City Council · Regular Meeting · May 28, 2025

Morning everyone. Welcome to the budget work session. We are uh calling the meeting to order. m.

And um Madame Clerk, what is your suggestion? Should we recess now or wait a little bit? About 30 minutes. Maybe 30 minutes or so.

Okay. All right. Well, welcome everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started.

Um and will you please call the call the role. Mayor Williams, I'm here. Mayor Promp Middleton is in route. Uh, council member Baker here.

Council member Gavayto (unclear - possibly a misspelling of a name or title) here. Council member Cook here. Council member Freeman present. And council member is Thank you so much.

So, at this time, um, I know we have breakfast. Uh, it's still being set up. We'll be ready in about 30 minutes, so we'll recess at that time. But, Mr.

Manager, I will now turn it over to you to get us started. Thank you, Mayor, Council members. uh and staff and guests. We are excited to have

you here this morning to begin two days of what I know will be productive conversations about uh your proposed budget uh in advance of budget adoption in June. Uh I don't have a formal presentation for you this morning. Just wanted to set up these two days a little bit for you. Um this budget as of uh last Monday night became your budget.

Uh it is obviously something we work on throughout the year and hope to deliver something that is responsive to the directives that council has given us to the conversations you've had to the feedback we've gotten from staff about how to lean into the objectives you've given us. Um and that all culminates in presenting a budget to you uh from the from the manager and the administration that that you have now seen and that has been introduced to the public. Um as of that time this budget really becomes yours and our job shifts. Uh our job now as a staff and administration is to uh help you understand what's in that proposed budget to answer questions for you uh that you may have to provide context around any uh issues or concerns

that you have uh and then to respond to direction from you as to whether or not you want to modify, change, add, delete. Uh and that's really what these two days are about. So, we have tried very intentionally as a staff to shape the agenda for these two days around what we've already heard from you. You all received individual briefings on the budget.

Uh, and you have now heard from the public, I'm sure, an initial round of reaction to the proposal. So, we want these two days to reflect conversations that we think you want to dig into a little bit. So, we've prepared presentations to that effect. Um, we have deviated a little from the traditional uh format you may have seen in prior years as far as departmental presentations. I've really asked the budget staff to work with departments to try and focus the presentations very intentionally on the key issues in those departments. Uh, heard from some of you that in prior years you've felt a little bit of angst about wanting to make sure

you had enough time to dig in on the issues that really mattered to you. So, we really want these two days to reflect that. Toward that end, um I have a challenge for the council uh or or request and that is, you know, I really urge you to use these two days as efficiently as possible to get the information you need to give us the direction uh that we need to make sure that we can prepare as best as possible to have uh the budget prepared and ready for your adoption in a way that that mirrors your uh your desires and objectives. So when we present today, please feel free to ask questions as we go and uh maybe more importantly as we close out a presentation, if there is, you know, some discussion you want to have with your colleagues or with staff about something in that presentation, you know, my my urging is for you to go ahead and have that conversation then and not to to think about we we certainly will reserve time at the end of the day to come back and cover any

materials you want, but feel free to sort of dig in and have the conversation. that you want to have to give us the feedback on any particular proposal uh that that you have seen. Uh I'm sure despite our best efforts uh that we're not presenting something today that you may have more questions about. So that is also something I'd love for you to keep notes on as we go.

If there is some element of the proposed budget that we did not feature in a presentation on your agendas for the next two days, please share that with me or Christina. we will make sure that we you if we hear it today we might be able to add some more information to tomorrow's discussion. Um otherwise we can plan to make sure you either get uh additional information in writing or we can use the uh the tenative uh third work session period for that. So don't be shy about telling us you'd like to see something that's not on the agenda. Uh and we will make sure to get that information for you. So uh with that I think if you if you look through the two days uh we have we have a list of agenda

items but we did not put times uh beside those agenda items because I really think we can move as quickly or as uh as slowly as is uh needed by the council to get the information you want. So, uh, we're we we tried to group the presentations to be somewhat balanced between the two days. Uh, but we did not try and hold to specific time frames. We we hope that that allows you to make uh the the flexible decisions you need about how to spend your time to have the discussions about these topics that that you want to have.

Um, I believe that's everything I needed to introduce. Does anyone have any questions about the next few days that either Christina or I can answer for you? I'm uh happy to hear what questions you have or requests you have about these two days other than making sure the coffee gets brewed as quickly as possible. Yeah, I I don't know how many times he's going to say your budget. He's really

tossing the ball now. Amen. Um Council Member Rrist, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thanks, Mr. Manager. Um just a um actually one point of clarification. So on our calendar we've got a hold from 9:00 to 4:30.

Are you suggesting today's meeting is only going we're only scheduled to go to one? Christina, why don't you talk about the difference between the hold and the and the schedule? Uh yeah. Well, I think when initially when this was um put on your calendars um you know we were in a in a transition to a new city manager and so um you know we had saved the whole day.

I think we have prepared enough presentations to go to one, but obviously we're also prepared to go beyond that if um if the council wants more um time and discussion. So, and by looking at today's agenda, so we got essentially seven big items. So, it's like half an hour roughly per agenda item. If we divide it equally, right?

If you were just to divide it equally and you were just to go at that pace. Yes. Yeah. Seems like we'll probably need more time than that. Yes. So I I do what I've have shared with staff is while uh while the presentation portion of this

probably would be complete by one that I've asked staff to make sure they're available beyond 1:00 for conversation. So we can go as long as council would like to discuss today. That is our plan. Um but given the flexible nature of how much or how little time council may want we you know um it's it's going to be into the afternoon but then adjourning at your pleasure.

And for each for each of the agenda items, do you expect sort of presentation and then questions later or questions after each one of those? I I I would prefer uh at the mayor's discretion that we go ahead and have topic relevant conversations after each presentation. Uh and if the council can reach some uh consensus or at least majority opinion on on budget direction that may come from that uh we would we would welcome that direction as quickly as possible. We've got a room full of ears.

Everybody's listening to make sure we can capture uh any direction that you receive. That makes sense. I also will just note on the two days of hearings there's not a single housing is not on the agenda either two days and I think that's a missing item. Um, the other

thing I think is clearly missing is some conversation about economic development, which we didn't have last year, we don't have this year. So, those are two to me that look like clearly are not or big items that would be worth a conversation. Okay. Thank you.

Just one more. I I just want to make sure that I let my colleagues know I have to a hard stop at 12 today, but I'll be fully available tomorrow. Thank you for letting us know. All right.

Um there are no more questions. Um director rein as as we're going we are going to probably recess in about 15 minutes to grab breakfast and then we'll come back and um keep going. So just as you're factoring in Okay. Thank you.

Um well um welcome um Mayor Williams, members of council. I'm Christina Rearen, uh, budget and management services director, and I am, um, here today to welcome you to their, um, first, uh, budget work session. Um, I, uh, get the honor of,

um, starting with the first presentation, which is always our revenues presentation. So, I will get started on that presentation and then, um, we will, we will kind of recess as we need to. So to start out um okay so um I want to start out talking about um the FY26 budget and I think that there were probably um three factors uh big factors that affected this budget um and that you will see them in kind of our agenda throughout the days but um we there is definitely um as we have all talked about revaluation um we've also had a citywide reorganization um and then there's also been some changes in our revenue sources that um I want to talk about as as we go through this um presentation today. So, starting out with um Reval, this uh chart that you see here is showing you um assessed value, our property tax growth, our property tax base growth over the last 10 years. And I think what is um kind of remarkable about this chart is what you'll see is

that um you know um we have had um steady growth um for the last um 10 years. Um you will notice that in FY20 that was the last time we had a reval. Um and then as you can see in FY26 there is a significant jump. Um and what that is showing um in that chart that blue line is our real property growth and after our reval our pro our real property the assessed value has grown 71%.

39%. Um and so just kind of um wanted to kind of give you a sense of the um the the um the historic nature of this reval. That does not mean that um our our property tax is uh income is growing or revenue is growing by that amount. This is just the assessed value which is how we set our property tax rate. Question on that graph. just that just that bottom the um the cumulative growth

let me describe that so the cumulative growth is taking the growth over the last 10 years and kind of you know um it is so it's a cumulative growth it's not every year so that is that is why you see such a large jump but so if you were just to take from FY25 to FY26 it would be um about 62% but also FY25 so you're saying it's grown 77% in the last 10 years yes last year got okay thanks so We've had very strong growth as far as property tax goes. And so, um, at, you know, I just wanted to remind you, um, what our proposed, um, tax rate, obviously, you saw this at the manager's, um, when he presented his budget, but this is the tax rate that we have proposed for FY26. 62. 71. 91 cents below the current rate. Um, of course, we've talked a lot about and we spent a lot of time at our

budget retreat talking about revenue neutral, which is the um tax what the tax rate would be um if um if we were to try and uh calculate what we would get from um uh the current amount that we're receiving right now. 23. So um we are proposing to go above revenue neutral and I'm going to spend a little bit of time in this presentation talking about what those changes are. 48 cents above revenue neutral.

We are um dividing it among several funds which is what we um traditionally do with our tax rate. Our general fund receives the largest portion of the tax rate. Um followed by debt service. Um our solid waste which we will be um changing the name of to environmental services um our transit fund and our dedicated housing. 51,

53. And I'm going to talk a little bit specifically about what those um you know pennies above revenue neutral will be going for. And then also as a reminder, our bid rate, which is our business improvement district. Um this is a district that was founded in 2013 to account for the city's activity in the downtown um business improvement district.

Um the assessed value in that um in that area has grown by 54%. So this is a separate tax rate. um for for folks in the bid. The current allocation is 7 cents.

3 c 2 cents above um revenue neutral. And we do have um DDI um downtown Durham Inc. coming tomorrow to talk about some of the proposals they have and the ways that they would use that extra um allocation in um the downtown business

um improvement district. So this um I wanted to just give you a comparison of um to kind of compare our tax rate from FY25 to FY26. Um so if you look at this chart um on the left you'll see that our median home value in FY25 um was $239 um000. Um our median home value today um after reval is $415,000.

So what that means is you know um we don't um when you're assessed that your property value um essentially stays the same. So that's, you know, those FY25 would have been based off the FY20 um reval. And then with the new reval, we've grown um that property median home value has grown 73%. 62. 91

71 cents. And so the taxes paid um based in FY25 um would be $1,423. And then um if we calculated a median home value on our proposed tax rate, it would go to $1,814, which is a $386 increase. And then as another reminder, um the value of the penny.

9. Um this um chart is really here just to give you a sense of where we fall with some of our peers. Um I do want to caution about this um chart. It really is um it does not include any fees which can also impact some of the way that um our our tax bill um or the in other words property tax is sometimes not the only thing that a taxpayer will pay. some some organizations have fees for

solid waste. This does not include that. This is just um an FY a snapshot of the FY26 proposed rate. Um and then also some cities have are going through reval, some are not.

And so that should also be taken into consideration. Yeah. Yeah. So there are some some caveats with looking at this, but I just did want to give you a sense of of where you are.

Just that's just not that's not accurate for Raleigh based on information that was already provided to us because um the Wake County Yeah. So I just wanted to flag that the the medium home valley is not 391,000 in Raleigh anymore. Sorry. Okay.

And we can we will we will take a look at that and make corrections if we need to. So probably be helpful to just put a date as of Okay. So that you're noting because if this is from December versus June 25. Yeah, there are and the dates um the source is kind of um captured on

that as well too so that you can see where we had gotten the information. All right, moving on to our property tax rate. Um, so I did talk about how we split our tax rate across several funds. And I just wanted to give you a sense of, um, for the levy that we have for next year, where that tax rate is going.

And so, uh, the biggest portion of our tax rate goes to our general fund. Um, about 58% of the property tax, um, that we collect, um, is distributed in our general fund. So, I'm going to talk and spend a lot of time talking about that fund. And then the next would be our debt service fund. um we will be talking um a little bit about what the rate above revenue neutral for that fund is and then we also have a presentation on our CIP. So our debt service fund is where a lot of our CIP projects um it is also the place where our um revenue bond the bond that was passed in November by um uh residents will be paid out of and then

we also have our environmental services fund is the third fund our transit fund and our housing fund. So, moving on to the general fund. Um, this is just giving you a snapshot of the different revenue sources in the general fund. Um, one of the things that you'll notice is that property tax is the largest portion of revenue in the in the general fund.

It's about 54% with sales tax being um the second largest fund largest revenue source at 33%. And so then all other revenue sources only make up about 21% of the general fund revenues. This chart is really showing you a snapshot of um the different revenue sources over the last four years budget to budget um in the general fund. And so one of the things um I wanted to point out that last column shows you the change between FY um 25 and 26 budget. And what you'll notice is that um uh property tax has been very strong. It's

increasing about 15%. sales tax is um which I'm going to spend some time talking about because it's our second biggest revenue source is um slightly under budget from where we are currently. Um and then the the two revenue sources that um are we are seeing a decrease in next year is other local taxes which is really our occupancy tax. it sits it makes up a large portion of that other local taxes which is something we knew about a change in legislation um is moving that tax to uh Durham next and then other revenues really um contains our um appropriation to fund balance.

So that varies a lot of times based on how much um we are appropriating of fun how much fund balance we're appropriating in our budget and so we will not be as appropriating as much next year. So that's the change there. And then um charges for services um is also um will is there's a strong increase in there and some of that has to do with some develop um fees that we will be talking about tomorrow. Um some changes in those

fees that will be um used to um bring on some more staff for that service. Um so these are the four uh largest um revenue sources in the general fund. So, I just wanted to kind of show you where we are as of Q3. I know you all received a Q3 report um last last week from our finance department, but this shows you where our adopted budget is, where we think we're going to end the year, and then where we uh are proposing for next year.

So, obviously, um the largest increases in property tax, um which uh is, um part of what we're going to be talking about, um today over the next few days. um sales tax is um essentially flat. There's a small decrease about a little bit less than 1%. Um and that is because we are anticipating coming in um under our FY25 budget. And so we've talked a little bit about this. I'll spend a little bit more time talking about it, but um we are proposing our budget for next year um to

be relatively flat to where we are this year. And then occupancy tax, we spent some time talking about. and then POW bill which um we are proposing to keep it the same as where um we ended the year or where we'd expect to end the year this year and that pays for our street maintenance. Okay.

And this chart is just another um another example of kind of how um our general fund property tax um this is the actual property tax that we receive in the general fund. This is showing you both the um budget to actual and then our end of year projection. We are projecting that property tax is going to come in at budget and then um obviously we have a an significant increase in the budget for next year. Um moving on, I'm going to talk a little bit now about sales tax. Um so, uh because sales tax is kind of the second biggest revenue source in the general fund, I did want to spend some time talking about it. 3%

year-to date. 7 million lower than our budget. 2 million proposed budget. um that is a decrease over where we are with our adopted budget, but I do want to point out that is 2% higher than where we think we're going to end the year.

So although sales tax um is uh not doing as well as it has been doing over the last several years, it is um I mean it we are just expecting less growth than we were seeing in years past. So that's um there is some growth in there um in that projection. I do want to remind you too that we have an ILA with um Durham County and that that um is going to remain flat um from what the distribution was in FY25. So our next chart shows you visually kind of what's been going on with sales tax over the last few years.

Um and I think it's it's important to point out um this purple line shows the growth year-to-year in sales tax. Um the blue is the budget and the red is collections. So what you can see happened um you know in FY20 through into FY21 you can see that we lowered our sales tax budget and that was because we were entering the co entering COVID during the pandemic. We didn't know if we were going to have sales tax but I think what um happened is we had kind of the opposite of what everyone thought which was we got a whole lot more sales tax than we had budgeted.

Um and so that continued for the next couple years. we were seeing kind of record um collections in sales tax compared to budget. Um we right sized in FY24 and so our budget was closer to what we um actually collected which was um good. But what we're seeing in FY25 is that um we anticipate coming in under the budget. Um so we had kind of a 5%

increase from FY24 budget to FY25 budget. We don't believe we're going to make that budget. So, um, we part of what's going on here is we have been having so much growth in sales tax. We've been kind of using that in our budget.

It's been kind of a a s a source of revenue for us. And I think that what I'm saying here is not that sales tax is bottoming out or that it's, you know, going away at all, but it it's just going to be a more level source of of funding. So, this is um I showed you this chart at the budget retreat in February, and I just wanted to bring it up again. This is our gross collection.

So, this is Durham County sales tax, city and county. It's it's really not really what we're um what we actually budget, but more of what the it kind of gives you a picture of what the trend is with sales tax. And so, um I just wanted to kind of um show you this chart again. Um, as you can see, we had some really um phenomenal growth and now we're kind of leveling out um with a slight decrease

about that um FY25 decrease is is less than 1%. So, and then um just to give you a sense of that we are um we you know that kind of what the picture is statewide this is kind of a heat map of sales tax statewide. I can say during the very good years this was mostly blue as you can see now there is a lot more red and yellow. So, this is kind of a trend that we're seeing um across the state.

So, other general revenue funds um as I talked about, these are much smaller portions of the um general fund revenue, but I did want to kind of give you a sense of um this chart shows you the adopted budget, the year-to- date, our projection for the end of the year, and then what we propose. Um the uh notable um things are occupancy tax which we've talked a lot about. Utility tax is one that is a decreasing revenue source. It has to do with um uh a tax that's received on home phones and video franchise. So that is those are two

areas where um we see a decreasing um amount of tax coming from those services. our POW bill is strong and then our charges for services we're anticipating coming in um uh slightly above budget and um anticipating a strong year next year. 3 million in fund balance. Um about 1 million of that will be for election costs.

So, we use fund balance every year um for one-time expenditures and um what this chart is showing you is our percentage of unassigned fund balance. 7% um of our undesated fund balance. And so that red line is showing you that

7%. And what the blue line is showing you is how close we're getting to that line. And as you can see, as we reach um FY26, we're getting closer to that line. Um and part of the reason is because um of of the fund balance we're using, but part of it also is when our budget increases, even though, as you can see, our FY25 and FY26 fund balance look almost identical.

7. So I just kind of wanted to um visually show um the council that and it's something that u we will be taking a look at as we move forward. And so trying to maintain that fund balance and making sure we have um a healthy fund balance is something we'll be doing. 7. So that amount for for for for mayor prom

um we are going to be um we will still be using the same amount or allocating the same amount to streets. We'll talk about that when we talk about the CIP, but that'll be coming from our debt service fund rather than from our as a transfer from our general fund. The end of an era. The end of an era.

Yes. Okay. Um, do you need to do we need to break, mayor? I'm just looking at you.

How close are you to finishing this presentation? Um, I have to go. I Yep, we can. This is You want to break?

Yeah, I think this will be a good breaking point is what I'll say. Question real quick. 7% of would be

undesated of the general fund and that is the that is the way the the policy applies to the general fund fund balance and other funds would have um different fund balance. Right. And so when we're talking about the amounts are the same, it's just that the fund is growing so the percentages, right? The percentage drops, too.

And you said we'd like to keep it there, but just this is recommended by the local government commission. Yes. Yes. No, we we I apologize.

Yes. No, it's a policy. We have to keep it there. Yes.

Want to be more direct? Yes. Yes. Exactly.

No, it's not it's not a it's not a like it. It's a have to. Yes. Thank you.

We've been there in that conversation before. Um, all right. 7 is our is our own internal policy for Yeah. Yeah. Um, let's just take a quick break to go and grab grab a plate, come back in, and uh keep going.

I will say I've had the caterer food before and my gosh, it's so good. All right, we're in recess. Uh about 10 minutes. It's been frustrating.

of our um rate above revenue neutral is um intended to be dedicated towards new requests. And so we have um some of those new requests um like our heart program will be coming to talk to you um and you'll be able to talk about some of those um as part of this work session. The next is um a little over half a cent is revenue adjustments and um I've already talked um and spent some time talking about sales tax. 2 million in occupancy tax that will be going to Durham next.

So that is what our revenue adjustments are for. Um pay adjustments. Our um human resources department is going to be talking they are the next presentation up to talk about pay and benefits. 45% structure adjustment which is um to keep us in line with the

pay plan that we adopted last year. Um and then we also have um our full half penny which we have our parks and recck department talking today. Um right now we have our um half penny for parks which is goes towards park m park and trail maintenance. um in this proposed budget, we would keep it at a full half penny as opposed to going to revenue neutral.

And um our parks department is going to talk a little bit about what they would be doing with that um extra um revenue. So, one of the things in our new requests is positions. So, I know that um you have seen in the proposed budget that we are proposing 42 positions, which sounds like a um a lot of positions, which it is. I did want to break them out for you so that you could see where those positions are going.

So the first chart shows you um of the 42 11 of the positions are supported through other revenue sources. So um that means they might be um fees or sit in our inspections fund. Um some other

revenue source that's not property tax is going towards supporting those positions. They have their a revenue source that would support them. the other um portion of the uh positions uh those 31 are taxup supported but I did so the chart on the right breaks out what where those tax supported positions are going. So of the 31 20 are going to our um would be going to our community safety department um and they will talk a little bit about um what those would be for.

Um six would go to our half to make the half penny a full half penny. there's some maintenance positions going to that department. Three um are for ERP related positions. So our ERP is our um our enterprise resource uh which is our software that we use to run our HR and finance and um all the things throughout the city. We're going through a transition right now and so there are positions that need um are needed in

some departments to support that. And then we have one in our city attorney's office and one in our environmental services or our solid waste fund um which is dedicated to our reuse hub. 53 cents above revenue neutral. And the first part of that is um to close a budget gap which is something that we talked about in our um retreats in February.

Um and that that is something that also we'll be talking about um when we when we talk about our new environmental ser streets environmental and street services department. I apologize I was thanking for the new name. Um and then we also have some pay adjustments which affect this fund as it does in the general fund. 45% 45% structure adjustment would also be in this fund.

And then they have some very modest new requests. There's the one position that they're asking for and then there are some contracts as well too that um that they can that that are rising that they have no control over. And this is a fund that has also looked at some other um ways um they'll be talking tomorrow about some service um modifications that they've been making and some revenue that they have been trying to generate. So um that is not just um an amount above revenue neutral but these are the things that um they would need in that fund.

We can talk about later. Could you just remind us that the budget gap what that was just high level? Um it well I mean it's it's so the budget gap was Oh what what what caused that? Okay not the amount you mean what what caused it?

Yeah. Um I mean some of it has to do with um kind of rising cost in contracts and some decreasing costs in revenue. So, some of the operating revenue that they're not seeing that they had seen um and also some of the they're they're tied very much to recycling markets and some other

things with some of their um waste and so that has an impact on what um gets affected in the fund. So, the next um I want to talk about is the debt service fund. So, the debt service fund is where we pay for our capital improvement um projects and it also is the place where the debt service for the bond that was passed in um the fall gets paid out of. So, in order to pay for the bond, we will need one um almost 2 cents of the two and a half cents that we're proposing for the rate and the debt service fund.

And then we are proposing um another half cent for some additional CIP projects. And um uh JJ Scott in my office is going to be presenting our CIP project. He's going to go over what some of those projects were and what would have gotten off would have gotten left off the list if um if without this um rate above revenue neutral. The next is the bid fund. Um and as we talked about, we are proposing

keeping the bid fund at its current um level. And so for that um there are a couple things that are happening in that fund. The first would be an increase in the contract to DDI or downtown Durham Inc. 69 cents.

And then um there's also a transfer that happens to um the environmental services or the formerly the solid waste fund. that transfer happens for some enhanced services that the fund provides to the downtown area. Um that has not been keeping up with the cost of providing those services. So this transfer would fully fund um those costs in the environmental services fund which we had just talked about um you know uh has been kind of subsidizing um the bid fund with those services. And so in order to to to make sure that that fund is whole, we're proposing increasing some um going

above revenue neutral in the bid fund. And then also there is a transfer that happens from the general fund into the bid fund that would be eliminated in this scenario where we go to seven cents. So this is just um briefly kind of showing you uh what the impact on our multi-year financial plan is. Um as you can see um this is still as we always talk about this is still this is conservative um so revenue growth is um very modest um 3% for property and sales tax and then um personnel services um we are also uh just this is uh pretty much business as usual with our pay plan um and modest um operating um for some of our departments as some of the costs that that increase just in general But this gives you a sense of um where we are anticipating. So we will be looking at kind of what as we go forward um kind of are there ways um especially with our reorganization are there ways

to gain efficiencies and um things that we can be doing to make sure that this picture is looking good for years out. So moving on, this is um my last slide just talking about some of the things that we are planning to do for the FY26 um and what the bud what the priorities will be for the budget and management services and um city manager's office around the budget. Um the first is to evaluate the reorganization's impact and identify potential cost savings. So that is something you know we've just gone through our reorg.

Um this particular budget does not assume that we um have significant savings at this point. Um but I think that's something that we'll be looking at to see where um where are the ways that we can gain efficiencies. Um we'll be staying alert to risk from potential federal funding cuts. So this budget does not assume that there are large cuts to federal funding.

It's something that we're looking at and paying attention to um and might need to pivot if if there was something um that did come up. We're monitoring the local economy and adjusting plans as needed. As we talked about, we're always looking

at our sales tax and other things that affect us um in the local economy. We're aligning um with council guidance from the budget retreats. So, you gave us a lot of guidance around transit um the transit fund, fair free bus service, um our environmental services fund. You'll see a lot of that the guidance that you gave us at those retreats reflected in this proposed budget.

And then, um we also are will begin preparations for our strategic plan refresh. So, we're kind of ending um the current strategic plan. And so, we'll be setting up next year as a time to really start um working with council to make sure that we're getting um those uh your vision and goals reflected in that plan. And then we're going to continue to refine um strategies to address our multi-year funding gaps and strategic priorities.

So, and with that, I will take any questions. Thank you so much. Start to my left. Council member Cook. This might be a a vote question

actually. Is the is the renaming to um environmental services fund just a rename or did it include any departmental changes? Just a rename. Okay.

Thanks. As you were saying, I just wanted to make sure I understood. The fund itself is just a rename. Okay.

