All right, good morning everyone. >> Thank you all for being here. Uh many of you all know my bias. Um we're making the county look good by being in the building.
Um we have just about everyone here. Mayor Pro is on the way, but we're going to go ahead and get started. Um, and I'm going to call the role and pass this over to Madame Clerk afterward and then I'll give it to Director Ren. I'm [clears throat] here.
May pro Tim is on the way. Council member Nate Baker here. >> Council member Shanetta Burr is here. >> Council member Chelsea Cook here at the buffet.
Uh, council member Matt Kovac. >> Council member Crist. >> All right. We have our uh manager,
attorney, and clerk as well. >> All right. Just went. All right.
And at this time, I'll we'll get started. Uh, welcome to our budget retreat, uh, meeting number one, and I'll pass it over to Director Rearen. >> Uh, good morning, um, council. um and uh mayor.
Um my name is Christina Rearen and I'm with the budget and management services uh department. Um and I want to welcome you all to our first of our two uh budget retreats. So um on this Friday the 13th. So thank you all for um being here today.
I do want to let you all know just some housekeeping. Um there are bathrooms behind us in the hallway. So um if you need to um use the facilities um please feel free to do so. And there's also a water fountain there as well too.
Um, so, uh, I'm going to start us off before I introduce our manager, but, um, today, um, our real focus is on the strategic plan. Um, so part of what we'll be going through is a strategic plan refresh. And
as you all know, our strategic plan should drive our budget. So, we really want to kind of focus on those two things over the next two days. So this morning, um, I'm going to be having the may introducing the mayor, uh, sorry, the city manager who will be setting the tone for our, um, upcoming budget retreats. Um, and, uh, you know, we will start then with a, uh, financial update.
Um, and then talk about pay and compensation, which obviously is the largest part of our budget. Um, so we'll be hearing from our HR department. Um, in the middle of the day, we're going to talk a little bit about kind of the context that you all will be budgeting in. So, we have um an economic update that will be coming to you and then also some Durham specific data from our planning and development department.
And then in the afternoon, we're resident focused. So, we have three topics um that are focused around the refresh and the council priorities that you identified last fall. We have staff from our strategic planning group that will be talking about um the strategic plan refresh and some um information
they got about from residents about what um they thought about the priorities that you put out there. Uh we have our resident satisfaction survey which you um hear from every year. And then we also finally have um our community conversations um data which will be presented by our brand new um uh comm engagement and comm community partnership and engagement department. So, we are really excited to work with them today and they did a fabulous job on this project and I'm so excited for those staff to present to you.
Uh, the one thing I did want to mention is this year we're we're start we're trying something new. So, you'll notice in front of you you have a notebook. That notebook has both your agenda and kind of will have uh a little place for you to do notes on each of the um presentations you'll be seeing. So, there's really only two questions that we're asking you for each of the presentations.
how does this presentation relate to the strategic plan and how does it relate to the budget because we feel like that's what we want you to focus on today. So, we hope you find those useful. Um, and so they're sitting right in front of you.
The other thing I did want to mention is that um last night I did send an email um with council budget requests. Uh we are not planning to talk about them today. That will be on our second retreat. We were asking you to kind of prioritize them um before the next retreat because we will be having a conversation about those.
But I did want to kind of mention that in case you had questions for your colleagues or you had questions for me, you can catch me um about that process. So with that, I will turn it over to our city manager. You're live. >> Thank you.
>> Everybody hear me? Okay. >> Fantastic. Well, good morning.
>> Think you have a clicker? Yep. >> Morning, Mayor, Mayor Prom, members of council. Uh excited to be with you this morning and looking forward to kicking off our first of two days of budget retreats.
Uh want to start off by thanking our tremendous budget management services staff who have put together these two days of retreats. I want to thank a room full of uh staff who are responsible for helping develop this budget, implement this budget, and carry out the services of the city every day. Also want to thank our hosts here at Durham County for this uh great space and giving us a chance to uh meet in an environment where we can keep the staff a little bit closer to you. Miss Lake is a fabulous facility, but uh we do like the ability for folks to be closer and around you a little bit. So pleased to have accomplished that this year uh and again are thankful to our friends of the county for making that happen. Council, we meet today at a fairly unique intersection.
Over the last few years, the council has done a lot of heavy lifting with setting visions that that we as an organization need to follow. You've had a tremendous three-year strategic plan. Uh we've adopted and are implementing a historic bond referendums both Forever Home Durham and Connect Durham. And right now we are in the midst of a new strategic plan refresh.
So we are rec-alibrating our compass as we go. Usually the textbook approach, the one I like to uh recommend to you and the one you probably would like to follow is that we we get the plan all nice and settled first and then we work on implementing that plan. Um but you also know that Durham doesn't always follow the textbook approach. Uh and sometimes we are building the plane as we fly it. Uh, I think there's a little bit of that in this year's budget development process. Uh, and I think we don't have
to be ashamed of it. I think we can lean into it. My message today is that our budget process can't wait for all of our decisions to line up perfectly. We're called to follow our plans as we build new ones.
We need to honor our critical priorities and pressing needs while also setting our sights on future goals. We're not sitting on our hands while our next set of plans are finished. Instead, we are shifting gears and we are moving from plans to progress. So, I think the question for this fiscal year is not just what are we going to do, but how do we do it?
How do we get it all done and in what order? Do a little call back. Uh I stood before last year's city council this time last year. Uh and we talked a little bit about chess and checkers. We talked about the reality of making decisions that impact everyday needs and also the
importance of thinking strategically, thinking about how moves that we make today set up moves that we want to make in the future. In chess, the sequence of our moves matter. You have to clear the lane before you advance your pieces. And right now, as a city and you as a city council, we have a lot of pieces on the board that we want to move.
We can't move them all at once. Things like affordable housing, transit, public safety, infrastructure. If we try to move them all at the exact same time, we'll be gridlocked. If we try to launch every new idea while also trying to deliver on all of our existing priorities, we may fail at both or at least fall short of the goals that we want to meet as a community. So, we have to be strategic about when we move our pieces. So, if the first part of that goal setting and prioritization is
chess, then maybe the second part looks a little bit like this. It's the detailed work of tailoring the plans. It's one thing to put a sticky note on a wall in a planning process and say we're going to do public safety, but it's another thing to weave the police department, 911, community safety, the fire department, social services, and support services into a fabric that actually protects people. That's the work that this staff is doing every day.
It is precise and it takes time. But given that we are in a refresh year, we're essentially altering the suit while we are also still wearing it. We're adjusting the fit in real time based on what we hear from residents, what we hear from our council, what we hear from our community. When we look at our city, we see momentum. We see a skyline that's changing. We are experiencing an economy that is the envy of many across the
nation. But that growth in this current picture also creates friction. Friction, excuse me. We are facing two hard truths.
One that we've got rising costs. Just like every household in Durham, the city is paying more for just about everything from asphalt to chemicals to treat our water. The cost to continue is significantly higher. and those costs continue to go up.
We've also got a lot of existing commitments that we know it's important to keep. We've made big promises to transit riders, to bond voters, to our workforce, and these are the mortgage payments that we have to make before we can invest in new and expensive priorities. So, this leads us to a bit of an unavoidable conclusion. Our capacity is finite. Our sequencing matters. If we try to fund every legacy project and every new idea and every standalone
priority at once, we will dilute our impact. So with these constraints in mind and with our commitments, our current priorities and our hopes for the future, we have a delicate act of weaving that we need to execute. If this budget is to result in a beautiful tapestry, we need it to successfully combine and balance the work of the past, the work of the present, and leave space for future priorities that we have yet to set. Let's look a little bit at some of our historic priorities that we have not yet completed and that we're still working on.
Of course, we are all extremely proud of the great work done by Forever Home Durham. We're seeing so many rental units come online. We're seeing a number of the assistance programs come into existence, but we know there's still work here to do. Our home ownership
program goals still have room to grow and to see more achievement. Some of our final projects are still in development and moving forward. So, we have to leave room as we move forward to continue the important work and close out the great work of Forever Home Durham. We've made tremendous investments in community safety over the past few years and our strategic plan has emphasized that particularly in retention of uh public safety employees and recruitment of public safety employees and growing a significant number of a significant amount of capacity and new programs within the community safety department.
Um, with all of those things, uh, we have increased this the cost of our personnel. Uh, and those costs grow every single year. We will continue to need to meet those commitments uh, and honor those commitments to make sure that our commitment to community safety continues. And obviously, we are all extremely
proud of the 2024 Connect our own bond program. The planning phase for that is over. We are in the execution phase. This budget focuses on the cash flow and the project management capacity needed to deliver these bond projects on time and meet the expectations that our residents set when they approve those bonds.
Obviously, as we continue our efforts to complete yesterday's priorities, we have also aggressively moved into a space where we are looking at some standalone strategies that have presented themselves and put them on our radar screen uh over the last year. First, let's talk about homelessness. Obviously, we did not wait for the strategic plan to say to for the city's strategic plan refresh to say that we had a critical need to address and strategize our plan for addressing homelessness in Durham. We launched a deep dive process for this that
concluded in December and just recently presented recommendations to the joint city county DPS meeting just this Tuesday. This budget process is going to wrestle with significant questions about how to resource that effort moving forward. Having just announced a bold vision, now we have to figure out, can we pay for it? Violence reduction.
Our community suffered three homicides in the last 24 hours. Uh, in addition to those homicides, there was a 13-year-old who was the victim of a gunshot wound in the same 24-hour period. I don't need to tell anyone in this room that reduction of violent crime is a critical priority that our community faces, that we hear from all aspects of our community. uh and that any budget year and in particular perhaps this budget year we have to think about how we're going to address. In December, we announced a
partnership with the violence reduction center which is right now in the pre-launch stage. We have community meetings that have just been announced for this month and next month. Uh and we're planning a summit in May uh to really launch this work. But we have to figure out what space will this budget carve out to consider whatever first steps may be called for in that critical work.
Finally, I want to talk about economic development as a bit of a standalone priority. Obviously, it's a strategic priority as well, but you'll hear in this budget kickoff that our revenue growth is slowing and you also know that our residents are facing inflation just like we continue to face inflation. So, as we think about how we survive a budget process and how our community thrives, we hear the calls from council, we hear the calls from our community and indeed the calls from our staff to focus on economic development to raise not
just the living standards of our most vulnerable residents, but also to critically increase the revenues that come into the city to provide for and support all the services that we rely on and that our residents rely Of course, we've also got some really big factors uh weighing on this budget that reflect critical priorities uh but also uh will impact the other priorities that we pursue. Before we can pivot to new things, we have to consider some of the key demands that are weighing on this budget process. The first is our commitment to the Durham minimum livable wage. Our council has made a bold commitment to paying Durham employees a livable wage along with an impressive package of benefits. To fund the formula captured in our ordinance, this budget will be tasked with funding the largest percentage increase ever since the DMLW
ordinance was adopted. We're also proud to continue our go free transit commitment. Council told us last year to plan for a multi-year commitment to keep transit ridership free in Durham. But we all know that fair-free is not costf free.
As the fund that supports transit struggles under the weight of growing costs and constrained revenues, we must confront the challenges and the realities that are keeping that that are required to keep fair free promises intact. So funding big commitments means making adjustments elsewhere. Every dollar backfilling fair revenue is a dollar that we can't spend on a new program or a new commitment. This is the tradeoff that we will balance throughout this budget process as this work continues. The good news for council is that while these challenges are substantial, you have a number of key resources to
draw from to help you make these critical decisions. The first, as you know, is we are well underway with a strategic plan refresh. The council has given us and the community guidance on where our goals are and what the priorities in those goals should be. Staff and community feedback are now underway.
And as this plan begins to take shape and take form, we're working towards a new plan that will be adopted later this spring. That should give you pivotal feedback both now and through the coming months as we develop the budget about where our priorities are going. I'm also proud that you'll hear today about our resident satisfaction survey. Durham uses world-class survey methodology to get diverse, statistically valid feedback on what a broad cross-section of residents say about our services, priorities, and the quality of life in our community. And finally, I'm really excited for you to get the results of our first in-house
completely managed community conversations uh exercise as as has been run by our community partnerships and engagement department. Uh the lived experience of our neighbors was the focus of this deep dive engagement with residents and you'll hear their voice as our staff presents the findings from this series of on the ground neighborto neighbor conversations that took place throughout the fall across our city. You will get to synthesize this information in real time. We won't have a final report or a final binder.
you're getting it here uh so that you can use it in these conversations to help us set our priorities moving forward. So, this brings us to our work today. We need you council to bring your expertise. We need you to listen to the data.
We need you to download the feedback from your constituents and your residents. And then we need you to confirm your priorities. Are we prioritizing the right pieces on the chessboard? Does the woven tapestry of
legacy commitments and new strategies feel right to you? Once we leave here, this team will start the detailed tailoring to make all the numbers fit. So, here's the road map. I will present my proposed budget to you on May 18th.
We have uh engagement through public uh public hearings. Uh a lot of public information. We'll have work sessions in May to refine and tailor based on the strategy uh that that is developed here and over the next few months and our goal is to achieve budget adoption on June 15th. So to close, we are navigating a difficult transition and it requires a very steady hand. The demands on this budget are pretty infinite but as you know the resources are not. I'm confident with this staff, with this council, with a lot of the information we're going to present to you today
that this budget will come together and be a great product, a great tapestry that will help us tackle the crises of the current present priorities and take advantage of a lot of the opportunities that lie ahead for Durham. So, let's use this retreat to set the sequence. Let's move from plan to progress and let's start the work. Thank you all very much.
Good morning again. So I um I'm going to start us out with our financial projection and budget outlook as we often do um with our budget retreat. So um for today's presentation really the purpose of um what I want to want to share to you is really to give us um you as council uh a shared understanding of the city's current financial a fiscal
outlook um and identify some of the constraints and opportunities that you'll be thinking about before you set your priorities um at the end of the retreat as we're kind of work towards budget guidelines and kind of refining those council priorities for the strategic plan and also to kind of create a common frame framework that we can kind of talk about um throughout the retreat. So, for uh the presentation that I'm going to be providing you today, I have kind of a couple of different um areas that I'm going to be talking about. The first thing I want to talk about is the current budget that we're in and kind of give us a recap of what we did last year at this um or started working on at this retreat. Uh, I want to give us a current outlook of what we think is um going on as far as kind of where where we are at now as of December and then talk about what we where we think we're going to be going for um fiscal year 2027 and talk a little bit about the budget development process. So starting out with our current budget. Um so uh to say that last year's uh
rebound was historic is probably a little bit of an understatement. Um I have this slide is showing you the uh assessed values in the city of Durm for um property. So the blue this is over the last 20 years. So the blue bar is um real property tax which makes up about 90% of property tax that we collect or sorry that the county collects.
And uh during we've had a couple of revals over the last 20 years. As you can see from the slide, there was one in '09 um fiscal year 17, fiscal year 20 and fiscal year 2026, which was last year. Last year, assessed values uh rose by 72%. So to give you some perspective, in FY20, which was the most recent reval before this, uh the uh they went up by 21%. So clearly assessed value is not um the only part of the story because we do adjust the tax rate when we do have a reval. So uh we adjusted our tax rate
71 cents. And so uh when we uh have a rebal we kind of talk about revenue neutral a lot. That's we spent a lot of time last year. There were a few as a reminder there were a few places where we went above revenue neutral in that tax rate and that was for our general fund, our debt service fund and our solid waste fund.
And another thing that we did in the budget last year was we have a half penny for parks in our general fund that remained at a half penny. So what did that actually kind of mean? Um when we looked at kind of what happened with property tax between FY25 and FY26, we see that um the median home value went from $239 uh,000 to $415,000. Um our adopted tax rate, as I said, went
71. And it meant that someone who had a median uh a home valued at the median home value uh was now paying $1,814 which is about 386 >> city. >> That's this just the city shares of taxes. Correct.
Um >> I know Sean not to ask so many questions doing your presentation. " Are those outliers? Um >> so I mean median is only what not everybody is assessed the same you know everyone's value changes differently depending on where you were in the city so it's pos you know it this is just looking at the medium value so I can't speak to every single person's >> and and to uh council member R's point there is there is the county and the city's tax as well too >> um but also the other thing um that happened during that uh is the value of our penny so you often talk about the
value of your penny today, especially when we talk and look at things that we're going to be uh thinking about, um how much when you raise a penny do you get? 9. So, what uh what did we kind of accomplish in that budget? So, there was a lot that we um did with um our $722 million.
48 48 cents um above revenue neutral and an 8% increase over FY25. 5 million new request and that included things like the heart expansion, bus rapid transit, um additional festival funding, keeping our half penny a half penny, which meant parks and trails um were uh taken care of as well. And then also we had some more development review staff that were part of that. Uh we had 42 new positions in that budget. 45 structure adjustment
that we did for all staff throughout the city and that's on top of our pay for performance. We our DUR minimum livable wage um went up 12% and we're going to be talking a little bit more about what that what that looks like for next year's budget. And we also started paying debt service on our FY24 Connect Durham bond and we provided more additional capacity in our CIP to to do some of those big projects that are um important for the city. So looking at FY27, what are we seeing?
Um well one of the things that we are seeing when we look at um and we started to do our projections is kind of growth in personnel costs. So you as a council have made a decision over the last several years to invest heavily in employee pay and I think that that is something that um you know means that salaries are higher for employees and it it's it's it's yielded results. We have
um lower turnover, stronger hiring, fewer vacancies. 1% vacancy rate in the city overall. 1. And some and some of our funds are even stronger than that.
And also, um, the other thing that's happening is that personnel costs are inc are an increased percentage of the budget. And these are good things. It's just something that as we move forward, we need to take into account. kind of to put it in perspective.
This is the uh general fund budget over the last uh four years. So, as you can see, the general fund budget went up has grown by $71 million. And of that, 60 million is due to pay and benefit costs. So, some of that is new new positions that we've added to the budget, but some of it is also just our current pay plan and kind of investing in that as well, too. So that is a 30% increase and kind of looking at the actual cost
of personnel. So we talked about budget. This is the um actuals looking at um actual personnel costs from 2023 to 2026. We can see when you compare them to revenue growth, our personnel costs are growing faster than our revenue.
So um you know revenue are growing by 22% and uh pay and benefits are growing by 35%. So that means that personnel is taking up a larger portion because as obviously you know our budget is balanced so we our revenues are always equal to our expenses. Um it just means that our personnel is a bigger portion of that. 8%.
8%. And then when we look at um revenue, which is the other side of our budget, we see that we have slow and steady revenue growth. Um that is not alarming. It just means that things are
kind of back to normal. Um our property tax, if we just go with natural growth, is about 3%. sales tax is doing um slightly better than um we thought at the beginning of the year, which is a good thing, but that is a revenue source that is um unpredictable. As of Q2, we are predicting to be over budget by about $670,000.
Um and uh you know, this is something that we'll be watching throughout the year, but we are we're optimistic about it. Um and that's a good thing. 1 million next year and then it will be eliminated in FY28. So that is something that we will need to make up for in our general fund. And these are kind of the three I I point these out because these are our three largest um revenue sources. These three revenue sources make up about um
property tax is 54% of the general fund budget and sales and occupancy tax is another 33%. So it's you know over 80% [clears throat] of the budget. And then looking at property tax, I wanted to kind of show um what happens with property tax. Um you know oftentimes when we we have a budget um we uh adjust the property tax rate.
And so that um this this chart is really showing you what our property tax uh budget was those blue bars and then the gray line is what is actually happened. So you can see um in the in the legend on the to the to the right the the times or the years where we made changes to the property tax where we increased it. And then the orange bar is kind of the natural growth. So that is to showing you what would happen if we just relied on natural growth and had never raised the property tax. And that is often the way that we kind of um closed gaps in the budget. >> We
um could we add information? So FY22 would have been forever home Durham. So that would have been a bond and then FY26 percentage of that is bond. Uh, I really want it to be clarified for residents that some of these increases was because they voted for their taxes to go up and not a council decision.
Thank you. >> Yen, could you explain the the the natural growth against how you how you make that how you make that calculation because based on what you said, that's sort of just that's without tax increase. That's just the natural growth of revenue. >> That's right. >> Which would assume that there's a big jump in property tax base between 25 and 26. I know we I know we reval we did a reval >> the >> reval so that that 25 to 26 is looking at we just went revenue neutral >> re okay just a reval >> is some there is some natural growth that you get to capture in in when you do a revenue neutral calculation >> you're saying there is some growth you capture >> a revenue calculation yes so that's capturing some of that growth from the future years that's why it's kind of going up like that
>> okay >> um the next uh is sales tax which is the other big um revenue source. Just to kind of give you some historic perspective, uh this is showing you uh the actual um sales tax that we um have had over the last several years since the pandemic. And what you can see is the blue bars are budget. And so you will see that in during the pandemic, we did lower our budget for sales tax because of the unpredictability, but it didn't do what we expected it to do.
So it it it increased significantly. And so we saw increases in sales tax of 16 and 17% during those FY21 and 22 years. And so that was um another thing that has made sales tax a larger portion of the budget as well too. 7 million in FY20 is now $102 million in this year. So that is is a was a growing revenue source and I think we we expect it to be
as you can see from my projection for you know FY26 another 3% we expect it to grow it's just it it may be slowing in a way that is more back to normal. So the next thing um kind of setting the stage for our general fund multi-year. 8 million. So we know that there are a lot of things that departments either would like to be
doing and new things that they don't have in their current target budget. 7 million and we're going to be talking about that next year and sorry next um retreat and uh kind of asking you to prioritize those and talk about that. >> I just want to say that's a lot better than 50 million. >> Yeah.
>> And I think 40 something requests. So thank you council. >> Yes. I think council uh folks there were less we had less from from council this year. 6% and I think we have a presentations I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that because our HR department is going to talk and spend a lot of time with you talking about that. And then um as you all know as as we remind you every year general fund fund balance the practice is to use it only for one-time expenses.
I want to know how much >> I just want to know how much overlap there is. Like I would imagine some of the council priorities are also request from >> I'm sorry, council member. Uh make sure you turn that on. Um they can't hear us on the stream without it.
Yeah, overlap. I think the question was is there overlap in the council and then um the departmental requests and I do think there is. I do not have that answer for you today. We are we are evaluating that.
Um so we will be able to tell you next next time whether um you know something that you requested was also requested by a department. >> Thank you. Um,
I appreciate that you sent that table last night uh to council about our requests. If we could add like a column around that overlap so by the time we have that conversation, it'll help with our prioritization. I may not prioritize a thing because I know it's already in in a department's budget. So like fair free buses is just an example.
>> Thank you. >> Yep, we can definitely do that. So this is the um multi-year as we um have now projected it. Um I will I know it's very small.
So I will um also kind of just go through some of the assumptions that are used in it and then um we can also go back and take a look at it. But as I talked about the main driver here is um is personnel. So let me go through some of the revenue assumptions in there just to give you a sense of what's in there at this point. So currently we have a 3% growth in property tax and that is kind of that natural growth. So there is no
assumption that there is any um tax rate increase and um we are expecting a 3% increase in property tax going forward. sales tax. We have a 3% increase which um is is good is uh kind of uh our last year we did not do an increase because we um and so this year we are expecting to do 3% which is a little better than where we did last year which is about $3 million occupancy tax. Um as I said before there's a decrease for FY27 and then it um nothing in the future years and then charges for services.
This is an area where um you know right now we have it flat because we have not received information from our departments. We'll be getting that on Monday and evaluating kind of where we are with that. I will say as of Q2, this is a this is a growing area. 2 million over in charges for services. A lot of that is some fees that our planning and development department has um instituted
last year and those are doing really well. So, this may be an area where we could um where we might make some changes. >> Sure. >> Is that it?
Yep. Okay. Um so, so the property tax increase that's just sort of based on historic sort of patterns, right? Your 3%.
Yeah, it is based on historic patterns and I will um I have had a I had a conversation I reached out to the tax um the Durham tax office every year. I have reached out to them. They are it's early in their process and so I will be reaching out for them as well to see where they are with the collections and that helps me um to determine as well too if that will need. >> Right.
So once we've done the reval so like the the property tax base based on the valuations of of current parcels that's sort of fixed, right? So any any growth is really like new new property that comes online. Yeah. >> Do we have any like estimates of like
peer cities like are they growing about 3% as well like a Raleigh or a Richmond or whatever is one question because I think residents see like they see things going up all around they're like is our tax base not going up faster than 3%. So is there any again like comparison to peer cities or even you know with the planning department any sort of sense of like building permits or things coming online like how do and I guess some of this is the is on the county side they actually put things on the rolls but yeah >> it seems like again from the perspective a lot of residents they feel like things are growing rapidly 3% seems pretty modest for a fast growing city so I'm just kind of curious is there any way to kind of ground truth that 3%. Yeah, I mean I think that we are always looking at that and kind of um looking at, you know, information from our planning department and then also reaching out to Durham County. I will say if you go back to um this slide with property tax, we have been pretty close with our budget. You know what tells me that look, we are close in our budget projections to actuals. And so I mean I think there were a few years that um in FY21 and 22
where we were under budgeting uh property tax. So, in other words, if it was growing faster than I was budgeting, I would see I would see additional collections, but I'm I'm kind of in at budget, which which means that we we have been pretty accurate. >> Again, you're sort of following sort of historic patterns in Durham. >> Yeah.
just and this may be a question for uh director Young, but does could it mean also that we are seeing uh we're seeing applications but the uh developments are not materializing yet? They're slow to materialize and being approved. Could that potentially be an indicator of why we see only 3%. And an aggressive growth >> I don't know that I could speak to, you know, speak to that. um >> okay >> level of detail um on that and I don't know if I don't know if Sarah is prepared to come and speak to that.
>> Good morning everyone. Sarah Young with the planning and development department. Uh typically what happens in terms of development is you all may see a large development come through as it moves through the uh rest of the approval process and then the building process. you know, maybe a subdivision for like 300 units, but in any given year, you know, only 30 or 40 of them get built.
Like it usually takes anywhere from 5 to 10 years from the point where you approve a resoning to all the units in a development are built. And so that accounts a little bit for why the the growth is maybe not as aggressive as what you all may may think or what the residents may think is coming because it does come little by little. Um I think the other thing is we are seeing a bit of a um plateauing though it is not as aggressive in terms of the amount of developments and the size of them as what we had been seeing in previous years. Mayor does that answer your question? >> Thank you. It does.
