City Council · Regular Meeting · February 20, 2025

If you would please call the roll thank you Mr Mayor protm mayor Williams is 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 I'm trying to okay I we haven't received any messages from council member cook have we 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 I will be very brief I just wanted to send a word of thanks both to the staff who made this meeting possible I know it was a bit of a a last minute situation and I know a lot of hard work went into that.

And also to our city staff who have been working on clearing the roads and ensuring that everyone's safety is cared for there have been a lot of traffic incident ents I know mayor PM just alluded to this please do be as careful as possible only travel if you need to travel and I really appreciate all of our First Responders and everyone else who has had to go to work and 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 I know we do have some question or some time for questions about budgetting requests mayor protm I'll leave that to your discretion but if folks do have questions for me that can't be addressed off screen and would like to do so 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 I would just say ditto to what council member cook said thank you so much to to staff and for everyone who works for the city who is keeping things running and out in the cold and doing the hard work we are so grateful for everything that you do and that's that's it for me thank you thank you 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 our workers out there keeping us safe and making sure our roads are clear and to all the staff that are 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 good to see everybody thanks mayor PM for for holding down the fort and U moderating today's meeting 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 and again thanks for our staff and the folks who Duke Energy for what they do to make sure everyone has power so yeah that's all I got thank you thank you council member glad you're safe thanks for jumping on 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 doesn't shut down so to city manager Ferguson and to your entire team the entire organization under you just our profound thanks 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.

Greatly appreciate it and please yall stay safe out there my only announcement is is congratulations to our mayor on what I thought was a great state of the city to our council members who stormed the stage and 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 just thanks to all the residents and citizens who came out 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 to working with all of you and him in the coming year 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 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 just wanted to say thank you as well and then ask colleagues 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 and so was hoping that he could come to our March 20th work session and do he is supposed to share what his work has been per our Ila and 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 who have to be there to make this meeting happen so while we are 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 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 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 in in these conditions making our community safe for drivers for our residents ensuring their safety and I will certain L relay your kind comments to them.

I'll just note in advance of my priority items that we will have a call with our colleagues at the county and Emergency Management professionals today at 4 just to 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 but again I want to thanks and acknowledge the the efforts of all the staff for the community and also 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 I have several priority items that I'll read into the record first agenda item number nine the fourth quarter crime report there is a presentation that will be made during today's work session 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 we have added a supplemental item 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 mayor proen Middleton I did want to announce the the two board and committee appointments for the human relations Commission there is consensus in support of Kaylee A Greener but the Planning.

Commission appointment does not have consensus right now there's Caitlyn kmky who received three votes and 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 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 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 for our viewing public administrative consent items are items that we now take an opportunity to do a deep dive in as a council 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 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 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 Durham 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 slated to go for 20 minutes and for our Monday night 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 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 Durham FY 2024 annual report is pulled colleagues anything else all right I have Mr manager by my Rec items number 6 12 14 and 15 pulled I concur all right thank you colleagues I will go ahead and try and dispose of these 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 cabaro talked about the 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 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 Achieve economic stability and mobility in our community or wherever they may choose to be in this great nation and I I believe you all have a unique opportunity especially after listening.

To the council member request for the upcoming budget we have an opportunity to do something bold to show our young people we believe in them we're willing to invest in them and we're willing to do the hard work to ensure that they have the Bright Futures that we so often Proclaim with words but we need to match that commitment with action and I know that we're in tight budgetary times and I was looking at the budget documents and I saw where one penny on the tax will yield about $4.3 million and so I'm here to ask you all to make that commitment of adding one cent to our tax in order for us to generate 4.3 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 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.

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 I know there are lot of important issues in Durham right now so thank you for your time and also mayor protm you got my last name pronounced so accurately that was amazing so thank you 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 topics during our time conversations have covered 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 Durham 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.

With AMS Consulting that for some reason that relationship broke 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 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 Durham over the last four years with basically very little to show for it 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 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 I know you have a lot going on but we need more invol need you more involved with these decisions please 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 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 Durham in ways that are going to be hard to recover from thank you thank you so much for your comments Madame clerk did was there anyone else I only have two on my end but I want to make sure we didn't miss anyone anyone El no Mr May proon there were only two thank you so much and I want to thank our our residents and neighbors who who came to speak today just a reminder to those of you that are watching in the city your council is available to hear what you want to say Thursdays at 1: P p.m. in our work session there's a a a 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 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 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 so I'm just wondering why we are hearkening back or why this amended appropriation is going back to 2021 2022 fiscal year this is Reginal Johnson community development director I'm not able to put on my video okay here we go so the one of the.

To you you are correct in in in terms of the process in terms of reconciliation in in terms of why the num the process for for us making these adjustments one of the things that a c have happened here that we discovered an error in the reporting 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 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 we get we we get reimbursed and we have to make draws draws through the Idis system and so what this is.

