City Council · Regular Meeting · June 5, 2025

m. and we have a lot of guests here today. It's going to be a good meeting today. Madam clerk, will you please call the role?

Mayor Williams, I'm here. Mayor Patent Middleton, I'm here. Council member Baker here. Council member Cavier here.

Council member Cook, Council Member Freeman present, and Council Member Ris is on route. Thank you uh for everyone that's here, including Council Member Cook. Um this is Brave. Um you're here.

You're committed considering your weekend festivities. All right. Um, but any announcements? Um, I'll be so brief.

Thank you all for being here. m. I don't

think we should have to do anything until then, but just letting everyone know. Um, and I want to say because June really snuck up on me. Um, that happy Pride Month celebrating. I forgot to say that at the meeting.

Um, but we'll be celebrating all month long. Those are all my announcements. Thank you. Thank you.

And uh I will be on an airplane at 6 PM. So hopefully we'll be out of here by then. All right, Mr. Baker.

Famous last words. Uh good afternoon everyone. Um thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to see a full room.

First just want to say congratulations to Josh Gunn, our new director of office office of economic and workforce development. uh we're in a pivotal moment uh where we have a lot of changes in the global national and regional econ economy and uh we really need a fresh uh and comprehensive analysis and a new uh vision forward for for economic development. So uh timing couldn't be better and I'm excited about the work ahead there. Um last night in this room

uh was the environmental affairs board uh meeting. There was a presentation from Water Resources um about uh Brent Tag Midsouth Incorporated's uh repeated and continued elicit discharges into the creek that's running through Burton Park. Um it is killing everything has killed everything in the creek. Uh this is in Third Four Creek Whed and uh while I think a lot of folks aren't allowed to say this, it is a blatant environmental justice um issue.

uh I'd like to uh write a letter to uh the state attorney general and um would invite collaboration with my colleagues uh in in that effort. Um this is a really important issue. Uh and then finally um and and I might just wait until we reach uh the uh budget item, but I'd like to ask um for an update on uh the county's budget regarding day shelters and whether that's something we we need to address in this budget. That's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Cover. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Uh, good to be with you all.

Good to see a pretty packed room today. Um, I just have an item that I will be bringing up when we get to budget conversations. That's all. Thank you, Council Member Freeman.

Uh, thank you and uh, happy Pride Month. definitely forgot that on Monday night, but um I did get a chance to sit with folks last night for the lead in the park conversation and um I fully expect to hear from folks um more as they start to figure out what it is and what it looks like. I know um our staff has been working really hard with um the state DEEQ to figure out what the remediation will look like. So, I definitely would love to hear um feedback from staff on that. And then um al also congratulations as well on the new workforce development work director and uh understanding there's a few new roles a few other roles that will need to be filled. Um just hoping that uh we can have as

much as much success with those as well. That's about all. Thank you, Council Member Resty. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, apologies for being tardy. It's good to see everybody, colleagues, residents, those online. Um, good afternoon. Um, just a couple things.

So, um, it was an honor to be on Tuesday to be at the annual breakfast of housing for New Hope, um, one of our key city partners in the effort to really address the challenge of homelessness in Durham. So, I want to thank Russell Pierce and his staff, um, for the amazing work they do, for being a great partner to the city, and look forward to working with them as we go forward in this new exciting strategic plan around addressing our unhoused population. So, um, again, thanks for housing for New Hope and congratulations on your annual breakfast. Um, also on Tuesday, uh, the manager, Council Member Cavier, and I had a chance to go to the going away lunchon for Tom Dawson, who's been an absolutely dynamic and, um, creative, uh, force at the Durham Parks and Wreck and designing new parks.

So, we're going to see we're gonna Tom's gonna take a job in Raleigh. Darn it. You know, um,

Tom, you know where we are here. But I just want to thank Tom for the amazing work he's done in in creating new parks like Merrick Moore, but also in revitalizing our traditional parks here. So, farewell to Tom Dawson. Thanks for your great service to the city of Durham.

And then finally, the mayor had me traveling all over the triangle this morning. That's why I'm partly late here, but honored to join the mayor at the um celebration today of lighting the way um uh for the celebration of North County small businesses sponsored by Carolina Small Business Development uh loan fund. Um, small businesses are the backbone of our state economy and our local economy. And so, it's an honor to be part of that celebration to honor the role of small businesses in providing services, um, paying taxes, but also employing our residents here.

So, they're critical role and uh, joy celebrating that with Kevin Dick, who's the head of uh, the Carolina Small Business Development Fund. He certainly, as you know, used to be the OEWD director. So, it's great to see Kevin again. um and I look forward to working with him and other folks to continue building the strength of our small businesses here in Durham and across the state.

So, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank

you, Mayor President. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, honorable colleagues, all of our guests and neighbors in chamber with us today and whatever platform you may be watching on this afternoon. Thank you uh for joining us.

Not many announcements. Um let me uh also add my congratulations to our to for to Mr. gun on assuming his new role into our manager also on continuing to build a great team for us here in Durham. Um had a great time in CC CCD Plaza this past Tuesday.

Uh Mr. Mayor uh celebrating the inaugural uh money bestowment for the Bull City Future Fund. Uh it's been a long time in the making. I want to congratulate I think about 15 organizations who received north of $300,000 uh for the work that they're doing.

When we talk about grassroots initiatives and a lot of us talk about needing to do grassroots stuff, these are the organizations that are actually on the front line doing the grassroots work. Uh I call them headline stoppers. Uh and I say that because often times the work they do, the results don't make the news. So, while we're looking at numbers

and we're looking at headlines of things that have happened a miss and things that are bad that have happened, there are a whole lot of people in this city that are preventing headlines from ever coming to our attention. And it's hard to document those. It's hard to quantify those, but it's happening. So, I want to congratulate uh you, Mr.

Mayor, on partnering with United Way of the Greater Triangle and Triangle Community Development Corp. um I think I got their name right uh foundation right uh and um others in this city uh to launch this most uh important fund. I hope it'll be a permanent part of our landscape here and I want to encourage those organizations that didn't apply this time or didn't get money this time to keep coming back uh as we plan on doing this in perpetuity uh and thank you for the work you do to make our city uh a much more better place. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll be brief. um as we have a long agenda today. Um shout out to the Durham Library Foundation.

They hosted a fireside chat uh between uh Mr. Bari Sers and myself. Uh it was really cool.

Bari and I are really good friends. We go back sometime and it was just really cool to uh sit down and just talk and just catch up and yeah, it wasn't a formal we there was supposed to be a formal conversation, but we just kind of caught up and it was cool. Um but thanks to the library foundation for just hosting a series of talks. Uh they cover so many things.

Um thank you council member Riss for joining me this morning at the Carolina Small Business Fund. Uh and uh I want to congratulate uh Council Member Cook on her uh wedding this weekend. Um it'll be my anniversary. So we'll be having sharing the same anniversary.

Um and my wife told me I need to be out of here to get on the plane for our anniversary weekend. So uh I'll be out of here soon. um the um yeah, the inaugural uh Bull City Future Fund, the first round of funding, we finally got it, you know, uh kicked off and it was $35,000. Uh this was a dream come true and and it was it was a beautiful site

to see nearly 300 people at CCB Plaza just dancing, lining, having a good time, kids all over the place, ies, popcorn, pictures, you name it. Uh the big stage um and just a fun time. briefly. Uh just going to name them out.

Dorm YMCA um received $10,000. Bump of the Triangle received $10,000. Sidekicks Academy $10,000. Growth NC 10,000.

Youth Mentoring Collaborative 10,000. Uh Graced 10,000. Uh Standup Speak Out 20,000. Poof Teen Center 20,000.

Purpose Learning Lab uh 20,000. Made in Durham 25,000. Boys and Girls Club 25,000. Echo 25,000.

Elerturo 50,000. Th success summit $50,000. Uh and I look forward to keep raising money and uh continue to support more organizations throughout the community and um yeah, this is this was really really really fun to do. Um let's get to work. Uh really excited about all the talks of things today. Um yeah,

it'll be our last meeting before we have to pass this budget. So let's take another dab at it, folks. Mr. Manager on you.

Good afternoon, Mayor. Mayor Prom, members of council, I have a few uh comments this afternoon and then I'll read my priority items. Uh first, uh because we have a packed room, I do want to just make an announcement to any staff in the room to I'll ask you to monitor uh whether or not we have members of the public in the lobby. And if so, I'll ask staff to move to the city manager suite or another space and monitor the meeting and then come in for your item so that we maximize space in the room for the public.

Uh I do want to acknowledge and mildly apologize to the council for the length of the agenda. It seems to be inevitable that the last work session of the uh fiscal year always seems to have more business on it than we would like. Uh we regret that, but appreciate your willingness to plow through it with us. So we we have a a good list of discussions to have today. Um, I do want to uh uh acknowledge and

appreciate that I was given the opportunity to be included in the Junth flag raising ceremony at the courthouse this Monday. My thanks to Phyllis Kohley was there with the mayor uh and Spectacular magazine for pulling that together and including us. A really meaningful moment and and I learned a lot uh thought thought I knew a lot about Junth, learned more about Junth and so appreciate that opportunity. And finally, uh, Council Member Cook, on behalf of the administration, we all extend and, uh, congratulations on your forthcoming nuptuals and commend your choice of of a location for that event.

I I won't share it publicly so that the paparazzi won't track you down this weekend, but uh, commend you for having chosen one of our finer city facilities, a little bit of a hidden gem in the city. So, with that, let me read our priority items today. Also, not a short list. Uh the following are priority items from the city manager's office. Agenda item number six, fiscal year 202526 budget and 202631 CIP ordinance and other related

ordinances. We have added a presentation for this item today. There is also additional materials in your packet that have been added uh answering some of the questions uh that we received in previous discussions. Agenda item number 42, Gwen Silver under citizens matters.

Miss Silver has withdrawn her request to speak today. Agenda item number 43, the contract with Word Systems LLC for Nice System Maintenance. A supplemental item was added to the packet. , a supplemental item has been added and the city council is being asked to suspend the rules and vote during today's work session to replace the existing contract that ended in May 2025 for our prior prior vendor.

And then agenda item number 45, contract for implementation of CityWorks permitting, licensing, and land management software with Timmans Group Incorporated. A supplemental item has been added. Those are all the city manager's office priority items.

Thank you. Um, always get hung up on this. All right. I'll entertain a motion.

Second. All right. It's moved and properly second. Please show by your right hand.

I All right. Thank you. All post. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Attorney. Yes. Good afternoon, Mayor and Mayor Prom and Council members.

Uh, senior deputy city attorney Appears as 'Fred Lamar' - correctly transcribed sitting in for Kim Rayberg, the city attorney. City attorney's office does not have any priority items. Thank you. Madam clerk.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pet, and city council members. The city clerk's office does not have any priority item items, but I do have uh some announcements with the nominations.

I can either make them now or All right. So, our first one is I apologize. One uh the Durham

Convention Center Authority mayor's mayoral appointment. Um, council has nominated Re Med. The Durham Workers Rights Commission. The one vacancy has uh been nominated uh Ryan Wang.

The Durham Convention Center Authority um has been nominated for Carl Newman. And for the Housing Appeals Board, Inel Go has been nominated by council. I do not have general consensus on the participatory budgeting steering committee. Uh what's the breakdown?

Okay, so uh as of right now, uh council has nominated majority Rosemary James and Kenneth Webb. Um Daniel Seder has three votes right now and Robin A. Smith has two votes right now. I did up until u five minutes ago I was missing two uh council votes. However, Daniel Seder. Okay, now that puts us up

to three. All right, so um let me just state it again. Part participatory budgeting steering committee appointments. Uh oh, I'm sorry.

One second. So I have Rosemary James, I have Daniel Seder, and I have Kenneth Webb. Thank you. Right.

Thank you so much. At this time, I'll go ahead and read the uh consent agenda. Oh, they Item 44. It's item 44.

You can either do it when you read it. Uh let let's let me read the consent agenda and then we'll come back and do that first. All right. This is consent agenda.

Uh number one, Durham Convention Center Authority mayoral appointment. Number two, Durham Workers Rights Commission appointment. Number three, Durham Convention Center Authority appointment. Number four, participatory budgeting steering committee appointment. Number five, housing appeals board appointment. Number six, fiscal year

2025 2026 budget in 2026 2031 capital improvement plan CIP ordinance and other related ordinances. I don't need to pull that, but do we want to put that on GBA? It's a presentation. Okay.

Number seven, Dorm Housing Authority uh DHA operational assistance loan commitment. The entire council pulls that. Yeah. Uh number eight, amendment to interlocal agreement of city council strategic youth initiatives.

Number nine, amendment to interlocal agreement between city and county Durham for of Durham for inspections services. Number 10, contract with North Carolina Coalition and Homelessness to provide homeless management information system lead agency services. Number 11, approval of contract between the city of Durham and Habitat for Humanity to administer the city of Durham minor repair program. Hold that one. Number 12, approval of the contract

between the city of Durham and Hillyard Lawn Maintenance Incorporated to provide landscaping services for city- owned properties. Number 13, approval of the contract between the city of Durham and Legal Aid North Carolina to administer the city of Durham eviction diversion program. Can we just go ahead and put that one on GBA since I have to recuse? Is that okay?

I can pull it at the meeting, too, if you'd rather do it that way. But just since I'm thinking about it, um, if this is a request, we'll have Yeah, I'll have to put I'll have to recuse on this. Thanks. Y It's fine.

We're not we're not taking any action today other than that one. But I was asking to put it on GBA so that I we can have a vote separate. Yes. Um first amendment to contract number 14. First amendment to contract 1966 650 with Housing for New Hope Incorporated uh for the provision of landlord engagement services. Number 15, second amendment to the contract to contract

19376 with the volunteers of America of the Carolinas Incorporated for the provision provision of coordinated entry with diversion services. I don't want to pull either, but can you get the actual original contracts for 14 and 15 the amendments are out of context which is helpful. Thank you. Number 16, 2025 amendments city of Durham and county of Durham in a local agreement regarding homeless services and the homeless services advisory committee.

Number 17, execute the Durham City County interlocal agreement for continuation of the gain reduction strategy. Number 18, revise small business revise small local business enterprise SLBE ordinance. Number 19, contract with Axius for the fire for fire department facility study. Number 20, city space, city hall space reconfiguration design contract with array architects.

We get a new city hall. Is that what that mean? I don't know. General services like no.

Um number 21, amendment to interlocal cooperation agreement with housing authority city of Durham to procure and install security equipment. Number 22, contract with Folded Poetry LLC for public art at city hall. Number 23, condemnation action to obtain two eastments at 302 Marine Road for the bicycle and pedestrian improvements project. 24, combination action to obtain one area of feed simple and one eastment at 401 Marine Road for the bicycle and pedestrian improvements project.

25 update on the redevelopment of 505 West Chapel Hill Street. Pull that one. do that, Mr. Mayor.

24 was pulled by a resident. You're all right. Thank you. And then 25 as well.

Um 25, update on Okay. Yeah. Number 26,

combination action to obtain two easements at 700 Marine Road for the bicycle and pedestrian improvements project. Number 27, Garrett Road Park restroom sewer connection design contract with RVE Incorporated. 28 contract with Symmetra Symmetra Symmetra Life Insurance and Company for stop-loss insurance coverage. Number 29, fifth amendment to fiscal year 2022 2026 contract to fund downtown Durham Municipal Services Service District operations provided by Downtown Durham Incorporated.

The 30 fiscal year 2025 2026 agreement to fund economic development programs and services operated by downtown Durham Inc. using city of Durham funds. 31 contract with E+ Incorporated for implementation of the metropolitan area network. Number 32 Durham station license agreements. Number 33 agreement with Greenwood RST LLC for propane auto gas

supply. Number 34, construction award to Teraflex Group LLC for the American Tobacco Waterline Replacement Phase 2 project. Number 35, professional services contract award to Rafelis Financial Consultants Incorporated for utility rate financial and management consulting services. Number 36, service contract with McKim and Creed Incorporated for lead service line inventory field verification project for disadvantaged areas.

Number 37, professional services contract award to McKim and Creed Incorporated for the South Durham water reclamation facility tertiary filter replacement and miscellaneous process rehabilitation items. 38 award of non-professional services contract to Duke Root Control Incorporated for the sewer outfall inspection program south project for the upcoming Zoning um public hearings. Zoning map

change Methodist Street town houses number 40. Zoning map change 16006 and 1608 East Cornwallis Road. Zoning map change 401 East Lakewood Avenue. And of course we have the number 42 Gwen Silver who withdrew.

Okay. Uh, citizen matter. Number 43, contract with Word Systems LLC for nice system managements. 44 contract for print mail services for the city of Durham with um RA Rev Spring Incorporated.

Okay, that's I'll come back after and number 45 contract for implementation of city works permitting licenses licensing and land management software with Timmans Group Incorporated. That is our consent agenda. Uh first order of business, I'll entertain a motion to suspend the rules. So move. All right. All in

favor? All oppose. All right. Now, I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a six-month contract with the option to renew with Revring Incorporated for French and Mail Services up to the amount of $1,143,576.

Second. I don't I maybe it was just me. So moved. Okay.

Moved. Second. All right. It's moved and probably seconded.

All in favor? I. All oppose. All right.

And I'll also Oh, do I need to do the contingency fund? Yeah. I'll also entertain a motion to establish a contingency fund in the amount of 1,143 and 43,576. So moved.

It's been moved and properly seconded. All in favor? I. All oppose.

All right. And lastly, I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute modifications to the service contract provided. The total cost does not exceed

$2,287,152. So moved. Been moved and properly seconded. All in favor?

All opposed. All right. You got it. All right.

Uh, so items pulled. Let me see. One second. Yes.

Let me uh check one thing. I didn't check to see if there items. Mr. Mayor, I believe item six is on uh on the cards as well.

Cards. Mhm. Right. Were there any do you know if there were any pulled that we that's what I'm checking against right now and because I saw 7 11 21 24 and 25 were pulled.

So, uh there is a there are two speakers already on there for 25 I believe as well. Okay. All right. So, we're starting out at number six. No, that's the budget one.

Okay, just do the just one. Report item first presentation. What items? Yeah.

Items for seven. Seven. Yeah. 7 11 13 21 24 25 number these up 13.

Okay, thank you. All right. Uh we're going to have we do have one citizen matter. We're going to address that then uh now and then we'll go with pulled items before going to the presentation.

Uh Joshua Robinson, are you in the room? Welcome. You have three minutes.

All right. Yes. Uh start out by playing an audio from a city official. I'm tell you what it is with you.

It's fraud. No, it's not. When I do my response, that's what it's going to be. So, that was in response to uh when I came here on May 8th in, you know, regards to asking Ed Nixon uh just to update what's going on with my case.

Um I I've met all compliances. I turned in everything. I even told him, you know, hey, I was in a trauma situation. I didn't want to disclose my address.

Um that was completely disregarded. Not only does did he def uh defame me, he also intentionally concealed information that led to now of a federal uh grant for me, which is also a criminal um offense of the federals. I have notified HUD and they said the city has um been notified and they're trying to make a

decision. I just wanted to come upon y'all and ask just to try to get an update or understanding like what's the process going on right now. Someone is going to speak with you right now. Okay.

Keith, my intention would be for you to give him an update privately. Just let let him know our understanding of the process and then if council requests any information of staff, please let me know. Would you speak with him? Thank you.

All right. Thank you. That was 11 and 25. Okay.

All right. We're going to go with the code items first. So the first one up is number seven. DJ.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh so Dor Housing

Authority DJ I think a resident pulled number six, but we're doing the presentation after. Yeah. Okay, so this is number seven de uh Durham Housing Authority. Um Okay, I think every Yeah.

Okay. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Proam, uh city council members. I'm here to answer questions about this item. I also have with me today is Shanti Brown, CEO, COO at DHA, as well as their attorney, Jason Briner.

All right, I'll just start. Uh, Council Member Ris, would you like to start us out? Sure. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. 5 million to Durham Housing Authority. um as the as the proud uh liaison of the city

to the housing authority, I just wanted to say a few words to provide additional context and fill in some of the gaps. You all have an amendment before you from Miss Windbush um that explains a lot of the request here. I just want to lay out a couple more things to again fill in the gaps. So, um for folks that don't know, DHA provides decent affordable housing for low-inccome households in Durham.

Um around over 4,000 units here that serves over 10,000 residents in the city of Durham. So that's one in 25 residents in Durham lives in a DHA property or has assistance from DHA to pay their rent, right? Um average income of public housing residents is $13,000 plus. The vast majority of residents earn uh 94% earn less than 30% AMI.

Um according to the latest report from Central Ponds Regional Council, there are 16 units 16 units of naturally occurring affordable housing in the city of Durham. 16 total for people below 30% AMI. So essentially, if you're below 30% AMI, Durham public h Durham Housing Authority is virtually the only option you have. Okay. Um again, 10,000 people

in Durham, average rents are $289 per month. Um one-third of households, I think if I'm right about this, Miss Brown, one third of households are either on zero rent or minimum rent, which is $50 a month. Am I correct about that one? Close.

Okay. Do you have the the right number there? Yeah. Yeah.

Do not have the exact number in pay. Essentially, a lot of residents are not necessarily even paying their rent, which is charged as a as a as a um percentage of their household income. Correct. That's correct.

Um so the waiting list for for DHA properties are long, right? So Willow Street house Willow Street, which opened just a few years ago with 182 units, has a waiting list of 5,000 people on the list, right? Um, if I'm not if I'm not mistaken, this uh the housing choice voucher program has not opened the waiting list since 2018, right? Because the list is so long.

So the lists are long because the demand is great there for public housing. Um, so DHA is a critical source of safe affordable housing, but there's not without challenges, right? So DHA, as many of you all know, has been has

been classified as a troubled agency. Um, and that's because low because of low assessment scores from HUD. And what that means is the requirements of our recovery agreement with HUD and again if I'm getting anything wrong tell me Mr. Brandon M is wrong.

The requirements of that recovery agreement with HUD include increasing occupancy to 95%. Right now occupancy I think this is in the memo from Miss Windbush is 92%. So increasing occupancy is one piece. Number two is repositioning McDougall Terrace.

Right. Number three is improving unit conditions as measured by inspection scores. And so I'm sure the question will be like so why doesn't DHA just do this do do these things? right?

Get the occupancy up, uh, address the maintenance. Um, but the issue goes back to the request before us. Um, which is to address short-term revenue shortfalls. So, for example, because of these revenue shortfalls, the maintenance staff at DHA is only 84% staffed up, right?

We need money and resources to actually hire people to fix those units. Um, you saw in the memo that DHA is planning several things to stabilize operations and address long-term sustainability. that includes

expenditure adjustments and the continued expansion of public housing which provides certain fees to to the agency. Um but it also involves this issue of lease enforcement sort of like the issue that's been discussed um that I want to I want to name. Um it's been before the council we've heard a lot of comments about that. Um so just in terms of lease enforcement um since during COVID because one couldn't be evicted there was some so there we began to have a problem with lease folks paying their leases.

So right now tenant w tenant rent collection at detail properties is at 65%. Okay. Um let's see my notes here. The goal for that is 98% right.

So 65% rent collection. Tenant rent makes up onethird of the revenues of the Durham Housing Authority as the mayor often says for the city of Durham like DHA can't print money. So they rely in part but largely on federal funds but also one-third of the budget comes from ten uh rent paid and that's a budget of 56

million. DHA has filed 86 cases for non-payment of rent since July 2024. And correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Brener, on this one.

The largest share of those cases has been resolved through payments received from tenants. 13 cases have resulted in evictions. Each one of those is an eviction too many. But I want to make clear to all that this is not this is not a title wave of evictions at DHA, right?

Um it's essentially one per month. And each each one of those evictions is a is a is a is a crisis, right? That's not good. Um at the same time, DHA is a critical housing partner to the city.

um with this troubled status, we don't want the federal government to take over the housing authority, right? And so what we have before you, I just want to make sure it's clear, is a balance that the DHA is trying to balance between addressing the key issues in this recovery agreement, right? Providing safe, affordable housing, making sure they can be sustainable for the future. So, I would urge my my my client my clients, my colleagues here on the council to

support this motion as we're trying to support and strengthen what is essentially social housing in Durham. This is our social housing. We talked about a lot of this on council. This is social housing and we want to make sure it works for our residents.

So, I want to thank you all for being here. Urge my colleagues to support this um as we as we seek to strengthen and improve DHA. As you know, this agreement is a is a loan agreement. It's not a grant.

there are some uh provisions in there to for performance agreement with performance items which I think makes sense. Um but I think this is a critical investment we're making in the future of public housing in Durham that remains in Durham and not taken over by the federal government and that provide these services to tens of thousands of residents who need safe affordable housing, but the agency needs dollars to be able to make sure that housing is maintained and that we do the the issues that we need to address to address the recovery agreement. So I'll stop there. Um so thanks for the time here.

Well, thank you for that primer, Council Member Wrist. It's almost like you should have been on that mic. No, it's good. Thank you. Um, before I get into my comments,

colleagues, are there any other comments or questions that you all would like to provide? Council member Cook, go ahead. All right. Good afternoon.

Um, some of these questions might be for staff, but I'm going to start since y'all are at the mic. Um, so I actually council member Rrist answered one of my questions which was about income. Um, but I was hoping that y'all could explain the TARS. 1 million taken in as the overall agency.

