The broadcast will begin in one minute. We are currently live streaming and the intro sequence will play in 30 seconds. Oh no, that's you. That'll sequence you. Testing one, two, three, testing. All right. Good evening, everybody. We would like to call the Durham City Council meeting to order for this the 21st day of March, 2022. At seven PM, we certainly want to welcome all of you here in attendance and we have a pretty full house tonight. So welcome back everybody. We are back. Doofs. Yeah. Those joining us remotely as well. I would ask that you all join me in a moment of silent meditation. Thank you all. I would now like to recognize Councilwoman Freeman who will lead us in the pledge of allegiance. United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Madam Clerk, if you will call the roll. Mayor O'Neill. I am present. Mayor Pro Tem Middleton. I'm here. Councilmember Caballero. Here. Councilmember Freeman. Present. Councilmember Johnson. Here. Councilmember Williams. Present. Thank you. Thank you. We now have a ceremonial item, which is a proclamation for the March for Meals month proclamation, which will be read by Councilwoman Caballero. Thank you, Mayor O'Neill. Is the proclamation down by the microphone? I have a copy of it here, I believe. Thank you. If you'd like to use this one. And Mr. Jason Peace, I believe will be the recipient. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to apologize, I need my reading glasses and I can't do the mask with the reading glasses. So I'm going to take the reading, I mean the mask off. This is Mr. Peace. He is the fantastic ED of Meals on Wheels. Just very quickly, I had a wonderful time delivering meals. Councilmember Williams was there and I do want to shout out police officer Denise Campbell who was there this morning, don't, excuse me, volunteering her time delivering meals all over Durham. It's my honor to read this pledge. Whereas 50 years ago on March 22nd, 1972, President Nixon signed into law a measure that amended the Older Americans Act of 1965 to include a national nutrition program for individuals 60 years and older. And whereas for five decades, this landmark law has helped to fund community-based organizations like Meals on Wheels Durham. And it is still the only federal program designed specifically to meet nutritional and social needs of older adults. And whereas this year Meals on Wheels programs from across the country are joining together for the March for Meals Awareness Campaign to celebrate 50 years of success and garner the support needed to ensure these critical programs can continue to address food insecurity and malnutrition, combat social isolation, enable independence and improve health for years to come. And whereas Meals on Wheels Durham has served our community admirably for 47 years, and whereas volunteers for Meals on Wheels Durham program are the backbone of the organization. They not only deliver nutritious meals to seniors and individuals with disabilities who are at significant risk of hunger and isolation, but also carrying concern and attention to their welfare. And whereas Meals on Wheels Durham provides nutritious meals to seniors that help them maintain their health and independence, thereby helping to prevent unnecessary falls, hospitalizations and or premature institutionalization. And whereas Meals on Wheels Durham provides a powerful opportunity for social connection for seniors to help combat the negative health effects and economic consequences of loneliness and isolation. And whereas Meals on Wheels Durham deserves recognition for the heroic contributions and essential services they have provided amid the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to provide long after it's over. And whereas the senior population is increasing substantially and action is needed now to support our Local Meals on Wheels Durham program through federal, state and local funding, volunteering, donations and raising awareness to ensure these vital services continue to be delivered for another 50 years. Now, therefore, I, Elaine M. O'Neill, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim the month of March, 2022 as March for Meals Month. In Durham and hereby urge all residents to honor our Meals on Wheels Durham program, the seniors they serve, and the volunteers who care for them. Witness my hand this 21st day of March, 2022. Can I take a moment? Thank you. Thank you so much. So on behalf of all our volunteers, our staff, our clients, our board members, just like to say thank you to the Durham City Council. March for Meals is our month-long advocacy campaign for all the affiliates for Meals on Wheels across the nation. And what it does is to serve a purpose to bring awareness to the many older adults in our community who actually need and benefit our services. Over half of our funding comes from the government. And in this celebration of the Older Americans Act, it wouldn't be possible without that. And so, you know, if there's anything that I wanna leave you guys here with, it's probably two things. One is to get involved. And you can get involved by donating your time, your talent, or your treasure. That's most important, I think. And then two is just not the loose sight of our older adults in the community. Like, because none of us would be here without them. So you don't get here without the folks that came before you. And so for me, personally, it's just an honor to be able to be back in my hometown to be able to give back to a community that gave so much to me as I was growing up. So I would just urge and kind of champion everyone here to think about it and to not lose sight on helping one another, and particularly our older adults who sometimes are often forgotten. And, you know, if you needed any more information in regards to how you can help, please go to our website at www.mowderm.org. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peace. Good evening, Your Honor, and to my honorable colleagues and to all of our residents and citizens and friends watching, wherever you may be tonight, it's good to be here to conduct a people's business. Madam Mayor, just a couple of things, maybe two or three things very quickly. I want to report that we had a, we being Council Member Williams and Council Member Freeman, and I had a wonderful trip to our nation's capital, Washington, to participate in the National League of Cities, Congressional Cities Conference, where leaders from all over our country, local leaders, mayors and city council members have opportunity to meet with our federal elected officials and cabinet members and others. The President dropped in on us on Monday and then the Speaker of the House dropped in on Tuesday and we had opportunity to have audience with a number of cabinet members and undersecretaries and federal officials, all to talk about how we can make life better for our cities and particularly how we can leverage and fully exploit in a good way of the money coming down the pipeline, particularly for infrastructure and ARPA money. Also had an opportunity to have meetings with representatives on Capitol Hill, both Democrat and Republican. One of the cool things about being a local elected official is there's no DRR on the road. There's no DRR on the stoplight. When you call 911, it doesn't matter what the political affiliation of the responder is, the firefighter or the emergency medical technician or the officer, you want help. And that's what I love about local politics is we get things done. So we were able to have, I thought, I think substantive meetings with our Senate Senator Burr gave us a good amount of time. We met with Congressman Price, another federally elected officials to talk about ways that Durham can benefit. Council Member Caviarra, I thought about you because one of the conversations I was able to attend was about ARPA funds and one of the things that I at least had not thought about, but I know is important to you and you've championed, was using some of our ARPA funds to make solvent and buttress our water emergency fund. Those who need help when they're having hardship with their water bills, I had not thought about that, but I had an opportunity to talk to peers who were using their money for things like that. Also, Madam Mayor, in your absence, attended a meeting of mayors for education there in Washington and many of your colleagues, your honor, are in the same position as we are. We don't have direct control over education, but there are things we can do to partner and things we can do to create an environment that will make success more likely for our students. So I was very happy to be in that meeting and look forward to reporting to you, what I learned there and had a wonderful opportunity just to meet with colleagues from around the country who are facing some of the same challenges we are exiting out of COVID in this pandemic. And I want to thank Council Member Williams and Freeman both as well for being fully engaged while we were there. Secondly, we are in the process of filling one of these seats that belongs to the people of the city. These seats ultimately are on loan to us. They don't belong to us. They belong to the people of the city. And we approached this process with a great deal of pause and realization, how sacred an obligation it is to fill one of these seats. I just want to remind folks that the application period is still open and will close this Friday, March 25th. So if you're interested, if you're watching, you're interested in coming up here and making big bucks and working crazy hours, please fill out the application and we'll look forward to giving it a full vetting and reading as we fulfill the sacred obligation to fill the seat vacated by our good friend, Council Member Charlie Rees. And finally, your honor, happy birthday. Madam Mayor, who celebrated a birthday just a few days ago, finally hit 35. So we, it's holding. So we certainly on behalf of the city want to wish you a happy birthday. I hope you're continuing to celebrate and we pray and wish you many, many more. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you so much. I'm 35 and holding everybody, 35 and holding. But no, actually I turned 60 on Friday and I'm glad to meet that milestone. So thank you and thank you all for holding it down in DC. I'm traveling next week for the city and I think Councilman Williams will be traveling as well. And I think Councilwoman Freeman will be traveling as well to Florida.  So we'll be traveling next week and thank you all for holding it down in DC for us. That there, are there any other Announcement Councilwoman Freeman? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to thank Mayor Pro Tem, Middleton for that overall coverage of the National League of Cities trip. I just wanted to take a moment and congratulate you as I understand you've had a welcome addition in the family. And I hope that you'll be taking some time to enjoy that welcome addition over the next few days. And so I just want to say thank you and for your service. And I want to thank you for giving up yourself on every day, not just today, but every day. And I do want to say, I think it's important that you do take that time. Thank you. Thank you, Mama. Thank you, Councilwoman Freeman. I had a grandbaby that was born this morning. Yes, Kalia Grace. It's been a wonderful day, been a wonderful day. Are there any other announcements from Council? Councilwoman Freeman. Thank you, Mayor and colleagues. Just want to say, just piggybacking quickly on Mayor Pro Tem's coverage of Washington. He didn't mention the $80 Uber rise that we had to cancel because there were protests from Canada, truckers who were clogging up the streets around the Capitol. But what I can say is with all the issues that we have going on in Durham, with all of the positives and opportunities, we are so unique across this country. I mean, sitting in a room of 3,000 people that are just like us, and when you go into a breakout room and it's maybe 200 people in there, and you get to the mic and you say, well, here's what's going on in my city. And no one can say, wow, me too. No one is experiencing the growth that we are experiencing. No one is in a unique position like we are to leverage this once in a lifetime opportunity. There are a lot of commonalities that are happening across the country, but nobody is doing it like Durham. And it was just so, it was such a moment of pride to represent the Bull City, and to know that with all of the things that come with us, as I keep saying, North Carolina, we go from crazy conservative to problematically progressive. Well, we are Durham with pride. Take it or leave it. And we represent it well in D.C., and it felt good to be a part of the Bull City. So to the Durhamites out there, let's keep doing what we do. Thank you. Thank you, council. Recording in progress. Williams, are there any further announcements? Council. All right, we will next move to our priority items, and I will now recognize our city manager to see if she has any priority items. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem and members of the Durham City Council. I do have one priority item. It is agenda item number eight, which is the Greater Triangle Commuter Rail Study Update. Pursuant to council's request, additional information related to the proximity of affordable housing to the station area has been provided in attachment number three, under priority items by the city manager, city attorney, and city clerk. That is the only item I have for your consideration this evening. Thank you, city manager Page. I will now recognize our city attorney for any priority items. Good evening. I'm Don O'Toole, sitting in for city attorney, Kim Rayberg, and the city attorney's office has no priority items this evening. Thank you, attorney O'Toole. Glad to see you again tonight, sitting beside me. Miss Kim, but you are very able. Thank you. I now recognize our city clerk for any priority items she may have. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem and city council members. The city clerk's office has no priority items this evening. Thank you, Madam clerk. We will now turn to our next order of business, which is the Consent Agenda. The Consent Agenda consists of items that the council has previously considered in a work session. All items on the Consent Agenda may be approved by a single vote of the council. Items may be removed from the Consent Agenda by a council member or a member of the public. And those items will be considered separately at the end of the meeting tonight. I am now going to read into the record the Consent Agenda. Number one, Durham City County Appearance Commission Appointments. Number two, the Audit Services Oversight Committee 2021 Annual Report. Number three, Acra ACRA FITS-POW Affordable Rental Preservation Grant Agreement. Item four, Amendment Number One to Contract Number One, Seven, Six, Four, Eight with Moss plus Ross LLC for Communications Consulting Services. Item five, Durham City County Interlocal Agreement for Continuation of the Gang Reduction Strategy. Item six, Resolution Authorizing the Virtual City Auction. And item seven, Contract SW-87 Bracktown Sidewalk Improvements 2022. Now I am ready to entertain a motion to approve the Consent Agenda. So moved. Second. Second. It's been moved by Councilwoman Freeman and seconded by Councilwoman Caballero. Madam Clerk, if you will please open the vote. Excuse me. If you will please close the vote. Sorry. Madam Mayor, the vote passes unanimously. Councilwoman Johnson, you were able to get your vote in. All right. Thank you. Couldn't find the remote. I'm sorry. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The ayes have it and the Consent Agenda is approved unanimously. We now turn to our third order of business which is the General Business Agenda. And we do have some public hearings this evening. The first, I'm going to read the General Business Agenda into the record and then we'll take them in the order that they appear. Item 10 is the public hearing on the FY20-22-23 budget and FY20-23-2028 Capital Improvement Plan CIP. 11 is the Consolidated Annexation Carver Street Assemblage and item 12 is the Consolidated Item Trosa Main Campus Expansion. And we will start with item number 10 which is the public hearing on the FY20-22 budget and FY20-23-2028 Capital Improvement Plan. And we do have several speakers for this item. Good evening, Mayor and members of council, residents of Durham, I'm John Allure. I'm the Director of Budget and Management Services. This is the public hearing to receive comments on the development of the fiscal year 2022-23 budget and 2023-2028 Capital Improvement Plan. The city manager will present the FY20-23 proposed budget on May 16th. There will be a second public hearing on June 6th to take up the matter of that proposed budget. All public hearing commitments have been fulfilled with this item and we are here to listen to comments. Thank you so much, Mr. Allure. We have received the staff report. At this time, we will entertain any questions and comments from council. Councilwoman Freeman. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just for the point of clarity, just understanding that today's the comment period opens and so from 5 p.m. today until June 21st, we will be taking public comments and I do believe the email address was listed in our agendas as publichearing.comment at durhamnc.gov and I just wanted to make sure I said that out loud so that folks don't think that today is the only day. That's all. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. We have a number of speakers who are in our audience this evening. I will call those names first and then we have a number of speakers who will be joining us virtually and I will call those names afterwards. Each person will have three minutes to speak. Our first speaker is Ms. Stella Adams. The second will be Ms. Danette Wilkins. The third person will be Ms. Hilda Cookie-Cobitch and those persons are present here so we will welcome Ms. Adams this evening. You have three minutes, Ms. Adams. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the Durham City Council. It's good to see y'all. Good to see you. I am here to say that, to speak to both the budget process and particularly to the capital improvement plan for 2023 through 2028. The key to budgeting and developing the capital improvement plan must be equity. And we can't just have equity going forward but we have to address the past policy violence that this council and previous council have done in previous budget and capital improvement plans to minority communities and in the past. So we have to drive equity going forward but we have to address and remediate past inequities that are developing in our community. You're gonna see me, hear me say, Braggtown, Braggtown, Braggtown, Waltown, Waltown, Waltown, Southside, Old Farm, Northeast Central Durham, Merrick Moore. I'm gonna call out those historic neighborhoods. These are the people who built this city. The tobacco workers, the hospital workers, the workers at Duke, the workers that built this city and making sure that their families have the opportunity to remain in this city as it's growing and flourishing. As that requires that you require every department work through its agenda, through the equity lens that DEI office has developed. If the budget doesn't include that, then you should not adopt it. It has to be the priority, the lens that you work through. On capital improvement, transit, transit, transit. We need access to jobs. We need paratransit. Happy y'all got that $10 million for the bus station, but what about the bus riders having access to jobs, having bus routes in their communities? Affordable housing, affordable housing, we don't have affordable housing. And Durham has done more than any community in the state to try to address that, but we have to be more creative about building infrastructure, about assisting developers through gap financing vehicles and be creative about the future. But again, a Durham that includes us all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Adams, for your comments tonight. I would now recognize Ms. Dennett Wilkins. Good evening and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you all today. I'm Dennett Wilkins. I'll be speaking from notes because I'm feeling a little nervous first time in this room. I'm honored and privileged to be here today to speak out against the spot-shotter proposal today as the city council develops its budget for the next fiscal year. I come here today as a public health professional working for Johns Hopkins University in social and behavior change around myriad health issues, including violence prevention and response. But most importantly and proudly, I come here today as a Black Latinx resident of Cleveland Holloway neighborhood, representing myself and some of my dear neighbors. And speaking on behalf of them and their storied history here in Durham, which is much longer than mine, a mere five-year resident from Atlanta, Georgia. I'd like to cite the mounting evidence against shot-spotter across this country. Most recently, the city of Chicago Office of Inspector General issued a report citing, and I quote, that use of shot-spotter acoustic gunshot detection technology and Chicago Police Department's response to shot-spotter alert notifications can seldom be shown to lead to investigatory stops which might have investigative value and rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime. Additionally, the Office of Inspector General identified evidence that the introduction of this technology in Chicago changed the way that some Chicago Police Department members perceived and interacted with individuals present in areas where shot-spotter alerts are frequent. Here in North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, decided to discontinue its own shot-spotter contract ahead of its end date for similar reasons. I ask that we learn from the hard and costly lessons of cities like Chicago, Charlotte, and so many others across the U.S. And I respectfully implore the city council to strongly consider the mounting evidence against spot-shotter and thoughtfully explore more evidence-based solutions for reducing gun violence in dialogue with those Durham community residents who are most directly impacted by gun violence in our beloved city. I'll be meeting with neighbors in Cleveland Holloway in the coming weeks to discuss the spot-shotter proposal and welcome any and all council members to join us in brainstorming ways to invest our precious human, financial, and material resources to effectively reduce gun violence across the city. Thank you so much for your time today. And I look forward to having the opportunity to speak with you all in other areas. Thank you so much for your comments this evening. I'll now recognize Ms. Hilda Cookie-Covic. Ms. Coppich, C-O-P-P-E-D-G-E. We will now turn to our speakers who are joining us virtually this evening. And the first speaker we will have is Mr. Wilson-Sales-Salls, S-A-L-L-S. Each of you will have three minutes this evening. Madam Mayor, Mr. Salls is not in the virtual queue. Chi-Voe, C-H-I-V-O will be the next person followed by Ms. Laura Stroud. Hello, everybody. Thank you for having me. I'm Chi-Voe. I'm here as the chair of the Environmental Affairs Board. The Environmental Affairs Board is in strong support for the Durham Open Space and Trials Commission's proposed budget. The budget request is crucial to realizing Durham's great, largely untapped potential to provide open space to all residents equitably. This proposed budget comprises of two major requests. It's a permanent city employee positioned, termed open space implementer, to provide guidance, accountability, and assume responsibility for the implementation of the open space aspects of capital improvement projects in the city to provide guidance, accountability, and assume responsibility for the implementation of open space aspects of capital improvement projects and an annual labor recurring open space budget for this city, earmarked $100,000 and the DOS is recommending. In the absence of an individual explicitly responsible for executing urban space, the urban open space plan at the city level, actual tasks needing to desired outcomes fall through the cracks and these tasks and outcomes particularly affect our quote unquote communities of concern. An open space implementer could assume responsibility of various unassigned tasks instrumental to our city's wellbeing, while also engaging with neighborhoods and environmental groups throughout the community. Therefore, we see the adoption of this request to be an important part of addressing equity concerns in Durham. And the green space surrounding Durham is the part of what makes our city unique. Yet these areas are not accessible to everyone in our community. Additionally, preserving open space cross cuts so many other issues that come before our board from water quality, air quality, biodiversity and heat islands to name only a few. Prioritizing open space in our community is central to the vision of Durham and that is what we as a board hold. So thank you for your consideration. I yield my time. Thank you, Ms. Fowle. We will now recognize Ms. Laura Stroud and she will be followed by Ms. Larissa Seibel. Ms. Stroud, you have three minutes, ma'am. Thank you, Council Meet. Thank you to the city council. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to make comments this evening. I'm the current chair of the Durham Open Space and Trails Commission and I know you've heard from me in the past so I'll keep my comments brief this evening. But I would like to speak in support of the Durham Open Space and Trails Request for a city staff position for an open space implementer, project manager position, as well as a line item for an annual recurring open space budget for the city. Dost in the past has identified a number of potential parcels within the city that are good fits for conservation. Within our region, the Upper News Clean Water Initiative has also created a prioritization for parcels within the city of Durham. That would be a good fit for land conservation for water quality benefit. And the Durham Urban Open Space Plan also has a prioritization method for which parcels within the city should be conserved. So we know that there is a need for land conservation within our city and Durham tends to trail behind peer cities in its provision of open space. And part of that is because there isn't a specific role within the city of someone tasked with this in their job description. As a conservation professional, I know that there have been opportunities that have been missed for the city to act quickly on open space opportunities. And we all know these land deals are moving very quickly these days. So in addition to the role of the Urban Open Space Planner, it's also essential that there be funds on hand with which they can act quickly on these conservation priorities. We know what the priorities are. We just need the staff time and the resources to act on them. And we appreciate your, we ask for your support in providing this open space position as well as a recurring fund for funding land conservation. And thank you so much for your consideration. Thank you, Ms. Stroud for your comments this evening. And Ms. Seibel is present. Thank you for being here. She'll be followed by Ms. Rita McDaniel. Thank you very much. I wanted to speak on some of the priorities that we have spoken with you before and a few new ones perhaps to recognize the call that the mayor made to do more for affordable housing for people who are homeless now. We want to prevent evictions first so people don't become homeless. And the legal aid of North Carolina did an amazing job in using $6 million and we're asking for another $6 million to continue to fund rent. They're already there in person, but we need to have substantial amounts of rent to help people from being homeless. And another speaker will talk about homelessness and that's our second priority. And then we definitely need to increase affordable housing. We know you're doing that. We just need to do it in every area of Durham, every piece of land that the city and the county and anyone else that has land can assist. And we want to offer gap funds to developers that are willing to build affordable housing and renovate affordable housing. And then we think a couple ideas including helping tenants stay in their homes by creating local housing vouchers. We're seeing huge increases in rents. I get calls every other day with people that I know or people that somehow find us asking for help with rents that are going up three, four, $500. And so I think local housing vouchers would help. And the last one is ban the box to reduce barriers to people who have past criminal records and also eviction records. Eviction records can't even be expunged. And certainly criminal records and eviction records prevent people from finding and being able to get decent housing. So we hope that you will support those. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments today, Ms. Sybel. Ms. Redo McDaniel, Ms. McDaniel will be followed by Ms. Brittany Price. Ms. McDaniel, I recognize you for your three minutes. Madam Mayor, Ms. McDaniel is not in the queue nor is she here attending. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We will now ask for Ms. Price, Ms. Brittany Price. Ms. Price will be followed by Ms. Angela Vic Lewis. Ms. Price, you will have three minutes. Hello, thank you for your attention. My name is Brittany Price and I've lived in Durham for 10 of the last 12 years. And like all of you, I feel very fortunate to call this place home. And I want all of our neighbors to live abundant, flourishing lives. I'm speaking to you today to say that a ShotSpotter pilot, one of the items under consideration for the proposed budget will not help us get there and it would actually harm our city. ShotSpotter is a surveillance tool that you yourselves when scoring it as a potential budget item noted will not advance equity. I'm a public health professional and I like to check out what the evidence base says about technology like this. There's not a ton of published research on ShotSpotter but what is available shows that this technology isn't preventing gun violence and it has no effect on health outcomes for people who've been shot. So we know that it's purported immediate benefit which is dispatching police to places where gunfire has been detected does not help us. Furthermore, and worse, we know that interactions with law enforcement are linked to a range of poor health outcomes for any of our neighbors who are criminalized and marginalized and particularly for black people. Dispatching officers into our neighborhoods especially when no one has called them is damaging.  We know that for our neighbors who use drugs over policing which ShotSpotter contributes to is linked to increased overdose. In young people who've been stopped by police overwhelmingly to report those experiences as traumatic and stigmatizing. The evidence shows that people who have serious mental illness are nearly 12 times more likely to experience violence or injury during police interactions than people with no such diagnosis. And I'm concerned that ShotSpotter will hurt Durham. I urge you to remove it from your consideration and allocate those funds toward resources that we know protect us. Restorative justice programs, our community safety department and universal basic income are far better investments in violence reduction in Durham than ShotSpotter is. Improving housing, preventing evictions and better food access are too. Durham deserves a budget that serves all of us and I hope you'll keep that in mind as you finalize how you'll spend our money. