Good morning colleagues. Good afternoon colleagues. Our wonderful city staff members of the public who have joined us today. I want to call this meeting of the Durham City Council this work session the Durham City Council to order at one o'clock on Thursday, March 4. And I'm going to turn the meeting over to Mayor pro tem Johnson who's going to be presenting this afternoon. Thank you, Mr Mayor. We can go ahead and call the roll please madam clerk. Mayor pro tem Johnson here. Councilmember Cada Yaro here. Councilmember Freelon here. Sorry. Thank you. You're fine. Councilmember Freeman. Present. Councilmember Middleton. I am here. Councilmember Reese here. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any announcements by members of the council. Mayor Schultz. I have one announcement. Thank you, Madam Mayor pro tem. Councilmember Reese suggested to me and as did. Interim city manager page that we needed to start thinking about returning in person. And congratulations to all my colleagues who are now eligible for the vaccine. And for so many of other essential workers in the city who are as well. And as happens. We all know that we need to start thinking about coming back in person how to do that when to do that how to safely do that. So, Councilmember Reese suggested and I thought it was a good idea that I call around and just kind of discuss individually with each of you your thoughts. And then we'll look to our city manager for guidance. I'll share that information with her and look to the city manager for guidance. So just wanted to let you know I'll be I'll be calling you to talk about that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Any other announcements. All right, we can move on to priority items. Madam city manager any priority items. Good afternoon, Mr Mayor, Madam Mayor pro tem and members of the Durham City Council. I do have four priority items for you this afternoon. Item number 15 professional engineering design services with John R. McAdams Company, Inc. for federal transportation project, EB 5904 Durham Beltline Trail. A presentation will be made. And it will be approximately 20 minutes agenda item number 23 consolidated annexation olive branch reserve attachment number 22 was updated and attachment number 20 was updated agenda item number 24 consolidated annexation 920 Sharon Road attachment number 12 was updated Finally, agenda number 25 zoning map change 4523 Hope Valley Road attachment number 12 has been updated. That is all I have madam mayor pro tem. Thank you, Madam manager. We need to vote to accept these I believe Sarah motion on the manager's priority items. So moved. Second. Madam clerk would you call the roll please. Your school. Hi. You're going to turn Johnson. I can't remember Caballero. I can't remember Freelon. I can't remember Freeman. I can't remember Middleton. What I can't remember Reese. Hi. Thank you. Thank you madam clerk and any priority items from our city attorney. Good afternoon, Madam mayor pretend I'm having trouble turning on my camera brother. The city attorney's office has one priority item today. I would ask that the city council approve a motion to go into closed session for students to go on a general statute 143-318.11 a six. And that is to consider. And I'll read the session language with qualifications confidence performance character fitness conditions of appointment or conditions of initial employment of an individual public officer or employee perspective public officer or employee. Thank you madam manager can I get a motion on the priority item. Second. Madam clerk would you please call the roll. Mayor school. Hi. Mayor pro Tim Johnson. Hi. Can't remember Caballero. Hi. Can't remember Freelon. Hi. Remember Freeman. Hi. Can't remember Middleton. I will. Can't remember Reese. Hi. Thank you. Thank you very much. And any priority items from our city clerk. Good afternoon. I wanted to let you know that the city clerk's office has no priority items today. Thank you madam clerk. All right, we will move on to our administrative consent items from the city clerk's office item one Durham city county appearance commission appointment. Item two Durham workers rights commission appointment. Item three participatory budgeting steering committee appointments. Item four Durham affordable housing implementation committee appointment. Under departmental items from the city manager's office item five interlocal agreement with Durham county to expand both city united. Gotcha. Item six family's moving forward of Durham fiscal year 2020 to 2023 sub recipient contract for case management services using community development block grant funds. Item seven urban ministries of Durham fiscal year 2020 to 2023 sub recipient contract for case management services using community development block grant funds. Under department of transportation item eight contract for construction of city owned traffic signals in Durham. Under department of water management item nine academy road waterline extension construction dash award of construction contract to JF Wilkerson contracting incorporated. Item 10 asbestos cement and continental drive waterline replacement award of construction contract to JF Wilkerson contracting company incorporated. Item 11 tar river land conservancy k part watershed protection project authorization to fund. Under equity and inclusion department item 12 extension of the ordinance to promote equal business opportunities and city contracting. I like to pull that item. Under department of services department item 13 acquisition for replacement of Celeste circle lift station. I am 14 acquisition for replacement of get in school lift station. I am 15 professional engineering design services with John R McAdams company incorporated for federal transportation project. EB 5904 Durham Beltline Trail and will pull 15 for presentation from staff. I am 18 proposed acquisition of 0.289 acres at 814 Carol Street and fee simple from be well LLC. We pulled out a matter for attention. Under neighborhood improvement services department item 17 neighbor human relations Commission 2020 annual report. To pull that item. Yep. Under public works department item 18 Bradford circle drainage improvements. Amendment number one. Item 20 contract amendment number two for SW dash 49C construction consulted project manager. Under presentations under finance department item 21 procurement process and we'll pull that for presentation. Under public hearings city county planning department item 22 consolidated annexation Gillings track. Item 23 consolidated annexation olive branch reserve. Item 24 consolidated annexation 920 Sharon road. Item 25 zoning map change 4523 hope valley road. So I've got pulled items 6812 1617 and presentations 15 and 21. So we can go ahead with our pulled items. Item number six I believe that was council member Freeman. I actually didn't call them. Was it. I was a Middleton. I pulled five ma'am. Five. Sorry about that. Agreement with both city united. Gotcha. Okay. Turn it over to you council member. Thank you so much. I'm going to move it out of there. Good afternoon, everyone. Good to see a folk. For my address. Hey, miss. Are you doing well? Thanks. First off, let me say how, how excited I am that we are moving forward with this expansion. I want to thank my colleagues for their willingness and their foresight and sensitivity to what I think is perhaps the greatest threat to quality of life to the community at the time, certainly one of them. Easily and that is done violence in the city. This is particularly exciting because this, this, I think squarely falls within the set of responses that does not tack with traditional policing and law enforcement responses. Which is a. Respondes that we definitely to have more robust. Well-bound responses. I don't think it's all we can't do or should be doing, but it's an important step. I want to acknowledge that it's an important step that was undertaken by this council, and I'm very proud of it and I look forward to this expansion. So, thank you. The, I highlighted just a couple of things in the interlocal agreement and section one, after the now there for paragraph a county funding and service areas Durham County is currently responsible and shall continue to be to be responsible for all salaries benefits and operating expenses miles phone office fair training, office space training, etc. associated with most of the United Staff in the census tracks 1301 and 14.00. I just wanted to ask about the the firewalling of our funding. When it comes to personality, this may be an artful. This is a, a financial firewall. Correct. And by that I mean, because of expanded folk, they may have more strategic options. So if folks, if folks say who are already established tracks, spend some time in the other tracks or consult with people that are working in the expanded tracks, that's not what this is, is prohibited. Correct. This is mainly a financial kind of firewall, but there's none of our money is going to those folks, but they can talk to each other and work with each other. Is that a, is that a fair characterization. Sure. Good afternoon. Mr. Mayor, Mayor pretend Johnson members of city council and Christmas manager, Carmichael Wallace assistant to the city manager. You are absolutely correct. I was expecting when I say we city staff and specifically myself and manager page have been in regular communication with county staff on developing this process that this agreement to bring to fruition. The desires of this council as it relates to addressing gun violence specifically. It is our expectation that the current staff who are currently being paid by Durham County will do some training and shadowing with the new positions. And you're actually right. This is merely language to reflect the city's commitment and the census tracks for which our funding is being committed but there will certainly be some collaboration disclosure based on my conversations with the county. Sometimes the shadowing will occur in the existing bull city united census track, which are referenced in that section one a of the interval agreement, but specifically our funding will will go toward staff that will be assigned to work in the new census track. Well, and thank you for that because I know that I've been, I mean, I've made some public comments and I don't want to misconstru that. I know these folks have to talk to each other and although, you know, it's very clear that we want this as an expansion, not our money to necessarily buttress or shore up with already existing. But within that context, there may be some coordination and talking and we ought to be afraid of that or spooked by that or think that our money's going to. If that means, you know, that's correct. We will need there to be collaboration between existing staff and new staff that come on board because we are relying on the existing staff to help train the new staff that we're going to be hiring. We won't be hiring, we'll be paying for the county to bring on board so there will certainly be communication and collaboration. Okay, thank you so much for that. And section one paragraphs just a little bit about the reporting functions, the annual presentation to the city who do we, who will we will be receiving that from. So, what is not here is who the specific people will be particularly given that the staff haven't been hired yet, particularly as it relates to the city funding that's being provided. But what typically happens with the interlopers the city manager and the county manager will determine based on guidance from the both elected boards, how that presentation will come forward. So in this case, I think you are the one that some time ago that made a request regarding both the United Council number Freeline came on board work with the city manager to get a presentation scheduled for county staff but it will certainly be somewhere from the county representing Bulls City United as part of that presentation. Got you. And the, the, this will be the, I mean the presentation won't just be germane to our money this will be kind of the health of the entire initiative. This is the entire update on Bulls City United, and there will be a folk I would expect there to be some focus conversation on where city dollars are going how those dollars are being spent, but that is typically in developing that presentation. We hear from the council what some of the main things are that you want to hear about you as a council, and then we work with the city manager and county manager or their designee to determine what actually goes on those presentation slides. And the quarterly reports will be written submissions we're not expecting like the chief does for folks to come a quarter and kind of do it. Is that is that with the anticipate this written presentation. That's correct. All right. I think that's all I had, and that I marked up I really really really appreciate the work that you folks have done our staff has done a collaboration coordination with the county. And thank you very much to the express our thanks to all of the staff and your colleagues at the county. This is a good thing. So thank you so much that's all I have madam there for 10 thank you as well. Thank you council member. Any other questions or comments on item five. All right, let's move on to item number eight contract for. Now I'm sorry, which one did you pull council member Freeman. Well, I pulled a mail you pulled a all right council member middle 10 item number eight contract for construction of city own traffic signals. How are you. Good. Is anyone from culture here. They are not at the work session. Since we've been going virtually. Thank you. Let me, I think we have followed up a few versions of mentions I'm not mistaken. Maybe I wanted to ask about, and you may or may not know this but I will at least ask for the record is safe. Do you know what the starting hourly wages for laborers with with I know they were the lowest bidder, but I've gotten some some communication from from friends and friends and Fayette bill. And colleagues and Fayette bill. And I know they're they're located in Fayette bill. I just wanted to ask about their, their starting hourly wage, if you know that for their laborers. I'm not off the top of my head we but we can certainly get that information followed up prior to the prior council meeting. Okay, and they were founded in 1993. They've been around. That sounds correct. Yeah, I've been doing this since the other mid 90s and they were around when I started. Okay, if you would get that.  