussion there was I remember myself along with commissioner Jacob said let's just spend it on five things like let's be systemic let's make sure we do something life-changing the first iteration we did we gave out 49 grants right and then we also have a uniform policy all of that takes tracking so when you give out 49 Grand now I got to have somebody to track it make sure that the money's going out make sure that it's coming back in the right way we got to report it back to the federal government so I also know in the event that we want to start to go after other opportunities that will not be a singular job right so

and I like I'll use um Public Health and Social Services you all get opportunities all the time some of competitive some of them non-competitive I know that Ellen Beckman we asked her to go after something uh Transportation wise she went after it by God she got it so we do see certain departments doing things but I am happy that we're taking the approach how can we do this enterprise-wise but I also want to elevate to my colleagues as soon as we get one person to do that there's going to be some track and it has to go so that that job in and of itself is a force multiplier for other jobs so I don't I I joked facetiously to say that's 127 but it would actually if we really want to do this thing the way we want to do this thing that's four or five people and you're thank you for validating what we are the path we're on we added two compliance positions and the a budget this past year as well as an accounting position to support our finance efforts you heard all of us miss

tizai her Deputy Chrisley Wright myself and some others as we talked about all the scrutiny and the extra scrutiny that will come with these dollars so we're still assessing to see if we'll need even more but we're excited that the board sees the value of those Investments because on the back end it protects you so you have not clean reviews and when you when we talk about context I just want you to know and I'll lift this up I'm not just throwing that out to say to have that happen serving on the committee the environmental committee that's been given by the out of DC by Michael Egan I'm getting a lot of information right now that has to do with grants in that document in those documents that I'm receiving and right now I don't know who to push that to because the money is there an

environmental there's a lot of money involved so when I lift that up I'm seeing the dollars but I don't think we have anybody in place right now for me to shove it too I just want to make sure Commissioners know at the back of the registrar there is an item for supplemental documents and there are updates to a number of the plans like the cultural Master Arts plan the Aging plan so you can read those like they're one page long sort of answer some questions about where we are in the process of spending developing in the next steps on those plans last thing I'll say about plans I know commissioner Jacobs talked about potential Revenue sources but I'll also say plans are a hammer in search of a nail and what I mean by that is they will have costs that come with them that they will want the county to pay so plans are awesome but they will identify lots of new things they will want the county to spend money on commissioner Jacobs I don't know if you heard that I just want to say in the legislar there are supplemental in the

supplemental section there are updates to a number of the plans that we had budgeted in the current year like the Aging plan the cultural Master Arts plan so look back there and you should see some one-page documents when you get a chance thank you chair Howerton has um wanted us to make sure we took sufficient breaks as chair of the healthy counties committee so we will take 10 to 15 minutes there is still breakfast and snacks available in the Innovation space is in the Innovation space yes yeah they're looking for it okay where is it yeah yeah all right so we should be back what it uh 11 say 11 15.

what yeah no you know he's going to tell us when he needs to click he's going to tell us when it's to move forward and he wants us to do it he wants us to bring it okay Madam clerk do we have Dr Walden on I can't hear you do we have Dr Walden on okay face but we know that you're here oh like a good morning I can see okay I can see all of you and your um I think people should be putting up my slide set can you tell us when you can see the slides we can see them

this is the economic Outlook yes yes Dr Walden we'll just ask you if you'll indulge us for just a few minutes while we get our Keating set up here Dr Walden slides wait okay because he's included in here yeah okay there we go

great there we go okay are you able to see your slides now I I can yes thank you great okay well feel free to go ahead and start with your presentation thank you so much for being here I'll say next when I'm ready to go well thank you for inviting me again and let me start by thanking all of you for your public service we live in a great area we do have some issues and I I certainly salute you for be willing to take your your personal time your time away from your job time like your family to uh to serve so thank you very much um I'm going to um you know a little abbreviated so I'm going to probably go through some things fast but we live in a great area one of the fastest growing areas in the country but we are linked obviously to the National economy and there's some issues in the National economy that that pretty much everyone everywhere is facing I have them labeled here on the title inflation labor shortage recession

so I'm going to focus my discussion today on where we're going with these what's happening in terms of policy and what we might expect in 2023 and the years Beyond next slide next one okay there's just a slight delay okay now this is a real quick picture of where we've been in any of these I'm tracking North Carolina and the nation I won't get into what these numbers are but you can if I look to the left you can see the covert recession very deep recession but we got out of it quickly as soon as the economy began to reopen and we started to see money flowing from Washington in terms of variety programs and if you look to the far left or far right I'm sorry we don't have the numbers latest numbers we don't have as late in numbers for North Carolina as we do for the nation but you can see that we've been we've been continuing to Growing backward we now have economies

S as well as North Carolina both dropped you can see our big metros which was would be Raleigh actually Raleigh Kerry Charlotte and then Durham Chapel yeah all continue to grow and I think that says something about the strength of those metros and then if we look at 2020 to 2021 you can see even faster growth in those metros so we've been lucky to have an economy here that has been very very strong and has gotten us through probably better than most economies through the Covenant

4 percent now the right hand grab I think is is better information for people who are worried about a labor shortage which is most employers at least that I talk to uh labor force participation measures the percentage of people who could be working which for the federal government has to find is everyone's 16 and over who are actually working or looking for work and uh pre-covered you see we were

5 here in North Carolina reason for the difference is retired people are counted as potential workers but we have more retired people as a percent of our population North Carolina so that's why it's a little lower in North Carolina see the big drop in labor force participation recovery since uh the covert pandemic ended but here's the takeaway you can you can see that if you look on the far right hand side we are not yet back to pre-covered labor force participation rates were under by about a percent percent and a half if we had the full labor force participation rate that we had prior to code we'd have about 2 million more workers Nationwide we'd have somewhere around 50 or 60 000 in North Carolina uh next slide big question then is why um we've got an aging population and we get more people over age 65 like I am uh people uh tend to retire and not work and so that's a bigger part now of our

population we've had particularly among my my demographic elderly people we had a surge in retirement so I was one of those we have had a decline however in the labor force participation workers 18 and 24 which is very very interesting economists are still trying to figure out why and there could be a lot of potential reasons but that's that's a key demographic particularly for for example a lot of hospitality industries hire folks in that area and we haven't seen labor force participation return for those folks and in terms of North Carolina looking for it I think overall the state will have adequate labor but the point the question is well we have it in the right places if the Metros continue to grow significantly more than the non-metro areas we could have Labor shortages continuing in the Metros so this speaks to perhaps a the state looking at policies that it could help motivate people not force them obviously

motivate people who are in non-metros where the labor market is not as strong to motivate them perhaps to move to metros where there are our jobs that are going money so that's a long run issue and obviously Durham doesn't have a direct voice in that but unless they influenced State policy next slide uh We've also had a real allocation of workers in fact there was just a study that came out uh two days ago from the Federal Reserve that really drove upon this point uh I I think many of us thought okay got the pandemic uh we have people uh thrown out of work because of the shutdowns the economy reopens we would think that people I mean I think the operating assumption was a lot of people most people would go back to the jobs they had that's not happened that's one of the unique things about the the code aftermath that has not happened and and what we think happened and we don't have very hard we don't have really hard numbers on this is that because of the expansion in a

lot of sectors particularly the tech sector which actually added employment as an astonishing rate between 2019 and 20 mid-2022 before they started to tear down a little bit Tech employment Nationwide grew 250 percent so the point is that when workers particularly young workers came back went back to the job market after code they looked around and thought and saw hey I don't necessarily need to go back maybe maybe to that job in Hospitality world let's face it Hospitality wages tend to be on the low end I can go somewhere else probably a lot of them we don't know exactly but probably a lot of them did go into tech and and you need to recognize about a third of tech jobs don't require college degree so there were plenty of jobs there that younger people particularly younger people could take so we not only have had an all labor shortage but we've had a reallocation of workers as a result of covert in the aftermath of that that is obviously hurting some particularly some Industries they send Hospitality day care personal services

next slide now I do think that going to see as time goes on more and more adoption of technology in the workforce businesses that can't find workers they're going to see if they can replace workers with technology this was actually a big worry about in a decade ago in fact the worry of that and was the exact opposite of the war we have now the worry then was are we going to have a labor Surplus I participated then in a emerging issues Forum that NC State put on that that was the theme we brought in experts for all around the country and yeah concern was with all this technology developing that can do things that people do people are going to be unemployed there was concerns about the unemployment rate could be as high as 20 percent and that's now actually somewhat laughable because now we're worrying about just the opposite not enough people to work very very low unemployments so the sideline that this is things can turn very quickly think

can very very much change and so I think actually that technology that we worried about a decade ago may help us get through it may help many businesses to get through uh you probably have heard the story of the McDonald's All Digital I think they call it an all-digital restaurant I think it's in Fort Worth it's a test case you go in there to get your fries your shake you don't see a person at all no personal interaction it's all automated there are a couple people in the building just to keep the lights on the switch is on in case they go off but it's all digital and then obviously McDonald's is looking ahead to see if they can reduce their use of Labor because it's so hard for them to get labor and I think we're going to see this in other sectors next slide um all right let me change it to item number two problem number two inflation uh this shows you the path of year-over-year inflation over the last roughly decade you can see going into the pandemic it was very very low one or two percent we got up to three percent 1918. I'm 1918 right 2018. and really

for three decades since the 90s inflation have been a non-issue then it took off you can see it started to take off at the end of 2020. 1 percent we've seen a little bit of easing but still inflation is very very uncomfortable why did this happen well let's look at the next slide um I try to always try to develop analogies uh my wife doesn't let me in the kitchen much because I just don't know my way around the kitchen uh and one of the things she would worry about if she would wear to say well my put a pot of water on the on the stove uh she would worry about I would leave it there I'd turn the heat up too much and and I go away and get busy doing something else and the water would overflow and we'd have a mess in the kitchen so that's one reason why I'm banished to doing the dishes and taking the trash out rather than fixing the meals anyway um really what this symbolizes what we've gone through over the last couple of years with inflation inflation has resulted for two reasons one we we had a

surge of money pushed him into the economy by two administrations so this is totally nonpartisan two administrations pushed over five and a half trillion dollars in Vietnam to help the economy survive the pandemic because uh we we haven't been through anything like this in over 100 years so called Spanish Flu of the late 19 teens my like one of my late grandmothers would told me about that how horrible it was and we didn't know how long this was going to last when we would get vaccinations uh what would happen with the the variants Etc and so we were we there was a big worry that we could have not just the collapse in households and businesses but a lot of literal collapse in the economy but we wanted to keep the economy going so we had the first stimulus package passed in March of 2020 and then it went through I think the last one we could actually categorize as a public seniors package was passed a year later in March of 2021 if you told and there were a couple in between you Twitter them all five and a half billion

trillion trillion dollars pushed in the economy and that helped people stay afloat it helps in many businesses stay afloat institutions schools Health Care got money Etc the the problem is that particularly on the consumer side many people use that money obviously to just just stay alive but many people got money that actually allowed them to save that money and the savings rate went up to an all-time high of about 33 percent during part of 2020 on her I'm usually at the windows around three percent the Wells Fargo estimates that at the end of 20 at the beginning I should say 2021 collectively households had three trillion dollars more in their very variety of savings accounts than it would have without the stimulus packages that went through so people had a lot of money uh stored away and then at the end of 2020 and into 2021 as the economy opened uh they tried to spend it a lot

4 and we hope as we go on it'll get lower several reasons for that supply chain has

improved dramatically next slide we've had a big drop in gas prices so that's been beneficial a little bit of an upswing recently but but obviously clearly you can see a graph of way below below the high we had and uh and last year at five dollars a gown next slide uh we've had consumers begin to pull back if you look at this graph you can see for November December actually retail sales want to actually no this is broader than retail sales this is total consumer spending went down now notice the big jump however in January this just came out a couple weeks ago this is causing some economists to re-evaluate our consumers really slowing down so we'll see but but if you look at last year you can see the downward Trend in consumer spending next slide and the Federal Reserve but I'm going to talk more about Federal Reserve in a minute Federal Reserve had one of their big Powers is they control the amount of money and circulation and they can come they can pump money in they can pull

money out you can see the big jump in the money supply that they they induced from in 2020 to um to 2022 recently they've been pointing the opposite direction which is helping to curtail consumer spending next one um where do we think inflation is going to go well fingers crossed a lot of economists think if the Federal Reserve maintains its policy I'm going to tell you a minute about what that is we could see inflation down to the three to four percent level year over year at the end of at the end of this year their target their public Target they've said they want to reach is two percent I don't think they'll get there this year but I I do think the worst of inflation is over now let me let me just quickly say again because I I get I get questions from this and I think there's so much confusion when when someone like me says the inflation rate is going to go down or anyone else says it's going to go down that doesn't mean try all prices are going down it simply means the rate of increase is going to

so when we say lower inflation we mean instead of nine percent inflation we mean two percent inflation now some prices do go down well going under them you've seen some prices going on gas is a good example but most prices don't most prices don't and this creates an issue for our standard of living because what inflation does uh when you have very very high inflation most people don't see comparable pay raises your standard of living literally is going down and if we have lower inflation in the future uh it's going to take a while even with lower inflation for people to get the pay raises to get them bring them up back where they were pre-pandemic so even if inflation gets down say a year from now a year and a half from now to two percent everything is not hunky-dory it means that people are still behind the curve and it's probably going to take a while they might say how how long well if you look at the the last recession before Clover the so-called subprime recession of 2008-2009 we had very very high

inflation we had high arms deployment it took on average five years beyond that recession for people to get Act was the standard of living they had pre-precision so I know that's a sort of a downer statement but it's it's absolutely true so you will continue to hear people complaining about you I'm not where I was before covet and and expect that that's that's going to happen next slide now uh what is a recession because we've heard a recession well in the technical definition is it's a broad-based decline economic activity that lasts for a significant period of time two calls or recession it's not it's not the president it's not that Congress is not anyone in the federal government it's actually farmed out to some economists who work for a think tank that can call the National Bureau of economic research uh whether we have a recession this year actually won't be declared and probably for a year afterward they take their time sifting through a lot of data next slide

uh now let me get back to the Federal Reserve um Federal Reserve is an extremely important part of the federal government it's an independent agency I mean it doesn't Jay pal who's head of the Federal Reserve he's not a department headline for the Secretary of Defense or Secretary of Treasury who reports directly from the president uh Jay pound the president obviously communicate but President Biden or any president that doesn't tell the Federal Reserve what to do president may suggest but the Federal Reserve is independent and um they have they have some regulatory um regular tear regulatory rules that they apply to make sure banks are behaving Etc but they're big their big influence in the economy is they are the go-to agency for when we sort of get off track when we are not growing enough when we have a recession they try to revive us they try to pump money in the economy and they lower interest rates and then the reverse when the economy is perhaps

overheating and we get high inflation they do the reverse they pull money out of the economy and they and they raise interest rates and that's exactly what they've been doing now uh next slide please if you look at this Library quickly this shows on the left of federal reserve's interest rate key rate Federal plunge rate and most other rates in the in the economy take their cue from this rate so when these rates this rate goes up other rates go up and vice versa you can look from 2019 and 2021 obviously the the pandemic is in there they drop their Federal plunge rates but the historic low virtually zero that's why mortgage rates went down so much they went under three percent for a while and why the home buying Market actually surged during the pandemic now that inflation is a problem now that the economy is back we're growing but we have high inflation they've gone the opposite direction you can see their federal funds rate is up to four and a half percent I think they're going to go higher and what they're trying to do here is as deep as uh uh take the

