City Council · Regular Meeting · March 3, 2023

morning sir good morning mayor and Miracle Tim and Mr councilman department heads City staff Welcome to our second day thank you for coming back uh because as always a few housekeeping things here this morning uh if you haven't had the chance to call me breakfast or behind us please support yourself had opportunity um you know quickly walk through the agenda for this meeting so everybody Folks at home um know what we have planned for this morning in the first one yeah [Music] we're going to begin this morning followed by um first presentation from the ETC Institute who will come and give us a presentation on our annual

arrestment survey to take a free trick um and then come back on second course in the morning and we'll have our Dr Michael Walton Professor Ramirez which is the State University to give us about an economic update it has been three years since live presentations for both these individuals so it's great it will be great to have you back welcome all of your questions regarding the presentations that we've already seen interesting information we will take a shorter launch about 45 minutes um in the afternoon we'll begin with a strategic Plan update foreign

[Music] to to help us shape and craft a budget that we come to you with proposed advice from from uh so with that and I'm clearly advancing because I've arrived yet but um [Music] foreign

foreign As We Gather this morning we are hopeful that the guest presentations that we have lined over you as well as our staff presentations and updates we'll continue to be valuable to you we'll continue to inform the importance of the centers that you have before you I once again look um we have built this world with staff who are intently listening at your direction uh they are here just requests to provide uh information if you needed a response any questions that you might have for us

and we will continue to facilitate conversations keep us moving that will continue to progressively provide us the development guidance that we need for our fiscal year 2024 uh budget and capitals thank you Christina Meredith quality yes um the deputy city managers for being the team we are a team um that's always listening always reviewing information that we put together make

sure it's accurate or making sure is representative of what we need always doing additional analysis and Analysis taking into more information and analyzing again the most importantly as councilman remember the whole island interests finding ways to bring new ideas you know Innovation um to the table as we put together a bunch of different clips at the battles of this organization's Durham City municipal government as well as this community that we all love while watching the news this morning um uh I heard always that today this very day marks three years since the very first covid-19 pandemic case will diagnose in North Carolina [Music] um three years and as we you know we saved us all the

time and we sometimes are convinced in ourselves that we're finally putting the pandemic behind us um because it it brought its their brains many uh many uncertainties a particularly particularly economic uncertainties that make it difficult for us to bring in um plan in advance for what we need to do to deliver services so Central division budget you've already heard that Equitable investment um is a high priority for us um in that Equitable investment in our infrastructure our services our Capital expansion we have a global Community getting demonstrated in the last census that our community is growing we have to prepare for that for our both present and in the

future and we need to actually attract and retain city employees who are opportunity to us being able to to do the things that we do on a day-to-day basis we saw when driving his presentation is most of our budget goes to personal personal services because we are on public service that's what we do we use our we use our knowledge our hands our things our Tools in order to deliver service to our residents these priorities are evidence by the inclusion in our preliminary budget projections that we do use the inclusion of step and performance increases for all of our employees all of us and we approximate that number to be around five percent but it's very important saying to include every single employee that works with specific government it includes an additional

five million dollars to our Street Maintenance based budget and we hear about the importance of of good good and excellent streets in our community as a high priority from our residents from all of us stakeholders all the time and programming of up to 25 million dollars in Equitable and green infrastructure Investments that we are implementing programmatically with the hashtag tax increase that the council the council approved in the previous year so discussing their prioritize uh all this is not easy so I moved at this point to uh a request of the council which is that as we continue your discussion and prioritizing the city council new budget request we would

like to schedule another uh special session just for that um and what I would like to do is work with your administrative staff and student clerk to set a date and time for that we do believe that another two hour session would likely to be long enough for us to get through all of those requests and provide us the information that we need as we continue to prepare the budget every single day we're doing something with the money so we are hopeful that we can get this special needed schedule very very soon for those who have history with with this it's not the first time we've had to do something like this because of office uh and we we like to because we know you're very busy potentially look at a thing that we want to always already be focused on City uh city services which will be like a work session day a day that they were assessment is already set up for but adding some additional time to that so

we'll hear more about that request later but I'm hopeful I see in us that you you're okay thank you very much um so at this time he's not here uh more egg jokes um so at this time Andrew Holland who is the assistant budget uh director is going to be working very slow [Music] as he will introduce our next speaker who will present a resident survey

results from 2022. so thank you uh very much for being attentive to my opening remarks and that's the end you're still walking there and here he goes yes I'm sorry [Music]

[Music] who is outside in which BTC ministers this survey every year uh this is an opportunity for us to hear from our residents around the extremes parks in our business operations okay and education [Music]

and all right let's get some coffee yeah thanks everyone it's the first I've been to this facility first I woke up in the delivery area and obviously did not look right well it's great to be here my name is Jason Morado with Etc Institute and we are a marketing research firm at a specialized in conducting Community surveys for local governments and we just finished for the 13th time conduct an original survey for the city of Vera so today I'm going to walk through the key findings that are fairly high level um full report is very detailed and comprehensive So today we're really focused on the key findings from the survey um I do just one slide I need to see Institute we are basically into the area so we're a national leader in providing

more research Global government we can do this type of work for over 40 years and in the last 10 years alone we've got a surveys and more than a thousand communities across the country and that includes a lot of work throughout the state of North Carolina so this is really the type of work that we specialize in oh this is just a quick rundown of what I'll go through we'll go over the purpose and matter I'll give the survey when I call the bottom line up front are our main conclusions boiled down to a couple of PowerPoint slides and then I'll go through the major survey findings to show how we came to those conclusions and I'd be happy to answer any questions so there are several reasons to conduct a survey like this one is to get objective assessments of how satisfied residents are with major stage services and also receive terminal residence feel on top priorities for the community we're also able to measure Trends from your previous surveys each year we tweak

the questions similar questions a little bit but most of the questions remain the same so that we can measure Trends over time and then we're also able to compare your results with other communities across the country and that's based on surveys that need conducted at Etc Institute so I mentioned this is the 13th time conducted resident survey we've been doing this every year since 2015 in conjunction with the current Windsor County and before that we'll conducted this survey every other year going back to I believe 2005. 8 percent

so essentially that means that we accepted this survey but the same way a hundred times nine five times the results in being plus or minus three point eight percent of what we're reporting so even before a statisticated out of survey the results are never perfect but the margin of error is small so now we'll take a look at some of the demographics survey respondents uh we had a good representation by age um just for my gender so this is very much applies to actual population of the city and also had a good representation about race ethnicity this also very much reflects the actual population of Durham and then we had a good representation of my household income as well so you can see the breakouts among the different uh income wages so here we have a map of the city and the county the survey is conducted from both City and County residents include those city and county services for this

presentation and for your report space just on those 673 respondents to live within the city we had an additional little 200 extra serving young women completed a survey we had a good distribution throughout the city this is a similar distribution compared to the previous surface so here are our main conclusions in the survey we've got a residence and a positive reception City over 80 percent of respondents they endure as an excellent or a good place to live and that's much higher than most other communities we'll look at that in more details a little bit 76 percent of respondents were satisfied with the overall quality of life this year overall the satisfaction ratings are similar to what they were last year and that's a good thing a lot of cities we've surveyed over the past six months have seen more decreases than

increases and satisfaction over the last couple of years so this is a good thing and overall the most that's actually similar and a little bit we'll look at some of these specific areas and among the biggest increases and satisfactions when we prepared your results to other communities there were a couple things that really stood out one is that you made nine percent points above the national average for an overall whole new city services and that's one of the most important questions on the survey because they're asking for residents to take into account all the services that you're providing and really have an overall satisfaction rate for how long it is typically if you're ratings for the overall quality of city services are good it means you're doing well a lot of things specific areas as well and then another area that really stood out I think rated 22 points above the natural average or customer service provided by city of course and that's

one of the areas where you raise the importance of ours and then we top overall priorities are over please Services following Schools maintenance of city streets and affordable housing and these have been the top feed priorities you really in the last few services so first we'll look at some just general perceptions here we ask the presidents to write their perceptions and determine a number of different ways assuming dark blue or ratings are very satisfied the white people were satisfied the brain is neutral and we interpret neutralize average or eating expectations it's a ring of a three on the 51 scale and then the pink and dark can't go into the dissatisfied your birds so the motor positive The Thinker negative overall for positive rates are always negative uh 76 percent of responded so either very satisfied or satisfied with the

quality of life in the neighborhood and then if you look at this third row down the overall quality of service divided by the city 16 of respondents are satisfied prepared to only 10 percent were dissatisfied so you've got a six to one ratio of those who are satisfied those dissatisfied overall quality assistance services that's a very good ratio typically that ratio is Durham is either excellent or a good place to live um you're a lawful received highways to work as a place to visit as a place to play there's a community that values the diversity of weapons now this was the very first question on the survey here we asked residents to

raise major categories of City and County Services so again with the Positive ratings uh the green or the gray or average or even expectations and container than negative so again overall the deposit rates are good they outweigh the negative the highest rated areas were Library Services EMS fire Services uh Wireless utilities Parks and Recreation programs and customer service of the city of employees there are only a few areas that have more negative responses than positive and those are the same ones we've seen in recent surveys schools and in transportationally services such as streams uh pedestrian facilities which primarily include sidewalks in the Public Training System so we also found that satisfaction was an overall quality city services is high in all parts of the city so here again you have a map of the city and the county and we wrote the results out by

geographical and we did this for every question on the survey and asked on a client clear scale so there are about 100 maps of the report like this there's just a few we'll look at now this is for an overall quality services now in broker results out where unincorporated Durham County is known area and then we broke the city out by a package so partner religious Prime and that's what the dark black lives so here for the overall organ city services the entire map with blue which means that residents from all these areas are satisfied with overall quality services so this means you're doing a good job of buying Services equally in all parts of the city when we look at the past problems this map is blue being a resident of each engine areas that are satisfied overall the quality of life Abraham

and this map is for how residents feel about Durham and the community that values the diversity of its rhythmics and again the entire map blew meaning that residents are satisfied wanting to break it down in each of these happier so I mentioned that overall this year the satisfaction ratings are similar to your previous year having said that there are some areas that had bigger increases or decreases these are the areas of the biggest increases in satisfactions over the past so he's a travel Plus yard waste collection of services the condition of all cards Greenways and trails the overall image of Durham Library services and programs and in cultural programs and these are the areas with the biggest decreases in satisfaction compared to last year management development growth overall communication

attractive safety laws government is a place to start a business their conditional parking pedestrian facilities which I remember the sidewalks and then use the travel model okay and we also compared your results to other communities across the country so for these next key charts the dark blue line or Derma residents who are together very satisfied or satisfied so we're waiting about four or five and five o'clock scale the light green are the rating for residents in the Atlantic region that includes the state of North Carolina as well as some surrounding states and then the turquoise color or light blue are the results for residents from home across just includes City and County Services in areas with the dark blue arrow means you would significantly above both the regional and actual average then it was Library Services uh all the require and life safety programs water sewer utilities Parks and Recreation programs

and then customer service from city employees one of the areas where we rate the farthest above the regional national average 63 of your respondents are satisfied with gold roll both your customer service sustainable employees and you can see the regional and national anthem in both around 40 more than 20 percent coins above so here's some more comparison for City and County Services for communication with the public your ratings are just a little more of the regional average but still quite a bit above the national average uh we're building ordinances to pretty much jump forward with other communities the areas where you do rate a bit lower on overall Podium with protection bicycle facilities Public Schools make sense of streams and then the Public Training System and this is still working seeing the last couple of years now if you look at comparison for

perceptions the city in a number of ways uh Landing areas where you're going to be honest above the national average is there one is a place to live over 82 percent of respondents feel Durham either an excellent or a good place to live you can see the regional average is 60 the national average is actually a little under 50 percent we also received very high ratings of work as a place to visit again as a community that knowledge diversity uh two-thirds of respondents gave positive weight loss in Durham and the community that got used the diversity of its residents and can see the original and actual average of both just a little under 50 and then here in comparisons for perceptions of the city and county and the number of other different ways the trainings are a little below the regional act on average but from the image and the appearance as well as

management of development growth but your ratings are quite a bit higher when it comes to the overall obvious city services which is that top Rail and again that's one of the most important questions on the survey because there were asked for residents to really get an overall s are also higher when it comes to the value of their residents the senior the local government taxes 20 of responses were satisfying the value of the super property taxes very similar ratings but you can see is a regional in the actual land we get both with only 34 percent now we'll take a look at top priorities and earlier we solved the very first question on the survey which shows satisfaction with major categories of City and County Services foreign

training systems some of you I remember this from previous years this is what we call the important satisfaction rating and this is a tool that we use to help Community set priorities this analysis is based on two different types of data of course we asked lesbians how says find their own services and there's a follow-up with which services are the most important to received so the idea behind this is that those areas that have a combination of low satisfaction but at the same time are the most important should it be a high levels um the idea behind this is that you could have some areas where residents can blow satisfaction ratings so that doesn't necessarily mean they wanted you the best thing just might not think it's an important this guy is in both satisfaction levels animals the areas in pink on the highest priorities and squeezing protection

