Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · November 6, 2023

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Board of County Commissioners

November 6, 2023 · Full Transcript

Morning every everyone I will call this meeting to order today is November 6 2023 this is our work session and I will start with a per public charge the Board of Commissioners ask its 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 toor theorum fail to be restored the chair will resist the meeting until such time that a genuine commitment to the public charge is observed so the first thing on our agenda is our citizens comments I have two and the first one is Pierce Russ Pierce and a housing for New Hope you have three minutes and please don't leave before I see you okay okay thank you thank you madam chair and Commissioners and it's good to be with you this morning many times we come and.

Ask for things to be done or fixed or changed in some way and that's appropriate and I've had my share of those moments in this year but today I wanted to just come and say thank you in August with three million in support from you and a matching amount from the city of Durham we were able to purchase and preserve Carver Creek Apartments not only did we save 48 units of affordable housing but we have opened the door to creating a Supportive Housing campus with deeply integrated Services eventually the campus should include approximately 120 units integrating existing Carver Creek 24 units of Williams Square the H&H built many years ago and another plan 45 to 50 units already a team has begun to work to determine the right mixture of Supportive Services as the campus is developed they'll soon be surveying current residents to understand what they would like to see on the site we will then move into a facilitated process with Partners to understand what they would need in order to operate.

There on our campus as that work is completed we'll start a master planning process encompassing the full 11 acres we originally hoped to have a ribbon cutting but came to realize that would be too invasive for the residents at this time I've had the opportunity to meet with many of them and have been Amazed by their stories you know many of us knew that we were preserving this housing and trying to avoid people being displaced what we did not know was we were actually avoiding for many people a second displacement I keep hearing stories from residents who long rented homes here in Durham the homes were sold the new owners either increased the rent to a point they could not stay or wanted to live in them themselves and it is kind of breathtaking in a different way to hear people in their 60s and 70s talk about becoming homeless at that stage of their life has reinforced our desire to ensure the current residents can remain.

If that's the place they want to be as it becomes Supportive Housing campus another Resident told me she'd been watching the news for months and joked about how much the story had managed to be covered and then she Saidi just want everyone to know how grateful I am that they pulled off this miracle because I know it's a lot of work from a lot of people in a short amount of time and with your leadership and especially I want to add in there are so many staff from the county and the city that had to do so much extra work in the background and we just so gracious and patient with us as we work through that and so manager soul I just want to say thank you and to your team because we got this done in record time you know people have been truly amazed that we pulled this off as a community in such a short amount of time people often say so when.

Did this start and for a while I said well you know we found out about the property being for sale early February but I've I've changed where I start the story because I believe it started in the library Auditorium on a dreary night in late January when many of us joined together for the point in time count and Madam chair you were there with us number of Commissioners were there with us the mayor and members of city council were with us and we went out all together to connect with our most vulnerable neighbors to count them yes but to also learn about their needs more than 120 people went out that night and I think it gave us a sense of urgency that for our most vulnerable neighbors we must continue to do things to address their needs even if it's challenging if it has to move fast even if it's going to take us a long time to realize the full vision so again I just.

Want to thank you today and let you know the point in time counts coming up soon and we hope that you'll join us Madam chair I think you went out with May O'Neal last year so we'll have to obviously see who your new partner is going to be this year as of later this week but thank you again and thank you for the time this. Morning.

Chair howon I think you need to turn your mic on it doesn't have okay did you hear me you are langle you have three minutes thank you good morning Commissioners County manager so thank you for this opportunity to speak before the board of Board of County Commissioners my name is Deen Langley I serve as the executive director of The Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation which provides a continu intense strategy centered skill-based and career focused program services and mentorship to facilitate academic leadership and professional development to prepare boys and young men of color for academic success and a competitive Workforce today I notice that you all will receive a presentation from the ju the juvenal crime prevention Council and one of the things that was notably absent from that presentation is the data around the risk and needs assessment as well as looking at trends of our juvenile complaints here in Durham County and one of the things that you will find and looking at those Trends and data is the over representation of.

Boys of color and I would just implore the Commissioners as they began to hear this presentation to just one understand the overwhelming and important role that jcpc provides in conducting a in-depth review of risk and needs gaining critical insights into the unique challenges faced by young people in Durham but also to empower them based on that datadriven approach to bring forth recommendations that the Commissioners and the community at large could act on in order to help better mitigate juvenile delinquency and better develop and Implement intervention Services here in Durham County I can't overstate and often times in community I've been saying of lately I don't know what catalyzing event must happen for us to prioritize and fund and support results-based programming and efforts in our community but our young people need it and our boys of color desperately need it and so I hope as you all hear that presentation this morning that you will employ the juvenile crime prevention Council to bring for actionable recommendations and not just looking at the annual funding plan.

Thank you thank you okay those are all the signed up speakers that I have is there anyone else okay thank you our next items Commissioners is 23746 our consent agenda we have we have about 17 items 19 items and our County manager will go through those you have an opportunity to pull those and discuss them thank you madam chair good morning everyone good morning we will begin the.

Comment period the public comment period opened on September 21st and closed on October 12th the public comment period was advertised on Durham County's staff working group website as well as Durham county social media platforms and our partner websites such as go forward we did not receive any public comments and as such the staff working group recommended approval of the Q2 amendments at our meeting held on October 18th following the approval by the board of Board of County Commissioners go triangles board will Board of Trustees will take action to approve at their meeting on November 15th does anyone have any questions about the Amendments commissioner Burns so this is the end of you saying any questions at this Junction yes ma'am yes to which one this is of this section thank you okay there we go cuz I thought there were more slides okay thank you so M really quick you said you told me the date of when the public hearing open when did it close on October 12th okay.

So it's about a month right we're required to open it for 21 days 21 days okay I do this is one thank you for everything this has been a beautiful presentation I have more questions at the end I just want to make a notation that we had this open for 21 days and we got zero comments now I know that transportation is not sexy I just want to make it clear that's kind of an anomaly to have zero so in the future how whatever other what other way we can kind of sort of get the message out because you know bike Duram the Coalition for housing and trans I just find it very hard that these very vocal groups I know that we put a ad in something else and it wasn't used in a QR code so that's not for y'all I just want us to kind of sort of take that in that it was for 20 days and zero comments came in and so as we move along.

And open this up for the public we always think of additional ways to make sure folks can access this and get it back I don't think in any way that's an indicator that you ought to do your due diligence but as a public servant I want to always be conscious of that so that that's my comment and I want us to just collectively kind of think about that yes ma'am thank you m Carter yes thank you for the this first part of your presentation I'm thinking about the mobile ticketing and just I'm assuming that sort of you presented it as it's a it's not that big of a change it's more of an upgrade an improvement to the current system but do you foresee that there might be users writers who would be confused by it at all or you especially going from free to a mobile ticketing approach sorry I don't I have a new phone I don't know how to cut it off moving it way over here that's why I'm asking about.

Technology and ticketing because I can imagine if I were getting on the bus I might think wait where's my do you know I'm saying I'm just wondering what you all think about that yeah that that's actually a great question and that's part of the reason go triangle is being very very proactive about putting these items in place to your point a lot of the drivers have never collected Affairs so it's really going to be just a whole learning process for everyone I know the go triangle Community engagement team working with the regional Partners if there is a go back to fairs is planning on a whole kind of public Outreach of what you need to do how you need to do it things you need to do I'm sure there's still going to be the oldfashioned fairs way to do it but okay the goal is really just at this point Tech since it's been so long technology has really Advanced and we've gone to the point where like UMO which.

Is the the the group that go triangle the region does they have it where you could just tap the phone kind of go on this kind of initiative which makes it very simple and easy but I'm sure that there's going to be a full Outreach explaining what needs to be done and I'm also you know I would think there would be some kind of a soft launch which really understands that there are going to be these growing pains means that over time we haven't been you know collecting fairs and now we are so I don't think it's going to be like a turn right on so I think it's going to be very you know evolved really very thought thought evolved roll out agre very very sensitive to the user and trying to make it as user friendly and and Driver friendly and Driver friendly yes okay thank you yep commissioner Jacobs Well I I want to First celebrate that our new process because I was really.

Excited to see this item to see us using the process that we came out of our governance study first of all the fact that the change in the work plan has to come to us for approval which is new so we approve it as well as the go triangle board and we approve it first so this is new and so I'm to see that also to see the template that we're using which is really giving very good transparency and accountability on what you know why is this money being requested and you know all the questions that I saw reflected in that so really excited to see this process and to see all three of you together representing all parts of our system so I fully support this work plan request you know we we come up with a plan but there's always going to be things that change every year and I'm excited about the fast study which is being led by ncdot so really great to have them.

Taking the lead on this because we can't have we can't execute on having our roads be incorporating Transit and you know being smarter unless they are taking the lead on it so so that's that's really great and of course with the mobile ticketing I we we're definitely behind the times on that and I think from what I've seen for instance being part of the DSs board is when we move towards people being able to do things on their phones it really made things a lot easier for people because that is something that most people do have and so being able to for DSS apply do applications on their phone and submit information things like that really made things more Equitable and accessible for people so I'm excited to see what we do come up with so thank you all and I'll let you keep going with your.

Presentation.

Okay it won't it doesn't want to.

Move oh is this me now okay great we put this together and didn't really have an opportunity to coordinate it so I appreciate your Gra so as commissioner Jacobs mentioned this is part of a lot of recommendations that came out of our governor study and the Durham County adopted Transit plan in the Durham County adopted Transit plan there are a couple of initiatives this pie chart provides the funding breakdown of resources over the life of the plan and as you can see called out about a quarter of the overall plan resources are intended to be spent to produce more reliable and better more consistent Regional connections between our core communities across the triangle so getting people to and from Durham from tour from Chapel Hill carbo and then Raleigh RTP carry Etc and then just to make bus service in general faster more reliable and those are really the two Key Program areas that support the initiatives that I'm going to talk about next so first a specific project in planning project in the adopted.

Transit plan is a count a Durham countywide bus speed reliability study we are working with a couple of Consultants to develop a strategy on how to convene all of our stakeholders across both internal to Durham County and our neighbors and and our other operations and public transportation Partners including go triangle and the state of North Carolina we've engaged with a couple of consultants and are working through some processes on what they could look like we definitely want to make sure as a part of examining our public transportation system in Durham County that again we're looking at how land use and housing jobs access all encourage public transportation use we want to make sure that we're engaging elected bodies appointed bodies and widely members of the public we are going to be looking at local services that are either operated with God Durham or Paratransit or private Transit and Regional connecting services that are operated by by go triangle a lot of times we ref refer to this casually as the brt study we.

Will be evaluating if there are operational corridors in Durham County that lend themselves for development into a a brt like service a fast frequent service that has more easily accessible stations and vehicles and then if we can identify a corridor where it would make sense to elevate public transportation service to something more of a bus resembling a train that we understand the process for developing a a Federal Transit Administration new starts application which is the capital Improvement Grants cig acronym that s that said we want to see if there are other Alternatives in the community how to identify corridors and improve public transportation current operations and that includes identifying the pieces of those corridors the timing for how to implement them what project sponsorship looks like you know which agencies are going to take the capacity lead on developing operations maintenance certainly we introducing a new kind of vehicle and Technology into our Durham County public transportation portfolio that's an amount of capacity that'll have to be built up so it's going to be something.

That takes a lot of intent and thought and then how we coordinate with developing the projects themselves and engaging the community so I am excited to begin working on this project the no is helping lead the procurement and managing the project but it is not an no project it's a Durham project we're going to be also I think what's really key is engaging our adjacent partner agencies whether they the pedm Area Regional Transit whether it's Chapel Hill transit whether it's go triangle Wake County Orange County person and Granville counties you know we're going to have spots at the table for all of those groups to talk about what this looks like and I am very optimistic that we will develop a a good series of projects out of the work this I I'm presenting you information on this right now now as an update there's no action that's associated with the the current program budget that was part of bry's previous presentation what was part of the previous presentation was the fast two.

Study a lot of questions get asked you know well if you have this study and you have that study well how are they different how are the same or is anybody making sure that they're not duplicating our efforts we want to reassure the board and and our constituents that are plugged into this meeting that we are are in fact coordinating efforts and not duplicating them I'd like to introduce how I consider the Fast 2 study as building off of a complete streets approach in our transportation system development that adds some very critical technology and standards to the idea of complete streets you know we have complete streets and how they our roadways need to be accessible for non-motorized transportation and and and other sorts of Transportation uses but we don't have a really good idea of specific standards you know for example are their additional Road Lane widths or geometric designs that are specific to public transportation vehicles that we need to make sure that we incorporate into any work that happens on our our.

Existing or future public transportation routes are there are there signal traffic signal opportunities to improve coordination and public transportation performance we think that the Department of Transportation is should really be commended for leading the fast 2.0 effort it's as much creating standards for them as it is for any of our local agencies most of the coordination will be internal between different stakeholder agency staffs it's there will be some public engagement but expect that a lot of that will fall to the the funding Partners as the study is nearing towards adoption so I would expect that you may be asked at the study's conclusion to sort of adopt support either through resolution or or some other way for the outcomes of the study this is going to be strongly considering both local services and Regional services and we'll be looking at our our significant corridors across the region us 15501 between Duram and Chapel Hill is is really important and how we can make improvements there the East 10 connector the new a which is.

The new 885 the Durham freeway us70 our other interstates all of these corridors have significant projects just Highway projects whether it's resurfacing or geometric improvements coming over the next generation for our constituents we want to make sure that those improvements include public transportation benefit go ahead and I'll go I'm not sure you want me to ask now though do you want me to wait do you want me to hold it till no this is this is such a important conversation no just goad okay could you go back to that slide that we were on just remind me so I am confused about what studies what sorry about that you know there's the 15501 there's a study there but I can see how it might involve bus Rapid Transit sorts of analyses you know maybe we're trying to figure out what to do along the former Light Rail Corridor 147 a lot of visioning over the years has come forward that talked about turning that into a Boulevard sort of project rather than a highway bisecting.

Neighborhoods 70 I know there's comments have recently been collected along about what to do with 70 is it going to be more of a highway or is it going to be more something that seems more like complete streets so just could you help me understand how all these are working together and what which ones of those falls under which category so certainly and that's a great question as I said this is confusing even for us that work with the day-to-day so we we have lots of internal processes and to keep things straight the examples you mentioned are all based on specific Corridor or area projects so the fast 2.0 study is a global look at our transportation infrastructure and the kinds of improvements that need to be made both geometric and Technology like signal systems and operations to make sure that we accommodate the future of public transportation broadly when we get to a specific Corridor like 15501 the bus being reliability study in Durham should have a a Str a series.

Implementation of what advancing public transportation in that Corridor looks like and be able to influence the outcome of NC's potential project along 15501 so that'll have more detail more granular more granular more Project Specific improvements yeah that that is helpful not completely clarifying but it is certainly helpful thank you David are you a professor have you ever been an instructor I have taught adjunct before and and I would guess that my students were equally confused about all this no no I asked that because one of the things that been on the board of a go triangle is that I I push back a lot because there's speaking to people that we're going to have a whole new board almost on go triangle Board of Trustees and and though sometimes there's no context for what's being given to us coming here first makes sense to me because you explaining it in a way that my brain can comprehend but when you come to me on the N 90th yard and ask me to vote for something.

That I don't have the context for what happened five years ago it gets to be we're pushing back on people but what you all three of you are doing this morning gives me context for what what is happening and I can I can follow it somewhat I mean I know all the details but it makes sense that's why I as you you Professor well I think collectively we're we're we've heard your statements and and your your perspective a lot collectively your perspectives and we're working very hard to make not just our public Outreach like when it happens accessible or where it happens but also how it happens so we're not throwing just a bunch of acronyms which transportation is very very famous for out at folks and expecting them to be able to follow along because it it is alphabet soup for sure it is and and and when the public is listening to it they don't understand either and then they come to us and ask us questions and if we are not.

Grounded we can't answer their questions and if we don't can't answer the questions we need to find you so thank you for what you provided this morning this far it it really makes a lot of sense thank you well I need to give credit to the county the Durham County transportation director Ellen Beckman who was not able to be here today because her expertise was needed to share with her peers nationally on some work that she's been doing and receiving recognition for that but she put together this slide and I think that it is very valuable along that same vein of conversation good so overall overarching in Durham we have a vision plan that was the the County Transit plan that you that you all helped adopt and that talks about on a on a high level and with broader public engagement you know what's important when it comes to public transportation in Durham County is it Regional connections is it reliability is it speed you know how does that go and and.

The vision plan takes a a longterm look at it and essentially considers the money that the Cy's Transit tax at half cent raises for the most part and there are some other small funding sources but that's the big one and how are we going to spend that and into those needs buckets the two studies that are in the next box up here sort of begin to refine those down okay we we know we've got 30 plus percent that we want to spend on some Regional connections and improving bufe reliability in in Durham County so how are we going to do that how what's our strategy for that the fast study okay what specific kinds of infrastructure all over Durham do we need to implement to make public transit more useful and effective then we've got project development we've got kind of two kinds of project development we've got big Transit projects you know public transportation corridors where maybe we are looking at installing a brt like system that has more.

Dedicated stops and and you know tied in more to specific developments rather than a flag stop kind of system where you have a lot lots of road signs just on the side of the road and then we've got Highway projects which are called out here is Transportation Improvement program projects on our major corridors what really specific improvements need to be made as a part of those and that project development th all of these are going to take many years and many versions and iterations and lots of public input lots of data collection lots of construction analysis and Engineering that'll go into some some output which would be projects and some of the projects we're hoping with public transportation are potentially bus Rapid Transit and just more reliable bus service people a lot of people in Durham use public transportation we want it to be consistent we want it to be on time we want to improve headways so that we get down to 15minute headways on some of our most important routes or even more.

