here going to call this Mee in the order at 1 pm Madam cler you please call the R thank you Mr Mayor mayor Williams I think I'm here may Pro Baker I'm here council Nate Baker here council member cabayo council member cook council member Freeman has requested an excused absence today and council member Carl Rist here thank you let me just clarify she when she requested it was it at that last meeting or we need to honor it today she requested it since the last meeting okay so we're good so we you need to do for counc member Cabo we need to Grant an excused absence for council member Freeman and I'm not sure of the status of council member cabayo okay she emailed and asked for she's not feeling good to ask for I hadn't seen that all right so I'll entertain a motion for an excuse absence uh for uh council member DJ moved second been moved and proberly second at Madam CL please call the r
mayor Williams hi mayor Pro Baker hi council Nate Baker hi council member cook and council member r hi thank you I'll also entertain a motion to provide an excuse absence for council member ciero mov the property second at mam cler please call the rooll mayor Williams mayor Pro Baker council Nate Baker council member cook council member W hi all right thank you uh announcements uh council member cook um hi everyone thanks everyone for being here it's a very crowded room and for those of you watching at home thank you as well um I'm just going to be very brief which is that I missed our last meeting so I didn't get a chance to thank the folks who took um council member Freeman mayor proen Baker and myself around the forensics Lab at the Durham Police Headquarters um it was a really informative tour I'm so impressed as always by the staff we got to see
some really really cuttingedge technology and um and it was just a really fascinating uh it was really fascinating and really informative and also I think showed us that we've got some places that we need to work um and and maybe some funding that needs to be reallocated so I was really informative that way as well and those are all my announcements thank you thank you council Nate Baker all right council member Carl Rist thank you Mr Mayor uh welcome uh deput city manager Kad well good to see you in the seat here today thanks for joining us um I just got a couple things so I did want to follow what council member cook said so um Council bacon and I today did go on a tour the same tour that forensics facility um and I share your your comments fascinating work fascinating science um dedicated staff just amazing stuff um I did want to say Mr Mayor just as an aside this is both a personal thing but also I think speaks to our city um so as I was wrapping up the visit um Alison Anderson who's one of the I think Firearms forensics experts said hey I was just talking to your
cousin Mason the other day so my cousin Mason Beyer actually is the deputy director of the Department of forensic science in Virginia in Virginia they don't have most most in Virginia most police departments don't have their own forensics Labs but they have a couple of I think there's four or five State Labs and so Mason's the my cousin Mason is a deputy director he was talking to Allison about being on an advisory committee to advise them on their science they're doing there and so just speaks of the fact that the people work for the city of Durham are among the as we know we know this but I just want to say this again are respected Nationwide for their expertise so it's great that Allison is in conversation with my cousin Mason who runs that department for the state of Virginia so again speaks to our great staff and again thanks to Alison Anderson for her amazing work in the forensics facility along with um Captain Bond and her whole staff so thank you Mr Mayor through all of our challenges councilor member wrist D dope May Pro your honor good afternoon sir to able colleagues everyone in chamber and on whatever platform you may be watching greetings council member
riss and council Nate Baker which one of you got to fire a weapon I how how do you do that that was that was Miss Anderson we were sort of we worked on that together she was yeah it was it was fascinating just to understand how those test firings improve the science and improve the ability to solve cases I it's amazing stuff yeah I said Monday night they're still repairing the hole that you put in the wall Mr Mayor uh uh when you did it uh mine went perfectly so a little too much fun it was too much fun well we we we definitely want to um send send shout outs to the men and women of of our Police Department our fire department all of our First Responders are do an amazing job While most of us are asleep uh they are out holding a line for us running uh toward situations that most of us uh flee from so thank you I'm glad uh we had opportunity to visit with them and property and evidence as well our Police Department um very very quickly U Mr Mayor not not many things today let me first welcome city manager Chadwell who's in a hot seat today hopefully it won't be too hot uh for him uh today uh we continue to
send well wishes to all who are uh celebrating and recognizing Black History Month African-American history month this month had a wonderful time celebrating with our members of our Asian-American and Pacific Islanders Islanders Community for the Lunar New Year um happy New Year uh to our residents uh some bunch of us are in video dancing twirling uh things in air with with with with differing degrees of proficiency uh but I want to thank the members of our of our Asian Community who who welcomed us so warmly at the pron Wood Country Club last week to celebrate the Lunar New Year Chinese New Year finally uh today I do want to uh send our thanks out to the um uh investigative division of our Police Department an arrest was made recently many of you may have seen uh in in media uh concerning a 15-year-old who was murdered here the presumption of innocence belongs to everyone who's arrested so we're not offering any editorial about guilt or innocence but um there are no winners here they're
they're they're both children they're both minors um so there are no winners here but I I I do want to uh send our thanks out to the uh investigators who tirelessly work uh who try and follow that leads um I don't know how much resolution or Comfort this will bring to that family I imagine a very little but it should put us all on notice and continue uh to focus our attention as a government as a citizenry as people that this has got to be our our number one uh focus and our number one issue uh um at the risk of sounding like a broken record all of our Ingenuity all of our creativity all of the levers we can pull all of the buttons we can push as a government uh I believe should be on the table those that comport with our values as a city uh should be on the table in combating the scourge um may God bless comfort that family uh both families of of the arrested and and the victim um and may we keep pushing forward thank you Mr Mayor that's it for me good to see you
you as well Poli good to see you all um shout out to net app uh just left there just just left uh RTP at net apps and uh was on celebrating Black History Month with them as their keynote speaker and um I do not do any public speaking without one informing what's happening in our city and two charging them to get involved and get engaged uh not only civically but also um where we need it most and that's with our children so I'm constantly finding alignment in our own Lanes uh what we do you know NE net apps is a technology company well um to the you know the 50 people that were sitting in the room and the 400 and something online I charge all of them to make sure that they replace themselves with a young person smarter than them and I think that should be all of our charge um but I do want to make sure we have young people to replace us and as I said last
night uh I'll say again especially to the folks who said how dare you blame the parents I'm not blaming anyone um we all are responsible for raising the kids in this community but there makes it makes no sense that you know we have a 14-year-old shooting at state troopers and then killing someone of their own age um in the middle of the night or during the day while playing in snow um I've been in constant communication with the mother of the 15year old um like many parents and it is very uncomfortable which it should be and I hope that more people you know um get involved so you don't have to have those conversations it is very uncomfortable and it's time for us to get uncomfortable and get more proximate with the folks in our community that are living lives outside of our constant Focus um and and I started that charge
with this Council um we we have our political ideals we have our political agendas and then there are real world issues that folks are dealing with on a daily basis that we don't talk about and um I want to make sure that you know we're we're running a government that responds to the needs of the people all people not just the loudest ones and that's every corner in this entire Community not just the ones that are paid to organize and not just the ones that are able to organize to come in here and talk about a specific issue so um those are uncomfortable charges but so be it you know so be it as as it may um this is also our reality uh so thank you net apps for inviting me to speak and thanks for taking the charge um I speak of that because I charge everybody in this room as well each of you all are sitting in your seats right now um because you should you have a concern that you're here
about today I ask that you have a plus one and that is the preservation of life of the young people in this city if that is not your number one priority you might have to wait a little bit when we talk because that is my mine you want to talk about cheeseburgers talk to me about the kids first you want to talk about infrastructure talk to me about the kids first just leave with that let me know that that is a share concern and I'm saying it that way to let you know what my number one priority is okay um welcome Garland Garland Keith Chadwell Deputy city manager who's sitting in today um so y'all didn't know that was his real name it's first name just keep a secret that business out there like that yeah but you know uh you know the these are hard times you know that we that we're talking about here you know but as mayor protim said you know inoc
into proving guilty but we know of a lot of assurances that are happening in this community that we must address and we're going to get to this work today um yes thanks for mentioning the uh the Luna New Year uh we had a ball had a ball had a great time um Mr Deputy city manager if you don't mind I'll pass it over to you for a point of personal privilege thank you so much um Mr Mayor for that for this opportunity U Mr Mayor Mr Mayor protim and members of council I take this opportunity if uh that's granted to me uh to extend a few words of tribute and honor to a city employee who passed away from a on us uh just a few days ago I'd like to bring honor to Mr Julian aroyo a building inspector in the inspections department transitioned uh just a few days ago again after a fairly lengthy illness he was funeralized in Duron yesterday Mr Royo came to us in
2016 after a distinguished stent with the facilities and design unit at Duke University and in our inspections department an operation known in Durham for its Stellar work Mr Royal was a major contributor who was and who was highly valued by his colleagues he was always willing to share his passion for music and I understand was a skilled guitar player on behalf of all of us who work for this great organization we extend to his family and loved ones our support our expressions of condolences and peace and of Life celebration as from his labors he now rests thank you for this opportunity to bring this sharing thank you very much thank you for sharing that um grateful for his service and wishing and praying strength to his family um I just recently was able to meet him during my department in uh Department visits and realized we shared a music background so um thank you good man good man all right
um Mr manager City man Deputy city manager uh you have any priority items today uh yes sir thank you sir um the city manager has one supplemental items for your hearing today the supplemental item that's a presentation uh of of an overview on the housing opportunities for persons with AIDS or hwa program it'll be presented by representative from the Community Development Department uh we anticipate approximately 20 minutes for the presentation thank you that completes our priority thank you I'm Madam attorney welcome you have any priority items thank you I do not Mr Mayor city attorney's office has no priority items thank you madam clerk do you have any priority items I do Mr Mayor thank you very much I wanted to give my um my board committee and commission report yes okay two of the items have consensus with the city council the first the
recreation advisory commission mayoral appointment is Michael Johnston the next the Duram Performing Arts Center oversight committee appointment the nominee for business category is Don Moffett the nominee for the business Community Finance category is Alice L sharp and the third group of nominees um the Durham homeless Services advisory committee appointment for the category of nonprofit organization we have a um a tie between Tasha D Melvin and Drew Wooten with yeah go ahead I'm happy to speak on that since I'm the H te leis on um both candidates incredible folks in our community uh both head up really important um nonprofits uh I did cast my vote for Drew woen and the reason that I did that is because he has been coming to the htac meetings with a lot of really um
concrete plans and ideas and I think that his voice would be really useful on as an actual member of hsac um but I just want to say both of them have had amazing contributions to the community in that sphere so both good choices but I just wanted to explain why um as the Le on what I've what I've been witnessing in the meetings and why I cast my vote for him who did I vote for Madam clerk um one second Mr may protm you voted for Tasha Melvin yeah I was going to say that was the recommendation I voted vasha Melvin as well she came as recommendation from the organization so I eily try to follow that practice uh yeah council member Freeman didn't vote I'm sorry councilman Javiera Caballero yeah GBA okay thank you Mr Mayor got it Mr
Mayor can I suggest that you entertain a motion to accept the manager's priority item yes thanks thank you I'll now entertain a motion to accept the manager's PR item so moved moved been moved in propably second um M CL please call to roll mayor Williams yeah I mean yes I mayor Pro 10 Baker council Nate Baker council member cook and council member wrist I thank you and I do have one more housekeeping item at the Das is a a survey or a poll for the legislative committee meeting next week if you could please mark down your preferences first second and third options um I I'll collect those after the meeting question about that it doesn't have a time we're not this is maybe an hour hour long meeting right it's a little hard to answer the question it's all day long so I'll defer to um Chief Wallace yes and good afternoon Mr Mayor
mayor Pon Baker M Wallace city manag office one hours about what we are anticipating and I want to clarify it is not the uh it is not a legislative committee meeting this is the opportunity for the full Council to meet with our new federal lobbyists um but we're trying to schedule it in a way that everybody can attend but certainly the legislative committee so we're trying to get there yeah Mr Mayor if I might as I indicated to the the clerk I I mean I I I'll pick something today but I I I would feel more comfortable checking with my administrative support see I I don't have no what my schedule is next week but I will I'll get back as timely as possible and also KN if there are any particular like with targets of time I mean those those days are there's things going on some days are less full than others but it's really the particular time so I don't know if that's I did reach out to your administrative support staff um yesterday and ask that they communicate with you to find out the best time that will work for you um but yes the window would certainly be not not to exceed an
hour we hope it's federal government got a lot going on up there so um all right so uh Madam clerk um that concludes your report yes Mr Mayor all right so I'll entertain a motion to uh receive the man the uh Clerk's Report with uh one item the DRM homeless Services advisory committee appointment being on GP okay second it's been more than probably second: please call the RO mayor Williams May Pro Baker council Nate Baker council member cook council member r hi thank you thank you all right I'm going to before we get into this uh Con well I'm going to read the consent agenda um and I I am going to move our citizens matters up
all right I hope I don't look weird because I I Soo Chief of Staff Wallace's glasses thank you for letting me hold [Laughter] them oh man all right uh number one Recreation advisery Commission mayor rooll appointment number two Durham homeless Services advisory committee appointment number three Durham Performing Arts Center oversight committee number four inter local agreement for the distribution of sales tax between the city and dur County number five 2024 durm Planning Commission annual report number six 2024 durm historic preservation commission annual report number seven Duram open space and trials commission annual annual report number number eight Durham city county appearance commission annual report number nine dur Durham Board of
adjustments Durham Board of adjustment annual report number 10 2024 citizens advisory committee annual report number 11 homeless Services advisory committee annual report number 12 amendment number one for contract number 18421 with United minority contractors of North Carolina Incorporated for mwbe minority Women Business Enterprise Workforce section three and Davis bacon Consulting Services pull that one okay it's popular number 13 um well Nate uh council Nate Baker you're taking okay right y you got got it okay cool ja you ever spoil me she just write it right there I look over her notes um number 13 durm Convention Center Authority board 2024 annual report number 14 durm cultural Advisory
