Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · May 16, 2023

to the 2022 Geo Bond referendum where we told taxpayers we would need up to two and a half cents in an increased tax rate to support upcoming future Debt Service or annual debt payments related to that Geo Bond referendum because our Revenue sources are doing so well particularly property tax revenue and sales tax revenue we've only have to do one and a half cents at least this year next year is always next year it depends on if we add more capital projects to the C CIP and we're going to update the CIP this summer probably going to have a brief discussion about the where we are in the existing CIP on June the 5th all that to be said one and a half cent tax rate increase for the general fund one and a half cent tax rate increase for Capital financing related to the 22 Geo Bond we have one of the managers main priorities if not the main priority of this budget was uh supporting County Employees through also supporting some mag study compensation increases support for another main priority with

4 million dollars of the total dtcc budget in fact they may come and talk to you I know they're on one of the upcoming agendas to talk to maybe expanding the use of those scholarship dollars to some other things at such a large amount so another priority is position growth to support a county emerging County needs I will say and I'll show you on a slide later and I've already shown you before we really tried to limit the growth in new positions this year largely because we have a lot of vacancies it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be putting new positions on the County payroll and

2 million dollars of arpa funding to help the general fund even as either as a direct Revenue offset or supporting some specific areas and Claudia we'll talk about that later on today we are fully funding annual vehicle and Equipment David what is it like 40 plus vehicles I think 59 vehicles at four plus million dollars we normally fund anywhere from 40 to 50 plus Vehicles a year most of those are replacement vehicles in public safety either the sheriff uh Leo vehicles and or ambulances or or Fire Marshal vehicles in that sort and sometimes General Services we are using additional

general fund fund balance as a revenue Source this year because our our general fund fund balance has grown you've seen that uh presentation from Finance earlier in the year and so we're going to take some of those saved dollars and put them into play I know commissioner Carter has asked about that pretty consistently and then we asked departments and we also worked with departments and we worked amongst ourselves in management to help balance the budget by making two and a half million dollars in operational Cuts what does that mean we didn't cut bone from departments we didn't take the blood we weren't vampires what we did was we looked at the trending of their spending at the end of year spending over the last several years and saw that across the county we left multiple millions of dollars on the table in other words it was budgeted and never spent at the end of the year and so we reduced that a little bit that's not a good use of County dollars budgeting money having it sit 365 days and then not doing anything with it you either want to purchase

8 million dollars in natural growth in the revenues of the ones I'm showing you that is a significant amount of growth in Revenue before you all decide to increase the property tax rate or

8 million is coming from property tax and that's just another sign of the local economy as property valuation increases during the year we capture that valuation growth and it turns around and makes additional property tax revenue sales tax revenue has just simply exploded frankly David and I have been trying to catch up for the last two years as it relates to sales tax estimates you would have thought when covid occurred in downtown was eerily quiet and no one was staying in hotels and everybody was staying at home that people wouldn't purchase items to which this where sales tax is collected from in fact the opposite happened since covid the growth in sales tax revenue has been the highest I have ever seen year over year and David and I

9 million almost 14 million dollars in new sales tax revenue medical Medicaid hold harmless funds is a revenue source that has grown in the last five to six years and I'll Show a slide on this from a nine hundred thousand dollar Revenue Source annually to 12 million dollars we're budgeting in 23 24. that's a three million dollar increase from last year that Medicaid hold harmless is from a state law change that happened a decade ago if not longer where the state took over County Medicaid costs and in taking over those County Medicaid related costs they also took away our article 44 sales tax the state law said if article 44 sales tax over collected

8 million dollars in new new Revenue before property tax rate increase Capital financing plan fund it also has

2 million has come into our call First that allows us not to have to raise it

6

9 million dollars going to Durham Tech we have a one million dollar Detention Center contract that can be talked about a little bit later but that's where we're going to consolidate the service support for the detention center right now the sheriff has to go to a number of

5 million dollars and then we're supporting some of those costs through reallocation of existing dollars just wanted to give you an idea of what those costs were one of the big ticket items now back to the revenues our biggest Revenue sources anyone care to take a guess what our single biggest Revenue source is thank you ladies thank

you very much you are exactly right property tax revenue property tax revenue comes from property tax valuation that is the value our tax department puts on property and says your house costs this much and we're going to charge you on based on that valuation what I want you to notice here is the valuation growth for Real Property over the last 10 plus years and what you can see are sort of three distinct areas if you look from 14 15 to 17 18 you see two percent plus then if you go from 1819 to 2122 you see three two almost three percent and then you see 22 23 and 23 24 at getting above well above three percent those are David and I frankly were happy with two plus percent growth in valuation we thought that was fantastic then it went up to three percent and we're looking at each other wider now it's close to four percent I'm going to show you that on the next slide and we're simply done that's great

is it is it going to last I don't know and I'm concerned about that you don't all necessarily have to be concerned but we are in very good times right now and I don't know that the good times always last to that end I'm showing you here all property valuation and you see those three different sort of they're not decades but three different sort of time periods sort of five-year groupings of time years or four four-year groupings two percent three percent and we're at four percent growth in Total Property evaluation property evaluation is made up of real property which is where a house sits in a piece of land there's business personal properties if you own a boat if you're a person you have to pay taxes on that boat or if you're a business and you have uh Factory equipment in that business you have to pay property taxes on that and it's the value of your vehicle if you have a vehicle and then there's uh public property that number doesn't change it but all of those added together create total valuation

increasing annual valuation feeds your annual growth and property tax revenue without a property tax rate increase yes ma'am can you just talk a little bit more though about how what is the interaction between this and a reval rebound hasn't happened yet I know but looking at the trend here so the last reval was in 2019. correct so I'm just trying to understand would we see a growth a natural growth if we did a rebound would we see a bump in that you David can explain it a little bit we were supposed to have one this year there's a state formula David you you so natural natural growth is allowed to be recognized in revaluation years it's more formulaic than actual valuation because the formula looks at the past years before the natural growth before

the reval so for example in 1920 I think we look back at the two or three years prior whereas in 15 16 or 16 17 it looked back at the seven years so we will be able to capture some projected natural growth on top of whatever the revenue neutral calculation is we you see in brinson's office did a great job of explaining and he will also be able to explain in more detail the projection of overall valuation increase that will reset the tax rate okay all right Dwayne Brinson assistant County manager so what what you're not seeing here on this chart um this this chart is natural evaluation it doesn't take into account the economic adjustment you see during a reval year if you look at the the overall growth that we would experience over these years the fiscal year 1617 and the fiscal year 1920 you'd see a very large

Spike in those years this is only natural growth growth that comes from new construction new buildings being built but in the revalu Years you're going to have an additional economic Spike where every property in the county is brought up or down to its then current market value so in the reval year which currently is January 1st 2025 we're scheduled for 23 but it's uh January 1st 2025 right now you'll see this sort of natural growth but on top of that in addition to that we're going to have the updating of values right now all this growth that's been happening in the market the last couple years that's going to be captured in the next revaluation we're kind of offsetting that like I mentioned in my presentation a couple months ago is the revenue neutral rate which the board doesn't have to adopt that but it has to be published as part of the budget the revenue neutral rate so it accounts for you know this David was just saying that

um by the natural growth you can count that as part of the calculation for the revenue neutral rate so basically what that does your Tech hypothetically I want to emphasize that hypothetically if the tax base were to increase by 50 percent when we did a revaluation the revenue neutral rate would offset that growth and it would tell you what tax rates you need to produce a similar amount of Revenue the following year as if the reval didn't occur as if all we had was natural growth show you historically how much the property tax rate drops it's like 20 plus years and you're getting ready to see it in a few slots I think people are already starting to ask what is going to the next reval is going to be it's going to be significant we're going to see a revenue neutral rate down in the 60s if not the high 50s it just is a rough guess it'll be the lowest Revenue

77 million dollars

2 billion dollars in one year is significant what does it all mean when we talk about a three cent tax rate increase well three cent tax rate increase would bring our tax rate up to a potential a recommended

6 million dollars or an additional

87 tax rate increase you can see each of the years thereafter some years there were no tax rate increase The Columns are the interesting number in this graph those represent Delta amounts the change the increase in Revenue the blue part of the column is natural Revenue growth and the green part of the column is the related to the tax rate increase what I really want you to notice is look at from 1314 to 17 18 and look at the blue part of those

columns you see natural growth in property tax revenue five six five six four those amounts of Revenue growth that's nice we learned to live with that but starting in 1819 what do you notice differently about the blues you see 10 million in natural growth in property tax revenue 9 million then look at the last three years 15 15 and 16. do you understand what I mean when I say we are seeing growth in Revenue sources particularly in property tax that we've never seen before this is natural growth that's entirely different numbers than 5 million a year and 5 million years triple that amount which has allowed you to continue to support schools or compensation increases or vehicles or new positions any number of new things without a tax rate increase this excuse me is the history of the property tax rate I could go back farther but this is far enough to fit to be able to be seen from 2000 to 2001 all the way to the current year so in 2000 2001 we had

97 cents per 100 evaluation the probability is that your house valuation was much lower than what it is today but you can see each one of those red lines is where we had a revaluation and that was the revenue neutral rate where it dropped down sometimes we had a tax rate increase on top of a revenue neutral rate and then we progressively started adding the tax rate and then it would drop after eight years or then it would go four years from 1617 to 1920. and we're on the cusp in 24 25 of having another revaluation that will probably drop that number down into the low 60s or high 50s and again like I said we will have the lowest tax rate we've ever seen that's only half of the equation remember the other half of the equation is the value of your house if you're being personal about it that will not be the lowest you've ever seen probably be the highest you've ever seen so give and take other special property tax districts there's no recommended

property tax rate increase for any of the fire districts or the special tax District in fact there's a one cent tax rate decrease related to the Durham County Fire and Rescue District which oversees overlays the RTP area they're doing so well in collections they requested a one cent tax rate decrease however there has been increased communication between RTP RTF the Research Triangle foundation and County Management in the last week or two and they may come talk to you in fact I think we have them scheduled to come on May the 24th to discuss some property tax rate increases they are requesting those requests simply came in after the manager's recommended budget so lots to discuss but as it relates to the manager's recommended budget no special tax rate District increase in property taxes which is a good thing sales tax our second biggest Revenue Source has increased massively because David and I finally caught up with the trend what does this mean we're looking

