Board of Commissioners · Work Session · May 4, 2026

Good morning everyone. Thank you all for being here for our May 4th uh work session. We appreciate everyone in attendance and everyone who is able to watch here. Thank Stephen Valentine.

I'm going to start by reading our public charge and then uh comm vice chair alum, would you mind reading the land acknowledgement? The board of commissioners ask members and citizens to conduct themselves in a respectful courteous manner both with the board and fellow citizens. At any time should any member of the board or any citizen fail to observe this public charge, the chair will ask the offending person to leave the meeting until that individual regains personal control. Should the quorum fail to be restored, the chair will recess the meeting until such time that a genuine commitment to the public charge is observed.

>> Vice Chair Long. Thank you, cheerle. As

we convene for the Durham County Commissioners meeting, it's crucial to recognize the painful truth of our history. We stand on the stolen ancestral lands of the Kataba, Eno, Okanichi, Shakura, Shakori, and Tuscarora peoples whose deep connection to the land predates our arrival. We acknowledge with humility the unjust displacement and violence that occurred leading to the dispossession 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 these nations, both past and present, by committing ourselves to fostering understanding, healing, and justice for all who inhabit this land. Let us walk forward together with open hearts, acknowledging the past, and embracing a future guided by compassion, respect, and unity. >> Thank you, Vice Cheryl. All right, the first item on our agenda for th this work session today is citizen comments. It looks like we have

four today and they're going to be in the order. I'm going to call all four of them just so we know um what we have. We have Doug uh Doug Hajes and we have James Chavis, we have Antinet Halls, and then Amanda Wallace. Um, we'll let Mr.

Chavis be over here since he's already over there, but everyone else will line up over here. Um, Mr. Hodgees, is the mic working? >> Yes.

All right. Good morning. Forgive me for reading, please. I I know I only have three minutes.

My name is Doug Hodgeges. I'm a resident of Durham, volunteer community advocate and executive director and founder of Swing Pals, which over the last past 13 years, uh, Swing Pals delivered paradigm shifting, life-changing programming to over 10,000 students in six Durham public middle schools. I'm here this morning to update you on

some very exciting news, offer several thank yous, and a very special invitation. First, my first thank you is to Kyle Kimell. Carl Kimble is the Hillenddale golf course operator and as you know Swing Pals offers after school programming at Hillenddale. Uh Carl has helped Swing Pals be the program it is today by providing the golf course at no charge for Swing Pals over the last 13 years.

He is transforming Hillenddale Golf Course to be a crown jewel property of Durham County. My second thank you is to the city of Durham, Mayor Williams, the city council, city staff Bertha Johnson, uh city manager Bo Ferguson. Several years ago, we petitioned the city to fund the expansion of Hillindell Golf Course to provide extra capacity for swing pals to bring more students to the golf course. Today, that is a reality.

I've actually circulated a few photos for you to see what's going on at Hillenddale. Uh the first photo is from yesterday. That's my students and their families at Heritage Golf Club in Wake Forest. It was an amazing day to see those families

competing at the highest level. The second photo is the expansion of Hillenddale Golf Course. You will see Hillindale has been torn up to expand to provide more capacity for kids to come to Durham public school students to come to the golf course. The third photo is the building that we're privately funding for the exclusive use of Durham public school students to come to our after school programming.

Huge thanks to Manager Hager. Manager Hager, thank you for your staff, for your support of Durham County. Really appreciate you. A huge thanks to Dr.

Lewis, Doran public school superintendent and Miss Cington at Neil Middle School. Finally, commissioners, I want to thank you for taking the time to come to Neil Middle School to see swing pals in action in the classroom and in the gymnasium. I'm deeply moved by your support, by your willingness to take your time to come into the schools to see what we're doing in Durham public schools. It's paradigm shifting and one day every Doran public school student should have access to swing power skills

and tools. My last thing to say, I want to offer a very special invitation to the commissioners. In August, we have our signature event at Topgolf. We always have extra capacity.

So, I would like to invite the commissioners. I know you all love golf and maybe manager Hey can captain the team to come and join us at Topgolf as my guest. It's in August and I will communicate through uh your administrative assistant who does an amazing job, Miss Wallace. So, thank you all.

Really appreciate your support. Just wanted to update you and thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hodgees. The next uh speaker is Mr. Chavis. He's over here on this side here. Good morning to all

May the 4th. I came back to first time I come back to you. It was in January and I informed you that I was coming back and I'm no waste tired and I'm not going to stop until we get this matter straightened out. you know or do you believe that there's two sides to a story?

If you don't, you one of the fortunate ones because everyone I've been asked is unfortunate because they are saying yes. So with that said, with a person making $300,000 off the taxpayers of Dur, do you think she should have heard both sides of a story before she signed an affidavit to get someone arrested? I'm talking about our cannon manager.

She signed an affidavit for the director of Durham Social Service to have a citizen of Durham arrested. That's a criminal activity. We held out till we got through with the court system to find out she was not guilty. But we still have not heard from our dictator, our county manager, who is making over $300,000 and is black.

Help a white woman sign off on a black woman. Now, you know how it looks to me being black and from the old days, how white women's and white men's lied on us black folks to get us in trouble and had our aunt Mary and Uncle Sam to help them. Well, this is the same thing I'm saying about our county manager because she refused to do the right thing for all the people. She only done

right for some of the people because there is two sides to the story and she refused to listen to the other side. So I'm asking you, you county managers, I mean you county commissioners, I hope you plan on taking action, especially one of you ones that's out here running trying to serve other races and living in Durham, North Carolina as a Democrat. Is you truly a Democrat for the people? Are you a Democrat for a special interest group?

This is one of the problems we are having with our Democratic party. Y'all are failing us as leaders, letting others who making over $300,000 to $100,000 salary do us and treat us like we are nobody. Now is the time to stop this new and new new move. Thank you, Mr. Davis.

All right, the next our next speaker is Antinet Halls. >> Good morning. My name is Antonet Halls. I live at 5610 Catskill Court.

And he's absolutely right. Drown County is failing this citizenry. Um, for example, the great eviction of the homeless people where the police went out there and just took their personal belongings and tossed them and had them handcuffed. sitting in the dirt.

That was an opportunity, a missed opportunity that Durham County could have looked like uh the humanitarian county. You could have implemented HART. I didn't see HART out there. I didn't hear anything about HART being out there to provide support. And of course, uh, Durham County could have, uh, dispatched their team of support from the department of, um, social services to provide support to the citizenry who are out there living under bridges, in the woods, under plastic. I mean, you're you're not looking like you're

supporting the citizenry. And then, of course, we're forced to go to the Department of Social Services for support. And I do say that some agencies, some divisions in within social services are doing great work. But of course, we still have uh Maggie Clap who is operating as a ZAR um which her objective is to get the funds, the state funds and the um federal funds for the children. And I want to put the county on notice that we are availing with your clinicians in Durham County are actively undoing uh our citizens health in order to take custody and keep custody and terminate parental rights. So we understand that and uh for the fourth time we need to have a forensic audit on Durham County Department of

Social Services and and with that you will find the underbelly and the uh seediness of dirty funds going to these memoriam of understanding um agreements with the clinicians to medicate their clients in order to take their children from them and put them into the adoption system which is currently currently being scrutinized and and and ex the point is we're losing our citizens. We're losing our children and you're not doing anything. You're not doing anything to help the citizens. You got money for golf.

Well, what do we what what if a homeless man care about golf? He wants to be dry when it's wet. He wants to be warm when it's cold. He wants to be cool when it's hot. He wants to be fed when he's

hungry. And you're failing. You have failed the citizens of Durham. >> Thank you, Miss Hall.

And our last speaker uh for this section is Amanda Wallace. >> All right. Hi. So, my name is Amanda Wallace and I'm the founder of Operation Stop CPS, which is a grassroots campaign based here in Dorm, North Carolina.

And our mission is to abolish the family policing system, which some people call um child protective services. And I didn't know if I was going to speak today. I thought I was just going to sit. Um but it was divine because I saw Maggie Clap, the director of social services, walk in here.

So, I knew I needed to say something. Um, and it's not surprising that she's here because I hear that um, social services is looking at a budget cut. So, I'm sure she's here to try to get some money. Um, but so, let me talk about how social services is doing, especially child protective services. So, there's currently 185

children currently in foster care as of March, as of the last board documents, and 83 of those children are not even living in Durham. That means there's 83 children that the Department of Social Services stole from their families and then shipped off to different places, different counties and different states, states like South Carolina and Tennessee. So, think about a parent trying to reunify with their child, but they can't even see their child because they're not even in the same state. And then of those 185 children, 156 of those children are black.

So when we say that this is the family policing system, this is a continuation of slavery, this is the new auction block, this is what we mean, that this agency is out in the community criminalizing poverty and taking people's children away. But you guys know that because we this is not the first time we've been here. Uh Commissioner Stephen Valentine, you sit on the board, you see these numbers every

single month. Again, there's just not enough that is happening. department is failing families and it is budget season and I hope as you guys are crunching the numbers you really see and invest in families versus more salaries. Salaries that continue to stay just empty.

I think the last time was like 14 or 15 vacant positions that have just been sitting there for like over a year. So why do you keep funding these same positions that keep s and then there's like point what 08 of the budget just goes to like reunification trying to get families back together. You guys are showing clearly what you are investing in. And then Neta alum, I saw your outrage when family separation hit in the context of immigration, but I do not understand why you can't connect the dots when it comes to family separation that's happening right here in Durham,

right here in your very streets in the county that you say you represent. You can't see family separation. Then where's the press conference? Where's the press conference for this?

and to the the issue of visitation. I hope you don't report about what visitation looks like and how it's failing here at >> Thank you, Miss Wallace. All right. The next item on our agenda is other business and we are going to in order to do the 260224 uh we have to suspend the rules and approve the and authorize the county manager to execute a service contract with ANA Associates Inc. doing business as ANA Security Group in the amount of 4,973,365 for uniform security services for Durham County facilities.

The rest of it is there on the in the agenda. I'm not going to read the whole thing. So, um, first we have to suspend the rules or we're going to do a presentation. Is there presentation first?

>> Okay. All right. I'll hand it over and then we'll manage the uh approval and so forth. >> Good morning.

>> Good morning. So, I'm here to introduce you to the potential contractor for our security services. Um I want to make you aware that uh we have gone out for RFP twice for security service in that we received uh documentation from our uh existing contractor that he would be unable to physically fulfill the obligation of his contract for FY27. uh due to this we were required to go

out to RFP to find a replacement organization to provide us security services. In that award we have recommended ANA security. Um which is a small business woman-owned organization from West Palm Beach, Florida. Um this is I think a very unusual situation in that the present contractor um Nighthawk is here with us today in order to help with the transition between these two organizations should you approve uh the the contract for ANA security and also assist with regards to that transition that's required between two organizations.

Um I will allow um you to be introduced by Mark. Mark is going to do the presentation of ANA Security to give you familiarity with the firm. But I'd also

like to introduce you to the CEO Andrew Luche and the president of the con company Gail Luch. So with that I will turn the presentation over to Mark. microphone. You need to hit the >> Yes, there you go.

The >> Good morning. Thank you for having us back. We welcome this opportunity and we are honored to be considered here. >> Introductions.

You've already started introducing Andrew and Gail. And then Sean is our COO. Garrett's our C RSO. And my name is Mark Hamilton and I'm in client development.

With that, I'm going to turn the history over to Andrew. Let him give a brief overview. Good morning, commissioners. Andrew Luchi speaking. It's pleasure to be in front of you today in Durham. We had an opportunity to meet with your teams with

staff on several occasions. You talk about the vetting process was unbelievable. They went through it several times with us and we we came through at the end of the day with flying colors. We're honored to be here in front of you today.

tell you a little bit about me and our company and what we do and why we feel we are the right company at the right time for you guys. We're ANA. We started back in 1999. I'm a CPA by trade.

Worked for one of the largest CPA firms, then was a controller. We started doing staffing back in 99. Did that for about 20 years. About 10 years, we got into security.

When we got into security, we aligned ourselves with a couple guys who had a good experience and a good record. We brought on Garrett and Shawn as minority partners in our firm. They both work for the number one and number two security firms in the world. Allied and secure.

We thought they bring a nice little mix to our team. We also thought they bring some diversity to our team. On top of that, um we're happy to be here in front of you today. We're now in several states.

We're growing. We're able to provide the services that are needed. We're not perfect, but I always like to say, you know what, we're going to spill

the milk, but we're going to wipe it up before it goes. One of the things that has been really done by the staff that is amazing is to have that connection where the transition where we get a chance to work with Mr. Eugene and his team as he's retiring to help make sure that transition is smooth. >> One of the things that we have is our core values and this is what drives everything we do and I'm going to Garrett is the one is the driving force behind that.

So I'm gonna let Garrett talk about our core values. >> Morning everyone. Um, we started this kind of security venture. Um, I had worked for some of the bigger security firms and when I was work partnering with Andrew and the rest of the team was like what separates us from the from the other security companies and we needed to start with our core values and who we are and what we what we represent.

And so we came up with our four different core values of of how we operate in a day-to-day basis. And the the number one core value is people matter. So without people with our officers, without our managers, we don't have a company to run. So our our objective is to make

sure everyone is taken care of to make sure they have all the tools in the toolbox to succeed. So our philosophy has always been to try and pay officers a little bit more. We can take less margin because at the end of the day, it's it's a win-win for everybody. And again, we really want to make sure we take care of our people within the company.

Our second core value is growth and development. Uh we're firm believers in in promoting from within. We're big into training. We want to make sure again that all the officers have all the tools in their toolbox um because we want them to grow whether they come on to to move into management or work with other companies that type of thing.

We want the best for them and so we're always trying to develop our people from within. Our third core value is service is everything. If we can't provide the best best service then you don't need us. So our objective, our goal is every day is to provide the highest quality of security services.

And then finally is is integrity. It's to do the right thing. Whether you win a contract, lose a contract, do the right thing. Um you know, mistakes happen,

just come open, be honest. And that's that's the way we operate. That's how we communicate and how we like to work. Underneath that, we have kind of three three uniques.

Um number one is that we respond. Um, we're we quickly answer the phone, answer a text, get back to you right away. There's nothing worse than having a client calling you and saying, "I can't get a hold of my rep. " So, we have to make sure you we're providing the best service.

We respond to our to our clients right away. Number two is we resolve the issue. Um, you know, things happen, people are human, but we're going to we're going to, you know, we fix it, we break it, we learn from it, we move on. So we make sure we step inside the pro step with in the process and get it done and taken care of.

And the last one, we like to work with the communities is we care. We try and give back as much as we can. We get involved with different organizations and and groups. So we're excited about being here in Durham and expanding that role here. As we continue just we took a look at the ANA difference. Um what you know

what separates us from from our competitors. And so some of the big things that we have found that that's driving us to our success and providing the best service is you know looking for partnerships um with our officers with our clients. Um building that teamwork is very very important. Um we do have technology um that we'll go through here in a little bit that tracks the officers gives great reporting geoences our sites just ba basically validates everything that the officers are doing.

Training is another big process. You know we're big believers in training. Um, we'll continuously train the officers from beginning to end. Big believers in oversight with supervision.

We have we'll have field supervisors checking in all the different properties, different sites uh throughout the day, throughout the night. And then we've had great um success dealing with in the public sector of government. So, we've got a lot of experience. We're excited to be here and looking forward to um building this partnership with you all. >> Another thing, biggest thing he touched on is training. We are big believers in

training because the problem is a lot of guard companies, they put people out there, they don't they don't do anything. They hire them, they put them out on site, and they don't tell them anything before they go out there. So before they even leave our office, there's an orientation for pre-eployment. We have an orientation.

We go through deescalation training because deescalation is so important because we want to train our officers not to get all excited and uh make a situation worse just by their attitude. Having a calm demeanor, customer service is a big thing. We call we actually renamed all of our officers that work at front desk first impression officers. that way because they make a first impression.

They represent not just us, but they represent the county. And that person can be the difference between somebody having a good experience in the county when they have to go to the courts or whatever they're doing and a bad experience. Continue education. We're constantly

going on report writing. Right now, I think we have over a hundred different training programs that our officers have available to them that we can give to them. always going over report writing, post orders. They're tested every they are tested every month on post orders and when we get into post orders also ties into our technology I'll talk about a little bit later but on top of that we have four qualified instructors inhouse Mr.

Luchi, Sean, um Josh, and myself. Between the four of us, we have over a hundred over a hundred years of experience in security, law enforcement, and military that we bring to the table. And it's practical real world things that we've actually been on been boots on the ground. Here's a big thing, and this is where PE ma people matter. What we do differently is when we recruit, we do not use rec professional recruiters, third-party recruiters.

All of our operations managers are the ones who hire their own people. They know the site. They've been and all of our operation managers have field experience where they've actually worked a post. Most recruiters just have a spreadsheet.

They're trying to fill holes. We try to put the right piece to the right puzzle and not just fill holes. That way when it goes you tie this into our core value of people matter most or our turnover rate is 25%. We don't hire people to fire them. We don't hire people just to throw throw them on the wall and see what sticks. recruitment and keeping people happy is how we grow our company and it's doing the right thing and the industry average depending on which statistic you use and I had I have different resources but is

anywhere from 100% to 300%. It's a high turnover industry and most of the time and you hear it over and over and over it's how they're treated by their company and their management. They're treated like numbers. Growth and development like any good sports team we have our own we try to grow our own our own bench our own farm club.

Training we train our people. We try to grow our own leadership because they know our culture. They come into it knowing how we treat people and how people matter. And it's personal.

We have invested a lot of time in in people. And like Andrew said just a minute ago, we're not perfect. We make mistakes, but it's how you deal with those mistakes and how you treat people and coach them. We have out of our nine operations

managers, four of them are homegrown. They started out as either guards or they came to us when we took a contract over as an account manager or site supervisor, Jamie Rogers, Eric Fernandez, Melissa Klein, and Ambra Narcio, who's our regional operations manager here for um the Dur North Carolina area. They're all homegrown. They know our culture and they come to us and they get with what they need and we help them out with whatever they need.

So partnership, what do we want? We don't want to be a vendor. We want to be a partner. We want to be a true partner. And when you see some of the things that we do with technology that goes with it, but when we presented the first time, Nighthawk had they had such glowing reviews of Nighthawk

and how they were a true partner for the last nine years. We want to be that. That's what we want to do. And we do that through our core values of doing the right thing.

And you'll see what I'm talking about here in a minute. So I'm going to kind of combine this one with the next slide because for time um our ATRA security management system is not just a scheduling management system or payroll system. It's much more than that. It is we do G it does GPS geoence tracking of our officers and uh real uh real-time reporting and analytics.

So when you look at it, everything is on their phone. When the officer clocks in, they clock in on an app on their phone and the area that they clock into, each building will have its own geoence location. So they can't clock in or out unless they're on in in that zone. It also sends our 24-hour dispatch an

alert whenever they leave that zone, so we know if they've left the property. But more importantly, it shows activity. Our dispatchers have a board up that shows activity, inactive or whatever. If somebody's been inactive for more than 30 minutes, it's not that we're trying to catch them doing anything.

We'll do a safety check. We'll make a phone call to them to make sure they're okay. I've been in this business for 40 years. I've seen all kinds of things happen.

I've seen people have accidents. I've seen people in the middle of a shift have a heart attack. So, we're worried about our people. So, it's not just to track them to make sure they're where they're supposed to be, but it's also for their safety.

Goes back to core value number one. People matter. The other thing is our reporting. If you look up there and you see trend analysis, our ATRA system does something very unique and it gives us data, incident report data an analytics and it can tell us how many incident reports we've had

broken down by category. the time of day and the days of the week. m. m.

Mon Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, not on the weekends, which is kind of which kind of surprised me a little bit. But with that trimmed analysis, it allows us to go to Isaac and his team and say, "Hey, Isaac, we're seeing trends here. We may what about shifting some coverage from a lower we do patrols over in this lower area and we do and move that static person over to here to give us some more coverage and more protection. That way our scheduling is dynamic and not static.

And in addition to that, and I said this, and I'll probably get in trouble for this one, but sometimes you may not you may be able to reduce your budget because you're saying, "Hey, we really don't we don't need an officer here. " And our system has NFC tags. They go through and they hit they scan it and it lets them know and verify. Our incident reports for all stakeholders are sent immediately when an incident report is done.

it gets sent into the system and then it disperses out to all stakeholders that need it. " Stakeholders also have access to our client portal to where they can look at schedules, past schedules, current schedules, future schedules to see what's going on. It also allows them to download any reports that they may have they may have lost and those reports are kept for five years for audit purposes.

So it makes us audit it makes us a instant auditing. Um documentation there we have we can customize reports to whatever you know the you know for the most part what the county needs and try to go paperless. um try to, you know, be a little bit more environmentally friendly and um um keep the paper down, kill less trees. Um so there's something else about partnership, but >> this is what partnership looks like.

This is what we want to be with Durham County. We want to be a true partner that is invested in your mission. >> Good. Good.

Mark G want to say something Mark and then Sean and then we'll close on Gail. You want to just say one last thing before we again we looking forward to this opportunity and this partnership as as we kind of mentioned in the presentation. So we're we're very excited about being here. >> Okay.

>> Thank you also for having us here. Um real quick >> I want to add one note. I know you guys are a serious group but I got to be that is Sean Emman. That is our operations guy 24/7.

I want you to test him doc. He answers the phone nonstop. text message. He's a beast.

Then he goes home on owns horses and shovels stuff at night. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Sean. I had to lighten the mood.

Go ahead, buddy. Thanks, Andrew. All right. Um, there's a few things for us.

You always get what you inspect, not what you expect with employees. So, for us, we support I'm sorry, man. Okay. We we always try to give the support to the officers out in the field.

Make sure we're inspecting them, checking their needs. Part of our dispatches 24 hours is also to call the overnight people. They're the most forgotten group of employees in any company. So, we want them to have a voice in our company.

We reach out to them. We check in with them. Do they need anything? How's things going? Um, we have a really good dispatch team that communicates well with everybody. Um,

and communication is the key to success for you and us. So the more we communicate, the more smooth smoothly everything goes as far as transactions and um we look forward to communicating well with you all and everybody else involved in the city and evaluation. If there is an incident, we evaluate it. We assess it.