Board 2024 annual report number 15 drum environmental Affairs board 2024 annual report 16 third amendment to lease with Duke University du University Health Systems Incorporated for the emergency communications 911 backup center number 17 solid waste management transfer station building number one renovation project design contract with d DTW Architects and planners limited number 18 First Amendment to service agreement for project management consulting services with Turner in towns inhi LLC number 19 ratification of five fiscal year 25 festivals and events contracts pull that one please number 20 Second Amendment to the Professional Services contract with ADW Architects PA for the Durham city fire and Durham County EMS station 19 project number 21 Second Amendment to the workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act adult and dislocated worker program delivery contract with eer youth
alternative Incorporated DBA e connects contract number 1 19714 number 22 benbe Festival headlining booking agent contact contract P that one I'm pulling that [Laughter] too uh number 23 2024 Recreation advisory commission report 24 Sals sell and storage agreement sodium chloride salt and number 25 contract amendment number one for storm water infrastructure repairs SD 20222 that's been pulled by council Nate Baker number 26 utility relocation agreement Ur for storm water drainage system repair and sanitary sewer main relocation project with lrc GB LLC lrc Cordoba LLC number 27 First Amendment to service contract with e+ Technology Incorporated
being pulled by council Nate Baker number 28 contract with e+ Incorporated for the implementation of the metropolitan area network number 29 2024 bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission annual report number 30 Municipal agreement with the North Carolina department departmental transportation for North Roxboro Street at Horton Road and denfield Street project tip W um 5705 AI number 31 purchase of seven replacement light Transit vehicles for goam Access 32 purchase order with Premier water LLC for Iration Basin pumps at the North Dum Water Water Reclamation facility and and we are just for reference consolidation Consolidated annexation palanco residence number 33 number 34 zoning map change h Road assemblage and number 35 overview of
housing opportunities for persons with AIDS hwa that's a presentation all right so that is our consent agenda with items 12 18 19 22 25 and 27 pulled I know all right I'm now going to pull us up back to Citizens matters uh I'll start online first uh I have ad dwen Langley Mr Langley can you hear me
hello council member Freeman see you're watching us good afternoon Mr Mayor can you hear me now I can welcome you have three minutes thank you so very much I want to first start by taking a moment of silence for the 15-year-old that was UN fortunately killed as well as the 2-year-old in Oxford Manor that was unfortunately struck by firearm uh in the L Mr Mayor mayor protim and members of the city council we are at a fierce urgency of now yesterday I saw a comment from our police chief where she said I am screaming and as I recall of maybe a few years ago the police chief made a very appointed statement while she was giving her crime report where she said between the ages of 16 and 24 if you are a young black male and we're talking about here in Durham you are either going to be a victim or a
suspect that statement is ringing true entirely too much in our community the council is about to embark on one of its biggest and most important fiary responsibilities in our community which is budget deliberations as you all begin these deliberations I want you to think about prioritize and put money to the most vulnerable individuals in our community that being boys and young men of color Mr Mayor you said this is a priority Mr Mayor protim you said this is a priority and I imploy upon the other members of council to make this a priority we cannot continue to start Council meetings highlighting or discussing when young people in our community are being injured or arrested without providing an alternative and having a collective Community strategy that is going to support nurture and provide opportunity for our young people
to capitalize on The Economic Opportunity that exist in our community that Prosperity that shared Prosperity is not going to happen with Hollow words it requires action and I would implore each of you to take a look at some of the work being done by the mayor of Baltimore one of the most violent cities in the United States He is investing in people and when we invest in people they have the resources to support to make better decisions and so I'll be reaching out to each one of you asking you what your commitment is because Hollow words are not going to solve this problem and we can't just rely on companies and Mr may I know you just mentioned that you met with meta I would emplore you to start when you start meeting with these companies ask them to make a t ible commitment not just to say that they're going to do something but ask them before you leave what what can I depend on you to do are you going to open your doors to internships are you going to open your doors to developmental opportunities because if they're in this
community and they expect their business to thrive we have to invest in these young people so I thank you all for taking time to listen but what I need more from you all is action thank you so very much Mr Mayor and members of council thank you for your comments uh I met with net apps and they have uh we are now officially starting at charge for them to get more engaged and I'm grateful for that um and when meta comes to town I'll be doing the same with them uh and I do implore everyone to please visit the Bull City future fund uh that is our most direct non red tape way of supporting directly into the youth uh saving uh organizations in the city um good all right the other person on line is a resource
okay all right first up I have Miss buris welcome thanks for being here yeah just press the button on the right okay there you go hello to the mayor and mayor proam already I'm disappointed and I'm G say why mayor you gave a valuable point just now if we're in it you need to show some sign people are here on their own agendas and because their agenda didn't come forth they left just like they do in church when the sermon get ready to come up you leave well being a preacher of the gospel and being led by the Holy Spirit the young man that was charged with or being charged or allegedly being charged happened to be one of the young men in my neighborhood that was living in the complex right across the street I tried to reach out to Mom nobody would give me
uh his address or anything like that I talked to that young man several times about being in trouble now look where he is today then we got the deceased young man's mother dealing with death now if y'all never lost a child you don't know how it feels so I wish people would stop saying they understand how an individual feel because you don't I live in East durm I am the co- facilitator down there for district five pack five Partners against Crime we got five of those districts I constantly ask y'all thank you may for showing up thank you Nate Baker for showing up and our last meeting it it's not but one Saturday or two Saturdays out of a month or five that we ask y'all to come to our meetings and give us two hours or 45 minutes to talk about this I live through the gunfire I live through running in my house I'm standing today as a community leader because I'm boots
on the ground but we talk about love we are far from it we worried about the administrator don't worry about the White House we need to be concerned with local level and see what we're going to do about our children now everything that needs to that was supposed to be in East dur right now has been taken from us no community centers nothing going on I can't get a man with a pair a pair of britches on to come down there and help me talk to some of these young folks they look at me as Mama Auntie Nana Grand I don't care that's fine but why is me being a female that I have to be the one talking to a male child and I'm grateful I was a single parent I came through the ranks my son is now 40 years old and doing very well but it was hard I had some males around here whether they were any good or not good halfway male whatever they was around where are we really where is our priorities today where are we y'all get paid I don't get paid I'm boots on the
ground I'm losing stuff just like all of y'all but I'mma tell y'all something you hear me today the good is going to suffer with the bad so y'all see sitting up here you know chilling like Willie I get a paycheck you in all your meetings eating drinking coffee I been in corporate I know what I'm saying born and raised in Washington DC okay so y'all can have all the meetings you want to that's irrelevant I need you to get out of the meetings and come down on ground level thank you thank you uh Pastor bur uh next person I have is re Smith from what button okay it's on hello I'm re Smith um hello to the mayor and all city council I am a lifelong resident of durm North Carolina I stay in East
durm I purchased a home through the habitat program and just trying to better myself cuz I've moved around durm over 42 times in trying to find safe and affordable housing so that's why I joined the Habitat for Humanity program I finally moved into my home September 2021 and since then it's been nothing but hell right on the corner of East M where the new shell is it's a sense of lawlessness people know they can come over there for prostitution the drug activity the drug sellers pull up in their cars on East Main and Laurel and stay there sell their products and have no respect for the citizens or the or
myself or the other homeowners that stay on Laur Avenue there was a drug bus over there and the police is always saying well we don't have enough police and if you help them out then there's communication sent back in the community and then the community is looking at you or looking at me as a snitch or or person so as I'm driving by through the drug deals people are literally watching me in my face and that's making me very very uncomfortable and um the school children are walking through the drug deals in the mornings in the evening getting on the bus getting off the bus when is it going to stop when is the the police going to be the the the police someone dispatched to curtail this activity it's just like
that area of town it's like oh well um um oh it's just blacks over there so it continues and enough is enough I don't feel safe I used to walk East durm all the way around Golden Belt and everything trying to get my exercise but now I don't even feel safe because that night the one of the last times that shot spotter was in place I used to work um at an urgent care center and I was coming home and and as soon as I rounded the corner that's when the bullets rang out and a half a second less me and my car would have been shot up and um enough is enough so I I really don't know how much more I can take in In Living in that um thank you thank you and and and I I
um I know exactly what you're saying I've spent time with you all and um just keep showing up and I did send the itemized list as you requested thank you um and what I just what she's referencing I did ask community members to send me uh I believe community members should be a part of uh a part of the solution to to feeling safer and I asked them to send me an itemized list of what they think they you know need in their Community um as I said there's an underworld in this city that exists that we tend to ignore and uh I hope that we could really start paying attention to it but I have been charging community members with coming to city council and sharing those those realities with us I've ridden my bike over there I've driven over there I know exactly what they're talking about it is true so thank you uh last speaker I have is Shanetta Burris
thank you Mr Mayor and to everybody else here for your time uh I am here as a representative of myself as a local entrepreneur and business owner uh and also on behalf of a number of entrepreneurs in the community so in September a number of us participated in a program that was funded by the city or was supposed to have been funded by the city it was the momentum financial academy was a great program it was a business accelerator we did a lot of great things they instructed us through this program to get ready to receive $20,000 in grant funding we were told that we would receive this money in 30 to 45 days we were instructed to make a number of plans to reach out to other businesses to help us with our funding with our growth with all the things that we needed we also were instructed to take on insurance contracts that we didn't necessarily need but that we were told were necessary to receive this funding from the
city we're at almost five months none of us have received the dollar we've lost this money and we've heard nothing tangible from anybody involved with the program in fact when I've reached out to people in the city I've been told by people in the program that we shouldn't be reaching out to anybody that we should go directly through them which is counterintuitive to me because if I don't get an from you I'm not going to talk to you it's a waste of my time so as a business owner who is invited into this program and was told that this was going to help my business to sit here repeatedly monthly being built for something that I don't need and to hear nothing but I I mean I wish I got excuses I haven't even gotten excuses and lately I've been told that now this funding which should have been in financial year fy2 24 has been held up by the current Administration which is patently
unacceptable so frankly I want to know where our money is we all want to know where our money is and we want to know that our city officials are invested in making sure that the programs that bear your city's name are doing what they're supposed to be doing because many of them aren't many of them this isn't the only one this is the most egregious example I've seen but you need to to be aware that a lot of the programs that pretend that they are helping entrepreneurs in the city are in fact doing the exact opposite so I would love some attention to this matter because let me tell you as a small business owner who was recently separated from my wife 20,000 would go a long way for me and I don't know what's going to happen with this environment none of us do right but I know that typically I love Durham but right now I'm not really feeling Durham's dopeness so thank you thank you um and I uh I did request that you
know uh uh those concerns were shared publicly today and I'd like a response um good afternoon Mr Mayor mayor proam members of council my name is Nixon I'm the acting director for the office of Economic and Workforce Development um first of all let me say Mr Ros I I definitely uh sympathize uh with you um $20,000 can be a big help I I sympathize with the concerns that you have about the program um I will offer as an explanation and not an excuse that um these are federal funds that are being passed and of late we have um some concerns have surfaced um related to some compliance
issues and so before we can continue the money is coming out um those compliance issues have to be addressed and those compliance issues are being addressed by the department um again not an excuse but in the interim we do have uh plans to um engage an alternate source of funding so that the funds so that the $20,000 can be um um awarded I would hope and I would like to think that even outside the $20,000 that you got a lot of valuable knowledge and experience with the program but to your point if the grant was a part of what you are anticipating that is what you will have and so right now we are exploring and Alternate Source of funding um and um it is our every intention of our department to make sure that uh those awards are
made yes there question go ahead and ask questions and um thank you Mr Nixon just while you're up here I the one other piece that I heard from Mr Ramos was that there has been a lack of communication or responsiveness can you address that piece for us as well yeah I I asked for an actual detailed listing of the communications and I have a number Communications from um November December January um both to individual participants of the program and group participants now you know to be blunt a communication of that sounds like the runaround is not much of a commun so I understand I understand what he's saying but there has been it's not zero contact at all hasn't been no no communication maybe not adequate communication or maybe communication that is not resulted in the $20,000 I think that is where we are um but um those Communications I have
looked at them today and I've seen where Communications have gone out um but if you don't have the $20,000 you know you can keep telling me a lot of things I do not want to minimize uh Mr Ramos or any other of our um uh participants uh feelings regarding this um so this something that definitely will be addressed we just get uh do you have a a timeline uh that that Mr OS can can expect uh and what what are sort of next steps there and so um the alternate source of funding we anticipate over the next 30 to 45 days some checks can be cut and by the way I'm I'm a look you I've heard that the 30 to 45 days from when you finish a program you going get the money I've heard that I don't know if that's anything we've actually officially stated but nonetheless I'm I stand here
now and um uh I'll work around within the next 40 30 to 45 days now obviously there going to be some compliance issues some things that have to happen to make sure you get the money as before but definitely um um we're going to be aggressively pursuing um um making sure that these payments go out just to be more blunt on that one can we give Mr Ramos a deadline we we often say but would can we say a date so we have a clear metric there either he has the funds or he doesn't today is February the 6 might got a calendar give me 45 days from February 6 45 days okay March 23rd is that it what day does that fall on that's a Sunday so March 20 24th