>> It'd also be great because we don't you know the the process of sort of putting property on the rolls is on the county side, right? So we don't have direct visibility there. be great to have some um additional information about like so when you're when a project is under development I'm sure it must be taxed at some like in development rate or something right so so once like a downtown a big downtown property so while it's being built it must be taxed at some I'm guessing and then once it gets finalized then it must at some point go in the books as a completed project with some valuation but like is are there lags in that process it'd be great to know exactly what the process is for getting new developed property on the tax roles So, if you could check with the county, it'd be great to have that just sort of have an understanding of like what that process looks like. >> I can get some more information about that.
But that is that is one of the reasons why that conversation with our tax office is so important every year because they can be the ones that actually are seeing the data and can kind of give me a better insight into that. So, they do give me a projection every year that I can use. Um, and so I have not had
all that to say is I think I have not had that I reached out to them. They weren't ready to have that conversation. So that is something that we will be looking at as we move forward as well too. >> Just quickly, can um can you explain why the charges for services will not increase next year but then will in like why is there a delay in the increase?
>> Um I just I'm I'm anticipating that I have been very conservative for next year. Okay. So I'm just saying these these are this is a guess at the beginning and it's a projection. So I'm say I'm that's why I said conservative revenue estimates.
I did I did build in an increase in the future but >> okay >> I did not for the current year. So that's the caveat with this it is as well too. So um so moving on to the other part of our um equation which is our um expenses. I wanted to talk about pay and benefit assumptions. So [clears throat] for my pay and benefit assumptions, I am assuming that um the uh pay plan pay for performance plan that we currently have
at the city um that we would be honoring it in in this um upcoming year. So that to remind you is our step plan is a 5% for sworn and nonsworn and then an open range of four to 6%. And we're going to talk a little bit about that plan and and kind of some of the decisions you've made is when the HR department um comes up as well too. So they'll give you a little bit more context on that health insurance.
So we have um last year and um we had several years where we had no increase in health insurance or a modest increase. We are seeing that increase um grow and so for next year um we are seeing a 10% increase in health insurance. So that is that is something that is and that is the increase that employer pays for city employees. that is not the um portion that employees pay. Uh dental insurance a 3% increase for FY27 and 3% in the outy years. 401k contributions I am um using an assumption that they would stay flat at 5% uh which is what they
currently are. And our local government retirement um that is something that we do not have any control over that is set by the state. And so I am projecting at this point a a 75 increase um over um FY uh 26 which >> a question on the health insurance. You said the 10% is just what the employer will pay >> just what the city pays.
>> What the city pays. Are we also making assumptions about increases that employees will pay as well which kind of total the you know a combined increase in health insurance costs that the city is seeing. >> Yeah, it is early in the process so we have not made decisions about that yet. Um and that that's something that the HR department will do as part of the budget process. This is just kind of where we think health insurance is going overall for us. >> Thank you city.
Okay. Okay. Um other expenditure assumptions. Um just a reminder that our general services um department has a maintenance replacement fund um that they have in the general fund.
2 million which is the same as it was. I would say that the department um would probably say that that is that they they probably have more me needs for maintenance than that fund um can can really um provide for, but that is what we are assuming. Um and also that streets would be at 11 million in the general fund um which is the same as FY27. And just as a reminder that also we add four million from our um debt service fund.
And then um and that also with bond funding that would be 25 million. And I I think that there's a mistake on that slide. I apologize. I think it says continue to be paid with fund balance.
We I am not expecting it to be paid with fund balance. So I apologize for that. I will get that corrected.
So can you just the 25 million is comes from where? Just to make sure I'm clear with this. >> So we have a portion that's coming from the the bond the connect bond, right? And then uh four million that comes from our debt service fund that's paid out of that fund and then 11 million that's paid out of the general fund.
>> Okay. Okay. Does that mean? So, >> so um the next portion that um assumption that I have is that I am assuming that there is no change in the tax rate.
And so this is just a reminder of where the tax rate is currently allocated to. We break up our tax rate. So the largest portion goes to our general fund. Um and this year in you'll notice that we have pulled out um our housing debt and so I'll be talking about debt as both the debt service fund and then our EG we have now an EGI fund and a housing debt service fund. 77 and then um I'll then talk about our dedicated housing just the operating
28 cents and then the other solid waste and transit are the other portions. the debt service fund. Yes, the debts. 48 cents above revenue neutral.
Almost two cents of that went to pay for that debt service in that that bond project. So then the next thing that um we usually talk about is fund balance and fund balance is looking um strong in next year. 7% of fund balance above um above minimum. And so uh this slide is just showing you where we think we will end FY26 with our fund balance. 12% is kind of the um state recommended. We have a a a council policy above that 12%
7. 7 which means we would be um a a little bit over 18% and um if you remember from past conversations with our finance department they like to be about 20%. So we you know we don't receive our property tax which is our largest revenue source until January. So having um funding available um is important to keep um to keep a healthy fund balance for that.
>> Christina, could you provide us with a historic because I know that this is a lower percent above target percentage than I've seen. Uh I know last year was probably the first time that that really went down just for um >> I can. >> Okay. Thank you.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, this is uh this is a little bit lower because we did we did and I can also provide some of the things that we spent fund balance on as well too. So
>> So what is not included in in the projection? I think the things that are not included um that I want to remind council of is new budget requests. So um including any of the strategic plan um requests or priorities that we come forward with out of the retreat. Um new CIP requests.
So, we're going to have a presentation on our capital improvement plan um next budget retreat and then council budget requests and um also as we will be talking about in our next presentation, the Durham minimum livable wage increases. I've only accounted for our pay for performance but not um any increases to the Durham minimum livable wage. So, moving forward with the budget development Okay, >> just to make sure I'm super clear. Thank you.
7 million gap and then the items you just listed are not included when we're projecting that gap. >> Yes. So this is just the gap um with
those kind of conservative revenue estimates and then the um estimates for just what kind of is essentially the cost of doing business kind of the kind the stuff that we are currently doing and then anything anything new requests that were submitted by departments or by council um have not been included in that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And just be clear so this is the general fund right?
This is not the full budget. >> This is not the full budget just the general fund. >> Right. So then so then for the total preparations that go up from 326 uh million to 337 million.
So so what's if it's not including the dur minimum wage or other increases that's is that just sort of that the essentially the personnel increases you mentioned >> that is just the personnel increases from um that's not including new positions. It's just that >> not new positions or living wage just the >> living wage. It is just the the cost of doing the pay plan. >> So why isn't the living wage in there? Um I think that there are decisions that council you know we options that we would want to um discuss with council which is going to be part of the next
>> because it is policy right? >> It is a policy. Yes. So we do anticipate that there will be something that will have to be done but kind of how we how we do that is something that we would like council input on.
>> Could you also provide us information? So this year's at 9 million basically but historically where we are because there's always a gap. So, I want folks to understand because I remember my very first budget, I was in a panic and it's actually not um psychologically helpful because if we come in thinking, oh, there's already there's not a $9 million gap. We don't have all of the there might be, but we don't have actually all of the information to say that there is or isn't. And so I think to show us that same trend, I know that our budgeting um has gotten a lot more accurate to this point in in historically than from like 2018, but I think it is helpful for council to see that there is always a trend that we are in the red right now. Um and it um so that we're not looking at these lists and saying, "Oh, we can't even meet our obligations on paying our
our employees what we're supposed to be paying. " Right? So that I think it's helpful for for that psychology piece of it. Thank you.
>> Okay. Yeah. 5 million. Um but uh you know so I think sometimes when we make you know the the decisions we make as we move forward um we obviously have to get to a balanced budget but um yes I we will see exactly what the gap is once we have better information but um there is a gap at this point but yes any other questions before I move Okay.
So, um I think we've talked a little or the manager talked a little bit about what your budget development process is going to look like, but um we're starting here with the retreats. We do have a new a public hearing coming up in March. Um, and then we have our proposed budget in May, council work
sessions where you'll come back and get to work on the city manager's budget that he presents to you. We'll have um two days and um an optional third to talk about um those that proposed budget. Then we have a public hearing at the beginning of June and then we will adopt the budget on June 15th. So, as I said, department budgets are due on Monday, which is where we'll have um more information.
That is when our staff will really start to get to work on um kind of seeing exactly what the gap is in the general fund and then also kind of working on um solutions to close it. And then we also have our um new funding requests. And um just a reminder that our new funding requests and budget decisions, we will be using the strategic plan priorities that you identify as part of um you know that process that the manager is going to go through. And also um we have um our capital projects uh which we will also
be um prioritizing. So, uh, just as a summary, um, I we you will be getting a Q2 report in your next, um, budget package, which will give you some more information about where we are in the, um, where we are currently in our budget. But currently, we are expecting that um, the revenue to meet revenue in most areas. Um, like I said, we are expecting to go over budget or expecting to collect more sales tax revenue than we had budgeted.
Um, which is good news. Uh the only area I think in revenues where we are slightly under is our POW bill and that was about um $117,000 and that's that's something that is determined by the state. Um but all the other revenues we are expecting to come in um either at budget or um in the case of sales tax and charges for services over budget. We're also projecting that all departments um in the general fund will end the year um within budget and some under budget. And so um that is also
good news. Um we have revenues um as I said on in the multi-year are um our projections at this point and we'll be getting information from our departments which will help us determine some of those charges for services that I talked about and um also the information that we get on Monday from departments will also help us determine our expenditures as well too. 7 million gap and then I'll take any questions that anyone has. >> Thank you.
A couple additional questions. So, first of all, you know, I know we're all aware about the occupancy tax uh decreasing and then going away. Are we expecting also a decrease in expenses as we anticipate the recipient
of those funds, Discover Durham, to um replace the city's um spending in certain areas? >> Um well, that is a it is a general fund revenue. Um so it is it is kind of a it is revenue that is received in the general fund for the programs that we operate there. So you know it is a revenue source that we will have to make up in that fund either through um you know >> uh another source or we would have to do cuts on the expenditure side.
Those are the only >> But are there areas we won't be spending on um because the recipient of those funds will be >> Oh I see. You're saying because Durham Next is is is >> Durham Next. Thank you. Yes, >> I see what I >> they're receiving the funds.
So, are they going to be then >> you're trying to I apologize. >> No, that's okay. Sorry if I wasn't clear. [laughter] Yeah.
Yeah. So, conceivably they will be spending on things that the city will no longer need to spend on because they are receiving those funds. >> Um I I believe that some Yeah, the mayor
manager Ferguson may want to speak to that. >> I would say the answer to that is no. that the the [clears throat] funds that we were receiving were treated as a general revenue source in the general fund, so used to support the variety of services that the city conducts. Uh while it is certainly possible that Durham Next will be pursuing projects that may have competed for new dollars um from the city, those so [clears throat] some possible future offset, yes.
But as far as them providing some level of service that the city is currently providing with those funds. Now the city could choose. So for let let me take an example. Durham next has a project right now where they are looking at festival ecosystems and events. The city does have money that it contributes uh through the uh through general services through the uh cultural
services function to events. " But right now, uh, there is not a discussion about those funds supplanting an expenditure that the city currently has. >> No, Discover Durham has always been funded by a portion of the occupancy tax. Is that correct?
a portion of the occupancy tax has always gone so we split it with the county the city and then dur um Durax and then there's also a portion goes [clears throat] towards um debt service on the DPAC so those were the kind of and areas where um occupancy tax went to >> and and I just because I I played a huge advocacy role in this just to be more explicit the money had no real intention other than just adding to whatever we had going on um the idea about Durham Next was to establish a body that would focus on more economic activity. We didn't have that before. So now that the
occupancy tax unlike other cities, I was going to the general fund. Now we have more intention behind it. DAC is one of those things that the uh that that that small portion goes to, but the other of the occupy tax can be more intentional. So no, it may not be a direct translation of, you know, taking on expenditures that we normally would.
we just never did anything. So now Durham Next can do those things. It may not be a direct translation, but it will be something a lot more than what we were before. >> Then a a question on the personnel costs.
You talked about personnel growing faster than revenue. Um 22% growth rate. I'm just curious that growth and also the percent it represents in the budget, you know, now or in the future. be interesting to see how that compares to peer cities. Um just to help us think about um dimensionalizing that you know that that the you know that percentage of our budget that goes to personnel.
>> Any other questions? Okay. Um well I will turn it over to um Jim Ryver who is the assistant director of our HR department. Um Jim is going to talk to you about um compensation and benefits.
Okay. All right. Can everybody hear me? Okay.
Great. All right. Um, well, good morning, Mr. Mayor, Madame Mayor Prom, members of council.
I'm Jim Ryan Gruber, one of the assistant directors in the human resources department, and like Christina said, I'm here to talk with you today about >> Sorry to interrupt. I I will ask you to speak up a little bit. Move the mic closer. >> Sure.
>> I know they can hear online, but we can't really hear. >> Gotcha. I'll try and talk louder at least. >> Okay.
I'll lean this way. Yes. Let's see.
All right. So, um um I want to um start by just u clarifying a couple of terminology uh phrases that I'll use throughout the presentation here. I'm going to be talk talking about market adjustments and structure adjustments. Those are interchangeable.
Um that's when we're talking about actually changing the pay plans themselves. And then I'll also talk about um merit or pay for performance increases and that's moving the employee pay within the the existing structure. So um just so folks don't get don't get confused about that. I also don't want to folks to get hung up on there are um rounding within the presentation. So if you're a big numbers person and you are trying to play along at home um there are rounding um rounding of numbers in here. So, so you'll um you'll you'll see that as we go through, but this morning we're going to start by
talking about pay and benefits. It's going to be mostly about pay and real heavy on the the Durham minimum livable wage. Um so, we'll start with a quick overview of some of the immediate plans. We'll go through a summary of the city's pay plans um and some recent history with with pay issue and changes.
Then we'll move on to discussing the Durham minimum livable wage or I'll call it the DMLW throughout the presentation and how that impacts the uh the coming budget. To wrap up the pay section, um we were asked by council last year and really the year before too um to come back early this year. So here we are uh with a scenario that would that would bring all part-time employees up to the DMLW. So we're going to run through a scenario that that would do that. And then finally, we do have a short but um but good benefits update and uh then we'll take any any questions or feel free to ask questions along the way.
All right, so I want to go ahead and put this out there early, set some context and and expectations. Um it is time for us to do another full comp and class study. Believe it or not, for those who were are here before, it seems like it just happened, but it is time to do it again. Um the most recent one was completed and implemented July 1st, 2024.
Um and then the so the proposed one would be conducted over the course of the next year with a plan to to become effective July 1st, 2027. So we're working on the RFP now. Um we do plan to make this a more comprehensive one than the previous one as well. Most notably including part-time plans in the study which which we did not do last time.
Um, so th that's that's overdue. And also I just want to note in the overview as you'll see that the the DMLW will continue to have significant budget impacts moving forward as as Christina >> Mr. Mr. Ryan Guber can you tell me um go back to this slide. So um when you do
one of those competent class studies like what what do we what's the cost of that? >> So it depends on on the scope of it obviously >> and I know we expand the scope which I appreciate including part-time as well as full-time. >> Right. Right.
So that the previous one we did was around 170,000 work, but we had uh when we put out the RFP proposals came in between about a h 100,000 and 700,000. So it, you know, um different companies do things different ways. And >> so what did we pay last time? >> We paid about 170,000.
>> Okay. So we're gonna look it's going to be a little more than that. It's it's we're planning for it to be in the probably 3 to 400,000 range because again it has been a few years since we did it. So, you know, costs go up and then also um increasing the scope.
>> But you're saying it would be almost like double in price from from three years ago. >> Yeah. I mean, again, that's a that's just an estimate. We haven't put out the RFP and gotten proposals back yet. So,
uh, that's that's just kind of a rough guess. And that's about what we, um, well, so last time we were doing this, we we we planned for something around there. We're kind of pleasantly surprised at the the the value we got with the proposal that we that we ended up accepting. Um, but, um, we we'll see.
We'll see with the RFP this time. >> I mean, in these RFPs, do you sort of is it up to like a cap or something? Is there do you or is it just simply what people say it's going to cost them and we have some internal mechanism to say like hey we're going to pay up to something because it seems like if we paid 170 last time it's going to cost 400,000 seems like a huge jump. So >> well again we don't we don't really know what it's cost what it's going to cost until we until we see the proposals we can you know that that is one of the questions that usually gets asked at a pre-bid for example what's your budget for this? So, um, yeah, this this would be this would be an item that would be funded in the coming budget. So, it's a decision that
would have to be made about what what level of funding that we want to >> in the in the budget we're talking in the 27 budget. >> Correct. >> Yeah. I mean, do we typically put a Yeah.
a budget for that or >> I'll just say whenever we go out it's not unusual when we go out for professional services uh to see a wide range of responses uh based on how individual consultants scope their work and propose their work. Uh that's always something that we both compare to what the market is is charging at the time. We compare the proposals to each other. uh we vet the quality and qualifications of them and we can negotiate those scopes.
So what Jim is telling you is is correct that with these can start you you ask the range and the range can be all over the place. Um but a lot of factors influence where we end up before we recommend going with any particular vendor at any particular price point. And so we we've got pretty rigorous process around that to make sure we're
getting the best value but also the best product for the city. see that process. >> Depending. Yeah.
But I mean, as with all contracts, all of that information is available to the council if the council's interested in seeing it, we can bring it to the council for your review if if that's your request. >> Thank you. I just want to say I really appreciate like I understand it may cost us, but like there's there's been open questions on some of these pieces for years. Yes.
policies, procedures, incentives in comparison to other cities. And so, in my mind, we really need that information. And I think it's worth the money to be able to look at other peer cities and have a real clear understanding as a council that what yes, we have a Durham livable wage, but we also have ways that we can compensate on the benefit side that maybe other communities aren't doing or that we realize we need to do to be competitive, right? And so I understand this is going to cost some money, but right now we're
operating with half the information. We don't know what all the incentives are out there that other cities and municipalities or counties are doing, right? Um and so if we're going to take recruitment and retention seriously, um you you kind of have to look at the full package. So I I I'm thankful that this is on here.
I know that we have a lot of um competing interests this year, but um it's going to be an issue that just keeps coming up and coming up and coming up if we don't solve for it. All right. All right. So, um let's take a quick look at the city's four full-time pay plans. Um those of you who have been here probably recognize these well, but I do recognize we have a couple of new council members. So, u we'll do a real quick uh look at these and we also included an appendix at the at the end of this presentation that you could refer to as well as links um to these these items on the city's internet site.
Um so the general step plan has the most employees associated with it over 1100 positions and these are mostly your hourly employees. They include our core frontline service providers and and some key support uh positions. Um the open range plan has over 700 positions on it and most but not all are salaried employees. Um so they include technical personnel, analysts, managers and executives kind of right up to the u right up to the deputy city managers level. And then we have the fire u plan and the police plan and those are specifically for sworn personnel in those departments. Um and um all city positions are are classified and organized into into pay bands on those on those uh pay plans for full-time employees.
All right. So let's start with a little recent history. Um, tomorrow's Valentine's Day, as you all hopefully know, and I'd like to first thank this council for showing so much love for our employees. It's it's it's not gone unnoticed.
Um, hey, showing love to the HR department as well, making our jobs easier. Budget, I'm sorry, but this it's great for us. So, um, I'm going to remind you just how much love you've shown over over these next few slides. And as I mentioned, we had the most recent class and comp study completed and implemented two years ago.
Um, employees saw some of the most significant market increases ever. And I'll briefly show those on on some subsequent slides. 58 an hour. And that's where the step plan began uh when it was implemented that year. Some other highlights from that implementation included increasing the general uh step plan spread between
steps from 4% to 5%. So that brought the step plans merit increases in line with the police and fire pay plans. Um as a result of doing that the range of the plan increased quite significantly. And what we found with the study is that um steps 11 and 12 because of that expansion in the range ended up well over the the market max that that was found by the study.
So uh therefore those steps were were frozen to new entrance and to further market adjustments after the implementation was was made for that that year. Um, executive increases for market adjustments were capped at 5%, you all might remember. And we also standardized police and fire merit dates to be consistent with the rest of the city. And that's that's made a big difference administratively with us and I think um employees um understand things a lot a lot better uh because of that change. So it's been impactful definitely internally. So we also took a minor adjustment back
to council. you might remember in February 2025 and that was to adjust the police and fire plans again um and that because we had to address some bypassing issues that were created by the the first adjustments that were that were adopted in July. So that was a lot done that year. So that resulted in over $28 million of love shown uh just for the market adjustments to the pay structures alone. uh significant amount and then throw in another 7 million plus for merit increases in the general fund and you ended up with employees really feeling the love at that point. 6% and
21% for market adjustments. So depending on where they lived on the step plan and most then also moved a step after that for pay for performance. So got that additional 5% merit increase. So here's what might have here's what that might have looked like for an employee.
Uh we'll take a senior solid waste equipment operator for instance. So these are the folks who drive the automated collection vehicles um and other specialized solid waste equipment. So, a worker who is who was on step four of that pay grade ended up receiving over a 16 and a half% increase by the time that the market and merit adjustments were were completed. So, you can see that was a significant increase for um somebody on on one of the relatively lower steps of the of the step plan. Um,
6% and those eligible for merit received an additional 4 to 6% increase of course based on their evaluation. And then as I mentioned before, executive level employees received a 5% increase for market adjustments and were also eligible for the four to 6% merit increases. 5% for corporals. And again, eligible employees there received a 5% merit increase on top of that. So very very substantial increases in the police department. 65% for
firefighters. Uh you will see there were seven employees at the top two pay grades who didn't receive market adjustments based on the study findings. But um everybody again who was eligible for merit uh got the 5% merit increase. All right.
So then last year was was certainly not as dramatic as two years ago, but council did invest over $4 million in market adjustments. 6 million in employee pay. So that's what Christine was talking about earlier. Um the DMLW went up 2190 as you all probably remember and some of the steps on the general step plan had to be inactivated that were that were below the new DMLW. Um affected employees who on those steps
that got deactivated were moved to the first active step in their pay grade. And uh then council also decided to increase merit for part-time employees. it had been 3% they you guys moved that to 5% which which was a a nice boost for them. So this that brings us up to date basically.
Um any questions on the past couple of years of of actions again I you know really it council showed a big commitment to to employee pay and it it showed I think you know it doesn't you guys should be reminded of of all that you've done for employees and you know we really appreciate it. Um, Mr. Rang Group, I recall from M. Reven's presentation said that the the vacancies were like 17% last year and have have gone down to 16%. >> Is that right? >> They were 17 and they've gone down 16
citywide. >> Citywide, right? Yeah. So, were we expecting to see a bigger boost there?
It seems like 1%'s good, but it like I was expecting maybe more. So, can you comment on that? [clears throat] >> Uh, I think so. Where you see those >> um >> I do want to >> Yeah.
>> want to recognize too. >> [clears throat] >> I do want to recognize too that we've been adding positions as well too. So, you know, it's in including vacancy rate, you also have new positions that come on that need to be filled as well too. So, that there's we do have more people in the city than we ever have as well too. So, that's that's very exciting news.
>> Right. I I will say generally we've been very pleased with the results. Um and Christina is right when you add you know dozens of new employees in a department it takes them a while to fill and uh um of course we have the departments that have the traditional um uh vacancy issues that they still have them but they're getting better. So um I think you know any progress we make is good progress.
And do we have a way of calculating the savings from reduced turnover? Because there is a cost to having to continue to go out and recruit uh and bring in new folks. Do we look at that as well? >> We don't really have a good way to do that right now.
That is something we could look at. >> Not a request, just a just a question. Thanks. All right. So, now we're going to review
everybody's favorite ordinance, the DMLW ordinance, and we're going to look at where this lands us for the coming budget year. Um, show the effects on our pay plans. So, [snorts] this is the ordinance. And note that it specifies the affected employees are those uh all full-time city employees.
and then part-time city employees performing work that is commensurate with that of full-time classification. So, what does that mean? Um, an example of one of these commensurate positions might be a maintenance assistant. So, they're performing the same types of work as the uh full-time maintenance assistants are, but just working fewer hours.
Um, a non-commensurate position might be a gatekeeper in parks and wreck. So that's um somebody who is going to go in the morning, open the park gate, check things, make sure stuff's okay, come in the evening, close the gate, make sure make sure the parking lot's fine and all that. Um so there's no full-time position obviously that that's doing
just that. Um so that that's a non-commensurate position there. And then the ordinance uh refers to a separate section of the code detailing how the calculation is actually done. So that's what this is.
35 per hour. So changed quite a bit uh over over the course of time. Uh the plan at that time was to ramp up to $15 per hour over the course of three years. And then after that, the base rate would be $15 an hour, but would be calculated.
So any um if it was higher than $15 an hour, that number would be used instead of 15. I don't think we'll ever see $15 an hour again, but that's that was set as the base on on this. Um and then I'll walk through the act an actual calculation on
the next slide here. All right. So, uh, we've linked to the data source here at the top for this for those who again want to play along at home. Um, but the calculation starts with the HUD fair market rent for our metro area for a one-bedroom apartment.
And you can see that this has increased quite substantially over the past few years. Um, the most recent four years are then averaged and then divided by 30%. So the idea here is to find the monthly salary that's necessary to keep average housing costs at no more than 30% of someone's salary. So then you um in the um bottom chart there uh it shows the fiscal years that are that these are relevant to and you arrive at the annual amount obviously by multiplying the monthly amount by 12 months and that's the minimum livable wage that is used uh for sworn police and fire. That's
defined in the ordinance itself. That's that's the uh annual amount used for police and fire. And then to get to the hourly rate for a general employee, you divide that by 280 hours, which is the number of hours those employees are scheduled to work annually. So then you arrive at the hourly rate that we that we commonly refer to as the DMLW.
Um so you see big increase as Christina mentioned 2190 to 259 this year. 14 over 14% increase, very significant um [snorts] and very impactful to the budget. And here's the progression of the DMLW over the past several years. So you can see that for the the kind of first five years there, the increases were roughly between four and 6%. Um once those kind of lowerc cost years rolled off of the four-year average, we saw that we saw this rapid acceleration
6% for the coming budget year and over 9% projected for next year based on HUD's preliminary number for uh for next year. Um and note that that HUD's preliminary number for that top line actually decreased for next year. So it could have been could have been more of a shock. Um we do see that sometimes it's not it hasn't been common in the history but um once in a while the when we saw that rapid acceleration so it wasn't a huge surprise that the uh that fair market rent value went down. 3% increase since FY20. So, needless to say, that puts significant pressure on budgets and and pay structures.
