City Council · Regular Meeting · May 24, 2023

The roll call and then I'll turn it back over to you Ma'am clerk would you please call the roll sure good morning everyone mayor O'Neal I am president Middleton I'm here my favorite Caballero what's the number Freeman it has a delay to write a ride once a number holds up or Johnson yeah councilmember Williams president thank you thank you madam clerk I yield back in America thank you all so much we are returning over for our welcome.

Okay thank you all right good morning everybody those who are joining us here remotely the most as well as in person we have a full today support the session and we're going to turn it over into our interim directory budget and Management Services. Budget and Management Services and as mayor said we have I want to welcome you to our first of our two-day work sessions we have a full two days and we are excited to be here and ready to have staff ready to take your input we'll be taking notes today see what you have to say just on the screen is our agenda for the day if you need to take a break we can but one thing that I will one thing I did want to say just before we get started this as we've said throughout the budget process this has been a difficult budget season in the budget Department having lost our director and so I just did want to take this time publicly to thank the.

Budget staff for all the work that they did it's an incredible group of people who who would not have had a budget if it wasn't for them and so I just wanted to take this moment all the hard work. Thinking about it.

Good morning everyone our staff here in the chamber council members and mayor mayor Pro tem we are as Christina has said we're here to provide additional information as we move through our budget adoption season I am not going to I'm going to be very brief this this morning because we do have a packed agenda but I did want to thank Christina for her leadership she she actually acknowledged the budget staff but I thank them every time I get a chance but certainly her leadership during this season I would like to take one moment of introduction we do have a new Solid Waste director who has joined us recently his name is James Lyons and I would like for him to stand up and be known to to the public as well as to the elected officials and staff who have not met him yet.

I'm sure he's going to be taking a lot of notes since he's the newest member of the leadership team thank you good morning we'll turn it back to you okay we will get started with an update on our shirts.

Good morning my name is Sherry Metcalf I'm from the budget department and I am here today to give you a free free cup of our strategic plan refresh but more excitedly I'm more excited to talk about our new plan that I will go ahead and talk about as well today it's my third time in front of you the last two times I've been here we've been getting updates on this refresh so we'll keep that part of it so you've seen this before you already know this but quickly to review our Citywide strategic plan is a roadmap tells us where we are now and where we want to go helping us to organize our long-term Vision into three to five year increments it helps us also to communicate to our employees and to our residents about what our priorities are and what those measurable steps we are taking to move toward those desired outcomes as well as connecting our limited resources with those long-term visions and priorities so here you see our strategic plan.

Begins with our mission and our vision those are approved by you all and serve as our guiding post each of our goal areas represent big priorities in the city we have five main goals they're very Broad and under each goal there are three objectives or Focus areas under each objective we will have we ended up having two to four initiatives which are the actual activities projects and programs that we need to do to move the needle in each of these areas so Mission Vision goals objectives and.

And this timeline is something you've seen before but we are very happy to report that we are right on track the last scope to you all in March at the budget Retreat when we were beginning the process of our initiative development and now we are back in front of you all to report out that the final plan is here we hope you all will adopt along with the budget in June and then of course work definitely does not stop there the all-important implementation will start almost immediately as well as going back to our employees and our community members to share that new plan so to write a quick recap of the refresh process before I go into the new plan in the fall so that fall of 2022. we met with Department leadership to talk about our goal areas better to find them and do an environmental scan we had a lot of changes in the last few years we wanted to make sure that those were well.

Represented in our new plan the goal of those meetings were to brainstorm the key Focus areas or objectives then we then brought to our residents and employees to help us prioritize we are excited to share that we received feedback from over 500 employees on potential objectives for our Innovative and high-performing organization goal that's our one of our internal Services goal we were able to gather 876 resident surveys through the use of both focused community outreach and the resident satisfaction survey so residents were given a list of five to seven potential objectives per goal and then they were then asked to pick their top three priorities for each goal the results were then shared with the executive leadership who finalized the top three objectives and we're really excited and proud that the top two to three priorities from our engagement efforts are directly reflected in our plan as objectives so initiative development in early spring we met with initiative teams and these teams were chosen by Department directors for being the subject matter.

Experts in each of these areas the initiatives are really the substance of the plan because they're the actual programs projects and actions and help us meet our objectives in order to achieve our goals so begin by asking initiative teams to dream big what you know the city could accomplish in the next three five years and we ended each of those meetings with a list a list of Draft initiatives many of these.

Initiatives came from action items of existing long-term plans such as the draft comprehensive plans small business plan and the carbon neutrality and renewable energy plan we wanted to use those existing plans whenever possible because it's so much the hard work and the Intensive engagement that had gone into developing that so initiative teams took their list of Draft initiatives and answered some questions related to potential resource needs key deliverables Milestones the impact it would have on the objective area potential Equitable impacts of who does it serve who does it benefit does it not benefit and then that information was used to plot out initiatives on an effort impact Matrix that you can see on this slide here to visualize the impact an issues might have on the community in the city and the resources that they would require so Department leadership leadership meant to review the Matrix and determine which initiative should not move forward most if not all the initiatives that did not move forward are items that are still going to happen.

They're just going to be with departments specifically and not in the Strategic executive leadership review the final proposing issues to ensure alignment with city-wide goals and Council priorities all right so next to the good part at the end of all those meetings and surveys discussions and in some cases Lively debates we have our fy24 the FY 26 strategic plan five goals each goal has three objectives for a total of 15 strategic objectives and we step to our original plan of having fewer initiatives to focus on we had over 100 initiatives in our last full plan and during implementing so why we ended up with 41 this go around and why is that lower number so important to us during implementation we look at these initiatives frequently and in detail so having a hundred initiatives makes that very very difficult so while they're obviously and this is this is really important there are far more than 41 activities happening in the city around these five goals that magic number 41 is.

Where we're going to really focus closely in the next few years and really work to communicate that progress out to our residents we're also going to be looking at measures and data around those initiatives and I'll talk more about that all right so I'm going to go through each of our five goals I'm not going to read all 41 initiatives for you all we have a full report available online it's also in our proposed budget book but I will highlight some initiatives as we go through keep in mind these are still going through quite a bit of the detailed work so if you have a specific question about them I may have to get back to you just because lots of conversations around those initiatives including milestones and deliverables and important conversations about resources are all happening in the next few months as we further develop this out so we'll start with Goal one our shared economic Prosperity we have three objectives providing tools and resources for small to promote small businesses.

Building a talented competitive Workforce and building connections between job Seekers and quality job opportunities I do want to highlight that as part of the city manager's budget proposal there's new funding available for the works program that's in objective 1.2 at the bottom expand the youth Works program to better align with the talent pipeline for business needs that's a big project for oewd side to see what that will look like in the next few years and how that grows out goal to our safer Community together we have our three objectives of reducing harm building trust between our neighbors and Public Safety providers and an objective that has not been part of this specific goal in the past an objective related to the recruitment retention and support of our Public Safety employees I do want to highlight initiative 2.11 that's the first initiative under underused harm this initiative is such a great example of collaborative departments working together it touches so many of our departments to reduce the public safety interactions with and.

Improve outcomes for familiar Neighbors in discussions with our Public Safety departments every one of them from 9-1-1 buyer Community safety and police they all have familiar neighbors these are residents that they interact with frequently this initiative is aimed at using a data-driven approach to identify neighbors with the highest number of interactions with each of these groups and to develop strategies and collaborative Partnerships to better address the needs for these neighbors resulting hopefully right in a measurable reduction in the number of times these neighbors engage with our health and safety staff goal three connectives engage in inclusive communities our three objectives there elevating Our Community Voices in local government decision making housing more affordable and expanding resident access to digital resources and Community programs so this I'd like to highlight the initiative under objective 3.3 create and Implement a digital inclusion roadmap which strives to ensure that every resident of Durham is provided with access to or use of digital tools and services regardless of their background a digital inclusion.

Manager is in the process of being filled right now on the Technology Solutions Department who will be focused on this work goal number four Innovative and high performing organization is our internal basing goal we have our recruit retain in advance I diverse and engaged Workforce second one is embedding Equitable consideration into programs policies and culture and the third strengthen interdepartmental collaboration and communication this one I want to focus on all the initiatives under objective 4.1 as no surprise that Across the Nation right we have some hiring issues we're not we also have some vacancy so all three of these initiatives are all around focusing on Recruitment and Retention strategies on these strategies that can expand the hiring tool hiring efficiency and the speed in which we hire as well as lower return number rates and our last school Portal buy was always last but definitely not least our thriving and vibrant environment these three objectives are advancing our carbon neutrality through the maintenance and improvements infrastructure supporting community-wide and renewable energy and Energy.

Efficiency strategies and our 5.3 objectives very specific to our Solid Waste Department focused on diverting waste through alternative and Innovative strategies not to say that Solid Waste Works in a bubble they obviously partner with multiple departments so they will be heavily focused and is objective this follows a really good example of how we look at current long-term plans to build it out objective 5.1 all three of those initiatives come directly from our carbon neutrality plan objective 5.2 they both come from our draft comprehensive plan and even parts of 5.3 are also from that conference as well so really excuse me I'm talking very fast I'm out of breath all right so what's next I'm almost at the end the all-important what's next so as I've mentioned multiple times before in past presentations and in this one the actual refresh process is a very small part of the Strategic plan it is really all about the implementation Asia city of Durham has a living Dynamic strategic plan it is not a Dusty binder.

On a shelf somewhere an implementation will start with fully building out our initiative so working with our initiative teams to complete the timeline a detailed work plan to talk about milestones we create the very important performance measures so we can track our progress we have conversations about resource needs and how those resources may or may not impact that timeline and those milestones all of those conversations and work will occur in the next few months simultaneously we're also working to build out our new Resident facing dashboard once we have our initiatives fully developed we put those into our dashboard and once the dashboard is complete with the help of our Communications Department we'll launch an awareness campaign to get the word out to our community member so they can go to that dashboard read more about our initiatives learn more about what we're trying to achieve through those initiatives and also see the measures it's really important and we'll be updating those posters and that's all important but back to you for your signatures.

Later and the last part of this is the ongoing tracking and reporting of progress so back in March I spoke about our germ strategy and performance means we've heard them as dsap internally so dsub will start back out again in the fall and we'll continue through the lifetime the lifespan of this plan so desap again it's an opportunity for initial teams to get in front of the city manager and City leadership talk about what they've been working on highlight any of their programs and then they talk about what they hope to accomplish what they hope to get done in the next three to six months it's also a time where if there's any issues roadblocks that they come across they can come out and discuss that try to find a resolution probably a key part of the implementation of our plan and I will end with this slide this link will take you to our strategic plan webpage it's not a dashboard yet but you can go there and see our full report.

That has a listing of our goals and objectives and initiatives as well as some older reports and lots of other information and with that I will thank you for your time this morning and open up to any questions and again if I can't answer something specific I certainly can get back to you all thank you so much do we have any questions thank you madam mayor good morning again good morning everyone in the room good to see you it's been a minute to see you in person I've been practicing my signature for the new posters so very quickly the 41 initiatives as opposed to 100 but you said that others will still be going on in the 41 so what will differentiate the 41 from the other ones well because if you drill down more in terms of metrics and tracking how they're going while the other ones what will separate those 41 from the other 100. 41 is what we will be focusing in on the dsap meeting so hearing about them more often.

But for our residents those 41 are what we'll be putting in our dashboard and that dashboard will have you know what it is what the Milestones are Health measures related to them so we're trying to build almost like a story about that Initiative for people to come in and see more information so it's really about how we communicate to our residents about we're doing a lot more but that 41 is where we're going to really components and so so for the residents who interact with that dashboard and didn't see me on the street and say it's fair for me to say but we're doing more than that in addition to those all right absolutely excellent report thank you so much thank you madamir and I will just add that our departments also have strategic plans so in addition to the enterprise-wise Strategic plan our department has strategic plans they have work plans so that's where you find the other work thank you thank you.

Good morning all right I think it might fall under goal four objective 4.2 but my question oh am I wrong sorry my question is you know when people leave the city I'm assuming that they have exit interviews so just wondering where that dater that that you compile when they have the exit interviews how is that going to be looked at in terms of trying to fall I guess it would fall into 4.2 4.1 good morning good morning Robin HR Director in response to your question we do collect exit data and it would be tracked under 4.1 I believe and that data will be available we're actually working on director and assistant director Scott and I are working on a dashboard so that we can report that on those things I'm sorry so that we can report out on those things thank you hopefully I'll answer your question thank you any other questions thank you so much thank you.

Good morning Christina Reardon budget and Management Services and I am up for the next presentation to talk about Revenue today. So we will be talking about revenues but the revenues that would be primarily focusing on is our general fund Revenue as you all know our general fund is where most of our departments sit and so when we talk about revenues for our general funds there are kind of two main Revenue sources that we focus on and that's because they make up the primary amount of Revenue in the in the general fund and that's property tax which is at 47 of general fund revenue and sales tax which makes up another 35 percent of our general funds we will also talk a little bit about our tax rate our property tax rate as you all are aware the proposed budget that you have before you now has no proposed tax rate for fy24 but we will go over kind of what the tax rate is and then also I'll talk a little bit.

About sales protections excuse me sales tax projections and also our fund balance so getting started this chart here shows you our major Revenue sources in the general funds and kind of giving you a snapshot of what our adopted budget for this fiscal year where we project to be at the end of the year and then what our proposed budget is for fy24 for our property tax we have kind of a four and a quarter percent increase which is 5.5 million dollars sales tax is a 15.1 percent increase for proposing for FY 24 which is 13.1 million dollars and then occupancy tax is a three percent increase that is a revenue source that has 100 rebounded since the pandemic and also our power bill which is a state formula that we receive from the state so we don't have that much control over it but we've had two strong years of power bill funding and so we are anticipating that that will come in at 7.3 the next is our general fund Revenue summary which is.

Are this this chart shows you budget to budget over the last several years we have some of our major Revenue sources in the general fund looking first one property tax and sales tax which we will talk a little bit more about other local taxes the majority of that is our occupancy tax State shared revenue is some of the revenue sources we received from the state which we have as we've talked about come as formulas the majority of that being our power bill there are some licenses and permits that also show up in our general fund and charges for services that Revenue source is mainly are the parks and rec and and and Parks and Rec and a planning for fees sorry so that's that's doing.