We get back to you with a full detailed report. That detailed report, we'll find out if it's a training error or people problem. If it's training, we'll adjust our training to make sure that it's corrected moving forward. If it's a people problem, we'll retrain that person and get them up to speed.

I won't waste any more of your time. Thank you. >> Good. >> And good morning and thank you uh for this opportunity to address you all today. Um we've Mark has presented and everyone else has spoken but I just want to say on behalf of our organization would like to really express our sincere appreciation for even considering us um uh through that we've gone through the procurement process um and the confidence you place in our firm for us

to be here today. So we are truly honored um to be considered for this engagement for this partnership. Um we feel we're fully committed to delivering you all the best uh surface professional, reliable, accountable um security service that aligns with the county's um needs and um standards and your expectations. Um so our team brings a great deal of experience as you've heard as well um training and operational um and any necessary anything necessary to keep um safety and ensure um a secure environment.

So, just wanted to just thank you for the opportunity and hopefully u if we're selected today, we look forward um to uh to working with y'all and for partnering with Durham County. Thank you so much. >> All right. And I'll open it up to Commissioner comments, questions.

Go ahead, Commissioner Burton. >> Thank you, Chair Lee. Thank you so much for your presentation. I have a few questions. Um I heard that Nighthawk had

the contract for nine years. Correct. Correct. >> I wanted to know the first question I had um is why is Nighthawk not able to fulfill the contract or go be able to go forward?

Um that's my first question. >> My second question is what happens to all of the workers who are currently working with Nighthawk? What happens to them? I would like to know what are the benefits that these workers will get.

What are what is their hourly pay? And I would also like to know what um other areas does A&A work in any other areas of the of North Carolina or is this their first area? So those are my questions. >> So your first question is the um Nighthawk indicated that they were retiring and could not um fulfill the contract of the last year of the contract. Um second your second question was uh help me please.

>> What happens to the people who work? >> All the employees that are presently working for Nighthawk will have an opportunity to interview with the ANA with regards to transferring uh to that company should they wish to. And the last one you wanted to know was the salaries. >> Like what are the salaries?

What are the benefits packages that ANA offers? Yeah. >> So I can give you the salary by classification. Uh that was in their proposal.

So the customer service agents make $17 an hour. the USOS, which that is an unarmed um security officer, make $1,751 an hour. The armed security officers make $221 an hour. And the CPOS, which are the

30. 30 cents. With regard to their benefits, I'll let their CEO. >> So, I'll I'll take that question.

I um with regard to benefits, we do offer uh all of our new staff um benefits, medical benefits as well as dental and vision benefits. Um we do have u obviously paid holidays as well. Um and um PTO um personal time off. Okay, I'm gonna go to Wendy Jacobs first and then to Commissioner Wendy Jacobs.

Uh, >> I have some questions. Just quick follow up to Commissioner Burton. How do those wages compare to the Nighthawk wages? >> Similarly.

>> Similar. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. And Commissioner Burton also asked about any are they currently

working in North Carolina? Yes, we we are still work we are currently working in North Carolina. >> Um we are we have work in the Charlotte area but I'll let our operations team. >> So we got um Chapel Hill Transit we do here.

Beatatric and Greensboro. Um some accounts in Charlotte um Forsythe County Parks we also do. Um trying to think we about I think in Carolina's rough in North Carolina about 1,200 hours a week of security. >> Thank you. Um so I'm wondering um you talked about your training. Could you talk a little bit about your training in terms of um your your staff interfacing with the public because a lot of the positions in Durham County are really it's about interacting with people um going through security such as

at our main library, at our health and human services building. Um, and um, I just would like to know about just kind of a lot of it really is about people's skills and I know you mentioned deescalation, but um, just could you could talk about your approach towards that. >> Can you answer that question for us? >> Sure.

So, our our process for if we were to take your front desk here, it's it's about the first initial contact with somebody has to be polite customer service, always respectable. anything other is not acceptable for us as a company. We go back into a concier service which we do at other sites for high-end buildings. We use that same training with our officers because at the end of the day, security is customer service.

It has to be about the the experience that every person that comes to a public building is a taxpayer. We want them treated with respect. We want them treated with dignity. We want to make sure that their experience there and get

them the information. And part of that training that we'll go through and we'll deal with Isaac and your team to make sure we have knowledge. Even though we're going to bring on the employees there, there may be some new ones there that need a customer service or a little bit of adjustment and refreshing as far as training. Everybody gets a little complacent here and there.

So updated training, we do that at least every six months. Um, we do an evaluation, we do self- evaluations with the officers. We get feedback from our supervision teams. Hey, how are we doing?

What are we doing? We also communicate back with our client as far as customer relations with the public and with their employees as well because your employees are your citizens too. Um, so that training that we give them is definitely customer more customer service than security nowadays. Um, as the world changes, we try to update and change with the world as far as interfacing with the public. Um, we also have deescalation skills that verbal judo um to deescalate. When

somebody comes in and they're they're super agitated, we're going to slow the speech down. We're going to have open hands. We're not going to put our hands in our pockets. We don't point fingers.

Um, just those little things mean a lot, right? So, that open hand approach, calming, slowing, confidence, and reassuring that we'll get them in touch with the right person. >> Thank you. Um, and I'm just I know that this um proposal says seven additional FTEES and so I'm just wondering um I I know the timeline is short here because I'm assuming the Nighthawk contract ends July 1st.

That's a short timeline, >> but was there I'm just wondering where do those seven additional positions come from? And was there any type of comprehensive analysis done of what our actual security needs are at this point in Durham County? Like taking a fresh

look at that itself. >> So, uh let me share with you about the seven FTEES. Um Isaac did a study with regards to our sock. That's the uh individuals that are 24 hours monitoring all county facilities.

And they communicate with the officers. We're requesting that that sock be county employees, not contractor employees. Um right now they are contract employees. Um, we feel that it's a better way to serve the organization as well as to reduce the cost of the contract and still save the county over $135,000. So those employees will actually monitor the be a 24-hour service, monitor the activities that go on through the security system, respond directly to the the security manager, um and it will

reduce their contract. 4 $4 million to perform services. 9 million contract. I would also like to note that from a continuity of operations perspective, I supported this approach as we look at the overall long-term management of our security operations. This contract is for four years and um I'm hopeful the relationship um continues. This allows for if there are transition periods some effort that's inhouse and we're not at a

vulnerable state of needing to hire more people um beyond the base contract. So, this is a change in philosophy and as you know, we will always look to see um if this is long-term the right approach and if we need to go back to contractual um as we've done in some other areas in general services. But I just wanted to give that context as well. Okay.

Thank you. And I'm wondering with your data analytics, can you give examples where in any situation you've actually ended up recommending um changes to um positions or um reducing the number of people or just things like that with the data analytics that you use? >> Yes, ma'am. So, we we have dealt with other clients. We've noticed that the trends weren't on the weekends, that the trends were more second shift than first shift. If we had

56 hours of coverage, which is eight hours a day, 7 days a week on first shift, and you times that and you had two officers there, we're noticing that the reports were down. We talked to the client, we communicated. Second shift, they went to one officer because traditionally that post was slower on second shift. As times have changed and evolved, most of the reports were coming from the second shift officer.

First shift officers, they weren't getting the traffic there. There wasn't that need to have two people say at your front desk. Um, so we went back to the client. We adjusted hours with them to give them a better quality of service.

And the client agreed and at that for that particular client, they're very happy with the transitional change. And we were actually offered a different length of a shift. We actually shortened the shift from 8 hours to 6 hours. So, it saved the client money, kept us as a good partner, and just was a good team effort to make sure that they got the most efficient service for their money. >> Thank you. And my last question is, um,

and maybe it's more for you, Mo. Um, how has how will this company or how has Nighthawk been coordinating with the office of the sheriff and also the police department and the heart team? >> I'd kind of like the sheriff to answer that question. Um, first of all, um, Nighthawk is actually physically at the courthouse and at the detention center and provide services.

Um hopefully the sheriff could back me up that the service has been satisfactory to to the sheriff. So much so that the sheriff has been able to reduce um the amount of contractors that are at his facilities. Um and that's part of the savings that we will be seeing in this contract. um with the heart group. I don't have statistics with regards to their working with the heart group, but I know that there have been si situations with the officers where the

heart group has come out especially to the library and over to the 300 deck and they've interfaced with those officers and or with with individual clients. So, I know that's um the fact and then you had another question that I could answer. >> It's fine. Thank you.

Yeah. >> All right, Commissioner Long. >> Thank you all so much for coming. Um, I had a lot of the questions that Commissioner Burton asked and I wanted to piggyback off of that a little bit of I know you said that there's going to be opportunity for folks who are already working with Nighthawk, but wondering how y'all look at like recruitment and hiring within communities um versus like just more so broadly posting positions and recruiting because obviously in security roles when you're interacting with folks face to face, people who understand the community, they often can relate to and build stronger relationships. >> So absolutely we are um

very uh passionate about um working with the community and hiring within the community um as much as possible. So that is our goal when we are recruiting. Um we use you know various tools to recruit but most of those tools are focused on the community and and trying to hire within. Um obviously the transition hopefully we have a great number of of officers currently with Nighthawk who will have an interest in working with ANA.

Um so we're hoping to have um a large percentage transitioning. Um but any openings that we might have um at any time would be um our goal would be to recruit from the community. >> And just to piggy back a little bit piggyback a little bit more on that, we definitely are interested in the existing officers. But before we just go take the existing officers, it gives us a chance to enhance our team. So we will meet with the existing manager Isaac and team and say, "Hey, let's grade these

officers who are in place now between one and 10. you need to score a eight to be part of our team. Those officers that score eight, we would extend an offer, too. In addition to that, we do recommendations.

We have referral programs. When we come into a community, we like to hire from within our community that's in Durham County. We make sure that's the number one priority when we do our scoring of officers. " We we uh usually come into a community and we set up our own training school.

And in going to do that, we go back to then to the high schools because everybody's not going to go to college. And we look at we say, "Hey, here's an opportunity that people haven't thought about. Us being a minority owned firm, we look at opportunities of how can we get people to understand you don't have to always go to college to be successful. You can get into security and you can make a six figure income, right, by working your ways up.

It's hard work. " And we train those individuals. We have a nonprofit that we actually pay for their training and uniforms. that.

>> Great. Thank you. And one more additional question. Is any part of this contract um like beyond just the staffing portion around the technology used not just for the geo fencing but the actual technology of security because for example one of the things that we hear a lot from our residents is around main library is uh there's residents who obviously we want security.

We want everyone who's coming into the library to feel safe and welcome, but then also to not have overly invasive experience. And I know as new technologies come out of like requiring people to search their bags, like that type of thing. Is that part of this contract? Anyway, I >> I'll start that guys and then somebody jump in.

>> Naturally, when we come into a new >> Use the Sorry, bring the mic a little closer. >> Oh, yeah. Sorry, I thought I spoke loud. Let me speak up.

I apologize. Naturally, when we come into a new situation, you have existing post orders, you have a scope of work. We learn what that is and we identify that and we train our officers on that and we test them on it. While at the same time, we look at

opportunities now to be that partner. I think the question was asked, do we make recommendations? Do we make changes? We quickly want to come in and make recommendations and changes because at the end of the day, if something goes wrong, we're going to be the first ones in line to be sued.

So, we make sure we've done our due diligence and making sure we're compliant on what we think is best. If we get into a situation and we think there's a need for cameras or if there's a need for other things, we will make those recommendations to you guys. And sometimes we'll even include it on our dime just to help save us at the end of the day. Was there anything you want to add, Sean or Garrett?

>> No, I think you've covered it. Thank you. >> Thank you, buddy. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. >> One more quick question. Sorry.

You said armed officers. Can you just um give a little bit more detail about that of what type of like what are they armed with and then which officers like particularly do you have armed at which locations? >> So is your question with regards to what type of armory do they carry? Do they

carry tasers and and that's is that what you're asking? >> Yeah. And is it are they going to be armed at all locations or is it that some locations will have some? So only only some locations will have armed indiv individuals and it will be similar to what you've seen through Nighthawk.

Okay, >> Commissioner Stephen Valentine. Uh thank you, Chair. Actually only have one question, but I wanted to begin by saying thank you to uh Nighthawk for your nine years of service here to Dorm County and also for being willing to participate in this transition. um working hand in hand along with the the county. You talked about uh people and that people matter and so to the extent that you can integrate personnel from Nighthawk, I'm hoping that you take every effort to ensure that those who are already employed here in Durham County uh remain

employed. Also, I noticed that uh many of your potential partners are already in the room. Uh Director Clap is with us, Sheriff Burkehead is with us. And uh to the extent that you can interface, as some of my colleagues have already said, interface with them as part of this transition, I think that that would be uh very important.

So my question is, what is your plan? You talked a lot about data and and trends and your technology. What's your actual uh plan for reporting that data? Is it going to be quarterly?

Is it going to be annually, semianually? What's the plan? >> I can tell you what the plan is. We're in MFR and as you well know we'll be reporting M MFR on a quarterly basis with regards to our statistics that we will generate from their data uh to give you a complete and comprehensive report of what's happening on the security

level. There are definitely um measures that Isaac will be uh reporting to you directly on. >> All right. Thank you.

And I'll end on this. Uh I I agree. I don't know who made the comment earlier about uh uh checking behind folks who work for you. I I know that to be uh the doers only do what the checkers check and so we're counting on you uh in that regard.

>> All right. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you all very much.

I just had a very very quick questions. How many uh companies replied to our request? >> So we had we had four companies that replied to our request and ANA was the uh most responsive to that. >> Okay. >> Um we also had members of the organization actually do the interview. So, we had members from the sheriff's office, members from the library, and of

course from the security department and myself that actually did the review of the proposals and uh the interviews that were done. >> Okay. Um what is overall nationwide so forth, what is your largest contract and would this be the largest? Uh, you mentioned a few here in North Carolina.

>> Um, and sounds as if this may be the largest North Carolina, but what is your largest contract? >> I'll go first, Garrett. >> We have a city of Dallas contract that is um Oh, I'm sorry. We have City of Dallas contract that is much larger, probably four times the amount of this one.

And then we have other contracts, too. >> Okay. >> Definitely not our largest. >> All right.

Thank you. >> It'd be in the top five, though. >> Okay. Thank you.

And although it's not our largest, it's a very important contract. Today, you have the CEO and the president and everyone here. I don't go to all these meetings, just so you know. This is how important this contract is to us. We will deliver. I I

recognize that. Okay. All right. No other If hearing no other questions, uh we'll need a motion to suspend the rules.

>> So moved. >> Second. It's been moved and properly second that we suspend the rules for this um for this item for 260224. Any further discussions on suspending the rules?

All in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose, please use the same sign. >> All right.

Now, we'll need a motion to uh authorize the county manager execute a service contract with ANA Associates, Inc. doing business as ANA Security Group. Some of >> All right, we have a motion on the floor. It's been moved and properly seconded.

Any further discussion? >> Just for the record, I didn't read the entire item. If you need to see the entire item, you can see it in our agenda. All in favor say I.

>> I. I. >> All oppose, please use the same sign. >> Uh, this item is approved.

>> Thank you. Thank you all very much. >> Thank you, commissioners. >> Thank you so much.

All righty. We're going to move on to consent agenda, but I just want to make So, we had 15 minutes aotted for that. Obviously, it took a little bit longer. Um, let's try to work to adhere to our times as we list have listed on the agenda.

I'll turn it over to manager Hangar for a consent agenda. >> All right. Good morning. Um, the first item that we will disc uh that's on the consent agenda is 260176. This is the approval of Soul Source contract with Fathers on the Move, Inc. for the Durham County Sheriff's Office in the amount of $36,000 for services to improve outcomes for detainees during

re-entry. The next one is 260198. This is approval of a contract amendment with Carolina Civil Works, Inc. for emergency and scheduled collection system repair services in the amount of 186,257856 bringing the contract amount to 796554 547876 and um is to execute any other related contract amendments not to exceed $875,000. The next one is approval of a contract with Triek Software Systems, a Central Square Technologies company, in the amount of $226,23 for computer AED dispatch and report management systems for the sheriff's

office. >> Okay. Sorry, I just had a quick question about this one. Just with all of the conversations around like the different surveillance technologies, just wanted to clarify and make sure like this isn't similar technologies to those that like Flock and those other companies is very different.

Like this is what is in the computers essentially for the deputies. Correct. >> Good morning, commissioners. No uh Commissioner uh Vice Chair Lom.

No, it's not that. It's just a record management system. Think of like when you get in a car accident and you come and pick up a copy of the report. It's our central operating system with all that creates all of our various reports.

So it's not surveillance or anything like that. >> Thank you sir. >> Okay. The next item is 26204. This is approved budget ordinance amendment

1 million to increase expenditure authority for social services. The next one is 26208. This is approval of a contract amendment in the amount of 44,000 for psychiatric services and consultation. um for a new total of $25,757. The contracted services provide mental health services in the detention center through the end of fiscal year 2526. I had a quick question about this and how many um individuals is like this 19 hours per week able to provide services for and have we found that like obviously we're expanding it to provide

more service hours but are there individuals who are in the jail that aren't able to get psychiatric services because of that? Like how many Good morning. Thanks for having us and for the question. Um, on average right now with the additional psychiatric coverages we have, we see 25 to 40 individuals in person each week and they review records for another dozen and they restart medications for probably three to four dozen a week and then we try to work them into the schedule to be seen within 30 days because that's accreditation standards. Um, we get records from the outside from their providers of who's been previously providing medication or if they were in the jail within the past six months, we can restart medication. We know that they're on previously, but roughly at this point, the case load for general health is around 200 individuals right now and it stays pretty consistent and so there's a very high demand because as you're well aware, the acutity level of

psychiatric care in the jail has gone through the roof since COVID all across this country and we don't see that changing anytime soon. Are you thinking with this contract, do you believe that um hopefully that every individual who would need psychiatric services would be able to receive it or do you think there'll still be a gap? >> This contract would simply extend what we're doing right now >> and there will still be gaps. There's we're struggling to stay up with with the need.

Um and at times we have people who are very high need individuals who have to be seen weekly because that's the level of instability. And so that means we're bumping other people who are more moderate needs and so we're there's a lot of struggle trying to get people seen even with the current contract. >> Thank you. Appreciate that.

>> Okay. >> Yeah. I just also had a follow-up question. I mean, I support this. Um, but I think it just again highlights um how much

funding we are we are having to provide to take care of people um with mental health issues and other medical issues in the detention center. I know I had um asked the county manager if we could um as soon as possible. I know staff is busy with the budget, but between the office of the sheriff public health and justice services, if we can get an updated amount uh comprehensive understanding of how much it actually costs per day taking into consideration the mental health needs, health care, physical health care, pharmaceutical prescriptions, food, housing um to take care of somebody in the detention center because again I think when we're looking at the kind of challenges that we have we really need to understand the costs and again look at what we can do to

prevent people from ending up in the detention center in the first place around diversion and prevention um and and just every possible way And I know justice services does a lot to do that. But um just to really understand our whole system, the way it currently functions and how we can continue to do better. And I guess related to this is the issue of the capacity restoration. Um, and I'm wondering have we have there been any progress on that issue because that again is the potential to people to be not in our detention center but in another detention center so that we're not paying those daily cost.

I know there was an issue about transportation. I don't know if we'd come up with any any solutions around that. >> Sheriff Burkhead, thank you for the question. No, not really. We haven't come up with any good alternatives to

solve that. And it's it's a little more complicated than transportation and and assignments. It's also the capacity that Meckllinburgg County has to receive individuals. Uh I think we have two in uh two residents on the list right now that could go out to Meckllinburgg County or to um Pit County.

Wake County is not accepting any. So our number is low. We're also on the waiting list at central uh the central regional facility. So, we have options, but it's just about bed space and a few other things that need to be worked out and and and again, we will save some money, but there still will be a cost to the county and to the sheriff's office. So my understanding was a meeting I was in related to the um representative from DHHS who runs that program for the state that there were the two people that were identified that there they were there

was the possibility for them to go to Meckburgg and I'm just wondering around the cost of the transportation is there any way for us to even look at the county helping with that because again, if we're paying over $3,000 a month, I'm just estimating if it's $200 a day or whatever to keep someone then I can't imagine. I I'm just over time I would hope that it would still be beneficial to um you know, for us to figure out a way to pay that transportation cost to whatever we need to do to help address um your needs. But um we also want to make sure for the system to work properly is for those people to be able to go to trial. That's the whole point of the capacity restoration is they then can stand trial and move through the system instead of sitting in our jail.

>> Well, unfortunately I I wasn't privy to the conversation you were referring to with DHS uh secretary. Uh it's >> that wasn't the secretary. It was just the person in DHS who runs that program. >> Have them give me a call so we can talk out some of the nuances that you just articulated because >> could you all follow up appropriately with that?

Thank you. >> Well, they won't have anything to do with that. That's going to be the office of the sheriff. So, we'll have to figure out.

>> I need to pro make sure that you're connected with the person from DHS. That's all. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, >> county manager.

Do do you have any uh comments on this transportation cost and facilitating this sort of thing? >> Yeah, this >> I mean we're talking about two people. >> Sure. Uh let us and we talked about this um briefly in the previous work session and um this is something we're following up on and so as the sheriff says there are some

nuances and so we let us get back with you with a written response in a couple of weeks to say what the path forward will be whether it's moving forward or something different. It's just one that we've not fully fleshed out. Is Does that work? Okay, Sheriff.

>> No, absolutely. Okay. It It's worth noting that we're talking about a very small segment of our population. Right now, we do over 2,000 transports annually.

And so, this is a just a a a pebble in the in in the ocean of transport and things that we do. We have we have the quick snaps uh snapshot of the statistics. >> So we are in the process of working on the statistics for the supplemental budget book. Looking at the numbers last week in combination with the transports between different courouses to the hospital and the obviously transports we

have spent about the equivalent of 10 and a half FTEEs doing transports during the last fiscal year. Over almost 1,800 hours of just deputies sitting at the hospital people who are in hospital here in Durham providing security. Over 18,000 hours just doing transports. So when we talk about just two small individuals, we spend an enormous amount of time transporting people throughout the state of North Carolina.