Fund presentation. All right. I will call our next presenters are our H. Oh, sorry.

I apologize. Um, regarding the bid, um, so I just listening to a few folks. Um, we're never going to please everyone. Some folks are excited about getting the seven.

Some folks are like, wait, we don't necessarily need it, paying a lot. This is probably an operations question. Can someone concede

from the budget, from the bid? The bid is set by statute. Uh, and so it would take a statutory change to remove some from the bid. Is that correct, Fred?

Um, that can you re can you rephrase question, Mr. Mayor? If I'm a part of if I'm in within the the jurisdiction or area of the bed district, um, I no longer want to be a part of it. Is there a process to remove myself or is there's a statutory process where you can petition to uh ask um to be removed?

Yeah, there's a process. Okay. Thank you. Um do we know I mean what what is and I I remember talking to Wanda about this and so she projected I remember hearing the projections of sales tax being down this year. Um but do we know the actual reason or we see any indicators why?

Um we don't have exact data. You know we receive just um we just receive our allocation. So we don't know point of sale data um you know to be able to analyze it um in any great detail. So I I wish I could say that I knew exactly what was going on with sales tax.

Um but I can only tell you the trend at this point. And so it is something that we look at and we try and you know we're we're trying to make sure that we have the best information for council. So I think that you know part of policym is been able to follow that data and and manipulate what direction we'd like to go. Um do where can we where would we look to to find the indicators because I know we're monitoring the trend and reporting that but the why is what would be you know what was advertising to me.

Yeah. And I think we can use broader trends and just, you know, ex I'm I'm sticking specifically to Durham City's trend. You know, I think we can use we looking at um economic trends overall and what we see kind of in the economy and broader trends and kind of applying

that to what we are doing with our sales tax as well too. So that's kind of what we try to do. Well, it's not just Durham, right? I mean, it's like it's statewide and that's and that's and that's why I showed you the map as well too.

It's not just us. So I don't feel like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

7%. Um could you tell me a bit more about the contract with DDI the service contract and the transfer from environmental services? Um sure and I think that you know they are going to be coming forward so they can talk a little bit more in depth about their particular contract tomorrow. Um and we will also have um the environmental services um folks as well here to talk specifically about what those services are.

But essentially um environmental services or solid formerly solid waste provides some enhanced services in the bid district around trash collection. And so that is um something that that fund pays for. And then as far as um DDI they provide some um some services uh in the mid

district um around economic development and some other um you know they have ambassadors that that um buses that they you know that are showing up around town. So those are some of the things that Nicole Thompson who is the um CEO will be here and can address directly. Thank you so much. All right.

Uh middle uh Mr. Mayor Prom, did you have any questions? All right. Thanks.

Those wrong numbers. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for the presentation.

The wealth of information. All right. Next up, turn it over to our HR department. Good

morning. Good morning, mayor, counselors, and staff. Montiglary, interim human resources director, and this morning we will be talking about pay and benefits. with me.

I have members from the HR staff. I have assistant HR director Jim Ryan Grubberger, uh, class and comp manager Althia Hardy, and the benefits manager Gwen Barnett. So our agenda today will be on the compensation recommendations, pay for performance specifically regarding merit, the Durham minimal livable wage structure adjustments, part-time adjustments, the implementation timeline, proposed new classifications, benefit and wellness updates, and then we will entertain any questions that you may have. And at this time, I'll turn it over to Jim.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Prom, and members of council. I'm Jim Ryan Gruber, assistant director of human resources, and I'm here today to go over the FY26 pay recommendations. And although you'll see the moving parts are fewer this year and the dollar amounts are smaller than we talked about last year, there's still a lot to go through and explain.

So, over the next few minutes, I'm taking you on a journey through pay for performance, structure adjustments, Durham's minimum livable wage, and some part-time employee information. And though we list these things discreetly, they're all very much intertwined as you're going to see. So, starting with the easiest one, uh, pay for performance or we also call it merit. So, you might hear me refer to it as that through, um, in in inter uh, interchangeably.

Um, this is proposed to operate the same way that it did last year. So, not a lot to explain there. Uh, just like last year, eligible employees are going to get between four and 6% depending on their rating and which pay plan they're in. The total

6 million overall. All right, so now we're going to jump in the deep end with the Durham's minimum livable wage. Um, and I'll call it DMLW because I say it so much. 8% and it's going to 2190 per hour.

So this is primarily affecting the general step plan. The other plans all have starting wages that are higher than 2190. So a lot of this presentation really focuses on the step plan itself. Um we also have on this slide the likely FY27 DMLW illustrated here for your information. You can see that's um so this year you know it's a significant increase and and frankly this year required some creativity to come up with a with a good implementation plan to address it. Uh but next year is going to

pose a much greater challenge and we already see that. Um, last year we showed in our presentation how long it would take a current employee to get to $25 an hour. And we noted that changes in the DMLW could accelerate that timeline. Uh, but we didn't expect the DMLW itself would put all employees over $25 an hour a mere two years later.

So, we're really going to need to start working on FY27 as soon as FY26 is settled. Um, because there are really no easy answers or solutions for this. But for this year, we're going to show you how the FY26 DMLW affects the current step plan and the proposed step plan with proposed structure adjustments included. All right, so this is where we currently are.

This is the current FY25 step plan that we adopted this past budget cycle. Um the steps highlighted in red above are all below 2190. So that's the again the new FY26 DMLW. Um,

right now there are currently 83 employees on those affected steps that are below the DMLW. And what we're going to show you next is our plan to address this for FY26. So before we actually get into our recommendations, we want to talk about the goals that ultimately set the framework for what we're proposing. Um, first thing we obviously want to successfully implement the DMLW.

Uh again, it's a big increase this year and as you saw, it affects the current step plan pretty significantly. Second goal is we want to make uh at least some incremental adjustments to the overall pay plans and preferably do this each year so that we're staying competitive in the job market and not requiring enormous increases each time we do another pay study. And then finally, we want to make sure that our recommendations don't create situations where there'll be massive salary compression or we're completely blowing up a pay plan that we just adopted this past fiscal year or this current fiscal year. And of course, we

know that there are budget constraints as well. So, we believe we've created a proposal that pretty elegantly addresses all these issues, at least for the coming fiscal year. So, when I first started talking, I said that this stuff is all intertwined. Um, and it's really necessary to talk about these structure adjustments within the context of the DMLW.

45% market adjustment to every pay structure for FY26. and we're going to show you what that looks like for the step plan, how it plays into setting the DMLW on the step plan, and we'll talk about the effects on existing employees. So, we'll show you a timeline plan for the adjustments in a few slides. But to preview that process, after we uh do structure adjustments, we'll process pay for performance increases and then manually move any employees who are still on a step that's that are below the DMLW.

45% adjustment. Now you see that we only lose three steps total as shown in the dark gray there. And the starting wage is the DMLW at step three of grade A12. So that's that first grade up there.

90. 45% increase. Yes, exactly. And uh just as a reminder, last year um steps 11 and 12 were um frozen and these continue to be frozen.

45%. Um however, the eligible employees on those steps as well as step 10, which is the top of the range, are going to get lump sum merit payments. All right. So, um, let's talk about the employees affected by the DMLW. And we'll we'll take a little bit of time on

this slide to go through it. Um, I mentioned earlier that on the current step plan, 83 employees currently live on steps that are below 2190. 45% adjustment, that number drops to 47 employees. You see those 47 um employees on the chart on the far left at the top of the slide.

The middle chart shows how those employees are anticipated to move in the pay for performance process. So 16 of the 21 employees on step one of A12 are expected to get the next step through pay for performance. The remaining five were hired after January 1st. 25 so are not eligible for merit.

So they stay on step one after the merit increases. And then when you look one grade down um on A13, 16 of the 23 employees on step one are expected to get that next step through pay for performance and the other seven again were hired after January 1st. So not eligible. So after the merit increases

are processed, there are still 28 employees you see on the affected steps as shown in the middle chart. The chart on the right shows those 28 getting moved to the first step in their grade that is at or above the DMLW. So I want to try and make the case that ultimately only three employees are truly compressed by this plan. Um, grade A12 has that more impactful form of compression because those three employees who land on step three after the merit you see on the far right chart do end up getting joined by the other 21 employees from steps one and two.

Um, so three affected employees, it frankly could have been worse. Um, and then if you look at the compression on grade A13, that's a kind of a more mild form of compression. Um even though there are more employees that are um involved in that, all of those 23 employees on step two after the DMLW moves were all together on step one together previously anyway. So again, a

pretty mild form of compression. Um however, do keep in mind that any new hires will also start at the first active step of their salary grade. So that will create further compression as as new employees are are hired um to the city. So that was a lot to go through.

Uh we're going to shift to part- timerrs, but I wanted to kind of pause and see if anybody had Yes. So I'm assuming that the compression will get even worse next year if we're already estimating where it is. So we're going to have to do a decent amount of an adjustment for next year. Correct.

Okay. because all of this just gets harder when and good for us. Like I'm glad we're doing it, right? We said we were going to do it.

I will also just say other employers in the city of Durham, this is what you need to be paying your your workers, right? And so um I mean I think our area median income now is for a family of four is 112 or $115,000 as of early 2025. So that that

tells you why right there. Um and so I'm glad to see it. I understand that it's going to be hard for this is why we have really great finance and HR and budget folks. So, thank you because this is not my job.

Um, but uh I just want to say thank you and I and I get that next year is going to be it's going to be fun. Um, thank you for that. We had talked a little bit last year or a few of us had had kind of been interested in this idea and I'd like to revisit it as we're looking towards next budget season which is to potentially have um lesser increases between steps at higher income brackets. I know that that is complicated with compression, but we talked about last year how 5% of our minimum living wage is significantly different than 5% of somebody's salary

who's like far up in this step bracket. Um, and so either standardizing those increases with a monetary amount that works across the board or using like the average increase. I think we had talked about like using the average increase between steps five and six for that band. Um, but just like something to look at having a more standard increase that's not then having a huge increase for folks who are higher up on the income bracket and prejudicing folks that are lower on the income bracket.

So that's something I'd be interested in looking into. I my colleagues are interested in that but something we had discussed. Thank you. Um, and then one other thing which is that this is a question for another day, but um, I feel like the number one thing that I hear from employees is that they don't feel like they are on the right step for the number of years that they've worked. Um, and I I heard this all last year while we were renegotiating the whole pay plan. Um,

and I continue to hear it now and so that's concerning to me. So I was just wondering, you talked about they can receive the four to 6% increase. Can you talk about is it do they always get a merit increase? Do do the steps always follow the years?

Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Sure. There was a reset. How long ago was that Althia when when they sort of talk, you know, set people on the steps that they were supposed to be on based on a years of service?

Well, So that was a few years ago. There there there was a 20 what? Okay. So so around 2019 there was a there was a methodology used for placing people on steps with that pay study. um and on the particular steps that they landed on. Step movements are subject to

a couple of things. Number one is the performance rating. Well, number one is is when people are hired. So, if you're hired before January 1st um of a given year, then you're eligible for u merit that July.

If you're hired after January 1, then it would be the following July when you would first be eligible to move a step. The other another factor is the rating that you get. So anybody who gets effective or above on their annual evaluation is again eligible to move that step. Um the the the final thing is basically it's subject to council approval.

So if if the budget is not going to allow it in a given year, um there have been years where employee increases were were not done. Um, but again that's that's a you know subject to to budget discussions and and and I'd like to elaborate or maybe simplify a little to say this. The city does not have nor have we had a time and

grade system. We do not have a system where the number of years you have worked for us places you on a certain step. as the system that Jim described plays out, most people are in a step that reflects some that has some correlation to when they were hired. But the the driving factor is not you were hired in this year, you have worked these many years, therefore you are on step X.

Um that is a point of confusion that we have worked really hard to try and clear up. um in particular it it uh has created frustration for staff. So you see this particularly in the fire and police departments where employees were all hired in the same class. They know their academy mates but there are different factors as Jim has described that move you to a different step and therefore there are a number of reasons that result in people being different steps. Some of those are beyond the employees control and Jim mentioned one

of those. So in years where we did not move employees because we did not have money in the budget to fund the steps, people stayed on the same step. But in those years, we were still hiring new employees. And so we did create compression during the COVID years that we have acknowledged and that we have also not endeavored to fix because the fix would mean moving hundreds of employees multiple steps and that would be very expensive to the budget.

So what what we have said which is not something all employees agree with but I think we vetted very transparently for the council is that when we did a market study uh and studied all our positions against market and were thoughtful about where we place people we believed we lived into our value that our positions and therefore our employees are paid at market. Um, one of the unfortunate or fortunate realities of working in a government system, uh, is that all of our pay is known to everyone. So, every

employee knows what every employee what every other employee makes. And therefore, every employee may have certain feelings about employees they are ranked alongside or above or below. I would posit that that would be the same in every private sector company too except private sector companies don't have to disclose that data. So I think the city council understandably hears from employees who feel that they are not paid commensurate with another employee who they feel equal to.

But all those realities are real. I'm not suggesting council needs to agree with those statements. But I will say that we have a high degree of confidence that our employees are paced are placed on the appropriate step for all of the reasons that we use to manage the pay plan. That may not be the same thing as they being placed on the step that they think they belong on based on some criteria that they were using. So Jim or Montique, I don't know if either of you want to correct or elaborate on any of

that, but no, that I was going to ask that point too. Are people talking about their situations in a vacuum or are they talking about their situations compared to other people? Because we hear we hear the latter and we we will investigate if somebody comes and says, you know, this doesn't look right. Um but we the Bo mentioned fire and and and police has the same thing.

you know, it's very standard. People all get hired within Academy. There's promotions done at a very set time. Um, with these other plans, it's all over the place.

So, people get promoted at different times. People have different career trajectories. " It could be they got promoted a year before you did at a lower place. And then, you know, it's like there's there's a lot of factors that that kind of can can be involved in where people find themselves. So, um yeah, I really just wanted to give an opportunity for folks to hear that

because I I do think um I do think that there is still confusion about years versus steps and I know that we've talked about it and I just like wanted to give space to talk about that. Again, I also want to say that like historically um when salaries are not shared, uh certain folks are impacted more. So, I'm all about sharing salaries. And I'm that person at all of my employees employers who is like going around to all of my colleagues and asking them how much they make and then sharing the information with everybody because I do think it's really useful in negotiating and I think it's um it's a right that we should have.

Uh, but I appreciate that answer and the the COVID compression piece makes sense to me and that was a that was a very big deal to our employees. And I want to close with a little bit of empathy on this which is to say, you know, we have heard arguments that that make sense to us about what our system gets wrong. I I would say that there is there's no perfect pay system anywhere um that that that addresses all the

values to their greatest extent. " But in in to to the expectation that we have to have a system of rules and rules that we follow, I think I am confident that this council has has seen um enough data to give us direction to build and implement a system that I think does the best job possible at capturing the different values that we try to do in our pay system. So thank you Mr. R, thanks for the presentation. I just want to say echoing some of the comments my colleagues, I'm very proud of our D minimum wage. I think the rest of my colleagues, if I can speak for you

all, are proud of that as well. I think our residents are. I just want to appreciate your presentation. Clearly, when you get down to the nitty-gritty of thinking about it's it's like it's individual people and individual steps.

So, it's like detailed work. So, I appreciate you're doing the hard work of figuring out exactly how we do this in a way that minimizes compression but rewards those employees that should be paid a living wage because we want all our employees to who work here to to work and not be poor. So, thank you. Absolutely.

No. Yeah. All right. All right.

Um, so let me start off by saying last year during this this presentation, we we frankly got caught unprepared by some questions about part-time employees. So, um, we did a good bit more prep work this year on on the subject and want to share some information sort of beyond the standard recommendations um, especially as to how the DMLW relates to part-time employees and why things are currently set up as they are. So, um, just starting with our basic

recommendations, eligible part-time employees would receive a 3% merit increase. This is the same as it as it's been, same as last year. 45% structure adjustment. Um, so this, you know, just as all the other pay plans, this would receive that that's that adjustment as well.

Um, and then any eligible employees, um, and we'll talk about eligible in a minute, that are below the DMLW would also receive an adjustment to be brought up to the DMLW. All right, so let's talk a little bit about eligibility um, and how this applies to part-time employees. So, what do we mean by eligible? This is the applicable section of the ordinance highlighted above. um it applies to part-time employees doing work that is commensurate with the full-time version of those employees jobs. So um um if we if we kind of look at if the chair stopped moving u using an employee

census that we took a few weeks ago we're estimating about 201 part-time employees that are non-commensurate in non-commensurate jobs so not eligible for DMLW that would be below 2190 after making the adjustments shown on the previous slide. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. Um, and these are these are jobs like scorekeepers, gatekeepers, lifeguards, uh, program aids and assistants. Um, they tend to be either seasonal or or very part-time.

Uh, the average hours worked for this subset of 201 part-time employees is about 472 hours per year. 81 an hour. 85. So, that's the least that any part-time person would be paid.

Um, and so moving those non-commensurate jobs up to DMLW would would create some significant issues for us. Um, so recognizing differences in duties and responsibilities, I'm going to talk about on the next slide. And then after that, I'm going to show how there are currently some opportunities in the part-time plan for uh for some progression. And that would either be basically compressed into meaningless distinctions in pay or we'd create a situation where the part-time jobs create inequities in the uh full-time plan.

So, here's a quick comparison between a non-commenserate job, park gatekeeper, and a commensurate job, a maintenance assistant, to illustrate why there is some salary differentiation there. Um, if if the DMLW is required for all the part-time jobs, these two employees would theoretically make the same. And if you look at the duties and responsibilities, one one employee um

the uh maintenance assistant performs equipment and technical work such as mowing, edging, maintaining the grounds, uh stripping and waxing floors and other maintenance activities. Um the park gatekeeper responsibilities include um opening and closing the park gate and scanning the park for issues. So, not to not to minimize anything, our park gatekeepers provide an important service and um looking at um uh looking at at at how they work um we see that they work on average about 366 hours per per year. 82 per hour.

So, they make about $6,500 per year. um those who would who would get the merit and then structure adjustments bring that up to about $6,800 per year. Um so that's you know that that that's what they would make on

an annual basis. Um you can see that the part-time maintenance assistants work nearly 1,200 hours per year. So more than three times the hours of a typical gatekeeper. And this is we found this to be pretty typical across commensurate versus non-commenserate positions.

And I have a summary later in the presentation showing showing some of this. All right. So just to show another example, this is a series of part-time jobs performing work in the care programs. So this includes after school, summer camp, intercession, and funday programs serving youth ages 6 to 12.

Um here you're going to see the increasingly responsible part-time jobs in this program are aligned with increased pay rates. So aids right now start at 1665 which again is the minimum currently. Um those aids are kind of extra hands to support staff. Um and then up to um

senior um program assistants who make 1937 and they do things like administer medications and do communications with parents and so forth. So on the surface, you know, just talking about part-time in general, it might be tempting to just say, hey, why not just bring all the people below DMLW up to DMLW and leave everything else the way it is. But um you can see from this that that would destroy some opportunities for pay progressions in in series like this one. And then conversely, if the DMLW were applied to the entry-level program aids and then you maintain the the pay hierarchy throughout the um structure through the more responsible jobs, as you can see on this slide, um you can see how that ends up compounding over time. And you see that it eventually causes the senior the part-time senior program assistance rate to exceed that of full-time classification of recreation specialist. And that recreation spe specialist

carries a much greater scope of responsibility. And so it, you know, this ends up creating inequity in the pay hierarchy for these jobs. The part-time plan has now created issues in the full-time plan. So now you're faced with living with these inequities or making costly changes to full-time plans.

So very challenging issues to kind of work through u when talking about DMLW. Um and this kind of illustrates why we currently have it the way that it is. So here are some in my opinion interesting stats with part-time employees. um when you compare commensurate versus non-commensurate as a whole and again these numbers are a few weeks old um I've looked yesterday and there have been quite a few people hired in the past few weeks uh for seasonal but um you can see roughly that a quarter of part-time employees are in commensurate positions and threearters are not. So right now of the 242 part-timers we have in non-commensurate jobs almost half um are above the 1958

current DUR minimum livable wage. Uh however because of the big increase in the minimum wage that number shrinks significantly and we expect about again as I mentioned earlier excuse me 201 of the 242 employees to be below 2190 after all the adjustments are made and again these are these are non-commensurate positions so not not technically eligible for the DMLW um I mentioned this before but there is significant difference in the number of hours worked between commensurate non-commensurate positions And we looked at this a few different ways and really regardless of the methodology we used the the patterns were consistent. So um we feel pretty confident that that you know this is a real kind of finding here. Um and finally these are their average hourly rate shown as they stand now. Recall that the minimum pay for any of the non-commensurate positions is currently 1665 an hour. So the average for those employees is just slightly

below the current DMLW. Um commensurate employees average significantly higher wages and we're actually estimating only nine of the 64 are going to require further adjustments after structure and merit reduces to bring them to the DMLW. So very insignificant number of part-time employees that'll have to be have to be moved for that. All right.

So I know Yes. Other way. One more. That one.

Yeah, that's that one. It's just not showing on the Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I can see it on mine.

Thank you. Can I go ahead? Okay. 54?

Like I'm trying to just understand what is what are we actually paying on July one for these and it does it depend on the position or is it everyone? It depends on the position. 45%. 45% four or five percent. Um, so they get paid differently than a recreation aid

who starts at 1665 and okay, I guess what would be helpful is to actually have all of those positions in a somehow, right? I I want to so I'm just going to say that and I maybe it was 2019 at least this was my intent as a council member and I hear everything you're saying about compression, everything else, but the fact of the matter is there was a council that said and I was on the council that we were going to bring all part-time folks up. That's what was said. all it was not tied to positions and we are not HR specialists and so no one broke it down by step or compression or whatever.

So I understand y'all's perspective and I understand the budgetary constraints but I think that we need to have as much information as possible because when we say things to the public our words have to mean something and so we promote that we are a living wage city. We don't say because you're a lifeguard or a cleaner or whatever. We say we pay our workers a living wage. A living wage in the city of Durham, if you're taking care of kids, is not

65. The end. Like, I'm sorry, that's what it is. And so, at some point, we do actually have to correct course.

And it's just going to keep getting more expensive. So, we can't just keep and and now we're this late into the budget and we've done a huge amount of work to get our workers here, but it just gets harder because you're saying that next year it's going to be $27 an hour. That's a $10 difference between potentially what we're paying folks that take care of kids over the summer or lifeguards. So, it actually just gets harder for the councils moving forward.

So, I'm making this request now at our budget retreats in February, and I will be on this council because I'm not done until 2027. I want all of this information then, not in May when it's too hard to rectify on the budgetary end. So, I am saying this in public. I'm saying it for staff to hear loud and clear.

And yes, I am upset. I want every single person at some point to make what it costs to make. We can't put pressure on other

folks to pay what they need to pay if we're not doing it ourselves. It's hypocritical. So, please provide this information, all of the detail. 65 for taking care of kids all summer long.

It's a huge issue in child care. It's why we can't get qualified people and we can't be part of that problem. Um I understand we may not be able to rectify it now at this late state. So we start these processes in January and February and March for a reason and we can't do our jobs if we're not getting the data.

Um so first request is who are the non-commensurate? I understand that it may be a gatekeeper versus a lifeguard versus a child care person. That's my first question. My second question is I would like to understand what these folks are going to be making on July

1 based on that job description. And that's all I have for now. Um, thank you. Amen to that.

Just Yeah. Um, and we're talking about hourly wages. We're not talking about year-long salaries. When we are looking at compression, I understand that the inequity is the hourly pay, but folks who are making full-time salaries are going to make yearly way more.

Like you just said, $6,500 for the year. So, and my only addition to what Council Member Cabier said, which I totally agree with everything she's just said, um, is that we also have an actual number amount of what that looks like because I understand increasing from 1954 to 2190 looks like a big number. Um, and there's 200 people that it impacts, but if they're only working a handful of hours,

I mean, I think in the first the comparison slide that you showed us, 336 hours of an annual. So, that's not a lot of money, even though it seems like a lot of money the way that these numbers are laid out. So, I would like total numbers um to see what that looks like. Um, and I to me it's it's a non-issue.

Like I understand that the statute doesn't have non-commenserate folks, but if what you're saying is that 201 of these folks will now be out or below the 2190, then we're looking at a median pay right now that is slightly above our minimum wage. And next year we're going to be looking at almost every single person is below because that's 2011 out of 242. So that's almost everyone. Um, yeah. So, just to to add to add some data points, would love to see a total amount, but for me, I understand the fairness issue, but I think we we are going to have to raise this.

I would just add my voice and echoing. I I had made a note when you were speaking to just say I think the same thing would happen at 7:25 an hour. Like it's it's just those differences when you raise the minimum are going to occur. So I appreciate the comments of my colleagues.

I think we are going to have to have the that conversation especially for the 201 um yeah so do we know who's working these jobs? Who are they? Oh, you want like position? Yeah.

Well, not the exposition, but do we know if they're a 16 year old versus a 30-y old mother? Um, demographically, I mean, we could we could find that. Um, I don't have it readily available. Yeah. So, where I land on this, I I I'd like that type of information because I don't want to assume who's doing the jobs. Uh, the

other thing I got you. The other thing is I um I'm supportive of of, you know, having a minimum wage. Um, what I'm not supportive of is having a value or a value statement or a value policy only for some. Um, I went to school and got my bachelor's and then I went and got my master's degree because I wanted to make more money.

So, I did something to get it. And I want to make sure that while I agree with there have been a base for everyone that we're not just saying like okay you've done all of this additional work and then I'll hire the position staff who've done these extra things well you can't get anything they took a f they took a freeze last time and there's a reason why they went and got what they when they what they got you know so I don't want to again attack folks that have been busting their tails to climb up their career you know professionally and then, you know, hear recommendations of, well, that doesn't matter. We need you to stay where you are because you get paid more.

I think that's that that's a I don't agree with that statement. But when it comes to this, I would like to know more information. Um because, you know, I we're government and it's it it's a it's a give and take. It's a pull here, give there.

