Good afternoon everyone. I'm going to go ahead and call our meeting to order this 9th day of April at 1 p.m. The mayor has an excused absence for today, so I will be presiding. I just want to do a little bit of housekeeping before I have our madame clerk call the role. we will be going into close session in in in the middle of our meeting essentially. So, what we will do.
Is after public comment and after the consent agenda items have been read and pulled, the madam attorney will give us our language for the motion for close session. Council will move down the hall into our committee room for our close session and then we will come back and continue proceeding with our meeting. So, for those of you who signed up for public comment, you will be allowed to speak before we go into close session. I'm seeing some faces with a little bit of confusion. and for sta for staff we will have pulled your items so you will also know whether you need to stay or go. Thank you. Madame.
Clerk, can you please call the roll? >> Good afternoon. Mayor Williams received an excused absence for today. Mayor Prom Cabayo >> here. >> Council member Baker >> here. >> Council member Burris. >> Council member Cook >> here. >> Council member Copac >> here. >> And council member >> here. >> Thank you. We do have a ceremonial item today., today we have the National Public Safety Telecommunicate Communicator Week proclamation and, I'm not sure who is here to receive that proclamation, but I would love for you to come to the podium. Oh, thank you.
So, it's a little different during our work sessions. I'm just going to read the proclamation from here and then give you all the opportunity, to speak. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. Whereas emergencies can occur at any time that require police, fire or emergency medical services or Durham County safety heart. Where an emergency occurs, the prompt response of police officers, paramedics, firefighters and heart is critical to the protection of life and preservation of property. And whereas the safety of our police officers, paramedics, and firefighters and heart is dependent upon the quality and accuracy of information obtained from residents and visitors who telephone the Durham Emergency Communication Center. And whereas public safety communication officers and call takers are the first first responders and most critical contact our residents and visitors have with emergency services. Public safety communication officers and call takers are the first first responders and most critical contact our residents and visitors have with emergency services. And whereas public safety communication communications officers and call takers.
Are the single vital link for our police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and heart by monitoring their activities by radio providing them information ensuring their safety. Public safety communications officers and call takers of the Durham Emergency Communications Center have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fires, treatment of patients, mental health prevention and interventions. And whereas each public safety communications officer and call takers has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their job in the past year. Now therefore, I, Leonardo Williams, mayor of the city of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim April 12th through 18th, 2026 as National Public Safety Telecommunications Week in the city of Durham, and encourage residents to support the vital work of the most essential in our community. Witness my hand in the corporate seal of the city of Durham, North Carolina, this sixth day, April 2026.
Thank you for this proclamation on behalf of Durham Emergency Communication Center. We are honored to serve the residents of Durham, answering every call with professionalism, compassion, and dedication to public safety. This recognition reflects the commitment of our telecommunicators who work behind the scenes day and night to support our community and first responders. We are grateful for the city's trust and partnership and we remain committed to serving with excellence. Thank you. >> Thank you.
Okay. And now I have a announcements by council. I'm going to go first, which I know is not typical, but I know that we had some hard news yesterday and this morning. I want to acknowledge the detention of a Durham resident family whose students were at Burton Elementary. They were detained Monday at their regular routine as check-in. That means that they were here as asles from the country of Honduras. It they had family in the parking lot who were waiting for them and after 90 minutes a federal agent reached out and said that the family had been all four of them including two elementary age children had been detained and within 24 hours deported back to Honduras. This is a completely illegal action by immigration enforcement. folks who are here with asyl refugee status have particular rules and protocols. They were following all of their rules and protocols. It was a routine check-in.
Currently, I know SMRA, many elected officials, and other community members are holding a press conference at Burton Park at 1 p.m. Obviously, none of us could be there because we are here, but I do just want to extend all of our thoughts with this family. I know that Durham will rally around them like we always do and there are conversations already happening about how we ensure Durham residents who have to go down to Charlotte, it's the only place to do these routine check-ins in North Carolina, can be offered support. We know when folks are able to show up with attorneys or pastors or community members or elected officials, their outcomes are significantly better. And I think that one of the reasons that this family was detained is that unfortunately we did not know that they were going down there. And so I pledge my support and commitment to any Durham resident who is going down to Charlotte and and happy to escort you.
And I think I can speak for most of my colleagues and and elected officials. So we are thinking about them. I do want to remind folks I think this is the first time in North Carolina we've had children detained in this manner. These were very young young children. I think a six-year-old and a 10-year-old. So again thinking about them. Thank you colleagues. Anyone else? Yes, Council Member Baker. >> Thank you., thank you to all who are here in the building and here with us today., just want to lift up your comments, Mayor Prom, and, associate myself with those., we want Durham to be a place that is welcoming to everybody and unfortunately the federal government, doesn't want that, in Durham or other places anywhere else., and of course this happened in Charlotte, but these are Durham comm community members, Durham public school students, and, just devastated and horrified, by by that and by what's happening.
I want to, read a statement from the Durham Workers Rights Commission., the Durmwork DMR workers rights commission voted unanimously to endorse the UE50 proposal to review and update the city's controlled substance and alcohol testing policy on Tuesday, April 31st. We believe this is an opportunity for the city of Durham to move toward a more just, fair, equitable system without sacrificing the safety and integrity of public services rendered. So, I wanted to share that as the the liaison to the Durham Workers Rights Commission., two other items, colleagues, I've spoken with all of you about these., the first is that the mayor of Boone, Dalton George, reached out to me., he's reaching out to communities across North Carolina and seeking to build a number of communities who will pass a resolution designating May 15th as Endangered Species Day. I've shared with you resolution language from Boone that I think that we can replicate pretty quickly and easily here. So I would like to ask my colleagues to place that on the next work session agenda.
>> Next door future when we deem your space. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. >> Sorry y'all. when I presside everyone gets two minutes. Sorry. >> One one more item. I'll be quick. I also reached out to each of you about a potential ordinance around a moratorum on hypers scale data centers. This is not just your average and typical size data centers. these are large scale. We've all been hearing about them. There's a lot to learn. It's an area where things are moving very quickly.
Many many communities across the state of North Carolina and a growing number are adopting one-year moratoriums and I would like Durham to join that. I think it's important to assess what's going on have a little bit of time to do that and then put in place any measures that are necessary to adequately regulate hypers scale data data centers. So, I'd like to put that on the next agenda for the work session and work closely with the plane department and the city attorney's office to draft that language.
>> Thank you., anyone else? Oh, thank you. >> Yeah. Any other announcements? Council member Cook and then Council Member Wrist and then Council Member Copac. Thank you. >> I'll be very brief. I just want to echo the comments of the count of the mayor prom. Those were very close to the exact comments that I had. it is a wild time to read that news. and also spend the morning in eviction court trying to keep people housed. lots of lots of just acknowledging of state violence against civilians and and watching that play out in real time is is really difficult. So, I just want to throw in my support that you have a council up here that is I think unanimously behind supporting every single one of our residents.
We are not discriminating on the basis of your income, your background, your where you come from, whether or not you have documents that say that you're legal enough for our federal government, which you know is on the line as well what those documents might be. and just to just want to echo those comments made and and say that we don't support that. I do not support that and I am very very much want to make clear that that is that is not going to fly in Durham and we will do everything in our power to ensure that folks remain safe even if the perpetrators are government agencies. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Council Member Rrist. >> Thanks, Mayor Pim. Good afternoon, colleagues. Good to see you all, city manager, madam city attorney. yeah, echo the comments from the mayor Prom (unclear context - may not be a name) about the the incredible concern about ICE detaining families who are here illegally. Quite concerned. Appreciate your comments and we'll do all we can in Durham to make sure we protect our immigrant communities. I've got a couple things to say real quick. I try to be as quick as I can. first thing is I want to thank DPR Foundation and DPR for organizing today's annual mayor's parks challenge. had fun working at Cornwallis Road Park with folks from Balffor who's out on the agenda actually today and also from community. So doing some some erosion work there at the park. It's always good to do that work together with volunteers from around the community. secondly, speaking of resolutions, I also have a similar res or not similar but another resolution I like to bring before the council at.
Our works at our next work session. This is one. This may sound like stranger than fiction, but this concerns so-called 530A accounts, otherwise known by statute as Trump accounts. These are accounts authorized by the federal bill that passed, the budget bill that passed a couple years ago that creates thousand accounts at birth to say for education, home or or business startup for kids born as of January 1, 2025. It also includes for kids who are born before that who are under the age of 10.
Also $250 asset building accounts for again home ownership, business startup or education for kids as well. We want to make sure that as many kids as pos or all kids that qualify for these accounts in Durham access these accounts. And so I'll bring a resolution that would encourage the city or or demonstrate the City Council's support for the city engaging to make sure all kids in Durham who qualify these for these accounts are getting these accounts. There's already a big community effort to do this and I want to make sure the city's supportive of that. So, I'll bring that I'll send you a draft before the next work session on the 23rd., but look forward to your conversation about that and hope you all support me bringing that resolution.
>> Thank you. Good manager., let's see how much. Okay., shoot. So, the last thing I'll say is that yeah, I need to ask for while I've asked for that resolution, I'll also be gone that day. Like to ask for a excuse absence. If it weren't for my youngest son getting married, I'd be here for that conversation., but the mayor can carry forward that that conversation. Also, I don't have time to say it all, but I do want to say there was a key meeting this last week between folks from HUD and the Durham Housing Authority to to visit what's happening with the Durham Housing Authority, all the housing authority is doing to get out of its troubled status. And that's based on incre improving unit conditions, increasing occupancy, but also repositioning McDougall Terrace.
And without going into great detail, I just want to say that if I can just briefly mention DHA is without any direct city support or federal support is gradually transferring families out of McDougall Terrace into different properties that are being redeveloped. And is doing that work. There's a plan now for half the residents, half the 360 residents will be have been or will be moved out. There's a plan for the rest of those residents. This is a key objective of of losing our troubled status or getting out of troubled status. But it also aligns with city goals because the DHA has also committed that 92 units of public housing have been committed to the continuum of care to make sure that families leaving homelessness have a place to live, a permanent affordable place to live. So, while DHA has had a lot of a lot of attention on DHA for good reasons, I want you all to know that DHA is also an incredibly important partner for the.
City, helping us to address our goals of providing home homes and affordable homes for folks leaving homelessness. So, we'll be talking more about that, but I just want >> Thank you, Council Member Ris. >> Thanks, sorry. >> Thank you, Madame Mayor Prom. So, I just want to lift up the comments that you made and all my colleagues made and also pledge support for myself and this community to stand up for all of our residents to support this family that was detained and deported illegally and others that face harm. It's horrific to see this this happen. another harmful action by a regime that's hellbent on sewing chaos and and and fear in our city and across the country. And so definitely hard is with and I know I stand with my colleagues in support of of folks who are affected. I'll just say as well that I'm interested in the city exploring the UE150 recommended updates to the substance use policy. I'm interested in looking at that myself and and reflecting on.
Ways that we can make improvements based on the the human relations commission endorsement and the UE50 and other support for that. So just really glad to be here. feel really fortunate to be in this room with my colleagues, with staff, with all of you residents here who care so deeply about our city. to be working together to support our residents in this community and and move forward good things for for for all of us. So thanks everyone for being here. Thank you, Council Member Burris.
>> Thank you, and good afternoon. So, I want to associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues and just thinking about what precious times we live in now with this oppressive administration where we're currently at war. Country's probably bankrupt and we don't know what's going to happen from day to day, but it is still not time to give up and just want to make sure we encourage each other to hold on, but also fight back against this oppressive regime. Yesterday, I had the chance to go tour Durham Techch. really excited about all the growth that's happening over there and the vision for the affordable housing which is so exciting to know that they're going to prioritize foster kids and making sure they have somewhere to go. So excited about all the programs at Durham Techch that's going on. Also a couple weeks ago the city manager and I were at the graduation for our police academy. It was a class of about 30 I believe. So super excited. It was good to see all.
Those young folks and then seeing I'm an empath. So watching the parents pin their kids who form DPD officers is really important to me to see. So again, looking forward to a great meeting and I got done with a minute. >> I appreciate that, Council Member Burus. Next up I have priority items., city, Manager Ferguson.
Thank you, Mayor Prom, and members of council. The city manager's office does have three priority items for your consideration this afternoon. the first is just to note that agenda item number seven, ST 332C pavement condition study presentation. This this is a presentation on the PCI for council to receive today. agenda item number 25 has been added. This is legislative priorities for the 2026 short session and that does include a short presentation as well. And then finally, agenda item number 20, proposed substantial amendments to the FY223 and FY2526 annual action plans for CDBG funding. This item is being referred back to staff and will show up on a future agenda.
>> Thank you, Manager Ferguson. Madame Attorney,. >> thank you, Madame Mayor Prom., do you want to vote on the manager's priority items? >> Oh, yes., could I get a motion, please? >> So, move second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries to accept the manager's priority items. >> Great. Thank you. >>, Madame Mayor Pro Tim, you've already mentioned that the city attorney's.
Office needs a closed session today, mid meeting., the motion for that, if you'd like to go ahead and vote on that motion, >> that would be helpful. Thank you. >> Okay. The motion is to hold a close session pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 143 318.11a3 for attorney client consultation regarding a threatened but not yet filed liability claim. >> Thank you. Could I please get a motion? >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second. All in favor?
>> Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Madam Attorney. And we will do that after public comment and the reading of the consent agenda. Madame clerk, >> good afternoon. the city clerk's office does not have any priority items, but I do have the boards and commissions report. for item three, the Durham Workers Rights Commission, council has voted a majority appointment for Tiana M. Apple White for the Durham Workers Rights Commission. >> Thank you, Madame Clerk. Council Member Ris, do you want us to go ahead and take up the your excused absence as well?
>> Sure. Yeah. Yeah. >> Could we go ahead and What was the date on that? >> April 23rd, I'm pretty sure. That's our next Yeah. Yeah. >> Is that right? >> Just confirmed. >> Yeah. 23rd. Okay. could I get a motion to have an excused absence for council member wrist on Thursday, April 23rd? >> Could I have a I have a motion and a second? Thank you. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Okay, we you have your excused absence, Council Member Wrist.
Next up, I have our under public comment, our first speaker that I have is Scott Harmon. And then following Scott Harmon, I have Thelma Glenn White. Although I don't know if she's registered for an item or not. and then just for general under general public comment Amanda Wallace. Good. Yes. >> Okay. Number 25. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. So, Miss White, we will call you when that item gets discussed later during the agenda. Good afternoon, Mr. Harmon. How are you?
>> Hey, how are you all doing? >> Good. You have three minutes. Thank you. >> Thank you. My name is Scott Harmon. I'm an architect and developer with Center Studio here in Durham. We appreciate chance to speak with you about the land development code. At your last work session, we talked about Durham character versus neighborhood character. We talked about the color of law by Richard Rothstein and the racist origins of our zoning laws, about the supremacy of four numbers, lot size, setbacks, height, and density. How we manipulated this math to create our infamous neighborhood character map. This map that bestowed government subsidized mortgages and other privileges to our wealthy green neighborhoods and denied those same benefits to our red neighborhoods. This system also forced our red neighborhoods to carry the burden of the affordable dense housing that our community needed but that our wealthy green neighbors didn't want. We talked about how sadly accurate this map is today. How our systems of land use politics and power keep getting the same.
Results even when the people who love Durham in their hearts want a different outcome. If we don't change the system, we don't change the outcome. The Land Development Code is a remarkable commitment to housing justice. Over a dozen different zoning districts and tiers are now combined into one zone, the RD. Virtually every residential property inside this urban growth boundary will have this new designation. The vision for the RD is clear. Quote, compact, walkable residential environments that accommodate a full range of housing types. This is how we create the polyentric, transitfriendly, climate responsible, diverse, connected, abundant community. This is effective policy. It's a new system and it's fair and equitable. Gone are the days when the green neighborhoods and the red neighborhoods play by different rules.
This is Durham character at its best. Except when you get to section 2.28, 28 infill development which requires new housing to honor the setbacks and height of existing housing in the same block. In other words, instead of our new vision, we have to preserve the old system. The system that adjusted those four numbers in different neighborhoods to preserve privilege, wealth, and power. The system that prioritized neighborhood character over the needs of the whole community. The system that divided the people who love Durham for over a century. the system that continues to this day to force our red neighborhoods to carry the burden of the housing crisis so our green neighborhoods don't have to. Everyone in Durham is impacted by the housing crisis. Everyone in Durham deserves housing justice. The people who love Durham in their hearts want to roll up their sleeves and do their part.
Everyone in Durham should play by the same rules. I'm asking the council and director Young to get together and preserve Durham character. the people who love you, the people who love Durham love you back. Thank you. >> Thank you. >>, next up I have Miss Amanda Wallace.
>> Good afternoon, Miss Wallace. You have three minutes. Thank you for being here. >> All right. So, like I always say, every time I come here, I have to take deep breaths. because you guys feel like you have the power to condense people's voice to three minutes. I know for myself I never consented to that. so I'm gonna sum I'm gonna try to sum up what I have to say, but I don't want to feel rushed, especially when the people of Durham are being sold out right in front of our eyes. And so I ask for the same grace. I've seen several county city council members go over their time and they've been given grace. And so I ask for the same. So my first concern is that this governing body is attempting to curb speech speech by enforcing madeup rules that make it harder for people to speak at meetings. See, when people break the quorum, county manager, city manager, you say that these are the spaces to have and voice.
