Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · May 30, 2024

Good morning we're going to go ahead and get started because we do have a quorum I'd like to welcome everybody to our second budget work session today is day two I will start off with the public charge the board of County Commissioners ask its members and its citizens to conduct themselves in a respectful courteous manner both with the board and fellow citizens at any time she any member of the board or any citizen failed to observe this public charge the chair will ask theend in person to leave the meeting until the individual gains personal control should Dorn fail to be restored the chair will recess the meeting until such a time that a genuine commitment to the public charge is observed additionally I will be doing a land acknowledgement as we convene for the Durham County Commissioner's meeting is crucial to recognize the painful truth of History we stand on the stolen ancestrial lands of the Kataba Eno okichi Shak Ari and Tuscarora peoples whose deep connection to this land predates our arrival we.

Acknowledge with humility the unjust displacement and violence that occurred leading to the disposition of indigenous peoples from their homelands their resilience in the face of such adversity is a testament to their strength and spirit may we humbly honor the ancestors and Elders of those Nations both past and presents by committing ourselves to fostering understanding healing and justice for all that inhabit this land let us walk forward together with Open Hearts acknowledging the past embracing a future God by compassion respect and unity and first up one of my favorite folks let me not say that that's how I get in trouble let me do look I'll do it this way my drct so that way I don't say I have seen look I I I had talked to some of my co-workers my colleagues we we saw 90 and 60 Minutes besides some of these I hope trust and pray that we are expeditious and tame our loquacious nature but I think first and for for most on the agenda today is.

Duram Tech at all of 15 minutes yes president bucks that if there's nothing it's Madam chair can we Pro I mean Madam manager can we proceed president bucks and the floor is.

Yours good morning. Let's try that again Vice chair Burns good morning commissioner Carter Manor so well it's good to be with you here this morning yeah we can stay right there I I believe you know our Chief Financial Officer Andy kch our chief academic officer Dr carab battle was slated to be with us today but is traveling to a family member's graduation and we gave her leave because we're an educational institution that's what we do so she regrets not being here today but I I bring her greetings we are pleased to be here today and as we start out and I want to go over our request commissioner Howton good morning I want to go over our request and also an update on our construction projects on Main Campus Bond projects just give you a quick update on those but I want to start out and just stipulate to the fact that this commission has been a strong supporter and investor in Durham Tech and we are benefiting in this community.

Right now from the strong leadership and investment by this board in Durham Technical Community College and as we start out here I just want to remind you because you don't get to see them every day when you make that investment in Durham Tech while it is certainly in the people that work at Durham Tech and the facilities at Durham Tech that support our educational Workforce Development Endeavors ultimately you are making an investment in individuals like the ones on this screen and these are individuals I want to make sure to lift up because in many ways they reflect that the community meets at Durham Tech if you look at your upper leftand corner that's Sophia who won our academic Excellence award this year highest economic achievement at Durham Tech her parents fled violence in El Salvador she came here and is now in our medical assisting program just graduated and will be continuing in our nursing program choosing to invest in this local community right on under her is Aaron.

Who after dropping out of high school and then starting a truck driving career decided there was something more for him and came back as in architectural drafting at Durham Tech he won our resilience award and is now in the competition at the state level to receive the Dallas Herring award Aaron McCullum next to him is Sharia Sharia is in our clinical trials program also employed at Duke Health while going through that program she is now moving into a role upon graduation in the clinical trials pharmaceutical industry if you go right next to them Cooper and Paul our our first apprenticeships industrial maintenance with Nova Nordisk our great partner at Durham Tech as part of a a robust expansion in our apprenticeship programs this year straight above them is one of the cohorts we're about to graduate our fourth next week but this is one of the first cohorts of our hati reborn bridge program folks who are coming to us either having been Justice involved or at risk of Justice involvement and we.

Are seeing not just strong completion in that program but strong enrollment then in our degree and short-term Workforce programs afterwards and then finally to their left is luzita Francis who was our commencement speaker this year who came to this country ended up late in life enrolling at Durham Tech going to UNCC Chapel Hill on a guaranteed admission scholarship cstep but not only that she graduated with her son from Durham Tech and then also from Chapel Hill with her son and then became the first Community College transfer in the master's program at UNCC Gilling School in public health and the first Latina in that program so when I say you invest in Durham Tech these are the kind of people you're investing in and I want to thank you for that investment now that investment is paying off and after hitting a low like community colleges across the country we have seen strong takeup of the opportunities at Durham Tech since that time these are year-over-year figures so.

If you look at fall 23 versus fall 22 we were up almost 7 and a half% in the spring year-over-year up 10% this summer we are now in our summer term we are up 8% in our continuing education programs overall which we'd seen really strong take up coming out of covid We Are up 5% year-over-year after being up in the 40% just after covid so we are seeing our community come back into higher education and specifically at higher education at Durham Tech now the other thing we are seeing thanks to your investment the investment in our community is strong institutional Partnerships and outcomes and I just want to lift up a number of areas that because of your support of Durham Tech and support of others we are able to engage in and just remind you of some of the work we're doing to both increase educational attainment in this community and increase pipelines to jobs and Workforce Development you know about our healthc care early college that we're launching thanks to support from.

The Bloomberg philanthropies with Duke and DPS I'd remind you we've also made a commitment with DPS to have a 25% dual graduation goal people talk about dual enrollment we want dual graduation and I appreciate superintendent KY Moore who I think is in here or was in here in the back row for stepping in and continuing the focus and commitment at dur Public Schools we have goals for every single high school and we're looking to get to 525 students every year year-over-year who graduate not just from DPS but also Durham Tech with a certificate diploma or degree the next three speak to critical higher education Partnerships both in guaranteed admission but also in our nursing partnership with Duke really first of its kind anywhere with a faculty share and investments in our programs and then UNCC Chapel Hill this is about internships and entry-level jobs in the bench Sciences biotech and the school of medicine for our students with UNC the next few are Community Partnerships made in Durham with the bulls program.

We're entering our eighth cohort of that program and we've moved up to a 90% completion rate and I talked about heti reborn Justice movement you have made specific investments in our back to work scholarships and Small Business Center supports and we are seeing those returns I've got some data I can show you but we had almost 450 people take up those back to work scholarships and short-term Workforce credentials and we are on track to to meet or exceed our Small Business Center supports in Durham County in addition to new Partnerships with the hisp Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and also a black business Summit new efforts for us to engage more folks in our community you've also invested and apprenticeships and this part of the college is rolling Duke Health Corning Kell Nova BASF Nova Nordisk just a few of the apprenticeship announcements we've done over the past year and then finally I'll do an update on this life science and health science facilities that are going up most important we have seen sustained.

Increases in enrollment over the past year and a half and sustained increases in completion and so we are getting more people in in and getting more people out and doing in ways that we know from our employer and higher education partners that our students need so let me talk a little bit about the budget and I just want to walk through how we built this budget this year and where the manager's budget has us as we move into this next fiscal year at Durham Tech the first thing is I want to be clear we got the memo we understood the assignment this was going to be a tough budget year so the first thing we did was we looked at our budget from last year to look at where we could make reductions and we found just under $300,000 worth of reductions that we could make in our existing County budget here in Durham the second thing we did is we looked at what positions that you're supporting that could be.

Funded out of the article 46 funding because they are Economic Development focused efforts and so we found another 311,000 so what we found was just shy of $600,000 that we could relieve from the current expense or the general fund budget and either reduce or cost shift over to article 46 and as you'll remember we get a percentage a flat percentage of the article 46 funding about $2.3 million this year it's gone down a little bit but it's got enough room to fit in some of these cost shifts we made no request for increases in the recruitment retention fund do you do that in partnership with with Orange County for hardto fill staff we made no increase in Bulls and back to work scholarships we certainly have more demand there but we did not ask for more there and then we cost shifted those key positions with bulls and back to work success coaching critical to their completion rates but also the small business center and apprenticeship where we're seeing strong take up so bottom.

Line while there was an increase in the overall request we we put the green a the green eye shades on if you will and really tried to see where we could make reductions or shift cost first so what that left us with was some fixed cost increases and I'll just hit on these briefly salary and benefits is that kind of royal blue box up there as a Carolina grad I say royal blue box up there and at about 202 almost 203,000 that's a 20% incre increase and that's largely owing to the 3% increase for state employees that's in the second year of the B banian budget State bani it's already in there and so that does the same for our County Employees as well as benefit increases if you come down and contracted Services you see a 16% increase and this is one of two areas I want to point out that you see is the two major drivers on our fixed cost increases in this year's budget.

This one is this is the year we are facing the full year the total amount of our commitment to pay a living wage to our janitorial staff we had rebid that contract we hadn't rebid it since 2016 we were not paying a living wage we took the Durham county living wage and required anyone bidding on the contract to commit to paying that living wage for our janitorial Staff last year we you made a down payment on that this year the full amount and and a large sh actually the total share that 171 really reflects the full amount we kept all the other cost and contracted Services level from last last year you see legal Insurance advertising travel supplies a 1% increase there largely due to inflationary increases I'll just jump up utilities is the top that's the lighter blue about 68 69,000 that's deal dealing with rate increases and utilities and then the large box the purple box deals with a required move out of our Duke Street North facility as you may.

Remember Beacon Partners bought that development they're going to turn it into residential maybe a little bit of retail I'm not quite sure we were occupying one of those buildings we needed to move out and so the option that they gave us was to move into a property one one door down it's the one building they're not going to redevelop it's an office building and to move us into that building with the same rent structure we have we got a 67% increase in space but we also needed to renovate that space about $4.8 Million worth of renovation to make it f for an educational facility so what we did at that point after confirming that the rent was what we were seeing as market rate we rolled that into we kind of amortised the cost of those Renovations into over the course of a 15-year lease so we bought down the cost of those Renovations so rather than having to go out in the market find a new place to put our programming at.

Duke Street North and pay for the kind of rent renovation that you just have to do given accreditation and other education requirements we were able to keep the same rent structure 60% of it 7% increase in space and roll that into now that led I think 99% of our rental property increase is due to that move that we had to do these fixed cost increases for us are what we're going to have to do no matter what so what we see here is $770,000 in fixed cost increases for us this year what I just went through that is less than what it would have been total budget because the reductions we were able to make and the cost shifting at about 600,000 the manager's recommendation largely funds our salary and benefit increases which we very much appreciate and have to have that is clearly the most important part of our budget as our people and we appreciate that but that puts us about in a $500,000 hole year after year just on fix fixed.

Increases so that doesn't yet speak to some of the other Investments that you've been making in these bulls and back to work and so that's where we stand today we think we have been a strong investment for you we think we have delivered on those things you have invested us to deliver we think the Community Partnerships are delivering for our residents and our students and we see it in people coming back and people completing so I want you to see the full picture of what we're facing as we go into next year with not many good sources to find this and that's the challenge for us is the article 46 money is earmarked we can't just borrow Peter to pay Paul within our budget now we could work with you on some of that but this is we want you to see ahead of that this is kind of what we're facing as we move into next year now let me just finish up with a couple updates on Main.

Campus projects which are on track right now we'll see we'll see if they remain on track we feel very good about where we are with with both these projects I'll remind you it's a 35,000 foot Life Sciences facility at about 35 million I think last time we were here we talked about Andre Johnson Architects with a assist from O'Brien Architects doing the work on this and we had not yet a chosen scansa as our Construction Services partner but we we have done that since we came in last and I wanted you to see the mwbe percentages we have for each 25 plus is there because we required A Min a minimum of 25% in the RFP process with scansa over on Health Sciences that's about going to be about an 880,000 squ foot project Lord X Sergeant is the lead architect architect of record there and skanska is also doing that we saw a lot of economies of scale in bringing skanska in on both projects and also given strong record in this community.

Including the UNCC surgical tower that just went up just completed by them which we thought was a good fit for both these let me let me Skip and then go back you you can't read this ey chart but just know we are all the way through the early architect and construction manager selections it doesn't quite show I think the final update here those would be at 100% And we are now in our design phase we've completed the early Advanced planning and design we've got a sense of what these buildings are going to look like and now we're working through the schematics inside we'll begin construction late next year after we finish all the permitting and site work coordination we'll get into construction in the summer or fall next year with a goal of being in both these buildings by the fall of 27 so we are on track right now and then finally just a little Peak at at the way in which this is going to transform main campus in Durham you're.

Looking North up towards the freeway south down towards South Durham you West towards mcdu Terrace and NC Central East towards Briggs and the freeway many of you been in that building five which is our library and boardroom area coming across loss and you can see the kind of Street treatment we're going to look to do to slow that Corridor make it safer for pedestrian Crossings and also create a real kind of Campus statement there but most importantly as you come across you see the Health Sciences Building at about 880,000 square feet the life sciences which is going to be a kind of a two-part building with a walkway underneath that'll come right off the bus stop and then existing Ingram and wind centers there in 10 and 11 with a redone quad with full Ada accessibility which we have not had on our campus and are excited that this Project's going to be able to make happen and so this gives you a little bit of a sneak peek about what main.

Campus is going to how it's going to be transformed as we put this into place so with that and I've got a few other slides if you got other questions so I'll just leave it on that right now we are happy to answer any questions. Thank you so I was actually in saying in just 15 minutes but somehow you got it down in 20 and it was comprehensive I'm going to go to my board members with any questions and I'll leave my comments for the end the first hand that I did see was commissioner.

Jacobs hello thank you so much JB and really exciting work that again that you're leading at Durham Tech really appreciate difference that you're making and all of your staff yeah I'm really concerned about the not having adequate funding for the continuation I want to say I appreciate the county manager you know making it clear to us this is the tough financial situation that we're in so you know I appreciate you making the effort to to address what the reality is but then you know we have to make decisions based on on this so one one question I have is what is the impact if if that you don't get this money and number two is Orange County funding fully funding any continuation required and and their their continuation budget what does that look like on their end yes so on the second question in Orange County I would say we are at a similar but little smaller Delta over there where we've got some fixed costs that are that we've got to.

Cover and that's all we're asking them for just like here we're really just asking to get those fixed costs and Status Quo Investments covered and we've got the same issue we've just got a a much smaller Delta over there which is what you'd expect with the budget so we've had a good very good session with them and we're in about I think we've been clear about kind of the areas in which we just need to cover those costs which largely also relate to the full cost of the the goral staff being in a liberal wage which is the bigger driver over there in terms of percent increase so I would say little bit better position in Orange County in terms of the total Delta but but a similar situation the the challenge here is for us to find the dollars because out of the state budget that those dollars don't have that same flexibility I mean we're we're talking about facilities and contractor Services the rental and utility increases we would we would like to.

See some movement in the state budget I'd remind you that much like I've heard our colleagues at Duram Public Schools talk about some of the challenges in the state budget we right now sit behind our four surrounding states in terms of per pupil Investments and so your Investments are critical and this is this is an area where we're going to have to work with you to figure out how we manage this Gap given the lack of other sources we really have to go to do that yeah and I guess be we what percentage of this is capital and I'm wondering I didn't yeah and I didn't put the C I'm sorry let me finish yeah because I'm just wondering if it's if it's Capital can that for if we're thinking about how we're going to address this Gap does that mean we have some flexibility about part of it coming from if it's a one-time like fund balance versus op you know what I'm saying so I think it would.

Be helpful for us to understand which part is which and and let me say this I know you were looking at the manager so I want to defer to the manager and I'm not figuring out how to go backwards in this but I did not I gave you the current expense on the capital budget yeah we had asked for 560 you did 560 that's 500 in some repairs and Renovations thank you and and 60 in some service vehicles that are that's two vehicles at 60,000 let me be clear we we'll be getting some Cut Rate use vehicles to do the service vehicles but that's what the 560 covers so that's in addition to the current expense budget okay yeah so so this this this is all reoccurring okay yeah all right that that helps and then the that wonderful list that you gave us about all the different great things that are happening it would be I would love it if we could get some data around it like for example number.

Two how many where are we at right now with the the numbers that are graduating in that program and for instance number eight how many apprenticeships do we have so if if we could get some followup where where where any of that data is available ABS it's it's all available okay we we can get you all that I would tell you with Durham Public Schools this was our first year we started Riverside as a pilot but we do have goals for each of our Cooperative Innovative High School City medicine School Technology and middle college to increase those numbers can give you all those we did see some increases in those we can give you all those the goal to get to 525 is a 2026 goal to ramp up at all of our high schools yeah but we can provide that data great that that would be wonderful and then my last question is around the construction projects vers the campus looks amazing I love the idea of a quad there you know having a.

Feeling of a real campus for students any is there any are you hearing anything about escalating costs at this point you want to say a word about this we're certainly facing that yes we are looking at some increased cost in the project we made some revisions in the scope of the project as we looked at Cost we removed the pedestrian bridge across it both cost wise and place in Wise it did not work so what we did was we moved the funds we were going to use for that onto the the streetcape which was not originally in the project we are right now looking at about a $4 million additional cost but I have $4 million in state funds that we can move to cover that that shortage that's fantastic so they're construction State Construction St construction okay that's great because it looks like you're trying to create almost like a little Boulevard or something there that helps to connect and make it safe for people to cross there yes yeah if you want to.

Test out your 0 to 60 that's a good place to do it and unfortunately many people do and many people also like to pass people who are respecting the speed limit so my window looks out over that that is a that is a fast Boulevard Lawson Street so this is going to calm that down yeah which which is badly needed and give us good safe pedestrian Crossings at the the top on the east side and then at the bottom of the hill on the west side but the moving that bridge off because it was both utility relocation and the cost of the bridge has allowed us to put money both into that streetcape and and keeping it safe but also back into the building and what we need in the classrooms and I don't know if you've looked at you know we see it here in Durham but I've seen it in other countries doing public art on the street also you know literally murals on the on the street to.

Create the connectivity but also that helps to slow things down too so something else to think about for that connectivity thank you thank you you're welcome okay so really quickly I did want to we could pepper you with questions but I did want to give you some flowers I did wantan to I listen I know what did Shannon say I always come with the vinegar I got a little sugar got a little sugar you know because some people always perform I did want to throw out she got my Orange County question but I personally just want to say thank you because I feel like there are certain departments certain agencies certain groups when we cannot find a place for something to fit people like to throw a catch all and I do feel like Durham Tech has become a place where we're like okay if we can't make it fit here it can fit here it's like it doesn't matter what we throw at you you like you catch it just successfully and you.

Executed so well I was at the Bulls graduation this weekend and I get it like we have college graduations we have high school graduations but I I would implore anyone go to these non-traditional graduations I've been privileged to be able to go to the Hat TI reborn Justice movement graduations which we threw at you admid you you ain't asked for that some we came we came and I we're all proud that we did it but I think down on their fourth or their fifth graduation the maiden Duram Bulls graduation I wish y'all could see these some of these young people and the keynote speaker for the Bulls graduation this year was actually somebody who graduated in cohort 2 so you know you don't have to have like these really extravagant speakers people want to see somebody who was you know working I think one of the individuals actually used to work for the county at ABC they're now working at Novo Nord dis and this one guy was working three jobs to.

Provide for his family he said I failed the first cohort of bioworks but I came back in cohort to he said you really got to focus in on this and now he's in the bio Sciences so there's all these really great stories if you really want to humble yourself like kind of sort of go and sit in in one of those but we threw that at you and it's it's just knocking itself out the same thing to be said for how you have been creative with your budget and being able to pay for things I've had that private conversation with you but just in the way that you were able to to bring Novo nor dis in to name the building I see two buildings so in the event you want to name the other one let us know how we can help so you brought in $6 million to name one of the buildings that's like really really creative you got Bloomberg to invest $30 million along with Duren Public.

Schools so I do just want to talk about the braided nature of not just finances but educational opportunities that you give out to our community that I think at times people don't really take into their calculus I did want to jump to the roads really quick this road that everybody's playing The Fast and the Furious on I'm just curious you came just short of saying it you just kept saying fast I haven't asked legal so I don't know if I've done any copyright infringement with this road is this a city road or a state road so we could have them to put speed bumps there or speed Bridges there I'm just saying I know we can do the art we can do everything but before we get there you know just that would just be a question because I know there's some schools that they're really pushing and they're floating this Bond and I don't know if you're in that you're in that calculus but it would be nice to look at.

She got my Orange County question I did also want to congratulate you on your mwbe goals and also on some of your attainment I I feel like people are getting a message we've done it here at the county we're trying to get the the schools are are making an effort you're making an effort so I feel like if people see every Enterprise trying to hit that they gonna recognize in Duram when you come here you have to work with our people you have to work with people who look like the people who live here so I appreciate you setting that goal and also even though commissioner llama is not here I don't know if she's online one of the things that she's often uplifted is are we paying equitably across the board with even the folks that we sub and you put that into your RFP so I know she's not here but I I feel confident that that's something that she would want to elevate my big question.

I I don't know where we're going to get the 504 from but this is that that new camp is at that well at Durham what are some of the things that we're going to see with that $4.8 million renovation or what are some of the core classes that we'll see there because I know that we there were only certain classes there so that's my big question and and how many folks do you think we'll be serving out there I know that's a random one sure out at Duke Street North let me first say just since this picture's up there one of the things we'll be working with the city on is to do a three-way stop if you look at the health sciences and the and the crossing right there we're going to do a three-way stop there that between that and the street trees and a median we think are going to really calm traffic down a lot and so that's we we do have some plans for how we can address that.

And I appreciate your suggestion of some other ways we going to do that Duke Street North is where we do a lot of our what we call Business and Entrepreneurship pathway Majors so that is Aesthetics natural hair cosmetology massage therapy the real estate pargal what am I missing our trade I think I think that's it what we've not been able to do is offer as many classes there as many sections just because of space constraints and in our world of accreditation you can't just pack people into rooms or just offer as as many as you can possibly do you've got to have you got certain space considerations especially when you have lab equipment like you get with a massage therapy and a cosmetology which is are all continuing education highly affordable Pathways so as we as we move and have a 60 7% increase we had to do renovation there just to make those education ready for those facilities whether it's venting and exhaust and I'm looking Andy.

Now is and the other not just spacewise so we're going to get not only the ability to move our courses as our our classes and Pathways as is will'll be able to increase there's a demand for barbering we're not able to meet there's a demand in cosmetology and Massage Therapy and I'm and I'm trying to think if I got aesthetician has that demand so okay it's basically gonna allow us to grow those programs in that new space and and look at adding addition ones the other thing it'll give us the opportunity to do is is put other programs we currently offer think it which we can offer on any of our campuses and there's demand all over both of these counties it'll give us some additional space that when we need to program our different campus locations right now that's not been possible this will give us that opportunity no that's helpful and I remember there was a Transit issue about getting to one class and another so I.

I'll pause that I did I forgot one that I want to throw out because I I was there that night but I did not I have not had the chance to publicly congratulate you for anybody who did not also know you know everyone is Novo nor dis and Eli Lily on tell Tel ision seem like they are at War especially with OIC and monjaro and wovi and Z bound but the one thing that they can all agree on is that they like Durham Tech so it is interesting that we have one building named aanova nordes but a couple of months ago the Community College as well as the Community College Foundation board gave Durham Tech yeah they we shared it with wake but it was Durham Tech I know president ra is going to be upset with that one but we got Partnership of the year with Eli Lily so that that that partnership they got the building they got that nice one on M but we got the.

Job so one I did want to also throw that one out so even that's just another layer of we are partnering With Private Industry to bring in more job opportunities to pay for lab space so you have given us a lot to think about and again I I Echo the same sentiments as my colleague that we appreciate what the manager had to do but even I think when somebody's hitting on all four cylinders we just we have to have some really tough conversations I did have one more I'm going to hold that one because I can email to and I'mma go to my colleagues since we are on time and you know oh you oh well her her light was on if you don't mind commissioner Carter okay commissioner.

Howton I just want to say thank you you know I've had the opportunity to serve with you on your board over the last several years and the work and let me say that again the work that you put into Durham Tech to make all that list of things happen is absolutely amazing and I just want to say I appreciate it I know this community appreciate it there used to be a lot of conversations about what Dr Tech was not providing I don't hear those conversations today and I just I want to say thank you for that and I want to thank you and our manager and Keith you know Keith started over a year ago saying Commissioners y'all been spending you may as well tighten your belt and you heard that conversation that we needed to all tighten our belt so thank you for being willing to do that I do want to go back to that chart and have questions because most of the the this information I've heard I just want to ask.

When you say 1% of is for travel where what is who's no that's so that is that travel this is the chart you're looking at commissioner so that kind a green bar that's that's legal that's insurance I mean I think our travel is maybe Andy what's our travel line yeah the travel is only about $2,000 the main increase in that area is our cyber security Insurance went up 10% last year so which I think everybody realizes that's as a industry Norm right now that you're pay for your cyber insurance and that's been one of our main goals is to be able to make sure we have a good cyber insurance policy okay thank you the other question the chart that had the deficit on it if you can move to that one was the five 504 so how is that going to impact what will how will that impact not having that funds available so again that is our commissioner Haron that's our current expense deficit and so we've the 560 in.

Capital that the manager provided consistent with our request we've got that it's this it's this $54,000 deficit in all these fixed cost increases okay the the challenge with that is so we we need the 504 just to do that okay that doesn't really also include I mean if and if we do that then we've got the recruitment retention fund the Bulls and back to work scholarships all those things now we don't want to touch any of those because we know how critical those are and we're not going to touch those the other ones are cost shifted just to be clear so what we want to do is just work with you to figure out how we can manage that $54,000 keep those whole and and just be able to address the fixed costs increases that we have for this year gotcha we are ready and willing to do that in whatever way you and the staff on to look at this budget we are ready to cooperate with you this staff has.

Been extraordinary partners for us just as you have been great leaders and supporters the staff's been extraordinary partners for us we see this as a manageable deficit working with you but we don't see it as manageable if it stays just the way it is now then then it's a much tougher gotcha bill of sale thank you thank you again thank you and your team because I know that the whole team at Durham Tech does really gets in there and get it done so I just want to extend that congratulations and thank you because that's a lot of stuff that you do thank you commissioner you're welcome commissioner Carter if you would allow me my question is auxiliary to the one that commissioner Howton to say I do remember the other one that I can't kind of wait on so would I remember you all if she hadn't said Keith I wouldn't have remembered it you all came to us maybe about a year ago and there's a quarter cense that we utilize for.

Scholarships and you all came to us a while ago and said could you all start to utilize those dollars for something else and I know that we I think not just you all but community colleges around the state recognize that wraparound Services was something that these dollars should be whether it be gas book support like people need to be supported in going to school so I don't necessarily need to know everything that those dollars were used for I imagine you didn't need to do an increase because you've been somewhat creative with those dollars question two-part kind of question how are we maybe utilizing those dollars and is there another change that we could make to help you utilize some other dollars that I'm not thinking about so so those dollars that and that's the quar that's the article 46 money comes in this year at about 2.3 two two 2.35 million that pays for Durham Tech promise so the $500 per Smith for up to four semesters for high school.

Graduates our College Liaisons so we've got liaison in every one of our high schools in our Gateway to College program which is folks are coming back to high school but on our campus after having dropped out of high school so and that money's ear marked that's not money we can we can pull in now what we have suggested as part of this budget is that we move move the bull success coach back to work coach Small Business Center and aenp and move that over to the article 46 money we see those all as economic development efforts and so we think that's a legitimate now had we not needed to do that we would be talking to you about how we could purpose those dollars for books and transportation for high school students coming to finish with us and so that we could have a truly Equitable dual enrollment program where there are no barriers for anybody to come to college we don't think this is the year to be making that request.

We we have been able to find some private funding from some individuals who want to make it possible for high school students to get the books they need for our classes we've been able to do that off some private money in the first year we'd like to do that across all the schools we work with moving forward and we think that changes the game for families who can accelerate their accomplishment of college credentials we just don't think this is the year as I said we got the memo we understood the assignment and we'd like to come back and talk about that but this year we think this is is probably the better approach now you braid with the best of them Linda Chappelle you coming up after this I don't know if you braid this good but my apologies to commissioner Carter and thank you sir no that's totally fine actually I was going to ask what was being unfunded from article 46 or what might you have done with the shifting of.

The fund so that that covered one of my questions commissioner burn so great president buxon thank you I just want to add my voice to the chorus of appreciation and praise and excitement for the highlights that you've laid out for us and I I'm so I'm so glad you started the presentation with the slide with the students and their stories I felt moved by that slide made my heart sing so I'm glad you started with that does a couple of sort of technical questions does the funding for the bridge program come through dermtech is that or is that County funded through heti reborn right goes goes to hati reborn and then we do some we do the employability interest assessments and classes in kind of key skills that get them kind of ready for employment but that is that we do with hate seems like a great program and I just wondered how how the funding was flowing so thanks for that do does Durham Tech do do community colleges analyze.

