afternoon uh good afternoon I don't have any announcements just want to say thank you to everyone who came uh to speak and I look forward to hearing your comments good afternoon councilman Baker right Council M ciero good afternoon good afternoon I have no comments thank you good to see you everyone council member Freeman good afternoon any announces okay council member riss good afternoon good afternoon thank you Mr Mayor pretend thanks for presiding Mr city manager colleagues folks in the room thanks for joining us I've just got a couple things first of all I want to remind folks about the uh miles for the mayor this Saturday at 9:30 at the American Tobacco Trail encourage all folks to come out to that um the the manager city manager threw down the gauntlet and challenged you know the uh his folks in the city councils all be there there look forward to that hope other folks will join us um for that annual mileage with the mayor event the other thing I want to say is that I'm thinking about counil member cook as I say this so I did um I want to thank the city and Bera thank you so much dep city manager Bera Johnson for approving a
revised agreement with the Durham Housing Authority for the use of arpa funds about it's about like what $300,000 right of arpa funds we made available to address past du balances for dhj resid hey Miss Beyer how you doing um this means that a total of 250 DHA families um had their pre-co era um P du balances erased so they've been assisted by that I texted council member cook right away when I heard that good news um so those those backd payments have been erased there's no longer any Spectre of any lease enforcement actions against them so it's great news for 250 DJ families who now are back to square one and can do there can be just residents without any fear of any kind of lease enforcement action so great news again thanks to the city for making those funds available from arpa um and good news for the citizens of Durham so thank you Mr Mayor Pam thank you council member and thank you for the reminder about miles for mayor miles with the mayor this Saturday um it's uh physically focused I I I won't be there but I'll be doing something else I I'll have the honor of throwing out the first pitch South Durham little league so I've been working on my arm and uh getting
warmed up trying not to embarrass this institution on Saturday but thank you for those announcements and thank you colleagues at this time I'm going to yield to our executive staff for any priority items and first I'm going to yield to the city manager Mr manager good afternoon good afternoon mayor PM members of council the city manager's office has several priority items this uh afternoon first for agenda item number six this is the purchase contract of contact Systems Inc for city council chambers broadcast equipment overhaul uh the council is being asked to suspend the rules and vote during this work session today uh to approve the contract so that we can schedule for that work to be completed during the summer recess this is work that needs to happen in the U uh council chambers so we do ask for that on agenda item number six uh for agenda item number 16 this is the vision zero action plan there is a presentation as part of the work session today and then finally I am asking for Council to hold a closed session that would be conducted at the conclusion of this work
session for a brief update from the administration thank you Mr manager we'll proceed this way I I'll entertain a motion to approve the manager items on mass so moved heard a motion to second uh call for the question all in favor those opposed all right I'll take the suspension we'll we'll just do it now before we move on to the clerk I mean to the um attorney forgive me I uh will entertain a motion to suspend the rules second a motion and a second all in favor I those opposed right it is unanimous we will now uh vote I'll entertain a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a purchase contract with Conta Tech Systems Inc for the city council chambers broadcast equipment overhaul thank God and an amount not to exceed strike that that's not on the motion and an amount and an amount not to exceed
$353,900 if you would like sure you want to read the language absolutely so the motion is to hold a closed session pursuant to North Carolina General statute 143 3181 A6 to consider the qualifications competence performance character and fitness of and to consider complaints and charges asserted against an individual employee who reports to the city manager I'll entertain a motion as read by the City attorney second is there a second I hear a motion and a second all in favor those oppos all right we will go ahead toose session at the conclusion of our published agenda today thank you Mr manager uh Madame attorney good afternoon good afternoon mayor PM the city attorney's office has no priority items thank you m cler Madam clerk good afternoon good afternoon Mr Mayor Protam I have my board and committee report the nomination to the Durham City County Environmental Affairs board under the category of Youth is Ben Goldberg and the nomination for for the
mayor's Council for women under the category of cultural Recreation and fine artart sector is Stephanie A Williams and that's the end of my report right thank you very much all right colleagues I will now uh read for the record our administrative consent items today can be pulled by any member of the council or any member of the public uh who wishes to uh engage in our Deep dive on these items I'll begin with the city clerk's office item one Durham City County Environmental Affairs board appointment item two mayor's Council for women appointment under the departmental items audit Services Department item three flexible work Arrangements performance audit February 2025 under our budget and Management Services Department item number four FY 2025 through 26 budget development guidelines under the city's attorneys city attorney's office item number five revised code of ethics for Durham city council I'll pull that one right item number five is pulled on the Communications Department item six purchase contract with context systems in well we we've already moved on that
one all right moving on Community Development Department item number seven resolution approval of a multif family housing facility to be known as Sandy Ridge station in the city of in in the in the city of Durham North Carolina and the financing thereof with multif family housing revenue bonds and an aggregate amount not to exceed $22 million like to pull that all right number seven is pulled item number eight resolution approval of a multi family housing facility to be known as Sandy Ridge Villas in the city of Durham North Carolina and the financing thereof with multif family housing revenue bonds in an aggregate amount not to exceed $1 million under the Community safety department item number nine execute software as a service sa saas license agreement between Durham Community safety department dcsd and touch phrase Development LLC DBA julota under the fire department item number 10 purchase contract for upgrade to air system and
additional filling stations for self-contained breathing apparatus scuba for fire department from our general Services Department item number 11 agreement to fund the stagville memorial public art operated by the stagville memorial project don't want to pull it but I'm pleased to see that here here on that great projectly noted item number 12 Solid Waste Management rollout cart storage building Construction contract with Penman Construction Inc item number thir item number 13 condemnation action to obtain one easement at 5727 grandale drive for the Parkwood area lift station consolidation sewer project Palco under our public works department item number 14 Street and utility acceptances item number 15 Street and utility accept accept acceptances Constitution Drive under our transportation department item number 16 Vision zero action plan presentation and approval this is a presentation slated for 20 minutes under our Wonder Management Department item number 17 contract Amendment one to professional
Engineering Services contract number 18305 with Hazen and Sawyer PC for the Western intake partnership water intake and transmission infrastructure engineering project item number 18 professional Engineering Services contract with HDR engineering Inc of the Carolinas for the Western intake partnership program manager project amendment number four like pull that one item number 18 is pulled item number 19 Amendment Three to contract 18648 with EMA resources Inc for handling and disposal of water and wastewater treatment plant biosolids item number 19 is pulled by everybody presentations parks and recreation department presentation on the draft germs parking Recreation comprehensive plan this is slated for 45 minutes public hearings to be considered at our next uh Monday full meeting City County from our City County Planning Department item number 21 Consolidated
annexation Sheffield farms and citizens matters to be heard at 1M we've already taken a motion to go into close session at the end uh of our published agenda that ends the reading of our published agenda give me one okay all right by my Reckoning I have items five 7 18 and 19 pulled Mr manager do you concur so and we have some yeah it looks like I have a card for a speaker for our presentation and okay and we have speakers for all right these items have been pulled so well no we have uh item number 16 as well and we do have speakers item four these are all four y right so revising we have items number
four five 7 16 18 and 19 okay all right we have citizens matters to be heard um at one mayor's not here to punt to this so Falls to me we have a number we do have a four people online and in person uh for speaking in the afternoon and we we have cards exceeding that number I will uh I'm inclined I I I am more inclined to hear from people than not to hear from people what I will do and and ask for you you're a you're aide uh you to abide me with is we'll make uh public comments two minutes this afternoon rather than three so we may accommodate all of our residents who have come out this afternoon if y'all can live with that then then I'll will go ahead and uh make make rubber our our rule today um I have uh first our online folk I have Mr Daren Langley and Madame clerk if you see him in Q if you can make him
hearable good afternoon can I be heard good afternoon sir you can you have two minutes thank you for being with us all right thank you so very much my name is dwor langle I serve as the volunteer executive director of The Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation where we Foster the academic leadership and professional development of boys and young men of color through a Continuum of strategy centered skill-based and career focused program services and mentorship I just wanted to point out that Durham is a very Vibrant Community we have our challenges but one of the things that I wanted to not is that according to the North Carolina Department of Commerce we have the highest average private sector wage in the state of North Carolina of 97,5 31 that means that we need to be more intentional and making our investments around supporting the development of our young people to prepare them for career Pathways and I wanted to share with you all about the career pathway program of the Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation
that work with boys and young men of color to integrate real world experiences comprehensive learning and tailored mentorship so that each one of them are prepared to achieve their career aspirations thrive in their chosen careers and secure lasting economic stability and upward Mobility through our program each one of these young men have secured at least one career oriented internship and they secure salaries on an average of $69,700 so much for being with us next I have Jacqueline Wagstaff Madame clerk would you please make Miss Wagstaff hearable can you hear me I can ma'am thank you for being with us you have two minutes good afternoon well good afternoon um I'm here on behalf of my co-chair of the housing committee for
the durm committee on the Affairs of black people I'm currently the vice chair she couldn't be here we I couldn't be here but I'm speaking on behalf of support for the Widow school residents who are in the room today there are a multitude of issues and we've been meeting with them and we're trying to address each issue that they're having but the my biggest concern and the committee concern is the safety issue that they're enduring uh I have photographs but I was unable to upload them but I'm going to get them to you eventually but at this point the city since this was a city county initiative and private sector they have to intervene the contractors that are supposed to be managing this project are doing a lousy job these residents have been fighting this for the last eight years and they don't need elected officials coming to their meetings feeding them pipe dreams they need action and they're living in an environment right now that is not safe for what they need for their safety and their peace of mind so I'm asking this
Council to investigate the contractors that are managing this property and some other properties and actually put some talk into action thank you very much thank you so much for being with us all right Madam clerk that concludes my um the folk I had in Q virtually we'll move now uh to the room I'm going to call uh three name three I'll call five names and if you would just in order you hear your name call this approach the microphone and just give us your name and you'll each have two minutes Helen Pereira Regina Royer Roda blunt Pastor an Jacob and James Chavis thank you all for being with us this afternoon you'll each have two minutes good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I'm one of the uh residents at Veranda at wited schools that Miss wagf was just talking about I'm here speaking in regards to the safety of my
building I've been living there since it first opened up eight years ago and it's declined in sanitation safety issues I'm going to speak myself in regards to we have no no maintenance staff cleaning our buildings in the last two years just about on a city we have people sleeping in our storages we have people in the stairwells living our locked doors have been broken into we have uh apartments that have been people have come into your apartment if you haven't locked your door the safety of it say a resident's mind is not all there and they go into their apartment and their doors unlocked we have people checking our doors we have no sanitation up whatsoever of
cleaning the floors in our building trash removal has come to almost a stop I was told yesterday that the maintenance technician is now taking out our trash instead of a trash company that we had prior he's being overworked he's supposed to do all the all the repairs in our building plus now take out the trash for a a unit of 79 apartments by himself we have no no sanitation whatsoever we have no it's it's it's scary you go into the um trash rooms our trash rooms are filled with trash we some people who can't get it down to shoot we'll leave it piled up we're afraid with rodents we're afraid with homeless people sleeping in our stairwells as I said before thank
you so much ma'am that that's your time we appreciate you being with us this afternoon good afternoon good afternoon thank you for taking the time to be with us you have two minutes my name is Rosa Blunt I have been a resident of Whit it Branda Whit it for going on well seven years September 29th is when I moved in there um for the last two years a lot of things have gone on what we I'm supposed to talk about is leaking of our windows in my living room there's when rain I have to put towels down uh in my bedroom I have to put D towels down in the window seals to catch the rain um I was supposed to speak on people uh sleeping in my storage room cuz it's right across the hall from where I stay and they have made a bed
out of rugs whatever they can find covers I I got pictures um we have told the management about it there the things that they have been sleeping on is still there and this been maybe three or four months they haven't done anything so I'm just going to talk on what I was supposed to talk and that was my windows and sleep in the storage I'm G let somebody else come thank you thank you so much for being with us good afternoon thank you so much for being with us you have two minutes thank you my name is Regina Royer I'm also a resident of oranda at Whit it and my issue is for about the last six years we've been fighting for the doors to be fixed um we have vagrance living in the building we see people standing on the corner and they sleep in our buildings at night we have videos and videos after videos we've been begging these people
but each and every time we say anything they speak money well this will cost that and that'll cost they lied said they fix the doors five times not true so our safety is at hand and that's all we want is to be safe we want to live like seniors but we're hiding we can't come out of our apartments at certain times we see needles people using drugs it's crazy so I ask if you can help us with this we've been fighting for six years for these doors that's all I have to say thank you thank you for being with us good afternoon good afternoon good to see you thank you for being with us you have two minutes thank you my name is Pastor Jacob I am the the on the president of the ten Association of Aranda and um we have different ones came up and say some different things but my concern I want to share with the city council and also Reginal Johnson
the Community Development Department also the city council member R of DHA we are having people coming in staying with the tenants whose names are not on the leas and they are saying that they are the aid of the person that lives there which they are not and we know this for a fact because we know who their AIDS are and also it has been reported to the management about the people that are living there but they have not done anything yet late at night they will come in all kinds of hours of the night they will go downstairs and open the doors for the other people to come in so they can do whatever they feel like they're big enough to do also we like to talk about the drugs that are being used on the premises also selling on the premises also the smokes are coming through the vent and we are a senior building you have people that are own CPAC we have people that are own oxygen you have people with asthma with heart issues and problems that causes them to not be able to read properly and I just
want to know what is it going to take for somebody to do something it's going to cause someone to get very sick and illness to their death something has to be H to take place and we just want to live our life we just want to live in peace and Harmony and enjoy our senior years at this building and we asking you to to please do whatever you can to help us to do that thank you thank you Pastor Jacob as Mr Chavis comes I'm gonna ask our next uh group final group of uh neighbors to get ready uh Regina Mays charlita buris Katie Ross and Stella Adams somebody leaned on the light there you Mr Travis good afternoon thank you sir for being with us you have two minutes good afternoon to all the city council members and some of the staffs I am the
co- facilitator of district one and I come to let you know today you may have the flyer in front of you is it this this as preparedness we had a training last month and we going to got up a committee and we are pushing this throughout durm because we found out the durm some of the citizens and I have been asking what is Derm this and we haven't gotten any El so it's time for US citizens to step up to the plate and we are so we are letting you know that we the people there only a few of us now but we getting many more this act of preparedness is not a race Creed code
age or whatever it's all of us and some of you may not know that the proess that was supposed to happen supposed to came here and done but it went to Ashville and some of you know that Ashville is in a whole deep problem because their people was not ready so we are trying to tell you all we want to get ready and our theme is are you going to be one of the five foolish are you going to be one of the five wise to help prepare us to help others prepare for a disaster when it comes to durm thank you thank you so much for being with us sir good afternoon thank you for being with us good after
hi again um city council members uh Regina May dur resident um I am here in solidarity with the wited residents I know I brought forth to you all a while back about the DOR um security situation and I do want to thank the city council members that have came out um council member cook um mayor Williams um is still a going process and I stand here today and I stand with the residents and I've been trying my best to educate them about not just the order of the meeting but um actually how to even get here some of them we car pooed and I'm saying this because I would like you all to really understand what it takes for residents to make it into the meetings to get here to exercise their rights to speak it's not easy for
seniors to get here when they have mobility issues and other things I was aiding them to fill out access van service but that takes 21 days for the application and only if their doctor approves it so just consider those things when the issues are made before you that sometimes you just might have to come out and see for yourself thank you thank you so much for being with us I just want I just want to thank you um Regina um for being as steadfast about this as you have been I know you've been talking about it for a while and I want to appreciate you getting those folks here today thank you good afternoon good afternoon good to see you thank you for being with us you have two minutes preacher charlita buris woman of History listen uh I have been instrumental in getting the lights turned on at Edgmont Park I don't know whether y'all realize I don't have problems with development I have problems when we not addressing the unlying conditions that's crime what are you building for and the crime is not
situated okay it was some shooting in Edgar Park Tuesday down that way homelessness is increasing okay and people come here but people are tired of coming here because we're not getting no results and I ask y'all city council to come down in our neighborhoods check out what is really going on why are you not holding landlords account for these properties looking the way they are why D I'm a DHA res why we're not holding I'm a residential president down there I call call get to run around all the time we got to stop this stuff and if you live long enough somebody here gonna be a senior citizen like I am if you live long enough my mother's 96 so don't keep pushing us on the side because you feel like oh we just getting old and we don't know nothing about it but guess what babies let me tell you something we wisdom outweighs everything thank you so much for being with
us good afternoon thank you for coming out today you have two minutes good afternoon I'm Stella Adams and I am the chair of the housing Committee of the DM committee on the Affairs of black people and we have been called uh by the residents of wted at the veranda to help them navigate understand what's going on and get results so I was there when management alleged that they had put in new door locks and that there it was Secure and safe and that the residents had new key fobs but in reality we walked through we walked into a vacant apartment turned the lock and walked into the apartment it was unlocked poed and unsecure the alleged fixed doors were easily popped we pop two of the 11 Doors
just by pushing from the outside it didn't even I don't have the strength to pick up 25 lbs I was able to open that door it is unsafe and unsecure there was your and feces in the w w hallways there were mattresses conveniently located in the stairwells there the conditions and nobody can say they don't know that there's drugs being cooked in that building because all you got to do is walk in the hallway so what is it that the residents need the city to do one if we put City dollars and I see we have $33 million doar in here that we're spending to build affordable housing for seniors and others and yet we if we don't put in the
the the property management agreements some kind of drawback sure that's your time thank you much we need to do something you need to act thank you so much for being with us thank you is Katie Ross here okay would you approach the mic thank you all right Katie Ross I'm here to talk about the proposed ethics rules hello yeah so first of all I want to thank the City attorney for her uh summary uh because she very candidly pointed out that these are necessary because the city council has experienced some recent challenges with self-governance I want to remind everyone of the gross challenge to self-governance fairness and uh due process that occurred almost exactly two years ago on March 23rd 2023 which I hope uh you folks will review that horrific meeting in which Dr Hy
Heyman uh who had been completely who later was completely exonerated of both false corruption claims made by the disgruntled developer Jared Edens and of campaign violations asking for asking for allegedly asking a city Stafford to work on her campaign during City work hours both of those allegations were completely proven false in the investigation I doubt Jared Edens I know he will never apologize or do anything decent because that's not in his character uh but Eden was not the only one who falsely accused Hy Heyman and he is not the one who failed not the only one who failed to apologize for of her fellow council members did the same as his Eden's devious plot was publicly unfolding and her life was unended uh Hy heyman's fellow council members uh set into plan a motion Jullian Johnson
Leonardo Williams javiera caviera and Mark Anthony colluded to bring a center motion against Hy Hyman on another trumped up charge the uh campaign violations uh please look at the March 23rd 2023 Council session but be ready to cringe with the approval of Williams Caballero and Middleton is that time over that's your time all right look at that please read what I've passed before you there's a reason anyway thank you because the buzzer went off that's your time thank you all right colleagues thank you so much and residents and and and friends and thank you so much for coming out today and we know it's the middle of the day that this isn't uh always the most reasonable time for a lot of folk but you took the time to come out and I thank you for coming here and and addressing your Council uh in your city hall we're going to get now to our pulled
items we're going to start with item number four I have several uh folk who pulled item number four uh residents for our budget guidelines I'll call your names Nicole uh Tom Thompson Nick OB Thompson Sean Umstead Justin Sako Mike Woodard uh former member of this the steam board former Senator good to have you with us sir Chris perlstein John talage and caric sarui uh in that order you'll have I'm sorry give me one second I'm sorry you're right yeah uh correction item number I thought they were all group let me uh call out who's speaking on number
