City Council · Regular Meeting · February 20, 2025

m I'd like to officially call this work session of the durm city council to order that we might Faithfully discharge the business of the people of Durham his honor the mayor is traveling he did receive a an excuse absence from this Council uh at a prior meeting his plan was to try and join he wanted it as a contingency but spoke to him a little while ago um RDU is operating so he did fly out this morning but he is in transit so uh he'll be monitoring uh from YouTube Let me thank uh the staff on behalf of the mayor in the entire city for making this meeting possible working behind the scenes to allow us to still go forward our hope is that all dermit are safe uh and warm at home and and restricting travel to absolutely what is necessary uh while we thr out let me also on behalf of the mayor and the city send our our regards and thanks to the governor governor Stein whose

Declaration of the state of emergency actually M laid the legal framework for us to conduct this meeting uh virtually today uh ABS in his declaration this would have been a bit legally Frau for us to do it this way those of you who are with us during the pandemic will remember the Glory Days if I can call them those of of these virtual meetings when they were our only way of meeting for some time so to our new colleagues who are is this your first time doing this welcome uh and to our veterans welcome back uh to this platform form to conduct the business of the people of Durham Madam clerk good afternoon ma'am if you would please call the role thank you Mr Mayor protm mayor Williams is uh accepted an excused absence for today mayor protm Middleton here council member Baker here council member cabayo here council member cook council member Freeman and council member wrist thank you all right is council member RIS here did was there uh I'm

trying to uh okay I uh we haven't received any um messages from council member cook have we uh RIS have we Madam clerk no Mr May proam okay if a m St probably text him or call him just make sure he's not having a technical difficulties te technical difficulties getting on I'd appreciate it sure with that we're going to go ahead with announcements by the council I'll call on council member cook good afternoon good afternoon um I will be very brief I just wanted to send a word of thanks both to the staff who made this meeting possible um I know it was a bit of a a last minute situation and I know a lot of hard work went into that um and also to our city staff who have been working on uh clearing the roads and ensuring that everyone's safety is uh cared for there have been a lot of traffic incident ents um I know mayor PM just alluded to this uh please do uh be

as careful as possible only travel if you need to travel um and I really appreciate all of our First Responders and everyone else who has had to go to work and uh continue on about their business in order to keep the rest of the city safe so thank you to those folks and I do want to remind my colleagues that I will be leaving at 3M um I know we do have some question or some time for questions about budgetting requests uh mayor protm I'll leave that to your discretion but if folks do have questions for me uh that can't be addressed off screen and would like to do so um just want to remind yall that I will be out at three o'clock thank you thank you council member council member Baker good afternoon good afternoon um I would just say ditto to uh what council member cook said thank you so much to to staff and for everyone uh who works for the city who is keeping things running and out in the cold and doing the hard work uh we are so grateful for everything that you

do uh and that's that's it for me thank you thank you uh council member council member Freeman good afternoon council member Freeman do you have any announcements you're muted good afternoon I would just say thank you as well well to um our workers out there keeping us safe and making sure our roads are clear and to all the staff that are um getting it done today thank you council member council member Ritz good afternoon good to see you we're doing anoun we'll you yeah good afternoon sorry I'm a little bit slow in the uptake on my first virtual meeting sorry about that uh good to see everybody thanks mayor PM for uh for holding down the fort and U moderating today's meeting uh I want to Echo everybody else's comments really appreciate all the work our staff done working overtime working hard in the snow event it's pretty slippery out

there pretty pretty dangerous on many roadways so hope folks are safe out there um and again thanks for our staff and the folks who Duke Energy for what they do to make sure everyone has power um so yeah that's all I got thank you thank you council member glad you're safe thanks for uh jumping on uh very briefly Council yeah let me just associate myself with everything you've said thanks to our our responder our First Responders particularly and to our city staff the city doesn't shut down although City Hall May physically be shut down the city uh doesn't shut down so to city manager Ferguson and to your entire team the entire organization under you just our profound thanks uh on behalf of the city for what you do much of it goes unheralded and unreported but but we know as a councilman we want you to know that the people of this city uh greatly appreciate it and please yall stay safe out there my only announcement is is congratulations uh to our mayor on what I thought was a great state of the city uh to our council members who stormed the stage and uh Rock the crowd I I mariss I didn't know you had moves like that man

you inspired me no I looked to the right you jumped up on the stage I had to use the steps so uh just thanks to all the residents and citizens who came out uh to the State of the Union who watched online and I look forward I heard the mayor's Challenge and appeal to all of us as residents and citizens do us as Council as well I look forward uh to working with all of you and him uh in the coming year uh in the coming year to make the state of our city even better more better than than what it already is thank you colleagues for some some great announcements let's get to the work now at this time I'll yield uh to our executive staff for any priority items and I'll start with the city manager good afternoon Mr manager thank you mayor pend midon I did see the council member Cabo's hand is rais so I didn't know if she had thank you for helping me with that because I I I have a strip coun copier I'm so sorry it's okay we're all we we've lost some M so memory around this um just wanted to say thank you as well and then um ask colleagues um for to see if we could get

a presentation from our immigrant refugees coordinator Koko Nao just goes by Nao he's housed in the county uh and so was hoping that he could come to our March 20th uh work session and do um he is supposed to uh share what his work has been per our Ila um and uh wanted to see kind of just temperature check around that dra po house colleagues any objections all right seeing none let's please extend that invitation I look forward to that report thank you and then otherwise just want to thank staff including the folks at City Hall uh who have to be there to make this uh meeting happen so while we are uh virtual there are folks who have to be there to turn on all the equipment and run it and and make sure that we sound and look good as a city so thanks to those folks who drove to get this going uh over there and then everyone else who's made the city keep going thank you so much absolutely thank you one out of two ain't bad I know that make me sound good I don't know what they can do for my looks but I appreciate it Mr city

manager will yield to you good afternoon sir thank you mayor protm members of council uh uh first want to thank you and acknowledge the the compliments for staff I am sitting safe and warm but many of your staff are out there uh in in these conditions making our community safe for drivers uh for our residents ensuring their safety and I will certain L relay your kind comments to them uh I'll just note in advance of my priority items that we will have a call uh with our colleagues at the county and Emergency Management professionals today at 4 just to uh assess what conditions will be like Council and the public can expect to hear from us later this evening as it will our employees about any plans that impact tomorrow uh but again I want to thanks and acknowledge uh the the efforts of all the staff for the community and also uh appreciate your comments ments about this meeting I've had very little to do with helping this meeting happen but there are a number of people you know who they are who support us in this space so thank

you for that uh I have several priority items that I'll read into the record uh first agenda item number nine the fourth quarter crime report there is a presentation that will be made during today's work session uh a second item the recognition of God Duram million MERS this was a recognition that was previously planned for today but we've postponed that and then finally agenda item number 2 for a discussion item for City Council budget request for the FY 2526 year uh we have added a supplemental item uh to the agenda to allow space for Council to discuss those items those are all of my priority items mayor P thank you Mr manager colleagues I'll entertain a motion to receive the manager's priority items second I heard a motion in the second all in favor we indicate by saying I I any opposition all right Mr manager thank you I have your items noted as 9 and 24 thank you much Madam City attorney good after there you are good afternoon good afternoon mayor ptim

members of the council it's good to see you the city attorney's office has no priority items today thank you ma'am Madam clerk good afternoon I'll yeld to you for any priority items thank you Mr um mayor proen Middleton I did want to announce the the two board and committee appointments for the human relations Commission uh there is consensus in support of Kaylee A Greener but the Planning Commission appointment does not have consensus right now uh there's Caitlyn kmky who received three votes and um Michael Jay Young One vote Ramsey Richie one vote and then Evan Bradley one vote Madam clerk I'll switch mine to Evan Bradley for now okay that's three that's for Evan I'll switch M to Evan as well okay thank you then we have reached consensus thank you very much thank you very much I'll uh receive a moot accept

a motion for the clerk's report and priority item so Mo second add a motion in the second all in favor will indicate by i i i those oppose all right thank you so much uh Madam clerk colleagues at this time I'll turn now to the reading of our reading to the record if I can get my iPad to work our administrative consent items uh for our viewing public administrative consent items are items uh that we now take an opportunity to do a deep dive in as a council uh these items if passed on to the Monday night meeting can be passed with one vote any of these items can be pulled by a member of the council or a member of the public and I I will now read them uh for the record administrative consent items City Clerks office item number one Durham Planning Commission appointment item number two human relations commission appointment under departmental items audit Services Department item number three procurement card pecard

performance AUD audit January 2025 city clerk's office item number four boards committees commissions and task force calendar year 2024 annual attendance reports item number five Duram convention and visitors bureau DB doing business as discovered Durham 2024 and ual report Under Our Community Development Department item number six Community Development block grant cdbg program Grant to project ordinance for FY 2021 through 2022 that one is that council member cook was that council member cook yes as always yes it's okay that's why we're here item number six is Pulled Under general service department item number seven Public Works Operation Center renovation construction manager at risk agreement with CT Wilson Construction Company Inc under neighborhood Improvement Services Department item number eight housing appeals board annual report for fiscal year 2024 under the police department item

number nine this is a presentation 2024 fourth quarter crime report our public works department item number 10 amendment number two to Services contract for water quality web portal repair and maintenance for the storm waterer quality program under our transportation department item number 11 supplemental agreement number three to master agreement 18906 with exalt engineering PC for multimodal saf safety improvements to guest Road mayor PM I don't want to pull that just want to say like yes that's great stuff so excited about that agreed thank you for that item number 12 supplemental agreement number five to master agreement 18925 with wsp USA Inc for design of multimodal safety improvements on City maintained Rose I do want to pull that one item number 12 is pulled item number 13 supplemental agreement number three to master agreement

18919 with stantech Consulting Services Inc for design of two-way conversion of Roxboro Street and Mangum Street again don't want to pull that one but that that makes a lot of people happy so I'm glad to see that on the agenda thank you so much mayor PM indeed indeed thank you item number 14 Second Amendment to the contract with ratp d Dev USA Inc for the management operation and maintenance of the godder fixed route transit system I yeah all right council member Freeman I think that was you and council member uh Baker Baker yes item number 14 is pulled item number 15 gold Durham FY 2024 annual report it item number six 16 governing agreements for the 2025 through 2028 city of durm Transportation on call Professional Services Engineering Services and data collection under our water management department item number 17 Construction contract

award to Carolina Civil Works Inc for the 2025 Water and Sewer Point repair item number 18 Construction contract to Teraflex Group LLC for the fy2 unscheduled Pipeline and plant repairs project item number 19 construction award to Teraflex Group LLC for the Albany Peach Tree gtis waterline replacement project item number 20 construction contracted Carolina Civil Works Inc for the fy2 unscheduled pipeline Pipeline and plant repairs project under presentations budget but from our budget Management Services Department FY 2024 to 25 second quarter financial report that's slated to go for 20 minut 20 minutes and from our Police Department I number 22 police satisfaction survey results presentation by Etc Institute uh slated to go for 20 minutes and for our Monday night uh General business meeting public hearings we have slated from our City County Planning Department item number 23 Cay Drive Street closing and citizens

matters to be heard at 100 PM another supplemental items from budg budget and Management Services City Council budget request fy22 through 26 which was alluded to by our manager in his priority items uh colleagues that ends the reading of our published agenda for the day I have items number six 12 and 14 pulled by my Reckoning Mr maner can you pull item 15 as well item number 15 item number 15 gold durm FY 2024 annual report is pulled colleagues anything else all right I have uh Mr manager by my Rec items number 6 12 14 and 15 pulled I concur all right thank you colleagues I will um go ahead and try and dispose of these uh well of course you have opportunity to exhaust all the questions you want but I'm gonna go ahead and knock these out before our presentations if that's

all right so we'll start with item number six council member cook I believe you pulled that I did do we we don't have any citizens matters yes we do okay much council member uh cabaro talked about the uh the muscle memory all right I have for Citizens matters dearen Langley Derek Ro well D no derck Ro pulled an IT him I have dearen Langley and Kai rle for Citizens comments and Madame clerk if there's anyone else please help me and thank you for the catch council member cook I appreciate that um Madam clerk if we can make Mr Langley present good afternoon us you got three minutes thank you Mr Mayor protim good afternoon Mr Mayor protim members of the Durham city

council city manager City Clerk and City staff I would like to first begin my comment with the moment of silence for the young male of color he was a black man shot a black 17-year old teenager shot in con Wallace on last Sunday so I would like to observe a moment of silence thank you and while that young person did not lose their life I again come before you as the executive director of The Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation where we offer a Continuum of intense and career focused program services and mentorship to prepare boys and young men of color for success in school and the workforce and Durham has a lot of potential we have a lot of opportunity but what we are falling short is a strategy and consistent investment in our young people to help them find their purpose develop a strategy and have consistent support in order to realize their potential and

