Board of Commissioners · Regular Meeting · September 5, 2023

Public comment and I saw that actually it wasn't on the agenda for discussion you it was on the agenda for sent and so I emailed them and called them and said hey I just wanted to be sure your expectations are matching what's on the agenda because when things are on the consent agenda we don't discuss it we might pull it we might ask questions but it was clear they were were thinking they were going to make a formal presentation so anyway at that point they said well that's you know okay thank you for letting me know I won't come then right that's why they didn't come that's why Nicole the chair didn't come and and and they also said it was fine to move forward with it there must have been some miscommunication they would like to present at some point in the future not you know it's not imminent but the main thing and I did want to lift this up was the Farmland protection plan has not.

Been updated since 2009 and so they would like you know then they're seeking grant funding to work on that so they they are hoping that that will happen and you know I don't know whether they actually need grant funding or if it's something the county could fund but nonetheless I just did want to say that for now but my recommendation would be to go ahead and approve their plan on consent and we can ask staff to be in conversation with them about presenting at another meeting okay yes I'm fine to approve their report or plan I definitely if they would like funding to update their plan I really want would like them to have the opportunity to present I also actually have a request of the Farmland board that is time sensitive so I'm kind of if it could be conveyed to them as appropriately through staff or through you but I think probably through staff is that you know a number of our of our boards and commissions.

Have weighed in on on things like the comprehensive land use plan and the future Place type map and they in their report they to spend a lot of time discussing the importance of the volunteer volunteer agriculture districts and they're actually have been expanding in Durham as we have been supporting small and minority farmers in Durham there's really been kind of a revitalization actually of small farming Durham I will say thanks to in small part to to the support of our board but also the support of the Farmland board swim water Cooperative Extension you know marry oxidine we we really are creating a strong local food system the Durham Public Schools but my point is I would like them to evaluate the future proposed future Place type map and the urban growth boundary and its impact on farmland and the volunteer agricultural districts so that that is my request if they could you know sewing and water staff the Farmland board please provide us some input so I know that they did participate in the public.

Engagement sessions around the policy the policy work groups and I know I think they provided some input I see people shaking their head out there but yes that I also want to just make it very very clear this was on the consent agenda not for a presentation and that's why they're not here to like speak and ask questions I feel a level of frustration around this because it was clear they wanted to present but you know they're not here to present because it was on consent do you understand I just want to be sure there's no slackness on their part absolutely absolutely I remember I thought it was on the consent agenda and evident ly there was a request that I didn't know about to change it so I didn't know that it had been changed until our chat our clerk just let me know well I didn't request it was changed you know because I had actually since I talked to Nicole and Sh Sherry you know anyway just want.

To make it very clear they're such a hardworking team no you know Monica can you Monica you want to speak on this and then we can have the staff follow up and see if we can get it on the October if they are ready and they may coming later I you know I they had several things you know they were hoping to talk to us about and it seemed like it might be better timing in in the long run for it to be later unless we're eager to hear from them now so excuse me I will just state that during our excuse me we have agenda prep meetings prior to the agenda meeting and this this item was listed as consent and so there was no presentation of any sort there was an email that was sent later on after the agenda was already created that they would like to present so by that time I did move it it was over the weekend so your conversation was already had with.

Them and by the time you guys got here this morning the item was placed as a presentation because that was the last email that I had received so I can reach out to them so that we can move it to a later date and they can present however we can still go ahead and move it now from discussion to consent so on the meeting on the 11th you guys can go ahead and approve it unless you want to wait and approve it at a later meeting when they present I think we can move to cons to the next meeting consent agenda if no one has any objections and and then they want to present especially around the urban boundary U no that's time sensitive because we're going to be approving the plan in October so if they're not going to present till October work session that will not be enough time so are you saying to not to approve what they've given us right now no that's just totally separate totally separate.

So so this item we'll move to consent agenda what commissioner Wendy Jacobs is talking about is something totally different right and I guess I would just request to our acting County manager if we can ask them to please evaluate the future Place type map and the urban gra growth boundary and any potential negative impacts on the volunteer agricultural districts or just for them to give us any assessment of that yeah and just clarification this item that we are moving to consent there is still a presentation attached so I will reach out to them so that they can come and present that at a later meeting no just that's not what you want no move this one to consent okay okay or I thought that there still wanted to be some type of presentation on it okay so we're just moving this to consent and your request will be at a different meeting it's a different request yeah okay any other questions good okay all right so we kind of jumped ahead to this.

This item but the next item is 23658 it's a unified development ordinance text Amendment regarding phased development and tree preservation TC 2200 4 and let's see who is here I saw. Sarah Robin guys wanna there you are just introduce yourselves and you want to take it away oh okay good morning sorry my name is Robin Schultz I am a senior planner and arborist within the planning department he Sarah Young director of the city County Planning Department okay so you can use why don't you move both of the other mic over there so you'll have two mics and you can pull them.

Close all right can youall hear me all right all right so good morning my name is Robin as I said before this morning I'm presenting information about a proposed unified development text Amendment case TC 22004 based development and tree preservation so the why of this text Amendment sort of gets into we've been seeing an increase in the amount of large residential developments there have been repeated concerns from residents council members and staff such as issues with con excuse me issues with erosion control especially for large tracks we've seen an emphasis on tree replacement rather than preservation and we've seen large residential developments with little to no topographical character and or poor soil health so how we're going to how we're proposing to tackle this is four-pronged essentially through four different changes to four different sorry four articles being changed with the United UniFi development ordinance article8 Environmental Protection we are creating a tiered system of tree preservation and phase development with the addition of incentives for tree preservation and inclusion of the.

Compact neighborhood tier when not zoned for the design districts in article 9 landscaping and buffering we are increasing the current buffering standard so that any residential development which Mas grades will now have to provide a buffer with an opacity of 0.6 which is approximately 30 feet the changes to Article 13 additional subdivision requirements include the establishment of of a new section 13.6 phase development which creates a maximum cap of 50 acres for any singular phase and denote denotes that Lots in previous phases must be stabilized before any new phases begin this section establishes other phasing requirements which will be covered later and as a result of public input we've also made changes to article 7 design standards and Incorporated grading setbacks and so in response to these ongoing concerns regarding the impacts of grading on neighboring properties we've added a new Udo section to the design standards called grading setbacks when projects utilize Mass grading an additional 10 foot no build setback no grading setback excuse me shall be required from all exterior boundaries of.

The development site projects which grade but do not qualify as mass grading shall provide a 5 foot no- grading setback just as a reminder Mass grading is defined as grading of four or more Acres at one time so the exceptions to this are creating for Trails utilities access infrastructure or any code required plantings so getting into the proposed tier system note that it focuses on residential development there is the ability to utilize tree replacement still but preservation is incentivized it promotes smaller phases of grading and more distribution of canopy coverage and it includes incentives for affordable housing varied housing types and further Environmental Protection so for projects which for projects with phases that do not exceed 35 Acres they shall be required to have 20% of tree preservation projects which include one of the incentives above can also utilize 20% projects with phases 35 Acres or greater shall be required to have 30% of tree preservation in each phase which exceeds 35.

Acres so each option includes the ability to utilize tree replacement if preservation is not possible though the amounts of tree replacement are higher for larger phases the tables underneath both options dep pick the required tree placement for each level of. Preservation so as far as visible as far as visual examples in example one the parcel is 100 acres each phase will be 20 acres and will therefore be required to have 20% tree coverage 20% of 20 acres is 4 acres per phase so in the same in the second example the same parcel is still 100 acres two phases will be 35 acres and one will be 30 Acres phases one and two will require 30% tree preservation or approximately 11.5 Acres of tree preservation per phase and phase three will require 20% or six acres so the main takeaways from the these examples are that larger phases will require more overall tree coverage and as a reminder that tree coverage functions as the sum of both preservation and replacement in.

Example one the smaller phases amounted to 20 acres of tree preservation whereas in example two the larger phases resulted in 29 Acres of total tree preservation just note that these examples did not include tree replacement but remember that the amount of required tree replacement is always more than what is required with just preservation so getting into those boundary buffer changes We've made a slight change to required project boundary buffers when residential projects utilize MK rating the project boundary buffers required will be updated from 0.4 opacity to.

0.6 sorry currently the Udo only requires this for residential development in Suburban tier the new text Amendment will expand this to projects in every tier the proposed Mass grading for residential projects so moving on phase development so the new section 13.6 is a new Udo section to be established which will denote the additional requirements for phase grading in subdivisions the main takeaways are that no phase can be greater than 50 acres each phase shall be able to stand alone this is similar to existing language in the Udo note that some plans will only have one phase additionally there are Provisions within the section I'm not going to read them all but they relate to the specifics of phasing infrastructure tree preservation and erosion control so we've been asked to look at car's ordinance and after speaking with their staff we've determined the following car's grading ordinance functions as a three-tiered system based on density rather than land disturbance as we're proposing projects which exceed eight units per Acres have no.

Grading limit though they have they do have stricter standards for lower density projects additionally Carri does not have a provision in their ordinance ordinance for tree coverage just open space Champion trees and buffers our proposal accounts for grading restrictions regardless of the density additionally we require tree coverage and open space buffering and specimen tree preservation car's ordinance also allows for more flexibility in the grading restrictions grading restrictions and ARS is not also worth noting that Durham was recently audited by the state for sedimentation and erosion control practices and was determined determined as meeting or exceeding state standards and lastly I just wanted to provide some quick math the maximum amount of grading which can occur within a phase within that first or base tier is 27.9 2 Acres which is 20 20% of the 39.4 acre cap because once you hit 35 Acres you are pushed into the second tier the maximum amount of grading which could could occur within the second tier is 35 Acres just as a quick note.

These calculations are based on the Assumption of tree preservation rather than tree replacement if utilizing tree replacement projects would ultimately need to provide more tree coverage and finally I just wanted to make a note that regardless of the grading tier will not change the fact that all projects will be required to plant Street trees vehicle use area plantings screenings screening plantings and any other required plantings for site development that are required per the Udo thank you and staff is available if there are any questions and I'm sorry that's so long thank you for your presentation on page five the you said that there's it's being required on every was.

It okay apparently UD only requires resal development the newand is projects in every give us a an explanation why so this this will still only apply to residential projects well excuse me this is is going to be within the Suburban tier still and then the urban tier I think she's talking about was wait a second sorry we're trying to find chair the part that you were just talking about this I think it it was on page five page five yeah yeah this buffer boundary buffer changes is what it right so now this is saying that any any residential project and any tier which Mass grades will have to provide that buffer is that what you're.

Asking so I still didn't hear an explanation as to why as to why we've expanded it yes why it why it's required for every every tier right and so I guess we've essentially gone from just the Suburban to every tier because we've received a lot of feedback about these large projects especially as they are graded and visible along the street and so we essentially took the language out that says in the Suburban tier which is why it now relates to every tier but essentially that's sort of what we got at these large residential projects when they're great these like large projects because it has to have four or more Acres graded at one time for it to apply we required those buffers in that case does that make sense not really is I'm I'm not hearing any was it some type of data some type of of analysis what I mean what how did how did you get to that so one of the things that although the majority of residental poal.

Development that we see happens in the Suburban tier or on the edge of the Suburban tier we also heard concerns that some infill projects in the urban tier would also you know potentially cause the same types of issues so maintaining this buffer around the perimeter and making it you know a little bit wider would help to defay some of the erosion issues water moving onto other you know property kind of unchecked and so we realized that this was more than just a Suburban development problem that this could also be a problem in the urban tier for for large residential projects so was there Community involvement or yeah so we had multiple Community meetings I will say that people wanted more buffers they they were very much in favor of this expanding be on the Suburban tier okay thank you all right Commissioner Michelle Burton one thank y'all for doing this so that's number one because I have heard the complaints so yeah we talk about this in the Suburban tier but.

If you go around North Carolina Central University and you see all these houses being built and then you look over at some poor woman's house and it's flooded it is absolutely flooded their basement flooded the paint messed up so I'm happy that we getting these additional buffers I don't have any problem with this my question is how you going to enforce it that is and if and I not saying you know S I don't need you to go and get a pistol and a host and a shiny badge I don't need you to do that but I need to know who is going to be in a position to enforce it because it's one thing for folks to complain to us we complain to you we put the parameters in place but as we can see from these amendments that are coming through as we can see from some of our neighbors on 98 going down Olive Branch Road there are many violations to the codes that we put in.

Place so if we as a body do it you all as staff do it and then we still have folks out here wild while Westing it I don't have a problem with this I'm going to vote for it my concern is who is in a position to enforce that because I can't keep having these houses getting flooded so that's my question right and so part of the enforcement is right going through the plan review and all of us looking at it additionally we worked with County erosion control staff those folks that would actually need to okay the end of a phase before the the start of the next because they're the ones that are sort of like actually on the ground planning staff aren't and so Ryan EES expressed you know comfort with that additionally that's sort of where the grading setbacks come in because we do have we require that revation plan which is more intense so it is a disincentive for them yeah so then otherwise instead of just them you.

Know having to replant what they accidentally took out we say you actually have to plant even more so that's sort of where the enforcement me mechanisms lie for us in addition to like you know zoning enforcement staff I don't know if there are plan to increase staff as a result of this but I know that erosion control did Express comfort with the amendment as proposed okay and and at some point I do want us to be in a position to better Empower people I think you know when we were talking about the recycling bins and the animal no no trash cans like we have campaigns do your duty we have we have all these campaigns around new initiatives I just I want people to feel empowered that they can protect their property because I I I really want y'all to understand nobody not nobody people in Durham do not feel like their property is being protected and so you know there's not a lot of folks in the public in this room they're.

Not going to see this measure that this board is about to put forward that we're in support of so I do want to make sure that when folks leave out of here it's no different than those seismographs that ain't sisma graphing like let's just call a thing a thing they're not measuring things these are empty boxes and folks don't know if they supposed to call the insurance company if they're supposed to call the police we got blasting we got dust and so as this board seeks to continue to try to put is as much out there to protect homeowners as we possibly can I I hope that at some point not today that we're in a better position to tell people what their rights and responsibilities are especially if now we do see something and somebody does go 30 feet closer than what they're supposed to go to I want I want folks to feel like they're empowered I left the comprehensive plan and people did not feel empowered they.

Felt like they were at a loss so that's not your burden some of that's on us it's a share responsibility and I hope that we can all meet it thank you you commissioner L thank you ditto to Commissioner Michelle Burton and thank you so much SAR on your team I had one simple maybe a silly question but when it comes to the opacities do you guys by any chance have like a graphic or something that shows a comparison of because like we can look at okay point4 opacity and 6 but what does that actually mean in practice if you have something that'll show that that be very helpful I think it also be helpful for residents and then wondering how does this impact if this is the new minimum requirement how does that impact conservation subdivisions does that increase the requirement of protected areas that are in conservation subdivisions by default since this minimum is moving up that their minimum should move up okay so I will tackle the opacity.

Part first which is to say totally understand understand that 04 to 6 sort of you know is not yeah not easy to understand at the the base but it essentially goes from 40% to 60% and I did write down a portion of the Udo which is to say this is how it's written 60% screen from the adjacent properties during summer no more than five years from planting so that's that's sort of what that means so that 60% within five years will be screened from anyone that is adjacent so one other thing that I'll add to that is the udio actually does have a a section called constructed buffer that tells you for each opacity you know how many you know deciduous trees evergreen trees and there's different kind of Alternatives versions of how you can meet that opacity so that gives people a bit of a visual understanding of like oh at maturity this amount of vegetation you know and you know 13 shrubs and whatever so that does give we.

We used to have a graphic that depicted this that I'll see if we can dig up I don't know where it is but we will we will find it because I think that is helpful a lot of people are visual and it's hard to kind of translate words into what does it actually look like on the ground and a followup to that the buffers those are just the requirements for like in between developments or between the development and the street there's not a requirement or something under North Carolina are we limited by North Carolina law from requiring or having developers have buffers between houses too we're we're not limited by law in terms of how we regulate buffers we we could require more buffers one of the things that this amendment is trying to do is instead of having the entire site clear cut and graded which by the way we cannot limit clear cutting that is protective the best day law but a lot of what we were seeing was they would.

Grade all internal leave this little you know by comparison little it's still maybe 50 feet or whatever but when you're looking at a site that's you know almost 100 acres that doesn't feel like much right and instead this by making it so that you have to have phases they have to be much smaller you're going to have tree tree preservation or tree coverage for each one you're going to start to see trees internal and more mixed throughout the whole development as opposed to just the trees on the very perimeter Edge so while it won't get to the level of kind of lot by lot tree Save which I do think we probably would hear some concerns from the development Community about this is kind of an incremental step towards trying to get more trees throughout an entire development so we can't be like two feet or three feet in between houses that have to be a buffer zone with trees planted by Developers our ordinance does not currently go to go to that level could.

That is that something we could that's something we could definitely explore in the rewrite of the unified development ordinance that's going to be coming up you know there's lots of things that we have to balance that may work well in a Suburban environment where houses are further apart in an urban environment where houses are closer together and density is higher it wouldn't so we'd have to kind of explore all those things together yeah it' be interesting to see like especially in the Olive Branch area I know there's a lot of developments that are already on their way but as the city starts to you know Annex and build more how to get as much green space and open space into those areas and your question about conservation subdivision so this would also apply to conservation subdivisions they're not exempt from these requirements but they have higher requirements So currently the conservation subdivision standards allow you to claim the tree preservation so if you had more tree preservation that would count towards your required.

You know kind of set aside the conservation area so it wouldn't necessarily mean that you would be conserving more the way that the conservation rules are written right now and I know we talked a little bit about this offline of the flood zone areas and conservation subdivisions can that be excluded from the conservation count or conserved area count since that's not in developable land anyways there are some limitations under state law we do have to give people credit for some flood plane and I think riparian buffers in terms of counting it towards open space and other things but that's not specific to conservation subdivisions so again this is you know one of the things we'll look at holistically when we tackle the Udo rewrite is is there a way to make our conservation subdivision standards even better more meaningful so we will look at that definitely thank you so much and I just want to thank you all for all of the work that also went into the joint.

Public hearing that was we got emails from residents about how much they appreciated being able to listen to other people and also have their voices heard so just thank you guys and your whole team for that thank you all for being there m Carter I actually do have some questions and I really appreciate this work and I'm so glad that you've tackled this and think it's a step in the right direction so thank you one question I have is are all trees counted equally like what counts as a tree when you're preserving a tree how big yeah so trees are not not all trees are created equal so I I also work as the arous within the department so there are a few different things in the Udo namely invasive trees do not count towards your your requirements so palonia things like that don't get any credit for additionally we do have a land Assurance tree survey which you have to show the amount of disturbance and that starts.