Moving on to the next live is our General from revenue summary this is showing you kind of a breakdown of the general fund Revenue which we've talked about already kind of putting into a visual of how important the property tax and our other local tax which the majority of that is sales tax makes up how those two Revenue sources make up a majority of our general fund Revenue looking at our property tax rate allocation as I've talked about already we are not proposing a property tax increase for FY 24 but I do like to point out with this with this slide that there are several funds that do receive a portion of our property tax our general fund receives the largest portion at 31.55 but then some of the other funds that receive property tax are debt housing Transit and solid rates so that are 55.77 cents is is what it would mean for the average homeowner if we look at the Durham County tax office the average or the median home value it's 244.

538 that would be a tax bill of 1 363 or about 114 per month and just just to note some of the you know the property tax growth overall from 23 just the natural growth from 23 to 24. Budget is about 9.4 million dollars in all months the next is our kind of a visual of our property tax text-based growth this is showing you assessed value breaking out assessed value by real personal and motor vehicle as we talked about the proposed rate is 55.77 for next year our real property growth is 3.6 percent motor vehicle growth at 3 percent and the overall growth warranty to five percent the next chart is just kind of showing you how we kind of get to our property tax projection the first set of numbers you see at the top are our assessed value broken out by the different different categories real property personal property motor vehicle and Public Utilities with real property obviously making up the majority of assessed values then we have.

Tax rate for our different funds we do account for some uncollected taxes we have a very strong collection rate in Durham County and so our collection rate that we are projecting for next year is 99.5 percent and then this breaks out what is appropriated to each of the different funds and that final number is which we focus a lot on is the one cent equals that really is telling you what one cent of the property tax what one cent of property tax generates as far as Revenue so it would generate 4.1 million dollars another look at property tax allocation you can see here this breaks out the different property tax allocation in different funds the difference in this chart is you'll see that we have accounted for our tax collection fee that we pay to Durham County they collect taxes on our behalf and so there is a net revenue that we you know after the tax collection fee is taken out I think the thing that I would point.

Out is which I've kind of stated already is the general fund is the fund that receives the largest portion of our tax revenue followed by our debt fund Solid Waste Transit and housing there is a column in the chart here showing you the bid which is our business improvement district that is a separate tax on the seven Cent tax on our downtown area and that is also included some information in this and there is no proposed tax increase for that actually the next is showing you our property tax budget to actual show this this chart shows you the glue is showing you the budget red is our actual and then we also have a green chart which are our projection for this year as you can see for the last several years our actuals have exceeded our budget this year we are anticipating which you have what you've heard at our Q3 report last week that we are expecting to come in budget or at budget for fy23 and then fy24.

You can see the budget which we have talked about and then also the one thing I will point out is that there is a reval expected from our hook marginal County tax office that the rebound will be January 1st 2025. So moving on to sales tax sales tax is doing well it is up 5. almost 5.5 from where we were last year at this time sales tax is on a slight delay which we've talked about in the past but we are seeing higher collections than we did this at this same time last year we are expecting our eoi projection at the end of the year to be 97.5 million dollars which is 12.3 over last year's sorry Which is higher than budget about about 10.7 million dollars and our budget just to remind you for this fiscal year is 86.8 million dollars so for next year we are projecting our sales tax at 99.9 million dollars which is a 15.1 percent increase which generates 13.1 million dollars more that does seem like a very large.

Increase but I want to remind you of where we think we're going to end the year so it's although it's 15.1 percent more than our budget of 86.8 million dollars it is only about a 3 increase over where we believe that we will end we've just seen him tremendous growth in sales tax and I think we probably under budgeted during some of the pandemic years and so we're we do as a reminder have an Ila with Durham County which has been renewed by the council and will continue for February 21.

Again just showing you a chart with some of the sales tax growth similar to the Chart you saw for property tax Liu is budget red is actuals and of course the green is eoi like I said sales tax is on a delay which is why the actual is for fy23 look lower and also there is a spike in FY 2014-15 that Spike has to do with the way that sales tax for our gas and electric was collected it became part of our sales tax so it wasn't necessarily an increase in Revenue in those years it was just kind of a change in Revenue sources the way to calculate our resources the next is our Elder general fund Revenue sources which which you have seen some of this information especially the eoy projections are the Q3 Q3 projections that you saw last week this looks at adopted year-to-date and then our proposed utility tax which is our video franchise and Telecommunications tax has been trending down and so as you heard at our Q3 last.

Week report from our finance director we have kind of corrected for that for next year occupancy tax is doing well and so we have a three percent increase in the budget for next fiscal year power bill we've spent some time talking about and then charges for services we are you know we are expecting that our proposed budget for fy24 is similar to our budget for fy23 we're not seeing much growth in that yeah so moving on to our fun balance and we did have a little bit of a look at this last week when we had the Q3 report but at the end of Q3 we are projecting that there will be 73.3 million dollars in one balance and reminding you of two of the markers that we used 16.7 if you 16.7 percent of that fund balance is 42.7 million dollars 12 percent is 30.7 million and then the Surplus above the 16.7 million is 34.2 million and so in this budget that we have proposed we are we are projecting to use.

13.8 million which if you minus 34 from the 13.8 there would still be 20.4 million dollars remaining on balance and as a reminder some of the things that we are opposing to use one balance for is 4 million for Street Maintenance around 600 000 for our election costs 500 000 for land acquisition for open space and trails 5.4 million to cover one-time funding of departmental items and 3.3 million for one time CIP funding our CFT projects this is a our multi-u which you have seen in the past and what I'll point out is that this is a very important internal tool that we use it is something that we are constantly looking at there are deficits that you will see in the years past fy24 and this is similar to what you saw last year at this time one of the things that we are doing in this model is to be kind of conservative so our Revenue estimates are conservative at this point since we don't have a lot of information and we.

Kind of adjust them as we get more information and then I think the main driver of kind of the expenses in this model are our Personnel Services you know kind of salaries and benefits are a main driver of some of those some of the the increases that you're seeing in this model and then finally just to talk about priorities for FY 24 I think these are similar to some of the priorities we've had in the past we are constantly monitoring revenues and expenditures and of course we provide you with a quarterly update on those and we amend the budget as needed throughout the year we'll continue to refine that multi-year financial plan that you just saw and you know we come before you and bring it to you at mid-year during our budget Retreats and we're also working with the city manager updating them on that several times a year is that something that we continue to look at as we get better inflammation and then we're also continuing to.

Develop strategies to address any of those multiple year gaps that you see and also especially with our new strategic plan looking to how we can fund those strategic and priorities and with that I'll open it up for questions thank you so much questions. Thank you so much and I'm going to our next presentation I'm going to turn it over to our Human Resources Director good morning.

Good morning mayor mayor Pro tem Council and city manager page my name is Robin lemon I'm your Director of Human Resources thank you for the opportunity to present to you today this is my first time so Dental I guess here I have my colleagues with me Don Scott assistant and Joyce Baker interim assistant HR Director to to assist with questions if needed before getting started I would like to thank Mr Scott Miss Baker and Matthew Green Hall who's also on our team for their tireless work on this presentation greatly appreciated.

My objective is to give you an overview of the compensation recommendations and the benefit changes submitted for consideration and these are the topics I will be discussing this morning so we'll get started pay for performance recommendations it is recommended that to pay for performance program be fully funded the amount listed here are derived from the city's multi-year financial plan that Christina just spoke about and represents the salary only cost to fully implement the plan for general fund importance here you will see our recommendation on the Durham minimal minimum living wage livable wage or dmlw which is how we refer to it the dmlw will increase by 4.9 percent for fy24 this is an increase over the year before land FY 23 was 17.60 but it will be adjusted to 18.46 those employees that were those jobs that fall below the dmlw will be adjusted to that particular rate of 1846.

Next we'll talk about compensation recommendations when we make recommendations we do so with considerations in mind we had five considerations this year and the first one was certainly to maintain the Integrity of our current plans the second one was to respond to market conditions and shifts recently the North Carolina League of municipalities released the Statewide salary survey and in that survey it talks about municipalities are planning to offer increases between 5 and 18 and that would include Merit and structure the largest cities in North Carolina are reporting a range of 4.7 to 11 which is averaging out to about 6.2 percent we and I'll talk a little bit more about what we are proposing in the next couple of slides on number three certainly to talk about our recommendations are to support the dmlw number four strengthen efforts to reduce turnover and to fill vacancies I I am as of Monday May the 22nd city-wide turnover is at 14.9 up slightly from last quarter of 14.3 but still down from the recent peak.

Of 16.5 in December of 2022. most of our turnover is voluntary which accounts were 9.7 percent however I am pleased to report that the total number of vacant positions are down to 451 from a recent high of 511. The vacancy rate as still stands at 16.3 percent and then lastly we certainly want to address recent changes in the economy with our recommendations and I'll talk more about that as we continue see HR recommended a two percent increase to all plan to all pay plans and salaries in the open range with a total and from this led you'll see with a total plan costs of 4.6 million dollars to alleviate that two percent was recommended to help alleviate some of the market pressures that we're facing and I'll talk a little bit more about that as I said before any employee that falls below our dmlw would be adjusted to that 1846 that I mentioned earlier this side just illustrates when a employee could see potential changes in their paycheck these are the dates of.

The way it worked we would have the salary structure adjustment effective July 1st and that would be reflected on the 714 paycheck and then the pay for performance will be affected July 15th and that that employee could see that on their 728 put paycheck and then we also have internal reclassifications that would be reflected on the 811 paycheck yes I also want to talk just to share with you the mayor mentioned an end-of-year appreciation bonus in April we are we have put that together the cost of that is 735 000 and if we schedule it to be awarded to employees on November 17th they would see it in their November 17th paycheck and we recommended that it was for all employees hired prior to July 1st of 2023.

Thank you in fy24 we are recommending a class and compensation study to be done and we are asking for that to include General employees police and fire this comprehensive study is more than just a salary survey it's done to we want to take a look at our current position and market and we also want to we have some goals associated with our class in comp study certainly we want to address Recruitment and Retention challenges that we faced we also would like to ensure our market and internal structure alignment then we also would like to simplify classification structures where that's where that's possible and one of the things some of the feedback that we've heard is around career progression so we want to look at it relative to that and then also we would like to look at it and use our class and comp survey to review minimal qualifications to facilitate recruitment or talents the HR department recommended the completion of a class in comp study in fy24 because best practices suggests that comp.

Studies are typically done every three or five years to maintain structured competitiveness and Effectiveness the last study here for the city was completed in 2019. In light of the the paid challenges and hard to fill position is an attracting and retaining Talent HR is recommending a more comprehensive more detailed approach to our class and comp study unlike what we did in 2019 and so I want to kind of just spend a few minutes talking about the why so attracting Talent continues to be a challenge for many employers as you all know and today we're seeing candidates ask for flexible work agreements or arrangements and higher starting salaries while we do our best to accommodate that we do understand that has an impact and doing this study helps us to understand better understand that and understand our position relative to the market adjusting the market rate I'm sorry hr's recommendation also will address some of the challenges around step plans and Market rates we want to look at how our step plan is.

Laid out and understand what it looks like compared to the rest of the market and it's our hope that by doing that the market we will be able to better retain skilled and experienced staff the 2018-2019 study that I just referenced recommended annual structure adjustments to as a to for the city to do a follow-up study in FY 24 however since covet since the pandemic everything's pretty much changed so that's why we are asking to do something that's a little bit more apprehensive so that we can address some of those major labor challenges and then also to address some of the challenges that we've had around attracting CDL Drivers and trade and inspection positions as well it's been one of our biggest challenges during the past year we've also consulted with the directors and it's become apparent that some of our jobs have changed and so what we also want to do is class and comp study is to evaluate those changes to determine where we need to make changes in jobs.

And position rates Durham's growth and development is happening quickly and we want to make sure that we're responsive to that evolving to to the Civic to the city's evolution and then lastly Market competition as you all know continues to be high we will rely on our consultant to identify and recommend strategies in current based compensation practices such as retention bonuses certification incentives and pay Equity adjustments to address Recruitment and Retention in the hopes that you know we are being competitive in the market next slide please next slide thank you moving on initially HR was asked to develop a cost estimate on moving employees into steps at the city not frozen pay in FY 21 and 22. the scope was expanded to to include an analysis of all employees affected during that same period next slide so before we started pulling that data we created some basic assumptions as we were looking at that information and on the screen you will see those but this is this just illustrates what we use.

When we were retrieving analyzing and calculating those costs to present today. So our methodology was to calculate it to calculate estimated costs we applied the same treatment to all employees who would have been eligible and then we applied the following percentages for each of those pay plans addressee on the screen. This is a summary slide on our findings from the slide you'll see that excuse me from the summer slide you will see that total cost would be a 16.9 million dollars to to make that change it does not reflect any impact on the fy24 recommendations that we made earlier it is just to kind of point out the grand total for estimated cost for FY 21 would have been 7.9 estimated costs for 22 would be 8.9 and that's how we and adding those two numbers that's how we arrive at 16.9 excellent there are additional considerations as you think through next steps this information is preliminary analysis that HR team would have to complete an in-depth analysis of each employee's.

Paying history to determine what that will look like and then certainly there's what we call the ripple effect we would have to look at whether or not by making any changes would increase wouldn't have any impact on compression issues that would require an additional Equity adjustment and again we do have a comprehensive case study in this budget and the study we hope will analyze structure step structures and play placement and Market positions so those are additional considerations the next slides are slides that we put together just to serve as to show a couple of examples and how hey has been affected from by 2019 to FY 23.

But it's a little small but hopefully you can see this so this is for fire we we selected a fire recruit hired on April the 8th of 2019 with a 10-year 4.1 year so this person would start out at base pay at 34 34 000 and then over a five-year period this person is now at 45 115. Those chain we did have some changes and those changes what were reflected or were a result of the step plan itself moving although merits were not given that year step plans were actually step adjustments were given and the same is true for like a fire captain and these are just examples of actual employees and on the next couple of sides you'll see the same thing so here in police you will see that this person the first person who's recruit started on April the 23rd I want to say that's probably 2011.

2018 I'm sorry it looks like a drop down and the tenure for that person is 4.82 years they started out at 37 000 and their current rate is 49.3 which is over over time that's an increase of about 33 same with the sergeant which is right around 30 31 we also looked at it for employees on General step as you see here this entry level position person started on November the 5th of night of 2018 with a tenure of about four and a half years so this person started at 35 over the course of time they got a 13.6 increase from start date to now and so that's about a 13.6 increase or 4.8 4794 dollars for mid-level same thing and then on Open Range we also provide an example of where the person started at 55 000 and then went to 63 this year 63 706 which is about a 15.8 increase over time these are just examples that we wanted to share with you so that.