incentively for people to to spend money on Big Ticket items anything you have to borrow money for as well as for businesses so they want to slow spending down in order to keep that that pot of water pressure down and they do that by first of all making it harder for people to borrow money more expensive the more money we've already seen for example a home buying Market slow down and at the same time if you look at the the right hand side this is I won't get in the weeds of what this is but it shows you from 2019 to 2021 effectively what this is showing you the additional money they pumped into the economy again to try to help us get through covert but then look at 2021 to 2023 they're beginning to taper that off so the Federal Reserve is trying to slow things down next slide the question is can they slow things down without causing a recession if they can do that in the business that's called a soft Landing uh it's what they're striving for they want to they

want to take that go back to my pot of water they want to take that pressure off the pot of water keep it from overflowing without turning the water without turning the water to cold so that's my analogy with respect to the economy they wonder if they want to slow things down the economy they want spending to slow down then when hiring the Slowdown but they don't want it to go negative and if they can achieve that that's a big deal that's very very hard for the Federal Reserve to do because they're not dealing with with perfect relationships if you're in physics and you do a you know you're going to get B in economics if you raise interest rates which the Federal Reserve is doing in order to slow the economy they don't exactly know how much the economy will slow because we're dealing with people we're dealing with reactions we're not dealing with chemicals so this is very very hard for them to do it has been done in the past but it's very very hard for them to do they got started late because I think they were not um aware that this the higher inflation

situation was not uh what they thought it was just temporary it was just going to last a couple months well it went longer than temporary but well we keep our fingers crossed that they'll be able to pull this off that's what we want uh getting inflation down but without causing a recession next slide now there are signs the economy is slowing real estate activity is has dropped manufacturing has slowed a lot as I showed you with the exception of January consumer spending has slowed question is is this going is this enough to realize the goal of a two percent inflation rate I don't think so I think again the Federal Reserve is going to continue to raise interest rates I think their their key rate of four and a half percent could go as high as five and a half or six now just to make you feel a little better I've been I'm 72 years old I've been walking around a long time following the economy Go Back 40 years when we had probably the worst inflation at least in my lifetime uh and of course you hear a lot

of comparisons then inflation rate then on an annualized basis got up to 13 and the Federal Reserve took their key interest rate the one that's like four and a half now that I think will go to five and a half they took it up to 19 19 we had a terrific conflict recession absolutely horrific recession I don't think the fed's going to go anywhere near that high but then it could be worse it could be worse next month um okay let's uh we're talking about this next slide I'm watching the time for you because I'm always aware of this um now there's a very interesting debate in among economists this is not something you see in the the the Durham News of Raleigh news and observers it's you got to go into the bowels of self-economist breed uh but there there's there's some there's one Viewpoint right now among some economists I'd say it's not a majority so we're going to actually get we can actually have a recession we could get the inflation rate down but without

7 uh

7 so businesses still am I'm talking an accurate a lot of unfilled jobs and you usually usually businesses when they have an on-field job they keep some money aside for those jobs so the theory here is that businesses could cut their unfilled jobs keep all their people they they're working but cut their unfilled jobs and therefore cut the money that is associated with those unfilled jobs and save money and do that without laying off any on any people that's that would be lovely if that happened obviously that would be great uh I don't their economists disagree on whether this can have but that could be absolutely great so we will see but at least that gives it some hope that this may if we do have a recession this will be a different reception next slide uh all right uh where is North Carolina going the rate the same direction as the economy yes I do something called a leading indicator for the state and if you look at the far right hand side it's been down since May the indicator and

that's a good sign that the economy is slowing doesn't say that it's uh that it's in recession but it's slowing and and one one array of Hope here that we may not have a recession in North Carolina is if you look on the far right hand side how far that lines go down it's gone down it's not nearly dropped as much as if you take your eye back a little bit to the left you should be a big drought there that's the covered recession and if you take your eye clearly to the left you see a big drop that's the drop before the subprime recession so what this is flashing my index is flashing is yes we're going to have a slow down North Carolina economy but it's not going to be a dramatic slowdown which means we may get by without an official recession next slide now that said uh here's my forecast uh this is again this is a gross domestic product which I'm not going to get in the Weeds about explaining uh but you can see uh left hand side you can see the drop in the in economic activity with with Cohen you can see we have

Trend it upward not not always up but we've trended upward and if you look at the green part of that line you can see a drop it's not a significant drop but it is a drop and that I'm I plugged in for the second third and fourth quarters of 2023 right now right now that's what I'm predicting I'm predicting a recession at the end of the year uh slight recession right that would be this would be a bracelet loop on from 535 billion dollar economy in North Carolina down to 524 I mean that's obviously noticeable but it's not major just like if you look on the left-hand side see the enormous drop with code then we begin to recover and actually by the middle of 2024 we'll fully recovered and we go on to grow even more so so that that's my view right now does that mean we cannot worry no everyone needs to to to anticipate uh some challenging times we're already having challenging times with inflation if you're a business person I think it would be wise for you to have a plan if your revenues

dramatically go down how are you going to handle that if you're a household I tell people this all the time they don't like to hear it and I don't like to do it myself have a family budget know where you're spending your money trying to identify where you could cut back on money if you have to but at least we're not talking about something that's going to go on for years and years and years which some people have asked me well are we going to have a recession is going to last just like the Great Depression of the 1930s no I think it's going to be rather short and and I'm I'm right in the middle there with most economists most economists are thinking that's going to be the case next slide hmm um now how high can unemployment go again I think it'll go if it does go up and again if you think that that debate between economists may not go up at all but if it does go up uh maybe maybe five six percent North Carolina I'm probably leaning more toward the five which is very very low when I was in graduate school 50 plus years ago five percent unemployment was considered full

employment um so we would have about 50 thousand and seventy five thousand more unemployed persons people in North Carolina now that's on a job base of about five million so it's a small percent but of course you know this is probably uh public servants uh any unemployed person is one too many so I don't want I don't want you to think oh okay we don't have to worry about about more people collecting unemployment and and having problems maintaining their their lifestyle no uh any person five fifty thousand is certainly something to catch your eye so we hope that doesn't happen but if a recession does happen that is a typical recession uh those are the kind of numbers I think I think we're looking at in terms of unemployment excellent uh okay that's this is just a a Shameless plug for my latest book relaunched uh this talks about how family family economics may change uh in the future with respect to uh post-pandemic economy so let me stop there and uh we've got maybe about five

minutes I'll be happy to take questions I do want to emphasize again how Dynamic the the trial economy is uh we we always save issues uh we've been growing so past obviously issues with affordable housing issues with Transportation the congestion obviously we want everyone to have opportunity to move up the economic ladder uh I don't know of of a metropolitan area that has been successful who hasn't had those those issues uh but we we have great people serving and hopefully we will be able to deal effectively with those issues uh the one thing I will say about this area that I'm I think is going to be very exciting if we move a little bit less of where you are in Durham uh go over to Chatham County and Beyond but you're certainly aware of the massive new Investments that are going in for our renewable energy future we have three companies that announce should be put together uh all of them together they announced about a 10 billion dollar the capital of badassment factories uh vent fast is the Electric Vehicle

Manufacturer wolf speed is the computer chip manufacturer and then Toyota is putting up a battery Factory near near Greensboro yeah I think there and those jobs I think last time I looked uh collectively those jobs are going to be paid somewhere north of sixty thousand dollars on average uh you're not going to need a college degree for most of those jobs you can get Community College training effects I think Alamance Community College is already setting up some training programs specifically for Vin fast so I think this is an exciting period And there's obviously going to be some although these job these these factories are not in the Triangle pers well I guess Chatham county is considered part of the triangle but they're obviously not in Durham County Orange County but obviously we're going to feel the effects here uh those those companies are going to have create all kinds of supplier effects and and other effects uh that that we will fear of triangle so I think that's very very exciting that North Carolina has been is going to be I could be a very big part

of our Energy Future the other thing I'll say in closing is that um I think one of the biggest challenges for any state in any region is going to be continuing to be delay report and not just in terms of making sure we have enough people working drilling jobs but making sure we have the ability to adapt to a change in economy I think what we're going to see over the next 20 or 30 years is a gigantic change in the kinds of skills that are needed in the economy right now we're getting a lot of attention for our official intelligence and you've been you've already read things about what artificial intelligence can do I think what we're going to see is some turnover in jobs or some jobs that have been around a long time or no longer needed maybe they're going to be done by technology but we're going to have other jobs created and we want to make sure that we have an educational system where people who are already in the workforce and maybe they're in their mid-30s or whatever they have a family to support they can't spend two or three or four years retraining maybe it's something that they can get retrained in fast I think

that's going to be the challenge for North Carolina and I think we're up to it the universities community colleges so programs working with businesses but I find that very very exciting and I just uh I have a very very positive outlook for North Carolina particularly for the tribal reason okay let me hush uh if you've got if we got some time left for any any questions that you that you that you want to ask I'm certainly available to do that foreign thank you so much Dr Walden for this presentation really appreciate getting uh having your expertise and knowledge helping us get the big picture I have a few follow-up questions um one which you just touched on we know that our biggest asset is is our talent our Workforce is what is attracting especially in Durham County we have a lot of life science and now

we're attracting clean tech jobs but if if if our if we are now ranking 50th in in the country and are spending for public education 38th for teacher salaries and 48th per pupil spending but the issue that you just addressed about how we how we keep investing in our Workforce in our uh the people in our communities I I mean I I just wonder how you look at that um and then my second question is related to a lot of the opportunities that we have now because you you noted that there's a slow down in manufacturing and a Slowdown just you know in the economy I'm wondering how you weigh the massive potential Federal funding from arpa from the infrastructure bill from

the inflation reduction act and of course that depends how we all use those dollars or or get or if we get them but the potential that those that those type of investments will have over the future on our economy and I'm thinking you mentioned some of the clean tech I'm thinking also about the transportation Investments around rail with the S line and the potential for increased passenger rail with Amtrak um you know how you how you've um factor that in and then my third question is related to my final question related to workers because I guess what I you kind of alluded to it a little bit but um while we may related to unemployment it seems like um a lot of employers way they they're also wary of not letting workers go

um so how does that play in people holding on to their workers even if they may not I mean just that balance because not not wanting to let workers go because it's so hard to get workers so those are my three questions three great questions [Music] without massive destruction and the labor force not only can businesses cut back on labor costs by taking away unfilled positions I think they're also going to be motivated not to leave folks who are already working on let them go because they work hard to get them so I think that's another Factor working in the favor of if we have a recession it's going to hopefully have very very modest negative effects on the labor market question number two about the uh Federal um uh bills that were passed when dealing with um uh Investments the the inflation reduction act but it's that

5 trillion code with money that was pushing the economy these are separate these are long run Investments I think both got or at least the one got significant on partisan support which I think tells us that people recognize that we need to worry about our infrastructure we need to worry about um staying competitive in the world one of the problems that of course you you realize is that chip production we know we don't do all that here and one of our geopolitical uh competitors China is is a leader there so I think this was very well and my personal opinion pretty wise to do and we'll start we're starting to see I think secretary Secretary of Commerce just indicated that those funds are going to spark the flow so I think those are very very positive elements uh almost say on the role of Education

because I know this is a hotness can get very contentious uh depending on where you on the political structure but my wife worked 33 years as a public school teacher she she knows what uh what the importance of that is in terms of working with students getting them on the right track toward toward a successful career uh I think obviously I'll give you my personal Focus here I think paying teachers more because they they probably have one of the most important jobs is not the most important job in the world much I always would tell people what my wife does much much harder than what I did um yeah I think we always need to worry about are we are we competitive in terms of attracting teachers in terms of all the other the other resources that go into K-12 and that's somewhat of a moving situation because for example if you're as old as I was you know we didn't have computers going through college even high school then I didn't even have any college uh so I that's really outside my wheelhouse what what kind of auxiliary support teachers need with but clearly

we need to try to attract the best and the brightest to uh to be teachers in my opinion and then obviously a big way we do that is is through salaries okay thank you um commissioner alum hand is up yes thank you thank you so much Dr Walden for this presentation I had a couple thoughts comments mostly about like the beginning slides your presentation around uh the population growth and why we haven't seen it inclining as much and how that's impacting our Workforce um as well as just why I'm you know the younger Generations like Millennials and gen Z aren't joining the workforce at the same rates as previous generations so on the First on that Millennial and gen Z portion do you think also the fact that we are just the gig economy is growing so significantly uh and people are able to find uh higher wages through the gig is on me that makes them less likely to go want to go

work in the hospitality fields that uh tend to not pay uh very well tend to not uh treat their workers very well to be quite Frank and also the fact and then that segwaying and the population growth a conversation about like I know from my generation and gen Z it's a very common conversation about how the impact of climate change is changing the way we talk about starting families and because we don't know what type of Planet we're going to be leaving for the Next Generation so why is our generation going to continue to have kids when it may not be a sustainable living for our children and the last question slash comment I had when I wrote this one down was just also and how that impacts the workforce or the population growth is that culturally we're seeing there's less of a need to have children because the mortality rate

is the infant mortality rate is decreasing across uh the globe so people are have less of a need to have multiple children and because birthing people have higher access to education they are less likely to you know start families because they're entering into the workforce more significantly oh triggered questions um let me take them in reverse order and access to education uh yeah I think that obviously is is a factor in um in the client birth rate's been climbing for a while uh probably prior to the widespread concern with climate change I mean raising children's extremely expensive if you uh if parents have careers obviously there's some give and take there in terms of time um uh in the old days my father for example grew up in a farm uh he was one of five children my grandparents needed those children because they had to work uh my grandfather had to get up at four a morning to milk the cows Etc so we

don't have those kind of needs now so I think people can people have a greater ability families and households have a greater ability to decide uh what what the number of children that they have and there's a whole host of factors I agree I understand your point about climate change I think there are a whole host of factors that go that go with that um let's see oh your first coin about uh pay yeah I mean clearly I try to try to make that point that we had all these tech jobs open which were paying high more much higher than say a restaurant job so when the economy reopened someone was working a restaurant job and getting minimum wage they can do a tech job and probably double the rate of pay I think that clear was a factor now I will tell you that the restaurant business has had to had to raise wages in fact that sector is ways it has raised wages on a percentage basis more than any other sector and they're still having problems which says a lot about uh I mean early in my my career I work in restaurant and it's tough work and so you know they're

going to have to deal with that in terms of maybe raising wages even more which turns into higher prices or I think down the road they're going to try to make do or try to use a better technology and then access to education I just want to expand on that I think that's going to be a key to everyone I think what we need to think about is can we make broaden access to education not just say Young people starting out and going to college and so forth but to people as I indicated who are going to face the situation down the road where their occupation is is no longer needed their skills are no longer they're going to they gotta relearn skills so we think we have to have a can a continuing continuing education process and I know there are a lot of people in the standard are thinking about that and I think North Carolina is probably ahead as well as other other states but I think being able to change your skills quickly as the economy changes in the on what's needing the economy changes from from workers and being able to access quick training