Kicking in at six inches of dbh or greater so smaller saplings are not as included and then lastly we do have specimen tree preservation so we have higher standards for larger trees and things of that nature as well so that is the short answer okay well than thanks a good high level answer always in more I appreciate the incentives you buil have built in to preserve versus replace could you explain a little bit more about the affordable housing incentive and how that might work like in re in real life can you give me an example also maybe the and also the additional Environmental Protections like what what would that be what kinds of like that yeah so I think in the additional environmental incentives they are like I think they're pretty specific that they have to be that the additional either Wildlife passage Corridor that meets those standards or the riparian buffer doubling so if it's currently 100 feet you have to do 200 feet Etc and as far as the affordable housing.

Goes it is specifically outlined as to what standards that it has to meet Sarah do you have that pulled up yeah I am trying to it's so at least 10% of the dwelling units no more than 80% Ami is what the what the standard is and then they would the incentive would be fewer fewer trees would have to be conserved but replacement still would be yeah I think it's also important to remember that that the fewer trees is really not fewer it's the trees we requireed today what we've done with the other tier is kind of up to the ante so we're saying that you know if you stay below the 35 Acres if you provide the affordable housing if you double your stream buffers if you do those things you can stay at the tree preservation level we have have today but if you don't then you're kicked up a notch to this this higher so I think that's something just a bit of better branding on our part to make sure that.

People don't interpret it as less right I and I shouldn't have said it that way thank you no I think that's really important because we want to be Equitable you know we have a legacy of being inequitable where green spaces are concerned with affordable communities and and we're not that is not what this is about right and we were really careful for that reason to not make affordable housing the only way that you could stay at that level that's why you know so it's not just that you will in essence have less trees if you're doing an affordable project you could also have less and by less I mean the same as what is required today if you do you know smaller phases if you you know do more in terms of your riparian buffer so we wanted purposely not to make that the only thing to to make sure that we were not creating an equity issue very good also do me I I really appreciate Commissioner Michelle Burton's comments about the.

Applicability of this in the urban TI it is difficult for me to think of very many situations but that's just because I'm not manner of any sort of way where you would be Mass grading in the urban here can you give me me an example where that would be because it has to be more than four acres I think what is that project that's right on could it be industrial or commercial well had to be res this only applies to residential but we do have some residential projects that have come in lately in the urban tier where there's been some either flipping a previously commercial property to residential or just you know amassing some some formally vacant Parcels putting them together and developing there so it is happening more and more I think as you know we continue to grow and INF Phill is aular alternative right that's desirable I think okay thanks I think that's all my questions thank you Mr Wendy Jacobs first of all thank you all so.

Much Sarah I know you have been working on this for a very long time and I don't think that we've done a significant revision to our Mass grading and tree preservation maybe since I was on the eudo which was before I was a county commissioner so it has been a really long time since we looked at this and it is very very needed to address some of the issues that we have seen on the ground in southeast Durham first of all the setback the 10 foot setback for any Mass grading will would have Pro I think about that project the the homeowner that had their septic field the septic pipe was damaged if there was a 10-ft setback that actually may not have happened is that correct yeah I don't know the exact location of the septic field but and then a lot of the residents who have the have the grading all the way to their literally to like their their storage sheds or you know things like that or to.

Their backyards and have these huge drop offs because of the grading like that it would have addressed all of these different problems s that we are seeing on the ground so this is really really urgently needed and you know I I guess one of my questions is this goes does this get does this get approved by the city council first or us it's going to city council this evening and then we'll be with you all next week okay but when does it get voted on hopefully tonight it's oh tonight so they've already looked at this during the work work session they typically don't have the same kind of work session involvement they did not pull it or discuss it at work session okay well I'm just take a good sign say for the record since we don't get to vote on this first that I certainly hope that this is going to be approved by our city.

Council so I I do have a few follow-up questions I would like to see what commissioner Carter was asking about the affordable housing provision on page two of the actual language under Suburban tier where U section two so it's whatever is 4. C two one whatever I'm can't even say it properly but the the one where it's referring to 10% of the dwelling units it refers to section as defined by section 17.3 if we could get that language because does it require 30e does okay all right 30y year and is there and I'm sorry you may have already said this to commissioner and I was distracted I was signing something does it lay out how many are 30% below or 50% or is it just ites it does not specify it doesn't okay all right because you know one one I mean the 30-year requirement is critical but I would say that one thing I really have learned at the program that was at the library a few weeks ago.

With the coalition for portable housing and Transit was the importance of us having the 30% and 50% Ami in below that that is really a critical need in our community so I think I would be concerned if the 10% were all between 60 and 80% I'm not sure how much we're actually really moving the needle if if there's not so I don't know if there's any way to address that at this point what your thoughts are on that I mean one thought that I have is we aren't seeing Ami propose or excuse me affordability for that section of Ami proposed by Wright very often if we do see it it is through the the resoning process in which it's proferred and so part of we realize that this Amendment may make development more expensive in many cases which is part of the reason why this is included so I don't I don't know how much Authority we also have to require it at that Ami yeah I think you know so our.

Experience has been at the lower Ami levels like 30% you're talking that's a project that needs deep subsidy that's not something that market developers are going to work into to their project what we've been typically seeing is 60 80 on res zonings and most of these large subdivisions so we're talking about Suburban areas a lot of them are profer at those levels and those negotiations are happening there what we have heard is that a lot more developers would provide at the 80% if that was an option which is why the the bonus it's getting used some but certainly not as much as we would like so throughout the ordinance we're trying a variety of different approaches to see what we can what we can get but 30% is definitely not something that an ordinance provision is going to be able to compel on its own so you know this is certainly something that we can revisit just like we've Revisited the affordable bonus I think two or three times now trying to.

Finetune see if we get more uptake on it we can monitor this see how it works or doesn't work and make adjustments I guess maybe we'll get the deeper affordable housing with the number one using the liite yeah yeah the other thing that I'll mention briefly is that the consultant that we've hired to rewrite the Udo part of what their first task is just taking a deep dive in the Udo evaluating it coming up with a set of recommendations of what they think should should or shouldn't change to align with the comp plan to align with you know the latest and greatest and best practices but also taking a hard look at afford our affordable housing provisions and making a set of very specific recommendations how we can improve in terms of of our affordable housing incentives in the ordinance so I'm looking forward to that and I would imagine this is one of the things they will also give us some recommendations on okay okay and then the sections related to the stream.

Buffers and the wildlife quds how will those be permanent I mean how do we protect those actually so for the Wildlife corridors we did we do reference the the portion of the ordinance which talks about conservation easements U most of which are held in perpetuity but that ultimately depends on the language of the easement but but that is to say if they would be essentially protected as long as the site is developed in the way that it currently stands and that any sort of change would require going back through the site plan process yeah and if there was you know it would be a site plan violation if they were to intrude into that area so that that's how it's protected as Robin said if that's for instance if a whole neighborhood which is highly unlikely were to compl completely redevelop then it kind of starts from scratch right but we're talking in residential neighborhoods that these areas on the site plan would say you know you it's protected you would not be able to.

Build in there do any disturbance Etc okay so I see in section five it refers to paragraph 7.2.5 c.1 which I assume has the language about being some type of conservation easement yep is there ability to also have a conservation easement related to the stream buffer the additional stream it doesn't reference anything like that with that one you can the thing regarding conservation easements that we've been sort of learning recently is that they require a lot of enforcement and a lot of environmental organizations are moving away from them and towards Steed restrictions and said additionally conservation easements often hold things in perpetuity which is great I am trained as an ecologist however I'm also a planner and therefore sometimes holding something in perpetuity is not always the best things might change in the future Etc how we use land might change so we could include language for a conservation easement but I don't think that it is appropriate at this time additionally for those riparian buffers that are included with high levels of.

Biodiversity those are monitored by the natural heritage program as well so this would just provide that additional buffering that goes beyond both the udio and the state and then to sort of get around it they would have to redevelop the entire neighborhood which is Sarah says it's like pretty pretty uncommon so you're saying that now it would be with going to the 300 feet that would be a deed restriction or I'm just trying to understand that would be as part of like the site development plan so to get around it they would need to essentially like redevelop the site showing how whatever they're going to build is then in line with whatever Udo standards are in place at that time yeah I mean I just think the reality is is that when a neighborhood gets built just you know things get inspected and overseen at the site plan stage but then after people are living there I mean there's nobody actually going and checking and seeing what you know so this could be.

Like I'm just saying hyper hypothetically this buffer could be somebody's backyard and there's nothing to really if it's not I'm just trying to imagine without some type of restriction how you're actually going to prevent somebody from that just being like okay this is part of the woods in my backyard and I'm gonna do whatever I want so you know I'm just yeah I totally totally take your point I think yeah short of a physical barrier like requiring you know fences or something I think anything e whether it's an easement a conservation easement yeah if it isn't something that people can easily visually see on the property we run the same risk of people intruding into it so I guess one one suggestion I would have would be we asking do we have anything in our ordinance which requires signage for protected areas so for instance if there was you know nothing terrible but just sign identifying this is a protected riparian buffer you know no infringement is allowed or something.

I mean something like that do we do that with this type of thing yeah I think permanent signage is a great idea and that's definitely something you know we've got a set of Omnibus text amendments that I would be more than willing to put that requirement in there so that you know this could go ahead and get adopted and we could reap the benefits of this but follow up in the next few months with that kind of addition through that omnibus guys can think about that more globally about when we would require signage and for things that we know is difficult to enforce we don't have the capacity but we want to make sure people know yeah thank you my other question is related to the tree protections around root zones so how are we going to and I love the idea that what you're trying to create here with which is I mean still grading 35 Acres at a time or more is still a lot Mass grading.

But it sounds like you're trying to incentivize because the infrastructure has to go in first that at each phase that there'll be an incentive for developers to leave some of the trees internally in other words I know your vision s of eventually working on designing better designs for neighborhoods which is really what we're talking about but I think one of the problems and I know commissioner Lam was asking about why can't we have trees in between houses whatever the reality is that it's very very difficult once the soil gets compressed once the tree root zones get cut trees will die so that's what's hard with the mass grading so what is our going to what is our is there going to be any beefing up of requirements around the pre tree protection areas right sounds like you're the right person to answer that right so we aren't technically changing those sections outside of those additional grading setbacks but we do currently require a land disturbance tree survey which requires developers to.

Provide a tree survey which shows both the dph and the tree protection zone of all trees with within 30t of the limits of disturbance and so if that tree protection Zone extends it's usually you know a circle and it extends past that level they have to tell us the percentage which is being disturbed and we have different we have levels which are acceptable mostly due to like size so as a as a way to sort of think about how much larger trees older trees can accept versus younger trees which like recover more quickly things of that nature which has been relatively successful I would say in terms of tree mortality okay well I'll be C it'll be good to see how this all plays out and what happens and my last question is will this be retroactive to already approved developments or can it be I mean how quickly can this be implemented and what will who will it impact at what phase so this will impact any new development.

That has not submitted yet under state law applicants are allowed to there's a variety of things there's permit Choice which says basically if the rules change in process while you are under review you the applicant and again this is in state law you the applicant gets to pick if you want to use the new rules or the old rules so anyone that's currently under review we cannot force this upon them they could elect to follow this but they can also elect to stick with the old rules that don't require this so that were kind of preempted by state law there there's also the issue of vested rights which is a little more complicated issue U but that basically says that if you started your development even at an earlier stage like at a rezoning stage and you were substantially reliant on the rules being certain rules and you have designed and worked towards implementing that there basically that you should be vested to those rules and not have to.

Comply with new rules so we take those on a case-by Case basis but just want you all to know that that is a very real thing state law so I think there we will have some projects that maybe have gotten an initial entitlement through a zoning but aren't really fully you know haven't really spent a lot of time designing and will want to comply with this I've actually heard from a couple of folks that intend to be responsive to neighbor concerns and plan to proactively meet these but I would not be surprised if there are some that try and go the vested rights route so I just want to put that on the table the only thing that we can actually in require is for anything brand brand new that hasn't come through the pipeline yet okay but I will just emphasize that when there is a resoning that is a discretionary decision by our elected bodies and I would hope that when rezonings are contemplated that again our colleagues will really try to encourage.

Developers to follow these new best practices this to me this text amendment is so important and really urgently needed and you know we we have to be not only addressing climate change the need for clean water order but we also need to be creating good places for people to live in our community and I think we will have some you know if you if you looked at what happened after the erosion control text amendments were passed we had a number of reasonings that came were in process but technically came after that and the vast majority of them proferred if not all of the components of that text Amendment a majority multiple items from that text Amendment so I think develop Vel opers are hearing the concerns of the community and the elected bodies so thank you so much for this we know that this is an awful lot of work and we appreciate that we saw last Thursday how important all of this is around the comprehensive plan and the.

Udo how important it is to this community you know that was that was a lot of people speaking and I've received lots of emails that people felt heard they didn't feel that they what they had to say was not important so when you know when I asked the question about whether or not people have been in the conversation it's all driven by whether or not people feel heard because if they don't feel heard they will let us know you better believe it and they'll let you know as well so you know as as Wendy said about the environment we really have to be protective of our environment and and we talk about so much about how Durham is a great place but it has to be a great place for all people to live and I remember and you know when I think about the trees and masquerading there have been times when it wasn't good for lowincome communities so we want to make sure that it's good for all.

Communities so I don't have anything else I think it moves on to the 11th on our agenda so thank you so much for being here if you have any other comments or anything thank you thank. You all right we are going to move on to our next item is 2305 oh no we moved that one that one has been moved off of the agenda let's see did I miss something let me go back here a minute I need to go back to open space open space on trails in a local agreement update that's 23638 in 1993 the Durham City Council and the Durham County Board of Commissioners approved the interlocal agreement to establish the Durham open space and trails commission the agreement was mostly was most recently reauthorized in 2010 and several changes are being proposed including but not limited to clarifying the roles of city council and the Board of Commissioners liaison and who is here is someone here to speak oh there you are like I'm looking over here okay.

To speak on this okay go ahead yes thank you so I don't have a formal presentation today but I'm here to answer any questions would you like to introduce yourself sorry my name is Carl kazma I'm a senior planner with the DM City County Planning Department on the staffle is on to the D open space and trails commission so as it says in the memo and in your pack before you it's been more than 12 years since do as it is often called has reauthorized its interlocal agreement so I'm just going to go through a couple of the key points and then again I'm here to answer any questions so within the interlocal agreement sort of taking an equity lens one thing staff is recommending is to replace gendered language with gender neutral language and also replacing the word citizen with resident in the document one of the more substantial changes is dos currently has the ability outside of the formal city and county application process to self-a appoint members to its own board.

Sort of in perpetuity which is a little bit strange and so we're staff is going to recommend that that function will be removed sort of related to that there's also this somewhat nebulous associate member function for the Dos committees which are it's it's not super clear in the interlocal agreement itself but I think the intent behind this is that there was members of the public who would maybe they were not formally on dos but they attend committee meetings I've been the staff liazon for four years there are a number of members of the community from local nonprofits and other important organizations that frequently attend dos meetings in the Committees and are listened to and and and you know are very involved in those conversations I don't think it's necessary that they are formal voting members of the committee there's also additional administrative responsibility that puts on me and other people and staff of keeping track of what it was as you can see currently with those 10 members dos theoretically.

Has the ability to have up to 30 members on its commission which is way too many so this will be reducing that down we don't anticipate any negative impacts to doss's functionality through these changes just a few other sort of administrative things dos also sort of I think a relic of kind of an older time dos has both a city council and a board of Commissioners Representatives who right now are full voting members on dos which can put folks in a sort of awkward situation where they're being asked to vote for something maybe dos is giving an advisory recommendation on something that is then actually going to go before the formal bodies either the city or the county so keeping those members we really appreciate commissioner Alam is is on dos and has been great and council member cavier is also on dos they will stay on dos they just won't be voting members anymore what's called EX offici in the interlocal agreement I think one other important thing to note is that.

So the city and the county very recently which is great also has the clerk's program has started a stipend program for members who attend the meetings to offset things like parking and child care and things like that dos had a previous provision that said members couldn't be compensated for any reason so we've now in consultation with the Stephen Valentine's office of an included language that creates a car out specifically for the program and I I think actually when I started this process the county program hadn't even started yet but I added the language in there and now it's here so we'll be able to be both city and county members will be able to be site bended once these changes are through I think that is that's the main things on the interlocal agreement so again I'm you're happy to answer any questions or so was was 50 members 30 members 30 members okay that's once you're over 30 what's the difference between 30 that's even worse yeah thankfully it has.

Not gotten that large but it's even just the administrative sort of so it's going down to how many now so there'll be a maximum of 17 members 17 still pretty big but it's you know there's a lot of people involved D also has members that are from other commissions the Farmland protection Advisory Board the Durham bicycle pedestrian advisory committee and other groups like that that are on the commission so how are you managing to eliminate folks from from from 30 down to 7 yeah so I'll sort of itemize them so if we're starting at 30 the first is the 10 self-appointed members that dos has currently there's none and currently there's none so that gets us from 30 down to 20 without having to deal with how to Sunset anybody who's in an existing position anything like that the other three are then the city council representative and the board of Board of County Commissioners Representatives who right now are full voting members but in this framework we'll get change to ex.

Official members okay still on the board but they won't count towards that 17 of full voting members and then the last one in consultation with the Planning Commission the planning committee no the planning commission sorry there's a lot of committees and commissions the Planning Commission they you know frequently have multiple hourlong meetings going to multiple times a month previously dos had a representative that was required somebody from the Planning Commission had to serve on dos but in consultation with the Planning Commission chair we recommended removing that so that's those are the 13 positions so it's the 10 self-appointed members one member of the city council one member of the county commissioner and then this planning commissioner appointee for being removed that's how we're getting from 30 down to 17 that's a lot of maneuvering to get it down oh my gosh and the other question I have then I'll pass it over to the Commissioners do stifen what how much is this stiping I believe the stipend is $50 $50.

Yeah okay I think we're trying to be consistent with that yeah okay great thank you questions from Commissioner commissioner Carter I just want to thank Carl and Sarah for this work it makes a lot of sense everything that you're proposing seem like very practical changes dos is a really important committee thanks for being the staff liaison to that U committee and I was only thing I had planned to say was go ahead and add the county language regarding the stifen but you got it down thank you okay doesn't seem to be any other questions so thank you so much appreciate it thank you thank you for the work all right our next item commissioner is 23 30652 presentation of the lowincome homeowners tax relief program and emergency rental assistance program by Durham County Department of Social Services okay and this is our ER program who's here to present.

Okay and if you will introduce.

Yourselves okay pull your mic up up yes yeah Megan Russ program manager with aging and adult Services okay great pull them up pull the mics up as close as you can that way we can hear you a whole lot better sure I'm Kelly Inman chief operations officer for DSS going hi hi I'm Maggie stian and director of DSs welcome okay okay go ahead and get you want to go ahead and.

Start good morning board members wanted to introduce the low income homeowner relief program with Durham County first want to start off with thank you for this time of allowing us to present this is a program this is a program that definitely will impact a lot of the seniors and the lowi income of Durham County residents moving forward wanted to start off with a brief overview of the program this program started off in October 2021 and it's been in existence for this is going to be our third year this is a partnership with the Durham tax office to operationalized property tax and subsidy programs to Target longterm longtime homeowners and long lowincome brackets remain in their.