But I'm just hoping you can clarify those numbers and also explain how um there's twice as much being taken in outside of public housing. So the three point I can speak to again. My name is Ashanti Brown. I'm

the chief operating officer for the Durham Housing Authority. Um good afternoon mayor, mayor prom, and members of city council. 1 million is actually representative of all outstanding tenant accounts receivable. So that is all outstanding rent for tenant accounts.

The public housing portion of that rent is what we would take in annually just for our public housing units. We have another 500 units of affordable housing that are not funded by the public housing operating grant program. 4 is specifically what we would normally take in for public housing alone. I'm sorry I'm still thinking I'm confused.

1 is all outstanding. 4 is how much would normally be coming in from public housing alone. What makes up and what's what what's the difference

1 explain that there's public housing and then there then there's the other other other ways we DHA is serving families, right? Yes. And that is my question is how much money is coming in from other sources because I thought that I thought a lot of it was coming in from public housing. I know y'all aren't taking rent on your vouchers.

That money doesn't go to y'all. 4. So I'm just curious how it grows that large. 4.

Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's really not clear from this memo, but the additional amount I guess the difference. Can you just say what that's made up from? 4 million from public housing in rents. However, since CO 19 and not receiving proper rents um rent payments from our

1 million is the overall rent um that has not been collected. So, one is a yearly amount and and the other is just a total. That's correct. Okay.

Also, not very clear in the Okay. It's just the way that it's written in our memo. This is not y'all related, but it just doesn't it literally just states those two things and it doesn't make sense. Um, can you talk about the 66 or 65% of um, tenant rent paying and how that compares to other places across the state?

Unfortunately, I do not have that information available for me in front of me for across the state. But what I can say in general is that it is not a problem that is unique to Durham. What I will say is that there are likely housing authorities in the state of North Carolina with higher collection rates. um because they actively enforced their lease during the co 19 period. Whereas general housing authority took an approach to try to help families and avoid evictions during the co 19 period

up until last year. My understanding is that the rest of the housing authorities across the state are had much higher rental um collection rates then that would seem accurate in my understanding as well. We're not alone in terms of having a tenant accounts receivable issue because this is a problem that's recognized by the federal government um where they've offered shortfall funding to help some housing authorities, but it also has very specific uses. Um but that's the reason and rationale behind that.

However, we are not we are not nearly as high as other housing authorities because they actively enforce their lease. Um, okay. Later in the projected shortfalls, it lists the rent collection as $500,000. So, I'm just curious about what that number how that how we're getting that $500,000 number. This

is again a memo. I'll read it to you second. Oops, that's the wrong one. Sorry.

You want me to come back to you? Nope. I have a thousand more questions. Sorry, got a lot of things open.

8 million and under the projected shortfalls we show a shortfall already this year of $500,000 alone from our public housing housing rent collection. 8 million. 4 4 million is from public

housing. 4 million is what we typically would take in annually each year. Okay. And at this point at the time point in time when this memo was drafted was April which would only be a quarter of the year and it was probably based on data that was even earlier than that.

So were we already missing 500,000 this year or we are we've only taken in 500 what? I don't we're missing 500,000 this year. 4 million annually. I'm just I'm I just don't understand how these numbers relate to each other.

4 million just to make sure that I'm answering that accurately for you. Well, I think that is that in item number one? I think you answered I think you answered that question for me. So that was under um let's see where the TAR stuff was. Um

1 million and then I'm comparing that to the um to the fiscal needs rent collection shortfall 500,000 and I'm just not sure how all those numbers relate. So, as of this point in time, as of March 2025 in the memo, um the time frame that's being referenced at that time, at that point, we were we had a shortfall of $500,000 in March of 2025. And so, that was revenue that was projected for the entire year. Um I'm sorry, that was based on revenue projected for the entire year. So when we looked at what our projections were for that time frame, January, February, and March, we

came we could see that the shortfall at that point was $500,000. 4 million would be a better reflection of what we would give for the entire year for public housing in terms of rent. But at that point in March, there was a shortfall of $500,000. Okay.

4 million, which is what you're saying your yearly taken from. So, I just don't understand and that's where I wanted to correct what I initially stated because I didn't have the memo in front of me. Okay. 1 million, that is item number one under DHA fiscal challenges. 4 million alone for public housing and that is actually across the entire just in terms of rent that has not been collected at

all. And so the del the difference there is for our other communities it does include other communities that are not public housing and that would be our our tax credit communities or communities that are considered market rate affordable. Okay. 7 million that hasn't been collected not from public housing.

That's correct. Okay. And what is the situation there? So the the reason why there's the distinction between our public housing and our affordable housing communities is that although our affordable housing communities has not collected have not collected that rent, those communities actually can afford to meet their obligations.

4 million collected. Okay. And when you say that they can meet their obligations, that's the those communities management companies or other folks are their obligations include things like their utilities, their landscaping, their maintenance and

staff. Okay, that is helpful. Thank you. Um, and my apologies.

That's okay. I mean, there's just a lot of numbers and they they don't they're not like super clear. So, I just want to make sure I understand. Um, the $700,000 for the real estate sale that y'all are assuming will come in, is that the old office?

No. What is that? The $700,000 is related to a parcel of vacant land that we own near the um Edgemont. I want to say Edgemont L.

Yes. Um, and it is vacant land. And we did receive approval from our board of commissioners to sell that land and are preparing that request um for approval for submission to HUD. And that's going to be a private sale, not to the city of Durham.

Huh. No, it's not to the city of Durham. Um Okay. 4 million in total needed. the rest of the lists on there.

We've got the real estate sale. We've got some um some stuff coming in from DVI uh development funds. 5 million that you're asking for today? Yes.

Okay. Um um and yes, that's right. 4 million HUD shortfall funds. Yes.

Earlier in the memo I read that those shortfall funds were used up um with or that we didn't have the shortfall funds because of previous issues at McDougall and so there's another bout of funding that comes annually or something. What is what is that shortfall? So what we explained earlier in the memo is that typically when our pro our public housing communities get into a shortfall issue, they can rely on their actual reserves to help offset that issue. However,

during the McDougall terrorist crisis back in 2020, we spent over $10 million on that crisis and wiped out $6 million in reserves across all of our public housing communities to do that. And so as a result, that $6 million actually represents double what we would typically receive just for capital funds in a year for all of our communities. And we eliminated that with just one property with one crisis. 4 million grant from HUD for shortfall funding.

However, with that shortfall funding, there are very specific uses for that. And that is one to make sure you increase your reserves back up and build that safety net. Got it. And so what the unit make ready requirement.

What is that? So that is one of them. Um is one of the issues is to make sure that we turn vacant units to rehouse families from our waiting list. Um and then there's also a lease enforcement

component to make sure that we collect on that back rent. Okay. Um, have there been any conversations about waving the past two rent to allow folks to pay moving forward? So, accorded to according to actually US statute, we legally cannot wave rent.

The residents of public housing have an obligation to pay their rent. Um, and that's based on the statutes. And so, HUD has come out and on a number of occasions and mentioned that we cannot wave rent. there are no authorized amnesty programs and also considering the fact that um in that statute it lines out that they have an obligation to pay that rent. In the past, HUD has also been reluctant to allow rental assistance because our households are already assisted. However, after some back and forth during CO 19, we were able and successful actually to get HUD to allow us to accept rental assistance.

Okay, let's read through the rest of my notes real quickly. Um, I'm I don't know if this is a question for you or for the deputy city manager Wimbush. Um, the $500,000 in repurposed funds from the completed McDougall tier. Can we talk about those?

I can. Um, so there were Oh, I see. jumping up too. It's either way I can answer.

So the 500,000 during the McDougall terrorist crisis, we also had another global pandem global crisis start and that was the pandemic. And as a result of that pandemic, we worked very hard to get families home and were very we were very reluctant to send those families back to hotels with the transient community that actually were a part of the spread or rumored to be a part of the spread of this at the time mysterious pandemic. And so we halted on doing electrical repairs that would end

up requiring us to put these families back in hotels. Um, and that was because of the nature of those repairs. We were holding to resume those repairs and having spent $500,000 of the money that was graciously granted by city council before um to complete that work. So the 500 Sorry, sorry.

So, and maybe this is maybe this would be a better question for Mr. Johnson. So, we had a there was a grant for $500,000 specific to ensure that folks aren't going to be moving into hotels during the time of the beginning of the COVID crisis. What happened to that?

Did any of that money get spent in No. Well, Council Regginal J. 5 million total amount was the total amount. They've spent down to have $500,000 remaining.

So they spent a million. Okay. 5. That that's the amount that's remaining.

And and what was that spent on? The electrical upgrades to the McDougall terrace units so we can switch them over from gas to electric appliances. Um it required upgrading each building um well shutting down the power to a building and allowing um the electricians to go in and change over and upgrade the power so it could support electrical appliances. Okay.

Um I have some comments, but I'm going to let my colleagues ask some questions first. Thank you, Council Member Baker. Uh no, I'm sorry, Councilman Cavio, you had your hand up. Yeah, I had a a quick question.

I missed the I know we're at 65% rent collection, but what was what's the goal? I missed the target. 98%. In the memo, we do mention is 98%. Um, however, our internal goal over time for this year, our short-term goal is to get up to 85%.

I don't have any other questions, right? I have comments, but I want to see who else has questions. We'll move on. Uh, Council Member Baker, Council Member Freeman.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, colleagues. Madam uh, Chief, good to see you, and thank you for the continued work y'all do at uh, DHA. Just want to say very, very quickly, um, I appreciate Council Member Ris's primer and, uh, um, context setting.

There there's a narrative, a foot. Durham has an eviction uh problem. I think one time I read report there were maybe like 900 a month. We were leading the state um primarily from market apartments for people who had regular leases and somehow the DHA got lumped into um this narrative that there were massive evictions uh in DHA. So I I appreciate you creating the u proper context and and and I agree one is one too many particularly when you're dealing with

economic hardship. Of course if any of us wherever you live if you miss two or three mortgage payments or if you miss your rent for a couple of months things are going to happen. Um and it becomes you know much more exacerbated when you're dealing with with a economic hardship uh to begin with. This is really not a controversial ask for me.

I'm more than happy to support um not a grant a loan uh to DHA, the Durham City Council and and I know there's a there's a perception out there. We do not micromanage and control the day-to-day operations of the DHA. We do populate uh their board. Thank you, Council Member Ris, for your for your representation of us on that DHA board.

We know the environment uh in our country. We we're we're living in an environment where our national leadership see people that live in public housing as a problem uh rather than as as neighbors uh to be helped and that is reflective in in budget uh and funding um priorities. Um I was pleased when we were able to assist uh with the the crisis in McDougall Terrace. Um I'm

pleased to to assist now. Now, I think it'll be money um well spent, although we can't um and I appreciate the questions, the probitative questions about what's going on, and we should as fiduciary as a city, you should expect those type of questions from us. Uh but at the end of the day, we don't have day-to-day managerial um leverage, but we we can write checks and we can spend money and and I think this is an appropriate uh use of the money. I want to thank the manager and the staff for putting us in a position uh to be able uh to do this.

And I I'll echo a council member Ris's uh appeal to to support this loan. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That's it.

Do you have any other Go ahead, Council. Yeah, I I had comments, but I didn't know we were moving to comments. Um I just wanted to say that I appreciate this. I I plan on supporting it.

I do want to note that this is and happy to do it. I understand the consequences of not doing it, right? the consequences of not doing it are that y'all are one of you're like the largest landlord of affordable housing in the city of Durham. Uh so and as we helped at

McDougall Terrace, we will help again. Um but I do think that if we're going to have um uh that responsibility, then there there should be strings attached. I understand that this is alone. I have been privy to um several conversations where and I understand that we are historically DHA was a much larger uh problem as far as uh eviction or lease enforcement and over time there has been a tremendous amount of work to improve and I just want to note that so when we initially started eviction diversion work I want to say in 2018 or 2019 was the first budget DHA's eviction numbers were were in a very different state of play than they are today and so I want to lift up that because I think it's it's it's in the right direction.

I also want to lift up that we have to improve from 65%. I appreciate this short-term improvement to 85%. Folks get in in in binds, right? We all we've all been there. Um but we also understand that many of your many of the tools that even to your point around, you know,

historically not being even allowed rent assistance because it's already seen as folks on assistance, right, or getting support. And so within all of that context, I just want to highlight that um when there are offers from community, which have happened before to do outreach to residents and DHA properties because I understand that sometimes, you know, folks don't have trust in their landlord, right? And so they're maybe not going to do that payment program. They're maybe not going to trust that DHA employee to come uh that's coming to their door for lots of reasons.

I also understand DHA's position of people have to pay their rent or have to get on a payment plan. But moving forward when uh and I say this because I know our community safety department has offered this. I know Durham Can has offered this. There have been a lot of community response to say let us help you do the outreach. And so when community partners come in and ask for support, I need the answer to be yes. I need the answer to not have walls up and I need the answer

to be like, yeah, if you're going to come ask for money, then this is actually a collaboration and not we just want the money. Don't tell us how to do our business. That's fine. If you don't want us to tell you how to do your business, then don't ask for money.

That's kind of where I'm at with it. 5 million, happy to do it. Families were hurting. Um we have to be really cognizant of uh we understand the risks but you know we there are also responsibilities to taxpayers and to our community about what we expect when we have collaborations with other entities and that we have to hold a high standard and expect collaboration and truthfulness and transparency even if that is uh the risk is is what it is around you know we understand you're one of the largest um landlords with affordable housing units And I also want to highlight the the bond we passed, the vast majority of those dollars were to go and improve DHA properties. And so again, this city and

these residents have made a commitment to DHA and we need DHA to do it back. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. Just want to appreciate councier noting that this is about partnership, right? This is not an adversarial. We're we're partners in the city of Durham and affordable housing.

Although we're different organizations, different different uh legally organizations. The thing I do want to address the elephant in the room if it's if it's there. Um Mr. Schnell could not be here today.

It's because of a serious family emergency. If if it weren't for that, he would be here today. So, I appreciate the staff from DJ being here and just want to um Yes. Our hearts go out to Mr.

Snell and his family. Thank you for that. Um thank you and my my heart does go out to Mr. now. And I appreciate him stepping up in leadership. Um I I do want to uh just speak to I appreciate Council Member Cabiero making that point because I do think it's it needs to be stated over and over again because 60 million of the 95 million went towards the housing authority sites, but we knew then that they needed 540 million to address the

issues. And so this is going to be a context that plays out over and over again. What I'm concerned about is that we keep trying to push it to like as if the rent collections could cover it. 5 million.

So, this loan is a very like drop in a bucket type of thing to to address maintenance or to address operations. But you're talking about 500,000 a month in operations cost that you're missing. it said per month and um we're in we're in June and so this is going to continue month after month after month and we know that this is the 4,000 units the 10,000 plus family family members that live in our community and we know that we're going to need to do more. I would love to have a different conversation about how other key players could be doing the support

in addition to the city because it's not just a city. It's not just a city resource and the people who live there are not just um yeah, I'm not going to go there. I I just want to make sure that we're not losing sight of like what the real issue is and that the federal government is still not not able to fund or not funding the HUD public housing sites that is the social housing of our city in a way that it needs to. And so we're kind of on folding in on each other or folding in on itself the issues around eviction diversion or evictions or um you know whatever the housing shortage is and we're we're still talking about the money that's missing and that money is not coming from anywhere but us. And so I think the city's ponyied up a number of times and the city will continue to pony up, but we do need other key players in our community, our state, and the federal

government to step up as well. So I just I just wanted to make sure I added that into the context of this conversation. I I do appreciate Mayor Pro Tim and stating clearly like this is where we are. So thank you.

I I I did want to ask a few more questions about the property that's being disposed of and the process that you set up for that because I do think it probably would be a great opportunity to do some some affordable housing with some of the funds we do have. Um if that's a conversation we need to have offline, that's fine. But I do want to make sure that I note that I'm happy to speak to that as well as Miss Brown and Mr. Brener. um the board and I'm not I'm a non- voting member of the board as as you know board had a long discussion about that and I think the first reaction was like you know we've got property that that that DHA owns and we're going to sell it why not use that for affordable housing um the reality is where the lots are the size of them it's um it's it would not

be how many units could we maybe put there right now what's being projected is what about 16US as well that's what we're doing yeah So, but those are not those are not all those are those are for sale properties, right, with ADA. Yeah. So, the our ability to put substantial house there, it's just it's not a large lot. And so, given the challenges that we're facing here and the you know the you see the plan therefore addressing this with different sources, it seemed like the prudent the prudent action at this point was to simply sell the property use assets to raise a little cash to address the shortfall.

um with land that was not super uh super usable for a large number of public housing units anyway. Yeah. But we did we had a long conversation over a couple meetings about this because we recognized that um that land is valuable and so simply selling it. It was not a willy-nilly decision for sure. Yeah, I gather that from the disposition vote, but I'm sure there's other properties that are owned and so that conversation should be going on as well.

I'm going to pass it back over to Council Member Cook, but just to that same vein, what are uh you all selling property is pretty rare. What are the chances of HUD approving this? Say they're quite good. Um these are some residual hope six lots um that have been sitting vacant for a very long time.

Okay. Thank you. Um council member Cook. Thank you.

Um, this is not directed at any person in this room, but I'm just going to go through a few things because I think it's really important to talk about some real shortcomings of our housing authority in Durham. This is a historical issue. It's not limited to today. Um, and like my colleagues have said, this is we we it feels like the most vulnerable of our population are being held hostage because we do have to dish

this money out because the consequences of not doing it are so extreme. Um, but this this is taxpayer money and these this we keep saying it's a loan. It's a loan. It's not a grant.

uh the the it's unsecured. There's a fifth forgiven at the end of every year and the restrictions on it are nil. Uh all properties must be served by adequate public utilities and adequate public access. That's not an enforceable there's nothing enforceable about that.

There's it's it's very vague. Um, so it is in essence a grant and what it is is the taxpayers of Durham bailing out our housing authority um, which has for years and years and years had substandard housing. We've been on failing lists at several of our properties in numbers that far out exceed anybody else in the state. Um, and currently we have people living in situations that are absolutely unacceptable. If you talk want to talk about non-payment of rent, this really

really gets my goat y'all because if you have seen a ledger from the housing authority, you would understand why people are not paying their rent. The ledgers are unbelievably dense. They're hard to read. They have things that no one knows how to substantiate.

There's so much turnover that nobody can get any answers to any of the questions that they want. um during the COVID pandemic and again not personal to anyone up here but during the pandemic DHA was unreachable. Nobody could get anybody on the phone. If you go to DHA there was nobody there.

Now it's staffed again closes randomly without any warning. There's time limits on the door that said when they're coming back folks aren't there. I've got people who are un potentially facing unhoused situations going over and over and over again and cannot get access to anybody at the housing authority. Um, we've also got folks who are having to pay to go take showers elsewhere because they've got little water bugs that are crawling up from their drains. We've got families who are living in mold inhabited spaces because there's water seeping from the

floors and the walls. And this is not a little bit of a thing because I was in a mold ridden um office unit for 5 years and I have pretty serious health problems from it. Um, imagine if this is where you're raising your family and your children are having to be there. we are letting people linger in places that are unsafe for them.

Um, and then we're gonna sit here and talk about unpayment like non-payment of rent. And I asked that question to you earlier because I know that across the state that there has been issues in collection of rent, but it's nowhere close to 66% that is here. So unless we're going to sit here and say that Durham public housing residents don't want to pay their rent more than other constituents across the state, then this is a managerial issue. And that's what it is.

I'm never going to sit here and say that I think Durham residents don't want to pay their rent as opposed to the residents that live in public housing in Raleigh or in Orange County. Sorry, I just don't think that's true. Um, folks are paying to go get showers elsewhere. They're having maintenance things put on

their ledgers every time that there is a maintenance issue. And even if it's like consistent maintenance issues because there's bad plumbing in some of these places, those charges are getting assessed to people's ledgers. Like this is a a very long-standing issue and a very very complicated one. And when we talk about it up here and we're talking about these numbers and we're talking about these numbers like these are real people's lives.

Real real people's lives. Real people trying to raise families and trying to get out of generations of public housing. But that's what we're seeing. We're seeing people just staying in public housing for generations.

So, we're not doing our job of getting people out of there and we're not doing our job of keeping people housed and in places that are I mean, the memo says decent, but I I have been to several units I would not even describe that way. Um, and and it does feel really hard because this contract doesn't have anything in it that's going to implicate the housing authority or or force them to be uh more collaborative in the future. Not that I'm saying that

I don't think y'all are. And Miss Brown knows that since she's come on board, we have had great conversation. Um, but there's nothing in here to enforce anything. 5 million, we're going to say yes again because this is this is what we have and this is all of our affordable housing.

Um, so it just to me it feels like a stronghold. Um, these are taxpayer dollars. We're bailing out um just a a long mismanaged uh organization and it is hard. It is hard.

I know that we I heard folks say that it's not hard. It doesn't feel like a complicated vote. It is. It's hard for me.

It is a hard complicated vote for me because I have seen where people are living. And these are not just clients. I want to be really really clear that when you work in this space, what happens is that when you're out in the community, people talk to you. I go to do um I go to do informational sessions or just literally being in the world. People come talk to me. I have heard things from pretty much every um public

housing space uh that I just makes me want to cry every single night. The the things that we allow folks to live in is just unbelievable. Uh so it is hard for me. Um my ask would be in the future that when we get things like this that we do put a little bit more substance into the contracts.

Um, if it's a grant and it has requirements, fine. It doesn't have to be structured as a loan. Again, it's a forgivable loan, 0% interest. It is pretty much a grant.

We should call it what it is. Um, and so if we want to have more say in these conversations moving forward, I think that that might be something that we should talk about. Those are my thoughts. Thank you.

All right. Uh, yeah. Go ahead. Today is just the loan commitment. We will have an agreement and we've had discussions uh with DHA uh Anthony Snail about the types of requirements we'll have in the actual agreement which is monthly inerson financial meetings as

well as financial reports. Um all what we've heard from you all today in terms of collaboration expectations around providing those reports to us, we can incorporate those items into the agreement. So we appreciate your feedback today. We've already listed as uh requirements that our finance department Tim Flora and his team have asked for, our utility billing folks have asked for.

All of those requirements we negotiate as part of the agreement and we'll have monthly financial reports with them. In addition, uh the uh the HUD compliance audits that that uh the HA has to file with HUD. Uh we've we've set expectations and deadlines about their ability to have clean audits. Those are also part of the agreements as well. So, I I do want to reemphasize what DCM Winbush has shared that uh I do believe uh there's a difference between a grant and a forgivable loan and and that there are uh there are expectations that DHA must meet to satisfy those agreements uh and and those are ones that that our

staff have been careful to negotiate into this. Cabo, thank you. I appreciate staff um response to that and um and know that we all need DHA to succeed. This entire city needs DHA to succeed um because we don't have a lot of recourse.

I do want to thank council member uh Riss for being the liaison and former council member Johnson because I know that that's a hard board to sit on. You uh it's it's not easy work. And then finally, I just want to say this because we're in this predicament because the federal government, which has many like much larger coffers than we do, abandoned social housing, right? We're here because they have decided that folks don't deserve housing.

Um, we've been fighting for housing as a human right. I mean, FDR included it in his second bill of rights back during the depression and we've still not been able to to rise to the challenges as the richest country probably in the history of the world. Uh um so I I while I don't like to spend too much time on on you

know I like to focus on what we can do here locally. I just want folks to when when we see like when we see these things and we see what we're getting asked to do as local tax bearers. It's because the federal government for decades has abandoned its responsibility even though we all pay taxes and it has abandoned its responsibility to ensure that that people who live in the United States have a high quality of life and there are many many countries that are much less affluent than we are in this world who have provided more for their citizens and residents. So Durham will keep doing what it does because that's what we are.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And I thank my colleagues. I I also want to um just just register my vote of confidence in this um staff to make sure that we have the proper guard rails and protect. This is not our first time doing this. Uh so we've got a little experience in in making sure that our interests are protected. Um I

appreciate everything that that council member Cook said. I I take her at face value when she said she wasn't really talking to anybody in this room. So, I'll try and glean lessons anyway uh for from the generalized uh universal statement as as a member of this council who actually lived in public housing uh growing up. Um yeah, I can affirm uh public housing often times sucks uh and it's been for a long time, for decades.

So, I I welcome those who who have dialed in now uh recently to to the plight of those who who live and were born and raised um in public housing. Councilman Caviierro is absolutely right. There's been historic uh disinvestment in public housing. I do want to just remind folk that the people who live in public housing are also taxpayers.

It's their money, too. Um, you know, and I've been on this council long enough to see a lot of money spent on wonderful festivals downtown and and all kinds of cool things. Um, for the sake of quality of life for our taxpayers, um, I don't I don't bulk at that. I don't bulk at putting uh

protected bike lanes in neighborhoods, even though a lot of people I know don't ride bikes in some of these neighborhoods. Um, I don't bulk at that. Um, so when these taxpayers need something, um, I am just as excited to to spend taxpayer money for taxpayers that live in McDougall Terrace and Cornwallis, uh, and other public housing projects because that's that's what we ought do. Um, I think as a government, but as fiduciaries of the city, we absolutely have a responsibility to to ask the tough questions um and to to make sure that the guard rails are in place uh that we're not just throwing money uh willy-nilly.

