m in City Hall Plaza we welcome those who are joining us in person today we have a nice audience today and we also welcome those who are joining us remotely as well Madam clerk if you will please call the road mayor O'Neill I am president mayor Pro tem Middleton I'm here council member Caballero here council member Freeman president councilmember Halsey Hyman president council member Johnson here councilmember Williams I'm here thank you thank you I will now recognize our my colleagues for any announcements that they may have looking first to my left hmm councilman Williams thank you madam mayor just briefly I wanted to shout out again I kind of spoke over it last uh
earlier this week but I had the honor of visiting uh the swing Pals program at Lowe's Grove and uh first thing came to mind it's so much more than golf but this is where they take sixth grade boys and girls teach them how to uh just it's really social social emotional learning I talked a lot about Sidekicks Academy and how successful they are at that there are a few programs uh in the city that are focusing on this and swing Pals is another so just wanted to highlight the great work that's happening over there there are over 197 students that are playing golf after school over at um Hillandale they are starting during school and then they continue voluntarily after school and that's just a really good method to uh saving lives on our streets so thank you guys for the work you're doing thank you councilman Williams I'm going to turn to my right for announcements starting with councilwoman Freeman thank you madam mayor and I just want to share being that it's a bike month for May
bike Durham actually held the annual uh silent ride or ride of silence and I really had an emotional moment in trying to bring remarks hearing the stories from Miss Allison Simpson grace and grace the Lord and also I just want to say I didn't catch Craig's last name but in sharing that they lost a loved one in a bike accident that took their lives it really hit home that this budget cycle it's really impactful losing our budget director in such a way and just taking a moment to just thank my colleagues for bringing forward or supporting the items in the budget I know that that's what Miss Allison Simpson I'm saying Simpson shared at the bike rally and I wanted to make sure I brought that back here and then also just noting I will be departing early at around two o'clock so I'll be here for
an hour and um so that's all thank you thank you councilwoman Freeman attorney thank you Iran good afternoon ma'am to my honorable colleagues everyone in the chamber and those watching wherever you may be good to be with you uh firstly uh very briefly uh Happy older Americans month uh to all those that celebrate I hope all of us are trying to Aspire to celebrate it uh madameir was at the Durham Center for Senior Life one of my favorite places in the city earlier today and uh to recognize and celebrate older Americans month with the national caucus and Center for black aging Inc and our wonderful vibrant older Americans that use that Center and had an opportunity to bring greetings they charged me to say hello to you madam mayor and to all of our colleagues here on the council and had opportunity to read the governor's resolution for older Americans month as well so shout out to all of our friends at the Center for Senior Life today it's also mental
health awareness month and Asian American Pacific Islander month it's also Jewish American heritage month and this morning her honor and I had opportunity to to meet with the representative of the Anti-Defamation League General representative of the Anti-Defamation League and a representative leader in our Jewish Community here in Durham as well many of us are aware of the reports of the rise of anti-Semitic incidents around our country and we have not been exempt or insulated from it here in Durham as well and we had a very robust conversation about some of the concerns of our neighbors and friends and our Jewish Community not just affecting them but but hate of all forms affecting all of people with the mayor's permission and after that conversation wanted to alert my colleagues that I'll be bringing forth in addition to the hip-hop resolution a resolution will be brought forth for us to consider adopting the ihra the international Holocaust remembrance alliances definition of anti-semitism and to join with other American cities and institutions around
the country that have gone public in their Declaration of their stand against anti-Semitism the language will be crafted to be contoured for Durham will not just be boilerplate but I did want to alert my colleagues that will be going forward the last time we had an official declaration in this area was a couple of years ago it was the um our resolution against a white supremacy islamophobia and anti-Semitism I remember it well because I wrote that document so it's been a couple of years since our city has officially given voice uh to this issue and and we will uh I hope with the unanimous hope with the unanimous vote of this constitution of this um Council uh give voice again to Durham's a stand against anti-Semitism as a freestanding a resolution uh in the coming weeks so that's all I wanted to say with respect to announcements again good to be with you and I thank my colleagues for the time thank you madamir thank you mayor Pro Tim we did have a great conversation with the rabbi and the representative
from the ADL this afternoon so I look forward to that resolution being presented to this body and hopefully um going out across the city I too want to lift up Mr Lewis daughter on yesterday at the bike ride it was a very emotionally taxing time for her and we just want to lift her up today and let her know that her she will never be forgotten and neither were her dad so I also want to make a couple of a quick announcements one I had an opportunity to deal to go out to our water management some of our facilities are with director Don Greely I met a lot of great people spent about five or six hours just learning and seeing how our water is cleaned there is a lot of infrastructure that's hidden behind City Gates and I just want to give a shout out to them I was so impressed with all that they're doing in treating our water and how that process works that I'm I'm going out
there and spent a full day with them to go and see some other areas but I just wanted to let you know that there are people who are working on making sure that we have clean water every second of every day and so they are really in my opinion I told them on yesterday they ought to give us a life they are the backbone of any City without clean water it's a no-go for any human so we thank them and I look forward to going back out to visiting with them again and and encourage encourage my colleagues who have not uh had that tour or that opportunity to do the same I also want to let you know that on Wednesday uh May 24 we do have a budget session that will begin at nine I may be late mayor Pro tem and I may be and we'll be leaving early both of those are for personal reasons one will be for a personal appointment and then the other I like to give a shout out to my great nephew Joel Tanner who will be graduating next week um his grandfather my oldest brother has
been in the hospital for a while and he still remains in the hospital and so we're going to go go we're planning to show up in force to support Jewels so go Joel you know your Auntie loves you and I will be in place for that day so with that being said we will now turn to our priority items by our city manager thank you madam mayor Mr Mayor Pro tem and members of the Durham city council I do have three priority items for your consideration this afternoon agenda item number 21 which is the 2023 first quarter crime report this item will include a 20-minute presentation agenda item number 28 comprehensive participation agreement for the implementation of the Durham County Transit plan the Durham County Transit comprehensive participation agreement attachment number two was added an
agenda item number 33 the Carver Creek supportive housing acquisition attachments numbers 6 through 14 have been added to your package and that presentation is expected to be 30 minutes thank you that is all I have thank you city manager Paige you have now heard the manager's priority items I am now ready to entertain a motion for their approval move second it's been moved by councilman Williams second and back by councilwoman Caballero all those in favor if you assigned by saying aye aye all those opposed have the same right hearing none the eyes have it and the motion passes unanimously I now turn to recognize not our City attorney but one who is very capable in her place thank you very much yes Deputy City Attorney Fred Lamar uh good afternoon madamir Mr Mayor Pro tem and members of the city council there are no uh priority items
from the city attorney's office today thank you very much thank you attorney Lamar and we thank you for you standing in for our City attorney today I now turn my attention to our variable clerk thank you madam mayor and good afternoon mayor mayor Pro teming council members the city clerk's office has no priority items today thank you so much we now move to our second of uh order of business and I will be reading the administrative consent agenda as as with items as well as all of the remainder of the agenda for this afternoon I will note that we will entertain when we get to the presentations part we will entertain the two presentations that involve external folk we will entertain you first okay thank you number one the citizens advisory committee appointments item two the Workforce Development board
appointment three Durham open space and trails commission appointments item four Madam mayor to item four I didn't see that one on my ballot this morning the EAB one but I maybe missed it I think it was adjusted and resent is that not correct I missed that sorry Madam clerk yes you're absolutely right Madame mayor the EAB ballot was skipped and it was included later around 10 30 this morning I think you had already submitted my ballot by that point Thank you and um thank you for mentioning thank you and then I don't know whether I filled it out but I know you said the email thank you item five human relations commission appointment item six the Durham Sports commission appointment number seven the Durham culture Advisory Board appointment number eight the April 2023 bid report
item nine as we move into our departmental items the disciplinary actions process performance audit April 2023 item 10 the amendment to the FY 2022-23 budget item 11 the charter Amendment renaming triangle J Council of governments to Central Pines Regional Council Madam mayor I didn't want to pull it I just want to thank Miss Wallace for getting that on the agenda today thank you item 12 . American National American National Community Services LLC doing business as a marionette for affordable housing loan Portfolio Servicing contract might like to pull that please sure thank you item 13 the Second Amendment to the contract with housing for New Hope to serve as the unsheltered coordinating
agency mayor I'd like to pull that thank you item 14 the annual insurance plan FY 24. 15. Construction contract with DW Ward Construction Company Inc for the Morgan Rigsby parking garage Suite 103 tenant upfit 16 the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Volkswagen settlement fast charger replacement Grant project ordinance and financial assistance agreement 17. Fellowship placement agreement between the city of Durham infused fuse Corps for Designing Equitable strategies for vehicle electrification 18. Construction contract with eagle solar and light LLC for design and installation of photo votiac electrical
generation systems at Water Management Miss Lake facility 19. the change order number one to the Construction contract will bar Construction Company Inc for the athletic Court Renovations Piney Wood Park pickle brawl pickleball project item 20 request for qualifications for redevelopment of 505 West Chapel Hill Street anime I'd like to pull that please thank you item 21 the contract of agreement with M cubed and company Global LLC to provide Economic Development consulting services to create a business registry and Legacy program 22 the 2023 first quarter crime report 23 Duke blanket storm water control measure easement agreement 24. Construction contract with prison
Contractors Inc for translation trenchless pipe repairs sd-2023-03 and stormwater Capital Improvement project ordinance Amendment item 25 the contract with WM recycle the map America LLC for recycling processing and marketing of recyclable recyclable materials item 26 the First Amendment to the contract with Lexa electronic seal Corporation for completion of Last Mile fiber Construction number 27. the First Amendment to the contract with gns Communications and Technical Services Inc for completion of Last Mile fiber Construction 28 the comprehensive participation agreement for the implementation of the Durham County Transit plan item 29 the memorandum of agreement for
the Western intake partnership amendment number two item 30. change order number two with ta loving company for construction of the South Durham Water Reclamation facility process improvements phase two project item 31 the water professional Engineering Services contract with brown and Caldwell Inc for the Forest Hill Park sewer improvements project number 32. change order number two Brady Integrated Security Inc for the site and building security system at the Department of Water Management Facility complex phase two turning now to our presentations item 33 Carver Creek supportive housing acquisition number 34 FY 2022 23 third quarter financial report item 35 this is the downtown Durham Municipal Services Service District
annual report our public hearings item 36 public hearing for the city managers proposed fiscal year 2023 2024 budget and fiscal year 2024-2029 Capital Improvement plan 37 the Consolidated annexation 418 Clayton Road 38 is the Consolidated annexation L parcel 39 Consolidated zoning map change Streets at Southpoint Mall number two and item 40. public hearing and economic development incentive agreement with Eagle Landing Partners LLC had a Mary forgot to pull it but I also have some questions about item number nine item number nine I forgot to pull it or to ask to get it pulled right you would like that for that to be pulled yes ma'am all right all right Madam manager I have pooled
item nine item 12. item 13. item 20. is that correct all right thank you so much and then we will have our presentations sort of out of order according to the calendar all right we now turn to our citizen matters and we have we will take our citizens uh in person first if you would speak to us for three minutes apiece we have first up is Miss is Sandy Metz second Erica Maddox third Leah Bergman for gujar and Palmer Palmer number five Sheldon Mitchell if you just state your name you have three minutes and glad to have you with us today hi I'm Sandy Metz I was here two weeks ago and I was with
the pickleball people and we were all in despair about the construction problems at pineywood court and somehow between now and then a miracle has occurred and paperwork has been done and money has been found and it's General Services wrote a bunch of stuff and now it's an agenda item 19 today to get it funded so I just want to come and thank you guys I don't know who did this but every pickleball player in Durham appreciates it I hope once we get it grand opening in the fall I hope you'll support the funding and when we have the big grand opening in the fall I want to see you guys all out there we'll teach you to play Pickleball it's going to be a big party thank you I'm going to ask the the city manager and even though it's out of order to kind of speak to that go ahead and see the manager but we appreciate it thank you thank you thank you thank you for your voice I just wanted to say that um the the Departments of General services and Parks and Recreation are constantly working to make sure that our facilities
that we have are properly maintained and upgraded as our budget and our CIP has been set in order to do so we uh we always appreciate our Advocates but it's not a miracle this is what we do this is what we do on a date on a day-to-day basis and we are very happy that the uh individuals in our community are going to have these newly uh refurbished pickleball courts thank you so much Miss Maddox Erica Mannix followed by Miss Bergman Miss Palmer and Sheldon Mitchell in that order thank you hi good afternoon Madame mayor mayor Pro Temp and members of city council my name is Leah Bergman I'm just here to make
some comments today on the agenda item 33 that you'll be considering later on I've been heavily involved in the homelessness and expanding and affordable housing in Durham for over 10 years in the last five to seven years I have been involved with the city of the Durham and Durham Continuum of Care initiative commonly referred to as COC prior to covid we COC and housing providers held monthly meetings where we strategize and implemented new ideas around greater acceptance of housing Choice vouchers in Durham housing provider engagement and how to how house Durham's chronically homeless defined by Hud as unsheltered for greater than a year I personally have tried over the last five years to house those who have been unsheltered the longest and I am disappointed to report to you all that I've not had tremendous success partially the lack of success is due to the lack of ongoing support services that those have been unsheltered the longest need to ensure long-term success
and stability I believe based on my first-hand experience that Durham desperately needs more Supportive Housing units to have greater success in housing those chronically homeless and those with the highest barriers to housing I am formally asking the city of Durham as I formally ask Durham County Commissioners to fund the purpose of Carver Creek and this will not only preserve the existing affordable housing but support this much needed expansion of Supportive Housing in our community if you are able to support this initiative it will create 48 affordable Supportive Housing units to me and most importantly to me create the Carver Creek campus and begin the Bold Vision to create a transformative Supportive Housing campus which when poorly operational would provide 100 to 100 units of deeply affordable housing with integrative on-site services this campus would be unique to Durham however there are other major cities that have had tremendous success that I've personally visited in creating
Central locations for serving the needs of these populations benefits of the campus include those include many but most importantly to me are clinicians peer support and other supportive professionals at a centralized location to see clients and thus can serve more in the community and have a more pronounced impact thank you very much for your time and those are my comments thank you Miss Berman Miss Maddox hello um and good afternoon mayor O'Neal in Durham city council members my name is Erica Maddox board chair for housing for New Hope it is a wonderful opportunity to have this opportunity to make this request for your assistance in the acquisition and preservation of Carver Creek Apartments this is such a an important role important and vital move in the right direction in sustaining what we already have available to us and creating additional Supportive Housing coupled with a Supportive Services campus as well as
preventing the eviction and its placement of the current residents if this property is purchased by a private developer which would also add to the number of homelessness homeless individuals within our community as we saw would only increase the percentage to over 158 with the point in time count showed the results of the Supportive Services campus will provide easier access for our most vulnerable residents to receive the help that they need to live and thrive on a day-to-day basis housing is not just a luxury that one hopes to Simply obtain but it is a right and basic necessity for any human being with the rising cost of housing as well as any other basic need attached to those slow rise of income it continues to be increasingly difficult to access some of the basic needs of life and this should not be the case we have the opportunity here within Carver Creek Apartments to help our Durham residents experiencing homelessness in various challenges access affordable housing and supportive
services such as employment training benefit navigation mental and physical health services as well as substance abuse assistance this project will have a significantly positive impact on Durham and has the full backing of the housing New Hope board we hope you will join us on this journey to end homelessness within our community thank you thank you Miss Maddox um as you're coming forth I'd like to take this opportunity I think this may be your last time coming to see us yes as a County employee yes ma'am congratulations on retirement and thank you for a job well done and servicing not only Durham County but all of the residents and live many lives that you've touched over this city we've known each other a long time I just hope that you can learn to stay retired like unlike some of us who have retired twice so congratulations thanks Gucci job well done
thank you so much for the kind words Madam mayor we've got we do go back a long ways 25 and a half years you were on the bench when I came to Durham so thank you I really appreciate it Madam mayor um mayor Pro tem council members I'm here for very selfish reason I am excited about the Carver Creek project because I believe it will also support the work that we do at the Criminal Justice Resource Center we have a number housing has become one of the primary services and resources that our clients need when they come to us for assistance and you may know that we do re-entry work but we also work with individuals in the detention center and in the court system lots a lot of clients that we see have very complex needs and and multiple issues mental health needs and coupled
with substance use disorders and they are and some of them might have benefits and some might be we might be able to connect to benefits while we work with them but if you if if we get a client from incarceration after 40 years that person cannot live alone that person doesn't know how to live in the community on their own while our agency is is prepared to provide temporary housing and we have thanks to you some funding to provide more longer-term housing assistance people need that Supportive Housing component and that is very very difficult for us for our clients to access so we are really excited about Carver Creek and we have great hopes that this will also serve our clients and our Justice involve people people with long records people with complex needs and that we can connect and and