I know that they, they were the lowest bidder, but but I had some questions as to, or some statements that that their ability to be the lowest bidders is because of their purported low end being at the low end of the hourly wage. I know that you know when companies are just starting out, it's more of a challenge to get up to a $15 an hour wage, but they've been around since the 90s I just wanted to ask. So if you could get with that with that a wages. There are starting wage work for laborers that appreciate that. And that's all I had on that thank you madam representative. Thank you council member. Any other anyone else on item eight. Great. All right. Moving on to item 12 extension of the ordinance to produce to promote equal business opportunities in city contracting. Council member Freeman. Thank you. And hello. Ms. Giles. I really just wanted to ask the question acknowledging that we're using 2016 data. What impact would it have, I mean, acknowledge this, this would sunset what impact would it have in this COVID environment around trying to make sure that we were actually engaging businesses to not really address or not really to study in this current year or this current timeframe. I don't think that there is a specific impact relative to COVID in terms of our ability to try to encourage our women and minority owned businesses to participate, or to continue to reach out to them. The primary principle here is to provide any service to any women or minority owned businesses. So that's, that's the real key decision here. You said whether to provide any service. You were cutting out a little bit. Any, any ability to provide services. On behalf of that, that audience. And then just, just thinking out. So extending the sunset period. I'm just trying to get a feel for why I think you're looking at doing it until. I didn't make a specific note on that one. Until. Three year extension. Three year extension is primary. Would there be a study within that three years? Certainly if the manager agreed that fund funds to do so. Do it as a city or as a joint venture between the city and the county, which is how it was done before. And so two managers have talked about this, and it would be up to them to decide when they think they can bring it forward. Or if our manager decides to bring it forward as a single item to the city. Thank you. And then just colleagues, I think that this is an opportunity. And I just want to like raise the, the value of the study up a little bit acknowledging how many black and brown businesses have, have been lost. And of course, women owned businesses lost due to COVID. And so just trying to get a lay of the land and figure out how we can be supportive of our businesses is important. Thank you council member. Yeah, I think that we should ask our city manager to come back with some thoughts on on that study. Whenever, you know, it's convenient for her council member Reese. Thank you. My mayor Pro Tem just wanted to add to the conversation that in my meeting with the city manager. Earlier this week, I made it clear to her that it was really important that we come together around around how we're going to get that new disparity study done. This one is possible. Totally respect the administration's position that the upcoming fiscal year has a lot of competing needs. But obviously, in order for our work under the EBOB to be useful, we need much more current data as council member Freeman quite rightly points out. And so I just wanted to make sure that folks knew that know that the city manager is well aware of this concern. And all of us will be working with her over the next little while to try to figure out the right time to do that. And as was John said, I think it makes a lot a lot of sense to do it in partnership with the county. It saves us some money but also gets a broader picture of the you know the market for these types of things is much larger than just the city. I think it makes total sense to partner with the county on that look forward to working with them on scheduling as well. That's all I had. Thank you. Thank you council member. Any other comment council member Freeman. Thank you. And I would probably note that it could probably be an even higher cost analysis that we were to do regional and in addition to that so just acknowledging that our regional partners are probably concerned as well like COVID is kind of just just decimated our small business community and many of our black and brown businesses across the triangle have been impacted. That's when makes sure I know it could be Durham County City Chapel Hill Orange. I think this could be definitely a collaborative effort. Thank you. Well I know our city managers listening and we'll get back to us with some more information about that item. So thank you. Thank you Miss Giles. Appreciate you. All right. Our next pulled item is item 16. I believe council member Reese pulled that item. You believe correctly. Madame Mayor Pro Tem thank you so much. Hi Miss Jenzer you're here to talk about that with me. Yes. I'm here to speak in relation to like valuation for the property but I believe that really is going to speak to the necessity of that position. Thank you. I appreciate you making yourself available and I'm sure we'll make use of Mr. Greely's expertise on this particular issue. I guess I have a basic question which probably isn't for you Miss Jones. It's for Mr. Greely. What is it about this piece of property that makes it so valuable from the perspective of getting access to the sewer line. That part is a little bit confusing to me. Maybe someone can help me out. Certainly this is Don Greely. Good afternoon Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem members of council. For some reason my camera won't turn on so hopefully you can hear my voice. Absolutely. Yes. About 80 or 90 years ago the city extended water and sewer lines that were further out from the city's core. And then as the city developed for some reason properties were able to be subdivided on top of our water and sewer easements and houses were actually built over water transmission lines and sewer lines. Of course the water lines are a major concern because they're under pressure and they were major appliance. We've rerouted all of those lines out from under buildings. We've had a program to reroute sewer lines out from under buildings and we continue to reroute them as we as we find them. About 20 years ago at this location there was a sewer line that was actually under 20 or 1818 Carroll Street that actually failed. And we ended up rerouting the line between the two houses. It was very difficult. There was a very narrow space. We started to undermine the foundations. The map that's attached to this agenda item unfortunately shows the old location of the sewer line. It doesn't show the rerouted sewer line that actually goes through much it impinges much more on the property that it's shown. Often we try to reroute the sewer lines in and around existing structures at a cost. Occasionally it's actually cheaper to buy property than the cost of the rerouting of the sewer from a long term perspective because of the cost of all the infrastructure that would have to be relayed to be able to accommodate the rerouting of the easement. In this location the developer purchased those two properties with the intent of tearing the existing structures down and rebuilding. The developer went through our development process. Water management didn't become aware of this until kind of further into the process. And the location where the owner was going to build was they were using the existing first print on the house which was really unacceptable for us because it was very difficult for us to even do the replacement back then because of the soils there and undermining the foundation of how close the sewer line would be to the house that was going to be constructed. So in those instances as past practice we typically approach the owner, ask to purchase the property and after the property is purchased then we work with General Services real estate division to look at how the property could then be either provided sold off to be able for the city to recover some of the costs of purchasing the property. But the overall intent of this is to allow the water management in the city to be able to maintain the sewer line without putting structures that are adjacent to the sewer line at risk and keep it out of the sewer easement. Kind of a long-winded answer but I hope that answers the question in full. I didn't think that was long-winded at all. It was fantastic. I now understand a lot better what's happening with this. The next question I'm not sure which of y'all is best to answer it but I'm sure you can figure it out. I totally understand, and I'm on the second page of the stack memo on this, the second paragraph, I totally understand the process which is that I assume you went through to value this property, this current vacant property, no structure at $168,000. It's a lot of sense to me given other properties in the area, the fact that it's not, that it's very difficult to build on it, given the odd shape, I totally understand that. What I don't understand is why the cities offered to purchase this property is greater than that. And why we have to incorporate the financial results of what appears to be a very bad business decision on behalf of current owner to try to acquire this, tear down the perfectly good house that was there already, this duplex, and then try to build something else and find out that wasn't going to work. It feels like $168,000 is a fair price, but at $250,000 it seems like we're bailing them out for their bad decisions. Can someone help me understand why that makes sense to add to the purchase price to that extra $82,000? Sure. So the appraisal was for $168,000. The last appraised tax value was for $224,000. So in evaluating the value of this acquisition, taking into consideration the appraisal amount, the costs, which I know that's kind of adding to your, that's pointing to your concern, the costs associated for this developer to plan to do, that they incurred to develop the property was about $45,000. And then that got us to about, we'll say we rounded up 170 that got us to about 215,000, leaving a gap of about 35,000, which we took into consideration their, their loss opportunity, because we're originally planning on selling the property for $550,000 once they built the three bedroom to that. And there are some area comps that would support that sales price. So essentially we are, you know, we're moving because we have a need, we're removing their opportunity to redevelop the property and sell it at that rate. So 250, much less than $550. Yes, agree. But $550 is the cost with a brand new structure on it. Right. Habitable able to be as part of the value and that's not going to be the case here as I understand. Is that right? Correct. Correct. The city won't allow any kind of structure to be built on this because that would interfere with the purposes of the purchase, correct? Right. So that difference between the 250, that 168 getting us to 250 does include some hard and soft costs incurred. Have we already made this offer to the current owner? Yes. Okay. And let me rephrase that the current owner that was there, that was there agreed upon price associated with their loss, their loss associated with developing this property and basically coming up to a stop sign that, hey, we actually need this property. Okay. Those are the questions I had. I want to appreciate Ms. Jones and Mr. Greeley for helping me understand a little better about this transaction. I wouldn't say that the answers have allayed my concerns about this transaction, but you certainly answer my questions and I'd appreciate it. Okay. And, and I was going to say too that David Fleischer is on the call as well. I don't know if he can can explain it a little better than I can. Oh, no, Mr. Jones, it's not a question of explaining it better. I promise you guys did a great job. I totally understand. I guess what I, what I don't, I don't remember encountering a situation like this before as a council member, maybe we have and I just was paying attention entirely possible. Where the, where the, where the fair market value or I'm sure you should say the fair market value was not the offer we made but, but that we have offered over and if we have I certainly don't remember ever having included the consequences of the poor choices of the current and the costs associated with those consequences in the price that the city would pay that that feels that feels bad to me. I don't like that. That doesn't mean I'm not going to vote for it. It just doesn't seem right. But I see a deputy C manager Bo Ferguson, who has turned on this camera and it is unmuted as himself and that suggests you might have a contribution here. So I'll stop talking. Thank you. Bo Ferguson, deputy manager for operations. I've been trying to get up to see a little bit more on details of this this morning is some questions have come in and I think I'll ask either Mr. Fleischer or Mr. Greely. My understanding is some of that gap. Council member Reese that you're referring to is in part because I think the city feels some culpability in some of those choices that the property owner slash developer made. I believe the information about the sewer easement came late in the development review process after they had made some decisions. I think Mr. Greely referenced in his comments that that information came to water management late and had allowed the property owner to make some reasonable assumptions about the development, developability of that property. I see that David seems prepared to elaborate and since I'm going off secondhand information I'm going to hand off to him and see if he can corroborate that or not. Good afternoon everybody David Fleischer General Services Department. To help correct some of the direction this is going. This I don't see this as a bad decision developer. The developer made good faith decisions based on an approved plot plan that he was able to build on this property. I mean to get to water management late in the game for water management to say there's a sewer line a main sewer line within eight feet of what will be a new structure. If we ever have to fix that sewer line, it could compromise or would likely compromise the structural integrity of a new home there. This developer has a property worth approximately $168,000. They have $45,000 in hard costs that they spent to demolish the existing structure to grade it for architecture and engineering of the new structure. And then of course they had the profit potential once they built the house. Given those factors I see this as a good negotiation and I don't see this as the city getting taken advantage of again by a developer who wasn't making bad decisions who's making decisions based on approved plans by the city. I hope that helps clear it up just a little further. It does. Thank you Mr. Fletcher. If I were describing the situation, I would prefer to say that the developers making decisions that were permitted by the current information. I don't think buying a lot with a duplex tearing it down and planning to build a single family home is what I would call a good decision, but it's certainly one they were entitled to make. And so that's probably how I would describe it, but totally get it. The piece I was missing was that the city feels like it has some culpability in letting this project get as far down the road as it got. And then when the developer realized the kind of the conditions on the ground as it were under the ground. That's when this conversation began presumably that helps that helps some. I really, I appreciate that. And yeah, so I'm going to I'm going to think on that. Again, this has been extremely helpful. Thank you, Mr. Jones, Mr. Greeley, Mr. Fletcher, and obviously to you, a deputy city manager Ferguson. I would like to just add one last thing, you know, just to point out that I'm sure all of you realize that if the city was to move forward with the purchase, of course, then it's up to the city to use what's the best public use of the property for that. So in conjunction with whatever, you know, not just water management, of course, but the overall city has that flexibility in the property. Awesome. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks to staff for indulging me on what is usually very routine real estate transaction. And that's all I wanted to say about that man of mayor pro 10. Thanks everybody. Thank you, council member. I did Mr Greeley if you're still available. I'm sorry if you could go over again. The justification for purchasing the property. It seems that the sewer easement wouldn't allow for for anything to be built in the area that would be needed to access that sewer in the future so I'm just not 100% clear why, why y'all think it's important for the city to purchase the lot. I mentioned what we've typically done it because we were the sewer line has rendered the the the property undevelopable. To a certain extent, typically where especially where there's been an existing structure in the past we've also purchased structures that were actually, you know, living to be able to tear the structure down because the structure was actually on top of the sewer line and it was cheaper to buy the house that reroute the sewer around the whole block. We've had some willing property owners that we've done that in the past. So, once to to be able to replant the necessary easements on the sewer line and to have control of it and then have the property. And either, you know, subdivided to suit the city's needs and to recover the cost, and that would allow the for us to maintain the access that we need to maintain the sewer line. I hope that answers your question. Thank you. I, I guess I don't understand if the if it's not buildable. And the only reason that we wouldn't be able to access the sewer line is if someone were to build on it. What is the advantage to the city of owning the property, rather than just the easement. Right. Well, that, as I said, the intent is to wants to use to secure the property and then, um, you know, if there wasn't any other public purpose for using it would then to look to sell the property, maintain the rights but sell the property to either rejoining property owners for expanded lots, or for redevelopment. So, the intent is to secure the rights to be able to ensure that we have the proper access and then put the property back into kind of public private hands with, you know, our easement in place. So are you saying there's not an easement currently. The easement does that's there does not conform to our current standards and for us, the depth of the sewer we need to make that sewer easement much bigger than the current. Okay. Thank you that that answers my question. Council Member Reese, did you have another mayor show. I wanted to just while we have Mr Greeley here. We've had across the country. These terrible water system disasters in the last month. And failures. And, you know, we've been reading so much about, you know, boiling water and in Texas and Mississippi and other states and I wonder if I just want to suggest Mr Greeley and to the and to the city manager that we have a report sometime whenever you all think it's appropriate about the resilience of our system. I know we have a lot of resilience built into our system. And I am so impressed with the fore foresight and all the, you know, the way in which we're repairing lines and replacing lines and, and building the resilience into our system. But I wonder if it's sometime I'd just like to request sometime in the whenever you all think it's appropriate in the coming months to to give us a report and kind of give us the big picture of that resilience. So that's all we'd be we'd be happy to do that. Thank you. It's certainly been on our minds and we've already had a lot of discussions with the events that we're seeing around the country and how we can learn from what we're seeing and to improve what we have but we'd be happy to bring that back. And in the very near future. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Any other comments or questions on this item. All right, thank you everyone. Staff for all the information that was very helpful. Item number seven. I'm sorry 17 human relations commission 2020 annual report. I believe council member Freeman pulled that item. Yes, I did. And mainly I wanted to give our chair from the human relations commission a chance to kind of share any updates or thoughts on what he wanted to look at for the year to come. I just really want to thank him and appreciate the chair John Rooks. I do believe he shared he was here so I figured it'd be good idea to hear from him. Madam clerk, can we make Mr Rooks available to be heard. He is available. John, can you hear us. We cannot hear you. There he goes. It's a promising ding. He's unmuted. It looks like. John, could we promote him to a panelist. And mainly, I mean just acknowledging that the human relations commission during this COVID timeframe has been really actively engaged in hearing from folks in the community about the issues and concerns they've been raising. And I just wanted to highlight. I appreciate each and every one of them. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking on the challenge. And I know our council colleague. Freelon understands just what that means. As he served on that commission previously. There we go. We cannot hear you. We see you. And you're not muted. So some something's up with your mic. Double. John, maybe if you disconnected your Bluetooth headphones and use the, and they had the sound coming out of the speaker, we might be able to hear you. Sometimes I have that problem. I don't know. I'm awful tech support though, so. Not great. No. That's not working either. Well, thank you for being here. We appreciate you and all your work with the HRC. And yes. Thank you so much. And yeah, if anyone has any questions, we'll, we'll just get in touch. We, we know how to get in touch with you. John, this is why you don't buy microphones in the same place you can buy a fish sandwich. I don't know. I mean, microphones and fish sandwiches. I like both of them. That was so cold. Oh my goodness. I need a coat. Wow. All right, thank you. Hey, this, this was the bunch that, this was the bunch that went to the no bookstore only for the fried chicken. And the bean pies. It was really good chicken. Steve, I don't think you understand. It was a bookstore. It was a chicken store. It was a chicken store. Get a learning journey and learn them. Right. Well, that was fun. Okay, so now we are on to our presentations. Our first one is on the item 15 professional engineering design services with McAdams for the Beltline Trail. Miss Rogers welcome. Hello everyone, I'm going to share my screen with you if that's okay. Can you guys hear me. We hear you is your screen share working. There we go we see it. It's a little messy. You guys see a PowerPoint. We do. I asked to do this a little atypical so my apologies if it's less smooth. We are happy to go along with whatever ride you want to take us on. Okay, so do you guys see an opening slide there. Yep, we got it. Hi, I'm Mia. I'm a construction project manager and general services. And I am going to give you guys an update on where we're headed with this project relative to the design contract. With the John R McAdams company. It's about a 20 minute presentation. I'll be going very fast. I'm going to skip a few slides just so I have time to answer questions. And there are numbers in the upper right hand corner of each slide if you want to come back to something later. Okay. So real quick, I'm going to tell you about where the trail is in case you aren't sure. I'm going to tell you a little bit about parts of the master plan that we're moving forward with into design. I'll talk about our costs and funding. And then I'll talk about the design contract. So that's what we're going to cover today. So this, this very colorful map, if you're someone that sees colors. This is the Durham hike and bike map and all those colors represent different levels of access for bikers and walkers. You can see in the middle, there's downtown. You can see my cursor moving around up at the top of the screen is I 85. The belt line corridor is between I 85 and downtown. It's got some red dashed lines on it. So one end of that corridor is in downtown and the other end is on Avondale Drive. Some other things in the proximity to the belt line is the future are Kelly Bramford's trail. That's a future project. And also in proximity is the American tobacco trail, which is an existing trail. We all know and love it. And both of those are real close but not quite connected to this project. I'm going to zoom in a little closer. So this is a different view rotating a little bit of our corridor. If you're not used to looking at aerial maps, kind of where you see like the gray boxy things, those are buildings, that's kind of the dense urban part of town. If you see more green stuff, that's the trees, a little bit more residential. So the bold red line in the middle of the image is the old rail corridor that the city has purchased that happened in 2018. So we own that now with the intent to put this trail on top of it. So roughly we're going to go from the Amtrak station kind of hovering my mouse over it. We're going to go through the main street, go past the history hub and the West End. We're going to kind of cut behind Washington Street. We'll have some proximity to the LRB stormwater restoration project, which is super exciting. Some of you may remember the Urban Avenue street closing that we did some engagement around, you know, so we'll cut through that area as well. So basically across Washington Street at Urban Avenue, the area becomes quite residential. If you can see my mouse kind of circling around where there's more trees. It will be kind of behind the houses there. And then we end at Avondale Drive, a really interesting point where we have both residential to the north and businesses to the south. So that's just the context of where we are. Some of the neighborhoods here in the residential section, just to touch on that quickly. We're looking at kind of making an avenue area, Perl Mill Village, Old North Durham, and Duke Park. That's some of their residential neighborhoods. Some of the places we're going to try and talk to people besides downtown. So real quick, if you were not really involved with the master plan process, we haven't read that document. It's a it's a very, it's a very deep document that covers all the different development that that might take place either in the corridor adjacent to the corridor. It includes material pellets for bricks it describes parks and different kinds of plazas, and it talks about the economic impact of all these things and it describes a future board and it's a really rich document but it's a master plan. And so the project that we're contracting with John Armick Adams for is for the transportation component of this plan, and that's covered in mostly in chapter three the design section going to tell you a little bit more about that. What we're trying to build going going forward with this contract. So this is another map of our corridor from the master plan rotated a different way on the left side. This is kind of our downtown area in the upper right. This is the kind of more residential part of the corridor. So we're going to focus on are these colors you got green, orange, and yellow, and those represent preferred cross sections and I'll show you what those look like. The reason I'm pulling this out of all the things in the master plan is because these cross sections describe the transportation part of the project and that's what we're, we're trying to deliver with this design contract. So what does that look like. This is this is what's called a preferred cross section I believe that was green on the previous map. So if we had all the money and all the room in the world. This is what we would try to build. It has room for plants and trees that has rooms for light poles and benches and things. The most important piece in this image is the 12 foot bicycle lane. You can see that that's that's the transportation piece. Okay, this image also shows a buffer between cyclists and walkers. So again where the walkers are that's another transportation components that's also really important. And this section also shows again, lots of vegetation I got vegetation all the way across. So this is preferred all the money and all the room in the world this is this is what we would try to do. We have a lot of room. Obviously we bring things closer together to go down to 10 feet. We put those walkers and then cyclists next to each other. Maybe there's fewer plants. And then lastly, if we're behind houses in the residential area, kind of like some of the areas where all those trees were, we might do things a little differently there to bring things a little closer together so maybe we aren't so close to houses. And then some more vegetation, maybe this is a rain garden, maybe this is some naturalistic plantings. But the thing I want you guys to focus on is that in all of these images, we see sort of a multi use or bicycle zone, and then a separate zone for pedestrians and those are the transportation pieces. Okay, the pavement, the part that gets the bike bicyclists and the walkers from downtown, roughly the Amtrak station to Avondale Drive that's the transportation component and that's what we're trying to get designed and delivered. Okay, so I'm going to break from some of this design stuff and talk about some of our costs quickly. Now the city has spent about $8 million on this project. Most of that was actually federal funds, yay, though us. So about $7.8 million was spent on the property acquisition. And most of the rest of the other funds that we spent were for the planning process for getting applications together and for doing that master plan. So $8 million spent so far, most of it federal. Right now we have five and a half million dollars available for the project. Kind of a reverse of the previous slide we spent so far in this case in our current funds, we have mostly city dollars available 4.8 million, and about $720,000 of federal funds available. Now there's some additional information on this slide. Some of the funds that we spend out of our own pot can be reimbursed. There's a lot of nuance to that so I won't get into it too deep. But the big thing to hold on to from this slide is that we have five and a half million dollars available right now. Okay. So, um, if we were to build all of the things in the master plan, all the parks, all the plazas, all the overlooks the beautiful brick the fancy benches the dog way stations the bathrooms playgrounds all those things. We'd be looking at $29.6 million. So we're focusing on the transportation project that is the trail that conveys the cyclists on the walkers from pedigree street to Avondale Drive I'm going to say that a lot. Just that component we're looking at nine and a half million to 11 million dollars and that includes some community engagement, maybe doing some connections to some neighborhoods where it makes sense and it's it's an easy quick connect. Again, I said we have five and a half million available. So we have a funding gap. Right now is four and a half million to $6 million. We do have some strategies in mind for filling that funding gap. We had a very well received and high scoring build grant that we submitted last year. We were not selected even though we were recommended we weren't selected to win the grant so we're going to submit again. So the CIP process which you all know well to request additional funds. There are some smaller grants that might not cover the gap that we're going to look into and there's also the possibility of getting some more funds from in CDOT. However, funds from in CDOT aren't as readily available as they used to be. Okay, but that is one more potential source. This contract, there was an error on the presentation that was submitted previously. This contract, if you look at the third bullet, the contract you guys are reviewing is valued at $966,000. That includes 65% design as well as pretty hefty community engagement support. So that is a 65% design was chosen because at 65% design, we can take our design, we can take our anticipated costs to in CDOT, have them review it and ask or inquire request some additional funding support. Again, in CDOT funding isn't as readily available as it used to be but because we've already kind of gotten into an agreement and a contract with them, we're kind of trying to follow their process. So 65% good place to take a pause and see where we're at with funding. We do anticipate about another 250,000 to complete the job. We've got to get through some design solutions first. And there's some other information there. Again, some parts of these fees are going to be reimbursable by in CDOT. So that's