Those IVC transports go to the mountains in Morgan, also to Jacksonville. So it's really a much larger capacity issue and those duties are performed by detention officers overnight. We have about four or five deputies who work regular business hours and then we have patrol deputies supplementing overnight as well with hospital security. So, it's more of a capacity issue. So, yes, those two individuals there, but we're serving probably hundreds more doing transports throughout the year.

Okay. Um the next item is 26 0209. This is approve and authorize the manager to execute documents conveying a nonexclusive easement to Duke Energy over the county's property at 1211 Shiloh Glenn Drive to provide electricity to the county's new Shallow Glenn lift station. The next one is 260231. 7 and authorized as a manager to approve

subsequent change orders within the project budget. Okay, commissioners. Um that that concludes our consent items. >> All right.

Is there any other questions about the consent items? Okay, moving on to our discussion items. We have a few here. Um so the first one was the departmental uh proposed planning development department fiscal year 27 work program.

Okay. On the agenda we have 20 minutes aotted. Is that enough or Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Good morning, commissioners. I'm Sarah Young, uh, director of planning and development department. I've got with me assistant director Bo Derrinsky. Um,

here, uh, in case there's some really tough questions that I can't answer. So, um, I wanted to just walk through, you know, this is an item that we bring to you all every year as part of the interlocal agreement. We provide a proposed annual work program. Uh this year's work program like many years includes uh kind of three parts.

There are ongoing uh mostly development review related activities. Um there are uh uh procedural things that we must do by the virtue that we have zoning in the state of North Carolina. And then there are kind of the discretionary projects. These tend to be our long range or community planning projects.

Those are the things that tend to change yeartoear. This year the work program has uh a number of items carried over in that last bucket, but it also has a few smaller new ones and I just want to highlight those for you all. Um the first is a last year we completed the Walltown small area plan. There are a

number of action items in that plan and if we're able to secure funding we will work on the first of those which is to close a series of uh paper streets. The second is a natural resource protection overlay research project. This is a topic that came up a lot during the comprehensive plan. It's something that we talked about uh to some degree during the development of the land uh development code which is the new UDO.

And so we want to be able to do a little more research into these type of overlay districts, figure out the pros and cons, how one may potentially work for us here in Durham County. Um and then you know we will present that research to joint city county planning committee to give us further direction. We also have had uh on and off the work program a tree canopy assessment analysis that was taken over last year by the city's general services department their urban forestry division. That analysis is nearly complete. So now it's time for the

planning staff to take a look at those results and see how that jives with our comprehensive plan goals for tree cover throughout the entire jurisdiction, city and county, and to make recommendations about how we may need to adjust our development regulations to make sure that we can meet um our intended goals. So now that we'll have some data, we can kind of fine-tune our standards to make sure that we're eventually getting there. Um we will also as part of that take a look at comprehensive plan policies to see if any of them also need to be updated um to reflect uh what we learn from that. The kind of fourth new thing is a bofilic bofilic cities metrics.

So this is the city last year uh approved a resolution to become a biophilic city. that program uh requires monitoring of a set of metrics and so this is preparing the baseline for those metrics. We are not the only department involved but we are the lead department in compiling

those. We also are reviving our urban design studios program that is a program that we had for many many years. Uh it is one where community members um business entities anyone really can ask for assistance from us in kind of reinvisioning a space. So whereas small area plans think about bigger areas of the community, whole neighborhoods, uh etc.

These this program can look at like individual sites. Um and in the past we did quite a number of these. So, we're excited to to bring this back um and and see what our what our next one might might look like. And then the last thing that's new, although it's not really it's something we've been talking about for a long time, is implementation of clarity, which is our new uh permitting software. As you all know, we function with a software called Land Development Office, which has a a very uh antiquated 2007 vintage to it. And in the world of

software that is really old and outdated. So we're excited that um Clarity will allow us to be uh much more efficient, improve our reporting, but it is also pretty time inensive in terms of staff resources to implement and deploy a brand new permitting system. So those are the highlights of what's new in the work program. We're here and happy to answer any questions or dive deeper into anything.

>> All righty. Commissioners, um, any questions or comments the work program? Uh, Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. >> Oh.

Oh, I'm sorry, Commissioner. >> Yeah, no worries. I just want to say thank you for this. Um, you know, I like the I the work plan around Bragtown.

I was driving through there. I was at the Braggtown Library um a few weeks ago and the talk about the sidewalks and then I end up driving through to see um okay what are they talking about? Ellen showed me on the map where there were no sidewalks,

things like that and then I just drove around the community to get an idea of okay what's going on here. I haven't really been in Bracktown in a while. So I'm glad to see something that there is a small area plan to figure out how can we improve make improvements to that area. So just wanted to give that comment.

Thank you >> Commissioner Commissioner Stephen Valentine. >> Yes. Yes. Thank you, Chair.

So with respect to the Walltown small area plan, I know we've been talking about that um for a number of months. Is there is any development on the what the potential funding towards this? >> So the the plan you know was completed last year. We there are a number of action items. So the only funding that we're talking about uh for this coming work program is just to essentially to hire a surveyor to do the survey work that's needed to close those alleys. Um as you know in the plan there was a lot of community concern about the state of

the alleys. that kind of become no man's land. Um, and really the desire to uh clean them up and or repurpose them. So, uh, it's I although we put in a budget request, I don't think that is going to materialize.

I think that we're going to have to look at some other creative ways to potentially fund that. Um, so that's why I left it in there. >> Okay. >> Um, because I'm an optimist.

Um, but yeah, we'll we'll look at other ways that we can potentially fund that. >> Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Wendy Jacobs.

>> Um just had a few follow-up questions. Um the natural resource overlay um will that that work be countywide and how how will that be used in in terms of the review process? So this first uh phase is just looking at um it's

envision it as kind of a white paper like what do these overlays do when other jurisdictions use them? What can they do? What could we use it for? So this would not necessarily be going ahead and applying it, right?

But seeing like what that tool does, how we may tailor it to Durham and what our needs are. And then if we get the go-ahehead from joint city county then we would work to u build out those regulations in the ordinance and then look at where it would apply county city you know wherever it makes sense. >> So there's no specific geography with it yet. It's just kind of the >> earliest.

Okay. And then related to the tree canopy the tree survey is that countywide? >> Yes. >> Okay.

Um and also bofilic cities like does that have any relevance to the county itself? >> Um I don't I don't think it does. We can look into um you know it is a program tailored towards cities. my

understanding um we've only been tangentially involved until now but essentially you know the premise is that um while cities tend to displace nature there is a way to um kind of live together with nature even in an urban setting and so there are things that are you know metrics that we have to identify to try and track like how are we doing that um but we can certainly look and see if there's any uh further applicability kind of county on a county level >> um and related to the small area planning. I mean it obviously is very important. Um, I wonder though how we are communicating to our residents about the fact that they are not enforcable like what we saw happen with Northgate Mall and how looking at what's happened with Walltown small area plan where how do you think

that that process has resulted in positive results. I mean, I know one thing is, well, we've identified these paper streets, but now it's like, well, we don't have the funding to implement it. So, I just wondering what are your thoughts on ways that we could strengthen the role since we're investing so much in these plans and seeing what's already what are lessons learned or just moving forward with them. >> Yeah, that's that's a really good question.

I will say kind of to your very first point, we do share throughout our whole engagement process with residents kind of what the limitation of any kind of visionary plan is that it's not regulatory, that it can't, you know, compel certain things to happen. Um, so we are upfront with residents about that and explain that throughout the process. Um, we don't want anyone to be, you know, surprised thinking that a plan can do something that it cannot. Um I think with uh the Walltown small area plan

there, you know, we have been able on the staff side to leverage it and meet with um the developer that has a pending development application right now and try and work to, you know, at least uh get a better outcome that is more in line with the small area plan than had the small area plan not existed. So I do think that's a positive. That's not something very public that the average person would see, but we on the staff side see that there's value to that, right? It gives staff a little bit of leverage to have those conversations with an applicant.

Um well, I'm glad to hear that that you are able to to use that. That's really good to hear. And then related to um the heritage communities and the inventory of local historic districts, do you do our annual report on that? Do I forget how do we like at least that comes to us

in some form? >> Yeah. So both the city and the county are what's called certified local governments under the state of North Carolina's historic preservation program. And as part of that, the joint historic preservation commission, which is a city county commission, has to file we we file it a uh report with the state.

It's called a CLG annual report that doubles as the annual report for the historic preservation commission. So you get that with your board and commission reports. That's why, if you'll recall, it has a weird format that's not normal, and that's because that's the statemandated format. Um but yes, we are required to track all activity related to um all historic identified designated historic resources.

>> And then just related to the heritage communities like just a list of them or any new ones or do we actually get anything like that yearly? >> Um we don't. But we do. So we've had um

one designated so far which is >> Merrick Moore. That's right. I was like I was thinking I had Bragtown in my brain but uh Merrick Moore. We're working on a second one which is Orange Factory.

Um and so that one since it's in your jurisdiction that one will come to you all for designation. Um when we uh did Merrick Moore uh there was we did a little event. So we'll be coordinating with you all um to make sure that we can do something special to celebrate that. Um we are I think there I heard from staff there was maybe another one already in the queue after that.

Um but it it really has been a very positive program. I will say people really like being able to highlight the history of a community without the burden of the regulations that come with traditional kind of preservation designations. And I'm sorry, Commissioner, did I miss a part of your >> No, that that's >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

Yeah. >> Yeah. >> That's great. Okay. And then my last question is great to see the urban

design studio. Could you talk about what you really hope you know because we can't require a lot of people get frustrated with the way things look um new construction and some of the infill that's happening. Um could you talk about and we're not allowed to require that anything related to design by state law. Um but what are you hoping that that will become or how how do you hoping that will work?

>> Yeah. >> In terms of the impact. >> So I will say this is this is a program that has kind of smaller more specific impacts, right? Um and they're sight by sight. When the program ran previously, you know, we were able to do things like uh get the property owners around the Holland Street Mall to agree to what changes would or wouldn't happened in in

Holland Street. Um and kind of a set of design standards that we all agreed to. You know, the city had an interest. Um but the adjacent building owners also had an interest.

So it's a voluntary thing like we you know we cannot impose standards but when we have uh community interest in something and we can talk to property the relevant property owners and get them to come on board and have this kind of collaborative design session where we you know they don't have to pay you know to have someone help them think through a design. We do that for them and hopefully in return they kind of agree to implement what we come up with. Um, so I think it'll be a series of smaller interventions interventions. Why is that word so hard today?

Uh, that hopefully will be meaningful. >> All right. Hearing no other discussion. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. The next item on our agenda

um looks like the approval of the freeze and Nicholas um contract amendment for engineering services for Triangle wastewater treatment plant expansion study. >> Good morning, Commissioner. >> Good morning. Thank you, Monica.

Um, so this is um just going to be like a short presentation to give you an overview of where we stand with this contract as we're bringing it back to add funds for the the next task moving forward. So, so the purpose of this study was um we needed to to look ahead and do some strategy planning um as we're looking at the demands that we're going to see in Research Triangle Park and the surrounding areas. And so, um we're

expected to grow as zoning in some areas are changing. So what we had seen in the park in the past was there was these large campuses um your GSK's and and that type. But over the years um that is all now changing to multiuse. So a lot of these campuses now have changed where there's businesses, there's residential and so this is changing um how much flow and stuff is going to start coming to the Triangle Wastewater treatment plant.

Um, so we need to start looking at how we're going to support all of this growth as far as not treating the waste, but actually getting it to the plant. Um, we discharge to Northeast Creek, which is a tributary to Jordan Lake. And so within, um, Jordan Lake, there's a lot of, uh, nutrient load requirements. And so the Triangle wastewater treatment plant many years ago, about 20 years ago when the plant was expanded, actually took on um the Jordan Lake nutrient limits at the time that had

been established even um because we could meet them with a new plant. So we took on very um low limits and we've been meeting those for the last 20 years. So phase one of the study, which is currently what we're in and what the current contract is for, um we looked at previous data um that we had that we've collected over the years and they took the preliminary engineering report we had already had done for phase 4 upgrades. They were looking at our current permits, our industrial users. Um they've went through all of our operation and maintenance manuals and our inspection reports trying to see if there's ways that we can um optimize in hopes to you know be able to take on more flow and meet those limits. Um, so Frieza Nichols developed a study work plan and they submitted it to DEEQ

uh for approval of the project to do Northeast Creek modeling and um the plan did get approved um for the Northeast Creek uh sewer shed. So currently, you know, we're having to meet these low limits. We're not sure right now what the state's going to allow us to do. So, will the state come back and say that we can discharge more permitted flow or can we not where we're currently at? Um so, the second task um that they've been working on is they did field investigations. So, they've had to study Northeast Creek um because they got to determine currently what is the flow velocity, what is the flow capacity that's going into this creek and they have to develop a model and the state will use this model to determine what additional flows that they will allow or they will choose

not to allow. Um they'll update existing models of Jordan Lake to include the Northeast Creek model. So right now um Jordan Lake nutrient strategy rules are also in the works of being passed uh through the state and so we're not sure right now if um EMC's passing those lower limits. So that's going to play a big part in this.

Um and Frieza Nichols will submit the application as they get all the data to DQ asking for speculative limits which will come back and determine whether we get um permitted for additional flow if they say we can't discharge currently where we're at but we could discharge somewhere else. Um and so that's what this study is going to tell us when we can kind of get to the point end of it. So this contract amendment that we're

asking for would be to go into uh phase two which would take on task three and six that was in the scope of services. And so task three is engineers alternative analysis. So they'll look at population projections and they're going to be taking um into account um currently out the land use models and what they could be used for to determine how much population can go into vacant areas right now. They're going to look at um historical data for the development of the design and they're going to evaluate all of our plant hydraulics um to determine if there's something we can change that gives us more capacity or not. um they'll develop treatment alternatives and then they'll give us some engineering alternative analysis and then they'll develop the opinions of probable construction cost and that will lead us at that point to know um what's

going to be in the best interest for the county and we'll be coming back at that point um to show y'all those numbers because a lot of it will depend on can the plant expand currently where we're at um could we discharge charge where we're currently at or will we have to run a discharge line further down into Jordan Lake somewhere? Task six is um request for technical support with the Jordan Lake rules read. Um, so there's a lot of materials and technical comments and with the Jordan Lake rules read there's a lot of um modeling and I'm not a modeler so a lot of the language is um kind of foreign in some aspects. So, um, this will allow them to help come back and tell us exactly if the models are working or they're not and what's in the county's best interest.

Um, they'll communicate any technical and regulatoratory updates and they'll also participate in the stakeholder meetings with Jordan Lake. Phase three will be a uh future contract amendment if we get to that point. So, it's not part of this request of this amendment, but it is in that scope of services. So, if you've read through, you've seen the what we're looking at the future, which would be possible preliminary design and permitting with the state and then any additional studies and applications we may need.

So, that's kind of an quick overview of this freeze nickel contract. Um, some of it may be a little confusing. So, any questions? >> Um, commissioners, um, Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. >> So, I'm chair of the Upper News River Basin Association and I'm very familiar

with what it sounds like we're about to undertake. Um, and this is a huge expense that we're undertaking for Durham County. So to increase the contract um over half a million dollars. Um I guess one of my concerns is when I read the list of related to the modeling um I'm I would like to understand how this is relating to the Jordan Lake the group that is meeting to work around the rules adoption for Jordan Lake.

And I just manager, do we and Monica, do we have anyone from the county serving on the group? Do you know related to Jordan Lake from >> um I believe Ryan Eves serves on that committee. >> Ryan does. Okay. So, we don't have a county commission because >> Well, I'm I'm on the Jordan Lake one.

>> Okay. So, you were doing that. Okay. With Carl.

>> Okay. Or no, Matt. Matt. >> Well, Carl was on there.

Okay. Now, switch over to Matt. >> Okay. Um, so because in terms of the work that it sounds like we're about to undertake, which is to basically model the entire lake, um, that that is the kind I would that's the kind of work that the entire upper news river basin association did and paid for. So what I would like to understand is that how is the fact that we are going to take this on but the city of Durham is part of that you know Orange County I mean there's a lot of other jurisdictions >> right >> are they how is this being coordinated >> so this here is just modeling northeast

creek from where we discharge going down to the um because that will determine if we can discharge where we currently currently do into Northeast Creek. We do are working on forming a larger group right now that I'm working with which is um the upper Cape Fear River Basin and we've been having meetings. I've been meeting with um city of Greensboro, Burlington, Durham City, um Meban. We're all kind of now starting a group and they actually um we had a meeting last week with DQ and some of the EMC members.

Um, unfortunately I was out sick last week, so I missed that meeting. So I'm waiting to get an update on that. But, um, because currently the Jordan Lakes study is not or doesn't appear to be a very

well um, model. And so everyone in the upper Capefir River Basin Association is questioning the model. And so we're looking at forming a group and working with the through the Upper Cape Fair River Basin Association to um kind of stop that from getting passed and let a new model take place. Um we may find out that if we go through and the state will accept the new model, it doesn't change anything for us.

But right now there's the model itself is questionable and so we don't want to accept what the state is saying that model represents um until we know for sure. So um so that's a separate modeling study that we're looking at. Um this one is just for Northeast Creek just for plant expansion and hopefully preliminary limits so we can expand.

>> All right. because I did read through the contract and it mentioned the modeling of it. What I understood when I read through it was it did refer to like modeling the whole lake. Maybe I misunder understood that.

>> Yeah, we would not do that. >> Okay. Yeah. And I I just want to put a a pin in this because of my experience with the Upper News River Basin Association and Falls Lake. It's a very similar situation and it's going to be really important that everyone who's a part of the watershed is working together and collectively contributing the towards the cost of modeling the whole lake. Um, and the other thing that I want to raise because I've also been in meetings since September with DE DEEQ and the EMC in my role is that

unless the current standards around nitrogen and phosphorus change to actually be realistic and representative of the actual usages of the lake, then it we're it's going to be problematic for Durham County, the future of RTP and our whole region. >> And so that's something that it's not mentioned here, but I really want to stress it is that it doesn't matter how much we've spent 10 years studying. Falls Lake spent millions of dollars modeling the lake. We have it's one of the best examples of scientificbased modeling in the entire United States with the collaboratory all these research institutions and you still have the state sticking to

definitions that don't make any sense. 0 and the future of Durham and our whole state because RTP is an economic engine for our state. Um and so I think you know what I'm talking about. So, >> and we and we will probably be bringing back something soon as we're working on um the larger group looking at trying to um get the state to allow stakeholders to have a model redone of Jordan Link. Um because that would be we would have a piece of that to cover. Um as far as the cost for the modeling, um the meeting last week was to even see if the state would even

take the model if the upper C be river basin does it because we don't want to spend the funds and then they say we're not going to accept it >> and right and we've spent again millions of dollars 14 different governments >> and for research that the state should have been doing >> correct >> and instead local governments have had to do it and then they and then they will not even follow >> the data that we have come up So, this is a very serious issue uh between the Falls Lake rules and the Jordan Lake rules because what they the standards that the state is using around nutrients will have an don't make any sense. They're not scientifically based and they will have an astronomical impact on everyday taxpayers in Durham County and every county that's in the

watershed and city as well. So, um I just I'm just for really just for everyone sitting here just to really for all of us to pay attention. >> Thank you, >> Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. We greatly appreciate your comments because those are our concerns as a staff as well is Durham County has been a leader in this space.

As as you and others may remember, our plant was designed 20 years ago to meet or exceed the Jordan the very stringent Jordan nutrient rules before those rules were even promulgated. and we have done so successfully for decades now. Uh due to Stephanie's work over the last five to seven years on optimizing the plant, we're doing even better in that space. And these rules would basically lump us in with others who have not been as progressive and have an incredibly draconian fiscal and operational impact.

And that is why we as a staff felt it important to bring this to the manager uh DCM Jones and to you as a board today for your approval because what you've outlined we see exactly that parallel path you've said of how certain unfunded mandates are being promulgated and put on local governments without the rigor necessary. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Any other comments?

Yeah, Commissioner Valent. >> Uh, thank you, Chair. I I uh share some of the concerns uh raised by Commissioner Wendy Jacobs, and it is a huge expense, but I think it's a a necessary one based on uh the long-term infrastructure needs of our community, specifically in light of the level of growth that that we're experiencing. And so I want to keep that uh in everyone's view as well. Uh my question is you

talked about early in the briefing about uh this impact on not only RTP which is important but also some of the other surrounding areas. So if you can highlight those surrounding areas that could potentially um be impacted. And my second question is with respect to um increasing the existing discharge in in Northeast Creek. Um I know that state has to make their decision whether to allow or or not allow.

Um but like amongst your the staff like what what are they saying with regards to the implications for this just you know even if only anecdotal because I I think I'm correct and we're still doing an analysis of that. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> Um so some of the the surrounding areas would be um outside of RTP. So if you look at the area where um like the CRE facility is located, all of that's outside of Research Triangle Park. And so um so Durham County has sewer outside

of the park kind of going out toward Wake County. We also accept um sewer from some of the city customers. So that's some of the 80%. So coming in from the other side of the plant from city limits, we accept a lot of that waste as well. Um, as far as some of the impacts, you know, if the state came back and said, you know, we're not going to grant you any higher permitted flow discharge currently where you're at. Um part of this study is going to be looking at some of those alternatives which could be I mean you know worst case scenario is you say no more development rate which that is where we don't definitely never want to go um you know other options would be that maybe we would have to run a discharge line further down into Jordan Lake and if we look at

kind of what happened with Western they were required to run their discharge line past Buck Horn Dam um going into Lee County. So then we're looking at a really large expense of, you know, trying to get a line that far. Um and then there's always looking at options of partnerships. You know, would there be a way to partner with the town of Kerry and help pay to have a larger line since they already go that far and we do something, you know, that might be an alternative.

So, this study will also look at those alternatives to kind of see what other options we may have. And Jay may have something else to add. >> I I think Stephanie has covered uh the question, Commissioner Stephen Valentine, very well. I would just note that that we are this project is really a 20 to 30-year project.