hopefully then they can move on right Carver Creek may not be their last housing um and they may not be there forever and the plan is they go there they learn how to live they get the Supportive Services where they are and then we can move them into more independent housing so we are excited this is a very important component in the Continuum and we really appreciate your support and we hope you will look at this very favorably thank you thank you so much Mr Mitchell good afternoon Madam mayor council members my name is Sheldon Mitchell I'm the executive director of urban ministries of Durham and come the day to speak on behalf or in support of the acquisition of the Carver Creek property by housing for New Hope so at urban ministries of Durham we are working with the unhoused each and every
day we say that we are connecting with others in the community to end homelessness and fight poverty we're offering food shelter in the future and one of the primary focuses of people having a better future is for us to help them get into housing we primarily do that by working with individuals through our case management team but also through our partners of which housing for New Hope has been a long-standing partner in very collaborative partner with us in this effort so we are definitely excited about the opportunity that their acquisition of the Carver Creek property has one of the things that we have seen though that this part of our mission has become much more challenging because of the fact of less affordable housing that's available that's also created longer lengths of stay for those who enter into the emergency shelter so we see this as an opportunity hopefully to keep that pipeline flowing
we have had the fortune since this is currently a resourcing community for many of our former residents to be able to find and secure housing at the property so we definitely feel like it's going to be a benefit to the community especially our residents to be able to maintain it as an affordable option within community we want to continue to support this population we feel like the opportunity for expansion at the site along with the Supportive Services piece would be key to individuals being able to be stable long-term but overall we see the community developing and growing in many ways and we feel like this is going to be a great option and an opportunity for the community to serve some of our most vulnerable as we think about our unhoused citizens but also those on with lower incomes and more challenge in going forward in the future so I would like to again just express our support
as an organization and as a partner for the project and for housing for New Hope thank you so much Mr Jeremy berggreen followed by Brianna van velsen Michelle Schaefer Rick Larson and Mr James Chavis those would be the last cards that I have for persons who are in Chambers good afternoon good afternoon my name is Jeremy Bergeron oh I'm here today with can and to support the car Retreat purchase my involvement in can also is through Monument of Faith Church and my connection to Monument of faith is actually through gun violence so I see kind of these issues of Housing and gun violence really related part of what brought me here is my own situation and that years ago community members and
the mayor and the city council all advocated for housing for low-income and disabled veterans and that's why I am a low-income and disabled veteran um a couple months ago I was at a community meeting in south side and one of the Elder residents found out where I lived and she said Oh Brother Ray really fought for those houses and brother Ray died after covet started but when Katie from Cannes brought this up to me I thought of Brother Ray and how probably even 10 years ago he was speaking up for someone he didn't know and someone that needed to get out of homelessness um since living in Durham in 2010 I have experienced homelessness being disabled chronic underemployment years without Health Care I have a pretty good life now even with Social Security um but the biggest factor is that I live in affordable housing and I've been able to access Mental Health Services last
five or six years and specifically I'm on disability for trauma-related disorders if I wasn't a veteran and if I wasn't white I would still be on the street um I wouldn't be able to access care and I would be dealing with other compounding issues of racism that would lead me to not be housed um and I'm surrounded by Elder people predominantly Elder black women and so part of me speaking up on this is that I'm really a young white dude and a lot of times the only person in affordable housing that's white and so mostly this is really about having a a place to live for non-white people and dealing with sort of like the anti-blackness and racism that goes on with the policies um I continue to help homeless people and mentally people with mental illnesses they come to my house I've been helping out a chronically homeless brother for the last six years sometimes
I wake up he's on the porch and he's been beat up he's 59 he's been in and out of prison he helps out other homeless people I have two other brothers that are in their 30s that come to me sometimes they just need a hug but sometimes they need medication and even trying to get into alliance there's still people falling through the gaps so I really feel like this Carver Creek acquisition will help folks that are still falling through the crack but also prevent others from becoming homeless like was my case so thank you with Brianna van Ethan films good afternoon Madam mayor mayor Pro tem and city council I'm coming before you today as the executive director of Durham congregations in action I represent over 57 Faith communities and we all support affordable housing we believe that housing for New Hope is good for this job we believe they can do
it they have proven over and over again their dedication to affordable housing and ending homelessness here in Durham and their ability to do so most of all I've met with several of you personally over the past 10 years that I have lived in this city and learned a lot about my civic duty as a citizen and several of you at some point or other have expressed that you didn't want affordable housing to just be downtown I'm asking you to support your intent this is an excellent opportunity sorry over five acres of not just helping with green space but to keep people in their homes in a part of Durham where people are had been pushed to and are now being pushed out I don't want to see as a resident of that area of Durham I also don't want to see my neighbors pushed out and being replaced by more cube storage or luxury apartments or warehouses or even a medical center I would I would like to
see them house which is what they need and our organization firmly believes that the city council should also support affordable housing wherever we can here in Durham I also appreciate as a leader a faith leader that housing for New Hope ensures the dignity and respect for all people in their necessary work and that they have the capacity to pull this off my office is across the hall from housing for New Hope Street Outreach team so I see every single day how housing for New Hope treats people who come into their doors and how they go out and reach out to people in the streets I think that housing for New Hope Has the support of several organizations that will help complete the wraparound services that folks need I live across the street from Denson Apartments I've seen what permanent Supportive Housing and wraparound Services can do with my own eyes and I really I really think that this is an initiative that would be excellent for our city and would take advantage of
resources and strengths that we already have here thank you thank you Michelle Schaefer it's all about Rick Larson and James Davis Madame mayor mayor Pro tempre city manager page and City Council Members thank you for the opportunity to speak with you regarding the correction of Durham firefighters pay compression from the perspective of firefighter's wife on Monday night you heard testimony from a few members of the Durham fire department on the concerns of pay compression and the need for corrective action to be taken in the days since I'm sure you have received more information from local 668 regarding detailed numbers and informative facts the current pay compression issue not only affects our City's safety by losing valuable First Responders to surrounding departments but our beloved firefighters and their families today I would like to shine light on how the pay compression issue has emotional and Mental effects
on our firefighters and their families on Monday night Darius Thompson made a moving speech about how picking up extra overtime shifts affects his baby boy his words had me holding back tears as I know the pain that many firefighters family feel like most Durham firefighters my husband Benjamin Shafer does part-time work on top of his full-time job with the Durham Fire Department while it is in fire culture for firefighters to have side jobs because of their schedules my husband does not work extra because of a passion for a trade he works additional part-time work so that I can live in the city of Durham we are one of the very few Durham firefighter families that lives within City Limits growing up outside Washington DC living in the city is in my nature I did not want to move out to Bahama Hurdle Mills or Rougemont like many of our Durham firefighters do I feel at home here in Durham and I have ever since we moved here back in June of 2012. we currently own a three-bedroom two-bath 1500 square foot townhouse in
94 without any other income our mortgage would be 43 percent of his take-home pay the standard recommendation for banking officials is that your housing cost is not more than 28 percent of your take home income in order to allow me to keep living within Durham city limits and enjoying in the prosperity of Durham Ben has had a minimum of three jobs ever since he graduated the fire academy in January of
2013. my husband currently Works four jobs Ben works full time for the Durham fire department part-time for Durham 911 Communications part-time doing tree work for retired for a retired Durham firefighter and has a landscaping property he manages in one month Ben works on average the following hours for his four jobs 240 hours for the fire department 48 hours for Durham 911 communication 32 hours in tree work and 20 hours on his Landscaping property this does not include any overtime shifts he picks up for the Durham fire department to put this in perspective the average full-time City employee Works 160 hours a month equating to 40 hours per week my husband on average Works 340 hours a month equating to 85 hours per week I do not see my husband a lot and I have grown to accept that and learn to enjoy my alone time and treasure the time we do have together firefighters already have a very high divorce rate because of their shift work
schedule now imagine adding additional jobs on top of that in order to give your family the life they feel that they deserve our only saving grace is that we do not have children I feel so much pain for the Durham firefighters trying to raise families and for their wives who are having to be single mothers without actually being a single mother being a firewife is not for the week let me clarify this fight is not about becoming wealthy this fight is about our safer yeah give you about 10 more seconds okay I'm so sorry a minute ago okay I'll do this one paragraph um Ben has been with the Durham fire department since June of 2012. his current role is driver between his years of service and when he was promoted as driver he should be at driver six pay level he is currently a driver too driver to pay is 58 145. driver 6 is 70 675 that is the difference of twelve thousand and five hundred thirty dollars per year thank you man thank you Mr Larson followed by Mr Chavis
you each have three minutes a piece thank you Madam mayor Mr Mayor Pro tem council members um my name is Rick Larson I'm with well I'm uh moved by that from duke Memorial United Methodist Church which is located at 504 West Chapel Hill Street right across from the 505 West Chapel Hill Street property which you're going to be looking at on agenda item 20 today thanks for the opportunity to comment on that we're very pleased to see the planning steps recommendation for 80 units of affordable housing that you'll hear about from from Stacy however we would like to challenge the city to do more in conversations with affordable housing developers our partners at the Coalition for affordable housing and Transit have heard that developers can make projects work at with up to 20 percent of the units set aside as affordable in addition we've seen as you all know the developers are getting the message about the need for affordable housing in
Durham two of the most recent requests to the Planning Commission have had 10 percent affordable units in in them so the the word is getting out that uh the county the city council in the city are serious about affordable housing this leads our congregation to the conclusion that the council can and should be a leader and do more we'd like to see you strongly encourage developers to include at least 20 percent affordable units permanently available at 60 percent on the 505 project we have a housing crisis this is city-owned land you have the opportunity to set at higher standard and for clarification we support keeping the minimum requirement at 80 units so this 20 requirement would only kick in if there was a development of more than 400 units altogether one more thought there has been feedback that from our neighbors in the Willard Street department down the street from our church that they feel like they're on an
island and a sea of people living in market rate Apartments you probably have heard that too we hear them and we say let's make the island bigger let's not abandon them and better yet let's build Bridges to their immediate neighbors and their other other neighborhoods like the West End we'll do our part to reach out to them indeed we have a highly successful relationship with Henderson Towers residents and we've had that for many years we want you to do your part create a world-class major affordable development at the 505 location more than 80 units please this would be a fantastic way to build bridges for the Willard Street folks and one more thought we at Duke Memorial would like to consider building affordable housing on our property Raleigh and Chapel Hill zoning laws permit that now and houses of worship are doing it building housing for their most needy residents it's a simple and easy change to the Udo literally one word in section
4 H take out the word staff in front of accessory dwelling unit in the current text done it's the easiest thing you'll do all day and for one more thought we don't tell you enough that we appreciate you thank you for all you're doing on the council to address the gentrification happening in Durham and we hope you'll consider adding this 20 component to a genome item 20 for the objectives of the 505 RFP thanks so much thank you Mr Chavis three minutes sir yes ma'am my name is James Chavis 2813 Ash Street Apartment B I come to speak on scab simplified code for affordable development not SC a a h at simplified code for affordable
housing there is a difference and I wish you councilmen that don't understand H and D affordable development means for the what and affordable eighth I mean houses is for who there is two difference and looking at that scad is not for us and as I look back and I've been looking back I see one thing to say today to you all we talk about clients Brown who's a black man sitting on a supreme court not doing his rights for the people but are we talking about Harold who's sitting up there not doing her right as a Democrat for the Durham people you see we can throw stones across the road but
we won't Stow stones at home and that's what we need to do because two wrongs don't make no right one is wrong and the others if you are doing wrong by helping your family to make money from these developers and your partners that's sitting on the other end you are doing us unjustice because USC d not s c h so understand that hey this isn't just a beginning fight but you must understand he who last first shall not last and I hope I won't be the one to come and last in your face thank you we now turn to our speakers who are on the internet let me verify with our clerk I believe those are all the persons I have here in person that would like to speak with us today
we have Laura who'sery followed by John Bon vicio followed by Jacqueline Wagstaff who will speak to us via the Internet Laura who'sere Madam mayor yes Miss hoosiery is not in the cube she's not in acute all right thank you we'll turn to John manviccio sir can you hear me Madam mayor I need to be made host of the meeting you need to be made host again okay we'll get our technical to take a look at that okay I'm host
thank you my name is John bonvecchio Madame mayor council members I bring an issue that has arised over the last five years the city I don't know I'm sorry sir if you could begin again sorry oh okay we can hear you great um about five years ago the city installed a traffic circle on University and Hope Valley 751 which is wonderful thank you very much an unintended consequence of this and the pandemic is Bexley Avenue serves as a thoroughfare connecting University of states in the Prestonwood community and many families walk their children to Hope Valley Elementary there's a walking path behind the school off of Ithaca Street
enduring certain parts of the day this becomes an issue because drivers now tend to be faster along 751 knowing that circle is there and there can be 20 to 30 parents children either waiting for a bus trying to cross the street and it just seems like an ideal area to have a crosswalk installed in some manner to slow down traffic thank you sir we appreciate your comments today we turn now to Jacqueline Wagstaff can you hear me Madame mayor yes yes ma'am okay uh good afternoon Madam mayor council members um I come to you again uh to speak on behalf of the firefighters and the First Responders um Monday night was just an eye-opener for some people but for some of us that
stay abreast of how Council vote and how they do business some of us already knew that the compression pay and the situation with the First Responders and the firefighters had not been resolved because we know the vote was taken in 2020 and and fortunately Madame man you weren't on the council at that point and there were seven there were six people that voted for the situation and there was one that voted against because uh thank you councilman Freeman for voting against because you knew that this situation would not be resolved now my suggestion to this council is with the same quickness that you voted last year to give yourself a raise at the behest of councilman Javier Caballero who said in her words that she could not continue to do this job for that little bit of money that you'll get it and you needed this raise you voted on this raise the raise was given to you within 30 days and now we have these First Responders that they are putting their
life on the line to protect us they have not been able to get what they needed so that they can live properly in Durham and also I have another suggestion why don't we take that participatory budget in money that's almost two million dollars that's just the free for all that has been applied to people have been applying for this money there's no accountability of it you get the money you're going about your business you don't come back and report you're using taxpayer dollar let's take that money and add it to the compression fund so that we can pay our firefighters and our First Responders and then we also need to remember that there are certain council members on this Council that do not support Public Safety they've made it known when they voted against budgets in the past that had to do with law enforcement that's actually a test they are First Responders too so we have to be clear on how we got to this point so I'm asking this Council which I'm pretty sure that they're at least four up here that's going to do what they want like they always do and a pro and make sure
that our firefighters and our First Responders get what they need because right now it's it's a shame that a raise was given to this Council and our First Responders who y'all are not have not got what they need and talking about they have to leave this city to even live at this point so we must put our focus on the things that are that are relevant and stop dealing with crap that people have their own agendas up here and they funding it because they're sitting in power positions and they're being able to fund things and then I also need uh the male Pro tem to disclose his affiliation with can so that we'll make sure that when y'all take that vote on that affordable housing complex that we know what his attachment is to it because I know that he has church members Monday nights your three minutes are up as well ma'am thank you for speaking with us today we now turn to our pooled items
and we will begin with number nine and I believe number nine was pulled by councilwoman Caballero that'll be followed by item 12 uh pulled by mere Pro tem item 13 also pooled by a councilwoman Caballero we also have a speaker I think Miss wax staff has signed up to speak on that matter and then we will follow that with um item number 20 which was pulled by mayor Pro Tim and we'll take those in that order thank you good afternoon Madam mayor Mr Mayor Pro Tim council members Madam manager I'm Jermaine Brewington director of the audit Services Department thank you good afternoon I appreciated the report I just had a couple quick questions um do you think that you know the I guess page nine where it shows the chart with the pretty large drop off of reprimands between 2020 to F year 2022 and current year do you think that has
anything to do with our current vacancy rate like part of the reason that the numbers have dropped is because overall we just have significantly less employees I would say we do have the Human Resources Director here but I would say yes that does have some contributing factor to that downward drop thank you and then my second question is well I really appreciated all the recommendations I thought they were Stellar I appreciated the equity lens is going to be applied to our employees I thought that that was um you know it just shows that the work that we do internally around Equity is just as important as the work we do out in the community and so are we going to get kind of a report in a few months time when we get when these recommendations because I know that there's several that are getting implemented over several months and so I would love to get an update once they have been implemented to see some of the um um hopefully better better outcomes so the Human Resources Director has indicated that they will report to the city manager and at that time that information will be distributed as the