4 million dollars

25 it could be three percent it could be five percent it could be ten percent let's hope it's not a negative number when we go backwards but this amount of growth don't get used to it it's a one-time money in your pocket historical sales tax revenue three and a half million remember these are the same sort of graphs you saw in the first one the orange line is actual sales tax collection the green line is what we had budgeted David and I are always trying to get the green line close to the Orange Line you can see we finally took that jump in 2324 the key number here or

the or the columns you can see the Delta amounts that's the growth from one year to the next in 2021 do you know why David and I budgeted a negative amount there you might have any idea at all in the middle of the pandemic David and I were looking around going there's nothing in the economy happening we can't budget clearly but but clearly we were wrong look at 2122 we're like oh it actually went up more than we thought it would so we bumped up our budget 11 million dollars eleven million dollars and then 21 million dollars this year I show you the same graph over more years again this is like that property tax graph look at what we were had the Delta amount the growth in sales tax revenue those are the blue columns in previous years compared to the last three years two million nine million was an outlier but five five three three five then we jump up to 11 11 and 21 million those are like super raises you are killing it at your job and you're

25 anyone care to take a guess why register of deeds fee revenue is decreasing commissioner long they aren't buying houses do we do we not and the reason they're the reason they're not buying houses or the same reasoning investment revenue is going up because interest rates are significantly higher it's much more expensive not only how are housing prices out of control by themselves in Durham County now the cost of taking on a loan has gotten that much more expensive so largely due to interest

5 million dollars like I told you earlier these counties right here historical Medicaid hold harmless at this point every County in red gets no money back from Medicaid hold harmless every County in blue gets money back what do you notice here rural Southeastern North Carolina Northeastern North Carolina are suffering in any number of economic metrics and this is a perfect one and then some Mountain County surprisingly enough Charlotte Mecklenburg does not

get hold harmless money back they must have a significant population that costs them in terms of Medicaid remember the states taking on the Medicaid costs but I just wanted you to see this graph this is really a stark indicator of the struggles of places nobody buys stuff in northeastern North Carolina Halifax County Scotland Neck places like that nobody goes to Lumberton in Robson County anymore I used to go to the movies there when I lived at White Lake but I'm not even helping them out anymore with that all that being hmm this this is a great little graph this is part of the sales tax information I send out every month to all those people who care to see it but it tracks data that David helped me collect it's Medicaid collection and this is for Durham County the green line is the amount of sales tax that the county had given to the state article 44 and the growth in that the blue line that light blue line is the cost of Medicaid for the county in each of those years

up until 2015-16 Medicaid costs related to the county that the states were higher than this article 44 sales tax that the state was getting to pay for our Medicaid costs after that year it flipped what I want you to notice is from 2021 to 2023 look at how fast the article 44 sales tax growth has grown compared to County related Medicaid costs that difference is the 12 million dollars we are going to get back important to note you've heard about Medicaid expansion probably on the federal and I guess state level it that will not affect this so the the Medicaid expense line here will not be affected by that so this income appears to be pretty dang stable right now with the growth of sales tax but again this is doubling economic sensitive and I'll stop yes ma'am commissioner Carter so does it also mean then David that does it also not mean then that the

reason the blue Medicaid cost line has not gone up as quickly as we might have expected and therefore we're getting more money for for the Medicaid hold harmless it has nothing to do with the fact that we're not serving enough of our population that needs the services does it you see what I'm saying are we or would we know I mean is is that a is that is there any reason to be concerned that that could be a potential factor in this I know there are experts in our Human Services departments who would be able to answer that much better but I we're we're meeting the needs of the of those that qualify for Medicaid as far as the state is concerned and Medicaid expansion is going to expand those that qualify as I understand it to determine if there's more people in need is a whole different part of the Medicaid structure that I would have to defer to experts I guess we don't think we're not we don't think we're we're seeing a cost savings because we're serving fewer people who qualify and who might actually need the services you know because we don't have the capacity or

for whatever reason we're not reaching them you see what I'm saying I do it I don't know that the budget office can answer that question like how many people are we serving less than we could and that's the reason right all I know is that based off of this trending the metric is is that the amount we're gaining in sales tax is outpacing whatever metric the state is using to say this is related Medicaid costs I will costs are going up it's just we're getting more money back from the state than the costs are going up correct you'll notice the the Blue Line like you pointed out is the Medicaid expense the state is now paying directly increasing so they've either cared for more or allocated more money the last few years but the sales tax that Keith talked about a little bit ago was just going so so much faster than it Nets to a greater Revenue it would probably be well it's called Medicaid old harmless it's probably a little disservice if we viewed this as Revenue based on not paying for Medicaid I don't know quite this is what the county would have spent

or passed through for Medicaid experience the problem is if there's a problem and there's always a dark cloud in my world the Dark Cloud it's there's two things economically that could happen at the same time to shrink these up if the economic if the economy slows down and more people are out of work they may be more people to your point available to get Medicaid so the Medicaid costs could rise at the same time the amount of sales tax collection could decrease and those two numbers could go the Blue Line could go higher and the green line could go lower and that 12 million number could suddenly become nine and that's a loss of three million to US does that make sense so that is the only concern with this Revenue Source it's a magical money as far as I'm concerned you can see the growth from nine hundred thousand in 1516 to almost 12 million and 2223 that's massive growth in a single Revenue Source but it's highly economically variable in fact you can see in 2021 to 2122 that big jump in the

blue line is related to covid cost and Medicaid so all it takes is another pandemic or slowing down of the economy or who knows what and costs could go up and our Revenue Source could go down it could be a double hit commissioner Jacobs yeah I just want to say to Heidi's point though is that the estimates are there at least 30 000 people in Durham that will qualify for Medicaid if we have Medicaid expansion and so to her point that blue line is going to go up after we have Medicaid expansion and I think the reason why you see it go up after 2021 is because of the public health emergency because we stopped doing recertifications every year for who qualifies for Medicaid so basically everyone who was on it got to stay on it now as of May 11th

everyone has to now reapply and get re-certified and so some people are probably going to lose their Medicaid coverage so I mean to Heidi's point I think we do want to see that blue line go up because we want to see more people be covered you know by Medicaid so that has a direct Financial cost to us in in one in another area while it's a positive in that area absolutely we talked about fund balance and and you all have seen our fund our general fund fund balance grows significantly as we've over collected Revenue intended to underspend our expenditures but in relation to that every year we have increased the amount of fund balances as a revenue Source every year in particular for the year coming up we've increased it by three million dollars we're now at total of almost 30 million dollars we're using a fund balance as a revenue Source we don't expect to use

all of that 30 million but we're very possible we're on the brink of very possibly spending some of that 30 million dollars and slowly burning through some of that what we might consider excess fund balance yes ma'am commissioner Carter I am not in finance David and I did some back of the napkin estimates we think we're probably going to stay flat we have to see the end of the into the year reports which we're not close to you asked a question and it got Claudia's attention so we'll let her hahaha I've been trying to stay over there I've been like doing directing traffic from there y'all haven't seen that we we will give you an estimate of projected year-end fund balance in um towards your June 1st meeting we as Keith shared we don't anticipate huge growth

this year um but uh there are so many factors that we can't put our arms around until later such as we don't get final sales tax dollars until after June and um yeah so there there are some things that may make the numbers lower than we expect we're also gauging year-end encumbrances so if folks have ordered supplies and y'all May reorder or a car or equipment and you may recall Lois's explanation house she at the end of the year couldn't get her item because it was on back order if we have some of those kinds of scenarios that may mean that some dollars we thought would roll to fund reserves because we were going to counsel that in Congress we would carry that forward which would reduce the amount of fund balance but we don't expect large growth yeah

particular you all have hit fund balance several times this year to purchase things partially because you knew you had it to spend an example is as we came to you or just recently and said let's go ahead and buy 11 ambulances this year because it's taking so long to get them and where did we get that money from we got it from fund balance we will not recoup that fund balance so as Claudia is saying we don't quite know how our revenues are going to end up because it's going to be almost October before we see the end of this year we do know we have spent more money we have spent more on salaries we've spent more operational dollars in our operating budget and we've appropriated fund balance for use by certain things all with the knowledge that our fund balance number was pretty high and we were working towards at least if not going lower definitely slowing the growth but I will just make one more comment you know when you look at the growth the question always becomes how do you plan for the next year if something happens and you don't have

that capacity we could point in our budget to at least 30 million dollars of somewhat one-time expenses whether it's travel vehicle purchases it's a lot of different places we could point to if we had to then plan for if that resource wasn't there and so as we think through what's The Balancing Act between raising taxes and using your savings and it is what do you have in reserves but hedging on longer term what does this look like when you start doing it because we have been creeping up and it makes me very nervous we can go on you got a check there's no money in the check they say you got a check right check where do you write a check I I I'd equipment I think we spend money it's a it's equivalent to if your grandparents grew up in the Great Depression they may have a huge savings account but they're

24. averaging again you see 20 million dollar growth in the general fund 2210 and then you see 37 44 and 52. I show

5 million pay for performance uh I won't go through every one of these um let's see things that might be of those opioid settlement funding we're going to appropriate 623 000 of that

5 million dollars I want to point out as massive as the revenue increases have been we still needed to make two and a half million dollars in Cuts even with a three cent tax rate increase to get in Balance we're stretched pretty thin we're growing pretty fast and as part of that growth we also had to trim a little bit and that's two and a half million dollars so even with amazing Revenue growth even with the three cent tax rate increase we still needed to and found two and a half million dollars in Cuts that's to be expected and we're happy and proud to do it but I'm just telling you it's not just free money flowing everywhere we're also having to contract to contract shrink in some other areas and hopefully moving forward with a new strategic plan we're going to look closely at where we can reallocate dollars from doing old less productive things to new productive things more