Homes the current rate of funding for this program is currently 750,000 County and 500 with the city with a total of 1.25 last year the program spent 35 57,000 and that has a split with 20 202 with the county and 154 with the. City I'm going give you some of the program guidelines currently property must be within Durham County also residents who are not receiving a tax subsidy state tax subsidy moving forward we are funding households with incomes of 80 80% Ami and under and you have to you have to be in your primary residence it has to be a primary residence and be there for five years the current allocations are 30 30% Ami High to 60% and we will fund 1,500 whichever is smaller and we also are going from 31% to 60 60% Ami with a funding amount of 12250 which whichever is smaller and the last U funding tear is 61% to 80% Ami with a th000 whichever is more.

We are recommending for this fiscal year is that the recommendations on your right recommended to operate through the full year we have noticed in subsequent years getting the tax bill completed and submitting for the applications have been a hindrance for applicants to apply apply so we wanted to make sure we incorporate that moving forward we also wanted to do the cap allotment increase to pay the full tax bill for people 60 years of age and above at incomes of 30% Ami or less I will break down what the cost it is for for the program on the next slide we also would like to continue to provide case management for seniors and disabled adults and connecting them with additional resources from Durham County and surrounding Community.

Agencies our T targeted Outreach areas are 27704 which is covering bragtown campus Hill downtown Durham east Durham and well wellin Village and also the Lakewood areas and also covering. 27707 last year we were able to again increase our number of applications from 339 on the first year to 435 so the program is definitely growing and the impact has been appreciated by the community residents there has been a definitely increase even in this year we have already received over a 100 applications in the first month and we'll continue to continue our Outreach for that.

Program so one of the actual recommendations moving forward is to actually pay the full amount for residents with 30% Ami or less and 60 years and older so we looked at some of the improvements that we can make to the program and that is paying the full amount so the average tax bill for people for residents under 30% Ami has been 1404 and the average assistance amount in previous years have been $1,073 which is a difference of $331 so moving forward if we are able to adopt these recommendations moving forward the average assistance increase would be spending is 35 $ 5,417 which is not going to make a huge impact in terms of the funding allocation of 1.25 but it will make a huge difference in the ability for seniors to be able to stay in their homes pay for medication and live in their own.

Communities social impact of short-term case management a lot of our programs within agent and Adult Services our main goal is to improve outcomes for seniors moving forward we want to do a collaborative approach with families and helping them support as they age and as as we continue to build a age friendly Community we want to also provide additional adult and Senior support by refering referring them and checking in on them and seeing what kind of referrals that we can make based off of their their.

Needs the liih HR program has assisted with stabilizing essential housing for homeowners throughout Durham County this has provided a long-term help for a lot of our seniors in the community any program fund decreases will diminish any significant impact of homeowners ability to leverage resources to sustain their households when you're trying to pay your tax bill and you can't necessarily help with additional things like Home Improvement providing prescriptions daily prescriptions and monthly prescriptions for the individual these are some of the things that help by alleviating that extra expense for these.

Homeowners I think that's it like it's like it's stuck like move clickers it's like it's yes just wanted if you have any questions I'll be be willing to answer those c i I'm I'm gon start I'm starting on this side and then I'll move on this collect my thoughts really fast okay okay thank you so much this is one of our most important programs that I I believe this board is is very supportive of and and proud of let's see my main concern is and I know it's yours as well one you share as well is how do we do we it seems like we basically need to about double our enrollment in order to you know expand all of the funds that we're providing and I we really need to don't we and so what more could you know we do to be supportive to be sure we are reaching all the people who could benefit from from this assistance so that's that's a question that we have.

Kind of work with We've also worked with Duke collaborative program for research we worked with some stakeholders in the community to make sure we reach out to those and also those in the faith-based community I think that is our best approach to engage engage with them we do presentations in the community to make sure that the word is get getting out and I thought it was really a great tactic to sort of focus in on certain neighborhoods and so I think that that maybe that will really help you know we want to be able to increase the number of programming and services that we're doing across the county and of course our only way to do that is to increase the money that we bring in through taxes or other fees and one thing that always gives us a measure of comfort as a board when when we are increasing our tax rate I believe is the fact that we know well we're actually you know providing some sort of.

A buffer against those who are lower income and are going to have trouble affording the tax increase and so you know in essence it's a little bit of like it's a way for us to help redistribute the wealth in some sense but only if people are taking advantage of the program so really applaud your efforts to increase Outreach and focus in on neighborhoods where there are likely to be a lot who could take advantage of the program the only other question I have is about wealth versus income someone asked me about this a retired person who is not receiving Social Security yet so basically just living on zero income but has enough wealth right that they don't have a problem staying in their house they have enough assets all that surely that person would not be eligible for this program but I haven't heard anything restricting eligibility to income versus you know you know just income not considering it's not means tested at all for wealth I guess am I.

Making any sense you're looking at me like what are you talking about totally fine no so currently in our policies is based off of your income per month so we do collect documentation off of that but that is something we can definitely look at moving forward and exploring those options for those that currently are have other assets outside of their home doesn't sound like this has been an issue no it hasn't and and so why borrow trouble if it's not an issue but when someone asked me that I thought oh wow you know that is not the intended recipient of of these funds and so just maybe have it on our radar going forward but thank you for you know you're your for leading this effort for masterminding these programs all the work that you do for aging and adult Services incredibly incredibly important work thank.

You how y'all doing one thing thank you for the presentation thank you for the work don't look nervous don't look nervous I do want to say I'm in full support of one because the data shows it not because I a lot of us are kindhearted and benevolent and we love our seniors the data shows if I'm not mistaken we have we put $750,000 into that fund we use 202 the city use some money so we're right at 350 so we have this huge half a million dollar buffer that we haven't utilized and in order for us to pay the complete tax bill for a person who's over 60 at 30% Ami is 35,000 I just want to State publicly I'm all for that recommendation thank you all for going out and like looking at the data and seeing that that's really where we are I think that is a I don't think that that's insane to ask for because you know we can sit here but once you're.

Over over 60 if you're really at 30% Ami there are a whole bunch of other issues ises that are keeping you from work so you're you're not even looking at retirement right now I I do get some of the wealth question but I'm thinking about some of our retired teachers or professors that might own their home and they really are not in a position I love how you put it that they can now go out and afford their medications that extra $300 that you might be able to give somebody is the difference between them getting their insulin even though it's capped at $35 now or them being able to buy food that week so I just I I am here for that I think my other concern is as somebody who currently resides in the 27704 you all say Outreach could somebody give me a definition of Outreach because again we were in coid right so I can't put the onus on you all to go out put your lives in danger knock.

On doors doing do a lot of the stuff I think we were like this is a really great program but so much it was on Zoom it was in newspapers and and I'm a big cheerleader for all the Outreach that we do whenever people in the community say I ain't no about it that's your fault at this point because I I know what the team does however now that I do see this half a million dollar buffer and I know it was me and commissioner Carter kind of sort of fighting back and forth with people to keep the money doing the budget I need y'all to help us help ourselves so could you all Define for me what Outreach looks like and so that and and I I'll stop here the reason why I'm asking I also don't want to pull on your capacity because what we do as a board often times we create these really Pine of scy beautiful programs but you all don't have the bandwidth to.

Do everything so I want to know what Outreach looks like for y'all what that enhancment looks like for y'all especially in those zip codes where there's a community center but also if you need additional support to execute the Outreach that would be necessary to hit that $750,000 Mark so all of that kind of in one would be helpful U so I'll try to answer that so even last year and the year before even though we were we in Co we still continue to get on the group on the ground routs and do those there you go continue to do those ground Roots efforts in hitting the pavement and doing presentations at faith-based community centers we're welcome to do any presentation in any Community the application and we also put a flyer in the tax bill so that is there for all residents that receive a tax bill so you will get additional notice through that we also use our social media websites continue to do our social media websites the radio and the DSs.

Website okay the only reason why I throw it out you know churches when they have their Community Days it's on the weekend so somebody has to do I I've been that person where you got to be the person at the booth at the church on the weekend Rod has approved at and we got Co ticking back up so we need folks doing other things so I don't ever want to put an undue burden on folks if we don't but I also want this money to get out and I want people to have it my only other question and again this is not me not wanting to do it I want to know statistically how the data supports it so right now the program is open from October 1st to January 31st so we got over six months that this bad boy is right at six months that it's open and one of your recommendations was to do it year year long I don't have a problem with a yearlong process I'm just curious.

When do we have folks who can take applications year long and have we talked to the tax department especially as we're coming up on a re-evaluation coming up on appraisal folks are going to want to do appeals so you might have a document that says your tax bill is this and then they appeal and now it's something else so the impetus for having this thing open kind of sort of year around and how you all going to work with the tax department to make sure that we don't have a rub so that's my and that's my final question yes we'll continue to work with the tax office and working out any of these additional Kinks that or unended consequences that actually come up and make policy changes and pivot any time we need to that is a tough question in terms of making sure that we answer those questions if there is an appeal in terms of the tax bill but we'll utilize the application at firsthand so we take the application and.

We'll base the approval based off the application at the time if it needs to be resubmitted and that would be a good way that would be a good way that the program stays open so that we can change the application because beforehand if there was an appeal process after the deadline date there would be no recourse but by having it full year round we could make a change to the allotment or the funding based off of that perfect answer thank y'all I'm in support of the recommendations commissioner Wendy Jacobs thank you all I'm so glad you're finally having the opportunity to present so first of all the these recommendations actually have already been adopted by us we we approved an interlocal agreement with the city so the good news is it's already no problem everyone agreed that they were really really important recommendations and I I appreciate how every year that we have done this program that you all have it's been very iterative where you've looked at what's working what's.

Not working and then you come back with ways to to improve the program so it's fantastic I mean honestly it would be great if we did this all the time so you all are really setting an example I think for for a lot of us about how we can continually you know evaluate what we're doing and how to tweak things and make things better I want to share that when I was again I was I keep referencing but there was a great Forum at the library that was hosted by the Coalition for affordable housing and Transit and I shared at that meeting something came up about this program and they didn't have the updated information and so I shared it with people and people in the audience were stopping me and asking you know how can I get more information and the Coalition leadership said that they would like to help partner with helping to you know the question about engagement so you know I mean you know Mr.

Savara I know Lee you know him yes he said that they would like to help spread the word and then the fact that we are going to be doing a property reval this merely over from now on out the Outreach in the community is going to be happening from here on out and I think it is an opportunity to make sure that people as they're learning about the revalve process that they're also learning about these types of programs as well to help one of the handouts that I got which is really good it's the North Carolina Housing Coalition and this is like a one-page snapshot of the 2023 housing need in Durham County and they say that according to their this is Statewide data that 31% of Durham County households which is 4,619 households are cost burdened so I'm just going to refer right now to the homeowners because I know you've got another presentation about renters so they according to this data 18% of homeowners in Durham County which is.

13,485 six households are cost birden meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent I mean on mortgages I'm not saying I'm not I'm not saying that properly it could be whether it's the mortgage or the taxes or whatever whatever they're spending so again this program is really important I mean we know we're not serving 18,000 people but we are targeting specifically our most you know 30% Ami and Below especially with this new paying all all of the taxes for our low income seniors but we are also targeting everybody at 80% 60% as well 30% so this is I think hopefully we'll we'll see that helping with this with the data that we have so could I jump in quick go ahead so only two things with that one I knew about all the other recommendations I actually did not know that we were doing the 35,000 and that we were doing it for seniors so if that's something that we already approved I can admit my ignorance I know.

Everybody else doesn't I didn't know that we had decided to do that one so yay for that thank you for that clarification two if we are I I want to jump on to one of these and it's it was something I was going to say for emergency rent assistance but if we are doing additional handouts and pamphlets because again I didn't even know that we had gone above age 60 for that 30 we have got to own this information not in a beat our chest way where the county look what we did but because they're very well-intentioned individuals giving our information and they loud and wrong they loud and wrong I'm looking over at Rod right now did somebody name that was mentioned not too long ago sent out a whole pamphlet on this program and on erap with none of the information right that bird y'all that burdens us so if we are going to do this whatever bookmark we got to come up with like that need we.

Need to own this because people are doing meetings at libraries they're doing meetings at us they are nonprofits who are saying they speak for the county they don't speak for us and I don't want to send the Stephen Valentine out there but I also don't want y'all to get CS from Angry constituents because the guidelines were wrong so whatever that looks like build it push it book it and help us get it out and that's for both of these programs so just I just need to interject here for a second Commissioners so that the person that are waiting understand that we may be later than we're supposed to because this there's another conversation coming up with the same group so if this conversation is going to last till 12 or 12:15 let's let the people that are waiting to present know that in case they have something else they want to do what time you want to do that one after lunch or do you want to go straight through till one o'clock your.

Choice are you talking about the ases presentation Asis this one the one that you have added here is going to last another you need another what 20 minutes for presentation 20 20 minutes so it'll be about 1205 five so the other group that's supposed to come right after them do you want them to come right after that and then we go to lunch after that oh what's your preference we can keep going okay so we'll try and get to the adverse childhood by 1210 okay all right so I just want want to say thank you for the work that you're doing around this and also I have one other question around seniors let back up a minute you you mentioned you showed the communities that you're working with what happens when people don't live in those particular communities can they still apply yes longer there are dur residents they can apply as long as their residents so you're just targeting particular communities additional to what we have.

Been doing in the past so these are some strategic so when we looked at the application process we kind of looked at people's address and the zip codes and we kind of felt where the need was based off of the lack of applications in those certain zip codes so we're targeting to increase those are efforts in that potential zip code in community okay that makes sense thank you I just I didn't want people to feel that they couldn't apply if they didn't live in those particular communities the other thing since we have you in front of us seniors things that we have that we support around seniors at some point I would love for this board to get a presentation around what are the things that we're doing and I know that seniors for seniors Center we give them a lot of money to support seniors but I'd like to know what it is that what else we're doing to support seniors and maybe we can do a presentation for the whole board okay.

Yes you so we're going move on to your next presentation about low income which were the other one the rap program yes go ahead with that one so as we're transitioning to the next slide I just also wanted to point out as part of the Ila we've increased the admin dollars and we've actually earmarked for the LR program $15,000 to use for marketing and Outreach and so that could be radio ads print different resources to make sure we reach the entire population and the city was very IM meable to that 15,000 shared spending as well as additional admin dollars to support the staff who could be at those events and the expanding of the program and the case management efforts okay thank you all right good afternoon can you hear me okay can't hear you pull it closer hello that's better all right so we wanted to present on the emergency rental assistance and eviction diversion housing stability programs mostly we wanted to share kind of where we are with our programs currently knowing that.

Over the last three years there was quite an influx in funding that we had to contribute towards these programs okay so in 2018 Durham County did have the highest number of evictions per capita than the five the of the five highest populated counties in North Carolina and that was 9,480 evictions that year with all of the funding that we've put into eviction diversion and our emergency rental assistance program this year we've still had 7,295 evictions so and that's specifically summary ejectment there might be more that were classified in a different way.

Way this slide shares all of the different programs that we've had since October 2020 so we had the Hope program which provided assistance to 1,781 tenants following the Hope program we had the cdbg coid program and that provided assistance to 454 tenants and then we went to ER which was the really the the largest funded program and we were able to provide assistance to 3,595 tenants Mo with those Erp funds the city was able to host their program the Duram Durham rent relief program and we don't know exactly how many households they were able to assist and then we had our NC Pro ER 2.0 which launched effectively in August of 2022 and we've been able to provide assistance to 561 tenants and throughout this time we've still been able to have our County funded programs which includes eviction diversion and in fiscal year 2023 we provided assistance to 100 101 tenants using eviction diversion funds and that is compared to the 81 tenants that we provided assistance to in.

2018 and I wanted to note that because even though we had all of these other fundings we had the NC Pro funding through 2023 and we still assisted more clients using eviction diversion than we did prior to Co in 2018 Megan is it possible that some of these numbers are duplicates it's not that they may be receiving assistance more than once I was just G to try to tally the number some can be yes we did put some restrictions so we would not duplicate and with the ER you can only receive up to 18 months of benefits so you could have maxed out but someone could have received hope and then received NC Pro you know a year and a half two years later.

So currently the annual budget for eviction diversion is 150,000 I believe it was 180,000 in years previous. Thanks some important considerations prior to the pandemic Durham County DSS allocated this answers your question allocated approximately 180,000 for eviction diversion yearly since 2020 we've had we've provided approximately 26 million in assistance as our federally funded programs unwind Community will feel the weight from the lack of housing stability funds also housing assistance and stability programs are not DSS mandated programs however the members of the community and Community Partners have relied heavily on the financial assistance provided by DSS to avoid evictions and provide security deposit financial assistance to our homeless population also DSS has created a program to administer the remaining funds to provide housing stability for Durham County residents and our Community Partners have made requests on how to operate our programs that are beyond our scope of War work and impact our staff division in our program such as the request for having social workers in our.

Courthouse the next slid go into the funding and I don't know if Kelly if you wanted sure yeah so we provided this information for informational purposes just to see the different buckets of money and the funding over the past years the big story is as Megan mentioned that our community over the past three years has received that $26 million in federal funds and this is just the direct to client portion we'll go to the next and then these are our Durham County funds that went to direct to the clients over the past the same time period And so you can see eviction diversion while we budgeted 180 there were times that we expanded on that funding from our other emergency assistants and also we had the co eviction funds and even opening doors we could serve the clients better and give them more funding by using eviction diversion or errap and so that's why you would see that decrease of the opening doors num monies so but again 1.5 million of Durham County dollars for.

The purpose and what's the budget for opening doors it's around around 66,000 so we did shift that funding in those years to eviction diversion as well as other emergency assistance funds okay next slide and this is just an overview of our Erp spending all of the different funding sources that came across as Erp and want to be transparent to this board and the community about the funding that is available and left and so you can see we're right at 1.8 million as of July 31st and that's how much is left from our beginning allocation of 7.1 million of NC Pro County 2.0 and that's how much is left so qu quick qu quick question given that the federal dollars are no longer available what happens when that runs out is that just is going to be the city and the county funding it well and that's part of the purpose of coming today is because just wanting to prepare our our board and our community that we have been spending about.

$180,000 a month on eviction diversion rental assistance and previously we were spending 180,000 for the year and so we know that that that impact could be felt now this slide right here is really about the remaining funds that we have for ER so if we go ahead and estimate what our August spending would be and so that we were just trying to estimate last week knowing we had one more check run to happen so we were about 1.6 million left and so then knowing that we're experiencing some increases they've been going from about 160 190 210 a month of spending estimating that we could be spending 240,000 a month and so that gives us six or seven months left of spending and so when we came to you with budget we had done our projections and estimated that we would have errap funding through the entirety of 24 but we might be March running out of erra funds so next slide and Megan I'll shift back to you for some.