Public Schools maintenance and streets against similar folks you know recent years the areas in yellow are also a higher a higher priority for residents than rate those as being quite as important as the originally high priority areas or prevention facilities inside a loss and the publishing system doesn't mean those areas don't need any attention but making improvements to the areas of pink and yellow will impact the greatest number of weapons this is the important satisfaction rating for maintenance services you can see the highest priorities has been conditioned with public school facilities other heart pressure release or the conditional vehicle streets and there's no sidewalks parking the appearance of landscaping along right away streams and public areas given definition of bicycle facilities

and then we also had a question of where we asked business which government services should be the highest priority for increased funding so in dark blue show results for this year's survey the light blue and the results last year survey and you can see both last year in this year two areas that really stood out as the highest priorities for our Public School operations and four miles um those are the highest pair with last year the numbers have even increased a little bit the other high apparently this year or a job creation training screen maintenance Universal 3K and new programs so we also wrote the results out by race and ethnicity to look at the results at a little more of a granular level now for these charts since we're taking the sample printed into smaller groups this is a larger learning way so a difference of five or six percent it doesn't mean as much as it does for the overall more understanding but there's

nesting charts and broken results out from black to Spanish and white respondents and then the modern version of the results for all 673 surfings in blue line or result finisher survey the gray last year so this first charge for the overall quality of police protection as a couple things that stand out here we look at the blue long the satisfaction ratings are very similar this year one black spin the white respondents and these percentages are the percent of residents who gave array to either satisfied or very satisfied compared to last year's survey the ratings have improved a little bit from black and white respondents for spend response the rates have increased quite a bit less last year just under 38 of his bank respondents were satisfied with fee those more importance boost protection this year is just a little under points

so this shows how residents feel safely we're walking alone and engagement with their own day so the results are very similar among black and his back respondents a little over 80 percent feel safe in the neighborhood during the day and that number is quite a bit lower the white response or 89 will save the loan um you'll also know that the ratings have gone down just a little bit for black respondents a little bit more for white respondents for Hispanic respondents have gone down a little bit more compared to last year foreign last year 32 overall real estate agenda this year is up to about 40 percent so pretty big increase for white response the results are about the same this year as they were last year of 43 percent

this shows an overall police relationship with your community so among black respondents these rings have gone down a bit regulation or surveying will also go down a little bit although not quite as much for one respondents uh but the rate assembled on up with the employees and response the during the last year now with this chart we're looking at this satisfaction with affordable housing so in this case the lower number um so if you look at the bottom row last year's 66 respondents were dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing this year that's seven percent or gone up a little bit and you can also see this satisfaction has gone a little bit unless um I was significant around but between two and four percent between each of the three groups last year we also look at the current state of

race collections um so for this chart the results haven't changed topic during the last year the rates have gone down a little bit for black respondents uh went up a little bit because the white response and then for Progress addressing professional Equity so here um overall the results have improved a little bit in terms of last year's survey if you look at that bottom row last year 37 overall was asked by the progress of the duration Equity this year's improved just a little bit of the 39 and it's also improves just a little bit of our black response a little bit more along my respondents it's approved by about six percent uh almost several percent more space responded you know we asked about their experience engaging the city government process so overall the results are similar to the last year um the ratings still have gone down a

little bit or black and white respondents um about the same for his band respondents the other thing that stands out here is that it range for black and white response is about the same 45 percent of black response were satisfied with their experience and dangerous in development is 43 of the white respondents but then quite a bit lower it's only about 35 percent of satisfied with their experience negating in the city building as a community moving in the right direction overall the results are similar to last year's survey we've seen a little bit of increasing satisfaction among black responses a little bit of warm and increasing satisfaction Hispanic respondents but a small increase and then here we asked presidents about terrorists and community that values the diversity of its residents so if you

look at the bottom row last year 63 of respondents overall were satisfied with German community that got into the diversity of residence by this year as well just a little bit 66 there's also been slight increase the satisfaction among black respondents Hispanic and white responses so small changes but also small improvements so earlier we looked at which government services response skills should receive the highest power rate with increase funding to the right are the top five priorities the model the entire surveying all 672 respondents and then we also are showing here the top five priorities on black Hispanics so one of the things that stands out here is that affordable housing and public schools are by Wild by far the top two priorities among each of the groups for black respondents affordable housing was one of our lives in priority

81 so after that is one of the Ohio paralysis funding public schools in seconds for Hispanic or white respondents those are also the top two the public schools was burst affordable housing sector that was part two the priorities changed along based on the group yeah and I really have more trouble together um feel their black response the third priority was job creation and training that's fourth or Hispanic respondents medical web respondents for black response youth programs the fourth highest priorities it wasn't in the top five or Hispanic or right response students wasn't in the Top Line we're in Hispanics it was third for white labels then if you look at Hispanic respondents a third of a sidewalk instruction they're one of the top five for black and white respondents we looked at Job appreciate reading the writing and then

the fifth highest power reinforest bank responds with social services that wasn't in the top five for black or white respondents didn't look at white respondents uh service commences that wasn't in the top five for black Hispanic respondents and then fifth language operation insurance so just a quick recap we saw a resonance overall our positive perception city um over 80 range excellent a good place to live we saw the natural average was just under 50 so we have more than 30 percent more Tire uh most residents of all sort of satisfied with the quality of life in the neighborhood seeing overall the whole skyscrash has similar to last year's survey but we saw from the specific areas that have had the biggest increases in decreases over the past year

overall ingredients are pretty good compared to other communities especially when it comes in overall home decision services in customer service for city employees is one of the areas stood out doing the top overall priorities this is based on an important satisfaction rating the goal of that question we just looked at about which development services should receive the highest prairies so voice protection a lot of schools things drinks and an affordable housing thank you foreign thank you [Music] um I can just talk loud [Music] thanks technology um thank you Jason this is great um

always so interesting to see um to see the results of this I'm wondering now that we have a number of years um it would be it would be interesting to be to see like some trend lines is that something that um y'all can put together for us for like you know for some of these questions for like the past five years some of the bigger questions this week we're turning off or down in general yeah absolutely I agree you're gonna smell these collections for the last 10 years otherwise much longer so yeah yeah absolutely you can do that um too much data in this thing but yeah absolutely thank you yeah I've never been overwhelmed with data in my life

thank you um no I don't think so um we typically get a very uh good representation in the city the demographic questions I think part of that is the way we administer the survey we get people in different ways they can fill out they can pull out the mail survey print survey and they'll back to us they can also take a story online survey or a key barcode it'll stop in the envelope and then we also promoted the survey on Facebook and mail out those comments and they couldn't even call me once yeah both they want to do the surveillance um but we did actually have some people were called we're going to school yeah believe it or not just about people who are not still have access to Instagram your experience engagement with city government process was that's just the one question what's your other supplement questions under that question

yeah that was that was a group of several questions um that was one of about nine different options um where we asked residents different aspects of being communication related questions that's fine good morning good to see you yeah you're good but this is always a highlight of modern highlights for our budget uh budget of retreat so it's good to see you I'm wondering in the um do you capture the the time the responsibility in the city of neural I believe that's a question a lot of times we do ask out the number of years they've lived in the city um we do have that yeah and do you also

capture do you know if there are any repeat survey thinkers is it just totally random do you know whether or not the people have ever filled one out before there's typically some but most are not um it's a random sample so each year starts over every household in the city and randomly select which householders through the survey so there's typically some repeats but more so they're on YouTube for the web at least is there a predominant um predominant time frame for residency most of everything here under five years one in ten you you know we did track that um it's a pretty good mix of those who are newer residents so five years or less all the way up to those who lived in the city for more than 30 years um I think that charts on the full reports the weekend it should be in there but yeah we need to break that out by like how long they live in the city

and we couldn't even do a process that breaks the results out by that and see if there are differences of um so in your um in your industry distinguishing for me the difference between um I know some a lot of folks um had issues with the appearance of their High investment and these physical and what the perception is very high operationalize that for me what is how do you all see that you know one of the areas and that's been the case for foreign um well one of the fair reasons I want to mention this was can you go to May residents definitely have a perception positive perceptual involved living in the city um when you look here for the maintenance services one of the highest

priorities typically is the appearance of landscaping wire ways freezing public areas um that's not all of them but I think that is the part of it that's typically one area that amazes almost from yellowers your appearance of radio entryways the downtown I mean those are those are a couple of things so when you when you when you capture perception or they ask what's about media stories or what friends talk about how how do you operation work we don't ask that we just ask about their overall perceptions as a place to live it's a place to work some place to play we don't really ask why do they have this okay [Music] to be you know go to school tomorrow but this is always very useful I guess I also just as I I finished want to

congratulate the our city staff who uh both have a very very high perception of the service delivery uh which means that they're having a positive concern from the cause which is good to hear for a government uh that folks have a positive experience when they interface with us so congratulations uh city manager paid into your entire team for putting a face an enjoyable thank you uh [Music] I remember correctly in communication with the public works fairly lowen or over one you know I'm looking at the priorities that are there and I'm wondering if better communication can uh probably impact some of these concerns uh

thank you uh yeah our presentation is on Monday okay gotcha that works I'll be back in my uh while I was in Kansas but yeah yeah that was Monday cool gotcha and I only ask that because you know the city is a very complex Enterprise uh this this giant bureaucracy and you know residents don't really think of how to remember this complex system when they have a concern they're just think about a concern and and I just think that you know the story that the state has told us today is just more efficient communication will solve a lot of that's all but helpful to better understand um the highest word is public schools we do not find the homeschools but they are over there not jurisdiction but you know geographically um you know horse police is is here you know but we compared our police

practices our Public Safety practices and all of the resources we have that we all for Public Safety in comparison to our neighbors and uh and just the national again I think the girls cities and as we communicated um the amount of streets that are owned by the state in the city of Durham but that's not communicated then it's it looks like we're not you know really keeping up with the strengths so I think what what I got from this is you know there just needs to be some effective communication uh and that's the you know sometimes the community engagement can be a necessary evil because you get the same you know players that you know hijack that that that that delegate area um but we you know and that's where the data programs that we continue to get a lot of us and I think we'll have some of that yeah your community yeah communication public education all educating the

public all that definitely results um an overall the communication ratings were were not bad they're a great communities but that is one of the area in the past a little bit more redeemed for this over the past year comparative uh the year before um I think the results are snapshot in time which could have been something particularly going on at that time it's really good to look at that look at the trend over time [Music] I I don't I don't necessarily mean the same staff has to come up with new ways to communicate right because I think we're doing everything we can possibly do there are ads everywhere they're you know their own YouTube right now I mean those of us that are going out in the community and talking to our constituents um