We are in the nissent phase right now. That is the reality of this type of project. It is a very long lead

time project due to the environmental rigor, the studies and things that must be conducted. Uh, Northeast Creek is designated a lowflow stream. While there is some current legislation that makes it a little more favorable to discharge to those, obviously that regulatory environment uh is a bit uncertain. And so we are doing these studies to to try and bring some clarity to options because all of these options very candidly will be looking at things in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Western Wake project that Stephanie mentioned back in 2005 2010 was about 300 million or better. And so this is not a a lowcost undertaking. It is not a short timeline undertaking. And so it requires a good deal of rigor on the front end to make sure as best we can in in the current known variables get this right so that we can start planning this this long time horizon in this project with some level of certainty and then

produce reasonable fiscal models as well as construction models uh that to to help our utility, our county and our service uh clients have some predictability going in the future. Uh thank you for that. And so although 20 to 30 years seems like it's a long time, the future actually started yesterday, Mr. Gibson.

And so uh I'm a big believer in being on the right side of history. And I think us preparing accordingly uh is consistent with that thought. Thank you. >> All righty.

Thank you very much. Not hearing, not seeing others wanting to make comment. Thank you so much for this. I guess do we need to approve or this goes to >> we'll come back May 11th >> it comes back.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Next item on our agenda is the adoption of local water supply plan for Rougemont water system.

>> Yes. >> Uh it's 20 minutes. We have 20 minutes associated with this. Okay.

All right. >> Um so a little bit of the background about water system. Um the Rougement residents relied on private wells that were contaminated from leaking underground fuel tanks. So they had unsafe drinking water for over 20 years.

Um so their temporary fixes at the time was they used bottled water. They had filters um that were supplied by the state. So in Durham County um built a public water system in 2016 um to provide a permanent water supply that would be safe. And so um at the time it was built, it was funded through federal and state partners.

And now the county owns and operates the system in northern Durham. Um this is just a map of the contaminated area. So, um what's inside the red there was kind of the plume um

of the contaminants from fuel. And then this showed the actual um needs of the residents of the parcels who needed um water that the county helped when they built the system. So the importance of the system of course is we provide safe clean drinking water for the residents. It helps protect public health.

Um and we're wanting to support community stability and future growth in the area. So currently the system is fully operational. We have 33 customer accounts currently. So 25 residential, five commercial, and three institutional. Um in calendar year 2025, we delivered over 1 million gallons of clean water and um which was a daily average of around 2,800 gallons.

So the local water supply plan is the requirement by NCDQ um as part of our permit. They have to be updated at least every five years. Um sometimes we get requested to do those annually. Uh the purpose of the plan is just to kind of guide a long-term uh water supply plan and so they look out 20 to 50 years and want to make sure that we have enough water to continue to supply those um customers.

And the plan contains current projected water demand, our available water resources, the capacity of the system, any drought responses, conservation measures, and any future improvements. Um right now our future improvements um is in the budget for um FY27. We did request to replace half of the water meters this year are coming up and then we'll replace the other um in FY28. And the reason for the request was to improve the accuracy of the water

measurements. Um over time water meters will um not read properly. So they'll see a reduce in what they read which will make bill and errors and um so the new meters will just help us continue to see what's happening in the plan better and we um the recommended best practice is replace them every 10 to 12 years. So, um, part of this is the water local water supply plan for this year has been submitted to the state and it has been approved.

Um, but once the state approves the plan, then they require that a resolution be signed by the chair of the board to be submitted back to the state and then that just kind of finalizes it for the year. So, this is, like I said, this is usually an annual thing. So, you'll see me back every year with this. Um, and so the plan was attached if you wanted to to review

that. But yeah, this is just to let you know the plan was approved and to get the resolution approved for signature. >> All right. Uh, Commissioner Burton.

>> Yes. Um, only question I had was about Baha. I guess they didn't have these kind of issues. Are the folks in Baha there on wellwater?

>> Correct. >> Okay. Any other questions? Uh, Commissioner Wendy Jacobs, >> I just had a comment since this is a program that started about 10 years ago just for our board.

I I'm really proud of Durham County for this program. Um, this happened because there was, you know, some contaminants leaking into people's wellwater in Rougemont. And this was a great example of our staff going out and getting federal and

state grants to create this water system to protect people's safety and well-being. So, um it just was a great partnership um with the state and federal government. I remember it really well. We were like celebrating drinking the water um up in Rougemont when it happened.

And um and I forget how I know I saw two different numbers, but how many people is it currently serving? I know it's like something like 25 different households. So, we have 33 customers currently. We're permitted um I think we can have up to 42 based on the parcels that was in the the contaminated area. Um so, right now it's uh 25 residential homes I believe and then of course there's a couple of Exxon gas stations um Dollar Generals there and then of course like the Ruran Club and a couple churches. So, have some

people chosen not to um use the system? >> Um, I believe everyone that has a home currently on one of those parcels is one of our customers. >> And just thinking about, can you imagine for people when they might choose to sell their property and not if they didn't have access to clean water would really be a burden for them. So anyway, just uh I want to thank the staff for continuing to run an outstanding system for people in um this area of our community.

Thank you. >> All right. Any other comments? Thank you very much.

We appreciate you. >> Sh. I'm sorry. I didn't see you over there, Commissioner Stephen Valentine.

>> So, just one question. Uh so, I'm a big proponent of sort of preventive and and maintenance schedules. uh being a military man and so you had mentioned uh um about the meters being uh

changed out on the on the schedule. Is that something that's new or is that something that's existed? >> Um so this will be our first time changing out meters um because the system's just now reaching that age where we need to do that. Um but we do you know maintenance all the time as far as you know part of our permit requirements.

Um, and then of course walking the lines, checking the, you know, valves and testing and >> Excellent. So, thank you for your due diligence for our county residents. >> Thank you. >> All right.

This time, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Um, next item on our agenda is to draft fiscal year 27 Durham annual transit work program update.

And after this program we'll do a lunch. Okay. After this uh presentation uh we have 30 minutes aotted for this

um that's presentation and questions. Does that work for you all? Does it work for the commissioners? >> Does that mean both chair?

30 minutes for both >> is we have for the whole item 30 minutes. >> I just want to make sure. >> All right. >> Uh good morning.

Yes, we will try to fit within 30 minutes. Um good morning. I'm Ellen Beckman, uh, Durham County Transportation Director, and I'm here with Brandy Miner, uh, Durham County's transit program administrator and staff working group administrator, um, and Sean Egan, the city of Durham's transportation director. Uh, so we're here today to provide an update on the development of the FY27 Durham transit work program. Um Brandy, you know, presented a longer version of this in April and she will be back in June with the final work program. Um this

presentation today is kind of outside of our process, so you have to listen to me present today. Um so since April, Durham County received a request from the city of Durham to assist with a shortfall in the city's transit fund in FY27. Um, this request is not typical and it kind of occurred outside of the planned work program development process. Uh, the city brought this request to the joint city county meeting in in on April 14th and the city and county staff were asked by the elected officials to consider what could be done given our adopted agreements and policies.

So, we have an update on that today. Uh, we are seeking your feedback on if the city's proposal is acceptable so that we can proceed with finalizing the work program. So, a few u overview slides just for context. Um, you know, the Durham transit plan is a long-term vision for how to improve public transit in Durham County using the countywide halfsent sales tax for public transit. Uh, the

plans required to be approved by the board of commissioners, the go triangle board of trustees, and the triangle west transportation planning organization. Uh the work program is the annual budget for that transit plan and its primary goal is to advance the projects in the adopted plan. Uh Durham County is the lead agency for developing this annual budget. Um the staff working group administrator who is Brandy Miner is responsible for organizing the process, setting the schedule, preparing the document, and presenting it to the boards for approval.

Uh the work program will need to be approved by Durham County and the Go Triangle Board of Trustees. Uh the draft work program was released for public comment uh more than a month ago and it was presented to you in April. Uh so public comment has closed and just real quick, you know, it's a $57 million uh budget this year. Uh the vast majority of that funding comes from the halfsent sales tax and we all are also drawing uh $10 million from fund

balance. uh the as we presented the halfsent sales tax receipts were lower than uh forecasted in 25 and given the economic uncertainties right now we have proposed no growth. Um however even with that uh more conservative revenue forecast uh we are able to fund all of the planned projects in the transit plan and that includes $26 million of additional capital expenditures this year. So these are capital expenditures that are planned in the CIP and we are also proposing to continue to fund all of the operating expenditures that were approved last year and they can continue to to uh be funded next year with a 2 and a half% growth rate. So you know due to careful budgeting you know I do want to emphasize that we are able to continue to fund all of the promised projects. Next slide.

Um the as the operator of the local bus system, Go Durham is receiving the vast majority of the funding at $38 million. Uh Go Triangle is next as our regional bus operator at $16 million. Uh we are funding one new project this year, which is the Durham transit plan update. Uh so this will be led by Durham County staff.

Um our interlocal agreement requires that the plan be updated every four years. Uh the last plan was adopted in 2023. Um also in 2023 we developed a new transit governance interlocal agreement. Uh the inter that interlocal agreement also as uh says that we will review it every four years uh for any potential changes.

Um it doesn't have to be changed but we will review it. Um, you know, we did make many significant changes in governance in 2023 to increase accountability, transparency, and cooperation. Um, some of these

changes have been positive, but we also recognize that there may be additional changes necessary uh to address some of the issues that we've encountered over the last four years. Um we um you know every year that we've presented this work program there's always been requests for uh policies and strengthening policies or um uh adopting policies to improve you know our process. So we do intend to include policy development in that transit plan update. Um we intend to come back in the fall uh with an update on our progress.

So, it's important to recognize that this state law that authorized the halfsent sales tax requires a long-term financial plan for these funds. And so, we do have a financial model that forecasts uh all our planned expenses through 2040. Uh we have a multi-year operating program and a and a multi-year capital improvement program. Um, and

that's critical because it it uh demonstrates that we can um continue to fulfill all of the transit plan promises through 2040. Um there is a fund balance as we presented in April. Uh but that is necessary to ensure that we can uh continue to fund all those projects. Um this you know funding source is being used for annual operating bus operating but it also is the intended uh local funding source for larger capital projects that often take many uh years sometimes decades to develop. Um those larger projects typically require going after federal grants and you know we need to demonstrate that we have the local funding source to compete well for those federal grants. Um so uh we you know we just want to make sure that that's well understood that um there is there is funding set aside for those larger capital projects in the future and I know many of you

guys have been engaged recently on the bus rapid transit vision plan. That's an example of the type of projects that we're trying to make sure that we can continue to fund. Um the the draft work program um has a $15 million low point in the financial model in the future. Our policies require a $10 million minimum fund balance.

So there's approximately $5 million of capacity available to program. So um this year given the financial constraints uh we were limited in what we could consider adding and we uh received direction from the boards in January to proceed with a status quo budget. uh our partners requested that we also prepare a supplemental partner but budget priorities document to highlight other new requests that were not able to be included. Um so that's included in your materials and was presented in April. Um you know so given the city's additional requests we want to recognize that this is in addition to those partner budget priorities that

were presented. Um, as I described in April, um, it is my recommendation that we focus on fully funding our existing projects uh, over operating expansion right now. Um, and that among those budget priorities uh, the paratransit maintenance facility uh would be my recommendation to be prioritized and the future investment income could be a funding source to assist with that funding gap. um it still likely will require additional funding and a coordinated solution with the city.

Next slide. So the the schedule is shown here. Uh this process really began more than six months ago. There's things not on the schedule.

Um and we are at a critical time for making final decisions. Uh the staff working group, which is the four member staff committee that votes to recommend the final work program, um is scheduled to meet on May 20th. Um and in order to

have a document for their consideration, uh we need to make final decisions um really this week. Um the um you know, the staff working group is required to recommend the final work program. Um, now I do want to recognize that the staff working group could uh vote contrary to what's discussed today. Uh, but we are requesting your feedback to prepare a document for their consideration.

And with that, I will turn it over to Sean to discuss the city's um update. >> Good morning, Chair Lee and commissioners. Uh, Sean Egan, the city's transportation director. 2 million. We looked at a series

of potential u cost reduction measures u that could be done but uh even those um would leave a substantial gap. Um and um we also just kind of refreshed on u the proposal to uh u implement uh fair collection. Uh but the direction that we got at that uh from the city council uh was that they were not uh in favor of moving forward with that. 2 million uh gap.

If we go into the next slide. Uh so we looked at all right are there steps that we could take uh as we conclude FY26 and into FY27 to make sure that we're right sizing the budgets uh for the uh services that we can uh feasibly implement and run. And

then are there some uh services that we had planned to implement that could be deferred uh to uh free up funding in that 27 budget. 68 million. Uh but that funding can only be accessed if uh there's an amendment to the FY26 budget which um is is not part of that um that work plan that and that schedule that Ellen just laid out. Um so uh at that point we turned our focus to looking at um services that we'd be um that we were planning to implement in FY27.

m. to midnight. Uh deferring that is 966,000. Uh deferring the route 13 that currently operates once an hour uh gets to

776,000. Uh and then uh taking doing a partial implementation of our North Durham services where we had initially planned to do uh 15-minute service on the full length of both Route 4 and Route 9. Uh we'd be doing uh a modified uh implementation on Route 4 from downtown up to Northern High School in the Old Farm U neighborhood rather than going u to the full uh northern length of it. That's the area where we see uh the most significant ridership and crowding issues.

Uh and then route 9, which doesn't have u as uh severe the severe crowding issues that we're seeing on uh route 4, that would be uh deferred. Um so by restructuring those north Durham frequency improvements, uh that yielded uh 867,000. 6 6

million. Um that uh is uh we've now resubmitted all of our project budget sheets for 27. Um so that funding is available. Um and then Ellen made reference earlier uh to about 5 million of liquidity in the model.

2. 2 be um funded in terms of authorized projects um eligible projects. So, uh, we looked at, uh, our, uh, vehicle replacement schedules. Uh, we have vehicles that we've ordered, some of which will be coming in 27, some of which will be

making progress payments, um, in 27. We have major uh, rehabilitation of vehicles. And then we have uh, equipment, things like uh, electric vehicle charging uh, infrastructure that's needed to support uh, our bus fleet. Uh so all of those projects together uh get us to a little over 5 million.

Uh and then the city's moving forward with a series of uh improvements to uh bus stops and pedestrian access to um to bus stops uh across the Go Durham system. So in the 2017 bike and walk plan uh transit and access to bus stops was a critical factor in prioritizing improvements. So, we're moving forward with a series of projects uh in FY27 that will uh improve uh safety, sidewalk connections as well as crosswalk connections uh to make it safer for uh

our bus riders to get to and from their bus stops. 18 million. 2. That would enable us to close our budget gap uh, for FY27. uh that would uh alleviate the need to raise property tax rates uh which uh was part of that discussion uh with the city council uh during that budget retreat. Uh and it would give us time uh to work with our partners as part of uh the plans for uh the year ahead to uh address uh the long-term structural uh needs that we have uh and to put us on a

strong u financial footing uh going into FY28 and beyond. So, the city's request is uh for uh the the board of county commissioners uh to give us essentially a a thumbs up that this approach aligns with uh the discussion that we had here uh with city and county elected officials on April 14th uh and that you're comfortable uh with us continuing to work toward uh being able to uh close this gap fully. fund uh transit services uh enable uh a a more modest expansion that we'd planned, but we we would still be uh growing our uh 15-minute frequent service network in FY27. Uh and then we'd be uh working to uh ensure sound financial footing uh for the years ahead.

>> All right. Um so the action requested is to provide direction on this final work program to meet our approval deadlines. Um as mentioned we really need to finalize this this week. Um we Durham County staff do not recommend considering any additional requests from any pro project sponsor at this time.

Um we are beyond the deadline for giving any new request adequate consideration and review. So if the if the city's proposal is accepted um as mentioned it does need to be refined to confirm that it fits within the financial model or costs would need to be reduced. Um we have landed on a proposal that would use FY27 funding for FY27 one-time capital expenses. Um and it should not affect any other project sponsors current or future planned projects. Um, you know, ultimately upon with approval of the work program, uh, the the city requests reimbursement through Go

Triangle. And so we it will be up to the city to verify that all those costs will be reimbursed next year. Um, and if if the proposal is not acceptable, um, we do have the draft work program that is still a viable option for approval. >> Can you tell can you say that again?

I didn't hear that last part. uh that the the the draft work program that was presented in April is still a viable option um to continue to proceed with if the city's proposal is not acceptable. Okay. Um questions, comments?

Okay. Go ahead, Wendy. Thank you. Um I just want to get clarification on a few things. Um Sean, the the slide that you showed, can

we go back to that? But be Yeah, that one. I'm a little confused. 68 million what that is right there?

So that is uh for services that we had uh planned to implement in the current fiscal year fiscal year 26. So uh for example we had planned to implement our East Durham service improvements uh at the beginning of the fiscal year in July. Uh because of operational constraints we weren't able to implement those services until November. Um we had also uh been looking at implementing and we budgeted for implementing um the route four and route 9 services uh for 6 months. Um and those uh will not be uh implemented. And so what we did was to look at uh the projections that were made as part of the short range transit plan that was done uh for uh the bus

services. uh that had we also found some efficiencies in how we implemented some of the recommendations coming out of that plan. For example, there was a a proposal for a standalone cross town service between uh the Duke Regional Hospital and the Duke VA campus on Irwin Road. We found that it was more cost-effective to extend the route six rather than implement that as a standalone.

68. However, in order for that total to be recognized in the model, the 26 work program would need to be amended. U so we're looking at other ways uh those those funds will revert

back to the tax district at the end of this year. Uh but the way the model works is that u it is uh required to reflect the appropriated amounts. Um and so that's why we've turned our attention to knowing that that funding will be uh reverting back to the tax district. Uh but for uh all of these changes to be reflected in 27, we're looking at uh 27 savings as well as uh the uh longer range that 5 million that's uh available in the model.

Uh just so that we can proceed with approval of the FY27 work program. uh without the need to uh make changes to 26. >> Okay. 3 million will be available because it hasn't been spent.

Is that what you're saying in operational cost? >> These are all Yeah. operational costs. m.

to midnight on Sunday, the 13 and the four and the 9, all of those would have been implemented in FY27. So, what we're uh recommending is that u we restructure those and defer some of those uh improvements um and then have the 27 work program um refle reflect the the deferral of those those service improvements. >> Okay. 2?

Yeah. 1. >> Okay. 2

where because the county transit plan dollars are not supposed to be used for baseline operations. They're supposed to be used for new or expanding service, not existing. Right? So, that's where we get into that issue.

And then you're you're asking for this one-time funding. I guess the next slide 8 million which is about the equivalent of what you need for the operations um to go from capital. I guess one of my questions is because it was mentioned in the memo that $30 million in capital did not get spent last year. 2 million from the 30 million that didn't get spent? Uh so for the most part that funding is

attached to projects that are underway. So the the biggest example is the uh the derm station project. Um so that project uh has been underway for about a year now. Um because we have uh federal grants on that project.

when we get an invoice, we always draw the federal funds first before drawing the local funds. Uh so we're still drawing down federal funds for that project in 26, but as we look into 27, we're going to need those local dollars to be able to complete the project. By drawing the federal funds first, it leaves uh those dollars in the tax district accounts so that it can generate investment income. Uh another example is uh the uh bus purchases. Uh we just took delivery of uh six uh transit plan funded buses. Um

those are in service now. Uh and so the bulk of that funding has been requested. We just submitted uh on Thursday last week uh our our third quarter requests. Uh so uh and then in other cases uh we've got projects that will be moving forward uh like the Holloway uh transit corridor project.

That project will be moving forward into construction in 27. So, um, even though those funds haven't all been drawn down yet, for the most part, those funds, those appropriated funds, uh, are needed, uh, to advance our major capital initiatives. I just want to note for the record that the rationale that you just gave for why we should not touch those capital funds is the exact reason why we should not use the capital funds in the transit

plan that are allocated for projects like future BRT. So I agree with you and I just want to note for the record that we've heard people say well you can just the money's sitting there for other projects you could just use it and this is the same line of thinking. So um so I just also want to ask like how can we I understand like we're coming being creative and trying to come up with this like one-time solution. Um, and I think like from the county's perspective and for the sake of the transit plan, um, and this is between I guess you Sean and you, Ellen, and the county manager, um, how can we make sure that it's just one time only? Like, can we have anou around that? Can we have a written

agreement around that? I mean, how how do we actually ensure that this is just a one-time thing? >> So, yeah, I would see if the county manager would be willing to share the conversations that she's had with manager Ferguson. >> Well, there are a couple of ways that we could do that.

I mean it it's um how the item is approved that it's one time and it's for capital and it only would be allotted for that one year. So that in itself would show that it would sunset. Um, as Sean has mentioned, the city manager and I have had uh conversations about how we move in this space going forward because there are some some opportunities in how the city, the county, go triangle addresses transit and we have some challenge in that there are operational expenses that are

greater than our ability to pay as well as capital that are larger than originally projected a few years ago. So, um, this is a conversation that, um, we're needing to to have further and I know we talked a little bit about that at the joint city county planning. And so, um, for this item as well as a few others, um, it's a, uh, situation where we may recommend to present a a number or a budget amount with a comma that we're coming back because we need to discuss this matter further. and and so um if we were to move forward with it, it would be denoted as just a one-time allocation if the board chose that route.

>> Okay. Um >> yeah. Um like for for what you might see if this is if this goes forward um in the final work program, it would be a

distinct project. you know, and we can describe have a scope that describes it as a one-time project only for FY27 and then this time next year, we can plan to close it out, you know, so that the funding goes away. Um, so that's just logistically how we would do it, >> right? Okay.

Because from a policy perspective, I certainly wouldn't want to hear, oh, well, we did it before, so we can just keep doing it or do it again. Um, and I'm wondering, you know, related to I know when we're going to do an update to the transit plan, do we have any policy that says that for all capital projects that all partners will be um making ensuring that the projects are eligible for um, you know, make ensuring they're eligible for state and federal funding. ing and

that there will be a cost share. There will also be always be a local cost share for the partner. In other words, that everyone has skin in the game and that we are making sure we are not we are making sure projects are eligible for every possible funding source for these large capital projects. Do we have a policy currently around that?

