City Council · Regular Meeting · January 18, 2024

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if you all are are ready I will uh who does the the video thing go by itself or is that yes if you all are ready we'll get started it's 1 o' and I'm going to call this meeting of the city council for work session to order and and we'll start with a roll call Madam clerk thank you presiding chair um mayor Williams is on an excused absence and mayor protm Middleton is delayed today council member Nate Baker is also got an excused absence and so I'll start with the regular role council member cabayo here council member cook here council member presiding chair Freeman presid council member wrist here thank you thank you and just moving on along uh announcements by Council if anyone would like to start I'm looking to my left yes council member cabier thank you I just wanted to thank um everyone out in the community including

City staff uh city bus drivers our emergency response I know several churches who've opened up their doors and and done a CommunityWide effort uh there are several um lots of residents actually who still do not have power and so the city and the county have opened warming shelters and there's been a lot of coordinated effort and so I just wanted to thank all staff City County CommunityWide uh um this is when uh Durham is at its best in my opinion uh when we all work together and I just wanted to thank everyone I also quickly wanted to thank out thank um I was able to go to and going to shout these kids out because they um I'm going to pull up their I went to RN Harris last week and uh read to some kindergarten students and my understanding was that they were going to be watching today so I just want to shout them out um M Frederick's kindergarten class at AR in Harris thank you so much for having me last week hopefully you all are watching you're excellent uh

students and you have an excellent teacher thank you thank you council member ciero council member cook um good afternoon I just wanted to reiterate my great thanks both to um my colleagues sitting up here but also the entire staff um for this onboarding process has been a bit of a whirlwind and everyone's been taking um so much care and time with me and I really appreciate it so I just wanted to say thanks again take your time council member R did you have anything to add if not then we'll move on to Prior I'm sorry I think um just a a couple additional announcements just to note I am presiding today because council member um I'm sorry mayor Williams is not not in town for us Conference of Mayors and mayor is out of town for a visit with the president so I will um request to move a couple of things around a little bit just in case I don't want us to lose Quorum or anything but I do have to depart at

about 3:45 today so I just want to give everyone a heads up we're going to move through this meeting fairly quickly if uh if I'm presiding that's all uh other than that I'm moving to Priority items by the city manager good afternoon Madame presiding chair um other members of the durh city council uh I do have a few priority items for you today but prior to getting to uh those few items I would like to call Deputy city manager Bo Ferguson up to the microphone to make a brief presentation and update on the CommunityWide response to the power outages in Durham Durham County so B thank you m Madam manager Madam presiding chair members of council uh appreciate this opportunity to update you and the community on uh our response to the ongoing power outage that's affecting uh a large number of customers

in Durham uh and to answer any questions you may have about our plans I will apologize in advance I've got uh a lot of this information is hot off the presses and so I'm I'm juggling a little bit to make sure uh I provide you all the information you need and we are still working on some details that we'll be providing to the public as soon as those details are finalized so let me Begin by echoing comments made by council member cabier we are uh deeply grateful for the partnership that we have seen uh beginning yesterday when this outage came to our attention in the afternoon uh outpouring of support from uh Durham um organizations uh individuals and partners who uh always step up uh and always offer their support uh to their fellow residents uh we have seen that in droves uh the city manager and myself were on a call just this morning with some of those partners and uh we are grateful for that and I want to I will capture in a minute uh some of their efforts but uh just wanted

m. m. and for the The public's benefit I'd like to read the the street addresses of those locations so the main branch is 300 North Roxboro Street the East Regional branch is 211 Lick Creek Lane the North Regional branch is 221

Milton Road the south regional branch is 4505 South Austin Avenue and the Southwest Regional branch is 3605 Shannon Road those facilities are open as warming centers that anyone may go to the regional branches are open until 6 the main library is open until 8:00 uh as a reminder City Transit is available for free so uh people may use uh City Transit and we are continuing to uh hear from volunteers who are offering for help with Transportation uh during the day I'll I'll cover that in a second but um but at this time we don't have immediate information about Transportation but hopefully uh people can use the existing uh uh gorum Network to to access those locations uh there is a tremendous Community effort ongoing now to provide warm food uh for anyone in the affected area and uh that is being led by uh

Durham congregations in action uh they are providing uh that and doing a tremendous job they are coordinating directly with DHA so there's a direct uh a direct connection between uh DHA and the organizers of this effort to ensure that hot meals are being offered proactively at DHA properties that are affected by the outage they are canvasing neighborhoods uh sending meals into neighborhoods doing some door-to-door work but for anyone who is listening who needs to access uh a hot meal uh they may call Durham one call we are receiving um we are receiving that information we are prepared to capture that information and convey it to the volunteers who are providing the meals Durham one call is 9195 60120 that can be called now uh our call takers in dur one call are prepared to collect that information and distribute it so uh those hot meals are available

m. Durham County Emergency Management is standing up an overnight shelter that shelter is going to be located at at the old North Durham High School uh DPS has made that facility available that facility is heated that facility is uh appropriate and and ready to host up to 150 individuals this evening um and let me get the street address for you that is at 117 Tom Wilkinson

m. m. this evening will be available until power is restored so

m. on their website uh but my conversation with the Duke official leads me to believe that that that time I wouldn't consider that time reliable at this time so we expect

m time at this time uh I think it would be wiser to have an emergency plan planning Pace better to be prepared and and not need it I believe that those are all the details I have at this time um Madam manager is there anything we've discussed that I left out and after that I'll ask if any members of council have any questions we can address thank you B seems complete if there are any questions from members of council if not thank you yeah just thanks for the for the comprehensive and and thorough report appreciate that thank you thank you uh thank you again

and I do have a few other uh agendar related already items for you uh agenda item number six the US Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration Federal airport Improvement program Grant offer 3-37 D 0056 d65 d224 the city council is being asked to suspend the rules and vote on this item during the January 18th 2024 work session so the grant agreement can be ex executed and returned to the Federal Aviation Administration by their February 5th 2024 deadline agenda item number 15 professional Engineering Services contract with freeze and nickels Inc for the Northeast Creek sewer Basin hydraulic model city council is being asked to suspend the rules and vote on this item during the January 18th 2024 work session so flow monitors can be

installed as soon as possible installing monitors sooner allows flow monitoring data to be obtained from the Wastewater collection system for both dry and wet weather flows and having more data assists with model calibration and finally agenda item number 18 update and presentation on the bipartisan infrastructure law B and inflation reduction act IRA and others this will be a 20 minute presentation slide number nine was updated to reflect the award amount for electric buses and slide number 10 was updated to reflect the award amount for the village Transit Center since your last publishing date so thank you very much and that is all I have uh Madam chair thank you madam manager I'll move through the other priority items and then we'll swing back to um

suspend the rules and vote on those items that you've mentioned um priority items for our Madam attorney thank you Madame presiding chair the city attorney's office does not have any priority items but if I may I'd like to take a point of personal privilege of course to introduce um an extern that we have with us this semester her name is Carolyn Calder Carolyn if you would like to come up um and just do a brief introduction of yourself Caroline is a second-year law student at UNCC law school and we will have her working on a variet of projects thank you members of the council and thank you madam attorney um as Madam attorney mentioned my name is Carolyn Calder I'm a tuel at UNCC law um I'm a Durham resident I grew up in kry and I had the privilege of working with the Durham Housing Authority this summer as a law clerk there so it's a pleasure to be here and to get to continue work in local government thank you for having me glad you're doing the service in D thank you that's all I have Madam appreciate chair thank you and madam cler if you have any priority

items thank you Madame presiding chair the city clerk's office has no items thank you I am going to ask that we move up our um approval of the I think of the items for um six and six and 15 before 6 and 15 also for um item one two three four just so that you can um well I just really just need to move item four up CU I just want to make a request of council if we can hold that item until the next work session the racial Equity commission is meeting Saturday for their Retreat and I just want to make sure that that's okay um or to make the request if that's all right so mainly for item four that's all okay so I'm going to open the vote

or essentially it's just a a request for a motion to suspend the rues so that we can um or do we need to accept the priority items of the city manager for items six and 15 and does 18 need to be also it's just an update okay so uh just to accept the manager's priority items moved um I hear a motion by council member ciero and a second by council member risk second yes all in favor if you would raise your right hand you're other the right but thank you I think we have uh a unanimous decision and we'll vote we'll suspend vote to suspend the rules a motion to vote to suspend the rules sove moved second council member risks a motioned and council member cabier second all in favor you raise your right

hand and a motion to approve item six which is the US Transportation Federal Aviation Administration Federal airport Improvement program Grant offer 33756 652024 so moved second I heard a mo a motion from council member cabier and a second from council member cook all in favor if You' raise your right hand it is approved unanimously and we'll move to item number [Applause] 15 item number 15 professional Engineering Services contract with freeze and nickels Inc for the Northeast Creek sewer Basin hydraulic model so moved second a motion from council member cabier and second from council member risk if you could all Raise Your Right hands oh well I'm sorry all in favor Raise Your Right

hands thank you unanimous uh approval so for item 18 we will approve the update automatically and for item number four do that does that just need to get referred back to the city clerk's office is that what we would do is that the proper action yes so request to refer it back to the city city man city city clerk's office if you would just raise your right hand okay thank you I think that takes care of most of that business and we can continue forward with our agenda so administrative consent items include item one the Durham city council environmental Affairs board appointment item two the human relations commission appointment item three the participatory budgeting to participatory budgeting steering committee appointment item three I'm sorry item four racial Equity commission

appointment I'm sorry has been referred back and departmental items the city council resolution in support of black teens and crisis I believe that uh we had some conversation about pulling that item to have some more conversation so that will hold that one and item seven I'm sorry item six has been dispensed of so item seven uh FY 24 Capital Improvement plan CIP project closeout and related budget ordinance amendments item eight contract with JP Morgan Chase Bank NA for banking services item nine Cooperative group purchase contract Service body trucks item 10 service agreement for project management consulting services with Turner and towns in hury LLC item 11 amendment to HUD Grant project ordinances item 12 2021 connect and

protect law enforcement Behavioral Health responses program Grant and project ordinance superseding Grant project ordinance uh number 15905 item 13 contract with Pace Analytical Services LLC for laboratory services for the public works storm water quality program item 14 14 first amendment contract with ratp Dev USA Inc for the management operations and maintenance of the go triangle fixed route transit system ct-1 19910 item 15 has been dispensed of and item 16 is presentations participatory participatory budgeting PB cycle 3 update 20 minutes and presentation on affordable housing Omnibus afford affordable housing deep dive 20 minutes and the updated presentation on

bipartisan infrastructure law bil and inflation reduction act IRL and others 20 minutes and I believe that is all of our agenda items and only item five has been pulled okay okay no so I believe there are some folks online to speak to some items yes and are we doing public comment on the items okay before we go into our uh agenda we're going to move to our citizens matters or resident matters um I believe we have two speakers in the audience Rachel zberg and George Robison