So, that was the DMLW lesson. You're welcome. Um, and let's move on to some discussions about cost and effects. And this is a general reference for context.
Yeah. >> So, did you say that for 2020, for the current year, the HUD fair market rent is actually going down a little bit from the previous year? >> Correct. >> Interesting.
>> Yeah. >> Okay. Thanks. >> All right.
So, um, this is, uh, just for reference, for context here, and this isn't exact, but for estimating purposes, basically every 1% change we make to the full-time pay structures results in about $3 million in cost. So, just kind of keep that in mind as as decisions need to get made here. Um, this doesn't factor anything other than increasing the pay within within the ranges. So it doesn't involve moving people from steps to the DMLW and all that.
All right. So here are the some of some of the challenges that this this rapidly rising DMLW presents. And I note here that it primarily affects the general step plan and the fire plan. Uh in the interest of full disclosure, it technically affects police recruits as well, but uh they're going to be $66 below the new DMLW if no changes are made.
So that's easily fixed one way or another. Um but I do do want to note that. Um [clears throat] so let's say we wanted to keep the current pay plans totally intact, no further compression. 6% 6% increase to the DMLW through throughout the pay plans and you end up with a total cost of about $44 million.
So that's way more than we put in when we did the market study a couple years ago. That's not um I don't think Christina would be very pleased with with having to figure that out. So employees would love it, but uh
not not really feasible and it's not and it's not in line with with how we've seen markets moving either the past uh the past couple of years. So what we'd end up with with a lot of over way over market pay. Um so we're left making decisions about how much to move the structures uh deactivating steps compressing people unfortunately. 5 million to um, take care of those affected employees and get them get them up to DMLW on on proper steps.
So, it's pretty safe to say the inflation is causing a lot more damage than we can keep up with. >> I mean, it's >> just in general. >> Yeah. I mean, the the DMLW
>> I mean, well, I'm speaking inflation overall in the general sense, but also everything else is contributing to it. Um, yeah, I'm just thinking about what what our capacity is and then looking at, you know, trying to keep up with what we've put in place as an ordinance versus costs that we don't have any control over and how we are able to like try and keep up with that is just seeming to pose itself difficult. >> I'm just looking at all contributing factors. Okay.
No, it's a it's a good point and and there were these have been extraordinary years as we know with with the postcoid inflation uh housing cost and all that. It's it's been it's been uh dramatic. Um this is part of the reason that we do the four-year average too because these things, believe it or not, this is smoothed out. uh you know, if we were
following the roller coaster of of doing this on a two or even a three-year average, it's it's uh it gets it gets a little hairy and crazy and um so you know this this is where we are right now, but it's it's challenging obviously. All right. Um so let's see. Yep.
did that. Okay. So, here's what this looks like for the general step plan. Those three darkly shaded steps that are um in the upper left are already deactivated as I mentioned earlier.
So, they they were the ones that were below 2190 this year. Um the 10 yellow highlighted steps are below the projected or the the new 259 DMLW. And then we have a couple of blue highlighted steps in there that are actually above DMLW, but we would want to deactivate them because they start at a lower at a lower rate than the
previous pay grade starting rate. So that wouldn't make much sense to to keep in like that. Um, so you can see we're we're getting to a point where a significant portion of the of the general step plan is no longer active. So we're going to this is we're going to look at this chart again.
Um, but you can get an idea of how dramatic this this uh DMLW increase is to our step plan. And here's the employee census for these steps. Um, the data is a couple months old, but uh good good representation of a snapshot in time. Um, as you can see, 204 employees are on steps that would be deactivated.
So that's that's significant. The bottom chart shows the compression that is created by moving those employees to active steps. So um at that point we have close to 18% of the the pay plan with unusable steps. Um step one up there you see has three three people in it in the in the
aftermath. So that's uh step one's basically you know irrelevant at that point. Um but you see the the stacking of employees in some of these u sort of lower to mid-range steps. >> That also means see before I think you said you you deactivated steps 11 and 12.
Are they being now reactivated? >> That is a decision that that would that would need to be made. the with the market adjustments that we've that we've made thus far that step 10 has not caught up to step 11. That would obviously be a a kind of an immediate trigger point that we would want to, you know, take action on it at that point, but otherwise it's it's a little more discretionary.
>> They're still above market. They're still above market as well. Yes. Yes. They haven't come back within market.
All right, so let's hop over to the fire plan. Um, fire recruits are below the new DMLW pretty significantly. 5% increase to get up to DMLW. The entry level step in the firefighter grade is just barely over DM the new DMLW.
So that corner of the fire pay plan is going to require some attention and decisions. Um, one thing we want to be careful for, obviously lessons learned, is to be careful not to, uh, have those decisions create cascading problems like bypassing. I don't want to don't want to do that again. Um, so, um, and we're going to talk more about these these in a little bit, too. But just to conclude this this whole section um about the DMLW's impacts on the on the coming budget year, uh in just two years, we went from a nice pretty clean shiny new step plan um to something that looks like it got got hit by a meteor. And we're, you know,
honestly, we're glad to be at a point where it's time to do another pay study and and figure out um how we how we want to move forward in a in a smart and sustainable way. I'm curious when we talk about at market and this will come I think out of doing this this this additional study. Uh, and so this doesn't have to be an answer for now, but something I'll be interested to see is um, you know, what we include in kind of our market for comparison and whether those cities that we are benchmarking with have seen the same uh, rapid or saw the same rapid increase in housing costs that Durham saw, which is ultimately what drives the living wage calculation, >> right? um and a significant cost for our workers and our residents. So, that'll be something I'll be curious to better understand is what do we consider to be part of our our market and the market
study. >> Very good. And we the city does have a list of peer cities that we often benchmark against. Um and then I think there are a couple other cities maybe that we also included that we consider competitors.
Um of course, you know, when you do these studies, you you create an arms race, right? I mean, soon as we increase our pay, we I can't tell you how many pay study requests we've gotten this year from other municipalities that um so these things are going around all the time and and it's it's a never never ending battle. >> Thank you. Um um especially with fire and police, we see that a lot.
Um and so I think that we do need to think about that. I guess one thing I would like to understand better is which of our peer cities have a livable wage ordinance and what their averages look like and then what their median home price is because we know Chadam, Wake and Orange all have a median home price much higher than Durham County as does Meckllinburgg. And so I know that some of those communities while they're bigger, whatever, we do want to at least know what the city of
Charlotte's paying its city workers, but their median home price I think is over $600,000. So what they're bringing in on property tax is just not comparable to what we're bringing in. Uh so I just I want to I know it's I know what a pay study is. I get that.
But I think that there may need to be other data points that we bring in to have an understanding on >> um what are our what is our full context um when we're making these decisions. >> Love it. Great. " They were able to, you know, one up us right after we did ours, but they had a lot more resources to do it, you know, and and do it quicker.
>> So, um that that the more information the better. >> Yeah. And of course, Durham is a more
interesting place to work. So, we do have that going for us. But, >> well, well, it is. I mean, Durham's dope.
We have a lot more to, you know, celebrate, but, you know, we also don't have as much money as them either. And and, uh, so we have other forms of currency. Apples to apples, but we need some oranges and pound apples and bananas in there, too. >> Fair enough.
>> All right. So, let's move into um a hypothetical scenario and that would accomplish something that council asked us to look at really over the over the past two years. And I do want to be clear, this isn't an HR recommendation. So, again, if you're following along at home and you're trying to calculate your your expected paycheck for next year, don't don't use this.
Um I do believe that this is responsive to the council request that we got. Um and uh [snorts] uh we heard loud and clear. So this would be a way to get all
employees, all part-time employees up to the DMLW. Uh we tried to do it keeping keeping costs as low as possible and and not creating kind of completely absurd situations and disparities with the with the full-time uh pay plans. Um [snorts] so but it's not without without some significant impacts and uh we do share some of those here as well. Um in a nutshell what this scenario is includes um increasing all the full-time pay plans by 1%.
And then adjusting fire recruits by the required 13 and a half% to get them up to DMLW um and bringing all part-time up to at least DMLW. So that's the the basic highlights. Uh we'll run through some of the details of that. Um there are obviously impacts here that would be to uh internal and external equity really uh compression of course and uh and and the budget obviously.
All right. Um so there are definite benefits to a scenario like this. don't want to ignore that. Everyone gets to DMLW.
Um it's a cost that is probably less than you might imagine at first. U so that that's good. Um it's always good to also, you know, keep moving the overall pay structure some to avoid those shocks like we saw with the last pay study. um we're able to create this in a way that that part-time and their full-time commensurate positions are at par with pay.
So, um not not bad there either, but it does have some negative factors obviously. Um probably most notably, the significant compression both in the in the full-time uh between the full-time and part-time and in the in the part-time plans. [cough] Um, we'd need to figure out a plan to to address grade compression between fire recruits and firefighters, which we it's
doable. Um, many part-time employees u get to DMLW or slightly above, but don't really have salary growth potential in this scenario beyond that. And um then um it's you know paying some part-time positions over over market and the step plan would necessarily start above the DMLW. and I'll I'll show you how that works u instead of instead of at the DMLW.
So, first let's look at the step plan again. This this lovely chart. Um this shows what it would look like with the 1% increase and all the steps that would be deactivated. 60. And again, there's a reason for that that I'll I'll go over in a minute. 6 million to the general fund,
1 million overall. And that cost includes the cost of moving employees from deactivated steps to the active steps. And that again is just the step plan cost. So it doesn't doesn't factor in the other pay plans yet.
I've got a summary slide at the end for that. So, taking a look at the fire plan, uh, this is the current state. It doesn't look bad when you look at it, right? One one little highlighted cell up there, but moving those recruits up to the DMLW puts them very close to the the firefighter step, uh, firefighter first step.
So, then you have decisions. Do you promote recruits from recruit to firefighter with basically just over a $100 raise or do you promote them to the next step which stays gives them that 5% um increase that we do as part of the promotional policy but then that creates bypassing. Uh so obviously you know it's a bigger problem than than first seeing with with you know than it looks like
with with one little highlighted cell there. So again, that 13 and a half% increase to recruits and 1% across the rest of the structure is is this is the scenario. Um given the current census and the distribution of firefighters on that on that specific firefighter grade on their uh different steps, there are possible ways to move some of the firefighters that exist on the lower steps right now. move them up uh one step without directly affecting a large number with total compression.
So, you know, really moving people to a step that that includes firefighters. Um there there is a step in there with with four firefighters on it that we could move people and kind of move them out of the way of of that bypassing danger. >> Yeah. Thanks. because I don't want to get too in the weeds, but you're you have a whole slide on it. So, I want to ask if someone could define a fire
recruit and what that that that role is would be would be helpful for me. >> Uh Chrisi, deputy chief of administrative services. By recruit is just someone who is coming into uh the academy. We've got a couple different levels.
We bring in recruits that have no fire experience. So they go through a full academy, they go through EMS, they go through fire. Um that is an eight-month program and uh they will graduate to be promoted to a firefighter. We also do bring in lateral uh recruits.
So someone who is already firetrained, we can bring them in. They don't have to go through a full academy. It's uh it's typically about a month and then we can get them on the trucks and working. So uh much much faster route.
Yes. >> Just to confirm. So, >> so once a once a recruit completes the
academy, they become a firefighter. So, it's just when they're in the academy that they were recruit, >> right? >> Okay. >> Great.
>> Thank you. >> All right. Okay. So [snorts] yeah, all that to to say that um um so basically in that scenario, if we're if we're doing that and trying to mitigate the the compression and all that, um you end up not using uh that firefighter step zero anymore.
Um but you know, I don't want to say that that's that's the solution and and we're good to go. It needs more analysis, but that is kind of a cut at what what that would look like. So a lot of lot of numbers on those charts there but basically this just
shows the uh the before and after with the adjustments. So the top chart is before and the uh the second chart is is after for fire and most notably you see that fire recruit at a little above DMLW that's just a rounding thing but that first step as a firefighter that's just a few hundred dollars you know above um above that. So that's that's that's the that's the big takeaway on that. So between the structure adjustments and some possible step movements, this could be done for the fire plan for just under $900,000 at this particular scenario. All right, so on to part-time. Uh this is the trickiest I'd say because um number one the variety of jobs involved.
Uh the number of hours worked of course varies um quite a bit actually certain jobs versus others and um again because you know we haven't studied part-time in in probably quite some time. It's certainly not with the with the most recent study. Um again this this data is couple months old but illustrative of snapshot in time so uh helps you know just just show the issues. Um but the census there um yep I'm on the right slide.
Okay. There are 84 employees including council who are also subject to DMLW rules. Um, other than council, there are only three of those 84 employees that are going to require manual adjustments to to get to the the 259 DMLW. So, for the commensurate ones, we're we're in good shape. Uh, for the non-commensurate part- timerrs, there are 30 230.
Um, the vast majority of those are going to be below 2590. The majority are currently below 2190. So, um, I should note too, these are almost exclusively parks and wreck employees. There are a few few other ones, but pretty much parks and wreck.
So, again, just want to impress this upon everyone. We know part-time's overdue for the study. Um, and we are we [clears throat] are planning on including it. 45% that we adjusted all the pay structures and um as I mentioned before council increased merit from 3% to 5% for part-time employees. So um they did they did get some some love out of last year's budget certainly. So, okay, here's what the part-time plan
would look like in this scenario and how it interfaces with the full-time plan. And that was that was the challenge here of, you know, making sure that uh we're we would implement a scenario. So, does all is all just the commensurate ones or all? >> This is all >> all so commensurate or non-commenserate.
>> Correct. >> Okay. >> Yes. says this includes all part-time.
Um, so you can see the first two grades in the part-time plan, one at the top there, um, they each have one step, no room for merit increases. Um, that first grade is at DMLW. And remember back a few slides ago, I told you that 256 first step of the step plan would be explained later, and that's we're here. Um that slight increase allows for some albeit pretty small separation between the first and second part-time grade and um it also
then keeps that the grade ZA12 up there um on par with the starting point of the A12 full-time grade. And just to be clear, um the basically they're not commensurate positions in those in those in those grades. But I'll show you in a few slides what this looks like practically. Um if you follow the first active steps down the pay plan through the grades, you see the part-time and full-time plans line up with starting amounts.
There's some rounding differences in there, but a penny. So, um the idea would be to to line those up so that uh the starting amounts um line up along the grades there. So, this this just puts into words what I explained on the previous slide. Um the uh the changes um to the structure of the part-time plan, just the
structure could be done for about $750,000. Um so let's look at this um the practical effects that that we get from this. So these examples illustrate some of the impacts and let's start with a comparison of two part-time jobs. Uh one's non-commensurate the gatekeeper and one is commensurate the maintenance assistant.
Currently, the maintenance maintenance assistant makes $5 more per hour than the gatekeeper. And after these changes, the difference would be down to 51 cents per hour difference. Um, and you can see, you know, the duties and requirements of the of the respective positions are quite different. So, that creates a a place where, you know, you're not you're not distinguishing much between the value of those positions.
>> [clears throat] >> And looking at this within a part-time job series, parks and wreck, um you can see currently a promotion results in a in a noticeable pay increase. Um but um if this scenario were implemented, these promotions would result in in very little difference, some difference. Uh reducing the financial incentive to promote into those positions with more responsibilities. This could also have the effect of uh leading to fewer entry-level opportunities.
Um you know, if you're if you're trying to be smart with the city's money and you can have a a program assistant for a few pennies more than a program aid, um there's there's a temptation to do that. And al also you can see there's very little salary growth available um at that point. And finally, let's look at that part-time series in context with the full-time position that might supervise them. Um, and again, that financial
incentive through the pay differential is is virtually eliminated for taking that full-time position with the more significant responsibilities. Um, it can make things difficult to to explain to our employees um at times. So the total cost to implement the part-time plan changes and have everyone at at least DMLW is just over a million. So again, not you know, it's it's significant, but you think it could be more.
7 to move employees in this scenario. 7 million. 3 million is a general fund.
All right. So, that's the uh end of the the fun part. Um >> just uh real quick, I um there's I brought this up last year. Uh and for me, this is less about the dollar figure.
Um but I just want to reiterate my concern with it is we are limiting our upward mobility uh pretty significantly uh with doing that and also the data that I was looking for last time I don't see which is part of the cons the age demographics of the uh part-time employees and I know there are a lot of folks that are in retirement that works with us to they are looking for addition income but not too much that would u you know compromise their their benefits or retirement. Uh how would we be impacting those employees? How many of those
employees we have? Uh so understanding the age demographic and um I think about the person in retirement and you know I I think less about the the 16 year old first job you know because they can contribute to their household but at the same time we you know that that more so sort of deincentivizes orivize the u you know I I could just do this rather than going to get all of these credentials to do this to do uh the other things. So those are the uh the concerns that I have wrestling with, you know, truly believing in the uh living wage um efforts. That's it.
>> And we we did bring uh demographic information to a follow-up meeting last budget year, but we're happy to refresh that and uh and provide that as well. >> Um thanks so much for the detailed analysis. I know last time I and other council members brought this up and I
" So, it's a lot of it's a lot of research and it gets into very technical details around step plans and step increases and structure. So, I really appreciate all the effort you've gone to to really break this down in great detail and and to share with us ultimately like the um you know the total what it would cost across all these different plans. It really it's really helpful and I think we have some big decisions in front of us. I will say that, you know, having been, [clears throat] as many of you know, involved in this living wage movement long before I got on council, you know, city residents by and large love city employees.
I think we're going to see this in the survey we see later. And so, I think this is a it's a it's a budget challenge for us, but I think it's a good challenge. And I don't I don't think the folks in the city want to see city services delivered on the backs of people who aren't earning a living wage. And so, this is a we've got to we've got to make some tough decisions.
But, I think this is great. We're doing this. I just did a quick Google search cities in the south with a living wage and Durham is it except for New Orleans and their living wage is like $10 an hour. So like this is a really impressive thing we're doing in Durham and again I think our residents want to see city services
delivered to them in an efficient u and high quality manner but not on the backs of people that are not earning a living wage. So thank you so much. Is it? Yes.
Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks for our new batteries. Um, yeah, I was just wondering and and I really appreciate I know that y'all done a lot of number crunching.
Um, I I do want to hearken back. We had this conversation a couple of years ago and now that I know that we have another study incoming, I just want to put it back out there again. We had talked about a more equitable increase among the steps as opposed to the just 5%. And I just want to put out there again that I am still interested in seeing that whether it looks like something where it's we take the 5% from the step six or whichever is the median step and we just apply that ubiquitously across or whether it's like
we do a gradual like at the bottom you get a 5% and then at the top you get a 3%. but something that like takes into account the fact that like 5% of $100,000 is like significantly different than 5% of $40,000 and that we just look at that equity piece. Um I don't know if it's going to help our budget at all because I'm looking at the numbers and I know how many are at the lower steps um lower to to median sort of numbers on the step plan. So I'm not sure if it will be impactful in that way, but I would like to look at that for an as for an equity lens.
>> Right. And and thank you for I know you sent an email that got shared with HR as well. So thank you for thank you for doing that. >> Um to that to that end, yeah, it goes to the kind of open pay range versus the four to 6%.
If we don't do it this year, however we land on that as a council, I'm kind of agnostic quite frankly. Um but um can we include that? That that's what I meant about how are other cities
doing it. Right. >> Right. So is it is it that most folks have moved away from an you know because there's trends 30 years ago was only step plans and then probably 10 to 15 years ago these open pay range plans got real popular and now people are going back to step plans, right?
So like every other area things kind of have trends and then people >> shift and whatnot. So, I'm really curious to see what other communities are doing in in North Carolina, but across the southeast. And if in fact, I I would love to know if that's true. I believe what you're saying. Out of the Southeast, can we name any any metropolitan area that has a ordinance, >> uh not just a practice, an ordinance is a law for for us, right? Um and um I think that would be helpful too as we're having these conversations uh because we might get some push back from residents and and I think a second part of that conversation is like well this is a law that council passed for itself and that's real different than like well we have a practice of >> um so um having that information as well
when we think about our peer cities and others uh to say well we we've a council this many years ago did this thing and and we've this many other councils have had to abide by it and and um happy to do it, right? Like proud to do it, but I think it does have a different tenor in that conversation. >> I love it. I I love the idea that the the more robust benchmarking, too.
I think that's something that was missed with the with the last study, >> right? And I want to take what council Cook said because we did talk about this a couple years ago about sort of different ways to think about um raises and so so right, we do it by percentage, right? As as council Cook said, that creates a definitely like a inequality, right? those who earn more get a higher percentage, right?
There's also other ways, not only other peer cities, but also model employers like self-help here in Durham, model employer. They provide, I think, a flat amount for everybody across the board, and then on top of that, some percentage. That's kind of a hybrid of what you were suggesting. But I think all those should be included in in as part of the the comic classes. I think there's different ways to do that can both reward everyone in the city create solidarity but also provide as
the mayor is saying some sense of in terms of folks who are like upward mobility there's some advantages or there's some benefits of those who are have earned and and and risen in the ranks but also combines that again with some base that everybody gets to have some solidarity. >> Sorry all of our stuff is always compared to other governments. I would love to have an understanding of um large employers. Um so, and I'm going to say a thing, you know, if there are institutions or forprofit corporations who, >> you know, our profit and we don't make it, but ours is tied to a local tax base, right?
We are not Amazon. We do not have profits. We are not a large um education institution that doesn't pay property taxes for the most part, right? What are they paying their workers? uh so that we can have that comparison as well so that when we are having conversations with community partners we're like hey the city of Durham has had to um you know we have dug deep uh
and and pay our workers and so for you to be a good stakeholder and community partner we kind of anticipate the same thing from you. Yeah, fair point. And I will note too, we did the previous uh market study did include private um information in there as well. So that was a factor.
Um but to your point, using the the larger employers and such is um something we can absolutely look at. All right, just a couple of benefit highlights. and Christina stole some of my thunder, but she made it sound like a bad thing that the that the health was going up 10%. Um, from our perspective when we talked to our peers, we're looking pretty good with our um [snorts] our health increases for for the coming year. That that 10% employer cost is uh not bad. " So, um
it's it's uh we've got great wellness program. Um we've got employees who take advantage of of the opportunities available to them to to stay healthy. So, uh we're we've been we've been actually pretty fortunate with the health costs. Yes, there there were years where there were very little increases.
Um and this is this is higher than that, but it could be a lot worse just looking at the at the overall market. Um, one additional uh piece we're we're happy about um is [snorts] that we're going to be able to implement additional cancer screenings for firefighters this coming benefits year. This is a new uh customized on-site preventative care screening program for the city's firefighters. It was developed in response to their their on job exposure risks.
So exciting development for us. It's um we found a company that is in network um and it's it's a pretty creative solution and we're excited about it. >> Thank you for that work. I'm really really excited to hear that.
>> With that, I'll take any further questions you have. Otherwise, uh thank you very much for your time and all the love you've shown over the years. Council member Baker, mic is on. >> Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the presentation. Um the Durable Wage Ordinance I think as has been pointed out by my colleagues is incredibly important. Um and and a value statement and it is a law um not just a policy. Um and it was built on at the time over the last four years you talked about the the um rents going down. um it was built over the last four or four year period because of at the time fluctuations in rent um and I don't think that they were anticipating at that time the massive increase in in rent and cost of living that we would see and we are in this awkward moment where the last four years saw astronomical increases in rents that
contributed to the definition of the German minimum livable wage and now we're plateau going and now we're catching ourselves at this extremely awkward moment. Um, so we're we're seeing that here. One of my questions about we're seeing the compression. Um, I think that's the the word of the day here.
Um, and for all of us who've been talking with with the city workers, that is the word of the day for them as well. Something that that we've been hearing a lot about. um you know with these adjustments for the coming fiscal year would we be able to message can we anticipate kind of future years assuming we we don't have the same level of astronomical growth um over the next few years messaging hey we're in this weird time period this you know we understand that this is a big challenge that this is it sucks
that [laughter] this compression sucks, but hold tight because this year might suck, but maybe the ne the next year we're not going to see the same the same amount of of compression. Is that is that something that do do we think we're in a a temporary time period where we're seeing something very strange? Um or >> if I if I had to put money on it, yes. Um would I stake my life on that it's not going to go crazy again?
No. Uh, you know, I think we're in turbulent times. I I know the economist comes after me. I'll be interested to to hear uh what what all that sounds like.
But, um, you know, to your point, this is unprecedented at this point. Um, you might remember a couple years ago, one of the requests we had from you all was to show us a plan to get up to $25 an hour. And we came back and said, well, this is how it would work for an employee who's currently here. they would get this raise and then this would happen you know if we move the truck to that we're at 259 two years later um
just because of the the minimum livable wage so um we didn't see this coming back then um but you know I so yeah so unprecedented and and what does the future look like I don't know but if I would had to guess I would say you're probably Right. >> I think the point I'd want to make sure we're all clear on though is once compressed always compressed. Like the the fact that we may not have as much compression next year does not change the fact that the employees who get compressed this year will remain compressed because any market adjustments will apply across the board. So, I don't I don't want to leave employees with the message that a one-year compression is somehow going to be rectified in the future and people will be spread back out because that's the same cost we showed you earlier in terms of trying. So, just from my standpoint in messaging to our
employees, I I'm one of the reasons they've been talking to you about compression because I've been talking to them about compression when we talked to the UE50, when we talked to the firefighters. I've let them know that I don't have I don't foresee a lot of good options to avoid compression and uh and I want to be really upfront and honest with them that I I don't even if that is not built into future DMLW calculations. It doesn't mean this compression goes away. >> Right?
>> And I will say some portion of the compression will be naturally addressed. So the let me say first that the step plans are not you don't move a step for every year that you're here or anything. It's not tied like that. It's a merit um increase.
But by default basically the longer you've been here the uh you know the the higher your step is. So for example if you're if you're an employee who got compressed and you've got three years experience and somebody who's got one year experience is right here. You're more likely to be promoted if
you're interested in being promoted before that person. So, um, you know, some some of this stuff starts to to work it out a little bit, but, um, to to Bose's point, it's we'll we'll hear 10 years from now about how somebody was compressed and they'll they'll bring up, you know, 20 26 and and, uh, we still hear about many many years ago issues that pay issues that happen. So, >> yeah. Yeah.