Um I can tell you I've been on the council for a minute, I can make a much stronger case for spending this money than I can for some of the other things we spent money on uh over the years at a much higher sustained recurring rate uh for some of those things, but that's another discussion. Um, but we keep plugging. Um, you know, we wish we we need we DHA has to succeed. And I I'll I'll finish by saying this. There are some counties

who who have better um success or higher rates of success in collecting rent because they're much more aggressive. They choose violence. Uh we're Durm and and according to our values, we're we're a lot more lenient. Uh we're a lot more uh softer in our approach and we still get dinged anyway.

So, so, uh, you know, I think we should still continue to be Durham, um, and help people when they need it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

I I just want to, um, appreciate Council Member Cook's um, comments as well and just make sure that I I put a point or a pin and just acknowledging um, I don't think the issue is whether or not the fund should go to DHA. The issue is whether or not DHA is going to find a way to actually do the things that need to be done for the residents in those those communities. So, I think it needs I would love to have a real fluid conversation going on about the

maintenance needs. We have a whole general services there. I mean, it has to be more than just the dollars is what I'm saying. like there this is not it's not lost on me the types of issues that I've heard about in the housing authority locations and I know everything is about trade you know dollars for service dollars but there has to be some like I'm going to keep saying there are other key players other key partners that could be involved and we we need a clear understanding of what needs are housing housing authority location so I know that those folks aren't The substandard housing is substandard because of the system that it's in, but that doesn't mean that people should have to live like that.

So, that's all. Thank you. All right. Any other comments?

All right. So, I'm just going to make everybody upset, put it out there. Um, there has to be accountability everywhere, starting with you all as an agency. Um,

I trust that staff are going to put guard rails in place, but I'm supporting this because my expectation is, yeah, you have to be accountable and you have to ensure your residents are accountable as well. I'm not going to act like you know this. Let me back up and ask a question. What is the average rent that's paid?

249, right? was. Yeah, I get that from you. Yeah.

Yeah. $249 a month. That's correct. Okay.

So, average. Okay. So, we're not going to act like this is going to be Trinity Park. All right.

So, I'm not even going to do that. At the same time, it's $250 average. All right. And to my understanding, there are some rents that have not even been paid since the

pandemic. So, I I'm not going to I'm not going to make this like, oh, you blaming the residents. I'm not necessarily blaming anyone. But what I am saying is this is America in 2025.

And if we're going to start putting some parameters in place, not only will you all have to be held like held responsible or accountable as an agency, your residents have to as well, right? That's why we're putting so many resources in place for people to take advantage of them. So, we have programs available right here at Durham Tech. I will say we need to expand these programs, but I want to know that people have taken advantage of every possible resource if you're going to pay average $250 a month in rent.

And I don't want to hear, well, some people just can't. Some people probably can't. I I know that's a reality, but but many can and I'm not going to have this conversation without saying that. If you're paying on average $250 a month in rent, you haven't paid in four

5 million. I want to hear about that when it's actually happening so we can know the root cause of that. So we can support that. So instead of like just keep it really high level and saying well you know people just they may not be able to why can't they and that's the level of information I want to know.

5 million. All right. This is not I don't expect marble counters counters. I don't expect valley trash. I don't I don't expect all I mean it'll be nice to say yes, you know, people should be able to live in those with all those types of amenities. I agree, but I'm also going

to be realistic. So I I this is a this is this is where we we we talk around or above what the actual issue is and I want to get right to it. If somebody is not paying and they're not and their average payment is 250, I want to be able to support them. 5 million is enough.

I don't and and and I agree with my colleagues. I said it earlier. The federal government is at blame here. And it was at blame a long time ago when you incentivize poverty and you p you penalize people for trying to get up on their own two feet.

You majority of your families are black. That's correct. What's the percentage? Over 90%. Over 90%. You cannot have a two parent household or two income household in public

housing because you're going to break the threshold. You're going to over you're going to go over the threshold. But that threshold is so far from being able to be self- sustained that the policy itself has literally put their knee on people's necks. That is the reality here.

So from the federal government actually penalizing folks being able to be self-reliant to the point of you know here we are trying to trying to like we have to bail out again. Like there are a lot of issues here. It is I I'm I'm with Council Member Cook here. It is it is a very it's a complex matter.

Now am I going to even doubt whether I'm going to support this or not? Absolutely I'm going to support it. But I need to say this. You're going to have to collect your rents.

And if someone can't pay it, then I want to know. There are over 500 or 600 churches in this community, in this city. There's

no way in the world we should have the amount of poverty that we have. How many people is your on your waiting list for public housing? We're looking well for our leased housing, the housing that we lease to the community, we're crossing about 6,000 households. Yes.

Okay. So, you realize what's happening here. So, so there is almost 6,000 people on a waiting list. We have some that haven't paid rent.

That's average $250 a month since the pandemic. 5 mil. There needs to be more communication. So my conditions here, I want transparency and I want a goal and a plan to get to sustainability.

All right, that that has to happen. And also when I tap on to this and and this is you this is not related to rent, but I also want to know how we can be better collaborating partners when it comes to uh crime. It's not a secret and I know

folks don't want to talk about it, but the concentration is also in your neighborhoods. I want to know how we can better support that. So, I want the conversations to be much more open. I don't want this to go another four years with people struggling and we don't know why because we can put we we lately I've been calling us the city of Oprah as this budget is forming out because we we're putting a lot of money to a lot of things and I want to make sure that you know I've said it over and over and over.

I want folks in this city to be able to enjoy a decent quality of life. And so I I'm going to support it today, but it's with conditions. I want to know what your plan is to get more to become more sustainable. And it's going to take some tough love.

There's no way in the world somebody's going years without paying their rent and they're not even paying over two barely over $250 a month. There should there are too many resources in this community to say, well, what if somebody can't? No such

thing when you have all these external resources. I it may have been council member Freeman or someone was talking about there needs to be other people stepping up. So, I'll do my job as at convening resources around the community in collaboration with you all. But it it no longer, you know, there's almost 6,000 people on your waiting list.

There are folks that haven't paid their rent since the pandemic. the average rent is $250 a month and you've only evicted six people. I'm not being a cheerleader for eviction, but I am saying there needs to be a much more functioning system, a functioning organization. This is really about the health of your organization because the money is is a joke.

The amount is a joke for what the need is. So I that's that's where I stand on it. I at some point we start to promote enablement and that and that can't that just can't happen. If you tell me I don't have to figure out something, I'm going to sit there and not do

it. So people who are struggling and not paying their rent, they need to either pay it or say why so we can help them. That's when I that's where I want to make sure we're much more intentional and much more direct. Um but but just not doing anything, not saying anything, and not paying anything.

And I know that uh Mr. Scott before he left went around with neighborhood community members, pastors, organization leaders knocking on doors. I know what happened when doors were slammed in their face, people spat on. I know.

But also, there's a lot of frustration here because people should not live in these conditions. during the p during the McDougall terrorist crisis. I became intimately involved over there intimately and had to go in those places. People should not live that way.

So, I hope that we can figure this thing out. I like where you're going with, you know, mixing market rate in with your units and the new projects forward. Um, but federal housing, uh,

public housing as we know it should never be like this again. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

We're going to move on. All right. Number 11, Council Members Cook and Rrist. Sure.

Okay. I only have like one and a half questions, so should be brief. Um, so I read that out of the three that folks that answered the RFP, one was ineligible or one withdrew and then one didn't meet requirements. Um, can you just talk a little bit about how Habitat scored and if we've done similar work with them in the past?

I'm going to uh bring one of my um ask one of my staff members who actually um reviewed the applications are part of the process to come and speak to him. So, so uh doc Dr. Pullum uh Kevin Easter uh actually Dr. Pull is the project manager for neighborhood stabilization.

Kevin Nea serves as the project manager is team leader and they actually reviewed the application and so they can speak to um the what Habitat had to offer in terms of the uh uh work that's being done. Good afternoon. Dr. Michael Pull, community development manager for neighborhood stabilization.

Uh you're correct. the uh other applicants. The other two did uh actually one withdrew and one didn't meet the qualifications but Habitat was the remaining proposal

which a review team did score the uh scoring for Habitat. I don't have those numbers in front of me but they were high. They met the uh conditions of the RFP in each of the categories. We also felt comfortable due to the history of their work with our department that they could uh indeed administer the program for us.

Thank you. Um is is there anybody from Habitat here? Yes, there are at least one or two people here at the ED. I have one quick question for y'all since we've made you sit through this.

Please. Good afternoon everyone. I'm the intermediate at Habitat right now. Carlina Dianan.

Um Will Everheart. I'm the construction director or excuse me, I'm the repairs director. Awesome. Um so I just a quick question. I know that y'all have done a

lot of contracting with us in the past. Um, and I also know that uh there's been some conversation around like capacity issues in terms of workload. And I was hoping you all could speak to that um ensuring that we have the capacity for this, how it fits into your normal um sort of operations that you're already doing as well. Okay.

I'm going to punt to Will since he's the expert in that. we um have our work cut out for us to do more since this is a larger contract than we're currently under in terms of units per year. So, we we're aware we need we need to grow our ability to deliver this uh this opportunity. Okay.

But you feel like you have capacity. Are you going to have to be doing hiring? Like what what we will have to hire and we'll also have to look at um subbing out more of the work um that we currently subperform. Okay.

And the team that we've got right now, they they're experts in what they do. Um, I'm just going to name some names. Uh, we have a a person working

for us by the name of Sheay. And when she described to me going into a home that needed repairs and being able to offer different options as it relates to tiles and what that meant to the person that was getting that repair who never ever ever had the option when it came to their house, that meant so much. So, we've got people working with us that not only can do the work, but they're missionaries as it relates to repairing. We're also really big with generational wealth.

So, as we repair these homes, if we think about what we were talking about here today, all of that goes into our generational wealth. These are particularly homes that are around 30% AMI that we're doing the repairs on. So after we do the repairs, we also do a lot of the estate planning to make sure those homes are also protected so they can go generationally. So when we look at it, um, uh, councelor Cook, we're looking at it holistically.

Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you, Council Rice. Yeah, Miss Pam. Um, thank you for your comments, Council

Member Cook. Thank you all for being here. I had some of the same questions about capacity. Um, and I, um, I mean, I appreciate the need, as you expressed, Mrs.

Dean um and I appreciate the the long history of Habitat having great impact in our community. Um I am also aware I think there have been like maybe six executive directors in the last 5 years. So there's been a lot of turnover at Habitat. So I do have questions about the capacity to lead this work and complete it as as um as planned.

And I guess my question maybe for Mr. Johnson is that um as I read the the documents I think I got this right. So this is a three-year contract with Habitat correct? Yes.

And is that is that a three-year contract? is that like a with three-year contract with one-year renewables. We just had a conversation actually about about sort of um about cooperation and about sort of responsibility and sort of um uh being able to sort of deliver. And so what I want to make sure is that we have a contract that's written such that we can ensure that habit is delivering on this. And so can you please say more about how the contract is structured? So this is a three-year contract uh with all of the

uh contracts that we have. We do have uh performance standards and we can evaluate and seek to terminate contracts uh if there uh or this particular contract if there's not a performance uh in terms of meeting the goals. There are annual goals uh as well as a three-year goal. Just looking at this.

So, so those three-year goals are or those So, there's annual goals in the contract. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. Let's let's because I don't think the total is a minimum of 113 total. Right.

But but like do we have annual goals within that? Okay. One third anticipating one third for each year. Right.

So and so so you're going to look at that every year to make sure that year to year Habitat is meeting the goals of this contract. Absolutely. Okay. That's what I want to make sure. Thank you. Thank you.

But I would just say um I appreciate this um contract following the conversation and just acknowledging like this is home repair for folks who are at the margins who are in home ownership by by a lot of grace and um living in a neighborhood with a number of Habitat homeowners. I know that as the age of the home gets older, so do they. And so their ability to navigate these repairs is different. 7 million is even enough.

But I I mean this is the beginning and we'll see what happens. But I do think that it should be an ongoing conversation. I'm just acknowledging that that one 13 could be done in one year and yeah. All right. Any other comments?

All right. Thank you. Thank you. That's just Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. 21 amendment to interlocal cooperation agreement.

Mr. Mayor, I believe item 11 had public speakers. Oh, did it? Oh, yep.

You're right. I'm sorry. There should be at least two I believe in that. Uh you have three here.

Uh oh, that's number six. What? I missed this spreadsheet already. Okay. Yeah, just one. Uh is there a

um that couch? finesse couch number. Yeah. Welcome.

Let's make sure your microphone's on. I'm going to move over there. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much for welcoming me here today.

I want to tell you what brings us here today. I'm here today with my husband. I want to show this when the camera comes on my side, which is what I've been watching the other presenters have. I want to make sure that I show you even though this is a little bit small.

I hope you can see it. This is leaving home. It's our driveway. It's joined with my sister-in-law. What the

city has proposed and what was passed by this uh body with the consent agenda vote was the placement of a 24inch pipe force man with 24,500 lineer feet of waste water and sewer right here in our driveway. So we understand that Durham is growing. We understand that the property values have gone up 70%. We pay taxes here and they keep going up.

But someone offered us and it felt like municipal municipal bullying. " I happen to know and have been reading that um this is us when we were trying to arrive home. So, we would have to be right in the middle of the sewer system. So, I happen to see that there are 31 uh spills every year.

And so, I'm I'm trying to understand how it is that we weren't invited to come. We all of the communications and notices have been late. Uh we don't get them on time and

it's been no uh negotiations about whether or not engineers can vary and differ in the method for having these uh lift stations and force mains. In fact, we've had to hire engineer. Yes, sir. All right.

So, I I have to keep us gerine to the topic. This one is not it, but I don't want to cut you off. I don't want to I want to make sure what you're speaking to is your issue, which is not this one. So, I'm going to ask m the uh Mr.

Lamar to speak with you directly. This is Well, I thought I was called up, Mr. Mayor, because that's the only issue I have signed up to talk about. I have you for number 11.

Yes, sir. That's my That's the same. Yes, sir. Habitat.

No, sir. I'm not Habitat. U We're here because of Soy easement. Okay.

Okay. So, yeah, that's So, we're on another item. So, I want to make sure that your your public comments are actually addressed. Yes, sir.

I don't have not Yeah, not given to another, but I I want you to be heard. I want you to get your address your issue addressed. So, are

you all working on this, Mr. Attorney? Um, yes, we have been in communication um with Miss Couch. Okay.

Do you have someone from your office that can speak with her to the side? We we can. If she wants to speak to someone right now, I can I can confirm that we can we can have that done. Please.

if Okay, I'll I'll do that. Okay. Yeah, I'd like to know as well. Thank you.

Okay. And colleagues, I just want to remind you there is an email in our inbox about this that's very detailed. Um, thank you, Madam Attorney. I'll just make sure to state that the the details seem very divergent and so I just want to make sure there's some reconciliation on the actual like what's happening.

You ask for a briefing, right? Yeah. So, you'll get a briefing. Okay. Um the next one now

21 GBA 13. Good afternoon. Logan Small, General Services Department. Good afternoon, Logan.

Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you for the work you and your your team continue to do. First, just a couple questions on this item.

First off, I want to commend uh the folk who who reside um in our public housing complexes for making known what they want uh with the use of taxpayer money um through through participatory budgeting. Wonderful initiative. So I I I want to congratulate them also for pushing back on narratives that would suggest that they were increasing surveillance in their own neighborhoods. What what they want is what they want.

Um so I want to congratulate them on that and their choice. I do want to ask a question a couple of just technical questions on the cameras that are being installed. Um and and without divulging too much operational security are will they be monitored all the time or are they just recording things? So I'll let I have DHA staff here. I'll let them speak about their operations.

Uh Don Burke, fraud and security manager. Good to see you. Yes sir. To answer your question yet, it will be monitored by myself and uh DPD as well with the um detectives on the ground as well 24/7.

247. Yes. So So will the people monitoring them will they be actually on premises or remote? Remote.

We can use VPN access for remote. Will they be a if the if the cameras were to pick up um something happening in real time, will there be an ability to dispatch? Uh, no sir. No sir.

What that what is we receive a notification on what happens. I will have the DPD's investigators who have assigned to that case. They reach out to me and depend on what time it is. I just go ahead and um execute whatever they asking for.

Whatever it is they want footage for a certain amount of time, I just get up and provide that footage to them. Or we have a meeting together downtown 602 or at DHA and we'll just collaborate and get whatever information needed just provided to them. But you said there there will be I don't want to put words in your mouth. There will be real time.

There will be a physical person watching. No, sir. We

won't have a software actually watching though. So it'll be recording 24/7, but once something is identified once the event has been identified after the fact. Yes, sir. Basically react, right?

Um will they will the cameras be trained on courtyard areas or doors? Yes, we have strategic uh areas. I don't want to mention here. uh street areas that myself and DPD are identifying and uh certain campers are placed in strategic areas where crime is upticked and uh far as lighting as well with this particular package and we observe those areas until we can have a a good hand handle on those.

So the cameras will be recording. Yes, sir. But the footage the images that they capture will not come into play until after something happens for for investigatory purposes. Yes, sir.

We have a 60-day archive and so we can uh capture everything up from 60 days prior. Okay, that's it. All right. Thank you very much, sir.

Appreciate the work you do. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

All right. 24 resident KO. Uh Katie. Uh yes uh virtual Ko Porter can you hear me?

Are they online madam clerk? Okay Porter can you hear me? He's unmuted. Yes, I can hear you.

Can you hear me? Uh we can now. Welcome. You have three minutes.

Thank you so much. Uh just very briefly um uh myself and my husband are the homeowners of this unit which is up for condemnation by the city to allow for expansion of Morin Road. Um our our particular situation is different than the other homes on the road and I've had trouble getting through to Terra or Lance Atelix or anyone else to understand our situation. Um, we live in a three-bedroom home that

the city recently increased the tax assessment to $450,000. And our home has a small driveway which has to accommodate all of the parked cars. Uh the because there's no street parking on Marine Road and the uh and there's also no nearby street parking if you're familiar with the area. The proposed expansion will uh basically reduce our driveway.

can only fit a single car and it will also take away the turnaround spot that allows us to safely exit and enter our home. Um, and it will put a replace that area with a bike lane. And so, uh, the city in our view has offered a really really unfair offer of $15,000 which they increased to $25,000. So, I don't have that in writing. um for a for an expansion project that will essentially make our home unlivable and unsellable. Um to have a three-bedroom home that only can park a single car that can't even safely enter and exit the road with no nearby

street parking would be devastating for us um and make it hard for us to sell our home. Certainly not at the $450,000 that we're currently being taxed at. Um, so we want to object this condemnation and we're asking for the city to negotiate with us in good faith to both allow us to have a safe way to exit our home and to provide us with fair compensation for the project. That's all I have to say.

All right. Okay. And yeah, second. Yeah.

Is there any staff response for this, please? Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Tara Nichols with General Services, the real estate division, and I'm a senior, uh, real estate officer working with, um, this property.

So, uh, could you just give me a little more context based on what the, uh, or is there a response to the resident's concern? Uh, there is negotiations still going on. And so, at this time, I'd just like to defer to the city attorney's office. They've been talking to the attorney that's representing this couple.

Um, the attorney is Kian Sack. Um, I was informed yesterday that he would not be available today, but he is aware and there has been ongoing conversations I think with uh the attorney's office, the city attorney's office. Um, I I have not, to my knowledge, we have not communicated with Mr. Saxs yet, but I've seen his name in some of the emails. Um as far as the uh the process goes um this the the issue that the property owner raises is the very issue that would be um litigated if the case

goes to condemnation. Right now, this action is just to get authorization to give notice of condemnation and then to file if the parties can negotiate um the actual uh not the actual but if they can agree on um the uh damages that uh uh may result from the project, then there wouldn't be a need to file. But even if we do file condemnation, that's the entire issue um that's litigated is is to what extent has the city um damaged your property by the subject taking. So that is in discussion.

It is not really yet come to our office yet. This is the very first point at which we may become aware of a case, but I I don't have any of the details of this case. And I I think that all we know is what's in the um the city attorney's office, what's in the uh um uh agenda item at this time. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful in the

uh understanding the process better. Council member Cook. Hi, Miss Nichols. Um I this is a great opportunity for me to ask a question which I had already uh wanted to ask previously, but we're in the middle of a revaluation year.

Um, what does at what point do offers reflect the new valuations of land and and how do you all work with the change of those values? Alicia Bass, General Services. How are you all? Um, so in in response to your question, um, we got an appraisal. So we have an appraiser go out and um in this particular case TX um they are responsible for getting those appraisals where it was this prior to prior to the revaluation right so that can be a part of the negotiation but effective for all our current projects we are using the uh current uh tax value the land value. So

starting July 1, we will use the new one. Yeah, we're starting we've already started using it. We started using We started using it. Okay.

But at the time that this appraiser went, it was before right at the at the time this project was um started that that was the evaluation that was done at that time. Um the negotiations that have been going on reflect an increase in the property values or an increase in the value. Is that correct? The an increase in the values of the property.

Yes. Well, I saw that it was increased from 15 to 25. Yeah. I mean, and the question is because I feel like we we've seen several of these.

We've got a couple bond bond projects with um and we're having to do some condemnations and and easements and um there's been a couple things that have come back to us of like, well, our properties now value, you know, we had a 70 an average 74% increase in residential property value. So, um does did we initiate the increase? Is that something we retroactively do when we see that there's been evaluation change or That

is something that is something that we do initiate. Cool. Thank you. Thanks, Mr.

Mayor. Um, thanks Miss Ms. Bass and uh, Miss Nichols for being here and thanks to Mr. Porter for joining us by phone.

I just want to understand, I'm looking at the attachment here and I want to understand make sure I understand this. So, it it does look like, as you said, Mr. reporter from the attachment here it shows um 1195 square foot of temporary construction easement I'm sorry proposed concrete driveway right that's the 1195 correct and then there's also then separately 523 square foot of new rightway to be acquired so that so essentially it is taking about a third of that what had been the parking area for this unit is that correct yes and this is also so and obviously like you can't park on that new bike Right. Um that is correct.

Right. Because and this is a big issue that's come up separately with a lot of folks in the bike community seeing as we are building out our bike lanes. A lot of folks parking on bike lanes. So clearly you can't park on this. But I guess I'm just wondering for the for the owner in that remaining

1195 square foot. You're saying how many cars could be parked there. Mr. Porter.

I think he said one. The dead is down to one. Yeah. Mr.

Porter, are you still there? Yeah. I guess I'm wondering how like how wide that is. Sorry, I'm back.

I was muted. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, we hear you now.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh it can it can basically fit one car. Uh the the problem is also that the driveway itself is so the the prop in the proposed uh construction plans the entry is so narrow and there's not enough depth to it that you could squeeze another car around it. So, if you could somehow Yeah. C cross the grass median and cross the bike lane, you could probably find a way to squeeze a second car in there, but not not you

can't actually do that with the current plans. And to to respond to Tara Nichols response that there has they did not initiate a uh increase in their offer based on the assessment until our lawyer asked them to do so. And I don't understand what's happening on this city's end or Telk end, but at no point have I felt like anyone's actually talking to me or negotiating with me. We've only been told 15,000 your final offer, 19,000's your final offer.

No one wants to talk to me about like what this is doing to our family and and how and how we can work together. You know, I'm not interested in being obstructionist. I'm interested in a solutionsoriented approach. And I have not experienced that from anyone representing Telix or the city.

and and there's been no just no one's talked to me or my lawyer. I understand. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. May I respond to that? Um because he is represented by an attorney, our office cannot speak with him and that's

why we've turned over to our city attorney's office. I'm sorry. So for all the other property owners that don't have attorneys, you're talking to them. We do.

All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Oh, you have one one more question. Yeah, just a more general question. Um and I assume we can we can wait on some answers with communication between the attorneys uh specific to this case, but in general um you know, obviously governments need to be able to condemn land and and build roads and and change change the um configuration of those roads. Moren doesn't have a sidewalk.

So, this is for bikes and pedestrians. Um, are there are there typically uh, you know, attempts through design because I see that this in this particular area there there's actually a turning lane there. There attempts in the design of these to um, generally try and limit the need for condemnation of

property adjacent to the right of way. Um, in terms of the design, we would leave that um to our public works department to answer that question. Josh is Josh Bar is here with us. Okay.

And I'm not uh trying to micromanage. I'm just asking as a sort of general question. Good afternoon. Josh Far works department.

I'm the engineering manager over contract management group. Uh so generally we do try to accommodate as much as we can. We don't want to impact residents any more than we need to. U whether it be right away or temporary construction easement, um permanent drainage easement.

This road is a state road, so it does follow NC DOT standards and so we don't have a ton of wiggle room with many of our design facets for that um including this one. I appreciate that. Thank you. Could I ask a follow-up question? Could you elaborate a little bit on I know this happens before it gets to your group, but on the design process. Could you could you talk generally on the

opportunity folks would have had to to comment on the design before it got to uh engineering and contracting? Just just to give the council a sense of where these conversations begin because I know we we we start in a planning phase, we move to a design phase, we move to a contracting phase, then this is really the end where we're acquiring real estate. I think it'd be helpful just to talk a little bit about how a neighborhood might be engaged in both those design questions before we ever really get to a real estate phase. Yes, absolutely.