Um, I'm I'm totally, you know, to my colleague's points, I'm I'm not against uh, you know, ensuring that was what, 2019 when you all came up with that. I'm not against that. U, but I I I will say, you know, as I always say before, I sell chicken for a living, and if I want to make more money, then I need to sell more chicken. Uh, our revenue doesn't come from chicken in the city.

It comes from tax base. So when we're thinking about how we get more expanding our tax base, think about when we have these zoning cases. All right? If we want to make these value statements or value policies that are expensive, then we need to think about how we actually get more revenue uh so that we're not hurting the people who are already here.

We can't say we want affordable housing and we want to take care of the, you know, you know, decrease the the wealth disparity and take care of the less fortunate, but also have expensive values like this. and then your actions are anti-expanding that tax base. So, I just want to while I agree and support, I want to make sure that we have this full context in uh in this conversation. Um yeah, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. So, a lot going on here.

So, first of all, I want to agree with my colleagues on this issue of of minimum wage. Agree. We do need more data who those people are. Um I just I guess I want to say a couple things.

First thing is um I'm concerned a little bit about a bias against part-time employees. I mean, we talked about a I think the number was a 3% performance-based raise for part-time, but four to 6% for full-time. So, I don't know why part-time employees would get a different raise. They're working for us, right?

So, so why a different performance based raise for part-time versus full-time employees? That's one question. Um second thing just to note,

and again, I appreciate my colleagues raising up especially the care issue, right? pay for like care workers is chronically underpaid in this country. It's worth noting and I again I applaud us. I'm so proud of us being a living wage city.

Um but if you the our minimum living wage in some ways is a more just minimum wage. It may not be a living wage, right? So for a single adult that 2190 is roughly what either MIT or the justice center says is the minimum or the living wage for a single person. Once you add one child in there, a single person with one child, it goes up to like $40 an hour.

So, we're like, so we're I'm proud of our living wage, but for folks who maybe have a child and are working part-time for the city, this is not a good wage. So, we really need to address this. I know one thing, and we talked about this a lot, I don't know if Wade is here, DPR, a lot of these part-time employees are at DPR, right? So, one thing DPR has done is actually combine some of these into a full-time job.

So, I think part of the question for the human resource team and the city managers to think about in addition to raising wages, what else can we do? Maybe potentially combining these into full-time jobs. So I think this is a big

challenge for us and I appreciate the manager and staff digging in because I think we do as as council cavier said we we need to address this. So thank you and I do remember this from when we had this conversation and this is to the the mayor's point for the most part most of our part-time workers are women of color who are providing care during our summer camps at DPR. Right? We know that because we knew that from back then and I'm assuming it probably hasn't changed that much.

So sure, we have a few 16-year-olds, but many of the folks are often teachers who take these jobs during the summer because we pay better. And so if we're going to also to lean into our values, but we also have this idea of shared economic prosperity. It's part of our strategic plan. We can't we can't rob Peter to pay for Paul, y'all.

So um we we have to figure this out. And and I and especially because and this is why we're asking for this data. I we talked about this in 2019. It is a lot of folks who are part-time who are DPR

folks. I know that and I want to thank DPR for trying to figure out how to get some of these positions. And in some cases, it's not. These are folks who are seasonal workers quote like they work 10-month contracts for our schools, not just in Durham, but in other parts of the triangle, and they get work in the summer and and Exactly.

Thank you, Council Member Freeman. And the the the part that I so I'm in the Hunt Institute this year and that is literally what we're doing is early child care and child care pay. And the state average right now is $14 an hour. That is hideous.

We cannot pay the folks who are taking care of our kids so so poorly and then expect better outcomes for our kids. I just wanted to appreciate um Council Member Cab Cabiero again and saying that I think um often it is those teachers who are coming back year after year and our parks and rec department. But I also want to say that for our uh folks at the

higher end of the steps, it's not frozen on the merit side. It's just frozen on this side. And so I don't want you to think that I don't want anyone to leave the conversation thinking that there's no increase. there's an increase for everyone who's done their job.

It's on record. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, colleague.

Firstly, madam interim director, good to see you. Congratulations on your assumption of leadership and and uh she's looking down. You can tell her I I propped her up. Um good to see you.

Thank you so much for the work and the responsiveness um to this this council. I you know I want to say to my colleagues at any given time we can pick an arbitrary number and order the staff to do whatever we want. I mean if if we want to you know there's there's there's the annunciation of of values and then there's actual governance and there's the actual numbers and there's the actual give and take. Um if we want to raid the fund balance and and and put out a certain number and say pay everybody this this set them in a moving

way we can do that. " Um, there are differences in in jobs. There are, you know, I was on the council and I appreciate Council Member Cabierro's um, illusion to the council in 2019. I was on that council.

Um, we've said we want zero traffic fatalities. We're still working towards that. Um I remember on the council one time we said we didn't want to hire any more police. Um so we from time to time we've all we've promulgated all types of values over the years but what's get what gets codified in ordinance is certainly different.

Um first so I want to firstly honor the work of this staff over the years in responding to us and trying to th this is an incredible improvement to what we were at years ago in terms of paying our employees. Um this is light years ahead of um so you have responded to what we've asked. If

we want to ask the staff to pay everybody a certain amount and you can get four votes to do that and then go out and explain the economics, explain what it looks like, the repercussions across the rest of the org chart. Uh if we want to micromanage and get into that, we can do that. Um but I I want to make sure that it's clear that this staff has not drugged their feet. They haven't uh carpet bagged.

they have responded to what we've asked and and what I think you've brought back. Firstly, I'm very proud of the the the market study and and the massive pay adjustment we made uh for our employees. I also, you know, want to say that I believe that uh for a lot of folk uh uh government work, municipal jobs, the good government job has been the entree for a lot of black and brown people and women into the middle class. Uh, I have no problem with saying that not only do I want to pay a live minimal living wage for folk, I also want to keep the gates open, the doors open for folk who have gone to school, studied hard, kept their nose clean, like mama said, get your books, go to school, and good things

will happen. Um, the CEO of Target and Fizer and Delta and G, those are the kind of folk I want to be talking about their salaries relative to the rest of their org chart. Um, and I I'm totally with that. But municipal employees are not the people who are who are making, you know, these ridiculous, incredible, exorbitant salaries.

They're middle class and upper middle class people who worked hard a lot of times to get to where they are. Uh, and I support that. Um, back to the the the part-time issue, I want to I want to thank you for the the work that you've done. Um, and if if if this isn't on you, uh, we can put our money where our mouth is, or the city's money, not our money, the city's money, where our mouth is anytime we want.

But I I I hasten to caution that these folk have run numbers. They've looked at repercussions. They they they've run scenarios. Uh, and if we want to pick an arbitrary number up here and and give it to them and say run with it, then we better be prepared for the implications

to be able to explain how that has repercussions throughout the rest of the org chart. But at the end of the day, we can do that. Just to be clear, this isn't on the staff. We we can do that.

Um, but we can do it with with implications and and repercussions. uh and with an asterisk next to it because there will be an asterisk because there will be uh u implications uh for us doing it. Thank you so much uh for the incredible work you've done madam interim director eye contact. Thank you so much uh for your for your assump assumption of leadership uh and best wishes to you of the department.

Uh thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Are you still going?

Yes. One more. Keep going. All right.

All right. So yeah, that was that was a lot to go through. So thank you and thank you for all the feedback. Really really appreciate that. Um but here we are now boiling everything down to the dollars and cents. Um and these are the costs to implement the proposed structure adjustments including an estimate uh for

salary related benefits. 1 million. That is the last slide of my part and then I'm going to pass off to Althia who is going to go over some timeline. Don't run away too fast.

I'll be here. And Jim, before you sit down, I'd like to bring a little bit of closure to the to the council conversation. First of all, thank you. This is exactly the kinds of conversations I want you guys to have today so that we can can make this budget responsive. I I want to be clear since this is my recommendation first of all that um that I think I want to hearken back to the comments I made about 30 minutes ago when council member Cook raised questions about people's steps that these pay plans are an attempt to uh are our effort to reflect your values in a system that we can make workable and my recommendations are based on uh how I feel those components are working together the the um that that is represented in my

recommendation on the part-time plan is simply that uh for for my understanding of what we want to achieve. I have concerns about the fairness issue, not about the cost. So, I want to be clear to council. I believe you can afford uh we would need to come up with options to do it.

But we you can afford to pay your part-time employees all of them at the Durham minimum livable wage. My my main concern is the vast discrepancies between responsibilities and the impact that has on the employees who have broader and more skill-based uh uh positions. I also believe that it's my job to inform you of that and for then you to tell us you understand those trade-offs and so we will be happy to to bring you recommendations in this budget cycle uh for you to consider because I don't want to imply that somehow uh there's a lot of data we don't understand. we have that data. This this was my recommendation based based on a fairness concern which I think you've heard and uh I think it is absolutely your prerogative to to direct us to move

forward and so we'll bring you options for that. Uh and I appreciate the conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Manager. We can continue. All right. So, I'm going to pass off to Althia.

Y [Music] Althia Hardy, HR manager. Um, this slide is our uh information regarding our order of operations for implementing these adjustments that Jim has told you about. um and when they hit employees paychecks and the timing for those adjustments. Um our order of of implementation is we begin with the structure adjustments first. Uh then we do the performance increases after that and then followed

by any reclassifications that are approved on employees um jobs. 45% structure adjustment is to be reflected on the July 11th paychecks. The pay for performance increases are will be shown on the July 25th checks and any approved reclassifications uh will be reflected on the August 8th check. Um I just want to point out any necessary movements to bring uh employees uh up to the DMLW will be reflected on the August 26 22nd sorry the August 22nd uh paycheck but will be made retroactive to July 1.

Um, so that that is for any of those employees who, as Jim mentioned, might need adjustments um beyond what the structure adjustment or merit would bring to them to make sure that they are at the DMLW if applicable. Um, and then part-time employees, we have the time frame there for full-time. Part-time employees have

a two-eek lag in this cycle. um their time is keyed through spreadsheets. So it's woven into the administrative cycle in that manner with a a lag. Okay.

Now this slide is uh relative to a process that we hold each year in the city uh where we take a look to see if employees jobs have changed significantly enough to um for us to do an analysis a job analysis on their position. With that analysis, um, some may not need a resulting recommendation for reclassification, but for those whose, um, jobs and responsibilities have changed significantly, they are reclassified to a different title in our classification plan. Last year, you may recall, we added various titles to our HR toolbox uh, to be able to better classify some of the city's work. Uh this year we um only need to add two new classes, both in the riskmanagement job family. The two classes that you see

here, the senior riskmanagement analyst and the riskmanagement administrator, resulted from this study we conducted. I just want to mention to and clarify, these are not newly budgeted positions. They're just two new titles to to help HR better classify the work that our employees do. and they're necessary to recognize specialized requirements that these uh incumbents perform in functions that support the entire city.

Any questions on that? Okay. Well, my part is I'm going to now turn it over to um Gwen Bernett who will talk about our wellness program and benefits. Oh, good morning. I'm Gwen Bernett, the benefits manager, and I'll cover our benefit and wellness program

updates. On this slide, you'll see the employee share of our healthcare premium trends from fiscal year 23 till fiscal year 26. The city does currently offer two health plans, our Etna Whole Health and the Etna Whole Health Plus plan. Our city is self-insured.

So, we're pl we're paying our claims weekly to our vendor, which is Etna. We will continue to offer a zero premium employee only plan for the Etna Whole Health. We are actually one of very few in this area that offer this option. This is really our most popular plan.

As you'll see, it has about 999 employees currently here. So, even with our proposed premium increases for employees, our benefit plan does compare favorably to surrounding areas such as Durm County, Kerry, and Raleigh. On the chart, you also see that aside from the zero premium employee only health whole health plus plan, whole health plan, the city does pay between

81% and 92% of the total premium on the other tiers. In previous years, the city was able to absorb a larger portion of the premium cost, which actually helped keep the employee premiums lower. However, as time goes on, healthcare costs do continue to go up. We do have an increased usage of GOP1 medications as well as some higher cost claimments that really drive the increase in some of the our premiums.

So, in order for us to maintain our current plan design without actually reducing the coverage that we have and increasing our deductibles, we've actually had to pass a larger share over to our employees, which is why you see a significant increase, a premium increase to our employees on the screen. Yes. Okay. A wellness premium discount. As you should be aware, uh we do have a

wellness rate. In order to get it, you do have to complete as an employee a biometric screening, a health assessment, and three additional activities. This is for fiscal year 26. If you have a covered spouse on the plan, you do have to comp they have to complete a biometric screening as well and the health assessment to gain the $30 wellness premium discount for the upcoming year which is 26 is fiscal year 27.

All of these requirements will stay the same. The only change here will be the spouse is going to be required to complete one activity in which they can self-report into the li portal, whatever port option we have the time and the premium discount is going to increase to $40. Any questions? Thank

you. So, that brings us to the end of the pay and benefits presentation. Just want to make sure if there are any other issues related to pay or benefits. We've got a full team in the room who can answer those.

Uh if none, we're happy to continue on. Yeah. Um, council member Cabo, thank you. This wasn't based on the presentation, but this was based on um some conversations that we had our budget retreats.

There were a number of HR policies that were potentially being reviewed including um our probationary period, length of probationary period, our uh I think it was like pro how long our probationary period lasts, uh when can you get medical leave, our um some of our drug policies to align better with state law. And one of my requests was to hire an outside consultant to do that analysis. And what we were told at the time was that HR was maybe doing that analysis. So I would love an update on when we can expect um uh that to be complete and when we can expect to have

that conversation as a council. Thank you. So currently we are reviewing our um our policies. They're going through the onbase um system.

But to give you the specific data that you're asking about, I don't have a expected end for it to be done, but we will definitely come back and follow up. Thank you. You're welcome. I'd also It would be helpful for me to hear from council members.

So, it would not be normal practice for us to bring our policies for council's review. We're happy to do that at your request. If there are areas of interest that you'd like to have insight into, it'd be helpful for me to know. Otherwise, I know some of those policy reviews have been completed and are done. I was not aware there was an expectation that that council wanted to review those. So maybe offline from this conversation if you guys want to tell us the types of questions you have, I'd be happy to

daylight that for council and let you know where we're at. Can I respond because it was Thank you. Um, so I think it was my request because we'd been hearing from workers in general and so I had the question of what was the comparison to other both private um private market or private um non-government entities and government around policies um not just with with pay. We've done a lot around that, but it was around what are our and I have a list of them, but folks basically it seems like our probationary periods are longer than they are in the private sector.

Um, and especially around like you have to be here a year to access any medical leave or parental leave. Um, I think the other thing that was raised was marijuana use. Um, and and testing around that. Um, those are the three that I remember off the top of my head. I think there was a list of about six and I can go back and um talk see what what we said at the retreat but at the time it was one of my budget requests

was do we need to hire an outside consultant to do this analysis and what was at least indicated was that no we're going to do a lot of this internally and so I I was expecting at some point to have a conversation around uh what that analysis um uh indicated as as are we are we fair in comparison to other players. uh we we look at market but market isn't just that it's also our our our policies our HR policies and what we offer workers. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks Mr. McCclary. Um on this part-time issue, could you give us a number model for us what it would look like if the performance base increases for part-time employees were in the four to six range instead of 3% what that would look like? It would be significantly um higher.

Um I can't give you the specific number but it would be significantly higher. I understand if you could give us that number what that would cost. Yeah. And it it won't be a range of four to six. It that's a step plan. So we it would we would pick a number and I think if if your point is

to make it commensurate with the step plan it would it would be 5%. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to add to to the conversation with council council member Cabierro and that if there's any way to document I know um the band the box conversation was where it started but just figuring out where we are with our formulated justice involved folks and making sure that there are there's some way to document that we are actually banning the box um just so just acknowledging folks are here we have banned the box but I'll be happy to bring that policy for your view to the to the part-time issue.

Um, I'd be interested in sort of painting the picture of who those 200 plus employees are. Um, getting a little bit more information there. Um, and if I I think coming back to the the conversation about a balance and um is there what are the options that are

available to bring those part-time employees up in a more in a in a more fair way? Are are there different scenarios that we can explore um to to getting there? And maybe it even uh happens over a couple years. It's not something that's that's immediate.

So just um thinking about about how to balance what your concerns and the concerns that have been raised with my colleagues concerns as well. Um and then to um council member Cababayer's uh question about um about benefits uh leave those kinds of things. I think the city is a leader um and should be a leader on on things like parental leave where the the private sector does such a horrid job of providing those kinds of things. Um certainly the the city and the county do do much better.

Um pensions, those kinds of things. Those are those are benefits that that just exceed the private sector. Um, I would second um the possibility of looking at

the one-year uh weight for for being eligible for parental leave and whether we can make folks eligible for that. Um, you know, soon after they they start with the city and any other any other little possibilities that there are to to improve u benefits for for uh city employees. So, thank you. Sure, we'll look into that.

super minimal, but um just because we're having this conversation and something that council member Cavier just stated, I have on my list of things to talk with uh the manager about is the um drug testing panel in total um because it seems to be relatively outdated, especially if there are um there's a legal dispensary literally across the street from city hall. Um, and our tests are unable to show the difference between legal consumption of hemp or other weed. I don't know all of the different things. I'm I'm speaking out of my out of my league here, but we don't know the difference between the strains which are legal and which are

not legal. We can't test for the differences. Um, and so it is a concern to me that we are still testing employees um, and specifically for those things when we literally have a dispenser across the street. So, um, just something to put on everyone's radar.

I have a meeting scheduled tomorrow with the city attorney to go over the set policy. Yeah, I I concur. I think we should I first off, if you drive a heavy truck, I want you tested, but but I I think we we need to certainly look at uh um perhaps better testing and and our ability to distinguish um legal, you know, to to my colleagues point. But to be clear, I don't want to send the message that, you know, if you're if you're a cop or you're operating a firet truck or or you need to be tested and uh so anyway, thank you, Mr.

I just appreciate this balance. I was sitting over here feeling like I'm just drowning into the abyss like, okay, so what about people with heavy machinery? Like coming to work

stoned out and not being able to focus. I was getting so worried, but also I'm glad we're banning like I'm glad I don't have to be tested. I'm just fine. scratch that from the record.

Um, but no, seriously, uh, I I I'm I'm glad we're looking at modernizing this policy. Uh, I'm not a stone mayor, I promise. But we do need you modernized. All right.

Thank you. You're welcome. " Well, considering we were just talking about benefits and that sounded like somebody might need some. Um, all right, JJ, we are on we're on you. Good

morning, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, Prom, is this coming through?

Let me move that a little bit. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Prom, uh members of council, uh my name is JJ Scott.

Uh in just a second, we're going to run through uh this year's CIP appropriation recommendations. All right. Many thanks to Matt for getting that running and keeping us smooth here. So, here's my clicker.

Great. All right. So, this is what we're going to talk about. First, I'm going to give you an overview of the whole process.

Um, broadly similar to what we've done in the past, but we've, of course, changed a few things and looking to change a few more. So, we'll talk through that. Um, we're going to look at some of the project highlights this year. I think we have a lot of really great projects that we were able to fund.

Uh, and then briefly look at the entire list. Um, both our general projects, we also have our enterprise funds. um and several other categories of projects. We do have and I want to

acknowledge we have representatives from all the project delivery departments here as well. Um it really takes a lot of work and coordination to put these recommendations together. Uh and so while the budget team and the finance team spend a lot of time um putting this all together, we really rely on the project delivery departments um to make sure that we are making the best recommendations. Uh so first uh overview of the calendar.

So we start way back in January with the annual process. Um so we get all those requests in um the scoring committee is very active in February. So we get presentations on uh every project uh proposal. Uh and so the that team goes through a set of um criteria and we're going to look at that in uh just a second.

Make sure that the scores are appropriate. Uh and then that really forms the basis for our prioritization. Uh we plug all of that into a funding plan which we're going to talk about uh again in more detail. Did

a lot of work on that this year. Come to the manager with a set of initial recommendations. Do some more work and now we are here with uh our our final cut um for this part of the process I'll say. So, just as a reminder, uh CIP is a multi-year plan.

Uh but we review it annually and we do annual appropriations. Uh during last year's process, it did become clear to us that well, our annual process was very rigorous. Um we did have some room to improve on the multi-year planning. So, we as we worked with finance and with our project delivery teams over the last year, we really decided that first we needed to get that funding plan, that debt model right.

um so that we could be confident in our ability to pay for the projects that we were ultimately recommending. And so we spent some significant time on that and then plugging projects in, see how it worked, run in different scenarios. Um so we do recognize that we have that

and we used it to build what you're about to see. Um but we do still have some work to do on the all the projects that are ultimately included in uh the outy years of that. So, we have some assumptions that are built in uh and we feel good about those, but we really want to spend the next year um solidifying what we have on there and making sure that those are the right projects in the right sequence uh at the right cost. So again, these are the prioritization factors.

You've seen these several times. Uh we'd not make any major changes to this set of priorities for this year. Um and so you can run down that every project is scored against these prioritization factors uh and then validated by our scoring team. This year however there were a couple of things that we wanted to consider. we recognized that those factors didn't adequately capture this and so some certain types of projects um were not necessarily progressing uh and

after several years of using a similar um a similar tool um it started to become an issue and so we wanted to try to address that. So one of the first things um may seem fairly obvious but we strongly prioritized existing projects over new projects. you're not going to see many brand new projects uh in this year's list and that's because we really wanted to strengthen that commitment. If it's something that we said we were going to do, we want to make sure that to the best of our ability, we're dedicating funding to those projects.

Uh facility maintenance is another type of project that just it just didn't score well in our existing criteria and so a lot of really important maintenance projects kept falling off the list and not getting done. Um you may have noticed a plethora of HVAC projects. Uh this is why like those are very important. Our facilities don't work right when those kinds of systems aren't working. Uh so we introduced a new technical review form which helped us gather some additional information. Um

the types of work that these things would need, evidence that there was urgency to get this type of work done. Um and then so we used that and kind of layered that on top of the existing scoring um to to evaluate the projects. We also had a mix of programs that we were dealing with. So we had the bond.

We've talked a lot about the bond. You'll see some bond supported projects uh in here. Uh and then we also had the equitable and green infrastructure program running concurrently. And so um Mary Grace Stone King will do a whole presentation on that uh project, but there that EGI program uh focuses on certain types of projects.

And so when projects fit into there, they came off of the CIP again just opening up uh additional uh capacity there. And then I talked a little bit more about this updated multi-year funding plan. So, uh, what this really does for us is, um, I think it more accurately captures the

total cost of projects. Uh, and so a lot of the projects here, you're going to see the FY26 amount, but captured in that plan are in most cases the full costs of that. And then there are some projects that aren't even getting an FY26 appropriation, but we are reserving cap capacity in outy years uh to complete those projects. I have a slide later, so we'll get to see some of those, but again, we wanted to make sure that the commitments that we are making, we can we can uphold.

Can I just ask you what the format's going to be for that multi-year plan? Like how will it be presented? How will we see it? So ultimately, we hope to be able to present to you, and I'm I'm going to say hope because we don't have it yet, but we hope to be able to present you a a real plan that lays out um this is when we would start a project, make progress, deliver a project here, subject to all kinds of um caveats of course. Um, but that is the the vision to be able to um

as accurately and confidently as we can um give people a real road map for what we're hoping to build and we recognize project by project by project timing costs. That's gold standard. Yes. Like a like a spreadsheet like on a like on a spreadsheet.

Yes. Yes. like a if the if the folks who are better at this are listening, a visual is always super helpful so we can see where things fall on timeline. Yeah.

So, I didn't have this on the slide, but um you have caught us. We've talked several times about our new ERP. Um that's the that's where we keep all our our records, all our financial records. We are in the process of moving from our old one to a new one.

So, all the financial data is also going to be moved. And so what we have found is there are a lot of um issues with the old ways that we used we used to have a viewer that was up that was connected to the live financial data. A lot of that is breaking and the decision has been made we are going to wait until we get into that new ERP

system and then we really hope that we'll be able to build some um really high quality ways for to communicate this because there are real successes here and I think we can do a better job of communicating some of those. So, I'll stop talking. That was not part of my presentation. I'm sorry.

Uh, so let's get to some of the highlights. Uh, this is what actually has been vetted. Um, so parks, trails, recreation. Um, you know, we have a large commitment to do lead remediation in the parks.

um between last year and this year that's going to be $12 million and we don't know where we're going to end up but that is you know it's not fancy and it's not fun but that is important and it it is uh taking up capacity in that CIP. We have a significant additional appropriation for the rail trail. So we're hoping to um get that moving. Um and then some updates uh on other facilities. These again um not always the flashiest things but this is these are the things that our residents uh really care about and

that we hear a lot about transportation and infrastructure. Uh again lots of support through the bond for these types of projects. Um but also a lot of projects in the CIP moving that vision zero um doing basic maintenance on our bridges. um Mangum Roxboro um may have heard of that project and so we have a commitment to that one.

Uh and then of course you know school zones, trail crossings, again the places where people really interact with uh our transportation system. Yes. Can I ask if the if the school zone extends to the entire walk zone? So this this project so there's essentially a list of projects and I have a stack of papers here.

I may not be able to dig up exactly which ones, but they prioritize these each year. Okay. Uh facility maintenance. So again, these are some of the projects that in the past may have fallen off the list and um so we prioritized some of these. Um

we'll be looking at the list of projects in just a second. And you'll see right at the very top there are some big and expensive projects here and they just have we they have to get done. And so we were able to um fit a lot of those in. Uh and then our enterprise funds uh of course so water and sewer this is a tremendous portion of the CIP.

Um of course it's funded by our our water debt model and those rates. I think you just had a presentation on that not too long ago. Um but uh storm water also you can see the picture of the South Ler storm water restoration project. So, we have another appropriation uh recommended for that.