Uh no, we do not have a policy that explicitly says that. Um we have as a whole like in the transit plan. Um in the past work programs, we have stated um that on projects that there that this is intended to fund, you know, a certain percentage of the project. Um all of the work program projects have an exhibit that outlines um other funding sources.

There's a table in there. So that's how where we document what the expectations are and you know there's a line that says transit plan funding, there's a line that says other funding. So we we

try to to document that. Um it does vary from project to project though. Um we have no overall um policy. >> Well, I'd like to request that that be considered as we update the transit plan.

Um, and then you also suggested in the memo about using the um considering in the future as a way to help fund the city's um uh operations facility the um could you be explicit about that? That's the >> Yeah, the investment income. >> Yes. Thank you.

>> Yeah. So uh presented more on that last um April but just or last month but just to reiterate um >> we do have a fund balance right now and one of the um benefits of the fund balance is that it is generating investment income. Uh I think it was

about 7 and a half million last year. Um since investment income is unpredictable you know and hopefully we are spending the money and drawing down the fund balance. that's what our transplant says we will um you know we we can't make predictions for what that investment income will be each year. So it's not in the model.

It's kind of like a bonus that we uh that we get each year. >> And so uh because we have this we have significant funding gaps in particularly two city of Durham capital projects for the paratransit and bus maintenance facilities. I think they total $68 million. Um that is a potential source to slowly help you know address that gap.

Um you know I can't say that it will fully address that gap. It depends on schedules and how the income comes in. So you know no promises but that is

something that we could we could prioritize for the use of those funds. Um it is you know just generally better budget practice to use those types of um unpredictable revenues for capital projects and not for ongoing operating projects. >> Yeah. So would we need to vote on that kind of thing as a policy going forward if we wanted to designate that for that purpose?

>> Uh I think it would be helpful. Um >> okay >> we could bring something >> okay >> forward. So I definitely would be open to considering that with again the caveat that there would be some policy around that those projects need to have a plan for how they're going to be funded and that there also be um again local city funding involved because I do think it's important um pe projects are going to be better managed if again

everyone has skin in the game. So I I would want to see some plan involved for how they're going to be funded. Thank you. But I'm open to that.

Thank you, >> Commissioner Burton. >> Yes. Thank you. And the reason why I let my colleague go first is because she had all has all the instit institutional knowledge around transit.

And one of the things um trying to wrap my head around with all the things that go on, you have all these different organizations that are involved and trying to make sense of it. 4 $4 million from fund balance to help with our projected revenue and our things like that. So if we you would we

have to pull money from our fund balance to help with this one-time cost or using this investment income to help with this one-time cost. 4 million or will be an additional amount that we will be pulling from our fund balance? How would that work? it it would be an additional amount.

2 million. >> Gotcha. And I think that's why we need to have a policy, right? Because you know if we're thinking about these big scale projects and if we're pulling money like even with the investment income because I can see where that can look like.

Okay, we got this investment income. we could use it for this and okay and then we're not really building our fund balance so we can handle these really big massive projects. How much do we have in our fund balance now

approximately? >> Yeah, it was I think 212 million as of February. >> Yeah. And it sounds like a lot of money but when you have to do these really big big projects it's not a lot of money.

So, I don't want us to continuously go into it to fund like these operating costs and things like that. So, um thank you so much for your presentation. I think we just have to think about what do we do long term to ensure we have these viable transit plans and that we can do the work that we need to do. So, thank you so much, >> Commissioner Stephen Valentine.

>> Uh yes, thank you, Chair. 2 uh million dollar gap. I have some concerns over this being one time. I think we're going to be right back here again next year dealing with the same issue. Um I don't know if anyone else has that reservation um or concern, but I certainly do and

want to share it publicly. Um, I think the elephant in the room is u fair free and I certainly like fair free but the fact of the matter is it's not free. We have to budget for it. And I mean I've sat through several of these briefings and I don't seem to hear anyone um putting forth a plan for how we're actually funding this.

Um, and another concern, one raised by many of our residents through email and uh in the streets uh regarding route four and nine. And so the city's proposal is to take that out uh and kick the the can down the road uh our residents expect us to deliver on what we promised. and they don't make distinctions between the city and the county because I can't uh tell you how many times people have actually said uh Commissioner Stephen Valentine I hold you personally responsible for this which is

part of the job. Um, but with respect to the the plan and the models that are already in place, I'm in line to uh to support that if that's the way forward and if there's a creative way to to to keep those parts of the transit plan on the table and help our partners, I'm willing to to to entertain that. Uh but uh everything that I've heard over the the course of last several months uh leads me to want to support the plan that we already have in place. >> All right, Vice Chair Long.

>> Yeah, just to round that out, I think um I agree with this. I'm glad that during the work plan that part of the thing that you emphasized, Ellen, is going to be those policy pieces because that's something that's come up and I feel like it ties into this very conversation about what are theus to make sure that this isn't a recurring thing. And I know in the meeting that we had um with Chair

Lee and the city council members Cababayro and mayor Prom Cabayro and council member wrist, we asked like what is the way to make this not be recurring? And it would be a city tax rate increase. Um I think it was like one and a half cents was it for like to >> Yeah. It was a little over 1 cent in 27 and then incremental increases in future years.

>> Yeah. And so wanting to know like what is obviously Yeah. revenue nobody wants to increase taxes. So we at the county are dealing with that when it comes to all the areas that we fund. But I think one way or another residents are going to be paying for this uh service and this program. And I think it's important for us to see from the city side what willingness do they have to bring the money forward um within the city's budget because whether they come to the county and ask for that funding is still

coming from residents anyways. And so I look forward to having that conversation through the policy discussions and theus that are written up about the long-term plan from the city. >> Okay. Um All right.

Okay. So, I had a question about uh Go Triangle and how that all fits kind of in I I sit on the board of trustees go triangle and I've been um you know obviously I've been hearing information and they're requesting information as well. Where does Go Triangle's request fit into this? So they what I understand they're requesting the $483,000 to be revenue neutral. That means to take it from like the 31 year, you know, 2031 and spend it now and then work on that

later. Like where where does that fit in? Are you aware? I'm sure you're you're aware of that, of course.

But I just don't know where that fits into all of this. Is that in the plan or is that one of those extra things that uh we're speaking about like we can't really do anything extra? I'm just curious about that. >> So, as uh presented in April, there were partner budget priorities uh things that we that were requested that we weren't able to fit in the draft work program.

>> And so, Go Triangle had several requests. Um two bus operating requests were included there, the route 800 and the DRX. >> Right. Um so uh as as we described then you know the available uh the financial capacity was around $5 million right and we couldn't fund everything. We're asking for feedback on those priorities. Um if if the city's request is acceptable and we use some of that $5

2 $2 million request. It it would not leave funding for other um requests from other partners. Um you know, I I am aware that Go Triangle sent a email to us um late Friday. Um I don't think Brandy or I have had the opportunity to review that in any detail.

So, I'm not prepared to comment on that at this time. Um, you know, as we as we talked about, we do need to make final decisions this week. Um, you know, frankly, I'm disappointed to receive a request so late in the process. Um, it it makes it hard for us to to really adequately consider it um at this time.

So, um, you know, we could always consider that for next year's work program at this point, but you know, it's my recommendation that we that we not consider that at this time. I just I really can't comment on it. And I um if we move forward with this, it does not leave funding in the financial

capacity for those requests. >> Right. Okay. Okay.

Thank you for that. I wanted I just wanted to ask about it um uh to see where that where that fit in and it kind of falls in the category of late requests there. Uh Commissioner Stephen Valentine. >> Oh, yes.

I just have a follow-up question. And so I like to have as much uh information as uh that I need when uh making a a tough decision particularly like this. How much is the city currently designating towards transit? Uh so the the primary source uh is uh property tax.

6 cents right now. Uh I think that yields uh about 19 million um in uh revenues. Those figures are being updated um based on some additional information from the uh tax assessors

office. But I think that was the um that was the information that we shared uh during our budget retreat in February. >> Thank you. I I just wanted to note um it's with the go triangle um submission and as with some of the conversations earlier u I will say about this budget season it is so different than many that we've been through and um as we think through the next several months some of these items we we will um probably need to come back and think about them further um as we look at the region and the county and the city etc. Um but um to your point chair I know that's important and and I would offer that this is uh not the end of the story but we have time to come back and discuss these matters further.

>> Okay. Thank you. Go ahead commissioner Wendy Jacobs. Just to follow up on Commissioner I mean vice chair Alam and Commissioner um Stephen Valentine's questions about the the way the city's funding mechanism.

Um so there is the opportunity to have it to add to that additional designated tax just for transit. Yeah. And honestly looking at what the future may hold, if there is going to be any consideration of a designated um increasing the designated portion for transit, this would be the time to consider it. >> Okay.

All right. Okay. So, this was for information, I guess, or do we or it's moves to I mean, I know you have to make

a decision this week. I'm not sure what what do we do here. >> I mean, we we would like to have an understanding of what you you would like to see in June in terms of the city's proposal. >> Okay.

How do we >> the long-term strategy of the city? >> Uh, no. No. Really just what um what we include in the final work program for FY27. 2 million of capital onetime capital expenditures um and the corresponding necessary decreases to make sure it it it um can be accommodated in the financial model. 2 million

>> I don't know. Sorry. >> Go ahead. Go ahead.

>> I'm not I'm not sure if my my uh my comments were clear on on where my position was, but to the extent that uh the things the way that they are, I wouldn't be in supportive of that. And so if somebody can come back and and you know give me some additional information that has as to how we get to yes with the inclusion of uh 409 but and I mean the way things are status quo. So the answer I guess that would be no. I'm open to um the this one time uh approach with the caveats that I mentioned around um policy agreements and some um ensuring that this is just a understanding that this is a um dealing with a crisis but I also

think there needs to be serious consideration. I mean, as again, Vice Chair Lom mentioned, um, what is going to be the strategy to for the city to increase their funding for transit and to not be reliant on the Durham County transit tax as their primary source, it's obviously the majority, I think out of this budget, um, I think it's like 38 million. Is that right? that so the majority of the transit funding is going transit tax is going to the city but there needs to be obviously that's not enough so um I think also commissioner Burton was alluding to this there needs we also need to understand what is the city's plan for funding capital and operating on an ongoing basis >> for the baseline operations >> commissioner Bertha >> I am willing that we do this one time

and agree with my colleague, Commissioner Alam, Vice Chair Alam, that the city there has to be some type of long-term plan around transit. And I totally get what my comm um colleague Commissioner Stephen Valentine says um that there has to be some tough discussions with regards to transit about how we decide about what's funded, but I'm willing that we use one-time money to fund these projects and that there's something in writing or that this is just one time. So, Yeah, I think for me when you guys come back in June, it's that commitment from the city side u and I know they're going to pass their budget um before probably before or right around the time that you guys are coming back to us. So seeing that even within this budget cycle of their commitment to not have this be a

recurring request from the county next year. >> Okay. And I think my my feelings towards this is probably closer to Commissioner Stephen Valentine's than than not. Um um I've said this a few times in our conversations that I'm not convinced that this is a one-time ask.

I'm just not. 2 million now, like it's going to continue. I think it's I think it's going to continue with and there's no it doesn't feel and I could be wrong about this doesn't feel like there's adjustments f uh fiscally on the city side to make changes um every time I mention something previously is oh we can't do that community we can't do that we can't do that well if we can't make any changes fiscally it's going to be the same same thing and

you We talk about affordability, but um we we can't we can't burn the candle at both ends. Like we can't raise t continue to raise taxes and then continue to say we need affordability like like something's got to give. We we can't do do it on both sides here. So, um, uh, at the moment, uh, I'm just not convinced that it'll be a one-time, uh, one-time thing.

I think I think just like Commissioner Stephen Valentine said, I think we're going to be here next year with the same thing because I don't I don't see any changes to make it not um to make it sustainable. So, um I think the the the the feeling of the board is is clear that we go forward with the one time with the planning of the one-time thing for June. But, um

right now that's that's because the majority of the board has expressed support for it. Um, but in order for me to support it, you know, or vote for it or going forward, you know, I need to be assured that there are changes fiscally um changes fiscally on the city side to make it sustainable and make and to guarantee that this is a one-time ask. I'm not convinced of that just yet. >> Okay.

So, I think you have your um your orders. >> Thank you very much. Okay. So, we're going to we're going to do a working lunch.

Is that okay? Or is that fine with you all? Okay. I'm going to have to leave about tw 1220, but uh get us back started.

So, let's take a 15 minutes to get your food. Is that okay? Yeah. 15 minutes, get your food. We'll get back in here at 12:15 and then

we'll get back started. Thank you all. We're at recess.

back. It is 12:15. Well, just about 12:15. We're going to go ahead and get started to keep track keep time here.

We for our next item is the Durham County early childhood update. Yeah, early childhood update. And I'm just going to make sure we know how much time we have allotted here. We have 40 minutes >> for you allotted and that's with discussion as well.

Is that enough for you? Is that Are you okay with that? >> That should be that should be enough depending on what you all have to say of course. >> Okay.

All right. That works. I'll turn it over to you, Donna. >> Thank you.

Good afternoon, commissioners. I'm Donna Rewalt. the county extension director and I'm here with Iliana who is our county early childhood coordinator. She will carry uh most of this uh this presentation today and I will start us off uh just as a reminder this is an annual presentation

we make kind of giving you an update on the work around early childhood um and some benchmarks that we've been tracking over time. Our agenda today includes a little background on um the role, the early childhood action plan, the needs of Durm County families, our past early childhood initiatives and outcomes, some emerging initiatives, and then future concerns and opportunities we have for early childhood, and then an opportunity for you all to ask questions and provide input. So, some of you are probably aware and some of you may not be that we actually uh as a as a board of county commissioners, you all started this position with community support following um an early childhood task force movement asking the county to do more in this area and that was in 2019. And around that time in 20 early 2020 we hired our first uh early childhood coordinator and that coalesed with the creation of the early childhood action plan which that initial coordinator helped manage. Um and then in 2024 we began managing through the role and

through cooperative extension managing the Durham prek contract. Um and our current approach uh with this work and this role is both facilitating internal countyf facing and external community coordination of early childhood initiatives. And we also support county leadership and you as as county commissioners um advice on early childhood issues as needed. Um and of course we do manage that $8 million contract with Durham PreK and ARPA contract with um Durham public school supporting preK Marie Massber and contracts with early childhood supporting organizations that we'll talk about later as part of that ECAP investment that you all have made.

So I'll let take it from here. >> Yeah, just beautiful. Um oh, I'll go back one. So the early childhood action plan um was I I encourage everyone who is not already to read it. It was really created as a community grounded document and it centered the voice of parents, caregivers, community members. Um and

there was also broad participation of agencies around Durham that support young children and their families. Um, originally the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services created their own early childhood action plan and Durham sought to create their own local plan. Um, we were the first county in the state and now other counties have have followed our lead. Um, it's very broad in spo scope.

So, um, it focuses on maternal and child health, early care and education, family support, and meeting basic needs of families. Obviously, each of those could be its own presentation. Those are those are significant um areas. But one thing that I really want to think about is um one community member who helped write the ECAP told me think of it as a framework both for eliciting community recommendations and seeing the community's priorities for collective action. Um and also a set of standards. So how do we align the goals of our community that these people raising young children and caring for young

children have set as their priorities? How do we align those goals with community action? So, that's something that we've tried to do in um making community decisions and investing in early childhood programs and activities. And I will just share a success story.

So, the original ECAP was created in partnership with Durham Children's Initiative. They were the contractor. where they devoted a lot of time and energy um and directly inspired by the ECAP which had a great deal about peer navigation. Families were really seeking that experience.

Um they became a pilot site of the pediatrics supporting parents program and as you can see now from the PSP website they are a national proof point community. So they are using the governance structure of the Durham Early Childhood Action Plan to guide this national initiative. Now they are modeling it after Durham. So we really set the example for them which is really exciting. And that team that implemented

PSP as well as a few of the remaining folks from DCI have now formed a new nonprofit organization called Thrive Family Health and Education Center. So, I really wanted to highlight them as a concrete success story from the ECAP to look a little bit at the needs of the young children and their families in our community. I thought this um report card that comes from NC Child did a really nice job of summarizing some of the needs that families have in Durham. I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone might have about specific data points, where they came from.

I'm also happy to tell you where Durham ranks versus the state overall. Um, but I did and and I'll note that this report card is attached to your agenda item so you have it as a reference. Um, but I did just a few things I wanted to highlight is um, receiving early prenatal care. We are a bit ahead of the state.

9. So that's something to highlight. Um, we're

9% of babies born pre-term in Durham. That's a bit higher than the state average. 4% of families raising young kids are below 200% of the federal poverty level. And when you think about the costs for paying for basic needs for children like diapers, when we think about the cost of child care, that's quite a high number.

So, um that's something that we really want to think about. Um our teen birth rate is a bit higher than the states overall. In a little while, I will highlight some of the organizations in Durham who are doing work in that area um to support our young parents. And then in addition to these statistics, which I will let you look over um at your own pace, I do think it's important to be forecasting what's happening with SNAP and Medicaid. I won't make too many points about SNAP

because the food security coordinator is right after me. Um but I will note that as of March of this year, about 17,000 adults in Durham County were enrolled in Medicaid because of Medicaid expansion. And we know that many of them are probably parents and many of them may be childare workers or others in the early childhood system. And we know that parents and caregivers of young children are exempt from some of the work requirements that came down from the federal government in HR1.

But we also know that there's when guidelines change when there are administrative um hurdles that it can sometimes result in people losing coverage even if they may still be eligible. I also just wanted to share an anecdote that one of our community partners shared with me, refugee community partnership, who said that when um agencies are making decisions about refugee resettlement, they know that because Durham is an area that's very rich in um medical resources. They will sometimes resettle medically fragile children in Durham

knowing that we have a lot of resources for them but also knowing that these are families who may have a lot of needs and we know there were changes to eligibility with HR1. So we want to keep those families in mind. Um these were projects that were funded in the previous fiscal year. So, the previous early child care coordinator reported about these projects last spring and I wanted to um just give you a little bit of data that we were able to get from those investments and see some of the highlights.

So, first um Diaper Bank supported the distribution of 140,000 diapers, which is a pretty astonishing number. Um, what's amazing about the North Carolina Diaper Bank is that they were the first diaper bank in the country to conduct their own research about diaper access. And I'll just share that um, the families who receive diapers and other essential hygiene supplies from them, they say 62% feel happier, 61% can spend

more money on food, 43% perceive their children are happier, 28% perceive their children are healthier. So when we think about meeting basic needs for families, it allows them to focus on the other needs of their children because their needs are being met. Um they also have some some really touching stories about the families who they have been able to reach with diaper access. Um Mameay has been serving an average of 50 pregnant and postpartum individuals with their first foods program.

So they were getting fresh produce, nutrition education, breastfeeding support and parenting support groups. HARTs, as I mentioned, um we want to help our pregnant and parenting teens in Durham County, and HARTS gives them intensive case management, group education, essential baby supplies. They also will help them meet emergency needs for things like child care, transportation, food, even housing. And then when we think about early relational health for our youngest children who are entering care, um, Exchange Family Center has a

program called ECHKO and they reached 484 children with social emotional education toolkits. So they are helping our educators become more informed about early relational health and also their parents and guardians and their teachers. when we move more into the space of people learning in the community. Um the ECAP implementation funds help book harvest or distribute 259 ready for school guides and backpacks.

So tiny children, big backpacks, very cute. Um helping them with a transition to kindergarten and also helping give services for families to learn about how to be advocates for their children, how to be really involved in the school system. Um at El Centro, funds were used. They did an early literacy class for young children at El Centro. Um, parents are finding that their kids are showing skills in early literacy, getting more on the path to be successful in kindergarten and later in school. They also educated preschool age

children while their parents were getting their own education. So, adult literacy programs, adult workshops and courses. families moving forward, our emergency shelter for families in Durham. We were able to support them with ECAP implementation funds and they helped those families meet their basic needs, but they also were able to give enrichment workshops.

So, helping parents and children um build emotional health and regulation through art therapy. Finally, Refugee Community Partnership provided 839 hours of multilingual support to families who are navigating new systems. So places like schools, places like health care settings, um and they also are able to digitally distribute resources to families which helps expand their reach a lot and also help some of the institutions in Durham do a better job of reaching those families. Um I also want to note that we in as a county made significant ARPA investments in organizations supporting young

children and their families. Um these projects were method were managed by the ARPA office and many of them have concluded now but again attached to your agenda I have some key points of data from that and the ARPA office is also available to talk about some of the impacts of what they were able to invest. So now these are the investments that are happening right now. These are the contracts that we have signed with community partners in the current fiscal year.

And so I'll look forward to at our next presentation giving you the data on the impact of these funds. I will note that none of these are new. We are building on previous work, both the ECAP implementation funded work and the ARPA work. Um, and we have amazing organizations doing amazing work.

We're continuing to fund Diaper Bank. Um, one program of theirs that I'd like to highlight is their essentials hub. So they already distribute a lot through community partners. Welcome baby who shares our building obviously distributes their diapers and supplies but they also travel to meet people

where they are. So they are distributing supplies in Durham housing authority communities through their essentials hub and it's a it's really been a lever for them to build relationships in those communities and help connect them with other services. Um we are still supporting our our pregnant community members, our new babies. So hearts I already highlighted them a little bit.

One program of theirs that I'm really excited to be funding now is their participant interns. So they are training and empowering these young people to um giving them job skills, giving them paid work and they are many they are hiring many of them from within. So their staff now consists of pro former program participants which I think is so amazing. They also started a program just for teen fathers this year.

So that's a new population that they're able to reach. We're still focused on early relational health and mental well-being for our youngest community members. So, Exchange Family Center, again, Welcome Baby we

have is an amazing county resource. And there are some um families and children who have higher needs. They may have been exposed to trauma. They may have um behavioral concerns, emotional concerns.