city manager and the exec team appropriate thank you and then one last question and I can't remember it was the part around like right now people's if they have something written up in their file it's um it lasts up to three years and they have to request to get it removed but it's going to be automatically removed but there may be some conversation around even like lowering the amount of time and so just curious as to when or how staff is thinking because just from my perspective I could see three years being really long for folks so just curious about that I think I need to I would like to let the human resource director answer that question please thank you bring this down just a smidge good afternoon my name is Robin Nguyen and I'm the Human Resources Director in response to your question three years has been by policy under the direction of the city manager we will adjust
accordingly and at that time we don't destroy the documents they just are inactive at that time perfect thank you and then is there the opportunity to go for less like I know the policy is three years but I thought I read in the in the memo that there may be consideration of lowering the amount of time from not three years yes we are posing that as one of our recommendations perfect I appreciate it I really appreciated the report I know you all are working hard to improve some of our policies so that we can um really recruit and retain the best thank you I am uh Mia Pro tem if you will allow me a point I've just received a text from we have another person uh Mr du Warren Langley who had signed up to speak on a citizen I matter but was actually registered for item number 22 I'm going to try to go ahead and accommodate him at this time Mr dewaran Langley if you
are available you have three minutes sir to speak on uh as I said thank you so very much Madam mayor for accommodating me uh good good afternoon uh Madam mayor O'Neill mayor Pro Tim Middleton and members of the Durham city council I come before you with a request for an investment of 250 000 for the Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation as you all are aware um we have had unprecedented issues around boys and young men of color in our community and one of which was stated by our police chief as you all are slated to receive a crime report today uh last November she said between the ages of 16 and 24 if you are a young black male and we're just talking about here in Durham you are either going to be a victim or a suspect there is an opportunity for us to change that narrative and then requesting is 250 000 for career exploration and development
programming that will provide the career and skill focus mentoring boys and young men of color and Durham to greatly benefit here from as you all may be aware this population is disproportionately represented in areas such as low academic proficiency College and Career Readiness short and long term suspensions Dropout rates acceptance to college life-sustaining career opportunities perpetrators and victims of gun violence juvenile petitions and representation in the Durham County Detention Facility our program seeks to address these disparities by providing the necessary support so that young men can change the trajectory of their life through skilled focused mentoring academic enrichment and leadership development most recently we had one of our fifth year Scholars who started with us five years ago the organization was founded to become vice president at Bank of America if that is not transformational change in the life of a young man of color I don't know what is with your investment we plan to expand
our reach to a larger number of participants provide additional Resources by programmatic activities and build capacity to ensure our program's long-term sustainability as you all are aware this is an effort that I've undertaken for the past six years voluntarily through our programming we aim to equip more than young men of color with the skills resources and support in order to capitalize on the Renaissance that we are seeing in Workforce Development and Economic Opportunity in our community your investment will help us make a significant impact in the lives of these boys and young men in the broader Durham Community mayor Mr Mayor Pro tem two years ago we stood on the steps of the Hayti Heritage Center and you said that we don't need permission to save our lives what I'm asking for today is permission of an investment to provide the resources we need to save the lives of the boys and young men of color in this community as well as council member Williams who was also present that day
so all of you all have an opportunity to help support something that has been making transformational impact in our community and I hope you all will consider it as you all uh work through yourself thank you Mr Langley I know it's difficult for you all to hear the um buzzer but we thank you for your comments today we now return to our back to our Port items mayor pro team item number 12. which is the m I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to pronounce it the American national Community Services LLC thank you ma'am appreciate you Reginald Johnson director of Community Development Department greetings mayor mayor Pro tem members of council good afternoon Mr Johnson good to see you likewise very quickly um no real controversy here who is currently servicing our portfolio American is currently serving our
portfolio to have been for the past 18 years that's what I thought so this couldn't have been um framed as just an extent they had to go through the whole RFP process over again and we came back oh yes sir same piece yes sir we we do require I think it's every three years every four years we have to reissue and uh request for proposals for those services and it's been the same person it's been the same group each time right yes how many how many uh outfits or interests did we hear from before we chose them again in this particular round it was just amerinational uh submittee okay all right that's it thank you madam mayor thank you thank you both we now uh turn to item number 13 Second Amendment to the contract with housing for New Hope to serve as the unsheltered coordinator agency it's been pulled by councilwoman Caballero and we do have once uh speaker via the Internet Miss jacket Wagstaff
has requested to speak on this item as well councilwoman Caballero turn that over to you and we'll hear from Miss Wagstaff after that thank you good just real quick something else fun uh good afternoon mayor mayor Pro tem city manager Paige Council Colin Davis manager of the homeless system and Community Development Department great question councilwoman gabriero we did not receive special nofo funding due to it was a limited pool of money that had to be spread across the country and we in Durham depending on how you want to look at it we were either fortunate enough to not qualify for 30 bonus points or we were unfortunate that we didn't but to qualify for 30 bonus points to get us to that hundred Point score we had to have over 10 000 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness
and we fortunately in Durham are not having 10 000 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness so we started at a deficit of 30 points our debriefing also showed that we need to increase our um tie-ins with the medical providers in the community and we did have a lot of mous and discussion of that we think HUD didn't read the application as well as we had hoped I think you actually appreciate that and for once I'm glad we did get those 30 bonus points because that's a massive population to have to shelter thank you absolutely thank you Miss Wagstaff I signed up for this because I had a couple of questions of concern and see where the uh staff is asking for 430 000 increase to the contract I I'm curious to know what does this million plus dollars give give the taxes as it
relates to this uh unshelter coordinating agency and how long have they had this contract and what was the previous amount and does the housing for New Hope I understand what their model is and unfortunately I support them but I do understand that their model is more geared to chronically homeless people uh people in addiction and people in mental health but we have people that are just experiencing housing insecurity that don't qualify in any of those categories so they would not qualify to be a part of housing for New Hope so I'm curious to know how much money has the previous contracts been with this organization do they put this out as a RSP when this contract is up each year or do they just automatically renew this contract because I'm curious to know what are we paying a million dollars for I I would like to know is there a report somewhere they can tell us what they do for this million plus dollars thank you
yes sir Mr Davis if you uh respond please thank you sure I'm going to do my best to remember there are multiple questions in there so if I miss something please help me the original contract began in 2020 there was a delay in getting started due to covid and due to some leftover money that Alliance had funded so the contract was late getting started the contract was originally for two and a half years due to the late start the contract sort of moved into about a three-year time period and we on the upswing of hiring staff coveted downturn of Staffing we extended the contract to spend out the original two and a half years that took about three years to spend our plan as a community was to have HUD pay for the street Outreach Services that the unsheltered coordinating agency
does however we were unable to get those funds from HUD and due to other pressures on us we were unable to get a second RFP out the door in time to be able to ensure we had a continuity of services and that's why we are asking to extend the contract for one year and add four hundred and thirty thousand dollars to the contract as the contract is budgeted at four hundred and thirty thousand dollars per year 50 of those funds are paid for by the city fifty percent of the funds are paid for by the county through an interlocal agreement and question in terms of what have we gotten I pulled some data if you give me a moment for the for the fiscal year that will end June 30th so so far this unsheltered coordinating agency this year has worked with 359 different people who are unsheltered in Durham since July 1st of 2022.
98 of those people were children under the age of 18. 136 of these individuals were male adult males 121 were adult females one person stated they were no single gender there were 50 males that were children 47 female children 72 participants identified as white 261 people identified as black African-American or African five identified as American Indian Alaska native or indigenous 15 identified as multiple races 13 people that were served unsheltered were identified as Hispanic or Latina Latino or latinx 71 individuals who were unsheltered
5 of the people who were served when they exited the unsheltered coordinating agency program moved into permanent housing went from unsheltered housing unsheltered homelessness into permanent housing so that was 58 people exited to permanent housing because of this program 61 percent of people served exited to what we consider a positive housing destination which is either permanent housing or exiting unsheltered homelessness to an emergency shelter or something temporary that ended their unsheltered homelessness
139 people were identified as chronically homeless and in addition to serving unsheltered individuals and families who are unsheltered the unsheltered coordinating agency is also our Primary Response Group to encampments in the city and county on public land so city and county owned properties that have encampments the housing for New Hope unsheltered coordinator agency goes out and works with those who are in those encampments to try and get them cleaned up and try and engage folks in services to exit homelessness I think that answers all the questions or did I miss something thank you Mr Davis thank you we now turn to our last poor item mayor Pro tem item 20 request for qualifications for redevelopment of 505 with Chapel Hill Street sir
good afternoon mayor mayor Pro tem Stacy Poston city of Durham General Services Department we also have in Chambers hrna advisors our Consultants to this project good afternoon Stacy good afternoon uh to all of you thank you so much uh clearly one of perhaps one of the most consequential decisions this Council will make before us and I pulled it because one I just wanted to kind of do a are we sure uh to my colleagues although this is not an RFP it is request for qualifications which will set the stage uh you know for the proposals that will will follow this and and I look back at the priorities again and and I had a quest a couple of specific questions about some of the priorities I also wanted to just kind of prompt my colleagues you know to alert that because in our last discussion our last discussion was pretty free-ranging and we talked about a number of things and and my sense was that we could have had another discussion but but we are at a point now where we're
going to actually float qualifications so I just wanted to kind of prod my colleagues a little bit to take a look at this list and make sure uh we're ready to hit uh send or or go on this um one of the questions I had um for for priorities for number two um preserve the existing existing Milton small building with potential funding support from the city subject to legal legal constraints I seem to recollect that's also talking about going after um money based upon historical preservation from the feds and the state as well not I I don't know if from the city is capturing that but I just want to be certain that we're not just talking about funds from our coffers or from our checkbook but all funds that may be available through grants for uh by way of historical preservation uh as well do we need to communicate that to potential developers uh to query them as to whether or not they have the bandwidth
or ability to go after Federal money um as well I'm just wondering if this needs to be or is that included in this in this uh bullet or do we need to clarify that thanks for that question it makes a lot of sense so what we will see in The Proposal stage and what will come in in the proposal stage is the developers pro forma and assumptions and you will see things like low-income tax credit assumptions at the four or nine percent you would also see assumptions around historic tax credits and the availability of those and their intent to use those as a part of their proposed project proposals fair enough will we when we get to the proposal stage it's not too late based upon these just um requests for qualifications it's not too late or we haven't crossed the threshold where we can't ask developers to send us proposals that include both keeping the building and not keeping the building right we still have that option moving forward after today correct
um I think that's it for me again I I pulled it just to kind of mess with my colleagues a little bit prod them to just take one last look and because I remember how free um how wide-ranging our last conversation was from uh convention centers to museums and things of that nature I just wanted to make sure we didn't need to have any more conversation that we're comfortable with floating these priorities as as they appear before us today as our for our request for uh qualifications that's it for me thank you thank you councilman Williams thank you uh just to add to that I I remember my support behind this uh and it still stands but it was under the conditions that we did have all of those encompassing factors including the county colleagues so reaching out to see if they would be on board as well um just it wasn't for us to to take that on just the City by itself and so I I
hope that when we're looking at this I'm not sure what stage should we engage others but I just wanted to make sure that was stated with it regarded in wording here of clarification um could you just give me a little more detail on what specific element you're referring to so what we are our interaction small building um because there was a lot of talk around whether we were going to preserve that or not uh and I support preserving yet but it was with you know the conditions of having other Financial contributing factors from Grants to tax cuts tax um tax percentages I'm losing the words for it and also uh the interest of our County colleagues who were potentially interested in preserving it as well right so the proposals that we have received in the past did not necessarily include historic tax credits so once you sort of engender that building to a specific program there are requirements in what you might do and restrictions around that it's possible that a
developer comes in with requests for historic tax credits their the tax credit program in general is a lot about the building's facade so for instance if a developer decided they wanted to bring the facade further or closer to the street they might do something to the building that would make the historic tax credit program ineligible and so one of the things we will see as the proposals come in is the assumptions that each developer makes around how to make their financial model work so those credits are available for a developer to partake of if they so desire in their model so they could preserve the building but not actually use the tax credits depending on how they wanted to utilize that structure moving forward whatever the best way for it is where it's not just one party doing it all and I'm I'm open to not pulling the trigger too quick if the colleagues want to talk about it I'm open to it if not I'm fine thank you all right thank you I believe that will conclude all of our
pulled items we will now turn to item number 35 which is a downtown Durham Municipal Service District annual report and we will hear from them for about 15 minutes [Applause] afternoon Madam mayor mayor Pro tem members of council amid Nixon from the office of Economic and Workforce Development we're bringing forth Nicole Thompson the president and CEO of downtown Durham aiming to make the presentation thank you boom glad to have you glad to see you turned over to you Miss Nicole Thompson good uh good afternoon mayor mayor Neil
mayor Pro tem Middleton city council members city manager and City attorney and everyone here in the audience staff and friends happy to be here today I've got 15 minutes to share all the great things that DDI has done over the last fiscal year it's going to be hard because we've done a lot but I'll do my best to go to go through this I'm happy to answer any questions um there we go there's our presentation um just a little bit about DDI our mission very very succinctly we are we were created back in 1993 to be the economic engine the economic driver the vibrant advocate for downtown in order to ensure that we had growth and vibrancy within the the downtown area we are our vision is to create a downtown that is diverse unique and thriving heart of Durham and is welcoming to all our main goals
include clean and safe Economic Development Place keeping and marketing and we'll talk about each of those as we go through the this presentation and finally just a nod to our organization we have a 27-member board comprised of stakeholders in the downtown area and of the municipal Service District with a representation from residents small businesses small Property Owners large property owners and small and large developers so quite a good mix of individuals representing the needs and concerns of downtown we have seven members on our DDI team with one vacancy and we have 10 DDI ambassadors our clean and safe team who are the individuals that you see in the downtown area with the teal colored shirts on this is just a map showing our district this has not changed as you can tell very very quickly it is from 147 to the
old ballpark just past the old ballpark I'm going north and south and it is from just shy of East Campus to the West all the way to Golden Belt to the east um just a few things about our accomplishments I won't read through these you all have had the information you've been able to go through that but I do want to call out a few things um in this a couple of highlights uh first um our panhandling social services and Outreach uh in the past that number was quite a bit more but due to the creation of the heart team and our cooperation and collaboration with the heart team a number of those calls are now being taken care of and are handled by the heart team we still interact we being the Ambassador team interact very closely with the heart team we are reporting those through the channels that were created in order to ensure that the heart team is called out when needed but I do want to note that in in years past that number was was much higher but we are still interacting with our unhoused population within the
downtown area under third under um Place keeping again a couple of highlights we continue to operate the mix at Durham station that is a third Friday event we work with DJ pittypat we set up a tent and then she provides music for individuals as they are coming into the um um the transit station um and as they're staying there we have gotten quite a bit of good feedback and the people really enjoy it and uh the individual we're working with is very excited to do that we did take a Hiatus in the winter because it's a little cold out there to play music but she was back out we started it back up last month and it is kind of a kickoff to third Friday but really trying our best to ensure that we are including anyone and everyone in the activities around third Friday we have some pictures later on that will show our holiday lighting and the launch of the bullpen one thing that we're very excited about was the work that we did around the nccu homecoming working with a number of our partners to ensure that
alumni and students as they were coming back for a homecoming were felt welcomed so we were very happy that Deepak the Bulls the airport had signs up saying welcome to Eagle Alum and then we also activated our retail space with um paraphernalia working with the Alumni Association and the student student department at nccu and then I will call your attention to the final thing there artists engaged for all of our events over the last fiscal year and this is just through March so this does not include the last quarter we have had 26 performers or groups we've worked with 26 performers or groups 58 of them paid performances that we had and then 58 of them were people of color and 38 were female going on to Economic Development we have assisted 450 plus business clients within the downtown area and then over a thousand clients in general those are individuals who may not have a business need but from concerns from residents uh