And that's how we're going to continue to get support and grow system usage so again the some of the future actions that will come before this board and the go triangle board will be approving project development funding and the annual work programs refining projects that are in the Durham County public transportation plan and then at the no board level including those regionally significant projects and investments in the the regional long range Transportation. Plan so Steve did you want to talk about anything with go triangle to put you on the spot you some of them are at a loss for word so no I mean I I think as as Doug kind of indicated that there's a lot of working together a lot of collaborative and it kind of feeds into just the overarching view of where we are with studies and where we want to get to implementation and one of the potential studies is go triangle Paul black I'm not sure if he gave it this in this work in previous work.

Sessions is something we could definitely correspond and have a presentation but one of the go triangle initiatives is the regional rapid bus study it kind of goes with all these other studies at as Doug kind of said there's also this kind of high level overarching study with the fast but one of the things is is really just evaluating where we could do kind of regional rapid bus kind of having these abilities to really serve into the area and just kind of pick up on the ridership in in regards of the specific if the desire is to actually have a presentation on it I think that would be great I'm sure he gave at the Go triangle board level but that's something we definitely arrange as we progress further on it not sure Doug if you have anything well I think that summarizes it well and and certainly that effort gets more refined I'm sure go triangle like to come back and inform is this in lie of something re.

You know for rail for Regional Transit I I think it's really just kind of like peeling the onion back and just kind of seeing where we could go and similar like you were saying like if we have to do something with the LRT Line in the past or just how we could really make the whole region go further so go triangle as the regional entity really is trying to evaluate everything kind of everything on the table but what I'll do is I will Circle back with go triangle staff and actually have them put a presentation in the next month or two with this board just to get further on as we're implementing or just really as the process is moving forward that'd be something great if you the board would like mhm yeah I I don't think this is intended to be in lie long range vision of for fixed guideway public transportation but you know in between now and then how to develop service on that route okay those routes thanks.

Yeah all right we're going to continue to build on engagement I know at the no we're working on some new strategies and opportunities to deploy and engage our constituents regardless of their their technology familiarity or capabilities or their location or where they're at but we want to get out we want to Target lots of people we want a lot of involvement we want to make sure that we're engaging different kinds of people in different situations but certainly making sure that people that have not traditionally had access to our public transportation system or our decision- making processes have that access that's very important us we're going to work a lot through the next that and I'm speaking from the n's perspective over the next five years as we're updating our long range plan which we coordinate with our sister agency based in the Raleigh carry Metropolitan statistical area so the whole triangle has a Consolidated long range Transportation plan that looks at the next 30 Years we want to make.

Sure that we're distilling the input we get into good information to help our decision makers make you know decide how we invest our limited Transportation fund you mentioned something earlier David and Doug why I want to keep saying David today my son his name is David he's probably talking about me right now but you mention something earlier about our partners and having conversation and making sure that they are brought into this conversation and you know had that conversation with you I've had it with Wendy as well and and I appreciate that piece as well because when we're talking about Regional it can't happen if we don't have relationships with the other counties so thank you for for driving that conversation you and your team and and for the next long range plan update which we intend on adopting in 2025 we are already having meetings coordinate all those Partners every Friday morning every other week so we're already starting this we're already working together good you know where.

We have regular touch points on so I can give up on I have to pull a meeting together good I don't have to deal with it you got it okay thank you Mrs Jacobs yeah thank you again for this presentation and I just two things one I I think it's really important and you alluded to it Doug that we especially with the bests speed and reliability study that we are talking about land use and I just want to make sure and we've talked about this but I just want to State it in this in this for the record here that it is going to be really important that we coordinate with the Durham comprehensive land use plan and and also with the adoption of the revised Udo we can't talk about being able to have an effective transit system and in increase ridership and then get funding unless we are also coordinating with the land use so to me this is just one of the most important pieces we know that we.

Didn't one of the reasons that we didn't qualify for FTA money for the commuter rail in the commuter rail study was because we didn't have enough ridership around the station areas so that's where it's going to be so important that we are looking at the land use because it will help us also get funding it will help us avoid sprawl and Implement actually the goals of our land use plan but it's you know all of the studies show us that the future jobs are going to be east of us in Wake County and we have we know the corridor where all the jobs are it is the the rail Corridor so we've got to for the you know for the future prosperity of our residents we have to make sure people can get to where the jobs are going to be in the future whether it's by bus or train or or the triangle bike way on on an electric bike so we need we need all of those so and to I know Doug.

Already addressed about that this is not in lie because we have to be clear that even brt can never replace the efficiency of of train so we we have to have both we have to have both you know buses are not going to have the capacity and they're not going to have the reliability and the efficiency we we have to have everything so but thank you and I look forward to all the great things that are happening thank you okay any other questions comments okay anything else for you well again thank you so much for your presentation we really appreciate it thank you all right all right our next item is make sure I'm on the right page here I think it's appraisal yes 23821 presentation of Durham County 2025 General reappraisal update and we have a new tax assessor Mr do and he going to present to us today all right and Dwayne they both of you good morning morning Dwayne Brinson assistant County Manager I'm going to give a just a brief remark.

On the theme of this work session that this work session is intended to be the community safety portfolio a lot of the presentations you're going to see coming up they are themed in with Community safety so I'm going to introduce this one and quickly turn it over to our new and very capable tax administrator Mr Kar Doyle this presentation is the just an an annual update of routine update on the 2025 General reappraisal that we'll have in Durham County so Mr Doyle good morning Commissioners good morning welcome to your first presentation thank you very much thank you very much before we get started just want to thank you all commend you all for the efforts on the Stag ra project I was glad to hear that I've been going there since a child and that's a very powerful place so yeah thank you very much all right we're GNA Jump Right In I have the deputy assessor staring batty with me to assist good morning now we're going to basically.

Just be giving a update on the reappraisal we did a presentation I believe was back in May believe but this is basically going to recap some of that same information and give you a little more clarity in regards to where we are today no problem all right he's he's still nerves all right so so the agenda Durham County history of Durham reappraisals the significance of the actual 2025 re appraisal and the timeline all right so the history of Durham County Durham County was established in 1881 it is a product of land being transferred from a portion of orange and Wake County Durham County hosts the fourth largest city in the state and the 73rd largest city in the United States over the course of the first 100 years the population grew in 1981 to just over 163,000 people so it took a 100,000 years I mean 100 years to get to to get to 163,000 people okay so 100 years we got you all right so the county increased in population in 2,000 to.

223,000 that's an increase of 60,000 people by 2010 it grew to a population of 267,000 the County's population for 2023 is over twice that 1981 population at more than 350,000 people so the increase in population of course creates that demand and the supply went through the roof so this is why we are in a kind of situation we are in regards to the housing rent rental market everything's increased because direct effect of this population growth in such a a short time period so the history of Durham County and I'm not going far back but the last four including this one so we did one in January 1 2008 very long time in between the next one was 2016 thankfully you all changed that to a fouryear cycle this particular time was three years so we did one again in 2019 and the expected reappraisal now coming January 1.

2025 the significance of these reappraisals so the reappraisals are required by law at least once every a years the more time between those reappraisals the more opportunity we have for activity to take place in the market whether that is positive or negative that time span gives a lot of time for a lot of movement the goal of the reappraisal is to bring all of the properties to 100% market value so we're basically saying every reappraisal we're going to adjust those tax values to the current market all right a reappraisal equalizes the tax base but should not be confused or considered a revenue generator all right so it's again it's really just to readjust the tax values to whatever the current market is at that time of that.

Reappraisal North Carina Department of Revenue reap appraisal standards the North Carolina General statute 105 283 States all property real and personal shall as far as practicable be appraised or valued at its true value in money again at market value standards and uniformity on November 1st 2017 the north Carina Department of Revenue announced the adoption of the International Association of assessing officers standard on mass appraisal for real property as the standard for re appraisals thereby provide in a systematic means by which County Assessors throughout North Carolina can improve and standardize the re appraisal process so this is really just a matter of trying to make sure that everybody across the state is doing the same thing we're all trying to use the same standards the same practices to get to these.

Values County Assessor is responsible for the listing appraisal and assessment of all property in the county ordance with the provisions of state law the board of Board of County Commissioners is to provide the funding necessary for the county assessor to carry out the the duties and responsibilities required by the North Carolina statutes taxpayers deserve a fairing Equitable reappraisal County government provides resources to produce fair and Equitable reappraisals based on standards adopted by North Carina Department of Revenue which one our reappraisal public relations it is imperative Durham County Citizens understand re appraisal mandates and requirements the purpose of a reappraisal the process of a reappraisal and how a reappraisal affects their tax.

Liability we're going to go into our timeline if you notice the top five units or lines are things that have already occurred they occurred between January 23 and August of 23 we did the real appraisal plan due was due to North Carolina Department of Revenue that was sent in and approved by them the in January also of that year the internal reappraisal work began we started doing our initial things as to how we need to set up the office how we who we need to be in what place to do which things so we started that in January and then Janu in January also in conjunction with doing the plan and setting up who does what and when we also started began to analyze the sales that have occurred in Durham prior to January so we started doing that and that gives us an idea of where we concentrate and where we need to start learning about the activities that occurred prior to that day in March we started pricing land and when we.

Started pricing that land that was based upon the information and the data that we got out of the analyzing of the sales so there most of the land sales we were interested not so necessarily package sales of land and homes and then in August we started the Improvement pricing which then takes that land that we've already analyzed and we put it to or we add some buildings to it so now we understand or we are beginning to understand the the the sales of the county the how should we price the land how should we price these buildings what what are the contributing things to making things sell for what they sell starting and that's what we're doing right now we we're in that process right now we're really analyzing sales and putting those sales together to come up with why these things sold for this how much did they sale based on the land SES and how much does it did the house contribute to that package sale so.

That's what we are trying to understand now and to set that Baseline for what we're trying to do Mar 24 up coming up we're going to start or begin to construct the schedule of values that is the thing that we bring before you all to lay out so that you all can look and at it to see how things how we plan to price these things also lays out for the Community to review and make comments on so at that point in time we'll start putting that thing together so that by September we'll be able to have that to you all because in July we should be getting that thing that document together we should have the information that we think is going to be relevant and going to make this project happen and so at least in September we want to have that adopted so that you come before you all get it adopted so it can lay out and everybody look at it and then between.

January in February of 25 we want to start getting those notices of change of value out the things that everyone is going to be waiting for and the thing that everyone is going to be dreading so we're going to do all those things at the same time to get that out so that the people can get their notice of what we intend to assess these values at or these property values at and that they'll have their time to look at their notice determine whether they think that notice is valid or are we just crazy all right which most of the time they say we're crazy all right so and we'll also start in the after we send out this notice the set of what we call informal appeals there is no such thing as an informal appeal but there are things that happen that may not need to be appealed which for example if we've got you with 72 bathrooms and three bedrooms and a 14400 foot house that's an error you don't need to.

Appeal we just need to fix that that doesn't that's going to be easy so we're going to have a number of those things that happened simply due to data entry we will straighten those things out and hopefully that will not cause a formal appeals so we can get rid of those formal appeals and so the Board of Equalization review which you all has appointed to sit in you in your Place we'll begin of course after the first Monday in April and at that point in time we should be hearing people people should be coming into our office they should be getting information that they haven't gotten before and and they should get an understanding of why their values are as they are or we can discuss it and see what they have that will dispute what we have and we'll go through the process of having an appeal so that's that's what we'll do then and so April we start that process which everybody is so excitedly waiting for and I certainly.

Am okay I guess y'all heard that okay how to accomplish a successful reappraisal of course it's the timeline we got to set it up so that we'll know how to begin and when we need to end time management is a priority ensuring all necessary resources are accessible and that everything is done timely we need to have the proper software the things that really help us to keep it organized and we we are utilizing the topof the line modern software with all the technical enhancements and advancement that are going into the Mass appraisal business and then we have an educated staff you all have have afforded us the opportunity to make sure that the people on our staff are educated they're not just in their talking they they know what they're talking about so we appreciate that so we're going to apply that training and education to make sure that how we communicate with the staff how we communicate with the citizens of the of the county and make sure that we they.

Know that we know what we're talking about and so that teamwork through all of that none of that would happen if we do not have teamwork and so we're going to ensure that all these divisions within the tax administration work together to produce the required results and we're going to make certain as I said that communication is orderly and constructive you say well well you don't need other teams in the tax division to work on this remember we're doing the real property part of it and in mixing in that real property when especially when you're doing commercial work there is personal property so when we see a commercial sale even though it's not supposed to include any personal property well we need to work with the personal property team to make sure that that we are not double listing things so there is some cross referencing from the personal property section and also the land records and GIS people we get our Parcels the size of our lots and.

Tracks that comes through them so we work with land records and GIS so the or the office has to be coordinated so that we can have everything the best that we can have when we send it out and then we need to be coordinated when we send it out and something is not correct that we are able to fix or adjust or correct whatever needs to be corrected and our success The dco Tax Administration staff has the skills and knowledge to successfully complete the 2025 reappraisal staff paired with the enhancements of the ncps camera system provides and enables our office with the ability to complete the 2025 reais in accordance to the NCD St standards and in a timely manner the 2025 real appraisal will be a fair Equitable and here in dur a historic reappraisal which I finally referred to as hysteric and we listen here so if anyone needs to contact our office K there's the information to get in contact with him and anytime you all have something for us any questions.

Please feel free to contact Mr D or myself we'll be glad to talk with you and give you anything that you need from us and we appreciate time to go over this and answer any questions you all may have questions please okay Mr doel and Mr batty thank you so much for your great presentation any questions from the board commissioner alum thank you so much for the presentation and congratulations Kar on your first presentation to us I had a question more so for my own learning and understanding so when we do a tax reappraisal it's not you already mentioned it's not a revenue generation so it's to get us to be tax neutral so the way that would happen is that the properties are assessed and then there's going to be properties that increase in value some properties that stay the same some properties May lower in value and then you adjust the tax rate to get our Revenue to stay the same right is that how it works you are.

Explaining Revenue neutral okay yes but in general the reappraisal itself is just to get those tax values where they need to be which is market value the tax rate portion you're speaking of makes it the tax the Revenue neutral conversation but the reappraisal itself is specifically for Value so it's only identifying whatever the market value is at that particular time in this case January 1 2025 so properties that are selling today and next year 2024 two years prior to the reappraisal those are the sales that we're going to be focusing on mostly in regards to identifying market value and that will equate to tax value those notices will be based on just tax value so then the residents that would be most likely to be impacted by the tax appraisal are going to be the ones who like maybe purchased a home in like five or like in 2019 when the last reappraisal happen versus someone who purchases a house in 202 2 say they purchase it for 600,000 is probably.

Still going to be valued at that 600,000 versus a 2019 person their house is grown since then or their value is grown let me let me give you a quick example all right this might help you out all right so taxpayer buys a home in 2017 they paid $230,000 for that property in 2019 there was a re appraisal their tax value became that $230,000 or close to it based on the fact that their sale took place right before 2019 all right in this particular case in this particular Market that person that paid $230,000 that that reappraisal readjusted their tax value in 2019 to 230,000 all right that person has not purchased a home they are still in that same property 2025 that person's property value could be $450,000 without a sale taking place now in that particular case that taxpayer paid $230,000 for the property about four years later a person across the street with a smaller home 1,000 s ft² smaller paid $360,000 for their property yep all right so that.

$360,000 property sale affected mhm that 200 that $230,000 property because that was a smaller home sold for $360,000 and that sale took place in this time period so that $360,000 affects that $230,000 sale now does it mean that it's going to be 500,000 or 600 I don't know but that's how it affects it they two totally different properties two totally different sales but they they do affect each other so did I answer it did I help you in okay this is what's happening throughout Durham now depending on neighborhood those ranges are drastically different or they could be very close and Tighter that's the hard part that the Tax Administration has well real property specifically has to has to take their time analyze these sales and determine the triggers that cause these variances these differences is it just square footage is a location there all kind of things that go into that particular math thank you that's really helpful and I have one followup question I know so we're only talking about the reappraisal.

So you can tell me if we need to get to this part at a later time going back to the revenue neutral conversation so in that instance that you just explained if we are trying to reach a revenue neutral tax rate the impact would still be greater on that individual who purchased their home in 2017 versus the person who purchased their home more recently if we're trying to reach Revenue neutral because then the tax rate would come down but their property value still higher so their tax rates probably still higher or tax the the purpose of the reappraisal which we've been stating is to determine market value the effect for the person that paid the 230 will be the same as the effect of the person that paid 330 because remember that property was sitting on the books at when they purchased it at the 330 price at some price more than likely lower than the 330 they paid so everybody had been equalized in 2019 all right so their.

Value was it was a 2019 value for the 230,000 sale but also the $330,000 sale was also equalized in 2019 so they both were sitting here at this price the sale of the 330 just came here so it did not change their value they did not get raise so when 25 comes everybody gets to raise at the same time so they will be equally affected it would not be one is higher one would pay more taxes simply because they purchase years earlier than the one who purchased more recently so that's the purpose of the revaluations is to keep these periods of Equalization that and that's how we make the the effect be equal you know the pain is spread it out over the four-year period the same then we go into the next cycle everybody's equalized from there and your value stays the same until the next reappraisal so you don't get in between Rises or lowers thank youate okay commissioner Jacobs or commissioner Burns yeah I think what's confusing is that.

The tax rate has not the tax value has not changed since 2019 so no matter what somebody paid for their house it doesn't correlate to the tax rate and what we're doing with the rebow is actually changing the tax rate so that it's correlating to the current market value yeah and just to clarify so they will tell us what the neutral tax rate is but it's actually up to the board of County Commissioners to set the tax rate yeah but thank you so much for your presentation it's really helpful not only for our board but I think to start having this conversation in public it's you know every time you come and give this big picture and tell us where we are at the process it's helping to educate the community so one of my questions is related to the community engagement piece have you developed a timeline for that yet and and strategies around that yet I should have gone first we always think the same man it's.