four again Nicole Thompson Sean Umstead Justin Sako Mike Woodard on item number four the other names I called well your items aren't up yet my thanks to my honorable colleague for the assist good afternoon you have three minutes thank you honorable mayor Williams city council member city manager and City attorney DDI welcomes the opportunity to come before you today to ask that the current bid rate of 7 Cent be maintained this matter was brought before the DDI board at a specially called meeting held on March 17th and there was unanimous approval since its Inception in 2012 DDI has been responsible for the management and administration of the bid but our work in downtown dates back much further for 32 years we have served as a cheerleader and advocate for downtown and we believe that this there is little question that the work that we have done to support and encourage downtown's growth is anything but outstanding with ddi's constant support and focused attention downtown has seen astounding growth and development while remaining dedicated to being the authentic unique Urban
downtown that the region has come to know and love would downtown Durham have grown without the creation of the bid most likely would it have grown without the intentionality and hyperfocus Focus attention to remain local and authentic with a heavy focus on culture and history definitely not bid Revenue allows that to happen with the requirement that Revenue collected in the bid must be used within it DDI has remained committed to uplifting and supporting what the stakeholders want most local small diverse and authentic but downtown is facing some significant challenges that without continued focus and attention could lead to its decline lack of daytime traffic due to remote work policies businesses shrinking and scaling back safety concerns afford and competition from other communities are placing downtown in a precarious position as these issues continue to percolate downtown must work to create solutions that are thoughtful effective and B bold all while still ensuring downtown is open and welcoming to all DDI has spent the last year working with his consultant interface studio and the downtown Durham Community to devise a blueprint for downtown's future a plan
that will ensure that downtown remains safe and welcoming vibrant and growth oriented and will focus on keeping downtown keeping Durham Durham this plan acknowledges the ongoing challenges that may impact downtown's ability to grow but also identifies how we can meet these challenges and grow even stronger there are a number of initiatives that DDI can begin to implement immediately but only if the bid rate remains at 7 Cent at this pivotal moment with these complex challenges why would Durham regress at this why would we weaken this important tool by dropping the bid rate to revenue neutral thereby limiting ddi's ability to push impactful and transformative Solutions we have seen the success of of the bid and we know its ability to shape downtown to be the place we want it to be it is an important tool that is necessary to keep downtown's economy Workforce and Community strong when the bid was created in 2012 the goal was to provide the resources to spearhead and ntue ongoing growth and development while ensuring that there were resources to support this growth we see that this goal is being realized growth is happening and with that growth comes
ongoing needs and responsibilities it is through the revenue generated by the bid that we can continue to not only meet but be proactive in addressing these needs while also stimulating and supporting downtown's growth and vibrancy thank you for your continued partnership and support as we work together to ensure that downtown remains a cool and vibrant and wonderful place and continues to find innov innovative ways to be welcoming diverse and inclusive I um also emailed you a complete letter this was just excerpts from that thank you so much thank you so much John I'm stad right good afternoon welcome thank you for being with us three minutes thank you very much thank you city council mayor protm for uh having me today my name is Sean Umstead I own multiple of hospitality businesses in downtown Durham I'm also sit on the DDI board I'm here to advocate for um leaving the bid tax at s cents um it is a tax that is paid exclusively by downtown business owners within the bid uh District to support ourselves um I
believe Durham is at an inflection point um both from your ability to budget um our ability to live and and the City City's ability to grow um and I think it's a requirement that we invest in downtown um for the benefit of all citizens of Durham um Nicole and her team um do an amazing job uh maintaining and creating a vibrant downtown uh both for people in and outside of businesses um if we don't make this investment other cities will um this is not an uncompetitive environment to live in the Triangle um ra Chapel Hill surrounding smaller cities um that have growing downtowns um will invest and and I don't believe we can fall behind um I moved to Durham after living in the triangle and and traveling shortly after college and I've been here for 10 years and I came here because this is a city of big dreamers um it was a place that felt like one of possibility and I think you'll have an opportunity to continue to push
possibility for all residents of Durham whether they're downtown uh or outside um so I implore you to keep the bid tax at 7 cents um again I don't speak for all business owners but I do pay a portion of that tax and I happily leave it at 7 cents personally um but I'd also implore you to look at all the money that you can um use in this recent uh reassessment of of property values I know it's a fraud issue but this is an opportunity to be leaders and dream big and um you guys should do whatever you believe is right and grow this city and push us forward um this is not a time to be small-minded or Penny pinch um you all were elected to do big things and and and Lead so I'm I'm in wholehearted support of y'all taking as much money as you want and uh and really grow in the city I know other people might disagree but I believe in you and I believe in your leadership and I think um the only way that we can do big things is to have big thoughtful leaders so uh leave the
bid tax at 7% and uh do whatever you want that's big and Grand and bold thanks thank you so much for us can I get that in writing yeah sure Justin good afternoon my name is Tiffany bashore I'm requesting permission to read on behalf of Justin Sako I'll allow it you have three minutes dear City Council Members mayor and appointed Civic leaders the businesses and residents of downtown Durham have witnessed significant changes in recent years regarding our population growth and dramatic shifts in how we use our downtown on the backside of a pandemic and while downtown continues to inspire entertain and engage new challenges are present we continue to see diminished patronage during the day and very selective pedestrian traffic in our evenings and it's not enough to support our businesses downtown Durham Incorporated is fortunate to be both a sounding board and a proponent for the affirmation excuse me AFF forementioned residents and businesses when it comes
to these new challenges in addition to the feedback gathered during our recent downtown durm blueprint planning effort we received Direct Communications on the following concerns number one we need safer streets downtown two we need more thoughtful and connected plan to attract and add diverse ground floor retail and businesses to our existing roster businesses there are too many underutilized storefronts on primary streets and key services in retail businesses are missing three we need to better capitalize on our spaces between the places to further activate our down town with vibrant corridors and improved public spaces DDI is a Nimble and effective tool in our Civic toolbox and we can play a vital role in providing answers to these challenges but this is not currently part of ddi's existing financial plan therefore I support support an adjustment to the S cents per $100 rate so that DDI can expand its role and provide solutions to this list downtown isn't done let's roll up our
sleeves and get to work very resp respectfully Justin Sako board chair of DDI vice president at lrc properties and Golden Belt Community member thank you thank you so much for being with US senator good afternoon sir you have three minutes good to have you with us thank you Mr Mayor Pro Tim members of the council Mr manager members of the administration I'm Mike Woodard I reside at 2009 woodro Street and I urge you not to do what you want to do but urge you to do what your folks want you to do the people who elected you the the residents and businesses of this community you've heard from three uh downtown businesses now who are in the bid and have urged you to leave that at s cents and I join with them and urge you to leave the bid rate at s cents I come today with the experience of having for six of the seven years I served on this Council having been ddi's having been this council's representative through DDI when we started the bid so I was in the room when it happened as we designed the bid what the rationale for having the
bid was and why it was setled on seven cents at the time and that's what based on that experience and knowledge and where we've seen the bid go since its implementation in 2012 I believe it's been effective I believe DDI has been a great Steward of the bid funds and you've heard from your businesses who pay this bid that they want to keep it at that we built downtown Durham to be the city's living room and we want to keep our living room clean refreshed and a place that we all want to visit we've struggled uh after during and after covid for businesses to uh come back um for uh daytime visitors but also to continue the vibrancy at night and the only way we're going to be able to continue to do that and as one of the previous speakers said to think big is to continue to maintain it at a 7 Cent rate I understand the pressures that you all are going to face in this budget year but I believe you've heard from the uh people in the bid that seven cents makes all the cents in the world I
concur with them I believe that that is a wise investment in downtown and ultimately when we have a healthy vibrant downtown that the seven cents will allow us to have we're going to continue to have a healthy Vibrant Community thank you Mr Mayor pro thank you so much Senator good to see you all right colleagues I've exhausted all of the cards this was a pulled item by uh one of our neighbors does any council member have any questions or comments on this item if not all right item four is discharged we'll move on to item number five which is pulled by council member cook Al to you council member thank you um I just have a couple questions about the new codes as [Music] written are you going to be answering the questions you're not the resource person on here so I am not really a resource person council member um I brought it Forward at the beest of the council procedures committee so there may be questions that you could ask your colleagues who are on that Committee
just was making sure that whoever needed to be up there had time to get up there um okay colleagues so I have a couple of pieces of this that I want to look at the first one is on the very first page A3 so it currently reads notwithstanding the forgoing council members should feel free let me make this larger so I can see it all in one go should feel free to assert policy positions and opinions without fear of reprisal from fellow members of the council or members of the public to declare that a council member is behaving unethically because one disagrees on a question of policy and not because of the council member's behavior is unfair dishonest irresponsible and itself unethical um I do have a an issue with this and I think that we are seeing uh sort of the the push in local uh Statewide but also Federal politics to couch things that are not actually ethical as positions or
opinions um and I think that because of the way that this is written that calling out a fellow council member for something that is maybe an ethical issue because they have positioned it as an opinion is going to then lead other council members to be considered unethical um I think that's a really questionable uh and and a bit of a a slippery slope there so I'm not comfortable with that language as it is um and I'm not actually really sure why that piece is needed at all um so that's my first issue I'm happy to leave it open for conversation or I can list all my issues first and then we can talk about them together I don't know council members if y'all have a thank you my suggestion and I would would like to remind folks that they got this policy in writing and full U many many months ago uh so if you have a
variety of things like a long list my suggestion is you actually email them to all council members and so that folks can respond that was why we provided it many months ahead of time before it even showed up on an agenda so that folks could have that dialogue I also would like to remind council members and the public that procedures committees are public uh everyone was invited to attend um happy to um set up time oneon-one it can be an email I don't really it doesn't really the mechanism really doesn't um matter um but if you have a long amount of lists my my recommendation is you send them via email thank you thanks yeah I do not have a long list I just have three things so I'll go ahead and state them now um and then I'm happy to speak about them further my second one is section B8 um just the fact So currently Reeds representing the official policies sorry I should start at the beginning um we're
talking about acting with integrity and indeep and Independence um this section this part is talking about how to present as a council member when presenting personal opinions as opposed to presenting as an official council member the way that it's written now is that you are assumed to be presenting as a council member unless you state otherwise and State that your position is um your personal opinion um and I I am I think it should be the opposite way where unless you are like sitting on a council um or in your if you are doing something that that alerts the public that you are speaking in your Council role then I think it's okay that it be assumed that you're speaking in your Council role but if you're just speaking out in public I don't think that we should have the burden of saying that those positions are personal I think it should be the opposite way so if you are out in public and it's not apparent to the public that you are representing the council and you would like to be representing the council then you state I am representing the council in this or I'm representing the city in the statement and then if you don't say that
then it is taken to be personal uh so that is my other one and then missing from this entire um code of ethics this is the only third thing I have um is that we don't have anything about interactions with staff um and I do think that given something that was brought up today and some other things that have happened in the past that that might be something that we should look at so those are my three things that I had noticed and again I'm happy to follow up I would ask that this but be put on GBA though moving forward thank you um I'm pretty sure there's a space and I'm trying to find it where we do actually say that all council members should act uh in a certain manner with staff the public um and I can't remember the third one so I'm going to Madam attorney Maybe you'll be able to tell me exactly I will say that the provision related to interactions with staff is in the draft Council procedures which are coming forward in the next
agenda council member cook would you like that added to the ethics policy and not just in the procedures um as long as it's in the procedures I I'll double check I just noticed that it was missing I'm assuming that's a because I thought it might need a whole section so that's why I was wondering it's it's commonly addressed in a procedural manner it's it's not really an ethical issue right like how Council deals with staff it's just a procedural matter and working through the administration a certain way that's consistent with the charter and consistent with procedural guidelines I'll cost reference that thank you madam sherff I might with with respect to your uh comments uh regarding how long this document's been in our possession uh and in public realm if if if you're aable it sounds like it it might be a good idea to have another discussion within the context of the if we're going to be doing word smithing uh detail good afternoon your honor uh any detailed word smithing perhaps with due regard to how much time we've already put into it if if a council member would like to come to
procedures committee and and engage in more word smithing that might be better handled in that context rather than as a gba item I'm open to that I would just say that we started this about a year ago um it was last spring I want to thank uh the city attorney's office for a lot of um a lot of of drafting a lot of looking at other ethics policies across North Carolina um so happy to set up another procedures meeting and give folks that opportunity I will just ask council members that are not on the procedures committee and happy to coordinate and make sure that that's a meeting that you can attend um to to make that effort so that we're not back here in a month or two that's all and I and I try and give wide birth uh to council members since this item is particularly Germaine to our inw workings the alternative is could just go ahead and vote uh since the work has been done but I I try and and come down with with uh difference to council members in any individual council members concerned so with that no I mean that that's why we've tried to be pretty
slow like we we I understand shared you know had a few rounds and meetings and provided council members with the text language so they would have a lot of time to ruminate on it um and then uh would rather set up another procedures committee meeting in the next just going to say in the next month though um ideally my original timeline was to get this passed before last budget and so I would like um both the ethics policy and the procedures policy that's coming uh to get get voted on by this Council before we go on our summer break so that that's kind of my timeline as procedures chair um again I can follow up with council member cook I know um your schedule is harder than than mine and make sure that you can come to the next procedures committee meeting if folks are open to that thanks I'll poll the house is is is the council amable to us referring this back to the procedures committee yet again um to engage in in uh any words smiing that Council recommend you all right okay all
right staff be advised that we're referring this B Mr Mayor good afternoon sir we're do going through pulled items do you want me to yield to gabble do you want me to continue you can continue um but in retrospect to that that topic we just talked about um it's been a lot of work putting into it but if you all are okay with going back then okay thank you Mr Mayor I just i' I've shared my piece as a procedures chair as long as we get procedures and ethics passed before summer break I am fine thank you okay yeah Mr Mar and I I was just trying to honor our longstanding tradition um and institutional um uh practice of of giving each individual council member wide birth when it comes to issues like this particularly Germaine to us uh so I was just trying to honor that tradition um all right item number five is is referred back item number seven council member Caballero I believe you pulled that I'll yield to you council member Caballero I had also had this on my list to pull I believe your question is relatively specific and I was going to ask for a
little bit of a summary on some of these items do you mind if the if I ask those questions first oh um yeah you can go ahead good afternoon Tenya Coleman assistant director of Community Development good afternoon to city council uh city manager mayor proam and mayor and council members thank you um good to see you I just was actually hoping that you would go over each of the four funding types that are listed in here just so that we have a clear understanding of what they mean um so I'm looking specifically from the um memo tax exempt multif family housing revenue bonds the low housing tax credit the arpa fund loan from the city and then the Deferred developer fee I know what all these are I just want to give a brief overview since it's an interesting piece where all of them kind of come together okay I will give you first the amounts particularly of the uh new bond funds
8 million uh I may need my colleagues from DJ to speak on the low the the tax credit loan that they that's backed by Fanny May that is on virtually ER okay we have someone on virtually I believe Eric Swan and cler do you see him okay if you would make him hearable pleas are are you calling on him to respond yes okay if you would make him accessible please Mr Swan can you go over the funding allocation I've given the two public sources uh the new Bond funding and the Opera funding but there are two other fundings the tax exempt loan Bond and the um developer deferred
8 million and the Deferred developer fees of 9,132 uh there's also uh uh $94,500 that
are included as a public housing Capital fund Grant uh which is uh allocated towards the relocation of residents who will be whose assistance will be transferred from uh the Oxford Manor property to the Sandy Ridge station uh project uh and then in terms of the tax credit Equity again there's a total of1 m338 76 there thank you I just wanted that break down so thank you so in addition can we actually get that kind of stuff listed in our memos our next several projects the reason I pulled it is because I know some of our projects have actually vouchers associated with it and I didn't I knew this one didn't but uh in a federal context that we have I'd like all Community Development memos being provided to council where we have lots of different pots of money uh what is local what is federal what is private uh and then um any updates as these come
forward I I'll just say that there's a lot of affordable housing uh deals that kind of got glued together during Co because of construction overruns and things like that and I think it's going to be really important that council is very hyper aware of these projects and what that is what's happening at the federal level uh because we could lose them and we need to know uh what's coming so that's just for for not just this memo but all of the kind of where we had to back fill with arpa dollars there's like seven to nine projects if I'm not mistaken um there's going to be there's the projects where the county put in their doll and the city put in separate dollars so that's just for Community Development staff to have more details in in in the memos moving forward thank you did you director please approach good afternoon city council mayor and mayor protim um and members of the city of Durham's um staff I just wanted to give you guys an update related to the
federal funding for the project voucher program my name is Ashanti Brown and I the Chief Operating Officer from the Durham Housing Authority so recently um we actually just got a continuing resolution for our voucher funding um and it's actually an increase to the voucher funding of $3 billion across the country and so that's actually relatively good news because other federally funded programs did not see an increase um and one of the key things is that with a lot of these transactions if they do include Project based vouchers they will actually be transfers of assistance from exist communities that are already assisted and so it's not a requirement to get new assistance but moving assistance from one place to another thank you Miss Brown would you mind providing um an email to council with that same information yes ma'am thank you thank you coun m cook were you were you done okay C were you done yeah and I appreciate that that that's rare bit of good news these days
thank you C member R thank you mayor pend just Also to clarify in case it's not not already clear that that these are we the city's being asked to approve these bonds this is by federal law but these are bonds these are these are tax exempt um uh multif family housing revenue bonds that will be issued by the Housing Authority so it's the housing author's obligation to repay but by federal law we're just we're asked to appr approve that so just to be clear we're not this is not additional bonding Authority the city's being asked to take on this is the DHA so thank you for being here right council member Baker is this um is this permanent affordable housing is this a 30 year it is 30 year 30 year and then what happens after after the 30 years I have to defer to the their project we typically renew the housing assistance payment contract at that time okay and is that for both seven and eight items seven and eight yes okay all right colleagues anyone else all right item number seven uh is discharge we're moving on now to item number 18 that was pulled by council
member cook I believe is that 16 is presentation presentation good afternoon mayor Williams Mayor Protam Middleton city council I am Sid Miller I am assistant director of the Department of Water Management hi good afternoon Sid um so I just had a couple of questions about this the first is can you just give us a bit of a summary um about what water rights we have to Jordan Lake with respect to and and so the benefit to working with chadam and Pittsboro and and how that kind just give us a little bit of background on how that works I'll try okay thanks I'll try to keep a little yes um so Jordan Lake is a federal uh multi-purpose Reservoir um it's owned and operated by the core of
engineers um there is a contract between the core and the state in which the state owns the water supply storage within that Reservoir and then the state has a whole process um has a statute and it has rules about how it sub allocates that water supply storage owned by the state to units of local government so we've gone through that process uh and the city has uh the right to 165% of that storage which is expected to yield on average 16 A5 million gallons of water per day so that's our share um chattam county has I think 133% um Pittsboro has I think it's 8%
um and then aasa has 5% and so and and before you like spend a lot of time taking notes you can always shoot me an email and I can just send you a table that's so I I the actual breakdown of percentage isn't as important to me I'm I'm curious how how we work inner inter city and Intercounty with Pittsboro and chadam to secure that supply and because what I'm seeing is that we have this is the fourth amend amendment to this and this is only um phase one um and so we've we have had to see and two out of the three of the former amendments also had an increase in spending and so I'm just curious about it seems like that has been tracking a few different reasons but one of them seems to be our relationship with chadam and Pittsburgh that is that has and correct me if I'm wrong but in at the process in some way and caused
there to be some increase in our spending and so I just was hoping you could help me understand that part so we do have partners and it makes things messy and it makes things take longer but I don't think you can point to the partnership as the cause for the length of time that's taken because this is only one piece of the western intake partnership program right so part of it is governance and figuring out how we all work together now and in the future but there's also four other components of the project there's environmental permitting there's all kinds of preliminary engineering and so forth um so all of these things is the combination of all these things that kind of conspires to make things take longer sure um you you point to the amendments to this program management contract um there have been there this is the