Their funding from the states in such a way that you have a per pupil allotment kind of number in the way that we do with dur public schools and that you also know what the local per pupil contribution is yes it it's a hard number to derive because it depends on which Workforce sector right now we're organized by tiers and I'll I'll get our CFO to explain this if you need at a different level but essentially depending on what program you're in that generates a different amount of money so if you're in a what we call a tier one program think our nursing program that has a lot of cost attached to it but really at the end of the day that's about our ability to hire faculty in those areas in addition to some of the equipment and other costs that we have it depends on the tier I think what's our average that we receive the average per FTE is about $4,000 the reason I the reason I ask is.

I feel like I have a good hand a good pretty good handle on the state's responsibility for K through 12 education and where you know how there is a gross shortfall and and the way that schools have to turn to us and and I just I'd like to understand that at the state level too and I'll just maybe try to read up on my own but if not today but if you have any suggestions for how to better understand what the state is responsible for funding and you know shortfalls and just where you know where again just just so I'll know as a resident of Durham not even as a commissioner just what is what as a voter so I'll know commissioner Carter what's hard is how different community colleges are funded in different ways so for instance in North Carolina we don't keep our tuition receipts those go into a big bucket of the state level and then go help to determine how much legislature needs to fund but in general.

At a $4,000 we we Trail our four surrounding States okay in per pupil okay we are generally 40th to 46th in Community College faculty salaries horrible in the country legislature has made some good efforts in recent years to address that we still sit in the bottom tier yeah and right now they're considering a proposal that would be a significant overhaul of the funding formula that would be very good for Durham Tech and really all 58 community colleges would return more dollars to US which would be a great thing that really means we can do better to hire The Faculty we need and staff in this labor market which is a challenging labor market for talent because there's a lot of choices but it would also allow us to do more continuing education more short-term Workforce credentials where that's more important than the two-year degree the current funding formula really incentivizes the two-year degree and as the labor market shifts we need equal incentive depending on what the market where the returns in the market.

Are so we are we are confident this funding formula would be a significant boost are you and you're hope to Durham Tech and we're confident that the legislature is supportive of the funding formula we've put together whether they're going to be supportive to fund the funding formula amid some of the negotiations they're having that's not clear okay all right well I I just think that Durham Technical Community College is an incredibly important part of our education Continuum in Durham and we hold that as top priority and so I do think we're going I hope we will figure out a way to work with you to deal with this half million dollar budget deficit so that you can continue your your good work and and momentum won't slow thank you commissioner we are ahead of time but I I did see there were two more questions I'mma end with commissioner Jacobs but again auxiliary to commissioner Carter's question I've seen vice president Economic Development John lak's presentation on Propel NC yes no.

Indifferent and you can just say commissioner burs I don't want to say on camera but do you imagine that that I I don't know if it's about 93 98 million that the Community College is asking the general assembly for for Propel NC have you what is the temperature do you imagine for some of that funding flowing through and what would be the impact in Durham if if we were to get it and you can say I plead the fifth on all of that and I will move to commissioner Jacobs but it's up to you no we don't need to take the fifth on that it it' be 93 million Statewide that would be for both the reorganization of the funding into Workforce sectors and increasing the funding for the workforce sectors as well as an increased base allocation I think it's worth about on on current enrollment and Workforce focus is probably be worth two to two and a half million okay for us here okay here but really what that means is we'll.

Increase our ability to attract highly talented faculty and staff that's really where those Investments and that is where our most crucial investment is that's helpful commissioner Jacobs will'll end on you thank you sir thank you thank you yeah and I just want to Echo what commissioner Carter just said that you play a vital role I say Andy sitting back here in our to Career Pipeline and our whole strategy around recruiting good paying jobs and and trying to create a pipeline for Durham residents to get into those jobs I really hope the state legislature will put a value on the fact that this is when companies are relocating here or coming here it's because of they want a talented Workforce they want skilled workers a few follow-up questions one is the the bridge program do do you have information on exactly how much that costs the the funding flows through them so I'm not sure what their allocation is we can certainly get money on the it's a pretty small contract.

That we have with them to provide the courses course work to know what the contract is how much it costs and you know how many students have been served by that program on to know about the status of the drop in child care that we had previously been funding so you had and we appreciate made dollars available to Kate's corner to serve as our partner and allow us to offer tuition free I don't think we're allowed to call it drop in child care but it's a kind of part-time Child Care per the regulations which we were able to offer on a five-day a week basis when we had done a nominal tuition rate we had had almost no takeup when you provided that money to Kate's corner and they were able to then provide it free of charge we had very good takeup especially for students and then some faculty and staff when we had slots available during the morning of the afternoon session once those dollars were not were no longer.

Available you've not been able to offer that service we don't have those those resources in place and we've not been able to raise those resources what we are looking at is is a full-time solution where much like Kate's corner has been on at the American Tobacco site we could when we've got a couple options we've been looking at where they could take a site and be a full-time and we would just be kind of a preferred partner with some slots available we had looked at us we had looked at one of our sites to potentially that they could renovate and then we could do a favorable lease we just that site did not end up being a good location for childcare so we're looking at some of the other properties in our area that we might be able to acquire with some of the property acquisition money made available in the bond there's one in particular but that is not we're not yet at a place where I could tell you that's.

Going to be possible we would very much like to provide this service and we know it's a barrier for folks not just to attend Community College but to work at Community College and so this is a high priority for us we've just it's been the the solution has been elusive at this point thank you I think this is going to be something important for our board to continue tracking yeah because I mean that just yeah yeah but we're in a little bit of a childcare desert right where we are and so it does not have to be through us we would but we'd like to be a partner in making that happen yeah so I hope we'll all keep that on our radar and also in our conversations with our business partners who want to support Durham Tech whether there's a role there but yeah okay thank you so much so we we will end there as always thank you for coming in here bat in a thousand I hope that folks.

Have recognized that this conversation while mey also intersects with many others the daycare conversation that we might have to extend to Dr Chappelle the conversation about bridge but we will extend that to hey Tyre born please thank you so much for your CFL coming please extend and our congratulations to Dr battle and I think we if if there are no other sentiments that you would like to leave us with sir we thank you for coming today well I thank you and I'd just like to end on a note of partnership which is not just with you but I've always felt that healthy communities are defined by strong public and private institutional Partnerships and I think that's what we have in Durham we're proud to be part of a lot of them and we feel like your investment in Us and Them has allowed those to flourish to the benefit our resident students and that's what we want to continue thank.

You while our clerk is preparing the next presentation I would like to invite Dr Chappelle up I think she also has a guest with her everyone is getting gold stars today.

Oh we're getting a gift Miss thank you so much you ever feel a piece of paper and that's warm and you know they just printed.

It e.

Good morning I'm all spread out so the copies that you got are just of the slide deck mostly because you have slides in there that are referenced that I'm not really going to be talking about today they hearken back to our previous joint meeting with the public schools so you have copies of the enrollment information and that type of thing should I start yes ma'am no okay I I think people water but yes you can go ahead and start DR Chelle so I'm Linda shabelle from Childcare Services Association appreciate the opportunity to touch base with you today regarding dur prek just want to remind everybody that child care services Association we are a 50-year birthday this year nonprofit serving locally in our region and also our state as well as 22 states that we partner and work with our mission is to lead efforts to strengthen accessible and affordable high quality early care and education for those of you not familiar with us and pardon my voice my allergies are insane in the.

Spring so I'm gonna speed through some slides as I mentioned because some of them are for reference from previous presentations okay so just to kind of really quickly remind you we're all about opportunity for our youngest children and you committed Durham County committed to expanding access to high quality publicly supported preschool and we have been on this journey for many many years but we began implementing in a pilot in 2018 so to remind you for this current period this current school year we are providing funding for 659 locally funded seats you will recall that we are a collaborative your local dollars are placed in a situation where we braid them with other resources we do fully fund a number of seeds but we partially fund others and our goal and what we say all the time and my staff gets sick of hearing me say is we spend Durham County money last so that is our goal you're you'll recall that your investment doesn't just pay for the seats the actual direct instructional.

Services it increases the number of seeds but it broadens your eligibility guidelines the other publicly fun fed programs have restricted eligibility this program does not however the Durham prek governance committee has set very clear guidelines that we prioritize our needy as children in terms of income and developmental advantages so we we serve everyone it is open to all Durham residents with fouryear olds but we do have priorities that we meet and I'll show you that later your funding the local funding also provides extensive quality coaching and professional development for the instructional staff in all of our public preschool sites including the public schools that includes coaching modeling actual true individual but mostly in small group types of situations and we also fund technical assistance to local Child Care Centers to build our capacity for meeting higher standards so we serve programs that are not presently under contract for dur prek to build their quality to meet the standards to be a future site as we grow the program there are other technical.

Assistance activities and quality improvement activities available to child care programs that are funded through other sources through the state in Durham but in particular These funds for your local dollars are spent to build capacity for future classrooms in dur prek in addition dur prek funds higher wages for teachers you'll recall that many many public preschool programs do not pay Equitable wages for the teachers who work at the private sites we have a mixed delivery model we have dur pre in the public schools in private regulated licensed Child Care high quality only five star rated as well as at Head Start but those private programs across the state of North Carolina that are serving children have the same credentials as a BK licensed teacher do not make the same salary in other counties as our Public School teachers scale and so Duren PR makes that possible for our teachers okay so just to remind you where we are we have a community goal to serve 75% the four-year-old census not.

75% of quote eligible children which is what NC PRK has as a state goal so we are at 40.5% we're very happy with that in terms of the fact that we went through the pandemic and that did shorten our growth trajectory our original budget proposal for this year hoped to take us to 42% of census next year so just quickly you can see where we are in terms of those these again this chart reflects locally funded seeds this slide just shows you where we are in terms of the census information the senses is very interesting and there are some little odd spikes and that type of thing and we do use the numbers for each year as they are issued to do our percentage go goal and so each year sometimes our percentage retroactively gets tweaked a little bit but this is where we are right now and this chart is really just for your reference you saw it at the Boe bocc meeting it just gives you an.

Overview of where the seats are that your dollars are touching and it also shows you where seats are that your dollars are touching indirectly through the quality Improvement and professional development activities but not in paying for the seats I have a quick question on that SL why is the DPS enrollment so much lower than the other sites well there's a lot enrollment rate I mean yeah yeah the percentage there's there are a lot of different reasons for that so we are braiding Duran Public Schools funding is braided through a number of different sources and different seats have different eligibility requirements different Title One different different types of seat eligibility pieces and since the pandemic the enrollment has been down some and it's something that we continue to work through with them they could probably you know weigh in more about specific reasons but there are a number of different because the public school sites are spread in a lot of different locations some schools that are smaller you know they have a lot of variability.

In their enrollment and and we work with them to track their seat enrollment as well as attendance it's a complex issue I know when you look at this number it's sort of like well what's wrong but I think that you know to be clear part of our our purpose in tracking is to identify any challenges but we also are very aware that because of the different when you look at the hole not just the seats of your funding when you look at the hole there are a lot of different indicators that allow a child to be eligible and there can be a lot of different reasons why enrollment may not be at capacity I know that doesn't give you a super clear answer and I think you know I would defer to the school district to talk more deeply about what those reasons are yeah I I think it's raising your hand I'm sorry but I I think it's important for us to be able to dig into.

This because if it's a if it's an issue for instance around rap care right which the PO the governance committee has has long identified and what are the solutions for that you know things like that yeah I mean at all our sides there are barriers such as the need for extended care for Working Families which we call R rap care which we've done extensive work studying and it is presently not available at the public school sites other than at the monory classrooms the other barriers include things like the lack of Transportation being available for some families that is a obviously a huge barrier also just be Beyond the extended day option the actual hours you know for many families just need more flexibility and what's available and in addition locations all all types of different factors and I think that we work closely with our partners to try to assess what they are doing to address barriers for families and what we can do the rrap care situation is one of the.

Biggest challenges we have two components to that one is we have allocated dollars out of the dpk budget to pay for WRA care for families for some families up to up to about 35 children that have Financial stress and are unable to pay for rra care when it's available it's it is available more at our private preas sites and we do work with closely with social services to access vouchers at the license programs for RP care and we work with families to help them examine whether the site they're enrolling their child at the offer they received for enrollment whether it best meets their needs in terms of the availability of w and we work with families to try to identify a better location if there's a need that can't be met at the original offer site we do ask families to let us know if they need W obviously it is complex due to Staffing okay so a couple of quick things that I did notice one so three things y'all saw how quickly I.

Moved through to president Bon's presentation because I knew that this was going this one people already had questions before we started I would respectfully request that we do wait for it to get to the end and I just like to elevate you know commissioner Carter and I both agreed last year you know how many times did we not have this on the agenda for joint school board county and it was consistently moved when we consistently move things then we overbear the person when they do get to have a opportunity to be in front of us that happened last week it could possibly happen this week and no way would I I want to silence that but I do want her to be able to get through it I also noticed that commissioner Carter like no no no no you did notice that superintendent Moore did have her hand up while it's not what we traditionally do we do have the expert in the room so if you did want to answer said question.

I'd be more than welcome to let you answer the question or at least when it comes time for your presentation and if not we could proceed yes no maybe oh. Okay so.

Now thank you so much that's helpful context and she even though she did project very well for those who did not hear on the camera she did she reiterated a lot of what Dr Chappelle said and elevated that she's thinking about it from the point of a family that location is a primary issue access to transportation and one that we all know all too well extended hours and so parents are making a choice to go elsewhere and that Transportation feasibility location as well as our extended hours of things that we need to think about so I am going to let thank you so much for offering your volunteered expertise we needed that and also I'm going to give it back to Dr Chappelle thank you so much so I invite you there is an extensive rap care study that we did as part of our scope of work in 2022 with the county to deeply study the issue of rap care it's available on the dur prek website and this complex issue was.

Certainly exacerbated by the pandemic with as we all know sta issues we do work very closely and we meet with J Public Schools every month and this is an issue that's on our agenda every month to talk about ways that we can make different choices around rap care I think that rrap care has been available in the past in the public school preschool classrooms at some sit is not available right now and we are hopeful that it will have you know it will become a priority again as we move further from the pandemic we're hopeful in particular at witted as one site that is a priority that we hope to to begin rap care again in particular there's there's not any rap care in the four four year olds in during Public Schools except for at the monor preschool sites and that is a fee based activity well and let me be clear all the rrap Care available is a fee based however we work very hard to work.

With families who can't afford rap care but needed to have them access a during preg scholarship or a Smart Start scholarship or a scholar a voucher administered through Durham social services so rrap care can be covered under some Child Care financial assistance so if there if if funding were available more families could take advantage of rap care is the availability of staff to provide rrap care also an issue yes the Staffing is a critical issue and was one of the the major reasons the district suspended offering care as they shared with us that was a big you know I mean the reality is we know you've heard all over the state about the workforce in early care and education and in particular extended hours can also be very challenging we believe it can be better in Durham and we continue to work to help people come along with our belief that it has to be a priority I mean we have some private providers that don't offer it too let me be.

Clear I mean we we need to be really clear and also we have variable definitions of rap care for for me in my school age history for many years rap care meant you at least we're open until 6: PM however that is not consistent in Durham some programs end rap care earlier than that and it can be problematic for some families I mean we hear from not just preschool families we hear from dur Public Schools families who are seeking after school care and before school care and it it's been difficult to provide it for funding reasons Staffing reasons but that is critical people have to be able to go to work I do feel like this is one of our our you know again a priority because of the way it helps families and we're trying to invest in children and families so anyway right and one of our goals I mean Durham has a very robust before and after school care program for school aged students and has.

For a very long time and yeah I did used to run it but that was 19 years ago almost can you believe that feeling pretty old but the reality is that Durham is unique in that all all of the foreign after school programs at the elementary level in Durham are licensed and many many school districts have chosen not to pursue that historically school districts have not been as interested in going through the regulation process for obvious reasons of additional external oversight as well as the amount of personnel time the investment to get license the gain of that for is that those families who are in a rap CARE program can if it's a licensed site can access a public voucher for if they're financially eligible if it's not a licensed site rap care vouchers are not available and that's a state legislation it's not a local rule so but looking at these numbers we it coming out of the pandemic that the numbers have gone up the enrollment was.

Better prior to the pandemic across all programs so I want to be clear and there's a lot of reasons for that obviously families four yearolds are young and families have to make personal choices about about what will work for them so it's it is certainly a complex issue okay so just to I'm not going to go through all of our enrollment demographics you you will have those to look at and they we did talk about them at the Joint meeting of the school board and the commission however I wanted to come bring us back to this one as I said before Durham is committed to a universal program and that is unique across the country there are not that many universally available programs however we have been very clear about prioritization and assuring that we are really looking at need and so you can see here that we are consistent with our priority and I just wanted to lift that up as an important piece because sometimes people in the community will.

Say to me well you know that's not for me and what we say is that every child can benefit from a high quality Early Education experience to support their success trajectory in school and in life so this this you know is an important piece of who we're serving so I mention this because one of our concerns longterm is we know this is a very expensive project we acknowledge and know that and unfortun fortunately we believed there was were going to be more federal dollars coming through a few years ago you know it was a very important agenda item in past legislation that didn't pass and our state of North Carolina has not increased the investments in NC pre as we hoped and has not adopted the recommendations for the Leandro report right big surprise but the way that directly impacts our during prek program is that there are fewer resources available to braid with so you know you'll recall that other communities in North Carolina are investing in local preschool by creating parallel.

Programs and and paying for children completely or they're enhancing just in PR but they're not braiding across all public programs and we're committed to this model we believe it's best for Durham and we've seen that with the growth and the numbers but we know this is a very expensive project and one of our big concerns is that due to fiscal restraints at some point there may be a push to say you know well we need to restrict access we believe that's the wrong move because we know from research that children benefit from having the opportunity to engage with children across our whole Community regardless of their demographics their fam's advantage so I'm really quickly if you go pause for one second I just I know it's just hard because you're giving a very thoughtful kind of presentation so I'm flexible what role does it play because being able to pull down and prek funding that does exist is so important and we we have not been.

Doing the best that we can on that as a community what and that puts a bigger burden on than the use of the local dollars what what I like to understand because we did this did come up at the Joint meeting with the board Board of Education the fact that we only have 10 out of 25 DPS ume sites that are credentialed meaning that we can't pull down the NC prek or the federal Child Care Subsidy money what role though does that play for us locally as well as you know the rap you know the rap program we're not taking advantage of Federal grant money that can provide rrap care which the Biden Administration has pushed out so you know on the one hand we can't just say wo is me but then on the other hand we're not actually doing what we need to be doing I really would like to understand okay the full picture thank you I'm happy to address that so A couple of things there's a couple pieces.

To what you said first let me just say that to start with what needs to happen is that we have to Advocate to our legislature about the importance of investing in NC prek this is an issue across the state the North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education allocates slots to counties they allocate seats in NC pre to counties ideally this would be based on a formula that made sense and and was based on you know population of children eligible unfortunately it's not based on that it's more historically in the growth of NC pre counties accepted seats from the state as they had capacity to place classrooms and in some communities there wasn't the availability readily available classrooms to open Inc PR classrooms so historically you had a hodg podge of allocations to counties in Durham in the early years of what was called Mor at 4 that became NC PRK Durham did a really good job as compared to other like counties in accepting seats and opening classrooms and one way they.

Did that was by having a really robust mixed delivery model some counties in North Carolina only put more of four and later Inc preate in the public schools and that became a big issue and that did change due to changes of rules but in Durham we always had a mixed delivery model however you'll recall that back years ago in the public schools in Durham there was a real commitment to focusing on strengthening the k12 and prek back in the day was not something that was supported for the public schools except for in the mandated area of services for children with identified needs in exceptional children department so we had a smaller number of NC pre seats initially or four seats in the early days well unfortunately the state is never right sized they did not invest in dollars for local communities to invest in opening classrooms in funding things other than the direct service and in cprk many people don't realize since they have all their nice you know Lottery ads and everything but.

What a lot of people don't realize is the state does not fully Fund in C prek it is is designed to require a local investment and they only funded at about a 60% ratio and when you look at our investment even prior to dur pre our investment locally in NC pre we divert our local Smart Start dollars we allocate Smart Start dollars through derms partnership for children their allocations committee diverts funds to enhance the NC prek reimbursement rate which is abysmal from the state of North Carolina and so we are we are braiding we were already braiding some dollars prior to Duram prek anyway this is a kind of a long answer to say to you that for NC pre we have to advocate for more investment at the state level secondly yes we do we are limited to plac Inc pre seats at licensed regulated Child Care programs they must be five star rated licensed programs and we do have a strong number of festar rated programs in.

Durham we're very fortunate I do have a document that I can give you that gives you the latest numbers in Durham that I haven't have with me but anyway the the reality is that for NC prek we want to be ready if there's an investment and new seats are available and we ALS you know and being ready means getting more of the public schools licensed over time the school system has committed you recall superintendent maanga committed over time to having preschool in every elementary school that's a long-term goal thankfully the new school in liines Forum opened it opened and they worked hard to get that program licensed as a SCH school opened that was a that that didn't happen in the old days so that was progress that we were thrilled about and we believe made that preschool those preschool classrooms allines for stronger because those families can access additional resources through ncpr as well as public assistance the issue is that to get licensed does bring additional dollars.

But it costs dollars to get license in Personnel investment time all the things and when you look across North Carolina you see Public Schools really not pursuing lure at a level that we would like to see from outside of school districts because of all the complexities however we would like to see additional work in this area with the public schools but we also also are aware there are a lot of competing priorities but we work hard to provide technical assistance and quality improvement activities to help them when they are working on lure okay so even I have follow up for that one that was the big one that a couple of us did have it's not to point fingers it is because we're curious and as we're trying to allocate dollars if there are dollars left on the table we want to at least say how can we posture folks to be able to do different I do want to throw this out to the L sitting here the presentation that is immediately after.

This one those individuals if I'm not mistaken have to start on time because they're they're needed elsewhere I know that Dr Chappelle does have 20 more slides I do have two questions for myself I'm willing to hold those not even to the end but until a later date but if we could continue to move it would be really helpful I do not want to stop my colleagues but I know she has 20 more slides yeah and I'm not going to go through all those but I would like to talk about the budget so let me move forward so these slides are just for your reference that show you again about our priority for income support for families and again to remind you that we do bring in Revenue to support the program on a sliding scale for families when they reach if they're at 400% of federal poverty it is a sliding scale and it is modest but just to show you the impact of those parent fees on the.

Budget we for this current school year we're averaging a total monthly parent fee of almost $20,000 and those monies roll back into the program so want to be sure you you know that so the way that works we we means test and work with families on their income they're assigned a parent fee they pay the parent fee to the program and we pay the difference to the program between the parent fee and our reimbursement rate so we don't collect money centrally from parents the sites do that it's like a child care voucher Arrangement but it's the opposite it's people people paying you know for a program that's mostly free okay so Aron we know what this means is that we from all Sites there from the from the 12% of families who pay a fee at all Sites we we defer costs to the amount of 20,000 a month almost yeah yep so I'm not going to go into all this this is your reference for enrollment tells you about all the.

Demog grabits I do want to obviously I'm here to talk about the budget so to to remind you this is complex because Durham County funds a lot of different early childart components and so when the Investments are publicized sometimes it's confusing for people but to talk today I'm talking about the money that comes centrally to dur prek and is administered through our contract with you by ccsa in accord with the policy set by the dur pre governance committee so these dollars do not they exclude witted because the witted dollars although part of the Early Education investment those dollars go directly to the district so our current budget this year 6.8 million or so dollars so you'll recall in 2020 and in 2022 you asked me to project our needs over time to get to our 75% goal so typically our budget ask is related to that work that we previously presented to you to meet our goal this year our original request of 8.24 6365 was less I just want to get a gold.

Star was less than what we had projected you get a gold star thank you was less than we had projected that we would ask you for back in 20 and22 however current economic climate obviously it was still too much but that was what we asked for and what that was to do was to fund an increased seat rate based on inflation and salary increases and everything it was to add seats 45 to 70 seats and you'll recall we always do a range because of the braiding we try to get as many seats as possible and then also to fund components of the Duram pre Equity plan so then the recommendation by the county was also confusing for some folks because there was an increase for Early Education which we appreciate so much in especially in this climate but the actual increase to Durham prek available to all the programs that are administered through dur prek in the recommendation is 422,000 419 so that means the total dur prek.

Budget ex excluding W it would be 7.3 million for next year if that 422 419 still happens so of course we were disappointed but we acknowledge the environment and so we've worked hard to figure out okay if that is all we get which we would appreciate any amount what would we do so we would still fund The increased seat reimbursement rate because of the very real costs and the analysis we've done for expenses we would add some seats but we could not add as many as we hoped to add we would project between 22 and 30 new seats if new money became available again we always spend your money last but right now it's not looking too promising from the state and then we would revise our Equity work by decreasing our plan to provide transportation for high need children down to five and it would be obviously more like a pilot and then we would instead of Hiring Our healthy social behaviors person that we've been planning to hire for several years to.

Provide social emotional support to teachers to better serve their children not to provide individualized activities or therapy we would postpone that to the Future and we would instead review and revise and we're already working on this our professional development offerings for the coming years and we would enhance our professional development to support students social emotional needs by helping teachers in this Arena so instead of doing both professional development and having dedicated staff who would enrich that Arena we would wait to a future hopeful time of more resources so that's how we would cut back to the 422 419 the key here though is that means that in analyzing the spending so so we were going to add three new locations next year we can't do that with this with this model we would still add one location in RTP which I won't name since we haven't made an offer and they haven't accepted although they apply to be a site we would instead of funding a full classroom we would offer them a.

Half a classroom which is you know fraught with issues but we believe it's possible secondly we would only be able to fund one classroom at Murray massenberg we had hoped to fund 45 seats at Murray massenberg we would only be able to fund one classroom of 18 children at Marie massenberg and then we would drop our plan to expand at one of our existing sites and we wouldn't get to our to our Pro rejection of 42% of the census we would still make a little incremental bump in how many children we were serving but obviously it would be fewer well we're at 40.5 right now 40.5 right now we were hoping to go to 42% but the reality is that we cannot say enough how much the support for this program matters and means to this community into our work and and we will do the best job with whatever money you provide obviously okay so this is just for your reference but it's just to give.

You an idea of our growth over time up through this school year you've seen this slide before but basically what it really does it shows you how how the money is spent and the fact that the majority of dollars go directly to pay for seat reimbursement and then the program Services area what that means is that's everything that's the universal portal for applications that's all the support for families to get enrolled everything all the quality assistance everything as well as just the paying the bills to every site attendance all those things okay I now we're almost out of time so I just want to bring your attention to these are the reimbursement rates presently in Durham this is Durham only Durham and you'll see I referenced the NC PRK rate of 1100 that is nowhere near what the state contributes we're using smart star dollars that could be going for other Investments to enhance the state very very low reimbursement rer in supr so it's it's less than half of this.

Amount quickly just want to mention the other thing that we would cut back on I've presented to you before at the Joint meeting and in other meetings about the apprenticeship program that we are unbelievably amazed at the success of it's the largest one in North Carolina for Early Education we have 42 participants actively enrolled and we have a waiting list so the other thing that was part of our budget request was to be able to take those students potential students off the waiting list what we would do with us this proposed budget is we would just maintain the number we have now we would backfill if anybody were to drop out but we would keep our waiting list and we you'll recall that the apprenticeship program was started not through your local dollars it was started through money we raised and for seed money $150,000 that we raised in seed money to get it started and then you the dur pre budget pays for some portion of those apprentices that are working in a Durham.

Prek classroom but The Apprentice program is available across all Early Education in Durham but we have people in the weight list who want to work at a dur preas site but we would just maintain that weight list okay so I'm not going to talk anymore about the apprentiship program you have it as a reference in the slide tag I will say that one lastly when it comes to the budget one thing we are not going to cut with this budget is the teacher support payments just to give you an example about that people say to me what is a teacher support payment these are the dollars that we provide for every teacher including during Public Schools teachers it goes to the district or to the Child Care Program to support the salary of that teacher and on average we pay pay $12,000 per year for the teacher support payment that certainly doesn't pay for their salary but it is a amount that's in addition to the perch child reimbursement rate that allows the site.

To hire a highly qualified teacher regardless of the salary you think about in particular our private sites they interview somebody with 20 years experience we require them to pay on the scale the during Public School scale they can't afford that and so this support payment allows a teacher to be hired regardless of how experienced they are and creates a more Equitable process anyway we would not change that there's more information about that so I'll stop so you can ask me questions I know we're almost out of time no so we wanted to get there because I know that folks do have questions I know you have 10 I want you to take it to five but no wait wait well I'll say who goes first because I'm chairing I know y'all used to be in leadership give a black girl one chance we will start with commissioner Howton and then I do have a couple and we'll we'll move on from there commissioner.