It's being worked on now we have not actually scheduled the first one but we are working on how we want to roll that out but we want to get started as soon as possible okay great I think that's going to be really important and when you do have that plan if you could share that with us and hopefully we will have the we've got great resources I see some of them sitting in the room to help you with that and I hope you'll also use I know Dwayne did some of this too when he when he was you know the tax administrator is the videos you know I think and Rod just did a great has done he's done great interviews during coid to the community and recently rod and Maggie our DSS director did a joint video on Medicaid expansion so I would encourage you to to use EV all the resources that we have within Durham County government to help you with getting the message out.

Because I think that one of the com it's you can hear from the conversation here how it's confusing and the idea that this is the value at one point in time one day you know January 1st 2025 it's not the day before it's it's not the day after it's that one day it's just a snapshot that's the way the law Works I think that's going to be really important and also are we going to be able to do the comps again that we provided in 2019 where residents could go online and right there just like you you were expl explaining that you could see what the different properties were that had have sold on your street and when so that people can understand where these numbers may be coming from will will that be available to people that is our intentions at the moment that particular we we lost a little functionality with the conversion so we're trying to make sure that we bring that portion back two different systems.

So our intentions were not to get rid of that so that is something that we plan to definitely have back okay I I would just say I think that's one of the most important things because not and it would really help with number one cutting down on the appeals but also I think it makes it more Equitable for people because some people can't afford to go out and or they don't know how to get a comps and so you know they can't go out and get an appraiser to come and that's expensive so if we can provide those comps to people who do want to appeal also I think it makes the process more Equitable so for me I know that's a priority to have that and the other thing I would encourage is just use us as a resource about Community groups to go speak to and also we're happy to help with that and making connections and also our libraries have always been a good place to have you know.

For you to speak or have your staff speak when it gets you know through the process but we're here to help so thank you always Monica is a good place to send your notices so that it goes out to all of the board members and it can go on our announcements so that that's helpful yeah commissioner Burns thank you so much okay welcome so nice never met we got a new Tex administrator nice to meet you is everyone treating you nice nobody's taking your lunch money great so gonna go I look and you speak fine I still have homecoming ears so that's why everybody got to speak up I unapologetically have homecoming ear and I'm slightly horse and Unapologetic for that as well so you answered my question about I I already know that Outreach is going to be important to you if for no other reason I don't know why what I'm about to say is offensive to people but it's because you're from darl right and you don't want your neighbors to.

Feel the way you you don't want your NE neighbors to feel in any any way UNT word that you would want to feel right so you want to make sure they have everything so I'mma I'mma go back to Dwayne a little bit back in April because I know that we're talking about the appraisal and we're not talking about the tax rate I just want to publicly say I'm if I if God still allows me to be here for you know two years from now I I I'm going to be a staunch proponent of lowering this thing as low as I can low as I can neutrally go and so Dwayne on April 4th I think 2023 you all were here for a work session then I followed up and said I wanted to see what it would look like if we kept our tax rate the same and he sent it right to me thank you so much Dwayne I appreciate it K I'm going treat you.

The same way so I just he s it because we said this is what it point 57 and then we were at 7522 and then you sent a chart and you I requested it but everybody got it so and I just puled it up in my email and just seeing how big of a jump it would be if we kept it the same and I want us to I wanted us to see that sticker Shar because I wanted us to see if this is what sticker shot looks like to us in our emails this is what it's going to look like to our neighbors in their mailboxes so she was talking about the comps I was going to ask I actually before this presentation went online and played around on the website so some of dad is up there I don't know how much of an issue so I've seen all the sales I I pulled mine no joke two days ago and said okay what what all sold in my.

Neighborhood so I already know a sister about to get real big stick of shock cuz I I didn't buy nowhere near that but that's the name of the game and you know I do my part I wanted to go back to you said there's no such thing as informal appraisals but you appeals I got I can't read my own handwriting that's me in former appeals but you have it up there so those you said those will be kind of sort of the fixes right yes we we have a process in our office at this time and which we call dcrs where we when something is not correct you contact us and tell us that it is not correct and we fix it and rather than you having to appeal your value when you only want to have your number of bedrooms change to four that's okay so that's not really and we that DCR is a data change request you request that we correct some data that is involved with your on your parcel on.

Your property record card so that that informal hearing is something of that nature where we fix the things that are not value related is just incorrect okay no that's helpful okay I just I wanted to know the name of it because when you said it on the screen and you said that's not the name of it these people watching this we need to know what the name it is okay saying that DCR yes only in that the state of North Carolina does not recognize a informal appeal session you you driving down my next street the other thing we used to kind of sort of get and I know we still get these any updates so I'm going do my last two questions because I know that we're on time one and I'll throw both of them out there you all know that we're dealing with Medicaid expansion right now I asked the manager and I asked our director okay what algorithm do we have that says how many of those 600,000.

Beur the state had an algorithm said 22,000 people could potentially build on Medicaid and this wonderful board staff and everybody else said we need to hire 35 more people boom we had a hiring Fair we still behind those people this board moved the money I know that you GNA need some more people so I don't know what algorithm you all have to do I know that during tax season you take on contractors but in my mind I'm like you got to real appraisal and a reevaluation that's possibly somebody help me if I'm wrong to me that seems more timec consuming than a contract person so in preparation because I I always want to think about what you all might need ahead of time because there are things that we think about but if the need is there that y'all need three more FTE 17 more contract people over two like I don't know what the number is I would love to know that so that as I'm going.

Into our public policy Retreat as we are going into budget that I can be mindful like yes these are things that I want but these are things that we need so if there's a number there I'm sure y'all communicated that to the manager I I would be interested in knowing what that is and then number two we get legislative reports from your department is there anything that you all see on the horizon so that's question two we get monthly legislative reports from you all is there anything because you know it's the Wild Wild West over at the general assembly that you all see that might potentially affect your work and how can we be cognizant of it and be Advocates of it so that it doesn't derail what is supposed to be in your words Mr baby Fair Equitable historic and hysterical so okay so those are questions Brenda and they haven't answered them okay great thank you thank you so much you have are the answers that they can provide for you on in.

Writing because we going to need to move on no problem we'll make sure we get okay they can send you an email that would be great as soon as possible okay I'll allow it today thank y'all thank you thank you you have a question Mard may I sure thank you thank you gentlemen for your historic work and for perhaps doing some of the most important work for the county right now and trying to make sure everybody's paying Fair taxes their fair share as we grow you showed us great data on how much we've grown we know that we need more services and the only way to provide more services is to have more revenu and the the tax office is the one who helps us get the revenue so thank you so much for that and really appreciate your your presentation one thing we've seen in the past and I can't remember what these ratios are called but I'm always interested in them because it seems like they help us understand understand how much.

Equalization actually needs to happen to be sure that the assessed value actually is matching the market ratio or market value I is it an equalization ratio I can't really even remember but are those numbers something you could share with us so that we can begin to get an idea in our own head of the magnitude of the change we're about to see and maybe we could even use that to help the community understand the magnitude of the changes coming yes those are I believe you're referring to the Cod COV that sounds right yes so those are ratios the further so in general real quick because I know we're on time the the further the further you get away from the previous reappraisal that number should get lower and lower and we are low we are low due to traditionally you should be low because we areais correct and we are low due to a astronomical market so those two things make the number lower than what would be considered acceptable right like if the.

Number let's say was 50% like you know basically my tax the taxes I'm paying now are really only about 50% of what the market rate value of my house might be for example that's the perfect way to look at yeah and so that would be important maybe in helping the community understand how this isn't ta we're not Revenue generating here because people do seem to think that's what's happening we're actually trying to be sure people are paying their fair share in taxes and doing as much as we can to protect those on fixed incomes and low lower income long-term homeowners but you know for there are plenty of people in Durham lots of people in Durham who can afford to pay more taxes on their their house and their house is worth more and they need to pay more taxes on it so so that that 200 $3,000 example was me okay I went to the market I went to the market for a $230,000 home I don't I haven't.

Figured it out yet what to tell somebody that went to the market for a $230,000 home in 2025 that their home is now Worth $460,000 right that's a conversation that I'm not I haven't figured out the cheat code for that particular conversation because that's just the facts there is no way to alleviate or make that sound better than what it is the the real truth behind that is technically back to the revenue neutral conversation that $450,000 new tax value does not necessarily mean that my tax bill would increase exponentially exponentially right but as Burns said commissioner Burns mentioned earlier there is a difference between my $230,000 divided by 100 Time 1 27 then it would be well 1.30 with the new current rate there's a big difference if you don't change that rate and you use 450,000 divided by 100 multipli times 1.30 so that's a drastic difference in regards to what the bill would look like we already know the the sticker shock in regards to the tax value that change of.

Value notice is going to save $450,000 that doesn't necessarily mean their bill will be astronomically more but it does mean their tax value will be thanks got a lot of work to do to help the community understand exactly and me I need to understand and that does and does as well thank you so much no problem well thank you so much for your presentation and educating all of us and our community because this is a serious conversation and I know that there's a lot more that you can share with us and and that you will share with us so thank you so much and we look forward to your next time thank you thank you're welcome the next conversation is 23822 Durham County Department of Public Health response to opord crisis and R is here with this conversation and who else is got Lindsay got quite a and Jeff okay good afternoon mow afternoon we that's ourry afternoon morning still stuck in the other afternoon I apologize good morning we thank you again.

For oh that okay that clock is okay I'm looking at this looking at this side yeah I apologize thank you it's a pleasure to be before you again I know we were with you a short while ago to kind of give you guys our ideas and our plan of action for responding to the opioid crisis with me today again is our illustrious medical director for the county Dr Jeff Jinx and director of health education Community transformation Mrs lindsy biger boach and without further Ado we'll allow them to go ahead and get started we hope to answer your questions toward the end very good good morning again and thank you to folks who have heard this before and asked good questions we're gonna start with a similar overview of how we got to where we are and we do have some updated information information about data current as of October and happy to answer questions so we're going to focus mainly on our opportunities to act in response to the opioid crisis around prevention access.

To treatment harm reduction and coordination across the county so as a reminder we really got to having an opioid overdose crisis for two fundamental reasons of science one opioids are a highly addictive substance when people are introduced even to small or shortterm use of opioids there is a high risk of having a long-term addiction so we see that even if people get a 10day prescription of opioids one in five people end up still using those medications or other illicit drugs a year later we also have seen fentanyl have a tremendous effect in the community in in terms of not just opioid use and misuse but actually leading to overdose deaths and I have just been shocked to see this graph go up and up and up when I started at the county four and a half years ago this number here was that four people die in an opioid overdose every day and now it's 11 so this number is shocking and you'll see these graphs which we won spend a.

Lot of time on but really the scale of them is quite substantial these medications and substances really change people's brains in the way that they make choices and so we saw a lot of opioid use happening starting in 2000 and we started to see about a hundred overdose deaths in North Carolina a year at that point and we did okay in Durham not that any death from an overdose is good but relative to other counties we were we were fairing okay but you can see the inflection point where we saw fentanyl being introduced into the drug Supply and we jumped from about a 100 overdose deaths to 1,200 overdose deaths at that point that number has just skyrocketed from that point where we've seen coid make things worse we've seen fentanyl be much broader across the drug Supply and so this gives you a sense of the overall number and then this graph here shows you in this blue to gray to Red how we compare to other counties in.

North Carolina so like I was saying when we saw lower levels of overdose in the early 2000s we were kind of in the middle of the pack but as we have seen the overdose level rise we have ended up being at a much higher level relative to other counties in North Carolina so part of that is why we're bringing to you the specific recommendation of really thinking about intervening on overdose deaths the big thing I want you to know even though the numbers are startling and really jarring is that overdose death is preventable we do know things that work we do know that opioids change the brain chemistry but we also have ways of treating those brain disas Lindsay can I ask a question really fast and Madam chair is on this these two slides or the ones that the overdose death Trends in Durham 34 at the High Point from heroin and or synthetic narcotics versus 86 from illicit drug overdoses so one is is from opioids the.

Other is from all illicit drugs yeah so we've provided two different things the total number of Overdose deaths which includes all substances not even just opioids and then also looking specifically at how we compare to other counties on what percentage of them are from elicit drug overdoses so the 86 is the total or is it a percentage it's actually 86 out of 100 okay like so we're 86 highest County whereas yes the other one is looking at a 34 per 100,000 rate so they are two different they're similar looks but two different things okay thank you yeah good clarification okay I I missed that say that again so this slide is giving you a rate of how often we are seeing overdose deaths per population this 86 number here is how we are comparing to other counties of the counties in North Carolina so those individual numbers you see up by the top are just totally different scales so we're 86 compared compared to other counties wow in illicit drug overdoses.

Specifically 86 highest highest in other yeah yeah and and one number is looking at racial disparity which is not reflected in these numbers which is that is disproportionately affecting the black community right we did not provide you all the data we could but commissioner Jacobs is very right that one of the very unfortunate distinguishing factors that Durham has seen compared to other counties is that we have had a equally High rate of Overdose and misuse in both the white and black population in Durham and we really have seen that as kind of a canary in the coal mine sort of statistic that that was true and Duram as the numbers started going up and we expect that that will be increasingly true in other parts of the state but are true and could I request based on because had she not had Heidi not asked that question I wouldn't have known that one was rate and one was percentile so I know that this is going to be on our.

Public website on our agenda can somebody add a legend to this for the public because a lot of times the data we give them is what they use to apply for Grants it's what they use to apply for and I would hate for them to say there were 86 deaths when this is a ranking so just add a a legend to this and a notation on the public website thank you happy to do it and yeah trying to give some context and we're gonna from this point give you what we think we can do about it so we're going to talk about like I said preventions supporting access to treatment providing harm reduction and also increasing coordination so there are several things we're already doing around prevention we have an ases coordinator here at darm County we're really the only county in North Carolina doing that so that a lot of that work around around preventing adver adverse childhood experiences and increasing protective factors are things that are happening through that work it's a.

Place that we can focus on involvement of parents and school engagement as ways to reduce early use we also are doing work within Public Health to provide educational Campa s around the dangers of opioids and also supporting medication recovery all of this work is work that can help prevent initiation of opioid use delaying early use and stopping the progression from having use problematic use to substance use disorder Public Health in Durham County is not really doing it's not now that we're not safely prescribing but because we are not providing primary care we are not involved and work doing a lot of work around following safe prescribing practices so that is on my list of things that are really important strategies but the reason you don't have a a gold box around it is acknowledging that four of these fives are really The Wheelhouse of Public Health and one of them Falls more in our medical system I did throw some new Flyers up here we just had an event at peace.

Missionary Baptist Church on October 28th so use that as our most recent example of a time where we have community members actually come in and provide extra medications so that we can safely dispose of those and not have extra opioids sitting literally in Grandma's medicine cabinet for a granddaughter to come and and pick up and and experiment with so those are the reasons we do medication recovery because we know that having extra pills doesn't benefit the original person who was prescribed them and also want to make sure that we're not getting those into the hands of anyone else so we do this all the time we have a permanent medication dropbox at Public Health but we also do different events we're also doing lots of different Community Education events so we highlighted a couple here for acute and Primary Care Providers just general information for them around substance use a mini conference that we did for Durham clergy and health Ministry leaders thinking about the role of faith based organizations around this work and then.

Also recovery friendly workplace Focus for employers including Durham County so we've been trying to think about the different ways that having Community Education just helps people understand about addiction about community health and safety risks about how to access available treatment before you leave that one faith-based mini conference where was that held so we actually did that virtually it has happened recently enough that it did not make sense at that point to be gathering the group in person. Okay so the next thing that we think is really important if we are going to treat a treatable brain disease is to increase the access to treatment we know that there are effective treatments out there but that a very low number of individuals with substance use disord actually access this treatment we see the statistics being about one in four individuals who would qualify as having substance use disorder actually receiving specialized treatment for opioid use and that comes from a lot of different things the certainly stigma is a major piece but ability to access and.

Afford care is a piece and thinking about where people can access what's really the gold standard of treatment for opioid disorder which is medication assisted treatment having more of that in more places including Primary Care is something that we want to increase access to so one of the biggest things that Durham County has been able to do directly so far in this space is actually Provide support to the community linkages to care peer support program which actually puts peer support Specialists individuals who have lived experience with either mental health issues and or substance use disorder in contact with individuals pursuing treat it helps them develop a network of support and also prepare a plan for Recovery that really makes sense for them starts where they are and helps them link up to resources the peer support Specialists are also a part of our post overdose response teams which often get called our port and that is a place where we team up with the EMS Community paramedics and actually go out.

Into the community and visit people within 72 two hours of an overdose and see if that might be a point where they are more ready to access treatment than they otherwise would have been and to make sure that they know about the resources that are available for treatment and peer support So we had State funding for this CLC peer support program from December 2019 until August of this year and then we have been able to use some of the opioid funding to actually support expansion of the program in this current fiscal year so that we're in the process of expanding from one peer support specialist which we had under the state funding to three peer support Specialists with the county funds and and another just if we're going to make any revisions I think it's important that this is noted as County opioid funding this is not coming from the general.

Fund so what we really want to focus on in addition to all the great things that are already happening so far is to talk to you a little bit more today about harm reduction and how two specific strategies increasing access to theck Zone which is the opioid overdose reversal drug and offering safer syringe programs are places that we want to be doing more and we really want to think about these as strategies that help us stop all together or reduce the harmful impacts of substance misuse we want to think about how it helps individuals wherever they are in their use journey improve their health improve their social function and really manage relapse risk which is unfortunately very common in a chronic brain disease so one of the big things we've been focusing on so far is increasing access to theck Zone we currently have that available if you just walk up to the window in the phy at Durham County's Public Health Department and we also just this fall launched the first of our.