and then there are three online and I do not have their names okay okay thank you for being here you have three minutes minutes as soon as the clerk has that up thank you thank you my name is Rachel salsburg I've lived in Durham since 2018 and this is my first time giving public comment at a city council meeting I'm speaking to you today to require that each of you as my elected representatives take the only moral stance on the ongoing genocide in Israel Palestine by adopting and passing the ceasefire resolution submitted by u150 and over a dozen community and labor groups this is not a complicated ask as

the US continues to fund the occupation while at the same time blocking International votes for an end to the almost unfathomable violence it is the very least we can do to call for a permanent ceasefire and no Aid to Israel I can share my credential as a graduate of the Duke Sanford School of public policy with a masters in public policy as a member of the Jewish Community who joyfully became a bot Mitzvah at 13 and who subsequently had to interrogate her political education around Israel Palestine who has taken direct action against the institutions upholding the occupation and has been called a self-hating Jew for speaking out but none of that is necessary each of you know deep down what is right just as we know we need to be paying all of our city workers living wages and ensuring our neighbors have access to affordable quality health care and safe warm places to live please pass this resolution

thank you thank you I truly appreciate your voice in our community I did want to just pause and just note that uh I do believe that the mayor's committee met on Monday and council member cabier is uh part of that did you want to share any details at all you don't have to but I just want to make sure folks do know that the the conversation has not stopped and I do appreciate you being here each and every time to make sure that it doesn't thank you Madame presiding chair I can provide comment after all citizen or resident matters sounds good good afternoon George Rosen Chief Executive Officer of organization ofad Incorporated retained attorney retired representative and Veteran administrative director Larry D Hall I'm here trying to see why the um Le uh Lakewood Apartments has not been renovated by durm housing rather than go

and spend develop a new uh place for housing why not renovate what's already there why not so with that being said I'm done I just want want to let you know that that would be a great idea rather than going out here spending money on a new area of of property and also this Council the last Council sh took my city to hell in the hand basket crime Rose use their political power for for profit and gain by changing ordinance and then advertising it in the N we talking about Jillian Johnson that's what I'm talking about and collaboration between the nail mayare and B L Davis I just can't stand it I'm darl's

number one political pundit pretty much probably the biggest political pundit in America I made a lot of changes my whisper reaches far and wide and if Biden wanted to stop the war all he had to do just move the the embassy back to T so I recognize it as a as a a a state because they are occupants and with that being said I'm just done I'm done done oh no I'm not one more thing I'm going to be seeking indictments on a few folks on this Council for collaboration and using the seats for political G power and gain I'm done thank you Mr Roberson I appreciate your voice in our community you texted or emailed it

texted it thank you so we have Betsy arant if we could just make Betsy aant available Madame presiding chair we've had a technical difficulty and we're working our best to get her online thank you hey can you hear me we can hear you okay great thanks sorry I um I'm stepping aside at work so I will have to get um have to leave the meeting directly after my comment but uh my name is Elizabeth aand I live at 804 Berkeley Street in Durham um I've attended or watched nearly every city council meeting in Durham and Raleigh since the call for ceas fire resolutions began and over and

over again I hear the vast majority of constituents in both of these cities calling for a ceasefire presenting every ankle of this argument from international relations to human rights to anti-racism to decolonialism however when I hear people speak out against a ceasefire I notice one common theme Hamas I'm not going to waste the council's time reminding them of the many carelessly cited claims about Hamas in the October 7th attack that have since been publicly debunked while this misinformation is troubling it distracts from a more pressing truth this has nothing to do with Hamas there's nothing that Hamas could have done to Warrant the Relentless Mass Slaughter of Palestinian civilians which I shouldn't need to tell you by now are mostly women and children Exterminating an entire population is not a strategy for eliminating political leaders it's a strategy for ethnic cleansing military experts on all sides have agreed that Hamas will not be eliminated through indiscriminate bombing in fact this tactic wouldn't be affected even if it were to take out some of hamas's leaders through pure chance as these military experts say that hamas's power structure is known to be intentionally decentralized the IDF is well aware of this it has demonstrated impeccable

military strategy and power throughout most of its history thanks to the support of powerful Nations like the US it knows exactly what it is doing and the goal of its campaign of genocide is to eradicate the Palestinian people not to protect its own freeing the Israeli hostages is another theme I see among Zionist arguments always conveniently ignoring the massively disproportionate number of Palestinian hostages being held in Israel many of them since before October 7th yet Netanyahu has made it clear that his priorities do not lie with the safety of the hostages any historian or military leader can tell you that hostages are not freed nor protected through the annihilation of civilians mayor Williams you have made it clear over and over at these meetings that your greatest concerns are with your own approval and protecting your career as you are unwilling to take a stand that will anger a small but vocal contingent of zionists that come to these meetings to cry Hamas but I assure you that you will not get out of this pleasing everyone so I implore you and all of the council to find the courage to put Durham on the right side of History thank you thank you I appreciate your voice in this in our city uh Leslie St

dry hello um I want to First welcome council member cook I'm truly excited to see another leader dedicated to tenant and housing Justice on the council uh I'm Leslie St Dre a Durham resident and member of mothers for ceasefire enduring Beyond policing here again to demand that you all announce you will introduce a resolution for a permanent ceasefire and all of historic Palestine an end to USA to Israel a lifting of The Siege on Gaza and release of all hostages and an end to the occupation of Palestine South Africa has laid out an incontrovertible case against Israel for its genocide in Gaza underscored by over 500 statements of genocidal intent by Israeli officials and political and military leaders here's yov Galant Israel's Minister of Defense we will eliminate everything if it doesn't take one day it will take a week take weeks even months we will reach all places and let's not forget

netanyahu's statement that they will quote thin out Gaza the same South African lawyers handling this genocide case are now prepping a separate lawsuit against the US and the UK for their complicity in Zionist war crimes Israel is refusing to let the UN investigators interview doctors about what really happened on October 7th when there are multiple accounts from survivors and even members of the military about Israel's indiscriminate killing of their own people which we also see in Gaza meanwhile our Senators overwhelmingly refused to allow the invest tigation into whether or not our tax dollars are being used for war crimes this along with a 100 children per day being killed 250 Palestinians per day total should provide more than enough information for you to join us in demanding an end to the Bloodshed paid for by our money that should be used to save lives and livelihoods here the mayor has suggested there are two sides to this issue and has chosen a closed door process there are no two sides to genocide and no atrocity is justification for genocide

side if like Biden he's not ready to stand on the right side of History we need you council members to take the lead and put forward a resolution that states where we as a City stand on these atrocities happening before our very eyes your silence is complicity 80% of Democrats and even the majority of Republican voters want a ceasefire if you're not yet ready to represent the majority of Durham constituents and use your leverage as our highest public servants to demand an end to the genocide ethnic cleansing starvation dehydration mutilation apartheid and occupation destroying Palestinians in all of Gaza after 105 days you should no longer be allowed to represent us or anyone for that matter Palestine is the litmus test you are currently failing in your leadership roles on this not one more scent for genocide not one more second of Silence let's remember MLK's call for a revolution of values in militarism and redistribute the wealth to end poverty money for workers amilies

3 million in taxes annually to Israel's military while North Carolina North Carolinians collectively are sending over 90 1 million this has contributed in part to

Israel's indiscriminate killing of nearly 30,000 Palestinian civilians since October 7th including more than 8,000 children meanwhile residents here at home are in need of housing living wages at least $25 hour for our city workers affordable health care and of course no more indiscriminate killing of Innocents abroad I implore you to do the job that we hired you to do and use your leverage as our council members to demand Congress stop using our tax on genocide and ethnic cleansing invest in the resources that we need here at home that alleviate violence like food Health Care emotional and mental health support housing security fun and affordable after school and summer programs for our children invest in our workers and in our communities here and divest from war and attacks on black and brown people there is no neutrality regarding genocide oppression and Injustice neutrality means siding with the oppressor and in this case that is Israel this is not a conflict between two Nations this is an ongoing genocide

made with clear genocidal intent by an occupying State against an occupied population I am not advocating for solidarity with one people over another but rather an affirmation of respect and adherence to the implementation of national and international laws without exception hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives are at imminent risk of death if a lasting ceasefire is not achieved and humanitarian Aid is not delivered without delay thank you thank you and I want to appreciate your voice in our community um I think that's all we have for public comments and we'll move to our so pulled item but prior to that I'll just um thank you thank you to all the folks who signed up today um on MLK day on Monday uh the group that the mayor was uh had been wanting to convene finally convened uh the next steps is that group will be um drafting a resolution that will be brought back to council so that we can

take it up thank you thank you thank you I want to appreciate I apologize I don't have a timeline on that thank you I I do want to appreciate you um sitting or standing in the gap on making sure that that resolution does move forward so I do want to appreciate all those in the room and those who've spoken to us over the last few meetings and just acknowledge that it is it is definitely a a tight tension but I do think think that the voices are loud in our community and we know where we stand thank you madam presiding chair can I just add one clarifying piece the way resolutions excuse me it'll be determined whether it's a resolution or a statement which is different um by this Council uh so just for for clarity a resolution which is the official official document and voice uh of the city would need to have four votes to be introduced and four votes to pass and I'm just sharing that so that folks can understand some of the mechanics the statement is is less for

lack of a better word burdensome uh it does not require those official um motions thank you can can you confirm we need four votes to bring it forward or just two correct so our process around resolution since it's an actual official document and it's a um you know introduced into record Etc is that to be introduced in front of the body since it's the Entre ire body uh speaking in one voice it has to have four four votes to be introduced and then four four votes to pass gotcha thanks thank you thank you we will move to our [Applause] pulled I'm sorry item number five resolution in support of black teens in crisis thank you um Madam president chair um I'm just pulling this item it's this is the mayor's item um and so he is not here to speak on that and so my my

request I guess is to potentially put it on GBA to allow council members opportunity to send feedback via email or whichever way they want to do it to be incorporated this is actually a great example of how a resolution process works um uh so that that is essentially my request is that it not be placed on consent since he's not here to speak on it um and then that allows council members to provide feedback directly to him on any language changes that they want and then we can just take it up on GBA I guess whatever February 5th I think is our meeting yes thank you thank you so we're moving that to GBA and that moves us along to our presentations item number 16 for participatory budged Madame presiding chair can we go ahead and settle the agenda is that an okay thing so that's our last task that we actually need to vote on and then we can move to presentation so if we do lose Quorum it doesn't impact

anything just I'm wondering on um if we need to add anything I guess so yes we can move forward to settle the agenda then so that's items you want to say each one you want to settle agenda okay thank you sorry I just don't want to forget and then we don't have four folks [Music] while you're getting that together okay Madam manager thank you um Madame presiding

chair I do have for your upcoming council meeting I uh for consent items 1 through three and items 7 through 14 item five for GBA do we need to go ahead and settle the appointments before we do that cuz you're saying item one through three so I'm going to check with the clerk on that yes thank youing chair um I do have a report on the nominations for Council number one the Durham City County Environmental Affairs board there is a tie currently um three votes for Campbell and three votes for Auten and um I was wondering if anyone wanted to shift their votes I will note that the um the Duram City County Environmental Affairs board did submit a