Have a sense of what has changed or what has happened over that period of time. Okay so now we're into benefits and wellness next Slide the city has finalized the health and dental rates for 2024 in collaboration with our broker independent benefits advisors or Ida the city has proposed a 3.3 increase in plan rates and doing my research many organizations were experiencing a 6.5 increase and we're that we can't we came in at a three-point average of a 3.3 percent increase which is actually very good the whole and the way we have applied those those increases are over two different plans and have been applied differently for those employees in the Whole Health Plus plan it's an increase of about five percent and for those that are in the whole whole Health low plan it's about a two percent increase those based on our current numbers our current enrollment the overall increase would average out to about a 3.3 increase from the comparison slide you will see the most significant increase amount is at.

19.94 which is tier three for family the highest cost that is the highest increased amount for in our employees as well as our retirees and we are also not recommending any changes to premium or our cost on our benefit I'm sorry on our dental plan we the city of Durham does have a wellness initiative and in 2022 the city started out or implemented a hybrid Wellness Plan program design the program requires ways to complete one mandatory Wellness activity and then they needed to work through a point system in order to get to 200 or to earn 240 points we got feedback from the employee that they were not they that that was not one of their favorites so we certainly made a change in our plan this year our employees asked us to bring back our biometric screening which was done in previous years so we have since brought that back with on-site clinics and then employees can also complete their biometric screening of both in a physician's office and a patient service.

Centers and then also instead of them now having to complete spot city-sponsored events to earn 240 points they can complete three additional activities of their choosing as long as they're Wellness related and we do have a list for employees to select from and then they would qualify for the wellness insurance premium for 2025. 20 because you do it you actually do the activities on one year to earn for the following year so this is all effective on this is already effective we did maintain the discount of twenty dollars per month but we are considering we are looking at that because that was one of the other things that employees asked us to take a look at.

It is our hope oh and it's our hope it is our hope that by the time with these new changes that we will see and increase in participation and Wellness Plan participation and then lastly which includes have been notified of this by the federal government into the covet emergency Declaration on May the 11th of 2023 and in support of that we recommended removing a code that start charging that has been approved this concludes my presentation I hope that you found this information helpful and I did not go too fast and we thank you for the opportunity to come reporting today are there any questions I can possibly answer if I cannot we will certainly get back to you as quickly as we can well done for your first time turn it over to my colleagues to see if y'all have any questions.

Thank you madam Mary congratulations great presentation as well yes ma'am so there's a there's a lot going on here and and important that we I'm glad you put some things out in the atmosphere Because the actual nuts and bolts of this you know require putting some things in context and and I think you've given us a great amount of on-ramps first of all you so I voted on a 2019 plan after we did the comp study and you you said that this next one would be more comprehensive and I don't want folk residents or citizens I mean I could I could see some people hearing that and and maybe deducing that perhaps there were some things deficient about the previous study that we didn't go as deep as we could have so so just for trying to set the the the tone what are we going to be asking this time that we didn't ask last time what's going to make this more robust so I'm I was not here the last.

Time but what I can tell tell you about this plan we do plan to look at Equity we look initially I guess we did a cross-section of certain positions we are going to look at more positions than what we looked at before which is typical in a comprehensive study we just know that we need to look at more positions just based on feedback and what we're getting from new hires when we when they apply when they when they want to negotiate rates so we plan to do that certainly we want to look at Equity you know and equity in terms of female versus male and you know how people are paid to make sure that there is a balance there we also want to take a look at what what are Best Practices what what are other organizations doing that at that time in 2019 you may not need it to do but now you know do we need to look at sign on bonuses and if so to what extent.

Do we need to take a look at CDL incentives back in 2019 there wasn't a shortage of CDL Drivers but now there is so what what do we need to do to attract those those people here for the city so we're going to rely on our consultant to help us really dig deep on some of those things that have been what I call Post covet impacts to your comp our compensation design that that you didn't have to do before thank you for that so I'm going to talk a little bit about the compression vis-a-vis a pay plan that's market-based as opposed to services because one of the things that that we've heard is that there's concern with some employees that a new employee's salary is too close to someone that's been here a number of years but when you're trying to if you're doing market-based hiring the the quote-unquote value of that job is based upon current market conditions and with an engineering an engineer may have been making five years ago to start.

Has changed now so if we said we want to be competitive and bring folk in we have to pay them competitive salaries the challenge is at a competitive salary for the same job may be closer to what you're making now having been there five to six years so how do we tell a new employee we're going to take you back to what your job would get would have gotten five years ago they're going to say you know well I'll go to somebody who's going to pay the market so say a little bit about how market-based hiring as opposed to experience experiences or time based hiring factors into this compression conversation so I will use okay I found this on the web for factors in your example you mentioned Engineers Engineers are on our open range plan and oftentimes and I'll stick with them you're right things have changed from a market because of demand and that demand is it has come because you see less people going into an engineering.

Career in or taking those college courses or graduating and that that's where the shortage is coming from because we're not we're not getting enough people to graduate with engineering degrees so what does that mean for us so that means that we do from a market perspective you're absolutely correct we do have to look at what the market bears and our needs around what you know what we're going to pay what's an acceptable acceptable pay but when we do our comp study we also look at we we're evaluating ourselves against other municipalities to determine how they pay that position because clearly we don't want to out price ourselves in terms of that and then we also will look at internal equity and and that's I think I reference that there may be a need to create other Equity we may have to do other Equity adjustments that will depend largely on our guidance that would depend solely on our direction from our city manager on how she would like us to address those things but in.

Terms of Market hiring yes you are correct we do look at what's happening within the market and how that position is going to be paid because quite honestly if we say we're not going to pay that person you know what they're asking for or you know something that's comparable into our structures then they will they will pursue opportunities elsewhere right and that's part of the the dilemmas of decision making when I even look at police and firefighters if if we pay a police officer you know or firefighter or whoever whomever a bunch more more money to attract them at the initial stage and it resembles what someone who's been here for a number of years and we have internal pushback from folks who've been here but we then also have these Market forces that if we're going to get these people we have to do you know and part of my work with the league I talked to folk all over the state all the time and one of the things.

I hear about Durham is is you know you'll hear folks say well this folk these this city May pay more but one of the things I hear consistent about Durham is that our benefits are almost unmatched that's endearment and a lot of folks want to work in Durham they'll look at salary but when you look at your kid going to the dentist or going to the doctor that factors in as well so we need to know that Durham is an incredible place to work and I hear this all over the state when it comes to benefits as well so I think that's important when when you know when we think about this this huge sucking sound of people leaving Durham a lot of people who stay in Durham because there are benefits and that adds up as well I want to talk a little bit about the the line that went across the bottom because the the lumps on Pavements that we've done and also how the steps.

How the step plan you made a comment and I think it's important that we drill down a little bit on it the one-time pays across the bottom that because we didn't really talk about we talked about the step plan but not the money that we've paid in lump sum over the years as well being added to salary and also I think it's important you say a little more about what does it mean that this the step has changed as opposed to a person leaving the step because in some instances the step itself was made for more robust so you couldn't go up a step but the Step became more valuable correct so and and that's a part of the discussion that was not you know as we draw how to make decisions I think that so say a little bit more about that what that means so our recommendation is a two percent increase on the step so what that means is that current value of that step would.

Be increased by two percent so people that are on currently on that step would get that two percent and that two percent is now that new value for that particular step okay so whenever we talk about Mark when you hear me say Market or step we're talking about that relative I'm so sorry we're talking about it relative to the step plan the other piece of it you know when we talked about pay for a performance paper performance is the Merit piece so if you have two percent step and then you could earn up to six percent on your Merit so adding those two things together you could go anywhere from six to six percent to eight percent for your total increase for these examples for these examples in 2020 and I'm going to defer to city manager here but in 2022 there were no step adjusts I'm sorry in 2022 there was no merit but there was a step adjustment is that correct I mean so that's that's what happened so on.

This particular side looking at the fire recruit the dollar change that you see at that 6868 was a could be a step in a step adjustment is that correct and and additional money so what what you're seeing in these examples there are actual pay changes that have been added to base so those when you're looking at the dollar amount and the percentage change all of those increases were added today so I think your first question was about the banner below which is one-time payments we wanted to show that as information in this presentation but those totals were bonuses and they were not added to base but what you see in the main table those are beginning salaries they are salary changes that have been added to base pay in all of these pay examples and it is an accumulation of the dollar amount that has changed along with the percentage change over the time frame that is showing in the table so connecting it specifically to steps you know a step is really just a.

Percentage increase in pay so for us as a city government we have two of our pay plans that do have steps that are at five percent and that is in our fire and our police pay plan and our our general employee pay plan those steps are four percent so in any given year if a step is taken and that step plan is active then it generates that increase to base so what we have heard is that in 2012 in 20 21 and in 2022 those steps or those increases that would have been applicable to those steps four percent or five percent did not take place but there were salary changes that were added to base that did take place and the whole step moved to reflect those changes so thank you for that minute will you finish with your yes so if I I'm a firefighter and I've been here 10 years 11 years and I say that my step I have not received my step in four years five years what does that mean.

Like you've got more steps so I may have gotten the as a city manager just explained I've got moved within my step but I did not advance to the next step so if I if I'm on a step two then I didn't go to and firefighter play which I did not go to step three right but the money has increased however if that hurt you it's in that step within the step right okay I'll stop here tonight because I know my colleagues have some questions but I think this is really important that we get this out to the Public Square as well thank you good morning good morning thank you for the excellent presentation could you go forward there real quick and then one one more I want the examples of the individual so what would be helpful for me is to actually do what you all did here with the same like because this is what we did I would love to see the same with actual folks.

If we if we've done the steps like I see the totals two previous slides but the totals don't help me so because I just look at I'm like okay that's an insane amount of money right which I think all of us are probably cognizant of that I would like to see just because these are actual employee numbers so that I can see the because what we're hearing is I didn't move the step now I can go and figure out the math but I think y'all can do it way faster than me and so I would love to see you know if we had done the the plan as it's created not what was actually done because of coveted pandemic that would help me understand what are what are our In This Moment mostly firefighters sharing so I would love to see that and then I think the other thing that would be helpful is could you explain so that folks in the public understand we have two main pay structures the the.

Step plan and then the Open Range can you explain like you know the difference is sure one more truth okay so Professor meant sitting me on your page just said we have two step plans so one is for sworn police and fire and then we have a general employee step plan our open range step plan is not based on steps it's used it's normally designed to be in minimum a mid and a maximum and we typically I'm sorry so we typically would hire within that minimum to maximum depending on the position in the open range when we hire for staff we hire and put that person within the step plan depending on that position and then their progression happens based on you know various factors within that step so when the firefighters say I you know I didn't move my step they're basically saying I didn't go from step two to step three in an open range you would not see that it's that's just you know you have big.

Salary and that's it you just so it's more it's based on Merit just like all of what we do we all have merits we also have are all in the Merit plans and so for open range it's it's a percentage of your current salary for the for the planes fire in general employees it's moving to the next step thank you I appreciate that and I have one more question can we go to the again to the examples of folks I think and then can you go back to the okay so the base pay for the beginning pay in 2019 for a firefighter was 34 000 34 000 and some change right and then if we but now currently you're saying it's 45 115. no that's just that person just this particular person move from 34 388 and over time has is now at forty five thousand one fifteen okay what would be the base pay for somebody coming in the organization today that's a great question you don't know that yes we know.

I just turned to them so in this particular this particular position Step Zero I believe is the is 42 966. And that is could you say that again I'm sorry well 42 966 and I'm looking at the HR they're pulling an app yes that that and that is because this example is someone that is on step one so okay so Step Zero would be forty two nine six six and that's for a firefighter that's four five could you tell me the same for the same thing because we've got the fire we've got the police and then we've got just a a general employee you know they're working on it now thank you I I can get this also in an email I don't want to open this up but what I would like because the other thing that we hear a lot is that just our entrance entry pay day one prior crew is significantly less than what they're seeing in other again this is what we're being told and so what I want to.

Understand is what are the actual numbers so that there's evidence one way or the other okay and so that is why I would like to understand for the for the general general just like the examples here for police fire in a general employee if you walk in today or on July 1 with the what we're proposing what are you going to get as a Durham city employee. Councilman Williams thanks for your information it was a lot so I like to ask very clarifying questions for the folks that are watching and for myself so.

The percentage yeah this is a good slide right here so the percentage increase from 2019 to 2023 for a fire recruit is about 31.2 is that right that's correct okay for this particular person right for Recruitment and for Captain it would be about 33 percent that's correct so that's the 33 or 30 one percent raise in four years so what what I'm also hearing is I'm below the livable wage and I I want to be really intentional about putting what I'm hearing out in the atmosphere so we can you know be able to just correct it or or address it rather they they I let me ask this question rather so we provided a raise in 2021 for fire and police is that right was it it was actually January of 2022. January 2022 that was were those the only departments that we gave them ready to the particular Market increases that you're referencing went to police and fire at the time it was a special Market a study that was done for Public Safety.

And we implemented it mid-year January of 2022. all right that we provide any type of raises for any other city employees and if so what what was the comparison comparison. 2022 it was two percent for General employees and similar two percent full of oriented employees and it was about five percent let's see 2022 okay so it's five percent for fire and police 2022 I'm just trying to follow along from 2022 to 2023. what I'm trying to get to the bottom of is the value of the step versus the actual stuff that they're supposed to begin because I think the argument is what's I want to be in my appropriate step but are we looking at years of experience or are we looking at the value of the stuff where they are placed I guess it's for fire specifically so I so in the particular pay plan that we that we currently operate in that pay plan was implemented for police and fire in 2017 and it was implemented.

After a study or a complete study or redesign that the plan was done and then the employees who were present and working for the city at that time were placed into that pay plan in a way that we progressed from that point forward so in some cases if someone had been here different amounts of time but they were doing the same position so if they're a fire driver but they've been here different amounts of time that was given consideration to the initial step that they were placed on once everyone is placed once an implementation takes place everyone in a step plan everyone is on a step at the next time that a raise is provided it is a five percent change in pay from where they were and that five percent represents a step so that's five percent between each step so that is that is how it was implemented and it was intended to to operate after that but that was in 2017.