Nxone vending machines so both of those are opportunities for people to get a free Noone kit and take it kind of wherever they might find it useful whether that's having it with them as they are using substances or having it for a family member or knowing that they are frequently in a place where other people are using we know that most overdose deaths actually occur at home so having noox Zone easily accessible is something that's really important to address that overdose risk we also know that use of Noone does not increase the frequency of opioid use so this is something that we really want to have available as a harm reduction strategy so you can see here how we've given out kits at the pharmacy in public health we've we saw a little dip in 22 just I think based on the way the world was shifting around us but between 21 and 22 we saw about a doubling of the number of no oxin kits that we distributed through our Pharmacy which.

Is part of the reason that we then started thinking about how else we could increase access to noock Zone and thinking about the vending machines is your charge to get it out of the machine there is no charge there's no chart so how do they get out of the machine they have to have a code or something basically there's actually an organization that has worked to create a whole vending machine where there is no cost there's just do you want slot two do you want slot two yep you just okay you just push button yep when I try that on the machine to get my crackers it doesn't happen it does not work as well for your your soda or your afternoon snack but it is not your fault no it won't give me no crackers okay let I put money in got a different vending machine than that yeah the other thing that we're providing again totally free of charge is actually participation in a safer syringe program where people might get.

Some or all of these different supplies to help them engage in safer injection drug use and so we provide things like container sterile syringes but also things like alcohol pads and sterile water safer sex supplies like condoms and newly well we've for a while had fentanyl test drips and have recently started offering also xylazine test strips as a part of those offerings we also provide educational materials for people and a a card that keeps us in compliance with the North Carolina legislation so again you've seen these numbers really increase over time and in the 2023 fiscal year saw 770 kits provided so we did want to offer a little bit of really time sensitive updates on what we're seeing we launched the vending machine in the Durham County Detention Center on September 12th we've distributed 91 Nar count and kits between then and October 30th if you think about it we had distrib 175 in the previous 12 months so we're outpacing that monthly rate and that's in addition to continuing to see.

Distribution of those kits at the pharmacy as well we've also been asking some questions that we weren't being as specific before when we're giving out our safer syringe kits and so we're asking people now when they come in for safer syringe kits have you used nxone in the previous month and we found that actually five people in October who receiv received supplies from us said yes in the previous month I have used Noone in the case of an overdose that might be that somebody used it on them or it might be that they used it with somebody else but we know that the noock zone that we actually Distributing in the pharmacy in the Detention Center is getting used actively right now we also know that zyline test STS are getting used so we started Distributing those September 1st and so far we've had 72 individuals who have said yeah we want XY test strips we give people options about what which of the supplies are useful to them and we know that xine.

Test strips are are not the cheapest thing and so we've been asking and lots of people are taking us can I add something about that because I I had this question with these Fentanyl and xylazine test strips like how are they being being used and it doesn't appear that like a person purchasing you know one of these substances is able to test a substance and then choose whether or not to buy it but what does happen is you know they will test the substance and either a know if there's fentanyl or xine in there but B they can also give feedback to the person that sold them that drug say Hey you know did you know that what you sold me has you know one or two of these substances in it and it not only is feedback to the person selling the drug but you know there's enough of there's enough availability of people to buy these substances from end Durham that they can actually go to someone else and so there.

Is some feedback along that supply chain and so it was in learning a little bit more about that was instructive to me as to like how these test strips are being used we also wanted to highlight that along with all of the harm reduction supplies that we're providing we are providing education and linkages to resources so we have updated this Durham County guide three different times already over the past couple years and distributed 5,500 copies in both English and Spanish and created a really culturally specific Spanish version it's not just a translation of this English resource guide but thinking specifically about bilingual and bicultural individuals who are providing substance use care so we've shared this not just with individuals who are coming to the pharmacy or making it available at our vending machines but also thinking about how people are connecting to hospitals emergency department our EMS our Detention Center our faith-based organizations and other community organizations so really at this point in time we think that the biggest things.

That Durham County Public Health can apply and use is having an additional person who's focused on harm reduction we do have harm reduction work happening through our Pharmacy with people who are filling Pharmacy prescriptions for a wide variety of requests they're doing that on top of things we do have people who are doing harm reduction within our community testing program when they're doing testing for HIV and STI we do have individuals who are working in the clinic and providing harm reduction education as a part of all the other things that they're doing but we really don't have anybody who's focused exclusively on thinking about how we can increase the harm reduction work that we're doing in durman County right now did we use to I was thinking we had someone present to us that was like in charge of harm reduction for the health department no so we have several years ago had some funds that were specifically F focused on hepatitis prevention that we did use use largely.

To do harm reduction work that was before we saw such a spike in the fentanyl overdoses so yes we have had roles in this way in the past that have been Grant funded and like I said we do have folks as a part of our communicable disease work so Dennis Hamlet has come here before that's who I'm thinking y so he certainly has that within his whe house but all of the funding is actually coming from a focus on HIV sexually transmitted infection and hepatitis reduction not a focus on overdose prevention very important distinction thanks yeah we continue to think about how we have funds for Noone remarkably we see funding application after application that asks us to impact overdose deaths and very top of the list of things funds cannot be used for is no o this is related to Federal dictates about what we are agreeing to spend money on and just over and over have opportunities for funding which do not allow us to purchase Nock.

Zone so we have a vending machine that we're ready to launch as soon as we feel like we have a sufficient supply of noock Zone to actually keep it stocked and we don't want to launch it and have a media event and then have it be out of the lock zone two months later so it's kind of sitting there waiting waiting to be filled and and we know that there is the need for moreal oxone in the community similarly we also know that funds to continue supporting the growth of the safer syringe program are important because right after it says that you can't spend money on the lock Zone it says that you can't spend money on safer syring or sterile syringes those are just two things that funding announcement after funding announcement says that is not a place that you can spend funds on so as we think about the fact that we do have funds that have some flexibity with the opioid settlements we encourage you all to.

Think about whether these are places that we might actually be able to purchase supplies which we know can have an impact in Durham finally we encourage and and are eager to be a part of a comprehensive evaluation effort to think about how these supplies how education are reaching different parts of the Durham Community as we mentioned earlier we know that there's racial dynamics that are going on in Durham which are currently unique to Durham but I do not expect are actually unique to Durham I think they are just for voting signs of what is happening across North Carolina and so really having an understanding of stigma of access and other things about what is influencing where people are willing to get support and access to treatment I think is is really important so we have provided a proposed harm reduction spending budget with a public health education specialist in that harm reduction role and then really thinking about programmatic supplies that would support a person in that role but then a significant purchase of it.

Just supplies Naran sterile syes and then based on the last conversation that we had here at the board we did actually add a a individual vending machine into this budget the thought that there does seem to be good support for the idea that at least one Durham County Library could be a pilot site for having a vending machine for an a lock Zone and so that is the cost of just purchasing the machine itself which like we said has no cost associated with it but just sets it up for people to be able to access the lock Zone and then we do recommend a little bit of contract Staffing budget to have an individual who has lived experience to actually go out in the community and say hey this is available this way you could go to the library you can go to the detention center you can go to Public Health and and making that as a support to the the staff role of a harm reduction specialist beyond that we are just.

Highlighting that there is this kind of new opportunity for public health to continue to help the county overall think about how opioid settlement funds are used so we do have an opioid response committee within Public Health Dr Jinx is one of the co-chairs of it and then Dennis Hamlet who we mentioned earlier is the other co-chair and we would like to be able to provide this budget for that group to be coordinating and then for that group to be part of another group that is really subject matter experts across the county so really thinking about the fact that people in the Justice Resource Center people EMS people the library you know are are all sorts of folks who are experts in how we think about Community engagement around the opioid settlement use and coming back to the evaluation piece we do think that there's an opportunity for there to be a Durham County data dashboard we know we've got great resources within public health and our population health Team to be able to.

Think through that but we also figure that there's an opportunity to link these things like what's happening in the Detention Center with mat what's happening in the other parts of the community and the county to really highlight this work and and pair along with that data that you saw earlier which is coming from the state's Center for Health statistics to say this is what dur is doing with this money so with that I'm going to wrap up I certainly invite your comments as you all have them and and welcome any questions from the group here thank you Lindsay Rob and remind me your name again Jeff Jeff jff thank you thank you all for this presentation this is so important to our community it's important to this board and that saving it's about saving lives so we thank you for the work that you're doing so Commissioners questions comments I'm going to start on this hand commissioner Alum thank thank you all so much for all of this work I know it's really.

Difficult and emotional work so just really appreciate that and the way that you've presented it to us I know Durham County is just in general appreciative I had a question around the demographics I know you mentioned like some of the racial demographics do we know how like overdoses are impacting Youth and what programming or services that public health has looked into to Target like youth who are being impacted by these overdoses yeah I'm happy to start with the fact that the data does show that in general we are seeing overdoses most frequently in individuals who are over 18 years of age we are most concerned about youth having early initiation of substance use which then later as it gets older becomes more problematic so we are definitely doing work in the community around education the medication takeback is certainly a major part of that strategy but a lot of that has really been in partnership with together for resilient youth Durham Tri has been a a major leader with the Duram joins together to.

Save lives task force and really has rooted their work in a focus on youth so that is where a huge huge amount of that prevention focused work has happened and less so in public health just because we have such a strong Community partner in that space but certainly we do have efforts that are happening through our school health nurses thinking about how that is happening and there has been some important conversation which I cannot claim has gotten all the way to a success but some conversation about having the lock Zone available in all of our schools we we do think that is something that is valuable in the same way that we have epipens and schools but thinking about the logistics of who has it and and who would be prepared to administer it is something that has has been good conversation but not yet all the way to adoption but actively happening right now I'll just also add that along the lines of the conversation about the locks on the.

Schools the local the association of local Health directors were just pulled as to who is what counties are providing the locks on in schools and you would be amazed out of a 100 I think way more than 60 are doing it so that's something that's definitely on our radar and further to your question your inquiry U Durham try has been a valuable partner but I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we what does our heart well is the fact that they use a public health model and what they do so it's you know it's always evidence based and it's like rooted in science so they continue to be a very very partment us thank you and I I will say you know we don't we haven't had a super I think coordinated effort as far as like working with some of the local universities but we have supplied them with none a number of Greek organizations at some of the universities and I think it's important because one of the I think.

Misconceptions may be that you know everyone that overdoses is someone that's using a substance daily and that's just not the cas I mean I mean often times you know someone that overdoses is someone that rarely uses them or maybe this is the first time they've used used a substance you know that that happens to be adulterated with fentanyl so it's not just you know these people that use daily or most days and so yeah I mean that'd be certainly something we'd love to do more in the future is work you know work more with schools in including higher education thank you and I had one more followup question also if there's Partnerships and conversations with like the Durham urban ministries and like the rescue mission if like these type of vending machines can we try to establish vending machines in like these type of facilities and spaces nothing's off the table commissioner Al wherever the need are you know I I think that's why we're really gearing toward the more evaluative phase knowing using.

Heat Maps using data to determine where those hot spots are we have our ideas of where they are but data you know should drive our decisions on where we put them but you know I just want to say nothing's off the table we certainly want to make sure that we put put it where it's going to be used and most impact thank you appreciate it yeah I will say EMS collects quite a bit of this data and you know we've you know as Lindy mentioned just started collecting some data from the public health side I think what would be great is to be able to bridge bridge that dat I think it'll help us work better with EMS and our other partners and yeah certainly having almost like a real time idea of you know where these overdoses are happening and getting feedback from clients too you know who are picking up SSP or in the lock Zone and that'll help us kind of Target our our interventions and I'll just emphasize.

One more time the machine itself is the easy part the Nock Zone being stocked into it is the thing that we need to make sure that we have an adequate supply of I think we have Partners who are already in a wide variety of places who are already doing some of this work with us with the CLC program to say we're here in Partnership but we need to make sure that if we're providing this as a new resource that we're able to sustain it Carter yes thanks so much for this presentation I mean I my my first comment would just be that based on the the need that you've done such a great job of presenting and the evidence of the harm reduction strategies that we currently have underway and the fact that they seem to be effective to date makes your requests seem really reasonable your funding requests seem really reasonable and especially just given the magnitude of the situation and the the the the the life saving nature.

Basically of what your requests are and the potential there this really seems incredibly reasonable and this the whole thing about the lock Zone not being able to get enough an adequate supply of it I I heard a presentation at the Alliance Health Board also the same topic came up is there a cheaper version it's more difficult to use is is that what the issue is what do you think the future holds with that if if anything there is an injection version that's cheaper than the nasal spray okay it requires some training and you know I think they're maybe some people more you know more reluctant to use that than the nasal spray but there is a cheaper version yeah I I just wonder if any you know there are there any studies Across the Nation who have tried that and had success with that as a way of just an additional Avenue I guess yeah we've certainly had conversation within Public Health about where are the right venues for each so yeah people who.

Inject drugs are pretty comfortable with the fact that you could use an injection Noone right so there certainly is distribution happening that way through North Carolina harm reduction and there are other venues where I think if we had a harm reduction coordinator it might make a lot of sense right to have that something that's available for outreach for something that is available through our Pharmacy but it might not make a lot of sense for it to be in a library vending machine we know it's not possible for the Detention Center to have an injectable theone kit as something that's in their facility so I think it's both is what we need but I think that they're absolutely our opportunities to pursue additional harm reduction with the injectable in the lock Zone if we have the ability to be reaching directly to communities that are in need of it well I definitely believe in the need for a a coordinator here you know I think this board believes in harm reduction efforts at least you don't.

Have to convince us of that right which is I'm sure the case everywhere and so appreciate that greatly yeah you got to have someone driving all this work you've laid it out beautifully so yeah thanks I like it when we get very specific requests I think it I also think the idea of you know working through our schools is really makes sense and we have all this new funding for the school health teams right and so maybe there's additional opportunity there to work with our schools and figure out how to put a har reduction person on that team we will collaborate when we can but just know of course you all know sometimes those funds of money are very specific but wherever we can kind of Total Line and kind of you know just get the state to conform to our wishes we always try our.

Best commissioner Jacobs Well thank you so much for this presentation and this is basically you all coming back to us we asked you to come back with a specific request to implement a harm reduction program and this is what you're doing and I just want to State I would like to see this funding on our agenda as soon as possible I mean literally every day that we do not move forward with this we are we are risking lives in this community and you know I've spoken about this many times I feel a huge sense of urgency about this we cannot stop fenel from entering our drug Supply it is not possible I'm on the national Justice and Public Safety Committee we heard from the Biden Administration the head of the the whole you know drug Zar opioid response and he said the most one of the most important things we can do is harm reduction because right now we have fentanyl it's not just coming through the Border it's coming through our mail.

System it's it's coming through the mail from China from Mexico we know it's in our drug Supply and so the the most important thing we can really do is is arming people with Naran and educating people and xylazine strips and Fentanyl strips we have to do it and so I I just hope that you can bring this back as soon as possible we have the money you know we I was looking back at the opioid funding we have I guess a total of 3.2 million between 2022 and 2023 and right now the only thing we've spent is is 400,000 for Community linkages to care which is an evidence-based program that you all are running and the M the medical mat director for the jail so I think it would be good for us to get an updated budget as well to see how much money we currently have unallocated so yes I hope we'll see this as soon as possible Madam chair we appreciate your support we know that.

You' played played a critical role in the past and leading our efforts and we certainly appreciate that I've received my marching orders from assistant County Manager peers in her absence and manage it so well you could expect that revised budget immediately okay yeah and I just want to go back to the report that we got from goodam back in May of 2023 so that we don't lose sight of the context here and and the time sensitive actions that were the result of that report were to hire a behavioral health manager somebody to also help run the Opia program which I know we've already put out an RFP for and then the second thing was harm reduction and then the third was Community linkages to care so we're we're following up on that by doing this the one thing I do want to say that is not in this request that I do want to hear more about is a Street Supply testing program which that that is.

One of the things that we heard is that we helping the harm reduction coalition to really facilitate people you know in the street testing their drug Supply that that is much you know that goes beyond the strips and so I do you have any feedback on when you think we could learn more about being able to move forward with that yeah I think we've had good conversation with North Carolina harmmer production about what are the possibilities and I think there are a couple I think one is that if the board were interested in purchasing an FTR machine and just gifting it to them that they would be glad to receive it so that is one possibility in the absence of doing that and trying to keep it within Durham County then I think we have to do a little bit more thinking about either are people bringing stuff to our Pharmacy which we are uncertain is the number one appropriate Avenue but is a place where we have existing.

Infrastructure to be able to deal with that or would it make sense to have a harm reduction coordinator who could work in Partnership to be able to have the testing so I think there are there are these three Avenues and if we move forward with a har reduction coordinator then I think th one of those two where we actually are taking taking it out into the field is a much better option than one where we're housing it inside our Pharmacy and I think our are definitely things that we could pursue and just to add to that so we will be having a medical van customade medical van you know within the coming months and that was one thing we had talked about is some of these analyzers are desktop and so we could even put it in the in the medical van and use that when we're out in the field okay so please come back to us when you're ready with a recommendation on that so we certainly.

Have have heard that from Gan and also thought about it internally but want to make sure that we're poised to be able to actually yeah because again we have the money for it and I just also want to go back to the report which talked about because you kind of referenced this as well that there should be some type of a a project team of different stakeholders the dashboard is required by the opo settlement and also you know us having eventually a some type of Behavioral Health Plan so I don't know Madam manager if you could just give us a quick update on that I can say it's all in the works and the agenda item to approve this should be on our next agenda meeting ACM Bron and I have talked about it good so we're listening even if we don't speak we hear you and we're moving the direction that you're giving us yeah yeah and you know just to say that there there is some distribution of.