5 and then it dropped a little bit in 17 18 19 20 all again prepping around covet and where we had the revenue support things it jumped up to 64 and 49 but this year the key year 2324 the manager specifically wanted to keep position growth at a minimum where possible to only 20 positions and this is all for six of those 20 positions are in Enterprise fund and are supported with fees in those funds so it's really only about 13 plus positions in the in the general fund that are supported with property tax dollars that's lower growth normal that's all great it's provides services but you add on 300 400 new positions or 250 new positions over five years you're eventually going to have to have a place to house all those people

there are indirect costs that go with these positions that aren't accounted for every year even though we pay for their salaries and their benefits new position growth what I want to show you here is the blue line is the record the dark blue line is requested ftes and the lighter Blue Line are recommended or approved ftes just showing you the growth so down in 1314 we're at 1900 roughly and we're now going to be at what is the number David to 2246 well that's what it is this year plus another 2268 so close to 300 plus positions in those number of years just showing you the growth that table shows you all the new positions being supported and we'll go through these in more detail as you talk with some departments and this is also on your summary document as well new positions that are being recommended across all the funds remember I told you there are six positions are highlighted in green that are related to Enterprise funds all the positions that have no

3 new positions are specifically recommended for the new youth home in the assessment center and some of that discussion is going to be had on May the 24th and then there's some positions in isnt to support growth there in in various other places this graph is it looks complicated basically it's just showing you the movement of money around funds and I've tried I think one of the Commissioners a number of years ago tried to ask for how does the financial system look this is how it looks if I were to turn visualize what's happening with the number the simple thing to see is the flow of money in and out like General uh swap fund money goes to The Debt Service fund Capital Finance fund money remember we collect property tax and sales tax revenue in the capital financing fund to pay for cost in The Debt Service fund so we move money from the capital financing fund to The Debt Service fund to pay annual Debt Service we move money from the general fund to

the public Arts fund or excuse me to uh the benefits plan fund how do we pay for our health insurance and vision and all that we pay for it we charge the general fund and move that money to the benefits plan fund to pay for our self-insurance so we have lots of money moving around I want you to know we have money from the capital financing fund annually going to the public art fund you all requested a public art fund to slowly start building up money for public art we annually are putting money in there we put 500 000 in there last year we're putting five hundred thousand dollars in there this year I believe we have have a public art contracted position as part of this budget we're going to see if that's enough to fund it there was a request for a full-time ongoing public art coordinator I think we wanted to slow down and see if that actual need was there so we're going to do a contract position this year and then start planning on spending that million but we'll we'll slowly start adding money to that public Arts fund we're taking arpa dollars and opioid dollars and moving some of that money to the general fund to support things that I've already noted any

questions about this beautiful graph yes ma'am commissioner Carter I have always liked this graph the ever inscrutable swap fund um is there any chance that there's an increase there that we don't need to put into debt service because we've already had an increase in the Capital Finance fund and some of that swap fund increase I don't know if there was an increase you haven't really talked to us about as well the swap fund is is eventually going to go away it was it had been collecting it's a great thing we've collected over 17 million dollars in that fund and that fund is sitting there and it's part of supporting Capital financing so it will be used a little bit next year a lot in the upcoming 10 years of the CIP to help offset the fluctuations and costs year to year that's what that money is for but you talk about what we're earning on it we had been earning two million dollars a year we're down to less than 500 000 we're easing out of that program altogether in fact I only have 250 000

budgeted and I talked with Doug harder and he reminded me but I'd already known that we need to be getting out of that business from an appropriation standpoint so that is kind of going to go away yeah yeah any question yeah go ahead the finance team sort of watches how this in our financial advisors watch this actually daily because of the fluctuations in the market it's quite fascinating some days we hold our breath um yeah so uh we're we've benefited greatly from the fund but we're towards the end of the life I saw George quick at Susan tizon's retirement and thanked him again if he didn't do anything else which he did a lot he it was up it was he who decided to do this and over the course of the life of this fund it's and it's about to end 17 million dollars in money that

many other places would have never collected is what we collected is amazing commissioner Jacobs you um yeah I'm glad to see the public art fund as a separate fund I'm wondering why we don't do that for the land conservation money that we also appropriate every year half a million in my we don't have a special fund like public art fund land conservation fund which we do use to for all the conservation easements and things like that we do we have a project it's fun it's not a fun but it's a specific project it's County cash that goes into arpega but then each year we budget 500 000 a year for Jane chorus to access over time she may she may be working on multiple grants on one piece of property for four years and then when she's ready to buy a six million dollar piece of property she's got Federal money coming in and she's got to stay and then she'll go Keith I need to

she'll go to that project that's already got the five and and use some of the money that we built up it's not a fund but it works the same way it's a capital project and each year we budget 500 000 into that for open space yes we try to limit the number of funds that we have okay and we track that as a capital project fund this was unique with the public art fund but but we as Keith said try to achieve that we do achieve it and happen of course decades um and two other things one is um I guess the ABC money um I guess we're it's why we don't count on that as kind of a designated Revenue source which by the way I hope we are going to assume that they're going to be increasing their amount by another 100 000 as they have done so it would be I

7 million dollars it was after the manager's recommended budget you will see starting after May the 24th and add delete list and we're going to say there's a plus hundred thousand dollars in Revenue to offset additional costs that surely will be added to the budget fantastic and my last question it's not maybe you'll be for when we have further discussions but

I know a number of us have brought up the idea that it would be great if we had a Durham Community Fund that the private sector and the non you know um endowments could uh you know donate to that we could use for things like return Pre-K or affordable housing or transportation um um so let's say we had a fund like that what would that look like it would it would probably be a special Revenue fund if you think that red group because it's dedic it's Revenue it's a different type of Revenue source I I am ready to create the fund when I see the revenue coming in or do you think creating the fund might attract people to bring create the fund yeah we we can we can do that yeah sure that's all right so that would be where the red

25 think that also has a termination of the same time frame There's an opportunity

in the next four five six years to go back to Durham or Duke Regional and see what to do yes I there that was renegotiated I believe when uh former manager Mike Ruffin was here and it was extended extended out to 29 but it's that'll be three plus million dollars potentially that could stop from duke and I know you all consistently talk about getting money from duke for many of the services we provide so either continuing that type of discussion or some other form of Revenue Source but it's significant that would be lost in the next four to five years continuing to get money yes ma'am in some form or fashion if not related specifically to Duke Regional but the EMS Support Services you always bring that up the cost for particularly for supporting Duke University in any number of things so I always show you all this was

5 million dollars worth of Debt Service another 10 plus million 11 million goes to pay Pago projects of which one you will know commissioner Jacobs is the open space land acquisition project you were just noting so each one of those projects in blue get this basically County cash going to those projects that's just how that's part of the graph

6 percent this is the growth and funding for DPS

County funding for DPS it has grown again you see the same history here that you saw in revenues you see the blue columns 3 million four million six million four million seven million what do you notice about the last three years I see significantly higher growth Delta funding for Durham public schools in the last three years compared to the years before that that's just the new Norm but we have to have Revenue to keep funding at Double Digit million dollar increases this yes ma'am actually um I'm very glad to see this um I also noted that the general fund increased by almost 10 percent in the school funding increased six percent so it's not astronomically you know out of bounds no man words DPS per pupil pupil trending these are the number of students in the school system the blue line is DPS students and

the Orange Line are charter schools now the orange line is using the the graph numbers on the right side while the blue line is using the graph numbers on the on the blue on the left hand side what I want you to note is that during covid we saw a drop of almost 2 000 students that have yet to come back to DPS charter schools have continued they went flat a little bit during covert but they have picked up we are waiting to see DPS increase yes ma'am I just want to say we we ought to be alarmed here as well because I worry that the numbers the per pupil you know the the average daily membership is not going to increase back to what it used to be general assembly is about to start giving people who are very wealthy money to send their children to Durham Academy who already are sending their children there so you know I just think we're going to continue to see a loss of funding and a loss of students and I worry desperately I hear you and this graph actually says this is DPS enrollment against not only

9 million total funding for Durham Tech or 20 percent big chunk of that is for salary increases in a couple of new positions in that department it's additional

9 million dollars um 300 000 of that's for a few different things but just more than anything I want you to see your steady growth in funding support additional funding support as you try to move towards Universal Pre-K I don't know that number

9 is doing and what the future is for that and that's pretty much it thank you for your patience we have a budget work session on May the 24th the public hearings on the 22nd we have uh meetings budget work sessions planned for the first and the fifth we do not have a meeting planned for the sixth although we do have that date available I think you all might you could try to avoid coming in on the six but we have that time available if you want it okay we're all looking yes ma'am and I just um interject we did have a request for two other presentations to come in so it looks like we might write great so for commissioner Jacobs the request that you asked for gudrin I have included that on the May the 24th as we talk about behavioral health and mental health I

S gudrin and I asked gudrin to connect with this group and so they're going to come as well and then I think commissioner Alam has requested for the Durham Museum of History to come and I think we have them set for June the 5th after the CIP so those are the two groups so far that have been requested as additional people to be added to meetings as it stands that is during the work session we have four hours on June the fifth right now it's fairly light which is a good thing we were going to go over CIP particularly talking about animal control and some other issues and tell you where we're going as it relates to that remember I said we're probably going to do a full CIP refresh this summer and fall and come back to you in November December with an updated

two-year buy you biannual update of the CIP 10-year CIP and then we added on museum of history on to the fifth those are currently the only two things for the fifth but usually you all have a significant amount of time wrapping up because we'll have a list of ads costs and we'll go do you agree to this do you agree to that and then how are we going to pay for it we'll figure that out June the 6th is vacant we have the time we don't have anything on that date away from June well we're just holding that in case we have some other asks that we don't get to no Brenda an environmental that we cannot do that on having to take off of the culture

but now he's at three o'clock we should be able to have everything we're hoping you won't need the sixth at all and you can go to your other meeting we asked you to hold that time just for that I thought it said if needed as well y'all better email these before I go ahead went ahead and told them like that we could do it and I didn't think I didn't see anything on the sex on the calendar and I checked the County calendar I didn't see it um so we'll as we get closer we should know but as it stands now we're okay it looks like we don't need this as of today it the last date was June 6th yeah so if possible if we could do the seventh rather than the six would be helpful