Related to is making sure that we can make the proper draws in the Idis system 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 complete the project and as well as the process okay thank you I think that's all my questions for the first tough but the second part is that we saw a decrease in income realized by 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 on the decrease but one of the things that we have to recognize is that we have an estimate that we have in terms of our program income and that's income that we.

Will receive based upon the payback from loans or 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 at the end of the year to what actually actually happens and and we have to pull reports to be able to to do that and so that's where the comes in the the the difference comes in quite often it is a discrepancy a difference I would say I wouldn't say a discrepancy but a difference because the actual 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 our entitlement allocation was increased by $31,000 as a result of amended appropriation from HUD additionally we reported 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 Carnegie to come on and explain a little bit more detail afternoon council member cook fellow council members so regarding the the issue presented yes council member cook we had an increased appropriation from HUD by that $3 31,5 51 amount that was an increase to our entitlement that during the last gopo we completed it it was missed there was error made 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 and that is what's resulting in that that decrease amount of 9,684 and so this is the time where we we need to make sure that our entitlement appropriation and program income actualized is accurate to support some 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 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 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 dbg 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 again there's just some specific projects we are trying to complete 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 follow and just ask which project and which recipient we're talking about for.

This this particular project is the Ross Road project and reinvestment partners is the. Developer thank you your colleagues anyone else all right item number six is disposed of colleagues a lot a lot of moving Parts here virtually so I W to I want to round back to the clerk the clerk 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 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 alerted that some residents did pull some additional items and I want to thank the city attorney's office Mr manager and if you'll amend your list 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 to the to the pulled list and we'll go in numerical order number seven Madame clerk is Charlie Wilson and I don't believe 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 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 jumping in he may very well have been council member to your question I'm not certain but Mr Derek or Derek rhs item number nine 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 make them present I did make Mr rhs present Mr rhods good afternoon thank you 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 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 on item number nine on the fourth quarter crime report we continue to see high levels of violence impacting young black men 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 Mr rhods Madam Clerk yes we did all right and I that's a presentation I could have very well just had him wait to the presentation to make his comment so if we get him back we'll certainly allow him afford him that opportunity 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 yes thank you so much 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 like University Drive for example near South Square so you know in between the two ends of Old Chapel Hill Road so that's a transit route the godam route 10 operates on University Drive there 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 and assist with our vision zero goal to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries 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 in Mangum Lind between Pleasant out in southeast Durham 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 yeah Transit Lanes bike Lanes we're looking for any opportunity to 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 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 relative to item number nine when we get to that police presentation which is part of our regular order so I apologize for that 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 and then when when when we get to the presentation 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 Durham success something we're located on.

Mang Street 727 very excited about this project here and and looking forward to to its implementation hopefully at the however at the February 17th Durham City Council meeting earlier this week 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 we do not have time here for humorous activity outside of real meaningful engagement 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 so thank you director Egan for for being here you've got a lot of items on on on this agenda today so I wanted to just make sure I understood what was going on here so our bus vehicles are requiring more maintenance than we would ideally have TW twice as much maintenance as as we'd like and then it it it looks like hybrid vehicles cost way more when it comes to to maintenance than 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 so our experience with the hybrid system 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 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 when you're trying to operate both an electrical system for propulsion as well as a diesel system and so I think in the passenger vehicle Market the hybrid technology you know really Advanced and developed in the transit bus Market the general consensus in the industry has moved away from hybrids and choosing either diesel or one of the U zero emissions Technologies because of so much of the the same type of experience that we've been having with 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 cost for maintenance for battery powered is the lowest 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 new vehicles basically you know all of the vehicles have been purchased in the last four years 75% of them were purchased just two years ago so we typically see very low maintenance costs for new vehicles and then as the vehicles age the maintenance costs so there's a we don't have data going back you know 10 plus years for the battery electric bus buses because we took delivery of our first two buses in 2021 so it's not clear I think that we'll be able to maintain such a low maintenance cost per mile over the life of those vehicles 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 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 so we're getting ready we're doing public engagement right now for the next round of God Durham service improvements we're going to be adding frequency on the route three Corridor on Holloway Street in East Durham serving The Village out to Southern High School new cross town connection between the village and North Carolina Central University and Durham Tech in order for us to we have the dollars lined up in order for us to be able to implement that service expansion we need more vehicles because.

We're we're at the limits of what our Fleet can do right now so this enables us to increase our Fleet size and have vehicles available for all of our service needs and to support that service expansion that U we hope to be bringing forward by the end of this fiscal year okay very useful 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 sorry council member Freeman all right colleagues and just for clarification thank you Mr manager for clarifying Council Maris item number seven Charlie Wilson was indeed a resource Charlie last name Wilson was indeed a resource so we'll move on to item number 15 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 colleagues colleagues like 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 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 with that we're going to move to our presentations and I'm I'm going to start with 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 Madame clerk if you'll make him present and and give him three minutes for his comments relative to item number. Nine thank you mayor protim Middleton thank you Council again for for hearing our comments related to item number nine now the epidemic 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 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 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 crime report and 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 manager Ferguson City staff and and also the community that are currently watching this is your I'm back so you couldn't get rid of me forever but I am back with your 2024 fourth quarter crime report before I start I just want to 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 actually coming and and seeing what it is that our forensic Services Unit what they do 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 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 the five performance measures 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 January 1st to December 31st what you'll note is that overall we are down in violent crime and as you know as I've said time and time again the data does not necessarily does not reflect what's in the heart and on many of our minds as it relates to violent crime so I want to First say that we were down in four categories I'm sorry we were down in three categories but slightly up in in rape in the fourth category so.