recommendation for art toban and so if anyone would like to move from Campbell to Auten that was the recommendation the only um council member in the chamber at the moment would be council member rist would you like to shift your vote uh what what the only member that was what the only member in the chamber who can shift their vote is you oh got you gotcha um I guess also wondering about the the seventh vote is that do we if we only have six votes do we have to and we don't resolve does it go back to the clerk um council member we need four votes for nominations and right now there's a three three split I'm just wondering if we can keep it open until that that that seventh vote this is cast um that would be mayor Williams and he is out of town unless you want to hold this to the next council meeting and put it on GBA yeah when we do that it's up to

you so we're holding item one open for GBA okay thank you very much um item number two human relations commission the unanimous consent is for asaiah Robertson the participatory budgeting steering committee appoint um unanimous vote for Rosemary James and item four has been referred back to the city clerk's office thank you you want to resettle so now I will set the uh agenda uh subsequent to the to the council deliberation on the agenda items so now we have for consent items two and three items 7 through 14 for GBA we have items one and item five and that's it that's it thank you Madame measure and if I could get a motion to approve the agenda

do we have to approve the agenda right okay call for a motion motion to approve the agenda so moved second council member risk I heard from council member risk motion and second from council member Caballero all in favor raise your right hand so we're all set and we'll move to our presentations the first presentation is the participat participatory budgeting PB cycle 3 update and I'm turning it over to our staff Miss Ortiz yeah okay so good afternoon uh members of council my and a special welcome to uh council member cook on your first day today um and so my name is Carmen Ortiz I am the budget engagement manager overseeing participatory budgeting and my colleague here felon Thompson is the senior budget engagement analyst and we are here today to provide you with an update on our third cycle of participatory budgeting

which I will be referring as PB as well as to announce our winning projects okay and so before I get started I'd like to take a minute to introduce you to to our team um I'm very proud to have you know this team by my side PB cycle 3 would not be as incredible as we believe it's been without the hard work and passion of my team and starting with Andrew Holland right here he is the assistant budget director overseeing the house of performance and innovation in the budget office myself Carmen and my wonderful colleague Fallon that I am very excited to work along with uh we also had Samantha Pace she is our strategy and engagement analyst intern turn Samantha primarily focused on analyzing and working with our data Melissa AMW bank and Matthew Ken were our design interns they uh created all of the renderings that uh with the visuals that went in the ballot they also supported us with

uh media website management um and a lot of community engagement over the summer and we have Nathan orio here he is our data analyst Nathan focused on data management and a lot of the graph that you'll see in this presentation all right and so this is the agenda for this presentation um I will take a few minutes to talk about participatory budgeting as primarily for those of you that are not familiar with what PB is I will touch very briefly on PB cycle one and PB cycle 2 um but the meat of this presentation is to talk about you know PB cycle 3 so I will touch on the framework the different steps idea collection proposal development voting um and then Fallon will talk to a little bit about our voting demographics as well the winning projects and the next steps all right and so PB is a democratic process that allows residents to participate in the city's budget process and so here are generally sort of the steps of what it is um usually it

starts with an idea collection phase and this is where residents share ideas and projects they would like to see the city funded the second phase is the proposal development and vetting phase so this is when residents our community members work alongside our technical department as well as City staff to look at all the ideas that were submitted and vet them for feasibility the next step is the projects that move through the proposal development phase then they go on to voting and residents get to cast their vote for their uh priority or you know favorite projects and finally it's the implementation phase so this is when winning projects are actually built and funded and finally there's an evaluation and planning phase so this is when we internally analyze the data data reflect on the process and prepare for the next cycle and so why does PB matters and so PB increases Civic engagement it allows residents the opportunity to participate in their City's decisionmaking process

it also build stronger and more collaborative relationships between residents government and Community organizations and so our budget delegates you know got to work with you know us the city uh staff as well technical departments for over 6 months vetting project ideas learning you know what it takes to build a sidewalk learning what the cost of of these things and so it's pretty exciting a learning opportunity for the residents and even us um in in as a staff it also builds a more inclusive political participation especially by historically and marginalized communities and so a residents who otherwise would not be engaged in government um get to submit ideas and work with the city to develop ideas and finally and my favorite part is that it empowers people to decide together how to spend public money and so community members from all walks of life different neighborhoods and background and experiences come together to look at project ideas develop these ideas and make decisions together to improve their

communities and so uh PB uh started in Durham in 2018 when our Durham city council approved the guidelines and approved 2. 4 million in our in our first uh cycle of PB was divided amongst the three WS so each Ward had $800,000 uh any City durm residents and all students 13 years old can participate in the process PB cycle 2 was a little bit different it's it you know started in 2020 as you all know there was a pandemic and so there this was an very different cycle and so in order to skip on PB our Durham Council approved $1 million in funding to support the communities most affected by

covid and so we started our work in PB cycle 3 in the spring of 2022 during this time we spent significant time reviewing the recommendations from the thirdparty evaluation conducted by North Carolina Central University we had meetings with our internal Department that were part of our PB cycle one and we also met with cities across the country to learn from their PB Cycles our goal was to learn from what we did in PB cycle one and build on the best practices so that we were able to build a more Innovative PB cycle 3 and so we unboarded a a brand new PB steering committee some of which are here we unboarded a new PB steering committee who um decided on three different goals and so the goals was to engage more diverse populations to implement projects that serve the most underserve and marginalized communities in Durham and to increase Community engagement in the decision-making process of the city and so additionally

our PB SEC revert it back to the original scope of PB which is to fund onetime cap project on city property DHA property and or private land donated and so our 15 member P steering committee under the leadership of Axel era Kenneth Webb and Angela Jimerson decided to move away from funding projects based on Ward as we did in PB cycle one and set a goal that 60% of the projects be fall in a geographic area based on equity and so our PB steering committee worked with our data works and our equity and inclusion Department to determine which were the area the focus areas for the parameters of this map and so the three Focus areas that they voted on was communities or neighborhoods with high percentage people of color uh with household incomes under 48,000 and where high percentage of residents take public

transportation some additional Innovations for our PB cycle 3 we extended our timeline to allow for planning and adaptability and more time for a proposal development phase so that we were able to incorporate more Community engagement in the process and so some of the areas some of the additional uh changes that we did we expanded our Equity Matrix so we did have an equity and impact Matrix in PB Cycle One however we ex expanded it so that we can incorporate so that our budget delegates were able to use data from neighborhood Compass to score project project we also expanded our impact Matrix um so that we were able to score projects uh uh analyzing the population that would be served something that was also very unique to PB cycle 3 was that we incorporated co-design and so this allowed our design interest to work with our residents to design the projects and so in the spring once we start implementing the projects we're going to go back to the community into additional Community engagement so that residents are part of Designing the

projects are going to go in their communities and so some of the other recommendations that came from our evaluation from North Carolina Central and conversations with other cities was to incorporate more appreciation in the process and so we were absolutely happy to do that and so in the summer of 23 uh we hosted a rooftop rooftop celebration when which we invited all of our budget delegates our technical departments our PB steering committee members our budget director joined us and some of you members of council joined us and this is really a neat opportunity for us to thank our budget delegates and all our volunteers for their hard work and so our budget delegates were with us for about six months including about three weeks of training um before we start idea collection and then they spend time going out into the community speaking with residents about the projects doing research um for the project as well as meeting with their technical staff and so we wanted to thank them and appreciate them for their hard work and

their family of course and that was pretty exciting some of the additional things that were pretty exciting about PB cycle 3 was that we were able to partner with our cities Innovation team who designed three uh ballot for us and then took it for user testing and so right before we kicked off uh voting we did a user testing event so we were able to test our ballots before we rolled them out so our Innovation team tested both the paper options as well as the online ballot and here I'm just going to take a few few minutes to just kind of run you through PB cycle 3 and so idea collection took place um as I said the fall of 2022 when we collected over 600 ideas so again we went into the community spoke to Residents and gathered over 600 project ideas in the spring uh proposal development took place we had over 260 ideas that moved onto the proposal development process and were reviewed by our budget delegates committee engagement took

place over the summer so what we did over the summer is we took all of the project ideas that had moved forward the project ideas that moved in the uh in The Proposal development process and you know moved on for feasibility equity and impact we took him back to the community so that we have conversations with the residents that would be most impacted by these projects so we ask questions like you know if this Project's implemented in your neighborhood would you support this project do you think this project would impact your community and so the projects that moved on into voting were projects that again moved for feasibility Equity impact and had high support from the residents that would be impacted by these projects then these projects went onto the ballot for Resident voting and so right now we are in the implementation phase and so we will be incorporating uh the co-design um in the next few months so that again as we start sort of implementing and working with our technical department on these projects our resident um will provide us more information on how they would like to see these projects implemented

and so what I'm going to do in the next few minutes is sort of touch on all the different faces starting with idea collection and provide you with a little bit of the demographic as well as the proposal development and voting and so during the idea collection as I've mentioned we had over 600 ideas submitted most of the most uh most common ideas were around sidewalk Parks security and lighting and so we engage our we prioritize our engagement in the hard to in the heart to reach community so we understand that there were communities that in order to hear from them we had to put our boots on the ground and go to these communities and so our goal was for everyone in durm to participate in the process and so what you see here are the demographic information from the 600 ideas collected over the fall of 2022 and so the data shows that the majority of residents that participated were people of color and the highest percentage of participants were those under the $10,000 yearly incomes

and here what you see is the data details for the engagement that we LED over the summer so these were the residents that again we had an opportunity to speak to over the summer and gather feedback about how the projects would impact them and although um we you know although about 20% did not complete the raise and ethnicity questions and about 30% of the residents skipped income and the data shows that there was a good representation from residents across raise and income and so as I've mentioned very briefly projects go from being submitted by residents um in idea collection then through the proposal development phase before they go into voting and so we were uh 629 ideas were submitted out of those 629 ideas there were over 100 comments made about these ideas um that were submitted um approximately 200 271 of those ideas Advanced to the proposal

development phase and so our budget delegates who are volunteer residents were able to work with our technical staff to vet these for feasibility equity and impact we were very excited to work with our budget delegates our budget delegates were we had a very D diverse group across race gender age education and background and so these budget delegates worked to do the research that these projects and do the scoring so all this came from our budget delegates and not us and so generally the way that it started is our technical departments provided with an initial scoring on feasibility so they basically scored for you know for cost estimates so they were able a score for project is way above the cost estimat or around um they also provided us with information about you know is this project idea within the city limits which is very important is it within the scope of the work that the city can do and so the projects that move forward will then continue to be uh analyzed by our budget

delegates and so the first thing our budget delegates did was uh provide an equity score and so just keep keep in mind that every project was scored by at least three different budget delegates and so our goal was that every budget you know had multiple people score it and so our budget delegate um looked at quantitative data to identify underserved neighborhoods so they looked at questions like what is the medium household income in this neighborhood or Community what is the percent of of Transit ridership um what is the percent of Youth population and percentage of people of color is this a food desert and so our our goal was to analyze Equity using multiple data points our budget delegates then scored projects for impact so it did a qualitative analysis to determine the uh proposals impact so we thought about how will this project potentially impact their residents so they as as ask questions does this provide a missing resource if so what is the condition of