[Music] the original date was June 7th but it was moved to June 6 because the 7th and 8th is the opioid um event that's been um held at the Marriott Durham Convention Center okay yes some Community we can't do it all right as usual if you have questions about the budget please write them up and send them to the budget office and we will try to turn around and get the answers back to you as soon as possible if you have questions right now David and I and Claudia are sitting right here I'll assume it was just so comprehensive a presentation that there's no questions I don't have a question but I do think

to respond to your warnings Keith I do think we need to have a macro economic view about um you know what's happening I actually just read an article last night before I went to sleep um about the migration of people with college degrees away from coastal cities some of the large cities into kind of second-tier cities and actually refers to Durham in the article and they also have a little graph where you can plug in where you live it's a little scary because it already had Durham in there that's a whole other thing um but what it showed is that and it tracks with the trends that you showed us during the pandemic we saw a boost in our property tax revenue and sales tax revenue but that really Trends with the impact of rising

costs in some of the big cities with housing and also the pandemic which a lot of people left and we saw that in migration to Durham people coming from New York San Francisco Seattle Chicago that's not a coastal city but but long story short what they're showing though is that there's still a dynamic where Durham is actually losing net pop our net we are net losing people with college degrees because they were tracking people coming in here with or without and basically so I don't know why that's happening but you know I think just the dynamic of housing costs and things like that and and different like I said some bigger Trends here we I think we have been in a little bit of a bubble with people being very interested in

Durham and to be realistic that it may not you know these Trends change in other cities become popular or you know quality of life issues um so that's why it's like if we don't get our Transit going uh and we don't have you know are dealing with all the tools in our toolbox around housing eventually we could you know see Trends change so I I just want to put that out there to say it does make me cautious to not think that what we're seeing is and then you know you get the dynamic of the state legislature and what their the impact that is going to have on us locally related to school funding issues I mean it is going to kill us because we're going to going back to your slide about our increased costs for our schools but a bigger and bigger chunk of that money that we're giving to Durham

Public Schools is going out the door to the charters which will you know so it's just a very complex Dynamic and I appreciate us actually being conservative in I'll just stop there while we're healthy then after the fact and we're scrambling because we're far out spending what we're bringing in so it's worth thinking about strategic plan and reallocation and efficiencies go ahead I'm just going to say that was a conversation we had about reducing our budget or cutting our budget now we didn't have to do that but we just thought it was prudent to do that so that we can make room for the times when we are stretched then that

we've already thought about how can we become more efficient and how can we operate maximize our operations um without having to do so yeah it's easier to have those conversations when you don't have to thank you all right next counties for guaranteed income is next and so we're going to have our chief of staff yes Miss Shannon Trapp to come up so just keep in mind this is a preliminary conversation but we wanted to bring to you all just some proposals and and some components of the guaranteed income that you can think about we're we're asking for your input on this so that we can formalize a um and finalize some decisions but this

is the first of what will probably be a few conversations to get us to a program that would be to your satisfaction all right good afternoon Madam chair Madam Vice chair Commissioners and Madam County Manager we're going to as the county manager said briefly discuss our plan for counties for guaranteed income and get your input on what uh you'd like to see come out of this program I'll give you a little history which some of you don't actually need because you were included in this history so in June 2020 Mayors for guaranteed income was founded as a guaranteed and compiler by former mayor of Stockton Michael Tubbs The MGI Coalition has grown to over 100 Mayors and the City of Durham launched its pilot in January 22. counties for guaranteed income launched in 23 and chair Brenda Howerton and commissioner Alum are founding members of the CGI

coalition the mission of counties for guaranteed income is a coalition of County elected officials from across the United States working to ensure that all Americans have an income floor so let's talk about the Durham County pilot eligible participants in Durham counties guaranteed income program which we have called decode Thrive are defined as low-income families with children under the age of 18. now the data is based on 748 residents who are currently receiving erap funds this is not indicative of all Durham County residents but just of that sample group of recipients for those funds we will collect some data on full County residents but we're using that as our as our margin for this at this point if we're looking at residents that are at or below 30 percent of the Ami that's 63 percent about 471 recipients of erap funds at 50 percent that's about 202

residents and at 80 percent that's about 75 residents we will leave it to your discussion and decision on which measure you'd like to see implemented and Deco thrive select the applicants will rent will be randomly sorted into two groups a stipend recipients and comparison participants stipend recipients will receive financial support each month in addition to compensation for survey completion and comparison participants will only receive compensation for the survey completion we estimate 125 stipend recipients and 125 comparison participants for a total of 250 participants in the pilot program the county will provide guidance on the administration of the program through a program manager who will serve as liaison to our partners via a memorandum of understanding counties for guaranteed income will operate as consultant technical assistance provider convener and strategist for the pilot via a funds

5 million at a thousand dollars per month for the 125 recipients pilot surveys we estimate a hundred dollars per month for each participant for a total of 250 participants at three

3 and 2 million dollars I want to also make note that our third party contractor this is one note I want to just emphasize will also when I say confirm eligibility for those who are receiving the erap funding they will confirm that being a participant in Deco Thrive will not impact the current benefits that they're also receiving and so if it's going to negatively impact their household that applicant won't be considered to continue with the program because we don't want to cause any further conflict

so just to give you some information on what is currently happening in guaranteed income based on the data and I've linked here in the presentation to the website the dashboard is showing that there are 7 341 participants in the program right now and this is a this is a chart describing where those uh D where those monies are going where they're spending based on the data and the research and we see that the number one place for where they're spending those monies are retail sales and services and number two being food and groceries so our next steps would be to approve a resolution to support the counties for guaranteed income and Durham County's participation in the program that's once you've decided on what the pilot group will look like which group which Ami level we're going to go with and what the statement amount will be we look at hiring a program manager selecting a contracted party via RFP and then we'd

enter into a memorandum of understanding with the counties for guaranteed income and then we'd enter into a funds provision agreement with contractor party now I will open it up for your questions and discussion to start with reapprove [Laughter] then we'll go backward to the questions kind of go back to the the numbers the number that shows that that one funding so what I what I what I understand here is 750 000 at 500 a month for 125 people correct so in the pilot program you have two survey groups you have the group that receives the stipends which we estimate 125 will receive the actual and we estimate you know the the bottom at 500 a month of course you can see that some went up to a thousand so we gave you the variations of what the monthly

Figures were so you have the the one group that receives and then you have the group that is kind of the control group that does not receive the stipend they only receive um compensation for the surveys because the research center will assess both groups to see where they are and how they're spending and of course you all can decide if you wanted it to be 615 a month that's up to you but we were just giving you kind of some examples of the monthly stipends that other programs have used and I think the city Durham city use six hundred dollars a month um for the recipients that are in their pilot program Durham city uses 600 a month they are um according to the data on the website they have about 109 recipients and their program is for justice involved residents yeah 109. receiving the stipends they also have a control group but 109 are actually receiving disciples

um I think it's a good rate if we go to 600 then we're gonna have to add more money to it um if you when you look at the data on the GI dashboard the majority of the participants are doing it at 500 a month the majority that's what they're offering yeah when I talk to the folks in Cook County they were doing 500 a month and they got a lot more money than we did so go ahead commissioner Burns had her hand no I'm gonna since y'all doing this I'ma wait I want to hear what y'all got to say I'll wait I um I was actually interested in possibly the other side of it of like since the city has done 600 a month and we're able to pull their data of How It's impacted

and like the positive benefits obviously it's a different Focus area for justice-involved residents versus you know us is doing families with small children of doing a higher amount to see than measuring the two groups kind of like what significant impact did that hundred dollar or 150 jump possibly make and we don't yet have their data because their program is just launched and so we don't quite have their quantitative or qualitative data although some have reported some qualitative data we don't quite have Durham cities yet but that would be an option and you do can you do a comparison in the data from Cook County to the program that we have here we could we could look at what what their offerings are and then compare them to ours again although they started sooner they only had qualitative data out so we don't know all of their figures and their results but we could look at comparing what they're currently

doing and what you all are recommending thank you Shannon it's the first time you've had an opportunity to present before us thank you for your time your talent and your diligence um that was the the sweetness before the new show was it really because I mean I'm just seeing this so you know sis it ain't because you hate that commissioner Burns thank you so much at least it's on brand right so um you know I just I got questions and I did so one thank you for at least aligning it with e-wrap dollars and here is and not because that's a space that I've worked in but it we have had four groups to come in here even though they keep changing the name of their projects because they povert poverty poverty profiteers I ain't afraid to say it on camera they poverty profiteers um they come in here and they've been

asking for money for evictions okay now I'm smart enough to know I don't have to like the messenger to like the message if it's people out here being put out if it's folks who are homeless and Durham I was elected in the office to try to help as many people as I could I don't want folks facing homelessness I get what that's like so I do like that you at least aligned it with e-wrap dollars and the reason why because for everybody who don't know what that is that's emergency rental assistance program um so at least there's some alignment with this other request where my struggle is is that I got kind of like two questions so the 109 that are in the city I get those adjusters involved and we will be focusing on families I would want to know is there going to be any duplication of benefits so I would want to because you you know you can walk into gum at the same time you're gonna have some folks that are just as involved and have families right so I want to I want to see you know are we because that has happened in counties

like and quite frankly on this let me not even do that that happened with e-wrap dollars there's only one city in the state of North Carolina that had to give back money to the feds it wasn't Durham County and that's all I'm going to say um it wasn't us but it was one city that had to give money back to Janet Yellen and so I I do want us to be very careful about how we do this because what we don't want is people coming back to the poorest people in our community asking for money back because that's not fair to them because when do I do diligence and I know that we are um my other concern and I did talk to the manager about this only slightly it was only like a five minute conversation so we didn't go in there when we were thinking about the eviction request one of the issues that we saw with e-wrap money or any dollars two years three years trillions of dollars spent and folks still not working still not where we can give out as much money as we want and so we had

discussed like how can we be supportive around these dollars I don't want to tell people what to do with their money I'm not saying you got to put it on rent if you need to put it on diapers just put it on diapers if you got to put it on food or feminine products that's what I want you to do it for like I want this money to be able to be supportive but I also want us to think proactively about what it looks like in a year to take this once in a lifetime funding and give it to folks in a vacuum because we don't give money to Durham Tech in about a vacuum we don't give money to Durham public schools in a vacuum we don't give money to anybody in a vacuum and I just want to make sure like so I guess my big like what is this survey going to do because I want people to be better off when I'm not sitting here if I give somebody it's their adage you know teach a man how to fish I want people to know how to fish I'm just not I'll give you fish all day my daddy's like that I got food in my house everybody in this room got food in their