And so, Exchange Family Center is able to provide them and their families with a variety of types of therapy for free to um help catch them up, help get them back on track in terms of their milestones, reduce the risk of abuse and neglect. Um and then early literacy, you probably recognize those book harvest logos and boxes. So we are continuing to support their kindergarten readiness work and they are also this year teaming up with early years to promote Durham prek. So they are helping families with the transition into public school and kindergarten but also with the transition into public prek and helping um in connection with Durham prek. Reach out and read is another organization that's supporting early literacy. They are in our Duke primary care settings and they are really

focused this year on improving the experience of medical residents who are training. So everybody's learning. The children and their parents are learning. They're supporting their literacy.

And these new medical residents are learning about early relational health. They're learning about the needs of family. They're learning about literacy. So it kind of benefits everyone.

Refugee community partnership. We already discussed the work that they're doing with their community. They're continuing with service navigation and ThriveNc as I mentioned earlier um the new organization built from previous DCI and pediatric supporting parents they are supporting the nurturing Durham website and helpline. So Nurturing Durham is a central repository in Durham.

So families who are navigating a really complex landscape of maternal health, infant health, early childhood, early relational health, maybe their child is expressing some needs. Maybe they're noticing that they have a new diagnosis for their child and they don't know where to go next. Um, that Nurturing Durham website has had an 18%

increase compared to the previous year and a 62% increase in prior compared to 2024. So, it's clear that this is something that families are finding and they're able to utilize and look out later this summer for a targeted maternal and child health and early relational health awareness campaign. So, the goal will be to make sure families know that this is a central spot for them to help meet their children's needs. Um, and most of the services that they highlight are low and no cost.

Breastfeed Durham, I don't um know if any of you had a chance to attend their families expo yesterday. It was a resource fair and pregnancy expo. So, Breastfeed Durham has really been focusing on highlighting familyfriendly businesses. They are doing business outreach going doortodoor and finding businesses that um support breastfeeding and general familyfriendly policies. Um they are also installing lactation spaces in businesses all around Durham so that babies can get

that first food that they need and families can feel comfortable feeding their babies that way in Durham. Um, and as we discussed, we know mental health and well-being is so important, particularly in that perinatal period. And so, they are coordinating with the Durham County ACEs and resilience coordinator to share mental health resources. At the same time, they're sharing those resources about having a family-friendly workspace.

Finally, we are funding community-based participatory research. So, ESLA, Immersion for Spanish Language Acquisition, has been doing community-based participatory research, training parent leaders for years. So, these are parents who speak multiple languages, and they are surveying, conducting focus groups, doing photo projects with families of young children. They have done a number of projects um about navigating early childhood, about navigating special education, and now they're doing a project on food insecurity and how these parents of young children are having those experiences and how language

barriers may play a role in that. So, we're very excited for them to share their resource their research as a resource to the county. They've already presented a partnership for a healthy Durham. We are going to connect them as we do our county food security assessment.

And um the fact that they are empowering this population of parents and getting data to inform our community to help us do better work is really exciting. Obviously, families of young children are are facing some concerns that I've already alluded to in the presentation. So, we have risks of parents and caregivers as well as children losing Medicaid, losing SNAP. 4% of these families of young children are already low income. So those costs are hitting them hard. Um the infant and maternal health data as we discussed are showing concerning trends and child care supply,

staff affordability and quality are always going to be in the front of our minds when we think about having a healthy workforce. we need to also have child care available. This data was shared by Early Years. Um, so thanks to them for being both our Durham PreK contractor and our child care resource and referral agency.

What they're finding is that 73% of Durham children under six have all parents working. So whether it's single parent household, multiple parent household, and families are consistently seeking care that they're having a hard time finding. Some of this is geographical. So, we know RTP surrounding growth corridors.

We're hearing increased demand with limited nearby supply. We're also hearing about some gaps in northern and rural areas. Um, and family childare homes might be very appealing particularly to families with younger children. It's a smaller setting.

They can sometimes be more flexible with hours um with pricing and those are closing at a much higher rate. child care costs. Um, again, thinking

4% of these families are low-income, the cost of infant care has risen by 27% in the past 5 years, an average of $1,319 per month. Three-year-olds not far behind, an average of $1,123 per month. Again, that's a 26% rise in the past five years. ARPA projects were recognizing and focused on this need.

4 million for child care scholarship payments. It was really reaching families in the gap where their income may be slightly too high to qualify for a state subsidy but still well below the county average income, well below the income at which child care would be affordable. Um so that had a big impact um on reaching those families. There was also an investment building the business side of child care which helped particularly for family child care homes and for smaller centers serving um kids who were

receiving those subsidies. So trying to help build capacity of child care locations. And then of course we had our DPS title one investment that allowed for um operational expenses to get moved around to allow for supporting more prek. I wanted to share some family quotes about their experiences with the Build Babies Durham scholarship.

So um families were able to save. Families were able to increase their own education, increase their own ability to be a higher earnner in the future, be able to invest in their family. Families also were able to pay other bills, other basic needs, car payment, electricity, water, student loans. So it had a big impact. Of course, um I want to follow up on Durham PreK, knowing that um Durham PreK was something that really you all helped build. So, the task force was established both with resolutions by the

board of county commissioners as well as the city. And um the goals of Durham PreK was that it was universal because we know that programs that are universal tend to have higher quality and better outcomes rather than just reaching the kids from low-income families. They've always included family engagement, kindergarten readiness, and they've also had capacity building built in, knowing that having a workforce and having high quality experienced teachers was a big part of what would make this successful. And obviously, you all have continued to invest in the program.

We um the original goal by that original task force that created Durham PreK was to reach 75% so close to universal knowing that there would always be some families who would want their children home or in another setting. Um and we are right at 42% and have stayed fairly consistent for the past few years. I won't go into this because early years already presented it at the budget retreat, but obviously we are really

excited to see the measurements of quality coming out of Durham PreK. So we can see that more than 90% of kids are at or exceeding developmental expectations at the end of the school year and that is setting them off on a positive a positive trajectory towards kindergarten and further schooling. And we know that retaining experienced and skilled teachers is a big piece of what helps them to reach those milestones. This is also a duplicate from the budget retreat.

So just a reminder of the gaps in funding for Durham PreK for the upcoming school year recognizing the ARPA investments that had been made. One success story from Durham PreK. As I said, they invest in the workforce and something that they have been able to add is a pre-apprenticeship. So, they have helped folks work towards their associates degree. Then they went even earlier in the work trajectory and they helped folks work toward their apprentice and now they're helping

people start at the very beginning with kind of a child care academy. So things like CPR and first aid training, getting the North Carolina early childhood credential, and they have had enormous numbers of applicants for this. So it's really excited to hear that people are still recognizing what a rewarding, enriching job this is. And they're also having more teachers of languages other than English enter the workforce, which is also exciting.

So kids can have teachers who um are able to connect with them in that way. Um, currently they have 44 registered apprentices and to date they've had 16 program participants newly hired, an 87% course completion rate for fall 2025. So the fact that they're giving educators the support, helping people enter the workforce, helping them with classes um is working. Um 24 early childhood certificates earned. Um some areas of opportunity that I see ahead that I wanted to share. um collaboration between coordinators.

Obviously, I'm here with the food security coordinator. We know that families really um their needs don't exist in a vacuum. So, all of the commissioner created coordinators are trying to have our work complement one another and make sure that we know what one another is doing. Um we also are all coordinating with the benefits access coalition recognizing the value of Medicaid SNAP and WIC to families as well as um some of the tax created programs.

So tax credits, saving accounts. We want to make sure that families have everything that they can, everything for which they're eligible to maximize their economic security. Um we will continue to use the ECAP to leverage partnerships and funding. As you've heard, it's being used as a national model.

We are exploring private sector supports um particularly for families of kids in that zero to three age range with the ARPA funded projects and the scholarships ending. We know those families are going to have needs. And then of course we're continuing to support families through Durham PreK.

And now I will open it to questions, recommendations, any feedback that you all have. >> Thank you so much for this presentation um and all the work that you've been doing. I'll bring it to the board. I have some questions but want to bring it to colleagues first.

Commissioner Burton. >> Yes. Thank you, Vice Chair Long. Thank you so much uh for this wonderful presentation.

Investing in our children is the utmost importance to me because they are our future. So, I'm so glad that Durham County were taking on this work of prek. One of the things I wanted to discuss and it goes back to the chart or slide about current needs of Durham County children. I think that came to my going back to that slide on my iPad. Ah, here it is. Yes, I am looking at high quality education for our children.

8% proficiency. Only 40% of our third graders read at proficiency. 3% of our high school students are graduating on time. 5%.

>> That is per a thousand >> per a thousand. Okay. Um so what I'm looking at is that concerns me and I know that that's something the schools we have to really work with our schools on that. Um, I was an elementary school librarian, so I didn't get all the data. I was mostly we would get the data on elementary and we I knew the literacy rates, the proficiency rates were low. But it's making me think about we have all of these nonprofits in Durham that

promote literacy. Book Harvest, I think you there was another organization that you mentioned, >> Reach Out and Read. >> Reach Out and Read. And their focus is basically giving access, right?

making sure kids have books in the home, there's no book deserts, things like that. But then you have this other issue of I got to get you to be able to understand what you've read, right? And then you have a situation also where a lot of parents haven't reached that proficiency level. And so what we know is that many young people who get in trouble with the law, it's because of the low literacy rate.

So I I feel like we have to have this discussion with the schools about what are we doing to ensure that our kids are proficient, right? We we we're glad that they're growing, right? But how do we get them to proficiency? Because we want as many of our young people to be able

to read and understand at a high level, right? Um because we know that will lead to a lot of outcomes that they will have later on in life. So I was just I just wanted to highlight that. And um also with our delinquency rate, I don't know if you all listened to the I don't know if it was this last school board meeting, a couple of schoolboard meetings ago around truency.

There's a truency issue here in Durham. Um which is probably leading to this delinquency issue where kids are just not going to school. Um, so I think that's something that we have to focus on because um, it's it's I think it goes under the radar because we thinking the schools are handling it, but I think this is something that we need to discuss with DPS, with the superintendent and the school board. Um, and like what are they doing about it because I don't think that's a good thing for our county.

So, I just wanted to lift that up. So, thank you so much. >> Thank you, Commissioner Burton. You want

to say, Commissioner Wendy Jacobs? Commissioner Stephen Valentine. >> Yes. Thank you, Vice Chair.

So, several questions uh we've talked about and of course, you know, the the county supports uh early childhood education, prek, and child care. All those things sort of come together for a child to have um a good start, right? A good healthy start. And so we talk about uh their development cognitively and we also talk about the socialization that goes on during those during those during those early years.

Um but my question is um like problem programmatically what are we missing? What are we missing? What are we missing? So, we're making a large investment, but I I think somewhere uh programmatically we're missing something. Not exactly sure what

it is, but what are we missing? >> What are we missing? >> I think one when what's what's great about early years is they collect a lot of data. So we have more data about the Durham prek family participants and what we hear a lot from them is transportation is a huge barrier and afterare is a huge barrier and our Durham prek sites are doing everything they can to provide those services but it's quite difficult logistically in terms of with our littlest children the legal liability the concerns you want them to be very safe so those are barriers that families are identifying for sure um and then I I I think when we think about um we're we're hearing from a lot of our educators that they're noticing behaviors and so I think some of it is thinking about as we are supporting our educators which we do through um dur prek but also early years does is the childare resource and referral agency. So if there are

concerns that are coming up in local um childare programs for our youngest kids they're there. trying to give technical assistance and we're recognizing that um these a lot of these are our COVID babies and so they had a real interruption in their early life and so um places like Welcome Baby are trying to help reach those families kids and parents together giving them support giving them peers who kind of had the same early experience of parenting. Um we're seeing that too. Uh the book Babies, their graduation is coming up.

If you ever get a chance to see Book Harvest's Book Babies program, it's a really nice place for families to get support from one another in navigating some of those things, navigating some of those behaviors. Exchange Family Center, they're trying to help meet those trauma needs, those attachment needs. Um so those are some of the some of the challenges that that families are bringing up. And I would just say more broadly, I

mean, we are doing a lot of the right things. So you hear the results of the things we're doing, but we're doing them often on a smaller scale, right? So it is I this is a very difficult and challenging time as you all already know to invest public dollars because we're we are also stretched. So it's um you know the places where we can support the things that work, where we can help expand those things, where we can help groups work together is something that you know we can do in terms of the county. Um you know we also do look at are there policies are there things that we can help with um we don't have any you know hot button topics right now in that scale but I think staying at least staying the course of where we are is really important not not stepping back to the degree that we we can do that at this particular time. So I think that's particularly important and I think the wrap care issue like I think all those transportation the afterare it's a complex system like if you think I know a lot of you are parents um and you know my children are a little older now but I mean I remember like making a frantic

phone call because something fell through right and but I have a car and I have all those things in place right and so you can just imagine that those minor crises in a day of a parent that doesn't have these things set and is trying to work and is trying to have a child in childare even if they have a subsidy is so difficult. So where we can make systems work better together um help our school system work better with you know with our early child system all of those different things can help and the levers that we might have to do that as you know county commissioners or county government we can employ those but I think in general I think supporting the things that work and and digging into those um and not spreading ourselves too thin because I think we can get really excited you know there's some recent data about how technology is affect as is decreasing literacy levels we know some literacy programs that work and we are going to have to look at that maybe technology piece down the road but we still can invest in things we know work. Well, I think you highlighting uh afterare is part of that those wraparound sort of services is uh an intricral part of what I think we're all

trying to to accomplish for for our families and uh to the extent that uh these services help families uh helps them because they're able to um be productive members of the labor force without disruption that that you mentioned just a moment ago. Um could you tell me a little bit about the uh benefit access coalition that you described in your your presentation? How's that working out? Absolutely.

So, I participate, the food security coordinator participates. Commissioner Alam, we've we've seen you. We've had um other local government representatives as well. Um so, the idea behind it is knowing that there are residents of Durham County who are eligible for SNAP who are not using SNAP.

There are residents eligible for WIC, not using WIC. Same with Medicaid. Um I am in the working group led by Love Anderson from Breastfeed Durham and um specifically focused on SNAP, Medicaid, and WIC. There are other working groups focused on using some of the um technology that's available to us to help families with the administrative burden of applying for those programs. And there's

also a working group focused on maximizing um child tax credits and other um federal and state taxbased programs that families may not be aware they're aware of. Um, specifically for SNAP and WIC, um, Medicaid, I think the state plays a much bigger role and so there's seemingly a little bit less less of an opportunity for enenuity around that. But I think for um, for SNAP and Wick, really trying to figure out how to find the families who aren't participating and having them tell their own story about why they're not participating. Obviously, privacy is a pretty big barrier that families are identifying right now. Um, and kind of finding who are the trusted organizations in the community who maybe those are the people to kind of warmly walk people through those application processes and give that kind of reassurance about how data is used, about privacy, about those needs. But

it's it's an ongoing coalition. Um, and the meetings are always full of really collaborative people who are who are trying to help the community. So, I I get a lot out of them and I I'm sure you all would be welcome at them. >> Uh, thank you for that.

Uh, my my question is going to be who who uh who are you not reaching? And so, you've already answered that and so we appreciate that the work that you're doing in that space. Sounds like one of my my colleagues is uh participating that actively and so that's important to me. uh but specifically with the the changing requirements in these programs for our families right here in Dorm County, it's going to be um necessary for us to to provide that sort of outreach.

Thank you. >> Thank you, Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. >> Thank you so much for this update um and the data that you shared with us. Um, I personally feel that our investment in Durham PreK and the ECAP

is the most important thing that we do in Durham County. 9 million just to maintain the current program just to maintain and I think that's really key for our board. Um it's the next slide. Yeah. um because we have been at flat reach 42% for the past two years and I I know personally I do not want to see us decline from our impact and with everything that is coming at families right now whether it's you know people losing you know Medicaid or SNAP

or whether they had Obamacare coverage. Uh the cost of fuel, uh you know, the LEAP program, energy assistance program has been hit, food, um you name it. Um it is inflation, uh it is, you know, it is really scary to think about what is happening to our families and what is going to continue to unfold. 9 million in this budget. I'm going to leave that up to the county manager to do her magic on this, but also the grant the grant funding. uh you know we obviously we can't replicate the level of funding that we did the ARPA funding similar with the food programs but the

incredible direct services that these nonprofits have been delivering to people again to families are so so important. So I do hope that we will have still that grant funding um some some degree of it um and especially the most effective programs um make sure that we continue our support for them around you know maternal health and the diaper bank basic needs and the reading I'll just mention that the reach out and read program actually just to address some I think commissioner Burton and raised some really important points. One thing that Reach Out and Read does, it actually tries to teach the parents how to read with their kids um and how to model that. And Book Harvest, I think they do some that same type of support as well. So, they do I

think that's important, but you're absolutely right. It's the whole family. It's a whole literacy thing. Um so I just wanted to raise that and to see that it works.

I mean the data that you showed us around the um performance after being in Durham prek that it shows that this program is working. this investment is working and this is one of our ways to help with literacy because that 40% reading uh being able to read a grade level at third grade and this that I don't know do you have an updated NC trial report because that was 23 24 >> yeah I I tried to dig around and I think I didn't see I think there have been delays in the >> okay um but that is part of our PL. We part of it is that we're hoping to try to move the needle on that. Um because

that I agree with you, Commissioner Burton, you know, we've got to zero in on that third grade reading level and remediation and all of that. Um you know, you've heard it over and over again, they predict prison populations based on third grade reading scores. So that's how important it is. Um and um anyway, so and I do want to just also raise the issue that we we did see this at our budget retreat that there's how DPS is using their prek seats and that there did not seem to be full utilization still and that being um something for us to really follow up on.

Um, >> and I'm I'm happy to give I have updated numbers from early years for for utilization. So, Durham PreK overall. Um, 92% of seats are being utilized um

as of March and those do vary by location. Um, and so Witted had been at 46% as of September and they are now um as of March at 70%. So they've been doing they've been doing community outreach um and then excluding witted DPK is at 95%. >> That's great news.

Really really great news to see that change. Um and then again following up on the point that Commissioner Burton wrote mentioned I mean around the truency um is very concerning. um if kids are not in school then they're going to be getting into trouble. So this ties into concerns about you know community violence. Um but we at one point had a education uh our school to justice pipeline uh years ago. One of our district court judges

led that and that was years ago. Uh I participated in that and I remember listening to a number of our high school principles who were very concerned but saying they don't have any mechanism to uh at that point to go out and and deal with the issue because we don't have a truency court anymore and I know that our DA does not um support that model but then the question is as a community what model are we going to have and we've never really stepped up all the partners coming together so that means the school system the court system uh you know nonprofits to say how are we going to then bring everyone together in some way and come up with a plan because

it's not fair to um to our teachers, to our to our students, um and to our families if we're just throwing up our hands. And so um that that is I believe an urgent issue for our community and I hope that we will find a way for everyone to come together um to address this issue. But um again, thank you so much. great report and I'm grateful for all of the partners that we have in Durham County working on this with us.

>> Thank you, Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. And thank you again. I want to echo the statements of my colleagues. Uh this work is super vital. Uh obviously as I am mom and my daughter is uh prek age now and we're actually going through this process of figuring out where she's going to go. I'm wondering um how does it work for because you know there's some daycare facilities that offer prek

and like some families choose to just send their kids to that prek but then they have to pay those out-of- pocket expenses and with one of the biggest costs burdens for us to expand prek being the capital expense portion of the actual land and rooms and seats of how can we is it a possibility to ask these daycare centers that have these seats to be a part of the Durham prek program that maybe there's some of their seats can be part of the pre-k program for kids to be enrolled. Um, and families who can't afford the tuition that's like $1,400 a month for daycare centers are able to go through it through the prek durk. >> Yeah. So, we we already have some who are participating. So, um when a program wants to be part of Durham PreK, they have to apply. It is a competitive process because it's an amazing program and so um they have to meet certain criteria in terms of their curriculum, the education of their teachers, family

outreach, all of that formula that helps Durham prek um be the highquality delivery system that it is. And so this year is a year that programs are applying to be Durham PreK sites. So they have to meet certain criteria. They are evaluated using a rubric.

But the goal is if a family has utilized a childare program since their child was a baby and they know all the teachers, it's close to their home. Um the goal is for that program to become a Durham PreK site. The family applies to Durham PreK. They rank it as their top program and they stay there.

So those are actually the first um those are the first seats that are placed. So as Durham PreK starts sending out um updates to families about where their child has been placed, those children will be placed first. The only barrier to that would be if the program um does not meet some of those standards and wouldn't be accepted as a Durham prek site or if the family doesn't apply early enough. So, you would want that family to send in their application as soon as it opens in the spring, even

though they may not hear until later in in the summer where they'll be placed just because of they're they're managing all these different braided funding models and so it's complex placing people, but they they want that they want that continuity of care for those those children and they want to be able to support the programs in our community that are providing fantastic child care, including prek. >> That's great. Yeah. So then what is the for the prek center then how did they get reimbursed for that because obviously like the for the families we're trying to make sure it's like as affordable as possible for them and that full prek tuition price may not be um accessible for them.

So how does that work with the partnership with the daycare centers? >> So if a if a childcare center is part of Durham PreK um most families pay nothing. families who are above the the governance committee just voted to slightly raise it. So, it's a little bit closer to the median income, but um it's based on percentage of federal poverty

level. And if you are above that cutoff point, you pay 2% of your budget. So, it is still extremely affordable for a family as long as it is a Durham PreK Center. >> And then how does the prek center get they get the funding then from the county or the state?

>> Correct. They get funding. So, um, Durham PreK will maximize how much state funding they're using, how much, um, so for example, a private childare program might be an NC prek program. So, they will maximize the reimbursement from NCRK and they will spend local funds last.

Um, they will supplement the NC preK funds because part of the model is making sure that the teachers are paid the same as the Durham public schools salary scale. And so, the county funds will be used to stack on top of those NC preK funds. Um, and then something that, um, NC PreK, I'm sorry, Durham PreK has done this year, um, is start a pre-ervice payment because they're finding there are a lot of upfront costs at the beginning of the school year, and

they want to make sure that, um, a reimbursement model is used by a lot of these different programs, but they want to make sure that they have those upfront costs, they're able to cover them. So they've experimented with that pre-ervice payment which seems to be working really well for the private childare centers who as you know are on very thin margins. >> Then I had two more questions. The the presentation the slide that you had that showed the 43% of like the growth of how many children were reaching how does that compare to statewide?