fourth which brings us into phase two theoretically there will only be one more Amendment after this which will be the Fifth Amendment for the construction phase of the project great you actually answered another question that I had which is what we expected to see um can you talk about I'm assuming there are also benefits to those Partnerships but can you talk about the benefits to those Partnerships as well um yes and I can I've been mired in this for quite some time and I try to hold on to that thought of benefits okay great um so there are benefits um so right now it pretty much is the city of Durham we're doing this right we have these Partners some of which well they're all at different places within their needs for water now and in into the future right those are the partners that we
have now um the benefit of the partners is that when they do realize that they have the need and the need is more impending then they buy into what we are building or have built so we are essentially fronting a lot we will see it come back um so that's kind of the the the base um there are other allocation holders of Jordan Lake water supply there are currently there's currently just one intake in the lake and it's owned by carry and Apex there will only be a second intake that will be owned and operated by us all allocation holders holders other than carry Apex and Morrisville will need to come to our intake in order to access their water supply
storage so right now we're working with three other partners in the future there will be more Partners thank you that was super helpful those are all my questions thank you council member council member R thank you m m for being here and Mr gy as well could you also just high level for the council share I know there was some miscommunication during the recent case about picket apartments that that that were taking water from Jordan the city has no intake for for Jordan right now right and can you explain as as Mr gy has done about like long range in terms of water for the for the city and county what we're thinking I know Don has mentioned in the past it's almost like every 50 years you need a new source so can you give the big picture and why Jordan is so important to us going forward as we grow as a city so the heart of that Jordan Lake is the cheapest water supply at least in the triangle if not North Carolina um the cost of that water
8 million and we pay a small percentage of that for our share of that water supply right what we're in the process process of Designing and building now will provide for the city up to the year 2060 or so the next increment of Supply that we would look at after that is probably another share or larger share of that water supply storage in Jordan Lake that's probably our next source so we'll continue we will continue to rely on Jordan Lake um beyond that um oh is that f for the future correct correct so right now we're looking out to the year 2070 so we're going to need additional
Supply beyond that um tier quy that we're working on now is another piece of that we will have that sooner than 2060 hopefully we'll have that somewhere around the time that we have Jordan Lake coming online and then beyond that um would probably at this point would probably be an increase in the size of Lake Mickey which is expensive right oh yeah yeah much more than yeah I mean Western IND partnership that's expensive lake mgee is yeah it's going to be more than that colleagues there anyone else on item number 18 all right then oh go ahead good afternoon mayor mayor Pro 10 members of council I did want to add just additional comments about the benefits of of going to this project which I think are very important number one is the fact that we are building the
intake in these facilities for and with our partners is helps immensely when through the permitting process as Sid mentioned but also dealing with all the Regulatory Agencies because the the intake is a shared facility because that's where the water's coming out the other is the benefit is is we are uh will be approaching the the legislature to see if there is participation available potentially financially to be able to build to um build for a regional project like this um the city of Stanford um two three years ago um the state legislature um ordered them $30 million for the expansion of their water plant for the growth that they we're seeing in chattam County so we think with the benefits with our partners we think we we our fingers crossed if we can leverage some participation in this project because it is a very expensive project I just wanted to add those two things thank you thank you so much all right colleagues that uh disposes of item number 18 we'll
move on now to item number 19 I believe council member wrist and cook both pull that I'll yeld to you council member risk to get us started good afternoon mayor mayor protim members of council my name is Lori mcgomery I'm a senior engineering manager in the Department of Water Management thanks M Montgomery thanks for coming um just have one question so I I think the um obviously the work we're doing with the biosolids to sort of to utilize them as in ways that are not just simply going into the landfill of the transfer station is important my question is simply uh and this came up at a recent U Jordan Lake one Water conference I seem to recall there was some concern in Orange County that bio cells were being sprayed in agricultural lands and that those bio cells contain PESAS or POSAS so to what extent to what extent are are we monitoring these biosolids for any PESAS or POSAS and to what extent could that get into our agricultural lands if it's if it's being if it's being uh um applied to to agricultural lands so one
thing is that the state has recently required all landfills that are receiving biosolids to begin testing for PESAS that's actually one of the cost increases that is a reason for this amendment um so it's being monitored by the landfills and EPA has recently released some guidance that is so far very general and very vague um looking into how utilities may be required to Monitor and deal with P in the biosolids um the Department of Water Management also has a biosolids and bioenergy study underway looking at the future of how we will handle our biosolids and that as part of that study we are also evaluating what future methods we might Implement for dealing with biosolids that that would reduce or possibly destroy PS so we're looking at
that on several different fronts great I appreciate being aware of that and being vigilant so thank you so much thank you council member council member cook you hey good to see you um so I actually have a very very specific question which is one of the reasons that was listed for the cost increase talks about the third-party contractor um and it talks about them failing to keep up with the plants production rate due to Personnel Resources and I was just wondering if you could talk speak to that at all um and whether or not that's a concern moving forward um I know that there's not like a lot of companies that are doing this work right um and so I know that we are restricted in that regard but if you could just speak to that shortage and how it affected us sure big the primary reason reason for their inability to keep up at one point during that period that was referenced in the memo was just staff shortages on their end the the labor market was very tight across all sectors and they were having trouble finding enough people to
come do the work so during that time they also had the unfortunate luck of having a lot some equipment failure and they had a difficult time finding parts to repair the equipment that's located at the North Durham plant that's part of the biosolids um processing and the compost processing they've resolved those issues we've been working very diligently with the contractor to try and make sure that they are able to meet the requirements of the contract that the city has with them things are going much better at the moment um but it is still a concern that we have it's something we're monitoring very closely we continue to work with them but but going forward we want to make sure that the north Durham plant does have adequate Budget on this contract so that if we get into that situation again we will have another Outlet immediately that we can use to handle the biosolids that are being
generated we don't want the composting process to continue to be the only outlet that we have okay thank you that was helpful those are my questions thank you so much colleag anyone else on this item all right we've disposed of all of our our pulled items by my Reckoning going to move now on to our presentations the first presentation is item number 16 Vision zero action plan presentation and approval but uh staff PRI I'm we have uh a couple of neighbors who want to speak on this I'm gonna I'm just going to go ahead and let them speak before we do the uh presentation uh Chris perlstein and John Talmage if you're in uh chamber with us are they on Madam clerk are they on are they here I see n is Chris here hey how are you good afternoon thank you for being with us you have three minutes thank you uh thank you City Council Members um I think the the first thing I'd like to say um on this is that I appreciate the fact that um you all have supported us having a vision zero coordinator and developing an action plan and I'm going
to be a bit presumptuous and assume that the action plan is going to pass um I also want to say that this is uh a big effort and so I really appreciate all the staff members that were involved with this um transportation department uh obviously Lauren work um Public Works uh all the emergency services that kind of stuff and community members that were part of this um I also want to emphasize that this is sort of the first step um passing the action plan means that this is what we want to do but we have to do it and that's going to require your continued support uh that's going to include um you know political support but also financial support uh one of the big things that stands out to me in this presentation I've already seen parts of it um is is the fact that ncdot streets are most streets um some of that's because of the volume um some of that's because of the road configuration and we have to find a way to work with them uh to improve these streets in order to achieve our goals so you kind of look at that and think about how we can in the next 20 years get to our goal of zero
deaths and serious injuries thank you thank you so much for being with us Thomas good afternoon sir good to have you with us you'll have three minutes thank you very much I'm John Tage executive director of bike Durham and longtime Durham residence uh I'm also here to say thank you um and thank you to the staff for the hard work in getting to this point where the vision zero action plan is ready for your consideration we have bike Derm has long been supportive of the city's commitment to Vision zero uh established back in 2017 um also been long frustrated with the slow pace of of change it was in November of 2022 at the world day of remembrance for road traffic victims that uh we called on the city council and staff to do two actions that were
identified by the national Vision zero Network as fundamental to seeing progress uh toward Vision zero and that is one high Vision zero coordinator so somebody's dedicated to managing the process um building relationships with all the partners it takes to make the changes and two is have a vision zero action plan and so we are grateful that we are here uh today and that you all have invested in the position of division zero coordinator and that the staff has has taken this so seriously uh and I just will Echo Chris's comments about this being a milestone there's a lot of work uh ahead of us to see the real change so that um we are not seeing deaths and serious injuries on our roadways um and finally in addition to the the projects and the money it is also a culture change so it's they know that it's a culture change within this
organization but the partners um I'm glad that John sandor from ncdot is here um NCD has to be uh a close partner of the city in order to accomplish the uh the goals thank you very much thank you so much for being with us all right let's go with the presentation good afternoon uh mayor mayor proem members of city council my name is Lauren Grove I'm the vision zero coordinator of the city of Durham and I'm here today to present the final draft Vision zero action plan and while I am the one Speaking today uh this work is supported by City staff partner agencies local organizations and community members who are part of the vision zero working
group Vision zero Coalition and our joint efforts to achieve zero traffic dust and serious injuries on our roadways and Durham and I want to take the time to give those folks kudos they believe in this life-saving work they are behind this commitment and some of whom are literally behind me here today the vision zero working group our city staff from 10 different departments and I'm going to name those departments if you're here behind me if you could just raise your hand so you can be acknowledged City and County Planning Community safety fire Fleet Management General Services neighborhood Improvement Services Parks and Recreation Public Works police and transportation our partners at ncdot our traffic safety unit and division 5 who are here with us today and members of The Vision zero Coalition some of whom you've heard from but they are folks
from our Public School System County Public Health local organizations and Community groups thank you to everybody here today to who watch ing from afar and who has actively participated and engaged in this work technical difficulties thank you there we go okay thanks I also want to take a moment to acknowledge and honor lives lost on our roadways in Durham and the family and friends who've had endure this unimaginable loss due to traffic crashes today we will talk about data and numbers crashes deaths serious injuries but we cannot let statistics make us forget the human toll the pain of losing a loved one or having your life permanently altered by a serious injury is something numbers can never fully
capture so as we move forward I ask that we not just listen to this presentation not just see these numbers but truly commit to action let's approach this work with the urgency it deserves because behind every data point is a life that should still be here today if we don't act this plan our vision zero resolution are just words on paper but if we do we have the power to prevent these tragedies and create a city where nobody has to fear for their life just trying to get home the vision zero action plan is a composite of four key inputs Community feedback from our vision zero input map historic crash data using crash reports in the city of Durham best practices including the Safe Systems approach and public health framework and team guidance from our vision zero working group and vision zero Coalition who formed in the summer of 20124 and I've met monthly for the last eight months combined these guide strategic
approaches to achieving our vision zero commitment to reduce traffic DS and serious injuries by 50% by 2035 and end traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2045 the community feedback we received over the course of 2024 and continue to receive comes from the online interactive Vision zero input map staff attended 12 community events in the summer of 2024 to launch the map collect feedback in person and engage with people on their traffic safety concerns as of December 2024 there were over 550 comments with people most concerned about p pedestrian safety which are the orange dots that you see on this map here across all modes the biggest locational concern is speed followed by lack of safe infrastructure like missing sidewalks lack of safe Crossings and drivers failing to yield team guidance including the vision zero working group and vision zero Coalition is a crucial piece of this
action plan with multidisiplinary expertise and experience across organizations combined with the passion and enthus iasm for change we came together to brainstorm priorities and actions to support these priorities these are categorized into themes and during the vision zero Workshop that we held in the fall of 2024 we brought together groups to further refine a Durham specific strategy for vision zero we heard that we need stronger agency coordination more meaningful and fun Community engagement a culture of safety better transportation and land use policy and safer infrastructure these five priorities are established by our vision zero teams and included in this action plan in the next few slides I'm going to share some crash data that inform the action plan it is all uh crashes within the city of Durham from 2017 to 2023 unless otherwise noted over in this graph you'll see that over a 10-year period in the city of Durham fatal and
serious injuries are going in the wrong direction notably in The Last 5 Years From 201 19 to 2023 we have a higher number of traffic deaths and serious injuries compared to the 5year time frame from 2014 to 2018 when we look at who is being impacted we see that Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately impacted by traffic deaths and serious injuries black people account for 36% of Durham's population yet they account for 53% of serious injuries and 49% of fatalities and traffic crashes Hispanic people account for 15% of Durham's population yet 177% of serious injuries and 19% of fatalities vulnerable Road users are over represented in fatal crashes in the city of Durham pedestrians are involved in 2% of all crashes however they account for 26% of fatal crashes motorcyclists 18% and bicyclists
2% in fact pedestrian involved CR crashes account for the highest percent of fatal crash types in Durham and when we look at other common crash types we see over representation of drivers who run off the road make left turns hit fixed objects and Collide head-on notably angle crashes like a T-bone crash are not over represented but they do account for the highest percent of serious injury crashes by understanding these patterns and the underlying causes we can identify the right solutions to prevent future tragedies underlying all of this are the contributing factors to fatal crashes we see speeding recklessness and wrong way maneuvering contributing to a majority of fatal crashes this is reflecting what we've heard from the community concerns about speed so as roadways get wider with multiple Lanes these outcomes are more
likely for example 9% of the city's roadway Network have more than two lanes yet those type of roadways account for 59% of fatal crashes with multiple Lane roadways drivers are given more opportunities to speed and maneuver dangerously and this is not always an active Choice people behave in response to their physical environment that is our built environment influences our Behavior this is why we see so many of the same streets appearing in fatal and serious injury crashes over and over these aren't just rans random incidents they're patterns the streets in Durham the highry network make up just 10% of our roads yet they account for 74% of all traffic deaths and serious injuries that means we know exactly where our biggest safety problems are these corridors aren't just dangerous today they'll continue to be unless we take action this is where we need to
focus our e efforts because if we fix these streets they'll save the most lives and we can focus our safety efforts reverse the upward Trend and address the high andry Network by doing the most critical things really well so instead of taking a scattershot approach this action plan sets a focus on the fundamentals better land use and transportation policy safer infrastructure that protects our most vulnerable Road users Community engagement and education that highlights disparities and progress in traffic crashes stronger coordination within and across agencies and building a culture of safety with that prioritizes saving lives over convenience these fundamentals are exactly what we heard from our vision zero teams and these don't stand alone they actually align with best practices that treat Transportation as a system of components that work together to achieve safety
benefits this Safe Systems pyramid modeled after the health impact pyramid is an action-oriented Public Health framework designed to improve safety at the population level the key takeaway is this the further down the pyramid we go the bigger the impact because interventions at the base change the system itself rather than relying on individuals to change their behavior historically Transportation safety models have leaned heavily on strategies at the top of the pyramid more signs more warnings more public awareness campaigns but we know that telling people to drive safely doesn't change the reality of a dangerous road what works a combination of policy safe roadway design and meaningful engagement these are the interventions at the bottom of the pyramid where we can reshape the system to make safe Behavior the easy default choice and none of this happens in a vacuum so you can see diagonally agency
coordination is the thread that ties all of this together without it these strategies remain isolated efforts rather than a transformational shift so A Safe Systems approach isn't just about streets it's about how we design the places around them that's why our first action is updating our land use code to ensure our built environment supports safety from the start by prioritizing safety of vulnerable Road users and aligning with nationally recognized Street safety practices standards in our unified development ordinance can help to reduce vehicle miles traveled the amount of driving in a place is a predictor of traffic deaths so a reduction in vehicle miles travel saves lives and this is very timely City and County Planning are leading the update to the city's unified development ordinance and we have been collaborating to incorporate better standards for multimodal design street cross-sections that align with National Association of
city transportation officials design guidance and shifting to a comprehensive Transportation review that increases multimodal connectivity updating our land use code shapes how development happens and we also need to ensure that when our streets are built or redesigned or resurfaced they prioritize safety by Design that's why our next action is creating a street design manual to make safety the default in every project the street design manual will serve as an adjunct to the Udo linking land use and transportation standards and create Street typologies based on land use context and protecting more vulnerable Road users by setting standards that reduce conflicts between Road users we reduce exposure to driving which has the strongest impact on safety elements that protect vulnerable Road users and reduce vehicle speeds such as narrower streets roundabouts safe and frequent Crossing
and protected pedestrian and bicycle facilities can reduce fatal and serious injury crashes for all Road users by 15 to 82% setting these as city-wide standards and creating Street types that incorporate land use context and city-wide goals means that we build it right the first time better utilizing the city's resources so that everyone in experiences safer streets having clear design standards is essential we also need a process to evaluate whether our streets are actually working as intended that's where Road Safety audits come in conducting Road Safety Audits and implementing proven safety counter measures is one of the actions to address approve improvements in the built environment this can reduce total crashes by 10 to 60% with this action we aim to establish a road safety audit program that assesses high inury Network locations and areas around schools that are near
highry Network corridors these Road Safety assessments would be done at site specific locations in person with a multi-disciplinary team assessing conditions and identifying necessary safety improvements rsas would result in formal recommendation reports creating a pipeline of safety projects with short and long-term recommendations that can be quickly moved into design speaking of quickly we need to get back better and faster at project delivery this is key to achiev achieving Vision zero Milestones by 2035 and 2045 creating a quick build program including a policy for implementation and toolkit will help to address safety concerns more rapidly the policy for quick build would include the criteria for eligibility and the toolkit would outl outline the types of elements that classify as quick build it may also include ways that volunteers or the community can be more involved in the
implementation and maintenance of these elements showing the community what's possible especially in neighborhoods that have not had this type of safety investment is crucial to creating a culture of safety and equitable distribution of resources managing safe speeds is crucial to addressing the severity of traffic crashes in Durham we saw this in the data we hear this from the community this plan focuses on developing a speed management plan that will provide recommendations to reduce speed limits and speeds Citywide we know that speed is one of the most crucial factors in determining if somebody survives a traffic crash so the goal would be to analyze existing speed limits observe speeds and Implement speed limit changes to reduce driver speeds Citywide not in all cases will a change in speed limit result in a speed reduction so physical changes would be implemented
to support new speeds were necessary and finally sharing traffic safety data getting better at reporting documenting and celebrating progress we plan to release an annual report on Vision zero progress develop a vision zero data dashboard updated quarterly find ways to regularly report safety data to elected officials and other decision makers such as reports on traffic deaths and serious injuries at Council meetings and feature stories from the community such as their experience with traffic safety and celebrating projects that have been implemented in their community so how does this all work together these actions will inform each other so findings from the road safety audits will inform standards that are outlined in the street design manual results from quick builds will be featured on the vision zero data dashboard speed management techniques May inform elements in a future Udo
update these actions aren't operating distinctly but rather as components of a system and here in Durham we want to improve that system by starting with the fundamentals and here is a broad overview timeline this is not just a schedule it's a road map for how we build momentum and set ourselves up for long-term success and we're already making progress two of these actions updating the Udo advancing Traffic Safety insights are already underway but over the next 5 years our focus is twofold improving Street safety now while building the capacity to sustain this work over time this means strengthening the systems that make safety possible better transportation and land use policies so our built environment supports safety by Design redesigning our most dangerous streets with proven strategies using data data and collaboration to inform decisions streamlining project delivery
