Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · June 1, 2023

good morning good morning Commissioners good morning uh first I'm gonna let you know our Chief Financial Officer Andy kleichlow under the weather this morning so I don't have my budget Firepower with me so I ask your mercy as we go through any budget related questions we will do the best we can if we don't have any details that Keith or others can't answer we'll get we'll get back to you I think you know Dr battle our chief academic officer yes executive director Jerry Jones of our Center for Workforce engagement and we are excited to present or or budget package here to you today and first we'll just we just have a few slides to go through here and first just want to recognize that in

the manager's recommended budget we are accomplishing five key priorities in this slide these are priorities around livable wages for our employees which includes the projected increases we believe we're going to see in the state budget that is included notably in the in the wage side we had a significant increase in our housekeeping or janitorial contract because we decided in this rebid process we needed to ensure that our contractor used a livable wage the Durham County living wage when we pay our janitorial staff that cost a significant increase very appreciative of the manager's inclusion of that we think that's an important step that we're taking and and to make sure our contractors are doing the same as we're we're taking and we are a living wage employer some key College infrastructure positions and Facilities I'll go through a few of those coming up uh our priorities around economic and Workforce Development that we're very much involved with the county and

collaboration that are funded through this budget very important recruitment retention resources we're in a competitive and dynamic labor market and we benefit from that but we're also challenged by that with our own faculty and staff and you're giving us a chance to be competitive and have the best people working with our students possible in our community and then finally important some continued some new support for scholarships through a number of different scholarship barriers that will detail briefly so just want to note that in the manager's recommended budget to you we have five critical priorities that we see as being addressed and we think are are important for the work that we do with you to support the Ruby would you pull that mic up to you please there we go thank you all right I'm not hitting the right buttons here we go all right so I want to focus in three areas with you uh student scholarships some critical positions and

then finally give you a little bit more in that Recruitment and Retention fund first and recognize that these three items are in the manager's budget we want to continue the back to work scholarships these are what we call non-credit and so they're not eligible for federal Pell Grants and this ends up being for most individuals the only financial aid source that they have available to them with the exception of some private funding through our foundation these have been uh in some ways over subscribed and we had to use some State dollars and we were also able to work with you and your staff to use some of our article 46 money to address some of these These are generally working adults trying to Pivot in their careers get back into either different or entry-level jobs we generally do about 700 per grant that pays for tuition but it also gives them some credit so they can do books technology supplies and they and it gives them access to important short-term Workforce credentials both stipends you know about we are seeing

really escalating demand here and very thankful for our collaboration not just with the county and the city but made in Durham and now other participating community-based organizations who are starting to make this a focus of how they work with young people to create past opportunities so we're seeing increased applications we're also seeing increased retention rates in this program and success rates and we'll show you a few things on that in a second or can talk through some of those numbers with you finally Durham Tech promise you all LED this work a number of years ago this is the 500 per semester for up to four semesters for graduating high school students I just want to note two related items one is we've worked with you in the past where because of the escalating dollars coming in through that article 46. sales tax we've had resources Beyond just what the take-up is with graduating high school students and we've been able to address some overages in those short-term Workforce credentials and you've allowed us to

provide some additional funding for working adults looking to do those the the other area we're going to want to talk with you about as we're moving forward is some permission to use some of these dollars to support what we just announced with DPS with our goal of having 25 percent of graduating high school seniors also graduating with a Workforce credential or associates degree with us the state's allowance to waive tuition for high school students really makes that possible but there's an issue with books and transportation for those individuals for whom that's a barrier we were really pleased to announce yesterday a private Grant a gift from a couple Mark trust into Marcia angle to to provide 50 000 for us to use as kind of a bridge as we start ramping up this program on textbooks but with transportation and books as we get to scale that's a major issue and we want to think about how we can repurpose article 46 rather than think about the student who graduates from high school and then comes to us if we don't need tuition dollars because

they come to us while they're in high school using some of those resources to defray the cost of books and transportation is an area we'd like to explore because we think it gets to the very same goals that the Durham Tech promise is meant to achieve just Builds on some of the state resources that's the scholarship area if we look at the critical position support we've appreciated the partnership with the county on this over the past few years on the left side are three positions that a couple years ago we talked with both Durham and orange about taking on ourselves while the federal fiscal dollars stimulus dollars were in place and then coming back to the county because we see them as critical economic and Workforce Development priorities the Bulls and back to work success coaches are all about wrapping support around individuals that we know need some case management support to get through to completion and we believe that the bull success coach along with our Maiden Durham support has been

really important to increasing the success rates when the Bulls program similarly with with our back to work for a lot of individuals who are coming back to us after many years removed from college or never having been in college and this provides a little bit extra support to help them navigate Small Business Center coordinator we have funded this for the past uh year or so with a durham-specific focus I'm really pleased to say that since we've done that we're up nearly 50 percent in clients served nearly 90 percent in hours with clients and over 80 percent in new business starts so this has been a successful position for us and this is one again we appreciate the manager including in her budget and then finally an apprenticeship coordinator we we do work with the state of North Carolina's apprenticeship North Carolina but those individuals serve Regional consortia of colleges and so we are working as one of many with a with an apprenticeship coordinator at the state level what we've realized

T and culinary arts so we're excited about what having someone at Durham Tech dedicated to this has meant and we're asking both Durham and orange for this with a split based on the traditional Revenue split or funding split finally on the new investment side the facility Tech and plumber is really a Cost Containment strategy we're about double what industry standard in technician per square foot

when you're talking about your facility plan we do not have a plumber on staff presently this is really about reducing contracted Services being able to have someone in-house and taking care of with aging buildings this is just a reality and we're having to address this right now through what is a much more expensive proposition with contracted services and again appreciate the inclusion of the the 90 of these positions and the manager's recommended budget finally The Faculty staff recruitment retention just want to give you a little background on average salaries for Durham Tech faculty and staff and for you to think a moment about what that means in the context of the Research Triangle region and the kind of salaries and the competitiveness we have especially with University colleagues and with industry and Industry is particularly challenging for us it's not just a faculty area in places like life

T professionals our own skilled trades and this is an area where we think we've got a great College to work for and there are real premiums to working at a community college that we can sell we just need to be in the ballpark so when a hospital system hires one of our nursing instructors and gives her a twenty thousand dollar raise and a 200 thousand dollar bonus we are not in the ballpark there and what we've been asking for between Durham and orange is some resources to do Recruitment and Retention inducements to keep the individuals where we have significant market demand that we have a hard time addressing and appreciate again the inclusion of that in the manager's budget so critical investments in livable wages in

our College infrastructure in student scholarship access and retention and in our faculty and staff positions that we think allow us to do the economic and Workforce Development and academic success that you call on us to do and with that Madam chair take questions and I'm gonna put them all right here yeah we we've got lots of questions we want to let you get through your presentation then we'll start with questions you finished oh I'm done you're done we're done you're done all right thank you so much and it's always good to have you here and your team so I'm going to start with the questions um just if you go back to that first page uh JB I want to add just to clear up something and uh and I think we did you cleared it up for me but if it comes up in the for any of the other commissioners uh the questioner around the money that

someone said that they were not able to access a student said they were not able to access the funds um that they were supposed to they thought they were supposed to get and they were pretty upset about that can you give Clarity around that I believe that and I don't know exactly what the specific issue is I believe it relates to the Durham Tech promise funding and there is a provision that you have to meet satisfactory academic progress and so we talked about it you may want to say a word about this but so if you receive funding through Durham Tech promise take courses and then you are not meeting satisfactory academic progress you don't continue to get scholarship resources to take additional courses you've got to get yourself up to satisfactory progress and so this is to make sure money's not going out the door with no return and you may want to provide a little more detail on that and uh good morning but satisfactory academic progress has to do

0 or an A depending on the credit hour if it's on the credit and uh three credit hour class and a a d and a three credit hour class would average that out to a c so that's what our satisfactory academic progress is based on and it's based on federal guidelines so we use that for our financial any financial aid that we give students okay anyway go ahead and just to note so when that comes out of the article 46 allocation if a student receives the 500 one semester then because of not making satisfaction satisfactory academic progress does not have access to it next that just stays in the article 46 allocation fund that doesn't get pushed

into any other pots without permission by the county to do so if we came to you and and so anybody who is eligible to receive receives their their resources yeah because I think the conversation was that the money was put into another account rather than being given to the student uh and they didn't maybe they just didn't know that they needed to um meet those guidelines and um it may be somebody else in the community as well who doesn't understand that they have to meet the guidelines because I think they think the money is just the student automatically is supposed to get the funds and when that didn't happen they were pretty upset about it um and and if I get a if I get another conversation about that I will send them to you okay did you had something on that yes thank you so much for this presentation and all of your work within Durham Tech

and just partnering with all of the businesses that are coming to the county I had a couple of questions well the first one is more so a comment and just excited and president Buxton and I were talking about this before the meeting thank you to your staff for bringing this forward and requesting it from us the increasing the request for the contracts with the janitorial services that you can provide a living wage I really really appreciate that and I know that's been a conversation on our board in the past about our contracted janitorial services so you know I would love for us to also look into um modeling what Durham Tech is leading with um in this space so that all of us can be uh living wage partners that was my first call and my second was around the scholarships I know we've had preliminary conversations about it but interested from manager soel and president Buxton have their been more conversation around the scholarship pipeline within Durham

County open positions I know this was brought up during the Bulls initiative conversation really really interested and that's much louder um seeing how we can create a scholarship opportunity within Durham Tech to build a pipeline into the vacant roles we have within the county like our nursing roles our EMS our uh not manufacturers maintenance like for our emergency vehicles because I know we've had a lot of vacancies there um so where we are with those conversations and so have had conversations with our EMS staff about creating that Pipeline and of course it is contingent upon them completing certification we actually also wanted to do apprenticeships but because they don't have the certifications um we have to go through dtcc so there is that relationship already established and then we also have our internships and apprenticeships that are for high

school students as well as our college students and one of the changes that we've made that I really want to give credit to Chief Trapp is that our internships are focused on students that either live in Durham or that attend college that were from Durham we're not looking to recruit from you know students or universities that are outside of the Durham community so it's an ongoing conversation but we are certainly committed to making sure we establish that Pipeline and maintain it that'd be great because I think that would also help us with being able to advertise saying you know go to Durham Tech complete this program get certified and have like a guaranteed job within Durham County um that job security is going to be really important to folks to get them to take the step to go and take the courses because a lot of people be like if I invest this money to take the course will I get a job um so that's security that there will be a job at the end of the road is really helpful and I had one last comment but

of course it slipped my mind now so I might come back to it Okay so so I so the other questions that I had JB was um two you were you had an announcement um with um the superintendent I was not here I'd like to hear you talk a little bit more about that I was out of town and then the other one if you will share with us what's happening around your plan I know you said you've talked about Mental Health and what you have and planning for for the for Durham Tech um could you share a little bit about what that looks like and what the plan is absolutely on the First with superintendent mubenga and we were pleased to have a chance to speak with members of his board and appreciate the strong support and then as you know superintendent came to the Durham Tech

Board of Trustees we were able to announce a goal that we're ramping up to over the next five years we put this framework together thanks to some leadership support from RTI and I should say publicly thanks to the AJ Fletcher foundation for paying for RTI to support and facilitate that work but we've got a five-year goal to get the scale where we have 525 students that would graduate from Durham public schools with a Workforce credential or associate degree from Durham Tech and that would not only be the most ambitious goal in the state but the only goal of its kind in the state where we are dedicating ourselves to having to accelerating College credential completion for students while they're in high school to create the kind of options as they leave high school to go into the workforce to continue in the community college system to go to the UNC system at a as an automatic Junior the the key issue of tuition is taken care of because we can waive that under State policy

and then it's a matter of putting the course Pathways in place and I want to be really clear about this we're not trying to get high school students into our courses we're trying to get high school students to finish programs of study that lead to credentials and degrees that have labor market value or university transfer the big issue that are barriers for students for whom money is an issue Transportation getting to our college and books and so what we're doing a couple things one we're piloting this at Riverside coming up this fall and then we will be moving to all campuses is we're going to be taking either Durham Tech existing instructors or working with High School faculty that meet our credential requirements and we'll teach courses at the high school in the sophomore and junior year to start so that they can get those courses without having to have transportation and that they can then take whichever path from a credential or degree standpoint they're interested in so they're kind of our prerequisite courses

then we're working on the transportation side with DPS they do that for City medicine Academy School Technology at Hillside and middle college high schools on our campus we now need to be able to get students from other campuses to us when the courses are at the Durham Tech campuses and we're working on the transportation costs that'll be there maybe a couple of buses is what they're thinking right now and then on the book side we've done some initial private philanthropy to ramp up as we start building this over the next few years and that's where we want to talk with you about kind of forward funding the Durham Tech promise accomplishing the same goals because for many students two to five hundred dollars per semester in books is much more than they can afford and this way we take that out of it so we are very excited and when you think about Durham students one out of every four having a credential degree by the time they graduate from high school the talent competitiveness in this

community shifts dramatically and there are options and their families options shift dramatically so we are very excited about that partnership and very much appreciate the the leadership of benga and that the board on Mental Health uh the chair and I have had some conversations we put a mental health task force together recently of Faculty staff and students and really what we're what we're focused on one is on the presence of in-person license counseling on our campuses we know we need some more of that and so we're looking within our budget we're evaluating what has been a 24 7 online counseling service and and I would just say what we're finding is take up is a little low and we're trying to understand if that's because of lack of information or if that's because what people really want is they want to sit down with somebody and talk and they're not interested in an intake process we are we have set a goal of having a hundred of our faculty and staff complete what is called the mental

health first aid training module we do that through a state I believe program we want to have a 100 people across all our departments and degree programs certified in that to be touch points across our campuses for our students and frankly for our faculty and staff as well and then there are a number of other ongoing supports that we're looking to put in place and really we're also just focused on connectivity and now we're creating greater connectivity as we come out of covet and have more time in person and just looking for ways that we do that on campus and people feel a part of a community and like they have caring adults that they know they can go to so those are I would say the Highlight Dr battle you you've been involved in these conversations am I missing any of the kind of highlights you know we we've also had some additional training specific to certain mental health issues like suicides

that some of our faculty and staff have engaged in where they've become gotten training uh it was a 16-hour training where they got a certification afterwards some of our faculty and staff are also doing things online I'll if you I look at LinkedIn sometimes and they'll have these certification and and badges related to Mental Health Training so they are very aware of the challenges that our students and our faculty and staff are facing and trying to be proactive and and trying to solve those problems and and help our community thank you where this is it's exciting the things that you're doing and we really appreciate it and we and please tell um get his name already uh the fifty thousand dollars oh my Thruster and I I know Mark um tell him for us thank you

other board members it's you or I know I don't know which one of you raise your hand first commissioner Burns good morning how's everybody else on staff I've been relegated to you um I don't really have a question I do want to give my full throw to support not only to this budget but specifically to item number three and I think that we talked you and I had a quick conversation about that and I and I just know age myself what it was like 20 years ago to do dual enrollment as a senior at Bladen Community College and walking in the week that school was supposed to start and I said Daddy I need money for books I thought that was supposed to be free yeah Daddy the class is free but I need books he said how much I said three hundred dollars I did it just handed it to me that's a blessing that's a privilege that ain't what everybody else has now

he blanched when he realized there was no bus because I was 16 but I hated to drive anything but a lot more on the tractor so I had no license so he also had to go and do what find me a car because it was 25 miles away and add me to insurance so the reason why I'm in such supportive twin I know what I was struggling with then and I know what the kids are struggling with now I had a chance to talk with the doctor Contreras when they tried to roll this same thing out in Greensboro so I'm hopeful I'm one I also thank the manager for bringing this forward to us and my big hope is that when we do this that we roll it out in Grand style and the reason why I say roll it out in Grand style I think you all do a great job of sharing information about what you do I don't think our partners do a great job of talking about what you do so I'm putting the burden on us I'm putting the burden on you and the Durham Public Schools to a certain extent because parents do come to us because the ending it with everything right like you know this college this school we're finally getting people to start thinking parents

especially about Community College being a viable option I don't want anything to be the thing that says they can't go so my two quick questions around it are the transportation piece I think we talked about it some that's going to be a barrier for some students for some of our high school students how are we working with DPS to make that bus situation a reality for somebody who can't get put on um their parents insurance that week or doesn't have their mama's minivan to drive like I did and I bring that up because it was my first time ever driving by myself my first day of dual enrollment was the first time I ever drove by myself I hydroplaned into a cornfield I don't want nobody in Durham doing the same now my daddy didn't know he just knew the car was out of alignment I told him you know years later but um I don't want anybody getting in the accidents because much like me at 18 they know how to drive so how are we going to help the bus situation and then I want to Pivot in immunizations on the bus situation let me be clear about this and and give Durham Public

Schools credits with they handle transport middle college high school students right are on campus with us right but from City medicine and School Technology there is transportation that they provide for those individuals and we're going to really try to significantly increase the number of students we call those Cooperative Innovative high schools that's a state level program term we want to really in the short term and over those five years significantly increase so nearly all of those students are achieving credentials it agrees because that's really what those schools are meant to be and then also see it across all other institutions that's where the transportation and where we have a significant gap between where we are now with providing Transportation what it's going to be needed once we get all our other Comprehensive High Schools like a Riverside of Jordan the hillside besides School Technology they're looking at what a bus Network and right now the early conversations are around a couple of buses that we may be able to move around in the next as we ramp up over the next five years we'll learn

more about that when we see the take up and Riverside is going to be important early test but that is critical to getting individuals I mean your story is one that would be told probably in different way I don't have any corn fields people are going to plow into but in Durham but they're gonna they're gonna find that is a big barrier and we want to erase that right and we do have public transportation here so kids have you got kids now taking public transportation school but I just want you know every option available and again like I said I want this road out because kids really do think I don't have the money I can't do I I can't pay for the books I would go to Durham Tech and so I just want how whatever campaign y'all do to say hey guess what we can now pay for books hey guess what you know I want all of that done especially since we're making a change to article 46. my other question now that we're talking about kind of sort of removing barriers netta's in the hunt Institute now and I'm pretty sure she's uh drinking out of a water hose it's not a geyser but one of the things that they brought up uh was how few you

know black boys in Durham County go to any school once they get out of school um and they started to look they look they're doing what Georgia did and starting to look like what are some of the things that are stopping them outside of finances like if they apply uh one of the things that popped up was immunizations so you know schools I need this record I need this record I need this record not here just in other states and some of the other counties are looking at it and they saw like 13 of kids at 27 excuse me of kids uh came back and said we you know we we just couldn't turn this record in and so the university says hey you need to turn this in well you got to think about it if a kid didn't get these immunizations for 18 years they didn't have the resources access what have you beforehand I'm wondering if that's something that we're seeing or if that's something we could look into and how we could partner with public health to take that additional barrier down so I just wanted to throw that out there as a as a thought process because people's immunization records got off during covet uh during covet you know I was a generation that got uh uh measles months for Bill of hepatitis C and the sixth

grade they stopped that so there's a lot of things that kids just don't have and I know these requirements to you know further your education so if we're seeing like I would love for you all to look and see if that's one of the things that we're sending back to folks because they're not going to pick it up in two months they didn't pick it up for 18 years and how we can be supported but that's all we will thank you commission we will certainly go back and look at that that is not something I would say right now we're seeing as a barrier but as we look to increase that population we certainly won't be part of that discussion I support your budget sir can't wait to see what happens thank you all so much the work that you all are leading at Durham Tech is really transformational and I am really grateful to you JB and all of your staff um you know when I look at all of the initiatives you're what I see is you building the the relationships you know with Durham public schools with our employers and you know that that's what we have

really needed I mean since I've been a county commissioner um because we've we've had all the ingredients but we we just haven't had the connections um so I have a few and I strongly support everything that you are doing um so related to um the the Durham Tech partnership and I agree with commissioner Burns I've been I'm negligent I've been in wanting to pay post it on my social media we really do need to get get the word out and think about how and and a lot of this really also needs to be done by Durham Public Schools um is and even starting in middle school with educating parents and families about getting ready for for this opportunity because at the Academy Awards for the polls Academy I remember talking to the mom of the you know featured student who now works at Biogen

and she was saying you know parents don't know about you know all the opportunities in RTP for these jobs um so really um thinking really carefully and and a lot of this is is going to have to rest with Durham Tech I mean I'm sorry with Durham public schools and I'm really wondering about what and this is not for you to answer but how they are going to to Really roll this out internally within Durham Public Schools to be successful because they they did have the three-step their CTE program the three two one which for me I never felt like I really never got a sense of that really getting strongly launched and um so I I think you know whatever on their part whatever help they need I just think we're going to have to really be very intentional about that and I'm

glad you're going to start with a pilot um what are the the certain credentials that you're looking for what what are the what are the classes or credentials that you're looking at that are going to be the most obvious ones for the the um Durham Tech partnership sure let me make one comment commission then Dr battle ask you to weigh in on that first and I can't I don't want to speak for superintendent mubenga and his team but part of this plan is is not just a goal and not just the identification the bear is it is really I would say a five-year looks beginning in middle school and maybe even six kind of seventh and eighth grade because that's when families and students will need to start thinking about how they do their High School path that incorporates the college courses whether it's short-term credential or the degree so really making and I would say DPS really brought this to the table quite strongly working in the middle school and what we've committed to is kind of a shared accountability model shared

responsibility where we have to be ready to provide the easily understood materials the clear website Pathways that parents can understand how they're going to do this in partnership with them so we've got work to do to make sure seventh and 8th grader and his or her family can understand what is kind of higher education language sometimes and we're committed to do that and then in high school really thinking through these Master schedules one thing I want to be clear about Riverside's a pilot in terms of we're going to put our our faculty on that campus but anybody at any Durham Public School can begin this process with us as we move into the fall I mean this is this is open to everybody now we're just doing that work on the campus to start at Riverside to make sure as we we move around so I think that's the critical thing all the pathways are are open I think University transfer we assume a lot of individuals will be interested in that they'd like to get the two years associate which maximizes their

T I don't know if there's some specific areas you'd point out but it's all of this is open for students to take the path and I would just add to what president Buxton said is that these students will be able to get diplomas certificates or degrees so that could range from four or five classes to 60 hours worth of credit for an associate's degree we also have Pathways for Durham public schools for continuing education so they can take the bio work the um

the prep course the SOP and GMP course as continuing education students and sit for that exam when they're 18 and then those courses will articulate to a credit program if they decide that they would like to pursue a degree or like to pursue a curriculum certification then the credits that they got for the continuing education articulate to the credit side and they can transfer them over and use them towards the degree so that they're not starting at zero so it sounds like navigating this is not I mean just thinking practically is is not going to be necessarily easy and when I think about the number of school guidance counselors that we have um you know just the guidance counselors even being able to sit down and do you feel like you all have the resources

um to be able to help you know students and their and their families understand which pathway to to go on and what the benefits will be and and just I mean I really want this to be successful and I just think the how it gets executed um is I mean the devil is going to be in the details right absolutely I think as a public institution anyone anytime anyone asks you do you think you have the resources you're supposed to say no but what I tell you is the good news is between the college Liaisons we have already in the high schools uh between the work we're doing the counselors talked about I'm not sure if you're aware know the date but at some point we've got all the Durham public school counselors coming on campus for kind of a council of boot camp to help prepare them for not just this but dual enrollment in general uh I think from a material standpoint now

books Transportation those are big issues that we need to solve for in terms of the infrastructure between the two we'll learn more in the coming years and and my answer coming back may be here's a resource we didn't think we needed but we do but right now we feel good about how we're launching um and then my other question is all of these different um you know the back to work the Bulls and now this program um will you be able to provide us maybe on you know some type of regular basis whether it's annual basis just the data on tracking who is you know ends up participating the program successfully completing it um that you know those types of things like will you be tracking this yes so yes on all of them uh what we'll commit to do is sending you a memo following this to you and staff we can

give you detailed breakdowns on back to work recipients by uh gender race ethnicity the pathways they're taking if you want to see the courses we can give you all that and and what those numbers are we can do the same with bulls and as we get in the Durham Tech promise we can also do the same with those students so we are we'll send you a follow-up that details those obviously if you want more data than we give you we'll we'll go another level deeper that would be great be happy to do that and then I'm wondering and the apprenticeships fantastic and um the positions that you've mentioned um you know again trying to strengthen those connections and relationships what it what are we currently doing Andy and with with all the companies that we have economic incentive contracts with and in our contracts we always list you know working with Durham Tech having apprenticeships and internships blah blah blah but you know that's what we

say and and so I'm wondering what you know what's happening right now on our end um I guess is a question for both you Andy and and JB and as well like what what's what's really happening with that process especially the companies that we have you know that we're providing incentives to excellent question uh for us uh I think a prime example is the work that we're doing uh with Andy with their group uh for instance with uh Kim power that we know that's moving into the area there in the process I believe are retrofitting uh their company their facility but one of the things that we've already discussed what are their immediate needs we've looked at for instance uh the larger if you would higher uh position which is for instance their production worker and then we've

taught with them to assess what are the critical needs for individuals that would like to obtain that particular job and so that part of that partnership is identifying what are the skill sets and for Durham Tech obviously to create as it were that Pro program that would support creating individuals identifying individuals that would get skilled up but also part of that is because they're looking at again like many organizations large numbers is to understand there's no one uh one Silver Bullet that's going to address this issue so a apprenticeship is part of that equation internships is part of that equation and so with again Kim power as well as others we are identifying what do we need to do to help you be successful and give you the workforce that you need at

the same time we know that we are creating that Pipeline with reaching back with our students and looking at our underserved communities and seeing where those opportunities lie Dr battle I mentioned uh just a few minutes ago certifications credentials those kinds of things and always that opportunity to get the two-year degree and then to move forward but several of these entry-level jobs do not require initially a two-year degree and so we want to make sure that we are targeting collectively collaboratively that if you would aspect of it and getting folks and positioning them so that they have the opportunity to move into these spaces with growth potential so again I would say that apprenticeship internship is is really critical to helping meet that particular

need good morning Commissioners um you know I think to add to that that was that was a great encapsulation um so I think for most of the companies that we work with in the business recruitment side many of them have made commitments around internships more so than apprenticeships apprenticeships there's a little bit of extra effort intentionality there you know particularly for so many of them as they're building their facilities and kind of building the workforce and getting to a point where they're ready for that type of Engagement we're certainly happy to you know facilitate those conversations with companies if they feel like they're in a position where they can move on to apprenticeships but by and large we have many of our internships and are we are they following up on the internships with Durham Tech are they doing that so not not with Durham Tech uh per se uh but you know working at that's one of their goals to have um internships uh with with broadly within the community

so um so yeah we do include that with our annual reporting um many of those internship commitments you know there's a build up that takes a couple years to get to that point where we're getting uh internship ready and so there's there's kind of a lull uh from announcement to get to that point it's just something important to keep in mind okay one quick comment on internships and one one things we're trying to help companies understand is we don't pay your interns you don't get the full range of the Town available to you and they'll go work fast food they'll go work if you say the interns wouldn't get paid so when we have companies come to us and are interested in offering internships and then you ask them you got to get paid and they say well no we say well then you're going to have a pretty reduced talent pool and the pay that we're still seeing in some

sectors that provides a pretty competitive wage versus zero so would for some I would say some companies really starting to get this and a lot of them certainly we want them to get to apprenticeship but internship's a great route for a lot of our students who need that and may not be ready to do the full apprenticeship commitment we've got to get companies so for any companies that are listening that's a critical Talent strategy for these companies is to make sure they're paying their endurance thank you commissioner Jacobs if you finish we're going to run out of time and I want to give make sure that okay commissioner Carter sometimes or I just have one last comment which is I also want to acknowledge the role of Durham Tech with our early childhood system with training our our early childhood Educators and also with being a partner with Kate's corner um and and also the what you discussed around mental health you know the Surgeon General has said that he feels that social isolation is is one of the

big sources of of a lot of our mental health issues so when I know your plans to try to really create a campus which we're investing in I think is going to be is very important opportunities for people to feel a part of something and each other so thank you commissioner Carter I'll just say I think your presentation is a great justification for the request your budget request I've like my colleagues I fully support what you're asking for this year I feel like the all the initiatives that you're undertaking are going to really help us achieve our main goal which is to increase or widely shared prosperity in Durham and you're doing it multiple ways you're looking to pay a livable wage to all of those who work at Durham Tech something that I agree we need to be sure we're doing um in our uh you know publicly supported positions in local government across Durham um and you're removing barriers both for

people who might have already dropped out of high school for re-entry also you know helping I think kids see hope for the future and excitement about the future and staying in high school with your um you know your your new initiative with Durham public schools and expanding the number of kids up to 500 or whatever the number was 25 percent to have a the credential or certificate or associate's degree that I think that could be really meaningful the apprenticeship coordinator we've you know is a great move if we don't have someone coordinating and thinking about these things daily driving the efforts it's hard to expect a lot of progress um the only in the and then the I was shocked to see what the staff salary the average staff salary was so low 53 000. um so yeah I can see how you'd be challenged in Recruitment and Retention in the same ways that you know public schools are challenged to get CTE teachers Career and Technical education teachers

um my only question is related to the scholarships and are are there any people for whom are there any are there any students who would not qualify for that scholarship upon graduation from high school Durham Tech promise yes uh I guess I'm into undocumented students in particular I feel like someone asked me about this fairly recently we have we have a fair number of DACA students on campus now what they face because of State policy is they face out-of-state tuition rates that's what it is yeah and it's a state issue that's another situation where we're combating challenges of this that are driven by the state okay well thank you thank you all so much for your work Durham Tech is a world of excitement more than it has ever been in my opinion since I've been paying close attention so really appreciate your work thank you commissioner and Madam chair if I could just say one two things I was

remiss not that one thing I was remiss not to say just two things okay we really appreciate your investment in the affordable housing project and not just ours but in in the community in your work with the city and I know they're finalizing uh their efforts but that that leadership is going to allow us to construct 124 units and thank you uh the second thing is I just want you to know that a recent downtown Durham Rotary meeting they came to Durham tech and and I spoke to them and what I told them was that amidst a lot of distrust and crisis of confidence in public institutions they live in a community where their Public School System their County Commissioners their City their Community College and employers major institutions that impact people's lives work together collaboratively and are actively putting in pieces in place to make people's lives better and so if there's any place in this state in this country where you should be feel good about the state of your public institutions is Durham and I just want to appreciate

the leadership role that you all play in making that collaboration possible often to the resources that you invest in our institutions so thank you well we certainly thank you and thank you for all your work I think commissioner long had one more quick thing I remember my last question so before you go in this quick one I promised Charleston for the positions that are difficult to fill within the Durham Tech and even just in general the positions at Durham Tech are they being advertised the Durham tech jobs qualify for the Public service loan forgiveness right so is that being advertised when folks apply that they could potentially receive that's a good question I'm not sure that it is I'm not aware that it's being publicized though all of our faculty and staff are aware of that I'm including myself I've submitted that paperwork but that's a great point that maybe people often things like local government yes