Naran happening in Durham schools Durham Public Schools right now Durham joins together has been I'm sorry Durham Tri has been working with Durham public schools and whether that needs to be expanded I don't know we also have now all first law enforcement have Naran you know that is also a big achievement and of course being able to do the start treatment in the field thanks to the funding that our community paramedics have gotten but you know so I'm very proud of of what Durham County is doing we we have been leading the way we will continue leading the way and I was going to share this in my commissioner comments I've been appointed did to the the president the new president of ncac Johnny Carswell has appointed me to his task force called one more thing which is again related to all of this work because frankly I think because we of what the work that we've been doing here in Durham County so I'm excited to be bringing to the state.

At the state level the best best best practices that we have been frankly creating here in Durham I say it all the time but it was very comforting and rewarding to hear you say Durham Le Way Durham Le way congratulations commission thank you Jacobs were you finished well thank you so much and and thank you all you know I guess when did I think we go back to when all of this started with an associ in CAC we had one of our presidents and others in that organization were losing their children it was a very difficult time for all of us that were on the boards because the kids were dying from overdoses and I reflect on that because one of the things that you talked about a few minutes ago was data and as we reflect back then they were all there were all children of white Community there were no people of color that in that organization at that point time there were no parents of color losing their.

Children so the data is important because what was happening then and what's happening now I think is different so we need to know what's happening we need to know how many suicides that are happening in our schools I don't know if you know that now but I think it's something that we need to know suicide is is rampant right now we need to know this if it's having anything to do with with the drugs so we can you know get that kind of information would be useful the other and I the other thought that I had during the conversation was is there a difference in the number of individuals that are ending up at Duke say earlier than what's happening now you know what's the what's the numbers that we're ending up with you have any any idea don't know the num certainly something that we would love to be able to research and get back with you on yeah just to make sure I'm clear you talking about from.

Previous years when it was a little bit less compared to now as far as the number of overdoses that are going to Duke yeah are we are we are we getting are they are there more or is it leveling out where are we in those numbers can almost assure you it's more and that's just what I work with the community paramedics Helen trips team and everything they provide us with a wealth of information but I know that this board deserves specifics so we're happy to get that for you yeah the data is always good to know and the other question and I think it's been addressed and and I also had asked for around an opioid dollars you know what how much do we have and we think we know what we have but how is it being spent we I'd like to know that as well and the other thing was there's another amount of funds from Kroger's have we have manager have you gotten that document I just got a statement.

There's another litigation yeah we'll we'll follow up with the attorney's office on that so we'll get together and get you respons I mean I can give you this one I just got in the mail on Friday so there there's Bunches of money coming in so we don't have a lack of money to be able to do all these things that we need to do so your request absolutely honor it it's about saving lives so thank you one more quick question if I may just wondering about access to treatment medication for treatment I think would you please think about this and and let us know what your thoughts are what is the biggest limiting factor to connecting more people to treatment helping them stay in treatment because that all in addition to harm reduction that seems really key so not to be answered now necessarily but I bet you already have an idea I bet you already have an answer but anyway I know we're trying to move along but I think that's really really.

Important i' like to figure out how we can help there too absolutely all right well thank you very much thank you all right we look forward to the request all right Commissioners the next item is juvenal crime prevention Council presentation our lunch is here if you want to have lunch now do you want to go through another presentation that what's the sense of what's the what's the what's the boards. You can't eat a potato sitting up here so you need to either take about 20 30 minutes and have your lunch and then come back or what do you want to do since they're already here let's go through with the presentation I mean you know what's the majority of the board you want to go ahead and do free okay fine all right you've got 30 minutes to do this presentation and then we'll go to lunch then if that's 20 or two.

Okay right good afternoon again Dwayne Brinson assistant County Manager I will introduce this presentation this was a request from the board from some months ago to have the juvenile crime prevention Council jcpc come and to a an overview presentation for the board we have 30 minutes allotted for it I we have staff from Justice Services here as well as well as jcpc so we can start down the line and introduce yourself and then we'll get into the presentation hello I am Kevin mcgyver I am currently leader 2324 chairperson good morning my name is Abigail Holloway I am currently the vice chair I'm also the the defense attorney rep for the juveniles currently.

Wonderful okay all right good morning or good afternoon right I'm Eddie Cruz I'm the area consultant for the north Colina Department of Public Safety good afternoon I'm Mark strange I'm The Clinical Services manager with Justice Services Department if you want to go to the next slide start so just as a quick reminder the division of Juvenile Justice and delinquency prevention partners with juvenile crime prevention councils in each County in order to Galvanize Community leaders locally and Statewide to produce and prevent juvenile crime the juvenile crime prevention Council meets yes okay okay thank you jcpc meets on the fourth Wednesday of every month at four o'clock and and is compiled to both designated and citizen appointments and approved by the board of Board of County Commissioners jcpc is responsible for monitoring funding and Community awareness and the coordinator is responsible for monthly dispersements to funded programs Durham County jcpc is awarded $ 71,1 one by the NC Department of Public Safety These funds are allocated through a monthly dispersement broken up and.

Even installments these funds these funds flow through the jce Services Department that's part of our involvement here North Count Department of Public Safety requires a 30% match from funded programs that's based on its change Per County based on population and budget and for Durham it's 30% Durham County provides a 15% match of that required amount and so that takes care of of half of that required match the match you may either be in funding or it can be in kind contributions jcpc coordinator is responsible for monthly dispersements to funded programs and funded programs are monitored twice per year all unspent funds are returned to the state at the end of each fiscal year and that's the the boring stuff and so now I'll turn it over to Yes and thank you for giving us this opportunity by the way to kind of give you an overview of the important work in the juvenile crime prevention Council I'm kind of presenting in the place of Tamila McDow who is our chief Court.

Counselor but she provides the jcpc with a monthly court report this data is reviewed and discussed by the jcpc and area consultant and programs are required also required to submit monthly reports on the numbers they're serving and any developments within their services next slide please so this is an example well this is our fiscal year4 for report and you can see the months that that we've had reported on so far and in the First Column you can see the number of Youth that are actively on juvenile supervision and another word for that would be probation right so they're actively being Ser supervised by our court services division the second column is the juvenal received so these are distinct juveniles that have come through the juvenile intake process by way of a criminal complaint and therefore you're going to see in that third well fourth column or third column rather I'm sorry complaints received and that number is going to be higher right because often times one juvenile May commit several.

Criminal complaints we see this a lot with Breakin and entering of cars they could even have you know 20 30 complaints per juvenile so that's why that number is going to be significantly higher and then as we move towards the right here you're going to see complaints approved and so the way our system is set up is that we want to divert all of the low-level complaints away from the juvenile court as much as we can and do what we call a diversion plan or contract with the Youth and Family because we feel like we don't want to take up the juvenile Court's time on those matters matters that are less serious and I think as you will see the data as we go forward one of the the positive things if if I may speak now there's some concerning things on the data report is that Durham has been a Statewide leader in lowering school-based complaints and typically that's where we get a lot of our misdemeanor complaints and.

Low-level charges and you won't see that a lot in Durham and that's because there's not a lot of criminal charges occurring in Durham County schools and that's a good thing because we don't want to criminalize behavior in school that doesn't really warrant that that can be addressed other ways so as I said we we were at the complaints approved part complaints diverted we didn't see any here again juvenile court is pretty much getting very significant and ser serious charges and you can see that as we move forward but then we go to detention admissions again these are kids for Public Safety sake need to be put in a secure facility of course you guys have your own Detention Center Angela provides great Insight as she is an active participant of our jcpc and we kind of move we continue to move to the right here in Our Youth Development Center so this is our most restrictive resource within the Juvenile Justice System this is where once a kid has been adjudicated in.

Disposition they if they have a certain number of points or at a certain level they could be placed in a secure facility known as a Youth Development Center we don't call them prisons we call them Youth Development Centers because they receive education Treatment Services re-entry services and we're hopeful that they will come back out better than when they came in and again this is the types of complaints if you're looking now into that kind of second part of the graph and and this is where there there's some concern in the sense that there's a lot of a through e these are our most violent felonies these are our homicides are serious sex offense you know the the most serious types of crimes now keep in mind with raay the age that even if a kid a 16 17 year old is charged with a homicide they are still under the juvenile jurisdiction so most likely those kids will be eventually transferred to adult court at some point in the process.

But they're going to come in and be reflected in the numbers here because they're going to be initially their first system they're touching is the juvenile justice system with raise the age then we see our serious offenses which are kind of our our fonus breaking and entering could involve some robbery offenses you know we can give you kind of just a breakout of the types of crimes that fall into these categories and then we see finally our M minor offenses our misdemeanor class offenses our simple assaults simple possession disorderly conduct those types of things moving continuing to move on the chart here we see breakouts our demographics again it's I'm probably not a surprise to you of the disproportionate contact I know Drew Cummings has done a lot of work in the past before he moved on to try to address that as much as we can with our Black and Hispanic males but they predominantly make up most of the juvenal complaints here so we are actively aware of the disproportionate.

Contact and trying to develop strategies to address that we have seen a slight uptick in female involvement and you can see that as well and then you know again I like to try to work in a little bit of good news I mean one of the things we've established Within in the department is what we call a vulnerable juvenile now we we try not to well a youth cannot be charged unless a a really really serious felony under 10 so we we keep them in what we call a vulnerable status so you don't see any youth under 10 typically in the system unless they've been transferred up for very serious offense and then you can see the majority of our kids are are 15 to 17 in that range 13 to 17 and I apologize but it's it's straining my eyes to see the numbers there so I know hope you guys can see it all right all right thank you all right so next slide and so that's just a sample of.

The report and I know Kelly says I like to preach and I know we're at lunchtime so I'm going to keep moving quickly here but the annual process with jcpc involves something called a review of risk needs in the county and and so that's part of my involvement in all the kids that come through that junal intake process that we just spoke about receive what we call a yazzi assessment they either receive the short screen version or the full assessment which sometimes can take three and four hours it's about 130 questions in several different domains School family Etc I get that data and share that with the jcpc so I'll have the data for last f school year for all those kids that came through juvenile court and then the the jcpc is a full body and maybe the risk needs subcommittee will look at it and determine are there any gaps in services that exist in Durham what are we not funding that we need you know how can.

We improve upon what we offer with the availab with the funds that we have obviously jcpc cannot solve it all and one of the things that's been refreshing is to look at this holistically today right all these other agencies come into the table so jcpc just you know again is a part of this process but can't do it all Duram is currently on a so that risk needs will feed into a request for proposal usually in the spring an RFP will be developed to advertise for the services that are needed and identified but Durham is currently on a two-year funding cycle so the RFP we do have one new program so that portion there's a a clause there where if it's a new program their portion has to go back out for bid and we really haven't fully determined how much of the funds are going to go about but typically if we were at the end of our twoyear cycle the whole 71101 would go back out to bid for the.

Public and so we would solicit bids it's put on the County website applications are received and ultimately the jcpc you know makes funding recommendations to you guys and I hope I didn't get too far ahead but next slide yes so I've spoke to these bullet points I think a little bit but yes this is a County Board it functions as a County Board and whatever funding recommendations after we've gone through that review process and recommendations is shared with you guys to get the final sign off on the programs that they would like to fund all right I think I let Mr Kevin have this all right I'm G try to move through this fairly quickly I'm give you an overview of each of our boards that we currently fund and at what rate we fund them at so our first program is the Durham proud program it works with interpersonal skill building and they work with youth ages 13 to7 17 and focuses on increasing the awareness and sensitivity of the youth specified life.

Learning skills most of these teens in this group are delinquents or involved in gangs needing pro-social skills and exhibiting serious Behavior programs and problems in school and functioning below their their grade level and we fund this program at 153,000 our next program is the Durham team Court and restitution program which is our restitution and Community Services Program tin CT team court is an alternative court for youth who commit firsttime misdemeanor offenses youth admitted to the court are defendant prosecuted and judged by their peers and held accountable for their actions the restitution program allows adjudicated or diverted youth to perform community service to earn up to $200 to repay victims of their crimes and we fund them at 130,000 our next one is Project bill which which is also a interpersonal skill building program project bill is a multi-disciplinary gain prevention program and that provides coordinated Case Management Services wraparound intervention to Youth and Young adults ages 14 to 21 who are high risk for gang involvement they have Street Outreach.

Workers they work one-onone with the youth and the service delivery is Guided by a multidisciplinary team that conducts individualized case planning and urance coordination and we fund them at 130,000 our next program is our new program that we brought on this year by the name of Grace it's a change makers in a healing centered mentoring Intervention Program which volunteers from the community are match with at risk youth ages 13 to 17 this program provides at risk youth with positive and constant adult or older peer contact to promote healthy development of functioning by reducing risk factors and we fund them at 51,000 our next one is parenting of adolescence which is a homebased counseling this program provides 12 to 36 weeks of homebased family counseling for at risk youth and there also court involved from ages 6 to 17 their families utilize multidisiplinary family therapy the program works on developing a healthy parent child family relationship and improving family management skills and we fund them at 155,000 our next program is epic through our strength-based resiliency.

Model we provide a holistic approach to Direct Care Services trauma informed care practices and holistic practices as well and their goal is to increase mental physical and emotional stabilization and we fund that group at 25,000 next we have our Durham youth bill which is a the Durham juvenile Literacy Center which provides individual and small group tutoring for court involved youth to address basic literacy deficiencies that they may have and we fund them at 20,000 our next one is our Administration fees that we have that come out which is just our administrative funds which is about $2,101 and our last program is the youth mediation program which is also known as Elder be Spalding that's a peac making circles is community based diversion program providing an alternative response to Mr offenders it also is a restorative justice practice based on accountability of the offender to the victim and the community and we fund them at 25,000 and that is it for all of the programs that we currently fund at this.

Time and that's just to break down that overview and once again I am the current chair Kevin mcgyver and I have my vice chair here miss Abigail Holloway we also have a secretary which is LEL Stevens the treasurer is Amed Ali our parliamentarian is Angela nun and our Eric consultant Mr Eddie Cruz and our jcpc coordinator Miss Kelly Waggy and if you guys have any questions for us thank you so much for your presentation and welcome Kevin I don't think you've been you presented to us before have you you are Miss Holloway well we're not we we don't buite we promise so thank you for being here it's been a while since I've seen you I was on that board for how many years probably about 12 years yeah I I enjoyed that so it was always a challenge to make to ensure that we were funding the right organizations and I think I see we're still funding the same organizations and you've got you've picked up some new on so I think that's.

Pretty great yeah but thank you for this presentation and Commissioners are questions start with commissioner Burns how y'all doing I was gonna save all my comments for the lunch break but I did want to give you all your flowers so thank you for all your hard work and diligence Kevin especially because you poked me a little bit and I appreciated it we've got some people off of that board and got some good people on that board and this board gave some additional funding this year so that you all could continue to do some of that good work I don't want to pile anything on but what I did want to ask I think it's some of the new groups that we have are really centralized in certain locations in Durham and and I think that's a good thing because sometimes when you really spread out you can't centralize your services I'm not going to say which one it is but I did want to throw out I think maybe for the next.

Year as we start to look at it there are other groups in this community that like to and under your leadership which I trust there are some groups that like to do heat Maps they like to talk about the impacts of census tracks I personally feel like a lot of the impacts that we have been seeing have been from the additional dollars provided and have been from some of the groups that we've been working on so I would love to see I don't know if you all would have to come back to us how we could start the to look at maybe how some of these folks are working in specific sensus tracks and with other I see the affirmative nod you already know where I'm going with this CU folks are taking credit for work today not doing and I know it's some of the folks that we're funding not all of it the other thing I one of my favorite things you said was that Durham is the leader in.

That Durham is the leader in diversion for our juvenal another report came out from another task force that pretty much said the antithesis of that and right right and we all know that it's kind of not true so I would love if you all and I know an article came out I think just today about how some of the complaints are up by 19% I would I would love for you all to give us something that shows that comparative analysis to back up the sentence that you said is that fair like whether it's coming from the governor's crime commission whether it's coming from AOC somebody has decided that we're doing it a little bit better or whole lot better than other counties that are really criminalizing children that being said the ad felonies that we there's only so much we can do right because those are violent crimes rape murder first deegree attempted assault attempted murder I those we can't fight so I got two those are my two requests my two kind of sort.

Of questions I'mma steal one from commissioner Jacobs it's okay they you might have a follow up the August uptick the August uptick who would like to give voice to power because I think we could i s I see your hand up yeah so we can start with you August that 500 number is it school is it what whatever we're looking at and then I'll wait on my second question but go for it so what I can say about August I believe a lot of those were in the serious range and I can say that saying too much probably six to eight kids are responsible for some of them are charged with 100 counts right now than okay so that helps okay so to put that I don't know if everybody couldn't see the chart I think the number is like 595 right complaints is Am I Wrong was five something 565 so you're saying that without saying too much that is less than 10 kids that make up some of those complaints or the.

Majority right for that month yeah for that okay so that's saying something as opposed to this is just school started and kids were in there doing the crazy that is not what it is go for it Kevin and also if you guys remember that we had a uptick in the juveniles with the robberies and the carft right they would charge a lot too as well so those 42 cars that ring that we saw multi County so that's I always want to give context to numbers because that looks like y'all started school and they started calling on the keys as soon as they came back and that is not what that is so thank you for I can't remember my second question now I'm probably going to be cut off anyway but yeah go ahead sis and I will say those did not all happen in August right so some things these numbers are based on when the complaints are filed exactly some of these are things that happen sometimes we get.