3 million dollars for the investment in young people in this community especially boys and young men of color who

predominantly represent are represented in fact and data points that we don't want them in in terms of uh perpetrators of crime victims of crime Dropout short and long-term suspension all of those things and it's not because they are inherently deficient it's because we're not doing enough to support their growth development and success so I ask Council to consider that request and making a bold and courageous step in investing in our young people so that they can have the future that is possible in this community or whatever community that they choose to live in thank you so Langley thank you so much for being with us today all right Madam clerk if you can make Kai rle or ryel uh present good afternoon everyone can you hear me yes good afternoon thank you so

much for being with us you have three minutes thank you so much good afternoon mayor PM councel um I know there are lot of important issues in durm right now so thank you for your time and also mayor protm you got my last name pronounced so accurately that was amazing um so thank you um you've heard a good bit from me voicing Collective and far-reaching concerns that we're way off track with DM's creative and cultural economy the overriding concern being that the architecture of decisions is continuing to hurt DM's creative and cultural and economic present and potential um topics during our time conversations have covered uh event funding money lost or extracted by City organizations and much more the most recent issue concerning myself and others is General Services spending a total of $480,000 to basically Outsource a cultural road map for durm with a schedule that is already years overdue what appears to be extremely over budget they've already spent $150,000 on the first phase um with AMS Consulting that for some reason

that relationship broke um now they're spending another 250k on MJR Consultants with another adk and Community engagement so for many of us this continued kind of Outsourcing is way off Target um we again seem to be offloading responsibility of DM's future onto external and usually out ofate organizations that for intents and purposes interview people like myself and repackage it just to sell it back to us at a premium price without much insight and really actual Ro maps that we can't develop ourselves and there's some of us that would rather see dur their own R our own our own road maps and fail them be held stationary and paying large sums of money for information we already have and it's just not confidence building when one looks at the amount of studies and road maps that we have taken place in durm over the last four years with basically very little to show for it um the decision Tree on this the nice and overall intelligent people at dcab have sat back and greenlighted all this even when some seemed to not agree with it

then this came to council and was cleared as well and this just seems to be and I have nothing personal against dcab but it's just continuing proof that they need to be cultural advisors and not cultural and economic decision makers especially financially um durs creative economy is closing in on about a million dollars loss between overspending Financial mistakes extraction from funding sources lost opportunities sometimes just bad choices um I know you have a lot going on but we need more invol need you more involved with these decisions please uh we need a proper conversation with you the creative economic Community about all these issues because we may be missing something but it stands right now we have no idea what that something is so um I have a group of people we're going to be putting together an online form about this everyone on this call will be obviously invited but we need a more focused path about how to solve some of these issues and some of these decision trees because they're they're hurting durm in ways that are

m. in our work session there's a a a um a point on on our agenda for Citizens comments on generally whatever you want to talk to your Council about so we invite our residents to go to our website and sign up um in advance to do that if you show up that day there are a limited number of spots Beyond those who have signed up that you can occupy to talk to your councel at our work sessions at one o'clock so we going to thank our residents who came out today all right I think now we'll go to pulled items and I have item number six and council member cook I believe that that's you and I'll

yield that is is thank you um I have a few questions on this item the first is that this is from fiscal year 21 to 22 and my understanding is that the way that these reimbursements happen is that we estimate how much we will receive in these type of grants for the year moving forward and then the following year we have an actualization of how much money we do receive um so I'm just wondering why we are hearkening back or why this amended appropriation is going back to 2021 2022 fiscal year uh this is uh Reginal Johnson community development director I'm not able to put on my video um okay here we go so the uh one of the to you you are correct in in in terms of the process in terms of reconciliation uh in in terms of uh why the num the

process for for us making uh these adjustments one of the things that a c have happened here that we discovered an error uh in the uh reporting uh that Genesis was that there was error in some pool reports and so we were seeking to correct that because that affects one of the payments for the uh uh projects that we're doing now was this something that we found we being staff or was this one of the things that our consultant that we hired was taking a look at oh this was staff we this was staff and is there any issue with correcting something several years out no no so one of the pieces that we have so it's two two steps to the process one is that we have to make payments and then uh we get we we get reimbursed and we have to make draws draws through the uh Idis system and so what this is

related to is making sure that uh we can make the proper draws in the Idis system uh for the particular project that that's focused on so there's not a problem there's not a problem with it but we need to do it to be able to uh complete the project and as well as the process okay thank you um I think that's all my questions for the first tough but the second part is um that we saw a decrease in income realized by um almost $110,000 can you explain that decrease and also maybe account for why I'm assuming it's part of the same error and calculation as the as the increase entitlement but why it's why we're going back several years years and but I would like to see why we have a decrease there

okay so I would have to go back and specifically look uh on the decrease but one of the things that we uh have to uh recognize is that we have an estimate uh that we have in terms of our program income and that's income that we um uh will receive based upon the payback from loans or uh the disposition of property of main things and it's a really a estimate and then we have to make sure that we adjust it uh at the end of the year to what actually uh actually happens um and and we have to pull reports to be able to uh to do that and so that's where the uh uh comes in the the the difference comes in uh quite often it is a discrepancy uh a difference I would say I wouldn't say a discrepancy but a difference because the actual uh you could have a major loan that comes in so you have more or you could have not the payments that we projected based on the previous years

so you have a decrease so the I'm just a bit confused because the way I'm I'm reading this paragraph from the memo um our entitlement allocation was increased by $31,000 as a result of amended appropriation from HUD additionally we reported um and then $193,000 in program income how however this amount should be amended to indicate $84,000 in program in income that was realized which is a decrease of $100,000 so can you just help me understand because this is there two different things happening here can you help me understand the difference between these two and then whether or not this sort of was all found together or I'm just a little bit confused how we have we're going back to fiscal year 20121 and we have ostensibly maybe two errors that we're showing yes we do and I'll ask Maggie uh Carnegie to come on and explain a little bit more

detail afternoon council member cook fellow council members um so regarding uh the the issue presented yes council member cook we had an increased appropriation from HUD uh by that $3 31,5 51 amount uh that was an increase to our entitlement that during the last gopo we completed it it was missed there was error made um in that last GP where we didn't account for that correct entitlement amount regarding the program income or the revenue that we actualized again there was an error in how we pulled reports that reflected the revenue we actualized for that year um and that is what's resulting in that that decrease amount of 9,684 and so this is uh the time where we we need to make sure that our entitlement appropriation and program income actualized is accurate uh to

support some uh budget or our general ledger and it will support us being able to finalize some draws and receive reimbursement from HUD for some projects we have funded within the the 2021 uh 2022 cdbg Grant okay so when when you're talking about that moving forward is this something like we went back and and did like a self-imposed audit of the past 5 years sort of thing and and these were just two things that we found they just happened to be from the same fiscal year is there a reason why we were looking at fiscal year 2021 that is correct we we did an internal uh look to see if we had any inconsistencies we we found it as we were trying to again draw some funds and and receive reimbursement for a project that's funded with uh dbg uh from the 2021 program year okay and so we've done we've done like we're not going to then see that we have also miscalculations in

2022 23 even though those we are have already gotten reimburse we would already have gotten reimbursements for those as well because we're past that year we're not going to see this come up again I guess is my question youall have gone through all of these years now and and looked at the accounting so I I would state that this gopo is just specifically for this program year and I guess I would preface with the cdbg grant has a seven-year period of performance so the period of performance for this grant year will not conclude until September 1st of 2028 so we are well within the the period of performance for this grant um again there's just some specific projects we are trying to complete uh final draws from so the city can be ured for expenses that have been incurred by the subrecipient and we do foresee that there may be subsequent gpos that need to be done for

other program years but we were kind of targeting and focused on this fiscal year or this program year in particular okay that was helpful thank you those are all my questions thank you thank you council member council memb is anyone else on this item I was just going to uh follow and just ask which project and which recipient we're talking about for this this particular project is the Ross Road project uh and reinvestment partners is the um developer thank you your colleagues anyone else all right item number uh six uh is disposed of colleagues um a lot a lot of moving Parts here uh virtually so I W to I want to round back to the clerk the clerk uh would like to make an amendment to her report so Madam clerk I'll yield

to you at this time thank you Mr Mayor proam I did want to confirm that we had four votes for Evan Bradley uh there is council member cabayo the mayor Williams mayor protm Middleton and council member rist after everything shook out so I did want to make that on the record all right it hasn't changed the outcome of the vote it has not changed the outcome all right and chair's opinion no substantive impact to the voted so so we don't need to revote again we'll just make the appropriate Amendment to the record well you will you keep the you take minutes thank you absolutely colleagues I also have been um alerted that uh some residents did pull some additional items and I want to thank the city attorney's office um Mr manager and if you'll amend your list uh item number seven but the person who pulled item number seven appears to not be in Q Charlie Wilson so we'll add to the list item number seven item 9 13 and 21 uh to the to the pulled list and

we'll go in numerical order uh number seven Madame clerk is uh Charlie Wilson and I don't believe um Charlie is on do you see that name in the queue no Mr Mayor Pro I do not see Charlie will and then the queue okay then well we'll move on then to was he was he a resource person or not that was a I guess you're right sorry I was wonder if that was a re if he was serving as a resource person or no this is this is this is per um uh information from the attorney okay that it was a pulled item okay yeah mayor ptim no I just saw that person as a participant in the with the item listed so it could have been a resource person I don't know that it's not the staff person listed on the agenda okay so you're looking at the actual I'm just looking at the participants making sure we don't miss anything okay yeah and I'm toggling between three and four screen

so please don't be shy about uh jumping in um he may very well have been council member to your question I'm not certain but Mr Derek uh or Derek rhs item number nine um if there is there a Derrick rhod I believe I saw Derrick rhods in the que and Madam clerk if you'd help me search that the queue and if you see a Dereck rhods uh make them present um I did make Mr rhs present Mr rhods good afternoon thank you uh for being with us you you wish to speak on item nine yes thank you absolutely we're glad to have you you have three minutes appreciate it good afternoon members of of city council uh it's great to be with you all my name is Dereck rhs I'm the founder and executive director of darm success Summit located at 727 North Mangum Street in Durham um on item number nine on the fourth quarter crime

report uh we continue to see high levels of violence impacting young black men uh including 11 who were shot last month however it's crucial that we recognize that violence is not occurring in a vacuum here approximately 40% of young black men in Durham are not on track to secure employment by the age of 25 this lack of Economic Opportunity compounded by the challenges many of these young men face creates a pipeline to violence rather than a pipeline to Career Success I urge this Council to prioritize funding and support for programs that are directly working to bridge this Gap by equipping young black men with the skills and networks they need to succeed in high demand sectors like life science did we lose uh Mr rhods Madam clerk yes we did all right and uh I uh that's a presentation I could have very well just had him wait to the presentation uh to make his

comment so if we get him back uh we'll certainly allow him afford him that opportunity uh I'm going to move on in the interest of time and and we'll Circle back when he gets back on to item number 12 council member wrist I believe you pulled that uh yes thank you so much um is the resource person on is that Mr Tracy so I'm available this is seanan director of Transportation hey so I just so just a quick question this looks great I know this these are roads that are slated for some multimodal multimodal improvements they were part of the bond referend right so it's good to see the bond refer was already getting we're already using those funds I just wonder if you give me an example of what kind of multimodal safety improvements they might suggest on these roads and maybe an example of one of those roads certainly look like walk through a couple of them yeah so um like University Drive for example near South Square so um you know in between the two

ends of Old Chapel Hill Road so um that's a transit route the godam route 10 uh operates on University Drive there um and so one of the things that we'll be doing is looking at the potential for reducing Lanes to accommodate Transit Andor bike Lanes along the corridor as well as looking at potential safety improvements at intersections to reduce conflicts uh and assist with our vision zero goal to uh eliminate fatalities and serious injuries uh on our roadway Network some of the other locations in the Crest Street neighborhood on Elba Street near Duke University Hospital on gear Street near Washington Street uh in Mangum Lind between uh Pleasant uh out uh in southeast Durham um and then Martin Luther King Parkway between Shannon and Old Chapel Hill Road so we're focused on six locations that are part of the the city's resurfacing schedule using the bond funds and again could be safety improvements could be sort of like Road diets uh yeah Transit

Lanes bike Lanes uh we're looking for any opportunity to uh build out and strengthen our multimodal transportation Network great that sounds exciting thanks so much that's my question mayor Pam can I just ask are these the items that are listed under exhibit a that's all the six items under exhibit a yeah it's it's in there thank you thank you Council M colleagues anyone else on that item all right Madam clerk do we have Mr rhs back yes Mr roads in is in the queue right now and he had two minutes remaining actually if you I'm going to men I'm going to let him speak on item 13 now and then when we get to the actual presentation it's Germain his comments for Germaine he actually wanted to speak on item nine which is a presentation so I I'll have him speak during that time per per our regular order okay so if you'll make him present

now we'll do 13 good Mr Ro can you hear me yes may yeah Mr Rose I let me apologize to you um your items are gerain to item your your first remarks would your remain to to item number nine which is a presentation so what I'm going to do is I'm I'm going to allow you to make your comments um relative to item number nine when we get to that police presentation uh which is part of our regular order so I apologize for that um multitasking here but you did also pull item 13 so I'm going to ask if you would give your remarks relevant to item number 13 uh and then when when when we get to the presentation uh by our Police Department I'll allow you to make your remarks relevant to that item at that point is that all right that's absolutely all right thank you mayor Pro absolutely so you'll have a fresh 13 you'll have a fresh three minutes on

item number 13 thank you absolutely so regarding item 13 again durm success something we're located on mang Street 727 very excited about uh this project here and and looking forward to to its implementation hopefully um at the however at the uh February 17th Durham city council meeting earlier this week um council member cook acknowledged that quote neighbors who are left without real options housing and Durham approximately 40% of young black men are not on track to secure meaningful employment by 25 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York by the time a person turns 25 their lifetime earnings can be predicted this means that there are 3,280 young black men who are counting on us at mangup Street who are not just at risk of being unemployed or employed without a living wage but also being housing insecure because of this um we do not have time here for humorous activity outside of real meaningful engagement uh we encourage you to prioritize funding

and support for programs like ours across this city that are directly working to bridge the gap equipping young people with the skills and networks they need to succeed if you care about any of these issues if you care about this street and this block we urge you to invest in youth serving organizations as you continue to prioritize budget requests thank you I'll yield the rest of my time Mr Rose thank you so much and thank you for your understanding with our our massaging of the agenda colleagues we'll move on to item number 14 I heard both council member free council members Freeman and Baker pull this item out I'll yield to either one of you who wants to start first I'll I'll hop on here um so uh thank you director Egan for for being here um you've got a lot of items on on uh on this agenda today uh so I wanted to just um make sure I understood what was going on here so our bus vehicles are

requiring more maintenance than we would um ideally have TW twice as much maintenance as as we'd like um and then it it it looks like hybrid vehicles cost way more when it comes to to maintenance than um Diesel and Battery could you just explain and do you know why and could you explain why that would be sure so this is Sean Egan again director of Transportation uh so uh our experience with the hybrid system um is that you're really U taking care of two separate propulsion systems for a bus so you have to take care of the diesel fueled system and then you have to take care of an electric system um and so in our experience the chances of something going wrong when you're U trying to maintain two separate systems that rely

on each other those chances double um when you're trying to operate both an electrical system for propulsion as well as a diesel system um and so uh I think in the passenger vehicle Market um the hybrid technology um you know really Advanced and developed in the transit bus Market uh the general consensus in the industry has moved away from hybrids um and choosing either diesel or one of the U zero emissions Technologies uh because of so much of the the same type of experience that we've been having um with uh a high incidence of the buses being down and unavailable for service and then very high costs associated with replacement parts and maintenance to keep these vehicles on the road thank you for that that's that's very helpful and then it it looks like the um cost for maintenance for battery

powered is the lowest um however cost of purchase of those Vehicles is twice as expensive as new vehicles is twice as expensive as a diesel on its own so obviously that's something we have to wrestle with and so we're looking at purchasing used diesel vehicles at the moment because of quick turnaround time and just meeting demands and keeping up with everything so just want to make sure that that was my my understanding is correct and correct yeah was caveat the battery electric buses the data that you're seeing is from uh new vehicles basically you know um all of the vehicles have been purchased in the last four years uh 75% of them were purchased just um two years ago so we typically see very low maintenance costs for new vehicles and then as the vehicles age um the maintenance costs so there's a um we don't have data going back you know 10