house but I also want you to be in a position to go out there so could somebody help me understand you know what other either wrap around support what work support are we connecting them to an interview because this will be done in a vacuum so if somebody could explain that I'll leave it alone yeah and I will address the um the duplication of benefits and so that is if if this board decides that we do want to allow participants that are just as involved in our parents if that's something that you decide then if you notice one of the points was it will be arpa or fund balance if it looks like providing assistance to just as involved people could jeopardize the arbor funding then we would choose to use fund balance funding as opposed to arpa funding so it really is dependent on how who you all want to help and then secondly those wrap around Services it is going to be critical

um the way that we structure the RF and this will be an RFQ a request for qualifications right and we have a lot more flexibility so we can we can put in those qualifications or that RFQ to have a provider that also provides wrap-around services such as job training classes or financial counseling or so that's what we would Endeavor to do if if we decide to you know based on how we structure it we would put that in the RFQ because we do want to offer now we can't mandate that people take advantage of that but we can certainly solicit that in the RFQ so that they would have access to those types of classes right I'm not trying to go all George Bush on this and do welfare work requirements right like that's what happened in the 90s it was an epic failure right but you know I guess again I hear people when they come in

here I don't have a problem supporting my two colleagues and this National initiative I don't I wish I would have been given more of a heads up but I I Can Vote Yes for things because it's the right thing to do but I do want to just elevate that we have had folks coming here whether we like them or not I don't like all of them but they have made some very real points about this eviction crisis in Durham and so for us to say yes we're going to fund this and we haven't even talked about the other thing I just I want to elevate that y'all that's all I'm saying and seeing how we can and I'm not saying we have to fund the program that was brought in here you all saw that long email I sent to that group I I did not agree with that administrative cost that they were asking for at all I thought it was too high I didn't think it was going to help as many people so I mean I can be critical and be affirmative in something going forward I just want us to really think about you know we're trying to support something but we still got this other thing that's coming here old times and we have not talked about it at all and I've been one

of the biggest folks saying Hey so uh I'll we'll see uh and I guess my last thing um the city is just starting theirs if you are able to get something from Cook County and see how this improved people's lives I mean I would be be interested in seeing I'm sure it has I just you know it'd be good for us to see it so at least we can explain that same thing to our community you know the the thing that commissioner Alam and I had privilege to experience was a large picture about what this meant we listened to the president of Cook County Commission and she's spearheading this so this is a larger conversation than we're talking about right now we talked about from the being it being funded from the federal level and we know right now that's that's going to be a little

bit difficult but what she has started across the nation is having conversations with Commissioners from All Counties so when we were in DC there were 17 counties that's undertaken this initiative there is a conference going on this coming week that they are inviting they invited I know they called me I don't know if they call them or not but they wanted more Commissioners to be at their conference and having this conversation so this is a a national conversation it's just not one County um so you know I supported in that not not just giving people crippling people but giving them I know when I was raising my

kid four kids and making 168 dollars every two weeks if somebody could give me an extra 500 do you remember what that meant to feeding kids when they come in the house and everything that boys the only thing the boys would say when they walk in the door was there's nothing here to eat what's to eat five hundred dollars would have made a difference in my budget and it wouldn't have stopped me from working and trying to better my family so you know I support this in that you know the city has already done a pilot program and they're getting ready to do their next one I just see this as a way of still lifting up out people in our community that are not at that middle income level um so

I I just think it's something that we can do it doesn't cost us all that much money we can give people in our community a lift up I'm all for it we do a lot of things and as far as families I'm all for supporting families thank you for your work on this Anna um so I have a few questions one is um I personally like the idea of focusing on 30 Ami or below that would be my priority I think to focus on our most vulnerable residents um I I like you know the idea one possibility of using you know the pool of people who have applied for e-brap funds as one determinant the other one

that comes to mind for me as DSS director I mean board chair is thinking about some of the other overlaps related to our the family's first prevention Act if there were also another possibility would be actually referrals from DSS although we would be in that situation where we can't jeopardize their existing benefits and put them over the edge so I don't know maybe that makes it too complicated but I think that if we're trying to support families upstream and prevent a lot of the stress that may relate to abuse and neglect or you know parents getting re people getting referred for CPS investigations and all that you know frankly it you know to your point Brenda it's a lot it takes a lot

of stress stress off of families and moms when they're not trying to put food on the table or you know struggling to pay the rent um the other population that comes to mind is also our family Justice Center um so I don't know you know maybe it's making things too complicated just for the first go around at a Pilot but I guess as much as we can think about our system our our system of early childhood and supporting families and children and like integrating this as another kind of Upstream investment and thinking about that way like I'm really excited about how we in how we're thinking about this in terms of our entire system and for instance like would we make sure that somebody's reaching out to these families and may and telling them about Pre-K or

um you know the funds this Child Care Subsidy funds that we have like are we going to make an effort to make sure they know about the other resources that exist for them I really like what commissioner Byrne said because I believe I'm pretty sure that's what step up has done who has managed the city's pilot they have absolutely done classes on budgeting and financial management and also connecting people to jobs job training so I I would like to know more about the city's pilot honestly um what their framework has been um because I think they actually did require the financial management piece possibly that went along with the money I'd be interested in knowing that and also just what were the

administration administrative costs um for them because if you do add up the contract and party Administration program manager the marketing I mean it is it is a lot of the it's like it's a it's a lot of the money um but you know I know we want to do it the right way and I like the idea of working with the University of Pennsylvania the counties for guaranteeing income research like being part of some you know something that is a kind of a data driven research focused effort I think is really good I know that we've done that with Bull City United we've been you know operating out of you know best practices in Chicago with that or wherever it is now but so I I think that's also a really good practice for us to continue um

and then in terms of the amount um I guess 600 is appealing to me because that's what the city did and I think being able to compare um looking at that amount compared to the city study would create some type of consistency with that um and I think that's it for my questions and comments right now but I'm excited about us you know doing this together thank you thank you I'll figure that out I'll figure it out thank you Shannon for like putting a framework around this for us or the beginnings of you know kind of an organization around which we can think about this initiative which I completely

support and um I want to thank Neva and Brenda for you know championing it for us and um allowing us to to really take this on and I do think there are ways that we can couple it with other Endeavors that we have going on in the county in the same ways that uh naimashina and Wendy suggested and I think it is important that we do that I I totally agree with that um and I wonder if we could get some advice from either The Early Childhood coordinator and or our Aces coordinator you know who are both people who are working around sort of policy recommendations for us I think um it seems like this might be a good project for some policy recommendations to come forward to us as far as what else do families need to alleviate stress right funding but and and how how

can they best maximize the use of of that funding and it might be through um you know with child care with a stipend through the stipends that we have to give out it might be some sort of Transportation you know stipend any of the social determinants of success it could it could include um and so I do think it's going to be really critical the structuring of the RFP you know what what are we going to want to ask for as part of that I do remember that during our early early arpa discussions uh the the Division of Community Health emailed us a lot and I think that they I think they put forward a proposal for some arpa funding and it was all around our neighborhoods that are the most socially vulnerable there's a CDC index with a social vulnerability index and it was all about the importance of neighborhood in place

um in predicting success and their proposal tried to to work with community-based Partners to address all the social needs that are relevant to health outcomes that you know Duke Health focuses on and that we focus on so I I would need to go back and look at their proposal but I you know you all may have it uppermost in mind or or not but maybe we could pull that forward to see are they indeed um in a position to work with Community Partners to help provide additional supports to any young families that we are providing our guaranteed basic income stipend to um so that something for us to consider I think as far as the structuring of the RFP and I hope I'm making sense I feel like I'm rambling a bit the other thing I would say is I was just writing down categories you know sort of like pools potential pools of recipients and I know

Wendy you mention several others too but I really like young families I really like that you know we're targeting young families I um agree I would go with the lowest you know income so the 30 Ami and I kind of I agree with my machine I I'm not sure she was a 100 expressing this sentiment that I'm going to now Express but I paid close attention to those um I'm sure you all did to those pitches from the Coalition for affordable housing and Transit around how we should consider using our guaranteed as a way of supporting our lowest income renters and so there may be a way to do both you know what's the intersection of all these different Target groups we're looking at and there may be a way to do it all and and also looking at the the the neighborhoods that um that the Division of Community Health had laid out as being ones that historically have been segregated you know during redlining and that their outcomes continue to be you

know among the poorest outcomes for health for wealth for Education achievement for everything and you know we we could really try to make some strides there so I'm glad we're doing this it's really complicated thank you for trying to simplify it for us we've done nothing but further complicated today of course but um I I think that we're we're going to be in a good place with this we're going to be able to make it happen thanks to great staff and and you know brainstorming Minds here that just won't stop um we're going to make it happen and I think it's great so thanks thank you yes thank you so much Shannon for spearheading this I know commissioner Howerton and I were Champions when really you have been the champion internally of getting this moving forward so I greatly appreciate that I think I agree with everything everyone has said I agree with the 30 Ami being the target Focus area and then hopefully

after the pilot program expanding it out of their um would be really great uh I do think I see how like the uniformity with what the city is giving in their stipend is helpful but it also just reiterating that I think being able to give more than that will also help us of just saying like even if it's a fifty dollar to 100 difference of how once we get data from the city we can compare it also to getting data from Cook County Cook County gives 500 the city gives 600 if we're giving more than that what those margins like what gaps does it close for different families and different residents I think that would be really interesting especially if we're partnering with the University of Pennsylvania I think it'll also be really beneficial for their data analysis to have different versions of the pilot in different variations of stipends I would just uh say that I

support more than the six hundred dollars to what extent that is I think we can discuss that in figuring out what that would actually equal out to I see we have 600 and a thousand or maybe like 700 what that way too thank you so much Shannon just one other question for me um you mentioned uh being able to analyze and ensure that individuals won't lose any of their other benefits um and how so how would you do that that is managed by the contractor party in the for the city side it's step up and so they manage that they manage the entire application process and for each applicant they look at what they're already receiving and benefits to make sure that receiving this funding would impose any issues it wouldn't cause more harm than good and so they will determine that and make sure that there's no no challenges therein and if we want they can also determine um

whoever whoever that I'm not saying it step up or whoever we choose to use they can also make sure that people participating in the Durham city pilot are also participating in the county pilot that's a barrier with something we want to make sure does not happen yeah yeah they're not participating in the one the city has and the county right yeah and so that will all be managed by that that third party yeah and I'm assuming that it would be too overly complicated then for us to look at like if a family could only accept 200 before losing other benefits to like have a family that receives 200 and then another family that could receive up to 600 without losing their benefits like a varied eyelid but that might get too complete maybe a second a prorated a prorated I mean like for the stipend amount yeah yeah that is that is not right that is complicated and it's it's not a tenant of the counties for guaranteed income so they have certain principles that if we are going to you know participate in the