Complaints six months later once investigations are completed no that's helpful and so I'll yield my time on that one and if you could get that back to me I would super duper appreciated like how we can say you know with some shity we are leading if you could come back to me with some of that because I want to be able to say that and be able to back it up thank y'all absolutely and I just want to add one more comment to the numbers for August and as they' mentioned the most common offense type this calendar year for Durham is by a large margin is breaking and entering Motor Vehicles and it C ties into our Department of Public Safety safe storage campaign of making sure your Firearms are stored securely because they're actually coordinated efforts Now by these juvenal to go to shopping centers into different areas and and their ways they have creative ways now that they can break into cars so but yeah it it it's and I'm glad.

You explained it I mean if you look at the number of juveniles you can see that only a couple of them are responsible for a lot right while you on that same conversation the the number of females is that's a lot so can you give any context around that no no I haven't you know it's kind of I can say in my other Seven Counties we kind of see the same Trends typically you know D I have a lot of rural counties so sometimes the data is a little bit different but I would defer that question I can certainly look at it to see some of the underlying causes but maybe you have a better so a lot of what we are seeing right now are some of our young girls being involved with adults unfortunately adult men there's a lot of trauma with these girls that we're seeing so I know a lot more of them have been referred to Epic to try to work through some of that.

There's also been especially with the girls a lot more DSS needing to be involved but there's a lot of adults I don't want to say using but using some of these girls to get involved and I think that's a big part of that uptick yeah thank you and I I do remember I do remember my other one now so and it a young girl was actually killed at like 12:30 this weekend I don't know if y'all saw it she was shot multiple times that was I was like why do I have female here I did want to go back so so when I think about the work that our our folks are doing and Joanne's not here so that might be another part and that I know she's probably working at doing some other stuff and something that you said about Drew I just want to elevate that was what I want to bring up you know I'mma Be once again broke clock I know we had our first black and.

Brown boys round Table Right I just want to this is not just me this man sat here and the first couple of slides of his presentation illuminated what was happening with black and brown boys the presentation that was before that illuminated that the death and the fental overd dose is overwhelmingly black and brown boys so there's a theme Here we have a table here whatever recommendations that you all see that might need to necessarily be additional so that we can stop this uptick and young girls this uptick with black and brown boys I would be interested in hearing some of those because we are coming up on budget so that Jo that was the other reason why I said I Circle Joanne if if we're having this problem I want to know a status of that black and brown Boy's Round Table so I'm just throwing that out into the Zeitgeist and hopefully that'll be on the work session but thank y'all commissioner Jacobs Well thank you so much for being.

Here and for the work that you're doing I had actually was the person who requested this presentation and I apologized if something got Lost in Translation but it was actually from a report that we got and I tried to find the report last night and I went through many agendas and I could not find the report so I'm not sure when we received it and how we received it but we got a fantastic report from from you all last spring that had recommendations based on the data and very much focused on prevention so that's what actually I was really hoping to focus on today was as commissioner Burns mentioned that fantastic report that you gave us which had recommendations of really you know kind of even predating the the data that we're seeing how can we really focus on the prevention piece so we're not so that we don't see these numbers and also in in alignment with the gang prevention most re recent gang prevention plan because I'm really.

Concerned when I look at these numbers and I see you know 42 young people that are involved with Ser you know violent crime time that is I mean it is really alarming to me and then even seeing the numbers with you know ages 11 to 15 are bigger than the 16 to 17 year old so 11 years old that's elementary school that's fifth grade I used to be a fifth grade teacher so you know I I'm very grateful for all the programs but I I just would really like to hear more from you all related to those that report which again I can't find because it was so outstanding and it was really looking at at the data because we have to focus on the Upstream piece whether it's you know getting kids the mental health treatment you know what's going on in the family the resilience and Asus and you know when I looked at the number for literacy you know that we're giving 20,000 for literacy my son just started as a new.

Student teacher in one of our high schools he actually had his first day of full-time teaching last week and one of the things that I've been learning from him is that he has kids who can't read in ninth grade so if we can think about what starts kids on the trajectory of having behavior issues you know having not feeling success in school starting down on this pathway you know one I think one of the most important things we can do is make sure that kids are able to read and succeed in school because I just can't even imagine how frustrating is to go to school every day and not be able to read and they're just going to get worse and worse as they get older so anyway so I'm going to stop here but I you know I think about the vigil I went to recently for the religious Coalition and there were young people that who we were mourning their their deaths in our community and so.

Again I hope we can hear more from you all later this issue and can work together with our community intervention folks and let's see if we can what we can do because this is the juvenile crime prevention Council right and I know you're getting this is data related to kids who are already getting in the system and so I'll just any any thoughts that you have at this point would be great yeah just a a quick Point so our Juvenile Justice System includes juvenile crime prevention councils and then we kind of have layers of service above that for more the the higher risk court involved Youth and so I would say probably at least 60 65% or more of the youth that our jcpc programs currently serve are in the non-c court involved status so schools probably and I'd have to go back and look at the data have over and juvenile court is the predominantly the the major referring source to these programs sro's refer to these programs DSS refers to the.

Programs really any Community agency can refer so there's a so to go back to the prevention it's prevention and intervention because sometimes that gets maybe they get criticized sometimes the the programs for not doing preventive work but actually they actually serve more non-court involved youth now than they do court involved okay that's helpful and oh I'm sorry were you just gonna say thing oh okay if and just to picky back on what commissioner Burns requested it would be great if we could see how many how many kids are being served and some data on you know breakdown on who who they are and if we and how do we even track the outcomes do we track you know who the recidivism or who we don't see again in the system like how do we know that we're which programs seem to be working and are helping and which maybe not so yes each one of our programs do track the number of juveniles that they have in their programs and they do have a.

Breakdown of how they're brought into the program and how they're discharged from the programs at the end of and they do provide that to us each month we do a monthly basis on how each program is doing how many kids are served and how many new kids they have brought into the program within that that time span okay great and do we have enough capacity are there kids who aren't getting serve that we need to a lot of have wedding right okay so that would be helpful for us to say I you know we do so much we have so many programs I wish we knew where the Gap was you know there's something that is missing I I don't I think we do so much that I don't think we know where what's missing because it's no way we can the money that we spend and the programs and services that we provide that can't catch these kids but we I don't think I don't think.

We even know how to come up with a strategy to figure out what what is it what's missing because something's missing clearly and I wish somebody had that knew what that thing was or how to put it together maybe I want to things to to close puts to analyze all these programs that we have because we we consistently create more but we don't know where the Gap is and the and our kids keep following through the cap yeah I would just add and like I said what's been I'm glad I I've been here for two or three hours to see what other agencies are doing in this County because I think we have to look at it holistically I was talking to Kevin yeah and that jcpc you know really is involved with those kids that are either court involved or at risk for court involved but you're right it doesn't really go up the stream to where some of these other Community agencies maybe touch the kids before and I think.

That's where I I totally believe what you're saying that we've got to really figure out the root of these issues we can pull out some risk factors and I can have that data for you but yeah we we have to look at it holistically yeah we all do that's not just have I'm not just throwing that at you at I just think as a community that's on all of us commissioner Al thank you thank you so much for this presentation and all of the work you guys do with all of the different programming that exists I'll be very quick but I had a question question around I think it was Sheriff burkhead's team that came and presented around project safe neighborhoods and they were sharing statistics around youth especially young black men how their statistical likelihood of becoming Justice involved spikes as soon as a parent becomes Justice involved and so wondering which of these programs that are listed or if we don't have a program right now that comes in as an.

Intervention point the moment a parent enters the system that they come in and start to say okay this child parent is now you know in the system this child is going to need support do we have anything like that looking at parenting of adolescent they are homebased family counseling so a lot of times they' be able to go into the home a lot more but as specific to just as soon as the parent goes into it and be court involved I'm not sure exactly but I could get you that information and find out yeah because I feel like you know when we're talking about working Upstream since we have statistical data that shows I think I can't remember the number off my top of my head but I think it was like 70% more likely or something for a child to become Justice involved later in life that's a very very big number to be going off of that we should be targeting that population of pre to provide prevention because I mean.

More than likely not that child without prevention at that stage is going to end up becoming just as involved so that's a key demographic area we could have a significant impact and and commissioner Al the gang prevention plan talks about that data right that you can identify children in elementary school and one of the data points is third grade reading levels that's what they use to to actually predict jail population is on third grade literacy so to your point yeah so like our programming we should start to focus more into there and speaking on that you know we're looking to get more programs to apply whenever we get whenever the RFP opens is it's a lot of our same programs and we really don't have a lot of programs that do apply or that do this work well let's I want to say that out loud or do this work well and I did just I hope y'all hear y'allselves talking because I heard a question here I heard what you said I'm in full.

Support of that it like Duke a couple I never give any credit to Duke Duke did a study a couple of years ago said the biggest determinant for whether or not a child will do well is if their mother is educated the whole world just should started educating women at that point like that would have been the not that to catch all but we knew that that was the biggest indicator for a child doing well we already know that when I was a kid they were building prisons based on somebody in third grade did anybody hear what commissioner Jacob said her son got a ninth grader they can't read commissioner Howton that's the Gap now nobody wants to say it out loud I will if you are 14 years old and you can't read that's where the problem is that is when you decide to start stealing that's when you decide to start doing drugs that is we we can play all day you can't read it 14 you probably.

There's likely I'm not even going to sit here and talk because I don't want to offend nobody you got to ask yourself how in the word you get to high school and you couldn't read but that is the indicator that is the gap and nobody wants to talk about it because it is the light rail of this County nobody wants to talk about those things and it's not necessarily the it's not the teacher's fault there's a whole system of wraparound surfaces that we are missing that is where the issue is and I'm going to end on this because that was the other thing I wrote down truancy we live in a county where someone decided unilaterally that she didn't want to want to put her name on truancy paperwork anymore and as soon as that happened we no longer track these children who were missing 30 and 40 days of school now I don't think that we should necessarily be criminalizing parents or kids but when a seveny old.

Has missed 30 days we need to be able to catch it a letter from the school does not do it a letter from law enforcement might that doesn't mean that I want to criminalize parents but I do want to catch this kid because at the M we we you anybody who has not been to a school board meeting at watch one you will see these kids I miss 30 days this year 40 days next year 52 days and they keep moving up and we don't have anything in place that says okay Mom Dad are you in need of help are you on drugs is this a latch key kid so those are things when y'all I really want y'all to think about it I don't have no problem saying that stuff out loud when you have individuals in the court system who say I don't want to put my name on trcy paper anymore and you have kids missing hundreds of days of school and then they can't read into.

Ninth grade all of this is cyclical and then that's why you're asking us for additional money and more programs because somebody else ain't do their job okay commissioner Carter it does all come back to the schoolhouse gate I will agree with with with you on that and well and we have school health teams we could have a person on each school health team that is basically in charge of looking at attendance and as soon as a child has missed 10% of their days then they help the family figure out how to get their kid back in school but boy we've diverted from the very specific Focus that you all have thank you for your work so much especially our citizen Partners here that are serving on jcpc as well as our staff thank you and and yeah I did have a couple of questions not trying to instead of trying to figure out what what our gaps are right now we have a lot of gaps but are any of the funds unspent funds.

Returned is that an issue that we have here in Durham having to return unspent funds because if we have waiting lists and we're you know still returning money just curious about that I I would say not proportionately I I would say Durham is is probably the same as as other counties and that there 's always going to be a program with the staff vacancy as commissioner Burns alluded to one of the issues is finding people that want to do this work there's so many people when you find good people you just you try to hold on to them as best you can but anyway sometimes that will create a lap salary okay within a program agreement and then of course we had coid yeah which created some issues and expending normally and we go through our final accounting process but that's the long answer the short answer is proportionately they're about the same as other counties okay I also want to be sure and thank our the partners who are receiving the.

Funding I mean proud has been doing this work for 20 years at least the the Spalding Center and all the restorative justice work it's been happening since I was in newbie on the school board so another 18 years project build you know our own County program just thanks to all Partners thank you for lifting up the the fact that the referrals to the justice system are not coming from our schools that hasn't always been the case the school district really worked hard to make that a change with that data point and I we need to remember that and and be glad about that I'm curious about the time of offenses that are that occur you know are they during school hours are they after school hours that kind of thing the school board had high schools start later you know know one reason besides the fact that data shows that's best for adolescents but also because that way kids are in school at later in the day less time at home alone just middle.

Schools still start at 7:30 or so though I'm just wondering you know especially with the 11 to 15 year olds when are these offenses occurring and I commissioner Jacobs asked about your measures of success with the programs it sounds like you're monitoring that carefully and that there's that great report I can go back and look at to probably that gives some more of that but like yeah how do you know these programs are working that kind of thing but you're on that it sounds like you're monitoring.

That the you said on the monitoring so we are monitoring programs on both a monthly and a yearly basis keeping track of weight list who's coming in how long they're staying in the programs if they are discharged from the program was it was successful was it unsuccessful what were the reasons but also trying to keep track of pro issues within the programs and if there's something that we as a jcpc can address to try to resolve those issues or make sure that the program is aware that these are issues for us and you need to align with what you say you're going to do we're monitoring that speaking with the programs to make sure that that is happening you did ask also about timing of a lot of these offenses occurring we do have some that are occurring during the day I will say a lot of offenses in Durham County are in the evening and night hours and a lot some of the things that are happening.

During the day also go to the school attendance issue when we have kids when I hear 30 to 40 days absence being an issue we do have kids where me hearing 30 to 40 is good our Justice involved kids the kids that we're seeing in the courtroom are in school less than that sometimes when they're coming to us so. Correct again thank you for your really important hard hard work thank you again for the report and all the work that you do because this is what is it this is called hard to work work it's more of a heart work because you two volunteer and I don't think no I'm I'm I'm paid by the state so this is my job okay the volunteers okay that's doubly thank you for your heart we appreciate it if there's no other questions any other comments from you just quickly I wanted to thank you guys personally for signing the resolution back in Spring that helped support the pay increases for our state detention workers and our Court.

Counselors yes there were I'm not I don't think all 100 counties signed the resolution but it passed and so hopefully we can address our serious vacancy issue and our facilities and our court services which goes to the heart of what commissioner Burns was saying about finding good people so thank you you're welcome thank you okay so that's that's it we are going to take a lunch break for about the next 20 25 minutes and then we'll be.

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I don't know know where Netta is but see if you can see her come on let's get.

Started.

Well there are three of us here we go ahead and they should be back in a moment why don't we go ahead and get started here we have an item 2308 to7 presentation of the Durham County blasting permit process because this is a 45 minute item and we've got Jim Groves hi Jim how are you good afternoon good to see you as well Gregory so you've got more than two people there so you can introduce everybody so we can go ahead and get started wonderful good afternoon it's good to see everyone again Jim Groves your emergency services director and with me today I've got Greg Borden our assistant Fire Marshall with Durham County and we Partners so graciously agreed to join us from the city of Durham Chief jod Morton and deputy chief Chris Wilcox I hope I've got your title right Chris great and they are here in support and if any questions come up about the U the Deltas between the city's process and the Count's process process they graciously agreed.

To sit down here with us and provide that information okay and I will try to be as generous with giving a lot of your afternoon back as possible I will hopefully this won't take 45 minutes but I want to go through the presentation fairly quickly and then give you all the opportunity to ask questions to make sure that we've covered everything for you appropriately great thank you okay so what we'll planning on talking about this afternoon is authorities legislation and ordinance that gives the fire prevention folks the again the authority to be able to do the work they do especially with regards to permits fines fees and anything like that the requirements of folks that want to blast the timelines fees associated with that the pering process itself what I've done is I've gone through our website and kind of went through it step by step by step so you can see the types of information we're asking for and how easy it is to actually complete that process we'll talk about the resident.

Notification a 911 notification by the person performing the blasting how we handle reinspection and complaints and then share some other information with you and and once we're done with that again questions and guidance U from the board so with the authorities given it North Carolina General statute 153a gives the county the authority to appoint the fire marshal and employee assistance and those are the folks that are actually doing the work so in addition to our Chief Fire Marshal the assistant Fire Marshals can also do all of this work for us the North Carolina fire code specifically chapter 56.7 talks about blasting operations and so a lot of what we do is in reference to chapter 56 which also referen is the National Fire Protection Association 495 so between those two that's where we get our authorities to be able to regulate blasting if you will and when you look at 495 and and the the 5607 that talks about Day date hour excuse me daylight hours of blasting making loc notifications to the utility making.

Notifications to the fire prevention division or the fire Marshall's office precautions they must take to minimize vibrations and stop debris from flying in the air such as blast mats and things like that and specifically in FPA 495 talks about Grand vibration and no pressure there's where we have those seismic grass that are actually taking the readings and then 495 goes into a diet tribe of other standards that you can see listed there and we don't don't have all those available for you but there's a lot of engineering that goes into this blasting what the ground is going to act what they think the ground's going to act like what type of blasting material they're using how close they are to Residence and things like that so that's for those others one point of of clarification we do not have anything currently in the Durham County Fire Prevention ordinance relating to blasting although we do have proposed changes that are sitting that will be moving forward with that do specifically include blasting and some other.

Things like open fires we wanted to several months ago before this became excuse me before this became an issue that was being brought before the board we had already looked at the things that were kind of a shortfall in both the the fire prevention ordinance from the EMS ordinance and also from the Civil disorders or Emergency Management ordinance so these weren't kind of reactions to what's going on this something that we've just not been able to implement yet the requirements so the Blaster must complete a a permit application right so part of that you'll see when we get to the permit that they've got to have a safety plan they've got to have insurance they've got to have an ATF license to be able to do the blasting and actually have those types of explosives have a business contact perform a pre-blast assessment for existing structures so you know it's their job to go out and and take a look and see what's going on in the community around them before they ever blast.