great. That's money that will come back to us. This slide has a lot of text on it. I'm not going to spend too long on it. It was part of a previous presentation, but basically this is part of a scoping document that the McAdams Company provided to us. And it's basically they write up that they're agreeing to provide design of the trail from Pettigrew to Avondale Drive 12 feet wide and do some analysis of some things that we're not sure of how we're going to solve the problem yet. I'm going to skip this slide as well because the next slide shows better. This is one of the areas where we're going to ask the consultants to do some more analysis. And the reason I'm talking about it with you is because we intend to do the same kind of communication with our residents about the parts of the project that they can influence. Okay, so at the top image, if you know this part of town, hopefully you do. This is downtown. This is the loop coming into Chapel Hill Road, I believe. Yes, I know that. And the corridor that we own that we purchased is up here at the top of this event. Right in front of the Amtrak station. However, our agreement with DOT requires us to connect to Pettigrew Street, which if you know this area, Pettigrew Street is somewhere on the other side of the embankment and the train tracks and all those things. It's a very busy intersection. We have a great change. We need to do some more analysis about how we solve this problem. So that's what we've asked our consultant to do. And it's something that we would like to also talk to the community about. Similarly at Avondale Drive, if you can look down at the lower left, if you can see my cursor moving, there's two images, different views of Avondale. The one all the way to the left is on Avondale Drive looking south. The next one over is on Avondale Drive looking north. Notice you don't see any train tracks. That's because our corridor is like 25 to 30 feet below grade. That's quite a significant grade change to solve, but we have an obligation to connect to Avondale Drive. So we're going to ask our consultants again to do some analysis of how we solve this problem. Why is this important? Because how we solve this problem will have an impact on the businesses and residents in this area. So these are the type of things we'll be looking to solve as we work through design and communicate with residents about. I think this last image is P Street, which is a residential street near Avondale Drive. And I show this because if, for example, the solution here at Avondale Drive isn't readily available, perhaps we come out on P Street. But that's an impact, right? To residential neighborhoods. So a lot to explore there and discuss with the folks who might be impacted. So that's kind of thing we're going to be doing as we move through design. Just to go back when we were talking about the transportation project, which is the part that we want to deliver with this project. This is not a pretty slide, but the transportation project is the 12 feet of bicycle pavement. That's the part we need to make sure we deliver the trees and the light poles and, you know, maybe this is a rain guard. Those things are not part of the transportation project. So for right now, that's not part of what we're necessarily aiming to deliver. You can see I've got this box around this area on the right and that includes the pedestrian zone. We would love to include that. The master plan strongly recommends that we keep cyclists separate from walkers or at least give enough width for both. There are some technical issues we need to tease out about that as well as some funding issues given our funding gap. And there's also some maintenance issues. So that's something we're going to do some more analysis on to see how we can get to that or if we can get to it, given the situation we have with funding and maintenance and things like that. I didn't go to my next slide. So what does that look like? If you've been on the American Tobacco Trail, it's probably going to look like a lot like the American Tobacco Trail, but downtown. It may have an additional lane for the walkers. So if you see the image in the bottom right, Tobacco Trail, additional lane kind of dashed in there. That's what we might deliver. And just above this image is an image of the KT Trail in Dallas, Texas. A little bit nicer look to it with two lanes. We may get to something like this even, but we need to get through some analysis. We need to secure some funding. So just to give you a kind of visual of where we're trying to go. Okay, and then this is kind of in the center here is sort of the technical illustration version. The contract status, obviously it's before you now. We also have a final legal review with MCDOT that's going on and hopefully we'll get things started off with some sort of design in April. I'm going to veer direction real quickly, because one other component we have in design is community engagement support. Internally, as you know, we have the equitable engagement blueprint that neighborhood improvement services has been rolling out on a number of projects trying to get that implemented trying to kind of kind of test that program and especially with the community partners, I think we're on like our second round of community partners. So we don't know who our partner is for the belt line yet or partners, but we hope to incorporate that either through contracting with the city or contracting with our community engagement consultant, we've kind of hopefully set things up to be flexible so that we can meet whoever the partners are and whatever kind of contracting way makes sense for them. Then obviously we have general services department supporting. We have the design consultant who's done some great engagement work around park projects for us previously. The sub consultant for engagement is Perkins and will they're known nationally for their engagement, but they are a local Durham presence, which is great. And we also have our public art team supporting that, as well as parks and rec and transportation. So we've got a pretty good body of folks who know know the ground. Just to refocus if there are folks here who haven't been a part of the equitable engagement blueprint process, just to refresh, we're trying to reach historically underrepresented communities likely to be impacted. Okay, black and brown folks, people who don't speak English as their first language, low income folks of renters, right so folks who maybe weren't at the table at the first go round or didn't get their voices heard. We also have to talk to the whole city because the project is downtown and over at Avondale Drive, right is very busy so there's a lot of people who would like to know what's going on. And then we also have to talk to our project neighbors. Anytime you're doing work, especially when you get towards construction, right. Just to be fully transparent we are spending about $85,000 for engagement coordination and support and that is in the contract with McAdams most of that is going to the sub consultant Perkins and will, and that will enable them to provide us with a structure and design that kind of lines up with the design milestones and the places where we need feedback on design things. This also includes some capacity to support community partners. We have got $20,000 for more robust website. In this time of COVID we felt like that was really important to be able to have a good place to store surveys, any kind of imagery, anything interactive we wanted to do. Fees for community partners are not set yet those folks still need to get to the table and negotiate and other support fees will likely come up and we're just trying to be nimble and ready for that. This is my last slide. I think I am a smidge over so I'll stop after this one. Just to be transparent with you all the same way we want to be transparent with everybody else. On the left hand side are potential design topics that we hope to bring to folks to talk about with this contract right trailhead areas what's happening at category, what's happening at Avondale. Do we connect to some neighborhoods? How do we relate to LRB stormwater project? Public art should be pretty big with this project and like whose story is getting told in this corridor and how. All those things are things that are well within the scope of a design project and within this project there are things that aren't set yet. Also general project updates when we get to construction will be a thing. On the right though are topics and issues that are going to be planning items. They're going to be items that we need to plan for that someone will need to consider if it needs to be a part of a policy if we need to do some long term. Planning for how it gets funded. So we also want to make a space for those types of issues and conversations to happen. But being transparent that we may not be able to to affect those in the same the same timeframe that we're delivering the design project right so there's some future phases of work that need to happen in the corridor, but also the issues that come up. Time and time again that kind of have this interconnectedness with this kind of project right we've got green gentrification and housing are huge right this kind of project can drive those kind of things and vice versa. Can't solve it with the design of the thing, but we need to make a space to have that conversation and to get information to the departments and folks who can consider it for policy. And similarly crime, you know, jobs, people may come and a community may know what they need and it may not be this project, but we need to make a space to receive it to document it to report it back, and to get it to the folks who can, who can address their needs. So that's what we're trying to do. It wasn't, it wasn't a full on blow by blow detail of community engagement but just to know overall what our vision is. So I think at this point I'm going to stop talking because I'm over my 20 minutes and open it up if you all have any questions for me about what we're trying to do with the design contract we hope to start. Thank you so much. That was super informative and really appreciate the fabulous presentation. Could we take the slides down. And so I can see folks awesome. Thank you. So questions from council. Mayor Schull and then council member Reese. Thank you. Miss Rogers great presentation. I loved the. I really loved reading about this and seeing the presentation. It's such an important project I mean this could be such a fabulous, fabulous asset for our community, and I really want us to. I really want to encourage you the design team and the management of the city and our folks are thinking about the finances to think about the, the cross section that is most the preferred cross section I can't remember the exact term that you use for it. When I look at the slide on 18 that we have the picture of the American tobacco trail and the kind of dotted line in with the potential for a, say a natural surface walkable area there. I think a lot about the American tobacco trail south, you know as it goes through Wake and Chatham, where you have that kind of arrangement, and it's good. It's better than what we have on the American tobacco trail in Durham. But when I think about this being just an amazing place for our city. I'm so I'm totally down with that this is a transportation project first and you're doing that first and that that seems really right. But I think we have to do it in a way that as we get other assets to contribute to this that it's going to be, it's going to be amazing. So, I think about the West Side Highway in New York, where which when I'm in New York I like to run that that the West Side Highway, the right along the Hudson. It's a great running trail there. As you go down that highway you see playgrounds you see public art you just see it's just so many wonderful kind of gathering places you have places for people sit and meditate. I just think this could be that right through the heart of our city, and so I'm just urging that whatever we do we preserve our ability to do. We preserve our ability to make it. What is what is first and foremost, a trail and a transportation project which I very much indoors, but that we preserve the ability to make it everything we want to be. And so, in so far as the early decisions are going to be able to do that. I hope we can. I love, you know, again on back on slide 18. I, I really, you know, the, the divided. The trail that you pictured and then the other cross sections with the divisions with the green divisions between the pedestrian and the, and the bicycle. Yeah, I just, I just hope we can be really preserve our ability to do that as we go. I think that I'm really appreciative of the of the of the engagement and the plans for the engagement, the money we're planning to spend on it. I think that to me the area that is most concerning is at the Avondale and you know we think about green infrastructure as gentrifying but I think we need to face the reality that the neighborhoods that it's going through have already mostly gentrified neighborhoods where the having nothing to do with this trail that the price of housing is skyrocketed. But that's not true at the Avondale end. And when when Parks and Rec took us on a tour of this. And so my colleagues were with us that I think maybe a couple of years ago. It was, you know, really, a lot of a lot of thought had already gone into into that and so I just want to urge us to think really hard about how to support people yeah DOS thank you. I remember Caviar reminds me it was DOS to took us on that tour that that we really think hard about how to support those neighborhoods on that end of the trail. But I think this is one where we just have to think about what's going to be absolutely wonderful. And this is an opportunity for completely wonderful. I mean, to me that the American tobacco trail is kind of the best human built asset of Durham. And this could be, you know, in certain ways even more amazing and it's so so close to American tobacco trail. And, you know, I love seeing the map with the, with the third four creek coming into the American tobacco trail and and then, you know, we're we're just a hop skip and a jump here to just creating an amazing kind of green necklace and. So yeah, that's all. Thanks. Thank you, Mr Mayor Council member Reese. Thank you Madam Mayor pro Tim. Yeah, I just want to say. Ms Rogers excuse me, we I see a lot of presentations. I've been on the Council for about five years now. I don't remember a better presentation. And I say that because this is a subject that it's really easy to get lost in the weeds on. It's really because there's a lot of complicated information. You don't, you don't have a casual conversation about preferred cross sections for example, that really gets technical but you do of course that's your job. But you made it really easy to kind of understand what you were talking about and that's super, super important. So thank you. Thank you very much. I'm, I'm, I was really impressed by that. I want to echo everything that Mayor Schuyl said out the preferred cross section. He's absolutely right. We have to get this one right. It's an opportunity to build something transformational and I'm excited about it. And I know you're apply reapplying for the build grant. I think we'll see urban projects like this get a much better hearing in this administration. And so I'm very, very hopeful about the prospect of getting federal funding for this. But, you know, ultimately we have to figure that piece out as a council we have to figure what we're willing to do to make this what it can be. And so I just want to just want to thank you for that work on the on the on the Avondale portion of the trail. I think the mayor has it exactly right. That's where we need to focus a ton of our attention. I