programs that'll give you that switch I think that's going to be a very very important component down the road to our economy commission I want uh Burns uh thank you so much again uh Dr Walden uh I I had a couple but I I'm gonna just drop it down to two questions uh for the sake of time and I want to go back to one of your slides about what's holding back the labor force uh in particular you said my analysis suggests that North Carolina will have adequate labor if in migration continues and I just I want to elevator or ask you uh in your calculation in your studies in your conferences have you had any conversations about how I know when we're talking about immigration we're talking about here but just about immigration as a whole like we we've seen that it's you don't want to get political but it's not missed on anybody in here that the last Administration was adversarial towards individuals being

able to immigrate into the United States and that's the that is like significantly hit some Industries whether it be agriculture whether it be Hospitality we know it's hit education um Chancellor Woodson said the other day that across the state you know we've seen 15 less graduate students application and undergraduate applications from outside the United States so we know the kids are still going to school because Canada saw an uptick and Australia saw uptick and England saw uptick so kids are still coming in they're just not coming in here and so how that type of immigration might be affecting the workforce I would love to hear your thoughts my second question we talked about work and unemployment and while I do have a question about underemployment I'm not going to elevate that one today what I really want to know is uh in your research we know that people are working from home or right so we know that remote work is a trend but we also are looking at the ways in which people work and I think commissioner long touched it a little bit if we think about how we

order food and I'm just going to say if we order a pizza and then we get a little text on our phone that says your pizza has now been moved to a third party service so it's moved it to an Uber or moved it to a postmate now that individual still is delivering a pizza right so so this is so let's just say Pizza Hut Domino's now there's a driver but that driver doesn't have a ball so this is still the same job but somebody is choosing I want to do this job absent a supervisor so and I Elevate that because they brought it up at the banking commission that we're seeing people yeah I want to choose this job but I want to choose the way in which I do this job so as we here even in the county are trying to figure out how we feel positions and I know at the city and the school and everybody else are there any additional trends that you all are seeing in the ways in which people want to work perhaps the same job but under different circumstances and what those circumstances might be and I'll let those be my two

well um questions again I'll take first order last several years and you're right I mean a lot of the people we don't we don't have food delivered in our house but I'm aware that people do that and uh order it and you that's created a whole new source of employment and a lot of young people who do that or maybe older people who do that they're going in because maybe the hours are flexible and uh like it gives them supplemental money Etc uh along with that I think you've all probably heard about and this is someone outside my Lane that a lot of young people especially now have a different view of work uh they they conceive of work as just part of the plan because they want to have a lighthouse some kind of work and so I think employers are having to deal with that and they probably are are dealing with it in a way and I think that is um that has probably impacted the percentage of about 18 and 24 year olds that are actually employed because they have a different they have a different

Viewpoint of work and far be it for me to criticize that I think as I've gotten older I've realized yes you gotta gotta take account of your family at Center I probably worked too many hours when I was when I was actually full-time employee and your first part about migration now the numbers I alluded to in that slide which I didn't I didn't explain very well didn't take time to explain I was looking at in migration which technically means migration of people who are already at the country from one state to another state right and having a net plus there your point about immigration though International Energy is very very important I mean yes we I think if you want my personal opinion we We should strive to attract people with the kinds of skills individuals with the kinds of skills that we want uh and need in the country I wrote a book a couple years ago where it's called real solutions always think of thick time to offers always take time to promote their books but I wrote them

a couple years ago called real solutions where I looked at all the major issues of taxes that migration climate change poverty Etc all of them about 20 different issues and summarize what the views are and then gave my take on them um there's some discussion about uh there's been some who promoted the idea of attracting trying to focus at least part of immigration uh your track in bringing people that have skills that we're not generating enough of so clearly immigration I think is important to our important part of our history it's going to be an important part of our of our future I guess I guess right now that the date is uh is it controlled is it you know I'm not going to get in that I feel but uh yeah I don't know any Economist who doesn't think that there's a certainly an important role for foreign immigration in our country and always has been and and will continue to be okay commissioner Carter uh yes thank you

again Dr Walden your presentations are always so interesting economists are very interesting people in general I think they're going to cause my head to explode [Laughter] I also have two questions um I'm interested in what you think about the availability of high quality affordable child care and its effect on employment and the economy um and also the effect of the economy and turn on on wages of covet in the economy on wages in particular the wages of people at various points on the pay scale um and how you might advise us as we seek to pay living wages for public employees and as we seek to support families so they can afford child care as we you know seek to consider guaranteed basic income for folks if

just wondering what your thoughts are on that as an economist the trick um obviously everyone in our country does get paid the same wage and from a business point of view what businesses look at is what is that employee bringing a table in terms of the productivity they they provide for the company what's the value of that productivity and that's what wages and part are set on then there's competition between workers between companies for workers more competition the higher the wage Etc I mean I work my first paying job was at McDonald's I got a dollar an hour um why did I get that municipals of course 50 years ago so 50 60 years ago why did I get uh so so low okay well because uh pretty much anyone could do that job and one of my tasks was cleaning garbage cans at night and going out in the parking lot and they didn't put they didn't put those Liners in I literally had to take um cleanser and rub it uh spray or put in

an air and then scrub with a subscriber Etc so those are you know those are cast pretty much anyone can do so that's another Factor um and we also I think we all we also need to be careful about making sure that people do have a motivation to move up the far skills that provide them the higher productivity so workers so businesses that did Will and pay them more but on the other hand we don't want people to suffer so it's it's there are a lot of complications there um going back to my book that I wrote two years ago real real solutions but I suggest that there is rather than for example telling a business now you've got to raise your wage um telling someone all right we're going to give you uh we're going to give you a guaranteed well actually let me stop here instead of telling your business you've got to raise your wage if it's important to the public sector which I think you're in a candidate is that people may people are guaranteed some minimum standard of living and then provide that um do you have a negative income tax are very very simple people file their tax

returns the tax organization say IRS or in our case Department Revenue they don't have any children you have how many people are in your household they can they can look at your pay and say gosh uh this is not enough to guarantee some societal agreed standard of living and so then you you send them checks for the next year to make up that difference between what's acceptable standard or living or what can be a standard of living that they can afford with what they think now the key there though is you have to be careful about taking about still motivating people to because I think we want to we want motivate people to help themselves that is if they're not getting paid a lot get skills that will allow them get paid more so in that in that same book I say when someone gets above a certain level so they go above in terms of their income at minimal standard of living you don't cut it off to zero gradually take the money away so that they always are so people are always motivated to earn more because if they're going to lose some of their

public benefits they don't lose them dollar for dollar with the additional money they earn so I think there are two things there that are sometimes difficult to balance our societal uh desire to provide people with enough to to reach some acceptable standard of living but the other uh the other intent is to provide people with the incentive to to also require skills that so they can move up and support themselves that's very very hard too um the the minimum what it's called the minimum the program you were talking about your skinnier moment where people get a flat amount if they're under a certain amount of income I'm not a fan of that I'm not a fan of providing people with resources but I'm not a fan of that uh because I think the studies that I've seen have been done that actually indicate that the work participation of people of folks receiving that money actually goes down so I'm certainly not

I'm not opposed to the idea of financially helping people who are who are at the lower rungs of vehicle matter but I think you have to be careful to again preserve the motivation for them to to try to help themselves up the up the ladder so I view as two two forces there helping people move up the ladder the public sector and and guarantee and they're going to get they're going to get help to get to a certain level of standard of living but the the private motivation to motivate people okay we want you also to check to do things in your life education probably being the most important skill acquisition so that you can earn more child care and its effect on unemployment everything would be in my notion of how when we look at a per when we look at someone or an X dollars or householdering X dollars and we and we have already just thought about okay what what kind of income do you need to

provide shelter for yourself food for yourself health care yourself Etc that would all be part of the calculation of what if someone had no money that would all be have all part of a calculation of what what the probably this is better at the state level but I'm certainly locals can experiment all being part of the calculation of what the state would decide okay we have no money here's what we're providing you so given given your the number of people in your household you can have adequate health care you can have adequate food you can have adequate shelter you're going to have adequate Transportation Etc and then my point is is that that would be the case of someone not having any private earnings that as the hopefully the the the adults in the household do get private earnings then again you grab eventually remove some of that money but not dollar for dollar with your earnings you always want them to be better off so that if they earn a thousand dollars you don't take a

thousand dollars away of the public assistance you maybe take 500 away so people are always motivated to to to earn on their own as they move up the ladder thank you okay so Dr Walton as my colleagues have said it's always great to hear you and um what you bring to us and uh you probably answered this question already but I just want to make sure I ground it for myself um today are you what are you seeing that persons offer two dollars more go to a different job what do you see in in the job market um we're seeing that people switch jobs so frequently is it been offered just a little bit more money that everybody 's answer then I bet I've been observing particularly for young workers it's not

all about the money it's it's not it's about the money plus it's about the work environment it's about what the work is about and many young people have decided they want work to be meaningful in terms of our societal broad Society it's about flexible some one of you mentioned remote work it's about flexibility and how they work it's a big debate now of course you've probably read about companies wanting people to come back to work and a lot of workers saying no we like working at home it helps us with that work-life balance so what I'm hearing and reading is that what what what workers want especially young workers is much broader than in Prior prior decades when it was pretty much just just the pay and maybe the benefits too um it's about the job it's about what the company stands for it's it's about flexibility thank you very much thank you

anything else for you manager yeah ma'am that's it thank you so much Dr Walden appreciate it well thank you all again thank you for what you do you do and I know probably I was asked to run for public office once this was several decades ago in Raleigh it's a big job again I applaud all of you for doing it and taking time away from your job your family your life Etc but we live in the Triangle are better off board so thank you very much thank you all right enjoy the rest of your day sir okay we are now at lunch which will also be served in the Innovation space and as you've noted there are tables available in the space and as well as out in our open area so feel free to get lunch will take about 30 minutes so that's going to put us right around one o'clock starting yeah yeah okay all right

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interesting okay Commissioners I think and Madam clerk do we have commissioner long back with us sir we'll start she is online I will send her a text to let her up she's here okay I'm here great great all righty so Commissioners we're ready to go hey let's roll yes ma'am turn it over to Deputy County Manager Claudia hey good afternoon Commissioners I trust you are well and we're about to talk about one of our favorite topics I know it's been a while since we've chatted and um we'll give you some highlights today on some components of the arpa funding we

will come back at the work session some information I shared with you related to affordable housing that we'll discuss Wednesday but we'll talk about that not Wednesday but next week we'll have those conversations we'll move fast let's see now Monica I'm not sure if it's me it was me okay I always do the reminders funding for our has to be incurred or obligated by December 31st 2024 that means you we need to have a contract there have been conversations about potential Extensions by some Desiring that there are Hoops that would have to occur I also cautioned for us to be conservative and prepare for that date just in case shifts happen economy shifts that are declined

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8 million dollars allocated there is a set-aside for broadband and

we'll give a quick update on that and the community grants were awarded in December we will start bringing those contracts to the board for approval there's a very intensive vetting process we did a lot of that before we made recommendations and we're making those final steps now uh will now give some quick updates on broadband as you know there are dollars that are flowing to the counties and local governments from the state and federal government growing rural economies with access to technology the great Grant is one that we partnered with some some internet service providers I'm so used to seeing the the acronyms to to potentially compete for the dollars the great Grant dollars are under review if the first wave has occurred

Frontier was identified I'll move forward on this there's also another Grant that's impending the cab Grant completing access to broadband this is for counties to partner with um the state to look at Broadband infrastructure and then there's a final one the stop Gap Grant now with the great Grant there are if then statements we talked about all this in the last um session with the board will not go through that when we last talked with you we were waiting for the state to make some final decisions beyond their initial wave of decisions they have um like like we have kicked the can we were thinking they would finish it in December now that date and we're making correct me that date has been moved further so we're waiting to see what they do with that and the reason there is the the if then with this particular

6 million dollars from the state and the apportion amount for Durham counties is less than five hundred thousand dollars

Loomis they announced that they are moving forward with broadband and Durham and orange counties this is outside of those great Grant award I applications or any work allocations this is on their own which is strategic considering how this region is growing so fast so we wanted to just remind the public of that well and so the last the some quick highlights closure is that we are waiting closure in the state great Grant so we'll see who that second part if they do award another applicant for Durham County and all of this sort of all these if-in statements means that we we would not potentially need to use the full amount that we've set aside for broadband and so that's that's why we're doing that um they have to re complete their award agreements their completing the um agreements with all of the entities which I can only imagine

how cumbersome that is we will then we we actually close out our RFP and we're going to open it up again because it would have been a year that it would have been open we started our RFP for broadband back in March of 2022 and we kept extending our date to align with the timing of the state of finishing its process so we closed it out we just did that and we're going to open it up again okay okay so just to give you some process UPS updates on that and so we're also assessing sort of that in those next grants that will be available on affordable housing I there are some documents that have been shared that are related to the potential partnership with the city of Durham on some shovel ready projects in 2021 the city

sought requests for proposals to Joint partner with entities that were building affordable housing they were able to fund some of those projects but they had four that were not funded in our overall allocation for affordable housing we always sought to see where we can partner with the city one of the Intriguing components with this if we do decide to move forward in any way is that the entities that are moving forward with the project have they're not starting totally from the beginning stage the time which helps with the timing issue of making sure the dollars are expended by 2026. the information that you have are from the original proposals

9 so not a huge variance between the original ask most of the financing is through other financing sources we will also bring forward to the board some options to consider related to permanent Supportive Housing that's an area that has been a priority as well as exploring options for traditional transitional housing and so there are many opportunities and as Jay Gibson and Perry Manns and our partners at DFI shared at your November

retreat we have to decide in what way we will support affordable housing efforts and so this will be an ongoing conversation but it's exciting that we're getting closer to making some decisions and we'll have more conversations on that today we're going to talk about some Investments that we may consider in our food insecurity space but want to share how this conversation aligns with what's happening as a result of dollars no longer being available from the federal government and I will ask my colleagues to share on this component of the discussion and pass the mic to you good afternoon a little tighter good afternoon

a little closer really close is that better yes yes excellent so families who are enrolled in food nutrition services have received extra benefits during the pandemic covid-19 pandemic benefits when the federal government declared a public health emergency due to the federal actions these extra benefits they're called emergency allotments and the maximum supplements are coming to an end effective March 1st 2023. what that means is that any person who is receiving food nutrition benefits based on that household size receive the maximum hot men and it was not based on their resources or income and so want to make sure that for an example if a person was a two-person household they

were they received a maximum allotment of 516 dollars a one-person household which is many of our seniors that we're going to reference they received the maximum allotment of 281 versus their normal 23 dollars and again that's coming to an end effective March 1st 2023 as a result over 9 000 residents in North Carolina will see their benefits reduced for those actively receiving FNS benefits as of March 2023 They will receive their regular monthly allotment so households will receive this notice um starting yesterday and going throughout the the month of March mid-march and that um mailing is dependent on when they normally would receive their benefits on a regular basis and Durham County in December of 2022 over 20 000 we had over 20 000 cases 20