I think that the technical college also qualifies you for raising that all right thank you again so much and we appreciate you all right our next item Commissioners is um Pre-K update 230397 I see Linda Chappelle and her team she'll come on up and Wow since I've seen you guys so Orlando fuel which one of you take the lead and introduce everybody you want to do that okay yes good morning Commissioners Dr so well thanks for having us today we're going to get started this morning with our Durham Pre-K update and take about 30 minutes of our 45 for that and Linda

Chappelle and Tamara Mathis from Childcare Services Association will present that piece and take questions and then we'll take about 15 minutes on other Early Childhood updates and discussion okay good morning good morning you'll be relieved to know that um I'm going to only talk for 15 minutes so you can ask questions for 15 minutes before we shift to the other Early Childhood piece so um thank you for having us I don't know if you guys have met Tamara before she's our new program director and is didn't hear her name because Tamara Mathis and she's the program director for Durham Pre-K and comes to us with extensive experience in the public schools as well as in the enrichment Arena of out of school time and by way of lots of different experience at the Department of Public Instruction at the state level too so we're really fortunate and she's onboarding so

I'm going to remind you that Durham Pre-K is one of the best things you're doing I'm I realize I'm biased but you know we have a bold vision and we continue to get reminded every day that we are pushy for children which is what we are um so just going to remind you as we are pursuing our growth model that we have stuck with our bold vision and although the Journey's been slowed by the covid pandemic we've continued to grow even during that time so I'll just remind you of the why so back in 2017 we had a community recommendation from our task force to develop a universal program which is unique in many public preschool Arenas they're not Universal for four-year-olds we want to make sure that Durham Pre-K

is supportive for Working Families and of course we prioritize that our darn Pre-K programs are respectful of our children and families and a key component is we want to provide resources to lift up our teachers and just to kind of focus on that for a minute I'll remind you I've told you often and you probably remember that our theory of change revolves around teachers we believe that those relationships in the classroom are absolutely fundamental to our success and we continue to invest the resources in the classroom for the teachers in a variety of different ways okay so you I was asked to talk about what are we going to do with the increased funds that we have asked for and have been recommended so the first and most essential piece of

the additional funds will support our goal to serve 75 percent of the four-year-old census and it's a key phrase I want to mention because you'll hear that you'll hear in other programs they'll say a certain percent of eligible children you know like in NC Pre-K at the state level there's they have a Statewide goal which they're taking a long time to get to which is you know an issue but it's for eligible children and they have a lot of exclusionary um requirements in Durham our goal is to have enough seats to serve 75 of the four-year-old census so the new funds will support up to a hundred seats and continue to support our efforts to be family work friendly by having before and after school care scholarships those are those are tied to income need the

before and after school is I'll remind you that this program is set up to be a free program for families up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level and beyond that there is a sliding scale fee to contribute toward the cost for Durham Pre-K the reason you may say hmm why does it say up to 100 well remember we have a braided program we are unique that we are blending and braiding resources across Durham and your local dollars we make every effort to spend last so we're drawing down resources from the federal government from the state and um making sure that we're trying to use our local dollars as enhancement wherever possible but your local resources are what supports children outside of a lot of the limitations that are set by other programs so for example our middle class families

in Durham many cannot access programs due to income limits but yet they cannot afford the high cost of four-year-old high quality preschool of which right now in Durham the average four-year-old tuition in private child care presently is approaching thirteen hundred and fifty dollars a month so just that's the average all right so you may say well gosh every time every year we come back asking for more resources just to sort of show you a picture this shows you the growth in locally funded seats so remember I said we braid resources so if a seed has local dollars either fully paying for it or contributing toward the payment for it they are counted in these numbers so this current school

year the local dollars are fully or partially supporting 608 of our preschool four-year-old seats we have had significant growth we did obviously slow down during during coven so but what does that mean when we talk about the braiding and the blending we have invested quite a lot of money and that is Durham is to be commended for that investment but we continue to work toward our goal of 75 percent of the census and what we do when we are calculating that is we look across all programs so you see on this slide all those logos at the bottom we are working closely in Partnership and president Buxton referenced that in Durham as such an asset this program also is an example of that partnership and collaboration and it is very challenging to blend and braid

funds I'll just say that up front there's a lot of requirements there's a lot of um monitoring that has to happen to assure that funds are being used appropriately but what we do is we say okay how many seats are available publicly across Durham and this number we've we have been able to grow see growth by 88 percent since the 2016 school year through local Investments as well as through better efforts to draw down those dollars from outside of our County we continue to work hard to make sure we're accessing all resources and we do believe that we are recovering from the pandemic by continuing to find ways to draw down those resources the pandemic really changed the entire landscape and when we were trying to

develop Trends you know you always want to follow those Trends to see how you're doing the pandemic obviously created so much of people that those trends are difficult to track but we believe that we'll be back on on track so the other piece is you know what is the additional money going to do in addition to those seat additions so obviously we have to plan for salary increases for teachers we do provide what we call a teacher support payment to assure that our sites hire the most qualified teachers and so some of the new money that we've requested will support that we will also be using some of the new money to upgrade the universal online registration portal this was a good thing that came out of the pandemic that we invested in an online portal but as with many things software they

are ever changing and the bills change so we we know that families some families have had some frustration and we've worked hard to address that and we know that some upgrades are needed in addition it was ironic to come right after Durham Tech you may or may not have heard that child care services Association as the as the present management Agency for Durham Pre-K we did receive a private donation um to establish an early childhood apprenticeship program specifically through Durham Pre-K we are working in partnership with Durham Tech the seed money we received 150 000 seed Grant to invest in that to get us started and we were fortunate to hire a Workforce Development person who is making sure that the apprenticeship program also Blends and braids with

other apprenticeship opportunities and in fact we have a meeting this afternoon again with some Durham Tech folks around that so we will not be duplicating Services we will be enhancing and working together so we're pretty excited about that we also with new money will enhance the on-demand professional development courses which are open free to our BK certified teachers and our instructional assistants in Durham Pre-K they are available for a fee by outside of Durham um teachers in public preschool in addition new monies needed to support some language translation support and also to broaden the family outrage to assure that we're continuing to build that public will and help families understand why they should care about during Pre-K okay so then lastly we I just want to remind you that you're already spending a lot of money and that

money what's unique about Durham Pre-K is that it really focuses on quality the highest quality and in addition to having open access for All Families in Durham we are enhancing existing preschool spaces so the other public preschool programs are are being enhanced by the investment in professional development and coaching and technical assistance provided to those teachers so you may or may not know that for example that NC Pre-K as a state program invests only modestly in coaching for their teachers and so our local investment enhances the quality in the NC Pre-K Spaces by providing additional support and coaching for teachers it also the money that has been allocated the last few years in addition to providing that regular coaching and

professional development to our existing classroom it also works to create opportunities for programs to become Durham Pre-K we know that as we grow we want to continue to have a mixed delivery model that includes the public schools as well as private Child Care programs and in order to do that you have to have classrooms that are ready to meet the higher standards that Durham Pre-K sets and those are really honestly no joke they are quite demanding and sometimes you may hear in the community that we've had some folks suggest that our standards are too high and then we need to consider being more flexible and obviously we we listen we want to hear and we try to explore when the feedback may be something we need to make changes around we do have a governance committee that works really hard to assure that our program is responsive to feedback and really just in closing to open it up for y'all's questions I just want to

mention something um you know I could talk all day about this but I won't um but I recently read a blog post from new America and there was a really Salient point that I thought just Illustrated during Pre-K so much it the and it's just to quote directly they said increasing access without prioritizing quality is not real access and honestly they just gave me chills when I read it because that is so such a core principle of the Durham Pre-K initiative because creating seeds to just keep children safe is not enough to assure their long-term success both in school and in life and we know that obviously from all the research so I wanted to talk only briefly to make sure you had a chance to ask all your questions and because I know that you guys have

been amazing in your support of this program but we know that we always want to be very accountable for our work thank you so much Linda you know it's great to see you again and to hear about the program I mean there are several of us here that were here pushing for this program when it first began so we are always excited to hear the things that you're doing um and to hear about our babies because you know that's our future so we I just want to on behalf of the board say thank you right up front before we even start with the questions um you know if we don't get it right here we're in trouble so thank you and I'll open it up for questions you want to start commission Jacobson yes thank you both for being here you know ccsa is

such an important partner for us we have there are a lot of things that the county does that we we partner with nonprofits in the community because frankly the nonprofits like you all can do are the experts and are much more effective at executing the work than than we are and so we're really lucky to have you as a partner with us and what I see is each year is an iterative process that you all are continually adapting to what the challenges are and what the needs are and I appreciate that um because it's a complex issue and I I've really noticed how you especially over the last year have been trying to be addressed some of the barriers like the roll up and enroll you know people just driving up to at the at the hill and dale well now

it's the mini fort Brown Staff Development Center how did that go that event yeah it went well Tamara you want to talk about that there's another one coming we do have one next Saturday at the Hilldale or the mini fort Brown staff development okay the previous one that went extremely well yeah um we had a great turnout a lot of marketing went into place with that was mainly by the partnership and Head Start did that one next weekend is um Durham Public Schools as well as Durham Pre-K so we're excited for that gearing up for that a lot of work is going into it and please tell everyone but we really want to make sure that we use that way to get the information out this one is going to be different we're trying to make it more like a community fair to kind of get people to come in and bring stuff that the families may be interested in or and or need as well as share information about getting I'm ready for Pre-K fantastic and I know with the language barrier as well um doing doing a lot of Outreach in the community I think that event's a great

example of the collaboration because the way it worked out it's really important to have events in addition to other marketing strategies to build that public will but the partner agency's mapped out dates for those kind of events and shared responsibility and so that's why the different agencies taking the lead and it also helps with shared costs so that your local dollars are not paying for all of those things great um in terms of the I know one of the slides you said that we were getting closer to our goal of 75 of four-year-olds having access to high quality Pre-K that's good can you remind us back or we're even with our population growth I know you know the study that was you know early childhood or the Pre-K study that we did many years ago supply and

demand study yeah the supply and demand study um I I wonder do do you update or look at those numbers every year based on population yes so for 2024 so what happens with the census information yeah um you know the North Carolina state budget management takes that census data and because the census talks about children under six you know it doesn't break it out the the budget office does at the state level so in Durham and again what's interesting if you look at the charts which I'm happy to send you a chart um the four-year-old population you know does go up and down a little bit for 2024 they estimate that there will be 4 118 four-year-olds in Durham and um you know it's hard to believe but it was actually more four-year-olds last year so it does go

up and down some right now based on the 1521 seats we were at almost 38 percent so when I say working toward our goal you know my your first thought is wow that's depressing I thought we were closer to 75 percent but to say that we're I mean when you think about it 88 growth in seeds that's what we've had and 88 growth in seats since the 2016 school year and these are expensive programs and services and we know that we also have to build that will among families we want to be trusted partners with our families and the public preschool program we continue to build that relationship with our communities and so right now you know some somebody asked me recently

well aren't you kind of bummed that you're less than 40 percent of of your of your census and I said no I think we're in a good place I mean sure I would love to be growing faster but the pandemic really derailed our growth trajectory and obviously families faced quite a bit during that time and are continuing to face the consequences of that we also have to build capacity in the community which is part of what you've invested in that capacity building support to because we're never going to be able to serve our children all in the public schools we have to use that mixed delivery model plus that's what parents want it's choices and we also where we are right now in our growth we have barriers to increasing our growth transportation is a challenge before and after school a shortage of seats for that we have a whole paper we did on that which I would

love to share with you it's on our website but um the very real barrier of for Working Families of rap care and then also um the public schools the superintendent made a commitment which was phenomenal to have over Time Preschool in every preschool classrooms in every Elementary School that growth is very slow and it's a great commitment and when we opened Lions Farms last year it opened with two preschool classrooms which would not have happened without that commitment and so we know that although we're not we would love to be closer to the goal we feel like our growth is aligning with our capacity and that is really important because if we do a poor job we'll break that trust with our families thank you and related to what you just said with I know we did start funding some

before and after care rap care funding how how many people have been served by that and are is there adequate funding do we are we providing enough I mean so you're the Durham Pre-K resources were set aside to serve 40 children in before and after care that's not the only children served what our goal is you know Social Service Child Care vouchers help families pay for rap care and also Smart Start scholarships help pay for rap care and so again it's an example of us blending and braiding resources so the Durham Pre-K dollars are enhancing the numbers that we can serve in wrap care is it enough no I would say no but we have a bigger challenge not a bigger challenge we have an equal challenge of a shortage of

available rap care with the pandemic rap care so before and after school care we we just call it wrap care to wrap around the six and a half hour school day and the workforce challenges that everyone talks about are very real even even more real in the Early Education Arena and rap care is not available at every one of our Pre-K schools and that is a huge barrier you know if I was clean for the day I would love to have the money for you know 40 additional wraps care scholarships but I know that right now if you gave me that money I could not find 40 seats in wrap care so what our plan is we're continuing to try to build capacity a round wrap and try to continue to incrementally grow our requests for funds for wrap care we are also pushing

our public Social Service Arena to work with the community to provide more scholarships for vouchers for rapcare you know because they have a surplus of funds that they hadn't been able to allocate and so we we want to try to help them connect with our families so it's a very much a braided model okay well I appreciate you saying the reality is we don't have the workers who can provide it and not asking for for what we can't do and I'm glad to hear that you're working with DSS with the um Child Care vouchers because honestly I've been concerned about that as a member of the DSs board because we're we're not we don't have a waiting list right now right and you're under spending for child care vouchers yes and so that's worrisome it's like well people

are not using this resource yeah I'd love to chat about that sometime I think that there's a lot of reasons for that and a lot of barriers for families but I know that social services is working very hard to try to support families the Smart Start Child Care scholarship funds are completely subscribed um and there is a wait list so I think that there are some core barriers for families that some of which we can't control for example the eligibility guidelines you know that are outside of our control and different um barriers that may get worse with legislative changes and that type of thing but I think that we're doing a good job in Durham of using our local money in flexible ways and I think that all we can do is can you continue to be an advocate for better systems and roles to serve

families at the state level my last comment is um have there been any con again the partnership that you all have with Durham Tech um and I guess this I mean maybe for future conversations with Andy sitting here but you know our board has talked a lot about how we would love to see our employers providing on care uh you know Pre-K and Child Care on site um so and also you know from the beginning the Durham pre-k program has been about um not just the county funding it but it being a public-private partnership um so you know maybe this can be something that we start to Pivot on in the coming coming year I know commissioner Burns has mentioned about and and I know this

is something I support it of us having some type of a Community Fund where you know the business Community could contribute to things like Durham Pre-K so I don't want to forget about that I appreciate you saying this is what we have capacity for and so I think what are some other ways we can you know increase the capacity so it's not your ccsa doing this but other partners but I think we we need to be really start to focus on that yeah I you know when you mention fund for the community um we'll have a conversation I've got two business persons right now that want to give money they can't give it to me I can't I want to just like okay but I can't take it if we gotta figure out get it into a pot so that

is how to do we do raise private funds for Durham Pre-K and that was that was what was instrumental for example in building um having getting seed money for the apprenticeship program but um yeah we welcome any conversation about how we can partner to shine that Spotlight of I think there's a lot of ways that private funds can enhance this program in particular for example we were able to get a private donation to start the learning management system which is a the on-demand professional development for teachers through the internet and there's lots of opportunities for for private support of this very public program go over here and then I'll go commissioner Carter and then I'll go back and forth you want to go and then I'll come back over here yeah uh no I'm Gonna Give You preference since it's been given to you what

I'm okay Mr Carter would you like to go and then I'll come back because of Mr Burns sure um well I just want to thank you all for uh what I do think is some of our most critical work that we do as a county and thank you for leading and shaping and helping us manage managing that effort I mean it's really nice to meet you Tamara and look forward to continuing to work with you and learn more about the things that you're doing specifically with Durham Pre-K um I I I feel like we're making good progress I liked your statistic about 88 growth in seat growth for for pre-k since 2015-16 and we should hang on to that and do everything we can to continue to move forward towards our goal of 75 percent um Wendy kind of asked this question I just want to ask it again you know could additional funding increase

um the capacity so that we would have more adequate capacity to grow faster and if what would be the what would be a Target investment that could let us grow faster would it be something related to Transportation or the rap care or you know staff development or staff salaries or for recruitment or all yeah I mean I think all these things working together we're trying to really change the landscape for early childhood and Durham and that Workforce issue is such a big deal obviously with the pandemic I think that what we came to you two years ago I believe it was and we said that we would like a commitment to growth and we you know we had a we had a goal actually it was right before the pandemic and I feel like we're getting back on track with this investment this year right we certainly could um you know if you said Well we'd like more than this many seats we have a couple of schools ready that could add

seats but I think that given um the transportation issue as well as the workforce issues that this this incremental growth makes sense I believe strongly and we are this coming school year will be studying this Transportation issue deeply I was very interested in president buxton's references to Transportation over and over again um transportation is quite challenging we are in a community of practice with other counties that we founded who are making local investments in public preschool taking the example from Durham for example Buncombe counties in that Community Practice and their County Commission has prioritized to study the transportation issue and we are trying to work with them on some really good Lessons Learned and they are not having success as yet with

this Transportation issue so it's it's there's a lot of barriers but right now in terms of the resources you're investing you know if we had additional money available to us I would probably add a one other classroom that we're not planning on right now and I think one of our big issues is we want to continue to make sure we're working closely with the parent engagement an Outreach piece for this program because even though this is a universal access program we prioritize families with less income and we have to do some really intense work in the community to try to make sure we're connecting and developing those relationships with all of our micro communities in Durham that makes good sense and I know that work is hard [Music] um

as far as you know along those lines building relationships with families one one conversation I've heard over the years is that there are some families who would like to choose preschool at their assigned Elementary School their neighborhood or whatever their zoned Elementary School and yet there's no real real correlation between us getting a pre-skate Pre-K seat and it being in your assigned Zone School and I had always thought well wow if we had it preschoolers come into our elementary schools for preschool and they had and they would have a great experience and they'd be hooked and they want to continue on in Durham public schools and so that was really a good plan in my mind what do you think about that is that something we should strive toward are we are we already moving in that direction is it not something we should strive towards because there aren't really that many people who no we definitely should I mean I think that preschool is one key to the health of Durham Public Schools I believe that strongly that that those

early relationships that families form with their home school can be very impactful for children's success the challenge I think the this is the issue Durham public schools has a lot of competing priorities and I would certainly not presume to speak for them but we would meet with them every month and we strategize and we hope that they will continue to consider more investment and in um in preschool I mean they've made a commitment and they've made some strides but we believe that that exactly what you just said the opportunity for families to go to their homeschool you need to go to whatever school that they believe their child will be in for elementary school is a key right now that's not possible at very many schools and it's very much a key strategy to long-term success and um the district has has supported that as a principle I

think that um what we're hopeful is that coming out of the pandemic that it will rise up in and be a bigger uh a stronger priority right that's also certainly we can help um Stoke that the Spire of that conversation um and one last question is I you know I have always as our board has and the school board really you know fought for expanded access to pre-k but we also know that maybe that's you know almost too late it's like what about three-year-olds and even younger children um I don't know my question is on that it's like how how do we afford to provide services for the younger children too that need them funny you should say that um we we do intend to come back to you next year with a proposal due to develop out of pilot for a three-year-old Club that's cool it's been part of the goal ever since the beginning zero to three no three-year-olds just now let me remind you though you may not

remember that your arpa investments in Durham you have funded a very uh intense robust program to support infantiler care and now it's the arpa project so it's time limited but it's not that you're not doing anything in that space But but the three-year-old goal has always been part of the Pre-K task force goal and um we do believe that with some not a universal three-year-old preschool but with some parameters around where the need is where the needs are that we would want to Pilot in partnership with our Early Head Start programs that already serve three-year-olds across our desk yeah it would have been earlier but the pandemic really did derail that and in addition you know that your your Main Street project yes is coming online and you'll be seeing me

more than you want to about that project because we're going to support you in um selecting a vendor for that preschool program for for that and that will be birth to five-year-olds I'm really excited about that thank you all very much how y'all doing Miss Mathis uh welcome aboard we know the questions for you Linda I'm just saying welcome she just got here okay yeah yeah she's out she's on boarding he's her next year my first question is easy questions gonna be hard okay so the first question I think a lot of us or at least in the state everybody's focusing on the budget so this goes back to one thank you so much for the fact that you braid everything like every time you say that I get it you're using every single solitary resource you have to make sure that we're helping as many people with state federal private our got it

