Board of Commissioners · Work Session · June 2, 2025

Good afternoon everyone. We are back in session and we are at our budget work session day four. Uh we have a few items today. Let's uh do you announce that or do I?

You can. Okay. There's a 25329 that's a Durham County District Attorney discussion and then 25330 that's hey reborn justice movement then we have our 25331 which is the ad delete review correct all right so manager Hager good afternoon um this afternoon's session will capture conversations as um vice chair Lee shared um that the board asked us to come back and have discussions. Um the first one uh with district attorney Deberry will be a

conversation on a couple of items that the board raised in conversations with the sheriff's office as well as um conversations in uh with school related items. One was uh related to truency and how that process works and another one was related to the overall movement or cases through the courts. And so um we'll invite you to the table to share and again thank you for joining us and we will have continued conversations um later in the fall with the public defender. she may join us. Her schedule um was tricky today and we did not coordinate it as seamlessly um with her, but she may join us to listen in on the conversation and answer questions later in writing. So, thank you.

So, is there's not a present. So, So um um DA uh the green button if you push that it'll get started and with the two openend questions we'll just let you share and then the board may have other questions that they may desire to ask the the one about truency. You gave me a great overview of how that process works. It was a part of our conversation of how can we support Durham public schools differently in an effort to have improved um levels of attendance which ultimately leads to graduation rates.

And again the second one was about the whole courts and the process and the DA's role with um movement through the system. We're seeing an uptick of individuals who are being detained and I know that's for various reasons. You also gave a great overview of that.

That's great. So, uh you like me to start with the choice here. Do you have a question? That's fine.

No, no, go right ahead. You do? No, I don't have any qu Yeah, just so um I talked with uh manager Hager on Thursday, I believe, and she said that you had some questions um and asked me whether I'd want to do it in writing and I thought it'd be better for us to have a conversation. So, I'm here to have that conversation with you all.

Um and the first question was around truency. And so, uh, just to give you kind of an overview of of how trrency works, it is I think there's a misconception that Durham used to have a quote unquote truency court. Um, Durham has never had a truency court. Um, truency has been handled either in delinquency court, um, or abuse, neglect, and dependency court. There is a North Carolina statute that allows for

the charging of parents if those uh if their children do not come to school and uh those were um generally usually did not reach court. But what had been the practice in Durham County um for several years was that the um various um attendance um assistants or attendance managers at various schools would send out a letter. a letter that was generated by the was my understanding automatic automatically generated by the attendance system that would kind of lay out the law on truency in North Carolina and threaten the prosecution of the parents if the child did not come to school. And I think that the the system may have automatically generated that letter if a child had 10

unexcused absences. um when I took over as district attorney and and then that letter would have the district attorney's signature affixed to it when I um became district attorney. I reviewed that letter. The letter was not correct on the law.

Um, and also I did not feel comfortable having an automated automatically generated letter under my signature that was one not correct on the law and two uh threatened prosecution to families for whatever reason. Um, and so what I spoke to the superintendent about at the time and I believe Dr. Lee was on the school board at that time. Um, I what I suggested was that they continue to send out the letter just with the superintendent signature on it. It didn't need to have my my signature on it. It let families know um what the state of the law was.

They could schoolboard attorney could review it. They'd know what the state of the law was and what um could possibly happen. it was not me threatening the prosecution of people. And so that is um where we are now.

I don't know that Durham County still sends out that letter. I know it certainly does not has not been authorized to send out that letter under my signature. So let me I want to make sure I have this straight. So we never you're saying we never had a truency court.

Those cases were tried in abuse neglect um court. Those courts there like right they were tried in if they made it to court they would have been tried in various um district courts. That's correct. And so how was it done before before you became because I'm trying to make sure I have it understood. before you became district attorney would other DAs just

bring like if parent okay they get this letter and then they don't comply then would they get arrested how would that work or they would be summoned to court or how did that work in the past I was unclear how it worked in the past what I did know is that what generally uh happened is the family would get one of those letters they would call the school about the letter and then from there the school would work with them. My understanding was that there were um not many if any of those that ever made it to um court. So with that um um with the switching of the superintendent, I do remember the discussion around that previously. um how would if it continued to be an issue, how would that be referred to you? How how would

it get from the school system to you? If it continued if the truency continued to be a problem and if it does get to you, do you prosecute the truency part of if you know if it's referred to you from the school system? Yeah, I am unclear how it would get to me. it is likely that it would be um either referred to juvenile justice.

Um but again, juvenile justice doesn't have any jurisdiction over the parents. I I imagine they would have to either refer it to some law enforcement agency for charging um whether that be the sheriff's office or um Durham public schools. Um and I would unlikely, it would be unlikely that I would prosecute that case. It would be likely that I would send that case back to the school for some type of um negotiation and adjudication. Generally um kind of trrency we see it happening

in two categories. One is if it is a with a very young child that would probably come up in abuse, neglect, and dependency cases. Um, school neglect is an actual thing and and can be um handled in that court. Other truency matters are for older kids and you know, parents are like, I try to get them to school, I can't get them to school.

What would you like for me to do? And so to me it seems to be um contrary to what we're trying to do around public policy to charge the parents of um children who may already be experiencing some type of issue at home to you know charge those parents now with a criminal matter um and make it a criminal matter. So I I'm guessing it's safe to say that as um since the the change has been made with the letter uh there hasn't been a

case come to you come to your office related to truency. There has not you saying it hasn't it hasn't that's correct. Okay that's correct. All right thank you.

Um um we'll go to commissioner Jacobs and then Valentine. Um, DA um, Deberry, how are other counties handling this? Do you know how Wake County or Orange County is there? What is there any type of partnership or program related to this with the DA's office and the schools around truency and absenteeism?

Um, not to my knowledge. It is it is not a high to my knowledge is not a high priority of any um office in the state. But so you don't know how other no I mean I think just being frank I think the problem is that we have to face the facts is that

there is a very serious absenteeism and truency problem in Durham public schools and especially since co and what I hear from principles is that they have and they have no way of in the way things function actually compelling some of the parents um to respond even when they do reach out to families. And you know what you know what we have to look at this systemically is you know when we have kids that aren't going to school then it increases the likelihood that they are going to get involved in some type of criminal activity. And um it really would be interesting if we could get the data on truency, absenteeism and also juvenile crime at the same time like over the past 10 years to look at the trends because I think we you know whether it was good or

not my understanding is that the previous letter what it did was it helped get parents to the table and while it wasn't you know in reality parents did not end up being charged, but what it did do is help bring people together to try to problem solve. And we don't really have a mechanism right now for some of the most severe cases. So, at one point back in 2016 when I was chair, um, and I know you were part of those conversations, too. Pat Evans, the district court judge at that time was trying to I think Ela O'Neal was involved at one point and then um Pat Evans around this um school justice partnership trying to bring everyone together and try to work together and problem solve around this. And I, you know, I would really like to see those efforts renewed in some way, everyone getting together because what's happening now is just not helping

anyone. And I don't know what the solution is, but you know, that's what's happening. And so I think why this our board is interested in this because we are at the intersection of funding the courts, funding our public education system, and funding um our detention center and funding our youth home. And so we're spending all of this money on these things and we want to make sure that we're funding, you know, we have our community intervention support services department.

I mean, and it's just I think in this budget cycle, it really hit home to us. We kept hearing from different intersecting parts of our system and that I know we'll talk more about some of them, but it really feels like we need to bring people together to just address the crisis that we're having um on levels. So, I don't know if you have any ideas about what we can do

around this issue, but the schools need help. The teachers and principles need help, and we don't want to criminalize the issue, but we have to come up with something that's going to work to bring everyone together. So, I'd love to hear if you have any ideas or know about best practices that does still involve our courts and our criminal justice system in some way, even if it's just a supportive role. I don't know.

I don't know what the answers are, but I know that what we're doing now is not working. Uh, I agree with you 100%. I don't know if the folks on the board know that I'm vice chair of the Durham public schools foundation. So my um and my children are graduates of Durham public schools.

So I do have a strong interest in this as well. Truency has become a national issue since co it's not just a Durham issue. Um what I again what I suggested to the superintendent was that the superintendent send a letter out under

the superintendent. they can send out the exact same letter under the superintendent signature. Um, now I think that would also generate some involvement from parents. What I've also suggested, I have talked with the school-based committees um, at several of the high schools and I've suggested that we do a community-based intervention um, in which my office would be happy to volunteer to have help to set up school-based courts.

um that families or students can be referred to when they haven't um when there are truency issues. That doesn't put the parents um in criminal jeopardy, but does provide some level of accountability um and require the stu at least the student to show up and account for why they're not there. Um, and you know, we'd be happy to to

intercede in those, but number one, I am not the appropriate person to be dealing with school attendance. I don't have any of the tools that the Durham County Schools has. I know people think that we have Matt that it is some type of magic to threaten to prosecute people. Um, if that were true, we wouldn't have any crime.

Uh, it doesn't work like that. I am the the I am a hammer and all that I have to threaten people with is the um the loss of their liberty. And Durham Public Schools has lots of community partners and community interventions that they can help with that I do not have. Um, and were we to refer them back to the schools, that's what would be happening anyway. So, I'm and I don't know what happened to the school-based partnerships. We did all agree to do that and I know that has

fallen by the wayside and I'm not sure why. So, I don't have an answer to that, but I'm willing to participate 100%. I'm just not willing to. I have 20 lawyers um under my supervision and um we have 30,000 cases a year and so we don't have the resources to to deal with those.

Well, I definitely would like for us to learn more about these um school-based courts and it seems like it would be really important to have your leadership and involvement with that. Um and you know what that would look like, but we you know absenteeism attend school attendance is the biggest correlation with success for kids. So, and it's really an upstream issue that we need to deal with. Um, so I hope that we can um focus on this issue in the coming year

with the schools and I think it's everybody trying to work together on addressing this issue. So, I appreciate you bringing up this u possible approach. Thank you, Commissioner Valentine. Yes.

Thank you, Chair. Madam DA, thank you for coming today. Um, it's a pleasure to see you here in the chamber. Uh, it's also uh good to hear that uh you'd like to be a partner in um solving or at least mitigating the issues that we have with truency in children in schools.

And so I agree with you that uh how the the uh arrangement was previously most of the cases that were or would be referred would not be adjudicated in in any way, shape or form. And that and that's your position today. Um but at one time in our community the CC Spalding uh mediation settlement center actually had uh um schools

designated in which they had representatives from the community having been one of them um that actually participated in this program to help facilitate um a conversation with with parents and uh I can tell you that uh and I hear your position very clearly on on the letter um but the letter served as a a mechanism to get the parents more involved and and that was uh an effective sort of uh approach to the issue with uh while also respecting your position uh on uh your name being on that form letter. Um but uh I'm not exactly sure what happened uh with the settlement center and their involvement in in this uh in uh their involvement with truency in our schools, but I'd like to to see that come back. um it sounds like you would too in some way, shape or form and be willing to participate in uh in that process in some kind of way. And so I'm hoping that uh we can work together in in partnership to see something like that happen. And so um um to the extent that you would be a

leader in that effort, we would be we would welcome that. Okay. and and the settlement center was also involved in our domestic violence courts. Um and they've gone away from that too and and we definitely miss their um their participation in those courts.

And I'm not exactly sure what happened to the settlement courts either. They I mean to the settlement center either. I know that they had some leadership changes and um but I know that they have mostly disappeared from um our domestic violence courts and the courts in which you know we really depended on them to to do some of the leg work that our office could not do. So do do we do we know whether that's a funding issue?

Um, can I imagine? You know, I was trying to research. I know years ago we did have that. I remembered that contract and part of it was through our

nonprofit process if I'm not mistaken and when we had more focused areas that did not elevate as a category or for some reason was not funded. But we can go back and see the history and I see Commissioner J. I think it was also funded through the um Juvenile Crime Prevention Council, JC PC um but no JCCPC. Um so yeah, I remember that that was something that was funded through that.

So I'm not sure what happened. So we can do some research to see historically what shifted. Um, but I do, as you mentioned, it was a couple of places it was funded and so we can follow up. Thank you.