Uh and then environmental services, we're doing some work over on that campus um with the reorg that's now part of our formerly public works, now all environmental uh and street services. Um but we're going to be doing some work over there. So, this is a list. It's split in

half. These are our general capital. So, this is what we pay for out of the debt fund. Again, this is the FY26 proposed appropriation.

52 cents towards um, our capacity. And so you will see projects highlighted in green. Those are projects that in the last scenario that we ran because we ran multiple scenarios. In the last scenario, these were projects that we were able to add back um with that additional capacity.

Are we constructing an entirely new emergency operation center? We are. Durham count Durham County is and we are on the hook for our portion of that. Plus, as part of that project, we are building the new backup 911 center. So, we are we both have an ILA that requires us to pay half the cost of the emergency

operations function because we share emergency management with the county and then we are paying a portion of that that is building the backup 911 center. Got you. I I thought that number seemed a little low for a facility that be crammed full of state-of-the-art and kind of but that's good to know. Thank you.

It's 52% I think number Mr. 52 cents in the tax rate. So as I recall from the earlier slides that now a penny gets us about seven or eight million. Is that correct?

9 million. Yes. 9. 9 million.

We sure do. Yes. So this is all debt funded. And so this is the Oh, this is the this is not CF.

This is debt funded. Yeah. So we're not paying cash for these projects. So these will go into the debt fund be paid over time.

So the penny the the the half pay the debt. Yep. Is just to pay the debt. Yes. Uh the I'm still learning about the

emergency management center. So is this merging in 911 centers or is just a backup? Uh so the the county currently has an emergency operations center. It's the basically the department headquarters for emergency management uh on the same parcel of land that the youth home is located.

Um so first the city is is 50% responsible for capital expenses related to emergency management. They are replacing that function on the same piece of land and we are responsible for that. At the same time they were developing that project. The landlord where we currently have our backup 911 center which is Duke University indicated they want to redevelop the property that houses the backup 911 center.

So, we needed to create a new backup 911 center. We felt like there was a good uh chance to do that in the EOC and so they we agreed with the county to add that to the scope of the project. Recently, the county has opened conversations around merging the

sheriff's communication function with the city's 911 center. That's been an on andoff topic for years. Obviously, that requires cooperation of the sheriff, county, and the city. We have indicated our willingness to uh to have that conversation, but it is not it has not been decided yet that that is moving forward.

Um if that happens, it would primarily be housed in the existing 911 center in police headquarters. However, the backup 911 center would be designed to accommodate both the sheriff and the the city if needed. In the interim, the sheriff is also has also planned to build their communication center in this same facility. That 100% of the cost of the building for that right now would be charged to the sheriff, therefore paid by the county.

Correct. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Um, so this is just a continuation of the previous

chart. 52 cents. All right, I'm going to Sorry. Sorry.

Can you just go back to the is I don't I'm I'm just catching up now. But the is there a new transfer station? There's not a new trans This is maintenance on the transfer station. Okay.

because it says maintenance on the Okay, just making sure it was not a new one. It wasn't clear from that slide. There was some work that needed to be done there to renew permits. Yep.

Sorry. Um and is fire station EMS station number 19. That's that's planned, right? That's not um maintenance, right?

That's the plan. That is not maintenance. Yes, that is to construct it. And what's the timeline for constructing that? Is that right away or is that still to be determined? Um, I don't

know. It is in design currently. Thank you, Steph. So then the 18 million there, so it's in design.

So we're So this is part of our commitment to appropriate the cost um for this project. So this is our anticipated cost uh for this fire station. So design is far enough along for that to be a reliable estimate if that's if that's your question that we so design so we would spend $18 million in the next year. It we no we would appropriate $18 million which should be sufficient to complete the project.

Right. But not all all capital appropriations can go beyond the fiscal year without needing to carry forward. So when we're when we have a good estimate on the total lifespan of the cost, we put all of that money in the budget. Occasionally, we don't know what future phases will cost. So we may reserve capacity and only appropriate a small portion, but the majority of these projects uh that you see in here, the

amount that is shown as the appropriation should be sufficient to complete the project. And so that in FY27 that would not appear that it would be would just appear in this. Correct. Correct.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a way to know because some of these have federal dollars attached to them?

I'm thinking Durham Rail Trail or and I think the Woodcraft Parkway because that's TPO money in there. Um is there a way to know that so that we can have kind of like that risk assessment that that Christina talked about earlier? Um just to see what would be in the CIP. We lose funding from other sources.

What what does that do to the CIP? Because I think there's probably a number of projects, especially the transportation ones. Yes. Yeah, we can get that information together.

Yes. Okay. All right. So, let's move through.

So, these are our enterprise funds. Um water and wastewater. Again, some major major projects there. Long time

coming. Storm water projects. Many of these familiar, many also routine fleet IT governance. So there's some some major uh investments in IT that the city is committed to.

This is just a list of the equitable and green infrastructure projects. And again, Mary Grace is going to get up and give a fuller presentation on that in just a second. Um, and now reserve future capacity. So again, I want to treat this as a very tentative list.

This is what is currently in there. Um, certain amounts are there, but we want to spend the next year really vetting the these projects. Are these the right projects? the amounts that are in there, the timing of uh when these projects could actually

start, how that'll align um with what we have. Um and then be able to present to you um something that you know you can have some confidence in, some faith in that these are the projects that we will be able to do um over the next few years. So consider this slide sort of the the this first year's placeholder to get to the multi-year plan, Council Member Cook, that you asked about earlier. Um we did knowing that we have some future major expenditures in the CIP.

It was important that when we modeled what could be funded this year that we reserved capacity for projects that we knew were coming. Ultimately, what you see in front of you will grow into a complete list or as complete as we can make it of all the projects, but we did want to be transparent about some of these placeholders, especially ones that we know you get asked about. So, we are reserving capacity for a future fire station build. Obviously, we know those conversations come up. Is that in the

CIP? Is it not? This is your answer, which is we are reserving future capacity. Also obviously with all the conversation around Mangum Roxboro that is to your earlier question council member wrist that is a project where we didn't know enough about the final cost.

So the appropriation you have this year is for signalization but we knew there would be additional costs. So we have reserved capacity but we did not ask you to appropriate a number because we don't have a good idea of what that number ought to be. So there's a mix of factors that go into this. That's why you I think we wanted to be transparent about what this is and what it's not.

But I also wanted to put an asterisk on this to let you know that I think in future years this this will provide you a more complete picture and we're looking forward to getting that for you. you. Um, something I just like to throw in here while we're looking at the future capacity stuff, uh, for my colleagues, is that we just got this presentation on, um, the Central Park in

Durham, which I think everyone was really thrilled by, and we have to talk about funding. That's another story. But um as that and other projects in downtown are coming on board, um I want to hearken back to something that I think council member Baker put in front of us at the budget retreat, which was a study of the downtown loop and also some of these pieces of land that um the city owns that are just not being efficiently utilized. Um so I know that we've got a presentation coming from DDI.

I know they have a blueprint. Um, but as we're kind of thinking about these projects that might come in the future, to me, the study of the downtown loop really like interacts with a lot of those things that are coming. Um, and would help us use some land more efficiently. So, that's something that I am going to be pushing for to just at least be considered in this like future capacity um as a potential project in the future for funding.

So, just wanted to point that out. What? Uh, thanks. What's an e economizer

expansion, please? What is that? I knew as soon as it came up that you were going to ask that. I know it has to do with the facility, the new police headquarters.

Um, I might have to ask our general services staff to help me out on what the economizer is. Are you building a desk or It has to do with the air coming into the mechanical room. Right now it's just spilling into the mechanical room and so the economizer makes up more efficiently so it just doesn't dump in there. That was the way the existing design was.

So it has to do with air. Yes. Okay. So this is that it's that room where um like you have to keep it at a certain temperature.

If not it overheats and shuts down. And we had to shut down one time and the entire power went out from the police station. Something like that. I think that was different.

Okay, never mind. All right. I don't know, Bill. It sounds suspect, but I did also want to just just point out um for for our

neighbors and friends watching that we have on there fire station 21 for the future. And I know sometimes when we get into land use debates, we talk about infrastructure and capacity. This is what planning for a growing city looks like. Um we don't build fire stations and then say just in case people are coming.

We build them based upon projections of growth. And as folk come and I know that sometimes as you're growing there's discomfort when you're sitting in traffic to you that's a capacity issue. You don't care whether or not the road can actually hold 10,000 more cars. If you're there at rush hour and you're stuck at a light it's uncomfortable for you right then and there.

Air go. we have a capacity issue, but this is what it actually looks like for an entire city at the macro level. So, so we see there's a fire station right there that we're planning on building in the future based upon uh projections uh of future growth. This is what it looks like. This is the sausage making. It's not always comfortable when you're in the growing period, but I

think it's instructive to to point out that we are thinking about these things and they are on the radar and we do know that we need infrastructure and growth, but but these things work in tandem with folk coming. An empty fire station or a fire station with no people living in the area is not a good use of our resources. Um, sending buses out to where there are no people to get on the buses, it's not a good use of our resources. So, it's it's uncomfortable sometimes.

It's painful, but this is what it looks like uh in growing a city. So, thank you. Thank you. Uh can we get a timeline or just an update?

And may maybe this is going to be at another another time, but um the Elderby Creek project. Can't give you a detailed timeline on that, but we can we'll get you an update. Okay. Did you want to ask Uh just to to count um council member

Cook's um point about the Mangum Mangum Roxboro. Um yeah, we had we had discussed the the downtown loop and there might be there might be an opportunity here for us to and I I see that we have trans we have Sean Egan transportation presentation later to discuss the portion of the the loop that meets Mangum Roxboro. that might be that might be an appropriate time to to discuss. And then I have a meeting set up um with the city attorney's office to discuss the possibility of a municipal uh service district to help pay for these kinds of um improvements that are more geographic based and where the the um the benefits are are concentrated in certain areas.

So I will report back on on that conversation um once we have it. So, thank you. Yeah, this was about the Ellerby um creek storm water. I know at some point when we were doing I don't remember what

year it was, but when we were having conversations, what what is currently in the storm water CIP that isn't the full scope of the project, right? Like I know there's certain tiers kind of like the basic basic and then like the pretty stuff. Could we just get a little bit of update like what does that actually include? And I think maybe okay now or uh when Marvin's presenting.

Okay, we're going to get more information on the Ellerby Creek project. Thank you. Absolutely. Council member Freeman.

Thank you. And I just wanted to touch back. Uh fire station 21 is a is it a new station or a replacement? I believe this would be a a new a new station station.

So is there any future planning occurring for the replacements of stations? The So you currently have uh you have completed one replacement. We inherited station 18 when we went through the city county

merger. We have built the new 18 and that is completed. Fire station 19 which you see in this CIP is a replacement of the second station we inherited from the county and that is going to be built in research triangle park. Um all all uh future stations that are contemplated right now in the CIP are um are new builds. However, you just approved a contract for facility study of the entire fleet of well the entire uh inventory of fire stations which will inform conversations about uh renovations andor replacements of existing stations. the department uh fire department has already developed an internal CIP sort of with in-house staff um and so they have some idea of which stations obviously we still have stations from the error when we had combined uh city uh fire and police the public safety uh experiment from the late '7s which we backed away from and some of those stations were not built uh

with the intention of housing staff overnight and so they've had to be retrofitted for that purpose and therefore are highly constrained. So, we do have a number of stations that will need to be rebuilt with time. Um, the fire department uh you you funded a couple of years ago um a new piece of software they use that's very helpful in determining the correct location of stations based on call volume. So, all of that data informs the CIP.

As far as this particular request right now, it the only the only reserved capacity in the CIP is for this new build station. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.

Um, I appreciate my colleague, Council McC asking about the South El Creek restoration project, and it sounds like we'll get an update on that project. That's one we get a lot of questions about. The other one is the Durham Rail Trail. Are we going to get an update on the status of that, the timeline?

Because I it's also in the in the CIP. Yes. Henry Prosbury General Services. What

was the question, Council Member? the derm rail trail like just that and I don't know whether that's general services or it is general services the project is about 65% in design right now we just made our submitts to NC DOT and then we'll be making our site plan submitt to our planning department so it's squarely in design right now what's the long-term so what are we talking about in terms of actual delivery going to go out to bid I believe in spring of 2026 with construction duration to be approximately 18 months with delivery around I think February April of 2028 same timeline we've presented in the past, right? I think that timeline's also but I think it was 27 now 28. I mean the timeline has sort of like it gone out, right?

I think the construction duration remains the same. The project uh was looking for additional funds for design and that protracted the design schedule. So that that was the that accounts for the schedule changes. We asked for CIP money in last year for the design of the gateway plaza and some additional

amenities along the trail and then this year CIP requested for the construction of those amenities. I also there was I understand there was an approval hold up with DOT regarding the gateway uh park project that involved the potential changes to the loop. DOT had to approve that. as of the last project update we received from general services, they they felt like they had some opportunities to get to make up time in the remaining schedule.

So, um that that was the the cause of another significant cause of the delay. Yeah, appreciate that. I I just want to say for these high-profile projects, I think it's you know, I think we're with this proposed budget, we're asking our residents to dig deep again. So I think we need to continually think about how do we how can we find ways to deliver things more to quickly more efficiently.

So to because our residents are again we're asking them to dig deep. We want to show them that we're sort of creating the value they want the services and um and and projects. So I just want to would love to look for ways we can kind of speed things up to deliver for people as we're asking them to dig deep.

Certainly hear you on that and also on the visibility piece. Happy to provide project updates on a regular basis to council at your request and we can daylight these types of delays and and welcome your input and thoughts on how we can move past those. All right. Uh I don't have much to add about the bond.

You've heard a lot about the bond. Um but would remiss uh to not use our beautiful logo. um at this opportunity. Uh and so some of the projects that you saw, particularly um I'm thinking of the um street maintenance and the sidewalk maintenance is supported by the bond.

So you saw a full funding amount. Some of that is uh bond uh bond money there. Um, and I'm sorry, we had some questions about South Elderby Creek. Okay, Barbara Williams with the

public works department, soon to be environmental and street services. Uh, project is being broken up into two additional phases. Since we did put it out to bid earlier this year, we're not successful with getting biders that came in much higher than the engineers estimate, almost double the cost that we estimated for the project. So, we're trying to separate out some of the earth work from the remaining portions of the work.

That'll be the amenities and more of the actual storm water retention pond itself. So, the first phase with the earth work should be going to bid sometime this month or early next month. We'll see where bids come in and then from there we'll move forward with the second phase of or I guess it'll technically be the third phase of the project uh that will go to bid either later this year or early next spring. Hopefully I answered your questions because I didn't hear because I was walking down here as you were asking. Thank you. Can you just um as we move forward to like if we actually I I understand why there was a delay, right?

To council member Rrist's point, this is one of the projects that we get a lot of questions about because it has been fenced and you know there in that state for probably about five years now. Um um when we get that we get to move the dirt and that gets done and then we get to do the other thing and that gets done. If we could just get brief updates so that folks can hear and we can say, "Yeah, we just got this update. " Um that would be really helpful.

Thank you. Yes, we can do that. When do you expect to break ground then? Really depends on what type of prices come in through the bidding process.

If we get favorable bids, we should be able to start work sometime this summer, early fall. If not, we'll have to re-evaluate to see if we need to go back out for bids again for a third time. The problem is construction is construction right now is at an all-time high in this area. So, there's a limited number of contractors available to do the work. So then when we do let projects for bids, we're getting really high prices, not just on this project,

but every project that we're releasing for bid process through the city. If those bids come in too high and you got to go back out, please let us know so we have visibility on that. Yeah. Thank you.

I just want to thank staff. I I do want to This is because we know residents are listening. This is like basically Raleigh's BRT project which has now gone out to bid three times and they can't get their BRT project built. It's not just Durham.

It's there. We're seeing this across, you know, because I think residents sometimes think that we're just this island that where this isn't other things aren't being affected. And so I'm just highlighting that we're seeing this with other um important projects in other communities that are just getting stalled out because of the cost of construction. Thank you so much for the update.

Um just can you help me understand? So we the bid came back too high and when we put it back out for bid, we have shifted into phases. Yeah. So we separated out utilities from earthwork. So it's two two separate projects now even though it's the same big

overarching project but two separate bid packages. Is the idea then that we would have multiple bids for each thing and that would potentially lower the cost as opposed to one p one company doing it all together. Correct. Okay.

And then if it comes back a second time will there be further changes in the bid structure? Do you all change it every time you rebid or what? No, we just did it this time because we thought the way it was set up that it might have not encouraged a lot of companies to bid. So hopefully now it'll by separating it, you'll get true utility contractors and more general contractors bidding on earthwork type work.

Um just looking at the the website for the the um project looks like there are two different websites. I think one is for um under cultural and public art program and then the other one is about the actual storm water restoration project itself. And it it

looks like they're um the last update was 2022. So maybe maybe that's a good spot to to put some some updates and then we can just kind of find information there. Yeah, that should not have been last updated in 2022. We pretty much keep the project website up to date.

So I'll find out why it's showing that date. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Um and I usually ask this question just out of curiosity every year. Uh is it is it more cost effective for us to have a you know enough manpower and equipment inhouse to do these things than to bid it out considering bidding it out is always super high.

We are not a construction department. We are a maintenance department. So in order to staff up and buy the equipment that we would need and to find the skill set, it would take us years to do that if ever. Um, so that's why we use contractors for a lot of the work that we bid out. We're

we're really good at doing the small maintenance type projects, but anything on a large scale, we're just not set up to do. Yeah, I think that's why I'm asking. Uh, I'm documenting every time I ask this question so I can go back and reference and uh, calculate how much we're paying out in bids and then compare that to what it would actually cost to have our own equipment to actually have a construction department uh, to where we can control better our timeline as well as cost. Uh, oh, something legal.

Um, Mr. Mayor, um there's also a statutory limitation as to how much work uh the city can um actually do in a single project for capital improvements. Um so, and I don't remember what the cap is, but it's relatively low. So, a big project like this, we would probably statuto statutoily required to contract out and bid out the work. So, that's an added limitation to our ability to to do that kind of work. So we're statutoily limited to just what

we can do for ourselves. So we have to just we're we're forced to spend more money than Yep. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Yeah. This is not an LB Creek question. So maybe JJ and I didn't mean if anybody else get on LB.

I just am curious about whether um and I don't see it in the slide, although I'm sure that there are more in the future projects that y'all are thinking about besides the ones that you gave us today. Um we've seen two major uh Carolina theater investments the past couple of years. Do we have any more in the pipeline? Just curious about it.

Uh in addition to what we have this year because I know we have the roof and then now we have the HVAC which is costly. I love the Carolina Theater. Just curious if there are more coming down the pipeline. Yeah, I don't know right now. Um, but those are exactly the types of projects that we'll be looking at. Henry

knows. Henry Henry is gonna Henry is going to ask the only other project that we had submitted earlier uh was for the elevator replacement. So, that was an upcoming project too that we actually put I think in this year's CIP that wasn't made to the list. Not as not as big as the HVAC.

2. Okay. Cool. Thank you.

So, as amply demonstrated here, I mean, it really does take a huge team to do this. Love the spreadsheets, love the financial piece, but um really appreciate our departments, our project delivery departments who are out there. Um, I mean, this is the really complicated major uh major projects and so getting those delivered. Um, it just it it takes a lot of work that I have a a new appreciation for.

My first year working on the the capital side of things. Uh, and so again, appreciate all of your support. Looking forward to working on this for the next year. And if there are no more CIP questions, I'll

turn it over to Mary Grace. No question. And I I just want to I you know plug a commercial here for the the power of having a AAA bond rating and being able to float and leverage debt in a way like this to get these projects done. And I know sometimes we have our debates in isolation when we're talking about certain things and and pursuing our values.

But maintaining that that bond rating has really put us in a position uh that we're envied by by our peers quite honestly around the state and able to able to do projects like this by leveraging debt a good credit rating. Um, thanks to the entire team. Thank you, Mr. Manager, running such a tight ship.

Also, just a plug for the meetings that you actually have with the committee. When is that meet? Because it would probably be great to drop in. I haven't been in a while.

Sure. So, right now, the current model that we've been using, uh, that team is active primarily in February. Uh, and so we get together. Um, we consolidated it to four meetings this year. Um we have had discussions about going back to I know pre uh prior

to COVID there was a more ongoing um committee that met more regularly. We don't currently have that uh functioning um but it is definitely something that we are considering. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Also want to add my thanks to the finance team, Mr. Scott and your your team. you know, there's so much that we're doing that you're managing.

So, I really appreciate that. I know that as in the council, we come in for the budget retreat and sort of work sessions, but like you all are doing this 247. It's very reassuring that there's folks a strong team that's kind of looking at this stuff and thinking about the future of our city. So, again, thank you for that and appreciate all the work.

All right. Thank you so much. as they're transitioning and we leave the CIP conversation. I did just want to not hide the fact that uh in this budget preparation, I I don't think there's anywhere else in my proposed budget where I proposed a funding increase that wasn't somehow commensurate with direction the council specifically gave

us in the budget retreats except for this place in the CIP. 52 additional pennies to fund project capacity. Um, so I did before we left the conversation just wanted to make sure that that was noted that in the the overall amount above revenue neutral. This was essentially a discretionary recommendation on my part.

I think given the intense interest in the CIP, I think I read the the room correctly on that one, but but uh just wanted to make sure for the public that that was uh spelled out here again. [Music] attorney. Not yet. Still after the bar, but you now have a JD.

Yes. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, yes. Since you last seen me, I uh graduated NCCU law. Um, so very excited, but even more excited today

about EGI. That's that's a cool switch up. Good. Um, so first I really want to start with um gratitude, which I know um JJ did a great job of uh thanking folks as well for their CIP.

So I wanted to do the same for EGI. um really without a lot of departments and staff dedicated time on top of their day-to-day work um to make EGI happen and it couldn't have happened without um all of their support and work on this project. Um so I wanted to highlight especially some major um departments and teams that helped which are our budget and management services both our budget team and folks with CIP as well as participatory budgeting team um and our innovation team uh public works DPR NIS transportation

communications finance technology solutions and general services. So these are folks who really helped design this year's program and also did on the ground work. Um so I really wanted to mention those departments. Um so I also want to remind you of our EGI FY26 focus areas.

Um these are census blocks that were chosen uh five areas based on a scoring metric matrix which was built from factors of the climate and economic justice screening tool. Um and we also um since the last EGI we also made sure they didn't overlap. We wanted to choose new areas since the last cycle. Um, and we generally because they're census blocks, obviously they do not look like neighborhoods that usually our residents think of in Durham. Um, we

focused on engaging within those areas, but also a half mile radius outside of those areas and um, also looked at potential projects in a half mile radius of those areas. Yeah. Quick question reminder. So like the EGI is all is funded separately from all the other capital stuff, right?

It's it's a portion of the sale or I'm sorry, property tax is funding. So it's a half penny tax. Um and but also some of it is debt funded. So um cuz about I believe it's around 2 million a year with the half penny around there. Um and we build it up over two years, but we also have to debt fund some of the projects. So it's it's an and so some of them appear in the CIP then or um yes they all okay thank you

Christina Reen. Um so you will see them on the CIP ordinance but they are um and they are part of that debt service fund tax rate that I showed you before. Um but it is a so it is a portion of the the that penny that goes to the debt service fund but we reserve that as separate to do these EGI projects. So Mayor Grace mentioned that it was you know it's it's half a penny.

9 it would be half of that. If you if you debt fund stuff you obviously get like we've talked about with the CIP projects you get you know more money for that. Um but and some of them are um cash funded depending on the finance helps to make that decision. Thank you.

Right. So, the moment you've been waiting for. Drum roll. No, I'm just kidding.

Um, uh, FY26 engagement results. So, I wanted to start for first on what we did. So, we had six EGI area events and

I've included a lot of photos of them because they were truly beautiful community events. We had a lot of residents who engaged with us and then stayed after and like made friends and um played games with their families. Um we provided free food from a fruit food truck and a lot of games and different activities while um some of our engagement um engagement folks from the city but also uh some residents that helped us with engagement went around and talked to folks. Um so we had six of those.

Uh we had five collaborative events. So we um were able to work with our budget team to go to community a couple of community conversations um that were in those areas that I mentioned earlier. We also worked with our um transportation um department as well and came to some of their engagement events. Um, we did

door-to-door canvasing for the events and passed out over 1,200 flyers over 10 different days. We also had 32 different city of Durham employees from across departments volunteer for canvasing and events and um an estimated around 200 city of Durham staff hours to um direct canvasing. And that's not including the meetings and all of the the other things. So what did that produce?

Um we were able to engage 468 residents. Um this is about five times as many as we did last EGI. So really really awesome. Um we um engaged around 349 total in person across all the events we had. Um then 75% of our surveys were completed on paper and then the other on an online

tool. Um this one I'm really proud of because as we have mentioned uh we really focus EGI on those neighborhoods. So we really try to um reach people who have a strong connection in the areas. 5% of residents we engaged were living in one of those areas or within a half mile of those areas.

Um additionally wanted to show other demographic breakdowns that I feel are really um we really tried to target um a lot of groups that are often unheard. Um, so I feel like we did a really good job of um, getting a reflective um, demographic pool of folks from Durham in these neighborhoods. Additionally, with age, um, we were able for youth, um, to get

around 17% which I was really proud of. Um, I think Durham's population is around 20%. So, pretty close there. Um, we also wanted to make sure to represent our LGBTQ plus community and um the demographics and we had about 14% say yes and again woo some of those are prefer prefer not to answer. Um next um so the project recommendations um so to remind you again um I know earlier during the budget uh retreats um I mentioned how we are scoring and selecting projects a majority of the score is um uh community input so direct votes from residents but we also look at environmental impact and as well as project readiness because we want projects that can be completed within or

around four four years. So this is how our environmental scoring is. We have a lot of different factors uh based on what green infrastructure means um according to the EPA. Um, and we scored those at high, medium, and low impacts and had very um, laid out definitions of what that meant.