Uh so generally a lot of our city projects start with the transportation department who do the different studies bikew walk study and they engage the community on on where they see you know need for um bicycle circulation pedestrian circulation and they set up priorities and then have those community uh input meetings for that. Thank you. And I'll just elaborate a little bit from my experience with the city. So condemnation is is absolutely the last option and a rarely used tool

in the vast scope of the amount of real estate that we negotiate and acquire for projects. I think my experience is that you know from from the beginning of any project uh you maximizing our ability not to impact private property is always one of the key design considerations. Uh and then when it is determined that we need to acquire property or easements or temporary easements, it is always through a negotiation process that is based on exactly the same principles of of fairness and uh and um using appraisals in the community, relying on private property owners to represent the value of their property. So, um, you know, I want to assure the council I don't think that the city has an aggressive approach towards using condemnation, nor when we do so that we try to negotiate the least possible price. While obviously price affordability is something we have to consider, I don't think the city has a history of of offering lowball offers or anything. So, I I do encourage I'm sure

our attorney's office will engage the attorneys for this gentleman and hear any concerns that the this offer is not fair and the the condemnation process is exists so that the courts may determine what the fair price is and if we have gotten it wrong, that is something that we would be bound to. And Fred, I I don't know if you or our real estate staff want to talk any more about just the general condemnation process and what rights are afforded to a private property owner through that process. This does not dictate the city's price. It simply indicates that the city intends to move forward while the value is determined by the courts.

Could can you elaborate a little? I can. Absolutely. And you you are 100% correct uh um council um manager um Ferguson that the objective of the city is to pay um the property owner the um um the uh fair price the um just compensation for what the taking is. Um, as far as the

communication between the real estate and the property owner and the transition to the city's at city attorney's office, we are communicating regularly as cases um evolve. Um, this is at this point this is where the city attorney's office does get more more um directly involved in the uh discussions and and um communications. With regard to this particular case, uh um we have not communicated directly with the attorney or the property owner, although we've been privy to emails that have gone back and forth. Um and it's you know I think the appraisal issue has come up uh quite frequently in a number of different properties and we understand that even prior to filing condemnation that that the uh the uh we need to evaluate the appraised value um that was used and relied upon initially and to the extent that we believe that

that is not representative of the current just compensation. we would come back to the council and ask that uh uh you approve any negotiated adjusted price based on what we what we believe is the is the fair price and I think that's the ultimate desire on the part of the city attorney's office as well as I'm sure the council is is if we have to condemn if we have the project has to go forward we um want to make sure that the property owner is paid what is the fair uh just compensation and that's just the process is trying to determine what that is, which is which is why we use the appraisers. We don't do that value in house. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right, colleagues, I am going I'm going to recess us for a few minutes. Take a buy a break. The next two items is going to be pretty lengthy. Um, let's

uh just take a quick break and then we'll come back and get to it. Uh, we have 505 and we have the budget. Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, let's get back at 3:10.

It's 24. Uh, you just finished. What number was it? It's 25, right?

Yep. All right. So, we are um There's not a not a briefcase. We can request information now.

All right. Um, so this is an update on the redevelopment of 505 West Chapel Hill Street. Welcome. Yeah, there we go.

Thank you. Um, Stacy Poston, City of Durham General Services Department. I'm glad to be here today to discuss the 505 West Chapel Hill Street redevelopment. Um, I have me with me today some other uh partners that have been working with me on this project.

Um Erin Miles from the attorney's office was sitting there and has slipped out, but we'll be back. She's been a great partner. Uh Rebecca Joiner is here from Parker Poke providing outside counsel. Here she comes. Um also, um Samuel and Mark from

HRNA Advisors have been partnering with us. So they um along with some other city staff have been working on this project for a number of years. Um, last time we met with you all, we were in August, we were in front of council and talking about um, advancing to negotiations with the people's corporation um, with an attempt to secure a non-binding term sheet to um, to wrap up and state the revised priorities um, that council had directed to us. Since then, we've been actively negotiating with the people's corporation.

um despite you know negotiating for about a half a year now, we've been unable to come to consensus on um the details of a viable project that staff could recommend advancing with. And so we're here today to sort of walk through and talk about um what we've been doing and and answer questions. Um our negotiations with the people's corporations did secure um the new um uh ground lease structure which was a goal of council. Additionally, we were able to negotiate adding some additional affordable housing units. Um, but when we we were working through this

project, it also um had some other impacts which was to increase the requested subsidy from the developer to $75 million or $78 million from the city. Um, additionally, there was then a bifurcation of the affordable housing uh from the regular market rate housing into two separate buildings. And so these were some areas of concern that uh led to us not really being able to recommend advancing with this development team. Uh additionally uh the subsidy um with that $78 million subsidy that request moved us from 150 to $150,000 subsidy per unit when the market for affordable housing subsidy is between 40 and $50,000. Uh so we we were not seeing numbers that we felt like um were reflective of what we've been able to do previously. And then just generally the economic conditions have been deteriorating in the market right so we've been seeing tight labor markets um increasing construction costs due to tariffs and uncertainty in there higher interest rates um in the community itself in the multifamily space rents

have been not increasing um in in a way that um would support the development that we were proposing. So the the array of these economic development activities and the movement um of requests of the subsidy amount leads us to um to the recommendation today that's in your agenda materials which is to move um not to move forward with the people's corporation at this time and to move towards some interim interim site programming to sort of activate that site um to allow us to have a little time to have the economic conditions um improve and think about how we want to address and move forward with this project in the future. With that, I will pause and see if uh we have questions or how we want to advance. Yeah, I have uh some speakers and I'm going to start with online and then I'll come back before the council.

U Mr. Mayor, um some of the speakers have requested to speak in order and Miss Stella Adams is part of the last three speakers that are here in person here in person. So, three are in person. Miss Stella is uh first of four, so they

would like her to speak first. They have something planned to go back to back. I have I just have Stella Adams online. Okay.

Okay. All right. Miss Adams, can you hear me? Miss Stella, can you hear me?

Mr. Mayor, can you hear me? I can hear you now, neighbor. All righty.

Three minutes. Welcome. Um, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tim, and council members. Um I am um you all know I have been advocating for the affordable housing on this site for it's almost a decade and I want to encourage the

council to continue and move forward with the affordable housing um proposals in this um I understand that um people's put forward of a of five um story affordable housing proposal. We need those 160 to 240 units now. Um conditions are only going to get worse. Prices are only going to get higher.

Um and and the need for affordable housing is has been demonstrated earlier in your conversations. I believe that um Councilman Baker said that there were 10 units of um naturally occurring affordable housing in Durham. 10 units. Um the proposal would double that

um for our city, but it would also provide much needed affordable housing for our um city workers, our county workers and teachers um who sadly are below 60% a median on their starting salaries. um and many um even after five years of service to the city. This housing is critically needed and needed now. We can't keep kicking this can down the road becomes because it becomes more and more expensive and less and less feasible um as a priority for the city as we go forward. Um if you are not satisfied with people's find somebody else but build the affordable housing. I do not believe that it taxpayers should be subsidizing market rate housing or

subsidizing um commercial um space in the city with all of the commercial and market rate housing that the city has downtown. We need to meet this need that our families have. And I'm going to say put some guard rails in future contracts um with the housing authority and with this project that would require them to maintain the properties and do proper maintenance, security, and safety for all residents that are subsidized by city um dollars. This housing is needed.

Thank you, Miss Stella. Next I have Rick Lawson followed by Reebac. Thank you Mr. Mayor and Mr. Mayor Prom Council members. Um I am uh Rick Larson.

I'm with uh a member of Duke Memorial United Methodist Church which is across the street from the 505 uh site and I'm the co-chair of the affordable housing action team for for Durham Can U. Stella's organization, the Durham Committee for the Affairs of Black People, our organization, um our church, the People's Alliance, Durham Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit Transit, um Durham chapter of the NAACP, and um I think that's it. There's six our six organizations have been working together for years, as you all have to um come up with a solution for this site. And uh we're here to share with you, we shared with you via email our full statement, but here to share pieces of that in in person. We stand by our previous position that the development of the property at 505 must include a significant number of residential units that are affordable at 60% AMI in perpetuity. And there must be no more delays in the affordable housing element

of this development plan. The lack of affordable places to live in Durham is one of our most critical and pressing issues and the 505 site because it's owned by the city offers the city a chance to really do something significant now and not wait for years into the future. For this reason, we reject the recommendation to simply stop moving forward. This is a pivotal moment and now is not the time to take our foot off the gas.

Durham can uh every couple years holds listing sessions. all of our congregations go out and talk to residents and um neighbors to find out what's on everyone's mind. And we talked to 2,000 people this year. Um the number one issue, not surprisingly, was affordable housing. And so this uh reinforces what we've been really saying since 2023 when we put together our initial position statement. Durham's long-term residents, educators, first responders, bus drivers, maintenance workers, and especially those on fixed and low

income, um are being displaced and priced out of the city they help build and now serve in so many important ways. So, um we've had discussions about what to do with this important plot of land for almost a decade as as Miss Adams said. And during that time, hundreds, if not thousands of Durham residents have been priced out of Durham's urban core, or they've been forced to spend an unsustainable share of their income on uh rent or mortgage. And we just we believe it's simply unacceptable for the city of Durham to pass up an opportunity today to use an asset that that it owns and that we as the people of Durham effectively own to do what our residents most need which is to address this u incredible need for safe, attractive, affordable housing um for for Durham residents.

I'm going to turn it over now to um Ann Reebeck to talk about what our specific asks of council are. Thanks so much. Thank you. Good afternoon. Um Ann Rebeck

People's Alliance. Um at this critical moment, we collectively and respectively ask the council the council to pursue the following. One, honor the first priority of the RFP and ask the city staff to negotiate and execute a cost-effective contract with a developer. People's or another qualified affordable housing developer to build 160 to 200 units of housing affordable at 60% AMI in perpetuity at 505.

And we do agree that um market rate housing um isn't um feasible at this time. Um this affordable housing does not need to start from scratch. Peebles has already submitted to the city a preliminary lowdensity proposal for several stickuilt five-story buildings that would require much less subsidy than a 10 to 12tory tower using steel construction. Um so the city subsidy for 160 units for example might be roughly 15 million. Um two time is of the

essence. Council should stipulate that this contract be finalized in time for the developer and the city to to apply for NC housing finance authority for the 4% LIHTC allocation in the fall of 2025 or January 2026 at the latest. Three, if council determines that it has lost confidence in the city's ability to work constructively with peoples, then council should agree to the staff's recommendation to end the negotiation um process with peoples. At that point, city could pivot to identifying another developer, one with deep affordable housing expertise to execute the plan and to build lowdensity affordable housing at 505. Acidge had previously submitted a good response to the previous RFP. And then finally, most importantly, the members of the 505 coalition, and Rick stated who that is, agree that the city should not

stop the development process, but continue to move it forward with the affordable housing component with all possible speed. The affordable housing crisis continues to worsen. and the city and our city employees, teachers, first responders, and other essential service workers deserve action, not further delay. Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you. It's good to be with you all. appreciate the opportunity to talk some this afternoon and uh appreciate the endurance you all show and some of you who've been here a long time show and continuing to try and think how can we make good things happen at the 505 site.

Uh so here's some personal comments but first I'm really happy that uh Kennedy Telmac joins us from can lead organizer and Donna Hicks joins us who's been working with us too. There's some other good folks here. Um, and to get in three minutes, I'm going to try and talk

fast. Understand why the council would turn down this uh highdensity proposal from Peebles with a $78 million price tag. It almost seems like a proposal designed to make sure it would not get approved. Um, the lowdensity proposal though, which I don't know got a lot of uh visibility, had a different approach.

Um, but we agree, I agree with the recommendations to hold off on building market rate housing and commercial retail right now. Uh, and understand that that'll likely be years probably before there's the market conditions and the economic visibility that would say we could go forward with doing that. Um uh but as a housing developer told me recently uh which is interesting when you start to have an overall housing downturn in the economy that actually is the time the best time to build affordable housing. Demand for housing materials is going to contract. Interest rates are going to be steady or declining because of reduced demand uh for it and there'll be a number of builders looking for opportunities uh

probably most of them to keep their businesses going. Uh so uh he said it actually is the best time uh to take a hard look at building some affordable housing and uh so I hope we don't let battle fatigue have us miss this opportunity. Um as you've heard and know well the community's affordable housing crisis has only grown in recent years especially in the downtown neighborhood. Uh so while it makes sense to hold off on some of the other components of the 505 development we think it makes great sense to move forward now with the affordable housing aspect of it.

supposed uh the proposal staff brought to you all said 240 units of affordable housing even to some housing advocates affordable housing advocates that seems excessive. I for one uh I think that uh we early on right after you all acted at your last council meeting for this which was last year we talked to the developer and uh both of us agreed 130 would be a good target to go for. Now, you know, you could say, "Okay, let's take a look at 130 or 160 or some range, but we hope

you'll go back to and direct your staff to go back and work with the developer that you all want to proceed with of your choice, but work on a very tight time frame now to say, "Let's develop a proposal. Let's bring it back to council. Let's see maybe at a couple of places uh what the subsidy would be. " Uh, one last thought.

We've had numerous meetings and conversations with peoples and I just want to say that we appreciate their cander, their willingness to meet with us and engage with the community. Uh we've had no no uh negative things to say about it. Uh but if council wants to proceed, there's other good developers out there and you all know who they are. Thank you.

Next, Kathleen Turner and after Kathleen Turner, Julianne Patterson. Uh thank you mayor and council members. My name is Kathleen Turner and I'm the Piedmont Regional Director speaking on behalf of Preservation North Carolina to express our intention to enter into direct negotiations with the city of Durham for an option to purchase the

former home security life building located at 505 West Hill Street, West Chapel Hill Street rather. Our intention is to acquire the building parcled out from the larger 4 acres for preservation and adaptive reuse. Designed by noted modernist architect Milton Small, this historic structure is an architectural cultural asset in Durham and the state of North Carolina. Despite its significance and opportunities for adaptive reuse into a multitude of uses, the building remains vacant.

We suggested this path several years ago when the police department first announced they'd be vacating the building. The building would be rehabilitated and generating tax revenue today if action had been taken then. The building should not wait any longer. The time to act is now. We believe this proposal represents a viable and necessary forward path forward and urge the city to use the authority granted under North Carolina General Statute Section 160A-266B, which allows direct

negotiated sales of historically significant property to qualified nonprofit preservation organizations. Uh, I included in uh an email to y'all uh uh information on this statute and it had a list a partial list actually of the projects that we've worked with across the state uh in this uh particular way. Preservation North Carolina has purchased as I said and resold dozens of historic public properties across the state resulting in tens of millions of dollars in historic rehabilitation and private investment. All of them are protected by pres preservation agreements ensuring they're around for preservation for future generations to enjoy.

And I think it also bears mentioning that many of these have been developed for affordable housing. In fact, we're currently working with one of our projects in Lexington uh as workforce and affordable housing. Uh we make this request in light of recent city council consideration to end negotiation with the current development team and

reassess the site's future. of the alternatives presented. We join uh several advocates including Preservation Durham and North Carolina Modernist in urging council to reject continued delay. The historic building can and should move forward on a separate track, one that is not entangled in broader development and and allows for uh uh the focus that is required for the development of the affordable housing units that are needed in the city.

Now, entering into an option would allow time for us to solicit experienced developers that we know that can deliver a successful tax generating project, thereby freeing up the rest of the project for the focus it deserves and requires. Durham has a rare opportunity to take decisive action to preserve an architectural treasure and to catalyze its transformation into a publicly beneficial asset. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Uh Julian Patterson, executive

director of Preservation Durham. Um thank you for allowing some time to speak today. Um I sent my comments um to you all by email. Um but after hearing some of the the earlier comments um I'm going to pivot because I've realized we're basically asking for the same thing.

um like our affordable housing um folks, we have I think we've all been patient and constructive partners um supporting the city's efforts to identify a developer capable of tackling the entire 4acre site. Um but I think we can all agree that after years of stalled progress and continued deterioration of the historic building, um it's clear that this approach has not produced results. Um so we believe preservation Durham that uh we must pursue a more focused achievable solution to ensure the building's survival. Um, so as Kathleen just mentioned, um, Preservation North Carolina did submit a letter of interest, um, to enter into direct negotiation with the city of Durham for an option to purchase the historic home security life building. And Preservation Durham fully endorses and supports, um, supports that effort.

Um, yeah, like the affordable housing folks, we agree we cannot stop this development. Um, and so we we advocate for kind of three three main things. Number one, um, carve out the historic building, put it on its own separate parcel, work directly with the, uh, with Preservation North Carolina and allow Preservation North Carolina to use the experience and the expertise that they have to move that project forward. Um, we believe that carving out the historic building from the rest of the site, um, will actually make the rest of the parcel, which would then be vacant, um, more attractive to an affordable housing developer who can then put the focus, um, and attention as well as public subsidy that it deserves on that portion of the site.

Um, as I've shared with you all by email, um, you have the opportunity to utilize existing special legislation to work with Preservation North Carolina. Um and that special legislation authorizes you to direct uh or enter into direct negotiations with Preservation North Carolina for that. Um there's precedent for using this um special legislation in Durham, both with

Preservation North Carolina as well as with um Preservation Durham. Um this legislation was created to uh come in and solve solutions exactly like this. Um and it offers the flexibility, expertise, and accountability necessary to get to a preservation centered outcome. Um, Preservation North Carolina, as Kathleen mentioned, brings a proven track record of delivering these types of projects and would bring the expertise um to the to the table.

Um, each month of vacancy compounds deterioration and costs and uh, Durham deserves more than an uncertain future. It deserves bold, timely action and a creative solution to finally get this project moving. Thank you. Thank you. Those are all of the speaker signups that I have. Um I I I will say before I just start passing it around, um I think it's I know today was an update, but I think it's going to be really helpful for the presentation to be available

publicly. Um just so people can see all of what we've seen. uh it is it is it's not just holding the building or letting the building go and there is a lot of complex here and there are some serious financial decisions we're going to have to make too and I I I've already said I'm not going to be Chicago and spend 11 billion dollars for 10,000 units. So there has to be a better way forward.

I think time is a value that we're going to have to really observe here. uh and and that's going to call for some forecasting and um and and just you know what's to come. So it's it's a little more complex than are we going to just do something or not. Um but I I just want to go ahead and say I think we need to make that go ahead and make that available for the public.

Um, I know we're going to have a long meeting on the 16th, but um, yeah, colleagues. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

Uh, first I just want to thank um all of those advocates that have been working at this for almost a decade or longer. Um, I really appreciate you staying focused on the affordable housing aspect of this. And I also want to appreciate those folks who've been focused on the Milton Small Building and presently preserving that piece of history that tells the story of Durm and why building towering over it is the North Carolina Mutual Life building. Um I I do I do think that um it has many complexities as our mayor indicated, but I also have been advocating over the last eight years for the parcel to be split up.

And so I would like to know if a proposal has been submitted or a request has been made actually for that Milton small building to be parcled out. Um because I have not seen anything like that come forward. I've not heard anything like that previously. And uh

yeah Stacy Poston um so we have not received a formal request to parcel the or subdivide that parcel. Um early uh on in 2017 and 18 when we were initially conceiving how we were going to approach um this site we had a lot of discussions about what the implications of dividing that site might be um what if it might trigger things in you know like roads and things like that. So um it is not something that we have a formal proposal. We absolutely had conversations with the state preservation team and Kathleen Turner um and so um we would welcome you know a formal proposal for them to be able to do some analysis on but we do not currently have something um submitted.

Thank you. And I would also just want to echo that welcome of a formal proposal um just knowing that at least getting that site separated would make it much more simpler to do affordable housing across the rest of it. um whatever else uh might be included that piece could get done. Thank you.

Mayor, could you turn that mic off for me? Yes. I just, you know, I think for the purposes of the public and the council and and I know some of us have had conversations outside of this room. I I just want to do a little bit of issue framing.

Obviously from the the there have been several development attempts on this property and and from the beginning the council and and your predecessors on the council have struggled with questions of the individual priorities and then how those priorities play together. Uh obviously the two major attempts to redevelop this property uh the direction we received from council in both of those were to attempt a master development where a number of different priorities were pursued. Uh and while uh in this most recent effort there has been a ranking there was also an expectation that a development respond to a number of different priorities. Um for that reason if along the way there have been people who have expressed interest in partial partially satisfying some of

those goals. Those are not conversations that the city staff felt u authorized to engage in. So, a strictly affordable housing discussion, a strictly market rate housing discussion, or a a strictly uh preservation of the Milton small building discussion are not ones that the staff have been authorized to. And and that is directly as a result of of I think uh very thorough vetting at the council level of the possibility of doing those things, but determining that the council wanted staff to pursue a master development agreement.

Um the recommendation we bring to you today is that the most recent effort to negotiate something that seemed to satisfy the uh the council direction uh is one that we should not move forward with because of all of the conditions presented forward. Um we uh brought a recommendation to to take a pause. I want to be clear that that recommendation is not a reflection of exhaustion. Although I will admit

obviously a lot of people have put in a lot of effort and the staff just like the council wanted this to result in a successful project. I do think we do identify a number of market conditions that we have a concern and that is why you know that the recommendation came forward to pause any sort of master development discussion. Prior to that, we we have uh presented council with the possibility of subdividing the parcel and pursuing different objectives. And that is something that we remain, you know, willing to do at council's direction.

In our prior conversations, that has not been something that council has directed. Obviously, you've heard from two different groups of speakers today who proposed that and that is something staff could pursue if you directed us to do so. Uh but at this point, that those have not been individual conversations we've pursued. So I was wanted to provide that framing because I do think uh council has several decisions to make. One is do we proceed with a master development conversation or or or uh or stop that is our recommendation has been to stop.

Then the next question is more open and that is what do you want to happen next and the staff is available to to try and help you down that path whatever you choose. Pro. Thank you Mr. Manard and thank you colleagues.

Let me thank all of our friends who are in chamber with us today. Thank you, Mr. Manager. So, in other words, the buck stops here, uh, is what the manager essentially has said, and I think rightfully so.

Um, full disclosure, I'm a member of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People. I'm a life member of the NAACP. Uh, I lead an organization that is a dues paying member of Durham CAN. Um, I'm a friend and ally of Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit.

Um, so just about all of these organizations are ones that are that are near uh and dear to me in some ways in many very tangible uh ways. Um, I I I think it's important for us to frame how we got here and a number of you the speakers have have said something. There's a recurring motif. You use the phrase bold action and decision. And anytime you use

that phrase, whether you call a name or not, colleagues are talking about us. Um this is this is maybe the third and a half iteration of a council that has looked at this development and taken a crack at this development. And I believe each and every council has the right to to reconsider to look at to deliberate um what's before them. We are not beholdened to to previous councils.

Although I think precedent and and you know industri um uh institutional integrity mean something but we each have the right to take a fresh look. this this uh devel development piece of land. The approach we've always taken has been that we would, as the manager said, master plan it. And that each element informed and buttressed and supported the other element.

In August of last year, we were at a threshold. We were at a decision point. We chose not to act. We chose not to take one of the proposals, the three

proposals or so that was put before us, which if we had those proposals made all of the constituents, not the constituents, not just the constituents that are here today, but all of the constituents, the business community, the preserve, the building folk, the the historical folk who wanted to make sure that we honored our past, those of us who wanted an iconic kind of a um uh statement there that would brand Durham to the rest of the world. We uh would have had more affordable housing in one of those developments than we were first asked for, but we decided to punt and ask the uh staff to essentially substantively change the RFP and asked them to rework with Peebles a plan that involved leasing rather than selling. The original fi one of the original five goals was financial windfall for the city. And the way that was achieved was through a sale. The developer would then go out

and leverage that uh a title to do the other things we wanted. We would have had affordable housing. We would have been moving dirt already. We decided not to do that.

Moreover, the decision to do that was predicated upon a proposition that somehow through maintaining ownership, we could safeguard our values and make sure that we what we wanted to happen would happen, which is a demonstra demonstrabably false proposition. Um, there are black people that are living in this country for generations that know that restrictive covenants have prevented them from buying things by people who have long been dead. Municipalities around this country engage in sale for terms or sale on terms every day. So the notion that somehow this developer would have been able to wiggle their way out of doing what they were contractually obligated to do because we kept ownership is just false. And we made policy based upon that. And when we punted it to the staff, because we did not act uh on one

of those proposals at that time in the interim period, the United States of America held an election. The economy contracted. We got into a tariff war with China and Canada and whoever else we could find. And the market changed.

Everyone in this room and everybody listening to this broadcast um from time to time sits down and makes decisions what you're going to spend money on in your household. Some of us can't take the vacation. Some of us can't buy the suit we want. Some of us can't uh put an addition on the house.

Some of us are choosing between food and medicine based upon our family's finances. This Durm family now is looking at our finances and has to make some real world decisions uh based upon the current market uh uh conditions. Now, whatever else we talk about and if we want to do affordable housing solely or whatever whatever the council decides, we can do that. We have the power to do that. But it must be understood that we are not here by an act of God or or nature or or

or some uncontrollable circumstances. We are here because of our indecision because of our and I'm saying our because of our action or inaction as a council. And there are causal links, there are causal outcomes because of that. Uh in that interim period, things have happened.

