I want to call this meeting of the Durham City Council to order on February the 17th 2020 and I certainly want to welcome everyone here tonight and also those people who are watching at home on television we're very very glad to have you with us and now could you join me in preparing for our time together tonight with a moment of silence thank you council member Reese thank you Mr. Mayor good evening colleagues staff and members of the public tonight we are happy to be joined by Cub Scout PAC 424 that's from Immaculate Conception Church Mr. Mayor we had the opportunity to spend some time in the lobby just a little while ago talking about local government and what we do and what we don't I now believe they're gonna come up and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance and if it's your practice to do so if you're able please rise and join us for the pledge go for it guys I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you well done scouts we appreciate you thank you council member Reese always four to four and now ma'am clerk will have the roll call Mayor Schuyl here Mayor Pro Tem Johnson Councilmember Alston here Councilmember Codillero here Councilmember Freeman present Councilmember Middleton here Councilmember Reese here thank you and now we're gonna move to tonight's ceremonial items and we're gonna begin with the neighbor spotlight always one of our favorites which will be presented tonight to Patricia Obregon a resident of the old East Durham and Pac-1 Ms. Obregon would you come up and bring with you anyone else that you might like to come up with you how are you come on up I'm going to give this plaque to Ms. Obregon and I'm gonna read a little something about her and then I'm gonna give her the opportunity to say a few words to us the neighbor spotlight is given tonight to Patricia Obregon Patricia Obregon is the recipient of the neighborhood spotlight for the month of February 2020 the neighbor spotlight award recognizes community members that have gone above and beyond and volunteering their time to serve the community this month Patricia Obregon resident of old East Durham community was nominated and selected because of the wonderful work that she has done in her neighborhood including but not limited to assisting with organizing a computer skills workshop for Spanish-speaking moms in her neighborhood with limited computer knowledge to learn basic computer skills volunteered numerous hours with the City of Durham's participatory budget program her dual language has been a tremendous benefit during the participatory budgeting process and providing support to other mothers by providing resources and programs that benefit Latinx residents in Durham so Ms. Obregon congratulations on being the February 2020 neighbor spotlight for the City of Durham and thank you for all the work you do to improve our Durham community and if there are other residents here to support Ms. Obregon can you either stand up or raise your hand great wonderful thank you all Ms. Obregon would you say a few words to us buenas tardes soy Patricia Obregon y tengo 13 años viviendo en Durham y me gustaría agradecer a a la ciudad y a todas las personas que están tratando de involucrar más a los latinos en especialmente a Carmen Ortiz que fue quien me invitó primeramente y algunas asociaciones como DCI el grupo de apoyo para padres con niños con autismo y acción política de Durham muchas gracias good evening I'm Patricia abieto is going to help us with the with the interpretation thank you good evening my name is Patricia Obregon I've lived in Durham for 13 years I would like to give thanks to Carmen Ortiz and Anna and I asked for first encouraging me to participate in the city along with the DCI and acción política Latina thank you so much and also to the Latino parents of children with autism for all their support and our second ceremonial item tonight is also another really great one and this is a proclamation to honor Samaritan health center day and will the folks from Samaritan health center please come up how are you good to see you I am going to read this proclamation and then Elizabeth Brill who's here representing the health center will have a few words for us whereas access to health care as a top priority for Durham County and whereas Samaritan health center was established to provide high quality medical dental and vision care to the uninsured in Durham and whereas an estimated 13% of Durham residents were uninsured in 2017 and whereas Samaritan health center has offered more than 29,000 visits to community members in 18 languages since 2009 and whereas Samaritan health center collaborates with academic medical and faith-based institutions throughout the region and whereas February 19th marks the 11th anniversary of Samaritan health center's first clinic now therefore I Stephen M. Shull mayor of the city of Durham North Carolina do hereby proclaim February 19th 2020 the Samaritan health center day in Durham and hereby commend its observance to all citizens witness my hand in the corporate seal the city of Durham North Carolina this 17th day of February 2020 congratulations on this anniversary and please join us for a few words thank you very much I'm honored to be here tonight on behalf of Samaritan health center our staff our board of directors our volunteers but most particularly our patients it has been our privilege to offer high-quality affordable health care to our uninsured neighbors in Durham for the last 11 years this is a city with a rich diversity in its history its people and its resources at Samaritan health center we seek to foster connections among all the members of our community it's been my observation that not only are our patients receiving excellent health care but our volunteers and our staff are becoming better doctors better students and better communities from learning from our patients we have a very long way to go in this city before every member of our city has access to the high-quality health care they deserve and I'm really grateful for the commitment of so many people in our city whether it's Duke or Lincoln or El Futuro or World Relief we're honored to be a part of Durham Safety Net and we look forward to serving and learning together for many years to come thank you I do want to say one more word before Elizabeth leaves the podium which is that she and her staff had members of the city council out to their wonderful clinic about six weeks ago I'm thinking and a whole lot of us came never seen so many council members in one place except for here and we had an amazing tour of this facility which gives free and extremely affordable care to so many of our residents we're so lucky to have them so thank you so much all right now I'll ask if there are any announcements by members of the council council member Middleton thank you mr. Mayor good evening to you and to colleagues and to everyone in the chamber two quick things mr. Mayor firstly just want to take a point of a personal privilege to make a special introduction tonight mr. Mayor growing up I didn't grow up in a wealthy family materially and we weren't powerful but we were blessed to be part of an ecosystem that was culturally rich and connected to some people wonderful things both in our city and in our country and because of those connections culturally oftentimes what I was getting in the classroom I couldn't go see the places I read about in the textbook in the classrooms financially but I had people in my life that poured into me culturally and gave me a great deal of exposure that made up for any financial lack and I directly attribute my being on this council to those connections into that pouring into me at a very early stage in my life and I want to keep fidelity with that commit those commitments that were made to me so I've been on the council for a couple of years I've never had an intern since I've been on council I've made a lot of excuses I need to learn how to do the job there's so many things going on but I thought seriously last month about all that was poured into me growing up so in keeping fidelity with that I am very very pleased to announce that I have an intern a brilliant young political science student a junior from the North Carolina Central University I went to city I see you to help me welcome Imani Johnson to our municipal of families it might just stand up real quick and wave so she's not on the council so if she calls you don't yell at her she's just doing my bidding save the yelling I did want to welcome her congratulate her on her internship and looking forward to her having a wonderful time here at City Hall secondly Mr. Mayor we are greatly anticipating the return of our residents our neighbors our brothers and sisters to McDougal Terrace to newly renovated fresh units we look forward to that but we also know that when they return many of the things that they were dealing with outside of the apartment will still be in play and there's much work to be done in addition just in addition to just physically renovating their homes there's been a couple of shootings lately and we know that there are people that are still being affected by that notwithstanding what we report in the headlines I do want to acknowledge that I've received calls from a leadership and staff of the Widditt School one of our premier pre-k programs here in the city faith leaders Jerome Washington and Mount Vernon Baptist Church both of those institutions have had gunfire come very very close to their facilities I want to stress that the first one is a facility where our children are gathered regularly I look forward to at this Thursday's work session the chief are coming back before us to talk about some specific steps they've been taken taking and something like to take with respect to gun violence through the prism of gang intervention as well and I ask that the city stay tuned and pay close attention to that as we continue to do more than just one thing we know the emergency that's been on the front burner so to speak and being in the headlines but I do want us to be aware that when our folk return to their home the things that were going on outside of the home will still be issues and indeed those issues have been persisting so let us continue the work thank you mr. Mayor thank you councilmember Middleton councilmember Freeman thank you just following up I also wanted to share I mentioned last month about earlier this month about the Durham youth internship program getting up and running and needing volunteers for the interviews but I also want to encourage all youth from ages 14 to 24 to apply to the program and make sure that they sign up for those internships deadline is actually going to be March 27th and I want to make sure as many as many students in this community have the opportunity to take advantage of all of the businesses and opportunities we have and encouraged folks in the community also gear up to be involved in the process as well to help steer these youth and the direction that could lead to future economic stability and so I wanted to share so we'll need in interviewers for the internship program with a lot with up to a thousand students likely to apply each of those slots will need at least two people's 2000 slots available for folks in the community to participate in interviewing students that we know will be in our workforce in the future and so I'll just continuing on that push to get more businesses signed up as sites there's also the at that signup is also available and I need to get the exact website named but I will follow up on that and then on another note I had a hold on let's try to pull it all together with middle thing you do talks a little longer I will come back to it but it's specific to and a bit Carolina theater and I just want to put it on everyone's radar but I'll give you a second I will come back to that maybe we'll do the priority items and after we done the priority items we'll come back to you counsel thank you very much sure mr. manager are there any priority items thank you mr. mayor members of the council good evening everyone have one priority item this evening item number 17 the ordinance to amend the Durham city code provision right regulating the withdrawal of right away within the city this item on the original agenda was erroneously listed as a public hearing no there is not a public hearing to accompany that item and so at this point we have repositioned under the consent agenda if counsel prefers you can certainly move it to a GBA item I think it's fairly routine but right now it's listed as item 17 and the consent agenda thank you mr. manager okay madam madam attorney good evening mr. mayor madam mayor percent members of council it's good to be with you all this evening the city attorney's office has no priority items thank you madam clerk good evening everyone the city clerk's office has no items thank you so with that I'll ask a council member Freeman if you would like to make her second announcement thank you so I just wanted to share that the there are three more events actually four events coming up and so on every Saturday there is a Saturday series for families all shows are at 11 a.m. at the Carolina theater and the shows are $5 is a great opportunity for you to come out and enjoy what the Carolina theater has to offer and then also noting that there is a teen theater intensive that is offered at the Carolina theaters on the or in partnership with the Durham Arts Council and that will be from June 16th to the 19th 9 a.m. to noon and this will be the second year of that program and just want to make sure that students are aware as they look for options over the summer and then also planning for all 750 plus parks and rec youths that attend the Carolina theater and the Durham Parks and Recs dance and music performances throughout the summer there will be offerings throughout the summer thank you very much councilman Freeman all right well now move to the consent agenda the consent agenda can be approved by the council with a single vote any member of the public or any member of the council can pull an item from the consent agenda in which case we will consider that item at the end of the meeting item one is approval of city council minutes item to interlocal agreement with Durham County for joint funding of an unsheltered coordinating agency item three contract with the housing authority the city of Durham for the provision of tenant based rental assistance services item for contract purchase of six replacement light transit vehicles from interstate transportation sales and service Inc. Interlocal agreement with the I'm sorry item five interlocal agreement with the capillary metropolitan planning organization for the triangle bikeway implementation study item six FY 2019 20 CIP budget amendment project close out item seven interlocal agreement for automatic mutual aid with the town of Kerry item nine purchase contract with sassons today for the smart building analytics platform expansion Mr. Mayor I don't want to pull it but I do want to comment on it sure I just wanted to say that was an item that I pulled at our last work session and the mayor pro tem and I both met with us folks last week it was a conversation around their contracts with Department of Homeland Security and if there was any collaboration with ICE immigration Custom Enforcement and we were able to determine that that was not the case and felt good about it and we will continue dialogue with them thank you very much Councilmember Covey I don't thank you for having that meeting and to the mayor pro tem item 10 purchase contract with J Brady contracting incorporated DBA building clarity for the citywide master HVAC control systems integration item 11 contract with environmental conservation laboratories Inc. for laboratory services for the public work storm water control system. I don't want to pull it but I do want to put it in the public work storm water quality program. Item 17 ordinance to amend the Durham City Code provision regulating the withdrawal of right of way within the city you've heard the consent agenda and now I'll accept a motion for its approval. So moved second and moved and second that we approve the consent agenda. Madame clerk would you please open the vote please close the vote. Thank you motion passes 7 0 thank you very much. Okay we are going to now before we have our public hearing items and before the GBA general business agenda we're going to move the agenda a little bit so we can hear from members of folks want to comment on the doodle terrace which we have at the end of our agenda but just so these folks won't have to be waiting. We have two speakers and I'm going to call them in order first will be Ashley Kennedy and then we'll be John Trey Dunston and if you all will please come over to my right. Miss Kennedy welcome and we're glad to have you and you have three minutes. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I know we talk about Mac do the terrace a lot but it's a really serious issue but it seems like every time I come to the city council meeting something different has happened. I just want to people make people aware that what you're hearing about what's going on the Mac do the terrace is true people's departments are being broken into residents are coming home to nothing. When those busted out my son actually walked in on somebody in my room counting my money. We have videos of contractors putting stuff in their pockets. Enough is enough we've suffered enough. I've seen today when I was out there and I do a guy walking around selling the residents TV after calling the police. She's going to come home to no TVs. I just want people to be very vigilant if you're coming through the neighborhood. If you guys see anything just just let us know. Residents are coming home but the sad thing of it is is when they're coming home they're going to need more help because a lot of residents are coming home to having to deal with the fact that they may not have anything. Housing authority has turned the power off in apartments which has caused residents to lose everything in the freezers. So we're dealing with that as well. I just need the city of Durham to realize that people aren't really trying to get people aren't trying to get over in Mac do everybody keeps saying oh they just trying to come up off Mac do that's not true. So Durham we're going to need a lot of help when residents come back mental health. We have children being suspended from school right now we have 13 students that are displaced in Mac do that are suspended from school facing hearings because the school said they're coming to school venting too much. That's the problem. So right now we're battling hearings. It's so much going on. I just want you guys and I want to thank the city for you know really stepping up helping us in Mac Google. If it wasn't for the city I don't know where we'd be. Everybody keeps giving me accolades and stuff. Yes I'm doing the work but if it wasn't for Durham coming together we wouldn't be where we are today. And I just ask you guys to continue to support us going to keep applying pressure to housing authority because we're right now actually trying to have the NC detective agency removed from that do because they're not doing their job. They're 24 hours but we have over 23 apartments being broken into residents shouldn't have to come home to that after being displaced in hotels. So we're going to need a lot of support. So if you guys have support my number is out there. I'm at 51 be pretty much every day if I'm not sick but just continue to support us in that do and listen to the cries out for help because people aren't making up these stories. It's the real deal. And if we were any other community I feel they would have done a lot more than what they're doing. We barely see DPD anymore. Once the break is increased DPD has started showing up more but we had NC detective agency out there today where three apartments was broken into with them out there. They're not walking around. So if you guys see these agencies and stuff just encourage them to even though we live in Mac do we're still human at the end of the day. Thank you Miss Kennedy. Mr. Dunson. Good evening ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters city councilman and city council women. Just like Miss Ashley noted on is that you know there's a lot of incidents that's going out there with the break ends and with people with lost of material. Also we went through there and did our own inspection and the situation where now there's water damage coming from the cabinets. There's ceilings because we had this past last storm and plus we're about to come across our freeze now and a lot of the units out there are not getting the mandatory work that needs to be done. Also again like Miss Ashley stated that we have North Carolina detective agency and I'm a licensed security officer in the state of North Carolina and all they're doing is just riding around sitting in their cars fraternizing with certain individuals out there. They need to be fraternizing with and yes during PD has not stepped up the patrol like they used to. Now this all comes down to where this is an issue where a lot of the residents don't even feel safe coming back to MacDougal tears because they feel that this is going to be a continuing problem. Now there are vouchers that can be issued but like the agencies that we've been in contact with said that there's no available rental places for us to go. But there are places located outside of this county that are willing to accept the vouchers.  I am also proud to say that this city is showing that who we really are as a family not as individuals but it takes a family to help each and everybody out. Our children are suffering because of the claustrophobiasm that's setting in with them inside these hotels.   And I know Jillian Johnson you've been catching a lot of you know flat but sister I see what you're trying to do and I'm proud of you. But like you said with your analysis of the police department you was absolutely right and you need to continue your investigation and you need to get into our police chief because we don't see her come out in the community. We don't see her get involved with this situation and honestly that last report you did was on the money and I'm glad that you stepped up and you need to stay in the police chief because our sheriff cannot do all this by itself. If this comes to the situation where we have two agencies we need to drop one of these agencies. The sheriff is the highest law enforcement person of the land. He could deter ICE away from here and plus we have this new governor that's coming up that's going to give y'all a little bit more problems than our last governor. So at the end of the day I would like to tell everybody thank you my minutes up and y'all have a great week. Thank you Mr. Dunstan. I appreciate you all for being here. Let me say again that we all recognize our responsibility to get people home safely and the the break-ins that are occurring are not acceptable and I'm appreciative of you being here to talk about that and we've had lots of communication with Mr. Scott and with Chief Davis about this and I am sure that they will be doing a lot of work on it and I appreciate you appreciate y'all being here and we all know how important it is. So thank you so much. All right. We'll now move on to our next item which is item 21 which is the community safety task force bylaws. We do have a number of people here to speak about this item. This is not a public hearing item but we're going to of course hear everyone. We have one, two, three, four people here to speak about it. I think what I'd like to do, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, is ask you to give a brief introduction then we'll hear from the speakers and then we'll discuss it. Does that sound like a good way to proceed? That sounds great. Great. Thank you Mr. Mayor. So this item is to approve bylaws for a community safety and wellness task force that we have been working on in cooperation with some interested community members for the last few months. The safety task force would be in service of bringing community members together to think about ways that we can ensure that our residents safety by expanding access to prevention, intervention, and reentry services to deal with violent crime. We've had a number of conversations about the issues that we face in our community around violent crime particularly gun violence and the goal of this task force would be to think about ways that the community can all come together and prevent crime before it starts intervene in situations that are escalating and then make sure that we're providing services to folks who are reentering the community to prevent recidivism and reoffending. The bylaws that are before the council today have been through a recent revision in consultation with community members who requested a few changes and those are enumerated for all of y'all. We would also be partnering with the county and the school district for this task force which I believe is the only task force that includes county, city, and school board appointees which I'm very excited about because we're able to think holistically about our entire safety along this landscape and of course the schools are a really important part of that in disrupting the school to prison pipeline and we know our school district has been doing a lot of work on reducing suspensions making sure that kids can stay in school where they want. So I'm excited to discuss this all again with with folks tonight and hope that we can move forward this evening on getting started. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much and thank you very much for helping to lead this mayor pro-town. Appreciate it. Thank you. With your colleagues. Thank you councilmember Alston as well. Appreciate that. All right I'm going to now ask for the speakers and then we'll have this discussion and there are four people who've signed up to speak. The first is Keisha Millett. The second is Manju Rajendra. Third is Danielle Purfoy and fourth is Beau Cromarty and so I'm going to ask if the first couple of you could please come over here to my right and we'll begin with Keisha Millett. Ms. Millett welcome and you have three minutes. Good evening thank you for allowing me to speak this evening. As you said my name is Keisha Millett. I am a Durham resident and a member of Durham Beyond Policing. We are very excited that the city council has approved the safety and wellness task force and is now in the early stages of implementation. This signals your recognition that all Durham residents need a comprehensive approach to safety and wellness. In addition to recommending funding more social support systems that address root causes of violence in other programs and other problems, the task force should also consider identifying and recommending other forms of first responders such as mobile mental health crisis units that have been enacted in other places and that move us away from criminalization and incarceration and towards conflict resolution and transformative justice. Durham residents know that safety comes from our basic needs being met such as having housing, having access to food and employment. The new community led safety and wellness task force promised promises to move Durham in the right direction away from harsh enforcement practices and towards a more supportive and safe place for us to live. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Millett. Second we will hear it looks like you all have a different order you want to go in that's fine. Ms. Purefoy welcome. You also have three minutes. Thank you. My name is Danielle Purefoy and I'm here also as a member of Durham beyond policing. I'm here to celebrate the passage of the task force the community led safety and wellness task force and here in support of it. I think this is a critical time in Durham's history to move us beyond policing and surveillance and towards support systems designed to reduce the social stressors that lead to violence and other forms of harm in our communities and schools. I'm specifically here as we task to do to support the proposed amendments to the task force bylaws which include stipends for task force members and I understand that that's a sort of general proposal on the table for the for the budget to cover all task forces which we in the city which we support along with increases in the numbers of justice involved organizers and youth members on the task force. We think it's really important that folks who are directly impacted by our carceral systems and policing be more most represented on the task force and in particularly since this task force does include the representatives from appointed from the school board it's really critical to have more than one youth member on the force. So I am here as a member of Durham beyond policing but also as a lifelong member of Durham's community. I grew up here and I went to public schools here I went to Holt, Hillendale, Carrington and northern and I've been witness as a student and as a sister to two younger sisters that also came up through these schools to the vast increases in policing and surveillance in the city and especially in our schools. I grew up in a Durham where there weren't SROs in every corner of the schools where we had guidance counselors and peer mediation and various other systems in place designed to keep us safe and importantly also to keep us in school and so I believe that one of the really critical things that this task force can do is to help get us back on to relying on those systems instead of on fear and criminalization of our students and our broader community. There are so many resources out there to support this argument around the school to prison pipeline and also around policing and surveillance moving beyond that generally and as Durham beyond policing will actually be posting a public resource list for folks who are interested in learning more about what's out there and what the task force could support in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Purefoy. Bo Kromarty, welcome. You also have three minutes. Thank you. Hello, my name is Bo Kromarty and I'm also a member of Durham Beyond Policing. I'm also really grateful for the passing of the community task force and I just want to emphasize for the bylaws that it's essential for the members of the community task force to be compensated for their time. There's the city has already acknowledged that for the other various task force that most of the members are middle to high income earners and I think it's imperative for this task force to succeed that the members are representative of the community that is most impacted by policing which is mostly low income low wealth black and brown people in Durham and so additionally the Durham police and sheriff's department command millions of public dollars every year to perpetuate criminalization and incarceration and neither of which makes it feel safe or well. The task force requires investments at levels that take seriously the transformative work it is trying to do in Durham. Beyond individual stipends for the task force members the task force will need funding for travel research additional meetings and public meetings to represent its findings so yeah I just want to emphasize stipends and paying the task force members for their time. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Marty. Manju Rajendra and welcome you also have three minutes. Thank you. I just want to thank y'all on behalf of Durham Beyond Policing particularly Mayor Pro Tem Johnson and Council Member Alston for your leadership on authoring and amending the bylaws and for to the whole council and city staff for your enthusiastic involvement in developing this county community-led safety and wellness task force. We'd like to call on the city council to support our efforts to engage the county commissioners and the school board to fully participate in the task force. We know that the community led safety and wellness task force will only be successful with meaningful leadership and enthusiastic engagement from not just city council but also our county and school board. We see in our daily lives how the issues around safety and wellness apply broadly in every sector of our city and county and especially the schools. So thank you so much for that vision that we saw Mayor Schull bring around that united work and please help us in our efforts to recruit them to the cause. Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here and for bringing this issue to us. We're going to have some discussion about it now on the council. I do want to just say a couple of things first though and in response to some of the important points that you raise just to I think you all know but we are now considering offering stipends to those members of any of our boards and commissions who have the need. We haven't decided on that yet but we're what we have discovered and one of you all pointed out is our city clerk did a great job. Madam clerk thank you studying the makeup of our boards and commissions and that we have an extremely in terms of race and gender. We are very very representative of our city which is great but we also ask an income question on the survey and what we found is that our members of our boards and commissions of whom I think there's 200 and some members we have relatively few low income members of our community on those boards and commissions and we feel like we have an opportunity to get more folks involved if we're able to pay us small stipend for meeting attendance which would help people with transportation and child care and those kinds of things so the council is considering that we've made no decision but I did want to address that since you all had raised it and that will be that's under consideration currently. The other thing I wanted to address was the Ms. Regendron what you said about the county commission and school board. I think it's I've had discussions with county commission members county commission chair and others and I know that Mayor Pro Tem Johnson has two and I know some of our other council members have and when you all came to us a lot of people came to us to talk about this and really lifted this up as an important issue and I think that same kind of grassroots work is going to need to go on with the county commissioners we have asked them to join us we either tonight or sometime soon we'll be passing these bylaws but we're going to it's going to be really important that people organize to get the participation of our county commissioners thank you I think our school board is readier my reading okay thank you all so much and now I'm going to ask if there are any comments concerns questions by members of the council Councilor Middleton thank you Mr. Mayor thank you for the work I look forward to supporting this task force but I think firstly I think there's some questions and considerations regarding the current iteration of bylaws before us Mr. Mayor you alluded to that the in its current form the impression is that the county is on board and I think that some work needs to be done I think the good thing about this we are we are under a self-imposed deadline there's no case to be made for experience and I think from a matter of form as the city's highest deliberative body I'm I just have an issue with passing something that I know on its face is not fully reflective of what has gone on so I'm going to ask for a little more time to to either bring the county on board fully with a full yes or if they're not then since we're going to be taking a legal vote on this to make this document be reflective of the reality on the ground secondly I do also have some questions about the way experts on the committee would be credentialed and deemed so I think I feel a little more comfortable with some conversation about that I do want to say however for the larger audience why I'm supporting this and the context in which I'm supporting it I'm not supporting this the task for us within the work rubric of an either or choice from the beginning of this debate debate I have argued that we need to be doing root causes and we need to keep up with our capacity as a city of three hundred thousand people who do not experience policing or interaction with police the same way as some of the voices that have been most reflective in this conversation I asked voluntarily and I was given the job so when I go to bed at night I watched the news a little differently and I read the paper most average folk so when I go to bed and I think about police and you're saying you need to get a life when I go to bed and think about police I'm not only thinking about responding to brothers and sisters in some of our low income neighborhoods I'm thinking about establishing perimeters during gas explosions I'm thinking about a multiple pronged terrorist incident in our city and who responds to those I'm thinking about not waiting for three hours to get an internet report taken for for offender vendor and traffic thinking about the fourteen to twenty people that move here every day as a black man it would be very easy for me to to parse this conversation through that lens of experience but you didn't elect me to just do that you elected me to to consider the well-being of three hundred thousand people and within that context is a much more expanded view of what it means to augment capability in the department much of which what they do has nothing to do with violent crime that the gas explosion establishing of a perimeter has nothing to do with violent crime taking an accident report has nothing to do with violent crime when an amber alert goes off looking for our children we hope doesn't have anything to do with violent crime ripping off your tack belt and jumping into a lake or a pool and pulling somebody out because there's a storm they got stuck in water has nothing to do with violent crime and as more people move to the city I want to make sure that we're keeping up with the capacity to do all of those things that have nothing to do with violent crime secondly I just want to speak also to the to the intellectual underpinnings for me in this debate racism has been such in this country that to make exotic just a police department is intellectually dishonest there is no area of american life that does not require deconstruction and renegotiation none not the constitution not the declaration of independence not professional sports not police everything requires deconstruction and one of the things historically I love about abolitionists is that they were truly abolitionists they didn't call just for the end of whippings they called for the end of slavery the entire institution so my intellectual trajectory is that the the real end result the the logical trajectory of abolitionism is nationalism it's the total destroying of a total system which would include the justice system the police are the whippings they're not the whole system and most of us when we engage in this conversation don't engage in a true abolitionist conversation because it's it's real cute to show up and and and and support black people you know from getting beat or shot by police but when you start talking about total black self determination when you start talking about total control of systems that's a nationalism conversation the reality is we are most of us just really reformers satana de berry is not calling for the total deconstruction of the justice system she's reforming it sarah and davis is not calling for the abolition of police she's reforming it and the reality is we most of us live in the dress live in live in at the address not of true abolitionists but as reformers the notion that over policing is a numerical reality is fallacious over policing has nothing to do with the number of police officers we deploy or hire over policing is a cultural phenomenon it is a leadership issue if we don't hire one more officer from now until the end of this republic we can still deploy that department in a way that overpolices we can still put them and aggregate them in areas which will result in disparate outcomes it is not a mathematical phenomena over policing it is cultural it is incumbent upon folk like us to be unafraid to snatch a badge if somebody does something egregious we are the bulwark against overpolicing not playing with numbers or or or moratoriums or arbitrary hiring freezes so i want to be very clear and signal to the folk of the city i'm i'm supporting this task for us because we do need a comprehensive approach to to to criminal justice all of criminal justice in this country and policing we need to do listen i'm a head start baby i understand the importance of root causes we definitely need to do root causes but as as a duly elected leader of 300,000 people it is also incumbent upon me to make sure that this great american city maintains the capability to respond to a wide range of contingencies many of them that have nothing absolutely nothing to do with violent crime we need it either or approach and and i think that approaching this debate as if it's we need a both end approaching this debate as an either or i think is is is just it's not intellectually viable it doesn't reflect the the facts on the ground and it also doesn't truly reflect what we do in every other area i can't imagine anyone opposing our da hiring more assistant district attorneys which do law enforcement because that would be augmenting the capacity to do more harm no we trust her because we see her as a transformative figure who is not deconstructing the system she's reforming it i see this police chief that we have in much the same way as a transformative figure and if you want to have an intellectually honest conversation if we want to talk about abolishing police then we need to abolish the whole darn system because everything in america requires renegotiation there is no vestige of anything in america that has not been enlisted in an institutional racist systemic attack on us everything if you're gonna stay here requires renegotiation and deconstruction so mr. mayor with that i look forward to supporting the task force i do however want to again emphasize that i think some more wordsmithing needs to be done to reflect the reality of either the county's support or non-support and i do think some more wordsmithing needs to be done in terms of how we will credential and deem experts as such so with that i will submit that as my concern i would ask that we would do some further work before we actually pass the bylaws but i do look forward to passing the bylaws and then paneling the task force within the context that i just described thank you mr. mayor and thank all of you thank you council member middleton other comments just point council member council member roster just kind of in response briefly in terms of wordsmithing i guess as a threshold matter kind of my working understanding and correct me if i'm wrong madam attorney if we vote to approve these bylaws the task force still doesn't exist until the other bodies kind of also approve this their participation in the joint task force because i mean it can't function really without their participation so to your point about the kind of legal situation i just wanted to clarify like if we are creating a body that in theory won't have two-thirds of its members or if it won't exist until they appoint they approve their version of the bylaws and make the appropriate right okay so does that i'm just wondering if that satisfies your question about the formation thank you councilor appreciate that actually i'm not sure if they're going to i think this is not only a question of that it's a matter of course that they will there's a question as to whether or not they even want to participate right so i guess yes so what i'm seeking to clarify is that i don't know that it exists until if and until they do so it isn't as if we're creating a body that somehow can't function i don't think it's actually created until those two bodies also kind of ascend to the formation of the task force right am i wrong i think the question becomes and why would we put our emperor modder on the document well i mean we can find that out before we actually vote i just think you know the weight of this body actually taking an official vote when there are still matters pending i mean we're not under anybody's clock it's a self-imposed deadline there's no case to be made for expediency why don't we just do the work dot every i cross every t and and then take a vote i mean if we if we don't pass it tonight what what what bad happens we're going to do it we just want to get make sure the document is tight that's all i'm suggesting sure and i don't think that there is a if we were to delay it one cycle yeah you're right this is a self-imposed deadline and i wouldn't be opposed to a delay if you're uncomfortable kind of with us moving forward tonight i just don't think we will know until they actually vote and so then we're in a chicken and egg of waiting for other people to vote for us to vote and then they can in theory wait for us to vote for them to vote so i don't know that we get to the finish line at any point i will ask my second question that i'm happy to do i don't know if they're going to vote councilman hang on a second in terms of the expertise issue i look i just looked at the language and you have a valid point because it does reference it does use the word expertise and i'm wondering if that word has used for other boards and commissions that also kind of call for an or eab has seats that are kind of designated for different subject matter areas and if that language is not typically used if we could just change that to experience or something i don't know that we need to certify folks as experts to serve on this board i think there's precedent for having folks who have certain subject matter experience to occupy a certain seat and i'd be fine with kind of amending that language to reflect that if that's possible thank you anyone else at this point i just wanted to remember carburetto thank you i just wanted to note in fact eab has mentioned that they are also a county city and when they added their seats probably about a year ago between the city and the county we both had to amend their bylaws and we did it in order like we didn't wait for the other body when it came to us we voted on it so i see this is a similar situation and i also um am totally fine with changing the word expertise if that's what the hang-up is okay i'll just express my concern about the bylaws which is which i've expressed to my colleagues i feel like the enumeration of the membership of the of the of the task force is too restrictive that to have so many of the positions enumerated as to exactly how the slots are to be filled my experience with that is that we get a lot of good applicants a lot of times and then we end up trying to have to slam them into fit them fit round pegs into square holes and that i think we ought to have a more flexible um that more of our members ought to be more i'm not against having some slots enumerated and i thought that the first pass through the bylaws i thought that it was about the right balance but i will just give an example one one of the one of the that the bylaws now have the council appoint two community organizers i think it's entirely possible that we might get an application from one great community organizer and one great social worker and we