plus years for the battery electric bus buses because uh we took delivery of our first two buses in 2021 so um it's not clear uh I think that we'll be able to maintain such a low maintenance cost per mile over the life of those vehicles um so you're what you're seeing now is is kind of a best case scenario because the equipment is is nearly new okay so we're still triing the battery powered buses and we just kind of need to wait and see how long they are low maintenance vehicles and as they age that will inevitably go up and we just need to we don't have that comparable yet that that's correct okay okay so in the meantime we are purchasing used diesel vehicles um okay and so currently we're just monitoring the costs of Purchase cost of Maintenance to make decisions as we as we move forward is that yeah our focus is really on vehicle availability

uh so we're getting ready we're doing public engagement right now for uh the next round of God Durham service improvements we're going to be adding frequency on the route three Corridor on Holloway Street um in East Durham serving The Village out to Southern High School uh new cross town connection between uh the village and North Carolina Central University and Durham Tech uh in order for us to we have the dollars lined up in order for us to be able to implement that service expansion uh we need more vehicles uh because we're uh we're at the limits of what our Fleet can do right now so this enables us to uh increase our Fleet size and have vehicles available for all of our service needs uh and to support that service expansion that U we hope to be bringing forward by the end of this fiscal year okay very useful uh thank you so much that's it for me Council membering like that those are in line with my questions and

specifically it was like if there was a supplier issue and I I get it I think you also thank you count okay I thought you had Frozen uh sorry council member Freeman all right uh colleagues and um just for clarification thank you um Mr manager for clarifying uh Council Maris item number seven uh Charlie Wilson uh was indeed a resource uh Charlie last name Wilson uh was indeed a uh resource so we'll move on to item number 15 uh coun member Freeman I believe that was you and I I believe that Sean has answered my question was really around whether we're moving towards the bus Rapid Transit and he stated those lines that he's actually looking to increase with the used vehicles that will be on mind absolutely thank thank you so much uh colleagues uh colleagues like uh item 21 which I indicated was pulled like item nine item 21 is a presentation as well so I will I will have our speaker

who pulled it from the community Reserve comments until we get to the U the actual relevant um agenda item by my Reon we've exhausted our pulled items I trust my colleagues have had opportunity to exhaust all their questions and concerns and a fully treated them to your satisfaction uh with that we're going to move to our presentations and I'm I'm going to start with uh ask our Police Department to prepare for item number nine the 2024 fourth quarter crime report but before we hear from our Police Department we do have a Community member Mr rhs and at this time uh Madame clerk if you'll make him present and and give him three minutes for his comments uh relative to item number nine thank you mayor protim Middleton thank you Council again for for hearing our comments uh related to item number nine now um the epidemic uh facing young black men disproportionately affecting young black men is at an all-time high we continue see high levels of violence impacting them however it is critical that we recognize that violence is not

occurring in a vacuum the lack of Economic Opportunity compounded by the challenges many of these young men face create a pipeline to violence rather than a pipeline to Career Success I appreciated in this report the referrals to employment agencies however I urg this Council to investigate what are the outcomes associated with this support and how is the police department partnering to ensure that young black men before the age of 25 have economic and Community Support with wraparound Services working collaboratively to make our entire Community a safer place thank you very Pro I yeld the remainder of my time for the presentation Mr Rose thank you so much may I take a point of personal privilege on behalf of the mayor in the city to thank you for the the Grassroots impactful work you do uh in our city with that population I know I speak for council member cabier and and the mayor and myself that we had a wonderful time at your event uh a couple of weeks ago and and we're pulling for great success up for the important work you're doing

so thank you so much all right at this time I will yield to our Police Department for the fourth quarter uh crime report and uh thank you so much for being with us we going to let you knock it out so you can get back to responding to all of our needs in in this weather out there so thank you and Welcome to our dpd thank you mayor protim councel uh manager Ferguson uh City staff and um and um also the community that are currently watching um this is your I'm back so you couldn't get rid of me forever but I am back with your 2024 uh fourth quarter crime report before I start I just want to uh just take a moment and thank all of you for spending a few hours of your time we're all busy I know that but I also know that you all are busy as well um actually coming and and seeing what it is that um our forensic Services Unit

what they do um and learning about the scientists that they are and so and also coming over and seeing our property and evidence unit so that means that means a lot to staff and I'm and I'm really appreciative of it so Captain Packard is working behind the scenes to guide this uh ship so hopefully he gets it gets it right the first time no pressure just just kidding all right so next slide so as you know our report typically covers the Department's uh the five performance measures uh part one violent crime part one property crime our clearance rates our response times to Priority One calls that occur as well as our as our staffing levels here in the Durham Police Department so this slide reflects our part one violent crime from uh January 1st to December 31st what you'll note is that uh overall we are down in violent crime uh and as you know as I've

4% enforcable rapes 22 of those actually occurred and were reported uh having occurred in uh previous years uh 14% of those were domestic in nature um so we have a a known suspect in that and 12 of the 45 clearances that we had about 27% of those were reported in Prior years so our robberies we did have and and we're down slightly but I do want to just take

a moment to talk about our robberies um obviously we have we have seen a reduction in both um our individual robberies our robberies from people as well as our commercial robberies we've seen slight reductions in that but kind of the the middle to the last part of the year we started to see um several trends uh In Pockets of robberies where there was a disproportionate amount of Hispanic or Latino latinx um victims and um and and they were uh affected in in a high amount um I am extremely proud of of my staff for being able to investigate each one of those um robberies that we had uh some of those were also ended in aggravated assaults and were able to make several significant um arrests uh in in each one of those cases um our aggravated assaults although down we did note that 63% of

those aggravated assaults involve fire involved Firearms so that was about 149 gunshot wounds and that rate so we did a comparison of of of what is our rate look like so our rate our rate is 63% the rate for North Carol Ina agencies um in uh in during the year was 56% in 2023 and that's kind of how that compares out next slide please so this just gives you a um a visual snapshot of what violent crimes look like and and we like to do on you know 10year um so 2015 to 20124 and we like to show you how those look those numbers look year over-ear overy year and so what I do want to draw your attention to is so homicides is reflected in the the the flat Blue Line there and um it's the lowest uh we're at

the lowest since we've been in 2020 um of the 39 homicides we had last year 34 of those did involve a firearm and if you'll look um our our higher year was 2021 where we actually ended up with um for homicides but we've been 49 homicides but we've been kind of trending upwards for 2021 2022 and 2023 um last year we ended up with 39 homicides our robberies so that is the green line that you see on your screen that has trended downwards and we are at uh a 10-year low for that particular category again you heard me mention and talk about um Hispanic victims that have been disproportionately impacted throughout the year uh with 43% of those individual robberies uh in 2024 those had uh at least one or more um victims

uh about 37% of those um had one or more victims so aggravated assaults is your purple line that's that's when we talk about gunshots uh non-fatal gunshot wounds that's what we're really looking at is the the aggravated assault as you see it was almost like a mountainous Peak um that um we had a significant Peak that almost that started you know 2019 really sharp increase 2020 and it appears that we're on somewhat of a downward trajectory um and that began um to come down after 2020 um and you see that we're almost leveling out to where we're coming down in 20 uh 24 next slide please thank you so these are your shooting incidents so that kind of this breaks down what we're just talking about um with the aggravated assaults that involve um gunshots so and

14 uh people shot uh during those time during that time there were 981 guns that we seized in 2024 so that's down about 12% um those guns though however did

come from 695 um of those incidents um um of each one of those incidents and and we get that data the gun seiz data is based on um what we are actually turning in into property and evidence and what property and evidence is able to log in um as it relates to each individual incident so we did have a question I do want to touch on that uh last time I believe um it it might have been from um either the mayor or council member Middleton um oftentimes what we see is when we have a gunshot wound especially one that's non-fatal that victim will be driven to the hospital and so the hospital um has to report that gunshot wound and so we we looked at the shooting incidents from a period of 2023 to 2024 um it it increased um over over

time um from those that were um that were actually visiting and going to the hospital um and it it's very hard for us to individually track how many of those ended up in the hospital um but we think about 50 a little about 54 of those shootings were uh individuals that went to the hospital we don't have the ability to really look at um without taking a deeper dive was there an actual 911 call that resulted um prior to them actually going to the hospital so next slide all right so this is what our gunshot wounds fatal and non-fatal um look week by week so throughout the year so we took this from calendar year 2019 through December 31st 2024 and so your yellow line is 2024 what you'll what you'll notice is our

highest was 2020 so if you think back to the aggravated assault line that I showed you um where that sharp increase and then you started to see a steady decrease um this actually further tells that story and demonstrates that um what we talked about in previous slides so 58% of the gunshot wounds occurred in the first half of the year and 42% of our gunshot wounds occurred in uh the second half of the year when we start to look at just individual demographics we have you know we've heard anecdotally that that there are a lot of our young black men being shot when we actually looked at the looked at the demographics of shooting victims comparing those to shooting suspects so in 2024 are shooting victims were 82% black 86% male and 41% were under the age of 25 years old

41% our shooting suspects it aligns somewhat um 79% black suspects 85% male and 38% were under the age of 25 and so we have not been able to identify all suspects from all of our shootings uh but um those that we've been able to identify we have of course um been able to to charge them next slide please thank you all right so we talk a lot about violent crime it's also important to talk about property crime because property crime in a way um is is um you know is what we we talk about when you start hearing us you know motor vehicle break-ins motor vehicle thefts often times those firearms that are stolen out of their vehicles out of vehicles um can pop up and be used in a shooting and being recovered from a shooting um also um motor vehicles that are stolen we often find are being used

to um used in in other crimes whether it's here or or in other areas so I do want to just just bring your attention to um the larsy so you see that our lares have increased um 8% so what's driving that well our two main ones are our lares from Motor Vehicles those were up 11% um and from 2023 uh 34% of those lares uh we had 34% of our overall laries were also related to shop shoplifting so shopliftings um you know people just think that it's you know it's someone steals this or they steal that and it's very small but but overall it represents a large amount of property that that is that are being stolen from some of our major retails um and and can really contribute to a larger overall ring of of crime our motor vehicle thefts as you have seen in

years past that really has driven us up in those numbers however we are starting in to see um a downward Trend in the rate and the number of Motor Vehicle thefts that we have um 20% of our vehicles that are stolen were left running unattended or had the keys left somewhere in the vehicle so we always say you know although it gets cold it's very cold and you're tempted to to warm up that that vehicle you know please try not to do that also taking your key fob and really putting your key fob in your home far enough away from your vehicle so that that frequency cannot be cloned um and they cannot get access to your vehicle Kia still continue to be High um Hyundai still continue to be number two and Hondas are falling into our number three category of most stolen vehicles next one please okay so similar to your the

violent crime graph that I showed you this is your property crime um reported by year so 2015 to 2024 and so um just of note want to talk about the Larsen because that's your that's your high that that really what we just talked about your high line that's way up there with larsy and you'll see you'll see the trend so it's it's been trending upward right over the last two years and we are currently at a uh a 10-year high and again that's mostly due to the shock liftings as well as the um the the thefts uh from Motor Vehicles so um we have really tried to um to assist our uniform Patrol um in some of the calls that they are responding to um we've tried to be Innovative in um in in really seeing if we have other ways in which we could document those crimes and So 20% of of

those shoplift calls um uh have been in progress 8% of those calls we've been able to route to our telephone Response Unit and um and that has actually that's that's been very helpful in being able to redirect our officers to respond to other higher priority calls we have really been trying to promote our ptoc or police to community or police to Citizen we began that in March and we've seen um almost 16% of our um our larsy calls so the nonin progress um calls being um um our community members have been making reports through the P Toc platform which ultimately has again translated to more um availability of our officers so motor vehicle thefts again that's our green line as we've been talking about there is at Kia Hyundai 20

21 it almost was level then it shot up 2022 23 and we're starting to see it come um down again in 2024 big shout out to Kia and Hyundai for really doing their level best and trying to partner with us to mitigate those stfts so next one please all right so here is our guns when we talk about the guns stolen um we look at what does it what was the trajectory from 2019 to uh the end of 2024 and this is very self-explanatory what we've all we've talked about it has just skyrocketed um in in 2024 um you'll see 2023 it was coming up um but we really have seen a an increase in the amount of guns being stolen um and so year-over-year increases we're looking at about a 29% increase over um 2023 69% of the guns that were stolen were stol in from motor

vehicles um you know we have we've had conversation about you know are there legislative changes that we can make there are things that we could do to um to really um dissuade our gun owners um from from not leaving their guns in their vehicles and quite frankly um you know it it potentially if there's legisl legislative changes the the unintended consequence of that um would be that simply people stop reporting their guns stolen and then that way we are not able to track uh track these these guns when crimes are committed um if they're not reported stolen so next slide please all right so this is one of my favorite slides because it does really show uh I I talk all the time about the great work that our uniform Patrol um staff are doing with really being present and doing great courts uh and then it translate to

even better investigations our investigators uh they continue to to Really lead the charge in in clearance rates but not just clearance rates clearing by actual arrests um as well as very solid cases that we present um to our district attorney or to our federal um um partners and so just want to show you in our homicide category we consistently cleared over the FBI's clearance rate for 2023 and 20124 we cleared higher in all categories so that is commendable because every last one of those crimes um are are not easy to prove and certainly aren't easy to identify um a suspect so I credit our Patrol officers our investigators but also you all visited the lab our forensic staff so out outstanding um

work and I'll shut up about that and move on so let's go to property property crimes property crimes are are as equally as you know as difficult to to prove the who done it um it we really do rely heavily on our forensic evidence as well as the networking with our intelligence teams um because we do you know we do talk to Raleigh and other agencies and so what we see here is we actually um overall we were uh we we we did clear um lower in some categories however um we did still did did well particularly in the burglary category where we clear cleared higher um than the than the national average um I don't take too much um heartburn with our clearance rate in the property crime only because I know how very hard it is to actually bring someone to Justice identify someone and bring them to justice for these

crimes um so just so that you know I want to remind you the FBI clearance rates um for 2023 um are based on CI cities with populations of like size so 250,000 to 500,000 people so we are comparable to other cities our um our size um I also do want to uh just tell you that 90% of the violent crime cas es were cleared by arrest 90% 95% of our property crimes were also cleared by arrest someone was held responsible and actually went to jail for those those those cases next please so property one calls for Priority One calls for service so we saw um that we were um our Priority One calls for service we were at 8,998 pri1 calls for service in 2024

that is actually down 1% from 2023 not really sure what what causes that um you know certainly I think if it was a higher number we'd probably have to look at you know where were we down exactly what calls for service were we down in and what was driving that but um that's not necessarily anything I I would take heartburn with um however I will tell you as I've as I've said to you before that we um are our um our average response times were starting to kind of tick up and so our average response time in 2024 was a flat 7 minutes and this was response to Priority One calls for service so think CO3 runs um that officers need to get to very very quickly um this obviously did not mean our Target of 5 minutes and 48 seconds 45% of those calls were answered in less

than um 5 minutes which still didn't meet our Target of 57% and so our data previously uh indicates that our response times are obviously being negatively impacted when our staffing Falls below 80% the city of Durham is also growing as we start to you know have new developments and also bring in and expand the city's back boundaries um our you know that doesn't change the amount of officers that we have out on the street and on uniform Patrol and that are working you're your the number doesn't change right um as as the boundaries change what we have been doing is we did go back uh Mr sheath and I did go back and actually look at um our response time we did make a small change that actually we think ended up being a very large change a significant change to um the calls that our staff could actually see that were holding um they our

officers could not see holding calls and self-dispatch themselves to certain holding calls none of them were Priority One calls for service but certainly um I think it kept them from being able to respond to certain uh to certain calls quicker and and may have had an effect on the priority One calls for service if we had some that might have been held because there were no officers available so we have since remedied that and um we're going to see how that has an impact on um on our on our response time so next please so this is what it looks like just so that you can see our response time measured by year so obviously when you know in 27 and and 2018 um you see that our response time while it was still um above where we should have been we actually were responding much faster um you'll start to see an increased response time as