And that went into the scoring tools. And of course, some projects could score around multiple areas. So, our overall amount of recommended um, funds is a little under $6 million. You'll see there's variation among the different areas.

Um really a lot of that is to do with the top projects. Um each for the scores we chose the top three projects for each area. Yeah.

Sorry. Could you go back to the previous slide? So so a little bit unclear. So obviously so scoring was high for improving storm water quality, medium for reducing localized funding, low for capture water for use.

Those other categories how would they so other Yeah. Oh sorry that's just to show that each category would be from a high medium low scale. Sorry that was confusing. Okay those are all the So how do you how do you prioritize those different sort of those different factors?

those factors are all weighted the same in one environmental section which is weighted uh the 30%. So um they're all given different scores based on that high, medium, low numerical scores and then added up for that one project. But they all can get out of three. So like one through three.

Oh, they all get for for one project for storm water you might get a high, medium or low. It depends. Yeah. or none potentially if that project does not

impact storm water. And again, um we had very um specific definitions and examples of what kind of projects would score high, medium, low. Thank you. So the high score would be 27 for like Yeah.

If you got Yeah. And a low score would be zero. So um again the variation was around because the scoring um we were able to choose with the amount of funds we had and worked with finance and budget um was the top three projects in each um area. So to go through those projects um and we will be posting this on our web page for EGI. So, um, for East End and Rowena, um, constructing an ADA compliant bus stop, um, installing a midblock crossing on East End, and then

also, um, removing, um, doing improvements to CR Woods Park, which also include some native planting um, and rain garden elements and others for East HT. Where was that? A2. Um, uh, oh gosh, I might have to call on transportation to answer that.

The A2T. Yes, that's what I thought it was. Okay. I want to make sure.

The American Tobacco Trail. [Laughter] We Oh, never mind. It means access to transit. Thank you.

We're there. And we'll we'll change that for our other communications so folks know what it is. Um I appreciate that question. Thank you.

[Music] Um oh wait oh okay. Um for East Trinity and Aendale uh Bay Harrove Park. Um, this one's also very exciting to just share a moment that was one of our really well- attended events. We had it in Bay Harbor Park.

Um, so a lot of folks were really passionate about that project in particular um around that that park and um was a really great event. So I'm excited that um it was one of the top voted projects um and scored projects. So uh a lot of this is around providing shade shelter as well as rainwater capture for plannings. Um also again you'll see with EGI because of the environmental definitions we're trying to incorporate more green infrastructure. So walks and plaza would utilize carbon cure concrete. Um, additionally, um, construction of an accessible additional accessible ramps

around Aendale and East Trinity crossing and then Madison Street drainage improving um, some of the flooding issues on that street. I have a I have a quick question on the Aendale East Trinity crossing. Part of that project was also PB funded. Is that right?

Um, I believe it what part of it was and they already had some work that was done in that area, but that came up again as needing even more improvement. It's kind of like helping complete. Yes. Okay, perfect.

Thank you. Yeah. Um, Highway 55 area, um, Unity Village Park. So you can see a lot of different um improvements to that park again including uh meadow plannings um improving pedestrian as um access and playground improvements and shade features um and then in the NC55

sidewalk gap. So, designing constructing a sidewalk connection starting along NC55 north of latitude to Riddle Road um and Ancraftoft Avenue sidewalk. So, improving the safety there um around those bus stops. And then can I ask a question about the NC55 sidewalk gap?

Is there also because there's another project I might be wrong here, but it's TPO funded somewhere on Highway. Yeah. Uh, and so just is that also again to help complete the kind of arc of that project? I'm seeing nods back there.

Sorry. I will call on my transportation. Thank you. Sorry.

Uh, Bill Judge transportation. The, uh, TPO funded project would be um, north of Riddle and it's a shared juice path. So, this would be a um sidewalk extension basically south of that project to connect to some new development further south that's constructed sidewalk filling in a sidewalk app. Thank you. I really appreciate that. It would be really

lovely to get some kind of images where where like because these are all pieces of different funding and and really showing the community like I really want to lift up what uh manager Ferguson said a little while ago. We are putting a lot of money in CIP and we are delivering uh on a lot of projects and I really want us to like own the wins, right? And really celebrate those wins. And so if folks could see those, you know, EGI helps fund this little bit, but then with this other thing now you got a whole beautiful project and I think residents would really appreciate seeing that.

And I and I also would love giant signs. I've said that so many times. Thank you. Thanks.

Awesome. All right. and then Holloway North Elizabeth. So, uh, pedestrian safety upgrades at Elizabeth and Holloway. Um, an on street protected path under the railroad to existing sidewalks on Elizabeth. Um, and then, uh, pedestrian safety at Taylor Street

and I believe that might be Elizabeth Street. I can't see right now. Yeah. Thank you.

Um then MLK and Fagatville. Um safety at Cook Road and MLK. So reconstruction of existing curb radi and concrete medians to reduce pedestrian crossing distances and provide refuge islands. Um Southern Boundaries Park.

So this one is developing an entire new playground. There's currently not a playground at that park. Um, and then also, um, traffic coming. I believe it's, is it Cook Road?

No. Yes, I think so. Sorry. Okay. I believe it's Cook, but I cannot

see. There we go. Yay. It's good.

Okay. Right. There we go. Well, all right.

And that any other [Music] questions? Um, I actually don't have any questions. I just want to say that this looks awesome. And I I want to echo what Council Member Cavier said, like these are huge wins.

I was just thinking about that while we were looking through it. Folks ask us all the time for improvements and a lot of these places are ones that we have gotten requests from. Um, and obviously the folks who are living there directly impacted by uh the lack of I mean some of these things like seem pretty obvious, but like shade, places to congregate that have shade, uh, water recapture, these are really awesome things that we're doing and y'all's done such an amazing job at engagement. So, I would I would echo what Council Member Cabier said. It

would be great to see just a visual of where all these um things are happening, but awesome. And uh thank you so much for all the work y'all put into this. Thank you. Any other question?

Go ahead. Uh do so do we not have like an interact active map or anything online to um so we um usually put it in our CIP project tracker. Um I think we could make it a little more clear about which projects are EGI and that's something we can work on. Um, we have some other interactive maps about all the equity scores of every census block in Durham, um, from our scoring matrix where folks can kind of compare their neighborhoods to the ones selected.

Um, but I I do think we need some better visibility of the ongoing projects and that's something we can work on. Thank you for your work. Um, I would also add,

um, having signs, physical signs out there showing what the city of Durham is is doing with these folks tax dollar everybody's tax our our tax dollars. Um, go go goes a long way. Um, and you know, that's something you see a lot in Latin America. Um, and it it it tells a story.

You know, there's a lot of work happening. What is the what is the city doing? What is the county doing? So, thank you.

Yeah. Um, just really, this is just I mean, you know, in in Chicago, you literally had Mayor Daly's name on every single trash can. So, um, so I we've said this a lot. I really want us to to we we we need to tell community and and tell that story about how we're winning on their behalf, especially in this time. And staff works really really hard. And I this this was um this whole thing came about many many years ago at this point EGI and this is a huge success story and we really need to highlight how successful it's been.

So I look forward to seeing Mayor Williams on all of us. Got it. That's good for a Reddit post. All right.

No thanks just uh my commendation to staff. I remember uh council me some years ago um manager Ferguson I think you gave us the initial presentation on this if I'm not mistaken we were talking about this bomb when it was all a dream um it was just a concept and now to see now to see it um you know in my tradition word becoming flesh as it were and to see actual projects I I I do appreciate um and share my colleague celebration um that that not only city leaders but the city administration is indeed responsive uh to the people's voices and are doing projects particularly these that are directly reflective of engagement and asking folk uh what they want that these things are going on. Um I would just ask that remember this conversation as we have

other conversations. Um and remember uh what we're doing collectively and what we are leaning on leaning in together collectively as a whole when we have some of our other uh discussions. Um this is great great project and great work and and it's important for our city and yeah put some signs up definitely. Thank you Mr.

Mayor. And I also want to um also thank DCM Wimbush who has also been great leader and um has guided a lot of this work as well. So wanted to make sure I let her get some gratitude. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Uh lunch is being set up right now. So, whenever you would like to recess and then come back or do a working lunch, however you'd like to do it. So, it should be set up within the next 10 minutes or so. So, we can keep uh No, we don't want you to

know. No, we have a lot of questions for you. We won't we we'll we'll get started and when lunch is set up, we'll take a break to recess and get back to it. Make sure the working properly.

Good afternoon, uh, Mayor Williams, Mayor Prom, uh, Middleton, and members of council. My name is Sean Egan. I'm the director of transportation for the city. Uh I know you have a very full agenda, so I'll move quickly through this presentation. Uh it's my honor today to represent more uh the 90 city employees in the department and more than 200 Go Durham and access transit workers supported by this budget. Our mission in transportation is to provide and maintain a safe, equitable, inclusive

and sustainable multimmodal transportation system with high quality infrastructure to improve mobility and to offer everyone in Durham access to necessities and opportunities. Uh our work is led by two assistant directors. Bill Judge, who you just saw, uh, manages infrastructure development, traffic operations, and safety. Uh, while Evian Patterson manages our parking operations and mobility division that plans and overseas go Durham transit services.

Our business services division, led by Tom Develin, is responsible for developing this budget, as well as the contracts, agreements, and many agenda items we bring before city council. As part of the city's reorganization, three of our staff who are responsible for reviewing the transportation impacts of planned developments will move to the planning and development department. The budget also includes three new positions to deliver bus rapid transit projects

starting with the central Durham BRT. These three BRT positions are 100% funded by the Durham County Transit Plan and we are grateful to our partners for their support. We'll now move into the transit discussion with our a review of fiscal year 2025 highlights. Um, so looking back on the last year, we started out FY2025 on a high note, welcoming US DOT Secretary Pete Budajedge, Governor Roy Cooper, and US Representative Valerie Fushi to tour the Holloway Street Transit Corridor following the announcement of a $12 million grant to fund improvements to bus stops and pedestrian safety.

We were proud to have many of our bus operators who deliver essential services every day participate in that event. You can see them here. This picture is AI apparently. Uh we're now uh nearing the 50% design level uh for the hallway street

improvements uh and we look forward to bidding construction in FY 2026 uh for our Go Durham services. The Durham County Transit Plan funding enabled a major expansion in August of 2024, implementing a new cross town connection on Route 6 between the Duke VA hospital and Duke Regional Hospital. We also restructured routes 1, 4, and nine in North Durham, doubling service frequency to Northern and Riverside high schools and laying the foundation for 15 minute service on routes four and nine in FY2026. Click.

Uh, we also recognize that not every transit need can be addressed by a 40 foot bus. So, we revamped Durham's microtransit system that enables users in zones to request a ride to get to and from our transit network. We developed a new model to reduce costs while still enabling first and last mile connections. Also in October, we kept a close eye on ridership that has been

building at a rapid pace, fueled by service increases funded by the Durham County Transit Plan, like the one implemented in August. With more than 650,000 trips in the month of October 2024, we broke our record uh from October 2017 uh by nearly 6%. Sorry, 650,000 trips in the month that just the micro transit. No, just it's the whole bus system.

Okay. I was like, what in the world? No, that would be amazing. Okay.

We would not be reducing costs if we um were doing that. We're much more cost effective providing trips on the bus. Yeah. Okay.

That's why um throughout the fall, we also worked with our partners uh at Durham County, Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization, and Go Triangle to secure the full funding needed for Durham Station. uh and we hosted our groundbreaking uh in December. Construction on that project is now underway. Uh we also completed testing on transit signal priority at 13

intersections on Fagetville Street and began TSP operations. During our testing, TSP enabled a significant reduction in buses running two to five minutes late, boosting on-time performance and advancing the Durham County Transit Plan goal of improved service reliability. So, here you can see some of our Sean, can you say more about how that works that the TSP? So, basically the way that it works is uh if you've been on the bus, the bus pulls up to the traffic signal, uh there's a stop there, everybody gets on and off, and then just as the last person gets on and the doors closed, the light turns red and then everyone sits at that cycle for uh a minute or two waiting for the it to turn green again. What TSP does is it sends a request to the traffic signal and says can I get five more seconds of green maybe 10 more seconds of green time so that I can clear the intersection. Uh and so uh we are able to uh improve on

time performance by implementing that technology at those 13 signalized intersections. Uh so looking ahead to FY 2026, uh the budget continues fair free service on Go Durham and access through June of next year. Uh, and it includes funding for service expansions from the Durham County Transit Plan, uh, including 10-minute service frequency, uh, along Holloway Street, a new cross town route uh, from the village to North Carolina Central University, uh, and 15minute service uh, in North Durham on the 4 and 9. 0 0 study led by NC DOT with funding support from the Durham County Transit Plan recommended the central Durham BRT project connecting from the village in East Durham downtown and out to our largest employer at the Duke VA hospital

campus. In January, we kicked off our level one feasibility analysis eval evaluating routing alternatives and screening for fatal flaws. We're now at level two evaluating alternatives against the Federal Transit Administration's small starts criteria for land use and economic development. As we begin FY2026, we are prepared to put forward a preferred alignment comprised of the highest ranked segments from level two uh that are best suited for implementation and feasibility for small starts.

funding in the FY2026 Durham County Transit Work program. And this budget will enable us to add three staff and contract for consultant services to support project development activities and coordination with FTA. Sean, real quick, what is is there going to be some kind of modification of lane markings for BRT or is are we are they going to have dedicated their own dedicated lanes in the So, we're looking at the places where we think dedicated lanes would offer the most benefit. Uh

so that's all part of the evaluation. Right now we do have some red painted lanes around town uh for uh some segments and so we're looking at the places where we think u dedicated lanes can be accommodated um as well as uh where they'll provide the most benefit. So stay tuned on that. Is it are we anticipating that wherever they're going to be there will be some uh it's just a matter of where and for Yeah.

And what at what lengths? Gotcha. Thank you. Um so BRT uh is you know dedicated bus lane.

So other than wherever those bus dedicated bus lanes might be what what would make it BRT other than those dedicated lanes? So, the biggest thing is frequency. We're looking at potentially starting with a 10-minute frequency on the quarter and growing that service to five minute um frequency so that you walk out to the bus stop and you'll never look at

a timet again because on average you'll be waiting less than 3 minutes um for the bus to come. Uh but we also want to see higher quality stations particularly um at major transfer centers like the village. Uh we want that to be a high quality transfer experience um at the village um and at the Duke VA campus. Both of those are very high riders, some of our highest ridership locations in the system.

Um and so um we uh we're we're looking at uh the quality of the infrastructure um and the service uh with a real strong focus on uh frequent reliable service that gets you uh where you're going quickly. Um, so considering where we are now, is there any any consideration of how this plays with the rest of the triangle? Um, uh, in regards of the plans from the airport to like RTP and, um, from East

Durham to the center like the mobility center. Sure. So this was uh recommended as part of the the NC dot fast study. That study is u advancing an entire network.

So this would be one leg um in that broader network that would connect BRT systems across our entire region. This was the one that um the study recommended that we get started on um and then we move through um connecting our BRT with with other BRTs across the region u in the the kind of vision laid out in that plan. Did that study considered a timeline of other studies that are happening? It it did uh I think it's being updated right now to reflect uh the most recent developments on Newurn Avenue, for example. Uh and there's still some uncertainty about uh the north south BRT in Chapel Hill uh with the new administration conducting reviews uh of projects. So uh I think it's it's hard

to say right now how all of this will schedule out because there there is considerable uncertainty about some of the early uh BRT projects. And lastly, are we uh looking at potential other routes or BRT projects at the same time? So, we're uh supporting uh a Durham County effort to do a broader uh countywide plan that looks across the county and really across the region u at a at a broader network. But we didn't want to wait for that uh full uh vision plan to get started on what we thought was the most promising first line.

Okay, that that's good to hear. Thank you. Yes. Thanks, Mr.

Regan. Isn't it also true that the original fast study looked at was thinking about BRT from Duke all the way out to the airport down 70, right? Wouldn't that sort of like scale back, but isn't that wouldn't that be the potentially the next phase of the Holloway Street BRT to sort of extend that service, right? So I mean I think this alignment lends itself to

extensions down uh US70 for example from the village but also down 15501 from the Duke VA complex. So we really see this as a starter segment with great opportunities uh for extensions beyond this uh once it's up and running. Well, I I'm I'm glad I know that as um Council Member Cabier and other have mentioned, I know Raleigh has had some delays on their this is their Newburn BRT, right? It's been delayed and Chapel Hill also was supposed to be getting going on the north south that's also been delayed.

Is there any like value in having like a friendly competition in the triangle saying like we're going to beat you all to BRT? I think um we've learned a lot of lessons from the challenges um that we've seen from our partners in um Raleigh and Chapel Hill. U some of the um schedule impacts and cost impacts that they're seeing on Newurn Avenue uh have a lot to do with roadway widening. Uh so we're looking at uh alternatives here that would not require roadway

widening as a way to deliver the projects uh quickly um and uh at a limited cost and then limited uh disruption to u community and environmental impacts. Uh so we're trying to take uh some of the lessons from those other projects uh and use those to design a project that can be uh planned and delivered quickly. Uh whether we can do that uh and open for service ahead of u those other two I think it's s too soon to tell but sure would be nice. I think you had to make a friendly wager with Mayor Cow, Mary Anderson. you know, some kind of a, you know, if if we get there first, they owe us, you know, I don't know what really bunch of city of oaks under a bunch saplings or I sat on a stage with all of the triangle leaders, mayors, um, some time ago and everyone has something to do with bus raper transit already kicking off except us and I was new on council

" He said, "Yeah, that's why you're here. " So, I'm glad to see this happening. Now, I'm sitting on Go Triangle and you guys have no work happening. Um, there are there is a lot of movement TP.

Yeah, TPO. That's right. Um, I saw on my calendar was what is this? Um, but yeah, there's a lot of movement happening around the triangle.

Go Triangle just today, which is happening as of 28 minutes ago, just brought their new CEO in. Today's his first meeting and um, we are finally about to be the regional connector like we should be. So looking forward to how all of these things are going to play together. All right.

Well, as we discussed at the budget retreat in February, there is sufficient fund balance in the transit fund to support the projected deficit in FY2026 without an increase above the revenue neutral rate. 75 cents for the past six years. The budget before

4 cents rate which is the revenue neutral rate uh for the transit fund. As you can see in later years of the plan significant adjustments to revenues and/or expenses will be needed in future years as fund balance will be substantially depleted next year. Here we see our major assumptions for revenues and expenditures keeping Go Durham bus and access fair free through June of 2026. Uh Durham County transit plan funding is available for service expansions in East Durham and North Durham.

Um and we do not expect additional support from our state or federal partners. We have cost escalation built into our bus operations contract and are currently soliciting a new contract for access that raises standards for on-time performance and customer service to respond to feedback from our riders. Both of these contracts along with

indirect costs paid to city departments for their support uh will increase our cost structure in 2026. With the fund balance that we accumulated thanks to federal COVID relief funding going away in FY2026, we will face difficult choices in the next budget cycle as we continue our fleet renewal program without the benefit of competitive federal grants that supported bus purchases over the last several years. So with that, I'm going to move into parking. Before we get into Sure, Mr.

Mayor, I'll yield into uh parking. Um, how how long do totally spec I'm asking you to speculate. How long do you anticipate we'll be able to do fair free buses? It's really a a decision for council.

I'll I'll take that. So that without doing something different. Maybe I should add that to the question. Um the so you know the the intention of putting

this as a discussion item back in your budget retreats was to hear council's uh long-term trajectory and and the long-term trajectory I think we heard loud and clear was keep keep fair free for the foreseeable future. Uh it's part of why this presentation is back before you today in part that last slide I wanted to call attention to and that is after this year the fund balance is depleted. This will require a higher tax rate dedicated to transit to continue fair free. Um I wanted to get some long-term direction from the council which I think I received.

So at this point barring council giving me a different direction. I think it is foreseeable that a another tax rate increase would be needed next year to support fair free into the future. Um and I wanted to to call that out now. We could have put that tax rate in this year, but the fund balance told us we did not need it. And so I didn't want to uh request the revenue before the fund required it. But I did want to highlight

very clearly for council that this is not a sustainable tax rate going forward. Um, that actually leads to one of my questions, which I think um, Christina and I had talked about before, but um, I'm just curious to hear thoughts on it again. I understand the the the want to use all of the money that we have brought in from taxpayers and and what that looks like. is are there negatives to depleting the fund first um and and doing the kind of the trajectory that we're doing right now which is raising the revenues after the fund is depleting as opposed to leaving some part in the fund and can someone talk to me about this might be yeah I see philosophically I would say no and this is fairly consistent with how we manage our other funds some other funds are actually in deficit uh so it there's there the only purpose of raising the tax this year would be to, you know, to try and

forward fund it or if you wanted to spend additional money from this fund. I wouldn't recommend raising it if we didn't have an expenditure in there. Uh, you know, the the reason some funds go positive, you know, can can have to do with the variables of their cost structure or the variables of their revenue structure. At this point, having eliminated fairs, there's not a lot of variability on the revenue side.

So now we're in a much better position to predict when it goes negative because we don't have a revenue source coming from from the fairbox that that we have to predict that there's no more predicting on this side. Um so I I'll look to Christina if she has any more thoughts on sort of fund philosophy and and but I think that's largely going to cover it. Um clear yes Christina Rearden um and I think uh the city manager has expressed it well but um also this is this is different than our general fund which we talked about. Um Sean is going to talk to you a little bit about the parking fund which is one of the funds that is in the negative. So our overall cash is

strong in the city. Um this is a fund too that um had received a lot of um federal co dollars and so some of that you know surplus that you're seeing is stuff that um has not been spent down from there as well too. So, not necessarily, you know, exc um sitting in the fund, but some other um in some other funding that we had that's available next year to um support fair free service. Thank you.

Um I just would like to add my support that I would I would like to continue to see Fairfree in the future. I've got a question. This may be your question as well, but I want to get back to Mayor PM's comment. You know, part of the goal of fair free is to sort of make it easier for folks to get around, right?

Part of it is increase wrership, right? So, I guess I'm looking out like five 10 years out. Is there is there a point where wrership maybe doubles from where it is today or I don't know. Is there a point at where at which it becomes it makes sense to begin charging fairs modestly once wrership is dramatically expanded? I'm just kind of

curious what that looks like as we go way out or do we think fair free for like you know not just a short term but even longer term future. So right now what like what are the sort of like what are the trade-offs there? Right now our bus system is primarily used by um lowincome riders. So 87% of our riders uh have incomes below $35,000 a year. I think as we introduce more and better options, we're going to grow um and broaden the demographics of our ridership and maybe um as we do that and more folks are riding things like our BRT system, we'll get to a point where most of our riders are not lowincome and it makes sense to do uh what a lot of the large urban systems do, which was to bring back um fair collection because in cities like New York and Washington DC and Boston, most of the um riders um are not low-inccome.

So, uh I I would love to see us get to a point where we've grown our ridership and we've broadened um the demographics uh to a point where uh it really um there's there's a strong case to be made uh for uh fair collection because most of our riders um are are outside of that low-inccome group. Um, just to that point because I know this has come up a little bit with like Go Triangle and who uses Go Triangle versus who uses Go Durham. It would be great to see that. I think we've had these conversations, Council Member Wrist and I sit on the TPO.

We've had some of these conversations um in in meetings with you and your staff um Sean, but part of the difference is that demographic. like we have carveouts for seniors, we have carveouts for youth, we have carveouts, right? So, we wouldn't make the kind of money from users that you would see in other systems and to bring in fair boxes and all of these things. That cost

analysis isn't to our benefit right now. So, for folks who are like, well, you should bring back fairs. It's it's not good for the system. The people who are often on our buses aren't folks who would be paying anyway, even if there were were a fair.

Um, and then I just want to really shout out the the route to Riverside. My kid takes a bus along now. That's all. Thank you.

Thanks, uh, colleagues. And and and I I appreciate conversations about um expanding ridership. Part of the way we can do it is folk like us riding the bus and and and using it. It there's kind of an interesting dynamic.

Some folk I talk to, part of the stigma that folk have about the bus system is because it's free, it must be something I don't want to ride. Um, there are some folk, interestingly enough, who who would find it more attractive if there were a fair because in their mind that somehow some type of uh siphoning value. It kind of it raises the gate of of the rider. So, I I would just encourage folk um everybody listening to and listen, it

can be it takes some planning sometimes because of connectivity, because of having to go downtown, you know, if you want to go out to the mall rather than just driving straight. It it takes some planning sometimes, but I but for the folk who are interested in and want to see um you know, enjoy the the egalitarian nature of our transportation like some other cities do to make a plan and ride our buses. They're clean, they have Wi-Fi um and and they will get you there. Um so that that's my commercial for the buses.

Shout out to all my people on the on the number two line. Um, I asked about the the fair free zone because listen, as an elected official, it feels good to say fair free buses and I support it, but but I'm also interested. I don't I don't necessarily want to bequaf to some future council inevitably, you know, we get to say that it's fair free and we get the benefit of it and you're the council, however, that's going to have to raise taxes or institute a fair. Um, and I don't know because I want to keep it fair free. I mean, I don't know what the economic situation is going to look like from

from year to year. No, no one does. So, if we if we're faced with a year where it's time to raise taxes to keep buses fair free, but we've also had a terrible turndown in the economy where we've got to raise other taxes and other things as well. Sometimes I wonder is it better to kind of incrementally put ourselves and this is for my colleague incrementally put ourselves in the position to keep it fair free or do we wait to that moment to council member Cook's point when fund balance is totally depleted and we have to raise taxes at that point to keep buses fair free not knowing what other reasons we might need to raise taxes uh that year. Um, so again, it doesn't require any action now, but I too I don't think there's as a person on this council who doesn't want to keep Fairfree buses in perpetuity, but I I think we might want to start thinking about how to uh vector ourselves for the landing, prepare ourselves uh for that day uh you know, when when we may have to raise taxes and not necessarily wait for the drop dead day to do it. Um

again, no action required now, but just something to think about as we move forward. Um, thank you. Oh, one other question is, um, is transit signal priority available in person or private vehicles? You don't have to answer that now.