I mean, and so far my conversations with with workers who are anticipating being a part of that compression is we understand the situation. It sucks. Um [laughter] that's kind of where the conversation ends. Um so and then I'll just second or I guess third the comment about u through the next um study looking at the lower percentage at the top um not not as any form of uh you know punishment I mean there are organiz other
organizations and companies that that do that the one the company that I work for um gives lower percentage at the top as well. So, >> so to dig in the compression point just a little bit more, I mean there's a cost to following our law, right? Of keeping up with the minimum uh living wage ordinance. Um there's a cost to uncompressing, right?
Like there are choices that can help uncompress, but there's a cost to that. Right now, we're seeing big cost increases due to the living wage, which is tied to the dramatic increases we've seen in the cost of housing. Seems like we've been undertaking steps as a city that have helped mitigate some of that. And so, we're seeing a decline there. So, in the future, it may be possible that the cost to the city from the living wage doesn't continue to be such a a shock to the system. Um and then I I
don't know if there are then steps that can be taken in the future to then uncompress when we don't face the same pressure around the living wage increases if we are keeping our housing costs under control. So I guess it's just sort of is that is that a a correct way to to think about it? >> Sort of except that keep in mind that there there is a top to the to to the range. So, if you're uncompressing people, unless you have empty steps that you're able to utilize along the way, um, somebody's going to get compress, somebody's still going to be compressed.
It might be at at the very very top, but >> um, >> yeah, and I think we're I've heard some of the, you know, greatest concern, and I'm sure there's concern for anyone who gets compressed at any level. It tends to be the folks who are at the lower end of the pay scale, right? Who >> correct? because it's the minimum wage pushing the >> Yeah.
>> putting the pressure on it. >> Yeah. And that's where all a lot of the highlighted cells are right in in the graphs. So, >> and you know, it's it's it's consolation
to us, but not the employees that they're they're still being paid fairly. It's not that that that the they're not being paid the market rate. Um it's that other people are also being paid that rate that maybe have less tenure or less experience. Um >> yeah, >> so um we're we're fortunate we don't have both issues, but uh that that issue is is of obvious concern to employees.
Yeah. >> Okay. >> Council member, the one thing I would point out about uncompressing is you and I've made this point to a few council members in previewing this discussion today. We essentially are we're trying to put two philosophies into one pay system.
Um, we have a market-based pay plan, which means the philosophy is we pay about what the market pays for positions. We also have the dur minimum livable wage, which is a livable wage philosophy. No one shall make less than x, y, and z. When you put those two together, there are going to
be natural conflicts between those two values set. And compression is where that lives. When to your question about could we fix it later? The answer is yes.
What you would be doing then is you're leaning into the fairness value and away from the market competitive value. So at that point, you're beginning to pay people in the plan who are currently pegged at market. You're essentially moving them above market to to create fairness down to the DMLW. So it's not that you can't do it.
It's that we're trying right now we are trying to balance two different philosophies and there's tension between that and that tension shows up in compression. So can you lean more into a fairness philosophy? Yes. It will have a dollar cost and it will be at the expense of moving people in the plan higher [snorts] than what the market says they ought to be paid for their years in the system, years in our system and in
comparison to other employees. So, it's just trade-offs. It's not right or wrong. You guys get to decide the right or wrong, but we will constantly sort of bring those back to you so that you understand kind of the pros and cons of what you're doing.
>> I think that's well said. I think there's opportunities and challenges, right? I think we've got I'm again, gratitude to the to the staff for doing this analysis for all the council and for residents for like being willing to to dig deep to pay all our folks a living wage. I think that's awesome.
Just commenting with council Kopak. I remember like it's not that long ago that we were thinking about how do we get the city to 15. That's when the fight for 15 was going on. How do we build up to 15?
We're there and as you said a couple years ago I think we said what what's our plan to get to 25 and we're there now. So I think that's great. It's a huge opportunity. There are challenges in terms of the budget.
How do we pay for that? Um and there's also some choices that we I think you've laid out for us here. There's a couple questions for me is like you know do we do the fire recruits? Do we or do we consider them in a sense like apprentices and just keep them where they are? one one one sort of question. There's another question about the commensurate part-time, the
non-commenserate part-time. So, those are some key questions I think we have in the data. I guess my question is when like when do you and the manager want feedback on those questions? Um, so I think obviously a lot of what we've talked about and a lot of the feedback we've heard from council so far, for me the appropriate time to try and wrestle with some of that is when we go out and do the compensation study next year.
I think the questions on the table for this year, um, I I I, you know, I believe we've heard a strong commitment from the council to fund the DMLW. Uh, I think we understand the council wants to see options for uh for part-time. Um, I haven't heard a commitment to keep it in, but I understand that I think my proposed budget at least needs to include options for part-time. Uh, and if there's additional feedback to what you've seen
today that you you want to give us, please do. But I I would say, you know, that that my presumption from the beginning is that we are funding some version of of the analysis you've seen before you today. >> Um, and this is for moving forward, not in our current budget, but we have had a lot of conversations around workforce housing. And so when we get into that conversation on the benefits side, um I would also like some information.
Like in my mind, if you're a recruit, police or fire, whatever, and maybe you're not quite at livable wage, but we are helping you with housing, then that is a massive benefit that it really stretches your salary, right? And so those are the ways that I really want us to think creatively. If you if we really think about daycare for folks, right? That is again, people are paying $2,000 a month for high quality daycare.
If you are getting some help on that, but you're making a lower salary. It's a package deal. And so we have to be able that that's the part that I want to get to. I
I very much am glad that I think four councils ago worked really hard to get people to $15 an hour. And then I um manager Paige, I think Mayor and I were probably the only councils on here at the time. We knew we were going to hit 25 in two years because when we passed that $28 million love letter, >> uh it was already clear where we were heading. Um so I think that's the place with this with it and I don't know what kind of firm can do it.
I don't know if it needs to be one consulting firm that has a right. Who knows? But that those are the places that I really want to have a better understanding is we're going to hit this tension in our pay plan. What are the other tools at our disposal that then show workers that we mean business as far as like we want you to work for the city of Durham?
We believe in high quality work and we believe in work with dignity. And so what does that mean? Does that mean we're helping you with childare? We're helping you with housing? Uh maybe that means your your salary is a little less than your counterpart in Charlotte.
>> Any other comments or questions? Just a comment to piggyback when you look at national models that um that that fight for and estimate on living wages um they often do have policies around apprentices. Um they do have policies that account for contributions around housing, around healthcare, around some of these other benefits that are also at the end of the day um you know contributions back to uh our pocketbooks. So it's something worth worth looking at.
All right. Um, and I just put a bow on it. I um, you know, I like [clears throat] the way Council Member Morris put put this. We have obstacles.
We have challenges. Um, but I I think there's definitely ways forward in in everything we're looking at and I'm excited about it. in and yes,
in fact, we are the only city in the southeast that has this as an actual ordinance. Uh, and that's something I think we need to stand proud on. Uh, so I'm I'm Gosh, I mean, that's a that's a pretty good bragging point, you know. Um, I I do want to say that uh, you know, equity I think is is a lifestyle.
I think it's a value. Um, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have consequences. And I and I want to make sure that while I think Bo uh you stated it perfectly, you know, we have two value systems that we're trying to fit into one vein and uh it is going to create some challenges or obstacles and and challenges or whatever. Um I want to be very careful and how we you know what just I want to be very conscious rather of the messages that we're sending uh on all sides of it. you know, um, thinking of it solely through the lens of equity is is making sure that we're trying to ensure that, you know, everyone can afford to live where they
are. I always use the analogy of a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread costs one price. How much you make determines how much bread you can afford.
Uh, but also, you know, you have folks that said, "Look, I want to go and get this degree, that degree. " they have these levels of responsibility and I don't want to send a message to them that you've done all of this work but you also don't deserve to get even you know just also be celebrated. So uh not and not saying we're we're saying that but I just want to be conscious that when we are trying to write one wrong that we aren't creating an additional one. Uh and morale matters.
Um we we fixed that in a sense when we had the whole defund the police thing. uh you know uh back in 2020 2021 and we gave our police officers not only a raise. I mean that helped but what the biggest value was is we see you, we care, we appreciate the work you're doing and now look where we are. You know, we have a a
class of 59 recruits. So [clears throat] there there are different levels of currency. I appreciate that. And I just, you know, want to close with local government.
And I've said this before, local government is a jigsaw puzzle. And uh you know, we we we get money through sales tax and property tax. And uh I we can't expect to breed that we're going to choke ourselves. So we have to think about how we're going to generate this revenue, not only what we have, but what's to come.
And that's the that's the way I look at all of this. And all of our actions have to be accounted for, especially when we get to these retreats and think about these big numbers that we have to solve. how we're going to pay for it. All right.
Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Okay.
Yes. So, we are a little bit behind schedule is what I was going to say. So, um we did have a quick break scheduled for right now and I think maybe um we had had 15 minutes, but I
think maybe having a five minute break would be a good and then I know our next speaker is here. So, we'll get um her miked up and be ready to go as soon as you all get back.
Have you you Yeah, I think it's fine.
One, two, one, two. Now we're live. So, All right, thank you all for that very long five minute break. [clears throat] Uh, we're ready to go.
Here's a makebelie gavo. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you, director.
Ready to go. >> Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Um, I have
the pleasure of introducing our next speaker, um, Sally Hodes Cppell with the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center. Um, this is a new speaker for us to give us kind of an economic update. Um, and we we were looking for someone who could give us, um, a more local flavor. So, um, Sally produces research and analysis to deepen understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and systematic racism in North Carolina and builds the will to act on policy solutions that advance the well-being of all people and communities.
Before joining the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center in 2023, Sally was the data evaluation and impact specialist at the Emily Shashepski Center, where she worked to support continuous improvement improvement in programs that help Durham youth access and complete higher education. Born and raised in Durham, Sally received a master's of public policy degree from Duke University and a BA in economics and policy studies from Rice University in Houston. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, volunteering
in the community, and spending quality time with family and friends. So, help me in welcoming Sally to help us give us um some economic uh an economic update. >> I didn't turn it on. >> Okay.
Is that better? >> Still okay. >> Yeah. Okay.
Hi everybody. Thanks so much for having me here today. Um I'm Sally. I'm a senior public policy analyst at the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center.
Um joining you today to talk a little bit about the economic and fiscal context in North Carolina. Um if you're not familiar with the Budget and Tax Center, we are a nonprofit nonpartisan organization. We work to document and analyze fiscal and economic conditions and we do that in partnership with community leaders and North Carolinians who have lived experience of poverty. um all with the mission of advancing systemic solutions through public policy
that drive anti-racist outcomes in our state. Um we're going to start off by talking a little bit about some key economic indicators uh for North Carolina and we'll kind of look at the the topline headline numbers um and talk about why uh we kind of need to dig a little deeper than those numbers to really understand how people are doing in our economy. Um, I'll share a little bit about our federal funding context and especially the impact that the implementation of HR1 will have on healthcare access and food assistance in North Carolina and also some um state budget and uh county budget uh cost cost shifts related to that legislation. Um, and then we'll also talk a little bit about our state budget and tax context and how trends at the state level um are impacting well-being.
uh and costs at at the local level. All right. So, starting out with these economic indicators, uh if yeah, you've heard a more traditional economic presentation before, you're probably
familiar with folks looking to prices, inflation, um jobs, and employment as kind of key indicators of how our economy is doing. Um, so starting with prices, um, we're probably all very aware that the rising cost of living is a top concern, uh, in poll after poll in North Carolina. Um, overall inflation is still up about 3% over last year. So that's down from its heights a few years back.
Um, but we're not really expected to reach that steady 2% level um, until closer to 2027 2028. But then if you look at kind of specific categories of prices that matter most for people's ability to afford the basics, um we see that household energy in the south um is up 6% over the last year. 4%. So continue to see the the cost of
those um basic household budget items increasing at a faster rate than folks wages. Um unemployment is another number that we can look to to understand our economic health as a state. Uh this map comes from a a dashboard that we maintain at the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center. So you can always kind of check back on the website to see the most the most recent data here, but this shows all 100 counties across the state.
You can see the unemployment rate uh ranges from 2% very low up until 6 till till 6%. 9%. So slightly lower unemployment than the state average. Um but again this is kind of a topline number um that tells us something but doesn't tell us everything.
So, the unemployment rate won't capture folks who uh have been looking for work and then got discouraged and stopped looking for work. They won't be reflected here. It also won't capture folks who are um
undermployed, who would like to be working more hours um than they currently are. And it doesn't include folks who, you know, are working multiple jobs, still not able to make ends meet. they will count as employed, but the unemployment rate won't reflect that their their work life is not allowing them to to meet their needs. Um, another way to look at this, so this is probably kind of small, so sorry about that, but this is showing North Carolina's unemployment rate alongside the national unemployment rate, uh, going back quite a ways.
So, more recently, we've seen, uh, national unemployment start to tick up a little bit. um North Carolina's has not uh has stayed more steady. Um but if we look back on once the national unemployment rate starts to get close to you know 5% um we have in the past seen it kind of shoot up uh more quickly after that level. So there's kind of just a lot of uncertainty um in the numbers here right now about where we might be headed uh in
the next year. um jobs. This is another dashboard that we maintain. So this shows uh job growth from December 2024 to December 2025 across different metro areas in North Carolina.
Um you can see that Durham um saw a 2% increase in jobs over that time frame. Um while some metro areas in the state saw a loss of jobs or um pretty slow anemic job growth. uh at the state level there's kind of signs that the labor market is stagnating. So um there are you know more job seekers than job openings in the state right now.
Um so again kind of a lot of uncertainty uh in this space kind about what we might see in the year ahead. >> Just a quick question are we seeing any population trends that are consistent with this >> population trends? Yeah, I mean I know it's two different categories, but >> um yeah, so that's a good question and
kind of what this does show and doesn't show. It's yeah, showing um the overall number of employed people and change in the number of employed people, but that's different than uh a rate, you know, like uh what share of the population is working or how does the growth in jobs compare to the growth in population. So that is not captured right here. Yeah.
And yeah, please feel free to ask a question at any time. Um, can also talk at the end if that's preferable. Um, so again, those those topline numbers tell us something, but they don't tell us what we might want to know about uh inequality in our state or people's ability to meet their needs. Um, and this is showing uh uh average household incomes in North Carolina by quintile. So the bottom line is the bottom 20% of incomes, then the next 20%, the next 20% all the way up to the top 20% and then the top 5% on top of that. So um perhaps unsurprising but
still very noteworthy is the the growing level of inequality in North Carolina. Um North Carolina was the only state last year that had a statistically significant increase in income inequality um in the country. Um, and we'll talk a little more when we get to the kind of tax and budget section about um, how how tax policy can tie into this. I know you all have spent a lot of time talking about pay and living income standards um, and that Durham has done a lot of work and developed a lot of methodologies around this.
Um so just wanted to share um the budget and tax center also has a measure of living income that's calculated for every county across the state and for a variety of household composition. So you know one adult, one adult, one child, two adults, two children, etc. Um so the our latest version of the living income standard, this is a bit out of date by now, a year perhaps a year out of date. uh the for a single adult in Durham
County to cover basic needs including housing, ch no childare in this case, but housing, food, health care, etc. Um that adult would need to earn about $49,000 annually to cover those needs. And that shakes out to an hourly rate of uh 23 $24 an hour. Um, I don't have a slide for this, but if you adjust the household size and change it to one adult, one child, uh, the the amount of income needed to meet needs increases dramatically.
It jumps to about $85,000 a year, uh, which would be an hourly rate of $41. Do you have a question, Carl? >> So, no, thanks. That slide is really great.
And I don't know if you were here for the previous discussion we had about our German minimum minimum livable wage. >> I was here for maybe the last like 10 minutes. >> So, like it's going up to 25. Well, depending depending on council action would is scheduled to go to 25 next year, which means that um folks at that living wage would actually be above this living income standard, which is pretty awesome. As you said, once you add a child in it, it goes up higher. So, I think it's important to know that for
all of us that like what we call the Durham minimum living wage is a more just minimum wage, right? But it's not necessarily a living wage for all families. Um, the other thing is like I don't know if you know any other are there any other cities in North Carolina that could meet this standard? I'm not sure there are, but I wonder I don't know if you know that.
>> Um, that can meet this standard in the in like their [clears throat] local government pay >> for city employees. Yeah, >> I I don't haven't like comprehensively looked at all >> I don't think so, but I'm just Yeah, >> I think Durham has done uh to my knowledge much more than than any other local jurisdiction across the state. We have another map on the website that kind of it shows median worker earnings compared to that county's living income standard. And I believe Durham is the only county on that map where average earnings are at the living income standard. Again, that's average earnings. Not saying everyone is making a living income, but on average, Durham's the only county where that, you
know, shows up blue instead of red as an indicator. Yeah. Um so finally rounding out our indicators section here. Sorry this the bullets got a little messed up.
Um one big takeaway is just the level of uncertainty that uh governments and families are going into in this next year. Um, at the federal level, we're going to get more into it, but uh, erratic tariff policies and rapidly changing federal policies are creating, uh, both increasing costs for consumers on the tariff side and creating a lot of uncertainty for states and local governments about what they, um, may be responsible for in responding to new costs and meeting new needs. Um, lots of uncertainty around state and federal budgets. We'll talk about the fact that we uh, don't currently have a comprehensive state budget and why that is. Um, and then just the uncertainty, you know, we know that HR1, the so-called one big beautiful bill has passed, but we're just now entering the implementation stage of that legislation. And so there's a lot of um,
again unknowns about how that will be implemented um, and if it can be implemented to minimize harm to families. All right, so moving along to our federal section. Um big takeaway here is going to be that uh cuts to health care and food assistance are expected to increase hardship and shift costs to lower levels of government. Um HR1 was the legislation passed this last summer so-called one big beautiful bill.
Um the legislation did a lot of things, but one uh key thing that it did is that in order to extend and make permanent federal tax cuts. Um the federal government is enacting massive cuts to SNAP or food stamps, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act uh marketplace like subsidies that folks use to purchase healthcare on the marketplace. So to put it kind of in context, um the red bar you see that the value the like some value of tax cuts for folks with incomes
3 trillion. That is also the dollar amount of cuts enacted to these um programs, SNAP, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act. Um in North Carolina on the health care side, uh some of the impacts that we're expecting to see. So, the legislation imposes Medicaid work reporting requirements for the first it's the first time that those work reporting requirements have been imposed um at the federal level um along with more frequent uh eligibility checks for the Medicaid expansion population.
So, governments used to have to check uh eligibility once a year. Now, they'll have to do it uh every six months. And in North Carolina, that falls on county governments to do that. Um, it also eliminates federal funding for Medicaid and access to Medicare for most groups of lawfully residing immigrants. So, this includes refugees, people granted
asylum, um, certain victims of trafficking, um, and other groups who are residing with legal status. Yeah, >> thank you. Can you go to the previous slide really quickly? So, when we talk about that, have y'all been tracking [clears throat] like in other states where there's more uh authority at the local level, are some states starting to pass like, "Okay, well, fine.
You're your federal income bill is going to go down this by this percentage because you're making over $500,000 a year. " Like property tax. Have you been seeing any kind of experiments at state levels like California or something where they're like, "Okay, great. Person who makes over $500,000.
" Yes. Short answer is yes. I don't have those examples on hand, but I believe there are states that, you know, once they saw the costs that were going to be passed down, they decided to either um stop tax cuts that they had planned for
the next year um or I believe I'm hesitant to name the state because I might be wrong. I believe there's a state that's enacted, you know, a mansion tax. >> Yeah. >> I don't know how explicit they've been about saying we are recouping some of the federal tax cuts that have been given to um the wealthiest in order to fund these uh you know basic access to care cuts that we're experiencing.
But I think you do see that happening in some places. >> Could you provide those examples to council so that we have that talking point? That is not an option that we have as a local municipality because of state like law. Like we can't tax folks here locally like in increase their property tax tied to savings that they're making on on um you know they're not going to be paying as much federal income tax.
So we are going to figure out a way to recoup it. >> Uh because it does limit the kind of tools in our toolbox as to what we're going to be able to do. >> Yeah. >> Thank you.
>> Yes. Absolutely. >> [clears throat] >> as we keep an eye on even our state
looking at property tax. Uh I don't know what they're trying to do, but this is just crazy. >> Yeah. And we will I don't have a ton on the property tax situation here, but we will get more to the the state context and the kind of ripple effects that it that it has.
Um, in total, uh, well, so one other thing that HR1 does is ending, you know, an an extra enhanced tax credit that people could use to buy Affordable Care Act insurance. Already, we've seen that enrollment has dropped 22% in the Affordable Care Act marketplace in North Carolina. That's a drop of 200,000 people and the most of any state. So, we'll learn more as more information comes in, but um already seeing the impacts.
>> And Sally, you may not have this, but any estimates of like county by county because obviously over 500,000 people are projected to lose health coverage by >> I have I have not seen a county bycounty estimate. Um >> I mean, because we're the third we're the third largest city probably. Yeah. So, we're expecting a lot of those
people are going to be here. >> Yeah. I and I think this is a priority for us as an organization. we um you know uh I think we're waiting on some guidance from like national partners on what how reliable the data is at that level.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Would love to see that when you get that. >> Yeah.
Um so in in some through a combination of these changes the work reporting requirements more frequent determination when you take it all together the current estimate again these are all just estimates are that over half a million people in North Carolina are projected to lose health coverage uh by the year 2034. Um we've kind of already started talking about it, but in terms of the the funding shift, um the total loss of Medicaid funding to North Carolina over 10 years is $40 billion. Um and state Medicaid administrators are already telling state lawmakers that they will need an additional uh $ 31 million per
year to conduct those required eligibility determinations. So folks are, you know, describing this understandably as a an unfunded uh mandate here. Um on the SNAP food stamps side, there are also new work reporting requirements imposed. Uh even though the vast majority of folks receiving food assistance already are working um up to 143,000 North Carolinians live in households that could lose food assistance under those requirements.
um like we saw in healthcare that uh the law also ends SNAP eligibility for most groups of lawfully residing immigrants and for the first time ever uh the state is going to have to cover up to 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits and that depends on the each state's error rate. So if they gave benefits that are too much than they should or too little than they should that affects the this cost shift and again that's not the fault of any family. Um, it's not fraud, it's not deception, it's just a mistake where a benefit was slightly higher or lower.
That counts as an error. Um, North the cost in North Carolina based on our error rate is estimated to be uh $420 million per year beginning in October 2027. So, I don't have this slide here, but there's kind of a timeline that charts out when these different um aspects of the law kick into effect. So, they they didn't all kick into effect immediately.
Um this one as you can see starts in 2027. Um I think also we you know we can I think all understand the hardship that this creates for families, the new costs for governments. Um but there's also an a larger economic impact that happens when folks aren't able to spend money in our local economies on things like food. Um, so this is a map county bycounty map in North Carolina of the estimated SNAP dollars received um by each county per month.
And I believe in Durham the estimate is that the the impact is 2 to3 million per month. Um that comes from SNAP. So again, these kind of have
ripple effects. If someone can't spend at their local re retailer, that local food retailer suffers um and it kind of again ripples out from there. um other economic implications. Uh I think we all know that health the healthcare industry is a major employer in North Carolina and rural hospitals especially are an economic engine um in certain rural parts of the state.
Um at least five rural hospitals in North Carolina are already considered at financial risk. You can see them listed here. um with the loss of Medicaid funding that is expect that we're going to see from this legislation, you know, there's uncertainty about what whether those hospitals uh can make the numbers work and how that will impact their margins. Um we've already there's I believe an organization at UNCC that tracks the closure of rural hospitals over time. Our state has already lost a lot of rural hospitals. Um can't really
afford to be to be losing more. Um local government impacts. So, we talked about how counties are responsible for uh administering SNAP. The expected cost shift to this is like, you know, total across counties is $65 million in new annual administrative costs um for these new STA snap requirements.
Um it's also an administrative burden for DSS offices. Increased paperwork for work reporting requirements uh means slower processing, more errors, delays and benefits and staff are moved away from you know the critical things they were working on to now work on this. Um also has impacts on schools. Uh SNAP eligibility uh translated into a free and reduced price lunch eligibility at school sometimes at the individual level but sometimes at the level of the school. If a certain [clears throat] percentage of students are SNAP eligible, then the school in its entirety um receives uh a
certain amount of funding for free and reduced price lunch. So with the change in SNAP eligibility, there are these secondhand effects on access to free school lunches. Um Medicaid, schools also bill Medicaid for services for children with disabilities. So loss of funding there um impacts kids in schools as well.
Uh we focus a lot on HR1. There are a lot of other things happening at the federal level that have uh implications for our economy. These are some headlines about a couple about the impact of tariffs on North Carolina. Um hurting small businesses in Fagatville, wiping out a third of North Carolina farm income.
Um job loss. you know, we saw impacts in the triangle of uh federal fund the uh yanking back federal funding on certain organizations that rely on that in the triangle area. Um kind of continuing to see some of that in the new year. Uh and then with uh immigration enforcement uh across the country um obviously impacts people's ability to feel safe going out into
their community um spending money in their community the way that they used to. Um and so we saw those impacts in Minneapolis and uh can com probably expect to keep seeing that. Um, going to move now into the state budget section. Um, the big takeaway of this section is that scheduled income tax cuts at the state level are reducing the state's ability to invest in residents well-being and to respond to the new financial costs that are coming from the federal level.
75% on income above a certain level, lower rate, about 6% on um lower levels of income. Uh, we also had a much higher corporate income tax rate. 9% at that time. And you can see since then
the state has been steadily cutting both. Uh the corporate income tax rate is now at 2%. It's the lowest among um all states that have a corporate income tax rate. 44 states have one.
We're the lowest. Uh and it's scheduled to be completely eliminated uh by the year 2030. So after that year, corporations with um multi-million dollar profits will pay no state income tax on those profits. Uh similarly, the personal income tax rate has been steadily cut.
Um you know, when we cut this rate, it disproportionately benefits richer North Carolinians while um shifting more pressure onto sales tax, property tax, other more regressive taxes that hit lower income North Carolinians harder. 99% personal income tax rate. The dotted line is because um in [clears throat] the following years, the rate will depend on triggers um that go into effect automatically unless lawmakers
change current policy. So if the state hits a certain amount of revenue, a threshold that is not based on any, you know, um precise measure of ability to sustain funding, if if it hits that number, uh the rate cuts are automatically triggered and the rate starts to decline. 49%. [clears throat] Um it's I think you're all aware that we don't have a comprehensive state budget right now.