Um I you know I trust the staff. They came back with a recommendation based upon uh what they do every day is look at the market uh make recommendations and we we can accept a recommendation or not accept a recommendation. What I will not do is engage in theater and pretend that this just happened to us. No, it is written.

it was authored by us. Um, and I would I would encourage uh my colleagues to to um there are a lot of a lot of winds of change blowing in our economy. Um, one thing that we have to focus on is we cannot have blight in our downtown corridor. The building is deteriorating every day as we've heard. Um, I had a

chance to speak to a couple of visitors in the city uh just a couple of evenings ago. " But then they said when they got to other parts of the city, they said, "Oh, okay. " So, we need to be concerned. And I and and I appreciate the manager's um focus on activating the area in in the interim, but whatever we decide to do, we need to make a decision and not be capriccious.

We need to make a decision, not be afraid of what what if this happened or what doesn't. That's why we get paid the big bucks. That's why we've been put in the seat. But part of our issue has been we have been moving the goalpost uh on this project and we have effectively, at least in my assessment, taken a an asset and turned it into a bill.

We we we we were in a position where we would have gotten our affordable housing. We would have kept the building. We would have had commercial property. we would have had all all of the five the five things that

we agreed to. Now, if we're going to change the priorities, then we need to just telegraph that and be honest about it. But we're here because we agreed to make everybody happy. No one ecstatic, but at least happy.

The conditions have changed. So, if we're going to reset the conversation, let us reset it honestly by acknowledging why we're here, what has happened thus far, um, and move forward. But I I I support the uh staff's recommendation unless my colleagues have something to say that will compel me otherwise. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. Any other comments? We got a question um for staff. Um how much of HRNA do we do we have left?

I know that we contract with them to to help us get through this process. Um it's actually a pretty big contract. Do do we still have a significant amount of that left or would we if we wanted to continue working with them would would we need a new contract? We have some available funds on the contract. Yes.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Um so uh so I'm interested in I appreciate uh Council Member uh Freeman's um comments and and the work that you know you've done over the years.

Um I have lost confidence in in peoples um based on the conversations that I have had with staff based on the feedback that we've received from HRNA who has been working on behalf of of the city uh and has a lot of experience in this area. So I have lost confidence in in Peebles. Um, and I I understand that the community advocates have had good conversations, but um I I have not been privy to those. So that's where I am when it comes to Peebles.

I'm good with ending our our uh our conversations with Peebles. Um the historic preservation of of Milton Small. This is one that I have wrestled with um for a significant

amount of time. Uh I am now at a point where I think that historic preservation is a very unique skill set that um developers of gray grayfield sites of of parking lots existing parking lots um maybe don't have or lack the the nuanced um skill set that is necessary that people who do historic preservation and historic preservation development every single day have. Therefore, I think it would be uh a a good move for us to consider uh partitioning off the Milton small building and engaging in conversation um with uh Preservation North Carolina and Preservation Durham. So, that is something I I join uh Council Member Freeman in um in in that for the remainder of the site. Um I agree with my colleagues that we we can't just leave it as it is. we have to do something um whether it's something in the interim whether it is site

preparation um I would also be interested in is there a possibility of a third party master planning and then working to working amongst multiple developers in a phased approach or one developer in a phased approach I I would want more information details about what is most feasible what makes the most sense um particularly in this moment um and I I I want to today to whoever to to the folks who who wrote the the uh memo and the staff report because I've written many of those. Um you did a damn good job of laying out all of the different issues and considerations that that need to go into uh our decision moving forward. And I'm going to try to um not fall out of my seat when I read that not only is this publicly owned land, uh not only would on publicly owned land would affordable housing need to be subsidized, but now we are in a moment where and the staff report says market

rate development on this site is not feasible without subsidy and could no longer offset the lower residual land value associated with the affordable units. We do not want to subsidize market rate units. Period. We do not want to do that.

Um, we have these four major projects in in downtown. I think that was good context laying that out that are paused because of that. Um, what was beneficial, you know, is in a strong market that those those market rate units would be able to help subsidize the affordable units and we're not in that position right now. Um, however, I don't I'm not a real estate developer. Uh I don't know what the opportunities are moving forward with looking at a portion of the site and um that is not the Milton small building and moving forward on on some sort of affordable housing on that on that portion. So, I would be interested in um and I don't know if it's HRNA or someone else uh getting some more in-depth options on a phased approach

looking at a smaller portion of the site uh whether we would want to look at uh a number of different developers to build out the entire block. But I do think that it's important that in the long term upon full development of of the block that is a cohesive development where if there are different uh phases or different developers on the site that they all work together um and that we have something in in the interim so that is not just sitting empty uh to other colleagues um uh points. Uh so that's where that's where I am. I agree not to move forward with Peebles based upon what I've heard um from from staff and from HRNA and um you know I I explain the other elements of what I would what I would look for moving forward.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mccavier. Thank you. Uh thanks very much to staff for the memo and for advocates for being here today. Um I do want to put uh and I

appreciate Mayor Prom, you know, I think Certainly, I've certainly moved the goalposts and I don't have a problem saying that. And I will say that the market has also moved. We had a deal where we sold the land way back in 2021 that didn't have tariff wars or elections or anything else and it wasn't possible for that developer and that was with sale of the land. So, um I think that that that we we did do the the hard work and make the decision around the five priorities and just didn't go our way.

Um so, I appreciate I the the current thing that we have in front of us, we're not going to do 758 78 million worth of subsidy for for however many units. That's like not going to happen. So, um that proposal, as far as I can tell, is is is not one that is feasible at all. Um the the market around um market rate units, there's a in our memo a list of several projects, the YMCA project, uh American Tobacco phase 2. Again, all of those projects were slated to be done well

before this election. So, the market, especially around multif family, has been turbulent and volatile since about 2023, maybe end of 2022. We've heard that from the development community. We've seen that with interest rates uh and and constru and construction costs that have been high since since co.

So, th that's the that's the real estate and market reality that we're faced with. I am open to having conversations about the parceling out of the historic portion of the lot. I I will stay I will say that I the rest of it then you know maintaining ownership of as much of it as possible is a still a critical of of critical importance to me. Uh I'm only interested in the part that the where the Milton small building is so that the preservation of the building and it not being an isore blight uh continue and I think that as the city continuing to own it or or figuring that out maybe drag it out and then the building can will degrade further.

Um I've long been a proponent of of saving the building. Initially I wasn't there. Uh and then uh

it's not my style of architecture. uh goes to how design is actually real tricky. We want to talk about design but design is is a very subjective thing. Uh but it is uh very much an important uh building as far as modern architecture is concerned.

Um and so I I get why folks want to preserve that building and we we have not done the best job downtown preserving some of our iconic buildings. So I that argument has resonated with me for a while now. Uh so moving forward I think the deliverable you know I think the parts that we can accomplish are the historic building and the affordable units. I do have a question for staff around what are our legal requirements around having to do another RFP or if we are allowed to not have to do an RFP. Are we allowed to just say hey we want to go straight into negotiations with an affordable housing provider that we've already worked with because we already know they can deliver units. So that's a question that I have for staff.

You don't have to answer it now, I don't think. But like I kind of I I do want to know that like we have affordable housing partners that have delivered on many projects downtown. Are we forced to have to do an RFP on that? Can we just choose?

Um, so that's a question I'd love for for staff to get back to us about. And then I think that the at least going down this path of how do we separate out the historic part of it so that that part can move forward and we don't lose the building. I'm also interested. I hope that that provided enough direction to staff.

Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I mean, I wonder whether City Lamar, do you want to answer that question, but it seems like we've talked about this in the past.

So, yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I can I think I can answer the question. The answer is um if you have a public purpose and if it's authorized by statute you can enter to private negotiations um that's the case for affordable housing certainly it's also the case for preservation historic preservation purposes um so we want to know the specifics of what is being sought but uh direct uh private

negotiations are authorized for many of the kinds of things that we've been talking about. Thank you. So I that's what I had understood especially with our own land but I just wanted to to make sure that that's so that's the other thing I'm interested what I guess what I'm not interested in because I don't think we're going to succeed uh is this big RFP process with this master plan of the whole thing I think we we carve out what we can uh we activate the space I think staff has some great ideas open space whatnot with the parts that we can't deliver on the office the retail the market rate and we figure out what we can move forward and and that's That's where I'm at. Bruce.

Yeah. Thanks again, Mr. Mayor. Um, yeah.

So, I'll I'll my comments will be brief. I want to first of all echo Council Member Freeman and just thank the housing advocates that are here that have been involved in this um conversation for a long long time. I want to thank the preservation advocates as well who've been here and made strong case for the for the real uniqueness of the Milton small building and why that's a valuable asset to to um to preserve. I

also want to thank the people's corporation for being willing to sort of engage with us in the last what like eight nine months in this negotiations. appreciate all that. Um um my colleagues have been at this lot many colleagues have been a lot at this a lot longer than I have. They've been in this for what six seven years, right?

So um I'm not interested in litigating in the past. I will I will mention though that in any of the proposals and this this comes from the staff memo um if I can pull it up here. Um we were looking at for any of the proposals since last August anywhere from 47 million um to as high as 94 million. The latest one was 78 million.

Even the initial proposal it requested city support of 61 million. So we were looking at a big investment anyway, right? Um I think at this point from what we've what we've now we are I think we got to rightsize our ambitions and I think a lot of my colleagues have been saying that. Um I do appreciate the comments today about um how to how to go forward um potentially parceling out the Milton small building. Many colleagues have mentioned that. I think that makes

a lot of sense. I also appreciate the city manager kind of framing the decision for us, right? That essentially is it, you know, number one, master development or not? I'm also in the camp that would say like I think the master development idea again in terms of right sizing ambitions is probably not the way to go right now.

And I'm um uh interested in going a different direction in terms of what happens next. Again, I appreciate the staff and the memo. You've laid out three options that that we could follow. And I think the last option to me was pretty um at least in terms of what we can do right now.

The idea of pursuing a smaller scale development solicited developer for Milton small and or affordable housing. I think we can do both of those and then add maybe add service parking and open space. So I think something like that would be attractive. I am interested in the affordable housing piece still. I am interested in preservation still. And so I think I'd love to to I support the motion from staff to end negotiations and would I would if looking for our opinions I would uh I would propose or or or pursue the or prefer number three option pursue that smaller scale redevelopment right away that we don't

want to slow down and do nothing. I appreciate the comments from former mayor Gully that in some ways doing this work on affordable housing right now while the market seems to be slowing down could be a way to do that in a way that we can that we're not subject to like higher interest rates and high costs as as the markets kind of slows down. So um that's my perspective again appreciate the staff framing some um uh clear decisions for us and that's how I see it and appreciate your work on this. Thank you Mr.

Mayor. Council member Freeman, you good? I was just going to frame it in that same framing and appreciate my colleagues um making that very clear. Uh I do think it's opt uh option three. Hold on comment down pretty good me but pursuing the smaller scale redevelopment soliciting developer for Milton small. I I just want to be specific that I do think that it should be preservation North Carolina or preservation derm and um andor for

affordable housing. I I do want to be really clear. I did not lose confidence in peoples. I do agree with Mayor Pro Tim.

We have moved the fence post and um to council member Cabierro's point, I don't mind moving the fence post a million times if it means we get what we need. Um but I do think that there should be some conversation about part like it would be nice to have a building coming up out of the ground now. Um, but some part of that space is going to need more than just housing. And so I do think that some conversation about what the plan would look like around that space would be great.

Um, people do need jobs and they need places to work. So, and it's nice when they can walk to them and they're right there. Um, I I definitely don't I don't think that, you know, I would never approve or never be behind doing 78 million for market rate housing. That at all. And uh I was trying to think of

what else you might have questions on. And I appreciate Council Member Baker's question about HRNA. It would be good to know if they can help with the the process since they're already in the queue and they've been involved this long. That's that's all.

Um thank you advocates. I yall have been working for a really long time and have worked really hard on this and staff um and my colleagues have said most of what I think that I would like to say, but I'm just going to add my voice here because I know we're giving direction. Um I I am I it's not my style. I understand the importance of preserving buildings. If it felt like it was going to impede um affordable housing or commercial development on that site, then it would not have been my recommendation to preserve the building. But it sounds like there is a viable option to preserve the building, have that history preserved, and also to

allow us to um have more focused uh potentially RFP or just communications with developers moving forward. Uh, so I would support um looking at portion portioning off the parcel. Um, I also had council member Cabier's question about working directly with developers. Um, and not something that I need to hear about right now, but I am curious as it's made public that we are not going to move forward with peoples.

It sounds like that is um the will of the council. Whether some of the other folks who put um who responded to RFPs previously, particularly folks who have demonstrated work in affordable housing are interested in coming back on board and what that conversation might look like. So, I'm open to that idea. Um and for me, the priorities are affordable housing in downtown 60% AMI in perpetuity or less. Um, I do want commercial, but I really want to be like careful about what type of commercial we are um, facilitating

coming into downtown Durham. We just had a conversation with DDI about um, what their asks are around um, developing commercial nature in downtown. Um, we really need a grocery store. So awesome.

But certain things like that I would definitely prioritize over just like bringing in chain and we all know this but this is kind of what makes downtown Durham really unique and special is just not having like a million chainowned resident or uh commercial businesses. Um, but I do think that that we do need some commercial business and um, maintaining the Milton Small building and preserving that history and giving that opportunity to have that building repaired for right now because I do agree with what several of my colleagues have said. It's an eyesore at this time and um, yeah, it deserves better. That space deserves better. So, number three sounds like a good option to me. Um I am curious to see what um the conversation is like around a potential parceling portioning parceling off portioning off

I don't know what I'm saying. Um in that I think uh Gina you said that there had been some conversations maybe five or six years ago about it um about like rightways and other access things. So, I'd be curious to hear kind of what happened with that those conversations and maybe why that wasn't um why that wasn't moved forward on. I don't know if we if you have any helpful insight.

Sure. So, I think we as Bo as the city manager Ferguson indicated, we we moved forward with a master development plan. And so, we wanted to maintain flexibility on the site and let the the market tell us and the developers that proposed tell us what might look best on that site and how that might work. And I think at that time there was also uncertainty about council level about whether the building was something that would be a long-term part of that or not. Even though it was one of the goals, I think we were trying to maintain some flexibility in the work that we were receiving from the development firms. I also just realized I called you the wrong name, but my mom at the counter her name is Gina, and I

" Sorry. Um, okay. Anyway, uh, so when when y'all had that conversation in 2017, it it wasn't more specific than that. Okay.

Yeah, I I would be curious to kind of see what options there are around. I mean, we had intense conversations with the planning department about what the implications of that would be and what the council goals were and how we might approach and so the the determination was made to approach it as a master development agreement for the entire 4 acre site and try to have the best design we could possibly get for a catalytic project on that site. Okay. when you had said it earlier, I was hoping maybe there was like some stuff that was done and that that changed the council decision, but it sounds like that we would have to do some research around the implications there. I do think that that that's the part and and I'm definitely not the expert in this. So, I'd welcome Sarah Young into the conversation, but but there there definitely were uh constraints that are our uh UDO would place on subdividing the lot that you

know, talk about breaking up a master lot, the master development agreement, you know, uh checked a few boxes that would allow the developer to satisfy that through a master development agreement. If we go to subdivide the partial, we will trigger a number of of those requirements. And Sarah could could educate the the council and staff a bit more on what those were. I know it's been a while since we talked about that option.

Does it does the new UDO potentially change that conversation? Again, I' I'd invite Sarah to answer those questions. Sorry. Yeah, that would be helpful for me.

Um, but otherwise I think what everyone's stated and for me it's it's affordable units and moving as quickly as possible in that direction. So, thank you so much to everyone for your work. Thank you. This is really helpful.

This is helping me a lot in terms of um charting the course forward and and this is why it's important to listen to each other. I thank Council Member Cavier for for G reminding us historically of the deal with Fallon. The main reason the

deal with Fallon fell through is because they took a look at that building and realized it was going to take much more to uh rehab the Milton Smalls building. Um you know there there's there's virtue in retaining ownership. So let's sell the building. Um and part of the the footprint of the building is part of the acreage of that total project.

Uh, and if the and I wanted, as a council, I just want to um I think it's important to acknowledge where the master plan idea came from. I I don't want it to be kind of like the council giveth and the council taketh away kind of situation. The master plan came as a result from a whole lot of people who came before us during a massive public engagement campaign. the folk from Hatai came and they dreamed of having a space where artists could work and where they could have subsidized meeting space and where we could honor uh that history. DDI and the chamber came and said we need a place

that will will generate revenue uh for the city. Folk dreamed of a of an iconic kind of presence there that when folks saw a picture of it, you'd be able to say that's Durham without seeing Durham on the screen. um there were a whole lot of people that poured into this. So the master plan didn't come from us.

So if if we're going to move away from that, I just want to honor and acknowledge that that that was not born with us. That was a whole lot of engagement way beyond the uh organizations that are represented here today that came up with that master plan. But if we're going um to diverge from it uh and if we're going to retain ownership, then that changes my calculus. I say personally, I'd like to see then as many affordable housing units there as we can get on the property because if if it's a fundamentally changed property, a fundamentally changed plan, that changes my calculus. My disposition and votes in

the past on this property were based upon an attempt to keep fidelity with the multitude of constituents that came and dreamed of this property. A lot of dreams were tied up in this property. And that was that's what I was attempting to do. Make everybody happy, no one ecstatic.

So, if we're going to page break from that, then, you know, given my past and my passions and desires, and I want to see as many affordable units as possible. In some of the iterations, we didn't know whether or not the affordable units would be in the Milton small building. So, if we're going to sell it, I want to know what's going to happen to it because I thought the whole idea of retaining ownership was the ability to determine. So, if we're if we're so gung-ho about selling the Milton Small Building, so if that doesn't fall under the virtue clause of retaining ownership, then I want to know what's going to go on with it.

What are they going to be able to do to to bring it up to code that we can't do? What tools are they going to avail themselves of? What funding streams are they going to avail themselves of other than just

loving history um that we as a government can avail ourselves of? Because if ownership is a virtue, I want to own everything on that lot because that building takes up a significant amount of the acreage as well. I want to be able to determine what goes in there. Are we sure that what happens in that building is going to be uh uh compatible with our values as a city or are we going to exercise sale under terms?

Are we going to tell them what can happen in the building like we could have done with this entire parcel? Um, so I I I just want to, you know, be clear on on what our parameters are and I and I thank Council Member Freeman and I want to echo what she said. I want to be very careful not to be smmerged the reputation of Peebles. Peebles numbers changed because we changed what we asked them to do.

Peebles came with a proposal that we could have voted on in August of 2024. Would have been moving dirt. We would have had affordable units. The building would have been preserved.

We would have gotten money from a sale. we would have done. So we had that opportunity. People's changed because we

changed and and I don't want to ever, you know, I I don't demure from a debate or assigning a of fault where, you know, where I think it should be. But I'm not also going to uh uh, you know, engage in theater making believe that this developer is somehow unscrupulous when this developer, not out of large s or magnanimity, they're they're a for-profit business. When we took the ability for them to have a title on this land away, it changed their calculus and they started talking in ways reflective of that change calculus. That doesn't make them bad people or make them unscrupulous.

It makes them responsive to to the conditions that we change. But if we're going forward with with ownership and parceling out the building, then I want to go for as much affordable housing as we can get. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Thank you so much. Um I think you know well first of all I want to thank the residents for coming out and I respect the engagement uh that you all have done as well. Thank you to my colleagues.

Um thank you to my colleagues as well. I I want to be just just honest you know and this is in no form of disrespect. I lean on I lean on the community members that that talk about the historic preservation of the building. the the he's actually who I lean on the most is it was a black woman who was one of the architects uh who told me the history of it that I wasn't aware.

" I actually ride by in disappointment because it's just an eyesore. Um so I didn't know the history of it. Um and I honestly don't believe that majority of Durham knows the history either. Uh so that I just wanted to put that out there. So preserving it or you know coming up with a plan I hope would come with also an education campaign about and around it as well. Uh I do have a a few questions for staff that I think will help inform my

perspective here. What is the cost to preserve to get the building back up to code? So we do not have independent analysis that we've done. Yeah.

The most recent proposal that we got from the people's corporation was around $25 million. Let me just brief that $25 million to for the hotel vision for a 100key hotel at that site. And those numbers are about three months old. And that's that's the only data point I have that is in that range.

So about 25 million to get the co get the hotel to I mean get the building to just question would that include historic tax credits? So this are construction costs to that we received from the people's corporation to bring the building to current code, current standards, energy code, all those types of things. Um that's just the cost side. It's not the revenue side. So it doesn't talk take into consideration the tax tax pieces and all that stuff. That's just

that's just the cost. So the tax stuff is a different kind of historic uh preservation tax credit offset those costs. You want to go into this? Yeah.

Council member Riss interrupting my line of question to ask the question I was going to ask. Oh, you're good. Go ahead. But but yes, it would ameliate some of the costs associated with bringing the building up to code and returning it to use.

It depends. uh the People's Corporation offered an estimate. There's no way for us to know exactly what credit would be issued. It's relative to cost.

A follow question for NC Preservation. So, if we sold the building, would NC Preservation have access to tools that we don't have as a government? Would it be less for them to restore the building than it would for for any other entity? Yeah, please.

Okay. Um would it be cheaper for you to do it than us? Well, what we would do is facilitate bringing in a developer who has these tools, experience and understanding and how to

do it. Look, if we're talking about, you know, cost analysis here, seven a $25 million price tag to bring the building up what to the boutique hotel level or just building code level just oper just code. Yeah. You know, then you we're looking at $312 a square foot for an 80,000 foot building.

that is half of what new construction costs in in any bad day. Um and and then you multiply in there, let's just say uh you know the 35% state and federal tax credits amounts to $7 million in offsets for that total cost. And then what you can do is take that and syndicate the tax credits and turn that into equity for the project. So now you amplify the savings of that project which can be put into service um in far greater speed than say working with you know the scheduling of LITC and everything that is you know we've worked in affordable

housing too and you know and it is an important process um but it but it can extend the time frame this is a little bit more streamlined and then you look in u you look at the you know saving the building is a lot cheaper than demolishing it. And on a good day, I think now with inflation, we're looking at 2 and a half to $3 million in demo costs and 2500 tons of debris into the landfill. We can forego that and get a tax generating project off the ground. Well, to we had a developer say the exact opposite to us that it would be cheaper to demolish it rather than save it.

That this was years ago, but but to your to your I in terms of bringing in developers say about that. What would No, I'm just simply saying that we get a lot of different that's my point. We get a lot of different information to make decision on. But so if you brought in a developer, what would what would that do to your equity position?

Would would that uh as uh would you sell it to the developer? Would they have an equity position? And what what goes on in that building on Yes, sir. That's how it works is according to state statute, the

um preservation or conservation nonprofit gets an option to purchase from the city to market the building and uh bring in a preservation-minded developer. We acquire the building from the city and then we place covenants on it uh and then uh convey it to the developer with a rehabilitation agreement and a time frame. There's a lot more certainty to that process than there is other ways of doing things. Certainly the open-endedness and uncertainty of an open bid process, which you never know what you're going to get at the other end.

Sure. But the point is what you just described is something that's not unavailable to us as a city. I mean, we could engage in this exact same process. Could we not just get a developer that's preservation-minded and and and retain ownership of the building and still have that done ourselves, can't we? You could, but this streamlines it uh because the negoti you have a negotiated sale option with us in order for us to get that knowledgeable experienced developer in place. We have people that

can do that, but I I to your I get your point. Thank you. Can I just piggy back onto that line of question and just ask you um is it just a development or is there case study developed um students involved? Like is there more than just a development like a business development happening?

Is there a more educational process alongside of that? You mean in in helping to inform people about this building, its architecture, its history, its place in the city and the context, you know, a a lot of people involve us in that process because of that very thing and what we bring to it. plus the uh um the long list of preservation-minded developers that we work with. Council member, I just have a clarifying question for staff. Right now, all you all need us to kind of determine is that we're we're good with not moving forward with Peebles and just a general direction.

So, do we need to keep like having the conversation around the details or have you all gotten enough guidance from this? Um council can give us as much or as little direction as they want. Obviously uh direction on on people's was the primary uh objective of the agenda item. Um for clarity's sake for staff.

If council expects us to do anything else, it would be great to get that direction today. I will state with friends in the audience that uh that you know there there have been disagreements in the past as to whether or not staff was fully following the direction of council. So, it's important for me today for council to say if you expect anything to happen on this property after today that it be explicit in this work session what you want staff to do after we stop working with people's and any of the options in front of you are are available but I I would note that I that I have not yet heard consensus I I I have heard two

primary things I would like direction on. One one is uh whether or not parceling off the Milton small building and pursuing redevelopment is something we are to move forward with. And then if there is and that is a A and B option A for any purpose or B only if the Milton Small building is repurposed for affordable housing. And then I have heard the possibility of using some or all of the rest of the site for a separate affordable housing project.

So I I would look to the council or to the mayor to to lead a conversation. If there is direction on that. If there is no direction, that is also fine, but I would want it stated publicly that the staff is not doing anything further until we receive direction from council. So, let let me just give some comments and then I'm going to ask for uh some explicit direction. Um I I [Music]

am well I do have one more question for staff. Sorry. The subsidy for affordable housing what it was versus what you you mentioned. So what is usually market for affordable housing subsidy versus what this would have been in this in this case?