so safety improvements happen faster getting better at reporting documenting and sharing Su successes to sustain momentum so we're not trying to do everything at once we're being intentional about focusing on what works so we can do it really well the goal is not to check boxes it's to build the muscle we need to take on bigger challenges in the year ahead so our ask is for Council to approve this Vision zero action plan which means three key commitments number one prioritizing improvements on the highend network we commit to targeting our resources on the subset of corridors that account for a majority of traffic dust and serious injuries doing so allows the city to focus its resources where the need is highest on corridors where people die or are ser L injured year after year number two establishing dedicated funding for vision zero we prioritize
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visionz that concludes the presentation and our transportation team looks forward to answering any questions you may have thank you so much for a great presentation colleagues I I'll open up now to the council for questions and comments anyone want to jump in council member Freeman thank you appreciate the presentation and I've been looking forward to us actually having a vision zero coordinator um on staff and I appreciate also um your coordination with the mayor's count committee for people with with different abilities um I did want to ask uh do we have like a a account that's we kept rising up for me the question uh account of how many streets city streets there are in total is there a total number that's what I could I couldn't find anywhere yeah the total number of total miles of city streets in the city of number of streets number of
streets and this is mainly based on um the audits that we're doing okay and kind of like giving some some context um I don't have a number of city streets we know the mile Center Line mile 809 809 is a number 89 Street 89 miles and could you tell me what um 10 Street audits would cover is that like how many miles would you say that would cover well so it really depends there's a couple of way to do uh audits you can do them at the intersection or you could do a corridor level audit what tends to happen if you do it at an intersection generally the intersection is a function of the corridor itself um and so you could look at that intersection and see there's multiple lanes that need to be addressed for an entire Corridor and that Corridor could be anywhere from 1 to 5 miles long and
so you could identify improvements for that five mile long Corridor based on on what you're seeing at that intersection so you said by intersection or quarter mile or at the corridor level um Corridor Corridor Street corridor sorry I I imagine it's allergies lines are going to be kicking actually recovering from the flu but yes been fun glad you're here thank you you can make it uh I I appreciate you powering through I I I just um I'm trying to and I'll just say in general I I like to have more Automation in the process and so I just want to know what it looks like to figure out or for us as a council to be able to support this work moving forward how best to support some more Automation and and policymaking so that those audits
because what I tend to see is a is a is there's a group meeting and they're going to tell me about the petition they're working on because their Road does not have speed bumps and there's too many Speeders and I'm trying to put pieces together so that there a little bit more streamlined because I don't think they all belong in like cmsr um yeah so if there's any that's kind of like where I'm going and if there's some like timelines that look like you know this section of the this quadrant of streets is what you're looking at at you know January February March like that level of detail would be so helpful sure yeah so in the appendix of the action plan there are work plans to for each of the s and for the road safety audit specifically our goal is to do two every year and it would be a series of audits so it could be five intersections at one time in the fall and then another five intersections in the spring and those would be uh result
and formal recommendation reports so we'd have this sort of that pipeline of safety projects and we would use the high endry Network as our starting point for identifying where we would do road safety audits um and that would be a multidisiplinary team that would come together ncdot City staff folks from the County Public Schools um making these assessments identifying Uh current issues on site as well as using a lot of the crash data traffic volume data to inform the recommendations and so we want to make it programmatic um and so if you're hearing from folks and they happen to be on a highry network Corridor this is potentially one programmatic way we can address safety in those areas and along um those streets that's helpful I have one more but I'll back thank you council member council member begar thank you thank you so much for this work um if you just look around the
room uh and multiply everyone in this room times three you'd almost reach the number of people that have been killed in the past five years and uh this is a pandemic that doesn't not only doesn't go away it gets worse every single year uh in our city in cities across North Carolina across the South um and if you look at the if you look at the data it's worse in North Carolina it's worse in the South per capita than it is in the Pacific Northwest where they've already implemented a lot of these things and um internationally um were if you compare us to our International peers were 300 400% higher on a per capita basis because of the built environment that has been created over decades um and that we that we live in today and if we look at the the most dangerous streets there's also just correlation with the number of pedestrians that are on those
streets the number people that are bike that are biking so it could be that some of our most dangerous streets haven't even been built yet um until we really implement the DNA changes the design changes to the new streets that we are building which is obviously much more cost effective than going back it's so expensive to go back and fix the dangerous streets that have already been built um so I I appreciate those first two implementation actions that you listed of development regulations and um the street uh design manual because not that those are priorities but those are the biggest bang for your buck um those are the um you know the the biggest return on your on your investment is just making sure that when you build those new streets that you building them according to uh best design uh practices um I I had a question about if you could just go into the dashboard that you
mentioned and just talk a little bit about what you imagine that looks like and what that includes sure yeah so there's a lot of really great examples other cities that have done data dashboards that are interactive um public facing for the community I'd point to the city of New York and the City of Austin New York's is especially promising um because they feature not only the crash data so the crash points themselves in the highry network they also feature projects so it's a way for the community to track where projects are happening what types of projects and these are things anywhere from signal changes to implementing sidewalks to traffic calming so people can really get a sense of what's happening in their neighborhood and that's on the dashboard as well they also feature Community engagement events on this dashboard so it's very comprehensive and it really is the Hub uh the place for people to go to find out what's going on um the additional feature that I would add is
our vision zero input map that we have where people can drop a pin on a street or an intersection identify their Traffic Safety concern I would make that part of the data dashboard as well so you know we are proactively addressing uh safety concerns as well as showing the historic um traffic safety issues in those in those areas I'm just curious do you think that one of the greatest would you say that what what are some of the biggest metrics that would correlate you think with traffic deaths would be like VMT I think well a reduction in in traffic dust and serious injuries is one way that we're going to measure ourselves a reduction in speeds especially where we Implement safety projects seeing speeds go down means we're going to see less severe crashes those are the two main metrics when we're talking about Vision zero and then you can talk about the increases so increases in pedestrian and bike activity where we've done safety Improvement projects there's ways to measure that and use that as a as a
metric for success and then we can also use Community engagement and feedback as another metric do you feel safer in your neighborhood with this new infrastructure um so those are a couple of the ways that we can really measure if we doing it well that are also readily available to us from a data uh collection perspective and so there's an irony here too because when you put people on their feet or uh on bikes they're much more vulnerable they become the vulnerable users and they feed into um the the the metrics that we see of of traffic deaths and yet uh we have to strug with that because that is the way to redu to reduce the number of people that are in their vehicles that are in this dangerous moving metal object that's that's flying down the road and so that's just something that we have to struggle with and be aware of when we're looking at the metrics too um I I'd be curious um for the metrics and for the dashboard if we could in somewhere and I
think I think maybe this is the right bucket to to put it in but look at vehicle miles travel and just track that annually are we going in the right direction on stuff like that um and then what are the things that feed into vehicle miles traveled and increasing or reducing that what are the elements of the built environment that reduce or increase that so would it what would those things be I would be interested in us exploring that is that the percentage of residents that are within a quarter mile of food sources or those kinds of things um the housing plus trans ation index I'm sure you're aware I would be interested in feeding that into the metrics and tracking that annually to see which direction we're going in um the average walk score the average bike score um I just want to I want to see where we're headed with with those and um as they're they're correlated to to this work that you're doing um and then the percentage of residents who drive alone to work I think um you know I saw
a lot of a lot of these things um scattered throughout um the the vision zero action plan so really really appreciate the work that you're doing um as was mentioned I think by one of the community members you know we need to see this as a as a first step and then there are many more steps to follow um and tackling the lwh hanging fruit and then doing the hard work of putting some skin in the game and and um you know infrastructure is expensive and so being being thoughtful and careful about about proceeding with that as well so thank you thank you council member colleagues anyone else council member cook thank you um thanks it was a great presentation and I wish you all the best and overcoming the flu which seems ranted this season um I have just a couple of questions the first one is that I I saw and maybe I just didn't know this from before but i' i' feel like we we hear this um 10% of streets causing 74% of the serious accidents and deaths
um but that excludes major highways and I was wondering if you could speak to that exclusion why it's there and also what impact that would make on the statistics sure yeah so um the high inry network is a model that was developed about 10 years ago in the city of San Francisco and many cities use use it as a way to prioritize where to focus their resources it is best practice to exclude major highways major interstates from the analysis um for a couple of reasons mainly the cities that do this have uh very little control over what happens on those major interstates yes we have a lot of state owned roadways we partner with ncdot on a lot of our surface level streets but those major highways um definitely different set of priorities and functions for so including them we like to exclude those so we can really focus on the subset that we have more control over um if we were to include those uh
highways definitely are a safety issue and the percentage would in increase slightly um but actually we see more traffic dust and serious injuries on our surface level roadways where we have more intersections more traffic signals um where we have multiple functions so the majority of those are happening on uh surface level streets can you just give me a definition of surface level stre yeah sorry um uh it would be streets that are not elevated or streets that are uh kind of controlled access so no on or off ramps um a lot of our downtown Urban core streets Suburban streets things like that so you're not only just trying to move Vehicles really fast like a highway it these streets are serving multiple functions that was really helpful thank you um and then my next question is mostly focused on the quick build toolkit um let me pull that back up real
quick one second while you're pulling that up can I ask for clarification when you on the surface streets when you say multiple functions you mean Street functions yeah so uh moving people and goods moving cars people walking biking uh there's different commercial activity yeah so was more activity yeah on those and different types of uses um that sort of thing yeah yeah I would just clarify think of a limited access Highway as bicycles and pedestrians are not allowed on a limited access highway so like 147 85 885 um if you're not allowed to have a a bike on it or you're not allowed to walk on it then we exclude those roadways from and every the surface streets are basically everything else and so um that's why uh we focus on the conflicts
with bicyclists pedestrians on those surface streets they are um they're effectively removed from those limited access highways would you introduce yourself to the audience please I'm Sean Egan I'm the transportation director thanks um so yeah so my next question is just about the the rapid Street improvements which seems to be mostly centered around the quick build toolkit and so I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit more about what that toolkit would look like I assume that y'all have already put a lot of work into that toolkit because I it looks like on your calendar of actions that it seems like you think you could get it implemented pretty quickly so we yeah so we have a traffic calming guideline currently at the city that has a lot of the elements that we would include in a toolkit and toolkit is just a planning jargony phrase for um literally having a menu of options and things to choose from on our roadways and so that's what we're talking about so we would watch to continue to build on what we already have in that traffic calming guideline
and create a formal policy for implementation so you can think of the toolkit as the what like the things we can pick from to put out on our roadways and then the policy would be more of the how like where what are the criteria what types of streets or neighborhoods would a quick build qualify for okay so I'm trying to understand I guess like we're talking about moving um this feels like the toolkit feels like more planning um and so I'm wondering like it just it to me it feels like another another hurdle to pass in order to get the things built is that am I I hear you no I hear you the think of it this way we we know what works but internally at the city we need to build that capacity and come to an agreement on those measures and have a formal policy that says here's what here's what the city
agrees to from a maintenance perspective from a safety perspective we kind of have to get the in our own internal house in order and come to an agreement on that to be able to then go out there and do that quickly and so where does that where does that come in like where will we be deciding on the actual policies I think what I was expecting to see in the action four is like actual policies we were like yeah going to move on so is that the next step and like do we have in the quick build toolkit where that will there be a streamlined method for getting policy approvals is that sort of the point yeah that is the point so um some of this work is being done through the Equitable and green infrastructure initiative so we have a consultant who's helping us to develop a traffic calming guideline and toolkit and the goal would be to quickly build on that policy see a a quick build component so agreeing to what the timeline is for a
quick build and moving to have an adopted policy um very soon so we can move on actually the project delivery uh timeliness okay yeah yeah I just I feel like um that the community is coming to us with like a sense of urgency I feel like you're you have also been coming to us with a sense of urgency and then I feel like but what could keeps getting put in front front of us doesn't feel like it matches that sense of urgency like I don't feel like I'm I'm of course excited to to um get this plan in action at our next Monday night meeting so in 10 days I guess it'll be considered approve but or today I don't know it's part of a presentation um but yeah I'm like I'm ready to like see the things that are actually going to implement the change I mean we saw like from the community engagement and I was at some of those that these things that feel like pretty straightforward and that we are starting to address sidewalks uh signaling CR safe Crossing these things that um of course we're
going to have plans for policies with those like to be built in the future but for the streets that we that exist now that don't have it like I'm ready to start moving so um yeah that's all that's my only comment is just that I'm like really excited to like see the things get put in front of us that y'all I know y'all have been developing and and I know you have best practices for um but otherwise this is okay well great um yeah this is an incredible it's an incredible document and I can see how much hard work has gone into it and I really just like want to appreciate you and all of the various departments that were included in those conversations um it's just such great framework for how we can tackle issues in the future uh for gun violence um homelessness strategies all of these things that implicate multiple departments in the city I just think it's a great program or Pilot uh for that collaboration so thank you very much much welc for all that work hey Sean hi I would just say um we're not waiting to start this work
this work is underway across the city and I think part of this building of culture is uh taking folks out council members and other city leaders out to the Southside neighborhood where we did a major traffic common quick build project as part of the resurfacing on Enterprise taking folks out to Irwin Road uh where we worked uh with our colleagues at ncdo uh to add vertically protected bike Lanes there uh going down U West Main Street from uh bright leaf and seeing uh what we've done with pavement markings and posts uh by the Duke East Campus so this work is already underway uh across the city you're going to be seeing it in the seven uh egi neighborhoods uh very soon uh but what we're really looking to do here is kind of build that muscle and scale up the the the types of work that have been proven effective across the city that we have successfully implemented but really yeah build that scale um and build the
speed of delivery but I think if you're if you're up for a tour um we'll get you out there thank you so much council member R thank you m PM um first of all yeah this is an exciting day so thanks so much to to miss Gro for bringing this plan forward thanks so much to the leadership interation director Egan Mr judge this has been great stuff I also want to thank my colleague who proceeded me on the city council who actually approved all this work thanks for your vision uh and your willingness to support this work um and as you know we're also this is not only a conversation in Durham we're talking about this every meeting of our what had been the npn now the sort of Transportation organization we talk about Vision zero all the time so this is really really good stuff um I want to appreciate some of the suggested actions including the annual progress report and the dashboard I think giving more visibility these numbers was really important and I've actually talked to the city manager about that and make making sure that we do have it's not it's not pretty numbers as you said and these are all these are all individual stories but having full visibility in that is really important so we can manage that and reach our goals of reducing those deaths to zero um I have
a couple questions so one is about the um the hyro network obviously that that analysis drives a lot of this which is great to see that um I guess my question is like how do we like as council member Freeman asked like how many roads you said it's 89 miles it's a lot of miles right so I know that's 10% of the of the roadway where the 75% of injuries occur but my guess is with this kind of stratified data that if you take took the top one or two% it's maybe 40 or 50% of all the injuries right so is there additional analysis to kind of dig in deeper there do like a heat map to show that because this this network we know this network right it's a lot of the major roads in Durham so yeah so how do we get begin to prioritize given limited resources and time like where do you start what are the of that hry Network what are the roads that are the biggest priorities and how do you how do you figure that out yeah so so 10% of streets in Durham is about 130 Mi so we need to further prioritize that number if you look at the top 20 corridors in the high Injury
Network that's 53% of of the highend network they're accounting for that much number so some of the qu is that in the report or is that no that's not in the report um yeah you know I've seen that but I mean the the the data here about like that yeah So the plan would be a lot of that's going to go on our data dashboard we're going to have more inform detailed information about the highry network what those top 20 corridors are what they account for um some traffic volume data so that's going to be a feature of the dashboard where people can interact and filter um as they wish but further prioritization is already happening we're already talking with our partners at ncdot specifically about the road safety audit piece because that's our first action that we want to get started with is as soon as this plan is approved and our partners at ncdot are going to be crucial for that that program is where do we start and so we've talked about a few factors one just how the high inury network is ranked so if you
go to the interactive map you click on the segments you can see that they have a ranking that's according to their crash severity and how many crashes they've had over that eight-year period from 2016 that's if you go on the map now you can do that right now yeah on our vision zero website there's an interactive map with the highend network on it um so that's that's a conversation that we're already having is looking at how they're ranked we're also talking about maybe focusing in on crashes that are happening at night in our action plan we identify that 80% of pedestrian fatalities are happening at night during dark conditions 80% it's a lot so if we can focus in on specific features of these crashes and use that as a mechanism to prioritize where we start Road safety audits that's also one thing that we're talking about so there's a lot of different ways to cut further cut the highry network we need to focus on what our priorities are and where we're seeing those over representations and crashes and pedestrian safety is
certainly one of those thank you for that um on the manage safe speeds action which is also really important I guess I'm wondering on that one you know as I understand the state sets the standard speed limit is like 35 Within cities right but we can change that right if we properly with proper signage so it's great that this is in the plan like why haven't we done that sooner um we have we are changing speed limits as it comes up so in our uh review of fatal and serious injury crash data that we have with ncdot every month as those opportunities arise to change the speed limit um we take them we go through that process and we've been uh successful at at doing so but that is sort of the ad hoc approach where it's one by one this particular action focuses on a Citywide strategic effort to reduce speed limits using a lot of different examples from the city of Austin city of Seattle both have done
this where they analyze speed limits Citywide and make me recommendations for a default in for example neighborhood areas A reduced speed limit like 20 or 25 in all neighborhood levels so that's where we want to go with this is to be able to do that strategically rather than you know just one by one right now thank you for that um you did mention dot I'm glad Mr sandor's here I think it's great thank you for for joining us um and you mentioned working with them how does this change the sort of relationship with DOT what is how does this report support can you say more about that yeah I mean we're continuing to build stronger collaboration with ncdot who we can't do this work without them so I think you know we have monthly meetings to review and serious injury crashes the road safety audit piece is going to be a huge component of collaboration of getting multidisiplinary multi- Agency buyin on formal recommendation reports to make safety improvements on ncdot roadways I think we could push that
further I think we could have formal partnership agreements that allow for specific safety improvements on ncdot roadways so that way we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we're reviewing a corridor or an intersection we have an agreement with our partners about the types of safety improvements that we would want to see and what we know ncdot would allow that would allow us to also move quicker so I think that um collaboration there will continue to grow as you know we've evidenced with Partnerships on Roxboro and Mangum and Duke and greggson and previous uh safety improvements on other roadways m f with your interactive map here last question or just I just want to thank Mr Egan the your comment I appreciate my thought was like can we not do a quick build faster but but I like what you're saying about how we're building the muscle to do that more frequently and more quickly so that I look forward to seeing that because I think that's part of what we need to do to show as k m cook said to show our residents that we're listening to them that we care and that we're moving with all um with all due speed to address the
changes they're asking for yeah and I mean conversations in the communities have been happening for well beyond this time of adopting Vision zero communities have been sharing their Traffic Safety concern is now and now it's time for us to actually act on improving those so if we click on the map here so so I clicked on one with is like this is looks like Markham here so do it ranks these you said it ranks them in terms of it will rank the high endry Network corridors yeah so um there should be a pop out when you click on those segments that has a variety of different information and one of that will uh a few of those will be the rank of that Corridor uh by a percentile so there's an average percent and then there's a high uh the highest percent rank okay I'll keep filling with that okay thank you so much appreciate no problem thank you Council mavier and good afternoon good to see you thank you so much for the presentation um I have a couple of questions one I'm in the
