calling the meeting to order I was waiting on council member Freeman for us to start now that we're all here um we can get started uh Madam clerk will you please call the role thank you Mr Mayor mayor Williams I'm here mayor proen Middleton I'm here council member Baker here council member cavayero council member cook council member Freeman council member RIS thank you thank you any announcements by council members yeah go ahead okay good afternoon thank you all for being here um we' got a couple of announcements the first one is um you just want to recognize if your house is anything like mine then you were up watching a Doppler radar um into the Wii hours uh concerned about loved ones for the second time in two weeks which um yeah is just a horrific time so my heart goes out to Florida and all those impacted by the
hurricane and the resulting tornadoes um I want to remind folks that the need in Western North Carolina is ongoing um please do donate join me and I think my many of my colleagues and donate your money dollars uh that seems to be really what is most needed in Western North Carolina uh so I'm continuing to give I hope you will as well uh so we can take care of our neighbors in that regard a couple pieces on that this is for folks either directly impacted or if you have family or friends that are impacted the first one is that we've seen a lot of misinformation around FEMA and I want to just encourage folks to utilize that Federal resource um if you have anyone in your household who is a US citizen and that includes a child in your household you are eligible for FEMA so please do utilize that resource lots of nonprofits and the government of course has information on websites uh so if anybody needs help finding that um I'd be happy to direct you um I also want to
m. on November 5th uh so I hope that folks if you are displaced or if you have F friends and family who are display so please encourage them to look at their local Board of Elections is my understanding that all 100 counties Board of Elections are up and running which is incredible um but do check that and again want to encourage everyone to
vote early registration ends tomorrow um and if you have been impacted by a potential Purge or if your voting location has changed these are all issues that you can fix during early voting so be my I just want to encourage people to use that resource that is available it is so much safer to vote during early voting and um and you can fix any issues that might come up again we've talked about this but it's going to be a long ballot this year so again suggestions have been made to flip it over start at the back work up make sure that you um hit every single thing that you'd like your voice to be heard on so um yes don't forget to bring your IDs to the polls but also bring your friends and family and their IDs okay um the second thing I wanted to say is I've talked with most of my colleagues about this I've requested a presentation from our um EAB our environmental Affairs board to be put on the agenda for next
work session I believe that's October the 24th um I have a little bit of information but I think you will learn way more information at the presentation the EAB is looking for guidance on um uh whether or not they should continue their conversations with staff to keep developing a tool that's going to be used inter departmentally uh to do an analysis on environmental impact from all of our different um from all of our different departments both on the city and the county so they're going to be presenting to the County Commissioners uh within about 10 days or so of that um October 24th work session so I have um I believe enough support to get that on the work session for next time um but I just wanted to get my colleagues a heads up that they going to be that the chair and the rest of EAB is going to be looking for a potentially they asked for a longer presentation but I believe we're probably going to shorten it to about half an hour um or shorter
presentation on that tool that they've been working on and those are my announcements thank you thank you did they already SP has that been presented at uh jcpc yet um it has not and it's not a planning specific tool and so there that is their reason for coming in front of the county and both and the city because it's going to be an in departmental tool and so they're going to be looking for our guidance um and that is the information that I have um so I think that those questions will be good for uh the EAB chair or whoever does that presentation in a couple weeks thank you um Mr May quick question yeah I I was not contacted about that but I we usually give thumbs up so I'm I'm just gonna I'm cool with it but I I I had no idea about that so yeah same all but let's go through it was that you may have I'm not gonna say actually I retre you may have and I don't remember but okay just just for process though need we need to say it in
here uh for the records so that they're coming up yes is that good with everyone okay all right thank you also like I know that you shared with us that onepage thing I think as much background as we can have on this it seems like it's an evolving thing and so pardon me yeah yeah I did not send this out I want to be very clear it's coming from EAB and I'm not their person I just am bringing it because I happen to meet with the chair of EAB the week before this and that is the only reason I'm bringing it today um I'm happy to contact the chair and have her send whoever is looking for it I believe council member riss has received it and the mayor has received it um it's already in your email um and I can have I I can ask her you can reach out for it I did not prepare it and I did not send it um but I think it will answer some questions but I do think that there will be more to be answered in the presentation yeah uh good afternoon everyone um good
to see you all it is a beautiful day um surprised there's so many folks here um it's definitely a day to maybe play hookie from work um um so first of all I will have to leave between 5 and 5:30 I know we have a closed session after that so just just letting colleagues know and then secondly I wanted to apologize to both residents and staff on Monday night our council meeting got rather testy uh I definitely had a role in that uh our residents don't deserve that our staff definitely don't deserve that and it is incumbent upon us as council members uh to do our work whether we are frustrated or not uh in the most um positive manner possible even when we don't agree with one another uh we have a lot of um pretty ugly politics in this country and so we should not be adding to that climate so I just wanted to say I'm sorry to the community and uh staff for any part that I had in our testy exchange on Monday night thank you thank you for me I just need to request the excused absence for October 21st and
24th all right um let's uh I'll come back and entertain that motion thank you Mr Mayor um mayor patm city manager colleagues folks here thanks for joining us um I've just got two things so the first thing is I want to um Echo the comments from council member cook about um the most recent hurricane these I mean hurricanes are all rough and I know uh we've had we had a conversation at the last meeting on Monday about hurricane Helen horrific damage in West North Carolina very personal to many folks in this room and on the council um Milton's also personal for me I grew up in South Florida um so the places that that we're talking about on the map Sarasota St Pete Clearwater these are all not just places on the map to me these are places I've been to have friends there and family so this is a this is very personal um in fact you'll love this one the mayor of of Tampa Jane castor's an old colleague of my mom so you know a lot of connections there so
um and we're I think we're just learning now the next day what happened there I mean I see Heather Wilson back there I know Heather you're from the Tampa Bay area right so this is the wind and the and the water are scary things and so our hearts go out to the folks there in the Tampa Bay area and across Florida Orlando and so forth um and I hope I know we our city was so generous and providing expertise in the mountains from our uh from the fire department and also from Water Management I I know Florida's further from us than Western North Carolina but I do hope that if the request comes into the city to help in Florida that we'll be um prepared as well to provide whatever support we can to Florida as they recover from this pretty drastic hurricane so um uh thank you all for your concern and we'll um your support of of Florida the second thing is I'd like to um I'd like to request that we add an item to the end of our agenda today to talk about the process for um for identifying new city manager I think we're all concerned that time is moving quickly I think we can get to agreement on that I I think we should have a discussion in public about
that and I'd propose that we add an agenda item to the end of our agenda today to actually have a discussion about the city manager search I don't know what the president to second that motion if that is appropriate and and have a vote on that sorry motion yeah just that we add an agenda item to discuss the process for hiring the new city manager there'll be other matters correct yeah okay if that yeah whatever was the proper okay so do we need I don't know if we need a thumbs up or we good okay point of clarification the mayor holds the gavl and the mayor can entertain other matters at the time other matter other matters appears on our agenda I'll address it okay thank you
I'm not gonna repeat everything I just said so it belongs to it's above me now y'all heard me right um thank you so much uh finally um I want to just another shout out I had a wonderful time with the Durham Housing Authority for their 75th Anniversary had a wonderful breakfast on Tuesday many of our colleagues were there elected from around the city and just want to send another shout out to them uh Mr Mary you would have been very pleased with the uh presentation wonderful uh presentation they're doing great work at as you know Durham Housing Authority was an honor to Keynote that event in your absence uh Mr Mayor uh for them that day uh that's it thank you so much thank you colleagues uh that does remind me uh just a big shout out to those who were able to attend the massenberg Murray massenberg School ribbon cutting as well I had opportunity to be there for ribbon cutting and um excited about the new Elementary School that'll be added around the Martin Luther King um area of kind of Southern southeast Durham so I know we need many more
schools online and I'm excited to figure out how we're going to get that moving so thank you just one comment also thank you for mentioning um mayor pretend that the Derma Housing Authority 75th U anniversary breakfast I do want to say your comments there were outstanding outstanding I hope that was recorded because it was a very very compelling funny but passionate story about the role of public housing in the lives of so many people and what is the difference it made in your family so I really appreciate that yeah I I wrote it for him checks in the mail no um no obviously we know uh mayor Pro is quite oror um great to see so many folks in the audience today um I had uh an event for week myself um but first I want to thank uh my colleagues for the remarks regarding Western North Carolina as well
as South Florida as many of you know we have a national mayor's Network um the mayor of Tampa is quite occupied right now I was able to speak to um one of her senior staffers and uh it it was pretty significant you know um the problem with Florida is their water just sits rather than draining you know down the rivers or mountains like we have in Western North Carolina but both are catastrophic uh situations um and obviously we see the aggression of these storms uh becoming more frequent um and I I was paying close attention as well um council member is my my nieces are there in Tampa and they were one of those folks that said we're going to hunker down I said you don't get your butt in that car and leave now so uh they went South and was able to you know really uh sort of went over them in a sense it just experienced rain um but
they did lose everything it's just flooded out um so these things are are pretty tough uh got back in town last night um Harvard Rod out the red carpet I was able to uh represent us there uh as a guest lecturer and and um I think probably my most memorable moment was telling Professor David King uh that he wasn't doing a good enough job because Congress Behavior was not good right now in a jokingly manner but David Professor David King is who does the orientation for congress members when they are going into Congress I spoke at his class and spoke at a few other classes was able to spend time in the Bloomberg City Center for cities to meet with their senior staff about the new Innovation track that Durham has recently been named which is the coolest track which out of all of the cities in the entire world Durham is the only one that was re that was able to receive this Innovation track twice
and uh I am uh that means that we get to work on a really cool project uh in uh across the city uh and I cannot wait to announce what it will be uh we're working with some staff on it and um pulling a few other partners together together and we're going to make a big shebang announcement about it um and uh I see some staff smiling over here because they they sort of got volunt told to be involved uh but it's going to be exciting and we are getting a lot of support from the Bloomberg Network uh so I'm looking forward to that um council member cierro uh stated it um Monday's night meeting did get a little testy and we've had some conversations and uh we we you know sometimes get a little passionate about these things and we'll just make sure we keep this training on the track um and just keep moving forward so we will uh get going
here I will now recognize manager pach for any priority I well before we do that i' like to entertain a motion to approve the uh requested absentees absent absent dates absentees for council member Freeman so moved second they are excited to get rid of you I see wow no I'm just joking um I'm gonna vote no anyway so uh uh okay it's been moved in probably second probably second it choose one uh and all in favor ol of host all right thank you okay Madame pach Madam pach Madam manager good afternoon Mr Mayor Mr Mayor
protim members of the Durham city council I am pleased to uh be here this afternoon and provide you with a list of a few priority items that the administration is bringing today so we have for today agenda item number 10 the Watershed interpretation at Patterson Place a a presentation approximately 10 minutes will be made during this meeting uh on October the 10th 2024 uh at this work session agenda item number 20 the contract with TT faster LLC to upgrade Fleet Management's information system attachment number for a price quote was added to the item and finally agenda item number 26 the Durham County government 2025 reappraisal update a 30 minute presentation is planned for you and agenda item attachment number two uh the
the presentation was updated to add additional information regarding the process and the tax relief programs that is all I have for you you this evening thank you very much Madam attorney good afternoon Mr Mayor mayor protm and members of the city council the city attorney's office does not have any priority items for you today thank you and Madam clerk good afternoon Mr Mayor Mr May protm and City Council Members um we do have a closed session this afternoon and um um I did want to mention that a supplemental item has been added to the agenda item number 31 resolution to adopt the nacto Urban Street design guide and urban Bikeway design guide as official city of Durham Bikeway and Street design guides that's my report thank
you right uh I am going to uh address our citizens matters no let me uh do the consent agenda and then I will come back and address citizens matters all right item number one Durham Convention Center and visitors bureau appointment item number two racial Equity you ready to write down U item number two racial Equity Commission item number three Duram affordable housing implementation committee appointment number four durm Planning Commission appointment number five human relations commission appointment number six mayor's Hispanic Latino committee appointments city attorney's office uh number seven fiscal year Grant 25 grant agreement for let me start over number seven fiscal year 2025 Grant agreement for an immigration legal defense project number eight 2024 Durham City County Emergency Operations plan
number nine revisions to deer bow hunting ordinance pull that one okay number 10 Watershed inter interpretation Patterson Place it's presentation number 11 C sorry mayor I'm gonna pull that I know the motion one is just the presentation I'm going to pull that one in regard to motion two okay number 11 Capital Improvement plan time division multiple X stdma upgrade project number 12 purchase of paratech equipment for new fire department rescue apparatus 13 Forest Hills spray spray ground and playground design contract with it's not a with with architecture is that a real word yeah it's a can I pull that one okay that was the Ty um
all right with with architecture PA all right number 14 service contract for computerized maintenance management system from brightle software incorporated number 15 supersedes Grant project ordinance 16190 the United States Marshals service 2023 fugitive apprehension task force agreement project coordinance number 16 super seeds Grant project ordinance 16357 the US departmental Justice us Marshalls office fiscal year 2023 2024 Federal asset forfeiture funds Grant project ordinance number 17 Street and infrastructure acceptances number 18 utility extension agreement with Meritage Homes of the Carolinas Incorporated to serve auin subdivision phases one through four number 19 contract for four-way digital evidence management system 20 contract with TT faster LLC to upgrade Fleet Management information system 20
21 contract with Mainline Information Systems LLC to upgrade the city's firewall and VPN Solutions 22 purchase contract with Brasco International Incorporated for 60 bus shelters Mr man I want to pull this one but just like congrats this big big news yeah I would like to pull this one it's gonna be very brief but so all right number 23 Transit Grant project ordinance amendments 24 updates to lwi income monthly parking discounted Voucher Program and evening parking rate I'm that one might have been pulled by the community as well but I'd like to pull it if not okay that's what I have a request for all right number 25 governing agreements for on call Professional Services water water water waste water and utility management and uh number 26 durm County government 2025 reappraisal update and number 27 Consolidated annexation Min Springs tow houses 28 zoning map change 302 Mor rine Road 29 Consolidated
indexation Oxford Ridge number 30 permanent closing of 165 linear feet of Hamlin Street and number 31 resolution to adopt a nacto urban street design guide and urban Bikeway design guide as official city of dur Bikeway and Street design guides uh and then we have some other matters right and I have items uh number 9 10 13 23 and 242 22 I have items number nine 10 13 22 and 24 PLL all right uh first thing we're going to do is do citizens matters and then we'll um I do have a a request for um quite a few people who need to get back to work so I I'll honor that all right number one
um number one I have uh Susan perus hey all right so the way this works you just come up to the podium right here and I'll give you three minutes to uh you just introduce yourself by name you don't need to give any other information okay and um she's going to have a little alarm to go off to let you know um when time is up okay well um I'm going try I'm GNA try my name is Susan Susan pervis and I'm here uh in Durham North Carolina and I'm I'm representing the senior citizens over on hollowwood street and different things as far as um the police and what time did they get there as far as response and things of that nature and as far as our city coding and things of that nature when people have violations they they only sing out one person and do a blind eye
to the whole Community it said the whole Community because I've had my experience um I'm also you know like I said the the police is you know is for I don't well first of all I want to say to everybody good morning and uh so I'm I'm I'm just in that agenda right now as far as feeling like a secondhand citizen as far as our city is concerned I was born and raised here and uh I am 66 of course I'm I'm I'm in there and so what I'm saying is I'm a senior citizen we have senior citizens in the neighborhood and I'm concerned about the drugs and the trafficking and things of that nature and it's it's taking a blind eye and I understand and I hear all the time that they don't have uh staff as far as as the police officers and things of that nature and 911 calls and I'm afraid a lot of people
is going to die because of uh the questionnaire that the 911 calls and then sometime they don't answer the phone uh and the phone is busy and as far as uh when I say secondhand citizens when we call we feel like we have a right to call if we call 911 they should come or should respond to us and uh I've you know had the experience as far as our officials that um I get choked up because that's SAR I'm feeling because I'm one of the elderness that have illnesses and uh we rely on our officials to take care of our citizens as far as serving them and um things of that nature and they tell us uh our our cause is not a priority as far as what we're calling for and I just feel uneasy about things here in Durham now so I don't know what the response is
I don't know whe I'm in the right place to discuss all of this or things of that nature and I feel like that we put people in place and we vote for people and we you know it just I'm just feeling like we supposed to reply as far as the city but somehow or another the city don't provide with us you know as far as citizens as far as the buses and things of that nature some areas we need uh like senior citizens I have fibromyalgia sometime I don't stand Al some places have Sitting areas some places don't and I just just feel different and we all should be as far as senior citizen where we have sorry should I stop so that that is your time but I have someone that's about to come and see you uh first of all you are in the right place and I want to make sure that we're responding to you um so I have someone
that if you just wait just a moment uh in your seat I have someone that's going to come and get your information and and speak with you about how we can um get resources better over there if if you don't come and say anything we won't know so you're you're doing right thank you well thank you for listening of course um and this is not a policy matter but Madam clerk could you change that alarm that's find a good alarm just something softer that's giving me anxiety me thank you thank you I was about to evacuate the building just you're fine thank you Miss Susan okay let's just turn the volume down we'll get the we'll get the message sure yeah or just put your hand up and
I'll uh I have uh next uh kedra Campbell is there KRA Campbell okay maybe not all right um hi welcome yep you're on I'm on thank you uh thank you for time good to see everybody um quick side note uh we did actually try to take some of our ticket sales from Saturday's event at slingshot towards um NC Arts over in Asheville um so we are trying to do our part uh attendees could also do a QR code and donate to Arts organizations in Asheville on the way in and there are moves to do larger events here in town so if you have uh creators or musicians in Asheville that you can direct us to we can maybe do something in durm more organized thank you um KY rle former