785. 6 million we cannot close that cap I was waiting for that comment I was waiting for that comment hmm and so the question becomes what can we do and we've been meeting and having conversations about how we can help our citizens um step down from

um what they've been receiving because beyond the fact that um it's a significant reduction um groceries are more is more there's so many other things that's happening that also has an impact and So based on a lot of conversation we narrowed it down to looking at our seniors and we're identifying seniors as 60 plus and then looking at the general FNS population and for our 60 plus population I'm gonna pass the mic to Janine Gordon who is the assistant director of our aging and adult Services area and she will give you more information good afternoon so when we looked at the seniors that we have which are approximately uh five thousand their allotment is dropping nearly two hundred dollars a month so that was

really the focus um of our attention and figuring out how can we address this um huge drop particularly given the fact that a number of our seniors are on fixed incomes um can we move to the next slide I'm sorry thank you so when we look at the number of seniors that we have and are projected to have we we have been growing steadily and then next um just looking at the number of residents per the entire Community you can see that again we're growing and what we are trying to address is the fact that um we have so many adults that are over the age of 60 and are oftentimes

single African-American women we really wanted to be able to address this in an equitable way so we looked at the food nutrition benefits that are being offered to our Durham County residents and at this point only nine percent uh receive benefits however overall in North Carolina 21 are eligible to receive benefit and are at risk of food insecurity so um one of the what one of the um one of the things that we really wanted to focus on is the fact that we have infrastructure in place for our seniors we actually have um a partnership with the Durham Center for Senior Life we actually have an eats program with them that I'm sure you have seen over the past few years that actually

addresses food and nutrition services fortunately the executive director at the Durham senior Durham Center for Senior Life is happy to hear that we are addressing food insecurity for seniors and is ready and willing to help us in this endeavor and is is ready to hear whatever it is that we are able to um able to offer so one of the suggestions that we have made is creating a position that would be housed in my division of aging and adult services that would that would essentially be a liaison between the food providers in the community the food pantries in the community and the senior center to make sure that when we offer additional resources throughout the community for those who are not 60 and older but also those at the senior center that we are ensuring that

everybody has an opportunity who needs that opportunity this is essentially we want to make sure that that we don't have any one not uh not getting more than they are supposed to so everybody has one opportunity each month to get more resources and not going to multiple resources at the same time which is kind of the um the essence of being able to have that relationship with DSS to verify that they're eligible and they have received further assistance through our through our local food banks and I've failed to invite Mary oxen died I know she's Mary forgive me although I know you would have stuck your hand up Mary it was a group of us Joanne um

the DSs team Cooperative Extension many of us have pondered how do we move forward in this space and I'd like Mary to talk some about the bonus bucks this is an effort that happened in any of the other areas that are there hi hi um so I can just talk to you the the bullets that are up right now um so as was mentioned there's a huge gap in Services that's going to be coming particularly for folks that are receiving FNS benefits um and so one of the strategies to kind of at least create some additional supports in the community is to provide some additional funding to our emergency food providers and in you know we're not necessarily asking uh

3 million dollars that were potentially recommending that the board consider across nine months we understand that that is just kind of extending the time frame that you know for folks before there's a complete drop off but we do think that it's important to try to create a sort of a step down approach before folks

kind of face that what what some organizations are calling a hunger cliff um the other thing that also supports residents in particular that are receiving SNAP benefits as well as WIC that live in DHA housing is the double bucks program and I know we've talked about this a few times but it but the short version is that if double books is able to double the amount of purchasing power of folks that are buying from the farmers market so if I'm a snap participant or FNS recipient and I go to the farmer's market and I want to buy ten dollars worth of produce I can get twenty dollars worth of produce so um it's taking those federal dollars and then doubling those so that essentially over three years we're getting a million dollars into our local food system and really supporting families to be able to get that fresh local healthy food so that's you know double books has been going on in Durham for several years now I think about 10 years

in the the funding for for it did end at the end of last year and we've gotten some additional funding from duke um Duke has provided 185 000 to make sure that the program is able to continue but um thinking about over three years you know that is that that's not enough to to sustain the program over three years so we are asking or recommending to the board that you all consider continuing to fund double books and making sure that that program continues um and then there are definitely some opportunities in the community to support improved Equitable food security infrastructure particularly thinking about how do we support uh communities in starting uh um like markets in Durham so one example that has been brought to us is there's an organization in East Durham that is interested in opening a grocery store they have been operating a

food co-op and a farmer's market in that area for several years now I'm in Los Primos closed in that neighborhood which increased the Gap in access to food in that area and so one of one strategy is that the board could support you know making sure that there's a local source of healthy fresh produce in that community so those are just some recommendations and strategies that we can employ to address immediate needs but also thinking about how can we kind of start moving towards more Equitable Food Systems change I did want to highlight in in addition to what Mary just shared we wanted to make sure it was a true step down program which means we don't want to kick the can down the road and then three months from now um that they have their benefits have reset and we haven't done the things we need to do to try to help them adjust

and so we also talked about ensuring that we focus in on our budgeting nutritional programs that we already have in place to make sure that we connect these families with those resources and if necessary beef up those resources to meet the need because eventually their allotments will go back to pre-pandemic levels and so that's the reality and so then it becomes what can we do in the interim to help the families transition in a way that makes that reality not so harsh for them these are our recommendations on Monday we'll formally come forth with some actions that would move things forward and it will entertain any questions the board may have on this

first of all um yeah I this is um DSX DSS folks know I've been very raising this issue at our at our board meetings for a while because um I am very worried about the ending of just a lot of the entitlement programs Medicaid as as well that we've had automatic recertifications for the past three years people have not had to reapply it's just been automatic that's another one to have on our radar so but when we think about this big picture of things like guaranteed income and people being lifted out of poverty and hunger like we have been living that for the last three years because of all of the covet relief funding that has flown into our communities and into our families I

mean that like just the example for seniors from going from 24 a month which is Criminal I mean to think that that's going to do anything for anybody especially with inflation and but that somebody's gotten used to having you know 224 dollars a month and then for families it's also been really significant and there was a study that was done recently that showed how during the pandemic how many people have been lifted out of poverty children and families so as we talk about our budget you know keeping in mind that we could we could see us moving backward in these areas because we're losing this huge amount of money and the other thing is the impact has had on our businesses because with with three million dollars coming in every month or 43 million dollars coming into our grocery stores

um it it has had a significant Keith on our sales tax revenue uh has you know probably been taken getting a big Boost from this this type of money so um so I fully support I think this is a perfect use of arpa money we absolutely should be using it for food security and I really love the way you all came together you know Cooperative Extension DSS Mary everyone like collaborating on this to come up with Solutions Durham Center for Senior Life is Just fantastic um to see you all collaborating and working together on a solution my question is um about Meals on Wheels do we also need to look at expanding that because I know we have a waiting list of about 200 people right now for Meals on Wheels we got rid of

that waiting list during the pandemic actually and now it's back again so I guess when we think about different ways that seniors are going to access food the Durham Center for Senior Life will help with those who can get out of the house and come to the senior center but what about seniors who are homebound so did you guys look at that and think about that as well and what would it take to add that one of the bullet as far as expanded infrastructure support for seniors encompasses many areas and Janine shared the strategy of of having the support systems to help with the logistics of all of this which will be a lot we did talk about those other entities that are partners and needing to evaluate

levels of additional support we didn't refine what that number is so we'll come back with some recommendations on on that as well we're still it's a lot my hat is off to the DSs team there's a lot that they will be sorting through as well as our Public Health Department right now as the feds are sort of clawing back those those benefits I would just say I personally support you looking at other things I mean again this is a great really this is the way we should be using the arpa money um and to you know come back if there are other Investments we need to make for for those who won't be served by these programs that you're suggesting commissioner Burns yes as always thank you ladies for the presentation it's good to see Catherine and Janine in

Chambers today don't often get to see you same for Mary um I wanted to go back to something um about the March first deadline because you said that February 27th letters will go out and then March 1st was the last day so I guess that sound quick to me March 1st is the last day for what to fly something to come so March 1st is the the last day will actually February the 28th it's the last day for the emergency food stamps allotment March 1st is the reset so any there we go yes okay no go ahead finish okay any recipient receiving food nutrition benefits in March will will not be receiving the additional okay emergency allotment thank you I didn't when you said March where I didn't know what my timeline was and I want to make okay so because this again sounds time sensitive also so that

was the other thing and um commissioner Jacobs uh hit it on the head we were all at the um either knee gala this weekend and they you know they played some song they played some some recordings and um you can really tell that these are things that people need so um I don't know I I do I heard the sentiments in the beginning we can't hit it all but I do think that our seniors deserve the best from us because they've given given us their best so I would also be a proponent and a supporter of figuring out how we can do this and Mary thank you for elevating um well thank you commissioner Jakes for elevating it you know we got to think about who can't get out because that's who can't get out and I don't know how we we add that in but also something that Mary pointed out about how if we help our spaces it's almost triple because they can buy things in bulk um the meals are you know kind of somewhat not prepared people can do what they want to with them so I do think that that's an added incentive so I do like that idea that we might be in a

better position to stretch the dollars so want to elevate those two sentiments but I'm on board thank you I'm sorry Carter yes thanks to our food security team for the presentation and for your critical work that you're doing every day for our residents and I also you know it's not necessarily Meals on Wheels but I do think that that is a non-profit with a proven track record and I even I would definitely be in favor of like eliminating their waiting list I like it when there are strategies that solve problems that are tangible I feel like so many of our problems are you know amorphous and they feel intractable but you know when you've got a really a solution right in front of you I don't know and I actually thought maybe you had that in mind and it was subsumed by emergency food providers you know it was in one of those categories already and maybe it is

um but anyway just pile on the support from for seniors receiving food from Meals on Wheels um and um I just I think these are excellent recommendations I like the fact that they um touch a number of different approaches some related to emergency need of food and others related to infrastructure support and others sort of looking ahead at Equitable Food Systems and how to you know Foster entrepreneurism in the community around food and you know and for the people who have lit have had lived experience with this so I I am you know excited to see this and I'm glad y'all are working on it I did have one quick follow-up follow-up and it is for Mary Mary I remember when we you know first hired you uh we tasked

you with doing a similar project that we recently gave gudrin and it's one of the priorities for me uh we do have a lot of mapping priorities right uh so she's been mapping you know the resources that cjrc trying to figure out how we can help with the opioid crisis I know when we brought you on um it was on Zoom but we were talking about how many churches had their own food banks like their churches that have been operating consistently well-run food banks in Durham for 20 years 30 years something for 15. you know you did that Community within the 10 block radius knows on Tuesday I'm at this space I'm about to say some of the names but they were not necessarily looped into the county as we are trying to be creative and go out I know that that mapping was something that you were working on you know how well has and I know we hit the pandemic how well has that Network materialized and do we see a space where we can insert them because even again I'm thinking you know six months nine months

down the road we would sell a shortfall and I'm trying to figure out how our other Community Partners these more non-traditional ones might fit into some of these recommendations as well yeah um so we have over 60 food pantries in Durham and a lot of them are churches like you mentioned and so they are definitely included in the emergency food providers kind of category but also we thank you so much you all approved for us to do another round of the Durham County food security grants this year and so there will be 350 000 dollars that are going to be coming out as grant opportunities hopefully in the next month or so that pantries directly can apply to you and so that not even listed on here that's already funding that you've already approved and I also wanted to note that um you all had a also recently approved fifty thousand dollars for for me to

contract directly with Mills on Wheels to take some of the people off their waiting list I will say that it's over a year's time fifty thousand dollars doesn't cover a lot of people but we were able to take some people off the waiting list and I do think Mills on Wheels is a great partner and a really awesome organization I just wanted to know a couple of things um is that with Meals on Wheels um the way that and Jason is an awesome executive director and kind of Forward Thinking planning whenever he takes or the organization takes people off the waiting list he's really mindful about making sure that they have an ongoing funding stream so that you know if they don't want to take people off the waiting list for six months three months and then kind of drop them so he's really um you know thinking about how do we take people off and keep them off the waiting list so I just want to you know note that like as we're thinking about how do we take people off the waiting list and how many people thinking about um kind of into the future like what that funding might look like but also I

know Janine and I have had some conversations that taking you know 200 people off the waiting list also has some staffing implications for her team and making sure that we have enough case managers to support all those folks so I'm just you know kind of sort of teeing up for the next conversation potentially about how do we potentially work with Meals on Wheels or other organizations to really support our seniors in the long run just two other points um are we working you know double time or anything maybe we need more staff for this too just to be sure we certify those who are eligible I feel like every food security webinar I attend that that is lifted up as something that's an issue like people are eligible for WIC but they're not connecting to the resources and so I just wonder if if that's part of our strategy going forward and um this isn't wouldn't necessarily be seniors but I do think that working

through other systems to be sure people are getting food makes sense so you know this this idea of a universal School meals plan through Durham Public Schools everybody everyone's eligible for free School breakfast and lunch and I think the state is working on that that the Catherine Truitt has that as a goal but until they make that happen you know maybe we would need to step up the local level because that would feed a lot of people automatically and also create market for you know food too as well maybe some local we're lucky so just a couple other ideas can I jump in for a second I'm sorry um can I jump in the sure I know that I heard the voice I was just trying to see where it was coming from it's like um I wanted to just piggyback off of uh what commissioner Carter's last comments were that was going to kind of be what I was also interested in of how we're

partnering with schools because and also if we have data available that shows how many of our DPS students are just kids in general in Durham County are food insecure do we like to know that a number if that's available or continue to find that out and also in addition to the universal meals and just within the school I had briefly passed this idea along to me and commissioner Carter briefly briefly chatted about it in passing but of not just you know the availability availability of breakfast and lunch but like if there's Partnerships that we can build with the farmers and the agricultural players within Durham County to even like send home students with some sort of like green healthy food options because deserts where amateur Memorial also benefit their families and I know

that costs money I did warn Keith already texting him and telling him that I'm going to be asked I I can respond briefly to um kind of working with DPS we I have been in conversations with them and I can definitely Circle back I know that they're um and I apologize I'm not going to remember these numbers off the top of my head but there's um a certain percentage of uh that DPS would need to be able to get to as far as like students who are eligible for free and reduced Mills in order to qualify for what's called Community eligibility where essentially you reach a threshold and then everyone gets free meals um and I think DPS was they were working on the calculations last time I talked to them but we were getting really close to hitting that threshold and they were thinking that we could soon apply for Community eligibility

um so I can I so I know that you know not just at the state level but Durham County public schools are also looking into how do we provide free meals for everyone and be able to do it um based on the reimbursement from the federal government I'm not sure if if they're at a point where they could do that but potentially a little push from or some slight additional funding from local government might but but I I would love to like Circle back with them and then I can bring more information to you all Jacobs yeah I just want to follow up on two things um one was commissioner Carter was talking about well about other other sources to address food food Security in our community and you alluded to um Duke being helping out with the devil bucks but there are hospitals in our region

and even in our state um health systems that do do provide prescriptions for food and there is one hospital I'm thinking of who has they have a food bank in their hospital and so when people leave the hospital people are given a prescription to go and get food um you know so I I think we will also really need to keep and we really need to have more engagement about the issue of social determinants and food being part of people's Health in our community and the way that our we only have one Health System in Durham really I mean between Duke and Duke Regional and then they're affiliated with Lincoln but how it would be beneficial for Duke to be investing in in patients um having healthy food to eat and really what that looks like

um so I that's one thing I just wanted to put out there um and the other was years ago when looking at also structural issues around our our local food system we did have a program that was tied to our Farmers getting Gap certified so they could sell to institutions where we actually were trying to integrate local food into our jail um and and the provider I guess the sheriff's not here anymore but the food provider then for our jail was buying from local farmers who were Gap certified so you know between Durham and I know Durham Public Schools is doing some of that but again this is kind of a big picture thinking for our for our strategic Innovations staff but you know the potential for institutional

food buying whether it's within Durham County um you know our our other institutions um how we connect that to to our um local farmers you know people being able to collectively fulfill orders for different things so I don't know how much people are talking about that now but and how we create that yeah so I'm going back to your first point about Duke they do have some clinics that have pantries or um kind of community like a healthy food uh bags essentially that they give patients but it is it I don't think it's health system-wide I have definitely been in communication with some folks who are interested in doing a lot more food security work across the health system but I think yeah I I think that there's a little there's definitely more need for them for Duke

to walk work across clinic and across departments and also potentially us to work with them and kind of help um bring a little bring more folks to the table but I do think that there's there are definitely some opportunities for other clinics to kind of get on board with providing healthy food to their patients um the other thing um essentially what you're describing is what's called kind of a good food procurement plan and that is definitely something that I've been looking into and that have had some conversations with folks and even had some conversations with farmers in the community I think it I think it's a good place to start a conversation I think it'll definitely take us a little bit of time to get there but I do think that having a food procurement um generates not only just um I think it's just a good thing for the county to do but also I think it definitely stimulates our local economy and kind of supports our local farmers

and you know creates more Community generational wealth within the farmers that we have here and IT addresses some of those inequities in our food system so I I would love to continue that conversation with you all okay so I apologize I missed part of your presentation when when my children call everything else has to take second place um but uh a couple of things I just wanted to lift up and on expand infrastructure support seniors I think we do not do enough for our seniors and I'm sure that's been lifted up already so I won't lift that up and the other thing is um anything that has to do with this with DPS if you can let us know what those things are so that we can ask DPS to get it on there agenda when we do Joint City