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Price for your comments this evening and then turn and recognize Ms. Angela Vic Lewis. Happy to have you here. Hello, thank you. Hello everyone. I'm here to speak on a few topics of the homelessness. I'm currently the chair of the HAC advisory board and I'm a former person of homelessness. I went through it here, moving here. I came here to do this advocacy and ended up being part of it. So it's really near and dear to my heart. So let me get with these three minutes because I can talk. First, we wanted to try to continue the hotels, the hotel to home program, the funding for that and for the shelters of the nonprofits. Shortly, I was trying to get some of the clients that are over there at the open table ministry to come in to speak their voices, because I could speak for people but it's better for them to speak their own truth. Now, I'm nervous. It was a gentleman that I met last week. He just came home from Afghanistan and he was staying in the shelter because he said he couldn't get into one of the homeless shelters because he didn't sign up in time but he was over there in the reserves. So when he came here, he ended up homeless. That's crazy. This is some of the things that we're facing and with these programs that need to have continued funding, we really need that for our clients, our families that are a lot of people from theatorium. Theatorium, they ended up, a lot of people end up losing their homes on top of the homelessness that we already have in this city. So I'm just asking for continued fundings and just to put that up on the calendar as one of the things that are really important. I know it's a lot of other violence and stuff that's going on here that's really very important right now but so is the lives of people. Like I was saying the day on the thing, when I, you know, my dog lives better than some people and that's crazy. You know, when it's cold outside, if they, after they are in the shelter, if they can get in the shelter, people are in the street. You know, with the COVID, they could ride the bus all day. So you're riding the bus, you're sleeping the shelter on the floor, you get up, you on the bus, you bus hop it. Until you come back, it's seven o'clock to go back to the shelter. And that's just right here, open table ministry. And then all around town, you see like tent city, people are living in the woods. And they're surviving because of those skills that they have. They have nothing else. I'm just asking that, you know, we try to do a little bit more for our citizens. You know, I stood at this right here four years ago, I'm sorry, and asked for help. And I went through some organizations, open, I mean, families moving forward. And look at me now, I'm the chair. So this is near and dear to my heart. And I just asked that you all just please take into consideration. Thank you, Ms. Vic Lewis for being here tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here and for your comments tonight. And now I turn to Mr. John Talmich. And he'll be followed by Mr. Austin Harper. It's our next speakers. You have three minutes of peace. Good evening. This is John Talmich. I'm an executive director of Bike Durham, local advocacy organization for sustainable transportation here in our full city. On average, once every other day, someone who is walking or biking in Durham is in a crash on our streets. And tragically, every 18 days, someone is killed or seriously injured while walking on our streets. And I know that this pedestrian safety, bicyclist safety, access to transit have been high priorities for our communities and for this council in the past. And we thank the council for making the commitment of an additional half cent for equitable and green infrastructure last year. And we support the efforts to do the community engagement and the scoring rubric. It takes equity, foremost in mind in terms of what priorities should be funded. What we wanna talk tonight about is the building the capacity of the city staff to deliver on the projects that will improve the safety and the access of Durham residents as they walk or bike or use transit around our community. And so that is funding additional positions for project management, funding additional design and engineering capacity, making sure that the salaries and benefits for key positions, whether those are project management or engineering or our transit workers are competitive and that we can retain and attract the talent that we need to deliver these important projects and services includes building the, making sure we have adequate community engagement staff and resources to bring in the community rooted partners that has been a practice in the past years instead of hiring those services out to outside consultants. Finally, we want to support the continuation of Fair Free Bus Service, but we urge the staff to begin thinking and the council to be thinking about how to continue that or beyond the use of the federal funds that have come in through the various COVID packages once it becomes part of the local tax responsibility there should be a strategy in place that is considered in this year or the coming year. And we would urge you to begin considering whether to increase the city manager's authority to contract for our construction projects as they increase with inflation whether those are consulting services, engineering services or the actual construction, we can speed up the delivery of these projects if the manager has greater authority to sign contracts herself without them having to come. Thank you, Mr. Tomuch for your comments this evening. Thank you for being here, well being on virtually. We now turn to Mr. Austin Hopper. Thanks for having me. I think when I kind of look at the budget and we're considering what it should look like, I think with infrastructure and the investments that Durham is making, the reality is that speed and delivery really matters similar to what John was saying. I think investment communicates the city's values, but it takes groundbreaking being done for any of my neighbors to know about the good work that's being done behind the scenes. I think for neighborhoods, sidewalks and investments, and I mean, it's just sad we have projects that are approved, funded, that would bless people like my elderly neighbor who's trying to walk the food line, but he's not gonna know anything about that until it's built, until there's groundbreaking being done. I think it's just such a direct way for neighborhoods, for people to see the city council doing things and the city investing in their neighborhoods and how empowering it can be for people like my neighbor Mark. Yeah, so I think I would just ask that we consider investing in that speed and delivery for those people that are being injured, for people. I mean, my heart just breaks looking down. You go down 98 and see kids walking in a dirt path, and we have plans, we have some funding or to see elderly people as I'm walking, biking to work, waiting in the rain at a bus stop, but there's funding, but I think the speed and delivery is what is gonna save lives. It's what's gonna really impact people in their day to day. So I would just ask that you consider, yeah, that speed and delivery as we're thinking about the budget and those infrastructure investments, and that's all. Thank you so much for your comments this evening, Mr. Harper, and I'll just take a glance at my clerk to make sure that I did not miss anyone who had signed up. All right, thank you all for being here in attendance who spoke tonight to our budget process and all those who have joined us virtually. We really appreciate your comments and your participation in this process. We will now turn to the next item on our agenda, which is item 11. Do you entertain remarks from the council for the budget hearing? I will open it up for comments from council as to the public hearing portion. All right, Councilwoman Caballero. Thank you and good evening. Thank you, Mayor O'Neill. I just wanted to, sorry, I was getting some back and there it is again. Let's see if that's better. Thank you. I just wanted to appreciate Ms. Vic Lewis for her comments. I had the privilege of riding around with one of our CIT officers last week. That's our crisis intervention team and we spent most of the morning checking in on several of our unsheltered folks and some of the folks that he knows very well and are really, really struggling. And so I know that our situation in Durham is very dire. I've also spent quite a bit of time in our courthouse over the last several months observing and watching what's happening around evictions. And so I know the serious crisis that we're facing and I just really wanted to appreciate those comments. It's something that I know we're all struggling with in the city COVID has had. We hear that the economy is roaring but there are a lot of folks who are being left behind. So I just wanted to appreciate her. Thank you for your comments. Anyone else? Councilwoman Williams. Thank you. I want to piggyback on that. Thank you, Council Member Caballero and Ms. Vic Lewis for those comments. We have a lot of issues that we have to deal with but there are some things that are non-starters that should be non-negotiable. We shouldn't have anyone serving this country and then coming back home would be homeless. We shouldn't have, that's just unacceptable. And we have a world crisis going on where we just sent billions to Ukraine and that was very much needed. We needed to make sure that we support democracy around the world but we also have to prioritize our issues here at home. So I appreciate those comments and I want to highlight the realities that we have here on the ground here in Durham. And I know government can't do anything. So let me say on the public record, if you are in the private sector and you have the means and resources, let us work together to solve this issue. We share these problems. We share these issues and let us have broader corporate partnerships and private public partnerships to where we're taking care of one another because if we can deal with those issues to make sure that folks have a shelter over their head and a floor under their feet and food on their table, it's better for all of us. So until we have made sure that no more tents are in our woods because folks have somewhere to live, none of us should be comfortable. So I appreciate those comments and I want to make sure that stays front of mind. We have a crisis that we need to address. On the other issue, shot spotter, we've received a lot of emails that are in opposition to this consideration. But let me also say that we've received a lot of emails that are for as well. And as we deliberate through this process, I would hope that we give the same energy and the same attention to the idea of trying to solve this issue beyond gun violence but a broader community in which we can say this is a safe community. This is a part of a suite of efforts. It's not the only thing. It's not the one all be all. And I understand that there's a lot of strategic messaging here. I also understand that there's a lot of real concern. And anyone that's speaking in opposition to this idea, I know that it's coming from a very true place. And I want you to know that I personally, I hear you. I hear you and I'm taking your perspective into consideration as well. As the people who are reaching out that are saying, don't touch my police officer or don't touch, just do something more, please. And yes, please try that out too. At least from my perspective on this, we have to take all perspectives. We have to take all options and all resources and make the best decision. And that is when we're led to ask, please consider assessing the results and not just the idea. We've made decisions. There were decisions made before even I was on council that didn't get this type of pushback. And now here we are. We have a lot of data and a lot of perspective on something that we haven't even tried yet. And none of it is in Durham. When it was proposed, when I had to hear it, I didn't hear this is gonna be the thing that's gonna solve gun violence. I heard multiple scenarios. So I'm speaking to those who have I'm speaking to those who are actually in support and in opposition equally. Give us a chance to try this. There are people who afforded people who are against. And if it works, it works. If it doesn't, we're gonna try something else. But I do know that we have folks right now that are asking for help. They're asking for help. So I'm not, I'm not downplaying this. I just wanna say, let us have a chance to try something that works. This is not the only bag technology. This is not the only good technology. But give us a chance to try it. If it doesn't work, hold me accountable. Hold me accountable for trying. And I'll leave it at that, Mayor, but I do appreciate the time. And I just wanted to let folks know in support and in opposition, I hear you. And this is part of an overall suite of efforts. Thank you. Thank you both for your comments. Are there any others? Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I wanna thank all of the residents and citizens who participated in this discussion tonight. This is what it's about. This is the nuts and bolts of our democracy. This is how it works. We come together and we, we debate, we debate vigorously and rigorously. And then we, we craft something that comes out of that debate. And then we move on and we try and get it right and do better the next time. I do want to say to all who are watching our discussion tonight, anytime, anyplace, I'll be more than happy to show up. I accept any invitation to come and talk about ShotSpotter or anything else, any citizen or resident I want to talk about. I'll say this. One of the things I've asked happened in this process is that the CEO of ShotSpotter is gonna come to Durham and I want him to take all, catch all the smoke and bring his team. And I want him to stand in front of us and take the scrutiny and answer the questions because quite honestly, one of the things I think this debate has suffered from on both sides on whether you're for it or against it is confirmation bias. And it's cherry picking examples and studies and data. There are currently over 100 American cities that deploy this technology. Some of them are more progressive than Durham. They're lapping us when it comes to marijuana. They're lapping us when it comes to LGBTQ rights. They're lapping us for environment, far more progressive than us. And I had colleagues in Washington kind of almost chuckle and say, are y'all still debating about that? Because they found a way to integrate the technology into their universe and to their orbit with guardrails in place to protect their values. If you hadn't noticed, I'm a black man in America. And I have some deep seated views about policing that come from some very, very personal and traumatic experiences growing up in what was the crack capital of America, Red Hook, Brooklyn in the 80s. I remember listening to Uzzies go off at night when we would go to sleep, not semi-automatic pistols, Uzzies going off at night. But that was just the way it was in the neighborhood. I also remember waking up in the morning, one morning and going through Coffee Park on my way to school at PS 58 and seeing a body in the park covered and folk surrounding him. But that person had bled out. Someone actually did get shot in the night. When ShotSpotter was first proposed, it had nothing to do with lowering of the amount of gun violence. It had nothing to do with retrieving shell casings. It had nothing to do with getting there in time to catch bad guys. It had to do with saving lives. It had to do with sending help when people need help.  