think we're going to hear a lot about this as the result of the community engagement process, but I will just say at the outset that I think it's crystal clear at least to me that we need to. We need to be prepared to focus some of our community development resources from the dedicated housing fund into this specific geographic area. As part of the effort not to make this a gentrifying force in that neighborhood, we're going to have to be prepared to make investments in affordable housing in that area. And that can take a lot of different forms and I'm ready to roll up our sleeves and work with our community development department to figure out what that looks like and what what form it ought to take. And this really isn't your part of the present for the project. This Rogers, I totally get that I just want to make sure that my colleagues hear me say that this is this is what it means to build this kind of infrastructure in a way that doesn't displace folks. We have to be ready to do that. And so I'm excited about that opportunity, ready to work with the folks who live in that part of our city to find out what will work best for them and for all of us. But mostly, Mr. Rogers, I just want to say, I feel it's been a while since we heard much about this project. I went into this work session somewhat apprehensive about what we might hear. I will tell you that after your presentation, I feel so much better about where we're headed. And I feel that this really essential community asset is an outstanding hands. And so I want to thank you for that and let my colleagues get into thank you madam and person. Thank you council member Reese council member Caballero. Thank you. This was a fantastic presentation. Thank you, Ms. Rogers. I just wanted to share a couple things. So I think this is excellent. I really want to lift up what council member Reese just said about the affordable housing component. I am the liaison to Dost. While they are very excited about this project there has been lots and lots of conversation conversations and I know many of my colleagues have been privy to some of those conversations around the concerns around the gentrification especially at Avondale and then the other pocket is actually a kind of the remaining affordable rental housing between Duke park and Trinity park and I know that area well because it's a couple of blocks away from my house. It's mostly Latino working class folks. It's the last little bit of rental housing left in that section of the city so when I think about the two components of affordable housing that I'm the most concerned about those are the two elements. But I also believe we have to figure out a way to do this. This is public and I hope that we figure out the money to do this with the same server that folks figured out how to do D pack and the bull stadium because at the end of the day. Not everyone can access that. I have never taken my whole family to a D back show because I can't afford it. Now they have those cheaper tickets, but for many years they didn't. And one of the things that I so appreciated when I live in Chicago is I had 22 miles of lakefront public property, even though I couldn't necessarily afford the museums, unless I somehow found the free ticket day or the community day. I could take my family to the lake and I could hang out at the lake and benefit from open public space. And so I really challenge us to think about what does it mean to have public open spaces for our community. And how do we it is an equity issue. And how do we find the money to do it. And how do we also think about the consequences of doing that when we think about affordable housing in the two areas that I've mentioned. Thank you. Thank you council member council member Freeman. I see your hand. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation as well. Miss Rogers, and I can emphatically agree with my colleagues in their comments around the greening of our city and also acknowledging the housing. And I think that's helpful. I think also adding to that there is an opportunity here to make this a part of our shared prosperity focus and acknowledging that there are jobs attached to this funding that goes in, in the form of, you know, laying that pavement and all of those many things and, you know, planting the trees and all those contracts that will follow and so just acknowledging that I hope that workforce development is included in this conversation along with Durham Tech acknowledging that some of us could be training up, including our youth and also, you know, working with our I think it was the EBOB conversation earlier and acknowledging that there are plenty of women and small black owned and brown owned businesses that could be a part of this project that helps with building up our shared prosperity and just not losing sight that this is kind of a like all in, you know, we can hit a lot of areas if we, if we make sure that we're not single shotting it and just focusing on the transportation and so I appreciate that that's the way that we need to fund this piece of it, but don't lose sight of all the other parts in it and so I just, I do appreciate the way you laid it out so thank you. Thank you, Council Member, Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Madam Mayor for Tim. Is Rogers good to see you. And thanks for a great presentation. Steve, I'm actually sitting in New York City just minutes away from the West Side Highway right now and ours is going to be better because ours is going to be equitable. I don't know anybody, well, the present company, I don't know anybody before the West Side Highway right now, a lot of neighborhoods along there, you know, where we're sacrificing the altar of this, this becoming Gotham and this metropolis so I want to say ours is going to be better. I really appreciate the community engagement piece on this and, and I'm reflecting on what I've drawn and Charlie said they really kind of look in what I want to say about the community engagement piece and there's a significant financial commitment to our community engagement. But as I've, as I've talked to people I know my colleagues talk to people about this project as well. I don't really want it to be a really expensive listening session, because my sense is that I spoke to the people. When we say community engagement, we, you know, political types, government types, bureaucrat types, we mean one thing. But as I talk to people in the community, they look at community engagement as de facto veto power over certain elements of the project.   If not, we've seen this movie before. This is going to be a highly expensive listening session that may choose a couple of well known local artists, but in the final analysis, it will go the way of, well, you know, where I'm not far from the West Side Highway. And interestingly enough, another area I'm going to talk about as I end. So I just want to underscore the need for our commitment to not only listen to folk and engage the community.  So I don't want this to be just a really, really, really expensive listening session I think the people in our city also are expecting this community engagement to actually impact not just the aesthetic of the trail, but the trail itself. So I think we need to be prepared for that. We need to be prepared to put money and muscle into it. So I want to affirm also the greatness of Perkins and will as a partner. Last year, I was on a NLC junk at Silicon Valley, the leaders in Silicon Valley and I took a stroll along the embarked era in San Francisco walking in the street. I look up in the cross the street, see a big sign on the side of the building who is it Perkins and will. So, so they're there we they are, you know, East Coast West Coast and worldwide so I'm excited about them being partners. The interesting thing though is I was on a stretch of, you know, Riverside care of property that also is incredibly nice, but incredibly expensive as well. And you can choose any number of examples from around the country. So I, you know, I know our hearts are in the right place, but but this will be a crucible for us, I think as a city this will be a crucible for this council and counseled after this and a potential inflection point for our city as well. If we don't put our muscle into this project and get it right. It will by default and on autopilot go the way of other projects and it'll be a wonderful place to hang out, but folks who used to live there. I fear won't be able to live there anymore. So I just put that as celebratory and as a word of caution as well. But your presentation is brilliant. You've given us what we need. I think to move forward. So I hope we will do it with with while we celebrate but the sober vigilance as well, because there are a lot of examples around this as to how this piece needs to turn out. So thank you so much. Great presentation. Thank you. I'm out of there for 10. Thank you, Council Member. Any other. Yeah, Council Member Freeman. I apologize. I missed I had a note to myself and I still missed it but just one additional comment just acknowledging also in this, there's opportunity around, you know, waste reduction and solar. And I mean, I know that the presentation is high level, but just, just noting like there's so many opportunities as a liaison to be the conversation last night there was a presentation where they were talking about solar trees and all of the many things. So I'm, I'm really excited, honestly. And so I know that there, there's a lot more partnerships to develop in this. Thank you. Mayor short. Also, I was inspired by by my colleagues of thinking about this, the embarked arrow and the Lake Michigan property, public property. I can't remember exactly who was I think it was I believe it was Stacy post and but it was one of our city employees said to me some years ago that the American American tobacco trail is our river. We don't have a river through Durham, but we have the American tobacco trail and the one of the things I love about the tobacco trail is that it really does go through all kinds of neighborhoods. And that's one of the real beauties of it.  Well, you can go 22 miles from the ballpark until the end. And so this will, I think, add to that this will be another part of that river. And I just, yeah, again, I'm just extremely excited, really appreciative of your presentation as Rogers and I just again want to urge two things one is, which my colleagues have commented on so much which is thinking about the Avondale and and how we are going to help, you know, with with the gentrification concerns there which are really important. And I think that's going to be very hard. I mean this is privately owned property and you all know our ability to control that is extremely limited. So we have to be very thoughtful and assertive. And then the, the second thing to keep in mind I think besides that is just, I really think this is one just be really ambitious or to try to make this something wonderful so that anybody strolling out of downtown or strolling into downtown or riding their bike through has so many opportunities for a great experience and I think it can be that. Thank you Mr. Mayor and Council Member Middleton. Thank you Madam Mayor. Mr. Mayor, thanks so much. I just want to associate myself with your comments and you had, I wasn't artful and you kind of touched on the spirit of I guess what I was trying to say is that we need to manage expectations because it is so difficult to imagine how much of it is private property, and you look at this amount of investment in community engagement. It could be read as while they've got this robust community engagement budget air go. There's going to be significant community impact. And I guess I just want to manage expectations going forward because some of us have been hurt before. And so many of us in the community, you know when it comes to projects like this so I really appreciate your, your, your caution and your enthusiasm and your excitement about it I think there's room for both. Thank you. Neither comments. Awesome. Thank you everyone thank you so much. Miss Rogers for the presentation and we look forward to hearing more about this project going forward. Thanks. All right. Our next presentation is item 21 procurement process. Welcome Mr. Boyd. Thank you. I'm David Boyd finance director. I'm joined with Deborah Giles. I'm not sure our topic is quite as much fun as the Durham Belt Line trail but we'll try. And to remind council you all you all asked for this so here we are to kind of give you an overview of our procurement process which I know we really haven't talked about. In the, I guess in the 10 or 11 years that that I've been with the city I don't think we've ever come to council really go over this I mean you see it in bits and pieces and a lot of your agenda are items that have come through this process so I guess to keep things moving and take some questions at the end. You can put the slides up Diana. Diana are you working on that. Yes I'm working on it. Thanks. It's not. So while she's doing that. I'll tell you what I'm what we're going to tell you. We'll talk about the different types of procurements. And I give you a overview of all of the statutory and policy requirements. Deborah is going to talk about our opportunities to engage small local and minority businesses. And I'm going to talk about kind of some an example bid package contents and responses and then share with you some of the areas that we're looking to improve upon as we go forward. Can you see it. No, not yet. Now. Not yet. I would like to take this opportunity to ask for forgiveness and not formally introducing myself earlier. And so for those who might be watching I'm Deborah Giles and I'm the director of the equity and inclusion department. I'm pleased to be supporting David in our conversation about procurement. And for those who may be tuned in. I certainly hope that you will use this as an opportunity to feel free to contact our office. If you're interested in elements of women and minority business procurement and our small local business enterprise program as we reviewed them with you this evening. Can you see it now. Yes. Thank you. If you could click forward to the third slide where it says types of procurements. There we go. Thank you. Thanks for that Debra and I should have given you a chance to introduce yourself. I apologize. So the state statutes divide procurements into four categories construction and repair professional services, other services and goods. Professional services refers to services provided by engineers, architects and attorneys. And there are different rules that apply to the procurement of those types of services. In the city, we have, I would describe it as a hybrid system of both centralized and decentralized procurement practices. Generally, and there are some, some exceptions. Generally, we have centralized procurement through the finance department of large purchases of goods that require some level of formal bidding. And then decentralized procurement of construction and repair. Other services or smaller procurements of goods. And then we have, again, centralized support kind of on the back end administration as to how it works. Next slide. There is a lot here and my intent isn't to go through all of this with you, but to give you a flavor for the process that is required to actually get to a contract that comes before you all. And it varies not only by type of procurement, but also dollar amount. And the way this slide is set up it is the first bullet is kind of the method that we have to use. The second is kind of our selection requirements and then the third is is who can approve it. And this is a combination of state statutes and city policy and included with your agenda item I have included the entire city procurement policy as well as kind of a cheat sheet that that shares a lot of this stuff in a summarized manner as to how this all worked but it's it's what I wanted to point out was, you know, it's, it's fairly complex. And I would say that our, our procurement policy is probably the largest and most complex of all the policies that we have in the city because there are so many statutory requirements. And we really kind of Durham eyes those requirements to the extent we can within our policies. We talked about this a little bit when when Fred Lamar from the attorney's office and I were we're in front of you talking about the workforce contractor workforce diversity. And the fact that other services is that one category of all of these where we have the most flexibility. We have the highest level to do something different. Whereas the statutes are very prescriptive as it relates to the other categories. And really, you know, professional services and other services are really the only areas where we don't have to just take the lowest price. A lot of a lot of processed, much of which mandated by the state that we have to go through before we can actually award a contract. I'm going to turn the next few slides over to Deborah. So it is the equity and inclusion department that has the ultimate responsibility for trying to be sure that we engage women and minority owned businesses and small local businesses in all aspects of the city contracting activity. And we do this under our contracting and compliance division of the department. We have two ordinances that underpin all of the work that we do. One being the equal business opportunity ordinance, which is for women and minority owned businesses and our small local business enterprise program, which is basically put into place in order to try to support our local businesses. And when we speak of local businesses, we're talking about the Durham metropolitan statistical area, which means Durham Orange person and Chatham counties. And the idea, of course, is to support our local economy and promote opportunities for employment for our citizens.  