Just I want to note that so for forcible rapes we were up 6.4% enforcable rapes 22 of those actually occurred and were reported having occurred in previous years 14% of those were domestic in nature 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 obviously we have we have seen a reduction in both 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 several trends In Pockets of robberies where there was a disproportionate amount of Hispanic or Latino latinx victims and and and they were affected in in a high amount I am extremely proud of of my staff for being able to investigate each one of those.

Robberies that we had some of those were also ended in aggravated assaults and were able to make several significant arrests in in each one of those cases 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 in 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 a visual snapshot of what violent crimes look like and and we like to do on you know 10year 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 it's the lowest we're at.

The lowest since we've been in 2020 of the 39 homicides we had last year 34 of those did involve a firearm and if you'll look our our higher year was 2021 where we actually ended up with for homicides but we've been 49 homicides but we've been kind of trending upwards for 2021 2022 and 2023 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 a 10-year low for that particular category again you heard me mention and talk about Hispanic victims that have been disproportionately impacted throughout the year with 43% of those individual robberies in 2024 those had at least one or more victims about 37% of those had one or more victims so aggravated assaults is your purple line that's that's when we talk about gunshots 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 that 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 and that began to come down after 2020 and you see that we're almost leveling out to where we're coming down in 20 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 with the aggravated assaults that involve gunshots so and gunshot wounds so this is our shooting incidents and it breaks down our person shot and from that how many were fatal and then how many did we have that were non-fatal and so this is what we have been seeing over each quarter is that the there have been less incidents so if you look at the shooting incidents we're down not quite 25% but 24% but we've seen an increase in the number of persons shot so it's almost a 7% increase and so what that tells us is that in any one of these shootings we.

Generally have more than one person shot I think we're averaging just over 1.14 people shot during those time during that time there were 981 guns that we seized in 2024 so that's down about 12% those guns though however did come from 695 of those incidents of each one of those incidents and and we get that data the gun seiz data is based on what we are actually turning in into property and evidence and what property and evidence is able to log in as it relates to each individual incident so we did have a question I do want to touch on that last time I believe it it might have been from either the mayor or council member Middleton 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 has to report that gunshot wound and so we we looked at the shooting incidents from a period of 2023 to 2024 it it increased over over.

Time from those that were that were actually visiting and going to the hospital and it it's very hard for us to individually track how many of those ended up in the hospital but we think about 50 a little about 54 of those shootings were individuals that went to the hospital we don't have the ability to really look at without taking a deeper dive was there an actual 911 call that resulted prior to them actually going to the hospital so next slide all right so this is what our gunshot wounds fatal and non-fatal 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 where that sharp increase and then you started to see a steady decrease this actually further tells that story and demonstrates that 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 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 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 but those that we've been able to identify we have of course 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.

Is is 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 can pop up and be used in a shooting and being recovered from a shooting also motor vehicles that are stolen we often find are being used to 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 the larsy so you see that our lares have increased 8% so what's driving that well our two main ones are our lares from Motor Vehicles those were up 11% and from 2023 34% of those lares we had 34% of our overall laries were also related to shop shoplifting so shopliftings 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 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 a downward Trend in the rate and the number of Motor Vehicle thefts that we have 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 and they cannot get access to your vehicle Kia still continue to be High 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 reported by year so 2015 to 2024 and so 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 a 10-year high and again that's mostly due to the shock liftings as well as the the the thefts from Motor Vehicles so we have really tried to to assist our uniform Patrol in some of the calls that they are responding to we've tried to be Innovative in in in really seeing if we have other ways in which we could document those crimes and So 20% of of those shoplift calls have been in progress 8% of those calls we've been able to route to our telephone Response.

Unit and 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 almost 16% of our our larsy calls so the nonin progress calls being our community members have been making reports through the P Toc platform which ultimately has again translated to more 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 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 we look at what does it what was the.