County and DPS meetings then they can give us a briefing as to what they're doing so that we can see where the connection is for the county and DPS so to see anything that we need to do and we need to do that as well for the county what are the things that we are providing especially around Health Mental Health and food those are the two things that I think we need to get on the dps's schedule and so that when we meet with them we can have a briefing as to what those things are okay thank you so I will just sum it up I want to make sure that we don't miss anything but it sounds like we've heard you would like for us to expand the partners that we're having conversations with in addressing this hunger Cliff that we

are about to experience and then to also have more sustained conversations around this to make sure we're addressing the immediate need as well as planning for what we can do in the future because otherwise we'll do it in isolation and it never works thank you thank you all so so much manager so well could we give one more additional direction of Staff this week in your most recent newsletter you actually sent out it wasn't until Catherine said the March 1 deadline you actually sent out a photo of your rights and responsibilities around emergency food stamps and why it was going to be ending so there's a link in legal aid said this is what you need to know if if we could ask staff this week on our social media since it is kind of end of the day and starting over tomorrow could we Elevate that for the public because I saw it on Friday but since these are the two days I think it would be good to just push it out one more time so folks know what they need to do even though they did get

the other letter so and and to permission Burns Point um you all did a great job with that QR code that people can just click on that has local food resources which is fantastic so I agree it's a good time to push do another push and I will just add in case I don't get a chance to reach out to you all directly so Duke has initiated a Chancellor's Community Health Advisory Board and they are looking for topics for us to discuss it's a great diverse group of leaders that are at that table I think this would be a great topic for us to lift up at one of those meetings so please reach out to Deborah Clark Jones is the contact person here you probably have already had conversation with her reach out to her and ask if we can conclude that as an artist one of the agenda items Miss Pierce thank you chair Howard

um manager if I will I just want to share something um Vice chair Jacobs you mentioned that you noticed that we were collaborative in our discussions and I just wanted to uplift that that is equity work in action that we took across systems approach we discussed the issue and this this part that we're implementing we understood that at the federal level and and local levels that we weren't able to um the monies are going away so with this proposal what we're able to do while that's happening is address some systemic issues that we know are present but not you know pull the carpet away from people so we're doing that both an approach and we truly used an equity lens to address the issue so thank you for noticing that and I just wanted to uplift that because we never kind of noticed when Equity is happening but I just wanted to pause to let us know that

we're doing that work thank you so much we have um two more conversations thank you great I'm excited because it's been in the works for a while so great okay partners next World Peace we have um some conversations next about funding that was allotted in the budget and the framework for our youth programming we allocated 350 000 to Crawford extension to support 4-H efforts and expansion and in your pre-meaning materials and I'll invite Donna rewalt to come um in your materials your pre-meaning materials there is a overview of the program efforts that will move forward

and I only have a couple of slides in here because I had a sense that we would be um short on time but Donna did a great job of fleshing out the concept and I have um I only included two of the slides that gave program overviews but Donna I'll let you surprised to me this will be exciting um thank you all for for uh Donna can you pull the mic just a little closer to you thank you all for uh hearing our presentation about our 4-H organization you may know that 4-H is the largest Youth Organization in the country it has been around for quite a long time I think we have some former 4-H in this room you know one of the things that we know about our Durham County 4-H is that we've been very successful with what we've been able to do but we have a very small staff and a lot of volunteers and we know that more can be done with some

strategic Investments so we have looked particularly deeply at the community to better understand what might be the directions that would be most needed for additional investment and so one of those is working with our latinx youth we now have in our Public Schools over a third of our students our students who speak Spanish as their first language and are from a variety of countries and that pathway to career and to college is often a little bit more fraught for many of them depending on their status and so we have a wonderful program it has a national program but it happens to be based at NC State University called juntos together for better education and it is actually a program that walks families and students starting in eighth grade all the way through High School through that pathway through family engagement through 4-H clubs and youth

enrichment there's one on West one-on-one success coaching and mentoring and there's also some summer programming which takes place at NC State University where our students can actually be on a college campus and and have that experience the the best chances for success for a program like this is to have a full-time who does coordinators that's one of our recommendations is to have a new staff member that will coordinate the new today's program we're also really lucky right now that our our current 4-H agent is also bilingual Spanish so that is that will also be helpful so here are kind of and there are a couple of other additional components I'll Point those out as well so the juntos program coordinator the other need would be around a 4-H program assistant the other investment we really want to make is more in our Healthy Living Program I think you all have already heard data in the past about the youth Mental Health crisis we certainly have an adult Mental Health crisis but we certainly have a youth Mental Health

crisis it's certainly been exacerbated and also the the document that I've prepared for you has a lot of data around that but we certainly know that having proactive positive social activities based on Research is helpful to students in addressing those challenges including challenges of the are increasing drug use that has been happening particularly in the field epidemic so we want to be able to provide some of those opportunities so our program assistant would also lead our programming around the uh some of our health and wellness activities and so we have a wonderful National program called Health rocks which actually is delivered to groups in schools and in the community and it focuses on kind of healthy living and it does include addressing drug use and substance use so that's another aspect of the programming that would expand I think the other thing that's happened which you might have seen kind of evidenced by the pictures that we have is we've really been spending more time

recruiting youth who may not typically be served by programs like ours so for example Youth and public housing so our culinary club that you saw a picture of earlier that is right now all youth who are from our public housing communities that we've worked with in Community Gardens when we work with youth who are in more challenging situations it does take more time and more resources so if you think about a youth program youth programs have permission there's often background checks for adults there's a whole lot of administrative overload as well that goes into these types of programs that program assistant will also help that 4-H agent deal with some of those aspects as well and then also we really want to hand hold those families we don't want paperwork or language to be a barrier to accessing a County 4-H program so that's another thing that we've thought a lot about one of the other things that we do know about our structure which is is sometimes a challenge and that is that we do have a couple of Staff members in Cooperative Extension who are on a different salary

trajectory and schedule than our County employees and it's a lower salary trajectory and schedule so and that does include the 4-H agent so for example 4-H agent's current salary is like the minimum salary of one of these positions we'd be hiring so we and that person would be supervising these individuals so we do want to provide a small salary supplement for supervision because right now the 4-H isn't supervising anyone um and then some operational funds we do not want to do this kind of work without providing the proper funds to support it we also are great at looking for Grants and finding other funding and we will continue to do that so that will certainly supplement that I think one of the things you also will note that we have proposed funds for scholarships so those are for camps but other activities we have wonderful activities that 4-H Youth have access to like electric Congress or our youth voice training where the students get to spend a weekend getting really involved in those topics and so we would support them in going to camps we also are working with

some of our other internal County Services like through project build where we might be able to select appropriately then get scholarships to go to camp with us and one of the wonderful things about going to Camp through 4-H particularly residential Camp is that we actually send our Durham County staff with the youth so not only we're not listening a kid to camp for the first time where they're getting that life-changing enriching experience they're also going with a caring adult who is looking out for their interests while they're at Camp so we have some really great plans uh to you to really use this money we're great at stretching a dollar so we will make the most of this and I'm happy to talk more about it but I think that again that's perfect thank you so I have one let me have one quick question about that the one thing that I don't see in your plan is um where the students will participate in the ncacc last year there was no Durham students and there were students from all around the state and we didn't have any students in that

there at all I will make sure that I find out the answer to that question that's certainly something I mean certainly with kids voting also being in our portfolio as well as 4-H that's certainly something that's of Interest we also were at a transition between 4-H agents and that very well may have been part of that that challenge because we did Adrian just came on last summer with us yeah it would be great to give our students that opportunity because they do learn a lot by being there okay I will definitely look into that well thank you Donna I just want to say I very strongly support this um we you know 4-H has been a Cooperative Extension it seems like has been one of the places that has been very effective with our latinx community the different programs that you offer it just seems like you know Spanish people speaking people

in our communities feel very comfortable with accessing County Services at Cooperative Extension and that you know unfortunately that's not the case with all departments as we know that there's you know other kinds of fear or connotation we know with other and maybe DSS or public health but with Cooperative Extension it doesn't seem to be there so this really seems like a way that we can really um do Outreach to to our middle school and high school students and I love the fact that this program is focused on the sticking with the family through that anyone who's had a child in Middle School knows what happens when they get into Middle School it can be tough and so um we're you know being with the student and through that and then the connection to NC State

uh it's fantastic I mean this is not very much money for honestly for for three years um how many students do you feel like you'll be able to serve yeah and I and I and I've thought about that question we we've been debating that as a staff I mean I I know that we will double or triple the number of students we send to Camp um we're already moving in that direction so you know we've been sending you know the pandemic kind of tapped us back down to like sending maybe several so we can we can see ourselves at some point doing the 20 or 30 kids and getting a bus uh kind of situation where we're sending more Durham youth to Camp um I mean ultimately it will affect hundreds of kids without a doubt um so I I can probably you know we've been kind of crunching that a little bit to kind of think about what this will mean you know juntos obviously is a little different in that it's a much more intensive cohort so you expect to maybe run a cohort of 30 students through in a year but then of course that cohort builds because you would add the next year and the next year um so that's um you know I think as we roll out those plans we bring that

coordinator on board we'll better be able to answer that I appreciate you pointing out our ability to connect with our latinx populations it does help with Staffing and we do have 10 of our almost 30 staff are are bilingual Spanish and we do serve a lot of other groups as well but I one of the things we have been really interested in strategically is is making that Continuum happen so a lot of people come to us with welcome baby with those younger ones and we really want to make sure we do that warmer handoff to those middle and and high school aged kids so we're keeping those families with us longer in a place where they feel comfortable and can grow with us because they also contribute a great deal to our work too we have families all the time they they actually donate their clothes back or they come back and volunteer and they also bring new families to us you know we're often one of the first places that our refugees from Afghanistan showed up if you had young kids you were sent to welcome baby into our office right away so it's often a first

stop for a lot of families with young children and we really want to serve those older children well too well great well thank you for all that you're doing and of course we have our Refugee and immigrant coordinator working with you all too but I think this really fits with our board wanting to make sure that our youth have have things to do during the summer um so this is this is a great fit for many reasons thank you Wendy I'm so glad you forward to that conversation I was trying to hold myself back because I get so involved in that anything that has to do with our young people so thank you for continuing to lift it up and thank you Donna for the work that you're doing that continue to support our young people yeah what else um commissioner Burns um as always Donna thank you you know uh I I is Keith in here because I don't never ask for anything great get out no

I don't need you I'm about to ask for some money I'm about to pull a commissioner along and I didn't want you to know that I was about to ask for something so I I Echo the sentiments of my colleagues like I'm a 4-H kid right and you know back in my day which I know y'all can't believe I'm saying back in my day you could do a 4-H program for a week between four seven or ten dollars like that is how much it was in Bladen County like if you wanted to go and do a camp for a week it was cheaper than the Y and you know your parents could come up with four or ten dollars right uh I think a lot of the work that you're a lot of the opportunities you allow for us are very evidence-based and we do need to have wrap around services for the parents because some things are cost prohibitive I do think that there might be even some cultural differences it's not going to to come to our corporate extensions everybody's not going to be in a position to go to Parks and Rec even though those are significant Investments

at this entire board has tried to make you know how do we partner with the city how do we be intentional uh Tammy bag is not here but I sit on the library board oh yeah and so um we have done like every week there's like a multitude of Youth initiatives that we do um through that through the libraries every week A B Class how to make chapsticks uh let's do 3D printing I say all that to say I think that there's still more that we can do a lot of y'all know that we just got done with state of urgency at Hillside High School so that's a group of kids that said no we don't want the teacher the right to play we don't want to do West Side Story we want to write our own play about what we're dealing with and I don't think anybody up here who saw the player anybody in the community saw the play uh could say that we are not in a state of Crisis and so I do think that we have to do different things for different folks and really ask ourselves if we do not make the investment now when can we you know we had to sit and listen to students no it didn't happen in school

but you know I can't I can't believe how many kids stood up especially at one of the most recent performances you know a young girl stood up who was under the age of 18 and admitted to everybody she'd been shot twice on two different occasions adults in this room in law enforcement who have not been shot once and so that really you know it really took me to a place because that's not something that a social worker can handle that's not necessarily something that a a teacher can handle that's trauma right like you don't get that straight out of school so I do want to make sure that as we we look around the community what are some of the other spaces and here's what my question comes in I know that we have worked with boys and girls club we know that they're servicing about four or 500 students and we said we were going to circle back with them we've made it we're putting a school right there we bought the shopping center there now we have um we've made I think a small investment there on that side of the community what types of Investments could we see from

staff in addition for that boys and girls club and I Elevate this if for no other reason the Y is closing right and so we do see a gap in what we're going to have for you services so I'm trying to figure out like what are some other things that doesn't mean I don't want to vote Yes for Universal Pre-K but I think that we can all agree that we need additional supports outside of school and outside of introductory services anybody got something I will offer one thing that we are doing and we have worked with the girls and boys club um and you'll probably hear about this during the budget process later but we have brought in the expanded food nutrition education program which is a federal program and is also connected with 4-H on the youth side and so we actually have a a youth educator in our in our office now that we um have had at the boys and girls club and is trying to build like some longer term Partnerships so he's going to consistently deliver as long as they have him few nutrition education classes at different ages so it's often targeted

depending on the age um so we are we actually have also invested in that process as well and we do have the ability to go into and work with other organizations so if there's some things that we could be doing more from the 4-H Cooperative Extension perspective with the boys and girls club I know we have previously installed Gardens with them and done other things but we certainly be happy to engage in a conversation about things that would work for them but I'm sure there's more that others have commissioner Burns we can follow up because I'd like to be able to share of the Investments that we made with the arpa allocations that we did the proposals that are youth centered focused that are recreational related those that are um academically focused to help with learning loss but to your point it there are gaps in areas