8 billion the house 24 billion I think Senate 24b then we go back and I always tell people dwindle down if we look at the budget that the governor put forth for early childhood education is 700 million dollars the house in the Senate is 40 million and 3 million so Governor won't 700 million for you and the house wants 3 million for you so you're not going to be able to braid like you need to braid so that's what I want to ask you about how are we looking at this when we know that no matter what you about to get a huge not just you but the whole state is about to get a huge cut in early childhood I can't even fathom what equation they're using the governor has 700 and they got 3 million so I do want to bring that up because while I'm excited about you know you bringing forward 3 million I also know that we're

about to hit an arpa Cliff so even some of the money you got and other folks is about to come to an end and I don't know if we need to wait a year for another report to come so how do you how when you and your other colleagues Statewide my big question my first one is how do you think that's going to affect you and are you in a position to come back in less than a year and be like y'all I need this so that's the first one and just so you know that was the easy question that's fine um and again I'll remind y'all I could talk all day about this but I'll try try not to so the yes it is um personal opinion it's appalling the discrepancies in the proposed budgets and early childhood if you look at the voters voters support investments in early childhood and our state proposals don't match that but for our local program the what we did in crafting a budget for the coming school year we look at what

is guaranteed what we know I would love to be able to come back to you in the fall and say Hey you know we ended up with more seats well we've been told by the Division of Child Development Early Education is there won't be any new state-funded seats right some of the reason sadly some of the additional resources that they gave for NC Pre-K to support teacher salaries and instructional assistance salaries they are removing yeah they use time limited dollars and they didn't reinvest State dollars so that we we have factored that in because that's a huge concern obviously with all the workforce challenges and then the biggest problem is that we can't Factor those other funds into our growth trajectory right because there's no growth from those other sources and so that makes it quite challenging to meet our 75 percent goal because it's

not realistic for the local investment to fully carry that kind of those kind of seat numbers right you know um so we are in fact Keith from your budget office was so helpful to me in getting some additional information we needed for our budgeting we are constantly revising and we are sadly believe we believe that fewer NC Pre-K state funded seats will actually get filled in Durham because of the removal of some of the supports for teacher salaries because if you don't have a teacher you obviously can't serve children so the the state budget will impact the growth trajectory of our program that's about so yeah I'm trying to because we do get com you know competing things not from y'all but you know but

um I think that this is a board that does fully support you your work your staff's work everything that hate it like and when I I see that kind of a cliff coming I don't even I don't even know what math we would use to to feel that now here's the hard question so um I Wendy asked it thank goodness about the 75 I didn't think we were there yet and I know that y'all are trying and I know I asked this every year and I'm a broken record and I'll be a broken record today um there are some places where we don't have pre-ks right and I get that I get the wrap around service I get the transportation I get all of that I'm still curious is there specific locations ZIP codes in Durham that have absolutely zero the reason why I asked about that I employ my board and you whatever we got to do to open something there like that's what I want I'm all about support and wrap around Services I'm all about filling seats but the same way in a little bit Mary's going to be

in here she's going to talk about food deserts I don't need a Pre-K desert like that's where my head is right now so if they're a whole two zip codes that don't even have 10 seats like in my mind like that's problematic and we we just funded the only reason why I also throw that out I get that we don't have teachers everywhere we don't have transportation everywhere but we do have the will of families who really do to commissioner Jacob's point they got vouchers but they can't find a seat I was at Hayti reborn and I that was the one thing the director was at La said Naima I got like 10 women in here with vouchers and there's no seat and not only is there no seat there's no location that they can get to because they can drive to it so um I would love to know where that is but I also want to work towards opening up a Pre-K Center where none exists at all and I would love your help with that we'd love to partner with you on that what I will say is I would just be this because I don't know what I'm talking

about but right because I I get that the lady the the places have the uh the state has stars requirements right I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I know what the state star requirements are I don't but uh but if if there's a place that doesn't meet that standard and I know y'all have an incubation process help me help you help them meet that requirement so that they can open a hat that's where I am you know yes yes well we're all about capacity building and the the and I love I would be happy to follow up with you with some additional information because one of the things you mentioned was the families with vouchers who couldn't find a seat right and um we are working that's one of the things we at ccsa we operate free Child Care Resource referral service and we are working with DSS with a whole list of families who can't find care to try to match them with an available seat and there's a lot of layers of issues with that that I'd love to chat with you

about in terms of there are many private Child Care Partners that don't take vouchers they won't accept them because the state reimbursement rate is so low for a voucher and you get families in a cliff because they have a parent copay and they have to pay the difference between what the state reimburses and what the program charges and that's a big problem but that's a separate issue for pre-k to answer your question when we did our supply and demand study we knew we found that in our census tracts in Durham that there was only one public pre-case seat for every six low-income children in the census tracts that was in 2018 1718. so we are presently looking to update the that those numbers in light of our growth but what we do know in terms of matching our online portal of families who've applied with available seats we continue to have way more demand in South Durham which you would expect than there are

available seats so all of South Durham is is a huge challenge when it comes to seed availability but in addition you asked about particular you know deserts we believe this is why it's so critical that the school system continued their commitment to the preschool at every elementary school because that would create some core Pathways for families to access preschool and that would take a big swath of what your concern is off the table so that's one issue secondly though for business development you know president Buxton mentioned about their small business incubator and the support for small businesses and all that one of the projects you funded through the arpa is to provide um technical assistance and support for the business side of child care and that is to help some programs open new

and go through not only the licensing process which is the building of quality in the classroom but also to access technical assistance around the business strategies because a lot of times Child Care owners and directors have very limited business skills it's not their jam you know so we want to support them so yes it is on our radar and you said that was a really hard question it's really not because the issue is that everything you have invested in to build capacity are our feeling is that we're trying to braid everything together so for example the apprenticeship program that's in the Workforce Development Area we're trying to get more teachers in the technical assistance quality improvement we're trying to support people to expand and be able to offer more seats we're trying to push the school system forward with their new goal of having preschool you know all these things together in addition working closely with Head Start

you know that that is a key element and the public schools used a lot of Title One Federal money to to help support preschool in addition to what you give them directly in addition to what we pay them through the Durham Pre-K money but we know that um in the public school Arena there's so many competing priorities that we have to continue as a community to expect preschool to be a very important focus of our public school system so Linda this is such a important conversation for for for this board it has been for years so I'm I'm sure you could tell us a lot and and the other thing when you talk about a manager just reminded me that um Jeff Durham is going to work with us around um getting resources into an account because sending money to the county

it gets a little bit more complicated when we have to give it out it is government stuff you know it it just takes a lot of stuff so if we can get and and the businesses really want to help in this community yes yes and especially when it comes talking about our children I I think they they want to participate is just us giving them an Avenue of how to do it and I look forward to that and I want to give commissioner long a few minutes so that she can ask her questions as well thank you so much for this presentation and yeah a lot of my colleagues asked the a lot of the questions that I wanted to ask so thank you so much for the clarification especially around that 38 thank you Wendy for asking that um to my only question remaining now is kind of to build off of commissioner Burns's last comment could we receive like a map basically that shows where the Pre-K programs currently are located and then also overlaying on top of that

where is public transportation in relation to those um what using Census Data if it's available like what is the average income in those communities um even pulling in like what is the crime rates in those areas because I think there is a correlation to pockets of lack of access to education to increase uh rates of crime so I think that would be really beneficial for us to be able to see how we're mapping forward for the future so we don't have those uh Pre-K uh deserts or commissioner Burns mentioned yes we can do that the what we have already we have the programs mapped by type and site and all that but and we do also have quite a bit of information about the income for families who have have applied what we can do though is we can certainly work to to do an overlay of those things the map that exists now overlays public you know

Public School sites versus private sites and that um and and identifies where those are and how many seats there are those sites but we can certainly work to to Overlay this and follow back up with you okay well thank you so much we appreciate them yeah did you have yeah presentation as well yes it's just two slides I'll work to move as quickly okay I can't run out of time here how long is yours it's only two slides and I'll work to be as fast as I can I was planning on 15 minutes not for discussion and presentation but I can try to make that shorter kind of sorry yeah I should have no problem yeah thank you thank you Tim okay so just to provide y'all uh with a little bit of a retrospective for this year in the kind of Early Childhood Program area um as you all know our budget for pre-k

is by far the largest allocation um for community-based supports in early childhood but there's an additional for this particular fiscal year an additional almost four hundred and forty thousand dollars um that we use for Early Childhood focused initiatives um and of that of that 440 000 about 57 of that supports grown in Durham uh our uh initiative to implement our early childhood action plan for Durham and I'll talk about that in just a second 43 is used to support a relatively small grants to community-based Partners working in early childhood in Durham in these areas that you see on the slide um and the funded partners and projects are listed on the slide as well um about

94 of that 50 of that 43 most of most of those funds go directly to Partners and about six percent of those funds are used to provide uh books um as well as funds for Early Childhood focused events and community building and I just want to highlight super quickly the art on the fridge Fest which happened on Monday um you'll see the flyer and the picture here on the slide this was a partnership with the office on youth Changed by youth ambassadors and we work to provide a day of play and art kind of in response to the listening project and in response to the Early Childhood action plan feedback just around wanting more spaces for joy and for community building we had over a thousand people come out for this event on Monday and it was almost entirely youth-led and it was just super joyful and that's I think one

really amazing thing that these funds contributed to let's see um I'll also just say this doesn't include that 440 000 doesn't include the arpa funding and you all did an incredible job um of of allocating over five million dollars in arpa funding to Early Childhood um uh supports aligned with our grown and Durham Early Childhood action plan and that's really exciting um and if there's also funding built in for the universal basic income pilot that will also be aligned with our early childhood action plan and that's really exciting so just quickly on grown in Durham um These funds that the county has provided for grown in Durham have really been transformational in allowing us to transfer leadership of this project to a group of community Leaders with lived experiences with challenges in our early childhood systems and I think

that's something we should be really proud of um I think as far as I know it's sort of the first contract of its kind here at the county at least in recent history and I think it's making a big difference in facilitating stronger Connections in our community I think in competition for philanthropic dollars and with competing needs across our early childhood systems grown in Durham has been a space where people have built relationships and and been able to sort of expand out and and strengthen trust um and I think our community is stronger because of this investment the county has been making and grown in Durham um so I think let me just see if there's anything else I'd like to add to that um I think of the funds allocated this year for gronin Durham 40 percent have been for Staffing like that backbone infrastructure support role to

facilitate that collaboration 20 have been for Community member compensation for steering committee members 20 percent have been on strategy implementation and small grants to community-based and Community rooted organizations 10 percent on community engagement and community building and 10 on Administration and we are working to to raise funds from private sources for this work as well um I'll just uh to close draw your attention to the photo at the bottom of this slide this is a recent gronin Durham steering committee meeting and in this picture we've got Durham County staff Duke University staff together with parents with lived experience with immigration with incarceration with maternal health challenges sharing their experiences with each other and and planning for the future and again I'll just say I think it's been really powerful and I believe

deeply in what this type of community building will be able to do for our early childhood systems in Durham and I'll leave it there and if you all have any questions about our Early Childhood Program Mary I'm happy to take them thank you so much and I I do apologize for you having to rush through your your presentation we just kind of got enthralled into uh this other conversation but they all are connected so thank you are there any questions any burning questions that anyone needs to ask before we move on um commissioner Jacobs thank you Kate and I'm I'm sorry I missed the art on the fridge I'm glad to hear it had such a good turnout on a on a not not really nice weather at all that day so imagine if it was and I hope that will be an annual event um and I thank thank you so much for the

work that you have been leading in the community um and um for can you know implementing our early childhood action plan that that's what it's all about is making that happen we you know we create plans and then they sit on a shelf and so the fact that you are really helping to to make it actually happen is fantastic and I appreciate both of you reminding us of the arpa funding I honestly forgot about the fact that we we are supplementing and and really providing a lot of funding through that um and I I looked at the five at Thrive website was really glad to see that um and it just felt very concrete and relatable and also I was just started thinking about all the things that we are doing in other areas that are aligned and the

low income I'm sorry the guaranteed income pilot is what came to mind so I'm glad you mentioned that and I'm wondering what are your thoughts on how we can you know because again we want to we don't want to be in silos how how do you see grown in Durham you know weaving together and being a part and a partner in that pilot thank you so much for that question um Universal basic income are guaranteed income pilot is one of our five to thrive strategies for grown and Durham it Rose to the very top families told us again and again that so much would be helpful increased access to child care more family-friendly spaces but the most impactful thing that we could do to support families with young children in our community would be increasing Financial Resources direct to those

families without strings attached so I think the way that grown in Durham can support that work it's already in the grown in Durham sort of work plan for design sessions to happen this fall around a pilot for Universal basic income and so I think if we are able to kind of align these these two efforts and build on those conversation and conversations and planning that have happened already around guaranteed income for families with young children in Durham I think that would be wonderful and I I uh let me just say um supported uh commissioner long and myself in getting us prepared to go to DC and speak on that so she was very involved in this conversation yeah just acknowledge that yeah Kate is how I got looped in even the Nationals yeah she's been in Bob from the beginning

I just want to say I am thrilled that you all are considering uh guaranteed and compilated I think it's for the focus on on women and children right right so and I I think that if if we can really show alignment with you know the grown in Durham and even I don't know if it's possible but linking with DSS with the family's first initiative the legislation I mean as much we could really our program could really be a standout I think nationally so I think it's great when is that coming to us on the agenda coming back at the work session mm-hmm Monday yeah I'll be on the agenda not not this Monday right uh commissioner Carter um thank you Kate for the right presentation and the even greater work

in the community and um I just want to follow up with what Wendy said when I first heard about the guaranteed basic income that you all are championing my immediate thought was I remember that our early childhood coordinator presented I think you know for arpa funding for a guaranteed basic income kind of program because it was part of the five to thrive and it's what families have been requesting which is why when the manager was sort of feeling us all out about the guaranteed basic income I said yes I I I'm all for it I and I really think that our candidate pools should be families with young children and I still feel that way and I really think it's important that what Wendy said happens is that we are sure to align our two efforts very closely so it's you know very evident that that our guaranteed basic income pilot which is part of a national thing is aligned with our early childhood action plan here locally so I think that's critical

64 overall an operating decrease of 20 almost 24 percent I don't want to decrease anything um in this area because I think this is our most important area to be spending money on I mean you might remember at our budget what kickoff or whatever it was that we had at Duke when we talked about our priority areas I really limited mine to just a couple and one of them was you know early child The Early Childhood space and families and supporting families and doing everything we can to

help families with young children and it even if some of the funding and if I think if I understood the the reasoning behind it the justification for the decrease there was a you know a good answer for why the the justification why the reduction had been made but I think the reason why is because we no longer need that funding to support the creation of the grown in Durham right we've already created it so now we're implementing it I just think we should keep using that same amount of funding um you know for implementation efforts and so I'd really like to see that funding added back or some portion of it added back or I'd like to I guess hear from our staff could they spend it if they had it you know that kind of thing it doesn't feel fair to ask that right now so I don't really want to but um and I know that's not what these this is for necessarily but um just I I would like to make that point that this is I think the most important area to invest in our

families in our early childhood years and I don't see the benefit of making a cut here so the manager want to speak on that now or do you want to wait I can just say that was the rationale because the um the study and ramping up to the Early Childhood action plan was done and so normally when you have set aside funds for that specific purpose you take them out of the budget but that is not to say that we would not fund anything that was was requested um that that maybe the funding isn't there for so if there are additional initiative strategies that we need to implement and the funding is not there we have made it very clear to staff that all they would need to do would be to ask us so certainly in this area we could fund any additional strategies that were presented all right thank you so much thank you for all the work you're doing welcome

again on board and um I would look to hear from you again soon I'm sure thanks for you all so much thank you thank you all right our next conversation is uh 230398 and that's the classification and compensation study age up persons are here is Kathy good morning is that better so David and I are here today just to uh review recap from the presentation that

you received earlier from our consultant and I understand that you have the full report now so we're also here to answer any questions you may have good morning chair Harrington Commissioners good morning manager staff we're going to start off with a quick recap of our past presentation there we go um and our last conversation we had a quick uh conversation around our labor market and Market position pay for a performance pay structure maintaining a competitive compensation system and the compensation and philosophy policies uh you all have the full detail now the policies in the report I hope you've had some time to look at

it we'll be able to discuss today labor market and Market position just really quick we did Cover the 12 cities and counties that were part of the recommended labor market for this particular study and I wanted to point out that Durham County should aim for a market position that is above the average at 75 percentile so that's something that was a part of the study's recommendation and that we're working to aim for I also want to note that on an annual basis the county manager should recommend a pay for performance structure that allows the county to maintain that place in the market recommended pay structure so this particular study has done something different they've Consolidated us from having three pay plans we had a unified which was a general pay plan executive pay plan and Public Safety they've done

22 per hour um we've noted this before and we had a wonderful conversation in the fall regarding the living wage and how that policy should be reviewed on the annual basis so we'll be looking forward to having additional conversations with the board regarding that policy foreign this is the cost summary so it breaks

5 percent went to employees who were at or below 75 000. um in addition to the cost of living increase there was a retention bonus

that was done uh the retention bonus broke it out so every Durham County employee even if you were a temporary you did receive those funds we had a certain amount for relief which was five hundred dollars temporary staff received a thousand and then our regular and provisional staff received 1500 there was also a differential we gave 1800 to employees who did not do not have the opportunity for remote work so we wanted to make sure the county manager was really adamant about this she was very enthusiastic in hearing the employees voices about the fact that not everybody has the opportunity for remote work we do have staff that can't do their jobs from home a wonderful EMS technicians attention officers there's a number of classifications that fit within that in addition we had a longevity bonus and the longevity bonus was based on your service criteria here at Durham County and so we had the amounts broken down as you can see if you were new to the

5 percent so budget projected that would be an additional six hundred thousand when it comes to the cost and all other employees will receive the recommended seven percent for the

8 million when you look at the implementation cost for our Executives we're looking at 374 thousand dollars so you can see that's a small slice of the pie of the total cost of the study

I can give you the total number in just a moment thank you all right well we're getting the questions so uh I have commissioner Carter's question around how many staffs that is and that executive piece so just give me a moment to look that up and if we want to have ongoing discussions while I found that information for you are you waiting on us to respond what what is it that I just I just want to say I I really appreciate getting the additional information especially reading the study was really helpful to me personally um and to see you know where where the recommendation is coming from um from the assessment and and also when I looked at the salary survey and then to see where the adjustments

were made and to see that we adjusted up to make sure that people were at that the focus was on getting people up to minimum level and to see that with each department I was really glad to see for instance that the majority you could see with the salary adjustments were made predominantly in areas like for DSS it was 179 people for Library it was 68 but you know those are just some of the notes I took but I I felt a lot better when I looked when I was able to see where we have really gone and especially looking at getting people up to the minimums that was what was really prioritized with this Compensation Plan also I was I mean I was pleasantly surprised to see that with a lot of our um with the salary survey in a lot of areas we're actually doing better

than the market I mean consistently there were certain positions that we definitely needed to adjust but there were probably majority were actually doing pretty well and maybe that's because we have been doing this on a somewhat annual basis so um and I guess I I think I feel like this is the first time we're actually implementing it at one time and so you know I remember when I talked to your manager so well you said I really want to honor the results of the study and I really want to that you know my position is that we Implement what is being recommended and so I I feel I can never I'm the kind of person that I need to feel like I'm informed myself and so I I and reading the study I I understand why you feel that way and so I support

the recommendations in the study um the other thing is um I did want to note something that I felt was interesting which was on page 22. where there were some guidelines about um the pay for performance evaluation system and the study says very clearly like the other side of this is you have to have you know a really strong pay for performance system and I took a screenshot of there there were four guiding principles that were listed and so one of my questions is you know and because that to me that's the other side of the coin right if we're going to really about you know pay people for their performance um you know and have a ha so I guess to you manager so well and also to Kathy what is we're going to really do this

and do it the right way with all these new policies and you know what are we going to do on the other side our pay for performance system what's going to be that work around that so we've already started having conversations with department heads around this and I was really pleased to hear some of the steps that department heads have already taken so what it appears is that when we have our performance appraisal period um some people just get exceeds expectations with no real justifications others get needs improvement with no real justifications and so we are addressing that and one of the recommendations was for us to well one I asked all of our department heads and then to to make sure our supervisors and managers do this at the beginning of this fiscal year to sit down with each employee to go through their performance plan and establish what the expectations

are so that people know up front what it is that they're being evaluated on and then clearly identify what are the behaviors that would warrant and exceeds expectations what are the behaviors that would warrant and need Improvement or lack of behaviors that we want so that people are clear up front how they can can achieve and exceeds or meet expectations so we've already started those conversations but I will let director Everett Perry add on to that so I wanted to add on to what she was saying about there's been a pattern of exceeds expectation without real justification but our paper performance system was so low that individuals often felt or at least this is what they communicated to HR that they needed to give the exceeds because it was just three percent and our neighboring counties were so much higher the city being in and or cities because the city being at five percent at the max and our Max was three so now that Dr Sowell has

come and she's raised that to at least four we're getting competitive but to be truly competitive we need to probably broaden the ban and have more levels so people don't feel like they have to give the max to show an appreciation for the work that the employee he's doing and we've had conversations Dr solo has spoken with us about looking at how we can extend the ban okay well I hope yeah I mean just looking at their four kind of guiding principles there on page 22. um I hope that we'll look at that and and make sure that we are following those recommendations as well and the other issue I was going to ask about is how are we going to be sharing the the policies the new policies that are laid out in the plan you know with with this with our staff and also with people who are applying to

work with Durham County because um there's there are a lot of policies that are laid out here and and so just wondering how how is that going to happen we're going to be upon the approval of the study incorporating these changes into our current policies and we have a number of activities planned including training for our internal staff to make them aware we have several different Avenues of communication we use for employees My Deco and now we launched in the fall Durham County Services Hub which also includes all of our policies and procedures as well so that employees know how to go about doing certain things especially when it comes to our HR processes and so we do plan on getting that done as soon as possible there are a number of changes in the policy that will help us operate a lot more efficiently and also help us be able to maintain our compensation system in a way that we really need to in the last conversation commissioner Alum did

mention having the salary max range to make that a lot clearer for people so they can know what they're when they're applying what their salary possibilities are are and so looking to incorporate those things and get them out as soon as possible will be one of the first things we're doing we have a number of steps this is a huge Study last time as you mentioned commissioner Jacobs we did have it broken out so Public Safety happened one year and then general population happened the next year so uh fortunately we've uh made some resources and reached some additional resource changes in HR and we'll be able to successfully work on all these implementation changes say that whenever we do change policies we notify staff by putting that information out and making them aware in a way that's very clear that they've been policy changes but in terms of our recruits we could clearly put our policies on an external site versus just

internal so that they will have access to see how we operate as well yeah I think that would be very helpful because it's one of the one of the messages I got you know from the study was the importance of being very consistent being transparent things being you know having very clear rationale for why things are done and and it being done uh consistently so and one of the other things that we've done to ensure we get comprehensive communication we've established a group of employees called decode communication ambassadors and these are people that will help us spread the word when we have significant changes that people need to know about because not everyone has access to a computer every day and so we have people identified that can go out and meet those who are in the field or off site and make sure that they're getting the communications that that everyone else is thank you yeah I'm really I am really happy to see

this because we were for the longest time we were losing employees to the city because we weren't competitive in salaries and they would leave the county and go work for the city because they can make more money so it's time we be competitive yeah so thank you questions uh commissioner Burns bless y'all I literally text the manager and said how is 10 slides 90 minutes I was confused so thank y'all for getting through that so expeditiously mine is really easy one I'm for um I would have been for it before the report but much like commissioner Jacobs it's nice to have some evidence to back it up in the previous presentation I brought up the state budget right so we can't get the governor's office the house and the Senate to agree on public education can't get them to agree on early childhood education can you but oddly enough the one thing they agree on across the board almost it where they can't agree on also the race for teacher

5 some

random percentage but if we have our set and that's a number like that's something so I can say well all right I know I'm gonna get this extra 800 these first couple young people calculate that I promise you they do when I'm on boarding people and they say uh the state doesn't do longevity pay at this level they don't they don't do it at zero to five I thought this was great but they just the feds don't do longevity pay this early I think you got to have like two years in so I do think that this is something else that people would gravitate towards because they'll say okay if I'm gonna get this uh and if if it really is this sit right as a poster percentage I think that this is something that we might want to show also and so my last one told y'all I was quick this is a lot of stuff to implement and you say you got additional resources do y'all have everything y'all need to roll this out I know I asked y'all that last year but you know we ain't budget y'all y'all got what y'all need we're we're going to work the best we can and what we have but we do need the Erp just to throw that out there but that'll happen one day

you know I I'm not trying to ask anything here I'm not trying to pull along this but I want y'all to be successful like that's where I am because if y'all are successful they're successful but I'm done question is what is Erp oh so Enterprise resources uh look at it look at it can't even tell what is an sap is an enterprise resource that's our sap budget it's an HR System I think they need that person if nothing more for the definition right it's currently a 20 enterprise resource platform I would say that we we work very very close with budget and Finance in our system that was implemented in 2005 and it was a little dated when it was implemented so there are some nuances to it and a lot of manual work that has to go in to keep it cranking but we will be able to make it work and we'll work with the staff to meet expectations as well

for asking the question and thank Dr so well because we have been understaffed for many years and she came in and gave us some resources last year's budget and that's been very helpful yeah and really quick commissioner Carter there are 31 people that are within that but I do want to know it does include the individuals you all appoint into positions as well even though technically they're not because you all appoint them and set salaries they are included in the study for that purpose thank you so much for the presentation and the amount of detail that I'm sure went in behind this to getting it down to 10 slides for us um I'm supportive of this uh I'm always supportive of you know making sure folks are paid for the work that they are doing and valued and seen uh for their value that they're bringing to the county I had uh two questions one may be more honestly a Keith question um of Jess I saw the 1922 and I was just

wondering to confirm that's our school with the school budgets they are their request also brings School Employees classified staff to 1922 right so I don't think theirs came up to 1922 I think it was closer to 19. Keith do you remember we asked Paul um what the base salary for the classified staff would be with their study thanks for the question I believe the last communication when we had DPS was it was theirs was more in the mid-18s we can confirm 1850 1870 I think Claudia said we're their number is also a little bit flexible because they're still pending of course what state changes happen which may trickle down and influence a lot more also okay but we can try to confirm once they're wrapped up to see where they are that helps that would be great yeah sure because if we depending on the state you know I'll just throw it out there I would love for us to be just across the

board even for Durham County government schools everything at the same starting wage and then my um second question was around for positions that are vacant um how are they impacted by the adjustments right question vacant positions will be brought in at least at the minimum of the new pay ban and so it all depends on the position of course we work very close with Recruitment and recruit recruitment Works close with the hiring managers to do equity and look at where people are within that a particular classification ban as they're bringing them on so they will not make anything lower than 1922 most will probably come in probably a little bit higher unless they have no experience but we do they will not be paying under that amount thank you and my lap and I'm always co-signing here I apologize but I uh to add on to Dara's response because or if

the study is approved and salaries go up that would require pay bands to go up as well and because pay Banks go up the vacant positions then would be in a higher position so when we hire we're still hiring individuals at a higher salary than we would prior to the study and my last question is um for our staff and this is just in general like overall for staff being able to organize is there has there been more conversations around staff being able to do deductions to be able to contribute to if they want to participate in the local UE 150 or unions like the city really does commissioner Alum a lot of that is controlled by the legislature the general statutes whether they will allow that no surprise they're a lobbying efforts on both sides it is trending toward not being more expansive with

that opportunity there are opportunities now to do that but it's not a Durham County policy but does the city the city currently allows the deductions right so well do they have different rules for cities than they do for counties in allowing that no we're able to do anything that statutes allow so I'll let Miss Miss Perry explain what we do currently do I don't want to misspeak but generally whether to allow a more a greater expansion would be based on what the state law has but I'll defer we don't currently have anything in our policies that address that is that due to this to the general statutes or is that due to us just not being having done that yet if it is allowed by Statute it's just us not having done it I know many years ago when there was a talk at the legislature to um

have unions in public sector jobs a lot of things were discussed in prepared for I should say but when that did not go through all of that was not considered any further [Music] like automatic dues um yeah so union members can choose to have a and this is for like typical unions you can have a payroll deduction that goes towards your union dues instead of paying for it separately and that's people like that yes yes yeah I was a Durham public school teacher that's what I would do to pay my ncae dues yeah I was going to say I remember the school board allowed that for hives drivers and things and I've gotten some information about that too

and I'm trying to remember who I spoke with uh one of my Representatives that I'm not clear I can't remember because I'd gotten the request and I think I talked back to the person to see if we could do that and I don't I don't remember being told that we could so maybe turning have to clear that up for me because I remember getting the request so two things I'll recommend one we want to find out what the law allows us to do I'll send you something about that there are no unions in North Carolina that deal with government I know we use that term but it confuses the public so I'm just for the record there are not unions that County employees are a part of that we're associated with because there's no collective bargaining but um to the extent we are allowed by Statute to allow employees to contribute will have that answer mechanically to make it happen is a cost