issues Around clean and safe place keeping any number of other things um calling out 307 West Main that is our retail space it's about 300 square feet of retail space we have moved back in March of 2020 two and when we moved into that space that's right I think when we moved into that space we actually created what used to be an office space on Main Street we converted that into a retail space and we are working to fill that with minority small and women-owned businesses currently we have a short two-year con uh two-month contract with Hometown apparels woman owned that has a location out on 9th Street and then starting July we will have a longer contract agreement with Echo who will be working with some of their entrepreneurs to fill the space and we're very excited to announce hopefully in the next few weeks who that first tenant under the echo agreement will be [Music] um
we had 48 new Merchants open up in the downtown area and 13 that closed and we have and I'll mention more about the bullpen when we get to to that slide under marketing communication we are still getting lots of compliments um and kudos for the creation of the merchant map that is a pink tri-fold map that is out there right now we update that every three to four months things change that much in the downtown area but but people are using it we see it on the street quite a bit we have an interactive one on our website we are in the process of of working on our website and therefore also working on that interactive mat so it can be a little more user friendly um going on to advocacy special events we continue to work with the city on parking challenges for our businesses in the downtown area continue to work on fine-tuning the outdoor dining program in parking spaces and then we were involved in some of the commuter rail conversations aggressive panhandling the Beltline and social districts and also
are watching the happy hour bill that is going through the general assembly at the moment um these are just some pictures of our ambassadors doing the work that they do in the downtown area a lot of graffiti removal but but overall just keeping our downtown streets clean and safe emptying trash cans removing debris from our sidewalks uh removing graffiti uh removing stickers things of that nature they also do quite a bit of hospitality in informing people of where to go how to get their check-ins for businesses so a variety of things and very much our eyes and ears on the street um talking about the bullpen that is something working with the city that we launched in December December 3rd I actually it became effective December 1st we had a big launch December 3rd where we had an all-day event starting at 11 o'clock uh ending with the mayor I'm doing a countdown to light the tree at CCB Plaza it was a great event we've heard great things since the launch in December from all of our businesses we
have 71 who are actually participating by selling drinks to go and we have over 30 businesses that are allowing that in we see that number tick up some businesses are still watching it but but we're seeing and hearing great things the Bulls are now participating and we're getting into the warmer months so we are ensuring that we keep on top of any issues but today we have heard of no issues a couple of trash issues which we immediately address but other than that we've not heard of anything big we have a website if you have an issue that anyone can reach out and make sure to let us know if they're having concerns but our businesses are very pleased with that and very happy and we remain I believe the largest social District in the state of North Carolina um they we do have a website we we were required by the city to maintain a website so if you were to go to our website slash Bullpen you will actually see all the businesses that are participating and you will see a map and all the requirements around the the bullpen um
just a couple of things about special events in downtown we see them coming back certainly we are sad to see some of our long-term uh special events that were in the downtown area not coming back our hope is that you will say the return of full frame um and that we'll see some of our larger ones replaced we were very happy as you see on this picture that Center Fest came back for the first time in person in 2022 so brought a lot of people into the downtown area a lot of people into our businesses in the downtown area we also had this is a picture from our launch of the bullpen we worked very closely with nccu and we had four of the eight Greek Greek and Greek organizations come and do a mini step show it was a crowd pleaser and we are very excited and we're hoping to to bring them back in any new and different way so more information on that to to come soon and then yes say again there was something wrong with
the picture um you know they they those three individuals were very very very into what they were doing um so I thought it was a great picture to represent the energy that was occurring on that evening so but if you'd like to get up there we can certainly have an alumni and have you all come on and and and do your thing uh this is a picture of a DJ pity pad at the transit station um and we've had a long relationship with her um and she does enjoy the work she does she was also at our launch we did a opening day of the Durham Bulls this year um so she was also there um so we really do enjoy working with her um I do want to share a quick slide we we do hear many times that um downtown doesn't appear to be um um receiving visits from from everybody that that it it it is it really a place that's welcoming for all what does our visitor makeup look like uh we have access to a database called Placer it is
8 individual single visitors to our downtown area in 2022 um so that single visits not multiple visits by the same person I mean we have a good 50 50 mix um I know that 50 that are non-white 28 were African-American 12 Hispanic and then the remaining help me with the math
20 right 20 was on other races two or more races uh and and um other um so we're very pleased with this could we do more we certainly could we continue to ensure that the events that we sponsor and that we put on are um open and welcoming um and we're very very conscious of trying to provide sponsorships mostly through use of the spendable our spendable gift card um to encourage people to come into the downtown area um our public input around our blueprint so as you all may be aware we are getting we are in the middle of or we're at the very beginning of launching our our multi-month um blueprint blueprint 2020 2035. uh this is to look at how downtown will grow what it will look like as it grows into the future and we did a little bit of um public input prior to putting together our scope of work this is in no way means or no way the only public input we will do community engagement that we will do when we launched launch
the actual um process I mean to to actually look at what the the plan will be we'll do quite a bit more of intensive Community input community outreach not just within the downtown area but we will be going out this will be the first time that we'll make a conscious effort to go out of downtown and invite voices in but as you can see here some of the major findings is Public Safety is a concern in downtown addressing homelessness and some panhandling and horse housing affordability moving on from that we identified seven key challenges these challenges are what the scope of work will be centered around the first and seventh one are kind of bookends that we do need to come up with a coordinated and coherent coherent vision of what downtown is and what that vision is for downtown and then at the back end of that challenge number seven is ensuring that we all are buying into that vision and we all and that would be the city the county DDI public sector private sector all folks who love
downtown are a part of this plan as we move forward there are a number of challenges in the middle here I will highlight that number five is one that came up we did some very quick focus groups with um various groups commercial brokers developers residents businesses non-profits public sector and in all of those cases there was a common theme that there is a fear that we are losing some of our unique assets and we are in our authenticity what makes Durham so unique the reason that we all want to throw up the bull the bull sign we're in Jeopardy of losing that it was a very interesting conversation very interesting to hear that that was coming from all sectors and and that is something that we certainly are very aware of that we have heard but to hear it through this venue makes us know that we must really focus on how do we protect our locally owned businesses our our vibe that makes Durham so unique um and just to end on a note uh this is the data the economic data that is
3 of them went to a major attraction those major attractions are Deepak the Bulls Carolina Theater the Armory the library it's always bad when you start trying to do things for memory because then you missed some so I'm missing five other ones but those are to the major events in the downtown area so that's very briefly what has happened this is a picture from the lighting of the tree this year and we're always happy to be a partner with the city on the great Network that we're doing and appreciate the long long partnership and support that we have had
from the city since our start in 1993 happy to answer any questions colleagues councilman Williams thank you so much I'm director Thompson president Thompson Nicole whatever they call you I don't know what to call you please don't call me president though okay all right thank you for your presentation um I I got a chance to see some of it at your state of downtown address which was really good and thank you for that for disclosure I I do now have businesses in downtown so I'm also a product and contributor of some of the data that you're saying um regarding the festivals what what major festivals did we lose Moogfest um article and um full frame or through the largest ones that we that we lost do you have like a ballpark figure of economically
what their impact were were what the economic impact was of those I don't we work closely with discover Durham for that we can get that information to you okay and do we have any type of uh from the city do we have any type of financial support that would attract those caliber festivals uh that that we provide to you or is that something that you all have in-house or is that something that you need I am I will defer to Parks and Rec I will say that we are excited to work with the new newly created division within Parks and Rec that will be focused on special events we're very excited about Who was appointed to to lead that um she's been a long time City employee and very familiar with events and how they work not just in Durham but throughout the city so so we're very encouraged that should streamline the process we have heard that uh event
managers when they come into the process can be very disjointed and very difficult and you have to run around and get different signatures so so we're happy to see that Parks and Rec is moving forward with that we provide minimal funding we have a very small amount of funding that we have we try to Target that to new startups so we are a we have been a sponsor of centerfest that is one of the longer ones that we do remain a funder a sponsor for but then we also have been a funder a sponsor of the hip-hop I'm forgetting the name beat some bars beat some bars uh we're a sponsor of the Blues Brews Festival so there are a few that that we are and we're always looking for other opportunities where we can bring in a small event that will bring in a diverse group of people a lot of our sponsorships now is given in the form of a spendable so we will we will donate a hundred dollars spendable with the
thought that this is money that then could be something that could be then given out to to individuals to come back and spend that money at one of our businesses in the downtown area thank you for reminding me of the new uh the new position for parks and rec I actually forgot about it then I asked you I think that's going to help out a lot yes I do you want to go on record and say that I look forward to um not only analyzing the economic uh impact or or return on potential investment of major festivals uh seeing that data and also being supportive of investing in it on because it appears that it would turn it would you know pay for itself uh and considering that we are we're trending to near record sales tax revenues that this is a trend that we want to really invest into so I look forward to supporting that thank you guys for being the guardian of this growth and the other thing that stood out to me was you know just the finally we're getting to the point of having some coordination
uh of what we have in our downtown as an effort and I look forward to supporting that as well so um I guess the most the biggest thing I look for is just the economic impact of these festivals that are coming down we we do have the walking chew gum in Durham um as a as important as affordable housing is you know it can't be the only thing that we focus on we have to focus on all of these matters so that it can support things like affordable housing so I look forward to uh really honing in on this yeah we are very excited to work with the city on on what future events will look like it is challenging in the downtown area the the closing of streets the parking issue um so there there it makes it a bit difficult in downtown but we're very encouraged that Parks and Rec is working closely with us as they maneuver through what that next Vision looks like thanks thank you any other colleagues councilwoman cabiere thank you good to see you Nicole um just I would just really appreciated
the report and I also really appreciated the work that you all have done with our local businesses around our unsheltered folks in the work with heart I know it's been really challenging I know last um and and I know housing for New Hope is obviously one of our other big Partners in that work you know last summer we had several small business owners or maybe it was early fall with a lot of complaints and a lot of concern and so um I just wanted to thank you because of what I'm what I appreciate is my concern there and my fear then was that we would start a trend that you're seeing of many other big cities across the city which is to penalize and not offer compassion to these folks that are clearly hurting and need support and I uh at this point just feel comfortable or good that we are making a very different decision in Durham um that is more about aligned with our values or those that we we claim um you gotta gotta act if you're gonna say um so I just wanted to commend DDI for their role in that and I know we have a tremendous amount of work to do and I know it's going to be a growing problem because you know our numbers are going to increase well
anyway um so it is a challenge um and just very appreciative and then I do I really also appreciated the slide around the demographics because it's a comment that I make I often see Latinos cooking my food but not necessarily frequenting the restaurants in downtown so I was happy to see that our Latino neighbors are actually coming downtown we have a lot to offer I know we have it has been hard to lose some pretty amazing festivals I know it brought in a lot of foot traffic and dollars and I and I'm glad that the city and DDI are working so closely together to have a different future thank you um we we are still working we are very excited about the work that the heart team has done we are very encouraged by the expansion of the heart team that they'll be going later into the evening our businesses see an uptick in the more aggressive behavior in the evening so so we're encouraged and and our hope is
0 I guess I just said that so so yeah we will start it in June June July and August
um yeah but we have a big marketing campaign around that with the dates but but we will have that within the downtown area and and very excited and we'll work very closely with the businesses this this year to bring them out and have them apart with in the closing of that street one will have a family theme focused on water and splashing around so keep an eye out for our page and we'll certainly share it with the city council in with our partners yeah protein thank you madam mayor good afternoon Nicole good to see you you too um good to have you with us I uh first just brag on you folk a little bit it's a common refrain when I speak with colleagues across the state a common question um you know what's going on with downtown Durham and a lot of that and it's a it's a source of Pride I know for all of us as we move about the state and I know that has a lot to do with the work you're doing and your team so please convey to them our our undying gratitude for the work they're doing in downtown disclosure I sit on the DDI board so so a lot of these conversations that we've
had you know I've had some intimate involvement with over the years I'm I'm very proud and I'm glad to hear about the um the cooperation with our heart team one of the things I was most proud of when I listened to other board members and and stakeholders in downtown talk about the panhandling and homelessness issue is almost in the next breath they would say but we don't want it to become a law enforcement issue and that that that that was a great thing that in Durham part of our culture was we we recognize as a challenge but we did not want to be like other cities as council member Caballero mentioned and the Heart team has been an invaluable asset and addressing that issue um and even when our law enforcement did respond and they're in the room uh our law enforcement wasn't responding like other law enforcement agencies that we hear about around the country as well so I want to commend them as well some of the biggest cheerleaders for our heart team have been our police department and our police uh Command Staff here in Durham I did want to um um talk about the the bullpen and and I
had heard that I when I first heard that it was the largest one in North Carolina I was like really but but it is and so congratulations on that one of the issues that was um uh concerns that was raised was was the possibility of public drunkenness and kind of you know marauding bands of folk uh you know drinking and breaking windows and stuff how how's it been going we've had none of that yeah okay well that's good to hear we we um are we are just it's terrible working for DDI because ever so often we have to go out into the community and walk around and see how this program is working um so we we do that quite regularly um and we're here in the evenings and on the weekends um and all jokes aside we are not seeing that we're seeing folks who are enjoying whatever that special beverage is we are working very closely with the businesses um to make sure that they're following the laws we certainly don't want anyone to get um caught by surprise um so making sure that they understand um as more businesses come on that they understand the cups that need to be used
and the hours and things of that nature but we have had to my knowledge no issues with um public drunkenness disorderly contact disorderly conduct any of those things a couple of little concerns here and there about trash which we immediately address but but we've been very pleased and the the Bulls the Durham Bulls now are participating um so we've been watching that again no issues um They don't serve but you can pour something in a cup and then leave the stadium and we're having no issues with that at all so we did launch in the the winter which was probably a good thing to get us kind of ramped up and get ready for it now we're here in the warmer months and and we're seeing more people enjoying it and that just means they're spending more money in downtown they're going into some of our retail shops we have about 35 that are allowing alcohol into the store so they're just staying a little bit longer spending a bit more money and that was the whole intent of the program to get them to come into downtown I'm in order to make sure that we were as competitive and offering the same things as our neighboring cities and downtowns in
Greensboro Winston-Salem Raleigh and and while they're here enjoying that spend a little bit more money glad to hear that and finally the councilmember Williams earlier point about the festivals it it is precedented for us to um give financial aid uh financial assistance in some of these festivals I remember in previous budgets I know that art of cool has gotten money from the city in the past and and we have participated so it hasn't just been about uh money um but something you've talked about actually and that is that is capacity and capability of our venue some of what these folk have talked about that are connected with these festivals have said it's not just about the money it's it's there have been a number of things venues and you know people make changes and stuff but but I appreciate your your your laser focus on on the economic piece and and uh but to answer your question directly the city has given money uh to these festivals before we realize the importance both culturally and economically the importance of having these festivals here in Durham
um I'm expecting I'm suspecting that we'll we'll get more and and I would say stay tuned and I suspect that some of these might be returning um in the future um you know given the right circumstances but I did want to speak to that and say that yes the city has indeed given money to some of these festivals uh in the past thank you thank you madam mayor if I could second that yes I understood council member Williams question to be is there like a formal process that I but you are very correct in giving quite a bit of money to article I shouldn't say it that way money to article Center Fest I believe you all are still a sponsor of centerfest and a number of events even outside of downtown I think bin Bay is a big a an event that you all sponsor and and promote very heavily I'll leave any other comments I guess Convention Center is next then I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how much I appreciate you and Miss Thompson from the moment we met you have been