that the community does need to continue coordinated efforts this is a space too that we've talked with the city of Durham staff about seeing where we could partner with youth programming as well because of the State of Affairs across the world and how we help our youth become our future leaders and we we just have to help them so we'll Circle back to clarify for instance what's in youth programming that we Fund in our current budget what we funded in arpa knowing that we won't be able to sustain all of this but looking longer term um the policy conversations that the board will will have to have how what are those coordinated efforts to build more systems for our youth oh you thank you both and again Donna

thank you for the program and the holistic programming and the fact that I I see it and it's not very expensive so that's why I'm like what else can we do but thank you and again I support it down here by myself nether I need you back a little bulk at this end of the table um I just wanted to thank the Cooperative Extension Don and all your staff it's clear that you all have really been thoughtful about how to increase your capacity to to implement programming in ways it'll be successful in in ways that will reach more children and youth and will also do a you know sort of double duty in trying to reach out to children who might not otherwise be served um and I would really hate for a Young Person's family and the young person to

want to go to camp and for the cost of the camp especially if it's a county you know connected camp like something through the Cooperative Extension I would hate for the person not to be able to go because of that cost so I was glad to see that in there in that in your budget but you know maybe that's an area where more is needed but I expect you guys have analyzed how many what what the demand will be and that you probably think that amount matches the demand um I think it matches where we want to start because I think it's really important to make sure we take kids who can be successful at camp and are prepared to go and so we want to get the Staffing up so I mean I could see a point in time like let's say we are we are filling one bus and we want to take a second bus we might want to come back and talk about that yeah I think we really want to do this really well yeah I think absolutely we're at the level where we think we can do that really well right another thing I really like about the Cooperative Extension I do have a great deal of faith in the programming coming out of the Cooperative Extension um and am glad that you're looking at

ways to build the internal capacity you know of that department so that we can continue to do great things in the community and just really quickly if I could lift up the continued need to do even more around safe sleep and I know the Cooperative Extension helps with that and has it has come up several times recently on the child fatality prevention task force a number of infant deaths are related to Suffocation basically from sleep co-sleeping patterns and so I just wanted to lift that up and we and I think we would be happy to bring any information back on so we do run the cribs for kids program which is a national program it provides a safe sleep environment so in the form of a safe pack and play and we also provide the supportive education with families so and I know that you know this is often based on referral and we do a lot of Outreach for this too but I think there's

you know it's often making getting the family connected with us and and making that connection is really important so um and then we also do raise you all provide money and we also raise additional funds to make sure we can provide enough of those supplies yeah and and we've been meeting with the mayor mayor of the mayor's interested in these kind of programs as well and with um the activities for young people for the summer we've been she's been I've been meeting with her around that so and the May and the manager and the city manager will also be in that conversation about what are the things that we can do jointly so there that would give us more mileage for our buck if when we can do it together so just keep that conversation going because I know she's interested and I will note that our chief of staff Shannon Trapp has been working with the city and the office on youth

to capture what programs are being offered on both sides and we're looking to create a landing page on their website so that it's a one click and people can have access to what's available Vice chair Jacob says yes thank you Shannon for doing that um yeah I want to lift up that the um that the city manager on her her newsletter this that came out on Friday she she focused on summer opportunities for Youth and she actually has a link for the programs that Durham Parks and Rec offers she highlights the youth work program the summer youth work program and also jobs that the city has seasonal jobs like lifeguarding and she references the future you know partnership with the county but I think

we should remember it's not just especially when you're talking about high school kids I mean any type of Engagement is great some kids need to work or want to work and then also the triangle volunteer Center non non-profit and volunteer Center leadership I forget the new name of it but it's our volunteer Center you know volunteer opportunities so I think there's a lot of we do really have a lot of resources out there I think the challenge is making sure that people in the community know about them and feel comfortable kind of you know taking the next step so thank you Shannon did you want to add anything to that I know you all had a very exhaustive conversation about what what we feel like would be we have and we've been working on capturing all of those items on the county side and the city side and we are looking at the office on youth will be start promoting more heavily on March

8th is when they will have their landing page ready to begin pushing that out we'll also push that out on our socials I wonder if it's possible for us to think about some kind of a joint slogan that we could all get around you know like just something you know I don't know I'm not the person to think of it but just you know just something that we can all get behind that we could really about you know get you know about getting busy getting do doing something well summer because you know it's it's tied to mental health it's also tied to the youth violence yeah and and we're talking about more of a short-term strategy something we can do for this summer but also looking at a longer term strategy because there were some other ideas that we came up with that it's just not possible for us to achieve this summer but looking forward

3 million dollars to support efforts with maternal health so I'm gonna make this available good afternoon chair Howerton Commissioners manager so well thank you for having us we're pleased to bring updates around our efforts in maternal health and the various initiatives that

you funded for this current year and where we look to go in the next few budget years so with that I'm going to turn it over to our director of nursing Hattie wood who's going to speak more about the topic good afternoon Commissioners good afternoon manager thank you for allowing me another opportunity to come before you so you've asked for an update on how we've used the funding that we asked for last fiscal year and we either have to pull it tighter to you or speak louder one or the other you asked us to come before you to give you an update on the maternal Health where we are with the funding requests that you allocated for our services keeping in mind that we want to decrease the numbers of maternal morbidity and mortality of the black and brown population in Durham County so having said that we go forward with um

so what is done what has been done so far and what is still needed I'm just going to throw out if if we were in a perfect world what we'd also like also so what we've done so far is we provided lactation support centering pregnancy started back up uh the blood pressure monitors were ordered and they will begin to be given to our clients who meet the criteria and while going to further as to who meets the criteria for receiving a blood pressure cuff and why people need to know their number um we were interviewing for the Women's Health Navigator position that you allocated that would Implement to hear her campaign and work without moms and that uh 10 months of the pregnancy the postpartum period to decrease the mortality and I'm happy to say that we have selected a candidate after very rigorous interview process there were specific items I mean um requests that I liked for the person that would uh be

selected for that position and so we have selected an applicant for that and we are now currently sending out for references and expect to move that forward we've established more Community Partnerships and we aided in expanding lactation space in the county of Durham and we've funded food Equity workshops and um there is now a community health worker in the um health education division with the ioch maternal Health Grant and she's Spanish speaking and she'll be working specifically with that Community to decrease the mortality and morbidity of the brown women in Durham County that's it all

so we have an ibclc internationally breastfeeding International breastfeeding um certified internationally certified lactation consultant the position that you funded last year which was funded 23 from the county and the other position and the remaind was was funded by the grant we asked last year on our service on our NSR request that you the county fund that 100 which you did since then she has gone on to become internationally certified as a lactation consultant provider in our maternal health program she's integrating breastfeeding education to prenatal appointments at appropriate gestational ages she's offering the one-on-one breastfeeding support is needed we've partnered with breastfeed Durham health education department who has the iocmh Grant and to assist an implementation of

the 10 successful steps to breastfeeding and we have a public health working with a community-based organization to develop a strategic five-year breastfeeding plan Public Health has aided 10 Durham County businesses in the formation of lactation spaces and we funded two first food Equity workshops utilizing that Ico for MH funds from public health and they have also public health education transformation has welcomed um and Andrea Chicos to the health education department she's a bilingual Community Health worker that will focus on providing reproductive life planning reproductive Justice and breastfeeding support to Durham County Community Spanish speaking families so what I'm going to talk about we've reestablished our centering program and our centering programs have restored and

these are some of the positive outcomes we've had since we opened it back up since last summer as covet decreased we began to slowly open up our centering programs the number of women with outcomes so far have been 16. so you look at the percent of babies that were born before 37 weeks when they were in the cinema program zero zero percent the number of babies born with low birth weight zero percent six percent were admitted to the NICU and a hundred percent would discharge breastfeeding as a result being our centering program and then we talk about vbac that's vaginal birth ethosity section we didn't have any of those we remember now our denominator is 16. so and then we had 19 percent that had C-section births so centering has proven what we want to do is to increase our centering programs we currently have about 10 programs going on we'd like to

go up to at least 20. we have Spanish-speaking sermon programs and we have English speaking and so on one of I'll get with that so last year you also allocated fifteen thousand dollars while blood pressure monitors so we have we have allocated those funds and we've placed the orders for the blood pressure monitors to be given to our maternal health patients and I'll go back with you to tell you how significant that is everyone needs to know what their number is that's very important and this will support monitoring throughout the pregnancy and during that fourth trimester that fourth trimester that postpartum period that fourth trimester is one of the most that's really important is where you get your increase of maternal mortality your data that that's that's where it's been saying things are not being picked up um and so that's also known as the postpartum period and we're happy now that Medicaid has addressed that it is a 10 month of Medicaid you can receive the services whether your services during

that 10 months will be as a result of birth or whether there were other issues that came up but you will have that fun the Medicaid to use for pregnancy related issues during that time we were actively um interviewing for the nurse Navigator when we when we made the slack we have made a selection like I said we'll be moving forward with that probably within the next week or two so we'll establish support for the critical first year after giving birth that's what this Navigator is going to do we asked for that position and we gave it the title of a ob Navigator and we got like we gave a lot of support to Duke that Duke has applied for multi-year Grant and you can the grant is to generate Innovative approaches to address preventable maternal mortality decreased severe maternal morbidity and promote maternal Health Equity in

partnership with one or more population that experienced that maternal Health disparities including but not limited to black African Americans Hispanic Latinos American Indians Alaska native Asian Americans native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders the socio nomically disadvantaged populations the underserved rural populations or sexual and gender minority populations persons with disabilities are also prior to population so we um our health director was happy to sign a little support for this with Duke so what so in a perfect world if you ask me what would we like we'd like to have funding to offer doulas for all Durham County maternal Health clients this effort is supported by acogs American College of gynecologist 2019 report and the march of diamonds report card we did put in a request for another

position in maternal health clinic this year as a dedicated centering assistant our wish is also for this Center of assistant to be bilingual and that and that person will be dedicated specifically to maternal Health in our sermon programs to assist with the coordination of centering and then way in a perfect world if we could have funding for an in-house Durham County Women's Health Ultra sonographer that would be awesome so I want to go back and just give you a little information about two groups who have successfully delivered since restarting cinnamon group in August some of the comments were one of the best benefits of me was that someone always asked the question that I didn't think to ask that's when you have all the clients that are like you in the room and receiving care some people may be scared to ask that question but then somebody else will ask it and everybody gets the answer and then another person said they felt extremely supportive and safe

environment it was a safe place for them and when it came to time for laboring surring had helped them and informed them of what to expect in reference to the blood pressure monitors it's those will be given to every client that qualifies for baby aspirin during pregnancy some of those qualifying factors include first pregnancy African-American via my grade in 30 mother or sister history of preeclampsia more than 10 years between pregnancies prior low birth weight babies and various other comorbidities knowing your number is vital especially during pregnancy and postpartum period so and then a client may come to the clinic and you know we call and get that number we can call them and ask them they are trained on how to set how to take their own blood pressure to keep a record of it and so that's very significant

we talk about the position that you gave us for the navigator that candidate would be vital in implementing the hear her campaign that here her campaign listen to me I know what I'm talking about this is a great support system for women during the first year after giving birth this here her campaign this person will be working across programs in the health department and we'll be reaching out into the community and as an ambassador for public health and for maternal health and serving on committees for for the public health also and strengthening our existing Partnerships as well as establishing new Partnerships to continue the pursuit of a healthy Community by focusing on the women and children of Durham County and the grant that we're support that gave a little support there's a multi-year multi-million dollar Grant Five Points five to seven community research centers will be established

across the county and across the country and they will receive the decision in May of 2023 whether or not Duke got that Grant so the doulas you ask what would they do so the doulas will funding will help ensure that all Durham County Department of Public Health maternal Health Physicians have access to the support they need during the prenatal and birthing process and the position that we request for the clinic assistant this will allow for a much needed for our recruitment planning and executing a growing centering pregnancy program the data is in and it shows what remarkable success we have with centering the centering model so you ask so why do you want an ultrasonographer okay so we currently would like that in a perfect world it will allow for immediate ultrasounds to help initiate first trimester care for our clients currently we refer our

clients to do for their ultrasounds that's a delay in care there's a delay in contrast we must send all of them to do for dating so if we get them there in their dating and they're 24 weeks as opposed to 16 weeks so then what labs did they missed on their first trimester that they could have gotten that we need to catch up on and what can we do you know are there a alpha fetal protein test AFP genetic testing that should have been done earlier and that that caused a delay in initiation of any of our first trimester care which Studies have shown helps to reduce infant mortality and morbidity so we've also said if should we get the position for the sonographer because we have the ultrasound machines that we would need budget adjustments to accommodate the maintenance of our ultrasound machine as well as supplies to be able to deliver that care to our clients great so this is so great I'm just in here

just salivating from last year till now totally different conversation so thank you for all the work that you've done to get to this far and um you know I know the duelers are excited and thankful for the work that you're doing to get them in place and I absolutely support the the request so you know this has been such a conversation I think the biggest impact that this conversation made on me was watching that video and you know which one I'm talking about where mothers were dying from giving birth that I mean there there were probably a hundred people in the room and I don't think their word was a dry eye in that room it was just so profound to watch what was occurring

um and we can't have that endure so I just want to say thank you kudos and let's keep going yes if I may chair Howerton today was timely because immediately prior to this session Hattie and I were at our born and Durham healthy for Life retreat uh for the for the morning with Community Partners so I think that we know thinking about where we were last year and where we are now we know we've come a long way and we still have a long way to go yeah but we have absolutely been been trying to do that in partnership with our community-based organizations and with our moms in the community who are advocating and are who are affected by these by these issues and it's our job to to play our part in trying to make improvements and I think we have really done a lot of of hard honest work with a lot of those groups that have

helped to bring us to where we are and I think inform these requests that we bring forward to you so good thank you commissioner Carter thank you so much Hattie and Liz this is a great presentation and I agree with what Brenda is saying too makes a smile I think I even saw some Smiles you know just break out on your faces as had he was describing the recommendations to us and it is wonderful when we ask for what do you need in order to you know what sort of Investments do you need to address a disparity that we've lifted up and you have come back to us with this is these are the things we think we need we're already doing some of this and some of it involves new staff some of it involves Partnerships and both of those are great and I hope that we will you know approve these as many as possible I feel you know like they're

all really valid and much needed and I believe in the health department too I Believe in Your Capacity to implement these and and do a good job do a great job I love the idea of of doulas for all of our maternal Health clients and I don't know whether I saw the same video as Brenda I think Deborah Craig raised him a video out last year um about the disparities in maternal Health outcomes and the the women who were you know living this situation doulas was a number it seemed like it was one of the most lifted up interventions that they believed would would really make a difference um so anyway there are all of all this is great the breastfeeding support so much more is being done there uh it's just fantastic all of these centering nurse Navigator Community Health worker excellent thank you so much and I think speaking thinking specifically about our doulas I want to

acknowledge that that work is happening in the community they just aren't getting paid for it and we know that yeah and so we need to figure out how to pay them for it and to ensure that all of our patients are able to access those Services yeah oh yeah absolutely yeah there's been a couple of specials on on one of the TV channels about it as well yeah the duelers having a conversation about the work that they're doing um happy Easter so I didn't have to because that was exactly what I was about to bring up I know a lot of doulas I know the need for doulas I know what it's like to go in the hospital and just because of how you look you sicker than the person that came in right before you and when you're trying to have a baby you need somebody who can advocate for you it might not be your spouse or your partner because they're sitting there looking crazy too so somebody who knows

the plan and level-headed so much like my colleagues I don't have a problem with any of these requests however I am going to be somewhat of the wet blanket today ain't got nothing to do with you all I got to do with the community um a couple of things I'm excited about everything I saw I think you said it best we've come a long way we still got a ways to go we elevated some issues with disparities and so we put things in place to help close the gap in those disparities but I didn't see no numbers today ladies so I don't know if we've and there are no numbers in this so I don't know if we have closed the Gap in that disparity and we might not know today it might take two three years I'm all you know smart enough to know that right but I would love to see and it doesn't have to just be last year and it doesn't have to be today but I would love for somebody to email me maybe this can be one of our directives I want to see a demographics breakdown of who we are serving uh with uh who we are actually serving because again every

every year the same thing comes out black educated woman more likely to die in the hospital more likely for their child to die in the hospital than somebody who immigrated here 60 days ago right so if we if we're putting all this in place and that disparity still exists then we haven't done what we needed to do I'm not saying that that's the case I just want to see are we improving right because in every budget it's the same thing dead black woman dead black woman dead black woman nobody wants to hear that but that's what the case is so until I can see that some of the stuff that we're doing is great and as beautiful as it sounds is actually doing it then maybe we should be doing something else is that fair that ain't mean that's fair so as far as the sonographer I'm all also a proponent of it at ncciw that's the North Carolina correctional institute for women you know nobody wanting to pay for a mammography machine nobody want to pay for a sonographer uh and I think I forget how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it was but once you put those things in place you do catch Things Early you catch cancer earlier so now

you know the person by the time you're in pain with cancer we're stage three or four when we could have caught it here by the time you're in pain with a baby we have a whole nother problem so I am a proponent of it but I also know you you elevated it it's not just a sonographer I need somebody who can operate it I need supplies so I would love to know how much it's going to cost not because I don't want to do it but I actually know we're going to need some other stuff around a machine and I want to make sure that y'all have that other stuff around that machine so I know that that's not for this meeting I know the manager is probably going to bring it um back to us but uh also the other thing I would like this is a request for me I I would hope my board would also be interested you talked about how some of the doulas are not being paid I do want to know what culturally confident non-profits we have been working with like that's important because again we can have as many doulas as we want to we can have as many folks as we want to I'm happy we're getting Spanish-speaking folks but again something that drama