I just wanted to make sure um this youth programming I noticed I mean it's Fourth for the Black American can you speak to where it might have fell for Hispanic and white or overall um just because it looks a little weird and the same thing to the sidewalk in construction yeah I have to look at the full report of the crfl uh yeah the youth programming eventually yeah I believe it was it wasn't too far out of the top five but it's been the white responded so it wasn't significantly lower but it wasn't even it was a few spots down and doing the same thing um I would love to see where so once you once it fit into the top I would love to see where it was for the food that don't for other groups it paints a picture

yeah I mean we definitely have the results for all of these um there were there were 11 different items asked or built too busy to show them but yeah um typically the things that were in the top five for one group would not be authors didn't all didn't fall apron thank you I really appreciate it um these uh statistics being shared uh as part of this budget process you know in over the years the evolving to actually include this has been it's been like how do you use it and I think I think I'm coming coming to a way that we didn't have to see some things but uh I do agree that Council under Johnson if we could get some more trend lines that would be helpful to see how we're doing because I think you're compared with comparing ourselves naturally and regionally or what have you and it's nice to compare yourself to yourself yeah

yeah that was that was in that that was a general question and that was one of the ones I asked on the very first question on the survey we're really asking about those areas big Venture Department uh we did ask for more specific questions about communication later on in the survey but that was just kind of you know wrong okay thank you are there any other questions thank you so much enjoyed your presentation we'll turn back over to our house that's a manager all right thanks everyone thank you

um foreign [Music]

thank you so thank you yeah this year previous year yeah

thank you

that's good foreign that's cool [Music] [Music] thank you good morning no actually um Dr Walden will be coming in after us so I'm sure and I'm here with Bethany Hamilton and we um oversee the Strategic plan refreshing process so we're here today to give you a update on that and

then we'll get to the assignments that I got it all one person I thought today so um it's all in October I gave you a brief uh look at what was going on with our refresh that we were doing what we were coming up with um and today we're doing something similar um but really October and today are just uh they're really just kind of teasers get you all excited for our big reveal that's going to happen at the end of May well we will be coming forward with our whole plan we're very excited for me or may not be some kind of steady involved with that big reveal but we're excited so we're going to start out with Beverly she's going to come up here and talk about some of the work we've been doing and some of the engagement efforts that we've done we've tried some things great difference just go around I'm really excited to talk about that then I'm going to comment at the end and share about those results that came from that engagement and talk about our next steps all right let's go ahead and view our mindset hello

hello myself um [Music] governor and it's a very exciting for me my first latest slides are going to be just a review of our strategic plan a lot of stuff you know we just want to review it for anyone who may be watching fulfillment because it's great to revisit this information social teacher plan is really a road map it's really a way of just looking at where we are now and where we're going to be doing a future where we want to go and also a great way to organize our long-term vision is to Shorter term priorities um in this case we're going to find your increments and it's also an excellent way to communicate to Residents and employees what are the measurable steps we're taking to get to our desired

long-term outcomes um and also to connect as we discussed yesterday we have a limited resources extra expensive and so how do we connect those limited resources to our highest priorities so it's just about to change the definitions I'm going to kind of stick this because if they don't want to know this I'm going to kind of talk about more next slide so here we started the talk we have our mission in our vision which is approved by you all our Council everything that we that we have five goals with the Mississippi Durham and these goals are kind of our big priorities and these tend not to change much these stay pretty much pretty stable over the price um over the point five years ago is still important now in terms of these larger local areas um and then we have under equal area we have about three objectives and these were developed by step and then we get extensive community and employee engagement around them um and we'll talk about those in more detail a little bit later on and then initiatives initiatives are really what we do these are actual activities

projects and programs the actual work that we do initiative is not a verb in this case it can be a verb because it's exactly what we do and these are develop my staff as well as informed by our long-term plans so the goal of this refresh why do we do a refresh we think it's really important to re-evaluate almost like a gut check kind of look at our current priorities and see if that there's still what on priorities of residents are officials and our staff see if there's still what we shouldn't be doing um and it's also a way to get our get you all involved get our residences involved get our officials involved and employees involved it's also a great way to handle activities in our for our long-term plans into our strategic plan so we're really lucky that we have a lot of long-term plans about cancer plan small business plan and our professionality legal energy plan our staff is really really part of developing these plans and they have a lot of really incredible action items as part of these plans that

they've done a lot or research on as well as extensive Community engagement around them so we really want to kind of use this opportunity to follow those into our strategic plan find the ones that should be done the next three to five years the nature of those are represented [Music] we were in the process of developing our objectives it works with staff and about to do our community engagement very happy report that we are on track we are back there with you all now to get feedback on our objectives and that we're currently in the process this spring of working on developing those initiatives this is really the most difficult part of the Strategic plan because the initiative we're really in front of those thought and development because they're actually what we're going to be doing the next few years to reach our desired outcomes um and are we still plan to come back to you all and have the Strategic office part of the other process so we'll be back to you about the end of May um and then hopefully this will be about this in June so it will follow quick we're going to

talk about what we've done so far we facilitated meetings with our department leadership for each goal area we're really enjoying an environmental scan and so much has changed in the past few years and we really wanted to catch that as a part of this refresh process which is met with to look at what are emerging challenges and opportunities and we use that through the outcome of these meetings was a list of potential selfish areas so our objectives that we would then focus on for the next few years yeah very excited to say that we reached out to 543 employees and Collective surveys on our new objective areas for Innovative and high-performing organization Bowl area um and we're very excited to review this for in person as well as online with the help of our Communications Department we're grateful for all the assistance they gave us and it's like Ricky or able to reached about I think it's about 24 of our employees so we're really really proud of that

also this is probably a business holder we're both proud of this year we really wanted to try something new um most share Stations don't do expensive engagement rendering plans but here at the stage as we established yesterday when Nas both we really value real estate Communications um so we really focus on peering for residents and making sure that we can draw a direct line through what our priorities are on our plan and what are the actual priorities of our residence so we were able to collect 876 surveys um as 203 you know Focus Outreach which included visits to in-person to the holy Center of leadership Rec Center preseel Place Nations we were able to really meet the presidents and hear from them and um as well as use the residence satisfaction survey which as we heard earlier is statistically significant so people has really represented

but we also were able we're really excited to be able to build on the in-house expertise of NIS with their equations blueprint which we use to kind of think about how we want to do this engagement as well as we're really looking to have ums which we were able to also we had to follow them around but they were when they were doing navigation so that was really fortunate that we really had all these folks because they've done for doing this work and we could really build on that right and then we're really excited that like when we got the results and we share them exactly the leadership the top two to three priorities by opener residents employees that actually have ended up in our recommended objectives for the Strategic plan so we feel that it is actually Fair representative of their priorities and next I'm going to talk

about the sharing he's going to share all the details of what this objectives actually are thank you okay so I am going to go through each of our goals and talk about those three objectives um so if you're going to see anything from shocking I think you are very aware of what our residence and what they find important that's what we hope you're going to see in front of you also keep this in mind this is important these are working titles only um they will be built out much more when we get a more holistic approach when we are done with our initiative so we know there's some work to do around this language we use a lot of City speaks sometimes and we want to definitely um make this much more friendly and usable more residents in the future so keep that in mind so we'll start with the one our shared economic Prosperity I keep looking out here when it's right there we have three objectives so the first one tools and resources to promote small businesses and local entrepreneurs is nothing that is a continuation of what the school has been focused on for quite some time removing our neighborhood

businesses build a town to be competitive Workforce you saw that today in our residence survey just how important that is and this last one really building connections between job Seekers and quality job opportunities this is very heavy in oews wheelhouse working with working with the companies and businesses making sure that we have the right training in place for our community going out to save our community together the first two objectives not surprising they came from our last line as well our reduced harm and building trust between our neighbors and our Public Safety providers this third one is very new and as you heard yesterday from our HR Director this is definitely a pain point in the city you're going to see something very familiar in another goal as well this one is really focused around Improvement retention and the wellness of our Public Safety staff it's the different than the rest of the city is very unique and and so we think there's some unique solutions to that in our connected engaged inclusive

communities this is really the heart of the community's plan is our goal three these three objectives the first one about cleaning places in local governments we're going to continue and Elevate the work we're doing with our engagement efforts in the city clearly that is an important part of what we do number two um I don't think we could even have a species plan without thinking how the cardboard will be a part of that and then our last point is more about expanding our resident access to digital resources as well as our community programs and our resources so making sure that we're connecting residents with the services that we offer angle for our Innovative and high-performing organization goal this is our internal Services goal more of our employee one this is the one we have our employees prioritize objective ideas for this one so our first one strengthen our inner Department of collaboration is this is just about how we need to we will communicate and collaborate better internally within our Department's processor within other departments and we do that better and we'll be better at our services for our community number

two this is the one I spoke of well when you've got a recruit retaining and are a Workforce so again a second one we all know why and number three um this one yes of course is one thing here are advancing and inventing equity and programs and services this one really is going to be looking at not only internal um internal processes and policies that we even think but also looking at how we perform the services and the processes that go out to our community as well and our last but definitely not least goal Article Five driving and vibrant environments we have maintained and improve in existing infrastructure you solve this all over our residence area this morning about our roads and streets and sidewalks um our expand renewable energy and efficiency Energy Efficiency strategies we are very lucky that we have a carpetuality plan that will be used to feed into this one private as well as the comp plan which will be used throughout the plan there's a couple hundred action items in that content

we'll be looking at as well creation of ideas our last one is divert waste to Alternative Innovative strategies for working hard and see what our Solid Waste departments and their collaborative collaboration with other departments see if we come up with that so um I am now going to take you away from the refresh and for one minute I want to focus on another part of the Strategic plan which is the all-important implementation of that plan so I I talk about this in October when I talk about it today and I'm for sure going to talk about it in May but we spent a lot of time right now on the development of a strategic plan but this is not the most important particular plan it is these implementation of a strategic plan I'm a local government yeah I've been a mobile government my entire adult life I have been in multiple organizations and every single one of them has had a strategic plan it's not until I came to Durham that I actually understood oh you can actually do something with that strategic plan and nice fantasy covers on them and yeah that was about it so

um and that's an important part of our strategic plan and so one of the things that we do we do a number of things we have an online dashboard that we update and provide to Residents we use it definitely in the budget process we use it just to talk about what we do and we organize things by our strategic plan but one of the things that we started some years back was the Durham strategy and performance meeting we call it these app internally and these meetings are held once a month when we look at those initiatives those uh working items that departments are working on and we bring people together including our city manager our Deputy city managers it's a two-hour meeting it's not like some quick little you know oh half an hour it is a commitment to do this every month people behind you half of them I think are are part of that as we speak every month and part of those discussions is looking at a long timeline um you can see up here at the very small little character but looking at a year in advance what are the main deliverables what are those big Milestones that are part of this initiative what are we looking forward to um and part of that being too at the end very end of the 15-minute update because

you go through quite a few initiatives um the permanent share out the next ABC and D we're going to do ABC and D between now and the next time that we're in front of this group and then on a fast forward a couple months three months they come back and you start the presentation went okay I hope you open your ABC and D so this is where we are with ABCD and it's it's been such a great way to see this continuation and this progression of those initiatives this is such an important part of this I know it's definitely going to start brainstorming how you um when we get our plan adopted in June the implementation of it and we want to do a better job of really doing storytelling around that um because it's it's great for us to see it but we'd love to share that out and work with our residents just how things progress over time and how exciting it is to see that all right I'll go back to the refresh now that was just my my two cents so what's next so we are in the all-important initiative development meeting right now we started this week we're continuing on it will take a couple months

um this is really the most fun but also the most challenging part of strategic planning um behind you you have some amazing people that have amazing people to work for them and there's no problem coming up with ideas for initiative the challenge is how do we get that number down if the bus office likes to remind us we do have limited resources we can't do everything we can fund everything um so that's really the challenge so to help us out this time we are going to be working with a decision making Matrix uh we want to look at the feasibility you know how much are these initiatives going to cost um how many people are involved what's you know are we going to be able what can we accomplish in the next three years and then looking also the impacts so what's the impact of that initiative on that objective on that goal as a whole and so we're hoping that this making Matrix will make it a little bit easier to really fine-tune and only in on the most important initiatives that will then make it into our plan and then we will be back with you on May 24th to share out that plan with you all um and from there we'll have an entire

you know getting out to our residence employee and then we start the all-important implementation part of the one so I like to end on the slide because we love to bring people to our website um we uh I talked about a refresh but we do have a current plan that we're also moving through right now and that current plan is on this website we have 13 initiatives that are going to be staff on a monthly basis um so there's more information there about those as well as well especially the United report that's just a great really easy and to go through with graphics and numbers and great for residents to take a look and see what we're up to so and with that I will open up any questions that you may have thank you this is phenomenal I always say it was learning process and appreciate how so alive

um I appreciate that as well and if you have um or how yes so we we did try some demographical information um around the surveys and special because they're starting to go through the resident survey or all they have plot system practical information so the 200 plus that we did and suddenly and I went out I was supposed to tag tag along with the PB folks and went to the bus station and other places we had some demographical phrase I believe that we were tracking and um as well as locations so just figuring out where folks are from to make sure you're not like in one primary location and not others so we were pretty spread out we did we didn't want to go everywhere we were trying to focus our engagements in certain areas which is why we went with PB the same neighborhoods they were

going to um we were looking for people that we don't hear from very much that's what we were trying to Target for those so we were definitely not like Randall like this episode thank you foreign [Music] we actually try and do the Strategic plan and oftentimes I'll think about the work problem the council over the years and how it actually aligned with our values our stated values only as good as the leaders that embrace it and adopt with that so I'm wondering about of scoring the do you have is there some um