Moogfest slingshot Festival producer music Electronic Arts here in Durham thank you for your time uh circling back here I sent an email on September 19th laying out some initial and Urgent critiques about the event funding process and how to now not in a year um and now is a crucial moment to to Pivot into more intentional event landscape so events businesses creators and the overall perception of durm can hopefully begin to thrive especially in the face of last year's what we consider missteps those were just some initial points um as event organizers local businesses creators vendors potential investors and more are very concerned about this there are many more but um as we know if you saw that email was plenty long so since sorry for the couple typos I did see them uh so please deeply consider having a conversation with us so we can move forward with a more from a more less critical stance into one that's more supportive and more more actionable um really don't want to push this conversation out into the public without your points of view and we don't
want it to become a rock in everyone's shoe over the next year obviously Durham has a lot of important things on its on its deck to take care of so if we can help please let us know this is very important to us um we LLY I want to thank former chair Ivon Coleman and uh Javier cavier for listening to over the last year when we reached out it's been very helpful had a conversation with manager Pat thank you very much I do appreciate that um we completed our fifth successful event in Durham last weekend um it was the smallest uh amount of funding we've ever had uh uh in contrast to many of the other years um and and doing a smaller event uh greatly impacted business Around Town artists possible outside investment and from many around the globe you know to take interest interest in the event we're hoping dur pivots into a more intentional Direction involving events and the art so we don't have to consider leaving town we don't really need Durham we want to be in Durham but but we don't need to um I'll send a more detailed email in
the future it won't be as long I promise you that um but you probably won't hear from us after that meaning that we'll either take your response or your lack of response as the information we need to to move forward how we'd like to um we're very interested in Durham we've completed our obl ations um we have a lot of suggestions on how to move forward I don't say of course you don't have to take them but we'd love you to listen to them to think about how we can be more productive for everybody in town and believe it or not I finished before time right okay no no all right 3 seconds all right thanks everybody thank you thank you and just to that I um I thanks for that I will say government does not move as fast as prefer uh preferable sure uh so uh you you'll probably will get some responses uh action have is on a fiscal calendar yeah well there are decisions being made in decab right now that could be taken this moment quite honestly those decisions hav haven't been finalized I know there's an agenda item to add more funding to those kinds of things so I urge you to take some of the points I've
made in that email and consider making more intentional decisions around what the fature of the next year will be thank you very much thank you um Chris perin hello city council members uh Mr Mayor uh I'm always up here talking about streets so here doing it again um I think transportation is one of the most Central uh and important aspects of everybody's lives um you know we've heard a lot here today from um folks about other issues uh that don't seem to be connected to Transportation but really are we've heard about schools new schools being made and our need for more um but the way kids get to school is driven by our transportation Network um just recently I saw a tweet uh from Duram Public Schools where they did U National Walk and Roll to school day I think um and it was interesting because the uh the pictures that they had actually posted to their account uh had kids walking which is great um but if you look uh most of the pictures involve
them walking on streets without sidewalks right so that's where our kids are walking um we also heard about um the great work that the Durham Housing Authority is doing um but one thing I I think we should also keep in mind is well what kind of Transportation access to folks in some of these neighborhoods and some of these communities have um I walk around downtown we have these nice wide sidewalks uh there's even some places where there's bike Lanes but where are we placing them right often times I think the folks who are most dependent on moving around without a car have the least options and infrastructure around that uh We've also heard from a senior citizen and a lot of folks get to an age where they can't drive anymore they have to take the bus they have to rely on other Transportation methods they need somewhere to sit they need some shelter from from rain um all this leads to I think a question of standards and whether we have good default standards that we can apply broadly and make sure that they're Equitable and help everybody in our city uh move around safely and so for that reason um I'd like to really call attention to the
proposal to do a nacto um guideline adoption um I think this is really important I don't know that it's the perfect solution but it is a solution to getting us um far better standards um I love Durham but there's nothing special about our streets there's nothing special about our roads we have the same context that a lot of other cities and communities have uh we have the same Vehicles physics works the same so you know these these best practices that have been developed um very broadly and have have shown success I think are an important way for us to quickly and expensively move towards better solutions for everybody that's all I got hopefully I don't get to get the alarm either thank you so much all right Miss Susan someone is coming all right items did I have nine 10 this is um yeah I'll just move it up colleagues I'm gonna change our order here real quick um G to move 24
up that's the pulled item yeah Chelsea I do have some speak speakers as well so let me go with speaker first Nicole Thompson I don't like that one if you could do a different one for me uh good afternoon Nicole Thompson president CEO of downtown Durham Incorporated um do you need the address okay no we we just need Nam we don't need information people say my information don't file voluntarily we don't need it just name oh okay so I take all of that back Nicole Thompson um thank you so much for some um a moment to speak with you um I am here to speak in support of item number 24 the updates to the lowincome monthly parking discounted voucher program and
evening parking rate um I just want to take a moment and say a thank you a heartfelt thank you and appreciation to the county man uh the city manager manager p to the county attorney's office um and to the staff um the transportation parking staff um for listening to us for listening to the concerns of our uh downtown businesses and to the employees and hearing what we had to say and our concern and coming together and coming up with a program that will drastically improve the lives of our hourly employees in the downtown area as we all know these are the individuals that make our downtown so special so wonderful and um listening to and and working with us and working with the downtown business Community to come with a significant program um that has meat and and and and and the ability to really support our hourly workers means so much so I just wanted to take a moment um I'm sure that you got a number of um uh written comments on this uh we did push this out uh I think there are a few people in the audience to speak but we are here to say
just thank you thank you to each and every one of you I know that it still needs to go before you at city council meeting um but this is great so thank you thank you so much thank you council member cook great um well I also just wanted to say that this is awesome so I'm going to Echo a lot of what you just heard uh from Nicole Thompson but as a person who was an employe at many of the locally owned restaurants downtown um and who dealt with parking I just really feel some kind of way about this and it is just an awesome job and I also wanted to extend my thanks to manager page and to everybody who's worked really tirelessly on ensuring that everyone has access to Downtown parking and I just wanted to make sure that we were singing those praises and so I wanted to make sure it was pulled that's all I have to say on that thank you so much obviously uh
council member WR thank you Mr Mayor just to Echo those comments yeah uh really appreciate the work the staff has done manager page uh Sean Negan back there from transportation we really appreciate that also want to give a big shout out to Nicole uh Thompson and the staff of DDI for holding us accountable on this issue and to your individual members including Sean Stokes who had so many conversations with about this so appreciate you holding us accountable I think this is a great shows we can there's so much work we have to do on a daily basis but we can also respond when we hear concerns from residents and this is a great example it happened so I'm excited about this we also have a big you know one of our big goals of the city is shared economic prosperity this is a small but important step towards that goal so I really think this is a big achievement and I'm I'm happy about this uh item and I'm glad to support it thank you I would just Echo um a thanks to staff for pulling this together well say this has been going since 2020 I think it was a little prior to that and just acknowledging that in this context of shared Prosperity those
who are often at the margins are often people of color and and especially business owners of color and so I know that uh bu Cafe made a very stated comment about the parking situation being a big hindrance for the organization's business and I want to make sure that we don't have the same type of thing happening for organizations or businesses that are downtown and so I'm excited that this is moving forward thank you I want to associate myself with everything my colleagues have said and I want to I really want to emphasize how um thankful I am to to the the manager and the staff and our city attorney's office for you know sometimes juggling some pretty difficult um circumstances we uh we were asked to address a parking issue for low um income workers downtown while at the same time trying to get people to stop driving cars in our city um and and and sometimes I
think you know in our Public Square we say these things and we don't realize the tension between some of them and trying to do these things at the same time so the man manager page you deserve a lot of credit in the staff because I know you hear things sometimes on the one end you have folks saying get us on bikes use the bus more walk more and then another group saying hey we need to park our cars um make it easier to to for us to use our cars to get downtown that's not easy um some of the same you know it's interesting I I eat at a lot of restaurants down town and around Durham and I noticed um and many of you may have noticed um many of the favorite places we eat at now have a mandatory service charge to pay f a living wage some of you may have noticed the prices are going up um the same economic factors that have led business owners to do that are the same economic factors that a government faces the municipal government we don't get to print money like the the federal government we don't get to tweak interest rates so the same
forces that are leading price uh prices to be raised by business owners are the same forces that the the the government looks at um but we know that when raising parket rates or Mark uh raising parking rates or responding to the same Market factors that these business owners are responding to um has different impact so in the face of that even in the face of Market forces uh for the staff to to come up with this this very substantive response and I hope as we look at it long term that it has real impact for folk even as we're trying to get them to leave their cars at home uh and and bolster our transportation system I hope that that we'll just appreciate the the incredible not us who are elected I'm talking about the staff the folk who actually do the calculus who put the pen and paper who look at the nuts and bolts every day of governing a great American city um just a magnificent job magnificent response um to an often times Public Square that's asking for multiple things at the same time so I'm really excited about
this is um and thank you and page thank you to our attorneys thank you to our colleagues at the County as well thank you much thank you Mr Mayor I'll uh be quick and Echo the the comments made by fellow council members here and and the appreciation um toward The Advocates um and those who who came here and spoke up and um uh administrators and and staff who who worked on putting this together I had a real quick question mostly out of curiosity um why why is is it that um we canot use the parking Enterprise fund and we have to use uh general fund dollars just a question of curiosity so um thank you thank you for the question certainly when we have um in in municipal government we set up an Enterprise fund we set a fee ordinance and that fee ordinance applies across the board to similarly situated customers and because of that uh those
Enterprise funds are typically designed to at least Break Even or when they have profit that profit to be plowed into improvements uh to the Enterprise so a parking Enterprise fund a water s uh utility Enterprise fund those funds set fees and they apply to everybody that's similarly situated so when we when we are intending to uh insert uh Equitable uh initiatives in into those Enterprises our general fund um is allowed to provide certain support to Residents individual residents uh in order to um support them in an equitable way so in some ways it is taking money from this fund and putting it in the Enterprise fund but it is putting it there to support the user who qualifies for the support I appre appreciate that I think
that's just good good knowledge that these things are are complex and there's not always a simple and quick and easy solution but we need to be creative and we have uh creative staff and coming up with with the these Solutions and solving problems so than thank you again all right thank you uh colleagues for your remk comment yeah go ahead I just want to comment because it's not often known that we have been offering simultaneous interpretation uh for many years at all uh work sessions and Council meetings and that is not what used to happen so I do want to just highlight the movement towards language access that the city's done thank you yes about and close captioning and even though we can't see that on our screen um the uh m Clark has informed me
that it is happening on the YouTube so another another win for access all right well thank you all for your comments um you know government moves slow um but I'm glad we were able to get this get at least this part done uh there is more uh that needs to be done uh at the end of the day we need to make sure that it's easier to do business in the city and that we are making making it um now we we're not you know putting barriers in the way we're we're working to remove them and this is a start hopefully I know um one other thing we've been talking about is outdoor dining we can get that taken care of as well um and um and whatever else we need to do to uh just continue to make this community vibrant um I know that Public Safety is an issue as well uh and a lot of times you know
we we we we experience these things on the ground and I'm speaking as mayor but obviously everyone knows that I'm also a a restaurant tour and uh I hear the same things that we hear our colleagues come our peers come up to the mic and say that they're dealing with I deal with them when I'm not in this capacity uh when my employees are like hey can someone walk me outside uh because there there's someone standing out there waiting for me and looking at me um and folks just want to feel safe uh so um we want to make sure that we're promoting a culture of safety in this community want to make sure that the folks that are working in this community feels safe we want to make sure that it's not a tax to come to work and the money you're making especially as an entry-level worker or employee that you're not spending it back into you know a a cost uh to actually be there um I'll say something unpopular there is a lot of folks that do not work in the office anymore and so therefore
downtown it's a lot drier than it used to be you don't have people out and about as much as they used to be so therefore the weekday are extremely extremely tough to maintain a business especially if it's a front- faing business where you rely on folks to walk in uh and people come out to party and have a good time on the weekends and you just cannot sustain a business that way so uh there are many folks that are starting to close shop and there are many reasons why at the end of the day if you're not making the money you just can't sustain and no government is going to save save anybody from that so I I do hope that we start you know having folks come back to the office and you know I hope that we do have more events coming downtown uh and throughout the community more um but all of that is part of the bigger picture and today is just a step in the right direction uh of um of just making sure that we are not making it burdensome to work downtown so thank you
all all right I'll now uh go up to uh number nine as uh Deputy manager Ferguson makes his way up I'll just um quickly say that um I've talked to several of my colleagues about this and I know that staff has put in a lot of work around this issue um and I I am particularly aware of the real safety concerns of having deer overpopulation and for the need for um culling specifically as as we heard from uh Mr Hut uh that this this well researched issue and that that is sort of the solution that we have come up with and I don't want to put a ton of barriers in
the way of that but I also want to recognize that bow hunting itself is is a dangerous activity and a lot of cities do not allow it within the city boundaries and I think that that's for good reason there are a lot of protections that we see in places where hunting is allowed I'm not saying that those would necessarily be followed by these communities but what I am saying is that when you walk around say duke forest or something they have signage about closures they have game wardens um there is is a lot of information available and I worry about allowing bow hunting in the city and not having those same protections that are available in other places um you're moving it into a more densely populated area and again I know that there are restrictions still on acreage um and again that those are well researched but for me thinking about this um and I think Echoes the sentiment of the concerns that we were hearing that it was more asked for as sort of an exception as opposed to just
like a blanket reduction in the um restrictions on bow hunting and so I'm concerned about residents I'm concerned about people's pets I think that lots of people move through um move through neighborhoods they might not know that this is going on and I also know having lived on a place that had quite a bit of acreage and being in community with neighbors that have quite a bit of acreage that these Pockets exist in the city and people will utilize this outside of this one neighborhood that's asked for it so I just want to make sure that we're doing all we can to ensure the safety of everybody in Durham so my request is and I know you've done a lot of work on this and I see that the deputy City attorney has stepped out and I'm wondering if I might want to wait for her and just so you know our comments are being archived so she can she can respond absolutely um so my I'm I'm
working on the on the bow hunting uh uh ordinance change and and I think it's important to to say like this is an an ordinance change we're writing law here and and so I want it to be as specific as it can I want it to be as um as I want it to meet the needs of the community but I also want it to be restrictive in a way that keeps the community safe as well so my two things that I am particularly concerned about are um having some sort of time restriction around this and I understand that this probably tracks with seasonal hunting um laws and so I'm assuming that some of that is already going to be enacted but I'm wondering if we could have potentially even more restrictions on on time because again this is a community and so people aren't going to have the same notice that they have in other places and then the other thing that I'm interested in is having it being written as that you can decrease the amount of
acreage when you meet a certain threshold I think that's what they were asking for originally and I know that um Mr Hut used a standard that was deer per square mile I believe um and so I it sounds to me like some of those standards already exist and I'm wondering if and I don't want to make it burdensome right for communities to meet that but I'm wondering if we could just have those extra precautions yes you can do this we can lessen the restrictions where Community meets a certain um whatever the measurement is we can have lots of different measurements to sort of lower that barrier but if you need to when the deer population is out of control and also with some time requirements would be my request um and I'm wondering if since I know you've done a ton of research and I don't know Deputy City man or attorney if if um you've been the person heading up this but I'm wondering if those are things that we could look at before the next meeting when this is on or if it would
be easier if we put it off one cycle I want to make sure that this question gets answered pretty immediately because I know these folks are looking for an answer but I'm wondering if we could look at those things before the next meeting or if a cycle would be useful both our Deputy City Manager for Public Safety and Wildlife Zar for the city apparently um the uh so to to address your questions first and foremost uh want to acknowledge that um the attorney's office has done the bulk of the research on this but I think it's fair to say that there there's not a lot of guidance or direction that the city is working under and and hopefully the agenda memo portrayed that accurately we've tried to give you a sense of how other communities have added I've checked with North Carolina Wildlife officials and had conversations with them uh and as the memo hopefully explains and as you've captured in your comments council member um there are
communities that are more restrictive and communities that are less restrictive and very little guidance or data from those communities that informs our decisions about how the acreage requirements or the buffer requirements do or don't impact safety I I literally could find no instances of concerns nor could I find instances or data about how the ordinances are actually used so I don't I don't want to mislead and imply uh that we have advocacy for or against these changes I think we wanted to provide the analysis we could and that's what's captured in the memo what I know about uh measuring deer population is that the the numbers that I believe the president of the trade and HOA brought forward came from the North Carolina Wildlife uh commission and I'm not sure that they are those are not that's not data that's regularly captured so I don't know that there is standing data out there that a neighborhood or a community like tror could access to then satisfy a