Um gone over seven months without one. The reason that we don't have one is actually a stalemate over those future uh personal income tax rate reductions where the House is uh concerned about their ability to uh raise teacher pay, a big priority for them. Um whereas the Senate is uh committed to maintaining the current schedule um and framing any any change
to the planned rates as a tax cut even though it would be stabilizing at the current rate. Um obviously with no state budget uh needs go unmet in communities and costs are pushed onto people. State agencies um have to operate with a lot of uncertainty and are less effective in their missions and local governments have greater difficulty planning sustainably for their communities. Um you kind of only have to look to headlines these days to see the impacts that these tax cuts and the revenue loss has had on our communities.
And I should go back a couple for a minute because I failed to highlight this blue box here. The annual revenue loss in 2026 due to tax cuts since 2013 is $18 billion um banks. So that's foregone revenue. If we still had 2013's tax rate, the state would have an additional $18 billion to
spend on um the many neglected priorities across communities. Yeah. >> I don't mean to be political, but I have a political question. Like what what is the rationale be behind like what's happening at the state?
Like what what is >> the rationale? >> Yeah. Like what what is their rationale? Like is it another like hidden people that we don't know about or where where is it going? >> Um I was actually recently looking back at articles from 2013 about how lawmakers talked about the kind of initial cuts. Um it's been framed as you know uh very much kind of a trickle down uh philosophy of um if we enact income tax cuts maybe especially the corporate income tax cut it will grow our economy create jobs um increase incomes again without any uh evidence there's no research basis to suggest that that's how uh companies primarily make their
decisions or how um what really drives econom economic growth. So, um, that was kind of the initial impetus and it's just been been going on ever since. >> I I'm a I'm a conscious capitalist and that I call BS on it. >> So, just a quick question.
Even if we had a budget, it would be nice, but if we had one, are we headed towards a deficit? I do recall in 2010, I think, when we flipped over the state ledge that they inherited a significant surplus. And so I do I just want to know like are we at the point where they due to the failed tax policies or whatever is happening at this point, are we actually looking to a point to where the state is going to the red? >> Um it it it's only forecasted at this point.
So not at that point yet. Um but in last year's revenue forecast, we we should get this year's forecast soon. Last year it anticipated that um in the second year of the forecast year over would decline. So even with a growing
population, even with a growing economy, because of these scheduled tax cuts, year-over-year revenue would be negative. And when they forecast out, you know, the cost of maintaining current services, so just current level of services that people are pretty unhappy with with inflation and population growth, the level of revenue growth would be lower than what's needed to sustain those services. So they that's kind of described as a structural imbalance. 5 and 4 billion by I think 2028. >> And like tax rates or people are like
that kind of >> yeah I think we have some of it I can go back and find it some of it published more recently on you know we can even just compare to neighbors like Georgia South Carolina who have >> that that's oh yeah even in comparison to other southeastern states um because similar governments they're they're villain rule states strong preeemption things like that >> yeah thank you >> totally sure >> uh oh yes >> in that note can you also include Virginia I'm just kind of curious about some of their um >> because they are I think they have legalized marijuana in there and just the revenue they've stream they've have gotten from that as well >> absolutely Um, right. So, some examples of what happens when you uh don't set a tax code that adequately raises revenue to fund basic needs in communities. Um, you know, we're seeing headlines where state
agencies are deeply concerned about their staffing levels, including uh safety concerns in certain contexts. Um, North Carolina is seeing a record loss of child care programs. So because the state is not uh reimbursing child care providers at a rate that is you know close to the actual care of cost of providing child care which is expensive. Um the numbers don't work in that industry and providers have to close their doors and they can't you know can't pay their workers families can't pay anymore and and they're in a bind.
Um kind of of course know that uh North Carolina is near the bottom in teacher pay growth and per student funding in K12 public schools. Um, this year UNCC, NC State, and ECU voted to increase their tuition rates for the first time in many years, in part due to the lack of state budget and uncertainty about state funding. Um, the North Carolina State Health Plan voted to raise insurance premiums for state employees and members in 2026 due to a deficit in that program. Um so again uh you know we
have this prioritization of tax cuts and but then not a full accounting for the costs that then get shifted um onto communities. I'm sure you can think of many more examples than the ones I've included here. Um, looking at big picture, we talked a little bit about, you know, income taxes aren't the only taxes that people pay in uh in North Carolina and most people, lower-inccome people are paying quite a lot in sales tax and property tax. Um, when you look at our kind of comprehensive state and local tax code and the effective rates that folks are paying by income level, the lowest income North Carolinians, um, the the level has changed a little bit.
5%. They pay the largest share of their income and state and local taxes of any income group. The richest 1% now those incomes are close to $800,000 a
year I believe household income pay a rate of just 6% combined rate income tax, property tax, sales tax. Um, so this is we kind of refer to this as an upside down tax code, a regressive tax code. We're hitting low-income folks the hardest. And as we decrease our reliance on income tax, increase our reliance on those other taxes, this picture just gets worse over time.
Um, just to drive home the point of how inequitable this is, uh, and how, as you were saying, Javier, you like folks are getting a federal cut at the same time that they're getting a state cut. How can we think about recapturing? Um, when you look at North Carolinians by income level and look at their tax change in tax year 2026 compared to tax year 2018. We use 2018 because that's when the first round of Trump tax cuts went into effect. Um, we're not going
all the way back to 2013, but just looking back to 2018 at this point. The lowest income North Carolinians have actually experienced a tax hike. Um, that's in that they received a very small state income tax cut, but that was offset by a tax hike at the federal level due to, for example, some um uh uh Affordable Care Act credits uh being repealed. the repeal of green energy provisions.
So, those create an effective increase in tax taxes for those lower income folks. Meanwhile, the richest 1% um receive a combined federal state tax cut of $74,000 just in tax year 2026 compared to what the tax code was in 2018. Um so, huge cut for the wealthiest among us where whereas taxes increase for um lower income North Carolinians. Um, another way to look at this and kind of put it in the context of some of the costs that our our state um has or
services that our state funds the combined federal and state tax cuts to the top 20% of North Carolinians um is over 15 billion dollars. That's more than our annual fiscal year 25 funding for K12 public education and community colleges combined. Um and so on. The combined cut for the top five percent is more than fiscal year 25 funding for North Carolina Health and Human Services and the top cut just for the top 1% um is more than the annual cost or annual state funding for the UNCC system.
Um so again thinking about you know the idea of recapturing that idea of uh this is what we're losing and this is the funding that we we need for our state. this kind of hopefully helps it put in put in scale and context a bit. Um, so that was a lot of information and I know it's a bit heavy, uh, but I'm, you know, a lifelong Durhamite and I've
seen Durham rise to the occasion, um, in our work on living income standard um, efforts to pass the affordable housing bond and see it through to implementation. Um so you know despite these economic headwinds and the real difficulties that are uh we're experiencing at the state and federal level our local leaders do have tools available to um improve hard decrease hardship where we can um and do the best that we can for North Carolinians uh with with the tools that we have. So appreciative of your your work on that and happy to answer any other any other questions. First of all, let me just say um Sally, thanks for coming here.
It's great to see you. Um we've always loved having Dr. Michael Walden come to present and this is a much more seems much more focused on our reality in Durham and much more accessible. So I just want to thank you for I think this is really I
mean it's sobering data as you said but it's also we we need to understand the reality that we face the state government climate always as creatures of state government always affects the work we do here in Durham. So really appreciate the presentation. Thank you so much. >> Thank you.
>> Yeah, I think we're all horrified by what we just saw. Um just want to thank want to thank the city manager for for uh bringing in um uh yeah bringing these folks in to to talk to us. Thank you, Sally, for for the presentation. Um, yeah, I mean, this class warfare, the richest people uh who rule over us, they hate us and uh they're not attached to our realities and um they're going to take all of our money and and do anything that they want with it.
So, we know that it's um it's a horrible situation that we're that we're in. And um you know, if this were in another country, you know, things would be burning, the White House would be burning, all that. Um, when I'm thinking about how we how we look at this at at
the local level, you know, I think we need to look at things through an equity lens, but I also think that we need to look at like what are the structural pieces to this that we can kind of lay a foundation for um to try and, you know, address some level of overexloitation of people. And I think about unions being such a a critical piece. Um, you know, we have some unions that are involved uh in municipal government. I think um those unions show up to try and support other unions and union unionization processes.
Um a few of us were over at the Amazon warehouse where they're attempting to to unionize there. um they do a lot of union, you know, uh solidarity work. And I think that supporting our unions in every way possible, symbolically, but also materially is going to be continue to be incredibly important. And we need to just be creative and finding ways to to support that. And also thinking about economic development strategies that are
not just bringing high wage jobs, but are also finding creative ways of bringing uh profit and power to the people who are actually working. um not not just the people who own those businesses. Um and so you know thinking about uh worker ownership and and those kinds of models. Um when we think about housing, how do we take housing out of the speculative market um and and make it permanently affordable or at least permanently rent stabilized?
Um obviously all of this is just chipping at the corners of a a massive problem, but that's what we can do at the local level. And I think that it's important that we that we do those things. So again, thank you for for coming in. Um look forward to seeing you next year giving us uh really great uh new information that says that we've reversed all of this.
And um thanks. Do you have >> Go ahead. I have one more. Go ahead. So just one one more thing. I just want to appreciate you lifting up the whole
issue of SNAP and benefits and how that's now much in Medicaid and what that means for families across the state. Um, and I just want to flag for my colleagues and folks here. Um, as I've mentioned in my council comments a couple times, there is a new group in Durham called the Durham Benefits Access Coalition that is so in addition to the fact that people are losing access to benefits, there's also the issue of people in Durham who actually qualify and are not accessing those benefits. So that access coalition is working to make sure all families in Durham that qualify whether it's SNAP or Medicaid or other benefits are actually receiving those benefits.
Um so it's it's something actually as a commercial my colleagues I'll be coming to you with a budget request around increasing our efforts to make sure families are filing their taxes and receiving those critical tax credits that boost their benefit boost their income. Right now in Durham I think about $52 million comes back to Durham through the EITC and the child tax credit but there's more we're leaving on the table. So there's additional benefits we want to get for famous in Durham. As you said, that's dollars for the local economy as well as dollars in people's pockets. So we need to do the most we can to make sure everybody in Durham who qualifies for those benefits is is access accessing
them. So thank you so much. >> So I just want to go back to the job growth. Um and so is there any additional insight in regards to what industries that consist of and what the makeup of those people are including information about their salaries or educational attainment?
Um, I do not have that off the top of my head, but yeah, I can uh my colleague Alex, he like maintains this dashboard and knows a lot more of the nitty-gritty details than I do. So, you're asking industries in these metro areas. >> Yes, highlighting Durham, of course, but also looking at like the Charlotte metro area as well. And then I would also want to know about the Greensboro High Point area.
>> Thank you so much. >> Great questions. Thank you. Okay, >> forward again.
Oh, was there another question? >> No, Council Member Cook, did you have something? Okay. >> Um, if there aren't any more questions, I
will ask if folks can scan this QR code to complete a very short survey. I think it's like three questions. haven't done a ton of presentations to local uh bodies of local government on this kind of content, but we do do a lot of community presentations and we always try to um collect feedback, see see where things were clear or unclear, how we can get better over time. So really appreciate if you could fill that out.
Um feel free to share anything we can do better. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
This is not for So I found this information to be super helpful. Is there a way we could include this when we're doing budget conversations and our community conversations? I really want Durham residents like this is really important information that I think that folks don't understand. Um we have a lot of new residents.
We have a lot of folks who move from other states. Uh really having that context about money. So we talk about financial literacy, right? Financial literacy isn't just about like what is what is your pocketbook. It's quite frankly how are you getting
screwed and who's screwing you and what to do about it. Um, and so I think that that really needs to be added um, when we go out. And I really appreciate that we brought those community conversations in house. Uh, that that was one of the things I really loved about the reorg was really emphasizing that engagement piece.
Um, I think folks really need to understand, you know, you're getting squeezed, right? We can all see it, but it it's hard to have that additional layer of what what is happening and that some of these decisions were made really long ago and people forget who made them and how they were made and now they're just seeing their paycheck. You know, it's I think all of us can experience the sticker shock uh on at the grocery store and what we're paying for childare and what we're paying for college tuition and what we're paying in fees uh at the DMV, however it is. And and and some of it it's really discreet and hard to see. Um, so if we're going to talk about financial literacy, I think we do need to add that component uh so that folks can can understand better what's happening.
>> Yeah, that that I want to second that. Um because usually you know I mean this is all out war on on the lower class people um you know on on especially on low uh the lower class economic status but also the lower middle class as well. This is this is insane. And you know people feel that and it's reduced their perspective is reduced down to uh the price of something when they go in the grocery store.
I don't eat a lot of cereal, but I was craving it. And I went to buy cereal last night and I was blown away. It was seven bucks. [laughter] I was like, what is happening right now?
But all of the really cheap sweet cereal was like four bucks, three bucks. And so what are we doing? And and I also want to, you know, um thank uh Mayor Schul and the coalition um for the benefits coalition uh that they are doing because yeah, we we have to we're getting squared in every way, but we
have to find um ways to make things as affordable as possible in every way we possibly can. So, uh, thanking them for the the $25,000 grant to focus on that. But hopefully we can conceptualize this work so that other cities across America can also see how people can take advantage of the benefits that we are already paying for. Um, so thank you.
Uh, I think we need to engage this data more and I'm going to do this survey. Hopefully we can get it to the point of being even more um directly on the ground so people can see how it impacts us locally. Thank you. >> Thanks, Al.
It's great to see you. >> Thanks. Good to see you all. Thanks so much.
Oh, and I think I think the slides got sent out, but there's, you know, contact information, um, social media stuff if you want to send an email with any follow-up questions. I've jotted down some of the things that I'll follow up on, but if anything else comes to mind, uh, please feel free to reach out. >> And, and I appreciate the day-to-day dashboards you guys have on the website as well. >> Yeah,
>> you guys did an update to the metro mayors and it was really helpful. Thank you. >> All right, next up I'm sorry we uh we are uh have one mic down so apologies. Um so uh our next speaker is um we wanted to give you some very Durham context.
So, we have um Kayla Cyel from our uh uh planning and development department who is going to talk today about a report that they're doing in connection with the comprehensive plan and share some um Durham specific data. So, Kayla, I'm going to you okay? Great.
Okay. Good afternoon. Can everyone hear me? Okay.
Awesome. Um hopefully everyone's had enough snacks and know [laughter] I'm in between you and lunch. Uh which is not always a great position to be in. No worries.
Yeah. So, my name is Kayla Cybel. I'm a senior planner in the planning and development department and I'm presenting um some highlights on local Durham data that we've pulled together for our community goals and objectives report card. I'll talk a little bit about what that report card initiative is and then go into highlights that I think would be helpful.
It definitely answers maybe some of your questions that you had in the previous presentation and probably will bring up some more questions. So, the community goals and objectives report card is an initiative that came out of our our adopted comprehensive plan in 2023. It's one of the ways we're trying to report out how our community is doing since adopting those policies
and implementing the comprehensive plan. Um, this is our first report card, so there's a lot of room for improvement. Um, we've never done this before and we're trying to report out broad trends. they've been trends of um data that maybe the planning department doesn't have control of or even local government has control over.
The report card is organized around eight equity indicators and I'll just briefly touch on that on how we're measuring equity and equitable impact of local decisions. gov346. You don't have to type in the whole URL. You can look at the report card there.
Okay. So, the data in the report card aims to show four-year trends over um the next two years. When we update the report card, we'll have even hopefully even better data to show how things are trending in Durham. This is a
countywide Durham specific data. So we pulled from our transportation planning organization uh the anything the Durham neighborhood compass publishes and even our own planning department data. [gasps] And we'll I do want to mention that because equities was a huge focus in our comprehensive plan, carrying that forward, we want to try to use data and compare it to where where folks are being impacted um in our community and also who's being impacted. [snorts] So this um map shows the equity emphasis areas. All credit to the transportation department for pulling this data together. It's about nine or 10 different socioeconomic factors overlaid together and pointing to specific areas in Durham where there are high concentrations of [gasps] folks who are have disabilities, uh, older people, younger people, folks with limited English proficiency, low incomes, well, all the the populations we talk about
when we're looking for equitable engagement and equitable impacts. Um other ways the city and county have tried to measure equity and equitable impact through the um equitable green infrastructure program and the county's community health assessment. Those are also great resources for um looking at uh what where folks say are they're being most impacted in our community and where those folks live. Okay.
So the report card has short sections, chapters in it, all of them organized by indicators that typically point to access. So when we thought about how we would measure data, we wanted to put it in the context of how are we improving access for those who need it, access to transportation, access to jobs, access to housing, and measuring who already has access um and where those gaps are. So, in summary, none of this will be probably surprising to you all the data we're going to go over, but this data
supports what we've heard for residents. It's hard to access and afford housing in Durham, and it's difficult to access daily needs without having to get to a car. Those are just two highlights. There are other other things our residents have told us that are consistent with this data.
All right, [snorts] so jumping right in. Population growth. I think this was asked earlier. Since 2020, Durham has grown by 12% in population.
By 2055, we're expected to grow even more. So, Durham has been growing, continues to grow. It's going to keep growing. Um, our estimated population as of last year, over 367,000 folks.
The estimate, the population forecast number comes from our transportation planning organization that do population forecasts for every metropolitan transportation plan. Um, it's a pretty good resource and it's local to Durham. How is our race and ethnicity demographics changing? In the um the blue color, that's the
2020 number. The orange, orange color is 2024. Um 2024 is the most recent American Community Survey data I have. So, Durham's racial makeup is shifting.
there's fewer black residents and more people identifying as Hispanic or two or more races. Um the white population is about staying steady there. That's just a little bit of how folks are identifying. Also, we know we know there are limitations to these categories and when folks fill out the census survey, they may not identify as one category or the other.
age. Um 15% of residents were 65 and older, 18% were young people. Um one limitation to this data is that the office on youth youth defines young people as between ages 13 and 24 and the census groups 10 year olds in that too. So just kind of more or less 18% of young people. This is important to note when we're planning about our future and young people in our community and also
planning for elder care in our community as well. Um, and these are just a marginal increase from 2020. So, it's about staying stable. So, a lot of folks ask us how many people are moving to Durham, how many people are moving out.
The best data we could pull is population migration data. There's a one specific data set in the census that gives us an estimate of how many people are moving to Durham [sighs] since 2020. That's that first column, immigration. how many people are moving out of Durham.
That's that second column. And then what the net is uh key takeaway here, more people are moving here than are leaving each year. That's pretty consistent. Um and then there's that population projection. Again, putting in context this 2025 number about 367 resident uh 367,000 residents in Durham expected to grow to 461,000 in 2055.
We can always go back to that if we need to. Housing growth. [laughter] So, I'm going to explain where these numbers came from because some of these are approved through our reszoning processes, the processes that you see in your meetings, and some of them are through our site plan, which is those that are actually permitted. So, over 16,000 housing units were estimated to be built between 2020 and 2024. That's from our American Community Survey. and trying to get into gran more granularity about how many housing units are coming from 2023 to mid 2025 over 21,000 more units were approved to be built in Durham and that is just through the reszoning process um it's not what may be built it's what folks have approval to do right now and then they would have to go to the site plan process so not probably not all of those 20,000 units are going to be built um but that is kind of the general indication of the
pace of what approvals folks are getting for housing units in Durham. So, how many of those units are affordable? We always want to know that. Um, there's a little caveat about it's hard to get our hands on comprehensive data for affordable housing across the region.
Um, it changes all the time. Some housing units are affordable now and aren't affordable in the next year. 6% of them are considered affordable so subsidized under market rate in that process. So most of them are going to be market rate there.
So it'll be interesting to see over time how this pie chart changes. Some more information on housing sales and value. Housing sales are going up, housing values are going up. Um, between 2020 and 2025, 40% increase in housing
sales and a 57% increase in housing values. So, probably something most of us have experienced if we've lived in Durham over this this time span here. Housing types. So, this is data that comes from our approved site plans.
So these are the um when a when a developer comes in, they have the if they got a resoning or development plan, they come to us for the site plan stage and that's where they get into the actual details of how many units they're actually going to build. So between 2020 and 2025, 83% of our new housing units were town homes or apartments. So, just kind of going into this graph real bit real quick. We talk a lot about housing types because people have different needs, different family sizes. Um, sometimes we need smaller units that are maybe more affordable to folks. Uh, this kind of dark blue largest section are apartmentsif almost 57%.
And then that orange are town homes and then the blue right there about 17% single family homes. duplexes are about 51 built in that time frame and then about 180 accessory dwelling units. So again, we'll be interesting to see how this changes over the next couple years and if our housing mix changes um from year to year. This is not existing housing mix.
These are the approvals. I wish I could get the existing housing mix. [snorts] some more information on homes, home ownership, household income, mortgage, and rent. All this is increasing.
I think we all know this. We all feel this. Um 56% of Durham's housing is owner occupied. So, think about about half of us, half of people in Durham own a house and stay in the house and the other half are renters. So, that's the people we're talking with all the time. [gasps] Household income has increased by 29% but so has mortgages and rents um by a
lot 30% 41% respectively. This is a little bit older data but we also want to know how many folks in our community are costburdened. This cost burden metric takes into account mortgage or rent, utilities, insurance, taxes, other kinds of fees. It doesn't take in account transportation.
So if you added the transportation costs, it would be even more folks who are cost burdened. Um but in general, you could say a third of all households in Durham are cost burdened. Um housing is expensive. All the fees are expensive.
Um this is a problem. We know that. And then talking about housing, we also need to talk about folks who are unhoused. This is a little bit older data.
It's from 2024 point in time. um count. We can see that uh from 2020 to 2024 uh a little bit of an increase in folks
who are either unsheltered in transitional housing or emergency self shelter between 2023 and 2024. So, this is just also something to that we track and that we we keep in mind as we're planning for housing and planning for housing services. food insecurity. So, this section is about how folks are accessing the things they need, groceries, child care, pharmacies, you name it.
Um, this is an area where we're improving how we're measuring this, but for now, we have some data from the Durham neighborhood, actually the sorry, the Durham County Health Assessment and um public health department's food apartide identification. So in general you can say about 50% almost 50% of residents although this is measuring census blocks are within more than a mile away from a grocery store. Yes. >> Do we know if uh I'm probably pretty
sure they are but private entities market uh commercial entities are they looking at the same data when they're doing their market research? Do they reach out to us for this or they do their own like if there's a grocery store chain looking to come to the city? >> I think they don't reach out to us but they do their own. >> Okay.
So they do their own market analysis but they don't reach out to us. I'd be interested if we could maybe build some proactive relationships and uh with industries what we see there is a deficiency. Yeah. Thanks.
Yes. >> I appreciate the disagregated numbers about food insecurity, but what's the overall number across the whole county? Like what percent are food insecure? >> Oh, percentage of folks who are food insecure >> overall.
Yeah, because you've got the good you've got the breakdowns there by by uh racial groups, but just overall, what's the number in Durham? >> Yeah, I I don't have that on hand. I'd have to dig into the community health
assessment. >> If you could if you could do that, yeah, that'd be great. >> Yeah, sure. Um, I mentioned this before.
Um, we're working on a a better method of measuring this. So, it's not just census blocks. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
>> Yeah, it [clears throat] would be census block. I guess the grocery store within a mile. There are still large parts of our county that are rural and so you're not necessarily going to see um >> um because of the the land use around them. So, it'd be interesting to see >> the breakdown of city and county.
>> Yeah, exactly. >> Okay. parks. A similar um type of metric we're trying to grapple with is how many folks live within a certain distance of a park.
Um this data is being updated right now by our parks and rec wreck department, but in their comprehensive systems plan. They report about 46% of city residents um are within a 10-minute walk of a park. So, we'll see how that changes and
we'll also see how um how we can get this data a bit more granular. This study was done by a a national company. So, as part of the report card, we wanted to see try to get at that proximity, trying to get closer to understanding where folks live in proximity to what the things they need and how can they get to those things safely and not always having to use a car. >> [laughter] >> So, we have this heat map.
We looked at schools, child care, libraries, health clinics, grocery stores, and parks. And zoomed in a little bit more. You can see [clears throat] where they're generally clustered. So, this is a heat map showing where those clusters of um daily needs are.
Right now, this doesn't tell us really how many folks can get to these things, but it shows us generally across Durham where the where the things are and where they're clustered. So, densest clusters concentrated in the central and southern Durham um all within the urban growth boundary. So, that's good and consistent with how our
our policy is around growing out. Um many of the equity emphasis areas, so that's this light blue color are are covered by these these specific clusters, but there are notable gaps in the northeast part of the city and county. That's kind of a mixture of city and county boundaries there. Again, we're working on a deeper examination of this.
We've already started looking into how we can use our tools better to get at those more specific metrics for how many people can reach um certain facilities. But just a general idea for now, [clears throat] little bit of transportation data. Um there's a lot of transportation data out there. And also, if there are things that you think are missing from these highlights, please let me know.
I can always add them in their next report card. Sidewalks. um about 79 miles of sidewalks between 2020 and 2025. And then don't have a great metric for how the greenway miles built in that time span, but we maintain uhund over 103
miles of greenways and trails in Durham. And our next report card, hopefully we'll have more better data. It can show the trend for this one. Bus impaired transit services also took this from transportation.
Um this is showing uh on the left the go Durham bus ridership. How many people are riding the bus over um 2020 to 2024 and then our uh GoDm access ridership 2022 to 2024. It's the best data we have now. The access system if you don't know it's more on demand.
Um elderly folks, folks with disabilities rely on this. Um so writership is increasing. People use the bus. They need the bus.
And um on time metric 83% for the go durm system and 94% for the durm access system. That's important because people need the bus to be on time to get to work. Yes. >> Can we make sure to send this data to our county counterparts?
>> Sure. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Okay.
little bit of environmental data. So, um, we talk about this sometimes, how much of Durham Durham's lands are protected in some way, conserved in some way. There are different regulatory ways of protecting land either from development. So, um, [clears throat] our department did a study a couple years ago looking at what level of protection some lands might be in and where we can go from there.
So, there's a lot of numbers here, but in general, we can think of almost 26% of land in Durham County has some level of protection. Um, either that high, medium, or low. They're they're defined in the report. Um, you could probably give a whole presentation on that report. Actually, Carl did, but could do that again if we needed to. Yeah, >> Miss Apple, do you have that over times
like in over the last 10 years that sort of like align how that's changed over 10 years, 20 years? >> Be great to see. >> I will look at the report. I don't think we we did historical data.