Factor because now you have to create a deduction and a routing system that's unbudgeted so it's not merely the allowance we want to also consider how do we modify our payroll system to do those kinds of transactions because it's going to be a percentage of the amount and even one percent if you're talking about three hundred thousand dollars you can figure out what that is so um we just want to be mindful as we proceed and when we incorporate that we'll bring it back for a formal action and then now that they were looking at one department they weren't they weren't they were not asking about all of County Government they were asking about one Department we're not going to enact anything for one Department yeah yeah that was but I remember that we're asking about the one and I was told if you did it the whole system and I will say that that goes back to the Erp that acronym because our system

sometimes handicaps us from things that might seem modern and commonplace I'll leave it there and to just add to that I'm just going to say for the record so we are working with our staff is working with an Erp system that is 20 plus years old and has not been updated that's unheard of you all can we just throw out the the last part of Erp is software thank you so that we know that's what it's a 20 year old program it's a 20 year old program and so there are a lot of transactions that staff have to do manually because our system has not been updated to the modern conveniences so we are working on I've charged our isnt director with pulling together a team to look at um a new either a new software or upgrading our current software so that is in the works thank you

um thank you Kathy and Dara so much for all the information and and for presenting what I personally find really complicated information in a way that is easier to understand I spent a lot of time with the report in those charts and if I look a little blurry I didn't cross-eyed this morning that's why I literally was up this morning at five trying to um just work through some of the specific situations I don't quite understand and would it be all right if I just present a couple of those now and maybe you can walk me through it and before I ask any questions I do want to be sure that I make it really clear to work in it goes for every single one of our County staff members but I do have a few questions still that in order to be fully supportive of this study I'd like

to I just looked at seven different positions and I'm trying to understand our compensation philosophy here and so in certain positions I definitely understand it um it might it because it's a like some of these positions I looked at are hard to fill positions or below the market average the recommendation is to you know raise the salaries so that we're above the market average by about 70 in the 75th percentile but then there are other positions where we're already above the average in the recommended new salary range is Rec it's there's a recommended increase and that's where I just don't understand the justification for the full increase and then there are a couple others where um let's see far below the market average currently the range is raised up but it's actually still below the market and so in my

opinion I would look at that and think well gosh it seems like that should be raised more and some of those others not raised quite as much and I'll just give you two specific examples so that you know that in general that's my question is why are some raised above the market average when they're already above the market average some are below the market average and they're raised but they're still not raised up to the market and so I'm just missing something because y'all are nodding like yes we hear your question please help me understand this I won't even tell the specific ones but so it depends on what you're looking at exactly because you may be looking at if you recall there are three levels and in some levels we may be low and then the midpoint we may be uh there or above and even at the higher range so we had the mid the mid mid and Max so some of those are not consistent at some levels were higher than others

and in addition to that in terms of those individuals who are already above the market and being raised higher you would have to look at the work that the consultant looked at to make these assessments my job description is most likely different from an average HR director in local government because I do lend some legal expertise so when you start looking at the specific jaq which was the job description questionnaire that each employee was asked to fill out we may not be able to find a perfect match but we may use the same job title so some of that would affect where he believes the job should go and in addition to that if you don't move everyone you create greater compression than we already live in so you're going to bring some people up because they're low and then you're going to not move people because hey they're already up but then you'll have this hodgepodge of compression that

won't adequately um compensate those employees who maybe have at a higher level and that was what I was going to share but not knowing which ones you're talking about either mid mid men or Max it makes it more difficult to specifically respond but Darren may have something in addition did you um I was just going to add in addition to that that when it comes to this work it does have a degree of subjectivity it's not like normal Sciences like biology and physics there are a number of components that have to go with it and so when they look as Kathy mentioned they looked at the job questionnaires and that actually had a lot of weight not just the market position or where the position is going to be now I want to remind us that those are the pay bands we may also already have individuals that are in those bands that

are well positioned where they're supposed to be in those bands so they're not low they're actually well positioned already in those bands because of additional work that we've already done like we've had colas two years in a row that have helped us manage the compensation plan so we aren't looking as bad as we looked before that is helpful and I get the compression thing and and I hear what you're saying too about specific job responsibilities in the questionnaire um this one's really stuck out for me it was a deputy sheriff major and um the our current salaries are 16 13 and 11 below the market average according to one of those charts and then the recommended salary the new recommended salary range does raise them but it raises them to numbers that are still below the market average

and so that just is hard for me to understand how that meets our philosophy of trying to meet Market minimums and averages and I can only say that in every instance it may not be ideal but you're bringing them up and if it is your desire to move those positions that are still below up higher we could do that but this was a more uniform way to address everyone at one time at the minimal cost and of course that's what the consultant's goal was to do but you can't tackle it all at once but the idea is to move forward and the recommendation is to also look at salaries every year to see where you're trending so that we can stay within our compensation philosophy and it might be during that year that you would move those up and nobody else is moving and we've done that with Public Safety in

fact we moved them last year quite substantially and we're still low I guess in some instances but that's how you move it I mean actually I was pleased to see that many of the public safety positions were above the market like the detention officer where I know that's a hugely hard to fill position and our current salaries are six percent nine point six percent and eleven percent above the market and you know we're going to raise it even more it's going to go even higher so that's good that made you know that's an example of one that made good sense to me um but but you know and and again those are pay bands so that doesn't mean that the employees are below the market right unless they're paid outside their pay band right I mean if they're paid within their pay band and the pay bans below the market then they would be below the market but you're looking at Mid Min mid Max we don't know where they fall right you see what I'm saying so it could be that even though the pay ban is lower they're not necessarily

um quite too low in that pay ban they may be up at the max can I just also Jim in this also does not include the seven percent does this include this does not include the seven percent across the board I'm not sure which one she's looking at so when you're looking at the study results that's prior to before we were prior to and the bands are moving but I want to make a comment about that particular classification as well that's not one that we tend to have individuals who are hired externally there are individuals who grow within the organization that are that tend to go into those positions so their salaries actually have grown nicely they come in at a level where they would never be near the minimum of that paper in they would be toward the mid point of the pay ban so they you don't have to worry about them being paid low and that's probably one of the things they looked at because we've made a number of changes in public safety over the last few years there's been a deep focus on that then they are positioned if I go

6 percent of the total staff so it's a disproportionate impact is how I see that you know that the pay the increased pay for the executive staff members has a disproportionate impact on the annual implementation cost and that just doesn't feel good to me and so that's why I've sort of spent so much time looking at this and trying to wrestle

with with it um but they probably take on a disproportionate amount of responsibility and risk in the workplace as well possible and I was I was I was going to say that because and I have said this to a couple of Commissioners I have been up at it our executive team where were those who are in the lower pay bands when the when their time ends they have to clock out and if they don't if they work over we give them overtime it's it's FS flsa it's a law our executive team members don't get paid over time and they work a significant amount of overtime so I have sent emails at 11 PM at night just to get something off of my brain and I get a response five minutes later and I say oh I didn't want you to respond and people say oh no I'm up working so our executive team members are working a significant amount of time over the seven and a half hours per day that's on their schedule and so that's

8 because they are working and they are working very complex problems just our community intervention and support services department that's a department that other counties don't have they Outsource that to non-profits that is something that I get a call it I won't say daily but multiple times a week General assistant County Manager Pierce is calling me about something that is not covered in our MPA programs it's not something that you can look at a page and say oh this is how they've handled it in other counties it's something that we are having to deal with and navigate on a daily basis and they do an exceptional job at some of these very complex issues that come up with non-traditional Workforce issues so that's that's one of the reasons why you will see more of an increase for

executive level staff because they are are handling these gigantic problems that have not been in existence 10 years ago people didn't have to deal with some of the problems that executive level staff are dealing with now yeah I I agree with all of that I I just I do want to because I feel like I'm hearing my colleague um I won't you won't for the executive staff I'm 100 on board with that and I know that the comment wasn't to negate um the work of anybody else but if I'm here I never like to put words in people's mouths me and my daddy we we always hate when people say uh what they're trying to say yes so I ain't saying that for commissioner Carter or for you but what I heard was we also have staffers that have a complicated job as well and there's

is 24 hours there are bullets involved and so um what I heard and I could be wrong is we're for the raise but I'm for raising to raise equitably for everybody and I just want to say if that's what I heard I'm in agreement and that is not for me to say let's change the budget to do anything but much like what we've said for everything else if a change needs to be made mid-year I would hope that we would be open to doing that for that classification as well so I'm gonna just throw that out there because I'm in agreement with that that is also the specific group that she brought up that's a complicated role too so yeah and there are others but right I get yeah yeah because those

words are different so yeah I'm with you on that and so one of the The Proposal is we could do a seven and a half percent for those that are below a certain salary which is what we did last year and I have to just say this for the record so eight years ago I was making forty thousand dollars a year I want that to sink in I was made well actually on this date I was drawing unemployment and then in September of 2015 I took an entry-level job at forty thousand dollars a year because I wanted to change my career trajectory so I understand the struggle amen I understand the pain and that is why last year I suggested that we give a higher level increase to those that were that that earned below 75 000 because it wasn't that long ago that that was me that I was front line staff and that I was boots on the ground so I am all for making sure that we are equitably raising salaries across the

board please understand that so the recommendation is we can go to seven and a half percent or those that are below a certain amount if that is what the board recommends we can certainly do that and we know that it's going to be an additional 600 000 but you know I I would support that but it's up to to whatever the board's pleasure is um I just want to say that you know when we think about I think about all of the folks that we call on the staff that we call on no matter what time of night is what time of day it is we call staff to get stuff done and we're expecting them to get it done and they get it done for us um so as we are engaging in this conversation I'm really thinking about the the man

that we put on people and the lack of of staff because if I call Kathy then on the weekend she gets information back to me right away so I you know I I don't have a problem compensating people that work like that and all of our employees work like that I mean they they work hard and some are more on call than others so I don't have a problem paying people because otherwise they go someplace else We've Got Talented good people that are committed to us and committed to Durham County but if we don't take care of them they

will and I don't blame them I would too I go somewhere else that somebody else pay me better so I I guess you know when we're talking about this conversation I hope we will take into consideration the demands that we place as a board that we place on our staff um and just consider that consider what we put we demand off the demands that we put on people to get the work done and some of some of us forget it's even a a weekend we just call you anyway and ask you to do stuff and and is not to disrespect you or we can but sometimes it just seems that urgent to us and we thank you for getting it done um I I just needed to let you know how I appreciate that and I think this whole

board does as well uh commissioner alum I was just going to ask for clarification because sorry I stepped away so I didn't know what was being asked too much did you have something no I was just wondering what was the question that was asked that we were just discussing I think it's a conversation around salaries and the equity um arouse Towers is that commission manager is that where we are yes yes that's where we are and so it's it's at the board's pleasure as to you know whether we the recommendation is seven or seven percent across the board but a question was raised about but what about those that are in the because at the executive level seven percent yields a lot more of an increase than it does for people at lower pay bands and so do we want to give a higher level increase to those that are below a certain salary

yes and so it is going is it is it ever going to be if it's it's never going to be even because if you're making if you're making twenty dollars and you're given 20 percent and I'm making five and I'm giving it's never going to be equal it's not going you you would have to you would actually have different different level increases for every Pay Band yeah it'd have to be Equitable yeah you'd have to yeah yeah go to Every diff every Pay Band and raise their to make it and I don't know how you do that yeah yeah my only issue is that is about process that you know we had a study done we had people look at the data and make recommendations and then it's are we

8 million dollars this this is a huge investment um yeah and so I I for me I guess I feel like and then the recommendation is that every year we come back and and you know really start to focus on keeping up every year and evaluating the study recommends looking at the cost of living the East what is it the ECI or the the certain index that we look at that

um so so for me it's more of a processing are we going to implement this or not are we going to file the recommendations or not that's why I said I'm comfortable after reading the studies you know accepting the recommendations and and moving forward any other questions not if you have anything else you want to present you're good thank you so much thank you Commissioners manager uh lunches in the back if we want to break for lunch before we go to the next item okay so we're going to take uh we're taking 20 minutes or 30 minutes for lunch what is it it's 20 minutes preference okay 20 minutes we're back by 12 0 then uh 12 25. okay

okay

continue food security update that is they're here right already okay hi how are you we can go ahead you can go ahead and let's get started the manager will be here in a second well thank you so much for allowing us to present today it's always nice chatting with you all um well oh that's that's perfect someone told me the other day that food security starts with you you got to make sure you got it you eat your lunch so yeah so feel free to keep chewing um but yeah we'll we'll try to keep it short but before we get into the presentation I did just want to take a moment to acknowledge that the land that Durham County occupies is the ancestral traditional

and contemporary lands of the Eno chicory okonichi Shira zaponi Lumbee and tuscora peoples and we hope that we can honor our ancestors the folks that live here today and future Generations in how we care for the land and for each other okay um so I want to share a little bit of data about where we are in regards to food Security in Durham and you all have seen these numbers before but I just wanted to provide a reminder uh so the the chart that's on the screen right now are the Durham County residents that sometimes are frequently skip Mills or cut the size of their meals because they did not have enough money for food and so this data is using uh the orus from the community health assessment that the county does every three years and so you can see um you know the for the county-wide

6 percent let me just yes um and so I will say that that doesn't seem like it's drastically different from 2019 but the context behind that is that there was a lot of federal supports going on while we were doing that survey so keep in mind that the public health emergency just ended people no longer have those snap emergency allotments so they may be feeling a lot different now than when they were asked those survey questions so just keeping that in mind and then one question that was asked in 2022 that's not on here is how the

7 percent so about 15 percent of the of the respondents said that they sometimes worried their food would run out and so this data is from the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina again you all have seen these numbers just a reminder the the the actual number of individuals is not usually what I look at because people do visit pantries more than once and they could be going to multiple pantries but what I usually look at on the slide is the percentage change or percentage increase and so still comparing to 2019 before the pandemic for 2021 and 2022 we saw about 152 percent increase I am I did reach out to the food bank to get updated numbers um to see kind of where we're tracking for 2023 but I don't have those just yet but I can share that whenever I do

so kind of with that in mind I we want to share about the Durham County food security grant program that we've been doing um so just to kind of give a quick overview thank you all so much you all decided in 2021 22 fiscal year that we could do a food security grant program for four hundred thousand dollars and that program was operated by Durham congregations in action and we we were able to provide a small stipend a thousand dollars for a tin awardees to collect some unduplicated data and we'll talk about the learnings from that data in a little bit and I just wanted to add that the food security budget also contributed about thirty thousand dollars in operating expenses in that fiscal year so this year um and actually this uh this slide is incorrect um the this year we had 475 000 uh for that same food security grant

program that you all allowed us to continue um this year the program is being operated by communities in Partnership and as part of that Grant and some of the learnings from the unduplicated data that we'll talk about we really saw that there was a lot of older adults particularly older adults of color that were visiting food assistance programs and so we carved out of that funding fifty thousand dollars for a non-competitive grant for Meals on Wheels to support our seniors and making sure that they actually had the the food resources that they needed and so also based on some feedback from grantees we changed the program just a little bit this year where we're doing a cohort model so there are some group trainings throughout the program to support capacity for systems change so we are learning and uh tweaking the program as we go and this year I'm the county manager has included a recommendation in her budget of 532 thousand dollars that

is a an increase from last year to account for the significant increase in the cost of food and also the cost of living in Durham sorry my clicker is not zero we we are um so we have uh three rfps um that have gone out um so we they thank you all so much you uh uh decided to fund double bucks with arpa funding so we have an RFP where we're receiving proposals that are actually due I think June 6 um to uh for double books they're um there's another RFP to provide some emergency Community food assistance that will be receiving proposals from that very soon and then there's another proposal to actually create a grocery store in

in Northeast Central Durham to really address some of the issues of food insecurity food apartheid or or kind of food deserts and also kind of thinking about how Los Primos closed and you know there's basically there weren't a lot of grocery store options in that area so we have three of those and all of those are using arpa dollars and you um I don't want to interrupt your presentation but you had a slide earlier about the percentage had how it has increased even since um since covet yeah that's the slide there can you share what's attributing to that is increasing now higher than it was before covert and you share a little bit about what

your analysis is showing yeah there's there's lots of um things that we could uh discuss so we'll so during covet a lot of things shut down people lost their jobs um so that's definitely one one thing that kind of was the initial Spike um but also because of I guess all the economic things that were happening the cost of living has skyrocketed in in 2022 the cost of food went up about 15 percent um and I don't have numbers about the cost of living but I have seen diagrams that look like it's a exponential growth in the cost of living so people's living expenses have gone up significantly which leaves very little money left over to buy food so they end up going to a food pantry or food bank so that they can access food in that way um and I think when um and there's some data to show that

when disasters like covid-19 or other things happen particularly low income or working class families they don't have that cushion to fall back on they don't necessarily have money in a savings account so it hits them harder and it takes them a lot longer to recover so thinking about if I um you know one person that I was talking to they they lost their job during covet and they they did start back working but they were you know thousands of dollars behind on rent and their bills and you know if you only have a let's just say a hundred dollars that you were able to save each month before you know it takes you a long time to kind of dig yourself out of that hole and so people start looking for other ways that they can cut Corners so if you maybe I can spend less on food and go to the food pantry then I can kind of start paying paying off some of my bills so I don't get evicted um so there's it's it's it gets pretty complicated it just depends on each person's situation yeah and the other thing that I wondered if it's the cost

of food I know the cost of food has increased um so I guess that I was hoping it would level off that people are going back to work and that they are able to buy food but I know that food is cost twice the what it is and now and to what it used to cost and the rate of [Music] so compared to last year the the growth is lower but the price of food is still anticipated I think to increase about eight percent in 2023 so it it will still continue to to increase it the food's not going to get any I mean I will say the one thing that probably did go down in price is eggs um you know there was a specific the avian flu kind of knocked out a lot of egg pop or

um hen populations and so like eggs were I think went up like 30 last year so I mean those prices have gone back down but General like overall food prices I don't expect them to decrease very much okay thank you um so before the food security grants um awardees are able to use them for lots of different things we do primarily focus on food but there's a lot that goes around providing food for people so thinking about transportation and folks that are delivering meals to folks we've been able to reimburse them for mileage or help them provide gas cards to volunteers there's a lot of materials and supplies that goes that go into providing food like bags or wax boxes um having equipment to safely store food like cold storage or freezer shelving and then also compensating or providing staff stipends for employees and

volunteers they're some of these organizations have hundreds of volunteers that come and support them on a weekly basis and to you know help you know support those those folks and make sure that they um one you know um or be able to able to take care of their own families um having a small stipend or some kind of compensation is really hopeful and we've also supported pantries with technological resources so maybe they don't have the internet but they're able to get a hot spot and while folks are coming to their Pantry then if they have internet they can help them fill out a Snap application so that they can get you know those longer term support and then also providing staff time for expenses like just taking time to reflect strategic planning staff development one example that I just wanted to share is that one one Pantry has really taken time to do some strategic planning and instead of just operating on their own now they have created a whole network of

congregations to really combine resources people funding to to better sustain their pantry and so that's made a huge difference in in you know them being able to continue serving the community but also in the burnout of their own volunteers this is a full-time job for some people that you know they're retired but spending all their time working in the pantry and then the last thing is you know just providing a small support for General operating expenses it's not a lot but you know we asked them to not have that be more than 20 of their total budget so I just wanted to give you just a a peek at the grantees from last year 21-22 this isn't all the grantees but it kind of gives you a sense of some of the organizations that were funded it's a it's a wide variety and lots of local partners that are really on the

ground doing some awesome work and so just we I'm going to focus on the 21-22 grantees because we just have the the most information about those that program is is finished and we have all the data but we were able to support 26 non-profit organizations out of 38 applicants and the full 400 000 was awarded although applicants applied for over a million dollars so there is a lot of demand for support and over half of those grantees were were new partners for Durham County so we had never worked with them before and over 680 000 Mills were provided over the course of just a four-month funding period so the grantee is really focused on providing fresh healthy foods that were supported through you know purchasing Local Foods as well as infrastructure purchases to be able to um to be able to have those those fresh

Fresh Foods and we also lots of organizations got to focus on capacity development through that data the unduplicated data collection that I mentioned before a lot of organizations had never done that type of data collection and it was challenging but they learned a lot and it not only helped you know us with our own planning but it also provides them a baseline of understanding that they can use to support future Grant applications so it's helping them in that way and then there was lots of collaboration across the grantees one grantee in particular worked with five other organizations to accomplish the goals that they had set for the grant and I just want to read like a quick quote they say this is the first year that a hundred percent of our raised bed gardens have been rented and in use by residents to grow their own food because of this project the resources of the organization are known by more people so we're you know not just helping people

connect to to the resource courses but cannot you know helping these organizations really build collaboration and you know build their own capacity so I've shared a little bit about some of the learnings but just wanted to do a quick slide on some of the the learnings from the unduplicated data collection there were disproportionate number of older adults as I mentioned before in families with children that were seeking food assistance and not surprisingly there was a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic individuals that were seeking food assistance which is kind of why we carved out some of those funds for this year particularly for Mill Zone Wills to support older adults of color and then on average individuals who are visiting food assistance organizations about two to three times over that four month period and so we used the grantee feedback from that round to inform the grant structure for this year I've talked about some of

the changes that cohort modeled to support connections and capacity building and we really are encouraging folks to um you know think about having more strategic strategic planning sessions and staff development and then we added this year some moderate funds for a general operating support and so to go along with the manager's recommendations um you know we're we would love to suggest a multi-year commitment of this grant structure chair Howerton you know you were asking kind of why why are the numbers still high and and thinking about you know people kind of having to dig themselves out of a hole that takes a while um if we look back at the 2008 Great Recession if you're just looking at Food Security numbers it took people 10 years to recover I'm not necessarily saying that it will take 10 years for people to recover from covid but I do think that it will be a multi-year recovery period we are we are two years

into the food security Grant and so you know if we wanted to do another two years three years five years what you know whatever we decided it would be likely helpful for Community particularly low-income individuals and and working class households to to it would be a great support to help them recover particularly in light now that we do not have the public health emergency in effect yeah I hope it doesn't take to for it to level out I hope the things that we're doing in the community to get people jobs and uh so that they begin to get back on their feet I hope it won't take that long I hope so oh yeah because that's that's just that's mental health and it's suffering in our community when you feel you cannot take care of your family and you don't have the food the economics to feed your family I do think I I do come in the county

because I think the economic development work that you all are that we're doing really does help it's it's a both hand of you know helping people get those well-paying jobs and and having a higher paying as Dr Soho was mentioning earlier our manager so um but but also while they're recovering you know making sure that they have that safety net to really support them um the the I just wanted to mention a couple other things just having the multi-year strategy would also help us see longer term changes right now the grantees are kind of budgeting year to year you know on based on you know what the project term limits are but we could potentially if they were able to have like a multi-year project they we could see some some longer term changes and maybe bigger impacts also it's more efficient on County time and staff time resources creating an RFP takes a three-month minimum getting out then getting a contract in place is another two months and then getting that contractor going and then so you're six

months into the year uh before you can get the grant program started and then so the grantees only have six months to actually like use the funds so just yeah so it does it seems like it's pretty simple but it takes a while um and so just having you know if we were able to say hey we want to work with this contractor for multiple years then that would be really helpful and then a lot yeah we just get the grants out to the community faster rather than having to go through an RFP process every year um the we'd be able to start at the beginning of the fiscal year and get the funds out so that is all that I had I will stop and see if you'll have any other questions or comments and can I just mention uh Mary's done just a tremendous job managing all these contracts and contractors and vendors and really educating and supporting them um it does take a lot of Staff time I think we were just you know we've all gone through appraisals recently and I think we estimated that she's been 25 of her time on that and she spent half of

her time this year doing that and so um but a lot of what we're trying to do also is help people maybe we haven't traditionally worked with and I think that's been a tremendous Focus that she's had we've definitely been talking about working with minority women and businesses and certainly talking with our ACM about that and so that's a big Focus as well that's oh sorry about that um just our focus on working with mwbe organizations it's been a big focus in food security as well as our department we've certainly been working with our assistant County Manager Tammy Hall on our our hopes and desires for more of that not only in our department but throughout throughout our organization so that's been a real strength and Mary's definitely been a leader in some supporting that so I just wanted to raise that as something I appreciate about that because Contracting is not fun I mean okay I will I won't say Contracting is not fun there may be someone here who finds Contracting fun so forgive me foreign thank you Mary and uh