Concerns, but then you create these these roadblocks. It feels like you guys really actually don't want to hear from the public., and so at the last work session, the man the mayor said, he didn't he was enforcing this rule that it's a specific time because he didn't want to shuffle paper. Y'all have a whole lot of city staff. So, if somebody needs to sit next to him to help him shuffle paper, I think that that's what needs to happen. And so, my question is that are the other city council members in agreement with enforcing this rule? And if not, could this be addressed? Also, Shannetta brought up that the city the the city government was forcibly removing people who had nowhere to go. Removing people who do not have homes because of the intentional disinvestment by this city.
Leo called this called the situation complicated. This ain't complicated. People who need houses, that's that's what they need. Like how many more studies do we have to do to realize that there are thousands of empty buildings right now in this city and people sleeping outside? So that's not complicated. It's capitalism. It's gentrification. But our mayor loves gentrification, right? So it's not surprising that we are here and I don't expect anything different from any of you. I'm here for the historical record.
So on April 6, 2026 at the general body meeting, item 10 was on the agenda and it was for the second amendment to the housing for New Hope contract. As I look at these contracts, I see a common denominator, which is Ryan Smith, the director of the community safety department. I'm really seeing it clearly how this y'all moving a lot of money to this department. And you know Ryan, Matt, right? his wife helped you steal your seat through fundraising. So, the contract is for landlords engagement.
And my concern with this strategy is that Durham through DHA, Durham Housing Authority, you you tried to say that they're trying to save their image is the biggest slum lords in this city. The city government through its intentional policies is one of the biggest reasons why people do not have housing. And so I'm trying to understand what other plan do you guys have? I'm I'm finishing up. And so item 14 was also on it. And the city used imminent domain to take or slashsteal four pieces of property at 515,517 and 519 East Trinity Avenue. Like literally just taking people's land.
There are businesses there. There are people who are who who are just like living there, right? And so you guys are taking this. But this is to the historical record. This feels a lot like urban renewal 2.0 when you guys I do not want to call you out of order. Please >> definitely able to email whatever you would like to your City Council members. >> I signed up twice. Don't I get three more minutes? >> No, ma'am. You signed up for a specific item number six. And so when we get to the >> I signed up twice for public comment.
>> Is there you down as a public comment work session and then I have you as a consent agenda item number six. So, when we get to item number six, when we call the agenda items, which we have not done yet, Miss Wallace, then you will be provided another opportunity to speak. >> Did I sign up twice? >> That is what I have in front of me. Madam Clerk, >> she did sign up twice for public comment.
>> We do not let folks sign up people to sign up policy for public comment. >> Miss Wallace, I'm happy to set up time with you the attorney what the policy is that people can't sign up. I'm speaking on something else. I have more concerns. I I appreciate that. But what I have in front of me is we do not allow folks to go three two, you know, three minute public general public comment. You have been given three minutes. I did allow you some grace on that which you asked for which I I got you got. And then what I have in front of me is you also signed up under item number six. When we get to number six, you would get an additional three minutes. That is the >> Can the C can the city attorney please explain the policy?
>> Madam see anything?, happy for you to do that, but I would like us to continue on our business. We do have a close session today. So, thank you. Appreciate your comments today. Thank you so much. >> Can the city attorney please explain? Yeah, >> the mayor prom has addressed your concerns and she's answered the question, which is that we don't allow people to duplicate their signups to buy more time. Miss Wallace, that's it. >> But is there a policy that says that?
>> It doesn't need to be written in policy. >> Just procedure, Miss Wallace. >> I'm just trying to verify for for the people, right? because you guys just make up rules as you go. And so I'm just saying I have more things to say that's not what I just said. And I signed up twice. >> Now out of order. >> You're out of order. I keep telling y'all that. >> Thank you.
>> next up under I will start our administrative consent items. I think that's all I had under public comment for today. under administrative consent items under the city clerk's office approval of city council minutes. Item number two. Item number three dur Durham workers rights commission appointment under departmental items under city council number item number four grant budget ordinance accepting a share our strength no kid hungry grant under city manager's office. Item number five approval of the Wake County multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan under community safety department. Item number six, interlocal agreement between the city of Durham and the county of Durham to fund community solutions consulting work on the homeless strategic framework under environmental. Oh, thank you, Miss Wells. You are registered under item number six., that is the item I have you pulled on for., thank you, manager Ferguson. Environmental and street services department. Item number seven, ST-332C, pavement condition study presentation.
We will take this up when we do our other presentations. Under general services department, item number eight, proposed 10-year lease with Liberty Arts, Inc. for the Arts Pavilion at 505 Rig Riggsby Avenue. Item number nine, Durham Rail Trail Construction Manager Atrisk Seymar (unclear context - may not be a known name) contract with Balffor BD Construction, Holt Brothers Construction, a joint venture. I'd >> like to pull that one. >> Okay. I have two folks who I think council member Cook and Kopac have both pulled item number nine. Sorry, Council Member Wrist., >>, that was item number nine.
>>, number 10, interlocal agreement for fire and emergency medical services station number 19 or 19. >> Pull that one. Under planning and development department. Item number 11, utility extension agreement with Jason Jones to serve 102 North Maple Street. >> I'm going to pull that one. And also number 12.
>> Item number 12, util utility extension agreement with the lighterd LLC to serve 252 Andrew Avenue. That has been pulled under technology solutions department. Item number 13, third amendment to the contract to the contract with Duke University for city fiber. >> I pull that one as well. >> item number 14, FY2023, state and local cyber security grant program L, excuse me, SLCGP grant program ordinance and authorization to execute memorandum of agreement under transportation department., item number 15, Federal Transit Administration bus and facility grant project ordinance.
>> Pull that one. >> And I think that that and 16 are they're related as I understand. >> Item number 16, purchase grant with Gillig LLC for 10 diesel buses for Go Durham. That item's also been pulled by both council members wrist and copac. Is that correct? Okay. Underwater management department. Number 17, service contract with Palmetto Underground Solutions LLC for the 2026 lead service line inventory field verifications project. Item number 18, award of construction contract for PC construction company for the Williams water plant treat water treatment plant basin improvements project. And then under presentations under the city manager's office we have item number 19 American Rescue Plan Act update ARPA 25 for 25 minutes. And then we also have for for public hearings which we will take up at our next council meeting housing and development, excuse me, housing and neighborhood services department. but that number 20 has been referred back to staff.
Planning and development department. Item number 21, consolidated annexation, Bella Ridge. Item number 22, consolidated annexation, Patterson Hall. Item number 23, consolidated annexation, Morgan Farm. Item number 24, consolidated annexation 9415 NC 751 highway. And then under supplemental items, we have the city manager's office item number 25, legislative priorities for the 2026 short session of the NC general assembly. before we go into close session, I would just go ahead and like to share what items I have pulled with you., manager Ferguson, I have items number six, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, and 16. And then I have presentations number seven and 25.
>> 25 >> and 19. >> Okay. I think we will do the pulled items and then I think we will do presentation seven and then 25 and take up the pres number 19 last so that staff can leave after yeah after close session. Okay. So at this moment yes Madam Clerk >> I believe council member copac said that item 25 had a public speaker for >> they did. Thank you. item 25 miss thema white. Thank you Madam Clerk. At this moment then we are going to pause and go into close session colleagues down the hall and then we will return. Thank you so much.
Testing one. Two.
Okay. we're we're back. I think the first pulled item that I have is item number six, which is Apologies, I got to find it. >> interlocal agreement between the city of Durham and the county of Durham to fund community solutions consulting work on the home strategic framework. I had a speaker for this item, Miss Wallace. >> Good afternoon. You have three minutes. Thank you.
There we go. I'm going to start where I left off. because all of this is connected. And so, like I was saying, the city is stealing people's homes, businesses, and land through imminent domain and then wondering why people are unhoused. It's kind of like your outrage like folks voiced outrage about the federal government attacking families through deportation while the city and county work in collaboration to separate families right here in Durham through your family policing system. So I guess I understand how you guys ideology just doesn't connect. But going to this contract through it community solutions, I'm confused at like the whole thing. It feels like just a lot of words on a paper without any real outcomes. And so starting with the timeline, technically this contract is over and I'm confused at what the deliverables have been. Like there are still increasing number of people who are unhoused like in the agenda packet. I don't see anything about again what the deliverables are, what what was happening, what meetings.
Happened. And so again, I'm just really confused by this. And then the total was $100,000. And you guys, this contract paid somebody $200 an hour to do this work. And I'm also confused that if this community solutions is based in Durham cuz what I'm seeing like they're out of New York or like this other state. So I'm confused at like why y'all chose them. And then I got a minute and a half left. So I really want to talk about again the common denominator in a lot of these contracts which is Ryan Smith because he is on this contract as well.
And so I'm confused at how this just keeps happening. And I really want to ground in what I saw from the heart team this last week, which is them working in collaboration with the police to remove people from their home. And so I know Ryan Smith is over the heart team and you guys act like he's like this is this like saviorism that's happening and so like you guys are just moving all of this money to this department. But I'm just here to call this out.
Like this is not this is not helping people. You guys are again $100,000 to develop a plan when you know the plan for people who are unhoused is to have a house. Again, it's not complicated. And with 25 seconds left, I know that Thelma White with the Committee on the Affairs of Black People are here and is supposed to talk. And when they show up, I know y'all ready to sell some because the committee was integral in selling out black folks. The committee is about class. And if you are not of the class of the people who associate themselves with the committee, then they will sell your sell you out. And so again, I'm just here to put it on the historical record that what Durham is doing.
>> Thank you, Miss Wallace. The next pulled item I have is item number nine, and I think Council Member Wrist pulled that. >> Oh, sorry. And Council Member Copac. >> Good afternoon, Mike Aresco (unclear context - may not be a known name) with general services. >> Good afternoon, >> Council Member Rrist. and then council member Cop. >> So, yeah, exciting project. Really appreciate you being here., I know that when this is done, it's going to be a signature project for Durham, signature destination for Durham., residents are like excited about this and they keep talking about it. So, two questions though., we, you know, we had initially planned to complete this by fall 2024.
Now, it looks like it's going to be June 2028, right? So I guess my first question is like what assurance do we have that there will be no more delays in the rail trail. Number one, are there like incentives built into the contract to ensure that? If not, can we add those? Like that's that's my first question. >> Yeah. So currently there are no incentives built into the contract. Once we do work towards a GMP, that could be something that does get added in there.
That would be a a motion that comes to the council per schedule around December. Was that was that a GN >> guaranteed maximum price which is part of the Seymar (unclear context - may not be a known name) delivery method. So we there incentives can be something that does get added into the actual construction piece >> and that comes that comes when >> that'll be back to the City Council in December. >> Okay. So we can build that that'll be helpful and and again not to say like this is a really important project. I just want you know there's been so much conversation about this so much you know excitement about this and so I just want to make sure that we are delivering for folks as we promised and there's no sort of any more reasons why we need to delay this., second thing is I appreciate general services has taken this this far. You all have done a big job to sort of the initial concept. I know we.
Expanded the concept and all that kind of stuff. All great stuff. My question is like so once this is completed in in June 2028, who's going to manage the rail trail? And is that the department of parks and wreck? And are they sort of are they on board with the plan for what the trail is going to look like, all the elements of it? Are they are they prepared to take on management light and and will that be a seamless process? I just want to make sure that once we complete this that it'll be a seamless handoff if it is DPR so they can manage it as we all intend.
>> Yeah. So I I certainly don't have the answer today but I also do know that there are ongoing discussions between general services DPR and trying to iron out the details of how it will be maintained who will be managing it from a trash perspective a landscaping mowing. but as of today there's not a definitive answer. And are those are those conversations that are happening with DPR about what that looks like when we complete this? >> I believe so, but I'm not positive. I can't speak on that.
>> Yeah. I just want to ask the manager to make sure that that we have complete alignment between if it is DPR to to manage in the in the long run that there's complete alignment between what the plan is here to develop it and DPR's role going forward. >> As as those discussions continue and come to resolution, we'll we'll update council with the full plan and answer any questions that you have. >> Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Council Member Copek.
>> Yes. First of all, and perhaps this just requires a bit of a historical perspective, I don't have yet, but understanding the the $300,000 agreement here for pre-construction services. what was McAdams role in this work? And wasn't this work that was already programmed and budgeted? And how does this relate to that? >> Certainly. So, McAdams was the designer of record for the project., so it's it's all their prior design work., from the Seymar (unclear context - may not be a known name) pre-constructive perspective, we're bringing a construction manager at risk is really here to help with pre-construction services, cost estimate, constructibility review, schedule phasing, >>, help with early site plan packages, in phasing from a from a construction standpoint.
>> Okay. So, building on the design work that was done, we're entering this new phase for pre-construction. That's what this is, >> correct? >> Getting us started on >> it's validation of the work that's already been completed as well. >> Okay., my other question I think is just maybe a broader question for for staff is that it'd be interesting and helpful to see I guess we're not at the end, so it's not a postmortem, maybe like a mid-mortem., I don't know the right term for that, but to sort of understand, you know, where we are today where I think we were projecting 11.6 million in 2020 on one for this project.
Now I think we're looking at $36 million for the project. you know just to understand and communicate you know what are the reasons for that you know are are some of the factors outside of our control some of it decisions made by council is some of it you know approach by staff I just think it'd be helpful to tease that out I mean just would love to have gotten you know three rail trails you know instead of like you know one for the price of three and and you know I think about Third Creek Fork Creek as well which you know we ended up adding you know years and millions of dollars under that project. I think based on decisions from the council at the time and it all may be perfectly valid, >> but I just think it would be good to surface that and understand to help educate and inform us as we enter into future projects. You know, is it because we want everything to be a signature.
Project and what does that mean, right? Is there something scrappier we can be doing that helps us achieve 95% of what we want? but I guess I just helpful information on that to help guide our future decision-m on these sorts of projects. So, I don't know if my colleagues would be interested in seeing that. It doesn't have to be on a a strict timeline, but I would be interested in seeing that information in some venue to understand the reasons why we see like a tripling in cost over time.
>> Certainly, we can definitely take a look at best practices, lessons learned, and come back with a report of how we got to where we got to and the plan to move forward and for future trails as well. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. >> item number 10 was pulled. I think council member Copek, that was you. That is the interlocal agreement for fire and emergency medical services station 819.
>> Oh, it's a super easy one. Just first of all excited to see this moving forward. These investments are so critical for the department, for our residents, and also just want to highlight the work of general services to be installing renewable energy solar as well on these projects as they roll out as well. which helps us work toward our climate goals and decoupling from fossil fuels. So, thank you. That was it. >> Thank you. I think the next three items I think are you, Council Member Cook. So, the first one is item number 11, utility extension agreement with Jason Jones to serve 102 North Maple Street.
>> Hi, good afternoon. So, I I want to talk about 11 and 12 and Tangent. I'm assuming they're about the same. So can you just give us a little bit of a background about how this came about and how it's related to the to the issues that we're seeing in that area? >> Sure. And you know you recently received a present Sarah Young sorry with planning development department. You recently received a presentation about Goose Creek specifically. These are the first utility extension agreements that are coming through as a result of that. the water management department has been meeting with folks.
You know, there were a number and Rob Joiner is here with me to answer some more detailed questions. but so these are the first few to come through where water management was able to find solutions that work with these properties. you may recall that one of the things they were looking at were for instance if there was no additional flow like it was demolishing something and putting something back and it was basically going to be the same number of bedrooms or maybe with a nominal increase that was already accounted for they would be able to move forward but we would still require utility extension agreement and so that's what these two are and I I don't know if Rob wants to add anything to that.
Robert Joiner, water management, assistant director., I just wanted to let you know that the reason that you're seeing the extension agreements is that is the best vehicle to memorialize everything so that reviewers can understand it, but it also provides a vehicle for banks and loan officers and other things that underwrite a lot of these projects and allow them to go forward. They need something in writing from the city. And because this adapts well to that process and it's used traditionally in the development process for all new development which you see all the time extension agreements Cas as they're often referred to are part of your standard zoning packages and things of that nature.
>> Thank you. That's helpful context. So back to what you were saying director Young that we had these numbers were accounted for in that presentation as ones that we thought that we were going to be able to have a fix for. Yes. so nothing surprising with this but just to >> that we are moving forward with those solutions. and then I guess to you Mr. Joiner but or to either but these are still going to be at cost to the developer. Is that correct? >> 100%.
>> Okay. But they will be able now to utilize loans or underwriting because of the because of the how the instrument that we're using. >> Correct. Yeah. The department of water management is going through and meeting with each of the customers who've contacted us and these are the solutions that we have that we brought forward contacted close to 90 customers that are operating in this area and looking at solutions and we're finding a wide variety of solutions for folks to be able to move forward at least in some part.
>> Yeah, thank you. That was all my questions. I appreciate you. Thank you., Council Member Crook, you also had item number 13, the third amendment to the contract with Duke University for City Fiber.
>> Hi, good afternoon. >> Thank you., so I have a couple things. The first I want to say is that I just want to publicly identify that I do work at Duke University. I will not be financially benefiting from city fiber. It is not related to my work at Duke University at all. I my very quick question is just that we saw a first amendment for the trending cost of the site going up. We saw a second amendment for a a massive amount of increase due to rock underneath that we didn't know about. And then we have this third amendment. It didn't really have any reasoning in our memo. and I was wondering if you could speak to that and whether or not we should be looking for future amendments increasing in cost moving forward.
>> This is the final amendment. this is to finish paying Duke for construction work that has been completed to initiate fiber at all of our city sites >> and as do we have a reason that it was just more than >> it was more I know than initially contemplated but then it's also been more since we've had two amendments since that time as well. why we weren't able to contemplate this amount those first two amendments history on that speak today. I'm Dwayne Kendall, assistant director of technology solutions. so we learned that you know Durham sits on a rock corey as we were boring rock and getting the fiber laid. there were additional costs that were just the sum total at the end of this project. This project started FY18.