Thank you, Michelle. Yes. Um, DA Deberry, I just want to reiterate what my colleagues are saying about the truity situation. A little over a month

ago, I met with a resident um who lives in one of the DHA communities and she was very very concerned that the children in that community they weren't they're not attending schools at all. Um the truency is like really really rampant and I don't think the overall Durham community really understands um what a serious situation it is. And so it did come up during negotiate um discussions I should say around the budget. So I think this is something that all you know three government groups need to and with yourself you know talk about and how we come up with solutions um because yeah you don't want to criminalize parents right they probably are going through other things but I think this is a really good starting point to get this out and figure out how do we get our kids to schools and really letting our families know parents know

why this is very important important. So, thank you so much for being here and I'm looking forward to continuing discussion about this. So, thanks. Okay.

And the second topic um and the second topic is a u conversation about the courts and the process of um cases moving through. I know there are many different um areas that are involved in that. uh we saw an uptick in um the number of detaininees that were having in the the jail and this came up in that discussion as well as um concerns about the the length of time some of these cases happen. Um, so that that sort of sets that conversation up and so I think we can probably ground the convers start the conversation in, you know, something just in general information about, you know, maybe how many pending home homicides

um do we have here in Durham County? You know, and and what does it take to move from um indictment to trial? Like how long does that take? Um, and it Yeah, I think we could start with that.

Sure. So, um, I'll start with the I checked the count of in Durham County Detention Center this morning. There are 440 um, people detained as of um, 8:30 this morning. They will update it again this afternoon. the numbers are always high on Monday mornings um because we have man we have domestic violence cases that come in over the weekend or other people arrested over the weekend who can't see a judge for 48 hours um but I suspect when I checked on Friday morning it was 407 people so for the last six years our the daily census has generally been around 275 to 300 people uh when we were

in the COVID lockdown we uh during the lockdown period in 2020 to 21 the census was about 175 people. So we do know that we can we can have uh consistent numbers around the the two the high 200s to low 300s. Um, I think there are a combination of things that are happening right now around the tension in Durham County. Um, I think the first thing is uh that and I'm not sure if the I know that the sheriff's office did have a contract to hold some federal detaininees. Now, those people will be counted in the overall daily census. So, I'm not sure how many federal how many of those 47 people on Friday morning

were federal detaininees. So, those are people for whom my office has no the state of North Carolina has no responsibility. I suspect we're still around we still have a I still think we are in the 300s around state detainees. Um, we have currently we have fewer than a 100 pending homicide cases.

We have more than 100 homicide defendants. Some cases involve multiple defendants, but not every homicide um defendant is being held in the Durham County Detention Center. Some of them are on electronic house arrest. Um some of them have made bond and are out on bond for whatever reason. Um so but it's not just homicide detainees. It would also be folks who

are um accused of other violent and serious crimes. So there would be uh folks who are um charged with armed robbery, who are charged with sexual assault, who may be charged with um some type of gun rellated crime. Um so and there are people there who are there because they failed to appear for a court date. Um so that's a combination. So, I think we are still in the 300s, but I don't think I think we all agree, sheriff's office, um, my office, the public defenders office, we all agree that we think the numbers have have gone up. And some of that is we have low bond meetings in the courthouse where we well we have a we've had a lot of different things that we did to um try to keep

the daily population as low as we could. Uh one of those was we were engaged in a research project with the Wilson Center at Duke University and they did a daily scraping of uh the jail population. They built a a program that would go in and see who was there and and spit out a report for us. Uh like everything the county does, the jail is a human service and human and human services are um you know not always reactive to technology but we literally it's like a living organism.

We had literally have somebody in our son in our office every day to look at who's in the jail cuz we don't know who comes to we don't know who comes into jail overnight. We don't get any notification of that. If you were to get arrested right now and immediately bond out, you know, we we wouldn't know that.

Um so that project is over. So we're no longer getting that kind of daily scraping. We do still have somebody assigned in our office who runs interference with the jail, but that daily scraping helped us in our low bond meetings to say who is there for say failure to appear on a misdemeanor or who is there for a misdemeanor is not a threat to public safety and can be released. So that project being over um has interfered a little bit in that.

One of the other issues around um detention is that for those people who are in our diversion courts who may need medically assisted uh substance abuse treatment. While I know that the county has used some of the opioid settlement money to create um a a place for people to go for for Medicaid assisted opioid um treatment or uh detox. There aren't enough of those

beds. And for those people in our in our diversion programs, if they need medically assisted detox, many of them often don't have insurance, the only place they can do that is in the jail. So, they have to go um to the detention center to detox to get back on their um their schedule for diversion court. So, all those things are going on.

Um, as to your question about homicides and and how long it takes from indictment to trial, a uh the average homicide case takes about two years from charging um to disposition. Uh disposition in 90% of those cases will be a plea bargain. the um long the time period, the two-year time period is mostly um a

um it is a result of North Carolina's process. In North Carolina, law enforcement charges. The DA's office doesn't charge. So, most of the investigation in a case happens after charging.

Um, and all of the discovery, all of the evidence happens after someone's been charged. It has to be shared with the defendant. Um, and we've had an explosion of digital evidence and that takes uh we now have to subpoena any number of um digital companies, Meta, Amazon um and work through cell towers uh those all of those all that digital evidence takes some time to acquire. um as well as uh you know just the kind of physical evidence. We don't have our own lab here in Durham County. So we

depend on the state lab to analyze uh anything that DNA or anything else that we may need. We also depend on uh the state medical examiner for autopsies and they don't have a enough staff and they've had changing leadership and so it's it's been a lot of things. But a case that was that will go to trial can take um those can often take four years. We also Durham County is also uh it doesn't qualify as a legal desert because we do have a lot of lawyers in Durham County, but most of those folks are in-house at the park.

We do have a little bit of a um criminal defense legal desert in Durham County. We do have a public defender office. they when they conflict out of a case. However, um

we have very few local attorneys who are willing to take those cases and we also for a a few years in the jail had someone who was um best described as a jail house attorney who was offering advice to defendants and they were firing their lawyers and get new lawyers. And so every time uh a defendant fires a lawyer and the court has to appoint a new lawyer, that new lawyer needs time to get up to speed on the case and that pushes the case back. That person has um now been convicted and moved into um DPS custody. So we're hoping some of that will um some of our cases will move a little faster. We have actually, I think over the last month, had four murder trials um and several other serious um case

trials happen. So, we are we are moving a little bit faster now. I know there's a lot of information in one fail swoop, but thank you, uh commissioners. Well, thank you.

I appreciate that we're having this conversation because again there are these thing this issue has come up about this how our system is currently functioning and what are the collateral consequences of that. Um, for instance, when we had our presentation from the office of the sheriff la dur, I think it was last week, you know, we looked at the fact that we're spending over $6 million on medical care for people in the detention center. So the longer that it takes for a homicide case for existent for example to go actually go from indictment to trial is has a huge impact on the county

budget. And you know I I would I would like to see the data on if we could get trend data over the past 10 years on you know the number of people who are sitting in the detention center waiting for trials who are um violent offenders and even outside as well whether they're on pre-trial release or um from bail because again it's you know none of us are in a vacuum. um here and hearing that it takes 4 years is just shocking. Um, and I think, you know, we have to dig in to understand why is it taking that long, you know, and if it means somebody needs more support, it's going to be cost effective to provide that support. Um, rather than us paying for to house people um because that the medical cost doesn't even include just

the, you know, $100 per day minimum just to house people. So, and just thinking about I mean I we were informed that Wake County's disposition rate was 18 months. I don't know. It would be good to get some benchmarking data on other counties related to the disposition rate for homicide cases, but um you know, it's just we really need to understand what is happening um here.

Well, Commissioner Jacobs, Wake County has twice as many lawyers as I have. I have 20 lawyers. The Wake County DA has 45. So, she also has more legal assistance. So, um, she's a much bigger office than my office. So that's, you know, to my point, if that's it's going to be again less expensive for us potentially to make sure that we have enough people to do the work to get these cases to

trial than having to pay for it on the other end. They also have twice as many judges. So we have uh four superior court judges in Durham County. Um yeah, and so I think nine district court judges.

Okay. So, and this is not just a a Durham County. think it is a is an artifact of the way that the courts are organized in North Carolina because we have a unitary court system and the folks who are employed by my office of state employees and included in the state budget and Durham County has not received an additional allocation of assistant district attorneys since the state budget of 1999 2001. Okay.

And I think related to this, I I I wrote down I think you said that a lot of the cases um actually end in a plea bargain. That's correct. Um but I I again I would

I'm mostly concerned about the violent crime cases. That's what I'm really cuz that's really you know we in terms of what the community is concerned about. Um, sure. Depending on who you ask, 93 to 97% of all uh criminal cases in in plea bargains across the United States.

We if we were to try every case, we we would never get every case to trial. We have 50 weeks a year um of trial calendars and we do have superior court every week in Durham County. Uh there are counties there are counties and jurisdictions in which they don't have superior court every week. So, we do have a superior court judge or two sitting on the bench um every week for 50 weeks. Um and we do have but we only have so that means we can only do two trials a session.

Um, and that means if we were doing a trial every we were doing two trials every week all year, uh, that would still only be a 100 trials and we have 30,000 criminal case filings in Durham County. So, every case is not going to go to trial. Most cases are going to end in a plea bargain. Um but we also have to have our evidence done before we can enter in a plea bargain. And if you look across the country um you know to there are jurisdictions our size generally um have three times as many assistants as my office does. a jurisdiction the size of Meckllinburgg or um Wake would have hundreds more um assistant district

attorneys. So we are um we do a lot of work for a jurisdiction this size. Well, I think it would be helpful. I don't want to compare us to other states, but I think other counties I'm sure we can get the information from the court, but just how are what is how do we compare in terms of how cases are deposed or resolved or whatever.

So, so we do have some benchmarking data would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, we'll coordinate. Yeah, because again this is something we really need to dig into.

and figure out what we can do to address it. Thank you. Okay. And um I saw um Commissioner Bird and Commissioner Valentine didn't have any questions, but I just had one question about the Odyssey software. Um

only because I'm a kind of a software person. I'm curious about that. How has that how has that gone? How is it done for your your team?

Has it helped with you with processing or the clearance rate or anything like well not um not clearance rate but how's that done with your team the implementation and so forth um since you're a software guy you will you'll understand this when I walked into the DA's office and turned on my computer I got a green And that was in that was on January 1st of of 2019. It give you some idea of how far behind our technology was. And so Odyssey has, you know, there were ADAs in my office who had better uh program, you know, better programs on

their phone than they had on their state computers. So we it has brought us I would say at the very least into the 2010s. Um we do have now electronic case record. We do now have a way a consistent way across counties to look up cases and know what's happening in other jurisdictions.

Uh it has helped us in our busiest court which is our our traffic court. Um it has helped us move those cases faster. Um and it is it has provided I think a window uh into what we are doing for the public which is not nothing which I think is important. You can now go if you have a case file number or you have a a defendant's name, if you've been the victim of a crime, you can go look up where the the the case disposition and

what is happening and when the next court date was. And that was very difficult to do before. So I think as far as a public facing piece, it has been helpful. Uh for us it has I think directly um impacted people's due process rights.

There are people sometimes who get lost in it. there. Uh, Meckllinberg and Wake County are part of class action suits where people spent time in jail and had never been entered into the system or their cases had been dismissed or resolved, disposed of and they kept getting picked up on warrants um because it had not been cleared out of the system. So, it is, you know, it's been a mixed blessing. So if if I understand it correctly, I think the software was there to help uh you know with case management. So the person who or the persons who were

responsible for that you know do they still do case management or does the software do it on its own? um has has it been able to replace you know resources or or reassign the person to new duties or so forth? No. So you're asking is it helped our case load help free people to do other things?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So you still have a person doing case management but also the software assist in that. This so the software essentially Oh. Oh.

So there this the software is essentially a clerk system. Okay. So it essentially helps the clerk track cases. Um okay on our side it has provided us for the first time with a case management software.

If you went to any law firm you know since probably 2000 they have a case management software. We did not have that. We had

paper files. Okay. Um and we we had our paper files and then we had the court record which the clerk maintained and that was also a paper file. Now the court record is the record in Odyssey.

Okay. That continues to be what the clerk maintains. Um and that is the official record of the case. And on for the folks on my side, we now have a case management system where I can go in and see the disposition of each lawyer's case load in a way that I couldn't see before.

So, it has provided me a little bit of a management tool, but not not really. I can't I can't run statistics. I can't run any of the things that would make it helpful to me as a management tool. Okay.