Howard answer sure on page four can you clarify what that means when you're talking about the private sites is that private schools or or what what does that mean okay let me make sure I it's on page four yeah the fourth slide I'm looking at the fourth slide and I'm just trying to be sure I understand your question all right okay okay right here no no this one no no when it's it's one one two three four it's about five slides okay it's not it either.

Yeah it's overall public prek numbers for their okay it's so at private SES and then across that chart enrollment rate 93% can you explain what that means sure okay so you recall all year every time I talk to you I always re I always talk to you about the locally funded SE but because that's what you're paying for and that's what I have the best access to in terms of information but we work hard all year with our partners who are pictured here their logos to get their information about children they're serving in our braided model and in in seats that we don't directly pay for but we support through our Universal application work and our quality improvement work so at least once a year we report to you all because what we what we are measuring is our 75% goal is for all children not just the children you're directly paying for and so we gather from our partners how many children how many seats they have how.

Many children they are serving how many are enrolled so our private sites what that means is the site is a legally operating regulated Child Care Program that's at least five star rated it is under contract to deliver public preschool Services either through Duram pre or Andor through NC prek and or possibly through a private chare arrangement with headart so a private chare program is operated it could be a nonprofit it could be a small business it could be a multi-chain but they are a star rated license program they must meet all the dur preas standards they must have BK licensed teacher has the Lead Teacher they meet all the standards and they receive all of those support and services and right now this year we have 547 seats for foury olds that are in publicly supported Child Care classrooms that doesn't mean that Mary's Child Care that has a four-year-old classroom is counted in this number if Mary's Child Care is under contract to deliver a public four-year-old classroom they are in this.

Number but if they are operating a tuition-based private Child Care those numbers are not reflected here and how is that different from Head Start headart is a federally funded program with very tight eligibility requirements Head Start and Durham is administered by families and communities Rising they're the fund funded partner and Head Start seats are allocated through their Federal grant we work so what we do with them is so for example in 2324 166 children are in Durham head administered by families and communities Rising some of those seats are fully paid for by the Federal grant but we do contract with headart to add seats that are paid for by Durham prek but these numbers so this chart it is confusing because this chart takes all kids no matter how they're paid for and Records where they're housed so for example when you look at the Head Start number and it says 166 children this year some of those children are being federally paid for some of those children are under.

Contract for Inc prek some of those children are under Contracting during prek so this particular chart is not not extracting the pay Source it is showing you where their house what office they're under in terms of where they house so we're reporting to you every child that's in our public prek ecosystem okay so it's not showing the quality of the prek no ma'am this is enrollment okay yes so these this is just showing you so so the green is this year and the capacity means that's how many seats they have the money to have okay so if they were 100% enrolled all the time they would have the seats for 1669 children in Durham in public preschool that includes your investment that includes Federal investment that includes state in super dollars that includes EC you see we have EC listed here the reason EC has a blank for enrollment rate is the public schools have to serve children based on need in the exceptional children's Arena and that number varies every year we do.

Report on that because it's important there are foury olds and we want to know we want you to know they're part of our census goal but but they're not it's not a set and certain number but the rest of so it's the whole I hope that's a little bit more clear does that help it's it's a little bit more clear just a little bit so this is just reporting on enrollment versus seats and we're trying to grow our seeds and our en and I guess the main issue concern wasse was how how are they getting the funds as far as is it a quality issue or or not no I will say of course we are only as good as our weakest program that's a fact but we have invested tremendously in quality improvement and capacity building all of these sites that are under contract meet the dur preas standards which I invite you to look at on our website the dur prease standards are much higher than the NC pre standards for example and.

So the thing about this chart though to understand is not all of those 1669 seats are meeting the Durham prease standards 100% some of these are meeting those other standards but those other standards are evidence-based researched you know they're not they're not low quality in any way the only ones I can tell you are meeting the dur pre standards are these the ones that are under contract and have direct reimbursement through our program we work with all programs whether they are funded locally or not to bring them to meet the dur preas standards and so enrollment of course could be related to Quality if a parent has a experience that they don't appreciate they're going to vote with their feet and so enrollment certainly one of the first things we look at is is there any issue at a site that needs support and Improvement that's always a thing you want to look at but then we look at what the other barriers are and as interim superintendent mentioned location is a real issue and.

Other factors in our community if a parent perceives a site to be in a area that may be experiencing High Crim sometimes families make different choices I mean enrollment is a complex issue once a child's enrolled though we also track attendance a different issue and we know about many of the intractable issues with attendance and we work very hard with sites to support attendance and we work with our families to support attendance thank you Lyon okay Dr Shel this is why we buffered this so we do have no no no no no I don't want you to apologize because here well so a couple of things like I feel like I go through this tug of war every year when it comes to dur prek and I had you know I I got to do it today because I'm not going to have another chance to do it where my struggle kind of sort of is and it's a couple I I never forget my first year I I personally feel like.

When people ask questions it's because they care I feel like every woman up here when they ask questions it's because they care and I'll never forget I was on a zoom and I was asking a bunch of questions question and somebody said you can tell commissioner Burns don't care about prease she always got so many questions no my mama retired from Head Start after 29 years I'm always have questions I watched her pay for the stuff in her classroom so I don't know how that equate so I do hope anybody who's watching recognizes that we we question because we care and if they don't then they that's on them my big question is so for the 7 I I get that we have this really laudable goal of reaching 75% just off the top of your head I I'm happy that we are increasing right like I'm s 36 40 we want to get to 42 and I think you you phrased it really well that due to the pandemic we've.

Shortened our growth trajectory that's a great way to put it who in the world is closer than us I'm I'm just C like is it is it bunkum is it w like who is it nobody that's all I needed you to say that's right but who's cloes Charlotte mberg okay sh and I can send you those numbers but I don't I don't have them in my mind at the moment but yeah they've been doing this local investment a little bit longer and so they are a little further along that but that that answers my question I I I'm not trying to Pat us on the back but I don't want us to beat ourselves up either because we are talking about a state that set a 75% goal and then every year decreas is how much they put in prek so I don't know how we going to sit here and say like this is our Statewide gold but we going to drain it like like anything else and.

Then have the expectation that folks are supposed to hit it so I'm proud of where we've come I'm proud of whether other people are not like I'm proud of the work you've done I do want to go back to something that that President Bon said he used it before I could use I used it three years ago and I took a lot of flack for it he said that he is sitting right now where he is in East STM in a pre desert now I remember a presentation years ago where we sat in this room it was a joint meeting and you know we said God bless us we didn't lose any seats during the pandemic and then I came back and I said I want a heat map because we might have not lost seats we might have had kept 600 seats but and no no offense to anybody if we gained those seats at South Point and I lost them in this Durham you know I'm not going to say.

I have a problem with that because growth happens but I'm also want to make sure how can I go back and capture these right so that's always been something for me because you you're right there are some parents say I don't want to send my kid to prek I've never understood that I have I I literally sat at a table with a woman the other day she's this is what this woman said to me she says my kid got to go to school for 13 years why would I want them to go for 14 I don't know maybe because we want their life to be better like you know but I I couldn't deal with that cuz even my mom looked at me she says yeah this is it's a different set and then we have parents like you location Transportation ex there's a million reasons why people don't but what I don't want to do is shortfall these seats and you did give us a heat map and.

It was interesting to look at and but I kind of want to go back and this is where my I might not be where everybody else is so I get it got the Stars program with the state then you all have a set of Standards here I think you put it very well at the Joint meeting where you said to us you know County Commissioners I wish other people would have heard y'all you said you know our governor board is solely focused on this and we don't need y'all to be solely focused on this because you're right you have the expertise so you all should be in a position to give guidance and to give governance on how this works because we have public health and we have mer mergen we have 50 million other things that we're looking at but we're pretty smart so but I always get really confused so the state has a star standard I recognize that dur prek has a higher standard and maybe I'm so just give me a.

Yes or no I'm maybe I'm just opposing Durham Public Schools and their pre- classrooms the wrong way because my colleague brought up you know they're 25 and only 10 meet these standards and we can't get it are we holding dur Public Schools or any of them to the standards that you set out outside so this is where since this where my problem comes in so if we're I'm not saying we shouldn't if the state has a star standard and they can meet that standard and then you have an additional standard but we can't pull down dollars because the stand that you said is higher like those to me that's dollars that we leaving on the table and why why can't and again and that's because I don't know and that's why I'm asking so you know why can't we say okay you are certified via Stars so I can pull down these State dollars limited as they are do I want the best for kids but if the star standard is.

Good enough for everybody else and I'm not saying I don't want DM kids I just don't want to leave dollars on the table if especially when we are going into we we are looking down the barrel of a Republican party that says whatever we can do we will take money away 200 out of this what is it these opportunity scholarships these $200 million right now is going to high wealth families 200 we have the numbers the money that they stripped out of public schools these folks that apply for these dollars and let's be honest when we look at it the first day that website open it crashed behind C behind Cumberland County Durham County had the most applicants nobody wants to talk about it I'll talk about it because the F preach it preach it sister preach right let's like really be honest about it I get it everybody says not Machina Burns is not the education person no not Machina Burns is not real breed but she.

Is well read and so I'm trying to understand why we are not going after these dollars when we can so I'm I'm going stop there and that's why we buffered in this time because I know this one has some questions it's not this one excuse me my lovely colleague commissioner J like that one is killing me and I need an answer for it before November 25th when I turn into a pumpkin okay obviously you have very complex questions there but a couple things I want to be sure to address first we as a community want our children to be successful obviously and so we created a program that does have really high standards in order to be sure our local Investments we going to get us as far as possible in children's success however this those things you're you're conflating a few things together that's fair then help me help me so I'm just going to tease out for a minute the North Carolina quality rating system which is better known as the five-star rated.

License is a is is a great tool to measure safety positive environment instructional Baseline activities it is a two component license assessments that looks at the environment uses an environment rating scale to assure the program is following quality standards and looks at the education level of the staff we know that in Early Education credentials and education for the workforce is a challenge especially when the majority of early Educators do not make a living wage anywhere near a living wage okay so that's a whole another complex issue but the reality is the quality rating system is good and it helps families guide families by easy to understand rating system people think five star must be great but the reality is that in the quality rating system the five star rating is in many ways a floor okay so but the five star rating is the Gateway and actually for subsidy it's a four or five star rating in the state of North Carolina to get subsidy so to bring more dollars in the licensing.

Regulations are a gateway to access additional dollars and so we want to push yes we want to push our Public School syst system as possible to get more of their preschool classrooms license so we can help draw down more money from somebody else other than you yes okay so that's this part but our quality standards that we have we have robust adherence to our standards and we also have a approach that is about support and capacity building it's not a punitive approach so we are continuously building quality we don't want quality for the day that you got assessed we want ongoing quality and the way we do that is by building that capacity through really strong professional development through coaching and modeling through the these kind of discussions with our early Educators okay so there's that for dur prek you say to me what about this goal so so you'll recall the goal came out of the supply and demand study that you invested in and it came from the feedback of the over.

3,200 something families who responded to the survey randomized survey that had very strong response rates of parents who wanted this so the goal was set now goals should be aspirational but they also should be achievable over time and so are you said you're happy we have growth yes we are too I mean if you said to me you're not getting an extra dollar this year at all which is not what you've said we would never do right but I would be really depressed because that would be you know we'd be stalling however any growth is an investment in our future and so we want to continue that the the thing I'm worried about the most be honest we have this school opening Murray mburg is opening in a high demand we we have we already the school is already filled three preschool classrooms could already be filled by the people who have marked it as their first preference who've who've applied for dur prek it's a fact I give you all the numbers the.

Reality is that My worry is that we've never had an opportunity for a public school in Durham to open with three preschool classrooms it has never happened and if we can't afford it that's reality but I doubt we'll ever get it back if the school opens without any preschool classrooms I'm I'm afraid that would never we couldn't go back and get them right and we do have a tremendous shortage of seeds you talk about a desert we have a tremendous shortage of seeds in South Durham it's a I know I know I know them M I know so I'm hopeful we can at least invest to fund the one classroom but I'm hopeful you know that we could figure out something but I know there's so many competing needs but that's my big concern about Mar massenberg we do need additional seats but we will work with what we have I'm going go ahead to my I'm still having a tug a war but thank you for your explanation commissioner I would.

Love to invite you to have a conversation at any time thank you thank you first of all Linda I just want to thank you because I mean I mean just as all sitting here and listening to you I mean there the the expertise that you have the history the knowledge I mean everything the way you can explain things I mean my passion project and I just I'm so grateful that we have a partner like what's the new name yeah our our agency name is changing to early years early years over the next year Brenda and I were at the Gayla the 50th Anniversary Gada Gayla and they rolled out the new name early years I love it thank you yeah we're just to me this is like local government at its best when we are able to partner with a nonprofit partner who has the expertise and the skill and the ability to deliver what we for us what we want to do that we know we can't do ourselves and we.

Don't want to do and I and also I I've always been I always lift up the Durham prek program as an example of systemic change and you know it is will forever be one of my major priorities so I guess I want to get back to to the budget and try to understand for one thing you mentioned that we have I think you said. $422,400 th000 I know it's not a big difference but yeah it is I would love to have it up to five yeah because her yeah her budget says five 500 and again you know we've heard different numbers but we would love to have whatever we can get okay the second thing I want to clarify is around Murray and and also the witted we directly fund that to the district and that is 1.5 million is that yes I think it's important that we also really add that to our that's our our dur prek yeah we need to we need to change the way we talk about that.

The well we include it in all our accountability and our reporting but right but not this number of what it is it is is it included in our budget yeah okay it is okay okay yeah so okay the Murray massenberg are those schools going to be opening credentialed So the plan after extensive meetings over time with the district yes well the way the rated license works is you open with what's called temporary license for six months if you've done all the work to do that and the district has fully committed to that as they did when they opened Lions farm so Lions Farm opened with the six- month temporary which is what by law what happens and then they fully followed through to get their fstar license and we worked with them our quality Improvement coaches worked with the district to support that because let's face it the public schools do not typically go through a a licensing process and it is different in kind of a parallel universe and so we do provide.

Extensive support to make that happen and they do plan that if those preschool classrooms are going to open they have said that they fully intend they can't apply yet because the school has to be farther along in the process and terms of building ready right so but but they are working to do that yes and I would hope since it was a new elementary school they would have designed yes they have the classrooms to meet those standards okay yes and can we get the information about lions Farm preschool classroom showing that now they are fully licensed and credentialed and how much money they are able to pull down of NC prek or DSS subsid childcare subsidy yeah so yeah I mean we can yes I can I can send you some information yeah it's important for us to actually see the data yeah so what I'm wondering is if we because you know during Public Schools requested in their budget I think it was 775 that let me just look.

76624 for Murray Mass Murray massenberg okay yeah I wouldn't be able to address that so with what is currently in the manager's budget how much of that would be covered currently okay so the the way we we do allocations a little bit differently in if this goes through the way it is and if it is the 400 because we feel like the RTP site I mean there's it's a Draconian choice you know like where you going to put your seats you can't it's difficult to find a partial classroom and so we can't afford with this budget to fund two full classrooms at maray massenberg and so we had proposed that we would try to fund one classroom and then put other seats at the other location we could partially fund a second classroom if we didn't find anywhere else new the when you ask me how much money I can certainly send you how much money the district will get the new rate this year is 1456 per child.

Per month and we would be budgeting for 18 seats in addition as I shared with you the teacher support payments an average of $122,000 per year per teacher that would be one teacher and then there are also what we call a pre-service payment where they get a percentage so I could send you that but it doesn't align with what the district ask for and I can't address what their money would go toward well cuz what I'm trying to get that is first of all I'm wondering about us pulling this out and doing what we do with wited pull it out of the Durham Public Schools budget so we don't lose the 20% to the Charter tax I'll call it when it is going to DPS though it doesn't it doesn't go through us right now wited goes the money for Whitted does go to DPS I'd like to pull that out okay but why yeah oh I didn't realize that okay so can we look at then that's a great idea pulling.

Outwitted so that we don't get the charter y'all see ke has gotten up and I'm pretty sure if we can try to look at what it would cost to do the same thing with Murray massenberg run the run run both of these through Duren pre basically can we run run those yeah so presently yeah there are Duram preas seats at Durham Public Schools not outside of wooded at a variety of schools we pay the district just like we pay any other contracted school public or private for a dur prease seat so there are additional seeds being paid for to the district where the money goes through governance to the site Lion's Farm the money comes through governance and goes for Lions Farm W it's the only one presently that's a part of the Durham prek Network that is paid directly to the district now the district gets some money obviously in their whole budget that goes to preschool that is not not administered at all through dur pregate you know there's so many.

Different costs and they're braiding so many funds but we do pay for seeds through dur prek Contracting at public schools and if you chose to continue that which we recommend because not only the the issue of the charter schools because the charter schools don't do preschool presently that's a whole different issue but the the preschool dollars administered through governance follow all the standards and would be based on seed allocation where there's greatest need and for example at witted you give a you give a set sum for witted no matter how many children they serve no matter how many seats there are so that's an arrangement that you give a set amount for for witted separate and that's not administered through Duram pre at all through the governance committee but W it meets the dur pre standards they participate in professional development and activities they're not different in their engagement with Children and Families it's just the administration of resources is not through dur pre I let me jump in for just one second only.

Because I see that direct delaying and also so we really about to be on time I want to get to commissioner Carter and I also want to preface that as we are publicly talking about loopholes I want us to be very careful and perhaps table that issue that way we get guidance because what I don't want people to do is grab a hold to that who are watching and think that we are doing something un until we get clarification on whether or not we can actually do it but it is helpful context to let us know that they that there are certain schools not providing that and that that loophole might be an option direct the L did you want to add something I just want to clarify that there is $1.5 million that goes for wited school prek it may go to the schools I don't know how it's routed to the schools directly but it is not part of their current expense funding in their budget for $19.

Million so it is not there's not a 20% sear charge for charter schools on those dollars okay that's what I thought it is currently budgeted in our prek budget along with the 6.8 million yeah thank you for clarifying so anyway I I know we don't have time to get into the details but what I would like to have before you know you know hopefully by our next budget work session is just what are what are some options for a way we could support the opening of what is the best strategy for how to fund the request to be able to fully fund and open the M Mass yeah Murray massenberg what is the best way to structure that on your all's professional recommendation I do think it's very important so and you know what what would that look like to to to be able to do that what would it cost but I also have a c caveat with that which is I would like to be included with that some some type of.

Commitment to anou with the issues that you raised at our joint meeting around the need for data sharing which we have been trying to get for years what is the data that we need to get so that we can understand if our Durham prek program is working so yeah I again this this money for me needs to have strings attached that's right the second thing is a commitment for Durham Public Schools pre prek to work with Durham prek to on a plan to get all of the sites credentialed so that's I would like to see what your recommendation is of how we can do that thank you Perfection I'm happy that she end it with I'mma come to you commissioner Carter if you have any you send I listen I I want I want to start listen no and look you goingon to get the last B and we G but again I just to Echo something that commission that Javan board member Lewis and I both agreed on I did have trouble with the.

Language when you said that you know when it comes to she says how do we know we're doing well you know and the language that you gave back to us which was honest was that reporting is contentious reporting is not contentious when you using my money it's not not my money when you're using federal dollars when you're losing State dollars and when you losing using local dollars these are simple public records requests so to Echo my my colleague sentiments when we sit here they can have all the contention they want they can meet Mr they can meet Mr attorney so I I do I want that was the one thing that I wanted deaded at that conversation when we said information sharing your information sharing is reporting back outcomes and that's information that we can get with a public records request either with a hammer with a nail or with an email but I I just want to agree with my colleague that yeah some you needs to be set up and commissioner.

Carter the rest of the time is yours before opio I'll just start by saying there is no County program that I'm more proud of than this one honestly and it's this community's work for over a decade now and I think sometimes we forget all the effort that went in up front to be sure we were laying a very strong foundation for how we rolled out our Universal prek program in Durham and I do want us to recommit to our goal of reaching 75% of all children and I do want us to you know work on finding additional Transportation so that the that's not a barrier in the rra care I want us to work on that together with dur public schools and all of our private Partners and I do want us to recommit to sharing data those are all really important goals but just the just the fact that this was was you know initiated through resolutions passed by all the local governing bodies back in 2016 I think.

Demonstrates the importance of this to our community research aside we know all the research on how important preschool is but you know it's clearly a priority of this community and I'll cut to the chase I mean I also think it's important to fill the full capacity of Marie massenberg if that's three classrooms I I think we need to fill it one of the goals I remember discussing Back in the Day in 2016 was this actually is a recruitment strategy for families to come to Duram public schools and stay in dur Public Schools if you get them in the door early they see the amazing programming that is possible they'll stay and so we want families to come together around and inside our schools and this is one way to achieve that that I think we should lift look at Shifting the the 1.5 million from wited to the Durham prek program perhaps we would reap the benefit of a higher percentage of seats would be filled perhaps we could get the.

WRA care in a more s in a simpler way I thought there was the opportunity to not have the charter SL charart so I'll have to figure that out I guess that's I was wrong I don't really understand why but I'll figure that out later and I hate for us to lose the workforce apprenticeship program additional seats that you were hoping to achieve with the full funding that you requested that's critical we can't continue to serve children if we don't have the workforce so I just what an amazing program the largest one in the state whatever you told us on that I it's just you know I don't want us to lose momentum there so I I I definitely want us to add to the budget and whether we meet Linda you know the full request in funding or we meet it halfway I don't know but a priority for me is filling capacity at Murray massenberg one question I have is are all the DSs subsidies used that we that we have for.

Families you like to open oh sry topics well no what I'll say is that in North Carolina since the pandemic across the state few to no counties have spent all of their childcare subsidy dollars is a fact and Durham is part of that also it's a complex issue because you have the issue of seat availability you know commissioner Burns mentioned the reality of being told we didn't lose any seats but we really did we have licens seats that have empty classrooms across our community and so for example we you know you fund an arpa project I'm not trying to open a whole another can of words but you fund a chalk care scholarship program with arpa as an enhancement for families who are not eligible for DSS vouchers we are fully subscribed for that we have a waiting list because the reality is families can't afford Child Care Way Beyond the eligibility Financial limits for DSS however what happens with with the DSs dollars is that some families are.

Offered a voucher and then they cannot find care because many Child Care programs do not accept public vouchers because the state reimbursement rate is so low it's lower than the average tuition rate that's why I'm always bringing to you what the average tuition rates are and so it's a complex issue but in terms of during prek whether we are fully taking advantage of voucher opportunities not to the level I would like to see but as I've been told many times I am pushy for children that I am that's my Mantra and I am always pushing us to do better well so at the same time that we're you know asking for DPS to try to maximize all funding opportunities let's work commit to working even harder via DSS to make sure all those subsidy dollars are being used can we can I add to what you just said so so adding the all of the accessing all funding and including working together on RP care how we go after federal dollars for.

Rrap care definitely definitely yeah and as for and just real quickly to to reference your mention about the apprenticeship program at ccsa we are fully committed to to additional fundraising around that project and in fact we did just recently bring in an additional $70,000 for from an outside source for continued work in that program that's not the answer because obviously you're chasing you're chasing all kinds of dollars and you need stability but we are maintaining the weight list we're doing what we can to provide some counseling services to people on the weight list as possible so that they don't give up and we're looking for additional resources all the time our long-term goal will be to be sure we serve anyone on the way list over time the 42 that we have presently enrolled obviously if any of them have a life change and they were to drop out we will certainly back fill those but the waiting list is certainly real so I do in the future outside of your budget.

Period I do I would welcome some some review and look at investments in other innovative ways you did a lot of good work with your arpa and we look forward to reporting on the arpa project which is fully subscribed and in fact we're overspending in our support of families but we had to May to fix that know we'll be in budget but you know the demand is high and we know that that's really done some good things and we're going to be reporting to you on that and I think that Durham has shown that we can be Innovative I had the pleasure of meeting with with Mr miracle from your team recently to talk about Economic Development opportunities and we know we want to integrate these strategies when people want to come to Durham we want them to give as well as we are giving amen y'all we did not talk about the the 300 preschool should we do we need got five minutes and I is this the time to.

Talk about that I'm just not sure if it is but I when do we have to decide they're coming back they're coming back they're coming back but if you have questions though I don't really have any questions except I want us to to choose a program that will be publicly supported and commit to what we initially said not market rate program yeah and we we are meeting closely with the Durham County team and if you do have questions or you think of things if if you want to send them it'd be great because we want to be sure we're pivoting from your interest areas a lot spks being done on that we're not going to we're not in danger of losing the public provider well there's no well right now that that would be recommended for the RFP if we went that direction right the the top Contender from the RFA process and this was something you know rabbit hole but when President buckton was here and he was talking.

About the great work of Kate's Corner fully support that however that was not an RFA process that was a wow you're good let's work work with you which I mean hey it was a good program no criticism but this was an RFA process with equal opportunity access and it was quite rigorous right and the top we have top three are all strong the top one Reverend Lucas and Pebbles Lucas from First Chronicles which I can say publicly because they've been fully on board about this process they were the top through the RFA process to expand their program they have said that they are hopeful and will see it through but I think right now the reality is that given your budget constraints we're a long way from from opening that program and I y'all I'm not stopping the conversation I want to because that is an RFP process and I see hold on y'all it is a RFP process I do not want us to it to come off like we.

Are discussing that public when that has not been decided yet so if there are other questions that have to do with the budget I really have to table this discussion for legal reasons because the attorney did it last time so let's not do that one I see you commissioner Howton we have about two the reason why I've pushed because we only have about two more minutes on this one because I op your Force you have to go I did say commissioner Carter will have the last comment I will give it to you I'll see you my last thank you my God you thank you m commissioner Carter and I just want to ditto everything that commissioner Carter said and and you know our little ones all of our children are so important to us but I was sitting here thinking about the first time you pitched this to us it's been a few years few and you know the same passion that you came to us with then is still.

Present and the work that you do we appreciate it and we want to continue to support you in every way we can and I I I certainly pray that the next board do the same thing that as other people take over that they will feel the need to continue to push pre well I appreciate that but I will say that we have an awesome team and what commissioner Carter mentioned about the The Roots the foundation of this program yeah was super broad it just happened to line up with my passion yeah and I am as a Durham citizen I'm very proud and people do get tired of hearing me and people say to me you do have a job with nine other counties and I'm like yes I do but no we we they say when you love what you do yes it's not a job that's right thank you for your support thank you you so I will say you are a credit to your profession and the reason.

Why we ask you is because we do not feel confident asking other people because they don't have the wealth of knowledge you have I'm I I do just want to reiterate to my colleagues again these all these conversations are interconnected the conversation that she brought up about the voucher program when we talked to hey Tyre born today the issue they have was with the voucher where there were so many people that didn't take them so I do want us to take all this good meat from the first conversation to this one and build upon this discussion as we go through today Dr Chappelle we will probably be following up with you hopefully we we can move forward with some of these things with the manager and discuss how we can best support you and I know that Monica is loading up the next presentation thank you thank you thank you yes we are literally right on yes governance is amazing yes yes yes yes made up of citizens and some Early.

Childhood professionals it's not a bunch of Early Childhood people love.

It right on time right on time see JB it didn't no JB had the 90 minutes and he had that I knew it was going to be the reverse I did Welcome welcome welcome good morning Dwayne Bron assistant County Manager have a couple colleagues here with me i' like for them to introduce themselves real quick good morning my name is Kristen Patterson Deputy Health director welcome missk good morning Captain Helen trip dur County EMS all right we are going to talk to you this morning about a much anticipated opioid settlement fund update first and foremost the opioid funds are restricted as not part of the general fund dollars has to be spent on certain purposes with lots and lots of details so I'm going to go through I'll go through the first few slides fairly quickly because it's a review of what we did last May and where we have been and then we'll get into where we are and where we're going okay so the opioid siment basically this slide we have selected.

Alternative a which gives us plenty of strategies to work through and it is a a more efficient option as well and as far as the set my dollars I will mention see the definition there should support programs or services that serve person serve persons with opioid use disorder or any co-occurring substance use disorder so it can't be for can't be for Standalone disorders that's be co-occurring that's part of the details of the settlement funds. Here okay so our process this is where we have been and kind of where we are now resolution approving the mo MOA we've done that we've created a special Revenue fund this has to be tracked and accounted for in its own fund and it has to be spent directly from that fund it cannot go into other departmental budgets has to be spent directly from that fund inventory the existing efforts we have had a great deal of community input over the last year 16 17 18 months or so some of that we have a.