And all the monies have been expended except for this last shore up. and again it was just to finish the the finalization of last mile work that the that Duke was doing from their contractors. and there were some contract increases that like like you spoke about between rock and then just cost increases for laying fiber just in general from the contractors. So this is just the last this is the last bill for for for the full. So, we're kind of just seeing the remnants of like ma'am increased costs from that rock which >> it >> we covered quite a bit of that before and I know this is like in comparison to that second amendment quite small.
>> Okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions. >> Thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Baker. >> Yeah, thank you for asking that. That was my question as well. just wanted to ask because this is very exciting. City owns fiber. state legislation says we can't sell this to to residents, right? It was so successful in Wilson, North Carolina that the legislature got lobbyed by the companies and said you cannot >> be more efficient than the companies. So I think that's important context.
Are we so we're we're done here, but do we still have the door open to say we wanted to make we wanted to take this to city parks or other facilities and make it accessible to people in these specific locations? Could we do that at some point in the future with this fiber? >> Yeah. So, so I like to describe the fiber that we've laid as like the is like the highway. so it was the it was a foundation of anything we want to enable to do in the future ultimately and that's smart city technologies that is that is providing residents free access to you know external wireless from park all of those things rooted in the fiber being the foundation. So to answer your question yes those are those are all possibilities. As a matter of fact, there are some existing projects that are that are that other departments are working on right now for providing some some outdoor wireless to certain parks locations. So, but this is the foundation of all that.
>> Cool. So, we we can't sell it to us, but but we can we can provide Wi-Fi and public places for >> Yes. And and and a lot of the fiber project dollars were expended at the very beginning of the project because of our commitment to DHA which we are still the ISP for. So we are providing free wireless to eight Durham housing authority sites that have children based on pandemic conditions in 2020 2021 year. So we are providing those free. >> Thank you.
>> Go ahead council. >> So in the future if we as as council member Baker said appreciate the comments if we if we plan to extend this further using the sort of that the backbone you described do we need to get like Duke's sort of like authorization or like how much how much authority do we have just to do that? >> That's a great question. And so what happens is >> like who so who ultimately owns the the the network?
>> Yeah. So I'm I'm glad you said it. So that's one of the the magic behind this this agreement. So Duke, the county, and us all cost shared. So if we were to do this by oursel, the cost three times what it ended up being. so the u the cost share agreements are all based on where the site's located on the spur. So we say we stand up a new fire station, then if it's right off the the ring, then we're paying the just the last mile since the ring is built. We don't have to build the ring anymore. So our cost to stand up a brand new site is significantly lower, but we we would own the last mile parts. The the ring has been constructed. So Duke, we do pay Duke a a maintenance fee to help us to maintain the the fiber if there are cuts and those those types of things.
But we can we we own our destiny when it comes down to adding new sites, >> right? So So if we have a new like a new rec center, we want to add sort of we want to extend to that rec center. Do we have to and we would we would the city would have to do at our expense. It's our rec center. >> Yes, sir. We would we would pay the the the construction cost, >> right? But we have to get approval from like Duke and the county to do that or can we just say, hey, it's one of our sites we want to extend. We do it. Well, we would work with them since the ring is still connect there. They own kind of the ring part, but the the mechanism to do it is we have a a very easy process to stand up a new site with Duke., and they do authorize us to to plug things to the backbone, but it's a it's.
A it's a part of a service agreement at that point. >> We do need their sign off essentially. >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah. And is there some what's the contractual relationship between Duke and the city on that? Is there some >> Yeah. So, we do have a so we're we're working on the process of the the SLAs's essentially for managing and maintaining the support, but the original agreements cover our the build and the growth parts of the the whole network. >> Okay. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Copek. >> Thank you. so, having not been here for the prior discussions, just some other quick background. So yeah, so this is a cost share between the city, the county and and Duke University. How much would is the kind of the entire investment in total for this work? >> Yeah. So our our part was $9.6 million over since FY 17. so we we've been in construction with them since FY17, but the total Duke has been building their their back they were going to do it anyway. And just give you some context. They were their original intent was to just build all of their sites a fiber network for their sites.
And then they they offered and and gratefully they offered us to be a part of the cost sharing. So so we paid for our parts up to a specific gracious up to a specific spur on a on the on the network notes. So it would have been a lot more if we were to try to do it oursel. Our mission was to divest from Spectrum Metro E. So we're kind of we're we're beholden to spectrums costs and n SLAs's and by us having our own fiber network we can deploy you know gigabit connections to each of our sites. so yeah our our portion is 9.6.
>> Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. >> You does anyone else have any questions? >> Okay. next up I have item number 15. I think council member Rrist you pulled that and that is the Federal Transit Administration bus and bus and bus facility grant project ordinance. >> Good afternoon Sean Egan transportation department. >> Good afternoon. >> So exciting stuff. It's always good when the FTA is giving us money to buy more buses to replace our buses. My question is why diesel?
>> So a couple of reasons. We had a conversation at the budget retreat in February of 2025 about the u the additional costs that we see for electric buses and the change in the federal policy position around battery electric buses. So, you know, with the new administration coming in January of 2025, they made it clear at the beginning of the administration that they would not be supporting electrification projects, electric vehicle charging, electrification of buses. and that to the extent that they were making decisions about things like grants for bus purchases that their priority was fossil fuel fuelpowered buses. So, the combination of the additional cost associated with the electrification, as well as the lack of there had been prior to that support, the city had received millions of dollars in federal grants for bus electrification previously., but it became clear, in early 2025 that, that would that the policy direction had shifted at the federal level., and so if we were going to secure competitive federal grants, we would need to use a we.
Would need to apply for a a fossil fuel powered vehicle. >> My recollection of the conversation, and I'm getting older, so I may maybe sort of like a little bit shaky on this, but I thought we talked about hybrid buses back in in the the budget conversations last year that we were sort of going hybrid, not sort of full electric. >>, as I recall, the the conversation was electric or diesel. Our experience with hybrid buses to date has been very unfavorable. So our highest failure rates as well as our highest maintenance costs are with our hybrid diesel electric fleet. so after we purchased buses in 2010 and 2012 we discontinued the hybrid program we were seeing very little savings in life cycle cost or emissions and a significant increase in failure rates as well as maintenance costs.
>> So I I guess so I appreciate that. I guess my question would be then so what does this do to our I mean our climate goal is related to like city facilities and our fleet right? So what is now buying is it like it's six of them, right? >> 10 >> 10. So what does that do to our like where we are in in sort of on the progress to re reach our climate goals and do we need to do something to sort of like mitigate for this now these these 10 buses >> because diesel is not I mean I know diesel's been >> not like the old diesel but still it's the dirtiest form of combustion right?
So I'll say that yeah diesel does not have the advantages that the zero emissions buses do on greenhouse gases or some of our other climate goal targets. I think where we're focused right now is really on looking kind of more broadly at growing our transit system, getting more people to ride transit, getting them out of their single occupant vehicles and onto transit. And in order to do that, we've got to have reliable transit. And we've got to increase the amount of buses in our fleet as well as the amount of service, the frequency that we're providing. and so our ability to do that is it relies heavily on you know having that availability of vehicles and then being able to replace our buses. So we're seeing a replacement cost of 2x for the battery electric compared to the diesel buses that when you include the the bus as well as all the charging equipment that's required., so that's a particularly challenging position for us financially without the kind of federal support that we were previously.
Receiving. >> No, I totally understand the sort of like the the challen the budget challenges and I understand the the and as you know I'm completely on target with the the goals of increasing ridership and and making sure our buses are reliable and frequent. Again, the question is like so so what does it do to our climate goals and what do we need to do to compensate for that since we are bringing 10 diesel buses now online? >> Yeah, council member Rrist if I can I would I would just say that you know we we track our our progress against the sustainability plan annually and in all cases with our buildings with our vehicles we're constantly going to be in need of making adjustments. I know the staff we just had a strategic planning discussion earlier this week indicated a need and a desire to update the sustainability plan. So these types of decisions as as we move forward will be incorporated into the plan.
Council would get a chance to see any updated changes. Obviously this transition does make the goals more more challenging, but we will continue to look for opportunities to address them. I do want to I do want to underscore I think Director Egan's recollection. I I I think we were fairly specific in that in that budget retreat about this being an unfortunate but necessary transition based on the finances in this fund that we simply could not fund the difference between between diesel and electric when once federal support dis disappeared.
>> I'm glad my colleagues recollections are are better than mine. >> Thank you. thank you., Council Member Baker, sorry. >> Yeah, it is unfortunate and I very specifically remember the conversation and where we landed because I I think about it a lot. I think about it a lot because it does suck. But I do think coming back to getting people out of cars has a huge positive, you know, benefit for for the climate. But the battery powered has many more benefits besides just the climate. They're much more comfortable to ride. they're much quieter if you live on a bus line. and so yeah, it is unfortunate. I was just gonna ask one question because previously when we when we talked about this I I believe director Egan that that you mentioned we were still looking into maintenance costs and how those compare. I remember hybrid being by far the the worst but maintenance costs between diesel and battery powered. Do we have any more information about how those compare?
>> So, we have a little bit more., we received in the last three months u 15 new battery electric buses. So, we have 22 battery electric buses in revenue service right now. But, you know, twothirds of those have only been in operation for a couple of months. so we are seeing good performance from them improved performance. and we're also seeing that the the cost sort of life cycle cost especially with diesel fuel prices where they are right now is shifting very much in favor of the battery electric compared to our diesel fleet. So, I'm glad that we have them because it is helping to mitigate the impact of the recent increase in diesel fuel prices on our budget.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you, Council Member Cop. >> Yeah, thank you, Director Egan, and for kind of returning back u my my colleague to the question of that comparison. So, as we get more data, would love to see that and you know the the unfortunate and totally unnecessary international state affairs we're in you know are contributing to the issue but we see volatility generally right around fossil fuel prices which I know EVs over the long term can help us to mitigate. So, thank you for studying that. The only reason I wanted to raise my hand I'm sorry I know that 15 and 16 were pulled. Are we just on 15 now? Are we on 16 yet? They're related. the rel I >> Yeah, I would just say that maybe I'm misreading it, but under item 16, I saw a statement around the lowest responsible bid for 40ft lowf flooror battery electric buses., and I just wasn't sure if that was intentional or if that was meant to be diesel.
>> I think it was meant to be diesel. So, the way that we bid it was that the vendors could offer across different propulsion systems and vehicle sizes. So, we may have, listed the wrong propulsion type, in the memo, and I apologize for that. >> Okay, that's fine. Understand it's diesel. Thanks. >> Thank you., did anyone else have any questions on 15 or 16? No. Okay. I just had one quick question. Director Egan, a few years ago, and I know it doesn't matter now, but it would just be helpful to be reminded of where we were pre January 2025, what were the original goals on the full like there there were clear goals on electrif electrification of the fleet and we were being really aggressive. So, I just wanted a reminder of that.
>> So, what we in the carbon neutrality plan, we set out a goal to be 100% electric fleet by 2035. So we will not meet that goal. >> 100% >> electric fe electric fleet by 2035. >> Yes. >> And then based on what we're doing now and if you can't provide that currently that's fine. To your point we know that diesel is more expensive. So we may the the costbenefit analysis of that might change. What do you all think would maybe be our target then?
>> I >> or how close will we be to the target? I mean, is it 2045? Is it, you know, like what what's the damage done? I guess >> I think, you know, we're looking at 2040 or later. and so it'll depend on the advances in the technology to the extent that as the technology advances and is more broadly adopted, costs come down. that is typically what we see. So, the, should the costs come down and should there be, a change in federal policy support for electric buses, I I think we could, we could look at that 2040 or later range, but, you know, this this is a four-year term.
>> Yeah. Thank you. So, that's a, just a important reminder. I remember at the 2025 budget retreat, it was a long conversation specifically on this and it was painful then and this is just a reminder and that the that you know these these vehicles are extremely expensive. The help that the federal government was providing us was critical to getting us to that goal. And so this is a a direct reflection of what what the kind of u domino effect on on municipalities who were also not just Durham who were trying to do this. Go ahead, Council Member Rest.
>> Yes. My own question. So by 2035, like how close will we be like like 80% there? Like how close will we be roughly? What's the >> We're at about a third now. >> Right now. >> and at this point we're not expecting to purchase any more battery electric buses at this point. our forecast is that we will be purchasing diesel buses at least you know through 2028 into 2029 when the the current administration's policy framework is in place. And so, that's what we're, that that's what we're anticipating is that we're we'll hold at that 33% until there's, some significant changes either in the cost or the federal support.
>> Yeah, that's tough. That's a tough, tough blow. Yeah. Thanks. >> Thank you. I don't think anyone else has any more questions. Thank you, Director Egan. >> Thank you., I think those are all the pulled agenda items because we did number 16 kind of tied up with number 15 and then, I think we were going to do presentation number seven and I flipped it. 25 will be our last presentation. So, if those folks could come up. >> Good afternoon.
>> Good afternoon. and this is for the ST-332C pavement condition study presentation. Thank you so much for being with us. >> Good to be before you. My name is Tasha Johnson, assistant director in engineering with the engineering and stormwater division environmental and street services department. here to present also with Scott Gordon who is our consultant. He's been before you a few times before, some of you may recall. and also Clint Blackburn who is over our contracting group and probably the only other person in the city who likes talking about asphalt more than I do. So we are providing for you an update to the city's pavement condition study. every three or so years we come before you and present those results. We were last before you in 2022 with the 2021 results. just a couple of quick things. We currently maintain 830 mi of streets plus. So that number continues to grow 1 to 2% per year. The study only analyzed the city maintained streets. There are hundreds of miles of DOT streets within.
The city limits. We do not assess those or maintain those. And let's see. Yes, city maintain streets. Oh, the average PCI is 68. Scott will get into those details a little more. we are happy with those results but we're also concerned with those results. We expected the number to go down because we have not been sufficiently funding the program until recently. So that align with what our expectations were but we are also happy with that number that we were able to stabilize it as much as we did in 2022. Our average score was 69. And so we believe that through the application of pavement preservation methodologies we were able to stabilize that score. we have one of the largest programs in the southeast and it has been critical to maintain an average PCI within the city. there are a lot more details and I will leave time for Scott to get into those.
Clint and I remain available for questions as well. >> Good afternoon council. My name is Scott Gordon. I'm president of roadway asset services. I'm also a licensed professional engineer in the state of North Carolina. I've been doing pavement evaluation, payment design for over 35 years now. So, this is as exciting as it gets. We love asphalt and we love pavements, but pretty exciting stuff. All right, I wanted to go over a few u definitions first before we kind of dive in. We talked about centerline miles.
Right now, we're measuring about 782. That changes as you bring in new streets into your network. paved area is measured at over 13.5 million square yards. that's your asset. That's what you maintain. That's to kind of put that in perspective. If we were to pave a two-lane road, we could go from Durham to Dallas at that kind of square footage or square yardage in there. A network replacement value. This is a big number of a billion dollars. That's if we were to go treat every road right now in its present condition and bring it up to great conditions. so that's a lot of money. So that just gives you an idea of the value of this asset that you're maintaining here. Lane mile by definition is just a a mile length which is 5,280 ft by 12 ft wide typical lanes.
This pavement condition index or we're going to reference a PCI value that is a number score from 0 to 100 that's raised determined based on how many distresses we have in the road. We're looking at cracks. We're looking at potholes. We're looking at rudding. A lot of different factors go into that score and they're each weighted based upon the structural value that they have in the performance of the roadway. If we talk about preservation, we're talking about surface seals. It's usually lightweight, cost-effective seals to extend the service life of a road pavement. And then the standard that we use is ASMD6433.
It's a national guideline we use to evaluate pavements. It's been around for over 40 years. it's by far the most common. we've North Carolina State did develop another method that that we have used in Charlotte over the years but now they've moved to ASM. So it's by far the most accepted method of doing this. just briefly look at the performance of a pavement. If you look at that line on the left that deteriorates down the black line going down that's typical life curve of a pavement whether it's asphalt or concrete they're going to follow under this similar deterioration theory.
What I want to point out here is we do preservation or light maintenance treatment which is represented by the blue lines. We can do those more often. They're much cheaper. They extend the service life by shifting that curve if you will. And based on your dollars at $5 a square yard for maintenance at that level, contrast, if we let the road deteriorate down to where we started getting structural failures down in the poor category, we're looking at about $29 a yard to come in and repair that to get it back up to a good condition. So, if you look at the life cycle cost analysis of a pavement, it's going to be much cheaper to do those cheaper treatments more frequently. So, that's part of what we look at balancing here.
>> What's that scale on the bottom? Is that like a year, five years? What are we talking about? >> There is no definition of it. It's going to be in years typically what we measure. So, if you look at a pavement and we design it, it's going to last about 40 years on average. >> Four >> 40 >> 40 >> four zero >> for very good pavement. >> Yeah. Well, that's how long it'll last before we have to rebuild it. So, you're going to have deterioration and that type of thing with that.
Go over real quick the equipment we do to do the measurements. this is most important on the back end of the van canal levered off there is the LCMS laser crack measuring system. This is state-of-the-art looking at 1 millimeter resolution imagery along with lasers that are shot on the pavement surface. The biggest thing we get out of that is the texture of the pavement surface. And based upon that texture, we can measure cracks, widths, links, patterns, those type of things.