might think and another community organizer applicant who we don't think would add as much value to this i don't like the idea of us handcuffing ourselves in that way and so that's my concern and i like everything else and i am i have a high level of comfort with us going ahead and waiting for the county or i agree with councilmember middleton they might never do but i believe that we could go ahead pass what we think the bylaws ought to be continue the discussion that we're having with them enlist members of our community to work with our county commission to try to bring them along as well but that's my big concern i feel like the way to much to have a portion of the 15 members are constricted in who they have to be and i'm i think that's problematic and could be fixed but just take a little time councilmember austin would it be helpful to maybe for us to wait to vote on this for to bring this back to work session for kind of a deeper discussion and about the composition and any other pieces of the bylaws and then bring this back for our next council meeting that would be fine with me colleagues are you all okay with that mayor pro tem so my preference would be to pass it tonight just because we have community folks who've been working on this who have now been to three meetings and i not i'd rather not ask them to come to two more if folks are comfortable with changing the the makeup of the folks who are on the task force now i don't know that there are any other substantive issues that i would recommend making changes to of course other folks might feel differently the the one change to the to the makeup that i feel strongly that we should keep is that we changed from one youth to two i felt that folks made a really strong argument that just having one youth on the task force would be isolating and make it difficult for their voice to be heard and for them to fully participate we have two youth for example on our participatory budgeting steering committee and i have felt that that has worked well with regards to the others i feel more flexible about moving some of the we'd initially had one community organizer and two at large for the city and one justice involved into it large for the county i feel less strongly that those that those configurations should remain as they are but i do think that two youth is necessary we could have one of the youth appointed by one of the other bodies if we felt like we didn't want to put them if we wanted the school board to also have an at-large seat for the same reasons that you enumerated Mr. Mayor with them potentially having more applicants that they would be excited about appointing who wouldn't necessarily fit into the slots but that's the that's the one change that i that i feel that we should keep in them very open to other thoughts on the other pieces as well thank you Mr. Mayor Council Member thank you and i appreciate the Mayor's Pro Tem's comments i think the latter part of our comments is precisely why we should kick it back and do the words missing and i'm glad we had this meeting tonight because because we heard them where we're actually now making more recommendations than if we had just passed it outright at the beginning of the meeting we wouldn't be able to incorporate that comment about the youth so again i i um and i appreciate i'm respectful of folks time coming out to these meetings and for what it's worth i think it's we're gonna pass this it's gonna it's gonna get done again i i just think that before we put the imprimata of this board on it and because we're not under any clock except the one imposed by ourselves let's do the work let's make the document clean and concise and not speculative as to who's going to participate or not and and pass it can do justice to all the work that i mean so much work is going into it thus far we're at the last yard we might as well make it as you know as concise and reflective of realities on the ground as possible and then do the document justice that'll be my final comment thank you very much so in light of all that's been said i i um i'm more apprehensive to move forward tonight recognizing that the county's not on board which is news to me because i i must have missed something there but um i'm also noting like from the comments i heard this evening this was really specific to or especially around the community this is specific to an issue for around race and there's no aspect of race bylaws and so i'm not sure if this is meant to address the community's concern around being community health and wellness task force and hitting the root causes without saying the word black or brown or if this is actually what was presented previously which was really heavily government focused and so i'm i'm hearing that there's a medium met but if the median has been met without the county that doesn't feel actually like a medium has been met and so i'm feeling like there's more work to be done acknowledging similarly like i support wholeheartedly having some way to some way shape and form of figuring out how to build build a task force around addressing these issues knowing that the long term and the short term has to be covered at the same time i'm not sure if tonight it feels like it's done hey thank you any other comments all right i'm going to i will ask for a knotting of the heads i'm going to suggest that we take it back to work session acknowledging that this does mean that we will have that those residents who are concerned will have to come back to other meetings to be present but i do think that we want to get it right so i'm going to recommend that we go back to work session and i do think we have some words for anything to do and i don't think we'll be able to do it well tonight is my thought i'm happy if if you all want to overrule me but maybe what i'll do is i'll ask for thumbs up on that and then we'll and then we'll make a decision can i see the thumbs looks like we have five or six thumbs so we will be that's the way we do it you all we do thumbs we actually do that a lot you might be interested to know in our informal votes that we take and so what i'm going to say then is we'll yes councilmember i just want to say that i do i know that the timetable isn't it's self-imposed right but i do want to say that i would like those wrapped up within the next work session and and to work we could words method to death and so i do feel that folks have been coming for almost a year asking for this now you know the first proposal we were given was last spring so i want to acknowledge the work that's been done and we so happy to take it up at work session i hear all of my colleagues concerns but i don't want to keep delaying it and if if the delay is on the county side that's fine but it's not going to be on our side thank you all right then we're going to move this back to the work session and we will expect it back on our agenda in two weeks thank you thank you all for coming to talk about this tonight members of our community and now we're going to move to our public hearing items and the first will be excuse me item 16 unified development ordinance text amendments signs and i will now hear from staff thank you very much michael stock with the planning department before i begin i would like to know that all planning department public hearing items have been notified as required now on file for review as for text amendment tc 1702 that text amendment revises the signage regulations within article 17 science standards primarily to conform with the united states supreme court ruling and read v go read v town of gilbert other changes technical in nature were also performed a presentation was provided at city council the last work session and a copy is included in your agenda packet primary changes include updates to the purpose statements reorganization reorganization of the article itself new exempt temporary and permanent sign categories and relocation of landmark signs and technical corrections within landmark sign desert section as a reminder city council required take two actions the first would be an action when the appropriate statement of consistency found in attachment a the second would be an action on the ordinance itself attachment b dono tool deputy city attorney and i will be happy to answer any questions thank you thank you very much mr stock you have heard the report from staff and i'm now going to declare this public hearing open and i'm going to ask first if there are questions for the staff by members of the council any questions for staff at this point just one question with the way that this sign regulation is written would i be able to place a yard sign for a summer lunch program throughout the summer at five different corner locations for the entire summer no thank you any other questions all right i'm going to ask for a little discussion among the council before we hear from members of the public i think that we don't usually do that you usually hear from members of the public first but i know the council members have some thoughts about this that i think that they probably want to express and so i think we'll go ahead and do that first and i'm going to ask are there council members who have any thoughts about this that they would like to offer sure thanks at the risk of sounding like a broken record i'm going to at least put on the table the the option of putting this this vote off i have complete confidence in faith in the interpretation by our staff for uh read and trying to bring our ordinance in consistent with read but we you know heard from our state delegation today or yes today which just in and of itself in my experience on council is a rare occurrence and so you know while i i want to move us in the direction of having our ordinance conform with read it just strikes me that this might be a chance to have a little bit deeper conversation that with our delegation and with uh stakeholders just to make sure everyone is clear on what is a very messy opinion from the united states court and kind of what this ordinance seeks to do and what the proposed text amendment seeks to do and so i just put that on the table i'd like to hear from folks but i want to ask the council to consider that tonight thank you council member ross and that delegation is going to be a heck of a lot better when you're a member of it which will be in the not too distant future i'm happy to say but not too near future Mr. Mayor not too near future that's right also not too near future other comments council member race what was that mr mayor oh thank you mr mayor appreciate you recognize me so uh as i think most of my colleagues know council member allson and i have been working been involved in staff efforts around this particular ordinance for the both part of the last two years and i first of all i want to thank our staff and our city attorney's office for for the unbelievable amount of work that has gotten us to where we are tonight i can tell you that the city staff that have been engaged in this particular effort have seen the the landscape shift under their feet since probably around 2014 when the issue was first raised for them and i'll i believe there was exactly one member of this council on the council at that time and that was you mr mayor and so the our staff has had to since then deal with our changing opinions about the issue that first brought these these signs the sign question before us which i think was the so some of us may have been in Durham login to remember the nefarious like Andrew signs that were up on a couple of public roadways here in Durham that i think triggered some of the initial work on this and then of course the following year 2015 the oh supreme court released its decision and read which upset the apple card and likely invalidated every sign ordinance and every community across America and put local governments like Durham's in a very difficult position of trying to figure out how to respond i've read the read decision myself many times although i'm not the city attorney i am an attorney and unfortunately my deep legal training did not allow me to penetrate read is as thoroughly as some of the other city staff have on this question so be that as it may with respect to the to the ordinance that was before us tonight as i said i think this is the product of significant amount of work and first of all i want to honor that second of all i think it's clear based on the communications that we've had with folks in our community that there are deep levels of concern about the impact of an ordinance like this on a number of different opera of number of different activities in our community that benefit from the ability to place signs in the right of way and i think what the our delegation to the general assembly has called us to do in this case is to engage in work to try to balance those interests in a in a way that allows more of that activity to take place while still laboring to be as as compliant with the redecision as a local government can be given all the other decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court on this area and so with respect to the to the specific request that council member Alston put before us i am open to suggestions from my colleagues about the appropriate path forward here i think there are any number of alternatives but probably my preference our planning director pat young reached out to us this afternoon in response to our delegations are our legislative delegations letter to us and in his email while he did he did stand behind the work done by staff and indicated that staff was prepared to proceed as set forward in our agenda with the ordinance as proposed he did say as ever we are happy to receive alternative direction regarding next steps and we'll work with the ncga or any other party of alternatives to our proposal are sought and it seems clear that with respect to this particular ordinance I sense on our board the impulse to try to find a better solution that more delicately balances all of the interests at play here and would encourage us to take our director up on his very kind offer and would also in the interest of trying to accept some responsibility on behalf of elected officials on this because our staff obviously as I mentioned have been working since 2014 to try to figure out a way out of this mess would offer the auspices of the joint city county planning committee which I am currently happy to chair to provide a forum for those conversations and if that's the will of the body thank you Mr. Mayor thank you very much councilmember any other comments councilmember middleton thank you Mr. Mayor and I appreciate my colleagues comments all of my colleagues comments I sit on the JCCPC and I think it is an appropriate forum for this discussion I do want to say however Mr. Mayor that I'm not one I don't like to punt just for punting's sake and I I just don't want to set the bar set the expectation I mean far more brilliant minds than mine have looked at this for a long time and we came down at least as I recall either letting signs along political signs be in rights of way for a prescribed amount of time and everybody can do it or letting it be for a free for all and I after all this deliberation I didn't even hear a semblance of a variation on that that would satisfy the supreme court a ruling or that would not get us into making distinctions between commercial and non-commercial speech with that said I'm willing to have another go at it but the staff memo was quite explicit that they wanted us to move on to tonight they it seems at least in my reading of the memo that they've exhausted all the intellectual capital in consultation with legal experts experts looking at it but if if it's psychologically more palatable for us to have another look and to have some more conversation I'd be more than happy to delay it but I do not want to