interactive map and it's like fat fatal and serious injury crashes and I'm just going to say that the differentiation in the color there is really hard to see on the screen so if we can have a little bit more because it's like a maroon and a red it's like a maroon and a red and most a lot of people aren't going to be able to see that great thank you for that feedback that that's little this is a great tool I really appreciate it um first of all this is long like many years of a lot of work uh with a lot of Community Partners and City staff and so just want to thank everyone of her folks for their advocacy and then um uh all the different partners um I all right I guess my thing is like I appreciate the Implement implementing the Vision zero action plan like the last Slide the immediate ask I guess when we do a prioritization within like our Capital Improvement plan and Designs like at some point we're going to have to make choices right where are we going to put money versus where are we not right or are we going to increase the money and so would love to know when is like that
decision Point coming because we can say yes right but we haven't seen the consequence and when I say consequence I don't mean that in a negative way I'm just saying like there's there's always consequences to decisions as far as money go right so um because at the end of the day as decision makers and we're the ones who have to say that to the public right um so would love to know that kind of interaction and I see Mr Egan so hi Sean Egan again uh so um you know we are in the midst of the budget process right now we had our budget retreats in February and your budget guidance um is uh really critical uh for the manager to be able to develop um his budget recommendations so I think you know the time is now to talk about um the extent to which this is a priority uh there are uh many uh requests for Capital Improvements uh that Transportation has provided all of
them will advance our vision zero goals um and so uh the U the more of them that we can get moving forward quickly now um that keeps us on track to hit those 2035 and 2045 goals to the extent um that because of resource constraints we're not able to move forward on those uh it it makes it much much more difficult for us to hit those 2035 2045 timelines um so uh it's uh now is the time to to um share your input as part of that uh budget guideline process on um the scale of uh investment um that the council is prepared to commit to thank you and I guess um same with the Staffing and I guess that's a question for the city manager you know I understand it's a we're in budget season I mean at some
point we have to see a list of of projects and and what what does vision adopting this what does this do to other projects other goals um at that I can say yes today and if I don't actually have a list of things that I'm choosing it doesn't really help me so at some point if that means we have to spend a dedicated amount of time because we didn't do a lot with CIP during the budget Retreats happy to do it um but at some point staff's gonna have to kind of guide us through that I'm happy to address sort of uh so when the council adopts uh plans and policy guidance uh we use that as staff when we review the budget uh and bring a budget back for council's consideration obviously uh this is not the only plan with recommendations and priorities that Council has considered blessing uh and um without putting the you know a little bit of what we do in the budget Retreat is to is to try and get a sense of where
the highest of the high priorities are um without ranking this against other plans and priorities I will do my best to to balance those things that you have placed priority on when I review the budget and then uh you'll get a chance to review my recommendation and make changes so I think um you know adoption of this action plan will uh will provide guidance to me uh but doesn't necessarily answer every question about what I will approve or not approve uh but when uh when I present that to the council you are free to ask me questions uh about how I made those choices and priorities and if you disagree with those that's why you get to adopt the final budget thank you so I look forward to that next step um um I will just say that the other piece of this is this is an interaction with the regional with with our TP um and so would love to know kind of how
that work is going because it was we got federal dollars to do that Regional Vision zero work would love to hear from you how that's going and then we can say yes to this today but at some point I'm assuming y'all are going to come back to us so what are our next steps as a council thank you yeah so the triangle West uh TPO is currently developing a regional Safety Action Plan and our plan is in lock step with their plan so a lot of the priorities and actions that are in that plan are very similar to what we're pursuing the high inury network is a product of that Regional Safety Action Plan development so it's the same data that we used um so we coordinating there and um their plans are to have uh they go to their board next week to release the uh action plan for comment and they are hoping to have that adopted in April so both of our plans will be ready for federal funding opportunity through Safe
Streets and roads for all um so we'll be able to point to both uh those plans and that collaboration there in terms of immediate next steps um the ask for Council is that uh the high inury Network that we presented today is our strategy so when we are going out to deploy safety counter measures it has to be on the high indry Network that's a shift from what we've been doing where we respond to a lot of community concerns and we we we can't stop that but we have to be able to say no we have to stop ourselves from spreading things too thin um and say yes to things on the high endry Network and that means a lot of the actions that you see here today um have to be prioritized and focused there for us to really really actually achieve Vision zero in the Milestones that we've set so um just I would say that's that's top of mine here this is this has to be strategic and and the highry network the data is that
thank you I really appreciate that that is what I need that quite frankly bluntness which at the end of the day comes back to us because we have lots of residents and there are some residents who are a lot louder than others and sometimes we are not good at telling people no I have no problem telling people no I am a mom of three teenagers I say no every day um so um I again I'm really excited we we will get that next Tuesday for those of us who are on the the TPO and then um just the the numbers are I mean we see this every year we get a we get a lovely update usually January or February every every year that I've been on the TPO and the numbers just keep going up and up and up and it's kind of horrifying um many of us now take transit bike walk partly because of the influence of of BAC and bike Durham and others uh to you know get out of your car and so um we I think all can you know have all been on streets syndrome that are scary to ride
on or walk on or across the street um so this is critically important work and then the the last question I have for you and this is really with ncdot I know that that sometimes we're not always aligned there that's the polite way of saying that and so just please count on your council members I look I'm really excited about our division five our new engineer um we have had some good conversations and so the more we can collaborate and um be innovative I think the the faster we're going to get to what we all want which is a lot a lot fewer people dying abut thank you yeah thank you thank quickly quickly just one um just point I want to make in relation to the TPO um and this is for the members of the council but also the public so we as you all know we've been at the TPO have been looking at the development of our 2055 Metropolitan Transit plan right and as we look at that we're looking at Big Data about like how the triangle is going to grow and and what those what those scenarios are and I think in in a
couple of scenarios I think we look at sort of what's the figure Sean is it sort of like like Mobility share or something share mod mod share right and so right now I think the mod share for like you know pedestrians and bikers is like what 1% or whatever it's almost yeah and so the level of investment that we need region wide to really provide opportunities safe opportunities for folks to bike and walk to where they want to get is going to be massive and even though some of those those projections of a 2055 show like mode share being maybe 4% by 255 so like we have a huge task in front of us that will take major investment so um just to put that out there I think we it does involve culture shift and behavior shift and it's going to take some time but we need to commit to that thank you thank you council member Mr May did you wanna jump yeah I had a few questions I'll be brief I know the next presentation is fairly long um I have a few stupid questions that I hopefully can get some clarity on um one I would like hard numbers know we're speaking in the
language of percentages but this is like you can send that to me later in email um but hard numbers in your presentation those that the percentages were based on um so in regards of the plan um one I'd like to know and this is also something you can give me later but I'd like to know I I want to identify the loow hanging fruit that it's differentiated between administrative and financial um I think as far as Financial we know the process we have to go through with that but if it's an administrative thing or decision that needs to be made I I think we I believe we can you know we can make decisions on that as soon as we need to um part of my stupid question is are we not able to just say across the city and neighborhoods we want the speet limit to be and then just make that policy is there some
prerequisite process yeah so said something about one one by one as it comes up yeah so um there is an engineering study that you would need to do to be able to come on up Bill yeah if you'd like to speak to this uh engineering study that you need to show and justify speed limit changes um so the speed management plan would kind of do that in one swath to be able to get out what your alluding to of setting a default speed limit on neighborhood streets so long as they meet a certain criteria the City of Austin all of their streets that are under a certain pavement width are signed at 25 miles per hour that's how they did it so that's one approach it's one way to think about it but there is an engineering study component to that and I'll let bill um speak more to that yeah no I think Lauren covered it pretty adequately but um so yeah you think back to when you took your first driver's test or driver ed class one of the questions probably was if you're on a road and there's no Post-it speed limit
what is the speed limit and if you're outside of city limits in North Carolina that's 55 in North Carolina if you're inside of City Limits Municipal limits it's 35 miles per hour the city has the authority to then set a lower speed limit on a city street or a different speed limit with an engineering study exactly as Lauren said but we have to go in document justify that for each Street um so we do that and we we we we do but um so this would be trying to take a larger look and classify based on Street type so yeah correct um that's one of the desires in my opinion I think that 35 Citywide speed limit for unposted speeds all across the state would be benefited to be lower to a lower speed based on the injuries and damage but um but that's the state statute yeah that's one of the
frustrating things about municipality work is this this Bureau bureaucratic process to do common sense things um so when you were talking about the audits auditing what does that process look like are we hiring a contractor to do it or are we having staff do like a shortterm task force or yeah what does that look like yeah so one of the first actions is to form a road safety audit team that's inhouse so we'd have a couple of thank you folks you just saved my line of question I was gonna prosecute this thing like so why do we need to get a contractor but you just answered it but go ahead great uh as Sean mentioned and as I've mentioned we have to build that muscle to be able to do the things because we have the control we are the ones implementing a lot of this so to be able to build that internal capacity in RSA team we'd have a couple of different departments involved uh similar to the working group and then our partner agencies like ncdot
6 million I'm still scarred from that because of City municipal processes so uh that that's that's why I was asking those questions um but yeah thank you for for this last question question um so we just did the bond and this might be a silly question as well but we just did the bond are
there any is there any Crossover with the bond service areas for streets and these high injury areas in if they are is in the bond is it possible to I know the bond has passed with the the scope of work but is it possible to do some type of like design in the name of repair so like how creative can we get with that sure so uh Sean Ean again Transportation director uh so the bond uh includes a number of project types that Advance our vision zero goals so uh $60 million for new sidewalks uh so some of those new sidewalk segments are on holway Street uh going out toward the village where we walked with the governor and secretary Budaj so the the bond uh will enable us to construct those missing sidewalk segments uh and keep uh folks safer uh
walking along Holloway which is on our high Injury Network uh we have a number of other roadways that are going we're going to be able to accelerate the resurfacing of city streets so uh every time that just like with Enterprise Street uh in Southside every time that we are doing a roadway resurfacing we uh are committed to making that street safer uh so what can we do with Lane widths with um pavement markings with posts um with little uh roundabouts little traffic circles uh in the middle that have the effect of calming traffic so as we as Public Works is able to with the bond funding accelerate the pace of those uh roadway resurfacings that means that those safety improvements arrive quicker because we are incorporating those and that is the most coste effective way uh and and quickest way for us to uh deliver these uh roadway
design changes is through a resurfacing it's a blank slate every time and now uh we're with the bond we're going to be able to uh significantly increase the the speed of delivery of those resurfacing projects thank you you're you're you're you're nailing my interest right on the head so thank you so much this is great I'll close with these comments um Mr manager uh the reason why I'm so excited is because I can clearly see a plan forward on how we're going to address Vision zero uh for traffic deaths um I have said this the last two times we've talked about this this is the type of approach that I want to see for gun violance and gain violance in our city as well um and I want to I want to see the same excitement from my colleagues and from the community interest as well um I was doing the numbers and you know the amount of uh people who've died or been killed by gun violence uh almost doubles this list and so I think that we are being able to better identify our top priorities and
as local elected officials um when we're coming to these seats I think the issues present themselves rather than our own focus our own interest um our scope of work is laid out for us and I was trying to find you know a dashboard or something around crime and it was really difficult it was a lot of documents I had to look through um so with that being said I I think that this work is this is this a crown this is a crown Joel this this approach and I think that as council member cook said earlier this is a model that we can take and how we can address some of our other issues as well so I really appreciate it thank you thank you Mr Mayor thank you colleagues we we had a dashboard on gun violence uh we turned it off um this is this is a uh this is a great presentation that was much um anticipated um I I want to talk as as a kind of a lay person and kind of Channel um this work Channel um a just a citizen looking at this as I've tried to look at it first off um I voted for the vision zero
plan Vis Vision zero coordinator um proudly because like gun violence I thought the same I wanted to bring the same energy to this problem if if if Durham residents and neighbors and friends are being killed that's a problem however they're being killed and it calls for absolute Ely we're obligated to throw the kitchen sink at them we knew what the highry networks were we knew the neighborhoods where folk were getting killed and to me it it it seemed just a ridiculous proposition to suggest to those folk that we need to focus on the root causes to just tell parents you need to raise better drivers um and not do speed bumps not do you know technological it's that would have been ridiculous to say right just raise better drivers so for me the two issues um deserve the same type of intervention and the same type of of urgency Ingenuity creativity throwing the kitchen sink at it so I was I was proud to vote for it I think it's a great uh thing that we have I do want to speak to um
specifically so the parts where we're overarching in a plan again this as a I'm trying to approach as a lay person not as a policy maker the parts that we have overarching it seem that some of it um and I mean this respectfully I'm not being respectful seems like cheerleading all right we're we're we already were on a trajectory to change our udl we're already we adopted a street design plan so some of it was already in motion um I would suggest that the Udo rewrite already anticipates what we're going to find out in the street audits that the whole per we're kind of retro engineering we we we we know um almost intuitively what makes a better and safer Street um so and we have experts on our staff that can go out and look at streets and tell you what the problem is without spending any money on an audit that knowledge is what's going to currently inform our Udo rewrite so we we can anticipate some of the stuff we need to do and we know which streets
aren't going to measure up to what the new stuff's going to be in the udl um that's not to pour water on the audit um function but I I do want to I think it's worth noting that we're not coming at this as with a TBL Ross or or on a blank we we we know a lot of stuff already there are conversations Partners around the country who have integrated a lot of stuff in their streets that we can look at and just cut and Pace uh uh if we wanted to so I I I want to you know assure our our voters and and our and our residents and and folk who watching this conversation that we're not starting with a blank slate um I do also I'm and and some of my council member uh colleagues alluded to this I I'm I'm a bit nervous um advertising that we're going to start a safe speed strategy strategy in 2027 and you know our vision zero qu would have been Vision zero Coordinator would have been working for a couple of years by then um people are dying and we've already said that speed is a big
contributing factor and I think I've heard staff say that we're already in a de facto sense already doing so if we're already doing speed type interventions we should take credit for that now I I I I don't feel comfortable posting that we're going to start that in 2027 when we know how how significant speed impacts these deaths particularly if we are in fact doing work already we should we should say that we should say this work is started now and if we're going to do a more robust intervention in 2027 fine but I don't want to tell voters that hey speed's a big factor we're getting to work in 2027 on it um particularly if we're doing it now so I would recommend that we we take credit for what we're doing fully now um yeah and I think somebody alluded to the quick uh tool kit as well yeah I would like to see you know whatever we're doing now um we can you know take credit for it that that that that that's my main thing from from a from a there I
say public relations point of view and it's not spin because if you're actually doing work on speed now then it's not 2027 it it's now and it'll get more robust in 2027 finally I I I hope that this great work you're doing doing um we can we can maybe take some some cues from it I mean I think it would be cool to have a dashboard to show us where gun violence comes from and we already said that we know the numbers aren't going to be good or favorable so we're not afraid of bad news uh for traffic acds we're not going to Blink or or or not count things because we don't have the capacity to address it or because it we we you know we need to know the information before we can address it so I'm hoping that some of the strategies that you're you're you're work working on on this very important problem can inform some of our strategies as the mayor said with gun violence as well um you know not just root causes but root cause and also using technology when I go over one of those things across the road that counts the cars you know I'm
on a public Street you know I don't I don't kind of back up and say I don't want my privacy invaded I don't want to be counted uh I'm on a public Street um I think we should take that same approach to bullets being fired our street as well you don't get to choose whether or not we know you fired a gun in a public Street that's not a private matter um so I'm excited about the work I think it's one of the best votes I cast but I did not cast the vote to talk about speed in 2027 uh yeah I cast the vote to talk about it now and and you should take your Victory lap for whatever it's worth for the work you're doing now um that's it me c we do did okay oh thank you um I appreciate my uh colleagues uh it's not comedic but it is rather ironic I I do think that there's a lot of overlap in where the gun violence and traffic deaths are occurring and I do um want to say that I think that in the past they've had similar approaches it's been
around law enforcement and neither have been um beneficial or effective in addressing um materially poor communities of color so I want to be clear that there there's a lot to discuss in that that matter um I did want to just track back to the road safety audit team and just say is there a a reason more of the drivers that are staff are not included in this context conversation or I noticed they weren't Partners like from Solid Waste or general Services folks who are on the road on a daily basis um you know the recycling drivers they're they're kind of seeing firsthand what's happening on the roads yeah so um to that point we've had conversations with our folks in Fleet Management around efforts that we could do to look at our city fleet um there's a lot of Promise out of the city of New York where they focus on Fleet Safety they retrofit a lot of their fleet vehicles with certain technology
to ensure um you know speeds are being tracked there's better policy about enforcing safer driving um so when we're talking about our drivers on the road and and who that's impacting including not only their experience but also how can we improve uh Fleet Safety so we've been having those conversations around that um we've also the opposite direction I was going oh I'm sorry but I hear you but the other conversations we've had is with our uh sign and signal shop team who are out there maintaining infrastructure experiencing what it's like to be out on the roadways and all types of weather and different conditions and how we can improve safety for them so additional measures additional uh Traffic Safety safer infrastructure to allow them to do their job so that is another work Zone safety is a another resource that we can tap into uh there's a lot of progress in that from the Federal Highway Administration as well how we can improve work work Zone safety so those resources are there as well and I also
wanted to share that I think it's really helpful um because Vision zero didn't start in durm it actually was National it actually International came from Sweden into the United States and it was actually former mayor um Anthony Fox who brought it to the US in a form of federal dollars that actually supported the work and so I do want to say that I'm not opposed to having any technology in place that would count shots or what have you but I am opposed to the tax dollars being diverted from the work that actually needs to happen in the city with the city dollars there's a whole lot of there's a whole lot of assumptions that are made in the context of this conversation that over and over again it gets pretty mundane and tiring but uh I do want to say that that I I think we can do better we can definitely figure some things out around gun violence and I think the people who are impacted most directly should be at the Forefront of that conversation and it is not just technology it's also the dollars like what are we doing on the
root side and on the Survivor sides and so I think we' we've been doing the work I think we'll continue to do the work and I look forward to more conversations um rather than just you know focusing on one tool that's not what we need right now that's all thank you very much colleagues um I wasn't being comedic I was being deadly serious and I'm my memory is not what it used to be but we've never hired a vision zero coordinator for violence and Durham um we never had a division to coordinator for gun violence and Durham check the record Mr Mayor um do you want to Pro do you want to take a five minute bio break to colleagu do we need a a break before we get to next presentation you want a motion you need a motion on this don't you no we need a motion presentation presentation go I got you you want to make a motion on something okay yeah let Let's uh reconvene at 350 please we're in break
thank you thank you no I'm glad I can pull through Michael Jordan you know I figured it was an important day for you to be here so this is the back
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e e all right colleagues and friends we're back in session it's 350 we are back in session we're going to proceed with item number 20 presentation of the draft Duram Parks and Recreation comprehensive plan slated to go 45 minutes but before that we're gonna have uh a speaker uh on this uh presentation karik sarui have three minutes you did a good job in
practice thank you thank you welcome thank you for being with us you have three minutes thank you mayor mayor protm and City Council Members I'm getting an opportunity to speak twice this week it's really super um I'd like to um U commend the city of Durham for developing the 2025 Parks and Recreation comprehensive plan uh it's a Visionary road map for improving our Parks and Recreation system with a strong emphasis on Equity Community engagement and environmental stewardship however as we move forward with these exciting plans we must also ensure that we have the resources to bring them to life one of the most critical opportunities we have right now is the recent property uh revaluation which could increase City Revenue by 74% 74% if the tax rate remains unchanged that is a pivotal movement for Durham to invest more significantly in our Parks and Recreation system increased funding could allow us to expand access to Quality recreational spaces improve