this resource will this projects serve just one group of people are Citywide and so they asked a number of questions so we're able to determine who and how will our residents be impacted by the projects and here are the 10 projects that made it to the ballot um we're very excited about the projects that made it into the ballot um they reflect our resident and their priorities um and you know the hard work of our budget elit who spend so much time analyzing over 271 different projects and so what you can see here is that our projects range from you know Parks and Recreation to safety to arts and culture and they also serve residents across the city so they're not concentrated in one specific area but they're all around the city and really serve different community members from the youth to the Elder and different interest points as we're very excited about these projects over here and before we move on to uh the

project and the data I want to take a minute to talk a little bit about about our voting process um one of the things that it's very special and unique about Durham Is our commitment to equity and so unlike other cities who only use sort of like an online platform at the city of durm you know we were committed to also use a paper ballot to ensure that every single resident in the city of dorm have an opportunity to V vote without any barriers and so our paper ballots we primarily used when we were out in the community and so when we were out you know canvasing our neighborhood when we were at the Department of Health and Human Services or at the Duram bus station we went to the Durham County Jail um this is what we had we took this into the community with us now our online ballot was more of accessed by those residents who had you know the comfort of their iPads and phones and the comfort of their home and these were the residents that accessed our ballots via newsletters and eblast advertisements through our large social media presence you know Instagram Twitter Facebook and so on and

information sent out from our Communications Department we were also very excited to work with dur Public School administration to ensure that students voice are also heard through the PB process and so we work very closely with dur Public School administrators and teachers so that our students were able to participate in the process all right perfect then I'm going to go ahead and F is going to join you to talk to a little bit more about the projects thank you thank you Carmen good afternoon I am one of the residents impacted by the Duke Energy power outage so if I sound and look a little bit frazzled it's probably because of that so thank you for bearing with me um we are excited to highlight our efforts thus far for Pb cycle 3 we had over 12,000 votes with 2,886 of those collect there from our Duran public school students about half of our ballots were collected online and

about half were collected in person using our paper ballots we continue to try to keep PB cycle 3 Community Leed we hired seven paid volunteers that helped us with Outreach doing voting and again we vocus we focus on our undeserved communities twice weekly during voting you could find us at the Duram bus station and or at the Department of Health and Human Services collecting votes from residents we spent time canvasing our undeserved neighborhoods and our Target neighborhoods including bragtown Merck Moore line Park um also we collected over 200 votes from our Justice involved individuals at the Durham County jail before we go into our voting demogr we wanted to show the racial composition of the city of Durham and Durham public schools for the city of Durham we have about 36% African-American are black 44% white and 14% Latino we want to show the

demographics for Duran Public Schools um since we did not as Carmen mentioned ask any Dem demographic questions from our student ballots for DPS we have about 40% black or African-American 19% white and 34 4% Latino the meeting income for Durham is a little more than $70,000 the data we collected from PB voting is representative of Durham this slide shows our demographic breakdown for both our paper and our online ballots the our racial demographic information here shows that most of our voters were people of color income unfortunately is not a question that's um frequently asked and answered on surveys and our data showed here that 22% of our voters left it unanswered up next I'm going to give you a breakdown of what our online and our paper ballot demographics looks like here here is our online ballot um

we expected our excuse me our online demographics to show residents with higher incomes and our data also reports that 66% of our online voters were white here it shows our paper ballot demographics we spent considerable time prioritizing our marginalized and underserved neighborhoods we primarily use our paper ballots in these areas and we're proud that 66% of our paper ballot voters were people of color uh you see here that 15% of the voters did skip that race question um yet we are confident that those voters were also people of color because we spent time Gathering these paper ballots from places like the Durham bus station the Department of Health and Human Services when we canvas our neighborhood um our Target neighborhoods and when we went to the Durham Housing Authority properties it's also fair to say that these voters were on the go at the Durham bus station or at the Department

of Health and Human Services and that may have um that may be the reason why we see that 15% raise question unanswered moving on quickly to income again it's a question that's not very popular on surveys and our data shows that 36% of the voters skipped it um it could be that these voters in those areas may have been of lower income and may not have been confident sharing that information with us here I want to highlight our student ballot demographics um we reached out to all of Duram public school high schools and middle schools um these are the ones you see on the graphs that were represented and participated in PB cycle 3 voting we had 16 out of the 177 high schools participate and eight out of the nine middle schools okay now for the reason why we're all here today I would like to present to you the PB cycle 3 winning projects

77% of the locations of our winning projects are within the target areas that Carmen mentioned earlier our number one project is the security measures at at Durham housing ad D'Orsey this project by far was the most popular project across all of our ballots that's our paper our online and our student ballot the estimated project budget for this is 110,000 our number two project is the lighting at pars with an estimated budget of $887,000 little over that our number three project is a sustainable improvements to pars with an estimated project budget of $110,000 our number four project is The Pedestrian safety on East Trinity Avenue with an estim estimated project budget of $990,000 and last but not least our number five project is the teen equipment at Rex centers coming in a little under $85,000 let's take a little bit of time

and look at a few details on each of our five winning projects this is the security measures at Durham housing Ador homes this project will install cameras debt boat blcks and lighting to benefit more than 200 families in the corn Wallace Road Community and 80 seniors at Price steel place our lighting and parts project will add lights to the basketball courts at moring Park moring Road Park rather the soccer fields at Holton career center and the parking lot at Edison Johnson Rec Center the sustainable improvements to park projects will install water bottle filling stations bike repair stations and solar power cellular charging stations at several city parks across Durham including lion Park and marmore Park The Pedestrian safety on East

Trinity um Avenue project will install pedestrian safety and traffic calming measure measures such as sidewalks crosswalks and signage along East Trinity and at the intersection with Avendale Avenue this is our teen equipment at Rec Centers the locations for this project include the Durham teen center at lion Park Holton career and Resource Center Walltown Rec Center WD Hill Rec Center and Weaver Street re Center this project will invest in our team populations by upgrading the hardware and software equipment at those Center locations we are excited about our winning projects and are looking forward to their implementation we continue to incorporate evaluation through each phase of PB and are very thankful to our

department of equity and inclusion for helping us to strengthen the equity in our process Innovation is the bread and butter of PB our innovation team will run two studies about participatory budgeting one about voters impressions of the PB projects and the other to examine if voting in PB builds trust in government we are also glad to report that North Carolina cental University will perform a thirdparty evaluation of PB cycle 3 that is um expected to be completed by the summer of this year participatory budgeting would not be possible without all of our supporters and those that help us out throughout this cycle we are so very glad for our PB steering committee all of our budget delegates the technical departments that helped us so much Our Community Partners and organizations the Department of Health and Human Services Durham Housing Authority the Durham

County Sheriff's Office Durham Public Schools Kids voting Durham and all our resident and community volunteers we we would not be able to do this without you if there are any of our PB steering committee members or any of our budget delegates that are in the audience at this time would you please stand so that we can recognize you thank you all very much for your help at this time we will entertain any questions that you may have thank you for the great presentation lots of details and uh exciting projects I'm looking to my colleagues if you have questions council member cabier I don't really have tons of questions I just want to say thank you um I I was pretty close and personal as one of the liais on to PB and I know it was a huge CommunityWide effort I'm glad that we I know the goal was at least 12,000 votes I'm glad we met the goal I know that pb1 was 10,000 so that's a pretty good

Improvement and I'm of course going to shout out Riverside um for the um uh responses from the high School uh uh role Pirates role um and just say that I look forward to the next round I know that there's going to be a lot of lessons learned we we learn each round um and I just also want to commend council member Johnson former council member Johnson this was one of her um Big Ideas that she brought to council and something that she advocated for fiercely and each round gets better and um so just want to shout her out because Durham wouldn't have this uh without that thank you thank you Council M risk sure want Echo those comments and just thank you for the presentation and all the the excitement around participat I can't even say participatory budgeting um great projects great involvement in the community so it's a wonderful Pro program and again I I also want to appreciate council member former council member Johnson for bringing this forward I just had two questions so one um and I also appreciate the thoughtfulness about doing an evaluation each round to sort

of figure out what we're learning how that could improve the program so could you say more about what you learned from the second round evaluation and how that influen the sort of design of of phase or cycle three sure so the first p uh PB cycle one was evaluated uh the second one we did not do an evaluation one okay yeah okay so there is a North Carolina Central doing a very extensive recommendation um and there were a lots of things um so some of the things was an extended timeline so that we would spend more time for example doing the proposal development phase and the engagement phases so that was kind of one of the big things also incorporate appreciation mayb is a lot of work because there's a lot of Engagement so that's one of the things that really came out to sort of have more time so that you're not sort of so one of the big differences is in PB cycle one we were in line with the budget calendar year which was very tight and so with extending the timeline we were able to spend more time during the proposed development phase which was a little bit over six months as well as continue to do community engagement which is the key so one thing that was very different um

between those two cycles is that before we took the projects to the ballot we went back to the community and ask them do you support these uh these project ideas and we had two projects that actually did change based on that Community engagement um any additional changes that I can think on the top of my head um were to continue to strengthen and develop the relationship with the community and so that's also part of why we incorporated Community engagement in the entire process so in other Cycles we didn't continue the engagement in the implementation process and so right now we will be doing more engagement as we Implement every uh project throughout the process great I appreciate again the thoughtfulness and the sort of the the creativity and the sort of intention about those evaluations and how that influences the next round second question I want to I want to Echo U councilwoman Cabo's comments about Riverside Pirates royal pirat royal Pirates role um but the question I had about that was so clearly Riverside had way more participation than other schools and I think one of the middle schools did as well why is that is that just because there's a person in that school that really makes it happen there

or what's the what's the secret sauce to make it a little more engage across all high schools and middle schools it's it's a great question um and so uh we spent a lot of time working with Dr Public Schools you know we reached out to Administration um as well as principles and so the ones that got more participation were the ones that we were able to have more you know have more principles and stuff receptive to it and so you know some principles for example like Riverside they just let us in and we spend a lot of time other schools weren't as receptive um to that and so I think it comes down to hopefully in the in the next round we'll have more schools that are willing to give us more time great thanks again you're welcome thank you I I would just add that I appreciate the demographic information I think it's important that we highlight how uh how we go out of our way to get that type of demographic information and half of the half of them being through paper surveys is really important to to keep in mind so that we don't lose

that paper touch so to speak yeah thank you thank you um I just want to Echo the council members that I thought youall did an excellent job and that was an excellent presentation um you answered my question um as part of your answer to council member wrist um but I want to say to to Echo um council member Freeman that I think that the paper ballot initiative was was really intentional really important and I appreciate that and youall spoke specifically to folks who are incarcerated and I thought that that was also um a great addition to this and I'm glad that those voices got heard thank you very much that's my copy there yeah just real quick when when would the next well obviously be evaluating into the spring so would that line up again with the municipal election in 25 am I right on that timeline I think so cuz we would kick off in the spring of 2025 so idea collection would potentially be in the fall of 2025 but you know that's the things where we can always have more internal conversations if there's kind of a challenge with that yeah no I just one of the things that I noted was that

um I saw folks volunteer years at polling sites and I thought that that was a a very brilliant move cuz folks were already they they're voting and so to see PB people teling I think while you're already voting for this other thing yeah sure I should continue my civic duty and I think it'll give us that that kind of Runway to really incorporate um I did a kids voting event at student U uh with folks I think I did two separate ones around PB voting and and one of the things that I've always really appreciated is how eager our students are and our youth are to vote which is you know we purposely designed 13 and over for a reason and so to give to to watch those kids actually click that oh like this thing that I'm voting for I actually get a say and so many times our youth don't get a say um and so uh having watched that and and watching them make the connection um obviously the teen equipment was a big win um and and interestingly so was the the security measures like it was interesting to see folks say yeah

everyone should feel safe um and these were 15 and 16y olds so I thought that was really uh an interesting thing to observe so again uh so much respect and gratitude for yall and I'm excited I know it's a lot of work but I'm excited for pb3 thank you thank you I appreciate that and we're moving along to item number 17 the presentation on affordable housing Omnibus affordable housing Deep dive and I'll just give a little introduction I appreciate the clerk on uh submitting the memo for me I just want to make sure that they can get that presentation pulled up so I'll start with just a little bit more background information to say that this is uh a cumulative look at the work from the last year of the council in presentations that we received from residents in the community experts um and Advocates all throughout uh fall of 201