called him many times and kind of untenable positions with your mayor and um the interest you represent which is all of our interests and you have been a steady force moving forward one step at a time and I just wanted to thank you for a great report today having watched downtown evolve over the years I see it's coming back innovators beneficial for all all of us it's not been an easy Road and I commend you for your work the staff that you have helping you and for your for your uh board so thank you Nicole for what job well done we appreciate you today thank you very much mayor so we turn now to uh item 33 the Carver Creek supportive housing acquisition and I do believe we have a couple of speakers uh that were signed up on the
internet but one two who are here in person um Miss Brianna van bills and I believe she may have spoken also Miss Julia gamble I understand is also in Chambers at this time and we also have Miss Donna Carrington just to let you know that we haven't forgotten you all and that you want to speak but we will turn it over to staff at this time we will introduce our presenter good afternoon mayor mayor Pro tem members of council we have Mr Russell Pierce here today executive director of housing for New Hope he is here to provide this presentation the Durham County Board of County Commissioners heard this presentation on May 1st thank you happy to have you here thank you I will navigate
very good mayor mayor Pro temen council members thank you for this opportunity to be with you with really a very unusual I think that's probably the understatement of the of the Year unusual opportunity for us as a community I want to start today to talk a little bit about housing for New Hope because I think one of the things that's come up in conversation is you know in what ways are we engaged together with the city and the county and other partners and I I think you've actually heard from a lot a number of our partners of How Deeply engaged we are around a number of um with a number of populations across the Spectrum with homelessness and affordable housing one of the easiest ways we often find to explain ourselves is that we start with people wherever they are on their journey toward being stably housed and we connect them to housing the Supportive Services they're going to need in order to meet their goals and among those things remaining stably housed and that's why for so many years
we have been working uh for example with Street Outreach that's work that we've done in multiple iterations since 2004 in Durham and for many years actually also in Chapel Hill as you heard earlier this is actually a jointly funded City County project that has been running for nearly three years now we also take on leadership as I shared some of the point in time count data on Monday night increasingly at the request of the city we have taken on more and more of the leadership for the point in time count each year and work very cooperatively with a number of Departments of the city in the county on encampment response we also have and if it's okay um one of my colleagues will leave these little yellow we call them Corner cards with a city clerk to share with you all I appreciate Nicole and others have mentioned um how we're different in Durham and how we respond to our neighbors that are experiencing homelessness and on this car there's a number of folks can call one to tell us about unsheltered
neighbors they're seeing but also a number that many unsheltered folks can call on and I'm proud to say that in Durham 90 to 95 percent of the calls that we get are folks calling to say I'm concerned is there something that we can do which very much reflects what's been shared earlier we also for um 15 20 years now have worked in different versions of housing location and navigation we are in the process now of standing up a new landlord engagement effort on behalf of the city which works with seven or eight of our other homeless services and housing Partners this is built on two prior Partnerships that we did with North Carolina Coalition and homelessness and Blue Cross Blue Shield funding where we took the lead in only four cities in the state were chosen and Durham was one and we did that together as I said with eight Partners since 2007 we have been one of the primary partners for Rapid rehousing which matches folks who are at least by original program design recently beginning to experience homelessness need time limited supports for up to about two years for rental
assistance and Supportive Services Durham with housing foreign hopes leadership was one of the first three communities in the state of North Carolina to take on that work more than 15 years ago we obviously do Supportive Housing and we'll dive into that more deeply in a moment and we also over the years have done smaller projects with affordable housing including partnering with you all back in 2019 for the My Board requires me to say the award-winning Holloway place because we won an award from the city county beautification committee where we actually took an old transitional shelter space and made it affordable housing that doesn't look affordable and to our understanding it is the regions and that's beyond North Carolina reasons first attempt at affordable co-housing located down on Holloway Street because we work in so many different parts of the system we're often able alongside the work of community development in the homeless Services team we're able to see lots of Trends and challenges sometimes maybe a
little earlier than others can see them you're not going to be surprised to hear we are seeing a significant loss of affordable housing options especially deeply affordable housing options and that's critical to a lot of the work that we do where we are working with landlords to place people into housing there's a lack of an adequate supply of landlords who feel comfortable running to clients with complex housing barriers as the barriers get more complex and multiply we have less and less landlords who feel ready to take on those kind of challenges and so again reduction in number of opportunities we're seeing a significant increase in communities on sheltered population as I shared the other night 105 increase since 2020 300 percent since 2018 10 percent here in this last year we're also seeing aging populations in Supportive Housing now in terms of Supportive Housing at its most basic level it is deeply affordable housing options that closely are linked with targeted Supportive Services to increase the likelihood of long-term housing stability that means things like connections to substance use
support behavioral health mental health physical health working on one's finances job placement job training oftentimes in many communities and I think this is true for us when we hear Supportive Housing we immediately go to Hud's definition of permanent Supportive Housing and there's a couple pieces to to realize about that one is HUD has a very narrow and it's there's good reasons for it definition of permanent Supportive Housing to get into this housing you have to have faced chronic homelessness which means that you've had at least one year of undocumented homelessness that can either be a straight year or and I'll say this slowly because people always think I'm I'm kind of making this up uh the other option is to have four episodes of homelessness accumulating uh two a year in the span of three years and that will qualify you that is more than challenging to try and document in many cases but the other piece is just a disabling condition and
most often what we see are folks who are experiencing significant mental health challenges and substance use challenges co-occurring 60 to 65 percent of the time or more that's what we're experiencing with folks who move into the Supportive Housing communities that we work with in these communities people do have their own lease that's different in many cases and obviously what you would see in a shelter folks have their own lease they are then connected to Supportive Services that connect to them their goals and help them be able to maintain that lease and remain housed we've done this work for more than 30 years our founder Terry Alaba started he was actually leading what is now urban ministries the shelter portion and what he was seeing was too many people going straight from the shelter to housing only to cycle back so Innovation at that point was looking at transitional housing which was there at the Phoenix House there at the corner of Holloway and Elizabeth it's now a private home again but it served men and had Services deeply embedded later we opened Dove house again for women deeply embedded
Services there on site over time we moved toward having residential communities Andover Apartments was built in two phases with 20 total units serving 20 folks later William Square was built which is up at the location we're going to talk about today with 24 total units and what was interesting is over time we kept adding more space for folks to gather community space or for services to come on site and one of the challenges we've realized over the years is that seven people 20 people 24 people it's not necessarily enough scale to regularly get the Supportive Services on site from a partner like Alliance or Duke health and so that's something that we've been paying really close attention to over recent years we also were unique in the community that we have both the residential communities and we work with 30 or more landlords in the community for streets to home so same qualifications but we are partnering with landlords across the community to provide housing and then connect to
services again in terms of Trends and challenges we're seeing a lot of folks experiencing mental health challenges substance use disorder concurrently um about half of the folks have income so it's not unusual particularly for Williams square and Andover we have folks who refer to us live with us who don't have income so we're working with them to hopefully get connected to disability income and other sources but that isn't necessarily always what's possible to happen the other thing we've noticed is that because there's such a lack of affordable housing that we can go to landlords and connect with we are seeing if somebody gets referred to one of our properties they can be living on site in 20 days if we have to work through streets to home we're looking at 65 days because we've got to find that location something that'll work a 2019 report of from the from the city of Durham's from the homeless service team indicated that we need at least 500 more units of Supportive Housing and that's kind of the moderate estimate it ranges from 250
to over a thousand depending on a number of factors currently we are functioning in our community with a capacity of 357 units that's 99 of that's actually being used and a lot of that is actually dedicated towards veterans homelessness not necessarily the populations that that we will most commonly work with we've also noted it's an interesting piece in terms of the ongoing and since government investment year by year when folks are in rental units the cost ends up being much higher than if they are at one of the properties because a lot of that investment has in a sense been front loaded so that we're able to reduce the costs over time especially since we bring properties on and keep them on we never have an intention of selling any of the properties that we create or take on now I want to back up again to this idea that Supportive Housing has a broad definition and we often very much think
just of that definition that's HUD psh with chronicity because across the country a number of communities and and through Durham County we've been engaging with this The Familiar Faces initiative and what it starts to look at and this is with support from the corporation for Supportive Housing is that if you sort of look at how people are getting housed and I'm going to use that in a very very broad way you know normally HUD psh we're looking at that homelessness aspect only but when we start to look at use of the health system and Emergency Services when we start to look at use of the jail and engagement with law enforcement we start to see additional broader populations that need this same kind of support and so it's very interesting because we have Partners from duke who've been looking at some of this doing some of the research alongside of us and what I share with you today this the the emergency department utilization um shows just people who have been arrested
into the Detention Center just once at least between 2014 and 2020 and you'll see that the top 50 utilizers are generating 1400 to 1500 visits per year that's an average of 29 a person and it's interesting because you see these top three reasons for visits and I had to go back to the researchers and say explain this to me what what do these mean exactly you know alcohol abuse unspecified long-term meds not elsewhere classified chest pain otherwise specified folks sometimes are just coming in understandably to to make use of the emergency room to have a place to be they're presenting with things that are not acute and so the attendings are left with these in a sense kind of generic unspecified pieces where they can name what's going on underneath but oftentimes it's from these populations that we're trying to serve our CUNY safety Department's own heart team no longer than they've been in existence they were able to share with us a lot of similar data in terms of repeat engagements with folks and you
see a pretty consistent piece around mental health Crisis crisis called diversion which generally relates to behavioral health issues and so we didn't pull police data in this sense because we're trying to look at more creative and Humane ways to engage with with these populations and that's what we're seeing with the community safety department so some of the same faces showing up in each of those systems we also I thought this was very interesting from Durham County's work with the SIM you know one of the pieces that keeps coming back is housing housing housing I love that quote there people experiencing homelessness or unstable housing situations without the foundation of secure and safe housing they don't have the resources to focus on their mental health needs and so that underlies a lot of challenges so as we started to notice these challenges across these different systems we started to look at other communities that were creatively tackling this oftentimes with support from the corporation for Supportive Housing Mecklenburg County has had the mech fuse project going on for 10 years
now and they have been working on housing the most high-need individuals within their Community those familiar faces and you see the the numbers 87 reduction in shelter usage by that population 24 drop in ambulance service charges reductions significantly in hospital charges we found similar pieces in Denver with similar Partners brought on board reductions in shelter visits police contacts reductions in arrests and in that case they were tracking very closely the overall Investments made from these different systems and they were seeing of lesser cost by taking this kind of approach the similar piece we found in these systems was that each of them had a campus with generally 100 to 120 units of affordable Supportive Housing with deeply embedded services on site we see that in Charlotte at Moore place which has been in operation for 10 years
we see it in Denver with the well-powered Sanderson Place complex Raleigh is in the process of building a campus like this near WakeMed in partnership with Casa the county Alliance and other partners we're seeing this consistently across the country when we look at those different systems together we are seeing a tremendous impact from having this kind of housing so there began to be more and more conversations of why don't we have something like this in Durham and if we did it where where would we want to try and do this when you first we need to make sure that if we do this we have a broad definition of Supportive Housing so that we're not locked into just the piece around Hud's definitions we want to make sure that there are deeply integrated services on site and we began to realize that Duke Regional especially with the Behavioral Health Center being there there were a lot of advantages to being in that area if at all possible very unexpectedly and I think some of
the people on the team thought I was kind of messing with them when we brought this forward um we were made aware as housing for New Hope of the availability of the Carver Creek Campus so let me back up and say just for a second a number of us that are affordable housing non-profit developers and we're a very small part of this most of the time dhic is part of it Casa's part of it habitat dclt self-help sponsors a broker who keeps an eye out for properties that are coming available and then we'll send around and notify a number of us some things up coming up or something is up and available would anybody be interested in in potentially trying to pursue this and so the other partners looked at it and this is often how we work we'll say okay you know who makes the most sense on this and everyone said it probably makes the most sense for housing for New Hope to work on this and a lot of it has to do with the fact that it is right next to a property that we already own this is the site of the Williams Square 24 unit
3 miles actually from Duke Regional it has excellent sidewalks to the point it's not unusual for us to see residents walking or even if they have Mobility units they they will ride those up to that space unusually it has its own covered bus stop which is really an incredible amenity for our folks to have because very very few of them will tend to have vehicles that they own and operate it's also unique in that across the front of
the property where the creek goes through and the forest there's five six acres there that you really can't ever mess with because of the flood plain that's there it's in a good safe place but so often when you see these kind of properties they're in an urban area or in a light industrial area or a commercial area and you don't get any of this kind of just beautiful therapeutic space as we went through the process of looking at this we discovered something interesting because the property line really runs at a kind of a strange diagonal Carver Creek folks can't get to their property without coming across ours we can't get to ours without going across theirs but we found that there's undeveloped property in the northwest corner that um they own part of and that we own part of and when you put it together you could build 45 to 50 more units right there on the site and again not disturb anything related to the creek or the trees out in front in the very long term and as I said we always intend to keep our properties pretty much forever there's
the possibility for an additional building behind the additional the existing Williams Square property if there was ever a need to go that far in developing things there's space inside Carver Creek that could be utilized for offices for Telehealth and other opportunities to bring Partners on site and we have the ability with 24 units and 48 units in Carver Creek another 40 to 50 we're hitting that 100 to 120 level which is really important the property itself is 30 years old and that's really part of why we're having the conversation today 48 one bedroom units the acquisition cost is only 126 000 per unit Which is less than half really of what it's costing to build new units we had a full property condition assessment undertaken um there's very there's only ten thousand dollars of immediate things to do I dare say many of us have bought homes that had close to 10 000 of immediate things to do and then gave us a 12-year Capital plan that was in the
9 million range of the property in the future one of the key pieces about this property and this may be kind of part of our learning as a community and and maybe some opportunity to refocus and strategize a little bit this property is on its 30-year expiration of its protections this property dates back to 1993. North Carolina Housing Finance Agency has continued to monitor it our understanding we know that there is local money in this originally so this is something we've already invested in all those records are somewhere in boxes and storage for everybody at this point 30 years later we're not sure if it's the city or county but but our suspicion is it was the city made the original investment but the thing is that the protections
are 50 Ami or less and seniors 55 and up all those protections end at the end of December all leases have to be signed under those guidelines through the end of December after that if this is sold and becomes market rate all bets are basically off those leases as they expire can be allowed to expire people can be expected to move and one of the things we discovered in doing an appraisal on the property was that the property appraised at the purchase price with the restrictions on it without the restrictions the property's worth more than a million dollars more than it's under contract for which becomes very attractive I'm assuming to a seller that if we aren't able to move forward with this the property is literally worth a million dollars more if it can be just sold and become market rate the other piece that we notice going through this is that um obviously the residents are older it's a lot lower income population
you have to provide marketing plans uh to the folks that monitor you this one's monitoring plan is is something along the lines of called the Durham Housing Authority call urban ministries of Durham and that's how they're making sure that they're they're meeting the requirements 60 or so of the folks are on subsidies at this point as we toured the building as we've talked with Partners many of us have been referring people to this property all along this isn't just senior housing this is actually senior housing that's been serving our populations for an extended period as we look at this property the idea is to create Supportive Housing there that has both well not both but multiple space for HUD Define psh Alliance is interested in potentially helping with renovation of some of the units they can go as high as 20 percent if this could all be worked out um and then there could be some alliance-funded Supportive Housing
there's the potential to have people transition in place one of the challenges we face with a Williams square or an Andover is that once somebody becomes stable they may have to move on well stable may be staying there not having to move to another place and go to that trauma but they have no choice but to do so and increasingly now it's harder and harder to find places in theory somebody could come in with a rapid rehousing Grant when a scattered site psh Grant opens up shift to that shift to housing Choice voucher all without having to leave that space so we're taking away two traumatic steps for a lot of people who've experienced a lot of trauma along the way we're also looking at ways that Justice involved individuals could could find housing here in partnership with the Justice Resource Center and exploring that and then also Legacy tenants who would benefit from Supportive Housing and I want to stop for a minute because there's been a lot of question what does this mean for the people that are living there and and I appreciate I've been impressed on this to kind of go further and