yeah so matter of fact let me now I got to make myself a note all right so I have until March 24th now of course that's going to be pending the still going to be some requirements have to be met to get the money you know and and those type of things but um assuming we get all the information that we need March 24th will be a drop dat that we uh would anticipate and um yeah I'll stop there Mr Mayor if I may that uh time frame was given to me uh prior to the meeting and just want to share with Council that the administration uh is is going to put hands on the review um this is an unacceptable scenario for us and we're I'm I'm not going to counter that particular deadline at this point as deadlines are certainly necessary when something this is egregious has occurred but I just want to add that uh we
certainly hope to have this completed well in advance of that particular thank thanks U Mr Mayor Mr Nixon good to see you you too um so on this business we know whenever Federal money is cut there's all kind of strings and attached and and and thresholds you have to cross and things you have to meet so my first question is when you say compliance issue you're talking about on our side not the FED side so so what what what type of challenges did we meet with our responsibilities for compliance specifically what did we not do I am thinking more along the lines of the of the federal side there are some there's some certain environmental requirements that had to be met by us uh By Us yes that we had to meet that came into question well we're not sure that we've been doing this we're not sure that this piece is done and it related to um environmental assessments could you be more spe what did we not do what
specifically um there was not a documented verification that the people that received the grant awards were not harming the environment anybody that get these funds one of the things is when if you're getting Community this is Community Development block grant money when you're getting this money one of the things you have to one of the boxes you have to check is this money is not going to an entity that is going to harm the environment so now we're giving these to small business owners barber shops you know those kind of things they're not going to harm the environment and so uh um I think that um there was a more thorough and a more uh deliberate um the decision was made that that need to be deliberately addressed and not just assuming that these things aren't happening right I and I it's a more formalized process is what I'm saying we we have to more formally say this Barber Shop's not
going to harm the environment that kind of thing right and and and I don't want to you know mischaracterize or oversimplify your representation but you're not saying we didn't get they didn't get their money because we didn't check a box we what was it is this a Personnel issue is it someone wasn't familiar with the federal standards or I'm still trying to understand because obviously it's not as simple as checking a box I mean what did we it's it's it's not that and I'm and I'm and I'm you know and I'm trying not to um this Community Development block grant money is is managed by another department in the City Community Development Department and so they're our compliance arm and so they tell us hey you can give the money everything's done here's the money okay so what has happened is they've come up and said wait a minute there's a piece that hadn't gotten done right and we need to go back and do this piece and so we're working with them to resolve that Mr manager is there any um symmetry
between this issue and the $100,000 we approved uh last time for a firm uh to deal with compliance issues are these are these related none whatsoever Mr Mayor protim uh this program dates back uh to the covid period and this sourcing of the Community Development block grant monies uh were outside of our normal allocations they were additional allocations uh ironically awarded to operations who have proved worthy of being able to manage them uh successfully uh and the the even transcending I think the normal compliance activity that Mr Nixon is now trying to explain even through several years postco that they're awarded and we're still in a compliance period where this is still El to use um there are statements Associated that have to that that have to be proven that um state
with some certainty that we've given this award to an operation that met a deficit that they experienced during covid okay and that's another one of the reviews that U I think our compliant are uh thought we we could have been lacking in okay thank you for that so as a fiduciary of this city when I hear alternate sources of funding of course my antenna go up we pass a budget every diamond penny that we give to each department is accounted for I my that's my suspicion when I when I vote for a budget so one when when you say alternate versus a what does that mean and if we are to cut and I'm not interested in cutting checks from Ultimate sources just to save City's face to get in trouble with the feds on the back I mean if we cut these checks and then the feds ultimately release the money is that a reimburse are we just reimbursing ourselves so what do you mean by alternate sources or other than the federal money that we get what are those sources and I'm sorry I don't have the number but we came to council a couple of months ago with an arpa
contract okay and we wanted to use arpa dollars to continue the momentum program the same program okay and so what I've decided is listen let's use the arpa money now and we'll work with Community Development on the back end to clean up those issues so we're going to use the ARA money now we were going to put the ARA money on the end now we're going to use the ARA money now Council has already approved it it's for this purpose so we're going to use the arpa money now and then hopefully by that time we would have gotten all the issues we need to to address so we can return back to uh the Community Development block grant money so the Alternate Source or the AR money yes but that's Federal money too isn't it yes it doesn't it doesn't quite come with the same environment aspects of the compliance piece it will it will carry over uh the r the uh covid impact but it will not carry out the the the the complexity associated with the environmental reviews and some of the normal kinds of things that would come with a cdbg money so if we use arpa money now to cut these checks how then
do we account what how we account for the money that's coming from the other Federal Source if and when we get that money if they've already gotten their checks how do we how what was the question if we're going to you if we're if we're going to use alternate sources namely arpa money to pay them now what then Becomes of the source that they were supposed to be paid from is that money does that just go away when that money comes to us are we refunded how do we report that money to the feds so that money is still available to us but it'll it'll probably go to a future cohort okay I'll have some more questions but I I I'll deal with staff after this I'll yield now to any other questions colleagues might have thank you Mr Mayor thank you let's uh I think with this you know clear as mud yeah well I I think you know this is when I say uh you know I I've learned to appreciate bureaucracy but it's a LoveHate relationship I understand that you know we have some federal ties to this money
and compliance but I I do want us to start think and this is just a a a culture shif in government in general but we do need to start thinking more about the enduser more about the customer service aspect of it uh because this stuff is really complex we have very capable professionals like you guys to understand it I I couldn't even begin to understand the complexities of compliance with federal dollars but I do understand hey this is the city just giving you a call we're dealing with some things we working on it um and that'll that'll I I don't as mayor want to have to get a call because of not fully understanding the system because I'm going to make sure that I dig into it myself but also I want to make sure that you know folks feel like their government is working with them and for them so uh just at the end of the day the bigger picture is it's customer service so understood and I appreciate you all figuring this out good thank you thank you
right we now have the item 12 items first all right I'm sorry one last question sorry just for cl go ahead so has the city has the city of Duran made a representation today by date certain we're cutting checks to individuals is is that my understanding is that the is that the administration's understanding that we are we have committed to cut checks by a date certain or was that just a someone to be clear about that we established 45 days as an outdate for those checks to be uh cut with an Ardent effort to make sure that it doesn't take that long and how many how many checks are we talking about how many interests are we talking about it could be as many as 13 totaling approximately how much 20,000 each that's 2 60 all right thank you thank you Mr Mayor Mr could you turn that mic off for me up there thank you all right number 12 was
pulled by council member cook this is amendment number one for contract number 18421 with United minority contractors North Carolina Incorporated for mwbe Workforce Section 3 and Davis bacon Consulting Services hi Mr Johnson um okay I have I have a few questions about this um so I'm going to try and put them into a logical order here but I guess I understand that we have a city an internal City goal of a compliance rate in Contracting with minority or women-owned businesses and that was City set when we did the bond is that correct no uh
Nate Baker uh director Community Development Department with the city of Durham the seven and 11% goals have been uh established with the city for some time much longer before the uh Bond and those not by Community Development those have been uh set by previous administrations and so we are using part of the bond Grant to do this work to ensure that we meet these percentages is that right uh no ma'am that's not uh correct actually we're using uh dedicated housing fund dedicated housing fund to uh for this kind contract okay so it is but is coming out of dedicated housing fund money um and and the only connection that it has with housing is that these companies
will be contracted around this topic is that am I understanding this correctly uh no that's maybe should just explain what because I have read this memo several times and I'm just going to be frank with you that I don't think that makes a lot of sense um and it's also a pretty big increase in money um it's it's what like a 30% increase and the contract that is provided on our agenda has exactly zero details on it so if you could just maybe explain why we need to meet these percentages why this is the money coming out of forever home Durham why that that money is coming forever home Durham and then what the um contract why we need the add money and what that contract hopes to gain for us yes I'll be glad to uh this is one of the uh major tenants when we talk about minority and women on participation uh in forever home Duram that was one of the uh I would say constructs or agreements or tenants when the bond was put forth before the public uh one of
the things that was shared that we will uh work and be aggressively uh in pursuing women-owned and minority owned businesses and the work that we do not just with the bond but all of the work that was part of forever home Duram uh previous to that Community Development had just been using uh in part the city's operations in terms of minority and women own uh participation but with this we needed to be more uh more direct more aggressive and so we uh said to the public that we would actually uh engage that uh uh firm to be able to help us with minority own business is to make sure that we were inclusive uh and adverse as possible uh one of the things that uh if you recall 58 million of the bond which of 95 bill goes to the Housing Authority the Housing Authority does use these uh services to uh help develop uh minority
owned businesses uh pursue them also include them in working with uh contractors General Contractors uh one of the other pieces that part of forever dur also requires because we have federal funds involved we have to do section three uh and also because some other funds involved we have to do the uh Davis bacon and so we need assistance to be able to do that all of those are requirements uh for using these funds and one of the things we wanted to do as a community was make sure and ensure that is part of uh affordable housing creation that Minority and women own business businesses were included I I understand the goal and I and I also want to be clear that I support that goal I just I think where I'm getting stuck is that I'm having trouble understanding why we're expending this much money to do a
something that is a city goal that we then know that we have the city goal with every project that we are taking on what we don't have the capacity to do it in house and so then we have to spend money to contract that out which is money then that does not get put towards housing right and this is a pot of money that is meant to be for housing and this is like the biggest crisis that we have in the city so that I'm I'm kind of getting stuck there okay I I definitely understand can appreciate that what I would first begin to share is that the reality is that for some of the funds that we use there's an expense and cost to be able to use them in a particular way uh that's the reason we have staff the reason we have to follow the rules and all of those things and it has a cost to it so it's not uh free if you will uh the other part is is saying that we needed to be specifically be aggressive with that was a important part here to for uh with
Community Development the resources that we had in the programs that we had prior to uh Bond we were able to do it because it was smaller programs this if you see you know with the numbers that we have uh shared we're doing way more uh funding uh and not only that it's more complex because we part of the firm and we have the representative of the firm here can talk about the work that they have to do with the general contractors to ensure that minority owned contractors are invited that they have the opportunity to be to help them prepare their uh bid so that they are in fact uh competitive uh in terms of participation and selected and so without this contract we don't feel like the city can provide the adequate support we need in order to prepare folks to get that Federal funding is that oh I would say definitely not definitely not definitely not but we not we not not not in terms of how we construct it now okay but we have had it previously but just for
maybe less complex and less large federal grants I would say so and the increase that we're seeing here can you explain why that amount has why we're extending the term as opposed to why we didn't have that in the original contract well I'm going what I'll do is I'll explain then I'll have uh in part and then I'll have uh Miss Renee Jones to come and speak uh in in detail one of the reasons that we did we knew that we would have it for initial period of time because we wanted to be able to assess whether we needed to continue so there was a uh break we didn't have a contract for with the firm and this is in a couple of other areas too for the entire period of forever home during and so we broke it in into parts and so we will have had a chance to begin and from the beginning and now we're at a point where um we almost uh you know better than halfway uh through but we still need to continue the work because a lot of the
funding uh is still is going to fall within uh the framework that Minority and women owned businesses uh need to be have the to participate uh I'll let Miss Renee Jones uh talk a little bit more in detail uh in terms of the actual expenditures good afternoon councilman um I'm Renee Jones and I am the Project Lead for United minority contractors Association um so uh councilman cook can you reiterate your question yeah so I mean I guess my question is why we're sort of changing this contract and amending it and increasing when I I heard Mr Johnson say we're a little bit more than halfway through we still have a lot of the funding that needs to be potentially distributed and and folks that might like to be contractors but surely we kind of foresaw that it wouldn't all be done by
now so why why was the contract written in such a way that we would have to then amend and add money moving forward that I cannot answer you that's my question that that's my that's my my question uh uh and that's where I was sharing with it was intentional that we would not uh go the entire period we wanted to have a break in contract and we had the opportunity to maybe in fact not uh pro move forward but we have elected uh and made the decision that it was best because of the work that we've seen and the impact that has had that's the answer to that question question I think the question that you were trying to ask for Miss Jones was the question about well what is it that they do and why does it cost what it does I I would like to know that because I mean again the the contract and and we just probably don't have the original contract but the amendment to the contract is literally like please keep going thank you here's a lot more dollars and that's literally it I mean
it's like four lines long so maybe you could just give us a little Baseline about what the original contract looked like what what the what the tangibles are that we receive from that contract in this so the contract consists of uh probably three main areas one is to do Outreach to the um mwbe firms which is minority and women oned firms one is to help the contract the general contractors and the developers to create and Implement a a Workforce Development plan which covers your section three requirements and the third part is to do all of the compliance on the Davis bacon which is the workforce compliance that's associated with all the federal dollars so a lot of it is compliance uh most of the contract uh monitoring that we do is compliance that is a requirement for the federal government the other is helping um
developers who don't necessarily uh work with small businesses um to understand the process to also help the general contractors who may be new to working with small businesses or minority and women on businesses especially if they are not local to this area so understanding who the players are um where they can be located what their capacity is um when is the best time and the best way to communicate with them what resources they have as far as Workforce Development programs that are local who are the nonprofits that they can work along with so we are uh helping them with all of those types of things uh so that they can meet the compliance requirements um set out by the city um which is some city um requirements and