22 through the spring of 20 um spring of 2023 our presenters today are our interns who were brought in under mayor O'Neal and I know that this was meant to be a fall presentation of 2023 23 and it it's come up in January uh we're finally here but uh Bryce mckel is a fourth generation derite and homeowner raising two fifth generation derite girls with his wife Rosemary he comes from a estate family and his parents have owned and operated apple realy on guest Ro for nearly 25 years and Joe Wilson is a master's student in the department of city and Regional planning at UNCC Chapel Hill specializing in Housing and Community Development and I'm going to turn it over to you two gentlemen to bring us through the Omnibus all right thank you very much so uh yes we are the mayor mayoral interns I'm Bryce mckill and and

this is Joe Wilson so in 2022 the Durham city council began deep Research into the city's housing issues the council heard 11 presentations from local experts and a number of City departments and local organizations uh former mayor O'Neal asked us to compile the information from those presentations and compile it into one easily accessible place so we have chosen to make an Omnibus available uh all of the relevant information from those presentations and this will be going on the city's website so that it is available to the public online so in the 20 minutes we have today we the today's presentation is not a replacement for those 11 presentations but it should serve as a helpful recap of that information so we've divided those presentations into five broad categories that we're going to go over today income and affordability private

development subsidized and public housing evictions and finally homelessness so with that take it away Joe all right um so just to bear in mind that all of this is taking place um amid rapid population growth especially among wealthier residents moving into Durham uh this has put a lot of upward pressure on rent and home prices and is really one of the um driving factors behind the affordability crisis that we see uh but it's also a product of a long history of housing additions and policies um we unfortunately don't really have time to get into those at this presentation but they're important to bear in mind as we consider the present situation um there are different approaches toward remedying the housing situation some are based on private practices others on more public intervention uh but we're going to see across um all present ation is that no one solution exists no Silver Bullet um

to solve all of these issues but with that in mind we're going to move on to the first major topic which is housing affordability um so to paraphrase a comment from council member Middleton during the presentations uh there can't really be a conversation about housing affordability without it also being about income um there are two sides to affordability one is how much housing costs the other is how much households can pay um so we often hear that households shouldn't spend more than 30% of their income on housing um Reginal Johnson for the Community Development presentation said that for individuals that's Financial advice but for the city it becomes a question of how we can actually make that viable for everyone um how we can have safe and decent housing available at that 30% income level even for those with lower incomes um so for the purposes of programs using money from HUD income levels are defined in relation to the area median income uh there's a little

bit of nuance to that but generally you can see the um income levels here for a given household size um so we just have a couple of graphs showing Trends in income and rent the first one comes from the data Works presentation and it shows a stratification of income uh you see higher income jobs becoming even more higher income and lower income jobs becoming even more lower income in relation to that uh median rent figure in the middle the second one is from the triangle Apartment Association uh this shows rent from 2017 to Mid 2023 uh as you can see there's a very large Spike during 2021 in the first half of 2022 which leveled off during the second half of 2022 but is still elevated well above where it was um a few years ago and then this is a graph from that Community Development presentation uh

showing how renting versus ownership is distributed at different income levels a big takeaway here is that home ownership um doesn't really become viable until you get up close to that area median income level uh as Regal Johnson pointed out that can make it really hard to save um wealth at the lower income levels for a lot of people home equity is the main form of savings and that can't really happen when you can't afford a down payment in the first place so for uh what the city can actually do regarding the situation um North Carolina is a dilal state uh that means that cities only have certain powers allocated them by the state so Durham cannot require the inclusion of affordable housing in developments um but the city does have a special Charter Authority which lets it incent incentivize housing um through things like density bonuses or other incentives of value which the attorneys office and

the planning department have been looking into all right so uh briefly on private development um we have a chart here credit to Sarah Young for this infographic uh and this chart describes the development process so development Begins by asking whether something is allow by the zoning so for example if I wanted to build a Workforce housing option like a duplex um all I have to do is check the zoning and if it's residential compact Urban or Suburban multif family it's allowed by right and I can build it without special permission um if the current zoning does not permit the proposed development then the owner developer has to seek rezoning uh through Council so this requires uh site plan which can be expensive and together with application fees realtor fees land costs uh developer can easily spend 65,000 or more before getting

approval to break ground someone looking to build a home might be prepared to spend that kind of money but if rezoning is at the discretion of the planning department then this investment becomes a bit of a gamble so risking 65,000 only to be told no is not a risk that smaller developers are willing to make most of the local developer most of the local developers are going to stick to by right development options uh which often don't include small multif family housing so if we're going to encourage Workforce housing built by local developers it's recommended by the triangle Apartment Association and the durm regional Association Realtors that affordable options be made available by right so at the time of writing there is a new development ordinance being written that could allow for such housing this is unfortunately outside the scope of this project but we do have high hopes for

that undertaking so uh development has been occurring at a rapid rate over the past couple years um but uh so far for reasons that are entirely clear uh density bonuses and other incentives haven't been very effective at encouraging smaller local developers most of that development has been by large corporate outof State developers but a strong pipeline of apartment deliveries has more or less caught up with population growth and as we saw from that earlier chart uh rents increases have seemed to level off this is good news that it has seemed to hit an equilibrium but of course the bad news is that they've stabilized above area medium income affordability uh I don't have a whole lot of time to talk much about environmental concerns so for more information on that particular topic I

would Point curious listeners to the Lick Creek water quality presentation so finally for this section I'm going to get into a few recommendations uh most of these came from the triangle Apartment Association and from the experts chosen by the durm regional Association of Realtors the first recommendation was the most common one um bring back the housing roundtables these discussions brought together relevant stakeholders uh from several different backgrounds to look at housing situation from all angles uh another recommendation from the apartment association was to invest in affordable housing preservation fund to buy and finance affordable housing uh the Durham affordable housing Loan Fund already already exists to do this but funds are currently exhausted I believe they exhausted in 2022 uh another suggestion was to streamline development process for adus

and when appropriate uh loosening some land use restrictions that could allow for more land where Multiplex units can be built by right and finally there was about uh 2 million from the 2019 affordable housing Bond uh for adus that went used um there was talk of reallocating that money I don't know what happened to it but that could be used to help incentivize adus that promise more affordable rents all right so from the sort of private development picture we're going to look now at subsidize and public housing um this is mainly through the durm Housing Authority which gets H sorry gets funding from HUD and so it has to use those HUD income criteria which can be kind of strict um so at the time of the DHA presentation about 9,000 people were using at least one of their services um and there were thousands more on waiting lists uh these residents had an average income of $111,000 a year

um paid an average of $300 a month in rent uh about a quarter of them were employed and around 40% or under 18 15% seniors and among um overall about 40% had a disabling condition um so the first DHA program that we're going to look at is Section 8 the housing Choice Voucher Program um this works by um uh giving residents vouchers to fund apartments in the private Market the tenant pays 30% of their income as rent and then the DHA pays the remainder um this is the Housing Authority's largest program but it does face some challenges uh one of them is that a lot of landlords don't accept tenants who use Section 8 vouchers which can make it hard for voucher holders to find find an apartment um another thing is that the Housing Authority limits what is considered reasonable rent um that's because they have to pay a lot of that rent um they have the authority to raise that number which would open up more

apartments for voucher holders but the flip side is that it would reduce the number of vouchers that they could afford to provide um and they'd really like to be able to provide as many vouchers as they can because there's a huge demand uh they kept the weight list and only open it up periodically but it's estimated that around 10,000 households are looking for Section 8 vouchers um the other major program is public housing which has a pretty bad reputation in the United States uh to paraphrase in exchange during the DHA presentation uh public housing is essentially a failed model in the United States because of chronic underfunding by Congress um still a lot of people in Durham use public housing and want to use it the Housing Authority has around 1,700 units almost all of which are occupied and over 5,000 people in waiting lists but in 2018 uh it was designated a troubled agency because of poor building

quality and the repairs that it needs are a lot more expensive than the grant that HUD gave them um Mr Scott estimated that the repairs would cost $50 million over 5 years and the grant was only for $15 million um it's one of those things that compounds over time when repairs have to be deferred they end up getting more and more expensive um and as we mentioned it's a national issue uh Mr Scott cited a HUD statement that Nationwide HUD had underfunded public housing by 76 billion over its history um one strategy that DHA is following moving forward is utilizing more mixed income housing uh you can see this in the plans for the ddnp development M downtown um so on to some recommendations the first one is finding a way to get more landlords to accept those Section 8 vouchers uh whether that's through incentives or as a contingency for city funding um there's also a need for

partners who can provide things like child care and job Readiness training for people using DHA Services um in a couple of the presentations noted that Staffing shortages have caused administrative difficulty uh the association of realair suggested partnering with um local colleges to build a pipeline for city jobs administrative jobs um and The Association of Realtors and DHA had a couple of suggestions uh as far as reforming D payment assistance and utilizing Section 8 vouchers for Mortgage Assistance instead of just rent okay uh moving moving on to evictions evictions are unfortunately back to pre-pandemic levels according to data works the apartment association and the eviction diversion programs uh talked on the causes of evictions not surprisingly non-payment of rent is Far and Away the most common cause uh this

can mean as little as a single month and the apartment association made a point to clarify that most evictions are a matter of $1,000 or less the eviction process is usually very quick uh the trial is often under 15 minutes 90 to 95% of tenants are unrepresented and almost all judgments are default judgments as the tenants don't show up to court the eviction virgin program works to try and prevent eviction judgments and to avoid filings in the first place they keep an attorney and a par legal onsite at court to provide counsel to tenants facing eviction and eviction diversion raises defenses finds facts and sometimes just buys tenants enough time to find another place to stay so the EV eviction diversion program and the apartment association both had similar recommendations for