aging infrastructure and create new programs that serve all of Durham's residents beyond the obvious benefits of creating beautiful accessible Parks research has shown that investing in Parks increation has the potential to reduce gun violence and crime studies from cities across the country have consistently demonstrated that safe well-maintained public spaces where people gather suppes engage in positive activities can significantly reduce the likelihood of violent Behavior Parks offer an alternative to idle time and can reduce youth involvement in Violence by providing constructive Outlets such as sports leagues after school programs and community events moreover Parks act as Community hubs that Foster a sense of belonging and connection and people feel connected to their neighborhoods and have safe spaces to interact there's a decrease in Social isolation and a strengthening of social cohesion both of which are linked to lower crime rates including gun
violence by investing in Parks and Recreation we can help prevent violence before it starts by offering opportunities for youth engagement and positive Community Building additionally research has shown that parks in high crime crime areas when designed thoughtfully with proper lighting visibility Community engagement can become a deterrent to Crime the presence of regular Park users particularly families and organized groups can create an environment of safety and stability making it harder for violence to take root this is why find funding our Parks and Recreation system is not just about beautification or providing more amenities it's about creating safer healthier communities by increasing funding for Parks we can enhance Community cohesion reduce crime and provide a critical alternative to violence in conclusion with a projected increase in Revenue with the property valuation D has a real opportunity to invest in its Future Let's direct those
resources towards our Parks and Recreation system not just to enhance quality of life but to reduce gun violence support Public Safety and build an equitable thriving Durham for everyone thank you thank you so much for being with us sir and for your comments we'll proceed with the presentation May pretend just second I just want to recognize caric who's been like a model citizen in the city caric is one of our most active members of the recreation advisory committee you're at every event you're such a great model you're also on Dust aren't you or you was yeah yeah yeah so thank you for your presence and all you're doing for the city of durl duly noted thank you for being with us thank you council member good afternoon thank you Mr Mayor mayor protim members of council city manager Ferguson Wade wut with Parks and Recreation Department here today to talk about the draft version of our Park system comprehensive plan
you said your presentation was about 10 15 minutes I couldn't hear possibly oh 52 slides my math was not good in high school so yep okay okay again Wade w parks recreation talk to you about our draft comprehensive Park system plan uh before we jump into it I want to do a little bit of table setting if you will structure so you understand what you're looking at why we're here today and make sure all of you are comfortable so you have resources in your packet first of course you have the agenda memo you have
the presentation that we're going to go over today you also have the draft version of the full comprehensive plan 130 plus slides we're not going over that one today you also have an executive summary in there and you also have recommendations and action plans at the end so what is our comprehensive plan and why are we doing it so there's seven main points for that so it's a long range long range Vision tool for us to plan ahead of course strategically it also helps us to prioritize so all the different issues and projects and initiatives that come across our plate helps us prioritize it's also as an opportunity for Community Education and to build consensus and during that process it was education for us too it was an opportunity for us to listen and learn from our community as far as what their needs are it's a tool for external funding so once uh adopted we can use this for either Public Funding to help with our operational funding or also
private funding potentially it's also uh a a must for us for accreditation we are an accredited department and this is a standard that we need to have to meet our accreditation process and candidly it was an opportunity for thoughtful reflection and honest assessment of where we are today and where we want to be finally one of the things I like most about this particular plan is the missing puzzle piece so we're all aware of the city's compr or I'm sorry the city's strategic business plan so the city has this then each department has their three-year strategic business plan and here in our department we also have develop an annual work plan so that tells us all the things that we're going to do that particular fiscal year and we also have kpis key performance indicators then from our annual work plan all those kpis uh get formed into smart goals so our annual work plan that's informed by the city strategic business plan connects to our
performance management system so regardless of your job title or where you're at in organization you're connected to the work plan and so there's smart goals and so it all connects it and one thing I like when you realize that you're a part of not only the Department's work plan strategic business plan the cities you realize you're a part of something bigger than yourself and I think that's one of the reasons a lot of people sign up to do uh City work to to begin with the other thing uh we'll talk about is timing so timing as you can see on the screen here the city was incorporated a little over 150 years ago and then 50ish years later the city got a lot better that's when they established the Parks and Recreation Department so we're lucky enough to celebrate our Centennial right on the heels of that from 1924 to 2024 and we had an amazing year and I want to thank everyone that helped make that possible so the timing is unique too as we finish our first 100 years let's embark on our next 100 years and let's
look at a a 10-year segment of that I thought the timing was interesting too recently when we had our budget Retreats all of us saw and heard the employee engagement survey and we heard loud and clear in terms of Parks and Recreation what residents liked and what they wanted in terms of um better Parks uh maintained parks and and more Parks space and opportunities and programs we also saw on the satisfaction survey on that slide and I'm sure you all remember as well as I do the first bullet on that slide it said what is the city doing right the first bullet was Parks and Recreation something that we're all very proud of so to put all this together we were able to select the the John R McAdams firm to put all this inform or go out and do this comprehensive Park system plan to help us for the future uh ALS and with us today is Austin Bowman with madams and he's going to take it over in a little bit and go over uh a little bit more detail and specifics also at this time I'd like to
acknowledge just a part of an amazing great team uh that's here today from Parks Recreation they're here a lot of them uh played a part in helping out with this plan and there's a lot more that aren't here today but I want to make sure we acknowledge them and the work they do every single day in addition to this great plan so next the why the the approach taken the information gathered and even how we arranged it everything you're going to hear and everything you're going to see in the full plan and here today was centered about around best practices for Community engagement of course it also includes technical analysis and it also includes team member of DPR feedback so the assessments that are put together in this great plan uh or chapters if you will cover previous and existing plans so that means any other City plans that are are going on right now or previously adopted and that includes you know Vision zero we talked about today so there's collaboration
there it also uh includes the city's comp plan that was passed not too long ago and the city's comp plan obviously is exactly that it is a very comprehensive broad plan for all the functions in the city and it of course had a section in Parks and Recreation ours builds upon that uh we go in a little deeper more and broader even broader and deeper and go the details of how we can make it better but also complements the findings in the city's comp plan so we also go through the community demogra community demographics levels of service that's the types of things that we're doing right now we Benchmark those with Benchmark cities that you'll see here in a little bit that youve previous councils have pre previously adopted along with national Trends uh we do Park assessments sustainability assessments fairness equity and accessibility assessments programs assessment operational assessments and those operations include our our maintenance but they also include our Communications
and our culture and how we build and strengthen communication and culture and then also thech technology that we use and have access to in our organization and finally the financial uh a financial assessment so once all those conversations took place and all the data was collected and got all the information it was clear there were some themes starting to develop after nearly a two-year process and those teams ended up being ultimately developed into principles so we developed five principles to help guide us so the first principle is is a fairness first Rec those are recommendations focus on inclusivity equity and accessibility along with welld distributed Parks throughout the city it also includes the programs and services and it's also regardless of of demographics or socioeconomic status our second principle that guides us is rooted in the community what we do is
reflective of the community and the culture and focusing and our action steps and recommendations that come out of this guiding principle focus on responsiveness and transparency third foresight we know foresight is having a a strong understanding and awareness of our past but also being present and aware of what our current environment is literally and figuratively and then being able to have foresight of being able to somewhat accurately predict future and that's what this is also this acknowledges the rapid growth that durm is facing in in this region it focuses on understanding growth trends for our current and future needs the fourth guiding principle is Bull City great to provide such meaningful and diverse programs and services at a high quality requires a ton of work and a ton of coordination so this principle really focuses on having critical de development opportunities for our team members regardless of their their job
title it's also making sure we have the technological resources that allow us to do our jobs the best and it's also about more efficient ways to elevate our maintenance operations and finally the fifth guiding principle is stewardship this focuses on leveraging our parks and green infrastructure to improve the health and wellness of our community and remember health and wellness that's physical that's social and that's mental wellness and and how we do that through whether it's our programs or activities or maybe it's improving the air quality because of more park space and green space but it's the second part of stewardship is also to improve our environment whether it's the design and construction of new facilities or Parks themselves um that help mitigate storm water runoff or help to mitigate soil contamination or help with air quality or frankly just help our ecosystems so those are our five guiding principles that developed after all this work was put together now these
principles serve as our Compass while using this plan as our map so having a compass and a map together helps us decide and helps inform Us in the direction that we need to take together into the future so if we use this Compass which is our our guiding principles and we have this map which is this comprehensive plan there's something we can do and that is we can create fun enriching inclusive programs experiences and spaces to build a safer happier and healthier Bull City please raise your hand if you're down with that okay so I want to say it again we do this create fun enriching inclusive programs experiences and spaces to build a safer happier and healthier Bull City that's our mission that's our Department's Mission and doing this kind of work and having these guiding principles help us achieve that mission so now you know what's in front of you and the resources that you have
and you know the what why and the how this came together Austin's going to go through some of the chapters remember you have also access to a full plan and you'll also see that there are recommendations and action steps so I think somebody uh earlier day mentioned it'd be nice to have a list to understand of what we're looking at so that you'll have that today so at the conclusion of this uh McAdams had identified or made and made some recommendations and action steps to consider implementing over the next two years we want your feedback we want your input we want your recommendations we want your direction adjustments for those that we're going to provide today to tell us are we going in the right direction also of course we want your feedback and input and Direction on the entirety of the plan so our plan is to go through this that's our intent with you to get your feedback get some guidance on the list that we're going to provide today if we're heading in the right direction
then we can go back and make whatever edits and changes that you recommended to us today and finalize those and the intent would be to bring this back a second time for your adoption so that's that's the outline and that's why we're here today and that's what the tools you have with you and so up next Austin from McAdams is going to go through those assessments or chapters if you will that I mentioned briefly thank you hello good afternoon thank you mayor and council members for taking the time today and thanks wait for the um perfect introduction for this plan um before I get started I just want to say we do a lot of these um Park system plans at McAdams we often like to say that the quality of them is really a direct reflection of the quality of the department that we're doing them for and part of what makes this plan so great is the DPR team they've been wonderful to work with they've been invaluable s sour of information for us as we've tried to complete this plan and I just really
want to compliment not only Wade but the entire staff who we've worked with um throughout completing this plan um thank you so before we uh talk about the technical assessments I want to highlight Community engagement because I know that you all really value that and it's such an important part when we're doing a 10year plan like this to make sure that it's rooted in what the community wants what they feel like they need okay great so as part of the comprehensive planning process we've been doing engagement now for over a year and a half along um different uh portions of the project we've had touch points with over 250 individuals in the community and we've done that in a variety of ways and that was very intentional at the outset of this project we talked about how important it was to engage with people in a variety of ways um obviously people are are more comfortable with um inperson engagement where they can talk to staff and other people are more uh interested in doing surveys where they can really sit down
and think about things and provide their feedback that way we also were very intentional for all of our engagement events to fi uh provide Spanish language translation and those numbers are folded into the numbers you see on the screen at a high level um feedback from the community Wade's already alluded to this the quality of parks were the overwhelming majority of our respondents rated them good or excellent and overwhelming majority said that parks are important to the quality of life in Durham a majority are supportive or very supportive of paying additional tax to improve Parks um on average 65% say their biggest priority is to update and maintain existing parks and Facilities within the city we like to always ask as part of these process what's your biggest barrier to participating in DPR programs or what's your biggest barrier to going to a DPR park or facility and the issue that Rose to the top here is awareness of offerings and to just contextualize that that's something we
hear all the time in this field you know developing ways to effectively reach the community that evolves every day the community is changing every day um so this is something that DPR I think actually does really well and we have some recommendations that talk about how to continue um elevating the way that they're they're reaching the community and finally one of the things that we heard in all venues scientific survey online surveys Focus groups uh in person engagement was consistent demand for more field space that's something that's very important to the community and we have some uh recommendations in here to address that all right so the next portion of this presentation focuses on uh as Wade said some of the technical assessments completed during the planning process these technical assessments are really intended to be uh look under the hood if you will of the department and its system to understand what it's been doing and where it needs support moving forward as Wade mentioned there were
nine assessments completed as part of the comprehensive plan all of those are in the planning document in front of you and this presentation is just a summary of those the first assessment is the demographics and Trends this assessment is really valuable It's usually the first one we do it gives us an understanding of what the community looks like demographically what population is DPR charged with serving so some key findings there this is probably no surprise to you all is that Durham is currently undergoing rapid population growth compared to the state and compared to the country um about three times higher which means that DPR has a challenge of both serving existing residents of which there are many and uh figuring out how to best serve new residents of which there are many we found that the program and service offerings of DPR are aligned well with Durham's current and future demographic composition we didn't see anything in
the data that indicated that DPR is out of step with the composition of the community or that they would be in the future and one thing of note um that we spent a lot of time with the Department on uh from this uh assessment is that there's a growing wealth Gap in your community and I'm sure for a lot of you this isn't a surprise either there's a really big discrepancy between the average income and the med median income in this city which is usually really indicative of a wealth Gap meaning that you have really large outliers on the high end of the income scale so what this means for your community is twofold one is that DPR should continue to maintain subsidized offerings for the community we don't want anyone to have any kind of financial barrier to participation but it also means that there are people in the city a sizable portion of the city who can pay for services that DPR offers and that the city should consider new cost recovery strategies to take advantage of that should I read demographic as population
oror because I hear when I prop program and service offerings are aligned with Durham's current and future demographic composition you meant you started with population which is kind of vanilla yes de demographic composition meaning age um and race in particular so when we look at Trends in Recreation programming we're usually looking at Trends within age groups and Trends within different racial compositions so those are not changing over time so what they're offering is already relevant so the they they're are no changes needed to maintain relevancy so alignment means that you the proper folk are getting the proper programming correct okay all right all right uh the next section is the level of service assessment as Wade mentioned that's an inventory of the current offerings Staffing and funding compared to the City's population size we use this information to Benchmark against peer cities and jurisdictions of similar sizes Nationwide the level of service
assessment found that in the city of Durham total Park acreage is low compared to similarly sized jurisdictions found that maintenance and operation Staffing levels are below average compared to Pure cities and jurisdictions of similar sizes Nationwide found that additional funding is needed to meet day-to-day maintenance as well as deferred maintenance although it is worth noting that the city does currently spend more money on deferred maintenance than pure cities which might sound a little contradictory the implication of this is that while the city is doing its best to clear out its maintenance backlog from a resource perspective the magnitude of that backlog is such that additional resources in the form of funding and staff are needed Durham also has a much lower percentage of undeveloped open space it does however provide sign ific more programs than peers both the peer cities and peers Nationwide and 96% of those programs are free which is significantly higher than most peers the
median cost recovery among peers is 18% and durhams is 7% on that open space measure is that Durham city or county City Durham city okay yep it's good question the next the next part of this assessment is looking at growth Trends and there's two there's two indicators that we use to do that and the goal here is to understand where growth is happening we know it's happening rapidly but knowing geographically where it's taking place can give the department two key pieces of information one if they're looking to expand into the future where is the most strategic place to do that based on growth patterns the other key piece of information is these uh growth centers are close to existing Parks it's good for them to know that those parks are likely going to have an influx of new users who may need different things or may need more space the growth Trends analysis found that there's heavy resoning activity along the southern and Southeastern edge
of the city and that there's heavy annexation activity along the eastern and Northeastern edge of the city so this slide has on the left a map of resoning case intensity so this is about the number of cases it's a heat map of number of cases across the city the map on the right is the same as a similar map it's just looking at annexation cases so again as you can see res zonings really heavily concentrated um on the Southern and Southeastern Edge annexations on the Northern and Northeastern edge of the city as part of the growth Trends we also look at um access so this analysis found that generally parks are well distributed across the city however some improvement is needed when it comes to access for lwi income and non-white residents the assessment found that high-income residents have lower access to Parks than low-income residents um this is due to the nature
of development in the city so if you think about um neighborhoods higher inome neighborhoods they tend to be towards the edge of the city they tend to be built on larger tracks of land larger Lots they're further away from existing City resources they don't have as much access to Transit it takes them longer to get places so that is why that metric exists um residents of multiple races in Hispanic origin have less park space per person relative to the city median and neighborhoods of color have greater park space per person relative to the city median but considerably less park space per person than white residents for Capital and land acquisition Durham is spending less than half of peer cities at a per capita level all right the next assessment is the parks assessment this gives the planning team an opportunity to visit parks and Facilities throughout the system the goal is to identify common themes that
the department can address in its parks and Facilities moving forward um as part of this uh myself a few other members of our firm went out with City staff including planning staff as well as maintenance staff to I think 32 sites um we used a rating system that uh addresses both physical conditions so what is the physical condition of playgrounds bathrooms other uh pieces of infrastructure as well as Human Experience how does a space feel is it welcoming when I get there do I know how to get around do I feel safe and four key themes emerge from that Parts assessment the first is that there's an increased need for signage and wayf finding making sure once people are in a space that they know how to navigate it that they feel comfortable exploring and know what's available to them finding ways to enhance the individual character of parks making uh neighborhood parks Community Parks feel special and unique but making sure that no matter where you go if you're going
to a park in the city of Durham that you're having a high quality of experience a need for providing a larger diversity of amenity at parks and this is directly correlated to understanding the diversity of your residents and their needs through meaningful engagement and increasing the amount of Park improvements that are happening to improve consistency of experience so modernization Replacements doing that on time doing it frequently to make sure again that no matter where you go if you're going to a city of Durham Park you're having a good experience the next assessment is the sustainability assessment like Wade mentioned um this assessment is really focused on how Parks interact with the environment and how that can impact residents and the environment itself the sustainability assessment was structured around what we referred to as the four dimensions of resiliency which we'll go through each of these are components of sustainability where uh we felt DPR had
the greatest ability to have a positive impact the First Dimension is flooding and storm water management so there's an opportunity to prevent and mitigate flooding and damage to properties through intentional Park design and additions of green INF addition of green infrastructure to existing parks with air quality and pollution the opportunity to partner with other City departments to increase the city's tree canopy on Parkland and also look at day-to-day operations and maintenance using EV vehicles and more environmentally friendly Park equipment for Park maintenance as we all know Summers here have gotten pretty brutal um they're not comfortable and for some members of the community it's not safe to do things like go to a park due to heat impacts so another thing that we discussed with staff and included in the plan was the need to incorporate standards to address heat impact by incorporating shade and cooling features into all new part designs and I again identifying