Donna give it give me yeah he's gonna dip my dog yeah I know my board loves you help me out so but thank you so much for your presentation and thank you for the work that you do and it's as such vital work given that the need is so great so thank you um Commissioners commissioner long thank you so much for this presentation and all of the work uh you all have been doing and I always love Mary that you always begin your presentations I think I mentioned this last time with the land acknowledgments thank you so much for creating that in our uh County and I hope we can you know start to do that even as a board acknowledging the land that we're all living and occupying um my question is it's not really in the presentation just like something that has come up in the past around food

insecurity or especially how it's impacting our children who really a lot of them sometimes only receive the two meals that they're receiving within schools and then once they go home they either don't have access to another meal or it's a not a healthy meal and like if there are models of like what other counties or states are doing to partner with the public schools and like local businesses and Farmers to find a way that maybe we could get food into like the students hands like send them home with food that can help them and their families at home if there's any models for those type of programs that's a really good question um I don't well there are some things that are happening so we do have a backpack buddies program the Interfaith Food shuttle runs that does helps and youth home with food um I haven't I don't I don't know off

the top of my head like specific like examples of what you're saying as far as like kind of sending families home with food but we have also Interfaith Food shuttle does have lots of pantries within schools and so that's another way to kind of send youth home with food but um I know that I have definitely had lots of conversations with Lyndon who's the um food systems manager I'm going to mess up her title I'm sorry with DBS but um but you know she and I are thinking about how do we get more one local food into DPS generally but also how do we potentially yeah create some kind of program to support families with she she has some some awesome ideas about like cooking food that we could send home with with children but um so those are those are some ideas that she and I are kind of cooking up in the works yeah like with the cooking site it reminds me of um I know Refugee Community Partnership does this in Chapel Hill Orange County where they had like after school

programming for low-income students where they would teach kids like who are living in food deserts okay this is what you have access to this is how to take like a can of beans or like something that's you can find at like a corner store and make it into a full healthy meal um we have done a couple um um like virtual cooking classes at Cooperative Extension with particularly with low-income families I use it the term as like how do you cook on a shoestring budget um but like how do you take simple ingredients but like really make it into a tasty healthy meal um and so we we basically prep like mill kits that families can pick up and then we like cook together on Zoom um so I think it's doing some things like that and I know so our colleague Sherilyn Berry does a lot with teaching children and our fnet staff staff teach a lot of children about cooking skills and things like that I love that

okay okay um commissioner commissioner Burns hey Donna hey Mary how y'all doing um I did want to say um Mary there's a lot of people still talking okay um there are a lot of people who've been giving you compliments in public and I just wanted to acknowledge that in front of the manager in front of your boss um just about how um when they're looking for ideas when they need help when I have questions I know um I harass you I will call you in the middle of the day so I just wanted to publicly acknowledge that and let folks know that I agree with Donna's assessment I don't know it might be more than 25 percent of her time that she she puts out there to commissioner alum's Point um I did think I remember before the pandemic it's funny you say backpack buddies because that's what Wake County does and it's six meals like they'll put on a Friday afternoon the kid gets the book bag it's three meals for Saturdays three meals for Sunday but you're right

like he's I think in Wake County even before he's like less than 2 000 kids uh and here it I imagine it's smaller and no slice I don't know if you've ever worked with them slice does the meal 365. right I was gonna say 325 I'm so happy you said it because I did not know and I should know because 365 is here I didn't know which number it was but they do that for folks who you know were um on SNAP benefits this is what you can buy with your approved SNAP benefits so forth so that wasn't what the question was but just kind of sort of throw some of those out I wanted to go back to something she talked about earlier and something that you and I had a chance to talk about uh there are people who uh whether it was Pride or just access to the information they did not use our food banks because they didn't know they existed didn't know that they were a resource and also I think it's one of those things I'm back to if you build it it will come the proliferation of additional

um food banks has also let people know oh I can go over here and get food because you all built a network so I also think and you can speak to this if I'm wrong isn't the uptick in numbers also due to the fact that people didn't know it was a resource and also that we have more resources now or at least a better coordinated Resource Network I think there were definitely some folks that didn't know about the pantries before there were some and and I think we've done a lot of work to let people know that it's safe to go to a pantry because there may be some undocumented folks that were anxious about showing up at pantries or you know is that a public charge issue if they get resources at a pantry and so we've done some education around that but I do think that particularly some parts of our community yeah we're not aware and became aware and so that's partially yeah that does have something to do with

the numbers but essentially they were like struggling and not eating before and at least they have food now so that's good um the other side of it I don't know if we actually have too many more pantries we're actually updating the list right now because they I know we have we have found out about some new people providing food but we also know that some places close during covid so the total number may not have changed but there has been some shifting around yeah best helpful context thank you look forward to what you're going to do next year with 130 of your time to Jacobs yeah thank you really appreciate all of your work and I appreciate you too Donna because here we're seeing you sitting you're sitting here with Mary last week you were sitting along nio we went we were at all of us participated in a conversation with youth

with Carolyn with kids voting and Donna was there so you you know support a lot of different initiatives in our community Donna so thank you um and um you know I I think also with thinking about your presentation Mary is thinking about the other initiatives that we're doing to really like you have said we have to address people's actual Prosperity um and economics and then you know it's kind of like housing we don't have these problems if people have have the resources but also the Investments that we're making in the food system so I was sitting here thinking about the farm campus and in our budget is also um increasing the food grants um that's that's to Farmers that's in our budget this year so I think you know

keep chipping away at our system um but I am really worried about the basically three million dollars a month of food benefits that are now gone away and that we can't replicate and I worry not just about having access to food but healthy food and what you know a lot of the stories that I heard during the pandemic was that people were eating healthier food because they had you know with the FNS benefits everybody was maxed out and so people were buying more fruits and vegetables and things that are expensive and um so I I do worry about you know people also kind of going back to things that are less expensive and not necessarily as nutritious um and I also thinking about the resolution that commissioner Carter brought forward about centering

all of our efforts around the schools as as commissioner Alam was speaking about so I'm really excited that you're working with the Linden Thayer and you know would love to hear your thoughts related to that partnership and I know we're going to make some investments in upgrading the cafeteria facilities so that then there's more opportunities for delicious and nutritious food but could you tell us a little bit about what what you all are discussing um with Durham Public Schools yeah absolutely um Lyndon and I actually are we kind of created a group of uh Regional food system Partners um because we are we know so we know that Durham Public Schools is interested in having more local Fresh Foods on the menu but part of building up our food system

is having Farmers that can actually grow and and provide that level of food um like at an Institutional level purchasing and so we are working with aggregators and farmers and some other folks in and also in waking orange counties I'm kind of taking a regional approach of how do we create build more capacity in our food system so that as more institutional Partners kind of come to the table we have Farmers that are able and and ready to to meet that demand so that's one thing she and I we it's just been a few months we started in March so um but so we are starting to to move down that road and then we I know that there's definitely the healthy School meals for all um initiative that's across the state of North Carolina and so we are I think Lyndon and some other folks from DPS are interested in potentially even

you know knowing that the North Carolina School meals for all program is going or initiative is going on but not sure if you know if or when that would happen I'm kind of thinking about how do we potentially get district-wide cep community eligibility provision so that um lunches could be provided for free at all of the schools and so um you know that application would be due April of next year if we wanted to submit for a district-wide cep and so that's something that I think folks are really interested in seeing kind of move forward so that we can at least know in Durham County we would have more opportunity to potentially provide free meals both breakfast and lunch to students great glad to hear you all are taking the initiative fantastic um and about the um the grant program I mean we we actually did a few years ago before covid had changed our County grant program to

be a two-year so that people you know could apply and would have two years so I mean it definitely makes sense to go beyond one year for the for the exact reasons that you said um I'm really glad though that you're collecting the data and because it's always a balance between you know getting the money out but also we want to have the accountability and you know tracking the data to make sure that we're we're using the funding wisely so it's always a balance between those and you know I I want to say I'm very proud of we the county has invested a tremendous amount in community-based organizations and I will I will just say publicly I was disappointed when I was at the Duke conference on food security and there was a lot of conversation

about kind of what isn't being done and what the issues were and from organizations that have gotten significant funding from Durham County there was not an igni we were not acknowledged I was in the room and I heard it and you know that's just not acceptable to me to point out inequities and we are addressing that and we are even investing in the organizations I mean specifically one in particular that was saying things and then not not one acknowledgment of of the role that we we are playing and that we are making it was very disappointing to me so I just think it's really important that um that it is not ignored I do think that the County's contribution to the community is is definitely seen I think it's challenging when inequities

have been going on for so many years it's not just you know it's not just this border Durham County they're like much larger societal issues that Durham County government cannot solve in and of themselves and I think some you know some of that came through in that meeting but I don't I don't know if it was necessarily a poor reflection on the board but yes I will say that I don't think that it was acknowledged at that but um I think Community does see and but I will say that Community does keep like Community seas and then they say and what else are you gonna do and where's the long-term strategy and you know so I get a lot of phone calls and so I try to hold both at the in both both at the same time just like you're saying like the county is doing a lot and I'm so grateful and the community is so grateful but yes they do keep asking me and what else how are you going to fix this and I'm like this is a much bigger

issue than just Durham County and we are doing our best and we are trying and we are working on you know baby stepping it there and part of the economic development is is um is part of the solution and there's like lots of things that are happening but it's not it's not going to happen overnight and I think some people are just they're just kind of they're just frustrated they're tired um and we're just humans wanting to solve problems and wanting it to be to happen overnight but that's that's not really how I mean food security as you saw from the diagram you know it's been an issue for a long time and it's not gonna some it's not something that's going to just go away overnight thank you very much Mary and Donna for this work and um I wanted to ask a little bit more about your comment that um such a high percentage of your time

is going towards Grant Administration will you repeat that again was it 50 now yeah yes I mean I mean I don't I almost hate to say it sadly so I mean we had estimated 25 of her time would be that it's been 50 part of that is the generosity of the board right and not anticipating um that growth but it does it is um when you work with community-based organizations it is a different we're not working with experienced right season uh vendors and so like even the vendor application every moment everything involves some hand-holding and we don't have like a large administrative staff in our department so right um so really I mean Mary does the heavy lifting on her on her things but she does a great job I mean and I think the other thing is she's teaching along the way and I think that's one thing I want to emphasize teaching people how to do this and how to apply for Grants not just with Durham County other places how do I access funds how do I become a vendor in other systems maybe I could work with Durham public schools at some point yeah so it is it

is also I think for us in Cooperative Extension and with food Security in particular to make sure that we're building capacity and we're teaching and it's not just for this moment with Durham County but it's for things that they might be able to apply in other other spaces right so that takes you know that kind of better education about why are you filling this out and what does this mean is is much is significant to them too for the long term that that's encouraging because it does explain that the role is more than just administering the grant there is this education capacity building component that seems really important too um and um it does make me wonder if there's enough like leftover time to do the coordinating work right of the food system the long-term Solutions because the grants are really more to address the emergency sorts of needs of people who are hungry and are food insecure and we're also trying to be sure that people you know

have access to land so they can be farmers and grow their own food and contribute to the system and so the person working in the food industry makes a living wage and so we don't waste you know as much food in that part of the system so that there is more food available to go around you know just the food system is quite large and so there's a lot to focus on and coordinate um are we doing a study of the food system by the way is that something that that's still ongoing that is still yes that's ongoing that RFP is coming out soon okay so that just there again it took a while to get the RFP developed right hopefully before I get off this gosh darn board well because there's so many artists so the RFP development and also there's a committee for hrp so I mean it is it is a big it is a really great process so we've had multiple ones this year so there's that that'll be really good so that'll help I think with coordinating what needs to be coordinated to look at the whole food system rather than just this emergency solutions that is obviously essential too and then there's the farm campus that Wendy mentioned

that's happening as well at the same time where we're with that or we can vote so we we have we have hired the vendor for the primary portion and we are fine and as well as the some of the community engagement portions and we're finalizing another another contract so right we will be off the ground and you'll start hearing more about it later this summer good I want to be sure I'm around to advocate for what we need to get that going and we do have and we do have I mean um commissioner Carter I have heard you on that particular point full times so um um we have built in uh some interim reporting so that you don't have to wait until a final final report to get some of the data that might be actionable for this board and and I and I recognize sometimes the processes don't always align with the board's decision-making processes so we we have definitely put in some dates and points in time where we will get from this analysis some actionable data for you

all hey it's terrific yeah thanks so much anything else from you Donna or Mary well thank you so much presentation thank you thank you so much I appreciate it Aiden is a discussion on water 2304 zero zero let me see one crew and before they get started I'm going to um commissioner Jacobs is going to take over the meeting

I just want to say before they get started if our day hasn't already been head spinning enough like with like lines and data and numbers and percentages and such it will be after this be gentle about it well thank you yeah well thank you I wasn't going to take offense don't worry okay well thank you Ryan if you would not mind introducing everyone who's here with sir uh again I'm Ryan Eaves the division manager for stormwater erosion control uh with me today I have Keith redling from raftelus Mackenzie Bradshaw our stormwater manager and Katie Cromwell also from Rath tell us and I believe you know Julio good afternoon so I'm here to talk about the proposed budget for stormwater the Enterprise fund for the next fiscal year as far as an outline we're going to talk

a little bit about our requests for new positions for a watershed study in Lake Creek and then spend the bulk of our time talking about the stormwater utility fee and the proposed rate increase you'll see we're going to go through a bit of a review talk more about our rate structure and then to make sure that as has been requested we we provide you with some information and a response to the Farmland protection board and the AG community's concerns just as a reminder I like to put this slide in all of my presentations because it is important an important part of our program these are the guiding principles by which we operate our stormwater program we want to be in compliance we want to be efficient we want to create a resilient community and we want to make sure that we acknowledge environmental justice and Equity where possible so we're asking for two new positions this fiscal year um the first is a public education position for storm water

part of this came out of a recommendation from an environmental enhancement Grant we're working with North Carolina Central students and interns who are helping us to enhance and enhance our Outreach and education program they recommended that we conduct more Durham County Centric and focused stormwater education and Outreach Additionally the Falls Jordan and news rules all require the county to conduct public education and Outreach and the newly revised news rules include this language specifically that all local governments shall shall be an important word right Al that we Implement a public education program to inform citizens how to reduce nutrient pollution and to inform developers about the nutrient requirements we know we can do more as far as educating our our community about

our stormwater utility and how those dollars being are being used in the community and that ties into these nutrient management projects we have upcoming being the Neil Middle School bio retention project and the Whispering Pines mobile home stream restoration are our first two that we're looking to get off the ground in the next year we want to make sure that we're emphasizing these are your stormwater utility dollars at work and then also educate using those as Educational Tools for the community the second position request we're making is for another storm water and erosion control technician that would be assigned to erosion control we have record high permit load currently I looked just now we're at 299 active permits we're floating with 300 I don't think we've quite gone over but we're right there and we're we're inspecting and permitting and reviewing those with just four and a half ftes currently

that's full-time employees that includes half of my time which you know I'm dedicated to a lot of different things where we would cover this position with those plan review and permit fees this chart shows you kind of how we compare as far as workload for our technicians in the field this is number of sites per employee the kind of orange red line is kind of the average for across the community or across really the triangle as well and then including Charlotte as another comparable program to ours you'll see for a couple of the um higher the communities that are higher than us like Wake County they have separate staff that do their plans review our staff do both plans review permitting and inspections of their sites another request we have for this upcoming fiscal year is the Lake Creek Watershed study Lick Creek is one I know

all of you have heard a lot about it's a very uh it's an area of the county in the Southeastern portion where development is very very active we have over 800 acres currently under development in that part of the county and that's caused some significant water quality concerns for residents out there this study would be a joint City County partnership to help find solutions to water quality problems in the area we would be taking a very holistic look at the Watershed and one of the reasons that we the city approached us about working together on this is you'll see the gray area in the map is currently what's inside City Limits and then the white is is County jurisdiction so the Watershed really or breaks down to about 50 50 as far as city and county and so this was an opportunity to really learn a lot about the whole of the Watershed both the area inside the city and

outside and just for reference I don't have it on this map but the Watershed goes straight into Falls Lake so it kind of ends there at Falls Lake another important point about this is any of this funding that we use in this study would count towards our I'm going to get technical here interim interim alternative implementation approach or IAI understage one of the falls rules if you'll remember we're committed to spend a certain amount of dollars towards our compliance under that III we had planned to we've spent a portion of it on our nutrient management study project that helped us identify projects like the new middle school project and Whispering Pines we had thought that the whispering or the Neil middle school project would be in and of itself enough to cover the rest of our our project but we fortunately were able to get a grant

that pays for approximately half of that project unfortunately we can't count those grants to our towards our IAI compliance and so this is a good opportunity for us to continue to meet meet our requirements now I'm going to spend a little time uh and Keith's going to participate with me um on our stormwater utility fee and the proposed rate increase and its justification this slide should be pretty familiar to you although we've made it a little prettier than it used to be just to remind you about the compliance costs for the county Under The Falls Jordan and noose rules really stage one of the falls rules that's where the iei requirements are stage two however is it's currently constructed is projected to cost approximately 67 million dollars to the county and then stage two of Jordan also has uh costs of approximately six million dollars so we're looking at you know between 70 and 75 million dollars over

the next 20 25 years in order to meet the rules requirements yes so uh back in 2013 the legislature put a hold on the requirements of the Jordan Lake rules for stage two uh and unfortunately they're still there uh the the re there's a revaluation currently uh ongoing and we expect to hear recommendations by the end of the year as far as what um what the next iteration of those rules will look like no the and I'm going to touch on that a little bit in a minute but the the work of the UN RBA the upper news River Basin Association really is what's focused on that stage two of the falls where that big big dollar amount is

um you know we do expect that that will change uh based on that work we just don't know at this time what they are so we're projecting based on the current uh regulations and so this gives you an idea of the cost of compliance to the county kind of dates back to when we implemented the stormwater utility and fy21 you can see when the stage two of the falls rules kick in in FY 26 we see a significant increase in our compliance costs and so we based our stormwater utility rates based on those excuse me those compliance costs and you can see if we only met our compliance cost the rates would look like what you see here where we start around twenty dollars increasing over the next few years to about 48 and then we'd see a significant increase when the fall stage 2 kicked in we didn't necessarily want to to do that and so

um there were the original proposed rates looked more like the orange line here where we started around eighty dollars and still had gradual increases over the next few years to get us closer to what it would cost when stage two kicks in I'd like to point out this only covers you know approximately six years and only the first year of fall stage two kicking in and so you know we would still see slight increases going forward just due to the cost to the county and so what we're proposing and what we've this shows what we've done in the past is that we we continue um kind of the the framework with which we or that I laid out to you last year for a path forward for our current rates we started at 24 in FY 21 which was approximately which was a one-third or approximately one-third of what we initially proposed because we were in the midst of a global pandemic that we

hadn't didn't know anything what weren't sure what the economic impacts would be we held steady in FY 22 last year we had a significant increase this year we're we're requesting another increase although not quite as much uh as next year and have gradual increases over the next few years to get us closer to what we need to fully be in compliance and so you'll see here our proposed future rates versus our original the original proposed rates here's that in just the chart form and then to share with you what the fee structure actually looks like for those that are receiving the bills if you'll remember we have a tiered residential rate meaning that anyone with a home on their property pays one of three uh tiers and So based on the amount of impervious area impervious error being hard surfaces that do not allow storm

0112 dollars per square foot per year

uh the green is our proposed increase and you see how that compares to um several other local communities that have stormwater utilities as well as several counties uh in the state that have storm water utilities in comparing residential rates this is for a home with 10 000 square feet of impervious which is is a lot that's a you know it's a pretty big house with a long driveway maybe a pool um you know maybe some outbuildings that's a that's a pretty good number of square feet but you can still see as how how that would compare to other local jurisdictions and other counties so a little bit to your question commissioner Carter earlier you can see based on our proposed we're still not going to get to the original proposed rates of 156 dollars for eru based on the path forward that we've laid out here today um but how are we addressing that we're

hoping through we can address it through a number of things first being that guiding principle of efficiency we want to get the best bang for our buck with the stormwater utility dollars as I mentioned earlier the efforts of the UN RBA we expect those that ultimate uh amount of compliance or cost of compliance to come down and we've been fortunate to receive three grants over the last two years to help fund stormwater projects to environmental enhancement grants totaling 265 thousand dollars and a lassie grant that was funded by arpa that's four hundred thousand dollars which will be used for the Whispering Pines mobile home park stream restoration for the planning efforts for that there still is that Unknown about what the Jordan rules are going to look like and then we've you know we've done a pretty good job of of creating reserves over the last couple of years since implementation and we hope to continue that to help us uh again get back to that efficiency

with that I'm going to turn it over to Keith to talk a little bit more about the structure and future of our program thank you Ron my name is Keith redling I'm Executive Vice President with RAF Telus I have been before this body a few times talking about the stormwater program and fee with Ms Cromwell and in the past we drove here from Kerry we moved our office to Durham and we walked here today wow and I got sweated awesome but I was still happy love that we woke up one day and realized almost everybody lived here not in Kerry so here we go so we're glad to be here today and like Ryan said I want to talk a little bit about he's really talked about why do we need money what are we using that money for and how does that change over time and how do we expect that to change over time and the rates that that would suggest we

need to have to generate the needed money I want to talk a little bit about the rate structure which is the details of how we decided to capture the revenue and and why for that and try to address some concerns that have come from agriculture Community about the rate structure and the charges too and so first off I want to iterate we're charging 48 dollars a year a year for an equivalent residential unit now so an average house in Durham unincorporated counties paying 48 dollars a year and under the proposed rate increase it would be 64. the biggest fanciest lot with a house on it and 10 out buildings and a tractor shed still residential because there's a house on it would pay two erus that's the high tier residential rate so our rate structure struck a balance and it was really driven by the feedback from the County Commissioners a few years ago between

the absolute simplest thing you could do just about which is a flat charge for every house and the Other Extreme being charged by the square inch or something which is really silly that would be like selling Water by the fluid ounce this three-tiered approach is pretty fair and it's really a common way to do it so that's how we do it now we're trying to get the 64 dollars a unit and like Ryan said we started out low and have stayed a good bit lower than our originally forecasted rates and part of the reason is that they've been working with other people's money when they could uh and trying to be efficient and keep things simple so we build this bill on the property tax bill there's almost 15 000 Parcels in the unincorporated County and if they have impervious area on them or a house plus impervious area they're being billed for this

so that's how it works now and our rate structure is impervious area with simplified residential rates so if you're reading about this in a textbook that's what you would say we charge for impervious area we charge on a unit equal to the average amount of impervious area found on a residential lot and so that's kind of important a minute ago I kind of jokingly said you wouldn't want to sell water by the fluid ounce because meters that could read that accurately cost a lot of money you wouldn't want to charge for impervious area by the square foot it's hard to measure everybody's impervious area that perfectly and it creates microscopic differences in every bill that really uh don't reflect reality in terms of demand and impact so a typical residential lot in the unincorporated county has 4 300 square feet of impervious area on it and so we've defined that to be an

equivalent residential unit of impervious area and if I live in a typical home I'm going to be built for one unit and if Katie had a business that had 20 times that much hard surface area on it we would charge her exactly 20 times what we charge me and that's called rate equivalence so what that means is we're not discriminated against rate payers by class we are agnostically charging for the hard surface area and that's true for agriculture too so we have rate equivalency it's a charge of X dollars for the amount of impervious area found on an average lot presidential that's 4 300. so when we're trying to choose a rate structure here because there's more than one way you could do this and I reflected this morning the first one of these fees I ever helped Implement was for the city of Durham and that was adopted in June of 94.

so I'm showing my age that was 29 years ago next month no this month and that's an impervious area rate structure and probably 90 percent of the stormwater fees across the country are based on impervious area like yours is the second thing we looked at was equity and that was really trying to be fair and that comes back to the idea that we're not going to discriminate based on land use we've chosen a metric and it's important to realize this is a non-metered service this is not like electricity natural gas water sewer this is more like Solid Waste residential where I've got a can I pay an amount of money I don't get a break if the can is empty I don't get a break if I don't roll the can out it's an availability charge well this is not an availability charge but we're not able to measure somebody's storm water usage so we choose a surrogate for that and

the surrogate for that that is almost universally chosen is impervious area because it correlates to runoff volume runoff rate run off volume drives nutrient from stream scour we get nutrient runoff from hard surface areas so it's a very proven rate structure that's been tested in the courts and it's fair uh we also chose a rate structure to keep the administrative burden pretty minimal this goes back to Ryan's four founding pillars to the program development which is let's use the money to do storm water things not to pay people to measure re-measure and do administrative things so we don't measure impervious area by the tiny amount it's units of 4 300 tiered residential rate rate equivalents we wanted to be able to communicate about the fee in simple terms and we wanted to align the rate structure with the program drivers or put another

way the allocability or the cost causation so the idea there is I explained why impervious areas in my opinion the correct rate structure it correlates to the things that are costing y'all money if none of that human built stuff existed in the county you wouldn't be in this program you just wouldn't be in it so it's the human built herd surfaces that generate more runoff faster runoff nutrient runoff that place us in a position to try to protect a drinking water lake so charging people for a metric we can measure that correlates to the demand for service is what this alignment is about that was kind of a mouthful I'm sorry about that so uh you already heard about the tears and you know about the tears importantly agricultural property as long as the the lot has a house on it then we're billing it as a residential property

so a lot of our properties that have some agricultural use on them also have house on them and if they have a house on them they are never built for more than two units of service two erus as a proposed rate 128 dollars a year it's important seems like that well we think it is and and and that's why I wanted to kind of touch on it twice is we didn't have to do that and like I said there are a lot of places that do some of this somewhat differently this feels to me and I've done this a lot for a long time to be a really appropriate rate structure for the program you run the revenue you need to generate the rate payers who exist in the

unincorporated County and how to treat everyone fairly I do have a question though related to that how do you find that piece of property because is it does is it defined by the plot that it's on or because that's that's you know you can have let's say a farmer owns a piece of property but it's made up of two lots and even though the lots are contiguous on one part of one lot that's part of the farm there could be a house with some of the farm and then right next to it is where the rest of the Farmland is so you're right if he will if they really wanted to get out of this situation they would need to kind of they would have to re-plat their property and combine the plot of the plots so I've just had him yeah so yeah I'm just curious about how are you defining property so you're

right so we don't really have a way to presume what they would have done but they could subdivide recombine change their parcel boundaries the bills go out on a per partial basis and whether or not a home exists on the parcel is a function of land use data we can gather from Alabama assessment yeah so just to get into the weeds a little bit it's really going to depend on the partial boundaries of that property how many Parcels they have so it's conceivable you could have a farmer that's on 200 acres and it's one parcel with the house and they'll you know and that but then you could have a smaller farmer who maybe has three different parcels and they only have 50 acres but they've got it all chopped up they could end up paying more than the farmer who has a hundred acres I just wanted to use that as an example they could and on the other hand if one of those Parcels just had was under tillage in other words if

the impervious area was all on one parcel the other Parcels were built zero already so it depends on the distribution of the impervious features and the adjacency of parcels and whether they've recombined or not those are things that are kind of exogenous to our calculation I didn't hear it all because I heard people say yes so what I said was a property without impervious area is not billed so okay an agricultural parcel if the only thing it had on it was row crops or pasture it's already built zero and if we kind of virtually glued it to the next door parcel which might have an agricultural three tractor sheds and a greenhouse and a house it's not going to change the bill because right now this one is two erus that's the most we charge if there's a house this one is zero because there's no impervious area on it and if