Trends so like I mentioned earlier many of our applicants have exhausted their 18 months of er rental assistance many applicants also owe more than five months of rent we noticed that many of our applicants are simply not sustainable they're the cost burden that commissioner Wendy Jacobs mentioned earlier where they're spending more than 30% of their income on housing and our average assistance amount per household is $542 to prevent the eviction that's the average amount that we're spending we've seen some that's a little bit lower and some that's much higher but on average it's costing about $5,000 to prevent the.

Eviction and Commissioners this is a link to our open data portal for ER and we update that after the 15th of every month and so just wanted to share that link with you all and the community as a place to watch the Erp funds and look at the monthly spending so what's the what is the data showing is in relation to how often a citizen is on this is it what's what's the data showing how long we you have we're funding someone that's using era so when they receive the assistance it's a one-time assistance it's only one time but it can cover multiple months we have seen people that have applied in the fall and then by winter they're they're trying to apply again so we do see people coming back needing the program and needing further assistance after we've assisted them yeah cuz if they if they get a temp if they have a get a temporary job and work for a certain length of time and they're out of.

Employment again can they come back and apply again yes as long as they haven't used all of their 18 months of emergency rental assistance okay if they've received count the county program they can only receive County Assistance County rental assistance once per calendar year and we did have to put in one of our priorities for the Emergency rental assistance is that you have not previously received it before because we did see a trend where some folks were using us to pay their rent and that's not what the program is set up to do okay thank you Mion Burns I trust y'all I don't trust everybody else I trust y'all I trust our residents I don't trust everybody else I need y'all on that second slide I don't know who's going to do it I don't know if it's going to take a public record request but it has been asked many times on camera it has been asked many times in the public we need to find out how many people the city helped.

The fact that y'all work here and y'all couldn't even have that prepared today for this slide has nothing to do with y'all but that's a problem and for y'all who do this work and been in the weeds with me in this for three years is it's a problem I see the head's nodding so we got to figure that out I think the other thing that we're not talking about I I there's some nonprofits I'm going to go back to a conversation I had with the mayor this before she was even mayor she said n why in the world girl did y'all give the Hope money to the county and I wasn't even here yet and the reason why we did is because y'all already had a program there was no need to give it out to a nonprofit like that's what the state was doing Charlotte had a program daram had a program Riley had a program I don't know many nonprofits just raise your hand no there's no nonprofit that's $26 million.

What nonprofit in Durham could take 26 million and turn it over they you you need people to process applications you need folks to call folks you need a check writing company you need direct deposit services that is a lot of money to give out and then you also got to put in money for program integrity and that's something that Janine found out that she had to do when she when we were working on the program so I see that you all gave this to us for information we are not ogres the fact that we were using $180,000 a year now we're using 180 a month now we almost we trending at 240 a month so we see that there's a need right and there are some nonprofits who've send in letters and demanded need and they're not the most trusted people in the community I I I'mma Be Careful saying names because people say I'm up here abusing my power not Abus my power I want to make sure the money gets to.

The poor people that need it and not into the pockets of folks who are just going to use it to keep their nonprofit going I'm Unapologetic about that so this was for informational purposes I'm not in leadership but but I would love to see some recommendations and if you if you got to bring and I got to bring them back what however we got to do it but some recommendations and I almost want to say for this staff to do it but I know that that takes bandwidth and additional FTE so I'm not going to ask for that but to find some folks who are trusted in the community to do this another issue I have you know there was only one city and county and the entire state that had to give money back to the feds we don't need to say it we know who who it was there's also an issue with this 18 months so folks really need to think about what that 18 months means so we could do up.

To 12 months back and six months forward there was a certain program that was doing 18 months forward who in here knows what the problem is with doing 18 month nobody is giving anybody a 18month lease you're not not in Durham you're not corporate housing maybe but nobody is getting an 18month lease forward so what we were seeing with those 18 months was 12 months back so your back rant I I think we're on average five or six and then we said we would push forward six and then we were doing in three month increments and this is a stating us and saying okay you can come back after three months I do not want this County to do like someone else did and y'all know who I'm talking about and do 18 months forward I think we do a disservice to ourselves and we can't help as many people as we want to help so in those recommendations I want us to keep those months on track and maybe we decide.

We're only doing six months at a time there was a time at hope that was it we were in the beginning when we first started it was six months six months and then you can reup six months and you can re up but we got to get out of this head space of 18 months because especially if it's 18 because there are no leases that are 18 months forward especially when we're thinking about folks who are 30 and 60% Ami or who are cost burden with their housing so when you bring those recommendations back I hope please take all of that into account you all have done a great job with our lessons learned I I I kind of get close to this one because it's it's some of the work that I've done but the community is asking for it I'm happy to see that we've used some of our money I think there was an email that was sent to us saying that the county had not put any.

Of their own money forward which was absolutely positively not true at all so I'm happy that we're getting this presentation so those are just my comments because I know we have to end but I would love to see recommendations even if it's you all coming back and saying all right Comm Burns you know the same way y'all did a low income housing y'all now need to do a set aside of 750,000 or a million dollars and what does that look like for us so Mr Wendy Jacobs thank you I'm so glad to have this presentation from you all because this was presented to our DSS board back in the spring and this is this is a crisis that we are running up in into an absolute devastating crisis I mean when there there is no way that we can replicate $26 million in Aid and this is part of a national crisis with rents are going through the roof not just here in Durham but it is happening nationally we heard I know commissioner Howton.

And I were with at the and commissioner burns the chamber economic Outlook one of the highest level people at Bank of America was when he was discussing presenting to us last week on what are some of the negative imp economic factors in this country right now he named rent the the the the soaring rents so just to put it in context this is not just Durham you know this is happening nationally but the problem that we have in Durham is that 48 49% of our residents are renters so basically half of our population are renters so you put those two things together and and again looking back at this data it's estimating that 27,1 33 households are between 30 and 50% cost burdened and at 48% of renters so half of renters in our community are cost burden so we can't just like say oh throw up our arms and say we don't have any money we we I agree with Commissioner Michelle Burton we have to.

Come up with a strategy we need to work with the city on this because we have all these different things you know the city is funding legal aid they're focusing on eviction diversion they have programs that work with landlords I mean good news is the housing Section 8 housing vouchers Are Congress is actually going to increase the the value of those so that's good there's going to be 12% increase in the vouchers that's good news but we we only have six months we have six months for the city and the county to come up with a plan and what I was going to ask acting manager I noticed that our next Joint City County meeting is October 10th and I would love to get at least some kind of presentation from you all or for everyone working together maybe just a status report at that point of you know we we all need to start working on this because there's no way we can come up with 26 million but I know we're going.

To talk about arpa money later we still do have arpa money left and we could certainly look at for the next year or two arpa money being being a source I'm just throwing that out there as when we have to look at where's where's money going to come from so I'll just stop there and say that I agree with Commissioner Michelle Burton that you know looking to you and the city and everyone who's working around house to come back with us with some recommendations so thank you one one of the yeah one of the trends that we have we met with the Landlord Association a couple weeks ago one of the trends that we're starting to notice with the application and an amount of funds that is requesting for us to provide is that before Co it was somewhere in the neighborhood of something reasonable about 1500 to 2000 now we're starting to see requested funds close to 8 to 9,000 that may be something that we.

Can look at why is that there's the big gap of 1,500 to 2000 prior to coid versus now the bills are so much larger because the Landers pay it that's that's always true money grab I'm sorry I know we got that's what this is like the trend that he's talking about y'all we seeing it on the state level they go they are raising these because we can't stop somebody from really evicting somebody if somebody just expect we don't know what the lease look like if somebody say they've been here 12 months thank you for the money but we don't want them to rent here anymore a landlord has that right but what you were seeing and we're seeing it on the state level is that individuals know that States cities and counties are going to pay this money so you've seen rents that were $800 shoot up to 2400 and the person doesn't have any place to go they don't have great credit so their only option is to stay here and so.

They're coming to Y they I I'm not even going to get on they are raising these rents because they know we're going to pay it and that's the convers had outside of this room and Durham has the highest soon as you finish I'll check with commissioner Carter go ahead I was just going to say Durham has is higher than the national average or median in rent rental prices I agree with my colleagues about the need to provide additional assistance absolutely it's interesting to me that we have funds unspent in our assistance for low-income housing homeowners but the rental assistance are totally you know spent down or about to be so it's also interesting to me that we were we were there was advocacy for a rental assistance program with our funding and you know we didn't go that route but it's certainly something for for us to consider now I think whether it be arpa or some other County source of funding you know I'd like to hear from the administration on that but definitely.

Something we have got to get our eviction numbers down they've always been too high and they're only seems like getting worse what would it take and do you all think it would be useful a good idea to respond to the request for social workers in the courthouse you know I saw that you know there's no capacity for that now but how would you know I I'm I guess I should go observe in the courtroom to see how it would be helpful but do you all think that that would be a good investment as far as helping people that need the help goes we saw that it was helpful with the first round of Erp because of the volume and the quick turnaround time and getting those applications processed with NC Pro we did structure the program differently because we wanted it to be more effective where we wanted to provide case management and not just you submit an application we processed the application we wanted it to be a.

Little more kind of Hands-On with the social worker and the applicant we do see that we are denying applications for failing to provide verification I think perhaps legal aid thinks that if we have folks in the courthouse we might be able to capture those documents when the landlord is there and when the tenant is there and we could get it all at the same time and that could work with the capacity that we have we have six social workers doing all of our rental assistance programs so that's a real challenge right now to try to to try to accommodate that request as you're thinking about the strategies that you would recommend it is one so I agree with my colleagues and I thank you so much for this presentation you know meeting with the rental Association folks you know they are they are adamant that they can raise rent what however they choose so that's that's that as I said it's a problem all over it's not just durum and I'm also getting calls from.

People that are looking for for someplace to rent gotten a couple of calls from students at nccu so people are looking for places that they can rent and not pay God awful rental amounts so I think like every other County we have an issue with this so thank you for the work that you're doing and we'll look forward to hearing the next report whether we'll talk to staff to see if it's going to be if it's something you want to get on the agenda for the next meeting but we'll talk with with the manager assistant manager and talk find out when that can be but thank you for your report today thank.

You so our next presentation is 23660 ederse childhood experience and resilience update and presentation and that is I see Rod going over there so just and and right I think those are the two it's the two of you okay great how are you since senen you a bit I'll turn it on I guess green is on and red is off yeah it's good to to see you all good afternoon I realize that we public health is standing between you and lunch so I appreciate the opportunity to present before you all take a break Rod is there anything you want to say before we get dive in we were again being very respectful of your time we have Jess and then we have another one so we got like 15 you know 15 minutes for her 15 minutes for the other is that the format that you wanted to do say again did you want yes and then followed by the harm reduction information no the farm reduction from we moved that to.

Another time okay Co so it's not going to be on the agenda yeah from harm har harm I thought you was in farm. So okay I don't even I don't chair Howton the second part which is the harm reduction that was added on after a discussion with the manager during one of the agenda prep meetings so the text is not on the agenda item but the presentation is included in the item and the materials it's included in this presentation a separate presentation separate presentation so it's 15 minutes each which equals out the 30 minutes that is allocated on the agenda staff has been prepared to okay go Ahad get started quicker you get started quicker we you get to lunch I know thank you all so this will be a since I just saw you all in September or April which was actually a good amount of time ago we will make this as as quick as we can but I wanted to give a few updates on accomplishments since April.

About some of the things that we had talked about that we coming down the pipeline one is that we do have five newly trained teachers in the community resiliency model and once again that is the training that is around reducing stress building resilience through six simple skills we're really excited that this is a partnership with the partnership for a healthy Durham mental health committee and that we have seven different sectors represented in those five people so you'll see on here we have someone who works in maternal Health Works for a community- based organization that does anal duela services and postpartum we also have someone who is part of a youth and Community Health Organization someone who is a social worker and also a locktician so she is able to serve in two different capacities we have someone who is in social work at nccu so is not only a social worker but also working in higher education and then someone who works in food security for a community based organization and so we are.

Starting trainings our first one is going to be a co- trainining they do with me with our with the cities holistic empathetic assistance response team as part of their onboarding so we are mapping out the organizations that they will be and Community organizations that they will be training with I know we just talked about our seniors we're talking about our senior centers and how to reach our seniors with this program as well but really excited that we have this up and running we talked about policy at our last meeting and I'm excited to say that Dart did meet in August to vote on 12 to 15 ideas based on things that Community has already told us that they want to see done so we did not want to reinvent the wheel with this policy agenda we have looked at things from grown and Durham from the office on youth's youth listening project from the Community safety and wellness task force the because there was a lot of work done to.

Talk to our community and we wanted to take advantage of that and work with those Partners to move something forward I'm particularly glad that we got to hear from DSS on the housing front because whenever we start talking about Aces and root causes one of the first things that comes up is housing so I appreciate the discussion in the AG agenda item earlier in September we are going to be working on distilling some of those ideas we're probably going to have to tear them some of them are going to be easier to write asks than others and so what might happen is in January you will get some of those first tier things the things that we say okay these are ready to go some of those things may be things that we need to sit down with Community Partners with and really do a deep dive into so if there is something related to housing for example for families with young children that is going to be a much more research.

Intensive process that we will undertake with our partners and you may get that one later than January but I just wanted to give you an update we are meeting with parents through grown and Durham we'll be meeting hopefully with young people to have some of those recommendations done for you by January cool I wanted to offer kind of a an overview of what strategies we're using for this portfolio we talked time about positive childhood experiences as kind of a way that we can add on to the positive of what's happening for Durham's young children and Durham's young people and so we've kind of distilled this down into five strategies that we're using one is promoting policies to address root causes of adversity for families and communities and that is that policy agenda and we are looking forward to perhaps partnering with Duke s school policy to really kind of drill down on some of those the other one is supporting positive childhood experiences is really looking at how can.

We through funding of programs in the community be able to increase some of those positive things like enjoying participation in community Traditions having at least two non-parent adults who are mentors or coaches or Role Models feeling a sense of belonging in high school ability to talk to family about feelings and feeling like you can get through difficult times as a family and then strengthening family and Community protection factors we think about this as you know families and children don't exist in a vacuum right they they exist within communities and how do we support communities and better supporting families and really this is around building those peer support networks building that social support in our most recent Community Health assessment about 78% of our residents said that they always are most of the time are getting the social support they need but we are seeing some disparities in that data and so we really want to dig in with a few communities and say you know is it what could we be doing to better.

Support our residents in Social and emotional health and then really prioritizing community-led Solutions so there are a lot of great things happening in our community we've got a lot of organizations who are doing really great resilience work how do we scale those up and we're going to talk about too that we we supported this past fiscal year and then lastly engaging parent and youth as partners which is really I think these last two things allow us to be a bit Forward Thinking the state has been working on their State Health Improvement plan and one of the things I'm going to read it because I want to make sure I get the language correctly one of the things that they have stated as a goal is to increase funding for and embed Community rooted culturally affirming family and Community Support s programs into existing initiatives we're already doing a good amount of amount of this work and I think it allows us to to show at the state level that Durham is in fact.

Already got some promising models of how to do this so I wanted to talk about two programs that I'm quite excited about that we had the opportunity to fund last year to give you a sense of what we're thinking about the first one is Circles of Hope which is run by empowered parents in community and this is a program that's really a safe space for parents to find Community Support increasing knowledge and understanding of self-care while also introducing tools to improve self-care practices and this is run with a clinician clinical psychologist in the room with the parents usually in groups of about 8 to 12 and so epic was able to run a total of six groups they're both six weeks with County funding this year this past year and 90% so they had they had two different sets of groups one was with fathers black fathers one was with single parents and one was just open to community members who wanted to participate which generally tends in the past has.

Tended to be mostly mothers from the men's Circle of Hope 99% of the men said that they reported a reduce a reduction in their stress and the ability to balance family work and parenting better after the program which I found quite encouraging 99% of the single parents participate who participate agreed that they gained self-care skills to better advocate for themselves as well as for their children and just from the general kind of community groups parents are finding spaces where they can really share the everyday stressors of parenting especially in in this group as a black parent and find ways to feel encouraged in building up their own resilience and so I think what I find exciting about this is not only are parents getting some skills during a particularly stressful last couple of years but they're also building Community actually the group was started in a small fashion with County funding last F two fiscal years ago and when it ended the men said but when can.

We meet again we want to keep doing this and that was huge we said okay well we got to figure out how we can do that and make sure this keeps running the other one that I'm particularly excited about that we were able to fund is coping together and coping together started at the beginning of the pandemic and it was a partnership between together for resilient Youth and Duke Global Health Duke Global Health had been running a program in Kenya around supporting parents and obviously was no longer able to do that once Co hit and they said well we're based in Durham does anyone want to partner on adapting this and being able to run something similar in Durham and so together for resilient youth stepped up to do that and we were able to fund some of this work last year which reached 31 households and was an opportunity this is run a little bit differently than the Epic groups this is run by community health workers and it's the whole family that participates.

Not just the parents so the the whole family will participate make family goals together talk about problem solving talk about communication Styles and how to reach family goals together and that goes back to that did I feel like I could talk to my family about my feelings do I feel like my family can will support me through difficult times adding on those positive childhood experiences and so you can see some of our young people were involved so I understand how to handle negative situations now that's from a 13-year-old I know at 13 I don't know if I knew how to do that so this is you know really encouraging to see and that many of the participants were saying very strongly that I am confident that I can use the skills that I learned in this program for a long time so we've have some PR proing work going on the challenge is sustaining that work and really saying yes it is great if we can reach 31 households with you know.

With the funding that we currently have but really thinking about how do we launch off of the foundation that we've built in this program in the last three years and so our current needs right now are the ability to provide sustainable expanded Community Based Services through contracts so we've been able to support one or two programs through the through the course of the year with the funding that we currently have and the the goal would be to be able to expand that to support more organizations who are doing this kind of community-led work but also to be able to expand which communities we reaching I know last time we were here commissioner Lum asked me particularly about the lgbtq community that is one that we're currently in conversations with that would be another some set of organizations we could think about partnering with the other other need that we're currently budding up against is expanded capacity to address our scope of work I think last time I was here Chair Nida Allam.

Said something the fact of wow 600 people trained that's a lot of people yes it is and so to be able to maintain the level of work that we are doing we are going to need to figure out how to expand our capacity and then lastly one thing that I feel very strongly about is that we're able to do outcome evaluation we're able to say not only that we reach this many people and the pre and the post test said that they had they they learned something that is fantastic but I would like to push that out a little farther to say what did that look like six months after a year after and to be able to build up the capacity of community-led organizations to be able to have that kind of data because it helps them and our community be able to go for bigger grants but also helps us be able to say this is what we did through our Asus program with County funded dollars to be accountable to those dollars.

And I know I just rush through that but I promised I would so I will stop and ask if there are any.

