City Council · Regular Meeting · September 5, 2024

Public comment there isn't anything actionable and so this seems like it is actionable and it's often it's not as easy to fix as you know looking at the landscape and saying oh yeah the ordinance in other communities is this we can match the ordinance there hasn't been any problems so I'm comfortable with moving it forward if others are it seems pretty straightforward to me based on what staff analysis is but. Baker what which ordinance would this be addressing just curious It's like the development ordinance or no it's it's your general code of ordinances and I don't have the reference in front of me I don't know if attorney rayberg does but it is an ordinance that originally existed that that simply prohibited the poisoning of wild life in the city and it was determined in 2013 when a revision to that ordinance was brought for forward that that would also be the place to regulate hunting under certain circumstances within the city limits so it's just your regular code of ordinances and I'll.

If we don't have the reference here I'll get the reference for after work session and make sure council is available okay and do we so Udo there's a there's a procedure for amending there's a formalized procedure there do we have a procedure is there a formalized procedure for folks who want to apply to amend and any of our pieces in the code of ordinances Madam manager afternoon council member Baker so as you know we do have a resident or public driven text amendment process for Udo Provisions land use related ordinances but for our general code of ordinances we do not there is not a process and it's very rare that a municipality would have such a process generally if the public wants a change in a local law they should generate Champions within the community for that change starting with their elected officials sure there may be some critical mass in the community that wants to see legislative change but no there is not a process for people.

Just to say I want code provision 14- whatever changed okay I'm I'm comfortable putting this on the the next work session I also share some of the hesitation of the mayor protown I think this might be an interesting learning opportunity for us to see if there is a more formalized process or if this is just the way that that that the best way and the best practice for amending the code of ordinances so all right I think we've cross our shell so go ahead and put it on the work session thank you and the city code provision is 6-3.

Thank we there any other announ so this was a little more fun than a culling deer so I just want to let everybody know that Durham based independent Records label merge records which just celebrated their 35th Anniversary will be inducted into the NC Music Hall of Fame on October the 17th at a ceremony in morille that's a Thursday evening the executive director of The Music Hall of fam has reached out to the city of Durham to the Durham Arts Council and others to just to bring a delegation to moresville to celebrate merge records and they're being inducted there's also going to be performances by HC McIntyre I don't know HC McIntyre one of the merge records performers but also Anthony Hamilton and pet Pablo so interesting stuff so I encourage my colleagues if he interested to join me in that celebration also if I can take a moment of personal privilege to say that the co-founder of merge records Mac McAn and I Shar quite an interesting history his grandfather my grand father were law.

Partners together way back in the day in Fort Lauderdale so the mcon family and the bird family my mother's made name have been have been connected for many many years so big fans of the maccon and merge records and I'll be there and encourage my colleagues to join me in that thank you thank you thank you council member thank you colleagues council member cook is not with us today she has an excused absence because of a death in her family and we want to send the best wishes and love of our city to her and her family during this season of bereavement all right colleagues with that we're going to turn now to our executive leadership for priority items and I will yield now to our city manager for any priority items good afternoon Madam manager good afternoon Mr Mayor protim and members of the Durham city council the city manager has no priority items for you today thank you thank you madam manager I'll turn now to our.

City attorney for any priority items she may have good afternoon counselor good afternoon mayor ptim it's good to see you good to be with the council City attorney's office has no priority items today and to our esteemed clerk Madam Clerk good afternoon any priority items thank you Mr Mayor proam the city clerk's office has no items great all right no priority items from our executive leadership thank you to each of you for your work I'll turn now to the reading of our administrative consent items today and the rest of our agenda any one of these items may be pulled by a member of the council or the public administrative consent items from our city clerk's office item number one Durham bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission appointment item two Duram City County Environmental Affairs board appointment item three mayor's Hispanic Latino committee appointments item four Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners appointment under departmental items under budg budget and Management Services Department item five contract with cricet Forge to create historic neighborhood signs under human.

Resources department item number six FY 24 logic compensation group classification and compensation study final report I I don't want to pull it but I look forward to reading every page of it public twice public works department item seven contract BR 11d Bridge Engineering Services for MBI structures 2024 item number eight utility preliminary engineering and construction agreement for corn Wallace Road P 5717 item number nine amendment number three to Carpenter Fletcher Road improvements prelim preliminary engineering agreement CS xt. number 845 869 s May PR just to say I don't want to pull that just to say we just heard a presentation about Transportation demand management week and the importance of having good choices this is one of a couple items I think on our agenda around bicycle facility so I just salute that work and happy to see that go forward thank you council member agree with you item number 10 utility extension agreement with welcome Venture Park LLC to serve the welcome Venture Park phase two Technology Solutions Department item 11 amendment to contra.

Cont ract with securance LLC for security operations center for managed Services item 12 First Amendment to the contract with Aon Enterprise Inc to increase digital evidence storage capacity for Durham Police Department under our transportation department item 13 amendment number two to supplemental agreement number two with wsp USA Inc for Transit asset and compliance Management Services item 14 can you pull that 13 yeah 13 is pulled item 14 interlocal agreement with Durham Public Schools traffic signal designed for proposed Durham School of the Arts item 15 supplemental agreement for design of bicycle facilities to tip- bl- 0028 with Mead and Hunt Inc item 16 purchase of seven replacement light Transit vehicles for goldm Access under our water water management department item number 17 Tar River Land Conservancy Mount Harmony track Watershed protection project author authorization to fund ma'am item 17 pulled item number 18 Award of midterm contract for bulk waterer treatment plant chemicals to Brint tag Midsouth Inc item number 19 Professional Services contract award to Smith Garder Inc for municipal landfill.

Monitoring and Design Services item 20 Award of bid term contract for bulk waterer treatment plant chemicals to Caris LLC item number 21 Award of midterm contract for bulk waterer treatment plant chemicals to Penco Inc item number 22 Award of midterm contract for bulk waterer treatment plant chemicals to Univar Solutions USA Inc and today we have colleagues four presentations from Community Development Department item number 23 homelessness in the Continuum Continuum of Care in Durham slated for 30 minutes from our finance department item number 24 fiscal year 2023 to 2024 fourth quarter fin financial report slated for 20 minutes City County Planning Department synchronizing enrollment capacity and residential developments in Durham presentation by Durham Public Schools slated for 30 minutes and under from our transportation department pre presentation on Paratransit Improvement Services study that is slated for 20 minutes under public hearings City County Planning Department item 27 Consolidated item Lions Farm Elementary School major special use permit permit Transportation special use permit and major site plan item 28 Consolidated annexation 5802 South Miami Boulevard.

Multif family item number 29 Consolidated annexation curly Road item number 30 Consolidated annexation farington Road multifamily and then for Citizens matters to be heard at 1M I have on virtually Jordan bakus who will be with us on our virtual platform and I have cards from Linda Sutton Zachary SOS see Linda another Linda Sutton that's a dupe Janetta Alon and Katie Lundy Ross we'll go in that order that ends the reading of our agenda Madam manager by my Reckoning I have items number 13 and 17 pulled you concur all right we will start with our citizens matters to be heard at 1 Madam clerk if Jordan bakus is available if you would make them hearable Mr Mayor proem Mr Backus is not online all right thank you much we will turn inhouse and I'd like to welcome Linda Sutton if you're here good afternoon thank you so much for being with us if you'll approach here this lect here there's a button for you to push and you'll have three minutes to address.

Us thank you for being with us no no. Worries you're kind turn your microphone on if if you would please yeah you can repeat that because I want the public to hear you did not hear my thank you looking at all that I think oh hats off to them I'll be as brief as I can in three minutes I've got just two items one is a long range plan and another is a short range I'm retired resident I came from Burlington like a lot of older folks we come to live near our kids in the neighborhood and love it when I got here I was so surprised that there was no leaf pickup in my neighborhood I live in one of the lovely older neighborhoods of Durham Burlington for example three times a year they would come with that suck them up vacuum truck and pick up leaves so I just would like to put this on your in your thoughts your committee work or however you do this but the the good thing.

About it is it it's it's a safety issue you've got snakes you've got insects you've got mole Leaf mole for people who have allergies like me and others so it's a convenience in Burlington all we did was Rake our leaves to the edge of the property and the truck came and picked it up now I realize everything is what money you all had a thing you put out for suggestions a couple years back and I wrote that but you know you had a pot of money and I said I have an idea for you to desend and that's that's what we did but anyway it was not done I realize that's a long range thing it takes time and planning but I think that would be a wonderful thing any questions on that or yeah okay my second item is an immediate item and it has to do with an amend it has to do with an ordinance ah I'm not sure how this would be addressed but a simple ordinance I.

Have the number here or I have a some papers to give you but in this one minute and half that I have I'm not sure we're going to do it so let me just read it I would like to see any kind of outdoor fires burning band why as you say here the objective of the city council is to Reg to promote efficiency consistency of health safety General Welfare burning the way I'm seeing several families and several neighborhoods do is is not in compliance with that also nuisance fires objectionable odors byproducts of combustion smoke can be harmful to the residents so whenever I've seen in several different cases people burning and I have one in my own neighborhood I don't want me this to be an issue of me versus him sort of thing that's what I I want the subjectivity of this out I want to see I would like to see an objective ban on this kind of material right now well you you you can you.

Can look at the ordinance but what's being burned that's bothering me is making the neighborhood Smoky my husband has COPD other people in my neighborhoods do my neighborhood does also and it's just objectionable and some people will just it'll sort of all day long it'll hover I've actually walked down and around and you know by certain time in the afternoon it's still going on so that's your time thank you so much for that if if you want to leave something with us if you'll leave it with the clerk if you have documents for us whatever you want us to see if you just leave it with our clerk she she'll see that we get see is the ordinance okay you just leave with her thank you so much for being with us I appreciate you thank you you Zachary Coto good afternoon thank you for being with us you have three minutes good afternoon and thank you mayor proem and Council my name is Zach Sado I live at 1909 ederton.

27703 I work at IBM and RTP and I just bought my first home in Durham my home backs up to a railroad crossing and train whistles have shown it quickly become a disturbance especially at odd hours of the night at 2: a.m. or as early as 7:00 a.m. Attempting to raise these concerns with different departments in the city has been unsuccessful and I was informed by most departments that it's not a matter that they deal with one of the Departments had suggested I come here today to vocalize my concerns today I'd like a moment of your time to talk about railroad quiet zones Federal requirement State trains should blow their whistles When approaching a railroad crossing however this is only if the crossing is not equipped with adequate additional safety measures there's a noise ordinance in Durham that also St that sound cannot exceed 60 DB during the day and 50 at night whereas train horns range is loud as 110 to 150 DB the F the Federal Railroad Administration also.

Says exposure over 85 decb leads to hearing damage and these dcbs are even more of a concern late at night since sound carries easier if you look at the F's website they also read site more in scholarly journals about the negative health effects from train whistle exposure and on their website they recommend quiet zones as an approach for local governments to decrease the negative impacts from train noise there's also partial quiet zones that can be enacted at specific times like at night they're implemented based off of a safety index rating calculated for the crossing and once the crossing is given an index a notice of intent can be served to Railroad authorities asking them to cease blowing their train whistles at the Crossing the F also mentions there's no known increase in accidents at quiet zones and quiet zones have been known to increase property value by at least 10% for nearby residences safety indices are provided based off engineering and non-engineering safety measures that are put in place non-engineering examples.

Are photo enforcement or public education and awareness engineering examples are improvements that address the roadway such as channelization devices like cones affixed to yellow lines or medians preventing drivers from Crossing Lanes Wayside horns can also be implemented at railro Road Crossings which direct the sound of train horns towards the crossing rather than spreading it through neighboring areas there's four quadrant Gates that can be installed which is forearms instead of two and numerous other safety improvements since April Raleigh has begun working on turning every railroad crossing into a quiet Zone in their city limits Apex has also implemented their first quiet Zone downtown and every railroad crossing by my hometown in Florida has them implemented as well my ask is if Durham can be next I'm not sure if there's opportunities to get involved with local advocacy groups or organizations that might already be fighting noise pollution and Durham but I'm ultimately just looking for folks who can help here to look into this matter to hopefully Implement quiet zones in the future for residents that.

Live here and are dealing with this issue thank you and I appreciate your time and consideration s thank you for being with us and congratulations on the purchase of your home I appreciate it very much Janette Austin good afternoon good to see you.

Absolutely good afternoon mayor pro team City Council Members I'm Janet atin dfk Towers is my residence 4900 North rosper Street Apartment 79 dur 27704 I stand before you today concerned Citizen and Resident for the last three months JFK Towers has not had a manager or assistant manager we out be on our own we have one elevator the residents have been so excited because they were doing work on the elevators that they thought we were getting new elevators as promise they put new floors in the elevators new lights and put new paneling on the three walls and they're excited about that the chains the elevators have not been fixed and right now today one elevator working for seven floors also it was brought to my attention and let me say it like this you all agreed for Northern to be built next door you all did all the research for it to be built next door but no concern for JFK Towers how many little Bicky Su are walking across JFK Towers every Monday.

Through Friday you know that's a dangerous place how many rapes have happened at JFK. Tower Northern is just a rock throw away are we concerned do you have children grandchildren nieces nephews that goes to Northern how many have somebody somebody some child at Northern High School but I still can't get y'all to come out there to see about this also when Hood came through the district manager showed up and she tried to put she tried to have Senator wooded arrested for being a guest of mine also the Indie Sarah right Mary tried to have her arrested as well as n and O for being guest of mine but Hood showed up anyway she showed them the good side of JFK but soon as she left I said okay now let me show you my side yeah we knocked on 20 226 and we knocked on 222 that floor is under construction guess what I opened the door 222 the drug biller came out of the kitchen he was cooking something to eat.

And he asks us what you want thank you thank you so much but please consider your children you don't care no about us consider the children next door thank you for being with us awesome Katie Lindy. Ross good afternoon thank you for being with us you have three minutes thank thank you please help that lady that's it's very moving what she's saying okay so I'm talking on a topic that Katie Ross Baha that I have talked about before in conjunction with specific projects but in general I'd like to talk about blasting and some of the terrible harm that is being done you all know about the Junction Road situation where it's now coming to two years since those people's 10 residents on Junction Road their Wells have been damaged and are not usable because of blasting of the surrounding developments they're not in the city limits but the projects that are causing the trouble are and they're projects that you all have approved and that's where I see the line of.

Responsibility and I I sincerely believe that all of you sitting here that I'm looking at and Miss Cook care about this and want to help the mayor has just casually stated I'll mention it to the county that is not adequate and it's not fair to these people what I am suggesting is that because I do believe that the people I'm looking at now and and that includes you U Mr Middleton because we had a very brief conversation about this once you asked me to come and talk to you about it I didn't and I apologize but I do think you care about these people but the problem is you don't know exactly what you can do and so that's why I propose having at one of your sessions a symposium a conference a gathering whatever you want to call it of appropriate experts in two areas of the field one independent experts not not the building Industries experts on blasting and what needs to be done to make it safe when it shouldn't be done.