Uh, Michelle, thank you. I just had one quick question. So, when you were talking

about the number of attorneys and judges that are assigned to Durham County or that's allocated to Durham County, how does how does one go about asking for more, you know, judges, assistant DAS, because that comes from the state, right? and the chief district um the chief um justice of the Supreme Court, right? How do how do we advocate for that? Essentially, it comes from the legislature and I've been advocating with our um our legislative delegation since I've been DA.

We I'm also a member of North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. We did a work study a couple years ago. Um, and we've been asking, we have over the last two budget cycles, um, well, our first priority was to get raises from our office for office. When I took over, there were lawyers in my office making $38,000 a year. And so

we've and there were um legal assistants making about that as well. And so we I tried to standardize that a little bit and we have as a conference our main um goal was to get more money for our assistant district attorneys and our legal assistants to raise their salaries because we had recruitment issues obviously as a result of that. Um, now we have been working on more positions, but I'll be honest with you, the Republican legislature gives um ADAs to jurisdictions with Republican district attorneys. Um, in the current Senate budget, um, Senator Blue when the allocation of, uh, new ADA positions came out, Senator Blue got up

and, you know, made a floor speech about the largest jurisdictions not getting any additional um, ADAs in that budget. and you know in through negotiations he got more um ADAs for Wake County, uh Meckllinmberg County and Guilford County and Durham was again left out. So I called and fussed about that but um a lot of it is politics and the politics at the legislature just over the last 20 years have not favored Durham County for additional court resources. In fact, um, two budget cycles ago, they tried to take away some some judges from Durham County. Um, and that failed. But, you know, we are, you know, one of the fastest growing counties in the state and my office may be um, at this point, I think I am the 14th

or 15th largest office in the state. So well behind what our population is. Okay. [Music] Go ahead, Madam DA.

Uh just to go back to uh you were talking about traffic court and so is that a pretty busy court? It is um 40% of our our case load. And so is that court uh run like both sessions morning and afternoon? Yeah, we generally um it's it's run morning afternoons on Monday through Thursday and Friday is an administrative session which is our largest day which is if people want to just come in and pay um or just want to continue their case, they come in that day. But Monday through Thursday, um traffic court has a judge on the bench.

All right. All right. So, my next question is about uh the disposition of DWI cases in in your office. Can you share with us what those dispositions look like?

Whether they're plea bargains, whether they're being dismissed? Uh well, I am Are any of them going to trial? Technically, North Carolina law does not allow me. I can dismiss uh I have 100% discretion in any case except for DWIS.

DWIS must go forward. Um and they are resolved in a number of different ways. Uh they're and generally the defense attorneys who and uh Commissioner Valentine may know this uh DWI is a very particular practice of law. Um, and the the it's a the lawyers who do do the defense lawyers who do do DWI almost always only do DWI and they are very good at it and the ones in

Durham County are particularly good at it. Um, but we have, you know, all those cases generally end with somebody either pleading um or being found guilty. um they do go to trial more often than more serious cases because they do sometimes because it is a particular area of law. Um and there's always something that can be challenged.

Uh we now have a uh a prosecutor who is very very good at trial and DWIS. Um, and so we are I would say we're doing uh better than average in our DWR. Uh, thank you. And uh, I'd like to acknowledge the presence of our top public defender in the chamber, Don Barton.

We look forward to to talking to you down the road. All righty. Um, DA Deberry, we really

appreciate you being here. Thank you for your candid answers and conversation. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Wendy.

I I did have a few more questions. Sorry. Okay. Sorry.

Um just to follow up on what um Commissioner Valentine said. So um in terms of when um there you have staff in the courts um are you saying that there there is coverage that you are your staff is in the court u Monday through Thursday? You were saying 8 to 5? Okay.

There our staff is in cl in court Monday through Friday. Okay. 8 to 5 the whole day. It depends on the judge but generally the whole day.

Okay. So, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, right? Okay. Um, well, court starts, District Court starts at 9:30.

Okay. Superior court starts at 10:00. Okay. Um, I wanted to talk a little bit about

juvenile crime because again, a lot of this came from our discussion with staff and when we heard presentation from our youth home director, she talked to us about how, you know, basically she's seeing more and more severe violent crime. Um, how our youth home is full. um and um even having to send kids to other counties, but very serious crimes, you know, homicide and and that she, you know, she's been in her role for a long time and especially the last few years is seeing se severity in that. So, I wanted to hear from you about what your approach has been related to cases of um juvenile violent crime and how you handle those.

Um what specifically? Well, that's a broad question. I'm happy to answer it.

It just seems very broad. Right. I want to answer what you Well, just related to petitions and are you know are are they are is the how is the violent is the violent crime being diverted down to juvenile court or you know what what is actually happening in in these cases. So the the law on um prosecution of juveniles has changed in North Carolina over the last few years.

Um, and I think what you're seeing at uh the youth home is um paradoxically I think a evidence of the success of the change of that law. So we are very focused on only the most we want to be focused on violence and serious crimes. So that means that

um what we are handling in juvenile court has become more serious over time. North Carolina's juvenile court system is a diversionary system to start with. Um you cannot arrest a ch a child in North Carolina. That is why we use the term petition.

Um, and if you have a kid who's shoplifting from Target, that kid is probably never going to come to my office. That is going to be handled by juvenile justice. um they're going to work with that family, even a child who um is who chronically steals from Target or who has has engaged in some type of misdemeanor or low-level felony type what would be misdemeanor or low-level felony crime for an adult. Those are generally diverted from court. Violence is not diverted from court, whether that

be juvenile court or adult court, but all cases that involve children under 18 start in juvenile court. Now, um and we do have so so everyone in our juvenile courts right now is someone who is accused of something very serious or violent. Um, now the youth home, I think, is similar to the detention center in that they have some state contracts to provide beds for um, juveniles who reside outside of Durham County because not every jurisdiction has juvenile beds. Um, and but the ones who are in the juvenile beds in Durham, I think we right now have six or seven juveniles who are charged with murder. Um, and the

juveniles in from Durham County are either charged with murder, um, robbery with a dangerous weapon or serious sexual assault. Um, so those are the the children who are now detained who are detained pre-adjudication in the Durham Youth Home. Um, we are in the process now of determining where those cases will be adjudicated. um we have to hold transfer hearings in front of a judge and the judge has to transfer agree to transfer the case um to adult court if that is what we decide to do or to keep the case in juvenile court and so we are in the process now of working through those transfer hearings.

Um do I think that we have more cases? I do not. I think some of those cases would have before raise started in adult court. So you would not

have heard about them necessarily. They would um but I will say that it is shocking that we have 14 and 15 year olds who are chared of murder who were holding on petitions for murder. That is um I think shocking. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. And again, this is where I would like us to be able to dig in on the data to really see the trend on the ages and just how our system is currently functioning in Durham because I would like to understand what happens when a juvenile comes in who has committed some type of violent crime and, you know, where do they go from there? do they if they go to juvenile court what happens and how many of those cases

um if they there are you know again I don't know what the options are but if you know things are diverted or just not followed up on how many of them end up going on back and committing a very serious violence diversion is like murder yeah diversion is the actual term of art and so diversion means that a case is deferred from court. We do not ever divert violent crime from court. So that does not happen. Does not happen in adult court.

Does not happen from in juvenile court. So yeah. Um so we can take that piece off the table. I I don't know what not followed up means on.

Yeah. I don't I don't Yeah. And I'm speaking from a point of ignorance. Sure. But any um and uh we have uh several times in the um what is the and public defender might be able to help me here. What is the

the not the violent crime round table? What's the other one that we did with the county with There's another group of us that meets around um so we have a kind of a city focused roundt around violent crime and then we have a county focused um uh roundt partnership around violent crime in which we talk about that and so we generally talk about um kind of the issues that are coming up whether those are space issues or what's happening or um and so I guess to so we don't we don't lose juveniles I guess is the point and so maybe we need to hear from the

juvenile Jack right justice advisory commission committee is the county one Yeah. And so we don't we don't lose them who are kids who are charged with violent crimes. And I and I will say for those those kids who we currently have who are um have been charged with murder to go back to our early early truency issues, those are not kids those are generally not kids who have been in school. They're not they are not regularly going they are not even irregularly going to school.

Yeah. They're just don't they just don't go to school. Right. Yeah. So because you know I the gang study that was done a few years ago it identified that um and even the the Durham Police Department I used to serve on the violent crime round table was on it for like eight years and um Jason from the city who's you know amazing with data had presented case

studies how you can trace somebody who started out in elementary school having, you know, behavioral problems or academic um achievement issues, you know, maybe even learning disabilities, whatever. And then you see them later on getting involved in trespassing and then, you know, by the time they're, you know, it just kept accelerating and then, you know, they're involved in violent crime by the, you know, later on, not not too much later. And so I think we can't we have to really look at things as red flags and not just ignore them and and and how we're treating these as a system. And so I I just hope that we can really work together on understanding what what is currently happening, not each in our own silos, but collectively. And because I'd rather spend the millions of dollars that we're spending

in our jail for things like health care for people with chronic illnesses who are sitting there for years, I'd rather put invest that upstream in our children. So anyway, I look forward to all of us really working together on this. Thank you. Absolutely.

I agree. I think the number one um indicator of your involvement in the criminal justice system as an adult is your involvement in the ch as a child. Whether that means um your actual involvement or you had a a parent or a caregiver who was involved in a criminal justice system or you grew up in a community um in which there was a high involvement um a police activity or criminal justice activity. So, we do know uh when you do kind of a a post-mortem on cases on homicide cases that you'll see that often that child started out with um medical issues and

had um GSS involvement early. Um may have had school issues early. So, well, thank you again, uh, DA DeBerry. We really appreciate your time, your work, and your answer here today.

Um, thank you. Thank you. Manager Hager. Fantastic. Um our next conversation will be an update on a um funded agency Hey Tyreborn justice movement and we have Lisa La Jones with us today. Good to see you Lisa co-founder and executive director of movement operations and Steve Chalmer's pleasure seeing you as well.

co-founder, executive director of movement programs. And so, uh, information was shared with the board last week that gave overview on the budget as well as performance information and the presentation is in your system. So, we'll turn it over to you, LA. Thank you very much.

Um, time flies, doesn't it? Seem like we were sitting here just like this yesterday. So, um, Steve and I are very, uh, glad to be here. Uh, first of all, I want to say good afternoon to the Can you move the mic?

Can you move the mic towards you? The microphone. Yeah, there you are. Apologies.

I thought that military voice was projecting. I apologize. All right, let's start again. Can you hear me now? Good. Uh good afternoon to the chair and uh also

members of the board. We want to thank you for inviting us here today to present and for your continued investment into uh hey ty reborn justice movement. As was said my name is LA Jones. I'm a co-founder and executive director of operations.

I'm with Steve Chalmer's uh co-founder executive director of programs. Together we bring almost 70 years of collective experience in public safety, communic community healing and transformational leadership. Today isn't just about numbers. It's about people.

It's about the community members who trusted us, showed up, and dared to change their lives. It's about showing you what your investment has made possible and why we're asking you to walk with us a little further. And we also never want to miss an opportunity to thank you publicly for being our first major funer

uh in this movement. Do I do the clicker? Yeah. Uh, wrong one maybe.

Oh, too far. Thank you. Our mission, and I'll say this for the the new uh county commissioners here, uh, is to develop and coordinate a total Durham partnership comprised of programs that already exist here in Durham. uh the programs, the resources and the organizations to enable access and seamless entry to comprehensive or wraparound services for uh community member success.

When we started HRJM, we weren't trying to reinvent the wheel. We were trying to realign it. Durham

already has the heart. What we needed was a bridge. We needed something to connect the services, the providers, and the people. We needed organization.

That's what our mission speaks to. Coordination, access, and a commitment to make sure that no one falls through the cracks. The reason we're here today, one of the reasons is because we're not I just want to say we're not here just to ask. We're here to show you why continued investment in HRJM is not charity, it's strategy.

We were asked to speak on several things today, like how the county's funding was spent, how we've grown, and what we've learned. We've organized our time together to reflect all of that. But most importantly, are you stopping me? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought someone said stop.

No, we were having some technology issues on our side. So, we're trying to be discreet, but apparently we're not. And so, commissioners, if you are having issues viewing, just um pull it up online. Um but we'll work through our stuff.

My apologies. No, that's all right. Just wanted to make sure you guys were good. Ready?

Gotcha. What you'll see in the slides hopefully and in the financial packet that you received is that every dollar has been spent with intentionality. That intentionality comes from lived experience. It comes from community listening and a promise not to waste what we've been entrusted with.