requirement if the ordinance had a requirement that said you must Reach This threshold of overpopulation before um I think that my initial reaction is that might be burdensome on the neighborhood to try to capture that data but I'd be happy to ask ask North Carolina fish and wildlife to inform us how they collect that data and and how that's done so I could uh provide that I'm going to defer to uh the attorneys as to whether or not my impression based on prior conversations with tror and HOA and attorney rayberg is that we can't create sort of special circumstances within the ordin ordinance for certain neighborhoods I think you know originally I think Trey Burns asked was could you guys just lowered this requirement for us and the answer was no uh so I believe that whatever Council decides whether or not they want to keep the current restrictions or or make them uh you know closer to what the HOA has requested I believe that does have to
apply Citywide unless there is some other criteria that can apply Citywide that gets closer to what you're after um we're happy to explore any of those options but might request that Council provide us guidance as to kind of what what pth you want us to go down there um and as far as time uh limitations um yes there there's deer hunting season uh I'm not going to try and quote that from memory but it is right around this time of year I believe September October maybe October November but I'll clarify that after the meeting and then North Carolina allows for cities to opt into a special Urban deer hunting season which extends the calendar um the ordinance nor the deer hunting season provides any limits that that tighten that uh I would again have to do some research with the attorneys to determine if we could create tighter time windows that that apply for circumstances like this I do know that
from my conversations with North Carolina fish and wildlife and the tror HOA the North Carolina fish and wildlife when they uh offered assistance to treyburn um indicated that they would arrange sort of a Time limited hunt and that or that they would assist with the arranging of a hunt that they would help uh the neighborhood make contact with certified bow Hunters people who are actually you trained or experienced in this area licensed to hunt and that those hunts would be over a certain amount of time but that is a conversation that um North Carolina fish and wildlife offered it's not something that we imposed and so whether or not we can impose that is is something on need to take additional research so I believe that addressed most of your comments and we're happy to take direction from Council as to as to how you want to proceed with this thank you that's so helpful and I I see you reaching for your mic so I I would love to hear the attorney's office on that um I'm just thinking aloud but as you're saying that there is assistance with the hunting I
that too would also make me feel a little bit better I think my concern is that we change the ordinance and there's just unforeseen consequences of that where other neighborhoods potentially are able to use bow hunting and and so that's that is my concern and and this is coming from a person I lived again nearby and I know that folks who hunt are are very aware of the of the requirements around hunting and um and so I do think that this I'm always worried when we sort of kind of do a deregulation of of sorts that the we just might have some consequences that we can't foresee so um if there is an option for if the um Wildlife is sorry the fish in Wildlife is is saying that they might assist with hunting that also might be something that I would be interested in as additional protection but if you Sophia Hernandez city attorney's office yes our office is uh very willing
to work with DCM Ferguson to do additional research I wanted to clarify when you ask for time limitations are we looking at calendar limitations or were you thinking of daylight hour types of limitations or both I'm I am I imagine those because I think that my understanding of the deer hunting is that the seasons are already set and I imagine we can't go in excess of that um so my thought was potentially also daytime hours or potentially days of the week which I think is already something that's set as well um Statewide but I I could be wrong about that um but yeah mine mine is sort of just whatever more information that we can give to communities so that when they are walking through their neighbor Hood they know that like that is something that's ongoing and this is like a little bit personal to me because I have a dear sized and colored dog and I just think about this a lot and I and I know that I mean Bow Hunting is it's a it's a weapon and we're you know it's a bow but it's it's still a weapon and and allowing the extra use in the city I just want to make sure that we have as much notice to
community members as we can understood thank you thank you uh Council colleagues anyone else I would love to just get clarification when you said that y'all be happy to work with folks do we feel like y'all can we could get something by the Monday meeting or would it be helpful if we push this out and go ahead and set it for the next work session we're gonna address that I'm gonna uh let coun because I I actually want to dovetail what you said because I'm I'm actually in your place but I want to hear what other colleagues want to say about it and then we'll come back to council action on the issue council member R yeah thanks for him um yeah I'm I'm fine with pushing this back a cycle to have a little bit more time to to work with um DCM Ferguson and the city Attorneys Office to to look at some of these questions I do want to thank uh Tiffy city manager F Ferguson for taking this on I know it's an issue that's not doesn't affect a ton of citizens but I know the request came in from the residents of treyburn I think part of our job here in the council is to provide timely and direct answers to questions like this so I appreciate you
taking this issue forward um having said that like I have like this is I have no stake in this so I think I think a good discussion here is is is absolutely appropriate um I will say I want to make sure it's clear that we're in terms of how we talk about this it's not like we're moving bow hunting into the in different neighborhoods the truth is we pass this ordinance back in 2013 as far as we know no one's taken advantage of this so it's not like there from my perspective it's not like there's a huge or we don't know but it's not like we're actively moving stuff into different areas I think the other thing to note is that the the way the ordinance is written previously you've got to be on a permanent or portable uh stand at least 10 feet high so it's not like there'll be roving bands of bow Hunters running around neighborhoods right this is a very much sort of prescri sort of restricted activi so I just want to make sure that's clear to everyone but I think a a further cycle to make sure we fully understand the consequences and po potential implications makes a lot of sense thank you if I can uh respond to that council member rist uh you brought up a good point that that I should have
mentioned earlier in the meeting I had with the tror and HOA and representatives from North Carolina Fish and Wildlife the individuals from Fish and Wildlife did point to that that portable or permanent stand as what they consider to be the primary protective factor for residents and residential areas that that that to to quote them you know that uh experienced deer hunters will either come with a portable stand or work from a a purpose-built stand for deer hunting that that creates an angle for uh shooting of the arrow that they considered to be the primary safety factor that is not to say they were arguing against additional safety factors but they found that to be a critical part of the ordinance which it remains unchanged in your ordinance in this proposal thank you deputy maner and thank you council member RZ I I just uh council members anyone know I um I want to fully associate myself with with um
the substance and spirit of of council member Cook's line of questioning um when this issue was first brought up I had asked for a an an additional cycle and precisely the type of questions the council member cook is asking today um it was my sense that it we should have probably gotten a presentation on it but the response to to Trey burs you know some neighborhoods you know we all got our issues some neighborhoods are dealing with you know gunfire at night some are dealing with deer eating their plants um we all have our issues uh in our neighborhoods but and when when uh the representative from from trayor and Kane our response was almost instantaneous um and the impression I got from that conversation was that this is kind of pretty straightforward there's a template already out there and we would just be kind of uh assuming a template that already existed lo and behold today I think council member Cook's questions go to how quickly we moved that first time when the presentation was made I mean I I have a lot of questions I I'd like to understand the
implications the notion that it would be just one neighborhood specific or we're responding because from one neighborhood an ordinance has the weight of law in the entire city and I think questions about not withstanding what folk may have done in the past but I think um you know questions about the implications of it Citywide in the city where we're already having issues with other types of weapons um but being so pinpointed on on you know this particular neighborhood um AB bucolic Treeline neighborhood and people seek these kind of environments sometimes precisely for the prosaic wholesomeness of it and to kind of be Urban but not Urban and to be in a cloistered setting um animals live out there and and you know the concerns we have about environmental impact with development I mean animals are part of the environment as well um you know we're and and and as we move humans move to those areas there are certain things that we we expect in those areas and certain things also that we we bring and
impact the area so I I'm fully on board with uh another cycle to get all of the implications to have all of the questions that that council member cook asked and others have brought up um as we do with other things before we place the imprim mod of the city before we place the weight of law on it and not just you know in quick response to to a citizen's matter um request and it may be fully that's not to say whether it was meritorious or not but I think the the pro particularly when it's has the weight of law behind it I I think um another cycle would would be appropriate um his honor is back I'm he asked me to finish up this matter then I'll hand uh the gavel back to his honor council member Baker you wanted to I was just GNA ask is one cycle enough or or would you want additional time I'm comfortable that we could uh begin working on it I I think one Cycle's appropriate I I'll inform the manager if it feels like we need more time and she can inform the council take
additional time if necessary I think based on some of the questions raised uh would like to invite North Colina fish and wildlife Personnel to the meeting I think they it might be helpful for you to have them in the room uh and and that way if you have questions about sort of some of the more details I I'm uh less prepared to answer those so we'll work with one and if it needs to go beyond that I'll make sure the manager can share that with the council council member copy error oh say I thought you were an expert colleagues thank you so much that discharges that matter I'll yield to his honor now all right the next item is a presentation um item number 10 do you wanna it's I had it and so it's not yeah that's I shouldn't say a presentation but there was
okay do you want to see the presentation first or do you want to ask the question I'm happy to just ask the question yes so and this is goingon to be very quick hold I just would sorry um I am just asking that the second motion be placed on the GBA calendar as opposed to the consent agenda I think that um pulling we're going to get a presentation on it today and and so we'll have staff this is just going to be an educational thing from staff um and I'd like to hear also or at least have present the land owner to just do a little extra questioning so that's my only request I could make a point of order generally with with when something's a presentation all questions are on the table once the presentation is made so so to to council member cck concern we we we will in regular order we be able to to entertain any any concerns or recommendations council member cook has we generally not generally always when it's a presentation we get the presentation it doesn't have to be
pulled and any question we have about anything is in order after the presentation is delivered right you don't have to pull a presentation okay I'm happy to to R ra that at the end of our presentations thank you thank you all right uh and just real quick colleagues um so you don't have to do the presentation just yet Aon I was I was I was blanking on your name no worries um okay what the question was already addressed you don't have to worry about the presentation just yet we're going to go through the other Port items and then we'll come back yeah okay so so I'm coming back up yeah well you can turn that mic off for me uh council member Freeman did you have a question okay all right item number 13 council member wrist yes thank
you that Tom yeah um yeah I just have um so first of all this is a great project I'm excited about this the spray ground super thanks for bringing that forward I just want to understand the Contracting side of this thing so if I could perfect yeah um so we're going to execute a contract with with with architecture not a typo okay um and it's a certified small local business Enterprise correct Mike aresco with General services department and yes yeah so my question is let me pull up the memo here so so they're a small local business Enterprise um and it says here at the at the under equal business opportunity summary there in the memo it says um the goal for the project is 8% minority participation 6% women so after reviewing the documentation provided UBC under bu under utiliz business compliance division has determined that with architecture is compliant with equal business opportunity program and
is an active certified s lbe firm with architecture of Durham will utilize the following Hub that's historically underutilized businesses right certified firm and then it lists in that firms are going to utilize JC Waller which looks like a minority underutilized business Enterprise but then with architectures listed there as a firm they're gonna contract with so how does that work they're the they're the prime right yes I I I don't want to necessarily speak specifically on the language that that was in there it came I believe directly from the compliance office in in that element yeah so I guess it doesn't make sense that that the person being wor of the contract is then gonna is going to utilize the following firms to address the the women um underutilized business Enterprise requirement because that they are the front so I don't understand how they can utilize a subcontract that's themselves it doesn't seem a logical to me understood I'll have to get back to you on that answer the clarification
okay that's my only question now otherwise great project I'm excited about it but I do want to make sure just on the on the sort of Contracting piece that that we got Clarity there I if there any is that yeah yeah okay so so certainly if um with with archite with with architecture PA is who we are Contracting with they are the prime and they're they're going to be doing 55% of the contract they have the opportunity to to subcontract some of the services out but if the contract is going to be executed with them then they are um uh a woman on Ube and that is who we're Contracting with so some of sometimes you know information that is provided is is for
information purposes but the percent of the contract that they're going to perform is actually showing in the table at the bottom of page too so you're say so they're going to utilize the JC Waller this the subcontractor address to address the minority participation requirement they're essentially saying they themselves can meet the the women yeah yes since it's a since they are a woman owned business they're using their 55% to to meet that qualification and then the minority owned business they're using JC waller for 18% so certainly they um you know they exceed the the the gold there for women which because they are women-owned yes correct I think that makes sense okay thank you I number 22 council member cook
you um hey this is gonna be so quick and I'm really excited about this but I was wondering if you could do two things for me one is I would I would love a list of the stops that have been been identified or if they haven't been identified maybe just an understanding of how we're going to identify those and then I was also hoping you could just speak to the match from the county um and how that came about just briefly that's good afternoon mayor mayor proam and members of council Sean Eagan director of Transportation um so we're very excited about the opportunity uh to upgrade our shelters uh across the city right now we have uh a large number of uh metal shelters that were installed in the 80s and 90s um and we've received a number of complaints for example from Riders about uh not being seen by the bus operator because they're obscured uh by the metal
um and it also um when we've put our new uh glass or plexiglass shelters uh into place it improves visibility improves the lighting uh we've gotten very positive feedback from uh customers and the community about those So the plan here is to take the old uh metal frame shelters that are beyond the end of their useful life uh and uh replace those uh with a much more attractive shelter with better visibility and better opportunities for lighting uh so we're excited about that I can work on getting uh a list of installation locations uh with this um so we are using a combination of um federal funds that are allocated by formula to the city as well as City Transit funds that come from the property tax um because these are uh shelter locations that predate the uh Transit
sales tax in Durham the uh direction that we've gotten from Durham County is that uh uh there's not an interest in the county uh Transit tax participating in the cost of these shelters U so while elsewhere in the Triangle region uh County Transit taxes uh are used for purchasing replacement equipment whether that's buses or shelters um in this case um the uh direction that we've received with that uh this would be a city responsibility not sure to understand I thought I thought it said in the memo that it does come from the County Transit from the city transit fund I think yeah I think it said so I can go back
75 property tax okay thank you so if it's a I'm just trying to understand so if it's a a new bus station because I know that there was the movement around go triangle putting down lots of new bus stations and I've seen them all over town then that is coming from the County Transit fund the shelter the new shelter and Pad generally are coming um but there are also examples where the city's doing it
as part of City sidewalk project in some cases if there's a development the developer is building profer it right right yeah so there it's it's a mix of different sources for when you see a new shelter location where there there wasn't previously a shelter but if it's a replacement shelter then we're not using Transit fund County Transit fund dollars that's uh the direction that we've received from our partners is that um they want um to reserve funds for other purposes thank you so in the memo before it goes on consent can we just add that in the memo that it's City Transit dollars uh one uh two is there like a a large list that kind of lists new that were funded by the county and then whatever we're funding and if there is that could we also receive that in our packet uh yeah we can uh work on that there's a there's an online then that's
org that shows um the new shelter locations that have been built so we can we can um get a table from that I'd love to see the funding source on all of them um thank you and then could you remind me about how much money is in the County Transit fund that's G be my question yeah so the fund balance going into the end of fiscal year 24 was about $130 million 130 thank you my final question is I'd love also a list from other because it's you know Orange County Wake County I mean there's lots of counties that have this Transit um fund that is paid through the sales tax increase um that everyone pays including City residents um and so I would love to see a comparison also of what other counties are funding that are different than what our Durham County Transit fund is funding we can work on that I'm not sure that we'll have by the 21st no no no
that's fine just broadly sorry thank you I appreciate that thank you so much so for the just for clarification for the 21st we'll clarify that these are City Transit funds that are providing the match to the federal yes and then a table and then as much information as we can gather quickly yes um on recently U constructed new locations um and the Planned locations for these 60 shelters perfect and then at some point the the other information would be great sure thank you so much that's all and again Kudos in the 60 shelters it's it's great news so thank you we're excited and then just a quick question do you have a number from the profer amount um that's available as well you mean a number of locations that are Developer built yeah uh we have to do a little bit of research on that I guess developer built versus proper so that those numbers are clear that they're not coming from tax dollars so generally our preference we have a strong preference uh for the
developers to contribute those stop and shelter improvements in kind um so uh we really we we try to strongly encourage that through the process it's much more costeffective for the developer they already have construction Crews and equipment on site to put the pad uh they're in gen uh generally building sidewalk segments as as part of their site development so uh we uh I can't think of any examples where we've taken cash as a profer we really try to um make it so that U the developer builds the Improvement it gets done a lot faster that way and I think this more previously there were some funds that came in around that but I may be missing we can do some research on that thank you it sounds like you have a lot of homework so much more quick and simple right um no this is good information that it's
going to be very helpful for us all right uh so we are at number 22 no no we're done with we're done with those uh colleagues I am going to switch a rude once more sorry Aon our County colleagues want to have them come on up and give us a presentation uh which will be item number 26 so you don't have to just wait through all the city business but welcome uh so you guys are it should be oh they gone welcome to City Hall our County colleagues I know it feels good to be in here you know it's nice and cool you know
my wife told me to tell you hello Pamela baby oh yeah tell hello it's all right well while we're working on the technical issues I will introduce this agenda item how's that uh mayor mayor protim council members I'm Tim FL City CFO uh we are here today we our friends from the counties are here today to present a 2025 reappraisal update for you I have uh K Doyle who is the tax administrator Starin batty who is the deputy assessor and James Roberts who is a commercial specialist and supervisor who will be making a presentation we are also honored today to have the acting County Manager Claudia Hager and assistant County Manager Dwayne Brenson uh uh with us as well and other County colleagues here uh as additional resources should there be some questions uh and so so
uh we should have that here in a second take your time I've been running away from this presentation anyway can go okay yeah I mean just go on and pull that from the agenda it's it's not a PowerPoint oh in the agenda set yeah so just go to the web the agenda the online agenda yeah we pulled that up from the website website
yep cck on that yep six but this one might be the did they update the website with the new okay