further with what we're explaining one we see no need for anyone to have to leave this housing based on a conversion there's there's no need for that many of the people who were there based on what we understand already would benefit from Supportive Services being brought on site that that's going to be a benefit to them the other piece is we recognize some people may not want to stay as it's converted to Supportive Housing so we already have as I shared earlier we have a housing location and navigation team we can make our housing location navigation team available to people who want to move on we have budgeted to have up to four thousand dollars in a reimbursable cost if somebody wants to move on in the first two renewal Cycles we will we will make that resource available we have also been in conversation with other partners including dhic on how we could have a more streamlined process for folks who said you know I really want to move to another place I qualify for I don't necessarily want to be here when it becomes Supportive Housing so we have a way for that to happen if that's what
5 million out to grab a property that probably would have been enough to grab this building when those rules were written in 2018 or 19 or early 20. but there are no resources there at this point the other reason we've come forward is that
this we worked very closely with the sellers to have basically an extended period to approach different audiences such as you to find the funding they are normally able to put a property under contract and have it sold within 45 days um and so we really negotiated to get this extended out as much as possible we've also been working uh with a number of private Partners from uh the faith community from um from businesses and Foundations and um already have all the money that would be needed uh for the rest of the all the acquisition costs and some of the initial planning for the creation of the um the full campus our sense is that there are funds available for renovation through a number of different uh sources I have noted on there with asterisks where they are competitive processes we continue to hear from North con Housing Finance Agency that they are very interested in partnering with us they were making a pitch in the middle of our conversation with the sellers that they would like to
2 million home ARP funds that's been set aside for the creation of at least 25 units of Supportive Housing this would fall within those various opportunities so just quickly who's in the conversation um we have been quite honestly amazed and I think you've seen that a little bit over the last couple of days at the number of partners coming alongside we had originally expected to have annotional here with us from Alliance Health um and you've got a letter from her multiple Parts at Duke University and Duke Health are engaged in this with us a number of folks from the heart team the county and the City we're seeing a lot of folks come together because it just makes sense that this could address a lot of challenges that we're facing as a community in a way that's that's not just Humane but this can be like a truly dignity giving place for us as a
community so just very quickly as I said the property is under contract for six million and fifty thousand dollars the county has already approved half of that funding pending Support also from the city council we are coming up against our due diligence date when some of our initial money will lock in and a closing date currently projected at the end of June we have a number of teams working together for really beginning the full planning of what the future could look like on the property and again and I put it in bold we are identifying partners that if if people don't want to stay on the property as it transitions that that can be done but the intention is no one should have to leave due to this so our request then is to help us preserve 48 units of affordable housing to secure this undeveloped land on the property that when put together with land H H already has could hold another 45 to 50 units of affordable housing and then finally to support the phase development of a master plan Supportive
Housing Community but the first thing we have to do together as a community is secure this property as quickly as we can so that all those other opportunities can follow and one of the helpful things and I believe this was sent in your attachment Jarvis Martin from our board pointed out when we were with the County Commission oftentimes a big part of your expense when you're building new affordable units is the land we're going to have the ability as a community to build 45 to 50 units on this property on land that's already paid for there won't be any more cost to it because really the cost is tied up in the building itself so it's just a very unique piece for us as a community and a unique opportunity to respond to the needs of some of our most vulnerable Neighbors and I will stop there right colleagues questions councilwoman Johnson thank you thank you so much for your
presentation and for bringing this to us um this is more a question for staff I think about the um the the fact that the project is expiring um and we did a lot of affordable housing investments I know as a city in the 90s and in the um early autums and so those are all also going to be expiring I'm you know in the next 10 years or so do we have a master list where we track that kind of thing um I feel like we need to get ahead of it as much as we can so that we're not in this kind of situation where you know we're left kind of scrambling at the last minute to figure out if we can afford to keep something affordable I'll allow Mr Johnson to respond to that thank you uh the Reginald Johnson director Community Development Department I would say at best that we have a partial list uh it's not complete that's one of the things that's we've talked about previously on our task list of many things to do is to there are some
projects we don't know from the Community Development Department we don't have records of them and we wouldn't know until such time as something comes up we've that has happened on several occasions prior to this that's it so for things that we've funded how how far back would you say that list is complete like all years ago do we know everything I would say I would be guessing I would have to look at it to say one of the challenges is that the way the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency did business and the way we did business has changed over that period of time their uh now for the most part we are engaged in some way uh but when you're talking about 20 years ago we weren't necessarily engaged persons could have transactions on their own yeah I just if we didn't put money into it we don't know about it that's correct okay and that's the major folk those who we where we have money we know okay okay great thank you I know you're on it just
you know we got to get ahead of this kind of thing yes ma'am absolutely mayor Pro tem thank you uh Madam mayor and thank you director Pierce it's good to see you here with us um I he's he's not going to appreciate this but I'd be I'd be remiss not to point out Terry alabar's presence in the chamber today and just he's been such a lion in this work um in our city um it's really difficult to overstate this the impact he's had on this work and on the generation of activists as well who care about this kind of stuff so I just want to acknowledge Terry alabar's presence in the in the chamber today and thank you on behalf of a grateful City and a whole lot of people whose names won't get called publicly uh whose work uh whose lives you've impacted through your work um so I I a couple of questions I appreciate the list of who's in the conversation very important list of who's in the conversation I want to know who got something on it though uh in addition to who's talking about it so the ask is the county you said has has
committed three half of the three million and 25 000 yes okay are any of these other conversation partner is is the asked us of the city and county just to put up the money or it is due or anybody the ask of the sorry no go ahead go ahead they ask of the city and county is the investment for the acquisition okay for the purchase price the other partners their engagement is on the build out of the Supportive Services so in the letters of support there's a piece from Deborah Clark Jones from the office of Durham and Community Affairs there's piece from one of the divisions of um also from Julia Gamble and Alex Cho within Duke with the Duke clinics so everyone's focusing really on the acquisition happening and then we've really got to go into a deep process of what will the Supportive Services look like because a lot of that has to do with the next building that's built because that's the place where not all of the services could be embedded there is actually space inside Carver Creek for some of that to happen right but over time we we
need to do a full design process um in order to make sure that what they need to have to be on site can be put into it Matthew thank you so and the County's three millions can is contingent upon the cities it is yes okay how many how many residents live there now is is it it's it's 48 units um since the first two months of of our engagement in the process there was turnover of six units I haven't had an update um in the last month or so um but there it's it's it seems to be running at a couple a month couple every six to eight weeks turnover and you're you're already um you know not you personally but the the outfit's already on on the hook now for 75 grand of of uh diligence money correct yes today okay um I think I might have some more queries but but it'd probably go to staff but I'll yield at this point now to colleagues and may come back for staff all right and please um allow me um councilwoman combiara we did have at
least two other folks I believe that wanted to speak um so I just wanted to check in I think Miss Julia Campbell has indicated that she does not want to speak she had to step away okay Miss Brianna Caballero she's okay all right thank you SCC says no and we also have Miss Donna Carrington who is on the internet with us maybe she's still there not there all right I'll turn it over to councilwoman copier just wanted to make sure thank you thank you madamir good afternoon Russ good to see you um I just wanted to share that um I um this is a great presentation I was one of the folks who has been in the meetings from the beginning I think the conversation around this started quite frankly right around the pit count at least that's when I was asked to basically randomly come to a meeting and then if I'm not mistaken there was a conversation around the familiar's faces
and then the property popped up like we were having a conversation of like wouldn't it be amazing and then amazing happened as far as I'm concerned with the with the opportunity like this I want to really thank everybody who's been on those calls and in those zooms and really looking at models across the country I think that our the city's affordable housing plan to date is excellent I think that we are also starting to see the places in that plan or when we think about affordable housing along the entire Spectrum where where there's gaps and this is a place in my mind that there's a gap um and this this meets this Gap I will say I'm just going to let my colleagues know I I absolutely want to fund this if folks are on the fence or have questions um I I know I'm one one of seven but I do think that this is a incredibly important opportunity I really appreciate our County Commission colleagues for already making that monetary um commitment pending our monetary commitment I do want to share that and
this is something for the future I know that there's opportunity on the build out I expect Duke to actually Pony up a lot of money for this if you look at other cities Chicago has a tremendous program where their hospitals because it's cheaper for them to fund units than to have people in the ER they fund units all over the city I'm pretty sure it's UIC Hospital U of C Hospital there's a lot and they have a lot of money that they Pony up and so Health the the massive Health Care system in Durham County is Duke and so while I'm very willing and happy to make this what I consider a down payment the person that has a seven billion dollar or the entity that has a seven billion dollar endowment the last time I checked needs to Pony up some serious cash and so I'm just saying that very openly again committed as a council member we have to do a lot for our neighbors who are experiencing as we know you know this this goes into the DDI conversation that we had earlier the presentation this goes into expanding the hearts
program but if we don't have actual units to put our residents in it's just a revolving door and it actually is more expensive because folks are utilizing the jail and the and the ER so that's where I'm at and I look forward to further conversations with our partners across Jerome thank you I do have a question for for staff in terms of the ask of the city where would that money come from so in our initial discussions we talked about fund balance as a source of funding if this is something the council chose to fund again today was a presentation staff was not you know making a recommendation or making a request obviously you heard the request from Mr Pierce but that is the initial that's what comes to mind initially for a source of funding and just for clarification for the
public would you explain what fund balance is I'm sorry uh thank you for that question that would actually be from our general fund savings thank you I'll have some further questions but I'll turn it over to I see the manager thank you Deputy city manager Johnson I would just like to add one one point as we are in in public meeting the um the forever home Durham or our regular affordable housing program that goes across the Spectrum it was a five-year program and the dedicated housing funds and federal funding is all allocated to um planned projects so as Mr Pierce mentioned when he came this was this was something that came you know came into existence and there's you know the the the funding that is
already set aside would not be able to cover um you know something of this of this magnitude so that is why Deputy manager Johnson is referencing the the fund balance as the major uh source of funding for a project of this of this size it would be where it would have to be where it would have to come from yeah I'll turn back to my colleagues before I have further questions councilman Williams thank you um obviously this is something actually it's a little scary because how many more situations out there are like this so I think that compiling that list is going to be important um so that we we won't get any more surprises I the question around in additional 45 to 50 units is based on the trajectory of our population growth um we can always choose to you know
fight against homelessness and uh the unsheltered but I'll say out loud what no one really wants to hear is because of how how things work in our society there's always going to be you know some some type of you know bad situation that we're going to have to respond to is that enough is that enough units is this campus big enough right now I don't know if going back to revisit it is going to be feasible we see pretty consistently in the other models that they're in that 100 to 120 range and I think that we'll be able and I fully agree we expect other partners to be on board I mean it's just moved at a pace they couldn't sign on that quickly any more than they have with with the letters and things we feel like this is something and that's why one of the places we started was let's start tracking data because we we know this can prove out based on what we're seeing in other places and it may be that over time in the community we may need one or two additional of these kinds of of properties but kind of going
back to the down payment idea this is where we're able to start I think we're concerned we don't see them go much past 120 units so I think there's some concern in terms of um kind of the balance of how many folks are in one place with the services without becoming too much of a concentration got you I this may be a stretch of connecting dots that I don't know they're supposed to be connected or not but our Ami is determined by Orange County Chapel Hill in Durham County region but when we're talking about housing for the unsheltered or homeless populations that we aren't we aren't including the contributors to what drives our housing costs in the Ami I I know we don't have a lot of time but I would love to get really creative in how we can have this conversation reflect that I don't even know how that would work going across county lines but I know it doesn't Ami so I'd love to look at how you know Carolina can potentially play a part in this
uh in their hospital and Duke of course I know Duke is actually looking at getting involved in some capacity but you know I right now I think we're looking at it as a direct ask or request when I think there's opportunity to get really creative not only in the services side on the back end but also on these on this upfront side and I think the only thing that I'm still looking for is where is the sustainability component of this like we we say that that so we're creating these this permanent Supportive Housing but do we have programming is the programming intended to support you know throughout Eternity for the residents are there or are we looking at you know where we can supporting residents to become back independent absolutely and really going back to that 2019 report um you know one of the pieces we noticed there was almost a negative rate of departure from the psh communities uh
here in town and projects and so over the last few years there's been much more intentionality of how we're connecting people especially when more hcvs became available to the homeless service system we were able to connect people to some hcvs with success but I think our sense is that you you over time you probably have kind of three populations going through this through a property like this on a regular basis you have some folks who yes they're going to be able to go through it could be six or seven years and then exit to an hcv or or another market rate type housing you'll have folks who really will benefit from this for the long term that's going to be their long-term stability and they can become your anchors and then other folks I mean it's there is such an adjustment that I think some folks go through and it may take one or two times through it through those kind of opportunities to get to that place of being long-term stable so we kind of see it being those three not just I know we say permanent support of Housing and people here forever um the HUD definition of permanent means a one-year lease uh that that that's that's the that's the permanent in psh
is is normally a one-year lease yeah those different definitions by those agencies is is uh speaking of that I hope that you know I and maybe it exists but I haven't seen it but just all of the options and resources that we have to offer in Durham I'd love to see Court some type of like graphic that court that can show coordination amongst all of those services from urban ministries to housing for New Hope to families moving forward to our Departments of Community Development um just I'd love to see everything in the dorm has to offer in one place so that it can help at least for me at least it'll help me think about how how creative we need to be right I appreciate it thank you yeah Pro tem thank you madam councilman wholesale councilman thank you madam mayor um director Pierce let me ask let me ask you a question would is this request
um there's a three million free and clearer would would housing for New Hope be amenable to the city being listed on the title we expect that this would follow the normal pattern where um and and manager page asked some really good questions about this last week and there was there was a piece that I'd forgotten when we when we discussed this to our Andover property was built in two phases Andover one and over two and over one has local funds in it and there's a monitoring process set for 20 to 30 years that was in 2005. Holloway place which which was completed in 2019 also has local funds in it and it has uh similar patterns so we we have a pattern of if it's home funds we follow in terms of those regulations that's what we follow the city also has the ability to set those even a number of the contracts we have with homeless Services if they're local money if it's dhf then it points to um it points to whichever set of regulations were to follow got to and and I appreciate that um
and the the city manager reminded me and had made a note to myself monitoring and ownership would do different things so I'm actually talking about um if if the if the city would decide decide to do this um as planned without you know we're not you know not putting the city offices or anything or not but uh if if it were reflected as an increase in the city's real estate portfolio even though it's being used for that purpose is that something that you think your organization would be amenable to if we could work through what long-term maintenance and care of the property we don't see that model in other communities we see Partnerships coming together for it I think because in many cases municipalities don't want the long-term responsibilities for the property right what if the long-term response I mean if we're given the 3 million um I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm really getting at framing for our for our residents and our taxpayers for this because the full
disclosure I want to I want to make this purchase so I'll add my voice to councilman Caballeros and whatever the staff if it's fund balance or if it's just our regular check income whatever I'm amenable to making this purchase I'm I'm what I'm curious about now is is is it just free and clear as writing the check for three mil which I think it's worth it or is there some I know monitoring is already exists but is there some type of instrument or or configuration where the city we can demonstrate that the city has an interest in this um with it being doing what it's without anything and my understanding is all I'm sorry for interrupting okay um my understanding is when those comply like with the nchfa piece they can't even sell that property to us without us being in conversation with nchfa about it because they have they have that amount of control over it and that's my same understanding with the city and part of my my piece I may be simply missing is we don't ever sell properties um and the properties we have have come online um just even the latest one was like