pilot these are the parameters that we we agree to um abide by so one of them is that the participants get to use the money for whatever purposes they need them for so if we wanted to address the eviction diversion or or rental assistance it would have to be a separate program because we could not require them to use it and I would prefer that it's a separate let this be on its own and not right we can we can definitely um we're aren't going to say to them you have to use it beside that hey music gives them more money for rent you know so to me it doesn't really matter and Heidi I can I can almost guarantee

you anybody that's 30 lower they have a problem with rent so we don't I don't think we have to address it I think it's just going to be I think it's just going to be part of the DNA in this community that's why we're working so hard for um income for housing right now to get more more housing available commissioner Burns okay I actually I got to go back to netta's point because I think it deserves additional conversation and Merit perhaps not now but to her point I get I one let me clear up a couple of things I've been to the website I read the tenants I discussed that with commissioner long when she was given this prestigious opportunity and and I think it's laudable that we are moving forward with a lot of these tenants this is something she's cared about for quite some time she's worked towards it so I'm excited about it that being said

emergency food stamps ended a couple of months ago we have now expanded medicaid they are new algorithms that we don't even have yet there are new algorithms so to the point that commissioner alignment if if this is going to be something if we can make up ourselves because this is Durham and we can make rules for ourselves I would be interested in looking at what it would look like to prorate some of it because again you said we don't want to do harm but that five that we might not be able to give them 500 because let's say they're in a DHA property and that 500 will push them over the limit and they would have to be put out that apartment I don't want to say well I can't give you this 500 I got to give you zero I wouldn't have a problem exploring and that's more headache on us but that's what we got an RFQ out for uh can we give that person 250. because we don't want them to be put out of DHA housing we don't want them to come off the food stamps we

don't and you got to think anybody that's 30 Ami they're DHA anybody that's at 30 percent uh uh Ami they're getting Social Security getting food stamps they're getting a plethora of other things um so I I do I don't know how we would do it but I don't want to say if we can't give you 500 we can't give you nothing like the math don't math there and we might be in a better position to help more people if we could give somebody 250 and that 250 is the gap on their diapers or their 250 is the gap on milk or Enfamil so I know that that's not a tenant It's All or Nothing But I would be interested in seeing what something Pro ready looked like I think at the very least we should track whenever we get to this to the point of picking the criteria we should definitely ask whoever the compliance officer is to track how many people ended up not qualifying it because if we

if we do need to keep the certain standard for the study and certainly the SEC the next year afterwards we may decide to do our own thing because we have the data to show that this is what works better for us I think similar to what happened with the low-income grant program we changed the criteria the second year because we found out that you know saying you had to be in your home for 10 years was too restrictive and we also increased the amount that we gave for different Amis we changed so we all I'm saying is that this also can be iterative based on the data that we collect that shows that it's we're actually not able to serve our most vulnerable residents so and I just want to also mention that I think speaking about bigger trends the idea of giving people just giving

people directly giving money rather than spending money on programs and administration is like an international trend for instance with refugees now if you've noticed now the big thing with refugees and even during the Ukraine invasion was just giving people money we're not giving them blankets we're not giving them clothing we're giving them money and they can decide they know which what what they need and how and it and actually is a way to get money directly to people and the studies are showing is that it does help people and it also has economic consequences so that in Refugee crisis areas if it it helps local businesses because then people have money that they can go directly put in the pocket of local people who are providing what people

need so I find it really interesting it's something that I've been paying attention to and um I think it does have some other policy implications for us in the future thank you Wendy anything else thank you Shannon thank you for all this work because it's I know it's a lot too thank you for your feedback and we'll be back in touch with responses to your questions we appreciate it all right watch that next and I will mention one one of assistant County Manager hager's mottos is if in doubt leave arpa out which is so that helps us decide where are some

of the funding sources oh my God that comes from years of being on the back end about it Andy did you bring some jobs with you Deputy County Manager oh that's right I mean one second all right greetings if I'm gonna sort of flow through our slides and um you know earlier Mr Jacobs talked about the news and all that's looming and right now arpa is on conversations is the Congress looks at how they will manage

their budget um back in this fall when we met with the board about an update we talked about realigning some of the dollars and moving with some of the relationships with Community Partners to help us spend our money faster and that's why we forged ahead with the partnership with the city the the board desired with the arpa plan to spend dollars in affordable housing and with the final rules it allowed for areas that jurisdictions normally didn't have a chance to do so I'll talk through some of that but um we'll give some quick reminders and we'll spend some time talking about the Investments that we're planning for Workforce Development some staff recommendations based on initial conversations but it's mainly a listing

of what I've heard from previous discussions about potential areas but I can't say fast enough with with these types of dollars when Financial issues arise you have to shift accordingly and we want to make sure we move quickly and how we make some of our decisions going forward for these final categorical areas will not go through the priority areas that that um the dollars can be used for the plan was adopted in May 2022 and we've been operating under this framework and lots of planning lots of movement and it's exciting seeing many things come to fruition especially this quarter you know our goal was to have pretty much contracts done there may be some areas rfps finalized and we're

getting close to having all that work happening this was the original Target time frame for deadlines December 20 four four dollars obviously obligated or incurred basically a contract with all dollars expended by 2026 but as we know and as we've heard things may shift and so we are proposing to off to to manage in a shifted environment and how how we proceed this is just a reminder for folks who may or may not have um who may be watching and want to know you know sort of how do we start with our framework and we'll not go through that but it has guided how we've allocated our funds we've tried to leverage other federal dollars or State dollars first we've aligned dollars with our the board strategic plan of course

8 million that we need to sort of talk through and sort of see how we proceed with that and and the fun application and within the categories there is a section that's Workforce Development and business economic recovery and Andy's going to give some update on that area and where we are with moving forward with the bulls contract we are funding some of the building up local labor systems initiative some of the dollars are in our operating budget so it's a co-funded effort we are planning to expand the

Bulls initiative as well with art dollars so that we can reach more students and it's exciting seeing this effort over the past several years and the return on investment that will happen for years to come once these individuals graduate from the initiative after Andy's conversation we'll then have um I'll show the some of the highlights that were discussed by the board for other Investments and then have some board conversation so I'll turn it to Andy uh thank you general manager Hager Commissioners manager it is a pleasure to be here with you today to speak about the Workforce Development and small business our proposals with the approval of the framework that came out last year really gave us guidance on how to proceed in deploying this one-time funding opportunity you mic up a little bit closer is this

better get close okay um the framework gave us guidance um on how to proceed with employing this one-time funding and we're very clear in the conversations that we're having this is one-time funding in a manner that is going to not only yield the best results but that will leave these systems in a better place where Partners understand how to operate in a coordinated fashion roles are defined and hopefully we're setting up the system for long-term success with this investment additionally where the system is in a better place to hopefully receive external funding where it can sustain itself Beyond this investment um so as we talk about the Workforce Development update first just to kind of give a little background on how we got here because it's really important to note um in 2020 uh the collaboration that is now called Bulls was formed and this came together

to understand how we might improve the education to Career pipeline we're understanding that obviously we have tremendous job opportunities in Durham and in the region but when we think back to when we revised our Economic Development policy in 2020 part of what we wanted to do was see more Durham residents and these really good jobs but the other side of that coin is we need to make sure that we have enough talent to fill the jobs that we're recruiting we're recruiting in thousands and thousands of jobs and we need to feel like we have a pretty good sense that we're going to be able to fill those jobs so we started by getting uh the key stakeholder key stakeholders at the table this includes Economic Development Partners Workforce Development Partners institutions community-based organizations and then specific industry partners that would really be able to inform the conversation which played key role and so when we did the uh when the analysis was performed about which

industry to focus on obviously as we all know now that it's life sciences to get us started um and again when we think about uh the County's role in this space the the clear majority of jobs that we have recruited have been in life sciences um so it certainly made sense in that regard and to understand a little bit more to reiterate the point why life sciences well we can look at the industry supply and demand these were 20 22 projections based on 2021 announcements this is the most current data we have um but I think it makes a point there's a pretty significant Delta in terms of the jobs that we have coming online and projected um you know bodies to be able to to fill those openings so it was abundantly clear that we we needed to produce more Supply uh the another really good reason why we selected Life Sciences um the the salary and benefits um with with that certification that you contain at Durham Tech in five months

you can likely start a job about fifty thousand dollars it ranges between forty and sixty thousand dollars in a career pathway where you can you know move up the ladder get promoted really great salary and benefits so what we're also uh conveying uh with with the way the proposal is coming together that this is not an isolated investment this includes a number of other significant invest Investments this investment is complementary obviously we're aware of Durham Tech's investment through the bond Campaign which will support a new life sciences facility the work that is already occurring uh related to Bulls part of the larger conversation is about connecting with corporations companies that we have here in Durham that will very much benefit from this Talent supply line and we are we are seeing financial interest Novo