My home is being surveilled. Many of you do the same thing. I am hard pressed to understand how sending police when gunfire goes off is a threat to our democracy. Sending police when gunfire goes off is not over-policing. Stop and Frisk is over-policing. Setting up checkpoints where black and brown folk frequent and our Latino brothers and sisters go to church or shop is over-policing. Stopping vehicles for minor equipment and fractions, mainly in black and brown neighborhoods, is over-policing. This technology, as I said, is being used in over 100 cities and we tend to focus on Charlotte and we tend to focus on Chicago. And quite honestly, some of the things we say are wrong, just plain wrong. Charlotte is actually reconsidering the technology again because when it was first deployed, it had to do with the structure they deployed around it to respond to it because you know what happened? When those centers went hot, we confirmed what we knew. And that's black and brown people are subject to incredible amounts of gunfire every night and children are jumping in bathtubs when it's not bath time. It's almost like if we don't document the problem, then we don't have to address it. And everything else that we've talked about in this city, expanding violence interrupters, spending money on root causes, we're doing them. We're doing them. Some of us that have proposed ShotSpotter have been the champions of proposing those other interventions as well. You know, we had a big petition and a big referendum called an election a couple of months ago and the people of the city did not reject the ideas of folk who are against ShotSpotter. What they rejected was one group thinking that only their ideas were worth trying. What they rejected was zero-sum game. What they rejected was an either or approach. What they said was do everything you can that comports with our values. And finally, if we want to put up evidence or talk anecdotally, ShotSpotter absolutely has saved lives. In the city of Wilmington last year, the mayor handed out rewards to officers who responded to a ShotSpotter alert. And when they got there, you know what they found? They found a body. They found someone who was bleeding out and they were able to administer A to that person. This wasn't about shell casings. This wasn't about catching a bad guy. This wasn't about getting there in time to make a TV type arrest. This was about when someone needs help in the middle of the night, someone will come to see about you. That was the animating proposition for ShotSpotter. Had nothing to do with saying we're gonna reduce violent crime. And by the way, if I pull out evidence or pull out instances where unarmed mental health responders were hurt or killed when they responded, are we gonna stop trying it in Durham? Is there anyone really that really thinks that if we pull out an instance where that has happened to an unarmed mental health responder that we're gonna scrap the whole program? No, no. We lean in on what we agree with and we push back on what we disagree with. And I'll put this to you and then I'll stop talking about this. I really want this to be a pilot in the truest sense.  I want Durham specific data points. I'm a local elected official. I'm not running for Congress. I'm not trying to make the honor roll of some national organization. I can't govern based upon a composite of policing that takes the worst of the LAPD, the Ferguson Police Department, the Rampart Division of the LAPD in the 80s smashes it together and then treats the Durham Police Department as if that's the composite, if that's what it is. I have to govern based upon Durham statistics and Durham data. I believe in science, this is the city of medicine. I want the data specific to Durham after Durham has had a crack on it, crack at it. Durham has put Durham guardrails around it that comport with our values and reflect what we know. Does anyone really think that we have a police chief that doesn't know she'll get called on the carpet? If we are sweeping in and over-policing and does anyone think on this council that we're gonna preside over a police department that just harasses black and brown people in our city? Not on our watch, but we've heard folk time and time again say we've watched interest in this city get what they need, whether it's bikes or trees or whatever, time and time again, we've watched interest groups and rightfully so get what they need, they're good ideas. But time and time again, it seems like other people are speaking for us and when we wanna try something in our neighborhood, we're told what's good for us. Anytime, any place I'll gladly come to any meeting. But what we need to get beyond is confirmation bias on both sides, we need to get beyond cherry picking the data and we need to name the studies when we're citing studies, when we're citing evidence, we need to name them so we can fact check them and see who wrote them. The CEO is coming to talk to us and I thank my friends and my colleagues and fellow citizens and residents tonight who came out. I look forward to further discussion on this and I accept any invitation to discuss this. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem for your comments. Are there any other Councilman Freeman? Councilman Freeman. Thank you, Madam Mayor and thank you colleagues for the comments, I won't go down that track. I do wanna circle back and just appreciate Madam Stella Adams and just bringing to our attention the need to make sure that we're including equity in our conversation around our CIP and I wanna make sure that our staff heard that very clearly because I know that that's where we're focused and that's the conversation we're having and just making sure that our departments are actually showing the residents of our community that we are including equity in this work is important. And then I also wanted to note the few areas, that were mentioned around paratransit access to jobs and bus routes to jobs and just being clear, like I would love to get a follow-up so that we can actually say what it is in our budget that's covering that. And along the lines of the conversation with open space and trails, I do wanna say that I'm really supportive of making sure we move forward with a permanent staffer. I'm not exactly sure about what that line item looks like. We know there'll need to be a line item that addresses that because we do need to be able to move quickly to actually implement whatever it is that the plan or the open space implementer is trying to do. And I wanna say that I wanna thank our Durham Open Space and Trails and our Environmental Affairs Board for being vigilant about this for the last four or five years at this point. And I'm glad that it's finally moving ahead. I do wanna also appreciate Ms. Vic for speaking specifically as a person who has experienced homelessness around the issues and making sure that we do pay attention to how we're using our funds to directly have impact for people who are living in tents, as opposed to folks who are losing their homes due to evictions. And so I do think that that's a part of our current budget and making sure that it's included in our future budget is important. I also will add that I appreciate the comments from Bike Durham and trying to make sure that we do have additional design and capacity staff in place to actually address some of our needs is important. And I heard Mr. Harper with a conversation around infrastructure speed and delivery. And I think that it's gonna be more than just the speed and delivery. We're gonna actually have to have a conversation about what that bond will look like to support our infrastructure needs as we move forward. Outside of that, I will say that I was trying to nail down a few other details, but I really encourage folks to continue to engage in this process. As I mentioned, this is the first night that the public hearing is open. And I know that there are others who have comments. Please continue to share those comments. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Freeman. Any other additional comments from Council? Once again, I thank you all for a very spirited debate on our budget process. We encourage you to continue to watch and continue to participate as we go down the road of balancing our budget by July. Is that where we have to balance it? July one. We're headed that way. Before July 1st, we have to balance that budget. So make sure you all stay tuned and we appreciate it. None of us enter into this process lightly. We listen very carefully and we have a very able staff who has just done a yieldman's job in catching Councilman Williams and I up to speed. I cannot thank Mr. Law and all the staff persons enough. They have done a wonderful, fantastic job of educating us and they continue to do that. So I have to give a shout out to them. I still continue to tell you all that we have a very well-run city and please, please appreciate our employees who work so very hard in making sure not only that they're answerable to your questions, but they're also answerable to us and they're catching us up to be able to answer better questions. So thank you. See the manager page and Don or to our attorney who's sitting in tonight and to Mr. Law and his staff. Thank you, forever grateful for all that you do. We now turn our attention, I believe, I'm correct to item 11, which is a consolidated annexation carver street assemblage and we have quite a number of folks who are in chambers tonight who would like to speak as well as we have some who are virtual as well. I do need to ask a couple of folks if they are proponents or opponents. Thank you. And then we can go from there from the written cards. They are listed on the virtual signup sheet but on some of our written cards. It does not state whether they are proponents of the Mr. Biker, I believe you're a proponent. Mr. Silver's Tom Tim Silver's. Mr. Silver's, are you an opponent or a proponent? An OP? Proponent. Thank you, sir. Mr. Ted Holman. Yeah. Ms. Vanessa Mason Evans, I believe you're also signed up on the virtual but Ms. Evans, you are here in person and you are a proponent, correct? Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Donna Frederick. Ms. Yvonne Orresco-Gomez. And please forgive me if I mispronounced your name. I apologize in advance for that. We also have Ms. Anna Marie Maria Arias-Zalazar. Pro, P-R-O. Thank you. And we also have Ms. Stella Adams. All right, thank you so much. Okay, we're going to first address those persons who are in here with us, who are proponents. Each person will have three minutes of peace. And we will first have our staff report. Thank you, ma'am, for them. And then we'll, just to give you an idea of what the lineup is going to be, we're going to address the proponents first. First will be the ones who are here in person, then we'll move to the virtual proponents and then we will do the same for the opponents.  Thank you so much. We will first, they'll start with our staff report. And that comes from Mr. Alexander Cahill. Did I get it right, Ms. Cahill? You did. Okay, I'm trying. All right, Ms. Cahill, you had a floor. Well, thank you, Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Pro Tem Milton and honorable council members. I'm Alexander Cahill with the Planning Department. We're happy to be here tonight and well, see your smiling faces. Before I begin, staff would like to state for the record that all Planning Department hearing items have been advertised and noticed in accordance with state and local law and affidavits of all these notices are on file in the Planning Department. Planning did receive a request for utility extension agreement, voluntary annexation and initial zoning map change from Tim Sivers of Horvath Associates. And this is for seven parcels of land totaling around 134 acres and located around Cub Creek Road, Carver Street and Old Oxford Road. This annexation petition is for a contiguous expansion of the existing corporate city limits. There's also an eighth parcel located at 937 Old Oxford Road, which is already in the city limits but is also included in the associated rezoning application. The intent of this contiguous annexation is to connect to city utilities and facilitate the construction of the residential units. The current zoning for the seven parcels is residential suburban 20 and for the eighth parcel that's already in the city limits it's suburban 20 and residential urban five. The applicant is proposing to change the designation of all eight parcels to plan development residential seven which is seven dwelling units in acre. This is to allow for the construction of up to 821 residential units with a mix of single family homes, multifamily units and townhouses. I think the history and evolution of this proposal is important for the context of the council this evening and the community listening in. At the Planning Commission public hearing in August of 2020, the Braggtown Community Association as well as community members from Braggtown and around it gave a presentation about the potential harms the proposal at the time could potentially cause. The community members identified a lack of affordable housing, a lack of environmental protections, lack of engagement and a lack of investment in a historically marginalized community. At that time, a different developer was on board with the project. Since that public hearing in August of 2020, the applicant and a new developer with the background in affordable housing development have worked to address these concerns by adding a significant contribution to the affordable housing inventory in Durham with 198 income restricted units, increasing the environmental protections associated with the proposal and engaging a community engagement effort with the Braggtown Community Association that has led to substantive changes to this proposal. At the public hearing on January 27th, 2022 with the Planning Commission, the applicant did to commit to several additional proffers which you found in your zoning map report. And these include clarifying that the pool and clubhouse will be being built will be serving the income restricted component of this development. We'll also ensure that no trees are being removed in the flood plain. There's a new design commitment that at least 40 units will be alley loaded and text commitment 23, which provides 150 foot stream buffer along the stream along northwest portion of the site, which is an excess of the ordinance. As a reminder for the council, three motions are required for this application this evening. The first is to adopt an ordinance annexing the property into the city entering into a utility extension agreement with the city manager. The second is to approve the zoning ordinance. And the third is to approve the consistency statement. Thank you very much staff and the applicant team as well as the chair of the Brighton Community Association are here this evening. Thank you so much, Mr. Cahill. You have heard the report from staff and I'm now going to declare this public hearing open. First, are there any questions for staff from members of the council? Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Not a question, but a declaration as is my custom here. There's no statutory conflict of interest for me in this whatsoever, but I always do like to divulge that the organization that I lead is a significant landowner in this area as it is also within a reporting footprint. But again, there's no, they're not giving me any money. So there's no statutory conflict of interest, but I always do like to divulge that. I invested in the area by virtue of my leadership of an organization in the city. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, Councilwoman Freeman. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just had a question for staff around the four units. I just wanted to know if that was like it was agreement or if it just was something that the number just came out of the sky. Like it just seemed a little odd. This one commitment is being added for four units. I'm not sure. Just to clarify, Council Member Freeman, are you talking about the 40 alley loaded units? 