yeah I'm just trying to get the ttop the browser home it all right so here it is not so without further ado
all right well good afternoon this is going to be a new experience but we'll make it work we'll make it work but um good afternoon thank you for having us my name is k do with the durm county tax administrator I tax administrator um I am very thankful to be here to share this information very important information so I'm going to jump right in and I'mma also Co navigate through this here we go all right so discussion topics we're going to go over the re appraisal process market sales Trends calendar of scheduled values programs to assist tax liability and then we'll talk about communication strategies and that'll go straight into discussion and just overview the reappraisal process is basically a process of appraising thousands of properties and we try to make sure that the importance of that January one date is where that falls into place because it's all
thousands of properties as of a single date so we're doing this because we're trying to make sure that everything remains fair and Equitable and we are trying to realize 100% market value all right so North Carolina General statute 105 286 requires that counties in the state of North Carolina conduct these rear appraisals at least once every eight years all right as we all see a lot of activity can take place in eight years we would like to shoot for four years right this time it's going to be six years of course so four years is a good Benchmark to try to shoot for cuz it kind of reduc reduces the activity in the market whether it's up or down good or bad um but of course the state mandates eight all right so once every 8 years the statute North Carolina General statute 105 287 speaks to the um inability to change values outside of re appraisal years all right so outside of
some type of change happening to the actual property or something taking place where you have altered the actual property s through some type of work permits things of that nature we don't change values values only changed during the re appraisal Year all right now the responsibility of this re appraisal number one goal is to bring those values to 100% market value process ultimately equalizes the tax base but it is not it's very important it is not considered a revenue generator all right most recent reappraisals in Durham County where 2019 being the most recent in 2016 and 2008 re appraisal process for Durham County started with a 1% random sample review submitted to the North Carolina Department of Revenue that is a process that allows North Carolina Department of Revenue to review our data and let us know exactly what type of reappraisal
they think should be recommended all right um industry standard methods have been developed for Mass appraisal to produce property Val values that are reasonable and reliable we are definitely one of the key counties in regards to trying to drive this education focus and we are um doing that through ouro International Association of assessing officers um that is basically who we look to to make sure that all of our education across the state is uniform and it's an International Association all right but all of our practices and standards and techniques are coming through these program this Association Mass appraisal techniques include statistical tools used to help measure the accuracy of an appraisal one of the most important tools we have is the sales ratio all right you're going to see it in a couple of slides coming up but the sales ratio is the most common measure of how closely assessed values match up with
the current sale prices the formula is represented as the assess value divided by sales price you're going to see a couple of different representations of that as we move forward but just for an example a home sales for $100,000 the tax value is currently $80,000 they end up with a sales ratio of 80% 80 all right and that's very important going into these next slides this is just a snapshot of the 100 counties of North Carolina and some of their most recent ratio studies I've focused in with some of the counties that are either bordering us or considered top 10 largest counties all right so if you see this slide you can see First Column is final ratio that's that sales ratio we were just talking about next column is the Cod that's the coefficient of dispersion and that's a uniformity measurement is just making
sure that everything is where it's measuring where are in regards to the median the median ratio all right so yes sir is a is a low coefficient of dis dispersion means there's less that's good so Higher One means there's more dispersion more there you go perfect great question and that's exactly what it means and exactly what you're looking at is if you look at those appraisal year dates on the far right you'll notice that further away you should expect the numbers to be a little lower and out of whack well the ratio should be lower and the Cod should be higher because we're far away from that reappraisal date this is this is a very important slide because it just makes it brings you a little closer to understanding exactly how important reappraisals are in regards to making sure that we are as close to 100% market value as possible but as you know once we have a reappraisal we're stuck so no matter what happens after that date up
or down we're still at we're going to be at those values to the next repr appraisal all right so it's very important you pay attention to those those appraisal years because that is that is a good indicator in regards to why the numbers look the way they do the more recent year 2024 I see two of those on the left side and one on the right for Border County but those numbers if you notice those final ratio numbers are going to be closer to 100% because they are more recent reappraisal years the older ones you see those numbers a lot all right so the cood is a separate measurement that's measuring uniformity in regards to the properties that are being analyzed but that ratio is a direct reflection of where they are regarding the sale prices that we see and the tax value that they're sitting at currently all right uh Mr batty is going to handle the
local real estate market good afternoon glad to be here and present to you all and to the citizens of durm city and durm county and we look here at the local real estate market and these will be some points in time that'll give everyone an idea of how things have been progressing or increasing here in the county uh we have the home uh home sales prices have increased dramatically uh since 2019 but if you look at these next three lines it'll give us an idea of how we are growing uh January 19 the median sale price in Durham County was $239,500 all right to compare that to a later date which is August of 24 this past August the median sale price in the county overall was $430,500 all right and in the city being
that the city usually have the more consistent higher things in the county you might can find a smaller property with a lower price uh the median sale price in the city of durm is $431,000 that's $500 per sale greater than in the county next so here we have a couple of examples of showing you how something sold in 2018 which is the year prior to the 2019 uh previous 2019 reappraisal and how it Compares now in the current market this particular house is located in town of M sold 12 12 of 18 that's like a few days before the 2019 reassess reappraisal and so uh that property sold for $270,000 that property resold again here in uh 2024 February 23rd of 24 it sold for $440,000 so that should give you an idea
of how some things are moving and if you look at that Community you would probably see very similar things there uh that was a 63% increase they will get better or in case of how you're looking at worse all right um here we're located in South durm all right this property sold again December 28th of 2018 three days before January 1 I think that's three days could be four according how you're doing it uh the sales price was $325,000 and here in this year of 2024 February 28th that house sold a game for $560,000 that's a 72% increase okay it gets a little iffy here all it gets worse so Forest Hills this is we know Forest Hills is a very particular place it's a really nice place to live in here in dur $210,000 in October of
18 and all these sales that we're looking at happened just before the date of the re previous reappraisal it sold again this year in February 1st of this year it sold for $441,500 that was a 110% increase that sale more than doubled and my favorite one to scare everyone with uh this is located in Watts Hill Andale section uh sold December of 18 Again sold for $300,000 it sold again this year and uh May 5624 uh sold for $710,000 136% increase and these are we try to be particular in finding these These are unrenovated meaning there were no major changes to change the particular building this is how they were except for a basic Main interet in uh
209 so these numbers here can give you an idea of what we looking at in in various places in the county at how things have changed in value Mr bet give us a moment for a second you can just run over this can you just this issue about there's no improvements does that mean there's been no there were no like building permits to add or what that's how you know that right somebody painted the walls or they could have painting is not considered you could have done a little renovation in your living room but you're talking about there were no building per no structural things that require uh the city or county to come out and make sure you're doing the right thing these uh maintenance you you could have put in a new furnace that this a dishwasher or some of those things but these are the things that we're seeing here so you can probably extract from that that if there there was a renovation there could have been even a larger uh increase in in that
value to the local real estate market is there a reason you're using median as opposed to average the median would tell you what the middle number is and so you can determine where you are from this Middle Point here or here and it's a easier relationship to compare to because the average of course you know we would take them all bundle them up and then divide them by how and that those numbers were and then that we may not sit above the the that uh mean uh whereas we make we may not be able to tell if we sit below that the real increase because the real increase is what happened at the middle those measurable points and that's how we take and look at it and say ah the county is going to increase by x amount of percent or the city is going to increase by x amount of percent versus the mean the median has been determined to be the best uh method of measurement for increases and
decreases let me just add to that briefly also memes will include some extremes and some abnormal sales so it might be a sale that's way up kind of out of whack doesn't really relate to the other sales that we're seeing or it could be very low and we don't really understand why it's like Outcast so you kind of take those out of the equation might pull you too far up or too far down so that's the main reason the median safer in measurement means going to include some abnormals and Outcast whereas that average would include those and it wouldn't give us a good point to compare our individual rise or fall uh as a property owner so that is all that I have for you any other questions I thank than you all for allowing me to present for you before you well just real quick I I don't know if this is the appropriate area to ask I
know you're reflecting what's happening are we going to have any information I don't even know it just presentation will cover it but are there any things in there that would tell us why these things are happening like trajectory like what's driving this other than just is it just demand or like what makes certain neighborhoods you know increase significantly higher than others that is a real estate agent question but from our analysis from what we're seeing it's a mass migration population has grown tremendously the demand has increased during that time period um it's not even focused as a normal Market would show where you would see this particular area growing fasted in this particular area it's pretty much the whole County so in that regard it's a little harder to pinpoint a specific Trend because it's so it's encompassing so much of the county it's not it's not really isolated to focused areas as it
would be in a traditional Market this is a non-traditional Market what we've seen here is an explosion and it's something that we're measuring through these sales and they have slightly tapered off in the last couple of months um it's not a tremendous drop maybe we're just starting eat into that overbidding a little bit um but there is a little plateauing going on but it's because they slightly slow okay yeah I'm just I'm just really interested in Tanner Tanner's Mills versus watt hillindale I don't know if the streets are golden or what but interesting to me all right hello James Roberts from the commercial supervisor um I'm going to go over the last of the residential slides and then we'll have a couple of commercial slides so this slide presents information on sales data that was submitted to the Department of Revenue for 2023 and as you can see the average or yeah the average ratio or median ratio sorry is
53 again our on as with the residential our sales at the lower end have a lower um sales ratio and sales at the higher end have a slightly higher sales ratio so the lower sale value properties will increase more during this reappraisal and a few highlights of of our most common occupancy types um you know we've all heard about office and
struggles there we're doing a little bit better than the national average we've had high rates and we've seen some improvement recently um values aren't going to be where they were in 21 but they are going to be about $15 a foot on average higher than 2019 um retail for 2019 we we were about $50 lower so we'll see a $50 bump on average sales price for retail multif family is go is experiencing a a boom in unit construction it's about doubled this year as to its normal average it's about 6,600 units and we usually do about 3,300 so that is driving the vacancy rates higher um that will put downward pressure rure on rental as these complexes try to um entice people to move in they'll have lower rental and they'll have all kinds of discounts associated with that um what we're seeing is about a $40,000 jump per unit from the 2019 numbers uh industrial
we're also seeing a increase of about $50 a foot from 2019 and Hospitality which is hotels and motels we're seeing about a $7,000 increase um per room and the triangle is actually the best Market in the state for Hospitality okay and here is a h schedule of how we uh proceed through this uh Pro process the 2025 R appraisal calendar for schedule of values presentation and uh you know we have the schedule of value that is the book that tells us what things how to Value the county and that has to be approved by the uh Commissioners it has to lay open for the public to view and uh to make any complaints or comments that they choose and uh this is the process we go through to present to the Commissioners and this is a set of the dates October the 14th
uh we're going to present the scheduled of values to the Board of Commissioners that is next week and uh is that Monday okay I guess it is all right uh this is how we started last week uh of February next year in 2025 we're going to mail notices in February late late February 1 of March you never know what you're going to run into so we use a range versus a solid date uh so we will do that in uh the last week of February in 25 and then March the 3 we will uh start receiving a deals because once we send out the notices of change of value you have 30 days from that uh date of that notice to put in for an appeal if you disagree with that value and we would ask that if you are just appealing to be appealing please don't uh we're going to have the people who really have issues that need to be addressed but as you know everyone
thinks that their property is less than what we have it assessed for there's never been a real praisal wom someone said that oh mine's too low no one has ever said that so uh we that's where we get appeals from so during uh between March 11 and March 25 we will start what we consider the informal meetings there's no law that says there's such thing as an informal meeting but we will be having those and we're going to have it set up through the libraries where you can come in and ask questions get some information try to learn more about the specific of your individual property not the process as a whole but your property individually May 5th the Board of Equalization uh of Equalization and review will convene and uh June uh 16th we will adjourn uh but that doesn't mean we stop holding hearings it means that we won't accept anymore because you should have had your 30 days to get in your appeal at that point in time and we
will be lining everything up to start getting everyone in to get all of these issues solved than the problems gone through the 30 days mandatory yes that's state law okay and K has uh the hard stuff for you all all right we're gonna get into the programs to assist with tax liability all right so North Carolina General statute programs or state programs are the exemptions exclusions deferments um the deferment is expected to be paid back upon this qualifying event of course and then we're going to touch on loow income homeowner relief program offered by social services and thankfully I have uh Mr little here if he's needed because this is a Social Services Program I'm going to present
best of my ability but the questions need to get a little too deep we're going to let um Mr L step in if needed um that particular program was created by the County Commissioners in 2019 tax relief programs the three state programs that are administered through the actual Tax Administration are the elderly and disabled homestead exemption the disabled veteran exclusion and the circuit breaker elderly disabled deferment program all right so the elderly disabled homestead exemption is of course need to be 65 years age or older um total owner's income must not exceed $ 36,700 and it's very important that it's joint so if it's two people in the household can't exceed that 36,700 um same income requirements are for the circuit breaker program uh this excludes 25,000 this program excludes 25,000 or 50% of the assessed value of
permanent residence so it's a great program if you qualify all right the uh disabled veteran exclusion for disabled veterans of course form must be completed by the Department of Veteran Affairs uh it is also available to the surviving spouse that's a good thing about that particular program um until they Remar of course um excludes up to the first 45,000 of the appraised value of the permanent residence circuit breaker this particular program is a deferment program not exemption or an exclusion so that's that's a little twist to this particular one circuit breaker elderly disabled deferment program 65 years of age or older again this one's different because it requires a new application every year those first two is continuous this one needs application every year all right and you'll notice that when we see one of the next slides little chart and it'll show you'll see a little representation and how that
affects things when you have to apply year um limits the amount of the annual property taxes on permanent residents tax bill is limited to a fixed percentage of income and taxes owed above that are what are deferred income limit up to 150% of the elderly disabled income limit so it goes a little bit beyond what the uh homestead exemption for income this a little chart to just give you a little representation of last year's results of those three programs and as you notice the 1% for 24 enrolled in circuit breaker that's because that program starts over every year they have to reapply all right so it's kind of stayed in that little realm of 22 24 I I don't think I've seen it past 30 um the disable this is data for Durham County right yes for the three state programs exactly yes and this is is as of 2324 so
last year's performance are these are these statistics total participants is this number of people or is this households households okay yeah um and this is actually when you put that in perspective it's 126,000 Parcels in Durham um and we're looking at about 2500 or so participates participants for those three programs and out of that 126,000 that is are not all owner occupied homes some of that's Bacon Land commercial land but just to give you a little perspective of how many parti participants we have versus total number of parcels I'm sorry any more questions about that before I move to the next slide all right briefly yeah has no you said this was created in 2019 not this one the lihr okay that's next does it show any um are you
starting are there any Trends upward or downward for these three no I've I've never seen this grow tremendously it's kind of in the same realm okay um but when you keep that in mind so circuit breaker is an annual it's an annual application those other two those people are people who have been in the program so when that grows you see growth versus circuit breaker is repeat applications um the next one you will see growth all right so before I start I just want to be clear again this is not a tax administration program all right it's offered by the county through Department of Social Services I think it's a great program I want to make sure I I Champion it but I have to be clear and make sure that not misrepresenting that this is a program through Department of Social Services um
Department of Social Services lowincome homeowner relief program so tax assistance based upon a three- tier income model centered on average median income all right now this three tiers so there's 80% 60% 30% depending on which one you qualify for it's going to change the amount you are giving in and assistance it's focused on households with income less than or equal to 80% of course of the HUD area median income current tax bill only all right so it's not it's not going back it's not going forth we're dealing with the current tax bill and this one again is a annual application you have to apply each year typically applications are reviewed from August to June of the following year and to complete the application process I know there was a question last time I presented this information it was a little concerned in regards to what exactly do they need to
to apply and it's income form of ID and actual tax bill and here we can see the trend that you are um wanting to know about so we have from from right to left started in 2122 uh the green is the actual amount of applications the blue is the actual approved all right and so as you can see it's it is growing um the farle that's current so it's not finished that's why those numbers are a lot lower but we got plenty of time to um get those numbers up and hopefully it'll be the best we've seen so far going into this reappraisal we really need this to perform um but as you can see we we had 339 well Department of Social Service received 339 applications they had 139 approved the next year the following year they got 435 applications they were
able to approve 340 of those and the following year it got even better 539 applications and 493 of those were approved and currently um and I'm pretty sure these numbers have gotten a little bit better since I got this information from Department of Social Services but at that time they had received 270 and 101 of those have been approved and what matters is the spending I didn't not break this out so this is combined this is the county and the city's money okay so what portion came from the city and what portion came from the county if need be we can do some research and get that broken out for you but for this presentation's purposes I combined those figures um and 21 the total dispersed was 14672 uh following year for 340 recipients that was 360,000 and the following year for 493 recipients we got up to 690,000