create the impression that we have not been racking our brains in ways to come up with an iteration that would please everybody and that the current iteration before us represents best efforts till now maybe something special will happen in coming days so I with that I'm I'm immutable to having JCCPC take another look but I just don't want to raise the bar of expectations too high thank you Mr. Mayor thank you very much any other comments at this time I have a couple of comments I was definitely one of the people back in 2000 and 1415 extremely disturbed by the so-called nefarious sign I was disturbed by for a couple of reasons not that first of all it had although it was judged to be a temporary sign it did not feel like a temporary sign it was it felt very much in terms of time place and manner like a very permanent sign and maybe you know I think that's something that any that we need to be giving some thought to but I think because of that because I and other members of the council at that time and I was the only member of the council I'm the only member of the council who was on the council at that time I'm also a lot older than the rest of you all I won't say that too not just longer serving but that I think a lot of us felt that figuring out how to deal with that kind of speech was an important thing to try to do and our staff has wrestled mightily with this question and then as Council Member Reece said then the supreme court made the ruling in Reed and this just made things that much trickier I think where the where I feel our delegation kind of misses the point in their letter is that they talk about the fact that Reed does not call for changes in the way in I'm paraphrasing here in the way in which commercial speech is treated with in the sign ordinances but the problem is that if we're going to try to limit the kinds of things like that nefarious sign then that's political speech and political speech cannot be held to a in commercial speech it cannot be held to a lower standard than we hold political speech to we can't be we can't be banning certain kinds of political speech and then allowing commercial speech political speech is and should be better protected than commercial speech and I don't think our delegation's letter really fully grappled with that on the other hand I do think that I was impressed I have been impressed by the comments that we have heard from lots of residents especially I thought that Planning Commissioner Tom Miller's remarks were very valuable his comments the system that he described is one which is an option for us he calls it self permitting I don't know if that's good word for it but I think the enforcement of such a system would be very problematic but I do think it's something that's worth taking a look at and so I'm going to support the recommendation of Councilmember Austin Councilmember Reese and the concurrence of Councilmember Middleton that we send this back to joint city county planning for another crack at I know that our staff has done a tremendous amount of work on this and that this is a this just means more work but I think it's where we are and I see Mike with the shrug I know it's yes because you don't have to do it Mike it's Dono Tool it's going to do all more so you're shrugging but I know you're I just emailed Don go do it so I think that's I think that's where we are and so Mike do you have some thoughts I have no thoughts I was just approaching because you're looking at me all right Councilmember Austin can I just get some maybe some council from the staff for the administration on whether or not it makes the most sense to send it back to JCCPC or not you want to verify for a back administration great all right for a back administration you all can advise yeah all right thank you I'm going to ask for a motion that we refer this back to the administration so moved it's been moved in a second and we refer this back to the administration Madam Clerk will you please open the vote please close the vote motion passes 7-0 thank you very much and thank you to Mr. Stock Mr. O'Toole all of you all have labored in the vineyard just one other example of us torturing you to death for not a very good reason but we are we are very grateful to you and we'll we'll figure it out thank you so much I believe I'm now going to declare this public I'm sorry I've opened the public hearing I should definitely offer anyone it's there's six people that have chosen sign up to speak you certainly don't have to speak but if you're dying to speak Mr. Malem welcome you have three minutes Mr. Mayor members of the city council Mr. City Manager Ms. City Attorney members of the public we just want to let it be known those six of us who had signed up to speak our qualms we do not have a problem with the hard work of the planning department they have done an outstanding job given the paradigm that they were given and so we want to join in your comments to them about the job they have done has been excellent our concern is that the paradigm that they were given which preceded Reed B. Gilbert was to get rid of that type of sign and all I ask is as long as the six of us who aren't going to speak just want to make sure that whatever future work there is that some of the stakeholders in the community whether it be pastor page on behalf of his church whether it be Mr. Willis on behalf of civic clubs whether it be Ms. Brooks on behalf of the realtor community whether it be Mr. Hasbrook on behalf of the homebuilders some of the stakeholders also be able to be at the table that was just a request absolutely appreciate y'all's time thank you thank you Mr. Malam and absolutely of course thank you so much this is a public hearing item is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this item Ms. Brooks welcome you also have three minutes I'm laughing right now because I worked really hard on my speech maybe you might need it again thank you thank you for your time last week thank you for the opportunity to be heard we do want to express our gratitude to you all and to the staff we certainly never intended for this to become contentious between our group and their group we know that they were given a mandate and that they've carried it out we do want a voice we have a voice we have some opinions we know that that read versus the town of Gilbert is a complicated ruling and that commercial speech and non-commercial speech and how to govern those two in the temporary signage world is is pretty difficult we just want a chance to figure it out for all of the reasons that we outlined at the planning commission meeting and that I discussed with you all last week and and I'll have my speech if we need another opportunity to talk about it but I'd much rather serve on a work group with the JCCPC and and put our opinions and what we've learned over the last two years in front of you all thank you so much thank you mr. Brooks welcome mr.  Mayor I feel sorry for you coughing up there would you like them you're nice to offer I get no thanks thank you very much thank you mr. Smith what a talent all right well you just never know what people are going to offer thank you so much all right is there anyone else that would like to be heard on this matter if not I'm declared this public hearing closed thank you very much we'll move on now to item 18 which is also a public hearing item and this is a coincided annexation Kendrick estates good evening good evening mr. others I'm Emily Struthers with the playing department I will now present consolidated annexation item Kendrick estates this request for utility extension voluntary annexation and initial zoning map change was previously heard at the December 16th city council meeting and was continued to this evening during the time of this continuance the case was sent to chairpersons of four organizations for review and comment and planning staff provided support at meetings these included the Durham open space and trails commission environmental affairs board new Hope Creek Corridor advisory committee and friends of hollow rock nature park additionally comments were received from the new Hope Audubon Society and NC wildlife resource commission those comments provided by these organizations are included as attachments in the staff report these organizations have identified ways for the proposed Kendrick estates to more responsibly develop adjacent to the hollow rock nature park staff generally concurred with the recommendations provided and encourages the applicant to take them into consideration however there is no mechanism for text commitments to be proffered in conjunction with this application since it is a request for annexation with a direct translation zoning staff also acknowledges receipt of an email from the Hope Creek Home Owners Organization this afternoon with concerns regarding stormwater that's not included in the staff report given the time that it was received and analysis of the stormwater impacts of the site has been considered city stormwater will require 100 year peak flow detention which is the most stringent and more stringent than county stormwater requirements should council act favorably approval of the annexation petition and zoning would become effective on March 31st and staff is available for any questions thank you very much Mr. Others you all will remember colleagues that this is a continuation in earlier public hearing we have several people sign up to speak I see one proponent Mr. Gouche I see one person listed two couple people as an opponent and several people listed as requesting delay of annexation what I'm going to do first I'm going to ask Mr. Gouche Mr. Gouche how much time do you think you all will need and is it going to be you or do you also have other speakers that will be Mr. Mayor thank you it was just me playing to speak I'm surprised here that there's a number of people who signed up to speak to request a delay or in opposition to so I guess what I would request is maybe to hear from them first because I think we've done a lot of work on the case since the December hearing to hear what those concerns are it may be the case that we've addressed many many of those concerns already so maybe hear from them first and I'm going to ask you Mr. Gouche here's what I'm going to do I want to ask you first in a minute if you have any remarks that you'd like to make just as an introduction then I'm going to give the people other people have signed up an opportunity to each speak for three minutes and then after that I'm going to offer you an opportunity to respond to any of those concerns that they raise does that sound good to you yeah that sounds fine perfect do you want to go ahead then and make any introductory remarks that you would like to make sure yeah I'll thank staff for their staff report and introduction this time as was mentioned this case came before you all in December so just at the end of last year and at that hearing you all requested that take this case in front of a different advisory boards which hadn't seen the case at that time to get feedback from them and to work with them and we did in fact do that and also we have met with neighbors in the Solterra neighborhood and in surrounding areas about the case since then and have made well I should I should be careful using the word commitment here because as you know this is an annexation and so any commitments that are made are obviously not ones which are of the type that the city can enforce however Baker residential is committed to one this project and two the Durham community generally and their reputation and mine is on the line and I trust you know that I'm not going anywhere and neither is Baker residential and so the commitments they made they do take very seriously and they've made a number of of those commitments to the neighbors and those commitments include well those commitments are responsive to the feedback that we've gotten throughout this process one of those for example was related to the use of full cutoff lighting and and motion sensors so Baker has committed to applying with Duke to get those full cutoff short pole lightings which are you know required lighting required outdoor lighting by the UDO but that's also less invasive than street lights which don't have that full cutoff shielding additionally Baker has agreed to to provide in its covenants and and bylaws literature and suggestions related to using motion sensors for lighting so that you have less for outdoor lighting so that you have less interference with wildlife generally so the lights aren't always on that they would come on with with the motion sensor one of the other piece of feedback we got was that we should use native plantings and Baker residential has committed to using native plantings in in its community there was also a lot of talk about the connection to the park and that connection has not been fully designed but we understand the feedback is basically to provide a connection which will not require an extensive amount of ongoing maintenance and whether that's a hardscape or a combination of hardscape and and you know softscape it remains to be seen but we are we are we have that feedback we are working with that with staff to get that type of a connection built there's a lot of great to make up there so that's another concern additionally we've agreed to have in the covenants a rule similar to that which can be found in the Solterra neighborhood related to the use of persistent pesticides and herbicides and so the that will be something that will be incorporated in the covenants for the neighborhood one of the piece of feedback we got related to providing a fence between the park and and the neighborhood and this is one where I don't know that we saw eye to eye exactly on it understand definitely and appreciate the concern with preventing social trails and that type of thing from happening into the park from the neighborhood right now what Baker residential is looking at is providing a clear demarcation of where the property line is so that is people are very aware of where where the neighborhood ends and where the park begins additionally to help prevent that social trail there will be of course the the trail had provided in the neighborhood but signage directing people throughout there so way finding signage in the neighborhood and also um covenants would speak to not dumping in the required buffer one of the other things and I think it was just mentioned is we've heard a lot of talk about environmental concerns especially with runoff and the Dermudio requires the developer to control for the one two and 10 year storm and on our next recent middle we've already drawn it up in fact the plan is to also increase our stormwater control so that it will it will handle the 100 year storm as well and I'm not an engineer so I'm going to say presumably anything under that but technically speaking it is the one two 10 and 100 year storm events I don't know how those devices work but that is a significant increase in stormwater controls and one which we anticipate is going to have a benefit downstream I think I'll leave it there for now and wait to hear from the rest of the speakers thank you thank you Mr. Gage and I'll give you time after we hear from the other speakers all right we have a number of speakers who've signed up and I'm going to call them in order first we have Kerry Bishop Coon second we have Scott Sunseth and third we have Paul Lindia and if I'll begin with those three and if you all could please come over here to my right and line up here thank you so much and the first speaker we're going to hear from is Kerry Bishop Coon welcome Ms. Bishop Coon and you have three minutes thank you and my name is Kerry Bishop Coon and I live for Moon Valley tonight I'm representing the Friends of Howler Rock Nature Park and we are one of the reports that was requested to