40, gotcha. 40, yes. I think the applicant just could speak to the number of the units, but it is 40. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from Council? Seeing none, we will now turn to our public speakers. Mr. Attorney Patrick Becker, you will be first. We are starting with our proponents. Each will have three minutes of peace. And Mr. Becker, you'll be followed by Mr. Silver's. May proceed, sir. Mayor O'Neill, Mayor Pro Tem Middleton, members of the City Council. I'm Patrick Becker with Morningstar Law Group. Mr. Sivers and Mr. Heilbrunner will be yielding their time to me, but I promise to take up less than four minutes of your time this evening. Again, members of Council, I'm Patrick Becker with Morningstar Law Group. I live at 2614 Stewart Drive. I'm here tonight representing Kelly Development for this agenda item. Again, our team consists of Tim Sivers, the President of Horvath and Associates, which is our site design and engineering firm. And then Ted Heilbrunner is the principal with Kelly Development Company, which is one of the leading affordable housing developers across the Carolinas. This agenda item represents what we believe is the largest rezoning for a mixed income affordable housing neighborhood in the history of Durham. This proposed neighborhood contains 134 acres with approximately 800 dwelling units. Of those 800 dwelling units, only 90 are single family detached homes, 180 are town homes. And then there are approximately 530 apartments of which 198 are income restricted. Those income restricted apartments will be developed pursuant to a 4% low income housing tax credit. Not only does this development contain 198 income restricted apartments, it goes above and beyond what our UDO requires in regards to environmental stewardship. Whereas the UDO requires 20% tree save, this development provides 22% or almost three acres of additional tree save. In terms of open space, the UDO requires 17% and this development provides 25%. In regards to the buffer along the North Carolina Heritage Preserve Area, the UDO requires only a 20 foot buffer and this development provides five times that, a 100 foot buffer. Last, the sales requirement for stormwater treatment is to capture and treat the 10 year storm event. This development will treat and capture the 100 year storm event. But that's not all. This project also will use private funding to make approximately $2 million worth of infrastructure improvements in the Bracktown neighborhood. All of which are listed as text commitments on our development plan. I want to stress for the council that these commitments for affordable housing, environmental stewardship and infrastructure improvements came after dozens, if not hundreds of hours of community engagement with the residents of Bracktown over the past year. Given all these facts, our team was disappointed that at the 11th hour, a very few people led by a person who lives at 110 Harmony Hill Road in Cary suffered to email the city council to require this project to improve Cub Creek Road. We believe this is being done in order to subsidize the redevelopment of property that was purchased less than three years ago. Since this issue was discussed at the planning commission and because all of the text commitments for this development plan were reviewed and approved by staff and worked on with the residents of Bracktown over the past year, this project will not proffer any additional traffic improvements, especially because such unbudgeted cost could affect our pending low income housing tax credit application with the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. In closing, we were very pleased to receive a unanimous recommendation for approval from the planning commission back in January. However, our team is even more pleased that over the past year, our team has established an open, respectful, and I would say very caring relationship with the leaders of the Bracktown Community Association and our Spanish speaking friends in Bracktown. Accordingly, the council will next hear from the servant leaders of the Bracktown neighborhood and after that, our team will be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much for your comments. I now recognize Ms. Vanessa Mason Evans. She will be followed by Ms. Donna Frederick. Good evening, Mayor O'Neill and city council members. I am here to speak on behalf of the Bracktown Community Association and its residents being in support of affordable housing. We are thankful for all the hard and long work that has been done with Kelly development and our community members. We are in hopes that this work will be a blueprint for other affordable housing developments in Durham. We are also in hopes that the city council will support this development and gap funding for this development in Bracktown. The BCA wants to thank everyone that has been in support of the work that is happening in Bracktown. That would include the planning commissioners who voted unanimously on this development, reinvestment partners, People's Alliance, Durham Cares, Duke, NIS, INC, the Stadville Memorial Project, Dataworks and so many other groups. We want to say to developers that have not engaged with us, please do so. I just learned of this development at Cub Creek last week. And my development worked with Kelly developments who we worked with for two years or more. I would like to say we have never heard of this development. And in all the developments that we have done, Alexander Cahill in the city of Durham has told us about every development that's coming into Bracktown for us to be able to work with them and to have engagement. So I am in hopes that this developer, at some point in time, will want to sit down and talk with the Bracktown Community Association and its residents. Again, I thank you all for your support and making sure that affordable housing is in Bracktown as well as all throughout Durham. Thank you. Thank you so much for your comments this evening. Ms. Frederick, we recognize you and you'll be followed by Ms. Gomez. Good evening all. I'll make it very quick and plain. My name is Donna Frederick. I reside at 603's Club Boulevard in Bracktown. I've been a resident for over 30 years in this town. I'm in support of this car assemblage because we've worked really hard in town to have communication. Communication is a really valuable point when you're trying to bring neighborhoods together and is really important when you're talking about housing. I've lost so many friends in this neighborhood that cannot afford to stay in Durham anymore. They work in the Durham business. They live outside of Durham. It's gotten too expensive for them. This is an opportunity for agencies to work together with the people in the neighborhood for income-based housing that they don't have to travel 45 minutes to come to work. So this is why we're in support of people who come together and push for housing that is affordable. It is not just for the very rich, it is for working people. And so we're really in support of the way we work together and all the community. And I thank you. Thank you so much for your comments this evening, Ms. Frederick. Ms. Gomez, Ms. Salazar, we follow by Ms. Salazar. Buenas noches, quiero. Good evening. Quiero agradecer la oportunidad de poder hablar. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk here and to represent part of my community, my Latino community. Mi nombre es Yvonne Orozco Gómez. My name is Yvonne Orozco Gómez. Tengo mi propio negocio ubicado. I have a business located en el 25-25 North Rock Street. 25-25 North Rock Street. Nosotros apoyamos la Asamblea de Carver Street. We support the Carver Street assemblage ya que como propietarios de pequeñas impresas, as small business owners, in breakdown, at breakdown, dependemos del crecimiento. We depend on the growth de nuestro vecindario para tener éxito of our neighborhood in order to be successful. Consideramos que Carver Street Asamblea, we consider that Carver Street Asamblea traería más vecinos a nuestra comunidad, would bring more neighbors to our community. Asimismo, más clientes para apoyar nuestras pequeñas empresas. And it would also bring more clients to support our small businesses. También apoyamos. We also support the building of 198 units accessible housing units, which were included in this project. And also, our Latino community podrá tener acceso a ellas. We'll be able to have access to it. Gracias por su tiempo. Thank you for your time. En por favor, voten a favor de la Asamblea de Carver Street. And please vote in favor of the Carver Street assemblage. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Gomez. Your comments this evening. Turn to Ms. Salazar. Buenas noches. Good evening. Mi nombre es Ana Arias. Gracias por la oportunidad de dejarnos participar esta noche. Thank you for the opportunity to let us participate tonight. He tenido el privilegio of having the privilege de ser resident the breakdown durante 16 años. Of being a Brighton resident for 16 years. He tenido la fortuna de ver crecer la comunidad Latina en esa área. I've been fortunate enough to see the Latino community grow in this area. Muchos de los vecinos son amigos y compañeros comerciantes. Many of our neighbors are partners and also business partners as well. He ha sido testigo de las necesidades que ha tenido el vecindario principalmente desde el cierre de Walmart hace más de 10 años. I've been privy to the consequences that has brought for the community the closing of Walmart some years ago. Este proyecto del cual hemos hablado, analizado y discutido con vecinos, amigos y compañeros comerciantes. This project that we've analyzed has been discussed with friends, with community members and with other business owners. Nos trae la oportunidad de poder prosperar en breakdown. And it affords us the possibility to thrive in Brighton. La comunidad Latina nos hemos mantenido firmes en esta área donde tenemos nuestros negocios y hemos elegido nuestras viviendas. The Latino community has stood firm in this area where we have our households and we've established our businesses. A pesar que hemos tenido dos golpes económicos muy significativos. Despite us having two major economic impacts. El primero, la recesión del 2009 y ahora la actual pandemia COVID-19. The first one was a 2009 recession and now the COVID-19 pandemic. Aun así, tenemos la confianza y la credibilidad. Even so, we're confident and we absolutely trust que este proyecto y futuros proyectos that this project and other future projects traerán prosperidad y gran oportunidad para el crecimiento de esta área. Will bring prosperity and a lot of opportunity for growth for this area. Amo breakdown. I love Brighton. Ha sido un vecindario donde han crecido mis hijos. This is a neighbor where my children have grown and where it has been. Ha sido el lugar donde he he tenido mi negocio I have been able to support my family for 16 years. It is a place where I have had my business which has afforded me the opportunity to support my family for years. I am proud to belong to Bractown and I would like to grow and develop the neighborhood. Thank you. And I would like to see the neighborhood grow and thrive. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Ms. Salazar for your comments this evening. We have Ms. Stella Adams. As a community activist and as a affordable housing advocate this is development done right. Building from the community having reached out and designed redesigned the plan built the plan with the community. This is a development that's inclusive while there are going to be over 800 housing units there. There's a commitment to income limited restricted housing at 198 units of affordable restricted income housing. That's restricted means it's going to remain affordable for our residents as over time. This was built designed to not only meet the affordability issue but to create community environmental options making sure the amenities are up to the standards of marketplace housing not substandard or second class but first class housing for all Durham residents in Bractown. This is where the neighborhoods spoke for themselves demanded fairness in 2020 and the City Council was brave enough to reject those efforts to make sure that there was an opportunity for community participation and the new developer has delivered in spades and I encourage you when the opportunity affords itself to be creative in assisting them in gap financing so they can create even more affordable units for our seniors. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Adams for your comments this evening. I believe I've finished all of the speakers who were in chambers with us and we will now turn to our virtual speakers. Our first would be Mr. Giorgio Castiglia, C-A-S-T-I-G-L-I-A and I believe he's listed as a proponent and then we will hear from the opponents beginning with Mr. Matthew Council and we will start with Mr. Castiglia and I'm sorry if I mispronounce your name you have three minutes of peace. Thank you. That's fine thank you so much for inviting me to speak but I believe that all my comments will be covered by that of Mr. Council so I can go ahead and yield my time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Mr. Council, Mr. Matthew Council followed by Ms. Peggy Salazar, Mr. Matthew Council the floor is yours sir. It looks like his mic went hot then went muted again. There he is. Good afternoon Durham City Council members. Good afternoon sir we can hear you. All right thank you for your time and consideration. Before I get started I did want to address the 11th hour comment I believe that was earlier stated that about the 11th hour push I believe that was in bad taste in regards to the developer's budget. The residents of Kirk Creek Road are for growth but there has to be inclusion and equity involved in that so during the COVID-19 pandemic we were not kept in the loop on all of the options available to this development so I believe this 11th hour push for opposition is warranted. Again my name is Matthew Council I do live at 3713 Cub Creek Road. I'm a resident and homeowner I've been happy to call this area my home for over 30 years so on behalf of the other residents I will be representing 18 of the 20 properties so I appreciate them yielding their time to me so please I ask for your patience because we do have a lot of concerns and I want to address each and every one of them.  