And that's what gets us to this PCI score of determining what type of of deterioration or distress we have. We've got GPS antennas all over the van. That way every image we take out of the van is geoloccated. We know a time stamp when it was taken. We also know the location of where it was taken within the roadway. you see some other pieces of equipment. The front bumper there certified as a profiler. Gives us the ride quality, the smoothness of the road, what you feel driving down the roadway. All that data is pulled together and calculated to get the scores that we're going to review here in a little bit. We do follow your GIS mapping. We don't recreate your segments or GIS. We use what the city's established. We follow that. What we're doing is adding information to your geo database files with pavement information that we'll be able to update every cycle that we do this. The image on the right kind of illustrates the little blue dots.
Is where we're taking imagery. So, like I said, we can locate where each one of those are. we can associate those with images and where we're measuring distress. So, it keeps us able to track where we are within the network. So, when we get into the results, you see the table there with the different colors. Those scales illustrate really the the condition description is just a a noun in there saying what we think the condition is. The score on the left is really what we're evaluating with. as we go green is a very new road, good condition. And as we go down through the colors there and the score drops, you'll see we get into very poor, serious, and failed. you'll see the categories of the percentages within each of the the the categories there. How much of the percent of the network is in that category. we've put up there the 2018, 2021, and the 2024 numbers for comparison. I was involved in the 2018 with another firm. We started re and we.
Did that in 21 and now in 24. So if you look at the average PCI, this is just one parameter that we look at with the condition of the network, but it's an average score of all the street conditions. And you can see we've hovered around 68 69 for the last several cycles. Just as a comparison, the national average we see is around 65 to 75 score. Most cities are targeting 70 as a goal. So you guys are right there just a little bit below what most cities are going to want to target as their ultimate goal. U so we're there.
The number that we're watching that we're wanting to take a little more action on is that backlog number. So if we define backlog that is a road that has a score of 40 or less. To get to that kind of score below 40, we're seeing enough structural failures or structural distress that the pavement is starting to fail. We're starting to lose serviceability. It's going to be a rougher ride and we need to go out and structurally repair that roadway. So when we say backlog, it's things below 40 that need major structural work.
You've seen that number climb from 2018 at 12 1.5% to 21 it was 15% and this last one in 24 at 16 1.5%. So we're seeing that number grow. Our goal now in maintenance is going to be to stabilize that number and reduce it and keep that from growing. because that's where most of the money is going to have to be spent in maintenance. Looking at this bar chart, you can see the distribution of the network within each of these categories. so it's a nice stair step there. What we want to see is majority of your network above 50% is up in those green categories, which is where we are with your network.
So that's good. the the fair to satisfactory where you really want to focus on preservation treatments to try to extend the life. Like I said, once you get down to the poor, you're starting to look at a few overlays. Very poor and lower. You're starting to do major structural repairs in place recycling, reconstruction, that type of thing. So that's how we focus there. But the distribution is pretty typical of what we'll see in networks. This is just looking at how we define maintenance. I've worked with your staff to go through and look at the scale. So you'll see a minimum PCI and a maximum PCI range of where we would reply apply each of these maintenance treatments. And then there's also going to be an improvement. The other thing to look at is that dollars per square yard category. We work with your team based on the bids that you're getting to do this kind of work so that we have real dollar cost in there. And that is how we.
Determine in our models how much a project's going to cost. So we'll look at the area of the pavement along with those unit rates in there to determine that. So you see the different things that we're doing from reclamite which is a a surface seal down to a microsurfacing down into the cape seals to where that's really more the preservation range. Then you'll see the overlays and down in rejuvenation where we're having to do structural repairs to that.
One thing we don't want to forget is the flat work, concrete cost that may be associated with these projects. So when you get into some of the street work where we're having to do some structural repairs, often associated is we have to upgrade the sidewalks, the ADA ramps, the curb and gutter. So that cost is burdened into that unit rate I was showing you. so that when we get a project cost, we are understanding and realizing the extra work we're going to have to do with the concrete flat work with the project.
So how do we decide what road to go treat within our models? So couple different things I want to define here. There's prioritization which is simple ranking. We can basically go through and say what's the PCI of those roads? Rank all the roads from top to bottom of how they score as far as our pavement condition index. Some people want to look at that as what if I just start working on the worst roads and do worst first. That's not your most cost-effective way of handling this. You're going to be spending all your money on big major projects. In the meantime, all the roads that are in fair condition are going to deteriorate down into that same bucket, if you will.
You're going to be chasing it. You're never going to catch up with the money. So, what you have to do is an optimization where you're doing a balance of treatments. So, what we look in our model is looking at how how can we most cost effectively use our money to get the biggest benefit for what we're providing. And some of that is going to mean when do we treat roads? What roads do we treat? And I'll give you example in just a little bit, but we're looking at financial optimization.
How to best spend our money to get the biggest bang for the buck. So, some examples of prioritization. Like I said, we could rank based on PCI condition. We also look at traffic classification. Of course, an arterial road that goes down into your high commerce areas of downtown. on a higher volume road is going to carry a little bit more weight than maybe a lower volume residential street as far as the priority of how we're going to treat things. Surface types, majority of your network is asphalt. That's generally going to carry a little bit higher priority. That's also requiring more maintenance than concrete pavements do.
The final part is the equity lens. We looked at this in the 21 analysis also where we're running through looking at the FIPS districts within the latest sensor data and using that information to put a weight factor on there. So basically what that's meaning we have several roads in the same category. We're going to look at the underprivileged neighborhoods to be able to treat those first and ensure that we're getting to those areas and not ignoring them. So as we move through optimization here's the waiting factor. Like I said, the the PCI condition is really a 70%, that's carrying the majority of it's telling us the condition. Traffic classification, the volumes is a 15% weight and the equity lens is another 15% weight in that decision process.
So when we go through and start looking at some of the results of how this program really works, I want to show you an example of a couple different conditions. So the road on the left there are scored a PCI 64. According to our breakdown, what we're going to do is go through and put a cape seal on that project. It's going to cost $11.91 a square yard to do that work. The break point, if you were to go back and look at a previous table at 60, we start doing a more expensive treatment.
If you look in the picture on the right, that's a PCI 44 that falls into that mill and fill category. That is $29 a square yard. So, the difference between those two treatments is $179 per square yard. We call that the cost of deferral. If I ignore that road on the left long enough, it's going to fall into that category on the right and cost me an additional $17 a yard. So, if we look at that road on the left being at a 64, that's in a critical range. Meaning, if we ignore it for another year or two, it is going to deteriorate into that much more expensive treatment. However, the road on the right at 44, excuse me, we've got a few years before that's going to deteriorate into a more costly treatment. So, we could defer that a few more years. I know people want to see that road improve, but back to cost efficiency and financial optimization. It makes more sense to treat the road on the left before we get.
To the road on the right because we have more time and it's a better use of our money. So that's just an example of why sometimes doing worst first is not the best option. So when we run our models, what we do is build several budget scenarios that we run through a 10-year analysis and look at the improvement we can do to your network based on certain amount spending annually. So the number on the bottom is the years of the analysis. The network PCI is on the Y.
The different colors represent different budget amounts. So the bottom white lines that do nothing. If we didn't spend any money, how fast would your network deteriorate? What that represents? Then you start looking at the orange line that is 20 million a year. You see we still deteriorate from our present condition. Move up to the next purple, it's 25. We get up to the blue of 30. Now we're finally starting to hold steady in our models of the condition of the network. If you want to spend more to go 35, now we can start seeing some improvement in the network condition.
So, I want to point out a few things here in the result tables that we came from our analysis. One thing I do want to point out in the scenario, what we're labeling as a $25 million project really includes $5 million for inspections, programs, testing. You've got to have inspectors out there watching these projects. so there's cost associated. We recognize that in the budget, so we're really only spending 20 million on the street. But you'll see each year where we apply that treatment, what the ending PCI is for each year and how it builds up. So even at 25 million, we're still dropping that PCI slightly from where we are right now. The number I do want to point out is that far column on the right says ending backlog percentage. If you recall earlier, we were at 16% in the network.
That number is significantly lower now. The reason for that in our models we took into account the additional money you started spending in 25. So back in 23 and 24 we were working on around 15 million. We went up to I believe it was 25 in in in 2025 and we took into account those projects that you're working in spending that money and you can already see the impact that is making on your backlog by reducing that significantly.
Now the key is in this model here's how can we keep that from growing back up and you see at that 25 million level that number is still starting to creep up when you get to the bottom there. Now look at the table on the bottom right. We've moved to a $35 million budget and you can see we've stabilized that backlog. It's not growing. We're maintaining that. Our PCIs are climbing and going up. So these are the kind of numbers that we look through to try to determine how much money we think we need to spend annually to be able to keep this network growing.
This is just a trend line from these scenarios that allows you to quickly look at the x-axis is the annual budget being spent. You can look at the blue trend line and go up and intersect and go over to the y-axis and see the network PCI result after 10 years. So the yellow line represents a steady state of 68 of where we stand today. You follow that over to the blue line, we're probably about 27 28 million to maintain that annually.
So that concludes what I had. We're happy to answer any questions you've got. >> Go ahead, Council Member Bur. Sorry. >> Thank you so much. Who knew asphalt would be so delightful to learn about? In regards to the PCI, I just had a question. Just wanted to know for those that have been listed in the, poor, very poor, serious category. Is there anything that you can like is there a pattern around geography? Like are you all clustered in like certain communities or can you like just unpack that a little bit more for me?
>> We can look at a map. We we often study that. I have not seen any trends that would indicate that it's a a geologic feature or soil conditions that's causing the biggest problems. I I think it's pretty well dispersed. you might have a better feel, Clint, of where where some of that's occurring. >> Good afternoon. Clint Blackburn with Environmental Street Services., no, it's pretty much scattered all over the city., if you look at the PCI map that we have, it's it's kind of like a gunshot went off. I mean, it's I mean like a shotgun. It's just everywhere.
It's just it's there's not one specific neighborhood. >> Council member Cook. And Council Member Wrist, >>, I just want to say that I appreciate y'all. I math is not my strong suit. My spouse has a PhD in it, and I'm like listening to y'all do these prioritizations and just so grateful that it is not on me to make these calculations., one thing I was wondering is that there was a there was a statement in here talking about types of pavement materials and the difference in deterioration. I'm assuming yall are also putting that into the the analysis on what to use, but I'm I'm wondering if we know that asphalt is deteriorating more quickly, like are we just using it in extinuating circumstances? Is that still our go-to?
Like what what does that determination look like? >> To answer your question, yes. The deterioration rate for asphalt is much quicker than concrete. So on average, an asphalt's designed for 20 to 30 years. Concrete's expected to last 40 to 50 years. it's a more durable product. The problem is the cost is quite a bit more. concrete cost be three to four times that of asphalt in initial construction. if you do a life cycle cost analysis over those 30 or 40 years, the asphalt starts catching up because of the maintenance that's required with asphalt. Concrete, it's not a whole lot of maintenance other than sealing joints and maybe replacing a panel here and there. so asphalt is much more intensive on the maintenance side but still if you run a 30 40 year most analysis will say asphalt in the long run is still a little bit cheaper >> when and >> and to add that a lot of our most of our pretty much all of our streets have.
Utilities underneath them. So as soon as you start cutting concrete your your maintenance costs skyrocket. So for us, asphalt really makes a lot of sense because of our utilities and what we have underneath the streets., and trying to maintain that and still maintain the upper surface., ashvault's very easy to repair, very easy to to cut a trench and put it back. And concrete is not. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think this is something that comes up a lot for folks. they're just driving down the roads and they're like, "Oh, this didn't have >> a crack in it last year and or the oh, the city just repaired this road and already it look we can see blemishes on it." And so I think it's it's just an important thing for us to be able to be to explain accurately., but that makes sense to me., those are all my questions at the moment. Thanks.
>> Thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Rest. >> Thank you, Mayor Pro Tim. thanks for the presentation and really appreciate the sort of like the analysis kind of looking forward where we need to be. You know residents in our in our annual survey talk a lot about roads having sort of good roads in Durham and it's something that around the country like keeping the potholes paved is something every citizen cares about where they live. So appreciate your work on this. I guess I'm trying to line this up with where we are. So for the last couple years we've spent 25 million right and that's maybe like 10 million on CIP and 15 from the bond or was where are we?
Yeah. Yeah, >> I was going to put my budget director on the spot. Yeah, so the the bond had a significant impact adding our adding resources to our paving budget that those dollars are running out, but I'll let Director Royen share where we've been. >> good good afternoon, Christina Reen, budget management services center. So we did have pre-bond million that we were kind of providing for streets. 11 million comes from operating, four million from CIP and then the rest right now we're doing 25 million. The rest of that would be bond funding. we will >> extra 10 million >> the extra 10 million. Yes. So we will be you know that will be expiring >> we have a little bit of bond money before 2027 >> about 2020. Yeah. About another year or two of bond money and then we will have to figure out a way to maintain that 25 million after. So through 20 through fiscal year 27 we can do the 25 million which >> yeah I can get we can.
>> roughly yeah that's good and so your analysis says that like by doing the 25 million we're sort of like essentially steady state so we it's good to we got as we think ahead we got to figure out how do we what do we do to keep our roads and I guess the other question rel to that is like so how many if we've got whatever forgot the number you had there for paved roadways but what's a how many how many miles do we add every year of paved roadway like what percentage do we add to our to our network.
>> Our network is increasing about 1.6 one one and a half to to 3% per year. It depends on the year. Some years we have a lot of miles added and some years we don't, but it's roughly about 1.6% per year. >> So, we got to factor that in as well. And is that a fairly geometric sort of like sort of the more miles is it like exponentially greater cost or essentially like is it sort of proportional? >> We usually put an inflation on it.
Even in the costing in the model of about four or 5%. to account for that as as far as what you're growing we looked at that I don't remember the exact numbers on the growth but it's factored in it's it wasn't significant you know in the number on that it's it's going to go up several hundred thousand yes but it's not going to add millions to it as you add those in. So we need to be thinking about like like after 27 25 million plus, right? I mean your model shows at 35 million we're sort of getting to actually like improving over time. So somewhere in that range. Okay, >> that's really helpful. I guess my other question is I appreciate the thinking about the prioritization versus optimization. It's very helpful to think about that and I imagine like environmental street services already doing that kind of analysis, right?, I guess my question is is whether and I know I know we hear this from res like.
Clint, I call you all the time and say, "Hey, like when's whatever road going to get paved?" I get I get emails. So, is there going to be is environmental and street services going to prepare like a list or plan for like which roads in the next say three to five years will be paved. So the so that there's a little more clarity for residents about okay I live on whatever street I know that in three years it's going to be done because it's on the list because I know right now you've got the the pavement the PCI or the index but it doesn't really say like which roads are going to be done when. So so will there be a list that citizens can see to know like >> when will my road or my neighbors roads be done? AB >> absolutely. So, we are actually working on a 10-year plan mostly so that we can work with you know other departments like water management and transportation to plan out their work.
But and we will probably publish like up to maybe five years really after three years the plan gets really washy because you don't really know how things are going to degrade over time. It's it's a it's a guess. so yes, we will publish, you know, some some amount of years. I don't know how many we will wind up. We're going to have to look at the model. We're we're wrapping it up in the next couple months. And so we'll get it on the get it out there to everybody this summer.
>> That'd be great. Yeah. No, I I realize things do change, but I think some kind of plan that gives residents visibility on when Yeah. and where would be really helpful. I know also like I think DOT does this for state roads, right? To make sure And if you look at the DOS, you'll notice that from year to year, those roads shift. So every time they redo their plan and they do it once a year, those roads will shift years on occasion., and so that you'll see, but we'll be redoing ours like every three years. So every three years you'll see the shift. And that's why I don't want to publish too much because I don't want anybody to really get set like, hey, my road's going to be done because it's not always on that exact because as we see things deteriorate, they'll shift from year to year. because it's all about optimization.
>> I get it. Yeah. But but that greater visibility even in the short term like three years. Absolutely. Yeah. And and and does that mean we also do do we coordinate our work also with DOT if we if we see a road I don't know that's on their list. So we would for like I know that restriping is something we try to do when they're repaving. So do we is this plan also include us coordinating with DOT for what they're doing?
>> not really because we are really like I said we're go ahead. >> Hello again Tasha Johnson. So transportation does coordinate with NC DOT for their striping work and trying to make use of those opportunities. But this plan that the work that we do we do not often coordinate with >> so it's because this is all it's all local road so you don't you don't correct >> okay thank you appreciate it look forward to the plan I know I know residents I know BPAC everybody's been asking about that so I really appreciate that >> if I could expand on your question earlier about the time >> so if you take care of street and you do nothing to it it's f 15 to 20 year maximum life cycle so what we're doing trying to extend the life to 40 and I actually kind of would like to see if we could make it to 50. so that's that's what we're trying to do is extend the use usable life cycle of a road the.
Level of service out many many more years from like 15 to to 40 or even more. >> Appreciate Thank you. >> Thank you. Go ahead, Council Member Copac. >> Yes, thank you. really appreciate the presentation. been helpful to see that that the direct relationship between that increase in investment that we're seeing with bringing down the back backlog and increasing our PCI. I think this is for a lot of folks the most evident and visible indication of their tax dollars at work and you know both with the increase I think in the operating and CIP and then the decision around the budget which residents voted for. I mean there's a direct relationship there and so it's helpful to see that result. Thank you.
Council members mostly covered the main question I had about thinking about what's coming. So, I understand that you can project out to about three years, but something that might be closely following after that point, you know, in three years it might change because something else may deteriorate faster. So, it is a little hard to predict., but do you have like a a database of all of the identified projects and how how long does that list go? How far out does it go? even understanding that we should be careful about how to interpret that and making any promises about where it will fall.