2020 came came about and then because that was covid right so everybody was was kind of locked into one place and and um so that was the co effect uh after that though you now see the increase in response time as more people are are up and about and and moving about so so uh supplemental Patrol Staffing um our normal Patrol Staffing range from 46% to 51% um per month in 2024 um we add paid supplemental so we use um our lap salaries to pay for extra officers in order to be able to absorb that loss that we're feeling um and that's been able to increase our staffing uh throughout the the day from anywhere from 6 62% to to 68% again we've diverted a lot of the lower priority calls by using p Toc um we have part-time officers that are also

able to come in and and take um calls over our telephone Response Unit I also want to shout out the work that Hart is doing they're they helped to divert a lot of those some of those calls away that we would be responding to so um they've done a great job with that and then hopefully you know with we roll out our our civilian traffic um investigators in Spring of 2025 who will be responding to traffic crashes um non-injury traffic crashes we're certainly hoping to to be able to see a little bit more of a reduction in our actual response time because we have officers that are are able to respond to those um and and and not hold or delay any of those calls next please so um we are I'm I'm very excited we always talk about Staffing and we've made a commitment to keep you all posted

um about where we are we just graduated or we will be graduating um Academy number 60 uh they'll graduate formally March the 14th they are currently in the after Academy right now we'll graduate with nine um but I will tell you that Academy 61 that just started on Monday um we started with 23 uh in the class and so we are very very excited our staffing numbers are holding steady um we have not lost uh any more officers going to other agencies um so we're starting to to to see the effects of um of of the pay increase but also some things that we've been able to do here um within the police department I won't say that it feels better uh that's not up to me I think the the the officers will will tell you if you ask them truly how they're feeling um I would like to think

that we've done some great work here um and uh that that we're going to continue that and so we've also we've been able to retain we're getting more applications in we are processing more background checks quicker and um and that is also help helped us on board folks a lot faster we've had officers that have come back from other agencies agencies that have been paying at a much higher rate um and they come back and they say uh just basically the grass was it what they the grass wasn't as green as they thought it was going to be and they came on back so we are happy to wel welcome their them back next all right so our 30 by 30 initiative we've done some great work around you know the commitment that we made um you all uh Council you approved um um our 2024 30x30 um micro Grant um through the cops

office and that was to the tune of about $175,000 and so that will continue with the development of our uh our commitment bringing in more women into law enforcement uh and increasing uh women in law enforcement to 30% by the year 2030 um this current um class that we have we have 26% 26% of that class are women and so we are we are very excited about the work that all of our recruiting team has done not only in just the development but also um being able to bring in um um the the the best uh and the brightest and so um with that I think we have one final slide that uh is a new one is a new addition this helps us track the trend of um it shows you um how many do we start with in basic law enforcement

training and how many did we end with and so I think that's always interesting to see because as we know we might start with however many we will lose some there are some folks that just realize it's not for them and that's okay and so this current um Academy 60 you'll see is listed on here we started with 60 we will finish with nine um we do track why they leave or why they are removed from the program uh from the training program most of the time what we see is that they are topic deficient um they are not showing Improvement and uh the state has uh has strict requirements around that and we want to make sure that we are bringing in the best into our agency and so um it's going to be interesting to see what this newest class that we have coming in what that looks like for them um we will lose some but I hope uh that we don't lose a lot so we will we're going to be helping them hang in

there as much as we possibly can so this is just a new slide um that I wanted to throw in there so you can just see you know how how we start how many we start with and how many we actually um we actually lose throughout the process and that is it please follow us on all of our social media and um thank you for your time today and I will turn it back over to you mayor protim and counsel for any questions Chief thank you so much for a a great report always good to see you colleagues I'm gonna yield now to you uh for questions or comments uh council member Baker I think you threw your hand up first and then we just go right on Den ey yeah thank you uh thank you so much chief um I think you're doing a a wonderful job um have had the privilege of coming into headquarters a couple times recently and and appreciate you welcoming me uh warmly into into headquarters and answering uh questions that that I've had um just wanted to ask

one question um if there's anything that you can share uh about Trends uh related to uh firearms and their movement and where they're coming from if you have that information and and it's something that you can share I I would be interested in it of course so we can provide you that information we don't generally track them unless there is a criminal investigation that's that's ongoing um however I can provide you with some high level information um around our nin and around just just overall behavior of firearms um we what I can tell you is that that what we do know is that a single firearm will be used multiple times in several different incidents and so you know they travel um they're being kept um instead of what we've seen before is that often times folks will get rid of that that firearm after after an incident what

we're seeing is that they are actually holding on to them because when we when we start the criminal investigation and we recover casings we can can actually see where those that same firearm has been also fired in in an incident in Raleigh or Greensboro or other places um so we do know that they are taken other places to be used okay yeah thank you uh I'll follow up on that um and I appreciate you answering that thank you yes you're welcome thank you council member council member kabier I think you had thrown your hand up yeah I did thank you good afternoon Chief thank you so much for uh all of the information in the presentation really quickly when you were breaking down the percentages of both suspects and victims of shootings you uh shared the percentages around age under 25 have you all done any um analysis on like is the age I mean we've talked how it's getting younger but I would love to see over just like we have that

10year um slide around what is it what's that Arc it would be great to see you know what does that look like when we're talking about both suspects and victims under 25 um so if you have that information would love to see it and I think um mayor Williams talked a lot during a state of the city and in other you know other places around we know who is both perpetrating and and um the victim of of many of our shootings and today we had several uh or two public speakers and it's a consistent theme how do we um meet that challenge uh and um especially for our our folks under 18 right I think that those kids those are they're kids one and two they are in our schools and in other places and so that collaboration between the city schools and County uh becomes even more critical and so knowing what the data is on that would be helpful and then I think the other thing

um oh the response times when was the last time the entire time I've been on Council I think it's been the same amount and we never have met it right like even when we had higher Staffing and quote this you know the the city was smaller or whatever population was lower I I don't think we've ever consistently met that and so when do we need to have a conversation of that is that the metric um is it not the metric um and you know would love to hear your thoughts around around that yes so I I agree I will have to do some research and find out if that's a standard um manager um Ferguson may have I see his hand up oh he says no um I I will do some some investigating into that um and and get some further information but I agree with you that if that's where does that number come from it's if it's a just a number um then you know certainly I think there this is an

opportunity for us to do some work around deciding whether or not that that's actually an attainable number and I would love see it in comparison sorry about that um I would love to see that in comparison to other um cities are our size right where where's their Target because again we have I don't want us to be not hitting a Target again just because it's a random number it's not comparable to something that's actually like contextually relevant to us so and then finally with the um the gun um guns getting stolen out of car s you know we've got Smokey the Bear we've got like I hear what you're saying about um well maybe we don't have Smokey the Bear anymore but um um some of this I think is also education right so is there is there a way I remember not this year because it got cancelled but last year uh Hillside their civic students had a a kind of Expo and invited a lot of elected

leaders and other community members to come and see hear like public policy ideas by Youth and there were two main themes one was gun violence and one was kind of sustainability environmental issues you could pretty much put most of the kids projects in those two buckets and one of the kids were like what if we bought gun safe right what is the what is the what is a lowcost public policy thing is there appetite for is there a thought process where maybe we offer free gun safe for folks to put it in their car yeah you can still take the gun or but it's harder right it's just it makes it harder it it makes it a pain um just like people get dogs or other things to keep people out of their houses it becomes a barrier and so then you it's just not as easy so that's all thank you so much thank you thank you council member Mr manager did you w to interject something you're muted Mr only after uh other council members comments are complete so uh W you uh receive comments from your colleagues

I was just going to offer some closing comments at the end thank you okay sure council member cook and then council member R your hand as well council member cook I'll yeld to you um I will be very brief because actually council member cabier hit two of my exact questions um but I I am I'm I'm just generally curious about the the goal that we've set but also why we measure not against the goal that we've set so we measure in response under five minutes but that's not actually the goal that we set so I'm just curious if we also have numbers for the and I I can't remember exactly what it is but it's like five minutes and some some number of seconds okay yeah and if we have stat statistics for how if we're what percentage of our calls are under that as opposed to under the five minutes or why we have the the distinction yes yes so we'll get you some more we'll get you just an in-depth some information around that because I would I I don't know

where that number um came from but I know that as we measure it when we look at how how many priority calls that we have we're not even hitting that by 50% and that was the goal but I can get you the actual what does that look like right and is that a number that's an industry standard or it's comparable to sister cities cool and actually the other thing that I had highlighted to to say was exactly what council member cabier just said which is that we're seeing this number of um gun stolen increasing that's a that's a huge amount and also that we are averaging it looks like higher in terms of gun usage and things like aggravated assault than some of our peers um and so just I I am I'm also not in interested really in in doing any penalty around um locking guns because the other piece of that is that we we know that um that incar eration or like

other potential like criminal criminalizing there we go criminalizing um of certain things that does impact specific communities in a greater way than other communities and so I think generally speaking like that is not the answer and you also talked about another thing that it deters reporting um but I do know that there are Creative Solutions that are being brought in other places and I would love to to see us looking into those more so so um looking forward to maybe putting my head together with council member cabier and some other folks and maybe you as well if we um can think about some other methods for keeping those Firearms safe so thank you for that presentation and thanks for all the work you're doing thank you thank you council member council member wrist uh thanks M pm and thanks my colleagues for the for the really good questions and and thanks Chief Andrew for the for the very thorough and always thoughtful presentation I really appreciate that um I do appreciate what you're saying about

tracing Guns by using the sort of like the it's the stuff we saw in your forensics lab amazing work they're doing to sort of trace the uh the imprint of of the casing so great work on the part of your staff um I'm excited to see the the sort of modest uh drop in the violent crimes it's always good to see that and also the the the drop in homicides last year which is is good to see I know that in the second quarter last year there was a big big jump and uh that was a concern for a lot of us um so it's good to see that number certainly below the last couple years I guess I just had a question if you do you know offand how many homicides have occurred this year in 2025 I looked at the the weekly crime stats it was hard to get sort of like had to go through all the the the different um uh districts so do you know that offand for this year so right now we're at five um we have um we have some investigations that are outstanding right now and we we um at least two um that that are outstanding where it's a starts off as a as a death that it's suspicious to us um

and we often have to wait for the medical examiner if it's not quite clear if it's not quite clear for us so um if there's a change in that number we'll always update that great thank you so much yes you're welcome thank you council member council member Freeman any questions or comments uh yes definitely I I I wanted to make sure that I said thank you for the presentation as well and uh I did want to appreciate a couple of officers the seen um the hometown hero senior officer parks and the first place state champions from the SWAT competition just want to S congratulations to them all and then also just wanted to note from the report um I appreciate the Federal Street Corridor um focus and the specific attention that you've given in a very sensitive way to the issues that are over in that area and I just want to just overly appreciate I think the

community has has raised a lot of Praise around um the work that's been happening there and making sure that folks are feeling um the the presence in a way that's not um negative and so I I didn't want to say that and then I also wanted to um just kind of touch on the number of rapes I know the violent crime is down but the number of rapes um the percentage seems to be up and I just wanted to differenti apprciate whether that's just delayed reporting or if it's like current and um I also noticed a slight increase in the and the clearance rates for rape as well and so I didn't know if that's something new that some new something new that's happening or if there anything that we can be doing to support um that work oh thank you that's actually a great question so um yes so the majority of um our reported offenses so 22% of those were actually reported from previous years um and um we we were and that that makes

it a little harder obviously because it's belated we still want the reporting the work that staff are doing around you know with the saki Grant um they are continuing we our Cold Case unit is continuing um those those investigations Cameron Park investigator Park who you referenced um she is a part of that team the work that that entire team is doing um we have we have they have worked very very hard with really focusing on those belated cases as well um and really making sure that we are we are talking with other agencies as well as as looking to see if there's any codus hits that that come back and actually looking at the evidence again that we do have so all of that has come forward and they've done an outstanding job and so that stocki Grant will continue or is it going away so well actually that the saki Grant um has dis will be discontinuing um but we have maintained

the um the positions within that Grant okay we've maintained the work because it's been very very important work okay thank you and I I just wanted to make sure that I I did State it's better to um it's better to to kind of make sure that folks understand if you're reporting those rapes um belatedly it makes it harder to prosecute or to um investigate and so just making sure that those out there who have been the victim um do come up do come forward quicker than um come come forward sooner rather than later is what I want to say thank you yes and and I do want to say you know our victims Advocates here are um are tremendous um and so you know we want to make sure that when we do have sexual assaults that are reported um our victim's Advocates waste no time in in really uplifting them and supporting um all of our victims through that very

difficult process so I think that that also has helped too um with getting as much information as we possibly can and making those connections so thank you and then lastly I'll just say I'm looking forward to having those uh traffic investigators online and so please keep me posted on when that will get started we will we will thank you thank you council member Mr your hand we back up I'll go ahead and take care of my comments now I didn't want to get get in front of other council members this was just to I wanted to call back to uh the chief's presentation uh she mentioned briefly some of our success in recruiting uh I know that uh the thing that most of the community pays attention to and that the council pays attention to is the increased salaries and I think that has certainly been an important factor I did want to commend the chief and her staff uh they had an aggressive internal effort to do process Improvement to ensure she mentioned