Trajectory from 2019 to the end of 2024 and this is very self-explanatory what we've all we've talked about it has just skyrocketed in in 2024 you'll see 2023 it was coming up but we really have seen a an increase in the amount of guns being stolen and so year-over-year increases we're looking at about a 29% increase over 2023 69% of the guns that were stolen were stol in from motor vehicles 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 to really dissuade our gun owners from from not leaving their guns in their vehicles and quite frankly you know it it potentially if there's legisl legislative changes the the unintended consequence of that would be that simply people stop reporting their guns stolen and then that way we are not able to track track these these guns when crimes are committed 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 I I talk all the time about the great work that our uniform Patrol staff are doing with really being present and doing great courts and then it translate to even better investigations our investigators they continue to to Really lead the charge in in clearance rates but not just clearance rates clearing by actual arrests as well as very solid cases that we present to our district attorney or to our federal 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 are are not easy to prove and certainly aren't easy to identify a suspect so I credit our Patrol officers our investigators but also you all visited the lab our forensic staff so out outstanding 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 it we really do rely heavily on our forensic evidence as well as the networking with our intelligence teams because we do you know we do talk to Raleigh and other agencies and so what we see here is we actually overall we were we we we did clear lower in some categories however we did still did did well particularly in the burglary category where we clear cleared higher than the than the national average I don't take too much 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 so just so that you know I want to remind you the FBI clearance rates for 2023 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 our.

Size I also do want to 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 that we were 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 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 that's not necessarily anything I I would take heartburn with however I will tell you as I've as I've said to you before that we are our 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 that officers need to get to very very quickly this obviously did not mean our Target of 5 minutes and 48 seconds 45% of those calls were answered in less than 5 minutes which still didn't meet our Target of 57% and so our data previously 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 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 as as the boundaries change what we have been doing is we did go back Mr sheath and I did go back and actually look at our response time we did make a small change that.

Actually we think ended up being a very large change a significant change to the calls that our staff could actually see that were holding 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 I think it kept them from being able to respond to certain 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 we're going to see how that has an impact on 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 you see that our response time while it was still above where we should have been we actually were responding much faster 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 so that was the co effect 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 supplemental Patrol Staffing our normal Patrol Staffing range from 46% to 51% per month in 2024 we add paid supplemental so we use our lap salaries to pay for extra officers in order to be able to absorb that loss that we're feeling and that's been able to increase our staffing 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 we have part-time officers that are also able to come in and and take 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 they've done a great job with that and then hopefully you know with we roll out our our civilian traffic investigators in Spring of 2025 who will be responding to traffic crashes 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 and and and not hold or delay any of those calls next please so we are I'm I'm very excited we always talk about Staffing and we've made a commitment to keep you all posted about where we are we just graduated or we will be graduating Academy number 60 they'll graduate formally March the 14th they are currently in the after Academy right now we'll graduate with nine but I will tell you that Academy 61 that just started on Monday we started with 23 in the class and so we are very.

Very excited our staffing numbers are holding steady we have not lost any more officers going to other agencies so we're starting to to to see the effects of of of the pay increase but also some things that we've been able to do here within the police department I won't say that it feels better 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 I would like to think that we've done some great work here and 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 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 and they come back and they say 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 you all Council you approved our 2024 30x30 micro Grant through the cops office and that was to the tune of about $175,000 and so that will continue with the development of our our commitment bringing in more women into law enforcement and increasing women in law enforcement to 30% by the year 2030 this current 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 being able to bring in the the the best and the brightest and so with that I think we have one final slide that is a new one is a new addition this helps us track the.

Trend of it shows you 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 Academy 60 you'll see is listed on here we started with 60 we will finish with nine we do track why they leave or why they are removed from the program from the training program most of the time what we see is that they are topic deficient they are not showing Improvement and the state has has strict requirements around that and we want to make sure that we are bringing in the best into our agency and so it's going to be interesting to see what this newest class that we have coming in what that looks like for them we will lose some but I hope.

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 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 we actually lose throughout the process and that is it please follow us on all of our social media and 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 for questions or comments council member Baker I think you threw your hand up first and then we just go right on Den ey yeah thank you thank you so much chief I think you're doing a a wonderful job have had the privilege of coming into headquarters a couple times recently and and appreciate you.

Welcoming me warmly into into headquarters and answering questions that that I've had just wanted to ask one question if there's anything that you can share about Trends related to 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 however I can provide you with some high level information around our nin and around just just overall behavior of firearms 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 they're being kept 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 so we do know that they are taken other places to be used okay yeah thank you I'll follow up on that 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 all of the information in the presentation really quickly when you were breaking down the percentages of both suspects and victims of shootings you shared the percentages around age under 25 have you all done any 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 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 so if you have that information would love to see it and I think 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 the victim of of many of our shootings and today we had several or two public speakers and it's a consistent theme how do we meet that challenge and 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 becomes even more critical and so knowing what the data is on that would be helpful and then I think the other thing 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 is it not the metric 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 manager Ferguson may have I see his hand up oh he says no I I will do some some investigating into that 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 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 I would love to see that.

In comparison to other 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 the gun 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 well maybe we don't have Smokey the Bear anymore but 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 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 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 other council members comments are complete so W you 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 I will.