Before we move further, we want to acknowledge that every statistic we'll share today represents more than a data point. It represents a life. One of the hardest lessons that we've learned and

that we continue to teach others is that systems fail people by making them feel invisible. Steve and I were a part of two major systems that were responsible for that. That's why we don't talk about cases. We talk about neighbors, about family, about folks who deserve dignity, healing, and opportunity.

We share these numbers because we must, because that's how funding decisions are made. But we do so carefully, never forgetting that each line item is someone's story. Someone who may have once believed they didn't belong here. We remind them and ourselves that they do.

If you're wondering why some of our county dollars are still on the books, I want to be very clear that it is not because we do not need them, okay? It's because we used every other resource first. We had federal funds uh with

tight deadlines, ARPA funds that couldn't be rolled over, and county dollars with the most flexibility. We sequenced our spending to avoid waste and to make sure the doors stayed open long after the clocks on those other pots ran out. You can see it clearly in the financial packet we submitted. Over 749,000 spent already this fiscal year.

When you look at our projections, we broke down those expenses, justified every major category, and prioritized sustainability. This approach wasn't just good stewardship. It was strategy born of necessity. We even applied for two major federal grants to try and offset future needs, but those funds were never distributed under the current federal administration. We are currently in various stages of awaiting the response of seven other funding possibilities.

So now we're creating a fundraising toolkit and growing our donor base to protect our future. And just to underscore this, this entire operation, 178 participants, 750 services, which included medical, health care, job training, and housing support is being powered by 10 full-time staff members, two of which are Steve and I. We are especially proud of the employees on our team who are formerly justice involved. They walk through these doors each and every day as living proof that people can rewrite their stories when they're believed in, supported, and resourced.

They repay that faith by going out and doing the right thing. Not every day, not one day at a time, but one choice at a time. This year, the county covered just four

salaries, two of which were mine and Steve's. To keep this work going, we cut consultants, left positions unfilled, and yes, even downgraded employee benefits. Because when there's not enough to go around, we make sure the participants come first. Because if I may speak plainly, trickle down economics does not work.

But trickle down oppression works every time. That is the cycle that we're trying to break. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Uh again, good afternoon to everyone. My name is Steve Chmers. I am the executive director of programs uh for Hey Tai Reborn Justice Movement. And again, it's a pleasure to be here uh with you this afternoon. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the program side of the organizations and u kind of give you an idea of what we do on a regular basis as it relates to serving the participants that uh come through our doors on a

day-to-day basis. Uh this particular slide here uh shows that uh for uh this year um uh that we have served 178 uh participants and of those we've uh provided uh over 750 different services through the partnerships and uh organizations that exist in the community. Um, one of the things I think that's very glaring if you look at the, uh, the slide here, uh, has to do with the mental health and wellness and, uh, drug and alcohol treatment, uh, aspect of what we do. Uh, one of the things that we're committed to doing is is making certain that uh, we prepare individuals for success. And one of the things that uh we feel that uh may be ignored uh more times than often is is is addressing the mental health and the stability of those individuals. And before we try to connect them to major resources and support in the communities like jobs and housing, even though we're working on that and that's part of the

plan, we focus on making certain that uh we address uh some of the underlying causes of the previous failures that they've had. Um, so those two numbers are dropping out. The other thing that's really really glaring uh about this is when you start to look at housing, uh, that number probably is one of the the lowest numbers that we see represented here. And and I want to to make certain that you understand that's not because that the majority of the people that we are seeing have housing issues, but it speaks to our capacity as a community to address the housing needs of individuals.

And of all the partnerships that we've actually developed uh over the course of our existence, everyone has waiting lists and also um a lack of of capacity to serve. So we're not unique uh as it relates to those numbers. And when you look across the board to other organizations, even though they are serving, their numbers are low, but it does not in any way uh

address the need that exists in this community's housing. We would say that housing is the one number one need that's uh unmet in this community. And we're talking from emergency housing to transitional housing uh to rental properties, especially with the population uh that we serve uh being uh uh some being um involved in the criminal justice system and uh involved in the re-entry process and others that are underserved and uh and again facing a lot of obstacles. uh but for the most part we are basically partnering with a lot of organizations.

We're connecting individuals with the resources uh that exist in community and we feel real good about uh being able to provide uh these services to these individuals. Next one. Uh again it's we we've uh our participants have demonstrated a lot of growth and and we are proud of that across the board. Uh but the journey often uh begins with our bridge program and we'll talk a little bit about that.

This is our flagship initiative that we've developed with uh Durham Technical Community College. Uh and I tell you folks, they are fabulous, fabulous partner uh in this community. And their president uh president Buson um is probably at about every uh graduation. He's uh expressed continued commitment uh to uh hate reborn just the justice movement.

Again, this is not just a program. as a launchpad because again what we try to do is to make certain that individuals are stabilized that once they come in they have the tools uh that they need in order to be successful. Uh sometimes this might include GED programs but what we try to do is create opportunities for them to actually go into an environment that's welcome uh that's embracing and actually receive the tools that they need. Next bridge program uh again stands for building, reinventing, improving and developing great employees and entrepreneurs. Um again it's uh

represent our highest standard of uh holistic justice informed workforce training. One of the parts of the bridge program is the pivot assessment. This is what the first thing uh that individuals uh actually undertake when they are uh when they get to Durham Tech. And the pivot uh uh uh tool assesses and evaluates their interest attitudes and readiness for career uh employment and education.

the the interesting thing and I think people say may be the driving force, but what we found is that uh a lot of the individuals that we serve would be there with or without the $15 an hour stipen uh because what they look at for at the justice movement is is really uh an opportunity to fulfill a dream uh to actually create come into an environment that uh is actually like family. Uh but we do provide a $15 an hour stipen while they're there at Durham Tech and they're there for six weeks, four days a week for six hours. Uh also a part of that is a

transportation a lotment and where we provide $25 a week for transportation. Many of them again Ubering and and and car pooling and so forth. Uh also uh we take care of all educational supplies and we also uh provide lunch at Durham Tech uh on each day for those individuals and this has really made a difference uh even uh uh with the the program again 90 plus hours of in-person instruction. This including communicating with purpose uh which basically helps them to create better communication skills to learn how to advocate for themselves better.

Working smart again gets more into the dynamics of our employment and being a good employee. Technology awareness which boy they go to go at that like you wouldn't believe and they really enjoy that aspect of it. Making dollars work and achieving platinum plus and also everyone is connected with the NCC works training center for careers uh once they come into uh the justice movement.

This shows basically we've uh actually uh had seven uh cohorts uh since inception. Uh tomorrow is the graduation of a uh cohort number seven and I know you guys are probably here hard at work but we offer invitations always and you receive invitations uh to those graduation but from 11 to 12 tomorrow we will be having a graduation exercise at Durham Tech. Um this shows pretty much um for each one of the uh each one of the cohorts uh the number that we started with and the number that we ended with. Um and again um as you can see uh we've had uh a couple where we had 100% completion and we've had one some where we lost maybe one or two during the process. The one thing about this is that doing these the ones where we lost people in most cases it had to do with medical emergencies even with the individuals or families or something something dynamic in their life that caused them to not be able to uh

actually complete that. Uh and then some of what we try to do is to bring them back in and actually get them on board to actually come back in and complete because once you're a part of the uh the haty reborn justice movement, you're always a part regardless of what happened. If you fall, even if you fall off the wagon, we bring you back on. Okay.

Again, this speaks to uh some of the completions of some of the programs. As you can see, we have quite a few programs that we are uh involved in with Durham Tech. And um one of uh as you can see uh they basically talks about the ones that we have individuals enrolled completed and also some that uh have uh were dissatisfied and did not make it. Uh and as you can see the majority of these we either have people that are in involved in these programs or they have completed these programs in uh this particular year. One of the programs we actually started and completed with Durham Tech and we would have had which

actually is probably our would make it this our eighth cohort is that um we uh actually started a um a health care what was that the um what is that one that's a a public health a public uh uh health program with Durham Tech where we actually brought individuals in and uh with with the partner with a partnership of Durham Tech and we graduated about six individuals in that particular pro program. So um again a great partners. The one of the things that I will say about Durham Tech too is that once we introduce them into Durham Tech, one of the first things they do is to start to look at alternative funding so that we're not having to pay every dollar for the courses and the programs that they go into. Uh the other thing is is that then what they do is that they use Durham Tech dollars next to make certain that HRJM dollars are the last one last dollars that are spent and again this is a real good partner that actually take u the responsibility for

doing that. Uh go ahead and NC works uh provide funding. Yeah. Yeah.

Even NC works. So again, you know, we've had uh a lot of the individuals, again, we have strong partnerships and a lot of these partnerships that we've established have funds available to also support the the individuals that uh that we bring into uh the organization. Um again uh a lot of the expanded training and certification pathway one of the things that we found is that that a large number of the individuals that come to HRJM are looking to be entrepreneurs and this is great news because a lot of these individuals have been facing a lot of challenges where it is not as easy as for most of us to actually become employed. So one of the things that we are trying to do is really to work strongly with entrepreneurship. The National Institute of Community Economic Development is one of our strongest partners as well as Durham Tech and others to help actually develop um these these partnerships. One

of the things that um we've referred about 10 individuals to work with uh the National Institute. Of those 10 within the time that they've been with us, eight of them have retreat uh obtained the LLC's. and uh and that is tremendous uh when you start to look at these individuals and coming to the table with dreams and saying that I know how to do this but I just don't know how to to make it happen. So eight LLC's and uh with the individuals that have come uh to us uh at the justice movement.

Um other things is apprenticeship programs. Uh uh we are working with Durham Tech now. We have three individuals in the electrical systems technology and they have not failed a course and they're doing very well. They're again individuals that come and said you know I would love to do this.

I've always wanted to do this but I've never had the opportunities. These are the people that we actually tried to provide support to. Uh three in the construction trades. Uh S KKK electrical and Durham Techch are one of the partners with us on that as far as

the apprenticeship programs. and we have individuals in included in plumbing, HVAC, welding, carpentry, and other preconstruction training. So, we've tried to take advantage of every tool uh that Durham Tech um has to has to offer. Uh and again, um this kind of leads to uh industry recognized certification and direct job placements.

our basically our workforce team on a day-to-day basis work to create partnerships with employers in the community to actually help us to impact uh the lives of these individuals. Where you see here are some of the employees uh that are basically that we're working with on a day-to-day basis that are are very and some are saying that the people that we're sending to them are the best that they've had and uh we are real proud of the individual. But again on the front end what we try to do is stabilize and prepare them to be uh those individuals. I also while I'm talking like for our staff to stand up back here uh team. Yeah. Stand

up. These are the individuals that these are the individuals that make it happen on a day-to-day basis and they are the ones that uh we have uh uh others that are not here today because they are actually either in the field or on some other engagements. Um but um one of the uh again the the the good things about it is is that they actually connect stay connected with these individuals on a day-to-day basis and if they have any needs or concerns and they also enjoy in involved with the employers uh on a day-to-day basis and again we've got very good satisfaction from the employers that we have. Uh again, some of the workforce training partners that we have uh we we contract with StepUp Durham and I think we send about 10 a month uh to step up and uh and you know and and as you ones of you familiar with StepUp, they have like three different parts of their organization. Believe it or not, some of our people don't get through the third part because they get jobs and they because they're so motivated with the support they got.

They get jobs before they finish. So they they they don't they out the door. So again, straight partnerships as you see here, Vance Granville Community College, our newest partnership, uh that we're working with them with their CDL program. Uh we have one individual who last week started the uh class A CDL program.

Um, and I actually uh got a call from um um individual from um Kelvin Shaw from uh Vance Granville Community College and he wanted to commend uh one of our workforce team who actually came over with the the applicant or the participant, sat through the entire orientation and vetted their program to make certain that it was of quality and what we need. and he wanted to call me just to say, "Look, we've never had this done and we are very impressed with your staff uh for coming over and being that connected and interested uh in uh in the individuals. We have one who's actually starting today with the class B uh

certification advanced Granville. Steven Sheileely is with him again today uh again working him through that entire process. So, this is the type of service that we provide uh at the HRJM. It's just not a referral service.

It's not just passing people off. We stay connected with them to make certain that they receive the support and and and uh and the resources they need. Um that's it for me. All right.