Gotcha okay and so basically the year that we did not have a stuff increase we implemented a race. And when we say raise we'll be very very clear it is a percentage increase and it's added to base pay the bottom line increase all right and and the reason why I'm asking these questions is because I don't want you know I I want folks to know that we value you know all of our staff but I I also wanted to be clear that when the world shut down we still stepped up and I also want folks to know that you know the concern is heard but also I I want to ask this question what happens if we're meeting certain requests that we're hearing what happens that we like adjusted this stuff when no one receives a staff increase what would happen if we did that before the entire city Enterprise what would that cost you know that number is 60.

16.8 16.9 million so 17 million dollars and that would have to come from the general fund it has to be recurring anytime we are implementing salary increases there has to be a revenue source that is recurring to cover it as well as the you know raises and in the future as part of our multi-year and to predict over time what will happen when any salaries are are increased right we deal with fire and police and that's recurring now that's that's annual that that is correct okay thank you I just wanted to I know it may have been a little confusing but I just wanted to ask those clarifying questions and see where we are and and what hard choices we have to make also projecting our values out there which is projecting and reflected in our budget I think to just add to that councilman Williams when I talked with the county manager that translates into before I'm a city manager is that correct yes basically you know in general based upon our 4.1.

You know 4.1 million dollars for one cent on their tax rate okay thank you so much I I want to just have to thank my colleagues for asking these questions because this is confusing and so just trying to figure out like so I guess my first question is at what point do you get a step is it every year is it every five years and what is how do you get this down be a little bit efficient rock this is Robin's first presentation so that's why I'm button in but you know essentially implementation of a step plan it is a plan I I want to say on the record it is not a guarantee of a future salary increase because we operate on an annual budget and that budget is is presented and it is adopted but it is a plan what anytime we have a pay plan that is in existence and it is a step play plan that means that it is anticipated that once a year an employee who is on a.

Step plan will move from the salary that they're in up one step and that one step is five percent okay and so it's that is anticipated based on budget right so I guess my question is like many many years ago I worked for the city in New York and we went on stuff plans but it was like after five years this is what your salary was after 10 you know so you knew what you were gonna get in a certain percentage rate in terms of years so that's why I wanted Clarity on that like because just to understand the difference between the step plan yeah it is it is it is a plan that if it's operating and is funded then you would move one step each year and that step will be valued at five percent so it's not really guaranteed that you wouldn't know that there's no there's no so when the firefighters are saying that they didn't get this stuff are they aware that that's not a guarantee is that.

Something that was told to them when they were hired that you would be on the step plan and you might get it I'm just Clary so I I don't know what is you know whatever what anyone is thinking in terms of you know what they're told what I am saying here is that every year we have to adopt a budget and that budget that is adopted includes recommendations for pay like we're doing here today and we always want to make sure that you know we can we can reward our employees with paying benefits that that this you know that this budget can can afford so you know in my in in my career here the the time that we did not do raises for employees if it was not the first time you know it has happened before but it is always based upon the economic conditions that surround us and the budgetary constraints that we have and what we recommend and what ultimately the council adopts for us.

I get some of my other questions so if we look at the firefighter fire recruit so in 2019 they started out as a 34 right and if they up into 2023 they're now at 45 000 right but you just just correct me if I'm wrong but a new person coming in is at 42. right so someone who's been here for five years is that 40. so they're only three thousand dollars apart in terms of somebody who's coming in so the staff just pulled the numbers so a fire recruit is comes in at forty thousand six eighty two today you said forty thousand forty thousand sixteen so someone who has been here for five years would be at 45 so they're like only like a five thousand dollar difference of someone who's been here for five years opposed to someone coming in according to an answer that's correct that's what you just said is correct okay so that's concerning for me but the also the other thing is that in in I.

Guess in the comprehensive Planet you're gonna do because I've been looking at just for my own knowledge the salaries in different cities in opposed to our firefighters here and one thing I know that mayor Pro tem said that you know we have good benefits here the other thing we do have is good training and I hear that all the time too that we have the best training here and I guess again my concern that I said in pre-budget and I just thought it was kind of swept over but in PP budget because I had to be met with the five the firefighters to discuss trying to look at this is that we are training the best and they are leaving and going somewhere else and so that really is a concern from again and so I I myself have taken the time to look at the different city salaries and we are losing people you know who are being trained in the best place here to go over places so.

Again that that's really a concern for me and that like somebody coming in that it's only like you've been here five years and you're only five thousand dollar difference you know every day you're putting a life on a line every day when they go into a a burden building they may not come out and may not come out to their family so it's just really it's just really disheartening to me that that that's so close and and I just wish we could do something different to increase their salaries thank you so much for the presentation I have two questions so for this current for the fiscal year that we're talking about now the proposal is two percent structural adjustment and everybody moves up a step so essentially everyone gets seven percent is that correct that's correct okay so during During the covid period when we weren't moving people up steps but we were giving raises within the steps but what's the rationale for doing it one way or another because would it cost.

About the same to just move the step up two percent and move everybody up a step I would rather they give you the manager I'm going to raise within this step like so it doesn't seem to matter in terms of how much money they get but it feels different to people clearly so when you have a plan with five percent between each step if the if the proposal is not to move a step if it's say three percent or two percent you will not be on a step with that type of raise so the strategy in order for someone to receive an increase in pay that is not equal to one step which would be five percent you actually move the step the percentage that the raise is so if the raise in this case in 2022 or for our recruit was 19 percent instead of moving you know almost four steps you move the one step you increase it 19 that is how you implement that.

Right it doesn't equal what a step is a step is five percent so so the Council councilwoman asked to you know look at an example of if the steps had been moved instead of what happened here and we can certainly do that but I can tell you that it's going to be a lower amount because each would have only been five percent per year for four years right okay yeah so this I mean this 19 obviously and I can move people four steps in here because here it doesn't make sense with the concept of a of a step plan but I mean I'm assuming we didn't know that we didn't do this because we didn't know this problem was going to happen but like we could have moved everybody a step and then increase the 15 or something like that you know but I'm guessing we didn't think to do that because we didn't realize that people were going to be upset about not getting steps so I would say that.

You know it's not necessarily we didn't think to do it there's you know there are different reasons for for moving and we happen to have here a combination of what we're trying to implement as Market and Merit but Merit is actually tied to an additional raise after a year of performance so in the case because yeah right okay so Merit is different from step or step replacing Merit in a step plan so pay for a performance we call it pay for performance right and it requires a certain level of performance in order to get the stem so there are potentially are people who work here who don't get the step but it's very very very very few I don't know what the percentage is but we are we are way above 9 I would say 95 percent of employees who do receive pay for performance on an annual basis whether they're in the step plan or they're in the open ranges because we have other methods for working with.

People who do not but the majority of city employees do receive that so okay so again thank you councilman I'm done because I'm trying to get into some clarity on it so fire the firefighters can actually get a merit-based increase to or no it is so they don't get so they okay so there are only stepping so they don't get the merry-based is paying for performance it's called pay for performance but if you're in one of the step plans the amount is five percent if you're in the one if you're in an open range that amount may be four percent up to six percent depending upon the level of performance so it's it's all paid for performance it's just five percent if you're in public safety and it could be four percent up to six percent if you're in an open range and four percent in the general employee step plan those are the current plans that we we operate.

I have a couple questions as well one probably is more of a request along with with Council one with Javier's request I think it would be helpful if I'm able to see an example of the compression issue we've heard a lot about compression and I'm not exactly sure you know how how that plays out for someone so if we can see a couple of examples of what that that issue looks like as well I'm also would like to see I guess some examples or or positions maybe of who would be considered in the open range those what those positions are okay really or in the general step range and looking at one of the charts those were the employees that only got the two percent so I I want to be confident since that we are knowledgeable about who exactly knows folks are since that would be helpful for me as well the other thing if you could talk a little bit about the comprehensive flake Pace study when you would expect.

To implement that how long does it last if we do it then when we take action on it just a little a little bit more detail so we kind of know and if we do that if we were to it sounds like to me we'd have an option of either going as high as a four percent tax increase or waiting for the comprehensive plan study to see how that plan pans out to determine next steps so just so we have an idea of timing for those things so everybody will know what we're talking about in that regard so it is included in our recommendations in this budget so based on approval then we would go ahead and get started in fact the HR the classic comp manager has already started to formulate some ideas around it it's our intent to be able a comprehensive study I want to be very clear it takes time and with that being said when I say take time it could take I would say probably four to six months.

In order for us to put up we have to go through our P process we have to then go out to and collect get our consultant and go and then get our data and it will depend largely on how other municipalities respond to us so all of that takes time so I I'm not saying it's going to take 90 days and we're going to come back with a response I would say it's at least six to at least six months before we could come back and and be able to have any conversations yes just to bring you know some we had you know in 2017 and 2019 comprehensive pay plan studies they are usually as Robin has mentioned she was not here but before as we go you know bring reports or or interim reports it would probably be in at least the third quarter of the fiscal year before final recommendations are are agreed on also any changes that need to take place would be most likely the majority of the.

Impact of those changes would not be in this year's budget because this year's budget is being adopted it will be in the budget that begins in July of 2024. And maybe you know some if it is something urgent you know some you know mid mid budget adjustments but if that were to occur we would have to be very very transparent about what that means to the next the next year's budget for example when we did the public safety media adjustment it was approximately four over four nearly five four something million dollars and then in order to annualize that that was an additional nine million dollars that had to be absorbed in the operational budget could you go back one side where it shows us the total I just want to that one so just so like high level my understanding is essentially to right size the plans that we've already adopted it would take us almost 17 million dollars that's great okay and so next year that's just going to be more money.

Okay so I just want folks like fantastic budget and the staff is more diligently and I know that we have been very aggressive especially when I think about infrastructure but I think at some point we're going to have to communicate to employees I love our staff I think everyone is innovative fantastic I think we have the best staff in the country and I've been a lot of places and I know that people envied around but at some point it becomes about choices so if we're going to right size the shift then it's not hundreds of additions because we know that we can't ask our residents to absorb that large of attack at least I'm not comfortable doing that so I think for for us as we think about next budget this budget is glorious I'm super happy but it's going to be 18 million you know whatever it is the dollars just get more expensive so at a certain point we're going to have to start communicating to staff if you want.

Us to right size the formula I hear firefighters very clearly but we've already been getting emails from other employees who would do those same step increases the same challenge is happening for our police officers and others and so I just want to be really really transparent with the community which is I I do believe that we're going to have to right size this I I think that we owe it to our employees are we going to be able to do it right now no is it going to cost residents yes and we just need to communicate that clearly to staff in the community at large thank you thank you madam Aaron thanks Colleen thank you colleagues for excellent questions and conversation Chris I I just want to say if if we if we tell new hires that we're going to hire you at 2019 salaries to deal with the compression issue in our city that's going to be a de facto higher increase nobody's going to work for Durham hiring them at 2019 starting on.

Salaries particularly if we're looking at the market and we're being realistic about what Market factors are secondly if we I think there are ways we can fix this short of you know a 17 million dollar commitment I mean there are plenty of creative way a lot of smart people working on this and I think we we do need to do something but to the to the city managers point the the step plan our work is not on contract I mean each year we negotiate a budget and I think I heard one of the firefighters say we knew what this starting salary was when we when we signed up they also know what the benefits were they know what the the plan is and the plan is very different from you know a statute or contractual obligations and I think that each year we you know we negotiate good faith to to do right by our employees and we will continue to this one is saying even if we were to spend 17 million dollars.

That still doesn't fix compression it just takes the same numbers and just puts them at a higher level but folk will still be have compression issues they'll be just complaining about more money it'll just be a higher level so that does not fix the compression issue the closeness of folks so there's a lot more nuance and and drill down we need to do on this plan but I think we can address it again it it it's a a plan is not a guarantee but even with that I think there are some things that we can do and I'm looking forward to the comp plan the more comprehensive comp plan study more comprehensive study that'll come forward to help us navigate how to do right by our employees so thank you so much for an excellent presentation thank you madam mayor for the time.

Thank you.

So next we will move on to our Capital Improvement plan I'm going to turn it over to our deputies. Someone deputies and manager Johnson is coming I will be leaving you at 11 o'clock I have a graduation to attend so I look forward to seeing you going tomorrow thank you and the opportunity will take over good morning everyone our birthday Johnson Deputy city manager I have this thing presented today which is named Trinity Snyder I'm a business services analyst and I want to first thank Renee for all of her work she's done our egi project she has taken over the lead on that project over the last has accepted a promotional opportunity in our solid once department and I'm so excited to see what she will she will be able to accomplish and explore and innovate with our new Solid Waste director we are so sad she's leaving our office she is a rock star but we are happy that she's staying in the organization.

So we also have with us our operational and our community building portfolio employees who represent our Capital Improvement plan those are the employees who actually develop the plan with our budget Management Services Department as well as our finance department who Implement our CIP as well as facilitate all of our discussions around all of our facilities that we own in Durham not just the ones who occupy city employees so our Capital funding plan is focused on ranking all of our projects using the equity scoring metrics we continue to fund the green and Equitable infrastructure projects which you will hear about today which is really the most exciting part of this presentation this plan is subject to annual review as you heard about our entire budget process where we look at each of the projects every year and we score those projects and we Bond those products to the best of our ability within our within our dedicated funding source for capital projects so our process for 2024 was the same as.

Every other year we get received CIP requests in January and February our departments presented recommendations to the internal committee and we have residents we have four residents who serve on that committee as well they have an opportunity to ask questions about the Project's challenge if they want to the scoring that the department applied to the projects and then also look at the equity tool as it relates to the projects in April recommendations are submitted to the city manager and in May as we are here today we are presenting those recommendations to you so here are the prioritization chapters that are used on the projects these are weighted differently the equity Equity factor is the most weighted has the highest weight as it relates to the projects a general Capital CIP nothing exciting here it is our normal CIP as we move through what we do in the city in terms of our sidewalk repair our street resurfacing as well as our dirt road unpaved road paving which is a 10-year program in.

Year four of that we're really excited about continue to move that that project forward and I'll leave it here in case you have any questions for a second yes this this could be this could be due to times well before me but back up a bit weird since prioritization factors and economic prosperity. When did we Define that as preservative environment addresses climate change and advances environmental justice so I believe we revamped this is it two years two years ago we went through a process where we looked at our entire scoring system that we use for capital projects which was adopted many many years ago and we went through that process the team the inter internal Team all of our departments represented here for tip projects gave input into the recommendations around what what the factors what factors we use those factors as well as their proposed weight were submitted to the city manager and the dcms we looked at those we made some adjustments and so I can share with you.