You can get back to me. I uh No, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank thank you for this work. I mean, this is this is one of the most exciting um realms I think um and something that I'm most proud.

I mean, we're expanding service, um, building faster service, and it's and it's fair free, and a lot of cities can't say that. And that ticks so many boxes of of our goals. I mean, the wrership, um, being being low income, but just sustainability, equity, I mean, it covers everything. I mean, this is such a worthwhile investment for us to continue making and I don't know what the future holds, but um but if there's,

you know, it hurts anytime we have to raise taxes, but this is one thing that that is that is worth raising taxes for and spending public dollars on. My one of my questions that I have is when when there were fairs, there were companies that were buying in bulk, I guess you could say, or or giving us chunks for their employees, provided passes. Yeah. What how much what are we losing there?

And have we connected with those employers to get a payment in lie of of what they were providing before? Uh so we have done some outreach. We were bringing in I think it was around $300,000 a year. So that's about 1% of um our operating costs. Uh so um but we have done some outreach to them. Um, I think that's going to be part of our work um as we get ready for the next

budget cycle is to go to employers uh and then um our uh government partners uh in the region and see uh what uh what they would be willing to contribute uh to help us um keep the system fair free but also uh reduce the the deficit that we're looking ahead to in 27. Great. Thank you. We were one of those employers, by the way.

So, I uh just add a little flavor to the conversation. This is why um this is this is a struggle that I have inside. It's like, you know, these great ideas cost a lot and I'm willing to make that investment. I'm willing to support that or even promote it. Um, but I I this is why I always talk about the other things we can, you know, do to promote more revenue generation without just taxing people. Um, which is why you hear me talk about festivals a lot, which is why you hear me talk about um an innovation

center that includes a convention center or more retail. This is why. " And yet also want to just make it way more expensive to live without generating other sources of revenue. This is why I talk about those things.

So, I'm going to be one of the folks that believes that transportation should be a basic right that we should always be able to get around. I know other people in the in the triangle are started to charge fairs again. We're charging fairs again at Go Triangle. Um, but I I think that, you know, you know, getting around in and throughout our city uh should should not be a barrier. Uh, and I support that until it makes sense to start charging again. But I also hope that you know we can start generating more revenue or diversify our revenue sources um in other ways and other means so that it's not such a strain to have to have a have to you know think about even paying part-time employees a a self-imposed minimum wage or keeping buses free uh or or the other

assets that we need uh in regards to capacity during growth and development. uh government is not a for-profit entity where we have an item to sell and make more or make money. It is a a balanced budget. So, just wanted to make sure that's in there.

That'll move into the parking. Uh so, this will be mostly uh just refreshing the discussion we had at the budget retreat in February. Um just some highlights. Since council updated the discount parking program in October last year, we've increased the number of permits issued from 23 in October to 63 uh this month.

Uh so low-income customers are benefiting from this change. Uh we've also successfully implemented the park mobile system offering customers more ways to pay. Uh and you can see in this photo the lovely uh new paint job uh on our church street deck. uh as our partners in general services continue to rehabilitate our

decks. Do you have a question? When do we get Apple Pay in in in activated on uh Park Mobile? It's coming.

Okay. Thank you. I struggled yesterday. 25 $25 million deficit in FY2026, primarily driven by debt service costs as revenues remain mostly flat with no proposed parking rate increases. Uh we continue to strengthen our partnerships with the Carolina Theater Convention Center and DPAC and to explore additional revenue opportunities with our partners to grow utilization without raising parking rates. Uh our focus on capital rehabilitation as well as lighting improvements that began at Durham Center deck yesterday uh will increase energy efficiency and improve the customer

experience. Uh and with that I can take questions about uh we got any questions in front? Um I have a couple of questions. The first one, uh, very random, but all the way back up to the three, uh, folks that are coming on board for bus rapid transit, when you all talk about covering the cost of employees, is it just salary or is it salary and there's a an investment for benefits, too?

Yeah. So, it's salary and and fringe benefits. Okay, cool. Um, and then, um, this is something on parking.

I I was just saying to the mayor that I also got stuck in a garage yesterday because I forgot my wallet on the way out the door. Um not my normal standard, but here we are. Uh getting married in 10 days, so I'm gonna blame it on that. Um so, uh I do I do am excited to see an upgrade in the technology and parking, but I I just want to be really really careful that we are not making

inaccessible parking downtown for folks who do not have um apps on their mobile phones. uh we have so many people and particularly groups of elderly folks who don't have access to those payment schemes and so having the ability for folks to actually pay at a meter I know it's ridiculous but like it's really necessary for a lot of folks so just want to be really careful there um to not be exclusionary in the method that we're taking those fees um and then I was curious about very specific question But I know Durham Tech is doing some improvements. They're burying some power lines um and and doing some street improvements on campus. And I was wondering if there was any conversation about um in transit at Durham Techch while they're already in the process of burying those power lines and doing that construction.

Great. Several of us have that question. So you look confused.

Maybe it's a come back to us with that answer. It's it's the um so doing with some of their bond money they're doing a lot of streetscape and part of that is burning their lines or whatever NCCU has done some work on Lawson there is an opportunity and also McDougall terrace that entire area is going to be redone um question is uh uh Durham is interested in seeing if we could be a participant in helping to help them with completing that corridor uh alongside their campus and if there was any opportunity there. So, I'd asked the manager about it earlier. I think there are some conversations about it, but um yeah, that was a an interest.

Keith, don't use openly big words. All right, come back, guys. Good afternoon, everyone. Uh Keith Chadwell, city manager's office. Um, in response to your question, we have been in deliberations with Durham Techch

around that project. It ca from a st from a planning standpoint and a capital improvements planning standpoint. It came to us rather late with respect to options to respond quickly. Uh, however, we have not uh ceased in considering what options that might uh come available to us as quickly as possible in light of that situation.

And it occurred uh as we've had some other conversations today because of inflationary costs to the overall project. Uh the project itself that Durham Techch has is going to be completed for the buildings and the verticality on on the property. Uh that left a g a development gap for street improvements and related improvements such as that. I'm not certain about the specificity of the burying of the of the lines that may be included, but we were approached there were two up two updates that they're doing. One is the the low-income housing is I think you're talking about they're doing a build and they were looking for Bian. The low-income housing is is a separate piece that would be handled through some community development considerations.

Not quite ready to make a pronouncement on that, but I am optimistic that we'll be able to support that uh in in a future allocation and based on the timing of that project coming to fruition. I'm talking specifically about the upgrades to Lawson Street. Um, so I know there's two ongoing projects, but one is that they're burying the lines at East Lawson and they're also updating their uh walkability. So they're going to have more of a like fluid uh pedestrian pathway, but it's going to cross Lawson twice.

I mean, folks are already crossing Lawson. They're hoping to increase foot traffic on the campus um while they're already in construction burying the lines. My question is, can we do anything about traffic calming there? Um, while they're already blocked off for construction, while there's already construction ongoing that would decrease our cost potentially if this is on this is a long-term project, the traffic comp, which I imagine it is because it's a pretty dangerous pedestrian crossing right now and there's lots of people crossing. um if it's on our long-term plan, like can we is there any way to move that up to

match with their construction to decrease our costs at all? So, that's that's the specific project I'm asking. That's a dimension I'm not sure I'm familiar with in terms of the burying lines. You know, there was a request to support uh a total street improvement project and my understanding that included the burying of the lines.

uh the timing of their request certainly had some consideration of while there was a disruption can we participate so that there's an efficiency realized about the amount of time it would take to uh deliver the project and all of that and the timing of that was a very very serious challenge for us so I don't haven't we don't have a ultimate answer for that but we're we're looking for ways to be supportive of Durham Techch because they're in the part partner to us and I just want you all are talking about the same project so uh the I know there's two right there. Yes. So, they they have plans that they would like to implement. Uh I know that those plans have some pedestrian safety elements to them. I think the initial framing that President Buckston had with the council

was the possibility that maybe our vision zero dollars or other dollars might be brought to the project. It wasn't until last week that uh President Buckston made a a formal request of me to examine the possibilities. So to Keith's point, that was pretty late in the process for us to have immediate options available. Um that I met with DCM Chadwell yesterday and asked him to circle back with departments he's already had conversations with and that's in process.

So we'll we'll bring council options. Obviously, uh, you have capacity, but we just showed you a a fully subscribed CIP. And so, it may simply be a question of of trading a project and and we would give council the opportunity to do that, but at this point, we don't have an immediate answer other than we are trying to develop options to be responsive. Thank you.

Yeah. And and I would be curious to see if we were to not do it in this time, what it might cost in the future. If there's added costs to not doing it immediately, I'd like to see that comparison, too. be

helpful for me. Thanks. Thank you. I didn't realize when you were saying that it was recent that it was last week because I had heard about that project several weeks ago.

So, okay. Yeah. Well, that was a refreshed request even at its inception. The request came very late in our planning process.

Sure. Thank you, Mr. Regan. So, um, another question.

So, if you look at that the parking fund, the multi-year projection, right? and and you're saying there's no at least for this year no significant changes in revenue expenditures. 5 million appropriation from funs like in the next for the next five years, right? So I'm just curious again sort of thinking long term like where like you know as we as we make keep buses fair free expand ridership we're investing in the cap and more like bike routes rights we're trying to get multimodal folks into different options other than cars right so that means we're trying to reduce the amount of car trips downtown right and the need for parking. So, like where do we we got these parking garages, we got to pay the

deadlines we built. Like where do we go with all that? Cuz longterm we we probably want less parking downtown, right? Because we want to have folks come there by other means.

So like where like where does this all go? So again, I'll circle back to the budget retreat where we we put some of those questions to council and what uh I believe my takeaway from that conversation was council was willing for us to have options on the table to repurpose some of our parking inventory. Uh so I think there is a general understanding among staff that if we see opportunities that serve a public need uh or that you know may you know advance some important objective in Durham that would involve the possible repurposing we we will not close those conversations out without bringing them to council. Um I wouldn't say I I did not take that as immediate direction to begin a d a divestment plan.

Uh and if council wants us to do that I would seek more direction around that. But certainly set her in a parking deck, right? Well, I certainly think council left the door open for us to consider those and so I I

think we consider that on the table, but there are not any immediate initiatives to evaluate disposition that that are before us. So I would just say that door is open and if council wants to push us harder through that door, uh feel free to do so. I have sort of a a random question uh about our um our deck AC across the street. We we had we had intended some of the space to be leased out to businesses um the new decks.

Yeah. I'm Do you have any What is our our posture on on lees? Are we at capacity? Do we have any more spaces?

And it is does that revenue go to the parking fund or does it go to where's where does that money go the rent from that and and where are we in terms of occupancy? So most of our available space is occupied. So we have salon lofts um for Mother's Day. I got my wife a box of sweets by Shada. Um powerful.

Yeah. Um so the macaroons there are excellent. I I recommend them. Um she's my wife's big fan.

Uh so uh we uh and then um the Indian restaurant has changed names uh but it's still at the corner there. Uh so uh we are mostly leased up. Uh we do still have some um vacancies. Uh the funding for or the revenues from those leases, those are managed by general services.

The revenues do come back to the parking fund u but they have to be net of the cost of improvements, tenant requested improvements. So, uh, it ends up not being, uh, a significant in the sort of scale of the parking fund. Um, it's not a significant revenue driver, but it does, um, you know, activate, uh, our downtown. How tenant requested improvements, those aren't like ongoing, right?

Don't don't we usually acrew those or or incur those upront? Yeah. as they move in, but it takes a little while uh to recoup enough revenues,

typically years, uh before you're u ahead of the the cost of those tenant requested improvements. So, what what what would you say the percentage of space is occupied and what's free would uh I' I'd have to work with general services on getting the um getting the figures on that, but I would say most sure and we occupy it with our um staff as well. So, we use a portion of it for our parking division staff. Gotcha.

Okay. All right. Thank you. All right.

Uh we will recess and grab lunch and if we can, let's come back and have a working lunch. We're almost there. One, two, uh two more. Yeah, two more presentations.

All right. Thank you. Thank you.

on you colleagues. I do have to step away for a minute. I'll be right back. Madam clerk, I have the gabble momentarily.

And can everyone hear me? Okay, great. Good afternoon, Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tim Middleton, members of council, manager Ferguson, Wade Walco with Parks and Recreation Department. want to continue the the theme of gratitude and thanks uh sincerely to I'm not envious of your position.

I'm not envious of the manager's position. I'm not envious of u the budget director's position or JJ's position with budget, but genuinely thank them for all the hard work that they're doing. Um they can't make everybody happy. They're trying their best, but it's a tough position and we all have a million one reasons why we want the things we want.

So appreciate all the work that you guys do for that. Uh to this presentation is to go over primarily our uh half penny fund and provide some information on that. Uh starting off it's you see our org chart here. Um part of this year's proposed budget includes uh the addition of six full-time employees.

I will say out of the current 136, we actually have less than 10 vacancies right now. And each of those vacancies are likely in some level of the hiring process or screening process. So we're we're lucky to not have vacancies very very long. You can see the the biggest portion of our budget increase is going to relate directly to the proposed half half penny increase. And so to get right into it, the history of the half penny uh starting off originally proposed around 2015. Um it was the intent was to make

some really quick, noticeable and impactful changes that the community could see in terms of the parks infrastructure. Oftentimes it was playgrounds and sidewalks and restrooms. Um things that could we could have money injected quickly and make noticeable improvements for our community. Um there was also some guidance there that half penny would be used for maintenance and repairs and not of new recreation or new construction and that was encouraged to spend that money in one year and that the project should be less than $100,000.

That has gone made a huge impact for Durham. And I know there's many people in this room that were part of making that happen originally. Um, and there's other people like Mayor Schul that was a big part of it, even from his days of being on our recreation advisory commission liaison. So, we and of course the community are extremely grateful for that foresight to make this happen to make these

improvements since 2015. A few things have changed in our community and in our environment. Uh, one being, of course, the cost to do business. And so with the guidance of projects less than $100,000, that has become increasingly more difficult, especially with the projects that we're working on like restrooms, playgrounds, and and infrastructure costs.

There's also the amount of projects and the the capacity that we have available to do those projects ourselves or even to have project managers manage the contracts uh the contractual workers that do these projects. So, those are just some of the the challenges that we're having. We DPR does have one project manager. So, when there's work that needs to be done like um resurfacing maybe tennis courts, that one project manager takes on that role of putting together a bid package together, um advertising it, interviewing, selecting the firm, and

then awarding it to the firm and then managing that firm and to do the work. and that's just for one project. Uh so there has been a capacity issue. Uh we're grateful for the work the general services does for us in terms of project managers and since we are their largest client with 60% of their work is DPR we know they are stretched thin too with their project managers and again we are grateful for the um contract work that they have now with Turner Towns and Hury as additional project managers.

So um additional funding is extremely appreciated and makes a big difference. Um it is also a big problem in terms of capacity of getting those projects done and managed. And you can see on the screen right here, this is in construction right now. This is at Sherwood Park, brand new playground um that's coming online here shortly. Uh I think in August we'll look to have a grand opening with all these great things. I I

do want to point out all the work we're doing at Sherwood Park with this playground. Um new pickle ball courts, lights, um we're looking to light the multi-purpose field for other activities. And while all this goes on, we still deal with time to time vandalism. And so some folks came in and damaged that beautiful play surface there.

And so we're going to have to uh deal with that shortly. Uh the overview here shows our current amount in the half penny and what and I think Christina went over this earlier, what a revenue neutral version would look like for the half penny and what that increase is. 3 million. So what do we do with that additional funding? A lot of it is uh what I mentioned earlier and the things you see in these playgrounds here, the things that make impactful and noticeable differences in the people's

lives and in their neighborhoods. You can see the entrance and see our wood a new paved uh portion of getting into the park. You also see our huge efforts over the last four to five years of be beautifification in our parks of native species and lowmaintenance landscaping that goes in at our parks. Um, you can see in the middle there, that's I believe Lake View Park, new trash can. It doesn't have anybody's names or titles on that trash can, but does say DPR, but you can see the improvements of the basketball courts and even on the right, the type of work and the type of fixes that occur thanks to the half penny funding. And you can see um I'm not sure if you can see it on your screens with the closed captioning, but you can see other examples of the types of work that the half penny produces and that we plan to produce u with this increase with half penny now and as proposed that also covers a portion of salaries for the folks on our team that

do the work. And right now the percentage breakdown with our current level of funding is around 50% 53% there. Um and 47%. 53% for personnel.

So this covers the the salaries for the folks that are doing the work in all these parks and making the fixes and doing the landscape work etc. And then nearly half of it is to actual supplies, repairs, projects for deferred maintenance or contractual work. That's the same percentage as it is now. Our slide says 47%.

Personnel. Okay. Is it? It fits.

It should be It should be uh on the big screen. I believe that's correct. I believe so. Okay.

Yeah. Ours. Okay. Thanks.

So, those are the differences. And so with six uh proposed six employees uh added on to this, you can see there's three for a small construction project. Um one for a person that's able to do

some of the small fixes and water fountain repairs and things like that and trail crews. The small construction projects is really important to us. Right now we have extremely talented men and women on our team that can do a lot of these uh repairs in our parks. However, sometimes their day-to-day jobs might be doing litter pickup and mowing and doing other projects.

And so, when a repair project comes up, we usually have to pull them off their uh day-to-day duties and go to this project. Adding this will help keep things and keep all other work on track. So, that's that's one example of some of the things that will be beneficial to have. There are other things like uh drainage solutions. Uh for example, there may be a tennis court project that we need to repair. And so we're going to contract out for uh the tennis court resurfacing, but maybe a behind-the-scenes issue or bigger issue is how that is draining or

the drainage around that. So sometimes our team can come in and work on that separately while a contractor is working on the actual surface of it. This is also these folks will take care of some of our gravel drives like at Twin Lakes Park. Um making sure that's smoothed out more for people to get in and out of it.

Um and again it's a lot of our some of our clearing. So it's crime prevention through environmental design septed concepts where we can go into parks and remove a lot of invasive vegetation and clear up sight lines. And so now it's a more um welcome and opening space. not just for residents to come and enjoy uh their time at a park, but also for the safety of our our folks that are maintaining those parks.

So, those are some benefits of the staff. And you can see some of these pictures here of the type of work they do day in and day out. Um they really get, you know, shoulder deep into their work.

Outside of half penny, other operating budget highlights, one of the things we're excited about is increasing some of our uh budget for some of our special events and programming. And you'll notice that it's this is non-reoccurring. And again, I want to thank Christina and her team for trying to put so much together in one budget one year. It was really tough to get everything that everybody wanted.

Uh my only concern is this non-reoccurring. This is for one year. So this will be an improvement enhancement and more funding for Bimbeay. Um it's also for our senior holiday dance and some of our concerts and movies. Um we hope that this will be reoccurring next year and so we we'll have this funding again because we'd hate to be able to expand a program or an event one year and then have to pull back and it makes it a little difficult for us in terms of planning. However, um the senior holiday dance, I think all of

you may have received a phone call once or twice a year of folks being upset that we're sold out. Uh last year, we sold 700 tickets in about 2 and 1/2 days. So, we sell out and so an increase in our budget for this allows us to do an RFP to find maybe a larger venue, but also to increase our budget that we can increase more people coming into this event as well. So those are some examples and ideas that that we're looking at here.

Um quick question. Yeah. BIM day is a nonrecurring event. We no we get a budget every single year.

This year we added for an increase to that and that was approved for this year. Okay. Not like just one year not correct. that has to do with how we account for when we we have some one-time funding that may be available, but we don't have something built into our base model. It's a way of being able to say yes to something that we'd like to be able to say yes to long term, but

we don't have the long-term funding available. So, the department would have to request this in next year's budget. Obviously, these events are near and dear to all of our hearts, and so I think there'll be a strong effort to try and fund it, but as of this year's budget, this is one-time funding for the expansion of these events, not for the base event. Got.

So, do the base events themselves, are those recurring or Okay, got it. Yes, we have an we have a budget for each of those events ongoing. This was a an ask the manager said an ask for additional funds to expand those and say yes we have it this year. Absolutely.

And as many in this room know it is uh these events of course whether it's a senior holiday party or a thing we a little thing called bimbeay it's a lot of work and the picture on the bottom left is from this year's bimbeay at the end. Uh yeah, Kristen swore me to never show this to anybody. So, of course, I honor her request. But this is after her and Kirk are are pull

Yeah. pulling in all the trash cans and recycle cans from the night at about 10:30 at night. So, we put our heart and souls into into everything we do. And as a result, in the middle picture there, you can see all the folks that like to come out and and have a good time.

And I know some of you were able to make it this year and saw that firsthand. So, we appreciate everyone's support. It was outstanding. Outstanding.

Addition to our half penny and some highlights for our operating budget, there's our our CIP budget this year that we have submitted and are really excited about. Uh you can see these are our bigger projects and a lot of these are we're continuing to make huge dramatic transformations in our parks. Uh the picture here is is the new CR Wood playground. Um I I believe by the end of this year that project will be will be done. In terms of playgrounds, it's not just, you know, seessaws and swing sets that we all grew up with and uh twisty slides or metal slides that you got

thirdderee burns on in the summer. We also have Yeah, they made us tough. Uh said Generation X, right? Um, we also are very cognizant and intentional with making sure we're doing everything we can to make these more inclusive and accessible.

And so this there's an element here to the right on the screen that is a a rocker, a slide inside that you if you needed to um have a chair to be mobile, move around, you could participate that with with everybody. We also see in this picture that there is shade structures that we incorporate in our playgrounds and almost all of them. And then that surface we're moving past our our playground mulch where we can to do this surface that it makes it easier for everyone to to move around. So those are the that's the transition that we're making in a lot of our playgrounds. What we're not we're also not focusing just on the playgrounds is while we're there

through CIP through half penny which can supplement some of these playground projects um and equitable green infrastructure fund we're trying to do as much good as we can at once at a park. So it's the playgrounds the restrooms it's the shelters it's to transform the neighborhood's playground and make neighborhood park because we know that's a place where culture is strengthened and community is built. So that that is what we're about. That is what these CIP projects are about.

And you can see the list here of this continuing light items in this fund that we're making improvements for. Any questions? No expansion of wheels. Is that planned yet or is that coming?

No expansion on the books yet for roller skating. Uh we're going to keep moving forward across the street with a second phase of Merrickmore Park with a playground and restroom there. And of course, uh, you all approved a contract for the designer and general contractor for the bond project out there. So, it's it's going to be an amazing even more amazing space

than it is already. So, transitioning um from half penny operating budget and CIP, a bit of an update for our landfill parks program, also known as our pre-regulatory landfill parks. Um there's four parks that are on the sites of former incinerators and a fifth park, Northgate, that receive some of the soil from I don't remember which park on that. So this started maybe almost two years ago I believe um when we started to work and find more out about this issue and the situation. So from the very beginning um when we got consultants involved Mid-Atlantic Associates and then we turned it over to the state and we were entered into the pre-regulatory landfill program which the state and their resources have been doing all the analysis and studies um since then.

While we've been doing that, we've formed a community working group that we communicate with multiple times a month and oftentimes do meetings and plan these meetings together, whether they're in person or hybrid or just virtually. So, we continue all that work along with our project website that updates the public on everything that we're doing. Um, and any update that we get from the state, we review with the state. We analyze that.

We break that down. We make the whole report accessible to the community as is the raw data and then we try to break it down in a userfriendly readable format maybe a one-page summary and so having that all available and that's what one of the images here is just an example from uh a March uh update uh one cheater and the image on the right are just some of the signs that we have out in these parks. So, as of today, we do have $5 million uh previously awarded to us um for these parks and in a CIP request this year, I

think you heard earlier today, $7 million. So, a total of $12 million potentially available. What informed me to make those dollar amount requests was a previous uh estimate by the state and saying if we looked at all the parks with the data that they had in place at that time and looked at what um the solutions would be, they estimated $10 million and they said very clearly that number will change. This is the information we have on hand.

So I requested $12 million. Um, yes, that is above 10. Um, we very rarely overbudget and with the trends the way they are, wanted to make sure we had enough funding and this likely won't be enough funding to cover everything and every solution that we have. But here's what it will do. Come, let's see here. Here we go.

I'd say by June we're going to get back uh more information and data from reports and that information that data will be the last bit of testing that the state needs to undertake and provide. And that testing going kind of reverse order on screen here will include uh probes to check out surface water above ground vapor landfill gas and groundwater monitoring will begin this month. We believe sometime in June we'll start to get some initial results of all that information. Previously in April, one of the u bigger reports that we received and have shared publicly since then uh the last work was to understand where the waste delineation is those borders and what that gave us and the community is an understanding of the borders of where the waste uh would expand. And again, waste, we're not talking about, it's just lead. The state has looked

through um or has tested for a lot of different chemicals and volatile compounds um including lead, but waste also includes things you would typically consider um like plastic, brick, construction material. So with these reports, we now know that where the borders are and we also get an idea of the thickness of the waste uh at these sites. That allows us to make better informed decisions moving forward. It also informs the state if they believe some of that waste may extend beyond the border or the parcel. And so what the state does next is where they wherever they see that border um and if it goes into private property next they develop letters and contact those residents informing them of uh of this potential and that they would like to enter uh their property to do tests. Now for questions about that and what the state does I would strongly uh I'd

refer for you and I can get contact information to the state. We have provided the residents and our working group uh direct connection with de D de D de D de D de D de D de D de D de D de D deEQ to talk about that the uh working group of the residents are meeting tonight um with DEEQ to talk about amongst other things that specific um detail and we've also provided a frequently asked question uh for residents to to look at too if they'd like to learn more about that. So what we know is as far it's been these parks have operated at these sites for at least 70 years. So we know most of these parks were designed and developed in in opened up in 1950. And prior to that, and I I'm not clear yet how long they operated as waste incinerators, um but they they've been parked since 1950. We once we became aware a couple Junes

ago, we worked with the right people in terms of health experts of environmental experts in the state entered the program and we're getting as much data as we can to begin to make informed decisions. What I anticipate next, like I said, was in June getting those reports back, sharing those with the community, receiving feedback, and then start making recommendations for what our steps uh to move forward would be. There may be opportunities, we just don't know yet until we get some of that testing back from May. there may be opportunities and this is why there's CIP funding that there may be portions of a particular park that um we may be able to re relocate shelters or playgrounds or amenities to.