some federal requirements um Mr Johnson may go back to you one more time and then I'm going to I think some other folks have some questions I'm going to pass it off for now um you said just a minute ago that it was intentional that the contract wouldn't run all the way through so that we could reassess that the St staff has made the decision that we do want to continue this contract can you just give us a brief sort of breakdown of how that decision was reached well that yes that the the decision was reached based upon the results and the reports that uh the um firm provides to us uh made it in based upon the uh percentages and the the efficacy of the work that they've been doing uh based upon what work we need to do moving forward I'm gonna be done for now and and uh I would also say one of the reasons that the amendment and we can provide the contract original contract
which has the original uh Scopes in detail we're not changing making any changes to that but the uh amendment is uh just adding money and time which is the reason it's the length that ites there was no reason to add anything in terms of change of scope remember WR um looking at this here so I want to continue that line of question but sort of taking a little different direction so going back to the um when we passed the bond I remember this discussion at the community level this is a big major investment we're talking $160 million investing right and often public Investments are an amazing way to engage minority and women on businesses in the work that we do in the city to give them a chance to to thrive as businesses right so that's a key objective not only here but for the City generally right um so I I I appreciate the the work we're doing in that regard and I appreciate
2 to um uh minority on business is that correct so yes those are just the the numbers for Durham County firms right we just talking about a contract for Durham right we're not talking about this is what we're talking about right we're not talking about for scye or awake right so what the um office CDD had asked me to do is to break down all of the committed to all the mwbe firms and show it by location so in order for you to get a total
to add up all of the numbers right so you're saying so these are so these are potentially W County owned firms could be having could be working on these projects in Durham and that's why we have that's why we waken for Scythe yes you do have a number of firms mwbe firms coming from other counties that that's good um and again I also I appreciate I I understand that the work you have to do is to part of the what you're saying Mr Johnson is that you need a partner to help you identify firms to do training an Outreach right and do and do tracking so I get all that piece I guess my question is on a very basic level is if if our goal here is to uh is to have 11% of total Contracting opportunities award to minority on firms and 7% of total Contracting awarded to women on firms did we reach that goal in the first phase because I see I see absolute numbers millions of dollars I guess if we add up wake Durham for scth whatever but my question is did we reach the goal of 11% for minority un firms and 7%
women un firms yes we actually exceeded that goal um hold on one second I'll grab my I want to that's what I love to see those number so we can see that because we don't that's not in our packet we don't it's not clear so uh to date the the goals that have been met are actually um about 13% for minority owned firms and 12 for women owned firms and can we can can we get a copy of that can we see that love to see that data that's what information yeah love to see that if you could send it to the council afterwards yeah thank
you thank you um Mr May and I I thank my colleagues for their line of questioning uh firstly I want to shout out United minority contractors they do very good work well regarded um in our states it's good to have you with us I um I appreciate my colleagues um line of inquiry but I I you know I think I think it should be said that we do this kind of stuff for all kinds of stuff across our city and infinitum we we bring in contractors to cut hedges in the middle of Highways we we bring in folk we just spend a bunch of money we have real estate professionals on staff but we just spend a bunch of money to get real estate professionals to go look for a potential area for us to bring to build a water treatment facility so you know as a government you know the main thing we do is we collect money and we spend money um we don't have the the the fleet capacity to do all all of our street work if that if that if we were to buy enough trucks and hire enough people to
do everything we needed to build sidewalks we wouldn't be a government anymore we'd be a a construction business and that that's the case in any number uh of areas um I think that um in terms of you know governments historically and why I'm comfortable with with Outsourcing how well we're doing with minority and and when and business on women is that there's always a a a temptation to grade yourself on a curve in this type of work I don't care how well-intentioned you are as a government there's a reason why we don't let students grade their own papers in school um we we we you know we we've always historically as well-meaning as Durham is have been tempted as governments to grade ourselves better than what we're doing so the contract extension uh for me kind of I mean it it this type of scrutiny I would bring to every contract we've done that that falls with you know if we have limited capacity within our government to do a number of things but never enough to do all that's needed um which is why we tax
and which is why we spend money uh on contract so I I remember when we passed the bond we were obsessed with making sure that with all this financial windfall that that Minority uh businesses would would participate in it and we didn't have the capacity within our own City to make sure because we we need people doing that all the time but as we're dealing with one contract we need to be looking down the road as well for other work so so we needed our people to be able to do things but continue to do other things you know we don't we don't pass budgets five years at a time we P we pass a budget every year because we can't anticipate what we're going to need so we you know we pause we take a snapshot we assess um I don't know that I would have wanted to give you $5 million up front without getting an assessment of the work product that we got after you know snapshot or after certain amount of time uh to seeing if it was worth extending but I'm I I understand the work I understand where it emanates from um I'm very comfortable
with it I also understand that on on any given day there contracts that we'll see today and and other contracts um what really gets me are these construction changes millions of dollars and and then the question is did we not know we needed the toilets on the left side as opposed to the right side of the building when we first uh started off and and we spent ridic ulous amounts of money and changes and amendments to contracts all the time and all I'm simply saying is is um if we're going to bring that level of scrutiny to this one then we we've got a whole bunch of work to do uh on a bunch of other contracts um I think this work goes directly to a critical uh value and goal of this city which is to to not only um get minority contractors but also you know we're experts at hiring Consultants but also to bring in minority Consultants to help us get those minority contractors because that's become a cottage industry in in and of itself identifying the folk
who you need to get so um I'm I'm comfortable with it for what it's worth I I I appreciate and this is our job as council members but I I I would just say that there's a whole bunch of money we spend on contract amendments and extensions um and to be quite honest I you know six months later after we spend that money don't know what the results are if we got the desired results sometimes it's a year later when they come back and give us a report but um I'm I'm heartened to hear uh that we've met and exceeded our goals um we have not with vision zero and we're spending money on that so there's a whole bunch of goals we need to uh you know look at and assess whether we're getting the proper bank for our buck so thank you Mr Mar thank you colleagues thank you Council M cook um yes and thank you mayor ptim I think you brought up a couple really good points and and the reason for for me bringing this one under particular scrutiny is because unlike those those contracts that we do where we contract out an
activity this we are Contracting out the finding of the person with whom we will then contract out the ability rate it's like one extra step removed um but this has been really helpful I I would like to see um Deputy city manager I would like to see those statistics added to to our packet um for the public but I would also like to see that original contract I think the the thing that really struck me reading through this was that the information that we were provided really didn't wasn't really helpful in in understanding what was going on and and why that increase was needed so um if those two things could get added to the agenda that would be great I've already communicated your desire for that thank you right and um I'm going to ask a more simple question the work that this contractor is doing are there organizations or potential Partners in our community um in our Network rather of resources that
already do this work or do we need to be very specific with an agency to work with us well and I just a little context I asked because I know that the chamber and the county had did some similar things around trainings and around you know creating a network being able to go out and find you know just finding folks to do uh all types of uh jobs or fill contracts with local municipalities I'm just I don't know if those things are related or not but well I would say uh Mr Mayor that we actually issued a request for proposals for this work and we did have multiple firms that uh did propose and the mcnc uh was the one that w out on the request for proposals uh to select for this service okay thank you yeah go ahead just want to reiterate
councilman Cook's comments I think we had a similar discussion just our last work session about I think this was about a Workforce contract same thing where the where the backup was simply not sufficient to really fully understand did we get success from the initial phase of the contract so I just want to reiterate that request to have little more backup so we can understand if this is an extension for for successful completion of a project we just want to see how that decision was arrived at and I agree with May Pam 100% we get a ton of contracts we certainly have prerogative to like look at any of those right it's part of our job our fiary responsibility and so I appreciate Council m c pulling this one I had the same concerns and just want to make sure that as we review contracts in the future we have that full backup so we can make good decisions as council members thank you thank you thank you what's that next one all right council member cook uh item number 18 First Amendment service
agreement for project management consulting services with Turner and Nate Baker LLC no one will be surprised to learn that this is kind of similar to the conversation that we were just having um and this is a bit different because and I'm just sry I'm part pulling it up right now but my memory um if my memory serves me that we have we already had a contract this is to um enlarge that contract to include the recent Bond uh Park recent Parks bonds um and so I was just hoping you could talk a little bit about the original contract um and then I'm I'm particularly interested because I know that a lot of Outreach work has already been done with the community and then some preliminary designs which designs which I know are not like buildable as they've been done but there has been already quite a bit of work put in by City staff and so how that gets Incorporated with this Consulting
7 million contract so this is an amendment to that contract to include specifically the bond projects um and then your second question was how does the initial work done for those projects get incorporated into this um so we had done uh and we hired a firm that did the initial planning for the bond projects and so we're basically using that to start the projects this specific contract though is for professional project management services so we are going through RFQ processes to bring on the Architects and Engineers to design design those projects specifically for The Aquatic Center we've already selected the uh Architecture Firm as well as the construction manager so the next step is to bring that contract for to the city council for those Professional Services and for that preconstruction and then
for the Long Meadow East End projects we are in the RFQ process to actually select the designers and the construction manager okay and so for the project management did we do an RFP or because we were already contracted with um town and Turner and Baker did we just expand that contract we are expanding their contract the initial Services came from a government procurement contract where they offer those Professional Services so the firm was selected from a government procurement contract and did we did we do an original RFP to contract with Turner in towns in a previously before the bond stuff came up again that firm came from that government procurement contract that offers those Professional Services okay okay and can you just explain that process to me how that how that comes about the government procurement yeah um so the city the purchasing department they work with vendors that respond to
qualification based selection and it's a repository for City staff to use for different services for Professional Services for goods and so they were a vendor that offered professional project management services on that government procurement contract that we selected from and we received a proposal and we negotiated their fees okay okay so just not exactly the RFP process but sort of with aspects it's like prev vetted vendors that go through that process okay and then you said we'll be seeing the rfps for the other pieces um and then the these folks have been working with us though and so they are aware of all I just want to lose or have to redo I mean we talked a little bit and I know this is not exactly what this contract is about but we talked a little bit about a few weeks ago about Community engagement and these things that we're sort of Outsourcing and and potentially duplicating and I just don't want to lose all of the effort that has gone in to this already but it sounds like
they're already they've been around they're aware of all that work that's been done um this firm has been with us for over a year now so they're really just augmenting our our project management staff but we'll be working with the Design Consultants incorporating all that pre-planning that was done in the previous phase for the aquatics and for the parks okay thank you those are my questions any other questions on this matter all right thank you thank you all right number 19 ratification of five fiscal year 2025 festivals fiscal year 25 festivals and events contracts uh the contribution to my gray hairs last year so uh counc member yeah thank you um my question is just simple I'm just I just want to make sure I understand what's going on here is this is this just kind of clean up these are contracts that were already approved we're just sort of ratifying them or what's the the timing of this would would be helpful good afternoon uh mayor
mayor protm um Rebecca Holmes for the general services department the city Attorneys Office can uh answer any questions about why the ratification is coming forth but Services have already been rendered that's what I thought yeah is is I guess that good afternoon Carlos Shan is with the city attorney's office what was your question question was so these are contracts have already been have already been executed the work has already been done so so this is a clean up here yeah so um for the sake of the organizations that had the festivals we had the city manager execute those contra conts to get the funds out however uh the ratification does need to be done by the council in order to comply with state law I mean wouldn't we usually ratify this before they're executed well if the scope of work of a contract has already been performed then yes you would normally ratify them prior to execution uh however uh during the
way the RFP process happened uh there wasn't enough time to execute them prior to these festivals occurring and the organizations needed to have the fund so um this ratification is uh checking a box to make sure we comply so we essentially so we essentially paid them and then the contract came later or no no no after the execution of the contract we paid them but the the festival happened without the city's involvement uh even though we had given kind of we're paying them retroactively essentially they were given notice by the city of an award uh and so they continued with their festival and so this is complying with that award follow up with payment yeah okay okay thank you other questions great by me your honor and and you as well that's P pull by the full delegation all may protim I'll kick off
with you thank you Mr Mayor this is actually what gave me gray hairs good afternoon mayor mayor proam and Council I'm Kristen Perez from The Parks and Recreation Department Kristen thank you so much think it was a good afternoon let me firstly just just celebrate um the incredible thing that BBE is uh I think it'll be 55 years this this year so double nickels this year it has been a mainstay on our City's social calendar it's been a pull from our region uh each year I don't know how many times I've had a towel in the front row jumping up and down uh to some artists uh out there even before getting elected so I just want to celebrate um how awesome BBE is and and uh thank all those folk from all over the state who come to Durham for Ben Bay and who plan on coming uh this may as well um so we