So what we have been seeing in the market recently is um $40 to $50,000 per unit and we were at 150 in the last iteration. Okay. Thank you. So that's not affordable.

Um and and I want to be very clear that I I don't want to just say I don't want to use the term afford the phrase affordable housing to say hey we did affordable housing and it's not affordable. I want to be really intentional and also you know money is not going to grow on trees. So it's it's it's not going to be like donated housing or anything. Um where I am explicitly is uh you know as I said before give me a plan on this building that that that makes economic sense uh

and I'll balance that with you know just making a values decision and that's when I'll consider it. Um, but right now it it you know and and I have I I just being honest I can't just ignore the finances of it or the economics of it and and just for the sake of saying hey affordable housing because it's city owned land. I I still want to do the master plan project. I do not think this should be developed in a in a vacuum.

I don't think it should be developed in in isolation. You know, I think this is a pivotal part of downtown that needs to work and marry with other parts of downtown. Uh from the bus station to being over the freeway to, you know, just part of the entire that that entire area. Um I would love to see um you know, if if we're not, you know, I mean, if the council decides, hey, we're going to preserve this building and do XYZ, fine.

That's what the council determines. Uh I want to see the space activated, though. It cannot continue to sit like it is. Uh, and

whether that's a park uh or amphitheater or something, it has to be activated. Um, I I do want to say in respect to my friends in the room, I'm I go to just about every committee meeting and this is not an agenda item that we're talking about. Um, and I'm not sure it's an agenda item and and and you know, I don't I don't go to the other meetings. I'm not going to speak on it, but I just, you know, I think that it's very clear like we we have members that are members of these organizations, but I if it was every organization like this is the an actual agenda item topic, then we'll see all of that.

So, I want to be very careful on how we're presenting that. And that's just just being transparent with it. That being said, it doesn't lessen or devalue the advocacy that's in the room today, and I want to respect that. Um, but I I you know I I think of you know this pro this site as an opportunity to to just really stand out in downtown

Durham. I and I think the way we're going about it is like oh give me a little affordable housing here and that's just enough. Like we we have to get it right and I rather take our time and get it right rather than rush and and get it wrong. Um so so that that's where I stand on it.

I I want to see the space activated until we can actually build something on it that actually uh will be that crown jewel that really stands out as a as a property or a development that has all of the things that we ask for. Uh, and I don't want to I don't want to just limit or reduce what we can do just because we have, you know, not again, not devaluing who's showing up in the room, but I'm looking at this at face value and I have to go with what makes sense and I and I think the best thing I can do is just be honest about it. Uh, this is an opportunity to do something pretty massive for downtown. " Honestly, you know, looking at the value of the land where it is, if we were to

take another approach, we could actually take millions from this and build an entire village of affordable housing where the dollar stretch further, you know. So, I'm I'm willing to, you know, go with which whichever way the council wants to go, but, you know, I I am I I'm not going to ignore the finances of it because it's, you know, oh, this is a historic staircase or historic building and, you know, I make it a part of the overall plan. You know, I my first time hearing what Preservation North Carolina offered today. That that was my first time hearing that, you know, but at the same time, you know, staff, I believe you guys are competent, you know, uh, and if we can set those those directions, then so be it.

Um I I don't know who talked about it. The RFP process, you know, if the RFP process is adding a bunch of expenses I I we we don't have to. Let's just money is money. It's going to come from somewhere. So it's going to I think it's gonna get in the process. So we can be much more direct and say this is what

we want and go that direction, then let's do that, you know. Uh, but I I I just don't want to just I don't want to miss the mark on this to say, "Hey, look, we have a few affordable housing and then everybody celebrate to say I played a part getting some affordable housing in downtown, you know, and we have 300 East Main Street coming, 500 East Main Street. Uh, we have other affordable housing projects that are coming on. Again, we are, you know, we we're being the city of Oprah and we're we're not really diversifying how we're going to generate more revenue in other ways.

So, just want to keep that in mind. We're not making money on affordable housing. We can if we are strategic about it. And I'd rather take 80 million in profit and build an affordable housing whole village than just, you know, say we have a few here.

You have a question? Actually, I was just going to to the your to the manager's direct query as to recommendation. First of all, mayor, I want to associate myself with your remarks. My recommendation would be that we um terminate the uh relationship with

people per the um staff's recommendation and ask the manager to whatever he's been brainstorming about in terms of activating beautifying that property um in the interim to do that and take no action on anything else today. I am not comfortable comfortable given what I know what went into this master plan amending that simply by fiat from this day. I want I want I want an opportunity for all those folk from the business community all those folk from Hatai all those folk from everywhere else to come back and talk to us before we we just eviscerate the five priorities that they inform. Um, and for me and also just for me from from it's it's just intellectually difficult for me to we told the developer we don't want to sell anything and then sit here and say but we'll sell the building. I mean the building is part of the parcel we wanted to retain ownership over. So if there

was virtue in that, how do we just now is there how does that virtue not carry over to the building which is part of the parcel? Either we want to own the stuff or we don't. Um, so I'm not comfortable today doing anything beyond uh sessation of our relationship with peoples and giving the rest of Durham an opportunity to weigh in on this their property, their piece of land because the last representation we made to them is that we'd be acting based upon those five priorities. If we're not doing that anymore, I think the people have a right, all of the groups have a right to come back before us.

So, I think we should hold. Let me get let me get some direction real quick on before we go any any further. Um all all of you all that are in favor of ending relationship with people's let me see your hands. Okay.

You got that? All right. Um I was going to suggest instead of doing a lot

of talking, we still have capacity with HRNA. Would we like H&RA to go back and bring us options with I guess community groups or the folks that are involved uh so that we can have something to actually deliberate upon rather than keeping it open-ended? I would just like to be more specific, a whole lot more specific with with like the options. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I'm getting at. Like because right now it's like if I go around and ask you all it's going to be open-ended. We may not get a consensus. But if we take a formal process which we have the consultants okay we've made a decision on people's all right now what are some options we can truly explore I think the options should be like in this time frame or for from for now oh you mean some options specific should be specific to a preservation derm with Milton small building and affordable housing coming up out the

I would be interested in hearing um sort of like what is possible because that that is possible. That's part of I think that could be a third option but I think those two should be in I think and based on what I'm hearing today preservation is automatically going to be considered as well. So, uh, we still have capacity there. Before we get into any other commentary, let me ask, would we be interested in working still with the capacity that's left with H&RA?

We're not specific within what yet to do what I mean. So, so, so now, so now that we're going to, if we're, the direction appears that we're going to separatize for people's, we're back to the drawing board. We still have our priorities, but we're back to the drawing board. So it's like now we have a consultant still what what give us new options you know. Okay. So I think that I think the to me the consultant follows whatever we

want to do since there's resources there. I think the question is what do we want to do? I agree with Council Member Freeman and the request from the city manager. I think we want to give as clear direction to the city manager as possible.

I think we're actually not that far apart. think for me um and I want to be careful like one of my old colleagues talked about the danger of hallucinating consensus. I don't think I'm hallucinating consensus to say I've heard several people on this diet say option three that the staff presented was the was the sort of clear choice going forward. That doesn't mean we have all the details worked out there about how many units of affordable housing, you know, how do we partial out but I think that to me that's the direction we go in.

We're saying we want to keep moving forward. To your comment, Mr. This may be this is not saying this is the all that's ever going to happen there. To me this is kind of phase one potentially and we sort of as as the market changes we can do more since we still will own the land assuming we parcel off the Milton small building. We still do stuff behind you know for par preservation we're parceling off the land uh maybe looking at a phase one phase two phase three option right parceling off with with preservation and

affordable housing. Those two things again that's that's referenced in option three there right solicit a developer for Milton small andor affordable housing I would say and affordable housing to me that's a pretty clear direction the staff the details they'll have to work out potentially with HRNA but I think that's pretty clear direction which I would support yeah um I agree um so my guard rails I guess uh would be preservation Milton small uh a phased approach a master planned site a cohesive site right, with short-term options, one of them being uh affordable housing and some sort of activated space. And to your point earlier, Mr. Mayor mentioned um use the word crown jew jewel. I don't think we want to abandon everything that uh we've been working on before. I don't think we want to abandon the idea that there be some sort of iconic building, especially up on Chapel Hill, but it's a large site and what what else can happen to other parts of the site in the interim and do

we need to wait on other parts of the site? Um, we we need those options. So, I would be interested in options from HRA. I I like every I think the phased approach is the right approach and that is in many ways beyond our control.

I appreciate what mayor prom said about that master vision. I don't think that that moves away from it. It's just being it's just acknowledging that the market isn't really there for retail or some of the things that we were hoping to do on that site. Um, I will say that with the and I've said this before with the I'm I'm not sold that it has to be preservation and see like I I am interested in can we do this in house right um the portioning off I would at least like to understand that I've said it for many years I have felt for many years we need a development arm I've said it is this an opportunity to do it maybe and I'll leave it alone

and I would just echo Council member Cavierra's comment with the addition of I I mean I think that the the piece that is clear like I don't think there was any any mixup in there. It it feels like somebody made like there was a comment made but no one said sell the rest of the property like it's just that one piece. So parceling off the Milton Small Building makes the most sense right now because Preservation Durham or Preservation North Carolina is coming forward saying they would be willing to take it on for 25 million. Yeah.

So, however that moves forward, I still would like to see affordable housing on the site. And in every iteration of the site plans, there's been a L of the Milton small building and affordable housing on the other side. And I think we can do that. So, Oh yeah, I was just going to build off what Council Member Cabier said, which is that I feel like we have been asking our staff questions which like they just don't have the answers to because we

haven't directed them to get the answers to them. Um, and so for me it is I have not decided if I think any of these things is a good idea, but we've heard some numbers from one person and not that I don't trust you, but um it would just be great to have that that information in front of us before we make any decisions. So I totally agree. I'm I'm just interested in giving allowing them to explore those options that we've done with with preservation considered with um affordable housing in a short term and just see what that information looks like when we get it.

I think it's right. I think I think beyond that, I think we're not having any decisions, right? I think we want to see what what can what's possible with that. Um I will say to be quite frank and you know we use we talk a lot about consultants.

We use too many consultants. We're spending too much money. The reason you hire a consultant is to get specific expertise on something. I got to say right now, I don't think we have the staff that can do this.

I think we need experts in preservation to do this. And that's why I think the groups that are coming forward, I think we should look at because they have the expertise. And it's not just preservation, it's also

brownfields. Yeah. I um I think you know at the end of the day where I still land I the the priorities that we last set which was affordable housing um preservation mixed use economic economic development. Yeah.

At the end of the day I still just rely on those priorities and however we get there and we are not helping manager out at all. You're just taking us back to 2018. I just want to say thank that's that's where the start is. Council member Rrist said it in right sizing that kind of grand vision it means you do a piece at a time.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite. So let's take the bite. I think I want to draw the distinction between master planning the site and parceling off the site. I I I believe that master planning the site can create a concept. Um but that if

what council wants to do is to respond to the advocacy they've heard today for either or both affordable housing and Milton small preservation that that that would that will make decisions about the site that you will not be able to revisit later that that you will you'll be making permanent decisions on portions of the site. uh and they will lend a certain amount of clarity to what that whole block looks like with some future possibilities around the parts that you don't develop. Um, so I I want, you know, I think the conversation I've I've felt shift towards clarity. Let's let's make some decisions, but then I hear council drifting back towards but we want a master vision. And I just I want to as a as the staff who have to deliver that uh the the you know if you are moving forward with firm firm direction on portions portions of the

site then you are master planning half the site and you are giving direction on behalf that you tell us to. So if you want the master plan first, that would be more of a planning engagement than an HR&A engagement to say, you know, what what sort of concepts do you want to see and how might the existing pieces f fall into it? If instead what you're saying today is we are ready to move forward. We we are tired of of waiting and we want some of these things, we can do that, too.

I I I don't want to overpromise our ability to do both. that you can both make a decision about part of it but still achieve a grand vision because I I do think those two things are in tension with each other. Well, thanks for uh asking politicians to uh give you clarity. Um yeah, I I maybe I don't know you we want to pave in and sell the rest.

I don't know. I I I'd be interested in that as well. Um go ahead. Thank you.

Um, we don't have to make a decision today on all those things. We we can decide not to go forward with peoples. We the elected leaders of 300,000 people. And with all due respect to the organizations that have already shown up that are significant, it's not all of the folk we spoke to in the first place.

So we don't have to substitute those variables right now because once we get to and the whole point of the master plan to begin with one of the the animating kind of um um the undergurtding um proposition behind it was peacemealing it by definition sets a trajectory for the rest of the project. I mean you can you you can have the best intentions to come back and add stuff to it but once you put something there it has a defining character for the rest of the project and that becomes the anchoring point and the whole point of doing the master project was to make sure that our vision was captured in totality with fidelity in a comprehensive uh plan. we actually have something called a comprehensive plan um

because we understand the importance of looking at how pieces click together. With that said, my recommendation would be uh and Mr. Manager, we had individ we had small group conversations about plans to the the staff had some plans to maybe activate the area, clean it up, uh do some things in the interim. My recommendation would be um to to sessation the main question sessation with peoples let the staff uh further massage what they were thinking in terms of activation and then I think we've got we got to talk to the rest of our bosses before we just kind of you know cuz even doing it peace meal is is not consistent with what the animating proposition was behind the master plan in the first place and I just feel more comfortable checking in with the rest of the city um who who has dreams about this uh parcel as well.

We don't have to substitute all these variables today. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr.

Mayor. It's been seven years already. Um couple more months. Again, I want to

make sure we leave here with giving clear direction to the manager. I don't want to leave this fuzzy and I'm I'm worried that if we sort of leave this fuzzy, hey, we just voted on we're not going to go for the peoples, but hey, you know, this this thing just sort of it gets behind everything else that's going on. So, I don't know what what Mr. uh mayor if you'd like a like a straw poll but I think I think the manager gave a clear question.

you said like you know people's or not right we think you said that and then you said like is it a master development or not and as I understand that I appreciate you clarifying that the choices there um I think there's a clear choice here for me like not master development doesn't mean there's no vision there's no cohesion I think we got the principles we talked about that still are there but I think to me it's either master development all one thing or it's just kind of you know it's the it's the not which means some sort of phase thing but again with those visions in mind I think I want to I want to today with giving you that direction. I think that's the most important thing to do and I would love to see we do like so I'm for a hybrid master development. All right, that doesn't exist. Um let

let's do this. Would that help you if I determine whether it's phase or overall? Yes. I mean any anything that you guys have a majority on it, we're prepared to move forward.

I just I want to make sure if there's direction that the I want to make sure that if there's actionable direction that staff understands how to deliver on that action. We are also comfortable with taking no action and and you can direct us to bring back a a phase discussion at another time where we revisit these issues. I I don't want council to to feel rushed into a divi a vision for the property. Settling the people's question is the primary item.

Setting a direction for the partial. I I I would echo both Mayor Prom's comments and council member Rrist. What we don't want to do is for to leave this room with uh members of the public believing that staff have been given direction that we did not hear directly from you. So I

think we want it to be clear that if you want us to engage in any uh development activity or discussions with affordable housing developers or discussions with Preservation North Carolina that that be explicit. If you are not ready for that and would rather us plan a future conversation to talk about your steps forward, we are happy to do that as well. I want I just don't want there to be expectation that we are talking to folks. If if we are to be talking to folks, I want you to say that explicitly.

Short of that, I want it to be known that we will not engage in conversations about the property other than to answer people's questions about its status. Thank you, Council Mook. I would love to give clear guidance on when time-wise it's coming back to us for those decisions because if it's something where we feel like it pretty immediately after our recess we can have this information in front of us and we can then start moving forward in those communications then like absolutely that's fine but if we don't feel like it can come that quickly then I would be

entertaining conversations with folks moving forward so that is just a timing but like immediately yeah August so one thing I could offer so in in your individual briefings, I believe we closed a presentation with four options for what could happen next. I mean, it was very loose, but it was, you know, do nothing to the site, uh, parcel the site, redevelop the site, and and we, you know, we we we essentially brought that forward today. We could revise that discussion with some of the feedback we've heard today and bring it back with with no recommendations, but simply with pro and con analysis and re and pick up where we left off today. Uh, and see and you know, if you have specifics you'd like us to explore between now and then, we can do that. Um, and we can schedule that at council's discretion to to happen soon after the I don't want to offer the very first work session because we may have some work we want to do, but we could certainly take direction that you would like to hear it

as soon as possible. I I would I would council I would prefer we take some time to bring this back with more information and let me pull you guys and see. I'm fine as long as the time frame is tight, right? Like that to Council Member Cook's point, right?

I don't um I I think that we can do I think what would be helpful is between now and then, have has staff had a conversation with Preservation NC around what does that look like? Right? Because if we if we if we just enter another conversation as preservation NC and Durham and Preservation Durham saying, "Oh, this could work. We're just back here, right?

Can it actually work? I don't know. So, if if staff could actually have those conversations between now and our our next conversation so we can say yes, we like it, no, we don't move on from that decision point. That's one thing I would think would be helpful. I think the other thing would be helpful is if there is a list of affordable housing

providers that staff feels confident that they have delivered projects already. So, not folks that we are unclear on. That would be helpful again. So, if we're going to move in the portion out phased out, we know where we're going and we can uh clearly state to the public, yes, we're doing a phased approach and this is why or etc.

And so that's the information I need to make a decision. Um happy to have that conversation in August. Um and when I say August, I hear staff about the first one, you know, that's a catch-up one. So then whatever the second one is in August.

So that way folks who are also listening can see what the time frame is to force us to make a decision. I don't know if that was helpful. So that means staff is having conversations while while we're on recess, right? Recess.

They have they can start having these conversations with these preservation folks. They can start having conversations around this affordable housing piece so that when we gather again in August, we can at least say, "Yeah, that we don't feel comfortable. " Right?

That's where I'm at. Yeah, I think you and Council Member Click are saying the same thing and which is what I agree with as well. Um, agree. All right.

So, who am I buying ice cream for to convince? Yeah, I Yeah, I agree that we should just make the decision about Peeles and get more information. We We've granted uh continuences developers for far less consequential uh matters. Is everyone okay with that?

Well, we Yeah, as long as we're not kicking the can down the road that we're like staff are having convers. It's not like wait until the fall to start having another conversation. It's not a hard kick. It's not kicking it hard.

We're just No, we're we're talk we're as as as city managers said, we're talking to people about these specific things we reference. Yeah. Yep. And I and I'll say to the community members, uh just whoever is listening online out there, um you know, I I hope that you would appreciate that we're putting as much thought and effort in this as possible to get it right.

Uh rather than just rushing forward and just doing something to say we did it. Um, so I I I'd ask for the community's grace on that. Um, thank

you. You you have what you need now? Yes, we uh we have a firm decision on people's staff will reflect on this conversation. I think uh have some of the conversations that that uh council has asked to explore more about the Milton Spurosing.

Uh, I think we will have some further conversations about what a standalone use on the property for affordable housing would look like and bring you some options there. I'd like to uh bring in our planning department, talk a little bit about how planning concepts could, you know, frame the conversation for those decisions. uh and we will bring you back no recommendations, but we'll bring you back further discussion and analysis with some some thoughts about the viability of any or all of the the two more prevalent options around affordable housing and Milton Small. Um and I'm also looking at our staff to see if they feel like I missed anything or if there are critical questions that we didn't ask council that you would like to make

sure we get direction on before we wrap up. You good? I ask a clarifying question, just colleagues. Go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say I and I know we're saying we're we're it sounds like we're, you know, we're ridding ourselves of people's we are ending negotiations for this or what was previously planned. We're not just saying screw you peoples, we hate you and we never want to work with you again. That I just want to make sure we're clear. We're not saying that they can very well bid for any other projects in the future.

um they actually pres pro provided the best concept, you know, we just decided not to go forward with it. So So just to clarify, so we're we're we're we were cool with selling Milton Smalls, but nothing else. So the staff, the conversations will not be about parceling anything else out. It's just this Milton Smalls building, the acreage that sits on. For me, it's not even I want to understand from the preservation folks, what is it that they're seeing that we have been told otherwise? That's what I want our folks and and for folks to for our staff to be real clear on no,

we don't have this experience in house to do it in-house would cost x amount of dollars so that I can actually make a real a real decision on like okay, you know, it doesn't benefit us to hold on to that portion of the land. Right. Okay. That's helpful because when I hear parceling out when you operational and and what what NC preservation recommended they're recommending that.

Yes. Selling it. Right. Right.

So So we're exploring So my question is we're only exploring selling that piece of the parcel, not the exploration of selling anything else. So okay, I just want to be clear because we told peoples we weren't selling anything. Well, I would I do want to seek clarity on that because I think in in what I put forward, I also heard council discuss affordable housing independent I heard the possibility that affordable housing move forward independent of the Milton Small a

possibility of Milton Spaul being used for affordable housing and the possibility of affordable housing moving forward independent of Milton Small. So I would like clarity because that that would be a second parceling that would be considered and and if that is not on the table staff will not explore that. If that is on the table staff will explore that. Okay. With an independent and with exploring an independent parcel and it's independent for affordable housing. Yeah, I am I the only po part par portion of the parcel that I am interested and when I say interested I am curious I guess is the better word curious about the money um is the Milton Smalls corner literally the corner of the lot other than that no to Mayor Prom's point uh we retain it especially when we're thinking about social housing and affordable housing that to me is is

is um the the part thinking specifically like Willard Street We Yeah, we that's what I mean. Yeah, but that but our values have been maintained there and um council member Freeman I I don't remember where you landed on the owning land. I will just own I will own that. I've been at several conferences when they were talking about affordability and housing that that is a shift within th those conversations that ownership by government is is a critical underpinning of it.

That is not knowledge I had. That is not knowledge I knew about. It could be also a shift within things change right like theories change things change right so that is where my um lens is coming from and when we talk about this subsidy in perpetuity and for 50 years and whatnot it gets a lot harder to deliver on those time frames which is why you see for 30 years or you see for 40 years right so that is where my lens is coming from which is why I'm not interested in selling the rest of the

portion and I'm only curious about send selling the Milton small what I want to see is like AB right I appreciate that that makes sense on the government side but I would say that in the sense the developers like Habitat DCLT like there are developers who can own in perpetuity that would present and like that's all I'm saying. So it's not like you would limit it. I wouldn't limit it is what I'm saying. Thank you.

Yeah. Can I just say to council member Freeman's point, I mean, I've gone to a lot of conferences too on on housing over the years. And the ownership of government point is usually raised as the government having an option to leverage their ownership to do what they want to do rather than waiting for the market to provide. I mean, that's what we did at Willer Street.

We took our land and used what we own to do affordable housing. And that's been the depositing of the the power of at least the conferences I've attended, the the power has been in the fact that you own it. you can uh build your own affordable housing or dictate it for affordable housing. Not that perpetual

ownership secures that. Your title is what secures it and dictating what goes on it. But I appreciate my colleagues. Thank you.

All right. I'm going to I just want to add one thing which is that in in this conversation about getting the information that we need in order to make a decision. Um I I heard you say that planning department would be involved. I think that'd be super helpful.

And that also um if they have other suggestions like potentially maintaining ownership of the land and selling just the building or something like that, I'd be also interested in hearing any of those things. So those any options in there? I just want to learn as much as I can before I have to make a decision. All right.

Thank you. All right. Let's move on, guys. Um, yeah, I I am gonna have to Can I just Can I just make sure that we don't leave because positing learn as much as you can until it's actually sold, until the actual building's being built. The consultant's not going to be able to give you a whole lot around what actually would happen without actually

doing something. So, I just don't want us to to fall back. Why not? That's all.

All right. Let's let's get to the next item. Good. Item seven.

Six. Colleagues, I will say I will have to leave out during this presentation. Good. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor Proa, members of council.

Christina Reirden. um budget and management services director. Um I am here before you because um we um heard at the last uh work session that you had some um lingering questions and so there is a memo in your packet today which answers some of those questions. There was one particular item that we did feel like um council wanted some additional information. So, we have prepared a presentation on the Durham minimum livable wage and it and part-time

employees. And so, I'm going to turn that over to um Jim Ryuber in our human resources department and then um we'll be available for questions if you have them. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Prom, members of council.

Jim Ryan River, assistant director of human resources. Um, we have a fair fairly big agenda or a fair bit of information to get through, but I'll try and be respectful of people's marital issues and make sure I'm not wrecking anybody's home. So, um, make sure you get off to a good start andor keep keep on the on the right path with your with your marriage. So, um, uh, we So, you all did ask for some some uh general information on part-time employees. Um, so we we brought some of that back with some background data. Um, you also raised the question about how changing uh part-time pay for

performance might work. So, we're going to show you some cost related to that. And finally, we're going to go through a few scenarios related to the uh minimum livable wage showing um how decisions would affect those costs and and associated issues. Uh, Mr.

Manager, I don't know if you want to chime in on this. I'll take this one. This this was my slide. So, um obviously as council saw, we're prepared to respond today to direction you gave us and we've developed some options for you around DMLW as they pertain to the part-time pay plan.

I wanted to start by reaffirming that um it is still my recommendation not to do so and I want to explain that uh as we head into it. And I wanted to do that in front so that you could weigh these options and understand how I get to my recommendation. And in I will assert that I believe a public sector pay plan needs to respect three primary values. The first is that people need to perceive it as being fair and equitable.

meaning if you're in that plan or if you're looking at that plan, there seems to be a a sense of fairness in how it treats you in in comparison to how it treats other people. So, we need a a plan that is fair and equitable. We need it to be affordable. The public pays for this.