Be very brief because actually council member cabier hit two of my exact questions 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 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 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 and so just I I am I'm also not in interested really in in doing any penalty around locking guns because the other piece of that is that we we know that that incar eration or like other potential like criminal criminalizing there we go criminalizing 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 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 looking forward to maybe putting my head together with council member cabier and some other folks and maybe you as well if we 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 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 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 the imprint of.

Of the casing so great work on the part of your staff I'm excited to see the the sort of modest 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 that was a concern for a lot of us 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 districts so do you know that offand for this year so right now we're at five we have we have some investigations that are outstanding right now and we we at least two that that are outstanding where it's a starts off as a.

As a death that it's suspicious to us 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 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 yes definitely I I I wanted to make sure that I said thank you for the presentation as well and I did want to appreciate a couple of officers the seen 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 I appreciate the Federal Street Corridor 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 the work that's been happening.

There and making sure that folks are feeling the the presence in a way that's not negative and so I I didn't want to say that and then I also wanted to just kind of touch on the number of rapes I know the violent crime is down but the number of rapes 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 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 that work oh thank you that's actually a great question so yes so the majority of our reported offenses so 22% of those were actually reported from previous years and 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 they are continuing we our Cold Case unit is continuing those those investigations Cameron Park investigator Park who you referenced she is a part of that team the work that that entire team is doing we have we have they have worked very very hard with really focusing on those belated cases as well 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 has dis will be discontinuing but we have maintained the 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.

It's better to to kind of make sure that folks understand if you're reporting those rapes belatedly it makes it harder to prosecute or to investigate and so just making sure that those out there who have been the victim do come up do come forward quicker than 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 are tremendous and so you know we want to make sure that when we do have sexual assaults that are reported our victim's Advocates waste no time in in really uplifting them and supporting all of our victims through that very difficult process so I think that that also has helped too 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 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 the chief's presentation she mentioned briefly some of our success in recruiting I know that 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 they had an aggressive internal effort to do process Improvement to ensure she mentioned briefly clear that that they 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 call out the council that in response or in partnership with the efforts you made to increase compensation the department had a very aggressive effort to 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 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 council member cavier and then council member cook thank you this was just something that was only my hand sorry we know that funding or at least my understanding is funding from the state around victim Services has been cut over the years and so since we were talking about the saki Grant and rape and sexual Assa assault numbers I think it would be helpful 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 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 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 they're reporting as an adult but their assault occurred when they were a child that's what I was wondering about we have seen it as far back as as that 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 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 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 you continue to do.

Here in Durham I did want to associate myself with my my colleagues comments on all of their commendations and appreciate the the recent tours we've done particularly with our property and evidence department and our our 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 I do also you know I'm I'm I'm glad about the decriminalization or or the the push against decriminalizing when guns are stolen 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 penalizing parents for kids taking guns out of their homes 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 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 and if we if we're going to chase the CH trace the chain of custody or manufa facturing 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 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 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 for us in their report so I do want to thank you for that that that visit 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 very proud of the work that our police department does I didn't want to say finally also moving forward about the culture of the department and.

Chief we've been blessed and you you've continued that Continuum of chiefs that have understood Durham values and have contoured policing to our values a drop in citizen generated complaints against our Police use of force incidences incidents drops with our Police Department 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 the division that would have fortunately not dpd but other police departments around our country with consent degrees 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 for the culture you've continued 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 that have been 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 navigating the waters ahead but we're very grateful for the Department that we have here in Germany and on behalf of the mayor regards to the men and women under your command and and thank you so much for what you do thank you good to see you and thank you for the report colleagues thank you so much for your excellent questions and comments I'm gonna in in the interest of thematic content I'm I'm G to go ahead and just group move on to item number 22 which is the police satisfaction survey results presentation by Etc Institute will'll.

Do that and then maybe at the top of the hour three or three or so we'll take five minutes for a break and then come back for our budget and Management Services Department second quarter financial report so at this time I'm going to yield for the ETC Institute presentation and again thank you.

Chief hey thanks good afternoon everyone good good to see everyone again 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 there just a little background about Etc Institute sure you remember this from recent presentations but Etc Institute is a national leader in providing market research for local governments 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 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 this is the seventh police satisfaction survey that we've conducted for the city of Durham the survey was administered by a combination of mail and online to randomly selected residents throughout the city and that's our standard methodology for these types of of statistically valid surveys we received a total of 502 completed surveys our goal was to get to 500 so we accomplished that and the results of the 502 surveys at the 95% level of confidence has a margin of a plus or minus 4.4% so essentially that means that if we conducted this survey the same way 100 times 95 times the results would be plus or minus 4.4% 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 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 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 so since our goal was 500 surveys we mailed a survey to about 3500 households and that mailed survey 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 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 they can mail it back take it online using the link or access the online surver to the QR code 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 offer a 500 if respondents want they can enter drawing to win a $500 gift card we don't do that in every survey but we do that some of the time 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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% 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 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 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 because they're more likely to commit crimes 32% said no 40% said not sure when we break these results out by rais ethnicity 43% of black respondents said yes compared to 26% for Hispanic respondents and 177% for white respondents.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 55% said media reports that's the top influencer people's opinions 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 83% said no just 6% said not sure and then we also broke this these results out by rais in ethnicity 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 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 for the majority respondents say they don't know it's 60% 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 fourth highest priority is efforts to cooperate with the public to address those concerns 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 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 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 followed by murder and.