know that last year we hit a glitch um out of 55 years uh we hit a glitch uh last year and I I wanted to First say I was pleased um clearly we learned some lessons some of the things that were codified uh in our contract agent must uh have written confirmation with the artist we need access to to social media platforms we want the artist to do a video those are all great things and I think they indicate that we've learned I do have a couple of of specific questions though um and this may not be for you it may be for the city manager's office what is the status of our repayment from last here's uh contract right got up like he knew that question was coming well actually I'm Fred Lamar with the city attorney's office um I see that um the City attorney uh Kim's Kim Ray Bird's not here right now but I'll do my best to answer that question there she is um so could you repeat the the question yeah
councelor rayberg I I asked I celebrated BBE first and then I asked what is the status of the repayment agreement with the city from last year's contract from B Bay sure and I actually count uh copied the city council on an email that I just sent to the media about this so um as we all know Mr weeks who was the contractor last year defaulted on uh his ability to deliver on the contract and in June of last year the city attorney's office negotiated an agreement with him that involved a repayment plan as as well as him executing what's called a consent judgment um that the city could use to enforce payment should he not comply with the repayment plan he made a $5,000 lump sum payment in June so um started on the payment plan but uh quickly fell off the wagon so in September the city attorney's office
actually recorded that consent judgment which has been docketed in both Durham and counties for execution but he appears to be largely um judgment proof at this point there's nothing that we can levy on to collect on the Judgment um based on that he has reached out to the city to ask about reimplementing the payment plan um we had a brief discussion with the city manager day before yesterday about that he is amenable to that it doesn't impact the city's ability to collect on the Judgment that it has so that will remain out there for 10 years or until it's paid so that's the status of the legal action against last year's contractor thank you uh very much for that and and just to be clear this is someone that we've used before uh in the past this this was this wasn't somebody that just kind of fell out of the sky this is someone we had had relationship with and a history with um correct you can come back up that yes that is correct we have used
him in the past and we're completely successful with him bringing the UN promised Talent okay um so so HBCU uh uh booking is is is a PR pretty reputable company well known in HBC HBCU circles have we given any guidance uh in terms of uh and I got a bunch of letters one year from from one of the artists that performed at B Bay a bunch um have we given any any or will we give any guidance to the Artist as to the city's preference uh first off communicating it's a family event and preference to radio versions as opposed to explicit versions when they perform is that is that anywhere noted I know that there's been a lot of communication I haven't handled the contract in the past um there's been a lot of communication to specify our um interest in that and that this is a familyfriendly I know we did run into of that a couple years ago um I do not know offand if it is in the contract I know we've added a lot to it to make it stronger um I don't believe that that I
looked at the contract I I didn't see yeah and and and that because I read it doesn't mean that it's not in there I could have very much overlooked it but I would I would be interested in in con conveying uh and again not censorship because all of these artists there's a reason why they made radio versions to begin with to have played on on air um and I remember I got a bunch of of letters about an artist one year so I would be interested in conveying the family nature of the event um and the the the the songs that they do have radio quote unquote clean versions of that would be our preferred ones as opposed to the uh explicit versions when they perform um looking forward I've already got my towel picked out and spot on the lawn picked out looking forward to a great uh time and uh thank you for the incredible work you do parks and wreck and and all the folk there it's a it's it's a super super hot festival and and it's one of the things that makes durm dope continues to make us dope so thank you Mr Mayor a y any other questions
so I know what we have in documentation um uh just for the sake of me not getting a thousand phone calls of what are we doing different how do we keep this can you just go through the process of how this works how we are how to contract you know how do we contract someone to find talent definitely we do an RFP process um to go out to everyone so they have chance to bid on the process and different grp groups come to us and say you know this is the kind of caliber of act that we can bring to you and here's kind of a dollar amount that we think that we can fall into then staff gets together and does a scoring process looking at um kind of History what they have done in the past if we think you know how they show that they can bring this person and you know their past successes they are scored and then from there we move forward with the preferred contractor so how with the RFP is that our only line of
vetting that contractor that's how we select the contractor um from there then we do there's lots of back and forth with that contractor to say you know this is kind of who we want we want to kind of go after these artists this is kind of where we're looking for in the interest um but they are selected because we think that they can bring that person or that type of person from the beginning um then we go back and forth and negotiate with them they say we can bring these people at this rate we can bring um and then we kind of go back and forth with them until we can find someone that we feel solid about within our budget does any council member have direct signing privileges to your budget like can we go in and take the money ourselves and just pay them directly or could the well not even council members could I as the mayor like sign off can I give someone a check or can I get access to the money to give it to someone I might know to come and perform not without going through the contract
8 million people last year and it had my face next to Monica and that the mayor took the money and
gave it to some guy and whatever they went and bought that's not possible it is not possible council members do not have access to the city's money so I just wanted to put that I know it's not possible I wanted to hear from the attorney I wanted to have it on the record I can't believe I went viral last year over that stupidity so thank you for the RFP process and this is what I app appreciate about a council manager system rather than a strong mayor system because there are levels of separation and um yeah thank you but thanks for the work and the success that we've had in the past we've never had this issue uh to all the staff that I called at two and three in the morning uh saying somebody about to figure this out now thank you for answering the call um when we had that that you know glitch once out of 54 times or once out of 4 years um but I I I did want to highlight
the the level of vetting the process this this fell through we have a process in which we'll be holding them accountable and um I hope that we you know as this is communicated to the public I hope that we are actually communicating what actually happened how it happened and not you know those as we said hypotheticals uh so thank you m amican I have one more point and maybe this was discussed I'm sorry I had to step away for second absolutely um just that this the staff and also the attorney in my office s law who works with um the team at parks they've added a couple of protections into the contract most notably paragraphs 13 and 14 if you look at the contract in on base this time um they were not in the contracts previously and they require that in addition to Contracting with the booking agent the city be getting some very public assurances from the talent themselves that yes they are committed
to the festival so that's new um we've never again we've never had to have that type of assurance in the contract but I applaud the the staff for thinking through that and thinking of ways that they can you can never control another party right if a part's going to breach a contract they're just going to breach a contract um so you can't ensure that it won't happen but that was a good way within the confines of how booking agent agreements work for the city to get some sort of assurances get buyin from the artist before payments before the event and that sort of thing I was uh as I Was preparing for the meeting and I was looking over this I can't remember if it's in there or not um and this could very well go back to the process of the RFP the way it's written and for what whatever reason I can't pull up my um uh Gran granus yeah I can't pull up Gran kids it's not it's it's freezing on me um Michael stay here but in it is there
like in the uh is there a way to ensure that the contractor has direct access to the talent rather than the multi layers of I know someone who may know someone who may know someone so that that's what I was juster to yeah that language that just says Hey within 30 days of signing this contract we expect to hear from from the artist directly yes yes I'm in I'm coming to benbe in May okay um and other types of social media website public pronouncements that they are committed to the festival I appreciate that and I think that's going to be the main difference maker so I appreciate you all due diligence on that yeah all right I don't take none of this personal it's just one of them days just one of those days wow no pun intend it [Laughter] right um well thank you so much sorry for the hypothetical M mam attorney but
I I needed to make sure that on that was on the record oh my gosh NC beat what all right what's the next one 25c Nate Baker 25 council Nate Baker all right council Nate Baker uh pull item number 25 contract amendment number one for storm water infrastructure repairs SD 20222 thank you um so this is a Amendment to the contract to add two additional projects um sounds like the projects are within the green inequitable communities areas um these are coming out of the CIP and one of them is related to the private drainage assistance program can you just talk about what that is mayor okay good afternoon Mr Mayor our mayor protm city council my name is Greg Smith with the public works department uh your
question is uh in regards to the the private drainage assistance program um pdap for short and one of the projects within this addendum is a designated pdap project um for storm water on private properties the city is not responsible for um maintaining replacing uh those systems they are a responsibility of the private property owner um the city has developed an ordinance um and a program the private drainage assistance program that helps um supplement and ease the costs and the burden to Property Owners um to repair their systems and they work collaboratively with us and our group in making that happen so it's a it's a cost share effort um the ordinance was revised recently I believe last year to make it a little bit more um attractive for the private property owners because the uh increasing construction costs were showing it um to be not um to
be um less attractive I I would say okay what's the and can you just share and I'll take a look at this after but what's the what's the share between the private land owner in the city uh great question it depends on the type of of ownership it is whether it's a private you know single family residence um property or whether it's a commercial property and um it's weighted more heavily to the to the former than the latter and I believe the current share is uh um 80% City 20% um uh homeowner with a cap but I'll have to double check those numbers I don't have them in front of me okay thank you that's all all right thank you any other questions right I item number 27 voted by Mr Baker there good to see you again see you um can you just talk about um so items 27 and 28 are related to the city
Durham Metropolitan Network can you just just a bucket for us to talk about it can you just talk a little bit more about that project and uh where we are and where we're going absolutely uh good afternoon uh Dwayne Kendall assistant director of Technology Solutions um the first one uh 27 is um what we would consider is just the the normal routine maintenance for our um our local area network and the existing equipment that exists out in the uh in the field in every site um all the network switches the wireless access points um all the devices that we provide uh technical support to uh this contract is for a managed service provider um with a much lower cost than if we were to um um to have staff 247 uh 365 to uh to provide these kind of services so uh we actually I think it would be you know multiple multiple times more if we were to try to have three shifts of 247 members so um
this contract is to just amend um the existing agreement um just to let you know it's it's uh the purpose of um amending it throughout the life of the contract is kind of similar to what's been said before is that we can't always forecast um new buildings being built and new services like that so what we do is we we go with what we have and then we just amend contract based on um new new changes like M Lake was built um remodeled and there's a lot of additional Network switches and wireless access points that we need to provide service to so um and then are there can we expect additional uh uh funding that we need to provide for for this for the uh city of J Metropolitan Network in the coming next year or two uh uh yes um what this part of the contract that on number 28 uh is for the actually deployment of the uh the fiber Network so the city's fiber Network where we're going to we go off
our dependency of our um our existing uh internet service provider with with Spectrum um the design and build to to do that work is what this The second contract is for um there there may be additional uh cost increases um okay anything about any additional increases yeah yeah em come on Carrie good the director of technolog solutions uh yes there will be some cost increases um for the for the deployment um we're going to have uh the a vendor do monitoring we're going to create a network Operation Center to monitor our Network organization like Duke already have that we could be standing up a network Operation Center that we monitor 247 as far as the performance value of our Network that that'll be one recurring cost the the lighting of the fiber is what this ven going to be doing
lighting the fiber so and put it in production but then there's another cause for running the network and that's mainly having the network Operation Center to monitor the network we're going to have an agreement with with Duke to repair the fiber if the fiber is cut cuz we we in the ground the condo is going in the same Direction with their Network so the fiber is cut more than likely their fiber will be cut as well so so that's that's so that's the model that we're using okay thank you uh I'm just I'm interested in this uh project it's a unique project that most cities don't don't have especially North Carolina right except for Wilson that's correct and and every building will have U at least a gig connection to the world so I'm excited yeah I'm excited yeah thank you thank you thank you colleagues anyone else on this item all right then by my Baker we've discharged all of our pulled items I believe we have a presentation from staff on
hwa thanks to all the staff that hung around for our pulled items have a great great afternoon thank you mayor uh mayor protim members of council Nate Baker Johnson director of the Community Development Department there was a request a city council request to uh for Community Development to provide a presentation and update on the Hala program housing opportunities for persons with AIDS which is uh one of the entitlements from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and so we are here to respond to that um presentation request are goals here are to provide um the amount of funding the types eligible activities how funds are spent the de demographics and beneficiaries and and how we are proceeding with the program I would just uh also share that the uh hot program is a little bit uh different from other entitlement programs and programs that we administer
because it does is the only program that actually well one of two that goes outside the city limits of Durham uh this particular program uh Services the uh Duram uh eligible Metropolitan statistical area which is five counties and so we're responsible as the administrators for the uh H program uh I'm going to uh turn it over to Colin Davis who is uh the manager of our homeless system who is responsible for ad ministering and his team is responsible for administering the hwa program to share with you uh keep in mind that hopwa is not a homeless program although it fits in uh this particular with this particular team because it has some things that are uh closely aligned uh with uh uh homelessness but it is not a homelessness program we want to make sure to emphasiz so that and that is a major distinction that he will uh talk about so with no further uh uh introduction I'll turn it over to Colin
Davis thank you Nate Baker good afternoon mayor mayor protm city council Deputy city manager uh Colin Davis manager of the homeless system Community Development Department so we're going to go over hwa and some of the stuff Reginald already shared we'll uh ZIP through those pieces and feel free to stop me if you have questions as we go along I don't mind being interrupted we got to start with hop at the beginning so Hop was enacted in 1990 it's in the code of federal regulations giving us all the things you can and cannot do with hopa funding we as the city of Durham are the participating jurisdiction we are the grantee of these funds and then we choose project sponsors to carry out the activities we as the city do not actually do the work for this we contract it out except for right now we