provide feedback in regards to the impact on this development into the park and in ways that we can support the park and the longevity and sustainability of the park so on behalf of the Friends of Howler Rock Nature Park we believe the location of this development adjoining Howler Rock Nature Park requires thoughtful consideration during the construction and the building process to protect the park for future generations we encourage big residential to be good neighbors to not only to new hope nature park but to the citizens of Durham with decisions that will protect our community's public resource and public space for generations to come our recommendation at this time due to the current level of ambiguity surrounding the public access mitigation of human impact and biodiversity within the park we are unable to recommend annexation for Kendricka State subdivision project and request that Durham City Council let know on the proposal we're willing to reconsider once we gain additional clarity so that what we'd like to do is ask City Council to help clear clear up this area of ambiguity before voting one area has to do with that public access through Kendricka States into Howler Rock Nature Park the easement within that tract of land provides virtue trails and both of them are located adjacent to some wetlands dust has recommended that they be consolidated into one area that right now the current site hasn't been updated and we don't have a design about that public access point so it's really it still remains quite unclear the one thing we do know is that because Baker residential has proposed the use of a high impact development model there's going to be result in significant clearing and degradation of the land so the proposed access point now will be raised 16 feet above the park floor and it's going to be extremely steep to get from where they've got 16 foot at the top all the way down and we don't know what that's going to look like and with that in mind we want to make sure that this one not the two but now that it's consolidated into one that access point is sustainable and that it's safe and that it's accessible to the public for use now and for in the future and that also that it doesn't create additional costs and expenses for the city of Durham as they're maintaining that hurt the sort of that goes back to back to that because there's just only this one particular access point we're looking at the fact that this is an uphill development and right now there's a 30 foot buffer so we really do believe that having a significant um bear here is important thank you miss Bishop thank you our next speaker will be Scott Sunset welcome Mr. Sunset you also have three minutes thank you I'm a powerpoint presentation I like to say first of all I am one of the homeowners that you'll see identified in the following photos and videos um I'm colloquially referred to as homeowner number one so there's two main points we like to make 49 number one is that we have an existing ongoing almost two decades stormwater drainage problem in our subdivision I'm going to show you photographic and video evidence of that and number two that we think the Kendrick estates development as it's been designed will only exacerbate that situation and make a bad situation worse so let me orient you here's um the Kendrick estates development this is trinity school right here and our homes abut our backyards abut up to trinity school this is another view the drainage comes under the road right here under picket road it follows a natural channel it goes under the road at trinity school right here you can see this open section here I'll show you that in just a second and then it hits my backyard right about this point here here's a picture of the stormwater channel as it goes under the trinity school you see these three large culverts and you'll notice that the channel here is deep and wide it's adequately designed to handle the amount of stormwater that comes through it unfortunately when it reaches my backyard I'm standing on my back deck right here you can see these two streams coming together that are overflowing this is stormwater on may 6 2004 shortly after I moved into the subdivision I moved in in august of 2003 we had a couple storms I finally decided I better start documenting this with some photographic evidence and then you'll see the same area here to orient you this little tree here is the same as this large tree here 16 years later this footbridge you'll see is a landmark in several of these photos you can see the amount of stormwater coming down through here this is egressing into my yard it leaves a lot of debris it's a road to the yard I can't grow anything there and it's just really destroying the property value this is looking west from my backyard the same deck you'll see that the channel here flattens out considerably there's no slope it broadens it's called an undefined channel and the water now instead of rushing along as you saw in that earlier photo spreads out and into the yards causing pooling and stagnation that you'll hear about in some of the other photos this is the last video I'd like to show you and if a picture is worth a thousand words I think the video should be worth about 10,000 we'll see that bridge that I told you was a landmark come up in just a second here you can see we've got between plus two and three whitewater rapids storming right under that bridge you can see the amount of water and debris that comes into my yard the erosion has been going on for 16 years again this is a problem it's only going to get worse next speaker thank you Mr. Lindia the next person on my list is actually I'm sorry that was Mr. Shun said that's Mr. Shun said I'm sorry this is Mr. Lindia thank you welcome please give us your name and address and you have three minutes thank you my name is Paul Lindia I live at 4316 Forest Edge Trail and house number three this first slide here you'll see water nearly filled the backyard and destroying landscaping this similar views here also show water up to the screen porch structure this video shows what occurs with the channel pictured on the right when heavy rains occur and here you see the depth of stormwater debris in the backyard to protect the home from stormwater the yard here has been raised two feet with a retaining wall that will be added to keep the raised area from being lost to stormwater flooding 14 years after moving into the home homeowner one continues to experience the channel that does not contain stormwater here you see a channel near the entrance to the school that is sufficiently wide to contain the flow but the channel narrows and then empties into an undefined channel behind our homes these are more views of water outside of the swale behind our homes this video shows stormwater sources converging with the portion on the right coming from the part of the neighborhood and the portion on the left coming from the offsite the extreme volume of offsite water at the forest often completely overflows the neighborhood drain pipe and the drain pipe cannot even be seen here the quality and the veracity of the stormwater passing through our backyards is so forceful that it can move heavy objects a long way like the cinder block that has carried a length of a half of a football field finally here you see a maintenance challenge where deck posts cannot behold paint due to persistent moisture on the ground thank you thank you Mr. Lindia our next speaker is Karen Lindia thank you thank you for coming tonight please give us your name and address and you also have three minutes do i get my slide up i'm sorry can i get my slide up it's oh yeah it's coming back up okay thank you hi i'm Karen Lindia also at 4316 forest edge trail what you see here shows the current stormwater flow from Kendricka states and its current undeveloped status about half of that water is going through trinity school in our backyards the other half through hollow rock park in this as is state you have seen that we have significant problems with stagnation and saturation and with post-rain ponding persisting for two to three days sometimes this shows what is proposed sorry for Kendricka states with all of their stormwater being planned to come our direction in addition to adjacent acreage surrounding their property we understand that they plan a 100 year detention pond and their peak flow rate will not increase the flow rate we experience now from other sources in the absence of final information about the extent to which trinity school plans to improve the soil on their property however these variables do not sufficiently mitigate our concerns about greater volume being released over longer periods of time the assertion we have heard that there would be no net impact seems impossible based on current information we have we have been negatively impacted by upstream stormwater for a long time we are not against the annexation and development of Kendricka states we have communicated with trinity school many of us have relationships with the school and we understand that they're working with McAdams engineering to consider redesign options for the soil and school property we have not been successful in efforts to meet with baker residential or McAdams we don't have the information needed for us to be confident of resolution and a long-term effective strategy city council members we respectfully ask that you defer annexation of Kendricka states until the parties can work together along with a city engineer in order to solve our ongoing problems and ensure that new ones are not created we also ask all of Kendricka that all of Kendricka state stormwater be directed toward hollard rock park and i'd like to ask mistrothers i may not have heard this but we did email the city council a letter last week and i did not hear mention of that as being in the record thank you thank you miss lindia our next speaker is tiffany freeson miss lindy we will get an answer to your question thank you miss freeson uh please give us your name and address and you have three minutes okay thank you hello i'm tiffany freeson and i'm the tenant of the 4313 branch would drive property owner who is my brother i spoke at the december city council meeting regarding the stormwater issues near my home because i was concerned more development nearby without assessing this existing issue you just viewed on the powerpoint and solving it will make it worse if no remediation is done to the existing offsite stormwater channel near these homes the situation will get worse if this channel receives additional water from Kendricka states further improvements will be needed especially in the forested area that delivers the offsite stormwater to new hope creek if the developer of Kendricka states wants to use this above ground channel that ends behind our homes to send additional stormwater to new hope creek then please require those benefiting to participate in the cost of upgrading the channel at the suggestion of the developers the homeowners did reach out on january 31st to schedule a meeting with the developers their engineering firm and the city engineer to discuss our concerns about stormwater the developer responded on february 3rd to us they were further looking into this which i trust they are but we have not heard back from them on this matter the situation requires the city to consider the needs of all properties hope creek trinity school Kendricka states properties adjacent to Kendricka states solterra and holla rock park in this region as they consider the best long-term solution for everyone for stormwater management of Kendricka states along with my neighbors i ask city council to defer annexation until more analysis is done in concerns of property owners who would be adversely affected by this are fully resolved thank you for the opportunity to be heard thank you miss recent our next speaker is kumbiz kline thank you mr kline please give us your name and address as well and you have three minutes thank you my name is kumbiz kline i am the president of the hope creek homeowners association i've resided 4203 forest test trail i'm talking to you on behalf of 106 homeowners in the hope creek owner homeowners association would like the city council to urge at least delay of the vote on this development until some of these issues with stormwater and some traffic issues that i'm going to talk about and briefly are addressed as you're as you're aware this is a 21 acre plot of land 50 percent of the land excuse me 50 percent of the stormwater i believe drains into the the hope creeks or excuse me holorock park and 50 percent drains into the swell that borders are the north part of our property and as such as you've seen in these videos here are some of our homeowners at the northern end of the of the of the development have experienced a great deal of stormwater already and if they're proposing to increase the amount of water that's going to be coming through there it's going to only make things worse it's true that the hundred the the hundred year retention pond is probably a good idea to address peak flow water but it probably does very little to reduce the total water around because eventually that water will come down into the swale between turnity and the hope creek development we fear in addition that it's possible that the other homes across the eastern part of our or excuse me the western part of our development may also experience the same types of problems with water with this increased flow the second concern we have relates more to traffic as you're well aware of in this in this design the egress and and and access to this development opens up onto Randolph on Randolph road I believe based on at least the city planners estimations that there's going to be at least 450 cars that are going to be traveling in 24-hour period the southbound lane of Randolph road at present is very backed up and it's very likely that it may require either a traffic circle or even stoplight to manage the traffic from this development we think that at least the current plant has not really adequately addressed this issue and we urge the city council to at least look at this in further detail before proceeding with a yes or no vote thank you thank you Mr. Klein our next speaker is Spencer Jennings thank you very much I live on a 3612 Randolph road also owned a lot 3614 we are on the direct southern side of the property development done by posed by Kendrick states we purchased the property back in 2005 with the intent of creating a building light on the on the backside of that property and our concern now basically as the previous speakers have said is that the amount of water that's going to be on the property is going to have a negative impact I think on the value of the property or the sustainability or the value of the property as a buildable lot some of the same concerns that these current residents have are the same concern I'd have if I were to you know to go forward and to build on that property so my concern follows along with them that a decision to annex be deferred at least until all the parties have gotten their issues resolved and look at maybe other possible ways of handling the storm water I have had conversations with both the engineers the developer the city planners and they've all been very thoughtful and helpful and I do understand that the storm water is you know largely going to be contained as far as the peak flow volumes it's just the volume is my big concern and just the period of time that the water is going to sit on the property you might have a flow that might last a day or so now it's going to be about three times that amount so that's my concern is just the potential impact to the value of the property and just the the nuisance value of having water on the property for that period of time thank you very much thank you so we've reached