And and whether the what's going on here is appropriate in some of these specific cases but secondly the remedies why aren't the developers and the blasting companies being held responsible for what they're doing why haven't they repaired the damage that they have done in over two years these The Junction and Junction Road is not the only victims but they're the most egregious one and the one that's been going on as long as I know why why are not the developers and the people profiting off of these developments and this Mas grading why aren't they being held immediately responsible and making the remedies for these people and repairing their Wells you know I'm a retired attorney I know that their insurance companies are telling them not to accept a responsibility because the insurance companies and the defense attorneys know that it's more expensive to get an attorney to try to bring a lawsuit to get private remedy for this than it is to fix your well and you won't get your attorney fees back so.

That's that's what I would like you to look at and maybe just consider that having some kind of a a a presentation question answer something that you will learn what possible remedies are under our current law or if we need to with this upcoming udio maybe we need a new ordinance to help make those people responsible so that's what I to say today thank you very much for being with us for coming out today and Madame clerk has Jordan bakus showed up in Q no Mr bakus is not online all right then then we have exhausted all of our citizens matters for the day we will colleagues we have four presentations we have two pulled items I want to and we we've got some guests do you think those of you that have pulled items how extensive do you think your treatments will be because if if if if they're really substance I'm going to go ahead with the presentations but if you think you can dispense of them with some I have item.

Number 13 was pulled by I believe council member rist and item 17 by council member cier do you think we can dispense of them let's go let's let's go with that then let let's let's do our pulled items and then we'll get to our presentations we are 20 minutes shy 2 pm so we're not doing bad on time now amendment number two to supplemental agreement number two with wsp USA Inc the transit asset and compliance Management Services coun member Marist I yield to you thank you may PM hey thanks Mr thanks for being here so I know this is one a lot about compliant stuff with the Federal Transit Administration right and I understand the focus of this is adding a task to our current work order with this consultant to add to make sure we're compliant with the requirements of Ft with FTA regarding disadvantaged business enterprises and so I guess my question here is because we've had several conversations here on the council about dbes and our our our.

Broader policy to ensure appropriate use of disadvantaged business enterprises so I'm just kind of curious what's going on here are we worried that we're not comping I mean what's what's the gist of this one here so good afternoon I'm Sean Egan the director of transportation for the city so every three years the Federal Transit Administration conducts a review of all of our compliance all of our policies and procedures we had identified U some opportunities for improvement in our compliance procedures particularly related to disadvantaged business Enterprise in previous years we had been meeting our dbe goals every year because we set a very low bar for those goals we were at 3% participation for dve firms we were exceeding the goal and so as part of our work with the consultant we evaluated we wanted to look at other FTA recipients other cities and Transit agencies to see how can we be more ambitious with this goal and what work can we do and what examples can we point to to really be as.

Ambitious as possible and so through that and then through the FTA process when you change your goal you have to provide extensive research and documentation to support that change so we are recommending a 20% goal rather than 3% going forward but there's significant additional documentation FTA wants you to demonstrate that it is reasonable for you to be able to accomplish this what other recipients can you point to who have set an ambitious goal and achieved an ambitious goal and how will you make sure that you're providing all of the monitoring of your contractors and subcontractors to be able to coordinate this so we want to make sure that we can satisfy all of the ft's requirements for documentation and re research because they they are skeptical that we can achieve such an ambitious goal but I'm convinced that we can achieve that goal well I appreciate that appreciate the clarification and I I do deeply appreciate the the willingness to set aggressive goals right and this is kind.

Of the thing we talked about earlier on the council is that you know just setting a low bar setting a low gold that's not I like being aggressive so I really appreciate that I guess my other question would be you know in setting an aggressive goal what kind of support will you all need from the rest of the city to make sure you can achieve those goals because I'm sure part of this is not only identifying a list of people MD M minority or disadvantaged business enterprises that on a list but it's also making sure that list is like a robust list and we got a pipeline of firms that are that are that are coming forward that can be potential contractors so what other help do you need to make sure you can achieve those aggressive goals so the consultant support that is on the agenda today is is critical for us to be able to do that but we're also looking at our staff capacity and the needs that.

We have to take on more ambitious goals What the adequacy of our current staff capacity is and we'll be addressing that through the upcoming budget process our findings and recommendations coming out of that but staff capacity was was definitely an area of concern within the review that we received that there needed to be sufficient staff capacity to manage compliance with all of these programs particularly with very ambitious goals being set and what about other departments in the city potentially like oewd is that part of the equation as well or what's the role that your colleagues may play so we work with we work with the equal business opportunity team and the finance department to make sure that we're setting participation goals for all of our Contracting opportunities U and we work with u audit services for example to make sure that we have strong policies and procedures and a compliance framework so there will be support required from other departments for us to achieve these more ambitious goals but I.

Think they're consistent with the city manager's Direction around how to approach this work appreciate that thank you thank you council member all right colleagues we'll turn now to item 17 Tar River Land Conservancy Mount Harmony track Watershed protection project authorization to fund and this was P by Council mavier onte now thank you good afternoon good to see you really quick I just wanted to have a an an I thank manager pagee because she helped break it down for me this is separate than any kind of a few years ago the city started funding a separate fund for open space designation and we got an open space planner and I just wanted to have a clear understanding this is a completely separate pot of money through water management and it's just so that that's it that's my question okay good afternoon mayor Pro 10 members of council Don gy Water Management yes this is a separate program altogether this is for protection of our Drinking Water Supplies so our our Watershed protection plan for our.

Drinking Water Supplies specifically thank you and this is in the memo it shows that other counties and other Municipal governments also go in with these types of land purchases yeah it's very frequent that they participate in in in projects like this thank you that's it that's my question I just wanted to bring it up because we have two we're doing a really good job along with the county around land protection we hear a lot especially when we hear about development cases and protection of our Watershed and just highlighting the really deep and extensive work that water Management's done along with other municipalities and counties around that Watershed protection and additionally we have a separate program along with the county to identify open space purchases and we also now have an open space Court planner in parks and W and so I I'm just naming all of these things as ways that the city is doing exactly what many of our residents ask us to do which is to identify where we.

Can U protect critical Watershed throughout Dr County thank you thank you council member for highlighting highlighting that and thank you director sure absolutely council member Freeman thank you I appreciate council member cabar bringing that up is there any way that these funds can be used to protect the Falls Lake even though it's in a Raleigh's Watershed well both of our water supplies are in the Falls Lake Watershed so any any projects we participate in to protect our watered basically automatically protects Falls Lake as well Falls in Jordan no that's a separate wed thank you council member colleagues anyone else thank you director good to see you thank you all right colleagues we turn now to our presentations I'm going to exercise some some gavel prerogative since we have our friends from outside of our of our orbit from dur Public Schools I'm going to make our first presentation if I can find them yeah see got you we're going to do item number 25 synchronizing enrollment capacity and residential development and.

Durham presentation by our friends from dur public oh okay my apologies our friends from dur public schools are not all here ah and so if we could kind of wait they were trying to game plan with your agenda so our apologies sure well would do tell them I tried to extend them a courtesy all right they'll be here shortly thank you absolutely all right then we'll start with item 23 homelessness in the continu Continuum of Care in Durham good afternoon sir good afternoon mayor Pro Tim and members of the City Council Reginal J Johnson director of the Community Development Department if you may recall during the budget process last spring city council requested a deep dive into the homelessness system and the city's role and we ask that we schedule it sometime in the fall well this is that presentation and so we want to spend a few M moments with you discussing the homeless system in the Contin of care and I'll turn it over to Colin Davis who serves as our.

Homeless System Manager for the city of Durham Colin Davis one second feel free to ask a.

Good afternoon mayor protim city council and city manager Colin Davis City ad Durham Community Development department manager of the homeless system I'm going to present to you today just an update on homelessness and Durham and sort of an overview of the system I apologize to those of you who are on Council in January of 2023 there are some slides that are similar to that because the homeless system there's some things that are static and some things do change and we're always having something going on so we're going to go over the homeless system the role of the city in the homeless system public funding sources that help us to pay for all the services that we.

Do Davis while they queing that up and this also came before The Joint City County didn't it also in December there was a brief piece that that we did a little bit of an update on that as well as some things that we we had requested from City and and County to assist in funding good memory so we'll start off with an overview of the homeless system starting off HUD US Department of Housing and Urban Development as we affectionally call HUD mandates that every jurisdiction has what's considered a Continuum of Care and this Continuum of Care COC is made up of homeless service providers it's made up of law enforcement hospitals education it's supposed to be made up of anybody who has any intersection with households experiencing homelessness and we have the homeless Services advisory committee which is our governing board of our Continuum of Care when you look at what HUD requ requires your Continuum of Care to be made up of just about everybody who is supposed to.

Be a member of your Continuum of Care is also a member of our homeless Services advisory committee so we kind of fill two roles in both places the homeless Services advisory committee or hsac has three standing committees the executive committee the policy and planning committee and Performance Management executive committee is designed to set up the hsac meetings and appoint chairs to the subcommittees policy and planning works and sets up funding priorities so HUD releases an annual notice of funding opportunities during that competition the policy and planning committee will make recommendations in terms of should a bonus project be prioritized for Rapid re housing or permanent support of housing or transitional housing or any of the other eligible people pieces Based on data and input that we have so we're currently in our annual Continuum of Care funding cycle and the priority for bonus projects this year is permanent Supportive Housing we'll talk more about that in a minute and then the Performance Management committee is the group who goes out and.

Is evaluating whether or not the programs in our homeless system are performing in the ways that we expect them to perform and the benchmarks that are established by the Continuum of Care so we will set benchmarks at 30% of one type of program should exit to permanent housing and Performance Management goes back and says all right are these groups hitting those benchmarks if not you go through a corrective action plan or a performance Improvement plan and sort of what do we need to do to fix this is this an issue that that that agency is not doing well or there systemic things that are in the way are there policy in the way and if there's policies in the way then policy and planning goes back and says let's make some adjustments to the policies and see if we can help turn the ship.

Around so we have a lot of definitions that you'll hear us talk about so I'm just going to go through this pretty quickly coordinated entry that is our front door anybody experiencing homelessness in Durham and I always say experiencing homelessness because people are not homeless people are experiencing homelessness being homeless is is lack of housing so people experiencing homelessness is an important thing to delineate that people themselves are not homeless the they're just experiencing a temporary loss of housing so front door coordinat folks come there looking for assistance they go through a prioritization process and are we try to divert people from the homeless system and may get them to connect with family and other areas to exit homelessness if there if that's not an option putting them on a wait list or trying to get into a shelter bed if a shelter bed is available generally speaking the shelter beds in Durham are lacking in terms of the numbers of people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness so.

Even if all the shelter beds are full there are still a large number of people who will be without an emergency shelter diversion that's getting people to other housing options emergency shelter is we've got two Emergency Shelters in our homeless system families moving forward and urban ministries are to Emergency Shelters and they work with a 30-day plan to try and get people to permanent housing that 30 days can be extended depending on what's Happening and folks moving towards permanent housing goals we are required by Hud to track our data track our outcomes and be able to report back on successes and we use that we use a homeless management information system otherwise known as the the hmis permanent Supportive Housing you heard me talk about this a moment ago this is something that is an intervention that is designed for people who are chronically homeless meeting Hud's definition of chronically homeless meaning having a disabling condition and being homeless for 12 months or more continuously or four or more episodes of.

Homelessness in the last three years that add up to 12 months so to enter this program you have to have a documentation of a disabling condition from a li Ed medical provider in that area of expertise and housing history documentation showing that you are chronically homeless and showing your housing history and where those breaks in housing have been rapid rehousing is a short to medium-term intervention where there's Supportive Services and up to 24 months of financial assistance the goal is households moving into a rapid rehousing program with those Supportive Services will be able to move on and sustain that rent at the end of 24 months ideally a lot shorter ideally we don't want to go 24 months because it's very expensive there's not a lot of money in those programs so it can get eaten up pretty quickly if if you have to go full 24 months Street Outreach this is our group of providers that currently the city of Durham is in a joint partnership with.

The county to fund housing for New Hope for an unsheltered coordinate unsheltered coordinating agency they provide our street Outreach and canvasing of campsites and work with those in our and Durham who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness to provide services and try and get them connected it's just a brief diagram of how the homos system works so you see our little stick figure here who calls entry point and that little stick figure could come from Street Outreach going to entrypoint everything funnels through entrypoint and will either go through a diversion which is our first option because it's often times the least expensive way of getting getting people out of homelessness is to reconnect them with family or friends and that may be a bus ticket or a train to you know South Carolina to go live with a grandmother who says they can stay then the next option is okay we've got to look at emergency shelter and permanent housing and there's steps to go through that and then once you're in shelter or even.

Unsheltered you can go over here through permanent housing which is rapid re housing permanent Supportive Housing other Housing Programs which include housing Choice vouchers housing Choice vouchers do not come with Supportive Services and they don't come with additional money so when you have a housing Choice voucher for household experience in homelessness we need to make sure that that household doesn't need additional Supportive Services and they have adequate income to be able to pay the water bill an electric bill and other costs associated with rental housing above the rent cost to avoid lease violations that could result in an eviction so the city has a couple roles in the homeless system so the city of Durham does operate as the lead Agency for the Durham Continuum of Care and in that role we coordinate the hsac meetings we coordinate and write the annual application to HUD for the for the noo as well as the state ESG applic we just submitted the state ESG application which is emergency Solutions grant for roughly.

$170,000 and we will be submitting the HUD cooc noo later this fall when it's due we also have to do the point time count and we serve as the coordinated entry administrator to ensure that we've got Equitable policies and procedures to ensure that people are treated fairly and we're following our guidelines and from an equity lens we as a homeless system do know that people of color are disproportionately over represented in the homeless system roughly 77% of people experiencing homelessness are people of color we have seen that throughout our system 75 to 77% of people served through every different thing happen to be people of color so we are operating at equity which is an incredible thing to do because it's a big piece that HUD is trying to solve across the country and we and Durham have figured out how to make sure that we're not over representing one one group over another in throughout the system which a lot of groups you'll see particularly in permanent Supportive Housing Programs tend to be.

Disproportionately made up more of white people versus people of color the city also serves as a funer and we as a city contribute money to coordinated entry landlord engagement Street Outreach the hmis lead emergency shelter operations for White Flag as well as rapid re housing we do have more Public Funding coming in so this is where our dedicated housing funds go our dedicated housing funds in terms of what we're funding $200,000 match to the state to Huds co Huds ESG funds excuse me as well as the city's half of the unsheltered coordinating agency coordinated entry with the version of 477,000 the hmis is 78,000 the HUD noo contributes $55,000 to that and we pay for this data and all the associated training and staff with that so that it's not a cost passed on to our service providers landlord engagement is $150,000 a year and our White Flag shelter is about 190,000 a year Durham County does contribute to to the homeless system and we're working with them to get specific dollars of.

How much money is going to what shelters at this point 215,000 is their half of the unsheltered coordinating agency and they are part of our coordinated entry program that's in partnership with Volunteers of America so they provide office space in kind to the vaa staff as well as to DSS staff to be part of that team Durham County is also Ser providing money to Emergency Shelters in the county talked a little bit about the emergency Solutions Grant from the state we as a city are an entitlement jurisdiction and we receive approximately $175,000 for that pot of money we use that $175,000 plus $200,000 match and that's used for Rapid rehousing households are experiencing homelessness we use $300,000 of our community development block grant which is our Public Services allocation we can't exceed 15% of that for this and this is we provide Supportive Services in Emergency Shelters case managers and some case managers in the support permanent Supportive Housing program These funds go out via competitive RFP on a regular.