are doing a portion of it and we'll talk about that later so hway is the only Federal program that is dedicated to housing for people living with HIV and AIDS and as Nate Baker said you do not have to be homeless to qualify for hoo assistance you have to be living with HIV and AIDS and low income in Durham we do prioritize people who are homeless living with HIV and AIDS For assistance with tenant based RIS rental assistance and when you're talking low income you're talking 80% or below and our priority is that 30% and Below when we're targeting resources to to get it to those who are really most in need and not everybody in the household has to be living with HIV and AIDS you have to have one person to qualify so let's talk about eligible activities in haa there are big categories in which you can spend the funds starting with housing Information Services which talks about counseling referral
uh housing counseling information referring and locating Housing Resource identification which talks about coordinating systems so that's one of the eligible expenses we can use to help coordinate the five counties and our eligible Metropolitan statistical area funds can also be used for acquisition rehab conver uh conversion lease and repair of facilities for projects that specifically assist households living with HIV and AIDS so you couldn't use these funds for an affordable housing unit that would be open to the general public at all you can also use them for new construction costs should you want to for households living with HIV and AIDS tenant based or project-based rental assistance just what it is it's just subsidizing rents using uh typical methodologies of 30% of a person's household income could go to this uh
going towards the cost of the rent the rents must meet fair market rent standards which are established by Hud minus the utility assistance so you're looking at a gross rent fair market rent minus utility assistance is what the total amount could be paid to the landlord with a mix of payment coming from the tenant-based rental assistance and the program participant themselves one of the we do tenant-based rental assistance City adorm uses that we don't do project-based but that's something that could be looked into in the future short-term rent mortgage utility payments these are can be used for up to 26 weeks in a 52-month period or 52- we period sorry uh it's very shortterm and it's to help provide stability for households who might be missing work due to being in the hospital so this is a way to keep people from losing their homes and being able to keep V load suppression
down Supportive Services uh we do spend money on Supportive Services in our emsa which helps link people to health mental health permanent housing placement which can also cover security deposits and first month rent to help people get into affordable housing daycare personal assistance the list goes on operating costs if you're if you have a a building that is serving folks who are living with HIV and AIDS those operating cost could be included in we do have to look at who's eligible talked about a little bit must be living with HIV and AIDS and low income the household regardless of income is eligible anybody in the household could receive assistance sort of by virtue of a parent who has hi AIDS and has low income the children who don't have hi aids would benefit as living in that household that might be uh covered by a
tenant-based rent rental assistance payment and then if you've got people living in the neighborhood Who if let's say you're doing a community- based HIV project people in the neighborhood could come participate in that all haa activities that are done must be part of the Consolidated plan that we as a jurisdiction submit every five years to HUD for approval and annually we have to submit an annual action plan so any expense that comes from HUD must be delineated in both of those and if you don't we have a compliance issue if we wanted to change it those require substantial amendments that we go back to HUD and say hey five years ago when we or four years ago we didn't think we wanted to do it we want to do this now we need to do a substantial amendment in our Consolidated plan and then the annual action plan for the year of hwa funding we're planning to use that to ensure that we could stay in compliance with Federal Regulations currently uh right now we're
we're using hwa funding for tenant-based rental assistance short-term mortgage Utility payments Supportive Services and permanent housing placement those are the only activities that are listed in our con plan and our annual action plan as eligible expenses so this sort of looks at our five County eligible Metro statistical area which includes chadam Durham Granville Orange in person and this sort of gives you an idea this is not how many people we are currently serving in the project because the project doesn't delineate how many are Durham how many are Grandville it's how many are eligible in this emsa so the total Universe of people living with HIV per our um Public Health database is 145 people are new infect are living with HIV in chadam 1900 in Durham 240 in Granville 336 in orange 117 in person and then
those who are living with AIDS you'll see on the right hand of that chart of 57 756 112 138 and 50 respectively living with full-blown AIDS in in those communities so it's our job to make sure that any of those households who are in those categories and lwi income have access to Services now how much money are we talk talking about and you'll see a a big jump in money from 2019 to 2024 and we had a little extra money in 2020 due to hoo covid funding we got a little extra money that came in at 70,000 to assist with short-term mortgage utility assistance the PO amount starting in 2019 you'll see it sort of goes relatively flat through 2019 to 2021 and then you see a big jump and this is where we get into the um modernization that hopa change their
formulation so this is what we've looked at then we get into tenant based rental assistance how much have we spent in count from 2020 through December 31st 2024 we have spent over a million dollars on tenant-based rental assistance which translated into 28 unduplicated households short-term mortgage utility assistance 118 households benefited from that for 431,000 Supportive Services 162 unduplicated households and permanent housing placement which is a one-time assistance of just over $49,000 for 49 unduplicated households so these are where the money's gone and how many people it is possible a permanent housing placement person may also get a tenant-based rental assistance because those two could go together so you can't really add these up and say oh this is how many
total unduplicated people were served with these pots of money because there is there are places where there is layering where uh tenant-based rental assistant everybody in tenant based rental assistance is eligible for Supportive Services so your biggest place of looking if you wanted to get your best Casa case of unduplicated would be looking at your Supportive Services because everybody would have been eligible for that at some point looking at demographics of those who are being served by our our haa funds 134 people that were served during this time period were male 77 were female two identified as transgender 190 uh identified as black or African-American 14 white and four Hispanic or lat or Latino Latino and and looking at those data points there's a few others I didn't pull out the whole piece there's you know one Native
American for instance I pulled out the Any number greater than one uh is what I pulled into this chart so if you try and add these up and back them in there there may be a discrepancy and that's why looking at age groups we see the uh bulk of the those served are 35 and older we are seeing a growing number of 25 to 34 year olds coming into this but you'll see the the majority of of people in the in the system are being affected uh in the older demographics and as this country ages the HOA population ages as well we are looking at money that has yet to be put out for bid because we get an allocation every year from HUD so this is looking at funding that has not yet been put into contract and we are getting ready to put out an
RFP and we are getting ready to amend a contract withs to finish out the rest of this fiscal year that they need money on so the RFP we're planning to put out currently with 7 677 th000 of tenant-based rental assistance $323,700 of short-term mortgage $339,500 36 for permanent uh housing placements and roughly $330,000 for everything other than tenant based rental assistance for a contracts so this this is money that um will be spent of funds that have already been received this is not what we're expecting in the future this this money that we have in hand so kind of uh haa is a reimbursable contract so we have Grant agreements
with HUD and when HUD gives you you a grant agreement they give you a grant agreement in calendar year 2024 and you have from 2024 three years to spend that allocation so by 2027 all of that money would have to be drawn if there's delays there's a process you can go through and apply to HUD and ask for a spending submit a spending plan and they'll extend the period of performance to draw the funds so these are funds that we have Grant agreements from HUD to be able to use it's an allocation exactly and HUD we've got a signed agreement and a go in place the grant project ordinance in place to be able to execute and move forward with an RFP the interesting thing Hopwood does not require the grantee us to go through an RFP process we are allowed to choose project sponsors however state law the city attorney's office brought it to our attention saying hey yes ho allows this but state law says you
actually have to go through a procurement process every three years so that triggered the H we gotta TI we got to go follow the state raw more restrictive triggering the RFP and we just need to go do an RFP because we've got more providers and we just brought in a the fifth jurisdiction Granville it uh was just new to our emsa starting with our calendar year 2022 hwa allocation thanks your question so the the RFP that'll come out will will be focused on those tenant based rental assistance short-term mortgage utility assistance Supportive Services and permanent housing placement we are planning to do a second RFP with a we'll have to do an amendment to the Consolidated plan and annual action plan but to use some funding in in future years uh to develop a our
strategic plan because we haven't done a strategic plan or needs assessment since 2019 2020 when I first started we were finishing that one so it's time to update that uh and go back and look at it do some system mapping we'll bring in some identification of resources Community engagement and kind of create a Continuum like we've got a Continuum of Care for the homeless system because we've got four counties we need to sort of build out that Continuum for all five counties of the emsa for hwa so it's it's more streamlined and then we'll be bringing in a temporary employee because when Central pedmont Community Action went out of business we had to bring tenant based rental and assistance in house and are in the process of making sure landlords are paid and caught up on payments questions thank you yeah thank you um so I know we just had a legislative update on this um do you foresee any any
um potential uh well I guess there's no way to tell but I will ask anyway do you see any potential stoppage of these funds this type of support I don't know I I mean that's the best answer I can give at this point is there's no way to know there's a lot of language in haa that specifically deals with the lgbtqia plus Community yeah and a lot of things talking about equity and when you look at our demographics we are disproportionately correct serving a group of people who identify as black and African-American um similar to the homeless system right you've got Equity issues in both of these places and how it plays out that's that's above my pay grade yeah uh uh director Johnson I um when we had that legislative call recently with providers across North Carolina I believe it was um shortly after that I I was speaking with someone
and they were someone said to them of a particular demographic of a particular political interest um this is why we need to end all of this Equity BS um why do people with AIDS get special treatment for housing and not other people and it was one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard um but it's that mindset that worries me on you know that goes all the way up the chain and that's why I ask this question but do we uh I can't remember everything that was shared on that call um do you have any insight on this uh so thank you for that question um Mr Mayor so no I do not have any uh formal insight other than you know we have heard from our standpoint from official context um her for the most part is gone radio silent uh on things of this nature so we have not received any communication one way or the other saying one thing or the other uh we have had there has been some
actions I'll have Colin to talk about the uh one where there was a RF well basically from my standpoint of RFP but uh a um uh noo that was pulled if you would share the sh with them so shortly I don't remember what date it was but HUD had posted an RFP for youth demonstration youth homeless demonstration projects and it had been posted on the HUD website for people to apply it was pulled down shortly after January 20th and the question is whether or not that youth homeless demonstration project will get put back up again nobody knows one train that's been coming out is it was pulled down to scrub all Dei uh diversity Equity inclusion language that was in there talking about uh lgbtq uh community and persons of color
and it would get republished after that the HUD exchange I went in the Hut exchange the other day to look for some some information and the HUD exchange is kind of our resource Library if you will for all things HUD related and there is mentioned to a supreme court hearing where the Supreme Court talks about equal access rules where people are allowed to be assigned dorm Space by the gender in which they identify so that is there but all the videos all the guidance on how to implement that has been pulled off the Hut Exchange and there isn't a way to get to that information right now except for there's a paragraph that says Supreme Court and I don't remember the case forgive me um this case sort of says you have to do this and after that the the information is no longer available on the Hut exchange website just and just to add to that and colleagues I I'm going to pass in just a second are we looking
at uh so I did get word that there were there were uh keyword searches going through the Federal programs right now literally as we speak um um as as the alternative president is doing um are are we looking at changing our verbiage uh to get the same outcome and some of the uh I guess you really don't know what to apply for it's still too early and there's so many things changing so I will say if I may in the homeless system is it we talk about Equity a lot in homeless system the Supreme Court ruled against the universities on using diversity as College admissions and I don't remember that case but you know what I'm talking about yeah yeah affirmative action yeah the affirmative action case so when that happened we were in the process of looking at our coordinated entry policies and procedures because our whole homeless system has been based on equity and ensuring we have equity in the system
and I got to say we've got the smartest group of people like known demand working on homelessness in Durham and the best team working on it so it's like we need to get to equity not call it equity and we need to look at how do we do this without talking about Equity so started asking different questions about what types of things impact everybody but may have a disproportional impact in certain groups that may help us get to equity our homeless system is still working at Equity using new questions so for instance instead of asking you know race gender ethnicity questions will ask you know do you have certain ailments sickle cell do you have uh kidney disease do you have things there are kidney disease impacts a wide variety of folks it's not a race specific but it does disproportionately impact African-Americans maybe a little bit more so these are sort of ways that we can get to the same end result but we're including everybody and it's it's been playing out very well in our system
analysis so I think that's the way we're going to be moving that's what I was looking for thank you for that um Shanetta totally VI Direction um so you listed the priorities or not priorities but the eligible uses and I know that they have to be decided in the in the Consolidated plan but how do we prioritize and distribute money between those in terms of how do we determine how much goes to each activity yeah which which activities we're going to use and and also how much goes to those that has historically been based so with tenant-based rental assistance we had a goal of getting a certain number of households into tenant-based rental assistance and we had to look at what was the average number what was the average amount of subsidy going to per household so you take that number times your goal number
of households to be assisted to come up with how much you want for tenant based rental assistance our short-term mortgage utility assistance steru what we call it is based on what have we done in the past and you sort of anticipate what you anticipate the numbers looking like in the year going forward because all of these dollar amounts have to be put into the annual action plan and if you shift those dollars up or down it'll trigger either a minor or substantial Amendment to the annual action plan to move money up or down in those columns so we put them in there and as we work our way through the year sometimes it's like oh we actually needed a more permanent housing placement and didn't need as much Supportive Services because it was staff turnover for instance in Supportive Services and then there's an amendment that has to happen in a budget change that has to happen so how did we choose those four because that's not the only four eligible places for this money to go what did we choose those for and then who also is looking at setting the