I glue them together it's still going to be two but commissioner Jacobs is right if I've got sheds on both of them and one's got a house one of them is going to get capped at two units because there's a house on it the other one's going to get measured and calculated at the non-res rate so the rates are equivalent between rate classes and what that means is if I have 4 300 square feet of impervious area on my residential parcel I'm billed for that middle tier one unit if Ryan has 4 300 on his commercial property he's billed for one unit so we're charging by impervious area only and it's rate equivalents across classes the three simplified residential tiers already talked about most of the residentials are in that middle tier most of them are in the middle tier and then the other thing is this

comports with the city of Durham's rate structure which is based on impervious area it also comports with Mecklenburg County New Hanover County lots and lots of places in North Carolina have this same rate structure including the simplified residential rate with tears so that's by far the kind of the simplest that also has fairness now just to give you an example here's a parcel in the unincorporated County with about 11 and a half thousand square feet of impervious area and were it treated as a non-residential property you take that eleven and a half thousand and divide by the 4300 and Round Up than If This Were commercial it would be billed for three units of impervious area and you can see it's a house with some outbuildings and a long driveway it's residential we know it's residential and therefore it's capped

out at two erus so right now at forty eight dollars a eru the fee is 96 dollars a year for this property agricultural properties are just a little under five percent of the total billable properties in the county and note billable so any parcel out there without impervious areas are at zero so we've got about 705 agricultural Parcels in the county and almost half of those have a house on them so if you look at this pie chart the green side that is AG with a house every one of those is being charged for either half an eru if it's very little impervious area one eru if it's average and two if it's big

and if you look at that right hand pie chart you'll see most of them are in the third tier and that's because in these more rural areas a parcel with the house usually does have a pretty long driveway and often has some outbuildings so all the ones in green 333 of them they're capped out at two erus and under the recommended rate of sixty four dollars a unit they'd be billed 128 dollars a year which is a fuzz over ten dollars a month the ones of Greater interest in terms of impact to the community and The Business of farming are the ones in blue there's 372 agricultural Parcels in the county unincorporated with impervious area and there's no house there that's the 372. all right so we're just talking about the 372 now

the average amount those are being charged is 327 a year this is current rates so you can add 33 percent to that they call it 440 a year after the rate increase so the average charge a little under 500 a year some of these are large business activities they're not a garden and a shed they're big buildings Greenhouse operations landscape type stuff the average for all of the non-res is a thousand and seventy five dollars a year and will be about fourteen hundred dollars a year after the rate increase so these non-residential agriculture which after a rate increase or somewhat under 500 a month on average

are around about a third of the average for the non-agriculture commercial property but it's undeniable some of these There are 16 that already pay over a thousand dollars a year the medians are pretty similar the median for all non-res now is 256 and the medium for the AG is 192. I bring that up it's not normally distributed data so the mean okay it's not very it's it's uh if you looked at a bell curve of the frequency distribution it doesn't look like a pretty Bell because nobody can pay less than nothing and There's no practical maximum so the curve is skewed to the right so if you look at averages the average AG right now is 327 and the average non-ag is 1074. so I'm going to call that about a three to one ratio if you look at the medians they're a lot closer

the median for the AG right now is 192. and the median for all the non-res is 256. but whether you look at means or medians whether you look at rates now or after a rate increase the typical agricultural property that doesn't have a house on it and does have impervious area on it is not being built as much as other commercial property in the county one of the things that has been asked about is whether there ought to be some kind of credit program for the fee so I want to talk about credit programs a little bit a credit in a storm water fee means a really specific thing compared to like a credit on your bank statement or your credit card bill and so a credit on stormwater fee is we have a rate structure

that cannot take into account all of the nuances that go with what's going on on somebody's property impervious area so if somebody's true demand for service that they place on the county is not correlating to their impervious area very well they could be issued a credit to refine the amount they're charged so for example if Ryan had a commercial property with rooftop and he put in a storm water control measure say a constructed Wetland and the rain that fell on his roof went into the constructed Wetland and did wonderful things and very little left the Wetland just charging him based on his rooftop is kind of overdoing it because that constructed Wetland really has helped us it's reduced his Demand on the county for service and I but it doesn't change his impervious area so the way that you handle that is with a credit program so

right now we don't have a credit program a credit program would allow you to refine what you charge rate payers if they're doing something that is helpful that our rate structure doesn't take into account uh but we've worked on a lot of credits programs for a lot of years and there's a few things to realize the first one is the the revenue requirements of the county for storm water management and nutrient control already take into account all of the things that are happening in the county already so if he has this constructed wetland the fact that he has it isn't saving you any money you still need all the money you need to do all the things you need to do so giving him a credit would not be driven by the fact that you now need less money you'd just be reallocating who you charged so the credit program here would

need to come with a rate increase we did not recommend implementing a credit program here the second thing is that we would not issue a credit to a rate payer because they had a lot of Green Space the Green Space has already not being charged we only charge impervious area so the argument that we're very lightly developed um I think because our rate structure is only based on impervious area kind of has that baked into the cake and then the last thing is if the true issue is to try to help people with affordability because of poverty or because of things a credit program does that's not what a credit program does a credit program for Durham County we'd raise the rates reallocate what we charge everybody to reduce what we charge a few rate payers because of large storm water controls

they put in place and everybody else would pay that much more so that you all got the same money you still got that's how it would work here you're going to be our education specialist most people think I talk I talk too slowly to be the education they run out of time one role of the education specialist will help will be to help us keep everything on the you know public eighth grade level to make sure we everybody understands I did graduate from eighth grade uh and I talked about this already but but this this choice of impervious area as the rate metric I believe correlates well with the things that are costing you money or will cost you money but one of the things that has been

suggested is that if we do some more research on what causes these nutrient loads that that what we would find is that the agriculture community is being overcharged and I don't believe that's true I believe with an impervious area rate structure were agnostic to land use and the truth is that a lot of studying's been done on nutrient runoff and a lot of studying's been done on Falls Lake and most of our AG properties in unincorporated County are in the northern part so they drain the falls and the three biggest contributors to nutrients to the lake are Forest Ag and urban most of the revenue being collected by this fee is off of urban so we already are skewed over toward capturing revenue from Urban sources through our choice of the rate structure we have it's counterintuitive

uh well I didn't say more I said the top three were Forest Ag and urban yeah there's a lot of a lot of them but I can tell you one is I'm not the biggest expert on this but I will tell you one thing that's something important and that is there's more than one way that a property can generate nutrients from the runoff it creates one is the nutrients run off of the land so I can get nutrients from atmospheric deposition on hard surface area like the church parking lot or his roof it rains and it washes it off so that's directly washing off however a lot of the nutrient load comes from the scour of stream Banks all right well where does that come from that comes from high flow rates during storms that's what scours the stream Bank where does that come from that comes from hard surface area so that's an indirect contribution of nutrients caused by impervious area impervious area generates more runoff

and faster more and faster scours the strain back and there go the nutrients Downstream to the lake so you can get it two different ways but can I just and Ryan can speak to this because Ryan and I are both on the UN RBA and actually we need to get Forest West Fall here in in the fall to present to our board on the delayed because the the unrba is finishing up their work and is in the process of submitting it to the state to Chow to try to challenge The Falls Lake rules and I don't want to go into it now but you know it's when this last Point here Paul's like is literally one of now one of the most studied Lakes probably in the country and but one of the surprising outcomes Heidi is that

where some of the highest levels of nitrogen and phosphorus are coming from is the forested land the undeveloped land around the lake yeah well that's a lot of it is if you look at a lot of those charts they'll show that AG that a forest is the biggest volume but it might be 80 percent of all of the acreage in the under in the Watershed for the whole lake not just y'all but the whole Watershed yeah so that's harder information to find a lot of that's coming from atmospheric deposition just like it does if it falls on the parking lot or the roof what you're not getting is high runoff rates that scour the stream Banks so the more indirect all right

um yeah let's talk about rate structure Alternatives one of the things that was really explicitly before we move on sorry yes I had a question related to The Falls Lake uh line also just wondering if this is something that falls under y'all's purview or where it would be discussed like since Falls like a lot of the runoff we're saying it goes into that Lake but also what are we as a county looking at or what responsibility do we have with the fact that that is also wake County's main drinking water source and like where what is our relationship with Wake County on that impact that their own County potentially has on their drinking water so essentially the fact that it is a drinking Supply Watershed that way that falls lake is a you know is used for Wake County and city of rallies drinking water source that is the driver behind the rules and so the rules acknowledge

that all of the communities in the Watershed are contributing to um to the issues that have been had the nutrient issues that have been had in the lake um and so that's why we have these rules that you know not only does Durham County have to comply with the city of Durham complies with um Granville and Person County the town of Butner Hillsboro Orange County all of you know all of us are required and including includes Wake County in the City of Raleigh as well they all have their certain requirements to reduce nutrients in the Watershed as a whole and then we each have our own kind of allocation for how we how many pounds of nutrients we are required to remove does that that answer your question yeah and I think just to follow up on that like so I guess through the tracking and just having the proper reporting about how much we're cleaning

up and how much is being deposited from Durham County versus other areas like just thinking in the sense of how do we protect the county from you know we don't want anything to happen to this water but if for some reason this water is not drinkable in the future we don't want Wake County coming back to us and being like hey you guys did this right so I don't get too far into the weeds but there are basically two parts to the rules there are new development rules meaning that anything that has been developed since 2012 has had to address nutrients on site they've had to manage those through stormwater control measures on their property and then what we're largely talking about and what we're funding and and that those measures were paid for by the developer when they developed um what we're really talking about here are the existing development rules and so we're having to address previous development which is why we the county

are going to be implementing and constructing our own stormwater control measures like the Neil middle school project and things like that they will will earn Us credit will reduce nutrients for things that are already on the ground in the county thank you home stretch one more topic on on rate structure so that one of the things that was suggested was that we ought to think about charging based on percent impervious and the there were allegations made of lots of percentages in the PowerPoint earlier and this is where they are but the the bottom line on it is you can't just charge on percent impervious because if Katie Cromwell has one acre and I have a thousand acres and we're both two percent impervious you wouldn't want to charge us both the same thing so you have to multiply the percent impervious times the lot size to decide

4 percent impervious but there's 145 000 square feet of impervious area on this lot that drains straight into the lake you know what it is it's a boat ramp it's a boat ramp it's the Corps of Engineers property Hickory Hill boat landing where you put boats in the lake so there's 34 erus here they will be billed for 34 erus they're not built anything for all that undeveloped plan and in this case you can see why trying to give them a credit because they have the undeveloped land is kind of counter-intuitive their runoff goes right in the lake that other land doesn't really have anything to do with their runoff and that's often the case and here's another example of the same

thing this is the Durham Kennel Club and this brings up something commissioner Jacobs brought up earlier you can see their driveways on a different lot than their building is so all of their activity and aggregate is not captured on this one parcel that tends to be how it is with fees like this though and if they own the other lot and don't just have an easement for a driveway they could recombine but this is not a residential use and it's being billed by measured ER use five right now there are other ways you can do this another way that's been done in North Carolina is to charge Parcels a Char a charge for how big their lot is and another one for their impervious area and another one in a base charge Granville County and Person County Butner creedmen were stem all do it this way this tends to shift the burden towards large light to develop properties like AG es yes it's not it's not helpful to the

cause of could we charge less to the AG Community it's also a bit more complicated and it's also harder to explain it doesn't comport with the city's rate structure and we looked hard at it and chose chose not to go this way right off the bat and I just said everything on the last slide so that's that's the our sense of things on rate structure and implications for the AG Community happy to answer questions okay I think you did an excellent job explaining that to us I printed out my slides yesterday you know so I'm gonna do a little bit of homework and preparation you healed way more than my preparation so I will say you know I um I I do appreciate it because we have heard from the community but um I think for me

um when you went over what some of the correlations were it made sense to me like and the fact that she went over different rate structure Alternatives I was like it's not like you all kind of sort of picked this out of the sky and then you all did toil around with it like okay who is this gonna affect more what is the city doing you went and you looked at other cities so I do feel a lot more comfortable now I can I can say that much I do want to go back I had two questions my first one I want to go back to you Ryan early in the presentation I took a note uh and you said one of the grants that we got couldn't be a match for iaia and I I could be wrong but if we're thinking about the one at Neil that was the Attorney General's office via Smithfield could you just talk about perhaps why that one couldn't be a match and or or even better yet like what are things that are not matches so like I'll just have it in my head um it was a random one sure fortunately there are a lot of things that that can be counted towards match unfortunately in the way the III was written

um it's written that Grant funds are are not allowed to be used um I was wondering if it was because it came from uh the state that via a private organization so it's just grants program no it's it's yeah it's really meant the III is meant to be uh you know um funded by the community's uh you know we're all putting some skin in the game if you will uh with our dollars towards compliance okay um it now ice okay don't worry you're you're going with me okay we as long as we're together I mean I'm gonna push you towards the snake but but on the public education specialist um I I know you've been at some of it I will yeah you've been at some of our jccpc meetings and we've been trying to do more around education uh not just with storm water we're blasting with some of everything uh just what are some other examples outside of just storm water because I know this is a storm water public education specialist but I

want to set reasonable expectations about what this person is supposed to do you know do people think this individual might go into schools do people think this person is just going to do HOA meetings are they going to present to us so I want to go back for just a second because again when we talk about it I know we're getting a veteran specialist you know I asked Lois what is that person going to do so I can talk to the community so what what's your vision for what the public education specialist is going to do I think you hit on a lot of it it's going to be a a very broad-ranging you know position um and we're hope you know my hope is we'll get a very talented individual who can um who can do a lot of those things that you talked about they likely will be going into schools the Neil middle school project for example has within the grant a component where we want to use that bioretention area that we're going to create as an educational item you know we want uh we want the The Faculty there you know the the teachers biology you know other science classes we want them to be able to go out and look at it and see and talk about what

it does and so you know we want to want someone to help develop some curriculum and things like that we want to make sure our community is educated not just about our storm water utility and helping to understand some of the things we talked about today but that they understand that uh you know what storm water is you know we're finding that some people just don't don't know you know what storm water means um and their impacts on it and how they can you know things activities they can do as simple as picking up after their pets have an impact and can reduce nutrients in our in our creeks and streams um and so and you know another part of it is going to be going to be making sure that um we as a staff you know Mackenzie and I are engineers we have a number of other technical staff on our team that um that when we speak to a classroom or create documents for the public they're helping us to

keep you know keep it free of jargon to make it so that the the public understands it so that anybody can pick it up read it and know what we're talking about and one of the reasons that we another reason we really are are looking for this position is that um you know we have those new development projects we have projects coming in that we review and approve and inspect both on the storm water and erosion control side we have these new uh new stormwater control measures Neil middle the stream restoration at Whispering Pines projects um you're you're looking at most of storm water and so that's going to take a lot of the time that McKinsey and I have and our stormwater technician uh we're going to have to do a lot of those things and so we don't have the time as much or as much of the time to do the kinds of Education that we really would like to be able to do to educate our community to do the Outreach and so having another position to to focus on those things we feel is very important

as our program proceeds and the only the reason why I bring it up quick follow-up I think it was commissioner Jacobs who might have said it kind of facetiously but another part of what that person or what I would like to see them do is what he just did you know in the community and while you walked here I don't want you to have to walk to Bahama don't you have to rock the route I mean I've done it it is restorative and salubrious and you feel much better afterwards but I want to make sure that um one because I've been uh to a lot of our communities um from RTP all the way up to Rougemont Bahama and you know you take staff with you but a lot of times it's very technical and I you know and I I can appreciate this person would go out and do this but I want them the same way we got some examples um it's no different than when we do our comp plan I just feel a little bit since this is and I've only been on the board a short time this is maybe like the second time I know that we've talked about these fees we talked about it one budget so people might feel some

consternation around okay so they're doing this to us again I really like the way that you all did your stormwater utility rate comparisons in here I like the photos and examples like this looks like it would do this but this is a boat and this is how this one this is 34 year eru so I would I am hopeful that when this person comes on when they're on board that we can almost maybe do a little tour and say this was the thought process behind why the board thought that this was necessary so I just want to throw that back out absolutely and and I would point back to the the other environmental enhancement grant that we have through the AG's office that we're currently working on with the NC Central students is to not just identify you know that we need to do more durham-centric things but also to help us develop some other educational items and things that we can put out there in the community but I agree with you and I think that that that this position will be in a place where they can do and expand upon our current Outreach because I agree it needs to be done thank you thank you sir I just I wanted

to add one other kind of expectation that I would see for this position completely agree with everything that was said from my day-to-day job I think another very important aspect is educating the parties that have stormwater control measures so these developers whether that be RTP or commercial or churches are a great example educating them on why they have it how to properly maintain it and how it's benefiting Durham County in the long run as well just wanted to add that yeah thank you this was a outstanding presentation and um regardless of you know if we move forward with the current fee structure or if we were to say hey wait a second we still feel like we need to tweak it somehow or other um I personally think it'll be really important for us to have a nice one-pager that lays out why this is

um fair and Equitable to the agriculture community um you know and specifically speak to their their belief that because they have a high percent of un impervious you know surface up against their sheds and their impervious areas that that's buffering the the impact and so they're being overcharged and I thought you you um refuted that um I'm still thinking it through to decide whether I agree with you or not but I'm pretty sure I do um but I would have a hard time explaining it I think to my you know farmer allies who I really want to support you know I really believe in the importance of protecting our open space and our farmland and I don't want Farmers to go out of business and I I am somewhat concerned about Financial Risk for some of them although the numbers you know you've presented to us the exact number of um non-residential agriculture

properties and the charges so um you know it doesn't look as dire as the stories we sometimes hear and I'm sure it feels dire to the individuals who are having these to face these charges and farming is not always as profitable I suppose as some other businesses and Industries or maybe it is I don't you know really know in each individual case um but so you know my request would be for the one sort of one pager um but could you just one more time say what you would say to the farmers when they asked you look we need some kind of a offset because we've either put these best management practices into place already we've spent money and and that's you know alleviating our negative impact or or and or we have you know a hundred thousand acres that has no previous impervious surface it's all totally pervious and that's you know decreasing

the impact of my huge shed and farm silo and other structures well I'll give it a stab I think what I would say is that our rate structure based solely on impervious area doesn't punish anyone for having lots of undeveloped property the premise that having lots of undeveloped property necessarily mitigates the impact from the developed part is pretty tenuous right and and recognizing that the dominant cost that you're dealing with is nutrient runoff and we don't get none of that from undeveloped land we get some of that from undeveloped land too that's why one of the rate structures we thought about would have a rate part that charged for gross land area we knew that that would be harmful to the agriculture community and we right

we purposefully didn't do that um and so we really believe we chose the rate structure that was the least harmful to this type of land use with our characterization of if there's a house there it's residential with our not charging for undeveloped land and with rate equivalence between rate classes now the last thing you brought up was gee we already do things to mitigate our impact entities who do things already to mitigate their impact are doing so because they're regulated to a higher level because they're unmitigated impact would have been much higher than other kinds of land uses so historically some parts of the AG Community have used a lot of nutrients and if they're not careful they get a lot of runoff from it so protective measures that are meant to have a

smaller footprint on the environment like how you manage your cattle or how you do for nitrogen and phosphorus those things are really valuable to the county but they tend to drive down the impact back down to where it was for regular impervious area not down to zero so for those Reasons I'm telling you we thought hard about it before we recommended what we recommended and I can't think of a tweak to this rate structure that makes it better for one group without making it worse for another one okay anyone else um well I also want to thank you so much first of all I'm really excited about the Lick Creek Watershed study really really glad that we're partnering with the city on this um I'm wondering are we going to be when we do that looking tying in other plans and studies such as the Falls Lake

study looking at the East Durham open space plan and also the comprehensive land use plan so existing plans that will have impacts and will we look at things like the fact that most of this is in the Triassic Basin and also pulling in stakeholders like at NC State News River Keepers Association just wondering like who how broadly how broad is this going to be so the the city's done a number of these plans across you know the city and the county you know uh it's a very robust study there will be I think all of the things you've talked about considered you know there will be um and I can't speak to all of the details of the study because we'll be tagging along with them and and relying a lot on their experience but I know there will

be a desktop analysis kind of off off the bat uh that we'll look at previous studies that will look at things that you know that are occurring in their uh out you know in that area other policies that have been uh done sampling that has been done and then it will build upon that um they will they will have consultants and staff um and and I'm looking forward to personally participating in Walking The Stream and assessing you know the the um the buffers accessing the stream Banks looking for areas of impact from development uh looking for sedimentation in the Stream uh there will be expanded sampling for nutrients for sediment for bacteria and all those things and then all of that information will be brought you know back into into this ultimate study that will result in

uh you know some recommendations likely some storm water control measures maybe some stream restoration opportunities um and any number of things that would be you know recommended to help improve the water quality improve the stream and the Watershed as a whole um and then um and then it will be kind of up to us up to the city you know to probably work together again to implement some of those things one of the great things about the way they produce these reports these days is that it makes them even more eligible and better suited for future grants and we would certainly seek to you know seek to find ways to to obtain more grant funding to implement things in the in the Watershed to help improve water quality great because I know also thinking about even Soil and Water and and our open space program we we have done a number of conservation easements and mitigation projects in this Watershed

and I think this will be important also for the implementation of the falls rules um yeah it's really important so I'm glad um do we have any idea of a timeline how long of a study it's going to be I believe the the plan is for the RFQ the request for proposals because they will hire a consultant team to uh to assist and do a great upgrade bulk of the work um along with side staff is to go out this summer uh and you know meaning selection would probably be late summer early fall and it's about a year and a half to two years it's a it's a fairly lengthy lengthy study because it's a lot of it's a lot of work right okay um and um and then following up on some of the comments that my are my colleagues I totally agree that great suggestion from commissioner Carter about you know some type of a one-pager that synthesizes a lot of

what you've said yeah well we'll just take Keith it's fine yeah he's used to it yeah yeah exactly I mean I I think um you know you did a very good job of like discussing this from a policy level and and that's really complex and so even some of the examples that you gave which I assume were in response to the you know letters we've gotten comments we've gotten you know why aren't you doing this and why aren't you doing that so is even as much as you can kind of give those you know whether it's a visual and then explaining and this is why this you know if we follow this this is what your rate would look like and if we did this this is and so helping people understand that this is what we've come up with as the fairest and acknowledging that these are tough policy decisions like we wish that we

didn't even have to do this but like this is what we're facing and that we we unfortunately wish we didn't have to have fees um and I think you know probably really honing in it really out of the 15 000 Parcels we're really talking about 372 right and then out of that it comes down to probably you know the 54 plus the 16 the two those two the you know so that's like 70 parcels um I know I personally have heard from a few people so it's not a lot but um which then brings me to the thought of if it does come down to you know commissioner Carter's Point like we don't want to put Farmers out of business and the fact that there there could be farmers in our community who this is a really really big burden for them um so I think as we think about things like our low income homeowner grant

program just you know whether we find out that you know maybe we need to have a hardship fund that people apply to you know like we have our tax you know grant program I'm just saying if it comes down to that there may be a need for us to be open to that and then of course we'd have to have some process and criteria for people to apply for that but you know it may be that that's something we have to look at in the future I just wanted to put that out there and I don't know if there are any any models for that um that was one thing that that came to mind um and I just wanted to ask whether and and following up on the education position I know we could keep this person really busy but I will note that our Soil and Water Department program had noted in the budget book

um that they have been asking for an education specialist who I guess we had originally funded and no longer fund and I know Heidi and I both went to the environmental the big environmental awards that they did over at um Durham Tech and I don't know if there's any way for this person to also partner at all with soil and water um and and be able to help out with some of the Environmental Education work that they're trying to do which is you know you gave the example of Neil middle school and so maybe there are some other ways to to partner with what they're doing educationally with the schools and my last is Ryan when do you think would be a good time for Forest Westfall to come and do a presentation to our board on the uh you know where things are at with the Falls like study and recommendations I've

reached out to Forest about that and I was looking at looking at the calendar knowing you know largely take July off hoping uh late August September maybe September work session was probably a good timing okay that sounds great and that I think that would help answer a lot of commissioner alums really good questions that she had thank you and I guess and that's it then thank you all so much okay and next we have our sewer utility discussion yeah we are

okay and welcome everyone hey Julio do you want to make introductions if everyone up here yes ma'am uh to my left I got Stephanie I haven't Vince with and Vincent and we're going to present the utility division uh service fees I really appreciate the opportunity from the Commissioners and Dr soil so by all means Stephanie okay so we're going to go over our recommended um what we've proposed for the budget for fy24 um so next slide do I do it okay um so this first time slide actually just kind of is an overview of our sewer service system as far as you know where we collect our Wastewater from

so as many of you have seen this before so we have the dark green and the RTP boundary area that's a hundred percent Durham County sanitary sewer customers so we own the sewer lines and we treat the Wastewater and then we also take Wastewater from a section from Durham city which is our 80 customers highlighted here um so it actually discharges into City sanitary sewer lines but then it comes to the County's wastewater treatment plant for treatment so we charge 80 percent fees to those customers so the city keeps 20 percent to maintain the lines and then the 80 percent comes to the county for to cover the cost of treatment this year I've requested four new positions to be in operator positions and to be in maintenance tech positions

So currently we have I think when we're fully staffed we have six operators but we have to operate the plant 24 7. and so right now with the way it is we may have two operators on day shift Monday through Friday but then we only have one operator that would work second shift third shift and the weekend shifts so due to some you know safety concerns hoping to eliminate some of that and also allow some additional you know preventative work to be done if we had two employees per shift it would help us out as far as that goes also when someone wants to take vacation right now or we're short staffed a lot of times we literally a manager that's certified will go in and operate the plant to cover those shifts for the maintenance positions our maintenance staff currently not only

does maintenance at the wastewater treatment plant but they're also the staff that handles our checking our collection system every week prior permit they handle all of the maintenance on our 13 lift stations they handle the maintenance of our reclaim system and distribution line our Rougemont water system and distribution line and also Wexford the small step system that the county is responsible for and we have a total of five maintenance staff that handles all of that so of course our systems continuing to grow you've all been aware of some talks where we need to build some additional pump stations as well so this is just going to allow more work on you know the few staff we currently already have and I'm gonna let Vince kind of go over a little bit about the projects so just quickly go over uh we had a couple projects complete in fy23 uh the

first one is we had a domestic water line installed to the administrative building historically the building has been on a well system and by State Statute the well system we had could not sustain above a certain level of employee threshold so we had to maintain employees at a certain number so the domestic line has helped us be able to increase staff to to account for the growing system we have another one was we completed some Rehabilitation and what we call train one it's highlighted on the on the picture below this included doing some little structural repairs to the to that area and also repairing and replacing some of the major equipment with that system a few current projects that we've got coming up and plan to be working on in the next next fiscal year two of the projects the board has already seen includes the security upgrade in a scada

upgrade both of those projects have been awarded and we hope I will get it underway soon um two projects that that haven't been to the board yet but we'll be coming in the very near future uh another one is train three um which very similar to train one we're going to be doing some of the structural repairs to that and replacing major equipment and then phase four uh this is a project where we will be effectively touching all aspects of the plant um many of the components of the plant are are aging infrastructure 20 plus years old so we're going to be going around evaluating what how the systems are functioning what the equipment is some of the equipment is Obsolete and we can no longer get parts for so it's we're going to be looking to replace those with a more modern system that we'll be able to to actually service and get parts for Ben schwart's a BFD uh variable frequency drive

a couple other collection system projects we've got coming up we are partnering with the city of Durham developing an interlocal agreement to model the entire Wastewater system this model will be for the entire 100 and 80 areas for everything that's going to be coming to the Wastewater Plant um the model where hope the goal of the model is to help us identify areas where uh the piping system is nearing capacity or or potentially over capacity um and will help guide us in future years on our annual pipe replacement program that we need to really start focusing on another project that is should be wrapping up here in the very near future I believe everybody's aware of is the Hub RTP off-site project this is where we're extending some additional 30 inch sewer line up to the intersection of