briefly uh clear that that they uh accelerated a number of efforts on background checks they also have kind of looked at each part of the recruitment process to see where there might be roadblocks so I just wanted to uh call out the council that uh in response or in partnership with the efforts you made to increase compensation uh the department had a very aggressive effort to uh to address their recruitment Pipeline and I'm glad to see these initial results with this first Academy but I wanted to praise the chief and her leadership in that effort thank you mayor Pon absolutely thank you uh council members I see your hand that commercial with Loki was just bananas yeah that that was brilliant I don't know who came up with that but you had me wanting to join uh council member cavier and then council member cook thank you um this was just something that was only my hand sorry um we know that funding or at least my understanding is funding from the state around victim Services has been cut over

the years um and so since we were talking about the saki Grant and uh rape and sexual Assa assault numbers I think it would be helpful um to know as council members that you know if we start to see detriment like folks not reporting or things not being able to be followed up on because of that lack of funding and I think that that my guess is the my understanding is it's federal dollars that act as pass through dollars to the state and so I think that the federal ecosystem may change drastically around that kind of service and dollars and so we don't want um that to impact the local ecosystem and so it'll be really critical for us as council members to hear and see what trends are happening and what y'all are seeing so that um we can pull the local resources as necessary to close that Gap that's all again thank you so much much for the presentation thank you council member council member cook just one quick followup Chief Andrews and you said that the 42% of the rapes that were reported

from previous years can you tell us on average the number of years prior or what what is like the range we're we're seeing you know I don't know that the 22% but I can get you that that's an easy I can get you that in for we can have that for you okay I'm I'm just curious if most of them are like the year prior or if we're seeing like ones spanning long long periods of time we we have seen some that have gone back you know as far as you know when someone is in uh they're reporting as an adult but their assault um occurred when they were a child that's what I was wondering about we have seen it as far back as as that um but I can get you just a a range of what we're seeing thanks you're welcome thank you colleagues it's to to note that even if it was reported um as an adult and they were a child it is investigated I I think people will think that you won't but it is it's clearly important to say like we do investigate

every reported case thank you colleagues for your excellent comments and and questions Chief uh very quickly just to put a button on first off the mayor wanted me to extend regards to you and thanks to all of the men and women under your command for the incredible job uh you continue to do um here in Durham I did want to associate myself with my my colleagues comments on all of their commendations and uh appreciate the the recent tours we've done um uh particularly with our property and evidence department and our our um forensics a division as well they want to make a couple of comments with respect to some of the things that were raised here and and um moving forward as well firstly very heartened that there's been kind of a plateauing of of blood loss if you will or or or bleeding off and I'm glad to hear about our our officers who are returning realizing that the grass wasn't necessarily Greener we knew that when we did the pay raise it wasn't going to be instantaneous or overnight that we

needed some lead time uh to see the effects of it and I think those effects are are starting to show so very happy about that I I'm I'm really excited about the the the interest and fascination with our leveraging of Technology uh the KN and system the laser which we need to get a new laser know laser 3D Recreation of rooms and that technological Continuum one of the reasons why uh the mayor and I have and I did not put shot spotter in my budget this year and the mayor removed it from his but one of the reasons why we've been Advocates of it is because we've seen that Continuum of technology and we talked about the being impressed with nin and being able to match bullets one of our highest profile arrest in this city was because of bullets we picked up from responding to a shot spotter call that's where we got the bullet made the connection so in terms of it bolstering our investigatory I I think a disservice was done in much of the debate saying it was a tool meant to bring down crime not

not so by itself it was meant also to bolster investigatory ability and response time speaking of response time as we um struggled response time the Duke report made it clear that response times to shot spotter calls were lower much lower than our response times to Citizen generated 911 calls so that's a direct kind of uh uh impact on one of the metrics we use one of the golden standards actually of response time the sooner you get somewhere the sooner you can help somebody the sooner you can recover evidence so if you know let's be impressed with technology but technology exists on a Continuum and all of these pieces work together um I do also you know I'm I'm I'm glad about uh the decriminalization or or the the push against decriminalizing when guns are stolen um but to put it in a larger context though it's it's fascinating you you can be held responsible if your dog gets out of the yard and bites somebody now you can be sued or if if if your

kids steal your gun and go take them to school we're looking now at at um penalizing parents for kids taking guns uh out of their homes um as I said dogs prop there's all kind of things we help people responsible for we want to criminalize the the gun industry I think there's there's been a push towards that like we did with big tobacco kind of make them responsible for their products and there's a big push back of course because there a second amendment uh in our country against against doing that but I just don't want to know where the guns came from and speaking of that if we're going to decriminalize those who have had their guns stolen but it's no mystery where a lot of the guns are coming from we just said it a lot of them being stolen uh um and if we if we're going to chase the CH trace the chain of custody or manufa facturing uh of guns then for goodness sake let's not stop there I just don't want to know where the gun came from I want to know when the gun goes off as well uh for me it's just an intellectual exercise if we're just tracking guns that are legal that this is a this is a

they're more guns in America Than People this is a gun culture in our country we know that owning guns is legal uh in our country so I just don't want to know where they come from I want to know when they go off as well but I did want to point out that that if you're impressed with being able to match bullets that remember one of our most high-profile arrests was because we got a bullet from a shot spotter response and if you're concerned about response time our response times were lower on those call and Duke demonstrated that uh for us uh in their report so um I do want to thank you for that that that visit um for us and for allowing us to to touch things and to see things and see some of the stuff that the general public generally doesn't get to see and our public should be very uh very proud of the work that our police department does I didn't want to say finally also moving forward um about the culture of the department and chief we've been blessed and you you've continued that Continuum uh of chiefs that have understood durm values and have contoured policing to our values um

a drop in citizen generated complaints against our Police use of force incidences incidents drops uh uh with our Police Department um but there's been much concern raised about what's going on at the federal level we know that that the Civil Rights division of the justice department is under assault this is the division that helped us get a Justice after George Floyd and Briana Taylor um the division that would have fortunately not dpd but other police departments around our country with consent degrees um so we don't know who's going to do that anymore so it it it it's now more so than ever in coming upon us to make sure that those who protect us and walk with us govern themselves according to our values and I say that to say how grateful I am to you uh for the culture you've continued uh to cultivate and just because the federal government may be shutting down the watchdog or those that are Vigilant against police abuses doesn't mean that that's going to happen here in Durham doesn't mean that our Police Department

is going to go buck wild they're going to continue to uphold the values uh that have been uh ingrained and we continue to push in our culture so I just wanted to encourage you in that and and and thank you I know it's going to be some interesting times uh navigating the waters ahead uh but we're very grateful uh for the Department that we have here in Germany and on behalf of the mayor uh regards to the men and women under your command and and thank you so much uh for what you do thank you good to see you and thank you for the report colleagues thank you uh so much for your excellent questions and comments I'm gonna um in in the interest of thematic content I'm I'm G to go ahead and just group uh move on to item number 22 which is the police satisfaction survey results uh presentation by Etc Institute uh will'll do that and then uh maybe at the top of the hour uh three or three or so we'll take five minutes uh uh for a break and then come back for our budget and Management Services Department um second quarter financial report so at this time I'm going to yield uh for uh the ETC

Institute uh presentation and again thank you Chief hey thanks good afternoon everyone good good to see everyone again um my name is Jason marado the director of community research at Etc Institute and we just finished conducting the Durham Police satisfaction survey so today I'm going to walk through the key findings from the survey let me FL my screen here hey Hope can see us okay um there just a little background about Etc Institute sure you remember this from uh uh recent presentations um but Etc Institute is a national leader in providing market research for local governments uh we've been doing this

type of work for over 40 years and in the last 10 years alone we've conducted surveys in more than a thousand communities across the country so this is really the type of work that we specialize in and we do work all over the country but we especially do a lot of work throughout the state of North Carolina um in particular a lot in the Raleigh Durham area this is just an overview of what I'll go through today I'll go over the purpose and methodology of the survey I'll walk through the key findings summar summarize our main takeaways and I'll be happy to answer any questions as well so there are several reasons to conduct a survey like this one is to get an objective assessment of how satisfied residents are with police services and to determine what residents feel are the top priorities for the Duram police department and to measure Trends from previous surveys so this survey is five pages in length um this is the seventh police

4% from what we're reporting so the results are never perfect even for a statistically valid survey but the margin of error is small so here we have a map of the city the red dots are households that completed a survey so we a we had a good distribution throughout the city and as you were administering the survey we

made sure that the demographics of survey respondents reflect the actual population of the city so you can see we had about a 50/50 split of male versus female respondents this shows the race and ethnicity of survey respondents and this matches up very closely with the actual population of Durham and then this shows the household income of survey respondents um S I said there's a question hey Jason just real quick just on the on the survey response I'm just I mean completed surveys is actually is a good number and I've done a little bit of survey research in my past like how do like what's your resp response rate how do you get you know how do you get that kind of response and how long does it take you uh yeah so the typical response rate for one of these surveys is around 12 to 15% so we mail surveys to about seven times the number of households as completed surveys that we need um so

since our goal was 500 surveys we mailed a survey to about 3500 households and that mailed survey um in the packet it included a a return play envelope for those who want to fill out the print survey and mail it back to us there's also a link to the online version of the survey that was printed onto the survey and then the envelope had a QR code pH those who want to take the survey on their phone using that um so I think that is helps us to get a better response right is to give people different options of how they can fill out the survey uh they can mail it back take it online using the link or access the online surver to the QR code um and then if follow up with s respondents sorry go ahead do you provide any sort of like modest sort of like you know gift card or any kind of modest payment or or is it or not we do sometimes um offer a 500 uh if respondents want they can enter drawing to win a $500 gift card um we don't do

that in every survey but we do that some of the time um I know we did it for your resident satisfaction survey I don't remember if we did it for this one early though but that's something we use at times um seems to help the response rate a little bit Yeah know I know getting people to respond to surveys is difficult so I'm I'm impressed it's it's you know getting 500 responses is a is a I'm sure it's heavy lift so appreciate that yeah yeah absolutely um and I think you also asked how long it takes it does typically take about a month or so you know it varies depending on the length of the survey but it it does take a few weeks typically to to reach our targeted number of completed surveys so thank you um so here's what we learned from the survey we found that overall the satisfaction ratings are similar to last year's survey in 2023 and overall the satisfaction ratings are a little higher from the survey back in 2021 we found that most survey

respondents respect trust and have confidence and during Police Department police officers and the top overall priorities police services are efforts to prevent crime visibility of police in neighborhoods and how quickly police respond to emergencies and these priorities are the same as we've seen in the last couple of surveys so first we'll look at satisfaction with police services this was the first question on the survey and here we asked respondents how satisfied they are with various categories of police services you can see the dark blue are those who are very satisfied light blue is satisfied gray is neutral so we interpret neutral as average or meeting expectations it's a rating of a three on a fiveo scale so it's not a bad rating and then the pink and red are those who are dissatisfied are very dissatisfied so overall the positive RS far away the negative you can see the highest rated areas are the overall

appearance and quality of police vehicles and Equipment professionalism of police officers and the attitude and behavior of Officer uh towards citizens in your neighborhood now this chart shows the comparisons for this question for the last three surveys so the dark blue are the results for this year's survey the light blue are the results for 2023 and then the gray bar are the satisfaction ratings for the 2021 survey so overall satisfaction ratings have increased in six out of 11 areas since last survey uh the survey 2023 so overall the level of satisfaction similar to a year ago but satisfaction ratings have increased in all 11 areas since 2021 if you look through a few of these this third row down um there was a bit of a little bit of a decrease in the attitude and behavior of officers towards citizens in your neighborhood this year but it's still much much higher than it was in 2021 um there's a

big leap from 21 to 23 if you look at this fifth rad down how quickly police respond to emergencies that's one of the top priorities for residents and you can see the satisfaction has continued to increase each of the past couple of surveys um satisfactions also increased each of the past couple of surveys when it comes to ease of Loca information on the Police website if we go down third row from the bottom visibility of police in neighborhoods that's also a high priority the satisfaction RS about the same in 21 and 23 but this year that's one of the areas that one of the bigger increases in satisfaction then if you look at this bottom row efforts to prevent crime that's the lowest rate area you can see it has improved each of the past couple of surveys um this year the satisfaction is at 34% three years ago it was at 25% so I mentioned that we found that

most respondents respect trust and have confidence in police officers here we asked overall how much respect do you have for Durham Police Department police officers again the darkest blue the results for this year's survey light blue in 23 the gray in 21 you can see consistently about two-thirds of respondents say they have a great deal of respect for Duram police officers really these numbers have been pretty consistent in all of these categories past few surveys we asked respondents overall how much do you trust dur Police Department police officers we had a big jump from 21 to 23 and percent who strongly trust dur in police officers that went from 32 up to 41% uh from 21 to 23 and this year the results are down 2% but really very similar to the last survey we saw a s similar pattern with um how much confidence respondents

having during police officers there was a big increase from 21 to 23 and those who felt very confident and this year the results are are similar to last year's survey so we also took a look at there were several questions related to race relations here we asked in general do you think uh Durham Police Department police officers thought people of certain racial or ethnic groups because they believe these groups are more likely than other groups to commit certain types of crimes so you can see we had kind of a mix of responses 28% said yes they do feel police officers stop people of certain racial ethnic groups um because they're more likely to commit crimes 32% said no 40% said not sure when we break these results out by rais ethnicity uh 43% of black respondents said yes compared to 26% for Hispanic respondents and 177% for white respondents

uh yes you have a question yeah how can how does that compare to other communities like Durham I'm just kind of curious that level of sort of if you go back to the last slide yeah this one here yeah yeah you know we don't conduct nearly as many police surveys as we do Resident satisfaction survey so we just don't have a lot of benchmarking data on this um this survey really is very C customized for Durham so yeah I just don't have a lot of lot of information from other communities on this question how's that changed over time in Durham oh over time um these these results are similar to what they were last time in 23 I have to go back to look at what it was in previous years um but I know at least going back to last year this breakout was similar in fact I could probably look it up here you may not have it in front of you but I'd be interested like demographic breakdown of these respondents it would be interesting to see

that yeah yeah yeah we can definitely we can definitely look that up we do have all that historical data that'd be great thank you so much um yeah I I did just find it so last time so last time on black respondents 40% said yes Hispanic respondents was 27% and white was also 177% so very very similar this year to last year the Breakout by race and ethnicity I curious about like age do you have age as well we can we can yeah we can certainly get that we just need to run a cross tab to break the results out by age so yeah that's certainly something we could do love yeah really for any of these questions we can break the result out by any of the demographic questions like age um we already did it for race and ethnicity household income you know gender anything like that great thank you I look forward to that sure so this this chart shows how the

results have changed overall for all respondents over the past couple of surveys um you can see from 21 to 23 there was a big decrease in those who said yes they feel that police officers stop people of certain racial ethnic groups um so that so that's a good thing in 20 2021 38% of respondents said yes they think police officers stop people of certain racial or ethnic groups um goes down to 25% last year and this year it's a 28% so very similar this year to last year's survey and then as a followup we asked what is the reason for your view um 55% said media reports that's the top uh influencer people's opinions uh then 40% said Word of Mouth 40% said personal experience here we ask respondents has there ever been a specific instance when you felt discriminated against by Durham