weeks before I came so I'm not as familiar but we could absolutely have that discussion right so I'd be interested in that so colleagues I'll just say I'm interested in making this uh purchase I think this is a missing piece in our in our array when addressing uh issues of of homeless home homelessness and um um shelter insecurity in our city I think it's an important piece I I'd like to make the purchase I also would like staff to take into consideration um the points I've made about what it would look like and particularly also known Mr Pierce's uh agreeance to at least looking at some type of configuration um but I'd like to meet the county on this as well so whatever that's worth thank you madam mayor yield back councilwoman Jose hello good afternoon thank you so much uh yesterday for hosting me to come out and see the property and we had a wonderful conversation about just you know the project in general but I'd like to say you know housing first um honestly helps in terms of especially
with clients with dual diagnosis which is mental health and substance abuse and it really is evidence-based that if if clients have housing it does help in their recovery and so I am also on board with it I just want to make sure that we have the funding um to support the county in terms of you know because I I was with some of the county my County members yesterday and I just want to make sure that they have already agreed to to the I think it's what it three million three million they have already agreed and voted on that am I correct yes and I my understanding is I've been learning about ilas my understanding is they initiated the Ila process with with the work that they did uh 10 days ago in order to help move the conversation forward if you all became engaged and essay 2 was making sure that those relevant residents the elderly residents will not be displaced and I want to make sure that that's on the record and also we talked about the model of case management and making sure that that case management model you I know you're
looking at different models and we talked about some that I knew about um but also that spend out model maybe case management support of case management peer support and also those wraparound Services yes absolutely thank you I just wanted to um ask you a couple of questions and I kind of raised those as I told you in in our meeting together and I appreciate that that um since I've had office hours in in the mayor's office um since I think October the last count that I heard was that we have about 4 500 non-profit agencies in Durham and 95 percent of that have been non-profits who have come in with an ask for the city and some of those have been emergent issues so I want to make sure that as I give my agreement that I think this is a unique situation that I am clear with the public
the questions that that I would want to have addressed as we venture down this Lane number one I would want to know that we would have affordability um restrictions in place for about 30 years I would also um if we cannot actually be on the deed ask that the city and the county county have the first right of uh first refusal certain that's right a refusal in the event that property does we can't predict you know under you or may not be sold but we don't know what the future will hold so I would hope that the county and the city would not have the right of first refusal if it ever came up for sale um I I do want to let you know that I think it's necessary I think it will be a great addition and gives a gives us an opportunity to really focus in on the campus with services and so
I do think that we can justify going into our savings um keeping in mind that we just had somebody ask us for 250 000 earlier and as I've indicated I've had numerous asks for emerging situations but this does fall into a unique category for our most vulnerable and marginalized community members so with those two caveats um if they could be included in the Ila I think you have my support as well thank you councilman Williams thank you I I know Tom is of the essence I would just really um as as I too am supportive I I really would like to make this as close as possible to some type of campaign to get others involved um and maybe not toward this site
specifically but just this initiative in general I know you guys are already working hard but I don't think this is going to be the first time we're going to run into this issue and and I think that this as I stated at your press conference it's time for you know we have enough churches on every corner enough businesses in this County and city in the private sector to make attacking homelessness a public-private partnership and I think that this is an opportunity for us to engage the broader Community um to to be players in solving this crisis I visited a friend at the hospital at Duke recently uh Monday night and there are 42 people sleeping on beds in the hallway and I was told this is you know these are folks that just needed a place to sleep uh so this is home it is personal um but there are a lot of folks that are
sitting in the audience or on the sidelines watching and I challenge them publicly get in the game thank you councilman Williams I do have one additional question in terms of Renovations uh and I know that may be far out but what what assurances that we how do you plan for those residents who are in already in there if you have to go in and Resident renovate what would that look like if you have any idea sure so we we've created a renovation budget and that's the numbers are included into the pro forma we created and we did in a simple way we just said okay let's assume we're going to take out the a loan for the full renovation and then run with it that isn't necessarily how we'd approach it our sense is that for the most part we could do it as people were transitioning the apartments are in remarkably good shape I mean that's several people walked it with us and then we had professionals walk it and so what we've been able to do in other situations we can pay for someone to be out for a period while it's renovated or give them the opportunity to move into
another unit on the you know on the same floor on the same property so it should be really minimal displacement from what we can so thank you for that are there any other questions or comments from colleagues thank you so much thank you all very much sorry we now turn to our next presentation which will be item 22 from our police chief and that is captioned just to make sure the record is clear 2023 first quarter crime report thank you
good afternoon Chief ready good afternoon Madam mayor mayor Pro tem city council manager page all of our city of Durham employees as well as our community so now is the time for the first quarter report of 2023. 3 percent uh in in the homicide
9 percent 21 of those offenses I'm sorry 40 percent of those offenses occurred in
Prior years so we're seeing more reports more rape sexual assaults being reported from prior years which is which is good we want to have those reports we were able to clear 13 of those and nine of those 13 were actually reported from prior years so again hats off to our our SVU and our Cold Case staff that are really doing a a great job trying to bring closure to the the tragic assaults for our victims um looking at our robbery cases so at the end of the first quarter you'll see that we we saw a decent decline of our robbery cases and we ended up having 100 incidents actual robbery offenses that occurred so that's going to be as as I've learned from Mr she's who is in the audience I learned a lot from him that
that was the lowest that we've had since October of 2018 since we started reporting through neighbors and that's the national incident based reporting system 71 of those 100 robberies that we had were from persons so we're still trending down in that about 45 percent or so and 29 of those 100 robberies were commercial again trending down 41 percent uh 26 out of the 29 robberies that we did have were commercial those were from retail businesses so about 90 percent and so we are seeing definitely those are those are keeping Pace with where we were the percentage of robberies from persons you know we always take a look at our victimization because our liaison unit actually goes out and does outreach based upon our victimization robberies from persons involving Hispanic victims was at 39 in the first
quarter of 2023 and Firearms are still present they were used in 50 percent of our robberies and one of those actually ended up resulting in a gunshot wound so our aggravated assaults just slightly down at seven tenths of a percent during the first quarter of 2023 compared to last year same period we had 272 actual aggravated assaults offenses however there were less less incidents so what does that mean that means that more people are involved or victims in those incidents we had less incidents but more people um which also goes along with what we see with some of our with our homicides from year to year 25 percent of those aggravated assault incidents or 45 of those were domestic related and then one of the 137 non-domestic so the remainder of those 79 involved Firearms so another 58
percent all right let's look at our shooting incident so again we are up overall for our shooting incidents about 24 percent from this time last year and but we are down in the amount or the number of persons that are actually shot or that have been shot and so one interesting again one interesting item that was pointed out is that of the overall 224 incidents that we had for the first quarter 25 of those were from shot spotter alerts and that's where no 9-1-1 call was received or generated from a resident or a Community member and so where we really need to look at that is where we do typically compare quarter to quarter from previous year to current year um last year we didn't have shot spotter right so so really what we're looking at
7 percent and again I think for the first time since I can remember Hondas are not the motor vehicles that are being stolen the most
S in 2022 that is a 95 increase from 2021. and so you know our team has been working very hard and you all have probably seen some of the social media outreach that we've done along with the rest of our staff really trying to advise and educate our our residents and our community members not just in Durham but in other jurisdictions that might have or be owners of Kias and Hyundais you know once that that initial upgrade
9 percent during the first quarter there were 316 actual offenses and 62 of those were two homes commercial burglaries did make up 18 of those and then obviously the top three commercial locations where our specialty stores convenience stores and restaurants we have recently started a new pilot initiative based around wrist terrain modeling Mr she's had actually brought this
initiative forward and we are hopeful that the this initiative will help us kind of address the quality of life issues focused around places and not people right and how do we help to to mitigate mitigate some of the the crime Trends and rates that we see in in areas that have been identified as hot spots throughout the city of Durham all right so let's talk a little bit about clearance rates so um as I have recently said that we no longer or the FBI no longer provides clearance rates um in that kind of drilled down detail as they did prior to and now clearance rates are really being captured as a nationwide average but for the clearance rates that we do have which is the last time it was posted the 2020 rates we were up individually in homicide we were
6 percent our rapes were being cleared at 26 percent which both of those were above the FBI standard clearance rates for 2020. 5 percent overall clearance rates for violent crime we're slightly below we're slightly below that national average for for clearance rates our burglaries larcenies and motor vehicle thefts with the exception of Motor Vehicle vests we were above clearance rates for 2020 however on the average we are also above our
clearance rates for property crime which is as you know that's a that's that's a big deal because property crimes are oftentimes more difficult to solve than any other of our types of crimes that we have happen in our city of the total violent crime cases that we received through the first quarter 69 percent of those were cleared by arrest 31 of those the remaining 31 percent were cleared by one of the valid exceptions so there was sufficient evidence to support an arrest however there was some element that was not under in the control of of our investigators so whether there was lack of victim of cooperation prosecution was declined by the District Attorney's Office those things that that are out of the control we were not able we were not able to clear those 31 percent by arrest
thank you let's take a look at our Priority One calls for service and so this is I'll spend a little bit of time on this um so overall our Priority One calls for service for the first quarter we were up 10 percent in our actual Priority One so we thought we think about the calls we have to get there right now the life or life or death the emergency calls and we were taking it was about 2154 Priority One calls for service that's a significant increase from this time last year it's especially whenever we look at they're not any other type of calls they are they're solely Priority One calls our average response time we are I think this is probably the the furthest we've ever been off of our Target that I have seen in such a brief a short period of time we are averaging in response to
1 percent of those calls in less than five minutes um but really when your average response time is nearly a minute higher um than what your target should be that's that's a troubling number Staffing growth those all kind of go into the mixture of of wire response times are where they are so this is also a slide you all know I won't go into this in great detail but it's a side that we we we like to look at our adjusted Staffing levels what what does it look like when our staffing levels is 50 to 59 percent versus ninety to nine percent it helps us gauge The
Sweet Spot really where we need to be on a consistent basis on uniform Patrol so these are solely Patrol numbers and as as you all can deduce is as our staffing increases our our time that we have to respond to calls it actually decreases and actually goes below what our Target time is so Staffing at the end of the first quarter so at the end of March 31 we were at 80 percent Staffing um our actual we're authorized for 540 sworn our actual is 431 non-sworn we are at 84 Staffing and our actual is 112. so we are just within the last few weeks we have lost officers within the last couple of weeks we still are tracking
um through Power bi we're utilizing the tracking system to be able to project staff is actually done projections all the way out to 2038 on retirements alone so between now and 2025 and there will be at least one or two of us in exec staff we will we will be retiring 2025 or prior to we are looking at about 31 retirements and these are officers that would be eligible to retire within the next two years so what does that mean for the police department what it means is that we are at this point in time we are still not receiving in we're not keeping Pace with where we need to be to really be able to start to dig out of where we are the deficit that we have for Staffing um and and we knew this we knew that it would not be overnight so a recruiting
unit has worked very hard as a matter of fact I think there is a open house tonight but the recruiting unit has been working visiting community colleges has really been doing a lot of Outreach we you know we implemented the um for our referrals so paying our staff not just sworn but also non-sworn for referrals they are our greatest recruiters and so we've been doing a lot of that we we have we have really been working with the media to promote our hiring events we've started offering conditional office offers almost immediately so if this this recruit or this recruit candidate has passed both the physical fitness as well as the written test when they come in we will we want to go ahead and offer them a conditional offer of employment the idea
is to to to to really get them before someone else gets them and then we send them through the rest of the the background process our recruiters attended 25 events for this quarter which is substantial because our recruiters are also some of them are also doing backgrounds we did a reorganization of our recruiting unit as well as our training unit to make it align better and we are seeing our backgrounds move a little bit quicker both with our sworn and non-sworn our training unit so our training unit has has changed back long long long long time ago when I came through you were given a big book first day and you were expected to run these ridiculous amounts of this distance on the first day um we know we have a different generation and we have to prepare them so the training unit has started once we have a pre-hire so someone that has been hired and they're going to the next Academy so
for example we already have 12 hired for our next Academy in August they have already started their training so they've already started providing them with the materials and they do study almost a study hall they have started doing the physical fitness portion so that when the very first day of the academy happens it is not like throwing them in an ice bath and we build up their confidence is what we are finding with our newer generation is that they have to be confident and able to in in for their ability to perform well and make it through the academy so there's a lot of um of of measures that staff is taking we're using a new interview now system that really does streamline the application process we have Billboards that that have been redone and are now going um have been I think we have one up on 85 coming into Durham so we're doing a
lot focused around getting more applicants internally we are still working with our officers on how do we keep you right and asking those questions and and and we're able to to to start to form some initiatives that we can do in Eternal internally that that I'm hopeful that it will it will help so for us it's about [Music] making our officers genuinely understand and know that they they do matter okay so you Visa requests by quarter so during um the first quarter we processed we received 64 U Visa requests and I will tell you Captain Packard who was sitting here he makes that a priority I don't the date doesn't go by without him saying I've gotten more Visa requested I'm going to do those first before I do anything else 45 of those were approved and 19 were denied and on any denial we
always make sure that we are contacting the applicant so that they are very clear on why that U Visa request was denied seventy percent of those requests submitted this quarter were were approved we do not have a backlog of U Visa requests we usually get them processed within a week of receipt so crime area Target team so they continue to to work in and around the city city-wide city of Durham they have been very helpful to our gang unit and helping our gang unit as well as helping our vice and narcotics unit and some of our Task Force officers with their work they made this quarter they made nine Community referrals to other departments so they have started assisting with our risk terrain modeling pilot initiative and program and they also were able to seize about
70 firearms and seven of those had been stolen we still see Firearms stolen out of unlocked cars 13 convicted felons were found in possession of firearms and 78 charges were a result of firearms related arrests okay so shot spotter so we I've got Mr she's here so anything that I I fumble he'll help um he'll help out with so as you know our pilot program began uh December 15th of 2022 and we have been this team has been extremely purposeful in ensuring that the pilot program that we are we are currently involved in is um is very very thorough and um and and and we are very transparent
about the program in itself and so I'm sure many of you have actually seen the platform um someone asked the the other day about how often is this this platform updated for the public and the updates generally would occur the same day and so you're seeing virtually almost a real time within a few hours so if we're looking at shot spotter alerts published within 60 seconds so we publish the shot spotter data that shot spotter sends to us so that's on our platform but this is a separate platform that staff built out because we we're capturing more information than what shot spotter traditionally has captured with that said they have actually um they have really been very appreciative of the extra work that that staff has done around analyzing what they are doing and their
55 percent of the shot spotter alerts are published within 60 Seconds um are gunshot detection so I think it's
16 of the time so anytime we have and we discover that the location hasn't worked or that there was you know a false negative or a false false positive Mr she's and the rest of the shot spotter committee they are in constant conversation with the shot spotter Representatives about this incidents that we have had happen we have worked with them to do insisting that they do reviews internal reviews of their practices just as we would do with ours as well so our median officer response time so what what we had kind of hoped would happen is that a reduction in the in the
time it takes for an officer to respond to an activation we have seen a reduction in that time versus not having a shot spotter alert so we've been able to from alert to arrival the median response is about five minutes and four seconds obviously indiv on an individual basis we have seen it less than that less time than that so that's that's a very good thing so for um from the time that shot spotter was went live to the end of March and New Year's Eve New Year's Day are not included in in this we still have people that ask about that so it is not included in the platform there were 385 published alerts and from those we had the unique gunfire incidents those were 332 and then the actual rounds so not every alert that we have is one round we