Dedicated web page and I've got a link for that as one of the last slides in the presentation so we'll be able to share that with the community we've done an online survey to invite feedback from the community and other stakeholders and we had a community input session that was last last March I believe really good attendance that has its own slide as well so we won't spend a lot of time on that we've done a resolution to sign on to the Wave 2 settlement which basically is a a settlement that's negotiated with a different set of retailers and pharmacies we also have established an internal work group January 2024 to help us steer this vehicle while we come up with a a more formal structure that's been that that group is met three times I believe the 2024 community meeting is being developed now we're looking at late June for having that community meeting the survey responses it was open last year December 7th 20122 to January 31st 2023 got 554 responses through that.

Survey that was something that Mrs Palmer did before she retired last summer some of the things things coming from the survey the community meeting got a couple different columns here highest priority and highest overall votes you can see some of the things there a lot of overlap evidence-based addiction treatment early intervention strategic planning recovery housing and Recovery Support Services those were a ranking of the top priorities that came from some of the community input sessions this is some some photos and some more information about the community input session Mar 20th of last year 68 attendees diverse group of stakeholders this session was really interactive it as you can see the bottom right photo there actually both of the bottom right photos you can see that it it was more of a a workshop trying to understand how the community saw the use of these funds where gaps were where needs are things such as that the strategies with the highest votes that came from the community input session evidence-based addiction treatment evidence-based recovery.

Support services and Recovery support housing we have a little more detail about those three and I'm not going to read all of that but I do want to point out a few things in each one the addiction treatment the medication assisted treatment program he about that with one of our funding priorities for next year here the recovery Support Services you can see a lot of narrative in there peer support Specialists care Navigators that's going to sound a lot like the harm reduction budget the community linkages of care that the board has already approved and Recovery support housing not part of this presentation because we haven't we don't have anything in stone as of yet but the transition home with Justice Services that is a big need for the community and something that we are actively working on all right so what does our funding look like when this was presented to the board last May the 18-year payment to Durham County was about 11.5 million well since then we've started.

Getting the wave two settlements and those projections and those estimates and now we're getting quite a bit more money almost $21 million 20 milon 958 139 this is a projection it is an estimate you can see the projected amounts on the right side there that's what we are expecting get to get in all of those years at this time I will point out I sent an email to the board no more than a month ago and I said that our with the with the wave two monies that have come in our new projection is I think it was $ 21,32 th000 that's not the same figure that's on this chart now now this chart is probably going to be ever changing it's an estimate it's projection but it will change time and time and time again so at this time we're looking at about 20.9 million dollar over 18 years or 16 more years what have we done we I've gotten some requests from the community about our our spending plans and you.

Know my so my understanding is that the the online portals that we're seeing now that was updated that was last updated in January of 2024 so it's not reflecting what we have done this year what has been approved this year by the board three of those things Public Health harm reduction Community linkage of care and the opioid settlement manager position all three of those have been fully approved have been uploaded to the portal and are good to go and we're spending money on that it just hasn't been updated through it's only a a routine update online it's not showing yet it will be showing in July when they do a new update I believe the next few slides no got one more all right so here's the draft fiscal year 2425 budget and again this is not general fund it's the the special Revenue fund for opioids you I will say that I had a a meeting not too long ago with some representatives from ncac opioid they mentioned that they hope.

The other counties take as comprehensive an approach as Durham County is doing so some other counties got started before us I'll I'll agree to that but the the the programs on this screen excite the community members and other stakeholders so we're getting started now now and in a good way you know our single our single best resource for opioid funding retired last summer so there's been a huge learning curve with this program and actually Kristen and I were were talking a few months back and after these workshops and these educations and talking to a number of different people like we we finally get it now we finally get it we finally understand so we're there so here are some things and the draft budget public health horm and a lot of it's Contin ation of what we've already done public health harm reduction Community linkages the care and we're going to we've got some slides after this that explain these programs in in a little more detail opioid settlement manager position the Sheriff's Office.

Medical director that is part of the that's earmarked for opioid funding Community paramedics two of those positions then I've got asteris beside the NC harm reduction Coalition Drug checking program that is the ftir spectrometer I've got a slide for that too the reason I have an asterisk beside it now is because we are trying to better understand how that would work working with our attorney to understand any risks that would be involved but that is something that we are earmarking next year for opioid funding you can see there's a bit more of startup cost in the first year 330,000 19 3,000 recurring once we start that program the total projected spending plan for next year with these programs in place 1.67 eight million now there is a practice I heard from ncacc there's a a a really good practice where where some counties are stabilizing the revenue because if you think back to that chart that I showed you with the funding that Durham County is going to receive over the 18 years.

It's a predictable amount but it is far from consistent for example this year we were scheduled to receive 3.1 million in the last two three years of the program we're getting 500,000 600,000 so there's a great deal of variation in the amount of Revenue that we're going to get so one practice is to stabilize that Revenue basically average it out take our $21 million divide it by the remaining 16 years that we have and that gives you a stabilized Revenue an average revenue of $1.3 million annually so you got three million this year don't spend all that it's going to help us in the in the future years the ending years of the program the other approach is that when there's a structure fire you don't want the firefighters to show up with a a water gun this is an exaggerated analogy but you don't want the the firefighters show with a water gun and put out your house fire you want them to show up with.

A huge fire truck access to a hydrant so they're also is this this approach where we know there's a problem we've got money we know that we can save lives so maybe we do more on the front end knowing that those programs those fundings won't last as long throughout the program so there are two different options there what we have here is basically stabilizing of Revenue you know the 1.6 million if you take out the onetime startup cost for the FTR Speer program the drug checking program it's basically a stabilized Revenue approach and ACM Bron this is not that because I don't want to open up questions you said you're gonna have a slide about most of okay so I can table my question till we get it okay thank you sir yeah absolutely and with so the opioid funding it is very restricted it is a very detailed process there are lots of things that we can do a couple of the things on here and these weren't necessarily pitched to me but there.

Are opportunities that we have youth home diversion coordinator that also would qualify for funding of opioids community paramedic case manager position that also would qualify so there's lots of opportunities and I also want to point out here we have a full budget for fiscal year 2425 and and honestly we could fill it up even more with just County programs this is before doing any kind of RFA process RFP process for Community nonprofits so that the money goes quickly goes quickly the approval process very quickly the governing body has to approve a spending authorization form that's one of the the two steps and that's a template that's given to us we have to identify the strategy identify the funding source detail the program that goes before the board voted on we send it to core NC when I say core NC is basically a partnership of all the different agencies up here Department of Justice Health and Human Services ncacc and UNC all of those agencies work together to help guide counties and.

Local governments through this program the second part of that prog the second part of that program is that local governments have to comply with budgeting and finance laws which basically means creating the spending Authority so there are a few ways we can do that you know this past year I should say this current year that we're in we brought before the board a number of mid-year budget ordinance amendments it wasn't it wasn't passed as kind of going into option b there it wasn't passed as part of the initial budget process so we had to go back to the board and create that spending Authority and do midyear budget ordinance amendments that's one of the options the other one as I mentioned can adopt it as part of the annual budget process and then if you need to if something else comes up midy year whenever may come up you can always go back and do a midyear budget ordinance Amendment again the other option is to include these programs these Services as part of the.

Capital project ordinance that's not recommended by ncac it's not recommended by us at this time but those are your three big options with the approval process okay next few slides I'm going to pass off to my colleague here harm reduction Community linkages of care and the opioid settlement manager position good morning board and to our County manager so in public health we have been doing this harm reduction work on all along but whenever the opioid funding came we decided because we have health Educators but we needed a dedicated person because as you all know this work is very hard and our health Educators they are out in our community but we needed one who was going to be specifically for opioids and with this position they're able to order supplies because it's an issue and we're looking to buy or we have two Naran machines vending machines but we're looking to purchase another one and this Naran the last Naran machine vending machine we're looking to actually place that vending.

Machine within our libraries and we're looking more so to the bragtown library because we've used our GIS mapping and we used our population Health division they actually ma where our opioid usage higher usage is and we've noticed that it was around that area and people go into our libraries so why not put the vending machine in the library and also we've worked with our risk management so we're working across the county we work with our risk management to actually in the a AIDS or AED excuse me to put Naran in there because there has has been some o overdoses in our library and all of our library staff they are from my knowledge they are trained in how to use Naran so we've also purchased Naran for our Pharmacy because people do go come into our Pharmacy and they ask for Naran and our pharmacist in the health department she is very knowledgeable she gets information that we can use so that we're seeing where are you know folks really living and who.

Have this disorder because it is a disorder and we're actually partnering with our health educating health education team and our cbos to go out into the neighborhood and not just pass out in our can but to actually educate because we can pass it out but if people don't know how to use it it's it's non inv void right and also we're not just educating folks who may have the issue but we're educating family members because they know who's using drugs and sometimes it's the family members that's actually finding their loved ones who are either you know deceased or they're able to get them some help so we're educating as well and then as you know the state has really cut funding and so our safe syringe program they harm NC they were actually able to provide us some clean needles but with that program ending with the state they're no longer funding it funding that program for us to get those supplies we're using our our our funding to purchase these.

Purchase these safe syringes we know that folks are using syringes but why not we're not enabling them but we're actually helping them not to come in contact with HIV or Hepatitis C so it's a two-part and I know people have different opinions but if we can help the community that's what we're here for is to help our community and then with this money we also want to partner and actually have contractors and we will use or work with our cbos because Public Health can't do everything and we can't do everything and that's why our hands are even stronger whenever we reach out across the.

County okay so our next is linkage to care linkage to care is already in existence and with our linkage to Care Program these are boots on the ground these are folks who have live experience because you can't tell someone who is going through this opioid used to order you know if you've never you can't tell them how to do things or even suggest things if you've never gone through it yourself so I what we what we're doing with this program is we have people who have le experiences we have pure Educators and they are actually on boots on the ground talking to our community and they're actually encouraging them to seek help and they tell their stories and you know they may not the person may not enter care the first day but if we keep going back and going back even if we get one person into care that's the success for us so we do use evidence-based care and because that's what the state ask us to use is evidence-based because they know.

These programs work so with our linkage to care like I stated before they go out into the community they actually talk to the individual and help them during their crisis so even if it's late at night sometimes we're going home but we have our community There Our Community Partners they are out at all time of night because people they just they're not out there just 8 to 5: they're out there in the afternoon so we have to have someone to help and these stakeholders they're able to go in assist the individuals get them into some type of recovery program if they're willing to go so and also with our linkage to care they look at the overdoses visits within the hospital and they actually go in and try to figure out how can we reduce the overdoses how can we reduce the fatalities that we're seeing here in Duram County and the only way we could do that is to continue to have individuals who have lived experience go.

Out and just really talk and tell their story because sometimes if we're we're hearing someone tell their story that will allow someone to know that there is hope and so that's what we're trying to do with our linkage to care program and it also addresses our social determinance of health and I know you've heard social determinance of Health we talk about it all the time but when you're seeing someone who has a social who has a substance abuse disorder there's other issues that let to this disorder and so that's what we're here for is to try to get to the root cause and once we can get to the root cause because if it's housing you're going to do what you need to do in order to get housing so if we can address those issues then maybe we can help them to move past this social move past this substance abuse so that's our linkage to CARE program and just to tie it all together this so the opioid manager this.

Position I've been working this position along with my colleagues and it is hard I'm just going to be honest with you it is it's a lot it's a lot of reading it's a lot of just trying to make sure we are efficient and making sure that our dollars are spent where they need to be spent and where they need to be spent is in our communities you know so being able to just really facilitate this program is taking a lot there's a lot of paperwork but also there's a lot of compassion that goes behind this position and we need someone in this position because the position is posted thank you HR we need someone in this position who is not only qualified but has a passion and although we're going to hire somebody for this position I'm not going to leave them because it is a lot of work but I just can't do it all and my colleagues they can't do it all so we need this position to write.

Grants because although like ACM Bron stated we had this funding for 18 years but it's going to take more funding to continue this work it doesn't just stop after 18 years and we're going to always have people who have a disorder who have the substance abuse Disorder so we're going to need this position and with this position they're going to be able to write grants so that's not only bringing in new Monies to the county and it's not just for public health but we may be able to write grants for the sheriff department or for Bull City United who knows we we'll be able to write these grants and and I call Bull City United because whenever we go out for outreach they're there they help us they know the community and then a lot of times your community allow you to come in because it's some somebody that you know and we usually call them Gatekeepers and if that Community know the gatekeeper and they know that this person states that hey they're cool.

They're going to allow us to come in they're going to allow us to do the education because you just can't go into someone community and they don't know you they're not going to allow us in so we're able to work with work with Bull City United and our vision is to really get out of the walls of the health department get out of the walls of the sheriff department and the justice department and go into the community where the people are and begin to really help and see the effects of this opioid money being utilized in the manner that it should be utilized and as ACM Bron stated there is a lot of constraints to this money and this opor manager they're going to have to know you know the rules and regulations that go along with it because if we don't spend the money correctly then of course we would have to pay that money back and cour andc would not pay for the the interventions that we're.

Choosing so that's why we need this position and they need to be knowledgeable I mean there's no other way to put it and not just knowledgeable but they need to have a passion for the community and have a passion for this work so we're very careful and as I put as I st up here meaningful it's they have to have a meaningful impact in what's going on because it's not just Durham County but it's all over the United States but Durham county is being hit very hard with opioids thank.

You I only have one slide so I don't need that M Commissioners Dr swell thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about why we would really benefit from two additional Community paramedics we've been we've been doing post overdose response almost since our program started start we started in 2017 we started doing post overdose response in March of 2018 and one of the challenges that we've had because having one person working every day doing this work is sometimes as we have trouble finding people one of the best opportunities to connect with people who've overdosed people who are experiencing an opioid emergency is to do it at the time of the overdose well in Durham County the majority of our overdoses occur between 11:00 a.m.

And 1: a.m so that 14h hour window there with most of those being between 3 P.M and 11: p.m well currently our community paramedics work 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. That means after 7 at night we don't have a a community paramedic to go out and respond to our P patients who have overdosed who are or experienced a opioid emergency they may not have actually overdosed but they're still suffering some effects from an opioid we would be able to with two additional people we'd be able to add that extra coverage to make sure that we can have those that benefit at later hours of the day we also are currently we started a year ago thanks to some grants that we were able to get we started doing medication for opioid use disorder in the field where we can actually get someone started on treatment again being able to well majority of the ones that we have inducted are during the daytime when our community paramedics are working by adding more people to cover.

Those extra hours we would be able to reach people during the time when most of our citizens are overdosing and hopefully get that medication to those people at a more appropriate time so there's a lot of benefits and looking back I was making some notes when AC and Brinson was look showing what the surveys had said the evidence based addiction treatment and Recovery Support Services as being two of the main areas that people approved of that they wanted to see us cover in our with our opiate funding and the medication use disorder is an evidence-based addiction treatment providing Naran kits and for harm reduction is evidence-based addiction treatment and as part of what we do we refer people to community-based recovery Support Services as well so that is also a part of what the community has already stated that they want though the you see that we've got some awards I'm always embarrassed I shouldn't be embarrassed but yeah I don't do this for the Awards right we.

Don't do this work for the awards but we've got the awards because of the work that we've been doing with our opioid response and we want to be able to do more we want to be able to reach more people because as you say 61% of what we do is opioid related so being able to have this extra people is going to be help us to be able to increase the amount of services that we can provide and to be able to reach more people to do that.

Right so 61% of all the responses are opioid related and they don't even cover the full Peak period for when o opioid overdoses occur so once we start covering that new shift can imagine that's going to be closer to 100% you can also see how nicely all these programs that we're already doing or planning to do next year they tie nicely back into the community input sessions and what the community wanted to see okay. All right the M team medical director Durham County Sheriff's Office I took these bullets from last year's budget Workshop where Sheriff Burke had presented this basically you know a few things with the the medical director sheriff's office here it would manage the medical contract and ensure compliance at every level it would manage all programs related to opioid treatment and medication assisted treatment the last thing is direct and indirect supervision of all staff involved in these functions at the Detention Facility so that that position also is earmarked for opioid funding and then the NC harm production Coalition.

Drug checking program you know heard about this last summer Miss Parmer presented it really really exciting heard from a number of of Commissioners who are really excited about this program and we very much have wanted to get it started ourselves as well one of the first things I did in the fall when I started getting my feet wet with the opioid settlement funds is to try to find this machine Google it 28 Million results when you when you Google FTI spectrometer like oh my goodness so lots of different calibrations lot lots of different models lots of different machines so reached out to NC har elction Coalition had a meeting with them they're like we know exactly what you need so that was very comforting to hear you know basically we're still working out the details of this program it is aark for next year still working out a lot of details with this but basically the funding as it's earmarked we would purchase through a grant to a coalition the ftir spectrometer I.

Believe that's about $40,000 give or take a little bit also you've got that the spectrometer doesn't just fit in the backpack can't just walk it around so part of the other funding the one-time cost that's driving us up the first year would be purchasing through a grant of a Mobile Medical unit to house a spectrometer and provide for the wraparound harm reduction Outreach so machine would go into this van of some sort a properly equipped van and it would be mobilized into the community and then you'd have trained technicians that would be able to check the substances for fanel xylazine what whatever is in the substance check the sample and provide that communication back to whoever provided the sample last bullet here drug checking programs have emerged as a high impact evidence-based strategy to prevent overdose wounds and other issues can other issues stemming from contaminated drug Supply it does not increase usage studies show that it does not increase usage it helps on the front end because people don't.

Understand what may be in the substances so the basic models I understand it and again we have lots of questions Coalition staff would be mobilized into the community the samples would be checked through the spectrometer by a trained technician it's not just something that anyone can do you have to be properly trained to test these samples the substances within the sample will be identified and communicated back the sample would not be returned the sample would be retained need to find out what happens when it's not returned and like I said we have a have a lot of questions but the samples would not be returned and it is important this is part of my understanding with the Coalition as well they explained to me that you don't you don't bring everything there you just bring a very I don't know how small but you bring a very small sample of the substance and that almost any amount is enough to do the testing of what's in the substance very small.

I would hope so I would hope so yes but this is a very exciting program this is something that ncac is excited about coalition's excited about I know Commissioners myself we're all excited about this it'd be the the first of its kind in our state as far as understanding there's a program at UNC you have to send it off to UNCC but as far as mobilizing in the community taking care of our community this will be the first of its kind we' be leading the way all right so our path forward first and foremost hiring of the opioid settlement manager be extremely happy when that position is filled we really really enjoy the work Kristen and I talk a lot but we will be the two happiest people in the room when this position is filled it's a lot to absorb have a great deal of respect for DCM Hager in the arpa process yes after going after doing this developing a structure I mention we have an internal work group a lot of.

Different department Representatives Deputy directors directors serve on that internal work group longterm looking to develop an Advisory Board of people that I think as Miss Parmer mentioned last year people that aren't getting funding that would help evaluate requests that week get in what we're doing today is great for today and it may be great for tomorrow but we just don't know there may be you know xylazine has just emerged here recently so things in this field change routinely and often so we need the we need this Advisory Board of community members to help us maintain the gaps the new gaps that may exist and to help evaluate County programs that we want to fund and if we want to extend it out to community nonprofits as well that's a long-term goal I say long term hoping within the next year getting this Advisory board established and set up and then kind of going along with that developing a scorecard so that it's it's a very objective process to evaluate Department proposals Community proposals.

Whatever it may be having an objective process I think that's a best practice additional resources there's just a few here there are a lot in reality County manager's office departmental web page we have a a tab dedicated to the opioid settlement there is some background information on the settlement there's a lot of different presentations and links to other resources we also in working with our Pio office we have a a new news tab right now what's on the news tab is basically an update that I provided to the board and some other community members just so that everyone is aware of where we are what we're doing and we they can be pointed to that page for any news updates ncacc opioid settlement team had a number of meetings with that team they're always a great resource and then NC opioids settlement. org lots of resources on there as well in addition to more powerful NC that's another resource and that concludes our presentation we happy to take any.

Questions the board may have thank you as always for bringing us these really creative opport unities and also you know bringing forth individuals that work with you on your team ladies thank you all so much for what you have done I did have two I'm looking okay so I I'll throw mine out and then I will throw them to the board Captain is it trip yes okay I want to make sure I got the rank right so Captain trip could you just I did not hear the hours that you gave a second ago to 11: to 1 p.m. I missed one could you give those again about the overdoses the time table sure the majority of overdoses in Durham occur between 11:00 a.m. and 1 a.m. with 3 p.m. to 11: p.m.

Being the highest frequency that was the one that I wanted no that's perfect this one's going to sound random I can appreciate you all have you know looked at the data for folks coming in it's it's really interesting that I just had this conversation with I'll just say one of the shopkeepers on fa street because the city's making some great Investments there but they said well where are you going to put where's the third Naran machine going to go and they said well you know it needs to go in Stanford El War see and this is where you know I had to table myself because I was like no that's a pet project that's my B but we want to help people so I can't sit here and say we want to put in a new one like we have it in the other ones and that's me being very honest to the public and I said and I I kind of sort of engage this individual because quite frankly they've had some overdoses.

In their shop if there have been some overdoses on at the convenience store there's a there's a lot that goes on there and quite frankly without saying the name the drugstore of choice on that street actually charges $46 for something that we have in a vending machine that's free there was actually an overdose and this person gave someone homeless $20 to go and get some net and they came back they said you owe us26 more dollars they chargeing $46 the other thing that we're also seeing is people charging for it like as they're giving it out for free so I my other quick do we are you seeing people charging for not the we know what the drug stores going to do which is questionable at best but are you actually seeing on the streets folks charging for it and is that the uptick in brag town as opposed to what we might see on fille and I know you might be like I don't know what you're talking.

About commissioner burds but we do no folks are charging for it on the street so they probably are yep yep the mic so yes the people probably are charging for it they can come into our lobes and it's free and then I mean because people are trying to make money so but what I can say is with our health educator this harm reduction Health educator they will be going into like our barber shops and just like how we have condom distribution now we need the Narcan distribution so we'll be able to partner with our Community Partners so that if if it occurs on fville Street even if it's a business on fville street that want us to come and give them become I got one for you yeah I got one you give it to me and sure we can make it happen the other quick question 61% of the responses are for opioid related cuz I know that was a bullet is that for Community par what is that that's all.

Calls what is that 61% in our community paramedics do more than just op response we do fall prevention we help our EMS Crews respond to behavioral health calls and things in the field so 61% of everything that they do is opioid related and that's that team okay making sure I didn't know if it was all paramedics I only have one more for the sa I'm trying to move fast y'all the safe syringe program I do know that when we were talking to Alliance and some other folks about how Federal funding for safe syringe is gone like we know that there's some State funding I like the fact that we can kind of braid some of this money into it do you imagine that that's going to take away from what we're doing or is there any more money somewhere else where we might see an investment in safe syringe or is this where we can finally grab it from well that's why we want this op your manager position so that so that they can.

Actually look for dollars because we know that there's other grants out there but we need a dedicated person that can look for the these grants and if it is we would apply for it because we're already doing it it makes it more easier and for us to get these dollars because we can show them the outcomes what we're doing how we're doing it and now we just need the funding and Perfection thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about the spectrometer because I know you and I talked about it some last week and you even gave me some helpful context you know that we only taking a little bit nobody can come in here bring a bag I do know that once a year the sheriff's department does do a marijuana burn if not twice a year I get some CL so maybe that is an option for what we can do and I am happy that you have budgeted this out because the safety and wellness Tas Force came and I'mma you.

Where is Keith programmatic expansion so they said it's 25,000 for the machine you said it was 40,000 40,000 for a car but we won't want it to be the Ragged as car and then we also need somebody who toand this thing fulfill this thing Ure this thing so that 330,000 up to up cost and then 193 annually that is really helpful context to see how we're going to pay for this thing who on my board has any additional questions I was trying to do it in four minutes commissioner Carter it is on you thank you and thank you so much for this presentation and work very important work could we look at the slide on the budget the draft fiscal year 25 budget the total projected spending plan about 1.7 million stabilized Revenue over the life of the project 1.3 million so does that mean we we we have a funding Gap with the positions and programming that you've mentioned today we we have funds in the special Revenue fund right now from fiscal year.

22 and what we receed this year okay so we're able to fund in excess of the average stabilized Revenue okay I think good going going into the year we had about a million and a half in the special Revenue fund and you can see what we've received this year so we've developed the spending plan based on what we have in that fund now so that will be well covered we have funds to cover that and what about the not recommended positions the community man paramedic case manager and the diversion coordinator the ones not recommended th those are options that we have at this time if we choose to go with a spending plan that essentially stabilizes the revenue then those would be deferred but those are options that we're considering okay why was I thinking there was a Divergent coordinator already in the budget for the youth home is that something else I was I was thinking so this is we don't need this one this would be an additional one targeted there' be two.

This would be right yeah well and it's not recommended I know I see that but I know if if it's there that means it's a it's a dream that we would have it right and so we're always trying to figure out how to have as much as we think we need well there's such a great demand for youth diversion programs yes yes we want zero people in our in our new youth home right exactly if possible Right okay and the the the community linkages to car in the par the out in the field on boarding all that can continue without the case manager because you're doing it Helen we've been here well all of our community paramedics are trained to do case management I had the privilege of learning that when I was getting my counseling license I passed that training on to my team okay yeah they they do it it just takes time from them being able to see patients when they're having to work behind the desk and right.

I see Will that makes sense so this budget right now does include the van for the infrared drug checking machine it includes a van it includes the spectrometer it includes some training it includes a portion of a couple position salaries like 15% of some salaries to expand the program I have an entire proposal from the Coalition but it is is an exhaustive that amount is exhaust it covers everything and do we have any other Mobile Medical unit that could be used at times in a shared sort of way because or you know or with Durham Tech I believe there are several Medical Mobile units I've toured before and just wondering how that might would that be a possibility right I I'm not aware of any do you Durham Tech does have a mobile medical van then they currently partner with NC harm reduction on a couple of Wednesdays a month Dr Logan Adams from duke Al patient Clinic works with them to do mud and wound care and primary.

Care for subance use patients in the field or clients they not really patients at yes but yeah they did and the purchase of the van is one of those other questions do do we purchase it as a county or do we issue the grants and allow the coalition to purchase we've got to work through a number of things but the funding is included with this okay and if I may Durham Tech Mobile Medical man has run out of funding and so that may go away wow right oh okay the grant ended wow you hold on all right thank you I think I'm finished I app appreciate this thank commission Jacob's next and I also want only to throw out because we talked about this there with the mobile Vans there's a I imagine that 15% or I mean in the array of positions some of that is also for security I'm looking at you well because this one it's not like the sweet the Tooth Fairy van that we.

Have it's not like the Optometry van that Durham Tech has there's a certain amount of security might need to be around this van when someone is bringing a class substance so I think that's why I'm a little bit indifferent to this one might have to have a sole purpose outside of the other ones but commissioner Jacob I was just curious but go ahead I wasn't going to speak about this but the what what is really key about this is that this is a partnership with the North Carolina harm reduction Coalition so I think legally to work work it out that way because they are the experts on how you work in the street with people people in the Coalition have lived experience and honestly the way that they operate it can it's literally can be in the back of a car I mean it is and honestly it should not be something like a b a van with a big sign on it this is about really be.

Working low barrier you don't want to be like advertising who you are and what you are you want to be able to for it to be comfortable for people to feel comfortable if you come in and people know you're there that can discreetly come over and get their drug Supply tested so I I think it's very important that we actually let them take the lead on how this is implemented it's very it's a very different approach and I I know that that's how they they it it it doesn't have to be something very fancy let me just say that but they do it it needs to be something where they can operate it out of in a mobile way let me I just want to say I am so proud of of Durham County and I I really highly support everything that you are bringing to us in the budget I serve now on a Statewide presidential commission one of only eight Board of County Commissioners in the state.

And when I sit in those meetings I am just so proud of what the work that we are doing we are so far ahead and that's why it's so easy to basically we're not having to really start from scratch we we already have laid such a strong Foundation here but when I look at option A because that's what we're following because we we don't need to do start from scratch out of the 12 best practices that are detailed there we're basically doing 11 out of 12 already here I mean the one that I feel like we we're not we don't aren't directly maybe doing is number five which is around employment related Services I mean maybe you could say through our re-entry programs we could say we're doing that but but virtually we really are I do want to go back back though to the original things that came out of the survey and the town hall because the one area that we I do feel that we haven't we're a little bit weak.

On is around housing the recovery support housing yes we are going to work through Justice Services and really do some renovation of the transitional home we have but we are really we really need need to do a lot more around recovery housing and you know Dwayne because you were at our last Durham joins together meeting we had a presentation from Jubilee home who is really one of our really strong providers who does low barrier no barrier and supports medication assist a treatment that they are just opening a home for women we it is the first home for women in Durham who were in recovery and in transition so I I would like to see us consider just going forward how do we really support that you know I'm sure I know it would have to be an RFP process but I I do think we we should be looking at how to support recovery housing because as Kristen and Helen know that with the folks that we are trying to get into.