Don't know that for sure, but that's that's the idea and that's the plan. So, we hope by by June we'll have some um solid information that we can begin making some recommendations and changes. Um thank that was really great. you

actually answered a lot of the questions I had. But on to that last point of there might be possibilities for us to move things within the parks. Um, also I'm thinking about like just reopening some of the parks based on the the Would you put your mic a little closer to you, please? Okay.

Um, is I understand that we did the 12 million based on the $10 million estimate. Was that estimate just for testing and remediation or did it include also like I guess my question is do we have part of this money set aside to do the immediate fixes outside of the remediation if we're able to move um park the some of the park pieces elsewhere so they can be used immediately or if we're able to reopen with minor upgrades. is part of that 12 million set aside for some of that too or is that just set aside for remediation and we would have to fund the other things through the rest of our general of our park fun the intent and I

think even the language in this CIP and the last CIP was to have it available to do whatever we needed to do right so I think some of it says construction demo soil it's what we want to have is when we get all the data and we can make an informed decision if some of those informed decisions can be quote unquote quick fixes. Now we've got funding to do some of those things. Thank you. " So, we try to be as proactive as possible.

Director, were you finished? Were you at the end of your presentation? Okay. All right.

Oh, no, not at all. Thanks so much for colleagues. I'll go around the desk. Any question?

A lot more questions. was just asking just asking parks questions or led and parks questions. Okay. Um I saw that they're in there, but I just want to make sure for folks who have been asking about it, can you talk a little bit about the

court maintenance money that was put into the budget? What's in there now for um tennis courts specifically and the parts that will be impacted? Could you ask that again? So, I'm I'm thinking specifically about the courts at Almyra, but I know that the request.

Yeah, that the CIP request was for more than that. So, can you just talk a little bit about that CIP request just to put record on it one more time? The court improvement for CIP is an ongoing request because we have a lot of courts and fields that need improvement. Um, and there are many that are still underway right now.

This year's request will include uh Elmyra tennis courts, I believe, Rock Corey tennis courts courts and Moren Road basketball courts. And and we don't have a sense between the three of those parks how that money will be allocated. Not yet. Okay. Yep. Um we are working fingers

crossed there might be a public private partnership opportunity for marine road basketball courts and if that comes to fruition then therefore we'd have a little savings there that could uh if needed be we could look at Elmire and Rock Corey if there was another I think that was that we had we had funding that funding is not secured as of yet the Marine Road they're marine We're asking for that in this CIP this court. So Marine Red basketball courts, Elmyra, and Raori. I thought the external funding for Marine was was secured. Not secured. Yeah, we Yeah, this will help with that if it's approved. Um that can you you had mentioned this briefly but can you talk again about the interaction between park fund and the EGI work because like I know that they had for example at South Boundaries

they're building a whole new playground. Um, what it can you just talk about where that money comes from and how y'all interact with EGI on those park improvements? They also had several like shelter shelters at parks in several neighborhoods. So you so Mayor Grace was talking about uh EGI earlier, right?

And so they had certain focused areas I believe in the city and based on those focused areas we narrow it down say what parks do we have in this focus areas and based on those parks we are able to take a look at our inventory of our infrastructure um for lack of a better description and say you know what are some improvements that are needed or additions there and so based on Mayor Grace's work with the community and getting that input and feedback and knowing uh what repairs or improvements we need to make. Um, we recommend those those changes. And so, right, for

southern boundaries, you mentioned there was a need for a playground there. I believe there's a request for additional basketball courts as well. So, that's part of what we'll look look at doing. Well, some of it I know that maybe the south boundaries one isn't a good example because that's a whole new playground, but for some of the other repairs, like will that money come out of the half penny for parks or is it solely coming out of EGI?

So the the the dollars identified for the equitable green infrastructure improved projects are coming out of that particular fund. Uh depending on what that project is, we often time we may have opportunities that we can sub if there's like added additional expenses needed that won't cover an EGI. If it's a repair or maintenance issue, the extra money in the or the increase in half penny could help supplement those projects. Um I'm just going to Sorry, that's okay. I just want to add real quick too, we

had um a lot of uh participation on our EGI team from our parks department. Um, so we had a lot of those conversations and again like Wade is is saying we for instance with CR Woods some of that was previous EGI project and we engaged more with those residents and found out there was still some gaps missing and so with this EGI that was one of the requests that went forward. So, we work uh really closely with them to make sure um that that works. But yes, those come directly from EGI.

Okay, cool. Thank you. And that and that goes back to looking at the whole park again like I mentioned earlier. And I can't wait when we have the ribbon cutting and grand opening to see all of you at CRwood because it's going to be something that you're all going to want to brag about and talk about and it's a great example of using and leveraging all these different funding sources. So, you name

a letter in the alphabet, we're using it. EGI, CIP, um, half penny, but also there's $600,000 worth of private funds that are going in this project, too. So, it's it's a great example of public private partnerships and having the community's voice drive the vision and create a new reality. Thank you.

That's Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Also, um, I'm curious about y'all do fundraisers. I'm curious to know about the revenue from those fundraisers. I know there was one recently the green print galla was maybe like last week.

Um green print gala. I don't know. I mean it was park. Oh central park.

Oh okay. Okay okay okay okay. Totally. Um but there are I know there are some there is the parks foundation. Everyone's like there's the parks foundation. Um, so yes, there was the gala that happened last uh week, I guess it was, by Central Park and their board uh to help raise funds about a a vision, a conceptual

plan that you supported through our comp plan about what the future of Central Park could be. The fundraising arm is a separate for our department is a separate 501c3 the Durham Parks Foundation and they are hosting an event and tickets are still available and if that's why you're asking um this Friday is glow in the park glow in the park. Um so there's operators are standing by for that. Um unfortunately I cannot attend that but and it sounds really really fun.

Um, yeah. So, so it's a C3, but they take in money and then can you just talk again? I know you've explained it to me once before, but can you talk again about how they interact with our parks department, the foundation form? Sure. We we worked with our attorney's office first of all when this was getting set up and to develop a uh an agreement, a contract that essentially says these are the roles and responsibilities of each party. The

foundation as a separate 501c3 is responsible for this and they're are fil our primary philanthropic partner and from time to time they'll do fundraiser events and it spells out the types of roles and responsibilities we can and can't do to support them. Um and so but yeah they they raise funds uh for us. Some of those funds go into a general fund. Um, many of them uh go into special uh uh restricted revenue accounts or line items that may help out just for special events, etc.

How much is coming in? Uh, I couldn't tell you. That's they have the books on that. So, we don't manage that budget. Um, I And then one more question and then I have one statement to make. Um, do we when we contracted out wheels um and we had talked about ticket affordability um what was the conversation around that

and um have we thought about what it would take to subsidize some of the tickets to bring that I don't know if we've thought we I don't I'm not aware that we've thought about subsidizing that at this point uh I honestly don't recall the conversation when we negotiated the terms of the contract for that I know they as they were great to work with and very flexible and oftent times lowered rates on certain nights that were typically uh big revenue generators for them like maybe Friday night for example is I I'm don't quote me on this but I believe like their Friday night rates are less expensive than some of their other Friday night locations but I don't remember the exact details of conversations negotiating that contract. Yeah, I think there are community nights now or Tuesday nights. Um, and I do think they're very crowded on those nights. Um, colleagues, this is just something I

want to be thinking about, particularly as we're looking at a bond for a water park in the near future. Um, but I've had community members say to me that um, with kids and like skate rentals, which is almost double the price of an admission ticket to wheels, that it quickly becomes actually unaffordable for people to skate there. Um, so I just want to put it on everyone's radar that um, it's something we need to think about, particularly with accessibility to our our new water park. Um, and then the last thing I want to say is just that um, the parks that y'all have improved, the thoughtfulness behind the accessibility.

Um, I recently saw at Merrick Moore that there's planters where folks with wheelchairs can move up under and actually reach um, the soil and do like planting there. Uh, the straight the shade structures. this thoughts about safety and ingress and egress from the parks and what that means for folks who have children who

are able to come and like safely allow their children to play. Um the thought behind the the ground and what it's designed out of. Uh it's just the improvements are incredible and I just want to commend y'all for all of the thought that goes behind that and um yeah, it's just it's really it's really impactful. It's really meaningful and I I look I'm so proud every time to see those improvements being made.

So, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. And that the accessible planters was an in-house design and and completion by Tom Dawson.

So, he did a great job with those. Thank you, council member. Colleagues, Council Member Baker, thanks for for being here for your presentation um and for all the work that you and your entire uh team does. Um I've got a couple questions.

One, the the landfill parks program. Uh you said that we're going to get a lot of results back in June. And

whenever they do come back, will we also get a full cost for remediation or are we just going to get the scientific results back? At that time, it'll probably just be the results and followed shortly after by a menu of options, I presume. Um the state uh Department of Environmental Quality, you know, they're it's a riskbased program and with all the fundings they have so far, their recommendation and what they h what they recommend and what they approve is is a phrase that probably you've all heard is and will provide funding for is a certain type of cap and cover where they'll have a um geoexile fabric almost at a certain depth and then clean fill on top of that that is what the state will recommend and part of their program will fund will fund a portion of it. I don't know the exact exact amount and that's what

they've been doing um for all their sites in their program that includes a lot of uh parks throughout the state of North Carolina uh including you know Dorothy Dicks Park and Raleigh and all those others. So yeah, puts us on a somewhere inserted into a list of many different sites for remediation. Then are we having conversations with the EPA as well? Not not as much with them.

It's been mainly, you know, the state and early on we looked at a lot of the guidelines for the EPA because they are the ones that changed their threshold at least with uh lead exceeded for example. had been 400 parts per million for decades and then when we were in the middle of this they uh lowered it to 200 parts per million. A lot of their recommendations do talk about um the importance of just clean fill and grass in in the areas. But we we'll continue to work with DEEQ consult uh EPA um the CDC and of course you know our our local

partners with Durham County Health as well. because I I really want to ask questions about potential interim solutions, but sounds like we won't really have ideas of what's possible until we get these results back in June. Yeah. Um, and I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but no one is more eager than than me to take down the ugly orange fencing and the signs at least by a little bit, you know, to open certain portions.

We we all want that. We that's why we got into the work we did. But we also have an obligation for public safety and for our our teammates. And so it's under the best advisement that we get to try to be a little more patient.

Um get the information we need and then let's start making decisions so we can open these areas up for everybody. Thank you so much for that. Um do we have interlocal agreements with Durham Public Schools? Yes. for parks and park maintenance and

their facilities. We have the answer is yes. We have interlocal agreements with the schools um but they vary from issue to issue like uh Holton the use of Holton for example interlocal agreement there. Um we have a interlocal agreement when it comes to shared fields that we're in the process of updating and looking at that but not maintenance or anything like that yet.

Okay. Okay. Um I think it is parks are so important and and um park accessibility and talk about walkability and safety a lot and um it would be a dream to get to a point where we are a city where everyone can reach a park can walk to a park or a playground or greenway within a fiveminute walk. And um I I just think that's such an important measure and metric for us for

us to achieve. And I saw, you know, in the parks um parks and recreation master plan, there's that map that shows, I think, the 10-minute walk, the 15-minute walk, and the 20-minute walk. Um I think we we've got two cities in the United States that have reached 100% of residents being able to reach a park within a 5-minute walk. And I would love for us to move in that direction.

And I think part of that is part of that is ensuring that when we do because we are growing outward so rapidly that we are when we are growing outward and there are these master plan communities and subdivisions coming in that 100% of those residents in new developments are able to reach a park or playground within a 5-minute walk. And so I know that we're continuing to work on the UDO rewrite. I know those conversations are happening and I just want to just want to continuously talk about about that making sure that we put in place uh regulations in the new UDO where the parks department feels happy with the parks that it is going to be getting

from new developments that they're meeting the criteria for for what you want new parks to look like. So, um just wanted to put that out there. And um last thing, what are you most excited about from and congratulations on the parks and recreation master plan. What are you most excited about from that plan?

Gee, let me turn to that page here. Um well, first your comment about our expansion. we we are working in lock step with uh city county planning and and that udo. So I'm grateful for that and we are talking about just what you mentioned about if there is a land donation opportunity for us. Um we want to make sure it's in everyone's best interest um that that becomes a public space or park. So we have some criteria that council member Marissa is aware of

as a liazison to the rack that we look through and then we want to make sure it's clear that we're not the you know decision makers as as as this leadership body is but we will share our criteria and what our considerations are when there is an offer on the table and then we'll bring that to our commission and then ultimately that I believe is you know your decision to make and you can look at our criteria and say oh that's great or um that's great but we're going to accept it. So we are continuing down that path. Uh I guess what I'm excited about forever plan is having a a good idea of where all the growth is happening and it gives us a map and a compass to plan ahead of why we need to increase the half penny and we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. meaning we have to take care of our 100red-year-old aging infrastructure and we have to take care of these parks that are that were built on landfills 70

years ago. We have to do that. But we also have to plan and prepare for the future and expand. And that means more parks.

That means more programs. But it means the unattractive things like more uh operating dollars and people and bathrooms and things like that. So, um, I'm grateful for our commission. I'm grateful for this council being so supportive with that vision and and understanding the importance that parks have on the community and the culture and the the wellness that we provide.

I'm I'm excited about having very specific recommendations in this comp plan that I shared with you that now become part of our everyday operating work. So, for example, we have I shared with you those action steps and and got your temperature like these kinds of things. Is this what you'd like to see us try to accomplish in the next two years? And and and that was the case. So now those

action steps become part of our three-year strategic business plan and then a portion of those get whittleled down into our annual work plan. And the annual work plan is broken out within the divisions that we have in our department. and those divisions will take those elements of those um action steps and start to assign projects or what we call smart goals for our performance. So now all of a sudden we have this map and compass and we have something that is looking toward the future but guides us in the day-to-day.

And then all of a sudden now we have maybe a entry level uh position that is developing a new program that focuses on 3 to 5 year old gymnastics. Let's say well sure it's cute and fun but it's more than that because now it's in the intention is this is a program that we reach 3 to 5 year olds in their health and wellness and get them active at a young age. And also the benefit is now

they're learning to take direction from another adult other than their parent. So it's this whole wraparound service and development that we're providing for kids. And now all of a sudden that entry level recist is doing that work that's connected to their performance plan that's connected to our annual work plan that's connected to our strategic business plan which connected to a comp plan that guides the future for 10 to 20 years. And if everyone starts to see that and what I got to do is my job is make sure people don't get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia and work worry about cover sheets on TPS reports but remind them that they're connected to something bigger than themselves.

So that's what excites me and and I'm very lucky to have such a great team around me that gets out of bed for the same thing. So having that kind of alignment and having that data and having that um clear vision is is is cool to have a job like that. Great. Thanks, Director Walcut.

Thank you, Council Counciloman Fabier. I don't have any questions. I just wanted to say thank you and just thank you to all your staff. um that we're seeing a big transformation in our parks in the next few years and I'm super excited and I I love that we have so many deeply committed DPR staff who are super excited.

Um I agree with Council Member Baker. Parks are free public space and um it is a benefit for our community and it definitely improves quality of life. So uh glad and also just want to thank uh our rack because I know and our parks foundation because um they do a lot in that ecosystem as well. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Council member Grace, add my uh voice to the kudos. Yeah. Thanks so much for the presentation, Mr.

Walka. Um it's a it's an honor and privilege to be on the recreation advisor committee. I get to see um on a more regular basis. I've got a front row seat to all the the great work your staff is doing, but all the great stuff that's happening in the parks and you're right, Councilman Recovery, like there's been a just visually, as you mentioned, like transformation of what the parks look like, which is a big part of just signaling to residents when they get

there, this is a Durham park. That that brand is so exciting. So, thanks for that. I'm so excited about the upcoming work uh with the aquatic center.

So yeah, keep keep it rolling. Thank you colleagues. Thank you, director. Thank you so much.

My my views on the egalitarian and transformative nature of parks is well known. So I won't go on to them here. I'll just echo everything my colleagues have said. I do also want to thank my colleagues for um I remember we had a rather robust discussion during our budget um retreats.

I want to thank my colleagues for for maintaining the half penny uh as opposed to just going revenue neutral. Um, I heard the comment also because I think I raised a question about, you know, how long has it been half penny and when we go when will we go to a full penny? So, it's on the radar, but I'm grateful uh for the de facto increase by virtue of our our um revaluation uh and and for this council agreeing to maintain the half penny. Thank you for the incredible work you and your team.

Do please convey to your team our thanks and the city's gratitude on behalf of the mayor and all of us. Thanks much, man. Thank you. Good to see

you. Mr. Manager, what's next? I think we have engage.

Engagement. All right. You see? All right.

We'll keep it rolling. Good afternoon, mayor, members of council. Bertha Wimbish, deputy city manager for operations. I'm excited to be here for you today to give you a brief overview of our new engagement department.

I have with me James Davis, um, assistant director in neighborhood improvement services. James will become the assistant director in the new department on July 1. So, I'm thankful

for the work he's done in advance of the new department. I'm here before you today because we will be recruiting for a new director. And so, I'm going to share this information with you, which is not a lot of detail at this point. There's lots of work to do.

So what I want to share with you today is the work of this new department will continue to be aligned with the strategic plan that this council adopted in 2023. Particularly two goals. One, connected, engaged, and inclusive communities. In that goal, there are two very specific objectives tied to these departments.

One is elevate community voices and local government and government decision-making. to expand resident access to digital resources and community places. In those objectives, there are several um initiatives that align with the department's uh one around youth around youth leadership around digital uh support um also related to um digital inclusion roadmap and so many of our

departments or teams that are will be in this new engagement department are already doing that work. The other goal is innovative and high performing organization. Uh one specific uh objective that has come uh into discussion today is embed equitable considerations and programs policies and culture. the work that ENI, the equity inclusion department is doing now, one of the initiatives is to look at our existing policies along with our city attorney's office with an equity lens as well as with our HR department and make recommendations on how we can change those those policies to make them more equitable. So that work is already being done by ENI. So what we've been saying is that the city will merge the engagement and equity functions currently embedded in neighborhood improvement services, equity inclusion, budget and management services, communications, technology solutions, planning, and the city

manager's office into this new engagement department. So what you see here is all of the teams that are being merged into or realigned under this new engagement department. What you don't see here is a org chart for several reasons. One is we want to align the resources around the work once we have the work plan versus the other way around.

Two, we will be recruiting for a new director and we want that director to make those decisions around how the department is organized. Now, of course, every employee as of July 1 will have a supervisor in our system, but that may not be their supervisor when the department is actually the structure is actually created with the new director. I want to point out a couple things here is we were able to do two things um by finding efficiencies um and realigning these teams. One is you may recall last year um audit services conducted an audit and the audit was around ADA uh governance and there were

two findings in that audit. One is that we did not have a specific ADA coordinator someone who was actually committed to ADA and that was the charge of their position. Our ENI director was doing some of that work along with her administrative staff. So we were able to use a position out of the other uh out of one of the other teams to create a full-time ADA coordinator.

The other finding was that there was ADA work going on in departments but there was no coordination. So there was no uh coordination around the work. There was no way to find out if there was an issue with a particular department who would you go to to make sure that that work is being completed. So that ADA coordinator will be doing that work as well. The other uh area is language access. We had one halftime uh position um in communications responsible for language access for the entire organization that includes supporting the work as well as the incentive program where employees can receive incentive pay for providing those services to programs and services and that was a program we wanted to

expand uh but having one a half-time position doing all that work was not sufficient. Obviously we want to make sure there's language access embedded in all of our engagement and equity work. So now we will have a full-time position um in this department to do that work. Again I point out here that the director position is vacant.

Um the other thing I want to point out is that many of these teams are really small. Um the participatory budgeting team for example we have two employees and a part-time or a fellow or intern as needed. And the digital equity inclusion program there are two positions. um language access we were as we recall there was I mentioned there was one half uh community engagement has the most positions the office on youth you know three positions with you know part-time employees and so it's really difficult um to leverage resources with such small teams when we want to create big we want to be bold we want to be able to implement huge engagement uh processes internally and

so there's an opportunity to leverage all these resources in one department and again lots of expertise um in within these departments we will uh as we move forward the new director of course will uh work with um the department to create the structures as needed so that you will eventually see a real uh org chart. So just as a reminder of the justification, we wanted to centralize community engagement to give us opportunity to streamline processes to improve coordination and communication promote efficient use of resources as I said earlier inclusive and datadriven decision making and also leverage a strong foundation foundation built by these teams. Um, interesting enough, when we were working on the reorg, the feedback, some of the feedback that the city manager received was around engagement and centralizing engagement and duplication of engagement. Also, when we had our first meeting with all of the teams together a few weeks ago, the employees actually on those teams said, "We need to be better. Uh, we need to be centralized. We need

" We go out in the community, community members say, "Oh, last week someone sent us a surve survey or last week there was another group asking us for feedback and they also don't have the staff to do the bigger uh project projects they want to be able to do um with their teams. We also uh know this is important because of community trust and better outcomes for our residents. " Well, it's because this is a different team asking a different questions about a different project. We also want to be able to capture all the data regardless of what the data is about.

So, if you come out and ask me about transportation, but I'm going to tell you something about, you know, uh um you know, uh bus services specifically or I want to tell you about housing. We want to be able to capture all of that data so we can use it when we need that data depending on what project we're working on. So equity inclusion is another part will be another component of this department. We know that that is important to all

decision- making and also community engagement. And so one of the things that we will have avail available obviously is the ADA coordinator as well as a language access uh person to be able to work with these teams as they uh design their work and move forward with their work. It got stuck here. Thank you.

So, I want to emphasize all of these teams are doing great work. If you look at, you probably recognize all of the branding here around our PB team, the community conversations work. Um, engage durm is something that's been mentioned today in terms of NIS, engaging communities around project, specific projects. Um, equitable community engagement, you know, about the blueprint.

Our digital inclusion team, as new as they are, have already received an award. our language access work, um our equity inclusion work. There's lots of great work going on with these teams and so I don't want to understate the work that they're already doing which is going to make it better for us. There's such a strong

foundation. Um one of the uh concerns that came up is that we have so much work going on that when we have uh progress we want to focus on for example one of the uh one of the things that came up in our first welcome meeting um the digital inclusion team Patrice Carol the manager said we have ARPA money and we one of our one of our project is to give out 600 uh um muffis in the community and provide service through 2026 with ARPA funding but we need engagement. We need folks to help us get the word out because this funding will not be available after 2026. Well, imagine all of these teams already have their own work plans.

And so this also happens with Mary Grace with EGI where we're looking for folks to help us engage, but everyone has their individual work plans. And so when we have one department, we can prioritize the work and decide on which uh projects we're going to work on over the next year. Uh what resources going to be needed to work on those projects. So it's a great opportunity to take the

great work that's going on in the departments and leverage that to do bigger projects and also be better with the projects that we actually are able to complete. So some of our other initiative we talked about is we want this department to be a clearing house for community engagement and we've heard that from you all as well. uh when there is um there are projects and the director or you know the initiative owner wants community engagement as part of that projects which we want in most of our projects then we want this department to talk to that group about what it is you need. Do we already have existing data so that we can move the project along?

Do we need to start fresh with a new community engagement strategy? Um can we do it inhouse? Do we need a consultant? Do we need a $250,000 consultant or do do we need a $50,000 contract? So, we want to make sure that we are strategizing around the work that we are implementing a centralized department that can do this work with our departments as well as the community. We don't want to um we don't want to eliminate the opportunities for

community ambassadors and others to participate in community engagement, but we can do that directly as we do with PB and other projects that we work on EGI as well. We want to uh we will have a process improvement initiative ongoing at the same time that's going to be led by our IT team. Uh they're actually going to look at our engagement strategies and how we engage the community now focus groups with the departments and the persons who actually do that work with our community members and we're going to look at our blueprint and all of the other engagement strategies. We want to have some standardization around that.

We want to make sure that we're collecting the data that we need. We want to make sure we're disagregating the data in a way that we need to be able to provide that to you and others to make decisions. Uh we are so so excited about the IT team taking on this work. And again, this was some of the feedback we received from our employees across the organization as well as in these departments.

Some of them said, I don't really know if this is really meaningful work. Like how do I know if this is meaningful engagement? We're doing engagement. We're collecting data, but I don't really know if it's making a difference in decision-m. We

also want to work with the community to guide the design and refinement of a new model for assessing meaningful and community engagement. We have a blueprint. We have other tools and other departments. But we want to work with the community to come up with a new model or refined model.

So our next steps we will be working with OPI to develop the mission and purpose for the department. Uh we will be working on a new business plan and the alignment of the teams. We will re relocate the team to golden belt. We already have most of the NIS employees uh in in all of the NIS employees in Golden Belt.

There's opportunity and space for others and so we feel like since we already have a lease, that's a great place for us to be in the community. Uh and and and the community, they've spent a lot of time uh creating those relationships with with that community. We think that's a good location. We will be recruiting a director.

Um that director will come as soon as we have have enough information. What I've shared with the team is we want to do this collaboratively. Like I want the team to help. We're going to look at the name of the department.