Thank you. Thank you, Steve. So, we want to talk about how HRJM has evolved in the couple of years that we've been here. Uh last year Steve and I, we were sitting down doing our organizational assessment and we realized that we were not having the success with some of the participants that we wanted to. Those are some of the ones that you saw that fell off of Bridge or out of other um continuing education programs. And

that's because once we would see that someone was likely to have a crisis, we would pull them from the program before they could fulfill that that self-fulfilling prophecy of I'm not good enough. And we helped them get into treatment that was going to help them be able to go back and succeed. So, as we were sitting and we were talking, we were were wondering about why we weren't getting exactly what we felt like we should be. And it would have been easy to place the burden on the participants or someone else.

Oh, they're not doing what they're supposed to do. But we decided that first we were going to look in the mirror. That reflection led us to a pivotal discovery and that's that our assessments were just the starting line. many of them uh you know we always knew they needed more than intake but they also didn't just need to be assessed they needed to go through a level of healing first so uh

they weren't prepared and we made some bold decisions we partnered with Dr. Rodney Harris Dr. Harris, a black male mental health professional who not only understands our community but is trusted in it. He reviews every clinical care assessment and helps us determine if someone is truly ready to start workforce training or continuing education or if they first need to address trauma, addiction or mental health.

We shifted our model. We accepted that education and workforce numbers might dip if we truly put the people first and that's exactly what happened. But what rose in their place were our numbers for counseling and recovery and healing which is in line with our commitment to do things differently. And the community kept speaking. They told us they wanted a bridge style program for disengaged

youth ages 16 to 20. This very group is responsible for over 60% of the crime in Durham. They also told us that they would like to see a reintroduction of a public health approach to violence prevention or something like the cure the cure violence. one that treats violence like we treat opioid addiction, which is something that our uh our city, county, state is uh actively involved in right now or funds that will treat opioid addiction.

And that's to treat this the problems they're having as a contagious condition that requires funding, care, and understanding. Because let's be honest, some people in our country get treatment. Others get prison or local detention instead of acknowledgment that often that crime is a cry for help. And

the difference is too often what they look like and where they live. This is the great Dr. Harris. Uh Dr.

Harris is our clinical advisor. He's the chief clinical officer at the uh empowerment training consulting group. He's also an associate professor at the Chicago School. He does more than review assessment.

He helps us practice what we preach. With his support, we've begun the process of becoming a certified traumainformed organization because we recognize that trauma doesn't just live in individuals. It lives in systems and families and neighborhoods. This matters because it changes how we serve.

Trauma informed care means we build trust first. We respond instead of reacting. We see people through a lens of empathy instead of judgment. In short, Dr. Harris has

been a gamecher for us. And it's been fantastic to have him through. He he's a real truth teller. How another in how we've uh evolved strategic decisions that we've made.

Every change we've made has come from listening to data. Yes. But mostly from listening to people. If you listen, people will tell you what they need.

Every single one of us is the own subject matter expert of our lives. No one else can tell us what we need to be okay. We stopped using quick intake screenings and started offering full clinical care evaluations by licensed professionals. And we honored participant requests to work with black male therapists who really, let's be honest, are often like a unicorn in in our world.

Uh, and we found one that exceeds our expectation. We we tightened our belt. We cut our

consultants. We left jobs unfilled. Uh we did all of this to to protect our people and this organization. We also welcome two new board members, leaders who bring exactly the kind of expertise we need to grow smart, not grow fast.

We're proud to introduce two exceptional leaders who've recently joined our board of directors. First is Mr. Dennis McCaskill. Dennis is the senior director of financial partnerships at Catalytics.

He brings experience in all of the areas that you see here. And then we have Jada Smith. Jada Smith is a chief program officer at 110. Almost lost it.

At 110. She has a lot of expertise as well. We um we recruited Dennis because of his financial uh expertise and Jada because

of her nonprofit expertise. We are actually in search of one more board member at this time and it is someone that is highly experienced in human resources. Now let's make it official. This is the part where I smile, I take a breath, and I ask for your support.

Ready? We are requesting $500,000 to sustain our core operations for this year, which is definitely less than the previous years, and it's a result of the things that we've cut. We're also asking for a million dollars to launch two vital initiatives. one, a youth bridge that will work with disengaged youth from age 16 to 20. And the second is the public health model for violence prevention pro prevention that we

mentioned. These aren't ideas on a whiteboard. These are plans backed by data, demand, and a deep community need. We've done the work.

We've earned your trust. We hope. Now, we're asking for the investment to scale it. Before we move further, I want to thank the Durham County Community Intervention and Support Services Director Crystal Harris and also assistant county manager um Joanne Pierce for all of their they've acted as our liaons and overall handlers for the last couple of years and uh we just want to thank them for their patience and and the challenging work of keeping us in line over the last couple of years, Steve and I may have been subject matter experts in law enforcement, but we're in a whole new ball game here with uh nonprofit

leadership. Also, um Oh, and they are a a credit to their organization. You're very fortunate to have them. We're grateful for your time and attention, of course, as always, and we know how many needs you're balancing, how many uh programs are asking.

But we also know this within the current fiscal year, which has yet to end, we've already wrapped 178 highouch citizens in 750 services for which we have the receipts. HRJ JM doesn't just ask without showing what we've done and what we'll do. So now we will turn it over to you. We welcome your questions and your insights and your partnership as we hope to continue building this into something powerful and sustainable.

Thank you so much for this presentation. This was a very good overview. Um I will

open it up to the commissioners questions. However, chair alum is actually virtual and she has some questions to start out with and then we'll go around to DAS if that dis chair alum. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, we can.

Wonderful. Thank you. Sorry I'm not there in person. I'm recovering from surgery.

But thank you so much for coming and presenting. Um I and sorry if this was included in some of the materials. Um maybe that was sent but um do we have like a breakdown of the like operational budget uh for the overall programming staffing um for Hayai Justice Reborn? Do you can just go through my all of my questions or would you like me to pause?

Uh if you'll pause, we'll answer each one. Yes. Perfect. Yeah. Yes. Uh we actually

did it's in the financial packet that we submitted separately because we knew we were short on time. So we knew we didn't have time to go over all that individually, but we did include it and anything additionally that you all would like, we are more than happy to provide. Thank you. And then when this project initially came to us, what was it in 22 or 23 for funding, it came to the board with the understanding that this was a uh there was a matching grant um opportunity for if Durham County and city were able to provide funding that there was an opportunity for federal grant funding to match however much the city and county provided. Were y'all able to secure that grant? It was also the initial goal and presentation to us was that, you know, this was an initial kickoff funding from the county to get the project off the ground and then there was going to be

work done to seek other funding sources to keep the programming running and not, you know, necessarily to be reliant on the county for recurring funding. Uh, some of some of that is correct. Uh the part that is not correct is that it wasn't that we were going to get that uh we were expect expecting I apologize my braces are in the way. We are not we were not expecting matching federal dollars.

However, we did have a businessman in the community that did say that he would that they were willing to do some matching with uh corporate dollars. And we can speak more about that later if you like. Yeah. And and so how much did that business partner end up providing in matching? He has not as of this time. Okay, that's all the questions I have

right now at the moment. Okay. Thank you, Chair Alon. Um go to Commissioner Burton.

Thank you so much um Vice Chair Lee and thank you so much for your presentation. Um I'm new to the board so if I ask some questions because I just don't know and I'm just trying to get more of a historical um background. So when did the county start funding hey Tyrie? Was that in 2022 2023?

Yes. Yes. 2022 2023. It's been 23 24 and then this is for this is 25.

Okay. Gotcha. And so each that year you've you've received a million dollars each year. $2 million the first year, a million dollar last year, and a million from the city.

Okay. So the first year, 2 million correct the first year from the county. A mill and then a million from the city and a million from the county. Okay.

Correct. And did you receive any ARPA funding? We

did. That's the million that we've gotten so far from the city. Okay. However, we do have a request into the city this year and we submitted this as um an intralocal um possibility.

Okay. So, and then I wanted to know when I was reading the um slides about so so I can have a better understanding what hey ty reborn does. It takes justice involved persons. Like I'm really confused about that.

So, is it because when I read it, is it um it's like okay, you're they're going through the bridge program. They're okay trying to find job placements. Is it um like how are individuals referred to Hey Tyrie? So, I really want to know how that works. That's that's very good questions. and a a lot of the other uh county commissioners have had access to information previously that you haven't

gotten. And just so you know, we'll answer here, but we're also very happy to send you more information about HRJM. But the short story is that HRJM basically works with black, brown people that were involved in that have been involved in the justice system and people that are uh socioeconomically disadvantaged or oppressed from any community. It doesn't matter as far as the way that we get people.

A lot of times they're referred. You can also go to they go to our website and on our website is a place where they can uh where they can put their name in and we'll have one of our care managers reach back out to them. Also some of our partners in the communities in the community they refer people to us as well. We go to job fairs we go to a lot of different events in the community. I

would like to add to that is that probably as you know we're operating right now uh the majority of the individuals that were coming to us now is by word of mouth uh from past participants people who have successfully navigated through the process and have have had their lives changed and they're reaching out to families friends and others in their communities and these individuals are now coming to us. uh we get people from department of social service and we've done presentation to several departments there where now we have a better working relationship with them to help but they also as they encounter individuals in need they send them uh the criminal justice resource center. So what we do is basically correction we yeah we've we've uh partnered with uh federal probation parole and we work with state. So all these individuals that we have actually gone out to when individuals come off of come into their organizations like for parole understanding that they don't have the capacity to really do a lot of things they actually send those individuals. So they're not justice involved but they are basically any people that represent

these populations that are in need and uh and wants to support. So, it's a way for people who have been very much marginalized to come in, get the support that they need to help them be successful. All right? Because, you know, I I you know, getting the support, getting the I guess care, the knowledge, the skills or what have you to help them be successful, right?

Absolutely. and and and and again the the the main thing is that they have one location they can come and we address all of their needs at that at that one location by actually bringing together the partnerships and collaboration of of existing programs and resources in the community. The one thing that we always say is that we are not actually service providers. We are actually organizers and connectors. So we actually facilitate their growth and and their stability and we connect them with the resources they need. And the final question I had was about

bridge. I wanted to know a little bit more about that as well, like the bridge program that you do in conjunction with Durham Tech. So, is that a way for people to figure out what skills they're good at and it's kind of like a job inventory or something like that? The the one thing that I can say about the bridge the bridge program is that it kind of serves as an awakening uh for a lot of folk because a lot of folk come in and they feel that you know uh for an example we had an individual came and she wanted to be um she wanted to work as a as a not a nurse practitioner but uh just a CNA.

And once she got became engaged with the bridge initiative at Durham Tech, they reported back to us that she actually had the capability of becoming a doctor. So this person instead of being a CNA is now had navigated into the into the nursing program. But so I say it's awakening because a lot of individuals come and they just want to really just kind of get a job. the vast majority of

them to elect to stay in school and to go into some of these other programs and also get certifications and and and also degrees. So it's again it it it basically again provides some of the things that they never some of them had wanted and some of them never even thought of. So it's like coaching in a way and mentoring people to know what it is they want to do and help them find that way. Well, some of them lack the basic uh skills that would be required to be good employees and that is what hap some people call them soft skills.

We call them essential skills that are necessary. The one thing that is happening with us that we absolutely did not plan for in the beginning was that we have so much continuing education going on. We originally planned for Bridge. Um, and now these individuals have found out what it's like to go to

school and have someone that is checking on how they're doing in school, that is coming to their defense when there's a problem, that is encouraging them and praising them when they do well. And what they've done is they found out they love it. And so they they've gone into continuing education. And it was such a need that we went with we got with Durham Tech and uh and NC Works to figure out how we could possibly pay for it to have them continue in school for as long as they wanted to go.

Yeah. Thank you so much for answering my questions. Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for asking.

Uh, Commissioner Jacobs, thank you so much for the presentation, all the information. Um, I have a number of questions. One is just to follow up on Commissioner Burton's question about the funding because are you saying that you never received federal funding? No.

No. Oh, I'm sorry. The federal Let me clarify. There was when we initially came to the board, there was a um grant uh or it was a foundation.

It was a perk foundation. I can't remember where the um acronym was from that we were partnering with the city which did not materialize. There were federal dollars that were awarded to Durham County that were um passed through to Hey Tai Reborn. And that happened two years ago.

And that amount off the top of my head was close to 750,000 if I'm not mistaken. Yes. And so I'm not sure if all of those dollars have been finalized um spent yet, but I I know that was a a trunch of dollars that were also allocated. Right. They have not um they were PERK was going to provide funding

based upon whether or not the uh city of Durham could match what they were going to give and the matching did not occur and has not. Okay. I think we need to get clarity on since the beginning how much public funding has been allocated whether it's federal, city, county and we can do that even right now. Okay.