Nordisk a few months back announced a six million dollar partnership with Durham Tech to support equipment and related needs NC biotechnology was the lead entity on the buildback better Grant made in Durham has received eight hundred thousand dollars of that grant that will be used to support non-profits in the community those non-profits will serve as ambassadors and success coaches for Bulls so we essentially have another layer of support and recruitment that our community-based organizations are providing so this will really is is a strong step to pull them in to two bulls and then obviously for the past two years again as well as this year there's two hundred fifty thousand dollars in the county budget to support stipends and that is currently set to continue um just a very brief update this was some of the information that was shared with man Durham's update a few months

back um we currently have uh cohorts four and five finishing up uh cohort four is set to graduate in a week or two and then cohort five in the next month on the left hand side you can see the the iterative improvements I think there's been you know as this process is unfolded there has been a lot of learning there's been a lot of improving as we go through and we certainly will look to see for that Trend to continue as we move forward so just to briefly kind of speak about um what the proposal includes and I can provide a high level summary today and then we'll certainly look for made in Durham uh to come back in a couple weeks to be able to provide a more in-depth conversation I think to take uh formal action on the proposal but just to kind of give you a little preview about what that will include there is a section of funding for

student family awareness this is a huge issue for Life Sciences it is not very well known to people that are not already familiar with that industry what does it mean what are those career opportunities look like what what is in Research Triangle Park and so we uh two of the approaches we're taking there are to focus on after school programming this is not only to gain access to students but their families as well we understand that families are play an essential role in helping to shape career trajectory three and then an idea that we pulled um actually through the business recruitment process is uh externships with teachers at Durham Public Schools as well so the the biggest uh chunk of funding will go uh towards education experience activities um that refers to stipends so that is both for stipends for the biopharma bioworks track as well as a second

um track that has yet to be uh defined I think we certainly have some ideas on what that is but that is not final yet so there's stipends for that as well um we also have funding in place for uh program evaluation and I think the point to make there is that by having an independent evaluation of the system the interventions the outcomes that will put us in a better place for Bulls to be able to sustain itself with philanthropic and private funding on the other end once once this allotment of funding has gone and Andy I'll I'll stop right there if you look at there's a slide one of the slides a few back when it showed the past the exam passage rate that evaluation Factor played a big role for them re-redesigning their pedagogical approaches and how they train the

students supported them and helped them move along in the programming so that's real important but just wanted to make that connection that's a great Point thank you all right and then just to wrap up uh I think the two other kind of big buckets in their program design obviously we're coming up with a second pathway um that will need to be uh constructed as we look at which industry sectors uh to support um and then lastly marketing and this kind of coincides with the awareness we really need to as we think about scaling this program up uh so far we've had enough demand to fill up every cohort that started but as as we look to fill more and more seats particularly with the new industry sector we'll need to make investments in marketing as well and I think the other thing to note is is the this will include um you know investments in personnel as well both for Maiden Durham and Durham

Tech and that is uh essentially to have the proper capacity to be able to administer these programs all right and then moving on to the small business support update um so I think you know there are a lot of similarities in the two approaches that we have taken here in terms of making system investments in terms of investing in backbone organizations and so we'll look to to deploy a similar approach here uh for for the small business RFP um for Workforce Development because we have an existing contract with made in Durham we're able to leverage that and to use that opportunity to proceed with arpa funding because we do not have an existing relationship with a service provider in the small business support

area we will need to issue an RFP and so and and for the purposes of today's conversation we're not really going to talk about specific organizations per say we need to let the RFP process play out but just to speak generally uh to to some of the goals and tenants of the RFP is what we want to share today and so I think you know in terms of the the broad principles here um we're looking to leverage a network of small business service providers to provide support counseling and technical assistance uh for Durham's entrepreneurs we're looking for a backbone agency to serve as uh an access point for entrepreneurs seeking assistance they will essentially do the and take an assessment and then refer out to other direct service providers entrepreneurial sport business support providers we have a number of agencies that provide those services in Durham so

we're just looking for the backbone agency to really coordinate Service delivery among the wealth of of service providers that we have um we want to align Community institutional and Financial Partners around a shared vision and an executed strategy we want to strengthen the existing Small Business Systems resources programs and Partnerships we already have some great work in place we want to make sure we leverage that um we want to facilitate Community input on priority Small Business Services right so rather than us kind of coming and saying well these are the five to ten priority areas we want to build in a survey as part of the RFP to get input from the community is where focus should be um just as important so similar to the first one this will likely include capacity building for the backbone agency as well and I think similaries as well there will be an element of

pass-through dollars where the backbone agency holds an RFP that is informed by the survey to to bring in those service providers in the community we can see that happening in a pro-rated fashion so if an entrepreneur comes into the you know they have their intake and assessment if they need assistance with record keeping if they need assistance with marketing legal help whatever it may be the backbone agency can refer them out to the specific service provider and so the thinking is you know different service providers may have different areas of expertise but we essentially have that Network that is available to us and depending on the entrepreneur's needs we can get them connected I think it's important that we stay connected with the entrepreneur during their Journey so we can provide that upfront help as well as long term as they grow as their needs change we can provide different services so it's important to stay connected um

so I think that is a pretty good summary that's perfect and and as Andy shared we will be coming back with the main and Durham contract there has been lots and lots of conversations about fleshing out sort of how the dollars will be used we will use this one under the revenue um replacement category of arpa funding always looking at sort of what um the requirements around it as well as the what's the return on the investment and when you have a smaller cohort we want to make sure that we can defend that and so when we talk about what's the return of the investment this five months of training has the potential of a 20-year period of of having a return at the person stays in they get annual increase of close to two million dollars if they're starting out at fifty four

thousand dollars and they get increase of two percent every year you know that's we're not sure what that number looks like but we're also going to put some numbers around it because at the end of the day we do need to with confidence be able to explain what a projected number may look like and so the board again has had the good wisdom many years ago to start in this space and we're grateful that the dollars are available to help us expand because this is life-changing and exciting and so with the RFP we will keep you updated on that information as well and I think from that point thank you so much Andy oh you can follow up now sure you can sit there yes sir yeah sure did you you want to you can follow up now or or I'll go through my

8 million dollars at this juncture considering the the the climate wanting to from a staff perspective recommend we move forward in areas that we can quickly get items into contracts whether it's leveraging our Partnerships with the city or if it is a RFP is something that we can turn around pretty quickly housing insecurity was a common theme and some of the prior discussions as far

as board design Investments and one suggestion is that we expand dollars further for additional Partnerships with the city we did invest the 10 million dollars there are other projects potentially that we can partner with with them they've gone through the big process they meet federal guidelines and some of these projects need gap funding and that's an area of consideration dollars to potentially support Investments with the the land trust initiative that's something the board has talked about as well the city has an Ila and our local government agreement with a couple of partners for that and that's another area also there is a need and we talked about three four years ago if not be before that looking at the infrastructure to support the day town the downtown day Center for

their homeless community and trying to see what support systems are there that are needed and that's another one that one would require an RFP but it is one that the board has talked about for some time the next bullet is one that is a carryover for my conversation earlier there are many different ways we can support our low-income residents and this bullet covers many priorities that the board has elevated and then another one that is most pressing is water sewer Investments we have almost 100 million dollars worth of infrastructure needs as we look at our our water sewer needs and right now we have four million dollars of our arpa dollars supported for water soil projects so this is another place that we can move forward and I guess we just

in the current climate just need to be nimble and um in an effort to be wise in how we make our decisions but responsive to some longer term transformative Investments that are that are needed from there I will move forward with conversations yes thank you Claudia and Andy could you go back to that slide oh sure um yeah thank you for already putting together some some suggestions and I do I am I already had a conversation with Claudia earlier in the week about it is concerning when you know that part of the debt limit budget Federal conversations are talking about clawing back our funding that hasn't been spent so I think that does create a certain sense of urgency to to

this um so and it's not like we don't know things that we can spend the money on um I I really like the idea of doing an RFP around the day Center we we don't have one we know we need one and that's a big yeah so so that I'm giving a thumbs up to Land Trust um if the city already has something I I really support that too because frankly that's really the best model for you know long-term affordability and um and then I just want to know um is I don't see the mention of Copper Creek is that also a possible use well that's when this and it when in doubt leave it at arpa out the only reason I say that is that I'm sorry assistant manager has say it well so so we do have the ability to use

arpa in a very general broad category which is revenue replacement you do not have the same type of um layers of uniform Grant guidelines if I follow but you still have to follow certain components and so it's not because we have not gone through a big process okay although we if there's a partnership there's we can do it but it's a is dependent upon how is perceived by the person who's auditing it okay and so we could defend it but at the same time there's there's the the doubt part because it doesn't technically meet all of you okay okay um so the other two things I did want to mention I don't see here one is related to housing repair funds um that's something we have done in the past and that really helps seniors and people who own their homes who are on fixed incomes so I would just throw that

out there as something to look at and and we've done that in partnership with the city and then the last thing is related to Supportive Housing partners that we already have through cjrc who are providing housing to people who are re-entering and also people who are dealing with opioid and other substance use disorder we heard during the town hall from David crispell the Jubilee partners that they're you know and we have really great community housing Partners but they need more resources um and so I I think that's also would be something else I would be interested in us looking at I'm doing and that's just related to happening I'll stop there and let people talk about this but I do want to go back to the stuff that Andy presented later is that a question about uh

as far as the money around funding and fund balance in other words can we use funding and the city use fund balance for that house for the for that what I'm suggesting is that we use um fund balance as well for Carver Creek I'm not sure we can explore it some more but that's been my recommendation so if if we use fund balance we're gonna have to do an RFP no no ma'am there there's going to have to be some clarity around that and we can yeah for the public to understand that because otherwise we're going to get bashed

I mean that if we do when we do the way we do it um and use fund balance there's got to be some explanation for the public to understand why we can do it that way could make sense adequate I'm I'm even confused only because I know for the Boys and Girls Club on Pettigrew we didn't do RFP for the shopping center for the Kroger we didn't so I I I'm wondering why we have to do one I I thought we could use fun balance because we didn't do it for the other two property purchases well I'm just asking for I'm not trying to start that like I am for it let me I made that very clear last week but we've done two other property purchases and this is a property purchase it's an investment and I I just I would like if we do have to do one for my edification you know I'd like to know why we have to do an RFP if we had to do what I didn't think we did that's what I was asking we were not I

didn't say we had to I'm sorry around that so that we understand and so the public understands those questions yeah I mean um yeah and it would be great for us to have that clarification so yeah and we have a great example with Hayti Reborn I think we didn't do an RFP for that either okay so if we can get that clarification the other one I want to talk about a little bit is the waters were Investments fear is that and where is that to be what area of Durham is that is it a particular area well right in manager you can it's a varying um areas in the county but I know one of

the um areas we were really focusing on was the chin Page Road area because that is where we are reaching capacity with some of our infrastructure and so that's one of the high priorities but you'll hear about that on I think it's June 1st we've asked them to come and talk about the various projects that are in need you know some of our some of our issues around water and well has reached our Dina I was over there yesterday and they are talking about what's happening with our well so I think that's a conversation that we're going to have to really do drill down into and even maybe even pull them in we're planning to do that all right that is where the Olive View I had on this page anybody else a question is on on this

initial here commissioner Carter yes thank you for this great presentation both of you I will say for some reason and it may just be my computer and being in this this you couldn't get it either so the record's currently unavailable so I really like the presentation I'd like to have it way or something but thanks it's really good um I am excited about anything related to expanding the current success of the Bulls initiative I think we all have you've demonstrated huge support for that and um recently had a big celebration at the library of their successes and it really does seem like a truly successful program and it's really nice to be part of it um and it's it's very interesting to hear that you're going to select the second industry to go along with the biopharma manufacturing or the life sciences so that will be fun to follow