uh mechanism in it in the Strategic plan or around the Strategic plan where we're actually looking at a policy outcomes and work product and scoring um whether or not I know we should do it yourself at least as council members but I wonder if we formalize any way of saying yeah that that kind of reports with our strategic plan or is it just to hope that elected leaders will do anything he means like for budget requests what just policy period yeah it gets to budget certainly the place is hard but um whether it's um electrifying the fleet do we say okay that that's that's a check mark for our strategic plan if it's something that's affordable housing if we're you know putting money into the board of housing initiatives do we is there somewhere is there a sheer sharing team so we're saying okay strategic plan check mark yeah so I would say that um

and this group is extremely aware of that so something may be on a three or five year time Horizon and they're working towards that with dsaps but eventually that time Horizon is going to match up with the current budget right so when they submit that item in the current budget everything gets scored from a budget requests to a CIP request and and part of that scoring process is is um alignment stickiness with the Strategic plan is this something that we identified three or five years ago or on a horizon that that we aspired to to complete that's [Music] you know without using a lot of fancy women how I will express it no yeah and that you mentioned I do recall on our um Council request and the paperwork we've

been out I do recall seeing that I admit first was like well you know with the council you know we um but it's a wonderful wonderful thing and I'm wondering you know even before when requests have been on the front end I'm wondering if we're looking back after the fact as well because sometimes the council acts when we're just doing our regular work outside of the budget process whenever you know we're looking at Council output and saying you know that was a good idea maybe that's something we should want just as a council we're getting better at that certainly you know I mean something in the in the capital plan we began to do a couple years ago how many requests are reactive and how many requests were playing right which was a question once again and we had a metric around that and we're getting better at that one of the things I think the recommendation that came out of our budget survey last year um was to within okay so we adopt this budget but then we don't do a very good at a job although there's a ladder of

transmittal and all of that we weren't um I believe it was Equity inclusion that made this suggestion to us and said can you talk about what was asked for and other book was asked for what was done so so we can get some idea about on a roadmap what we're able to do or what we couldn't do so that's something that was a recommendation expressed by Equity inclusion last year and it's something we're planning to incorporate this year thank you excellent work can't wait for a new poster it is on the list hello hello all right first of all thank you so much um thank you writing to TV plan evaluation 96 students in three sections of

leadership Community organization and they have to actually do a strategic plan right so they definitely um I look at it a lot in terms of you know me being appointed a name just trying to kind of catch up on what we really are doing so we're not speaking I look at this a lot um but also I think they're like anybody said this to the investigation piece of the top priorities is there evaluation piece in terms of you know like at the end of the Strategic we do at the end of the internet we talk about um yeah the initiatives and what happened we also the performance measures and we did not mention that and I agree should have um but at the end okay we do for more Adventures around it and that's also a big part of our dashboard to Residents and so that's a big piece that um I have numbers right you're looking at data so that is part of this which is something we do at the very end after we have our initiatives in place yeah always because we also use like a first chart when we go through some different steps of you know thank you love the

work I love this stuff I'm like alert with it but I appreciate it thank you okay um thanks y'all this is really really helpful I like the um the focusing more that we've been doing lately and you know just having um a strength of a stronger focus on viewer initiatives that seems um like a good like a good direction and I just wanted to share what we were talking about getting a very good video I'm in um right now leadership goes in three organizations and part of two other organizations this is the Strategic plan that I have internalized for those like I could quote this it distribution plan to someone I could not afford any of the other ones um so I just think that you know effects of like how we active we use it and the work that we're doing that we you know I I consistently ask whenever I have a request or like uh you know some of the audacity to move like to do we'll have to happen in our strategic plan and I think it really helps Focus us on

um like all the Great Adventure goals and it's really helpful especially I mean I a lot of things we demanded to like okay find the line of the Strategic plan that says we're doing this thing is you know I think really helpful thank you good morning for the great presentation um I just wanted to comment I love the dashboard I think it's really helpful in my life I'm happy um and I like that we have dashboards across you know I think that was sustainability roadmap I just think it's a just a very user-friendly um way for this to interact and I just want to comment I like the fact that all we're out with TV and that we were bringing that Resident voice I think when we um when former mayor School tasked NIS at the time and I think it was a really small Windows like you're gonna create a Equitable engagement blueprint at like 90 days and 60 days I can't remember and at that moment it to me it's just a moment of how students

and how that decision has now been embedded you know if you see the through line for DP and now we're saying it with strategic plan and so I do think and then when you look at resident survey like it does connect back with what the perception of City residents are like city government and so there you see I continue you see the outcome in those places and how people perceive our city employees and the Deep satisfaction that there is in the city um especially between operationally nationally and so I just have a lot of gratitude for this and I'm really excited um about the date and night when you logarithm and I think we're just going to continue to get better and better it's one of the reasons that Durham is highlighted so much nationally and I been in calls but it lifted up there on the face so this is actually house what you did kind of process should work your residents should be able to look at the budget item and understand how it relates to them in a very real way and I just think that the city does an excellent job just a lot of graduate

thank you hi good morning I thank you also for this I have more of a engagement question so the surveys collected were always more resonance instead is that right so we have paper um paper surveys that we went out to with residents and our employees and then we had the resident satisfaction survey it was part of the survey Atlanta is this so is this where we engage any practitioners or residents as practitioners it was very it was a paper survey that we went out and spoke with people and kind of worked through with them and they just were asked to prioritize their top three in the list we try to keep it as simple as possible it's not so very well first maybe keep it um as simple as possible got you and the reason why I'm asking this is our city institution plan I'm thinking about you know the folks

who are you know not only live in in the city it's almost like you know you're a pedestrian when you're walking you're driving you're driving so I'll use the term strategic uh the shared economic prosperity so we come up with that goal we come up with the objectives um you know um I guess I'm trying to what I'm trying to say is part of the Strategic plan force that it includes not only you know government employees or residents but you know I think the small business Community or you know or or any other private times uh practitioner that plays a significant you know our role in the community did we not engage that at all [Music] so one of the things that you did here staff mentioned Keith and here is we do a lot of Engagement in a lot of

different places and what we are doing we also hurting yesterday uh we are not just taking fresh opinions but we also are incorporating uh impressions uh post surveys and other types of information both groups any any other kind of information that we can give because we know our community is three 360. so an example would be you know we did a small business sir of that small business survey gave us the Impressions at the time along with recommendations for improvement and so we take um you know we don't just we don't just do those surveys and just you know put it to the side wouldn't constantly mixing it with new information we actually are planning right now to pay a funding another business service because the last one we did I think was about two two two years three years two to three

years ago in which they were implementing uh recommendations that came from that so we want to make sure that we're not missing any stakeholders um obviously you know sometimes we send a survey or we talk to a person who is a resident they are also might own a business you know they're getting they're bringing that self that part of them into the responsible questions but we still also have to do very specific uh receive Impressions and information from their particular groups and that is yeah I appreciate that qualification and I think that's what I'd like to see in this report this this this shows that we developed a city strategic plan with own residence and we're talking about whole institutions and I want to see all of these stakeholders that are involved in

that in the future just to make put some other words around that we certainly leverage the work that other departments have done around survey because although we hear that the community wants to be engaged and we also hear why invest into that question before you've already asked me the question so let's try and be sensitive to not fatigue people and make sure you know we went through three years of um the whole planning process that we use that information and we don't have to redundantly do it again everything so there's no one at the TV asked us that it was a hard in which population and so I I acknowledge that we always

use all of the different Staples and surveys that we use um planning process but it's a great question similarities when she said thinking thank you all for a great presentation of this morning and I don't have any further comments other than that in an effort to keep us moving along thank you for a great work thank you all everyone out there so we'll turn now to our next presentation and I believe that will be Dr Michael Walden um

[Music] distinguished professor emeritus at North Carolina State University and president of Walden economics Consulting LLC during his 43 years going back with the NC State wolfen has become recognized as an expert on the state economy and public policy he is a frequent contributor to the National and state media and he continues to write a Bible collegi newsletter columns just shipping throughout North Carolina he had won numerous Awards including two Champion tough awards for excellence in Broadcasting the UNC Board of Governors award for excellence in public service the holiday medal for excellence from North Carolina State University and the Order of the Lonely time so it's my distinct pleasure welcome Dr Walden foreign

[Music] uh I had a plan and obviously you heard that I do Consulting now um but I had a colleague a number of years ago who retired and his plan was to was to take up things activities that he didn't really have time to do when he was working and one of those activities was to learn how to skydive expert [Music]

and uh finally he thought the notice he was ready to do the solo jump first time his family was all excited his wife his children some of his grandchildren were waiting for him at the site where he was supposed to land which he successfully uh jumped and lands no no injuries but it was not where he was supposed to last nothing to do with the air currents so he looks around all he sees is formed as he's trying to figure out what he's going to do which direction he was going to walk he sees the distance of spec coming toward him suspect it's getting bigger and bigger finally gets to where he is it's a person looks like the farmer overalls and so the skydiver looks at the farmer and says uh where am I and the farmer says well you're in my cornfield the skydiver looks back at him and says I bet you're an economist Farmers a little surprised when he said yeah actually I do have a degree in

agricultural economics uh farming is very complicated today it's more about planning you have to know about financial markets how did you know I was an economist the side number says because you told me something that was absolutely true but of no use for me um we've been through a lot of trauma over the last several years uh the pandemic hopefully that's under control but now what do we see inflation inflation's a big issue several homes uh indicated that's still the number one issue and then now all right

what are we hearing recession so what is going on how do we get here I don't get out of this and what's the immediate first Prospect for the Futures that's what I'm going to try to try to help you with uh this is the picture I'm not going to get into means of the of the measure here but this is a picture of the path of the economy over the last three years uh red is North Carolina green is the US look on the left-hand side oops I turned it off okay where's mine no no no okay uh okay now we're back okay I need technical assistance you know Wilmington yesterday too um and all the industry in the state okay thank you and uh the text I said where's the tech person I want you right up here

oh okay um see a big drop in both lines that's the code with her session it's an interesting recession because it wasn't like I mean I've been a professionally Anonymous for 45 years I think this this was my eighth procession never saw a recession like this because really it was it was determined by policy policy game that we know we added to limit personal contact in order to reduce the spread of the virus and most donors did that as was primarily over the state level Governor Cooper did that as you know he had issued stay at home orders he issued uh he told several sectors of the economy like the hospitality sector I spoke to yesterday uh actually not even opened the doors uh and and we knew that we were going to have a recession we knew we were going to have a session I got several calls but usually I get a call every week from someone in General's family saying Logan sometimes um what's what's going to happen in our employment in North Carolina well it's

going to go up but how much and pretty much my forecast would would continue to rise as the calls got later in the recession we actually think that 14 anyway uh bad time unfortunately short left of uh 2020 we were beginning to recovery two things were behind that one uh we we began to see the the rules the the shutdowns uh loosen uh Governor Cooper loosen his his shutdowns and and some companies were able to get back uh also the stimulus points started flow through of Commerce passed and almost two billion two trillion two trillion dollars in this plan to the economy in late March that began to flow so as you can look at the line we've pretty much been growing since then back right now we look at the far right hand side of the economy is actually back fully back and actually um uh bigger than it was pretty pretty pandemic uh if you look at

S negatives for North Carolina but interestingly if you look at Raleigh Charlotte and um you know that's the Metro that you're in all positives all positives amazing that on this area the the Charlottesville um grew through this through this pandemic recession I mean that's just

S is green and you can

4 the lowest in 50 years they don't have the North Carolina unemployment rate number yet for January the Isis pack is going to be in that in that range so big big Improvement in terms of unemployment for what uh to make what the big issue is all right we've got jobs in your business you got jobs we don't have people who are fine and a number that picks that up is the labor force participation right now what is that first of all uh labor force participation rate first of all this is based on a a I should say a base of everyone's 16 and over in other words the developers of this number which actually goes back to the 1930s said or soon everyone age 16 and over is a potential worker potential worker

5 always get the question and I'll go ahead and get it out late why is North Carolina lower are we doing something wrong now we have uh as a percent of our population more retirees than the nation and uh retirements are included in the base okay and uh you can see during coven you can see dips in both those numbers uh but improve it but the key difference here compared to you know planar rate is we're not back to labor force participation uh the levels we were prior to the pandemic we're about a percentage and a half down for both the nation and North Carolina actually North