And with that, we have the racial equity division that's fairly new to the department, but it tends to look at those programs and services and budgets and practices that impair our ability to be useful in reaching out to our women and minority owned businesses. And you may have remembered that as a part of a proposed draft of an equity plan for the city, there are aspects of procurement and some procurement recommendations that have been made that we will certainly be incorporating over the next little bit. But these are the ordinances of the city that clearly seek to engage participation. Next slide. In order to do that, we set participation goals and we set participation goals on projects that come before the city, largely when there's an opportunity to do so on contracts that are $30,000 or more, where there are opportunities to incorporate goals and where we have three or more women and minority owned businesses who can provide a particular service within a project. Then next slide. We also find that we cannot set goals when the contracts are smaller and we don't really want to set goals on small contracts because they offer the best opportunity for women and minority owned businesses to perform as prime contractors. We also don't set goals when we have less than three businesses that can perform a service when there are no opportunities for subcontracting and where there are situations where there's a specialized requirement which would hinder us from identifying firms who can perform the service or prevent us from including it in our small local business enterprise program. As an example, one of the projects that was discussed back in December had to do with a ropes course. And in that case, there was a requirement that the person be certified to build those types of facilities. And so when we don't have anyone who can provide that service, then we're not likely to set goals. We also do not set goals on federal projects. And when I heard you speaking about the transportation project, a lot of times the funding on those projects are federal and we are not able to put our equal business opportunity program goals on those projects. Next slide. The goals that we assigned to projects are categorical so that we have construction goals, professional service goals, other service goals and goals for goods. I might add that you usually will see goals attached to construction and professional services. Generally, when you see projects that are general service or goods, they are singular types of items that have no subcontracting opportunities, and therefore do not permit us the opportunities that goals. Next slide. And the small local business enterprise program, we focus on reviewing projects for construction that are up to $500,000 and professional service projects that are up to $100,000. And this, in this particular program, we are looking for firms who are Durham Orange Person and Chatham County based and have been doing certified by our office to participate in this program. We are looking for three or more firms who can provide any particular service that may be required. And if we do not find that we have three firms that can perform a particular service, then we will not enter that project into the SLB program. We also only offer these projects to the firms who are duly certified if we accept them. And while we do advertise in a general sense, only program persons who are certified as local small businesses through our program are eligible to participate on these projects if we accept them into this program. We have to accept the fact that even when we do put projects in our small local business enterprise program that they are subject to the same state laws that David referred to earlier. And so for construction, they have to go to the lowest responsible responsive bidder or for professional services to the firm that best meets the qualifications outlined for the project. Next slide. So for goods and services, we always make an effort to identify firms from the club database, as we know it, and this is under the Department of Administration for the state of North Carolina. And so when we can find firms that might offer a particular service or good, we will insist that they be notified and given an opportunity to provide a quote on a particular service or project. And so we do make every effort to reach out to firms on an ongoing basis. Our office notifies about 1500 firms each week about opportunities available for their services each week. So we hope that folks who are listening, they're not aware, please contact me and we'll do that. We also advertise on the city's website for all opportunities that are available. And you can ask to be tweeted or emailed about those services that you go up there. And that location of your goal to the main city website and put in bid posts for the search. You can find anything that the city is offering at any given time. I'll turn it back over to David. Thank you, Deborah. So, one of the things I wanted to summarize was, you know, how can we maximize the UBE participation in city contracting? What are the things that have to go right? So first of all, there's got to be a UBE that provides the good or the service that we need. They have to know that there's an opportunity to participate. They have to respond when we make them aware. And then in some instances absent, you know, some other legal provision, they have to have the lowest price. And you need a different strategy to be successful, depending upon which of these areas are we, you know, not performing well in. So, for instance, you know, if there isn't somebody that's providing the service or the good that we need, why is that? What needs to happen in the workforce to create more businesses that provide that service as it relates to awareness of the opportunity. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that folks are aware of the opportunity to do the contract? Are we putting our bid postings in the right place? Are we reaching out in the right way? Are they responding? And if they're not responding, why? Is it because they don't want to do the work? Is it because we're not friendly enough to business with? Is our process too complicated? What is it? And then if they don't have the lowest price, why is that? Is that just because the bigger firms are just able to provide stuff more cheaply? And what strategies can be employed to try to address each one of them? And we need to have the data about each one of these things to know which area do we need to focus on and which kind of assets within the city do we need to deploy to address each of those individual areas? Because we're not going to be able to improve without improving in each one of these areas and they're not all a one size approach. Next slide. So one of the other things we wanted to share with you was what's in our current bid packages? And so we thought we would share with you a typical not overly large and not overly small construction and repair project. So this is an invitation for bid and what's typically included. If this was an RFP for some services or an RFQ for professional services, it would have different stuff in it. But generally the invitations for bids are the most standardized in terms of their content. And I will say that over time these documents have grown in their contents as we add more in new things. I think we are, as an organization, pretty good at adding and not very good at subtracting. I know that we have necessarily taken a real proactive approach recently to look at this whole process and figure out, you know, do we have the right stuff here? And I think we have kind of aired on the side of let's include as much information as we can because somebody might need it to evaluate everything they need to know before bidding on a project. And I think something that they might need perhaps after they've gotten a project. But I think if you look at, you know, in total there's 123 pages in this particular document and we included it in your agenda item there. So you look at each one if you want to. But 65 pages of it is kind of the boilerplate contract that somebody would be asked to enter into if they were to get the work. You know, half of it is just the contract itself. The first six pages of it are the kind of the instructions. And then actually that last eight pages is actually the scope of the work that this particular bid relates to the rest of it is, for the most part, you know, boilerplate, boilerplate information that would be included in anyone, whereas the last part would be the, here's the work that we need you to do and the things that are technically relevant to this particular project. And I don't know that I've spent a lot of time looking at these and just reading through it, there's obviously some things that we could improve. And it's on our list of things to look at. The next piece is then on the next slide is what do you have to send in to be responsive so irrespective of whether or not you have the lowest price what what do you need to what do you need to submit. So the next slide Diana can we get the next slide. So, so what what do you have to submit. It's not a lot of paper that you have to submit back to us the bid form and affidavit. We've got a safety evaluation questionnaire. Under the current COVID pandemic we've got some information about your, your pandemic protocols. All of the the UB forms that currently exist from equity and inclusion, and then some information about your licensing. And then an additional piece that that is going to be added is the contractor workforce diversity questionnaire that will become a part of things. So it's not, but not as much needs to be sent back as, as it is, as to what goes out in the, the, the front end package. What needs to be submitted is also different if this were to be a response to an RFP or an RFQ. And I would say that that, you know, physically what needs to be provided back for those types of responses is probably quite a bit more to flesh out more about how you're going to respond to what's specifically being asked for for an RFP or an RFQ. Next slide. I'm having some technical difficulties here. So as I've talked about throughout this, you know, we've got some things that we know we need to work on to, to improve this. And as I also mentioned, we need to make sure we've got some good data so we know what specifically we need to work on and how do we prioritize that work where does it need to happen. So we do need to think about analyzing and streamlining our processes. You know, can we make that 123 page document smaller. Can we make the process by which people are aware of, of bids and opportunities more widely disseminated can we make the way people respond easier. We need to continue to to work on and and improve our internal and external training not only for internal staff to make sure that you know we're all doing the best we can but also externally as Deborah referenced, you know, how can we help people that do business with us have greater opportunity for success. We're also looking at opportunities for greater centralized procurement, where we think we can move the ball towards either cheaper pricing or to save money. To move more contracting to UB ease. And then what we spoke with you about several months ago that contractor workforce diversity processes that we're building into this. We've got some some timelines on on how we're going to work towards that. And I think that's something that I will I will say as it relates to that contractor workforce diversity change. Just so council is aware, you know, we're we're we're intending to start using that within the next month or so. But I think the the agenda items that come to council. That could be kind of a of a gradual process over time because it's going to depend on when what what were the processes that were in place when that when that procurement was was sent out were we using that questionnaire. When we send it out or not so it will kind of trickle through over time you'll see those types of changes in your agenda memos and then eventually they will all be coming through the same way but I just wanted to let you know that you'll see that starting to happen as we begin to implement that. That's what we've got to share with you from a slide presentation standpoint we're happy to answer any questions if you if you stump either Deborah or I we've got some other folks with us to help answer questions if we're unable to do so. Thank you so much. You're on TV. Council member free line. Thank you. That was a wonderful presentation. Thank you, Mr. Boyd. And Miss Deborah.  I think there are a lot of blind spots in the community as well. And I will be sharing this work session with some folks who've been asking questions about this. I have three things that I wanted to just kind of underscore for y'all from from what I've heard from the community. One, a couple weeks ago, we had a confused and frustrated community member reach out like with an example of one of our RFPs and they were like why do we need a 200 page document to paint a gym.   