We can see if we can >> even like estimates or anything. Yeah, would be interesting just to see some over time. >> Any guess? Yeah.
And but also going forward, we'll have this metric to and use the same methodology. Could I have the additional information if we can get that in comparison to other um urban or metropolitan areas in North Carolina? >> Sure. >> Thank you.
>> Yeah. >> Okay. All right. Um greenhouse gas emissions.
The [clears throat] um our council of governments, the Central Pines Regional Council, uh produced a really good study that broke down um greenhouse gas emissions by county. Um, no surprise here in Durham County, transportation is our biggest producer of greenhouse gases, followed by residential energy use. So,
turning on the lights in your house. Um, we have some other obviously the blue is commercial and yellow is industrial. Um, but this is interesting to see how this would change over time. I know in transportation we're always talking about how we can reduce this uh our greenhouse gas emissions since that's a huge part of this this pie here.
Oh, >> sure. [snorts] >> Okay, I think I'm Okay, I'm good. So, as we continue to grow, is there any way we can provide projections about the emissions and we're thinking about particularly um I think it's what 2055 we'll be over 400,000 people. So, just want to see what that looks like maybe over the next couple decades or so.
>> Yeah. Um I [clears throat] don't have that number off hand, but I believe our metropolitan transportation plan gets into estimated emissions at least from transportation over time. Um also, as we invest in bus transit and multimodal systems, hoping that will decrease Yeah, that that's that's a great question Burus and I think that the TPO data we've seen data on this like sort of changing over time like what sort of patterns are mobility and it's like I mean it's like by 2055 right now what percent maybe 2% or like bike and pedestrian rides maybe gone it up to like 5% it doesn't there's not a huge delta there so unless we do more to get people to change their patterns yeah it's may not change that much >> currently what we're doing right now is kind of these scenarios um and and trying to chart that path forward. Um happy to maybe either one of us can Yeah, we could either ask for folks to come talk to us at at a work session or ask TPO staff to to send it to you.
>> Okay, that's fine. >> Yeah, great. Yeah, our transportation department's great at looking all this at all this stuff here. Um and also one thing to note, um a lot of these studies are done by region, so not just county because we know we're part of a region.
have a lot of jobs here and people are commuting across county lines. So, greenhouse gas emissions are complicated. Okay, going a little bit into employment. I know you just heard a lot about employment.
Um, so our top employers, this is as of 2024 are our usual suspects. These are number numbers of employees. That's how the the top num top 10 are generated. Duke, Fidelity, DPS, uh, the Veterans Affairs, IBM, and then us, the city and county are on there, too.
So, we employ a lot of folks. Um, and so this kind of gets at a little bit of the question I think uh, somebody had earlier about the the types of industries um, in Durham. These are saying pretty consistent. I think we could probably dig into that more. Um,
and then this is the unemployment rate um, that uh, y'all had a whole presentation on. maybe off. [snorts] >> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
We'll see how this changes in the next report card for sure. Okay. All right. And then uh it's always hard to know when we where we should talk about commuting, whether it's uh getting to jobs or during transportation section.
Right now, it's lumped in the in the job section. Um but in general, uh 63% of Durham workers drove alone to work in 2024. I know it's kind of covered by some of these bars here, but that's a little bit of a decrease from 2020. Um the we don't have good data on 2020 work from home numbers.
That kind of wasn't [snorts] as much of a a metric back then, but soon became a metric. And then travel time to work. You could say a little more than half of workers um their commute times are shorter than 30 minutes. And that was up from 2020.
So taking longer to get to work and this is just driving. There are other modes that could be measured. >> I I just wanted to see some of this we get at TPO but just in comparison of so that's a you know it's not a huge improvement. It is an improvement of of um 50 you know shorter work which if our comp plan is imagining denser more connected cities um you want to see that percentage go down.
I would love to see across North Carolina if they're seeing that same trend. >> Sure, we can do that. Thank you, Sarah, for taking notes. [laughter] >> Also, now I'm sorry, Miss Cable.
Um, and this is also relates to the TPO's modeling of what's, you know, this 2055 model, what it looks like in Durham. And I think we've mentioned this before in council meetings. The model shows that by 2055, we grow by 100,000 people. So, like about a 50% population growth, but it shows like jobs growing by 90%. >> Oh, for sure. And that means so that means a lot of those jobs are people living outside Durham coming to Durham
for those jobs. And so this relates directly to housing, right? So either either we build more housing to house people who are going to have jobs here and and get that tax revenue or they're going to be they're going to live somewhere else and drive to Durham. So it's a huge huge issue for us.
Okay. Yeah, that segus great into my next slide, which is job growth. um 11% increase in number of jobs since 2020. And then looking at future jobs, this this comes from our transportation planning organization.
They also forecast the future jobs. Um a lot of jobs, 62% more jobs estimated by 2055. And this this is just a rough map of where those jobs might be located based on our current plan. So our comprehensive plan where we would allow and cluster jobs. So obviously RTP is highlighted down there and then that blue um layer here is those equity emphasis areas. So you can kind of see um if folks live there, how they would
potentially get to which jobs. But we know that Durham is a main attractor for jobs across counties further than you think folks can be here for these jobs. Okay, that's just some highlights. I know there's a lot of data that could be interesting.
There's some more data in the report card here. Just some key takeaways. Rapid growth and rising housing costs are increasing. I think we know this.
Um, new housing is being added. Affordability challenges persist. And um, many residents lack nearby access to daily needs. We'll dig into that a bit more to get us some clearer metrics next time.
Transportation options are improving and transit still remains essential for many residents. People are using the bus, they need the bus. um and unemployment is low and job growth is increasing. So that's just some takeaways. I'm happy to answer any questions and also um if y'all have insights or reflections or thoughts about this work or how we can improve our work, um love to hear them. Thank you.
>> Thank you for your presentation. Um quick question. Is there a way to provide um additional data regarding population shifts via census tracks? Oh yeah, we could dig into each census track and how those have changed.
For sure. Okay. >> We could and specifically I guess the equity emphasis areas would be one way to start. Um unless there are specific places in Durham you'd want us to >> I'm particularly interested in legacy African-American communities and seeing a population shift for like we noticed that every other racial group has either remained consistent or grown.
So I want to know a bit more about like the black community or black residents and where people are being displaced. Well assuming people are being displaced. >> Yeah. Where the change is happening.
Yeah. For sure. We can we can look into that. Thank you so much. Um, I think access is exactly the right theme to use for this report. I think one thing that's so interesting about this is that this is really where our powers are like enu enormously where all of the different
pieces of work that we do as a city come together um between zoning and capital investments and economic development and and housing and neighborhoods. they all come together for this and that's really what um influences this report and the future reports that that uh you'll be creating. Um just a couple things here. Um access to food I think is is so important.
Um great example of uh capitalism doing what it does. When grocery stores come in they usually cluster. They're competing against one another. And so you'll find places that are just have tons of grocery stores and people have tons of options and then you'll see huge desert food deserts. Um and so I I think we really need to look at at some point especially maybe after we we we finally get through the UDO uh rewrite and remapping is coming up with a really good strategy around uh food and access
to food. And I know the county is doing some food work, but we really have the power at the city level through zoning and capital investments to to have more influence on that and economic development have more influence on that. Uh the heat map um I think is is really great. I think it's kind of a to me it's kind of a starting point.
It's like very high level. You see the this is where people are and businesses are. Um I think um you know in the future really interested in digging into that information. How can we get people's needs within five and 10 minute walks um to where they live or bike rides or transit rides? How how can we get things closer to people and people closer to the things that they need to get to in order to transition us from a a city that is hyper dependent on the automobile to one that at least uh has a few additional options. Um, and then yeah, I think figuring out how to get uh commercial neighborhood
oriented commercial into residential neighborhoods and building neighborhoods that have resident uh commercial that is oriented toward neighborhoods is is one really important piece. And then another important piece is kind of like looking at the uh job cluster map that you showed. moving our city from one that imagines ourself more as a monocentric city with one kind of walkable downtown to a city that is polyentric and has many different um centers of walkable activity areas. Thank you.
>> Again, just want to say thanks for the Oh, go ahead. >> Thanks. I actually don't have any questions. I just I I want to say thank you.
I to the manager too and budget folks. I like this presentation of like North Carolina broad framework, Durham specific framework. Um I am like still kind of trying to wrap my head around why we're looking at data that's two and a half years old. I I understand that we had some issues there, but for a lot of
this we have like for the homelessness stuff, we have a real-time data tracker so we could look at the numbers from yesterday. Um, and I think that we have transit information on bus ridership because we've seen that presentation. " So, just like adding that as additional context, it is like kind of like making it a little bit hard for me to wrap my head around this presentation. >> Yeah, that that's totally fair.
I get that. Um, yeah, it's a balance between trying to show a slice of time in a in a long trend versus the current numbers and that that can be confusing. Sure, we can work we can try to work on that for sure. >> So, first of all, I want to say thanks so much for the presentation.
This is like, you know, if we think about how we apply what's happening in the economy to what we do as a council. This is like critical information. So, I want to thank the folks who passed the comprehensive plan and had the vision to
sort of create this this goals and objectives report card. We'll get this every year, correct? uh every two years. >> Every two years.
Yeah. And so in the spirit, Mr. Manager, of being like data driven, what we do, this is exactly the kind of data we need. So pairing this presentation with Sally's presentation about the state level sort of framework is like so critical.
So I want to thank you for that. Look forward to the next report in a couple years. Um to council member Cook's uh comment, that was actually my question because we did have a presentation just um a couple days ago at Joint City County Committee on um on the homelessness strategy, right? And that and that and so I went to the dashboard.
The dashboard shows like 1,400 people roughly unhoused. There may be a different calculation than you shared which is like 400. So I don't know whether I don't think Ryan Smith is maybe director Smith not here. I don't know whether um director Venus knows that those numbers maybe why why we're showing on the dashboard 1400 right the P. Yeah but then what's the count the 1400 is what's that based on?
Hey, this is Sarah Vinius, Housing and Neighborhood Services. Um, Ryan can certainly speak to this in greater detail, but the number in in the presentation today was point in time count and Yes. And the number on the dashboard reflects total homeless. So one is showing point in time count different measure of unsheltered only.
And the other one on the dashboard that data point is total homeless. >> Correct. Yes. Not just unhoused but total homeless population.
Yeah. Thank you and thanks for pointing that out. Yeah. Once we put together a report like this, we put it together in October comes out of date immediately.
So, we're catching up with our data and our data sources. >> All right. Um, thank you all. I I would just say I I really appreciate this and this is really good perspective from Sally's presentation to yours. Um, I don't know what this looks like. I don't know if we have technology to do it, but
I'm looking at this almost is teasing with wanting to see it in the format of like an equalizer. If I'm looking for recommendations, like there's rapid growth, that's one data point, but there's rising housing costs. So, what's the recommendation to embrace rapid growth, but also decrease housing cost, you know, um and and I I know there's supply and demand, but I also know there's some policy and there's some policy impact uh from the state level. I keep talking about, you know, being restricted to use year old lumber.
um that that is that is something that's significantly impacting the cost of you know building which gets transferred to the end user. um you know, new housing is being added, uh but affordability challenges persist. Like, so how much more new housing do we need based on the rate of growth? Uh and also, I'm just going to put this out there, you know, uh if if the council, if we approved every
project, where would we be in this? If we denied every project, where would we be? Where would we be in this? So, what is the what is the accountability impact of our decisions?
And I'm looking forward to seeing that type of data with the budget overall as well. Since our two forms of revenue is sales tax and property tax. So we're looking to expand the tax base so we can pay for all these beautiful things. Then I mean we're not selling lemonade, you know.
So how do we how do we get there? And we see that we we uh you know we're approving units but not all of them are coming online. So what is that you know what is the realistic impact of what we approve and what we don't what you know uh what is the value of the the tax base expansion in real time I I I mean I know that's really really detailed like deep multi-level damn data but it would really help because I I don't I I'm just I'm tired of debating philosophically I want real time data to say look this is
the impact of our choice our decision All right. >> Yes. So, I think those are uh really good and valid questions, things that we have been trying to dig into with data ourselves. One of the hardest things for us is to predict the kind of end viability of a project, right?
When things come to you all at the resoning stage, not in all cases, but in some cases, they are speculative, right? And folks don't tell us, you know, that that's the case necessarily. So we do have a number of projects that end up never coming to fruition. Um so that is difficult for us to predict. Usually one of the best predictors is if they have come back in to seek the next approval a site plan um within a relatively short amount of time within like a year or less I think the chances are good that it so we can start working on some ways to identify like what the number that are really being pushed through to construction end up being. Uh that's going to be a little bit of a longer term project of kind of data analysis,
but that's something that we're we're happy to get into. I did if I could want to offer one clarification. Um as you know, a big portion of our department is city county and obviously we have city county ordinance and a city county comprehensive plan. So the population numbers that were shared at the very beginning, those are county numbers.
So out of that like current 360ish thousand about 317,000 are city only. Correct. Correct. And as you can imagine, most of the growth that happens happens in the city typically through annexation.
Right. So we are we are projecting that the vast majority of that future growth number of that 466 and some change will be city similarly proportioned. So hopefully that uh clarification is helpful. All right.
Thank you all. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Taylor.
>> Um, so I think the next thing on our agenda is lunch. Um, I before we go to lunch, I did want to remind council, I know you all have been asking for a lot of items, follow-up items. Just wanted to remind you we have budget staff here who are, you know, furiously taking notes. will be following up with presenters.
Budget staff will kind of compile um a lot of this and then get it back to you so that we can kind of what we can get immediately we will try and get before the next retreat. Um and what we can't we'll let you know and say that it might be longer term. So I just wanted to kind of remind you of that and then um we did hear the feedback about the presentation. you know, we we were we were struggling to try and get you something that was more um you know, more dur focused, get you more data. And so, you know, we hear that you know, we do we recognize we were looking at one thing that could kind of cover everything, but obviously we do have um experts in the room and um I know we will be hearing from transportation on our second day as well, too. So, um, >> so I know we're not talking about them today, but, um, like I had fair free
buses as one of my council requests, which I'm going to withdraw because I have seen that it is in the budget. If we want to do withdraw, is it can we still withdraw some of our requests or have you already created our tool? Am I I'm too late? [laughter] >> Too late.
>> I have created your tool. Let's let's talk at uh the break and see um you know uh but yes you have been the tool the prioritization tool has been given but um we can you know we can talk about what council might like to do um but let's let's [laughter] >> okay but we will um but but but transportation is coming to our second retreat and we're going to be talking about that issue so okay well I will let you go um I think that we will have um we were supposed to be back around 1:45 to keep us back on track because we do have a full afternoon so if folks want to get their lunch and then we can come back and we may start um a little bit before um y'all are done. But thank you.
>> Yeah, colleagues, if we if you don't mind, uh take some time, but we can maybe have a partial working lunch, get started a little earlier. Um we can if we can get started before 1:45. Yeah. Thank you.
Okay. Um, we're going to get started here in about four minutes. Four minutes. Okay.
We're going to get started here in about four minutes. the mayor had to step out. So, I'll I'll get us started here in a second. And um I know Christina's getting speakers ready. We can keep eating through the rest of it. Thanks.
Okay, I'm going to go ahead and get us started for our afternoon session. There's still plenty of food. >> Can you hear me? >> Try and put your Yeah, there you go.
[laughter] Oh, up one more. Thanks. That's great. Um, so our next section this afternoon is um we are focusing on residents and
kind of some of the engagement and conversations that we had with them. Um, and so I just wanted to do a little introduction before I I uh turn it over to uh staff. Um, but really this afternoon, um, just to kind of set the tone, we really have three tools that we're going to be looking at. And so these three tools, um, essentially what we are trying to get to is kind of giving council some informed resident centered um, or helping you to make informed resident centered decisions.
And so, um, the information that you'll be getting today and how it fits with both the strategic plan and the budget is really to kind of hear what some of our residents said in in a couple different ways. So, the first we're going to be talking about our strategic plan refresh, which you have already started in the fall. Um, and as part of that process, you created some priorities which we went out to residents to hear from um, and hear what they had to say about those priorities. So that's kind of a bit of a a gut check for you to hear um what residents thought about your priorities and how they ranked them. And then we have our
resident satisfaction survey which is a piece that you hear every year. So we have etc here who is going to be um providing you with some of that um data that they got. That is important because a lot of that data is stuff that we look at year by year. And so it's really gives you a a longitudinal sense of what are some of the core services that the city provides and how we're doing on it.
So sometimes it doesn't change a lot on on year to you know on a one-year basis but if we look at it over the course of the year um we get to see some things and so we'll be talking about that and a new dashboard we have for that data and then finally I'm really excited about our in-house community conversations and so we have staff here who are going to be talking about kind of a really deep dive into the priorities and talking about what residents said and kind of the conversation that they had with them about those priorities. So, I'm going to turn it over to um Sher Metaf in um our performance and strategy um at the budget and management services. >> Thank you. >> All right, it's on. Can you hear me?
>> Not good. Okay. Can you Can you hear me now? Is it >> Hello?
>> Okay. Little bit. [snorts and laughter] Okay. How's that?
>> Good. >> Okay, I'll I'll speak up. I'll speak up. All right, got this.
I got this. All right, we're all set. All right, so good afternoon everyone. I am Sheri Metaf.
I'm from budget management services. I lead this uh strategic plan um development process this year. I am joined today with Andrew Holland. Oh, wait.
I already had this up there. Andrew Holland, who is our fearless leader over our office of performance innovation. He is going to do the majority of the presentation today. I'm just here to really set him up.
Uh but we're also joined with Jesse in the back. Jesse Ren is our ICMA fellow. She's back there with the laptop because all of our data is back there. And so if you have any questions, we might need to turn to her real quick for some answers.
So today, um you know, this first slide here is is the slide we we always open with, but it's a little up. You know, this morning you already talked about the strategic plan. The city manager uh articulated why we're here and why the strategic plan is so important. Couple of the key words from this morning that really stuck with me is is clarity and direction.
Um strategic plan should be should provide that clarity between our residents, our employees, um you all obviously uh as well as our senior leadership into making sure we're all heading in the same direction that no matter what is going on and comes up and a lot of lot of noise that happens around us, we all are going in the same direction. Heading in the same place. heading to the same place. So the strategic plan refresh uh we do a refresh every three to five years for our plan.
Uh three is three years is is the best way to do it. Things change so quickly. I I um life is fast and furious. I used to think it was because I was getting older, but I don't think
it is. I I don't think it's my age. I think life is just moving at a much quicker pace. Things change so quickly.
Priorities shift. the community changes and so this refresh is really important. Strategic plan is no good if it's old, outdated and doesn't mean anything to people which makes this refresh so important. So we started this refresh or let me get to the calendar here.
We are uh we're that green thing on the bottom there. We are right where we need to be right in the middle of this process. In the fall we all talked about goals and those priorities. In two weeks, Andrew and I will be back with you right here, same place, same time probably um to talk about which of those priorities are going to uh make it into the strategic plan moving forward.
At that point, that kicks off phase two of our strategic plan process, which is all about that initiative development. And I'm going to talk more about that in a couple weeks when I come back. But that is uh that is the process that um city manager also mentioned this morning will run parallel to this budget development side by side.
And then we'll be back in May along with the budget at the end of May. We have a two-day um council work session that Andrew and I will be back to uh show you that draft plan. And depending on that conversation, if there's some minor tweaks um we'll go ahead and adopt that plan along with the budget in June. If there's more than minor tweaks, which is totally okay.
uh we'll take some time to do that. We're not locked in to that uh to the same dates as budget. So, we have some time to go back in and make sure this plan is how you guys want it to look. All right.
So, let's remember back um in the fall, you all have been involved with this for a while now. We all met originally in September. We had a a facilitator come in. You'll remember um most of you, I know we have a couple new folks, but most of you remember walking around the room with post-it notes and you were putting in your proc your um your uh priorities in the different categories. We then had a a good conversation around goals and what
how what the goals meant and what they meant to you, what they meant to residents. Um we then came back again in October. uh we did some work in between that as well. But we came back in October and you all had a lengthier conversation around those goals.
We came up with our four strategic goals that we are moving forward with. And then you took that very long list of priorities and you shrunk it down a little bit. We had conversations around kind of above the line, below the line of which ones were going to move forward in the process. So then we as staff took the ones above the line and we went out and did some survey work around that and which is what Andrew is going to talk about.
But before I bring Andrew up, I do want to say you had um four goals. That last goal that uh the natural environment that built natural environment, it's a big goal. There's a lot included in that. And when we started looking at surveys and going out to our residents, we did break out a couple categories just to make it easier for residents, a little more digestible for them. And so when you see the
results today, they are broken out, but that's just for today. We have our four goals and we'll bring them all back together. Um, especially for next week when we're talking about those priorities, we put them all under the same goal. Okay.
All right. I I'm very quick, so I'm going to turn this over to Andrew and he is going to uh sh talk about the data. >> Yep. Great.
I'm just right here. >> All right. >> Thank you. Thank you, Sherry.
So now I'm going to transition into the actual survey results. So it's important to note that our main goal was to ensure that our residents and also our city employees had the opportunity to uh rank your priority areas based upon the goals that you came up with. So this is basically a breakdown of the three surveys that were administered and conducted and it also shows the uh the number of respondents. So for the first uh survey is our community surveys. This was tailored
around our residents. So this was a minister in-house. So this was administered and conducted by our strategy and performance team. And as you can see we had close to 500 residents to complete the survey.
Next, we had our our employee survey. As I mentioned before, we wanted to ensure that our employees had an opportunity to rank um your priority areas. And we had close to 300 of our employees to complete the survey. And last but not least, we have our resident satisfaction survey.
And of course, we have Jason Marado from um ETC. He's going to be speaking more about the results of the survey. Um, but what was so unique about this particular survey this year was we were able to incorporate your priorities within the overall uh resident satisfaction survey. >> Yes, >> that was my question, Mr.
Holl. So, the the community survey and the employee service, the first two there were specifically focused on the the strategic plan priorities, right? >> Yes. That you all came up with in the
fall during your strategic plan and vision assessment. >> And then the resident satisfaction survey was the broader one we always do, but it included some of the strategic plan stuff. Correct. Thank you.
>> Yep. Any other questions? >> Okay, great. Okay.
Kind of weird. All right. So, um, in regards to our, uh, community engagement and outreach, uh, we were very intentional on how we went about engaging our residents, um, our goal was really to, uh, make sure that we met people where they are. So, we were really focused on those underserved populations and as you can see um from our community survey uh we had 477 uh residents to respond. Out of that number we had uh 174 youth um and as you know um our youth population tends to be a very um overlooked underserved population. So our goal was to ensure that we included um these uh
youth individuals in our process. We also piggyback off of our great participatory budgeting team. I know I'm a little biased um but um as you can see here are a few locations and sites in which we were able to partner with uh the PB staff and also we partner with the new communicate um the new um community partnerships and engagement department around the community conversation sessions. So, as I noted before, um we had over 700 residents to respond to the resident satisfaction survey.
And we really wanted to highlight um the last bullet. So, we received uh feedback from 249 employees through online outreach in person visits um to operations departments. So, we wanted to go and make sure that our frontline employees had the opportunity to uh complete this survey. So that was about I believe 73%
um of the total um as you know if you're specifically looking at the employee survey. Okay. So this is a racial breakdown um of all of the uh respondents who uh completed the survey. I'm not going to spend too much time on this um but as you can see it is a very diverse um population of folks who responded to this survey.
Um, as you can look at the last two columns, um, you will see that, um, all of the folks who completed the survey compared to the city of Durm uh, census, it's it's pretty, uh, reflective. So, it's very comparable. So, we're very pleased with that. 1%.
Um there were um there were some residents who were unable to complete the survey. Um specifically it was around our students. Um DPS does not
allow students to complete uh uh demographic um surveys. So I just want to go and be transparent about that. And also um it's important to note that if you look at our engagement or the type of engagement that we did, we went to the Durham bus station, we also actually did some engagement here. So whenever folks are coming to DHS or to the Durham bus station, their intent is not to go and complete a survey.
They're there to go and get a certain type of service. So, we were fortunate enough for them to um to to uh complete the survey. Um but I just want to be transparent about that particular number. But we're pretty confident that the folks who left those uh uh those uh demographic surveys blank, they were people of color. Okay. So for the next few slides, you will see how residents and also uh city
employees rank your priority areas based upon uh the uh based upon the goals that you all develop in the fall. So for the first goal you will see it is inclusive economic prosperity. So the top rated priority area is support the creation of quality well-paying jobs. And coming in in the close second is support the growth of essential businesses such as child care and food access in underserved areas.
And even if you look at three and four, you can see that there really isn't a bit separation of difference. So just want you to be mindful about that. um you know when you come back in two weeks to rate these uh priority areas. >> Mr.
Holland, just real quick on that one. So could you tell me so what was the like what's the question there? Did it say like like rank like yes or no or you're prioritized or what was the actual question that res? >> Yeah. So basically we asked residents to pick their top three priority areas per goal >> per per goal. So this is like the So
they were picking their top three for this first one about shared prosperity. Mhm. Okay. >> Okay.
>> Excuse me. >> Sorry. So, is is the top percentage is that how many people put that as their number one or is that it was in their top three? >> In their top three.
>> It was in their top three. Okay. So, do we have a ranking also of like a heat map ranking of >> Okay, just top three ones. Got it.
Okay, thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Yeah. >> Were these the only options or were there like many more?
Are these the top ranking ones of many options or was it was it like just these one, two, three, four, five, six, seven options? >> Yeah, just just these. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
That you you all developed. >> Okay. >> All right. These all came from that
meeting in September. Yep. >> Yeah. >> Okay.
All right. So, um for the second goals, um a safe community, um what was top rated was support safe, positive opportunities for youth. Um that was rated number one and the close second was reduce violence and coming in third was expand access to safe and inclusive community spaces. So, I give y'all time to look at that if you have any questions.
They're also in your notebooks. Um, I can't show you the page because I can't think of it right now, but we do have these slides pulled out for you to take a look at. All right. So, for the third goal, we have high performing organization. So, what was top rated was manage and complete infrastructure projects and services efficiently. I think that was you, Council Member Ris, who had brought that one up during the visioning
session. Uh, banishing and complete infrastructure projects and services. Yep. Um, and coming in close second is, uh, maintain a high performance city workforce through competitive pay and benefits.