Basis and we enter into a multi-year contract to to to ensure services are able to continue housing opportunities for persons with AIDS living with AIDS is Hawa this is not a homeless only project there are preferences for people who are experiencing homelessness in haa however haa is eligible to anybody under 80% Ami and living with HIV or Aids and we have to serve the 5count emsa which includes chadam Durham Granville orange and Person Counties and we partner with Department of Social Services as well as Central pedmont Community Action to make the hoto program work the HUD cooc funding were in were're in the noo competition now our renewal amount for the 23 24 year was a little over $2 million and it broke out for about 900,000 for permanent Supportive Housing about a million dollars for Rapid rehousing out of that million dollars of Rapid rehousing 525,000 was targeted for households experiencing or trying to flee intimate partner violence or DV and there's money associated with that in this year's noo as well for a.

Bonus project for additional money to to help households fleeing domestic violence priority through this is given to Renewal projects and the reason for that is people are often in these projects and you can't just strip the funding away and not have people fall off a cliff so renewal projects do get prioritized above new projects unless there's a plan to reallocate the funds and which we have done that a few times this is a year where money is being reallocated so we we expect some new projects to come online during calendar year 2025 this is how our state ESG money has been spent in the 2023 competition and the 2024 competition this year we're recommending that $64,000 be spent on emergency shelter and $105,000 being spent on rapid rehousing with a priority for households with children IE families are PR predominantly going to be funded with this with a set aside to prioritize families this is our total Dollar City of Durham with our entitlements is about 2.8 million and our COC Grant of 2.

Million State ESG so just shy of5 million is our total operating budget in the homeless system that does not include funding from the county and it does not include staff salaries so this is the money that's going out to actually do the direct work and pay for the Supportive Services that are required we look at this this was put together for the week of August 19th when it was submitted we had about 35 families reporting unsheltered homelessness as well as 55 single adults reporting unsheltered homelessness waiting to get into a shelter bed there are 5050 emergency shelter beds for men 15 shelter beds for women and 28 bedrooms for families and all of Durham that's our homeless systems emergency shelter capacity so right there you've got more than our system can can can handle go ahead and you repeat that again I'm sorry sure we have 50 beds for single men experiencing homelessness 15 beds or single women experiencing homelessness and 20 eight bedrooms for families experiencing homelessness between our two.

Shelters Mr Tess one question related to that sure I heard recently from having a conversation with someone about like the waiting list at the at urban ministries can you confirm how many people currently at least the latest data you've seen are on the waiting list for getting into the shelter this is a this these numbers here this 35 and 55 is about average it's not too far outside the realm of of of the normal week so and that waiting list changes and then it's prioritized based on need and a whole lot of things so you might be at the top of the list one day and somebody may call and they're more vulnerable and you might drop down so these numbers essentially this this reflects PE individuals or families that essentially are unsheltered and waiting for waiting for a shelter bed thank you this is on top of the beds being full.

Basically the 35 and the 55 where they go up or down that's our weight list give yes okay thank you it changes weekly a little bit here and there but for the most part there's not wild swings sometimes we do see a little bit higher Peaks at the end of a school year and then you'll see a bigger Peak like right after the holidays families tend to allow folks to stay especially if kids are involved until a school year ends and then it's like you can't stay anymore you got to go and then people will tend to allow people to double up or triple up through a holiday season and then in January we'll see some numbers go up so there's kind of a natural flow to the system can you remind me which which shelters serve families and which serve single adults I think or Ministries is only single adults correct so urban ministries serves singles and families they only have eight rooms for families so they are the only singles provider in our.

Continuum of Care then we've got the the families moving forward which has 21 bedrooms there for families and we've got if you look down we've started tracking folks who are exited from shelter for V variety of reasons and are calling the next day to get back into shelter so it could be they stayed out too late they got into an argument any number of reasons that they were exited from the program and want to get back into the shelter so we are working on on doing that we are seeing an average of about three households a week that are entering the homeless system from the rescue mission the rescue mission is not part of the Durham's Continuum of Care they operate independently and separate and they do bring people in from around the state outside the state across the country people do come and people who don't choose to not stay there or don't stay for a variety of reasons will often exit and become homeless and Durham and we're.

Seeing about an average of three new people a week coming in through that system we do have people calling and trying to relocate from other counties it tends to be about five five calls a week of folks trying to come from other areas and looking for housing and Durham and we are tracking people call coming from other countries who are either showing up we do have people who report being put on an airplane and coming to RDU and here's a family of 10 people who started in El Salvador and now they're here and need need housing and trying to work with that or other other foreign countries it's not just Latin countries questions on.

This do you want questions at the end or do you want them in it's up to you I I'll defer to whatever you're comfortable with I'll wait because just two more slides yeah because I have a lot thanks okay this is just our look at our point in time count and keep in mind our point in time count is kind of like a checkbook if you go look at your bank account today you'll see a certain dollar amount in your bank today but that dollar amount is not the same do dollar amount of all the money that comes in and out over the course of a year so the point in time count is what we the number of people we counted experiencing homelessness on one particular night in January so this is our historical trend of people experiencing homelessness in Durham and you can see a general increase from 2016 to 2024 of 354 to 405 we did have the outlier year of 2022 that was during covid we had a lot.

More shelter beds because we had a lot of federal covid money coming in so we had a lot of extra space that we were trying to to fill shelter beds and that's where you'll see a big jump in our emergency shelter that year was 28 86 people experiencing homelessness that were in emergency shelter on that particular. Night this is looking at exits to permanent housing by type of activity so Street Outreach this is going straight from unsheltered housing to permanent housing 23% of people that are engaged in Street Outreach Street outreaches goal is not to go straight to permanent housing the goal is to get you unsheltered so there's another Matrix that we also look at for Street Outreach and that's what we call exits to Perman to positive housing destinations and an exit to positive destination for somebody experiencing unsheltered homelessness could be entry into an emergency shelter it could be entry into transitional housing it could be getting connected to a temporary stay to deal with a psychiatric illness at a hospital.

So there are positive outcomes from unsheltered homelessness we also look at the same thing we we look at the permanent housing so that we can compare compare apples to apples between Street Outreach and our emergency shelter transitional housing and Rapid rehousing projects and you'll see that the trend line from 2018 to now has been going down well what's happened since 2018 housing prices have gone up landlords and housing tenant selection criteria has changed over that time the number of housing housing vouchers being issued has decreased because we don't have as many vouchers that are freely available they're tied up at this point with folks so it's getting harder and harder to get very very lowincome houses households with high barriers into permanent housing from any location so we're down to about 34% challenges there's lots of challenges we'll talk about this so one of the things we've seen is previous prioritization policies this is prioritization policies that the homeless system had in place for several years we were prioritizing the highest.

Barrier hardest to serve households for issues for for moving into permanent housing by doing that we inadvertently would put people into a housing Choice voucher with who needed extensive Supportive Services and didn't have money to pay the water bill and that didn't work out well so we are now in the process of revising all of these policies and procedures and really trying to be much more intentional and matching housing need with housing the housing available and matching it to the household experiencing homelessness with the appropriate services and the appropriate intervention at the most appropriate time as quickly as possible we have also seen landlords changing their tenant selection criteria because they want to reduce their chances of having to go to court for evictions because it's expensive and time consuming so we we are we dealing with that piece as well we did lose 20 emergency housing vouchers during covid the HUD did give Durham 68 emergency housing vouchers we were only able to to use 48 of them 10 households.

Received vouchers but were're not able to find landlords willing to accept those vouchers and get them under lease before the time limit ran out and the Housing Authority was unable to issue the additional 10 before the time the the deadline ran out due to staff shortages there there was too short staff to be able to pull it all off we also don't have enough Supportive Services to line up with some of the high barrier needs that some of our households have to support them in housing on their own as we talked about emergency shelter those limited beds for families and for families we don't have a shelter system for couples if you're a couple and experiencing unsheltered homelessness and living in your car you both might want to go to shelter but there's no guarantee that a a female bed and a male bed are going to open at the exact same time and you're going to be in the shelter at the same time so there's sometimes where a male bed might open.

And there's not one for the for the for the partner and the male will choose I'm not going going because she can't go so you sort of end up in a cycle of remaining homeless to be with the partner because we don't have that system in place we do have people who are medically fragile and there isn't a specific shelter for that group of folks who are tooo sick to go to an emergency shelter but they're too healthy to stay in a hospital and there's another group who might need to go to an assisted living facility but they don't want to go to Assisted Living because they don't want to use their money to pay for it so we've got that other group of people who don't want to spend their money on housing that sort of end up in this gray Zone as we'll call it of what to do and how to solve that and we always do in the homeless system by Hud we are required to accept and work with people.

Who have service animals however we do not have places for people to go with pets so if you don't if your pet is a pet we don't have a place for that but if it's a service animal we we will work with those so questions it's a lot of information and there's a whole lot more that we could go into but on a high level this is kind of where we are today Colin thank you very much this is an excellent primer for some of us and and reminder for others excellent presentation thank you all right colleagues I know some of you were deferring Now's the Time council member m cabier please thank you good to see you Colin so I I'll have several questions and some of it's going to be kind of historic as far as going back to a few years and and current so I guess one one question and I I'd heard this we were providing tents for folks if if they needed it and I was just curious if.

We're still doing that the homeless system itself was not providing tents okay heart was providing tents to people who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness and we've put a pause on that until we can figure out a policy to ensure that we don't have encampments getting out of control it's it's a delicate balance right so we're in the process of working through that when can we expect like what's the timeline on a policy we are working we've talked about as the homeless team I need to get with Ryan and his team I've talked to NIS about sort of their take and then we need to take it to our we have a lived experience work group as part of the homeless Services advisory committee we want to get their take on it and run it through the homeless Services advisory committee because it's not just a policy that will impact City or city departments it's something that would affect any Continuum of Care member who would want to distribute tents so we.

Want to make sure that we look at it at a variety of ways and also make sure it dovet Tales we don't create conflict or challenges with the encampment response policy either okay and then I guess my thing is or my next question is if if folks we have these long weight lists and I'm assuming that when that the folks who on these weight lists are we know that they're there because they called in this isn't like really the only accurate or more accurate time we get it is when we do our point in time count because if you haven't called in and you're unsheltered then we don't necessarily know your there correct okay so we could anticipate that our numbers are higher over the course of the year when we look at our longitudinal system analysis it's about four times the pit count of the number of people who come through the system over the course of a year about 12 to 1500 come through over.

The course of the year if you look at the number of calls that entry point Durham gets our coordinated entry system for the year that ended June 30th 2024 they had 3,491 calls those are unique unique people right and and not calls people 3,000 491 people were impacted by homelessness or at risk of homelessness calling seeking assistance so that's our total number but that's not all of those are not unsheltered when they call right some are hey I got an eviction notice and I need to be out shortly some of those are I'm in shelter some of those are the out of County I'm looking to relocate because Durham's the place to be I don't want to be wherever I am okay thank you and then a few years ago maybe it was in 2019 there was a a the city did an analysis of how many permanent supportive units we were going to need and we were already at a deficit then what is the I guess what is the.

Count today and have we done that comparison and Analysis the we've not done an updated analysis on that we have not brought any additional permanent Supportive Housing units online since then so the deficit would have grown and then I guess my question would be when are we when can we anticipate that analysis being done we have to look and figure out where it would fit in a time frame okay we've got there's a lot of competing priorities so we'll it's it's one that we need to look at in terms of our gaps analysis and what we're trying to do is streamline our gaps analysis so that we can pull these reports much quicker and easier and I I think there's a an easier way of doing that analysis because the analysis that you're referring to was done by a Duke grad student who spent a semester doing that kind of research that we just don't have the bandwidth and the time to do we can get we can arrive at close enough for planning purposes.

Through through other ways that might be able to streamline that process then my next question is kind of similar I feel like in 2018 and now could have also been 2019 certainly pre pandemic we also got an update from Community Development in general around a plan to decrease art at the time it was mostly single men that was the identified population I know we've seen family a lot of families that are now unsheltered that those numbers have grown but in that moment that was the population that we were seeing most frequently and there was a plan to pretty much eradicate or or very aggressively decrease that number have we done an analysis back to that and maybe staff can help me out here because I remember it was 2018 or 2019 that we got that update and so just again curious have we kind of done that backwards look to see you know what was the what was happening then have we achieved met any of those goals is the landscape just completely.

Different great question so I I not familiar with that study I think that predated me so that must have been early because I started with the city in October of 2019 so I'd have to go find and Wanda wouldn't have been made okay I'm gonna like have to go into so I'll have to see if I can find that and I would say at this point that data is really old and everything has changed and I mean housing prices and 2018 to now are radically different and the numbers of of people experiencing homelessness is we looked at the slide on the point in time count is you know 100 people a night higher so I think it's it's good to go back and look and say where are we now and how are we moving forward on these and we are making adjustments in our policies and procedures of how we move people through the system it's expensive and we've got about $5 million a year yeah it's the.

Same five milon so if we want to do another permanent Supportive Housing program are we going to cannibalize landlord engagement what what program gets cannibalized to do something else and until we can find and identify other funding sources that are ongoing and sustainable because with the homeless system it's not a one-time Capital cost it's not like building a building where it's here you build a building and it's done well then somebody's got to figure out how to keep it running on the ongoing piece but it's how do you sustain the support of services how do you sustain the rent subsidies on the go forward thank you and then so my last question is around White Flag nights how how many of those do we typically operate and what are you all thinking about this year and do you all feel like it's sufficient we are looking we're doing White Flag differently this year we had been doing White Flag because during covid we did White Flag using motels for congregate social.

Distancing we did have a socially distanced congregate shelter for White Flag in 2021 2022 at Trinity United Methodist and after that the church said this isn't going to work for us anymore Open Table Ministry is still our White Flag provider last year we had 10 motel rooms and the reason we had to do that is because now that travel and everything is back up motels couldn't guarantee that we could call up with 24 hours or 48 hours notice and say hey we need 25 rooms and have them available so we kind of had to rent 10 rooms for the whole cold weather season and that's what the budget allowed and we sort of moved in and had a prioritization for who would go in and the goal was to move people out and it was the easier way to look at it is we expanded emergency shelter by 10 bedrooms and we prioritized six rooms for families and four rooms for singles and those singles could doubled up so we did that this.

Year the plan is to use a a church that has agreed to work with Open Table Ministry to do a congregate shelter because we're out of the co piece so we're going to be able to serve way more than the 10 and be able to to do that so we're in the process of of building the infrastructure for that and it'll be stood up only on the nights that are the white flag nights or for if it's projected let's say a Tuesday to a Saturday we may stand it and just do it up even though one of those nights might be 60 but it we'll just stand it up for that week thank you I appreciate you answering a lot of my questions and I think in general what we're seeing is we have we don't have enough beds we don't have enough permanent Supportive Housing we need more services and I think that yall are doing what you can and that becomes a question for decision makers so I hope and we've said this.