minimizing evictions in Durham um since most evictions as I said occur for $1,000 or less in unpaid rents uh a little bit of emergency rental assistance can go a long way in helping these tenants keep their homes um Durham did have an emergency rental assistance fund for this earlier in the pandemic but funds were exhausted in 2022 and now there are only a few scattered means of assistance through social services and other nonprofits the second recommendation is to increase funding for legal aid the legal wing of the eviction diversion program program according to Legal Aid each lawyer was paid at a rate of about 60,000 per year and provided representation for 120 households each year uh legal aid says their attorneys have historically assisted 85 of those families in keeping their home and allowed them to stay there which at

about 500 per family served is a seems to be a very cost-effective way of preventing these people from entering our homelessness Continuum of Care all right and that brings us to our last topic homelessness um like with income levels HUD has uh some specific categories here which you can see below um the Continuum of Care is a network which works to uh prevent homelessness and to care for those who are experiencing homelessness uh the presentation by Colin Davis went into some detail on how roles and funding are distributed in germs Continuum of Care um but broadly it provides a few types of services uh the front door is entry point formerly called coordinated entry um that's where everybody um who entering system comes in uh Street Outreach is a program to help connect those who need services with entry point uh like we said a goal of the Continuum

of Care is to avoid instances of homelessness in the first place uh that's what divers is about uh things like connecting people with nearby family or friends who can let them stay until they're back on their feet um Emergency Shelters are temporary and only for the uh literally homeless category from HUD there is some permanent supporting sorry permanent Supportive Housing available um but it's only for those who are both chronically homeless and who have a disabling condition uh otherwise the rapid rehousing program provides uh temporary financial support to help households move from homelessness to a stable housing situation um there are of course a number of challenges facing the Continuum of Care some of them are going to sound familiar some of them are more unique to homelessness uh the first one is just limited capacity and funding uh

there are a lot of variables in how long it can take uh for somebody to find permanent housing and a big one is how crowded the system is uh from 2017 to 2021 the time it took to find permanent housing gr by 6 months um and part of that like we saw with the DHA is how hard it is to find Fair rent placement um the harder it is for somebody to find a permanent home the longer they stay in a shelter and the less room there is for others who need that oops homelessness uh is also impacted by Mental Health conditions substance abuse and mistrust of the system uh Colin Davis pointed out that uh as it stands the homeless system is really uh a separate entity from the public health system even though the two of them are very closely tied uh which leads us to our last challenge that the data and support networks are fractured um germs Continuum of Care collects some

data on what services it provides uh but partly for privacy reasons it doesn't really talk with other City systems um and since people experiencing homelessness have almost by definition slipped through some sort of official cracks um they can be undercounted or misrepresented in official data uh which can lead to a lot of work for case workers and uh ultimately make it more difficult for people to get the assistance that they need so just some final thoughts unfortunately the housing crisis is very complicated with over 11 hours of presentations there was a lot of data and good points that we just couldn't get to today I hope we've made them all available within the Omnibus for the public to look at um but housing is an issue with many different stakeholders and priorities it's simultaneously

subject to Broad economic Trends but it's also personal to the individual and it's the case that a lot of times those can frequently butt heads and make life difficult for us all but despite the difficulty and complexity we do want to thank the council for making this priority over the past couple years we really appreciate all the work you've put in and we're hopeful for progress as you begin to implement Solutions based on these presentations thank you so much thank you I appreciate the presentation in the time it's taking you to go through the 11 hours of presentations I did want to just first say that I spoke with um former mayor Alain O'Neal last night or yesterday and she did say she did share that she wanted to say um she would not be here but she was definitely going to be watching and she wanted me to clearly state that she was very proud of you both and she appreciated you going through all of that data and collecting compiling it for us of course I you do it and I'm turning to my colleagues for

questions if there are any I see council member cook also an excellent job y'all I thought that was um I know yall had a lot to tackle and I thought that was really well done um I I um had a quick question about the um investing in affordable housing preservation um and you had talked about the Loan Fund that was exhausted in 2022 um could you tell me a little bit more about what that fund was serving and and where the money was coming from and then kind of subsequently with the exhaustion how that occurred and um so I [Music] would probably point back to the presentation from the triangle Apartment Association I believe that presentation talked more about that particular fund where it went and uh where it could go in the future yeah not a manager thank

you for the opportunity um there was a um a Loan Fund for a a development loan fund that um was made available uh in partnership with with self-help and that is the fund that is being referred to as having been exhausted so there were multiple partners I believe the total Loan Fund was about $10 million uh in total uh with the city having a contribution to that so um local developers nonprofit developers were able to access those loan funds uh in order to do you know their their developments uh at uh at prices that allow the projects to be affordable uh it is it really is expected to be a uh revolving type Loan Fund but it takes time for um the developers to be able to repay based upon the conditions uh we we

do have um I think there is some funding still left in forever home Durham uh to help begin to replenish that Loan Fund uh along with the other partners couple comments yeah um one Echo um council member Cook's comments you you've summarized a lot of information in a short presentation so thanks for doing all that I do feel like um I have to admit um and I um would appreciate comments from councilwoman um Freeman I feel like we're we're just kind of stepping in this has been a long conversation for the last couple years right so we're just you know at least Council cook and I are just stepping into this there's a lot of recommendations in here so I'm kind of wondering what was the what's the what's what was the um the plan for all those recommendations is that being already being acted on or what where do we because there's a lot there and I think that's that's up to the council to either prioritize or figure out what what items or which recommendations we

want to move forward or look or look more deeply into and so it'll be a matter of us making that decision I think all of this information is for us in the public because I don't think it all sits in the city to manage as well and so I think it's a partnership though I'm hoping that the subcommittee on housing committee's meetings will continue and that will be a good space to kind of continue this dialogue with all the resources around the Omnibus available to anyone who serves on it thanks and I would also add like ask council member cabier she's been here almost as long as I have maybe a month shy yeah thank you um I've actually asked the mayor because one of the recommendations um is to kind of reconvene a larger broader housing group um with both you know people who have been historically involved in affordable housing but also including people who are doing Transit and land use to be more comprehensive um and so

um that is something that I have asked um him if I could lead um and so we'll be providing updates in the next month or so around um been having conversations with Russell Pierce from housing for New Hope uh I think council member Freeman was at our last joint City County um meeting where we were also talking about the Continuum of Care and some of the gaps within our homelessness um um work and so we all know that this is broader the idea of like affordable housing there's been conversations around work Force development housing including the county and schools in those conversations so to council members uh Freeman's point it it's going to be bigger than just the city it kind of has to be um and look forward to providing um feedback to council definitely sorry and just one last comment I do want to um as the council's representative to the durma Housing Authority board I did want to say for the record um I think the number is maybe I think one in 20 residents in Durham lives in public housing in Durham this is an important source of housing here um the comments in the presentation suggested failed model bad reputation I

think that from my perspective there's no reason public housing can't work it works around the world I think we just have not invested in public housing in this country our federal government has really abdicated their responsibility for that but I think as a model there's no reason public housing can't work and I think to the tune of$ 76 billion do when you say underfunded it does kind of hurt itself so I understand um council member Caballero yeah just to council member was point thank you for bringing that up a lot of folks come to us and wilda City definitely has a critical role to play uh so many of these things are are we could put the whole city budget uh which was last year $610 million uh last year we could put all of that money every cent into affordable housing or into housing it would not cover what we need and so this is a time where I you know ask residents remember elections matter not just at the local level but at your state there's plenty of states that that have got in the game around affordable housing um in a much more aggressive way than North Carolina

has uh and maybe why historically uh in North Carolina it has been maybe Urban centers in the last 10 years that have really struggled those struggles are being felt in rural communities and smaller communities as well as we see an influx um of residents uh North Carolina was the third fastest growing State last year and the year before and that growth is not going anywhere and so putting pressure on our um Folks at the general assembly to really be a partner with us uh local government folks on housing because we all know it's housing underpins so many other things in people's lives thank you and I would be remissed if I didn't add that I think that that's where the the the work has to happen is more so at the state level and then pushing around not just the the rent level but the actual tenants rights so there's there's a lot of work there there's a lot to be done and so again if any other questions before I let these gentlemen depart thank you I really appreciate you being here today and a great presentation this information will be available on the city's website and I

am working with the clerk to make sure that the links to all of the meetings so that you can see them you can review them I know you weren't here but um that information is stored so thank you thank you and we are moving to our final presentation with the update and presentation on bipar partisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act and others and I'm going to turn it over to miss Winbush good afternoon uh presiding chair Freeman other council members uh Bera wimbush Deputy City Manager for operations um at your January 4th uh meeting city council work session you asked for an update on the federal and state grants from the B bipartisan infrastructure law and Ira uh inflation reduction act so we have prepared a presentation to update you on the status

of the city's efforts to obtain These funds future funding opportunities and how the city will maximize the funding moving forward our presenters today are Mary Grace ston King uh she is a business services administrator and the city manager's office Mary Grace is responsible for the day-to-day coordination of this work in our office of across the organization and Julia brenman is a grants analyst uh in the finance department Julia is the former c u Mo intern and she's Pro provided support to this work when she was in the city manager's office Julia also continues to support our arer team as a member of the team so now I'm going to turn it over to Mary Grace all righty bear with me while I I pull up our

presentation all right great all right um good afternoon uh Madam presiding chair council members um and city manager page as Deputy city manager Winbush mentioned um I'm Mary Grace ston King and I am uh the business services administrator in uh the city manager's office we are really excited to be here today to present to you an all an update on the city's efforts to secure funding for um the bipartisan infrastructure law and which will we we will refer refer to throughout the presentation as B and the inflation reduction act which we will refer to as Ira I also before we want get started wanted to recognize we have a lot of support here and the people who really do the work I just help facilitate some of it um so I

wanted to recognize um folks from our general Services Department our Solid Waste Department our public works department our Technology Solutions Department um our Fleet department and uh also our transportation department as well so we have a lot of folks here and as we get more detailed into projects um I'll defer to them to answer um your questions so first I wanted to give some context um around these two significant and unprecedented um sources of funding so the B the bipartisan infrastructure law was signed into law in 2021 um this funding is dispersed through different federal agencies and 80% of the funding available is Formula or non-competitive so this meaning that the recipients of that funding are

predetermined um as well as the amount of award they receive um and then 20% of the V funding is competitive so those are the funds we can apply to um with a competitive application additionally I wanted to talk about uh the spread of opportunities so uh a majority of those opportunities are transportation and energy funds and then broadband and water making up the um other opportunities additionally I wanted to um mention that most of the funding is over over 5 years so um most of it is not one-time funding um a lot of times we even have applications that maybe didn't work out this year that we've gotten feedback on and we can apply again in the coming um year when those applications open again for the IRA um this was signed into law in