Police Department police officers because of your race or ethnic background you can see 11% said yes uh 83% said no just 6% said not sure and then we also broke this these results out by rais in ethnicity um the results are pretty similar among Black and Hispanic respondents 19% yes for black respondents 177% Hispanic only 4% of white respondents said yes then we ask do you think it's important for the makeup of the Durham Police Department to reflect the community in terms of race and ethnicity you see 74% of respondents said yes that is important compared just to 15% who said no then we also broke this out by race and ethnicity and again the results are pretty similar among Black and Hispanic respons uh 83% of black respondents said yes it is important for the police department to reflect the community in terms of race and ethnicity was 80% yet for yes

for Hispanic respondents for white respondents it was 68% so a little bit lower but still a significant majority think this is important and then we ask do you think that Durham Police Department does currently reflect the community in terms of race and ethnicity um for the majority respondents say they don't know it's 60% um but then for those who did have an opinion 24% said yes 16% said no and the results were very similar among all ger race and ethnicity groups 23% black respond is 26% Hispanic 27% white so now we'll look at top priorities we saw earlier how satisfied residents are with major categories Police Services as a follow-up question we ask which of these Services should receive the most emphasis from city leaders over the next two years you can see by a pretty wide margin the top

three priorities are efforts to prevent crime how quickly police respond to emergencies and the visibility of police and neighborhoods uh fourth highest priority is efforts to cooperate with the public to address those concerns uh address their concerns and these are also the top four priorities in the last couple of surveys and then when we broke this result out by race adicity efforts to prevent crime was the number one priority among black Hispanic and white respondents so this is the important satisfaction rating you might remember this type of analysis from our resident satisfaction survey this is based on two different types of data first we ask residents how satisfi the our services then we ask which Services should receive the most emphasis from city leaders so which are the most important and the idea behind this is that the services that have a combination of low satisfaction ratings but at the same time are the most important should be the top priorities to focus on so the

top three priorities are efforts to prevent crime visibility of police in neighborhoods how quickly police respond to emergencies um the next highest priorities were efforts to cooperate with the public to address their concerns police safety education and Outreach programs and the visibility of police in commercial areas so we've got a few other findings to look at uh here we asked respondents what are your greatest areas of concern and we gave respondents this list of different items we asked them which three are their top priorities or which are the most top concerns top concern gun violence um followed by murder and drug related crime uh but gun violence by pretty wide margin was the the top priority we asked do you think that Durham has enough police officers only 7% of respondents said yes compared to 64% who said no then you can see 29% of

respondents said they don't know then we asked how much respondents agree with different statements regarding the police department so the dark blue means they strongly agree light blue is agree gray is kind of neutral in the middle then the pink and red means they disagree or strongly disagree so if you look at the top of this chart you can see the majority of respondents do feel that the dur Police Department is trying hard to maintain good relations with the community so that's everything that I had just a quick recap we saw that overall the satisfaction ratings are similar to the 2023 survey and they are higher overall than the results of 2021 you saw that most survey respondents respect trust and have confidence in during Police Department to police officers and the top overall priorities are efforts to prevent crime visibility

of police in neighborhoods and how quickly police respond to emergencies so with that if anyone has any questions uh be happy to answer them Jason thank you so much man good to see you again and appreciate the report colleagues you heard the report uh I'll yield uh questions or comments or observations counis were you unmuting to yeah no uh but no questions now I raised M earlier thank you okay mavo did you uh no just thank you so much for the presentation yeah thanks Jason all right Jason thank you so much I heard you allude to that that it's usually customer um citizen surveys as opposed to this these ones specifically focused on police so I'm I'm I'm glad that Durham does this you know the most dramatic um impactful representation of

government pow is is perhaps when police show up all of the acutum on the lights the badge the gun it's a very dramatic presentation of of government uh Power so I I think it's really important for us to know where our people are um I think this you know I think this survey really kind of uh puts a firm exclamation point um against anyone who wants to have a discussion of either or in our city um this false dichotomy you know folk who who who think we need heart not police or police and not heart um we clearly need both um and and our residents clearly uh want both they want a certain type of policing um and they want us to have the tools to respond to all types of of of issues but not surprising that visibility we talk about doing community policing in our neighbors and and response time getting there quicker um really really I think I'm glad you asked the question where did they get their view uh and from the media because there's a narrative about police sing

kind of this National composite of policing and then there's what we're local people what happens actually on the local level with our Police Department so I'm did I I am glad that you did ask question it's kind of a can to when I asked how many folk that responded about transportation actually ride the bus um you know where did you get your view uh about Transportation so I'm glad you included uh that question um and thanks for the work and hopefully it we'll be able to integrate it into our future decision making um but I appreciate it c m is that your hand uh back up did you want to jump back in sure please thank you just really quickly I wanted to say um thank you it wasn't really survey related but I think part of the reason that we are we have the relationship we have is because of decisions made over many years of how we are going to do policing I think we wouldn't see the positive um I guess positive perception and I think perception has improved which is what the survey carries out and I think it's because we have made hard choices

uh nuanced choices uh that other communities haven't made um I think that that was the right call I think that it will always be attention in that who wants what that's what it means to to govern and so I'm glad that we are seeing the fruits of our labor essentially we're seeing the fruits of our labor of decisions made um and you can see the Improvement and also just from the chief on down um there is a culture that is expected in our police department and the decision makers around budgets and other things hold that high standard and I am very grateful but that standard still has to be held and still has to be championed and so I think that's why we see what we see thank you absolutely fully associate myself with your comments absolutely these organizations don't change themselves uh and and it has been a long list of of activists and and folk who who have who have caused this which is precisely why I push back against when we want to pretend that the work did not happen when we group our our police or or or or

put our police under the The Heading of policing nationally when we want to govern in ways that do not take into account the work that these activists did and the changes that have occurred so thank you so much for that absolutely um these organizations are resistant to change often and we've seen that um and I'm grateful for for those who agitated uh in Durham uh and got us to where we are now and and amen to we need to remain Vigilant and continue to to make the call uh which is why I said to the chief in the absence of the Civil Rights division of the justice department we need to continue to affirm our values and who we are here in dur thank you so much council member colleagues anyone else all right Jason thank you so much man I appreciate you good to see you guess we'll see you next year that is not absolutely see you next yep absolutely see you next commitment that's not a contractual commitment that was what I'm just saying I guess I'll see you there we get coffee personally I don't know good to see you

man hope hopefully see you next year I guess yeah yeah all right thanks everyone thank you colleagues is 314 we'll take a bio coffee tea break let you focus your eyes on something else besides your screen we'll take a quick break we'll come back at 3:20 thank you staff

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all right colleagues it's 3:20 I'll call us back to order hope you all enjoyed your very brief break thank you for your your perseverance and for your engagement we're going to uh move right along budget and Management Services Department uh we'll go now to item 21 which is a report uh on our FY 2024 20 2024 2025 second quarter financial report um good afternoon I'm mayor proen um and members of council it's Christina Reen um with budget and Management Services um I'm trying to get my video to work um but let me share my screen so hopefully you can all see my screen um got it okay and um I am here today to present you the um second

quarter financial report um some of this will be a bit of a repeat um from um sorry some of this will be a bit of a repeat from um our budget Retreat that we held last year but um I wanted to provide this um second quarter report which is getting us halfway through the fiscal year um this is a report that we bring with bring to you four times a year obviously with our in finance so to start out the report um I will start out with our general fund so looking at our um general fund which is the uh place where most of our departments sit um we expect this year um for all of our departments to end the year in budget and for some of them to be under budget um these are a listing of some of our departments and where we think they're going to end the year at the um fourth quarter um most departments um will be at budget we have a few departments that um have some uh Personnel savings and some operating

4 million better than our budget um and that large amount of money that you see in our non-departmental um line item is really the savings um that we are realizing from our pay plan so some of that is um captured in our non-departmental so breaking it out by expenditure types um if you look at our um Personnel Services this is the place where we um expect to um be uh the best um as far as um our variance to budget at 6. 3 million um uh under where we

6 million um also utility franchise um is another Revenue source that we have seen some decline in and um expect to be under budget by about $650,000 um Powell bill um which is our

6

6 million under where we um had budgeted for the year uh sales tax is a large driver of that um and then uh utility Franchise Tax with um other budget sources such as charges for services and occupany tax property tax coming in at

budget and then our pow bill um coming in over budget um we saw this chart um last week at this at the um at the budget Retreat as you'll notice um you know the we are ahead in revenue from where we were at this time last year um part of that that's being driven is the uh property tax which um obviously we have a larger budget for property tax this year so we we would be um from uh the perspective of amount of property tax we should be receiving more property tax at this year percentage wise we're about the same Christina I'm sorry real quick did are you saying the pow bill that's the amount we're projecting being over budget $845 million 845,000 oh okay sorry yes should be instead of an M oh it says yeah I was like thank you for catching that no we are not that it no it should be thousands um not we budget about

eight million we're gonna get about we got about nine million so okay thank youor my apologies for that that's uh and then um you know the other the other Revenue sources are doing well um compared to last year um many of them are slightly above um I will caution that you know in this in um and so um I think that that is uh you know we feel like these major Revenue sources um as I talked about before except for um uh sales tax um are going to be uh going to be close to budget except for power bill as well okay moving on to Enterprise funds um the first Enterprise fund I wanted to talk about was Water and Sewer um we are currently projected to come in um revenues are currently projected to come in over budget by about 400 um, and um Personnel expenditures are

8 million and so this kind of gives you a sense of the um this is just a slide showing the revenues and where we predict them to come at the end fiscal year and then as I talked about this is the um personnel and operating expenditures expected to come in over budget by the end of the fiscal

75 cents um on the tax rate and um you know we will be hearing more from them at our next budget Retreat on next Friday so this um is a snapshot of the revenues and how we expect them to end the fiscal year and then um of course uh this is the expenditures with um them coming in slightly over in Personnel expenditures and um under in some of the operating expenses so moving on to our Solid Waste fund um this fund uh is experiencing um

they are expecting that their revenues will come in under budget and their um expenditures will come in over budget so their operating revenues um I think that they have um in talking with the Department they've had some competition in some of their um uh mixed Solid Waste uh fees and so um they are projecting that that um Revenue Source will be under what they had budgeted for the Year by about 2. 5 million um and so uh that has to do with

um uh some of their contracts in Nix Solid Waste and Recycling so there's a positive budget variance of about $354,000 uh and this is uh this is kind of showing you those Revenue sources and where we think they're going to end the year and then I talked a little bit about their expenditures as well too moving on to storm water um our storm water fund um is going to be um ending the year very close to where we budgeted them for operating Vues are projected to come in um $10,000 over budget um and uh Personnel um services are projected to come in under budget by about $368,000 their operating expenditures are um projected to come in um slightly over budget at about $34,000 um and that leaves them with a positive budget variance of

$347,000 so this fund is very close to where we had budgeted them um so you can see here the budget variance for operating revenues is um pretty pretty close to budget um slightly over to about 10,000 and then here you can see their expenditures okay moving on to parking um which is our our last fund that um we're going to talk about um the parking fund is projected to be um $85,000 um under budget with their revenues and expenditures are also expected to be under budget at $171,000 um as a reminder uh there is some subsidies that this fund receives um from our debt service fund to cover um a portion of the existing debt and then um overall uh it's projected to be 5 and sorry $53,000 um a negative budget variance um which is a small budget variance but a

um it is um as we have talked about in the past a fund that has struggled um and we will be receiving a uh presentation from them also as well at our next budget Retreat so here is a look at the revenues um and uh what we talked about they are expecting some of their operating revenues to come in slightly underw um under the budget and then um there will be um some Savings in um in operating um and slightly over in personnel uh just um some of the other major funds that are in the exhibits that you received in your packet um that we just wanted to give you kind of a high level um overview of uh our Ballpark and dpack fund are um doing very well and expected to kind of really meet um budget for this year um so there's not much news there um our inspection fund which we talked a little bit about um in the retreat last week their revenues are expected to come in under budget um by

about 2 8,000 which um would leave the fund with a negative budget variance and so um that um and that is something that the department is looking at and we will keep an eye on um and that is all I have for today and so I'll take any questions that that folks might have Christina thank you for for very concise and on point report appreciate you colleagues uh you've heard the report I'll yield now for questions or comments or observations I just want to say that um this is probably not a good idea to have these meetings at home my daughter is making cinnamon rolls and I was a little distracted you bring enough for the whole class ah sure did too bad you're not here I can eat them for you no but I did want to say thank you Christina I appreciate the presentation I think it's an a continuation of the conversation we had at the budget