To I think when the affordable housing Bond past we were very clear with regginald like come ask for we knew it was going to be extra capacity needed in the department like please don't be shy and so we can't do what we have been doing with the same amount of money when the population and the needs have changed significantly and I think we all we all knew that I will say that the numbers of folks it is alarming quite frankly I think if you're downtown the the amount of interaction with some of our unsheltered neighbors has increased I think that there's more foot traffic downtown so there's a little bit less I think it's better and I you know I think as council members were certainly starting to let a let get more comments from residents and I what I don't want Durham to do and I I think we can all have opinions about I forgot the Supreme Court case Grant Pass and what that what the lands Cape is and so I think.

Our challenge is we're not going to do what other communities are doing I think that on counil I I hope I can count on my colleague support I don't think that that's where we're moving even if residents are asking that and that's what that the tenor of that conversation is starting to change and we have to be that the the hard line of we're not going to dehumanize folks who don't have anywhere to go especially when we know that a lot of times it's families that's what we're seeing it it is very different than the landscape in 2018 2019 and then the last thing is with with folks who are showing up you know Chicago New York some other our large cities the amount of folks who have literally been put on buses and dropped and the amount of money that those cities have had to spend and the community fights that have happened for folks saying why are we spending resources that we need for these other things on these folks who.

Just showed up here we are very fortunate end Durham that we haven't had a huge presence of that but clearly we are getting some how many are of those folks are showing up or being dropped in our community or unaccompanied minors to my knowledge none are unaccompanied minors they've been families and generally larger families so it's not like Mom Dad and two children it's multigeneration five to 10 people in a household if we end up with any unaccompanied minors and this is critically important within our immigration system there is a very small window where those people those kids get protected status and so it is important that y'all's Department connects with Justice matters on on those kinds of visas because what we know is a lot of times those kids do show up in our public schools and then we miss the opportunity because they turn 18 and they don't get that access to to legal status anymore the windows closed and so I guess if you all do encounter unaccompanied miners specifically it's.

Critically important that we connect them to legal Immigration Services that we are funding specifically because it gives them a different outcome otherwise we we lose we lose the opportunity thank you those are all my questions and comments thank you very much council member Al council member R did you I just have one question in a comments the question is it was a little hard to follow the data the different source of funds federal state local I'm sure you got a spreadsheet somewhere that just shows the total budget for homeless the homeless system and like columns for like federal state local do you have that I don't want to make you do any special work but Ian that's a total there but do you have that like sort of in shows like total federal sources total State local it's sort of in a you know this is I I can break it out I mean that's so your HUD COC Grant is federal yeah yeah yeah and state ESG.

So you ask let me make sure I'm understanding what you're asking because everything up there is federal except for dhf it's just Federal money that flows different ways but you got the state Grant at State ESG State ESG so ESG is emergency Solutions Grant which is a HUD Pro a HUD program it's Federal money comes to the state HUD sends money to the state for emergency Solutions and HUD sends money to the city for emergency Solutions Grant because we're an entire jurisdiction so we get federal dollars for ESG from two two sources and we as the city manage our city entitlement money and put that into contract monitor those contracts and the city manager executes those contracts and then we make sure that the money is spent we draw the money from HUD the state ESG money we submit an application to the state the state gets their allocation from HUD then the state enters into contract directly what the nonprofit providers were out of that Loop and they administer that state this.

Is what I'm ask because there's also County funds that aren on here like it' be great to see just like itemized County City federal state funds that would be helpful just to sort of see that just to understand it better yeah we're working towards that appreciate that the other just a comment is you know we spend a probably more time in this Council on housing especially on resoning cases than almost anything else quite a lot about that it seems to be pretty clear from your presentation mean you talked about what's the numbers like at any one time around 35 families unsheltered because we talked about the waiting list right 55 individuals who are on that waiting list I'm pretty sure the lat last time I talked to Folks at the the Housing Authority I think the waiting list for the Housing Authority is like 400 people so if anyone didn't already know like we've got a housing crisis we've had that crisis that's been going on right You also mentioned in.

Your presentation harder to get low-income families into perent support of Housing and so I just want to say publicly this is still a major challenge for our community we need to find ways responsibly to build more housing whether it's subsidized permanent housing Perman affordable housing whether it's market rate housing we just need more housing because we've got a housing crisis so thank you thank you council member council member Freeman please thank you I did want to just follow up and say that the housing needs to actually accept the vouchers and section A so it's it's always incredibly like depressing to go through this but I do want to State very clearly that I am the alternate and I am also the alternate on a different group for the same night and so I'm I'm gonna I'm I'm really stretched and trying to figure out how to be more participatory in the process and so if there are other meetings other than that fourth Wednesday please let me know sure I.

Also will say that with the town hall last August 22nd we had a chance to go through a lot of this and there were two things I wanted to make sure that I followed up on and that you didn't including your presentation which I think is important the phone number for entry point which is a new number 984 287 8313 if I'm correct sounds right let me check hold on I don't have it memorized but I'm working on memorizing I get a lot of phone calls and emails and then just a just a really ping a process in figuring out how to bring forward in a similar way how we're talking about calling the deer there was a conversation with Joint City County on trying to figure out how to swap some land so we could actually build some housing with St Philip's Episcopal church and the urban ministries and I'd love to figure out how we bring that back forward for conversation which I think is incredibly important because that could.

Be hundreds of units that could be available or hundreds of of beds that could be available but we're not having that conversation and those would specifically be for unsheltered folks and then thirdly there was a question from council member cook and she wanted to just be clear that that this number doesn't include those who are in hotels this which number the these numbers that you're giving for people who are unhoused don't unsheltered unhoused is not including people who are correct staying in hotels correct and then to that point she also said something else was.

Wrong if we're doing the point in time as a model Durham is doing the point in time count more than once a year we do it once a year we do it once a year and we're doing it in January which is the coldest time and lowest numbers is there also an additional time that will do a point in time count where when it's a little warmer so and bearable like in the fall good question let me start with the reason we do the January point in time count is because that's the Nationwide count that sort of Hud says this is when continuums across the country need to do the count because they take all this aggregated data during the coldest month to figure out who's truly unsheltered because people tend to be more willing to go indo if there is an indoor place to go when it's really cold when it's nice out shelter capacity drops and people tend to be more willing to Camp outside for a.

Variety of reasons and having spent 20 years running shelters before I came to work for the city it's very interesting to see all of a sudden it's 10 degrees outside and your shelter's busting at the seams and it's 75 it's nice low humidity and all of a sudden it's like what happened to all these people are breaking down my door trying to get in when it was cold outside they're perfectly comfortable being outside and don't want the bed so we could do it it it's it's a it's a it's labor intensive to do a point in time count so doing it twice a year does take a lot of work and then the D duplication the data analysis it's we do that count we don't get the count finalized for a couple months because it's so much data that has to go through between all these different places make making sure different people aren't counted twice because of a spelling of a name or an identifier that might have been typed.

Wrong so it is something that we do we that's where we look at our longitudinal system analysis to see who's coming through and and try and use that as a proxy it's not perfect but it's something we've talked about trying to do and how do we do it and and not have it overwhelm this the staff with the Outreach team with housing for New Hope I do think that there's if there is a a more coordinated effort around those Outreach days maybe that could also be a way to just kind of keep track and I I just had a couple of follow-up questions from the January I didn't notice any numbers coming back in around Youth and people with disabilities or differently abled physical versus developmental I will need to go pull those numbers for you I can get back so Youth and disabling conditions okay and I think other than that that I will continue to ask a lot more questions please however I can get I will I will I.

Will share that when it comes to disabling conditions It Is by self-report in our system and we just pulled some number for another presentation that we were doing this afternoon for another group on Substance Abuse and Mental Health and it was interesting the people who we calling coordinated entry 10 9% of 3,900 3,491 people 9% identified having a mental health issue and when you looked at mental health self-report and people who are in the street outreach program 28% self-identified as having a mental health challenge so nearly a third of of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness identifi they had mental health challenges I don't call the substance the alcohol drug and dual diagnosis numbers off the top of my head but it was we were looking at this we like wow this is by self-report probably way underrepresented so I just want to put that cave out when you see the number it's we don't have clinics out verifying it yeah I appreciate that that's very alarming thank you that's all thank you Council.

Madame manager did you want to and then we'll get to you council member Baker thank you Mr Mayor proam one of the things certainly this presentation did not include too much development that is in the pipeline related to permanently Supportive Housing in particular so before the staff left I did want you to bring that up in the in the public because there is requests for proposals out for a funding source for the development and didn't know if you had information with you today as to whether or not some of the other dedicated housing funding that have been allocated particularly in the first RFP that we put out is for permanently Supportive Housing in any way I can talk about two pieces I can talk about there's about $4.1 million of Home ARP money that is not it's in the the RFP is being drafted and will be coming out soon we did have a developer meeting last last week last week and developers came out to kind of hear.

About all the different pots of money that are coming out so they can start thinking through and since the RFP has not come out yet we don't know who will respond but there was some significant interest in developing from the home ARP which is 4.1 $ million with the goal of developing a minimum of 25 units and those 25 units are prioritized for households exiting homelessness and those 25 units must be new so it can't be like a rehab of an existing building where people are currently living it's we need we need more units online so if you find an abandoned building that has 25 units you could buy it rehab it and make it usable because they're not usable right now those units will come with project based vouchers to help cover that that Gap we do not have Supportive Services money lined up as of yet to be able to to provide those Supportive Services so if somebody needed Supportive Services we might have to look at some mixing and matching of.

Different program types to utilize those otherwise we might use those 25 units for people exiting homelessness who have a history of stability and just need a subsidy and don't need Supportive Services like they're they're just low-income households so there's a lot of stuff that we have to work through and figure out what's available to make sure that the project is viable and households aren't moved in and set up to fail we don't want that to happen because nobody's happy in that situation we also HUD has an RFP out now for a COC builds which developers can go after to build permanent Supportive Housing as well and I don't remember the dollar I believe it's maybe about two million it's a small it's a small amount based on our don't quote me on that so I'll go back and find their exact number for the COC builds because it's based on our noo allocation and it's if you're between this number and this number here's how much you can go thank you for that council member.

Baker I'm just gonna ask one pretty high level question if you just had an injection of new resources I'd be curious to know and you've got your on this complex space all the moving pieces what would you see as the top two or three priorities for how to expend new resources going your way if you had a pot of money the biggest piece is housing subsidies and the support of services so you know housing Choice vouchers there's not enough of them so creating a local fund of money that could be turned into a voucher and then pairing it with local money to provide Supportive Services would open up units that would be a help for some group of folks and there are some some group in our homeless system that are currently happy to accept housing and and they'll go into rapid rehousing and as soon as they have $5 towards the rent here my keys I'm out and that's part of homelessness part of where people are of wanting housing.

But not feeling they have to pay for it so there's going to be a number of people who are going to be either unsheltered or unstably housed for a variety of reasons and the other piece is we spend a lot of time talking to people and figureing out what they want for their housing because what we want and what they want may not be the same but I would say right now if if I had to say something that could make an immediate difference money for subsidizing rent and the support of services to go with it and the flexibility to use that supportive services in a variety of ways because there are folks who don't qualify for Medicaid and may need inhome nursing care and hey here's some money that we can get this person house they don't qualify for assisted living they don't qualify for a family a family care home but here's a here's a way that we could sort of make this work in a way that would work for that that.

Household thank you for that council member Freeman you had to follow up I just wanted to make sure that I didn't leave out I know usually the conversation comes up around veterans and I did want to make sure that that number was still at zero it's I I don't remember the number of veterans currently that are unsheltered but we do have a system in place that does work very well we have a meeting twice a month with the VA and the other veterans providers that we work work through all of a by name list of veterans who are experiencing homelessness and try and get them paired up with our Supportive Services for veteran families that's run through Volunteers of America or our other trosa or some of our other veteran service providers thank you for that Council colleagues anyone else Colin thank you so much I I'll I have some questions that I'll get to you offline after you know in the coming days I do just.

Want to briefly say before move on I I was the asack liazon for for a number of years on Council and I remember and and mayor SCH and I would have this conversation with others at that time you've made it clear there's a lot of competing variables and and one of one of the things that we we one of the questions philosophically we have to answer and this kind of carries over into other areas of of public policy is for every dollar we spend on on a temporary bed or a shelter that the we can't spend on hous permanent housing and and the tension is between because I remember the focus we we turned towards in my days with atack was was rapid rehousing as quickly as possible getting you a set of keys because with the shelter system comes a culture and all kinds of other things that that build upon itself and compound so so the the the lack of beds had to be held in tension with us.

Focusing more on on you not staying in the shelter system or getting as many people as quickly as possible out of the shelter into rabid rehousing it's a terrible analogy but it's almost a struggle we have with you know there are folk who look at Birth rates in certain neighborhood and say we're going to need more jail CES so do we build more jail CES or do we put more in education in classrooms so not to fill you know those jail sales do we do we focus on out comes that codify the negative or do we put money and things to kind of counteract those and it's it's a it's not it's an imperfect analogy but it's a similar discussion do we build up our resources to codify a shelter system temporary beds or do we focus more and we got to do them both obviously or do we focus more on getting folk as quickly as possible into key a key situation so that's where some of the the and resources of course are.

Limit you know do you want to build a it's it's less expensive to send somebody to Harbor than it is to you know put them in an incarceration and it's less expensive for folk to to be in a home than it is to for you know a shelter system in perpetuity although we've got to count to Cab's Point we've got to be able to in the interim the short term do what we need to do for folk but part of that tension with the resources is do we want to focus on on that part or do we want to focus on getting folk into permanent housing I heard you talk about the money in the pipeline and I thank Madam manager for for highlighting that so the the struggle continues but I just want to thank you for the incredible work oftentimes unheralded and uncelebrated work that goes on but it is absolutely critical work these are our most vulnerable residents and neighbors and friends and and we have.

Folk in the city that are working hard every day well beyond the close of business to help them deal with them and the city is grateful to you for it thank you so much I get my questions so I appreciate you absolutely colleagues thank you for some excellent questions and engagement on this are our friends from dur public schools here all right synchronizing enrollment capacity residential developments in Durham presentation by Durham public schools welcome you have three minutes I'm kidding that's.

Col do you need a couple minutes of break while they're all right we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna reconvene at three is that is that okay all right three o'clock good B break three all right we're in recess till three there let's make sure we're.

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Some to. All right friends it's 3 pm we are back in session if we'll come to order if any of my colleagues are in the building listening to this on speakers you are summonsed back and we are going to welcome our friends from dur Public Schools let's have order in in the chamber. Please good afternoon good afternoon can you hear me okay yes sir all right yes sir you have you have the. Com well on that note I'll proceed if that's we're good okay by all means please well thank you for the invitation to U attend today's city council meeting my name is Matthew Palmer I Am the senior executive director of school planning transportation and nutrition as well as real estate and development or dur Public Schools so I have four departments under my canopy it is an exciting time in Durham particularly here in Durham Public Schools we have new leadership and a plan moving forward today I wanted to provide an overview of what it is that we do in.