25 we need to need to get closer to hitting that number um I think we can do it a little bit more advertising marketing but we definitely don't need to reduce it communication strategy reappraisal and tax relief handouts flyers and brochures have been made available for taxpayers to visit our office um tax information being reappraisal information and tax relief information is being advertised and inserted in all mailings so the next two that I can speak to would be change of value notices and the eventual tax bills uh the department of Tax Administration ation has incorporated tax relief programs and the DSs program in all community outreach sessions and presentations that are being conducted so whenever we go out and speak to the community we make sure that the champion
the two the three programs that are State administered and that we administer and the uh DSS program lihr and uh hopefully amongst those four programs we can serve as many people as possible I ask a question about this slide yes ma'am because this was one of my questions that I wanted to ask you so it's just a little bit unclear the way that it's worded that the last bullet I can see that the relief programs are included in the community outreach they are included in all of these in all of the with all of the not change in value notices as well information about the programs or no yes yes yes sorry they they haven't gone out yet but they will be change of value notices will be in the first quarter of 25 okay great yeah I just consistently hear from people that they don't know about these programs um and particularly people that qualify for them so that's that is that is a big deal so if you could help us get those
people we we would like to get to them as well but um but yes we we will make sure that we include everything that we have and that can possibly be sent out in the mailing will be attached yep the next slide is for you to open up discussion questions whatever it may be Alex go ahead thank you for your presentation that's really awesome um yeah I I just voiced one of my main concerns which is that I'm interacting with a lot of people particularly in conversations around we're putting General obligation Bonds on um on our ballot this year in the city and this come up in this conversation about taxes property taxes that people do not know that these programs exist so I'm just putting it out there that um yeah I know yall are working really hard but messaging is is just not connected so my first question is for folks who might qualify for more
than one of these programs like if they were to put an application in for um the the DSs one and they apply or they are elderly yeah they I know they can't double dip but will will is there any information if they apply to not the better one do we move them like does anything happen in that regard if you get folks who qualify for the state ones that might be more of a discount to my knowledge the tax office just provides a checklist of if they are already in a program or not okay what the following Communications are I do not know gotcha um and then the just just a second Mr little can speak to that following communication oh great yeah good afternoon city council and city mayor um regarding that um we do get information from the County tax office we do not have that discussion
about um we just allow them and let them know that theyve received the subsidy for another program now they can always take their name off and apply to our program which we allow them to do so but we try to make sure we're not in competitive with the different programs yeah I mean I would imagine we want people in their correct getting the correct pot of money um or assistance not money but um it we talked about the timeline for the DSs one the statutory ones the state run programs do they are they also open for the entire year up until the fiscal end of the fiscal year do they also do the what was it July to August or August to July I guess makes more sense yeah typically uh the the uh assistance for uh in the tax programs are open until June 1st I think the last day to
apply in the calendar year is June 1st now we do have a situation we have situations whereas people cannot uh do that by June 1st and and they can put in what is called a late application that can go before the Board of Equalization review if they're still in session if they're not it would go before the board of County Commissioners and they can rule on that application as being timely and then we can apply or put them into the program give them whatever their things were uh their adjustments are or their assistance is uh but that uh that's only for the three state monitored programs whereas the uh local one is uh all the way until June 1st of the next year the next year oh of the next year yeah it starts in August of this year and continues through to June of the next year right that tracks Year yes okay all
right I I have visited the website and I've looked at the I've looked at the programs I it is a little unclear on the it to how to how to get your application and when to get it in I think is is a little bit unclear um yeah I spent some time on it I thought it was I thought it was a little bit hard to find um and and particularly with distinctions between the programs so okay um I had a question about one of the slides going back to uh sorry let me scroll back um going back to the commercial Trends and we talked about yeah so the yes that one so um on the very first one the vacancy rates are high but have improved and then it says values have declined but average sale prices are $15 higher could you just explain that sentence to me one more
time so uh we saw a spike in in values in 21 after Co had subsided you know the the issues with no one being in public and no nothing selling after that started to subside we saw a massive spike in sales and and in office prices we actually had an increase um that we are not we did not maintain that value has dropped since 21 oh I see so we like kind of peaked it's gone down but overall it has increased overall okay thank you that makes way more sense um I think that is most of my questions I'm wondering maybe this is a complicated issue and we just went through some I think the statistics are yall did a great job presenting them but I think that they're a little bit tough to digest and also to like regurgitate to the public and I'm wondering if you can just sort of give us like an easy way to communicate like what what is the impact for residents
with this reappraisal what is it what does it mean for them in a in a less statistical based way in a more like easy to understand all right let me try let me try let me try I know it's it's an ask for sure yeah no problem all right so use me for example my tax value is $230,000 but my house is not worth $230,000 anymore the reappraisal is going to cause my tax value to reflect what my house is worth January 1 2025 that's the easiest explanation um an example would be when I purchased my home for $230,000 it tax value was $196,000 a re appraisal took place my tax value became $230,000 another re appraisal is about to take place I haven't sold my home or
bought a new home it's the home I paid $230,000 for but my tax value could possibly be $450,000 now it's scary because I went to the bank I got pre-qualified pre-approved to buy $230,000 home not a $450,000 home so that's the scary part um but that is a reflection of the market that's not a tax value thing tax officers follow the market don't create value all right so if that example going back to my property paid $230,000 4 years later house across the street from me sold for $360,000 and it was smaller than mine so I immediately knew I'm in trouble all right that's my market I don't control my market I live in it my market increased from me paying $230,000 for a house in 2017 to a house directly across the street from me selling for that's a th 1,000 square ft smaller than mine selling for
$360,000 four years later and so here we are a few few years past that if a house 1,000 squ ft smaller than my sold for 360 where does that put me so I mean I don't know any simpler way to break that down but it's a matter of the market the market is moving whether it goes up or down we are stuck with 2019 tax values until the next reappraisal we could have been doing this reappraisal and the market crashed and we were going to capture tank values unfortunately the market went the other way and it went the other way in a way we've never seen before in Durham but I don't know another way to explain the general concept of the reappraisal oh that's really helpful thank you I just I want to make sure because I don't want to get bogged down in in numbers I want to make sure that as people are listening to this meeting they sort of understand what we're talking about um and that was a great
explanation yeah it's a it's a scary it's a scary thing to try to take in um if I didn't do this I wouldn't understand a lot of it either thank you so much so just in colleagues I'm coming around but to your to uh her point a person that is um they haven't retired yet they're 63 years old uh they've had the same job for I don't know the last 10 years um they don't see a raise coming in the near future and again they haven't retired yet they live in that house that you live in where the thousand square foot smaller across the street just sold for right x amount so their income is not moving but what they were paying in taxes is going to increase yes and I guess what I'm trying to understand is I'm trying to capture that that
demographic and what may happen to that demographic like I mean they have to find money or something well we hope that they can qualify for one of three programs two of them one of them doesn't have a age limit so hopefully they can find a find assistance um the tax office is limited in regards to our ability to create programs we can't but we can provide the data to those who can try to come up with ways to help serve the public so we don't mind giving as much data and as much information as we possibly can to help people kind of be able to figure out ways to be creative and find some ways to assist because this is real you're talking about some of my family members all right so so this is real but these increases are real and we've watched them happen for the past six years or more so we're just finally it's finally about to affect us with the reappraisal yeah this is going to be great for some it's going to be horrible for some others I before I get
questions um director Thompson I I think we're gonna have to spend some time together to figure out how we can really simplify and communicate this out to the Mass public uh just so folks can take advantage of these programs um but let me come back around here council member Baker I'm sorry uh council member cook were you done okay council member Baker yeah first of all um thank you so much for coming over to City Hall and uh giving us this presentation um of course the appraisals are going to go up the appraised values are going to go up and then the property tax percentage will will will go down the rate will go down um so we we often compare different property tax rates between different communities and that's sometimes almost an arbitrary comparison be unless we are also uh a more complete picture would be if we're including the sales assess ratio right as as part of that
comparison um so the tax rates will go down but some households bills total bills will go up and some will go down um and can you talk a little bit about what you think are some of the determining factors between the households that may end up seeing rates go up um total payments go up and some going down um it sounds are you describing Revenue neutral it sounds like that's what you're describ yeah I'm bringing in I'm I'm bringing in Revenue neutral yeah so yeah because we don't have any say so or ability to dictate tax rates that's not part we're just focused on value um but yes hopefully I say that cautiously but you would expect if if value goes up that a rate the rate should come down um we don't have control over what what
that rate does or doesn't do but it sounds like what you're referring to is revenue neutral and that's a benchmark that's a that's a rate that kind of shows you what what the rate would be to capture the same Revenue as if there was not a reappraisal okay so that particular rate though Commissioners are not held to using so they do they do need to see it and it's something that they they do see but we don't have any you know control over what's used or not used um to speak to what your the the piece you're missing it sounds like you're trying to figure out what's the B what's the the the Tilt in that Revenue neutral and it's about the average um percent of change across the whole County so that's the actual anchor that dictates you know where that threshold is in regards to
whose value stays kind of close to the same whose will rise and whose will come down a little bit all right but that's only that only applies if Revenue neutral is used if that tax rate is used yeah yeah okay that's great that's I that is what I was getting at I think is the the average rate of change there you go yeah would determine so where your where your home Falls in value that that value where it falls in regards to the average rate of change is going to dictate whether you see a increase kind of stay about where you were or if you see a little bit of a decrease and um I think I think I might be taking I might be thinking a little bit of a of a step further and we might need to bring in some some folks from um you know a grad program or something but what what are those PL are there certain characteristics of neighborhood where we might see the average rate of change be higher versus other neighborhoods where we might see the average rate of change
be lower where where are people going to be experiencing that and my gut tells me it's going to be folks who are living in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods that might see the average rate of higher than average rate of change do you whoever's above the average rate of change is going to see the biggest increase and if and if that that is definitely going to be dictated by the biggest difference in sales so if if these gentrifi areas are the areas where the prices have exploded more than others they are above that percent of change so as as the mayor Point yeah you live in that house and the house across the street has been torn down and rebuilt you know to a Beck Mansion you know you're going to be in that category um okay yeah yeah um I'm curious about commercial properties and um the methodology talk
mostly about residential but I'm I'm curious a little bit about the let's just talk about multif family um is that based also on sale um and also is there like a can that be depreciated do do owners of multif family depreciate the value of their properties differently from single family we we use depreciation we use all three approaches to Value so it's going to be the sales approach cost approach and income approach of course with commercial you're going to see more income but I'll let the commercial specialist speak to that so yeah we we um on multif family as you asked they are all assigned a depreciation schedule um we use the same schedule across all of our occupancy types and Commercial um so they based on yearb built and then how they've been maintained they'll have depreciation rate on that property um we
also as K mentioned we don't just look at sales we'll have income we have an outside group that's assisting us with with data and Analysis for income um when we appraise property the three approaches that he mentioned are the cost income and sales and we put you know large emphasis on income and sales when we do commercial properties um ones like multif family are are often sought after specifically because of the income they generate so that is why we put a lot of emphasis on income approach okay I'd be curious to get more information about the depreciation schedule if if that's possible point Thank um so you talked a little bit about the the fact that owner Property Owners can appeal um um I'm curious if if there's public information that's available after that happens of um who is
appealing sort of demographically or lo location wise within the city who who is who is um creating those appeals and are there you know are there appeals being accepted um and I'm just asking that because I'm sort of suspecting that certain demographics might appeal at higher rates than other demographics so higher we'd probably see a correlation between higher values do you think that's accurate and also is that information made available we we definitely track that information um I can't say that it's actually published anywhere publicly the hearings itself are public so they're they're not closed session hearings we have open hearings those are public um forums um we have we have people that appeal every year whether it's a real appraisal year or not um and then we do have people who've never appealed yeah so um the interesting thing about appeals
if you appeal right now you can't because the deadlines pass but technically let's say you appeal in 2024 you're appealing 2019 you're not appealing 2024 that's the good that's the thing the important thing to remember so the important time to appeal is during the reappraisal right after the reappraisal the further the further you get away from from it it's an emotional appeal because you're not looking at 2019 anymore you're thinking about I just refinanced last month and my value is now this so I want to appeal because I'm looking at my tax value we're still looking at January 1 2019 so when we have this re appraisal we're going to be looking at January 2025 until we get to the next re appraisal so if it's four years at the end of 2028 if you appeal you're appealing 202 you're not appealing whatever we're living in in 28 so if I appeal in 24 I'm appealing 2019 I'm not appealing what I'm living in right now so that's an
important thing to remember about appeals but um speaking of something you mentioned I think you said um if they're approved every taxpayer has a right to appeal their property it's not a approve or decline when you appeal we we take that appeal and we review the property now whether you get a reduction or not that's going to be based on what types of if we can find anything wrong with the listing itself we're going to do sales analysis based on the reappraisal date and if there's anything that we can discover during that process you could get a reduction it could stay the same or it could go up appeal could cause value to go up it's not something that we like to do but if if you appeal something you appeal your property and your basement your B basement's fully finished and we have it semi-finished or unfinished when you appeal we're going to correct the listing it's not about your value it's about correcting the listing so you might not know that something's to your benefit you appealed
and now it possibly could hurt you but that's not normal it's just I have to make sure I mention that because that's part of an appeal process if you appeal one of three things is going to happen it's going to go down stay the same or go up and it's about correcting the listing you're not appealing theoretically you're not appealing your value you're appealing this particular listing we appeal because of our value but it's it's we're correcting the listing do some people ever Pro provide their own appraisals yes that's a good that's a good practice we don't we don't require that because that's costly but it's a good practice if you appeal to have an appraisal I want to bring up one quick point back to Miss Cook right quick I'mma take next question but um we have the uh this is a actual tool on the website to help people see if they qualify for the tax relief programs um this might go back to your original question though they don't know about it they're not using it but this
is on the website under property tax relief and it's supposed to help people figure out what's the best program for them and if they qualify you yeah yeah and also so if you don't mind just sending us that link because I can't see it oh yeah so you just get to the uh property tax relief right here on the left column this menu bar and it's going to take you here and it's the one right below tax relief for homeowners this this selection right here property tax assistant evaluator it's on the it's on the website next question I'm coming around just a second it might be a question for the acting manager is there any um again this is not policy it would be more so practice is there any graphics that
gov or whatever we talking about the evaluator I'm talk like these tools just I'm just thinking about how we're going to communicate what's coming to people um for the sake of information the sake of you know you know uh reappraisals or so it's a direct link I mean it's www. gov Tax that'll take you right to the to the place where all of this information is the reappraisal information tax relief information the actual ual tax assistant evaluator um if you're trying to figure out a way to get it more accessible than that I'm I'm all for it let's figure out put it on your website or yeah I I don't know if you SE our website it's just so government websites are so much it's so much information that it's just really
intimidating so yeah I'm I'm open to any suggestions to make this more accessible all right uh back to you can I just follow up doesn't our water bill still include all of this information I feel like it does I feel like every month it goes out it's on it's in the it's in there all right will you finish uh two more questions all right um second to last question um how much does it cost to conduct a a reappraisal it varies depends on what you're doing if you're doing an internal re appraisal or if you're paying a contractor externally to to perform the actual task um but they can be costly it could be $3 million be $1 million okay so we'll just say I mean that's just something that needs to be thought about when shifting from six years to four years right yeah something to be thought about but um I believe it's it's it's pros and cons to each approach right all right so externally was 19 and 16 25 is
internally 2008 was internally so we've done both in Durham County um all right last question related to the DSs the low income homeowner relief program thanks um so let's say someone is in a $100,000 house they're average they're above average rate of change and uh you know they qualify and they're they're part of this the program and it goes up to $250,000 will they get an increase in their um in the grant that they receive let's say they're on a fixed income will that will that be covered that's if I'm not mistaken that program is based off their income it has nothing to do with the value if I'm not mistaken yeah yeah it's based on their actual income and not the value of the home so we have teared it and we have adjusted the
program since the Inception of the program so every year we try to look at better ways to make the program fit the community uh last year we didn't make any changes because the program grew so much um so we'll continue to look we also work with Duke University as a collaboration so they have done some research for us for the last two years and we'll continue to work with them to see how we can make the program better the last two years we have included some case management for seniors to help them get patched into different referrals in the community any way we could possibly help okay yeah I think that's um that's one of my main concerns coming out of this is the above average rate of change which we think could potentially be uh disproportionately in
rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods where probably a lot of people qualify for the DSs program and they will not receive uh an increase in the the grant um from the DSs program so they might see they might see a pretty substantial increase in their tax payment but they won't qualify for a larger Grant to to cover that yeah right they're not they're not getting more money to cover that and let's say they're on a fixed income so um just is that I'm not sure where where to take that but I think that's just a concern coming out of coming out of this and and is that something that you can look into that we can work on is is helping to cover that that uh you know that that difference in what people who qualify already today would need to would need to cover following the the
reappraisal process yes every we every year we look at the at the close of the program how we can make the program better what changes that could could and need to be made and we go through the County Commissioners the DSs board to make those changes okay thank you I'm I'm G to put a note in that because I'm GNA come back around when when it's my turn to ask continuation of that cover yeah thank you so much for this presentation um I just had questions on the State Relief programs so I get that the um and I'm trying to find my slide I get that the um there's one that's the circuit breaker that you have to apply every year how do it's not automatic I guess is what I'm trying to understand anybody who is going to even if they don't have to renew every year it's not an automatic like you've hit an age you automatically qualify it's done no it's it's an annual process because the income has to keep being so
reviewed have y all done because this then comes back to us as we don't have control over this but we certainly have relationships with our and we understand the climate we're in but in South Carolina my understanding is is automatic if you are a over 65 years old doesn't actually matter what your income is there's a you just get relief and it just happens and so I would love to know um I yeah I understand it's a state I I know where the lever of power is what I'm saying is what I would love to see are what are the other state programs and if you all could provide that information uh if you've done that analysis yourselves around programs that work better so that we as electeds can start lobbying our delegation I understand it's pie in the pie in the sky for for our current climate but at some point we actually have to do what other states are doing and that's not going to happen unless we start putting pressure on our delegation members to ask for those changes so that seniors is
it it isn't burdensome the way it is now right and I understand even our program is even different but I'm just saying from the state level it's combersome hard and not a great program um so uh would love that information and then um I know why we have to reapply because it's a a grant um can y'all I can't remember the year but you changed the level for like seniors at 30% Ami or less there was a there was a change in the program that was more beneficial to them and I just can't remember what it was yes uh at the beginning it was just teared off but we noticed that some of our seniors um after applying the program they still had to come out of the pocket to pay their taxes so we wanted to make sure that we eliminate some of those as much cost as we can and also have enough funds for for anyone
and the grow for the program so you just added money for that specific Target population correct okay thank you I appr that was one of the changes that you all made okay and then I think for this is really for City staff I know that we route to the County website like need need your county is there a way we could just put a button like I love where the bond is on the city's website right now everything's there I love you need to hook up water can we just say need tax relief and it goes straight to the county I think that that's one thing we could do on our side that would be really really helpful I know we run it in the water and so thank you for that but I think that um that would be a really easy and helpful way and then um what what tools are yall using and what outreach are you using into language groups that their predominant languages in English I I'll let you get to that question in just one moment Dwayne Brenson I'm assistant County Manager here in Durham County um for my first five years I was a tax administrator so I know many of you know that I have a little bit familiar with this topic uh
happy to pass that on to Mr Doyle we have had some legislative efforts with the tax relief programs um one of the things is the $ 36,700 figure that is across the state 36,700 living in Durham is a lot different than 36,700 living in eastern North Carolina where I grew up unfortunately we have the same it's not it's not tied to area median income it's the same income across the state and one of our legislative efforts like uh Mr Doyle was saying if a property is owned by a married couple or two individuals whatever it may be it's still that 36,700 figure if you're single it's 36,700 so something that we had tried to move forward uh in a couple counting I've worked in so it's not just Durham there's a wide range of Interest with this is giving some kind of credit if there are multiple owners it doesn't make I won't say it doesn't make sense it seems like there should be some kind of credit if there's more than one
person that owns a property to count their income towards that tax relief program one of the other legislative goals we started on years and years ago uh first started working with the the Coalition for affordable housing was taking as you can see there's not a lot of interest in our circuit breaker program and that's not just Durham County that's across the state because it's a deferment program people have to pay it back there's not a lot of interest in it so we have 24 applications something that we had tried to do years ago was to eliminate the age requirement for the circuit breaker so that more people would qualify it's not just the elderly population that's going to be struggling that is struggling with property taxes the people first getting going you know having multiple kids it's a lot of people struggling so we tried to eliminate that age qualification for the circuit breaker to expand what we could do in dur and that could have been just for us but we haven't gotten that past yet so we are we are working on these things
and we are trying to simplify things Mr Doyle he showed the evaluator a while ago that's something that we have here in Durham uh kind kind of oneof a kind but as uh Madame council member was saying that tax relief application it's seven or eight pages of complicated stuff and we looked to that we're like that that's not what we want so we developed this online evaluator someone go online answer a few multiple choice questions and it's tells you which programs you're going to qualify for and when you click submit it goes to the tax office so we are making tremendous efforts in this area and we won't stop because there are people in the community that continue to ask and continue to go without this benefit you want to get the yeah where you from in eastern North Carolina I grew up just outside of Jacksonville little town called Richlands yeah Richlands cool yeah um y go ahead council member thank Mr Mayor um yeah Mr Doyle County colleagues
thank you so much for the presentation really appreciate all the Deep detail this has been we've all been waiting for this and so it's good to see the detail um uh I also should note just so folks know this is a county supported program right but the city's paying we're paying half of the amount right so the city is co-funding home low-income homeowner relief portion yeah yeah 750 and 500 good thank you so I so this is I love this discussion I could not be happier to be having this discussion as many of Y all know or maybe don't know but although Miss hager's in the back of EV back there Mr Brinson was there like we spent about three years before this was approved working hard with the Coalition for affordable housing Transit people's liance the committee to get legal sign off to for the county to do this and get the county to pass it so this is a big it was a big effort and you all need to know that there's virtually no one else in the south at the local level that's providing property tax Rel for longcome home owners virtually no one else in the South right and you all have people trying to figure out a way to copy it so
this is like so yeah the comments are absolutely you're right Communications got to get better right the amounts we need maybe need to think about the amounts um you know getting our state to do something better you're right states in the Northeast for example have these automatic circuit breakers that just happen right so we can improve this but the fact that we had this on the books is pretty amazing for Durham it's a great success for us so I'm so proud of this and now that we have on the books we can continue to expand it so this is really critical it means that as we're thinking about you know Bond issues to to invest in our future right means we can do that in a way that's not going to overly burden our low-income residents this is a great tool for tax Justice for fairness and so I'm so proud of this I look forward to contining to work with youall to support this I have one question though that's maybe a harder question but I want to ask it so I know that around the country um this issue of you talk about the sales ratio right and we know from research around the country that there's a racial bias in sales ratio around the country right this is this is sort of there there's research that documents this very well right so
what are we doing in Durham to eliminate the racial bias in our sales ratio my question would be is there a racial bias in the sales Ratio or the sales that produce the ratio yeah no there's a there's a absolutely racial bias there I I can I'm happy to track down the but if the ratio If the ratio is based off of a sale a sale amount and a tax value the sale amount is the only thing that's coming from the market right the tax value came from the market whenever that previous reappraisal date was right so so the bias is in the sales because the the ratio is a product of sales not necessarily so I think it's back to my colleague Council Baker's question so we know that you're right what the absolutely agree that what you're doing is you're setting you're setting the the the proper tax value based on the market right right but we also know there's an appeal process right right and some people are more likely to appeal than others right some people
have more res resources to do that we also know that some people are more likely to succeed than others and so that's what that's what in the end that's what academics have documented that that when in the end what people pay the sales ratio there's a racial bias there and I'm happy to get the academic data because it's pretty voluminous I think that I don't think that's a a gen that's it's a dangerous generalized statement because you are taking it you're saying that all all offices act the same in regards to how they evaluate once somebody sends in an appeal so when our office receives an appeal there is no there are no demographics attached to that other than address and that address is going to be attached to a market and we're going to look at the sales from that market there is there's not a lot of room for your own biases right no and I'm not saying that that that that our process is somehow has a racial bias to it I'm saying the impact around the country again this is like large data sets that looked at property taxes for homeowners
black and white that there's a racial bias in our okay our in our yeah in the sales ratio I can I can imagine that there's a difference in regards to who actually is aware that they have a right to appeal who actually goes through the appeal process who succeeds in the appeal then yeah right the succeed part is questionable because like I said before an appeal can go up stay the same or go down there not a lot of demographics associated with that decision because we're going to look at that particular appeal we're going to look at the information we can pull from the market to support whatever the value is adjusted to if it's going to be adjusted based off of some new data we found with the property itself or if it's going to be adjusted based off of market sales that we found to adjust that property I don't know where any other factors could play a part in our ability to support the value change because we are mandated and regulated by another we we don't we don't have that freedom to just
do what we want with value so we're regulated and mandated to do these things a certain way these practices so I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying that that's a a little bit of a generalized no absolutely right the data that's been right in the papers I'm glad to Tracked Down this is at a national level so I'm not saying that like ratios or appraisals sales ratios okay yeah yeah so I think so the question simply is I just want to put it out there I just want to ask are we what are we doing to ensure theend Durham there's no racial buyas in the sales ratios I think we do I think we do a very good professional job and we try to be human about it so I don't think that there's any Wayan do we do we do any tracking after the fact to make sure we're Dem Graphics yeah we're checking our quality of work and we're doing that with all of the tools we kind of just went over a little bit with the cood with the sales ratio itself and we are studying these analytics every year not
just in a re appraisal year but specifically to focus in on racial bias or any other types of demographical things that we could kind of try to use Prejudice in um it's all analytical based Bas off of the data that we're looking at which is sales once you appeal we do get into looking at that specific property and seeing if there are any inaccuracies anything that we can do to change those values um when you start talking about the ability to win a appeal so there's there's different levels so you're going to meet with an appraiser that's the initial part of your appeal if that can't find resolution you go to the Board of Equalization and review that's a neutral board full of real estate agents appraisers they're going to hear the case they're going to decide whether they whether they believe there's any reason for a reduction increase or stay the same and if the taxpayer still isn't pleased with that result they have they
have the right to take it to the to the PTC that's the state level Property Tax Commission so when we start talking about you know identifying some of these biases there are a lot of different levels to go through and doing that takes time and resource that's that's the whole point again I'm not suggest in any way no are processes but I think that outcome Nationwide is a is a racial bias in the sales Rao so very quickly um to add on to what Mr Doyle said we I think I think to grow you have to be vulnerable so in Durham County we back in October of 2021 a number of us actually I think all of us here partner with the UNC School of government to look at our appeal rates from the 2016 and 2019 reappraisals here's our data overlay with census information how does this work with um any racial bias any income bias and uh I can send this out um to the council broadly we can post whatever it may be
it's out there um and it's interesting meinberg County followed up with the similar study as well but 2016 2019 it goes through and shows uh actually within the blog it gives this summary it shows that race and property value appeared to have consistent impact on appeal rates those variables did not demonstrate a consistent impact on appeal results so long blog post there and part part of the takeaway why we wanted to go with the school of government and looking at this and creating some action items is what can we do right to your point what can we do and one of the takeaways is we get out in the neighborhoods do some more Outreach find the property tax assistance evaluated online tool try to really get creative in what you do and sharing information on we we tell people how they can be successful in an appeal not many counties do that we give them the data we have an online tool here's
what's sold how does this compare to your neighborhood here's how you should analyze we tell them how to present a successful appeal because we don't want to be wrong if it wrong we want it to be right so we're trying to take all these actions all these steps forward to make sure that we uh Abate any issues like that but that blog post uh UNC School of government October 21 very interesting article from yeah please send that that'd be great yeah we'll do yeah thank you thank you uh Council mariss I I and actually I did not know we were the only one doing something like this in the South um this is pretty cool and this is also one of those areas where you know just through the resources made available to Mayors like through the Bloomberg uh philanthropies and all those resources we could really hone in on I know procurement is another one that going to be soon working on we just going and get resources bring you back here to help booler it so thanks um May F thank thank you Mr May thank you colleagues thanks good to see all of you uh down the street and around the corner
uh visiting with us um just very quickly for me f firstly there there's no more nonpartisan issue in our country than our taxes are too high I I don't care who you are the energy only matched by the notion that I want to resell what I bought for more than I bought it for it's those are the you know two poer points on which we all agree um I I with that said this this isn't our first revaluation and durm taxpayers and residents says this isn't a new thing they they know it's coming we've been through it before and to one of my colleagues earlier queries about um how do we Market this to folk and and I I I think you've kind of set the stage for it's one of the ways just tell the truth one it's it's legally required we have to do it um but I found over the years when I've been in conversations with with with residents and Neighbors about this um I remember one town hall in particular you know I asked you know how many people bought their homes hoping it would stay the same value
forever not one hand was raised um you know we because it's a commodity and many of my colleagues have pointed out it it we treat housing as a commodity now for that population that they just want somewhere to stay this is forever home I raise my kids here I'm not trying to make a make make a buck off of it I'm going to say something about that particular swath of of of our population but for the overwhelming majority the term starter home in and of itself implies right that this will not be my last home and no one wants their starter home to be sold for less than what they bought it and two of the ways you know that your investment is doing well is one your tax value and comps in the neighborhood when other homes are sold um even as you gripe about your tax rate going up or your taxes going up that's one indication that when you're ready to resell it you're probably going to be in a better position than when you bought it and of course Market forces a capricious but that's one of the indicators and the other indicator of course is the comps you know in your
neighborhood when it's resold so you know I find when you talk to folk like that about what your intentions are with your home when you're ready to resell it it it kind of mitigate some of the tension uh in the conversation and of course we all agree that we we don't want to pay taxes uh but we do want to resell for higher amounts um I do the low-income home homeowner relief program I want to congratulate um the the the county on how it's been going I remember when we first delved into this and to councilman Maris point the the reason why the lacome home homeowner relief program was invented if you or came up was precisely because of racial concern of what the impact the market was having the blind Market Adam Smith's invisible hand was having on folk who were uh Legacy long-term residents of a community um had already paid for the house but they couldn't repair it or couldn't pay for the taxes so th this intervention was precisely aimed at that
swath of our population and we talk about the navigability of the website I remember one of the main concerns was some of these elderly folk don't use computers at all so how do we how do we penetrate that market we we had ambassadors going out door too we we put stuff in our water bill um we targeted mailings constantly us using our own bully pull pits to to to let folk know that there was help available and the numbers have gone up so so the penetration is get and and your graph depicts that the penetration numbers are getting better these numbers are getting much better than our success in getting more people to vote in dur uh you know we we try you know our voting you know other than presidential election Cycles it's usually 20 some OD thousand people to vote no matter how many speeches we make how many mailings we do how many yard signs we put out so this program is actually doing statistically better than our efforts to get people to to fill
these jobs uh up here so I while there's much more work to be done absolutely um not just on improving the website but exploiting things like the neighborhood ambassadors that we use continuing to use snail mail um knocking on doors uh every opportunity we get to to trumpet the existence of this program I think has been paying off over the years so we can take a little bit of a a short pause uh short celebration but still need to to double down on our efforts um to to let folk know that there is help and and to uh aside from the state programs to to participate in our low low-income homeowner uh relief program so I just wanted to congratulate and first off thank my colleagues past and present for for for partnering um with the um County uh and the the advocacy group and the activist community that that uh gave wind put wind in this sale so many years ago but having watched this program
evolve over the years it it's it's gotten better it's only getting better uh each year um you know and to and I I'll end here it's you know we we if somebody shows up with with a a briefcase full of money at Grandma's steps she pay $50,000 for the house it's paid the briefcase has got 200 Grand in it now they're going to flip it for 500 Grand but you never seen that much money at one time in your life you know the government we can't there's no way we can legislate them not doing that but to to to have programs like the long come homeowner relief program to constantly use the the platforms that are available to us to to educate people and inform folk um one of our biggest challenges as a government is is people thinking we're more powerful than we actually are um and the low-income home on relief program was a direct result a direct response to the realities of a market economy but us not just resolving
ourselves to it we're we're we're at the creativity uh the ability to find way the durm workaround we call it uh ways to to still insert ourselves into a market economy respecting all of those guard rails but doing what we can uh we've got a lot of work to do but it has gotten better um so this is one of those pills you don't want to take but you got to take it the law says we've got to do it but uh but I'm I'm very I'm I'm very hopeful and and grateful that we got professionals like y'all who have showed up today uh leading us through this and and leading our discussion uh in the city so thank you so much good to see you all thank you m Mary you back and that's um that's a direct reflection of the hard work of little and the uh Social Services thank you so much um Council M Freeman did I go to you earlier you good all right um I uh again I'm I'm just glad to have to know we have the a resource like this here in