Do we have that comparison? >> I would have to pull that pull that and I'm happy to send that to you. >> That'd be great. And then the second question was that other sheet that showed like this is um it was from NC child of what percentage of children are born below like birth weight and like those I'm wondering has that ever been like graphed of like an overlay of basically like starting from those indic oh you just passed that indicators from birth of let's see like of below uh birth weight

6% 6% like how much more likely are they than a child that's born at birth rate to have any of these other factors and just kind of show like >> all of those stacking up against each other and like has not every child is going to be the same. uh we want all of them to be given the same opportunity and given the same resources, but some of our kids and families need extra love and support and looking at it going all the way downstream because if we're looking at looking at it all the way or only when they enter into that classroom, we're already behind. And so to figure out like before they even enter in the classroom, before that those levels start stacking up against each other, how we can provide intervention and support. >> And I would say um an organization who we just finalized our contract with, which is great, um Equity Before Birth, they're trying to reach families on those levels. So they are trying to do

um pre-birth and postpartum doula services help offset the financial cost of that offset the financial cost of um mental health services. We know the perinatal period is a a higher risk time for mental health and we know to your point early bonding early social development of the child, early literacy of the child. We want healthy parents and so um yeah I I think you you raised an excellent point. Yeah, and I know the city um council member Wrist is been advocating and I've been joining his meetings around the baby bonds um and equity before birth is in that space too of hopefully that's something that we can bring forward to the county to explore of like partnering with the city on that that what council member Riss is trying to do is set up any child born in Durham County to a Durham County family.

The family is set up with a baby bond. Um because that helps and that grows to be able Oh, I see some whising in there. U to be able to grow. So >> all positive.

>> Oh, great. Wonderful. to be able to give

that child a higher opportunity for um continued education and also those bonds can also be used for other type of child uh education expenses, not just college. Um, and so that's something to look at the downstream impact of setting up families from the start, like when they're in the hospital giving birth or with their doula, that they're signed up for that from the start. >> Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because that's something that I've been talking with um, county manager Hager about. How do we increase our residents knowledge about financial literacy?

and that can, you know, because of the cost and things like that. And so making sure our residents are educated about, okay, saving for their children when they're young. And so I just wanted to echo what she said. >> Commissioner Wendy Jacobs, and then we'll move on. >> Yeah. um related to how we can grow and expand Durham PreK and

things like the RAP Care. Um when we first started Durham PreK, which I I think it was in my first term of office, I don't remember the date of it, but it was meant to actually be a public private partnership. Um, the goal was that we would have other funding sources and that it would not just be county funding for this program. And I really wonder if we should take a hard look at that as a board um about what we can do around that. And I know this conversation has also come up around our uh conversations with companies um related to our economic incentive uh criteria and contracts. And um of course companies are going to benefit from Durham having a robust uh prek program and having a lot of

providers who are highly trained and well- paid. Um, so I, you know, I I think it would be great for us to talk about what does it look like to have a Durham PreK, um, nonprofit. Uh, I mean, I'm thinking I'm looking at John in the back, you know, applying to foundations. um there at least there there are some national foundations that their whole purpose is is they're very focused on um early childhood investment and you know I'm I'm thinking about tax forms um where I mean when people pay their taxes being able to round up I don't know where's key uh round up to the dollar for uh you know Durham prek I think our community would support something like that. If we're going to ever meet our goal of 75%, there's just no way we're we're going to

be able to do it with just county funding. >> I will say um having been with the county and watched the investments that have occurred over the years, it's been impressive. I I do know in early conversations there were um thoughts about how we get a coordinated fundraising effort at some point once we got further along whether through grants or private dollars. It is definitely a place from an infrastructure um perspective uh that we we need to figure out how do we coordinate in the community with other um entities that are doing the work so we aren't competing against each other because we the main issue is to ensure the dollars are flowing into the community. But we can come back later maybe in the um fall winter time frame with a strategy on how we uh more

systematically look at bolstering our private dollars because that was a part of the conversation. 82 eight two million dollars when it first started and now we're at nine which is fantastic but when we enter in seasons like we are now it's it's difficult to grow at the pace where it's needed >> and we've actually talked about um and I know manager Hager I've discussed it briefly with you about um maybe bringing together because there was the early prek task force that created this program and established this but we've been talking and brainstorming about doing a childare care type task force of before they enter into the pre-K, that 0 to3 period and even the prenatal to three and bringing in our team from economic development and uh our business partners here in Durham County because

they have a vested interest in um supporting child care for their workers, for also future talent um for their workforce. >> Also, I love that idea. um is the conversation that we had at Durham Tech. Um and I had a follow-up conversation with President Buckston about that. Um after we were there um we just he remember he asked us what's the next big big thing >> and I think we all were talking to him. We suggested um you know something like there being a a a pilot model prek uh ch child care site at Durham Tech which could be um a training ground for some of their new teachers and educators serve businesses um kind of like the Frank Porter Graham model in Chapel Hill but around child care um and um you know

having something right located right there. We we funded at one point child care on site for Durham Tech. Um so that's another partner to bring into that conversation. >> Absolutely.

Thank you all so much. >> Thank you all very much. >> Thank you. >> And now our next item is county food security initiative implementation update.

And I know we are very we're very passionate about all these topics. Um we went a little bit over with the last one. We have 40 minutes allocated for this. You think 20 minutes presentation, 20 minutes discussion.

That's what we're planning. So we'll see how it goes. Um let's see. Oh, we'll wait for our slides.

There we go. >> Good afternoon again, commissioners. I'm Donna Rewald. the county extension director and the food security work of Durham County is based at cooperative extension and we're very proud to support it and we're also proud to work in a county that values, you know, you just heard the presentation on early childhood, but that values these very basic needs of our families that need them the most. Um, also of course here

with me is Randol Steinug who is our county food security coordinator and she also will carry the bulk of this presentation. Uh, we just want to start out with a little bit of our agenda. We will give you a little bit of the background. Um and Rain will talk about the food security landscape, current initiatives, upcoming plans and opportunities, and then give you a moment to have questions and conversation.

So similarly, this position, you know, it's interesting, all of these positions came to Durham County in different ways from different advocates, from different community conversations. Um this uh kind of also was a a conversation that preceded COVID, but then uh CO brought food security into sharp relief. Um and this position was created by the board of county commissioners in um fiscal year 2021 um with a lot of community support and advocacy. Um it also similarly to the early childhood work um facilitates our internal our county coordination as well as our external coordination within the community. Um and of course we have the food security network as a component of

that and the upcoming food security food sorry food system assessment and planning process. Um again this position supports county leadership including the board of county commissioners and providing you good data and advice on food security initiatives as needed. Uh it does manage also the food security investments which in has included support for the ARPA support food security investments and the food security grants which you'll hear more about in this presentation. And we also um and this started somewhere along the way we do have an intergovernmental food security team.

So, we actually meet regularly with county and city departments and Durham public schools. And that's not something we started with, but we recognized um that that was a really important component to have this um deeper conversation and coordination. >> Thank you, Donna. Um good afternoon, commissioners and county manager.

Um I'm glad to be with you all today. As Donna mentioned, I'm Raina Goldstein Banug. I'm our county food security coordinator. Um, I wanted to start with

a little bit of the landscape of food security here in Durham. Um, and also some context um, beyond here in the county. Um, and I like when talking about food security, especially when I'm about to go over statistics to uh, remind us of some definitions. So food security means access to enough food for an active healthy life.

Um and this definition is what is used in a lot of our data and statistics um that are provided through government and uh other organizations. Nutrition security is a little bit different. It um goes beyond food security. Um and the USDA definition is all Americans have consistent and equitable access to healthy, safe, and affordable foods essential to optimal health and well-being. Um, and here in Durham for our uh, food security initiatives, we might use the term food security, but um, both within the county

and with our partners, we are really focused on nutrition security. Making sure um, that our Durham residents have enough access to um, the food that they need that that's unique to them and their families for optimal health and well-being. And then a little more context here. Um I think that most of us are pretty familiar with um the causes of food insecurity and uh the causes of food insecurity and the effects of it.

But I also think it's important to remind ourselves um especially when we're talking about a variety of different food security programs um and looking at all the different um outcomes that we might see with increased food access, more meals, uh more fruits and vegetables, things like that. Um I think it's important to ground ourselves in why we're doing this. Um and I like this diagram. It was originally created by uh

the group project who's a food security group in Boston. Um it shows um the not only the the causes of food insecurity um but also how it plays into poverty, how it can be caused by poverty and also how um easily it becomes a cycle. Um, and as you look at the diagram, um, there's just again reminders of things a lot of us know, but that when a family's experiencing food insecurity, um, they often are skipping meals and, um, eating uh, whatever food is available to them, often quantity over quality because they're not sure where their next food may come from. And this can uh, um, result in poor nutrition. Um we know that food insecurity causes struggles in school and then later in work. Um and we see a variety of health problems both physically and mentally um with children

and adults in uh who experience food insecurity that can often last um well beyond their um time being food insecure. Okay. Um, so now really narrowing in on the food security landscape in Durham, we have a lot of assets, lots of great things going on in Durham. Um, we know that we have free school meals for all DPS students.

This is the second school year that it's been free for everyone in DPS. And um we the school nutrition coordinator let us know that they have actually applied um they continue to qualify for free school meals and actually they're um they revised some of their data. They were able to basically do a data audit to ensure that they were sharing the most up-to-date data and they will be able to get more federal reimbursement for those free school meals which is great. Um, and if C uh

the USDA community eligibility provision program uh stays um how it is right now, um DPS should have free school meals for at least the next three school years. Um so that that's great and we know it's there's nothing that can replace free school meals. It's it's great. A lot of our Durham residents uh kids are getting free breakfast and lunch.

Um we have great county food security investment. So thank you to all of all of you. Um the continued investment um from our county leadership um makes a big difference and we'll talk about a lot of those programs today. Um our institutions, our other institutions are also working hard to protect food security. um as we see again SNAP internally here with our DSS and then we have a great wick program for um pregnant women and children um that is uh administered out of Lincoln. Um our

community programs and advocacy are um great. Whenever we tell people that are not in Durham about all the food security work coming from the community, they're just so impressed. And as Donna mentioned, that is really where a lot of the county work came from as well. Um, lots of places in Durham um to buy local foods all year round, knowing that um we have a great double bucks program so people can get even more food and we'll talk more about that later.

Um over 60 food pantries uh with some really great collaborative work going on. Um community gardens and mutual aid and I think more of this is popping up almost every day. So we have a lot of great um great work going on in Durham around food security. Um even with th all those assets and all those good work all that good work we know that there is there are a lot of challenges for food security right now. Um not just in Durham everywhere um in

our country. Um and I put a few of those challenges here. We know um the past there's past and future policy changes that are affecting nutrition um and related assistance. Um we've talked a lot about it um at several meetings uh over the last year and even before that HR1 um really has reduced access to SNAP for some of our most uh vulnerable populations.

um that federal bill. And then um we know that we're currently watching uh some federal um legislation. Congress is making decisions about uh FY27 appropriations, about the farm bill, which is historically what funds SNAP. Um and we know that um we've been watching our um state uh work on the budget as well. Uh the government shutdown. Um, we all saw how big of an impact the federal government shutdown

had on everybody here in Durham. Um, that was when there was a big snap. Um, there was a a snap gap. There were a couple weeks where people did not get their SNAP benefits.

Um, and uh, thank you all commissioners for your response because I remember that was such a crazy time and dur county and the city um, and our community worked together to help people get food. Um, and luckily they did get that SNAP benefits back a few weeks later, but we saw how huge of an impact that was even with um, just a couple week gap in SNAP. Um we're also seeing increased food prices and um prices for other essentials. Um and um we know of course how these prices are affecting um famil family's ability to access food um both if food is too expensive but if they're paying more um with health care or rent it's even harder to pay for food. People are

losing um there's lost jobs and wages. We've I think we've been seeing this here in the Triangle area uh at a greater um with a greater impact than some other places just because of how many individuals are either work for the federal government or um maybe contractor contracting for the federal government. Um and then we're still dealing with affordable housing challenges. Um so sharing that landscape um just because there um as we heard in uh Ilana's presentation these issues don't happen in vacuums.

So all of these other big um kind of uh main needs of people and big uh social and policy issues are affecting food security in a in a variety of ways. I wanted to share the data. This is um this is the most up-to-date food insecurity data that is disagregated at

the county and state level. Um the next slide I'll show national data, but this is um the the most current. I know 2023 doesn't seem current, but this is the most current available. 8%.

Which is lower than North Carolina and just about the same as the United States, a little bit lower. And then we also see some significant um disparities when we compare it um when we disagregate it and compare different population groups. This is the 2024 data from the household food um security in the United States report. Um this is the most recent data. This is where the bulk of this information comes from. Um but the 2024 data just came out and it has not yet

been um disagregated into the county and state levels. Um but there's a lot we can still learn from it even at the national level. Food security rates they didn't change from 2023 to 2024. Um but it's notable that they did increase significantly the two previous years.

So the 2022 and 2023 they increased significantly and then they did not go down in 2024. Um they they stayed the same. 4% 4% of households with children were food insecure in the US in 2024, which is a staggering amount. 5% in 2021. um which was um mainly attributed to the COVID relief um programs such as the expanded child tax credit and um free

school meals for all students in the country. Um and I do want to say that some of um the chart and some of the analysis I'm sharing is from the center for budget and policy priorities. Um they also noted in this analysis that SNAP participation has decreased by more than three million people um nationwide. So 8% since HR1 was enacted in July 2025.

So from July 2025 to January 2026 um SNAP participation has already decreased by uh 8%. The reason they thought that was so important to include in this analysis, even though that wasn't part of the report, um is to show um how the food security um kind of the programs and supports are um reducing. So we're seeing decreased supports. Um so um unfortunately we can predict that uh food insecurity will rise.

Um this is uh Durham community health assessment data. This is also um the most recent that's published um but and I know you all have seen this many times but I did want to share it. This is the food security questions from the community health assessment um that the survey was in 2022 and then the report was published in 2023. Um we saw that um on the left a question about in the last 12 months did you ever cut the size of your meals or skip meals because there wasn't enough money for food.

6. And then on the right, um this was a new question in the 2022 survey, but uh it was included in the 2025, so we'll have updated data for that. And that is asking in the past 12 months, did you ever worry your food would run out

before you got more money to buy food? 7% of respondents said yes, sometimes they were worried they'd run out of money before they were able to buy more food. Um, so again, unfortunately, I would expect that number to rise um because of all of the trends um and issues that we're seeing that affect food security. And the awesome p uh population health team at public health said that um the new data should be out very soon.

So, we'll we'll all look for that. All right. Now I want to shift and share some of our uh current food security initiatives. And um again the way we approach food security um with our county program is we work to enhance the social safety net to meet current needs. Um at the same time we're thinking about systemic change efforts to improve long-term food

security. So, even um when there's um uh different crises that come up, and this year has felt like a lot of crises, um we're doing our best to help the community meet the needs right now while still thinking about what we can do in Durham long term um to make sure that we have a more resilient food system for anything that might be happening in the future. Um, I last time when I uh gave this update, so it was in February of 2025. I know I've seen you all since then, but that was the last time I gave an official um annual update.

I talked a lot about our great ARPA food security projects, and I'm going to go over them a little more briefly today, but I did want a chance to check in about um about them. The total investment um is over $3 and a half million dollars. Um I'll go um through slides to talk about each of

them. And as as I do, I just wanted to share um a shout out to the organizational effectiveness team. They have just been such an amazing support for us through these ARPA projects, helping with a lot of the analysis and the reporting. Um there have been a lot of questions especially uh I came into this job when the ARPA projects were at their height and I had lots of questions and they just have been great supporters along the way and um even all the way to some of the infographics I have are very cute and they are taken directly from their report.

So just wanted to shout them out. Um the first project I'll talk about is this uh is the ARPA emergency community food assistance and this project closed in August 2025. Interface food shuttle was the community partner. Um the funding amount was close to $2 million and this included um an additional um $342,000

that was added on later um because there was were additional funds available and this was such a great project. Um but through this project, 38 Durham food pantries received monthly food deliveries of produce and eggs for almost two years. Um and this um equated to um over a million um and a half pounds of food distributed um to Durham families via these food boxes. And there was just tremendous um satisfaction among the food pantries and the participants.

The Easter market was another um project that has already closed. This was with Communities and Partnership. Um and this was a community accountable grocery store in um in northeast central Durham. Um this um community and partnership worked hard to meet the needs of the residents. Um they used um

this was a place this is a place where there are not enough grocery stores. Some of the grocery stores have closed over the last few years and they were able to use local um offer local produce um and hire employees from the um community. The market is still going. However, um the it was um a mutual decision between communities and partnership and the county to end this contract earlier than planned.

Um some of the SNAP uh changes from the federal government made it very difficult um at times almost impossible for them to offer the double bucks program in the way that we originally agreed in the um in the contract. So um the market had a lot of success. However, it was ended early because um they could no longer operate the double bucks which was an important um important part of this project. the county food security grants. Um, communities and partnership administered

these for the 20242 round of grants. Um, and we'll talk about the grants um, in more detail about the grant program later on, but wanted to share that this round of grants was extremely successful. Over 400 or $400,000 was distributed to 26 local nonprofit organizations. Um, this is one of the adorable infographics that I mentioned.

Um, I get very excited about fruits and vegetables and in cute little uh graphics. And so we can see that over 2 million pounds of food were was distributed and over 19,000 um households were served. And this was from this variety of projects um from our great community partners. And these also emphasize systems change.

The Durham Center for Senior Life ARPA project. This is now an ARPA interest project. It is ongoing, but this funding

helps to support um one of their staff members. 5 FTE. 5 has been provided by DSS for several years. Um, and this allows the Center for Senior Life to provide more intensive um, food security programming like different types of meal programs and food pantry programs, delivering to seniors who aren't able to get to the center.

Um, and also allows the staff time to do referrals for um, the seniors to meet other basic needs. Um, the last ARPA project that we'll talk about is double books. And this is ongoing. And I just I want to point out I'm I apologize.

I made a um error in the funding amount. It's actually it's significantly less than that. 72. So um apologize for that, but um this is an ongoing program. Farmer Food Share is

the fiscal agent and it is run at four of our farmers markets in Durham. And this is a great program because um it provides double the funding um for uh Durham residents who are on SNAP on WIC or um live in our housing authorities. And um there's just so much great feedback. I wanted to share this um this flyer that they made.

that was kind of their impact report. But um for last year in 2025 um there wasund over $120,000 of double bucks that were reimbursed at um the markets. Um and um I believe that where it says three, I believe it was because one of our our markets uh opened a little bit later. Um but that is close to 50,000 of SNAP EBT that was converted into those farmers market tokens um supporting 539

unique SNAP and WIC households. Um and I really think it's important to note that this uh resulted in um $214,531 that is entering the local economy across all of our markets. and they h were able to do some really great things like during the shutdown they were able to offer one or two triple buck stays um so that families who were on SNAP who weren't getting the SNAP dur because of the shutdown were able to get um more food at the market. All right, so now I wanted to transition into the um county food security grants. um I talked about them in the context of ARPA, but um to share a little bit of the history, these fund nonprofit organizations um for a variety of community food projects um and the focus is creating um long-term change while also addressing immediate needs. So, a

theme we've been talking about before um 2021, there was some similar funding for food security organizations that was awarded um through the nonprofit grant process, our county process. And in FY21, this is when um the food security grants became a separate program. And we just wanted to share the funding history of the program um throughout the four um four iterations. So, um, starting at 400,000 and then up to 475.

When it was ARPA, it was 532,000. That was, um, what we saw a few slides back. And then for this round, um, the budget is 332,000. And a little more information about what's going on with the current cycle. Um we 325,000 of the 332 will be distributed to organizations. Um so there'll just be a

small percentage um needed for the admin um fees. The awards will be um 20 between 20,000 and $50,000. So we made an intentional shift to um have larger award amounts so um we could fund some more extensive projects. Um this is the first time that we've been managing this process internally um through cooperative extension with um technical assistance from our friends in OEE and public health and soil and water have been providing some additional support and recommendations from their different grant programs.

Um we had a huge response to this. Um there were 55 applications totaling over $2 million. Um we only have the budget to award 14% of the request. Um just a little comparison to last time. Um there's always a higher need than we can fund.

Um and last time um that was that was the case. 28 projects were awarded out of 38 applications, $400,000 total. Um but 32% of the request um was able to be funded last time which I think is significantly higher than 14% this time. There's a huge need um and we are currently very diligently reviewing all of these applications and the award announcements will be made um mid mid month.

>> Okay, we are running a little bit over on the time that let me see um I would just mention the food system. >> Yes. >> And then get to >> I just want to say this is important so I I don't want to miss this presentation. >> And just we'll see to just I want to get all the slides in but just to be mindful of the time.

>> Yes. Yes. Awesome. >> Yeah.

Okay. Last. >> Yes. All right. So um Don and I

presented to you in November about the food system food system assessment when um we were asking for approval of the vendor. So, a lot of this is review, but I just wanted to um share that we are making great progress. Our uh contract was executed in January. We've been having lots of great meetings with the contractor.

Um and our steering committee kickoff is actually this Friday and we will have community engagement um activities coming very soon. So, stay tuned. We'll have a lot to share. Um and then just notice noting that we have other initiatives that we work on with food security.

All of them are focusing on capacity building both internally and externally helping our partners to build capacity um as well as strengthening partnerships. Um this was a picture from our farm campus retreat um at the end of our USDA grant um planning for what is next. And I did want to highlight as one of

the other initiatives our food security network. Um this is a wonderful group um with so many people and sectors and communities represented. We have monthly meetings. Um, our list serve has over 450 members and this is just um I think earlier in Iliana's uh presentation I think Donna said um something about we just we can't do all this work on our own and I think the food security network is such a great example of that.