Durham Public Schools and the intimate relationship and to a degree codependency we we have between this opportunity and Durham of one school system one Durham County and one city of Durham unique to North Carolina most communities school systems and counties are not set up as such even in W County it is 13 municipalities Wake County and Wake County Schools all working together so with that I wanted to give an overview of how some of our work touches the various institutions our intent and effort to bring together the Durham community to focus on the importance of not only residential growth but also the connection with education and student enrollment with me today is Sarah Young the planning director here in Durham and it is a reflection of our now five-e standing collaboration between our teams and departments between DPS and the City and County Planning Department as well as Miss Christian brickshire our lead school planner at Durham Public Schools some topics to cover again this is a review for some that we're at the Joint.

Session with the county it was requested that was our fourth presentation on this topic we have been picking up I think interest as we go we initially presented this in Spring of 20124 to our Board of Education who asked that we bring it to the Joint board and County Commission meeting and we're here today with you all at the City Council level so we'll talk about the interconnectedness between DPS student enrollment and our schools past present and future of enrollment where we're looking over the next 10 years with respect to residential growth how we manage that in North Carolina for public schools it's pretty complicated and we have limited options but I will review what we have and then where we are and where we hope to go between durman Public Schools the county and the city for collaboration Mr Milton I did want to lift up and really pivot on the the prior topic and saying when neighborh hoods are being built we have an opportunity to plan for those students.

With schools pre wraparound Services food and transportation providing opportunity for every child that is the very Spirit of our work here is to be prepared for the future Durham residents as well as those that we have. Today this past year dur Public Schools Board of Education announc the new strategic plan that takes us through 2028 those priority goals for enrollment we are intended to grow and looking to grow by about 5,000 students over the next 5 years want to review our enrollment forecast what that looks like between our current enrollment and new residential growth element one of our longrange plan is that Bedrock of students we start with students that leads into our facilities both those that are built and those that will need to be built what's the standard for Learning and how do we get there that will be our needs assessment that we work on with Durham County ultimately that is the facility Capital plan our priorities for school facilities both new seats and modernizing seats you see that is.

Element three together giving you a run of show kind of a timeline Archive of where we are and where we're headed over this next few months by Spring of this next year we anticipate that we will have a full clear look at what we're going to need for our school facilities in conjunction with the county dur Public Schools is tasked with ensuring utilization or that the students that are enrolled in the school system fit within our school facilities and our capacity of those schools developments that are approved by city council and the Planning Commission do influence student enrollment an age restri red neighborhood is very different than a traditional market rate neighborhood which could itself be different than one that is receiving subsidies or vouchers we Factor all that in when we're looking at developments that are under review and approval by the city the county is tasked with the responsibility of providing K12 seats for our Durham County School resident citizens the point there is that this Dynamic this triangulation of DPS having.

To be responsible for utilization the city reviewing and approving developments and the county needing to provide the adequate public facilities so that our children are learning in adequate schools not mobile classrooms and preferbly really not private or Charter Schools but in Durham public schools is very much what this relationship is about student enrollment in DPS is for the first time in a while growing this year we're excited about that that is one of the bedrocks of our growing together comprehensive Student Assignment plan on an annual Cadence every year we try to predict exactly down to the seat to the classroom to the school how many students are coming next year that's used for teacher allotments that's used for decisions on Staffing near-term decisions if you will long-term decisions include which schools do we need to renovate which schools do we need perhaps another additional facility at a elementary middle or High School level that rolls into our long range facility plan and our Capital Improvement plan which is reflected in bond referendums and.

Support from our community wanted to lace that out because I think we have to be able to do both talk about the micro specific annual work we do at a classroom and school level as well as the long-term forecasting of what's ahead for. Us we are projecting right now if we follow our residential birth rates as well as our growth that in the next 10 years we will grow by approximately 5,000 students right that is a conservative estimate at this point based on existing what we would call student generation rates or matching similar home types with geographies to understand if we're putting in a 100 homes on Olive Branch Road what is a reasonable comparison of existing homes and what choices are those families making and his development on pearls here in Durham what is the additive impact so right now and this is a today number as we move forward and we'll continue to update this 10-year forecast every year that is our job Miss Brookshire who's with me leads that.

Group where we are annually updating not only what's going to happen next year but what's going to happen in 10. Years we get get to that number by looking at elementary middle and high school we've also got five regions now in Durham public schools so the northern region is roughly the area north of Interstate 85 the Eastern region is east of the East End connector or Interstate 885 the Southeast region is south of 147 and east of fville street but is inclusive of Culver farms in the South Point mall area and the southwest region is west of fville Street going to the the chap town of Chapel Hill line and I should share here in Durham there is a good segment of the town of Chapel Hill that is also experiencing residential growth it's in Durham County the central region the core of our community is bracketed by 147 Interstate 85 in that East End connector when we look at our existing enrolled students at an elementary level you see we have.

14,18 the growth that we forecast from the additional residential development that has already been approved is an additional 2,228 students which is about a 16% increase in enrollment that's a good thing we definitely want to continue to elevate our enrollment numbers it also means that as you compare our capacities with that total enrollment that we will be Beyond capacity or will be at 103% utilization you can see how that breaks down geographically where we still have some capacity for example in the Southeast region but will be significantly overc capacity in the central region as you're all well aware development is spacially concentrated in certain pockets of Duram and stable in others this is reflecting that at a middle school level you can see our total students currently at 6600 with an additional 891 on the way or again about a 133% growth let me be repeat that is a great thing we are here to promote residential growth as you all are as well I will share just on a personal level many of.

My 600 staff who are bus drivers and cafeteria workers are seeking the very housing that you're reviewing so I wanted to be clear throughout this presentation that we're aware of the pressures on Duram City and the county as we grow what that does mean is that we'll be completely full at Middle School in 10 years at a high school level it's even a bit more dire we are currently at over 10,000 students at a high school enrollment level this year alone Jordan High School has 2,300 students and there are only 1,800 seats in the school so that's 500 additional students at Jordan high school then it can support there are 12 mobile classrooms on the front set of Jordan High School that was built in 1958 all of this is to load into a larger picture not a specific spefic lens not a specific school or region but you can see especially as we work to the right the utilization for our high schools nearly every region will be significantly over our.

Capacities so we're left asking the question what can we do with that and what should we do with that and what are we asking for County and City Partners as we grow here in Durham well we're in North Carolina so we definitely have limited options the school of government did a wonderful white paper led by Adam love lady that kind of synthetically pulled together what impacts does development have on schools and how do schools impact development that's both ways our team is both responding to the growth that we see at our doorstep and also wearing the developer hat when it's time to build a new school we have to look at both sides of that lens however because we're in North Carolina we are unable we do not have bonding Authority as a school system nor have we the ability to Levy an education impact fees most recently Chapel Hill carboro schools was doing that and was ordered by the state you either return the money or stop doing it at a county.

And school system level the adequate public facility ordinances again that Orange County has we do not have any such sort of development management tool here in Durham nor are we advocating for one what we are aware of is is that as growth is being reviewed it is a major constraint and a consideration as we go forward we also do not have a precedent of capping schools Wake County does of course they're well known for that that can lead to driving by two or three schools to get to the next open seat these are just some again some considerations and limitations on how we could manage growth what we are doing is using the tools that are in our toolbox we have the ability to change and adjust boundaries we did that with that southwest region in Creekside Elementary that opened with 12 mobile classrooms on campus 20 years ago those mobiles are still there today we also adjusted for githens and Brogden again those are both Greek side and githens in the southwest region M.

Major areas of growth over this past few decades but what we learned in isolating and focusing on those specific schools was that we had to have a community reset focusing on one or two schools is not going to help us when we have a large dilemma at hand over the past four years we've completed the Arc of our comprehensive Student Assignment plan while growing together which is very intentional about balancing the objectives of schools that are close to home but also have intentionality with diversity and Equity at the Forefront while preparing ourselves for the growth that is at the door for Durham we've opened three schools in the last three years Lions Farm Elementary School in 2022 on Scott King Road and are still working to put the finishing touches on that school which includes a crosswalk providing direct access from the neighborhoods to the north there are seven to the school which is on the south side of Scott King Road we've also opened Northern High.

School last year and this year truly a a Beacon of Hope for us here in durma is Murray massenberg Elementary School and after Paulie Murray and Dorothy massenberg they're at South rockboro and MLK 800 students and opening strongly under principal midleton Browns leadership we also have six schools that are scheduled for renovation currently Glenn is one of those schools you're aware that's that East to Northeast region of Durham is growing as well as we talk about Glenn station in the area immediately around I85 and Glenn.

Road to bring all that home our team DPS that is in school planning is looking specifically at utilization what are the students and what are the seats in North Carolina there is a legislative law that indicates exactly what those ratios can be particularly at an elementary school level bear in mind we also have Community Durham Values around access to pre kindergarten in Universal prek that is eating into the number of permanent seats and capacities we have as schools we have those values but to bring those values into our build buildings is a very complex task that we've been working with the county on these past few years to repeat we are not able to Levy an education impact fee for developers it costs $100,000 to build one seat from a capital perspective locally it costs another $5,500 annually to operate at a local budgetary plus the state contribution so when we think about the implications the marginal effect of one seed in a school it is profound and it is.

Long our team's been working hard through and after covid in preparation for days like this opportunities to come together and I want to emphasize that again today this presentation our only ask is that we are all aware of the impact of choice we have inventoried and walked every one of our classroom square footage does it have a bathroom does it have a sink is it equipped with a hot water or a changing table could it be used to support children with autism developmental needs or pre kindergarten we have developed neighborhood planning units and I know that director Egan's here as well the neighborhood planning units start with Road speed because 35 mph is the speed that a 9-year-old can't tell the speed or distance of an oncoming car we had a student hit at Duke Manor on LEL on Friday morning and I was the first responder child pedestrian saf and how we route and assign students matters a great deal so we started with neighborhood planning units the 750 that.

You see there is reflective of the road speeds and Community infrastructure internal to DPS we now have five regions those are not only designed to ensure equity and access but also prepare us for growth if a development comes online in East we can quickly pivot on the enrolled students in that area as as well as the capacity of the schools in that area and any other developments that have been located there our boundaries are now designed to reflect the residential growth you'll see Glenn and Bethesda are on our Capital Improvement plan specifically because they're situated to support the Eastern region growth but those Renovations though they cost $150 million a joined only generate about 300 additional seats those campuses were in deep need of modernization as it was pushing on 40 years externally we've been at the table for the update to the Durham comprehensive plan I joke but I'm not joking that I was there wearing the engaged Durham pink shirts here in the community listening to people and caring just as.

Much as they do about the future of Durham director young has been phenomenal with her team to be at the table with us we're making traction and progress but we need help some next steps on our side on the D public School side number one we have to keep doing the work as developments whether it's a rezoning or new construction by zoning right are coming through the pipeline we will continue to update what it means for the long-term enrollment in Durham public schools that 10-year student enrollment forecast at the same time we've got a lot of work to do in our schools if you read the papers or you listen to the parents or our students or our staff or any of us we will say very clearly we were in a severe state of facility disrepair from HVAC systems to water fountains we have a lot of work to do on a base level of standard for our facilities when we talk about pre kindergarten EC or K12.

Classrooms or an art room or a music room what should be in place for every student not just privileged students not those that can buy into a particular school but for every school that will be our standard that then is companioned with the facility conditions assessment which will lead into our long-range facility master plan in our work with the. County the last point on this slide and and I want to restate it there will be an ongoing tension and need to have a rolling prioritization based on availability of funding and criticalness of need between our deferred maintenance and building additional seats for more capacity we have many old schools and we have many students on the.

Way some thoughts and considerations for you all as city council who continue to work with the planning department with procedures for development review sharing with you where we are with enrollment both this year and in 10 years and importantly the additive impact of decisions for.

Approval we do need your help to continue to build community awareness and support for those enrollment increases in our needs at a DPS level again again not only additional seats but ensuring all schools are to standards we have the opportunity to build a task force for growth and education I was part of the comp plan task force for work force development and education that's a great start but again continuing to have a shared commitment of and I'll use this word the marginal impact of choice we are fully aware that we do not want to stand in between the needs of our own staff as well as our community when it comes to housing we have no intent to do so we do need to make sure that we're all aware of the cumulative impa of choices that have been made and choices that lie ahead for us that task force has the opportunity to continue to pull together that information make it accessible transparent and with Integrity we do not.

Want any ambiguity we don't want there to be any confusion about where we are and what difficult choices we have to make at a school system level a county level and the city level and with that my team and I are here to answer any questions but we did we were asked to bring this to you all and it is with pleasure thank you so much for very excellent presentation again welcome we're glad you're with us colleagues that's a presentation I I'll yield to any of you for questions or comments council member Baker please thank you for your presentation got a few few questions here one is School site dedication do you need developers to be dedicating School sites to the Durham public school system is that something that would be helpful to the Durham Public School System I used to be a a low-level planner out in Texas and that was kind of the norm is that developers would dedicate 15 20 ACR of a large development directly to the school.

System they saw it as a benefit to their development and we would simply receive that and hand it off to the the school system out there what what's your reaction to something like that one of the opportunities we had as we go back to those new schools that were constructed recently that was the remaining Parcels of our land bank it was wonderful to walk in the door in 2019 and have at least three possibly four constructible Parcels Lions Farm was shovel ready we had an improv site plan let me walk a little further with you even a conversation about how do we ensure that those commitments from developers are actionable And Timely I think we can look at recent large developments in Southern Durham and recognize that there may have been some challenges with the follow through so the mechanism for that is is reviewable and I think could be improved upon we certainly can receive donations and profit from developers I would say if you look at some of the best examples of.

Planned neighborhood and residential growth with schools we can go to Southern Village and Mary scrags Elementary School in Chapel Hill we can go to Brier Chapel which is in chattam County Bill Bishop a colleague of mine at Chapel Hill was the developer there and ensured that a school was planted in the heart of the neighborhood it is hard for us we have about a 5year lag to catch up to residential growth so we're either leading it or we're following it and right now we are following it severely so so to get there we probably need input from the school system right like resoning cases coming annexation cases coming and the school system says this would be a good area for schools is this something that the developer would be interested in in working with us on is that we're able to share one of the one of the benefits of the regions is that we take the county and we're shrinking it down to a focal lens and again it.

Isn't I want to be cautious about what I can request versus what I could advise so on the question of are there areas of the county that we can say we're going to need help in this area we can certainly get that conversation underfoot I think that's part of the inventorying documentation and sharing of the cumulative choices made and those that are ahead of us that'd be great we also receive a a voluntary donation frequently during the resoning and annexation process for schools I would be curious to know you know if we did have the power to Levy an impact fee which we obviously don't what would that number be and how do we arrive at that number what kind of Nexus study is necessary what what would we want to be receiving from developers ideally as a donation were they to be able to to provide that what would the number be and and why I think that would be an interesting thing to know and what's the difference between what we're.