We don't have unlimited money and so we need to consider the cost. And then finally, it needs to be just. It needs to honor our values and particularly Durham's values that wages need to approach a level at which people can can have a meaningful quality of life. I posit for all of you that that all of these things to a certain extent are in tension with each other. I don't I have never been part and never been aware of a pay plan that that everyone feels is perfect and that is because different people value different things um on this list at different levels. There are people who would prefer a much more affordable plan that employees wouldn't fear feel equitable about and

that council members wouldn't feel as just. Uh and likewise you could lean into the other measures. As your manager, what I try to do and what I is discern where you are on this list and bring you a proposal that balances all of these things. My recommendation not to make a a change at this time is based on that assessment.

As we go forward, I want you to know we are prepared to implement your direction on any of these options and we have in good faith tried to develop options that that we think are responsive to the concerns you expressed. But I wanted to make it clear that it's not just affordability and the ability to pay for the changes that I have concerns about any of our options not being able to balance the fairness equity piece against the affordability and the just piece. So I I wanted to start there which is not to forestall council. I want to be clear we are fully prepared to implement any of these options. Uh, but I wanted you to have a

strong sense of that my recommendation is not just an affordability based recommendation. We have fairness and equity concerns about some of the proposals. With that, I'd like Jim to go forward and we're happy to answer questions as we go or at the end. Thank you.

Great. So, just as a quick reminder, the ordinance does make a distinction between commensurate, which is positions that are indexed to a commensurate full-time classification, and then non-commensurate, which are those part-time positions that don't uh perform work that are commensurate to a full-time classification. So, the commensurate positions uh must be paid the minimum livable wage. And um the presentation today is mainly going to focus on the non-commensurate positions because those are those are the ones that that question.

So first we're going to look through some general information about our part-time employee population. Um this is similar to what we presented last week, but this has the census updated through May 30th now. So this is

this is fresh information. Um some takeaways here. There are a little over three times as many non-commensurate uh positions here as there are commensurate employees. Um the vast majority of those 245 out of the 267 are parks and recreation employees.

And uh by the way, special thanks to Parks and Wreck who they worked with us all through the year on this but intensely over the past week. So many thanks to to them for doing that. Um, but of those of the 267 non-commensurate employees, there are currently 159 that make below the 1958 and it's projected that after the proposed pay adjustments for FY26, 234 will actually be below 2190, which is the new the MLW. So again, these numbers are different from what you saw last week just because um parks and wreck is or mainly parks and wreck but other departments too um have hired others

especially more seasonal employees after the census that we used for last week's presentation. So again these these represent uh current state as of May 30th. And here are some highle demographics. You all asked for some some demographics of the non-commensurate employees.

Um, and you know, based on what you all discussed at the budget work session last week, I don't think anybody sees any surprises here, but um, so this slide and the and the next one contain a lot of data, but um, what you're seeing is a breakdown of the 267 non-commenserate employees as things stand today. Um the job classifications up there are sorted by the number of people that are in those positions and it's sorted from from highest to lowest. Um you can see by each classification how many people work in that job, how many hours the average person in that

job works per year, and then if you take that currently hourly average of pay for those employees and multiply it by the average hours they work, you arrive at an average annual salary. So again, these are all averages. These aren't any specific one employee. Um, and just to, you know, just to reiterate this, just because a job is non-commenserate, that doesn't mean it's automatically paid below DMLW.

There are um many or not many, but there are some that are that are paid above. And as I noted on an earlier slide, currently 159 of the 267 non-commenserate employees are below the current minimum livable wage of 1958, but there are some above and some significantly above. So just like um so this is I'm sorry this is the second slide with the rest of the classifications. Um and fewer numbers of employees obviously occupy these.

All right. So, just like last week, let's tackle the sort of easier one first. The question about pay for performance. Um, as you know, the current part-time plan steps are at 3% spreads.

You all asked about the possibility of changing that to 5% spreads. And that would cost about $270,000. And um one of the benefits of that would is that it would result in we're we project about 44 of the 234 that were going to be below the DMLW would now be making more than 2190. So it would pick up some of that 234 if we did that.

So now on to some of the more dense material. Um, we wanted to show a few scenarios that would result in either making further progress toward or complete implementation of getting all part-time employees up to the DM DMLW. But, um, we're going to show it's not without some drawbacks and consequences. Uh, hence the the

manager's recommendation he spoke about a minute ago. So, um, yeah, first when we when we, um, ju just to set some context here, when we talk about making sure employees are paid the DMLW, there's two primary tools that are used to accomplish this. One way is you can move the employees. So, you can progress them along steps until they hit a step that is at or above the DMLW.

And then the other way is to move the entire pay structure. So, those are those are the two primary options. Of course, you can end up doing a combination of both, but the ultimate goal is to balance the three tenants that the manager spoke about at the beginning um and and uh make your pay plan work that way. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we do our our full-time employees.

Do we do a combination of those two methods to get them up to We Okay, we do. Yes. Thanks. Mhm.

I would clarify though that when we did combine moving the structure and compression in the pay plan, it's because there was a very small margin that we were correcting for. I think the reason why you don't see scenarios in front of you today that combine the two is because so because almost the entire pay plan is below the uh DMLW that there there's no real way where where a combination helped. So we're just showing you what the different options look like. Jim, would you agree with that?

That's right. Um, and I should clarify too that last year we when the pay study was done, we just moved the entire structure. So that was that was a pay plan piece. But yes, this this year the proposal is a combination.

Um, again affect affecting very few people compression wise, but it is a combination technically. That's one more question. Sorry. So when we're looking at dur minimum living

wage, um we are looking at it by hour for these employees obviously because they're not full-time. Um and we look at it sometimes by hour and sometimes by annual salary for our full-time employees. Is that correct? Correct.

The way the the way the ordinance reads is it's basically it for full-time employees it is by the annual amount. We break it down hourly because it's more understandable, but the way the ordinance reads, it's an annual amount for it's calculated by by what you need to make in a year to maintain a certain standard of living. And the hourly number is provided to help to give clarity and that's of course been a point of conversation with Durham firefighters who get calculated an hourly rate but are paid by their salary. And so that that's been why that has sometimes been discussed at the council level.

All right. So jumping into a Oh, sorry. Council member Ris, if I could just if

we're asking questions, the way I just on this issue of like commensurate non-commensurate, I just want to make sure I understand this. Um because I've looked at the whole chart you have of the non-commener employees and so I get in I get sort of conceptually that um that part-time employees that are performing work that is commensurate with full-time shall be paid no less a little wage. Right? Then if I look at the jobs here and I see lifeguard like is a part-time lifeguard not commensurate with a do we even have full-time losers?

We probably don't. So So why is left on the list? They're doing work of a lifeguard, right? They're they're on the non-commensurate list. But non non-commensurate with what? With the with any full-time classification that the city has of lifeguard, which we don't have is how commensurate means if we have a full-time job that does a certain full-time person that does a certain job and we also have a we hire someone part-time that does the same job, then we will index them

together. But if we only have someone who is part-time and there is no full-time equivalent, that is non-commensurate and they are paid what I would describe the philosophy that governs their pay is market rate. So we pay what the market pays in those positions or frequently above market. Uh I would argue in a lot of is that a technicality just because you don't have full-time lifeguards.

So you're saying it's non-commener but if you had full-time lifeguards they probably would be commensurate. Uh if we had full-time lifeguards, they would be classified in our normal pay and classification system. We don't have full-time, so we classify them the way we classify part-time employees. The point of commensurate is to say it would be it would be an equity problem to have.

So I I think maintenance assistant is one of the positions. So we have people who who have who do park maintenance year round and they are classified as part of our pay plan. We also have people who are part-time who do the exact same work. We made a value statement that they will

both be paid what the full-time person is paid. Um, however, if there is no full-time equivalent, then you will only need you will only be classifying someone by the position that they do, which is by by the nature of the work we have. Those the rest of those are non-commenserate parttime. Yeah.

No, I understand completely. What I'm saying is it's somewhat of a technicality since we for many of these positions we do have full-time people that you could be either commensurate or non-commenser with. There are just no full-time lifeguards and so therefore by definition you're non-commener but I again I'm saying if we had lifeguards that were full-time then I'm sure most of the part-time lifeguards would probably be commensurate with full-time right absolutely would be I so therefore but I don't think that's a technicality I think that describes two different types of jobs. a a a lifeguard job for us.

We we don't have the opportunity. I mean, we don't have the the dynamics in what we require to need a full It's not like we are choosing not to have a full-time lifeguard to keep them. I

guess that's that's a question I would have actually invite our parks and recreation staff to because we have pools open all year round. Not outdoor pools, but we have pools open year round. Hi, I'm Joey Guy, assistant director of parks and recreation. um our full-time professional entry level position is a recreation specialist.

And so we do have recreation specialists that work in our aquatics division, but those individuals not only may they they may lifeguard, but they also have many other duties assigned to them as well, including things like um planning for swim lessons, instructional programs, contracting with instructors, you know, additional higher level responsibilities, if you will. That's you. So that's the that's the the 31 employees on that second line. That's the uh we can go back to that slide. That's the I think you just mentioned the recreation next one. And a recreation

specialist is a full-time position. That's what I refer. What's the second? What's the recreation services aid?

The recreation services aid is an entrylevel um position that assists with our front desk operations. Um, typically when you see aid in the title, okay, it is going to be more. Okay. So, what you're saying is that there are there are recreation, what's the term used for who would do maybe do lifeguarding?

Recreation specialists. We do have recreation specialists in the aquatics division that have their lifeguard certifications. They also have additional certifications which may allow them to uh teach and and train other lifeguard to um, you know, individuals to become lifeguards. you know, I mean, they have other um responsibilities that uh benefit our operation and how we're set up to operate.

Okay, that I'll come back to this, but thank you. Okay, I have a quick question. Um, and this is I was going to ask this at the end, but I do need to leave. Um, so if we were to move everyone up

to if we were to move everyone up, I had asked for demographic information because I wanted to know um if there are people that are receiving supplemental income, people that are in retirement, people that are getting child care support because they make under a certain amount of money. Um and if we move if we decide to move everything up then therefore therefore we could potentially be cancelling some benefits for some people thinking yeah the benefits cliff. So that's why I was reluctant of just moving everybody to that point and and that's one of those things we usually don't think about. But when two employees came was like you messing with my you messing with my benefits here.

Okay, I you thank you and I I'll you know I'll look into that. Um that that was after I asked for the demographic information. National demographic information because I didn't want to

assume that everyone was a you know a a certain individual like it could be you know all middle schoolers or all high schoolers all I think it was a single a teacher you know getting a summer job. So, is it is it fair to say that it's possible if we move everyone up that we could potentially uh clip some people that are that are doing this job just so they can get supplemental income but not make more than it would impact their retirement or something else. I'm gonna defer on that one. I think they're working because they want to work.

Good evening, mayor, mayor prom and uh counselors. That is correct. Um there are certain people in our that work for our uh parks and rec department that are on supplemental incomes um low-income housing and getting those types of aid,

but the requirement is they cannot work a certain amount of hours and their pay can't be over a certain threshold because it will jeopardize those benefits. So, I know my mom needs to work uh to make additional money. Uh she works at the museum in Rocky Mount. Uh she lives in Durham, but she can only work a certain amount of hours.

She she wants to work more, but she knows she can't because she would lose it. Uh but she does need the hours. I don't think the solution is to say work less hours. I think people working because not only they want to, but they need to.

And that just to my colleagues, this was the concern I had of moving everyone in part-time to that minimum wage. I I I I can totally appreciate what we're trying to do, but in addition to the compression that's about to be created. Um it it's bigger than just saying, "Hey, we did it and in Durham, this is what you get as a minimum wage," there are people that we could negatively affect. Um but I just wanted to put that out there and and as part of the deliberations. Thank you all. I need to run.

Okay. So, let's look at what would happen if we did sort of what the mayor just said and just said everyone who's making below um the 2190 will move you up to 2190. And so this is essentially the moving the people method that I mentioned in the previous slide. Um what this would end up doing is completely compressing two salary grades in the part-time plan, mostly compress a third and partially hit a fourth as well.

Um in all it would compress um 230 total part-time employees and there would be a total of 237 com um non-commensurate employees all making exactly 2190 regardless of how long they've been with us, the level of work they do, um that sort of thing. So this scenario would cost about $550,000 for this current fiscal year we're doing the budget for. And if we use the same method in FY27

um with the expected um minimum livable wage that's going to be next year, it would cost around 800,000. 35 million. But let's look at some of the issues that that this would cause using some variations of examples that we actually showed you last week. So this first one's a more mild example of a consequence of compression that's created between two part-time positions.

One's non-commensurate and one is commensurate. So the park gatekeeper is non-commensurate. The maintenance assistant is commensurate. Um the maintenance assistant currently starts at 1958 which is the current minimum livable wage and they'll start at 20.

So they'll start at 2190 when the new DMLW is implemented. Um, but in this scenario, the park gatekeeper who had previous previously been at 1665 is now also at 2190. So, the maintenance assistant has more complex duties, more stringent minimum requirements. Um, and the tenants that

the manager talked about, that first one, um, of equity and fairness is is kind of injured here. So, this example is a little more impactful. Um, just like the full-time plan, there are job series in the part-time plan. So, here's one showing our uh care programs in parks and wreck.

These are care program related jobs that are that are part of a progression or a series. And you see the pay distinctions for the different levels of work, responsibilities, and requirements. So, in this scenario, the starting pay for all these jobs is flattened out at 2190. And again, this illustrates injury to that first first tenant. Um the different levels of the job complexity are devalued here and experience is also devalued because basically all the all the steps of people had gotten increases in prior years that's all flattened out to 2190 as well. So just to um summarize the uh the

first scenario here um it does accomplish getting all part-time employees to the MLW. Um and of the scenarios that that we have in here, this is the least costly one. However, the violations of that first tenant have some pretty significant consequences and um you know basically ends up removing the financial incentive for taking on roles that that have greater responsibilities uh pursuing certifications and uh working toward advancement. Um this likely impacts morale of the people that especially that are in sort of the higher level positions could lead to dissatisfaction and turnover there. And um uh you know the city of course has control over how it handles this but um this also incentivizes parks and wreck to seek and hire people at the higher level positions and not necessarily use the entry level positions as much. Um and right now so the current system really does provide a nice entryway for those looking to um as

a first job come and gain experience, build some skills. You know this the progression I showed on the previous slide you can move up. Um so this scenario event, you know, potentially has the uh uh or basically has the potential to destroy that possibility. So on that cheery note, let's look at another scenario.

Um, this one uh avoids the problems of the first scenario, but then creates some issues of its own. So kind of following a progression here. Okay, the first one created some issues. Let's mitigate those issues and see what that looks like.

So this scenario makes the first step of the part-time pay plan 2190. 5% increase to that particular step. 5% is run through the entire part-time plan. So this is the other method I mentioned a couple slides ago. This is this is moving the structure.

Um and again this mitigates all the issues of the first scenario. You don't have that compression but creates a whole new set of problems with the fulltime plan now. 8 million for FY26 and another million for FY27. 8 8 million cumulative over over the course of the two years.

So, this probably looks familiar. We showed this last week. Um, and this shows how non-commensurate jobs create bypassing in the full-time plan. You can see that by using the methodology in this scenario on the part-time plan, you've increased hourly wages to the point where these part-time positions that do have significantly less lesser duties and responsibilities um now have higher starting pay than a full-time position and a full-time position that could supervise some of these people's supervisors. So we're talking, you know, could be multiple steps uh multiple steps in the hierarchy

above that that are getting bypassed here. And this also impacts commensurate full-time positions and their corresponding full-time classifications. Um here are a couple examples that illustrate this. And in these two cases, the end um there's actually eight other full-time classifications where the same thing happens.

So 10 total. You have a situation where the part-time commensurate position is making significantly more than the full-time one there in Dex two. So there are currently um 202 positions in those 10 classifications in the full-time plan that would be impacted by this. And um those those numbers just address the direct impacts. But of course, there are many other classifications in the full-time plan that are on the same same grades as these other classifications that would be um directly impacted here. And so that again that that comparative fairness tenant is is again significantly impacted

here. All right. So to sum this scenario up again, we've achieved getting everyone to the MLW and avoided the compression issues of scenario one, but now we've created full-on widespread bypassing with the full-time plan. So here we are back with with tenant number one again.

Um, and by the way, making changes in the full-time plan to address the issues that we just created would be extremely costly. So, you know, just following the the path here. Let's say we keep chasing um fixing these issues that we keep creating. Um so, we then look at adjusting the full-time plans by that same 31 and a half% just to keep all the current relationships intact, you know, no bypassing, no compression.

Um now we're now we're for the first time really uh severely impacting tenant two of affordability. Um, we're not just talking about$1 to2 million here. We're talking about $92 million for FY26 to stretch that out and

and make it so there's no problem whatsoever. So, um, admittedly the first two scenarios are extreme, but that's that's kind of the point. you know, it would take it would take something pretty extreme to ensure that every part-time job in FY26 is paid at least the minimum livable wage. But let's look at what happens in a scenario that doesn't accomplish the goal of getting everyone to the minimum livable wage this this current fiscal year, but does put a dent in it.

Um, this scenario demonstrates what would happen if we picked a grade. So we kind of start at the third grade down here um and started at the minimum livable wage. So this particular grade is the one that the program assistant senior that we showed a few slides ago lives on. 37 current starting pay for that grade. Um and then to avoid compression

06 06 or 505% would be run through the whole part-time plan including the grades that are that precede the grade that this would start at. So then that would make the starting salary of part-time 1882 at the lowest grade and instead of uh 234 employees below the MLW, it's now 106. So um and the you see the costs up there, they're significant, but less than less than scenario two. However, we still don't escape that bypassing of the full-time plan.

So, even though um it's less than shown in scenario two, we're we're back um with our old friend tenant number one again. So, going back to the example we just used in scenario two, you see that the bypassing is not as severe, but it's still there. Uh the same group of commensurate positions still all bypassed their full-time equivalents.

And as I said, this does not get everyone up to DMLW. Um, this table looks a lot look looks like a lot of stuff, but um, it's actually pretty simple. It shows the number of people below the DMLW at a given hourly rate for each classification under this scenario. So this is again based on um the actual May 30 census and it's a breakdown of the 106 um mentioned a couple slides ago that would be below DMLW after scenario 3 adjustments.

So summing this scenario up, it shows that we still have a significant number of people below the MLW uh when we have to even when we make compromises and the compromise still violated that first tenant by creating bypassing with the full-time plan. Um and then I'll just sum up by saying that that we know FY27 is going to be a challenge. It's going to take some creativity to meet the requirements of the DMLW, preserve the

three tenants of pay plans because that those tenants are, you know, relevant for all of our pay plan. So, um, we're going to be looking at part-time in conjunction with full-time, looking at the classifications in there. Again, a fresh look, um, and then, you know, bringing bringing information forth in a in a timely manner, which I know was a concern brought up last time. So, any other questions before before is this the end of your presentation?

Yes. Okay. We have a couple of residents uh and neighbors who had wanted to speak on this issue. So, I want I want to allow them first and then we'll uh turn to the to the council.

Um if they're still here, I want to welcome Thurman Couch and Finesse Couch. Did they speak already? They're the ones that came up. Okay.

Right. This is the issue. They're gone. Okay.

All right. We'll make sure we contact them and let them know that their issue came up. Um the same person

they filled out two cards. All right. Colleagues, council member Cook, please. Can you talk about benefits between part-time and full-time, please?

Real quick. So, yes. Um there are um so first of all, full-time employees. has benefits.

Um, you know, we we uh all have health and dental and and vision and options for other other insurance and retirement and all that. Um, part-time, it varies. Part-time, it it depends on the level of part-time position you are. And I'm glad Gwen jumped up here because you can answer this much better than I can.

Yes, it depends on your part-time position. Um, Gwen Bernett, human resources manager. Sorry. um part-time um if you work a thousand hours, you contribute to the retirement system. For P3s, they get the health, the dental, and the vision benefits in addition to um retirement, which is the same as what a

full-time employee would get as well. Right. Could you do that again? Just like half the speed.

Okay. Sorry. That's okay. Okay.

Part-time 1,000 hours. So, they get retirement. That's the threshold. Okay.

1,000 hours for retirement. Correct. And then you said the part P3, so that's part-time. They 30 hours.

So at that point, that's when the the medical, dental, and vision benefits also kick in. Okay. And how many of our part-time employees meet these two thresholds? They have a number.

I don't I don't have that number, but we could look it up for you. No, but in the presentation the chart did have average hours, so it it's not the exact number she asked, but could we go back to the slide that showed average numbers of hours worked back in the demographic slide? So you do see in that third average number. So that that's not actual employees, but that could give you a sense of who's meeting the various

thresholds. I only see I believe there's one more slide. Yeah. Then event coordinators.

Okay. Sorry. I see 11 people over $1,000 average. Okay, that is helpful.

Um and then we just reminder that these are just the non-commenserate. The commensurate positions are not on this list. So there may be additional part-time but for this conversation this was non-commenserate. These are just the folks that are not not in with the minimum wage statute. Okay. Um yeah, I mean I asked the question earlier about annual versus hourly calculations and it and it was because of this um which is that I understand that there is like theoretical

compression but there are benefits job security and multiple hours that you are guaranteed if you are a full-time employee as opposed to if you are a part-time employee. And so when we're looking at compression, I understand that it's there, but it's not exactly the same thing as when we're looking at compression in our full-time employee chart, right? It's not exactly the same because it's not it's not comparing apples to apples necessarily. Um, so I I appreciate the presentation.

I I still feel like this is something that I I am interested in. Um, and I know that option two is the most expensive that we got, but that is the one that seems the fairest to me uh in terms of in terms of not compressing within the part-time employee structure. So, those are that's just what I'm thinking from the presentation. Thank you, council member.

Were you done? Anybody else? Colleagues, council

member. Thanks, Mayor Tim. Um, first of all, let me just say I'm so happy that we're talking about living wages on this council. It's a great discussion to have.

Um, as you all know, I brought forth a request in the budget process to to do this to raise um, salaries for all part-time folks, temporary part-time temporary folks up up to to living wage. And so, I'm glad we're having this discussion. Um, as you all know, I was a founder of the Durham living wage project, which built on the city's living wage ordinance to encourage private employers to do the same thing the city is doing about paying a living wage. This is really important to me.

Um, I think it's obviously clearly we got some trade-offs here, right? The first thing to notice is that, you know, in the first scenario, it's not that expensive to pay the folks who are part-time uh or the part-time folks who are below the minimum wage to pay the minimum wage. It's not that expensive. $500,000, right?

But it does create, as you mentioned, as you identified, some compression bypassing issues. So, it's it's it's not simple, right? Um, I appreciate you're providing different scenarios. I mean, obviously the first two scenarios seems like a little bit like almost like straw man. The third one's I I appreciate the thinking there,

although we're still just talking about essentially some version of moving part-time employees or moving the part-time pay, right? And so I want to offer an anecdote and then offer a suggestion for maybe a fourth way to go forward. So in when we were doing the Durham Living Wage Project, one of our one of our flagship employers was an employer you all know this is Self-Help Credit Union. Full disclosure, I'm on the board of Self-Help.

Um so we went to Self-Help. They're mission aligned with us. They wanted to pay their employees a living wage. They're also a large financial institution.

" So, we want to do this. It's going to take us a couple years to get there. And so, I guess what I want to suggest is something similar for the city of Durham. And I think Council Kabio referred us at our last work session when we talked about this, like we talked about this last year in the budget, and sort of just things just it went away.

And then we're back here this year in the budget looking at the budget and again saying like we've got part-time seasonal folks who are below living wage. We want to do better than that. We want to be a living wage city.

And so would it be possible for staff to go back and say over the next couple years we're going to look carefully about who these part-time folks are that are non-commenerate and figure out like for example I know we've talked about this again on the recreation advisor committee some cases DPRs collapse part-time folks into one full-time position. Are there things we can do like that and other other ways to address this that we can get as many people who work for the city of Durham who are part-time employees either full-time or to some living wage standard. Can we do that over a couple years so that we live into our values of paying fair wages, right? Living wages, but also don't violate the other principles you mentioned, Mr. City Manager, about um I forgot what the other two were, but that we kind of balance all that. Can we do that over the next couple years and say in a couple years we're going to we're going to do virtually all we can to get all these folks up to the dermal minimum livable wage in a way that can again is responsible to our financial finances but also live into our values of making sure everyone earns a living wage because as you mentioned last time there's a lot of care workers on here that are taking care of our kids every

day right that are not earning a living wage and that's not cool. So that's my suggestion Mr. Yeah, Mr. manager, we we would be happy to uh to undertake an exercise to come back to council with uh a fuller exploration of how of options.