number of household for the tenant based rental assistance understanding that this is we're Distributing for multiple counties so I'm just curious like who is involved in setting those priorities and how they get set so a lot of that goes back to some of this was identified in our needs assessment back in 2020 that was completed to sort of lay out what we needed to do that trigger that was part of the current con plan that we're in and then we've got the modernization where we're looking at what are the current needs what's Curr data and we've been working on that with every year we have annual action plans there's public hearings that are part of that that we take information in from that we talk with the providers who are doing the work to see how many people are on the waiting list for vouchers how many people are being served by which program and and do our best to line up the money based on those recommendations that we're hearing from the data where we're collecting all the where we collect the data from let me also chime in our council member because um Colin is exactly all
right but I think the question you may be asking is how did we get on this path to begin uh in terms of how we have the breakdown and one of the major pieces is what we inherited uh from Duke University and the Statewide system when we received I never forget it one day just received a letter you're now awarded H and begin to transfer from duke well Duke as you know is a healthc care provider so their uh programs the emphasiz are going to pick the ones that are more so aligned with their mission and when it was transferred to us we have to keep serving those people that they were serving so that continue the foundation of the where we uh are in terms of uh our program alignment uh because the amount of money we couldn't necessarily make major shifts uh but as we begin to are considering um um addition getting additional money we can begin to consider uh some ships one of
the things that HUD was particularly interested in when we uh were awarded HOA was the idea of including HOA with housing uh but we have not been able to make that shift just yet but that is something that uh we're uh we're looking at yes you can make the changes and it's important to note so the that future RFP is made up of the 23 and 24
allocations so those last two allocations that are like a million dollars a piece have not been put out or are in the Pro or they haven't been put into an RFP and they're and part of that money 330,000 of it is in the process of being put into contract now so we're still spending out uh Durham Housing Authority had the based rental assistance program and they chose to not renew it because it was a very nuanced tbra program which is very different than their standard tenant-based rental assistance hcv program there's a lot different set of rules yeah we're about to talk about that and to track and to track 40 you know 25 or 40 vouchers is is very tricky but I guess I'm still not getting an answer to my question which is like how and who decides the priorities when we get this Federal money obviously we have to comply with these Federal Regulations I understand that but who is setting the priorities how are we Distributing the money between these priorities how are we
setting these numbers who's doing that so we've made we make suggestions as the homeless team and part of the annual action part of the annual action plan process gets put out there and part of that is to hear back from the community about these numbers we take that feedback and would make adjustments over the years when we've done this feedback back on changing those numbers that are eligible to be there haven't been our goal has been to try and increase tenant-based rental vouchers we have also struggled over the last several years to find landlords willing to take thirdparty payments we've had a gap landlords are starting to come back on taking third party payments now but when we had the eviction moratorium we lost a lot of landlords who used to partner with us because they sold out to out of state Cong uh conglomerates who own things so a lot of local landlords are now coming back we're also now in the process of getting our forever home Durham units are now coming online and they're very eager for third party payments uh to make their to make their
performance work yeah I mean I'm not going to delve into it too much more but I I guess I keep asking the same question and I don't feel like I'm getting the answers which is like we make suggestions who is we is this development makes a suggestion part the annual action plan for all these five counties without input from those five counties we're just hopeful for feedback take it from from the needs assessment that was done in 2020 that sort of set the trajectory and then we have to as Reginal said we have to there's certain programs we have to continue doing so then we're looking at okay how much money do we have we also have when you're also putting money into a system and we had so many vendors you have to look at what has been spent previously and what could realistically be spent in a year because when you start running into problems is if I gave a million dollars to an organization they can only spend 300,000 then it's like oh contract ends we either have to do an extension of that contract for time or the contract ends the money has to be unencumbered and you've got to get
exactly the right do like to the penny how much money is being encumbered which might take 30 to 90 days after the contract ends for all the reconciliation to happen to be able to unencumber that to put that unspent money into the next contract so it's there's a lot of Art and Science to it of trying to get the right amount of money to the right group that can actually be spent and deployed in a in a reasonable Manner and not have a bolus of money at the end of the year that's just sitting there that you can't do anything with and then trying to unencumber and create a new contract and when you do that you run the risk of losing the money because it either doesn't make it into the next new contract or your period of performance ends and Hud's like well we don't want to continue that does that is a perfectly way into my next question which is um are we losing money have we returned any money um and if not can you help me understand why the totals are so drastically different from the money that we've been awarded versus the money
that we've spent and I understand not all of it's been contracted but um we are looking at and I and I understand the three-year periods but we are looking at the same yearly uh 2019 through 2024 and the numbers are it's less than half that we have spent so is there money going back have we lost any from not there was $88,000 of 2018 money off the top of my head that was returned of admin and that's that's a number that is not it's when you go back and look at the 2022 to 2024 total allocation that's the total allocation I didn't put the admin in there there's a 10% admin so if you add 10% back in of that or whatever is so there's 459,000 of admin that's not accounted
for in those spending things because that the admin is sort of going that sort of helps to cover some of our expenses it helps cover some of the project sponsors expenses 3% comes to the to the city 7% admin goes to the project sponsor so it's not a whole lot of admin going anywhere um that's not included in those expense sheets and the rest of it has been either this all came from what has been drawn so the city is in the process of drawing funds that are owed to US money has been put into contract and we're in the process of paying out contract money but we can't draw the money until we have paid it and then make the draw so we've only drawn what we've been able to draw uh and get reimbursed so that 1 Mill 66328 and that 1 uh 1,1 3729 has not been touched that can't be drawn yet because we haven't contracted it or uh or spent any of that
6 yeah and then we spent 2. one so add um so I'd have to go do the math but add 10% you take 42,900 48,3 54,000 and 96,000 add that back into this amount spent for the admin so you're adding probably another 100,000 or well more than 100,000 sorry I thought you said that the admin was not included in and it was also not included admin's included in the hwa amount here oh it is okay yeah that's what I'm saying is it's included
there as the total award amount it's not included in the amount spent I just didn't put the admin line item on there which is a 10% because I was more focused on what are we doing in the community with the money versus the the Minimus 10% and then the additional difference you're saying is from fing would be 23 24 money or any of the 2021 or 2022 money that we have not drawn down from the lock system yet but we've spent it we just have we the city have not been reimbursed yet this is all coming out of the official record for lack of a better term the integrated dispersement information system Idis of Hud of showing what we've what we've drawn okay and the hoo CV amount if you go back up one slide we just explain the difference between the amount and then the CV sure so during covid um HUD put out a lot of covid
response money so we had emergency Solutions grant covid money we had about $2 million of ESG Co money money we got $7,350 of Hawa covid money in the 2020 uh allocation Year and that hwa money had to be spent within a certain time period to be used so we spent the hwa money the hwa CV money before we spent the regular HOA money which created a delay which because that money was also intended for short-term mortgage utility assistance and there was some waivers that allowed that money to be used longer than the normal uh normal amount of weeks that are set okay so you spent that that 70,000 is completely spent and gone and do we have a caper for that could we could see the Caper for yeah I can yes I can email that or we can get that too add um and then it's a it's an Excel spreadsheet like the HOA
Caper looks nothing like any other Caper that yes it's quite possibly the most convoluted HUD system for hwa uh accounting ever but it's a spreadsheet with multiple tabs and sheets but we can get that for you um and then I'm I've got two more things and I'm jumping around the hopo next steps we're talking about developing an RFP so that we can have a strategic plan who's going to write the RFP and who's going to review the submissions the does that process look like sure the RFP P would come out of our our office or out of Community Development would draft the RFP and then we'll put together a scoring committee that will include not just people in uh Community Development like we we don't ever do scoring uh on any of the homeless projects by just us and the homeless team we bring in outside folks okay I I I think what what worries me about this is that I not that I don't trust y'all's team but we are a pretty
limited team Community Development and y'all are sta to do specific things but like this scope is large right I mean it's it's there's a lot of people affected by this and Durham but there's also four other counties that we have to think about and I'm just I'm concerned because I'm not hearing that there's like a lot of community feedback and engagement that happens and I don't mean like after the fact I mean like beforehand when we are developing these priorities when we are developing these rfps because like you talked a little bit about data but how data is gathered and how it's presented makes numbers look and function differently we all know this right and and I just I know that there are Community groups that have come forward I know that there's folks working in these spaces and I know that they're not being included in this stuff and so it gives me pause um and we don't have to address that right now I just want to say it out loud that like I've been hearing this a lot from the community and I also work with some of these in my other capacity and I know
that that is the case I know that the folks that are accessing some of these resources first of all it's hard to to know to find them folks are having trouble getting to them um and there seem to be like obscene barriers in accessing them um if you even know about them and then also that once you access them you don't there's not a lot of like Community engagement and and their voices are not being Incorporated so I'm concerned about that I'd like to Pivot to something that you said earlier and I really want to talk about who is Distributing the money for the vouchers because um if you do a little bit of a deep dive it's not even that deep a little bit of a shallow dive on the internet what you're going to find is that our vouchers were distributed by a nonprofit that has since closed its doors but before it did that all of the people that moved from DHA with the hwa vouchers either were fired or arrested
for fraud and so we've got this like long history that's very very public and I don't feel like we've ever gotten answers about like where it was moved to and what the reaction was and how we're making sure that that Federal money is kept safe and that also that the landlords are getting paid because I heard you say that people are not accepting vouchers and the reason that people are not accepting vouchers is because they're tired of working with these agencies that aren't paying them timely or there's been other miscommunications and that's a huge issue it's not just that they're not accepting vouchers great question so when DH DHA gave us several months notice they were not going to do vouchers um effective June 30th 2023 and we began a diligent search and contacted every other Housing Authority in the Five County emsa we contacted any agency who had act had
done tenant-based rental assistance of any kind permanent Supportive Housing rapid re housing anything I think it was 30 30 or 36 different agencies we contacted to find out who would be interested in being able to carry out tenant-based rental assistance for the hoto program two two agencies said we're interested and then we're sitting there okay well do we need to RFP this or how do we make a decision and as we were having that conversation the phone rang one of the two said we're out this really doesn't fit our mission because we only work in Durham trying to do this outside of Durham doesn't fit us we were left with one Central pedmont Community Action at that point in time Central pedmont didn't have a hopa program they were doing tenant-based rental assistance rapid rehousing for balance of state with Federal money they were doing Federal money like on a grand scale they had offices in three of our five emsa counties they didn't have the the people
that you're talking about who were arrested on their staff we entered into contract we as a city entered into contract with them then they had to go hire an entire staff to do the hop with tenant-based rental assistance and during that period we had to get records from DHA and transfer those records from DHA to the new provider and if you've ever tried to transfer records and all these different things it's like a database of information and reconciling and the new vendor has to set up payment abilities and be able to make this happen so Central pedmont we got through that there was a delay in the transition of those records because we started that work July 1 but the records didn't get trans we were transferring as quickly as it can they're trying to stand up as quickly as we can trying to reach out to the landlords calculating rents and making sure we're the right people because DHA also agreed to keep some of the hopo participants who no longer needed the Supportive Services on a regular housing choice voucher which would free up some more hoo money which
we were grateful for so it wasn't like here's 20 people and they're all going it was like here's 20 15 are going here are the 15 and then some of those records it's like wait this isn't the right record and going back and getting the right records um Central pedmont then went out of business with no notice to us um we literally were in their office having a normal technical assistance meeting with them which we were doing a lot of regular handholding and walking through and they didn't mention anything the next day it's posted on our website all of our staff are for load so we were in the office the day before this happened and they mentioned nothing to us so one of our providers the North Carolina coalition to end homelessness also worked with them on balance of State ESG funds and they called us and said hey do you know about this said we do now um at that point we quickly got in touch with them and we went over and retrieved all of the ten based rental assistance records and brought them to our office at CDD we at CDD were like
we've got to be able to do this so we knew we were going to put out an RFP for a new group starting July 1 and to be able to do all this transitioning we found out landlords had been entered into contracts with but hadn't gotten paid so we at CDD now had to go out and reach out to 15 16 landlords please register as a vendor with the city so we as the city have been paying um and catch everybody up on rent paying the late fees uh using uh a separate set of funding to be a to be able to make sure that we make our landlords whole rebuilding the relationships and because we as a city have it it will make our transition um because we don't have a contract that's necessarily going to end we can sort of smoothly move money over in a gradual process when the new RFP begins and avoid this so we're in the process of getting caught up on a whole lot of of stuff that fell through crack since June 30th of or July 1st 2024 yeah um that's awful I know that
story ex happened I also saw the message that was like everyone is furload and I was like cool cool cool um so I saw that it is I have it screenshotted in the world um I guess yeah I mean I there's so many issues here because when the ball is dropped and I'm not saying that y'all sounds like y'all had to Pivot really quickly and so this is not an attack on y'all but when the ball is dropped for that long a period of time and we have landan Lords who don't get paid for that long a period of time what we see is like real Fallout and real consequences to tenants and I understand that we're now trying to make the landlords ho and like that is a valid goal but um those those consequences to the folks who are living with HIV AIDS who already had those vouchers and they were the ones that needed more assistance right because they were the ones that had the needed the extra resources because they didn't get their vouchers transferred to a normal housing Choice voucher um and they ended up in eviction Court some of them so yes yeah um and then yeah so