Freeman said I found it in this community all over North Carolina we will get a translator for everybody else except for the folks that look like us and every now and then I speak English but I need a translator so I just want to make sure that we're also having culturally competent doulas that can go into these spaces and speak up for these women where they're in a significant amount of pain very afraid trying to bring a baby into this world but kudos to you ladies and gentlemen who have worked on this and I can't wait to see what's next but I do want to see if we cracking a nut on these disparities so I'm happy to share we as you know we have a fabulous data team in public health We Will We Will brag about them every day because they're wonderful um and we have really taken the dashboard approach that we use during covid and that we know served our community so well and we've started to apply it to other areas in public health one area that is in the works and I think in pretty good shape we weren't quite prepared to share it today but we do have a maternal Health dashboard that

is specifically looking at disparities it's looking at who we're serving yay for that it's looking at who we're serving in our Clinic compared to giving who's giving birth in the county it's looking at when people are starting care like some of the data that Hadi did mention related to centering it's looking at breastfeeding rates returning for postpartum follow-up visits all those things because we absolutely need to be looking at that data we know it's going to take a minute it's not going to happen year year from one year to the next but over the next five years we better see some changes or else we're not doing the right things so thank you for bringing that up yeah so go ahead I just wanted to add thank you commissioner Burns for your comments because um as time it would have it there's a really important maternal and infant Health conference or conversation that's going to happen in Guilford County next to month and of course they reached out to Durham County to work and partner with them not only are they including of

course Community affected individuals and families and partners of people who unfortunately have had a very poor outcome they're inviting clinical folks and of course community and doulas and so it's this cross-section of Partners and community that will come together they have full support of their elected officials and we're right next door and they said will you partner with us to share in this conversation I believe also Wake County so something that we need need to have this conversation I think it's going to have statewide implication in terms of who will show up and participate in this conversation it's much needed and we know not only is our County affected our state all across our country we have this great disproportionality and disparity around maternal Health outcomes and infants and so really really excited about that and what we

come back with we can incorporate but I will say that Durham County I guess I'm a little biased but Durham County really really we really want to delve more deeply into those structural and systemic issues that really also contribute significantly to these outcomes so thank you for that bringing that up and if I can add aren't we also looking to cover the cost if we have people in Durham like doulas that want to attend that we will cover the cost of their attendance share the cost for being a part we don't we don't have to pay that I will say we have the full support of director Jenkins and so we're working together to see what you know how we can help build capacity for the for the conference to make sure that we have a state folks are even interested in attending so something is just growing into a conversation that we needed to

have so um we'll get back with you on that all right all right all right all right and um Keith is saying we got to hurry up I see him up there and windy has something so Keith how much more do you have that you need to get done keep keep you're going to take more time when he was presenting and now he's trying to wrap us I saved my questions for this evening hey hey all right um commissioner Jacobs yeah I just want to Echo great presentation great work um on all that you've done really in a short amount of time and I do also look forward to seeing the outcomes it was great just to see those outcomes with 16 people um was fantastic um just to clarify because we're talking about arpa funding right now the the what still is needed are you going to can you share what is this are these

things that can be funded with arpa funding that we're looking at what I would recommend is we do with any proposal is that the proposal is presented and because there were dollars in the plan that were set aside for public health components but we will determine how to address it with staff or an example there were some one-time cost items that may could be funded through the realignment of existing dollars overall in public health the reoccurring costs is something that we would have to consider but we will work with manager Joanne Pierce and the director to flesh out the budget in its entirety and then come back with some recommendations and which type of funding okay because I mean I I guess I thought these were focused on what we could use arpa foreign and we could use funding arpa

funding for it but um because it's not fleshed out I just wanted to okay this is most appropriate okay but I have to do the crosswalk right I mean because we're doing the um the 4-H program right is some positions too right and that was already programmed in yeah so we'd been talking about that for about a year okay and so um for this because it's right now okay we just do our due diligence so that okay got it got it yeah and I just want to highlight also that the the non-profits that we did fund for maternal off one of them was was an organization that is focused on doulas so it's also really great to see the alignment between what you're doing and connecting what what's happening in the community I mean again this conversation of how do we have a systems approach um it sounds like the Navigator when you

were talking about the Navigator I was like oh you're going to have another you're going to have a merry cape [Laughter] uh with you know maternal Health somebody who can be out there you know making those connections and looking at a system because you know again like everything else we It's gotta we we have to have things that are embedded systemically so I was really glad to hear you talk about Duke um because again that's that's one of our huge partners that that needs to be part of the solution um and investing in this as well so um I hope we will continue those conversations as well with Duke but so yeah I just I don't want to acknowledge the manager uh and um Rodriguez is not here but I want to acknowledge her because when we start to sit down with some of the

doulers to try to get this to under unravel this conversation rod a County Manager Joanne were committed to figure it out what it was that they were asking for and that was it was no small task so I just wanted to acknowledge you and just and I know Rod's not here but that was just we appreciate you doing that and hanging in there as they were committed and they had to get us committed around them so thank you all for the work that you've done on this issue I did have one question um so I remember from the previous presentation that actually the our next population has the even worse uh outcomes around maternal health no it wasn't okay I thought in Durham we were seeing that and in Durham our disparity

around maternal morbidity and mortality the disparity ratio is highest comparing white moms to black or African-American moms our Latina moms fall in between those but I will say in Durham and I think within our Clinic our Latina moms tend to come to care later and they tend to have some more access to care issues so kind of other factors coming in there but in terms of actual data related to okay morbidity immortality it's our black moms who are suffering the highest thank you for clarifying that so are we I didn't maybe I wasn't paying attention are we doing anything with more Outreach bilingually or is that has that been have there been I don't know what what our status is related to that do do we have that capacity with I think in terms of reaching our Latino moms like Hattie mentioned we have our community

health worker position funded through Ico for MCH who is bilingual in the past the community health worker positions for that Grant have not necessarily been bilingual so I think that's a big step and then um Additionally the centering assistant that we're asking for this year would be a bilingual person to support our Spanish centering programs we find that more moms tend to gravitate towards centering who are Spanish-speaking and so the more support that we can give to our centering program that is likely going to most significantly affect our Latino moms in addition to that we also have our Care Management high-risk program see Sim harp where we have case managers and we have some that are Spanish-speaking and we also are funded um with another Grant from the state that supports um uninsured and um underinsured well actually uninsured not Medicaid patients that need resources allocations and they they

receive Care Management Services from our Spanish-speaking care managers as well and linking them to resources and these are high-risk pregnancies so she directly works with the specific Spanish population in reference to that that are pregnant so well you all are doing a lot it's really impressive thank you what were the questions well thank you question chair Howerton this is Nick go ahead thank you thank you so much for this presentation I had uh two questions and I apologize for the first one if I if this was already discussed and I would have missed it but you know especially in the conversation around black internal health this is more just a general question to staff I know we had a presentation uh a few months back from some Doula organizations within the community and they were supposed to be coming back to do a follow-up conversation because I know we didn't get through that do we know when that's going to be happening and if that's

going to be tied into this discussion that's my first question commissioner Alum we some of those doulas through collaboration and Coalition build and received finding through the first wave of Opera distribution okay so will they become back to finish their presentation to us or just wondering we will come back to the board to award contracts and what we can do is make sure that we Elevate what was in their proposal and we can also send some additional information to you after the meeting based on their initial application and that review process so I think you'll be excited there's also a Consortium among them that started that's also being co-facilitated by the

United Way which is excited and so we'll we'll follow up and give you more detailed information on that thank you and then my second question was more about um just in inclusiveness and making sure like what work are we doing in this field and just generally in Durham public health of looking at the language that we're using because I know a lot of the places in this conversation we've put you know women and moms but also making sure that we're being inclusive to non-binary uh and trans uh birthing people just to be inclusive to them and making sure the Outreach is equity areas thank you for pointing that out commissioner Alam and I think that is good feedback I know in general we're tending towards using terms more like birthing people or people who give birth rather than just exclusively talking

about women within our clinic at Public Health we don't see a high proportion of transgender or gender non-binary folks but that is certainly an area that we think is an area of for growth both within our OB clinic as well as our family planning clinic and thinking about how we offer that care to everyone along the sex and gender Spectrum so I think you bring a good point in terms of the language that we use both in presentations and and really that's been asked for and some of the grants that we've submitted to include the partnership with Duke that that Hattie mentioned in our presentation thank you so much I appreciate it okay any other questions all right great thank you all so much great presentation thanks so I think we're scheduled for another break right now and I know that we are a

little off our time with our schedule but I think because we allow time for commissioner discussion at the end of the day we can certainly allow that discussion to move toward tomorrow if we need to because I know we were all here late last night so let's take a we can take a break are we going to end at four we're gonna yes yes point so I will I will I second that talking tomorrow I will Reserve that discussion time for tomorrow okay but let's take about 10 minutes all right

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I think it's green [Music] okay so it looks like we have our presenters for our final presentation of the day thank you so much for your patience so we have Angela Nunn here in gudrin Palmer to talk to us about the youth home give us an update looks like our presentation is ready so we'll go ahead and turn it over to you all all right good afternoon everyone and thank you for giving us an opportunity to come and present what our needs are moving forward as most of you are aware the Durham County Youth Home provides secure custody programs and care for juveniles who've been detained in the courts while their weight disposition the children reside in our facility are between the ages of 10 and 17. however we do have 18 year olds in our system now and that is because they're still in the Juvenile Justice Courts and cannot be housed in our local jails

the youth home is one of 11 State Juvenile Detention facilities and we are one of four that are County run the children uh in our courts in our system are there for supervision the you poem provides emotional and safe environment with our juveniles receive custodial care that includes Mills clothing bedding routine medical attention educational resources and structured program and counseling right thank you this slide shows the existing facility our exterior View at entrance the interior view of our day room and um previous xtw review from Broad Street the facility was built in 1983 we currently have challenges with our

facility and O'Brien Atkinson did a study in 2017. T our plumbing equipment and our overall housing layout just just to add to this this facility was never built or intended to be a Detention Facility a secure facility for for you children right on this slide you will see the rendering of what we will look like in five months which is a significant stocks difference between what we look like as of today

um this is this view is from when you turn into the into the driveway so I don't know how many of you are driving past the construction right now on on Broad Street it looks pretty imposing looks like a fortress but I think the final product will be a lot more inviting and and the entrance will Orient itself to coming from as you turn into the driveway exactly this is our floor plan which is designed to meet all of our operational needs also allowing us the opportunity to classify separate and segregate our youth based on the offenses and of course their ages in which we have a difficult time doing in the current facility you will notice that we have four pods we have two PODS of 12 one pot of eight

and one pot of four for special housing we have three classrooms we also have an indoor recreation area which we did not have in the past so if inclement weather we could not have a good exercise activity for our children we also have an area designated for our medical team to work with our children as well as having office space in our administrative area for the youth home having an appropriate Lounge for our staff and a wellness room so that we can have an opportunity to take care of our own mental health in a stressful environment as well as locker rooms and showers for the staff uh to the right of that you will see our Assessment Center a space which is uh offices and conference rooms as well it's the light green uh top right top top right right yes this view is the layout of our current

facility as well as how the new facility sets in on that land area the goal of this project was to keep Durham children in Durham County it is approximately forty one thousand fifty five thousand square feet 36 beds 27 545 square feet is designated for programs and services so over half of that is for programming and services it also includes this assessment center this project was required as part of the legal settlement in 2019. we'll look into partner with the Department of Public Safety and Juvenile Justice on this project they cannot give us Capital funds but there is a commitment that they can perhaps give us funding for computers and furnishings so we're going to hold Billy to that we are also pursuing Lee gold

the assessment center the assessment center is not a community center for all Durham children the assessment center purpose is to serve at risk youth and those who have been caught involved or whose Behavior puts them at risk of being caught involved and to prevent further penetration of the Criminal Justice System chair Hamilton you and I worked on this project for a couple of years we've worked really hard really hard with the county manager the county manager gave us an okay and 2014 to assemble a group of stakeholders in which we did convened and we had representation from Durham juvenile court our district attorney and public defender's office our district court judges the Juvenile Justice Institute from North Carolina Central and University we had community community programming from the Department of Public Safety and Juvenile Justice our local jcpc programs psychologists and several of the community stakeholders who were experts in their prospective

fields that they third so we had a vast majority of people working on this project and coming up with an excellent plan that they thought would be good for Durham County with that said this space is designed for different agencies that tells Children and Families we will have system Navigators who would be at our facility in the assessment center one day a week or at a minimum a half a day and those system Navigators that we have pinpointed to date our Department of Public Safety we have Durham public schools that we're working with on that as well we have Alliance Behavior Health we have project build and I'm missing someone else but we do have a group of stakeholders who are currently committed to working with us in that facility there will be varying hours to accommodate family and Youth we have a collaboration with our partners in the Juvenile Justice System Mental Health Schools youth serving organizations and non-profits to ensure that we have adequate support in the assessment

center to be a resource of who can refer to this agency a youth May self-refer anyone can refer a youth or family to the center who is in crisis law enforcement our schools parents other source youth serving agencies and as well Juvenile Court I also think that the jcpc funded programs would be great um Partners to have time or or certain hours at the assessment center to be available to other families and Youth okay now let's talk about financing the youth home budget was built on phasing approach we understand that everything may not be able to open on day one therefore this budget is comprised of three significant