And also right now for us blasting Ms are going to be required within 500 foot you'll see when we get to a Delta document that the city is recently modified Jody to 750 or has that always been there it was about four years ago yeah so the city's requires blasting Maps if Within 750 ft of the structure Jim what is a blasting mat so it's like a b the easiest way to explain it is like a bunch of tires roped together extremely robust extremely heavy and that goes over the the blast point to stop debris from flying up I think that's the simplest layman's terms I can give it to you but it's a very heavy covering so it's just all it is is preventing debris it's not like minimizing actual vibrations anything like that no ma'am it does not there's a lot that goes into the vibration and a lot of it is like anything else ground composition and what's going on underneath the soil that we may or may.

Not see right the type of soil is there any Hard Rock in the area there's just a lot of things going on that their Engineers are looking at well beyond our capabilities within the prevention division so you have no way of determining before you blast what's going to happen I I believe believe that they have well you know they say all models are wrong but they do have a model and what they believe is going to happen with this blast sometimes they're right and sometimes it may miss just being very honest with you but you know it's it is it is a model and based off the soil and their calculations they come up with a model on what they anticipate to happen and that might infer what type of material they use to blast how much of it to blast how far away from structures they can blast so that model tells them that but again I'm a firm believer that all models are wrong they're helpful in.

Helping us plan but they're not a guaranteed to be 100%. Correct okay our permit fee is 350 bucks our permit is valid for 90 days you'll see the Ci's is valid for 60 days that's another Delta between our processes no blasting on the holidays and within the County Fire Prevention the fire Marshall's office witnessed the first blast but not subsequent blast it's just the capability of the the department right now on Staffing levels so the first blast can be witnessed follow on blast or not necessarily again that's just a if you would want to call it an audit to make sure they're doing things right and it's our best best method right now that we have with existing Staffing levels okay here's the permitting process this is off the the farm marshall division's web page when they go to the web page they'll see this and with the green arrow is pointing they'll click on permit applications when they go to permit applications they'll see click here to apply for construction or fire.

Prevention permit they'll click that and then they'll see this information presented down here if they want to continue with the permit they'll click the apply button on the bottom right of the page once they do that they'll see this drop down menu and they'll select blasting demolition they'll click the demolition box and then they'll click. Next they'll get a checklist what they need to have and be prepared to be able to upload or provide as part of the permit process so they license they can include a copy of the license by clicking and just dragging and dropping it they'll fill information as far as who the Blaster is what their address is email the contact information in a 24-hour contact phone when the blast start date is supposed to be when they EST estimate that the end blast date will be the time for blasting right we we go daylight hours but there you'll see in know bit they're required to make notification within an hour of the blast.

So so say if they're going to blast at 11:00 they'll make notification by at least 10: that that blast is going to occur so this gives them a a window of time to make sure that blast occurs why the blasting is part of the project scat sketch of the blast site their blast plan there's a lot of stuff the safety plan that they can drag and drop so the fire Marshall's office has all this documentation and if explosives will be stored on site which is a big concern for us because when we're looking at hazards and we're looking our normal inspections they're typically yearly if if this is going to be stored on site for maybe 60 or 90 days we need to make sure that explosives are there outside of our normal inspections process and this enables us to identify that the liability insurance is going to be required as far as this they have to include that and they have to give us our their Certificate of Insurance so.

That is on file talking about records we get them to sign it we have a name of the property owner rep we ask the property owner rep to sign it and then the property owner letter of consent if they're blasting on property we'll have a letter of consent now this does not apply for the blast is away away off the owner's property it is only if it's on the owner's property right so I think a lot of the the complaints or the concerns that been expressed or when the blasting is declaring nearby but not on the property this is if it's on the property that they'll get the owner's letter of consent a lot of information right here but just a lot of upload availability about plans how they're going to plan to do this what it's going to look like just a lot a lot a lot of upload information once they upload what pertinent to the project they'll click next they'll come to the next one and they'll give a generic description on.

The right hand side that's just I think this is every permit goes through this particular page right here so they'll complete that information and click next and then we'll get their last bit of information here once they finish this they'll click submit application and once they click the submit application they get an automatic return email that their application has been received now with that the permit being applied for and before they ever start blasting they have to have the permit in hand which goes to our P fire prevention division but there's no documents that actually requ are required from our residents we don't require anything from our residents that are nearby but the blasting company's got to give them 24 hours of notice prior to detonation and then they got to give them I think I said an hour each way is 30 minutes each way my iies but they've got to make notification within an hour of the blast and give a 30 minute window all right so they're going to let.

The property owners know it's getting ready to happen it's going to happen within 30 minutes this includes also a notification to 911 or.

Decc I think a shortfall of ours and this is just being very honest with you right here is we don't have something in place that validates that notification has been has taken place at residence just to be quite Frank with you I think it's something that we could spend some time on and try to figure out U but that's that can be a pretty big lift U but we do not we do not verify that they received notification of the blast yeah they don't 911 Center know I mean they would know clearly if they and I think right now we infer that since they notifi 911 they probably have made notification to the residents but still okay yes ma'am so the the the results of the blasting what we hearing as the citizens are not privy to those results when you say the results help me understand what H what happens as a result of the blasting when they say that that there was damage to their homes they are saying the companies.

Refuse to have allow them to have a copy of the report I think what we can the way we can handle this and Greg help me out here we are authorized the fire fire Marshalls division is authorized to request those records and then we might we would be able to provide them that request I don't even think that would take a fo you I think it'd be easier on us to go through our portal to be able to to request that record like we do right now but we would be able to request it on their behalf and provide it on on behalf of the citizens yes ma'am can it be a part of the permit process itself so that way it's not something that the citizens have to like Chase down or you guys even have to chase down after the fact that you would just already have it on record that in order to get the blast permit they agree to be sending you their inspection reports.

I I think we're happy to look at that and how we can make that happen your man I don't think we do that right. Techically that could be a requirement however with construction once they get their permit they're very good about just not talking to us again so we would have to go to them probably anyways then like a conditional approval based like you get conditionally approved if you finish this final step absolutely yes but we would have to give them the permit in hand for them to blast so it's hard to make that a stipulation they can sign something but it's not really going to guarantee they're actually going to do it once they have their permit they're going to blast until they're done and then it would be pretty much up to me to go and follow up with them well this is the I think I know that's what I'm talking about might be also what chair Howton talking about the pre-inspection report where they go and they take pictures of.

The out side of the house and they go and test the well to show whether there was any structural damage before the property was blasted because I think that's where residents we've been hearing from that we've gone on tours with they've shown us that there's cracks in their Foundation now but they don't have the pre-inspect pre-blast inspections that the company does to go chase after them or their insurance company but if the city and county already have those on file then I think part of the issue is the the distance so it's it's 500 feet most of the blasting does not have any residences within 500 feet but they might be experiencing issues from the blasting further out than that it's just kind of a code stipulation I think that's kind of part of the problem and what's the maximum distance we're allowed to require notification for and inspection for 500 ft for the county and that's based on a rule that like you know weed inside not the state like is.

There any requirement from the state that limits how far that's that would be the the state requirement and the code the fire code that's done by the state and a reference standard is NFPA 495 so we reference that standard and that's the National Fire Protection Agency so we use that as a guideline kind of on how we would perform the practice and that's what's referenced in the code book so we couldn't like increase it to a thousand we could always make orance for that of course but it would have to be an ordinance okay so were you were you going to say something no Okay so we've jumped in and not let you do your presentation so maybe let's pull back for a minute Commissioners let them let him finish his presentation you see we've got a lot of concerns and a lot of questions I understand so I'm going to let you finish your presentations and then we will ask question thank you than again the the the no verification.

Process is something that we need to be looking at so reinspection is there's no formal process for reinspection typically what's happened is if we find out that there's been a complaint automatically look into it immediately so our folks are really good about that and trying to find out what's going on you know what if a for permit lapses got to start the process all over again and again just reminder that they're they're required to give 24 hours notice and then notice an hour's notice within 30 minutes right where that window is going to be and again residents and decc yeah so we can we do have the authority to request a seismic readings what what I think is a great kind of brainstorming session is how we might be able to tie in the pre blast inspection and even even images to post blast so and with the reading so if if the residents were within this 500 foot range they would automatically have a place to go that's going to require some.

Thought on you know do we have the technology to be able to provide it the timing and and even resident notification so they even know it's available to them we would need to put some some horsepower behind that to figure it out other information so this is kind of a Delta between what the city's doing right now and what we're doing on as a County right now permit links City's 60 days Count's 90 days so we think it's prudent for us to consider maybe skining that up a lot can happen over 90 days at 30 extra days the permit time they required the city requires them to have a permit three days before the blast there's no time requirement for the county the utility location City's requiring a locate ticket you know that UCC where they have the lines down and things like that we don't have that requirement from the county side pre-blast inspection City's 750 feet and we're 500 same thing with blast mats same distances city is requiring signs.

Within th foot of a roadway we don't have that in in in our permit application records retention City's five years counties three years and blast time is about 30 minutes off cities 8 to 4:30 counties 8 to 5: and we are able to take a look at our process and we believe it's a good idea for us to be as close with our processes as we can and just given there is so much of the municipal County interface with expansion going on right now so with that said that's kind of where we're at with this happy to answer more questions concerns guidance from you great thank you so you didn't have anything else that you want to I keep seeing the light on and I keep thinking you gota you want to say something talk to turn that oned light the speaker oh all right let's Wendy you've got your hands so so let's start with you well I really appreciate you all being here and that we are finally having this conversation because because.

This has been an issue that our board has been really concerned about and several some of us have been out several times to meet with residents and have seen on site what is happening and you know this is the system that we have in place is not working for our residents it's not and so we we really I for me there's a sense of urgency about trying to change what we're doing to the greatest Authority that we have within the state statute and to to get it done as quickly as possible because these you know this construction these projects are happening every single day so the longer that we wait the more people that you know are being impacted possibly negatively and one thing that I learned on the last site visit a few weeks ago was and I didn't understand this before I I personally had always thought about blasting being done for construction where you have a lot of rock and evidently why what's happening in southeast Durham is that because.

There are so triap soils there which are highly erosive that the reason that all the blasting is happening is because the developers are trying to find solid soil yeah beneath the triatic soils so it's actually a very unique situation where they are doing excessive blasting and so much blasting because they're trying to get to a solid foundation I didn't understand that before and that really helps to understand this is a very I think unique situation because in all my times being a planning commissioner for six years and then being a county commissioner for 11 years we've never heard these types of complaints about blasting and so one question I have is working with our environmental staff is there a possibility of even coming up with more environmentally sensitive or sites specific types of criteria because again it's kind of I don't understand myself but something is happening here and you can see it in the type of development that we're getting because if you go out and see these projects the land is being completely.

Resculpted it's being completely transformed and you get these huge this grading where you get these huge Heights these artificial Cliffs that are getting created and things like that it's not I'll just stop there and say that this is a unique situation and so I also wonder whether we need to and and this may be for later on understand that because it sounds to some people are are it it sounds almost unbearable for some people if you can imagine living somewhere where there's just constant explosions happening all the time so you know some some of my fellow board members have already raised a number of the issues that we really really hope that together you can address as quickly as possible and and one is around the pre-inspection information and that has to be done with the resident because people need to go inside people's houses and look at their walls and look at their foundations it can't be done with somebody just looking at the outside of somebody's house it really has to be.

Done in Partnership and that information has to be shared with the homeowner and you all need to have a copy of that as well we need transparency we need accountability the second issue is the location of the monitors we heard from residents that they're not even told exactly where the monitor are and they should know and they so we know that they are being put in the right place and especially if people have wells that they are being put where their Wells are and their septic systems so again how how how can we make sure that that is getting done and again that that's the the homeowners know where those monitors are and then the third thing that's already been alluded to is the data that comes from the blasting information that's picked up by those monitors has to be shared with you all and it needs to be share with the residents because people are going to their insurance companies and they're getting declined because they're they don't have the data.

And you know nobody wants to take responsibility the developer doesn't the insurance company doesn't and so you know we have residents who simply can't afford now to make these repairs to their Wells and to their homes so I would just ask that you address those steps and make sure that we are protecting our residents and then the last thing is the notification to give people 24-hour notification how is that information being shared with residents because we heard over and over again they weren't home or they didn't know and so or even the one hour is ridiculous so again these These are the issues that we really need to address immediately and I would say I support adopting the city's requirements because those are obviously stronger than the couny so that would be an easy First Step so we're going to give you an opportunity to talk for a few minutes and and see if you can address some of the things that that commissioner Jacobs has raised because we have all been in the middle.

Of this conversation for several months and we all have the same concerns so why don't we just the board if just give them an opportunity to address some of the things that commissioner Jacobs just raised I will do my best I think unfortunately there there are going to be some items just going to take a bit of time for us to kind of work through as a team to find the best solution to it but happy to reach out to environmental I I do have like a question in the back of my head if this is based off a state statute we may have to go a little bit greater than than what we are right now and modify that state statute if if we're going to try to change how blasting occurs when they're trying to find good soil versus blasting in the traditional sense that we think of so it's going to take us the a bit of time to find the right path but we will move forward with that with urgency.

The pre-inspection work we'll have to find out exactly how that takes place I know that there is some new requirement that allows inspectors on property sites that I just read about not too long ago and I'll be I'll be glad to get you all that information U through U AC and Brenson that that we want to make sure they are not turning people right right I don't want you in my home so that's one thing we need to rule out to to two make sure that the person that's coming in their home is they're going to be safe let safe letting them in their home which I think is another concern that folks might have but also how that's how that is communicated to the residents in in my mind right now I think one of our biggest opportunities that we have with this is starting a dialogue with anybody that's going to be be subject to this blasting and encourage them take your own pictures as soon as you find out.

That blasting is going to be near you our message to them is take pictures inside of your home take pictures outside of your home have your own don't don't be depending on anybody else to do that and then once the damage occurs it will be very obvious right so we can work up on some type of messaging or some type of requirement to to kind of help make that happen too and I think that that will help us be more successful I'll have to ask about the location that it monitors the Jim of planner Jim's not a conspiracy theorist but there is a concern with kind of operational security and and making sure that the equipment is going to operate normally so part of me can see why they might not want let folks know exactly where this stuff is so they don't disappear they're not tampered with right right right yeah so that so we got to we need to find out how that works out better U so that I.

Think that's something we can work with the companies that's doing that and say tell us about this what's a better way the data from blasting I'm as I'm sitting here I believe that we can work on that with our blasting permit as part of the permit process they agree to provide those results within a certain amount of time I think we can include that and then if they don't do that we can either not give them a permit the next time or we can go ahead and start working through legal to to make sure the Loop's closed so I think we have a path there on that and then the notification on the 24 and the when hour I believe we've got some flexibility on how that works so we can expand the the distance and I think we can modify the time requirements and and we have some work that we can do right there that's that's my quick down and dirty about what I heard from you today.

Representative Hawkins was on the on the ride with out there and he also was concerned about the blasting to see what he can do for from from the legislator so if you want to maybe contact him and as far as working on the legislative end from Raleigh and and this was who I'm sorry representative Zack Hawkins.

Okay.

Commissioner along I'm sorry commissioner Burns has I think she commissioner Burns had her hands up first I don't know I'm relegated to emailing y'all but one thank you so much director grov I appreciate everything that you do you gentlemen Marshall Bowden all right not bow so good to have everyone here today I me a couple of things I want to State unequivocally this ain't y'all fault right like we know that y'all have a job to do y'all are good public servants you out here trying to keep us safe from fires and everything else and and it's not an easy job especially on the city Side I've seen some of the stuff that's been going on over there so thank you for coming over here director grow thank you for inviting them team effort here's here's where I am I don't disagree with anything that my colleague said here's where my concern is I I also want to sayate unequivocally that our support us moving up to the city standards.

However Marshall Bowen said even as we were sitting here he said once they get a permit for us they stopped talking to us so now we got folks out here disrespecting our public servants right like so if he comes back with an inquiry if you come back with an inquiry if you all come back with a sanction we found that right here in this very public setting on camera even with the strong standards that they have they are not given the respect that they need so I do support moving up to those standards but I also want to make it very clear that is not going to be the Quick Fix it's the quickest thing we can do but I also think we are now in a position where as sad as it is a message needs to be sent they sent a message over to the city they got rid of some of the folks on that elected body that's that's the message they sent so we G to send one.

Back you cannot continue to come in here and keep blowing up houses now commissioner Jacobs mentioned I've seen it folks have gone out there the the blasting where I'm concerned and here's where my question is going to come in so I the 24 hours that makes me think like that's what your internet service does they leave something on your door say listen we about to put some Fiber down and you come back in an hour and your whole yard is torn up I don't like it when my utility service does it I show enough and then that that's a service for me I'm trying not to actually say utility service I don't want to get sued but that I can imagine what it's like when it happens there and we we got to come to terms with the fact that these are not onetime detonations those significant drop offs that we're seeing that is not one blast of dynamite going off that is consistent blasting so now I'm kind of funny about the timeline.

How are you giving me 24-hour notice a one hour notice with a 30 minute you have got to almost be giving me consistent on hour updates or daily updates dates because this is consistent blasting going on so that's where I I want to and it's not on y'all that timeline cannot even realistically occur if it the one on Olive Branch that is the drop off is taller than me you did not blow a hole in one day that is that tall and that broad it is that that's consistent blasting so I am sketchy about that timeline and then what what does can somebody whether it's a general statue or whether Define for me right now what is notification cuz it's notification of door hanger it's notification of phone number when folks don't have landlines it's notification a knock on the door because if we have not definitively defined what notification is that's how folks keep getting away with it to your point you know it's one thing in my if I'm on vacation it is.