But there is a there's a document behind here that we can share with you that shows the weight for each of the factors as well as there's a scoring sheet for each project and the projects are scored and the total score you'll see on this slide so there's a total score and there's an equity score so it wasn't something that we actually discussed in this form it was something that was developed along with the Departments that actually Implement our Capital Improvement okay and just to be sure it's the it's the other slide I approach prioritization factors I don't want to hold this up hold us up now it's just that just based on my personal experience it appears that economic oh yeah like I don't want to say how this is economic prosecutive but I could ask later but it's small Oh I thought you were asking about the process by which we use to oh no that sounds like how do we Define economic Prosperity is the type of issue thank you thank you.

Paying attention I went through that whole process foreign so here's a second half of our project I mentioned the unpaid roads program as well as our quills project and other projects that we discussed in depth with city council with various City Council meetings. At it governance projects those projects are submitted to the I.T governance team which consists of the Deputy city managers as well as our budget and finance department those private those departments present those projects and we actually vote on those projects that included in IIT governance projects for the upcoming year we don't have as many as we usually have because we're embarking upon selecting a new Erp system and so we're only focused on projects that we must do during this time so that we can make sure we have capacity with our TS departments and other departments to select and Implement our next Erp system so Enterprise funding plan those projects you don't see a score here and we can give you the score but essentially you have the solid wage.

Group you have the stormwater group and you have the water sewer group those are funded within those individual funds there was enough funding in those funds to fund all of the projects that were requested essentially we we scored them but we we made sure that it actually went through the same process but there wasn't competition and these are projects that we must in most cases implement Fleet replacement program just continuing to replace our Fleet we have implemented this project this process many years ago maybe about five or six years ago and we continued that process so I'm going to turn it over to Janae who's going to talk about the most exciting part of his presentation today and this will be the last time she will be with us on this project but I'm sure you'll see her again with the solid waste problems thank you very good good morning everyone so on February 25th 2021 the Durham city council approved the half cent on the tax rate for Equitable infrastructure investment.

The purpose of the Equitable and green infrastructure project is to prioritize investment in and engagement with the low wealth communities and communities of color that have historically been excluded from or harmed by policy decisions egi aims to rectify these herbs and improve infrastructure in low-income communities and communities of colors color with a focus on historically disinvested communities these infrastructure Investments can address disparities and promote environmental justice and so during the fiscal year 22-23 communities were prioritized in the first round of the funding to develop proposed projects during engagement events with residents or during engagement events for residents the following projects categories emerged enhanced in Equitable green spaces water quality sidewalks Street Paving and pedestrian safety access and tracking content so I'll just make a note that you're going to notice in the projects that we don't have any Street Paving projects and ultimately that is because you know Street Paving it's a significant part of what Public Works does and it has significant costs that would have maybe been too significant for the.

Funding for this run in the next few slides I will provide an overview of our proposed projects for fiscal year 24. ideas for these projects were generated by our egi Equitable Community engagement by the NIS Department as well as other engagement around the 2019 WD Hill Recreation Center renovation engagement 2022 CD of Durham resident survey engagement lab by the local park park Champions to develop Park improvements the listening and learning phase of the comprehensive plan data lion Park Community guided improvements sidewalk condition study and sidewalk assessment management plan August 2022 and the Splash and play project engagement for our consideration for the projects included factors such as the communities and what they wanted and their requests feasibility shovel Readiness and costs and so as you can see on the screen this is an overview of the projects and some of them are self-explanatory and so some of them are going to just give a brief explanation and so bragtown sidewalks along with any other sidewalks mentioned where this this year round of.

Funding there are for sidewalk repairs sidewalk and curb ramp repairs the next you see on the stormwater Regional retrofit so you will notice that there are seven Regional retrofits or seven prioritized communities a storm water Regional retrofit solution will serve to assist with enhancement of water quality and assist in reduction of Street flooding and flooding along major ditches and streams at a neighborhood level at Lake Park the Lake Park Culvert is to reconstruct the covert at the park to keep pedestrians out of the drive aisle this will be the final piece of funding needed to complete the improvements at the park to the crosswalk for access to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street traffic common assessments in engagement there was a lot of concern about traffic and pedestrian access and safety and so you also seeing seven traffic calming Assessments in those prioritized communities traffic comment would include an analysis of traffic calming traffic signals and crosswalk needs and to incorporate Green Design and in the construction once it gets there.

For Red Maple and Lakeview Parks connector trim so we would do some planning and planning and engagement study to determine Community interest for developing a pedestrian safe Trail between Red Maple and Lakeview parks then next we have here just Burton Park walkways so repair and or replace asphalt and concrete walkways through the park as a compliment to the recent playground replacement and then we have here just project management to ensure that we get to get the work done and that we do a good job on these projects in Cornwallis we have a stormwater Regional retrofit again and traffic common assessments we are also planning and engagement to further develop the idea by funding planning and engagement to study and determine the community interest and feasibility around the request for community garden and core models.

Under Citywide project management is is that like an outside consultant or people who are going to be paying over to kind of monitor these projects first or do what what that 100 grand for city-wide project management that's is that what we're not doing internally in terms of managing these projects but what does that 100 gram workers in place so we don't know at this time but we wanted to ensure that we have the funding allocated to do so and so that may be what we can do internally or if we need to utilize external services to be able to do that I stuck 100 Grand a man don't know what you want to do with it so in East Durham sidewalks again.

On the Albright building decommission that is a plan to demolish abandoned buildings and be paid in a practice to continue to enhance the experience at Longmeadow and East End parks and then we have another storm water Regional retrofit and then the R Kelly Bryant Bridge Trail accessible bathrooms at CR Woods at CR Wood Park LED lights at the the car at the court in fields at East End Park where the fluid saw in tennis courts and then at Birchwood Park improvements this would include public art ground plane and carbon concrete basketball and pickleball court improvements and then another traffic common assessment next we have W.D Hill enhancement so this would include a restoration of historical historic tennis courts and restoration of the football replacement of incandescent lights to LED lights for tenants and compliments which complements a CIP LED light project for Full Stop Futsal courts and then 200 and then an accessible project playground in the next again your firms stormwater Regional retrofit and traffic common assessment in Goose Creek the Sherwood.

Park LED lights and enhancement would include first it would complement enhanced Renovations already funded to athletic courts surfaces and the crime prevention through environmental design improvements of walkways and removal of invasive and overgrown vegetation also Park and access improvements for playground accessibility Bridges across the creek entrances and create youth football practice fields and then in Lion park storm water Regional retrofit and lion Park Place making and polymers Murray center which will include creative Place making for planning and construction at polymoring for historic and history and social justice.

And then another traffic common assessment and then in Merrick Moore so we have a number of Merit more enhancements so enhancements will include features at the front of the park create more access to play and provide necessary infrastructure like bathrooms and walking tracks nature oriented playground design and fits in fencing and planting a walking Track with seating in an outdoor classroom area also public art along the interior and exterior of the roller rink formerly known as Wheels to reflect the community stories another stormwater Regional retrofit the art as mentioned traffic common assessment and sidewalk repairs in Pearson town community the South so light Park full-size athletic Court basketball and pickleball and more with lighting and then in Stokesdale so the Stokesdale connection is to construct a pedestrian safe and ADA Compliant connection at Hillside Park between the WD Hill Recreation Center and poolside at pool at Hillside and then a storm right original retrofit traffic coming and then in Twin Twin Lakes LED lights for lighting at the basketball court and then in wall Town.

A fuller death Reclamation and renovation of basketball courts new striping and new goals and backboards accessible playground restriping and parking lots and so if you have any questions about these specific projects I have many of my colleagues here who helped develop you know the ideas for the projects they're here to answer any questions before we get to that I have my colleague Christy West here from the public works GIS team and she will be briefly demonstrating the map for this work so that you are in the residence can see where the projects are focused and who those resources will serve.

Good morning Madam mayor mayor written and council members yes I've been here 16 years with this first time in front of you so I really think about it.

Thank you.

Okay is it the first for the past four years the pill that works Geographic and business Information Systems group has been leading the charge for Applied equity in our operations portfolio we have built in-house web Maps dashboards and databases so that applied Equitable practices are at the Forefront of all of our decision making we pride ourselves in the ability to use technology to support this endeavor the purpose of this map is to display the cfp projects list defined by the city manager's office for I'm sorry defined by the city manager's office for a focused Equitable neighborhoods the gray area is the original Green and Equitable census thought group slayered developed in 2020 that met the criteria for green neighborhoods and social economic indicators defined by the budget department and neighborhood Improvement services the they are in different colors is the focused the current focused Equitable neighborhoods for fy24 they were the ones that the city manager Dean priority areas for fy24 the blue outline is the Durham city limits.

The polygons in red outline are the fy24cipu projects and the gray lens are the census blocks block groups which is where the Equitable data comes from the predefined bookmarks represent the FY 24 CIP projects The Bookmark they used to take you to the neighborhood or neighborhoods for that particular project so I think the area will open information windows for all layers overlapping that area you can scroll through the information tabs to see the data for each layer in that area so for example Lakeview Park culvert you can see oh one second.

Together. Okay let's try that again so for the late viewport cover which is into it that works okay and you can see that there is a project for when we click on it we can see there's a general project for General services and transportation to build a culvert as trena said to different British pedestrians from walking in the to the drive aisle but there is also a sidewalk project a stormwater retrofits project by Public Works in a traffic calming assessment about Transportation all in this one neighborhood you can also see information on link viewed for it and data from the Census area that shows percentages of color here and although poverty level percentages for that blood group so turning some of the top layers off.

What we'll reveal some other layers such as sidewalks trails and Greenways and Parks and then clicking the home button we can get back out to the full extent.

So you can also search by address to see if the properties within the fy24 Equitable neighborhoods and what CFA products are nearby once I can instrument in the dress.

So you can see that the layer is outside of the 2020 green and Equitable neighborhoods layer but it is within the new fy24x neighborhood Slayer and there's also a three mile R Kelly Bryant Ridge Trail project playing nearby a stormwater Ridge project cyborg project and traffic coding assessment if you click. So that's pretty much this map what's in here the pwgis group has also created other Equity web maps and can be made available then request thank you thanks Christy thanks everyone that concludes our presentation and again I have many of our staff members here to answer any questions you may have about any of the projects thank you so much Madam Clerk please know that I'm assuming the Gallup and the mayor's absent also note that our honorable colleague councilmember Freeman to joined us good afternoon to her good to see you so colleagues we've heard the presentation at this time I'm going to yield to any of you who may have any questions or comments councilmember Williams then I think.

That's what councilman caviaro's hand yes sir thank you I how long does it normally take for some of these projects to roll out and we are we accept this or improve this today when should we start seeing some of this to happen so it depends on the it depends on the various projects we're planning to have a kickoff as soon as we receive the direction from you all and when you plan for projects to start right away in the new fiscal year but the various projects have different timelines as far as when they will be completed and so some may be completed in the fiscal year some have plans for two years some have plans for four gotcha and just some questions I'll ask just for clarification what I don't see on here I'm assuming has already been improved and funded Ardmore Drive it's a residential neighborhood I I don't see it on here but we I do get a lot of emails about that area and I'm assuming that's already funded is that correct.

Okay okay the worst director Williams foreign.

Yes our more Drive is actually funded right now we have it funded this year for the initial design after that we're doing going forward as we finish that design we'll make requests for additional funding from utility relocations that that are needed and then the actual construction there's no reason for us to make those requests for this upcoming budget because we had to complete the design work yet but for fiscal year or two more than likely there will be a requests actually construct that project okay thank you so much thank you councilman councilman covering yeah this is a I don't know who to ask this question to I have a question about the LED light projects just out of curiosity are we thinking about you know like some of the dark sky initiatives that we're seeing cities sign on to and if we're thinking about what kind of LED choices we're making on them and I know we're not at dark sky City I'm just curious welcome parks recreation simply yes we are considering that especially.

Locations of those and a lot of the lights that we're looking at are for athletic fields and courts so they're positioned directly down and did not have a whole lot of light pollution thank you thank you councilmember any other colleagues all right it's a couple of things first off congratulations to both of you on lateral or promotions I guess and first-time presentations here before us you both were brilliant I also want to congratulate just the city because we're kind of in this Silo and just doing it it may seem pedestrian and kind of commonplace to us but it's really difficult to overstate just how far ahead Durham is of our our colleagues and sister cities in the states when it comes to actually operationalizing Equity there comes a point where you have to start re-prioritizing things and actually spending money to do the work of equity we've had staff members come and present before the leave because we were doing such groundbreaking things and then the Vanguard of actually doing.

The work of equity so I'm going to congratulate the city you met a manager in all other team that have really they put our money where our mouths are in terms of equity there are kind of two tracks going on we're looking at our our CIP we prioritizing projects then we have this egi as well so we are really coming at this in a number of ways and again just just really really exciting because he has actually in a tangible observable measurable way re-prioritize things based upon an equity score with that said I do want to ask about some of the some of these projects that at least at initial blush seem to have some some overlap with other areas we talked about sidewalks and and things of that nature but these these stormwater Regional retrofits what exactly is that and how bad things have to get before we retrofit.

So with the stormwater Regional retrofits it's really going to be initially a study at the neighborhood level to really understand what this what those storm water means are and how we need to address them it could be anything from roadway flooding that may occur to ditches that may be overflowing so it's really going to depend on what we get from that study in those neighborhoods identify what actual projects go for that for what time it will be depleted and could those things or should not those things that information be captured just by regular order of the functioning up here does that need to be something ad hot for money from this fund shouldn't we be doing that through our regular kind of assessment of City needs in your department well we actually do this just gives more of a focus on these specific neighborhoods instead of the line that have come up through the bigger and larger plants that that may come at a different time frame so this actually.

Speeds up those processes so that we have an intentional focus in these areas that have been identified as priority I got you isn't it possible to do that but because we've with our regular CIP separate from this we've actually re-prioritized some things is it possible to do that with funds from our regular CIP rather than using these funds to do that it will require us to go back what projects that actually came up for funding through that funding source versus the egi funding and then decide to run a fund them through the storm water fund or fund through egi which may bump back some of the projects in the store okay makes sense well which of course if I mean if we if we if we re-prioritize things in our CIP then by definition something's going to be back money back anyway for evens we all right I certainly Merit more the and we hear about sidewalks I I I'm in Merit more every day to get to my other job.