the one question I have around all of that related to the bowls initiative and working with Durham Tech strengthen our pipeline into the job sectors that we're recruiting here is a question related to are we as part of our goal going to be or currently is trying to reach more students who are currently enrolled in Durham Public Schools versus what it feels like the current model also very necessary which is recovering you know sort of student recovery ones who have not been successful and perhaps have dropped out and are looking to restart so it seems like that's what our current focus is I could be wrong and please correct me if I am but are we also going to look at more intents uh you know partnership with DPS in their Career and Technical plan to get kids into the program sooner yeah absolutely that's that's a great question um so you are correct uh I think the

initial primary focus was around opportunity youth uh those that have been disconnected from DPS uh didn't finish um you know I think from a sheer uh just numbers perspective as we look to scale up we'll have to to broaden that Outreach and have you know continue that as a priority um but part of the conversation I think there's been some news in the press as well uh related to the dual enrollment program that Durham Tech has announced uh with with DPS and so I think for this we're looking to start a class uh next year that will be located at a high school at least in terms of the first part of the class that doesn't require equipment and things like that yeah um so really trying to broaden this out at TPS to reach more students right so maybe when Durham Tech learn more about that and also just the um

the early the middle the middle college high school that's there and is that would that be part of this effort and you know if not I'd like to know what's happening with the middle college high school you know just what's the latest with that um that's a Durham Tech Durham Public School school but it's on the Durham Technical Community College campus and maybe that's part of this and you know I don't know may not be but it very well could be I don't think we've identified a specific high school yet okay yeah it may just be in one of our regular standard high schools but it would be um and just interesting to learn about that and um the small business and entrepreneur work that you mentioned Andy in ways of trying to support small businesses and new entrepreneurs sounded good it sounded very much like uh just trying to strengthen our ecosystem there and I think that sounded great

um so that so that that's all I have about that let's see I have one more question it was on the last slide I think or one of the next last slides about an RFP around housing food and utility funding needs um maybe that's really what I was talking about when I was talking about an RFP to go along with guaranteed income maybe it could be either one I want you guys to think about this help or help me think about this help us all think about this but I definitely could see that we need that basically an RFP to help families address the social needs that they have that are success and and that's the framing for the guaranteed income um it falls under that umbrella not again here and it so it may be it could be and and y'all are making me spill all the beans on what I'm trying to work on secretly behind the scene did we say secret in a

public no I'm saying for me because you all once you hear about it you're gonna be oh yeah let's do that and now in our capacity it's okay so one of the things that I've talked to uh um director of Public Health in um ACM peers about is creating what we are unofficially titling um like live World Durham and it's pulling together all of the different initiatives we have about addressing the social determinants of Health there's a lot of work that's going on but it's not connected and so we're trying to look at how we can connect this and then identify where there are gaps and focus our efforts on those gaps if y'all give me a minute we're gonna get there just don't ask me to do it that's it yes yes all right

um commissioner Burns mine is relatively quick uh it is about these slides one as always Andy Miracle thank you Claudia thank you Andy I usually expect you to have jobs when I'm talking to you so you failed today but presentation set aside you're fine I don't think we have properly hazed all of our new uh County managers and so uh I you know I know we were talking about this small business fund and then there's Tammy Hall who actually for two years ran a small business entrepreneurship fund and so and in light of like what you've seen today since you didn't do like Claudia and Dwayne and grab your laptop and Scurry up here very quickly I'd really like to know your insights I'm like well we possibly could be doing because you have the benefit of like Monday not even money on the quarterback you did this program for two years you have data you know what did work what didn't work we know who didn't because we saw what

other organizations did so if there are any thoughts for how we should be looking at this differently and I see Andy nodding his head and uh and come here do you have any thoughts to share on the microphone I mean we got the best of the best we got the a team so I know we can build something really good good afternoon and thank you so much I appreciate the acknowledgment uh commissioner Burns um certainly uh when you're working with federal dollars and particularly Opera funding there's all kinds of requirements as Claudia has mentioned as ACM DCM has mentioned mentioned here and Andy and I along with DCM Jones have been meeting to talk through what can we collaboratively do that really helps to

enhance our entrepreneurs our small businesses our minority and women-owned businesses in the midst of what we're already doing here so I will certainly be happy to work with the team to look at the small business initiative and what we can really do to move our entrepreneurs to the next step and pre you know this is once in a lifetime funding and certainly to be able to maximize it and have some real impact boots on the ground to really look at outcomes I'm happy to do that I was going to ask for some Trade Secrets but the the manager already said I can't ask about no more Trade Secrets today so I'm gonna let that go but I'm just I'm I I feel like we got a good team here that can really build something good because you did some great work with me too I got businesses all over North Carolina y'all I've been in Charlotte and Tammy has stopped traffic because somebody said that she saved a business so I just want to you know if we can build something great

here I want to see it now I appreciate the support I just think whatever we can do businesses would appreciate it the pandemic hit them extremely hard small businesses and then certainly when we look at minority businesses women-owned businesses it's termed the impact was exacerbated by the pandemic so whatever else we can do to help to build capacity and level what we're doing would be great so looking forward to helping and thank you and ACM Hall since you've already been put on the spot can you provide an update for the um Enterprise program The mwbe Evolution program that we're working on you all approved the contract a couple months ago but we're making progress and have some tentative dates and things absolutely the Enterprise mwbe 13-week training program will be another excellent way for us to really horn in on some of the soft skills needed but

then also some of the very basic skills that business owners need to survive and build grow capacity so we are in preparation of pulling together our instructors that can help us to really take a look at marketing our legal principles you know some of the very basic business structure that many of our entrepreneurs just don't have time day in day out to really focus on but they are the basis for survival of their companies and so we are really anxious about rolling out that program program our Target time frame is August the manager has made it very clear we will all come together and we will host up some type of information session so that we can get businesses number one informed of this opportunity but then help to build excitement around this program it will take a a serious

commitment 13 weeks is uh you know it's it's uh quite a bit of time and the way the program is set up is one day every other week for 13 weeks with some of our very um you know professionals various Professionals in the areas that really have expertise in business development so we're looking ex forward to that program as I said roll out hopefully in August is what our Target is but we'll take all of your support to get the word out when we have all our marketing materials ready to hit the streets and bring in some businesses that we know need our assistance okay taking my seat [Laughter] Mr James go ahead

thank you Tammy yeah um earlier slides about um about the Bulls and the small business support um so just to clarify the 3 million is for the Bulls and small business or three million four bowls and how much is for the small business three million is for the Bulls until 2026. 5 okay and I um you know related to the Bulls I um I know commissioner Burns was there in the beginning and then commissioner card and I were there um for the end and I promise I will bring our Academy Award on Monday I keep forgetting to bring it but

um you know it really is being with the students some of the graduates and some of them who were in the program now and the student who was being recognized and talking to his mother um he is now working at Biogen and you know it's been transformative for him he doesn't he never finished his college degree and now he's making a really really good salary at Biogen but his mom said you know we have to we've got to get this you know let parents know about this we have to get this into the schools a whole lot earlier that was her message to me is that parents don't know about this they don't know about this opportunity for their kids nobody knows about you know most people who are trying to reach they don't know anything about the life science Industry in in Durham I mean I'm sorry one thing that

really sticks with me I is going to a lunch with kids who were graduating from youth build which is a federal job training program that's in Durham and the lunch was at the University Tower and seeing how the kids were reacting who had never been up that high in a building in Durham and never had that kind of view of their home you know it's literally like giving people a different perspective and understanding what is out there what is out there for them I mean that was like a physical reality up there in the in the University of the Tower you know the big pickle the University Club but um but you know we we really um and and this it's really hard and it does take the funding and it takes the people and the resources to to really make that happen so I agree with you Heidi I look forward to hearing more about how Durham public

schools and Durham Tech are going to work together because I feel like our biggest missing link right now frankly is within Durham Public Schools I feel like we've got the biotech Center and the biotech you know and we've got Durham Tech we're supporting it you know we've got employers starting to get engaged like noble nordis but we've got to get this really growing um much earlier in Durham Public Schools so I'm glad that we're putting the money on that the other thing that really concerned me talking to the students that day was there was one student who I mean and she looked so polished her clothing her Manner and she had gotten she graduated the program and said she had only had one job interview so I guess the other thing that does concern me on the other end is what are we doing to actually make sure we are

getting you know interviews set up we are getting their graduates in front of the companies they are do you know holding up their end and again I know that takes the investment of the staff and the people to make sure that that's happening but I just saw that in real life by talking to the people who were there that those seem to be things that we have to work on so I'm all for making the investment with this money um you know to make it happen um and then and I love the idea of the backbone because I think again we're looking at a systems approach and not that the county has to be the one providing this but that that's already out there and making the connections I think it's similar thinking that we're using around a lot of things so I think that's a great idea thank you absolutely and to address the one point um there is a component of corporate

engagement in the broader plan as well some things we've been able to start to do some things we have they need to be refined and that is one area in terms of making the connections to businesses really having that that pipeline clear in terms of lining up jobs lining up interviews where you know once you have that certificate that's the hard part and so connecting to employment so there are a few things we need to refine and better put in place but that is absolutely part of the larger plan and if I'm not mistaken it's a part of the the ftes the 775 000 where it was two ftes and one of those positions if I'm not mistaken is dedicated to helping with the the matchmaking in the career um get interviews okay anything else don't you ever see any other questions thank you very much

okay sure we'll have you back again all right so that brings us down to um board discussions and questions you have anything else any other questions or follow-ups or follow-up yeah I think you all have given us enough for today I think you're right great discussion thank you so much okay yeah oh hey all right let's see what I got

thank you I'm finished we're finished we're finished look I'm gonna say you may get a last minute of suggestion so we'll be here we didn't do as much money though for the boys and girls club we didn't buy no building we just gave them money Oh you mean the other building we didn't even talk about that until after we did it yeah yeah

because right I just want to get clear Clarity around here yeah we've brought that whole property I find out what we're doing I don't know what we're doing yet with it because it's gonna it's gonna require all other good work done because I just um

yeah yeah and they said no yes