Another thing if somebody says well you know what we went and stuck a a postcard in everybody's mailbox so my question is and maybe our attorneys know what is the legal standard for notification because we can't have every especially with this really educated population that we have really nosy population that we have there's no way that folks are saying I never got anything so nobody got a postcard nobody got a door knock nobody got anything and we had consistent blast and going so again that's not on y'all I just can somebody and that's that'll be my first question I might have a second one depending upon the answer but what is defined as notification well so and I think the main issue is the notification only if the building is within 500t blasting so we're not having many blastings where that's occurring that's that's like that would be something like in a bigger urban area where you have like houses and apartments and stuff right next to stuff but what they're doing out there.

There's nothing within 500 feet and the issue is like you're saying repeat blasting the seismic readings aren't that strong the further out you get but if you keep on having little hits over and over and over again in multiple days that's where you're going to probably see these Foundation issues and these Wells issues however by the statutes and the the the things we have to work with it's 500 feet we we can't really answer your question yeah you do can I can I interject that this because this was a concern that we raised at the meeting that we have with the Joint City County leadership as well about notification and one of the things that we agreed to do as City leadership and County leadership is that and you all will hear this from ACM Bron but once the permit has been issued that we as the municipal and County government would send something out to those homes that are within that area to say we have issued a permit for blasting between.

These dates yes yes it please look forward to hearing from the contractor so that residents are aware that this is coming and can be on the lookout I think we need to take some ownership of that notification pie I don't disagree can you add on there for them to take pictures of the we can include anything you want to but that's a concern I I'm with you and I appreciate us taking ownership of that and and I'm H one that is a good for step I'm gonna ask again what is the legal stand because we can do we're voluntarily doing our part we are voluntarily being good public servants but there is a statute that dictate what they supposed to do and I want somebody to tell me when Charles Francis RoR came up with the magnitude scale in 1935 this is not what he anticipated that's y'all seismograph R I know I said seismograph seismograph the other night my daddy got me because I built award-winning seismograph in the.

Fifth grade and made it to the state science fair thank you very much so in 1935 when Charles Francis RoR came up with the magnitude scale you said it in the beginning director Groves models are not fat so we can sit here and say the projectile will most likely go 93 degrees this way at a speed of 128 miles per hour I was in the Attorney General's office and felt the earthquake from Philadelphia and half of us F nobody knows how far these shifts go or what they G so I'm happy that we're doing that and we don't have to answer that right now but I honestly sincerely need somebody to let me know what is the standard for what it is that they're supposed to do because if they're not following back up with you they're not following back up with the home owners we have got to find something that's going to at least stick where we can say you did not do this and these PE folks.

Need to at least have some form of legal recourse that's all I'm saying now stop there what is it so the the when you look at the statute is is very silent to what actual notification is is incredibly generic so it's not it's not useful and I'm not sure if the term is appropriate but it's something like like that and I'm sorry I don't have it in front of me for you but it's it's it's pretty silent on exactly but thank you so that means it's a loophole you can drive a Mac Truck through that is very helpful well as far as the code books go they don't have a definition for notification in the code book they reference a developer wrote that code they reference the 2011th Edition no sorry the 11th edition of Mariam Websters so whatever Mariam Websters defines as notification in the 11th Edition that's probably what they could use and I'm pretty sure it's Broad could be much okay other questions commissioner thank you so much I got.

One of my main questions answered Around The Bling permits if we can look into adjusting the pre-inspection reports I agree with commissioner Jacobs about matching the city's requirements however I would say I think we should go steps further than the city's requirements because as you mentioned there's not going to be any structures currently at the 500 ft I think 750 ft isn't enough either when we're looking at our more rural communities and so seeing if there is any statutory maximum that we can go first but yeah if we can I don't has there been any study of these blasting that have been done or in other rural type areas how far is that damage seen especially when you have the instances that you described of the repeated small lastings over and over and over again how far out should we make our requirements to really protect our residents and I'm surprised that we don't have signage requirements already but I definitely think that we need to match that with the cities.

And then director Groves I also I forwarded you an email that I had sent when we had had met with the residents way back so I had sent a couple of my questions there one of them was around the requirements for the permitting and then also yes the blasting zones for that and then for the well reports so after a blasting is done who is responsible for the well test is it the lasting company is it the developer or is that on the resident and your question specifically to post blast.

Yeah contractor is their responsibility okay but we we've dealt with that some here and not to weigh in too much from the city side but we did have an incident in 2018 in the city over in the Beth Page subdivision and we had flyer rock that traveled 750 ft and that's how the city came up about 750 feet I know Chris and I we sat down with our attorney for two days recently reviewing this we met with our chief our Co consultant the county had a representative on the call as well I spent the last 34 years with the Department 27 in this Division I will say blasting complaints have been a part of my career all the way back 30 years ago but they become more and more prevalent as the city and the county meet and as the construction continues to go into the rural settings we do have tools we we we've revoked permits on the city side I mean they will talk to us we will make sure that when we.

Have a complaint or a concern we always respond out we are limited into going in and just on advisement from our attorneys on what we can and cannot do you know on the scenes themselves as far as reviewing damage what's considered a civil matter what's cons versus what's considered a violation of the permit itself but basically if they violate the terms of the permit in any way we can revoke the permit we've done that here We've issued finds so there are tools that we currently have as code officials this has been a Hot Topic in Raleigh it's been a Hot Topic in carry we recently met with Raleigh K and and the state fire code consultant about this I expect more legislation and changes to possibly occur we do have the option to look at an ordinance however as Chief grow mentioned a lot of the changes would have to go to the Building Code Council to get approved at the state level so you do receive the 24hour r.

Reports the city does but does the County yeah if there are any buildings within 500 ft we would receive notification we'd have proof that they notified them however we're in the county a lot of these places that this just doesn't happen because there's nothing within 500 feet so so there so there are so many concerns around this whole issue and we've heard the manager U and what she's working on so would so we're going to look to staff to come up with some recommendations for us because this is something that we just cannot not address and so if you could work with a manager and staff and come back to us with what do you see that we can do that's going to really be substantial because it's it's got to be pretty different than what's happening right now and and what do our legislation from Raleigh what does it afford us to do how far can we push it is the question yeah happy to do that appre we appreciate that come back to.

Us managers working on something and you guys got to get together and work it out okay you have another question yeah I just wanted to say I just scanned the beginning sections of this memo and I I just you know that are responding to basically each of the assertions made by preserver Durham that these are complaints you know that we have now but I don't know if it was all of them but all the ones I read so far had not you know sent a complaint in to the office and you know that you were even unaware of their complaint until 20123 so I I don't know that that didn't seem like on their part you know the preser dorm's part that they were doing everything they could have done at the time that they had the concern and it's come up now that we have expanded development that's encroaching more and more in the rural area so you know it's hard for me to know whether our current.

Process is as in in insufficient as we're all acting like it is right now you know and I'd like that's he don't have to tell me now but I'd like to know maybe this will be what what comes forward as chair Howton has suggested we need input from you all but you know what do what do we need to do is it good enough now what do we need to do to make it better if it isn't and you know how would you respond to these complaints that we're getting now but you didn't get them at the time so I mean I'll be interested in that at some point either offline or online okay all right another question I I just want to say publicly for the record I do support us looking at an ordinance again I I think we need to be doing whatever we can to protect the environment and also our residents so I would I'm interested in the shortterm fixes but also the long-term.

So thank you all for your expertise and your help with this and collaboration between the city and the county thank thank you it's great to see that happening all all the time thank you so much thank for being here thank you all right thank you all right Commissioners we have one more on the agenda and then I.

Believe we have a closed session for that any comments from Commissioners any report outs that you have you want to take a couple of minutes and Report out if you have anything and then we will go into close session okay he none. Let's I asked because move on if nobody says anything okay you got something yes so one of the comments that I wanted to share is this is on behalf of commissioner Al and I we had shared and and I'll just read this directly during our o during our October 23rd County Commission meeting commissioner nid Alam and I made a joint statement addressing the rise of islamophobia and anti-Semitism our Collective grief and mourning over the terrible loss of life in Israel and Palestine and the need to work together for peace and social justice as leaders in our community as a a Muslim woman and as a Jewish woman nit and I are deeply committed to walking this difficult path together in our statement we called for a ceasefire to.

Stem the loss of life we want to make it clear that respect for life also requires the immediate release of all the hostages taken by Hamas while our statement explicitly condemned the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th it did not mention the hostages again we want to be crystal clear that all of hamas's hostages must be released immediately it is important that we all continue to find ways to come together discuss these very difficult issues and find A Better Way Forward and I will be submitting that to staff on the behalf of commissioner LOM and I and the other comment I just wanted to make was that as I shared the I was excited to share with the board that I've been appointed to this task force and of course we'll be keeping everyone informed and getting input from all of you it's called one more thing and it is about addressing addressing the opioid crisis and the other let let me let me stop you a minute.

Commissioner Jacobs and go back to what happened because what you just what you just did will come back to us the board just like you did you and N put out a statement before and what happens is then the entire board start getting emails and I don't and some of the staff as well that we didn't all say exactly what you guys said and that's just totally unfair to this board because in the beginning when this stuff first began I made a statement on behalf of this board so we all we all acknowledged what was going on here in our country and when you do stuff like that and I have this conversation with you what you do is you leave the rest of us out and then we start getting emails from the public as if we don't care about people and that's so untrue and I I I just have to address that because it sets us up to start getting these emails that I I just think.

That that's not fair to the rest of us yeah and thank you and I should have stated more context we put this statement out on social media on October 26th and and said that we had to do it on social media versus at our board meeting because we weren't going to be meeting this was the earliest time that we were going to be meeting and so so we made a commitment that we would also share it on the public record because it was to address feedback that we had gotten from the October 23rd statement and that's so this was the first opportunity to share it at the board which we had we had promised that we would do so that that's the only reason why I'm doing it now and I should have I should have you should you should have notified the rest of us on the board because otherwise I mean I didn't know I didn't know anything about it yeah I don't think app bur it either yes and I appreciate that.

Well I just miss you I one I I'm not I want to say it this way I remember the timeline and I I do only agree with I'm because I'm G speak for myself because clearly I have to I'm not worried about the emails necessarily that we get from the public about what we do and do not do right I think this is I think in the past couple of weeks I've gotten more emails about what I don't do or supposedly what I don't do I just want to elevate this sentiment when children are killed in Durham and when black and brown children are killed in Durham and Sheriff Burkhead makes a statement and everyone up here is quiet you do not see emails from the public saying why didn't you say anything when children are killed and and I make a public statement if my colleagues are silent in no way do I assume that they don't support me because they are all dealing with their own Collective grief if chair Howton.

Makes a statement about black boys being murdered and we all sit here silent in no way does our silence is as a s an indicator that we do not support her because yet again many of us are dealing with our own Collective grief so I don't think necessarily that your statement that you put out didn't harm me I just I am always surprised and it's Illuminating and I'll say this way at what people get from someone else's silence as opposed to it being silent reflection so I saw the emails that we got that called upon commissioner Carter and commissioner hton and myself to say something and and still right now I think we we all have trouble coming up with it but I will share the sentiment events that I will share that that chair Howton shared I wish for a ceasefire not only in Palestine and in Israel but I wish for a ceasefire in Durham I wish for a ceasefire in the Congo I wish for a ceasefire in New York.

I wish for a ceasefire in Compton I wish for a ceasefire on corn Wallace so when I'm sitting here and I am silent it has nothing nothing to do with me not supporting anybody it is everything with me sitting here trying to figure out how we going to save another baby and I'm not speaking for commissioner Carter when I say that I'm not speaking for commissioner Jacobs commissioner Howton or for commissioner Alam and it is to me almost sad that you have to do this because for me many times when I don't speak on things that have to do with International relationships it literally is because I don't want it to be performative which for these two women it was not I don't want for it to be political which it has been for other elected officials and this is a time for me to sit and listen because I'm not an expert in those fields and I would hope that people would be happy that folks would listen as opposed to move immediately.

Because I know for my people that is what we realistically want most days out of the week so that's all I got to say about. That thank you commissioner Burns the the last thing that I just wanted to share was kind of related to what I'm sorry I was late for Russ's public comment this morning but I just wanted to share with everybody that the the group that had formed the familiar faces permanent Supportive Housing work group that had formed and had worked on the Carver Creek Campus has now now we we are now the famili the Durham familiar faces initiative and it's I just wanted to share that we've moved into a new phase and it's really exciting there are three committees one committee is going to be focused on Supportive Housing and that's being chaired by shanet shetta from housing for New Hope and is going to focus on what are the Supportive Services that that are going to be needed for Carver Creek and is really going to help lead that process.

But also looking at all different kinds of Supportive Housing that are needed in Durham so trans some transitional housing some permanent Supportive Housing but recognizing that we need all different types of housing for people who are homeless nowadays people are getting you know requests to hear about you know tiny homes tiny home Villages and there's just a lot of different things happening so that committee is going to focus on that there's a second committee that is going to be focusing on the data sharing and this comes out of what we're funding through the Justice Services Department really looking at the data analysis and the data platform and that is being chaired together with it is somebody from the city a city data person and then Beth steamburg who's in Justice Services so we've got a city and a county data analyst chairing that committee and then the third committee I'm really excited about is a pilot that is going to actually start looking at the first familiar faces initiative serving.

Identifying about 15 people in Durham who everyone knows who they are you know whether it's the heart program or you know our you know our our EMS staff people who were cycling and out y people every our people in our community know who these people are we see them on the street and so this committee is going to be chaired by Ryan Smith who's head of the heart program and ran Parker who is our Justice Services director and these committees are meeting monthly and I will keep you all updated but it's really exciting that people are just getting started and working together and seeing what happens if we can start identifying who these people are and start doing case management and meeting you know different staff from different departments are going to be seeing what do people need and doing the case management and the wraparound services so and seeing what happens so I just wanted to share that and I will stop and in in reference to that I met with some.

Folks yesterday with Zack Hawkins and some other citizens about hope it's housing for for disabled citizens or young people that's growing up with disabilities and what they are looking for is to partner with others I wanted to talk with u the Supportive Housing folks to see if there can be they they can be included in that or have them come and present us because they have not been before us before and it would be good to include them in some of the projects that we're doing yeah so I will pass the information on so they they can call and contact get some contacts in there anything else GRE thank you chair Howton thank you Vice chair Jacobs I appreciate you reading the statement I had just one question more so than a comment of just wondering for you know in and our board can we have an update soon from Library staff I think we've all been receiving a lot of emails around concerns around the hours and the capacity of Library employees right now.

If we can receive a presentation on what is the current capacity how many contract employees does the library have and just trying to work through that so that before there's a decision to expand to Sunday hours we don't want to overburden our employees we we can certainly do that but but we this didn't just start we just started getting emails but there have been requests to open the library back probably as far back as six months yeah and the director was planning to do that and staff said that that we weren't ready to do that so what I asked the director to do was take a step back there are lots of different areas of concern concern that we have to address in the library so we've actually engaged a consultant to come in and help the library think through how we're moving forward on some things and also do some development work because a lot of it is you know developing staff so that we are working more efficiently.

So if you all will allow us to work through that ACM Hall is working with director badget to make sure we're taking the appropriate and thoughtful approach and so but that is that that we're working on I was surprised to see this flood of emails that just started yeah coming through but it is something that we are being really thoughtful about and planning how we move forward and and and if we move forward with opening on Sundays I appreciate thank you manager thank you ACM hall for looking into that can we also include I'm sure you might already do it the tech aspects within the library I think there's also been concerns in the past about how has maintenance in the library been keeping up up and how have we been able to make sure that all of the tech that we have in our amazing libraries is actually accessible and usable we can certainly do that yes we okay so if there is nothing else I is.

There something else I I didn't see your hand no I it's yeah normally I I don't I mean I don't really have any relevant comments other than to say that you know I've never been a big fan of this agenda item because I think it you know presents an opportunity for a commissioner to suddenly talk about anything right and and I don't I've never had any problem I don't you know with anything people have shared but that doesn't mean that different boards and different commissions might not and Brenda you had a problem today with you know something Wendy shared and it's because it was not an agenda that we all approved you know what I mean I mean that's why we have agenda approval is because we know what each of the.

Discussion items is going to be yeah and instead when it's just commissioner comments it opens a can of worms it it it just a cautionary tales it could be a problem it never really has been we've worked through it but that's just why I don't love commissioner comments because it's an agenda item that's so undefined and you know I just I when I approve an agenda I like to know what I'm approving so anyway yeah I so be it yeah I I just I I guess I push back on anything that doesn't include all of the board members and puts any of us in a bad light with the citizens of Durham to make it and it it I don't think it's intended that way but what the citizens received was okay two of the board members support and the rest of the board members did not and that's not true and I just wanted to make clear that that's not what it is so that that.

Was my push back is like let's not set us ourselves up to make it look like that yeah so but citizen but having commissioner comments does set it up yeah I got you I got what you say all right all right if it's nothing else then we have finished with all of our agenda we're going to move on to a closed session 23815 the board is requested to adjourn into Clos session to establish or to instruct the public body staff or negotiating agents concerning the position to be taken by or on behalf of the public body in negotiating the price and other material items material terms of a contract or proposed contract for the acquisition of real property prop by purchase option exchange or lease or the amount of compensation and other material terms of an employment contract or proposed employment contract pursuit to GS 143 d318 do1 A5 and I will entertain a motion to move into close session Madam chair I make a motion that we move into close close session for.

A matter stated second it's been moved impr promptly second go go into close session all in favor I motion passes 5 to zero we are in close session.

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Did. You have to turn it on M on okay that makes it better we've met the board has met in Clos session and give direction to staff no action needs to be taken I will ask.

Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · November 6, 2023

▸Consent Agenda9:19

▸Public Comment1:05:35

▸Closed Session5:23:18

▸Discussion Items5:39:32

▸Adjournment6:11:46