And you see people walking down the the roads very very challenging in that Community I know it's public art the the art was 150 Grand and I think the sidewalks were 86 000 in Merrick Moore seems like a pretty specific kind of number to me do we have already have an idea of what we're going to do in Merrick Moore with that I assume we do the the 86 Grand yes it's actually for sidewalk repairs that we've identified through the sidewalk assessment that we present at the Fort Council a few months ago okay so that's what we used as like God to determine the repair needs in each of the neighborhoods I think that's all of the questions I had again this is this is a you know you'll when we look back over our time there'll be certain things I think we'll remember and it can be particularly proud of for voting for making happen this will be certainly be one of these things where we we literally put our money for our mouths.

As Durham has agreed and to tax ourselves we take this so seriously but we have taxed ourselves to do these types of projects and it's a it's a really cool thing you don't get to say that often we're working in government but this this is pretty cool so thank you all colleagues I'll check one more time and if you have any questions or comments on this particular item I also want to know colleagues up let me check with you we have I think about two and three presentations left does anybody need a break or do you want to push on right okay we're going to stand and break for 10 minutes we'll come back at 11 28 so we are in recess.

The director of our Public Public Works Department of Margaret Williams good afternoon sir good morning.

Well good morning again mayor Pro 10 members of council my name is the Department of Public Works we did have the management team for the public works department here our assistant director is called with the Natasha Johnson who actually actually has several staff members from public works here too as well because they were here to answer any questions that might have come up about the CIP projects that was listed for the Equitable Equitable increment infrastructure projects that we listed and it's actually a good timing that we're doing this presentation because it also happens to be the national public works thank you so I actually just take this opportunity to thank all the employees within public works for all the work that they do on a daily basis a lot of times it goes unseen it's kind of one of those things I say all the time man if everything's going right you really don't know our names or our faces it's not until you get questions concerns comments things.

Along those lines thank you really start to know who we are and what we do so today I'll just give you a brief overview of our department some of the key performance measures that we have and then answer any questions that you may have so here it's just giving you again an overview of our department we're broken up into three main divisions with our maintenance division our storm Water Division and our engineering Division and also our Geographic business and information systems unit which as you saw in the prior presentation provides a lot of support not only for us within public works but various departments throughout the city when it comes to their GIS needs technology degrees anything along those lines so here just give you a snapshot to show you what we do in each of those divisions how we're structured and the org chart here just gives you some of the major programs whereas Street and concrete maintenance street sweeping our storm water infrastructure engineering development review Design Services.

Variety of things in in several different areas so jumping right into our performance measures potholes is something that you all hear about constantly about the condition of our streets thankfully we had a pretty mild winter this year so we're not tracking overall to have the number of potholes that we've had in previous fiscal years but there's still a problem and that's one thing the the manager was aware of when she decided to dedicate additional funding to the street surfacing program to increase that from the 10 million a year that we have been receiving an annual basis moving enough to continue doing it if you don't recall there's still more work to go in that area the consultant that we had to pay with addition assessment last year he did make a recommendation to us that we would look to get the program into that 20 million dollar range 25 million dollar range at some point as the city continues to grow on our street Network but these two measures here just kind of.

Give you an overview where our average pothole repair costs slightly lowered up because material costs are going up labor costs are going up but we're still able to respond to a majority of those problems in a very commonly bases within three days typically we're about 98 completion rate of populations once we're made aware of then of getting those filled for the traveling public another big program that you hear a lot about sidewalks as we just discussed in the previous presentation with the egi funding and also in the CIP portion another major program for us where additional funding has been dedicated by the city manager moving us up to 10 million dollars a year for sidewalk repairs and again remind you all that you get receive a presentation from one of our Consultants a few months ago regarding our sidewalk assessment that was completed recently showing that we have a backlog of roughly 80 to 90 million dollars assignments that are needed so this begins our efforts to try and Implement that program to address.

The sidewalk repairs now we identify at that time when the assessment was completed so our cause for software repairs are slightly going up because this really captures the work that we do on our maintenance with our maintenance Division and we've been moving more of our sidewalk preparers to a contract basis because some of the stretches are so wrong we're not really capable of doing the amount of repair work in some locations with our maintenance Crews and we have to use a contractor to help supplement our work and these two measures here touch our storm water unit drainage service requests you will get the emails at times for people with concerns about storm water issues whether it's within the street that they're located or on a State Street which we can provide limited assistance with or within their private property but this just gives you an overview of the percentage of transfer puts that we would you respond to with some type of plan of action within a month's time and.

It's actually been trending downward as you see over the last couple of fiscal years which is a good thing because we're trying to do more proactive maintenance with our storm water system both so in our stormwater Division and our maintenance division as well development review another big program within Public Works we have a lot of construction activity going on within the city we are one of those departments that play a major role with that along with our planning departments City County inspections as well as the Department of Water Management it just gives you a snapshot here the number of plans that we have coming into the department right now we're estimating that we'll have over 3 500 plans or items to review by the end of this fiscal year you'll see that's an increase over the Target that we initially had of 2400. so it just shows that the construction activity isn't continuing it doesn't seem to be a substantial drop in the activity but there is a slight Dropout here because.

We were 22 or 21 and the number of plans and items that we process and review on a timely basis we're completing those our goal is 90 we're coming in about 88 of the time I'm completing those within the time frames for the various items that we do review so then I think we're the only Department that has two resource allocation tables because we're split between the general fund water sewer fund and storm water fund but this one just gives you a snapshot with the general fund pretty straightforward I'll just note the one big change that we had there to drop 99 that was one time funding that we received to purchase equipment that supplies for our maintenance decision we didn't need that again going into the next fiscal year so there's no reason to have that dollar amount dedicated within the Capital y9 their professional year 23 24.

And the stormwater fund pretty much the same thing you'll see again a couple of drops there we have reductions from the appropriation from fund balance because our Capital programs we're not anticipating to have as quickly going into the next fiscal year so we didn't need to do as much money from Starbucks over into a spendable account for us so though that's a big reduction there and just a couple of budget highlights something's already touched on our ongoing Street maintenance program 15 million dollars has been proposed in the upcoming budget for our Paving needs again that's something that we're trying to build on every year we make the request and try to keep you on the board of what the needs are and I'm sure you're aware of that just based on the number of inquiries that you get from residents about Street conditions same thing with sidewalks increasing that program to 10 million dollars going into fiscal year 23 24 vessel spray for Bones from that we're hoping to be able to.

Pave roughly 30 Lane miles of city streets do some type of preservation of 90 Lane miles of city streets and I stress that city streets because residents still don't understand the difference between the city streets and the North Carolina Department of tape the North Carolina Department of Transportation and streets that are within the city that they're actually responsible for maintaining and paying and we're also planning to do roughly 7 000 linear feet of sidewalk repairs and we have a new program that's still in the development process for us but it will be another big ask for funding in future years our Bridge Asset Management program because we're really we've gotten our hands around city streets we've gotten our hands around sidewalks now we're trying to get our a good handle on bridges that the city owns and maintains so as we complete that Asset Management program over the next calendar year we'll look into the next budget process to see what that funding needed the ice is in order teams with that.

Program and ensure that we have no critical repair needs or chances of failure we're just at City Homes or maintained and I know I talked fast and we'll do the slides fast but be happy to answer any questions that you all may have thanks so much America Williams colleagues I'll yield now to you for you I'm councilman Freeman good morning thank you I think just appreciate the presentation and I am excited that we are focused on trying to get closer to meeting that studying this goal I I'm very excited that this year's budget is really reflective of making sure our streets and our sidewalks are up to par just acknowledged in how fast our city has been growing those repairs are back dated backlogged and so we're doing that and trying to move forward at the same time which I think is phenomenal that's why I said thank you very much to your department I know a call often have lots of emails directed to you so I just want.

To appreciate you all right thank you council member anyone else I do have a quick question and councilor Rayford you you may this might be your name to you at what point is a city liable for damage to our residents vehicles and personal property for potholes and to what extent is the city Live Well I get a lot of emails sometimes I know we sent them to you folks damaging their vehicles in potholes particularly ones that have persisted that have been there for a while so give us a sense of what's the city's exposure when do we become liable and to what degree are we liable for damage to property rather than apocals that we can document Good Morning America city attorney's office so cities in North Carolina do have a statutory duty to maintain streets and as we've learned sidewalks and but it's not a strict liability so just because someone hits a pothole doesn't make the city strictly liable for repairs to whatever personal property they've had that's been damaged.

By the pothole the city has to have notice of the problem and the city has to have had a reasonable time to respond to the problem and responding to the problem doesn't necessarily mean correcting the problem or fixing it it might mean coding it might mean coordinating off an area it might mean you know putting some sort of public alert and it's very fact intensive it's funny I had a the county attorney and I did a town hall with a community in Durham a couple weeks ago and this very question came up because they've been having sidewalk problems in the neighborhood and it's so fact specific right it's like when did the city get noticed how did the city get noticed how much time has elaped so it's not there's no the specific deadline you know City must act within two weeks to at least put a cone on it or Cordon it off or fix it it just it's a reasonable time standard which in a court of law.

You know is going to be less left to the trial of fact and try to fall to determine I know that's a fuzzy lawyer answer but but there's no you know you hit a pothole and the city's responsible for fixing that to go back to our records did the city get notice of it through our systems if we did get notice of it when did we get notice of it was it three days ago in which case maybe the city hasn't had a reasonable time to act or was it a year ago and we're just backlogged and maybe we do need to make a repair I do know that the risk management Division I don't know if they're in the room they do pay claims fairly routinely for that sort of damage to cars related to hitting potholes and objects and Roads right no that wasn't fuzzy at all so I I just there have been in fact times when we provide a relief to Residents without.

Lawn to court at this point when we okay that's that's good to know secondly the the with the development of a bridge Asset Management program have we leveraged any infrastructure dollars here in Durham Federal infrastructure dollars so yes we have been pursuing those federal dollars but it's it's kind of odd situation so our bridges are in need of repairs but they're not at the point where they're so critical in need of repairs and we scored there as well in any of those programs have been made available so my take on what's been provided by the current Administration in DC is that Bridges need to be there pretty much it's state of complete disrefair and are at the point of failure or major critical need that needs to be done right now thankfully we've been proactive over the years we have inspected all of our bridges on every two years and we know what repairs mean and we made those but that that has hurt us at the same time because then it.

Doesn't make us a high ranking municipality in order to get in those federal dollars right the more likely you are to Die the higher chances of money yeah federal government and says thank you so much that that's all I had colleagues of one last time or director William thank you so much good to see you at this time now not time now will turn to our general General Services presentation record Junior approach in the morning good to see you still good morning. The private General services nice to be in front of me today the general services department is responsible for building and maintaining City properties to make Durham a great place to live work and play you're not usually some civic pride and with the public service mindset I've decided those job missions all the time our department is currently 123 ftes with our budget requests this year we're recommended for one additional staff person which I will talk about in just a little bit to orient you to our org chart left to right.

On the left hand side I want to point out our assistant director for project delivery sustainability it's JC Poston Matt she's here today that includes our project management division our real estate division our sustainability and public art and cultural units they are responsible for also for Staffing current boards our cultural Advisory Board public art committee our environmental Affairs board as well as liaison and with our keep doing beautiful board as well so they have outward facing as well as internal clients moving on to our assistant director for facilities and grounds and our operations unit that's kind of Lily he's here he has the pleasure of having about 67 of our our full-time employees under his umbrella they are our front line employees that show up every day that do the work that's listed here from urban forestry to Landscaping to facilities management and maintenance to custodial Services also I have Al Walker he's our Episcopal administrative service manager he runs the business unit for us as well as liaisoni with some of our community.

Facilities he's our money man and leads our cemeteries operations which is really our only Revenue producing Enterprise actions that we have within our department we have two public cemeteries and then finally we have Asset Management division that has been around for about a year now we are continuing to fill and manage that unit which is a bridge between project management and Facilities maintenance includes our computer platforms like technology everything that Bridges information that helps us with our data analytics along with our Security Management program self oh I did want to say one thing we have had ups and downs of vacancies at one point in time less than about two weeks ago we were fully staffed in our Landscaping Division and our one of our staff members went to public work I think you're here right now but as a promotional opportunity we took someone from public works it was a promotional opportunity we had another staff member that went to Water Management so it is great that we're seeing this movement as.

Well as upward Mobility I mean they're staying in the city but it still creates vacancies because we have all these opportunities that are actively in interviews and others that are posted so we I think we'll continue to see this I appreciate my team that continues to do quite a lot during during this time thank you okay moving on I talked about 67 of our staff is front line one of the most important things that our team does in our urban forestry I consider them our First Responders they have to respond to severe weather events they have to ensure that there's any blockages in the road that they'll remove they take care of our trees removal pruning site distance our goal is to complete our service requests within 30 days we anticipate to be there by the end of this an average of 30 days we anticipate being there by the end of this fiscal year we do that along with our team doing tree plantings so we're out of that season and we we don't.

Expect any issues with hitting that Mark next slide so we we prune we remove and we also plant trees so a big ball goal that was established after we had a tree canopy assessment as well as an EPA review of where we should plant trees and it was established in our strategic plan it said plant 1500 trees a year wait 85 percent of them in priority neighborhoods when you put it in a strategic plan and you name it then you have to do it so that's what we've been doing this year we planted over 1700 trees in public rights away some of this have also been in coordination with keeping our beautiful and of that we've exceeded our 85 percent threshold of about 96 have been in our priority neighborhoods we'll be due for a refresh of our canopy study in 2025 and we're also going to be pursuing grants to try to help with that as well okay our sustainability efforts one measure that we track is on our total.

Greenhouse gas emissions and our progress towards our 2030 goal which is that we reduce our emissions by half which is a 30 000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent is how it's measured you'll see we've got that we've had really good progress we expect that progress to continue with the electrification of our Fleet specifically also our buses which are a big emitter of greenhouse gases the other electrification that we've talked about with Fleet Replacements are on green Source Advantage solar project I'll touch on a little bit as well Future Energy Efficiency water I mean all the other things that we've identified are sustainability plan we believe that we will continue to make great progress with that without implementation as well as implementation of solar and LEDs we talked about it earlier those type of improvements next slide this is a snapshot of our portfolio for our project management division they decide and construct and plan project from half of the city we have various clients we get the opportunity to work.