Davis Drive and I-40 and also in extending the reclaimed water system up there right now we're in the final stages of testing certifications and stabilizing the the outfall areas of that one a couple upcoming projects that we're we're trying to get underway is the one is the chin Page Road lift station this lift station will help us with capacity in the Stirrup iron Creek lift station as as everyone may be aware there is some capacity issues last year we were able to determine uh some additional capacity to get us through some time but this the 10 Page Road lift station will effectively cut that Basin in half thereby taking half of the flow off of the star Pine Creek lift station and putting it to Chin page

therefore increasing the overall capacity of startup the next one is the page Point lift station this one is up near right off Highway 70 and Page Road this is one of our oldest stations in the system many of the components out here at this station are obsolete so in terms of where where we start running up against capacity issues here we can't just go pull a pump and just replace it with a new one um components of that station will need to be replaced and once you start doing that you really have to get into a full upgrade the other aspect we're up against with this is ncdot has some new roadway projects that are going to occur along Highway 70. with those projects the control access right away is actually going to engulf the lot that the lift station sits on so we need to find a new new home for the new lift station on that one so we're working with the County real estate and

actually trying to find land for that that we're working through right now uh the last one we have highlighted here is a new Administrative building which would be right across the road from us off of Highway 55. this facility will serve the the professional staff with on-site training spaces and additional workspaces as we're running out of room in our existing Administrative Building it's going to have a new maintenance Warehouse where we'll be able to maintain parts and additional piping for a quicker response time to emergencies and pump repairs and then some multi-purpose conference rooms we are proposing some fee increases this year so we've requested an increase in consumption fees by 10 percent and this has been pretty common to what I've done the last several years just so we don't

give anyone a rate Shock by you know going several years and not doing one and then doing a large one at one time but the consumption rates actually cover our operational costs of the plant they cover all of our loan payments and they support our CIP projects our system development fees there's actually a request to approve an increase in the budget for those as well a recent study was completed by Will Dan financial services and the public hearing was held May 9th and so we didn't have any comments prior to the public hearing or dear and the public hearing on those changes again the system development fees were required to have that study completed once every five years by House Bill 436 and so um you only see an increase in those come to you once a study has been completed that's the only way we can do that for future resources we're planning on

doing a contract to get a complete fiscal model done of our for the utilities just to help us guide us with how we need to increase over the next several years with all those CIP projects that we know are coming our way again with future fee increases we're looking at you know continuing to do consumption rate increases seven to ten percent um system development fees again that would be once every five years we do need to complete a surcharge study fee so right now we do charge some surcharge fees for those that have high strength concentration search certain industrial users and so that's for parameters such as phosphorus and nitrogen bod and total suspended solids those fees we have not increased and it's been many years so we do need to

complete a study to look at that as we know chemical cost has went up and sometimes we do have to use chemicals to treat the nutrients and then for future resources we're just going to continue to monitor our other fees as you may remember last year we did increase a lot of our inspection fees quite a bit from what they had been and so we'll continue to monitor that and compare it to kind of what our neighboring facilities are charging as well some of our other concerns kind of looking ahead is we definitely have the Aging infrastructure so the wastewater treatment plant was last upgraded it's been about 20 years so we know that there's a lot of parts of that that's becoming obsolete um there's also with our collection system I mean some of the oldest parts of the collection system will probably put in in the 60s when Research Triangle Park

was originally built so there's areas there that we know we need to replace um just to prevent pipe failure but there's you know also we may need to fight we may find areas we need to upsize and so we're going to need adequate funding for an annual pipe replacement program I mean we just kind of gave an example in 2019 we replaced 1600 linear feet of eight inch clay pipe with ductile iron and it cost us eight hundred thousand dollars to do that um so that kind of came out you know we're estimated it's about 625 dollars per foot again that may be a little higher now with inflation but if we you know assume that we needed to you know replace about 10 percent of our pipe so that's about 10 miles our system's around 110 115 miles total we would need 33 million dollars just to

replace 10 percent of piping so when we're looking at the future we already know that that this is coming our way over the next 10 years you know we need to look at the possibility that we may need to change the capacity of the plant so we may not need to just do Rehabilitation but we may need to do a full upgrade for capacity and we know that where we're at with the Jordan Lake rules we'll probably have a hard time getting additional nutrient credits to discharge there and if that's the case then there's a possibility that the state could come back and we may have to run a really long discharge line which could go to the other side of Jordan Lake which would be taking us down toward Lee County um so of course we're getting ready to work with an engineer to kind of get some estimates of what that would cost in the future if we have to go that route just so we know how to plan for that as well

and my slideshow was short thank you another very complex set of issues yes and challenges to deal with here and we'll also I think Julio's had us working on I know sometime in the near future we're going to be doing uh infrastructure presentation yeah so again good afternoon the waste treatment plant is basically the base of the triangle development we need to be really proactive in how the Dynamics are changing there so we're I'm talking to the team to start thinking about risk how the structure of the plan is okay how how do that report I mean think about the future okay need more be proactive okay as we know the rtb area the the consumer mix is changing okay industrial now

we're getting more residents so things like that so I have the team thinking about okay look about the position that you have let's rewrite positions to ensure that we're meeting the future needs not the 20 years ago so it's a lot of work going and they're going to be we're going to be real busy down there so if you look for me most likely you want to find me at the plant so go ahead thank you and thank you for uh you know thinking really thinking big picture about all of this really appreciate that questions comments commissioner Burns I only have one quick question one thank you for your presentations as always do we know how much I know when we talk to RTP Foundation last week and they were moving up their fees I was able to ask them how much would we how much would we gain or how much money will be raised with this 10 do you know how much and if you don't have it right now that's okay how much money would an additional 10

percent bring up in that budget uh for the like a consumption I'm sorry yes the title for the year how much it would increase it I do not have that number on top man that's okay I can get that for you thank you best friend that was my only one commissioner Carter just wanted to say thank you for your work and to also say that any time I am in the presence of Stephanie I'm reminded of a field trip I took to the triangle wastewater treatment plant when my first year as a a commissioner I would highly recommend it I don't know whether any of you are fans of the Ms Frizzle series like Ms Frizzle goes to the Waterworks but the Magic School Bus yes not that Stephanie is like Miss Frizzle because you're not but um it you know it's a complex just operation out there and trying to understand it all is a challenge in

those Magic School Bus books were really good I thought it explaining it so anyway I recommend going if that one's been if you haven't been they're coming up would be a good time too because we're doing the train three Rehabilitation so that Train's empty so you can actually see the massive size of it I mean when you look at it and it's above ground you see how tall it is but when you're standing on the structure and you're looking 20 feet down you realize how much water is really in that thing when it's full so um so yeah if anyone wants to come out let us know sounds like we need to have a series about Durham County government right for each each all the things that are happening yeah commissioner Alam thank you I would love to go on this field trip um just like an environmental question do we know since we do have residents within the county and not in the city area who are

on like septic just wondering on an environmental level do we ever know really like what the environmental impact is of septic tanks versus like being on sewer lines I'm sure there's research that's been done on that um the one thing I think is from a wastewater treatment standpoint we definitely Wastewater is treated better because in that aspect we are regulated by the state permits so um like for the Durham County plant we discharge small amounts of nutrients but when the nutrient limits for Jordan Lake were initially proposed many years ago the county had rebuilt the plant and had built it to meet those nutrient limits and because we could meet them at the time even though we weren't required to

put them in the permit the county went ahead and accepted those limits so we've been meeting those stringent limits all these years the one thing with septic systems is you know they don't get inspected annually and you know you could have a felon septic system that's discharging waste is not really treated and you could get runoff from that to creeks um so I think from you know when you look at it in that aspect I think wastewater treatment plants just because of the way we're regulated it's treated much better so I just did you have another comment no no just thank you yeah that's what I assume but just wondering if there's like studies showing it and I know that there's nothing we can really do about the fact that we have septics within the county uh limits but just interested in the environmental impact

so um I have a few follow-up questions I mean I really support what you all are doing which to me is you know is your really thinking ahead um about what the needs are not just with the existing facilities that we have but what we need for the future and I just um just want to confirm that our underlying philosophy or policy is that these are Enterprise systems I mean is the goal still that we are trying to have these Investments be um self-funding or at least you know that the cost of the development is paying for you know that the develop the development itself is paying for for these costs basically um is that is that still the the goal that is the goal we've um you know we've

submitted for a couple of these larger projects applications to the state for the state revolving fund um the one thing that hurts us when we apply for Grants a lot of times is Durham counties considered a county pretty wealthy so that sometimes you know lowers our chances of getting grants so then we're you know typically can get approved for State Reviving loans with low interest and so you know that's probably the route some of this may go um we have had conversations um you know Jay myself Claudia um Susan before she retired and trying to figure out the you know fiscal impacts and the direction to go as we move forward and what type of funding but it would be from the Enterprise fund you know even with loans the Enterprise fund would be paying those back yeah

it's going back to your question and the straight answer is yes okay we are this is an Enterprise okay that should be maintained by itself now we should not we should also look not just at the fees and how do we charge also we're looking at efficiency okay how to improve efficiency maintenance that way our equipment lasts longer that's why we're asking for operators a maintenance Personnel that could support that because when when you do the numbers on how much it costs to pay for an operator versus fixing something that cost you a couple million dollars I believe that preventive maintenance is the key in Ephesians see how much chemical you use for some of it are we overusing so things like that that we are doing in our charge the team to look into into the details I think in the details is where you find the big stuff okay where can we save money and use it towards making more uh

Improvement to the plant so it's the straight answer is yes yeah thank you for that and um yeah I just noted in your you know you referred to a number of initiatives and studies you know um working with the city on a systems model and looking also at a fiscal model long term and so are those things all gonna are they all budgeted for like you all have funding to do that yes yeah okay um and um when you mentioned about ncdot that we probably are going to lose part of the site would that be something that we would get compensated for by ncdot I will let Vince he knows a little bit more about this project

uh that's we are we've been recently contacted by dot to start the conversation on what the impacts are going to be so we're not exactly sure what's going to happen um I believe the first meeting we're going to have with them is the next couple weeks yeah so that's that's coming up but you know our hope would be that they help paperwork but I'm not sure how it's all going to work and lastly I just I also want to note the environmental sustainability things that you all do like they're the gray water program and your Water Reclamation and also the biosolids program could you talk a little bit about how you see those programs you know in the future would you see them growing or expanding or what what roles do you see those kind of things playing so right now as part of the Hub RTP project we actually

extended our reclaim line all the way to Hub um part of that is as that area is growing RTF is supposed to be assuring that there are tenants and the hotel Whatever Gets built in that area they have to use a certain percentage of reclaimed water right now this is that's the farthest We've ran the line to we start getting into some complication when we start trying to go further because of we'd have to cross 40 so the one good thing was when the toll road was built we felt ahead of getting it across that and went ahead and had a carrier pipe put in when the toll road was built so that allowed us to recently run that line and use that carrier pipe that was installed but then again you know getting it much further becomes a little bit harder just due to the road system and the area

we haven't rolled it out if there's enough you know requests for it but the expense of getting it there we would have to look into that to see if it fiscally paid off um there's also the issue you know the the longer the distance you run if there's not a enough turnover then the water doesn't hold a chlorine residual that's required so you may treat it and you may chlorinate it and send it out but if it's not getting used in a certain amount of time then basically we have to send it back to the sewer and then send it back to the plant and Retreat it even though it's clean water so you kind of have to look at all sides of the treatment process and the usage for our biosolids I'm currently right now um we dewater it and then it's hauled off to mcgills where it is used for compost and the McGill sells it

um we are starting to look at what newer Technologies may be out there that we could use we don't know right now and and one reason we're looking that way was the last time that we actually took our biosolids out to bed we only had one bidder and so that's kind of concerning that if what if something happened and they couldn't take it then what do we do so we are trying to look at What new technologies are out there and how we could handle it moving forward fascinating commissioner Carter and I both find this stuff fascinating levels right um and and what you just mentioned though really um thought I just hadn't even thought about or do how do we work with ncdot about road infrastructure projects and how we can integrate

our needs with that how are we doing that how does that happen we we do actively try to work with DOTA with these type of situations for example right now we're working with Dot and trying to replace part of a force main along Hobson Road there was a some work going on out there and we realized that the the fourth part of the Force main out there was very brittle so we're trying to get some of that replaced now through with our partnership with DOT so as work projects come along and and hopefully some of our forecasting of where we need to expand or do some additional work we try to you know look at that and and do situations like put some casing pipes under the road partner that way all right well thank you all so much any any other commission I mean commissioner because I normally don't have a comment

but I just wanted to so well I will leave the hard work to you all um I did want to ask the staff because the board has expressed commitment to allocating some of the Opera funding for water sewer projects and so you may not have an answer right now on the spot but we do need to think about kind of what project or dollar amount that you feel like we would need to specify from arpa as we as the board wraps up kind of our final allocations of Arbor thank you manager so well all right well thank you all so much for your great work thank you okay all right and arpa discussion yes well she looks she she managed to make

sure that the the debt ceiling discussions didn't come after arpa money so she can work miracles thank you [Music] I could actually earn and we I said we have Casey steinbacher with us and Andy you know this could have been a very different conversation I know I am so grateful I can't say that enough can you pass me the um looker um my conversation and remarks will be very short today

again we are all breathing much easier because of the understanding of how the clawbacks will work there may be some impacts to the community because there are some important areas that were not allocated in the budget so we'll I'll show you all that slide and we'll move on we'll talk about future discussions a little bit not much today because we have some more time and also conversations around the Bulls initiative Expansion Project I think Andy Casey kristely who is our interim CFO and myself we have gone back and forth for months and I can't leave out Maurice we started before Maurice cave I think he helped us to to maybe wrap it up but it is because of our desire to get it right our focus on the back end what does it

look like when we're measured and so this will be a great conversation off the hills of the discussions with President Buxton so this slide will say it all the claw back does not impact state and local governments they'd already allocated the funds to jurisdictions and to States however there was some uncertainty because it was not quite as clear clearly stated so we were quite pleased to see definitively that note and shared that and put it in the item as well so this gives us time to continue on the path that we've been on trying to make very thoughtful allocations and Appropriations and to do our work intentionally and so

today again I'll be very short in my conversation we will have follow-up discussions on Monday about some of the affordable housing investments one that may be expanded dollars for potential Gap funding for City projects that have already gone through the RFP and as as a quick reminder we were nervous or not necessarily nervous we were planning back in November when we asked the board would you consider realigning some partnering with the city when it's appropriate so that we could move faster in some areas and that partnership related to affordable housing and then some other categories we then in February in looking at the state's appropriation for areas such as Broadband said hey we may consider coming back can do an additional

realignments and so we've refined our plan since the board's adoption back in May 2022 and we will continue as we move along this journey and again grateful it's not been into being interrupted and so on Monday in addition to given some updates on the some joint projects there is um there are a few projects that the city has that they have some Gap funding needs and so we'll have some high level overview on those the city is also looking at how do they close those gaps as well and we will also have a brief update on another in a local which is related to the Arts proposal there is some collaboration and Synergy going on between the Arts Council and Hayti so they will jointly manage those dollars which is fantastic and so um the other part of the conversation

and again it will be very high level we'll talk about other priorities on the board we heard from you at the last conversation there's a desire to do the RFP to look at support for a day Center for our homeless community and there are some other priorities such as our the guaranteed income priority we'll list those out and and I didn't have my notes like I normally do but the LA another one that was also a focused in looking at how do we support dollars for housing efforts that are related to home repairs especially those that are certain income levels and our seniors which is an extension of Investments we've done in the past and so those are my remarks and I'll turn it over to Casey and you may have a

few comments oh wow as well which way again you go to though right I always Monica is going to switch no I think I did I blend them all I did not so I did a badge well while we're doing that um Commissioners please allow me to First tell you what an incredible opportunity this has been and I say this with all honesty um when I wrote the request you have in front of you I believe is number 13 draft 13. we have been working on this for a long time but I say that to tell you that the very first draft I sent to Andy I said Andy this is what I need you to do I need you to take that draft and I need you to go see Claudia and tell Claudia to rip it apart and Claudia and her team did that the most important thing I want you to know is never was there uh we can't do this it was always uh this this is an ineligible thing here but let's think about how we might be able to do it this way and make it eligible it was the most

collaborative process I've ever been through for a very restricted funding source so I just want to say thank you to the team they've been Emporium he's like my he's he was my proofreader and you'll see I and I I missed one already so I apologize for that but I'm not going to take a lot of your time today because I know you've had a really really long day and most of you are really really familiar with the program I know I talked to you all about this ad nauseam but we are really doing some great things what I am going to do for you in this presentation though is just do a real quick update on where we're at and then a high level overview of what the budget is you have the I'm assuming you have the full request but we're just going to do it real quick and then I want to talk to you a little bit about outcomes um to the point that Claudia was making in terms of you know how we are really being careful about what it is we're doing and the the reason I want to do that is from the time we started this application to the time that we're actually at it right now we're getting better at this and the better we get at this believe it or not it changes our outcomes because you'll see in a minute

the longer a student stays in the program the more money we spend um and you will see in a minute that the cohort that graduated last Wednesday we had cohort four graduate last Wednesday 77 percent of the kids finished and completed the program 77 now on one hand that's awesome on the other hand it scares me that we're running out of money so I just want to when we get into that point that's one of the things I talk about these projections are based on our previous numbers um and so as we get better at this it's just the numbers aren't going to be as high in terms of our outcome but there'll be better outcomes because we will be completing this program and getting in so let me real quick I just think for the general public uh we always put this slide in to make sure everybody understands who a maiden Durham is this is what it is we do we're a systems organization that work with the Myriad of programs and institutions in Durham and the education the career space and quite frankly we call ourselves the misalignment gaps and barriers of Avengers that's our job is to find those

things and figure out how to help those organizations fix that you also know this is again not a secret uh the Bulls Academy is something that we're incredibly proud of that we started just a little over a year ago um you these are our main criteria for any industry that we would create a bulls Academy for and that is part of what we want to talk about today is scaling it into next Industries not going too fast but at least taking this template and having the opportunities president Buxton has already commissioned some of his staff to actually review the certification programs that the college currently has available to it that fit these criteria for the future as we move forward and obviously what we're all about in this Academy is making sure that we're actually providing very structured Equitable access for our Durham Youth and Young adults to ensure that they get the opportunity to share in Durham's prosperity so where are we at today again just a quick reminder this is our operating model we live and Breathe by this we have Community engagement education experience and corporate

engagement these are the there's a zillion things that fall underneath this but these are the main categories you've seen them all before and this is the work this is a lot of those remember we talked about the below the line work this is where we spend a lot of time in the below the line work so the next slide I'm just going to kind of update you where we're at in each one of these things so remember we got a around 827 thousand dollars from our collaborative with the North Carolina biotechnology Center through the buildback butter better fund from Eda that is going to allow us to put about 600 000 over the next two years two community-based organizations to help them help us in this program we believe very strongly it takes a village in this work and so we're providing capacity grants for them to help us identify recruit and support students through the program we have three different categories we put out an RFP last month for two of those three categories we received 28 applications from community-based organizations and we are currently in the process of reviewing them Andy's on the review team

it's going to help us select which of those non-profits get the opportunity to participate I will say one thing really important thing that we added was the success coaching PLC a professional Learning Community what we're found in this process so far is that many of our nonprofits don't have that really full rounded understanding of Life success and so we we will be doing actually uh paying them to participate in a professional learning practice where we're going to teach them the latest and greatest best practices in that we have some great Consultants that we work with right now and they'll help with that and so that selection is underway hope to be able to let you know about that you just heard me say our fourth cohort started with 17 we graduated 13 that's an insane jump we normally graduate about the 53 53 number there there's a whole lot of reasons for that which I could get into if you think you'd like to hear but um it mostly is because as we as we continue to build out those below the line

um uh pieces of the program we're adding more and more and more interventions early on we're getting smarter about who's a good candidate for the program we're getting smarter about when the intervention should be addressed um and so we're we're really happy that cohort 5 will graduate June 21st and that will complete those first five at this point we'll be almost out of money for the stipends that the county has allocated for us over the last two years we'll have a little bit left but but not a lot we don't know for sure until the last cohort because our through this process we have created a process where students are stipend for both their daily life costs but we also keep some money in there for performance so as they do well and and get engaged in this program we we throw them a little extra towards them money and so that's probably one of the reasons that we're doing so so much better but we won't know that obviously until this cohort finishes um to date of those four cohorts we've had 58 that began and 31 that passed so

that's an overall 54 percent uh pass rate and what I mean by that is we've had more that have completed but not have passed remember we talked about that you can pass you can complete the program and still not pass but that's a pass a number the number that I've actually passed um I can't tell you you'll see over here on the corporate side our estimate for students employed in biotechnology uh Andy picked that up I missed that totally sorry about that number we don't actually have a very accurate number for that number yet for two reasons number one the cohort four literally just passed they're just graduated last week they just sat for the exam so we don't know how many passed the exam but we do know that there this is a great group there are three of that classes already gotten jobs has gone out and actively sought jobs in that the other thing that you will see in this as you'll see in our budget is work budgeting for mentorships and an alumni group we are finding that the vast majority of our successful students are coming from referrals from existing candidates in the program so we're doing really well in that as well and so we're going to

start some money there but I will tell you at this point we can verify 12 that we know that are full-time working in a biotechnology position but again remember this is non-credited courses and so we don't have a way of tracking them unless the student tells us they've actually gotten that right now as we build out the corporate engagement we will engage corporate to help us with that in connecting with them but it's a little bit more difficult for us to do that right now the other thing we'll need and you'll see in a little bit I'll talk a little bit about this budget is a dedicated position Durham Tech has just added one for to work specifically with the life science companies North Carolina biotechnology Center has a dedicated one as well but what we really need is someone that walks them in the door and sits them in the seat with the HR person who's about to make that decision so that's that's something that we're actually collaborating very closely with the Durham Chamber of Commerce about potentially being able to help us provide uh and that work with their uh activity with non-profit organ or with the corporate sector so we put in as you

recall you had two two million dollars in for bulls and you had one million dollars in for related kind of activity for Durham public schools and Durham Tech in working with the collaborative that we worked together this way we decided this year to just put in one made in Durham is acting as the backbone Organization for all three of those organizations for the three million dollars we have three really big goals we want to do here we really want to scale the biotech program we want to try and get as many uh students through this program as we can we want to add a second Academy and I I put in this develop the case for sustainability you will see in this budget there's some large infrastructure costs we need to find a well-renowned internet well-respected evaluation company that's going to come in evaluate this program write up all the great things that it is that we're doing that will allow us to get that in front of the key funders to sustain this initiative moving forward it's it's we're looking at a much more integrated data system that will allow us to be much more predictive in what it is that's going on to increase the rates so it's a lot of infrastructure but all of that infrastructure is really built

around our ability to be able at the end of two years to be able to say hey Cami thank you so much for this funding we've now gotten some philanthropic funding and some corporate funding to continue this program moving on and so that's really a big goal for us our partners continue to be the same three Partners when I say in this particular program obviously we have more Partners In The City North Carolina biotechnology Center the Durham chamber we still meet to this day uh monthly on on these initiatives to make sure everything goes well really high level you can see again staying with the model what we're spending in community engagement by the way that's a low number because of the 600 000 that we're getting from build back better okay so that's just the arpa funding um the rest and that is much more engagement in Durham Public Schools right that's going to allow us to do way more engagement during public schools and our hope is a dual enrollment program which we think are we're piloting this year and I say think only because there's a minimum number that has to be meant for bio for Durham Tech to be able to do it so we're hoping that we can get that minimum number of high

school students to do it and then we have a relatively large investment in dual enrollment with eventually as we can get that going to actually provide the funding for the equipment inside a high school so that they don't have to go over all the time to Durham Tech and can actually take it in in a high school and so that's our goal with that Community engagement in money along with working with one of the things that we are going to do is put together a program to work with local um after school programs not community-based organizations but after school programs and and child care programs we need to start way way way way earlier in this awareness activity and so we're going to work with ones that are currently associated with the county or with their Public Schools those kind of programs and work with them the education experience as you can see the vast majority is in stipends for both biotech in a second industry cluster we have not acknowledged what that is yet until we go through a comprehensive rubric process to determine that we are adding a position for the Bulls dedicated stat position inside Durham Tech as we go into

multiple Industries we're going to need someone that sits on top of this and that can coordinate within the industry sectors inside Durham Tech because remember guys we're doing a lot of things different than what the institution normally does so it's gonna it's gonna we find that we spend a lot of time negotiating how these how these initiatives move forward and then in corporate engagement we have a little bit under corporate engagement our goal is to really fund that through the corporate side but what we wanted to do get started was the mentorship and the alumni development we think it's really important for the for the 31 kids that are currently in the program um to be successful in the program development and sustainability it's program evaluation it's curriculum design and development for the next cohort that takes a lot of time and development and marketing and documentation we really need to have um all of this below the line work documented in white papers we need to be able to do some marketing we want to really we really want to do some documentaries work on this to follow some kids and see how well they do we think it would be incredibly helpful and impactful for us moving forward on being

2 million dollars uh to that if we are six if we our

formula for these outcomes are based on currently currently through four clusters for through four cohorts we're spending about six thousand sixty five hundred of that 10 000 per student the reason is is that kids fall out you know and so they only end up spending three thousand of their ten thousand so but as we get better at this we're anticipating that that number could hit as high as 8 500 this next year our numbers are based on the six thousand dollar number right so we could be actually um doing less than the 270 students that I'm showing you here if we're really successful and students are going the whole way through the program and actually getting a job so I just want to put that caveat caveat out there that our assumption is the spend rate based upon the first four cohorts as we get better at that the spend rate will be higher so the number of students can will actually be lower on that we vote for more students being successful so we we just but I do want to to put that out there obviously I've shared with all this all

of you before none of this has changed it's all for us about increasing um you know our ability to do this program more effectively and to create better above-the-line outcomes so that we have more students actually actively participating in the program and getting um hires through the program I will tell you that um right now we're getting a lot of interest from three corporations I always want to give shout outs um all of them obviously are interested in participating in the program but hiring our students right now seem to be Biogen Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly um talking to them Eli Lilly as they as they start to ramp up so I just want to I want to give credit where credit is due obviously we we are working with the North Carolina biotechnology Center that has a group of life science companies that are meeting around the at the concept of talent acquisition um regularly and they have agreed to work with us to create to help us use that to create more activity inside um this our ability to get students

actually placed in this process until we get a full-time person on board and then again I just wanted you to know it's your 3000 is not the only thing we're doing obviously we got 820 000 from the Eda the Durham Tech bond has 35 million dedicated to the facilities that will absolutely be required if we're going to hit these numbers uh long term and then additional crests we have about 750 000 out in a philanthropic and corporate money that we're asking for from organizations like Oak foundation and some corporate life science companies that are interested in participating right now we don't have any of those uh we have smaller ones committed uh smaller ones that commit to made interims just overall philosophy of what it is we do these particular requests are specific to the Bulls initiative and where that will be gone so that's really quick really high uh oh by the way this is Armand uh Armand is uh just as one student of the graduate of the program um he graduated in cohort three he has a

job at Biogen um he spoke recently at our um award ceremony that we had to tell the crowd what it meant to him to actually get um this certification and then he came to our C4 graduation last week and spoke to the students at C4 and then grabbed me for 30 minutes to let me know that he's had three more he's acquired three more certifications along the way in his journey uh in this process and so he has actually become an ambassador for us in Durham Tech we are both using him to actually talk about the program with students and engage them with them he's amazing his sister graduated from the program in C4 his mother came up to me after the graduation and ceremony and she says she goes I gave me my son I gave me my daughter I got no more Casey I thank you very much we greatly appreciate appreciate it so that's it ladies I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you so much Casey we we could not ask you to please speak any more quickly

and he kept saying 15 minutes 15K you you've packed a lot in um and really appreciate um also everything that you share with us is always so detailed so thoughtful so documented um the other uh document that you shared with us as well um and i i as somebody who's been a part of this since the beginning I really appreciate similar to the conversation we had earlier about Durham Pre-K which are both both these are both homegrown programs how you know to me this is like the model of innovation and transformation where you are continually tweaking and adjusting based on what's working what's not working and just continually making things better so and and it's amazing to see even the the fourth cohort the

difference in the outcomes because your last presentation to us was hey you know very transparent these are the numbers some things aren't working we've got to do some things differently and um so it's it's really great um we have great Partners um I would say to you that um in all my years in Durham the ability for the partners that we have in this program to work together is been amazing and everyone is super committed and then when you have outcomes like Armand and you see the the human impact is what of course keeps everybody going and motivates us right that this is really working and it's making a difference yeah I I should have also said one thing at the end of every graduation we ask the graduates is there any one thing that they want to say we don't require it you know make them feel uncomfortable and everything but if they want to thank their parents or someone because the room is full we've we've now are over at the fail wind Center because

that's how big the graduation has gotten with it so many kids come and one gentleman young gentleman got up and he was 24 I think and got up and thanked his parents then thanked the program and he said um I before this program you know what I was doing I said we said what he goes I was laying the carpet in this room I was laying the carpet in this room so I I can't and I can't I can't tell you how impactful this program is regardless of the numbers everybody that goes through it changes their life so absolutely and they put me in the back of the room with a box of Kleenex and don't let me get anywhere near the microphone because I just ball the whole time and I know we were we were all invited to that and um it was we had a we had a conflict I know that yeah and I won't be here at June 21st but please let everyone else know yeah you are welcome please anytime yeah no staff as well um so for for because I know people this

last one was also Durham Tech graduation night we did not know that yeah and so y'all were probably there right uh well we were over at the Fairwind Center but it was still it was great we it turned out really well any questions guys yeah any questions or comments uh commissioner Carter first of all I feel like um even Casey's enthusiasm and excitement and Andy's green and white stripes stop can't seem to lift me out of my PowerPoint stupor I'm sorry this afternoon I'm really really feeling the effects of it today but I did have one question I've been wanting to ask because this program is so incredibly successful partly because of all the below the line puts and things to finally get some above the line outputs um do you have any idea what the per pupil cost of the program yeah we we're getting closer to that I I would say to you not yet and only because um when you ask a pupil cost one of the things we have to do is take into account existing staff right right