Carolina's got a downwards um what would that mean if we were back to pre-pandemic levels the Laboratories participation we have about two million more people working nationally and we have about 50 000 people working in in North Carolina next one all right the question is why why is Labor Force participation down before I get to this I should tell you play Forest participation in the country has actually been trending now it's not just the code of things it's been going down for the last three or four decades there are a number of factors here aiding population again as you get older even though that that population is included in the base for labor for participation usually when people get older like me uh they they retire and so they're not working so we have a bigger part of our population now in that upright category um we also saw to coincide with that we saw a lot of retirements among people in that operation right away interestingly you might have wires and all because covet are people who are old or afraid

to go back maybe they had jobs and so it's probably afraid to go back because that may be part of it there's an interesting study that just came out this is literally all depressed that some economists did that argued that one of the reasons why elderly people people will still raise 55 I'm certainly in that category uh people over at 65 are not working at the race they were pre-covered not just in a code but it was due to the fact that they took advantage of a hot housing market in 2020 2021 I'll talk more about that later and Soldier house made big profits and therefore said hey I don't I don't need to work this up on that my my retirement uh plus I made all this money in the housing market so that's an interesting sidewalk the other uh if you're going to have the bullet point three you know probably in my opinion they're more interesting uh observation we can is the Labor's participation among people at the other end of the HDL 18 to 24 is down and it's down more than

ever now you might say well we're in school no the measures account for that same jobs for that it's an apples and apples comparison yeah there's a lot of head scratching that economists are doing why are young people 18 and 24 why are not not working at rates they were okay and that's now I don't I can't give you any any uh absolute risk absolute to answer to that I can give you some some speculation because this is really not yet been studied it's in the deal by economy uh one speculation is that um student loans now the news that you know but as you probably know also that even going back to the previous administration both by Administration strong Administration uh have suspended interest payments at a certain point when someone graduates and they've got to start paying back the student loan that's what happened for three years federal government said no we'll take it apart and it still Falls and furthermore the

the the payment that you would have should have made in the past We're Not Gonna uh we're not going to hit you with that with interest on top of that so uh that average is 250 a month [Music] so one possibility is that for people uh there's young people who are graduated and they're out there in the workforce they're looking at a dispense and say oh right now I don't have to pay that maybe that loosens or the reduces their incentive to work another reason and yesterday when I was talking to people about the value industry boy they really perked up with this another reason appears to be that this sort of gets outside of my land of the cons it's more psychology is that young people have a different view of work now different New World um when I was a person starting my first job my my motivation went I gotta work I gotta work and I got to take what's available um uh saying what by the way

nothing I'm going to say here is the criticism the young people now I'm just giving you the perspective but I can hear a lot of information about young people is uh they need if they're going to work they need to believe in the company and what the company's doing uh because the damn work is more than just working they want to know are they are they how are they contributing to society making Society better that's important there uh they also want flexibility uh they have a they have a a greater interest in a in a work life balance and again this is all praiseworthy in my opinion so uh and on top of that the fact that we have a great tight labor market has allowed many of them to be picking and Michael stand yourself well if they don't take a job how do they live this is where another statistic comes in the fight you've probably heard about this there's a record percentage of people in the state age category of course living with their parents so anyway so that's an issue and I think

it is an issue for us to make it very very much an issue for the city of Europe but it's something that the business group type talk to are very very uh very cheap on next one yeah now there's also been going on in the labor market and labor reallocation I'll give you a personal example my late father was a carpenter always black came back from World War II trying to get a carpenter working until about age 62 would work longer but he just put into a physically tough work um what he called laid off primarily due to the web and they collect unemployment compensation and then when the weather just came to say that this was in the north of Ohio this is mainly November December January February so we expected that uh he can collect unemployment then when things got better the the sun came out and the flowers were coming up you go back to work is not going to work you know they just

expected that um that didn't happen so much this time around uh especially for jobs in hospitality and jobs and personal services and you saw in government because of changes the economy especially the fact that the tech sector during covet exploded I don't I mean not a good way there's no business exploded soon remote work development of the cloud now we got AI coming off the tech sector nationally these are National numbers it's from 2019 to Mid 2022 when they began to realize oh we overdid especially for recession is coming so there's been some playoffs that you know recently so from 2019 to Mid 2022 the tech sector increased employment 250 percent of that now the tech sector includes the wide ranges it's not all people doing code people that work for an Amazon warehouse or because they're part of the tech

center uh and a third of the jobs do not require a four-year College degree so uh what many congress things happen is when the economy began to open up and people were going back to work if they were working in a job where they maybe weren't happy with the level of pay maybe they weren't happy with the prospect or uh payment advancement they now saw whoa I didn't get a job over here and with a tech company maybe don't mind my wage so we have a realization of jobs now interestingly very interestingly I think that the latest unemployment report for the nation that came out about a month ago where we're about a week away from the February report you may have noticed there was by surprise at how robust it was half a million jobs added in the nation in January but if you go down and look at the details the leader there was the

county Etc restaurants hotels Etc and my theory is that a lot of folks who maybe have been cut from their jobs instead I've been going back maybe to their job that they get prior but anyway this is this is certainly another issue here in this point [Music] over the last three years and the the average wage was gone up 28 so they're trying they're trying to track people with with better pay a better working conditions Etc and incidentally we have 28 foreign so clearly that would go to your traditional go-to but I think another another uh aspect of this of how the labor shortage might be

stalled is more technology now let me give you a little Segway here um you know I worked at NC State for 43 years NC State I think I think it was created in the 80s and developed an Institute called emerging issues uh Institute someone who has some of you know I know about that and the idea of emerging issues Institute was every year to try to get ahead of the curve look out there on what's happening in the state and what potential issues are coming up maybe and the idea we will get to that and we'll address that uh before it really becomes the problems that would potentially can get some solutions they've looked at things like health care and education all sorts of sorts of things um this year's um Institute Focus was on I actually wrote the background paper plan if any of you attended you know the focus there was two weeks and what can we do to reach perhaps populations that that have lower labor force participation uh how can we help for

example mothers with children work so they put a child care was a focus uh training uh folks who were who were previously incarcerated was the closest uh at Etc uh I I consider that are all good interestingly six years ago six years ago not that long ago do you know what the focus of the uh emerging issues incident was the focus was the emerging labor Surplus just the exact opposite to show you how things can change and I I don't envy you if you have to deal sometimes with the strain right about rapid change and in the war 86 years ago was this was when uh there was a lot of news about new technology coming out for example if you were a lawyer six years ago here's the lawyers used to have it with some relatives and law lawyers used to employ a lot of paralegals and when that job apparently those would be in case comes in partner gets a case partner says to to uh for a paralegals I need research on this but at the library

but all the information you can background information on cases of what the defense already what the prostitution arguments Etc and that consumed a lot of hours and that was a lot of uh work for for Peerless now there are computer programs so some of you probably know this is their computer programs a lawyer can load buy and load into her computer and case comes in type in a couple of keywords whatever ammo in a few hours you can get a stack of papers like that cover all that kind of paralegals a couple days so apparently well let me exactly one one down um so uh if you look at six years ago where it was Labor Surplus now shortage I think hopefully we're going to come to a middle ground where actually technology is going to help and we're already hearing about some employment technology I think the best example is McDonald's

my first job 1956. um uh McDonald's has opened so you've probably heard this in all digital restaurants I mean if you've heard about this in Fort Worth Texas All Digital restaurants uh there are a couple people in the building I understand just to make sure all the switches are turned on correctly but obviously McDonald's is concerned about their future in terms of their ability to retract workers and with things like the Aging population the birth rate down of course McDonald's traditionally been focused on resource workers and so uh that may be that we may see more of that my expectation we will see more of that but hopefully we can have a nice balance not the concern six years ago where people were worried about gosh the normal unemployment rate would be 20 that was actually talked about I can remember from an expert who was at the emerging issues point six years ago unfortunately so so this is something I think and I and I have no

you all need to you all know this but I better buy I have no clue about whether you can employ uh technology I mean I do know for example um so nice people have gone to automated trucks to lift up the bins that's why Raleigh's gone demands we've got three kinds of bins we've got the household crashed and we've got the recycle bin and now we have a yard made in three different kinds and they're picked up at different weeks but uh we see the the the post come and of course they they it's all messed it up so the same language so uh don't know if that's that could be your model and clear that and this is going to happen more in the international Workforce next one okay let me move on to inflation this is a national issue but I do think North Carolina is in a better situation for the labor force for the Civil reason that we are so attracted to folks moving

here from other states uh I think last year on our memory Thursday last year we were the second in second place in terms of the number of people moving here well let's let's actually calculate is what's called a net and migration this has nothing to do with immigrants and foreign immigration it's in migration which measures people moving to North Carolina from other states minus people who were in North Carolina moving somewhere else in the nation and I think we were second I believe to South Carolina but we did in the top five for four years and I think that's going to be a continuing important probably a more important part of our ability to to to fill our basic jobs because of not necessarily internal generation but in terms of continuing to attract people from uh from other states all right here we go able to move on to uh uh what do I stopping with my gosh okay

[Music] all right inflation I haven't met someone yet and I thought I'd continue to do a lot of talking um uh to all the writing groups and it doesn't matter if I'm talking to businesses uh rotary clubs I spoke to your wrote them a couple of uh weeks ago yeah that is the Walmart beautiful thing um everyone's worried about inflation well here's a picture of what inflation has been been doing this is a euro year change in what's called a consumer price index which is the go-to measure for inflation it is based on a survey that the federal government does every month and uh uh that compares how that price price in January uh compared to uh what

it was in December or what it was in the previous January and then they create an average where they don't count each price the same the price was in weights or the price changes to get laid based on how important the product or services in the average household budget they didn't understand what are people buying and first though for example I think the biggest way expect a shelter whether it's rent or owning and then shelter weight is going to be a lot higher in the state of wait for our campaign anyway uh if you look at this chart I probably make to this point I probably should have taken it back to 1990. up until 2020 for roughly 30 years inflation was a dead issue we had three premise complexion one or two percent was the average between one year there in 2018 but pretty much inflation was offered which is totally different uh again I'm

72 so I've lived through more Cycles than than certainly young people uh but even when I was just becoming aware of it economics and wanted to pursue it with this problem the 70s and I got my graduate degrees et cetera I mean we would have the typical situation with inflation of within over years when inflation went low but then we have years when inflation was high no one go back below there was a cycle with inflation usually it was related to how strong becoming was so we we haven't really had that for 30 years I won't get into the leads on how that was accomplished was a major accomplishment though in the country actually there's a worldwide policy nation was pretty much off the table as something that we worry about but then 2020 came and you can see what's happened since 2020 um we hope inflation peaked about nine percent last June the hampstein had some downward Trends in inflation the downward trend is being pricing that are still going up at less stapling um why do we have why where does

inflation problem come that's why uh while it came because in in the market in the market system we have some called free market system uh of course not totally including their important things obviously the public sector does like you do but uh in a market system where the prices really go up and down uh and uh that whether they go up and down is determined by Supply demand uh everything in economics comes back man I would tell my students when I was thinking about doing a test uh which gave I didn't give multiple choice tests yes but that was his name and I would say to them now if you get to a question it's not unusually gets a question you just have no clue this is maybe something you missed you forgot it no problem I get that here's what happened we had a situation developed in the

country where the van which means an economics being fine exceeded Supply people were trying to buy more than what was available to buy how this happened and I'm trying to illustrate this I'm not sure if this is a good analogy I've tried it out another audiences but there's a pot of water there and you can see the stove is on and now that that's what my wife said Mike put a bottle of water on for tea uh I'll do that Ernesto well no forget it and walk away Falls over so she's Spanish is anyway one inflation is akin to if you put a pot of water on the stove you're turning heat up like you turn it up too high and the water obviously boiled and Bubbles over that's my analogy to inflation going up to um on on the

levels that we don't want um where'd this come from well on the fine side uh you know I think you know this well that uh under two administrations this is not a particle time under two Administration our national leaders specifically decided that they were going to um avert an income and collapse and actually I think this is a good thing by uh businesses up institutions up uh by pumping a live match in the economy until we got and voted under control and if you look at what was pumped into the economy from the first stimulus plan of homes in this plan that happened in March of 2020 up to the last that was that on the interestingly was March 21 incidentally I'm not including the two what I call infrastructure plans for physical infrastructure plan uh that was passed and then what I call the Social

5 trillion dollars oh unheard of I went back and did the numbers looked up the numbers for what the Roosevelt administration which was really the first Administration to take an active part in keeping the economy upload and keeping people afloat growing up what was actually depression I went back and added up all the numbers for all the Roosevelt stimulus plans adjusted the dollar values because obviously a dollar in 1930 bought a lot more than a dollar today Justin you can you can do that many times make an adjustments it came about preschool wow so we blew past that almost double unheard of it now I get sometimes in the Q a with proofs I thought someone raised their head why don't we do that that's insane my answer