Questions that's a great question that's that's one of those places where we need it a little to expand our capacity a little bit because when we do community resiliency model training the the hope is that it's not a one time training that you're having a chance to actually practice those skills regularly and so one of my goals is to be able to host regular meetups for people to come back and practice skills to be able to go back and do refresher courses or be able to host kind of informal you know come have coffee either on Zoom or in person and and practice at this time that has been a challenge.

Thank you and and it's good to have you back again because this is really important and I guess one of my questions would be I know you know you're you're you focused on some of the kind of communitybased efforts to create Community resiliency but I think I'm also really curious just about how do we how can we have impact in terms of having an Asus approach within Durham County government and within our own programs and services that we have I mean just thinking about how do we have strategically the most impact and I know one of the reasons that we brought you on is because we wanted to have a you know trauma informed Durham County government so I guess I'll be interested in hearing more about that that part of it because you know I mean I do worry that kind of what you said the sustainability of you know doing rfps and funding Community organizations just where does where does that what does that look like longterm versus what.

We can do just in within Durham County government because most of our programs I mean most of our departments are touching people you know the staff and and just the things that we're doing so I'm I I would like to hear more about that and I just you know when you were talking I was also thinking about the Surgeon General who I I think are we have an awesome Surgeon General right now but he he focuses so much about on things like resiliency and so social isolation and the importance of people feeling connected and kind of what you referring to is how do we have a I think I feel like Durham is that we are very Community oriented and that I feel like you know the city's going to be having a welcoming week of activities there's just so much we can do to just to your point be how do we create make sure that our whole Community is about that I was at I.

Love to go go to the free Central Park concerts every month and my favorite thing about those concerts is that after the performer there's a dance party I if anyone's everever done it but I haven't missed one yet this year there's one on Friday but it's like it is the best thing in the world because like literally you know the DJ from nccu from the radio station at nccu they he it's there something for like a 45 minutes but it's literally a Durham dance party and people get up all ages all backgrounds and people just dance like that to me that's resiliency when people can get exercise and feel connected have fun so anyway I know what I just said was all over the place but really glad that you're doing the work that you're doing and I hear you're telling us that you need more support so whatever that looks like I know we'll we'll be hearing more about that thank.

You.

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I'm glad you brought that up because it is something I think we get to a dart meeting and we're all holding it and so I would say that there are a few things on our possible policies that would either indirectly or directly answer that question I think that there I was particularly impressed by the the building a safe Community event that happened was that only last week May it was two weeks ago and I heard actually quite a bit about resilience there you know how how do we help young people feel connected in our community some of those social connections this is certainly not an area where I am an expert and I will be the first to say that but I think that there is definitely a role for that resilience conversation within within the gun violence and gun safety conversation and so it is something that I know our line providers also are holding a lot of as well Jess thanks for your presentation again today and for your ongoing work.

That we all really believe in and I really appreciate the way that you're incorporating feedback from various Community sectors and also from any current plans that are already out there you mentioned several I think that's great am I understanding you correctly that you're going to be coming back in January with some specific policy recommendations for us funding recommendations that kind of thing there'll be polic yes policy proposals in whatever that form takes I don't want to forecast too much because it is a a process that we're doing in Partnership but I think there are number of things within specifically grown and Durham and the youth listening projects that fit really well into the work that Dart does fabulous really glad to hear that and how about working through DPS you they also have a whole schools initiative underway it really lines up nicely with on the ways to create resilience I think and and decrease stress and Children and Families just wondering what the collaboration there looks like close.

Collaboration I think I would say Rod is a honorary co-chair of whole schools movement and I serve on their advisory Council we have a meeting this evening so I am working very closely with Dr SoDo at DPS Foundation we actually are due in Atlanta later this month for a grant meeting they were able to secure a grant through called build Grant and the whole team will be down there talking about kind of next steps they have really started working with adults in the building and I think that that's a a great first step great yeah and we were talking as a community about trauma informed schools in the early 2000s because it does make sense right it just takes a while to really implement it thoroughly and effectively but thank good thank goodness you guys are so connected to because that's where we have a captive audience with 33,000 children and their parents it's a great system through which to to work on all of these initiatives and the only other thing.

I wanted to ask about I remember there was a webinar back during coid I guess about prenatal to three policy road maps for you know per state and we are doing this you know guaranteed basic income which I think is actually probably on their road maps but there were others that seemed not to involve funding necessarily like one I remember was decreasing administrative burden for continued SNAP benefits that this was something we were hoping the state would do I believe something you know like a person would only have to qualify once every two years instead of annually so I didn't know whether that was also informing our work currently that was a great webinar I think you all had something to do with it so I think it did inform the grown and Durham work and so I'll just I'll do a quick quick double check on that I I meant to say during my presentation that the basic income pilot is a fantastic way to start addressing.

Aces and so I just really wanted to commend chief of Chief of Staff trap and the County Manager for and you all for approving that because I think you know we know that lack of access to B basic needs is a huge parental stressor and there is definitely strong evidence that indicates that it helps reduce adverse childhood experiences so I think that was a a a a great investment on our part in terms of addressing Aces I agree I'm really glad you said that we should be explicit about that I think we know it's true but right that was one of the reasons we're doing yes exactly yeah yeah what I did want to come back to one question that you asked commissioner Jake is that okay that's great yes around the trauma-informed organization kind of trauma-informed County piece we are doing that currently we have a pilot at Durham County Public Health we are in the process of doing implementation planning for that and really identifying Champions who can.

Sustain the work so you know we don't want it to fall on just one person that's not sustainable from a burnout perspective but it's also not sustainable from a longevity perspective and it is something that we are we are operating as a pilot so that we can test to make sure that this is the the way that we wanted roll it out across the county but we are already working with colleagues at the Justice Resource Center and have had discussions with them and then we are also hosting a healthc care provider Symposium in November to train Healthcare Providers across the county in trauma informed care and skills so this is that is definitely we have kind of three big buckets and that is you know where there's so much we could be doing and we have narrowed it down and it's still you know to really sustain to to keep that work moving forward and growing the capacity really is the a big issue.

There thank you all thank you so much Commissioners exit the great work with Jess basquet we now invite our medical director Dr Jeff Jinx and health education and Community transformation director lindsy bickers boach for the second presentation we also invite Dennis ham back there as well come on up come on up good afternoon thank you I give D Dennis a chance to come up here and you want to say hello I'll scoot that closer that's good do you have excuse me a second Monica do we have an extra mic.

Do you need one ra oh you have one I see it I couldn't see it there okay now that's better go ahead I think I've met most of you before but I'm Jeff Janks the medical director okay morning my name is Dennis Hamlet program manager in health education welcome welcome all right well thank you for having us all we are going to walk through a little bit of how Duram County Public Health is responding to the opioid crisis thinking about the science that's in place and also how we are thinking about all the people who are affected by the opioid crisis so my goal is to give you a very brief overview of the epidemic I know it's something you're well aware of but to really think about where we are in September of 2023 and why there are some specific Avenues that we want to be thinking about in terms of opportunities to act so the the biggest thing that I think is really important to understand.

As we think about why are we talking about an opioid crisis and an overdose crisis is acknowledging first off that opioids are very addictive even short-term use can lead to addiction and misuse can stem from the fact that opioids cause both Euphoria and Relief pain and that is something that it's very easy for the brain to say I like this this this is something I want more of and so that addiction risk is very high and then on top of that after people are misusing opioids then the access to illicit drugs in particular fentanyl has been a tremendous terrible increased risk of op opioid overdose I was reflecting with Dennis that when I first presented some of this data to the Durham County of Public Health this number was four people in North Carolina die from opioid overdose each day that was in 2019 in 2023 that number is 11 people die from opioid overdose each day so we are really seeing that this number is spiking and so just to emphasize that in.

A graphic back in 2000 we were seeing that North Carolina had about a 100 opioid overdoses per year the whole state in 2021 we had 4,000 overdoses this is the rate in Durham in particular you can see when fentanyl was introduced into the drug Supply you can see what happened in terms of the pandemic having an effect on the opioid overdose deaths this next graphic shows how many of those are linked to elicit drug overdoses so back when it's in the 2000s we have a lot of overdoses from prescriptions the blue also indicates that we were low relative to the state as it shifts from Blue to Orange we are rising in the number of Overdose we're seeing compared to other counties in the state so we're now the rate is 86 per 100,000 people but you can see that we are getting a less good status as we're compared across Durham and we were seeing essentially all overdose deaths are contributed to fentanyl in the current and Lindsay if you could also.

Mention the racial disparities related to this yeah and I tried to not you know spend a tremendous amount of time on the graphics but one of the things we've seen Statewide is that most overdose deaths are in older white men it's not true in Durham we're seeing actually a much higher rate of again men but black men in Durham who are dying of overdoses and so yes you could do a whole presentation on the racial background and how that's impacting overdose deaths but I just wanted to give this really quick overview to say this has been a problem for 20 years but it's it's a different problem in the last couple years than it has been even since 2016 or since 2020 and to have that in the front of your mind as you're thinking about what we need to be doing in Durham so as we talk about what public health is doing and what we can be doing collectively I just want to emphasize that overdose death is.

Preventable opioid use disorder is a chronic disease but it's a treatable brain disease and so as we think about what we want to be doing we need to acknowledge that addiction is is common with opioids overdoses our skyrocketing but it is preventable so I wanted to talk about really four different strategies and to start with prevention and I put Yellow Boxes around the ones that are happening in Durham through public health and you already heard about one and two just a moment ago so I'm not going to spend more time there but I'm going to acknowledge that all these things are linked together there is work happening at the state level really to think about how providers follow safe prescribing practices even the difference between a 5-day opioid prescription and a 10day opioid prescription more than doubles the number of people who are misusing opioids a year later do did you say that was a state the state is doing work around this and there is a reporting system about the.

Way people are prescribing these medications but it's not something that we're doing a lot of work specifically at Public Health Bel I don't know if you want to weigh in but we we could talk more about that but that's less a place that we we've focused here at Public Health at the local level but I did want to highlight that we are doing work around providing educational campaigns and supporting medication recovery prevention helps prevent initiation of use it helps delay early use it helps us stop the progression from use to misuse to opioid use disorder so all of those things are important things that we're trying to do and prevention efforts so we just th up a couple pictures to show that we've both done individual time medication takeback events we've done that in cooperation with others in the criminal justice system and also on our own in the health education system and we do have a permanent medication Dropbox that's at the public health office so those are ways that we are.

Reducing the amount of medications that are out there and can be misused especially by youth as a way that they start using opioids and then progress to other misus we've also been doing a lot of Community Education I highlighted three specific things here we've done training for acute and Primary Care Providers thinking about what substance use looks like in their patients thinking about how they can know more about addiction relapse and treatment we've been doing work with Duram clergy and other health Ministry leaders we did provide a health I mean a faith-based mini conference last year and are interested in repeating some of that work that we do with the Durham Health Ministry Network and we've been working with Durham County HR to actually think about how we provide education about recovery friendly workplaces some of that has been within Public Health in person but more of it webinars actually available to the whole County and so again these educational campaigns actually help people have a a better understanding of.

What is addiction why is there a really great likelihood of relapse and what they can do to actually access treatment treatment is where we want to be increasing access right now the vast majority of people who have opioid use disorder don't get any specialized treatment for it and that's a lot of reasons stigma is part of it the Health Care system is part of it but really having people understand that there is effective treatment is a big part of it there's a lot of myths around opioid use around substance use disorder and so helping people really understand that there's treatment out there that's tailored to opioid use disorder and in particular that medication assisted treatment is really a a gold standard of helping people eliminate and reduce the risk of overdosing while receiving both counseling and and treatment for their substance use is really important so one one of the things that Durham County has invested in is the community linkages to care or CLC peer support program and.

It really is built around peer support Specialists who have their own lived experiences with either treatment for mental health issues and or substance use disorder and the idea of the peer support specialist is really that they are connecting individuals to a network of support and also preparing for Recovery in whatever way somebody's ready for that at the particular moment that they interact the peer support Specialists also work with our community paramedics and EMS to be a part of our post overdose Response Team where they're actually responding to any overdose in Durham County within 72 hours going out to the location where we have contact information for somebody who's overdosed and and checking in and seeing what resources can we offer right now at a moment that we hope and and sometimes find is a moment immediately post overdose that people are especially receptive to moving their behaviors potentially moving into treatment so this program was run with State funding from December 2019 emerging out of the Durham joins together to save lives task force and.

That state funding ended in August of this year so we had a lot of really good success I've highlighted some of the numbers here in terms of people who met with peer support Specialists how many total contacts they had and also really a great success in terms of connecting people with medication assisted treatment and increasing the housing that people have and so as a part of the FY 24 County budget there is $400,000 that's allocated for this program and it will Ex allow the expansion to three full-time peer support specialists I thought we were using opioid money for this it is opioid funding okay yes but initiating in July of 2024 yeah good clarification so the last thing that I wanted to focus on here was talking a little bit about how harm reduction is really a place that we are actively putting forward work and can be doing more in Durham County reduction helps with a number of things it helps stop or reduce harmful substance use it helps.

Improve health for people who are using at whatever level they're using opioids it helps impr improve their social functions and it helps manage the risk of relapse for anybody who's in treatment because as I mentioned we know this is a chronic ongoing brain disease that we're dealing with so we want to focus on two things for you safer syringe programs and access to nxone nxone is the opioid overdose reversal drug and most overdoses happen at somebody's home so having easy access to noox zone is a really important way to save lives when we're looking at the high risk of Overdose with fentanyl So currently we are Distributing fre aloin kits directly at the pharmacy at Durham County Public Health people can go up they don't have to provide hardly any information they're just asking for noock Zone we can also work with Community organizations that would like to distribute noock Zone themselves we've done some training with the library we're working alongside EMS and that is kind of the main way that we're.

Distributing noxin right now and you can see the numbers are growing in terms of the number of people who are coming directly to Public Health to get those kits we are working towards install well we have the actual machines but we have two vending machines that we've been able to purchase with the goal of filling it with n lockone to make it so that people don't even have to have that in-person interaction to get n lockone it's going to take us a thousand kits to be able to fill the two vending machines and stock them in that initial uptake Dennis has done a lot of work around this and knows that as soon as you fill it people will empty it out almost immediately right at the beginning so there's not 500 slots in each but over the first month we know that that's what we need to actually stock it so our goal we have 426 kits in reserve right now and our goal is to be able to launch the.

One in the detention center next month but we need to have additional noock Zone supplies to be able to both keep up with a number of kits that are being requested in the pharmacy and be able to fill and launch the noox vending machine in the only thing I'll add is that the ultimate goal or dream would be to have one of these vending machines in all of our libraries as well but as Lindsay alluded to it's very expensive to fill how much did you say to fill a vending machine well so we're working towards having a thousand kits and each kit is $40 you can get cheap Noone in a syringe that is easy but for the actual Naran that we can hand out in a library or at the Detention Center it is a branded product and it is $40 a kit which is two doses of the ability to give two doses after an overdose so then the last thing that I wanted to highlight is a harm.

Reduction program that we've been doing for a long time now since the North Carolina state law allowed but we do provide safer syringe kits at our Pharmacy and this is a picture of the supplies that you get so everything from the sharps container to sterile water for cleaning sterile syringes also we're providing fentanyl test strips and we were just able this month to purchase xylazine test strips to put those in there we have resource guides and also what's required by law which is a saver syringe program participant ID that people are receiving Lindsay could you explain this isosine what that is yeah so so fentanyl is one of the drugs that have oh Jeff is offering to give the clinical off explanation so I'll allow that yeah that xylazine it's a animal sedative that has no approved use in humans but it's found its way into the illicit drug Supply mostly fentanyl but some heroin and and cocaine and it it prolongs and deepens the high from the opio opioid.

Which is why it's being added it's also a little bit heavier than some of the other substances like fentanyl so you actually get a little bit more bang for your buck if you're a drug cartel in you know making these illicit substances because you know it's a little bit heavier so you you know are able to use a little bit less of the other substances it can cause overdoses typically if someone's overdosing the probably the bigger player is going to be fentanyl the other thing that we're seeing is these horrible people can get these horrible skin wounds either at the injection site or or sometimes away from the injection site and that has something to do with the way this medication Works we're not really sure why and so you know we thought it's important you know to provide the opportunity for people who are purchasing these substances to know not only is fentanyl in in the sub substance but xylazine the last time the last numbers I have statewide are 28% of fentanyl.

Products have xylazine in them now this was this data is probably about a year old so it's not like the elicit drug supplies completely over own with zzing yet which is I think a good a good reason to have these test strips available people can make hopefully informed choices why why we're on that one I just want I was going to wait till the end for our viewing public zyline is also Tran am I wrong with that thank you street name TR the street name of it is Tran it was since my Stephen Valentine got me using other words so I've seen the videos out of Philly with Tran quite frankly I've drove down fil Street and seen it so we I brought this up the other night doing a regular session we got folks stepping on drugs and y'all know that we're trying to make these highs longer make it stronger because they can't get access to fenel like they used to is it true like I know.

You say sores but are we not seeing people going around in a trans-like state are we not seeing paralysis or is that I've not heard of of those effects with xylazine there are other like bath salts right yeah yeah's another substance which can do that I've not seen that with with xine it's possible but yeah the big concern aside from overdose is these you know horrible skin sores which really can require ex treatment yeah potentially amputation but you know extensive debr skin grafting they can be really serious thank you sir couple other points for your consideration about three months ago State Health director Dr Betsy Tilson was in Durham for a violent death Reporting System meeting that I I serve on her board and she asked me as an Assad she's like are you guys seeing any zidine and Durham I said not necessarily at that particular Point fast forward three months later it's it's hit so I can say with Assurance to my board that Durham is probably one.

Of the first Health departments to offer zzing strips inside our safer rench. Program so to wrap us up I was just going to share a little bit about what we think are some current needs and open up for other questions this is the current resource guide that I think some of you have seen and we have hard copies here but this is a way that we're providing current information in both English and Spanish to the Durham Community about different treatment providers harm reduction Services housing and more and have been able to distribute this to a wide variety of organizations but we do continue to need to print more and keep updating it so that's one of the things we're keeping in mind but also sharing has been a a big success is directly providing resources for individuals who use drugs we do suggest that we consider in Durham County a harm reduction coordinator we have seen several other counties do this and you can see the reasons that harm reduction we really.

Feel like is the strategy that we're doing some of but not enough of with the current statistics that we see in Durham County we think that person could be a a targeted person to do Outreach around the oone distribution help us manage the safer syringe program and also do some of the work around providing a comprehensive evaluation effort we want do want to be direct that we need more money for nooc Zone and the safer syringe program we're kind of shocked how often we get funding opportunities at the federal and state level that say please work on the overdose problem consider the following non-allowable expenses no oxone stero syringes yeah I mean it happens all the time and so really most of our harm reduction program has operated on $100,000 from the state that's been like where the funds have come from because even when we've gotten other outside grant funding it has explicitly excluded these things as things we are able to pay for so you heard me say that we're working on.