2022 um it is a mix of Grants loans and tax incentives and this the focus of ir ra is more towards private investment so reducing costs um for energy reduction products for in health care costs for families um but there are some opportunities for jurisdictions and I also wanted to mention and note that both B and Ira funding is also available for um local nonprofits to apply to and not just uh jurisdiction all right so now to the city's efforts um since 2021 the city manager's office has taken a more proactive collaborative approach to seeking funds um we Noti with this unprecedented funding that some of our departments needed some more support um so we were trying to centralize the process more by tracking

and increasing that collaboration a lot through our our monthly B and Ira meetings we have with departments um also uh since 2021 some departments have um either already had or have gained um staff that are dedicated to Grant ring and Grant Management um however we still have departments that either lack capacity because of Staffing restraints or do not have a staff dedicated to writing grants um so because of that we have started a partnership with uh Central Pines Regional Council um they have a representative here today um so in case there are any questions for them um so we the city of the central Pines Regional Council is a um a local Hub uh for support in this region for

local governments um in July 2022 we entered into a contract with them that renews automatically annually and with this contract they help our departments um go for these competitive funding opportunities through federal state and private funding um by helping with research funding opportunities project development grant writing external collaboration with um other partners Grant editing and reviewing so now for the fun part um the update of where we are currently um and the results of those efforts I mentioned um so we have applied to um around $96 Million worth of funding we have been awarded um over 56 million and we are

preparing applications for an estimate estimated um around 63 million and I want to note here two things um so for these tables throughout this will apply um with the applied that is um ones we've applied for and been awarded a combination of those ones we have not been awarded but applied to and then ones that we've apply to and are waiting responses and then second just real quick so I imagine that that includes both B and Ira correct yes yeah and I'll show the distribution of um the funding sources as well we've applied to and is that of as of October 2023 or is that current so this is as of last Friday um sorry well sorry one more one more Interruption that then that includes the 80% that's the non-competitive or is this just the 20% this is the 20% um competitive thank you

so um also the preparing application this is an estimate because some of the guidance around certain ones we are still rearch researching and potentially looking to apply for um haven't released the amounts you can apply for or guidance and criteria around that so um that likely that number will be higher um so I wanted to point that out and we have this uh very fancy success rate of 74% and this is of um ones we've applied to so that does not include um the preparing researching um so overall we have been very successful so um the funding source distribution um as I mentioned so most of the funding we've been going for is be IL or IRA but we are still looking

for um we also have applied for other sources such as private maybe just other um miscellaneous and state funding or federal funding that's not associated with those acts there's also a very small percentage that is both IRA and B and this is of what we've applied to so so we delineated these um into categories um so we have our climate energy and environment our public transportation roads Bridges and other infrastructure and other programs so other programs right now includes um Economic Development Arts um broadband and cyber security and opportunities such as that just most of the B and most of the funding coming out right now um is for those uh first three

categories um and I also want to mention that uh some of these do overlap as a lot of things do and um our for instance um our public works department was awarded a $250,000 grant for flood mitigation and storm water repairs we um did our best to choose the category felt most closely aligned with those projects so for that even though it is infrastructure we did um put it in our climate energy and environment category considering the increasing risk of floods all right and now uh wanted to show the distribution of funding categories so a majority uh not well more than half are of um the the applications we have applied to sorry um are climate energy and

8 million for EV charging

7 million for electric buses um public transportation a lot of these um are more to even though as mentioned earlier we have climate with um electric buses but public transportation is more about making Transportation more accessible reliable and safer so um we've applied for um over 26 million we've been awarded over 11 million and we're preparing applications for um 16 million and I just want to note that we have a different project

8 million for Durham station and then roads Bridges and infrastructure um you'll notice our preparing application is much higher because a lot of these were still waiting for guidelines or waiting um for further criteria to apply to these but we've applied to um around 8 million and then we've been awarded 3 million and this 3 million we wanted to highlight for the the South lb restoration project more information about that project is on the Public Works website and then for our other programming category um we've applied to

7 million um for

reintegration of ex offenders into the workforce so now I want to give some some more context around um the efforts it takes to apply to these grants these are again very unprecedented they're very new both for federal agencies and for the city of Durham um so I wanted to walk through the grant life cycle research funding sounds like we're just looking up funding it also involves understanding eligibility understanding criteria understanding if there are matching funds required um and a lot more um preparing an application requires not just writing an application a lot of times that can involve project development it can involve um having to pay for assessments from technical experts to make our um application

competitive it can also um involve trying to get partners for those projects and then we also have to manage report and that's the actual implementation project management and um making sure we're uh compliant with federal and state reporting and also internal reporting and then that is closing out the cycle so since this is such a commitment the city really has started to think very strategically about the funding we go for um so I want to highlight some reasons we may not apply one we're just ineligible for instance um I know there was a water infrastructure Grant but it was only four rural communities um with populations far less than ours so we you know obviously would not apply to a grant like that um it might not align with priorities we've

already set for this the city or in our departments with our strategic planning um and you know take resources away from those priorities if we were to apply um cost May outweigh the benefits so some grants a lot of Grants require matching funds um a lot of times they can be maybe even 50% of what you're going to receive and then on top of that we might have to pay for an assessment again and to consider all the FTE and staff resources that would go into implementation um so sometimes we just do cost benefit analysis and realize that the grant is not going to be worth um all the effort to apply for it also we might not be competitive we might get this information um where we have a project in mind to apply for but it's just we know it's not going to be

competitive sometimes we get that information from the agencies themselves sometimes we get that through our experts at Central Pines and sometimes we do realize that we're just not the best organization to apply so we will share that Grant opportunity and also usually write a letter of support for or local organizations um as well so sometimes we're not going to be the lead on a Grant application but we do want a local organization uh to go for those funds so in October of 23 we held a facilitation um through our Innovation team help to lead um to help us kind of think about the barriers around departments are having around applying for these grants so the biggest one being matching funds um again sometimes these grants are available but then you

find out they have required matching funds and our resources in Department um are for other priorities and sometimes we um it wouldn't make sense for us to apply or we might not have the funds available um grant writing experience and expertise we have that but also again this is very very new funding even federal agencies and state agencies are struggling to disperse These funds um so deadlines guidelines criteria are constantly changing so our staff is really trying to stay on top of that but it's it can be very difficult landscape um even though we have staff who have that experience also we have Staffing gaps potentially so again those resources such as project managers project delivery that is on top of what they're already doing adding these new projects

so so and even some times we have constrained procurement because the market is also strained because of all this funding so even if we can contract out some of the implementation it can be difficult uh to find contractors and coordination um again A lot of times we will apply with other jurisdictions other um other organizations so coordinating those external Partners as well as internal Partners when departments work together together for applying um is a lot of work so with that I'm going to pass it over to Julia to talk about more about our process that we're um continuing to improve and build good afternoon um Madame presiding chair other council members and manager page as DCM win Bush mentioned my name is Julia brenaman and I am a great

analyst in the finance department so now that Mary Grace has discussed some of the barriers that we currently face I want to walk through our process for tracking grant information since 2021 we've worked on centralizing the city's Grant process through a combination of meeting regularly and tracking our progress we alert departments with help from Central Pines or departments alert us to Opportunities and then after we meet with departments they provide recommendations on if the city should apply and for what project or program we should apply for for the city manager's office analyzes Department responses along with the city's strategic priorities to determine whether we agree with departments and then departments are asked to regularly update their progress in the city of Durham Grant tracker so um here is the tracker you can see that it's separated by departments um with one of the categories being unassigned even though there are three grants in that tab those grants do have a home um they just happen to to live with departments that

typically do not focus on Grant funds we have been working to centralize our grant process since 2021 so there's quite a few grants included in that database and we also keep grants in the database um as the years pass so that we can reflect on previous efforts in the funding um and that helps us with um future Grant applications so for the process of this visual or for the purposes of this visual I filtered out the grants under the Do Not qu qualify category so therefore the numbers on the grants that are currently being so therefore the numbers on your screen are just the grants that are currently being researched applied for awaiting award decision or awarded so here in this second picture I have screen grabbed from the general Services Tab and here you can see what it looks like to have all the detailed information listed out this is incredibly helpful for us to quickly get status updates and learn more about the city efforts for specific group grants the first thing I may stick out is the

red boxes but this is just notifying us that the application date is passed and actually as you can see in the next column this is okay because all of these grants have been applied for and in this instance all three of these grants were awarded to the city of Durham the charging and fueling infrastructure disc discretionary grant program was awarded to the city late last week after I took the screenshot so also visible here is the amount applied for a brief note on how the funds would be used additional comments and if the grant falls under the bipartisan infrastructure law departments are responsible for updating this tool in the city manager's office is able to use specific staff members many that you see here today um from various departments to gather additional information or ask specific questions staff does a great job providing updates and answering any additional questions that there may be and at this point I am going to hand it back over to Mary and Grace but I thank you for granting us your time thank you for keeping it within 20

minutes I appreciate that and we're almost done this is the last slide prise all right so um I wanted to mention also with the barriers of course sometimes it's worth overcoming those some of those barriers so there are certain grants that we will overcome those barriers for they're barriers they're not complete roadblock um but we're also looking at ways to continuously improve and more centralize um the city's Grant um Grant process um so one way is of we started having more focused meetings um originally having the all departments meet around monthly um IRA and B meetings was great because we're all learning now that we're getting a little more focused in and have these grants coming out that are more specific to departments we are starting to schedule more focused

meetings along with our Central Pines Partners um additionally um Central Pines is um working with us to uh upcoming to have some facilitated project development strategy sessions um sometimes when those grants come out we don't have projects for them so we'd like to start being proactive about developing these projects so when they come out we have more of a solid base for applications additionally um Central Pines is going to be helping to provide more training around grant writing that will be recorded and available for our staff and then um we're also reeva reevaluating and streamlining looking at Best Practices of other jurisdictions around City Grant processes and policies and working closely with our finance department around that and with that any questions and now thank

you oh and I understand that we do have someone online to speak and I had Jennifer carrian with the city's uh City County Environmental Affairs board if you want to raise your hands we can unmute you hi can you hear me yes we can thank you so much thanks so much for that presentation um it was really exciting to see especially all of the um the progress that's been made uh since this October facilitated meeting I think some of my comments or questions are really uh kind of drilling into some of the identified barriers and next steps so um you mentioned at the end that there's going to be some more effort to develop some projects in advance so that it would be easier and more competitive to apply for some of these things and I'm just sort of curious about the overall

strategy for Grants capture it sounds like the when we talk about whether these are aligned with high priorities I'm assuming you're talking about the Strategic plan but to my knowledge and I may be wrong to my knowledge we don't have an overarching resilience plan and so many of these funding opportunities are directly Rel related to climate resilience so I'm just wondering if having a overarching existing resilience plan that directly addresses our known climate risks would make this whole process easier because I am curious about how do how does the existing Grant strategy overlap at all with our known climate risks in Durham because I don't know that our strategic plan necessarily directly addresses that and then the last thing I'll say is just to drill in a little bit more on that coordination um barrier I know a lot of the upcoming uh funding opportunities require coordination with local community- based organizations like co- applying and I see that as a potential future barrier if we don't really have that type of

coordination for the local cbos to work with and then lastly coordination with the county and DPS because you know we're all one big community so I'm Cur I would also be curious about what the coordination is right now uh co- applying with DPS in the county thank you thank you appreciate that thank you for those um questions I'll try to address a few of them and then I'm going to defer to our general services department and our sustainability division um for the climate resiliency plan um so as far as applying with DPS in Durham County um thankfully um Central Pines has connected us to uh the main person over grants at Durham County um so we have reached out and we're trying to schedule a meeting because I know they've also have been doing a lot of work to centralize their process so I think we have a lot to learn from them and I'm excited to hopefully continue to

collaborate um and then with DPS I think we're also again trying to coordinate that will be a part of our Improvement I hope in the future as we consider streamlining internally but also um having more solid connections to other folks uh seeking these grants and now I will and I don't know if Central Pines wants to they also work with Durham County they work with several local jurisdictions um and often times they'll help us connect to those folks if they hear of an opportunity they know we can benefit from I don't know if you have anything there's about 14 different counties mhm Oh