So this is the partial goal and this is the goal that Sherry had alluded to where we you know with the in-house we call it the mega goal. So what we decided to do again was to go and split this goal up so that again it would be more digestible and more comprehensive for res residents to understand because there's a lot a lot of stuff in that mega goal. So what came in number one top rated was explore and support strategies to make housing more affordable. And coming in second is promote affordable housing and construction and preservation while protecting residents from displacement. So the second part of this goal um is transportation infrastructure
environment. So we had a I would say a clear winner here. um encourage affordable, walkable neighborhoods with nearby shops and services. Coming in at second is uh create more parks, playgrounds, and greenways near residents.
And coming in third is support effective long-term city planning. All right. So, here are some uh key things and takeaways um that we uh want you city council to consider, especially as we meet again in two weeks. Um so, staff, we examined survey responses uh within the demographic groups which included race, uh Hispanic, Latino, ancestry, total household income, years lived in durm.
So overall uh the rankings were consistent across groups. Uh the top three to four priorities were clearly dominant with substantially high rankings than the remaining options. So
the lower ranked um items had minimum impact on overall results. 29% points between third and fourth rankings. Black respondents place slightly higher emphasis on these priorities compared to white respondents resulting in a close split in votes. And last but not least, uh we have our partial goal, our transportation infrastructure environment.
22% points between third and fourth ranking. and long-term city planning was ranked higher by white respondents and respondents with household incomes more than $60,000. So, I know that was a lot. Uh we do have
more data. Um and this data has been disagregated. We'll be happy to share that with you all. Um but if you have any questions, Sher and I are here to answer those questions.
This is gonna just expose how I don't really just like have trouble with statistics, but if we're looking at these things and it folks only had four options and they had the ability to put three things in there, what is it what is it really telling? Like what is it really telling me when I look at this? Is it is it telling me as much as I think it's telling me? Is it telling me less than what I think it's telling me?
like they didn't I mean did most people put three in their top choices? >> They did. They [clears throat] did. You're right. When it has four, it's telling you less than when you have seven or eight or nine, right? Um but I
think as Christina was trying to say too, this is this is one part of this engagement community conversation. I'm I'm really excited for you all to hear about community conversations. It just goes into a little bit more detail just from a different angle. Um, and so we didn't, you know, you asked a question about whether uh we asked for like one, two, or three.
This is a really quick survey. We're meeting people, you know, we're trying to grab them on their way. And so when we've done surveys in the past with one, two, or three, we normally we just usually get check marks. So we just try to make it simple.
And so that's why we did it that way. Um, but it's meant to really be taken as a whole along with what you're going to hear from Jason and from community conversations. um just to kind of tell a story of what our residents are saying. >> Okay.
And they and equally so they had the ability to put top three in in all these categories with no ranking in between the categories. No commentary on the categories in total. >> Okay. >> In community conversations, you you're going to hear more about the categories, but yeah.
>> Any other questions? All right. >> Okay. >> Well, thank you.
>> We'll see you in two weeks. Uh [laughter] sorry. >> All right. Great.
Thank you. So, thanks. >> So, now I have the pleasure of introducing our next presenter, Jason Marado, who will be presenting on the city's res uh resident satisfaction survey. So Jason Marado is the vice president and director of community research at etc institute.
Jason Jason has over 20 years of experience in the design administration and analysis of community market research. He has served as the project manager on community survey research projects for over 600 local government governmental organizations throughout the US. Jason is experienced in all phases of project management of market research studies including survey design, developing sampling plans, quantitative and qualitative analysis, interpretations of
results and presentations of fundings. His areas of emphasis include resident satisfaction surveys, parks and recreation needs assessment surveys, community planning surveys, business surveys, and trans and transportation studies. So, please help me to welcome our our guest speaker, Jason Marado. Go ahead and give it a try.
>> Let's see. Oh, there we go. There we go. All right, let's get
[clears throat] Okay, seems like that's working. All right, great. Thanks. My name is Jason Marado.
I'm the director of community research at ETC Institute and we're a marketing research firm that specializes in conducting community surveys for local governments and we just finished for the 16th time conducting a resident survey for the city of Durham. So today I'm going to walk through the key findings from the survey. I have just a little background about ETC Institute. We're a national leader in providing market research for local governments and the thing we specialize in is conducting statistically valid surveys and most of our work is with city and county governments all over the country.
So this is the type of work that we specialize in. [clears throat] This is just an overview of what I'll go through today. I'll go over the purpose and methodology of the survey, walk through the key findings, and then summarize our main conclusions from the survey. So, there are several reasons to conduct the survey. One is to get an objective
assessment of how satisfied residents are with major city services and to determine what residents feel are the top priorities for the city. We're also able to measure trends from previous surveys. Most of these questions are the same ones we've asked in previous years. So, we can measure trends over time.
And then we're also able to compare your results with other communities across the country based on a national survey that ETC Institute conducts. every one to two years with randomly selected residents all across the country. So I mentioned this is the sixth resident survey we've conducted for Durham. Uh we've done this annually since 2015.
Then before that we did every other year going back to about 2009. The survey was administered by a combination of mail and online to randomly selected households throughout the city. That's our standard methodology for these surveys. We received 706 completed surveys.
Our goal was to get to 600. So we had a good response. And these 706 surveys at the
7%. 7% from what we're reporting. So the margin of error is very small. [clears throat] Here we have a map of the city.
The red dots are households that completed a survey. So we had a good distribution throughout the city. And as we were administering the survey, we made sure that the demographics of survey respondents reflect the actual population of the city of Durham. There we go.
So this slide just shows the race and ethnicity of survey respondents. This matches up very closely with the actual population of the city. This shows how long survey respondents have lived in the city. So, we had a good mix of newer residents as well as longtime residents. You can see 17% of respondents have lived in Durham for 5
years or less, 29% for over 30 years. And then this shows the household income of survey respondents. And we had a very good representation here as well. So, here's what we learned from the survey.
We found that residents have a very positive perception of the city. Um, covered up a little bit, but that's what it says. Um, 84% of respondents rated Durham as an excellent or a good place to live. That's five percentage points higher than last year, nine percentage points higher than two years ago.
So, very, very positive responses. [clears throat] >> That that is much higher. Yeah, absolutely. Um, in a little bit we've got a few benchmarking slides I'll show, but that's that's definitely much higher than other communities.
Um, even a couple years ago when the ratings were a bit lower, those were even still much higher. So, we also found that cities moving in the right direction. Satisfaction ratings
have increased in 74 out of 90 areas since last year's survey. And that includes 31 areas that have had a significant increase in satisfaction. And by significant, we mean the satisfaction ratings are 5% or more higher this year than last year. And that definitely goes against the trend of what we've been seeing in most other cities.
Uh most cities have had an overall decrease in satisfaction compared to last year's really as well as the last couple years. Um you'll see in a little bit when we get into the trends in more uh detail, these results have improved since last year as well as a couple of years ago in most areas. And then when we compared your results to other communities, one thing that stood out was that Durham rates 20 percentage points above the US average when it comes to the overall quality of city services. That's a really important question because there we're asking residents to take into account all the services that you're providing and really give an overall satisfaction rating for how well you're doing delivering services. And then one of the areas where you consistently rate far
above the regional and national average is customer service provided by city employees. And this year you were 30 percentage points above the US average. The top overall priorities are maintenance of city streets, police protection, uh pedestrians facilities, which on the survey we define that as sidewalks, and then affordable housing. These priorities overall are very similar to previous years.
The one thing that's different is this year the survey focus was just for city residents where in the past it was a city county combined survey. So in past years we asked about public schools and that was always a top priority but this year since we focus just on city services we didn't ask about schools but but other than that these are same priorities we've seen in previous years. [clears throat] >> Yeah. Did the county not do a survey or was it just different?
The county didn't do a survey this year. Um they decided they wanted to do a survey every other year. Um and it is
kind of unusual for a city and county to do a combined survey like we did here. Usually they're separate. That's really kind of a more typical way. >> Durham County did ask to take a year off this year.
They want to do their own. >> Yeah. Yep. So for this first section, we'll look at trends comparing these results to previous years.
I mentioned satisfaction rates have increased in 74 out of 90 areas with 31 areas having a significant increase in satisfaction. So for these next two charts, the dark blue are residents who were either very satisfied or satisfied on the 2025 [clears throat] survey. Light blue are the satisfaction ratings for 24 and the gold for 23. As we go through these, I put blue arrows by the places where there's been a significant increase in satisfaction this year compared to last year or 25 compared to 24. So this is for major categories of city services. You can see there's been a significant increase in satisfaction with the quality of EMS
services as well as quality of police protection. Police protection's gone up quite a bit each the past couple years. It's 10 percentage points higher now than it was two years ago. The only one of the few areas that had a bigger decrease in satisfaction was fire prevention programs which is down five points.
However, if you look at that top row, response time for fire services. That's gone up consistently each of the past couple years. Up four points compared to last year, seven points compared to a couple of years ago. Here are more comparisons for major categories of city services.
You can see there's been a steady increase with communication over the past couple years, up five points from last year, eight points compared to a couple years ago. There's also been a significant increase with bicycle facilities, quality of public transit, and then sidewalks. Uh each of those areas were down a little bit from 23 to 24, but now they're now they're up. And then streets has been down a little bit each the past
couple years. [clears throat] Here are comparisons for perceptions of the city. You can see there's been a significant increase in the overall quality of life in Durham. And then if you look at the third row down, overall quality of services provided by the city.
That's the area on the survey that had the biggest increase in satisfaction compared to last year. It's up 11 percentage points this year compared to where it was in both 24 and 23. If you look at the top row, quality of life in your neighborhood, that's gone up consistently each the past couple years. So it's eight points higher now than it was two years ago.
The only area that has significant decrease in satisfaction was value received for local property taxes, which I think it's not a surprise them. And [clears throat] then here are more comparisons for perceptions of the city. Uh the satisfaction rating has increased in all 10 of these areas. The three areas with the biggest increases were Durham as a place to live, uh, as a community that values the diversity of
residents and then Durham as a place to educate children. [clears throat] So now for this next section, we'll look at your results compared to other communities. For these next few slides, the dark blue show Durham residents who were either very satisfied or satisfied. The light blue are the satisfaction or the light green are the satisfaction ratings for residents in the Atlantic region.
So that includes North Carolina as well as surrounding states. So that's really the regional average. And then the light blue are the ratings for residents from all across the country. So you can see Durham rates significantly above other communities in most of these areas including as a place to live.
Um you can see Durham actually rates 29 percentage points above the US average. Uh Durham also rates much higher as a place to work, as a place to visit, as a community that values diversity, and as a place to retire, uh as a place to raise children. That's an area that had an increase in
satisfaction this year. And this is the first year in a number of years where it rates above the US average. It's not It has to be five percent points above to get the blue arrow. So, didn't quite get that, but this is the first time in a while it's been above the US average and it's just slightly below the regional average.
Here are comparisons for major categories of city services. You can see Durham rates much higher than other communities when it comes to customer service from city employees. That's one of the areas where you rate the farthest above the US average. You see, you're 30 points higher.
also much higher when it comes to water and sewer utilities, fire prevention programs, and then the overall quality of city services. Um, which again is a very important category, and you're 20 points above the US average, 17 points above the regional average. And then here are more comparisons for major categories of city services. You can see you're much higher when it comes to parks and recreation, uh, communication with the public. Then
areas that are below are enforcing codes and ordinances, bicycle facilities, public transit, and then maintenance of city streets. That there was a slight decrease in satisfaction this year in codes and ordinances. And then a bigger increase in satisfaction this year in bicycle facilities and public transit compared to last year. So now we'll switch and look at top priorities.
So we saw earlier how satisfied Sorry, do you have a question? So like I'm just looking at that that previous slide because there was a slide a couple ones before where where uh bike facilities and public transit ranked high. So what was it what's the difference in the question? The one this is the quality right and before you were looking at >> so what we were looking at here I think is probably what you're referring to >> right >> these are you're comparing these results against your previous year's results. >> Okay. Um, so, so for public transit, high school facilities, you can see the rate >> better than previous years in Durham, but then compared to our peers, we're still a little low there.
>> Exactly right. Yeah. Exactly right. So those areas have increased compared to your previous years for Durham residents, but they're still a little bit lower than the national average.
Exactly. >> [snorts] >> So then when we look at priorities, we looked at the satisfaction earlier with major categories of city services. As a follow-up question, we asked which services should receive the most emphasis from city leaders over the next two years. You can see the top priorities are maintenance of city streets, quality of police protection, then sidewalks.
Um city streets and police are always near the top. Last year police was one, streets was two. So those two have switched orders but those are typically among the top priorities. And then this is something we call the important satisfaction rating.
You might remember from previous years. This analysis is based on two different types of data. First we ask residents how satisfied they are. Then we ask which services are the most important. And the
idea behind this is those areas that have a combination of low satisfaction but at the same time have the highest important ratings are the areas that are identified as the top priorities. So the top priorities in pink are streets and sidewalks. Um in the yellow area third is police protection. Police just barely missed being in that pink area.
Last year police and pedestrian were in different order. um still among the top priorities, but I think the increased satisfaction in police is why it rates a little bit of a lower priority now compared to last year, although still a high priority. [clears throat] The other top priorities are ease of travel within Durham, bicycle facilities, and public transit system. Then we've got some other findings.
So just like in previous years we broke the results out by um different demographic groups. Here we broke it out by race and ethnicity. So this question is for the overall quality of police protection. This shows the percent of
respondents who are very satisfied or satisfied for black, Hispanic and white respondents. And then the bottom row are the results overall. So a couple things stand out here. One is that satisfaction with police protection is very similar among black, Hispanic and white respondents.
And then among all groups, the satisfaction has increased quite a bit this year compared to last year um for each group. And then also overall if you look at that bottom row [clears throat] here, comparisons for how safe residents feel when walking alone in their neighborhood during the day. So the ratings are highest among white respondents, second among black, then next among Hispanic respondents. So a little bit of a difference there.
And then in all areas, the satisfaction ratings have increased compared to previous years, which you can also see from the bottom row. This year, 90% of respondents overall feel safe walking in their neighborhood during the day. That was at 85% last year, 82% a couple years ago.
And then here are comparisons for how safe residents feel just overall in Durham. Um we have kind of the same pattern here where the highest ratings are with white respondents followed by black and then Hispanic respondents and then the satisfaction ratings have increased at least a little bit in each area compared to last year. They've actually increased quite a bit among white and black respondents, increased just a little bit among Hispanic respondents. And then if you look at the bottom row for overall the ratings are up from previous years.
Then we ask respondents about the police relationship with their community. And again we've got the highest ratings with white respondents followed by black respondents and then Hispanic respondents. And then the ratings have increased also overall if you look at the bottom row. um 56% satisfaction rating in this year, which is up 6% from last year, 10 percentage points from a couple years ago. This chart shows how dissatisfied residents are with affordable housing.
So on this chart, a lower number is better. So it's different than the other ones. Um so if you look at the top row, for example, 73% of black respondents are dissatisfied with affordable housing. It's a little better than the last couple years, although pretty similar.
61% of both Hispanic and white respondents are dissatisfied with affordable housing, which is quite a bit better than previous years. And if you look at the bottom row for overall, the ratings are better compared to the last couple years. And then for this slide here, we asked respondents which services should we receive the top priorities for increased funding. So you can see the top priority is affordable housing.
Uh this is question used to include uh public schools as well. So schools and affordable housing are always kind of neck andneck for one and two. [clears throat] This year we didn't ask about schools. So affordable housing's kind of clearly number one. And then street maintenance, job creation, and youth programs are the next priorities
or 50% of respondents picked that as one of their top priorities. And then you can see to the right we just kind of showed how these broke out related to the strategic goals. We also broke this question out by uh race and ethnicity just like some of those other questions we looked at. So there are some similarities but then some differences as well when you look at this broken out by race and ethnicity.
So if you look at the first column among black respondents affordable housing was the top priority and that was a top priority among all groups. Uh the second top priority among black respondents was job creation and training followed by youth programming, street maintenance, and then law enforcement safety initiatives. If you look at Hispanic respondents, again, affordable housing one, and then streets, then job creation, then sidewalks, and then fifth is law enforcement safety of safety initiatives. Then among white respondents, you've got
the top two are the same as Hispanic um affordable housing, streets, followed by sidewalks, job creation, then youth programming. And then the top five priorities among the entire sample is there to the right. So affordable housing, streets, and job creation were among the top four in all groups, but then the order switched a little bit beyond affordable housing. And then just one last thing.
Um, [clears throat] this past year etc Institute created an interactive data dashboard and what that does is it shows the results going back to 2021. It has a lot of the same information that's in the PDF report that we provide every year. It shows trends compared to previous years. It has maps that show the results broken out throughout the city.
It has some benchmarking data that shows your results compared to other communities. And then it has the important satisfaction ratings which shows the priorities. But then it also allows you to drill deeper into the data and look at the results broken out by really any demographic variable, race
and ethnicity, age, household income. Um, so it's just a way to look at the kind of the same results that are in the PDF but more data in one spot and then you can just drill deeper into the results. >> There's a website for it. I think like Sherry has more information on that.
>> Yes. So >> yes, so it just went live today on our city website under our strategic plan. It's a whole new page and so you can get into there. We can also send out the link.
Um but yes, so the dashboard you can get into it from there as long as well as the report from today. >> Yeah. >> Okay. And so just a quick recap, we saw that residents have a positive perception of the city of Durham. Um especially when it comes to the Durham as a place to live is the ratings have always been good, but it's especially gone up over the past couple years. We saw that things are headed in the right direction, which really does go against
a trend we've seen in a lot of other cities over the past couple years. Um, couple of the areas where Durham rates much higher than other communities are the overall quality of city services and then customer service provided by city employees and then the top priorities maintenance of city streets, police protection, sidewalks, and affordable housing. So, if anyone has any comments or any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Sure.
>> Thanks so much for your presentation. I have three questions for you. Um, could you first explicitly state the name the states that are in Atlantic region? I know you said North Carolina surrounding states, but I want to know like specifically what states you're included in that.
>> Yeah, they're listed in the report. I forget what all it is, but it's six or seven states, North Carolina and the surrounding ones, but they're all there's a benchmarking section of the report that lists what they are. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I can actually I can probably grab the report and look at it actually now that I'm thinking about it.
So that includes North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, and then Washington DC. >> And then on um just a question about the framing of some of the questions. So particularly the question around do people feel safe walking in a neighborhood at daytime? Can you give me a little bit more insight about why the question was framed that way and what you were hoping to like deduce from that question then?
So, we ask that safety question in a number of different ways. We ask how safe residents feel in our neighborhood at night. We ask about the overall safety of Durham. A lot of those questions are ones we ask in other communities.
So, we started asking this way a number of years ago and we've kept it the same way so that we could measure trends over time and then just compare your results to um other communities. So, it's just kind of typical wording. >> Okay. And then I guess like this is more so maybe for staff or such.
Um, I know we're doing a lot of work around the violence reduction. And so I do remember part of that presentation was like looking at crime from like a micro standpoint. And so we talk about like where people feel safe in their
neighborhoods. I think it'd be helpful to know the location. Um, so we can understand exactly how we're going to address the issue, what the dynamics are in that because it's not really it's helpful, but it's not the most helpful to say like, oh, I feel safe, but I don't know where you feel safe at or I want to know if you also feel safe walking at night. To me, that's like a big teller of your community safe or not.
you feel safe going outside completing your regular activities like walking your dog at night or so. So, thank you so much >> Jason. Is it possible to disagregate the responses of the safety questions by the location? >> It is.
Yeah, absolutely. We um we created maps. I know you won't be able to see it from there, but maps that break the results out across the city. Um, and we did that for every question on the survey asked on a fivepoint scale so that we do have that where it shows the the differences throughout the city.
>> Yeah. Yep. Great questions. >> Um, there's a separate PDF report with the GIS maps. I don't know if it's a
separate report from the the full main report. So, it's is available online. >> Right. >> That's just great to hear the uh the increases in the areas that we've increased in.
Um it's like my favorite part of the uh budget part of retreat every year to hear what our residents think. So uh good results. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
Yep. >> Yeah. I just want to just want to echo that. Um yeah and especially Mr.
Manager your first year on the job kudos. This is like incredible results. Yeah. Know I was going to say that's the second thing I would say for the folks in the room. 30% above the US average customer service provided by city employees. That's everybody in this room and that's
that's a huge testament to what we all doing. >> Thank you. I um this is always very helpful data. It is that year-over-year it's one of the places where we can really see a through line. Um I I do want to say with the community safety or the public safety question, how how is that going to be has your firm anticipated uh how that question may have to be reframed next year? I basically what I don't want is our RPD has worked very very diligently to build trust in certain communities and we're seeing that in the data and that trust is likely going to be eroded in the last year not because of anything that they've done but just because of misperception of who is showing up as law enforcement >> right >> and so I just want to name that and I what I don't want is our police department to get dinged for something that quite frankly is not their fault at all and we know that that um that relationship is is robust and improving and there's been an infinite amount of
work around that. So, just wondering how y'all are thinking about that as we see that played out across the country. >> Yeah, I um well, I I I think we still should keep the wording the same so that we can continue to measure trends, but that'll just add some context to it if we're seeing the ratings go down all across the country. Um that's something I guess we can talk about next year when it's time to do the survey.
But at least at least right now I would lean towards keeping the questions the same. But [snorts] >> the um question 20 which was uh the prioritize your top five to increase funding for. So I wonder if you could compare like so on that one like transit ranks really low, right? And we're in the south, right?
So we don't like traditionally not as had as much transit as bigger cities in the northeast. like how does that answer in Durham compared to our peer cities? >> Th this is a much more customized question than some of the others we ask on the survey. Um but I will say
affordable housing and streets streets are always a top priority everywhere. They have been for years. Affordable housing has really been a top priority in most communities as well the last couple years. Transit, I mean that can vary that can vary a lot from one city to the next.
Um, but I'm not surprised to see streets and affordable housing near the top. That's that's definitely typical. Another >> more you can say about trend like how we like how other we >> it's a lower priority. We also conduct surveys like this for for like city of Raleigh, they do it every other year.
Chapel Hill, um, a lot of the, you know, kind of smaller to mid-size suburbs in the area. It's typically a pretty low priority in those communities as well. We don't word their question quite like this on those surveys, but it's yeah, it's not usually one of the very higher priorities. >> I um don't have another question on it, but more so to our comm's team. I think
that you know more than just the post, I think this seems to be a marketing campaign that we're delivering uh in the areas where we're doing very well. I I really want to highlight highlight that. Um, I know folks usually, you know, associate disgruntlement with government, but I want to I I really would like to change that sentiment, especially if we have an effective uh effective government, we should celebrate that. >> All right.
Thank you. >> All right. Hey, thanks everyone. Um, so we did have a break scheduled in the program, but happy our speakers are here and so we're happy to move forward.
Um, so it's up to the councils. >> Do do you guys want to keep going? Take five or we good? >> All right, >> five minute break.
>> We can take five and five minute break. Push through. Thank you.
Flip it. Talk goes green.
All right, let's uh get it on back. All right. Well, we have saved the best for last. So, um our last presentation is going to be um a recap of our community conversations um that we had this year.
So, we've um the first half of this um resident engagement um information that we've been giving you has been kind of quantitative data and now we're going to talk a little bit more about the qualitative data. I just wanted to take a minute um to thank the community partnership and engagement team. This was their kind of first big project and I will say working with budget we are not easy. We um you know we made it hard on them. We had tight deadlines and we wanted um to to reach a lot of people and um we wanted um you know we wanted it all and I just want to say they stepped up and they gave it to
us. So I want to be really thankful for all the work that they did. Um I was personally at a lot of the events. They were well attended.
They were very representational and I think they got some really good data that's going to be really useful for council um as you make for as you move forward with budget decisions. So, I just want to thank them all for the work that they did and I'm really excited for you to hear um all the great um information that they got. And I'm going to turn it over to Starlet Tanner who is the um director for the department. >> Thank you so much Christina.
Good afternoon to everyone. It is a pleasure to represent the first large project um as a combined department. Of course, you'll you'll hear from PB, too. We we've done that work.
That's important. This was started before my tenure began, but I understand it was all hands- on deck. As a matter of fact, listening now is our whole department to support their colleagues, everyone, all of our divisions. And if you'll bear with me, I just want to thank them for for this effort and the results and the ability to share this today. our equity and
inclusion folks, our digital equity, our PB folks, participatory budgeting team, our youth services team, our language access folks. It was truly an all hands- on deck um so many different community events. Again, I wasn't here, but I am a delight I'm delighted to introduce the two speakers today to share the data. We have Taiisha Troy, who is our business services administrator.
On her first day of a a new promotion, she presented to the executive team this data. So she is she's rocking and rolling. Laura Beiger um is our senior senior community uh engagement manager who's been with the the city for over 16 years. And so they are coming forth to share the data.
And of course we thank our DCM and the city manager and all of you for supporting this new department in this effort. Thanks. >> Hi. Um can everyone hear me?
Make sure my mic's working. Okay. Um, so we are Yes. Okay, good.
>> Am I Am I Can you hear me now? >> Can you hear me now? >> That's better. >> I only have like seven slides to get through.
We can do this. Um, hi, I'm Lauriger. Um, Stara, thank you for the intro. So, I guess we'll just get started.
Um, our department did did the engagement for budget community conversations on behalf of BMS. Um, and we're going to tell you all about that. And I do want to start with this is a very high level information. So, we have way more than this.
And Ty will give you just like the very icebergs tip of it. But if you're curious, want want more information, that's something as the engagement department we're really trying to help uh do is make sure that engagement isn't just used once, but we're really, you know, trying to maximize that for other uses across the city. So, let us know. Um so today we're going to go over how the engagement was designed. Um
understanding what BMS needed and how that shaped the design of our engagement, who all participated, um what we heard from the residents and then uh especially how residents prioritized the um the priority areas that we discussed during the conversations. So the first piece is um is kind of scoping the project. When we met with BMS, one of their the pieces that they shared with us that they would like improvement on based on uh previous years with the consultants was having more of a sense of priorities, not just like an extensive list wish list of what residents wanted. So being able to have a discussion on what residents wanted and how that affected their daily lives, but also some sense of priorities and tradeoffs because our budget isn't limitless and so the wish list couldn't be limitless. Um and then also understanding that uh how we could shape the discussions around the new um council goals. So one
of the things I will note is in our design we uh designed around five uh priority areas. Um, so instead of just the four that council had, we broke one of those into two different priority areas because that fit the engagement design that we had that we had at the time, allowed us to meet our timeline, and also gave um the residents a chance to kind of uh really in uh engage with those that really large goal a lot more. Um, each session had the same uh structure. There were 13 sessions and each session started out with a kind of budget one 101.