5 trillion has been pushed in over the last a couple of years but at the same time what would happen on the supply file so

if I change problems so when the economy began to open up in late 2020 and continued in 2021-202 and people were were able to start spending that money you might say well what people do with all that money coming and what people do who got stimulus check whether people do about all of their unemployment compensation what do people do who got uh the Child Care Credit but a lot of people obviously have spent that to to people that was a purpose but a lot of people because the Congress didn't take time to figure out okay we got to narrow this down this who really needs it and I understand why they did because this was an emergency just get the money out there um what did people do who didn't need to spend they saved it in 2020 the personal savings rate which usually covers around three percent simply measures how much you save and where we're staying in as a percent of your income usually it's around three percent it got up to 33 percent in 2020. So at the end of 20 at the end

of 2020 when the economy was began to open up that was part of this is from Wells Fargo Wells Fargo calculated that collectively tells the ultimate a country get three trillion dollars of savings that they wouldn't have had without the code uh program and I started trying to spend that so as they try to spend that there wasn't we had a supply chain problems and so what happened what happens in a in our economy what's called a market economy whether you got too much buying relative to what what's available by the price goes up so that's the simple reason at least in my mind I think most Economist lines basically why we had this surgeon inflation next slide now we have seen the rate of inflation moderate again doesn't mean prices are going down so far but most part it just means they're going up at a slow rate uh why well if I came pretty well with this not totally pretty well fixed much much better than it was in Europe too number two if a slightly uh gas prices have come down

4 is people have started to back off

in the steps although January looks like that improved the improve the wrong next one and a better reserve and this is sort of my entry to the Federal Reserve because if you talk about the macroeconomy you have to talk about that Reserve Federal Reserve one of their powers to have this is a car I'm sure you would love to hang up any government would love it yet they can print money print money they can buy stuff with foreign [Music] by saying uh now we're going to look at an institution called Federal Reserve uh let me introduce that by saying uh how

many now this was a day was when people walked up writing checks I I was still teaching I'd have to change this because some people don't use checks um I had someone I was I was at a event where I was selling books some of my books and uh probably two out of three people came up on my book said do you uh okay I started gonna write a checker okay no we're gonna do the you know the names by the only one that starts with a B you can't do it together yeah no I said no I don't do that I love them anymore the stimulate the student interest in the Federal Reserve I'd say what in this institution they run a check they don't have to debit anymore and I guess there's maybe computers and actually but then oh wow

2 uh fortunate of that for those of you who are in finance technically what the Federal Reserve did is buy the debt the treasury Treasury Department issued for the payments they deployed and when they do that they just pay with cash that they make up so uh and you can see on the right hand you can see in the middle there are competitors are flooded in common with money during Covenant again unfortunately and now there's Babies on the back wall so let's let's move ahead let's go one more time but I know let's

1 there are a lot of there are several uh uh I think very uh respectable forecasted by the end of the year we think we would be at three or four percent but want to emphasize this doesn't mean prices are going down so well so do uh usually the prices that go down are products that we buy that are not reprocessed uh like the like the farmer's market products or gasoline those prices will not go down so I want to emphasize let's find this for all my audiences when the better when you hear someone say the inflation rate is going down that doesn't most people unfortunately read that my experience is oh prices are going to go down no it just means prices are going to continue well less slowly and so the Federal

Reserve wants to get price price inflation down to two percent that's that was where we were crypto it I think by this year though we could be we could be close to that to three four four percent the other thing I want to mention uh the real problem with inflation it's not the price will first air going up is that equal salaries don't put commensurately that's the problem so if the energy person the average health or less two or three years has not seen their income other people working Investments whatever fill up anywhere near the inflation rate that's the big problem that's the big problem because that means your standard living point now now if we get the inflation rate the two percent that still means prices are going up and it means that most people many more people can look at that and say well there's a good chance I can get I'll get a pay raises above that so for at least I'll try and water but that's going to take time do you realize that after the um when we had the sub crime recession

which is that four or four sessions unemployment got up to 12 percent I was going monthly calls with Governor Perdue I mean she was calling me and just the um and I I was very honored by that because all she wanted to do is take my brain on what's going on what's going on um Association was not a professionally promised obviously and uh I remember her uh brain that uh gosh why she said the coffee's not grooming but um we're not staying unemployment and that was a big problem with the cell Prime recession inflation was never a problem it was done unemployment was was stuck about 10 or 11 percent this time we promise flip it said inflation is high and what unemployment is low so my point is if you look at the stone Prime recession of course there the problem was people have lost jobs the inflation did what a little bit it took the everything else about five years five years he did the standard of living back to where it was

so that that's that means that a lot of those are going to be still struggling even if we do get down to a two percent okay next one okay let's let me move on to the I don't remember uh let me move on to the third big problem and that's the borrow quarter session first of all what is the recession well there is a rule of thumb out there in fact be thinking about exploration poet some of you did hopefully hope this is a good experience for me and my wife and it wasn't your problems didn't always established instructors anyway that's my opinion uh what is the recession where there is a uh there is a rule of thumb that people use that a recession has occurred if we have a two consecutive order decline a GDP did you give this trust domestic product transplanted it's the value of everything we produce but actually in that in the first and second quarter of last year GDP went down for two quarters and that's won a big debate in the country

uh as the weather we were in a recession already my view is no uh because it wasn't widespread who actually had to do with some technical technical issues of due to productivity so we didn't have any deterioration the labor market so I don't think we've been in a recession yet uh but anyway a recession generic definition of recession is a broad-based appliance broad-based means that it affects most sectors and most businesses uh well rodrigating Define an economic activity of the last person yet period of time that's a very generic term and you might say well who makes that job to the president is it is is he gone is a her economic advisors is it complicated it's not it's known in the administration no one in the federal government it's actually made make a call made by a economist and their their composition changes over time who work with a group called The National Bureau of economic research nber which is a think tank it's it's been around for

they work in a committee that's called the business cycle dating committee comments um and the problem just I mean this is probably more than you want to know the problem is they think they're good times decides that we have a recession now they were pretty quick with the Covenant recession because it was so awesome but if we get a recession late this year which I'm getting kind of bad I think will I think we will it'll probably be 20 late 2024 before they make the call they are extremely slow because I think they want to be careful okay next spot enough of that um understand why often do we have to have a recession

in the Cure inflation that just seems to me like we're getting the problem or maybe at the desk we're substituting one problem for another problem and I get that totally I get that totally if you look historically usually uh when we have wrist leader inflation so it is when when this is controlling inflation is primarily a Federal Reserve account and incidentally the Federal Reserve is not a line Department like this Treasury Department defense department Homeland Security uh where all the department heads are obviously appointed by the president they report to the presidents that do this to that necessarily so it's not like that it's an independent agency Congress set it up as an independent agent they don't even get their budget from from Congress they get their budget from fees charged to Banks who want to be members of the Federal Reserve um now members of the federals are aboard uh are appointed by the president but they have very very long terms I think that either 12 or 16 years I gotta I gotta write this past sometimes in a

very very long term the idea being that is the weight down from making broader decisions that a chair of the Federal Reserve does have a short term four years and a chair it is appointed by the president every president not necessarily at the beginning of a test or her term does get a chance at this point the care but after that they're on their own uh the the chair of the Federal Reserve cannot be removed just because there's a policy difference with the president the president president can do that with any of the any of the heads of the department not on the Federal Reserve so vet reserves out there are going there today they're the prime uh Point agency in dealing with inflation the fact about I think about a year ago when when inflation was really starting to get the tension present line so I think it was at the press conference and what he learned about inflation so well really this is mainly the role of a reserve videos so what the Federal Reserve has been trying to do in fact let me know going

out in other slides okay Federal Reserve has two thick Powers I already talked about one great one and great destroyed money thank you the second thing power they hit is they can influence interest rates uh now they don't control like mortgage race directly or auto loan raids or personal rights but they control a couple of interest rates directly uh the the most important is called the federal funds rate which is the interest rate the bank a charges Bank B for a loan and instance and so usually when the Federal Reserve moves that rate up other interest rates of water in an economy and when they go down now if you look at the left-hand side of this slide I think very very instructed London 2029 free pandemic that's about a normal rate for for when inflation's not a problem in the economy's growing uh looking where it

was in 2021 in the middle of the of the pandemic it went down effectively to zero money was free pretty much tomorrow and that was reflected in other interest rates 30-year mortgage rates that if you bought a house during this time they were under three percent absolutely unheard of unheard of the housing market roared during 2020 and 2021 was the better reserve we should try to do is motivate people to spend their own spend because that's how they wanted to help they wanted spending to occur because they were worried about people don't spend their repair is going to collapse so they were going there they're throwing their Darkness to get people in business instead by pushing money into the economy I already mentioned that as well as making it essentially no cost so far away now look at 2023 where the focus has totally changed some Focus not only changed the economic growth does not be assumed we've been growing I

75 and again this is designed when I had I go to the gym in the morning I see a lot of young people and over if you go enough you see the same truth when you get the diverse with them and one young person a great guy he's recently graduated he's opening his own business I mean I just appraised him right and left and a couple months ago he said uh we're on a mic uh put on cases um he said I wanted to call me no I can't call it but Dr Wallace look the only person I've required to call me Dr Wellness my wife um especially he said um uh I said I'm

going well with my business and thank you for some of the advice you gave me and I'm ready to buy a house but my gosh what's going on with these interest rates he said I can remember a year ago they were under three percent for a 30-year mortgage rate Now They're Up For What right now they're up around seven percent more than no that's the same and so I tried to explain him what was going on and I said well John you know things could be worse he said how much worse than they do well uh you go back to him before you were born uh the early 80s we had a big inflation call but it was after a big amazing problem actually bigger than what we have now okay great reached 13 I think was in 1981 or 82. the Federal Reserve was doing what they do to try to slow the economy down I said they pushed their key rate federal funds rate so high to actually pushed up to 19 the mortgage rates the rate you're looking at now at seven percent

so anyway my point is that this is standard operating policy for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates now one of the questions that this is the appropriate times that to answer it uh one of the questions people have was Will Walden are we gonna are the Federal Reserve done is this as high as gonna go my opinion my forecast is no no they're going to raise ready for more um of course if you're looking for a job that was good and if your employer looked in the Army level that was good definitely a new job twice the number of comments we're expecting um I already showed you how uh uh consumer spending actually took a big jump in January so I was I was predicting even before that Federal Reserve was going to raise more now I'm bridged whether they're going to rain today I think the federal funds rate could go up to as high as five and a half percent so uh they're not they're not done yet uh next one

okay um now here I I sort of started before uh remember I told you the guy that yesterday raise the band yesterday I think a very good question why uh is the Federal Reserve um why are they inflicting this pain on the economy uh is it the only way to reduce inflation to cause recession instead of still I don't that don't make sense and I said to him uh unfortunately oftentimes yes the Federal Reserve and trying to pool the economy remember my my pot of water examples we're trying to pull the economy I said the problem with with economic policy is it's not like physical science gay Comics is not my business in physics if you do a you're going to get B and you know you're going to get exactly deep getting economics you do a you hope you're going to get B that's what you're expecting but you're probably not going to get exactly need this hopefully in the neighborhood

because you're dealing with people and people react to differently people are not available [Music] uh and they if they fear that they think we're getting close to the session they may stop I mean they're they're their goals to get interest rates are apply straight to two percent they may stop at four if they think hey if we go any further we're going to have a mistake what they want to do is pause and actually this system you might think gosh that's that's a term I understand why are the obviously don't you use these big big words no one understands uh they want to cause they want to create a small plan again analogy think of the economy as the

plane flying out to 30 000 feet uh that also that high level that represents High inflation but the Federal Reserve wants to do is cause that plane to come down uh which will bring inflation down uh but they want the plane to land segment securely on the runway which means that the economy does not have a recession economy does not print I mean think about recession is a crashing up they don't want to cause depression in time so they are trying to their goal is to regulation to a lower level without pressure and coffee now yeah they know they're going to have slower growth but the point is they don't want to go back to my continentality they don't want to turn a handle they don't want the water to go to Coal high school they want to keep some temperature here and they want to take them and keep the economy going but they don't want to turn off the question is the problem is they don't know exactly where that optimal level of the of the interest rate is that's going to get the economy to to assault planning but