Filling a vending machine but until we can actually have the funds to have enough no lockone in we're not going to start a vending machine that's then empty three weeks later we also want to emphasize that there are lots of opportunities to have increased collaboration between public health and other parts of the county so we do have a Durham County Public Health opioid response committee that these two co-lead and so we are working to have budget where that group can think about how we provide training across Public Health we acknowledge that we're all seeing the same patients and the people who come in for the safer syringe program also come for family planning or who come in for immunizations and we want to have good training and and be on top of how we talk across Public Health we also think there's an excellent opportunity to gather experts across the county as you think about how to use the opioid settlement dollars so we are glad to be part of that but also acknowledge.

That there's other people across the county who have really great experience thinking about how opioid use affects the different Services they offer and we also think there's an opportunity to offer a Durham County data dashboard that looks at things like the overdose rate the number of kits that are being distributed the collaborations that are out there we think that we have good resources in public health through our population Health division that could help put that together but we also know it's not just a public health dashboard that makes the most sense so we highlight those as some things for increased coordination opportunities I know it is past lunchtime so I'm going to pause there but offer that we are happy to answer any questions across the board we just say thank you for your time I know you guys are probably lightheaded and your public health officials want you to get something to eat but we will just say that we thank you for the trust that you've always given to Public.

Health and you all know that if you fund us and allow us to do the Strategic initiatives that we need we feel confident that the results will come well I want to say thank you on behalf of the board for your presentation and all the work that you're doing this is such an important topic you know and you know the association of Board of County Commissioners at their conference last week this been a week ago they had a lot of information about o about this topic and you know and you know listening to the president that's stepping in as the association of Board of County Commissioners president and who shared with us about losing his son through this and through the and it's just it's just really a it's a nasty thing that's happening to folks nasty so we are in line with helping you supporting you and doing what needs to happen and I hear the request and I think the board hears the request so we'll do what we need to.

Do Commissioners do you have a lot of questions or are you in line with them what what is it that you need at this moment questions I I mean I was going to ask Dennis if he want tell us a little bit about what he does if we have time for that love to hear and I was going to say I think we should try to get a an lockone vending machine a Narcan vending machine vending machine one of our libraries as soon as possible even if we can't get everywhere see how it goes yeah I like main library but I do think Super supportive of the things that you're recommending thank you for the work you're already doing it's a lot you're doing a lot of harm reduction work already prevention work it's.

Impressive so yeah that us know specifically you know how how we can save lives yeah know that's what this is really about okay do you have something else that you'd like to to say I mean I'll be happy to give you all just a guideline or outline of what I do in terms of work here at Public Health so essentially I am the program manager for the communic disease and Maternal Child Health Team I started out as a health educator where I oversaw the County's efforts with Outreach HIV and STI testing we also do prep referrals and around 2016 is when we initiated the safe syringe program and the nxone distribution program which I completely took own of because due to liveed experiences with family and friends I'm from West Baltimore so I have a lot of family and friends who unfortunately have passed away from overdose so U this topic not only aligns with my you know professional but my personal interest as well so essentially what I've done so.

Far in terms of the response open response is just to consult with Dr Janks and Lindsay about my great ideas and hopefully they get funded I definitely wouldn't yeah none of these projects that we that Lindsay outline would be possible without the support of Public Health leadership but I do want to you know reemphasize the importance of having a dedicated person to harm reduction Outreach and efforts you know all the work that we do is data driven and evidence-based however we need a expert to look at that formative evaluation to see you know what we're doing and how can we improve it that's it and I'm open to any questions as well thank you just add one quick thing to the the last thing you said about data that's one thing that at least you know on the county level we don't have a lot of data about like what what's working for for clients that come in like what are they using are they using these test strips are they are.

They throwing certain things out and I think a harm reduction coordinator that could in a in a sensitive way ask some of those questions are we meeting your needs are the other things that we can be doing for you would be helpful and we don't have that right now so we are we're we are offering what we think is helpful but we actually aren't getting the feedback because we've you know this is being run out out of our Pharmacy our pharmacists are busy doing other things so yeah just the last plug for me you know we really need a coordinator that can kind of oversee this as well as do Outreach with our partners in the community thank you so much and our staff will bring us a proposal and let us know what we need to do next and we are going to break for lunch I'm going give you two minutes we're going for break much I am starving absolutely yeah I I just want to say I.

Strongly support this and I learned about what the public health staff has already been doing on their own time on the side at the harm reduction conference in Durham this is critical we we literally are losing people by not by not funding this now it's urgent we have the money with the opioid fund funding I would just also ask that you come back as soon as possible for us with a budget also that I'd like I do want to hear more about how you would work with the harm reduction Coalition because I think that's a really important piece of this is they are the folks who are who are out in the community so I would like to hear about that and also there had been a recommendation that we get the equipment for people to test their street drugs and Lindsay I know you guys are doing this but you didn't mention the the envelopes for people to send their drugs to UNC that you guys are also giving out.

At the pharmacy but if you could I know we don't have time now but come back when you come back talk about how you will work with the harm reduction Coalition and also about the whole testing the street drugs absolutely we are glad to do that I am talking with Lofton Wilson from harm reduction today at 3:00 so it is regular and recurring and we just say thank you I know it's we press for time but please know that that budget has already been submitted to man to miss manager thank you thank you for your leadership on this you again for your report thanks so.

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You already here all right presentation on Durham's count why 205 29 strategic planning process and open the office of strategy and performance that. Is6 this is the board is requesting to intru to the planning process the recently renamed office of strategic and performance.

Thank you so much Chair Nida Allam and vice chair Wendy Jacobs Commissioners Stephen Valentine Andrews and DCM Hagar thank you so much for having us today for this presentation as you may recall in our leadership reorganization two business units were transitioned to report to the chief of staff one of those business units is the Equitable wellbeing office which you all have all I think have met our new director of Equitable well-being Dr Brent Lewis and the second unit is our what was formerly called strategic initiatives but is now called our office of strategy and performance and so our office of strategy and performance is getting ready to launch us into our 2025 2029 strategic planning process and so I am am going to introduce our director of strategy and performance Josh Edwards and and he will direct introduce his team to include a new member that we've just added today thank you good afternoon pardon me I'm sorry good afternoon Cher Howton Board of Board of County Commissioners welcome thank.

You for the time to present today I have with me Adriana Williams yes I have with me Adriana Williams Stradic initiatives analyst and Johnson I'm so sorry R Johnson she just got married so I apologize yeah I we have such a problem with our mics if you don't talk directly into the mics we can't hear you okay understood is that better that's much better thank you ma'am Adriana Johnson our strategic initiatives analyst and also CG Garner strategic initiatives analyst and starting today we have Pat M he's coming to us as our strategic initiatives manager so that's the introduction to our our new unit which is the office of strategy and performance.

Okay so again here just a quick overview of our office laid out and a quick reminder of what we do as the office of strategy performance we'll be doing strategic planning which will be a five-year living document with an annual review and update we'll also be doing Innovation support and skill Building inside of our new iLab thank you very much for the space it is fantastic we appreciate it greatly and also we'll be doing consultative services this will be change management process review and problem solving and last but not least Performance Management and data analytics so we'll be taking on Clearo as part of our internal processes and doing performance review over time including future data projects as they come about.

Excuse me at the start of any strategic planning process the vision and Future Vision of the future must be assessed and the mission stated unambiguously to be able to move forward into a new plan so the county mission statement as you see above is Durham County provides highquality physically responsible Services vital to a safe and healthy Vibrant Community our vision is to be a leader in our region by creating a thriving vibrant and diverse Community with abundant opportunity for all residents to live work play and grow and this has been our mission statement for quite a number of years so one major absent element in both our mission and vision statement is language around inclusivity and Equity so I put to the board as a question for consideration for the future is does our mission and vision still hold true to the future of Durham County so at some point in the future during the planning process we'd like to revisit that and just have.

Input as part of the strategic planning process and the pre-planning that we have done over the last few months I've been back on board with Durham County for approximately five months now we took the policy planning session the policy review session that was done I believe in November of 22 with the board of Board of County Commissioners and we took the 26 policy priority areas that you had and I'd have to consolidate them into more focused areas for review and out of that the top five that came out were education and economic development affordable housing maternal Health Durham County compensation and resource overlap between city and county we will move forward into the process of doing the plan by using these areas to focus objective.

Creation Now the history of the Durham County strategic planning from 2017 to 2022 which was a refresh of the original plan created in 2011 if I'm not mistaken was broken down into five goals 19 objectives 60 objective strategies 119 strategy measures and as part of this we did a little bit of review with departments and asked them what they thought of the previous strategic plan from that those meetings that we had with Department directors it was said the plan was complex and a bit wordy and hard to understand and at 9,000 plus words it did have a lot to it so the plan also the original plan that was was created Silo departments into an organizational structure of goals one through five and they also said it restricted the advancement of goals because they couldn't have cohesion and collaboration between each other to achieve those.

Goals now moving. Forward is our proposal to modernize the organizational goals into seven Focus areas as you can see on the slide the new strategic plan alignment aims to promote collaboration and inclusion between departments these collaborations will help to maximize existing County Resources with accountability between Department leadership and executive leadership members our team developed a name for the 2029 strategic plan that embodies our Collective Visions with the focus areas and thus Durham County moving forward 202 9 was conceived or Deco forward 2029 each Focus area will have an executive sponsor a member of the executive team who drives performance toward the Pacific Focus area and supports strategic advancement and moves Durham County.

Forward those seven Focus areas just so we can go over them Regional leadership High performing organization Community empowerment Community infrastructure and advancement safe and resilient Community healthy and inclusive community and responsible governance the next two. Slides our team sat down and tried to determine a basic structure for how each Focus area will be structured as you can see here many of the Departments align with the ACM DCM or chief of staff that they're currently assigned to as part of of the organizational structure but in other ones we moved them around to create more collaboration and give them more cohesion overall yes ma'am I'm sorry is that better I apologize One point I like to make is that this has not changed the leadership reporting structure for example when you have Tax Administration that does not imply that tax administration will then report to DCM Hager what that suggests is that the work that is done those collectively the work of those units have a similar goal similar focus and so DCM Hager would be the.

Executive sponsor of that goal so no longer would we have the goal one goal two goal three because there are some areas that merge into others we would have a sponsor that kind of leads that Focus. Area thank you.

Here's a second set of focus areas and again they're broken up so they just respond better to correspond better to the areas they're going to be collaborating. In over the next several months we will use the these guiding principles in our development of our strategic objectives and work with stakehold Ral internal and external so our guiding principles for the Strategic plan will be a living document as was stated in our meetings with Department directors the document felt like it couldn't change and adjust for what happened in the world around it and so we want to create a document that we can actually adjust over time to meet the organizational needs meet our resident needs we want to embody Durham County's Vision we want to be dedicated to Durham Count's Mission over time we want to prioritize action able equity and inclusion and by actionable we mean putting it into place in the real world simple easy to read and understand we want a document that all levels of Durham County can understand and can get.

Behind and believe in we also want to create a road map for translating our long-term strategy into present and future. Efforts.

So here's our timeline moving forward with our strategic plan we have currently reviewed the 2017 strategic Plan update we have worked to interview Department directors to get feedback on the original plan and now we're moving moving forward into a phasee of where we would like to conduct a SWAT analysis with our departments to better understand where their bottlenecks are where their strengths are their weaknesses their opportunities Josh yes ma'am too far away again what is your what is your outside voice I don't have an outside voice ma'am I know you can do better than that like we we want to hear you I apologize we're and we're straining trying to hear you can can you give us give us a little bit more volume please yes ma'am I apologize that better that's better I I in tend to be softspoken and I it's my way okay exactly all right I worked with Keith and David they you know somebody had to be lower volume.

So apologize for my frog in my throat today okay so now we're moving forward with a SWAT analysis with our departments and as part of this plan we're also bringing in a strategic planning consultant we are working with the Insight Performance Management Group I'll go over that particular aspect here in just one second but our Big Goal here is that we would like to have a draft before the board on February 5th's work session it is an aggressive plan but as speaking with our consultant with my team we believe we can achieve that and as part of the strategic planning process this is only going to be development and implementation of the plan it will not include the performance measurement side yet that'll be next we'll actually begin the strategic planning side for performance measurement and management in July 1st of 2025 we didn't feel we could do both simultaneously because it is going to be a new system for Performance Management in Durham.

County as I stated the next steps in the strategic planning process we're executing a contract with Insight Performance Management Group who is Monica Allen she has come highly recommended from several different organizations U she'll be conducting meetings between Commissioners U and Department directors to gather information regarding your vision for GM County of course we'll be doing the organizational wide SWAT analysis and also doing internal and external surveys to prioritize objectives that come out of our SWAT analysis and Department director meetings connecting all the dots with initiative development will be the last step and of course initiatives will be more the T iCal side of items it'll be how we're going to achieve our objectives long term and our major goal here is to move away from onetime goal and Target creation and move towards more of a system development systems over time that can sustain Improvement and actionable.

Change so just a real quick review of SWAT analysis and the tips that we're going to be giving our departments is we want them to be inclusive we want them to include their as many people inside of the department as they can because they need the feedback from all levels honesty and transparency is critical for organizational planning and support a lot of times with SWAT analysis you don't get the full picture we need as much as we can get to be able to build and plan that's going to work forward of course they can contact my office me directly with any questions we plan on having workshopping inside of the Innovation lab again thank you for the space it's wonderful and we also are going to work with each department director to help them with their SWAT analysis as we understand that sometimes it can be hard to get to items that are actually part of their strengths and weaknesses and not just items that are critiques inside of their.

Department my team at OSP has already conducted our SWAT analysis as you can see above and from the slides we came up with quite a few strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats as most Apartments will as part of this process we're also going back at looking at the SWAT analysis conducted in physical year 2022 as part of the budgeting process and I'm going to take those results and presenting to each department director so they can review them and see where they were at at that point in time after we get each SWAT announ analysis from each department director we're going to take them and try to focus them down so this is this is for the office of strategy performance here out of all the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats that we reviewed and created I narrowed it down to our team narrowed down to strengths culture of change executive support our opportunities we're a clean slate we're starting with a new strategic plan and so we can really create something that.

Is organizational wide I'm not going to through all of them with you but as you can see this is what we plan on doing moving. Forward and that's the end of my presentation happy to take any questions again sorry for being softspoken over the mic I will make sure in the future that I ring my outside voice said you're not gonna let me forget that are you no ma'am thank you so much ma'am I do have one question to go back you you gave us a date which I like dates it's like by when when you said the draft plan for by February 5th can you say again what's going to be analyzed what's what's going to be in that plan by the 5th because it doesn't give you a whole lot of time to do a lot of analizing so what's going to be in that by that time by that time we hope to have a department we hope to have research done through departments saying what their objectives will be and then.

Have surveys gone out internal and external to the organization to prioritize those objectives so at that point we're hoping to have a list of objectives broken down by Focus area and also initiatives created to be able to give you a full draft plan of what it'll look like moving forward in 2025 so will you create a whole different framework or you just going to build on what's already there technically speaking this will be a whole new framework this is from scratch we're making biscuits and you know this is what it'll be because of the feedback from the department meetings that we've had so far felt that building on the old plan wouldn't Garner the buyin or the acceptance that a new plan would and that's part of the reason also for the naming is that instead of calling it a strategic plan we're saying you know Deco forward 2029 it takes away that negative connotations that may have existed in the past for the previous plans okay all right thank you yes ma'am Commissioners.

Carter thank you for your work it's exciting to see the opportunities that we have right and developing our new Durham County forward what outline guidelines now I'm afraid to say strategic plan how did you tell me again how you decided upon the focus so the determining factors in the focus areas was looking at the Departments and kind of thinking through what each department is looking to achieve as part of their work and and bless you as part of that we felt that we put all all the Departments up on a board actually with sticky notes had our Focus areas and went through and determined that you know these areas that the items that Durham County wants to move forward in wants to achieve was these areas of being a regional leadership that was one of the new ones of course I'm sorry moved away from the mic being in Regional leadership and we felt that it needed to be called that in the past because it was called I believe it was.

External Affairs I believe it didn't quite embody the fact that we were actually wanting to create systems inside Durham County that reached out beyond the scope of the county borders so our transportation and City County Planning which in elections was actually reaches outside of our County and so that's how that particular one came into being and discussions like that went through the whole the whole list and we came to those is our our proposal they're not set in stone if there's feedback from the board we we welcome it okay I would like to add to that that once the consultant is on board and we'll be meeting with all of you she will get your your feedback and your ideas and so these are just draft ideas based on the conversations that the team has been having but of course those are open to change and to evolve once we've gotten feedback from all of our Commissioners and our leadership and others other stakeholders great sounds that sounds great I have one other question about.

Like key performance indicators or measures metrics you were you were saying that you were trying to have fewer and that right and that makes sense to me shoot I can't find the slide but it sounded like you were trying to find some sort of indicator for systems outcomes rather than I don't know onetime actions I think it said so how will you know if the you know actions are being successful without an indicator of some sort of measure or metric there will still be an indicator in place of course you'll have to have some I think we need to cut down on the total number of indicators because 119 to 200 depending on what we're looking at is a lot to to cover totally if you focus on everything you focus on nothing correct and so what our goal is to move forward is in systems development so focus more on the objective and initiative structure more than the actual measure at the end because we may not even know what the.

Measure is at that point but if we work on the focus into the systems in each department of how we're going to achieve that objective and initiative the measure will come out of that at the end very interesting well I I certainly think a systems approach is really smart so thank you for presenting it this way and helping me understand it ma'am Commissioner Wendy Jacobs thank you and I appreciate getting this update you know this is this is very important work and I remember working on our prev a strategic plan and one of the problems was we actually never really got we were never successful in terms of really doing you know we said we're going to have a data dashboard and we're going to you know present out to the community and really be able to you know monitor how we're doing and we just we never seem to really get there with that part and so I I do think that you think about what's the purpose of a plan.

I do hope that we can figure out some way for this one to really connect back to the community so that people can see you know how we're using taxpayer dollars and you know how we're moving the needle and making progress I I just yeah I think that's you know because I know you said we're not going to really do the performance outcomes till 2025 is that right I I guess I know we'll have time for input as you mentioned but I do think that you know if this is only a five-year plan we want to I guess this will be 2025 to 2029 so 202 5 will actually be gu the first year it's implemented and then the last plan was from 2022 so we'll actually have officially three years without a strategic plan but yeah so I just I think that that's going to be really important piece of this for at least for me thinking about what we we never kind of were able to actualize.

The other thing is I do I see that you're there's a plan to have you know the consultant come in and talk to Commissioners but I'm actually requesting that there be an opportunity for the whole board to have input together because you know last time we had like a planning Retreat and I just think that you know I think it needs that level honestly of the board involvement it really you know it it should be really coming from that level so I just want to make sure that it's not just one-on ones with the consultant but we actually are having input as a board I'd also like to hear more about how all of the staff will get engaged because I heard a lot of reference to talking to directors and department heads but how are you how are you going to get the bottom up information and really get everybody engaged I'll start with that last Point if you'll note that on one of Josh's slides the first thing was to be.