>> So So that's what we're working on right now. So right up until this point, we've been doing it from year to year. but we we've been working over the last year to put together the 10-year plan. So at that point, we will be able to say, you know, in the next year, next few years, this is exactly what we're planning on doing., and that way we can better coordinate with, you know, water management on their repairs and transportation with striping and other departments on the work they plan on doing as well.
>> Okay., that would be super helpful and interesting to see. I have to say I love the map. >> I'm very visual person and that was super helpful to be able to go across and see. >>, which also just, you know, is evident in what we hear from constituents about what they're experiencing on their, road networks. And so, thank you for that that presentation of the data. my other question just has to do about about different treatments. I understand that Greensboro may have backed off of some of their use of microsurfacing on high volume roads because of concerns around how quickly they deteriorate in those high volume networks. what is our stance on that and what have we seen in in our use of the microsurfacing treatment on high volume roads?
>> Good question., so what you've seen, I'm sure y'all have seen some of the roads like MLK and Barbie where we've had some failures. That's a phenomenon called stripping., and I won't get into the details, but it it has to do with the the soils. So in the southern Durham, we have the Turassic basin and it and the soils are hold a lot of water and we have a lot of groundwater. So it's affecting those streets. So we are we have discussed not doing micro on the thoroughares high volume streets in the southern portion of Durham mostly because that's where the trash basin is. We've had a lot more success with it up north., so, so we're we're looking into that, trying to figure out exactly where that is and how that's going to affect the micro and where we can do better use those those dollars and not have it deteriorate. And we're also kind of, you know, the the conversations we've had with, industry experts across the.
Nation or really in the south., this is a this is a problem that many cities have and it's and it's and as far as we can tell it's not it's not something you can easily predict because it's about groundwater and and and there's there's a lot that goes into it and so yeah so we are looking so we're not going to stop doing it. We're just going to try to be smarter about where and how we're doing it. >> Great. Thank you Mr. Blackburn and and team. So thank you.
>> Thank you Council Member Baker. >> Thank you. thanks for for being here and for the presentation. I think it rivals that parking presentation that we got. just first of all this shows I mean this is so important. I mean this is consistently the largest line item in the CIP. So being as efficient as possible is vital given how limited the resources are for the for the city. just a couple questions. One is let's say we we have streets that are 36 feet wide and we go down to 28 feet or something like that. That kind of dimensional change does that have any significant impact on on reducing costs or is it pretty comparable?
>> I'll I'll take that one. so yes, it will reduce the cost because we're not paving, we're not using as much material, paving as much roadway. So it does reduce the cost. and if before I turn it over to Scott to see if he has more to say, I do want to reiterate going back to the 10-year prioritization plan, that would be a financially constrained document. And so assuming that the funding remained consistent throughout that would only be how we could deliver it even on the first couple years of that plan, much less the outer years.
>> Yeah. And you want to add >> No. Okay. >> You got it covered. >> and then things like shade shade on on pavement, street trees, those kinds of things. Does that have any impact on how on on the quality of >> Yeah, most definitely. U the deterioration of asphalt is usually due to oxidation. UV rays on the surface deteriorates it starts it makes it gray faster so you'll see it visibly. Excuse me. We're talking about allergies earlier. trees is the other issue because of the roots. So if you look at the location of the tree, imagine those roots are pulling in moisture. They're trying to survive. So it's pulling all the water out of the soil. It's causing it to settle more. When a wet period, you get more moisture around the root ball because of the tree. And then those roots also pop up looking for moisture and they'll heave the sidewalks and the pavement. So trees are probably the biggest thing that affect and water affect the performance of pavements.
>> Okay. So some good from trees and some bad from trees. >> Good from trees could slow, but the roots are the the issue. >> Okay. I'm just going to assume they even out. Okay. So all right. >> I love trees, but from an engineering standpoint, it's tough. >> All right. okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. >> Sure. >> Go ahead. Go. >> Well, I just wanted to build on one of Council Member Baker's questions, about you know, reducing the, you know, the the amount of of street in the street, I guess. and so as we're pursuing greater efforts around traffic calming you know across the city you know projects that are going to you know shrink city streets that are four-lane highways or some cases DOT but streets that are like going through our city that are four-lane highways down to two lanes that instead have let's say bike lanes on the side like you know you know do we track and think about like if we do a lot more of that.
That it can like reduce our maintenance costs over time as well because obviously a a bike or pedestrian crossing across that that asphalt concrete is not going to be having the same impact as a large truck rolling down or or cars. That's not influence our our maintenance decisions. that's more of a safety. So that's more falls into our vision zero in transportation some of the decisions they're making., so as far as our decision- making process goes about maintenance and about that's not because it's it's a it's not a it's not a majorly significant amount of money difference when you're reducing from like let's say 30 feet to 20 ft. It's I mean there is it's a you know because we do have a square footage cost and that's how we price things out. So there is it does affect it but not significantly to the point that we would really make maintenance decisions based on that.
Okay. It's really about safety, about vision zero, and about making you know, good decisions about how to keep people safe. >> Okay. Thank you. I'm think I'm going to use my the privilege of my colleague as well to to do some of my own mental math and assume that it still nets out in the favor of some cost reductions, too, as well as safety. So, >> yeah, it will it will save us money, but that's not a that's not part of the decision making. Yeah.
>> Thank you, Council Member Ruth. >> Thank you, Mayor P. So, while you're doing your mental math, I'm I'm gonna try my like my elementary physics here. So like it just occurs to me that so like so I know that like heavier cars cause pavement to degrade faster. Correct. >> Yeah. >> So what about the relationship between like speed and like >> absolutely >> pavement conditions? So like more speed equals like so like there's so there's a relationship there, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah. So your high volume roads do deteriorate faster because they have speeds, they have heavier vehicles. Yeah, absolutely. that's why we see more of the deterioration on our micro on those heavy streets instead of our residentials. and and in fact, you know, with you know, some of our high volume bus routes really beat our streets up and we're having to go and beef those streets up when we when when when those routes change. like transportation is working on their bus rapid transit. and they're going to be running these buses every 10 minutes. We're going to have to work on those streets and and make them make the profile thicker.
>> But again, so like so weight times speed is is more is more stress. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, I got Where's our We have our lobbyist from Checkmate here. We'll be talking later, but right about our about our legislative agenda. So, like if we if we drop the speed limit on all our city streets from like 35 to 25 like what does that do to maintenance costs? >> Slower volume slower speeds equal healthier roads. That is true. >> Would you agree with that? >> Yeah.
>> So, can you quantify that anyway? Now you're >> maybe Scott could I could not >> I I I could not quantify that. >> No. >> Yeah. So it sounds so there is a relationship. It says >> there's a relation. >> There is a relation. It's it's tough because you're looking at the load per axle if you want to get into the details of it and and the speed. So there's a combination of a lot of factors. It's really more the vibrations due to speed because if you hit a bump and that load is is pounding, you know, it's going to make a bigger difference.
>> That's good to know as we think about speed limits. Thank you. >> Thank you. Anyone else before we start to continue geeking out on pavement? >> Come on. We've had fun. >> I I do actually have a question because this is around our street tree program and and our you know native tree planting and things like that. some some trees are better about the type of root system. So, when we're thinking about our native tree planting guides for residents, >> are we are are we are we thinking about the types of trees that we're encouraging folks to plant? Because I think is it like sycamores are like terrible and they're like their root system is really going to cause a lot of damage.
>> So, the conversations I've had with our arborist, the city arborist, they are very much considering what types of trees that they put in the rightway. They have a list of approved trees that they, you know, will publish and when we, you know, with our sidewalk projects when we put in trees or work with them to put trees back in, they have a list of trees that they give us for that. So, they are thinking very closely about those types of trees. Yeah. >> Thank you.
>> Anyone else? We're all good. >> One parting comment. I do this work all over the country and I've got to say your your group is one of the best that we work with. >> We agree. >> Including Charlotte. Okay. But >> yeah, and we heard that. Thank you. Yeah. >> Thanks. >>, next up is our presentation number 19, I believe. It's our American Rescue Plan ARPA update.
Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon, >> Mayor Pro Tim and members of city council. I'm Bertha Wimbush, deputy city manager. Also have for with me here for this presentation, Andrew Holland, assistant director of budget and management services., with this work, we have had many partners., and you see some of those with us in the room today. You might wonder why they're still here., we are really excited about our partnership and we've been working on this project since 2021. I want to bring attention to our theme which is on our first slide.
Durham's down payment towards transformative change. This has been our theme since the beginning of this project. As I stated earlier, we've been working on this since 2021. So obviously we can't include all the information in this presentation. We would be here for a really long time. So we wanted to add all of the agenda items that have come to council related to ARPA funds so that if you would like to go see any of the projects, any of the agenda items or watch the meetings, you have those here before you.
We've also presented many updates to city council over the years and those are included as well. We also have a Upper website that we stood up at the beginning of the process and all of our information is on that site as well as all of our arrangements with our nonprofit organizations. We want to give a little background since this has been over the last five years. As a reminder, the American Rescue Plan provided $350 billion for state and local governments to respond to CO 19. Durham County's allocation was 62.5 million and the city of Durham received 52 million. We received the funds in two tranches over one year.
Under the US Treasury interim rules, there were eligible categories as listed here. It's really important to note that because the final rules, which were finalized in January 2022, effective April 2022, significantly broaden how the funds could be used by cities and counties, in particular, the revenue loss category, as well as adding affordable housing. As a budget director on March 18th, 2024, I beca I came before council and I proposed a process by which we spend these funds. We knew that we wanted this money to go out into the community and so but first we wanted to think about looking internally. We had an internal process where we had committees internal that talked about things like revenue loss, economic development and other areas in our organization that we could use the funds for in the eligible categories. We wanted city council to also have a process by which they could prioritize proposals.
But more importantly, we wanted to go out to the community. We wanted the community to help us decide number one which categories we want to focus on, the eligible categories, and also where we need to focus our dollars. We created a website, as I mentioned before, so that we could let the community know one that we have this funding coming to us and two what our process was going to be. So we started with community engagement. Externally we had two communitywide events in partnership with Durham County also North Carolina Central univers and also other organizations. We heard from hundreds of residents during this process. This was an exciting process because North Carolina Central University had already decided to have these events and we showed up to events and said we actually have real dollars.
Folks were really excited and some of the comments we received was you talk to us all the time but you don't come with money and this time we actually came with money. We also developed a survey so that residents who may not been able to attend the events could actually give us their feedback before the July 31st deadline. We received 80 proposals for funding. This is just the flyer that we used for the budget healing event. Again, this was in collaboration with Durham County and North Carolina Central University and also we had our partner departments as well to help us fil facilitate those discussions.
So, our final applications for funding ultimately 71 final applications of funding were submitted, reviewed, and scored by committees made up of residents as well as city staff. The applications totaled 136 million. Obviously, we did not have $136 million to allocate and I wanted to show you the breakdown of the demographics of those applications on this slide. So, on December 21st, 2021, BMS came to city council and we made a recommendation to fund all projects that scored 24 above by resident staff committees.
City Council appointed us a group of council members to look at our recommendations and also do work behind the scenes to make a recommendation of their own. On May 18th, 2022, city council came forth and recommended approving 34 projects which awarded 70% of the organization's requests at a maximum of 1 million. Three organizations formally withdrew funding requests resulted in 31 projects. City Council also created a list of deferred proposals for joint city county funding and we also funded some of those projects at a later date.
So here is a list of those proposals that were approved. This list was immediately posted on our website for residents to see. So our residents and the committees decided on the priority groups and you can see those groups on the left of the chart. Economic equity, community resiliency, sa safe, stable housing, health and wellness. So this slide shows how those proposals were funded and the categories they were funded in. Other funding decisions were made. We originally told the proposals that we were going to have a second round.
Instead of having a second round, we made some targeted investments because as I mentioned after the we had our process, the inner rules, the final rules allowed for affordable housing. So again, we approved 13.5 million for affordable housing which was matched by Durham County. We approved 10 million for favor street quarter projects. We also approved 466,000 for Central Hispano and that was because that was in that category health and wellness. We had a very small proposal amount that we allocated initially. Council approved 1 million for Hatai justice reborn and that was a city council budget request.
Durham County came later and matched our 1 million for arts and culture. And then the Durham County also awarded 750,000 to match the city's 750 for digital equity. So if you think about the amount that was allowed to Durham County, they actually provide a lot of their funding to us to support our initiatives. When we came to you in October, we showed you this reconciliation. And I'll give you a few seconds to look at that. At that time, we told you we had an unobligated amount of 249,000.
We proposed using that to support staff salaries. you all shared with us that you wanted that money to go back into the proposals and also provide any other funding requests related to the deferred items. So, I'm going to turn it over to Andrew Holland. >> All right. Thank you, Deputy City Manager Wimbush. Andrew Holland, Budget Management Services Department. So I'm going to focus on the 34 approved organizations that we initially started with. three organizations formally withdrew funding requests which left us with 31 organizations remaining. So today we have 15 projects that have been completed. We have 11 projects that are in process. it's important to note that a good portion of those projects are close to being completed.
And last but not least, we have five projects that have been suspended. So now I'm going to talk about the activities that have been completed and also talk about the performance measures in which we have been measuring since the inception of monitoring these 31 projects. So the ARPA team has completed 40 of the 67 desk reviews. also completed 34 to 67 site visits. Since FY22, there has been a total of 490 490 hours in direct one-on-one meetings with with subreients. And we have paid 366 invoices equating to about 17.7 million. And our expenditure goal for these 31 projects is around a little over $19 million.
So, next I'm going to talk about potential reallocations and some potential remaining dollars as relates to specifically to these 31 projects. So, we're estimating a total of two FT FT excuse me FTFC projects which is about $330,000. Also wanted to highlight the contracts of concern. It's actually one in this particular organization is in our intervention process. So we continue to work work with this organization to make sure that they are meeting their milestones and that is a great segue into some of the practices and the work that we do within our opera team where we want to ensure that these subreients have access to staff. So that includes having one-on-one meetings.
Also we want to ensure that we provide technical assistance to these recip subreients and also we continue to conduct desk reviews, site visits and we have our bi-weekly ARPA hours as well. So, I'm not going to go into great detail on this slide, and I know Deputy City Manager W Bush highlighted some of these projects. But I really want to emphasize that what you see on this slide in the next few slides. this is captured in our quarterly report that we submit to the US Treasurer.
And here's some other projects as well. Please note that this information is in reflection of December 31 of 2025. So, our goal is to hopefully have a quarterly update submitted by the end of this month. And this information is also published on our ARPA website. And as Deputy City Manager W Bush alluded to, this is how these 30 projects are I guess allocated into these four buckets, categories. again this is submitted in the quarterly report to the US Treasury and this is based off of December 31 2025. So next I'm going to hand it off to Deputy City Manager Wush.
>> So here's where we are now. as close as we can get to the numbers of where we what we think we're going to spend as well as what we think we're going to have available. We asked the finance department to actually project out our interest earnings through December 31st, 2026. And as you can see here, all of the categories that we talked about earlier on this screen. The bottom line is we believe we will have about 1.6 million available. And we wanted to bring this to you now because as we are talking about the budget and budget priorities, we want you to know what we have available. And this is interest earnings. There is no timeline on these dollars. So they are available to support our budget. city council priorities any other discussions you want to have about initiatives. And so this is where we are now with the projected interest earnings which again I want to repeat that because those are projections out to December 31st 2026.
And we've allocated interest before for some for some of our projects particularly DHA in the past but we wanted to make sure since the we have to spend all the funds by December 31st we got as close to the number as possible. So another look at those numbers in a different way showing the interest earnings total and also how much of interest earnings we have spent on projects. So if you have any questions about what we shared with you before this is a good time to ask those questions. After that we want to showcase some of our projects.
>> Thank you. Oh, no. I was gonna see who had questions first. >> Okay, go ahead. Council member Bur, >> thank you so much for this lovely report in April., lovely. And also, but no, all seriousness, glad to see AR money at use. Again, I said earlier when I toured Durham Tech, I got to see where the affordable housing dollars will be utilized at. So, I'm really passionate about that. And I saw that there's a new banner up on the abandoned building on Fedville Street. So, I guess $10 million is being utilized appropriately. my question about the suspended funds can you just tell us like that means basically like they were not not in compliance or like how are we defining that or they just like halted the process or for the orgs and this match the the ones that slide with the 15 completed 11 in process and five projects suspended. So just want to like unpack the definition of >> Okay. we can give you details on.
Those projects. Do you want to you want to share that? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. there were a number of reasons and each organization was different. It may be due to low levels of spending their funds. And and there and again there were a number of reasons and we'll be happy to provide you with you all with the pro the reasons of suspending those contracts. >> Okay. And then so for the intervention phase, is that just only the one organization for the $768,000?
Yes, there was another organization which they are transitioning out of the TFC because we've been working closely with them to make sure that they are at a level in which they can expend all of their funds by the deadline. >> Can you u provide the definition of turkey of TFC? >> Yeah. Termination convinced. Yeah. Madam attorney, do you would you like to Yeah. So basically it is where our organization has you know reached a point where we feel as though that they may be at risk of not fulfilling you know their obligation or their contract. So it is just best for us to work with that organ. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I'm not attorney.