You don't generally okay I'm going to speak with our attorney offline for one second. I will make it work within the timeframe. Okay sir you may proceed. Thank you during the construction of East Carver Street on Cub Creek Road it was bisected and the southern portion of Cub Creek Road was not connected to East Carver Street making it difficult to access our homes for emergency vehicles and other opportunities. Without connectivity between Cub Creek Road and East Carver Street this development further isolates Cub Creek Road residents which is already difficult for emergency access. This makes a bad situation worse and creates a significant concern concern for health and safety and more importantly the welfare of Cub Creek Road residents. So as residents of Durham we know that growth is coming and we are definitely in favor of it but smart growth is the way to go. However smart growth utilizes and improves on the existing infrastructure. As you can see from the plans for your consideration the proposed development has a frontage along the entire length of Cub Creek Road on the north and south ends of East Carver Street. However the rezoning plan only shows the developer has it as optional accesses to Cub Creek Road and states that improvements would only occur if the developer decides to construct accesses SC number two or SW number three. We believe that access and improvement of Cub Creek Road should be mandatory for this development not optional. We will request that the council only approve this rezoning if the developer agrees to construct all the traffic impact analysis improvements including the items 16 through 22. Now I do have a concern as relates to my own property. I personally believe that access of SC number two should be removed all together but it should definitely be moved down to a further lot on this street and also SW three on the back end of my property should be moved to another lot. The reason and being because again I've lived here and own here for years and you want to really put an access point at the beginning and the end of my property and I'm definitely opposed to that but I will continue. Connectivity and cross access are important to the goals of Durham the Durham City Comprehensive Plan. These goals that we agree with however connections and improvements of the existing roads with significant frontage to develop a discretion in this case is labeling them as optional does not achieve connectivity with the existing roads. Pedestrian access, bicycle access, we do not believe that access to East Carver and bringing creek road up to current standards is an unreasonable request. Currently we have children myself we have lots of residents to use this road for recreation to commuting and adding all the traffic really is just unacceptable but we've reached out to NCDOT and Durham Transportation Department regarding these concerns on zoning in this case is gaining support of the staff. You may proceed Mr. Council. Mr. Council you may proceed. Did we lose him Madam Clerk? He's trying to reconnect. Okay. Madam Mayor. Yes you may proceed sir. Thank you ma'am. Do you have any Mr. Council I want to make sure that I'm fair to both sides. When you were asking for extra time are you indicating that Ms. Salazar, Ms. Karsner, are you speaking on behalf of those others who signed up as well? Yes ma'am we did collaborate and I'll they'll be using their time to me. Okay and so you will be the only speaker that and you will be speaking on behalf of let me just make sure it's Ms. Peggy Salazar, Ms. Karsner, Mr. Jeffrey Maurochiknick, Alan Seawail, Lalit Yadav, Preeti Yadav, Victor Escobar, Alberto Serven, Crystal Sterling, Anofrio Castilejila and Tony Jenkins. Were you speaking in regards for all of those persons sir? Other than Crystal and Salazar those two individuals would be speaking after me. Mr. Jenkins will not speak as well. No ma'am. Okay I think the other side had about 15 minutes of that 15 and I think you're about at four minutes now. How much time would you need and then Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Sterling and Mr. Castilejila would have six three minutes of peace totaling six. Oh no ma'am I'll only be requiring about 60 seconds. All right. Okay Mr. Townsend go please. Thank you ma'am. Just want to be fair to everybody. Thank you. Absolutely. We've reached out to the NC DOT and Durham Transportation Department regarding these concerns and zoning case and we've gained support from the staff if these connections are made. We were to if we were to redevelop this road we would be actually having to fit the bill ourselves as owners and residents and we definitely are for this growth but we don't want to be left behind. We simply are asking for you to hold this development plan to the same standards if you would hold us to if we were developing our own properties. So unfortunately again we are having to discuss this on a public farm because it has been difficult to be kept in the loop due to COVID-19 but we have reached out to DOT, Durham staff and the developer on multiple occasions and definitely been responsive. Sadly we've it's been difficult to be heard seriously in these virtual meetings but our key takeaway from this council tonight is that public health safety and welfare should come first and I definitely want to bring this home as being taken so much time for the other residents and representing them. We are opposed to this but we would definitely be proposed to an if improvements was made to Cub Creek Road. That way this road would be included in all the growth that is surrounding such a staple in this community to be honest with you. We are just as old as some of the neighboring communities and the new growth should include the old residences and communities and thank you for your time Madam Mayor and City Council. Thank you Mr. Council for your comments this evening. Ms.  I'm clerked if you let me know when you're ready. All righty thank you so much. Ms. Sterling followed by Mr. Castilla you each will have three minutes of peace. Ms. Sterling you have the floor. Are you able to hear me yet? Yes ma'am. Great good evening Madam Mayor and City Council members thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to speak with you. I come speaking to you as someone who moved to Durham North Carolina 25 years ago in 1997 and owning at 3611 Cub Creek Road for the last 16 years purchased that home back in 2006 and was very surprised to find out that I needed to install a septic tank system and so I've owned this home for a long time I worked with the state well first we had to figure out who I had to go through for the septic tank system. Finally landing upon the state of North Carolina learned that there are policies procedures protocols things that are put in place to help for the maintaining and the development of that land I share well with my with my next door neighbor he is on the line as well we are not against this proposal we're not against growth I want to make sure you all hear me on that we are for the growth we just need the growth to extend to us as well they're improving upon infrastructure they're meeting standards for marketplace housing and things like that but yet standards will not be met North Carolina DOT standards will not be met on Cub Creek Road and so we're just appealing and pleading and begging that we are included in this growth that we don't make the outside pretty and leave the inside a mess because down the road leaving that inside a mess it's going to be a problem not just for us but for everyone if we were to develop one or two acres of the land along Cub Creek Road we would have to improve our half of the road or the part that we are responsible for and so we're just asking that this developer in in their role of improving and growing in Durham and making things better we want affordable housing all that we're just asking that they be held to the same standards that we would be held to should we improve and not just improve around us and again as Mr. Counsel said earlier public healthy public health safety welfare emergency access those are all things that the developers required to think about for that new community that will be built around us and we just need to be included our safety our welfare our emergency access is also parent so I just thank you for allowing me time to speak and I hope that you all consider what I've said thank you Mr. Sterling for your comments tonight we will turn to Mr. Castiglia at this time you have the floor sir can you hear me yes sir we can thank you my name is Analfrio Castiglia speaking on behalf of my aunt Peggy Salazar who lives at 3635 Cub Creek Road in Braggtown and my mother Susan Castiglia who purchased land around her childhood home in her youth with money earned working in a grocery store her grandfather my great-grandfather Ernest Johnson built a family home in small farm there following his service in world war two and our family lives there today my grandmother Ali Josephine Johnson single-handedly raised my mother and an uncle in that little home like many residents of Braggtown they were poor we are opposed to this project only because it leaves Cub Creek Road unimproved and unconnected I would like to point out that I think my brother Giorgio Castiglia and my aunt Peggy Salazar were incorrectly listed as proponents of this project as it stands we feel we have not been adequately invited to participate in these discussions we never really wanted to see this place change particularly the forest and the animals since I was a small boy I've witnessed scenes of wonder involving the deer falcons and foxes in my dreams I envisioned this place as a wildlife refuge for native birds but we know that is highly unlikely as I paid attention to the various developments that have been proposed for this area it's always been my assumption that an unspoken goal was to continue the history of isolating Oxford Manor from the area's growing population of affluent residents I remember one previous proposal included building a wall to separate those homes from new high-end housing now following the construction of the Carver Street extension we have this ridiculous half measure whereby a GPS will direct someone driving their car to turn off of Carver onto Cub Creek but these flimsy stoppages have been erected to disallow that traffic Braggtown needs investment and Durham like the whole country needs more housing but why should Cub Creek and parts of Old Oxford be left out of the solution what good reason is there to leave these land resources unused and unconsidered we need economic prosperity and we need true economic and class integration to the extent that this development promises prosperity I do not see that those promises extend to the families that have lived in Braggtown since before most developers or investors would have thought to look at this place I think this development should take all residents of Braggtown into account not chase after these weird half measures that blackout whole sections of the map to contemporary development if Braggtown is to develop let's do it right include Cub Creek Road improve it and connect it to Carver thank you thank you sir for your comments this evening I'll turn to our clerk to make sure that I have gotten all of the speakers on this matter both virtual and in person I now declare the public hearing to be closed not a matter if I might I'm sorry I'm back before the council I see Alberto Servin's hand I didn't hear Madam Clerk you respond and Rebecca painter's hand is up are they I guess we're checking with them servant on the list he has registered to speak I'm sorry would you say that again Alberto Servin is on the list and he has his hand up he would like to speak all right and Rebecca painter is also on the list I think he's not on the list Mr. Servin correction Rebecca painter is not on the list Mr. Alberto Servin sir you would have three minutes Mr. Servin if you would hold up for one second we're going to get our interpreter in place sir if you would if you could tell him you can he can proceed he's ready now Mr. Servin you may proceed we have nine years living there and we would like for our community to keep growing we will like our community to keep growing because we want everything to look beautiful because it's a street that it looks kind of like a mess so we just want our community to keep prospering I think that would be all and we are in favor thank you so much for your comments this evening sir madame clerk was there another person miss Rebecca painter hello can you hear me now miss painter yes you will have three minutes okay good okay I've lived here for 35 years and here's my opinion on things as far as the aggregation and the incorporation into the city as proposed I have no objection to that I do object to the the zoning change which will increase the density of the development those of us who are still in the county have no objection to being in the county but that carries a responsibility we have to provide our own on-site water and that comes from wells in the past when we've had droughts the wells get pretty low I was pumping mud once and when it does finally rain the rain falls upon what is the proposed development actually shows up in our wells pretty quickly so there's a direct connection between that surface area and our aquifer in this area and so my concern is that by increasing the density of the development at in the proposed rezoning we will lose more recharge area for the wells and the wells will further that they will be contaminated by more runoff from the project I know they said that we're going to capture the runoff but it really doesn't work that way not to mention when you put the development in you have to keep the grounds up you start putting chemicals on the ground the kill weeds or bugs whatever so that shows up in the water so I have a very real concern about the water quality for the existing residents and so I do oppose zoning change as far as the highway I guess I object to opening it up all the way through if somebody wanted to move the barrier somewhere that's fine and I don't actually care where on the road but if we open the road up between corvore and old oxford it's going to turn into a drag strip through here and right now this is a very nice little community people are out while this call was while this meeting was going on during the daylight I saw about three families walk up and down this road and once this road gets if this road gets connected to carver directly then from my perspective we're going to lose a lot of what makes this a nice little neighborhood so I personally have a problem with fully opening the road up I don't have a problem with improving it on either side of the barrier I couldn't care less but I really have a problem in terms of what it will do to the community if you open the road up all the way through and that's let me see if I have anything else on that list here no oh okay the only thing only other thing is with the road if the road does get widened it sure shouldn't come we don't have enough right away right now I don't think to make that into a proper two-lane road right now let's say a glorified one and a half lanes and I have a problem if there's to be a imminent domain exercise to take a chunk of land on this side of the road from people who will not benefit from the project and that does conclude my remarks thank you thank you miss painter for your comments this evening I'll look to our clerk once again to make sure that we have concluded with all of our speakers madam mayor there's another speaker Lalit Yadav who would like to speak and has their hand raised madam clerk could you confirm that wasn't one of the people that yielded their time was it should have been one of those persons as I have it listed that way miss Yadav apparently mr council was saying that um this person yielded their time but now they have their hand raised I don't know if you want to ask them to speak or not miss Yadav or mr Yadav I see they're too listed the tea Lalit and Yadav and pretty Yadav yes ma'am this is Lalit can you folks hear me yes sir did you yield your time to mr council well yeah I didn't have much to add I think everything has been discussed but Cub Creek you know today our thing was that Cub Creek today is bisected by east car world and is not traffic worthy for you know all intents and purposes for emergency access and anything so that's okay you know I mean that's what I wanted to bring to your notice ma'am that's it all right thank you so much we will now declare the public hearing to be closed and the matter is back before council but we have reached a nine o'clock hour and we do need to take a break at this particular time and then we will come back to have any questions by council we will at this time take a break for 10 minutes it's 904 we'll come back at 914 thank you prom the visibility of police and neighborhoods and how quickly police respond to emergencies the results also show that residents think that the top priorities for the police department itself over the next two years should be treating residents of different races and ethnicities equally and minimizing violent crime more information about the police department can be found at Durham NC dot gov slash 149 and by following on social media I was looking for