1

million dollars over 20 years if if they got an increase of about two percent every year and so when we tell this story we have to make sure we tell the other part [Music] just in the human being and it takes a lot of people it costs money I mean it's you know when we try to shortchange education funding at the state level for example it affects us down the line and Claudia just you know gave the math for how it affected um I do I wanted to uh um say one other thing that commissioner burns when the very first time we presented remember I said I was surprised how many female we had and and you huh and they were pregnant they were pregnant uh but you have said I want to make sure you have an emphasis on males as well so this class now put us right around 50 50. so we're doing 50 50 and speaking of pregnant at our graduation

one of the girls from ce3 that was pregnant came back with a tiny little baby to tell us she got a job yeah and so maybe we're helping her what can help her with Durham Pre-K or get a job at Biogen because they probably they provide Biogen provides on-site yeah daycare right they do Armand uses it commissioner long well Claudia uh took my question before I could even ask if my question that I was thinking was like we know when we talk about like early childhood education like you know every dollar we invest is a seven dollar return on investment like do we have that so you were already ahead of that and I will say this in when we when we had the conversation I said that it needs to be pressure tested more yeah because that doesn't show all of the impact but that is something that we're working towards and how we're thinking as we're having these conversations right and I feel like um you know how the universities do

some I think most universities do this like when you graduate they'll sell like their first year graduating class or like one year after average salaries aren't this much like to be able to report that that's exactly where we're headed and you know I haven't spent most of my career in higher ed we did that often and so that's what we'd like to do and have it um show by different types of of areas that the students are going into so it's a little bit harder because it's non-credited right right um so on the credited side you can follow you can track a person's employment on the on the non-credited not so much you you're really relying on them telling you so you you saw in there corporate's our last piece to really build out it's it's a big emphasis uh for us this year and when we can get the corporate really built out what will build into that is not just relying on staff the individual to tell us but relying asking the corporate to also

share with us those those at least to Claudia's Point not initial hire right that initial hiring that initial hire would be a focus so we'll we'll figure out a way that we can frame it and stand behind right and I I agree we have to we have to have a way to quantify the impact thank you any other comments or questions I have I have two follow-up questions um one is could you tell us a little bit you mentioned the the new um DPS Durham Tech partnership program how do you see yeah made in Durham being a part of that yeah I I had a conversation with um president Buxton and superintendent membega the other day there's some initial costs um that there that will for them to be able to um do books uh transport students things like that uh you know if since they've

already planned on a dual enrollment as their first one uh in biotech we can definitely pick up the costs associated with that in some of our community engagement work right so from from that perspective I think for us it was going to be a little bit difficult is um the Dual the dual enrollment piece the engaging the the DPS early on is a little bit trickier than what at Durham Tech because our non-credited students so we can go out into the community and talk to them right we can find them where they're at whereas this is going to be much more DPS Centric right and so our goal is to we've included in there um I think we I know Claudia and I talked about this a while ago I kind of snuck it in there Claudia um there's a there to doing more career assessment work than what you would typically see there are great examples out there of 8th and ninth graders where you do both aptitude and interest not just both aptitude and interest and then

you use that information to actually build out okay here are the things that you had both aptitude and interest in here are the here are the careers here are the jobs here are the salaries and here are the local employers and then you not only give it to the child you get to send it home to Mom and Dad and so I think for us we'd like to get more of that going so they're starting to see the application early early on and we've built some money into this program to to try and do that we also think that will lead to them be having much more interest in this collaborative that they're putting together to have 25 percent of the kids graduate with certificates or as degrees I think that's fantastic yeah I mean even it sounds really silly to say this but I used to teach fifth grade and you know one of the things that I would always do with my kids is you know what do you want to be when you grow up and really um it almost feels like people don't do that anymore but really even you know having those conversations early on it's like what do

you what is your vision for yourself what do you what do you want to do what do you want to be um but I um my nephew went to Wando High School in in Charleston which is a huge High School like 3 000 kids but one of the things that impressed me so much was they had a requirement um it was in ninth grade every single student and they did it with you know that big of a school had to sit down and do exactly what you said they actually had to sit down with a counselor with their whoever is their adult supports and they had to have a this is this is your like you said your interest your aptitude here are the careers and they had a plan and that went home with them and I've always felt like that was something that we are really missing um so I'm glad that there's a conversation about

T skilled trades and

utilities all of those we know right off the top meet all of those five criteria we haven't done a deeper dive on some of the other areas in the area I would also say to you that we get reg I regular calls from um financial institutions and health related institutions that are looking for technology specific jobs that are specific to those industry sectors you know what I mean so not just an I'm going to go learn how to do an apple certification but very specifically how how do I how do I do how do I do a fintech financial technology that kind of stuff so um we haven't done any analysis on those the analysis is deep and the other don't forget the other part of the analysis is to make sure that there is a there is a void in Supply you know we don't we want we don't want to go to one that there's already a lot of so we do this detailed analysis uh which you saw in the in the proposal we

did for this industry sector of what are the five-year projections on jobs what's the five-year projections on turnovers um what is the net we expect to see in job postings what percentage of those job postings are biotech entry level what are the current community colleges actually producing what's the Delta um and that Delta it was large enough for us to say this is worth the investment so we would have that's another process we would have to go through um I would say to you JB's leaning towards Advanced manufacturing or skilled trades at this point Advanced manufacturing and skill trades is because he feels he has infrastructure in place to be able to support it relatively quickly that's obviously a big deal for us the space at the college now that we can be in person again um or hybrid so right okay well great thank you all right anybody else thank you again so much I cannot tell you enough how how incredibly I tell everybody that you guys we did a pilot

of five students and you guys gave us 500 000 and believed in this and when no one else necessarily did so again and again and again thank you thank you well we we also appreciate you uh sticking with this as the interim Aiden Durham director I just took that off I was I sent a someone asked for my aunt for my uh bio the other day and I said maybe I should take it thank you I appreciate it very much and thank you again to the staff too thank you thank you all right just saw Dwayne walk out with his um it looks like his boss there yeah yeah [Laughter] well Keith's shoelaces are helping to

wake me up I couldn't see Andy's socks did you like these shoes from where I was sitting before but yes these are my running shoes I'm going to go for a run after that yeah those are good good for the dark right yes ma'am I do love that American Tobacco Trail for Iran that is a real gift for those of us who choose to run to have that here in downtown Dave uh David is going to pop up real quick a couple of things I I want to go over real quick we're just going to go over the add delete list to show you some things that are on there I'm not expecting to talk about it right now just things that we've added you you all feel free to speak up and say wait a minute there's a dollar amount on here that isn't on here that should be we can talk about that most importantly uh I want to say that uh the next meeting in hopes the last meeting for the FY 2324 budget work session season is Monday June the 5th and we currently have APS coming to that meeting first and then we're going to have a

Chief of Staff Shannon trapp's going to talk about some stipends for uh appointees to boards and commissions maybe one or more I don't quite know what that's about David can you click on the work session agendas real quick just so they can see and and then the last thing we're going to have is a brief discussion overview of the CIP and some of the outstanding issues that are have dollar amounts that could affect next year or more more likely in future years Claudia yeah I just want to manage that expectation 30 minutes is not a lot of time and so we will talk very very high level about next steps process and um as Keith says we'll we'll send some pre materials so you you can see what's on the horizon but didn't want to manage that expectation I have 45 minutes for the ad delete list because on the 5th is where you are going to sit and say yes we're going to give more money to this no we're not going to give money to this and then David and I and Claudia and the

management team will say this is how we expect to fund these things and and there'll be a brief discussion I know that Monica has sent out to you all a piece of paper asking for the non-profit board your own I don't know if you remember last year based off of some state legal rules some of you all had to abstain from some votes as part of the budget ordinance so what we did was take some things out of the budget ordinance and then y'all had individual budget amendment votes on those based on board you're in and funding we're working on getting that so I'm just bringing that up to request that you all fill out those forms I believe commissioner Carter or commissioner Alam one of the two of y'all or both maybe or maybe it's commissioner Jay anyway one or two of you have filled it out we need all of you to fill that out so we can get that straight before the June 12th budget adoption with that said David can we move to the athlete list real quick so this is a list you have gotten you hopefully you've gotten somewhat used to seeing over time these are changes to

24 we're happy to take that

on but that came in after the manager's recommended budget some IVC Transportation charges these are some charges that uh currently uh I think Chapel Hill or Orange County is charging our Sheriff's Office to take people in the in the jail or the Detention Center over to hospitals and things like that and they charge us because they come and take them any way where budget eating those dollars I won't go through all of those unless there's anyone that you want the biggest number to note there some of the economic incentives we got in touch Andy Miracle got in touch with us and for whatever reasons there is about 385 thousand dollars in economic incentive payouts that probably won't be paid out of next year's budget so that's a reduction a savings of money for us those blue ones net to about ten thousand dollars again they're not really arguable the key ones are going to be David if you'll scroll up into the purple in full there you go those are things that we've heard about either from Commissioners directly or that's

been spoken about in work sessions budget work sessions that we've had so far the safe sleep campaign that came from commissioner Carter I believe a request a note that's like fourteen thousand dollars for the child fertility fatality prevention team uh I think we got one from commissioner or chair Howerton related to the boys in curl Girls Club have requested a bus for eighty thousand dollars I will remind the board that I think we gave the Boys and Girls Club earlier this year close to half a million dollars in funding so this is an additional request that chair Howerton sent to us I don't know if she's talked with you all about it we have it on here for everyone to have a nice and robust discussion about on June the 5th Lincoln Community Health Center pre-development process there's been some discussion about them needing to update that building these are the costs for architectural design and things of that nature I think we saw Perry Manson here but these are these numbers come from him and that so that's three hundred thousand dollars to get that process started that won't be the

3 million dollars in new money if you were

3 million dollars I'm a little uncomfortable using fund balance for it because most of those costs are not one-time costs they're ongoing costs and then David had scrolled down to show you some changes to some other fire districts the Bahama districts wants 489 thousand dollars of their own fund balance it's a special tax District doesn't cost the county it's their own tax tax District fund balance and you see RTP increases they came to you remember you had a presentation from

them last week or a week week and a half ago with a two and a half cent tax rate increase yes I see multiple hands up the commissioner commissioner Burns um okay so some of my colleagues have talked about these so I'll I'll leave my angst and consternation for them as opposed to you Keith um some of these are not reoccurring could you scroll down some go back to the purple um and only for the PO I'm this is not for or against anything but just so we can clarify I did receive uh the forwarded email with absolutely no context from the chair about the Boys and Girls Club um bus but it wasn't a bus it was two vans so I just let's at least change that in the Excel spreadsheet and it was not unless something else has come up so it's two Vans and not a bus um I do know about um I would just say this about a request that I wanted to have and even I'm pulling back my you know one of the

requests that I have and I'm trying to figure out you know how folks can do this maybe do the same and maybe I can talk to some of my colleagues over the weekend like one of the ones that I I wanted but I even told the manager this so I'm not putting on the spot I told my colleagues this like something I pulled back uh that public health asked for uh they wanted a sonographer we know that they vetoed the abortion bill uh and it's 12 weeks and now instead of doing your 72-hour appointment over the phone you got to do about four visits on average to the doctor's office to be able to get access to life Altar and health care I know at IR here we have a ob gyn and somebody can correct me if I'm wrong that comes in two days a week every woman in here knows how long it takes for any of us to go get an ultrasound don't even think about a vaginal ultrasound um so I you know one of my requests was for a partial FTE that could come in on the same day as the OB GYN all comes in

if for no other reason to get your scan done there because right now what women are doing is coming to Public Health having an OB GYN visit and then getting a referral to a medical center I know that I gotta wait six weeks minimum folks do not have that option anymore in North Carolina so I'm throwing that out there um because I know also I talked to a couple of gyns in the in in the county and they just talk about how hard it is to recruit so I was like I'm gonna pull my back because Dr Sowell is probably not going to be able to recruit with that I talked to some of the nurses they might not be able to so we might have to do something partially so I'm throwing that out there not to just throw my own idea out there but just so that we as a group can be very creative about you know how we make some of these requests like you know 14 000 for the sleep study like we can't take that off of fun balance like like I heart y'all uh and she and she knows that so I'm not picking on hers but um just I hope that we can have some of those conversations because I did go outside of myself and

go to other people and say do I really want to request this and put this on Dr so well or can I get some wise counsel for some folks and social services and some nurses and some doctors to say commissioner Burns that is a great request and it will play well on TV but in no way is it practice practically practically applicable right now because you can't recruit for it and we might not need somebody full time so I hope that we can kind of sort of do that with some of these and so that's just my thought well can I just pop on that it would really be good to before our next meeting to get information from public health because I think that's a very important issue that is not what I requested well no I I no it is a it is a very important I I know you talked to me about it yeah and based on what has happened in the state it it really makes a lot of sense so I don't know if it's it would really be good to get some information from uh our maternal health

staff to see but I still want this this the the machine the ultrasound machine well it's the person yeah because we got the machine it's the person and so like a full-time FTE you know I haven't talked it's hard to even recruit for Duke so I understand like why we might not have it in there but in a couple of weeks can we come up with a contractual position that's why I pulled like my request yeah I agree I think we should try to have it Joanne you look like you're ready to respond yes good afternoon to the board just wanted to address thank you uh commissioner Burns for making that comment I will say that the Women's Health Clinic which includes of course um maternal Health they receive Services their services offered every single day five days a week so we have our providers they provide services every every day so what I'm confirming is um that I think it was mentioned two days a week for the ob-gen and I'll double check

I'll double check that because thank you for five days a week so I'll get that before the end of the meeting but I believe it's five days a week and to the sonographer that you mentioned um all those points I appreciate you sharing that but I'll confirm that for you thank you so much be clear you want information on the cost of a stenographer I guess what I will say yeah that would be great I think that that's for another discussion what I was saying is like I can appreciate what's in purple but I want folks to kind of sort of go home the same way I kind of pulled mine back because it won't make sense because you're saying you don't know where you're gonna get one million dollars from which is a quarter of a penny we're already I'm just hoping that maybe we could go and figure that out because again I have no problem with commissioner Carters and it's 14 000. we can pull fourteen thousand off of fund balance as opposed to making this a budget request so yes I'm uplifting the idea of the sonographer and I know everybody here will vote for it but do we have to vote for it on the budget so I pulled my request back I just hope

that we can do it I mean and I'll stop I'll stop here like the stipends I and I feel bad because I feel like Shannon think I come for everything that she brings up she I tell her I love her on a deep psychological level I really do um but you know the governor has 550 boards there are only five of them that are paid and I know people like so when my boys came to me and said commissioner Burns can we get paid no like I literally told them no and not not to be mean not I just said no because the budget is closed so somebody clearly said yes because it's in purple now so it wasn't me so those are just some things that I just I hope that we can think about it's not that I want people compensated but I also know some people pretend that these boards are their full-time jobs and they're not yeah and I think those are all great points and we definitely yeah I think you're making a really good point what is an ongoing Point cost what is a one-time cost that's one issue and I will just clarify um the the

um request that was submitted from the stepping up initiative that was also done within the context of the overall conversation that we had over a million dollars worth of Alliance funding that have been set aside and that we were uh you know folks were charged with doing a gaps analysis and so that request comes from a very long process that is backed up by data backed up by a study and was in that context so I think it's also important to again same thing with the child fatality team request you know when things are coming out of a process I think is important also important versus just you know out of funding an email and then that's it but anyway so I I just I think it's those are important important things for us to think about

we're not going to what no no no we're not I think we that's that's for Monday I think that's for that's for the Monday but the last thing I do but what Keith does want to hear now is are there any other things that are missing from this list that need to that we know right now should be added and I do have um one two things that I want to ask about and commissioner alum um thank you um thank you so much Keith um for the board stipends I think that this may not be where it came from with Shannon but like I know we've had this discussion at a work session in the past so I may have been the one to bring it up so give me the heat not Shannon but um I think this is something that you know will I support so we can discuss that on Monday not for this add or delete list but on the schedule and the

manager is going to get mad at me I see that we have allocated three and a half hours for Monday for 1 30 to 5 but the scheduled items only add up to three hours so there is a 30 minute time slot available to potentially discuss Museum of History so to provide context to provide context there was a request that commissioner Alum made to have the Museum of Durham history to come and present to the board during the budget work sessions and so we originally had put it on there and when we talked about it at the last work session the question was asked is this is the city participating in this this should be a joint funding opportunity between the county and the city and so since it and and the budget team was tasked with going back to the city and asking the city where they were in the process of considering this funding

proposal I will let Keith Keith has more details but in essence the city is not considering it right now and so what I explained to commissioner Alum is so our budget work sessions are for those funding items that the county will fund wholly not as a joint process it's something that you all can make a decision on and you know it will be funded um and that I recommended that the Derma the Museum of Durham history be uh presented at the Joint City County meeting so that both governing bodies could hear the presentation and you all can get a sense of okay city are you going to participate or not unless this board decides that they want to fund it wholly then it is something that you don't have to have a conversation with the city about so we we took it off of the work session schedule so that it could be put on the Joint City County meeting to discuss so hence the request

from commissioner Alum that it comes to this board for the funding request it's completely up to you all but I I told her I moved it because if you all are considering the county as a joint funding partner that the discussion should happen with both yeah I mean I guess one of my questions is you know the process because we we actually discussed it like last September at a joint City County meeting and I mean one of the problems with joint city county is that the boat the whole board isn't at that meeting it's only the members of the board and at that meeting the next step was supposed to be to have point a subcommittee of the city in the county and that never happened so I can understand the museum being frustrated with our process um you know I I do think we need a way for this this whole board to get the information

and to hear about the project I mean I personally feel like the museum is an important part our community and we need to be taking steps to figure out how to get a bigger an adequate facility for that um so I mean the one reason to hear from them next week would just be to get some information for the whole board so if if the purpose was to just get us started in the process understanding that we may not make any funding decisions until later but you know that would be one of the advantages to have them come just to at least let our whole board get the information but is that something we could do at a regular work session versus a budget work session is my whole premise was a budget work session is for us to make have conversation and discussions about the budget so that on June 12th we are

already um but if it is this board's desire for them to come on Monday I serve at your pleasure and we can certainly do that yeah thank you specific budget allocations I guess for me and I might have to talk to you offline you know what is the expediency because it seems like the I could be reading the room wrong the board is in is not in opposition to said request so I guess is there a reason why there's some expedience and we'll have to talk about it now I just will it hold a week and that's not me trying you know if I got to be here 30 more minutes like I'm cool with that I don't have a problem but that's the only reason why I asked like if they if she slated additional time in

two weeks I'm two weeks weeks not unless you're like not Minaj you can't hold two weeks well sorry I have three mics next week because I keep filling them but on the expediency so if it wasn't discussed on Monday and the next work session would then be in August because in July we're on break and then we're in August um and that's pushing back like the Museum of History's work and what they're able to do with their budget and you know for me the reason I'm requesting it to be in this budget is because not everyone has received a level of information that I have of being on the board and so to receive that presentation from the Museum of History of what is actually their ask there may be bits and pieces we can include in this budget there may be parts that we tell them hey this is something outside of budget cycle but like since we haven't had the conversation as a board we don't know

could they do something in 30 minutes do you think I think that that's right I think Patrick would take any time that he has given very happily and make it work so I guess we need to see where people are at we've heard commissioner Burns I know y'all getting hit the oh this is a nice loud mic uh I know if y'all getting here talking along I do know I like I have to leave early I'm gonna stay here as long as I can so that I can hear it and I my my plan is to be here but so I'm not gonna cut somebody off from but I'ma also ask my request y'all go home some of this stuff that's on here like let's have a coming to Jesus meeting um so yeah I'm not in opposition to your board being heard commissioner Carter this is something that's very important to commissioner long so I yeah so if we can if we can just limit it to a 30

minute presentation and but the understanding that we also need to have a joint City County conversation I'll get back to the fifth is the last meeting for a decision on a board approved budget for June the 12th are you prepared to make decisions on a Museum of Durham history budget request without knowing anything the city is going to do in relation to a June 12th board approved budget are you just going to use it as a listening session not have anything on the add delete list and then come back June the 13th what that means then is you're then moving to an August date where you might use fund balance after you've all coordinated with the city that's a possibility but two commissioner Long's Point that's two plus months away so what is the point and I'm asking this as kindly as possible what is the end result of the meeting on June the 5th is

it information is it information and a dollar Choice without the city having made a decision and Keith are Commissioners if I may speaking with the uh whoa apologies that Mike's even more speaking with the city budget office they also receive this request later than typical so they didn't have a chance to process it and they have not heard from their counsel of a request to hear this imminently so I'm not sure that they're in a position to rush this if you will I think they may be about a week behind us on their process but I'm not sure they're in the Pro in the process right now to get things on there but I talked to the council member Williams is the liaison from the city Side he's been pushing for it I don't know if it'll come up I know he's asked for it but they're is also some discussion about like moving it within the city side and I think that's where it'll be beneficial for the joint meeting but the piece their budget ask and I can send you what

I've received I'll send it to all the commissioner so you have time to review it before Monday it's not just asking for the money for the expansion of the Museum of History but also raising the salaries of employees so like there's different pieces and it's not just a conversation about expanding the location so it's up to you all whatever you decide we've explained why we recommend it the way we recommend it but it's up to you all I'm saying okay so your preference is it is uh pres just present presenting information okay so I so I think look okay so that if they can understand the time is limited 30 minutes and it would be for information purposes going to next week

or the following week on June 13th would be the joint City County meeting which our whole board will not be at so that would be the chance for our board to hear it and then it can go to the no no yeah thank you okay yeah I'm gonna dog trade for this later basically uh can I have one quick question what's the I know that we talked about it but I thought we did the seven and a half percent increase what's the 600 000 for I thought we already had to end there maybe I'm just happy no we have a seven percent increase for all employees what uh Dr Sowell brought up as a possibility for some of the issues I think that were spoken of from Commissioners was for positions making seventy five thousand dollars or below which are most positions in the county there are more people making 75 000 and Below than

there are above those positions would get seven and a half percent while those above seventy five thousand would get seven percent that half a percent for some I get it now I get it now it's an estimated 600 plus six hundred thousand dollars that was from today's discussion yes ma'am and one of my questions would be from the staff is how does that affect the study right a salary compression it would increase salary compression can I can I just throw this out here and this is going to save a whole bunch I I appreciated commissioner Carter's uh comment early on and I would be hopeful that we could come back to it but again the study guides us at seven percent across the board I like in a state they used to do that like your bonus was based on whether you got you made more than 90 000 made more than 75 000 so forth and so on this today seems knee-jerk can we make this a

delete and keep it based on the study at seven and then if we see some issues with those that you identified be in a position to come back that alone if we delete that takes six hundred thousand dollars off this list because it's not Guided by the study I'm just throwing it out there right right

right so no you're doing great so to your point that wasn't the spirit of the request so again perhaps this one can be taken I'm trying to lighten the load on the research y'all got to do this weekend and I and again it's the state is doing seven percent we're doing seven percent the study says seven percent I'm okay with that right now so that's a penny you don't have to a quarter of a penny you don't have to find excuse me point one two five percent I did my math and I'm there um so the the the one item that I was going to ask about was um I guess the gun safety team did not come forward with anything remember they did a presentation and and you said we would be willing to support but we didn't get I didn't get a budget campaign and something about um they talked about

people needing gun safes but I guess they never came is that she um I do remember that I thought now I could be wrong the safe question and I remember some kids had it I thought they said they had more gun locks than they they could get then they could use that was gun safes right but it was cost prohibitive I think that that so that's what I remember well we did not get a proposal okay but there was also a discussion of like a real kind of coordinated campaign about you know locking your cars and locking your guns and I I guess I was just wondering if we had heard anything good afternoon again and again commissioner Burns um I I did and just in response to this I I did speak with public health and it was more about the locks than the safes because um they wouldn't be able to afford it I mean we wouldn't probably be able to afford to get them out the way in which

we wanted to do that and um we also we were working with the community intervention and support services department to see how we can coordinate to get that so there is not a proposal to provide okay until we just really come up with what that would look like for safes but the the locks are efficient if we can get them out to people who need them yeah well if you could follow up with them I mean obviously if they're not ready to come forward with something they're not ready but there was discussion about really a big kind of social media media information education campaign making sure they had resources but you know obviously they're not ready at this point if they haven't submitted some things up we will continue to work on that thank you okay thank you and then my last thing was just the opioid funding related to harm reduction there was so weird syringes and also some machine to people for to test their

drugs in the field so those will be done um as those requests come forward so we will bring proposals and requests or approval individually to spend the opioid settlement funding so it doesn't have to be included in the actually we were asked what is your preference do you want to have it all included in your annual budget or would you prefer to bring items as and so we selected we prefer to bring items as we identify strategies and initiatives okay do we know and any follow-up on that because that was what gudrin had presented was a need but do we know what follow-up on that and so she and Dwayne actually met before she left to transition so Dwayne will now take over as our Point person for the opioid settlement fund expenses and so we one of the things that I know we have to do is um actually post will

come to the board with a a recommendation for a manager over the opioid settlement funds so that as well as any harm reduction initiatives will bring forward individually to you all okay and I would just say that for me like that's the harm reduction is time sensitive in the sense that like that's literally something that could be saving lives especially that machine that people could use to test for fentanyl so I as quickly as we could get that going I know the hiring part could take a while right that right you know that they don't need to happen at the same time right right it's just the transition period right um okay it's causing us all right well that was those were the only other things I might add delete list so the harm reduction was coming out of opioid funds correct yes okay right right and I just yeah I didn't know how much we were linking the two because I

know the the linkages to care was noted so forgive me Dr soil but I want some clarity if that's okay about the 600 000 if there are three of y'all that aren't really ready to move on that 600 can we take it off of here we don't have to bring it up again on Friday foreign but you did sort of debate this one a little bit do you want to do you want to leave it up and have the same debate Friday I mean on Monday I hear a no is that okay doctor so well yes sir so that gets you out about a net increase of 708 000 we won't debate that now that is a different number that's probably a fund balance appropriated just in general but we'll see there are some other key things on there that's where we are unless you all and unless there's a

flurry between now and then no nothing else for me thank you all for your time woohoo