the end of our speakers Mr. Goshe if you'd like to come back up and provide us with any additional information thank you Mayor Pro Tem Johnson yeah I wanted to discuss or respond to some of the things you just heard one of them was about the public access and and I think the concern was that the design for it is unclear and I I would agree that the design for it has not yet been completed and it won't be completed until we get to construction drawings and site plans so I don't know what level of certainty we can provide ahead of that but as I said the the feedback that we've gotten with respect to providing that access in a sustainable low maintenance way has has been received and that is something we're working on with your staff to provide that type of access but I will tell you that we don't know exactly what it will look like and we will not know that for a while you saw a lot about drainage problems and and stormwater issues that are existing and that that is one of the points I I understand that that doesn't you know that doesn't help necessarily with that problem but the point is there are some existing drainage problems that the Kendrick estates project is not going to be able to help mitigate now what it will do is not make that worse and that's what it's required to do and that and it's required to do that as I said for the one two and 10-year storm and in this case Baker residential is also going to be upsizing its stormwater controls to handle the 100-year storm and this should be a significant increase or a significant improvement over what is already required now there was also a lot of talk and I think you heard it about the problems existing at the Trinity School Development and we agree there is a problem there but it also is not a problem on property that we're talking about or property that we control now the neighbors mentioned and and I also am aware that the school has retained McAdams to work on that so McAdams is working on a new design for that channel I don't know what that's what it will look like and when it will happen but that is something that the school actively is working on right now and I know that your stormwater engineer Mr. Irwin has been involved in that project as well so there should be some improvements there in the pipeline but to the extent those problems already exist it is not something that Baker residential has a whole lot of ability to help at this point one of the one of the suggestion was direct all stormwater to the Hall Rock Nature Park and we think that's a bad idea and that's exactly why we didn't design the site that way and it also is it contradicts a lot of the information and a lot of the feedback that we've gotten from city staff and from the Hall Rock Nature Park the different groups that that are working with the Hall Rock Nature Park so I don't think that's really a viable option I don't think it's a good option but we are going to as I said be upsizing our stormwater controls to handle under your storm as far as traffic this development is not very big and it it is not even close to moving the needle for like a traffic impact analysis or a traffic study something like that the existing traffic on Randolph Road in fact is is below the current capacity for it that's not to say that there aren't a lot of cars on Randolph Road there are but by design that the road can already handle that traffic and also the traffic from our project we think the traffic is adequately handled on the project as is and then you also heard from Mr. Jennings who has who owns a property directly south of the Kendrick estate's property and we've looked at his property and have had conversations with them as you as you've heard my understanding is that there is already a buffer stream on that property that has really nothing to do with what's going on in the Kendrick state's that property is wet and it will be wet and there's nothing you can do to not make it wet I understand that he bought it and was hoping to build on it and I'm not saying it's not buildable but it certainly will be difficult given how wet it is already again we don't think we're causing any additional harm to that property especially with the proffers on stormwater and stormwater amendments we're making thank you I know my time is up thank you Mr. Gosh we've had one additional opponent sign up to speak Mr. John Kent thank you please give us your name and address and you have three minutes my name is John Kent I live at 394 Cub Creek Road in Chapel Hill and I am I wear two hats actually three I've done stream watch on New Hope Creek for a number of years I'm a board member of New Hope Waterfront Society and I'm a technical advisor to the New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee I want to say it's mixed what my feelings are on this we have made we have had several meetings with developers and I think on light pollution native plants pesticides and some limiting the trail connection to one from two we've made sir would you go back from the microphone just a little bit be better to hear you it's too far back there's a sweet spot right there that's okay you got it that's okay so we I know what the the Corridor Committee met on this last week and we had hoped to see something I think everybody well we had hoped to see some change in the site plan regarding the trail connection on road a which is the one to the north off Randolph road into the nature park and we haven't seen that and then most everybody wants some kind of physical barrier between the this is on the west side of the property only on to between the nature park and the housing development where exactly that is going to be is still still unknown so at Salterra there was also a neighborhood meeting and I attended and the developers mark and and Derek Brad yes we're there and they they did mention putting up a fence actually on the park boundary and I believe it was mentioned six feet standard code won't allow over eight feet but we didn't see any of that as we got a written response to the Corridor Committee letter so those are still outstanding and I I would I would urge you to vote no tonight and postpone this a little bit more till we get those issues resolved thank you thank you mr kent is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item this evening yeah mr gush you have an additional 14 minutes of time to provide you with equal time for the with the opponents but if there are any additional speakers other than mr gush get to hear them first are great mr gush you oh I'm sorry there's would you like to speak okay can you tell us are you a proponent or an opponent I'm a proponent I don't believe that this estate should be built I'm sorry hold on that that's an opponent opponent fantastic great that's the dyslexia speaking and when you're done speaking if you could go fill out a yellow card with a clerk that would be great it would be my pleasure thank you guys so much for having me please give us your name and address and you have three minutes yes my name is Roman Jennings I'm actually a Spencer Jennings son I live at 361 to Randolph road and our property is adjacent to this proposed housing unit I grew up on the property I used to play in these woods I know them very very well and I think the wildlife situation would of course be hurt by this whole system and I think some of the arguments here tonight were a little bit disappointing to hear I think we need to really address the concern about some of these neighborhoods previous planning as we see a result with poor neighborhood planning we see results of situations where runoff goes unexpected ways we have poor water control so my point is if we don't pay attention to the past and how if we we're not paying attention to how the water runoff is really designed we can run into another situation if not worse they of course speak about the idea that we're not going to make it worse and I'm sure that during the previous neighborhoods installation that same argument could have applied because there are so many unknowns in that and I really do think that it's a very important point that we understand the ramifications of installing a property where it's at with the knowledge that we have about how the water situation is being handled and then putting an adequate solution an adequate knowledge base of what that's going to be not because it's going to make my poor little neighborhood you know feel bad it's just I think that it's really important to be consistent in how we go about putting in developments I think this sets precedent for future neighborhoods being installed in Durham and I think it's important to pay attention to people who address this in the future so thank you guys for having me and I really hope we can come to a good resolution here thank you so the proponents now have an additional 17 minutes we would love it if you didn't use all of it but it is available to if you need it only use all of it use as much as you like I'm going to pull the doc cam out and does the mouse work maybe not if it's easier I orient it correctly okay so this is the Kendrick estate's neighborhood here that we're looking at and this is the Trinity School you can see the flood plain area and the flood areas on this map that are existing and you can see many of the homes in this neighborhood just south of the school back up to it now this is where you're getting a lot of the stormwater issues that exist today and it's not surprising now you also have an issue with the way that stormwater is today oh thank you Vivian sorry it's much nicer there also is an issue as has been noted with the way the stormwater is conveyed from the school that's also causing an additional issue with stormwater here so I just wanted to point that out just so you can get an idea of how wet this area is now this document is just an exhibit that shows some of the buffering that's being provided I don't know if you can read that very clearly but I know I can't so the required undisturbed buffer area is about 3.2 acres and what's being proposed on the site plan is about 1.91 additional acres of undisturbed well I put this mic down so you know what we're talking about here I think is a very respectful development and one which has taken into account a lot of the feedback that we have got I want to say thank you to Mr. Kent for coming up here in my haste earlier I did forget to mention what Baker residential was proposing as far as a fence we've got a lot of feedback and I will say conflicting information on whether a fence is a good idea here given that it's an age recorder but there also seems to be a lot of good reasons to have a fence and so Baker residential is committing to putting a fence on the property line essentially and that fence so between the development in the park a six foot tall fence that would be that black rod iron a five foot I'm sorry five foot tall fence that would be that rod iron looking fence and that will prevent you know the social trails from being formed from the neighborhood into the park which I know is a maintenance issue for the parks and I apologize for having left that out earlier I'm not going to take up all of this time at all but I you know I think what I want I just want to be very clear I understand that there's a lot of concerns a lot of eyes on this but I don't want you to get the impression that Baker residential has not paid attention to that and has not in good faith tried to make a good development better there have been a lot of proffers added to this which I know is a little bit hard to stomach in that this is an annexation but Baker residential is committed to to providing a good community and in being in Durham this is not going to be their last project here oh just one other note so the site plan I think there was some questions about how that connection would be shown to the park there's not I mean the site plan is never going to show a lot of detail on that the connection is is here that's the connection and on a site plan that's the detail that you're getting there so in that cul-de-sac that would be all public right of way and that's going to be maintained by the city after that it's going to be maintained by the HOA so you know again from a maintenance standpoint we hear it loud and clear that that we want a low maintenance type of item there especially because the HOA is going to be somewhat responsible for the maintenance of it so we're trying to develop a connection there that's going to be very nice and one that's not going to require a whole lot of maintenance and one that's not going to get washed out continually and constantly thank you very much I'm happy to answer any questions that you have and hopefully you can support this annexation tonight thank you Mr. Green I should switch it up on the document I'm sorry you put that other picture back up with the floodplain there you go is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item this public hearing item tonight yes ma'am is that first time or first year? different yeah if you've already spoken then yeah that's all sorry about that all right so I'm going to declare the public hearing closed and the matter is now back before the council there any council members who would like to council member Caballero I just have a question because my understanding of proffer is different and maybe I've just interpreted that different I've heard the word proffer twice and in previous meetings when someone is proffered then it becomes text and as part of the deal essentially so any commitments made would not be enforceable by us as this is an annexation we don't have a development plan where you would be able to make those proffers what's being offered is technically not a proffer then right thank you it's just a promise yes thank you thank you yeah I was hoping to was that I was hoping to hear from Mr. Goshe about that issue and I'll just be a little more direct Mr. Goshe I heard you used the word commits committed is committing on behalf of your what does that mean to us given the context for it well it doesn't mean that it's something that's enforceable by the city and I and I explain that at the very beginning of my presentation there's not a tool here available to us it's annexation to to provide those proffers nevertheless this is what Baker residential has told the neighbors and and many of the advisory boards that it is it is going to accomplish on the project it is a promise and if it's one that they don't keep that would be very unfortunate both for them and for the city but it's also you know is also one that the city would never allow a developer to make twice and Baker residential is committed to this project and is committed to being in Durham long-term so I recognize that there is some on you know there's some discomfort with making any type of commitment on this project because the city has no ability enforce those commitments however I'm asking you to put your trust in Baker residential to to implement these promises that they've made and their promises that we think are a good idea the people who have given many of the neighbors who live here have given those ideas based on their experience living there and when we have looked at them and and thought about how that would impact the property they all sound like really great ideas actually using native plannings not having invasive lighting all of this sounds like great ideas and things that that Baker residential is happy to implement especially if it's something that the neighbors are asking for and something that will make them happy I don't know what else to tell you on that other than that I believe that Baker residential is going to be doing these and and and definitely is committed to doing them for this project thank you Mayor Schult Thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem and thank you for presiding I would like to