Treatment whether through the community linkages to care the post overdose response teams I mean everyone's working together you all Helen you refer people to community linkages to care right but if people don't have that housing it is very hard for them to really continue in treatment and to be in treatment so I I do think that's a piece that we have to look at and luckily we have providers but but I know their challenge is with the ongoing operating cost for them to keep going year overy year so I I just wanted to throw that out there and manager say we that is something that we are actually looking at and I will say ACM Bron he's taken the lead on that and so looking at several options and one was kind of innovative I'll I'll allow you to explain as much as you're comfortable with but it got away from us before we can get to it the Durham real estate market yeah we we're looking to we're looking to purchase an additional.

Transition home remodel the current one to some extent and purchase an additional transition home we to the extent we've been on site visits for properties that are listed for sale that meet our criteria but the one that we're looking at it got swept away from us and we're looking at making one of those if we if we could get to the point of having two making one of those a women's only transition home so that's something we're working on as well very very much at the top of our list to include that I mean it's one of the top three priorities okay awesome and yeah so I I I just want to say that I do I do support the way that we're moving and the idea of having the stabilized funding completely makes sense because we we don't want to start things that we don't then have the ability to continue so having that continuity and I would and I know I mentioned this before Dwayne you've been.

Great about coming to the Durham joins together meetings but making sure that the new person who's hired which by the way you mentioned in our last meeting how many people applied for this position Dwayne I think everyone needs to hear this the opioid manager position I thought it was still open but it's still open but did you mentioned some huge number of people had who had applied for something oh the harm reduction coordinator I think the harm reduction position Dennis Hamlet mentioned in the meeting it was unbelievable like 45 people applied to be the harm reduction coordinator for Durham for in public health that just blew me away that we have so many people that want to do this work so yeah so anyway I'm just fairly proud thank you all so much and I think that you know we we are we're we're following the evidencebased practices we're following the plan and I just have a question is how will this what going back to the budget how will we will this be.

Included in our budget adoption process explicitly that it will be so that's our plan moving forward is to make it a part of the annual budget adoption process and then if anything else comes up throughout the year we would bring that back separately for a separate budget amendment okay okay so everything that we saw there will go just move forward yes yeah it'll it'll be included in in in the initial budget we'll we'll have to do that second step as well though the spending authorization so we'll probably bring those to the board at one of the June meetings but that's the the the two-part test so it'll be included in the budget for the spending Authority and then we'll bring the spending authorizations for these programs to the board at a meeting in June okay thank you I did I don't know if I don't want to we are at the time God bless y'all I did not want to conclude without commissioner Howton being able to ask any questions so if anybody knows where.

She is I do want to bring that back and if not I do I just want to also throw out I'm happy that mentioned Jubilee home it's probably closed by now but for those who don't know their open houses this Friday so they will be doing a tour so if you've not had the opportunity to see some of their great work please look them up I also want to reiterate to this team if you look in other counties in pit County right now Paula Dan who's the sheriff there who runs the mat and their Public Health they have not had this kind of support because in the community this is seen as very taboo so so we we do hear you if there are any things that we can do I know I I'm speaking for myself I hope I I feel confident I'm speaking for the board that we can do the continue to Champion this work by all means we got somebody who's on a presidential board.

We got some who works in recovery resiliency we want to make sure it's good in the schools and we do want to make sure that our young people have access so please come back to us whatever additional support we can provide and without that being said I think we'll go ahead and close this out we are headed into lunch ladies and gentlemen AC and britson did you want to leave us with any parting words I think we're just excited to really hit this next year running with the programs we have the work we've done getting these getting all this started in an aggressive way it's very exciting to all of us thank you all so very much we will reconvene at 12:55 so that we might start at once thank you.

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All right ladies and gentlemen we do have a quum seed and present I do see that we have our personnel as well as our Sheriff's from the sheriff's department we are going to go ahead and start office I'm sorry sir listen I've learned my lesson from the Sheriff's Office to disc we are now headed into part two of our budget discussions on day two our clerk has uploaded the slides again we do have a quum we thank you all for being here being open to discuss your budget request and I will give the floor over to you sir I did we share the clicker okay perfect.

Good afternoon Commissioners Clarence Burkhead Sheriff of Durham County always a privilege and an honor to come before you as a as a fellow elected official and talk money and so we're here today to go over the Sheriff's Office let me say that again go over the Sheriff's Office budget request for fiscal year 2425 and as you can see I always CRA travel with my Poss and so you will be hearing from members of my staff at an appropriate time and they will also be available to answer any questions should you have any at the end I will say that this proposal is about as straightforward as you're going to see as everything we do at the Durham County Sheriff's Office is about saving lives and making lives better for those who are in our car and custody as well as though that we service in our community commities all throughout Durham County I'm really happy to say that this budget request that we're going to review today is pretty straightforward there's no fluff in here.

We're just trying to get back to the basic needs and equipment that we need to do our job and do it well and continue to deliver high quality service so I will not belabor my introduction any longer we'll go to the first slide it's every year we try to buy vehicles and we've been doing this as a practice with the county for for for for years of course annually we request we have somewhere between 55 and 65 vehicles that qualify for replacement that's approximately 18 to 20% of our Fleet annually we request 30 to 35 Vehicles so we're already behind the eight ball somewhere between 11 and 133% so what that means is I our vehic Vehicles run 24 hours a day 7 days a week some of them run long trips because we also do Transportation obviously accidents do happen if you're going to drive on the streets and the highways in North Carolina you are going to have accidents and so we have accidents that sometimes can total vehicles and those total.

Vehicles are never replaced immediately so we basically lose those from the fleet until the next cycle and and again we're constantly playing catchup and if you remember some of you are on the board in 2019 we actually reduced you guys actually reduced our Fleet by about 17 Vehicles so we've never really caught back up so this year we're asking for 31 SUV EcoBoost two investigative vehicles the EV hybrid Vans we actually have those and they've already presented with some additional challenges and Specialty vehicles and then we need the funds to upfit those Vehicles as you can see there to the tune of $588,000 $2.2 million for.

Vehicles the maintenance and repairs on these vehicles again that I I point out run 24 hours a day 7 days a week is quite extensive I'm going to ask d David laar to explain this slide to you and give you a little insight on how much it's costing us to maintain these vehicles to keep make sure that they're in good repair not only for patrol but for transportation David good afternoon Commissioners County manager so well Sheriff mentioned this is just a historical chart of what we've experienced over the last couple years as he mentioned back in the 2021 budget cycle we requested about 34 Vehicles those Vehicles were cut in half for a total of 17 and you can see where those maintenance and repair costs are Illustrated here as a spike other than that it's pretty straightforward in terms of Maintenance and Repair we recently received notice from all of our vendors Sport Durst Matthews Body Shop Hendrick Motors all of them are having an increase between 60 and.

75% labor cost and so where an oil change would have cost you $55 $60 is now going to cost us $135 $140 for an oil change so they're not passing any savings on to us and obviously we want to make sure we we take our vehicles to the best shops around but they're now was about two months ago president. Thank so May 1st they started charging us almost 60% more than they were over the past few years and along with that cost we're running our ownmy as you all know both basic law enforcements as well as detentions and we still have challenges with Staffing so we're I'm pushing the staff to run these acms as much as possible and quickly as possible without reducing quality what that relates to or equates to is an increase in our uniform cost and so that's why you see the the uniform the current budget 85,000 we're requesting a 7 an additional 72,000 because we have to outfit the the men and women who go through ourmes.

Ourmes is not like going through a one at a Durham Tech or another Community College we hire them they go through the process so they Durham County Sheriff's Office employees either on the detention side or on the law enforcement side so we equip them with an appropriate uniform and attire to get through the academy and right here I'll take a just a point of personal privilege to let you know we are participating in the new B curriculum has not been redesigned in over 25 years Durham County Sheriff's Office was selected to be a pilot program and just last week when I was in Raleigh I was informed that we we are running one of the best pilot programs in the state of North Carolina and other agencies including community colleges are coming to us talking with our instructors making sure that they get our input on how we are successfully running this Academy which is brand new it's nearly 900 hours where it used to be close to 600 and and a little over.

600 so we're proud of that and we're proud of the fact that we're able to do it in house but it does come with a cost next slide along with vehicles obviously comes fuel in in this slide you see our fuel line we're projecting $170,000 shortfall again these vehicles don't stop fuel cost is going up I know General services in mreo do a good job at trying to keep the tanks working and full of fuel but it does come at at a significant cost cost on on average we're spending $ 48,1 183 a month in in fuel cost I don't anticipate that going down so our ask is 57,4 184 for fuel and again let me just point out we've tried to be mindful of our carbon footprint and you may remember about 5 years ago now at least four we switched to the Ford EcoBoost we have yet to see really any significant changes and we the carbonate emissions are lower but they still it's a hybrid vehicle so obviously still.

Runs on fuel so we don't have any aggregate numbers to show that there's a red reduction in fuel cost by going to those hybrid vehicles but again they they are reducing or producing fewer. Emissions Mr. Ritter this is our we we've talked about this before Shi this is our our license for Microsoft and our Beyond trust Mr Ritter is our director of it I'll ask him to give you 60 seconds on what this will do for the Sheriff's Office. Good afternoon I'm Vincent R director of technology for the sheriff's office so we're going to first speak on Shi which is our Microsoft volume licenses pretty much we can't do business without it we are following in practice with what the is&t is doing we're also following practice with is which is best practice throughout the entire industry so this covers all of our email Word documents Excel documents anything that we do on our laptops or regular computers today is part of our volume licenses excuse me our Beyond trust.

Which is a really big one that we're trying to introduce into the facility and it's going a piggyback off of something Sheriff just mentioned about fuel cost with our deputies not having to come back to the to the to to the agency no matter where they are in the county we can reach out to them when they have a problem we can reach right into their laptop fix whatever problem it is they don't have to come back to us they can keep working they stay out in the field where they are so not only are we reducing fuel cost we're reducing we are reducing mileage that is put on the vehicles and we're also reducing any time that they have to come off the streets so the more time we can keep them out there doing their job the safer everyone can be and again we're saving money by not having them come back downtown then going back out to whatever the far farest parts of the county they were.

In thank you Mr rder it goes without saying that technology continues to evolve and be a very intrical part of law enforcement and we want to use technology till this fullest from email to keeping our deputies in the field as Mr Ritter just articulated the next priority is protective vest you heard heard some of our stories the other night from three of our detention office employees our officers there we've never had a protected vest in our facility we are seeing an increase in assaults on Detention officers an increase in assaults on detainees inmate on inmate and we are continuing to find Shanks or homemade weapons or fash fashioned weapons inside the facility Captain Elby is going to pass some some of these around so you can take a closeup look at these instruments these instruments are designed by the detainees to inflict as much pain and injury as possible we started having this conversation about a year ago that it would be really wonderful for us to equip our officers with vests to make.

Them as safe as we POS possibly can so the just like we do our deputies and on the other side of the slide you see the deputy sheriff's ballistic vest the vest that we're trying to go to now we're requesting an increase in ballistic protection because we are seeing an increase in Firepower on our streets individuals where used to you'd run into a 9 mm a 45 or a 30 38 standard issued handgun on the street in the commission of a crime we're now seeing Glock 40s AR-15s rifle rounds and we're encountering these these weapons with great regularity and so we are asking also to increase the the ballistic vest which need to be replaced every five years for our deputies and get new vests first time ever for our Detention officers Captain Elby.

As Sheriff said weapons are Ina to our facility to all compartment facilities the weapons that you see passed around you notice one of them is kind of small that's what we typically were accustomed to in the past but as Sheriff was saying about the weapons and what's available to people now are increasing the detes are now looking for new sources of weapons and those weapons now like you heard on Tuesday our officers may not make it home so weapons in the facility are present for either self-preservation or intimidation both of those require our staff to respond and we're at.

Risk thank you Captain Elby so we're requesting 175 vests for our Detention officers and 230 replacement vests for our deputies if you have any questions major Cody will be available at the end to answer any questions about the ballistic vest for Leos next slide. Please you know part of running a Detention Center is being able to feed and care for the individuals there we are continuing to see an increase in our food cost our current contract track is $800,000 we're requesting 1.3 based on their calculations that they've given us and we've had a good relationship with aart but we are also exploring other opportunities the reason I'm exploring other opportunities is I'm really trying to get away from food that cannot be identified right now airart has admitted that they use as most vendors mean Ally processed Meats soy products and I really think our detainees deserve much more as I'm sure you will agree so we are researching the vendors out there who can really put a quality product on the trades for the.

Men and women who are housed in the Durham County Detention Center and as of this morning that was 420 that number unfortunately continues to rise here of late but nonetheless we want to make sure we give them nutritious meals quality food and also provide them with snacks because they're there and and I know sometimes after I have my dinner I get a little hungry I crave I crave a snack in the evening and so we're trying to work out that as well while while you know certainly continuing to be fiscally responsible but but again this is this is something I think is absolutely necessary and we have heard from our detain need that if they get hungry they get they get angry they get angry they act out and we don't want them so we want to keep them healthy and happy next slide please major Cody I'm going to call major Cody up to talk about our weapon system all right good afternoon everyone how we doing all right so Firearms for.

The agency we're currently experiencing that time frame in replacement cycle so our handguns are coming up on seven years we typically like to replace those between the five and eighty year mark the industry standard is about five years on those and the shotguns we've had our shotguns since prior to 1998 since I started here so we're about 24 years on those when you look at Firearms specifically you have to to be mindful of it's kind of like your car when it's brand new you don't have to worry about a whole lot you don't have to worry about maintenance except for oil changes and things of that nature and as you start to put mileage on your car you you know may have a a part replacement like an AC unit or a fan or something like that Firearms are mechanical instruments much the same way so after a period of time either through training or usage or or whatever the case may be these mechanical instruments start to show some failures.

Obviously obiously in this line of work these these particular items are what we would consider personal defense weapons but in that instance God forbid that we would ever have to use them but in that case we want them to be functioning properly so we have requested and proposed a replacement for our handgun systems to improve the technology and also to have something that we can rely upon and same for the shotguns as well thank you major Cody as I mentioned a moment ago we we are outgunned on the street that's no secret and you all know me I don't I don't keep secrets these weapons are a necessary part of our us doing our job and we have to be able to meet the threat with an appropriate response now what that means is we want to make make sure that we keep our deputies safe but we also want to make sure that we can employ non-lethal or less lethal musicians if possible but we also we we recognize.

That in this day and time we are seeing an increased number of threats in Durham you all listen to the news you hear the reports right now we are on Pace to surpass last year's record setting number of shootings in Durham City Durham County which is unfortunate but that is that is where we that's where we are today we talk with the Duram Police Department we talk with City Council Members we talk with our community about how we can address the gun violence and we are working on that to address the gun violence but at the end of the day we know we have to be prepared to go into to potential situations where gun play is is highly likely that's the bulk of my ask so I'd like to take just a couple of minutes to inform you on some current initiatives that we have and highlight some programs that we're doing you all have heard and supported our education programs in the facility for years this this year we.

Had another young man graduate and get his GED he is looking at some some serious charges but he never gave up on completing his education and so we were happy to participate with our partnership through our partnership with DPS to to allow him to finish his classes and graduate with his high school diploma we are and you've heard me talk about this now for about a year and a half Project SAFE neighborhood this is designed to address some of the gun violence that we are experiencing I have Phil cousin some of you are familiar with Phil I think Phil had another engagement Phil is our PSN director and works alongside Miss Tamica Gilmer who is our coordinator for PSN we have a great relationship with the US attorney's office in the Middle District to bring this program back to Durham to address gun violence violent crime and Target violent offenders to get them off our streets and but also identify those who are at risk to give them opportunities to turn their lives around.

Through our Partnerships and programs in the Community one such as hi reborn whom you're here from next would be a partner with us trying to save those who want to be saved and so we're very excited about bringing Project SAFE neighborhood back and you'll also remember that I reclassified positions to make this happen U because I did not get new FTE so I repurposed FTE to make make room for the project project safe neighborhoods three FTE next slide electric vehicles I've already talked about those the Vans are here we're going to try to use those for our Transportation it's presenting some challenges but I'm convinced that my staff will will be able to figure it out and you charging stations location of charging stations how we upfit these to make them safe and secure for transporting our detainees is some of the challenges that or we're facing right now but we will we will figure it out and these are totally electric and as you know we were awarded our Triple Crown through ACA last.

Year some of the members you see behind me traveled with us to DC to participate in the conference and the training and and in the hearing where we had to go before the ACA commission board to talk about what we do at the Durham County Detention Center and once again we were granted accreditation with a perfect score of 100% which is unheard of for a firsttime reaccreditation agency and so we're very very excited and very proud of that next slide please you all are very familiar with our medication assisted treatment program one again this is something that we highlight we lead the state of North Car Carolina I always take an opportunity to say that we were the first sheriff's office in the state of North Carolina to implement mat and we are still leading the way as of April 15th we have served over 536 individuals and as from where I'm sitting that's 536 individual lives that we have saved I'll give you a quick breakdown we have 40 detainees who are.

On Suboxone male and female we have five that are receiving methodone through our Partnerships and we have four that on lockone and three are receiving Vivitrol injection so we also treat alcohol addiction inside our facility we could double this number if we had our medical director on board that was approved in last budget cycle we have yet to be allowed to post that I am really hopeful that we will move forward with releasing HR to allow them to go ahead and post for the the medical director cuz right now we cannot go any further without having the medical director on board so I'm excited about hearing discussion about that and moving that forward we are also pretty much fully automated in our Detention Center so we can have remote hearings we went through working with the state of North Carolina aocc Our IT department and certainly our local judges to get our courtrooms upgraded and so even those some of the judges don't want to come and use them they are.

Ready our our facility is up up and running inside the Detention Center Captain Manning is with us today as you all know Captain Manning runs the best animals control division in the state of North Carolina he and his team and I recently reclassed seven individuals seven seven positions to get him the help that you need because you know in in 19 and 20 and 20 and 21 21 and 22 I had asked for additional FTE so the manager and I had a conversation and she said well just reclass them and move forward and when you get to full staff we'll have another conversation did I recall that correctly yeah so Captain Manning come forward and give us a brief on animal services and the great things that we're doing and explain what the new civilian animal service technician officers will do good afternoon everyone thanks for having me it's an honor to be here this something I'm very very passionate about and I'm thankful for Sheriff Birkhead and all the assistance he's.

Helped us as you as you all know our division is slightly different than all the other divisions within the the agency we are the only division that responds to the city and county of Durham we're the only Animal Control service in this in this entire area we only have one shelter that we partner with as well to put this in perspective going to give you some tangibles and then we going to talk about briefly some things that you can't really put a number on in what we've accomplished with with with this assistance so for example last year alone in the fiscal year we responded to almost 11,000 calls for service 11,000 calls that was with primarily eight individuals eight so we're talking about that's that's a tangible number now we're talk about the intangibles we're also supplementing the detention service we're supplementing Patrol Division we're supplementing our own on onsite RAB vaccination clinic with those eight individuals while responding to 11,000 calls per year it was too much was.

Obviously too much when we took over in 2012 I think the population was somewhere estimated around 100,000 less people than it is now we all know we all see the booming population and growth that we have with people come pets so we just Skyrocket it so now let me tell you about what we've done with these we currently have four animal Services officers two of those are already vaccinated completely outfitted completely field trained and have already out there responding to calls for service two of those are in the process they're already hired they're already outfitted and they're in field training one should be released in about two weeks and then one is probably another month because he started a little later do it to a relocation issue that he had to put that in perspective the estimated time of arrival for our calls last year was 20 minutes still pretty good last month with just two additional people it's cut down to 14 minutes it's a huge difference that's a.

Huge advantage to the citizens of Durham and we're still managing to provide protection and response for the City and County of Durham to some level seven days a week 24 hours a day and in most cases that's far off surpasses anything that's in the state of North Carolina at this point and we hope as we continue grow we can continue to do that we also we having those individuals are being cross trained to be certified rabies vaccinators so they can assist with our new administrative staff that's in the office last month alone we administered 71 different rabies vaccines in that clinic just that one Clinic thank you Captain Manning so we some of you will be familiar with the term dog catcher back in the day they were referred to as dog catchers we reclass those positions and that equates to a savings of $48,000 where they would have been deputies so we have to outfit them differently so that Savings of $48,000 we're proud of that these individuals.

Are hitting the ground running I want to make sure you understand that when Captain Manning said that two of them have already been vaccinated in order to work in Animal Services you have to receive your rabies vaccinations you have to go through classes and you have to make sure that again you're afforded the proper protection when you're dealing with animals some feral some wild some domestic so we we've got all of that in place it's it is amazing to me when we talk about what we do at Animal Services you would be amazed at what we do and what some of the things he didn't mention we we build dog houses and we give away dog collars and and treats and food to help those who are struggling to care for their pets and so we do quite a bit and we work alongside APS as you know who you may have already heard from but we work alongside them to make sure that they are able to do do the job that they do.

At the shelter and the last thing I want a couple of more things and I'll be done and we'll take your questions our jail is is is in disrepair you all have heard me talk about that last year we had a conversation with with AGM Delgado and and the mo and general Services about a maintenance contract we've done some research and we're really looking forward to move forward at an appropriate time to get a full-time maintenance contract in the within hopefully within the next budget cycle to the tune of about $1.5 million things continue to break in our facility our our jail is reaching the end of its life so we're going to have to spend some money to keep the beds from falling off the wall the windows from becoming unsealed creating a hazard the roof from leaking replacing the plumbing paying attention to the HVAC we just finished installing new two chillers Chiller to make sure the environmental controls are intact and we need we need someone to pay full-time attention to that.

Facility to keep it up and running safe and efficiently for as long as we choose to stay in this current location next slide these are some items I certainly want to make sure you are aware of as we begin to have our Capital Improvement our our Capital conversation I've sent this information to you a couple of weeks ago and just want to reiterate it real quick I won't go through in any detail but we need radios it's just like weapons we need radios we have to be able to communicate the state of North Carolina is going to a new Viper system a new radio system that is Statewide we are on that system now and the new generation radios are not cheap it's just like your cell phone every time you upgrade your cell phone yeah it the cost goes up so those are some things that we are have to have to continue to do our business and then on the right side you see a list of things that we.

Continue to repair or need to fix inside the Detention Center so I thank you for your time and we will pause here for questions thank you so much Sheriff Burk here thank you so much to your team off for coming in and I I next time we will know to bring more chairs so that folks can access our microphones I did want to open I went first last time we've kind of been doing a bit of a round robbing here does anybody want to jump in first before I go anyone so many question oh you there we go okay I have my this I look she didn't you done done that three times a day I don't overlook people so let's start there number two I looked at her too and I waited for her to raise a hand and it didn't go up so I'm g go first how about that that kills all that so first off and foremost I have a really quick question it's not GNA be a.

Fun one for anybody I do appreciate you bringing up a lot of the highlights that you all have hit we can always appreciate a graduation I think you know I highlighted non-traditional graduations and you all admitted this young man has some serious charges but we didn't let that be an impediment to him getting his degree my my first question because and this is because I'm looking at other presentations and I'm thinking about past presentations that we've had so and I'm about to step into a hornet nest and I do apologize to my staff and everybody else so I remember we had the email conversation I get it y'all are using the email that we use and we had an issue in the beginning the year where it was given to you and it was taken back then I looked at that somebody can if if someone would go back to that slide it says the maintenance contract was a million dollars it went and then.

It came back and I I see it says 1.5 now and then the medical director we approved that I don't know where that is I'm admitting my own ignorance I do know that DCM ACM Bron just did a presentation about it possibly coming out of opioid settlement money that 200,000 so I'm seeing money go back and forth and back and forth and not necessarily staying where it needs or where I don't know I wasn't in leadership last year so I don't I don't understand how it moved is can we kind of sort of speak to that movement and I appreciate it because if we can pull it out of opio settlement money and out of a fun balance I'm here for that but can somebody speak to some of that movement on either side I I can start yeah go for it on the maintenance contract I did include it in my recommended budget for last year and the sheriff and his staff spoke with ACM Delgado and General Services.

Director to identify how they could Implement that to issuing RF p and get a maintenance contract done and and Sheriff I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong but I think it was mutually decided that it was a lot for the sheriff's team to handle at that point and it was agreed upon that then the money would be reverted back that's fair to the county okay yes Madam manager that is correct to do an RFP obviously you have to do your due diligence so we've spent the last year doing that due diligence okay and so we've now identified one of two companies in the on the Eastern Seaboard on the East Coast that do this type of work one that is currently operating and has been in existence for about 25 almost 30 years in mecklinburg County called tkc we've had a number of conversations with them and that's how we got to the 1.5 million so the other company is based in Georgia they currently operate in fton County at Fulton County facility.

And if you're familiar with some of the stuff that's going on in Fon County they would be my second choice my way way at the bottom second choice because there's some issues there well clearly over this past year that as as the manager mentioned my staff has done research had conversations with a number of facilities across North Carolina tkc is one that we would hopefully would bid for this and that actually their contract proposal for full Services 24 hours a day would $1.5 million and I think our current budget is for General Services is about 800,000 give or take so not too far off so happy to have that conversation again okay and one thank you for the mat numbers I usually am able to get those from like commissioner Jacobs cuz she she's really on that one that's helpful to know that you all I feel like you all did give us alcohol numbers last year my thank you for letting us know about the work you all are doing with b and.

About how other folks are looking at you all I'm looking at my notes right now the other question that I had thank you for let letting us know about the electric vehicles yeah I'm pretty sure some you those charging stations it gets a little funny in some of the the up charge that you have to do my other one I didn't know you all did as much with animal services so that's helpful and I do want to public I was not able I know some of my colleagues were there I know some of the staff was there for the tasting I had a doctor's appointment but I've I feel like not just your all departments you know get criticism on what we doing how we doing and so I did want to publicly say it it wasn't just us for anybody who wasn't there you invited some of your harshest critics from the community to come in and actually tast the the food and talk to folks and so I did I did want to.

Get the last thing I want to get some clarification on because to be honest up until we had the budget hearing I was not as familiar with the weapons issue I'm trying to think of another word to say other than shank and Banger but I was not as as learned about some of some of those issues so I would like for somebody to to speak more clearly I know you said that major Cody could get into the ballistics but before I do that I know an email recently went out and this is auxiliary to you an email went out from the DA's office and when I look at this 420 number and she states that what is it the DA's office is now G to be closed on Friday at 12 o'clock I'm trying to I know that the courthouse still runs and you all still run I'm trying to figure out do you see any impact on your office especially when you all are almost full well not almost.

Full but at 420 is a pretty high number and now we have a DA's office that says we shutting down every Friday at 12 and do we see any impact on your office at all and I'm asking everybody that and I could have asked you in private but you here so I'mma ask and you can say no oh I never say no first let me let me kind of go in reverse order I really appreciate your your note taking on the things that we've highlighted here the medical director you may recall that we reclass an FTE to to make that position happen to make to create that position so having the opioid settle settlement money would certainly benefit and we can move forward with that again so we can continue the great work that we're doing with our mat and expand our efforts through our mat program we are at 420 today in our facility whether or not we will see an immediate impact by the DA's office going the summer hours.

I don't know that we'll see an immediate impact but I can tell you right now that out of that 420 about 350 or so of those are awaiting trial some of them have been sitting in my facility for almost 5 and a half years if they don't prosecute cases and we we have to move folks through the system I should not have individuals sitting in my jail for five and a half years of waiting trial so I it may have an additional impact by reducing those hours for the summer I can tell you this the state of North Carolina the Constitution says the courts shall remain open and so therefore we never close Sheriff's Office never closed Durham County Courthouse never closes we did not close during Co we're not going to implement any summer hours either so we'll continue to do do our job hopefully that answers your question it it does sir and I will relinquish the rest of my time we're somewhat ahead to my colleagues commissioner Jacobs has a.

Couple thank you and that that's news to me I I had not heard what you just said about and out an email saying I will not work it at the 12 well thank you so much for this information this presentation all the staff that's here first of all I just want to say I I think you're well aware that we are unfortunately have tremendous budget challenges this year and not only do we not have do we have many most of our departments that receive well most of the Departments that receive Durham County funding not only are they not getting their requests they're actually experiencing cuts some very serious Cuts so I I just want to acknowledge that we're in a very difficult budget this year and I mean I I and I I do want to acknowledge that the manager's budget does give 820 $845,000 in new operating funding as well as the $2.1 million for vehicles so so I just want to to give that context and not to.