an opportunity and an old friend of mine suggested that I apply at go Durham the community really relies on us on go Durham public transportation well I like driving a bus because of the friendly culture I love it in the morning when people greet me good morning they give me a free me wave they appreciate you and that goes a long way being a bus driver in go dorm anything can be achieved here um you can come in at the bottom and you will be able to excel in a fairly a short amount of time here I started as an operator and I'm here now as a operator training specialist so long as you stick to it you can't excel the perfect candidate that would excel at go Durham is someone with tenacity someone with drive someone who wants to make a difference for their community you have to be people oriented you have to be experienced and you have to be on hands ready to go but with the proper training it's just like driving a car so as a new driver with road training come in and you see me and I'm going to make sure you have all the tools to succeed they give you a lot of input and they work with you step by step so you won't be alone in this to anyone considering working for go Durham you won't regret it please go please apply we would love to have you join the go Durham team here's some tips to ensure that your garbage and recycling gets picked up one your carts should be put out for collection before 6 a.m. on your collection day two your carts should be at least three feet from all other objects such as mailboxes telephone poles fire hydrants trees and other carts three your carts should be no more than three feet from the curb four no vehicles should be blocking your carts the mechanical arms on our trucks need direct access to your carts and cannot reach around vehicles to find more information about garbage and recycling pickups go to this web address have you experienced changes in Durham that negatively affect your everyday life many in the community have the city and county of Durham want to correct those issues and ensure the future changes work for the entire community they're listening and want to hear your ideas for making Durham a place where everyone thrives that's why the city and county of Durham are inviting all members of the Durham community to take part in the creation of the new comprehensive plan which will determine the vision for growing Durham over the next 30 years this collaboration between the city and county of Durham and the Durham community is the result of the new Engaged Durham initiative which seeks to ensure that all community stakeholders are involved in the shaping of city and county projects help build a Durham that works for everyone so Laura I know one of the division's most important projects over the past few years has been the development and implementation of the equitable community engagement blueprint what is the blueprint and why was it needed the blueprint is a document that we created about four almost four years ago three and a half years ago in response to a few residents coming to a city council meeting and asking and really I mean really demanding city council to do a better job of engagement specifically around the the belt line project whenever the city makes decisions and does projects it can have really positive impacts but sometimes if we're not careful it can have negative impacts and that's where engagement comes in it's really important to make sure that we're you know engaging residents to make sure that we see all sides of what's happening and can do our best to mitigate any harm North Carolina constitution requires that the courts be always open we had to figure out how to protect people's constitutional rights I ultimately decided to get vaccinated one I felt it was safe two I have a public facing job it was quick it was easy I had limited to no side effects and to me that's a fair trade-off for staying healthy stay up to date on your COVID-19 vaccine find out when you're due for your booster visit myspot.nc.gov all right we are at the 9-16 hour we were to start back at 9-14 so we're going to come back to order at this particular time right prior to our break we were at the close of the public hearing on item 11 the consolidated annexation carvers street assemblage and this matter is back before our council with any and I'll open the floor now for any questions that council may have thank you madam mayor I have a question for staff probably going to be a bill judge question about Cub Creek Road hi thank you so can you just tell us a little bit more about why the developer is not required to develop Cub Creek Road as part of this proposal the existing portion of Cub Creek Road south of the Carver Street extension is actually still currently in the county portions of it are being annexed with this annexation but the very southern portion closest old Oxford Road is not within this annexation so it is currently maintained by NCDOT and will need to continue to be maintained by NCDOT so that therefore they they set those requirements and then when so in the city built Carver Street extension NCDOT for similar reasons did not allow the city to connect that portion because they did not want basically they wanted the road upgraded they didn't think it could handle the additional traffic that might might go through without resurfacing widening improvements great thank you um so that portion of the road that's owned by the state they wouldn't be able to do any improvements on it even if they wanted to is that right well they would have to get NCDOT's approval but in order to basically connect it to Carver Street extension or to connect an access point to add significant amounts of traffic to it the state's going to want them to improve the roadway substructure resurfacing additional pavement additional pavement with okay so so because of that they're just not connecting to it so because of that I guess they've listed as optional so that they're not absolutely required gotcha okay so so if they were to choose to do that then they would have to do the improvements and go through all state process to make that correct and those are listed as uh committed elements I think like 16 through 21 or 22 on the development plan okay got it thank you any other questions before council mayor pro tem thank you madam mayor and my thanks to my colleague council member johnson for anticipating as she often does anticipating question I had and going right to it uh with respect to cup career I was actually going to ask the applicant um if they wanted an opportunity to respond but I think I think you would probably want to associate yourself with the uh responses that um council member johnson solicited uh from our our staff so I um I want to say I intend on on supporting uh this annexation and utility extension um you know but I gotta say this project looks a lot different uh than when we we first saw it and it is it is directly attributable to the work of the activists in the bradtown community this is really a watershed moment and these things can be kind of routine these these annexation hearings and these land kind of things can be kind of boring sometimes for folk but every once in a while light breaks through uh this is an example of a neighborhood stepping up organizing themselves making demands and being persistent not just making them and walking away but following up following up following up and you got a developer to change uh and it didn't come from city hall it wasn't by fiat or directive from the mayor or this council or any any bureaucrat here in city hall it was it was community driven it was it was driven by the neighborhood and um whatever the outcome ultimately we should all pause and celebrate that and and the folk in bradtown should be extremely proud you know I've I've said on a couple of occasions um one of the things that happened after the end of world war two is the united states um dedicated millions and millions of dollars to the rebuilding of europe uh in a marshal plan called a marshal plan and i've said that you know we'd need that type of plan and investment and particularly our legacy black neighborhoods here in durham bradtown america more haytide there are communities around this country where folk make pilgrimage to uh whether it's sweet auberna in atlanta or sugarhill in new york folk go there to see the history but here in durham you know it's not just about the ghost of the past or or breathing the rarefied air of what used to be um these neighborhoods are still vibrant and they're still making history and still organizing so it's not just about looking back it's about looking forward and i think bradtown one of those legacy great legacy black neighborhoods that i think folk all around the country should be making pilgrimage to to come and see and just kind of breathe the air of what it means to be organized black and brown uh in this in this instance that great coalition should be incredibly proud of yourselves um the work that's been done and i just want to salute um those activists in the community first and and also i guess give a salute a lesser salute to the developer for having good sense enough uh to listen to them and to meet with them and and to be responsive and to read the greens pop properly uh in our city uh and get a good read of the context um so i i intend on again thank you councilmember johnson for the question i was going to ask about cup creek thank you for that question and and thank you all the residents and citizens who stayed and to those uh student journalists that are present you sure you still want this beat uh welcome to city hall thank you madam i look forward to supporting this annexation any other comments councilman wins yeah thank you also um thank you mayor and colleagues thank you to um thank you to the residents i want to echo that thank you for speaking up and thank you for being involved in this process thank you to the developer for listening uh listening to the folks who are impacted by this and thank you to our planning commission for being that gate uh and and and also facilitating this process uh thank you to all of those who were involved it really does take a village and this was this was village work this was kingdom building and uh you know those who are interested in building in Durham take note take note this is how you do it look at our responses up here um so i'm i'm really glad to hear that um i just wanted to echo that uh those comments and one question maybe this is for staff is there you know in regards of the property owners over there is there any type of uh maybe uh partnership or any type of like private funding resources where i mean we the public has done its part the private in a sense is doing its part is there any other player that could be a part of this to just holistically build this entire community up it's not an annexation so therefore we are responsible for it we don't want to just throw that on you you're doing a good job at you know going from you know the uh x amount of affordable units to x amount of affordable units uh and that's part of solving the problem that we have you know in this affordability issue and housing uh stability issue we have but we do want to make sure that folks are you know living uh not only in shelter but you know driving on a good road and so on and so forth so i i mean i think it's worth asking a question do we have resources to uh resort to for the property owners uh that are over there as well yeah absolutely thank you for that question as council member williams um there's a several things that we are uh in the process of doing some scaffolded building with in the planning department one of them is working with the bright town community association miss vanessa mason evans has really led that charge she also has put together a development sub team uh and they are staying fully engaged in the land use process uh they're holding us accountable they're creating a feedback loop they're building their acumen and be able to articulate things that you know sometimes we're like we don't even understand uh they're just expressing it to the developer in a very authentic and substantive way so that's one of the things we're doing the other thing is the planning department for many years now has had an engagement ambassador program where we stipend community members several members of the bright town community are a part of that and that's where we stipend them for their expertise in their work and their lived experience and bring it into the project we're doing that for a comprehensive plan project which you're probably familiar with um so there's two ways we're doing that uh we'll be looking for other ways to do this in the future as we build capacity within the department and we really start moving towards what racial equity looks like as it manifests in the planning department's work operations thank you so much councilwoman johnson thank you madam mayor um this uh case is illustrating a couple of things for me that i just wanted to comment on as well i think this is a great example of how meaningful community engagement can lead to better development outcomes and honestly we don't see that very often um mostly we see middle class homeowners who are rallying to support less density fewer townhomes fewer apartments less affordability um overall less building of new housing and which we know our community needs and honestly it's been kind of demoralizing so this is a little bit of a breath of fresh air for me for a community to be really excited about about more affordability and more density and working with the developer to make that happen this is the first time that a project has gotten better in every dimension that i care about because of community engagement so i just want to appreciate the residents who made that happen the developer for being a part of that process this is what i want to see more of um more work like this within communities to really strengthen um strengthen the the the resources that we know Durham needs which is more affordable housing um and and that needs to come because of all of our environmental concerns and the just the cost of housing with more density and so often so often the community engagement that we see with developers results in less density and so i'm excited that that we have an opportunity an example of that heading in the right direction um and another thing this is illustrating for me is a problem that i think we have a lot which is making the perfect the enemy of the good this is by far the biggest commitment to affordable housing that we've seen in a really long time and that is absolutely one of our top priorities um as a city and there is never going to be a project that is perfect there's never going to be a project that is everything that we want to do and after a point you start balancing the cost of doing those extra things against the cost of the housing right like the more the more we require the developer to do on a site the more expensive the housing is going to be because they're not going to eat that cost they're going to pass it on to um onto the the people who are going to rent or buy that housing and so we have to find that balance between um making like making a community you know we we don't just want to throw apartments out and make them you know inexpensive and they are aren't nice for people right we want nice housing we want some open space we want to we want environmental protections um but we have to balance that against the cost of of the housing and how much that's going to impact our affordable housing crisis and so i think this project finds that balance um i think that getting partnering with an affordable housing developer was very much the right idea um coming back to us with this strong commitment to affordability which is what the neighborhood really wanted to see and then the neighborhood really coming out and supporting