I think that that can be kind of a staggering prospect for an independent contractor person of color. You know who might be trying to get their foot in the door and it just feels prohibitively complicated and I think they're, I would definitely just want to want to underscore that that I've heard that from community and that I'm glad that's going to take a look at the, the, another thing to literally yesterday I got a call from a lady, a black woman who was asking, where do I go to find out about RFPs. So now I have the answer but I think the communication pieces are really big frustration, not just here with our piece but across the board, people constantly are saying like why didn't I ever hear about this. Why is there a ribbon cutting and there was no one consulting community first. I think we have a citywide perception from some community members that we don't do a good enough job communicating. I think it's an issue to reach out to partners, you know there's the, you know, black Durham Chamber and other organizations and institutions and terms black and brown communities that have really well network databases of folks, and they should probably all be on these advertising lists or email lists or listeners. But it's good to know that there's a place a portal they can go to on the website I wrote that down. I wrote that with a lady who called me yesterday. So yeah, that that's great that was news to me and I'm happy to hear it. And then the third thing I had maybe this is a state thing, or I guess an education thing I'm not sure it's the, I always thought it was strange when I first heard that we must go with the lowest price because we put our own equity lens we're kind of forced to go with the lowest reasonable offer. And I think that some training around that or some transparency around. I don't know if we're allowed to disclose those kind of things, but it seems like that really benefits someone who's been in the business for a while. They know what the floor is. They know exactly what the bid. So it's like, what was that show the price is right, you know where you can just, you can make your bid $1 less than the person who went before you and you're going to go up there and be a contestant. You know, so how do we get our folks informed about what the standards are and where they should be bidding so that they're not. So just their lack of experience doesn't preclude them from getting into the opportunity. And I guess the question a follow up question for me there would be, if there's like $100 difference, you still must go with the lowest legally by state statute you can't even okay So that's interesting. Wow, we should talk to our legislative team about that. Because that just seems like a wild metric when there are so many other things we may want to take into account I know there's nothing y'all can do about that but at least educate folks or figure out some way to be transparent. With minority on businesses about that seems like it would be another area that we might want to address. So those were just some feedback. I didn't really have a direct question but yeah, thank you for the presentation. That's helpful to know what you're hearing. I'd like to just to indicate to you, Councilman three one that we do make an effort to train at least once a year on the bidding and contract and process. So that firms do have an opportunity to to learn what what we're looking at and what their their requirements are. And certainly as we interact with individual businesses we try to make that clear to them, but certainly your points are well taken. It's, it just requires a lot more marketing activity to get the word out to folks that this is what's required. And there are people who are here to help. If you will, just let us know. Thank you so much Miss Charles. Okay, those are my questions may pretend thank you. Thank you, Council Member Freeman. Thank you. I appreciate your comments, Council Member Freelon. I think there are a few things that would be helpful that if that if there are available. It's mainly around data. And so I'm not sure what kind of software we use, but you know just acknowledging that when the procurements go out, all that information is coming in. I don't know if we're tallying if there's some report that comes out but I know I've been on Council the last. Is it been three, four years, three years now. I've not seen a report that shows, you know, what's come in and what's gone out and in a way that that can define in that race equity sense acknowledging that you know the diversity and inclusion, or equity and inclusion is, you know, using that race equity lens to look at the data and see what's coming in and what's going on going out and acknowledging that our legislatures need like data to use to actually make those shifts and changes. It would be helpful if we could talk about, you know, using our software to do just that. And so maybe there's a conversation in there. And then I was just noting to myself. So on the federal side that we can't use the dollars to kind of implement our own, you know, initiatives, but I do think that it's important to make sure that we're innovative and acknowledging that we have a whole office of workforce and economic development on hand to partner in that marketing. And so they're working really hard to develop those relationships. I mean, right now. And if we're not using, you know, what we're, what's coming down the pipeline to make sure that they're kind of previewing. These are the areas that we're going to have the most projects and I feel like it's a miss for all businesses, like not just black and brown with all the local businesses that are here. So I'm mindful of what. So when Miss Stella came Miss Stella Adams came I, I know we've had the conversation a number of times. And so it's, I mean, it's kind of, it was disappointing to hear 130 pages. And so I was, I was really like just struck. And I like I said, it was horrifying to look at that application. And I had my, I mean, I admit that I, you know, in the light of COVID is there's a lot more layers in place. But what in COVID could you say has been beneficial that you would like to keep and move forward so like specifically around trainings. Or, you know, the ways in which you're operating now, more virtually, with a lot, a lot of different technologies. Are you seeing a difference or are you getting good feedback from other vendors that are using, you know, the different technologies that we're using or different platforms that we're using. And I would also ask noting like the tech support areas probably where I feel like we could build out a lot more and I didn't, I don't know if that's in this office or if it's in the workforce development office but I do know that there's an area that I didn't hear and I want to make sure is included. Let me maybe respond from the equity inclusion side of things relative to keeping up with data about what's what's coming in and what's going out and how women and minority owned businesses are being impacted by the level of procurement that we do. And so we do monitor ongoing that information so I think I'm surprised to hear that you have not seen the reports we do them and send the report up annually through the administration to the members of council so that you have a chance to know what we have or have not accomplished relative to the goals that we've set. So, if you don't have it, then certainly I'll be happy to let you see what we did last year. Now, that's so much the goals were more on the side of the applicant. So, if you've got 320 coming in and the goal said at you know set specifically by project. I'm not seeing the 320 coming in to see a gaps. That's a different thing. And, and we would need need some different software to try to keep up with that kind of a process, but certainly we can look at it. And that's helpful. I think that the key there would also be the, especially with where forms or pages have been submitted previously can be reused like kind of finding a system that works where it's kind of layering in as as technologically advanced as we are. I feel like they could, they could have been like a 60 page, you know, cut off in there, where it was like, just check these boxes, and you kind of just need to. Yeah, yeah. This modules and like all of this information and yeah. We had a discussion about the bid documents in the last equity EBOB steering committee meeting and certainly we're open to having a look at it because, as David indicated, what we end up doing sometime is putting documents into a bid because of some issue that we're cropped up. And we never go back to say, Oh, maybe we don't still need this anymore. And we could take it out, or could we not look at how we put the package together, and some things would need to go out because it's a bit of a certain while other things wouldn't need to be included because they're not necessary for a small dollar bid versus a high dollar bid. And so we're at least exploring those opportunities to look at that package to make it more. I think David likes to call it make it user friendly. That's what what what's necessary and then so doing, it will certainly impact the ability of a small firm and the minority on business to be to respond to a bit because we have taken that look. I would just say just the one additional statement to say that I think that the planning department kind of use that same mindset and made the shift so that they had a customer focus. And I guess the same, which you're saying is along those same lines. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor short. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. And thank you, Mr. Boyd and Ms. Giles was a really great presentation and I learned a lot. I learned a lot reading it. And I thought that had a lot of different reactions to this and I've, excuse me, I've had a lot even more today as we've been as I've been listening and I'll say the first thing is that that was the first time I'd ever heard the word Durham eyes and I'm just going to let you know that I'm planning to steal that Mr. Boyd. Good word. So let me see I'm just trying to sort of organize my thoughts here. Just yeah so as we've discussed the bid packages a lot and it is easy to see how someone coming to it as my colleagues have said and if you all have said it's daunting. And if you're not good at that sort of thing. You're really going to need a lot of help getting through it or you're not going to be able to for a lot of people. I have one suggestion for a resource to help you all think that through which is the folks you all will remember when we did the reform initiative three years ago I'm thinking our innovation team and I think Aaron Parrish maybe was part of that and and there's some people from the center for advanced hindsight where they had users come in as well as city staff involved and I think they took maybe five of the most common forms in the city or something like that and worked on how to improve them from a user standpoint. So just wanted to suggest them as a possible partner for you all. The I'm I'm struck by how much of what people have to actually fill out is driven by our Duramizing. Most of the pages that you have to fill out are about racial equity and you're actually going to increase that now with our new initiative around employment statistics. Those are great initiatives but they are they are a lot of what makes this complicated. So I think for us as a council we have to acknowledge that we've asked for a lot of breakdown on employment in a lot of different detail. And so quite a bit of the demand with when you look at this chart that the slide about what people have to turn in most of the pages that people have to turn in are driven by our requirements or our desires which I know our staff shares. About racial equity and so just wanted to mention that. So so then that so the issue of the forms I think trying people have already talked about this a lot. You all have and my council colleagues have about how to get people the help that they need to do this. But I've really had another another place that I wanted to try to take the conversation a little bit which is I looked at just this week's at this work session the MWB and the WB and the WB and the MWB and the WB and the WB and the WB and the WB and the WB and the WB statistics and we had well here here we had for the traffic signal bid we had two of these sub contractors one were from South Dakota and the other one from the Well, here for the traffic signal bid, we had two of these subcontractors. One was from Selma, North Carolina, one was from Jupiter, Florida. For the Academy Road water line, we had a subcontractor from Mount Airy, one from Youngsville, one from Rougemont, and one from Zebulon. For the Belt Line project, we had one from Silver Spring, one from Kerry, and one from Raleigh, from Bradford Circle. We had one from Apex and two from Raleigh. So this is 12 minority or women subcontractors, and none of them were from girl, and we see that all the time. And I think that our intentions are pure and our execution is excellent. We get exactly what we asked for. I remember maybe six years ago, I'm thinking, Ms. Giles, you came to us and we really having trouble with our meeting, our goals, and we adopted the state-wide hub database as a place where we could get more minority and women contractors. And we've succeeded, but we haven't succeeded in getting Durham contractors. And if every single work session looks the same, we have so few minority and women subcontractors, especially minority subcontractors from Durham. And so we're doing what we said we were gonna do, but I don't think we're getting the result that we want. And so I'm a little confused about why that is, and I've been, you know, thought about this a lot. You all have heard me raise this before, but I think there are a couple of things that it makes me think about. One is, well, I'll just say for myself, it isn't my goal, and I don't think it should be our goal to have minority women contractors just from anywhere. We really are all about trying to make this a success for our Durham women and minority contractors. And so I think when we, as we think about this study that we talked about earlier, I really think we gotta give some thought to how we do that, how we change the way in which we are, you know, where we're recruiting from. But I also think that the part of the problem is, I, yeah, so what I don't know is, do these contractors actually exist in Durham in significant numbers? And I don't know the answer to that. Ms. Giles might know a lot more than I do. I know you do know a lot more than I do, but I think that is one issue. And I think another issue is that because Durham is a booming economy, there are a lot of our contractors, minority women contractors who are contracting with private companies and who are, you know, paying more than we are, maybe paying faster than we are. And I think that that's an issue too. But I just, yeah, so this whole discussion takes me two different places. One is how do we improve the experience of people applying, you know, or looking for contracts, which people have spoken to a lot. And I think we can. And then, but on a bigger, in the bigger picture, I just don't think that we're meeting our collective goal. Even though we've had the best of intentions and we've executed well on those intentions in terms of getting more minority and women contractors, but we haven't had Durham's success. And so anyway, I'm putting that out there. And would love to hear Mr. Boyd and Ms. Giles, your thoughts about that and maybe how we could proceed. Any thoughts that you might have about how to kind of move this discussion forward or, you know, just, I'm not sure how to do better on it, but I'd love your thoughts. So I'll take a stab initially, Mr. Mayor. I think, you know, one of the things you said is, do these contractors exist in Durham? That's one of the things that I meant when we need, we need to have more data about all of those kind of four things that we have to have in order to be successful. Do they exist? Do they respond? You know, are they notified? Do they respond? And in some instances, do they have the lowest price? We need the data about that to know, are they there? So that we're not looking for something that's not, and if they aren't, then that begs the question, why aren't they? And what do we need to do to create them? But we need that data to be able to answer that question. Backing up a piece, I think the, how to make the forms easier and how to make the process easier for folks to interact with us, I think that's