that's that's clearly what they want one of the problems with the current federal reserve is and I think they're going to say this in Einstein thank God for the inflation quite late uh there were a lot of people worrying about I'll put myself in this Camp uh that we're worried about inflation uh in 2021 uh Federal reserve's statement was uh something in fact this is temporary uh it's not going to continue they're wrong they're wrong now why were they wrong I think because today we're looking at there's this this this there's this um analogy and uh military uh finding the last four the concern is you look at the last four to plan for this war and usually any successful board is going to do a lot different I'm sure our people are looking very closely at the Ukraine warm so the notion Jay Palace [Music]

um the the the thought is that the economic policy maker makers and administration thought that the aftermath of the covet recession would be just like the aftermath of the stock primer session the aftermath of the surprise recession was not that inflation to evolve it didn't it was that an unemployment state um too hot in fact there was a term going around when we were dealing in North Carolina even with 10 unemployment still three years after the end of the cell primary session that oh this is the new normal business The New Normal and so the thought is that the econ policy makers in the Federal Reserve thought that was going to be the problem inflation was not going to be a problem it was going to be um unemployment so they they wanted to keep the tickets open the money supply open they wanted to keep interest real slow but that is one problem with them oh now

you might say he's saying to yourself well then um has there ever been a situation where the Federal Reserve has been able to um Implement So Soft have we ever had examples in history where we were veterans or was fighting inflation raising interest rates where we did not have a recession and the answer unfortunately is yes yes uh most race went twice in the 1990s the 1990s there were two recessions we never heard of Brazilian occurs why didn't they occur because of pretty much one person who was just in as uh amazing in his career at an amazing ability to predict being comments and that was Alan Greenspan Federal Reserve chair for 19 years employment by presidents of both foreign [Music]

there's actually a lot of chatter in among an economics profession this is in websites that none anyone would want to go to where you can read about this um about I mean covet has changed so many things uh so many things that we thought all right this is what's going to happen no it's not happened that way and how the economy has changed uh there's actually a debate pre-significant Bank among economists of whether we could actually have baseball planning uh that is a recession without job losses um there is uh actually uh the person who uh is the head of this debate is by name Williamson you know one of the Federal Reserve Banks I forget which one but uh he's his argument is twofold number one why do businesses play off workers during recession well during a recession this business is theater Revenue so they have expenses in order God will Belly Up and normally uh they've got

2 um so one Theory this is from Williamson is that if businesses sit around revenue is going down they've got to cut expenses they'll just cut so it's not Bill Johnson because usually businesses will have some money put aside maybe not for all up to the dollar for all those jobs but at least some because if they hire someone they got to start paying them so uh that one that that one uh reason why some say well it's not playing separation is businesses uh will be very lucky they're very reluctant to furlough people require people because

it took them so so much effort to get them hard in the first place so the idea is that we may get through this material session we made it through this recession with minimal damage damage in the sense of people losing jobs uh in the labor market because of the how the labor market has changed and we've gone into this with uh with uh okay I do want to leave a couple minutes with questions so one more slide I think this okay um or do we have any indications the economy is slowing or will be slowing yes we do I skipped over supplied that almost value you know there are a lot of indicators in the National level of the economy of slowing real estate that's fine I spoke with the apartment association in the Triangle the other day uh they have all kind of numbers things are things blowing in well the one good thing for renters is Supply is way up uh rents are actually going down on average we're supporting their data so that's actually good for for people who are looking for rent uh same on the

building side I suppose the whole Builders a couple weeks ago uh yeah everything a slowing manufacturing is Flowing so a lot of indications of things are flying uh I do an index for North Carolina leading in accidents again to the National leading index so that this index goes up it means future economic growth is going to be stronger if it goes down it means economic growth is going to be slow don't necessarily mean a recession and you can see on the right hand side that index has been consistently falling since May now notice though if you uh move your eye back a little bit and I don't know I'm not going to fiddle with this but I'll probably turn the system off if you if you um if I move yeah I can move um if you look uh the self the recession is right here look at how much that drop here's the stuff primer session look at how much that drop whereas now drop uh withdrawal but not very much so uh this this is up this is uplifting to me that looks like North Carolina uh and

obviously you're in North Carolina uh may get through a slower economy not necessarily a full-blown uh recession but next slide uh I am actually working in my forecast favorite National recession you can see this is the slide install first uh if you look at that rain part which is a third and fourth quarter this year I am predicting uh that we will have a dip so I think will be officially called a recession um but it'll be a short dip for a model dip and we'll have a quick recovery so I think for any businesses I think for your budget um deliberations I think you should have a contingency plan that hey revenues I'm not saying your revenues will go down but they may not be going up at the ratio that got used to so I think I think it would be better to at least work into some of your numbers the possibility of a downturning economy now obviously what you saw from my early earlier spot what happens naturally is

much worse than what happens in North Carolina and what happens in North Carolina is much worse than what happens in some of our big growing methods and certainly during travel still as part of that and I have one more slide yes uh we do have a rise in unemployment again falling with the notion that I hope we don't but if we do how high can go I think great models oh I think the next time we're in North Carolina we're around three and a half percent I think we can go up to five or four percent maybe five what did I say no five or maybe six uh that's very much consider form one we've now improved by that uh so that's modest uh it will create if we did go up to uh somewhere between five and six percent that's another fifty or seventy five thousand people are employed now three admittedly that's small compared to our base we have about five million people in the labor course in North Carolina but still every person who gets unemployed having grown up with a sip with a father who periodically employed that's challenging

so I don't I don't diminish that as an issue even if it's a rather small number so bottom line here is um the inflation situation appears to improving uh I think it will continue to improve Challenger the Federal Reserve mainly is can we can we get into their target without causing a full-blown recession but if we do have a recession I think it'll be modest and model and even more even even more so in in the triangle which obviously includes uh inclusion so um let me stop let's see one more slide I think yeah oh same with one from my latest books um I wrote a book that was published last year it's called relaunch that's why I'm going to say it's a really long subtitle I fought the publisher over that I actually think they were right but it doesn't go for where I try to look at what the pandemic did to films uh and uh what those pandemic economy

will need for families in terms of their standard of living and I look at things like the remote work and look at things like telemedicine I look at things like um um impact the pieces the economic geography changes the how that impact the the economy employment so um I I thought I think it's an interesting book because it's obviously available and what books are sold where one place six times a week and my wife said oh my gosh um okay I know you're on a budget time budget I think just watch next so that's that's very important but certainly a couple questions uh if you have heard any questions I'll have to happy to respond okay okay professors didn't see that's personal

retirement looks good absolutely thank you for being with us so I wanted to just um use the percentage change in real inflation just GDP as a as an on-ramp my questions first I I remember when our our state referred to the Declaration down I think I think the Warner's action signing the date of the performance it's called that for a feedback that night and uh back and forth and shut it down um and I you know I love the numbers and it's encouraging as a Financial share of the city and the decision makers encouraging to see how our economy did overall it wasn't really helpful when talking to Residents who were struggling working not-for-profits restaurateurs restaurant tourism in our city and others but so but it's good to be armed with this knowledge um I do have a question because I I remember 100 level economics learning about GDP and it was it was a national thing but I'm I'm intrigued by the

concept of Municipal League I'm wondering what type of variables are substituted to get our Municipal G the opportunity massive military industrial complex or things like that the how do we get the city's GDP what variables federal government Publishers safety numbers and I'm not aware they published GDP at some national level for Regions they published it for Metro areas so you can get up with your own Capital metro area and they published them for accountants so you can't get it for a county um I mean GDP essentially is uh looks at the um uh everything that's produced whether it's a product or service even the public sector is included in there uh how they value the public sector is obviously a little different than how they value uh primarily working in sales for production um finish that up myself they do adjust your inflation so when you're comparing GDP in one year uh to another the previous year it's taking

out inflation so if your PDP just developmentation of accounts for that and uh it's also what's part of value-added number so for example if you have um if you're a company making widgets which is the you can probably remember that's the sure the uh National numbers right now we've got uh uh yeah I think we have four quarter GDP numbers

for the nation we don't have the rejects in North Carolina and um okay then yeah I I wouldn't be intrigued to look that up I do remember wages and I remember guns and butter I think some of my answers to the decision was now about some of my votes are going to assembly better if I'm trying to do carefully your entire presentation which I was looking forward to this the most yes um North Carolina is number one Indian national for business what number one number one business [Music] um I'm really interested in the thing that we can reject important it may happen with those participants move it into a potential discussion if you look at in number one in business you would probably make sure that we may be okay

maybe you know certainly but at least in a triangle we may be okay but I'm wondering how the working position conditions are going to translate to just the everyday worker well good question uh hopefully if we don't have massive layoffs households and workers and live through and that's important um the interesting thing is if you in fact I have this home and see what NC State website I developed another index for because he prays a good point we thought about growth but then we have the distribution Network and I have without an index that tries to measure both of those and as part of that index on the distribution side of what I tracked for at data for I think 20 years I tracked a divided of the occupations and roughly three groups high in um middle income employment okay

and I've cracked inflation-adjusted wage rates in those three categories and the interesting thing is when you think you can see here with the national Publications on this is that during covet the biggest wages percentage-wise for at for the low end Warfare and the radish down for that is what sectors had the biggest problem keeping labor it tended to be sectors that were on a low paying side like us propelling no I'm not criticizing any one or any institution the hospitality personal services child you know so you know and to survive a lot of them I've already put into the numbers for Hospitality they have raised their wages over three years 28. so so my point is um hopefully now hopefully if if we do have a downturn um uh through the lower income though supports don't have the reservoir they don't have the savings so that's no that's always going to be an issue

hopefully with a downturn it will be short and modest that we won't have deterioration because I know where your your point is certainly a good point that we want to worry about our brothers and sisters we really don't want people to suffer adversely like a lot of people did for example they're in histo Prime recession uh what my thought is hopefully we're not going to have that situation repeated is we end up finding ourselves in uh that are good but unrealistic and the concentrated things and our jobs particularly on the top task of trying

to find out how would you make it realistic or you have the housing thank all of you who are who are serving um I actually was asked there's no serve on the Crowley State Council and uh there was a vacancy and I looked at my plate with Workman and I just can't fit that in and you all are doing that because I know there's a lot of sacrifice in the time and efforts so thank you for doing my mom Raleigh and David in Durham I do appreciate everyone [Music] and this is

um good afternoon everybody I hope you all had a great lunch we will now review our I think we have one two additional sessions there's one session yeah services [Music] additionally and our recruits with this session which is around begins and consensus throughout our budget guidelines um we have the guidelines up here now and what they are is it's a toilet case from last year with all these updates and so what I will do you know I'll read through all

of them one time so what we did last year slowly read through everything and just kind of taking the temperature of uh council members to see it that we're on the right line but you know if I may I I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna read the podium for this session simply because we could be here for a while and uh if you haven't noticed I am at University of cloud crops for the last two days decision and please stop me at any time if you want clarification on these the ideas I will read through them and if if we if we get from you that you want something new Christina in real time we'll do that that's kind of traditionally what we've

done that same energy so these are the fiscal year 2023-24 budget development guidelines we have an introduction the development of the budget guidelines is a best practice that supports the city-wide strategic plan goal Innovative and high performance organization one of the objectives of the goal is to promote organizations sustainability there are four bullets strategic sustainability realistic vision and goals program and service sustainability high quality services and programs Personnel sustainability effective and reliable personnel Financial sustainability reoccurring revenues equal to reoccurring expenditures adequate financial reserve and contingency planning the general fund is the primary fund for the city and supports 24 of the 27 City

departments including 1680 of the city's 2368 full-time employees fluid might have changed but I think I think that's good for now the city manager shall use the following budget development guidelines prepare the Foy 2023-24 proposed budget there's an overall statement which reads the budget should prioritize funding based on the city's strategic plan needs related to accommodate population growth State and or federal mandates and initiatives consistent with the city council's priorities this is divided into two sections one the revenues and then what the revenues pay for expenditures so we'll begin with the revenues

7 Million for 2022-23 the city must have used a strategic approach to balance the budget by assessing Revenue enhancement

55 per 100 success value that is for now the tax rate for The Debt Service yes over the years and overall the languages budget should prioritize funding based on following is anybody highlight the revenue plan and I did a lot of London programs and services um [Music]

5 cents per 100 assessed value

75 cents per 100 assessed value tax rate for the downtown business improvement district bid will remain at seven seven cents per 100 assessed value the allocation for the half penny from Park program will remain in a half cent of the proposed tax rate fund balance in the general fund will not be project will not be projected to fall below 12 at the end of the FY 2324 fiscal year non-recurring funds will not be directed towards reoccurring uses propose Water and Sewer rate increases