it and getting behind it um it's just been really this has just been a really great thing experience and um it's been a really great case for me to watch because i feel like this is what i want to happen like this is when i talk about wanting more community engagement i'm like yes this is what i want and so often we don't get this we get the opposite of this and so i just want to um let you all know that you've restored a little bit of my faith in in community driven development um that it can actually lead to better things um and really hope that y'all will continue over in breakdown and that other neighborhoods will do this kind of work um to really encourage and support this affordable housing missing middle housing this is what we need more of in Durham we don't need more neighborhoods coming to us and telling us that they don't want townhomes they only want single family right like this this is the kind of engagement that we really need so thank you very much for for doing this i'm going to go home feeling a lot better uh about this case than i do about a lot of our resumings thanks y'all appreciate it thank you councilwoman johnson councilwoman javier i'll talk about councilwoman free thank you i plan um to support this project i want to thank the community i do want to highlight a few things uh this is i want to just lift up what my colleagues have also said i very much agree with all of them but i do have a couple of additions we were able to get what we were able to get because they had to come to city council for permission and so when we have that i just really want our community to understand that we have other developments in the city that folks are very unhappy about and we do not have the same legal authority to say anything about those and so i just want to highlight the difference we were able to get a really great community-driven project because at the end of the day folks needed something from this body and i want to really lift up the developers because they knew that and they understood the power there and they've worked with us long enough to know and i want to say that this is an excellent project and we are moving in the right direction i do have a question for the applicant though and this is to highlight another issue with what we are seeing tonight which is excellent but that there is a consequence to this just out of curiosity what is going to be the amount spent in this process by this developer so between community engagement but basically in parking it and our planning process for as long as it got parked what's the what was the cost of that oh god i'm sorry council member caviaro i wish i could answer but i honestly tim and i honestly can't answer that off the top of our heads i'm assuming you were researching talk to you offline about yeah i'm assuming it was rather expensive yeah it was but i would hasten to add that um of course we want the process to go faster but i would not none of us on the development team would trade any of the friendships that we've made in bragg town for having this approved last month or what your outfit is a rather large development outfit would there be smaller development outfits who would be able to put the that level of cost into our into this process the answer that is probably not and so that is another thing that i hope we take away from this i really want these kinds of projects but i also know that our internal processes have to help developers smaller developers we know this developer well to come in before our city council and after rezoning in Durham has gotten extremely expensive and we're seeing fewer and fewer of development outfits who can afford it and that also there's a cost to that so i want us to work to figure out how we get these kinds of projects faster because they're giving us something that we know we need they've worked with the community they're providing affordable housing and we know that that's an outcome we want and so we have to be able to deliver these projects faster so that our development community our smaller players can also play in that sandbox thank you councilwoman freeman thank you councilwoman copy thank you madam mayor and thank you colleagues uh appreciate the comments made before me and i agree and part there are a couple of elements of this that are a little bit i don't want to miss the cub creek residents who are not going to be like who are not going to have that road up upgrade in place and just acknowledging that that is not something we just need to leave off on the side this is not a as a mayor pro tem says zero some game we need to figure out how to make sure that that that area is addressed and so whether it's in our cip or in a future conversation i would like to have that conversation just acknowledging i don't think it's appropriate to put that on a developer in a project acknowledging that this is something that's more more infrastructure on the city and the county side and so noting that the planning department is both city and county i think that there's a good way forward that we can manage to address the issue because i do not think that it's okay to leave folks with water that might be tainted in any way shape or form and so with this project coming online making sure to track and keep an eye on what's happening around flooding and flood mitigation is going to need to be on on ramped in some way shape or form and i mindful i i appreciate all that the developers putting into this effort but i don't think that it's something that's like it's over and above i do think that's it's exactly what should be happening and so i can't say thank you greatly but i will say thank you um i i've been at this for a for quite a while and i know what it takes for our community members to engage as the unpaid people in this process who live at these sites and are often uh once all of it's said and done they have to live with what it what it is and i really want to send uh a real appreciation to those folks who do live on cup creek who feel like they have not been heard in this process and just acknowledge that you have been heard this evening and acknowledge that that the concerns that you raised around water quality and around making sure that the infrastructure is is addressed um will not be left un un followed up on i don't know if i would say any other way to say that but i i do think that it's appropriate to continue with the project i do appreciate that it is much better than the previous i would not have ever approved the previous so you know this project before me is different i i will also add that i noticed the difference in the hundred year from so previously it was a 200 year storm water i think and this is a hundred year and i just wanted to just ask if there was a reason why it was shifted or changed and i might have it mixed up because i've been watching various projects in this area so the udl requirement is a one two and ten storm um this has been a 100 year commitment the 200 was probably a different project okay thank you and that was mainly my one question i will say that staff i really do appreciate the way that you're adjusting and kind of being nimble about this with very few new additions in your staff um uh or staff positions that have been created and so i would like to say that i think it's important to make sure that we're including this and our thoughts around how we move forward because it's it's it's definitely time consuming and i think councilmember caviero said it best in acknowledging that smaller developers are not going to be able to do what these developers are doing and that's on us and so i i'm i really i really feel i'm concerned still but i feel comfortable enough to move forward so thank you and staff i think that's what i was getting to earlier in regards to the infrastructure it's not in the city so i don't want to hold us too responsible for but you know just other partnerships regarding like the county and any other um funding opportunities that could help build out that infrastructure to be a partner in the overall community building um and the other thing is i i want to just throw the the basic you know economics one on one in there we'll never be able to build enough affordable homes so therefore it has to be the other end meeting us as well with all of the job growth that we have coming in the area we leveraged up with this type of project and i think we're starting to get to solving getting to solving our problem so i i just want to make sure that nugget is out there um making sure that folks have access to decent paying jobs while also projects like this helps us with our housing crisis that we have good evening mayor mayor pro tem and councilmember sarah young with the planning department i wanted to briefly address a couple of the points have been brought up um councilmember williams we have at the planning department also built a relationship i think with our brag town friends and through that we are continuing to try and connect them to other resources we ourselves are learning what those resources are and where they may be located and as we we find out more about their needs and how we can work with them we will absolutely connect them to additional resources to councilmember caballero's earlier comment um that i think was echoed by several folks we are bringing forward a proposal to the joint city county planning committee meeting that's coming up in a few weeks that will address i think some of the concerns about how folks how we make the rezoning process in particular more accessible to folks so i would encourage anyone that's interested to join us for that meeting um i think all elected officials get copies of those agendas and those packets regardless of whether they're on jccbc thank you miss young are there any other comments from council well that leaves very little for the mayor to say because i think everybody has said it all so ditto job well done shout out to brag town i am now ready to entertain motion number one which reads as follows to adopt an ordinance and next scene carver street assemblage into the city of derm effective march 31st 2022 and to authorize the city manager to enter into a utility extension agreement with kelly development company llc second that's been moved by councilwoman councilman william seconded by councilwoman freeman madam clerk if you will open the vote madam clerk if you will please close the vote the motion passes unanimously six to zero all right thank you so much we will now move to motion number two now entertain a motion to adopt an ordinance amending the unified development ordinance by taking property out of the residential suburban dash 20 r s dash 20 falls slash jordan watershed overlay district dash b f slash j dash b counted jurisdiction and residential suburban dash 20 r s 20 residential urban dash 5 r dash 5 falls slash jordan watershed overlay district dash b f dash j i'm sorry f slash j dash b and establishing the same as planned developmental development residential 7.000 pdr 7.000 falls slash jordan watershed overlay district dash b f slash j dash b city's jurisdiction moved as read back yet it's been moved by mayor pro tem and seconded by councilwoman freeman madam clerk if you will open the vote madam clerk if you will close the vote the motion passes unanimously six zero thank you so much we will now move to the final motion on this matter and i'm ready to entertain motion number three which is to adopt a consistency statement as required by north carolina general statute 160 d dash 605 move to adopt consistency second the move by mayor pro tem middleton and seconded by councilwoman freeman madam clerk if you would open the vote please close the vote and the motion passes six zero thank you so much everybody we now turn to item number 12 which is a consolidated item trosa main campus expansion this includes a major special use permit application for the trosa main campus expansion application number m 2 1 0 0 0 0 1 i would like to start by acknowledging that this meeting is being conducted as a live meeting with remote participation permitted some witnesses will be testifying in person in council chambers and others will be testifying remotely over the zoom platform the clerk will unmute witnesses who are testifying remotely when it is their turn to speak this meeting is available live in city council chambers and it is also being broadcast live on the city's youtube site the city's website and is accessible through zoom before we begin this hearing i would like to provide some important information about the steps taken to ensure that each party's due process rights are protected as we proceed the newspaper mail notices and the city's website contain information on how the public can access and participate in this meeting i would now like to ask that all those who would like to testify during this hearing identify themselves by raising their hand both live or virtually in the zoom platform each witness will need to provide their name to the clerk now and i do have some cards let's see if i can for the ones who are here it will be attorney patrick biker mr dan jewel i also have mr lyle over cash mr keith artin mr mike richless on the zoom a platform a virtual platform i hear mr william bill former mayor william bill former mayor nick tenison and mr grant gardener would that be all of the witnesses mr jarvis martin let's see if i have this mingo mr jarvis martin thank you sir thank you mr martin all right now miss uh madam clerk um we will be if you will please unmute those who are be speaking on this matter this hearing the hearing in this matter is judicial in nature and will be conducted in accordance with special safeguards witnesses must be sworn in they are subject to cross examination and written evidence will be incorporated into the record and madam clerk would you now swear in those that have registered to speak this evening please raise your right hands do you swear or affirm please repeat after me do you swear or affirm that the evidence and testimony you're about to give in this case is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you thank you madam clerk i will now turn to my colleagues and ask if any council members would need to withdraw from consideration of this case because of a conflict that will prevent them from rendering a fair and impartial decision in this matter seeing and hearing none thank you all i would also address this question to our colleagues on council uh council members have you heard any information about this case other than what may have been presented at a work session or as in the staff report and if so if you would please disclose that information at this time all are clear i am now going to give an explanation of our proceeding if an attorney or representative wishes to cross examine a witness please raise your hand live or virtually in zoom while the witness is testifying and you will be recognized to cross examine the witness when the witness has finished testify each side may raise objections to the mission of evidence on the basis of relevance hearsay or any other evidentiary ground again this should be done by raising your hand live or in zoom questions concerning admissibility will be handled by the mayor with the assistant from our assistant city attorney now we will first hear from city staff who have studied the request then from the applicant and then from opponents to the application if any and we will now open the hearing and hear from our city city staff yes sir good evening i'm robin schultz representing the planning department before we begin planning staff sorry requests that all agenda materials submitted for the public hearing be made part of the public record with any necessary corrections as noted request for a major special use permit m21 0001 and a major site plan d21 000306 have been received from cjtpa representing troessa residential incorporated t