With the fire department the police department Parks and Rec is a is a great partner that we work with this slide is meant to show kind of just like you know what the overall portfolio health is and the volume of our work this does not include anything y'all getting ready or getting ready to approve so we will constantly you know be monitoring and prioritizing and ensuring that we have the right Resources with our own staff are contracted out in order to manage all of our projects so from last year this year our project size is number of projects is down if you're very in the next one thank you Adam but our I mean the dollar value is off these are funded through Capital funded through maintenance and replacement funded through sometimes operational funds and some of our other funds like recommendations or DPAC or so those are those are where some of those funding sources come from and where our projects come from it's just a healthy life cycle they.

Don't annually turn over the keys there's a close out in the worry phase so we still have to manage that that's a you know a thing of our city resources also it's like you finishing go off to a new project you still have to be able to close out in warranty days as well exactly the contribution of Keith Durham beautiful volunteers I love the slide I love the progress that we've seen since covid I love the ability of our team to leverage our volunteers the value of a volunteer by the national metric is 30 an hour so we have an estimate over 7 000 volunteer hours which is approximately 4 000 volunteers today keep your beautiful as initiated a little kitten schools program they're involved in leader literature excuse me litter leader training to help neighborhoods identify little literal leaders that will assist with you know assistant ensuring that that you know when you when you when you go to when you go to to to do these volunteers you need to ensure that.

You've got the right the equipment to do it so that's one of the things that keeps our beautiful insurers we've seen a lot of folks really interested in participating or beautiful and I think that's just extremely positive along with adopt a straight program that we continue to enhance finally our performance measures we are tracking the average number of days to complete reactive work orders with our facility management team so over the year we typically complete about 4 500 work orders that includes planned and preventative this is focused mainly on the reactive this is the stuff it's too hot it's too cold something's leaking something's broken something happened last week a hawk flew into the second floor of the annex and the window was broken so our team takes care of animals as well but those are the type of adapted things that that occur that we can't plan for but we we want to make sure that we do it timely we are on track to complete on average within.

Eight days and it takes away from our other plan work so we have to know what that is so that we can adjust our team accordingly next our resource allocation table our budget is approximately 18.5 million comprised mainly of Personnel Services and operating which will remain about the same I did want to point out as I did before under program revenues you'll see that we're forecasting around 602 000 for next fiscal year that is comprised of our cemeteries anticipated Revenue we do get twenty seven thousand dollars from the county for keep darn beautiful last year we had County contribution for our cultural roadmap but you won't see that this year so that's where the some of the changes that we've been on time thing to that side project highlights we continue to want to retain our employees we train them and we want them to have portable skills and we can stay with us that's great and if they we can't help it but we want them to have.

What they need to perform in our division and or be right in our department and it'll be ready for other opportunities trying to continue to focus a lot on supervisory training HR is going to be providing some of that a new program this year we've been doing that with school of government as well sometimes we have promotional opportunities we want people to have had that supervisory experience to be ready for the next step this year we also removed some barriers for hiring in our arborist positions where some of those positions typically have acquired a CDL we said come on we'll go send you the CDL training Alamance Community College and then you get your your certification and you're with us we had a hard time recruiting some arborists so we wanted to reduce some barriers so we have two folks that have just completed that and we're offering it to others so they'll have affordable skill but we had to focus on those that required it for their positions to begin with another.

Thing that we have done since step five in our Landscaping Landscaping staff to Community College for an Arbors training as well and just to enhance their skills when they're working with our our department and special thank you to their other colleagues that didn't go that had to help make sure that the work continues department internships the city manager's office has been great to help support and Lead an effort to ensure that we have opportunities for interns we've got five interns that'll be working with us this year two from Central one from duke one from Carolina and one who's from Liberty who actually wants to go to Central law school so we've got quite an array of of Staff persons they're helping us with different you know short-term projects we're excited about that this past year we were able to host some Durham public school students under the the leadership of Kevin Lilly in February we had a job a job Charter day we had 18 students that shadowed our team from Vietnam Roots.

Looking at solver going to down to the ballpark looking at that project seeing that our HVAC Penthouse y'all know we have a penthouse so it's like in City Hall so they were able to do so many things and then that led to a week of the scholars at work program during spring break where we had students from from all schools of endurance come come work with us in Chateau and the the I think it was great for the students and I will tell you it was really awesome for our team members because when you get to show the work that you do and we see the pride in that you just I mean it just you the day-to-day changes in a different way when you get to talk about the one thing you do and that's what I saw with a lot of our apartment so that was a great program Granite Awards we were told go go pursue anything and everything that makes sense we're doing it we don't win them all but.

We've gotten some for Ev Chargers we'll continue to do that we also have two new funding grants report after with the clean fuel technology and five million Grant and one degree urban forestry which is six million dollar brand energy audience was a green Source Advantage you know seeing our press release recently we now are on our way for our 35 megawatt solar solar farm which is a partnership between us the county and Durham public schools that will get us to help us get to our Noble energy Falls to be online by the end of 2025. energy audits were funded last year we'll have the results of that this year which will then be a road map for future improvements capital or otherwise Innovative construction applications we have tested at durables Athletic Park and we're also going to do it at CM horn in a sidewalk section which includes a pride and cure that is a process where I've had to watch a video last night that is a process where.

Recycled carbon dioxide is is mixed in to concrete to create a a mixture so that then it it will sequester the carbon dioxide and concrete so we're testing it it works it works that's great and we'll see what happens but we want to continue to do things that are Innovative that will help us with our sustainability goals we also have green natural burial program and a fuse color that is helping us with that in our improvements at Beechwood after the break will be coming before y'all with some ordinance revision so that will allow us to do that and other updates about our projects there cultural roadmap should be completed by June 2024 some of you start on that committee so we are excited about how that will help us with our future planning one more slide budget highlights we've been recommended for funding for our physical security specialist that was one of the recommendations out of our assessment for our security assessment also contracted security guards I like to call Courtesy officers as well.

To manage our weapons detection system as well as continue to have that that resource within our city hall complex which is our most public building and RFP will be going out soon for that we are working with Transportation as well as DPR to include security presence for parking garages and whatever DPR needs may be just to have that as a a larger RFP security operating funds are for licenses and maintenance see how security improvements include a list of recommendations from a study from replacing cameras or dating cameras door access a visitor management system you may know you know many schools now are moving to that we have the information management system is that something that we was recommended as a on best practice thank you all of you for the signage project in the convention center project and the symphony project that came from Council we will be advancing those as well and if that any questions thank you so much for a great report colleague so as counselor formulating questions.

I did want to say after Public Works and the general Services Department there was a question earlier about which employees may fall into other pay plans many of the employees in the two departments that you just heard from their employees are in the general step plan so as we are taking notes and bringing back you additional information really quickly I wanted to say that even though I have an opportunity to make a few remarks at the end of the day but while they're still here but.

Thank you just want to say thank you to you and your team I've gotten a chance to work with director Lily I didn't know trees were so complicated and I found myself in the middle of the streets on both sides of the issue and I just the way the department handled it was just superb and I really appreciate you guys I wanted to say that on the record here do we you may have mentioned this but I think I missed it do we have organizations nonprofits that also are helping us like plant trees or that can align with our our missions keep talking beautiful is one of our strongest Partners they are in our department so we have a great opportunity to we also done some some planning before with tree star on which is another non-profit so we we do we do that as well we focus primarily on cleaning trees in the public right-of-way and public property and then also have more opportunities and other locations thank you I just met.

Two other organizations that are excited about lending their time and efforts and also their federal grants that they're applying for to the city so I'll be in touch after this with you all about that thank you thank you thank you councilmember councilmember Johnson thank you so much thank you for your presentation I just had a couple questions so when we plant trees in the right of way do we have any follow-up to like try to keep them alive like make sure they're doing okay yes we have stepped up our water Roots as well when it comes to that there is going to be a something typically some amount of potential mortality right some of them are also damaged from from being outside of our control vehicles or people or things of that nature but we do go back after we've done a planting to see how they did and then part of our planting may be replanting it is I'm glad you brought that up though that it.

Is an area that we need to continue to work on our maintenance program especially because we planted all these trees all these new trees so when you have assets you have to maintain them so they are an asset yeah okay great and if someone notices a problem with one of the trees is that something we could do one call yes okay depending within this I have a perfect way to make that awesome and then the greenhouse gas reductions look really great could you tell us like what do you think are the primary like what's primarily responsible for those numbers the electrification of our bosses has been a big hope for that solar not so much it contributes on our any Energy Efficiency work that we do in our buildings is another a main thing as well as energy deficiency that we Implement in our wastewater treatment plants those are those are big energy Hawks thank you so much thank you councilmember councilmember do pull up the or could you pull it up.

To pull up the last five I just don't want to miss thank you just thank you for the excellent presentation really excited about a lot of the movement especially about the the Greece Supreme Source Advantage I mean that was a that was a lot of work and a big win for our city county schools and I love that we're all working together I know that that's also something that has been different than a lot of communities is everyone working together I just wanted to shout out the cultural roadmap work and just shout out Annette Smith she's doing a fantastic job I also sit in that group and it's just been really amazing to see all of the good work that's already progressing there and then with trees really quickly I know folks have to do kind of like Street tree replacement that is something that's asked when we are you know if you're if you take one down you got to put one back for private development but it doesn't can you do a little.

Bit like explain it doesn't necessarily have to be the type of tree that would have provided as much shade as before because the list includes trees that maybe are smaller right and so just wondering about it is there going to be any more discussion on you know you kind of have to replace what was not when it's originally planted obviously but where it would have gone eventually growth that's something I think in the studying Department okay the head would be responsible for those guidelines and do and they do their review as well okay thank you thank you councilman councilmember Freeman thank you and I I appreciate my colleague back there as well question I do want to talk back to the vacancies and just ask if you're noticing that they look like in a specific area or if it's just spread out across the department it's it's spread out we we did we've got three costario openings right now but we have a lot of people that one was someone who went to another.

Department and one was someone who wanted a part to actually part-time person with the VPR so so we we have a great pool so we have it we've got a great pool so we're trying to do a interviews to kill all three create a registry so we do everything we can creatively when we when these unusual things occur yeah I wanted to know that last night it was interested in the County Commissioners talking about you know swapping the city map or County managers they were all taken them from Subway I think everyone's getting a little bit of that going right I did want to also just turn back and say I appreciate I think it's a great way to retain current staff by getting them trained up and you know getting your Landscaping team in what arborist training is a great company in this kind of space stuff up and I I wanted to ask specifically on the trees that have already been planted kind of going back to how we're.

Maintaining the trees that are there before they fall down and then also I'm not sure if we call it trees but the branches that are always in the sidewalk or the right away especially for like more forested areas I don't know who maintains that is it so infections go back to trees we do have a an inspection program where we we do monitor what has been planted that things can occur in between when we do our inspection and something else and we shout out anybody has an issue please do report it to one call will help help help us respond to that as far as other Landscaping impediments if it is a city right of way if it's a DOT that those things will come into play as well but we have responsibility for maintaining right to places that are and I think that's probably the question is to try to understand or help other people understand whether it's City or not and I don't know if we have signage that says that because.

There are some areas that I know are probably private and NIS would you know cite but for those areas that are are more like I won't say abandoned but they're just not maintained and primarily I'm thinking about car like Carver streets I've had a chance to be open down that road a lot and I'm noticing a lot more folks writing their mobile or motorized wheelchairs in the bike lane because the sidewalk branches are like all in your way so so I'm trying to I'm just trying to think out loud and think what what that would look like to document and then to kind of get through a process of letting folks know to contact their one call and then it'll come out through the other side we we actually have a intern that's going to be working with lessons about our mapping so that would be a great way to help identify this those locations but if it's if it's an area where there's a sidewalk it's likely of us and.

If there's a tree impediment or something else then help us we would ask how people to help us identify those things as we try try to self-identify as well thank you thank you thank you councilmember councilman Williams I just want to say I learned so much when I was out on Oakland and other places I'm an uncertified arborist so if you have any questions just let me know I gotta tell you all about it I did not know it's so complicated.

Thank you councilman I'll leave anyone else here thank you so much for a really great reason I do have a couple quick questions and then one comment I see with respect to our cemeteries how far out are we before we I hope you say 100 years before we need to start talking about land acquisition or another city cemetery where are we in terms of our capacity so we have plenty capacity at Maplewood we have active projects of Beachwood right now I'll have columbarium Garden that's underway we have a lane clearing that will create the beauty 60 lots and then we have a Construction contract unit approved for another 390.

That in addition to offering the columbarium Garden effects would like to have cremains as it refers to a traditional burial I'm trying to have as many options in order to be very sustainable on how we use the rest of the current land that we have at least one that that was the one that was in more constraints because it's only like 25 acres versus I think what's 121. so we I expect that the three night I don't want to give you a number of how long the green audio get us I could I could follow back up except to say as we also see what what people's burial practices are May influence on how long our space will will last you know surprisingly maybe not surprised I've had a few questions from residents on that to be sure we are in no rush to use these spaces so we we want our residents around a long long time so hopefully something we can kick down the road this.

Department is probably one of the one of the most impactful and least known departments it's kind of like to be in there yeah director Williams just said no but you do a lot of important things a lot of I mean I learned a lot a lot of our resident citizens don't realize some of the things you have your hands in I did also want to ask about the the how do we evaluate and I'm glad they're there to keep during beautiful but you've got you've got a a evaluation box and what kind of a koi do we do it do they turn in our sheets how do we place a value on what they do well it's a national standards yeah typically so at the local level do we because it says volunteer hours do they who keeps track of those hours do they keep doing beautiful does with our apology.

All right and finally I want to say someone on the personal note the the I want to thank you for the work that you're doing considering in terms of of building security and physical security there there are a number of I'm always surprised at the number of my colleagues around the country when you know when I travel and and talk about what's going on in the city who we're surprised at our mayor does not have a security detail we don't we don't ride around in dark sedans or blue lights we don't have cops following us we'd be outside you know we we're and and you know we want to keep a balance of not turning City Hall into an armed Fortress we want it to be welcoming and invited to our people and it's hard work to to strike that balance between keeping folks safe I you know as much as our colleagues we have may have spirited debates we all want to go home we all want each other to go home.