Okay. So if so the city has given $1 million through uh the American Rescue Plan Act dollars that happened in 2425. Durham County gave in 24251 $1 million. Okay.

And then 23 in 2324 Durham County allocated $2 million and that was the year that we were originally supposed to partner um with the city and that was the perk funding. Okay. Um and those were the um

public dollars that um and that includes that includes the federal money. No, I'm sorry. And then in that year it was 750,000 that came from the federal which was okay. 700,000 I'm sorry 700,000 from the federal government.

7 million. The burns grant was prior to the first funding that we received from you all is when it was awarded. So, but there was a change in um leadership and then when um when Crystal came on, she was kind enough to get everything set up for us so that then we could finally get those funds in and pay for them. But they were already allocated because we were given the money two years earlier if Okay. I'm just trying to get an idea

of the public funding. 7 is that correct? Over the past three years. All together over three years.

Okay. Over the past three years. Okay. So then we go back to 20 223.

No, that that is when the federal award occurred. But the actual dollars were receded over the the I'm interested in when they were actually received when the money was in hand. 7 over the past two years. We'll get you a chart.

Okay. All right. That Yeah, cuz I think we went over it, but we can get your chart. Okay, that would be helpful. Um Yeah. And I I just I also want to just follow up because of what Commissioner Alam said because we're only two commissioners that were here then and I remember that you know we wanted to support you all getting started but that you know the understanding was that this was not going to be ongoing operational support.

Um we have a whole process involved with nonprofit funding you know RFP process and also we have certain policies around what percentage of our nonprofit funding can actually go for things like salaries we we have certain criteria around that. Um and you know honestly we are going to be funding we are going to be facing a huge crisis um at in 2026 because we've been fortunate to be able to provide a lot of ARPA funding to we have wonderful nonprofits in Durham doing great work that are helping support the mission of the county government but we're not going to be able to sustain anyone at the levels that we have previously and so I know that our board will be looking forward in terms of how do we move forward because everyone's going to be saying hey we need your help and then

we're you know we're also facing as you know a lot of a lot of alarming um threats of really fundamental cuts to our security net and then of course we've got the schools so we are we are in an austerity budget so I appreciate appreciate that you have presented us, you know, what is your for at least this year, what is sustaining versus expansion? We've we've done the same thing with Durham public schools, you know, um you know, looking at what is needed to sustain versus expansion. And you know, right now we're really not in a time to be expanding. Even our county departments have many of them have been have been told flat funding.

You know, we have a hiring freeze. So that that's just the reality that we're in right now. I I just wanted to frame that reality of what we're in right now. Um yeah. Um so can I address that really

quickly? What you just said though? Um ma'am, absolutely. I absolutely hear what you're saying and I absolutely get it.

I really do. I do want to point out that one of the things that makes HRJM different is that the IND the nonprofits that we are um partnering with in the community, there are some of those that we actually fund as well with the with the dollars. We have step up, we have a line item in our budget for step up. We also have a line item.

Uh we work with um uh alcohol treatment uh uh organization. That's right. We don't none of these people except for public entities like social services are doing this work for free. So, I just want to let you know that we because we have a line item that says um that subawwards

and uh contractors and subawwards, those go to individuals that are at that we're partnering with to do this work. So, I do want that to be pointed out is that we definitely know that there are other nonprofits that need help and the ones that we're actually working with that have agreed to come in under this umbrella and work as a coalition. they do get funding from us to help some of them meet capacity because otherwise they they're great at what they do but they do not have the capacity to serve the number of people that we send them. Yeah. So I think I mean I'm looking at the budget from January through March of 2025 and okay it if you could provide us because that's not in we don't see that here but exactly you know when you say that you are providing for payment for services for clients um if you could

provide us exactly what what that data is cuz I saw the list of the referrals and you know so just see that's that's fine. I I do want to explain why you don't see it there though because we were asked to submit how we've spent county money this past year and and uh we explained at the beginning that we spent other dollars in other ways. So what what you see is what county what your county money directly went to. That's why you don't see it on that's not the entire budget.

That's the county's fault. Okay. Well, be good to see the whole thing because cuz cuz what we see here is mostly it going to salaries. Um so that's why it would be good to see if you had ostensibly a million dollars from the city, a million from the county then to see exactly how those dollars are being spent. Um that

would be very helpful. Thank you. I you know you and I we've done this a few times. Uh Commissioner Jacob.

So, I knew you were going to say that within the financial packet of information that I sent, it actually contains a justification for all of the salary spending. And I will say this, we are well within the norm for grass right grassroots nonprofit salary spending. But I absolutely want you to understand everything you want to understand. But I do want to be clear about that that and I made sure that we included all of the documentation to justify and back that up along with sources of where it came from.

Okay. Well, I I am looking at what you provided. So Okay. Thank you. Sure. Um so and then um do you know exactly how much you are spending on the bridge program because obviously that you've had a lot of success with that but I

would like to understand how much you know how much is it actually costing for just that program or and even per person we can sit down and figure that out. Um what we have to do though when we do the budget is we allocate for up to 15 people per cohort for for uh four for for a year. So, we we allocate what we're hoping it'll be, but there's no way that we can um uh that we can uh anticipate how many people are going to be ready to go mentally or with regard to their addiction or something of that nature. Well, I don't Yeah.

I mean, just this past year, how much I assume you're tracking how much you're spending on the program. So, so you want just this past year, not what we need to budget for. Yeah, just I'm just looking at what you submitted for the this past year and

then I guess we we didn't get a detailed budget for FY 2526. 5 million. But we didn't see that that I believe you sent it. It came in as a direct communication from LA to the board members.

So, we'll we'll send that. I saw that, but I didn't see an actual budget. Okay. Yeah.

Um and then um do you keep track on just the demographics of the people you're serving? things like age, gender, um race, and just even like background like whether somebody is justice involved or not. Do you have that demographic data?

Yes. Okay. That would be great to see that as well. Okay.

Absolutely. Thank you. Sure, Valentine. Thank you, Chair, Mr.

Chambers, Miss Jones. Uh thank you for your many years and commitment to the people in our community. I mean uh if people don't know, they need to know uh that you are one of our gems and we appreciate you 100%. Dormwide, black, white, Hispanic, men, women, you're doing the hard work. Um I agree with my my colleague in the sense that these are challenging budget times and with the uncertainty at the federal level. Um I mean certainly I hope not but the ball could drop could drop uh any moment

with regards to um our finances that come from the federal government and I'm cognizant of that. Um but in light of that, you had talked earlier about the ask and partners and so I have already talked and uh with several of my colleagues uh that I plan on supporting not necessarily the the entirety of your ask um but to ensure that uh you receive uh some funds in this budget cycle. Um certainly there needs to be a discussion about um the way forward. um I wasn't around as you uh already suspect when uh there was discussion about how long uh the county would be able to provide support and so certainly uh that's something that we're going to um look forward to having discussions in the future.

May I please say one thing to certainly address that? Yes. the very first time that we sat here and I remember I was actually speaking to uh

county commissioner Heidi's last name Carter Carter I I could remember Heidi but I couldn't get Carter out. She and I were speaking and I asked for I she asked she said will this be a continuing thing and I said thank you for asking actually I'm asking for five years to get this up and running and sustained and standing on its own. So I was never there was never a conversation about it just being one year. I I will accept whatever you're willing to offer but that's what the conversation was. Well, I certainly appreciate uh that clarity and uh to the extent that uh here in Durham County and I believe this is true about the city, although in my discussions with uh Commissioner Jacobs, I always remind her that the uh the cities in the county, we value

um we value equity. And in my mind, that's what your program represents. A commitment to the poor, a commitment to the downtrodden, a commitment to the disenchanted, a commitment to people who look like me, a commitment to a second chance. And I believe that that is what this program stands for.

And I can get behind that because Dorm County values that and I value that also uh as an individual. And so thank you for your comments about your commitment to the taxpayer or making sure that you're using the the taxpayers funds wisely. Absolutely. We absolutely will hold you to that. Um the fact that you use other resources first, which is what we ask of you, uh we're going to hold you to that as well. I am particularly um excited about the

bridge program uh that Dr. or not doctor but president Buxon and I have had a brief conversation about about this partnership uh and it sounds like that new partnership with uh um Granville County Community College Branville. Yes. And so that gives our young people an opportunity at a second chance.

It does. And uh the work that you do with your other partners in helping to curb the problems with mental health uh the mental health crisis that we're experiencing here in Durham County and our young people in the areas of of drug and alcohol. And so all of these partnerships help to make for a healthy dorm to put our young people in the best position that they can be in order to add to our tax base in the future. And so that's uh what this program stands for. And lastly, uh in this current cohort, how how many people was I might have missed that I think there are nine

graduating. Okay, nine. I think there are nine graduating. We have 15 slots.

Okay. Well, time permitting, I I plan to be there tomorrow. No, no guarantee, but time permitting, I plan to uh be there tomorrow. And one last thing, I think uh Dennis McCaskill is an excellent addition to your board.

He's a good guy. I mean, his uh skills and knowledge, um his uh connections in the business community, I'm hoping that uh they bear fruit. Absolutely. with respect to the your funding needs and also Miss Smith's nonprofit leadership as well.

So, thank you for appearing here today. Thank you so much. I I want to say before we leave that I do want the last thing to be an acknowledgement for the difficulty and the decisions that you have to make. Um unfortunately though our our people that need aren't going anywhere and especially right now while t while times are hard HRJM is truly

doing the most work as a as a grassroots effort uh right now and that's really important. And so even if we ever feel like you're going to say no, I have to have you know I'm gonna ask every single time. So, it's never going to be personal, but I'm going to sit here and go, "And here you go, LA. " So, I'm grateful to you all.

You're a good advocate. Thank you. I mean, that that's your job is to ask. It is not your job to tell yourself no.

It is it is our job to figure out if we can do it. Um, I do have a a couple questions. Um so the 178 participants that you listed is that for this year? Yes sir.

That's for this year. Okay. And what is uh with a 178? What is the the cost to handle that

the 178 per 178? If we had a budget of $2 million, that's about a little over $11,000 per person. What are those how are those costs? That is a great that is a great question.

First, I would like to say and then I'll let Steve address is that one of the things that has been the most challenging about this is that this is a unique and innovative approach. We can't really say how much because when that one person comes in, we offer 12 different wraparound services. So, it just depends on how many services they need. And then sometimes they need to come back.

Let's say if they start out because they just got out of prison and they're trying to get up on their feet, we'll help them. We'll deal with, you know, some criminal justice stuff. Say they don't have their license. So, we we have to work with them to try and help them get their license back.

Then, you know, they want a job. Then they need this. and then two years later or 3

years later they may come back and want to get their record expuned. So it's very difficult to say that Steve can you answer that in any different way. So so so in that example you pay the fees for them to get their license back? Do you do you like pay justice?

Depends. depends on what is available and what we can convince other organizations to cover and whether or not we can smile and bat our eyes and say you got a little money on the side help us out. So we always ask though I I don't have a problem asking. Okay.

Yeah. I know that uh Mr. Chambers said that you all are connectors not really service providers and I was curious about except for workforce what that uh yeah workforce. Yeah. um for that. Now, uh, in your budget here that you sent us the, um, January through March in the, um, funds report column

for, for example, consult and professional services. Um, it says 1223,000 about 124,000 itself. Um, what is professional service? What is consultants?

What's what's in that budget? Yes. What that covers is our human resources consultants, uh project managers, HR consultant, um different things like that. I more than willing to give a I would be happy to give you a list if that's what you like. um uh uh what do you marketing and um uh advertising different things like that to bring people in our website stuff like that okay because I I I don't see any used or actuals kind of in here were some of there's some actual that's because we used them from a different because we had to get the money used

from the different uh pots of money that we had that were running out. So that's why we haven't used all of those yet. Okay. Yeah.

And kind of in the same vein, um the uh the row for state federal taxes and fees. It's 125,000. Is that payroll taxes? Is that the kind of No, actually what we realized was and that was my error myself and our accountant this weekend had a long conversation about that those funds need to be redistributed uh reallocated hopefully in in some other ways. But initially before we got our 501c3 because we were actually operating prior to getting our 501c3. So we did have state and federal taxes and that's how that ended up on the list in

the first place. And that was when you were first starting. It was okay. And so it just kind of it just didn't hung around on the on the sheet itself.