69 cents per month moving on to the expenditures to balance expenditures against forecasted revenues

the city manager will continue to monitor performance data to guide focused discussions with City departments regarding programs and service priorities this includes possible areas for elimination reduction reorganization new Partnerships and or alternative Service delivery models that address the performance and efficiency of City programs first bullet city employees are the core of city services one objective under the city's innovation in a high-performing organizational goal is to cultivate a diverse engaged and healthy Workforce dedicated to public service attracting training and retaining a competent high quality Workforce is essential to being a high performing organization therefore we will continue to consider employee compensation adjustments as a priority the following pay and benefit components will be proposed

85 budgeted for employer contribution to the Local Government Employees Retirement Systems

2 million dollars for FY 2324. sleep replacement funding for general fund will be provided in accordance with the fleet Department's tenure recommendation plan within the debt model and then these last two will frame with

saying that these last two particularly the next one is contingent Pawn when you could reconvene to discuss the remaining items that were on the list for uh City Council budget costs so this can this can be modified based the outcome of that and that is funding for City Council budget requests will be considered and programs may be considered for downsizing or discontinued machine within budget framework John the language programs may be considered downside for downsizing discontinuation was that did we not say similar language like that already we did it was a preamble where that that was mentioned okay the same that they are they are we added in for references because it was something that I brought up yesterday I was to make

sure that sure an asterisk I mean I'm not I'm I'm not telegraphing that we're moving in that direction I just think that that we want in preparing the budgeting lever we need to have levers to maneuver not to yeah so so certainly um John and I spoke about glass and woods very much what he is what comes in Compares what goes out and as you know as well as we consider the new requests um compared to new relevant sources it all has the balance so that's why we kind of wanted to emphasize that it was getting new requests are so large that we cannot uh absorb them and maintain our base

that we would have to consider your reduction yeah absolutely everything should make sense I when I read these I try and read them as a member of a public who doesn't do this and if they see the language twice I'm I'm wondering if they might think it's referring to two different sets of initiatives or or pots of money um when they see the language but what you say unfortunately it's perfect since um yeah okay y'all um I answered a couple questions and sorry about this is my previous um page is there in reference to um you you said about the Council budget requests before we consider there's any reference to also all the Ledger requests that came from staff there is not and because I suppose we we assume that's

just part of a process there is no harm including that building [Music] again it's always considered um you know not something we necessarily want to do but if we need to we do uh so I think including that you know a task increase will be considered would be reasonable especially I mean especially because we haven't hear all this language that the rates are going to remain at least that you know I don't I don't know that we actually know that

the rate is going to remain at that level like we should I don't know that we're at that point yet to determine that councilman the Quarry team because I'm your memory is probably better than mine uh and and I I agree with what you're saying I'm I'm delayed when we use we're considering tax increase number one it's about my Revolution I think the the vetting process at that time will give you a little more in advance that there was actually a percentage not by you know it wasn't that we may consider attacked me if I recall I think it was more considered to be honest you're right and I think that was based upon a little more because we've got to go back and do some work I think it was based on a little more depth to we were a little further along in the process I believe which gave us the ability to identify up to as opposed to just we might raise taxes

we had already talked about and also the increase for um the payment of the housing Bond tax and I think there was uh specifically in a previous year not this is my third one so I'm not really children's last time I was coming before but there was because of the market adjustments that we made um in our paid plans we asked that specifically that some it's a small portion we considered to cover that so you you recognization it was it was more to specific areas uh where there's been much discussion about knowing that those were things that we needed to put into continues

to um that's very helpful I still resonate with councilman Johnson's point though even you know without that I just so it's us you're not at the point that we all are actually asking us for it at this point I guess after but I I agree with you that's correct we had we had specific um we had identified what we needed and at this point it's it's kind of an unknown right and I may very helpful you may very well so I think Calvin Johnson's pointed out the language is a good one thank you yeah I think I think we just need a little bit more flexibility like right now the latest Teresa is that all the tactics are going to stay the same and if we if we find ourselves when we got when I got programming um and I would like to yeah just massage the language a little bit around some of the things too yeah we may consider it I

think professional conversations I've heard I might also recommend and it's not to not consider the other funds but I did hear discussions about trying to find creative ways around the capital issue so you might want to add the same language to The Debt Service upon me because I did hear language around that that was a potential what do we need to do in order to advance this finance department development plans director said you know we will we'll show you what we need to do when and then come up with a plan scratching from A4 so possible it was during the recession and we put it back in the general fund gotcha okay um and also the transit fund are we concerned about losing Federal like Transit money and do we you know we

figured out how we're going to facts about that yes so the responses we certainly are going to lose we're going to lose some of the covet era operating grants that we've had over the past three years we do do a multi-year prediction for all the funds you saw um membership two questions

thank you I'll visit around the transit so we're saying that based on your own internal uh conversations we will be able to maintain peer and reaction of 23. that is great so so yeah we're going to continue it we're we're ready to agree yeah okay great that was a plan to propose to continue right I know yeah [Music] so thank you yes okay and and just backing up a little bit about that service number um what would determine whether we move back to the police [Music] you know anytime we are moving overall

property tax for any function that is tax supported um you know we we are ensuring that both the current year as well as multi-year um operations you know can you come up with all of the funding sources yet we would love to be able to fund you know some of these the Enterprise type funds with no tax support but we know that that is not what we're missing so um you know anytime we move tax around it takes away the one to put in another um unless we raise it so we're going to be looking at it ballistically as to what you know once we're doing it yeah we will not put an ad of this month tax to the transit fund that transplant doesn't need direct resource do it all at the same time

so did you want to add the same language to the dead service number for poisoning potential increase there yes I think that would be yeah other questions um would you scroll back to the top um I wonder about um putting more money into the parks with like specialized Apartments funds

and I know the parks and rec department has um was interested at some point I don't know if they agree submitted that moving that from math I need to open um is that something that's under consideration at all Administration so what I will say at this point is um no the department did not send me that timeline request um you know we typically there are different things that can happen with these dedicated money so you can feel the bucket where you can actually assess the needs and the timing of those needs and determine how you actually pay for it and um I do not recall on a previous step okay so yeah

[Music] [Music] over the years not been doing thank you I I agree I think um in the

future we do look at it it will come up with a tend to trust that the Department's not asking for is not necessary accent and I feel like this is one of the areas that I trust that the most and so I really am looking for guidance and where we do need um [Music]

maintenance and operations have fun so when we think about putting more money into a bucket like that you also have to think about how you actually Implement um operation so I didn't want it to be lost they have requested uh like other departments uh new Investments but they did not request new maintenance funds and we always if we if we do decide to invest and then uh assets then administratively we have to give consideration to be maintenance and operations of those assets and we have been doing a much better job of that in recent years because both of them so we you know we invest in 100 200 million dollars of new assets that comes with new operational um dollars yeah

other questions feel comfortable moving forward with this we will have a meeting around budget guidelines um and then the work session on this side of this um the March 23rd worship session on April 3rd concerns we are very focused on the progress that we know that we leave this movie today we'll have to work with the court being yours you all staff to get that additional meeting to prioritize your new requests uh together we are hoping to get that meeting done before marginally there where we will be considering some of the final words with these uh these guidelines to go on

Castlevania you know these things and that's our program a month okay so oh yeah I I hope works and um again um you know the staff and all the staff here tonight we thank you for an opportunity to be able to help inform your decision making what you are charged to do and is always our

privilege to do that I consider today day two weeks another good day for us we've discussed a very important priorities for our organization as well as policy matters um that would have a great impact on the future of our city um just as a reminder once I pledge of season kicks off the first week of January for our departments I've been working and thinking about the budget development pretty much every day uh along with all of the other operations which remain ever changing and very complex especially during the time of increasing vacancy rate for employees in the organization but I can assure you and I have have all of these folks behind me that we're bringing our best we're bringing our best to this work and if you saw some of

that reconnected and the surveys that our residents who who are the recipients of these Services how do they feel about that um these last couple of things the dialogue happens they have provided us uh much guidance for progressing toward a religious responsible for your consideration we will continue to provide back notice and communication of when we will be discussing budget related items at the upcoming work sessions as well as the special budget work session uh planning to continue your prioritization of your new budget requests and you will ask is customer receive a watering presentation please you saw that here and we're going to love song but you'll have the details that go behind that that's a normal ordering presentation uh information on our shared economic Prosperity initiatives that are part of our

strategic plan about Housing and Community Development priorities and progress so as we move through this budget season we will we will you will see these presentations for your consideration um guidelines that we just had a general discussion about we will continue to flesh out and we hope that we can come back with a little bit more um informed detail around those guidelines and that we can get them finalized at the city council uh when I finalized but the thumbs up at the city council work session on March 23rd as we continue to do the work that we we need to do to get to that day and day so uh again I would like to thank staff here today um for excellent work that they do every day I like to thank the city council for guidance that you provide

um that we we need in order to be effective public service um thank you foreign [Music] [Music]

thank you [Music] um yeah thank you so much everyone I just want to um appreciate all of our staff that have been um here with us in this Whirlwind uh budget Retreats um we usually have a little bit of time in between so I know there's a lot more work through all to get um everything ready with uh you know a two-day a two-day challenge so I appreciate all of you and your excellent presentations and keeping this in the loop about everything that's going on this is like my so like eight letters um and yeah and it's it's always really exciting to um to be at this stage in the process and you know see where things are headed and think about exciting new projects and new initiatives and all our ideas and all of y'all's ideas before we have to actually like dig into the reality of how many how much money we actually have and what we prefer to do

um but yeah I just really appreciate it caring for everyone and all of your work and I'm looking forward to doing this promise thanks no um [Music] superheroes and uh I enjoy being a champion I know it's not always easy I know that there are always peers thrown at City Hall um I enjoy you know uh you know being a shield to some of those fears and take some of those spirits and be kind of just hey this is what it's totally concerned with and help them to translate those concerns so thank you uh colleagues I appreciate the relationships and open-mindedness uh our diverse perspective to trying to do the

best for our community uh our residents and our stakeholders are always part of mind and I appreciate that uh and I hope that will come out of this with you know uh making it feel like there's a million people that live in Durham uh only 300 000 in their creative ways to do that I look forward to continuing this deliberation thank you very much um I just want to really thank staff um this is always an incredible process um you'll just keep that better um and the fact that you do that with the vacancy rate that we have um is an indication of your of your commitment to public service so um we can't do our jobs we don't have the

foundation and expertise at y'all so um thank you uh the council member also as a resident of the great city um and I really look forward I know we have a lot to a lot lots of the Apple to write off and figure out and okay we're gonna have a lot of dialogue um and I also just appreciate it getting out that's too early [Music] because I do appreciates that um just acknowledging that there's a lot of information out there and I want to make sure we wrap those as much of it as possible we have great opportunities with the circle and um our current budget like there's just too much to to this and I want to be really really um loud and clear that I want to see

something happened around we'll see something happen with the ministry and I am not going to stop shouting I also will say that you know this is this is my six I feel so wrong and um this point more but and so I really want us to dig into how we continue to elevate our engagement processes I want us to continue to to make sure that we're educated and sharing as much as possible so that everyone knows I mean I don't want to be the one person who understands it or the seven of us who understands what's happening in the budget process we want to make sure that everyone knows and I think that we've done a really good job pre-fold it I'm just going to be back to that so that's those are my comments and um

did you mention Convention Center Convention Center [Music] [Music] thank you all so much geography

I need to be able to look at them this is my second budget cycle says becoming mayor of this great City and uh you probably noticed I would say a lot that's just how I'm trying to listen and do a lot of listening and study and then come back with questions and so I want to thank my colleagues for continuing uh those who have been here until continuing the conversations uh as you continue to educate me and the other new people on the on this Council uh I thank our city manager for leading a well-run organization this city is only as great as its employment and I think the community has told me that nine percent above the national average and the overall quality services 22 above the national average in the

customer service provided by the employment that's not news issues yes you are and so I thank you all this the Lord has been thinking over the last couple of weeks I said manager the new state of their future day and they have led us terrible our accounting attorney in our city clerk we are helpful grateful to him and the technical assistance that we've received over these last couple of days uh you know I think about what covet uh you all never got a rate uh you're down 500 employees get crimes down and you're getting rave reviews wolves getting strong only because of you are that's why my only budget request is to make sure that there was a bank that I see

I see the work that you do and not only do I see you all know I want to give you some time back today that's why I'm consistent that they know that comments for two minutes okay [Music] States