>> Okay., hello Carlos Hernandez with the city attorney's office. So, TFC is not meant to be confused. Termination for convenience, not cause. So, a lot of people get those confused. Termination convenience is a contractual right that the city writes into the majority of its contracts to have the ability to exit a contract without any kind of cause. So, it's not necessarily a negative anything negative in terms of the party. It could be shifting priorities of the city that we decided TFC a contract that no longer aligns with our strategies. it's for any reason. So seeing a TFC doesn't necessarily mean that the vendor did anything wrong.
Just to clarify. now in certain situations where we don't feel that it's rises to the level of breach or default but we aren't satisfied with maybe reporting or where the organization is managing the program then that we could also use a TFC without having to go through the process of proving a default and and a breach. >> Thank you. And then Andrew, not to put you in a hot seat for so and just to clarify for us, just to have it on record. So out of that 1.6 million that's available that I know is going to have some claws out there after you just said that. is that 330K like factored into that amount already?
>> Yes, it is. >> Okay. And then so someone magically like say we hope this doesn't happen but the org that has the 768,000 if they default would that also go back to that pot of money as well? >> Correct. because the ultimate goal is we do not want to send any money back to the federal government >> and at what point I guess in the timeline would you know definitively if they're going to be successful or if you guys are going to do like the >> yeah so we typically meet with the organization on a weekly basis u we were actually in conversation with the organization today so we are again we are accessible we want to go and make sure that organization is successful by any means necessary but we understand that, you know, challenges do come up, but as far as opera staff, we want to go and make sure that we're providing the best support that we can to these or to that organization.
>> Thank you so much, Andrew. It's always a pleasure to see you. >> Yeah, thanks. >> Thank you. Other colleagues, anybody else? Do you have Okay, go ahead, Chris. Council member Rrist, >> thank I guess my only question is like, so what kind of input do you need from the council? I mean, I appreciate the update, you know, and all the work that's gone in the last 5 years, but like what are are there questions you have for the council? Any input you need from us?
>> No, I believe Deputy City Manager Wimbers, she made a recommendation in regards to the 1.6 $1.6 million. So perhaps city manager perhaps there can be conversation conversations around that. Primary purpose of this was was an update given the complexity of the program given the significant number of dollars and I think a certain amount of pride that we have that we were able to get these dollars out in the community and very proud of the work that a number of departments did to make sure these program these dollars were deployed deployed into our community and for the most part spent very successfully. there so there was a there was a timing factor and and aformational factor to the presentation as DCM Wimbush indicated. There are some dollars and I would very much love the flexibility to bring you a proposal in conjunction with the proposed budget that I'll bring forward in May.
Finding a a place for that to support council priorities within the budget. But obviously we wanted to be transparent about the fact that those dollars are available available to the city and and it is at council's discretion how we allocate those. my recommendation is that we do that within the budget process this year. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. and I missed those don't have the expiration date because they're interests. Correct. That's what was stated. I just want to make sure I understood that. Thank you. Any other colleagues?
>> Okay. I just want to say thank you. >> Sorry. >> She just wanted to >> Oh, yeah. You have more. Thank you. Sorry about that., no, you have the happy news now. You have all the the the the good like the the amazing things that got done with this money. I just want to thank staff. This was a long arduous process., and we we what we did what we set out we were going to do set out to do. We put a lot of money back out into into community at a at a very trying time. So, thank you.
>> Yep. Thank you. And I will be very brief with the pictures., this was an event that took place August 22nd. This was the 100 book hub event and this was this was an event that was spearheaded by book harvest. And as you can see, we have a couple of council members in the picture. Council member Ris and Council Member Javier, >> Lee Farm Park, right? If I recall. >> That's right. Absolutely correct. Correct. this is Fort Justice in which they held the seed to supper event. it's a farm to Fort Mitzer and this was held December 5th.
And also wanted to highlight another event. and this was centered around health and wellness for justice. They held another event on December 6 and this event was actually held at WG Pearson. Next I wanted to highlight the corridor bounceback program in which MCU administered this program in partnership with OEWD. definitely want to go and shout out OWD and also Chris Dicki on the great work that they have done in providing business assistance to 16 businesses along the Feb and Street corridor. So if you look at the photo to the left this is a business along the corridor, Luster and Beauty Bar. this is a beauty salon and actually the ARPA team and I we actually did a site visit at this particular location several weeks ago and they used the ARPA dollars to purchase a new chair, new mirror and also some other equipment. And if you look to the far right this is a photo of Rhythm and Bruise. this is in the Phoenix Square complex., this particular business used the ARPA funds.
To purchase new lights, new ceiling and also a new refrigerator and a freezer. And also, I wanted to highlight, Superior Fragrance., and I just wanted to make sure that I captured, the quote from Hakee Muhammad., he states, he quotes, much appreciation. My hat goes off to the Fedville business corridor renovations project headed by Tanya Taylor of Durham City and their consultant Anthony Taylor. I want to give you all much deserve and thank you and congratulate you on a job well done. The renovation project of the property located at Superior Fragrance was extraordinary. So definitely wanted to spotlight that.
And also wanted to spotlight our great digital inclusion division which is in our new community partnerships and engagement department. they are working in partnership with Durham County and getting out free my fas. So you know they have distributed 650 mafas and they have provided these two two participants since September 2025. So definitely want to go and shout out the digital and equity inclusion team. And last but not least youth by youth. This was a a a showcase, a youth showcase. It was specifically the future founders. this is where students delivered their business pitches and completed for scholarships money and and all of the students were recognized with a certificate. I believe there was I believe there was a $5,000 scholarship. this was this particular contract project was led and administered by Echo Systems.
And that is it. Any questions? >> I want to add one other reminder. We have some of these small projects, but they were meaningful to the businesses. But remember, we we actually allocated 27 million to affordable housing, 1.5 million to DHA. Other projects that you don't see here, not necessarily projects, but a large part part of those funds went to really large projects. But we highlight our small partners here who were really impacted significantly by, you know, small amounts of dollars in some cases.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> said this earlier, but I'll just just add I think Durham can and should be very proud and and this council and its predecessors can be very proud for the unique approach that Durham took towards AARPA funding. it was there there were a lot of municipal governments who who did not push the money out into the community the way that Durham did. I I will say on behalf of staff, I think it was much harder, much more complicated to do it the way Durham did it. Not unusual for Durham. but also you see the benefits in what you saw here and the the additional projects that Bertha mentioned. So, I I just want to commend staff once again and and the vision of council to to see these dollars pushed out and and to really highlight how many of these dollars got spent because so many of these recipients were small firsttime recipients. there was a lot of education that needed to happen, a lot.
Of handholding. It is very hard to spend federal dollars effectively and to be able to keep those dollars. And so it's a testament to our staff for the amount of work that went into making sure they could do that successfully. And I'm I'm really proud to have seen that work played out. Thank you. >> And then Council Member Cook has a question. >> Do you need a thumbs up for us or is that money just going to default back into budget?
>> in in the budget presentation, I will identify a a use for it. Certainly, if council wanted to have a conversation about alternatives, they could do so now. If you do not, I will bring forward a presentation in the book. >> That's totally fine. Thank you. Thank you., our last presentation. Oh. Oh, sorry. I thought you had a question you'd forgotten. I was like, is item number 25. And I think we have a public speaker on this item. The under our city manager's office our legislative priorities for the 2026 short session of the North Carolina general assembly. I think we have Miss White here. I see her.
>> Good afternoon, Miss White. Thank you for being with us. You have three minutes. >> Good afternoon. My name is Dma Glenn White. I am Mayor Pro Tim and city council members. I live at 1015 Jerome Road in Durham, North Carolina. I am the chair of third vice chair of the committee on affairs of black people and precinct 34 chair in my community president. I'm here to speak on election reform packet. I have passed out a print of the 2425 election results. As you see in 25 there was just a few numbers different.
And when you see the cost, when President Biden was in office, he did a lot to help the cities, small business, and others come back. Now that with the current president, he isn't renewing any of those things. Instead, he is cutting them and more. Raleigh and Charlotte, two of the largest cities in North Carolina, as we know, has stopped having mun municipal elections and combined them with the with the elections that saves money for them. When we have combined elections when the president and all the council of state and others and in Durham the city the county and city board of elections I mean board school board and others run also as you see the very low turnout in municipal elections as I said earlier I am precinct 34 chair and I always work my precinct on election day and I also help at south library south library is one highest turnout early vote sites. My precinct is one of the highest and we have a low turnout on.
Those in those two areas. That means you're going to have few people voting, but we pay a lot of money. Both of them are some of their highest turnout precincts. And I also said also like to say that as precinct chair with the Democratic Party, we do resolutions when we have our primary when we have our meetings in the spring. And one of our resolutions is the same to stop having elections every year. Also, at pack four meeting in March, the police department said we are 34 officers short. The monies could be used for safety, education, housing, health, and others.
And I've heard a lot of things today that as well. And it it would be nice if we would consider combining these elections so that we can save money and you will not raise our taxes. I would also like to say to ask that we find ways to cut down on the use of petroleum or gas or oil products like plastic bags, plastic bottles. When we go to Costco, when we go to Sam's, BJ's and Aldi's, we are responsible for how we bag our products and get them out.
And at Harris Ters and at Food Lines, they have plastic bag. They have brown bags. Is that me? >> Yes, ma'am. You can finish what you were about to say. >> At those stores, they have brown bags, but you have to ask for them. And at Whole Foods, they have brown bags. even in the produce department. I know the state has passed a law against it, but we need to find ways to cut down on everything. And with the crisis in the Middle East, our gas has gone up a dollar in the last month. And on top of that, the turfs was already carrying everything up, which doesn't make any sense. So, we need to find ways to bring stuff down so people can live. And also on using the use of no plastic, when you go to the laundry department, you can find laundry sheets kind of like you find dry sheets and they're in cardboard boxes which can be broken down and when the water hit them, they break down and.
They clean your clothes just as well and you don't have those chemicals on your in your family's bodies. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss White. >> Thank you. Please consider these things. >> Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mayor Perim. >> Good afternoon, >> members of city council, city manager, staff. My name is Carisha Wallace. I am the assistant city manager, and I am here to discuss our legislative priorities for the upcoming short session of the North Carolina General Assembly., I'm joined by Derek Applewite and John Easterling who both work for Checkmate Government Relations, which is a state lobbying a lobbying firm that the city of Durham has had under contract. So, I'm going to turn it over to to John and he's going to walk you through the legislative priorities that have been discussed by the City Council's legislative committee.
Madame mayor, pro Tim, members of council, Mr. Manager, it is good to be here with you., I am John Easterling. I am a partner at Checkmate Government Relations., for some of you, we've had this interaction before. For some of you, this is my first time meeting interacting with you. So, I thank you. I run our relationships, as it relates to municipalities on the Democratic side of the aisle. Want to introduce my colleague here just for a moment, Derek Apple White. >> Good afternoon. Derek Appwite, government relations director with Checkmate., and I've been working with John for a number of years and my service with the League of Municipalities and join Checkmate in October and looking forward to working with you all.
>> Thank you, Derek., well, we've worked with legislative committee and, Carisha and Aaron u to come up with a thoughtful legislative agenda that reflects the priorities of this council. And so we have a few overarching topics. We'll kind of tag team between myself and Derek to expand on these and so we'll we'll try to move through them quickly to give some time for some Q&A and have a little conversation with council if that's fine. U as it relates to housing which is a major priority here in Durham.
Expand local authority to increase housing supply support for workforce and affordable housing development. Address the tax loopholes affecting affordable housing ownership structures which is something that has been caught in the news cycle. I know this was brought up during our last legislative committee meeting with Councilman Wrist and extend local authority for temporary shelter solutions and preserve municipal revenue and zoning authority. one of the things as being a municipality when the legislature is in session we have to constantly be on the defense and so we as a team are armed to do that with our representation of multiple municipalities. We try to stay on top of what's going on to make sure if we're going to leave session we leave session not losing any of the current authorities that we have. And so we're working diligently on restoring those authorities that we have lost.
There. Another focus area and Carisha and the rest of the staff did a good job of trying to take the input from council and then devise kind of overarching themes or buckets for the legislative focus during the short session. And I think that's one thing that we shouldn't be remiss to to mention is that this is a short session to be differentiated between the long session that occurs during the odd number years, short session during the even number years. Typically, this is when the general assembly comes back to do budget adjustments or any changes for the second year of the 2-year state budget.
As many of you are aware of, there is no current 2025 state budget., the state is operating under a continuing resolution that includes those numbers from the last pass state budget. So, just want to make sure we're clear on that. the next focus is on environmental quality and resiliency. invest in renewable energy and disaster resiliency for local government and and along with that is to support renewable energy development and incentive models for locals and municipal governments here in North Carolina and for Durham specifically.
Another item is to address and incentivize PAS and emergent contaminant remediation and water systems. We know that the Department of Environmental Quality and the EMC are looking at PAS right now and we want to make sure that Durham is positioned to address those issues here locally. Transit and transportation, one of those other overarching themes as well. three main points here. Authorize local transit revenue options. Provide municipal authority to set safer speed limits on DOT roads. this is something I know that has been set out as a priority for council. Again, Councilman Ris has brought this up time and time again. I think there may be a pathway forward for us to do this.
Seeking some direction as well from council so we can proceed on filing a local bill, which I believe local bill deadline is Monday. So would like to leave here with some direction on what bills we would like the local delegation to file so we can move forward on that as soon as possible and have that language filed. Improve state reimbursement and increase cost sharing from NC DO. there are a number and multiple ways to create create local transit revenue options. We were very much involved and I would say it was our baby to move forward with the PAVE Act which moved forward with the sales tax piece that was on the ballot in Charlotte just this past year which attract which established a local authority to move forward with expanding light rail options in northern and southern communities in Meckllinmberg County. And so those are conversations that we'll certainly be armed with as we go into short session as well.
And and the the local bill options and priorities. I think this has already been a topic of discussion amongst the committee as well. looking at even year elections here in the city. That would certainly need to be something that is discussed amongst council as we approach the the deadline for a local bill this year. Perhaps this is something that we can build the groundwork for moving forward if the council does desire to do that. another topic that came up is in regards to the Falls Lake rules as they're under consideration by DEEQ and then the EMC and to make sure that there is representation and local input from the city and from partner partners within the community as those are developed.
Appropriations requests. This is where things kind of get very interesting. As Dererick alluded to, we do not have a budget. We have a we had a primary election that was an upset for the president pro Tim of the North Carolina Senate. but there is some level of agreement and conversations that have existed amongst the corner offices, the speaker and the president prom about moving forward with a budget compromise. We do not know what that looks like yet. we go back into session on the 21st. we'll have more of an idea as we inch and creep closer to the convening of legislative short session, but our team will advocate for targeted funding requests aligned with city council and staff priorities as opportunities arise during the short session. short session presents moments. They present unique opportunities. We want to make sure that we're all aligned with what those requests can be and what they and what they will be if those moments do arise for us to make such requests. And as.
There will be a number of interesting conversations that will be tied up in conference committees that will make way for negotiations, we want to make sure that we are armed with those requests to give to those individuals that advocate as well on behalf of Durham within the delegation. So our legislative agenda implementation prioritization council adoption our de the legislative delegation meeting which we have done in the past and continue to do those relationships are very vital I'll be remissed I'm a Baptist pastor as well I believe the best way to get places are ships relationships friendships and fellowships and so we're moving forward on those ships as well and we want to make sure that we have the partner stakeholder and legislative engagement and our team, which we're very diligent about. As soon as session commences, we'll we will move forward with our weekly kind of progress report on how things are moving. we'll update this city whether it's through engagement directly with council, through the legislative committee, our weekly talks that we have.
With both Carisha and Aaron to make sure we are keeping the pulse on the attitudes that exists here on council and if things need to move and making sure that you all know because certainly a short session with a short window and there therefore a short runway there is limited opportunity for us to get things moving. And so we want to make sure that we are all aligned and that you all have the most accurate and up-to-date information as we move forward.
And we'll take any questions from councel this matter. >> Thank you for the presentation. I think colleagues if folks are comfortable I think the way we were imagining this conversation proceeding and could you put the PowerPoint slides back up because that'll help me. I mean I can pull it up on my iPad but I think the idea is that we want to prioritize one with just large buckets right so those those headers you know is that is that the right way forward is there anything we want to add that is not currently there and is there anything that we want to take off that really there's just not consensus on council but we do want to leave today's meeting with that idea we will do a formal adoption it will be on our agenda at our next meeting and then I do want to just let folks know was the reason we hired our lobbyists is that they are going to be our our path forward. So even if we prioritize.
Something today, that doesn't mean anything other than if there's an opportunity, they will they will inform us of that and we will move forward on that item. again, the short session is really a different strategy than the long session. That was something that was very clear to us during our legislative committee, I think last week. And at this moment the only thing really on the table as far as sponsorship for our delegation is the speed limit bill. the other kind of spaces are around kind of advocacy and opportunities. Council member Copek, I saw your hand up.
>> Yes. Thank you, Mayor Prom. So the ones that I have on my mind are first of all the speed limit u issue which it sounds like that could be a local bill that would be filed. So my understanding is as part of this process we would just need to decide as a council if that would move forward. Then you asked about other local bills and the other one that I saw on the list of all the priorities on the slides that I think would fall in that category is around the move to evenear elections.
I just wanted to dig more into your comment Derek about what the path forward could be on that if it was the will of the council given the short timetable and what steps would need to be taken there and then the third is I'd like to talk about the renewable energy bucket but I'll wait to get your feedback on the first two first. Sure. I think u it's my understanding that the council has moved forward with the the request of a local bill on the change for speed limits on municipal or on DOT roads within the city previously. So I think that that's something that the legislative delegation is aware of that we can move relatively quickly on and could pursue opportunities that arise throughout the session. What's helpful to also just as we learn into this to be on the same page about the the process too. So my understanding is that was the one item where there was consensus among the legislative committee which does then make it a.