So all uh participants had some kind of understanding and baseline information for how the city budget works. Uh what the city budget includes versus what the county budget includes which residents found really uh really useful. This is the part that um normally budget staff did at our large events like Christina talked about. Um then we had uh the first exercise was uh
taking 10 tokens. Each uh each participant got 10 tokens and we had each of the five um uh priority areas had a jar on the ta on each of the tables. So if you were sitting at a table, you allotted your 10 tokens to each of these jars. So some people might put all 10 in the first jar or some people you know you know distributed theirs evenly.
But that's what we used to understand how people were prioritizing each of the priority areas. And then after that, um, at each of the small tables, they had discussions. They started with the jar that had the most tokens and then worked down from there. And we had a a standard set of questions for people to go over.
And then the last piece was the participant questionnaire, which is really crucial because it included um having the participants write down how they allocated their tokens. So we had their token counts as well as demographic information. So that helped us to kind of understand patterns in how tokens were allocated and also some evaluation questions on the
experience. Um these are the locations for our uh engagements. We had 13 of them. Five of them were city-wide events that we really heavily promoted and then eight of them were held in partnership with uh community groups so that we could make sure to uh that certain populations were represented in the engagement.
Um we held them uh you know pretty much across the city at CPR facilities, libraries, the senior center and um other community other community and neighborhood locations. And I think one of my favorite parts of this was that the small group sessions were facilitated by city staff largely from the community partnerships and engagement department but also with community facilitators. Um we had a lot of uh partners that we've worked with over the years from our various teams uh uh community members who are trained and experienced with facilitation and so we were able to bring them in and compensated them for their time. but they helped lead small
groupoup discussions so that it did feel more like a community effort. They also helped us to reflect on the data that we heard um and have some of them were also involved in the data analysis. So making sure to make this a piece with the community, not just from city staff. Um, other pieces that were important was to design it to be as accessible as possible from the beginning so that people would be able to take time out of their busy lives and um, attend and engage and really be able to have a voice in the budget.
So, we had food at all of the events. We had child care at all of the large events. We had language support um, and translation interpretation at all of the events, including one session that was entirely conducted in Spanish. Um, we also, uh, offered transportation assistance if people needed it and a $25 stipen for everyone who completed the questionnaire. Um, we also had one session that was focused on on youth specifically.
Um, and then this is >> Can you all hear me? >> Okay. [laughter] Hi, I'm Taiisha Troy. I go by Ty again.
I'm the business service administrator. I'm happy to be here today to present some of the data that we have here. So, we had a total of 13 community conversations. They were held between November the 4th through November the 22nd.
The times varied from the morning and the midday to the evening. We wanted to make sure that these sessions were available to everyone who could attend. Um, we did have particular services. One was for justice involved youth sessions at the Durham County Youth Home to include um their perspectives.
We also had a session like Laura was just saying designated to the youth and we also had a session for seniors. Um the rest were mixed demographic sessions open to participants of all ages and backgrounds. Um we had a total of 499
questionnaires that were completed. Um, these questionnaires also included the token exercise and they allowed us to capture the priorities and basic demographics and feedback. Where am I? Okay, here we go.
[laughter] All right. So um we had 35% of firsttime city engagement which is exciting because this suggests that this was an open door to uh civic engagement. Um 66 were previously engaged in some city activity or neighborhood pack. Um 67% identified as uh black and roughly 24% as youth and that includes um transitional age youth up until the age of 24. and um to make sure that we centered young people's perspectives. Also, 30% um were seniors ensuring the older perspectives were also represented
as well as 49% um identified as renters. Um so that was very helpful. Uh participation came from all around Durham, which helps us to understand how these priorities show up in different neighborhoods. And so as a result, the input reflects a broader range of lived experiences and community conditions.
So if you see the shading here, it reflects the number of participants by zip code, not the population size or need. Most of our uh heavily responses came from 27704 zip code. Great. So before we get into the findings, I just want to be clear on how to read the input.
So these are the perspectives that was shared from the residents during the budget community conversations and we were able to find patterns based on repeated themes across the sessions. This is not the staff's opinion. Um this is not a statistically representative survey. These were conversations that were held and the staff were um the residents were very um
open with participating with this. I mean also it's not a replacement for physical analysis or staff expertise. So some of the differences among participants they vary by experience. So while participants largely agree on what matters such as housing, housing safety, jobs and transportations, the experiences different vary they different they were different according to who they are and where they live in Durham.
So for renters and owners they talked about housing in different ways. So some mentioned stability and displacement displacement while others more so affordability. Um transportation access also mattered. Participants who drive experience durm very differently from participants who allow on public transportation. And parents and caregivers discuss safety through a different lens than participants who uh don't have caregiving responsibilities. and also differences uh were associated
according to like education, caregiving roles, disability, military service, unemployment and transportation access. So we were able to have dis uh disagregated data for that. >> Uh so now we're going to get into uh the results. Um we're going to start with kind of some overall themes and then Ty will get into each of the specific priority areas.
So the first is what's working well. Um by far the strongest asset according to the community conversations and the residents is the neighborhood and community ties that people feel within Durham. The next piece is the free or lowcost public transit which people talked about how important that was to being able to get to work or to services and being able to move around the city. Uh the next was uh especially when we talked about community safety uh recognizing the work that the city is doing that is more prevention focused
became a talk like a key talking point. um and especially around investments related to youth and kind of uh feeling safer within neighborhoods. Um when people talked about parks and sidewalks and shared spaces that they felt were well-maintained, um that was something they they when they talked about those, it also then was followed by how that made them feel within their community and made them feel more connected uh as residents. And then residents also uh talked a lot about uh recognizing the economic momentum and the pride in Durham's workforce right now.
Even if they then talked about wanting more access to opportunities for that. Some of the other overarching themes were just how interconnected uh housing, jobs, and transportation especially were. So, if the topic that we were supposed to be talking about was housing, it almost eventually led to I don't have a job so that I can stay in
my house or I don't have a job so that I can afford my rent. Um, or if it came transportation might come up, I can't get to my job because the bus doesn't run late enough or I have to spend so long on the bus like it makes it hard to have a job. So pretty much any of our topics really centered back like circled back all three of those were really uh present in in any topic that we talked about. Prevention and stability was really big.
So being people talking about really wanting things solved early as opposed to having to react to a crisis. So, being able to fix the sidewalks before they got really bad or being able to focus on youth investments before they became like became uh jobs or safety problems. So, there was a lot more emphasis on that versus um you know trying to recover from something. Uh people talked about reliable services. So the impacts of having a regular reliable transportation and how that
made their lives easier and getting to school or getting to jobs or getting to the services they needed but when there were interruptions like how disruptive that felt to their lives. Um and then in any of the topics in any of the five areas um follow through came up. I know that there was a praise for and especially in the resident satisfaction part around communication from the city. This part was especially around follow-th through after engagement.
So people were really appreciative to be able to have the opportunity to engage but wanting to know what happens afterwards where where is this information going? How is that like impacting my life? Uh so this is the totals from all of the tokens that were allotted um from almost the the 500 questionnaires that we had completed. Um, you can see housing and neighborhood stability is definitely the top, but especially the top four, transportation, infrastructure and environment, jobs and economic
opportunities and community safety are also very close to housing and neighborhood stability. And then responsive and accountable government was the the lowest one. Normally that came up um because people saw the first four as this is something that I put money towards and then the responsive and accountable government was kind of implicit in the first four. Um but you can kind of see again like housing was the top but they were all very closely related to each other.
All right. Okay. Okay, so now I'm going to get into uh some of the data that we captured from each of these priorities. Now again, this is just an overview.
There's so much data, but so if anyone is interested, then just reach out to our director and she can um she can link us up. So for housing and neighborhood stability, so what residents are working again like Laura was just saying, strong neighborhood and social ties and a sense of belonging. Um also existing
affordable house um housing, senior housing. um participants describe growing up in Durham, leaving and coming back because they feel connected to the city and also housing was affordable during that time. Um but uh first let's look at who the participants are in terms of housing stability. So 49% identified as renters, 38% identified as owners, 4% identified as homeless exper experiencing housing instability or 6% also stated other.
Um so uh long-term residents also uh they talked about the rising rents, also the property taxes, the cost of living outpacing um participants incomes. Also, long-term residents emphasize redevelopment pressure. Um, it's contributing to displacement and not just losing housing, but being pushed out of long-standing relationships and support networks. Uh, newer residents, they emphasize uh affordability and despite
the pressures, many expressed a strong hope for um home ownership as a pathway to long-term uh stability. Uh, seniors, they emphasize stability and the need for additional senior housing options in Durham. uh noting that a longer life expectancy and a desire to remain in the community that they have invested in for many years. Um also uh just to uh for our senior renters uh 40% of our seniors identified as renters.
um participants on fixed income stated that they feel um that they feel uh priced out of safer housing and participants expressed an interest in the government using vacant or underutilized properties to address housing needs um including shelters. Now this priority ranked the highest with youth even though the youth are not renting. They are observing um what their families are experiencing and so this was a the highest priority for them. Um and so we have here a quote um
from a resident that says yes I live in a neighborhood that the old houses and the families that live there the houses are being torn down and the people have to find somewhere else to live and these were the good friends who are all being spread everywhere. And it's important as people get older, they have a community. And so just want to mention that 70 70% of the participants um in this community conversations have lived in Durham for over 10 years. >> Can I just ask a quick question?
>> Sure. So just to go a little deeper into this are were these participants where these situations happened to them or it's they they know of someone that it's happening to or it's a something that people are saying and it's an interpretation of what they assume what what what what were the actual impacts? >> So it varies. So with the youth, they were uh talking about observing their families, people that they know, what they were going through, and also their lived experiences. But for the
residents, those were actual conversations that they were holding, and they were talking about their day-to-day lived experiences. >> So these were people who had been displaced and >> Okay, good. That's what I'm good. >> Yes.
>> Next time we have community safety. So what residents say is working um is preventative approaches to safety. The residents talk a lot about the heart program and how that's so helpful for them. And also the maintained public spaces as uh Laura was just talking about those maintained public spaces.
They enjoy going out, spending time with their families, uh having fun with their dogs, with their animals. Um but also a large share of feedback. I just want to mention that it came directly from youth alongside uh responses from parents and caregivers and the following themes reflect the concerns and experiences they shared. So uh participants raised concerns about safety in public spaces particularly parks and walking routes
described inadequate lighting and inappropriate activity occurring around ch children occurring uh contributing to feelings of unsafety. Also, uh, participants with disabilities raised concerns about speeding vehicles and unsafe pedestrian crossings. Participants repeatedly called for investment in youth spaces and youth centers. Uh, participants described gaps in structured youth activities, especially outside school hours and on the weekends.
Um, many older adults and seniors uh shared particular concern for youth. they viewed as having fewer structured supports and they noted that a lack of consistent youth activities leaves youth with fewer supervised places to spend time and they emphasize that safe supervised environments can reduce the likelihood of situations escalating into conflict. Um these spaces were also identified as opportunities for mentorship and job and skill development. um community safety was one of the strongest emotional
topics. The youth described exposure to gun violence and express safety concerns um about their personal safety and also participants shared that ongoing exposure to violence is affecting their stress levels as well as their mental health. We have a youth uh a youth quote that was taken at the Weaver Street um recreation center. Um and they said when you're not constantly in fear of something, you can really focus on what you're trying to do.
You want to live somewhere where you can walk outside, ride a bike, play with your friends. A lot of people get taken while walking. Let me see. Okay.
Next was jobs, training, and economic opportunity. The residents expressed a pride in Durm's economic growth, saying that they are so happy to see how Durham is growing. They've talked about how
Durham uh formerly looked and how Durham is just booming and growing. Um they also talked about the free or lowcost transit access and how that is a huge benefit for them in their day-to-day. Um also along with that participants pointed to small businesses as an accessible path to economic opportunity and a portion of our participants identified as small business owners. Um participants um with regarding the challenges, participants shared that their wages are not keeping the pace in the cost of living and many described that working full-time does not always cover their basic um expenses. Um, participants described skill build skill building programs as valuable but noted that they do not consistently uh lead to stable living wage employment and as a result they expressed clear pathways from education to training to available jobs. Um, participants are also saying
um jobs and training may exist but they can't reliably or affordably get to them. So the barrier isn't motivation, it's access. Um, also one of our conversations was with a uh youth with the Durm County Youth Home. Um, and these uh these youth identified jobs and trades and paid trainings as an important factor in um preventing the reinvolvement in the justice system.
The youth there had a strong entrepreneur um interest. They specifically name trades such as CDLs or welding or auto repair as opportunities that don't exclude individuals with prior justice system involvement. And they stress the need for those supports to be in place before um before they transition back into the community. Also, uh approximately 84% of full-time participants uh listed jobs trading and economic
opportunity um as their number one priority and a large amount of participants who were seniors also selected this. So for one of what the residents are saying was transportation infrastructure and environment that transit is a public good. They are so grateful for uh public transit and being able to travel freely. Also that um there's no no cost associated with it.
They also talked about the sidewalks and the lighting again where the parks are maintained. Um they spoke a lot about just being downtown in Durm and also enjoying Durm's growth. Um but also participants emphasized um let me go back here. They uh cited that some of those uh transit systems were uh unclean. Um they talked a lot about violence at the bus stops and some of
the year the youth uh mentioned a fear of walking and waiting at the bus stops. Residents mentioned long bus routes and weights especially at stops with no shelter. um and the need for non-traditional hours and daily routes. Um also the residents talked about roadway maintenance and potholes, storm water and drainage concerns and participants highlighted uneven access to well-maintained transit infrastructure and some uh of these locations have shelter and lighting and seating and others don't.
Um seniors and participants with disabilities mentioned gaps in sidewalks or no sidewalks. They mentioned soft curbs and fear of walking in North DM. They want more bus routes and access to the city. And they also mentioned beautifification and the upkeep of sidewalks, bus stops, and public spaces, noting that the conditioning, the appearance of these make them feel welcome and safe. Um,
this priority emerged as a top priority across youth ages the 13 to 17. and a youth described that these that some unsafe uh transit conditions are barriers to them attending recreation centers. Um for responsive and accountable government um the residents were very excited and participating. Again 35% were uh new participants and they had a deep appreciation for being asked and also want to participate in future conversations.
Um, now this was the lowest token amount as Laura was stating earlier, not because that a resident thought it was unimportant, but it was considered an expectation of city government rather than a separate area requiring investments. Um, the participants, they emphasized the importance of being heard, requesting the city to listen to their input, and called for more town halls and direct opportunities to engage with leadership in a continued conversation. They also
mentioned wanting um a request for materials in simpler language and visuals. Um they also raised concerns about the accessibility of information, stating that the website can be difficult to navigate and hard to find resources. Again, residents described different levels of service quality depending on where they live. And participants noted that these differences influence their perceptions of whether city systems are fair or reliable.
um and clarity about what happens after participants give input. Um and that they want to they want to be able to view the input that they shared. >> So uh this is just >> wrap up again uh the highlights were housing is the the top uh token getter. Uh you can see like a quarter of the tokens across all the sessions were allocated to housing
and neighborhood. Um but as we talked about before, it's still transportation and jobs were really closely linked to um all of those discussions. There was the emphasis on prevention and uh kind of more uh investment in maintenance as opposed to a call for a lot of new uh new things kind of expansion and improvement of existing things. And then the um there was the key piece of followthrough.
The follow through after engagement and the followup communication and kind of keeping residents like actively engaged in communication is a huge piece to building trust. Even if something isn't happening immediately, being able to hear what's happening and that there is something coming is really important to residents. So in closing, um thank you BMS for this opportunity. Um, thank you to everyone um from in the community partnerships and engagement department for their work. Thank you to to the community facilitators who helped us um to make it make this a success as well as the um
community hosts who um who helped host us and all the residents who participated. >> Thank you colleagues. Any questions, comments? Hold [clears throat] on, it's really heavy.
Okay, I just want to say thank you so much. I just [clears throat] I know we've talked about this many many times, but I can't get over how often we try to run on quantitative data and the qualitative data particularly for local government where we do have access to our residents just feels like so baseline and so important for how we're making policy. So, I just like cannot appreciate enough the work that y'all did and like presenting it to us. I think these graphics were really useful. I love seeing the quotes and like understanding in people's voices because it's one thing to have y'all say what people are saying, but it's another thing to hear those voices directly. So, just really
want to appreciate this entire presentation. Um, I think it's given us a lot to think about and I do want to like spend some time really like thinking through it. But something that I kept coming up for me as we're reading this is like we had this presentation on the statewide level and we are thinking about what this is going to look like for us when we have folks who are losing access to SNAP and we have folks that are losing access to health care. And it really struck me with one of the quotes about like how stressful it is to be unsafe in your neighborhood.
And I talk about this a lot with evictions, but like we have documented like absolute statistical data on how unhealthy it is to be poor, to be housing unstable, to be unsafe in your neighborhood and what that does to your literal bodily health. And then in combination with the fact that we know we're losing access for folks, not the city, but overall the state um and through the country like access to health care, like just how quickly those things can compound. And
so it's just something that I've been thinking about as you did the presentation. Um, and something to be aware of like sure we can't we can't impact like how many people can like we can't impact the state budget and we cannot impact ACA and like all these different regulatory things, but what we can impact is like direct quality of life and that does have like real real impacts on people's health and well-being. So again, thank you so much for the presentation and um I'm looking forward to like letting this sit further. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Great. >> I'll echo the com um sentiments expressed by my colleague. Um thank you so much for efficient presentation.
We love efficiency over here. Um so definitely want to highlight that, but also just want to um echo just the voices of our youth and what I like they're watching. So just pretend like people are oblivious to what's going on because we think about that the um affordable housing club out of Riverside and how we all arrived the tenants rights or the bill you all passed before I was on council was the voice of the youth. So just want to make sure that we acknowledge and try to do more to uplift
because we know that your zip code could determine your lifespan and we did a lot of work around social determinance of health and so want to make sure that everyone has equal access moving forward but just want to also think about how do we thoughtfully and intentionally address the concerns of crimes that our children are facing. Like I was born in the late ' 80s. We played outside all day every day like street lights we need to come home. To think that children do not have the same opportunity to go outside and play out of fear for what may happen is something that I think we should all be concerned about in the broader community.
Like if no one child is not safe, no child is safe. And so I just want to echo that. But again, just thank you all for your hard work, your efficiency, and your hair is really cute. I like your choice.
>> Thank you. [laughter] >> Thank you. >> Yeah, I want to echo the comments of my colleagues. Yeah, thanks so much for the presentation for the for adding the qualitative side to the quantitative data we've been looking at today.
It really makes a big difference. I just have one question from Miss Troy. So, there was a lot of on those slides, you shared a lot of data that wasn't on the slides. Is there like a there must be some report that's behind all this that has more of that data. Just want to make sure we get access to that because there was a lot of rich stuff in there that
hard there was so much there. It's hard to sort of kind of like absorb it all, but if you could share that afterwards, I'd really appreciate that. Yes, we um with these uh 13 community conversations, each conversation had several tables at the location and so we had direct recordings um and those were also transcribed and also the uh participant questionnaire captured open responses as well and we had note-taking templates. We have a lot of data to support uh to support >> right.
I guess I mean the like the the the bullet points you were sharing in that presentation. Do you have those to those notes as well? >> Yes. Yeah.
All of this came from the qual um from the conversations. >> Yeah. So we if we could have a summary of that that would be awesome to have that additional data because it was so rich there. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Thank you. >> Okay. Yes.
>> Agreed with everything that my colleagues have said. Um yeah the qualit I mean this data rich uh as you said I mean it's so such rich information. Um, just being able to sit at tables and have deep conversations, you get a lot
out that you don't get from just kind of answering a quick survey, although that those can be very helpful as well. Um, a few things that that um that came to mind or or that I want to lift up that that you all were talking about. One was this issue of um housing and neighborhoods. you know, not not just thinking about housing, but thinking about entire neighborhoods and and how as we have this conversation about affordable housing that we can't lose uh the element of gentrification, displacement as part of that conversation and the community, this the community that people create in where they live. It's not just a place to to house someone or to invest. It's also a place where people live sometimes their whole lives and make their friends and um you know at frequent businesses and and that's something that that can be lost in kind of the quantitative data that that we're capturing here in the
qualitative um data. So I think that's so important. Um you talked about the uneven experiences by neighborhood. I think that's something that uh that is really important that we think about as well is kind of geography and how um how experiences in each neighborhood differ so much even within the same city.
Um the some you talked about the city website being a little bit difficult to navigate uh or find information. We have um our communications is so good. The um social media that our that the city's putting out, the emails, great information. Um but I do hear that a lot from people as well is that um sometimes the the city website can be a little clunky and difficult to navigate and I do think that's something that's important in this day and age. Um, also this issue that you raised or that that uh these folks raised about engagement. I think that's so important because we talk a lot about engagement, whether we
should do more of it or whether we should do less of it. But sometimes it's what actually is engagement and it's not just going out to the community asking questions. It's the whole process of asking the right questions, having the right conversations in the right way. um and um and react and responding and reacting and and providing uh you know providing information back to people and also allowing that to be reflected in the decisions that are made in in local government and I think that's that's really important.
So again thank you so much for this presentation. I thought it was really rich uh data and um I also look forward to um whatever report comes out of it. So thank you. >> Thank you.
Thank you. Just real quick, I want to say thank you to this and I also actually want to thank thank uh the more the former mayor prom Jul J Julian Johnson because community conversations exist because she wanted them in the budget several years ago. Um it was exactly to add this
complexity and this context to the excellent quantitative data that we've gotten for a long long time. And so I do just want to shout out uh that some of the things that we see today are because of important work that former colleagues did. >> I um I [clears throat] I just want to thank staff because of the sequencing of the presentations and information we received today. It just from the federal level to the state level to the local level and we really went hyper local here.
>> Um this is really good information. We we have to make some big decisions when it comes to this budget and I think that you all have given us the data that we need. I want to really highlight my colleague, Council Member Cook. You know, we're working on getting on the same page on most things.
We had a cool meeting the other day. Um but you know, we she's right. We only usually look at quantitative data. This is qualitative. And that's why I asked that question. Is it people's interpretation of what's happening or is it actual lived
experiences? And that is vital rich data that we do not utilize enough. That is very very important. It's imperative actually and I just want to thank you all for that.
Now that being said, it also gives us more information which could be a bit more uncomfortable. We can't be selective when we listen to our residents because what this said was the number one priority is housing. We are trying to do that. So the next was safety.
So we we I I think that we have the data we need to be responsive to the residents. Now we have quantitative data as well as qualitative data. It is not on us to be selective when we listen to residents. So I really appreciate all of this and I think that we are I mean this is just the first day we have a series of meetings around the budget. the more information we have, I think, not that the decisions are going to be easier, it's just I think we're going to be
better equipped to make those choices, those hard choices. Um, but also it's al is leaving me with the at least I feel so the option of how intense we communicate and I and and kudos to our comm's department because literally when you all said any questions on the last the etc presentation, it went out in a in a blast. So, thank you uh for already sitting that out. Yep.
So, uh so D that that's Yeah, this is this is good. We're headed the right direction. Thank you all so much, >> Mr. Uh well, Madame Director.
>> Anything else? I think that was the last thing, right? >> Thank you. Thank you.
[laughter] Uh yes. So I think that was our uh thank you to the um uh to Laura and Ty. And uh
that was our last presentation for the day. We do have another day coming up in on the 27th. Um and so I think that um the only thing that I wanted to before we wrap up is I know there was a question about your um budget requests and so we have added a notes field to that. So um I know staff is working on that.
So if there are notes that you want to provide us about the things that are you know that you um about your requests or changes or things that you can put in those that notes field so that will be available. So it's it's a yeah it's a qualre survey but yes it will have um yeah we've added a notes feature as well too. So if you can get that done by next Friday that will help us out. um you have all of the requests and a spreadsheet with summary on it and that that will help us out for our our um conversation that we have next next time and so I'm going to turn over to the manager. Uh mayor want >> yeah just uh is this may be too much asked for this year but I would you know based on the information that you all are presenting us it is in fact
information for us to make decisions but also you all are experts in your respect your own respect I would love some recommendations or options I know Bo probably doesn't like to get into that he's like hey you all are the elected officials you made the decisions but you all also the experts and you're in in that area So, if we're, you know, we got these big dollar figures up here, what would be the economic activity recommendations to make up for where we're losing or make up for where we're spending? Uh, or what are some things we can do to help close the shortfalls or meet our goals of what we're trying to do. And it's up to I think it will be up to us to choose whether we go down that route because it would be in fact policy moving forward. But in some some world uh recommendations in in some areas.
>> Well, good news, mayor. At the end of this process, you get a whole recommendation budget for me. Uh that uh that does reflect uh the the feelings
of the staff. Um the hard part of that for you is it it does start with you guys telling us kind of what you want. So I um uh being a little flippant but not entirely flippant. You know that the these two sessions really are uh for you guys to react.
I think today was all about context and really appreciate all the tremendous presentations from staff. Um, not just this afternoon where we heard a lot about what you are hearing from your residents quantitatively, qualitatively through the strategic plan process, but also uh this morning's presentations, our planning presentation with data about Durham. You know, you there are so much information that you guys have to consider and have the opportunity to consider. And so today for me really is about uh is about you getting all all of those flavors and deciding what matters to you. Your your seven individual elected officials uh with uh different perspectives and different ideas about about where you want to lean in. Hopefully there was
something uh and and hopefully a lot of information in today that helps you make those decisions. Uh we will drill down a little bit more in two weeks in some of the issues that we will hear back from you on. Uh and then we really will take those and do our best to provide a recommended budget that we think is as responsive as possible. Um you know the the challenges are are very real, but I also think the opportunities are real as well.
So I want to I want to thank all the staff again today. I know a lot of staff come here and don't don't speak and specifically participate, but to me it's so critical that they get to hear your questions, that they get to see this information because it's really critical to the work they do every day. And I think with that, I'll just thank you all for your time and tell you that we'll uh we'll see you all Monday. Uh but we are particularly looking forward to seeing you two weeks from today when we complete uh this process with our second budget retreat.
Thank you all. >> Thank you everybody. We are adjourned at
2018. Uh no 318. 318.