Retreat and uh we'll just keep looking to see what the numbers will be thank you council member council member R thank you may PM thanks Christina for the presentation um it's good to see the a little more detail than we I know we had limited time at the treats get to see the full picture of quarter two I just had two questions one was on that the first couple slides you talked about there were some savings on the Personnel side but also some like operating savings can you explain that was like about $2 million in savings right can you explain that a little more detail I wasn't quite sure I understood that yeah so there's um there's a few operating savings I think um you know uh uh which uh you were looking at the overall fund for the general fund so it B breaks down in between departments I think the big place that we're seeing some operating savings is um our office of Economic and Workforce Development has some savings for some incentives that they probably will not um be um kind of be realizing by the end of the year and so that's some some savings that

we're seeing um and so that's probably the main place that we're seeing savings and then there's some smaller savings throughout departments that okay I thought you said something about like also some savings with with the pay plan or something about pay plan oh well so so a lot of the say I all I said I guess what I said was um you see um where we are variance to budget there's a um you'll see a $5 million variance in the non-departmental so the way that we budget um our pay plan we did not um departments uh it did not get distributed throughout departments we kind of put it in our non-departmental and then we were kind of going to distribute it as departments need to use it so um we're seeing savings and the savings are throughout the departments in vacancies so that may be kind of a a a a complicated way to describe it but that's the way it'll show up in the financials I got so essentially vacancies with that big number vac it's there's no there's no vacancies in the non-departmental but the mass majority of those Savings in the non-departmental are vacancies um because that's where we budget of the pay plan so the vacancies

are in the Departments themselves I think I understand that but you said you said the vacancies are in the Departments but the number was in the non-departmental yes because we budgeted so we we um we budget the pay plan it in in the non-departmental but obviously there is no personnel there got we we are we kind of um than you know making everybody whole in other words in the Departments gotcha gotcha and then my last question was on the water sewer there was a there was a larger deficit there how do you like how do you um how do you account for that then is that are there separate sort of surpluses in that fund that we can draw on or is that does that come out of the the overall budget yeah so the water and sewer is a um you know it's it's an Enterprise fund so it it will contain its own fund balance um you know uh I know we we talked a little bit about the

general fund and its fund balance but the water and sewer fund if they if there is overages um that they were not planning for that would probably be the way it would be paid for this year so they they have sufficient fund balance to cover that is what you're saying they do they do okay thank you that's my questions thank you thank you thank you council member council member cabier please thank you thank you for the um presentation Christina um the only question I have is around the parking fund glad to see that it's slowly performing better I would just love to see um anything that you have year over year because I know a couple years it was struggling even more uh and so we just love to to see that that's all okay sure thank you thank you council member colleagues anyone else for director all Christina thank you so much always good to hear the numbers that's it's important critical to what we do so I appreciate it and please thank your team as well for the hard work I know it's a busy time for you we appreciate you thank you

absolutely all right then colleagues I think we've exhausted all of our uh presentations and and uh published matters we come now to the U City Council budget request conversation item number uh 24 I do want to note the absence of of the mayor and council member cook um you know this is a one of those conversations where you know I believe very much in Quorum and conducting business but every once in a while those topics come along where you really want everybody there if you have them uh but we will note our colleagues absence and and we'll do our due diligence to make sure that their their views and concerns are are looped in and and reflected uh in subsequent conversations from today I do want to make sure that we honor um their input um so with that said um uh Mr manager is is there a uh a staff member that was going to facilitate this or or we just supposed to talk Talk Amongst our Sal uh we we had not planned any form Al uh process is primarily a Talk Amongst yourselves obviously the budget uh director is

still with us as Mi I to uh provide any context you may be looking for but primarily we took the directive from Council as just wanting a little more time than we had last Friday to ask each other questions uh I'll take this opportunity to remind everybody that your ranking exercis is due by close a close a business tomorrow to make sure we get all your uh priorities back and primarily we are here as a resource for you today sure I appreciate that colleagues um you you've got the ranking exercises in your in your possession um I I certainly had some views that I think I expressed at our last meeting and and my only input today will probably be just some form of reiteration of that but if any of you have any questions for each other or or want to opine a little bit on what we talked about at the last meeting and any specific things about any of us that we've anything that we may have uh proposed I'm going to also recommend that we have another discussion well clearly after the ranking we're going to have to discuss the ranking so a discussion after if if at least one

other one it probably will uh require more but but don't want to feel any anxiety that this is it today um so with that said I I'll I'll yield to any of you council member Baker please thank you yes thank you um it's a a great list of of items um I think uh manager Ferguson said it well in in our budget Retreat that implementing all of these things would be would be good for Durham um so obviously the the process of prioritizing is is a tough one um for the most part I am I I I feel pretty comfortable that I understand um the requests there are a couple that I'm going to reach specifically out to colleagues probably this afternoon if not if not tomorrow morning so I feel comfortable doing that one of them is for the mayor so obviously he's not here um so I'd like to toh chat with him I did have one there was one question that I had um about an item that we have not

placed in here uh among the other items but which uh has been a regular item at least over the past couple years and I'm not sure if we just forgot to put it on uh the the list of requests or if it this is something that we just already uh built in um but eviction diversion and my understanding is that there was going to be a change in process to an RFP process um but that that was going to be uh that we were expecting to to allocate that uh so I wanted to throw that out there if uh manager Ferguson or any of my fellow council members had any other information about that that would be appreciated uh there is going to be an RFP uh I'm sorry May for tell I didn't mean to respond no please go ahead no not at all there is an RFP process uh I'm uh like the mayor Pam I have a number of screens in front of me I did get an update from the staff about uh

when that would be moving forward but so I don't waste your time as a hunter around today uh let me let me get that to you uh after we conclude this evening um but I the the staff is moving forward with an eviction diversion RFP was that the gist of your question yeah I just wanted to make sure it was still it was still in there because we hadn't included it um and uh so I'll just I'll I'll await your information um just wanted to make sure that you know it was an amount that that everyone was was happy with and comfortable with my uh high level and and I would might need to double check with uh DCM Chadwell Andor the budget manager Christina bton my presumption would be that we're reissuing that RFP at the same funding level that is currently approved I do not think staff uh staff on on its own without direction from Council would be changing the amount of funding with that uh if DCM Chadwell or director Orton know anything

contrary to that I'll ask them to come on and share that feedback U if I may Mr manager Mr Baker um I I I think the intent is to not go beneath current Investments and of course of course there have been uh very robust deliberations associated with additional deliberations Beyond which we have uh been considered all of which from a historical perspective would have had to come from uh the dedicated funding source you know which which would have meant programmatic adjustments and the like in the space of that and on top of uh advice from Council that a a a competitive process was needed uh we're not going to put forth a definitive amount at this time with the expectation that a a a competitive process May yield uh a process for managing this circumstance as we have traditionally understood it and perhaps some Alternatives we want to

be faithful to uh the process that would yield what the pricing might be around that and make some decisions at that time but I don't anticipate an investment beneath uh what we what we've historically done I hope that didn't confuse but uh we're trying to have some some manner of fidelity that um you know circumstances associated with the metrics of success how that's defined the approaches to get there without being presumptuous about which way is correct or or wrong um would drive the process and and so we'll proceed starting with an essential investment that where where we are now and see what the competitive process yields in terms of an approach and can you say that amount is I'm sorry it's I had questions around it too it's aox my recollection and don't cash this one at the bank just yet but my my recollection is that's somewhere around 600 to

$650,000 yeah mayor proam yes ma'am absolutely please so just really quick um I had planned on putting this forward in a budget request but then I heard that it was an RFP process this year and so wasn't sure how to proceed based on that information the current funding and it's because there has been additional federal dollars is for a million dollars the base budget in our city budget is 650,000 I'd raise this with um manager Ferguson and he said if we want an additional even if it's an RFP process an additional amount we need to share that amount um I would also like to add that I understand there's an RFP process that's fine but I would like a component of that RFP to include Legal Services um and so that that is my and I'm just saying that here and this is one of the things I'm glad we're having this conversation because this is a an odd item the process is changing um H how we do it next year may look different but I I just wanted to name that at least for this council member I don't want to put

forward a RFP um that doesn't the recourse in court has been um one component like there's many ways to do this but I don't want us to strip our ability to have that in the RFP so I just wanted to name that and then I had a couple of questions about the conversation today but I'll I I want to let my colleagues speak around what I just shared I want um comments as well and just know that the legal services side of it is what keeps people's in people in their homes and so I do want to make sure that it's that amount could be increased uh what that number is uh is closer to a million rather than 650 um thank thank you colleagues yeah I I um if I if I recall part of part of the discussion around this was we we we

keeping Fidelity to eviction diversion RIT large whatever that looks like in other words if if there was an onramp for us to stem eviction even before it got to court are there players out there are there entities out there that have had success in in doing eviction diversion whatever it looks like before you actually get to the legal point and is that a good place part of the concern and I know the mayor had expressed this as well was that a lot of these folk who have received fund for eviction diversion we don't know what happens three or six months later we don't know if they ultimately still wind up getting evicted uh if next year they were in the same state uh and we wanted to know to make sure that we were truly helping folk what the the outcome was of their legal action as opposed to if they never got the court in the first place and they're still in their homes we know I fully agree that I think statistics and studies show that

you have a better chance of being successful if you have an attorney uh with you when you go to court for these matters so I I definitely think our commitment to that um should be in place but if there's a better place to spend money for better results earlier in the process I think that was the um uh one of the animating factors behind us we are not wed to any particular organization we are wed to the concept of eviction diversion whichever is most successful which iteration of it and hither to we have not really searched the the universe to see what other players are out there that may be having sess the RFP may very well wind up ultimately may decide that a law firm that responded or or legal services or legal aid responded and alas they are the best result but but we haven't really done a lot of due diligence I think in looking to see what else is out in the universe um that's just how I remember I know the mayor had expressed some concerns as well and I have as well about what's happening to these people three months afterwards six months

afterwards within a year uh afterwards um Council m cabier i see your hand I think I see your yeah yeah thank you um I just wanted to share I think part of it and this is why I don't I think you know I'm just sharing that within the RFP process to your point being able to track certain things would be included in the RFP I think I do want to name that one of the issues which is a process question because and this is something that to access DSS funds to help pay your rent you literally have to go to court and that has nothing to do with legal aid that is a practice that has been there that is a practice that has been named as a huge barrier to your Point once folks get into court it's in a much different place when legal aid is brought in on mediation type things when they kind of get on the front end of a thing there are way better outcomes I think yes we need to track that better we need to be able to have any nonprofit that's receiving dollars to be able to share those kinds of stories of outcomes I think that that's important when you're getting public dollars and I don't want to argue that point but I do want to acknowledge that there are

processed pieces that the city doesn't hold because we do not run DSS that have created barriers for legal aid to represent folks and for and for residents to actually even access um rental assistance essentially and so I just want to name that since this is a public meeting I know that DSS is working with legal aid to remedy some of that I don't have an update because that was something that was brought um I want to say at a joint City County meeting a few months ago um as as one of the barriers um to what you know when somebody has an emergency and they need funds um we don't necessarily want them to end up in eviction court so what are the things that we are creating that creates a barrier for them or creates a bad outcome for them and then I do again want to share I think when we're doing eviction diversion there's going to be multiple tools and I just don't want us to shut the door on Legal Services as one of those tools that's all I agree with you fully counil and I think that's ex you you raised an excellent point I I think the very fact that we're issuing RFP by definition mean that we are

looking for something that possibly may not be part of the DSs Nexus it might or it might not and and and we know that in order to access the SS it it's court but this RFP is is allowing us to see if there's a step even before that that's not to say it's antagonistic to the partnering partnering with the county but um I'm curious to see if there's some onramps as I said already before uh even getting to the court Allah DSS uh doorway but your point is is excellent it it it it's wellmade um in any way we can you know minimize what people have to go through the Hoops they have to go through and in the the the the hurdles they have to jump uh absolutely um yeah I'm on your side on that I just want to add for this this is because this RFP has not been released as far as I or maybe not finalized I just wanted to add my two cens as a council member in the construction of this RFP I hear that there are folks who can do a variety of things and maybe we have to look at okay it's a it's a package of money but I'm

sharing my opinion that one of those one of those responses has to be legal coverage because it it now is that again it's like anything it's just like housing anyway right some people need permanent Supportive Housing some people need rapid rehousing some people need this or that in the housing world and so I think that that has to be our approach to eviction diversion and since Community Development is going to be doing an RFP that is what I would like reflected in the RFP that's all thank you anyone else just if it's an important response uh the drafting is not quite finished yet and so I'm I'm receiving this as constructive input until we get to the point of of of finalizing that document and and and we'll certainly share that with the staff thank you DCM Chadwell that's what I was hoping I hope I I figured y'all weren't completely done and so it would be important to get some of that guidance today thank you I want to associate myself with council member Cabo's uh uh point I I would I would there may be I would think that if we're asking first off I I this could be a

multi there's nothing I says that we can't have that RFP go out contract with someone and still give money to Legal Services I don't know if it's a splitting of the funds or an increasing of the pot um I know that if you if you're if you're a not for-profit that's not a a a law firm or doesn't have lawyers but you do other things then by definition if the RFP says that you have to provide legal services and you don't have the capacity to do that we have circumscribed already who's going to be able to respond but that does not preclude us I think from still Contracting legal services and still um Contracting with a this could be a multifaceted uh approach um but I just want to make sure that if if if we narrowly circumscribe what we're looking for that by definition a not for-profit that does not have lawyers or does not do legal work can't respond to the RFP and and then we're we're basically right back at a law firm so to speak I just had a question following following your comment um so does that mean that we're

we need to actually vote to have legal services put in place today like we need to actually have the conversation to add that to the budget because what you're saying will not be in the next budget um unless we decide that to that like in this budget cycle so Legal Services separate then that legal services needs to be named because those are the services I want to support sure um specifically we're having Services aspect of it um making sure that folks stay in their homes I'm not um discounting the rental assistance but I'm very clear that that's just paying a landlord and that's not the position I want us to be in I I really want to be on the advocate side of it but um aside from that I just want to say like if this is this RFP is breaking it out um and it does break off Legal Services because the attorney piece of it is is critically important we need to have the conversation about whether we want to do a separate uh request for Legal Services or if we want to leave it without RFP

and that's what I'm just want to make sure there's Clarity on that absolutely to short answer to your question is this is the discussion now and all of this will inform ultimately uh our decision uh the good news is that we already have a template in place we are doing legal stuff right now and and nothing precludes us from continuing in that vein so that template already exists I no I don't think anybody's arguing for the sensation of that um and again floating this RFP does not have to be viewed as doing violence that either I mean they both can exist and and we may very well end up with that uh with this RFP but whatever responses we get to the RFP in no way obligates us as a council not to do the legal piece or to reject what comes back from the RP because we decide it doesn't fit our values or or what we want to do um but yeah this all of this discussion we're we're doing that today that's what we're doing right now is having that discussion manager Ferguson I'll let you and then council member cabier I'll come back to you I see your hand yeah just for just for

clarification of how staff receives the feedback may you know DCM Chadwell is is listening and and I think what you we have heard clearly heard the council's interest uh as always when we issue an RFP uh you know I think we we're going to try and and focus it on meeting all of the objectives and goals that the council has Set uh we will do our best to capture that and as always uh awarding of these contracts comes before council with a recommendation not a not a mandate so if if we go through this process we will certainly explain how we rate respondant uh and come to council with a recommendation if Council has questions about our recommendations or prefers to uh to uh reject our recommendation and go with another um vendor that is absolutely within the council's purview so I I think I can give you all comfort that we we've heard this conversation and we'll try and be responsive to it but I would also remind you that you have the final say the the one piece of

direction that I would encourage early on is if you are looking for something beyond flat funding uh and I apologize that I don't have that number in front of me that would be direction to work somehow into your budget prerogatives either by discussion at next Friday's uh budget Retreat or uh it I don't believe it's something and I apologize Christine I don't have it in front of me but I don't believe we have it on the list for you to vote on in your ranking tomorrow but if you wanted to increase that funding and prioritize it against your other priorities that's something I would definitely want to hear uh at this time thank you I'm only one council member I I just was stting but but critical voice I mean all all you know all of us this is really important that all of our voices or council member riss I thought I saw your hand do you put it back yeah I think the city manager addressed my question yeah I think I'm glad the staff heard the comments you know they'll put the RFP