Correct. And and just for clarity for your ask for 2425. This was still calculated in in that ask, right? It was it was re it was reallocated.

Okay. And then when it was a I guess a miscommunication between myself and the county, it got on the old one, just redid the budget and didn't get marked off. Okay. Do we know about where those funds may be reallocated?

Have you guys thought about that? I can I can tell you exactly. Um I don't have it with me right this second, but I can send you Exactly. If you could send if you could send it and quite a bit of them go to the other contractor. um contractor subawwards category for the um the mental health services that

are uh being provided with uh for the participants that do not qualify for med I always get it wrong Medicaid Medicare Medicaid that don't qualify for Medicaid because one thing we do at HRJM is if someone comes in and we think they're qualified for Medicaid but they're not signed up. Our care managers sign them up so that um we're able to make sure that they get everything that they have coming to them. We are absolutely going to spend our money, your money, the community's money as a last ditch effort. Okay, I appreciate that.

I appreciate that commitment there itself. And just one more uh when I asked about professional service, we talked about is possibly you know the website and stuff like that. The technology infrastructure line item is 36k, right? Um would that include the website stuff? It includ is that networking, Wi-Fi, but a lot of it is infrastructure stuff like um our like

the phones for our staff out in the community. Um the laptops that are comm and then the programs and everything that goes with that software. Uh yes, training. um software.

Okay. Um different things different things like that that fall and oh also a uh database let me get it right. I workflow a an online database filing system for the participants. Um that was it was uh put together on a grant from MetLife and Metife gave us a grant in a partnership with MDC and that is actually uh what they helped us create and so that is paid for each month. Okay. It's a it's a monthly Yes.

Now I just have two more questions. What is cap what is your capacity at any given time for participants? Um you said you had nine graduating tomorrow. Oh, you're talking about with bridge cuz we we wanted to be very clear because people often think that HRJM is bridge but you know there's 170 other people.

So it it depends on the capacity for bridge each cohort is 15. Okay. Yes. Okay.

And my last question is more of a general kind of question, open-ended kind of question. 5 million. Okay. Fast forward to this time next year.

5 million, um, what does success look like? 5 million into us. We wanted these

outcomes. " Was this June 2nd? Yes. 2025.

This is this is how we performed on those outcomes. So what outcomes would you tell me today that you would would mean success in on June 2nd 2026? June 2nd 2026. Um what are the outcomes you expect to get with this money?

Well, um I we may have different opinions of this, but I can say with the money that we got last year, we provided 750 services. And that to me is definitely a win. That's something that we know that the majority of those people would not have gotten from somewhere else because hightouch people are the ones that usually fall through the cracks. Okay. Um and then they would have also had to go to 12 different organizations in order to get the help

that was given to them at this one. So ste yeah you know uh again above and beyond you know pro providing the services the the one thing that uh LA and I have concentrated on from from the beginning is is how we move to self- sustainability and uh that is that is you know first and foremost uh the thing that uh is on my mind on a regular basis. We know what we are doing is needed. Uh we know that the funding is limited. Uh so what one of the the goals that we have right now is to identify uh the re other resources uh in this community and other communities that we can kind of bring to bear. uh that would also understand we are working with the perk initiative now uh with this through the city uh which is basically has recognized that Durham has the capability of doing some great things and we have been at the table from the beginning uh with this this initiative

and and really one of the driving forces as they operate on a day-to-day basis just had a meeting this past week so that to me is is really you know what we're looking to do um again we we started to build this as Durham's initiative And uh ultimately that's what we are hoping that it will actually become and that the entire Durham community uh would invest in this and that um the the meetings that we're having today that we don't continue to have to meet have those right. Um so may I may I also um interject one more thing sir because there are a few of you that weren't here before and I've said this before. Um, I have to admit that that coming here and doing this is always uncomfortable for me, but I will say this. I spent over 30 years in prisons and finished as a federal warden and I never had to beg for a dime to lock anybody up. Not one. But yet it seems that all I've done

since I retired and came back and did this work because I feel like it's the right thing to do is beg for money. And yes, it's public money, but it's a public problem. These are the things that we have promised these people when you campaign, when we do it. We we're not asking you to do it.

Just help us do it. That's all. Right. I I absolutely agree with you on that.

It's um it is a backwards system. Um but you know, we have to as county commissioners, we have to um be the stewards of of course whatever little bit of budget that we have and we want to make sure we're allocating it to get the best results of what we what we can afford. And so, um may I ask a question, sir? I I guess what I'm you asked what we were looking for with regard to success and I would just like to ask if the if the county commissioners feel like that an

investment of a million dollars last year was if if there was a proper return on investment for serving 750 services within the city of Durham. Well, so um I'll I'll let anybody else answer that, but that's the kind of that's kind of governance I am looking to do as a new commissioner, right? Is understand upfront what are the plans, right? Right.

And then compare them at the end. I don't know throwing out a number of 750 services. I don't know if that's high or low. I have no I have no context on that, you know.

And so, but if last year you said, um, our goal is to hit 600 services and you came back and you actually were able to do 750, I would say, oh, you overachieved. That's wonderful, right? So, I don't really have a context on that, right? And so, I can't answer if it was good or bad. I think it's I think it's great because I can see I can see just so you know, the

eyes were I can see your excitement in it. So, I I read passionate that it was actually really good, right? I I can read that. And so, um, so the things that So, you know, you asked for one $500,000 was your operating, but a million dollars for your new services.

And I guess what I'm looking for is in those new services as you're strategically planning, what do you what do you expect to achieve of those new services? Right. And so that that way when we come back just like you just mentioned we'll know a context of with these new services we wanted to you know um increase our services to 250 people right? Yes.

So oh 250 people cool. So now when we come back next year and you say you know what we are actually able to get to 325 people even though we wanted 250. We're like, "Oh, that we're actually getting outcomes, right? Let us see if we can

" And okay, we're doing that. Let's give you a little bit more. See if we get to 500 and then let's get a little bit more the next year and get to 700. Right?

That kind of thing is what I'm looking for. And that's how I govern. Fantastic. That's where the question that's where the question comes from.

It's not from a criticism. This is not a year for me of criticizing anybody's ask. It's your job to ask. Absolutely.

My job is to see if we're getting a return. Oh, not if we're getting return because it's going to be a return. Even if you serve one person, that's a return. But if if the outcomes that you're expecting to happen are happening. And so I appreci uh so that's why I was you asking about you know that with the million dollars and I I may I'm going have to come and chat with you because I still like to get an idea. Please do we invite you guys please come over to HRJM of what that million dollars um what the strategic idea about

the million dollars. But I'm going to pass it over to and we do have our KPIs. And just for reference, I want to let you know that we exceeded five times what we committed to uh for this year. And I think that's one reason why you're reading my right passion.

And so the KPIs is something I do in work. I work almost extensively in that with my organization that I lead. And so when you present what when I come chat with you all I would love to see those KPIs understand what your plan for your KPIs will be so that when we have this conversation next year. Great.

Would be good. Commissioner we also have two full presentations on the new um the two new uh programs that we were talking about and would love to send them to you if you'd like them. Absolutely. Please do.

Commissioner Burton. Yes. And I'm going to um be brief, but I just wanted to address, you know, the question that you have. I I'm an educator 30 years. I was

a school librarian. Everybody knows that, right? And it's the same kind of business. It's relational relationships, right?

You're spending your day with kids. You're trying to mentor them, coach them, build them up, things like that. And it's sometimes it's hard to quantify, right? and you know adults who have you know been marginalized um justice involved things like that you're trying to do that same kind of work right we're just in a very very um the budget the finances are very tight this year and you in this role you have to make some tough decisions um so I get the vision of what you're trying to do you're trying to get human beings and you're trying to say okay this is available to you this is available to you let's figure out where your strengths are so we can build you up and that takes a lot of touches right so I

think as a commission we have to decide okay because we have all these um asks where do we put our where do we put the money and we have to ask these tough questions so I just wanted to share that with you I get what you both of you are trying to do. So, thank you very much. Yeah, it's difficult to measure the immeasurable val Valentine. Yes, thank you, Chair.

I'd just like to to make a comment. Uh, so goals and measures are important. Me and uh, Vice Chair Lee talked about these things extensively and I I agree that they they are important. Uh but something that you said uh made me come back to your presence here today and uh I think uh vice chair Lee will agree with me on this.

You keep on coming to this chamber and you make people feel as uncomfortable as you can. Even if part of being uncomfortable is in your own skin. That's right. Because that's where change occurs and your involvement and the community's involvement quite frankly in our discussions are important

component of the work that we do. So keep on being uncomfortable. [Music] All right. Anyone else?

All hearts and minds are settled. Good. Thank you so very much. It was very nice to see.

Thank you all very much. And you will be seeing me. You absolutely will be seeing me. Okay.

All right. Thank you all. Um, manager Hager, did they Do we want to find? All right, we're going to take a quick break. Five, seven minutes for restroom. Okay.

back. We're We're ready. Microphone check. One, two.

All right, we are back to uh end up our uh budget work session very quickly. So, I'll hand it to Manager Hager. Good afternoon, commissioners. Um on uh our meeting, our last meeting on Thursday, we um walked through areas that the board considered adjustments to the budget to date.

Um there were a few areas that we said we would follow up on and uh those we put on our add delete list. Keith will go through them. But before we do, just want to recap that we have all of your items that we're bringing back to you. Um, in the fall, we're coming back or in August

on a conversation on justice services, the alliance. Uh we'll also have a followup based on this morning's conversation with the district attorney which will also include Durham public schools as we look at approaches um to address um student attendance looking historically at what's been done in the past as well as some best practices. So we'll try we will coordinate with the superintendent to do that. We will have at the city county meeting um a conversation on Durham Museum of Arts and their u not yeah the Durham Museum Durham History Durham History I am tired history I'm giving them new hair like who is she talking about I have named a new organization um but the Durham Museum of History at the joint city county meeting and there will also at that meeting be um conversation about the homeless

community. Um that's some joint strategy happening between the city and the county. I will also um bring an update to the board by Friday on the RFP that we'll be doing to address some day shelter pilot initiatives. And so that'll come out on Friday.

thought it was important to recap all of those issues before we um get to our ad delete list. And um I may have missed something, but but let I'm sorry. Oh, and prek for prek, we will be handling that um at our June 23rd meeting with a contract amendment in grant funding. So um that will not show up uh on the list, but we have a solution.

John Kefir um has um I talked with Dr. Chappelle on Thursday afternoon um John wor with her and they have a contract amendment that we can use um to address the prek issues that were brought up. So that's a recap.

Yes, one question when I was reading Keith's followup the budget office and management's followup. Thank you. Okay, sorry. budget and management followup to my questions.

Um it said that the lowincome homeowner relief program would actually not be funded at the current level of 500k for each city and county. Did I read that wrong? I think that we we should have kept that at the base level for the low income. I think where where it may be different is with um the other eviction diversion diversion dropped off significantly. We funded that at the levels of 20 um precoid pre-COVID amount. We funded that and we will address it as the budget availability occurs if fundings

can happen. If you may recall when this has come up before, we did say that we would potentially use funds that were not allocated in the lowincome homeowners program to eviction or diversion and do that shift, but that the lowincome homeowners should be the same. I think we were projecting to spend about close to 800,000 the current year to date. Okay, this is what the response says.

The total amount of funding for the LIHR program for FY2526 is 500K. 250 from the city, 250 from the county. So that's actually it may it probably should have been 500 and 500 I believe. Okay.

So that's the same. Okay. So that's a mistake. That's a mistake because Yeah.

Yeah. That's a mistake because we spent 800,000 this year. If anything, we're trending higher, which is what you all wanted. And I think you

came back and heard and the manager. Thanks for But we'll follow up to make sure just inadvertently. Okay. Just so you know, I do read.

So, y'all all do. Y'all keep us on our toes. Thank you so much. It's not for not.

It's appreciated. Yes. Yes. So, so with that, um, we will, um, pull up on the screen the two items that were reconciliation points, um, from our Thursday conversation and I'll let Keith talk from there because we recapped everything except those two. We got a couple of commissioners that weren't here uh, or at least one that wasn't here at the last meeting. Just to make sure, the add delete list is, and we'll just do a recap, a little relearning here, is a list where we talk about some changes to the manager's recommended budget based off of discussions that the

board may be having, as well as some things that change that are sort of management changes. In a budget this big, there's always a few things the budget office or others might miss or have to update with new information. So, with that said, the add delete simply what it sounds like. Are we adding money?