Oftentimes being gifted today and that that amount I think that would be interesting to know you talked briefly about the neighborhood development units can you I I can you just elaborate a little bit more I didn't quite follow I think it's related to the prior comment and question as well and for the illustrative purposes let's let's discuss just a 100 single family homes in the east region which is fairly reasonable right what we are able to do is identifying by geography as well as by housing type so there is a difference between Town Homes versus apartments and condos versus single family detached homes we are able to at a unit level what is the likelihood given all of we've got 15 years of data we've mapped all of our housing typology we're close collaborators with the research group I've LED at NC State University at ity this is the work we've done nationally prior to my coming to Durham the prior Administration recruited me to bring this into Durham Public Schools.

This is what I do at a national level I'm a standing member of the national APA for public schools we've taken those best practices that identify housing typology and geography and say if we're building a 100 homes approximately by grade level elementary middle and high school and I will go past approximately and say precisely what does the data tell us of the likelihood that we're going to have out of even one household an elementary student a middle school student and a high school student 100 homes is easier because then we can take those percentages and turn them into students so in some geographies that may be 50 students for 100 homes in other areas that might be 25 that's the purpose of having the regions is to say geographically what we're building and where we're building is going to influence the overall number of students that are coming for us to us I should say so want to answer that question and say sort of in a in a larger sense we're.

Able to produce an estimation of the number of students that will be generated by development we call that a student generation rate we then share that information which says for 100 homes proposed we're talking 25 or 30 students depending on the area and the H type of house that's being built I mentioned age targeted age focused or age restricted developments that's a great example of we would put that at zero right there's occasionally a grand child that might live in that development but largely speaking that's that's uncommon so we break it down to that level by region and by housing typology what are we looking at and then we're able to share I'll just repeat what I shared earlier it is $100,000 for constructing one seat today in today's market it is an additional annually $5,500 per student to operate and educate at a school system level I would not feel comfortable putting out a precise number for you as far as what that would be I think other people would.

Need to weigh in on that yeah last thing when we look at school sites that were built let's just say pre-World War II neighborhoods built around school sites pre-World War II and the way that we've developed planned developed zon our cities since then I think there's a pretty strong contrast right like dur in public schools the old Hillside these Central located civically celebrated buildings and spaces on smaller typically smaller Parcels multiple levels maybe located closer to to the street and parking was what what with parking but parking wasn't the dominant feature of of those sites and then strong connectivity around the the school sites on older older schools newer schools step further back from the street parking sort of dominates the front and then usually they're on arterials bigger roads to cross if anybody wants to cross them if anyone's walking to school or biking to school you have higher speeds normally not surrounded by a highly con connected neighborhood and so what we have and what we've created over over time over.

DEC decades is schools that are not walkable that are not safe to get to by walking of course some people will walk some people will bike but o overall we have trended toward building cities neighborhoods and schools that are not easily walkable is that something that we can work together on particularly around the comprehensive plan the UniFi development ordinance reite in thinking about School sites the way School sites are situated buildings school buildings on school sites and their surrounding neighborhoods do you think that's something that we can come to the table and and think about how we can maybe not go back to the way we that we used to entirely but think more comprehensively about how they could be more easily and safely accessible via multiple modes of transportation that is the Genesis of my dissertation us to sit in Mr seat when I was a member of BAC 14 years ago yes indeed that is that is very much what we can do let me let me briefly go.

To that and and share with you Clarence Perry look into the neighborhood planning unit 1929 Regional plan Association everything you're referencing really started with the idea of a 15-minute neighborhood and schools were at the heart of everything we have lost sight of that I would agree greate I would also just remind all of us that when we talk about access we have to talk about access for whom some of those artill you're referencing also ensure that children from all over Durham can access those schools and that's important we've come a long way and lastly the easiest artifact I could hold back would be that at Murray massenberg we have flipped passenger vehicle and bus ridership you look at like WG Pearson Elementary School the bus riders are brought along the back of the school that school was built about 20 years ago with Murray massenberg the bus riders have priority they are visible and they are the first students that you see when you come on to the campus with intent Miss.

Brookshire had the Good Fortune we both have our career background in safe rats to school but we are also aware that this is a much larger conversation about for whom is it accessible so I would I would take that conversation and just kind of put more air in the tire and say we can do a lot more and we hope to do more with you all and I'm glad that director Egan is here today as well thank you thank you council member council member fre Council will come to you council member riss thank you I appreciate the presentation and happy that we're having the conversation I definitely would like to figure out how to cross-pollinate because I do feel like growth and development highly impacts the schools and where we're seeing a lot more annexations without the plan development around the schools I I I just want to I I just keep hearkening back to I'm a New Jersey girl and in New Jersey you actually have to build.

The school not just offer a lot and so it's hard each time we go through these cases to see the the lack of community benefit and not even being offered that much and so I I I really appreciate the the hard number of at least having that the 100,000 per student each time we're talking about what $500 offered for a student added to our mix and I I just want to add to that the concern that I have been hearing around this overc capacity and and the way in which at one school lunch had to be cancelled because it's creating some hardships for students and ways that look like a lot of inappropriate behavior but I I am I'm trying to trying to unpack it and I just see the the utilization numbers aren't including the schools of ignite or the the system of ignite whatever Holton has and L View and hospital and trying to understand and if these are locations that need to be turned on or turned all the way off or.

If you have any insights on what's the plan around those locations or those numbers as well sure and with our specialty campuses that do afford alternative education options whether that's online instruction or heavy emphasis on Career Technical there at Holton right we are we are here in operations to support the vision of our academic leaders and our community leaders and so I couldn't say more than each of those campuses like few Holton those are very small campuses often times some of our older facilities one thing that is exciting and and I want to take your comment question and and bring it to we are doing a districtwide 6 million square foot walk of our facility conditions that is inclusive of Holton and like view we have to put all the chips on the board and look at everything it is our responsibility to be fiscally and operationally responsible and we are right in the midst of that so that will if I go back to that timeline with the.

Colored squares in the next six months we'll have a lot more clarity around that appreciate that and if you could share when those walks are that would might be help I know at a pre previous pack meeting it was concerning it was kind of heartbreaking one of the residents broke down in tears about around the facility lack of Maintenance at Holton specifically and how there's kind of this this drag on whether or not you can get stuff done and so even the the Ada door not working for almost over a year is a is a problem where you know someone in a wheelchair will not be able to enter I I I definitely am there's so much to unpack in it and I definitely am trying to say that I would love to be a better partner in that I don't know how that looks but I do know that we've got conversations with the city around transportation that could speak to you know pedestrian safety and we have conversations around Workforce.

Development that could speak to some of that career Readiness and the specialty schools and funding that could be made available and I could probably think of more but those are the two off the top of my head but I do want to say that that it's a huge priority that's been missed and I know in the seven and a half years I've been on Council I've tried to raise concerns around you know how our development sprawls and makes it so that these islands created they're not child friendly and so your your play is limited and all of those things have a a weight in how I make my decision so I I appreciate this presentation today thank you thank you council member council member RIS thank you may P thank you Mr Palmer again for the presentation it's good to see you again I'm glad we shared the same seat here when you were on bpack so my first question is if you can go back to the slide on the the.

Different slides on utilization there was elementary school middle and high school just want to make sure I understand the the the data there so what this shows for example Elementary School shows that currently right now we're at 89% utilization for across the whole districtwide right although it varies based on region right and so what this then shows is that by 2033 34 that with h with with the forecast increase in students does this also include forecast increase in capacity that you're planned or or not just understand like just looking again at that number for like the 103% in 20 33 34 that means that with expected increase in students and expected increase in facilities I'm guessing well right it shows what is funded right I'll leave it at that I'll say that we have we have greater need and certainly you know as we move forward we do anticipate over the next 10 years we will need to be adding more seats I cannot forecast that that is you know we have the bond referendum.

That was approved in 2022 right but but that number includes funded increases inome in seats correct yes okay okay so so even though Again by 2033 across different regions you have in the central region much more stress but overall you like overall we're pretty close to what the projections would say we'd need right to be at 100% capacity or utilization well I I think we want to clarify there that the optimal number where we need to be at is about 85% so what happens is is that that's for let's take it Northern dur example that's all eight elementary schools that all of them will be pass full all of them so I can change boundaries and I can cap a school and bring students to the next school but all of them will be over capacity so so your goal that a DPS utilization goal is like 85% 85 to 90% after 90% we have an asterisk and we need to have a plan right so one of the challenges when they.

Open Creekside is that we had anytime you open a school and you have mobile trailers out front or out back right you better have a plan a facility master plan to address that and and being candid and transparent that is part of today is that we have not had that comprehensive conversation just as we were discussing with all of our facilities that include even administrated many of my staff work in mobile trailers right that's helpful I guess my I guess my question Still Remains and we talked about this at the the at the Joint City County meeting so I I absolutely understand that the growth is driving these numbers right the number of kids that are coming but I think that the notion that somehow residential growth is driving school overcrowding I mean growth is this is this is a growth challenge right and so we can address that with Transportation you know issues we can address it with tax policy we can so this is one of many ways and I I get it.

The you it at DPS so you're thinking about how how development choices affect you there but I just want to make sure we're clear that for the City Council we're trying to balance a whole number of things related to growth one of which is is development but I think like what I don't think is is to me is L logical is that like residential growth is driving this I think growth is driving the challenge we we could look at residential developments and and predict where students are going to be we can also just look at growth projections for the county right so know we're going to grow we've been growing so I want to make sure that that the issue is not that because I think you referenced of like choices past choices future choices and I I assume that means development choices right rezonings but when people come they've got to either live somewhere or or not right and so to me again the challeng is like growth how do.

We manage that one of them is how do we manage the increase in the school population right so I I'm just want to make sure that I understand that I also want to make sure I'm not quite sure sure Beyond you know sharing that we are making the community aware of what's happening the growth of students and growth of population want to understand the specific request of the council because you've got some high level requests there like what is it that we actually can do I think council member beger had some good suggestions like should we be asking for profit for space for schools that's a very tangible thing but like what is it that we can what's the best way we the City Council can help DPS that's what I want to be clear about spefic specifically what can we do to help you.

All and we have an we have four more hours so I just want to make sure okay yeah and thank you for bringing the comments to the question of what can you do to help is that the interpretive yeah yeah yeah like what's the specific ask for the City Council I think it's twofold it's we are going we intend and with director young here I certainly don't want to answer questions for her but I would say at a high Lev we intend to lead with transparency and accountability and integrity and say with what we are knowing now this is where we'll be in 10 years to council member Baker's question earlier if there's a five-year lag from knowing we need to build maray massenberg because we're bringing in kids from mobile trailers at Hope Valley and otherwise into a brick and morar permanent School remembering that we live in not only Tornado Alley but also of the hurricane State children in Mobile classrooms when there is residential growth which is very common all and throughout.

Metropolitan Charlotte go to cabis Union counties you'll see mobile Villages 150% utilization my job is to make sure that we are prepared for the future with student safety and educational opportunity in mind I certainly want to be consistent in that message and ensure that we've been proactive been communicating the marginal effect of choice we saying these decisions whether it's a resoning or it's a byright development have occurred this is what we're looking at for enrollment in the long term we're bringing the best data in the country to our community to make sure we're clear eyed about it what it also means is that it's just that it's having a transparent consistent and predictable conversation not that you see me again in 10 years 420 right but that we're consistently at the table every year sharing what is the enrollment what are our capacities and what's on the table for us heading forward that is the ask is quite literally to have staff representation and awareness of electeds of what is ahead of us where.

We're at and what are the implications for residential growth and if we want to call that growth more broadly that is that is framing and that is for you all to to take on I would say it is it is not a bad thing but it is a thing and we need to be prepared for it thank you thank you council member council member cabier thank you and I received this presentation at Joint City County I think beyond the task force I think what would be helpful and I appreciate council members Baker's question around you know offering of land I feel like somebody tried to do that recently on one of our cases maybe 751 South or something or I don't and it got tricky it ended up being trickier than we assumed we were like oh this sounds great and we were like actually this is more complicated but I think the other piece is you know I'm looking at I think it was the high school one hold on the high school slide.

I have it in front of me you know we can look at this and see that everything essentially in 10 years is is overutilization right like you're saying except maybe Hillside because you said no even Hillside I can't remember what percentage you provided that you're once you hit a threshold you start to 85 just yeah I was I was looking at the current and not the 2033 to 34 so that's 10 years out right the utilization 2033 to 34 and then yeah on that slide you can see every single one of our high schools is going to be over enrolled essentially right I mean clearly Riverside is already over enrolled by quite a bit so I grew up mostly in Charlotte I definitely understand how we think that our growth here is bananas I'm sorry you didn't live in southeast Charlotte so I think I spent most of my elementary school years in a trailer and many schools were built and they were already over enrolled so I think the the.

Thing that would be most useful and this is really going to be staff to staff and doesn't actually involve the electeds is if you already know that you're over enrolled in the northern part of the county where quite frankly there isn't a ton of development then where are as you're doing your your master planning where are the sites that make sense where we're going to need to potentially think about a school and then as we get potential annexations we know that because if you're asking for that now we're just Flying Blind because I'm assuming that y'all do have that planning or you're getting there you're going to be able to identify where is it if you're looking at the eastern part of the county that it would make sense to place a school and so then as we are doing our work of land use and and Zoning cases and to your point some of it is by right we have the the necessary information and and I'm assuming that at some point.

Y'all are going to be identifying yeah this would be a great parcel to build a school or this part of the county needs a school we know we're going to be over enrolled it's close to these other community amenities it would be a great place for a school because without that information we're all just kind of you know shooting in the dark thank you thank you council member certainly did you want to respond or or it looked like you were being pin of but I I was just going to add or acreage because I think what what I'm very clear on is is when like over 50 acres or over 100 acres or over 200 Acres if there could be you know a school whether it's elementary middle or High School centralized in that area like there just some some gauge I know there has to be I know that there is language like this because I've seen it before in New Jersey which is what struggle what I'm struggling with so yeah.

Please director good afternoon just real quick we are working closely with our partners at DPS to try and get like that very same menu of understanding where regionally you know they may be looking for schools because honestly by the time it gets to you all a proposal is already so far down the road they've done their performers they cannot carve off 50 acres at the point at the time of resoning so staff needs to catch that when we're having presubmit meetings and concept meetings with folks and we need to be sharing information then with applicants because I do think that it it is not is likely not feasible that someone would be able to carve that off when they are you know that that far along in the resoning process so that is something that's on our radar we're working with them on I just wanted to share that bit and then I have an additional follow-up thing because thank you I'm glad y'all are talking but then also Transportation because if we're.

Ever going to do like we had a really great conversation just yesterday at jcpc about Transit opportunity the transit opportunity zone I'm assuming what a school looks like in that area may look real different maybe we don't want to prioritize or we want to prioritize mass transit or walking or whatever and so what are the standards and what are the opportunities and are the partials potentially smaller we're not looking for a 50 Acre Site because of where where it is and I know we're going to be doing that a lot with udio but I think I guess our my ask back is you I I the task force doesn't involve Council thankfully not more work for us and the the flip of I need staff at planning and transportation and the schools to do the thing that we're saying we want and that's already reflected in our comp plan if we're going to do 15 minute cities yes I actually believe in the community schools Model A a school.