Durham um more the reason why I say things like d is dope because we're dope we do dope things this is great um to what we were talking about earlier um about that person with the income that's been the same for a while and they're not reaching the the uh retirement age and you know things around them are changing but their income it's not I know that there are employers that that do that you know so I'm just out of curiosity um it appears that because you did say that the the the allocated funds they would get out of this I guess Grant or well the assistance that they would get it's not based on their income it's based on the rate the uh the the it is based on the income I mean I'm sorry it's based on the income not not the value not the value um so I'm looking at this as as a uh almost like an annuity you know so if it
goes up up um is would it be within the policy RM to say if the if the rate goes up their income stays the same are they able to uh capture that if it goes down it doesn't does that make sense I I think I think I see just trying to trying to make sure that it's a way to not you you don't want flat right you want it to kind of be adjustable um and that's some work that I'm sure they can they can speak to yeah I'm just trying to see what how we can this is really complex stuff so my my brain is turning but I'm trying to see the possibility of scaling with change rather than being a victim of stagnation yeah I think that's a difficult if it doesn't work that way that's fine but I'm I'm learning here while asking my question yeah so I that's a difficult question but I would
say every year we look at the demographics we look at the amount of people that apply where they apply um we use all these Matrix to help us make a decision on what needs to change moving forward so the the program has changed about two or three times and each year we're trying to make it more accessible for more people to be able to uh get a relief uh the second thing I'll probably say is that we've also added some additional things like Case Management Services for the elderly so you can opt in for additional resources you get to speak to a social worker the social worker going to give you more information about services not just in Durham County or social services but in the community itself so you know that is a tough thing and we want to make sure that we don't run out of funds right um
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okay okay that lets me know about how much room we have you know to grow if that fund if that balance is still the same the available resources okay um part of the African-American Mayors Association we received a uh financial literacy Grant of $30,000 to do some workshops um uh the special assistant to the mayor uh Derek Stanfield is going to be reaching out to ask you all to provide this presentation at one of those Community workshops all right thank you all so much thank you this is this is Rich this is great thank you all so much all right and we have one last uh presentation before going into close session colleagues uh we have ordered some food oh and we have a supplement it
yeah I have to leave by 7:30 tonight hey we were here to to 9 o'clock the other 9:30 one night so it's on us than Mr Mayor absolutely thank may members of council Aaron Kan with the planning department uh this should be I'm sorry real quick are we good to continue do you need a quick break we good keep going all right okay I should I this presentation itself shouldn't be more than probably five minutes uh you just have a case coming before you on October 21st that we have not had this kind of case in from our records in about 9 years which I believe predates all of you on the council so we just wanted to make sure give you a little primer on what this kind of case is and what you're being asked to do on the 21st there we go so what you're going to be asked to do is uh forward something
to the Environmental Management commission for its con for its consideration regarding a request to change the boundaries of the Watershed protection overlay District um this is just a quick slide to give you as to how we got to where we are with watershed prote overlays in our um ordinance they are it within the unified development ordinance they've been there since it was went into effect in January of 2006 started with some State legislation in 1989 uh creating the Environmental Management cons uh commission which really oversees all of the rules that uh are incorporated into our Watershed protection overlay districts we had our first ones in in 1993 and then like I said we're Incorporated into in 2006 now what is a watershed protection overlay you will not hear this much except for when the mayor reads out rezoning uh uh motions and he often says moving it from Falls Jordan Watershed protection overlay uh
District B County jurisdiction to Falls Jordan overlay Watershed protection overlay District uh City jurisdiction they don't often change and like I said we haven't had a request to change them one since uh 2015 these are the things that our Watershed protection overlay regulations uh regulate within the Udo lot size impervious surface storm water control measures uh Wastewater uh treatment and sanitary sewer and hazardous materials the big one uh is the impervious surface there are restrictions on how much impervious surface can be on a site whether it's in either a critical area or a protected area you don't usually see much uh regarding critical area we have very little critical area within the city limits most of that's going to be in the county you do see quite a bit of protected area um and that's usually going to be labeled fjb we also have Eno River protected area we have
um Lake Mickey Little River protected area but for the most part you're seeing Falls Jordan and that means that something is either is from one to five miles from the drinking source also when these districts were created and again they are essentially zoning districts um when the line was created as to how far it is from the drinking water source if a portion of the parcel is in we put the entire parcel in as I mentioned the five drinking water sources being protected Falls Jordan Lake Mickey Little River Reservoir and the Eno River intake now the Udo and state law allow for new interpretations of this as I mentioned before 1993 is when these first went into effect you've got a picture there of the actual paper maps that are our official Maps these were all created back in the early 90s before we had GIS before we had real computer
mapping technology at all um so there's going to and they were literally drawn with like a pen putting a DOT on a map and taking something and drawing that line we have transcribed that into our GIS but that's how the original mapping was done we also had different surveying technology back in the early 90s um so state law does allow for requests for changes of those the state law anticipates most of those requests coming from local governments themselves but it does allow for private citizens to make a request for a watershed interpretation and there is a strict procedure laid out in state law that our Udo follows to do that an application is submitted the planning director then reviews that to determine if the application has Merit if it's merited then the governing body would forward it the request to the Environ North Carolina man Environmental Management commission and they are the ones who
have the bulk of the authority on these matters so what you're going to be asked to do on the 21st the first two bullets have already happened we got we received the application back in I believe July um the planning director has reviewed those materials has determined that it has Merit and so we're now asking you all to forward that request to the Environmental Management commission for its consideration once they vote to approve or not approve the request if they vote to approve we will bring it back to you since it is essentially a zoning map change that is when it will go through a public hearing process a public notification process and you'll be asked to take action to change the zoning map so that's all I have um if you have any follow-up questions I'll be happy to answer them so so what happens on the 21st I mean you've given us a presentation so what more will happen then you there's an item um whether it's on General business or consent is up to you all but
there is an item it's simply a memo with all the attachments you're going to basically see something very similar to what you have here it's going to be a memo with attachments with the application materials and all we're asking you to do is authorize the city manager to forward that to the EMC and so there's no other action being asked at this time so by so so so it sounds like So the plan director's already has already determined that there is Merit in this in this that's correct and so we're being asked to sort of affirm that decision essentially that there's Merit in the case to then send it on to the Environmental Management commission you're you're being asked yeah to to to allow for that to be sent to the EMC for its consideration that's all you're being ask at this time I'm having a hard time getting my attachments to load so I just want to wor that the the application materials are going to be very large there's a lot ofic attachments that are that are very large size we have the application what is y'all's process for determining Merit and do we have any documentation of that
process so the yeah the oh okay um uh the process is basically I mean it was again we don't do this very often last time we did it was nine years ago and before that we maybe did it twice beforehand um it was basically a review with the planning director and the executive team staff within the planning department of the materials I drafted a memo based on my review of the materials and brought it to them for their consideration um the main the main pieces of evidence are updated sealed surveys demonstrating that the parcels in question are more than 5 miles from the lake and isn't that partly an an attachment D that we have in our packet all those materials are there yeah yeah I can't I just can't load them it just says something went wrong so um I'm just I'm going blind a little bit so I I mean
I guess I'm just curious about like how these things change like the water location change like what's going on so it's it's I wouldn't say that it's water location change I think there's there's two factors going on here one the surveying technology is much better now than it was 30 years ago right we just have much more precise GIS system geographic information systems computerized mapping than we did then um the second thing and uh when we had conversations about this 15 years ago regarding the lake the area around the lake is not it's not real clear necessarily in some places where the water starts and where the land begins and it is based on the elevation of the lake right it's it's and it you know the lake the lake level does move and so state law says that the normal pool of the lake is at a certain level and you shall measure 5 miles from
that point uh where the lake is is at that point at that elevation rather than where the lake happens to be me touch you know where the shoreline happens to be on that when we do the measurement yeah okay so there's like an average as opposed to like there's an average we get sort we get a a level that's consistent for everybody to measure so we're not right yeah and that and that's embedded in the state law that created Jordan Lake in the first place and okay all right I think I think those are my questions for it might come back to me um what so could an outcome impact adjacent property so so this property owner has has uh you know submitted their application it's determined it has Merit it could move move forward to the um to the EMC if if first of all what
does the EMC do with the application and then could the outcome or determination by the MC or what they send us could that impact adjacent adjacent properties so um I can't answer what exactly happens at the EMC I've never been there this is going to be a learning process for me as well uh and I'm I'm learning that process as I move forward uh in terms of affecting adjacent properties so what would happen the main thing that would happen here in this case is if this is approved and if it moves forward the properties that right now have a maximum impervious surface of 70% will no longer have a maximum impervious surface so they'll be able to cover more of the parcel uh with development or with whatever you know whatever they're putting on the parcel um how that might affect adjacent Property
Owners I mean we have ordinances you know within the Udo we have requirements for storm water treatment we have requirements for um a variety we have requirements for setbacks for certain height limits and so forth so I think it I maybe want to ask you are there particular effects on property owners that you're concerned about I'm just CU I'm just curious if they would say oh actually these other properties are also you know not within oh I see what you're saying I see so the application we have before us is only for those I believe it's 14 Parcels um if you look at the surveys it looks like there are more Parcels outside but that's not what's being asked to move at this time and then um there are sort of two decision points for counil one is next Monday's uh meeting then it would go to the MC then it comes back and when it comes back it'll go through
a formal public hearing process a formal public notification process just like any other zoning case would um this portion of the process does not it is simply you all and sending a letter and then are both decisions just discretionary decisions yes okay just one more question is it safe to say that at the Environmental Management commission is that because I looked at some of the attachments there it's pretty stuff surveys and so forth and like how the surveys done but beyond me but can is it safe to say that EMC is is providing a more technical review of that so they they're going to provide have expertise that actually can weigh in on this change of the sort of of the of the the five mile radius so I assume that's what they're doing right yeah they're going to look at at the five mile radius they're going to be they're going to understand the the the mapping requirements and the and the mapping technology we have nowadays they're also going to be looking at say topographic data where is that water going to flow um how might that affect the water
quality flowing in the lake and so forth thank you Mr Mar thank you colleagues uh for drilling down on this F us I'm I'm com this is a process that we're allowing to go forward um and we'll you know we'll have an opportunity I you know I five miles is is is empirically observable I I trust director Young's ability to count to five and uh and I also I also take comfort in the notion that that the the higher ups at the states will be looking at this as well if there's a legal um uh uh standard for five miles and this property meets that threshold either they will or they won't um you know I'm comfortable with allowing the process to go forward I also you know if it comes back to us and we decide not to do it and this land owner can demonstrate that it does meet that requirement then of course we open ourselves up to to state action it you know beyond that which is something we're not unfamiliar with uh here in der I'm not saying it's going to get to that but but you know it will be
five or it won't be five so so I I I'm comfortable with let to the process go forward coming back to us thank you Mr Mayor this is gonna go too deep I apologize in advance I just I'm am I'm stuck on like water levels because who owns the dam and who controls is it the state or it's either the state or the Army Core of Engineers that's I think ownership I know the Army Core of Engineers manages the dam and manages the lake whether the dam is owned by the core or owned by the state I'm not sure okay I just guess that I'm like we're sort of deciding on a local level and then there's like other people managing the actual water level which I assume even though we have that standard to measure like it is possible that that changes um it right because in well the water level changes the level that we're using as our like pinpoint you could could you say it again the the normal pool I believe noral pool so I mean there are
forces at play that would be not in our hands as the city to change that normal pool level but it could change I guess I'm curious like what happens what happens if this goes back into the five M like what is the so the normal pool is set by state by the state legislature the original and I'm trying to remember the year that was passed I want to say it was 70s or 80s um and that that's set in the law that created Jordan Lake so it would be take an act of the state legislature to change the level of the normal pool and if it did change what would happen they would reassess assumedly all of the the mileage and with Parcels were in or out so let's say the state legislature decided to change the level of the normal pool um we would probably need to take an exercise to remeasure where our zoning our Watershed overlay boundary should be if they don't
change the five mile distance at the same time right but then at that point in time anything that's been developed like the we can't undo impervious surface so like correct then those things would be sort of Grandfather Den assumedly yes okay it's just an interesting thing that like we have we are like the final arbitr of that when like the decision rests somewhere else about like both distance and also water level rate I just I'm just finding it really like complicated for me to grasp that that's our responsibility but okay I'm following thank you thank you all right we are good yeah right all right thank you Aon Kane I'm still going to make a motion to move this onto GBA I don't think it's going to be controversial but it's a
bigger item and so that I think for my comfort level and I would like for it to be moved there in general if one member of the body doesn't want it then it's fine all right um okay all right it just gets moved all right the other item we have is under other matters I need to set the agenda first or after the other matters oh the um 31 was it
pull I have I have questions on I mean do we have a still a work session I have a question um I thought we were treating it as a supplemental uh yeah is there is there any staff here who will address it minut I'll be shy Robert Joiner public works thanks how can I help so K did you have any framing comment you wanted to make or is it okay if I just go into a I mean that that can give you the process from the last work session or you can just go into questions whatever okay I'll just it from my reading it would appear that the the concerns I raised it they they seem to still be present in the language and by that I mean first off let me say this this is not a question about this the substance or Spirit of the of the this is a
process question for me um again this is a resolution but but it contains language of making official and and mandating something which has the force of law behind it and and so I have a couple of questions about the vehicle the the resolution as a vehicle as opposed to an ordinance the language in it and so my question uh are the standards in the na nacto um C book short of com if certified Professionals in this area why would you not already be doing this absent the compulsion of law or or or are we already doing this and the reason why it's the reason why I ask because I don't the force of law implies consequences if we run into a case with a developer where for whatever reason these standards can't be met or they're not met what does that mean when it's has the force of law as opposed to um
policy you know that gives us more flexibility and why wouldn't this already be the practice of certified Professionals in this industry um Even in our own planning department why wouldn't we already be doing this absent the compulsion of this Council uh great question um so again Robert Joiner Public Works um essentially the nacto guidelines that have been published are based on a lots of additional research that have come in over time it looks at uh all kinds of things that are relevant to accidents uh it looks at everything from uh serious accidents all the way up to fatalities and as you change as your population changes and grows you adapt your guidelines to deal with that so in in essence now with the city of Durham I think what you're seeing is a push by both bike pedest bike pedestrian folks members of the Council uh influential
members of the community to be more green in terms of your travel right and so you're seeing a whole additional set of population that's now starting to take on biking to work and doing those types of things and as you get more and more conflicts what we're just what we're I think discovering through these guidelines is that when you had a smaller amount or smaller percentage of interactions you had a different set of design standards as your interactions grow you have a much more robust best way to describe it set of interaction protocols that you have between cars and bikes yeah I I I I appreciate that I get the cont I guess my question is under what circumstances Would we not use these guidelines or do the circum exist so I think that's also a great
question to when you look at for instance a local Street in a subdivision um how your cars and bikes interact in a a say a culde saac is going to be very different than a collector Road uh because your cars have you know one way in one way out people are used to everybody who's there if you have kids uh that are in the houses and stuff like that your expectation that they merge into slower traffic is there whereas if you have a a larger like a collector Road you got folks that are going uh higher speeds they have less stopping sight distance um you know all of those factors take in so there you'll have a dedicated bike lane whereas in those smaller local roads you probably can have folks who are kids who are riding on the sidewalk they're learning how to you know use their bikes and stuff like that whereas your more advanced adults
who ride know how to to be in traffic in low volume low speed streets if you will that that that's very helpful because my concern is could we be creating a situation where whereby because we've placed the the impr of this Council legal law this is official our official policy and we have a situation where an exception might be where where in this particular case within a a residential area I I I I don't want to set up a a situation where a council member current or future looks at you and says this is our we' this is this is what we've adopted this is what you need to do uh and even if a compelling case is made where this should be an exception we have now set up a situation where we are blatantly going against something that we've said this is our official policy where we could have aain achieved the same results by just by virtue of highly trained people that are aware of these
standards just employing them by virtue of policy when we can I I want us to have the flexibility to do what we need to do on a case-by Case basis um and again I I'm I'm fully with council member Baker and my colleagues on the end result of what we want but we're being asked to to to make a handbook which I have not read in its entirety our I don't know how many people up here have in our our official policy and when you use that type of language it by definition sets up situations where we may look at one of you Stafford and say you're violating policy when you're making a very coherent and cogent case as to why in this particular case the nacto guidelines may need to be relaxed and that's what I'm trying to to avoid while still attaining the same in result I mean we we don't have to constrain ourselves with the language of you know official and adopt and and we can still meet the same in results without setting up future kind of legal skirmishes even if they're internal just