a relatively easy process for us to move the ball on pretty quickly and pretty easily. The other parts that you bring up are much more complicated and I don't necessarily have the answer off the tip of my tongue and something we're gonna have to think about and I'll ask Deborah if she's got any other thoughts too. I'm hypersensitive almost to your statements, Mr. Mayor, because having been a long, life-long resident of Durham, this is where my interest is. And certainly over time, we have certainly seen, I think, better participation on the part of Durham-based firms on city contracting. And so to some degree, I think having gone to the hub database in many regards has sort of impacted the ability of our firms to be successful on projects because we're still locked into lowest responsible, responsive, particularly as it relates to construction, which is where we do the most work and have the largest amounts of money. And so what you won't see many times are that Durham firms are bidding, but they are not being successful because they weren't the lowest bidder. On the other hand, I think we do better with our firms relative to professional services, architects and engineers, we tend to do better there, but still not to the level that we would wanna see. So it's really gonna take some additional study, I think to figure out exactly who's here and who does what, and then try to make sure that we can focus on those firms when we have particular types of contracting so that we can try to get them in. But even when we have done surveys in the past to try to look at what opportunities we might be missing to help our women and minority on businesses right here in Durham, oftentimes they don't respond to give us an opportunity to try to figure that out. So it's certainly something that I can assure you is always high on my mind. And we just have to continue to try to find ways to reach out and notwithstanding the comments earlier about interactions with the greater Durham Black Chamber with whom I have ongoing relationship with the president and we talk often not without the engagement of the Institute for Minority Economic Development that's also here and focused on this area. We're all here, but we're all seeing similar gaps as well. So it's something that we certainly need to continue to look at. Thank you. Council Member Middleton, did you have a questioner's manager page? Did you wanna jump in? I did, I was gonna yield to the manager page and herself did, so I'll certainly yield. Yes. So thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. I was just gonna add a few brief remarks to what Mr. Boyd and Ms. Jouse have just said. And really the mayor brought some light to when we actually did move from a small database of Durham owned firms making a majority firm be compliant with the bid from around 300 or so businesses to 3,000. What we started to see is that when we had the larger database, firms have relationships with subcontractors that they prefer to bring on to the job. So when those relationships already exist and those businesses are also businesses that can make them compliant, they're in business, they would bring a firm that they have a relationship with to the job compared to one they've never worked with before. So I did want to, because I've heard the mayor on numerous occasions talk about what impact did going to the hub statewide database potentially make with some of our subcontracting relationships. But I have noticed that, even from the manager's office that that is one of the impacts. I would say that from a statewide or a national perspective when minority and women owned businesses are building capacity and getting jobs, it still is good. To me, it still is good. It's just not local good. And so it just hasn't been termized, was that the word? But we have to continue to work in that space. But I didn't want the moment to pass without addressing potentially what the mayor is thinking and trying to search for one of the reasons that that change may have occurred. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, and I appreciate this conversation so much. First off, Pierce Freelon, what do you know about the prices, right? Oh, possibly a little bit. Dave, thank you so much for your presentation. You're one of the people that when I just repeat what you say, just verbatim, I always come off as being smarter than I actually am. So I appreciate you. And Ms. Giles, thank you so much. We were just on a panel together. I was honored to be on a panel together with you a couple of weeks ago talking about these kind of issues. You're an icon in our community and really appreciate the work you do. So I want to associate myself with what everybody said. I want to make a comment and then I want to make a, I don't know if it's a suggestion or a question. This conversation to me really crystallizes the scandal and the challenge of race equity work. Because we are legally prohibited from procuring remedies to problems that were statutorily created, historically, being locked out of contract, locked out of participation. So we've got this piece of law that says you've got to be the lowest bidder when historically it was laws that kept oftentimes women and minority businesses from having the capacity to be the lowest bidder. This list is not exhaustive, but usually when folk are the lowest bidder, again, this is not an exhaustive list. It's because they're either underpaying their workers, they've got accumulated historical wealth or economies of scale just allow them to be able to put in the lowest bid because they've got so much business going on that they can do that. And then along come our companies that can't do it. And what we've done, and this is not, I don't mean this in a pejorative or as a critique, but what we've done is in, I think the mayor alluded to this in work sessions, we'll kind of pivot and take the consolation prize. Well, you may be a company that can put in the lowest bid, but how many black women employees do you have? Not necessarily the big wealth creating contracts of the owner, we pivot to employees, which is fine. I think that's important, what we should be doing. But this conversation just really kind of crystallizes that tension and the challenge of race equity work. So, and respectfully, we should get the data, but we already know what the variables are. At this point, the data is just gonna tell us the degree to what the damage is in each category, but we hear the categories all the time. Lack of access to capital, victims of cronyism, oftentimes race-based cronyism in the industry that's been historically codified. The length of the paperwork. If we come in with the lowest bid, we gotta go out and load up on debt to pay, to kind of keep ourselves, our heads above the water so we can eat this contract out and hope we can get paid in time to pay off the debt to get the contract. Well, you've got other companies that got the money already in the bank, a lot of Fallon. And I mean that respectfully, but you've got these legacy companies that can purchase their own credits. And then we say, well, let's study to see how they can play in this field and how they can do better. When anecdotally and historically, we know what the issues are and where they come from. So, as someone mentioned the shared economic prosperity plan, we know that if we can have initiatives that provide either low interest or no interest, grants or loans for capacity building or minority owned companies or women owned companies that will put them in better footing to compete with some of these contractors. It's interesting how much people wanna talk about repairing without talking about reparations, the actual injection of capacity to do this. But we know what the variables are already and that's not to say we shouldn't collect the data, but we already know the variables will be substitute. We'll just be quantifying to what degree in those variables. So I want to, first of all, I guess, just encourage to continue and encourage us along the work we're doing, but we really, we really need to, and when I sat in the presentation for Bill to last and shared economic prosperity plan, part of the, at least to my recollection, part of the initiative was to start a separate not-for-profit that would help build capacity among other things in minority owned businesses because like the mayor, as an African American, of course I want, I like to see success universally, but as a brand ambassador of Durham, I want that success in Durham, for Durham companies and Durham entrepreneurs and Durham women in my minority owned businesses. And part of the thrust, I thought, no, not by thought, it is part of the thrust of our shared economic prosperity plan was to do precisely what some of the things are that we want to research and collect data on. The shared economic prosperity plan has already offered a response to the things that we're talking about researching because we already know what the areas are, capacity, access to capital, you know, not having to load up on debt in order to compete with some of these contracts. So I would, you know, strongly recommend and ask that we, we again, redouble our efforts, we refocus attention again on our shared economic prosperity plan, particularly as we start to emerge out of COVID, find out what's going on with, I think devoted almost $300,000 to stand up a not-for-profit organization towards that end to address some of the things we're talking about right now. We should, as a government, as a council, encourage the work that David and Ms. Giles are doing, Mr. Boyd and Ms. Giles are doing, but also double down again on our efforts on our shared economic prosperity plan because when we intoned that plan, we were already admitting that we knew what some of the problems were and we knew the areas where these companies needed help for Durham, not just universities for Durham, and I would just ask us to recapture that fire of that initiative as well as doing the wonderful, supporting the wonderful work that David and Ms. Giles are here, trumpeting. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. I associate myself with everything everybody says. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Mayer-Schul and then Council Member Freeman. So what Council Member Middleton was saying has made me think a little bit more about this. So, and what the manager said was so right. I mean, about people having, people know they can, large contractors have people they know, they trust, they can work with. They're in Youngsville, they're in Zebulon, and they hire them. So two thoughts I have. One is when we are shared economic prosperity and not just working along with what the schools are doing in Durham and Durham Tech have been, has been very oriented towards certain kinds of pipelines into certain businesses that we think of as, you know, businesses where there are lots of opportunity, you know, biotech and, you know, these kinds of things. So, you know, there are the pathways that have been identified, the Durham Public Schools and Durham Tech are all about and their businesses that work with them. But when I think about this, I wonder if there's not an opportunity to, specific to the city, to think about, okay, what are the services that we need as contractors or subcontractors? Because a lot of these businesses aren't big enough to get the, the contracting business, but could be the subcontractors. Two ideas about it. One is just to be, you know, through your contacts with the, with the Durham, with the black chamber, through OEWD's list, and it has a list, I know, to try to develop that list and, you know, very, and then I wonder if it's not, and I'm spitballing here, but how about having an on-call list like we do for, you know, like we have sewer repair and we have an, we have on-call contractors, you know, who kind of, you know, as needed. I wonder if some version of that would be possible for what, you know, a lot of these are landscaping service. Some of them are engineering. So a lot of them are, you know, there's, there's pouring concrete. Just think about the things that are there today that I saw today. Yeah, so that's my thought. You know, is there some way to develop a kind of city on-call list? So what the manager was talking about, what we've been talking about a lot about the hub databases, yes, we are increasing the kind of universe of minority women business people who get contracts from the city, and that's a good thing. But it isn't war with our own desire to have local businesses succeed also, especially local minority and women-owned businesses. And so I'm just trying to strategize and think about strategies. And so that's my one idea that's rolling around in my head. I just wanna put it out there. You know, the idea that we could develop some sort of on-call contracts that we could encourage our larger contractors to go to first, or, you know, not exactly sure how you do it. I don't know what the legal things are, but I just wanted to try to think of another city model where we're doing that and, you know, doing something like that. So, there you go. Probably worth about what most of my ideas are worth, but I do think it has some, maybe it has some potential. I sorta like that though, Mr. May. A Durham on-call list, if you will, but I'm sure it's fraught with legal issues. And so, but it's certainly one that I made a note of and will certainly take back and get with Fred Lamar. But of course, it does take that earlier work we were talking about, identifying those things that we know Durham firms are available to do and then sort of channeling them to whatever list we might ultimately develop to be on-call for that type of work. It's an interesting concept. And if we had, if we incur it, if we knew what they were, if we knew what the needs were, who would carefully identify them, and I believe you already know what the needs are because you've done this so many times, you see, both of you all see what kind of contracts come through here and what the subcontract opportunities are. You know, marry that with, as my colleagues as Councilman Freeman and Councilman Middleton been saying, you know, with the work that we're doing in OEWD where we think, okay, what are the firms, not just that we're trying to develop for the general economy, but what are the firms that we use in this, what are the services we use in the city? If there's not an African-American, if there's a small African-American concrete laying business, I don't know what you do with concrete, you pour it, you don't lay it. You know, how do we help them scale up? You know, what are the things that they need? How do we get them to capital? You know, just think in a very targeted way about the things that we do, that we as a city, what are the services that we need? Because a lot of prosperity can be shared just through what we do. Okay, I'm not gonna say anymore. Sorry, I've been saying a lot. Okay, Council Member Caballero and then Council Member Freeman. Yeah, I just wanted to share a little bit. So I worked for a woman of color-owned firm and in fact it was a almost all women of color-owned, or just employed firm and we were one of the few in the country. In fact, I think maybe the only one in the country at the time for the professional services that we offered and this was all school-related. But once we were able, so there's two things that I think of, we had to go through the federal process of being both a woman-owned and a minority-owned firm. Which is, it's a heavy lift. So I think about technical expertise that needs to be offered, which is definitely what I think we could do as a city is to get the folks certified, right? Because that's its own challenge. And then in certain school districts there was essentially preferred vendor status. Once you met the requirements, once you did all the extra stuff, you we