Drug related crime 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 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 I'll yield questions or comments or observations counis were you unmuting to yeah no but no questions now I raised M earlier thank you okay mavo did you 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 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 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 Power so I I think it's really important for.

Us to know where our people are I think this you know I think this survey really kind of puts a firm exclamation point against anyone who wants to have a discussion of either or in our city this false dichotomy you know folk who who who think we need heart not police or police and not heart we clearly need both and and our residents clearly want both they want a certain type of policing 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 really really I think I'm glad you asked the question where did they get their view 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 you know where did you get your view about Transportation so I'm glad you included that question and thanks for the work and hopefully it we'll be able to integrate it into our future decision making but I appreciate it c m is that your hand back up did you want to jump back in sure please thank you just really quickly I wanted to say 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 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 nuanced choices that other communities haven't made 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 and you can see the Improvement and also just from the chief on down 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 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 these organizations are resistant to change often and we've seen that and I'm grateful for for those who agitated in Durham and got us to where we are now and and amen to we need to remain Vigilant and continue to to make the call 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.

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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 move right along budget and Management Services Department we'll go now to item 21 which is a report on our FY 2024 20 2024 2025 second quarter financial report good afternoon I'm mayor proen and members of council it's Christina Reen with budget and Management Services I'm trying to get my video to work but let me share my.

Screen so hopefully you can all see my screen got it okay and I am here today to present you the second quarter financial report some of this will be a bit of a repeat from sorry some of this will be a bit of a repeat from our budget Retreat that we held last year but I wanted to provide this second quarter report which is getting us halfway through the fiscal year 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 I will start out with our general.

Fund so looking at our general fund which is the place where most of our departments sit we expect this year for all of our departments to end the year in budget and for some of them to be under budget these are a listing of some of our departments and where we think they're going to end the year at the fourth quarter most departments will be at budget we have a few departments that have some Personnel savings and some operating savings overall we expect that we will do um8 Point almost 8.4 million better than our budget and that large amount of money that you see in our non-departmental line item is really the savings that we are realizing from our pay plan so some of that is captured in our non-departmental so breaking it out by expenditure types if you look at our Personnel Services this is the place where we expect to be the best as far as our variance to budget at 6. um1 million dollar there is some.

Operating savings that we expect to happen by the end of the year which is about 1 Point two $1.9 million and a small amount of of capital so looking at expenditures we project that we will be by the end of the fiscal year8.3 million under where we had budgeted Personnel costs as I talked about being under 6.2 million under mostly due to our vacancy rate and then operating costs at about $2 million with capital being about $255,000 under and we don't expect any budget to go any of our departments in our general fund to go over budget so moving on to revenues we talked a little bit about revenues in our budget Retreat last year or sorry last week and as we talked about the big news that which I talked about last week is sales tax we do not expect to make our sales tax projection this year and do expect to be under budget by about $2.6 million also utility franchise is another Revenue source that we have seen.

Some decline in and expect to be under budget by about $650,000 Powell bill which is our the money we receive from the state for road maintenance is doing well is doing better than we budgeted and we do ex we have received our second payment so we are about $845,000 over budget and other Revenue line items coming in close to to what we expect them to budget so property tax I think we talked about this at the budget Retreat last week all property tax was you know needs to be paid by January 5th we are over 90% of our property tax at this point has been collected and so we expect to be to end the year at budget sales tax as I've talked about our collections through October 31st you can see that we're under budget by where we were at this time last year and we are expecting to come in under budget by about $2.6 million under budget our budget for the year was 104.9 million right now and.

We've just received even since we prepared this report we now have our November sales tax and there was a slight decline in that month's sales tax from the state too so currently at the moment we're about $900,000 behind where we were at this point in the fiscal year last year so that is why we are projecting not to come in that budget so running through some of the highlights of the general fund Revenue as we talked about we expect the total budget to be about two.6 million under where we had budgeted for the year sales tax is a large driver of that and then utility Franchise Tax with other budget sources such as charges for services and occupany tax property tax coming in at budget and then our pow bill coming in over budget we saw this chart last week at this at the at the budget Retreat as you'll notice you know the we are ahead in revenue from where we were at this time last year part of that.

That's being driven is the property tax which obviously we have a larger budget for property tax this year so we we would be from 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 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 and then you know the other the other Revenue sources are doing well compared to last year many of them are slightly above I will caution that you know in this in and so I think that that is you know we feel like these major Revenue sources as I.