together and again it'll come back to us eventually and we'll have a chance to to review that so I appreciate that I I will say that if you you know just for each of us as myself included if if you've still got millions of dollars of other ask and you want to prioritize this you might within your own internal space weigh that against what you've already asked for if you want to prioritize eviction diversion um because we've got I think we're already at 36 million uh assuming that hasn't gone down whatever we want to increase for eviction diversion add that to that number um so just something to kind of kind of Contour the conversation council member Baker I'm sorry did did did I see your hand go up or I'm trying to look at mul okay thank you for the input we'll proceed accordingly and with this input um noting to council that uh uh we we we take that in put and to remind that uh as this as my exit statement uh we will

we will have to also remain fervent to the necessity that this process be competitive so thank you very much Deputy Chadwell hold fast council member Baker did you have something for Deputy Shadwell and then counc mcab I see your hand again uh no I just I I I had originally been on the in the understanding that this is going to um be something that that we funded I appreciate the uh conversations that we've been having I do think that it's something that I mean it's the last line of defense for a lot of folks um if we want to build something into the RFP that um provides some additional analysis of outcomes I think that would make sense um but I do think that we need to uh adequately fund fund um you know Legal Services as well thank you absolutely yeah I think we're all in agreeance on that I just want to see what's happening six months later uh after Court's over um council member

cabier you had your hand up again yeah I just wanted to remind it's $350,000 of difference it's not the full million because it's there's $650,000 in base budget so unless we say we don't want that in the base budget it's just built in for eviction diversion currently that's what goes to Legal Aid right like that's where it is I just want folks to understand that you're you're not trying to find a million dollars you're trying to find $350,000 um that's one and then DCM Chadwell is there a way we have had a lot of success around organizations being able to partner with one another so if one set has one one group has a skill set that the other doesn't uh is there a way to structure the RFP I Envision that we we we address that by giving biders an opportunity to collaborate in that F thank you yep thank you yeah this has been a great discussion listen I'm always talking about this and that either or I'm not going to abandon it now um I think a natural out U outshoot

this is dur we talk about causes I think a natural and organic outshoot to the root cause conversation is before you get the court is there's something we can do to prevent you from from getting there I mean that that I think that fits our root cause value still need to have the money in place when you do go to court um but if there's something we can do before you get there before you get arrested before you get put out before you're homeless um then I think in durm fashion we need to be looking at some of those root cause interventions what which we're always looking for in durm but AB absolutely excellent conversation anything else on any other ones like you councilman Baker I'm gonna some individually as well about some of your ask some specific questions all excellent ideas I'll say um my only as I said at at the retreat I would ask that we just ask is this something new or is this that already has a home because my sense in reading some of the requests is some of those things I'd like to know if staff already has

capacity to do them small area planning whatever it may be uh some of the things you ask for have already natural homes I'm interested in hearing what um uh the heart program what Ryan's plan is to data driven in a in a sensible way to to ratchet up and escalate to the point where we're 247 rather than kind of you know insisting that they do it now when they've already gotten in charge to do it so I'm interested in hearing those kind of conversations but I'm not against anything that I've seen on the list but I do have some some questions um council member Freeman I think you were gonna say something I just wanted to to check in with folks to see if there was any interest I know that council member Baker removed his housing plan um request and I wanted to see if folks were interested in it being added back um I know it it's a small amount it's about 150,000 and was actually asking because goes along with the economic plan that he had mentioned yeah I was curious because this is it looks like this is

the original list that we got and some people collapsed their items some people took their items out and so and maybe I need to go to the tool itself and that it's already been done for us I just didn't know because the T I think the email that Christina sent with the voting whatever instructions I think she sent an updated list of requests I think because I'm looking at for example the guaranteed income has a middle and wris together that collapse that one so I think if that's the one you are you looking at that one yeah I see it now it's Cabo cook I see that now okay so it went from 37 to 31 I think that's right okay so and then is there a away this is for staff so there's a number of these fairf free buses to council member middlton point heart expansion of some kind where there's that additional layer provided by staff I think some of the CIP items and we raised this during our retreat in other years council members I mean I certainly have withdrawn requests when I knew that it was coming from staff and

likely like that it was at least at that point kind of prioritized in a in a higher manner is there a way for us with our prioritization to say you know this is a priority that I have from one of the staff asks right because then it it's basically a larger number than it actually is right like if you're if if the thing that I'm asking for is two million but it's the same thing that staff is asking for and we're saying it's four million it's not four million it's two million and I think that that would help our PRI prioritization as well but then I don't want to take it out and it's then seen as well it wasn't a priority for you so it didn't move forward because that's that's just not how I feel so I would love some clarification on how and if you want us to rank the ones that are just ours and then put it in an email saying hey these are the ones that we brought that we know staff have also brought forward happy to do that but I would love some guidance thank you uh I'm happy to address that also invite director oron to represent sort of the ranking process so I

um I I'll reiterate I think how I sort of addressed this last Friday which is uh for me as the person who I think will be digesting the council's ranked priorities um it it is helpful to see what you choose from this list to be at the top regardless of whether or or not staff may have also requested an item that is similar or identical to council's request it is um you know council's council's feedback and guidance at this point in the process is telling me where your priorities are a department may have asked for something similar and assigned a different value to it um but I'm going to be looking at them more from a technical standpoint rather than my personal objectives or opinions however council's objectives and opinions are are very very compelling to me so I will also reiterate that you know I think we ask

you guys as a uh as a sense to try and get a matter of scope to assign dollar values to your asks but but we don't we don't hold you to those as much as we do the concepts I think the dollar values are really for you to educate each other especially for things that may not be staff oriented so I I would say for in for requests like Hart I'd encourage you to not focus on the dollar amount but focus on the concept and if the concept of the council member proposal which in this case was 247 heart coverage then I would still encourage you to place that in the priority list wherever you would place it without a lot of consideration of whether or not the department is asking I would say the same for for all of the other requests just given that what what I really need to hear from you is you know if you come back and say something is your number one priority that's going to be very instructive to me doesn't doesn't mean I can do it doesn't mean I can pay for it does mean I'm going to

pay a lot of attention to the fact that Council told me that so I I think I don't know if that's as exact of an answer as you want but I think that's as close as I can get the most important thing to me in this exercise is seeing what Rises to the top of council's list not quite so much detail that you included in the ask I I think I can interpret your suggestions and these conversations to get to the the meat of what the final ask is and don't forget as as mayor protm has reminded all of us several times to me there's a very important part of this which is next Friday's discussion so the objectives are going to inform a council conversation where your vote will then lead us to talk about okay you know tell us more about the staff may ask you to tell us more about it we may have thoughts on okay at this point that may that number may be high or that number may be low and so this is this voting

exercise still leads to another conversation I'll I'll leave it there and I see Christina may also have something to add U yes sorry about that and I I'm having trouble turning on my camera I think that um I'm being blocked for so I apologize for not being on camera um okay I can start my video um uh but um I was just going to um reiterate what the city manager said we um you know as far as budget is concerned we have not vetted any of the numbers that are in there as well too so those are numbers that were provided by council members so we realize that you know you you use the information you had um I'm also happy to talk about the um prioritization and the way it's going to be done if that's helpful for folks as well too so I can talk about kind of how the tool works thank you director C council member rist was your hand up or did yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so in just to miss R's point and and actually Bose comments so I I just pulled up the tool and I see Miss re that what you've asked us to do is

essentially it's it's it doesn't have numbers attached it just has the the idea right so so that's kind of what Bo is saying you want us to prioritize the concept it's not like we're ranking it with like ideas and numbers attached and then we have a list we say like oh we can we can only take the top two because that's all where all the the dollars are so you're asking for a prioritized list of the the concepts Behind these ideas um which I think so that that's helpful to me I can do that exercise um regardless of whether it may be something that that a department is gonna do or not I can do that and then we'll as you said on Friday next Friday we'll come together with that list and some maybe some additional sense of numbers from budget and go from there so I think that makes sense and I feel clear about the exercise yes and I think that's a bit of a change from where we were in the past thank you so much uh colleagues uh I I do want to answer council member Freeman put a direct question that I want to answer uh regarding council member Baker's housing plan put it back on and my answer is is no and and here's why I trust each of you I my assumption is

that council member Baker withdrew it for a reason that he he you know none of you all of you are highly intelligent folk and and my assumption is that through your Reckoning if you decided to pull something off there's a reason for it I'm not going to second guess uh any of you um you know it it it could be that the Departments might have and and we're also to council member to count to the manager's point we also have the wherewithal as council members to ask staff to to make as part of their assessment uh as to their capacity to do what we're asking within their existing uh Personnel levels within their existing uh it may very well be as I've said that the these are things that can be done particularly if they already have a home in our or chart without money attached to it maybe maybe not but at least making that assessment or asking those questions can be part of our methodology uh a as we uh move forward um so I I appreciate the staff kind of contextualizing this for us and if one of you says okay I take that off

I'm not going to try and talk you out of not uh taking it off because my assumption is that you've given it thorough thought and you've considered what your colleagues have said and as a reason why uh you've done it I have people saying you know you should ask for two million uh for a guaranteed income or 3 million so there's always but no um let's get it started when it finds a home um then let it go from there and finally the final example I I already know that Hart understands that we want them to be 247 I think that there are some battles have already been fought and already won this is no longer a political issue this is no longer that that bridge has been built um and I trust you know Hart understands that it is the will of this Council it's the will of the people of Derm for it to be 247 when we get there and what that looks like I I you know I want that to be deliberate and data driven and and not messy or rushed or hurried that the the growth is organic and natural but there is it is no longer a controversy

whether or not it's going to be 247 so when I see areas like that when we're having budget deliberations at least for me as one council member as council member Freeman says I'm just one council member but that's a victory we've already won we don't have to fight that anymore it's going to be 247 no one's against that which for me leaves our you know leaves us room to direct our energy and Ingenuity and creativity to other areas and fighting battles that are still such as are we going to increase eviction diversion funding and what that RFP is going to look like um so I look forward to the conversation uh at the next Retreat I as again I'm going to follow suit with council member Baker and I thank him uh for the uh the standard of just reaching out to each other uh and talking to each other with questions we may have um about some of our ask uh and I'm gonna follow suit in doing that thank you for that answer I appreciate that but I I do want to just note that when we're talking about an economic plan acknowledging that there's a housing crisis if we're not looking at where our housing stock is we have the chance of creating a bigger issue and so

I do want to just put an emphasis on if we're doing an economic plan an economic development plan there has to be some assessment of what housing stock looks like in our city and so it it doesn't necessarily have to be a budget item but I do want to be clear that it would be irresponsible of us to set a housing economic plan in place and not have a housing plan in place no we have a housing crisis that's all affordable affordability crisis but people being able to afford being being kicked out evicted whatever all of that is tied into the economic development and as we move forward if we push a plan without that it's going to be lopsided I don't disagree with you my comment is just I I believe that Baker knows everything you just said is my point my point is my trust in each of you uh with your intellectual rigor to make your own decisions whether to put something on or pull something off that that was the only thing and I know council member kabier was working on a housing a very robust housing discussion in our city again to my standard is it

does it already exist does it have a home and does it allow us to focus our energy in other areas for me as one council member council member cabier yeah I just wanted to speak speak to what council member Freeman said the the plan's already being funded and it should be released um so HR hrna has been uh contracted with that was a chamber it's actually a good example of how the city of the county and and philanthropic dollars can work together so the chamber Foundation the county and the city all went in I think $25,000 each hrna has been hired they have been doing the initial analysis and I think currently are holding focus groups and you all should be getting an invitation because that presentation should be I think it's April 9th is the day that we have reserved um for that information to come out and it's not just a it's not just um a static plan the tool that they're building is something that is dynamic uh and so can be as markets change as things change um it it can be

nimble in that way so I just wanted to share that they are including um our Community Partners like Duke and UNCC andc Central yeah Duke has actually been um well in the broader housing group um the the one that I've been leading since September Duke Central Durham Tech uh DPS the county Alliance Health um it would be good to get a upate report we're getting an invitation for April 9th to hear the group's shortterm recomendation no everybody all council members are going to get an invitation for April 9th to like make sure people know the idea is that they will be presenting the full report in the fall to both City County and schools and there you talking about in their in their the folks who are drafting the recommendations all of the different partners is the goal is to spend the summer after folks have turned in their short medium and long-term recommendations and happy to have this

conversation offline so we're not taking more time I think it's really good for the public to know yeah happen yeah the the idea is that folks would come in the fall to share to all three governing bodies because it's not just about the city if we're talking about housing it's it's a lot of different folks who have to talk about Housing Council Members thank you very really important issue a critical issue um colleagues I I want to as you know I'm a firm believer I want to give each of you absolutely every opportunity to exhaust any questions or concerns you may have you you each have a vote when this thing comes up and I want you to be satisfied that you've done your due diligence and examining but my sense is that uh we may be at a stopping point here we've got some deliverable or to-do list in terms of talking to each other and we've got a critical discussion at our next Retreat um but I'm I'm not I'm not I'm not ending this I'm I'm asking are there any other areas of exploration or inquiry you have for this part of the discussion that's all I've

got council members colleagues Mr manager or or director did you have anything else you wanted to reiterate for this no thank you very very good conversation and and appreciate uh all all the thoughtful feedback we we're listening colleagues I appreciate your passion each of you and and your concern uh that youve brought to this conversation the these are big things these are big issues um a lot of people are counting on us to to get it right or at least struggle to get it right grope at getting it right um with that I'm I'm going to uh end this discussion look forward to to the continuing discussion around these matters and with that I believe we can settle the agenda Mr manager thank you mayor preton members of council appreciate the strong meeting today uh have for settling our agenda on consent items 1 through 20 on GBA public hearings item 23 that that is my summary of the agenda I concur all right with that said

colleagues thank you for a great uh meeting we send our best wishes out to mayor uh Williams who's tring with shim safety and his TR uh regards to council member cook who had to part early as well and my thanks to each of you uh for the passion um you bring to this work uh I'm very proud as a resident and a citizen of this city of this Council that said with that it's Thursday February 20th 4:20 PM I'm going to adjourn work session 4:20 PM during this work session yes hey it's a City attorney can you call the vote on the agenda the agenda yeah let's let's why don't we do that I I'll entertain the motion to the agenda moved second second motion and second is heard to settle the agenda move to settle uh uh call for a vote to settle all in favor I I oppose all right the agenda is settled it is it is now 4:21 on Thursday February 20th I'm going to call this uh work session of the Durham city council to a close have a great day be warm be safe uh

everybody thanks