Should be the center of a community public schools let me rephrase that public schools should be the center of a community thank you and if I could just add to that there's also a location in fville it's the Bill Hefner Elementary School that I think was built with the development and I'm not sure how they managed to do that but I do know that it was it happened in North Carolina so I'm just trying to pull up my role of De thank you colleagues anyone else director Palmer thank you so much I I I was very much looking forward to this conversation obviously there are some legal barriers to to our participation directly in the management of our schools but your clients your customers our our children they're our most vulnerable and youngest resident and citizens so everything we do impacts them on their way to the building out of the building as well you know in addition to not being able to Levy an impact fee we also can't do a.

Moratorium on development as well what a lot of what we do as you know is manage outcomes something's going to go there whether when we say yay it's a nay to something else when we say Nay it's a yay to something else you know part of this we used call it having high class problems if DPS sucked a lot of this wouldn't be an issue you know when when folk make a a decision to move to to our area there's a there's a lot of factors that go into it our robust economy job opportunities our cultural scene our weather and some of those folk are are are going to move whatever the condition of our public schools because some of them have the means and and they'll make a decision well my job is here but I'm going to find some other options if if you know what I mean so our as our schools become more excellent y'all are part of the reason why folk move here they're part of that Nexus of things.

That make our area so attractive so it's like it's it's almost kind of a self-feeding problem it's a high class problem to have the fact that folk want to be here and in our school so I want to I want to just you know congratulate and keep Laing of the job you're doing at you and your team all the whole DPS family and educating our children and presenting a product that is so desirable that folk want to live here for our schools for our economy for our culture for the wonderful weather for our climate for our people for our parks for our Trails the council member R earlier point about all these factors that go into it I do want to you know encourage continued conversation one of the things you know if if Durham we're a state Durham city is the state then the Durham County is the federal government and and things like land banking and looking at where the schools need to be in the future are.

County level decisions and I know they're making those kind of strategic decisions and I think we definitely have to take these take School impact and other impacts into account when we make our our our zoning decisions but it's the waters are fraught as you know with a lot of legal barriers and guard rails but I think that I know for me personally that when we when we make these zoning decisions a lot of the folk that are moving here and seek to move here have have in many cases already made a decision that they want to be here and they're going to be here and often times when say no to developments folk with means if they've already made the decision well I've got to live in Durham because of my job I've got to be here I'm just going to take my resources and put pressure on some other neighborhood in the city sometimes our nose are what Drive the pressure in other areas in our city.

So so I say all that to say and and just a long answer I say all that to say that the our youngest residents our youngest clients if you will students in DPS are always for in in our mind the parks that they use when school is over God forbid if the worst should happen the First Responders who would have to get to those schools if the unimaginable happens the safety of our streets as they're traversing to and from school is also you know some of the things that we we look at in making these decisions so I hope that as a task force goes forward that our voices will be included not in ing upon the the County's purview but but knowing full well that the decisions we make in zoning incorporate all of these factors and and you know without forecasting what the legal landscape is going to look like in our state moving forward not New Jersey in in North Carolina moving forward you know I.

Hope that we will and with our Udo rewrite councilman reaker I hope that every tool we can exploit every Avenue we can exploit as a council to appr more power to us to make these decisions in a more holistic way will will be so if I can appeal to you personally go no go ahead then I go ahead when ask you a favor yeah if I can if if you would just give our regards and our thanks to to Dr Lewis I know I was unable to attend the the official welcoming of him my very first meeting when I had when I got on Council two meetings the first meeting was with the DPS superintendent Dr mbang and then the president of Duke who was nice enough to come over to City Hall so it's kind of a a thing when we get a new superintendent if you would extend my greetings and congratulations to him and and best wishes on behalf of the city and I look forward to meeting.

Him soon you were GNA say something just a couple summary remarks I did want to bring it back to the recommendations and we are we are intentional about being humble in the ask which is that we intend to lead and bring together with a transparent conversation so that you all are aware as electeds what decisions are before you and it is with humility in respect of their tough choices whether it's resoning or otherwise a couple things just to you know council member Middleton you brought me back to a few remembering points schools are where we vote they're where we shelter when we are in danger right they are the heart of our community in so many ways not just physically but we talk about having a a timebase Ang right Hillside High School is nationally renowned for its Excellence as a historic black high school for now over 100 years we are growing through growth challenges but it is a first world problem of saying we're growing and our.

Project that I lead is called growing together internally the DPS that means Student Assignment our Ambitions with equity and diversity shorter ride times for students but it also means as a community it's an elastic framing to say it's going to take all of us to get through this we can and we will 1991 analysis of the merger feasibility by liot and liot who came in from New York now they might have been just writing this because we paid Consultants but they said Durham public schools in Durham city and county if you bring this together has more potential than any schools district in the country those are Dr Lewis's very same opening vision and remarks for us here at Duram public schools to be the premier Urban education District in America and we can do it and we will need your help just lastly and it is it is known that we have a school bus driver shortage on the Workforce Development front during Public Schools is the first larger Urban District in North Carolina to.

One be authorized by DMV to recruit in our own school bus drivers so if you all or anyone at home viewing wants to drive with us we need help and two we are the first school system recipient from NC's safe routes to school Grant which is roughly $400,000 between Durham Public Schools as well as bik Durham and our Community Partners so I name that to say we are doing everything we can we're here very much with open hands and saying we can do great things together and I appreciate your time today thank you Su council member please it's just an addition and I've been trying to think about how to frame it but I do want to like I want to seriously have the conversation about how land is used and and not just the humble way but also in like the imminent domain way just acknowledging to your point about the Sheltering and emergencies those like I I think coso cavier is being fous but it is really that you need these.

Spaces to be centralized for people to get to and so having a larger convers I don't know how it got missed in the Udo conversation but I want to make sure that that is brought up to the top of the list as a priority that's all thank you thank you council member colleagues thank you Dr Palmer thank you so much sir for for a great presentation and best wishes to you and your team talk again soon all right colleagues our next presentation item number 2 4 fiscal year 2023 2024 fourth quarter financial.

Report the.

Timster is your mic on it is now so while the technology is doing its thing good afternoon I am Tim Flora I am the Director of Finance mayor Middleton council members I appreciate the opportunity to give the fourth quarter update if I may just take a couple minutes of or a few seconds of per Personal Privilege I would like to thank mayor protim Middleton for speaking recently at or engaging with us at our Summer Conference the North Carolina government Finance Officers Association we work very closely as the ncj fooa with the league of municipalities and as in your role as president of the board at the league you came and addressed I am the on the board of the NCG fooa and at a recent meeting all of the other directors were very complimentary of your your remarks and almost I think they phrase it as a standup routine and so we're very appreciative of the support that you have provided there thank you so much Tim and you guys throw.

Incredible parties I just you didn't say that part but thank you we Finance directors while we may come across as rather dull we can be rather exciting Folks at times so today this is a joint presentation this is our Q4 presentation and this is a joint collaboration between the finance and budget departments and so I would like to extend a very thank you to director Reen and her staff for all of the work that she has contributed to this presentation as well as as the finance staff I will say we are the books are closed for fy2 24 we are still working through the process we are still working through the audit and so all the numbers you see here today are un audited numbers we are thank you we are anticipating having everything completed by the requirement from the LGC the October 31 deadline and so what I will also say as we move forward that I am a person who does not like surprises and so fortunately the.

Financial results of fy2 24 there were no surprises everything pretty much came in as we had anticipated so so we're very excited about that for the general fund let's just get right into it since we don't have much time so for the general fund one thing I will note is departments came in under budget so that's always good one thing I will just point out here just to to show you'll notice our economic and Workforce Development Department has a pretty positive variance of $2.1 million the percent of budget was 43 percent a lot of that what you see there is just incentives that were budgeted that that were not needed or did not get tapped into so I just wanted to point that out as something to jump out really no big surprises one thing I will just point out here if you look down here on this line item sometimes I I know you know this this is really more for the education of our residents as I'm giving this.

Presentation you notice that there is a negative number in a column of mostly positive numbers under the adjusted budget and that is our indirect cost and so just to to to highlight what that that really is that is the charges that we make to our Enterprise funds for all of those GNA type expenses the legal services the financial services the governing body as part of that rents or the land that is or rents that would where we've provided facilities for that and so those are the charges that number does that is not just a madeup number we actually work with a consultant to give us what those indirect costs are and so that those are offset and and charged to our Enterprise funds if we look at the expenditures by class we'll see that the Personnel Services had a variance of savings of 9.3 million followed by operating expenditures of 6.4 and we'll jump here let me just jump to this the revenues it shows the total revenues have come in at $270.

Million which is about $2.4 million so I'm right down here I'm looking at this number right there so our revenues came in at a little over 270 million which is $2.4 million over our budgeted Revenue amount for our total expenditures our expenditures were more than the revenues they came in at $287 million so there is a negative net revenues or use of fund balance of $16.8 million I just want to point out that is planned for that is exactly there again no surprises there we budgeted more in expenditures than we did Revenue we had a we there was some Surplus so rightfully so we used some of that appropriated fund balance or our reserves and so to to give you confidence that that number is is a big number but it is right where we need to be and when we always have always talked about that fund balance number of of those expenditures for our fund balance reserves should be around 25% we are really anticipating that we're going to.

Be right where we need to be with that which from my standpoint is is good when we relay that to our rating gencies is why we use that fund balance because we also want to be very good stewards of our residents taxpayer money and so we try to use that money as efficiently and as effectively as possible and not have more than we need we just like to have just enough so just jump into some of the bigger revenue streams so this is just a some additional information on property taxes you can see from 2021 to 2024 you know we've got those really steady increases in our property taxes this is what we like about property taxes it is a it is a very stable Revenue stream for us it's very predictable and so we we like that whereas sometimes sales tax can be a little bit volatile and so you can see from 21 to 24 the numbers sort of Jump Around these are collections that you see up there through June 30th.

Because we do not have all of the sales tax revenue in yet I think our last Revenue payment comes in in just a couple of days I think within the next few days we are fully expecting the sales tax revenues to come in at on budget at 999 or 99 million almost 100 million dollar and so you'll notice in the prior year we had it was $10.7 Million over budget that was a conscious decision that that is again absolutely what we had planned to do is because sales tax was so volatile and priors we weren't really sure what it was going to shake out to be because of the covid situation we had some pretty big surpluses we've gotten much more precise in our budgeting and so everything is exactly as we had anticipated so just again on the end of year projections total budget $2.5 million over budget this year last year $1.1 million of that but of that 11.1 $10.7 million was the sales tax property taxes again are are very steady million.

Dollars under budget on the utility franchise taxes again people aren't using cable and the landline telones like they used to be and so those revenue streams are on the steady decline no no surprises there we just looked at the major Revenue comparisons so sorry that is a FY 2020 to 2024 comparison not just a 2223 comparison but if you can if you look there's no surprises in that chart all of our revenues steady growth if you look at the bottom line you can see every year year-over-year we're having a very steady growth in our revenues again the only outlier is the utility Franchise Tax which is it's been going negative for us I like this chart this is a multi-year comparison of our revenues and expenses Trends and so again if you see that you see the steady growth in revenues and expenditures I will just point out where we talked about before we were using reserves so you see our revenues are less than our expenditures for this year fully anticipated.

Normally it it's the other way around but it is just to show you that it's not unusual you'll also see in 2020 where we had that same situation so again it's just a matter of managing our financial resources trying to keep the reserves where they need to be and so none of this stuff is is is unexpected quickly into our Enterprise funds again we're we're right where we should be or maybe not right where we should be in all cases but we are we are right where we anticipated we would be and so Water and Sewer again revenues are slightly under budget just better they do a really great job with projecting their revenues and you know they do a great job of shown as I think the user the the user fees projections that they have expenditure are under budget 2 $2.6 million there's a positive budget variance of $2.5 million if we jump down here you see again there's a a a negative 3.2 million dollar again that was.

Anticipated so they've used their reserves in the appropriate way there but we did have a pos positive budget variance of $2.5 million the transit operations fund they're projected to be under budget by $1.3 million so that's good positive budget variance of $2 million the transit operations fund is supported somewhat by the 3.75 tax rate so so there is some Public Funding that goes into that they are exceeding collections in several categories but with a net revenues of $783,000 but I will say of that 700 83,000 750 almost 750 or $750,000 of that is interest earnings and so if if I were to point out here again they have a a negative net assets of $7.1 million positive budget variance of $2 million but the fact that they have $750,000 in added interest income means they have a very healthy fund balance and so again all of this is planned for and anticipated Solid Waste fund their total revenues collected are $32.9 million which is up $9.1 million from.

The same time last year and so they have operating revenues projected at $8.7 million which is about 365 $366,000 under budget leading to an overall positive Revenue variance of $52,000 so it's it's running pretty tightly we'll say for the solid waste fund we have used some of their fund balance this is an operation that we're keeping a close eye on there not many reserves in that that fund and so so we are keeping a very close eye on those operations but again no surprises there the storm water fund total revenues are projected to be $27.6 million or $4.8 million over the budget projected expenditures are expected to be under budget by $1.3 million for an overall budget variance of $6.2 million we still anticipate using fund balance and from that fund what I will say is if I could draw your attention down here we fund we cash fund payo fund a lot of their cap capital projects and so you'll see that transfers to other funds down there of 13.8 million dollar historically we've.

Always been Cash Cash funding a lot of their projects because their fund balance now the reserves are are now getting lower we are starting to look at as we look at their cash flow models we will start looking at at now debt funding some of some of their cash some of their projects in the future as opposed to just the the payo the parking fund is at the at the end of the year the parking fund received 102% of budgeted revenues ending the year with total revenues of $7.1 million conversely the fund spent only 92% of budgeted expenditure ending the year with expend expenditures of $7.8 million what I will say with the parking fund the parking fund is a victim of supply and demand unfortunately demand these days for parking during the day is not as great a lot because of the remote working and so unfortunately the fund does have a cash deficit of $1.9 million and we continue to see that that deficit to continue by about 766 almost 767,000.

This year and so we do carry that on our books as a do to other fund so basically what we have is our other Enterprise funds are sort of loaning the the parking fund money to offset that and so no over no concerned other than the fact is we just have lots of capacity that we would certainly like to see used other Enterprise funds the ballpark fund doing very well the projected U overall budget variants of $347,000 and our DPAC fund again is looking to have an overall positive budget variance at $2.9 million with their net revenues being somewhere about $2.3 million so we're in really good shape there so that's very quickly the run of the numbers more than happy to answer any questions but I also would like to point out that the full financial report can be found online we encourage folks to on there because there is a very extensive I think it's 100 some pages of financial information and so in addition to the financial information you'll see information on.

Our Investment Portfolio our claims and contract information our debt planned debt issuances lots of updates on our C CIP projects and a new report that has been on there since the last is the general Services real estate division report and it is really great reading too Tim thank you so much for a great report colleagues any question or comments we're in the black go ahead just just one question about the I know water is an important part of our budget and the services we provided at the city so they had a $2.1 million short of the budget based on sounds like vacancies and so's not here but I'm just kind of want to make sure that those vacancies obviously we care about the the quality and the sort of accessibility of our water just want make I don't know if there's any kind of concern about if there I I I think the their their their turnover their vacancy rate is very consistent as in Prior years I mean it.