There's always helpful information and grants and um food distributions being shared new connections through this. So, one addition, this was us um representing the network at a conference. Um and then the Everyone Eats Durham fundraiser um is a coalition of food pantries that came out of the network as well. And it's great to see them working together to meet our increased needs. Um things that are upcoming, um working on even improving

our network collaborations more. We're jumping into our uh farm campus work with our golden leaf grant. Um we hope to see all of you on June 7th at our Durham Hunger Day uh downtown. Um and we'll continue to support our um food security uh organizations.

Um some opportunities um maintaining our strong county food security investments. Um, I think we all feel that that's more important than ever with the increased need and so much going on that is beyond our control. Um, we are very excited to use the results from the food system assessment as it's going and when it's completed to shape and prioritize future work. Um especially we're losing uh the US household um food security report that those were where most of my statistics came from and USDA ended that report.

It will no longer happen. So having data now is great. So thank you

all so much and happy to um answer any questions. >> Thank you so much. I'll start over on this end this time. Commissioner Stephen Valentine.

>> Yes. Thank you for that wealth of knowledge that you uh gave us here today. Um your food security networks um I interface with a lot of uh nonprofits, churches, and the pantry at North Carolina Central University and they all talk about there being a lack of coordination around when uh pantries deliver food to the community. Has there been a discussion about like linking all of those sort of sort of uh provisions together into one sort of seamless >> Yeah, that's a great question. I know that um there are so many food pantries and um a lot of them are connected and then some of them are maybe happy doing their own thing, serving their own communities. Um the everyone eats Durham

campaign right now. a fundraiser campaign but they have talked about stage two they call it like stage two of their um work would be doing something more coordinated. they are using that momentum of uh being all together um trying to get more pantries on board because right now it's 15 out of the 60 um and they have talked about something and if that's something they'd like to do like we would love to support them in that >> and and I would offer there is a pantries network that's supported by end hunger Durham um so there is communication among pantries all pantries don't participate and you have to realize a lot of pantries are run by all volunteers and sometimes the the facilities they have access to are only available on Wednesday or they're only available on Friday and they may not have choices about when they deliver. They may not be able to be as nimble as we might like them to be.

Um I do agree that there are some opportunities maybe to improve coordination. Um, and we we definitely have tried to support that in a variety of ways. And there is a wonderful map of food resources that is

also supported in part by our dine team here in Durham County and our GIS team that is available to everyone so that people can see where and when food is available. But you're right, like there may be no food that no pantries that are open on a on a on a Tuesday, for example. Um, and so that can be a little bit challenging just the nature of how food pantries operate or run and their structures are so varied. Um, and some of them run with these volunteers, which is just much more challenging than some of them do have staff, but a lot of them don't.

I would say the majority of them do not have staff. >> Uh, thank you for that. And also, thank you for uh uplifting dying. >> Commissioner Wendy Jacobs, >> thank you. And I'm grateful to both of our our amazing uh coordinators, uh, early childhood and food security. Um, again, similar to what we just talked about, I think it's going to be critical that we maintain funding um, in our

budget for the food security grants. Again, we won't have the ARPA level of funding over $3 million, but um you know, the these nonprofits are doing the work for Durham County in a in a more effective uh cost-effective manner than we can, many of them with volunteer labor, especially around the food pantries. Um, and I appreciate the effort that Everyone Eats is doing with the help of um, public health staff to be more um, you mentioned in the first presentation about people collaborating and having efficiencies and I know that's one of their goals is to be more coordinated and get people to collaborate. Um and and frankly some of the pantries that have the bigger capacity and organizational structure I think that the um Eglacia church they give out is it something like 7 how many

cars did they serve per month? >> They're breaking records each week which they don't want to break but it's close to 800 families now I think. >> I mean 800 cars. I at one time on a Wednesday I was trying to get to the post office at Mil the Milton up in northern Durham and I was going down Roxford Road and it was there was no traffic moving in the middle of the day and then when I finally got up to the church I saw it was because they were doing the food distribution and to see that massive line of cars that shows how desperate and I also had a conversation with someone on Friday night um at the concert at Central Park. They had helped um with um Durham Public School Strong had organized food for families on Friday because school was closed. And this person had gone to volunteer at one

of the um DHA communities and they said it was absolutely eyeopening to see how many people really are dependent on those school lunches and were participating. So, uh, again, this is a critical need in our in our budget and luckily we have, um, the infrastructure to help support. Um, I appreciate that you have been managing these grants. Um, and thank you again to John Kefir and your staff because it saves us money and it makes sure that more money is getting directly out to people and not paying other salaries. Um and um uh you know again I I one one question I did have was I recently was checking in for an appointment on Duke Health and

they asked all of these screening questions like you like that one data point like have you had trouble finding food or or having food and they asked all these questions um about being social determinants around food, housing, and I'm wondering, do we do that um at Durham County Public Health or DSS around screening on these things? And also, I mean, I'm on the Lincoln board, but I don't even know if we do that at Lincoln. And I'm wondering what would be the next step then if people do say that they are food insecure? Um, you know, you were asking about Duke resources.

Do we know how people are then even getting connected to help? >> Yeah, thank you for saying that about Duke. Um, they are choosing to do it. It was a federal requirement. I for I'm forgetting exactly um what requirement it was, but Duke's continuing to uh or

choosing to continue the food security screening even though they're not legally um com they don't have to anymore. I don't know where our food security screening is at um public health. I know there's been different versions, but I'll definitely find out. That is a good um a great idea.

and um Duke had been sending referrals to NCare 360. I am not sure if that is still the case or if they are doing something different with referrals. Now, >> I would say as much as we can directly refer people to local resources, the better obviously. Um so, um yeah.

Okay. >> We'll we'll find out about the referrals and let you know for sure. And I also want to give a shout out to just the whole system, the way you work with the food security network, but also everything that cooperative extension does and supporting local gardens because if people can grow their own

food, um, you know, helping people be self-reliant to even supplement their diets, those who can is also fantastic. So, >> and I will offer we've actually increased some resources around that separately through other staff. Um, we actually are we've started a community garden collaborative in Durham um to bring people together uh around the community gardens and um provide resources and support. We always have done that in a more in a more direct way but we are doing it as a convenor now to uh bring people together on a quarterly basis to do a little bit more coordination.

Um, so we look forward to sharing about the results of that as that as that matures. >> Commissioner Britain. >> Yes. Thank you so much.

I just wanted to know um I know there were some um community partners who do this work. They came and met with me. I imagine they've met with other commissioners about funding, like how will things be

funded in the future now that the ARPA funds are, I guess, gone away, or do they just use the community grants that they just apply for that in order to help with this food insecurity um problem that we have in our county? Yeah, the um our county food security grants are um the biggest opportunity for those groups um to apply for funding. Um and then again through the network, we um do everything we can to get people connected with other resources, so nonprofits connected with maybe other grants they haven't heard from or partnering organizations that could work together um to meet their needs. So, I guess the best thing is because this large source of funding is going away, they're going to have to I mean, this is such a huge problem and we can't as a county do it on our own.

We need these groups and nonprofits to help with this, right? And you just have to figure out where do we get the money? And it's kind of sad in a way that our

funding is gone um because looking at the data um of the number of people who are food insecure in our community, it's like what are we going to do? Um I'm so grateful that kids get free breakfast and lunch in the schools and I'm really glad that Public School Strong did what they did on Friday um to make sure kids were fed in our DHA community. So yeah, just wondering what do we do? One of the things we've also talked about is having uh some more fundraising education for um some of our pantries.

I mean certainly anytime you read 55 applications you note that some people are really good right at writing um and raising funds and other people may be more disadvantaged. They might be doing great work but they may not know how to communicate about that work. So one of the strategies we've discussed I know organizational effectiveness has also experienced this also thinks about that as well. Um, we've talked with soil and water. We see the same thing on the agriculture grant side. Um, that there could be some more community education

on helping people access funding. There still isn't going to be enough money period anywhere, I think, to solve the problems that we're facing right now, though we can give people a better leg up to help them find funds. Uh, we also are encouraging collaboration. Pantries are often very independent operators.

We kind of pointed that out talking with Commissioner Stephen Valentine. So, we do a lot to encourage actually in the grants, they get extra points if they're collaborating. Um, so there are some things we're trying to do that longer term systemic piece to really get people to work together um, in the ways that we can. So one of the things we can do is we can we're good at education and providing research based education so we can help maybe educate people about how to raise funds too.

>> Thank you so much. >> Yeah. And also adding the um I know you serve on it, Commissioner Burton, the open space and trails uh grant tying into what Commissioner Wendy Jacobs was saying of people who can grow plants that they can apply for the open space and trails grant uh funding to be able to utilize

their land uh for community purposes such as addressing food poverty or food insecurity. Um, I was just wondering, do we have a heat map of Durham's like food deserts? >> We I know that um the food security assessment team is working on that. Um, and we'll definitely share maps as they become available.

I know they're um a shout out or um a plug for our report to the community extension, which is this Wednesday, May 6. Um the food assessment team is going to be sharing some of their initial maps. So, I'll have it there and then we'll definitely follow up with you. Um, but there'll be maps that they're making throughout the process and this will be the first time sharing them so they can get feedback from the community about what's most helpful. >> Great. And then wondering if you guys are partnering at all with uh DHA around all the redevelopment that they're doing with the public housing um communities that you know they're doing a lot of

mixed income like redevelopment to try to you know just create more spaces that are that uplifts our lower income community members and residents. But are they going to be addressing like not just the housing piece of it but also the food security? Because often times I think I don't know about maybe all of our public housing communities are essentially food deserts. Like the closest place for folks is to walk or reach is a convenience store where you can't really get fresh fruits and vegetables or anything.

It's all processed. >> Yeah. Um I will say that our um at Cooperative Extension, our family consumer sciences team that um Donna was mention mentioning works with a lot of our community gardens. They work really closely with community gardens at DHA sites. Um and we've we've also um been connected with a few of the sites um that are doing like after school programs for kids and so we're thinking

through how we might be able to support them. They've been asking for ideas for how to have more food after school and out of meal times. >> So, yeah. >> Wonderful.

Um, anything else? Oh, one last question. I know, Angela, we talked about this a while back. I know originally the 300 East Main Street, we were hoping that we could potentially get a grocery store or something because downtown is a food desert of essentially of just there's no access to groceries close by.

Um, did we get any we didn't get any interest from any >> 500? Sorry, >> we did not. Um, I need to follow up on that. It's been some time. I know some of the grocerers that we were trying to attract were concerned about the market and we just did not have enough foot traffic um at that time um to support a grocery store and so maybe sometime down

the road it the numbers will reflect differently. >> Is that space that was potentially for a grocery store has that been >> taken up now? >> Is it still empty? Okay.

Yeah, >> now that people have moved in, maybe we can sort of reach out to these >> and there's a lot there's a lot more um buildings and apartments that are being built. So, >> we can follow up. >> Okay, great. Thank you.

>> Definely we need those spaces rented out. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Well, thank you all so much.

>> Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. Our final agenda item is discussion around uh future future data center policy discussion which I know I brought forward but I'll pass it on to manager Hager and uh attorney Williamson to Yes. This item was placed on the agenda because of interest in having some conversations um about uh data

centers and wanted to get uh an initial uh discussion to hear what board members may want to um see at an upcoming policy conversation. So, we don't have a presentation today, but just wanted to formally have a opportunity for board members to weigh in so we can come back with the right information. >> And I'm sure I requested for this item to be brought forward for uh us to have a discussion. And I know I emailed each of the commissioners and county manager, attorney, and um our assistant and deputy county managers because we're seeing a huge boom of uh these massive AI data centers coming up across the country. And recently, Governor Stein even had his um task force around AI found that it's going to cost the state of North Carolina billions of dollars uh with the tax breaks if the current

amount of proposed centers are approved. And in Durham County, we don't have any definitions or rules around data centers. So I shared a draft of a ordinance and um resolution for us to consider and to bring forward to the commissioners and have a public hearing because we need to have definitions about in our UDO uh in development and processing because these aren't the data centers of 10 15 years ago. These are data centers that take up massive footprints that consume large amounts of water uh a lot of uh large amounts of electricity and that creates a low increased load that Duke Energy is already telling the utilities commission they're going to raise rates by 18%. And majority of that reason is to build out the infrastructure for these data centers that they're projecting over the next uh several years. So wanting to make sure that as we move into this new

realm of technology um that Durham County residents are protected and not paying for these increased utility costs through essentially an AI tax and that our waterways are protected from, you know, a lot of them use these backup diesel generators that pollute our water and air and generate noise. how close or far away are they from our schools, places of worship, um community centers and all of those uh things to be considered. So the ordinance and draft that I had shared with us for potentially uh review at a future meeting is hopefully to address all of those to give us 12 months time to really sit down and make these definitions and set these guard rails in place to protect our residents of Durham County and move forward uh accordingly. Commissioner Burton, then Commissioner Round. >> Yeah, I have a question. And I was wondering and I don't know if anybody up

here knows the county manager, anybody on staff like we do have data centers in RTP and I was wondering how big they are, how many we have in RTP or just around in general because you know you have to have data centers to run you know generate data. Just wondering how big of a footprint they are and are we looking at like these massive data centers that take up acres and acres and thousands of acres of land? Is that the restrictions? Um, so I would like information about what's out in RTP or what do we have here in Durham County?

How big are they and how much energy are they using already? um just get myself educated because I don't want us to have these huge massive data centers but I know we we got to have some in order for us to do some business. So having that discussion before we do this I guess ordinance. I can answer the question about what the current is in RTP of what the footprint

is. But in the draft that I've shared, I did put an exemption for office scale server rooms because yeah, like IBM, Frontier, all of these companies, they have their data centers that are for processing regular amounts of information to keep their services um provided. So, what these data centers that folks not just, you know, here in Durham County that we're talking about, the city I think is uh going to have their public hearing tonight for theirs and the one that Orange County just passed two weeks ago. Chattam County passed theirs, Apex passed theirs. Um, and I think there's 11 cities and counties now across North Carolina that have passed or are about to pass um this. It's about these large scale hypers scale data centers that are like sizes of like multiple super Walmarts um that take up dozens if not hundreds of acres of land and are consuming over

millions of gallons of water every single day and aren't using any sort of like closed loop system for uh collecting that water that they're using for um cooling their technologies and they're used for AI and these cryptocurrency data mining and so they're not actually providing a direct service through companies like IBM and Fidelity and Frontier that have their data centers. It's specifically for the AI and crypto industry and not a direct consumer. >> Commissioner Pal. >> Uh yes, thank you vice chair.

So, in I think in light of the the interest um and also the concerns in in our community, I think that uh we should move to um having a public forum on this as soon as possible. I know that uh Commissioner Lam has created uh a draft for us to consider. And as she had mentioned, there's several um local municipalities

who've already sort of acted uh in this space uh in the best interest of their um constituents or or residents. So, I support us moving as quickly as possible to bringing this before u the public. Also, I'd like to know, we've talked about RTP, but what are some other considerations around the county that people might be interested in developing one of these data centers? Um, I don't mean to suggest that I'm for or against, um, but what what are people, you know, interested in?

So, the fact that we're talking about it tells me that someone might be interested in it. And so, I'm my residents uh or our residents in the uh the northern part of the county have expressed uh concerns about this and other other parts of the county. Um certainly part of the discussion is the um the tax revenues that could potentially be gained from these data centers that necessarily has to be part of the the conversation that that we have. Um right along with other

considerations. Um there's some considerations around the potential jobs that uh could potentially come to the area as a result of these um these data centers. Uh I don't I don't necessarily personally believe that to be a plus. Uh but it's part needs to be part of the the discussion.

Um I think offline uh Commissioner Lam and I have talked about the noise pollution, light pollution, the power consumption as well as the water water consumption that she talked about which are all considerations and ones that I think that we need to uh get to the public as soon as possible so that uh we can know the way forward uh with respect to these data centers and their impact uh in in our community. >> Commissioner Wendy Jacobs. Yes, thank you. I know this is a huge topic uh nationally um and you know also in our state uh there are many parts of the country where these mega data

centers are being built and are having a huge um negative impact on people's lives. Um, I I think for me personally, just following up on Commissioner Burton's questions, I do have a lot of questions and requests for information. Um, for me, I I want to make sure that we are having an educated um informed conversation about this and also making sure that we educate um the public and hear hear their questions and concerns as well. Um, so one thing I would like to know is what does our current UDO um specifically say um in our land in our um ordinance um because we're looking at um uses in outside the urban growth boundary and also trade burn and RTP those are the areas that we specifically have jurisdiction over. Um so I would like to understand specifically because outside the urban

growth boundary um we don't have industrial uses um currently and um also that's our watershed protection. So I would I would like to understand what exactly the ordinance says now and also what has been proposed in the new UDO which we haven't been able to move forward with but what does the new UDO also say? Um I I agree with Commissioner Burn. I would like to know what type of data centers do we currently have um in Durham County? Um and what are their how are they functioning currently? And so like what are the uses and you know the size um the water usage, energy usage, um number of employees and then what what function do they serve and then also just do we have any standalone data centers that are not um connected to hospitals or universities or advanced

manufacturing, life sciences, whatever. Um um and um I'm I'm also really interested in are there new models that are being proposed um around data centers that we should be aware of uh that are trying to address these issues around noise and energy and um um water consumption and things like that. Um, you know, are there passive solar generated? Uh, just, you know, what what are some kind of state-of-the-art new models out there that we should also be aware of? Um but I think it's really important that if we are going to consider um a resolution addressing this issue that we distinguish between different types of data centers because I would

I'm also really curious whether a mega data center could actually even be built in Durham County. 0 O um and um and again whether that would be possible outside of the urban growth boundary based on our current and proposed UDEO. But just really I think it's important for us to know is this something that's even possible um in Durham County at this time to know how how at risk are we at this very moment? And then as you acknowledge com um vice chair alam there's some huge issues around policy at the state level related to um energy rates that could be passed on to um consu uh customers about tax

incentives or lost um revenues that we we're certainly going to have to partner with our um delegation and rely on on folks at the state level to address that are policy issues that we don't directly control. But um so I look forward to this conversation. Um thank you so much. >> Thank you. And if I may just uh respond a few of those. I think that's a you know a big reason the definition piece is a big reason for um me bringing forward this moratorium and why other cities and counties have been passing these ordinances because we don't have definitions because this is a new phenomena we're seeing across the country of this level of data centers and to my knowledge when I was researching there isn't anything in our current UDO that defines um restrictions or guidelines around managing uh data

center development. So this ordinance would allow us the moratorum for 12 months to set those definitions into the UDO and putting in those guidelines of how does Durham County define a large scale because there is also national debate about what is a large scale. Some people are like it's 25 megawatt, some people are like it's 50. So for Durham County to set that definition for ourselves of what is that uh massive data center and also to provide that public education and community understanding of the difference between these hypers scale large scale AI cryptocurrency data centers and the data centers of that even here in Durham County we have a b backup data center for 911 call center we have Duke hospital has those are very very different.

Their technology is different. Their energy usage is different. They don't use uh the same type of cooling systems for their servers because they're not running on basically mining data 24/7 at all hours

of day. And so this moratorum would allow us to set those guidelines and definitions uh into our UDO. And I think it's going to be very important that we also hear directly from our partners in RTP and in Treyburn because I think Durham County were very unique. We have huge economic engines in um RTP and in Treyburn that the county has invested heavily in and um that really we punch we punch outside our weight in those areas. So I think hearing from folks there also make sure that they have the opportunity to give us input um about how things are currently functioning and what they're what they see the future as being um in those areas so that we make sure we're all communicating and collaborating as well.

Thank you Jagger. >> This is very helpful. We have uh in addition to Lissa and myself, we have other partners online and in the audience including Deputy Jones who are taking copious notes and we'll come back um with several different angles of of this very important issue as we try to preserve our resources and ensure we are aware uh about this sector as we um are in new spaces. Thank you. >> Yeah. Only thing I was going to say, I think um I want to do our due diligence first, find out what do we have here in Durham County um so we're educated fully and you know once we get the information and then we can say okay I don't know what it takes to do this resolution but really making the parameters of what what we don't want in Durham County with

these data centers. I think that's important to say, okay, we don't want these mass scale data centers, but I do want to find out, okay, what do we have here? Um, and see what they're like so we know, okay, this is what we want if we have to have them. This is what we want to see something like this because I imagine they're small data centers of what we already have now.

I don't know. Yeah. So, okay. And I believe so.

Uh the process would be of just the way that our UDO is written is that before we passed any sort of ordinance, a public hearing would have to be held. And that's what the city is doing tonight. And so we'll talk about this in agenda prep about when this would come to the county commission, maybe next meeting or >> not not the next one, but we need a few weeks to to make sure we get the information to you. The hope is to we want to come back before June by June um and so that the board can

deliberate staff can give you our best efforts with with work and also benefit from learning what other um communities have done. this just had not been an area that we'd um researched yet and we try to make sure we have all that as much as possible as you deliberate laid on issues such as this. >> Thank you, >> Commissioner. >> I heard you loud and clear.

Move fast. And especially since the city's is there I think what I've heard from council members is they're tonight going to do a 60-day moratorum to allow them to loop in with the county to be on the same page of since we do share a UDO. So if theirs passes tonight then we have 60 days. >> So may I >> Yes.

>> Okay. I'm in line with uh the thought that we should uh act on this moratorum. I'm I'm in favor of that from the beginning. Information uh is important.

Um but I dare say it's a critical moment or a watershed moment. Commissioner Wendy Jacobs, this could be a potential watershed moment. And I want us to to act uh in a way that I feel comfortable with being responsible to to the needs of our community on one hand and the the fiscal needs of our county on the other. And so I'm hoping that uh we can act on this fast.

Thank you. just just as a know that we want to move quickly on it but our UDO does speak to um the process for moratorum and in that if you're doing a year it has to go through the planning commission as well. So there is some steps that we would have to follow. >> Yes. So for finding out what do we have,

what data centers do we have here in Durham County already and RTP, Treyburn, etc. Knowing you know the size and how big thing and who do they service that would help me at least. So yes. >> Anything else? With that we are at the end of our agenda and we are adjourned. Thank you all so much.