Majority of the council. and I also will just say that I'll give a thumbs up on that even if I don't need to. But I appreciate the work of the legislative committee to come to consensus on that issue for a local bill. But I just feel like it's useful here for others of us to voice support or not support for it too., but is that where I understand that's at?, in terms of the process, >> there was consensus at the legislative committee, but if there was I mean, we wanted the opportunity to really have the full council weigh in and so that was a decision that the legislative committee made was that we had we wanted it to be fully discussed with the full counsel. And so if there were, you know, real adamant like nos, I think then we need to have a conversation about that.
I I'm not seeing anybody being like no. So I think that in that case. Oh, okay. Go ahead, council members. >> Thank you. And John, now that you said pasture, it makes complete sense how you were like kind of talking. But under no circumstance will I ever support moving our municipal elections to a even year. I have worked in electoral politics for a very long time. Have worked in the state level and did large programming. When you make the ballot longer, it it kind of like materializes to voter suppression. And so I'll be concerned about how that would impact and it goes to cost but I haven't been presenting anything outside of something without Yeah. And so that's where I'm going to be at and I've been opposed to that for a very long time and I would never be in a situation where I support that.
>> Thank you council member Burris. We're just talking about the speed limit one right now. >> Well I just want to be ex you know. >> No that's fine. so specifically on the speed limit local legislation which was the >> I'm sorry. Yeah. just just on the speed limit one. it didn't seem like there was any real disagreement there. So and I'm seeing head nods. Yes. so that one can move forward. Go ahead, Council Member Res. >> Just to clarify, so it's so it's not 25 on state road, it's state it's 25 on all roads across the city, right? Correct.
>> So and I'll allow Aaron to weigh in on the difference between those two. >> Good afternoon. A with the Durham City Attorney's Office. So currently we have the authority to change municipal roads. So any roads that the city operates and we could do that by ordinance and we'd have to put a sign out on each of those roads to make that speed limit enforceable in order to change the entire city which would include DOT roads. We would need some sort of legislative action by the general assembly.
>> Correct. Right. Because otherwise the default is 35. Right. So because I think Derrick said it was on state roads. It's like it's on all the roads. >> Yes, it would be it it would be on anything in the in the within the city limits which would include the entity road into DOT roads which we currently do not have the authority to make changes to DOT speed limits. >> We have >> but on city municipal roads city roads that the city of Durham operates we do have the authority to reduce those speed reduce or increase the speed limits currently under >> but we'd have to post it. That's the thing. This would allow us to like reduce it. The default would be 12 overall overall and we wouldn't have to post on every road, >> right? You wouldn't have to post on every road. It would be those those larger green signs when you're coming into the municipality. It says what the speed limits are. If you're familiar.
With those, it would be that type of sign that this legislation would allow. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. So, I think on that one we're good. That one will move forward. I think the other two opportunities around local bills for this session that we did talk about pretty extensively at our legislative committee was around the falls lake rules and the evenear elections. And I think where we left it was that not necessarily pursuing a local bill, but if there were opportunities to have conversations to participate if there was another community that was potentially asking for things around their elections that that we were interested in that opportunity. That's where we left at legislative committee. I don't know council member wrist or cook if you wanted to share anything else. but that's kind of how we left that conversation. I don't know, council member wrist, if you want to talk a little bit about the falls lake rules because that is important., and we do need to to to have a strategy around that.
>> So on falls like I think we did talk about that briefly at the meeting. I don't think there's no specific request at this point. just that we want to maintain maximum flexibility as we go forward with the rules reoption process in the falls that we have the ability to to do whatever sort of is in the best interest of the city but also work potentially with other communities who have similar challenges in their wershed. So yeah so I think that that's just so no specific request but just want to maintain that ability to do that right >> so do folks feel comfortable with that item and that strategy on that I on that one.
>> Yep. Okay. And then the last one, and council member Burris, you your your discomfort was heard. is there any conversations we want to have on evenear elections and where folks are? Again, it's not necessarily a local bill. It's just if there's opportunity, other communities are starting to move their elections to even years. And so if there are conversations happening, our lobbyists would kind of just let us know. if we want to again strategically join those conversations. Council member Cook.
>> Thank you. Yes. So, we talked about this at the legislative meeting and and just for clarification, our our decision at the legislative meeting was to come with no no suggestions for the whole council. We wanted to have everything in front of the council to discuss without any necessarily >> Yes. Well, yeah. I think I think actually all of them was what we decided even though we were all in agreement on the speed limit one. I voiced this at the at the legislative meeting. I'm going to just reinstate that this is the lowest of my priorities and pretty equity concerns with it. I know we had talked about potentially put ballot. So I there's some ways feel a little bit more palatable to me in this moment, but yeah.
Political power and sway potential a short session. This is going to be like the last of the priorities for me. So I was down on this one as I said before and I think across the board on this as it was another person's like very first priority. It feels like we are we've sort of like ranked up both top me. we've been talking a lot about political power reallyious about what our look is. Oh, I'm not Am I just not talking? It's dying. Well, let's just assume that was like the most beautiful speech you've ever heard. I did get a long email. I got a long voicemail on my a message on my phone about my use of the word like and not speaking well enough in public. So anyway, let's just assume that was perfect. But yes, I think that this is I'm very concerned about our political standing and and power and I think I want to be really conscientious and intentional about how we use it.
Even if it is just in support of other bills and municipalities that are moving forward. I think we have a lot of pretty major priorities listed throughout this that I would support above this one. So >> I don't know what to do with this. It's just on >> you see it. >> Oh, okay. >> Thank you, Council Member. Go ahead, Council Member Copac. >> Yeah, thank you. So glad to see this one on the list of consider issues under consideration. I think in terms of any well first of all like I'll echo that you know I would you know trust and want to follow the recommendations of our adviserss in this area around is mine too. Okay.
I'll try and lean in and see if that helps but otherwise we'll get the other mic. oh that's member. >> Okay. Knocking everything over here. Been a mess today. All right. Oh, and this is permanently on so we can just pass it around., so first of all, yes, it was would welcome guidance on any legislation we want to bring forward or join in terms of understanding its potential to, you know, bring back, you know, sort of eye and harm upon our city. And so I I definitely am supportive of of of hearing that advice about where to be cautious in terms of this or any suggestions around electoral reform. I always think it's really critical to analyze it and so I want to know what the steps would be for the city to to look into the issue of even years., you know, it sounds like there's u, you know, valid opinions, concerns, as well as support for this issue, and it'd be good to to do an analysis to understand what.
The impacts could be of this this shift. You know, I would, you know, be in favor of the idea of having much higher voter participation and also saving money., if there are other reasons to be concerned, we should we should hear those. I guess my question is so it sounds like the recommendation at this time isn't to make this a local bill. You know it was to consider it as one to join in on. I would I would support that with the caveat is like I would like to to to study it to assess it. So I guess the question is what is the process for looking into that? Who does that in order to to look and see what would some of the pros and cons be of a move to even your elections?
>> well thank you., so way the legislature kind of works, especially as it relates to local elections, is it gives us the opportunity to attach language to an already drafted bill. One of those can be a local election omnibus bill where it would cover multiple municipalities. In North Carolina, you move beyond a local bill., when you have 15 or more local government entities that are part of it, those bills require governor signature. Anything that's less than 15 requires just a simple majority from both chambers of the legislature. so with language like this, we will be looking for if it was the priority and prerogative of council to insert it into a local elections omnibus bill and sometimes honestly it's in bills that actually have nothing to do with local elections. there has been a move to some down east school boards move those elections from nonpartisan to partisan. there are certain municipalities and across the state that have had to change their terms in their election years. I think Greensboro.
About 10 years ago and there might be some others that we could recall. so this would be a process where we'll be looking out for what's coming. if we understand that there's a local election omnibus bill, we would go back share that information with both Carisha and Aaron to get that information to council. maybe even the legislative committee so you all know what's going on in real time. But more than anything, it's about updating you as this stuff moves. I'm sorry, Carisha.
>>, and I I'll also add, this is not a new request. This request has come before previous councils. The city attorney's office has done some research on it., and so I can certainly do some followup with with Aaron and I know I think it was Kim who actually did the work. In addition to that, Mayor Williams has made a request of Derek Bowens to come to of what's Derek's title? I forgot his title. director >> director of board of elections and so he's been invited to a work session in May to make a presentation. So so not sure that that will be an analysis but at least I know he Derek has director Bowens has some cost related information. So between the information that we already have from the attorney's office along with the information from Director Bowens, I'm sure we can answer some additional questions.
>> That'd be great. So I'd want to see that analysis from Attorney Red Berg., and with that in mind, I' I would lend support to keeping an eye out for those opportunities while we we do our analysis and then I guess at some point it would then require u a decision like a trigger in the future about going forward or not if the opportunity arose. But at this point in terms of keeping an eye out for those opportunities while we get more information, I would support that.
>> Thank you. Council member Baker, I think I saw your hand. Yeah, I I am definitely open to to the an analysis and and conversation where I currently am. I'm in in line with Council Member Burris on this one. I think it's it's very enticing to look at higher voter turnout that we would get and see in evenear races., however, I think that we would see a lot more people who are showing up to vote for the Senate or voting for the president who turn over their ballot and have really no idea who the people are at the back of the ballot on the bottom of the ballot., whereas I think in even in odd years, we we have much more educated folks who are interested who are paying attention in local races. I think that makes it incumbent upon us. It is our job to to increase the the turnout for those those oddyear races. We need to get people excited. We need to show people that it matters that.
They vote in local races. and I do think that we can have I I would be interested in in a in an even bigger conversation. Should there be other local races on the even on the odd years? should school board move to odd years?, and and should this really be a focus on local elections? I also think it's really important. It's almost like annual maintenance de annual democratic maintenance, you know, pounding the pavement, get making sure people's addresses are up to date., maintenance on, you know, making sure people are registered to vote, checking in on those things., I think there's a lot of benefit to doing that year after year. I also think that it opens us up to we get to be advocates in evenear races. we all get to be kind of on the same page. We we we we find our differences here, but we t we get to be on on the same page for the most part in with some exceptions on on evenear.
Races. We get to get out there and advocate for the people who we know will u be advocating for Durham in those even races. And so I think that that is another really important reason. So for all those reasons, I support keeping our local race during the the odd years. But I'm I'm definitely open to some conversations about how we can make it better and make it make it work better for for the residents of Durham. >> Is there anyone else? Council member Wrist and then I have a couple comments.
>> I say thanks to all my my colleagues for the comments. I think this is obviously like a rich kind of policy discussion. I don't think I need to sort of re rename all the issues you all raised. I think I mean I can with with Council Member Cook that essentially I'm interested in this conversation but it's sort of my lowest priority. So, >> thank you., I think where I'm at is if there's opportunity, I'm kind of where Council Member Copek is. This is a conversation that's come up, I feel like, three or four times since I've been on council. This is not new. Every council talks about it., and so, appreciate the analysis is going to get sent to us. I think if there's opportunity, I am interested in moving towards even years. I think honestly at the end of the day, getting permission of the general assembly, we did talk about this at legislative committee.
There's three areas that folks have talked about when it comes to municipal elections that have come up every year almost since 2018 since when I first joined the council. It's moving to even years. It's lengthening the term of the mayor and it's making ward seats or districted seats real districted seats. Those are the three issues. And so in my mind I think ultimately I do think the voters actually have to decide if they want that. And I would propose like if we were able to get the authority from the general assembly, we would then put it our that action would then come to to us to put back in front of the voters for all three things. And so it would basically be a modernization of municipal elections. And if the voters want their things even years, they get to decide. If they want their mayor term to be four years, they get to decide. And if they want true districts, they get to decide. So it's actually one.
Of the reasons I also like bonds. You you want a better PCI score or whatever on your roads and it's going to cost 35 million. Well, maybe your taxes have to go up and you ultimately get to decide whether you want your taxes to go up. So, that's kind of my thought and that's what we talked about a legislative committee. So, if there's an opportunity, sure, I'm kind of like, no, I don't want to waste too much political capital on it, but I I think it could be a good robust conversation in the city of Durham of what are we doing with elections at the municipal level? So, that's where I am at colleagues. Are folks at least comfortable?
Council member Burris, I know you noted you're a flat no, but for those others, are folks comfortable with at least the kind of approach of if there's an opportunity, please pursue it. >> Well, I think it was if there's an opportunity, let us know. >> Yeah. When I mean council can >> bring it back to us, >> can make a decision at that time. >> Okay. Are folks comfortable with that? >> I mean, I guess my question is so like this is a fast moving process. If if there's an opportunity, then let us know. We'll decide then. Is is that a realistic >> I think >> piece of the agenda right >> it's worth considering if this is something the council's and I I can allow for weigh >> I I want to highlight something that Baptist said it's it's it's there are opportunities because there several bills that go through the general assembly and sometimes it can be tucked in something else. So there is an opportunity. It's just a matter of.
Whether we want our state delegation to use their political capital to advance that portion of any bill on our behalf. So I so to to say is there will be opportunities. So what are we going to do with them? >> Yeah. So is it possible that if we if there were an opportunity and we got the legislature to say like sure Durham you can do this if you want does that then but we don't have to act on that right we could we could say we want to put it on referendum we don't want you like so could we at that point sort of decide what we want to do with it once we have the authority can we can we just hold that card or do we does this commit us to doing something if it's in the local bill >> well the time when I'm thinking about other referendums that we've had like a parent mill We were granted the authority, but we had to make a decision.
By a certain date and that that date was included in the bill, right? And so, and the other thing is it doesn't have to happen in the short session. It certainly could occur during the long session. So, we can do analysis, we can get the presentation, we can get some more information in this short session. And then prep as we prepare that information then when when we approach the long session then we can have a bit more insight of what it is that we want to do if anything.
>> Council member Bur and council member Cook. >> This may be for John. I don't know if you remember when Raleigh did the when they switched over. Oh, are we all dying? >> Well, yeah, we are every day. Okay. >> sorry. Sorry. >> All right. So when Raleigh did their when they changed the I think it's during the pandemic they put the bill in to change their election. So they didn't they didn't require them to go back to the voters. It actually became law once they lobbyed the state and so it didn't require any intervention for voters.
Right. >> Okay. >> That's correct. I Okay, hold it, John. And there are different solutions or situations for different areas of the state. This past legislative session, there was a city out west or a county out west who all the municipalities in the county were not in favor of a particular change to move from nonpartisan to partisan. however, the agreement that they determined with their legislative delegation was to take it to a ballot. So that was kind of a negotiated solution. But by and large, most of the ele election changes are happening by the general assembly's authority and by no requirement of the voters. Thank you, >> Council Cook.
>> Yeah, I'm I I don't want to go delve too much into this, but I do feel like y'all have limited time and energy and we've got some big priorities, particularly in this short session. So, for me, I'm I'm like not interested in pursuing this at all. So, that's that's a hard no for me. I'm if y'all have limited time, I want you to be in rooms talking about some other things that are impacting us, I think, a little bit more intensely at the I'm gonna stop there, but I think colleagues know what we're talking about.
>> Council member Cook might I add this is that if there is a consensus from council, we will not actively pursue it. I think we will just actively monitor the situation and if things do arise, we'll communicate that. Also understanding as well if if we're not being proactive there's a very limited window for action and some of these especially local bills I was working on one with the school system last year I had like two two days to react before it went to the floor and so and especially when they have you know regularly occurring board meeting these things can be very very difficult to reach a decision and consensus on.
So, so where are we colleagues? Because I'm hearing and the mayor is not here. I do want to say that he is an advocate for moving to even years. So, I by my I think there's three or four of us who are okay with it moving forward. Maybe it's not a huge priority. There's two of us who are not really interested and there's maybe one maybe. That's kind of how I'm tallying it, but I'm not 100% sure if that's accurate or not.
>> Sounds like an accurate assessment. >> Okay. So, I think that then there is enough enough of council that is at least interested in in furthering those conversations if there's opportunities. >> Okay. >> Based on the conversations at the legislative committee with the mayor as well. >> Thank you. then we are going to go to just kind of our large buckets. Housing, environmental quality and resilience, transit and transit and transportation. under each bucket, if folks just want to again, do they like the approach? Is there something that they don't want in there? do they have a question about something or is there something missing that they would like us to to move forward on?
>> Go ahead, Council Member Copac. Thank you, Madame Mayor Prom., so I'd emailed you some of this about or maybe you've all seen this at this point., under the renewable energy development bucket, I think there's a really interesting opportunity in what's referred to as balcony solar or plug-in solar. >> I'm sorry, Council Member Copek, can we just go by like let's do housing first because that's the very first one and then we'll go to environmental., and I that was on me. I wasn't clear. Under the housing.
>> Absolutely. >> Thank you. under the housing. You all see the several bulleted list. Is there anything that add? And again, this is just kind of spaces, opportunity, advocacy. This is not asking our delegation members for any actual bills or action. is there anything that folks are feeling isn't reflected, not a priority, or folks comfortable with this kind of approach under housing? I am not hearing one way or the other, so I'm going to assume we're good. And go ahead, Council Member Cook.
>> Can you just talk about a couple things and I know we talked about them a little bit at the legislative meeting, but the the tax loopholes we had a conversation about and that does seem to be like kind of moving. So, I want to I want my colleagues to hear about that. And then the first bullet is very vague. So, I'm wondering if you could flush those flush that out for us. >> Sure. John, clip us in here., so I'll speak to the first bullet point., right now there are a number of, opportunities at the general assembly related to housing supply, whether it's related to zoning reform, or incentive based programs. I think last session there were nearly 30 bills filed, some of which are still eligible to move forward during the short session. So, we want to make sure that we are representing the desires of council to find opportunities to help Durham increase housing supply and to provide any sort of u whether it be financial or otherwise opportunities within the city.