just you know rhetorical between us and staff if that makes sense yes very much so um I think in this particular case the nacto guidelines are are guidelines and they're not specific so one of the things that we talk to about changing the regulation is to actually bring in Consultants specifically who who deal with this and look at modifying all of our standards formally in the reference guide for development and the Udo as necessary um so I think those would become your formal ordinance so what you're normally accustomed to seeing so we'll the Udo will come back before Council next year a year from now thank you um and that you will actually see as a formal adoption of the Unified development ordinance for the city of durm it will replace the current one in that particular case because we're city and
county it'll actually get adopted by both bodies right uh and then in addition to that that'll come right after that the reference guide for development which is also ordinance and code but it is the formal design standards construction standards for all of this precisely and I here the operative being the O ordinance it and in in in Udo um and I I I guess what I'm kind of intellectually struggling with and from a from a just a you know organizational uh in institutional operational point of view is is is why we're putting this language in a resolution and and it's it's almost like we're anticipating we we're already crafting what we want the ordinance to say before we actually get to that process of I mean we can do this in the ordinance but but I'm I guess I'm just trying to to maintain for our sake and for the Public's sake also what to expect when we use a the language of resolution as opposed to ordinance this resolution reads like law
to me it it it has compulsion in it it has making something official it places our imperata on something something that I agree we should be working towards and should be our end result I just don't know that this is the appropriate vehicle to do that or why we'd be doing this now when we can do it when the Udo rewrite and my assumption is that you know if these these in fact are the industry standards best practices my assumption is that you experts down in that shop would already be employing them anyway uh with the flexibility of exceptions you know for example what you described to me and still be able to use the power of this tool but also you know navigate the world in real world terms when exceptions come up without anybody saying you're violating our policy that we adopted in the resolution thank you Mr Mayor let me go here and then there who um thank you uh hi good afternoon um
I just wanted to say it seems like I think some of my um urgings to my colleague was to to meet with staff and really get yall on board because you're the ones who implement the policy it seems like that has happened um it seems like there's a timeline here that goes along with Udo I'm assuming staff will come back to us with any uh additional budget um like if there's an extra consultant that needs to be hired or understanding that that that request will come uh and I guess my one my one thing is with the reason within a reasonable amount of time um my only thing would be that i' that it's part of the Udo rewrite process we know that when that's happening we're hope we're hopefully adopting within a year and that this doesn't somehow delay that thank you that that's it to me get getting the Udo done has to be ar because we're going to keep having these little spaces where things aren't lining up and then it delays the work and so then it just kind of becomes a domino effect so that's my only concern
with it um other than that um my my concerns were our staff okay with this I don't want to to Mayor Pro's Point yall Implement our policy we have to always really consider everything that yall have on your plates so um that it seems like that's been addressed and so I'm comfortable but just want that clarifying Point thank you do you want to address yeah if I could just address that real quickly Sarah Young with the planning department we fully expect that there will have to be some tweaks probably to the ud we are going to proceed and stay on schedule with the project and we're going to do our best to make sure that as much of this guidance gets baked into the Udo as appropriate for the stage that we will be at with not having all the details worked out for the reference guide and all the construction standards um but we anticipate that there may be a need to come back after the reference guide is updated to maybe make some tweaks to the Udo and as y'all know we
love to do some text amendments regularly so um that might be our first one after the new udio is adopted but we will work kind of an iterative process to make sure that the ordinance and the reference guide are working together thank you and just as always um let us know what you need from your Council around resources um so that we aren't delaying um what we have to get done uh which is to adopt a Udo next fall thank you yeah um so thank you for the for the for the clarification there yeah and thank you council member Baker for bringing this forward um and I appreciate the additional work you've done with staff to sorted to work out some of the these details um so as I read this to to address council member Middleton's uh comments so as I read this what what I see in that in that those last two Clauses so we're in terms of this issue about policy as I read this we're saying we're resolving that nacto is our official design guide right so just guide it's not a standard but it does say that further that as we update
the uo we'll use nao's reference as we update our official construction standards right so that so in that that's where it becomes more of more like law right now we're just saying these are the official guides so I'm comfortable with that sort of wording and the process going forward so I'm comfortable with these right thank you so much I know I feel it too um any other comments Mr Mayor if I may um I I think what I heard um staff say is that they were interested perhaps in bringing in a consultant to look at these guides to ensure that it's appropriate in its entirety for Durham um and I also want to note that there seems to be multiple resources listed in the resolution and I'm not sure if staff has vetted that there's no contradiction between the multiple resources and so I just wanted to know that because we would in the
city attorney's office be interpreting this to have a fair amount of force in how we move forward and so just wanted to put that out there m you had a question go ahead oh go ahead um yeah this is this has been reviewed by the city attorney's office and and we incorporated uh comments from from the city attorney's office I would I would say one of the one of the um benefits of adopting these as the guidelines is um is because of the bipartisan infrastructure law and it's changed to legislation that now grants um cities more control over Street design when it comes to federally funded um federally funded projects on city streets specifically and so that's that's one reason why it's important for
these to to become the guidelines um because there are multiple guidelines um and they are fairly aligned other cities have adopted the these guidelines in tandem it offers additional flexibility again just coming back to these are not the standards standards are are law standards are specific they are cross-sections they show you Dimensions um they show you materials these are not standards these are these are guidelines they um they are they are official but they are reference they they are something that you reference um and um and so I think that there's you know this is a good a good temporary option I think move you know moving forward we're going to have the vision zero plan plan uh there's also uh opportunity to create our own guidelines if we so wanted to you know wanted to do that in the future as well um some cities do that um this is this is a you know pretty pretty commonly done by by municipalities is to adopt the the nacto and it uh guidelines um again they're
they're guidelines they're not standards but they are uh valuable for for referencing when standards are being are are being created yeah Mr I trust my colleague I I don't need to put it on GBA so I I don't it can go on consent because it seems like so I'm not requesting it to be put on GBA Bas I I trust my colleagues apologies just just wanted to clarify that I don't believe the second version of the resolution has been reviewed by our office I do understand that the first version was reviewed but I know that there was some changes made I am not saying that there's problematic language there but I do want it to be clear that I don't believe that Fred Lamar who would have reviewed the first one has reviewed the second version which had some additional language so just wanted to clarify that thank you thank you so I guess um Madame attorney um in in your estimation is there enough time between now and our meeting to have that happen or do you
feel do you that's my question there was there was only a minor change in the last paragraph so I can share that directly with you thank staff is happy to work with Fred and okay and I can also send you the the uh changes in in Word Perfect we will connect with Fred Lamar and also ad miles who serves as the attorney for public works thank you thank you so in light of that my request would be that it is on GBA and not on consent to make sure that that work has happened thank you all right um apologies to folks that are watching and trying to understand everything this meeting was about um but thank you all colleagues for uh all of this we are going to um just set agenda settle the agenda oh we have other matters I'm sorry yeah
um no do yeah the agenda Co take away yeah so um I think this will I'll make it brief I guess um a lot of folks have been concerned um since the we were so sad to see the departure of our city manager soon and so we're as time is moving as we're getting trying to figure out a process for appointing new city manager I think a lot of folks are concerned that time has been moving on and so I think rather than having a separate meeting next week with HR to discuss sort of what our options are I think I since there's consensus here in Council to Simply go forward with a HR driven process for for recruiting the next city manager so I just want to put that I don't know if on the floor as a motion or just a proposal but I think I think there's support here for that but I wanted to I wanted to have a discussion about that I think we should do that in public and and move forward with the with all um uh with all what's this phrase I'll do do speed or
whatever yeah so uh so uh in reference to council member R's Point um I there I was I was going through a process of determining how we move forward on the on the uh the new manager's uh search or process rather uh and there were um several there there there options that we can take as a body um the process in which we choose is not something that we uh discuss in close session um I wanted a consensus from you all and I directed the um HR Director to meet with each of you however uh miraculously which doesn't happen often you all voluntarily came to me on the same page so um the so the three options were um option one to Simply appoint someone option two have a process um that is uh
facilitated by the by the human research service director in her office and option three uh utilize one of the um uh search firms that we have recently um acquired um retain rather uh to do a a just a national search which would open it up to you know um it would be a whole different process we bring you know that would be a search um the the opt and I'm going to ask you each of you to tell me which option then I'm going to ask you a clarifying question on that um well no I'm going to ask you all to verbalize so I can have that stated and then I'll provide that for the HR Director who is actually watching uh and then we will uh she'll provide us a process a presentation with the process instead of me doing that I'm going to have her go ahead and do this I just explain this again probably much better
than me and then I'll ask you which option we'll have that for her to prepare her presentation for us so director W if you can um go ahead and provide those options good afternoon everyone um yes there are three options uh I think you just went through them uh Rel relatively well um option one is to uh post the position with the HR function posting the position with the HR function will still allow for a national search so what we can do is post it anywhere that that you all would like but typically we do use um recruiters for that I mean we I'm sorry we do use like a and those types of sites for that um option two uh would be um can you not am I out of frame here yeah you're fine I think he's working on it I'm sorry
we uh you can go ahead director W okay okay option two would be to go with a national search firm and as you mentioned before uh we just uh uh got our list approved of um of of Consultants that we could could potentially use for the national search the difference between a national search and with us is that typically there's some sort of a assessment that is done with the national search firm however we can still provide something we would just have to buy that as a service not super expensive but we can certainly do a type of an assessment for selected candidates as well and then option three as you said before is the appointment and that's where you all would just select a candidate and that person would be appointed any question um council member
cook um hi thank you director W um I'm I'm just wondering if you could just for everyone watching talk about well I want to I want to say a few things about the national search so first is that we had our consultant approved that was uh from a different search correct that wasn't in Pro in preparation for the city manager no it was not it's it's our list of national search firms that we use that the course of the year and could you give us a time frame on using a national search via consultant and also potentially a cost amount for that absolutely um right now on a national search it's normally about 35% of the base salary or in some cases it could be for the entire compensation package it just depends on how they do their calculation so it would be you know whatever you all uh would want to pay that person times 35% would
typically be the salary I mean it be the payment for that and the the difference between the two in terms of timeline uh National Searchers usually like to have their positions posted at least 30 to 60 days um just so that they can make sure that they're getting candidates and that another what I would call a significant different is most of the time when you have work with a national search firm they're actually going out and sourcing candidates what does that mean they're actually going out and beating the bushes um as my grandmother would say looking for candidates who could potentially fill this opportunity based on the criteria that you all would like the person criteria and competencies you all would like this person to have and then could you also talk to us about if we um were to choose the HR internal or HR process um I mean I think
it's always an a wonder when we have the potential of using a consultant and then we are going to instead use staff what if there's an issue of capacity um or expertise or anything that we might be missing if we were to not use a consultant oh great question um so in this particular regard I would say there is no real capacity issue we're going our steps really pretty much align with that of a consulting firm the only difference is we're not we're not beating down the bushes looking for candidates we will post those positions in key areas around the country um like icma um leue North Carolina League of cities we will post that way um and we'll make sure that it's published in a lot of different places diversity sites as well but in terms of us um C- calling and things like that that's one thing HR would not be doing that's a that's a
significant difference when you're thinking about the two thank you so much those are my only questions you're welcome yeah just one quick question and thank you for joining us um is there would you anticipate any sort of difference in the timeline necessary timeline between the consultant option versus the HR option well it would be our recommendation that it's posted for 30 days uh Consulting companies like to post it longer so they'll have more time to Source candidates but um HR typically would want to do a 30-day search come back to you and say hey here are the candidates that we have and then get direction from you on whether or not you want us to go back out for a second 30 days um typically with a search firm they they kind of make that decision on the front end so that uh because you all have access to us from an HR perspective a little bit harder to have that access with with a
consultant any other questions all right I am going to uh for the sake of time I'm going to go around and ask you all what your preferences I'm having I'll say let me uh let me go into I'm want to take some notes um and I want to be clear that I'm not sure if this is the decision that I would have made if we had had this conversation a month or two ago because I am concerned about the timeliness um so I'm not really sure I feel like this is necessarily reflective of my values in terms of finding a new manager uh because I do think it's really important we are a midsize City a very successful midsize City uh we
represent 300,000 people we are a manager Strong City and this is a a really really important position and uh for me doing the best search that we can do and making sure that our candidates are the most competitive uh just for the good of Durham that is my priority um but given the time constraints and again hearing from director wi and understanding that we have the capacity and the expertise to do this it's going to be my option at this time to go with her first one that she suggested which is the HR function search I will say I the reason why I was taking a little time because it is such a complex process in a sense not really complex but there are a lot of factors that have to be considered but I know that you know um all of you have come to me with a preference and um I was trying to use as much time as possible but this is where we want to go today then I'll I'll honor that U Baker
give me your option please uh same HR Okay C mavier uh same HR internal HR I'll get to that part um council member Freeman I'm fine with HR all right council member wrist option one HR and man pro thank you Mr Mayor I I'm GNA say for I I had no idea we were gonna be doing this today when when council member mariss said he wanted to bring up a another matter it seemed rather on the spur on the spot I I didn't realize our our HR Director was actually going to be queed up with the options and and I it seemed to me that you just kind of thought not that you did but thought about this today and just wanted to talk about it um so I I I wasn't aware that this was going to happen today firstly and secondly let me say I um I I don't think that we are Mr Mayor to you I think you've done a great job in this process we're not I don't want to convey to the
residents of the city that we're somehow behind the the clock in terms of it's October it's early October we have a sitting capable city manager until the almost end of December we have it is within our the purview of this Council to point and interim if if we needed to um so I I don't want folk to think we've been Dilly dallying or kind of twisting our hands or twiddling our thumbs that we are we are we're fine um and you know so I don't I don't feel that the pressure of the clock um the the ship is being run and we have an incredible bench here uh to to run the ship um I also you know we haven't had the benefit of having this type of conversation in this is a Personnel matter in closed session and so for me to Telegraph um today my preference I think by extension would would Telegraph some other things as well so I'll respect you
know the majority of decision of this counil but um I will say that I'm you know I'm we have a an incredibly uh uh uh well-run ship here with a lot of capable folk and that I am I comfortable with exercising the council's prerogative to appoint someone uh to hire uh just based upon what we know now and who we know now with that said you know I I wasn't I was I didn't realize we were going to be ped on our recommendations today so I'll just say that whatever the the majority of the council Wills obviously I'll go with it but I didn't know we were doing this today thank you all right thank you uh everyone uh so this this doesn't this is not making a determining decision on anything right now other than you know we're we're asking the HR Director to provide us a process to present to us and there is a lot more detail that we're going to have to determine within that process I know there are some things I prefer to put in
um you you guys may have something there um does and and also when this process kicks off that timeline is going to be really important as well we may uh to your point may approach them we may still have have to appoint an interim you know um you know depend we may have to or may not it depends on the timing so uh at this point uh based on all of you all coming to me telling me your preference uh I I wanted to put that on the record today um that's why I stepped out earlier I had to scramble and get on the phone with the HR Director and ask her to get on the call because I knew this was coming in at that point so um director when you have the the preference of what option at this time if you can take it away uh and bring it back to us at a later date uh what that timeline looks like you know um you know what what all goes into that yes and uh
yeah you can do that for us okay we certainly will thank you I appreciate it all right at this time I think we will settle the agenda well yeah I'll pass it over to the clerk thank you Mr May and Council uh the first nominations for the Durham Convention and visitors bureau discover Durham appointment in the category of food service Shan Umstead racial Equity commission appointment in the category of at large Elena Snavely and of quick question is is Sean unstead on another board as well he's reapplying for this one okay all
right the Durham Planning Commission appointment khila kareim human relations Comm appointment Christina L Crosby mayor's Hispanic Latino committee appointment the ml mhlc recommended crisal Alvarez and Africa dor Nera and those are the two that were nominated there is one that did not reach consensus and that's for the Durham affordable housing implementation committee appointment there's a tie between um two members or two applicants for the atlarge position Gonzalo e arigata received three nominations and teron wessels also received three nominations and William a lane received one so we could possibly switch Mr Lane if if that's your
pleasure council member wrist um you voted for Mr Lane mhm and Gonzalo Arata received three and teron wles also received three typically I can flip a coin I don't know how to make that decision on the SP we can put this on GBA if you'd like yeah I'm happy I'm happy to rather me look at the two people but yeah let's do that GBA yeah okay let's do yeah okay and that's the end of my report all right thank you now I'm going to pass it over to Madame manager to settled the agenda thank you Mr Mayor members of council excuse me uh I have items one
and two items 4 through eight items 11 through 25 on consent uh GBA have item three item 10 and item 31 and items for the GBA public hearing I have items 27 through 30 thank you yes always forget I'll entertain them motion to settle the agenda so moved okay so move and probably secondly please uh respond if in favor I I all oppos no okay unanimous all right I'll now entertain a motion I now entertain a motion to hold a Clos session pursuant to North Colina
General statute 143 d318 point 11 A6 for Council consideration of the annual performance evaluation for city clerk Diana shriber second all right we will now uh prepare for Clos session colleagues we uh will'll start we good we have to turn off the streaming downstairs is the uh is the food here oh the food in five minutes all right so colleagues we will start at 5:15 no we're now preparing for close session thank you