Talked about before except for sales tax are going to be going to be close to budget except for power bill as well okay moving on to Enterprise funds the first Enterprise fund I wanted to talk about was Water and Sewer we are currently projected to come in revenues are currently projected to come in over budget by about 400 and Personnel expenditures are also expected to come in over budget but that is mostly due to a lower than expected vacancy rate which is a good thing but also means that they're running a little bit ahead of where they would be in our what we had budgeted and then operating expenditures are expected to come in about a million dollars higher than what we had budgeted the department has had some higher than expected electricity and costs and also some chemical cost some of it du to some weather events that they had and so at the moment you know there are expected to come in higher in expenditures than budget overall that.

Is a negative budget variance of $1.8 million and so this kind of gives you a sense of the 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 personnel and operating expenditures expected to come in over budget by the end of the fiscal year moving on to our Transit fund Personnel expenditures are expected to come in very slightly over budget and operating expenses are expected to come in under budget which is good news and so this fund is has a total positive budget variance of 1 Point almost 1.3 million as a reminder this fund receives 3.75 cents on the tax rate and you know we will be hearing more from them at our next budget Retreat on next Friday so this is a snapshot of the revenues and how we expect them to end the fiscal year and then of course this is the expenditures with them coming in slightly over in Personnel expenditures.

And under in some of the operating expenses so moving on to our Solid Waste fund this fund is experiencing they are expecting that their revenues will come in under budget and their expenditures will come in over budget so their operating revenues I think that they have in talking with the Department they've had some competition in some of their mixed Solid Waste fees and so they are projecting that that Revenue Source will be under what they had budgeted for the Year by about 2. um6 million dollar and then also with Personnel Services they they're are expecting to go over budget that's partly due to the fact that this is a fund that doesn't really have a lot of vacancies or anyone if they do have vacancies they have to be filled with overtime and of course we did a pay plan and so there is they are expecting that to go over budget from where we have them at also operating expenditures are projected though to come in under budget by about $2.5.

Million and so that has to do with some of their contracts in Nix Solid Waste and Recycling so there's a positive budget variance of about $354,000 and this is 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 our storm water fund is going to be ending the year very close to where we budgeted them for operating Vues are projected to come in $10,000 over budget and Personnel services are projected to come in under budget by about $368,000 their operating expenditures are projected to come in slightly over budget at about $34,000 and that leaves them with a positive budget variance of $347,000 so this fund is very close to where we had budgeted them so you can see here the budget variance for operating revenues is pretty pretty close to budget slightly over to about 10,000 and then here you can see their.

Expenditures okay moving on to parking which is our our last fund that we're going to talk about the parking fund is projected to be $85,000 under budget with their revenues and expenditures are also expected to be under budget at $171,000 as a reminder there is some subsidies that this fund receives from our debt service fund to cover a portion of the existing debt and then overall it's projected to be 5 and sorry $53,000 a negative budget variance which is a small budget variance but a it is as we have talked about in the past a fund that has struggled and we will be receiving a presentation from them also as well at our next budget Retreat so here is a look at the revenues and what we talked about they are expecting some of their operating revenues to come in slightly underw under the budget and then there will be some Savings in in operating and slightly over in personnel just some of the other major funds that are in the exhibits that you.

Received in your packet that we just wanted to give you kind of a high level overview of our Ballpark and dpack fund are doing very well and expected to kind of really meet budget for this year so there's not much news there our inspection fund which we talked a little bit about in the retreat last week their revenues are expected to come in under budget by about 2 8,000 which would leave the fund with a negative budget variance and so that and that is something that the department is looking at and we will keep an eye on 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 you've heard the report I'll yield now for questions or comments or observations I just want to say that 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 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 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 there's a few operating savings I think you know.

Which 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 our office of Economic and Workforce Development has some savings for some incentives that they probably will not be kind of be realizing by the end of the year and so that's some some savings that we're seeing 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 you see where we are variance to budget there's a you'll see a $5 million variance in the non-departmental so the way that we budget our pay plan we did not departments 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 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 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 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 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 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 you know it's it's an Enterprise fund so it it will contain its own fund balance you know 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 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 presentation Christina 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 anything that you have year over year because I know a couple years it was struggling even more 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 presentations and and published matters we come now to the U City Council budget request conversation item number 24 I do want to note the absence of of the mayor and council member cook 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 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 in subsequent conversations from today I do want to make sure that we honor their input so with that said Mr manager is is there a a staff member that was going to facilitate this or or we just supposed to talk Talk Amongst our Sal we we had not planned any form Al process is primarily a Talk Amongst yourselves obviously the budget director is still with us as Mi I to 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 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 priorities back and primarily we are here as a resource for you today sure I appreciate that colleagues you you've got the ranking exercises in your in your possession 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 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 require more but but don't want to feel any anxiety that this is it today so with that said I I'll I'll yield to any of you council member Baker please thank.

You yes thank you it's a a great list of of items I think manager Ferguson said it well in in our budget Retreat that implementing all of these things would be would be good for Durham so obviously the the process of prioritizing is is a tough one for the most part I am I I I feel pretty comfortable that I understand 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 so I'd like to toh chat with him I did have one there was one question that I had about an item that we have not placed in here among the other items but which 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 the the list of requests or if it this is something that we just already.