Say that that these requests are not valid but just that it's just very very difficult wondering ing about especially things like related to the protective gear and things like that are there opportunities with you know we get these regular Jag grants or the burn grants are you anticipating some of these federal grants that you could then use for some of these purposes some of these needs as they come up in the next year and and there's other obviously other federal grants too but just wonder about those in particular not specific to the protective vest and those are competitive grants and we've been very very fortunate that we've received Jag grants along in the past but this this one I'm not sure David David Lavar may be able to speak to the specifics on it but I don't think there are any grants that are currently available for protective vest and this is an immediate need we can't wait for another Grant cycle to open up yeah David thank you.

Sheriff I'll just add that the Jag Grant is what we use to fund our specialized teams so we've got seven specialized teams that we've never come to the county and asked for any additional funding we funded those teams for decades through these Jag grants so that's how we keep these going we not just provide these Services locally but we provide provide some of them regionally good question yeah and but there was the other one I think it was the burn or I I don't remember that it's the same one it was the same one okay that I know was some some equipment and things like that I remember seeing getting funding for that but are those related to the teams then they are another one it's Homeland Security it's okay equipment related Homeland Security okay I also appreciate getting some of the data that you just kind of mentioned I know you did a report I think it was 2022 that was really great to the community that listed a lot of data.

It would be great if we could get and you referred to crime like if we could get some data over the past year crime data the the the the data you just talked about with the ma program some the programs that you are running what the participation level is and then I don't maybe I'm looking at the wrong place but we used to be able to look and see who's in the Detention Center each day is that where where is that available I'm probably looking the wrong place yeah you're looking in the wrong place it's still available you can go on our website and search the what's it called yeah it's it's on it's still on the website under where is it on the the website upper leftand corner okay okay cuz I couldn't I looked and and the other was just wondering how where are you at now with vacancies and especially related to the Detention Center major Myers you have our current numbers good afternoon currently we have.

85 vacancies I'm sorry currently 85 vacancies 85 out of2 go ahead no total total FTE complement is. 223 okay 223 have to do the math on the percentage there maybe somebody could do it but it's about 43 about 43 and a half about 43% wow yeah okay yeah it's significant yeah and let me let me since you asked that question our deputies and our as Captain mentioned our Animal Service deputies our investigators all pull double duty inside the Detention Facility and have been doing so for the past 18 months or more our jail staff has been working mandatory overtime for north of seven years even before I became the sheriff so we're working again that's why we're running theseis as quick as possible to get folks in here our last Academy graduated 10 we we're set to graduate another academy in two weeks in two weeks with another 10 L you see the uniform cost so we're working aggressively to fill these vacancies and also first in the state of North Carolina I got the.

General assembly excuse me the training and Standards Commission to approve a truncated course so anyone who works inside the Detention Center has to be Doc certified so we created the course created the curriculum alongside our partners at Department of Corrections and the sheriff's training and Standards Commission to get an abbreviated course for sworn law enforcement even a deputy who has five years 10 years experience as a deputy has to be certified to work inside the Detention Center my goal is about is to have approximately 75% of the deputies dual certified so they can work in there to relieve the pressure that our regular do staff are doing and so we got that approved and launched it about 6 months ago and we completed two eies with 100% pass rate because you still have to take the state exam the whole state exam you don't take a a truncated exam you take the whole state exam but again that's a sign of us being creative and trying to feel these vacancies again.

The jail cannot close and so we have to staff it and an appr appropriate and safe level because again we're at 420 and you also mentioned the manager giving us $845,000 I really appreciate that management so well but what I appreciate most is you're not recommending any Cuts so thank you so much for that and I want to acknowledge that and also you mentioned project save neighborhoods if you do have any data because I know that's a data you know you're you're working with I think UNCG on that was that the correctc I'm saying yeah any any data you have at this point that would be great on that well we don't have any data at this point because we're still in in the formation stage okay and so what we're doing is we're putting all the pieces together so that when we launch officially launch project safe neighborhoods and oh by the way the city of Durham the police department has not yet agreed to be partners with us on.

That but we're going to find a work around so what we're doing right now is putting all the pieces together so when we launch this initiative we know who we're going after we know the services that are going to be available for those who are requesting our help and we're not just doing it sort of Peace meal so we'll have some data for you this time next year okay great and lastly I just want to acknowledge Captain Manning because it every time we get a complaint and it gets sent to him he is amazing in providing the most detailed responses and so I I just I just really want to thank you for I mean your passion and conscientiousness really shines through and to all of your team thank you and also the fact that you've come up with an Innovative way to address that the civilian I'm getting the name wrong of the new the civilian Animal Services officers I think that is a very I mean.

That's a perfect example of how do we come up with a way to solve something in a cost effective way so so thank you I will yield the rest of the time to commissioner Carter thank you and thank you so much for this presentation and even more thanks to the sheriff and the leadership sitting here but also all the Detention officers and the the deputies out in the field the school resource officers special unit people Animal Services Wendy stole my acknowledgement U you know I have the most exposure to the Animal Services officers compared to any of your other officers just because I'm the commissioner assigned to the Animal Welfare advisory committee and the you know residents complain a lot about you animal issues and our Animal Service officers are incredibly professional in in handling that and addressing everything to the to the fullest all all that Wendy said is is totally true really appreciate all of the work that you all do to help keep our community safe it's it's certainly.

An important component to to save communities is armed law enforcement and really appreciate your work and I know how hard it is I can imagine I'm curious from every other presentation that we've heard we've also been given examples of spending reductions that departments have made and so I'm just curious what spending reductions that you you have made to help meet overall expenditures within this constrained budget cycle oh that's a good question for the last three years we have reclassed positions instead of asking for new positions I just mentioned a moment ago we saved over $48,000 by doing the reclass for the animal services division again we've done that three years in a row by not asking for new additional FTE and we always try to find Grant funds as commissioner Jacobs mentioned but we can't survive off of grant funding but we have been very fortunate to receive a number of Grants the Jag Grant scap Grant Etc that has not cost the county any money and then we use asset forfeiture money David.

One of the thing I was going to mention commissioner Carter is is training we've really pushed back a lot of the not just the routine training but the continuing ed that we do across the.

Agency Miss Gaither is our finance director and she does a really good job of working with David and other team members to try to find some alternative funding and we've we've been very successful but again that's not sustainable in the long run and another question I have is where do the detainees get the scary items for these weapons especially the one that look like a little pencil you know that I'm sure would still inflict harm I could understand but what about some of the the long metal spear for example they actually use items that are just in the facility Sher spoke to the building kind of wear and tear the long slender one that looked like a blade or a sword was actually pulled from the window sill they just continued to work it over time the long slender one was a push broom we have thees work throughout the facility to help keep it clean and they turn around and use mundane items to turn into something else wow very interesting oh wow.

How old is the jail I can't remember when it was built the jail was constructed in 95 90 open in 96 constructed in ' 95 and open in 96 okay less than 50 years old but more than 30 more than 30 years old yeah it's like 30 yeah I did just hear that our average school age is 50 years old so it's interesting and I was the schools don't operate 24 hours a day 7 days a week can house 500 people the jail does they they house 500 more and more students some 2,000 but but good point I was to ask about project safe neighborhoods when we thought we'd see results so I appreciate your answer on that why is the medical director position not posted I'm missing that I'm sorry just wondered is that is that the county decision so it was the board's desire for the position to report to the director of Public Health and so we're at an impass of sorts I see because we.

Need to figure out you know the sheriff feels like it would be best suited to report to him and so we need to figure out where exactly that position will report and I do want to publicly State I was not in agreement with that that is not me picking sides that is not me choosing anybody I just think about my own family's medical issues you won't the person that they have to report to be over that I get it it was a board decision but I want to publicly state it was not I was not in favor of that because when it was voted on when it was requested when I asked questions on camera I remember I asked I said are people coming in there in kidney failure are people coming in there with stage five cancer I all of those questions because we have somebody over here it's no different then when we were dealing with Co I didn't want any I wanted that person to report the rod or Jo you know.

What I'm saying so I didn't I I want to publicly state that was not one of mine I would no more want to take somebody from manager Pierce's office and make a report to you or vice versa so I when that decision was made commissioner Burns was not in support of it how might we get Beyond this impass how can we collaborate better on this m commissioner Carter you were directing that question at me because I'm good I think so well we started the medication assisted treatment program in our facility that's a best practice the detainees are under my care and custody we have an infirmary our health care provider is unable to provide us full mat or they could I'm sorry but it would cost us probably 600 or 700,000 additional dollars so my staff has done a heck of a job implementing medication assisted treatment in order for for us to move to the next level according to the federal requirements and the DEA we have to have.

F certain measures in place a safe a procedure to administer the methodone to store the methodone etc etc but we also have to have a medical director that reports to the sheriff as the provider for medication assisted treatment inside the jail for us to move to the next level that's where we are those are federal requirements so the reporting requirement is a federal requirement yes so it's really non-negotiable is what you're saying as far as I'm concerned it's nonnegotiable as far as federal government is concerned it's nonnegotiable okay well I mean I I think if if if if that's a fact and I assume it is then you know it doesn't seem like there's a lot of room for collaboration it just seems like it has to be a certain way or not anyway I don't we don't we don't have to continue to have this public conversation right now but I we got to figure this out so let's let's work together to figure it out does the Office of the sheriff have.

A fund balance or is that something the county holds for the sheriff no I don't have fund balance okay so that's just and is it an assign do we have money assigned you know to that or and I will ask D DCM Hager to respond directly to that but there is not a separate fund balance that we have specifically for this year that's correct there is not a separate fund balance they may have dollars that carry for it because they're restricted as he talked about his grants but it's a nominal amount.

Yes you may need to get me this later but I'm just C I feel like during the year we make a a a lot of budget amendments where we allocate funding from fund balance to a wide assortment of need across the county and I'm just wondering what that dollar figure might be for the Sheriff's Office you know what throughout the year is allocated to the Sheriff's Office that comes from fund balance and I do see direct dcma also get up again we can get that information to you that'd be great thank you so it it sounds like there would be a cost savings if General Services kept the maintenance contract it's 800,000 now and it's going to go up to 1.5 well if that's without factoring in the cost of repairs that we do on a daily basis well I guess the question would be is is there any cost Savings in not having two separate you know manage General Services sort of Maintenance contracts it seems like consolidating as much as possible does.

Lead to cost savings the answer is yes over the long run initially it's going to cost us more more just like buying a new car initially your outlay is going to be more significant but you're going to buy a more economical vehicle it's going to give you longer service the goal with having a maintenance contract is to keep this 35e plus old building working as long as possible someone pays full-time attention to it so yes it is a slight increase in the initial outlay and what it's costing us on an annual basis but it will extend the life of the facility okay how about the emergency Communication Center I've never understood why we have two this is just another example where it feels like we might be able to have a cost savings as a community is if we just had one 911 call center is that a topic that is one folks are having at all you know trying to collaborate to figure out how we can merge some of.

These same Services into one and you and before hold on before he answers I will let you know that for the Joint City County meeting we will be discussing that much I'll just I'll just hold on that no I Ain saying hold he can answer I just wanted you to know it's coming I just it's $1.8 million and so it just you know just seemed like an area for savings anyway yeah I just no I'd wonder what your thoughts are on that sheriff well I can say as U this conversation I have not been in any conversations with City officials about merging the two that is a historical conversation that I I'm aware of but I wasn't the sheriff then and so I don't have any knowledge of how the conversation went so I guess I'll have to wait to the Joint City County meeting and and see what see what shakes out it was a request made by someone that we found out about today and I.

Assumed that you knew about it but again I apologize well I'm not going to apologize because I didn't make I didn't make the request I know he did and my staff it was not on them but I do know the elected official that the request and I respectfully requesting The Ether that that person reach out to you and do their due diligence as as you are also an elected official but yes I did want you to know that they had been brought up it's been brought up plenty of times but I I don't want to cut you off because you you had a list that's you had a good list had a great list I and I'm I'm finished thank you very much appreciate it all of you hold on and we do have commissioner Alam is does well does have her hand up she is is with us via our zoom and do we have the audio all right and we will finalize we will end with her because we do have some other.

Presentation hey can you hear me yep wonderful yeah and just Heidi forication I'm actually the elected official commissioner that requested that for the join City County and the reason I requested it was because I've talked to the manager about it in the past and we've talked about it a little bit at our board and Sheriff bhead and I when we had a one-on-one a while back I had asked him just like informally about his thoughts so I wanted to just see an update about where the conversations possibly are with the city manager for our joint City County but yeah so that was me who requested it and I also my other question was also asked by commissioner Carter was around the medical director role of so why I'm Shing at the manager mentioned is yeah like I personally had shared my thoughts that I think that the position would be suited well under Public Health being that it is a medical related position and since the county the public health department does oversee also the.

Medical health plans for the sheriff's office as well that it would kind of fall in line with the public health department also having the medical director role for the opioid the Medicaid assistance treatment program so my question was kind of in line with Heidi of how do we move forward of okay we all want to get this position hired and continue this programming so where the hesitancy is around having it in the medical Direct in the public health director's office thank you so much for that question I I we will I I think I can direct that back to sheriff B workhead and I don't know if you heard the complete answer but it looks like it might be a federal standard and that is the reason why and but I I'll let him answer that thank you thank you commissioner alum for your your question the the general statutes of North Carolina said that the public health director must approve the medical plan for any Correction Facility or jail.

That's the extent of their involvement they must approve and sign off on the medical plan and so we have a great relationship with Mr Jenkins and his staff we've had numerous conversations about this mat itself but certainly the medical director and you may recall him saying and I'll paraphrase I don't want it the sheriff is doing Ma and so it's part of our mat program and it would not just doesn't make good management sense to have a piece of it in public health and the rest of it residing inside the detention center and again the federal requirements we've already satisfied all of the other Federal requirements with except this one exception which is why we can't move forward with expanding our inmate so is the medical is the federal requirement that the position must be housed in the sheriff's office or it's just a federal requirement that there is a medical director I'll get the exact Federal language for you and and and all of the requirements for mat and get that.

To you but this is a best practice across the country this is not just Durham County Sheriff saying this this is what all of my colleagues in Boston in California in Iowa this is what the best practice is this is what the DEA has handed down but I'll get you some language thank you and do if there's other counties in North Carolina specifically also that have the mat program to use that as a model also of how they have their medical director position housed if they have one or are hiring one thank you yeah we we are leading the county we are leading the state I think mecklinburg county is close to having their medical director I'm not sure but Wake County is also in the conversation of getting their medical director yeah kha lbl will answer that question and then we got move on so pit County has a medical director I believe bunkham County Wake County Sheriff's office already has the medical director I think.

If we take it a step back we are the only county in the state where there's the desire to have public health managing the medical facility in the jail every other County the contract the payments everything is housed in the medical facil in the Detention Facility because the day-to-day operations when we're sending people to the hospital when we have people having cold blues and emergency situations it is our chief and the Command Staff that you see sitting here that are dealing with those emergency situations when we have someone pulling out the colos bag and bleeding out it is them that is going in in there rendering the emergency treatment cleaning up the medical Biohazard Waste Public Health pays the bills on the quarterly basis but it's our chief who goes in day in day out weekly meeting with mental health and medical about how to treat those needs so what you have is also a lot of that going to sheriff and then some of that coming to me as well when we're looking.

At those emergency transports federal guidelines on that last year when we were presenting the need for the medical director we gave everyone a copy of the federal guidelines that said you needed that for mat but it also provides that additional service when it comes to liability we are the ones that are doing it even when we go through medical training in D B dot in docc a lot of that is governed by a lot of that study is dealing with medical treatment emergency medical treatment the medical director with have a couple of different things one mat so we can Implement methodone what our survey of our residents show that we could treat easily up to 30 or 40 more people they prefer methodone we can't do that to that medical director is there federal guidelines require that to be there on site as an OTP but also with the increasing needs we have with our detainees from diabetes blood pressure stage four cancer kidney dialysis and failure and we're taking folks to the.

Hospital multiple times a day in cold Blues having that medical director on staff to help advise so it's not us even though they're very experienced it's us sitting there going dayt day looking at those issues looking at the billing looking at folks who've been in the hospital two three weeks how do we get the person the care they need can we care from them in the facility facilitating getting them transferred to safekeeping and then when an issue does arise unfortunately we do have folks who may pass away in the facility when liability does arise the first thing that happens is the county says if the lawsuit is filed is that hey their employees of the sheriff's office we don't have any responsibility there so if we're going to Bear the brunt of the responsibility for any liability for the lawsuits and for the care on a day-to-day basis we need the medical director there one if we're going to be doing methodone but two to provide that additional assistance as we deal with.

Folks who are facing all kinds of com comorbidities so forth and so on but those guidelines are there I can get them again because we when it comes to that we gave that to you last year and we can provide that again thank you okay and again commissioner long did you have anything after that marvelous explanation because I I can't see you and I can see my other colleagues no ma'am thank you okay thank you ma'am I did want to cause let I did give some extended time to this one because commissioner because cherl is is not here and present and I did want to give her the opportunity to speak since she you know took the time out of her day I do want to end with commissioner Jacobs with a quick question because we do have other people here waiting and then Chef Burkhead if you have any final thoughts that you would like to leave us with i for one will just sandwich this.

With this is not on his chief of staff this is not on our chief of staff this is not on our County Manager it's not on either one of these legal counsels as elected officials we have been tasked with talking with each other there are individuals at the City Council and on the school board that I that when we talk there's consternation and push and pull like there's not there's but I work with them because I want the best for all this every all the residents in the city I want the best for the schools I even I you know whether they want to talk to me or not there's sometimes I have to email them when I'm upset with the people up here and they upset with me I try to talk to them in person they w't talk to me I call them on the phone I email them because it ended out I have a job to do I implore you all please like this is like the I think.

For four years I have seen this push and pull between these two departments where somebody don't want to talk to somebody and we 365 days later and we haven't pushed any movement again that ain't the county manager that's not these two attorneys that's not his chief of staff that is a officials not doing a dog on job and so when people CU I hear y'all snickering saying n machine is close to the sheriff I ain't close to none of y'all because I don't see none of y'all in the hospital when I go I don't see none of y'all in the hospital my sister go I'm close to the people in this community that demand that I do a job so I'd like for other people to take that seriously too if I have to go over to animal control if I have to meet with the heart team if I yeah I am demanded to meet with Democrats Republicans Dae the black community the white Community the Rotary Club every single person I.

Try to show up for I'm respectfully requesting that my colleagues start to do that for other duly elected officials and that's all I got to say commissioner Jacobs is up to you with your last question Chef Burke I'm G give you the final word and we gonna bring up the final. Presentation hello I I think it would be good to have further conversation just about this topic I I don't want to give the impression that we don't have medical care in in the the Durham County Detention Center we have we pay for and I don't know the number Joanne now we with f well path to have a clinic there we pay for Behavioral Health Services we we are providing and I know you all are go be above and beyond because a lot falls on you but I just from the comments that you just made I just want to make it clear we we do have we are providing Health Care in in the jail so we.

But we can I think it's important for us to continue having this conversation but I just didn't want to give that impression that the deputies are having to do everything on their own because I I would hope that we we are making use of the health clinic that we have there with and the contract with wellpath and if we're not some issues then we need to know about that as well I know I don't want to oh I don't want to continue something here that we need to move on from but I think something we may need to talk about further thank you I think it's something we need to make a decision on Sher Burke here not talk about make a decision on with Chef B here thank you all for your time thank you sir can we go ahead and get the next presentation prepared y'all have a blessed.

Day.

E e.

Good afternoon chair commissioners it is a pleasure to be here before you again this afternoon I was a little jealous with Sheriff Burkhead support system so I made a call to my office to bring in my they got on t-shirts I want to let him know he's not the only one yeah you know first I I really just want to you know thank each one of you individually as well as collectively because you're the reason that we are here today once I mean we've we've had individual conversations and you've been very supportive and for that you know I really just want to say thank you because you've made this opportunity really a a reality first you believed in this concept you believed that what we were building was something that was needed and it was just not happening in the city of Durham a One-Stop shop for black and brown underserved and Justice involved individuals where they could get Complete Care support encouragement and it is working it is actually.

Working you provided that support in so many ways today we're here to reflect over the last 15 months so that since we've received initial funding back in February of 2023 and what that has allowed us to do with the hati reborn Justice movement $2 million commitment $2 million commitment to build a $4.5 million movement and that's what we decided we would do one of the things that I would say is that doing some initial conversations one of the things that we discussed was the fact that once we open we need to open at scale that we were not going to go into this halfway that it was all the way or it would not be anyway and that was the challenge that we had that was the charge that we had and that's what we that's what we actually did so as of February 15th we started by identifying an office area that would accommodate the needed staff which would we've did at the mechanic and Farmers Corporate Center on.

The Duram Chapel Hill Boulevard we have a suite of offic offices there in February we started H hiring the necessary staff and again we were hiring staff in order to open at scale and understanding that we also were looking to receive additional funding from the city and we had also received through the assistance of the County Federal funding through Congressman Price's office of 700,000 so we fully anticipated that that first year we would have about 4.7 million dollars that didn't happen but again we were determined that we were going to move forward after completing all of our policies procedures and getting prepared we finally opened it door sometime I think about June of 2023 so it took about 5 months or so to actually get us to that point we actually had our first cohort to start at Durham Tech in July 1st of 2023 so that we were really really pleased with that so as far as serving the community we've only been serving the community about seven months even.

Though we've been actually operating a little over a year and at this point we have actually impacted the lives of 326 people that we have on record that we have served over that period of time understanding that our goal for that first year was 150 and that was for the first year and I said we've done this in seven months what we're going to be talking about today which I think is is also important is how those allocated $2 million were spent more so important than how we're going to spend any additional money I think we need to qualify the fact that we were good stewards of the initial funding that we received from the county and this is one of the things that we want to do today this is a quarterly financial report and what this actually is the year-to-date report from I think July of last year up until the end of March this year so this would basically give you a total of all of the funds that have been.

Spent and for the ones of you didn't have I have. Individually you did provide us a copy though so yeah everybody does have a copy at their desk Chief Charmers they have copies yeah we we actually sent yeah we emailed it so you could actually get individual copies of that although it's not included on the slide presentation I actually have the individual reports which includes July quarterly report also the the last two quarters of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 just to see just a smaller breakdown but pretty much this is what we're looking at again with this $2 million of course the National Institute of minority Economic Development served as our Fiscal Agent and of that initial initial $2 million $100,000 was basically went to actually manage the funds that the county awarded us to to actually spend as part of this initial standing up of the organization the next thing on this list we start to look at actually participant support and the particip participant support what was actually.

Allocated was what is this 4 $52,000 and of course we spent 121,000 understanding again that for the first 5 months we were not serving individuals in a cohort so this is pretty much over that period of time also we move next to the salaries and wages again opening that scale what we did was to sit down and to try to identify each and every position responsibility that we would need in order to open up this organization and and once we open the door be able to serve individuals because once we knew that once we open the door doors they were coming we all because we recognized the need and we recognized the fact that people were desperate and was looking for opportunities the the one thing that I want to add right here and and again it went back to the conversations that we were having about opening that scale and and and I think we I don't really need to kind of explain it to you or say you.

To because I think you're fully aware that these are individuals who have seen programs like this come and go and they fail them and once they were gone they were in no better shape than they were before we were determined that we were not going to be one of those organizations and I was determined I was not going to be one of those individuals that failed individuals and I think the collective conversations we had was that this is the way we need to open up then the salary as we identified those position $548,000 was budgeted we ended up with $672,500.

So we went over as far as salaries and wages for our full-time employees also we have contractors that $582,000 were allocated we also went over that and in and came in at $730,000 we have continued to evaluate the positions the salaries and things and we have made some made some adjustments and reduced that and I will actually cover that shortly a lot of these are firsttime expenses to include moving expenses as we can see 7,950 we spent pretty much on target for that office space and set up we came a little under 88,000 allocated we came in at 795 again setting up technology this was a very big piece because currently we have 25 staff and and understanding in order to get everyone equipped all of the office all of the electronics that that were needed all of the technology we budgeted 75,000 we came in at 825 office supplies came in and looked at 10,000 budgeted we came in at 7800 we don't have any cost for business cost.

Or all the Network copier service plans we have $5,000 allocated for printing we came in at$ 47.89 we of course refrigerator Furniture pretty much on Target commercial paper shredder and again a lot of these first time one- time events always be a long time before we need them again we also U factored in Auto expenses one of the things that we do not have company vehicles we do not provide vehicles for staff we do allow them to turn in mileage if they go out into the community and do different things they don't do it that much as you can see we only have $1,234 53 and they did a lot more than that but they're just you know not turning in the the vouchers the travel cost we budgeted 2500 we didn't do anything in as far as that marketing and community events 18,000 we came in at $9,000 899 business insurance again 2400 allocated 1746 spent professional development we've done that even with staff one of the.

Things that we feel that if we are going to invest in individuals that we are serving we also should be investing in the individuals that are going to be doing the serving and to make certain that they receive certifications and are better able to serve the individuals that are coming through the do so we have focused on that we've done ret about a three-day Retreat where we brought everyone together but again just building a a better support system and a better staff situation food and meals we went a little bit over that 5,500 allocated 8759 and and and most of this basically for orientations doing our graduations and different things like that we actually have an orientation going on today and tomorrow for our next cohort that's going to be starting next week at Durham Tech so these are the kind of events that led to this type of overage here and again this first year is is you you start off by trying to estimate what this might look.

Like for your first year but the first year allows us also an opportunity to really get more in tune with what kind of cost that we're going to be actually dealing with during the course of the year and with the type of work that we are actually doing banking credit fees very Li limited there 1,000 allocated 390 spent no staff clothing and merchandise costs other expenses we had 46,4 allocated and we spent $40,000 there and again it allows us also to see what those other expenses look like so we may if if necessary move different categories we we we were dealing with a lot of housing issues during the course of the year single mothers with with children that could didn't have anywhere to live so we had to develop relationships with motels we had to kind of start doing some things we had a couple of eviction situations that we had to deal with so we actually had to intervene to make certain that these folk were not put out on the.

Street so the the thing that's that's going on is that we we we are we actually now are the represent the safety net for a lot of folk once they come through the doors and anything go goes wrong in their lives they are calling one of the car managers to get that type of support and we've tried to step up to do that Human Resources we allocated $40,000 with our HR legal retainer we have not actually needed at this point any legal contractor we have a couple attorneys that are basically pro bono working with us if we need help or whatever they're willing to step in and kind of give us the device we need storage 50,000 allocated and security Investments we had 456 and we spent 3949 and basically set up we have panic panic alarms in the office we have cameras and things like that and based on the fact that we have the the clientele that we're dealing with a lot of times we just want.

To make certain that all staff would be not only feeling safe but would be safe in the event that something happened overall at the end of the day we again the overall budget for allowable spending was 1,900,000 minus the 100,000 for the National Institute and we came in at1 million 93,00 $77.40 so again that is pretty much what the spending looked like for the first 13 14 months of this year and I'm going to just kind of pause right there because I didn't want to I'm even though I've got some things if you want to ask question now you want to wait till the end we can wait till the end if it's the pleasure of the board but yeah I see some nods so yes sir okay thank you Chief okay now one of the things I indicated earlier is that we are constantly reviewing and taking a look at our operation every aspect of it to make certain that if there are needed changes to be made we identify those and we make.

Those changes this represents some of the changes and and things that have happened over the course of this first year to kind of let us know going into the second year what we can do to actually eliminate reduce the budget as we as we move forward these are love and respect is one of the organizations that that we are actually Contracting with for housing as you can see $4,800 of that was actually transferred through the Federal Grant and and I'm going stop here and say that this year going into this budget we are again we are very very hopeful that the the this this this board would continue to fund us at the full amount of $2 million the city has agreed to fund us at $1 million and we were at trying to get two but we got one with the federal funding with 700,000 that takes us up at 3.7 going into this year if we get all of the funding that we are needed which actually moves us closer to where we.

Need to be and with some of the other things that we have going we feel that we can make up that difference over the course of the year so what this has done it has has allowed us to actually start to move some of these these needs across not just one fund funding source but three so as you can see here we've already identified a $700,000 federal Grant proposal and we'll move some of these items or at least portions of these items over to some of those as well as to the city funding that we receive some of these are actually reflected by being able to share the responsibilities others have been eliminated and some have actually been put on hold so I walk through there reach is an organization that provides bioc psychosocial evaluations as well as substance abuse training for our organization $4,100 of that has been transferred over into the Federal grant youth summer programs we cut that by $20,000 and actually placed that in the city budget directive of office.