Come hi yeah I'm Taran NIS with Central Pines Regional Council um I'm a management analyst and I work in our grant assistance program so yeah like Mary Grace was saying we work with Durham County as well so there's opport unities for coordination there um and we've been trying to bridge those gaps and bring them together like she was saying we're trying to connect them her with um John who is John Kefir is their um grants coordinator he oversees all of the grants they kind of have like a top- down structure for their Grant approach right now at Durham County that's new um so that's something that is a potential to learn from and makes our coordination easier with them and as far as um coordinating with some cbos we've also helped um the city coordinate with some cbos in the area and we have relationships with some of those organizations so that's something we're striving to do as well to increase that thank you and uh I was just going to say I appreciate

the the um resource that the Central Central Pines Regional Council has been so thank you yeah and I'm going to open it up to my colleagues for questions council member risk um uh first of all welcome um mayor PM oh thank you um so first of all thanks for the presentation this is incredibly important stuff as you know this is like and I think you said um Miss ston King this is all kind of very new at our level for Central Pines for the federal governments it's all new but it's moving fast right so I appreciate your attention all this stuff I want to focus I've got a couple questions on this the more than half of the grants related to climate energy and and environments you mentioned and I appreciate the comments from um from Jen carrian from the environmental Affairs board Jen I hope you're still listening thanks for your comments um I want to build on her comment about this this question about the strategy right and so so in the in the in the work you're doing the grants you've gone for the work you're doing with Central Pines what's your sense of like how do you

prioritize what are the what what's the process for doing that because there's so much out there right so curious first of all about like what's the how do you prioritize these many different opportunities yeah um and I might actually defer to Central pintes because they help us do that um and just say that it it really depends on a department basis as well because um we look at projects they already have we look at initiatives they want to be funded that are not funded or ones that are already funded but could use more funding um and again we look at the criteria of the grant um and talk to different partners around the city if we think there might be a collaboration potential or of another department applying um so I will oh well just kidding Summer from General Services is coming good afternoon Madam presiding chair Madam manager and members of

council summer Austin General services so in in terms of the city we have a brand new strategic plan we have a carbon neutrality and renewable energy Act action plan that feeds directly into that new strategic plan and so our road map is fairly set in that way but the reason that Central pins and entities like Central pins the state energy office and others are so important is because you really need that clearing house that umbrella that Aggregates things my colleague Amy says you know the air we breathe doesn't stop at the Durham County Line and so a lot of the efforts have to be Regional as Madam manager knows we've been working with the county and DPS we we spend two years coming up with the collaboration with the county and DPS but in the environment we're in now with the time and the urgency being able to rely on entities like Central Pines to say hey region and understanding that things may be different for Chapel Hill and they have a different elected body that is going to expect different things from them and being able to aggregate that

into where are the common threads so that we can go after something that espouses as many of the regional priorities as possible um is really really important and and we're relying on it heavily I appreciate that and and thank you thank you m Jones um thank you for mentioning both the the larger City strategic plan as well as the the um sustainability plan um I think those are important guiding documents I will say just for for the manager and my colleagues on the council um that this is the um the carbon neutrality plan we have is an important plan it's just for the city right so it's just for City buildings and city fleet many communities including Raleigh and Asheville have larger climate action plans for the entire community that includes Community stakeholders as well as just the city so I think it's something for us to consider whether our climate action plan should be broader to really address the broader community and not just our I mean I think our city city fleet and buildings are important but a larger plan I think would also be helpful and as as uh Miss carrian mentioned having included in that plan some sense of climate resilience is also a key piece that I think we need in

Durham that would be applicable for some of the federal grants that we need to add to that plan so I think these are all areas we need to grow as a city but I think it's important to know where we are now and how we can expand this work so thank you thank you and I will add that the central Caroline Central Regional Pines Pines central Pines Regional Council does have a regionwise plan and I think that that will be helpful to kind of review as well council member cabero yeah thank you thank you for all of the um updates I love when we win always um and just quickly is there is there a plan around a resilience I mean this has come up before so I was just curious if if City staff had or is that something that you need direction from Council good afternoon council member that plan is in the works we the way that we've prioritized Things based on

the resources that we have and all of the things that you all know well that we've worked on over the past however many terms that you all have been here yes there might be jurisdictions that are approaching it differently that have labeled it differently that might even be ahead of us but this Regional effort that was alluded to today that Mary Grace talked about is what we are prioritizing right now as the building blocks for a Durham based plan understanding that we may not be entering the conversation at the same place that Raleigh or Orange County might be but they were entering it where it matters because the money is now and so the regional plan will have some durm specific outputs and that's what we're going to rely upon because if we tried to sort of parse should we have done it three years ago so we would be right exactly where somebody else is that wouldn't address the issue which is the here and the now so is Durham going to

be leveraging that Regional plan to our betterment that is that is intended to be the goal thank thank you I have a follow-up question so um I know our sustainability road map there's a dashboard is it tying and I just haven't looked at it so it could be there and I just I haven't looked at it since campaigning um and um is there a place for for residents to directly link from our City website into that Regional plan so that they can see because to council member with Point people don't understand that there's maybe this regional thing going on and so it's always in my mind if our environmental Affairs board which are some of our most Savvy residents around environmental issues have these questions then that means the broader Community might have these questions and so where is that kind of information living this kind of effort which makes perfect sense so that folks are real clear that we are going after these dollars that there is a regional plan I mean Carolina Pines just got rebranded right like I think a lot of folks are used to you know TJ Cog

right and so then how are we communicating that where are we communicating that and yeah thank you and council member R had a followup as well yeah just one of the followup so so one thing that wasn't in the presentation and I know there's so much a covery you did a good job of of sort of summarizing all that in 20 minutes but I know the part of the whole stimulus piece and this comes out of the White House is a so-called justice 40 initiative that 40% of all these not all these but many of these grants should go to communities that have been historically marginalized or disinvested in so what role does that justice 40 play in our calculus of what grants we're going after related to that I know some of the grant through the department of energy involve actual um rebates or discounts to act to homeowners for replacing aging and and sort of more dirty sort of um Gas Appliances to replace them with uh energy efficient like heat pumps and so forth those grants I think require a community partner with the city for example so again this goes back to the question I think U maybe Miss caran ask like if

there's a community based group that wants to be involved in that who do they contact in the city what's what's the process for that so so talk to me about the whole issue of sort of these grants for disinvested and and historically marginalized communities so I'll take a piece of it but it it takes a village and it's a whole lot of people in here who have different elements of that in their work plans for for us on the team in general Services because we are so infrastructure-based our biggest priority right now is making sure that any facility whether it be a community facility or our facility has the infrastructure base that it needs to be able to perform in this space but specifically to what uh Jennifer might be referencing I really think some of the folks here can talk more for example the county just wanton a large grant that is completely Community facing and as we said if if we need to improve our marketing with Central Pines about what might be included in this next big push

which is the cprg and resilience plan that comes out of that you know if we need to be more outward in in terms of our marketing we we can work on doing that um we have lots of small community facing efforts and so it it it's almost like you have multiple questions in your question and so I'm going to step back and give somebody else a chance to highlight some of the parts and pieces that they know best the justice 40 question oh can you want to take that one well I was going to say um a lot of the grants we go for are around justice 40 um we also look at our own data through um neighborhood maps and we think about and strategize with departments where those areas in need are in Durham um so for instance I know the EV charging stations are actually in lowincome um historically uh not served uh neighborhoods um

additionally I wanted to speak to the rebates a little bit so I know um The Innovation team um Lindsey Gavin is over there our Innovation team manager I know they're actually currently working on a project to think about how we can help residents um better access those rebates and better access um the uh purchasing of um electric stoves and things like that to actually take advantage of the rebates um North Carolina has not yet put out guidance for those rebates the federal government has but North Carolina hasn't but we're hoping this year they will um if there's any more questions on that I would you know ask Lindsay to maybe come up and talk about but I know they're in the early stages of um looking at that as a project Justice good on jce

Bo oh no I think so I think this and this is probably a longer conversation or the first of many conversations so thank you and yeah I would just add that I think it probably would be helpful to figure out how to track on the other side um our Community Partners as well for their applications I'm sure that's part of the I'm sure it's in there but being able to report that back will be helpful especially on EAB side and then also figuring out how to make sure someone from EAB is involved with those monthly meetings that you're having might be a little bit helpful as well that's those are my suggestions I'm one person on this Council I'm just just from being on EAB I think that'll be really helpful those folks are pretty passionate about the work that they do um other than that I think um one last thing to your thing around EAB and if they can't participate potentially doing periodic updates there so that there's that again that clear communication back to Residents around the work I think is

really really important so and if there aren't any other questions comments then I'm going to thank you all for providing this presentation I just wanted to come up and thank Mary Grace and Julia this is their first time presenting in front of city council and they actually volunteered to do this today and so I want to thank them and thank we have such supportive Partners in our departments who are always willing to be here to support us so we can get you all answers in real time so I want to thank our department directors and others in the Departments for being here with us today and I'm sorry I just can't help but to notice there's a lot of th power on that team thank you thank you thanks to the Village yes and I I do believe we just have the one item for Madam clerk did you want to share yes thank you madam presiding chair and um Mr Mayor proam you're back welcome I did want to update everyone on the Durham City County Environmental Affairs board appointment ment we have received a seventh vote

from mayor Williams and Tom Campbell has received four votes so we can remove that from the GBA or I'd like to request that we do that which item was that M cler that's item number one um there had been a tie but um mayor Williams has voted since and we now have a nomination thank you I think um okay okay we want to settle the agenda Madam manager you have a majority nomination we don't need to it's it's it's fine to move it to consent agenda just for making it okay okay so now the um agenda will be

for consent items 1 through3 and items 7- 14 and item five will be on the GBA um section of the agenda thank you madam manager um Mr Mayor protim did you want to gel us out on ajour I'm just I'm going to let you do the honor um I just want to make a quick comment I want to on behalf of the mayor myself thank council member Freeman for what I know was excellent leadership uh today and bring you greetings the President says to say hey uh to Durham um that's it thank you all so much for carrying on in such an excellent way Madame presiding chair would you land us please yes and uh we are adjourned at 3:37 you got