Inclusive and then being inclusive does include all of our staff members and making sure that we use that we engage with all members of our community in getting information on their thoughts on the Strategic plan and getting their feedback and so we will be very intentional about that inclusivity and when we described the consultant meeting with you all that will be individually and collectively we will have some group sessions not just with you also with leadership with directors coming on down so we will have individual and we will have group sessions to really engage with each other and and get the get the plan together and the final point I'd like to make is one of the Beauties and bringing Josh on who was previously a budget analyst under David and Keith's team is that he understands our financial and budgeting systems and so we're very grateful for his experience and that he can help us connect a strategic plan to the budget and work with that team.

And making sure that we are using the dollars in the way that we've said we would through our strategic plan great that's great so and before I go to Commissioner Michelle Burton I I want to do use Wendy's words about some context you know when I I was on the board I don't with some other commissioners and when I came on the board we had never had a strategic plan the board was resistant to a strategic plan we had to get the school of government to come here and explain to us that it wasn't wouldn't be taken anything away from the Commissioners to do a strategic plan so that was the first one that we we've done and it was it was done but it wasn't given the kind of teeth that it needed to have at that point and then what was a young guy that worked on his named Michael Michael I can't remember his last name took it on and Davis okay he took it on and started working on it and.

It began to come alive but we have not always had a strategic plan it's just been trying to get the board to really look at what does a strategic plan look like this board is totally different so we are all engaged in wanting to do this but it hasn't always been that way I would add to that that we now have a full team committed to the Strategic process with three that are here the addition of a strategic initiatives manager coming on board and in this fiscal year budget you approved the addition of a data analyst that will also join this team and so we will have a team of five committed to really giving you the Strategic plan that you the county the residents deserve cool commissioner Burns m is really quick I think sometimes you we come into the building and we do take it for granted right I I I I've looked at the mission statement and the vision statement many times I think looking at today I looked at it.

With fresh eyes and said I don't know if that necessarily speaks to our current ethos so one I'm excited that we we moving forward on that because your missing statement should speak to what she doing like Ted Talks do y'all know what Ted Talks mission statement is spread ideas that's it it doesn't have to be long and drawn out I think y'all know times the shoes changing the world one for one because every time you buy a pair of shoes they give a pair of shoes to somebody else so I am hopeful that as we think about these things the vision statement is kind of sort of where we want to go this is what we want to do and that'll be this board and by 20 2029 you we got two more elections go we don't know what that board is going to be thinking but I think for the mission statement I think that that's something that everybody can agree on no matter what board you're on.

So I I'm hopeful that when you come to us those are the things that we kind of sort of pull out like what is in our marrow as a a board and body and I'm hopeful that we can do that with the staff while I'm excited to do it I am super excited there are people been here 30 years they know better than I you know what what should possibly be in here what they want to see out of their government so I do look forward talking to the consultant I did my only question was the timeline how long do we have what is that how long was that contract and I know it's probably in the documents for the Monica Allen how long so we executed the contract through the end of the physical year okay so okay all right so King so we got some time wood to really and then last thing because Miss de is not here I hope because maybe people are like me you.

Know they don't look at it every day a lot of popping circumstance when we unveil this bad boy so people know this is what we stand for if I may in response to that that is definitely a huge theme with our team and making sure that we are branding and creating that buy in commissioner Wendy Jacobs to your point of accountability that is how our team developed the executive sponsorship being able to have everyone included in the process with accountability checks and measures within that to create this plan that is digestible for you all and the community it is not our intent to present 120 Focus initiatives to you all but to break that down into smaller chunks of these are what countywide we're working on these are our departmental this is what our businesses this is what we're working on and feed that through individual work plans that create Division and mission for all of us thank Co anything else commissioner Wendy Jacobs yeah I I also.

Had a followup question on the on the seven proposed focus areas where would you think that something like when I think about what are the things that we're really focusing on in terms of the work that we're doing and things that we're funding for instance where would something like you know economic Prosperity shared Prosperity would where would you in en Vision that being under Community empowerment. Not yes ma'am we would see that as part of of in that vein of being under computer empowerment yes ma'am okay and then when I think about also our commitment to things like you know the environment and climate change would that be under safe and resilient Community or Community infrastructure and advancement I think the beauty in this is that it's it's doing exactly what we needed to do is that some of the items some of our Focus areas fall into different buckets right they fall into different pots and so that may fall into both of those areas because it may.

Sometimes lean in one and sometimes lean in others and so through this process we'll start some more flesh out what falls in multiple areas for example e Equitable well-being falls under Community safety and well-being but it also falls under Regional leadership because we want to be Equitable and we want to promote our Dei strategies throughout the community so there are a multiple items that will fall under different different buckets and we'll flesh that out more as we continue through this process and continue to get feedback from our stakeholders okay that's helpful thank you thank you so much for your presentation and I look forward to hearing more thank you again we appreciate it thank you all right our next item Commissioners is 23663 presentation from the naming committee on request to name the call dejes conference room in the County Agricultural building to honor first American African-American extension director in Durham County the state of North Carolina and the United States okay you still here I'm still here I'm still with you so good.

Afternoon again this presentation is coming before you before you from the naming committee and so I stand in as the representation of that committee I've added the background information that we recently presented to you from our most recent request but I have that here again just for a reminder of the naming and renaming policy again these are the members of our ziko family who are included on this naming committee they are listed here and so this naming request is for the Carl D hajes conference room I have to admit that I was not familiar with Mr hajes prior to doing the research on this and I was very excited to learn about him learn about his work especially as the first African-American extension director not only in Duram County not only in the state of North Carolina but in the United States and so that is pretty exciting to know that he was a member of our community and I'm was thrilled to get the research on him.

I encourage everyone else to go out and do so and learn more about Mr hajes and so this request was submitted by Donna rewal County Extension director for Cooperative Extension and Cheryl Carroll advisory chair for the Durham County Extension advisory Council in addition to his accolades as the first in the county the states and the United States he was the first black Extension agent in Durham to have a regular radio program in newspaper column he was a newspaper columnist for the Herold son Durham morning Herold where he wrote the popular educational column Durham County Farm Corner which educated farmers land owners homeowners and the general public about research-based information and extension events including for H youth in addition he was frequently interviewed for his agricultural expertise I will start this presentation by saying in the earlier iteration that you received on Friday in lie of this photo there was a picture of a plaque that we that had already been created by Donar Walt and her team that we thought would be hung.

But it didn't fit with what what we've outlined as our standard as we did with the fer naming and so we did not have a photo over the weekend we were able to secure a photo I have since learned that this photo has been photoshopped and the flag has been added to it because we did not have the actual photo and so we will not print this photo with the Photoshop flag we will print this photo in its original state without that flag but the Carl de Hodes conference room will be located in the County Agriculture building in rooms 129a and B I'll show you on the another slide where that what that looks like as you walk into that building the conference room will be posted in silver metallic letters above the entry to the conference room doors there are two doors that enter into that facility and we will place the titling over both doors the framed photo of Carl Hodges will hang in the conference room with.

The inscriptions that you see here similar to The Standard we've already set in place with the Siler naming we'll have Carl dejes conference room above and then we'll have the inscription below below an official naming event has not been planned by Cooperative Extension as Mr hajes was honored in May at their most recent event and so when you walk into the County Extension building you see on the left that is the hallway that you walk into on the right is where you enter into the conference room the next two photos show images of the conference room so it's the larger conference room in the space and as you can see there from the the middle photo was from behind the podium looking out into the room and the photo on the far right is from the entry door the first entry door and so there are two options for where we may hang this photo option one is the left wall at the entrance of room from door a and then option two is the.

Left wall from the entrance of the room from door B the option two kind of gives you a more broader anyone from the room is more apt to see it option A is when you first walk in it would be there on your left so our next steps after you have reviewed is to have a public hearing on September 11th 2023 we've already posted for that and already prepared for that public hearing following that hearing we will have the final approval via vote on September 11 2023 and I just want to reiterate that in the hanging the photo will not have a flag it will not have the Photoshop flag behind it it will be the original photo printed and framed thank you thank you you tanon that's wonderful any questions or concerns board commissioner Wendy Jacobs I just want to thank you and Donna and every all the committee members this is really wonderful just wondering I mean do you have a recommendation a preference about the location it sounds like the second one.

My preference would be for the second one because you can't really miss it option one you may miss it when you walk into the room but option two you really can't miss it it really really will stop you and kind of force you to look and that's the important thing we want everyone to kind of acknowledge who Mr hajes was to us and who he was overall in his role well that sounds great all right this is fantastic and it looks like do we have some family members here I believe we do have some family members who are here we had wonderful yeah wonderful would you like to stand and give us your name who have joined us like to stand and give us your.

Names okay thanks for coming and.

You want to come to the mic I can't hear.

You either one you can go right here. Now we'd like to thank everybody for this opportunity to let people know what dead really was he grew up as a farmer I think of a family what 17 Terry 17 children 17 children you throw a rock on the roof look like school let out but but he enjoyed his job he l liked the the farm he really enjoyed getting out with the people and when we were growing up we didn't like it that much I recall that not likeing farm he did a lot of things not only for Farmers but for children every year our vacation was to go to 4 camp and dad would load up a bus I would say 30 35 kids and we spent a week at the beach and and all the other kids were going to Disneyland and stuff we were going for each camp and it was just a great opportunity I enjoyed reading his articles growing up I didn't know that he wasn't he was the first black.

In this area to have a newspaper article and then the article would always be published but never a picture wow yeah because he was BL black it's bad to say so but it's the truth and the same thing was happening with radio shows and I remember one lady says you don't sound like you look but he had a a show and then I remember going to wtvd with what Peggy man in the mornings and he would have Farm news there but again thanks for everybody we're going to send pictures to the remaining sisters and brothers unfortunately due to their age they weren't able to make it but I'm sure they would be very very very thankful too J thank you for being here right U just thank you one thing I'd like to add which is very interesting and you'll never find it written that he was the first black extension director or agent to that was allowed to talk to White Farmers White extension directors in agents could talk to any race but blacks.

Were restricted to who they could talk to also with the newspaper article I can remember it was very very dark my father had very keing features so the first couple editions came out he didn't you couldn't tell what race he was so each Progressive newspaper article they would darken it so by the time they got an accepted photograph we couldn't tell who he was either but we'd like to just thank you for this opportunity and what's been done in my father's name and I guess since I'm I'm actually a tarhill but there has been a a scholarship established at North Carolina ENT in his name so I'll say this once Agate pride and unfortunately our manager is not not here who would be happy to hear that yeah I'll I'll say I'll say agry Pride for my kids my I have two I have two children that went to entt and I I have a granddaughter that's in the engineering program at entt so agie Pride back at you I'm me agie and Daddy.

Started sending kids for to ENT he was the first graduated in 54 I graduated in 73 our oldest son graduated in 20 and we've got a granddaughter that's a junior up there now well thank you both so much and your wife for being here coming to be sitting through you've been here all day so thanks for being here thank you so much and I I have a suggestion if you all are interested at the Durham History Museum there is a recording room where people can go and record oral histories and so I would encourage you to think about that I mean just the little bit that you just told us right now well I that's a great idea but I'm sorry I didn't add this that back in the early 2020s he recorded for two hours a conversation on his life with the Southern oral history program at UNCC oh fantastic okay so that's fantastic and he talks about the history of the extension service which is very interesting is that on online somewhere.

It's online I can it the extension service actually has copies of a of the transcript we'll get it to you all in addition to some newspaper clippings and articles that Donna R wal's team had yeah thank you thank you you so much thank you and Madam chair you are going to invite them back for the public hearing right oh yes yeah strap will take care of that yeah all right so we are down to 23669 the aqu update and that is Claudia yeah we'll give us an update.

Here American Rescue. Funds okay.

Let's just make makes it a little easier there are some guests as well who are here Mr Johnson with the city of dorham Greg marrow may also join there are many other partners who have helped us to get to this point and we've been on quite the journey with this and so so grateful to give an update and let's see Monica all right quickly we'll have some funding Recaps project status updates some updates on allocations based on previous board discussions and then some overall discussions I always put this first slide there that shares the funding categories and we've worked with the plan over the past two years getting us to this point and following treasury guidelines some process updates when the treasury establish their interim rule the board also set some guiding principles on how we should look at using the funds there was engagement Community efforts over almost a year's time frame with that happening with the city of dorham as well as lots of remote activity.

Because as you may recall we were in coid during quite a bit of that time the final rule for arpa fund use happened in 2022 and in May 22 your the board adopted a framework for spending and that alignment of fund use aligned with your strategic plan with emphasis on areas that you'd focused on for years but also align with US Treasury guidelines on arpa fun use so overall the county had 62.4 million do that they could spend over the course of up towards four years in addition to the dollar set aside for arpa there was in the plan framework some understanding that there may be areas that we could not cover through arpa and as it was appropriate the potential use of fund balance could be used during the the time frame quick update 40% of the funds have been encumbered that align with the plan and the framework that was established in in the sight of US Treasury encumbrance means you have a contract now we have a.

Plan on how we use the money but until you have a contract it doesn't technically count in their out their eyesight as an obligation and so 40% of our funds are incumbent we'll talk about what those projects are 39 projects that's a lot our this the as we work towards 100% encumbrances the first Target is to try to get the remaining larger bulk of activities encumbered by December and we're moving towards that Target over the past year or so you've heard how much back and forth we've gone through with various Partners to get to the contract partnership place a real good example is the Bulls and initiative and you heard them say well we've had 13 versions or whatever the version was trying to get it right because in our Forefront is the back end the compliance side we have up until I think 2030 we have to keep all these documents and I plan to be in the number somewhere but I may not be here and so with that we keep.

The in the Forefront compliance and all those components as well so that's why we have been really intentional with our vetting with the next several months there are lots of activities that will come before you we've been at a faster Pace just Again by virtue of process the outstanding Community grants we've have 33 contracts that have been approved remaining ones will try to move forward within the next couple of months or less there are rfps that will happen in the fall and we go over that list soon there are interlocal agreements that we'll talk about as well that are close to fruition and then there are remaining County projects as well that will have greater Clarity and we can bring forth our second target is to make sure we have everything encumbered by early spring March 2024 we feel comfortable with those targets because several rfps will be underway in the next couple of months with the hope hope that they'll be finalized by 20 February 2024 these are some guiding principles there are.

Several of us that think about arpa a lot and the two clock set ticket I don't know if y'all ever remember that show 24 and there was always this clock ticking well 2024 keeps ticking in the background I know our new grants administrator John that's one thing we talk about okay cly he'll say cly now what's our strategy again how we going to make sure that we're there so that's something that's in all of our Forefront but so the goal is to you know have of course everything encumbered within by the winter but also look at the plan and refined if we need to make adjustments and and what's being proposed if adjustments need to be be made that we make those adjustments by May of 2024 so if there are rfps that need to happen or contracts adjustments that need to happen we can do that well ahead of the December 2024 time frame and this is how we've moved throughout this whole process if you may recall we had a.

Plan we've been modifying it and we've been working along the way this is a list you can't see probably from that screen but it is in your resorce materias but it does show the listing of activities that we've brought to the board is contracts to date 39 projects and it's 24 million in committed dollars as we shift to well how do we get to the very end of the process is one thing to encumber it but then you have to make sure all the dollars are expended so to make sure we meet those targets the the we our our nonprofit Grant Community grants there for 24 months and they're to to complete spending by summer 2025 remaining projects are targeted to end no later than 2026 again our focus is on compliance u in your budget process there were positions added to support that we comply of course with the internal and external audit reviews and we're always looking at how can we make approaches more seamless with expenditure use and the other.

Part is also telling the story which is the place that we will you will start seeing more storytelling it's happening it's underway but it's soon in may we share with the board opportunities to do some realignments based on the original plan we move some dollars from broadband based on funds that were made available from the state to support those efforts and there were some recent Communications on that and we'll talk a little bit about that and in those conversations we said that there were about $15.8 million that were available to reallocate into other areas based on moving some dollars from broadband and some unallocated dollars that were in the original plan based on your conversations with staff we had a series we've had a couple of conversations about this and we're going to also put online those meetings so the public can see when they they can have a link and see all those discussions one area that we presented to the board was potentially expanding affordable housing investments with continued Partnerships with the.

City back in fiscal year 2023 we jointly partnered with the city to invest $10 million of our arpa funds and they ALS also invested another 10 to support housing for new affordable housing and so based on our U conversations and board commitments U and there were projects presented we recommended continuing that effort with a commitment of $3.5 million we'll talk about a little bit more about that soon the other areas were related to planning and infrastructure f on for downtown homeless Services Center expanding housing repair programs for seniors that are below the medium income expanded affordable housing through increased funding for land trust Investments dollars to support Water and Sewer infrastructure and Technology Investments this is one that was not discussed but we'll talk a little bit about that today I'm going to go to the next slides and because I did break them into two major categories when we look at and one of the things that y'all talked about early on is that you wanted to make transformative investment into.

Major strategic areas and housing addressing housing insecurity in many facets has been a priority of the board and based on your feedback these are areas that you talked about and we are showing some of that information the affordable housing investments Mr Johnson with the city of DMS Community Development office they came to us in June and shared some gaps that were there there were approximately $12 million of of opportunity and we could not quite reach that number but did say we would go back and look at a different number there's another slide I'll showing that for the housing the the the the homeless Services Center and that's what it should say versus home that that has been a priority as well of the board and I I just mentioned the other two as well we have Target dates of of when we anticipate if the board desires to continue on this path when we could U move forward with those rfps many of these such as the trust invest the land trust Investments expanding.

Home repairs that's those are areas that the board has supported in other areas of the budget in the past moving to the U Joint City of Durham and County interlocal and affordable housing adding an additional 3.5 million is u a commitment that you that we're presenting here again the requested amount was slightly higher what city and county staff looked at was a lower number city council did support matching the funds at 3.5 million using arpa funds and that happened at their April I'm sorry their August 24th meeting and so that is sort of what's before you on this particular one and and so we can have some discussion here Mr Johnson's here to to answer any questions about it this is one we would like to have the board talk through potentially on the September 11th meeting there are some time sensitivity issues with it in that many of the projects are leveraging other dollars am I speaking correctly and Reginal if there any comments you may have to like to.

Make your your mic and close thank you Reginal Johnson director Community Development Department with the city of Durham as always thank you Claudia and it's always good to be before the Board of County Commissioners got to get a little closer all right always great to be before you thank you for indulging Us in the recommendation well the request that we talk about talked about earlier and we were able to refine that and come together with something that you know from the side of men is a bit more reasonable and so we would appreciate your support of the recommendations that we have before you you can see that they're similar in some ways what I would just point out that mckisic square you saw this project before but it was under a different name Gear street they were not successful in receiving 9% tax credits and we have had in our original plan an alternative just in case they didn't not receive a 9% award and so this 700,000 is the.