Affairs position which has been discontinued the senior it Position will be paid by a grant this year and actually the individual that was in that position has not gotten another job has moved on and we plan to actually just kind of contract the services off we needed that position fulltime the first year because we were building our infrastructure now we feel that we can contract and maybe save money in that particular Area Community support positions right now we have one position that's vacant and we are not going to be filling that we have a Care Management organizer position that is vacant and we're not going to be filling that our care managers basically are the ones that are provide the input and the care services for the individuals right now we have three Active Care managers and each one occurring at least 30 to 40 member case loads as well as other individuals that are on the inactive list but these are active individuals that they are managing right.

Now and so we feel that there's still a little room to for that with them there's also a transition position and this would be the individual that would actually work with more of the individuals who are inactive to make certain that we still maintain contact and we're not F in that position Workforce organizer position we have a vacancy there and we're we're not filling that our Workforce team is one that goes out and actually secure employment opportunities they are going in and they are working on a day-to-day basis to identify individuals that will provide opportunities we have our care managers here we have also a member of our Workforce team here today and this is basically what they are doing on on a regular basis so we have two Workforce organizer positions I mean individuals that are working in one position that's vacant executive director of programs and executive director of operation $25,000 of the of each of those individual salaries has been placed into the city budget we have four contractors positions that.

Actually we've eliminated $86,000 of their salaries also that's been placed into the city reduced budget project manager position by $112,000 reduce office supplies by 2,000 reduce business travel cost by 20,000 this is a total Savings of $543,500 that we've removed from the county budget and either eliminated it or transfer it and share it with other funding sources next can I can I make one commit can you remind the board of how many positions you all actually have and then after these changes Yeah we actually currently right now we have 25 positions 10 of those positions are full-time positions with benefits and 15 of those positions are contract positions and some of that may be changing based on the the IRS definition of a contractor and what is required to be a contractor but right now it's 25 with 15 contractors and 10 fulltime employees with benefits.

All right one of the things that we're looking at this year is that based on the fact that again we stood the organization up its scale and also due to the fact that a lot of the partners are in waiting we realize that we could not serve one of the guarantees that we made was that we would not create new programs if there were if there were existing programs that were providing those services so what we would do was actually work with those organizations to actually increase their capacity to serve additional individuals or or to provide more services and that's what we are doing during the course of the year we realized that a lot of the requests a lot of organizations that we were entertaining M with and contractual agreements we had to put on hold until we got some additional funding and and we so we realized that the partnership capacity is going to be increasing this year because the people in Waiting participant apprenticeships one of the.

Individuals we had was going to try to get here we've developed an apprenticeship program with Duram Technical Community College where we are actually working to in engage individuals into the comp to the construction trades we have an electrician that has actually hired four individuals that are basically our participants and they're actively working with him on a day-to-day basis and we've enrolled them into the electrician program at Durham Tech they've already finished the first quarter and all of them passed one of the individuals actually in the summer course and then the rest of them will be going back into the electrician program this coming fall we've met with Durham Tech and what we're doing right now we're looking at actually in engaging all of their electrician I mean their construction career modules and with a partnership Candace Rashad who works at Durham Tech is working on the Durham tech end to basically bring funding to support the funding that we may be able to do so you know president buckon is has has has basically said.

That he is in full support of hati reborn Justice movement and basically anything that Durham Tech can do to further the needs and and support individuals that are we're working with they're going to be doing it so this is very promising so that we so we see the the apprenticeship programs are going to end increase Brown Brothers Plumbing has already agreed that they are going they'll be working with us and provide thank you s Steven over here who actually got that individual to the table but and we have many others that are actually coming so we're looking at the electrical trades HVAC the plumbing even cabinet building the courses they're asking so and as we are actually bringing individuals in and we're doing the intakes and we're getting them at Durham Tech we are basically looking at these Avenues so these are some of the the the expected funding increases that we are looking at again the educational fees and supplies because initially we did a cost per participant analysis and found that.

That to be somewhere about about $5,250 I think was the figure that came up that is growing now because more and more of the individuals don't want once they finish to seven weeks at Duram Tech they want to stay in school as we mentioned last time we have one young lady who wanted to be a CNA now she's in nursing school and she's going on to be a nurse practitioner so once they see opportunities once they realize that these things are available they they're not stopping and you know and and the one thing is is that as I said earlier they're looking at us now as that opportunity so we we realize that some of these funding increases are going to happen participant orientation and graduations we plan to do more cohort Bridge initiatives at Duram Tech this year right now and I think that ctin I think we.

Said hit the button to the right we actually going to have a graduation on next Tuesday and we're going to be going over into our fifth cohort starting on July 1st so we see that again the call per participant we've actually now also have finalized theou with step up Duram and we are actually sending individuals there to their organization and basically again we are basically providing them with this financial support to actually increase their capacity to serve more individuals so that's already in place right now so again we realize that we just like you can't be all things to all people and we have to kind of look at the different other avenues and and and start to connect people with the other resources that exist in the community so we'll continue to actually you know move in that vein the housing funds living support the stiens all of these things are going out we've actually created our own Housing Coalition that we've been meeting every other Wednesday to basically talk about the.

Housing needs endurance we've also joined the Continuum of Care and participating with with that and again but and everybody recognizes how critical housing is and we are just trying to come up with ways and things that we can do actually to you know address the need that exist in Durham and especially with the individuals that are coming through our doors staff training staff clothing increased Gap funding fundraising and Grant we've We've hired a fundraiser and a grant writer that are actively involved in then I'm I'll touch on that as we move forward with some of the but our our grant writer is actually writing grants as we speak and and and this would be an ongoing thing so we are basically looking I think when we initially met and weal we talked about fouryear support and that sustainability was the thing that we were working to actually achieve and we felt that in order to do that we probably need at least four years no more so what we're doing now is putting.

In place initiatives and things that would actually get us to that point where we are not just depending on city and county to sustain us so this is one of the things that we are doing okay could I stop you for one second Chief I did want to just throw out I know we started about 20 minutes late I know I have a million questions my colleagues and two but you have 18 more slides I can I can get through an we're not going to have to get them all like this I just want to throw and I'm not treating you any different than anybody else I just want to make sure we get everything so yeah know this is helpful but I did want to just throw that out there that time yes sir all right let's go nothing but the deepest respect for you sir all right well you sheriff took my time that's what happened he did he's so selfish that's he's so self that's all.

Right I I'll talk with him later about this all right quickly folk again Durham County to is what we received we also just received U MDC Grant which is a technology for $100,000 this is going to work a lot for us the Congressional 700,000 and also $50,000 was awarded from the city of Durham okay let's going keep moving we got perspective grants out this is this is important we're working now with North Carolina Central University on their targeted violence and terrorism prevention Grant which actually will address 13 18 years old and I don't have to tell you how important that is going to be in our community and also with the Department of Labor we're working again with Believers United for Progress which is a local organization that has applied for a grant for 500,000 $500,000 and actually they are looking to actually deal with individuals that were previously incarcerated and actually Channel them through our organization and again they will be paying for these individuals so a part.

Of that money will come to us to actually work with our bridge program go ahead all right also we got a fundraiser coming up we've looking to at least net this first year $100,000 this is going to be somewhere around the fourth quarter of this year I've already had preliminary conversation with Michael Goodman at the Goodman Foundation and asking him to take the lead on this to actually serve as our corporate partner to bring those individuals so that partner that corporate arm would be in place and that's one that we really need here again quickly that's I think you've seen this slide before next this one right here again talk about the apprenticeship programs what we're doing at turn Durham Tech with the trades program we're also creating a networking with minor with with the International Institute where we're actually bringing minority business folk together to create our own networking among minority businesses and they and and to provide them with the resources and support they need go ahead again some of the program areas.

That we're working in keep going again in depth wrap around these are some of the things we are doing as far as providing support the last one is important because we've also seven participants have had charges dismiss expunge based on our encounter in the last six months I've been in federal court twice testifying on behalf of of our participants and even the judge has recognized that we are doing a great job at supporting these individuals the federal Probation and Parole Dr Fon and I met with them they're on board they're going to be sending their folk to us also because of the the the again what we're doing in the community and doing with individuals go ahead all right just some of Theus that we got you can look at this later folk go ahead again some of the youth organizations that we're working with that in the community that we've supplied support to and and dealing with individuals as we know over the holidays and this year probably again we.

Provideed tours for 143 individuals through working with attorneys in the community and again that's it and see a little nudge so much but I do want people to be able to ask questions I also like to visit I I'm not going to go first I'm G to start commissioner H Howton I see your red light on go for it the floor is yours. Madam Co on it's on no it's on we just need to hear you you good you're great I think I talk loud enough and folks can hear me not for the public who's not here not for the public who's not here hear me now I think my voice is loud enough all of your team here you know I can't even express how much joy it gives me to see the work that you're doing from day one until today and the graduations have been extraordinary I do have a couple of questions can you talked about the number of your staff the positions that are either went to the city or.

How many many have been do you no longer have at all you you pushed some of them to the city right we we we kind of Diversified or just spread the the cost out on some and again we have about four positions that were that were actually planed to be added to staff that we are saying not and I think other than that we've reduced salaries and we eliminated one position okay that brings us to the 25 that we have right now and why how many did you have before that 26 I think we had and again we only we only eliminated one position but actually we reduced salaries and things like that or of about six and then we spread the responsibility the funding responsibility out over the other two entities that are coming on board this year okay the other question that I have is as far as your graduates you know how many of your graduates have jobs when they graduate or been able to get jobs since they've graduated.

Okay ca you had that information and y'all had a slide that kind of spoke to I think we had a slide that spoke to it we went kind of that and I'm I'm going try to find it right quick. You know sometimes we people graduate but they can't find a job right and and again what we go back go back okay go back to that one go back one okay this is this is this is one no go back go to the next one all right this is one of the ones we look at right now employment we got H to go organization we got four referred we got full employed we got Duke we've got one employed and three in the process this again food line Distributors we got one in place three in the process SK lecture we got four individuals H fact this is actually still in school we have four and again we've got already four referred to the the trades program in school this.

Does not include the ones that are working right now under Care Management and do you remember we actually have some who actually are in continuing education classes outside of the apprenticeship so those they are going into peer support Community Health worker real estate courses and other continuing education courses right now I'm not sure if that number is up there but it's a little over 20 students and we're working with Durham tech to make sure that we can continue that and so after each cohort they go through an advising and so we advise them and get them enrolled at that time so are you having more participants that prefer to continue their education than get a job or is it it's going to be it's going to be a little bit of both most of the ones that are coming now I want to get into the trades program they want to get into the apprenticeships they want to get those certifications and that was one of the reason we actually brought the.

National Institute to the table because a lot of these folk want their own businesses that's the reason that Stephen and the workforce team working so hard to bring the employers through the table to you know to make certain that these opportunities are there for the individuals that want to get training and go to school and again we are basically sending applications to Duke on a regular basis and they we actually have our own recruiting team within HR at Duke they recruiting just for us so once we put application and they're going to the different departments to advocate for the individuals that's something they put in place at Duke so again as I'm saying what we doing right here has really been done over the last six seven months there's a lot of work that still needs to be done especially as it relates to recruiting employers and getting more people on board but where we are right now I think we're doing really really good especially as it relates to keeping these folk.

Motivated by getting them into those certification classes and with this construction trades program this is like a 12we course one day a week for three hours and I think and you come out with a certification and so this is a great opportunity also that we are partner with them on wonderful wonderful and I guess the other question I have is just to clarify the city is doing as far as how much the city is doing is did you said 100,000 a million a million a million one million they're doing one million okay and is that I understood that that was a million for three years or is it just for one year no no I'm thinking it's for three years 1 million a year okay that might be what I I read because I haven't not actually got an MDC MDC is actually the technology grant that we received and basically again it is actually to enhance our you know technology system and getting everything on board and also to provide training to the.

Organization and whatever areas that we want train is that a one time amount that is a onetime amount and we also in the process applying for an additional Grant through MDC that they've and they actually came to us and asked us to to partner with them and so but again we're actually engag right now in the second Grant so actually these types of fundings that's basically what we we're going after right now as many of these as we can find okay and the the 700,000 will that end this year I think with that I think they've extended the spending but I think we do have about another year to spend that got another year to spend it okay all right that's all for now thank you okay who would like to go next I've been watching Bridgton who would like to go next I have a long list but I'mma Be yeah go for it well I want to thank you first Chief and team and I've been to.

Some of the bridge graduations and and have found them to be very motivating personally and moving I clearly you've made a difference in the lives of those people working with the Durham Tech program how much of the funding do you think couldn't really hease it out of the budget goes towards that program are you able to are you able to tease it out with with the bridge program again we're looking at probably over the course of this year six cohorts we're g to try to maximize as many of those out as possible at 15 which that'll give us 90 and and again so I'm thinking of probably at least about $450 to $500,000 a half a million dollars were just for the bridge program itself and so certain amount per cohort is it we average that out kind of like at at again 5,000 and and $12 oh that's right you did say that person that's 451, and I'm saying and I'm thinking that's going to increase because of the.

Posteducation needs that they you know that they asking for right now so I'm I'm thinking probably we'll be looking at at least about a half a million dollars if not more for just the bridge program itself do you what's the participant support for I thought that was for things like you're saying they might need wraparound support social supports Transportation housing the line item in your budget that's 452,000 where you've only spent 122,000 121,000 that is I I would I thought participant support meant the kind of things you're talking about yes it it it involves it that is basically and that what the $452,000 that would actually budgeted for before that would put us right in line with what I just gave you again for this first six seven months we only did 121,000 so we're saying this year we it will be amped up we have processes and things in place where right now we're getting ahead of the game so as as as we're saying we've got one.

Orientation going right now and we got a graduation class that's getting ready to come out so as one is coming out another one will be going in where before we've had some gaps so we've kind of put system in place where n's more fluid and also as I said earlier we'll be going to be work we'll contract we step up so that's another you know some additional funding that's going to be going on there then with the other programs that we're going to be going with themm tech so the participants are going to be going in a lot of different other ways other than bridge bridge can only accommodate about 90 a year and we are looking at actually serving a whole lot more folk than that it does concern me that the wages line item is overspent and the participants support line item is underspent and so it's I don't see how you'll meet your budget for next year without you know getting additional funding for participant support or for.

Really cutting salaries and wages and I know that you did mention some positions you were sort of retrenching but I don't know whether it'll balance out or not do you have a budget for the following year this is for this year we actually have a preliminary budget that we have in place and it should be finished up and prepared I mean ready for you for your and it actually goes across again all three entities for and we've built that on 3.7 million dollars and so yes we we we okay I believe in your model where you bring people in you reach out you bring people in you provide Case Management Services for them you help connect them to the Community Resources that exist rather than being service providers yourself it does concern me though that even if even if you even if you count up the number of individuals that have been referred for employment just the quick math looking at the slid you showed us would have.

Been about 40 people and so $2 million divided by 40 would be $50,000 a person just feels like it should be less than that or we should have seen more people served I mean so that worries me especially when we're in such a tight budget situation so anyway these are some thoughts I'm I'm having wrestling with and I I I thank you for your presentation and great work that you're doing it's very expensive so far and I know that working with people is expensive yeah and I think too and you know go back you know what I I I referenced early on this first year we're standing up in organization there going to be a lot of cost associated with that and now we have an opportunity to re-evaluate and restructure and this is what we're in the process of doing right now and I think on in the long run it will balance out and I think you know as far as the the the cost analysis is concerned it.

It would not be as alarming I think moving forward but again standing up an organization getting adjusted and again building something that hasn't been built before sometime you know it causes is and sometimes you make some mistakes and then sometime you have to go back and reval re-evaluate and kind of kind of right size and and and make Corrections and that what we're in the process of. Doing Chief chers director you know ameritus there are so many things that we could call you I I I'm not going to pretend that I don't have some of the consternation that that was brought up by some of my colleagues and and I struggled with that to be quite honest because I you came to us from a place of Love for a community that you served and you ser so a need you could be retired right now you could be at home right now and join your family but like me you got tired of seeing kids get murdered you I don't even.

There are other nonprofits in this community that we have put millions of dollars into that in a decade have not had these outcomes now I agree that they are smaller than what I would have like but two things I know you were standing up a program and you were dealing with a volatile population or what let me say a underserved population a over incarcerated population a over stereotyped population and act quite frankly a population that 95% of the people in this County would not Endeavor to want to work with so I recognize it it's expensive I can tell you openly honestly I want to do something because I I know the impact you have had I don't know if we can do it all and I struggle with that because if I had it in my pocket I would give it to you I would and I'm only emotional because I I I know that there's some people in this audience who have had the opportunity to save lives and they've done nothing.

They've done absolute they literally manage a program with millions of dollars and do nothing I want to give it to you because on the City Council and I'mma keep keep saying this because I want it to exist in the public Zeitgeist I want people to know that there's a woman on the City Council who said with every bit of breath and fervor in her body she says I'm an elected official and I can't do anything about gun violence so I choose not to solve this issue but I will solve homelessness and then 30 minutes later refused when my colleague asked her for some money for eviction like we literally have people in office that watch kids die every day and they don't care and for me your program is not going to solve what's going on right now it's not it's literally not g to solve what's going on right now because people's siblings have been murdered there's no wraparound service for that there's no rap there's no job I can give somebody when their.

Brother's been murdered there's no job I can give somebody when they uncle's been Mur there's nothing you can give me if my family member is murdered like there's nothing there so I I I struggle I wish I could give you everything that you asking for because I believe like in year two it's going to be better but I don't even know where I'mma get it from I swear to God I don't even know where I'm going get it from I wish I could pull from certain departments I wish I could call out some directors right now who need to be fired and not manage another Penny I wish we could have done what some other folks did across the street for a group of people that had absolutely no Body of Proof and have come back and still have no Body of Proof a dashboard with no body they have cars they have everything and they have not done what you have done and they are championed by people on this board and.

Another board so please note it between now I have a lot of questions I I want to say thank you for going out and trying to get a corporate partner I want to say thank you the only time I've cried sitting in this seat is when Conan Morgan died and that was a year ago this week and I just I hope that we can what I really want how can let me let me stay focused cuz I took notes because I I really did struggle with your presentation today I honestly didn't think we were going to be able to give you anything I did not think the city was gonna come through I watched that presentation last week I couldn't even believe that she said a million dollars in her budget I didn't know because the city did not support y'all last time did not support y'all at all I'm thankful that they did this time so I do hope that there's some way you can adjust your budget when I don't sit in this.

Seat I I'm asking God that I can work with you so that I can help you get the money to save these kids kids thank you so much thank. You y'all do not see these teachers showing up or these people in red and purple t-shirts and that is not indictment at somebody's funerals y'all just don't see it y'all don't see how many bullets are in this community on the ground where the law enforcement officers can no longer tag them they got to put their business cards beside the bullets cuz they don't ran out of pap pay for.

Like and I do. Apologize thank you for the bringing this Step Up Ministries I know that our boo initiative is mainly focused on is mainly focused on bioworks and that we are trying to add an additional industry and so I'm hopeful that you can start to work with them and we can be thoughtful about it I do know that we're trying to add additional eviction thank you eviction diversion services and maybe you can pull some money from your budget thank you so much thank you so much you can pull some money from your budget and maybe we could be more supportive with our eviction diversion work I I literally am trying to figure out like what additional partnership we can add to add to your work so that you possibly don't have to pull so much out of your budget you know you said you come up with your own homelessness and housing Coalition so there's a homeless and Housing Coalition that the mayor is trying to develop with our councilwoman ciero I.

Know that they were not supportive but I don't want us to continue to reinvent the wheel and and and I know that I know that it's hard to work with people who don't believe in you and don't support you I get it and I know that some of the people I'm mentioned and don't believe in your work and don't support you but where we cannot duplicate any Services I hope that we can do that the other thing I wanted to point out I see some of the $25,000 grants of seven the some of the grants that you going to have doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get them and I've done the quick math of the $2 million and the 1 million and then the 700 from burn so that that seems like all the money that you might be guaranteed is the money that you budgeting for I hate to ask you this and it's eating me up on the inside but maybe we readjust that budget so that.

And I I hate to ask you that when I when I hear because I heard the teachers the other night I really seriously did I'm actually to be in full transparency I'm actually upset at some of the school board members that they have never come to us with some of the things that teachers bought to us I actually am I really seriously am because I think we heard some things that we don't get from them and they supposed to be their Chief Advocates and so I do hope I'm I'm going to give my time up I did take some more notes please let us know how we can be supportive on some of the other Grant processes and I kind of lost my place so I'm going just give it to commissioner commissioner Jacobs but please know that I recognize that you're saving lives and we are going into a very hot summer yes and there're about 20 or 25 people the only thing they want is a pound of Flesh and I don't know.

How we going to fix it yeah thank you. Thank you for for being here for this information and I would love if we could get a copy of the PowerPoint as well thank you yeah I I just to piig you back on what some of the things my colleagues have said you know I understand standing up a whole new initiative it takes time and effort and I think some of the pipelines that that you're creating are very important into especially the trades you know when I think about who's doing what you know we've got Maiden Durham who's creating pipelines into the life sciences jobs now we hope maybe they'll Bridge into Tech and you know the bridge program the the purpose of that pipeline is serving and now with the trades programming and and also with support for people who want to start a business so I I I think that's really critical and we and we need different types of pipelines and people are going to feel comfortable working with and connecting.

With other people it would be helpful for us to get the in the budget you've given us the operating expenses are very detailed which is great but if we could get a breakdown on on for like the participant support you I think you have some of it in the slides but more information about you know who are the participants and what what H in what way that they were supported and if you are keeping tracking any demographic data whether people are Justice involved you know age race gender that information would be really helpful okay and then around the salary and wages and the contractors because this as was already been acknowledged this budget is very Personnel heavy with about 1.7 million spent on just Personnel but and you know we all know this from sitting up here and from our own work with County government that is the most expensive thing and and you have to be careful about that eating up your budget and also how you're going to.

Be tracking that because as you can see you've gone over budget in those two areas but a breakdown also of the those positions and what the salaries were for those if we could get that that information but I think that you know it's just we're asking all this because we're in this context of really tight budget I mean that's just the reality every yes you know we just we have very limited resources right now and everybody is having to really make doe with less and do do more with less you know we have one of our County departments their operating budget has been cut 20% so that's Cooperative Extension we have you know just everyone was asked to make Cuts 10% last year 10% this year so that that's just the that's just the reality that we're in right now so yeah you know I know that we will and honestly I I and I really appreciate that you are are focusing on grant funding now corporate sponsors Partnerships because I honestly I.

Didn't know that we were being asked to give on ongoing that that there was an expectation for ongoing funding so I know we'll we'll look and see what we can do but it's definitely going to be it's going to definitely be a challenging year for us you know just to be honest with everyone but really value what you all are doing thank you all right and thank you and thank you all again is and again for what you've already done and I know you know that you're going to do whatever in my and I'm just thankful that you continue to believe in what what it is that we are doing and we're going to continue to do what we need to do to make a difference again with your support and and and the community at large we're going to make certain that we're not going to be one of those organizations or we that make promises and then disappear so we're committed for the Long Haul and again you thank you again for your.

Support I just want to make one other one other statement Stephen I I you know I so appreciate what you just said you're not going to be an organization that comes and goes cuz our Comm our citizens in this community our young folks really need you we need what you have provided in these last few months and we all know the difficulty it it is to start an organization and this is not just some organization this you're working with some of our most difficult Young people that have never had jobs before that don't feel that this community gives a damn about their lives so we we have to give a damn yeah we have to and we think we thank you that you do so my commitment has not wavered one bed because I've seen I've seen our children d dead in the street I've seen it I've experienced it so to say to even think for one minute that we're not going to do everything we can to.

Ensure that these things don't happen to as many people as we can is unconscionable for me so I say that with all the love and support that we do everything we can and we all know that we've got a tight budget but some things we just have to do we may have to do it a different way but it's got to get done so I say thank you thank you thank you so much and I you know I think about how would I feel if I say nothing and one of our young people do show up in the front of the newspaper how would I feel it wouldn't be something I'd want on my conscience when we can stand up and say we have an opportunity to support this young person and we don't so I I just want to thank you and the other question I had was about the housing situation are do you have a budget for housing or how do you how are you managing that I know there are people.

That don't have housing and you have an emergency situation how are you handling that yeah that's that was one of the responsibility for the Coalition really is to identify all of the different emergency and transitional housing programs that we have in the city of Durham and what we've done is brought most of those to the table so that basically in the event that we're needed we that's that we go to them first again we've contracted with with with love and respect where we actually have available room there for emergency so we always have a couple of beds at at this location we've also developed relationship with with hotels that would work with us so if in emergency situation we can just send person there and that is where those funds are used but we try to make that very shortterm because it's costly over a long period of time sometime $80 to $100 a night but so what we're trying to do is come up with what are the Alternatives because what we're looking.

At is from emergency housing all the way to home ownership and how we meet people where they are and put them on that Continuum and start to work with them and you know continue so we're bringing all of those resources people who deal with home ownership with the rentals and as you know Bergman ryerss is Reynolds is one of our key partners and she's providing four apartments for individuals at at about half rent or about a third rent really that and we we're trying to transition those out and bring more in so what we're trying to do is just kind of build our own transitional housing program and but at the same time we realize is that it is just very critical as it relates to that and so the housing the jobs the education those are the key things that we're focusing on right now and again this year we will be focusing on younger individuals we're working with Durham Tech Now to create a bridge program for younger populations and started getting.

Them in so we we got a lot that's actually getting ready to happen that we're working on we're just waiting to see what things going to look like this year and if we're going to be allowed to kind of make the things happen that we we really no need to happen so you know we'll find a way we'll find a way thank you and we so much yeah thank you so much commissioner Howton and we will close out I do I do want to throw it to commissioner Jacobs for the final one I know that we because I feel like there there's some things in your budget outside of just Personnel I feel like there's some additional Partnerships that we might be able to Aid with so that you don't have to use as much of your budget on that one but you can go ahead commissioner Jacob I think you brought up housing for New Hope yeah I just want yeah just want to make sure you are.

Part know about and are connected to places like housing for New Hope and then you know we do coordinated entry it's called entry point with Durham County yeah just yeah we don't want to recreate the wheel yeah and that was one yeah we agree and making sure that you all do get involved with the housing plan I know commissioner is going to be our representative on that but that yeah it'll be important for that you all are a part of of that whole discussion we have the homeless Services advisory committee so plugging into into those yes yeah thank you thank you thank you so much sir hopefully we can come back with something and we look forward to seeing you all next week and congratulations on your additional cohort thank you yes sir and is it ARA next I'm sorry madam manager Commissioners the agenda has been refreshed so their presentation is now on in your agenda packet thank you so much to the best clerk in the world master clerk second term on the.

Board of Clerks I'm saying the title wrong okay and we will wait yes ma'am don't I think next Tuesday don't we have two things scheduled Ed something from 10: to 1 and then the budget work session from 1:30 to 5:00 I just remember there was a conflict with the graduation at 10: yeah so that that conflicts with the bridge graduation want to be yeah I did also want to throw did you have to leave commissioner Carter I shifted my grandmother duty to Poppy my husband okay I he is babysitting now instead of me cuz it's enough of us here for a COR and I want to be respectful of your.

Time greetings Commissioners this is going to be very short yes you know I'm used to being on the agenda at this time of day so I was thrown off last time in the in the morning time but I primarily this the slides that I'm going through quickly are ones we talked about the last conversation just wanted to address one question how much do we have available potentially in arpa funds and I know cutting to the chase y'all know I do that often so the we have an balance of about 4.5 million that's not allocated there's another category that we have in Revenue replacement which would bring it to another million dollars that we could potentially use convers ations this morning about child care or prek we did have a placeholder for prek and there are a couple of ways that we could potentially use those dollars if we were to do a partnership with an existing entity with ARA dollar we can do an in we can do it.

We can use an Ila for an organization that's a governmental entity or DPS if we use an entity that's a nonprofit it would have to go through a competitive bid process and so that's why the placeholder is still there so that if it's decided for prek we go one route or the other we have an option and so I wanted to also clarify that by that particular issue the oper dollars will be re continue to be refined over the next six month months y'all saw an exchange recently and you see some the of the efforts that we do and following up with spending Etc so we imagine over the next three months we may have some additional balances that may become available because timing of when folks use it or their project scope changes and that will continue until the end of of a fun project use and we went through with great detail the last time our ability to make those changes and and gratefulness with treasury.

For changing those rules and so we won't go through all of that today but just know that although I'm saying right now is 5.5 there's a possibility as we go through our reconciliations there may be additional capacity but that's to be expected or there may be less because something is higher I always get nervous with water sore projects which is one on the agenda we just approved and one that's coming up on Monday those construction projects are often over budget.