anyway it's just it's just something to like keep it keep in mind is that like that those are real consequences for those folks I'm also curious since we have taken over that distribution you said 15 to 16 um I think the number was larger for the the number of vouchers that we were Distributing or that we put money towards over the over the time of the contract and so24 to 28 how many of those vouchers are active now and are we taking applications are we actually moving through applications for folks trying to access vouchers so right now we are trying to get caught up with this transition and part of the part of the challenge is Central pedmont was con continuing the work after July 1st and then it stopped so they were putting people into units with agreements to pay rent but didn't actually pay the first month rent or a security deposit we didn't find that out until October
November that hey somebody got put in my unit in September and now it's December and I never got any money from I was like okay so now we're finding that to your point council member cook yes had folks been uh taken to to eviction Court yes as soon as we took it over we sent letters to every landlord that we had record of saying hey we understand this happened you will be made whole the city of Durham is taking this on we are going to work with you please hold off on any any evictions please call Colin Davis Melva Henry or Reginal Johnson and and explained as best we could there were some landlords who still filed and then we called when the tenant said hey I got this eviction notice we called and they said we got it we'll put it on hold we're not doing it to my knowledge nobody in the hopper program was evicted they were all like every one of them is in the process of being paid or has been paid and so are we taking applications for new people right now we're trying to finish getting caught up and getting all because not all of the landlords I think all of the landlords are now set up as
vendors getting set up as a vendor in the city is not a fast easy process there is a process to it and some landlords if you're a small not technologically savvy person it requires a little more handholding to to do that so we have you know some landlords that took a little longer to get into the system and we're in the process of trying to bring in additional staff so that we have some capacity to add to take on those applications we are planning to sit on this we're not planning to sit on it forever no I mean but we're planning to to have it in the city as we're planning not forever no no no our goal is to put it out as part of the RFP that would start July one like we're in the process of putting together that RFP to request proposals for another entity to take this off of the city's plate the city should not be in the business of writing checks every month we just did it because there wasn't another option that quickly we had to be able to disperse checks immediately and when we talked about it the best and fastest way to make landlord's whole and
avoid people living with HIV and AIDS of losing housing was to bring it in house it was something none of us felt comfortable doing but it was the best it was the best of the worst options well and I would just uh say this one of the things that was most important is that we keep the program going and so one of the things that we uh decided and I made that decision that we would uh work to bring it in house and that uh versus trying to contract another vendor Contracting with another vendor uh that we would uh make sure that the program kept going as best that uh we could and so that's what we set about to to do and so we are working uh to that to that goal yeah I mean and the other thing I'm thinking about is that it it becomes more costly then to retroactively fix the issue because we've got added fees we've got late fees we've got all of this extra stuff that would have been accumulated in the time that like Central pedmont was doing whatever they were doing and so I'm actually this might be a an attorney question um but is there because now I feel like we're
going to have to draw more money from this HOA fund and also because we are not able to take applications I see all shaking your heads but I'm I'm assuming that if we just paid for our vouchers at a normal rate and we didn't have to pay back months and months and months of late fees and all these other things in order to make people whole and fix ledgers and that sort of thing and we could also just we're also missing out on people that we could take in as potential voucher holders because we're having to deal with this mess whether there's any methodology for recouping any of that loss by the city does that question make sense not entirely to me but I'm sure to Aaron it does so we'll look into it okay yeah I can share HOA does not allow HOA funds cannot be spent on late fees so the late fees are being paid for out of I believe it's a Community Development General operating budget so like this is coming out of our operating budget to cover the late fees and the late fees are not a huge dollar amount like we're
talking a lot of the late fees are like $50 a piece so you're not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars late fees yeah I mean I still think it's money that we shouldn't have spent right I disagree but there's only so much you can do when a when a vendor just all of a sudden disappears right hence my question no matter where the money is coming from I am curious to know about that because it is I mean it is still money and again we are fiduciaries so like and it's not our fault of course but we also are the other piece of this that I'm really worried about is that we're missing the opportunity to lease up other people because we're having to sort of deal with a mess that landed in the city's plate and I'm also as always concerned and I know y'all are working on it but like we then had to immediately take over something that our staff was not prepared to do like you were talking that Central pedmont didn't have the staff in house to do it they had to bring folks in like we also don't have the staff in house to do this and so and we're also like then delayed in being able to utilize this hle funding which to the mayor's Point earlier like we
don't really know where this money is going in the future and so it it feels to me like any delay and leasing people up or utilizing that money it is a potential penalty for for us and and it has real impact on people in the community too so that's something think about I would I would concur uh with that but I would also say that one uh we are uh engaged with our attorney on this matter I'll say I'll say it like that uh we do have to get records which will still ow some records um and when we proceeding in that in that in that manner uh I do appreciate what you're saying about people and new people in the program and I do appreciate what you're saying about uh us not having the capacity to just take this on and run with it 100% and have everything be perfect
um yeah I know there's no answer it's just me I'm just thinking aloud but I what the other piece of that being the community engagement I do really want to make sure that that is heard um and so we and we we he hear that and also that's the reason we do the needs assessment that's the reason we engage in that in that process to be able to do that we did it before with those who were involved at that time and then with those who are involved in this time that's the reason we have to uh do that uh every periodically I'm happy to get you a copy of the last needs assessment but we were just looking like Acro care um Duke B estate we had a lot of input from a lot of stakeholders that work with it but they were all part of the that original 2019 20 20ish time frame that we did that last needs assessment they were all at the table and contributed to that okay and if we could make sure so I can gets distributed yeah I can get you so the the Caper you would like and the the last needs assessment and then the other thing just to keep in mind is Hawa
is while it falls under homelessness I'm the manager of the homeless team and we've got five people sort of working on homeless specific things and one one person trying to manage hopa for five counties so when all of a sudden this fell in our lap we're in the process of saying we need even if this didn't fall in our lap we we need another hopa person in in the piece which is part of a future budget request and bringing an attemp to sort of help be able to get to where you're going there is a plan it's how fast can the Plan move and you know High is a process it's not something that you can just boom I got somebody today and it's a pretty specialized skill set to be able to pull it off uh bring somebody in okay 30 minutes later I'm done with my questions thank you yeah uh I colleagues I'm gonna come to you uh well no uh council member R I saw you earlier yeah I got I got a single question here um so well first thing I I just want to say I want to thank the
mayor and management for putting this on the agenda I know we talked about going doing deeper Dives on I mean this is critical work critical funding for folks in our community living with HIV so so having a a better understanding of what's going on with hop it's just one example of how we need to we need to do periodically these deeper Dives to really understand this stuff so I really appreciate that and I appreciate council member cook right that's right now I credit yes yes no I'm taking the credit keep it like it was you did ask for this and I appreciate your leadership on uh on the on aack so I guess so my question is this so we started getting emails late or last fall about this from folks in the community saying we're concerned about mismanagement or underutilization of hopa funds right so then we're not six months later so I guess my question is number one like how do we how how should we high level when we hear from folks hey we're not we're not utilizing These funds how should we message that on the council number one and I gotta follow but I just how do we message that in a very simple direct succinct way because we had a lot of detail here but
essentially folks are concerned they want to know so how do we message that so uh uh what I would say and what I do say is that we are serving for people who are qualified with under Hopper we're serving them we're serving them now we do have an increased allocation and that we're developing another plan uh with the RFP to have uh those funds distributed as well uh in terms of mismanagement I would not say that we course I'm biased we're not mismanaging f that just just the underation that's the piece I'm mostly concerned about so well I I would say this and be candid uh based upon that we have a provider that stopped on us abruptly it's not most efficient that we are the way that we're Distributing the funds uh there are more efficient ways and we're move transferring to to move to more efficiency uh are we serving people the answer is yes are we serving people
appropriately with the funds the answer is yes uh though this is not a uh homeless program remember that we are in the context that there are people with vouchers they have the same voucher challenges that all persons with voucher challenges have though theirs comes with h and so they are working in a system that is not is not perfect that's really helpful I guess the followup is you know and is maybe it's for us on the council for management and you all in staff so when the these things happen how in the future how can we more in a more aely way respond to this because I think what happens is people reach out say we're concerned about underutilization and then like there's kind of Silence they don't know and so they start losing confidence in Government Can we really deliver in a timely way for our resident so I'm just kind of curious again this for all of us how do we in a more in a more timely way receive these requests and respond to the community so they know that yeah things happen like agencies go under this stuff happens but when it takes so long I think there's
again this growing concern about it's mismanagement was going on so we need to do better about that to find a way to respond so in the future how do we how can we respond in a more timely way kind of concerns in the future council member that's a good good point and I concur with you that we need to respond more timely uh and we should have and could have responded more timely the challenge is that there are many issues where we need to respond more timely and so that's how we just have to prioritize uh those such things such that we do um and that's probably the best answer that I can can give you other in in agreeing with you and we we need to find a way to work with management better to sort of again to address these in a more timely way so people know that we we care and that we and that things happen but we also know that we we can set priorities and make sure if things are a priority that we that we tackle them thank you all council members you you're GNA get a proposal from me asking for us to consider a retreat outside of our budget Retreats at some time uh coming up this
year uh and part of that Retreat will be discussing more high level values of of how we want to you know operate this is in reference to the conversation we had during the hiring process of the manager uh so that that that that meeting will happen uh you've heard me mention a lot about customer service today um government is complex it is a multi-level bureaucracy that is very very very complex to um to to navigate and I go back to the con my last conversation with Pete buddh in DC he said you know he said Leo one thing I regret most is not being able to fully make the department more efficient when it came to dispersing funds and when I looked at I was like well dang if he feels that way about Transportation I can only imagine what he feel like in HUD uh HUD is like 10 times worse you know uh but these these
these systems are just really really really complex and dense and you know we're relying on our uh our experts here to to navigate with what's provided to them so I know it's complex I know it's difficult um but I also trust you and I I trust your engagement um I you know the fact that you've done A needs assessment the fact that you've done Community engagement you're never going to please everybody but I do appreciate the work you all do and I think most importantly I am as the mayor of the city I trust you and and I and I um this Council just wants the best outcome because we are that we're that connection point to the broader community so you're not going to hear us speak in the in the most technical terms of the work you do but do take the you know our commentary as appreciation to fulfilling an area that may not be being met and I you know
I would say in this conversation with management council member RIS I I think that there are some things that our manager can do with the staff that can get us to that point maybe if you all are running into complications don't wait until the complication gets there before we find out um but maybe we can have a earlier notification system and then we work on how we actually communicate to our constituency uh I'm not going to ask you about Communications because that's not your specialty but we have Communications Department uh Communications Department we also have a manager that will be able to help us you know we we'll communicate to our constituency based on when we hear it um and I think that'll solve a lot you know um the fact that this is a bureaucracy is not an excuse for for what is happening um but it's an acknowledgement of how these systems function and it is up to us of how we communicate it um but we have to know you know and I hope that everyone in the city feels empowered to be able to say hey hey I I see the writing on the wall
we're running into an issue here um and I honestly I think that you know um knowing that and and having a you know an earlier arrival of that information can can really solve a lot of the issue you w get you want to get into the characterizations of the issue I don't think nobody I don't think anybody in the city is mismanaging funds you know uh you'll be in jail so um yeah uh but you know it can feel that way if we're not properly communicating and you know things go AR right so received received all right colleagues are there any other questions all right I think those are all the items for today are you prepared to settle yes sir we are um Mr Mayor Mr Mayor Pro members of council um for settling the agenda we have under consent item one items 3
through 32 under General GBA item two under GBA public hearings items 33 and 34 second move to settle second it's removed in probably second at uh out of the agenda: please call to room mayor Williams hi mayor Pro Baker council Nate Baker council member cook hi council member Carl Rist hi all right thank you uh the agenda has been settled all right thank you all so much at 356 oh I do have one other item that I'd like for us to consider uh there is a uh resolution that I'm working on in conjunction with the mayor of Chapel Hill Apex um po Springs Carrie Raleigh on this
resolution which Madame attorney I'm going to send over to you all once we finish the uh draft uh is in support or um it's in reference to the freezing of funds and jobs for us Aid I the triangle is significantly impacted by this more than most areas I mean we're talking 1700 jobs we're talking major organizations uh the president of Duke University is in DC now Walking The Halls of Congress begging for them to come back to reality um RTI has taken a 30% cut there are yeah there are a lot of jobs that are getting hit and that is going to impact our local economy in quite a significant way I've been communicating with uh not only our fellow elected Mayors and council members across the triangle but also um many of our constituency uh constituents who work in these spaces
who have they they're just in limbo they don't know what's happening I know a federal judge did uh you know delay the uh the freezing of those jobs today um but right now we are talking about massive Global shifting of funds on a daytoday basis we we this it's out of control but I I'm working on this resolu ution and I'd like uh to bring that before the council for us to consider everybody's okay with that all right thank you all right we're joined in 357 thank you all