The piece that is in addition because they did not receive it that're changing the project so that they can move forward but it's still an exciting project we've talked about the other projects previously but that's the only. Difference I well thank you that that's the end of your presentation got more ma'am that's the end of that part but did you got a question just I have questions specifically about this could you get us some follow-up information about this or maybe some of it you probably could answer now one is I'm wondering are all of these projects a minimum of 30 30 years restricted for affordable housing that's one of my questions and then is there going to be anything in the agreement related to after 30 years you know the city the city and the county whatever having right of first refusal that that's one of my questions and then you know if it's going to go on the open market and then my second question is how many units are.

These representing for each of the projects and then a breakdown of what Ami they are which are you know how many 30% 50% and below and 80% and below for each of those so the answer to the question is yes there 30 years with the number of units and what I'll do is we'll resend the presentation that we had earlier on on each of those and I'll add the the mckisic square project but that project had will have 84 units and those will be 60% and below 20 20% of 20% will be affordable to households 30% Ami and then the rest will be earning up to 70% Ami on mckisic square that is a different type of project and then it's predominantly privately Finance without any tax credits involved the ACA rehab as you recalled is a rehabilitation as all 60% and yes they will have a harriage place in particular has agreed to a 30% I mean a 30-year extension the others will be in conversation about those as well okay.

Part of it is because of the Developers that they will be they are going to be remain affordable housing after 30 years because of destruction of the deal okay yeah if we could just get an email with that information about the length of the affordability and what the legal Agreements are going to be again I mean I'm just particularly interested in that and also what happens after 30 years whether it continues or there's a right of first refusal going back to the the city and the county and again just the breakdown of how many units at each of those areas thank you so much you're welcome Claudia could you talk a little bit m m kiss Square I don't remember that one yeah that and and Reginal explained that was Gear street information I think in the first yes around so you know we've been talking about this since I think April and we should have probably put a pinth around around it so the name is different yes ma'am and I didn't.

Remember and what we'll do is I'll resend the presentations that we did before my apologies I usually have a whole bunch of extra attachments in the in in the supplemental information but I forgot to do that this time but we'll send that out out yes what I would just add as they're going through the process development process the name changes as they form different llc's and and so we're that that's the only significant difference all right thank you Commissioner Michelle Burton mine is is really quick one I I I do remember you gave us a breakdown the other one thank you Claudia for getting that back to us if you could I only have two quick questions because I know y'all got other stuff since we're here you said it a second ago what how many units were going to be mckisic if you could just throw that number back out to me I'd appreciate it and then number two in the request for Southside phase three.

And four is a $8 million request but but the recommended is two and so I you know I I I leave that to the folks who know a lot more about this than me but I'm trying to figure out that kind of $5 million shortfall was did Private Industry come in was there another partner that came Okay so but we'll still be able to kind of sort of move forward with it and again I know we don't always have all the money I'm only asking because that's the biggest Gap that I see and I'm just curious about it I'm not saying I got $5 million in my purse if I did I wouldn't be up here no those are the excellent questions so just to go back to mckisic square that's 84 affordable units thank you sir 84 and then in terms of Southside of phase this is three and and four yes there's a gap and the Gap Still Remains but the part that we're talking about.

Here will be just a portion the city is going to work on the other part of that development to keep we have a plan to keep the project going this is will be helpful very extremely helpful but there will be the additional money that we'll put in Wonder and so I made that my last one was there a request that came into the city where the counter anybody I know that at fed place which is on fedell street they're trying to do Town Homes has anybody and this just a quick yes or no has there have they made a request is there any need for Gap funding and if you haven't then it's no so you know right across from Phoenix there's that whole development yeah it yeah it is DHA but they actually from my understanding the last time I listened in the developer was trying to do affordable did a request come in for any Gap funding for that at all so that that's from our standpoint this is is.

Not in the OPA conversation right okay cool beans I can call you later thank you Mr Johnson I'm just curious thank you but that's a great question this in Reginal remind me these projects were a part of an RFP that happened in was it December of 2021 time 21 time frame so that's the sort of the scope of projects yes ma'am thank you ma'am I'm sorry she said a long time ago okay great great question all right and then the the if there aren't any more questions on that I'll move to the next area is the infrastructure Investments water and sewer support we have over $100 million worth of funding gaps for water and silver projects in the original plan there was $4 million allocated to support Water and Sewer were projects we're proposing based on conversation and need an additional 6 million which would bring it to 10 million far from where we need to be and the 100 million is precon conversations about other places that may have some wider.

And suito needs as we look at the RTP area so an expansion growth that discussions that have and are underway there are many projects that could benefit from that and we can give more information about those later the last one is a infrastructure potential investment related to improvements from a technology perspective with the Department of Social Services they are about to as you know all institutions embark on Medicaid expansion and many organizations are trying to to get r and having the the optimal enterprise resource plan Erp system to support that would help both staff and then our customers which is always in the Forefront this is was not something we talked about we may also need to also use some local funding but is most appropriate is on State conf contract is something that the vendor would would be able to do that way so it does allow us to satisfy those requirements and in bid process Etc and so those were the other two areas and I'm I'm moving.

Forward but I probably should have had another another slide that went back so you can see them all and just want to get your thoughts on these and again these are based on our conversations we can come back back but is there agreement that we can come to the board on September 11th with the interlocal agreement a draft one for y'all to look at I only have one quick question yes ma'am and I I thought we were gonna be able to do this I wrote this down so I'm notic I see the two million the budget priority I'm not so concerned with so let's just do one of them a good example let's one that I think we can all most folks agree on planning infrastructure funds for a Down Town homeless Services Center right so I think the community business Community homeless soers everybody's pretty much in agreement and we said $2 million is the budget so we know it's going to cost more than $2 million yes we will right we absolutely.

So the RFP is for the planning so but that's not what the $2 million is well the the planning will the dollars we we will come back with the plan is exactly what we will do the RFP for because would not require that total amount however we we know this is a down payment into a larger investment that's all I needed you to say one of these that's not going to cover all that's needed however while we're in transition we need to plan for it and to also look at some infrastructure investment no me and you on the same page so just so I'm clear everything that is in the budget column is our down payment good faith that these are things that we want to move forward with in the middle car on budget yes ma'am everything is a down payment on we want to move forward with these and this is our good faith down payment because again the let's just say number two is gonna cost $100 million we we said all.

Right we don't put $2 million in the kitty for this we open up a r RFP they come back with a plan and then we move forward and figure out what that big amount is but that's what this is I know you GNA beat me because you asked me did I have any questions I'm just make I mean you and I both know it's not like this is not the amount right yes ma'am this one is probably one that we'll have to spend more time fleshing out what the RFP request will be right because the intent is not to come back with the cost of a building right so that this is but we wanted to make sure the the the dollar amount was something that the board could feel comfortable with and then we come back with more Clarity I just got a question well so I I think these are very good suggestions I would be interested in perhaps replacing one of them with expanding affordable housing for rental you know.

Prop for rent for R for renters just like we talked about this morning rental assistance EV eviction diversion you know what whatever you all thinks the whatever DSS comes back and and suggests to us but I feel like we need something for rental assistance somewhere somehow C could I throw something the only reason why I would disagree and it's not disagree I would love for us not to put it on Ara but put it in our budget and that would be fine too if that if that is helpful the only reason why we know this gonna run out our budget ain't gonna run out and so that's not me saying no I want to do the exact same thing but if we do that I want it to be where that money is always kind of sort of there so that's not me taking away if that is so if we don't get it here like I would still support it yeah out of fund balance as long as we get it.

From somewhere is yeah but you know even fund balance would be like a one- Time allocation yeah so I don't know so so is that one that just as we've come back with these that we can come back to the board with some options as we talked with DSS for ongoing funding to address eviction diversion challenges the community faces and not that direction to them was to come back with something so we need to find out yes ma'am we will work with them yeah so could I do one last followup so this one right here says expand housing repair programs for seniors added below the average medium income I I I do see that it says expand so that means on top of what we're already doing now correct me if I'm wrong but a couple of months ago didn't we get a grant from Commerce for senior repair I it just double check because let me dble trying to figure out where I can find yours if I.

Can I'm just throwing it out there if somebody could do the research that is not for a conversation now but just because if we already have money set aside and com and not that Commerce gives it to us every year but if it literally says housing repair programs for seniors and I I almost remember it was matter of fact it was last presentation that Drew cumins did so somebody just figure out what his last day was it it wasn't that much but love to know it was a we do receive a small amount of federal dollars and in the past through our We've also contributed dollar to some part but we'll we'll we'll look at that yeah let's not let's not mess with seniors if it you know since we because we're looking for now to see what we can do for seniors right I do have one other one other question the water and sore infrastructure so that won't have any to do with what we listen to on Thursday night any.

Of the indiv the persons around the ud Udo that might not have water and sewer that that is not on our current list of projects so we have for one that comes to mind quickly is Slater Road I know that's an area that we need additional Investments to meet demand residential as well as business and there are many other projects that are also and we'll send that list to you so that you can see specifically what they are okay as as shared this list this number was from CIP conversations a couple of years ago and we're about to refresh that so it's a bigger number and but there are some very times sensitive ones that are already up there that we're trying to to move forward with the board and so from an infrastructure perspective this these dollars would be most helpful thank you first of all I really appreciate the ongoing collaboration between the city in the county there are a number of of things that we've been doing together and so.

Even with the arpa money the digital Equity the investment and Cultural Arts together and affordable housing so I it's fantastic and of course Carver Creek as well so really appreciate the collab operation I I like everything in here except I do want to I I would like to get more information about the water and sewer infrastructure because that would bring us to about 10 million for that I'd also like to know more about whether any of the sewer and water projects have opportunities for for collaboration with the city and notice he just smiled and whether there's opportunity for participation of the private sector because I don't know if those of us who were sitting there listening to the conversation at the public hearing we we certainly heard the real estate community and the private sector saying you don't have to worry about these projects that say we need expanded sewer mortar because development will pay for that and I really wanted to remind people that well if that's true then why.

Are we having to spend all this money to upgrade our existing you know lift stations so that we can accommodate the needs of Industry and development so I think we need to have a re there needs to be more discussion about that and some real transparency around the reality of this issue well timing wise we will soon have those conversations with the board as we refresh our Capital Improvement plan again there are some that are very time sensitive and the question becomes do you use these infrastructure dollars or is it indirectly yeah pass along through higher rates to the public business Community or residential right and and then what's the benefit of it what's the return on that yes infrastructure dollars and we we do have that so we'll send that out to you as well and I do aind really important conversation because yes if we don't grow if we don't support more businesses then we're not going to have jobs we won't have the tax base so yes but it's still important is.

That a conversation that can have with a chamber to have a conversation with the business Community well I think first it may be of benefit for staff to present the data we a couple of years ago when we did this CIP refresh we share that fiscal impact and often times we do that on projects as we expand for economic development Etc so we can work to pull those things together so that we can remind you and also share the opportunities that are before us now as we think 30 years out right decisions we make now will have an impact years to come right so my other thing was I agree with Heidi I mean I'm sorry commissioner Carter that I would you know I'm I am concerned about having some money for rentals assistance eviction aversion wherever the best place for that to come and then the last thing is the one thing that I do see missing that I had have heard from directly about is the need for housing for our re-entry residents.

Who also many times are receiving substance use treatment we have a problem problem with not having enough housing for our re-entry residents I know for instance we had heard that there's a need for housing for women specifically and these are like housing in the community usually you know very much kind of family you know where you're people are living together in a housing supportive I know you could find out more from Roshana Parker at Justice Services but also when we had the harm the Town Hall related to how to use opioid spending we heard that there's a need for literally a need for housing and then at the harm reduction conference I went to a session where I heard the same thing so it doesn't have to be a lot of money it could be just half a million but some type of RFP related to providers who want to be able to make Capital investments in actually buying more homes where they can actually provide for single women with.

Children I don't I don't know I think talk to Talking to Rana we I will follow up on that one commissioner Wendy Jacobs there was the city of dorham also funded some dollars there was a problem with that yeah and so we we'll follow up it's a complex area at at times right but I'll come back with some recommendations you find out what went wrong with that because in that situation the money was allocated but it couldn't be used for Capital and what people need is actually the money to buy the capital sure so and so this may be an area we consider through local funding if there are some constraints but we'll follow back up and and the last thing is is related to the just want to clar verify that the conversation around our current homeless Services provider around with urban ministries is is that they are looking to not just the need for a day Center but it's also part of a bigger re re totally restructuring their shelter in terms.

Of non- congregant housing so I just want to make sure we do the RF for that that we are reflecting the the whole thing and and one more thing because Deborah is back here now that slide that you put out at the beginning going back to what we've already done the 40% yes can we please do a press release or something around it yes because it's fantastic and all of the work that you that you all have accomplished I really would love for that to be that that's perfect with everything that's on there now that yes we we can now tell our stories thank you I have I have one one other question Claudia about the cultural arts yes let I'm I'm about to go to those slides okay so the these are additional important highlights and there's also a companion Word document that gives more information about all of these to your point commissioner Howton if towards the bottom you talked about you were about to speak about the cultural.

Arts we're still in process the city is framing and finalizing it says November but we know it'll happen before then so the cultural arts and the digital Equity those interlocal agreements will be in process there getting finalized with the city of dman then we'll bring it to the to County I talked to the I'm on that committee so the chair asked if we would not not send that money out yet so I don't know if you had any conversation around well right we're still they're still fleshing out what the interlocal agreement will look like and so we've not sent anything out because we haven't I think what she was what they're getting at is that it's there's more money that's me needing to be added to that I didn't get all the details she just asked if we would not send that out yet so maybe just having some conversation to find out exactly what it is that they want yeah so it would be one it would be a total of two million.

And I believe the goal was to work the Arts Council is doing a part of it and then and heai Development Corporation is doing the other and so could you yes so I will I will follow up out to Ivon Coleman or or the chair of that committee and just find out exactly what it is that they're asking okay I'll follow up thank and so so that particular interlocal agreement as well as the digital Equity one we're still working with the city and they are taking lead with those conversations as as you know these require a lot of effort and and so we'll we're we are the partner but in some of this we're letting them lead and we join in as we need to I will not go through the rest of the items in great detail but the outstanding ARA Community grants as I shared earlier we plan to finalize all of those by October Broadband real Lin ments and I do have a slide but we'll not go into that in.

Great detail there is about 2.7 million that we still have allocated there we may not need that full amount and that is a place that we possibly can realign dollars there are two state grants that are still underway and we're hopeful we can U receive dollars for for our Broadband efforts there and earlier today you heard about additional efforts related to food food and security there there are two rfps that the board will hear about you heard about the double bucks program today from Mary and oxendine and then we will also present RFP responses from the effort to address Northeast Central Durham food desert challenges and opportunities there were two projects related to youth programming one at the the library and one for 4 that will give those def details to the board on the 25th some of those conversations happened last fiscal year the dco thrives project you've approved it there is an RFP component that will happen this month as well and then we talked about base allocations for.

Water sewer which is 4 million and then the the last component is to set aside that we had for administrative efforts with fund usage and management we have some positions already allocated against it am concerned about what the infrastructure do needed for Grant Administration till 2026 with our many partners that we're working with and and then compliance and so we'll flesh out what that needs to be we may are May not need all of it but we want to make sure that we're successful and so this these are efforts that already underway and just wanted to give you a status update we do have a few other items that we'll bring back to the board in our next meeting the two Broadband updates real quickly you know about the frontier dollar amount U our match was 20 234,000 and then Lumis our match was 50,000 and excited about 1,700 households and businesses that will have additional coverage in November of 2023 we're proposing to have a Community update on broadband we.

Did that probably about February of 2021 or so and want to come back to the community share more information also potentially have Frontier as well as Lumis to also give some updates as well and we can share about additional opportunities that are coming down the pipeline through the state this I'm so grateful we're partnering that local governments have the opportunity to partner with the state because navigating all of that is a a heavy lift so we are grateful for that next steps again you've shared some feedback already so I think we're we have some marching orders and I talked about the city one because that one was more time since itive and we'll come back in the October session so I think although we're at the final slide and I had a feeling that I would get feedback all along the way H we I think we have some clarity on how we're to proceed going forward okay think that's it thank you so much yeah thank you very much wonderful.

Wonderful job we appreciate thank you Reggie great great partnership love it awesome for awesome all right all right we are down to our next item Commissioners it's 23674 the board discussion and vote on the Durham Technical Community College Board trustees this is an item that was moved to the to this work session Al wanted to move it here for discussion so any discussion around it Stephen Valentine you have yeah Madam chair take this away my voice is so deeper while you all are either preparing your ballots or your thoughts I'll just say that we will in this is not normally how we take on an appointment except certain cases but we'll certainly render a vote or opinion if there are any procedural matters that need to happen we can do so but it will require a vote of suspension and then any motions that will come thereafter however you'd like to handle it and I'm glad to cor collect in any way that you all choose to any ballots that are related thank you okay.

Commissioner Michelle Burton yes maam Madam chair based on the extenuating circumstances and some of the movement within the legislature the current ballot that is in front of us does not give us an opportunity to do what is probably best for the board and for continuity of that other board so I would first like to make a motion to suspend the rules to make an amendment to this ballot so thank it's been moved and properly second to suspend the rules for a vote on the Durham check appointment all in favor I okay motion approval 4 to0 Madam chair I'd also like to make an additional motion if where if there's no discussion I'd like to make a motion to have the Durham Technical Community College bard of Trustees appointment that is before us today to be a two-year term instead of a four-year term second it's been moved improperly second for the appointment to be two years all in favor I I motion approved 4 to Z thank you all.

Right any comments from the Commissioners is there anything else we need to handle Madam Madam chair for yes we will need to name you need the Ballance i' I've checked it I just haven't given it to you there it is okay even though we voted on it you still need to do something the Stephen Valentine you all haven't named the person to be appointed and that's the reason we had the agenda item so you have you have that okay yeah so based on the board's vote the board has decided to appoint Dr Dr terara Fikes to the Durham Tech Board of Trustees and based on a prior vote I believe that term will be for four years I mean for two years years yes so the records properly reflected thank you very much Madam chair okay thank you all right anything else for the good of the board if not I will ask for a motion to adjourn close session close session okay we adjourn out of okay so we're going to go into Clos.

Session you know I'm moving here it's it's after 3 o'clock so rather than I excuse that motion take I take that one back so the board is requested to adjourn to close session to establish or to instruct public B 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 terms of a contract or proposed contract for the acquisition of real property by purchase option exchange or lease or the amount of compensation and other materials terms of of an employment contract or proposed Employment contract pursuit to gs43.

318.15 motion to go and close session second we are in close.

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Okay the Commissioners met in close session with staff give given Direction no AC needs to be taken and I will ask for a motion for adjourn so moved it's been moved and properly second all in favor I we are.

Adjourned.