Built in but eviction diversion and my understanding is that there was going to be a change in process to an RFP process but that that was going to be that we were expecting to to allocate that so I wanted to throw that out there if manager Ferguson or any of my fellow council members had any other information about that that would be appreciated there is going to be an RFP 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 I'm like the mayor Pam I have a number of screens in front of me I did get an update from the staff about when that would be moving forward but so I don't waste your time as a hunter around today let me let me get that to you after we conclude this evening 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 and so I'll just I'll I'll await your information just wanted to make sure that you know it was an amount that that everyone was was happy with and comfortable with my high level and and I would might need to double check with 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 staff on on its own without direction from Council would be changing the amount of funding with that 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 I I I think the intent is to not go beneath current Investments and of course of course there have been very robust deliberations associated with additional deliberations Beyond which we have been considered all of which from a historical perspective would have.

Had to come from 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 advice from Council that a a a competitive process was needed we're not going to put forth a definitive amount at this time with the expectation that a a a competitive process May yield a process for managing this circumstance as we have traditionally understood it and perhaps some Alternatives we want to be faithful to 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 what we what we've historically done I hope that didn't confuse but we're trying to have some some manner of fidelity that 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 that doesn't the recourse in court has been 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 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.

What that number is is closer to a million rather than 650 thank thank you colleagues yeah I I 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 if next year they were in the same state 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 with you when you go to court for these matters so I I definitely think our commitment to that 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 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 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 afterwards Council m cabier i see your hand I think I see your yeah yeah thank you 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 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 I want to say at a joint City County meeting a few months ago as as one of the barriers to what you know when somebody has an emergency and they need funds 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 I'm curious to see if there's some onramps as I said already before even getting to the court Allah DSS doorway but your point is is excellent it it it it's wellmade 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 absolutely 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 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 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 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 Contracting with a this could be a multifaceted approach 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 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 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 specifically we're having Services aspect of it making sure that folks stay in their homes I'm not 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 aside from that I just want to say like if this is this RFP is breaking it out 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 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 our decision 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 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 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 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 as always when we issue an RFP 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 we will do our best to capture that and as always 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 and come to council with a recommendation if Council has questions about our recommendations or prefers to to reject our recommendation and go with another 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 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 budget Retreat or 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 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 because we've got I think we're already at 36 million assuming that hasn't gone down whatever we want to increase for eviction diversion add that to that number 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 noting to council that we we we take that in put and to remind that as this as my exit statement 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 no I just I I I had originally been on the in the understanding that this is going to be something that.

That we funded I appreciate the 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 if we want to build something into the RFP that provides some additional analysis of outcomes I think that would make sense but I do think that we need to adequately fund fund 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 after Court's over 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.

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 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 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 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 then I think in Durham fashion we need to be looking at some of those root cause interventions what which we're always looking for in Durham 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 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 some of the things you ask for have already natural homes I'm interested in hearing what 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 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 request and I wanted to see if folks were interested in it being added back 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 I'm happy to address that also invite director oron to represent sort of the ranking process so I I I'll reiterate I think how I sort of addressed this last Friday which is for me as the person who I think will be digesting the council's ranked priorities 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 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 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 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 I'm being blocked for so I apologize for not being on camera okay I can start my video but I was just going to reiterate what the city manager said we 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 I'm also happy to talk about the 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 which I think so that that's helpful to me I can do that exercise 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 colleagues I I do want to answer council member Freeman put a direct question that I want to answer 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 any of you 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 as to their capacity to do what we're asking within their existing Personnel levels within their existing 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 a as we move forward 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 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 you've done it I have people saying you know you should ask for two million for a guaranteed.

Income or 3 million so there's always but no let's get it started when it finds a home 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 and I trust you know Hart understands that it is the will of this Council it's the will of the people of Durham 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 so I look forward to the conversation at the next Retreat I as again I'm going to follow suit with council member Baker and I thank him for the the standard of just reaching out to each other and talking to each other with questions we may have about some of our ask 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 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 so HR hrna has been 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 for that information to come out and it's not just a it's not just a static plan the tool that they're building is something that is dynamic and so can be as markets change as things change it it can be nimble in that way so I just wanted to share that they are including our Community Partners like Duke and UNCC andc Central yeah Duke has actually been well in the broader housing group the the one that I've been leading since September Duke Central Durham Tech DPS the county Alliance Health 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 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 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 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 all all the thoughtful feedback we we're listening colleagues I appreciate your passion each of you and and your concern that youve brought to this conversation the these are big things these are big issues 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 with that I'm I'm going to 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 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 meeting we send our best wishes out to mayor Williams who's tring with shim safety and his TR regards to council member cook who had to part early as well and my thanks to each of you for the passion you bring to this work 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 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 work session of the Durham City Council to a close have a great day be warm be safe everybody thanks.