hear from a member of a representative of the developer other than Mr. Gauch who might comment on the question that Council Member Reese asked regarding the commitments that you all are making Yes, Mark Bowles with Baker residential Mr. Mayor could you repeat the question or is there Sure. a basic one So you all we had a letter listing the commitments that you all had made the promises were correct I believe it was dated Thursday of last week Yes and it did not include the the fence that the five-foot fence that Mr. Gauch just mentioned I would be happy to reissue that letter with the change to it and your you've heard Council Member Reese ask do you have any other comments in terms of let me put it like this usually in these situations when we're we're going to rezoning there's a development plan and that kind of thing and we can be assured that these are commitments that are enforceable by the city What kind of comfort level can you give us Mr. Mr. Gauch has already given us his thoughts but what kind of comfort level can you give us that if we were to approve this annexation that you all would indeed do the kind of blighting that you've talked about doing provide the kind of trail entrance that you've talked about park entrance that you've talked about provide the five-foot fence on the west side and so forth could you could you just speak to that Well as Mr. Gauch said we we would intend to do more business in Durham I mean I personally wouldn't stand up here and tell you something I didn't intend to do and corporately we don't intend to do that either if we tell you we're going to do it and we don't do it then our reputation is shot and that's one of the most important things for business to have reputation that they do what they say and so I think it's really I mean we've been doing business in the triangle for over a decade and would like to do so for the next 20, 30 very long time in the future and we need to abide by our agreements if we're going to do that I have one more question Sure Thank you very much My other question is for Ms. Struthers or for someone in the administration Could you speak to the the stormwater issue you mentioned it in your original you mentioned it in your original comments but Mr. Young we've heard from the folks in a nearby neighborhood that and seemed a very real problem that they've got with stormwater runoff in their neighborhood I see this floodplain map which is very also very important you know illustrative the developer is saying that they will provide a 100 year floodplain or rather a stormwater treatment and I wondered if you could comment on that relative to the concerns of this neighborhood Sure thank you Mr. Mayor and members of council good evening Pat Young with the planning department start for the record with the fact that I am not a professional engineer not a stormwater engineer but I have been working 25 years professionally in the field and had a an hour long conversation with Michael Irwin who's our staff engineer with the public works department who's been on site and has been referenced by the applicant and some of the neighbors in this conversation who's analyzed this issue extensively he was not able to be here tonight so I am speaking on his behalf he did verify for us and Mr. others was part of that conversation he did verify for us that there is indeed a existing drainage concern at the rear the north end of the Hope Creek subdivision the Hope Creek subdivision was developed in the early 1990s prior to the advent of current stormwater control rules and standards that were from the early 2000s 2002 to 2003 so the fundamental problem that exists that you the neighbors characterized and showed is really a matter of kind of design that was inadequate to manage offsite stormwater which was a very common at the time and really any development prior to about 2002 or 2003 many developments throughout the community as I think you all are well aware have a similar set of issues because they were not stormwater issues were not required to be incorporated as they are today so what I can say is in addition to that is what is being required to the applicant Mr. Goche made it sound like a voluntary offer that the city staff will enforce and require a 100 year on-site detention of the peak flow from a 100 year storm so what that is very likely to do currently stormwater is running the site is not developed but it is running uncontrolled off of that site so having this very large sophisticated engineered device should slow down the peaking and the rate of flow to that location that was depicted in the video and in the pictures but the total volume as was stated by the opponent will ultimately end up in that low spot because of the fact that there is not a conveyance from the Trinity School site to the floodplain the swamp area to the west adjacent as you heard applicant refer to there is currently Trinity School is doing some modest improvements in the rear of their property they are in essentially amounts to negotiations we cannot require them to complete that conveyance from their property over to the floodplain area which would dramatically significantly reduce this flooding issue but really there is no mechanism to require this applicant to contribute to that or to mitigate this existing problem so does that address your concern? very much so thank you appreciate the information sir thank you Mr. Mayor are there any other questions or comments from council members? I have a question for Pat sure thank you Madam Mayor Pro Tem so just very directly in your professional assessment because the staff is recommending that we approve this annexation is it safe to assume then that the the representations that the developer have made to mitigate stormwater issues is sufficient to address your concern in other words it won't will it or will it not exacerbate the already existing problem what I think has been documented already exist? right so the the peaking so that you saw some of these videos and pictures where there were rapids and very large volumes of water coming through and causing scouring and abrasion and moving debris that should be reduced and improved the total volume of water will will be at least somewhat higher if Trinity school or some other party does not create a conveyance from the current terminal point on the Trinity site over to the flood plain to the east so I'm not trying to be evasive it will improve it in some ways but it will be the volume of water that will be standing if it's not mitigated by Trinity school or some other party would be somewhat higher because the total runoff from the site would be greater something I will remind council that I think is very important here and has not been mentioned tonight is that this property is currently in Durham County is owned RS 20 it could be developed at a lower density so a lower number of units this 20 acre site I think a reasonable number that would of larger lot developments that could be on septic tank or some other onsite treatment would be 12 to 15 at the most but that the county only requires a one year storm detention which is really just a dry pond or some kind of very modest swale or device that would not it provide anywhere near the level of treatment that's being proposed by the applicant so I just so it's clear for all including you all that this property could be developed in the county with less homes but with a much much lower level of storm water treatment does that make sense does it's helpful so it could it could make it better but it might it will make it better in some ways in terms of the scouring the at the rapid flow of the water the total volume of water will be will be greater and I think again that's true for anytime it land is developed more waters running off of it and so again I think we certainly as staff are concerned because every development prior to about 2002 has some deficiencies in terms of storm water conveyance and treatment that we I think we understand as a community that we need to work where we can to mitigate and improve these situations but that it's it's difficult to put that entire burden on each upstream developer North Carolina law allows when water runs one direction North Carolina law allows that water to continue to run that direction after development if that makes sense so we're we're we'd be concerned about setting a precedent where it's the sole responsibility of this offsite party to mitigate an existing condition so I guess colleagues the issue or struggle for me is is I think the first line of the the medical oath is first do no harm I we of course don't want to approve development that will will cause harm to those around them around the development I guess the question for me is however we we applying that principle I mean I this development may in theory affect some homeowners physical property and I guess the larger applications the printable for me is that I would like to not approve developments that further gentrification for whole neighborhoods and and how do you what standard if we're going to employ that standard to protect the physical property of some homeowners notwithstanding that some some proffers or or promises that have been made that our staff thinks would would address those issues and could potentially mitigate you know what what about not approving developments that that does damage that's not physical in nature but you know neighborhood changing in nature and developers you know have the right to do business and and and we we approve developments all the time I guess for me is the question do I believe this developer will do what they say I you know I think there's a compelling case that if they don't that's probably the that's certainly in the in me voting for anything else they do in Durham and and secondly given the pre-existent problems which I think we're documented and the staff's satisfaction if you will or the threshold being crossed with the staff to approve the development and again hearing the the the planned mitigation efforts with the fact and I appreciate the developer will reissue the letter including the fence I'm I'm teetering I'm I'm I'm I'm inclined to approve it but I do I am concerned about exacerbating a pre-existing issue but I'm also concerned about the ability to apply that to other developments that I that I think a we may feel that have impacts on neighborhoods that we approve routinely um you know it may not and for for far many more people than a few homeowners who's supposed to being washed out we're talking about the character of whole neighborhoods so I um you know in times like this I we've got an incredible staff I I tend to defer the staff in in when there's issues like this and and I um I take what the developer said at face value and and if the mitigation efforts are going to be carried out with respect to storm water I'm leaning toward to proving it but I'm I'm interested in hearing from my colleagues on this one I haven't put an exclamation point on it yet but thank you Mr. Mayor thank you Madam Mayor Vortume thank you Councilmember Middleton Mayor Scholl thank you I want to first thank my colleagues for urging us to hold this last time I was definitely ready to vote once again I was wrong so thank you all for pushing us to keep the public hearing open you're allowed one a year Mr. Mayor that was it okay go again because I think we've definitely got a better a much better outcome and we would have had if we had not held it so again appreciative I think that as I read the concerns of DOS the New Hope Audubon the Friends of the Park EAB environmental affairs board they all had various concerns and all urged a wall between the park and the the development and when I read the letter and when again heard John Kent's comments earlier this confirmed for me that the developer had met all of the concerns of those organizations that we asked them who that we asked to look at it around native plants maximizing vegetation the buffer lighting and so forth with the exception of the agreement to build a fence which Mr. Kent referred to but now the developer has promised to build this fence and I think that in terms of the organizations that we approached to comment they have I think fulfilled all of the they've met all of the concerns that were expressed and it was really good to have those concerns expressed by those groups I do want to I'm glad that they the developers decided to promise that this fence I do want to say something about social trails there has been a lot of concern about the groups the EAB and so forth about social trails and the creation of trails into the park that would not be that would that are not planned for the park I do want to point out an interesting irony I would say the number one issue in our region right now in terms of parks is people and and and and trails is the people who are adamant the environmentalists who are absolutely adamant that we keep those social trails on the airport land social trails are an interesting issue and I don't think that there's this promise to build the fence but I just want to say that I've seen the defense of social trails the incredibly powerful defense of social trails from a whole another camp of people so just a comment I think that where I come down on the stormwater situation is this I'm very I can really understand the concerns of the neighbors and appreciative of you all bringing us those concerns and the the videos are very powerful testimony about the stormwater that you all are facing I think that as I see it there are a couple of options for the developer one is the annexation in which case there will be the enforcement of the hundred year storm catchment the other option and more homes the other option is that there will be eventually this this area will be built on septic and there will be fewer homes but there will also be as miss young pointed out that the county only enforces the one year stormwater runoff and so I think that given that and I understand so I think given that that I think that overall for the stormwater situation that you all are facing this is probably a better result we don't know when it would be was developed later on septic but I think that's certainly it's sure to come I do think there's another important advantage of this that has nothing to do with you all or anything to do with anyone that lives there now which is that a couple of different things one is it's by annexing we need housing supply and as a community and by annexing there will be more housing supply which is an important need that we have it helps keep our housing affordability it's important aspect of housing affordability and the other thing is that this is a wonderful park and we need it's it's good to have more people living in this kind of proximity to this park and I think that's it's the same as I feel like about Central Park downtown that we've added a lot of density around Central Park downtown and it it contributes to the number of people are able to enjoy it so I think that that is something that is also advantageous about this I do have one question for the developer um would you be willing to provide the off-site improvement at Trinity School or contribute to that improvement to reduce the runoff from the Trinity School area Mayor Zul I'm what type of contribution I mean I'm I'm clear financial a financial contribution to the school's I could I could current plans um you know Mr. Gosh these aren't committed elements we know that I'm making promises so here's what I'm asking you if Trinity School is making improvements or is considering making improvements to its drainage the channel that we saw in the video uh in order to reduce this runoff and that we know that the total volume of water coming off of Kendrick although not the peak flow would be larger would be more significant given this given the development wo