And you know I'm I I have had some some some uncomfortable and scary things communicated I'm sure my colleagues have as well communicated to me over the years so I know there are some people that struggle with knowing the line between where public starts public ends and private starts very few cases but they are out there and we know the reality so I just want to thank you and I know that your team and the manager is approaching this this situation with a great deal of sensitivity because we are Durham and Durham doesn't have armed cams we don't want folk feeling like they've got to go through layers to get to us on the same token this is a public building it's a Target for many folk and and the work of keeping not just us who stayed up here but all of our employees all of our and our residents and neighbors who visit the building you know to conduct their business whether they're paying their.

Water bill or you know going to see the clerk to get some papers we all want them to to be safe and so I just want to thank you for for the work and the the responsiveness you've had some of the things that have happened in folk will never make the news but but some things that that have had to direct our attention towards this matter I'm as personally I'm extremely grateful as a person who loves this job but doesn't want to die for it the work that you're doing to to secure this building and all of us who work here so as you bring back recommendations and Implement things just know that we understand how tough it is to strike that balance between keeping folks safe but also keeping Durham Durham which is open and accessible in neighborhood that's all people so thank you so much for that appreciate it you know me thank y'all it's a privilege to be able to share out the work of our department and also I'd.

Like to thank you our city manager and wc and Andrew is there the challenges every day they support us and and we're very fortunate to have them thank you so much all right colleagues our final presentation we're doing really good on time comes from great department and one of my favorite TV shows Parks and Rec so we'll at this time yield to Wade Walcott we won't have the Parks and Recreation good good afternoon sir good afternoon my Pro 10 members of council Madam manager. Okay.

The Parks and Recreation as you know we can help connect the whole Community to the outdoors wellness and lifelong learning and encourage you to play more and simply put we help build better lives and a better community Through The Power of Parks and Recreation some of the information that you're going to see here today was put together by some of our team members that are with us today I'd like to recognize Joy guy rich on and on Dawson and as you you'll see here for our overall org chart not a whole lot of changes from years past one thing that is different that you may have heard about is the creation of the Citywide special events office where we just completed a firing of that office so we have five team members focused on improving the customer experience of our events that we have in Durham but also attract a new and community building events to Durham so we're really excited about that as well we're also lucky and grateful to say we.

Haven't had a whole lot a big list of full-time vacancies we've been doing really well on a full-time basis regardless of the type of position it is the part-time positions as you may guess of lifeguards and child care support continues to be a challenge each year we do a little bit better one of the things that helped us out a lot this year and two things really we created a we have a partnership thanks to the manager the mayor also the county manager and the school the school board we started talking and thinking early how can we combine our efforts and collaborate to make sure there's enough programs for Youth and teams regardless of what jurisdiction it is and who's doing it so as we work together we we've created different opportunities with its really cross marketing promotion of our opportunities but we also invited the school board to come to our job fairs is we don't want to have to compete but we just want to make sure there's enough opportunities and there's enough.

Awareness out there in the community that there's a great place for Youth and teens to go and as a result that our our free team program my Durham we've got that fully staffed and we've got a great participation registration there and we've been doing better with hiring Summer Camp staff this year too so all that is is good news and trending in the right direction and a lot of it was thanks to the cooperation we've had with the county in schools some of the performance measures that resulted from the resident survey you can see mostly Recreation programs and opportunities again that's a credit to this Partnership of the accounting schools to get more kids involved in our in our camps like I said my Durham is going really really well as well so those have been trending very good we've also seen a big jump since probably the the pandemic in terms of passive use of our parks and our facilities and people just wanting to be outdoors and so you can see we've we've.

Had a big increase in people wanting to reserve spaces and shelters and I think part of that is also because of the efforts our team have put forth in improving the parks and the quality and the appearances of everything we've had a lot more projects going on and so some of that is the reason we we pull people that mow the parks off to help out with construction projects or Improvement projects in the park so some of those numbers slip every once in a while with our our mowing rates as far as our resources go we have a essentially a pretty flat budget the biggest increase you'll see is capital and other that biggest jump really is representative of around a hundred thousand dollars being put toward the operations of the wheels the roller rink and so that's in our budget prepared for that some of the the highlights that we're excited about as you know the roller skating rink operation is moving forward the design improvements are on track with all the.

Things that need to happen there we've been working with the vendor who we're negotiating a contract with to operate the skating rink they've provided some ideas as well to The Architects and designers of what how can we design and update that's the best way to make it enjoyable for everyone that contract will be coming to you in the new fiscal year so we'll have all those details on that again we're very excited about the special events office that we've put together and some of the park projects and how we do some of our half penny maintenance funds we're really excited about and it all plays together with our Centennial so next year will be a hundred years old and we're looking for a year-long campaign of Celebration about what parks means to the city of Durham and our residents and celebrating those hundred years we've got a lot of cool projects that are coming up you know a lot about a wheel project but one thing we're also excited about is the amount of private.

Investment we've been able to receive in Grants nearly a million dollars this year in private investment grants that go toward different Park projects so we use that money to leverage City dollars CR Wood Park is an example where the next couple years that would be completely transformed with new restrooms accessible Pathways playgrounds and that's really been the focus of our department the last couple of years is inclusivity in terms of accessibility so our playgrounds the designs of our Parks how are we designing them differently to be more accessible for people of all abilities if you want to take a look at that most recent example please go out to America Moore Park we just added our brand new playground out there with a nice important Place surface it's much easier to get around regardless of your Mobility but we also installed sun shades to keep people in the shade but in and around that guard that playground we installed designed in-house and built a sensory garden so for folks that of.

All abilities and might have sensory issues they can go and experience this park and there's something for everybody there we're also going through and getting ready to launch our engagement process or our comprehensive Park system plan so as we're celebrating 100 years we're starting to plan for the next 15 plus years and we know that Durham is growing so we want to make sure that are we matching our facilities our Trails our Parks our programs our Dream spaces keeping Pace with the growth of our community we're very grateful as you saw earlier a lot of the CIP projects and the Apple wondering infrastructure projects that are coming to Parks these are projects that the community has been asking for for quite some time and we're really excited to get those out and rolling and I think we'll see over the next five years or less some major transformations in our in our parks in terms of accessibility and quality and really just the beautification of our Parks so there's a lot of great things.

On the horizon we're grateful for the manager's office support and this body's support as well and and a lot of the Partnerships that we have out there so thank you thank you so much good to see you colleagues questions or comments thanks councilman Freeman thank you another question I always get is oh yeah thank you the polls are scheduled to open June 7th and spraygrounds we're going to make that press release today we this year we will not be able to open Longmeadow pool we had routine inspections and because it's 60 years plus and we've been talking about this quite some time it's not a surprise however it's just unfortunate that it finally occurred so we're taking a look at that pool or assessing what the investment need is and see how we can fix it and if it can be done and opened up again next year I'll it won't be open this year so we'll say I appreciate Deputy manager keep Chadwell really going deep with the community the folks.

Who were really outraged about that pool being closed last year and the year before but but the explanation the explanation that the pool had flooded was very helpful I think just making sure folks understand what's going on is really helpful and key to making sure that they're not that kind of pushback and I will say that I appreciate you making sure to attend a couple of those meetings as well noted that this is a ongoing process in this comprehensive Park system assessment I'm gonna ask if you're considering kind of assessing how many of the parks or Parks surrounding areas have flooding issues I've known that that's a real resilience issue as we're going forward with screen and Equitable infrastructure is going to be in it key to have that type of information available on the front end on the front side of it so I will access that would be included in your comprehensive I sure thing will do and study yeah and unfortunately that's the the case of parks throughout the country.

When land is divvied up or like or we're going to do neighborhoods here and develop here and then what's left oh we've got this drainage and open space and flood lag let's do a park so yeah definitely do that and I think it's a great point to bring that to the Forefront from the very beginning copier. A great present for presentation I'm excited about shut out some of the staff I think councilmember Freeman the mayor and I all participated in the Dos tour which is fantastic and thanks to Tom Dawson for doing a great job being our tour guide essentially and then just really quick there are lots of my my kids friends who are going to be lifeguarding for the city so it is also a really a good opportunity for for the Youth to make some good good money for 16 and 17 year olds and I am pushing the 14 year old in that direction so we'll stick to the other two did not take me up honey.

Thank you council member colleagues what else wait thank you so much I want to thank you and your entire team for you and your entire team firstly with the the work on Wheels and and bringing it back online really asked you get it said yes and you're doing the work and then I you need to hear that we see of the work being done and we are all excited about Wheels being brought back online with deliberate speed you know when we talk about the kind of things that are our root cause kind of interventions and things that we can do to save our kids lives Parks and Rec it's not going to be the police department we're gonna be parks and we're at there's Parks and Rec that saved my life person in the inner cities this country was having things to do that kept me from doing other things so so I'm deeply appreciative of of the work that goes on with your department I'm gonna I'm I'm going to.

Invite you to speculate you so you didn't do this proactively so I went the record of like I'm asking you to open on this how long do you think we can go with the half penny before it needs to be a full payment and I'm inviting you so I understand you are not proactively mad at management he didn't bring this up I'm asking it here's the line we've got more work than a half penny allowance right now our challenge through all these projects and you heard earlier even with the what regardless of fun equivalent green and cipm we've got more projects so we if if it was a great campaign slogan in my opinion would be my two cents before that is his we have a lot of deferred maintenance and we have a lot of but we it's the people power I mean and I think that's why you saw some consideration Equitable agreeing for a hundred thousand dollars in project management is to help with that.

Scope and help with that capacity so yes we have we're going to be 100 years old we have a very aging infrastructure As We Know the need for an additional money and a half penny is warranted based on the number of projects it would just be the biggest challenge of having the capacity to get all those done as quick as we can all right thank you colleagues thank you so much just look forward to seeing her by June 3rd try and keep us away yeah Yes Yes Y'all thank you so much colleague that brings us to the end of some some really great and robust and substantive presentations we're doing really good on time and this time now we're going to have opportunity for any council members to reflect on what we've heard today in the comments so the floor is open around the table please just very quickly want to thank all staff for their excellent presentations and for the incredible work I look forward to passing this budget.

At the end of June and for all the wonderful things we're going to be providing residents thank you councilman Alex councilmember Williams I too want to thank staff and from the very top end of the page to everyone for not just having your head in the sand and just doing your job but also being conscious to what's been said in the community what's being said with within our staffing rates and also listening to us getting nervous and trying to communicate what we hear in the community you know making a sacrifice to run for office means you also make a sacrifice to be that one to learn and understand all of the complexities of municipality and to thank you all for your patience and also just relying allowing us to rely on you and your expertise and I just again I think it's magical when you guys take all of these complex perspectives that you put it into this product right here live for y'all just say it's very very very important for.

The community at large to tune in attend pay attention ask us questions as your council members and because we're required and obligated to give you fact I know that there are a lot of narrative hijackers out there I know there are a lot of folks that like to be a university of opinion and provide that information for you and they get you in an uproar the best thing you can do is engage with your local officials and we will communicate and translate and transfer information to staff on your behalf so thank you all thank you council member thank you yeah I just want to Echo everyone's thanks for staff for these very thoughtful presentations I always really enjoy this part of our budget process where we get to dig a little bit deeper into all the things that are going on in our departments this is a really great budget it's really exciting to see some of the some of the benefits that we're seeing from growth the additional the.

Additional funding and the you know the property and the sales tax going back into our community and making sure that we can you know use that money to improve the lives of the folks who really need it so it's good to see these sorts of Investments and looking forward to tomorrow and and the rest of the season thank you I I again want to Echo everyone I just want to say thank you for not only your presentations but your Innovative presentation to creativity and just your passion for the work and I continue to learn every time you present so I want to say thank you again thank you councilman Freeman thank you of course and thanks I am looking forward to tomorrow's presentations as well I think that there's a lot to there's a lot of pieces of this that folks don't understand and I really appreciate staff taking the time to just really slow it down and parse it out so that people know that we're doing the work and the things are happening.

Thank you colleagues for some great present great comments of course I want to associate myself with everything my colleagues have said and thank you for the incredible work that you've done to all of our department heads the ones today and the ones that will be coming tomorrow I guess by way of comment that I yield to our manager as we're at the bottom of the hour I didn't say it earlier when Christina Reardon was presenting but I this is this has been a A celebratory and and Bittersweet process this particular budget when you're a servant a servant knows that the mission is greater than the person servants always recognize that the mission has to go forward the organization is bigger than you but it still hurts when you lose one and you have to to mourn them but continue the work and my suspicion is is that John the Lord would be incredibly proud of the servants that continue to do the work that even as we mourn we pick up the flag and continue.

Going forward I tell my employees and my team all the time that the greatest measure of the health of an organization has taken when the leader is not there not when they're there how do they function how do they behave when when the top seat is not filled by the person that's normally feeling it when they're away could we still go forward and this organization has behaved magnificently and the loss of a great leader and like all great organizations other leaders step forward immediately and picked up the flag so while I know this is a Bittersweet moment there is much to celebrate as well this is a good editorial on the health of our organization it is a testament to the work that John did and the folk around him do and we should be proud even as we mourn we should be smiling that this work is is going forward that this organization is healthy and I think the best way to honor his memory is to finish and pass this historic budget.

And this isn't an historic budget that we have before us so thank you all so much for a great day we'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning at this time before we gavel out I'm going to yield to the manager for any final comments she may have for this she may have for the day Amanda thank you Miss mayor Pro tem thank you council members for your input for the time that you've spent with us today as we continue to to listen as we continue to progress in this budget season we have another public hearing that's coming up on Monday June 5th so I wanted to make sure everyone knows that I would also like to make sure that our residents know that when you email us when you call us when you see us and want to tell us something about what we do and how we do it we we do listen we are listening to you we are we love ideas we know that we.

Do not have them all even though we have some great leaders who are always present you see them everywhere birthday who are here today we we we're here to serve we're here to serve the residents to the Investments that you you make while they're not all volunteer Investments they are investments that help us deliver services to this community and we we are proud Public Service we're proud to do this work and I look forward to additional departmental meetings tomorrow as you know it is not all of our departments but all of our departments are represented in our budget draft so I invite you to go to the budget Apartments webpage and and look at the total budget that we have available for your review as we move toward budget adoption so again thank you and I look forward to tomorrow thank you so much Madam manager Madam clerk the gavel is down at 12 35.