opportunities to expand tree canopy and increase planted space to lower temperatures where possible finally the fourth dimension natural resource conservation and general environmental improvements expanding the use of low maintenance native plants increasing no mo zones so these are parts of the park that can grow more they're not as regularly maintained but they also have higher ecological value explore the reduction of chemical treatments and continue to identify funding strategies to make environmental improvements to Parks the sustainability assessment also looked again at a geographic component of this which was to understand what parts of the city have the highest environmental burden meaning which parts of the city are most impacted by um uh negative um consequences of environmental change over time so the map on the right uses a data set from the federal government called the
environmental justice indicator or index um it takes into account all of the criteria that are in the table to the left so what you can see on your screen is that the area located mostly around downtown and just to the North and South have the highest environmental burden and as you move away from the core of the city that burden decreases and this was important information for us to provide to the department because again if you're looking at if with limited resources which Parks have the most potential to provide a positive change to the environment and thus a positive change to Residents targeting areas where residents are already the most impacted um is the most strategic which is why we did this the next assessment is called the fairness and accessibility assessment and it was split into two focal points external goals which understanding fairness and access as it relates to DPR in the community and internal goals which seek to understand how fairness
and access are embedded into dpr's internal operations the external goals that were established were to continue intentional design for new part development or maintenance centered around inclusion and accessibility so this goes beyond just what we normally talk about with accessibility which is Ada we're talking about do people feel comfortable do people feel safe do people feel like if they come to this park or this facility that they're able to use the resources and sometimes that goes beyond those most basic levels of accessibility it it speaks to Universal Design and making sure people of all abilities feel able to use um the resources that they have increasing intentional investment in recreational opportunities prioritizing and benefiting those who would otherwise be unable to participate so using some of the tools that we provided around disadvantaged communities to make decisions regarding where investment is happening and exploring how DPR can be part of a multi- agency effort to create
anti-displacement strategies um anti-displacement strategies are something that major cities around the country are expor exploring and we wanted to make clear through this process that while DPR is not solely responsible for creating and implementing those strategies they should have a seat at the table um with other government agencies other departments within the city as those are being crafted internally the things that we called out um that we felt like the department is doing really well in terms of integrating fairness and access into their day-to-day operations was the pulse board which stands for peers United and leadership service and Equity this is an in a board internal to DPR that provides personal and professional development centered around fairness and access the opportunity to share perspective both among staff and from the community and to demonstrate the impact of dpr's project and as Wade mentioned earlier um they undergo an
annual process to kind of prioritize their work to make clear to the community what they're going to do and as part of their mission and values creation they've also integrated fairness and access at that high level and then in that annual operating strategy to make it clear to the community that's what they've prioritized as part of this assessment we found that we needed a tool that could help um the department understand where need was as it relates to fairness and access and where they should be looking at as they're making decisions about in investment so we developed what we called the fairness priority investment index it takes into account 11 indicators all of those indicators come from the sources that you see on the right of the screen and if you're interested I have them all and I can go through them um and it looks at the census tract level at how many of those indicators are present in a particular tract so a high priority tract has more than six of 11 indicators
a medium high priority has more than three and less than six medium a low priority has more than one and less than three and low priority has one or less how recent how recently did you refresh these index indicators from these departments these were done in October of 2024 on one check again the so that's a great Point all all of these except for one are still available because it's Census Data um and it's data that agencies collect as part of their annual operating although we have had conversations that it may not be feasible to update this often if those data sources are taken right I agree sens this data is not necessarily prescriptive no no it's not yeah so on your screen is a map that shows the uh Equity or the fairness priority index so the map on the left and the right are the same the difference is the one on the right just has the current Park system overlaid on it the areas in dark blue are your high priority um the lighter blue is medium
high and the uh blue green is a medium to low price priority doesn't look all that different from a lot of the other um vulnerability index maps that we did uh high priority areas are centered around downtown just north and south of downtown and then along the Austin 55 Corridor and the Roxboro Street Corridor can you say what's you mentioned the um the source of those indicators but what like are we talking like poverty rate income level what are the indicators yeah so the indicators are a the poverty index which is maintained by Housing and Urban Development racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty high percentage of non-white population high percentage of population with a high school diploma without a high school diploma high percentage of the population with a disability high percentage of population without health insurance high percentage of population without a vehicle High population density high percentage of population
under 18 high crime rates and a high environmental burden which uses the same data set that I just talked about all right next is the program assessment so the program assessment was intended to evaluate the relevance and the effectiveness of the programming portfolio that the department has as well as its Financial Health and performance the programming assessment um I said this earlier worth restating is well aligned with the community's demographics although uh common theme that came up was programming for children age 12 and older is a place that needs more Focus where there is a feeling that a need is not being met currently um from a financial perspective I alluded to this earlier but developing a cost recovery model that does not become a barrier for some while improving the financial health of the programming portfolio is really critical um we also identified a couple places where we felt like there were some unnecessary divisions of duties
with other departments um one of those being with some programs that an uh General Services offers that often interacts and overlaps with DPR work there's an opportunity there with adequate resources to gain some efficiency and Alignment across programs Citywide um we also wanted to call out here a suggestion um that we've talked quite a bit about which is to explore a partnership with Durham Public Schools to improve access to athletic fields through the use of Durham public schools Fields um they already rent those out but it goes through a separate process that's separate from DPR the thinking is there is some alignment there where DPR could help perhaps with reservations with maintenance in exchange for being able to use those fields which would really help meet uh or increase their ability to meet the demand for Fields as they are working on strategic expansion so this figure um just to talk about finances briefly it's in the
report um on page 95 but this is the kind of General um model that the programming assessment is built on when it comes to cost recovery and it really comes down to understanding which programs are essential and have widespread Community benefit versus value added programs that have individual benefit and the idea is as you move away from Community benefit to more of an individual benefit the expectation should be that the cost is shouldered by the individual all right and our last assessment of course on that assessment yeah where where you would Place uh Summer Camps summer camps I would say are somewhere between the considerable Community benefit and balanced community and individual benefit one thing that is important though to understand with this is that we're not saying that if um someone let's say wants to uh participate in a program that would
be classified as an individual benefit but they have demonstrated need that they should access that with little to no cost of them that would still be in place but there has to be some kind of structure in place for those that are able to pay to set expectations for how much they should be willing to pay all right uh the last assessment is the operational assessment and that seeks to understand any challenges and opportunities in day-to-day operation as Wade mentioned that covered um maintenance technology and Communications I want to spend some time on maintenance and Technology there were some Salient uh things that came up when we were completing the plan in those areas um looking first at maintenance one of the biggest things we heard from maintenance staff was um concerns about safety so this ranged from I was doing my job and a park and I witnessed something and therefore I now still unsafe um it also uh captured things
like I have heard of or have seen in media um things that are happening in this park that then make me hesitant or make me feel unsafe when I'm there performing those duties so that's something that's elaborated on in the report um we have some recommendations around how to address those real and perceived safety concerns but the other big challenge that the maintenance team is facing is just the size of the park system and the level and quality of Maintenance needed these staff are responsible for maintaining approximately 2,000 acres of land across the city um and all of that land is not very close together it's in the northernmost part of the city it's in the southernmost part of the city so there are some challenges that come with that so one is obviously resources so changing the guidelines and increasing the half penny fund for maintenance can assist with Project funding Staffing and increasing project completion rate there is a need for additional Personnel for both day-to-day maintenance and deferred
maintenance projects and finally um we feel like an additional maintenance shop that is north of downtown to reduce travel times is really critical what we heard from a lot of Staff who are responsible for say uh maintenance at Lake Mickey is that they spend a lot of their day in the car and in traffic as opposed to at the place that they're supposed to be maintaining so that's time that's being wasted um not by any fault of the staff but by the nature of having to commute from The Hope Valley area all the way up so that could um really increase efficiency and also allow for better distribution of equipment and resources another area here that we felt like there was some unnecessary division of responsibilities was maintenance of shelters so right now if a shelter's in a DPR Park it's still maintained by General services even though the rest of the park is maintained by Durham parks and wreck so that was another identified area where aligning what seems like kind
of a a common sense alignment with the adequate resources could improve how quickly maintenance needs are met in the city the technology assessment just two things here the first um obviously fields and facilities are extremely popular in the city and um as a recommendation of this uh plan is to issue an RF P for new programming and facility reservation software that better meets the needs of staff and secondly is to um make sure that there is consistent high quality Wi-Fi access at recreation centers and Parks um you know all of us know that that is no longer a nice to have it's really a need to have and again it's a twofold thing one it makes parks and Facilities feel more useful to Residents um because they can go there and do things that they would otherwise have to do somewhere else um but it also allows those um parks and Facilities to accommodate a wider range of activities as
well so as Wade mentioned at the conclusion of all of this engagement and all of these assessments we sat down with staff to develop what we call the guiding principles and you can think of those as the pillars of the plan all all roads lead back to the guiding principles okay um so the The Guiding principles are the way that they're structured is such that every action item and every recommendation relates back to at least one guiding principle so you'll notice in your backup material in the um both the plan and the recommendations table that they're coded in such a way to indicate which um guiding principle they're relating back to and Wade already went through those so I'm not going to go through them again um but I do want to talk about what Wade mentioned which were the prioritized action steps so there are over a 100 action items in this plan but we worked together with staff um feedback on um pulling out uh 10 to 15
we ended up doing 15 action items that we thought would be a priority over the next two years and the reason we wanted to present those today is because that means um you might see these coming up so it's really you know important obviously to get your feedback on the whole plan but particularly on things that are going to be in front of you sooner than later so I'll just go through these quickly the first action item is to develop a 15-year plan to increase Durham's Park acreage and number of Park sites throughout the city this plan should balance investment in high priority Equity areas and New Growth areas of the city that currently have little to no access um simultaneously should focus on trail acquisition Park propers from developers and land acquisition opportunities the second action item is to increase the half penny for Parks allocation and use that new funding for Equity focused addressing of deferred maintenance the third is to continue Park audits with staff and community
members as an engagement strategy during the planning process for major upcoming Park renov Renovations the fourth is to create a Communications work team that includes DPR staff and Community representatives to perform a consistent annual review of communications techniques um to conduct annual focus groups with residents in high priority Equity investment areas to understand needs and concerns number five create unique popup events at underutilized parks in the system to increase awareness and use of those Parks identify partnership opportunities with third-party providers for indoor facilities uh until DPR has the capacity to build new indoor facilities of their own throughout the city identify opportunities for expansion of downtown open space focusing on use of smaller pieces of land to create a network of green space in downtown support parks recreation open space goals identified for downtown in
the downtown open space plan DDI plans and other Citywide plans Advance the partnership between downtown Durham Inc and DPR to find Innovative opportunities for public Recreation programs and special events assess all activity areas within DPR Park including playgrounds and Fields for implementation of implementation of cooling features such as shade structures or mys integrate cooling features into DPR Parks focused first on parks in the urban core of the city what are the different designations RCA sa fa it's a great question those that was what I was talking about the link back to the guiding principles so for example fa is foresight s stewardship RCA is rooted in the community thank you yeah no worries um the next one develop a welcome to DPR guide that's targeted at new residents establish a park Ambassador pilot program to increase Community investment and parks and improve safety expand the offerings of outdoor
movies and concerts and Parks throughout the city this relates back to um the scientific survey where move outdoor movies and concerts number one amenity need identified um develop an additional Maintenance Shop North of downtown that can cover parks on the north side of the city and finally establish a pricing policy for Revenue producing sport fields to create enough Revenue to keep the sport fields in a quality of condition needed for League games and tournaments across the city so that is um again a summary of the assessments a summary of the prioritized action items that is by no means all of them um I'm here Wade's here to answer any questions or comments that you may have exciting an excellent presentation councilman C did you want to Champ at the bit colleagues councilman Baker uh thanks so much um I like to focus on the content but I would just
say it's a beautiful plan it's beautiful document thank you it's artistic uh we try it was which there's something to be said for that it makes it very accessible like I want to open it up and right and look look back through it um and then that aside there's tons of great analys is kind I mean there's this is like a comprehensive plan like for forget about the park stuff I me there's history and everything it's it's um it's really fun to read um you've got WB de boy in there which is great um lots of great information I I'm really excited about the anti-displacement uh just the thinking that that that there is some thinking around anti-displacement and something that's come up in our conversations uh as we talk about making major public investments in things that make places better and obviously we'll we uh spur um uh speculation and and make land more expensive um some of the some of the data points were almost shocking to see um the amount of
Parkland you know in Durham compared to some um some of our peers particular Greensboro I mean Greensboro I mean that's almost shocking the amount of Parkland that Greensboro has we almost a fifth of them I me how did they get so much Park land so it's it's twofold one is the cost of land um The Parks and Recreation Department in Greensboro can make their dollar go further than you can as the city of Durham so I think that's part of it two is the amount of um land banking that a lot of these peer cities are doing so there's a specific call out for undeveloped land or open space and that's typically a direct result of land banking so that's cities holding that land anticipating the need to develop it into a park in the future and that's what some cities have done just as an ongoing strategy in addition to maintaining what they currently have or actively redeveloping is pocketing that land as it becomes available when it's cheap cool um and one thing one of the other data points I mean that you that
23 Acres of Park land right and when I move back I'm from Durham when I move back to Durham I couldn't believe that we didn't do the same thing that um that
developments come in and there is there has been you know we've grown by 10 square miles in the past five years there's been no requirements for Parkland then you can see that born out in the map um and uh you know when I talk to honestly most not all developers are interested in it um I talked to Residents who are frustrated with some of the HOA fees that they have to pay and the maintenance companies and um and the that privatized land that's within some of their neighborhoods um that that they have to pay to to M adds to the housing cost and also the the standards there aren't standards for some of the facilities that are created within the the HOA open open land um that that would other be otherwise be required in Parks um and I've talked to um a decent number of sort of mid-level Staff who are like yeah we wish we were just getting these
kind of free parks dedicated in in all of these new developments and so I I did see and you just mentioned um in the the action you know starting to do that right um which yeah it would have been nice to to do that a while back but is there as part of that thinking about I mean is there an opportunity to look at some of these neighborhoods and and where there might be uh desire within some of these neighborhoods to dedicate their HOA lands to public park to to the parks department I mean is that something that's feasible is that something that has been considered so that's not something we considered as part of this process um whether or not it's ultimately feasible um we were very careful when constructing recommendations around us because of how restrictive state law is about what you can ask of the development Community um in terms of land propers or Fe andl um
what I do think you know is possible is if this land is being offered to the city they've you know DPR has a newer land acquisition policy and guidelines that they can use to evaluate how useful it is one thing that we've seen in other communities where developers do often provide or more often provide the land that they do inum is that the land is not um while it is allocated for Parks and Recreation is not in the most useful place so there will be a Greenway running in front of this development and they put a Tot Lot at the back of their Thousand Acre development that's a mile away from the greenway and has like a playground on it and that's not to say that's not useful for that Community but when we're thinking about you know um working with the development Community making sure that the what you're getting out of that is actually useful and is actually beneficial to the system and isn't just something that is there as a feather in your cap basically so a long way to answer your question that wasn't something we could we did consider I
think it's worth investigation but we've also talked with staff that the priority needs to be not only making sure that this land is being offered but making sure useful land is being offered yeah yeah and that's that's how some of my conversation with residents have been is just you know they put this uh you know recreation facility or something or like a like soccer goals but it's right on a busy street and there's no fence or something like that or it's in the flood plane lot lots of lots of um stories like that um or or you know all the homes are facing away you know and it's just it's just fencing and there's not great edges to to these Parks they're not centralized and celebrated Civic spaces so um okay I appreciate that um I think that's that's it for me for now but again I mean just there we could be here all day there's tons of stuff to talk about so much content in here um and I really appreciate the work that's been done appreciate it thank you council member colleagues council member wrist yeah thanks for the presentation thanks to Wade and the staff I am the recreation
advisor Committee Member and it's one of the commissions I like have the most fun on so you all are a great group and and yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly I mean but I I do want to say and this is directed away in particular I mean this report as as C Baker was saying this is like a thorough report it's detailed report You' shared with us the summary of the the two-year recommendations but there's a whole with 10 pages of recommendations of sort of action so I really appreciate both and Wade you mentioned the sort of like the annual work plan you have with like metrics and key performance indicators the level of sort of scientific management of this Pro of this department in addition to the fun you all have have is like pretty impressive so I just want to say thanks again to to you and your staff for the the great work you're doing um I had a couple of questions I was glad to see I will say I was glad to see the facility facility reservation software is one of the things on the work plan that's one thing I do hear from residents a lot it's kind of clunky hard to to reserve space so that's a that's a key I think that's a a good priority to have I did have a couple questions about some of the slides earlier in your presentation
that um if you go back to 13 so there were bullet points I was trying to understand the two we were going pretty fast I know we've have limited time as the as the time winds on so if you look at the third bullet point additional funding to meet day-to-day and deferred maintenance is critical right and then durman spend significantly more money on deferred maintenance help me understand those two yeah so this is kind of one of the conundrums that you sometimes find yourself in where it's a it's a good example of DPR doing the best with what they've got but that's just not enough for a resource perspective so what we see sometimes in other cities is that they're not allocating as much money to deferred maintenance because that the quantity they would need to actually clear out that backlog is so Monumental that they prioritize putting their funding elsewhere um so what we're seeing here is that while they seem contradictory they just don't they don't maintain or so deferred Mains is a little bit different so those are long-term big fixes to Parks whether
that's to renovate them replace big pieces of equipment not necessarily to go repair a hole in the fence or take out the trash um so it's not that they don't do anything it's just that they're spending Less on it because it's less of a priority to them and a lot of times that lower prioritization is just due to the magnitude that would be required to really take a bite out of it still having a hard time so you're saying like they've got they've got tennis courts that are like nonfunctioning they're just not replacing them they're just leaving them it's not that they're not replacing them it's that the money they're allocating to replace them it may take longer to replace them it's not that they're spending zero but compared to Durham they're spending significantly less than Durham is and they're spending significantly more on building a new park or other kind of larger redesigns so you're saying this is good that we spend more on deferred maintenance oh it's absolutely not a bad thing that you're spending a lot more money than your peers on deferred maintenance it's just that you need more money to spend on maintenance okay um
next one is on the SEC the next I'm sorry slide uh 15 um slide 16 actually um so the second bullet point high- inome residents are have lower access to Parks than low-income residents area know the first one parks are generally well distributed across City some improvement needed when it comes to access for low-income and non-white residents but then higher income residents have lower access to Parks yeah so that's kind of what I was trying to get at earlier is that the development pattern so for example let's say in North Durham where you do have you know when we looked at average income is well in the 200,000 they're living in bigger homes on bigger Lots in bigger subdivisions and that makes them that puts them further away from Parks as compared to someone who's living in an apartment downtown or an apartment uh in proximity to downtown so one thing to keep in mind with all of these is none of these are judgments to say it's good or bad it's just the reality of what it