3 ftes for the administration part of the youth home an increase in our psychiatric contract additional operating expenses for supplies food copy seeds and radios and as I stated that would give us approximately 16 to 24 beds and currently there are 14 beds

right we also have requests in for partner agencies we have a request for Alliance to increase our licensed clinical social worker position to 100 percent we also are asking for wealth path staff to increase their nursing services and psychologists at the facility as well as Durham Public Schools to assist with our three classrooms we're asking for an additional teacher and a teacher assistant priority funding would give us an additional eight bets opening in one of the pods additional operating expenses for supplies food copy fees and uniforms and radios as well as an additional six ftes for youth home counseling positions and then I just want to remind you that those positions are classified as hard to feel and are very difficult to fail at this time and lastly I priority three requests is

for eight additional beds to be open and at that point at priority three that would be 36 beds additional operating expense supplies food copy fees and uniforms for the staff that would be coming on board at that phase as well as the additional five ftes and my last slide is the revenue sources related to our priority requests at funding at a priority one we are projecting an additional 260 thousand dollars in revenues on top of what we have already receiving at a priority two level funding that would incur an additional 152 thousand and our priority three 36 beds being opened would be an additional 308 thousand dollars so for the total revenue fully operational that would be an additional seven hundred and twenty

thousand dollars to make this happen and I also want to note that with the revenue sources that are coming in that usually reduces the youth home's net budget uh almost has which is what it has done in the past the projected Revenue that I have uh put on this slide I want you to understand is very conservative I anticipate that we would have the potential to increase that funding a little bit more but I wanted to be conservative and make sure that we can meet those those Revenue funding streets and at this time our entertain any questions that you may have thank you Angela and gudrin for your presentation you know we started this conversation yesterday we were a little premature um so I have two questions and then I'll pass it over to my board members one of

the questions that we had was about Staffing that we hear that there's a problem with keeping staff right now so what do you anticipate as far as Staffing We are continuing to hire as quick as possible I spend quite a bit of time screening applications and interviewing I currently have three conditional offers out with hoping that staff will be on board by mid-march or late March and then we will continue to interview until we can fill my positions we did participate in a a resource fair at the library back in the fall of the year we also have plans to reach out to our local universities to see if we can come

to you know there are resource fairs to have conversations with them as well um and we're just trying to hire as quick as possible yeah and we're competing with um other agencies to get to qualified people the most difficult part about interviewing and these positions is that um there's certain people are automatically weeded out because they have to meet the standards uh criminal charges will read someone out very quickly and then you know we have tests and they have to pass the physical drug screen mental health screening and all of those things because they're certified positions so a lot of people who interview are not qualified for us to move them further into the applicant process yeah well you don't know that until they come into the door and interview and hand you that package and then you do the research and realize it they they cannot I think the other the

other complicating factor is that it takes the process is quite time consuming and so if you have a qualified applicant by the time they go through the county process and the state standards process they may have moved on and they already found something else so these are very complicated situations what you're hearing is not just Durham it's other places as well across the state absolutely the other question that I have has to do with the assessment center that I just hear you say that it's it will not be for community in general is right the assessment center was designed to work with Children and Families at risk of being in the criminal justice system and who were in crisis it is a preventive model so it's not a community center for instance like the y or something like that where

children come and interact and play and do those things this is for children who show up at our doorsteps today saying hey I need help I'm homeless or a parent who drives up to the fence today and say I've had it with this child it was just suspended from school he just got into a fight I don't know what to do I received a telephone call from a parent to say I don't know what to do they're telling me he's not in the criminal justice system there's nothing they can do so what am I going to do and do I have to wait for my child to commit a crime to get help so those are the premises of why the assessment center was designed with those group of stakeholders because we were looking at what do we see happening today these children are sliding through the loops and they're getting in trouble and we know it's cheaper to prevent than it is to intervene when they're in the system and it's hard to get them out of the system once the criminal justice system touch our children's stats show that they

further penetrate the system so the most important thing that we can do is to keep them out of the system so that they will not struggle to get out and then get branded have felony charges can't get jobs can't be productive systems citizens in the state and the assessment center is designed to help those families who have been showing up at my door since 1991 when I appeared and I think the other point is juvenile justice has the option of diverting if if they get if a child has contact then then Juvenile Justice makes a decision as to whether or not to file a petition or whether to to offer a diversion and and and provide some services and so Juvenile Justice is will have a presence at that Center so this is where families can come and then having the the other agencies at the same place the ones that are

designed or or have a special interest in serving those kids that are at risk and and coming from very difficult backgrounds the hope is that the assessment center will bring Juvenile Justice and and and and child serving agencies together so they can get diverted get get connected get the families find support for the families for the parents like our you know the jcpc programs parenting of adolescence um they they do a really good job with the coming into a home and doing strengthening the family and the parents so those that's kind of the design for this juvenile Assessment Center okay the other the follow-up on that was one of the conversations that we had with the community was that they could have input about the programs that would be that we would have there have there been

any meetings with some of the community members at all I have gone around the community to meet with agencies who would allow me to come in I've reached out to a lot of people who would not respond so we have had conversations about that but the assessment center essentially there are no there is no programming in the assessment center the assessment center is a resource Hub so we will be working with Children and Families to connect them to services that they may not already be connected to or reconnect them to services that they're not participating in trying to figure out why is it that you're not following the plan that DSS has or why are you not following the plan that Durham public schools have so it's about us getting involved and trying to connect them and making sure if there are any barriers we can remove some of those barriers so children and families can get services that they indeed need

over the last year Angela has met with Partners against Crime various various organizations and the heart program presented um presented on the new youth home the concept and also the assessment center um to to share the information we also reached out to the the city the the community wellness and safety task force and we're told that they are they are at a stage where they it's it's they don't have time for us anymore or they have moved on so so they're wrapping up they're wrapping up and so they are they are not kind of rewriting so okay all right thank you Commissioners commissioner Jacobs thank you Angela you know you can't retire until after we we you've been at

this for how many years now 29 29 years okay I worked on this Vision since 2001. and that's when I became interim director yeah okay so it's gonna it's gonna happen it is every day with the dust yeah we're really excited about it so I just was wondering uh first of all what what is the status of the actual construction of it like where are we at with that we are on schedule and we're projected to open in August of 23. hey great all right where's Perry so we're looking for that ribbon cutting and tour and all that yeah um okay great um so yeah related to I mean it sounds like the reality of Staffing that we need to roll out in phases you know you talked about the priorities obviously Priority

One would be the place to start and we and I would think you would you know we want to be successful yes most important yes so you know taking on what we know we can be successful at um related to Staffing is there anything else that you feel like we could do I mean I know this is a bigger conversation I mean is it salary do you think being in a new building will be more attractive and being able to have a different climate and and programming will that make it more attractive but are is just any other thoughts on anything else we could do to to help with filling the positions that's a very good question there's so many reasons why those positions in public safety are so hard to feel I'm not sure it's money um I think the generations have changed and people

are not really interested in Juvenile Justice as much as they used to be I think children today are raised with different ideas and perspectives and they do not see careers in this field that's been lucrative for one because it is public service and they don't pay well and parents are telling their children when you go to college you need to pick a career that you will be able to make money with so I I'm not sure it's money but I think the environment does make a difference and I'm hopeful that a new bright building with bright lights and beautiful colors and the layout looking safer than what we have will get more people than the door and perhaps keep the people that we already have more important we need to be able to stain the staff that you have of this past December and the first of January I lost six males right out the door by the

first of the year and with the minimum staff that I have that was crippling yeah to was but I really don't know what the answer is we just keep trying to figure it out and have a salary that is uh decent and is competitive and as our salary decent and competitive at this point or at this point is better than what the state is paying however when you look at Guilford County and of course Mecklenburg just shut down but mecklenburg's starting salary I think was like 54 58 thousand dollars and I give her salaries are starting uh in the high 49 50ish so and they just got uh the new comp study so they leaped over us okay we were trying to catch up with Gifford in the previous years and now yeah they've increased that okay I think a lot of the kids were coming in are asking for these enormous amounts I

mean on the applications that we're seeing coming in the door they're asking for 68 000 75 000. okay so they didn't even read the range this new Gen X Y and Z coming in they're demanded that they know the competition yeah so they're coming in negotiating and demanding higher salary yeah can I get a follow-up to commissioner I don't want to because it's in the same space and I know so like this is timely if for no other reason we did a resolution last night right and so we do know I saw the interview that Billy Lassiter did I've had an opportunity to talk with him so Statewide in these facilities specifically and almost auxiliary even to your facility we're seeing 50 vacancies right and so in the resolution that we all you know agreed to last night that's an agenda you know one of the requests was in in order to Aid this can we can we support compressed

compressed salaries and one of the arguments he made was okay when it did raise the age they recognized that we needed more people because the number went for like 200 some kids 300 some kids and then the general assembly kind of just lost in the language forgot about this kind of sort of step ladder that they had for those positions so in the spirit of all that knowing that is 50 lower I'd love to know what our rate is kind of sort of right now 52 thank you so it's hard in the state so I didn't know that but that so it's hot in the state so I know you say salaries wouldn't help but kind of sorted in all these other spaces it says that it would so what would you like to see us get to I would like for us as it relates to salaries I would like for us to have a starting salary of at least 50 to 52 000. I just want to hear a number so I I know the I I I was going to ask the county manager if if this was

something that I will be looked at in with the comp study and the um with as we look at this next year's budget and getting ready for the new center to be opening right after the new fiscal year so and so I will say the short answer is yes yeah but that shouldn't be the only thing that we look at there is a comprehensive um overview that we need to take and and I was just thank you we got the current the most updated vacancy rate is 57 where we are so it's growing and so we need to take a good hard look at this and and how we will staff um the facility and what services what offerings can we comfortably provide and because we what we don't want to do is fill the beds and then don't have the stuff we can't we can't we can't do it we can't you cannot have more more

residents right then then we have we have that there are staff too but it's all of Public Safety all Safe Community has this issue it's not the youth home it's not the detention center it's EMS it's all the first because those are positions that are 24 7 people work at night people work weekends gifts and every day yeah weekends holidays Angela worked on January 1st sitting at the hospital with a kid for I don't know 10 hours yeah something like that so so these positions this and you compare that to someone who can work from home right yeah we don't understand that and so there have to be other incentives and there has to be something that we that we can create or can can incentivize yeah what can it look like and I want to say this is not due to Angela's last leadership or anything is one of the hardest working people amen we have here

and so we know that she is putting in the work and the effort that we need but so we have to help her right think differently and at it for a while for a long time right and that's why I feel like we have a great opportunity with this new facility to really you know create a different environment or incentivize you know the mission um and and things like that so you know I'm hopeful I'm hopeful I am too and um I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to say what will happen there's a couple of things that I forgot and staff if you're listening please forgive me a lot of the complaints we have is overtime Durham County has this unique overtime formula that nobody understands but payroll nobody understands it but payroll and we tell our staff I am sorry call payroll they will explain it to you I can tell you what they say

I don't understand it but payroll can explain it to you perhaps but you have to work so many hours before you actually get into overtime pay and a lot of other organizations will give you over time once you have met those hours you are and the state does that as well you automatically go into overtime but here in Durham County 170 hours right yeah well 40 yeah they didn't work schedule yeah right so it it that is comparison to staff and no I don't want to work additional hours because I'm not going to make overtime and then the other thing is that you know uh shift premiums we did get shift premiums for our midnight to eight shift however most state government in prisons their shift premium for evening hours so if you're working from four to midnight there's a premium midnight to 8 there's

a premium uh so those are some things that I would love for us to look at and I think you probably have the same issue in the conversation as well that is something that I think will incentivize my staff to work even harder and bless their hearts they are working really hard because you know I'm at 52 I'm operating 24 7. my staff is working 12-hour shifts they're working 10 to 12 straight days with one day off they're working weekends and holidays and they're putting in the effort and I appreciate it that for them but I'm also fighting for them and trying to get whatever we can get um to assist them well thank you this is difficult word for bringing forth some things that that we can look at and a staged approach and what money and this staged approached yes I appreciate this and the money that could possibly cover half of what you have to do right yes yeah the revenue is conservative yeah the revenue is important I just want to

there's probably more money coming yeah and I just wanted to talk a little bit about um the assessment center because I think with the model that you're talking about is really important of co-locating services I mean we've seen this in a lot of other places you know the Oak City I mean we we saw that Haven for Hope in Texas Oak cities and Raleigh but creating a place where you create the opportunity for the existing services to come and be in one place for the community and so you know creates that access to people and plus it sounds like there's going to be an Open Door yes for people because when people are at that point guys they're desperate yes and you know right now we're asking people to wait weeks if not months to get appointments and things like that so um so I really I hope that we can

and I don't know what the design is for the layout but whatever will facilitate um I mean maybe we can go back and look at that but in the slides but to facilitate that having folks be able to be whether it's one day a week so and so is there that is that is the best practice model it really is and the most cost effective um I do want to um I'm just I'm sorry I think it's also perfect to have them there when you do discharge planning so if you when you have a child that is leaving the detention yeah then there is staff that will make sure that they are connected to Services before they walk out the door yeah and I just want to throw out I know you mentioned some of the partners but I think our community intervention support service department with those groups project Builders yeah but even MBK because once there's that network of all the

um advisory you know all the different mentoring and all those groups um and I was thinking of the sros I mean oh yeah you know being being a partner as well um you know any anyone who's having a point of contact with youth in our community young people would be I think conduits but I do think there should be I know um chair Howard can raise the issue of the engagement and it sounds like you have been doing trying but I do think there's there we're going to have to have and it's up to you all to decide how to do it but some some more open-ended type of public whether it's an information session uh where you know you're you're explaining what these you know this is the plan for the Assassin Center and asking for any feedback or other

suggestions but um I I do think we're going to need to have something that is you know a public type thing you know I have requested that they do that okay so there should be yeah already discussions about it yeah so Commissioners it is after four o'clock and we need for Keith to wrap this up and talk about tomorrow I know commissioner long you're on the line but we need to wrap this up and your questions can be we can carry this over for questions to for tomorrow um let's let Keith say what he needs to say and then let's wrap it up and come back tomorrow mm-hmm thank you I don't know if you thank you Angela and we'll do the discussion the commissioner discussion tomorrow

there's not much to wrap up just a key I'll remind you that tomorrow's uh meeting we're going to start with uh no I don't have it in front of me but I know for a fact we're going to do um Mars The Living wage discussion we'll start with an overview again and then a living wage discussion then we'll have the longtime homeowners Relief Fund discussion and then we'll talk about Board of election space then you all will have a chance to talk about priorities and ask any other questions you have as it relates are there budget questions you want to talk about specifically before we end today okay and and if you have questions that anyone wanted to email them tonight um you know you could do that I mean you usually do that email email the staff if you have some other questions that you think you might forget between now and tomorrow just emailed Keith and let

him get the information for you um but I think we've had a long day and then last night so I think we need everybody needs a break all right Vice chair Jacob s okay are we are we going to have enough time for kind of board discussion tomorrow because I know we didn't get to do that today I'm just wondering yes and we'll do that tomorrow yeah 12 or 1. I thought it was nine to one exactly nine to twelve and if we need we will have I think to go box lunches for lunches yes ma'am for tomorrow so if the board is so inclined and we need to go past 12. we'll be able to do that and take lunch if we need to

okay so we adjourned foreign