We're going to work with OPI. Every single employee in all of these departments will be working together with the team to come up with the purpose statement with the work plan with the strategy again as making sure it's aligned with our overall strategy. And we will also be working um our initial engagement project will be community conversations. Um as you all recall, some of you have been around when it started.

uh our first community ca community conversations uh bud doing during the budget process we uh did that internally with internal staff uh with a partnership with Durham County. Um the last one last year we have uh we have a contract with uh a consultant and it's $135,000. And so the department has actually challenged us to work with all of the uh teams that are working on engagement that to help design a community conversations process that we can manage internally. And so we are excited about that. And one of the reasons I'm excited about it is because it is not work that's already assigned

to one of these teams so that there's not bias around we're already doing this. Why are you taking it away from us or why you are you saying we're not doing a great job? So I thank Christina and her team for offering this up as our first project. This also gives us an opportunity to build the team to build relationship to see where the strengths are to see where the expertise is in individual teams.

The team is excited about designing this and working on this. And so as the manager mentioned, this is not necessarily about cost savings, but here's an opportunity, a specific opportunity um to look at cost savings as well as some of the other projects we're going to be working on. one I mentioned the digital inclusion with getting those modifi out in the community that's another some of the small projects that the small teams in their excitement when we had our meeting they were like I'm working on this I could really use some help with engagement on this project and so again but we have to prioritize the work because we can't have six seven different work plans that everyone's working on with limited resources and consulting it out because they don't have the resources to do this work and so we're really excited about this department uh I'm excited about bringing

on a new director um and I've been in the engagement business for a long time and so this is just another great opportunity to do something that's really going to you know put us in the forefront of engagement um in the community. So that is the end of my presentation. I hope I was brief enough. Yeah.

Go ahead, Council Member Cook. Um great. Wow. Thank you, W City Manager.

I can hear your excitement and I share it. Um, I think many of us up here have kind of heard this over and over again where there's community engagement and it just feels very discombobulated and we hear from the community too. And even myself, I feel like I get asked I'm bombarded with like surveys and I'm like, what is this even going to? And I work here, you know, like and I still don't even can't even follow everything.

So, I'm really excited about this. I'm curious actually about um I think these next steps sound amazing and I'm I'm really I am really on board with how much um community and also staff input y'all are going to be using. I'm excited to see what name

folks come up with. Like all of these things are very very exciting. Um I'm wondering about we're in budget season. Um these these teams came with money I assume into this new department.

um were there changes were had people applied for funding for new projects that comes with them? Like what does that look like when we're restructuring at the same time as starting our new budget year? So we I can think of one request that came to us for like new positions and obviously when we combined the departments, we had administrative positions that were redundant. We had some other positions.

We were able to create the ADA coordinator, the language access person. And so I can't think of any requests that came forward that we would not be able to accomplish with the budget. 4 million in ARPA funding. Um half from the county, half from the city to uh support their projects.

The NIS department had funding for many grants. Uh the office on youth had funding for many grants. So there's lots of uh funding when we bring it all

together. And I can't think of anything we would not be able to accomplish with existing funding. So existing funding followed the the teams that have now so we just and in that we actually it sounds like we actually have space to do other things because the efficiency has allowed some of that overlapping funds to be used just once. Yes.

Yes. We were not we did not ask for any new funding to do any of this work. Um and we're still looking at again we have the director position vacant. Um we have some other positions we're looking at.

We have some what you don't see as part-time positions that are funded. Uh interns. So there are lots of resources uh in the combined uh teams. Cool.

And I'll just add DCM Wimbush featured this in her presentation, but this is another good place to point it out that the reorganization actually allowed us to fund a position and a half that we had a need for um that otherwise would have been new FTEES. It's that ADA position and taking the language access coordinator from halftime to full-time. So that's another place where I think the the workload and the work

productivity will grow without the organization having to grow commensurate with it. Yes. Thank you. Those are my questions.

I'm excited to see what what happens. Yeah, this uh thank you so much for the the presentation. Thank you for being here. Um this this needed to happen. Um I think everybody everybody knows this needed to happen and and it's very exciting that it is that it is happening bringing together these teams building office of um the department of community engagement whatever we end up calling it. Um I think there has been some frustration and and the funny thing about that is there is so much as you pointed out in your presentation there is so much engagement um and in some and sometimes overengagement and I don't even want to call it engagement it's like overcommunication or over asking people what they want and then not replying back with here's what we can do here's what we can't do and that that back and forth that consists of true

community engagement And so consolidating this, bringing everyone together, having a clear vision and direction, having that director, I think it's all going to be extremely helpful. I'm very excited. My only question is how do we make sure that um that it doesn't um happen sort of we don't allow it to over years happen in a vacuum. How do we make sure that there's also continual communication between the different departments that that this is coming from?

How do we make sure that we maintain those those connections across across the city? Um that is that is a part of the work to be done. Um I I do believe that there there is some of that that happens but it's on such a small scale because there's such small units and so there is some communication going on but that will be part of it. You're going to restruct the uh citywide strategic plan.

You know we're going to have initiatives in that plan. We already have initiatives around collaboration, which is not one of the ones I pointed out here. But I tell you, these teams are so

excited about engaging in the community um and doing the work that they do with the resources that they have. And also our internal departments, many of those internal departments were the ones that gave us the feedback on the managers reorg like we need to centralize this. We want to be able to utilize engagement, but there is no centralized way to access that, right? And I mentioned the part about um departments.

We want this to be a mandatory clearing house when departments want need to do engagement on a project or or program. And so that's going to keep that connection tight because they're going to have to come through this department to pitch, you know, or or their or share their proposal and what they think they need. And we want to make sure that it is right size for the project. And I think that last part really speaks to your question which is by by going to a centralized client model like we have in communications like we have in some of our other departments where we we have a function that is centralized but the work is done through departments. I actually think um this is an investment

in that type of communication that uh will allow it to not sort of get off to the side. It really is going to be you know central to how departments do that work. So by very nature that dialogue is going to have to continue and then that elevates it to us when that dialogue is happening different DCMS are involved the city manager hears about it. So I I really do think this will elevate engagement visibility in in the organization uh and alsive engagement not just engagement for engagement sake.

That's perfect. Um and what's the timeline for recruitment of the position? We um the goal is to recruit for the position as soon as possible. Um but it's most likely going to be um August. Um in July, we do have some scheduled um meetings with the team. One of the commitments I made to the team is that we do some work before we decide on kind of the job description for the director

based on, you know, the purpose. And so the purpose statement and the and the mission of the department and so that's the work we're doing with OPI. Our initial goal was to try to do that in July. Obviously, July is right around the corner.

And so, uh, I'm I'm thinking August, uh, late July, August. That is our goal. We don't want to we don't want to recruit before we have a a good solid job description. And, you know, the purpose of the department and what the charge is going to be based on some of these discussions I mentioned, but we also don't want to wait too late because we want the director to come in and and um, and organize and structure the department.

Again, James is the AD and I'll be serving with him until we bring the director on and it can not happen soon enough for me, but so we will try to move it along as as soon as possible. That's great. Thank you so much for all your work. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm just uh excited that we're doing this and I know that there's a lot of great people in that uh new department and I'm glad we're bringing community conversations back in house.

Thank you so much uh madam deputy and thank you. Um I think this is a you know a further vindication of the uh Ferguson papacy uh here in the uh in the city. There were a lot of things that sort of suggestes this trajectory. Um, and some of my colleagues alluded to it, but to finally see it crystallized and actually see the ORC chart starting to change in in substantive recognizable ways, I think speaks um, well, we, you know, we didn't hire this team to do inertia uh, to keep on.

Each manager has brought their own set of uh brilliance and values and changes and and this is a really I think significant uh change to our org chart and one that was needed one that was hinted at. Uh but it's this team that's bringing it to fruition. So I'm very excited uh about the prospects of of of what's before us. We know there's going to be bumps, there's going to be, you know, uh starts and fits and starts, but but I think this bodess well uh for us for the city, and I hope the mayor will sleep a little uh better. uh

since some of the engagement concerns that he's been very vocal about over the last hundred years or so um are being addressed in a very concrete uh way. So congratulations. Thank you so much deputy and good luck with the hire. I know it'll be a brilliant hire.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. Thank you, Collins. Thank you, Mayor for your support.

Thank you. Um I you know this is uh music to my ears. I'm glad to let me pause and just say uh Mr. manager.

I am loving the way you're moving you and the team. Uh I was going to tell you at the meeting, but I I just want to praise you publicly just the the reorg the realignment. I know it's a lot of movement for a lot of people, but I I just love the way you are responding to, you know, the noise that we're making. And um yeah, just you know, also responding to the community and their desires as well. This is uh I I love this because it shows that government can be agile and I do I do think that

you know cost savings I know you say it's not about just that but that is a significant part because we tend to just pretend we have blank checks and so I uh I appreciate uh actually bringing this back in house. I have the utmost confidence in our staff to do quality work and the fact that they're excited about doing this. It's that is just so great. And um so I I I'm I'm glad that we are finally um getting this getting this uh under wraps and being able to respond uh to to what we've said as well as what the community said. I went to a small business yesterday on a tour and they had a big open floor plan but they had five disciplines. It was little architecture and they had interior design, they had you know um engineering, they had modeling, it was like five different areas and they all work and the thing I was asking is like how do you all like what's the tenacity with all of this and I feel we are doing the same thing here you know with our

with our engagement department now there are multiple facets around the city and they will all work you know uh in a tenacious way with this department and we'll be meeting the needs of our residents engaging with them, but not letting that process paralyze us from producing an outcome. So, uh, I'm going to stop talking because this sounds weird. I'm listening to myself. Thank you.

I just, uh, mayor and council, I want to only accept those compliments on behalf of of the staff and in particular DCM Wimbush for this department and throughout the reorganization has brought a great deal of the the structure and discipline that's needed. having the idea to reorganize and actually being able to successfully reorganize are two different things. DCM1 Bush has provided a great deal of the leadership that's getting us in that direction. I also a number of the folks you see in the audience have just been really critical to that success.

So I I want to thank everyone. Mayor Grace Stone King has been a project manager for us. The budget staff have really had uh double duty creating a budget and

also rearranging the budget in response to reorganization. the communications staff, the finance staff have all been fantastic. It has been a lot of work and so um your your compliments are appreciated, but not not just for me. I send them to those folks who have made this successful.

Thank you to the staff. When I say Mr. Manager and team, I'm talking about everybody. All right.

Well, um that brings us to the end of our uh Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I just I just want to echo those comments. I think you're absolutely right.

I think um Mr. Manager, your first budget is is exciting um aggressive and um and yeah, exciting and I think it's going to bring a lot of good to the city of Durham shows that how local government can be a force for good in people's lives, which is so critical. Um I do think as I've mentioned earlier and I we've already gotten emails about like taxes potentially going up with a proposed budget. um you know um so I think so so

there's certainly some some folks who are feeling that pinchion as we talked about at the last meeting that's why we created the low-inccome homeowner relief program so folks are having challenges with tax that's there the city and the county both contribute to that but I think you know I think largely we're asking we're asking residents to dig deep on this budget which I think makes sense you know so I think it brings a certain amount of pressure to the manager and the staff to deliver on on what we're promising but I think of the words um attributed to Billy Jean King I think is plastered all over the US Open in New York City. Pressure is a privilege, right? This it's a privilege. So I think I I feel the pressure.

Um and but I also feel the privilege of being here working with a great staff and I know we can deliver on all this. So I'm excited to continue the process and uh look forward to working with my colleagues on the on the budget and the manager. Thank you. Thank you.

Council closer remarks. Yes. Um yeah, I want to thank all the departments that presented today. I I hear the um I hear that we're doing so many good things. Um and also I am aware that

um federal funding is decreasing. We're looking at possibly people losing housing in Mass. We're looking at um a huge decrease in jobs, particularly impacting uh Durham and the Triangle area. Um, and it's the most vulnerable among us who are going to feel those cuts.

Uh, but also what we're seeing in a trend in Durham and across the country is just a wider differentiation between the top and the bottom. Right? We're just watching the divide grow. We're watching the wealthy get wealthier.

We're watching the poor get poorer. And um, and we're losing rapidly anyone in the middle because there's just nothing there for folks. Um I I am feeling I am feeling a little strained about the increase that we've proposed given the like just absolute chaos that is the envir the economy right now. Um I I am curious and I think

maybe council member Freeman had brought this up previously and and I'm interested in looking into this. I know we haven't always used our lowincome homeowner relief program. I don't think actually we've ever used it to full budget. Um I ensuring first of all that folks know that it exists and I know we're doing our best to talk about it, but really thinking about how we get that information out for folks.

Um and then also considering whether the standards for applying for that program might need to be looked at again. um potentially folks who maybe we wouldn't have necessarily thought needed to access that might need to access it now um given all these changes that we're seeing. So, just something that I'm thinking about um and a little bit of uh difficulty that I'm that I'm holding truly uh given given what we're seeing and and I know that that's a reality. Um yeah, it's it's just a difficult position to be in and watching folks lose their jobs um and worrying about

how they will continue to live here and talking about which communities nearby Durham are cheaper, where they can maybe move out of the city. Um, I also am concerned that we are we talk about revenue streams coming from property tax. Um, and I know that that is true, but I'm concerned that we're not doing a real deep look at the long-term costs of building so far outside of our city center. Uh, what that looks like in terms of providing utilities and services to folks.

Um, and the impact that bringing in a lot more population has. Um, we talk a lot about again the the revenue stream, but it's not all revenue stream and um, there are a lot of costs associated with that. So, a few things that I'm holding that I feel a lot of contention about. Um, and I want to also echo council member Rrist's comments from the beginning, which is that I don't see anything about housing on here. And consistently that is the

number one thing that we hear from constituents every year in our surveys. Uh the number one issue is about housing and affordable living. Um so that to me I think is a missed opportunity. I am concerned um that we are not doing enough in the immediate to solve that crisis which is just growing and growing and growing.

Um, and I am I just want to be really clear that I am not talking about the few people who are panhandling downtown, even though I do think folks need services as well. But what I'm talking about is all of the folks that we have in the community who are double, tripling up in single double room apartments, folks who are sleeping in their cars, folks who move from couch to couch, their family members who are endangering their family member subsidies. We've got folks that are living in all sorts of just absolutely not appropriate um circumstances and um and so it it feels hard to celebrate all the new expenditures and also like know

that people's basic needs aren't being met. So um I'm looking forward to hopefully having that conversation for me right now. the priority is really picking up the slack because local government I think is is more important than it has ever been as we watch a rapid decline of uh supportive services coming from other revenue streams. So, uh those are my thoughts.

I really want to thank everyone who came today to present and um looking forward to another another day tomorrow, I guess. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Baker. Yeah, I appreciate um appreciate those comments. Um and uh of course always we're operating at the local level in the United States and in North Carolina uh two levels of government that operate entirely on behalf of uh you know billionaires. Um and we are you know in that context a steady hand that is fact working on facts and information and and

much more deeply communicating and engaging with with residents and we'll be doing even better uh with the new community engagement department. Um to um the question of the low-income homeowners relief program that is operated on by the county. Correct. So if there was a desire to potentially uh expand the scope or expand who is eligible for that program would that and maybe this is I don't know council member ver if you know the answer but it's joint city county.

Yeah. So it's both of us. Yeah. Okay.

So it's joint. So we would need to work in agreement with with the county on what that would look like. Correct. Okay.

Well, I think that's something to keep in mind. I mean, that's our relief valve. I mean, and especially this year with the re-evaluation, you know, I mean, um, yes, this budget proposes a a t a tax increase. That combined with the reevaluations means that there are going

to be some people that get hit very very hard. And so, um, making sure that we're working closely with our our county colleagues so that there are some folks who might fall outside of the existing eligibility, making sure that they are eligible so that they don't get pushed out of their homes. Um, I think that's going to be important as we move forward over the next few months. Thank you.

And also, thank you so much to um staff. I know we have we have tomorrow as well, but thanks to all the directors that presented today and all the staff that have been here um and for all the work that everyone has has put into um the meeting today and I look forward to seeing uh folks tomorrow as well. Thank you. I'll be brief.

I just want to say thank you to all the staff and all the presentations. I look forward to the presentations um that we get tomorrow and then just continuing these conversations on the budget. We we have some hard decisions to make. I will I will just acknowledge that at least my understanding with the a neutral rate

would have been cuts on our side. So as we are seeing um um cuts everywhere else. I I I do want to acknowledge that an expansive budget means we are also thinking about our workers and their benefits and uh the impact that we make as as decision makers and how that ripples out across the uh city. So um this will be a hard budget.

Every budget's hard. I don't think I think I've had one easy budget. Um, and that was my very first one. And I think it's just cuz I didn't, you know, it was 2018 and I Right.

Uh, and so, uh, look forward to, uh, continued conversations and, um, with the county, city government. I do want to remind folks that the county manager has already presented her budget publicly and they will adopt their budget one Monday sooner than we do because that's usually what they do. So, I just want to share that timeline with colleagues. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Rrist, did you have any other further comments? Okay, Mayor Pro. Thanks, um, Mr. Mayor, and I I thank my colleagues. So, I I want um I want fair

free buses. I want to increase our contribution to eviction diversion. I want to stay competitive by paying our workers what's in uh what the market says they should be paid. M um I want to pay all of my part-time workers Durham's minimal living wage and I don't want to raise taxes that welcome to leadership.

Um yeah, I I I I experience some anxiety about that stuff as well. Um and I you know I'm waiting for that messianic municipal leader to come to tell us how to do all that. um when we don't sell anything um we either expand our tax base or or we raise taxes. Um so I you know the the the it's never easy thing and it's never an enjoyable thing to raise taxes and but I think there are some things that are that are celebratory and and heck about an hour ago we want to put signs on our EGI products uh projects that's celebratory.

Um, and I want to echo the words that Mayor Shu uh once said that, you know, when we when folk kind of pushed about what we were doing for the least of these and what are we doing to kind of ease the burden that our our our residents, our constituents are facing, we're doing a lot. " It's not perfect. we've got a lot of work um to do. But um when I watch this staff consciously and and doggedly and determinately come back with ways to uh improve the lives of our residents, ways to creatively move money around uh to make things happen. U I'm going to take time to to celebrate that while knowing we still have to keep our head down and keep uh pushing. Um, I remember I smiled when we talked about the low term the the um uh tax uh program because I remember when we first rolled it out and we got our first numbers, there were a lot of

people surprised at at the number of people who didn't take advantage of it and the exact conversation I remember having the conversation was, do we need to send ambassadors out to let people know and can we make the paperwork less ownorous? That was the conversation we had years ago and and apparently we had tried to do some of those tweaks. Um we ought not be surprised sometimes that when we we do things to try and help folk that we don't get the response that we're expecting. Um and we keep pushing, we keep trying to tweak, we keep doing, which is why I'm excited about this engagement department.

Perhaps this engagement department, this new this new org chart um tweak will help us get to more folk and and and inform them on the the opportunities that are out there for help. Um so so and I celebrate that and I think that's celebratory. Um, but yeah, I I I don't like to raise taxes, but the bottom line is until we figure out another way as a government, whether it's cupcake sales or lemonade, uh, or whatever, um, how we're going to raise

money and how we're going to we can either increase our tax base or we can increase taxes, something has to give when we do something in one area. Uh and finally, you know, I'll say in terms of expansion beyond our our city center, you know, if we establish an urban growth boundary and we still turn things down within the urban growth boundary, um the conversation becomes a bit diluted as to what the city center if we agree that we've drawn a line and we still are finding reasons not to do anything within that line, then what's the point of the line? uh uh and and and what does the conversation about um our expansion um really look like? That was an attempt to concretize the conversation to establish some type of guidelines to make it less abstract, to make it more manageable, to actually do something measurable. We tried that. Um, you know, and each successive generation of leaders will have to make up their own minds as to what lines they want to respect and what lines they don't, which lines are philosophical and which ones

are non-negotiable. Um, so that's got to be part of our mix as well. But as we stand today and as we close today, I want to again congratulate this this staff and this manager on an incredible job. The manager does a great job in punting to his staff and and uh pointing that as a team.

So, I want to honor this whole team for the work that they've done. I look forward to our conversations tomorrow. Um, I think this this budget is going to pass I think the $700 million threshold. Uh, it's going to be a historic budget.

Um, it's not a perfect budget, but I think it's going to be darn good. And the great thing is we get to start on a new one as soon as we pass this one and keep working. So, thank you, Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, guys. Um well we've come to the close of day one and I am also appreciative to all of the staff uh to the entire team that takes seven people talking heads policy makers and find a way to have a singular way forward. Uh it is a a very difficult job. Um, but

that's why we get to rest and bastard the confidence of having an amazing team here at the city of Durham. Um, I I I live in this constant uh contention of wants versus needs, you know. Um, I am as progressive as you can find a progressive, but sometimes I feel like I'm just like, wait a minute, like am I the conservative on council? Because I just I get I get nervous and it's not really my own personal values.

It's more so or personal experiences rather. It's more so I'm just thinking about the person that I literally talk to on the street, you know, and what their concern is. And often times their concern didn't come from an organized group. You know, their concern just came from a a lived experience. You know, right now, you know, there are very few things that

most people in the city are worried about right now. Gun violence, housing, and taxes. That's that's what they're really worried about. Now, we get into the nuance and you know this we are the elected council at this time.

So we are a reflection of the city's preference overall. So I also hold that accountability on the resident. This we are who you put here. Uh and and and this is what you got right now.

Um but I also think about you know the model of the statewide to be rather than to seem. And often times I feel like we are selective on what we want to be philosophical about versus what we want to be practical about. And that is the contention that rests constantly inside of me. Um we seem to be philosophical about the things we can do to respond to gun violence but not necessarily practical or doing something about it which is one of the

things I feel that this that is missing in this budget. Uh when it comes to housing, we tend to be very phil philosophical about the way people should live but not necessarily as practical about what we need to do. Like it is about supply. That is a large part.

Not only that, but it is about that. And again, you know, uh a a for-profit business, you have a a a commodity or something you can you can sell, but a city government is like a jigsaw puzzle. You have a limited amount of capacity and you have to move things around within that capacity, but at the end of the day, it will be that balanced capacity. And um it's it's all about prioritizing, you know, and you know, people want to be able to feel safe and they want to be able to live somewhere. And I don't think we, you know, uh I I'm looking forward to the strategies. I hope that there'll be some some way some

somewhere in this budget that I'm not necessarily seeing boldly, but a housing strategy, a public safety strategy, an economic development strategy, a housing strate homeless strategy, you know, um I look at our opportunity to do something and then I see the amount of encampments all over the city. I I see a park at Long Meadow that is the population of encampments of homeless people that are just increasing and it's in an actual park where kids are supposed to play but they can't because there are so many needles in the ground and I don't see the cleanup you know I don't see the things that are that are you know we should be that those are the immediate things that's what a resident drives by and say what is the city doing you know uh so so I I think that we need to find some way to come back to reality between this philosophical approach to governance and this practical approach to governance. And um I I have a lot of faith in in you, Mr. Manager, and the team here and

on staff on how we're going to actually, you know, respond to those things. But I think that we also have to have to constantly have a reality check uh on the fact that you know when we talk about gun violence we we respond with after school program investment when people are dying on the streets. Um the what a statement that still stuck in my head is you know there are two things that kill people in this city cars and guns. One, we're responding car we're responding to cars by a vision zero coordinator, vision zero plan, $200 million bond, investments into conversion of streets.

When it comes to gun violence, it's not even an investment. It's a takeaway. Gun uh Bull City Night is gone. Uh Shot Spotter is gone.

We have an operating budget of my brothers keep it at $11,000 a year. We have a community office of community intervention operating budget of $132,000 a year and a hundred of that comes from the state. So, I I I love the nice things that we have in the budget, but I also need to

accompany those things with the the the needed things that we don't have. And so I'm just putting out on the record uh I'm glad that we are moving. We're in a in a very progressive way on a lot of necessary things in this budget, but I do think we've missed the mark on some very big bold real life everyday experience, lived experiences that folks are are screaming out about. uh and we do a good job at, you know, floating around those philosophically and and we're quiet on it practically and and that is not my opinion.

That is a very objective um viewpoint of of our approach here. Uh so with that being said, I am appreciative of what we have been able to accomplish. Mr. manager.

Uh what gives me those are the contentious things that I have resting inside of me to fear is yes the federal government is so unstable right now. We have no idea what's going to happen. Um I don't feel

that we've diversified our revenue sources enough. Uh again, that's one of those things like, you know, we we have this constant debate about zoning and housing. And yet, that's the only way we can that's one of the very few ways and the biggest way we can expand our tax base without raising the taxes and making it more expensive, saying we want more affordable housing, but making it more costly for people to live here. And then we do a good job at talking about it, but what are we going to do about it?

Um I yeah, it all comes down to needs versus wants. The county just raised taxes again for the third year in a row after $550 million bond. Uh necessary, but you know, we also raised taxes and now here we are again. Um but this is this is where we are right now. I am appreciative, but I think it's important that we name um we there's some major things and maybe it's not necessarily in a budget line item, but I do think we need to

find a way to tell people how they're going to feel safer, where they're going to be able to live and and be able to move forward, you know, uh as a city. But I think we've made some very major moves, especially in the realignment. Uh and I'm appreciative of that. With that being said, it is 2:49.

Uh, Mr. Manager, do you have any closing remarks? I just, uh, thank the council for an important day of work. Uh, no one will ever accuse this council of not putting in the hard work. These conversations are are what you are hired to do, and they're very helpful for us. uh hearing what you liked uh what you were disappointed by uh hearing the information that you were looking for and also the information you didn't get that you're looking for all helps to inform us about uh how to build these sessions more productively and so I just want to assure you we've been listening today um you know I will too also say that you know we've tried to be very transparent with you council and the public about where the new investments are in this budget that's very intentionally to serve this conversation

about uh the rate increase. Um there is a slide in your slide deck that breaks that rate increase down very specifically by uses uh so that you can have an informed conversation if if if you are uncomfortable with that rate increase about about what it went into the budget to support. Obviously um you also have the option to suggest cuts to other areas in the budget and and we stand ready. I know that's not a comfortable conversation for you or us, but it is an important part of budgeting, one that we're prepared to do if needed.

So with that, I will close us today and say that we look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at 9:00 and completing this conversation. Thank you very much for a hard day's work. Thank you. We're joined at 2:50. That's all we see in the morning. Thank you.