is so this is due to the nature of the development and where people tend to settle when they're living on larger property that puts them further away from City resources so on the first point then some some improvement needed so there's so it's they have low-income resids have maybe better access but some improvement is needed in terms of like like safety of getting there AB the ease of getting there so um proximity to Transit proximity to Greenways the maint uh the maintenance condition of the park so it's not just about being able to get to a park it's can I get to a good Park can I get to a park where I feel safe feel welcome gotcha thank you yeah absolutely thank you council member council member cier thank you thank you for the presentation um a lot of good data here I have a couple questions um and um in general feel uh pretty you know this is really thorough really confident I will just say like and I want to shout out for member count council member Charlie rce who literally visited every single Park in the city he like did a whole
project on that um and so I I I think the part about lifting up parks that people don't even know exist um and and doing that deferred maintenance so I know that we're maybe like short changed on on land right but I think that there's a lot of opport it's kind of like with vision zero what are the opportunities that are like quick builds on Parks because the whole cost of land is not decreasing right also I'd be interested to see like the our Pure cities we have a massive state park it may not be ours right but it's a huge percentage of land right and I get that there is not great access to that for all residents but there are plenty of Durham residents who are doing their Recreation and things not in city parks absolutely so I think that that's something that we have to think through um yeah yeah yeah I mean like I don't I don't know enough about Arlington Texas but do they have a huge State Park in Arlington Texas I don't know right um so um and that's I mean part part of Falls Lake is also in Durham County right there's lots of other Recreation opportunities that are that are close to drum um right that that could change kind of where where
and how folks are accessing um but I do want to just lift up that that whole piece like I have been to several parks where the only reason you know it's a park is because there's a sign and it's this big right yes and it's got like a bench and a tree yeah especially when we're thinking about our comprehensive plan and that whole idea of like what what I think ultimately we want is for folks to be able to safely which goes back to that other presentation we just had connect to Green Space and open space and Recreation space um especially as we done ify and and that's what all great cities have like great cities in the United States and internationally you have incredible Parks you have incredible access to Green Space because you may not have that square footage at home right uh we we do want to get away from that kind of North Durham Trend right we don't want folks living in mcmansions with Suburbans right at least not in Durham like right right like we kind of we're trying to to to steer the ship in a very different way but that means that I got to be able to walk down the street and and have that outdoor space uh for lots of reasons um so I am
excited about this um and I'm definitely excited about those opportunities and and heard on the money we're gonna have an interesting uh budget conversation uh this this round um but just we all know the importance as you listed with public health with we we named youth programming as one of our core or top priorities we it is crime prevention right keeping kids busy is crime prevention uh keeping families healthy is crime prevention and so our parks are are critically important um I'd love to hear a little bit more also it's listed in here around the kind of duplication of efforts I guess is how I'd frame it with some of the cultural with General services and then one other space where it was kind of listed and so um would love to hear from Wade like that I will also name that I did put my own Doge as a priority um as a council member so yeah those efficiencies of like who's doing what in which department and and and coming back to us with clear guidance of like this is is where uh this is the best bang for our buck as as we make hard choices
thanks sure I think the intent of their calling that out was just as we work with different departments throughout the city and see what everyone does and their plans recognizing um General services that has a a cultural arts function and they have a um I'll just an office or a division focused on that and not speaking for them but my understanding is part of that function is to help attract cultural events and art programs and events to the city and I believe they have a funding source to help um make that more attractive for those producers and then when that typically happens those event producers come to our department to work with us and the entire special event review team to get permitted to do that and then so that so maybe it's it's not as impactful maybe on the outside side maybe a little bit in terms of customer service and who does the person go to which department
which our team has streamlined that a lot but maybe it was worth exploring internally administrative efficiency is what if that whether it's a cultural arts event whether it's a sports tourism event or whether it's a special event or a or a concert or whatever just go to one spot thank you and I just want to say I'm the Durham cultural Affairs board uh liaison and the events and I sit on Discover Durham so the events special events and festivals is something I hear a lot and so um that is something that we hear a lot of complaints around so whatever um not because anyone but just because it is onerous right like I have to go here I have to go there and so um it is an it is an important um both for for community building and for cult um Economic Development purposes or economic impact purposes uh getting that right making that easy and I think Durham next is is also uh a really good that's another opportunity uh with the with a key stakeholder um so just want
staff to to hear that um and and know that uh please come ask us for those things when you need them um so that we can make it a lot easier for for the users of those systems so it can be more streamlined that's all thank you thank you council member C member cook did you sure you um I'll just Echo what everyone says I'm also G to just say apologies for making you stay till the very end this is such an interesting um and and so well done uh presentation and and the plan is amazing um yeah sorry to make you sit through everything else wor um I have a couple questions I actually had questions on this slide as well so while we're there um I I guess I know you're saying that they're not a value statement and I'm I'm following that I guess I'm just like now I kind of have a better understanding of the first two bullet bullets but like now I don't understand the third and the fourth bullets I'm just I'm having a hard time understanding residents of multiple
spaces of multiple races in Hispanic origin have less park space per person and then neighborhoods of color have greater park space per person relative to the city median yet they have considerably less park space per person than white residents how may understand that because they don't make up the majority of the city I guess the statistics I'm just having trouble no no worries no worries at all so both of those are measured relative to the city median and then the data that we pulled this from which is trust from for public land breaks it down into these into several demographic indicators so the median is not is for the entire city regardless of any kind of demographic identifier and then what it does is breaks it down into those demographic identifiers and Compares it to the city as a whole so the residents of multiple races in Hispanic origin that's just compared again to the city median for everyone for all residents of Durham regardless of any kind of identifying Factor yeah I still the math is just not
mathing in my brain for some reason and it might just be because I'm tired but we have one thing that says it had they have less park space per person then it says that the neighborhoods of color have greater park space per person but they have considerably relative to City median but considerably less space per person than white residents but my my understanding of the breakdown of the population of Durham is that it is not a majority of people of color so I'm confused on how they have greater space per person relative to the median but then have less I yeah I just don't really understand it yeah so we can go back and look at it and maybe break it down differently I think it it could just be and how those factors are coming out but then the neighborhoods of color component is combining multiple demographics but others are splitting it out just by one okay so we can make sure that in the plan and also may have just not translated from the plan into the presentation we'll make sure to look at that before I think it's a wording a wording issue it just include like the numbers like what are yeah I agree yeah because I think what I think are that
there are important points in there but I am having a hard time understanding and then conversing about them understood understood um yeah I would love to see some numbers behind that um I do want to Echo council member wrist in talking about the booking software really glad to see that that was a priority way has already heard my comments on that and my particular actual personal use of it has been difficult um and also the Wi-Fi piece I just like want to you said it already and I just want to say it again like these are spaces that we have programming going on we have Community organizing going on and without the access to Wi-Fi like it makes those activities really really difficult and those are like Prime uses for those spaces and so I'm really really excited to hear that that was a priority absolutely um on these prioritized action steps I have yes two questions one is are these prioritized in order of importance or are these just the top 15 these are just the top 15 okay and then my second question is for Wade can you talk about in your budget proposals this year what you've asked for that meets
these 15 priorities or like obviously that's too detailed but like kind of broadly I can't only because this is an outcome of about two years of work and timing wise when we were developing our budget a lot of this data hadn't been gathered yet and was available now there's probably some Sim similarities just because um but since we turned in budget information I don't December I don't a while ago I I just don't recall so there wasn't an exact all right now we have this so but this would help us inform us better um come next budget cycle I mean I'm assuming also some of this you already knew because this plan been in works and so there are things tailored iag in your budget request to some of these things already not to put you on the spot but that's what I'm assuming um I would love to I would love to and this kind of hearkens back to this to the what we were talking about before in the
vision zero um I do understand that we get the budget and then we have an opportunity to sort of say like oh these numbers maybe I don't like this here and there but it's hard to say without kind of understanding what requests came from the Department um how they track with the um goals for those departments what things we think think should be valued and not valued otherwise I feel like we're just looking at money dollars and saying like oh I don't think this amount should be here but like without the context it feels really hard to do that so this is another space where I would just love to see like the requests that make it into the budget like your assessment with how they assisted or which ones might assist in some of these there there's a couple budget requests that are in right now that I can start to remember that are related to this and connected to what you've already heard at past at most recent budget Retreats so um expansion of our special events programs and so you've heard that people want movies and parks and concerts and things like that so that was what you've
heard previously that's what's in here and it's also in our in our budget request so that's one example there are other examples like just broadly if the value and dollar amount of the half penny plus how previously what our guidelines we've been operating under we need to have that conversation with the manager and the manager's office for strategy so that we're aligned first on how we move forward with that but there could be some similarities to what we're asking now and what's in here too that um impact the quality and the standards of our parks and our maintenance and also speak to the the safety concerns that Austin referenced about staff and going into parks and things like that yeah totally and you actually sort of hit my next question which was going to be about that half pen increase in what we're actually looking for and what we think we need to meet that um so I'm looking forward to that conversation moving forward um and council member can I address just the the budget comment so you know I think actually both of these
presentations today help set the table for an understanding that you know by by by Council reviewing and adopting strategies um I understand the duation with a budget you're about to adopt but you know as as Wade presented upfront this is a 15-year plan uh Vision zero the resolution had targets for 2035 and 2045 um so absolutely I think you know we sense your enthusiasm for moving quickly on all of these but I I do want to emphasize that you know these layer on top of other priorities you have also endorsed uh and so that you know in in our efforts to bring you a budget it is not us applying a different set of values than what you're responding to today but it is taking your feedback and you know from today's conversations and layering it in with the feedback you gave us in budget Retreats and you know
and the other presumptions that we make hopefully correctly but not 100% you know guaranteed that there is a core level of service that Council intends for us to maintain without telling us to maintain it and I think that that becomes a big factor in the budget and one that you know I think we continue to seek feedback guidance from the Council on you know where you know you you you and you I think made some good comments at the end of the budget Retreat about when do we talk about what we deprioritize and that isn't something that that is built into our process that we're happy to explore but I do you know I do want to say that you you you would be presuming correctly that neither the full Suite of visions Z recommendations nor the full Suite of 15-year master plan recommendations that you are going to see an immediate you know representation in the budget um nor would I say that they won't be top of Mind as we go into budget meetings that
we'll have over the next couple of weeks so it's a balance uh and and I don't you know I'm not being flippant when I say it really becomes your budget after I present it to you um I'm happy you know I think for for the budget staff and the Departments to try and provide the context in those conversations that you're looking for but but it it is a balance and it is just constant tradeoff because of the other major priorities we've all heard and and are trying to accommodate as well yeah I totally understand that I do think that that context still feels important um you're hearing our feedback we're always excited when we get presented with like innovative ideas ideas that are going to serve the community um and then you have to sort of hear us be excited about a million things and then prioritize I and then uh we get them and then we also have to prioritize and so like having the ability to sort of understand the driving factors behind the asks how they align with the plans um and like how quickly they can be implemented and all of these things I feel like that goes into our decision- making in terms of
how we prioritize and deprioritize things so um anyway I really appreciate it you'all done an excellent job here and um I think it I might have a couple more questions and moving through but I'll email youall directly if I do thank you Council Council Freeman thank you I I just I appreciate the conversation I do want to piggyback really heavily on um council member ciera's comment and just acknowledge it with the metrics that you shared um with Richmond and the others I I I just want to hearken on the cond like the conversation around equity and why it's not it's not flat it's Dynamic right and so just noting when you're talking about parks and the number of parks if you're talking about the quality of those Parks I would love to see things like whether they have buses that reach them whether they have people with transport people with disability accessibility toddler friendly cultural art spaces shade not shade um K9 mature adult and school age teenage programming like all of that
should be included in your metrics as well and so if you have that information it' be great to see it yeah I'm I'm not against it sorry I'm not sure if it's in the plane currently but that's something we can certainly um add into that benchmarking section just a a a crosswalk of how things stack up outside of quantitative factors yeah yeah Mary you have anything you want to go last just another point I I do think that um to council member Cook's point it is also not just this year's budget it's also looking at what the CIP looks like and what the next five years of planning um in context knowing what can be moved forward in the next five years not just this year and so it is helpful to see what you think should be included thank you thank you coun all great presentation I was just uh just general comments I I look forward to digging deeper into this I think that we could I I do think we have
to do it differently just how we address our Parks um I look at parks and I see D you know parks recreation I see it as our partly real estate manager you know in the city uh also a huge contributor to Economic Development and I also look at our development Community as partners in this and I think an adversarial relationship with them is not going to get us much at all uh so we have to be mature adults as we approach that conversation and you know I think there's a lot more opportunity we can take advantage of um and a lot of it is if we were to have more of a partnering approach to development um maybe we could be more integrative when it comes to you know parks and our Urban teer uh and not only looking at what blanket land we can find um my Bloomberg mayor's challenge is the pocket Parks
the paper streets you know it's we have over 600 you know paper streets Sy Duram collectively 150 acres of land that is unmanaged unmaintained undeveloped and and ready for you know ready for something uh and you know I think that uh yeah I I love the idea of engaging the community on this um do we have a adopt a park program yeah okay yeah three found okay yeah um so uh really probably amplifying that more as well where you know uh uh that could be more of a robust program if needed uh but definitely in those paper streets that we can do the foundational work you know um just letting a community or neighborhood adopt those if I don't win this million dollars then that's something way we give I did get I did get noticed that we're we're approaching the uh we're one
of the top projects and if we win it then hopefully we can uh uh get that million dollars and you know booler it so that's the news I had shared with you yet uh we we are a a strong Contender right now amongst other projects across the world so uh but yeah I I my whole approach to this is developers can be our partners on this we can be more integrative in our approach to development uh we don't have to look for just open empty land we could also look at how we can be you know integrated and what's coming that's new uh I also want to make sure that you guys are front and center and the conversation around closing this Loop and what we can do with that and I would love to have more conversation or even know if there's more conversation happening with our school system uh I mean every school has a park every school has athletic fields every school has all of those things just because there there's budget jurisdiction there is no jurisdictional borders when it comes to The Human Experience uh we go
m. m. is the mayor's Corporate Challenge so it is calling out all those businesses to come help give back and beautify uh the park system yeah yeah I mean I RTP is a big old park literally you know um so we we have a lot of companies that are
interested in coming downtown as well um there's a lot of opportunity here and I hope that we're uh going to have we're going to be mature in how we approach conversation thank you thank you so much colleagues well Al last uh council member uh Baker I I joke with my colleagues in Greensboro uh frequently that the reason why they have so much park space is because nobody wants to live there uh their their biggest population driver the incoming freshman classes of UNCG andent uh each year so I'm work just kid and GRE this is a great this is a great uh presentation um this is the first time since I've been on Council that I have heard representatives from this department explicitly call for an increase to the half penny um and I'm glad about it and and maybe I'm mistaken but I can't recall a time when when any of you have come before this Council and and asked explicitly for an increase my second year on Council I I asked about this um M SCH was still mayor and and it
was almost as though the half penny was s sacren it was almost because of it just flowed so poetically that we were just St half penny for Parks half penny for Parks um and I inquired about you know have we ever thought about raising it to a penny um I I want to say that because of revaluation I I don't want to put words in your mouth in a de facto sense there's going to be more money but my sense is that you're asking for an actual movement from half penny um I know you'll take more money whever you get it but but I so I'm I'm saying that I I would you know very much be in support what listen you may think that cops don't need more money or all you we can argue about what departments but um I think most of us in durm will will agree that that these spaces I've said it time and time again parks are the most egalitarian spaces doesn't matter what color you are rich poor who you love you parks are for all of us um in the city um so I I would very much be in favor you know I grew up in inner city
and aside from having two incredible parents it was parks and wreck that saved my life uh and the programming there literally that kept me from getting into some things that a whole lot of people around me um got into far smarter than me far cap more capable than me but didn't have you know folk directing them to stuff that that you know they're murals for them now uh back home so so this is where it's at um you want to talk about the ultimate um root cause um I think our parks and the programming that go along with it are absolutely essential so I want to just let you know I'd very much be supportive if not in this budget to to moving from the half penny to a penny question I asked second year since being on Council I'm glad that you you folk have full-throated I asked uh for it excellent proposal excellent uh um plan rather um looking forward to its implementation over time yeah um and uh providing space for all of us to live and grow um and continue to become community so thank you so much
appreciate it Mr Mayor that that exhausts the um presentations and the agenda I can hand it back over to you to land us all we need to do is um settle the agenda and then we've already T we've already taken a uh motion for for the Clos SE yes sir before they leave I did want to just ask the question um I didn't uh think about it but I know that we were talking about a dashboard before I didn't know if there was a dashboard around this ho there was a HOA question on the properties that are available I know there's a there was one large one that was turning over to the city and I don't know what year it is but I know trying to keep all of that in mind and and along with the CIP there are there are properties that will have to actually take maintenance over for I know it's not just streets it's also the parks is there anywhere that's documenting that I'm not sure I'm sorry I'm not sure I'm following um help me out there's a the development and it's in um out east
it's a large development they have a lot of streets and Roads and sidewalks and um and part of their their HOA I think it's gone defunct or what have you but the clubhouse that they have And Parkwood no it's not say it again Grove Park no all of those are probably part of it but it's it's near brightley but it's right behind where the Harris Teeter is and it's huge and I know that it's going to come into the city's perview and I'm not sure which year it is say it again they they had a they would usually have like a huge National Night Out event yeah Cardinal Lake which is back up but I just know that there's a list of of HOAs that's it that's it Carolina Arbors but Carolina Arbor they were having they well they their HOA was complaining that they weren't going to be able to they weren't
going to be able to keep keep it up because uh um some financial troubles but I know that there was a is it Del Web financial troubles in dewb and Carolina off don't go to same city well I know that they turned it over to the community and they were saying that they needed to turn it over to to the city and they were concerned about the the building and the streets and the roads and so I just want to make sure we're keeping that in retrospect of all of the other conversations around what the CIP looks like and if um if they're the only ones that's great I don't think they are I don't know what the other ones are but um that would be helpful to know as well that's thank thank you for that Council jum this does raise an issue because this came up earlier I think one of the the priorities is like expansion of the park system over the next 15 years right it may be helpful way at some point to come to the council just to share that that acceptance policy that you all developed that we you share with the recreation advisory committee when land becomes available offer to the park in what cases do you accept one or maybe not strategically so that'd be good to maybe share that with the council
because I think that that's a conversation that keeps coming we'll do thank you'all so much Mr May yield to you well you know I've worked really hard to manage this meeting um so I will uh I'm gonna you know I'm glad we're about done now because I'm tired of facilitating the meeting so I'll pass it over to the manager to settle the agenda thank you mayor mayor protim uh settling the agenda on consent I have items one through four and through 19 and on GBA public hearing I have item 21 thank you I'll entertain a motion to uh settle the agenda s all right the agenda has been settled uh Madam attorney do you mind turning that mic off while you there all right and we will now uh execute into close session