To do just that. so, we tried to make sure that we represented the desires of council in a way that was fairly broad, I'll admit. but if there are any specifics that come up throughout session, we'll flag those for you., and then I have my notes here for the nonprofit affordable housing tax loophole., currently many nonprofit housing developments qualify for exemption under the general charitable property tax statute., and there is a loophole that is was exposed through a court case a few years ago that's had a pretty drastic impact on the amount of property tax revenue that has come in to cities and counties.
Effectively, for-profit developers are adding one seat to their board, reclassifying their project as a nonprofit project, and then, you know, not meeting the requirements for low or moderate income, affordable housing for that project. so the proposal right now in the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reform would be to close that loophole. kind of create a new affordable renter property tax statute within the general statutes and make some other minor adjustments to kind of close up that loophole.
>> Thank you. Yeah. I just I wanted to catch everybody up on that because I do think that one is potential Oh, >> sorry. >> That's okay. I don't know where this come from. Sorry, this wasn't used to the cord. the the committee also asked the city attorney's office to do some research into other states that that may have similar provisions. and I had Brendan Neil assist me with that research. And looking at other states there what we in the states we looked at, we did not find any states that have a similar loophole that North Carolina does. The only state that we that had something in the hopper was Virginia where they're looking at currently they do not has to be 100% nonprofit ownership. But there is a bill that's being proposed currently in this session in Virginia that looks at changing the ownership structure to allow both a nonprofit and for-profit to share ownership ownership in a way similar to North Carolina. However, the nonprofit has to have majority.
Controlling interest of of the entity. So, I just wanted to share that that was a request of the committee that we do that research >> and go go ahead council member Cook and then I think I saw council member Baker's hand and then council member wrist. >> Thank you. So, thank you. Thank you for that background. I am good with most of these. I do want to be specific that it's for the first point of like increasing housing supply that specifically I'm looking at methods of increasing affordable housing supply and also in in methods of ensuring that the housing supply is actually utilized.
So I would like I'm happy to keep it pretty vague but to me it's broader than just increasing I don't I don't need more tools to incentivize more vacant market rate housing for example. So, >> I think Council Member Cook, one of the main items that came up during last year's legislative discussion and the previous session was the issue of ADUs, accessory dwelling units. and so, as we talk about increasing housing supply, that is one of the main ways that the legislature has looked at. It's been a very contentious issue and so that's something that we'll continuously monitor as well.
>> Thank you. And I know that doesn't necessarily impact Durham because we we've done that, but I think it's still a good opportunity to be to pay attention to those conversations. Council member Baker, go ahead. >> Yeah. I same same kind of question as as Council Member Cook. I'm I'm not quite sure I understand the first bullet point, but I support definitely support the second one. The third I I support all the all the other bullet points. I think they are very straightforward, make a lot of sense., again, I'm not sure I understand the first one, but if it is kind of leaning toward what the second bullet point is, then yeah, support that.
>> Thank you., Council Member Wrist, >> I just wanted to also again back to the tax loophole and just confirm. So, when you said, and we talked about this at the at the at the at the session, I'm trying to recall. Right. Right. So, when you say close the loophole, say more about what that means because I know that, as we talked about here, we we did at least one of these projects in Durham, Pearson Flats, right, which was 100% affordable, no city subsidy, well, with a tax credit., so is closing that means just kind of tightening up the ownership structure or eliminating that possibility?
>> It it's to tighten up the >> the ownership structure. Right. >> Right. And there are in the way that the bill is structured right now it would still aim to support or aim to maintain government supported projects so long as there's affordability targets that are met and I think it's specified in the bill for at least 15 years., so the the aim of the the intent of the legislation is to make sure that affordable projects can continue, but to make sure that for-profit developers are not just using the loophole to avoid paying tax >> like a shell kind of thing where there's like a 1% Okay, that's great. Thanks.
>> Thank you. I have a for Did you have your hand up? Did it? No. Okay. No. Okay. with the with that piece, it's it's because also the the ownership threshold is so low. Are there also just discussions of like increasing the threshold but not necessarily like getting rid of private because I think in some cases it's not a terrible idea to have private companies doing some of this. It does take the burden off government in some like to to council member to council member Rrist's point. We didn't have to subsidize anything with city dollars on that project. So it's a good tool. It's just kind of being abused. So I guess that's where I'm trying to I don't want to say no you can't have anything. But I think is it like 1%? They only have to have like 1% in the stake of a company or something very low and that seems deeply unfair.
>> Yeah, it's 01. >> Yeah, like that's that that's a shell game. Come on, y'all. but you know, okay, you put 15% in or whatever. So, I just want to have a better understanding of the legislation that's that's already been introduced >> and we can share some some insight onto the bill as it's currently drafted. And we expect the committee, the House Select Committee on Property Tax Reform is going to meet again next Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. and they're going to review all these proposals and have mentioned that they am to take a vote to vote these out of the committee.
So there may be changes between now and >> and so you'll flag for us. Okay, perfect. So other than the questions asked, are folks generally okay with the housing bucket? >> Okay, so we're going to move on to the next one. Environmental Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Council Member. >> I don't I don't need to belabor this point, but this conversation's so sad. I mean, the Overton window is so tiny. I know everyone probably agrees with this. I think I just needed to needed to say it out loud. Like, the things that we're talking about here are just not at all addressing our core our core needs., and I think everyone agrees with that, but I just wanted to say it out loud.
>> We know where we are. We know where we live., thank you. Under environmental quality and resilience, Council Member Copek, I think you had an item. >> Yes. Thank you. And this sort of gets at the the question of the state of of where we are trying to identify items that align with our values as a city that you know that can potentially move right because they've shown evidence of of having support in the state and and and other places and that there's like a practical way to pursue it too because there's like you know real legislation being discussed and so that's a framework I tried to bring in mind to get a little bit more specific about the renewable energy development., and so first of all, say, you know, the idea is specifically around what's called balcony or plug-in solar. These are smaller, sort of a, you know, modules that can be plugged into a regular outlet., often are less complex from an installation standpoint, which reduces cost. Can be easy to have.
Them hanging off a balcony, on a deck, on a roof. and they are a tool that states have started to avail themselves of across the country including in places that are you know much more liberal progressive places that are more conservative because it is a a tool that helps address this big challenge we're facing in Durham and across the country around energy affordability and and energy you know costs being being driven up for a variety of reasons and it's particularly been shown to be helpful beneficial for folks who are renters who otherwise wouldn't be doing installation on the place that they live and and also that would be something that's bigger scale. It's smaller and can be a bit more DIY in places too. So I've heard that there are actually discussions about this being potentially included in a bill around zero export solar that's been discussed. I want to be careful about trying to lend support to all the parts of a bill that I don't know might be in it for now.
And I've heard from the environmental community that there are some concerns about things that might get put into a broader piece of legislation., but I think in terms of something that's very tactical, something that helps address issues that we care about, something that has an actual chance of making it through and that there's a vehicle that could do it, this seems like it has a lot of benefit. And so I wanted to put it forth to my colleague as something more specific. I'm not recommending it as something that Durham would take the lead on. but something that you know we work with where we have relationships where it may be moving to signal support for it as long as that support will help the bill and not hurt it with Durham's role you know speaking in support of it. So so I wonder if folks have any questions about that or or you know >> Thank you. Council member Copek. Anyone have any questions or suggestions?
I'm personally comfortable with adding it to the to the point that you made, Council Member Copek. Just again the the general approach of advocacy if there's opportunity knowing that we're we're not going to take the lead on it, but not sure where. Okay, I've got one thumbs up. I just Okay, we're good. Thank you. We're good on environmental quality and resilience. Does anyone else have any questions on that approach? Carmeisha, do you Miss Wallace, do you have No. No, we're good. Okay. Under transit and transportation, anyone have anything takeaway, add, conversation, discussion?
Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. Council member Versus, >> can we just explain to me the authorization of local transit revenue options? like what does that entail >> for since the passing of the PAVE Act in Meckllinmberg County this past year by a referendum on the ballot it authorized additional 1 cent on the dollar sales tax for I believe it's 60% for transportation funding 40% for transit funding aimed at expanding light rail services across Mecklberg County and beyond. that authorization has been mentioned by members in the general assembly as an option that could go to other communities across the state and other counties across the state.
Meckllinmberg County has a transit authority at this point of I believe it's 27 members. so certainly something in Durham may not be as as large. However, the involvement from every layer of government in Meckllinmberg County and business groups, business alliance help usher that across the finish line. I think once we see some value proposition from that, there may be some opportunity to replicate that across the state. So, could be an option for you all. >> Thank you for that explanation. does anyone have any other further questions, conversation? Are we good with this bucket? Yep. Okay, I'm seeing alignment and then we already talked about the other things. So, I think Oh, go ahead, Council Member Wrist.
>> Just one other question. This didn't come up at the it didn't come up at the legislative committee meeting, but I also wonder like in the past there have been, you know, there'll be the general assembly will propose, you know, preempting this or that, all kinds of things. So in terms of like defensive posture like what happens if there's a bill that comes up to preempt I don't know like school lunches or whatever some job some crazy like so will you let us know if there's something that that comes up that could preempt something we do in Durham that you know have no idea just so we know these things are happening >> >> and can you help us if something like that comes up? Yeah, as I as I told you, you know, we're trying to be proactive, but mostly representing municipalities puts us at a defensive posture. I also got to commend Aaron Miles because on every call, she's going to ask me about 20 or 30 bills that she's.
Monitoring for the city of Durham and making sure that hey, you know, we've got this program in Durham. I need to make sure it doesn't affect us. So, I I promise you that we are proactive on on that engagement. >> Thank go ahead. Council member Baker, >> have you all worked at all with municipalities on tax increment financing? Because I know that that enabling legislation in North Carolina, if it even exists, is very clunky in this state. And I'm wondering it's not we've used synthetic tiffs, but I I'm I'm not sure if we have all the enabling legislation that we could have that other states have for taxing financing.
>> we do not. And I think that in bygone eras of the general assembly and legislators that have come and gone, there was a a reason at the time for why they did not want that to be an option in North Carolina. there are several notable examples across the state and across the country with that not play out well. Not to say that there would be any issue moving forward, but I think it's a bit of a hangover on on past policy decisions and that's why it's not been approached here recently.
>> Okay. did you have did you go ahead >> was just conversations about tiff surface from time to time especially I know league of municipalities has talked about it there there is legislation in the state but as as our consultants advised there's a bit of a bad taste in the mouth of of the general assembly but to to their point I think if council has a particular concept in mind or proc process. I would certainly bring it to us. We will work with our adviserss to determine, you know, if if there are red flags or possibilities to move forward., you know, I my personal opinion is is I know TIFF has been used very effectively across the country in a lot of situations and there's a lot of frustration in the state that it does not have the reputation in the state that it has around the rest of the country as a fairly breadandbut economic development tool and infrastructure funding source. Yeah, I mean any you know we can't get state.
Income tax. We can't do a lot of things with finding revenue and so this is kind of a way of trick for getting some revenue around redevelopment projects. Of course it can be used very well. It can also be used very poorly. I am interested in in having adding that tool to the toolbox. so >> go ahead council member. >> I'll say that one. So appreciate raising the issue like not a fan of tiffs. some from the work I've done historically around incentive reform around economic development. It's a tool that's been abused as well. So I would I have some serious questions. I'm not a big fan.
>> Thank you. seeing as it's five and the legislative committee will be meeting again would folks like your idea council member Baker just continue that conversation. Is that are you comfortable with that? Okay. So we're not going to add that at this this time. I think you all have a lot on your plate. I think we are done. So appreciate Oh, council member Rrist remind us that we are at 5 pm ladies and gentlemen. >> So just one last question about this question about like what's the proper way is it the like regular weekly standing call we know there's around do we get a quorum of the legislative committee like what is our what's the best plan for keeping us updated about what's going on to give you the information you know but also not to overly burden and encumber you all in your in the work you're doing. I just want to make sure we're clear on that sort of process for communication.
>> Yeah, and I appreciate that., we do this work., we're proud of this work. We're committed to this work. I want to acknowledge, Aaron Miles who's been a tremendous partner from the city attorney's office., at last week's legislative committee meeting, you made the ask that we have that we meet., yesterday was the first day of that standing meeting. So, if it is the desire of the legislative committee to continue the recurring meetings that I created, we're happy to do that. We meet every other week. and then once the general assembly goes into session, we will be meeting every week. That's that's just a standing time. We communicate on a regular. So, it's totally up to to the council and legislative committee how you'd like to be informed. If the the weekly meetings do not work, then we can certainly communicate try to be mindful about what we put in writing, full disclosure.
So, it's just a matter of what works best. So, if you want to do something different, certainly let us know. >> Thank you. I think if folks are comfortable right now, we do have that st standing me meeting. I think we should just stick to that for now and see how it goes. and then maybe change tactics if we need to. Council member Cook, you have a a question on that. And then council member Burris, you had something, right? if attorney Miles wants to speak to this or someone else, but I think that this the standing meeting as it is now is a bit complicated with noticing., and so I think that's we're trying to maybe find a workaround from that.
>> Okay, got it. So that's what because I I did not attend on Wednesday because I was like, oh, let me there's no quorum now. >> Yes. >> So we will have to notice those meetings and we likely will have to move them to a Zoom platform to allow for public participation., so I just that is we did mention that at the meeting yesterday. and moving forward if the meetings do continue we will have to notice them they'll get added to I believe the week the weekly calendar that identifies the public meeting and then we have >> seems ownorous. Okay. So I I think why don't we >> I mean last year I would just bother Carisha a lot. I bother Miss Wallace a lot. so that that was just how I got up to speed on what was happening. I understand that everyone has limited time, but maybe since that I I agree with you, Council Member Cook. I don't think that that's the right approach. so let's >> Oh, go ahead.
>> Go ahead. So go ahead. >> So isn't there a tool like a legislative tracking tool that we can all I don't know if the city currently has one, but they do make the tools to where you can follow certain bills of interest and you get like a immediate update on those bills. So I wonder if we a have access to it or if there are any recommendations for a tool that we utilize to monitor the bills of interest in the state legislature.
>> Absolutely. We we use it. It's from the school of government, the legislative research division and there's also one that the league of municipalities has that we use that as well. >> So like maybe it can be a mix of things like some self, you know, study a little bit when monitor some of those bills. So you want to meet or try to notice every week, but utilizing the tools that currently exist to kind of monitor and track those bills as well.
Thank you, Council Member Burris. >> Okay, hold on. What is there something that you want to say? >> The checkmate has a distributional list and we can we can add you all to that distribution list. >> Okay, thank you. Okay., Council Member Riss and Council Member Cook, >> right? I think I think we're trying to sort of find the sort of like the balance between something ownorous with like having notices all the time. That didn't seem to work. And I think I think that thought what we talked about in the legislative committee was just having the time whether we needed it or not.
And then there was a question yesterday about like well who'd make us that call. So I'm trying to find something in the middle where because if we're just individually following stuff that doesn't mean we're as a as a council at least you know a core or majority of us having conversations about stuff. So if big things come up I think we need a way that we can quickly get together trying to find you know organize a call on the fly is always hard and so like is there something in the middle we can do?
>> Thank you council member Cook. And then I'm going to go ahead and just we because some of us are in legislative and that that's really a conversation for legislative committee. I don't want to keep all of us here past the time that we're at. So, council member Cook, this is the last comment on that and then we're going to move on. Thank you. >> I don't really need to make one, but just saying that council member and I have talked about it. I still in favor of keeping the time frame just not having a regular standing meeting and then leaving it up to if someone on the legislative committee or if our consultants feel like it's important given our priorities that we just voted on today that we need to have a meeting that that gets told to us and then get just goes ahead and gets noticed for that time and assumes that we will all be there.
>> Hold the time. >> Yes. But I think we might need to work on the time and that's totally fine. >> Okay. So, we're gonna have something a hold on our calendars. We're going to move forward. We're going to have a process and we're getting a distribution list. Okay. Thank you. I'm ready to settle or colleagues, we're going to >> So just just so that you all are aware, I share this with the legislative committees. The next step in the process is for me to communicate with our delegation. I heard one local bill request. So this not a new request for them. So this this shouldn't be problematic. The next thing is to schedule the legislative breakfast. I have been communicating with your administrative coordinator for weeks to identify your availability. identify Wednesdays in the month of April. There is no Wednesday in the month of April that all of you are available. So, I have shared dates with our delegation.
I'm waiting to hear back from them, but that is the next step in the process. But I will move forward with at least making them aware of this one local bill request. >> Thank you so much, Miss Wallace. Go ahead. >> I'd love to be there, but I'd prioritize the legislative committee being available since that's y'all's role. But, you know, >> yeah, we should we all want to be there for legis. >> So, what is the day we're looking at?
>> We're not going to do that now. We're going to talk to our admin coordinators who are our very amazing folks who help us not drive other staff crazy and coordinate ourselves. Thank you. Settling the agenda manager Ferguson. >> Thank you Mayor Prom. Council members appreciate a good meeting today. So to settle the agenda, we have on consent items 2 through 18 and item 25 and on GBA public hearing items 21 through 24. >> Thank you. Could I get a motion to settle the agenda?
>> So moved. >> Second. >> Have a motion, a second. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Okay. I think that is all the business in front of us today. We are adjourned at 507.