Obviously, we developed these options. Yeah, we developed these options based on the conversation you had last week. So I I freely admit that that these were, you know, a rushed exercise and and did not certainly did not take into account sort of a a broad perspective of how other organizations have moved into those principles. Um so the answer is is yes, we could do that and be happy to have our HR department, you know, look at other areas. You know, I don't um there are a few, you know, I do think we anticipated that if council moved forward with one of these today, we we would actually do some of the things you

said, it would it would probably result in the, you know, it would likely be more efficient, you know, for the department to combine some of these responsibilities into full-time positions. But I would want to vet that with the council because I do think that means fewer opportunities. I mean, I do think one of the things we very legitimately heard from our mostly from our parks and recreation department as we had these discussions over the last few days is some of these positions are very accessible for people who have no no skills and are moving into the workforce and become a ladder up into the workforce. And should these positions not be here because we implemented a system that relied more heavily on full-time employees that that may create that may eliminate an opportunity for people to get into these progressions.

I would want to explore that fully with the department. I think those are things we could do over the year. And again, I mean, it is our desire to satisfy the council's objective here that we we are not we didn't raise these concerns to dissuade you. we we feel like it's our job to to

show you some of these issues and I just want to come back to my initial comments on you know I I absolutely hear uh you know what what I think is a consensus on council or not a consensus but but some opinions on council that the compression issue shouldn't matter that much. I just I feel an obligation to tell you as your manager that it is probably the number one issue that employees complain about. Not what I get paid but what I get paid compared to someone else. It is probably the number one complaint.

I have multiple examples where employees feel like they should have some separation. And so I just I don't I don't want to underell that as a problem for you and then have it come back later. If I if I make you understand that it's important and you do it anyway, that's fine. I am fine with you telling us that. I just need to do my job to make sure you understand your employees care very much what they make in in comparison to others which is why it was challenging for us to develop a scenario that we felt uh satisfied all

those objectives. If I can just respond real quick that I you know obviously staff did a a lot of work last year with a compensation study and we did a lot of work and I think we we've we felt the fruits of that this year. We're reducing our vacancies. we've got, you know, we don't have those same concerns about sort of complaints about compression and so forth.

So, I think that's real. Again, that's why I'm suggesting given that a couple years to sort of line things up so we can to the extent possible eliminate those jobs that are or or sort of reduce number of people that are working part-time at a less livable wage. Council, um first of all, thank you um thank you for running this analysis. I know you all did a lot of a lot of work over the last few uh last week.

Uh and thank you um Council Member Risk for for bringing this forward. I would just point out that you know it's rough the Durham minimum livable wage ordinance. Um and I commend uh the past council who who implemented that and adopted that ordinance. Um it's rough. However, it's

also not the minimum livable wage. Uh it's based on the last four years kind of in a in a rapid um in a in a in a city where prices are rapidly escalating. It's kind of what the minimum livable wage was two years ago. Um so all of these numbers all these numbers are are rough.

Um and I I just want to point that out as as well. Um and of course you know I I brought forward um going down changing the definition from the last four years to the last three years. Um I think that would have been a shock to the system and as we know prices started changing really four or five years ago and so we're we're that is kicking into the minimum livable wage ordinance and uh as we know now um we're seeing almost double the highest percentage increase in the minimum livable wage um that we've that we've seen. And so it it's doing its it's doing its job. Um now um my question is um so you're recommending

against um against these options. Uh we also have the part-time pay for performance potentially going from 3% to 5%. Was that a recommendation? That was information that was requested by council.

The current proposed budget does not contemplate that change. Okay. Yeah, that that would be one that I that I would consider at this point. Um I I would I would be I would be interested in in exploring what it looks like.

Um I' I would hesitate to select one of these scenarios now with so little time, with the costs, with uncertainty, with the fact that compression really matters to employees. I I would that's just too much for me to support at this point. Um but I would entertain um I'd like to listen to my colleagues about entertaining that the part moving up from part-time pay for performance from

3% to 5%. Uh and any additional comments staff might have about that as well. Thank you. Thank you council member council members.

Council member Cavier. Thank you. Um, one question I had is we know where this is going next year because you kind of forecasted it, which then means that the gap between our part-time workers and our full-time workers, it just gets more expensive to close it over time. Right.

So, that's my kind of concern is that um it just gets more expensive. Sure. Right. So, like I see what this is costing us today and I'm not I'm kind of where Council Member Baker is.

I appreciate the analysis. Well, I guess I'm where also where Council Member Wrist is. I think we need to have a lot more which is why my initial comments were like please come to us in February and January with this kind of stuff. Like I understand that we have excellent staff.

Y'all are in the weeds all the time. You are amazing professionals that we are not right as far as what you know and what we don't know about HR or what we hear from about employees. I have very much heard about

compression from employees very loud and clear. That is often what we get told. They come to us too and they get a we hear all the grousing around that. So that that is not surprising to me and I do not want to um put staff in that position because you're all the ones who who sign the checks and and and you are going to go to HR and finance and complain to you all about that.

So I would not want to set you up for for those conversations. But I am deeply concerned if if we know we're going up to about $25 an hour and we're only keeping our gatekeepers and our and like those folks aren't going to come work for us. I mean like there's going to be movement other places. So, um, we do need to do that deeper analysis.

As far as where we are with the budget, the place that I'm the most comfortable is that 3 to 5%. I think at least it indicates to part-time workers, hey, we know we've got some work to do. It doesn't cost us that much money. And and then, you know, we had to say this to full-time workers about two years ago.

We're like, we we hear you. We need some time. We're going to have to say the same to part-time workers, you know, this time. I think that time we gave

some bonuses kind of down the road. We hear you. we know that we've got to do some work on this. Let's do this little nudge that shows our appreciation and then that deeper analysis and we may ultimately understand that it's it's it's super cost prohibitive or it doesn't we don't get to this resolution on compression and that's going to be hard decision but at least we've done that deeper analysis and council gets that information way earlier in the fiscal year and way earlier in budget season.

Thank you. Thank you council member colleagues. I um did I uh I appreciate this this information so much. I was proud to be on um part of that the council that that passed the uh living wage ordinance. Um to to this to council member Riss uh point about working towards it over the years. I I think I think the spirit of that has been been echoed by staff and and this manager and others before that that we know we need to be working towards that and it's clear that the will of this council is at some point uh

to get us to that place. I am I I am with the manager's recommendation uh for a number of reasons. One, I have literally sat in rooms and been cursed at over compression. So it it it's not a theoretical thing.

It's a very real thing. not not just compression but fairness as well. And why is this person's job who's not as import quote not as important as mine or not as impactful getting the same or if you break it down to an hourly rate you know they make more than me and I'm full-time in this and so so a lot of those arguments that we'll present are non-compelling to folk when you know our employees when they when they talk to us. So the issues of fairness and equity are really um important to me. the as a kid who, you know, worked part-time jobs and some of you growing up, I know the importance of those step jobs, of those introductory positions that kind of push you and elevate you up. Um, and I I'm I'm I'm fearful of doing away of of Durham's positioning of those type of

positions for folk and and accidentally, if you will, or in effect focusing more of our emphasis on on higher paying uh jobs, more skilled jobs. where is the ladder for those folk uh to come in? I um you know when I was working those jobs as a kid, I I didn't have any expectation to be making the same thing as as you know other folk in the organization. Thirdly, I you know I was a progressive and then one day I became a governing progressive and being a governing progressive often times puts me in a position where you got to make hard decisions.

You you just don't kind of trumpet your values anymore. You got to actually look at the machinations of turning those values into policy. Which is why we hire a manager who's not just competent in managing but who also is in touch with our values. So I have confidence that this manager when they do the analysis, this manager does his analysis and his team does their analyses fully in light of and

understanding what the values of this council and this city are. and and I I fully suspect that everything that they bring to us is washed in those values. It's it's through that prism. Uh and and having knowledge of those values and still bringing back this recommendation as a governing progressive gives me pause.

It it it this is what I need to say to me in my ideal utopic kind of world what it looks like in real life to bring it to fruition. you know, uh, guaranteed income isn't reaching as many people as I want it to reach. Um, vision zero, if we have a fatality death, you know, a traffic fatality, you know, I'm not going to abandon vision zero. So, so we know that a lot of places where we want to get to, it's going to take time. I don't look at this issue any differently than zero fatality, everybody being on um uh guaranteed income, every I I look at the issue saying that that incrementalism should not be the enemy of of our progressive

agenda and our progressive value. So I am interested however uh in hearing more about the 3% to 5% but I'm wondering would that be for just commensurate or non-commensurate because that still doesn't do away with folk who are full-time employees saying well they getting the same percentage of you know mayor pay as me that's not going to do away with those kind of concerns but but I but I would be interested in hearing more but as it stands I've heard no nothing that compels me to want to override what the manager is proposing. with the understanding that we are consciously as a city working towards where we want to be in the coming years just like we are in any number of the issues that are important to us as progressives. So I'll I'll put that there.

Colleagues, anyone else questions, comments. Mr. Manager, did you want to So I um I just want to address this issue of of um of part-time jobs. I think the assumption is in a lot of cases because we all we work with jobs, right? I was like a wait I was like a part-time uh umpire back when I was a

kid made a little money you know now so the the assumption is like hey these are all kind of kids the lifeguards or whatever but if you just look at the the demographics you gave us so 30% of folks on this list are between 16 and 24 years of age 27% almost 30% are 25 to 39 the rest if I did the math right 43% of folks are above 40 years of age so this is not your typical hey entry- level job for high school kids there's a lot of folks who are 40 years and up who are working these jobs so I just want to make sure that's clear that we're it's It's some of those jobs are high school kids maybe but a lot of them are not. So and I don't know I don't know. So the recommendation for the manager you're referencing may prom is is simply yeah I would say the options for the council are approve one of the recommendations we or approve one of the recommendations we've put in front of you. One of the I mean one of the options uh modify one of those scenarios uh or leave the budget unchanged. uh and th those would be the decisions for this. I think independent of that, there's also the question of giving staff direction to come back with a more

thorough discussion of or more thorough exploration of options to move the part-time pay plan in a future year. I think um both of those are direction we're prepared to receive depending on where the majority of council's at. Thank you, Mr. Manager.

Um I appreciate council member R's point. I I you know during guaranteed income I I encountered some people 40 years old who were reintegrating who needed those type of jobs as well. So it's not just about age or where you are in school there are plenty of folk um at different ages who who for whatever reason life be life and uses those jobs. I also am you know the work through guaranteed income also made me sensitive to this benefits cliff as well which is a very real very real uh issue.

um sometimes wanting to do good in one area causes unexpected outcomes and impacts in other areas. Nothing insidious, but that's just, you know, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Um particularly in governance. So I I also am very sensitive about that as well, which is why I'm comfortable um

with the manager's decision with the provision, council member Risk, that we are looking towards fixing this. Um, but I I I I don't want to touch the budget, at least with uh with this um in this area. So, Council Member Freeman, thank you. I I will say I'm comfortable um with the budget the way it is, but I do think the 3 to 5% is a good intermediary.

Um but I will I do want to just make sure I do state clearly the benefit cliffs already exist and folks are making those adjustments based on their life. now. And then also, um, whatever the minimum wage is, um, that type of compression is going to occur. Like I I fully expect it to to go up and that type of compression is going to occur.

We're just pushing it off. And so I'm okay waiting, but I don't want to mince words on like thinking that, you know, we're doing something different. But yeah, that's all. Thank you, council

member. And yet to your point, they they are making those adjustments now, but the variable that will be changing will be the amount of money they're making as at the part-time level. So once that once that kicks in, that's a new calculation. I mean, they're making it based upon what the money they're making right now.

If we do this instead, but I think it's what I'm also including is the fact that if we're even talking three three to 5%, that's still a change. Any change, any increase is going to make that closer uh cliff occur. So it's just there's no way to avoid it and I don't want that to be the excuse next year. That's all.

Absolutely. Council member Ris. Yeah. Just to be clear.

So Mr. Ryan group that the the issue of the three to 5% for part-time pay performance that that's not one of your scenarios, right? That's a whole separate issue. Separate thing.

It it was information requested by council at the work session. So we wanted you asked what it would cost. We wanted to show you what it would cost. We if council wanted to proceed with that today, we would be in a position to to do it. I wanted to be clear that was a separate request apart from what would

it take for part-time employees to make the DMLW. So there there were really two questions on when we talked about the part-time pay plan. One was why do they get three and everybody else gets five. So we provided that.

The other was what would it take and then we showed you those scenarios. So if you directed us to change that pay plan, we would move forward with that. So I appreciate Council Baker raising that. I I would like to see us do that.

Three to five. Council me, thank you. And it does actually meet at least the need that we are moving because it does take folks from the non-corre non-commensurate from 234 to 190. So it does at least move some folks um in the direction that I think there is consensus on council saying hey we want to move it in some direction and it it it's not a lot.

It's 270,000. So um that that's why prepping microphone prepping for next time as well. Next anyone else colleagues? So the that

would be for all the three to five moving from three to 5% would be for all part-time employees notwithstanding commenurate and non-commensurate all part-time employees on the pay plan which includes commensurate and non-commensurate and pay for performance not their hourly rate. It's it's their step step rate. Well, and and recall, so I'm glad we did the step plan that we did with the full-time this year because it makes this easier to explain, but it's basically the same thing where you're changing the value of the steps. So people some people at at higher steps are going to get higher increases uh because that value of the step is going to people who are farther into the plan will have significant movement.

Colleagues, all right, Mr. Man, do I need to pull the house on that? It seems to be there there seems to be at least in my assessment a growing consensus or at least a spectre of one. I'll I'll defer to you, Mr. Chair. All right, Council Member Baker, do you One last question.

I mean, do you have concerns, compression or anything around the changing the step from 3 to 5? Um, I have concerns that we haven't spent much time analyzing it and that there may be unintended consequences. Um, I don't I can't tell you there are unintended consequences. I can tell you that given that we spent most of our time analyzing the other options uh and thinking through those options, we did not spend the same amount of time looking at this.

Um I don't want to I'm not trying to scare you into not doing it. I just there there may be unintended consequences that we haven't fully analyzed, but um that's we understand this may be where the council wants to go. Is that something staff can look at before that meeting on the on the 16th? I wouldn't stake my life on anything, but I feel I mean I feel I feel like um from what we've looked at so far making that change um there were no clear things like there

were with the other scenarios we presented. Nothing jumped out like the only So the only thing that jumps out at me is do we have commensurate staff who by nature of how much they would move would then drastically outstrip their full-time equivalents. 45 45 and the other pay plan that we might create inequities between commensurate non-commen or commensurate full-time commensurate part-time, right? That that would actually not be an issue because what we're talking about is doing those step increases would start at step two.

So, it doesn't affect the starting point which is already, you know, in alignment. So, they're not it wouldn't it wouldn't create any situation with with what you just described. Those are my experts. So, if they're if if that's their level of comfort, that's

my level of comfort. And you you you can make that determination off the cuff. You don't need to do any homework or anything. I mean, I'm I'm going to go with 89% sure on that.

So, okay. He's been in that step already. The reason he can say that is he's already had to move folks in that space in the plan. So, he's already been in the numbers.

And so, he based on his experience and knowledge of what he's already had to do for the other employees, I'm guessing you can at least Yeah. I mean the critical points with with the scenarios were the starting the starting wage of each and so that's not a factor when you're changing the the value of a of a step. Mr. Man, just for my own edification, would you just read your digest version, what was your concern again?

Or I won't call it a contention, but your your query about you. Yeah, you're concerned about that. Uh if we had people with similar experience in the organization, similar years, some in the

part-time plan, some of the full-time plan who we now the part-time commensurate is going to be getting a higher wage. But I put that question to our assistant director and he indicated that's not a concern. So I I trust his analysis. Okay.

I feel good about that part of it for sure. Yes. Turns out otherwise you'll be back. That's just I'll be the one getting cursed at in the room.

Council member Baker, I'm polling the house. Uh 3 to five. Are you council member? Council member council member.

All right. Looks like we are going to be uh increasing the step from 3% to 5% for our part-time employees. Very good with absolutely no implications or none whatsoever. Not even a hint of one.

Best best way. Thank you so much. Thank you colleagues for for your passion around this and for your engagement. Um thanks.

All right. Uh, Council Member Cavier, do you are are we taking up any other budget conversations right now? Um, I think this is it on DMLW. Um, unless colleagues had anything else they wanted to bring up.

I was going to say that's all the information we have to present. We're happy to answer other questions. We know there was we put a lot of follow-up information in the memo that came out yesterday, but we're happy to give voice to any answers that Yep. And I apologize if I missed this, but um do we have information about uh day shelters from the county?

Uh yes, it's this was not in the memo. Uh I got this information just before the meeting. Um, it stands where it stood last time, but with with a high degree of certainty from the county manager that they intend to issue an RFP funded from FY25 county fund. So, it's not a proposal in their budget. It's actually already funded. They issue an RFP for day shelter based

on the proposal that they received from I'm not sure if it was the housing subcommittee or HSAC, but they're essentially proposing to respond to that with an RFP. She indicated to me it has not been discussed publicly by her board, but she's had private conversations where she believes it will be supported and she's comfortable with me sharing that with you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Council Makabier.

Thank you. I've had individual conversations and also raised it with um manager Ferguson about augmenting the dollars that we give to justice matters for our IAP program. Currently they are funded at 250,000 and my ask is to bring it up to 450,000 and I think um have had some of the some of those conversations with you individually and I think some advocates have reached out and I was also told to bring it here if we were going to do it or not. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Not speaking for the mayor before he left wanted me asked me to express uh his views on this. Um he knows that the work is important. I want to capture the spirit of what he

said. He said there are a lot of priorities and things that we need to fund, but he would be uh in favor of leaving it what it is for now for this budget. So for whatever that however that impacts the discussion. That's from the mayor.

Council member, I would I would just um want to get some insights uh if the city manager has had conversation with this county manager about um hey Tyrie justice movement as well. Um I have not had conversations with the county manager. I um am the communication we received this week from Hatai Justice Reborn is the first communication I'm aware of. So I apologize.

I don't I don't know what the county's position is on that. Just wanted to check in. I know that they uh expressed that they shared the proposal and I did let them know it was pretty late in the cycle and that I thought that they well I think what I understand is that they haven't spent all of the funds yet. And so I just want to make sure I say it publicly that they haven't

spent all the funds yet and once the funds have been expended there could be a conversation about additional funding. So, I I just want to make sure I say that out. Councilman, did you have any um opinion on Council Maviro's aspect? I'm I am fine with the 400.

I would like to hear the city manager's um analysis or staff's analysis on what that would do to the budget. Director, did you So, um I think that I'm being asked about the Is it the 400? Is it the 450 for um from 250 to 450 to 450? So that would take it up $200,000.

Is that correct? Is that if I'm doing the math right on um and then you have also approved $270 for the So that is a $470,000 um increase to the budget. So you know there's obviously two ways that we can do it at this point. We would either have to um you know raise the tax rate.

So that's our only revenue source right now. Or we would have to go back and find cuts within the budget. Um, a tax

08. Am I doing my math right 0068 about point 007 or so for Thank you for that. Um, I'm not in favor of raising tax. I mean, if I want 2 million for guaranteed income, but not I wouldn't raise taxes to do it uh at this budget.

Um, and given where we are in the timeline as well, and to to be fair, let me just be fully transparent. I have family members that work for that organization. So, it's an organization that's near and dear to my heart, I just want to disclose that. But I would not be willing to raise taxes at this point. Um, for Council Councilman Baker, were you Um, yeah, I would I'd

be curious just for a little bit more information about the organization and um what what it would go toward, you know, just kind of at this late stage. Thank you. This was one of my budget requests. The initial uh request was for $700,000 and it was supposed to be reoccurring and there was a lot of information provided in my budget document including the types of work the organization does. Happy to share it with colleagues um if if helpful. I will say that even if what would be the budget increase for 270,000 because there was consensus around that because you're saying that it's the 400 it to that there's no money right a rounding error for the city there's no money uh in in the current budget to do either the 270,000 for part-time or the two are you saying well I'm saying we have at the moment we're balanced so you know I would we would have to either find ways

to kind of make sure that we could pay for that. Um, if within the budget, we can go back and we if you if we're instructed by staff, instructed by council, we will do that and we can find a way. Um, but if we were to rate, you know, if we were wanted to add to what we already have in the budget, we could do it through revenue, right? And I guess what I'm asking for is it's both the 250,000 and the 270,000.

So, we have to talk about both, right? Yes. And I think to elaborate that to be fair, there is a there is a a margin of error that that we always assume in budgeting that should we have something the the the number that the budget director and I talked about prior to today's conversation was something in the realm of 150 to 250,000 was something we felt like we could probably accommodate in the budget without making changes to revenue sources. I think the cumulative impact of the change to the part-time pay plan and this request, I don't think

we have a comfort level that that's absorbable and and so I think that's where we're looking for you guys. We we are, you know, cutting other areas of the budget is also an option. So I'm not trying to tell you that tax increase is required, but we haven't come with options for that readily readily for you. Council member Freeman, I would definitely be in favor of cutting um rather than raising taxes and figuring out what areas we could cut for 270 and 250,000 seems doable.

Um, I mean, I think even if it's just a nine-month delay on a contract, something small enough to um not create too much of a ripple, but I do think it's important to show um or to demonstrate support for both part-time and part-time workers and for um the justice matter work. Council member Rrist, I agree. Um, yeah, I think I think both

these are important requests, both the three to five for the part-time employees and the justice matter works. And so I would support the request from Council Cavier and look to the city manager and staff for uh creative ways to to make that happen. Council member Cabier. Thank you.

And um I'm not in favor of doing a tax increase for this small amount. I know that we have had other times where there's been small adjustments at this time and and it's been worked out. I think the other opportunity would be if we can't do it now, I guess sometimes we have like is it carry forward uh in the fall? Yeah, the other option would be like a one-time and so yeah um which is usually the carry forward.

So that's another option I could use as a as a revenue source as well too. Okay. So I think that if we can't get to that um because I don't want to raise taxes, we're already doing it. , then that would be my my other suggestion. And I don't know if that is enough clarity for staff or not.

I um don't did you I'll just say I I al I also do not uh support uh raising the taxes as as um beyond what we have already pro what is already proposed in the current budget. Yeah, I would certainly be open to looking at carryover funds. I don't know if I want to earmark a specific amount yet without seeing what the totality the carryover is and what the rest of our um landscape is looking like. I am I don't support either. I mean the the budget that the count the managers presented is balanced and we it was a lot of work to get to I mean everything in there is is is important. Um I um I guess when I look at the the the what are we holding on to and what are we adding the the 3 to 5% is something new um for our employees and and I guess I find that palatable

because we are we're actually augmenting this line is something as much as we want to augment it is there 250 grand is nothing to sneeze at. Um, and the argument for augmenting it, I think, is compelling. I think the argument for augmenting um, guaranteed income is just as compelling as augmenting the line for justice matters work given what's going on economically, giving on what's going on politically. I mean, anything we do um that helps our people, a case can be made to augment it.

But the consolation I take is that at least it's in the budget and there's money there. There is no money for the 3 to 5% yet. That's something new that that's augmenting our footprint. So, I'm comfortable with holding on to what we're doing, which is significant. Um, again, Justice Matters is an organization I love and I have family that's sustained by the organization. So, it's I don't do this lightly, but when I look at the totality of the budget, um what's already in

there, um I'm comfortable with doing the 3 to 5%, holding on to what we're doing, and taking a look uh for carryover. I I I don't have enough information now to to say it's going to be a hard 200 grand. I don't know what that carryover amount's going to be or what else we might need to address um at that time, but I definitely don't want to raise taxes. And I don't I having my read through the manager's budget, I couldn't tell you what area I'd be comfortable right now from taking 200 grand from to augment this.

Um, so that's where I am. And I know the mayor the mayor's position is to hold as well. I guess council member Cabier, you were willing to to look at uh I I will I will certainly commit to placing high priority with those carryover funds on this item. I'll say that publicly now. The dollar amount I don't think I can um your mark now, but I can certainly commit to Thank you. I'm willing to do

the to but I I need folks to make some There's not a lot in this budget for these folks. I'm sorry. There's not like you can took the total of the money of our budget and and and what communities this helps cover and there's very little. Uh so I I I will push back on that.

Um um but uh I'm happy to have that conversation when carryover comes over comes forward. I do not want to increase taxes um for this. I will say that I will be bringing another measure again next year because these are not communities as we can see. This isn't changing.

This landscape's not changing. is just getting worse. Thank you. No, thank you, Councilman.

To your point, certainly it's not enough. And I wasn't suggesting that there's enough or a lot. I said there's something uh in the budget and and but by all means, um more work needs to be done. No argument there.

Um Mr. Manager, do you have clarity on that? I do. Colleagues, thank you so much for for a great substantive conversation. This has been a great meeting. I think that has exhausted our published agenda.

With that, I'll turn to the manager to settle the agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor PM, members of council. I appreciate a long but productive day and so we we appreciate your attention.

Uh for settling the agenda, I have uh on consent items 1 through 12, 14 through 38, and items 43 through 45. On GBA, I have item 13 and on GBA public hearings, I have items 39- 41. Thank you. With that, I'll entertain a motion to settle the agenda.

Second. I hear a motion in a second. colleagues will indicate uh affirmation by saying I I those opposed. The agenda is settled.

This is brings us to the end of our last work session of this fiscal year. Thank you so much colleagues for incredible work and and a great and substantive year. We move to pass the budget uh at our next council meeting. Congratulations and best wishes to councelor Cook and her absence and to her pending nutshells and her family.

Uh and to all of you have a great uh weekend. We are adjourned on June 5th at 6:18. God bless you. God bless Durham.