do have a lot of just single shots right um but the actual rounds that were detected was 1455. during the middle of December to the end of March that's a lot that's a lot of rounds being fired we've only managed to collect casings 468 casings which you know for whatever reason it could be the caliber it could be the fact that you know folks are getting smart because we do use shell casings that we collect I mean we we can we put them through niben and we are we are able to to gain some information from those casings that are collected um so the ratio of alerts to evidence collected so generally what we are seeing is that when there is a single round we're not really we're not going to see any casings being collected just as if if we have a single round being fired the likelihood of someone calling
9-1-1 for just one shot is less now if you have more than one people are generally going to call right and I think we were seeing about 25 percent um of the shot spotter alerts where there was actually a call that was that was generated to report the actual sound of shots from that we had 10 gunshot wounds and we've recovered three guns and made six arrests so wanting to talk a little bit about the the gunshot wounds incident so I wanted to just quickly go down the shot spotter alerts that were not sent out to officers they were Mis misclassification so that means The Gunshot was um The Gunshot was detected incorrectly and it was determined The Gunshot was detected but it was determined by shot spotter not to be fire gunfire
so that's a misclassification so the first incident and we will talk about that just because it was such a large incident happened on New Year's Day the five people were shot at North Miami Boulevard at the subway in in Wellens Village shot spotter staff immediately very responsive as no sooner had you know Mr she's picked up the phone that they said yes let's look at this and so what they what they determined after a secondary review was that two two of those sensors had actually detected the gunshots three are the sensors there's three sensors required to triangulate that so two two detected it the other one there was not a triangulation that would have actually sent that alert and so the team there were 9-1-1 calls as you know for the shooting the the shot spotter team worked to remedy that and rectify that issue and
um and so we have not had a any type of Miss misclassification in that area since then because we have been um or in Wellens Village so the elapsed time between the time the first 9-1-1 call was received well between the time that the shot spotter sensors actually detected the shot so they did hear the shot it just didn't send an alert to the time that the first unit was dispatched was about two minutes and 22 seconds now we did happen to have officers in the area that heard the shots um so that that certainly does um does help with that um the second incident was the homicide that occurred on February 15 February 5th near Juniper Street and Fay street so during that time shot spotter detected shots fired during that incident but so when a shot is fired it it the sensors hear it that sound or what the sensors here goes
for a secondary review in their review center that sound is reviewed and then the alert is then sent in this case in this case the shot spotter alert was not sent out there was a 9-1-1 call associated with this particular shooting and we had to go back and look at the time that it took between the the actual shot coming out to um to the time that the first 9-1-1 call and it looked like that the estimated elapsed time was five minutes and five seconds from when police Personnel was notified the third incident was also a homicide this one was triggered on February 16th in the 800 block of Park Avenue the shot spotter Center was never triggered for this incident however video surveillance did show that we also did share the information with the shot spotter team
m the first 9-1-1 call was received the from the time the first unit was dispatched and the median average time it took for a shot spotter to put out an alert about 33 seconds the estimated elapsed time would have been about three minutes and nine seconds from when police Personnel would have been responded so there's no way really to know for sure if this person but if they would have if the time loss would have made a difference in in their survival there was just no way of knowing that so we also want to make sure that we're tracking harm so when we have a shot spotter alert is there being harm done to the community meaning are we getting officers that are going in and um and behaving in in a reckless manner are we causing more harm to the community by having officers respond to these shot spotter alerts
so we we use two mechanisms one um making sure that we are looking at any um any types of complaints whether it's a community concern or complaint coming into Professional Standards we have not found any record of any complaint coming in also officers are tasked with ensuring that canvassing is done Flyers with the QR code as you remember for the surveys are being distributed now it is completely volunteering so we may not have you know the number of surveys that we had hoped as a matter of fact we're not really receiving that much feedback from our community that are that are you know in and around the area of the shot spot or alerts but we certainly are trying but none of the responses that we see received back have indicated a dissatisfaction and so finally before I close I do want
to mention that May the 15th was National Peace Officers Memorial Day it's a time that we observe officers that are killed or um are die in the line of duty we did if you drive past headquarters we did illuminate Durham Police Headquarters in blue and the reason why this is so important to us aside from being law enforcement officers and wearing the uniform is that we have a the son of one of our fallen officers that works at the Durham Police Department that is a police officer and so he walks past his father's Memorial probably every day so it's important to us to to really lift up that officer and uh and um and his father but also all the officers that were lost in the in the line of duty or had a line of duty death May the 14th which is this week to May the 20th is National Police Week and so it's important to us that we lift up our
officers for the work that they do and for putting their lives on the line to keep our community safe and so that's my presentation thank you thank you Chief I will open it up to questions from my colleagues at this point we are pro team thank you madam mayor good afternoon Chief good afternoon sir Command Staff that's president all of the staff and as always we I said you give the men and women under your command our profound gratitude and thanks for racing towards what most of us run from every day um just a couple of things Chief first off thank you for an excellent sobering report about the state of things in our city I want to thank you uh for your excellent presentation on on shot Spotter and just the transparency I really cannot say enough with just how transparent and in-depth there are about a hundred American cities that use this technology and I've talked to a lot of colleagues around the country that have deployed this technology in their cities um I I don't think there's any Police Department for any Administration that
has done as much work around transparency and around integration and being of fully open and frontal uh face fronting uh then I'm than any City in this country I and I've I've visited I've looked at other setups it is just remarkable uh the amount of work so much so that I understand shot spot is actually looking to integrate some of the things we're doing in Durham into their operations and offering it to other cities around the country so I I cannot just say enough um warts and all and and this is what we asked for we asked for and we promised the people of Durham full transparency there's no other pilot that this city has ever engaged in from A to Z that has had more scrutiny and more openness and more accessibility to the people of this city Dennis pilot none um and ones that we've spent far more money on than this one um that have had that have not had this level of scrutiny and openness and accessibility to the public so I just
want to thank you so much in the administration for insulating yourselves from a lot of the noise that was around this uh pilot and just doing the work and bringing bringing us the numbers unflinching without editorial uh Straight No Chaser so I just want to congratulate you and the staff and I know you're going to instantly punt to the staff and the team that you have around you but but you're the face of it but I know that you've got a lot of people and to you as well Madam manager who worked on this and who are continuing to work on it and for just giving us uh such an excellent uh presentation and making it available to our residents and citizens um I do want to talk uh ask you a question Chief about the crime area Target team and if you would talk a little bit about Durham's use of specialized teams in general and specifically um there were some media reports that some in our community were concerned about some of the tactics of some of our our specialized units traffic stops some of our residents and Neighbors in McDougall Terrace had talked about
incidents where they felt that these teams were being overly aggressive um some years ago in Durham we we stopped doing traffic stops for minor traffic for minor equipment and fractions we stopped checkpoints and things of that nature so if you would just speak to our people speak to our residents and citizens about Durham's use of specialized teams and and to some of the concerns that people have raised anecdotally or if you've documented and then you can certainly bring that up of of our crime area Target teams our specialized teams being aggressive particularly in Neighbors neighborhoods like McDougall Terrace however you want to respond to those things okay so I'll start by saying this you know our specialized units we support them wholeheartedly we are very responsible with the way that we deploy our units very responsible with the way that we select our our teammates that that make up these units whether it's our selective
enforcement team our you know all the way down to CID any of our specialized units we want to make sure that one we have great leadership in place because that's key there is also the air of accountability we do believe in holding each other accountable in addition and in particular with primary target team we did investigate three complaints and so one one of those complaints actually came from it was a community concern a citizen concern the other two we actually initiated because we had seen a Facebook live there was never a formal complaint that actually was registered to us this exec staff initiated that complaint and we initiated a secondary complaint um you know what I always say to our community members is that it's just not enough to broadcast it on social media because I'm not always going to be on
social media or this team is not always going to be on social media we have to have a complaint whether it's you write it down on a scrap sheet of paper and you give it to you take it to one of the district substations or you submit it anonymously we have to be able to have that complaint um otherwise we're not able to function in the way that our city our community expects us to in this case the three complaints that we received were against or were on crime area Target team we did a thorough investigation and we made Personnel changes on our team so so we are walking walking the talk and that I know to be factual well thank you for that Chief and I know many folk in the city wanted to hear uh from you about that and I wanted to give you opportunity to speak to that one of the questions under what circumstances would a primary target team do a do a
traffic stop what has to um arouse their attention um is it so it's any violation of North Carolina General statute by which we are sworn and um by Statute right um so it could be anything from a vehicle registration a license plate or tag expired it could be tent it could be window tint it could be all the way up to a tip that they received from a confidential informant so it could be a whole array of those and everything in between so primary target team is is a city-wide team they do function city-wide when they are not answering 9-1-1 calls for service which it seems like they've been doing a lot of lately they are supplementing and assisting Our Gang units they're doing a lot of surveillance because that's really where we need the most assistance but yes any traffic stop just just as I went out and made a traffic stop for a tent someone's tent
it was too dark I couldn't see in the car in the daylight um that that's a safety issue and so you know I made the traffic stop so that's that's what they would stop the car for and are these Mark units are are all of them yes they they they they wear uniforms um the standard Durham Police Department uniform um and they are in March units yes thank you so much Steve I appreciate it thank you all for your command staff and all your staff thank you madam mayor thank you are there any other questions comments from colleagues well Chief um once again I am compelled to tell you how proud I am of the Durham Police Department and the fine work that it does I I have had opportunity to watch you all all my life and um have been I had the opportunity to judge you all for 24 years of that life and um I appreciate all that you do and
continue to do in your staff we count on you all to to to do the things as mayor Pro Tim said that what's up most of us would never think about doing so we congratulate you for all the work that you're doing for maintaining safety in our city to the best that you can humanly possible and um I hope that this week will we celebrate you all will be one that you all will take time to celebrate yourselves and your families because it's not just you all that go to work every day and put on that uniform is also your families and so we appreciate the sacrifice thank you you have a question yeah just a quick question have we entertained first of all hello chief how are you and good team how we entertain the idea um or have you all thought about the
idea of the other cities that are suing um Hyundai and um Kia Baltimore just came out with an article that they're suing along joining other cities pursuing them for um what is it they're they're the a significant uptick in Hyundai's and Kias that are actually they they're just being broken into um and I see we have the same exact two Brands um for the record this is not a proposition but I was just wondering if those conversations were happening I will I will just say that um I would not dare it put that on City attorneys because they like me um but no I we we have I have not personally broached that conversation um with with any of City staff gotcha thank you you're welcome thanks Chief okay thank you you all thank you all right we moved to our last
report presentation this afternoon and this is internal to us the item number 34 FY 2022 23 third quarter financial report we will turn it over to our staff foreign City Council Members city manager Paige I am Tim Flora I am your Finance director here to give you the third quarter financial report just to make this clear from the chief who just gave you the quarter one the third quarter is
on a fiscal year and the chief gave you a first quarter for the calendar year so for our residents I wanted to make sure there was no confusion there this presentation is on our financial condition as of March the 31st of this year uh and uh this information can be found on our website uh this is I'm going to give you a high level summary of the 47-page report that we have compiled and so I would recommend to our residents for more information uh that they can go on the website and get that information I will also say that this is a joint effort between the finance and budget departments and so I very much appreciate the support of our budget friends and especially I would like to give a shout out and my my appreciation to interim director Christina Reardon for these past couple of months which has been a pretty significant lift on her part and so just wanted to say how very much I appreciate her efforts in
8 million dollars uh this slide here is just uh the first half of our department uh departments that we have as part of that budget uh and the next slide is the other half of our departments uh I'm happy to report that uh we are anticipating all of our departments to be under budget this year so that that is good I will say that a big chunk of that uh uh being under budget is uh so we're
1 million dollars more than we had anticipated uh I'll talk about uh I will talk about uh the top two Revenue uh items which are property taxes and you
5 million dollars again uh the Lion's Share of that 11 plus million dollars of over budget and revenue is coming from
4 million dollars under budget but that has been consistent with uh the the last few years it's that's how it's been trending and I think we're making those adjustments in the Budget moving forward charges for services we're looking at 150 000 over budget and occupancy tax um we have a pretty strong recovery and
9 million dollars I will just point out that fund balance is one of the uh what we use to help manage our cash flow so while you may think that's a big number we like to have that buffer because as we move into the new fiscal year that is the time of year when we start really spending uh a
8 million dollars uh Personnel Services uh again is uh a big chunk of that being under budget due to vacancies but uh operating expenditures are let's see that is the revenues let's get to the operating expenditures are anticipated to be a little bit over budget by about three hundred thousand dollars and that's mostly due to the cost of chemicals that I think you've heard about a number of times no real surprises uh in the water water fund the transit operating fund
5 million dollars operating expenditures are projected to be under budget but a lot of that is just because of the shortage of drivers and the fewer routes that we're able to accommodate and these are just the numbers Solid Waste fund um our operator revenues are slightly over budget uh however we are um at this point as of end of the third quarter uh we are projected to be over budget in our operating operating
expenditures and our Personnel Services uh this has been this actually is being adjusted uh in this agenda cycle with a budget amendment to fix that the operating expenditures are projected to be over mostly due to added cost related to fuel and this is a situation where for Personnel Services where Staffing is an issue because we have to continue to run those routes and when you have a staff shortage temp services are more expensive as is now you're paying staff to work and paying them overtime at time and a half and so that is the reason why those are over over budget but we were able to cover that through the budget amendment and that will be covered by the solid waste funds fund balance and these are those numbers storm water not a big story to tell there everything is pretty much on track revenues are going to be a little bit over budgets over budget expenditures
under budget for positive budget variance about 341 thousand dollars here's their activity I will just point out in this that while it looks like there might be uh a negative net revenue we do shift money from this fund to the capital fund from their fund balance for capital projects our parking fund operating revenues are up as you all are aware last year we increased our fees for the parking decks that's uh generated some Revenue additional Revenue but we are projected to be 614 000 over budget our expenditures are slightly under budget I will also point out for this fund that this is a fund where we do um subsidized from the general fund the uh the capital projects so the debt service for the parking fund is is being paid for out of The Debt Service fund I will also just also point out just briefly that the revenues for the last
1 million dollars so we're very glad to see that and with that that is my quick uh presentation on Q3 financials and more than happy to answer any questions if you have them thank you Mr Floor any questions councilman Williams it's safe to say
that we are fiscally healthy I always yeah we're solid yes I like I like that too thank you for your leadership matter manager good thing to be able to smile about money and um you know I I keep thinking about being at the event on yesterday and you know you all didn't have an opportunity to slow down or stop City never closes it's always and you're right in the middle of budget season I don't know that we can say thank you enough adequately I just don't know that we'll be able to do that we're just going to try to be fiscally responsible to as you have been so thank you and I will say I appreciate the leadership of council certainly with your direction we have crafted some pretty solid policies and and certainly
uh the leadership of the city manager and the deputy city managers on keeping us on task we very much appreciate that it's all well done thank you all thank you all so much all right Madam manager we are down at well actually it's time for me to turn it over to Madam Clerk good afternoon Madam mayor Mr Mayor Pro tem and council members I will go through the report I'll name the the board first and then your nominees the citizen advisory committee appointments there were two vacancies and Council has nominated Alicia Curry and Maura Gerard Workforce Development board representing Durham Public Schools Julie a pack Durham open space and trails commission appointment for the at-large position there are three vacancies Shakira
Campbell Stephen A Cohen Melissa Southern the Durham City County Environmental Affairs board appointment for the position of at large resident is Julie n malaved human relation commission appointment for the category representing one Caucasian non-hispanic person is John J Hoffman for the Durham Sports commission appointment Angelique Stallings and the final one is the germ cultural Advisory Board appointment for a general position is Margaret e McNabb and that is the end of my report thank you madam clerk now turned to our city manager to settle large and thank you madam mayor for consent we have items 1 through 32 and GBA public hearings items 36 through 40. thank you
thank you like to entertain the motion to sell to our agenda second to move my councilwoman copier and second in by councilman Williams uh for all those in favor would you sign by I I all those opposed have the same right hearing none are that motion is carried unanimously and I believe you all we're going to be out of here at 4 50. we are adjourning at 4 50 on May the 18th 2023 Bull City strong