So microphone ma'am yeah I'm ma'am when is a deadline for them to have used it and that it would revert back that's a great question we have to encumber all funds by December 31st 2024 most of our nonprofits that are in the community grant program their contracts will end in 2025 in the summer the other contracts are scheduled to end in 2026 by mid 2026 because we want to make sure we have a close out period the big concern prior to I guess two I guess a month and a half ago is that there were very finite timelines with treasury they now have allowed that for instance if a a nonprofit doesn't when we do our due diligence and we do you know review of work and we determine well this particular project for whatever reason may not be moving at the pace we need for them to move or whatever we we can now shift those dollars to a different project whereas before we didn't have that as a as an.

Opportunity so we but we must encumber all the funds by the end of this calendar year but we do have and a process that we can shift the funds but there's a lot of administrative work on our side that will need to happen to make sure that window is open for us to do it so we'll have to amend amend our contract so that we can have some if then statements added to it and and those types of administrative things we'll bring forward to.

You listen so if that one slide you're done I'm finished listen look I you back a thousand out of here I do there might have been some other questions around it I I have a followup but I I you answered one offer someone else's email if there is no more from the board I know we got to enter in the board disc oh I'm so I promise you I apologize my side there's a whole another slide look she just clicked to it oh there we go it's it's another slide and then we can go to the question are you sure I did not have I was just trying to power it off that's what I was I thought it was another slide okay perfect I'm just trying commission Jacobs go for I did a recycled deck so I just needed this one slide okay I go for it so just to try to for me to understand what you're saying because I had asked a question that I've submitted on Friday whether there's an opportunity.

To to use and I'm I guess I can use the example of arpa funding I mean prek funding to and something that we're in the budget currently using general funds for if there's an opportunity to then instead use arpa funding that would then free up general fund dollars to be used possibly for something else like trying to fund the classified staff for Durham public schools and and and that is definitely an option but I want us to be very clear about that option yes is that in order for us to do that it would have to either be a competitive process or we could create an Ila with DPS and what I would need for staff to clarify is does that mean that the funding would have to go directly to DPS if we chose that route yes that's correct so if for instance and John can also clarify there was there were a couple of questions about arpa and how they could be how those dollars could be.

Used so I I will use the word that our budget director says responsible budgeting is what we have to keep in the Forefront and that's what we've done throughout this whole process is making sure whatever we fund is something that on the back end of it we have a strategy if it's something that we want to do beyond that particular point in time there is flexibility in lots of areas in which we can support for there was a specific question commissioner Jacobs asked could some of the dollars be used to address some of DPS needs and the answer is yes treasury has a a list of areas in which and categories in which we can fund and in that category address negative economic impacts there are subsets of categories that address School related areas it's a long list maybe about 10 different items and supporting Title One schools supporting and addressing School type issues related to repair Renovations and I'm doing it from memory but there there is and John I'll I'll.

Yeah please do my memory is so it's actually there are Ed education or School related allowable activities within both the support Public Health response category and the negative economic impacts category we have the broadest discretion related to services within Title One schools under the treasury guidance we can effectively fund just about any cost related to the operation of a title one school in our community we have a few other items that can be provided provided to specifically to students who are from low-income families things like School nutrition services for example they're allowable but only to members of eligible populations if it's not at a title one school we can provide them to all students at a title one school but outside of the title one schools we we have some flexibility to provide additional services to certain populations of students and then within the public health response category we have two categories Behavioral Health supports and what was the what was the second one that we I'd found that we' seen oh co.

Mitigation activities to like HVAC renov updates and things like that that would sanitation those types of things we can provide those at any of our schools because that's part of that public health response so that's not limited to Title One schools or to low income lower income students so so those are kind of the tiers of options that we have prek is an option again within the title one schools we have broad flexibility outside of the title one schools we would have to Target it to some of the income categories that Dr Chapelle was discussing earlier but we would have to do that if we chose not to do that with an Ila with DPS we would have to do that through a competitive process is that a onetime would that be a onetime allocation all of this all of this funding would be a onetime allocation which is obviously the challenge and the risk with some of it but okay really quick I get it right.

Like I could see the reason why I'm okay with almost being one time because the hope and the prayer is that once we do a tax re-evaluation and you all have to do a reappraisal you all would be able to find it elsewhere like that's the I'm thinking like I'm always trying to think think like a year ahead two years you probably be able to do it I would be and I didn't plan on having this conversation today you know cuz if it was up to me I would say take a 100,000 of it and give it to their children's Initiative for their creative to Career I'mma always say I want $100,000 for that why not I was going to say it during the discussion but I do want to and and there are other things I would you know clearly I'm te out from the other one there are a million other things but but I figure I figure out where I can get some of that money from.

If if we should make it so my concern which I get where you go with it how if we did a Ila and and I need people to understand this I'm not upset at the Educators as a whole there are a few in the name of Jesus but I'm not as a whole I'm upset with the administration and the governance who has served them poorly that is where my I'm upset where my struggle is this is federal money we would give them there's some strings attached to it and while I wouldn't be in total disagreement with it like I'm trying to figure out would the federal compliance supersede State compliance and when we gave them this money for this they would indeed have to use it for what we gave it to them for so just to clarify the Ila would be for a grant right so we would we would design I mean in conversation with them we would design allowable uses under the grant agreement and we would have.

Enforcement ability over how that allowable uses I'm being honest like I at this y'all know I don't care at this point like I do not think they know how to manage money well it is not that has nothing to do with the schools they can't manage money worth 4 cents I wouldn't go to the grocery store with half of them over there like it's just the honest goodness truth so the Ia would be Iron class yeah save me Claudia because that's it would I need would one or two allowances because these are folks who try to get blood from a turnup well and spend it with their friends non profits with no outcomes you have seen some exchanges with partners that have received this money our scrutiny is the same with with everyone so we would make sure that we have the same kind of controls in place and we would make sure that the infrastructure is in place for seamless management because for us it.

Is what happen s on the back end of this when it's reviewed and that's how we look at it from the front end of it so to your point we understand we but we would have all the controls in place to make sure that it's seamless we would have no choice okay this is federal money I some of them need to be in stripes and orange after just the first year it was the chillers they could have came to us about the chillers the second year it was the stoves at iron Harris they didn't come to us about the there were stoves somewhere they were heating up kids foods with war forers to give them botulism the next year it was that the elevator didn't work this year it is that we to we needed 12 million but we only ask it for 4.9 so this is not an indictment of y'all this is me showing a consistent pattern of mismanagement and so that's why I want to just make sure.

That we're doing everything that we can to make sure that the folks who most need this money get it and it's not used for something else I I know you're gonna do your part I'm just I and and I think that it's incumbent for it is a partnership whenever we do this and so we would do our part to help make sure the infrastructure is in place which is a conversation that the Board needs to have what's needed to support overall operations so that they are seamless commissioner Jacobs yes and I I mean I have asked Claudia no and also Curtis and the manager I I I've asked about what what are what and luckily we have John who worked for the Department of Public Instruction his knowledge but what what are the mechanisms that we can put in place even with this budget making sure for instance if we are able to figure out a way to come up with the funding for the classified staff that we.

We hardwire that money so I that's what I know that you will come back to us as soon as you have some recommendations on that but I'm very interested in knowing that anyone else on the board any inquiries yes commissioner Carter so thinking about the arpa money as potential sources a potential source of funding you know it's not recurring funding as we all know hopefully we're going to have a tax base in the future maybe where we can get you know some money additional resources that way in the future but maybe it would just make sense to you consider the arpa funding for all these Capital needs that they the school that the teachers and the school board has mentioned I haven't brought that up because I'm trying to keep it separate you know like even though it is related to the budget and clearly here's an example of how it's related what what would you recommend we do as far as trying to blend those conversations about the school district's Capital.

Emergency needs ARA funding the budget process the capital Improvement plan that we haven't talked about yet you know I would say we need to come back with a response to that this is complex yeah and part of the conversation would need to continue beyond the the budget yeah although we have some some immediate challenges adopting a budget and they have precent needs right there are some you know there is some flexibility however from a responsible budgeting perspective we just need to make sure whatever the board decides to do there's a clear strategy on how is it covered on the back end the operating dollars and how those flow are are I know of highest priority but the the the pressing issues with capital and repairs and renovation they they have competing high priority areas and we have some finite dollars that we're dealing with so we we will take this in and discuss with a manager and come back with some thoughts but we we've heard you yeah sort of like I guess one.

Question I would have is like do we need to use the arpa funding for some Capital needs and it does make more sense to use it for onetime Capital needs or or not we have more we have lob funding we have other flexible sources of funding you know fund balance and you know we've done we've done all of that before so I I think from the strategy and that's from the capital side that's a longer discussion because they for instance they do have Bond dollars that they are still working through and I know they're going to give us information on that and so I I think we do have time to have a thoughtful conversation on what makes sense and how do we blend the funding and we sort of have to decide if we're going to use any of this for Budget shortfalls that is correct and so I mean we can come back with some options that for instance would say we would support some let the train go by some.

Dollars to support or address repair Renovations and then they could transfer what they have in their repair in their Capital side of the budget to support operating dollars there are a number of different scenarios that could occur right and then later they could transfer it back gotcha so there are some options I I think that the manager would need to help guide us through that conversation because there are complexities with it as well okay and then if so Capital aside now focusing now on funding gaps if arpa funds were going to be directed for preschool expansion dur pre expansion but we didn't want to have to do an we didn't want to have to do an RFP we wanted to go with the Ila route means it has to go to DPS this is what I don't understand if we give money directly to DPS like we do with witted do you know that money then I guess does not have to be shared with the charter schools because they don't.

Provide prek is that why this is a grant a grant this was a grant so it's is totally separate funding so this is not this would not go through their traditional and is that what WID it is considered too a grant how is that protected that is not and I'll have to ask Keith to come back on that and we can know later I don't have to know today it is it is refunded but it's not counted in their current expense bu right I just don't understand how but anyway I'm thrilled to hear it it's really great news to know but okay I do see commissioner Howton I did just want to throw out also not to prolong this I one of our I think I was surprised at some of the things that our Educators said right and I do think that even with Co I Fred Davis I think has done a great I love the idea of a swing school you're kind of shutting some of this construction out but you.

Know there were I think three things that some there were like 10 things they brought up I was like oh my goodness but there were like three things that they brought up which I just don't think has made it to their des and it's because they're educating our children a perfect one educator eloquently stood up and talked about how upset she was about CC spaling right and what she had but if you all would just I didn't say anything because we and I wanted to say something but I wanted people to have the opportunity to say what they need to say less than four weeks ago or less than two months ago we moved the $2 million for the renovation for cc spotting does that make sense so like these some of these things I think sometimes if we do a deep dive and I think every month I've seen renovation playground equipment a bit something and so I do think that some of these things are happening and.

It's sad that it hasn't made it to them it's sad that the school board hasn't communicated to them and it might be sad that I didn't interject when she said it but I do think that there are some and I do want Capital Improvements improve but I do think that there's some options there I think there's some lobs there that they haven't used even back before I was on the board with the bond and I I'm hopeful that they can get creative about that or at least start to articulate to their employees we're working on some of these things too but that's just and I somebody can't it was $2 million for cc Spa it was for the kitchen and the renovation of the auditorium and she actually bought brought up those specific items and I'm thinking we just paid for that and that poor woman didn't know it and I felt like that was a disservice to her but I but I hear you and but commissioner Howton your light is.

On thank you so I'm I want to ask a different question I hear all the other conversation about the school I just want to ask a question about the pay for essential workers I know that we've been having conversation about employee insurance and deductibles can any of that be allocated for that is it something that can be used for for employees the or retirees the premium pay for essential workers category unfortunately had a time has a Time Li on and so we are we are past the point I believe where that was where where that category can be used so I don't think that that would be an option for us to look at last the last conversation as I recall did was something extended about funds being able to be used am I remember that there's been changes to what can what the definition of obligation and what can be done after December 31st of this year but the there there hasn't been a change necessarily to to.

That category I would say that the the revenue replacement funding that we do have available has some some very broad available potential uses and could potentially be used from an allowable activity perspective could potentially be used for some of that cost if that's how the board wanted to direct those funds obviously all of this yeah is just a discussion of what's allowable you all will have the final decision as to the Strategic deployment of these resources yeah i' I'd like for that to be in this conversation as we go forward and I will yep we're scheduling a time to have a specific discussion around the benefits okay and just for this board's awareness we are looking at the possibility of providing additional compensation either through a salary increase or a one-time bonus to for those those persons who are negatively impacted by the buy up plan yes so not across the board but staff and and we we're looking at options and we'll bring that back to you all for discussion okay thank you commissioner.

Jacob I know I know chair Alam who's taking her son to the doctor she had this very interesting idea of basically making available because the issue is around the fact that people are going to either have related to their deductibles and just the expense I know I'm not articulating this very well but she said where she works they they are given these employee funded cards that people can use specific specifically for medical expenses so it would actually be tied directly to this issue which is around the medical plan so I don't know if she if that's something you all have heard from her about but it sounded like that wasn't something else that we could look at it is it's not something we've discussed specifically but because we have a very short time frame by which to identify solutions for this okay we were looking at what we could do looking at the worst case scenario okay U and the impact that it would have on on those in our lower.

Pay bands and so identifying who those people are and doing something specifically for those people not to say that we couldn't look at another option but it would have to probably be post budget adop okay okay thank yall so so much I think we're going to enter into board discussion now I don't know I feel like we already entered into it right right we we have I did want to throw in I did want to manager I I I got a million requests but the main one that I want I'm always keep pushing for my black boys I'm always keep pushing for partners against children but the biggest request I have I would and somebody can just email this to me the community intervention and support services department I'm looking at their budget I would like a complete breakdown of the budgets for Bull City United project building My Brother's Keeper that's all I got and we have them scheduled to come before the board yeah oh no no no I know.

I just like to get it a little bit beforehand if that's okay got thank you okay ACM Pierce gave us gave us a thumbs up or come Mr Jacobs yeah I just I I sent it a long list of questions so I don't want to really ask any of them here until I I give staff a chance to answer them but I didn't know when I would be expecting to to get responses some of them were very general I had like a few pages of just really general questions I'm looking at it now actually had about five pages there are spaces but I I did anyway I don't want to I don't want to ask them now but I just was asking when when I know we have this is like such an intense you know we only have two more budget work sessions right Monday and Tuesday is that correct yes so I I do want to make sure I I don't like I said just wanted to see what the time frame.

Might be I'm going to allow director Lane to answer but I will tell you the question questions that we have around DPS we may not be able to get all the answers to all of those questions by Tuesday but we are certainly working to get that that information for you and certainly they'll be back before us on I think it's Monday that DPS will be here and answer some of the questions answer some of them okay and I mean I'm I'm really you know I don't want a bunch of PowerPoints like I I just want the actual data and documents themselves I want the information so I would assume that a lot of things that I'm asking them they should have readily available so I'll just say that and then the other issue is around the CIP when are we going to be talking about CIP we're doing CIP I think we're coming for August is when we're slated to start that disc there may be a place placeholder just to give the board some.

Update about process I think next week we did talk about but a fuller discussion in August it's it's a lot going on okay and we attempted to kick off the CIP process in the fall and the momentum and our realities of our current budget did not allow us to move as quickly as we'd like and so but we know there are many priorities of the board so there is the intent I think to give some overview of what the next steps are yeah and come back early summer so that we can go through the board's ranking and prioritization so that by the end of the Fall early winter we have Clarity on next steps okay and we have funding that is available or set aside to at least move over something things on there yes that's a that's an open-ended question and I I'll give you an open-ended answer yes we we we have funding remember we have dedicated Revenue every year sales tax article 40 42 occupancy tax and we currently have.

10.11 cents of property tax revenue dedicated for the CIP that's what we have dedicated this year the manager is not proposing an increase for 2425 to that amount but there's still 10.11 cents worth of property tax revenue along with 40 article 40 and 42 sales tax revenue and oxy tax and a few other Revenue sources compiled together to help pay for Debt Service and needs for the current fiscal year and estimated payouts to support DPS 2022 Geo bond funds dtcc the Museum of Life and Science plus County projects we have all that in we will we will get to to that a more detailed explanation I think the safe thing I would ask you all to focus on right now is that there is no tax rate increase related to the CIP as it now stands depending on the choices we make in August where we put projects which projects go sooner than others what the cost of those projects are depending on those choices can affect.

Not the 2425 tax rate but very much so the 25 26 26 27 as we look out 10 years into the future quite simply the more projects you pile closer to now the harder it is to pay for those projects without a tax rate increase does that makes sense if you Spread spread projects out over 10 years we can balance things out but there's a lot of need there's an animal shelter there's the DSs building there's a fleet facility there's a whole host of issues that people will tell you you are absolutely needed the radio project has popped up on the radar screen is something a little more expensive and needs to be done tomorrow kind of thing than it was six months ago you just saw the sheriff talk about the Detention Center that's not even in the CIP right to your point it's a 50-year building but it's 30 years in but it is something that we have we have lots of things to think about right because I did Keith I.

I dug up my file from last year and and you know I'm just just to Case and point like we last year we supposedly were going to spend three 2.4 million on the animal shelter and this year we were I'm sorry that was two years ago and then last year we were supposedly going to be spending 12 million on it and this year 14 million so I mean I'm just I'm just pulling out one point in here to show that yes we we might have a plan but are we following it and that's a great well that's a great example of what a capital Improvement plan is it is just a plan until the board gets in sync with management and or engineering about what type of animal shelter you want what amount of money you're willing to spend a smaller one okay well you can't the project was just proposed in the plan at this but none of us as a group have come back and said right yes that's.

What we want to do Ergo you see numbers in a plan from two years ago but in reality nothing has been budgeted to move it forward because we have to make we can talk about the CIP but each individual project comes in front of you the DSs building is a perfect example it's been in the plan for 10 plus years yet it sits there with no decision made definitively by all of us see how I'm including all of us in this and the Tru I'm planning to change that sir and when that happens we will come back with Perry mans a year from now six months from now once with and you all will say yes we are ready to spend x amount of dollars on the on the DSs building and then the numbers will but move from a plan to reality okay but you just may be really nervous Keith because you said unless we get it budgeted into our get it into our budget it's just.

Going to be be a plan and that's my whole problem with us not doing the CIP discussion till August because then what if we decide it we want to get moving on the animal shelter like now we're going to have to wait until next year's budget you can move on the animals these are all so so can I interject and just say so when when I have conversations with staff about okay what are our next steps in moving the answer to me is always we need guidance from you and the board right and so that is why we want to bring this to you in August we are developing guidelines to help us rank I I remember a specific conversation we had that you all saw that we were planning to move forward on a facility for the sheriff and you said but what about the animal shelter right that's been so we need to come back to you all to help us all rank and prioritize how we should move.

These projects forward and so that's what staff is working on to bring that back to you in a formalized fashion so that hopefully it'll be efficient and expedient for us and and that includes the DSs main building and August sounds far but it is not it's not to commissioner Jacob's questions we are working we have have farmed out a lot of questions to various departments we are collecting that information in fact I created five different documents by subject area of your questions and are getting answers to those so prek ones have been answered as we get them I will try to pecem those answers to all the Commissioners once we get them fulfilled by each documentary and we have some so they'll start trickling in some will take longer than others for Dr soel particularly around some of the the DPS information I just don't know that they're going to have the time to provide all the information you're requested by next Monday's meeting there are a lot of questions and.

We are working on it and getting closer to starting to send stuff out to all Commissioners all right I are you good anyone else want to add anything I have some things I want to talk about with you all if that's we will allow you to do it unencumbered it's not going to take long if well we have hold on we have a COR if somebody need to leave they can leave go ahead keth it's she had to leave to go and babysit the baby didn't I ask you 10 minutes ago if you had to leave it's okay you'll leave okay the the ultimately these budget work sessions are to get to an approved budget that is going planned for at least at this moment for June the 10th you have two work sessions left only half day of those work sessions to hear from people to make decisions and ultimately by the end in theory of June the 4th you will H we will have a dollar agreement on an approved budget that.

Will then show up on your desk at part of the regular work session and you will approve that all that being said we are far away from having dollar discussions because we've had a day full of policy discussions and ponderings in hearing from departments what I would like to do is review with you real quick what I heard today and you tell me all if you heard the same thing I'm turning all this into dollar amounts I heard during prek say and I think we heard and we double checked with my staff as best we could triangulate but this is an opportunity to get clarification from you an additional one roughly $1 million from prek for three classrooms at Murray bassen bger at least three full class it's not that high because I think one is funded isn't it so I don't know if it's that high well an additional two would be roughly $115,000 at least the way Shannon and I understood it in talking with Linda Chappelle did y'all she said a million.

Dollars I thought is that something you all heard or were pondering I'm unclear on the total for that yeah I just yeah we're clear on the total I'm sorry the total is the key from a I know but if you're saying it's 1 million I'll take you I was thinking it was less. But okay so two more is a million that's fair okay so we're working on a million can you repeat what Miss Wright just said Shannon just said one classroom at Murray massenberg is a roughly $500,000 so two more classrooms a milon1 15,000 and I would also want to be sure that ccsa and feels like they have the capacity to support all three and I think they do but just want to be sure about that we can double check I I heard her say that it was a great opportunity so I didn't hear anything negative on that standpoint that we wouldn't have three but we will double check so that's a million dollars out there that you all.

Will have to make a decision could make a decision on the next one we first folks we heard from today were dtcc they were approved for $200 plus thousand in the manager's recommended budget they asked for an additional 500 to get their full funding request of 700 and some odd, so there's $54,000 more on the table to give or not give or some amount from zero to $54,000 I have that on the list hey Tyree porn $2 million was a number I didn't hear a request from them I saw a slide that said a reduction of 500 and some odd, 550 I think I don't know the exact number the slide came and went there needs to be a decision if you're going to do it as part of the June 10th budget of additional funding for heti there is currently no funding for hati in the manager's recommended budget those those three numbers add up to if you were to fund 2 million 500,000 and 1 million equals $3.5 million an.

Additional 6 66 cents on the tax rate and we're not done we have the benefits discussion in some form or fashion for County Employees just so you know the current cost of employee participation in that is a subsidized number of $1.7 million so you're working down if you want to somehow take that on for the county and say let's just scrap any employee subsidy that would be a plus 1.7 million or any number between zero and 1.7 added to the budget to be paid for you foll with me can I just say we don't know what that number is yet because we're we're actually looking specifically at helping out the employees who are going to be burdened by that because they're lower pay so it's not it's not necessarily I'm just I'm just explaining what the maximum amount is and you might we might depending on the choice of clarification do something less than that but it will be additional cost to the budget yes ma'am and we also don't know what hey.

Tyre born just there's some dog trading that has to go on right like so we don't know what that number is so I hear you and hopefully we can give you something to put into that chart later but even yeah I'm just putting it on the list and Rie it with you you're exactly right you're welcome to horse trade because when we get on the fourth we are going have to settle these numbers and see what we're all in agreement with so there's what I don't have a number yet is for the benefits changes and you all haven't had a real discussion with DPS about any additional funding there I will say we funded 13 million you heard 27.4 so there's upwards of 14 million more that they you all could go from zero to an additional 14 million on top of the 13 million the manager recommended okay but if we can find a different way to fund the prek that would take away some of the money and.

The question is around the 1.5 for Capital can they find use some of their own B the bond money for that I mean I don't think it's necessarily that amount well but there is 8.8 for the classified study and then the Master's pay so we are talking at Le more than 10 million if if we're trying to do salary if we're trying toer did say Master's pay in her budget Master's pay is it does all add up is all I'm saying saying but yeah and and the amount to the charters will change too depending on yeah absolutely yeah absolutely so so maybe we could get try to get some updated numbers then on what it would what additional funding would need would be needed over and above what the managers already recommended to include the $8.8 million for the classified and to be sure that the all the Masters pay is also covered basically to look at wages I would just say that is my priority is Wages wages for our staff.

Wages for and for dur public schools that I consider them County staff in a sense and so that's why I lift those two things up that's why I lift those two areas up we can make those numbers and put them up on the screen but I'm you're you're doing exact you're pleasing me greatly by you're talking about the number US Keith well could you email it to us before we put it on the screen I'm being real honest and that's not an indictment that you I didn't know about the $7 million number until the school board put it on the screen like no school board member came to us with that number before which is fine because we didn't go to them but they didn't present it to us they didn't have it came three months late and I'mma be very Frank in this I what proof that we have that the number they have is right this year because the number they had last year was wrong I'm.

Just being honest I want to do this I think somebody a person I don't like at all got up there and said the choice to fund the classified staffs was not a mistake the mistake was made in the FI in their finance office so I don't think anybody here doesn't want to do the right thing but we this will be the fourth in a row that a number will be given to us and we can't ensure the accuracy of it so I would also like to know are we sure that this is indeed the number that would get it done this time because what I don't want is for the next board to have to go through what we went through this year and I don't think that that is unfair for me to say.

Staff and with our staff is there any way to have some accountability for how the money will be spent because it I I have no it's it's not given us any comfort level in the past about how the money is spent it's just it's gone on and people and they and it the request happens again but there is no no strategy for five years as to how things will get handled because this this budget should never have come to us to manage it all in one budget and to have this happen I have you know where is the assurance that things will be managed accordingly well that that is one of the questions that's asked and we're working to frame a response to the board about that as far as you know what what additional measures we can do next year to make sure we're in sync with how the dollars are allocated how they're used there are some questions that we we do need to ask do they have the right.

Staffing level to support what's needed to do their work and I know that was raised as a concern and so yes there is a challenge what what happened in January we've never experienced before we're like you trying to figure out the best approach to the support them because those are our dollars as well and and so we're hoping to come back with with a way to get more information but also to think about how do we do this Beyond these discussions now but ongoing and there are some tools in place that local jurisdictions can use in their partnership with the schools we're trying to figure out what's the right balance but I will say having been in this business a long time I from my perspective do feel that we need to support them and figure out what's the right number of Staffing that's needed to support a very labor intensive environment that's paper driven and Regulatory and whatever that number is we need to to figure out how.

Do we help them get there whether it's a realignment of their existing dollars or what because we are their Partners so but I we we do hear what you're saying and do support trying to figure out a different path forward so there's Trust on both sides thank you I will temper that with reminding you that you can go back and check it the superintendent has said twice quite definitively that the money that comes to DPS is for them to decide how to use so that is that is true the the the accountability the board of Commissioners do have the right to ask how it's used and as many questions as as they desire because they are the stewards of the dollar so it is striking that balance that we're on our side that that was the context of of my comments is not to tell them what to do but to make sure that there's on the back end of it assurances that our board is seeking in some areas.

I ain't thinking about what no interim person told me to do just just to end just to end that I think the citizens that we are asking for their dollars out of their pocket deserve some way that they can feel assured that the money is being used for what we allocate it for and I you know I haven't seen that happen could I just offer one thing yeah because this questions came to me amongst other members of staff and I of course reached out to DCM Hagar and also director Lane I received some responses for them I've been getting Clarity on them to make sure I understood stuff to provide to leadership and I think I'll be sending that out forwarding that on not that this is the total answer because as you've gathered this is a complex relationship between elected bodies and trying to make sure everybody's a good Steward of the funds and respecting the roles of the different bodies I hope after I forward on what was so beautifully.

Prepared by other staff not me it'll help yall have a better understanding of things there may still be a need for future follow on conversation but that may be the most beneficial way to go forward as opposed to trying to tease things out this afternoon yes ma'am and then we are going to we I I hear what all of y'all saying let me be very clear we don't just give direction because we are bullies that is not what we don't just say that this is what we we want parents to understand now some of y'all ain't been in this community and some as long as I have some of youve been here even longer than I have a lot of times we do this so that we can educate parents because you have black parents in this community who for a very long time before the merger during the merger and after the merger never felt like this money was given to schools to classroom rooms that represented their children I'm going to get the.

Numbers wrong 45% of what Durham Public Schools is African-American you know only 35% of Durham is the other 40% is Hispanic y'all use your own eyes and your own ears and you think about who was at the public heing and who's been at them so I do think we also do this to educate parents to let them know that we are trying to do our due diligence and fund them in a way that is representative of the past harms that people in this community has received I don't care what interim superintendent continues to say that when I said it and the manager said it and when Wendy said it that we are being divisive no what we are trying to do is bring a community together and regain some public trust commissioner Jacobs you had something yes related to kind of what what recommendations you may bring back about our our authority to try to our ability to try to put in some guard rails accountability management I mean reporting mechan isms transparency blah.

Blah blah related to what we have are trying to designate the funding for in response to what is being requested I I also would like to know that even related to the bond because we're talking about personnel and operations but I also would like to know that in regard to the bond funding as well and that is included ma'am I'm sorry okay thank you that's included yes ma'am all hearts and Minds clear any final words Madam manager great discussion I always enjoy I know that this was a long and grueling day finished eight minutes early we did but I really appreciate this and your engagement and discussion so we look forward to bringing back options thank you ma'am meeting.