Is a big department they have lots of vacancies but they also have lots of people that can cover for those so I I do not we make sure we have the staff to do the important work they're doing so yeah happy to spend that money because it's an important part of our absolutely and I feel confident that I could speak to director speak for director gley when and say that they they have all the bases covered absolutely thank you so much council member colleagues anyone else all right Mr director good to see you as always thank you so much great report colleagues our final presentation this afternoon item number 26 is presentation on Paratransit Improvement Services.

Study e.

Okay.

There we go perfect.

Thank you so much good afternoon my name is Brian Fahy I'm the Mobility Services manager with the transportation department I actually have the pleasure of presenting this this has actually been a project that's been very personal for me and I've really enjoy the past year working on so I'm here to provide an update today on the recommendations and findings from our Paratransit Improvement Services study.

Here we go so to begin with it'll be a quick overview of the god Durham Access program reasons for the study some findings and recommendations and key areas of the study however before we begin this study really was rooted in the customer experience and that was the focus and so it would not have been possible without the dedication of our task force members that you see here I would also like to thank our contractor we drive VI formerly known as National Express transit as well as our consultant Benish that facilitated this study so the background of the go Durham access service goorm access is the coordinated demand response service for the city and county access provides ada8 parat Transit service anywhere within the city of Durham but also provides service to County residents who are age 60 year older have a disability or reside in the rural areas of the county the services operated by our private contractor we drive you in June 23 this Council assigned the contract from go.

Triangle to we to the city and the Mobility Services Division now manages the contract sorry go back Sean in fiscal year 24 it's actually just quite amazing what we saw with growth but there were also some imediate benefits we saw from the work of the task force so we actually provided just over 160,000 trips last fiscal year and that's about 18% higher than the previous year however at the same time we saw a 9% increase in on-time performance and our cost per trip remain relatively unchanged so the study came about as go Durham emerged from the pandemic service faced a shortage of operators and on-time performance was significantly below our Target of 95% and resulting in customers consistently arriving late to their important Healthcare appointments work recreational or shopping destinations customers also Express the need to improve service throughout the public engagement of the Durham County Transit plan as well as the Regional Human Services coordinated plan so in June of last year the city and county created the par Transit task.

Force and thanks to funding from the Duran County Transit plan we contracted with Benish to facilitate this study the key goals were to identify and improve the communications and customer experience improve upon other key performance indicators identify opportunities of a Consolidated Service delivery model which I'll elaborate on further as well as looking at opportunities for travel training and Mobility management to expand Education Services for residents early in the study we identified several areas and issues to address the improve the customer experience that includes improving Call Center contact or interaction between customers and the call center that godder access operates improving trip reminder and notifications we see we were seeing a very large number of no shows and cancellations a lot of which could have been solved by you know prior day reminders to customers given the opportunity to cancel a trip but also real-time notification estimated arrival times of their vehicle also trying to encourage Riders to utilize self-service trip tools and finally to improve Clarity and readability of the methods in which.

We reach Riders and human service agencies so one of those primary improvements actually just occurred about a month ago so in Late July Goram access went live with a new reservations and scheduling platform from spare Labs the new system provides online eligibility applications and electronic management of those applications prior to that it was still a pencil and paper activity also provides web writer web interface and apps to allow customers to book and manage their trips as well as reminders notifications and real-time arrival estimates finally one that I actually just shared with director Egan during this meeting we actually have realtime ratings where Riders can rate their experience experience so I actually just received a positive review from a customer that they submitted 2 minutes prior so it's great to really close that feedback loop the other area we looked at was a Consolidated Service delivery mod this was explored as a way to support different trip types using multiple service providers to allow the system to become more flexible in responding to.

Peak demand periods the key goals identified were to prioritize the go Duram bus service options when available to optimize the customer's experience minimize the over trip Co overall trip cost maximize the productivity and of course to provide excellent service including same day reservations it's kind of archaic to believe that it we were not providing same day reservations gorm access you have up to two weeks in advance to the day before to reserve a trip but we w't and we still are not 100% there but we were not at a place where we could offer that capacity to provide that level of.

Service microtransit will actually be one of the services that will become a reality by integrating this new platform so up until June 2024 go triangle sponsored the microtransit pilot which was funded by the Durham County Transit plan in East and North Durham zones and that was operated by Lyft thanks to continued funding in the fy2 Durham County Transit work plan GM access will resume the pilot in October and this will be using GM access Vehicles microt Transit pil pilot will be fair free to be consistent with our other transit services in Durham since the final report that you received with this presentation was completed in June we obviously conducted additional planning and Analysis the servic is expected to provide just over 61,000 trips in fy2 but by using a different cost model as well as greater software capabilities that are now now available the services forecasted to be within budget and also provides a sustainable model for future.

Years we also explored tra travel training and Mobility management as a primary recommendation that was provided in the Human Services coordin plan and it's also a key area that we heard from riters and other stakeholders most travel training pro programs assist user users with riding the bus service as a new Rider or as an experienced rider that's new to the area or as a certified Ada pair Transit user looking to expand their Mobility options so most programs consist of four steps that you see here that is the pre-training training posttraining and monitoring and assessment after the pre-training is complete most agencies will conduct the training in a diff in a standard format the study provided best practices pros and cons for the following formats the one-on-one field training which allow the practice riding the bus under supervision or the access vehicle that leads to more P personalized experience group field training which gives the opportunity to train multiple people at a time this may be a preferred practice when the agency does not have.

An employee dedicated and classroom training which is a combination with either individual or group field training it's a good way to provide background information in the group setting the task force will be working with ke stakeholders to develop the necessary components for travel training Mobility Management program that will be included in the scope of work in procuring the next goorm access management operations and maintenance agreement which will go into effect September 1st of next year so overall the future is bright the city and the county and task force are thrilled to continue this critical work some of the key Milestones that you see on the slide are we have obviously imple implemented new scheduling reservation system also to continue improving the communication and customer experience implementing the microtransit program in October also looking at building framework for a Transit advisory committee in fiscal year 25 finally we actually are accepting proposals right now for Consulting Services to assist us with procuring the next go Duram ACC contract so we be.

Taking an approach similar to what we did with the go next drop contract and procuring finally also really to look at expanding our thirdparty operators by providing a Consolidated model where we incorporate additional providers into the systemless for the customer we're able to those PE and then finally incorporating travel training and Mobility management options into the next procurement as well so I would like to add a high note actually it's good to see real progress that is being made but this is personally one of the yeah sure thank you yeah but it actually been one of a personally rewarding project for me I actually have a family member that at 49 went from perfectly fine to completely disabled and and needing care and going through the process for her in Wake County to actually get certified and be able to take the trip she needs it's been very difficult so being able to work with our customers too and see day in and day out what they experience is has just been a.

Pleasure and I'll end it on a high note that this is actually a quote from Ed rudo who's on our bpack our task force but also a go maxess Rider it's good to see that real progress is being made with regard to modernizing and improving the god Duram access service by enlisting participation of perspectives and members of the community who rely on the service the process and outcomes are certainly better informed formed and more meaningful continuing the work to improve God Durham access service in Durham will expand opportunities for the city and county residents living with disabilities and this will make Durham a better place to live for everyone so thank you I'm happy to answer any questions thank you so much for a wonderful wonderful presentation colleagues any questions or comments councilman mariss thanks for the presentation Mr F I should say yeah I'm on bpack with Ed he's like a he's a incredible Advocate yes he's also like he's also direct and honest so like that feedback from Ed is really good because.

He's like he's you know he won't he'll be honest with you know how he's feeling what he thinks the service is like so that's great great endorsement of your work I just had a question did you remind me the microtransit like what are the options there in that microtransit service like what we talking about like mod so the microtransit pilot as it is currently is really what you as an area to serve Transit deserts so these are areas that are not dense enough or do not offer the opportunity to provide a 40ft bus so these are areas where someone can travel anywhere within the Zone A lot of times it may be to shopping also be to connect to our service so example in the north Durham Zone to connect to the the Horton rockboro area or to Duke Regional to connect to the Route 4 so it was really connecting people to be able to travel throughout Durham and the previous program really just allowed travel within Zone and did run into.

Some budget issues because it was very open and very few few restrictions the new platform we have enables us to create rules to really make sure we have a clamp on that so for example whe if there is a fixed route service a go Duram bus service that is within a quarter mile of the person's origin and destination in the zone then they're given the choice to take the bus we could also go a level beyond that that just because they're close to a bus stop what if the service doesn't come for an hour so we can also have that component in there say okay if the bus is coming within the next 30 minutes they get the bus option if not they get both options so it allows us to control more importantly it actually allows us what we would say co-mingle trips so people who are riding from as a goorm access ADA Paratransit Rider and then someone who is taking a microtransit trip or someone taking a county funded.

Trip those can all be within the same vehicle still providing the level of service with trip time and making sure that it is it a you know below 30 minutes that that still is handled and then all the funding and how it's distributed is now administer that in one system which was a big difficulty in the past but are the is it isn't this in some cases like a like uber lift or like a like a third party vendor so who are the different like vendors that are providing that micro Mobility sure so ours is actually going to be go access so as part of our contract amendment that came through Council a few months ago our contractor we drive you will be operating primarily operating the service we are looking at potential of incorporating another provider that is similar to Uber lift but they actually have they have their own pool of drivers using their own vehicles but they we we have the ability to use them for overflow but right now we don't.

Anticipate that so we drive you it but it's essentially like ve individual vehicles yeah yeah exactly but instead of the one-on-one trips where someone gets on our goal was to pool rides and Co mingles efficient and it's more cost effective thank you Council council member Freeman thank you and I appreciate I think I just want to thank you for your many many years of service I remember when I was on the Durham County transportation advisory committee that you were a very good resource in trying to figure out how to get folks on buses and throughout the city and the county I I did want to just kind of make sure that we mentioned I know this not slides didn't really talk about the funding resources that you have or don't have I know that there were some state and federal dollars that went away and so this co-mingling is really a necessity more than anything it is a necessity yes we are so through our Ila with Durham County Durham County.

Provides funding for trips one is through state State funding through rope funds which are for elderly disabled also for Rural general public and some Workforce opportunities which are more short shortterm and then the Durham County Transit plan actually funds a fair amount as well for the county but then on the F Federal side in the past we've used some federal formula funds our latest application we're focusing that on Capital to replace vehicles but yes it is that is always a constant concern and the old adage in transit which we're really trying to get that mentality out is get everybody on the bus because it's so much cheaper but that may not be what works best for our customer or our resident so our goal is to find that Medium happy medium where we provide quality service but we still keep that cost in check thank you and I will say as a a sibling my sibling passed away but she was very dependent on rides and so to get to appointments from doctor's appointments.

It's very different than just riding just getting on a bus that runs every hour or every 10 30 or 40 minutes there's a different need especially if you're differently abled or visually a unable I mean this this this is a more Equitable way to look at how folks need Transportation when they're not in a car and so I appreciate the way that you've presented it and I appreciate the way that we're moving forward with this microtransit access program and I look forward to the transportation Advisory Board and I'm going to ask make a very strong request that the mayor's committee for persons with disabilities is heavily involved in that absolutely and I yeah so many things but yeah thank you thank you council member colleagues anyone else Mr fat thank you so much let me say your your your personal Zeal for this work is infectious no it really is I mean this this isn't the sexy part of government work but this is the part that kind of makes come into this.

Building and do what we do really worth it when you see this kind of impact some of the best conversations I've had was was waiting some on some Sunday afternoons after church for the access van to come and pick up some of our elders and and stand there waiting with them to come and had some really good conversations so I want to thank you so much for this really really important work I I we there was an item on.

Our agenda on a consent agenda for seven new light vehicles for for Access Durham and and my question this might be to staff as well is that is that representing replacing aging vehicles or an augmentation of our capabilities that's correct it's simply replacing aging Vehicles yeah what what is our Fleet strength now what what just a sense of how how many what's our Fleet strength our Fleet is actually fairly strong so we have 53 light Transit Vehicles now they're all 20 to 22 foot light Transit Vehicles all lift equipped with the ability to handle two oversized chairs or scooters and also to be able to seat 12 so that really gives us the flexibility to where we need to go but our ultimate goal is unlike with fixed route or the bus service where as we expand service we're got to add more Fleet our goal is to keep that Fleet the same or even possibly decrease it over the next five years by going to more of a model where we're incorporating other service.

Providers and even possibility so we also administer the passenger vehicle for higher ordinance and we only have eight registered operator taxi operators now in the city and they are looking for opportunities and this is a great opportunity to potentially get them on board to operate service for. Access absolutely thank you so much this is a great I think way to bring the day to an end with this presentation on this great work thank you so much best regards to your team thank you director Ean good to see you congratulations on the proclamation earlier today again as well I love The Pedestrian friendly time always right colleagues that brings us to the end of our public published agenda I'm going to ask the clerk for a report in a minute and then Beverly I see over there I'm goingon to impose upon you if you would to just remind us about neighborhood college tonight I know we we've all been invited to that so if any of our colleagues can get by.

There but this time Madam Clerk will receive your report Mr Mayor Pro and good evening Council thecil nominated the following persons to its boards committees commissions and task forces TR M well the dur death and advisory Commission in the category of public transit Paratransit Zora H lent Duram City County Environmental Affairs in the category of Youth James T ham and Victor G haraldo the mayor's Hispanic Latino committee regular members and Brian J Rodriguez Sanchez the mayor's Hispanic Latino committee it's a youth member and finally William B Clark to the Durham Housing Authority Board of Commissioners in the category of Finance development and Real Estate Management report thank you Madame clerk think there something going on with your mic before we settle the agenda I'm going to ask Beverly Thompson if you would just give us a little primary and what's going on tonight with neighborhood.

College okay good afternoon everybody so glad to see you and tonight is the first night for Durham neighborhood College it is one of the most popular things that we do all year when it involves because it involves residents who actually have to sign up to participate tonight we will welcome about 20 four residents I believe who have signed up for the prr and they all have applied so they know you know what they're getting into for the next seven weeks so tonight we it will be our first official welcome to everybody and tonight we are going to have and not the mayor who's away but mayor protim Mark Anthony Middleton along with city manager Wanda page and County Manager Miss soell Dr soell and also someone else I can't remember who else naida naida Alam who's going to to welcome on behalf of the county so tonight they're just going to get a full interactive kind of session where they can ask questions and get an overview of what the city does and what.

The county does and then the next few weeks on at 5:00 6 o' we have special programming that we've been working on for the last I say six months so that they can learn all about special activities within their local government they mean here in this room or what do they mean no they're going over at the Durham County Administration room awesome and I believe the administration building rather MH on the fourth floor and you're welcome to I think they got food y'all we have food so why I wanted you to make you D thank you so much all right looking forward Madame manager I think we're ready to settle the agenda thank you Mr Mayor proam members of council I have for your consent agenda items 1 through 22 and GBA public hearings items 27 through 30 thank you thank you so much colleagues I'll entertain a motion to settle second I hear motion second all in favor we'll indicate by saying I I any opposition all right colleagues mat.

Thank you for a great great meeting really substantive meeting great conversation and thank you all for your your input and engagement today with that it is September 5th 4:44 PM I'm officially declaring this meeting adjourned may God bless Durham thank y'all.