Are we deleting money? We adding revenues or taking revenues away from the manager's recommended budget as we step towards a commissioner approved budget. You see three colors up here in this table that's being shown in front of you and up on the screen. The blue color, the light blue color at the top are sort of management related changes.

These are changes based off of new information that we had. And we'll go through those two first. There's some administrative changes we need to make to the prek base budget amount. We underfunded for a number of reasons $126,000.

So we needed to hold them to where we meant to hold them to. It's a plus $126,000 in expenditures that we need to fund them. Then we also had a revenue offset come from the Medicaid

transformation uh office emergency services. Some additional information where they said, "Oh, there's $300,000 in additional revenue. We didn't budget in the manager's recommended budget. Great.

that offsets the $126,000 in expenditures plus adds another $100,000 to the budget which we would then take away in another revenue source fund balance. But this is what add second color coding there what I call purple at least what it's looking like on my screen is where the big dollars are. This is the jockeying between uh commissioners about issues that are important to you. 574 million going to DPS for a few specific issues along with the 20 plus% whenever we do an increase for Durham public schools for charter school amount. 57 million that you all ask the budget

office and management to figure out how to pay for that. 5 million in additional funding to DPS? 57 million. And part of it is part of the charters.

I may I may believe it's adjusting for the charter school amounts. Yes, ma'am. So that's an ad. What you see underneath there.

Now I'm moving into how the manager's office and the budget office is proposing to deal with this. 57 million is that we could possibly reduce the amount of capital funding that we give annually to DPS. It's $6 million is what's in the manager's recommended budget down to 5 million. That frees up $1 million in funding. That's why you see it as a negative $1 million expenditure, a decrease of 6 million down to 5 million. Remember the

managers also offered DPS once we get some clarifications up to $10 million in long-term financing lobs funding if they when they identify needs that they have urgent needs HVAC repairs getting some of their current uh capital project schools up and running. So there's $10 million in lob funding for them. There's $5 million in this proposal for that. 5 million a year in lottery funds that schools have available to them for capital expense.

They can they have significant funding. They would argue there's never enough and they wouldn't be wrong. But this is where we're coming. We're using a million dollars of capital money and moving it to current expense to limit the cost to the taxpayers of the county.

57 million increase. 7 million? Well, we found some of it in

that net decrease and increase in the administrative stuff. What do we need? 4 million in new money. Management team and the budget office sat for an hour longer on Friday, I believe, Claudia, didn't we?

4 million to bring us into balance. Commissioner Jacobs. Hey, what? Okay.

Well, hold on. Hold on. Oh, you want to wait? Go ahead.

No, no, no. Uh Nida has her hand up and she's had it up for a little while. So, Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So, I got you. And can I make one more one more comment as far as the vetting? Um, there was an offer or a reminder about I know cars

was an area of big uh concern of the board members as far as the cost. It looks it's a big ticket item. Our concern with that uh was the um timing of of impending tariffs and potentially costing us more in out years. General services has presented a consideration for us looking at um a lease approach for cars and so we're doing more research on that.

That is something that we did not feel comfortable enough to move forward with that arrangement in such a small window. It is an option that is already approved and is on state contract. So over the next several months as we vet buying vehicles, we will see if if that is a potential for um something for us to consider. Um, but we need to do the the cost benefit of it before we can

feel confident bringing that to the board. So, it wasn't just uh u something that we did quickly, but there were considerations. Plus, this budget, as as you know, we've vetted it quite a bit. Um, so, uh, doing this adjustment is not one that we take lightly.

Um, but it is our our best effort at this juncture. All right. Knit up it. It says it includes the charter.

But just like recognizing and saying it out loud that like 1 million for capital is not the same as 1 million for salaries. 1 million for capital is actually equal to 820,000 for salaries. Correct. So like when removing it, DPS doesn't get much.

Um and that's not necessarily like to say that we should give more. That's just to point it out that we have that fee. and wondering so my question also related to that is have we had a conversation with DPS commissioner chair alarm chair alarm I hate to say this can you start over because we actually couldn't hear you oh at first if you could now we can if you could start all over again sorry yeah I was saying that I just wanted to make a note that um that 1 million from capital expense isn't actually equal to 1 million in salaries because of that charter school fee that we have to pay. That moving 1 million is actually 800.

It translates to 820,000 to salary. And that's not necessarily to say that we should move even more to salaries, but just that we should be cognizant of that. And on that note, I wanted to confirm like have we been able to work with DPS to confirm that the money that

they have asked us for and that we are allocating to them to salaries properly calculates the amount that they owe to charters because I know that's been an issue in the past year and like I would like that to like and I know I missed the meeting. I was in surgery one last Thursday when they came and presented but like to get absolute confirmation from them that they're what we are funding to them includes the percentage that they like the with the calculations of how much it'll give increases to their staff that that's not dipping into the charter fees. That would be my first question. And then my second um point would be around like the presentation we just received. I honestly like from that presentation from the hate high justice reborn have a lot of concerns and questions um still remaining that like I didn't feel were answered adequately about like the services

provided to the value of like of the money public funding that they are receiving. Um because on one slide it's saying that they have cohorts of seven people, 7 to 10 people graduating in each cohort and then another slide says they're providing 750 services, but those services aren't actually provided by them. It's provided by other organizations. And I feel like that's not a fair representation of where our tax dollars are going that we are stewards of. Um, and I would actually like my preference is that we remove that funding from this budget cycle. I mean I won't begin to talk about the second statement that the uh com chair alam spoke to but as it relates to the first question I will say that uh the budget office David and I are very

6 million more from us to get full funding. 57 million. 57 million, Commissioner Lom, Chair Lom, I need to hear does include already the charter school money. 57 million includes the charter school amount needed.

57 and we're moving a million to that. So it's it's a dollar for dollar in this particular case. Did I hope that answers commissioner chair's question?

Yes. Um I wanted and I had that concern too that um the amount that they were estimating for the charter school sir charge making sure that's enough because I know in a couple of years past they miscalculated um so just making sure that's the right amount um with the hey Tyrie hearing that presentation and um thank you um commissioner chair Alam for your um response on that. Um, I would be willing to give them 500,000. I don't think they need the whole amount, but maybe 500,000 um to continue operations.

7 million within the last what, three years? Am I correct about that? And um I think we need to just start decreasing the amount and hopefully they come up with a plan to raise money to be, you know, self- sustaining. But I'm

willing to go to 500,000. Um give them this one more year to figure out how they're going to go about to raise financing. So just so you all know, there is $1 million budgeted in the manager's recommended budget for Hatai. So to go down to 500,000, you would see us put on that ad delete a minus500,000.

5 million ask for DPS. Just giving you the numbers. Okay. So we have five minutes. This is a nice picture, but can we see the ad list? Um yeah, I I agree with um I support what um Commissioner Burton had suggested because what I also heard in their presentation and I made a point of emphasizing that too was that 500K for them as a continuation budget and I

don't think that any of us are you know we are not looking at expansion budgets for anybody. Um, you know, we really, I mean, we're trying to support DPS in that and we're doing that in public safety in Durham County, but nowhere else in our departments. So, I I just, you know, we're in that austerity time. And um I think also I I agree they they need to really come up with a sustainability plan um moving forward.

and and also I think we will be in that process of everybody with having a a new nonprofit funding process. Um they can participate in that. Um so if we cuz I really don't I see what was projected there around a tax increase and I'm not comfortable with going up on taxes to that degree that's proposed there. Um, so I I would I hope that this can also help us reduce what we may have. I I

really don't want to increase our taxes. So I'd like to see where that gets us to if we can reallocate that $500,000. The math on the spreadsheet very quickly shows you if I take $500,000 down for Hay Thai, it gets us to where we still need a onetenth of 1 cent increase. 5 cent tax rate increase.

6 cent tax rate increase. 5 million to DPS current expense, taking $1 million away from DPS current capital, decreasing Hay $500,000 to a budget of $500,000. And the net of that is you're still out of balance $900,000. In order to make up that $900,000, we need we're proposing a onetenth of a cent tax rate increase and

the use of $46,000 in additional general fund fund balance. So going back to the vehicles budget, there wasn't any area that you all felt like we could decrease a little bit. We I mean we did that approach before and it ended up costing us more money and in a time when we are they're just unknowns about the impact with tariffs we're just concerned with the pricing of of what will [Music] happen to give you a frame of reference that onetenth of 1 cent increase is $3 on a $300,000 house. 5 cents. That onetenth of 1% of 1 cent,

excuse me. All right. Well, that's about as far as I'm willing to go. Valentine, you have anything?

Your mic is on. Yes. Uh, thank you, chair. Uh, chair.

Yes, vice chair. Acting chair. I like it. Um, I I guess I agree with my uh colleague in uh at least on one regard with regards to um taxing our our residents.

I'm very concerned about that. Uh I've heard from uh a large swath of of our community on this on this question. " But in light of the the uh reappraisal and the current environment we're in, um I'm just I'm not comfortable with raising taxes uh in this environment. And so to the extent that we do it, uh I I think I could

could go along with the proposed in this particular instance. Now, with regards to the reduction of uh Hatai Reborn, uh I've already been on record and said that I I was I I would support them in in uh the proposed um budget request, but to the extent that this gets us to where we need to go to to solve another problem in our community with regards to our budget, I'm willing to agree. Plus, it would appear to me that the math is there for my side of the equation. And so it may be that we're we're uh going in that direction.

So I'd be willing to support it. Okay. All right. We're going to be ending up here. I just want to I'm not going on record yet to say which way I support with the Hay Thai justice uh program, but I will say let us think about so we're if this starts to drive

it not to not to be in action anymore. We're that'll be two programs that have been reduced for their constituency. Let's think about the larger picture for those who are working towards black and brown individuals who are having having cha challenges. My concern is when you when like with the Bull Bulls United Bull City United program when when these things happen at individual times you can't see a collective action. you can't see like a collective strategy or emotion. And so if we we do that with bull u bull whatever challenges that they had is gone with this we're starting to get down to only operational cost and may not they may not be able to increase what they're doing.

If that if we're starting to decrease there and that's a separate motion, something else comes down the line, we start to decrease, we're actually divesting from the programming in which they are targeting. And I want to make sure that we're not doing that inadvertently without thinking about the larger picture of who's being served. All right, that is my concern here. That is that is my concern when I hear the comments about this, you know, the services so forth.

But we've already gotten rid of one of the one of the organizations that are doing these services such as this. Not exactly in line, but kind of services in that area. Now with this one, there's like a lot of discernment about what's happening, but it's services, right? the services we need, we talk about, we campaign about when we're running for county commissioner and for our roles, school

boards, mayor, whatever. If we continue to divest throughout Durham, you know, there's not going to be anything left and I fear for that. That's all I wanted to say about I'm not saying which way I'm supporting this and I hear the comments. I'm here to learn more and then make a decision.

I'm going to go hang out with them for a little bit and learn a little bit more. But I mean, I share your concerns, but I share the larger concern about the services that are being restra constrained from Durham Durham youth uh and and so forth. All right. Are there any other comments here?

Because we're like three minutes past and I gotta go. Vice Chair, I just would like to say I appreciate your comments. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

Yeah. I I would actually say I I want to really create a bigger context that actually Durham County heavily invests in serving the the population that Hire Report is also serving. We

have an entire justice services department of 86 people that focuses on re-entry and we have a re-entry council and they do case management connection to resources. That is actually what our department does and even you know they they in their expansion budget they want to focus on youth. I would just say that that, you know, we just we're expanding our uh project build program in this year's budget and we're going to be giving redirecting some of the BBC BCU funds into that program which is serving again our our atrisisk youth and through the ARPA funding we we fund many many organizations. So I just I I don't agree with what you said about that we are not actually serving this population that we're pulling back. I said we are a reduction is a reduction. If we had even if it's a 100

organizations doing it reducing two is a reduction of those services. So okay I didn't say we're not okay but the 500k is what they said is continuation. They said the million is expansion. So, we're not reducing, we're maintaining.

Okay, I know you got to go. I just want to say numerically, we're $900,000 out. We're proposing onetenth of a cent. 4 million out.

So, just that number is 900,000 we're trying to figure out for tomorrow plus or minus anything you all have numerically in your head. That's where we are right now. We'll talk about it again in the morning. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Okay. We're ajourned. All right. Thank you.